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.
