Walter Gibbons (theatre owner)

Sir Walter Gibbons, KBE (14 May 1871 – 22 October 1933) was an English theatre proprietor who owned a number of music halls at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Along with Oswald Stoll, he led the employers' side in the Music Hall Strike of 1907, which was settled broadly in favour of the artists, musicians and stage hands who were demanding better wages and conditions.

After moving to London, he acquired an Urban Bioscope projector and, in 1898, launched the Anglo-American Bio-Tableaux, a variety film show that initially concentrated on news subjects.

[1] In 1900 he produced the Phono-Bio-Tableaux, a series of films synchronized to phonograph cylinders that presented famous music hall artists such as Vesta Tilley, Lil Hawthorne, Alec Hurley and G. H. Chirgwin.

[1] During the First World War, he was active in the Royal Army Service Corps as a Lieutenant-Colonel, and later organised food and emergency supplies during strikes affecting the railway system.