London Palladium - History
The London Palladium is located on Argyll Street (just off Oxford Street) in London. Its nearest Underground station is an Oxford Circus and its nearest train station is found at Charing Cross.
The venue that is the London Palladium is prestigious theatre that has high social as well as historical standings as one of the biggest theatres in London. Currently it is the home of the Royal Variety Performance, making it a very prestigious venue.
However, since it was constructed it has been the home to many different regular performances that are broadcast on television, with many famous faces appearing at the theatre to present coverage of great acts.
It was constructed by Frank Matcham, the famous architect well known for his design of theatres, which also includes the London Coliseum and the London Hippodrome. It was designed to replace a series of buildings that began with a wooden construction known as the Corinthian Bazaar, followed by a circus venue designed by Fredrick Hengler, then finally before Matcham took over, it was the National Skating Palace for ice skating. In 1910 with these ventures in the past, Matcham took over and built the 2,286 seat West End theatre.
Up to the time that the Second World War broke out the theatre was known simply as The Palladium. It was a popular venue made famous for its high quality variety performances. The Moss Empires owner George Black took over the theatre from 1928 and during this time it was briefly a cinema. It also became a regular home for The Crazy Gang, the British entertainers that had huge popularity nationwide. The members consisted of many double acts that were so successful that even King George VI liked them.
It was then that the post war era brought a number of high profile acts to the venue under the management of Val Parnell. As a result of this, a visit to the London Palladium (as it was known from 1934) could have resulted in witnessing the likes of Petula Clark, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra. Parnell’s policy of booking the bigger name acts proved controversial at first, but it soon proved successful and the theatre’s popularity blossomed.
It meant that an ITV variety show opted to use the venue and what resulted was Sunday Night At The London Palladium, with hosts Tommy Trinder and then Bruce Forsyth. In the 1980s it then hosted another broadcast variety show in the form of ITV’s Live from the Palladium, presented by Jimmy Tarbuck.
In the middle of this the venue hosted music in the form of Slade (in which the balcony nearly collapsed in 1973) and Marvin Gaye in 1977 (recorded for his Double LP Live At The London Palladium).
Since this time the venue has again changed hands, now with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group being the host. Under the management, it has shown productions of The King & I (2000), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (2002-2004 with many famous faces over the years), Scrooge – The Musical (2005-2006) and The Sound Of Music which starred Lesley Garrett, Connie Fisher and more recently Summer Strallen.
