Gala! (1931)

This is a fascinating glimpse of cabaret entertainment in an early ’30s West End nightclub. Full titles read: “Gala! Filmed at the Cafe de Paris. On with the dance, and the more crowded, the merrier, even though pretty frocks are submerged in the scene. Eddie Gross-Bart’s Boys are playing.“ London. Various shots show couples dancing on the very crowded dance floor of the Cafe de Paris; other people sit at tables around the balcony of the nightclub, looking down onto the dancers. Eddie Gross-Bart and his band are heard playing ’Sweet and Lovely’. Everybody looks impossibly glamorous! This seems to be a kind of charity gala. M/S of Russell John, American entertainer, sitting at a baby grand piano on the empty bandstand, singing an jazz song about New York. We then see two Scottish pipers playing bagpipes on the bandstand (the other musicians are in their places). Everyone claps as they make their way up one of the staircases. Various shots of “well-known West End watchers“ sitting at their