Book Description

Theatrical producer Andre Charlot brought Parisian revue to Great Britain in 1912 and dominated his field for 25 years. He greatly influenced American musical theater with Charlot's London Revue in New York in 1924. He created the kind of intimate revue the world came to identify as British, and was known for discovering and nurturing some of the greatest personalities in the century's theater, including Beatrice Lillie, Gertrude Lawrence, Jack Buchanan, and Noel Coward. This biography, researched from sources including his personal memoirs, covers Charlot's life and career from his youth in Paris to his time in Edwardian and interwar London, concluding with his final years in Hollywood playing all-purpose Europeans in B-movies and his death in 1956. Two unpublished essays by Andre Charlot are included as appendices: "Beverly Hills, 1937" and "A Quiet Game of Bridge." The work is illustrated with family photographs from all periods of Charlot's life, production photographs from his revues, contemporary charicatures from Tatler Magazine, and production stills of Charlot as an actor from Hollywood films.