British Movietone captured this amusing footage of somewhat bewildered and unhappy toddlers being paraded as part of a beauty show in Southend in the 1940s. The judges were Mr and Mrs Lupino Lane.
Who Was Lupino Lane?
Lupino Lane is now largely forgotten, but he was a theatre manager, actor and director known for The Love Parade (1929), Who’s Your Father (1935) and The Maid of the Mountains (1932).
Born into the famous Lupino family in London in June 1892, Henry William George Lupino later adopted the surname of his great-aunt Sara Lane, also a performer.
In 1917 Lupino married the well known music hall actress and singer Violet Blythe.
Four years later their son Lauri Lupino Lane was born. He too was destined to become an actor, appearing in The Great Waltz (1972), A King in New York (1957) and Carry on Loving (1970). Lauri married Kathleen Astor with whom he had a daughter, Sara Lupino Lane.
On Monday 30 December 1957, the BBC broadcast an episode of ‘Desert Island Disks’, featuring Lupino Lane as Roy Plomley’s castaway. You can hear ten minutes of the episode on the BBC website.
Lupino Lane died in London on 10 November 1959.
