George Marlow

Frank Neil: A publicity portrait from the late 1920s. Author’s collection.Part 1: ‘I had the showman’s spirit born in me.’

In 1973 I read an article in The Australian Women’s Weekly profiling a retired scenic artist called Jim Hutchings. Jim was living in Sydney with his son and daughter-in-law. He had suffered a stroke two years before and was regaining his health and confidence by developing his talents as a painter of still lifes and landscapes. I rang and Jim graciously invited me to visit him.

He took a shine to me. Though the stroke impeded his speech, he allowed me to record his reminiscences. He had spent the most rewarding years of his life working as a scenic artist at the Sydney Tivoli. His memories were crystal clear, warm, ribald, rumbustious. We ran out of time and tape. A few days later I received in the mail some painstakingly written sheets of paper headed ‘Tivoli Days’. They were filled with more colourful reminiscences. I wrote to thank him. More followed. Then more. Jim kept up the supply, week after week, until he died in June 1974. For Jim Hutchings the Tivoli was Theatre—and Frank Neil was the Tivoli.

‘It was in 1928 at the Royal in Adelaide that I met Frank Neil,’ reminisced Jim. ‘I told him I remembered seeing him at the Majestic in Newtown in Sydney. I asked him if there was some scenery I could paint. He started me on the Monday morning, fixing up Charley’s Aunt. That’s how I got started. He came down to watch me paint. I was very nervous. I was painting a hedge with roses on it. “That’s the stuff I want, pink roses. And colourful roses around the college door.” I realised Frank had a weakness for roses and for bright emerald greens. I couldn’t do a thing wrong! We were friends for life. He said, “If you come to Sydney, I’ve got some shows coming up, and I’ll give you an introduction to George Marlow at the Grand Opera House”. I painted Babes in the Wood and Mother Goose, then, I think, Getting Gertie’s Garter for Frank.

‘I remember the time he wanted an underwater scene for the ballet. We used to all stand out in the stalls in case he should see something that needed improving or changing. Frank dusted the cigarette ash off his lapels and said, “Bring in the sea legs. Bring on the shell.” Then, suddenly, he said to Teddy Bolt, the props man, “Where are those strings of baby pink roses?” Eddie McDonald said, “Christ, Frank, you can’t have roses under the sea.” “Why can’t you? Have you ever been under the sea?” said Frank. “There’s everything down there! Get the pink roses, Teddy!” So roses we had, under the sea, at the Tivoli!

‘Frank was a force. Eyes on everything. He lived show business, slept show business, loved show business, was show business. No-one but Frank could have got the Tivolis back on the map. It was Frank who organised the best people he could get and inspired their love and loyalty. We worked ourselves to the bone for him. There were rumours that he was a bit homosexual. There was never any proof, but I never saw him with any females or heard of anyone who did. As one stagehand said to me, “After all, it’s his own arse. He can do what he likes with it”.’

Corindhap, Victoria, around 1900

State Library of Victoria

The 7000-seat Alfred Hall, Ballarat, 1862

City of Ballarat collection

Frank Neil’s birth certificate confirms that he was born in the Victorian town of Corindhap on 21 December 1886—not in 1890 as several sources state. Today Corindhap is a quiet, scattered hamlet on the highway between Ballarat and Colac that has obviously seen better days. Around 100 people still call it home, but in the 1850s it had a population of 5000. Back then it was a bustling gold mining town called Break o’ Day, after a nearby reef. When the gold petered out, the community turned to agriculture. By the 1880s Corindhap was a busy, if not particularly prosperous, country village with about 340 residents—an extremely unlikely starting point for a man who made a career presenting bright, frothy entertainment and who worked with some of the greatest names in world variety.  

Frank Neil’s father, John Isaac Neil, was a Geelong-born miner; his mother, the former Sarah Scott Thompson, had emigrated from Liverpool. Frank was the last of the Neils’ seven children.

In 1890 Frank was enrolled at the local State School. There he met a bright boy, Percy Laidler, two years his senior, who, too, had an interesting future ahead of him: he would become a prominent socialist propagandist, and find himself, depicted as ‘Percy Lambert’ in Frank Hardy’s explosive book Power Without Glory. Percy managed Will Andrade’s bookshop in Bourke Street, a few doors east of the Melbourne Tivoli Theatre. The shop specialised in magic paraphernalia, plays props and theatrical makeup, and in leftist literature.

Frank was an average student, but he was in his element when, occasionally, the family made the four-hour Cobb and Co coach trip to Ballarat where they’d see a show at Her Majesty’s Theatre in View Street or take in a circus or perhaps a concert at the 7000-seat wooden Alfred Hall or in the more intimate Mechanics’ Institute Hall. He revelled in the colour, the excitement, the music and the exotic costumes. Family members recalled his early love of ‘dress ups’ and Frank himself admitted, ‘I had the showman’s spirit born in me.’

Frank claimed to have toured South Africa ‘as a boy’ with a juvenile comic opera company, though there is no documentation of this. We do know that he was still in his teens when the family moved to Melbourne, where he luxuriated in the city’s theatrical riches. At the turn of the century, half a million people lived in Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs. They patronised the city’s five great theatres, the Royal, the New Opera House (later the Tivoli) and the Bijou in Bourke Street, the Princess in Spring Street and Her Majesty’s (formerly the Alexandra) in Exhibition Street. There were dozens of smaller theatres and halls scattered throughout the city and suburbs, as well as a waxworks, two imposing cyclorama buildings, one in Carlton and the other in Little Collins Street, and even a permanent circus building in St Kilda Road. The first moving pictures had been screened at the Opera House in 1896, but it would be some years before movies would compete with live theatre for audiences.

Personable, fresh-faced and bright, young Frank Neil haunted the city’s theatres, picking up occasional backstage jobs or working as an ‘extra’ in crowd scenes. He was also an aspiring actor, ready to play anything from young hero to comic servant or wicked villain. And he could sing and dance.

In those far off days entertainment was certainly not confined to the cities. Country folk were treated to drama, musical comedy, variety entertainment and even opera, presented by hard-working touring companies often headed by city stars. Mostly they travelled by coach, sometimes by rail. They played in any available venue, though larger provincial towns such as Ballarat, Bendigo and Newcastle had fine playhouses. Some shows carried their own ‘canvas theatres’. It was with one of these adventurous itinerant enterprises that Frank Neil got his real start in show business.

Edward Irham Cole, Australia’s Buffalo Bill

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Poster for the Lilian Meyers Company’s season at the Theatre Royal, Hobart, 1908

In December 1906 travelling showman Edward Irham (‘E.I.’) Cole brought his Bohemian Dramatic Company to Melbourne. He set up shop in the Hippodrome, a rough and ready open-air venue on the south-east corner of Exhibition and Lonsdale streets, where the Comedy Theatre now stands. Apparently, Cole sensed that 20-year-old Frank had potential, and he gave the eager young man a job. ‘I helped build our stage of solid earth,’ reminisced Frank in a piece published in the Melbourne Herald in January 1930.

Not only was Cole a superb showman, he was also a shameless ‘quack’. One of his most successful creations was a pill that could miraculously cure liver complaints and almost anything else. The pills were made by Cole family members from a mixture of Epsom salts and cascara and sold in little cardboard boxes. Before and after each show, and in the interval, Cole would stand on a makeshift platform in front of the tent and regale the crowd with stories of the efficacy of his medication. As soon as someone indicated interest, it was Frank’s duty to conduct the transaction. This was known in the show world as ‘running the planks’. The pills, thankfully, were harmless.

Frank stayed with Cole when the company went on tour, travelling by ‘special train’ and performing in their huge canvas theatre.  He reminisced: ‘I was for three years with old “Bohemian Cole”, who let his hair trail down his back, wore a yard-wide sombrero, and imagined he was an actor. I was his property man and second juvenile [juvenile lead]. He made his actors work. We had to unload the tent from the train, put it up, and build a stage. Then we had to dress and make up, and parade the town. As second “juve” I was usually a more or less dashing cowboy. At night we played, and rode on and off on our fiery steeds. Our favourite drama was Buffalo Bill. I learnt a lot of showmanship from Cole. He was not a great actor, but he was a Barnum of a showman.’

Occasionally Frank took time off to work with other managements, such as Lilian Meyers’ Dramatic Company. Miss Meyers was a stunningly beautiful young Melbourne actress who had been stricken, wrote a reporter, ‘with the fever of bellow-drama’. Financed by her father, who was ‘not without riches’, she assembled her own company and ‘portrayed the terrible heroines with cheerful abandon.’ Her costumes—some from Paris—were said to be ‘almost too extravagant for the dingy little theatres she sometimes appeared in.’ Camillewas her favourite showpiece, and eminent Melbourne medico—and part-time drama critic—Dr James Edward Neild helped her perfect the consumptive cough that the star role called for.

We don’t know exactly when or under what circumstances Frank Neil joined her, but we do know that on 26 October 1907 he took to the stage of the Victoria Theatre in Newcastle in Miss Meyers’ production of a lurid melodrama called The Executioner’s Daughter. Two days later The Newcastle Herald reported that his part was ‘well enacted’. It was his first press notice.

It was after a performance of Camille at the Town Hall in Devonport, Tasmania, on 21 December 1907, that Miss Meyers and her cast and crew helped Frank celebrate his twenty-first birthday. Miss Meyers eventually went to the United States where she married a prosperous theatrical manager, Gerald Bacon, and retired from the stage. Not so Frank. Soon he was back on the road.

The Victoria Theatre, Newcastle

Newcastle Region Library Service

Actor-showman Terence Goodwin

Charters Towers Historical Picture Club

He joined a now forgotten stock company called Terence Goodwin’s Dramatic Players. Goodwin was actually William Thomas Goodwin Glancy, born in Melbourne in 1873. With his wife as his leading lady, he launched his peripatetic company in 1905. Years later he conducted a real estate business in Charters Towers, Queensland. He died there in 1938, aged 65.

Frank recalled: ‘I remember arriving at Pakenham one New Year’s Day as a member of Terence Goodwin’s company. We were a company of twenty metropolitan artists—on the daybills—but actually there were only seven of us. When we got off the goods train Terry had two shillings, and he was the only one of us who could jingle a penny. At the hotel the landlord looked us up and down and then shook his head. “No hope,” said he, “we’re full up.” So we went to the hall where we were to play, and the hall-keeper’s granite heart melted after a bit, and he let us camp inside. While Terry went out and bought two shillings’ worth of bread and butter, and some tea, one of our more adventurous spirits let his poverty but not his will consent and abducted a fowl from a nearby back yard. We had a poultry dinner that day and enjoyed it. There was enough “in” that night to get us on to the next town. A vagabond life, yes, but Terry was a good chap, and we were happy enough playing blood-and-thunder and dreaming dreams. Experiences of that sort are invaluable in the motley make-up of the theatrical manager.’

In March 1909 Neil was back with Bohemian Cole in Bendigo. They pitched their tent at Camp Hill, but eventually moved into the grand Royal Princess’s Theatre in View Street. Their first attraction there was the perennial favourite East Lynne. On 3 May The Bendigo Independent reported that, ‘The acting of Frank Neil as the wrongly accused and outcast Richard Hare appealed greatly to the audience.’ A few weeks later, when they presented Buffalo Bill at Echuca, The Riverine Herald told its readers that the acting was generally ‘splendid’, adding, ‘Mr. Frank Neil as Joe Blake, a bartender, is worthy of mention.’

Press advertisement for The Harry Craig Company’s season in Mildura, 1911

Trove

In 1911 Neil joined Harry Craig’s Australian Players who were on tour in South Australia. The company had been founded by Kate Howarde, a talented actress, entrepreneur and playwright. It included her sister, Billie, and Harry Craig, Billie’s husband. A fine baritone as well as a popular actor, Harry had cut his theatrical teeth in everything from opera to minstrel shows. When Kate ventured overseas, he carried on the enterprise as Harry Craig’s Australian Players, creating a congenial kindergarten for several aspiring performers—Frank Neil included. His first role with Craig was in a patriotic piece called In the Heart of Australia at the Port Pirie Institute Hall. It impressed The Port Pirie Recorder: ‘It sparkles in reproducing the atmosphere of the great Australian bush life, and it has a powerful and beautiful love story that goes straight to the heart, and it throbs with soul-stirring episodes. Special mention should be made of the acting of Mr. Frank Neil as Jack Gordon, a young bushman, and Miss Ethel Chadwick as Merry Dalton, the bush flower. Mr. Neil’s acting was good, but Miss Chadwick’s was exceptionally fine.’ Their second offering was the sensational prison reform drama It’s Never Too Late to Mend. A season in Port Augusta followed.

In December 1911 Frank was at His Majesty’s Theatre in Geelong, Victoria, for a season with the W.H. Ayr Dramatic Company. This appears to have been an offshoot of Cole’s Bohemians. Bill Ayr had acted for Cole, managed the company and had married Cole’s daughter. Their main attraction was a Wild West American crowd-pleaser called The Indians’ Revenge. The Geelong Advertiser made special mention of ‘the reappearance of the popular young actor Frank Neil, who will play Lieutenant Jack Forrest, who has been a captive of hostile Indians for three years and returns just in time to witness the marriage of his betrothed to another man.’

On 23 December Neil was the star attraction at the regular People’s Concert presented at the Geelong Mechanics’ Institute Hall by the Geelong Harbour Trust Band. Supported by Ethel Chadwick and Cyril Iredale, he appeared in ‘a specially written scena, My Daddy, combining comedy, pathos and sensation.’ He also delivered a series of ‘illustrated monologues’. The evening was topped off with a screening of ‘The Great Gaumont Vitascope presentation The Rose of Kentucky, a Romance of the Fields of Tobacco.’ Seventeen minutes long, it was one of D.W. Griffith’s earliest films. Now regarded as something of a classic of silent cinema, it has been meticulously restored and made available on YouTube.

In January 1912 Neil and Chadwick restaged My Daddy at the Temperance Hall in Melbourne. Located at 170 Russell Street, the Hall offered inexpensive Sunday night concerts as an alternative to the boozy, bawdy fare provided by pubs and music halls, and it gave valuable exposure and experience to hundreds of aspiring entertainers. It became the Savoy Theatre in 1934, but was eventually replaced by Total House, which included the Lido nightclub in a basement space which today houses a popular live music venue, 170 Russell.

Next Neil returned to Harry Craig who had considerably expanded his range of plays and was set to visit Echuca, Kerang, Mildura, Narracoorte, Mount Gambier, Hamilton, Camperdown, Geelong and Wyalong. An interesting addition to the repertoire was Brandon Thomas’s warmly familiar farce Charley’s Aunt, with Frank as Lord Fancourt Babberley, the drag role that would become his ‘calling card’, with its memorable line, ‘I’m Charley’s aunt, from Brazil—where the nuts come from.’ Neil debuted in the role on tour in Mildura on 19 March 1912. ‘Mr. Frank Neil was particularly successful,’ said The Mildura Cultivator, ‘and kept the audience in roars of laughter.’

Entrepreneur George Marlow, 1917

Elisabeth Kumm collection

Actress Maudie Chetwynd, 1904

Private collection

In 1911 London-born entrepreneur George Marlow (real name: Joseph Marks) had built the Adelphi Theatre in Sydney, at the Haymarket end of Castlereagh Street. It was the first theatre in Australia to use the cantilever system to support its circle and gallery, thus obviating obstructive columns, and it was huge: 2400 seats over its three levels. Marlow created it as a home for his busy melodrama players.

Neil made his Adelphi debut with Marlow’s company on 19 July 1913 in the tear-jerker No Mother to Guide Her. It was his first significant engagement in a major city theatre. Truth welcomed him as ‘A new comedian working on clean lines’. As he tackled small parts in juicy melodramas like The Girl Who Took the Wrong Turning, Married to the Wrong Man, East Lynne and Driving a Girl to Destruction, how could he have imagined that one day he would be running the place as the Tivoli, the focus of Australian variety entertainment?

Neil’s Adelphi season was not without its uncomfortable moments. First, a stage ‘hanging’ went awry, nearly choking him; then a ‘research visit’ to a Sydney opium den turned into a fiasco when the place was raided by the police. Neil narrowly avoided arrest.

In October 1913 actor-manager George Willoughby and two partners bought out Marlow’s holdings. They renamed the company George Willoughby Ltd, but Marlow continued to ‘pull strings’ behind the scenes. George Willoughby’s Dramatic Company debuted at the Princess in Melbourne on 11 October. It was essentially the same ensemble that had been playing in Sydney, with Neil now promoted to principal comedian and character actor. Their first Melbourne offering was The Queen of the White Slaves, a sprawling new American melodrama that roved from San Francisco to China, with a rescue at sea, torture, drug dens, Japanese acrobats and, of course, white slavery. ‘Mr. Frank Neil ably delineated the moods of an opium victim,’ reported Punch, while the theatrical weekly The Hawklet said he was ‘a clever young Australian who has made rapid strides. He is a favourite with audiences at the Princess Theatre.’

The company’s attraction for Christmas 1913 was a familiar favourite, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, optimistically promoted as being ‘as funny as a pantomime, as sensational as a melodrama, and as full of music and dancing as a vaudeville show.’ ‘There is little exaggeration in the claim,’ agreed The Age. Frank portrayed ‘Mr. Augustine St Clare, a Southern Planter’.

In February 1914 the company moved back to the Adelphi in Sydney, introducing The Pride of the Prairie, ‘a powerful and emotional drama of Mexican life’. Next came Brisbane, where they opened at His Majesty’s on 13 July. The season was soured by the announcement on 28 July of the outbreak of war. The ominous title of the piece then in production was Brought to Ruin.

In November 1914 the Willoughby company was back at the Adelphi in Sydney with The Kelly Gang. The Referee commented: ‘We read so much about terrorism in the war news nowadays that from that point of view the play of The Kelly Gang seems almost topical,’ adding that Frank played a comic trooper ‘with much over-exaggeration’. Unrest about the war had started to erode audiences, so Willoughby drastically reduced admission to what he euphemistically called ‘war prices’.

When the company returned to the Princess in Melbourne early in the New Year, Neil’s contribution to Camillewas particularly praised. In its review on 29 March 1915 The Argus purred, ‘Mr. Frank Neil, whose voice is remarkably sonorous, evinced considerable ability in his portrayal of the role of Gaston Rieux, and the cleverness of his work, particularly in the final scenes, indicates that he is well fitted for a more important part.’

Soon after this Frank was reported to be ‘contemplating a trip to the United States to join a well-known stock dramatic company.’ Indeed, many young Australian men—boxer Les Darcy included—were considering re-establishing themselves in the States, which at that point had not entered the war. Frank did not go, but it was later revealed that his application to join the Australian armed forces had been rejected.

In July 1915 The Hawklet announced that Frank was experimenting with vaudeville. He had formed a double act with petite Maudie Chetwynd, warmly remembered for her participation in the hit Williamson production of Florodorain 1900. Frank and Maudie developed some sketch ‘turns’ that they hoped might be suitable for the Tivoli or for Fullers’ theatres, but the expected bookings did not materialise. Instead, Frank teamed up with another member of the George Willoughby company, Herbert Linden, to establish a touring company to reproduce many of the melodramas that William Anderson had recently presented at the King’s Theatre in Melbourne. They debuted on 24 December 1915 with a seven-play seven-night season at the Geelong Mechanics’ Institute Hall. Their first offering was The Face at the Window. Inevitably there were comparisons with the big-city ‘originals’. When they presented The Face at the Window at the Town Hall in Queenscliff in January 1916, The Queenscliff Sentinel carped: ‘There was a good house, but the piece would have been better appreciated if aided with effective scenery, which the management had promised.’

Actor-showman A. Brandon-Cremer, 1900

Wikipedia

Actor Maurice Tuohy

Theatre Heritage Australia.

In April 1916 A. (Albert) Brandon-Cremer recruited Frank for his eighty-strong dramatic company for a season at the recently opened Tivoli Theatre in Grote Street, Adelaide. The two men had met in George Willoughby’s company at the Princess in Melbourne.

Irish-born, Brandon-Cremer was a theatrical all-rounder, a producer of vaudeville, drama, musicals and comedy, a manager of theatres and, eventually, cinemas, and as at home on stage as a melodrama villain as he was as a light comedian. His leading lady was, invariably, his wife, Kathleen Arnold; their daughters, Gertrude (later known as Barbara) and Molly (initially promoted as ‘Baby Cremer’) also had stage careers. Brandon-Cremer’s repertoire included Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Two Orphans, The Coward, The Great Diamond Robbery, The Three Musketeers and A Working Girl’s Wrongs. In the latter Neil played Bates, the servant of Warton, the villain. An impressed reviewer wrote, ‘He appeared in a clever disguise as an old hag, the character of which he fulfils to perfection.’

Also in Brandon-Cremer’s company was a handsome young actor called Maurice Tuohy. A policeman’s son, Maurice Caulfield Tuohy was born in 1892 in Willunga, South Australia, and educated, first, at the little school in nearby Clare, and later at the Christian Brothers’ School in Wakefield Street, Adelaide. Like Neil, he was determined to make a career for himself in the theatre. He was in his teens when he made his stage debut at the Clare Town Hall in August 1911 with ‘The Gay Goblins’, an all-male team of youthful amateur entertainers. The review in The Blythe Agriculturalist mentioned that ‘Mr. M.C. Tuohy, as an illusionist, mystified the audience with several well-carried-out illusions, and his performance elicited merited applause. As a character vocalist he was also fairly successful.’ Tuohy subsequently ‘paid his dues’ playing ‘the smalls’ in tiny touring companies, and ‘pushed his way from a raw, gawky, country youth to a leading actor and a fine advertisement for Young Australia.’ The Weekly Judge in Perth described him as being of splendid physique, and a good all-round athlete, to say nothing of his acting abilities,’ and the Perth Mirror labelled him ‘one of the finest looking men on the Australian stage.’ Tuohy and Neil found an instant rapport. They formed a personal and professional partnership that survived until Tuohy’s death in 1926.

Frank Neil and Maurice Tuohy were still with Brandon-Cremer when he successfully toured New Zealand in 1917. The following year Tuohy was recruited by the Fullers for their New Dramatic Company at the Princess in Melbourne, but Frank was not so lucky. He was reduced to accepting a booking as a ‘descriptive vocalist’ for a couple of weeks of vaudeville at the Theatre Royal in Broken Hill.

To be continued

With thepantomime season over, Edwin Geach’s Premiere Dramatic Organisation continued their season at the Palace on Saturday, 16 January 1909 with the drama The Broken Home by Lingford Carson, for the first time in Australia. Though advertisements called it ‘the very latest London and American success’, this seems to be something of an exaggeration. The only noteworthy performance of the play was at the Pavilion Theatre in London’s East End in 1902 where it played under the title The Drama of Life and with different character names.¹

With a somewhat conventional storyline, the plot sees the heroine, Myrtle Denton, tricked into believing that her former husband (a bad lot) is alive. As a result, she forsakes her husband and child. Though it all works out in the end, her son ends up in the hands of slavers and her second husband seeks solace in drink.

Over the past five months Edwin Geach had experienced a run of personal misfortune. In September 1908, his manager Adam Cowan died following a short illness, and in December 1908 his business partner J.F. Sheridan also died. Now it seems he had ‘lost’ his leading man. On opening night Jefferson Taite, who was to go on as the hero of the drama, was injured in a traffic accident. Although he was not badly hurt, he was not fit enough to perform. By chance, Geach met W.J. Montgomery in the street and persuaded him to go on in Taite’s place.

Mr. W.J. Montgomery had not seen it [the script] until half an hour before he came on the stage. And yet he managed to throw so much vigour into the parts that called for it—so much anger into the quarrels, so much fight into the struggles—that the piece hardly suffered. Once in the throes of some awkward passage, with his eyes on the book, he shook his wife’s hand politely when he left her for a minute. But the audience understood. It cheered him again and again during the piece; and called up the curtain for him and the heroine at the end. To read at sight a long part on a first night was a plucky thing to do; and it succeeded.²

Edwin Geach, manager of the Edwin Geach’s Premiere Dramatic Organisation

From Through the Opera Glasses, Sydney, 1909

W.J. Montgomery, who took over the lead role in The Broken Home at short notice

From Through the Opera Glasses, Sydney, 1909

Montgomery was on his way to Tasmania with Harry Robert’s company, so he was unable to remain in the role, and on the Monday night, the part of Harry Denton was assumed by Harry Diver ‘with much ability’. Other roles were played by Nellie Fergusson (Myrtle Denton), with Kenneth Hunter, Thomas Curren and J.P. O’Neill as the chief villains, and Helen Fergus as Mother Flanagan, the child-stealer. The Broken Home played to capacity audiences until the 29 January.

The final week of the season saw a revival, ‘by special request’, of A Modern Adventuress, for four nights, and East Lynne for the last two nights.

On Friday, 5 February, a Grand Complimentary Matinee was tendered to Harry Diver by Messrs Geach and Marlow, with principal artists from all the Sydney theatres participating. Harry Diver performed a ‘powerful dramatic sketch’ with his wife, Helen Burdette.

Saturday, 6 February saw a performance of Flotow’s opera Marthaby the Mosman Musical Society, under the baton of A.H. Norman.

The Sydney Muffs returned on 11 and 12 February with Romeo and Juliet. Romeo was played by Mr. Cam Marina. Juliet was performed by Sara Collins on the first night and Elsie Prince on the second night. The cast included the special engagement of Clara Stephenson (Mrs. Henry Bracy) as the Nurse. The Muffs would return, on Friday, 12 March, with As You Like It, with Elsie Prince as Rosalind. As You Like Itwas repeated on the Saturday matinee, and Romeo and Juliet was performed in the evening with Sara Collins again as Juliet.

Beatrice Holloway, leading lady with Meynell and Gunn’s company

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

John Gunn of Meynell and Gunn, who died suddenly on 20 October 1909, aged only 39

From Through the Opera Glasses, Sydney, 1909

Meanwhile, on Saturday, 13 February, Clyde Meynell and John Gunn took over the lease of the theatre. They opened their season with the first Sydney production of The Old Folks at Home by J.A. Campbell, first performed in England in 1907. Campbell was also the author of The Little Breadwinner, performed by the M&G company in Perth and Melbourne during 1908, but yet to reach Sydney.

The cast for The Old Folks at Homewas headed by Beatrice Holloway and Conway Wingfield. In a title suggestive of the 1851 Stephen Foster song, the play, a story of the ‘old South’, featured a special musical number performed by the children of the ‘Tin Can Band’ (originally featured in The Fatal Wedding), including Little Queenie Williams with a ‘coon melody’ and Maggie Dickinson with a ‘banjo song’. This play had first been performed by the Meynell and Gunn company during their New Zealand tour (September 1908) and had been given its Australian premiere in Hobart (November 1908).

The Old Folks at Home proved popular with Sydneysiders and held the stage until Tuesday, 9 March.

In the months that followed, Meynell and Gunn made final arrangements for what was publicised as ‘the most important theatrical event in the history of Australia’: the tour of Oscar Asche and Lily Brayton and their entire London company. Sadly, two and a half weeks into the opening season, on 20 October 1909, Oscar Asche announced from the stage of the Criterion Theatre, the cancellation of the performance due to the unexpected death of John Gunn. He was only 39 years of age. A nephew of the celebrated Dublin-based theatre manager Michael Gunn, he had first visited Australia with comedian J.L. Toole’s company in 1890. Returning to England, he worked for Richard D’Oyly Carte in London, and during 1894/95, managed the London and New York stagings of W.S. Gilbert’s His Excellency. Thereafter he worked as stage manager for George Edwardes, and in 1904 he returned to Australia as General Manager on behalf of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, with The Darling of the Gods and other plays starring Julius Knight and Maud Jeffries. In Australia, in 1905, he partnered with Clyde Meynell to produce The J.P. with J.J. Dallas and Florence Lloyd. The following year, they presented the highly successful drama The Fatal Wedding. Since March 1908, Sir Rupert Clarke and John Wren had joined Meynell and Gunn as joint directors.

The following week, on Wednesday, 17 March, for five nights only, Charles MacMahon and E.J. Carroll presented a short return season of their latest attraction, the film-version of For the Term of His Natural Life. This was the first of many motion pictures based on the Marcus Clarke novel. Filmed over four months in early 1908, it comprised a collection of highlights from the novel, beginning in England with the wrongful conviction of Rufus Dawe of murder, his transportation to Van Diemen’s Land, his escape, his reunion with his long-lost sweetheart, and their deaths when the boat they are in sinks during a storm. Following a private viewing at the Standard Theatre in Sydney on 18 June 1908, the film toured throughout the states, beginning at the Adelaide Town Hall on 4 July 1908 (under the direction of J. & N. Tait). It reached Sydney in August 1908 where it enjoyed an eight-week season at the Queen’s Hall. The bill at the Palace was augmented by the addition of other short films being screened for the first time.

1908 tour program. National Library of New Zealand.

On Wednesday, 24 March, Leo, Jan and Mischel Cherniavski commenced a short farewell season as part of their British Empire Tour, under the direction of Edward Branscombe. Described as the ‘Russian Wonder-Children’, the brothers played violin, piano and ‘cello respectively. They performed works from the classical repertoire, including Bach, Liszt, Grieg and Schubert, with a complete change of program each evening. In addition, the contralto Madame Marie Hooton and the baritone Mr. Percival Driver, also appeared.

The theatre remained dark for a few nights pending the appearance of The Dudley Dramatic Club on 1 and 2 April. The company performed a new four act comedy-drama, A Secret Weddingby Joseph L. Goodman, for the first time on any stage. Joseph Goodman was a manager for Spencer at the Sydney Lyceum and brother of George L. Goodman, business manager at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney. The piece was well received, notably Harry Whaite’s fourth act set which depicted the Thames at Maidenhead. Reviewing the play, the Sydney Morning Herald (2 April 1909, p.8) noted:

The new piece, though evidently the work of a clever man, suffers from a want of homogeneity, the first half of it taking the form of a drawing-room melodrama, and the second half of sentimental comedy. The latter portion was the better written, containing more than one pretty love-scene.

Included among the cast of players were two interesting names: Nellie Wilson and Harald Bowden. The first performed with Pollard Juvenile company as a youngster, and the second would become a senior director of J.C. Williamson Ltd.

Allan Hamilton, a popular theatre manager. Photo by Alice Mills, Melbourne.

From Stage Annual 1906

George Cross, leading man with Allan Hamilton’s company. Photo by Ruskin Studio, Melbourne.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

From Saturday, 3 April, Allan Hamilton took up the lease of the Palace launching his new dramatic company in a seven-week season. The leads included George Cross, G.P. Carey, Ada Guildford and Maud Chetwynd. George Cross and Ada Guildford, formerly with William Anderson’s company, were husband and wife. They married in 1905 following a sensational divorce, when Ada’s former husband, William Mount, sued her for ‘misconduct’ with Cross. Sensation on stage and off!

The company opened with the first Australian production of Queen of the Night. Described as a ‘Romantic Sensational Drama of Exceptional Power and Interest’ by F. Thorpe Tracy and Ivan Berlin, the play, first performed in England in 1897, told the story of a bigamous adventuress.

Ada Guildford as the Queen of the Night. Photo by Talma, Sydney & Melbourne.

From The Bulletin, 18 March 1909, p.9

Maud Chetwynd. Photo by Talma, Sydney & Melbourne.

From The Bulletin, 25 March 1909, p.9

The cast included Ada Guildford as Pauline, the adventuress; George Cross as Ralph Featherstone, a man of ‘sterling qualities’ who falls into the clutches of the ‘Queen of the Night’; and Wilton Power as the villainous first husband. During the second act, Maud Chetwynd sang a ‘couple of catchy songs’, including, for the first time in Australia, ‘Who’s for England’ composed by Frank Eugarde, with words by W.T. Goodge. The play featured elaborate scenery by Harry Whaite, and spectacular mechanical effects including a storm and a train at full speed.

Queen of the Nightwas performed until 23 April. It was replaced by a revival of In the Ranks. A stirring military drama by G.R. Sims and Henry Pettitt, first performed in the UK in 1883 (and in Australia in 1884), it was anticipated that it would ‘come out as almost a new work to the present generation of playgoers’. Presented by arrangement with George Rignold, who produced and starred in the first Australian production, the lead roles of Ned Drayton and Ruth Herrick were played by George Cross and Ada Guildford. Harry Whaite’s scenery was praised for its beauty, particularly his tableau of Dingley Wood by moonlight, and although the stage resources at the Palace ‘could not quite furnish one of the great productions which George Rignold used to provide in the palmy period of his rule at Her Majesty’s … the whole thing was surprisingly well done on the smaller stage’.³

In the Ranks was played until 11 May. A Message from Mars was revived for the final two nights, with George Cross as Horace Parker, Wilton Power as The Messenger from Mars, and Rosemary Rees as Minnie Templar.

Elsie Prince, a popular amateur actress with the Sydney Muffs, not to be confused with the 1920s English musical comedy actress

Selection of theatre ads from The Bulletin, 29 April 1909, p.27

On Saturday, 1 May 1909, at the matinee, a performance of Out on the Castlereagh was performed by J. Clarence Lee’s Australian Company. Written by Lee, this new play, ‘a story of Australian country life’ was well received, with the Sunday Times (2 May 1909, p.2) observing that ‘the varying types and scenes and incidents of the bush are well worked out, and were very creditably acted by the artists engaged’. The cast was made up of members of the Playgoers Dramatic Club, including Reginald Goode, Lilian Booth and Sidney Buckleton. An enthusiastic audience packed the theatre, and in response to demands, it was restaged at the Royal Standard Theatre for a further five performances from 31 May. It seems the Playgoers Club had been founded by Lee in 1908 and in an interesting aside, the secretary was Agnes Chambers, sister of the playwright Haddon Chambers, and she also conducted the orchestra. Lee would return on 18 September with his play The Marrying of Ma, which he also directed, first performed at the Palace back in 1906. The cast included Lilian Booth, Reginald Goode, and Elsie Prince of the Sydney Muffs.

From Saturday, 15 May 1909, West’s Pictures returned for the winter season, with new films screened every week.

George Marlow, said to be Australia’s youngest theatrical manager

Author’s collection

Generic postcard for Frederick Melville’s Married to the Wrong Man, featuring a scene from the UK production

After four months of films, melodrama returned to the stage of the Palace when George Marlow’s dramatic company commenced their season on 25 September 1909. They opened with the sensational Married to the Wrong Man by Frederick Melville.

Edwin Geach had recently sold his interests to Marlow, and as such the company now bore his name, making him, at 33 years of age, the youngest theatrical manager in Australia. He had re-launched the company in Adelaide during August/September 1909 when Married to the Wrong Manwas given its Australian premiere.

The company included many old favourites and some new faces. Nellie Fergusson and Kenneth Hunter played the lead roles of Ruth and Captain Gladwin, while J.P. O’Neill appeared as Jasper Skinner, with Hilliard Vox, making his first appearance in Sydney, as Captain Deering. The plot revolves around Ruth, the heroine, who, forced to marry a man she does not love, is eventually sold to another man, and finally accused of murder. The play ends with a dramatic trial scene at the Old Bailey.

Married to the Wrong Man played proved a crowd-pleaser and played until 29 October. Notching up five weeks, it set a record for any one piece of melodrama at the Palace, auguring well for Marlow’s venture into management.

East Lynne was revived for the final week of the season, from 30 October to 5 November.

Marlow’s company then left for a short tour to Mugee and Newcastle. During their absence, Edward Branscombe’s Scarlet Troubadours began a two-week farewell season prior to their return to England. The ‘merry costume entertainers’ opened on 6 November 1909 with ‘new music scenas, travesties, and humorous sketches’. Since they last appeared at the Palace, the line-up had been reinforced by the addition of Gertrude Parker (soubrette) and Claude Leplastrier (art humourist), while Maude Fane and Edgar Warwick were warmly welcome back.

The 20 November saw George Marlow’s company back in residence, having returned from a brief tour of country NSW, bringing with them another new melodrama, The Heart of a Hero by Lingford Carson. Advertised as the ‘Story of a Woman’s Sorrow and a Man’s Devotion’, this piece contained the usual ingredients of melodrama: abduction, murder, arrest of an innocent girl, the self-accusation of the hero, and a dramatic prison escape. Edwin Geach’s company had been performing it throughout New Zealand and Australia since May 1908, and this was the first Sydney production. The principal roles were performed by Kenneth Hunter (Jem Resdale), Nellie Fergusson (Nell Resdale), Hilliard Vox (Wilfred Marle), and Ethel Buckley (Susie Slack).

The Heart of a Hero was performed until 3 December.

This was followed on 4 December, for the first time in Australia, The Wedding Ring, a ‘great military and domestic play’ by Ben Landeck, presented in sixteen tableaux painted by scenic artist Ray Phillips (brother of vaudevillian Nat Phillips). With a story of love, conspiracy and revenge, The Wedding Ring proved popular, particularly the railway smash ‘in which the collision is vividly shown, with the wreckage and subsequent sufferings’.⁴ The cast included Nellie Fergusson as the heroine, Kenneth Hunter as the hero, and Hilliard Vox as the chief villain. To promote the show, Marlow distributed ‘ten thousand gilt wedding rings (packed in little boxes)’. As indicated by a notice in the daily papers, the gold ring sent to him as a memento of the original London production was mistakenly given away among the souvenirs. A £5 reward was offered. A reward was still being offered when the play reached Adelaide in February 1910, but the finder’s fee had been reduced to £2.

From The Daily Telegraph, 4 December 1909, p.2

The Wedding Ring played until 17 December. Married to the Wrong Man was revived, 18–21 December. And East Lynne saw out the season, being playing for two nights on 22 and 23 December.

Marlow’s first season as manager of a company was a huge success, with suggestions in the press that he would need ‘a specially armoured train’ to cart away all the gold he had made. And to ensure his continued success, Marlow had purchased new dramas from England, and ‘is building up a fine repertoire for his Sydney and Melbourne audiences’.⁵

Hugh J. Ward, funny man and manager, 1909

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Art Centre Melbourne

Grace Palotta, popular leading lady and postcard beauty

Courtesy of Bob Ferris

The year ended with the first appearance of Hugh J. Ward’s company (under the auspices of Allan Hamilton), bringing with them the much-anticipated comedy A Bachelor’s Honeymoon. The piece had its Australian premiere in Perth in May 1909, the troupe having toured India and China with much success. Thereafter, the play had been seen in Melbourne and New Zealand, prior to reaching Sydney at Christmas time. It had first been performed in New York in 1897 at Hoyt’s Theatre, with Max Figman, M.A. Kennedy, W.J. Ferguson, Isabel Waldron, Berenice Wheeler and Eleanora Allen as the key mirth makers.

At the Palace, A Bachelor’s Honeymoon opened at the matinee on 27 December to a packed holiday audience. The story involved the misadventures of much married widower, Benjamin Bachelor, who wishes not only to keep his former marriage from his new wife, an actress, Juno Joyce, but also keep his family, including his two grown-up daughters, ignorant of his betrothal. The company boasted a ‘brilliant’ line-up, with Hugh J. Ward as Benjamin Bachelor, Grace Palotta as his new wife, Celia Ghiloni as his sister, Ruby Baxter and Florence Redfern as his twin daughters, and Rose Musgrove as Marianne, the maid. Other characters were filled by Robert Greig, Arthur Eldred, H.H. Wallace and Reginald Wykeham. A Bachelor’s Honeymoon played until 11 February 1910.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. According to Allardyce Nicoll, The Drama of Life by Lingford Carson was given a copyright performance at the Colosseum, Oldham on 21 March 1901; it was first performed at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, Mexborough, 27 July 1901; and given its first London production at the Pavilion Theatre, 4 August 1902. It was later called Undamaged Goods. I have not been able to find reference to it being performed in the USA under any of these titles. Interestingly, when the Geach company performed the play in Adelaide in August 1909, it was under the title: The Drama of Life; or, The Broken Home.

2. Sydney Morning Herald, 18 January 1909, p.3

3. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April 1909, p.3

4. Sunday Times, 12 December 1909, p. 2

5. Sydney Sportsman, 15 December 1909, pp.2 & 3

References

T.D.M. de Warre, Through the Opera Glasses: Chats with Australian stage favourites, Sydney, [1909]

Allardyce Nicoll, English Drama 1900–1930: The beginnings of the modern period, Cambridge University Press, 1973

J.P. Wearing, The London Stage, 1900–1909: A calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, 2nd edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

Newspapers

The Bulletin (Sydney), The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), The Sunday Times, Sydney Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Sportsman

Trove, https://trove.nla.gov.au/

Pictures

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

National Library of Australia, Canberra

National Library of New Zealand, Wellington

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

With thanks to

John S. Clark, Judy Leech, Rob Morrison, Les Tod