Housemaster: The play in photos

 

Housemaster was in its day a rip-roaring success in the West End theatre and a mainstay of local repertory companies for many years.

We met the play before (Here). It was written by Ian Hay and first produced at the Apollo Theatre, London, on 12 November 1936 and ran for 662 performances. It was a mild English comedy and mostly forgettable today except for the opening scene, where Bimbo Farringdon is stretched across a couple of chairs while the Housemaster Mr. Donkin administers a pretty authentic-looking six stokes of the cane.

The scene was considered so interesting a photograph from it appeared on the front cover of the magazine Play Pictorial.

Several photographs were taken of that scene and here are a few of them. I was given them by a reader of this blog who got them on eBay but the circumstances in which they were taken remain a mystery. Possibilities are that it might have been during a rehearsal or the scene was set up especially for a ‘photoshoot’: we will probably never know.

Incidentally, I have seen the cover of Play Pictorial online many times but have never been able to see the article inside. I did make a search of newspaper in1936 and found some reviews of the play, but none referred to the caning scene.

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