The West End of London is a district of Central London, London, England, west of the City of London and north of the River Thames, in which many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings and entertainment venues, including West End theatres, are concentrated.
Hattie Jacques was an English comedy actress of stage, radio and screen. She is best known as a regular of the Carry On films, where she typically played strict, no-nonsense characters, but was also a prolific television and radio performer.
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and with the Royal Opera House, itself known as "Covent Garden". The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal's Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the historical buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the London Transport Museum and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
St Giles Circus is a road junction in the St Giles district of the West End of London at the eastern end of Oxford Street, where it connects with New Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road, which it is more often referred to owing to the location of Tottenham Court Road Underground station directly under the junction. It is near to Soho, Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia.
Shaftesbury Avenue is a major road in the West End of London, named after The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. It runs north-easterly from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus. From Piccadilly Circus to Cambridge Circus, it is in the City of Westminster, and from Cambridge Circus to New Oxford Street, it is in the London Borough of Camden.
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.
The Good Old Days is a BBC television light entertainment programme produced by Barney Colehan which ran for 30 years from 20 July 1953 to 31 December 1983.
Coventry Street is a short street in the West End of London, connecting Piccadilly Circus to Leicester Square. Part of the street is a section of the A4, a major road through London. It is named after the politician Henry Coventry, secretary of state to Charles II.
Anthony Vincent Benedictus Collins was a British composer and conductor. He scored around 30 films in the US and the UK between 1937 and 1954, and composed the British light music classic Vanity Fair in 1952. His Decca recordings of the seven Sibelius symphonies was the second cycle by a single conductor and orchestra released.
The Charing Cross Music Hall was established beneath the arches of Charing Cross railway station in London in 1866 by brothers Giovanni and Carlo Gatti, to replace the former Hungerford Hall. The site had been acquired, together with Hungerford Market, by the South Eastern Railway in 1862, and incorporated into the railway station, which opened on 11 January 1864, resulting in the demolition of the hall.
Evans Music-and-Supper Rooms was an entertainment venue for music and singing in the early nineteenth century, located at 43 King Street, Covent Garden, London. The venue provided the type of entertainment which later evolved into music hall. What would later be known as the Evans Music and Supper Rooms was initially known as the Thomas Archer House. The house was built by Thomas Archer in 1712 for Admiral Edward Russell, the fourth Earl of Bedford's grandson. The House would later be sold to a man named Joy and turned into The Grand Hotel. Formerly the dining room of the Grand Hotel, a 'song and supper' room was established in the 1840s by W. H. Evans. It was also known as Evans Late Joy's, the venue previously being owned by a man named Joy. In 1842 the rooms were taken over by John Paddy Green, who had been one of Evans's entertainers. Green reconstructed the rooms and maintained their popular reputation. The room was 113 feet (34.4 m) long by 56 feet (17.1 m) wide.
The Green Room Club was a London-based club, primarily for actors, but also for lovers of theatre, arts and music. It was established in 1877 in a restaurant in Piccadilly Circus, and moved to premises on Adam Street in 1955, where it remained until its closure in 2004.
A song and supper room was a dining club in mid-nineteenth century Victorian England in which entertainment and good food were provided. They provided an alternative to formal theatre and music hall with a convivial atmosphere in which the customers were encouraged to perform themselves.
Vida Hope was a British stage and film actress, who also directed stage productions.
Joan Sterndale-Bennett was a British stage and film actress, best known as a character comedian for her work at the Players' Theatre in London.
Hattie Jacques was an English actress who appeared in many genres of light entertainment including radio, film, television and stage. Jacques's career spanned from 1939 until her death in 1980. She is best remembered for her appearances in fourteen Carry On films and for her professional partnership with Eric Sykes.
Henrietta Street is a street in Covent Garden, London, that was once home to a number of artists and later became the location of many publishing firms.
Violetta à Beckett Williams was an English actor and singer who spoke fluent French and specialised in the performance of roguish and sometimes suggestive French chansons. For most of World War II she entertained Free French Forces in London and then joined the Late Joys Victorian music hall company at the Players' Theatre. She made her name with a five-year West End run playing "Hortense" in the Players' original 1953 London production of Sandy Wilson's pastiche 1920s musical The Boy Friend. In her work in musical comedy she used as her stage name the single word Violetta. As an actor she was styled by her married name, Violetta Farjeon.
Gervase Laurence Farjeon was an English theatre producer, director, manager and designer. Born into a theatrical and artistic family he became director of productions at the Players' Theatre in London and co-commissioned and produced The Boy Friend, a British musical of the 1950s. He nursed it through its record-breaking five-year run in London's West End and in the 1960s produced further shows in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Later he was in demand as a producer and set designer for pioneering companies who used theatrical techniques for corporate conferences, product launches, and cabarets. An animal lover, in later life he worked voluntarily with the Born Free Foundation inspecting zoos around Europe for the European Community. From 1965 he was the literary executor of his aunt, the English author and poet Eleanor Farjeon and allowed her hymn Morning Has Broken to be recorded by the pop singer Cat Stevens. It became an international hit.
