East End Entertainers of 1922
January 7, 2023
To cheer us all up at the end of the holiday season, I consulted the Concert Artistes Directory of 1922 in the Bishopsgate Institute to see what local talent was on offer.
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Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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I remember listening to Elsie and Doris Waters on the Radio. Very funny ladies!
I also came across the Bishopsgate Institute via your wonderful post today. Their collections, themes and archives are incredibly interesting! A treasure trove for new postings…
Love & Peace
ACHIM
What a splendid bunch of people! Would these acts have performed in music halls or a theatre I wonder ? Also was Miss Iris Jay a precursor for Joyce Grenfell, I love that type of entertainment.
The Mask entertainment looks terrifying!
Fascinating list of artistes including Elsie and Doris Waters who were sisters to Betty Waters who danced with my mother at the London Hippodrome at around the same time and also toured Canada and South Africa with my mother as part of the George Robey company in 1926/29. They all had a famous brother who changed his stage name to Warner and became known to us all as PC Dixon of Dock Green.
I am scared of H Waterman Harris.
Elsie and Doris Waters – sisters of the actor Jack Warner (Dixon of Dock Green)!
There is a hidden message from the past in todays blog . Here we have entertainers of considerable talent living as neighbours and friends . They were just working people earning a living in the same way as everyone else did.
In the 1950’s I sat next to a boy at school whose father played football for England and lived in a little house down the road . It eas nothing extraordinary at the time.
We have allowed such inequalities in our society to develop to the extent that money falling into the hands of celebrities and those in the higher echelons of business have created a layer of society that is unsustainable . Maybe the world would be a better place if we regarded human talents as for the benefit of us all and not just for that particular individual.
OK, I’m hooked. Mr. Levey (and his masks) is so intriguing — and I confess I cannot imagine what his act would have consisted of — but I think his promotional ad wins the award. I’m baffled,
I’m curious, I’m intrigued, I’m a little creeped out, and I have money-in-hand ready to buy a ticket. He’s captured my imagination.
Thanks, GA for shining a spotlight, cueing the orchestra, and bringing these wonderful performers on stage. Truly, “something for everyone!”.
Miss Iris Jay for me. Do you have her agents telephone number?
Wouldn’t want to meet H. Waterman Harris in a darkened alley anytime soon!
Like Lynne Perrella, I was fascinated by Mr. Levey’s advertisement.
To think he’d lost a leg at the Great War’s Battle of Passchendaele and a few years later was entertaining the public as he had before the war is astounding.
I wonder if any of the masks made for injured First World War soldiers influenced Levey’s own mask work?
http://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.com/2016/01/sivori-levey-1879-1924-british-author.html
Levey has a fascinating life history
My Great Uncles were Variety Artistes of the 1930s and 1940s. My Great Uncle and Great Aunt were billed as ‘Georges & Dorina’ and did acrobatics on stage and in the open air, and performed at the Hackney Empire and other threatres around the UK. Also, Dorina performed in 1928 on stage with two others as a trio and were billed as ‘Haywood, Hay & Dorina’ and performed a quick change dancing act. Dorina’s parents also performed on stage as The Lannons where they acted as Characters of Yesteryear.
I would love to see a show with entertainers like these. It would be nice to have variety theatre back, I think it would cheer us all up a bit.
It is interesting to learn that the nomenclature Skid Road had come to London. The Canadian Press Style Book of the 1960s had a note about this, strictly requiring in place of Skid Row (then the common version in N.America) Skid Road, as authentically the name of a logging road in 19th century Seattle (and other logging towns) where tree logs were skidded to the sawmill.
Fascinating information. I wonder why the preference for baritones? I’ve got nothing against baritones, but I’d have expected maybe a tenor and a soprano or two!