While allen doone and Edna Keeley were wooing the crowds in the evenings, Smith and Beaumont occupied the matinee slot. The attraction was Seven Little Australians, an adaptation by Beaumont Smith of the much-loved children’s book by Ethel Turner. Playing the adult role were Harry Sweeney, Sinna St Clair and T.E. Tilton, with Vera Spaull (Miss Bobbie), Cecil Haines (Suds), Lily Molloy (Pip), Jack Radford (Bunty), Fred Carlton (Dumps), Olga Agnew (Nell), and Esma Cannon (Baby) as the seven little Australians of the title. An interesting name included among the juveniles is Esma Cannon, an actress who would go on to have a successful career in British films playing support roles, generally village gossips.
The principal characters in Seven Little Australians: 1. At rehearsal, 2. Hector Macdonald as Bunty, 3. Olga Agnew as Pip, 4. Esme Cannon as Baby, 5. Cecil Haines as Suds, 6. Vera Spaull as Miss Bobbie, 7. Veta Cannon as Nell, 8. Fred Carlton as Dumps. These photos are from the company’s NZ tour and some of the roles changed.
From NZ Sporting & Dramatic Review, 22 April 1915, p.24 (Papers Past)
The play was well received, especially by the children in the audience, but reviewers were keen to point out that the plot was not a faithful rendering of the original book. Nevertheless, the acting was praised, especially that of Vera Spaull:
Miss Vera Spaull as Miss Bobbie, and a splendid Bobbie she makes. Although only a child, she has a stage naturalness that is delightful, and she carries off both the dramatic and the comic situations of the play with a finish that indicates a possibility of going far in her career as an actress.1
Indeed, Vera Spaull would go on to enjoy a successful career in Australia and the UK performing in plays and musicals (see Madame Pompadour). During 1911–1912, she had already attracted attention in The Fatal Wedding (as one of the children in the Tin Can Band), and as Tyltyl in Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird.
On 6 January 1915, a notice appeared in several of the dailies announcing the dissolution of the partnership between Beaumont Smith and Louis Meyer, “by mutual consent” with Smith taking “over the assets, agreements, and theatrical rights of said partnership for Australasian and New Zealand of the plays … and as from the first day of December instant the said Beaumont Smith will carry on in his own name the business of and pay the liabilities of the said partnership.” 2
According to reports, Meyer’s health had been poorly for some months, and he decided to resign from active management of the Garrick and Strand Theatres and settle in Brighton in the hope of regaining his strength.3 Sadly, his condition did not approve, and on 2 February 1915, he died, aged just 43. The cause of death was said to be heart disease.4
From The Bulletin (Sydney), 14 January 1915, p.8 & 1 October 1914, p.9
When the Allen Doone season concluded on 15 January, Smith took over the whole bill at the Palace. With Seven Little Australians playing at the matinee, he introduced a new comedy to the evening position, Who’s the Lady?, a farce by Jose G. Levy, adapted from the French of Maurice Hennequin and Pierre Veber. This play had enjoyed a seven-month season (175 performances) at the Garrick Theatre in London during 1913, with Jean Aylwin (Gobette), Farren Soutar (Cyprien) and Millie Hylton (Mme Tricointe) as the leads. With a reputation as “one of the most risky farces to be produced on the London stage”,5 it featured a scene, where in the course of a flirtation in the offices of the Minister of Justice, Gobette’s flimsy dress is torn and falls to the ground leaving her in just her petticoats. And when her dress is lost, she must borrow that of Madame Tricointe. In New York, under the title Madam President, it played for 128 performances at the Garrick Theatre, with Fannie Ward as Gobette, supported by Pattie Browne, George Giddens and John Dean. In 1916, it was made into a film, Madame La Presidente, starring Anna Held.
In Australia, the key roles were played by Ethel Dane (Gobette), H.J. Ford (Minister) and Sinna St Clair (Madame Tricointe). Advertised in some papers as “The Play that would make the Kaiser laugh”,6 Who’s the Lady? opened at the Palace on 26 December 1914, following successful seasons in Melbourne and Adelaide. With Seven Little Australians still running at the matinee, both plays attracted big houses.
From The Bulletin (Sydney), 21 January 1915, p.8
On 16 January 1915, The Chaperon was presented for the first time in Sydney. As Rosamund Gaythorne, Ethel Dane reprised a role that she had played in London. This play had already been seen in Adelaide where it had received rave notices. The plot concerns a young man, Hilary Chester, played by Tom Shelford, who takes the position of professional chaperon at a London restaurant. As protocol requires, when an older gentleman wishes to meet a young lady, a chaperon must be present, with the idea that the chaperon and the young lady are Mr and Mrs Jones, and that they are guests of the gentleman. So, when Christopher Pottinger MP wishes to entertain an actress, Rosamund Gaythorne, her chaperon must be present. As luck would have it, Pottinger’s wife and sister appear on the scene, whereby the chaperon and the lady are introduced as man and wife. And when Mrs Pottinger invites them to her country home things start to unravel when Chester’s fiancée turns up at the same house party.
The Sun (17 January 1915) called The Chaperon “one of the liveliest and original pieces of farce seen in Sydney for a long time”, “It has an elaborate and attractive setting, is well dressed and well acted, but it specially wins praise because of its constant action through amusing complications and their relief.”
The farce ran for a fortnight, and for the final week of the season The Glad Eye was revived. Thereafter the company departed for New Zealand, with the promise of returning to Sydney in the Winter with a new children’s play The Rag Doll by Arthur Adams, and the farce The Real Thing.
As the Beaumont Smith season was entering its last days, news of the death of Louis Meyer was received in Sydney. Although the original partnership had been dissolved the previous November due to Meyer’s poor health, it was now thought that “but for this inevitable change Australian playgoers would have enjoyed the additional enterprise of a London manager of unusual talents and energy”.7
With the departure of The Glad Eye company, Seven Little Australians also closed (notching up a six-week run), marking the end of the current Beaumont Smith season.
With Smith gone, Harrie Skinner, the Palace manager, was after a new lessee to fill the breach before the arrival of Allen Doone at Easter. In the meantime, the Palace was repainted and renovated.
From The Queenslander Pictorial supplement, 1 May 1915. State Library of Queensland, Brisbane.
The breech was duly filled by Frederic Shipman Enterprises Ltd. with Neptune’s Daughter starring Annette Kellerman, “the famous water-girl”. This was not a live show, but an “Alluring, Thrilling, Stupendous, Spectacular Photo-play”.8 It was claimed that the film had “broken all records in America”, achieving an “unprecedented run of 300 nights at the Globe Theatre, New York City”.9 Described as “one of the finest examples of the cinematographic art presented in this city for some time”, the film was a showcase for the talents of the Australian-born star:
In several of the scenes Miss Kellerman, in white, close-fitting tights, gives entertaining exhibitions of swimming and diving, her graceful form standing out against the brushwood like a marble statue as she poses before she dives.10
Neptune’s Daughter opened, for the first time in Sydney, on Wednesday 17 March 1915. Sydney-born Kellerman had achieved success as a professional swimmer and vaudeville star and was the first woman to wear a one-piece bathing suit.
Canadian-born entrepreneur, Frederic Shipman (1873–1961), who was presenting the film, was a well-known theatrical agent, having since 1906 been the manager for numerous operatic stars including Jessie McLachlan, Marie Narelle, Paul Dufault, David Bispham and Madame Nordica. Taking a break from the “slippery ground of concert management in favour of picture enterprise”, Shipman had acquired the sole Australian and New Zealand rights for the film—Annette Kellerman’s first full-length feature.
Neptune’s Daughter played twice daily until 1 April. On Good Friday, afternoon and evening, the Kalem Company’s 1912 “sacred picture drama” From Manger to Cross was revived, having previously been seen in Sydney at Christmas 1914.
The following evening, Easter Saturday 3 April, Allen Doone made his return to the Palace. He opened, not with O’Shea the Rogue as announced, but with a reprise of Barry of Ballymoore, the romantic Irish drama by Rida Johnson Young, which reintroduced Edna Keeley as the heroine Lady Mary Bannon, supported by Ethel Bashford (Nanette), Ella Carrington (Mrs Barry), Ethel Grist (Betty O’Mara), Maurice Lynch (Michael McShane), Frank Cullenane (Lord Bannon), Onslow Edgeworth (Sir Edward Emery), Clive Farnham (General O’Mara) and other favourites.
As on previous occasions, Doone was greeted by “a cordial and delighted audience” and at the end of the play “in response to prolonged applause, he sang ‘The Wearin’ o’ the Green’, amid a scene of enthusiasm, while masses of flowers, tributes to Miss Edna Keeley and other, adorned the stage”.11
Doone was an enormous attraction, and it seems opening night was oversubscribed. As a note in advertisements observed: “Saturday night hundreds were turned away from the Palace Theatre. Those who purchased tickets and were unable to gain admission are notified that their tickets will hold good for any night this week”.12
As the Sydney Sportsman (7 April 1915) opined, “The Doone boom is an assured success that is not likely to fade while ever its creator elects to remain with us”.
A fortnight later, Doone introduced Too Much Johnson for the first time in Sydney. His only new play for the season, this farcical comedy was by William Gillette (of Sherlock Holmes fame)—adapted from La Plantation Thomassin by Maurice Ordonneau—and originally staged in America in 1894. The play was a success on its first production (with Gillette in the lead), playing for 216 performances at the Standard Theatre in New York.13 This was the first Sydney production, the play having been seen in Adelaide and Melbourne in 1897 with Harry Paulton and Alma Stanley as the leads. Like so many three act farces, the plot defies description. But suffice to say, it concerns a married man, Augustus Billings (Allen Doone), who under the name of Johnson has been conducting an affair with a French woman and giving the excuse that he is visiting his sugar plantation in Cuba. Soon Billings, his wife, his mother-in-law, his latest girlfriend and her husband, and the fiancée of the real Plantation owner (a Mr Johnson) are on a ship bound for Cuba. What could go wrong?
Swapping his Irish brogue for a Yonker’s accent did not dent Doone’s popularity. As one paper summarised:
It was strange to see him [Doone] stripped of his Irish environment, his brogue, and the picturesqueness and quaint humour which appealed so strongly to Hibernian sentiment. The verdict of a crowded house, however, seemed to endorse the change with its approval, though the piece viewed either as a pure farce, a comedy, or a farcical comedy, is certainly not of the brilliant order.14
Too Much Johnson held the stage for three weeks and was replaced, on 8 May, by The Parish Priest, the hit of Doone’s 1913 season. This played for a week and was to have been followed by O’Shea the Rogue, but for a second time this piece failed to appear, and instead the season played out with revivals of In Old Donegal (15 May) and Molly Bawn (22 May). The season was concluded on 28 May after which the company departed for a tour of New Zealand.
Advertising postcard for the first London production of A Scrape o’ the Pen, 1912
Author’s collection
Advertising postcard printed by Syd Day Ltd for the first Australian production of A Scrape o’ the Pen, 1915
HAT Archive
Scottish sentiment replaced Irish sentiment with the next offering at the Palace, with the first Australian production of A Scrape o’ the Pen. Written by Graham Moffat, and performed by him and his wife, the play was presented under the direction of E.J. Carroll. The Moffats had been in Australia since June 1914, when they made their first appearance at the Sydney Theatre Royal in Bunty Pulls the Strings. Since that time, they had been touring the country with that play. This new piece, which centred around Scottish marriage law, had first been performed at the Comedy Theatre in London on 4 September 1912.
Set on New Year’s Eve 1874/75, the play sees a young man return from working abroad to find his ‘wife’, whom he had married in the Scottish tradition, married to the manager of a farm belonging to his parents, played by Mr and Mrs Moffat. Although the drama of the marriage is central to the play, the “exquisite pictures” of Scottish home life and the comedy scenes featuring the bickering older couple were absorbing and delighted the audience.
A Scrape o’ the Pen played until 3 July and for the final week of the season Bunty Pulls the Strings was revived for a week. On its first Sydney production the title character had been performed by Ella Young, but this current revival introduced a new Bunty played by Jean Clyde. This young Scottish actress, who had played the role on tour in England, understudied Ella Young in the role in Australia, and in February 1915 finally succeeded to the role when Ella returned to England. With the close of the season the company departed for Newcastle en route for New Zealand.
The next attraction at the Palace was The Royal Strollers, an English company of entertainers headed by Sydney James, G.W. Desmond and Madeline Rossiter. Presented by J. & N. Tait, The Royal Strollers were making their first appearance in Sydney following success in Adelaide, Melbourne and the regions. Billed as ‘From the Palace Theatre, London’, the combination had earned the title of ‘Royal’ having appeared before the King and Queen on 1 July 1914. Originally founded in 1900, the company toured extensively throughout the British Isles, South Africa and the USA prior to their arrival in Australia in November 1914. Adept at whistling, mimicry, impersonations and ventriloquism (with dummy ‘Billy’), Sydney James was the key attraction and known as the ‘father’ of the Royal Strollers.15
Sheet music cover for ‘On the Promenade’, written and composed by Madeline Rossiter and sung by Gwen Lewis of the Royal Strollers, 1916
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Sydney James with his dummy Billy, from the sheet music cover for ‘Belgium Put the Kibosh on the Kaiser’, written and composed by Alf Ellerton, published by Allan & Co., Melbourne, 1914
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Mixing comedy, song, dance and variety, the Strollers proved a hit at the Palace. As one reviewed observed of the seven-strong troupe:
In the Royal Strollers, who opened at the Palace Theatre last night under the Tait direction, we have the smartest and gayest collection of comedians seen on the Sydney stage for a long time. … The Chief Stroller is Sydney James, a comedian whose gift for burlesque is remarkable; while as a ventriloquist he is not only the cleverest but also the most amusing performer within the memory of our playgoers. Under Mr James are a bunch of men and girls whose distinct talents mark each with a special individuality. Some sing, others dance, they all talk smartly, and whatever they do is done well. … The Strollers form, on the whole, a more skilful combination of drawing-room comedians than any the Australian stage has welcomed, and provide an evening of wholesome laughter.16
Indeed, the Royal Strollers became a fixture at the Palace. Originally engaged for four weeks, their season was extended to twelve weeks, and they held the stage until 1 October 1915. During their stay their program of ‘refined vaudeville’ underwent many changes through the introduction of new routines and burlesques. The type of entertainment presented by the Strollers was just what war weary Sydneysiders craved, their antics providing a “constant simmer of mirth”.
In Europe, the war continued to rage, and as Australian men and boys were urged to join the call to arms, so too did members of the theatrical profession. With the boarders virtually closed to new arrivals from England, many English entertainers chose to remain in Australia rather than return home.
When the Stroller’s season at the Palace was concluded, Sydney audiences were not prepared to say ‘good bye’ and it was arranged for them to play an additional two weeks at the Little Theatre, the extension also allowing for country visitors coming to town for the racing season to attend the show.
From The Theatre (Sydney), 1 October 1915, p.23. The journal has mistakenly written Harold rather than Cleave McGrath. Harold McGrath (1871-1932) was an Amerian novelist, whereas Cleave McGrath (1871-1932) was an actor and later a cinema manager in NSW.
Preparing the family for a visit to Sydney. The Waybacks’ arrival in Sydney. In George-street. In Bathurst-street. Inside the coffee palace. Dad’s deputation to the Minister for Works. Waybacks in a back yard at Balmain. Back at Dingo Flat. The city visitors. The Waybacks rehearsing a bush comedy.17
Though critics were not overwhelming in their appraisal, they were unanimous in their praise for the play’s mounting and acting. Audiences were prepared to go with the improbabilities of the story and applauded generously and the “House Full sign was posted up early in the proceedings”.18
A fortnight into the season, the Daily Telegraph (9 October 1915) observed, “the success of season has exceeded even the most sanguine anticipations”.
The Sydney Sportsman (20 October 1915) elaborated:
Shows of a sad and serious nature appear to be taboo in this city of ‘silken sin and openwork wickedness’ at the present. For hilarious humor and fun and frolic, at full gallop, though, ‘The Waybacks’ is easily first past the judge’s box. It is a kind of foster brother to ‘On Our Selection’, but has a freshness all of its own in the visit of Dad and Mum of immoral fame, and the family to the Big Smoke.
After 12 weeks at the Palace, The Waybacks were still drawing the crowds, but unable to extend his tenancy at the Palace beyond 12 November, Philip Lytton arranged for the play to be transfer to the Theatre Royal, where it continued to delight audiences until 3 December.
From The Sun (Sydney), 28 November 1915, p.22
On 13 November 1915 films returned to the Palace with the Australian premiere of Hypocrites. Described as “morality sermon”,19 the film might have struck a somewhat sombre tone after the antics of Dads and Mums Wayback, but the attraction of “a clergyman steadfastly pursuing a nude through several thousand feet of filmed landscape”20 proved irresistible. (Historically, the film is now regarded as the first non-pornographic film to contain full-frontal nudity.) The film, which had been banned in some American states for being ‘anticlerical’, proved a money-spinner at the Palace and remained the attraction for five weeks, making it the longest running film in Sydney, second only to Quo Vadis at the Lyceum two and a half years earlier.21
Following the closure of Hypocrites on 18 December, the Palace closed its doors for a week’s respite, reopening on 27 December with The Rosary.
To be continued
Endnotes
1. Referee (Sydney), 30 December 1914, p.15
2. Argus, 6 January 1915, p. 4
3. Weekly Dispatch (London), 31 January 1915, p.10
4. The Stage (London), 4 February 1915, p.19
5. Herald (Melbourne), 10 January 1914, p.10
6. See for example The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 6 January 1915, p.2
7. Sydney Morning Herald, 6 February 1915, p.8
8. Advertisement, The Sun (Sydney), 15 March 1915, p.2
9. Advertisement, The Sun (Sydney), 12 March 1915, p.2
10. The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 18 March 1915, p.9
11. The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 5 April 1915, p.5
12. Advertisement, The Sun (Sydney), 5 April 1915, p.2
13. Refer https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/too-much-johnson-7246
14. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 April 1915, p.4
15. Western Mail (Perth), 19 March 1915, p.39–40
16. The Sun (Sydney), 11 July 1915, p.4
17. Advertisement, The Sun (Sydney), 2 October 1915, p.2
18. The Mirror of Australia (Sydney), 3 October 1915, p.16
19. Sunday Times (Sydney), 31 October 1915, p.16
20. The Bulletin (Sydney), 18 November 1915, p.8
21. The Theatre (Sydney), 1 January 1916, p.43
References
Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com
J.P. Wearing, The London Stage, 1910–1919: A calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, 2nd edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014
Newspapers
Trove, trove.nla.gov.au
Pictures
HAT Archive
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Papers Past
State Library of Queensland, Brisbane
With thanks to
Rob Morrison
