A Nude Review
Revealing Fancies & Fantasises
Windmill Theatre, Great Windmill st
To get the best view - Stand outside jazz bar Jack Solomons
In 1930 The Windmill Theatre was bought by Laura Henderson — who, together with impresario Vivian Van Damm,took many stabs at making a success of the former music hall: reflecting a number of latest crazes from variety theatre to pornographic cinema.
Gerrard Street 1946 - Street Ladies- Westminster Archives
What they landed on — Revuedeville — became one of Britain's first nude revues. They famously outwitted The Lord Chamberlains’ Censorship powers via a clever loophole, A strategy which became known as: 'if it moves, it's rude,'
With the dancers posing as sexy statues, the revue was presented as art not indecency.
The Windmill Theatre by Ana Tinca
During the war this theatre built on the site of an actual old windmill, was said to have ‘never closed’ with the performers staying completely still , even during air raids.
By the 1940s, Soho’s narrow streets had begun to transform into London’s unofficial modern red-light district with a rise in pornography and black marketeering- ( a trade centred on the corner of Windmill street and Shaftesbury Avenue). It was also the social heart of London with basement clubs and members-only bars on every corner..
The Windmill would later be taken over by the Porn Baron Paul Raymond, a man who would come to dominate Soho’s adult entertainment industry in the swinging 60s
Through the 50s and right into the 1970s the area became increasingly seedy -dominated by gangsters and protection racketeers and increasingly supported by corrupt policing taking their own cut of the widespread Organised Crime.
Archer Street 1946, musicians open air labour exchange Westminster Archives
In the 1970s plans were hatched to replace Soho’s 17thC street plan with a Utopian fantasy of 20 and 30 story tower blocks linked by pedestrian walkways with 6 lane highways below, We can thank local group the Soho Society’s campaigning and Paul Raymond’s property portfolio that Soho still looks the way it does
Organist Cherry Wainer changed her name to Cherry Waynei in order to play Accordian Piano and Solovox underage! At Windmill Theatre 1948 Internet Archive
Continue past the Windmill, taking an immediate right into Archer street where the musicians labour exchange was.
Past Soho’s only remaining school: Soho now has only 2000 residents.
And take a left on to Rupert street to get to Brewer Street.
Windmill Theatre programme cover.
Internet archive.
1974 from Westminster Archive.