Career
Van Damm, known as "VD", came from a middle-class London family of Dutch Jewish origin. He left school at 14 to work in a garage, and later abandoned the motor trade to manage West End cinemas. In 1931, Laura Henderson opened the tiny, one-tier as a playhouse, but it was not profitable, and she soon resorted to showing films.
She then hired Van Damm, and they produced Revudeville, a programme of continuous variety, comprising 18 entertainment acts.
That was also a commercial failure, so they added the dimension of nudity to emulate the Folies Bergère and the Moulin Rouge. The key element was Van Damm"s exploitation of a legal loophole (or zone of tolerance), that nude statues could not be banned on moral grounds.
This led to the legendary "Windmill Girls". The girls had to remain motionless, the Lord Chamberlain"s ruling being, "If you move, it"s rude".
To ward off criticism he used his own beautiful daughter, under the stage name of Betti Talbot, as one of the nudes.
The Hollywood film Tonight and Every Night, starring Rita Hayworth, told some of the story of the Windmill, though it contained no nudity. Van Damm"s flair for public relations created the legend of the theatre that "never closed". Newspapers carried pictures of plucky Windmill girls in tin hats on fire-watching duty, and stories of showgirls giving V-signs to German bombers.
Indeed, except for a 12-day period in 1939, when all London theatres were ordered closed, the Windmill remained open throughout the Blitz.
Laura Henderson bequeathed the to Vivian Van Damm in 1944, and he ran it until his death in December 1960. The officially closed on 31 October 1964.
Vivian Van Damm was the Vice-President of the London-based Magicians" Club which held charity shows at the
A 1949 film called Murder at the Windmill (Mystery at the Burlesque in the United States of America) featured Diana Decker, Jon Pertwee, and Jimmy Edwards, and was directed by Val Guest. Van Damm was portrayed by Bob Hoskins in the film Mrs Henderson Presents (2005).
