Our prompt for Sepia Saturday 337 is a promotional postcard featuring "Ashwood's Merrymakers", who were one of the many variety troops entertaining holiday makers in British seaside resorts during the 1920s and 1930s. What little information I have on the troop can be found on our Sepia Saturday Facebook Group page.
I have, perhaps, the most perfect match for the prompt image in a similar promotional postcard featuring a troop called "The Silhouettes Concert Party", who were equally touring the seaside resorts of Britain in the interwar years. But I have used this photograph in a previous Sepia Saturday entry and therefore it would be cheating to use it again. Having said that, my love of images forces me share it again - but if you want the background to it you will need to look back to a post of mine in 2011.
For this Sepia Saturday I would like to feature another photograph of my uncle, Harry Moore, who was a member of the Silhouettes (that is him second from the right on the back row - the one with his hair being wafted by the smog-infused breeze). This is a studio photograph which no doubt was part of the portfolio he used in getting jobs in the entertainment industry in the early 1930s.
I am not sure which character he was portraying, but there is a kind of period charm about the picture. Alas, it was not successful in attracting work, by 1933 he had abandoned his hopes of following a professional career, and had settled down to marry my fathers' sister. As Noel Coward once so memorably wrote: "Poor Uncle Harry looked at her, in whom he had placed his trust, His very last illusion broke and crumbled away to dust".
To see other Sepia Saturday contributions, go to the Sepia Saturday Blog and follow the links.
Well, I’m glad you shared it again - and what a backdrop! Harry’s costume makes me think of a pierrot or similar.
ReplyDeleteBravo! As a connoisseur of entertainers' photos, I would rate Uncle Harry's concert party photograph 10 stars for originality! Not only can I identify the talent for each member of the group, (even before I read your original post), but I can even place their regional circuit from the background. It was indeed a different time.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was about five I remember Auntie Annie taking me to see Uncle Harry perform for the Christmas "do" at the Low Moor Working Men's Club. He came on dressed in a tutu and resplendent as a well endowed fairy. An appropriate role considering his suspected sexual orientation. He also sang his standards: "We are three Jews from Jerusalem" and the "Drinking Song" from ??? which ends something like: "I do not envy anyone when I'm drinking, drinking, d-r-i-n-k-i-n-g...."
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