Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was most popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850, through the Great War. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous Music Hall and subsequent, more respectable Variety differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts, and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall, featuring rousing songs and comic acts.
Margaret Mary Day Lockwood, CBE, was an English actress. One of Britain's most popular film stars of the 1930s and 1940s, her film appearances included The Lady Vanishes (1938), Night Train to Munich (1940), The Man in Grey (1943), and The Wicked Lady (1945). She was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress for the 1955 film Cast a Dark Shadow. She also starred in the television series Justice (1971–74).
Peggy Cummins was an Irish actress, born in Wales, who is best known for her performance in Joseph H. Lewis's Gun Crazy (1950), playing a trigger-happyfemme fatale, who robs banks with her lover. In 2020, she was listed at number 16 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Constance Vera Browne, Baroness Oranmore and Browne, commonly known as Sally Gray, was an English film actress of the 1930s and 1940s. Her obituary in The Irish Times described her as "once seen as a British rival to Ginger Rogers."
Shirley Abicair is an Australian-born singer, musician, television personality, actress and author. In the 1950s and 60s, she was probably best known as an exponent of the zither.
Olivia Joyce Compton was an American actress.
Sarah Ellen Allgood, known as Sara Allgood, was an Irish-American actress. She first studied drama with the Irish nationalist Daughters of Ireland and was at the opening of the Irish National Theatre Society.
Lydia Yeamans Titus was an Australian-born American singer, dancer, comedienne, and actress who had a lengthy career in vaudeville and cinema. She was remembered on stage for her Baby-Talk act and a popular rendition of the English ballad, Sally in Our Alley. In appreciation, King Edward VII once presented Titus a gold bar pin with the opening notes of Sally in Our Alley etched in diamonds. In later life Titus became a pioneer in the medium of film appearing in at least 132 motion pictures between 1911 and 1930.
Harry Rickards, born Henry Benjamin Leete, was an English-born baritone, comedian and theatre owner, most active in vaudeville and stage, first in his native England and then Australia after emigrating in 1871.
Ethel Griffies was an English actress of stage, screen, and television. She is remembered for portraying the ornithologist Mrs. Bundy in Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Birds (1963). She appeared in stage roles in her native England and in the United States, and had featured roles in around 100 motion pictures. Griffies was one of the oldest working actors in the English-speaking theatre at the time of her death at 97 years old. She acted alongside such stars as May Whitty, Ellen Terry, and Anna Neagle.
Phyllis Barry was an English film actress. Born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to Seth Henry and Bertha Hillyard, Barry appeared in over 40 films between 1925 and 1947.
Laurence Hanray, sometimes credited as Lawrence Hanray, was a British film and theatre actor born in London, England. He is also credited as the author of several plays and music hall songs.
Arthur Michael Tauchert was an Australian acrobatic comedian, dancer, singer, film actor, and star of the Australian silent film, The Sentimental Bloke (1919).
Showgirl's Luck is a 1931 Australian musical directed by Norman Dawn. It was the first Australian full talking film.
Jenny Hill, born Elizabeth Jane Thompson, was an English music hall performer of the Victorian era known as "The Vital Spark" and "the Queen of the Halls". Her repertoire of songs included "'Arry", "The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery", "The Little Vagabond Boy", "I've Been a Good Woman to You" and "If I Only Bossed the Show".
Connie Ediss was an English actress and singer best known as a buxom, good-humoured comedian in many of the popular Edwardian musical comedies around the turn of the 20th century.
John Wood was an Australian who acted on the stage and briefly became a film star in Hollywood and Britain in the late 1930s.
Jennie Lee was a Victorian Era English stage actress, singer and dancer whose career was largely entwined with the title role in Jo, a melodrama her husband, John Pringle Burnett, wove around a relatively minor character from the Charles Dickens novel, Bleak House. She made her stage debut in London at an early age and found success in New York and San Francisco not long afterwards. Lee may have first starred in Jo around 1874 during her tenure at San Francisco's California Theatre, but her real success came with the play's London debut on 22 February 1876 at the Globe Theatre in Newcastle Street. Jo ran for many months at the Globe and other London venues before embarking for several seasons on tours of the British Isles, a return to North America, tours of Australia and New Zealand and later revivals in Britain. Reduced circumstances over her final years forced Lee to seek assistance from an actor's pension fund subsidised in part by proceeds from Royal Command Performances.
Jack Lotto was a British music hall performer of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras whose speciality was a trick-cycling act. With entertainer Joe Elvin he co-founded the show business charity the Grand Order of Water Rats in 1889. Later he managed his children in the popular cycling act 'Lotto, Lilo and Otto'.
Margaret O'Neil was an Irish-American vaudeville actress.
