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Right - The Pit, at the rear of the stalls - M.L. Some went every night. You would always meet Louis Bauer there. He was a man who 'managed' artists, not an agent, he would inform you. He was a tall, imposing-looking man, with a slight foreign accent, who inevitably wore a tall hat, a morning coat, adorned with a large buttonhole, and who carried a malacca cane. It had to be several degrees below freezing with thick snow on the ground before he wore an overcoat, and when he did it was a very heavy ulster. He would go from the Palace to the Empire and back again. That was his evening. That was, for him, all that London contained. And he would drink champagne. If you were a particular friend of his, he would ask you to meet him at the Motor Club - at the corner of Whitcomb and Coventry Street - at eleven a.m. There he would regale you with a pint of the best champagne, and dry biscuits. An astute man of business, who made several stars, that was what life meant to him. He asked no more. His only preoccupation outside of that was a collection of model owls, of which he had hundreds. This probably arose because he was a member of the Eccentric Club. He was a great figure around his own little corner in Edwardian days, and the Palace and the Empire were his spiritual homes.
Right - The stalls bar, recently restored to its former glory in 2004. M.L.
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They stood along that passage at the back of
the stalls, either leaning against the golden rail at the back, or
the partition which terminated the seats. Here you could see all the
men about town, all the people who mattered in Edwardian bohemia.
Then
there was Frank Otter. Here was a man of some standing, who had married
into the Theatre. To see Frank far away from a bottle of Rum was to
see a wonder. His genial face was the colour of a ripe Victoria plum.
He had a curious voice, with slurring tones, but very characteristic.
Nothing disturbed him. A bottle of champagne, a pal or two, and the
worst of the blitz, even an atomic bomb, would not have made Frank
Otter turn a hair. For those things, especially in that little understairs
Palace bar, formed his world. 
