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The Palace
Theatre
The Palace Theatre was
designed by the Alfred Derbyshire and opened in 1891 at
a cost of £40,500. It had seating for 3,675. All the
great names from the Music Hall era appeared on stage at
the Palace, including Charlie Chaplin, Marie Lloyd,
Harry Lauder, Little Tich, Lillie Langtry, and Vesta
Tilley. In 1913 the architect Bertie Crew renovated the
building and the theatre reopened with Harry Houdini but
a much reduced seating capacity of 2,600.
Below is a program from
1929 for the Charles B Cochran's 1929 Revue.
The stars of the show
were the young Jessie Mathews and the man who was to
become her husband Sonny Hale. Jessie Mathews
began her career at a very early age singing and
dancing. For people of my generation she was
better known as Mary Dale in the BBC radio drama serial,
Mrs. Dale's Diary which ran every afternoon on the BBC
Light Program from 1948 until 1967 when it transfered to
the newly formed Radio 2 until April of 1969.
Use the links below to
see some You Tube videos starring Jessie Mathews and
Sonny Hale. Click on the "Back" button to retun to
this page.
Mrs
Dales Diary
******************************************* Here is a programme
from 1935 for a "Smoking Concert" to be held at the
Palace and sponsored by the National Union of
Conservative Associations. Smoking Concerts were
popular during the Victorian era. They were men
only concerts at which gentlemen could smoke and talk
politics while watching a variety of musical and other
"turns". Interestingly this particular concert
was scheduled to begin at 11:00 p.m. and featured 17
acts so the audience would have been turning out onto
Oxford Street in the wee hours.
   *************************** The electrical
engineering company, Metropolitan-Vickers, had at its
height 20,000 emloyees. The companies original
name was Westinghouse and there was a tradition of
staging "Westinghouse Pantos" every year at the
Engineers' Club. The tradition continued after
it became Metropolitan-Vickers although now they were
staged in the M-V Club. In 1921 they started
going to the Palace Theatre to see the Panto
there. That year the employees nearly filled the
house on a Friday night. In 1935 they filled the
whole house and by 1936 they filled it on two
nights. Below is the program from that year,
especially designed for the Metrovick staff.
                ******************  ****************** The
tradition
obviously caught
on because as
you can see in
the image below
they went on to
take up a whole
week of shows.
 As you can
see from the
photographs above the
original Palace
Theatre bears very
little resemblance to
todays theatre. The
tiled cladding was
added in the mid 50s.
A further restoration
in the 80s improved
the back stage
facilities.
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