Gwen Lewis

The attractionat the Palace for the 1915-1916 holiday season was The Rosary, a four-act domestic drama by Edward E. Rose, which opened on 27 December, with British-American actor Harrington Reynolds as Father Kelly, the kindly Catholic priest who ‘makes wrong right and brings happiness to the lowly and melancholy’.¹ The was not Reynolds first appearance at the Palace. As a member of Daniel Frawley’s company, which toured in 1903, he had played supporting roles in Arizona, Madame Sans Gene, and other plays. With this current engagement, The Rosary was enjoying a return season, having previously been seen in Sydney in September 1914, when it premiered at the Adelphi Theatre under the management of George Willoughby. This time, George Marlow was at the helm, with an entirely new cast of supporting players. Chief among them was Ethel Buckley in the comedy role of Lesura Watkins, ‘the raw maid from Vermont’; Valentine Sidney as the twin sisters Vera Wilton and Alice Marsh; Vivian Edwards as Vera’s husband; Hodgson Taylor as the plotting ‘serpent’; and William Thomson as the love-smitten Charley Harrow. But it was Harrington’s play:

In the part of Father Kelly, Mr Reynolds carries the burden of the play, but he carries it with ease and a fine sense of interpretation which delights and grips. Equally as the stern, dictatorial priest, and the happy joke-making Irish pastor, he invests the character with fine finish.²

Harrington Reynolds as Father Kelly

From Table Talk (Melbourne), 7 May 1914, p.21

Ethel Buckley; photo by Talma

National Library of Australia, Canberra

The Rosary played until Tuesday 11 January, and the following evening The Spoilers was performed for the first time in Australia. This was an adaptation of Rex Beach’s best-selling novel of the same name. An American film version, staring William Farnum, had also proved a huge success in Australia during 1915. Advertisements headed ‘There’s never a law of God or man runs north of 53’ (a line from a Rudyard Kipling poem) made it clear to theatregoers that the play was set in the northern frontier, where the rule of law did not apply.³ The story revolves around Roy Glenister, who with his partner Bill, is returning to Nome in Alaska to work on their gold claim. On the ship Roy falls in love with Helen Chester, the niece of Judge Chester, who has been appointed the first federal judge for the Alaskan Territory. The Judge turns out to be a ‘wrong-un’—one of the ‘spoilers’ of the title—who uses the law to steal the claims of successful miners. Roy is warned by music hall singer, Cherry Malotte (who is in love with him), of Helen’s connection to the Judge, and believing she is on the side of the spoilers, Roy becomes depressed and starts gambling away his money. Although she is furious at being jilted, Cherry helps to save Roy from the crooks. As the hero, Vivian Edwards was complimented on providing the ‘statuesque type of robust manhood’ required for the part; while Jean Robertson as Helen, invested her role with ‘the tender grace of appealing femininity’. Ethel Buckley, as expected, was ‘alternately wildly passionate and exuberantly vivacious’ as Cherry Malotte.⁴

On 29 January, The Silence of Dean Maitland was produced—not the film version (screened at the Palace in June 1914), but a stage adaptation. This adaptation of the play had originally been seen at the Adelphi in August 1915 and was now being revived with Vivian Edwards (replacing Walter Hunt) as the Dean, with Ethel Buckley and Jean Robertson revising their roles as Winnie and Lilian Maitland.

The play attracted an appreciative audience and played until 5 February. With the close of the pantomime season at the Adelphi, George Marlow now relocated his company back to their home base. As a result, the Palace remained closed for the following three weeks, pending the first production of Edward Dyson’s new four-act play Fact’ry ’Ands on Saturday 26 February, under the direction of Charles Stanford.

One of Australia’s most popular short story writers, Dyson was best known for creating scores of eccentric character types, whose follies and foibles attracted a huge following. He had attempted to bring some of his characters to life before, when in August 1913, his play The Golden Shanty had premiered at the Palace, attracting mixed reviews. With this new comedy, Fact’ry ’Ands, he drew on characters from his 1906 collection of short stories of the same name. Set in Spat’s paper factory in Sydney, the story centres on the antics of Sarah, Martha, Cilly and Barbara, and their male comrades at the factory—Benno, Feathers, Fuzzy Ellis, and Billy the Boy. Keen to see some of their favourites brought to life, opening night attracted a full and sympathetic house. Edward Dyson and his wife, and Mr and Mrs Lionel Lindsay, made the journey from Melbourne and watched the play from a box.⁵

From The Bulletin (Sydney), 2 March 1916, p.8

First night reviews suggested some of the actors had trouble finding their ‘characters’, but on the whole director Charles Stanford was praised ‘for moulding the available material into fairly practical shape’.⁶ Comprising a series of character sketches, the play did not have a plot to speak of, but as one reviewer pointed out, ‘comedy of types may have any old plot … the story mattered very little in Graham Moffatt’s Bunty, or Steele Rudd’s Dad, or the eccentrics round Mrs Wiggs [of the Cabbage Patch]’.⁷ J.S. Mann’s scenery depicting Spat’s factory, Sydney Harbour by day and night, and Hawksbury Bridge was admired.

Fact’ry ’Ands held the stage for a fortnight … sadly for Dyson, it was no rival for On Our Selection. A planned Melbourne season by the Bert Bailey company does not seem to have taken place, though the touring rights for the play were granted to G.L. Merriman who staged a few performances in the NSW regions during mid-1916.

Big changes were in store for the Palace … with the return of the Tait management. As concert/film promotors, the Taits had been responsible for bringing many celebrity artists to Australia including Clara Butt and Kennerley Rumford (1907 & 1912), the Welsh Male Choir (1908), Peter Dawson (1909), Emma Calvé (1910), Margaret Cooper (1912), and John McCormack (1913). Notably, at the Palace, they had introduced the film The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1907, Nicola the Great and Margaret Cooper in 1912, Harry Lauder’s ‘good-bye’ to Australia in 1914, and the Royal Strollers in 1915. Now, they had determined to broaden their scope to embrace the legitimate drama. An article in the Sydney Morning Heraldobserved:

The approach of visiting concert artists of eminence is so usually made known nearly a year in advance, that the prospects of 1916 in that connection may now be pronounced deplorably limited. This, of course, is due to the war, and this reason is officially given by Messrs J. and N. Tait for sustaining from introducing any stars, as has hitherto been their custom. The dramatic side of Australian entertainments will be much less interrupted … Moreover, at Easter, J. and N. Tait will make their first venture in the theatrical field by producing the much-talked-of play ‘Peg o’ My Heart’ in Sydney.⁸

With Peg o’ My Heart, the Taits were taking J.C. Williamson Ltd. head on. As the largest theatrical company in Australasia, ‘the firm’ had naturally assumed that the rights to Peg would go to them. They were therefore taken aback when the Taits ‘snatched the rights to the … show from under [their] very nose’.⁹ In February 1916, E.J. Tait joined his brothers, John, Nevin, Frank and Charles, at J&N Tait. For the past 15 years, E.J. had held senior positions with JCW, most recently as general manager in Sydney, but an inability to be obtain a position on the JCW board was instrumental in his departure. As one paper noted: ‘With the accession of Mr E.J. Tait, the [Tait] brothers are likely to undertake a considerable extension of their theatrical business, both in the number of entertainments they will stage and in the class of amusement they will provide’.¹⁰

Advertising postcard for the London production of Peg o’ My Heart

Author’s collection

Sara Allgood as Peg

Author’s collection

Peg o’ My Heart, by J. Hartley Manners, is the story of an unsophisticated Irish-American girl, who after inheriting a fortune from an uncle in England, finds herself (along with her faithful terrier Michael) a ‘duck out of water’ in the home of her snobbish aunt and cousins, but due to her wit and goodness of heart, wins her way—and also gains the love of Sir Gerald. The play had proved a huge hit in the USA and the UK. On its premiere in Los Angeles in May 1912, it ran for eleven weeks, while in New York (where it opened in December 1912), it set a record, running for 607 consecutive performances, making an undisputed star of Laurette Taylor, and reportedly earning Hartley Manners US$10,000 in royalties. By April 1916, it was estimated that the play had netted him over US$200,000.¹¹ Manners had written it as a vehicle for Laurette Taylor, the couple marrying two days after the New York opening. Taylor’s celebrity continued when the play transferred to London in October 1914, where it notched up a further 709 performances. 

In July 1915 the play was sent on tour through the British provinces, with Sara Allgood engaged to play Peg. Up to that time, Allgood, who had been a member of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, had rarely played youthful parts, having generally been cast in old women roles. (‘I believe I’ve played about ninety “old Irishwomen” all told, and … most of them are country types’, she told a reporter at the time of her provincial engagement.)¹² Sara Allgood played the role on tour for six months, the tour opening in Blackpool on 26 July 1915.

In February 1916, it was announced that Allgood had been engaged to play the role in Australia. A company of fifteen players arrived in Sydney on 7 April 1915, travelling from England via New York and Vancouver, then on the SS Niagara to Sydney. Sea travel during wartime was risky, and at the last minute it was decided that the artists should take the Atlantic route to Australia—and a good thing they did, for the ship, the RMS Maloja, which they were to have taken to Bombay, struck a German mine in the English Channel with the loss of 155 lives.

Peg o’ My Heart opened at the Palace on Saturday 15 April amid a whirl of publicity—and the public was not disappointed. Sara Allgood—who was said to possess the loveliest brogue ever heard on the British stage—was a huge success. ‘Peg is truly a delicate dramatic creation, something genuinely loveable and charming [and] Sara Allgood knows how to play her’, wrote the Sun (16 Apr 1916, p.2). From her first appearance on the stage—a winsome figure in a simple print dress, a cheap straw hat, her Irish terrier Michael under one arm and an old-fashioned leather box in the other—the audience fell under her spell. As the Sydney Morning Herald (17 Apr 1916, p.6) observed:

On Saturday night she [Sara Allgood] made a really memorable debut … capturing a house crowded with first-nighters in the most unmistakable fashion. In doing this she exhibited an essential charm, mingled with a Puck-like spirit, which brought to mind the early triumphs of Nellie Stewart.

The Herald went on to say:

Messrs J. and N. Tait, whose judgement in engaging concert artists of distinguished talent has raised them to fortune, have thus brilliantly opened their new career as theatrical managers.

Allgood’s supporting cast were also praised as a ‘capable company’. Chief among them was Gerald Henson as Jerry (Peg’s lover), Beatrice Yaldwyn as Ethel Chichester, Doris Gilham as Ethel Chichester (Peg’s priggish aunt), Cecil Brooking as Alaric Chichester, and Thomas Sidney as Jarvis. The play was directed by E.W. Morrison, an American, who had previously been in Australia as a member of Edith Crane’s company, playing Gekko in Trilby during 1896, and again in 1913 as actor/director for Within the Law with Muriel Starr.

On 19 July, after three months, and 111 performances, playing to sold-out houses, Peg was withdrawn. Melbourne was calling! As the season drew to a close, Sara Allgood told the Sunday Times, ‘The Sydney people are just the most whole-hearted and most light-hearted theatregoers I have ever known. Peg o’ My Heart has never, so far as I can remember, produced so much laughter as in Sydney. I expect it is your sunny climate that has most to do with keeping your people happy in this terrific war time, and I cannot say how sorry I am that we are going away … when we come back for our return season here that the war will be over and everybody even more happy’.¹³

She would at least be correct on one point …

Sheet music cover featuring Madeline Rossiter and Gwen Lewis of The Royal Strollers

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Allen Doone as Larry O’Shea (disguised as a gypsy) with Edna Keeley as Rose McMichael in Happy-Go-Lucky O’Shea

From The Critic (Adelaide), 15 January 1919

On 22 July, Sydney James and his Royal Strollers returned, having completed a successful tour of New Zealand. They opened their show with a burlesque of Peg o’ My Heartwhich attracted ‘roars of laughter’. Dressed in the ‘carroty curls and peculiar waddle assumed only a few nights before by Sara Allgood, Mr James gave a really vivid imitation of that artist’s laugh, and the persistent appeals “to go to the Strollers’ Rest to-night”, and the repeated assurances “I’ll be awfully good, I will—after tonight”, backed by a brogue that could be cut with a knife, and a comic “property dog” Michael, kept the house in roars’.¹⁴ As before, Sydney James (and dummy ‘Billy’), was ably assisted by Madeline Rossiter; along with G.W. Desmond, Arthur Frost, Cyril Northcote, George Graystone (replacing Frank Halpin), Gwen Lewis, and Connie Milne (an ex-JCW musical comedy performer replacing Mena Bray). Once again, the company proved an amazing drawcard, presenting a changing bill of sketches and songs for the following ten weeks, closing on 29 September.

The next attraction was Palace favourite Allen Doone. Since his last appearance in Sydney (at the Royal in February 1916), he had returned to America and toured New Zealand. He opened his season on 30 September with a new play, Happy-Go-Lucky O’Shea, which was being performed for the first time in Australia. This play, written especially for Doone by Bert Sayre, had been mooted for performance in 1915 (as O’Shea the Rogue). A tale of romance and chivalry, it featured Doone as Larry O’Shea, an Irishman serving in Napoleon’s army. Sent on a mission, disguised as a gipsy, he is captured by the Prussians and forced to marry another prisoner, Rose McMichael, an Irish girl. At first, she protests, but O’Shea wins her over through his bravery and good heart. This play gave Doone the opportunity to introduce several new songs, namely ‘Kilkenny Cats’, ‘Night Birds Cooing’ and ‘Think of Me, Sweet Maid’. Edna Keeley played the Irish girl, with supporting roles filled by Ethel Grist, Ethel Bashford, Connie Kyte, Frank Cullenane, Onslow Edgeworth, Tom Buckley, and others.

Doone’s residency continued with revivals of The Parish Priest (11–17 November), Tom Moore (18 November–8 December) and In Old Donegal (9–16 December). Tom Moore was well-known by theatregoers, having been performed in Australia by the original exponent of the title role, Andrew Mack, during 1905–1907. Bert Sayre’s play, a romantic reimagining of the exploits of Ireland’s National poet was being performed by Doone for the first time. Set in the Regency period, the sets and ‘costumes were rich, and correctly represented of the period when perfumed dandies fawned upon the Prince Regent and Beau Brummell set the fashion’.¹⁵ Harrington Reynolds joined the company to play the Prince of Wales. During the course of the play Doone sang several Tom Moore songs including ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, ‘Love’s Young Dream’, and ‘Eveleen’s Bower’. On 20 November, Doone arranged with the Hibernian Society to donate the receipts to the Dublin Relief Fund.¹⁶

On the afternoon of Saturday 2 December, for one performance only, The North Sydney District Comedy Club presented a production of Charley’s Aunt.

The final offering for the year was the highly anticipated return of Sara Allgood with Peg o’ My Heart.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Punch (Melbourne), 14 May 1914, p.42

2. Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 1915, p.8

3. See Entertainment pages, Sydney Morning Herald, Sun (Sydney), Daily Telegraph (Sydney) and Sunday Times (Sydney), 8–15 January 1916.

4. Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1916, p.12

5. Referee (Sydney), 1 March 1915, p.15

6. Sydney Morning Herald, 28 February 1916, p.3

7. Sun (Sydney), 27 February 1916, p.4

8. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 January 1916, p.8

9.  Michael Tallis & Joan Tallis, p.156

10. Sun (Sydney), 30 January 1916

11. Referee (Sydney), 19 April 1916, p.15

12. Evening News (Sydney), 16 July 1915, p.4

13. Sunday Times (Sydney), 9 July 1916, p,7

14. Sydney Morning Herald, 24 July 1916, p.4

15. The Dublin Relief Fund was established to provide aid to those affected by the Easter Rising in Dublin, which took place in April 1916. It was estimated, at the time, that upward of 40,000 Dubliners were destitute.

References

Bordman, Gerald, American Theatre: A chronicle of comedy and drama, 1869–1914, Oxford University Press, 1994

Katherine Brisbane (editor), Entertaining Australia: The performing arts as cultural history, Currency Press, Sydney, 1991

Viola Tait, A Family of Brothers: The Taits and J.C. Williamson: A theatre history, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1971

Michael Tallis & Joan Tallis, The Silent Showman: Sir George Tallis, the man behind the world’s largest entertainment organisation of the 1920s, revised edition, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, SA, 2006

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

Newspapers

Trove, trove.nla.gov.au

Pictures

Author’s collection

National Library of Australia, Canberra

With thanks to

Rob Morrison