George Black (20 April 1890 – 4 March 1945)George Black at IMDb. was a British theatrical impresario who controlled many entertainment venues during the 1930s and 1940s and was a pioneer of the motion picture business.George Black biography:http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/67450/George-Black
Biography
Early years Black was born on 20 April 1890, at 3 Court, 7 Sutton Street, in Small Heath, Birmingham.George Black biography: Oxford Index:http://oxfordindex.oup.com/search;jsessionid=4183249747D152C63F36E42001429F0E?pageSize=10&q=black+theatre&sort=relevance&t1=GEN00020 He left school at the age of eleven to work for his father who had previously been a travelling showman and now worked in the film industry."George Black, Producer, Passes", The Evening Independent, 6 March 1945. Aged twelve, he was looking after his father's Flea Circus.A short George Black biography on BBC Genome mentions Black looking after his father's Flea Circus:http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?adv=0&q=george+black&media=all&yf=1923&yt=2009&mf=1&mt=12&tf=00%3A00&tt=00%3A00#search Black served throughout the Great War as a private in the Northumberland Fusiliers and rose to the rank of Lance-Corporal. After the war, Black helped his father establish the first permanent motion-picture theatres in the UK. Black was a grafter and learnt about the entertainment business from his father. One of Black's initial jobs in his father's cinema was to show films on a Paul's Theatrograph, which was the name of the first commercially produced 35mm film projector. Within a few years, Black had become proprietor of a circuit of theatres and music halls on the North East coast of Britain.
Managing Director of the London Palladium In 1928, Black moved to London and took over the management of GTC (General Theatre Corporation), which ran a chain of theatres, cinemas and dance halls. He also took over the management of the London Palladium, which was the flagship of the corporation. The Hippodrome, London in Leicester Square, Brighton Hippodrome and Blackpool Opera House were also under his control. When Black arrived as managing director of the London Palladium he'd previously owned a string of thirteen cinema theatres, which he'd sold for £300,000. Although the Palladium had recently fallen on hard times due to falling ticket sales (the theatre had lain dark during autumn of that year), Black's vision was to revive the Palladium as the number one variety theatre in the UK. On 3 September 1928, he re-opened the theatre with a superb variety bill that included Gracie Fields, Dick Henderson, Billy Bennett and Ivor Novello and a full supporting cast. Ticket sales skyrocketed and Argyll Street outside the Palladium's entrance became congested with a mass of unlucky patrons who'd been turned away at the box office. By headlining top-notch homegrown stars on the bill, Black secured continuous success through the remainder of the '20s and throughout the '30s. In defence of his entertainment policy Black was quoted as saying, 'Variety is an integral part of English life, the finest expression of the English character and as necessary to our social life as food and drink.' From October 1928 until 1931, Black allowed live broadcasts over the radio to be transmitted from the London Palladium, which proved extremely popular with radio audiences. Black even looked abroad for acts, bringing many of the top American stars to the UK to perform at the Palladium including Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, Adelaide Hall, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller,London Palladium poster advertising Fats Waller's appearance at the theatre in 1938: Vic Oliver and Ethel Waters. In 1937, Black brought Josephine Baker over to the UK direct from the Folies-Bergere in Paris to headline a British tour on the Moss Empires circuit, which culminated on 27 June 1938 with her appearance at the London Palladium, her first engagement there.London Palladium poster advertising Josephine Baker's appearance at the theatre on 27 June 1938:http://www.vaudeville-postcards.com/index.php/postcards/full-colour-1/p28-josephine-baker-1937.html Film stars were also booked onto the bill including the juvenile actor Jackie Coogan (who'd appeared alongside Charlie Chaplin in the hit film The Kid). Coogan proved so popular he was held over for an extra week.
In 1928, Black took over the presentation of the Royal Variety Performance. That year it was staged on 1 March at the London Coliseum in the presence of King George V and Queen Mary. After a gap of one year, on 22 May 1930, Black presented the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium, again in the presence of King George V and Queen Mary.Royal Variety Performance 1930: The show was broadcast live by BBC Radio.The Royal Command Performance BBC radio listing 22 May 1930:http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ea5fdaa005e94014a95480da6a01d5df Black went on to present and compere at the Royal Variety Performance each year (excluding 1936) thereafter up to 1938Royal Variety Performance 1938: after which the performance was halted for the duration of the Second World War.
Pantomime became a regular feature at the London Palladium for many years, and the Christmas pantomime Peter Pan was so popular with audiences that Black made it a fixture at the theatre every year from 1930 to 1938.
In the early 1930s, Black, along with his assistant Charles Henry, decided to experiment with the content of the shows they produced at the Palladium. They came up with the novel idea of pairing together comedy double-acts. On 30 November 1931, Black organised Crazy Week at the Palladium, which brought together various comedy acts. It was under Black's watchful eye that this format was developed into the act that became known collectively as the Crazy Gang consisting of Nervo and Knox, Naughton and Gold and Flanagan and Allen. Black devised and produced the shows and revues that starred the Crazy Gang at the Palladium. Many theatre programmes of the 1930s had the words "Produced by George Black" on their cover. The Crazy Gang dominated the Palladium scene until the war years; then subsequently at the Victoria Palace Theatre. The average season attendance at one of the Crazy Gang shows was between 500,000 and 600,000 paying customers. By 1937, Black had signed the Crazy Gang up for a film and stage contract worth £100,000. Black's 1937 production with the Crazy Gang titled London Rhapsody received plaudits from the press. It was considered to be one of the most spectacular shows ever produced at the Palladium. A contemporary critic noted, "whereas Ivor Novello has put Drury Lane back on the map by altering the standard of production there to a point far removed from the theatre's traditions, George Black has achieved the same results at the Palladium by a different process. The London Palladium reviews have been going one better every time. London Rhapsody is the best yet."The Man Who Wrote the Teddy Bears' Picnic by J. J. Kennedy, , George Black references on pages 123 and 124: https://books.google.com/books?id=LyJi8pge5KsC&q=george+black+&pg=PA123 In 1938 Black co-wrote and staged another Crazy Gang show These Foolish Things, which also featured the Sherman Fisher Girls.
On 5 May 1940, Black presented A Grand Variety Gala from the London Palladium that was broadcast on the BBC Radio Forces Programme in aid of the Variety Artists' Benevolent Fund. In August 1940, Black's musical revue Apple Sauce opened at the Holborn Empire starring Max Miller and Vera Lynn. After the theatre was bombed in 1941, the show transferred to the London Palladium where it ran until November 1941.
In her book The Time of My Life, musical star Pat Kirkwood recounts her time appearing at the London Palladium in Top of the World during the air raids of 1940. She had just opened in the new show:
"We had raids every night and we never knew who would be on stage when they dropped. Tommy Trinder had a side-bet arranged, based on which of the comics would be on when one dropped. It was always Tommy! I had my turn too: one night in the middle of singing ‘Rhumboogie’ a bomb fell so near to the theatre that all the stalls heavy double-plated doors burst open and the whole auditorium shook. Everyone onstage carried on regardless and the audience never moved. This happened on the Saturday night of our first week at the Palladium. On Sunday morning I had a telephone call from Charles Henry, George Black's second in command, to inform me that the show was closing and that all theatres would be shut down until further notice. What we were not told was that on the Saturday night a landmine had landed on the roof of the Palladium and become lodged in the chimney. The bomb disposal men had defused it then carried it out through the stage door on Sunday morning!"
By late autumn of 1940 the German bombing blitz was well under way and more producers and stars packed their trunks and headed out of London. Some moved to Northern England, (Blackpool especially), for the duration of the war. Jack Hylton and George Black were just two impresarios who ran their showbiz empires from Blackpool. The Tower Company who owned Blackpool Tower and its ballroom benefited greatly from this arrangement as their premises were used for shows in rehearsal and for the launch of national tours. Black was president of the VAA (Variety Artists Association) and during the war staged several shows that financially benefited American, British and Allied charities; one such show being Irving Berlin's This Is The Army. On 7 July 1944, Black's forthcoming production Happy and Glorious, set to open at the London Palladium starring Tommy Trinder, Zoe Gail and Elisabeth Welch, was previewed at the Proms as part of Sir Henry Wood's Jubilee Season of Promenade Concerts and broadcast over the radio on the BBC Home Service.
Managing Director of Moss Empires
Black oversaw the merging of GTC with Moss Empires variety circuit in 1932. He was then in charge of the new company Moss Empires Group and was in control of a chain of 53 theatres all over the UK. In 1938, he became the joint managing director of Moss Empires. As manager of the London Palladium and controlling boss of Moss Empires, Black became one of London's most powerful producers. When the chairman Colonel J. J. Gillespie of Moss Empires died in January 1942, Mr. R. H. Gillespie became chairman and George Black was promoted to sole managing director.
Family George Black Sr. was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1857. By 1861 the family had moved to live in nearby Sunderland. Black Sr. worked for many years at the Comedy Theatre in Manchester (later named the Gaiety Theatre) and at Theatre Royal, Birmingham. In time, he bought a huge waxworks exhibition, which he toured the UK with.