The London Palladium is a Grade II* West End theatre located on Argyll Street, London, in Soho. The auditorium holds 2,286 people. Hundreds of stars have played there, many with televised performances. Between 1955 and 1969 Sunday Night at the London Palladium was staged at the venue, produced for the ITV network. The show included a performance by The Beatles on 13 October 1963. One national paper's headlines in the following days coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the increasingly hysterical interest in the band.
Cabaret is a 1966 musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Joe Masteroff. The musical was based on John Van Druten's 1951 play I Am a Camera which was adapted from Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood which drew upon his experiences in the poverty-stricken Weimar Republic and his intimate friendship with nineteen-year-old cabaret singer Jean Ross.
Jan Miner was an American actress best known for her role as the character "Madge", the manicurist in Palmolive dish-washing detergent television commercials beginning in the 1960s.
Sally is a musical comedy with music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Clifford Grey and book by Guy Bolton, with additional lyrics by Buddy De Sylva, Anne Caldwell and P. G. Wodehouse. The plot hinges on a mistaken identity: Sally, a waif, is a dishwasher at the Alley Inn in New York City. She poses as a famous foreign ballerina and rises to fame through joining the Ziegfeld Follies. There is a rags to riches story, a ballet as a centrepiece, and a wedding as a finale. "Look for the Silver Lining" continues to be one of Kern's most familiar songs. The song is lampooned by another song, "Look for a Sky of Blue," in Rick Besoyan's satirical 1959 musical Little Mary Sunshine.
Marilyn Miller was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, and the combination of these talents endeared her to audiences. On stage, she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who lived happily ever after. Her enormous popularity and famed image were in distinct contrast to her personal life, which was marred by disappointment, tragedy, frequent illness, and ultimately her sudden death due to complications of nasal surgery at age 37.
Reefer Madness is a musical satire of the 1936 propaganda film and cult classic Reefer Madness that opened in Los Angeles in 1998. The book and lyrics were written by Kevin Murphy and the book and music by Dan Studney. Directed by Andy Fickman, it was initially shown at the Hudson Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. The Off-Broadway production ran from September 15th to October 28th, 2001 at the Variety Arts Theatre. Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatricals now administers the stock/amateur rights, and the show has been produced by local theater groups in several cities, including Long Island, Toronto, Seattle, Philadelphia, Charleston, Sacramento, Raleigh, Norfolk, Minneapolis, and London. The 2008 production at Washington, D.C.'s Studio Theater won two Helen Hayes Awards.
Katherine Renee Shindle is an American actress, singer, dancer, and AIDS activist. She is currently serving as the President of the Actors' Equity Association. She was Miss America 1998 in 1998 and Miss Illinois in 1997.
Dixiana (1930) is a lavish American pre-Code comedy, musical film directed by Luther Reed and produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. The final twenty minutes of the picture were photographed in Technicolor. The film stars Bebe Daniels, Everett Marshall, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Joseph Cawthorn, Jobyna Howland, Ralf Harolde, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Dorothy Lee. The script was adapted by Luther Reed from a story by Anne Caldwell.
Julia Kathleen Nancy McKenzie is an English actress, singer, presenter, and theatre director. She has premièred leading roles written by both Alan Ayckbourn and Stephen Sondheim. On television, she is known for her BAFTA Award nominated role as Hester Fields in the sitcom Fresh Fields (1984–1986) and its sequel French Fields (1989–1991), and as Miss Marple in Agatha Christie's Marple (2009–2013).
Sally Cecilia Hawkins is an English actress who began her career on stage and then moved into film. She has received several awards including a Golden Globe Award and the Berlin International Film Festival's Silver Bear for Best Actress, with nominations for a Critics' Choice Movie Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, two Academy Awards, and two British Academy Film Awards.
Madge Kennedy was a stage, film and TV actress whose career began as a stage actress in 1912 and flourished in motion pictures during the silent film era. In 1921, journalist Heywood Broun described her as "the best farce actress in New York".
Rio Rita is a 1927 stage musical with a book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson, music by Harry Tierney, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, and produced by Florenz Ziegfeld. This musical united Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey as a comedy team and made them famous.
Fenella Justine Therese Woolgar is an English film, theatre, television and radio actress. She is known for her roles in various films including Bright Young Things (2003) and Victoria and Abdul (2017). She is also well known for TV shows Doctor Who as crime novelist Agatha Christie, Inside Number 9, Call the Midwife as Sister Hilda.
Tammany Young was an American stage and film actor.
Robert Edwin Clark, known as Bobby Clark, was a minstrel, vaudevillian, performer on stage, film, television and the circus. Known for his painted-on eyeglasses, he was part of a comedy team with Paul McCullough for 36 years.
William Lugg was an English actor and singer of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. He had a long stage career beginning with roles in several Gilbert and Sullivan operas and continuing for over four decades in drama, comedy and musical theatre. Later in his career, he appeared in nine silent films in the early years of British cinema.
Sally of the Sawdust is a 1925 American silent comedy film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring W. C. Fields. It was based on the 1923 stage musical Poppy. Fields would later star in a second film version, Poppy (1936).
Everything's Rosie is a 1931 American Pre-Code slapstick comedy film directed by Clyde Bruckman, from a screenplay by Ralph Spence, Tim Whelan, and Al Boasberg, based on a story by Boasberg. Although the screenplay was credited as original, it bore a striking resemblance to a 1923 play, Poppy, which had starred W.C. Fields.
Dorothy Agnes Donnelly was an actress, playwright, librettist, producer, and director. After a decade-long acting career that included several notable roles on Broadway, she turned to writing plays, musicals and operettas, including more than a dozen on Broadway including several long-running successes. Her most famous libretto was The Student Prince (1924), in collaboration with composer Sigmund Romberg.
Poppy is a 1936 comedy film starring W. C. Fields and Rochelle Hudson. The film was based on a 1923 stage revue of the same name starring Fields and Madge Kennedy. This was the second film version of the revue featuring Fields, following Sally of the Sawdust in 1925 with Carol Dempster in the title role.
