The Empire Pool / Wembley Arena Story – Part 3

 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

1.     The Empire Pool in 1948, looking towards Wembley Park Station. (Source: Brent Archives)

 

Thank you for joining me for the third part of this article. If you have just come across it, you may like to read Part 1 and Part 2 first. We have reached 1948, when Wembley had just played host to the 1948 summer Olympic Games, and the swimming pool had been used for the last time. Now the indoor arena would be used not only for sports, but also for a variety of other entertainment events which Sir Arthur Elvin (knighted by King George VI in 1947, for his efforts to stage the Olympic Games at Wembley) brought to the Empire Pool.

 

2.     Programmes for the Skating Vanities and Aqua Parade shows.
(From the internet and courtesy of Geoff Lane)

 

Two of the early shows imported from America added a new twist to the Empire Pool’s programme. “Skating Vanities of 1949” featured singers and dancers on roller skates, not on the ice. The 1950 “Aqua Parade” brought its own pool, and was a variety show starring Buster Crabbe (an Olympic swimming gold medallist from 1932, who went on to play Tarzan in several 1930s movies) and Vicki Draves, who had won both the women’s Olympic high and springboard diving events at the Empire Pool in 1948.

 

It was not long before Elvin was putting on his own entertainment shows. The Christmas / New Year period had been the traditional time for pantomimes, and working with the theatrical producer, Gerald Palmer, the Empire Pool staged its first musical pantomime, “Dick Whittington on ice”, from Boxing Day 1950. It was a gamble, as the show cost £100,000 to produce (about £2.9m today), but 600,000 people went to see it over its nine-week run, and Wembley’s ice pantomimes became an annual event.

 

3.     Cover and “stars” page of the Dick Whittington programme. (Courtesy of Geoff Lane)

 

1950 also saw the first visit to the Empire Pool of the Harlem Globetrotters. Their blend of basketball skills and comic trickery in the matches they played proved very popular, and they would return to put on their shows for a week in May or June each year right through until 1982! Sometimes the matches at Wembley were televised, and I can remember enjoying the antics of “Goose” Tatum and “Meadowlark” Lemon on a black and white TV set. Their performances helped to popularise basketball in this country (and the Empire Pool hosted the men’s and women’s national basketball finals from 1973!).

 

4.     A Harlem Globetrotters poster and Meadowlark Lemon in action, 1960s (From an old book)

 

5.     Programme for one of the shows put on at the Empire Pool in 1956. (From an old book)

 

Sir Arthur continued to work hard, putting on sports and entertainment events at the Empire Pool well into the 1950s, but his health was deteriorating. He was persuaded to take a break, and go on a cruise with his wife, but in February 1957 he died on board the S.S. Winchester Castle, off the island of Madeira. A bust of “Mr Wembley”, as he had become known, was placed on the wall of Wembley Stadium in his memory (it is now inside the new stadium).

 

6.     The bronze bust of Sir Arthur Elvin. (Image from the internet)

 

Although professional boxing matches had been one of the early sports to be featured at Wembley’s indoor arena in the 1930s, only amateur boxing had been held there since the war, with the ABA Championships taking place there every year from 1946 onwards. This was because Elvin had disliked the violence of some of the professional bouts he had witnessed. However, after his death the promoter, Harry Levene was quick to stage regular boxing events at the Empire Pool, featuring some big-name fighters.

 

7.     Programme for the Cooper v. Folley boxing match in 1958. (Image from the internet)

 

Henry Cooper’s World Heavyweight title eliminator against a top American boxer, Zora Folley, (above) was his first at the Empire Pool. He would have 14 more bouts at Wembley (including a famous one in the Stadium in 1963!) in an illustrious career, before he retired from boxing in 1971. A few months after that October 1958 event, the arena saw the start of something new.

 

8.     The young Shirley Bassey, and a second S.O.S. event in 1959. (Images from the internet)

 

March 1959 saw the first one-night popular music show at the Empire Pool. The Record Star Show was a charity event, organised by Vera Lynn’s Stars Organisation for Spastics. It featured top acts, including Petula Clark, Lonnie Donegan and a 22 year-old singer from Cardiff, Shirley Bassey, who had just had her first number one hit, “As I Love You”. The show was a big success, attracting a paying audience of 9,000 people, and a second event, the Starlight Dance, was held later that year. Similar multi-performer concerts continued into the 1960s, with events like the annual New Musical Express Poll Winners’ All-Star Concert.

 

The early 1960s also saw Associated Rediffusion (a subsidiary of the British Electric Traction Group) purchase Wembley Stadium Ltd for £2.75m. They already had the Independent TV franchise for broadcasting weekday programmes to the London area, most of which were televised from the former Wembley Park film studios. One of their most popular (at least with the younger generation!) shows was “Ready, Steady, Go!” When that programme staged its “Mod Ball” in 1964, Rediffusion’s nearby Empire Pool was the ideal venue.

 

9.     Mod Ball programme, and photograph of the event in the Arena. (From an old book)

 

 

10.  Mod Ball performers, at the back of the Wembley Park studios in 1964. (Image from the internet)
(How many of them can you recognise, sixty years on?)

 

With so many top British singers and groups in the 1960s, you might think that one of them would be the first to have their own show at the Empire Pool, London’s biggest concert arena at that time. Instead, it was the American pop group, The Monkees (which included the British singer/actor, Davy Jones), who took that first step in 1967, in what would go on to become one of the main features of the building’s future use.

 

11.  Ticket for a show by The Monkees at the Empire Pool in July 1967. (Image from the internet)

 

But sport was still an important part of the events staged in Wembley’s indoor arena. The Horse of the Year Show first took place there in 1959, and continued as an annual fixture in its programme right through to 2002. However, ice hockey, which had been one of the original sports that Elvin built the Empire Pool for, ended its run with the Wembley Lions final game there in December 1968 (the Monarchs having merged with the Lions in the early 1950s).

 

12.  Horse of the Year Show programme and showjumper in action, 1970s. (Courtesy of Geoff Lane)

 

From the late 1960s and into the 1970s sponsorship played an increasing part in the staging of big events. 6-day cycle racing returned to the Empire Pool as the Skol-6, sponsored by a brewery with a new brand of lager to promote. From 1976, a top men’s professional tennis competition, the Benson & Hedges Championship, brought world-class players such as Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Boris Becker to Wembley, courtesy of a tobacco company.

 

13.  Skol-6 poster and photograph. (Courtesy of Geoff Lane)

 

The 1970s also saw a string of changes to the building. In 1974, the temporary floor over the swimming pool was removed, and a permanent arena floor installed. In October 1976, Sir Owen Williams’s 1934 building was given Grade II Listing heritage status, for its architectural and engineering merit. And from 1 February 1978, the Empire Pool name was confined to history, with the building to be known in future as the Wembley Arena.

 

Do you have memories of going to events at the Empire Pool / Wembley Arena? If so, please feel free to share them in the comments below. And please join me here again next weekend, for the final part of this story.

Philip Grant.