Mabel Hall
By GORDON IRVING for The Scotsman

ONE of the last links with the once flourishing world of music-hall and variety in Scotland has been broken with the death in Greenock of Mabel Hall, formerly one part of a song-and-dance double-act known as the Jackson Sisters, who were popular with Scottish theatregoers, from the Thirties to the Fifties. She was 92.

The two performers were not related. Ada Mabel Louden came from Govan, the daughter of an iron-driller in the shipyards. Her stage partner was Betty Jackson, an equally talented song-and-dance exponent.

"Sister" acts, modelled on the style of performers in Hollywood musicals, were numerous in the live theatres of the era, and the Jackson Sisters stood out, featuring regularly in summer and winter productions in variety theatres such as the Metropole in Glasgow’s Stockwell Street, the Empress at St George’s Cross, the downtown Pavilion, and, in particular, at the long-gone Queen’s Theatre in the city’s Trongate.

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