|
Burt Rhodes
Burt Rhodes (17 April 1923 – 21 June 2003) was born in Guiseley, West Yorkshire. He was one of Britain's most successful light entertainment musical directors and composers. His career covered radio and TV, West End and Broadway musicals and he worked with many famous stars including Judy Garland, Pearl Bailey, Sammy Davis Jr, Vic Damone, Cliff Richard, Johnny Mathis, Frankie Vaughan, Lovelace Watkins, The Supremes, Eartha Kitt, Howard Keel and Bruce Forsyth. In his childhood he had learned to play the piano and the organ, and later became a BBC radio band leader. Rhodes also worked on many television productions including '' The Benny Hill Show'', ''The Nixon Line'' with the magician David Nixon, and the BBC's annual pantomime. He worked on the television shows of Paul Daniels and Beryl Reid. From 1966 he was musical director at The Talk of the Town in London, leading the orchestra there to accompany such artists as Pearl Bailey, Mel Tormé, Judy Garland, Johnny Math ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guiseley
Guiseley ( ) is a town in metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is situated south of Otley and Menston and is now a north-western suburb of Leeds. It sits in the Guiseley and Rawdon ward of Leeds City Council and the Pudsey parliamentary constituency. At the 2001 census, Guiseley with Rawdon had a population of over 21,000, increasing to 22,347 at the 2011 Census. The A65, which passes through the town, is the main shopping street. Guiseley railway station has regular train services into Leeds, Bradford and Ilkley stations on the Wharfedale Line. Etymology The name of Guiseley is first attested in an eleventh-century copy of a charter from around 972, as ''Gislicleh''; it next appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as ''Gisele'' and similar variants. The early spelling suggests that the first element of the name is an Old English personal name ''Gīslic''. No such name is otherwise attest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Millicent Martin
Millicent Mary Lillian Martin (born 8 June 1934) is an English actress, singer, and comedian. She was the lone female singer of topical songs on the weekly BBC Television satire show ''That Was the Week That Was'' known as TW3 (1962–1963), and won a BAFTA TV Award in 1964. For her work on Broadway, she received Tony Award nominations for ''Side by Side by Sondheim'' (1977) and ''King of Hearts'' (1978), both for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Other television roles include her recurring role as Gertrude Moon in the NBC sitcom ''Frasier'' (2000–04) and Joan Margaret in ''Grace & Frankie'' (2017-2022). Life and career Martin was born in Romford, Essex. Theatre Early clippings show Martin as one of the cast in the pantomime "Dick Whittington" starring Jimmy Hanley at the Granada Tooting in December 1949 The following year she was in "Aladdin" at the Pavilion Bournemouth in December 1950 and in May 1951 she appeared in "The Happiest Days of Your Life" at the Playhous ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Performing Right Society
PRS for Music Limited (formerly The MCPS-PRS Alliance Limited) is a British music copyright collective, made up of two collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS). It undertakes collective rights management for musical works on behalf of its 160,000 members. PRS for Music was formed in 1997 following the MCPS-PRS Alliance. In 2009, PRS and MCPS-PRS Alliance realigned their brands and became PRS for Music. PRS represents their songwriter, composer and music publisher members’ performing rights, and collects royalties on their behalf whenever their music is played or performed publicly. MCPS also represents songwriters, composers and music publishers – representing their mechanical rights, and collects royalties whenever their music is reproduced as a physical product – this includes CDs, DVDs, digital downloads and broadcast or online. PRS (Performing Right Society) and MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musicians' Union (United Kingdom)
The Musicians' Union (MU) is an organisation which represents over 30,000 musicians working in all sectors of the British music business. Royalties The Musicians' Union (MU) Royalty Department, in its current form, was set up in July 2011. For the most part it deals with income for non-featured (session musicians) from the further use or secondary use of sound recordings on which they have performed. The MU uses existing collective bargaining agreements with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) to invoice record companies, film companies, advertising companies and production companies for use of performances, and is then responsible in distributing the funds collected to both MU members and non-MU members. The MU has no accessible database for member or non-member performers to access or cross-reference sound recordings in which they have performed. History On 7 May 1893 in Manchester a meeting was held to form a union for musicians, twenty musicians attended and formed th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Palladium
The London Palladium () is a Grade II* West End theatre located on Argyll Street, London, in the famous area of Soho. The theatre holds 2,286 seats. Of the roster of stars who have played there, many have televised performances. Between 1955 and 1969 ''Sunday Night at the London Palladium'' was held at the venue, which was produced for the ITV network. The show included a performance by The Beatles on 13 October 1963. One national paper's headlines in the following days coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the increasingly hysterical interest in the band. While the theatre has a resident show, it is also able to host one-off performances, such as concerts, TV specials and Christmas pantomimes. It has hosted the Royal Variety Performance 43 times, most recently in 2019. In March 2020, the venue closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on the theatre industry, but reopened over four months later on 1 August 2020. Architecture Walter Gibbons, an early moving-pictures m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Variety Performance
The ''Royal Variety Performance'' is a televised variety show held annually in the United Kingdom to raise money for the Royal Variety Charity (of which King Charles III is life-patron). It is attended by senior members of the British royal family. The evening's performance is presented as a live variety show, usually from a theatre in London and consists of family entertainment that includes comedy, music, dance, magic and other speciality acts. The ''Royal Variety Performance'' traditionally begins with the entrance of the members of the royal family followed by singing of the national anthem, God Save the King, which was also performed by the participating acts as a traditional end to Royal Variety Performances; with the exception of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, as a result of which, As If We Never Said Goodbye opened that year's show instead, sung by that year's host, Jason Manford. Background and founding The first performance, on 1 July 1912, was called the Roy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Hippodrome
The Hippodrome is a building on the corner of Cranbourn Street and Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, London. The name was used for many different theatres and music halls, of which the London Hippodrome is one of only a few survivors. ''Hippodrome'' is an archaic word referring to places that host horse races and other forms of equestrian entertainment. History Hippodrome The London Hippodrome was opened in 1900. It was designed by Frank Matcham for Moss Empires chaired by Edward Moss and built for £250,000 as a hippodrome for circus and variety performances. The venue gave its first show on 15 January 1900, a music hall revue entitled "Giddy Ostend" with Little Tich. The conductor was Georges Jacobi. Entry to the venue was through a bar, dressed as a ship's saloon. The performance space featured both a proscenium stage and an arena that sank into a 230 ft, 100,000 gallon water tank (about 400 tons, when full) for aquatic spectacles. The tank featured eigh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Forte
Charles Carmine Forte, Baron Forte (26 November 1908 – 28 February 2007) was an Italian-born Scottish hotelier who founded the leisure and hotels conglomerate that ultimately became the Forte Group. Early life Charles Forte was born as Carmine Forte in Mortale, now Monforte, Casalattico, in the province of Frosinone, Italy on 26 November 1908, eldest son of Rocco Giovanni Forte and Maria Luigia, daughter of Michelangelo Antonio Forte. His parents were distantly related.Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 1, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 1472Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2005-2008, ed. Lawrence Goldman, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 387 He emigrated from Italy to Scotland at the age of four with his family. He attended Alloa Academy and then St. Joseph's College, Dumfries as a boarder, followed by two years of studies in Rome. Early career After Rome, Forte rejoined his family, who had moved to Weston-super-Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Delfont
Bernard Delfont, Baron Delfont (born Boris Winogradsky; 5 September 1909 – 28 July 1994) was a leading Russian-born British theatrical impresario. Life and career Delfont was born in Tokmak, Berdyansky Uyezd, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), the second son of Isaac and Olga Winogradsky, a Jewish family. His brothers, Lew Grade and Leslie Grade, also entered show business and formed the Grade Organisation. Their sister, Rita Grade, later wrote a book about the family called ''My Fabulous Brothers''. In 1912, the family moved to the East End of London and at age 12, Delfont left school and followed Lew into music halls and changed his name to Delfont to avoid confusion with his brother, forming a dance partnership with comic Hal Monty called The Delfont Boys. He later formed another dance partnership called Delfont & Toko. In 1937 he stopped dancing and again followed Lew in becoming an agent and impresario. During World War II Delfont became involved in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Nesbitt (theatre Director)
Robert Nesbitt (11 January 1906 - 3 January 1995) was a theatre director, theatrical producer and impresario, particularly known for staging 25 instances of the Royal Variety Show. Nesbitt was born on 11 January 1906 in London, England. He was the Royal Variety Show's stage director in 1945, 1946, 1958 and 1961; and its producer from 1962 until 1976 and again in 1978. He staged and co-wrote the 1952 hit musical ''The Glorious Days'' starring Anna Neagle. He once rejected an audition by Julie Andrews, but on the grounds of her age (she was only twelve at the time) rather than a deficiency of talent. He appeared as a castaway on the BBC Radio programme ''Desert Island Discs ''Desert Island Discs'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942. Each week a guest, called a " castaway" during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usu ...'' on 27 January 1973. He died on 3 January 1995. Refere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise"."Noel Coward at 70" ''Time'', 26 December 1969, p. 46 Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as '' |
Blitz!
''Blitz!'' is a musical by Lionel Bart. The musical, described by Steven Suskin as "massive", was set in the East End of London during the Blitz (the aerial bombings during World War II). The story drew on Bart's childhood memories of London's Jewish East End during the Blitz and, like most musicals, centred on a romance between a young couple, in this case a Jewish woman and a Cockney man, although the largest role and main point-of-view character is that of Mrs Blitztein, the young woman's mother.Suskin 2005, Mandelbaum 2005. Steven Suskin describes it as "''Abie's Irish Rose'' set against the burning of Atlanta." Bart himself described the play as "…three human stories inside an epic canvas; the major human conflictthe major plotpersonifies the spirit of London and how that spirit developed during the period of the piece."Mandelbaum 2005 Production history ''Blitz!'' opened in London on 8 May 1962 at the Adelphi Theatre, while Bart's enormous West End success ''Oliver!'' wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
