
Sara Karloff visit
On Tuesday October 9th 2012 Sara Karloff came to visit the stage and hall where her father Boris Karloff first performed.
We were delighted to welcome Sara Karloff to visit the Hall and stage where her father first trod the boards, when aged ten in 1897, he played the Demon King in a production of Cinderella.
107 years later, she travelled to England from California, and with friends from Dusseldorf and Stephen Jacobs, biographer of Karloff, visited the Hall and the newly restored chancel. They also visited Enfield Grammar School and the house in Uplands Park Road where he had lived. Janet Reed, who was baptised at St Mary Magdalene’s 79 years ago this very day happened to be around, and on meeting Sara recalled how she remembered Jeremy, Boris’ nephew.
On seeing the newly restored chancel paintings, it was realised that Boris would have remembered them being painted, as he worshipped regularly in the Church during the period of the paintings’ creation, during the period of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.