I cannot remember the Festival of Britain, I wasn’t quite born, but it has a lot to answer for.
It was such a success that fatheads of every political hue came together for the millennial Festival of the Redundant Tent on the river, now repurposed as the O2. A feature of the F of B was Skylon; a metallic, silver cigar without any visible means of support. Churchill’s government wasn’t keen to preserve this iconic sculpture – it had been conceived by the previous Labour administration – and it was consigned to scrap now only remembered by the Skylon restaurant in the Royal Festival Hall. Thither I repaired for lunch yesterday. A window table looking across the river and attentive service were both good and the food only satisfactory.
I never saw Top Hat and thought it was a 1930s film and musical but I was wrong; the stage musical had to wait until 2011 to win permission from Irving Berlin’s estate. That reminds me, Irving Berlin came to London in the war to jolly up the GIs and Churchill invited him to lunch. Isaiah Berlin had been keeping him informed of American opinion and he wanted to meet him. He was somewhat taken aback when he asked him what was his best work: White Christmas. Lunch wasn’t a success.
Top Hat, the stage musical, is a definite pleaser. “”It’s a glamorous, mistaken-identity romance filled with classic Irving Berlin songs and dazzling dance numbers as Jerry tries to win Dale’s heart amidst mistaken identities and meddling friends” (AI). There is a valet in this production with a resemblance to Jeeves who is compelled by the plot to adopt disguises, including a waiter, a gondolier and a dowager and, like Jeeves, he steps in to bring the lovers together (by pretending to be a priest). It is all great fun.
The 1930s sure produced a great clutch of Hollywood feel-good musicals. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette Macdonald, Judy Garland, Eleanor Powell and even James Cagney were all hoofing and singin’ joined by the Marx Bros goofing to cheer up an economically depressed nation.