Magic at War

On the 2 March 1942, less than three months after the United States entered the Second World War, the Stage Door Canteen opened beneath New York’s 44th Street Theatre. Run by the American Theatre Wing, it offered Allied servicemen free food, dancing and entertainment, much of it provided by volunteers from the theatrical profession. Producer Lee Shubert provided the basement without rent and theatrical unions helped convert it. The room measured only forty by eighty feet and could accommodate about 500 people at a time, so servicemen were admitted in shifts. On busy nights more than 2,000 passed through. Actors waited tables, hostesses danced with the men and performers appeared on stage without fee. Among the famous faces involved were Katharine Hepburn , who danced with servicemen, and the young Lauren Bacall , who volunteered as a hostess before becoming one of Hollywood’s best-known stars. For men accustomed to seeing such people only on a cinema screen, the informality was part o...

Sir Julien Cahn made a fortune from furniture, fielded one of the most successful private cricket teams of the inter-war years and gave generously to medicine, agriculture and public causes. He was also a serious amateur illusionist who built one of Britain’s finest private theatres. Then war transformed Stanford Hall: an Army unit moved onto the estate, wounded soldiers recuperated beside his stage and Cahn’s magic found a military audience. More than eighty years later, Stanford Hall is again devoted to the rehabilitation of servicemen and women. Sir Julien Cahn Bt. (1882-1944) (Source: Unidentified and AI enhanced) In December 1938, a newspaper described an extraordinary new addition to Sir Julien Cahn’s country estate at Stanford Hall, near Loughborough. The theatre seated hundreds and was equipped for cinema, elaborate lighting and the owner’s increasingly ambitious magical illusions. Then came a less theatrical detail. Beneath it was a “bomb-proof dug-out”. Nine months later Brit...