Description

Date: 1945

Theatre: Saville Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue

Performance: Green Room Rag

Main Actors: Bud Flanagan & Chesney Allen

The Green Room Rag is a variety show of singing, dancing and comedy with a fabulous cast list including Bud Flanagan & Chesney Allen.

This mid 1940s theatre programme is made up of off-white smooth paper and stylishly printed in green ink.

In 1926 Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen teamed up whilst performing for the Florrie Forde Show and became the comic double act ‘Flanagan and Allen’ of which they would perform comedy sketches and sing.  As the pair’s popularity grew, in the early 1930s, Flanagan and Allen became a part of the very successful entertaining troupe, ‘The Crazy Gang’.

Bud Flanagan, was London born as Chaim Reuben Weintrop, (1896 – 1968).  He became a famous comedian and had a successful career on both stage and screen. He was a very popular world-renown performer particularly remembered for entertaining the troops during WWII and keeping up moral. From a young adult, Bud Flanagan had the good fortune to travel and perform around the globe; in 1915 he enlisted into the during the First World War. During his time in the army he met a Sergeant-Major Flanagan who, by some accounts, inspired the stage name that Bud Flanagan adopted.

Chesney Allen was the other half of Flanagan and Allen. Chesney Allen (1894 – 1982) was born William Ernest Chesney Allen, in London, England. Mr. Allen first started acting on the stage as a serious actor in 1912. In the mid-1920s, having turned toward comedy, he joined up with Bud Flanagan and created a successful double act.  In the early 1930s Flanagan and Allen became a part of the very successful comedy-act troupe, which became famously known as ‘The Crazy Gang’.

The programme is made up of 4 pages including front and back cover pages. Approx. H21cm x W13cm.