SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: Emigrating to America and becoming a ‘Broadway sensation’ is the stuff of dreams, but as DAVID MORGAN explains, for one surveyor’s apprentice from South Croydon, after four years in a Prisoner of War camp, it became a reality
In demand: Hugh Willoughby became one of the foremost theatre designers of the 1920s and ’30s
Relocating to live and work in America today might be less appealing than it was years ago. For one man, born in Croydon and christened at St Matthew’s Church in South Croydon, emigration proved to be his making.
Even before travelling to America though, Hugh Willoughby had lived an eventful life.
Hugh Willoughby was born on October 15 1891. His parents relocated to Merstham, and the 1911 Census shows the family living in the Old School House there. The household consisted of his father, Charles, who was an auctioneer and surveyor, his mother Clara, and six siblings – three boys and three girls. Hugh was listed as being a pupil to a surveyor.
Willoughby was married to Jeanette Challinor on September 5 1914 at Hampstead. On the wedding certificate, his job was given as an army officer. He was a Second Lieutenant in the South Staffordshire Regiment.
Shortly after his wedding, the following month, Willoughby’s regiment was deployed to Belgium as part of 7th Division of the BEF, the British Expeditionary Force, following the invasion by Germany.
Willoughby didn’t last long on the front line. He was taken prisoner at the end of October and transported to a PoW camp in Germany, where he was interred until just before the Armistice in 1918, when he was part of a prisoner exchange and transferred to Holland.
Willoughby’s time in a PoW camp was much more productive than many experienced. Among the other prisoners, Willoughby met artists from Russia and France and learned much from them. He later described his wartime experiences “as amusing himself in camp, drawing everything but a living wage”.
Captain Willoughby – he had been promoted during the war – used his new-found artistic skills for the first time in The Hague in September 1919 when he designed the costumes for a theatre revue under the direction of the producer Max Reinhardt.
Coming back to England, Willoughby found a job as a theatre designer and artist with the Moss Empires, a chain of more than 50 of the country’s biggest and some of the best-known theatres and music halls in the country.
Britain’s got talent: The Co-Optimists was a huge success for all involved, including Willoughby
Willoughby designed the programme for the 1920 production of Aladdin at the London Hippodrome as well as for The Peepshow there a year later.
Willoughby also received a commission from Albert de Courville, a writer and theatrical director, to design the costumes for Whirligig at the Palace Theatre. Opening on December 23 1919, the revue was a huge success, running for 441 performances.
Willoughby’s designs were an instant hit. The Times’s review posed the question, “Who is Willoughby?” After this production, everyone knew.
Willoughby in his new career as a costume designer was in high demand. De Courville had him working on the costumes for Jigsaw, another London Hippodrome show, which opened in June 1920 and ran for 311 performances. As well as all the costumes, Willloughby was credited with designing some of the scenery, too.
It was during this show that Willoughby first worked with some high-profile American stars. The Dolly Sisters, “twins of the twin-kling feet”, were top of the bill. The cast also included the British actor and dancer Sam Lupino.
Willoughby began designing costumes for the Paris stage. Pif! Paf! at the Theatre Marigny in 1921 and Un Soir de Folie at the Folies Bergere in 1925 were two shows when he designed the costumes.
Like many former soldiers returning to civilian life, though, Willoughby found it difficult to settle into pre-war relationships, and he was divorced in 1921.
Work was flooding in for Willoughby. He designed all the costumes and the sets for The Co-optimists which opened at the Royalty Theatre in June 1921. The show, “an all-star Pierrot entertainment”, was highly successful and transferred to the larger Palace Theatre.
Willoughby certainly worked with some great names. In December 1922 he designed the sets for the Battling Butler starring Jack Buchanan at the New Oxford Theatre, where on this occasion the costumes which were designed by Norman Hartnell – one of the pre-eminent dress designers of the 20th Century, who would become famous as designing the wedding dress for Princess Elizabeth in 1947.
Playbill: Hugh Willoughby’s production design work on Broadway continued well into the 1930s
It was not long before Willoughby sailed for America. In May 1923, it was reputed that for his first theatre job in New York, Willoughby was earning $75 a week – the equivalent today of $1,393.29.
On board the liner with Willoughby sailing to New York was Allan K Foster, the theatre director and choreographer. Willoughby’s friendship with Foster was a big factor in making the big decision to try to “make it” on Broadway.
Almost as soon as he arrived in New York, Willoughby began working for the theatre impresarios, the Shubert Brothers. One of Willoughby’s early successes on Broadway was his work on the Shuberts’ Mikado, which was staged in April 1925 at the 44th Street Theater.
Right up to the late 1930s, Willoughby’s name, if not quite “up in lights” on Broadway, was a fixture in the programme notes of a variety of the top shows. A new play, Tide Rising, opened at Broadway’s The Lyceum Theatre in January 1937, for which he designed the sets, and Where Do We Go From Here? the following year also credited him with the set design.
But times, and tastes, were changing, and the world was changing, too. Hugh Willoughby’s time as the must-have stage designer appears to have peaked. He married again, to Jill Williams, and they lived in Glen Cove, Long Island, and had two sons.
Croydon-born Hugh Willoughby died November 8, 1973. He was 82.
From Croydon to Broadway. It doesn’t happen often.
David Morgan, pictured, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Victorian opera star whose family enjoyed burgeoning success
- Read all about it! Croydon’s streets of crime from 100 years ago
- Here’s the news in 1925: policing, airport expansion and sport
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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