Chu Chin Chow is a musical comedy written, produced and directed by Oscar Asche, with music by Frederic Norton, based (with minor embellishments) on the story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. The piece premièred at His Majesty's Theatre in London on 3 August 1916 and ran for five years and a total of 2,238 performances (more than twice as many as any previous musical), an astonishing record that stood for nearly forty years until Salad Days. The show's first American production in New York, with additional lyrics by Arthur Anderson, played for 208 performances in 1917–1918. It subsequently had successful seasons elsewhere in America and Australia, including in 1920, 1921 and 1922.

A silent film of the musical was produced in 1925 using some of the music. Another film, with the score intact, was made by the Gainsborough Studios in 1934, with George Robey playing the part of Ali Baba, Fritz Kortner as Abu Hassan, Anna May Wong as Zahrat Al-Kulub and Laurence Hanray as Kasim. The show toured the British provinces for many years. It returned to London in 1940 for 80 performances, when it was interrupted by the London bombing but then returned in 1941 for another 158 nights. In 1953, an ice version was produced at London’s Empire Pool, Wembley, which also toured the provinces. Occasional productions are still mounted, including one in July 2008 by the Finborough Theatre in London, England.

Charles Courtice Pounds (30 May 1862 – 21 December 1927), better known by the stage name Courtice Pounds, was an English singer and actor known for his performances in the tenor roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his later roles in Shakespeare plays and Edwardian musical comedies.

As a young member of D'Oyly Carte, Pounds played tenor leads in New York and on tour in Britain and continental Europe. After being promoted to principal tenor at the Savoy Theatre, he created the principal tenor roles in The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, The Nautch Girl and Haddon Hall. After leaving the D'Oyly Carte company, Pounds was a prominent performer during the transition of light musical theatre from comic opera to musical comedy, creating roles in the West End in both genres between the 1890s and the 1920s. The new musical comedies in which he starred included the hits Chu Chin Chow and Lilac Time.

Pounds was born in Pimlico, London, the son of Charles Pounds, a builder, and his wife Mary Curtice, a well-known singer. He was educated at St. Mark's College, Chelsea. Pounds was a choirboy at St. Saviour's Church, Pimlico, and also sang at St. Stephen's Church, Kensington, and the Italian Church, Hatton Garden. When his voice broke, he went to work for his father, but continued to study music. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music and returned to St. Stephen's as tenor soloist. He also sang in variety at the Royal Aquarium theatre.

Walter Malcom Neil McEachern (1 April 1883 – 17 January 1945) was a noted Australian bass singer who enjoyed a successful career in the United Kingdom, both as a concert soloist and as one half of the comic musical duo Flotsam and Jetsam.

He was born in Albury, New South Wales, the sixth of 13 children of Archibald Hector McEachern and his wife, Rebecca Mary.

On 2 February 1916, McEachern married pianist Hazel Hogarth Doyle, who later became his accompanist and provided the musical direction for his career.

During World War I, McEachern went on a tour of Australia with the great Australian soprano Nellie Melba. Also in the touring company were Ella Caspers, Ada Crossley and Marie Narelle.

In 1921 McEachern went to England with his wife, where he was hailed as one of the world's best bass vocalists. He was especially acclaimed as an oratorio singer although his voice was equally well suited to the demands of opera; but unlike his finest contemporary rival among English-language basses, Norman Allin, he elected not to pursue a career in that particular art form. McEachern did appear, however, in an array of staged Gilbert and Sullivan Savoy operettas under the batons of the famous conductors Sir Henry Wood and Sir John Barbirolli.

Anna Sui (born August 4, 1964) is an American fashion designer. Her luxury brand retails globally in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Her clothing, fragrance, cosmetic, eye-wear and accessories lines sell at Anna Sui stores in over 50 countries and are also widely distributed at leading department stores worldwide. Sui is known for her timeless designs and ability to transcend eras with historical and culturally inspired collections.

Sui was born on August 4, 1964 in Detroit, Michigan. She took an interest in fashion at a very young age and began clipping fashion-magazine pages to fill her famous Genius Files. These have served as an inspiration for her line throughout her career. After moving to New York, she attended The New School's famous art and design college, Parsons The New School for Design.

After leaving Parsons, she worked for a variety of junior sportswear companies. During this time she began designing clothing out of her apartment. With the encouragement of friends Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista, Sui launched her first runway show in 1991. "That those professional beauties were then at the height of their fame helped stoke the reception Sui got from buyers and the news media," and helped launch the timeless and unique style that Sui's has developed over the past two decades.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer. He published works on philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction. Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox".Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out." For example, Chesterton wrote "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it."

Chesterton is well known for his reasoned apologetics and even some of those who disagree with him have recognized the universal appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both progressivism and conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify such a position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton's "friendly enemy" according to Time, said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius". Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Cardinal Newman, and John Ruskin.