Victoria Palace Theatre

1910 Theatre owner, manager and impresario Alfred Butt purchases the Royal Standard Music Hall on this site and demolishes it to build the Victoria Palace designed by renowned theatre architect Frank Matcham and costing £12,000. A gilded statue of ballerina Anna Pavlova is installed on the theatre's cupola which is subsequently lost when removed for safekeeping during World War II. 1910 The Victoria Palace opens on 6 November with a Variety show and in the succeeding years the best known variety stars of their day appear here including Harry Lauder, Little Tich and Vesta Tilley. 1929 The Show's the Thing, a revue by Archie Pitt starring Gracie Fields is a huge hit. 1934 A production of Young England by the Rev Walter Reynolds, a full-blooded patriotic melodrama, receives such awful reviews that it becomes a cult show seen by over 250,000 people. 1937 On 16th December Me And My Girl opens starring Lupino Lane, Teddie St Denis and George Graves. The song 'Lambeth Walk' becomes a universal dance craze that helps boost morale during the war years. Lupino Lane subsequently appears in a series of shows including Twenty-to-One and Sweetheart Mine.