Leonard Bentley
Piccadilly Circus: 1932
This is an anonymously published postcard showing Piccadilly Circus looking north towards Shaftesbury Avenue. This is 1932 and in early May, The London Pavilion started to produce “Non-Stop Variety” shows, starting at 2pm and ending at Midnight. There were usually fifteen acts performing turn and turnabout, you could buy a ticket and return at your leisure any time of the day to take in an act. This type of variety proved very popular and many other theatres followed suit until the pool of acts stretched very thin and the London Pavilion’s advertisements stopped naming acts and resorted to “Stars of the World in non-stop variety”. This continued until April 1934 when it was decided to convert the London Pavilion into a cinema which was done and completed by September of that year. The London General Omnibus Company's NS bus on the left is advertising the American gangster film, “The Beast of the City” starring Walter Huston and Jean Harlow, it played at three cinemas, the Empire Leicester Square, Metropole and The Stoll Theatre in Kingsway in the summer months. The traffic is being controlled on the south side by two police constables from Vine Street police station and the newly reinstalled Shaftesbury Memorial has Eros shooting his arrow up Regent Street.
Piccadilly Circus: 1932
This is an anonymously published postcard showing Piccadilly Circus looking north towards Shaftesbury Avenue. This is 1932 and in early May, The London Pavilion started to produce “Non-Stop Variety” shows, starting at 2pm and ending at Midnight. There were usually fifteen acts performing turn and turnabout, you could buy a ticket and return at your leisure any time of the day to take in an act. This type of variety proved very popular and many other theatres followed suit until the pool of acts stretched very thin and the London Pavilion’s advertisements stopped naming acts and resorted to “Stars of the World in non-stop variety”. This continued until April 1934 when it was decided to convert the London Pavilion into a cinema which was done and completed by September of that year. The London General Omnibus Company's NS bus on the left is advertising the American gangster film, “The Beast of the City” starring Walter Huston and Jean Harlow, it played at three cinemas, the Empire Leicester Square, Metropole and The Stoll Theatre in Kingsway in the summer months. The traffic is being controlled on the south side by two police constables from Vine Street police station and the newly reinstalled Shaftesbury Memorial has Eros shooting his arrow up Regent Street.