The Royal Variety Performance is a televised variety show held annually in the United Kingdom to raise money for the Royal Variety Charity. It is attended by senior members of the British royal family. The evening's performance is presented as a live variety show, usually from a theatre in London and consists of family entertainment that includes comedy, music, dance, magic and other speciality acts.
Margaret O'Rene Ryan was an American dancer and actress, best known for starring in a series of movie musicals at Universal Pictures with Donald O'Connor and Gloria Jean.
Patricia Amy Rowlands was an English actress who is best remembered for her roles in the Carry On films series, as Betty Lewis in the ITV Thames sitcom Bless This House, and as Alice Meredith in the Yorkshire Television sitcom Hallelujah!.
The Crazy Gang were a group of British entertainers, formed in the early 1930s. In the mature form the group's six men were Bud Flanagan, Chesney Allen, Jimmy Nervo, Teddy Knox, Charlie Naughton and Jimmy Gold. The group achieved considerable domestic popularity and were a favourite of the royal family, especially King George VI.
Flanagan and Allen were a British singing and comedy double act most active during the 1930s and 1940s. Its members were Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen (1894–1982). They were first paired in a Florrie Forde revue, and were booked by Val Parnell to appear at the Holborn Empire in 1929.
Florence Dawson, better known by her stage name Florence Desmond, was an English actress, comedian and impersonator.
The Tiller Girls were among the most popular dance troupes of the 1890s, first formed by John Tiller in Manchester, England, in 1889. In theatre Tiller had noticed the overall effect of a chorus of dancers was often spoiled by lack of discipline. Tiller found that by linking arms the dancers could dance as one; he is credited with inventing precision dance. Possibly most famous for their high-kicking routines, the Tiller Girls were highly trained and precise.
Doris Breamer Hare MBE was a Welsh actress, comedian, singer, and dancer best known for portraying Mabel Butler in the British sitcom On the Buses and its film spin-offs, after replacing the original actress Cicely Courtneidge.
Bonar Colleano was an American-British stage and film actor based in the United Kingdom.
Brinsworth House is a residential and nursing retirement home for theatre and entertainment professionals on Staines Road, Twickenham, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England. The house is owned and run by the Royal Variety Charity and has 36 bedrooms, six living rooms, a library, an in-house bar and stage, and a staff of 64. It is set in five acres of land.
Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox were English comedians who formed a double act and were part of the original Crazy Gang comedy group.
Edward Earl Gray, who performed as 'Monsewer' Eddie Gray, was an English stage comedian. He appeared in music halls as a solo act and also as a member of the Crazy Gang.
Betty Knox was an American dancer and journalist. Her early career was in American vaudeville and British variety as the original ‘Betty’ (1928–1941) of Wilson, Keppel and Betty – a dance trio who performed slick comedy routines in Egyptian dress, including the Sand Dance and the Dance of the Seven Veils. When she retired from dancing, she became a journalist for the London Evening Standard and was subsequently a war correspondent in Normandy and a reporter at the Nuremberg trials.
Con Colleano was an Australian tightrope walker. He was the first person to successfully attempt a forward somersault on a tightrope and became one of the most celebrated and highly paid circus performers of his time. He was known as "The Wizard of the Wire" or "The Toreador of the Wire".
Betty Jumel was a British variety hall entertainer and actress.
Sanding, also known as sand jigging or sand dancing, is a type of dance performed as a series of slides and shuffles on a sand-strewn floor. In some instances, the sand is spread across an entire stage. In other cases, it is kept in a box that the dancer stays in throughout the dance. Originally a soft-shoe technique, scratching in sand can also add a different texture to the percussion of tap. There is no one type of shoe used to sand dance; traditional tap shoes are used alongside soft shoes and leather boots, all creating a distinctive sound. Willie "The Lion" Smith said of sanding, "You could really hear and feel the rhythm when the dancers shuffled around in a nice pair of patent-leather shoes".
Ballet égyptien, Op. 12 (1875), is Alexandre Luigini's best-known composition and the only one of his works in the standard repertoire. It was dedicated to Jules Pasdeloup. The ballet consists of eight movements, from which two different concert suites have been extracted. The first suite is the better known.
Variety Jubilee is a 1943 British historical musical film directed by Maclean Rogers and starring Reginald Purdell, Ellis Irving and Lesley Brook. It depicts life in a London music hall from 1892 to the Second World War. It was made at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. The film was re-released in 1945, to capitalise on the popularity of Ealing's Champagne Charlie.
The World Before the Flood is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1828 and currently in the Southampton City Art Gallery. It depicts a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost in which, among a series of visions of the future shown to Adam, he sees the world immediately before the Great Flood. The painting illustrates the stages of courtship as described by Milton: a group of men select wives from a group of dancing women, drag their chosen woman from the group, and settle down to married life. Behind the courting group, an oncoming storm looms, foreshadowing the destruction which the dancers and lovers are about to bring upon themselves.
Fayne and Evans were an English comedy duo who were popular in the late 1940s and 1950s. They were Tony Fayne and David Evans.
