Vivian Van Damm

Vivian van Damm (1895-1960) was a prominent London theatre impresario from 1932 until 1960, managing the Windmill Theatre in London's Great Windmill Street, which was a British institution, famed for its pioneering tableaux vivants of motionless female nudity and for the myth of having 'never closed' during the Blitz.

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 and eventually he became an impresario.

In 1931, Laura Henderson had opened the tiny, one-tier, Windmill Theatre as a playhouse but it was not profitable and soon resorted to showing films. She then hired 'VD' and they produced 'Revudeville', a programme of continuous, non-stop variety with 18 entertainment acts, but this was also a commercial failure, so they added the dimension of nudity to emulate the Folies Bergeres 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, and this led to the legendary "Windmill Girls".

Van Damm's flair for public relations had 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.

Laura Henderson bequeathed The Windmill Theatre to Vivian Van Damm in 1944, and he ran it until his death in December 1960. He left it to his daughter Sheila van Damm, a leading international rally driver. The Windmill Theatre officially closed in 1964.

* Van Damm was portrayed by Bob Hoskins in the film "Mrs. Henderson Presents"