The Lambeth Walk and Its Permutations

Sooner or later it seemed that WFMU would get on the Lambeth Walk bandwagon that is sweeping the nation. This dance sensation which originated in a 1937 musical, Me and My Girl, has recently been the subject of a marathon series of posts over at Mark Evanier's always-interesting and amusing blog.  With all of the holiday-related work to do around here, I thought collating some of these would be a less strenuous blog to serve up hot this weekend, but I didn't expect to get sucked into the vortex that is The Lambeth Walk.

 

 

 

Before we get into the big plate of links, let's savor this appetizer of a short propaganda film from 1941 by Charles A. Ridley of the British Ministry of Information, Lambeth Walk - Nazi Style, in which he subjects footage from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will to some heavy cut-up loopy sickness.

 

This "Cockney" style dance caught on during the run of the massively successful Me and My Girl, with book and lyrics by Douglas Furber (co-author of the song Limehouse Blues with Philip Braham) and L. Arthur Rose and music by Noel Gay; and was performed by Lupino Lane who also got a lot of solo mileage out of it. A boatload of 78's subsequently were cut of the song in every language from 1937 on, and in 1939 the show itself made broadcasting history as the first full-length musical shown on television.

Also in 1939 the musical was made into a motion picture, and the dance craze itself was being denounced by the Nazis in a New York Times article of January 8th, "Nazis Hold Lambeth Walk is Animalistic Hopping".

And now on to the main course: eight versions of the song, and three video incarnations, with their accompanying comments from Mr. Evanier. There is also a larger version of the Lambeth Walk Instructions graphic here (dig those confusing directions!). Get on yer feet, Hit the dance floor, Give the salute and shout "Oi!"

post one     post two     post three     post four     post five     post six     post seven     post eight     post nine     post ten

 

 

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Don't miss the 1974 film "Juggernaut" (D. Richard Lester). Cruise ship entertainment director Roy Kinnear tries to energize the passengers with the Lambeth Walk.