Maud Chetwynd

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

Christmas1910 at the Palace Theatre saw the return of Hugh J. Ward’s company, bringing with them a new comedy, The Girl from Rector’s, which opened on Christmas Eve, 24 December. With this season, Ward was also announcing his ‘farewell to the footlights’, having accepted an offer from J.C. Williamson Ltd. to become a principal with The Firm.

Described in the bills as ‘A riotous piece of extravagance’, ‘A laughing paralysis in four fits’ and ‘A spicy banquet of merriment’, the new piece was a comedy in four acts by Paul M. Potter (best known for turning George Du Maurier’s 1896 novel Trilby into a play). Ward’s company had presented the first Australian production of The Girl from Rector’s at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne the previous June, and on tour, where it was a huge success. Derived from the French farce, Loute, by Pierre Veber, the play focusses on the adulterous goings-on of several couples.¹ When it was first produced in Trenton, New Jersey (29 January 1909) by A.H. Woods, it attracted the ire of the local clergy and was withdrawn after just one out-of-town ‘try-out’. As a result, it received a great reception when it moved to Broadway, opening at Weber’s Music Hall on 1 February 1909, and playing for 184 performances.²

Scene restaurant scene in the last act from The Girl from Rector’s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.

In advertisements, Ward reproduced a rather tongue-in-cheek ‘Author’s Note’, which read:

The Girl from Rector’s is a full version of Pierre Veber’s famous comedy ‘Loute’, which has had a triumphant career in Europe. Based on the strange theory that married men often lead double lives, and that the saint of the rural home may be the Lothario of its city, Mr Potter hesitated to introduce this comedy to a community where he believed, in his innocence, that married men of double lives were practically unknown, but as many recent lawsuits have tended to prove the contrary, the management has decided to produce the play, in the hopes that it will serve as a warning to husbands, and strengthen the hands of matrons and maids who are battling for the purity of the home.³

From The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 31 January 1911, p.9Like many farces, its plot is complicated. Nevertheless, the central character, has just been dumped by her lover Richard O’Shaughnessy, a New York playboy. She goes by the name of Loute Sedaine, but she is actually the wife of a small-town judge. Richard is on the hunt for a new girlfriend and falls for a pretty heiress, Marcia Singleton, who is also the object of Professor Maboon’s affections. Richard tells Colonel Tandy of his plans, little knowing that Tandy is really Marcia’s father, believed by his wife and daughter to be Martinique. In the end identities are revealed and the various couples pair off, with Loute returning to her husband and Richard marrying Marcia. The final big scene involves a dinner in a suburban restaurant between Loute and Richard, whereby the staff are all Marcia’s friends and family in disguise.

The play’s title, which references a stylish New York restaurant, has little to do with the plot, but rather reflects the current fashion for plays and musicals with titles beginning The Girl from … .⁴

In America, the central characters were played by Violet Dale (Loute Sedaine), Van Rensselaer Wheeler (Richard O’Shaughnessy), Nena Blake (Marcia Singleton), William Burress (Colonel Tandy), Herbert Carr (Judge Caperton), Elita Proctor Otis (Mrs Witherspoon Copley) and Dallas Wellford (Professor Aubrey Maboon). In Sydney, the same roles were performed by Grace Palotta, Aubrey Mallalieu, Ruby Baxter, Reginald Wykeham, Robert Greig, Celia Ghiloni and Hugh J. Ward.

The farce was to have been followed by another comedy on 28 January 1911, but on account of it “drawing such crowded audiences”, Ward decided to keep it running for a fortnight longer.⁵

The Girl from Rector’s was finally withdrawn on 3 February 1911, and the following night Seven Days was produced for the first time in Australia. By way of a publicity stunt, prior to its opening, one of the ladies in the company, Clara Budgin, undertook to climb a scaffold and paste a huge poster on the side of a building in Pitt Street announcing the opening of the play. This stunt was undertaken in response to a claim in a newspaper article that there was “at least one business in which women could not excel”: namely bill posting!⁶

Though not as hilarious as The Girl from Rector’s, Avery Hopwood and Mary Robert Rinehart’s three-act comedy did very well on Broadway, playing for a year (some reviews exaggerating it to two!). Based on Rinehart’s 1908 novella When a Man Marries, it was her first play and only the second play of co-writer Hopwood. The two would enjoy further successes with Spanish Love and The Bat.

Scene from Seven Days. From the left: Grace Palotta, Reginald Wykeham. Maud Chetwynd, Aubrey Mallalieu, Celia Ghiloni, Hugh J. Ward, Ruby Baxter and Robert Greig, with H.H. Wallace (top). Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.

Seven Days opened on Broadway at the Astor Theatre on 10 November 1909, following a single ‘try-out’ performance at the Taylor Opera Houe in Trenton, New Jersey, on 1 November. Deftly combining comedy and crime, the play centres on a group of people who are forced to spend seven days together after a case of smallpox is detected among the servants. James Wilson has divorced, but has not told his rich Aunt Selina, so when she comes to visit, he gets Kit McNair to pretend to be his wife. Just before the household is thrown into quarantine, James’s former wife arrives, as does James’s friend Dallas Brown with wife Anne; Tom Harbison, an admirer of Kit’s (amazed to find her ‘married’); a red-headed police officer; and a burglar in hiding. The Broadway line-up included Herbert Corthell (James Wilson), Lucille La Verne (Aunt Selina), Georgie O’Ramsey (Kit McNair), Hope Latham (Bella Knowles), Allan Pollock (Dallas Brown), Florence Reed (Anne Brown), Carl Eckstrom (Tom Harbison), Jay Wilson (Office Flannigan) and William Eville (Tubby McGirk). Unlike The Girl from Rector’s, Seven Days also played a short season in London, when it was performed at the New Theatre for 16 performances from 15 March 1915, with Lennox Pawle, Lotte Venne, Athene Seyler and Auriol Lee.

Seven Days was performed for the final three weeks of Ward’s season at the Palace, with the key roles played by Hugh J. Ward (James Wilson), Celia Ghiloni (Aunt Selina), Grace Palotta (Kit McNair), Ruby Baxter (Bella Knowles), Aubrey Mallalieu (Dallas Brown), Maud Chetwynd (Anne Brown), Reginald Wyckham (Tom Harbison), Robert Greig (Office Flannigan) and H.H. Wallace (Tubby McGirk). Opening night was a memorable one for Ward. Not only was he entering his final weeks as an actor-manager, but just before the curtain went up, he received news that his house (‘Lafayette’, William Street, Double Bay) was on fire. Fortunately, the fire crew was able to contain the blaze to a bathroom, lavatory, and luggage room, but the timing was not great. This was on top of an already busy week for Ward, not only rehearsing a new play, but as the chief organiser and participant in a benefit for two surf lifesavers. The benefit, which was held at the Stadium (in Rushcutters Bay), took the form of a ‘boxing display’, including a match between Ward and Reginald ‘Snowy’ Baker (a professional pugilist and brother of one of the lifesavers). The event raised £800. (For the record, Ward won the bout when in the second round he delivered a knockout punch with his left to Snowy’s jaw. Snowy fell back and hit his head and was carried off unconscious. Shocked at the outcome, Ward vowed to hang up his gloves!)

From The Bulletin (Sydney), 2 March 1911, p.8 (left) and Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections (right)

On the last night of the season, Saturday, 25 February 1911, by way of his farewell to the stage, Ward performed his Scarecrow dance for the first time in Sydney. The dance was part of a larger sketch entitled The Scarecrow, which according to publicity had been devised by him some years earlier when he was appearing in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet. The character was subsequently introduced into the Drury Lane pantomime Humpty Dumpty in 1903–1904. A quote from the London Telegraph was included in newspaper ads:

A wonderful scarecrow of old clothes and bursting straw stuffing, impersonated with rare skill by Mr. Ward. His movement, so invertebrate and fifth of Novemberish, are like nothing we have ever seen. There is a pathetic grotesqueness about them quite fascinating.⁷

With the departure of Ward and his company, Spencer’s Theatrescope Company commenced a short season at the Palace (pending their relocation to the Lyceum Theatre) and over the following fortnight they presented a weekly change of ‘picture plays’ beginning with Rip Van Winkleon 27 February.

Saturday, 11 March 1911 saw the arrival of the Hamilton-Plimmer-Denniston company, fresh from a successful tour of New Zealand. The company, which was considered the heir to the old Brough-Boucicault company, included Mrs Robert Brough (nee Florence Trevelyn), the widow of Robert Brough who had died in 1906. After his death she had gone to the ‘old country’ for a time and had also (rather unexpectedly) remarried. The three directors of the new company had also performed with the Brough company at various times. When he was last at the Palace, Allan Hamilton had been associated with Max Maxwell, but with the dissolution of that partnership, he joined forces with Harry Plimmer and Reynolds Denniston. The combination that was now at the Palace had previously appeared in Sydney in September 1910 at the Theatre Royal.

Pre-publicity suggested that they would be opening their season with the first Australian production of Somerset Maugham’s comedy Smith. However, this was not the case. Instead, they revived A Message from Mars (Hamilton having acquired the sole Australian rights from Clarke and Meynell), with Plimmer as Horace Parker and Denniston as the Messenger. Lizette Parkes was Minnie Templar and Mrs Robert Brough was Aunt Martha. The play was mounted with all new scenery by Harry Whaite. As the season was strictly limited to five weeks, it was withdrawn on 17 March and replaced by The Passing of the Third Floor Back. Written by Jerome K. Jerome (based on his short story) and originally performed in England in 1909 with Johnston Forbes Robertson and Gertrude Elliott, it was subsequently staged in Australia by the Clarke and Meynell company in June/July 1910 with star London actors Matheson Lang and Hutin Britton. Sub-titled, ‘an idle fantasy’, it was the story of a mysterious stranger who takes a room in a London boarding-house, and one by one he helps its miserable and dissolute tenants to find their ‘better selves’. For the current revival, Harry Plimmer played The Stranger, with Lizette Parkes as the Slavey, Mrs Brough as the Landlady, and Reynolds Denniston as Major Tompkins.

Characters from A Message from Mars. From The Sun (Sydney), 13 March 1911, p.5.

On the 25 March 1911, the Hamilton-Plimmer-Denniston company presented their last play for the season, a revival of Lovers’ Lane, a rustic tale of a “country parson’s troubles with his flock and his sweethearts”, by Clyde Fitch. First performed in America in 1909 and by the current company in 1910, it saw Harry Plimmer reprise his role of the Rev. Thomas Singleton, with Reynolds Denniston as Herbert Woodbridge, Mrs Brough as Mrs Woodbridge, Valentine Sidney as Miss Mattie, and Lizette Parkes as Simplicity Johnson. During the second act, Myra Wall, sang ‘Ben Bolt’ (composed by Nelson Kneass in 1848 and memorably reprised in Trilby), and Lizette Parkes, together with a ‘band of merry youngsters’, sang ‘The Old Red School’ (by Irving B. Lee, with music by Hampton Durand).⁸

With the close of the season, the company headed north to Brisbane. In advance, Allan Hamilton secured a return season at the Palace in September.

Next, for two nights only, Saturday, 1 April and Monday, 3 April, the Sydney Stage Society presented Civil War, a comedy in four acts by Ashley Dukes. It saw the reappearance of G.S. Titheradge, who as Sir John Latimer ‘gave an able and polished exposition of the proud and obstinate old Baronet’.⁹ He was supported by Leonard Willey, Stephen Scarlett, Lily Titheradge and Ruby Ward. A.E. Greenaway directed.

From 4–7 April, the Palace hosted the Lyric Opera Company in a new and original Australian ‘Musical Military Frisk’ by P.C. Gray (libretto) and George Tott (music) called 19–20. It seems rehearsals had been held in September 1910 and these were the premiere performances. A notable element of the production were the ballets created by Ruby Hooper (a younger sister of J.C. Williamson ballet mistress, Minnie Hooper) which featured a young Madge Elliott as solo danseuse.¹⁰

George Marlow was back on 8 April with The Luck of Roaring Camp—the play that had been a huge hit the previous year. But it was not the play! It was the ‘moving picture’ version, directed by W.J. Lincoln, with Ethel Buckley reprising her role of Nell Curtis. The hero, Will Gordon, was now played by Robert Inman. The review in the Sydney Morning Herald (10 April 1911, p.4) noted:

The drama was played before the camera by George Marlow’s dramatic company … and the result, as shown, by the pictures, is a thrilling “story without words” … The play has been carefully selected for this method of portrayal, because it teems with exciting episodes and thrilling incidents in particular that could never be seen on any stage without the camera is the splendid exhibition of horsemanship shown by a team of rough-riders.

The film, which had been seen in Melbourne the previous March, was being screened in Sydney for the first time. It played for six nights only as part of a longer program of films.¹¹

Good Friday, 14 April saw a Grand Sacred Concert, which featured The Royal Hawaiians.

The next evening West’s Pictures returned. Over the following months they screened films in two venues, the Palace and the Glaciarium, though in June, the pictures moved from the open air Glaciarium to the newly-opened Princess Theatre in George Street, opposite Central Station, and from 4 August, they used just the Princess, and the Palace returned to live entertainment.

Sheet music cover for ‘Why Does My Heart Beat So?’, sung in the pantomime The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, by Dorothea Liddle.

National Library of Australia, Canberra.

Roy Redgrave. Photo by Johnstone, O'Shannessy & Falk.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne.

On 5 August 1911, William Anderson took over the lease of the Palace, opening with the first Sydney appearance of Tom Liddiard’s Lilliputians. This ‘Great company of Little Artists’ had been formed in 1907 and since that time had been touring throughout India and the East. Since returning to Australia in April 1910, the company undertook several regional tours and had joined forces with William Anderson’s management to present the pantomime The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. The show received its first Australian outing at Christmas 1910 at the King’s Theatre in Melbourne. Prior to their arrival in Sydney, the pantomime had been seen in Adelaide, Broken Hill, Ballarat and Bendigo.

Reviews were quick to point out that it was a risky move presenting pantomime outside of the festive season, but nevertheless, Anderson seemed to know what he was doing. The Lilliputians proved a big drawcard. The pantomime by F. Major drew on a whole bevy of characters from nursery rhymes and fairy tales, headed by Jack Dauntless played by Lily Clarke, whose ‘graceful and effective’ singing and dancing proved a drawcard. Her song ‘Hello, Little Girl’ was particularly effective. Another song, ‘Why Does My Heart Beat So?’ was introduced by another youngster, Dorothea Liddle, in the role of Jill.¹²

From 26 August, with the arrival of William Anderson’s Dramatic Company, the pantomime played selected matinees only, touring to nearby theatres at other times. The Anderson Co. had been performing at the Criterion Theatre since 12 August, but was forced to vacate the theatre to make way for British actress Ethel Irving, who was opening her Sydney debut season on 26 August.

The new show was The Man from Outback, a melodrama in four acts by Albert Edmunds (the pen name of Bert Bailey and Edmund Duggan). An Australian-themed melodrama set on a cattle station—involving the capture of cattle rustlers by the owner’s feisty daughter with the help of a mysterious stranger—the play, which capitalised on the success of The Squatter’s Daughter, had first been produced in 1909 at the King’s Theatre in Melbourne, and had recently been revived at the King’s in July/August 1911. This was its first Sydney representation. The title character, Dave Goulburn, was played by Roy Redgrave (he created the role in 1909), supported by Olive Wilton as Mona Maitland, with Bert Bailey in the comic role of Joe Lachlan, and Edmund Duggan and Rutland Beckett as the chief villains. The play was well received, with the Sydney Morning Herald (7 August 1911, p.6) noting:

From the opening scene to the final curtain it gripped the audience, and clearly, ‘The Man from Outback’ has come for a prolonged stay. Its joint authors, Mr Bert Bailey and Mr Edmund Duggan, in this second effort have improved upon ‘The Squatter’s Daughter’. The plot is good, its unfolding moves briskly forward, the dialogue is to the point, and the whole environment is that of the Australian bush.

Of the cast, Roy Redgrave is probably one of the more interesting actors. He had been in Australia on and off since 1904 and prior to joining William Anderson’s company in 1909, he had returned to England, where he met and married his second wife, the actress Daisy (Margaret) Scudamore. In mid-1909, six months after the birth of their son Michael, the family travelled to Australia, under contact to William Anderson’s company, opening in Melbourne in August 1909 in The Bushwoman. Daisy played the heroine, Kate, with Roy as her lover Jack Dunstan. Off stage relations between Daisy and Roy were fractious, and when Daisy’s contract with Anderson expired in August 1910, she returned to London with her son. Michael Redgrave would go on to achieve accolades as an actor on both stage and screen (receiving a knighthood in 1959), with Roy becoming the patriarch of an acting family that spawned three generations.¹³

On 3 September, The Man from Outback gave way to The Christian. This was a revised version of a play by Hall Caine, based partly on his 1896 novel of the same name. It told the story of a young Manx woman, Glory Quayle, who, against the advice of John Storm, a crusading Anglican priest, leaves the Isle of Man to become a successful music hall artiste. Storm goes after her and in a rage is determined to kill her if she won’t repent her life of sin, and recognising that they love one another, Glory agrees to become his wife and help him with his work among the poor.

The play had originally been staged in 1897, when a copyright performance was given at the Grand Theatre in Douglas on the Isle of Man on 7 August, with the actors drawn from Caine’s own family (with Caine as John Storm).¹⁴ The first professional production was given in America the following year with Viola Allen as Glory Quayle and Edward J. Morgan as Storm. Evelyn Millard created the role of Glory in England in 1899, with Herbert Waring as the preacher. In Australia, a new adaptation of the novel was made by Wilson Barrett and Bernard Espinaise, and first staged in 1900 with Edith Crane and Tyrone Power in the lead roles. This version was subsequently revived in 1903–1904 (with Cuyler Hastings and May Chevalier) and 1906–1907 (with Charles Waldron and Ola Humphrey). In 1907, Hall Caine devised a new version of the play, given its first performance at the Lyceum Theatre in London, with Alice Crawford and Matheson Lang as the principals. It was this play that was staged in Australia in 1911.

The play saw the return of Eugenie Duggan (wife of William Anderson), who played the role of Glory Quayle, with Roy Redgrave as John Storm, a role he was said to have played ‘over 200 nights in England’. The run was limited to a fortnight pending the arrival of the Plimmer–Denniston company. It seems the success of The Christian lead to the making of a film version featuring the same cast. It was directed by Franklyn Barrett. Sadly, the film is considered lost.¹⁵

Scene from Nobody’s Daughter: Mrs Brough and Harry Plimmer as Mr and Mrs Frampton, with Reynolds Denniston and Valentine Sidney as Colonel and Mrs Torrens. In Sydney, Beatrice Day played the role of Mrs Torrens. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.

Saturday, 16 September 1911, saw the return of the Plimmer–Denniston company, under the direction of Allan Hamilton, with the first Sydney production of Nobody’s Daughter. Heralded as “The Best English Play of the Year”, the four-act drama by George Paston (the nom-de-theatre of Miss E.M. Symonds), had already been performed with noted success in Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and throughout New Zealand.

The story concerns a young girl (Honora May) who, born out of wedlock, is bought up by foster parents in the country. On her nineteenth birthday, her real parents, Colonel Torrens and Mrs Frampton, come to visit, and Mrs Frampton is persuaded to adopt Honoria as her ‘ward’. The Framptons and the Torrens are good friends and Mrs Torrens and Mr Frampton both become suspicious as to the young girl’s real parents. Honoria has a suitor from the country and on learning the truth fears that her sweetheart will reject her. However, he is made of stronger stuff, and the two young people elope. Likewise, after much discussion and tears, Mrs Torrens and then Mr Frampton forgive their spouses for the folly of their youth.

The play had first been introduced tPoster for Allan Hamilton’s Australasian tour of Beauty and the Barge. The images used on the poster come from the original 1904 London production. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.o the London stage in September 1910, playing at Wyndham’s Theatre for 185 performances. The key roles were played by Gerald du Maurier and Lilian Braithwaite as Mr and Mrs Frampton, Sydney Valentine and Henrietta Watson as Colonel and Mrs Torrens, and Rosalie Toller as Honora May. In Sydney these same roles were taken by Harry Plimmer and Mrs Brough, Reynolds Denniston and Beatrice Day, with Lizette Parkes as the title character. When the Plimmer–Denniston company first performed the play, Valentine Sidney had taken the role of Mrs Torrens.

The drama enjoyed a highly successful season in Sydney, playing until Wednesday, 1 November.

The final two nights of the season, 2 and 3 November, saw a revival of A.W. Pinero’s drama The Second Mrs Tanqueray, with Florence Brough as Paula, so her legions of fans were given an opportunity to see her in her most famous role. She had created the part in the first Australian production in 1894 when it was staged under the auspices of the Brough-Boucicault Comedy Company. Supporting roles in the current production were played by Harry Plimmer (Aubrey Tanqueray), Reynolds Denniston (Captain Ardale), Lizette Parkes (Ellean) and Beatrice Day (Mrs Cortelyon).

When Plimmer and Denniston and the Nobody’s Daughter company departed for Queensland, Allan Hamilton stayed on, introducing a new dramatic combination. This new company comprised many old favourites including Beatrice Holloway (making her reappearance in Sydney after her illness), Charles Brown, Robert Greig, and Katie Towers, along with two newcomers, Kenneth Brampton and Lilian Lloyd. The former would go on to have a long career in Australia.

The season commenced, on Saturday, 4 November 1911, with a revival of Beauty and the Barge. This piece, a comedy by W.W. Jacobs and Louis N. Parker, was another play from the repertoire of the Brough-Boucicault Comedy Company, having first been performed by them in Australia in 1905. The heartfelt story of a young woman who seeks the assistance of an old bargee in her quest to run away from her domineering father and an arranged marriage, the play had originally been seen in London in 1904 with Jessie Bateman as Ethel Smedley and Cyril Maude as Captain Barley. In Australia, the roles were created by Winifred Fraser and Robert Brough. For the current production, Beatrice Holloway played Ethel Smedley with Charles Brown as Captain Barley. Advertisements also announced that ‘The ORIGINAL BARGE, specially built at the Haymarket Theatre, London, for the late Mr Robert Brough, will be used in this production’. However, resident scenic artist, Harry Whaite, provided entirely new scenery.

A fortnight later a change of bill saw the reprisal of Why Men Love Women open on 18 November. It was last seen at the Palace in October 1910 when it was performed by the Hamilton–Maxwell company. Katie Towers and Muriel Dale revived their original roles of Matilda Figgins and Baby, while the leads were now played by Kenneth Brampton (Gerald Fielding), Beatrice Holloway (Violet Livingston), with Lilian Lloyd as Muriel Zoluski. With the final performance on 1 December, the Allan Hamilton season came to an end.

With Christmas fast approaching, something of a magical nature was in store for patrons of the Palace.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. This play also formed the basis of the musical See You Later by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, with music by Jean Schwartz and William F. Peters, produced at the Academy of Music, Baltimore, April 1918

2. Fisher & Hardison, p.273

3. The Age (Melbourne), 30 April 1910, p.16

4. Titles included: The Girl from Paris (1896), … from Maxim’s (1899), … from Kay’s (1902), … from Up There (1902); and there would be more over the years: … from Brazil, … from Home, … from Montmartre, … from Utah.

5. The Sun (Sydney), 20 January 1900, p.3

6. The Sun (Sydney), 28 January 1911, p. 10

7. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 25 February 1911, p.2

8. The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 March 1911, p.2 (ad) and 27 March 1911, p. 4 (review)

9. The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 1911, p.5

10. The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 April 1911, p.12

11. For more information see Pike & Cooper, p.21

12. For more information, see Tom Liddiard/Liddiard’s Lilliputians, Australian Variety Theatre Archive (ozvta), 2018

13. Both Ancestry and Wikipedia erroneously state that Roy Redgrave deserted his wife, Daisy Scudamore, in England in 1909.

14. Allen, p.256

15. For more information see Pike & Cooper, pp.39–40

References

Vivien Allen, Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian romancer, Sheffield Academic Press, 1997

James Fisher & Felicia Hardison Londré, Historical Dictionary of American Theatre: Modernism, 2nd edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017

Thomas Hischak, Broadway Plays and Musicals: Descriptions and essential facts of more than 14,000 shows through 2007, McFarland & Co. Inc., 2009

Eric Irvin, Australian melodrama: Eighty years of popular theatre, Hale & Iremonger, 1981

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

Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper, Australian Film, 1900–1977, Oxford University Press in association with The Australian Film Institute, 1980

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

J.P. Wearing, The London Stage, 1910–1919: A calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, 2nd edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

Newspapers

TheAge (Melbourne), The Bulletin (Sydney), The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), The Sun (Sydney), The Sydney Morning Herald

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

Pictures

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections

National Library of Australia, Canberra

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

With thanks to

Rob Morrison