大象传媒 Scotland - 大象传媒 Scotland - The man who tried to prevent exploitation in the entertainment industry a century before the #MeToo movement

The man who tried to prevent exploitation in the entertainment industry a century before the #MeToo movement

25 May 2018

In the early 20th Century, variety theatres were ribald onstage and home to unscrupulous behaviour offstage.

Unregulated theatrical agents could award roles to the highest bidder and pay acts a pittance while pocketing the majority of their performance fees.

Early theatrical agents were unscrupulous characters who greatly exploited the performers

Fred Collins created founded the first variety agency in Scotland.

Women working on the chorus line were treated particularly poorly. Some were so badly paid that they would supplement their income by working as prostitutes, plying their trade in front of the predominantly male audience.

Glaswegian Fred Collins had toured the country’s theatres as a performer and agent and had seen the industry’s wrong-doings for himself.

He felt compelled to act and founded the Collins Variety Agency – Scotland’s first theatrical agency – not just to protect the artists from mistreatment, but to provide them with proper representation and pay them decent wages, too.

Jan Van Albert, theatrically billed as Lofty, the Dutch Giant, stood an impressive 9鈥�3鈥� tall

His partner, 3鈥�6鈥� Seppetoni, was also his brother-in-law and the two were great friends.

The Collins Variety Agency

A colourful history of the Collins family who founded the first theatrical agency in Scotland, nurturing some of the greatest stars of the 20th Century.