| Main Performers | Madame Edna Thornton,
Mr Frank Mullings,
Mr Herbert Langley (British National Opera Company) - vocals |
| Orchestra or Band | London Symphony Orchestra |
| Set List | 'Toreador' from Carmen (Chorus),
Spanish Dances,
Mock-Bull Fights,
'Amor Fantasmo', H Wilcox (London Symphony Orchestra, Madame Edna Thornton, Mr Frank Mullings, Mr Herbert Langley),
Film Screening - 'Southern Love: A Drama of Bohemia', dir. H Wilcox (1924, mins) (London Symphony Orchestra, Madame Edna Thornton, Mr Frank Mullings, Mr Herbert Langley),
'God Save the King' (The National Anthem) |
| Performance Notes | 'Southern Love' is a 1924 British silent black and white film directed by Herbert Wilcox (1890-1977) and made in Vienna. The films stars Betty Blythe (Dolores), Herbert Langley (Pedro), Warwick Ward (Dick Tennant), Liane Haid (Countess de Silva), Randle Ayrton (Count de Silva) and Hal Martion (Gypsy). The film is a melodrama of a female gipsy who escapes a forced marriage out of love for another and earns her living as a ballerina in the big city until she is reunited with her love. It is based on the verse drama 'The Spanish Student' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It is known by the alternative title 'Woman's Secret'.
Rene Guissart - Photography,
N G Arnold - Art Direction,
S K Winston - Editor
The programme states that the film was shown by Ross Projectors, installed by The Kinematograph Equipment Co., Ltd. Setting by John Barker, Ltd, and lighting by Charles Penley (by arrangement with UK Advertising Co., Ltd.).
"Screen, orchestra, front of boxes and Balcony decorated by J[ohn] Barker and Co. Electrical effects by J[ohn] Barker and Co., sheet by Mr Noakes. Machines and operators by Ross and Co., premier performance by Graham Wilcox Productions Ltd."
(Royal Albert Hall Projectionist's notebook)
"I hired the Albert Hall for one night and turned it into a bull-ring. To do this, a new hardwood floor was needed and had to be laid in the twenty-four hours for which I had hired the hall. The contractors agreed to do it on time on pain of a heavy forfeit. They succeeded. The entire floor was covered with sand and sawdust, and the boxes were camouflaged to look like bull-ring boxes. A chorus emerged from the tunnels singing the 'Toreador' song from Carmen, supported by an orchestra of eighty. Spanish dances took place, and mock bull-fights. 12,000 accepted invitation for the première - for which I should explain that there was no charge! After forty minutes of the prologue, a big screen was lowered. The projectors I had specially installed behaved perfectly, and the film was shown. The ballyhoo took everyone by surprise - so much so that the shortcomings of my film were scarcely discussed. It was quite a success and made a handsome profit in this country. The great American showman, Al Woods, heard about the première of Southern Love and offered 250,000 dollars for the American rights. Since it had cost only £12,000 I was indeed in the money."
('Twenty-Five Thousand Sunsets: The Autobiography of Herbert Wilcox', Bodley Head, 1967)
Al Woods did indeed offer $250,000 for the US rights to the film after he heard about this premiere but reneged after he saw the film.
"From 1920 through to 1926, the most elaborate prologues described in the film trade paper were one-off productions for evening trade showings for trade audiences and special guests only, of which the most extravagant were mounted in the cavernous Royal Albert Hall [later such trade shows were replaced by premieres]. On 29 January 1924, for instance, the British film 'Southern Love' was given a one-night-only screening at the Royal Albert Hall to a reported audience of 9,000 and at an estimated cost of £1,000. The film was projected onto a screen sixty feet wide fitted up against the organ, accompanied by a sixty-piece symphony orchestra and three singers of the British National Opera Company. There was also a musical prologue with forty Gypsy performers who gave.... "a 'local' entertainment of their own on a special stage...The hall will be transformed into something resembling a Spanish bull-ring flooded with colour-symphonies of light." [as described in the Daily Express, 12 January 1924]."
('The Sounds of Silents in Britain', ed. J Brown, A Davison, Oxford University Press, 2013, pg. 205)
The programme contains the lyrics to the 'Waltz Song' featured in the film 'Southern Love' composed by Willy Engel-Berger, trans. William Helmore. |
| Related Archival Material | Programme (RAHE/1/1924/9) |