4 - Popular theatre, 1895–1940

Summary

The first ever Royal Command Performance of Variety took place in the presence of George V and Queen Mary at the Palace Theatre, London, on 1 July 1912. The acts included singers, ventriloquists, comedians and sketch artistes; jugglers, magicians and minstrels; classical ballet dancers and ‘Tiller Girls’. The programme looked back to the robust and lively Victorian music hall, and forward to the new technologies of entertainment. It featured acts representing the rich seam of British popular performance in the first half of the twentieth century. Some started out in the music halls of the late nineteenth century – stars of pantomime and musical theatre – and some were to find fame in film, sound recording and radio.

Little Tich, a comedian, vocalist and actor, had begun his lengthy career in 1880 as a blackface minstrel performer, at the age of 12. Four feet tall, and with his trademark 28-inch long boots, he became a star of the music hall. He performed for over seventeen years at the Tivoli Theatre in the Strand, where, in 1907, he was one of the ‘Five Harrys’ (his real name was Harry Relph; the other four were Harrys Lauder, Tate, Fragson and Randall). He was also a regular in pantomime at Drury Lane, appearing in 1891 on the same bill as Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd in Humpty Dumpty. For the Command Performance he appeared as ‘The Gamekeeper and His Big Boots’.