Wednesday 30 December 2015

Archie Graham and Watty 1924


Lancashire Evening Post - Wednesday 01 October 1924

The theatre in Friargate was a handsome Edwardian pile, built in 1905 and demolished in1959 (there are some mournful pictures on Flickr of it with the demolition notices posted). The poster says 'twice nightly' and I gather it was sold out most performances, despite the fact that there was another music hall in the town, and two 'serious' theatres. Not many of the artists on the 1924 bill seem to have had real prominence (apart from my father, of course!), but Lena Brown was still touring a Cinderella pantomime in 1942 and Gellin and Bergstrom (a two-accordian duo playing what we would now call mash-ups of opera highlights and popular tunes) had actually made 78 rpm gramophone records for the Polyphon and Piccadilly labels in the 1920s so were quite a big 'name' especially in their home countries of Sweden and Norway, and in Germany. How they made it to provincial Preston, I am not quite sure!

No comments: