The Lambeth Walk

So my current Musings on Things Past focuses on a song with a very interesting story that continues to this day.  

In 1937, the show "Me and My Girl" opened on the West End in London to great critical and audience acclaim.  One song, in particular stood out.  

Written for a local street  that was once home to street markets and a lower socioeconomic class, the song "The Lambeth Walk" was an instant hit all over the world.   

But this song was more than just another number in a musical show.  It would pull together a nation together that was being torn apart by war.  It unified the world, as the dance became wildly popular in living rooms and ballrooms internationally.  It became the basis for a film that so infuriated the Third Reich that a certain innovative British filmmaker made it to the Nazi extermination list.  It even became the subject of a early British television in 1939 as the first televised musical ever and also the subject of the first music "remix" video!   
  
So what was it about this jaunty, rollicking tune with its simple innocent lyrics that would cause both unification and outrage?  

Other blogs have been written about the history of it, so this one will focus on the media presentations!  The most fun (I think)  version is this one from the 1987 revival of Me and My Girl.  This version stars Robert Lindsey as the main character; a cockney lad who is thrust into high society.  Just as he unifies two socioeconomic classes; the song did as well.  The joy of this rendition is absolutely contagious.  

As it would have it, art imitated life (or life would imitate art rather) and in the late 1930's, King George and young Queen Elizabeth attended a performance and even joined their voices in the cockney shouts of "Oi!" in the chorus of the song.  They confessed that they had been doing the Lambeth Walk the "wrong way - the ballroom way" and promised to do it "right" in the future! "  As you can see, the song was one of inclusion and the audience is also delighted to be included in that particular Youtube performance. 


As Germany crept through Europe, the "Lambeth Walk" took the world by storm.  Check this out!

Soldiers and their sweethearts doing the Lambeth Walk.  One signature move was a thrust of the thumb over the shoulder with an "Oi!" 

Small preschool aged children doing the Lambeth Walk and "Oi"!

The Lambeth Walk and dancers in New York City

Children in the slums of London demonstrate the Lambeth Walk for a photographer!

A French magazine taught ballroom dancers how to do the Lambeth Walk. 

Countless artists and swing bands in the United States and Europe did covers of the song. 

Here is the televised broadcast of the number from 1939 with the original West End cast!  How seriously cool is THIS!?  

The song and dance became not only a distraction as England entered the war but also lifted the spirits of a nation during a very bad time.

So now we get to the Hitler connection, as the song took on a new direction.  Hitler mentioned the song and dance in a speech as  "Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping".

In 1940, the Palace Theater where the show was still playing was bombed during the Blitz and the show was forced to close.

In 1942, Charles A Ridley, of the Ministry of Information would have a bit of sweet revenge.  He took the song and set it to footage of marching Gestapo troops and leaders and released it, uncredited, to newsreel companies, making it look like the Nazi armies were dancing the Lambeth Walk.   Decades before Youtube and Movie Maker, he had unknowingly created the first popular "REMIX" that would have gone viral had there been a Youtube at the time!  Its pretty hilarious.  When the film was shown to Nazi leaders, reportedly they cursed, shouted and stormed out of the room.   The result was that Ridley was put on a hit list for elimination should Germany occupy England.  

 Check it out!  

And since "everything old is new again" here at Kels Musings, the  Lambeth Walk story continues today.  This innovative Youtuber has created a modern version of the Ridley film starring North Korea and Kim Jong-un  doing the Lambeth Walk in the same style as the Ridley film,  This is some seriously funny stuff!  ' 

People today continue to dance the Lambeth Walk.  

So there you have the story of the Lambeth Walk.  I  hope you enjoy these videos and history of this fun song as much as I did!   If you even watched a couple of these videos, you no doubt have the song stuck in your head, so my apologies!  

Until next time.......

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Kel is the owner of SuburbanTreasure, an Etsy shop feature eclectic items celebrating the popular culture of the past decades.  Check us out at https://www.etsy.com/shop/suburbantreasure?

So we just finished watching an episode of "The Goldbergs", in which the teenage son and daughter get a job in a Spencer Gifts store in the 1980's.  Spencer Gifts!  A flood of memories came back as a nine year old standing under strobe lights looking at racks of whoopie cushions, lava lamps and flies in ice cubes.  At one point, we actually came out of Spencer's with a black light bulb that we put in our basement so that we could have the novelty of roller skating and glowing in the dark.....

 Since the mall near our home wasn't built until 1978, this was a whole new world we had never seen.  Before that, trips to the "mall" meant only the yearly tradition of driving 45 minutes away once a year to sit on Santa's lap at Christmas time, only to get carsick and throw up on the lengthy drive home. 

But now we had a mall five minutes from our house!  And in the winter, or at night, or on rainy days, taking a trip to "walk the mall" was a new novelty

It's hard to believe, but in the 1970's, this is what malls looked like.  Oh the browns and oranges and wood theme!  

And what was it about the 1970's that led mall architects to think gigantic, abstract sculptures added to the ambiance of shopping for a pair of shoes?   This one has some kind of gigantic maggots suspended from the ceiling.

 This yellow megalithic sculpture was created especially for our mall in 1977 and placed in the center of it when it opened.  Supposedly the creator made it to "inspire shoppers".  Maybe it was urban legend, but we were told that at some point, some brilliantly minded person decided to try to jump from the second floor railing onto the top of this thing and fell.  Eventually it was moved outdoors, out of danger of ambitious jumpers.

Speaking of shoes.....once you arrived at the mall, your parents might have dragged you to this place.  Not exactly the most fun place, but where you visited every August for school shoes....hopefully not in danger of being speared in the head by the heels of a boot falling from the string of boot garland hanging across the front.  

And how about Hickory Farms?  The name sounded appetizing enough, and something about those holiday gift boxes with all the tiny individually wrapped cheeses and sausages that somehow magically did not have to be refrigerated made this place a novelty.  That and the free samples.   I have no idea if that Santa looking guy in a business suit is a statue or a real guy in a getaway disguise making off with a large gift box...

I saw this picture online and I had totally forgotten that was what the front of The Children's Place looked like.  We never shopped for clothes there, but we used to love to go sit in that little hole that was the special entrance for kids!  

No trip to the mall was ever complete without a visit to Kay Bee Toy and Hobby.  It was the only toy store in our mall when it first opened.  And it was the place that you secretly hoped to talk your parents into stopping into if for nothing else to just look at the toys.

I have many memories of this place imprinted in my mind.  There was the year I came out with this

  when my mom took me birthday shopping.  I was so thrilled that all the way to the car I kept saying "I can't believe this!"   
I also remember an epic mall parking lot experience with these in a Kay Bee bag when I was ten.   

And of course, no trip to the mall Kay Bee was complete without visiting the bargain bin of the Atari games where we'd pool our allowances to buy whatever we could afford! 

Then there was this store.  With its simple, unassuming store front, Walden Books was always of great interest to me as I loved to read.  I actually did spend quite a bit of money on paperback books when I was young and this was a great place to browse for as long as my parents would let me. 

Another favorite place was "The Occasion"; a small card and gift store that held great interest for a ten year old because they had these.  

and these....

Of course, not all mall trips resulted in a new Smurf or puffy stickers to add to the Trapper Keeper.   The ones that happened days before school started in September were pure torture.  I hated school shopping.  And unlike most young girls, I hated clothes shopping.  Usually a clothes shopping trip meant that we hit JC Penney first.  Is it any wonder clothes shopping was less than exciting when this was pretty much what you were looking on the Penney's racks.

The other yearly unpleasant mall experience happened around Christmas.  My grandmother would take us shopping for a Christmas outfit.  Usually here.  

 Looming at the end of the mall, this big, stuffy "fancy lady" store held zero interest to a kid whose mind was most certainly not on jewelry, perfume and clothes.  I hated this place as a kid.  Even the name was presumptuous.  

Neatly dressed in a polyester skirt suit and heels, she would always inevitably lead us to Bamberger's, even if we were at the opposite end of the mall.  Her reason was that this, and Penney's, were the only stores where she would use the bathroom.  My grandmother had apparently developed some kind of phone mall grapevine consisting of other people who enjoyed talking on the phone about such things, where she would receive a weekly mall rape and crime report. 

 Apparently she'd gathered through this grapevine, that the regular mall bathrooms were havens for rapists or gunmen. Therefore, was convinced that if she used the regular center mall bathrooms, she, I or both of us would be attacked, maimed or even killed.  Once we had safely used the Bamberger's facilities, we always had to eat there.  Yes, Bamberger's had a restaurant.  

  I recall one day having to go to the mall with my grandmother and begging to eat here:  

I was told "absolutely not, that is a filthy place.  In fact, you can smell it just by walking by.  Do you know cousin so-and-so told me they gagged out loud just walking past that place??"  I had absolutely no idea what she was taking about.  My parents frequently took us to Blimpie and the thought of the smell of salami, oregano, oil and vinegar made my stomach growl.  I was instead dragged, complaining, to "Bams" for lunch where I attempted to order "pizza."  When it came, it was whole wheat bread, soggy with tomato sauce and cheese on top.  Figures.  In my mind, if anybody could wreck pizza, it was Bamberger's.

Having survived the bi-yearly chore trips to the mall,  here was another great place to browse.    Remember going to "record stores" when it was all vinyl?  

The early 1980's held a new mall phenomenon that sparked my passion; the "Mall Antique Show".

 Local dealers would set up for a week  at the mall in various places.  They'd bring tables and showcases and to me, it was like heaven.  Like having an antique mall within the regular mall!  Just a few minutes from my house and open until 9 pm!  It was not always easy to get my parents to stop often enough at antique and junk stores on Saturdays for me to shop, so this was the best of both worlds; tag along to the mall and get to shop the antique booths!  I purchased several things as a kid on these shopping excursions.   Sadly, these shows became extinct as Ebay took hold in the mid 1990s.  

Of course, as we grew up, "the mall" became a place to hang out, go for coffee or ice cream and actually enjoy clothes shopping. Nowadays with online shopping and large chain stores like Walmart and Target, malls are less frequented than they were and many have closed up or gotten much smaller.  But in the 1970's, it was an exciting novelty for a kid!  

This Pinterest board has some more great photos of 1970's mall storefronts  https://www.pinterest.com/ctbfa/70s-mall-storefronts/

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Kel is the owner of SuburbanTreasure , an Etsy shop carrying all things vintage from the turn of the century to the 1990s.  Check out the retro fun today!  https://www.etsy.com/shop/suburbantreasure