All posts by Jazz Age Club

Dancing World Magazine

Dancing World Magazine

A few years ago I acquired a magnificent run of 25 copies of the rare British magazine The Dancing World. It is a remarkable publication spanning the period from May 1920 to at least March 1924, and at the last check, only one copy is held by the British Library. As a result this is a truly unique find that will be invaluable to researchers of the Jazz Age. But the bigger picture is that it also sheds light on the activity of William Mitchell who created the Palais de Danse in Hammersmith and Birmingham and was also behind Rector’s Club, one of the most fashionable nights-club rendezvous in London.

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Dolly Tree: A Dream of Beauty

Dolly Tree: A Dream of Beauty by Gary Chapman

A long lost artistic genius of the Jazz Age, Dolly Tree was famous on both sides of the Atlantic, for her extravagant creations that appeared in stage shows, cabaret, couture and film in the glamorous 1920s and 1930s. It is now time for her to be reclaimed as one of the great British dress-designers of the 20th century

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The Dolly Sisters in Pictures

The Dolly Sisters in Pictures by Gary Chapman

The glamorous life of the Dolly Sisters as seen in 200 photographic images. Capturing their rise to fame and fortune, from their birth in Budapest, through Jazz Age New York, London, Paris and the Riviera, it reveals their full story in pictures

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Dolly Sisters: Icons of the Jazz Age

The Dolly Sisters: Icons of the Jazz Age by Gary Chapman

The  Dolly Sisters biography is a  dizzying cocktail of delight, extravagance and pathos. Teeming with fantastic and fascinating stories from the Jazz Age of the twenties and thirties, it tells a true story every bit as dramatic and engrossing as the best fiction

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The Chateau de Madrid

The Chateau de Madrid was regarded as perhaps the best and finest restaurant and summer resort of Paris in the Jazz Age. A favourite rendezvous of Americans in Paris and Parisian society, it’s allure was because you could dine and dance outdoors under the trees in the cool night air at the height of the Paris social season.

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The Gaby Doll Scene

The Gaby Doll Scene

Recently Doreen Marshall sent me a photo and message on my Jazz Age Club Facebook page of a 1920s Gaby Doll and box. It certainly piqued my interest because it was a representation of a scene from the Folies Bergere in 1923 with the costume designed by Dolly Tree.

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Chez Victor

Chez Victor

One of the most exclusive members-only night-club in London in the mid to late 1920s was Chez Victor, owned and run by the Italian Victor Perosino. It had a glittering, but short, 4 year career becoming‘a popular haunt with the gilded youth and flapperdom’ before it was targeted by the police and closed down in early 1928. Victor moved across the Channel and with noticeable panache re-opened various other Chez Victor’s in Paris and elsewhere. But Victor’s story, and his deportation, hide a scandal that eventually became public in 1932

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