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
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7. The Serio-Comediennes
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8. Marie Lloyd
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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
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13. The Business of Pleasure
14. Warp and Weft
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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.
