London

The Ritz

Early 1900s
Having secured a week’s trial without pay at Forester’s Music Hall (Jewish Quarter, Mile End Road), Charlie Chaplin remarks: ‘I was undecided how I should look… my comedy was mostly anti-Semitic, my jokes were very poor. Moreover, I was not funny. After the first couple of jokes, the audience started throwing coins and orange peel, and stamping their feet and booing… it left an indelible mark on my confidence.’ Despite this, when he returns in 1921, staying at the Ritz, one newspaper headline reads, ‘Homecoming Of Comedian To Rival Armistice Day’.

1928
Virginia Woolf is walking down Kingsway when her knicker elastic snaps and she feels her undergarments fall to the pavement. Unwilling to bend down and hoist them back up in public, she takes the only other course available to her. She steps out of them and walks on as if nothing has happened. Feature continues

The Windmill

1932
Mrs Laura Henderson sets about reviving the fortunes of the Windmill Theatre with its first nude revue show. The show exploits a loophole in the obscenity laws – the girls remain stock-still on stage, the idea being that if the authorities were to cover the Windmill girls up, they’d also have to cover up every nude statue on public show in London.

New London Theatre

1934
John Gielgud is discovered to be an unlikely diva during ‘Hamlet’ rehearsals at the New London Theatre. Alec Guinness recalls: ‘There was nothing Gielgud lacked, as far as I could see, except tact. It was after a week of rehearsing “Hamlet” that he spoke “spontaneously” to me, with shattering effect. “What’s happened to you?” he cries. “You’re terrible. Oh, go away! I don’t want to see you again!” I hung around at rehearsals until the end of the day and then approached him. “Excuse me, Mr Gielgud, but am I fired?” “No! Yes! No, of course not. But go away. Come back in a week. Get someone to teach you how to act.” ’

1942
According to his biographer Graham Lord, ‘David Niven was spending much of his time in London hanging around his various clubs – Boodle’s, Brooks’, Buck’s and White’s. One night he and [Douglas] Fairbanks [Jr] wandered through the West End in the blackout and were picked up by a couple of prostitutes: a vast but jolly cockney and a pretty little French girl. Niv suggested going back to their flat for a few drinks, where they paid £5 each and the tarts immediately recognised them as soon as the lights were switched on. They stayed for an hour, drank whisky and eavesdropped on the sad performance in the next room of one of the girls’ regular customers, an elderly major whose pleasure was to ride her around the room cracking a whip and crying “Giddyap!” while she made whinnying noises.’