Noel Coward’s Cavalcade musical of 1931 showed three decades of an upper class British family 1899-1930, and played for over four hundred performances at the 2,000 seat Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It opened in mid-October 1931 and closed in September 1932. The cast numbered nearly three hundred – and included two black musicians, John Edward “Jack” London and Leslie Thompson, who were on stage in the penultimate scene (part 3, scene 2) which was set in a London night club and featured Binnie Barnes singing “Twentieth Century Blues”.

This musical “pageant of Britain” as the Graphic described it (21 November 1931, p 18) included the British royal family in an early audience, with the Daily Mail serialising the play, and well-established bands recording selections of the songs. The London-born Binnie Barnes, who spent the 1920s in America, has a solid place in English-language films and a lasting reputation (she died in the USA in 1998). The pianist Jack London (1905-1966) has an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography but he is probably remembered for his career in athletics.

Indeed, the Daily Mirror on 17 October 1931 (page 3) had noted “Famous Sprinter’s Part in ‘Cavalcade'”, saying “very few of the hundreds who have already seen ‘Cavalcade’ at Drury Lane Theatre have recognised the pianist in the night club scene. He is no other than Mr. Jack London, the famous Olympic athlete”. It noted he had been born in British Guiana (today: Guyana) and had been the pianist “in the coloured band at Ciro’s, and he also took a band to the Palace Hotel at Jersey”. Ciro’s was a fashionable night spot in central London.

London had been in the British team* at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, where he won a silver medal in the 100 metres, and a bronze in the 4 x 100 metres relay. Later injury prevented further participation on the sports field.

A photograph of the night club scene appears in the book of Cavalcade, and in the Tatler of 18 November 1931 (page 9) and on page 69 of Leslie Thompson’s autobiography (Swing from a Small Island: Northway Publications, 2009).

*An earlier black British Olympic athlete was boxer (and lawyer) Frank Dove who was at the 1920 Antwerp games.