Backstage Vancouver: A Century of Entertainment Legends

They are all legendary entertainers who made stops in Vancouver, BC, leaving flakes of stardust behind. A wonderful horde of showbiz lore has accumulated over the decades but has been jealously guarded by industry insiders. For example, Coquitlam’s Steelhead Lodge, a secluded fishing retreat, was frequented by the likes of Clark Gable and Kim Novak, whose surnames grace street signs in the neighbourhood to this day. Celebrated stage and screen star Sarah Bernhardt also came for the fishing, while African-American opera singer Marian Anderson loved attending hockey games. Comedians Jack Benny and Dick Martin met their future wives in Vancouver, and swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn met his maker. As Canada’s first rock ‘n’ roll DJ, Red Robinson was a spirited and essential fixture of Vancouver’s golden age of entertainment, meeting and befriending an all-star lineup of the twentieth century’s top performers, and amassing a brilliant collection of photographs along the way. Backstage Vancouver collects these rarely seen photographs for the first time, and presents them in a breathtaking pictorial hardcover.