Victoria Palace

There have been Music Halls on the present site of the Victoria Palace Theatre since the 1850's. The current theatre which opened in November 1911 was designed as a music hall and was called The Victoria Palace, adding the word Theatre onto the end in September 1934.

The most notable productions here include the musical "Me and My Girl" which opened on 16 December 1937 and, apart from a brief closure when war was declared in 1939, ran until 29 June 1940, by which time it had successfully completed over 1,600 performances. Just before it closed in 1939 the first live broadcast was made from the stage of the cast performing "The Lambeth Walk" making the song and the show a hit. In 1945 the theatre returned to presenting variety and dropped the word 'Theatre' in it's name. The theatre is also associated with the "Crazy Gang" (comedians Flanagan and Allen, Naughton and Gold and Nervo and Knox), who had previously occupied the London Palladium for 6 years in the 1930's, now taking procession of the Victoria Palace from 17 April 1947 and staying until 19 May 1962 between which time they presented a number of successful shows.

Later that same month "The Black and White Minstrel Show" who had already enjoyed success on television now brought their show to the Victoria Palace which run for 10 years with only a brief gap. "The Back and White Minstrel Show" was briefly revived in 1973, bringing the total number of performances upto 6,464. The early 1970's also saw a run of "Carry On London" based on the "Carry On" films and featuring Sid James and Barbara Windsor in the cast. More recently the very successful musical "Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story" opened here on 12 October 1989 and stayed until 30 September 1995 when it transferred to the Strand Theatre. "Buddy" was replaced by another musical bio, this time based on Al Jolson and called simply "Jolson" which opened 26 October 1995 and run until 22 March 1997. This was then replaced by the short lived new musical based on the Edward and Mrs Simpson story called "Always" which opened 10 June 1997 and lasted just 6 weeks.