page_title: Weston's Music Hall
section_title: Holborn Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Weston's Music Hall / History / Holborn Empire
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster canvassing support for the Music hall strike of 1907.
context_page_description: Weston's Music Hall was a music hall and theatre that opened on 16 November 1857 at 242-245 High Holborn in London, England. In 1906, the theatre became known as the Holborn Empire.
context_section_description: In 1905 the theatre was bought by the variety impresario Walter Gibbons and in 1906 he had the theatre auditorium remodelled by Frank Matcham at a cost of £30,000; the theatre was renamed the Holborn Empire.  The Holborn Empire was the last surviving variety theatre in the West End, also performing special theatrical matinees.
  On 22 January 1907, a long brewing dispute between artists, stage hands and managers of the theatres came to a head at the Holborn Empire. The artists, musicians and stage hands went on strike. Strikes in other London and suburban halls followed, organised by the Variety Artistes' Federation. The strike came to be known as the Music Hall Wars, and was against the conditions imposed by the managers. These included sole rights to a star and the ability to include additional matinee performances in the schedule without pay, or notice. Eventually the managements were forced to give in, in the face of solidarity by major stars like Marie Lloyd, and additional payments for matinee performances were introduced.
  The theatre premièred the first full-length feature film in 1914, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, a 50-minute melodrama filmed in Kinemacolour. In 1926, comedians Flanagan and Allen were booked by Val Parnell for a début at the theatre, and Margaret Lockwood made her first stage appearance at the age of 12, in 1928, as a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
  The Holborn Empire was where Max Miller was taken on by impresario Tom Arnold in 1926, and also where he starred in the George Black revues Haw Haw! (1939), followed by Apple Sauce (1940) featuring Florence Desmond, Jack Stanford and Vera Lynn. The theatre was closed as a result of an unexploded time bomb near the stage door, during the Blitz on the night of 11–12 May 1941, and the show transferred to the London Palladium. 
  The building was hit the following night by another bomb and too badly damaged to reopen. It was finally pulled down in 1960.
caption: 1907 poster from the Music Hall War between artists and theatre managers
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