Page 71 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

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Charles Morton: The Canterbury Music Hall
Charles Morton: British Music Hall (from 1852 - stars included Marie Lloyd, George Leybourne (Champagne Charlie), Vesta Tilly). Charles Morton created The Canterbury - the first ‘purpose-built’ music-hall in Lambeth, London in 1852 - by the end of the 19th century there were several hundred in London - some new and grand - like the Empire Leicester Square (1884) - many old and tatty, but all then the most popular form of popular entertainment in the century before mass media. The Music Hall not only created its great stars and celebrities (like those pictured above), but also nurtured and developed talents that were to flower in 20th century entertainment media - Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, George Formby, Will Hay, Stanley Holloway, Dan Leno, Lillie Langtry, Harry Lauder... and music hall and it’s ouevre inspired artists and performers well into the later 20th century.
There is a deep tradition in British comedy and popular song rooted in the Music Hall - just over a century (c1840-c1960) of the recent history of the evolution of British popular entertainment. This period produced its own stars, trained stars to be, and had it’s own folk heroes - like George Leybourne (aka Champagne Charlie), Marie Lloyd, Carlo Gatti, Arthur Roberts, Vesta Tilly, Joe Elvin, Ella Shields, Lillie Langtry, and in the 20th century, international stars like Gracie Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Fred Katno, Max Miller, Will Hay, Stanley Holloway and Flanagan & Allen - all became famous first in the Music Hall or in America, the Vaudeville. In Paris, in major music-halls like the Folies Bergere, the Crazy Horse, Casino de Paris, produced mega stars like Mistinguett, Josephine Baker and Edith Piaf. Since world War Two, stars like Max Wall, Benny Hill, Danny La Rue, Arthur Askey, Tommy Trinder, all owed a considerable debt to their music-hall backgrounds. To my post-war baby-boomer generation we caught just the last echoes of all this popular culture in glimpses of Music Hall in series like Ripper Street, Peaky Blinders, Tipping the Velvet, and The Good Old Days - and in the powerful resonances of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, Peter Blake’s early nostalgic pop art, John Osborne’s The Entertainer, Dennis Potter’s Singing Detective, and Lipstick on Your Collar. Ian Dury’s stage performances also owed not a little to music-hall - he was a great fan of Max Wall - one of the most charismatic Hall performers until well into the Sixties.