Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight", "Long Ago " and "Who?". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and E. Y. Harburg.
John Galsworthy was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932.
Robert Laurence Binyon, CH was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. His most famous work, "For the Fallen", is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services.
Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, was an English actress whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television.
Sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh is a British theatrical producer and theatre owner notable for his association with many commercially successful musicals. At the height of his success in 1990, he was described as being "the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world" by the New York Times. He is the producer of shows such as Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Mary Poppins, Oliver!, Miss Saigon,Cats, and Hamilton.
Sir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was an English-born Scottish writer of fiction, biography, histories and a memoir, as well as a cultural commentator, raconteur and lifelong Scottish nationalist. He was one of the co-founders in 1928 of the Scottish National Party along with Hugh MacDiarmid, RB Cunninghame Graham and John MacCormick. He was knighted in 1952.
John William Van Druten was an English playwright and theatre director, known professionally as John Van Druten. He began his career in London, and later moved to America becoming a U.S. citizen. He was known for his plays of witty and urbane observations of contemporary life and society.
Robert Cedric Sherriff, FSA, FRSL was an English writer best known for his play Journey's End, which was based on his experiences as an army officer in the First World War. He wrote several plays, novels, and screenplays, and was nominated for an Academy Award and two BAFTA awards.
Una O'Connor was an Irish-American actress who worked extensively in theatre before becoming a character actress in film and in television. She often portrayed comical wives, housekeepers and servants.
Leslie Lincoln Henson was an English comedian, actor, producer for films and theatre, and film director. He initially worked in silent films and Edwardian musical comedy and became a popular music hall comedian who enjoyed a long stage career. He was famous for his bulging eyes, malleable face and raspy voice and helped to form the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) during the Second World War.
Charles Edward Underdown was an English theatre, cinema and television actor. He was born in London and educated at Eton College in Berkshire.
Edward Keble Chatterton was a prolific writer who published around a hundred books, pamphlets and magazine series, mainly on maritime and naval themes.
Michael Keith Billington OBE is a British author and arts critic. Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts. He is the authorised biographer of the playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008).
As Thousands Cheer is a revue with a book by Moss Hart and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, first performed in 1933. The revue contained satirical sketches and witty or poignant musical numbers, several of which became standards, including "Heat Wave", "Easter Parade" and "Harlem on my Mind". The sketches were loosely based on the news and the lives and affairs of the rich and famous, and other people of the day, such as Joan Crawford, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Noël Coward, Josephine Baker, and Aimee Semple McPherson.
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.
Lawrence Randall Grossmith was an English actor, the son of the Gilbert and Sullivan performer George Grossmith and the brother of the actor-manager George Grossmith Jr.
Jane Carr was the stage name of English stage and film actress Rita Brunstrom.
Geoffrey Arundel Whitworth CBE was an English lecturer and author who sought to promote amateur and professional theatre through the formation of the British Drama League, acting as its director for many years. Whitworth was instrumental in the founding of the National Theatre, and served the committee lobbying for this as its secretary. Though not an actor, he was praised by George Bernard Shaw as one of the most important figures in the history of British theatre. The library he assembled is a large and important collection, now held at the Theatre Museum at Covent Garden.
Vincent Holman was a British stage, film and television actor. On stage, he was in the original cast of Arnold Ridley's The Ghost Train at Brighton's Theatre Royal and London's St. Martin's Theatre in 1925-1926.
George Goodchild (1888–1969) aka Alan Dare, Wallace Q. Reid, and Jesse Templeton, was a prolific and successful British writer of popular books, short stories, plays, and movies, who published over 200 works in his 60-year career, and beyond his lifetime. Books are still re-issued, mostly in large print for older readers. Featured characters include Inspector McLean, spy catcher Q33 Trelawney, Nigel Rix, and Trooper O'Neill. He wrote and directed films based on books and stories, including Colorado Jack (1921), Bucking the Barrier (1923), The Public Defender (1931), Condemned to Death (1932), Trooper O'Neill (1932), and No Escape (1936).
