Variety Jubilee

The narrative, wrapped around the many excellent music-hall turns in this film, is maudlin at best, but it serves to provide a history of a particular music-hall from the era preceding WWI to the era of WWII. When I play my VHS copy for people, I simply zoom through the story line to watch matchless and perfectly executed acts like Slim Rhyder, Charles Coborn (in his nineties!), the great George Robey, Wilson, Keppel & Betty and some younger variety stars impersonating earlier stars. The IMDb listing is in error as regards Marie Lloyd: the listing assumes that it was she in the movie and that she was billed as Marie Lloyd, Jr. Indeed, it was her daughter Marie Jr. who impersonated her mother, Marie Lloyd. As a previous reviewer noted, it is difficult to give a rating to a film like Variety Jubilee. The best analogy I can think of it that of archeology. To find this film (or Elstree Calling) is to discover a rare artifact of an earlier generation of clever and amusing stars. If you expect surroundsound, wide screen, color and jump cuts or have little interest in the history of show business, you won't see its value. The narrative merits a 3; the acts (or "turns" as the British call them) merit a 10.