I recently found a detailed interview with Dolly Tree in the Daily Express from January 1922 in the British Newspaper Archive. This feature was not available during the research for my biography Dolly Tree: A Dream of Beauty and so the information it provides was not included. So here is the text and commentary as it does show some invaluable and interesting points.
Continue reading Dolly Tree Interview in the Daily Express 26th January 1922
Julian Wylie’s 1923 London Hippodrome show Brighter London was in fact the second longest running revue in London during the 1920s, being overtaken by The Whirl of the World (1924) at the Palladium. The show had no real story but comprised a series of episodes with Cupid setting out to brighten London culminating in the appearance of the celebrated American band leader Paul Whiteman and his orchestra.
Continue reading Brighter London at the London Hippodrome, 1923
Sometime in mid 1921 the theatrical costume designer Dolly Tree became associated with the famous Cornish textile company Crysede and the owner Alec Walker.
Fidi Grube
Fidi (Fidy) Grube was a talented dancer who rose to fame in the 1920s of Weimar Berlin dancing alongside Kathleen (Kitty) Zammit and toured Europe. The dancing team of Zammit and Grube was most certainly one of the best and most successful of all German dancing teams in the 1920s and early 1930s.
Leap Year at the London Hippodrome, 1924
George Robey was the star of Julian Wylie’s third Hippodrome revue Leap Year described as ‘one of the best revues that London has ever seen’. Launched at the London Hippodrome on 20th March 1924 it ran for 471 performances. The show had no cohesive plot but was designed to showcase the talent of Robey as a comedian and he appeared in at least 11 of the scenes, which means that in fact Leap Year was constructed around him.
Joe Strassner
Joe Strassner was a German costume and fashion designer who made his name in Berlin in the 1920s and early 1930s designing couture and dressing a huge number of German films. He visited Hollywood with Lillian Harvey in 1933 and after the Nazi’s took power he fled first to Paris and then London. He replicated his Berlin success in London in the 1930s before leaving for New York in the 1940s where he ventured into the ready-to-wear market. It is also likely that in the 1920s he took the pseudonym of Ipsen Andre to perform as a dancer in cabaret where he frequently danced with Jenny Steiner, who became his wife.
Ipsen Andre
The enigmatic Ipsen Andre was an elegant German dancer who seemingly emerged out of nowhere dancing mainly in Berlin cabaret revues from 1924. His dancing career lasted until the late 1920s when he simply disappeared. Frequently paired with Jenny Steiner, they became a prominent dancing pair in Berlin nightlife.
Midnight Follies First Edition 1921
The Whitehall Room within the Hotel Metropole became the site of one of the first true cabarets in London that transformed London’s nightlife in the 1920s. On the 2nd November 1921, the ‘Midnight Follies’ was inaugurated at the Metropole with a show that was called a ‘super dansant.’ With glorious costumes designed by Dolly Tree it became an overnight hit with all of smart London flocking to see the show designed to ‘brighten London.’
The Cabaret Follies
When Jack Hylton’s Cabaret Follies show made its debut in London in the autumn of 1922 it was one of four big cabaret shows that made a Brighter London, the others being located at the Grafton Galleries (Midnight Revels), Murray’s Club (Murray’s Frolics) and the Hotel Metropole (the Midnight Follies). At first its status and popularity amongst London’s high society was unassailable, but when Jack Hylton relinquished control at the end of 1923, it floundered and ceased to be by the summer of 1924.
