Astor Club

The Astor Club was a nightclub which operated in Mayfair, London from the 1930s to the late 1970s. The haunt of royals and car dealers, gangsters and landed aristocrats, it was a fixture in London nightlife for nearly half a century. The most famous years of the club were the decades between 1950 and 1970. The Astor was one of the most prestigious of a number of nightclubs and "hostess clubs" which flourished particularly in the period between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the opening of the 1960s and 1970s discotheques. Such watering-holes had almost all disappeared by the 1980s, when discos and nightclubs merged into the nocturnal "clubs" of those years, a situation which led up to the present-day London "night-time economy".

The Astor, which was established in the 1930s and flourished even during the dangerous times London experienced during the Second World War (the so-called London Blitz of 1940-1941 and the V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks of 1944-1945), was owned by Bertie Green, a businessman and manager of show business performers.

Bertie Green has been described (by Michelle Monro, in the biography of her father, Matt Monro--Matt Monro: The Singer's Singer) as "[not] one of nature's gentlemen. He had a very bad reputation as a villain and used to sign artists up with the sole intention of doing nothing and then suing them...a greedy bastard, a no-good greedy bastard."

The Astor was one of the London nightclubs (a similar establishment was the Stork Room --or Club-- an attempt to copy the American Stork Club in Manhattan), which attracted wealthy revellers, members of the aristocracy, young Guards officers and even, occasionally, minor royals, as well as successful criminals (both "working" criminals and gangsters). Other clubs vied for the same clientele, or, in contrast, attracted very niche crowds. They included the Embassy Club, the Blue Angel,Annabel's (founded only in 1963, more select than the others, originally the haunt of the very wealthy and the aristocracy; still operating), the Gargoyle Club, the Bagatelle, the Continental, the Colony Room (not to be confused with the Colony Club), Churchill's (a hostess club which existed until about 1990, was later revived as New Churchill's and still operates), the Gaslight Club (still operating in different format), the Pink Elephant Club (gay), Danny la Rue's (drag) etc. There was also The Saddle Room, which (despite the horsey English upper-crust name, aristocratic and royal clientele and off-Park Lane address) was actually one of the first discotheques in London (the disco trend having begun in Paris and on the Cote d'Azur).

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