La Boheme to Gardiners: the Sights and Sounds of the Jewish East End (1989)

An historical video on the sights and sounds of the Jewish East End extending from the area from the corner of Whitechapel High Street and Commercial Road (where Gardiners, the men's clothing store, once stood) to two miles east where the La Boheme cinema and ballrooms once stood on Burdett Road facing Grove Road. Photographs and newspaper headlines are used to re-evoke the Jewish presence in Stepney. Several buildings and locations are discussed as cultural markers including Cooper's School, the Bow District Synagogue, the People's Palace on the Mile End Road, the London Hospital, Beaumont Grove, Wickhams Department Store, the Paragon Theatre, Spiegelhalther Brothers jewellers, the Great Assembly Hall, the Trinity Alms Houses, the Pavilion Theatre, the Rivoli Theatre, Mazin & Co.'s bookstore, Old Montague Street, Black Lion Yard and the Whitechapel Library. These images are brought to life by the recollections of the area from Baron Moss, Ralph Rosefield, Lottie Green-Lubett (Vice-President of the Stepney Jewish (B'nai B'rith) clubs), Sonia Senat, Joyce Saffron, Edna Hale, Stella Lucas, Anne Benjamin, Derek Reid (the Yiddish folklorist), and Dr Bernard Perlow.
Credits: Director, Aumie Shapiro; writer, Aumie Shapiro; narrator, Aumie Shapiro; editor, Michael Shapiro; photography, Henry Jacobs; sound, Warren Recordings; music, Giora Feidman; sponsor, Doron Foundation for Education and Welfare.
Copyright: Springboard Education Trust, 1989.
Tower Hamlets Local History and Archives reference number: LC15071.

[@jasoncohen7443]

Absolutely brilliant 👍

[@terfteeps]

Lovely film, I worked at Queen Mary for 17 years and this brought back many memories of its better fays

[@malcolmdale9607]

My grandparents had a shop in Fieldgate Street. My mother was born there above the shop. Her grandfather was a "chosen" (cantor) in Fieldgate Street Shul.

[@stephenvincent4989]

My Booba & Zaida Silver were caterers at Weddings at the La Boheme in the years before the second World War. In later years she catered my brother’s and my Barmitzvah assisted by my late father the great Solly Vishnick.

[@Steven_Rowe]

My dad was a bell hanger for the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and during school holidays I also worked there, it was a great place the East end and I seem to remember opposite the foundry on the other side of Whitechapel Road was a street that i think mayhave been called Blacklion yard I had to go in the shops as i was the errand boy, often called to get lunches etc. I remember the jewish shops etc and the notion that all Jews are rich was a fallacy, these were EastEnd working class Jews. I lived in South Tottenham very closed to Stamford Hill and iconic Jewish area but rather more well heeled and very orthodox, you could buy salt beef sandwiches which were ro die for and of cause the local football team Tottenham were nicknamed the Yiddos, arch enemy of Arsenal known as the gooners.

[@johnwalton2019]

If this was filmed in the late 1980s then much of what was left of the old Jewish Eastend was pretty much coming to an end. Bloom's lasted until 1996. Like all generations, outward migration meant that most of the population had moved away by the time this film was made. Cycle of life....

[@topbanana4013]

La Boheme i been in there when it was a nightclub Benji's lol