Glam, bam, thank you ma’am | A century and more of nights out at London’s Hippodrome

From circus to music hall to legit theatre to supper club to casino, The Hippodrome has been jumping for over 100 years. And from the late 1950s to the early 1980s the venue was quite literally The Talk of the Town. I first popped in for something specific. As a complete and utter Judy Garland addict, I’ve been tracking her London footsteps and had heard from a rather vague source that Judy was supposed to have done a set of cement hand and foot prints during a residency at The Talk of the Town in 1969. The cement story turned out to be false, but it did lead me to a fortuitous meeting with the woman who’d been the club’s production assistant at the time of Judy’s rather unhappy stint. The Hippodrome staff were as intrigued as I was about these hand prints and – lovely and helpful – they said if anyone knew about it, it would be Rosalyn Wilder.

Her eyes still sparkled at the memories of octogenarian showgirls with Swarovski-encrusted walking canes swanning about the place

From what I’d read about TTOTT, I figured it was a smallish place. It’s not. It’s huge. Rosalyn showed me snaps of round tables full of people in full bib and tucker. There were dancing girls with massive plumed headdresses, men in pastel coloured tuxedos and so many spangles and feathers that my beglittered heart thudded with sheer joy. Rosalyn’s visit spirited up a flurry of Hippodrome staff, all chattering about an event from a couple of years ago when Wilder, along with current manager Simon Thomas, came up with the idea of a Talk of the Town reunion. Rosalyn expected she might be the only one to turn up. Quite the opposite: it was packed to the gills with those who’d worked there behind the scenes and under the spotlights. “I’ve never seen such glamour and you couldn’t breathe for the hairspray,” one of the events team told me. Her eyes still sparkled at the memories of octogenarian showgirls with Swarovski-encrusted walking canes swanning about the place. Frequent TTOTT turn Bruce Forsyth was there. You can’t keep him off that stage, apparently.

This place has such a history of razzamatazz and that bizness we call show, it aches with it. Opening in 1900, for the first nine years it was part circus, part variety hall with Lady Lion Tamer Claire Heliot cracking the whip and Charlie Chaplin treading the boards. Then it became The Hippodrome Theatre and its stage hosted everything from Julie Andrews’s stage debut aged 12, to the UK Premiere of Ballet Russes’ Swan Lake, to a Folies Bergère-style revue. Then in 1957 impresario Bernard Dalfont (brother of Lew and Leslie Grade) turned it into dinner theatre The Talk of the Town. An evening would go like this: from 7.30pm dinner and dancing, then at 9pm the dancing girls would come on. The shows were themed. Preceding Judy’s turn was a revue called “Fine Feathers”. When her daughter Liza Minnelli played there a few years earlier, she followed “Dangerous Curves”. At this point, the stage would magically disappear and sputnik chandeliers would descend to signal more boogying. At 11pm, the main act would come on. Over the years they would include the cream of pop and cabaret stars of the times: Eartha Kitt, Sophie Tucker, Sammy Davis Jr, Sandi Shaw, Ethel Merman, The Supremes, Tom Jones, Sinatra, Stevie Wonder – to name but a dazzling few.

“She was outside her dressing room stark naked and said, ‘I’m not f––ing going on. You go on.’”

Some acts were professional and pleasant. Some were a wreck. Coming at the end of her career, I knew that Judy’s run had been very troubled with audiences becoming restless and at times rowdy. There were reports of a night when a drunk stormed the stage and grabbed the mic from her as people threw cigarette packets. “A lot of people threw things at her, most nights,” Rosalyn told me. “But she wasn’t the only one who gave us grief.” No, I said, I can imagine. Then: the bombshell. “Well, yes, you know, Dusty Springfield was a nightmare.” Really? Lovely Dusty?! Yes, apparently. “She was outside her dressing room stark naked and said, ‘I’m not f––ing going on. You go on.’”

Blimey.

“Dozens of others did all sorts of weird things here, but we just sort of took it on the chin. One woman walked on, did one number. Couldn’t remember what the second number was, walked off, threw a glass of water over the stage manager. Was never seen again.”

There were times when there were more down to earth obstacles, like when the 1970s power cuts meant that people were performing by candlelight, or the time all the West End’s serving staff went on strike.

“That strike started to spread throughout the building,” Rosalyn told me. “Eventually, the only people who weren’t on strike were me, the orchestra and the dancers. And you couldn’t serve any meals. But the place was run in part by Charles Forte, who had a catering company.” Forte had a stake in the Savoy Hotel but would also go on to launch institutions Little Chef, Happy Eater and Welcome Break. “So Charles Forte said, ‘I’m going to send in airline meals’ – you know, like you get on a plane on trays? And he said, ‘You’ll heat them in the kitchens and you’ll serve them.’”

So, that was then. What about now? Does The Hippodrome still offer the best time ever? Most of the space that was the ground level restaurant and dance floor of The Talk of the Town, as well as a lot of its backstage area, is now given over to the casino. Gaming is the main event at The Hippodrome, but it’s still also a restaurant, bars and a cabaret club.

I’d previously only been in during the day, so I visited recently for a West End classic night out: dinner and a show. It’s a little over-stimulating as an environment in the daytime – but after dark, it’s in overdrive. On a Friday night it’s not just busy, it’s on full0tilt everything, with holographic wallpaper and a rather strange choice of artworks amongst the more appropriate stars-and-hoods-in-1950s-casinos photography.

And it is loud in there! Our table was positioned right under a huge speaker but I could tell that its range spread far and by the time you’d got out from under it there was another speaker. There was a moment when the music got even louder. As I rolled my eyes they rested upon the reason: a bevy of high-plumed, g-stringed dancing girls had emerged to strut their stuff in front of the central bar. Half a song later, they disappeared. The gamers – barely looking up from their tables – didn’t stop gaming.

The dining takes place in The Heliot Steakhouse, overlooking the casino floor. It’s named after the lady lion tamer of the Hippodrome circus days. Alas, that’s where the circus theme ends but if you’re a carnivore it is a pretty good bet. I’d been told beforehand the steak was good and it was pretty marvellous, although when you ask for rare, you don’t want medium rare. I had the surf and turf, which in the rest of the world is steak and lobster. Here, the surf side of things is Scottish scallops and grilled prawns, but it was flavoursome and generous: those prawns were whopping great things. The rest of the meal, though, was a disappointment. My starter of tuna tartare was very pretty but flavourless.

In retrospect we probably should have thrown in some beetroot or additional salad alongside the bone marrow, “Millionaire’s Mac and Cheese” and onion rings. But the teensiest bite of each proved too much. Looking around, most people had a simple steak in front of them. Gamble on the rest if that’s your thing…

For the show part, held in The Matcham Room, we’d chosen to sample the weekly “Boom & Bang Circus”. I imagined that this would cover a lot of the elements of the past as well as the 21^st century. But where the dining experience was all a little too much, the show element was strangely lacking. I’ve seen a lot of cabaret, and some well-known-on-the-scene names trotted across the stage that night. Host Kitty Bang Bang was capable and the circus-themed acts were all obviously at the top of their game, but something was missing. I’d hoped the place would be dripping dazzling theatricality from every inch of stage and stalls. C

The Hippodrome Casino, Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square, London WC2 UK
020-7769 8888; hippodromecasino.com

Corinna Tomrley is a doctor of pop culture and an artist who lives in London. Her latest work is the multi-media project For The Love of Judy. She is 87% glitter