Floral Hall’s
Former Stars
Above: The original Floral Hall theatre
After
beginning as an open air home for pierrot performances – then for George
Royle’s popular fol-de-rol entertainers,
Scarborough’s Floral Hall gained a roof,
lost its floral decorations and welcomed a number of big name acts.
Above: Floral Hall – with roof
This post compares a number of the
venue’s programmes from the 1970s, with those from the earliest days. These
were the times of the summer season, the variety performance and the triumph of
British seaside entertainment. However, the story of Floral Hall begins with
pierrots – and Edwardian Scarborough was a good place to be one.
Above: Will Catlin’s pierrots perform on the South Sands
These
French and Italian inspired performers dressed in white and performed a mixture
of comedy, music and mime, primarily on the beach. Will
Catlin’s pierrots were a huge success on
Scarborough’s South Sands, as were Carrick’s Original Pierrots.
Catlin eventually built the
Arcadia on the Foreshore, to showcase
these performers, but with the development of cinema, he soon transformed the
site into the Palladium Picture House, and the
grander theatre that became known as the Futurist.
Above: The Futurist and Palladium Picture House
George
Royle also led a troupe of pierrots,
and when Harry W. Smith – Borough Engineer extraordinaire –
set about designing Alexandra Gardens,
the open air theatre was to provide a home for Royle’s performers. However,
Royle quickly rejected the idea of continuing with the pierrot performances,
instead preferring his troupe to dress in eccentric period costumes. Top hats
for the men and bonnets and crinoline for the women. Known as the Fol-de-Rols
they were Floral Hall’s original resident act.
Above: The Fol-de-Rols in the traditional white usually associated with pierrot performances
Below: Looking slightly more like pierrots, the troupe were also known as
George Royle’s Imps
The
Fol-de-rols were immensely popular, but WWI changed everything – audiences
dwindled (the 1914 Scarborough bombardment was a stark reminder of the dangers
of wartime) and George Royle signed up to join the army. When he returned he
was invited back to Floral Hall, but rents were rising and tastes were changing
– the Fol-de-rols would not return.
Above: Dresses and top hats
Below: An early programme
Fast
forward to the 1960s and 70s, and seaside entertainment had been completely
transformed. Gone were the old fashioned music hall acts, replaced by an
altogether more modern form of variety. Furthermore, another huge influence was
television – which was where many budding performers made their name. Talent
shows such as Opportunity Knocks and New Faces provided many big breaks. Programmes
from Floral Hall provide a fascinating insight into the
seaside summer circuit at this time, and how stars of the day broke into the
entertainment industry.
Above: The Krankies – a Floral Hall programme
The Krankies are a Scottish husband and wife duo. They
starred in TV’s Crackerjack, amongst other things, and Stu Francis, is another comedian who also featured in the same
programme. Joe
Longthorne, a singer from nearby Hull, found fame in TV shows such as Junior Showtime, and Search for a Star, while
American singer Diane Solomon, made a name for herself on the BBC.
Freddie Starr was another act who was ‘discovered’ on a TV
show – Opportunity Knocks. See below:
Above: Freddie Starr programme
He
was joined in Floral Hall for the 1979 summer season by a puppet show, Mike Lancaster(another comedian), and Patsy Ann Scott, known for her appearances on 1970s TV
shows. The Maurice Merry Orchestra are
mentioned on most of the programmes here, as is the director Peter Sontar.
Above: Les Dawson programme
Les Dawson, like Freddie Starr,
benefitted hugely from an appearance on TV talent show Opportunity Knocks, and was a comedian famed for his
‘mother-in-law’ jokes and piano playing. Dougie Squires, on the other hand, was a contemporary version
of George Royle or Will Catlin. Instead
of leading a troupe of pierrots, he created a singing and dancing group
called The Young Generation, who were TV regulars in the 1960s
and 1970s. Second Generation was an
ill-fated attempt to reform the group. As for Bobby Bennett, he presented Junior Showtime, another TV show with strong Floral
Hall connections. Finally, Kenneth
McKellar was/is a singer who represented
Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest in the
1960s, and made numerous television appearances.
Above: Peters & Lee programme
1970s
folk duo Peters
& Lee were Opportunity Knocks alumni – indeed, Floral Hall
seemed to recruit heavily from TV talent contests, and featured in the Royal Variety Performance of 1973. Roy Walker is today perhaps best known as the former
presenter of Catchphrase, the popular
long-running TV gameshow. but he started off as a comedian, and yet another TV
talent show alumni – New Faces this
time. Lee Wilson was also a comedian and another
former New Faces contestant. Singer-songwriter Berni Flint had a
record number of wins in Opportunity Knocks,
whereas Janet
Brown was an actress and
impressionist famed for her impressions of Margaret Thatcher.
Below: Frank Ifield and Ken Goodwin programme
In
this final programme, Frank Ifield – a singer who represented the UK in
the Eurovision Song Contest. He came a respectable second
in 1962, during the decade that made him famous, but in 1976 he was less
successful and finished twelfth. Opportunity Knocks gave
Floral Hall another performer in Mancunian comedian Ken
Goodwin, and Luie
Caballerois/was an actor and impressionist. Bert Weedon was a guitarist and a regular performer for
the BBC.
As
the above selection of programmes demonstrates, Floral Hall hosted an
impressive array of performers for nearly eighty years, but sadly closed in
1987 – there were insufficient funds to restore the building, and the heyday of
the British seaside holiday was slowly slipping away.
Who would have thought that a simple
open air theatre from 1908 would last so long and provide so much
entertainment?
Above: The sun sets on Floral Hall
No comments:
Post a Comment