The Nightlife

Lady Rose enters the scene and we all get to party in London like its the Roaring Twenties, from the comfort of our living rooms.  America may have been the ones to have perfected the art of the speakeasy, but London was not about to be outdone in the nightlife scene.

In 1912, in 9 Heddon Street just off of Regent's Street, was where the first night club was established.  Christened The Cave of the Golden Calf, assumedly for the Old Testament story of the Israelites worshiping a false god and putting Moses into quite a state of panic, it was occupied by the elite.  The wealthy and the bohemian flocked to its doors, proving the idea of a night club was a solid business venture.   Philip Hoare in his book, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand, provided the following colorful, if not condescending, description:

"Up in Regent Street young men wearing tight suits and nail varnish were sipping crème de menthe in the Café Royal, while down a dark cul-de-sac lurked a new and devilish sort of place where Futurists cavorted: a `night club' profanely named `The Cave of the Golden Calf'. Vague rumours had reached her that nowadays, the backstreets harboured all manner of such places, attended by members of the social elite. Such intimations confirmed all the suspicions of her class. At the root of these evils lay the name of Oscar Wilde, still unspoken in polite households. He may have been dead for more than a decade, but Wilde's decadence endured."

 

 

The Cave of the Golden Calf shut its doors only two years later, but the idea of a place to drink and dance flourished.  By the 1930s, over 50 licensed night clubs were being visited by the upper class on a nightly basis.  Some were made for dance floors, others for cabarets.  The names of the most famous clubs drifting in and out of discrete tea conversations included the Kit Cat Club (the name of the club in the musical Cabaret, although it is spelled Kit Kat Club) and the Coconut Grove (which is most likely the club Marilyn Monroe refers to in The Prince and the Show Girl).  Akin to its distant speakeasy cousins in America, the police enjoyed raiding these "bottle parties", but that didn't stop many from evading the licensing laws.

As for the Golden Calf, it lives on as a new bar, The Living Room W1.  It was at one point, prior to these owners, turned into a post office.  It can be seen on the cover of David Bowie's album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

Thanks to Exploring 20th Century London, for details on London clubs found on their website.