SURELY one of the most depressing photographs ever included in Memory Lane, these ornamental cherubs above the New Queen’s Theatre proscenium await their destruction in 1961.
They had looked down on more than half a century of drama and variety and especially during the Second World War on a succession of morale-boosting household names: Dame Sybil Thorndike, Sandy Powell, Rob Wilton, Rawicz and Landauer, Reginald Foort and his Mighty Organ, Henry Hall’s Guest Night . . .
During a single week in 1942, the Royal Carl Rosa Opera Company had given seven operas: Madame Butterfly, Rigoletto, Faust, Die Fledermaus, La Boheme, Il Travatore and The Barber of Seville.
“And now it’s the final curtain,” a reader signed simply EM Lawkholme wrote to the Keighley News in 1961, speaking for many, “but we have our happy memories.”
The photograph has been supplied by Mr Kevin Seaton, of Shann Lane, Keighley.
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