The name of Sir Julien Cahn should be writ large in the annals of great British lives. His riproaringly successful achievements were so varied that their diversity alone quite lathers him with lustre. His legacy, though, as far as this column is concerned, is a dashing art deco theatre which he built in the midst of his 3,000-acre estate at Stanford Hall, Nottinghamshire; a theatre, furthermore, that was created in conjunction with – and on top of – a Nazi-bombproof air raid shelter.
To begin at the beginning: Julien Cahn was the son of German Jewish émigrés settled in Nottingham – with a mother so refined that she could not even contemplate showing her guests the way to the lavatory. He rose through Britain’s shadowed-by-anti-Semitism ranks to the glittering heights of vast wealth and munificence. Armed with the motto ‘The opportunity of a lifetime should be seized in the lifetime of the opportunity’, he forged forth. Making a fortune in furniture manufacturing, he was a pioneer philanthropist on the grand scale. He built a maternity hospital and he established Britain’s first human milk bank. He saved Byron’s great Newstead Abbey for the nation. He gave coffers of cash to medical and agricultural research. To cap it all (ha ha) he had a private cricket team, the Cahn XI, which despite his being a spectacularly poor player – so fearful was he of the ball that he devised giant blow-up pads – he captained as far afield as Singapore and Chicago. In Bermuda he organised what has always been claimed to be the first official match between a white and a black club. No mean claim.
Ever passionate about his elevation in society, he became master of hounds to many and various packs. Again showing a sporting ability that failed to match up to his position, he would dismount at every fence and get his groom to jump it for him.
Not yet mentioned, but worth a banner headline, was Sir Julien’s considerable prowess as a conjuror – he was offered a booking at the London Palladium – and it was for showing off his tricks that he built his own full-blown theatre. With its complementary architectural lines and lighting, it is a superb survival of the period. The architect was Cecil Aubrey Massey, king of theatre and cinema design; Joe Redding of White Allom, famed for its work on the liners Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, oversaw the interior, and it was he who decreed that the muralist Beatrice McDermott should paint the walls, exercising her art while lying on a ‘celestial settee of scaffolding’.
No convenience was spared, with plush velvet seating for 352 in the auditorium, and with dramatic stage lighting that was technologically unmatched by any other theatre in the country. A great Wurlitzer organ, which rose up in full automatic tune from the orchestra pit, was the only one in Europe at the time. The theatre was finished in 1938, the year before the Second World War was declared, but Sir Julien, understandably sensitive to the rise of anti-Semitism, was prepared, having built an airtight bomb shelter beneath the building. Escape routes were dug down dark tunnels, all progressing through heavy-as-lead submarine doors. I tried one out and it was no common experience hauling open one of those doors and finding myself – EUREKA! – in this dazzling art deco palace.
The opening night was a grand spectacular with Sir Julien’s dexterity on display. His budgerigar Sunshine and his canary Garbo were top of the bill, helping him with card tricks. It was said however that ‘the bowl of disappearing goldfish was a spectacular failure, but as the routine was conducted with utmost solemnity, it was irresistibly funny and was always cheered to the echo’.
The theatre is a worthy monument to the man.
