Tag Archives: twenties

Valia (1899-1993)

Her philosophy of life was simple ‘you know… I am really a fatalist at heart – I live for today. Tomorrow can look after itself.’ Picturegoer July 1923

Christened the British Barbara Le Marr, Valia was somewhat type-cast as ‘the charming movie vamp’ which was in stark contrast to her real personality. Valia starred in numerous melodramas in just a three-year period from 1921, but made a big splash and was highly regarded, before marrying an American millionaire and deserting the screen forever in 1924. 

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Fred Dixon and Girlie

One of the most novel and amusing cabaret acts from the Jazz Age of 1920s London was that of Fred Dixon and Girlie. Dixon and ‘his girl-friend’ danced at the New Princess Frivolities cabaret show in 1926 and thereafter on the stage in two touring shows.

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Carnival Time, the Cabaret at the Criterion Restaurant, London

After four successful years (1920-1924) of being one of London’s premier rendezvous for dining and dancing, the décor for the Criterion’s famous Italian Roof Garden was swept away and the room was re-decorated and became a cabaret with a show that was called Carnival Time.

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The Criterion Restaurant, London

The Criterion in Piccadilly Circus, was a large collection of restaurants all housed in one building. It became an iconic rendezvous in London’s nightlife and a favoured haunt of London’s high society in the Jazz Age especially the splendid Italian roof garden that dazzled audiences from 1920-1924.

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Les Acacias, Night-Club, Paris

The Acacias night-club was a hall at the rear of the Hotel Acacias sited at 47 Rue des Acacias near the Bois de Bologne with a garden utilized for the summer. It was one of the many night-resorts in Paris in the Jazz Age that became a favoured rendezvous of high society throughout the 1920s. The roster of performers who appeared at Les Acacias was astonishing, providing a veritable Who’s Who of glittering international stars of stage and cabaret.

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Club Alabam in New York

From the 1910s, into the 1920s and 30s, Black culture in all forms proliferated in Harlem and became known as the Harlem Renaissance. In particular there was a flowering of jazz music, performance and night-clubs in the early part of the 1920s. This trend extended into Manhattan, first with Lew Leslie’s cabaret venue called the Plantation in 1922 and then with the Club Alabam in 1924. At the same time Black artists invaded Montmartre in Paris and established a comparable ‘Harlem in Montmartre.’

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Rome ‘The Eternal City’ in the 1920s

Rome ‘The Eternal City’ in the 1920s

Described as the Capital of Civilisation, Rome was known as the ‘Eternal City’ because civilization had endured there for thousands of years. As a result the passion to visit Rome had never died and was felt by the modern traveller as much as it was by the citizens of the Roman Empire, the medieval pilgrim or the renaissance artist. Naturally, the attraction of Rome has always been its classical monuments and the Vatican.

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