My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall

My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall
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Описание книги

The former Prime Minister takes a remarkable journey into his family past to tell the richly colourful story of the British music hall in this Theatre Book Prize-shotlisted history.Music hall was one of the glories of Victorian England. Sentimental, vulgar, class-conscious, but always patriotic and on the side of the underdog, it held a mirror to the audiences’ hopes and fears, and sometimes the general absurdity of life.Vast, smoke-filled auditoriums were packed night after night in nearly every town and city in Britain. The most popular performers, such as Marie Lloyd, Vesta Tilley and George Robey, were among the highest paid and most celebrated figures in the land.This was the world that John Major’s father Tom entered at the age of 21 as a comedian and singer. In My Old Man, the former prime minister uses his father’s story as a springboard for telling the entertaining history of the music hall, from its origins in Elizabethan times through to its heyday in the nineteenth century and eventual decline with the rise of radio and cinema in the twentieth century.Packed with colourful anecdotes about the great performers of the day, this warm-hearted history conjures up a lost age.

Оглавление

John Major. My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall

Dedication

Contents

Leaving the Stage

1. The Road to Music Hall

2. The Basement and the Cellars

3. At the Fringe

4. The First Pioneer

5. Explosion

6. The Swells and the Costers

CHORUS:

7. The Serio-Comediennes

CHORUS:

8. Marie Lloyd

CHORUS:

9. Dan Leno and Little Tich

10. The Comic and the Minstrel

11. The Cross-Dressers: Girls Who Were Boys

12. Top Hats and Black Faces

CHORUS:

13. The Business of Pleasure

14. Warp and Weft

CHORUS:

CHORUS:

CHORUS:

15. The Exotic and the Bizarre

16. Amusement of the People

17. The Literati and the Artists

18. Enterprise and Outrage

19. Overseas Music Hall

20. Music Hall War

21. Tom and Kitty

22. The Seeds of Decline

23. World War I

CHORUS:

24. Aftermath

Index of Songs

General Index

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

About the Author

Other Works

Picture Section

Copyright

About the Publisher

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In loving memory of Tom, Gwen and Kitty, and of my brother Terry, whose ambition in life was to see this book written

Title Page

.....

Bl—t his eyes.

In the repetition of the opening lines one can feel the horror that returns unbidden to the mind of the condemned man. As he curses his tormentors, he turns to spit on the cell floor. Ross’s performance was a savage rendition of a bleak song, and its emotional impact made it one of the most dramatic acts ever seen on the variety stage. Its power was such that when Ross finished singing the room would empty, and for ten years it would be a cult song. Ross entered show-business history with his performances at the Cyder Cellars, but he did not gain – or at least keep – wealth or position. He drifted and declined until he hovered – barely recognised – on the edge of the profession. He died in obscurity in the early 1880s.

.....

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