The Summer Season Shows
In this interview Tony King reflects upon the shows in Great Yarmouth from the 1950's to the 1970's
By Richard Dade
"When I first started there wasn't the big name shows, just prior to the war and just after the war they used to have nice summer shows at the Wellington Pier and the old Britannia Pier Theatre.
Then in the early 1950's there was the Britannia Pier came up with a show which I think starred pretty certain I think its '53 starred Max Bygraves then after that summer season the Britannia Pier theatre burnt down so there wasn't big shows again until about 1956 when the Wellington Pier first started putting on shows and star names began to come into it.
But the hey day of the star names I suppose was the 60s and 70s when Harry Secombe, Des O Connor, Tommy Cooper, just about any name in show business, Mike and Bernie Winters, they all came to Yarmouth.
Summer seasons in those days, the main shows of the summer season used to start in early June and go on to about the middle of September. Nowadays they start at the end of July and finish at the end of August almost. There is a big difference but the reason is television came in. Stars didn't want to do the work they used to do, slog away twice nightly on a summer show for weeks and weeks on end and where as they could do a television show, get probably as much money as they would for a weeks work at the seaside so those sort of things gradually died out.
At one time Yarmouth used to have the Wellington Pier, the Britannia Pier, the Royal Aquarium or Hollywood as it is now the Regal which then became the ABC, Gorleston Pavilion, the Hippodrome, the Windmill Theatre and I estimated once that with twice nightly shows there was about 33 thousand seats available in Yarmouth any one night in live theatre including the circus and that sort of thing like that of course so it was quite a big industry in those days.
And then on top of that there was all the peripheral things, there used to be a skating show, swimming show at the swimming pool, speedway racing in the early days at Yarmouth Stadium, Stock Car racing all that sort of thing, so there was a tremendous amount of things for people to do. Which nowadays there doesn't seem to be that range. So there has been a distinct change on the entertainment side. To be honest you really could not afford the stars these days."