Next Show

UNDER THE ARCHES

At Charing Cross Theatre, The Arches, Villiers Street WC2N 6NL

Sunday 24 June 2018
Performances at 4pm & 7.30pm

Tickets £25 | Friends £20

Booking line 08444 930 650

Restaurant & group bookings 020 7930 5868
Lunch from 1pm, Dinner from 5.30pm

DIRECTOR Miss Michelle Grant
CHAIRMAN Kevin Gauntlett
PIANOFORTE Andrew Faulkner

Players' Music Hall Company

1 day ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared British Music Hall Society. Home of Music Hall & Variety.'s post. ...

Born on this Day Shirley Temple. Shirley Temple Black obituary. Cherubic child star of the 1930s who returned to public life as a US diplomat Written by Ronald Bergan 11 Feb 2014 From 1934 to 1938, when she was at the height of her fame, Shirley Temple (later known as Shirley Temple Black), who has died aged 85, appeared in films as a bright-eyed, curly-topped, dimpled cherub, whose chirpy singing and toddler's tap dancing were perfect antidotes to the depression. "During this depression, when the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time, it is a splendid thing that, for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles," Franklin D Roosevelt stated in 1935, referring to the world's biggest and littlest star. Temple's message was "be optimistic", the title of the song she sang in Little Miss Broadway (1938). Her biggest hit songs were On the Good Ship Lollipop, from Bright Eyes (1934), which describes a child's dream of a candy shop, and Animal Crackers in My Soup, from Curly Top (1935), sung at an orphanage while skipping between tables at lunch as the kids beat time with their knives and forks. (She was adept at playing plucky orphans.) In Stowaway (1936), she displayed her considerable talents by impersonating Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson and Ginger Rogers (dancing with a Fred Astaire doll). She also demonstrated her dancing skills in numbers with the great tap-dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in four musicals. His deceptively easygoing tapping proved the ideal accompaniment to little Shirley's shuffle, as in the Polly Wolly Doodle stair routine in The Littlest Rebel (1935). No matter how one views Shirley Temple, and even for those who are allergic to precocious child performers, there has been no other child star before or since who has been as popular or demonstrated such extraordinary talents as singer, dancer and actor. She was born in Santa Monica, California, to George Temple, a bank employee, and his wife, Gertrude (nee Krieger), who saw nascent talent in her three-year-old daughter. In 1931, Shirley was enrolled in a dance school in Los Angeles, where she was spotted by a studio agent. With her blonde hair styled in ringlets in imitation of the silent film star Mary Pickford, she was signed by Educational Pictures to appear in a series of one-reelers called Baby Burlesks, imitating films by Marlene Dietrich and other stars. Thanks to her ambitious mother, after bits in a few features Temple was offered a contract with 20th Century-Fox before she was six years old. She immediately made an impression, bordering on the freakish, singing Baby Take a Bow, in Stand Up and Cheer! (1934), among seven movies in which she appeared in the same year. After only her first year in movies, she received a Special Oscar "in grateful recognition of her outstanding contribution to screen entertainment during the year 1934". She became a national institution: there were Shirley Temple dolls, toys and clothes (including a line in bathing suits). "I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six," she recalled. "Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked me for my autograph." Temple's first starring vehicle was Little Miss Marker (1934), based on a Damon Runyon short story. In the Runyon original, the tiny tot dances whenever she can, "holding her little short skirt up in her hands". In the film, Temple dances a lot, but keeps her skirt decorously in place. John Ford directed her in Wee Willie Winkie (1937), based on a Rudyard Kipling story, but changing the sex of the little hero to suit Temple. Graham Greene, infamously, reviewing Wee Willie Winkie in the London weekly Night and Day, wrote: "Infancy with her is a disguise, her appeal is more secret and more adult … her neat and well-developed rump twisted in the tap dance: her eyes had a sidelong searching coquetry … watch the way she measures a man with agile studio eyes, with dimpled depravity. Adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of childhood, a childhood that is only skin-deep … " Fox sued and the case was settled in Temple's favour with the judge (a fan) deeming the libel "a gross outrage". Greene fled to Mexico, and the magazine was fined £3,500. The settlement remained in trust for Temple in a British bank until she turned 21, when it was donated to charity. Temple continued to dispense sweetness and light in Heidi (1937), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) and The Little Princess (1939), her first film in Technicolor. Yet, already she was beginning to show her age and would soon be past her prime. Louis B Mayer wanted her to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939), but when Fox wouldn't release her, the producer Arthur Freed insisted they try the 16-year-old Judy Garland (six years older than Temple). George Cukor, the second of four directors on the picture, got rid of the blonde wig and doll's makeup that Garland had been given, presumably to imitate Temple, and stressed the character's naturalness, a quality the younger star often lacked. The Blue Bird (1940) was Fox's answer to MGM's The Wizard of Oz, but the film was an expensive failure and marked the end of Temple's star power. Temple's parents bought up the remainder of her contract and sent her, at the age of 12, to Westlake school for girls, an exclusive country day school in Los Angeles. Contrary to the myth, Temple was not all washed up at 12, and made a fairly easy transition on screen from cute child to pretty teenager. David O Selznick put her under contract for two films in 1944, Since You Went Away and I'll Be Seeing You. In the former, the weepiest, longest and biggest hit about the home front during the second world war, Temple played Claudette Colbert's sassy daughter, and in the latter, another wartime romance, she was Ginger Rogers's chatterbox niece. She is equally good as the teenager with the crush on Cary Grant in The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (aka Bachelor Knight, 1947) and worked for Ford again in Fort Apache (1948) as martinet lieutenant-colonel Henry Fonda's daughter, Philadelphia Thursday, probably the best film she made. Her young soldier suitor was played by a newcomer, John Agar, whom she had married three years previously. Their marriage ended in 1949, at the same time as she decided to retire from acting. The following year, she married the wealthy businessman Charles Black, who admitted to never having seen any of her films. After bringing up her three children, she returned to the public eye in politics as Shirley Temple Black. A close friend of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan (with whom she co-starred in That Hagen Girl, 1947), she became active in the Republican party in California, where, in 1967, she ran unsuccessfully for the US House of Representatives, voicing her support for the Vietnam war. She became US ambassador to Ghana (1974-76) and White House chief of protocol (1976-77), during Gerald Ford's presidency; foreign affairs officer with the state department under Reagan; and ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1989-92) under George HW Bush. In 1972, Temple Black was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. She decided to announce it to the media, becoming one of the first prominent women to speak openly about breast cancer, and encouraging other women who required the surgery to follow her example without fear. Her husband died in 2005. Temple Black is survived by their son, Charles, and daughter, Lori; and her daughter, Susan, from her marriage to Agar. • Shirley Jane Temple Black, actor and politician, born 23 April 1928; died 10 February 2014

Photo

View on Facebook

Players' Music Hall Company

1 day ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared FilmStruck's Jacques de Baroncelli's THE FRENCH WAY ('45). ...

Josephine Baker always takes our breath away.

FilmStruck

Video

View on Facebook

Players' Music Hall Company

4 days ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared British Music Hall Society. Home of Music Hall & Variety.'s post. ...

British Music Hall Society. Home of Music Hall & Variety.

Born & Died on this Day! Issy Bonn. Born Benjamin Levin in London on 21st April 1903, a comedian & vocalist. Success as a boy singer during the 1st World War led to his first professional appearance at the Mile End Empire in 1923 as one of the 'Three Rascals', a singing and comedy trio. As a single act he worked the small halls and in cine-variety as Benny Leven. BBC variety producer John Sharman heard him singing in an East End cinema, and he was given his first radio spot in 1936. As Issy Bonn he became well known on the air and in variety singing sentimental ballads like 'My Yiddisher Momma'. He appeared in two films, I Thank You in 1941 and Discoveries in 1939, where he played Mr. Schwitzer. During the War he toured with ENSA and in 1948 youred with his own show 'And so we go on' and the following year 'The Melody Lingers On'. On Good Friday 12th April 1963 he took part in the very last bill at the Metropolitan Edgware Road. His image appears on the cover of The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band He passed away on his 74th on 21st April 1977. www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM5hUe_d08Q

Video

View on Facebook

Players' Music Hall Company

4 days ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared FilmStruck's Mark Sandrich's THE GAY DIVORCEE ('34). ...

Night or day, it's always the right time for Fred and Ginger! Stream THE GAY DIVORCEE ('34) now: flms.tk/fb

FilmStruck

Video

View on Facebook

Players' Music Hall Company

4 days ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared Oldies Station's video. ...

The Way You Do the Things You Do - The Temptations (1964)

Oldies Station

Video

View on Facebook

Players' Music Hall Company

4 days ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared British Music Hall Society. Home of Music Hall & Variety.'s post. ...

A Very Happy 92nd Birthday to; Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, HM Queen Elizabeth II.

Photo

View on Facebook

Players' Music Hall Company

5 days ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared British Music Hall Society. Home of Music Hall & Variety.'s post. ...

Born on this Day Dudley Moore. After Dudley Moore, metamorphosed into a Hollywood star in 1979 with his film 10, he told a reporter: "Isn't it incredible? It's something I've always wanted, but I never thought I stood a chance." It was certainly a long way from his unpromising beginnings as the son of a railway electrician brought up on a Dagenham housing estate. When Moore was born in Charing Cross Hospital, his feet were turned inwards. At the age of two weeks, he had the first of many operations, but his left leg remained almost two inches shorter than his right, and he was conscious from an early age of the guilt that his mother Ada, who was a Christian Scientist, felt about his defect. But she got him to take piano lessons; by the age of eight, he had learnt to play the organ, and was also singing in the church choir. At 11, he was awarded a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music, where, for the next eight years, he studied the harpsichord, organ, violin, musical theory and composition every Saturday morning. During the week, at Dagenham County High School, he was bullied and teased with cruel names like "Hopalong Cassidy". So he turned to clowning to protect himself - the classic comedian, born of adversity. In 1954, he won a music scholarship to Oxford, where he played the organ at services at the cathedral, using a specially made boot with a two-inch platform. He made a name for himself as a jazz musician and entertainer in revues, wrote music for plays and appeared in Oxford University Drama School productions. Despite his popularity as a performer, he had inhibitions about his height (5ft 2in) and about relationships with women; he didn't lose his virginity until he was 22. His propensity to speak about his sexual experiences prompted Jonathan Miller to describe him as "libidinous, childlike, goatlike - the embodiment of some peculiar mythical satyr". After graduating from Magdalen College in 1958, Moore toured Britain and the United States with the Vic Lewis jazz band. He then joined the John Dankworth band; formed the Dudley Moore Trio; did a cabaret act with Joe Melia; and wrote the music for two plays at the Royal Court, John Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance and NF Simpson's One Way Pendulum. Soon the call came from the 1960 Edinburgh Festival to appear with three other Oxbridge graduates, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Peter Cook in Beyond The Fringe, the official festival revue at the Royal Lyceum Theatre. When the revue transferred to London's Fortune Theatre in May 1961, Kenneth Tynan called it the moment when "English comedy took its first decisive step into the second half of the 20th century". Moore's contributions were accurate, witty pastiches of classical music. There was his tour-de-force Colonel Bogey in the style of Beethoven, with a never-ending coda; a take-off of songs by Fauré "in which the poet bemoans the evil spirits at the bottom of his garden", and by Schubert (a setting of "the Heine poem, Die Flabbergast", with Moore singing tenor and soprano in mock German), and "Benjamin Britten's version of Little Miss Muffet", in the strangled tenor of Peter Pears. The show transferred to Broadway; after it completed its run, Moore continued with his trio, and wrote music for the theatre. He had fallen for the model Celia Hammond. When she left him for photographer Terry Donovan, he was devastated, and began psychotherapy. He was reunited with fellow-Fringer Peter Cook for a BBC2 comedy series, Not Only . . . But Also, which began in 1965; a second series followed in 1966 and a third in 1970. The show's highlights were the Dud 'n' Pete sketches, in which they played proletarian philosophers in cloth caps, dirty raincoats and white scarves swapping undigested pieces of information, with Dudley finding it difficult not to "corpse", as actors say. Their television fame lead them to make five feature films together, the best being Stanley Donen's Bedazzled (1967), an episodic Faustian tale, with Dudley as a lovable little man filled with self-doubt about his height, sex life and personality. Moore was almost 32 when he took on his first solo starring role in 30 Is A Dangerous Age, Cynthia, which, without support from Cook's lofty presence or invention, gave him a chance to demonstrate his ability as a musical pasticheur, and to indulge in romantic wish-fulfilment with his co-star, Suzy Kendall, whom he married in 1968. A year later, he appeared in a mistakenly Anglicised version of Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam at the Globe Theatre - one of the few positive reviews, from the Daily Telegraph, said: "Relying on the cuddly appeal of a small furry animal, Dudley Moore looks appropriately haunted and hunted." The Kendall marriage ended in divorce. Moore linked up with Cook again for a two-handed review, Behind The Fringe, which opened at the Cambridge Theatre in 1972. This had the classic sketch, One Leg Too Few, about a one-legged actor (a part that was brazenly tackled by Moore) auditioning to play the part of Tarzan. While this show was running in New York, Moore met Hollywood "Teen Queen" Tuesday Weld, who was then 20 years old. They married in 1975, and had a son. After his partnership with Cook ended after the abysmal film The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1977) and he separated from Weld in 1978 (they divorced in 1980), Moore settled in Los Angeles. In his first Hollywood movie, Foul Play (1978), he played a would-be swinger picked up by Goldie Hawn in a singles bar. It was merely a comic cameo, but it was the kind of role that gets noticed, and the little Brit managed to be slightly touching, as well as very funny. At a group therapy session, he met Blake Edwards, who cast him in his movie 10, after George Segal walked out of the picture. It is hard to believe that the role of the successful composer-pianist who falls for the voluptuous Bo Derek (the 10-out-of-10 desirable woman of the title) had not been written with Moore in mind. He managed to play melancholy middle-aged delusion, as a sexually fixated lover stoned on amphetamines and double brandies, while negotiating the slapstick with which Edwards likes to punctuate movies. It made Moore a star, gained him a female following and the nicknames "Cuddly Dudley" and "The Sex Thimble". He seemed to prove that small is sexy as well as beautiful. He soon found himself in an even bigger hit, Arthur (1980), a tale founded on the notion that a poor rich man who is continually inebriated and infantile could win the concern and affection of audiences. It was to Moore's credit that against all odds he gave the potentially irritating character some believability. The $100m box-office success earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination. From 1980 to 1985, Moore made nine films, none of them much above mediocre. Even Arthur Two: On the Rocks (1988) failed to draw crowds. But Moore was a wonderfully natural clown with a comic persona, his dark good looks and warm personality overcoming many weaknesses in scripts and direction. He was in demand as a personality on television talk shows, did commercials for Tesco chickens, and brought irreverence and naughty humour to gooey award ceremonies. Moore's five-year liaison with Susan Anton, model and actress (of whom he quipped: "I go up on Susan"), ended and he married another former model and actress, Brogan Lane, in 1987. That year, he played Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, in Jonathan Miller's non-Japanese Mikado at the Los Angeles Music Center. This was further proof that if his film career dried up he was still versatile enough to make a good living on the stage, or the concert platform, and as a jazz musician. According to George Melly: "It falls to very few to be truly original in jazz and even fewer English people and even fewer who come from Dagenham." When I was writing Beyond the Fringe . . . And Beyond, Dudley kindly gave me a great deal of his time, often phoning from LA, where he owned a restaurant, and writing copiously to answer questions. I detected, however, a melancholy behind every utterance. In a letter in 1988, he wrote: "Regarding my relationship with my three erstwhile partners - I rather miss their colourful and rich contributions to my life, but realise they work in areas in which I cannot participate. One of the sadnesses of leaving a show is the loss of friends. I think all of their careers have developed very richly, I would say that the only difference is that I have become perhaps less attracted to the dialogue that goes on between people in the classical sense of the word and am more interested in music things. It's hard for me even to contemplate assisting in some narrative, comedic or dramatic . . . since I feel I've had enough drama, or comedy, in my life. I suppose I have a feeling of futility. . ." In 1994, Moore married Nicole Rothschild (they had a son); a few months after the marriage, she called the Los Angeles police department to arrest Moore for assaulting her. At their divorce, Nicole sued Moore for $3m because of what she called his "campaign of terror and abuse". His professional woes began when Barbra Streisand sacked him from her film The Mirror Has Two Faces because he constantly forgot his lines and insisted on hamming things up; his television sitcom, Daddy's Girls, was cancelled after a few episodes. Still, despite the flops, there have been only a few stars who could boast two such very big hits in movie history. What other Hollywood comedian could claim to have sung in Gilbert and Sullivan, cut jazz albums, played the Brahms Triple Concerto with Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma, and fronted a classical music series on British television partnered by Sir Georg Solti? His last public appearance was to receive a CBE for services to entertainment at Buckingham Palace last November. The Prince of Wales presented the honour; Moore was in his wheelchair. He died of pneumonia as a complication of progressive supranuclear palsy. He is survived by his two sons. Dudley Moore, actor and musician, born April 19 1935; died March 27 2002.

Photo

View on Facebook

Players' Music Hall Company

6 days ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared Oscar Peterson's On The Sunny Side of the Street: Ella & Oscar. ...

Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson perform Jimmy McHugh & Dorothy Fields' "On The Sunny Side of the Street."

Oscar Peterson

Video

View on Facebook

Players' Music Hall Company

6 days ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared Vintage Everyday's "Uptown Funk" Mashup. ...

From Shirley Temple, to Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, this insanely clever creation uses 66 vintage moves and a modern pop hit "Uptown Funk" to weld something of perfection...

Vintage Everyday

Video

View on Facebook

Players' Music Hall Company

6 days ago

Players' Music Hall Company shared JazzLounge's Frank Sinatra + Ella Fitzgerald - Moonlight in Vermont. ...

DREAMTEAM Frank Sinatra + Ella Fitzgerald - Moonlight in Vermont

JazzLounge

Video

View on Facebook