Making proper use . . .
. . . Of the means of growing in grace.
What is Variety?
“Variety and only variety is worth the price of admission to this vale of tears”
George Sanders
Sounds
The latest dance
The biggest personalities
The antithesis of boredom.
In times of trouble and despair.
The search for talent
Acrobats skilled in comedy.
Clowning – oldest of traditions.
Variety in the 1920s
Lavish and sophisticated.
Circus tumblers and acrobatic dancers.
The finest hoofers
Sister Acts all the rage.
The nut monologuist and the vent act!
Genius equestrians.
Lawrowsky and Wassilowna lead the Sobolewski Troupe.
While none bareback more than the Brothers Reinsch!
Another magic trick.
Legends of legerdemain.
The achievements of these performers seem unsurpassable.
The escapology act
In the cheaper seats, sometimes cruel.
Or open-mouthed – desperate to face their nightmares.
Where to see a tiger, a giantess and an acrobatic sea lion.
Sea lions imitate bathing belles
Comical monkeys. Performing dogs.
The lady at 77 has the complexion of a 17 year-old.
God delights in the harvests which the earth brings forth.
The Best of Everything
Movies on stage.
A flavour of Ibsen, Shakespeare, or a social drama:
The ‘one-act playlet’ with a star name in the cast.
A newsreel item, squeezed in between turns.
The high-brow in music and ballet
With syncopation, rhythm and blues, opera and tap-dancing.
Science and unlikely inventions
Demonstrated before a curious audience.
2 hours and and 3 quarters for a night’s entertainment at selected venues.
Unadulterated illusion.
The moulded limbs of Léotard swing within inches of granny’s head.
Not a place for the faint-hearted performer.
The MOUTHIEST critic
Get on and off FAST!
“You’d meet a vaudevillian on the street and ask him how he was doing and he’d answer ‘seventeen minutes’ if he were a top act.”
George Burns
To come away from a Scots audience to the sound of cheers and adulation isn’t the fate of most English performers, even some of the most talented ones. Only those whose act was tight and full of fresh material commanded respect. Renée and Billie learnt this early on. When Jessie Matthews and Sonnie Hale took the musical ‘Stardust’ to the Alhambra, Glasgow, in October 1938 it wasn’t exactly a blissful experience. (Glasgow Citizen, 03.03.39).
Woe betide the act that has to follow the smash hit !
” . . . but if the Houston Sisters had been on before them, the audience wouldn’t let them off.”
Renée Houston, 1974
Perpetual change.
You send your luggage ahead of you.
“There’s all this luggage for touring in variety. If luggage gets delayed, you’re in the SOUP!! Nevertheless, it’s marvellous what can be done in an emergency. Only a few months ago my kid sister Shirley and I were in Edinburgh for an opening week of a brand new act. We reached the theatre and found we had no trunk – everything – props and all had gone to the Isle of Man! Shirley had an evening dress with her but I only had the travelling dress in which I stood.
Normally I have to get all my suits tailored for me as I am very small – there was no time in Edinburgh. Believe it or not in 10 minutes, I went into a store and I was able to fit myself out in slacks, a blazer, shirt, tie etc. I told the audience the story of what had happened. The audience wouldn’t believe me – they thought the whole thing was a gag.”
Billie Houston, 1936
They used to call it ‘Music Hall’
Come and be dazzled!
Every town has a place where you might hear ‘Roll out the Barrel.’
The Chairman does his stuff.
You have to do something in your act and it sure takes time to perfect it.
Soon you’ll be able to keep your end up – and compete with the best of them.
Shame-free
the rollicking torch song, the strumming folk song, the female impersonator, the champion clog-dancer, the Irish singer, the spoon-tapper, the dancing American blackface comic, the male impersonator, the singing pugilist, the freak act and the saucy low comedienne.
Please don’t look back, Miss H.
“I like beauty in the theatre. I believe in bringing the audience up to your level, not dragging them down to it. That’s the difference between today and the old days . . .”
Renée Houston, 1975
You’re looking through a glass darkly.
“I’m looking through a rusted keyhole darkly!”
Those proud suburbs and even prouder theatres.
Happy folk dressed for the occasion.
Take delight in the occasion.
Carry programmes with pretty covers.
Decay
In distress: The Brighton Hippodrome, 2016
From Metropolitan Theatre of Varieties to Metropolitan Police:
Now cinemas, pubs, religious centres, shops, supermarkets . . .
Changing times at Golders Green (above) and the Saville, Shaftesbury Avenue (below)
Blissful Ignorance or American History as Art
Robert Luff’s ‘Black and White Minstrel Show’ at the Victoria Palace, London in the 1960s and 1970s earned itself a place in The Guinness Book of Records as the show seen by the largest number of people.
Talk of ‘being offended’ didn’t exist then. Righteous culture’s ‘whip’ was as yet unfurled.
Whether on stage or TV (with 55 million viewers) the producers had family audiences in mind. Not even the staunchest Victorian could be upset by this middle-of-the-road, middle-brow, middle-class theatrical experience. Only the Rebel and Punk hated it; longing for something violent and disturbing. That this show could offend was laughable!
Dark episodes in American lived history such as slave ridicule were little known in Britain. All British people saw was an American idiom; an overseas musical culture to look upon enviously. Nobody analysed it – not like today when everything is analysed for traces of racism, with the fun and spontaneity removed in the process.
In British Variety history blackface had joyful connotations only. It signified irresistible dancing, comedy, harmony and clever instrumentation. It was colour blind with white and black blackface artistes. It was ideal when many provincial theatres were shacks with lighting so bad that whitened lips and eyes helped stage performers get seen. The earliest Minstrel shows and Pickaninny Bands were staid and forbade dancing ladies. By the time of the Luff Show, the form had been updated to include showgirls, remaining a nostalgic look back at Minstrel Shows peculiar to British Variety in days of olde. It still had little to do with the American story.
‘Hamilton’ (Seller Mackintosh et al) succeeds on many fronts. It bursts with colour. You leave the theatre with a far better knowledge about personalities of The War of Independence. History is brought to life. The casting decisions matter little, given the excellent, sincere and memorable performances. The choreography ably communicates every mood despite a set that never changes. The show has great song numbers, with the rap not so much a musical highlight as an alternative iambic pentameter.
Class Differences Everywhere.
Cultural Differences Everywhere.
An Antidote – Communal laughter – Softening notions of division . . .
No climate of fear. No proselytisers allowed in.
Camouflaged – No pain – Endless joy, beauty, illusion.
Razor-like manoeuvres by star turns aren’t witnessed.
“Hearts rebuilt from hope resurrect dreams killed by hate.”
Aberjhani, 2010
Hope is Eternal.
Their gifts were many
and they were much admired . . .
A fellow comic from the 1930s was John Tilley – son of Scottish footballer JF Thompson.
Here he is below, with Reginald Gardiner. They are impersonating BBC commentators.
Robb Wilton was almost family.
A homage to incompetent authority.
“The greatest English comedian of all – Robb Wilton.”
Renée Houston, 1975
Expect the unexpected with Charlie Laughton.
An inspiration, friend and rival, Gracie Fields.
“Gracie was a TRUE clown – one of the GREATEST.”
Renée Houston, 1975
“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
Anaïs Nin
Renee Houston Site 