Palace Theatre Sydney

When the palace theatreat 351 Pitt Street in Sydney opened on Friday, 19 December 1896, it was heralded as one of the most beautiful theatres in the southern hemisphere. ‘A dazzling spectacle of Oriental luxury and richness’, ‘As gorgeous as an Indian temple’ and ‘Like a transformation scene from a pantomime’, were just a few of the phrases used to describe this little gem.¹

The interior of the new theatre was indeed magnificent, designed in the Indian style, predating the atmospheric theatres of the 1920s. The design was the work of English-born Phil Goatcher (1851-1931), best known as a scenic artist, having worked principally in Melbourne on set designs for Williamson, Garner & Musgrove.

George Adams, c.1901; photograph by Falk Studios, Sydney

Private collection

Phil Goatcher, c.1896; photograph by Falk Studios, Sydney

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

The Palace Theatre was the brainchild of George Adams (1839-1904) of Tattersall’s lotto fame. During the early 1890s, he had completely rebuilt and refurbished his Tattersall’s Hotel on Pitt Street, and in 1895 embarked on the second stage of the redevelopment that saw the design and construction of an 800-seat variety theatre.

When Adams’ hotel re-opened in January 1892 it was admired for the richness of its finishes and the luxuriousness of its appointments. One of the key elements was the redecoration of the main bar, being decked out in marble and glass and relaunched as the Marble Bar. It quickly became one of the most fashionable destinations in Sydney.

The Palace was the seventh new theatre to be opened in Sydney in the space of a decade, the other theatres being the Royal Standard (1886, reworking of the Foresters’ Lodge), Criterion (1886), Her Majesty’s (1887), Garrick (1890, replacing the Academy of Music), Lyceum (1892) and Tivoli (1893, reworking of Garrick).

Section of Pitt Street, Sydney, showing the Palace Theatre and adjacent Tattersall’s Hotel, c.1901

From Structural plans of the City of Sydney Ignis et Aqua series, sheet 16, vol. 1, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

For Adams, money was no object, and by 1895, he had assembled a talented team of designers to work on the theatre development, giving them carte blanche to let their imaginations runaway with them and create something remarkable. Both the architect, Clarence Backhouse (1859-1930), and the principal interior designer, Phil Goatcher, had worked together before, on the design of the Lyceum Theatre in Pitt Street, directly opposite Adams’ hotel. Backhouse had also been the architect for the Garrick Theatre (1890) and had undertaken remodelling works on the Criterion Theatre in 1892.

In early 1896, after six years in Melbourne, Phil Goatcher had given up his job as head scenic artist at the Princess Theatre. At the suggestion of Arthur Garner (1851-1934), who had left the partnership of Williamson, Garner & Musgrove, Goatcher decided to try his luck as a theatre manager. With no written agreement, the two men arranged to take on the lease of the Palace Theatre. For Goatcher, the Palace was the most ambitious project he had even been involved with—and what could be better than to become manager of the theatre that showcased his talent as a designer. Goatcher borrowed money from Adams which he gave to Garner to spend on securing music hall ‘acts’ for their new theatre. In February 1896 Garner left for England and America, leaving Goatcher behind to work on the theatre. When he returned, eight months later, relations between him and Goatcher began to sour.

Arthur Garner, 1895; photograph by Falk Studios, Sydney

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

An example of Phil Goatcher’s work: the design of a drop curtain for an unidentified theatre, c.1890s

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

To complicate matters, the new partners had also taken out a short lease at the Lyceum Theatre, where from the 26 December 1896, they presented the Irish-American comedian Charles F. McCarthy in the cross-dressing farce Lady Blarney.

Around this time, Goatcher developed an interest in decorative pressed metal and was keen to explore ways to use this product in interior design settings. Forming a strategic alliance with the Sydney-based Wunderlich company (founded in 1887 by German-born Ernest Wunderlich) he was appointed head of their Decorating Department, creating designs for pressed metal panels and other decorative items. Presumably this was a consultative role rather than a full-time appointment, but it gave him the opportunity to work closely with Wunderlich on several high profile projects. Key among them was the Palace Theatre (1896), the W.H. Paling & Co.’s music store in George Street (1896), and at the Singer Sewing Machine showroom in the Queen Victoria Building (1898).

Business card for Phil W. Goatcher’s Art Decorative Co. Sydney NSW

Museum of Performing Arts Collection, Perth

Reverse side of Phil W. Goatcher’s business card

Museum of Performing Arts Collection, Perth

On account of the Palace opening later than originally planned, Garner arranged for the new artists to perform in Melbourne prior to making their Sydney debut. In Melbourne, Garner placed advertisements in the press indicating the new company was under his management. Goatcher was furious, for it was his money that Garner had used to engage the artists. He struck Garner’s name off his advertisements for the new Palace Theatre and placed Harrie Skinner in the role of manager and treasurer. Just a few days before the theatre’s opening, Garner threatened Goatcher. Goatcher took out an injunction against Garner. Garner was bound over by the court and ordered to stay away from Goatcher for a period of six months.

One of Clarence Backhouse’s architectural drawings for the Palace Theatre

From Theatres in Australiaby John West, p.82

The Palace Theatre fronted on to Pitt Street on a block 56 feet wide and 125 feet deep. Its imposing facade was in the Queen Anne style, a ‘handsome red brick front, with the lower storey in white glazed brick on a polished trachyte base’. The roof was of red French tiles, surmounted by a ‘lofty and imposing tower, rising almost 100 feet from the street level’.² A feature of the facade was four classical figures representing dancing girls, each ‘gracefully posed, and bearing in her hands a quaint-looking instrument symbolic of music’.³ Almost life-sized, these terracotta figures were modelled by sculptor Nelson Illingworth after designs by Phil Goatcher. Illingworth also prepared a number of models for keystones in the interior of the building.

View of foyer showing landing between entrance and dress circle, taken in the 1960s

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Photo of dress circle foyer taken in the 1960s

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Ceiling of dress circle foyer showing Phil Goatcher’s fresco of ‘lightly clad nubile females’, taken in the 1960s

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

The main vestibule and corridors were richly decorated, with allegorical figures representing poetry and composition adorning the ceilings and walls. A double marble staircase, sporting elaborate candelabra, lead to the main second-storey foyer and dress circle. The foyer, described as an ‘exquisite’ chamber, was decorated with bevelled mirrors, ornate plaster mouldings and elaborate painted ceiling executed by Phil Goatcher.

Photograph by C.H. Kerry and Co. showing Goatcher’s Indian-arched proscenium with its satin and braid drop curtain

From Sydney Mail, 23 January 1897, p. 182

The auditorium was a feast of Oriental luxury in elaborate Indian style and considered an artistic triumph for Goatcher. All the decorative elements to the boxes and proscenium were made from embossed zinc, while balcony fronts, capitals and consoles were of perforated zinc. The groined ceiling and dome were also constructed from metal. The Indian theme was enhanced by the placement of a ‘Buddha’ figure at the apex of the proscenium arch. The private boxes—four on each side of the stage—resembled ‘small Indian temples, with cupola-shaped roofs, arched fronts, and ornate tracery’.⁴

The custom-designed Wunderlich panels were manufactured in the company’s Redfern facility.

View of the Finishing Room at Wunderlich’s Redfern factory with elements for the Palace Theatre on display. The cupolas for the boxes and the Buddha figure that sat over the proscenium are clearly identifiable.

From ‘The Wunderlich Patent Ceiling and Roofing Company, Limited: A Visit to the Works’, Sydney Mail, 24 October 1896, p.875

Pressed metal Buddha figure (female bodhisattva); photograph by C.H. Kerry and Co., Sydney

From Wunderlich Illustrated Catalogue, Sydney, 1899. Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

The Indo-Moorish Broadway Theatre, Denver Colorado, with its ‘A Glimpse of India’ safety curtain, painted by Thomas G. Moser

www.museumsyndicate.com

Peacock blue and gold predominated in the auditorium, from the upholstery on the comfortable American ‘fauteuil’ seating in the dress circle to the magnificent plush and satin of the drop curtain. Made entirely of needlework, this drop curtain replaced the traditional painted act drop. Of intricate Indian design, it was said to contain ‘eleven miles of gold Russian braid, and over 3500 pieces of satin’.⁵

It was claimed that the ‘Indian’ design adopted for the auditorium had never been employed before, though theatre historian Eric Irvin and others have pointed out that the design had previously been used at the Broadway Theatre in Denver, Colorado.⁶

The dressing rooms, music room and property rooms were situated in the basement, as was the engine room. Refrigerating chambers, also located in the basement, ensured good air flow to all portions of the building. The theatre was the first building in Sydney to have its own generator, capable of powering over 4000 lights (i.e. in the theatre and the adjacent hotel). In the auditorium, the lights were hidden behind stained glass screens in the balcony fronts and dome to reduce glare.

At the commencement of construction, the theatre was announced to hold some 1500 people: 500 in the stalls, 250 in the dress circle and 750 in the upper circle; though by the time of opening, this number seems to have been somewhat reduced to between 800 and 1000.

This beautiful new theatre was launched on Friday, 19 December 1896. True to form, Adams’ held a ticket sweep for the opening night which saw patrons placing bids for their seats.

Cover of opening night programme for the Palace Theatre, 19 December 1896

Mitchell Library Performance Program Collection, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Programme for Grand Opening Night of the Palace Theatre showing the list of acts

Mitchell Library Performance Program Collection, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

R.G. Knowles, c.1895; photograph by Talma, Melbourne

Gordon Ireland scrapbook, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Lottie Moore and Albert Bellman, c.1900

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Billed as the Stars of All Nations company, the headline act was R.G. Knowles (1858-1919), an American music hall comic, who had achieved success in London; and Henry Lee, a lightning change artist who impersonated celebrities from Gladstone to Shakespeare. Others included specialty acts such as the Three Delevines (grotesque dancers and pantomimists), Winifred Johnson (Mrs R.G. Knowles, banjo-soloist), Lottie Moore and Albert Bellman (song and dance artists), Clotilde Antonio (ballerina and hand-balancer), the Sisters Winterton (mandolinists and dancers), as well as a boy violinist and a lady tenor.

‘Everywhere the eye is dazzled with the beauty of the place, and absolutely nothing has been omitted to secure the comfort of the patrons of the house’, reported the Referee. ‘The programme for the opening night, even if it occasionally was wanting in quality, certainly was never lacking in quantity.’⁷

In the opening weeks it seemed the Palace was doing well. ‘This pretty house of entertainment is filled nightly with delighted audiences, who thoroughly enjoy the excellent variety entertainment provided by Mr Goatcher’, wrote the Daily Telegraph .⁸ Earlier, in Melbourne, readers were informed by Table Talk: ‘With McCarthy at the Lyceum and Stars of All Nations at the Palace Theatre, he [Goatcher] is raking in the almighty dollar by the shovel-full. … more fresh faces are on their way to Goatcher’s Palace.’⁹

Flashlight photo of the Palace Theatre audience on Saturday, 9 January 1897; photograph by C.H. Kerry and Co., Sydney

From Wunderlich Illustrated Catalogue, Sydney, 1899. Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

On Saturday, 9 January 1897, Goatcher’s ‘delighted audiences’ were captured in a flashlight photograph of the auditorium taken by C.H. Kerry and Co. This picture, and others, were reproduced in the Sydney Mail, 23 January 1897, and subsequently in Wunderlich’s 1899 illustrated catalogue.

But it seems, you can’t believe everything you read. Goatcher’s tenure at the Palace Theatre lasted just a month and a half. By the end of January, his Stars of All Nations company had disbanded and Goatcher himself was said to have fled Sydney. Within days he had set sail for New Zealand, having (apparently) been engaged to decorate a theatre in Wellington.

Clearly the lines in Table Talk were exaggerated puffery. According to a piece in the Champion, George Adams’ was ‘disgusted’ with the way his theatre had been mismanaged. He blamed Arthur Garner for engaging predominately American artists ‘which managers ought to know does not please Australians’. Garner, the article said ‘toured the world to choose this feeble combination at great expense’. He was ‘once a member of the Firm [Williamson, Garner & Musgrove], but his own theatrical experiences and those of others seem to have taught him nothing’.¹⁰

Adams’ turned to Harry Rickards to help get the new theatre back on its feet.

Meanwhile Phil Goatcher returned to Australia, and following another legal stoush with Garner, where he was sued for £3000 for breach of agreement, he filed for bankruptcy. Goatcher remained in Sydney for the next decade, re-joining J.C. Williamson’s as a senior scenic artist and continuing to take on private commissions decorating public buildings and shops. In 1899 he married (his second wife) and in 1906, on account of a bronchial condition, relocated to Western Australia.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Sunday Times, 20 December 1896, p.2

2. Daily Telegraph, 17 December 1896, p.5

3. Evening News, 5 June 1896, p.5

4. Sydney Morning Herald, 16 December 1896, p.5

5. Australian Town and Country Journal, 26 December 1896, p.36

6. See Eric Irvin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre, p.292. Also, Ailsa McPherson, in her entry on Goatcher for the Dictionary of Sydney (2010) says: ‘It can be assumed that Goatcher drew extensively on his own experience in his decoration of the Palace, since the decor strongly resembled that of the recently completed Broadway Theatre in Denver, Colorado.’ A 2017 article by historian Wendy Rae Raszut-Barrett in drypigment.com lists the lead scenic artist on the Broadway Theatre project as Thomas G. Moses, supported by Ed Loitz, William and Charlie Minor, and Billie Martin.

7. Referee, 23 December 1896, p.7

8. Daily Telegraph, 14 January 1897, p.3

9. Table Talk, 1 January 1897, p14

10. Champion, 30 January 1897, p.3

References

Eric Irvin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre, Hale & Iremonger, 1985

Ailsa McPherson, ‘Goatcher, Philip W.’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2010, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/goatcher_philip_w

Ailsa McPherson, ‘Palace Theatre’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/palace_theatre

Craig Morrison, Theatres, WW Norton & Company, 2006

Philip Parsons (ed), Companion to Theatre in Australia, Currency Press, 1995

Ross Thorne, Palace Theatre Pitt St: A Photo Essay, www.rossthorne.com/downloads/Palace_theatre.pdf

Ross Thorne, Theatre Buildings in Australia to 1905: from the time of the first settlement to the arrival of cinema, Architectural Research Foundation, University of Sydney, 1971

Wendy Rae Waszut-Barrett, Tales from a Scenic Artist and Scholar, Part 231: Thomas G. Moses and the Broadway Theatre in Denver, Colorado, drypigment.net, 7 October 2017, https://drypigment.net/2017/10/07/tales-from-a-scenic-artist-and-scholar-acquiring-the-fort-scott-scenery-collection-for-the-minnesota-masonic-heritage-center-part-231-thomas-g-moses-and-the-broadway-theatre-in-denver-color/

Wendy Rae Waszut-Barrett, Travels of A Scenic Artist and Scholar: John C. Alexander, Frank R. Alexander, and the Broadway Theatre, drypigment.net, 23 November 2020, https://drypigment.net/2020/11/23/travels-of-a-scenic-artist-and-scholar-john-c-alexander-frank-r-alexander-and-the-broadway-theatre/

John West, Theatre in Australia, Cassell, 1978

Wunderlich’s Patent Embossed Metal Ceilings: Illustrated Catalogue, Sydney, 1899

Newspapers

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW); Champion (Melbourne, Vic); Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW); Evening News (Sydney, NSW); Referee (Sydney, NSW); Sunday Times (Sydney, NSW); Sydney Mail (NSW); Sydney Morning Herald (NSW); Table Talk (Melbourne, Vic)

Acknowledgements

John S. Clark, Mimi Colligan, Ian Hanson, Judy Leech, Simon Plant, Les Tod

Harry Rickards, c.1895. Photo by Talma, Melbourne. State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.On Christmas Eve 1896, George Adams opened his little vaudeville theatre in Pitt Street, Sydney, amongst much fanfare. ‘With regard to decorations, the theatre has no equal in Australia, and possibly it is superior to any building of its kind in London’, wrote one paper. Scenic artist Phil Goatcher, who designed the auditorium in a spectacular Indian style, was also the first lessee. But lack of experience as a theatre manager and arguments and law suits with his business partner, spelled disaster for the enterprise. ‘For a few nights it drew large audiences, and then a bit of a frost set in.’¹

After only six weeks, Goatcher’s lesseeship of the Palace Theatre came to an abrupt end. George Adams turned to Harry Rickards, striking a three-year lease with Australia’s undisputed King of Vaudeville. For Rickards this was an opportunity to secure a monopoly in this class of business, look at expanding his empire, and at the same time fend off any competition. But could Sydney support two variety theatres?

Without any interruption to programming, Goatcher’s company made their final appearance on 29 January 1897, and the following evening, Harry Rickards’ company took over the stage, with Rickards’ brother John C. Leete as General Manager.

While a couple of Goatcher performers joined the ranks of the new company, most were drawn from Rickards other theatres, the Sydney Tivoli and Melbourne Opera House.

Grand Opening Night on Saturday, 30 January 1897, was a great success and boded well for the new venture. ‘Mr Harry Rickards has reason to feel satisfied with the result of his initial performance at this bright little playhouse on Saturday night’, wrote the Evening News. ‘From a financial as well as artistic standpoint it was a gratifying success.’²

Carl Hertz, c.1897

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia, Falk 075/8

Florrie Forde, c.1897

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The line up boasted a number of popular artists, seen before at the Tivoli, including American illusionist Carl Hertz, supported by his wife Mdlle D’Alton, and champion whistler Frank Lawton in his ‘The Whistling Waiter’ sketch. Other artists were Australian serio-comic Florrie Forde (singing ‘Oh Harris, Ain’t it Nice in Paris’ and ‘I am an Innocent Dickie Bird’); grotesque dancers and acrobats The Three Delevines; American sketch duo Albert Bellman and Lottie Moore; mandolin artists, the Winterton Sisters; child serio-comic and dancer Little Alma Gray; and Ada Colley, the Australian Canary. Of the newcomers, there was Edgar Granville, an English character comedian who delighted audiences with several songs, including ‘I Haven’t Got it Out Yet’ and ‘This Life is But a Derby’, and ‘Tiddle-ee-wink, what d’ye Think of Me’, which he sang, dressed in widow’s weeds!

Three weeks later, armed with photos of his new theatre, Rickards left for England and Europe to recruit enough new talent to fill the bills at his three theatres.

Vaudevillian all-rounder Will Crackles, c.1897

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

C.H. Chirgwin, aka ‘The White-Eyed Musical Kaffir’, c.1897

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Over the next three months, the programme at the Palace changed, with new artists joining the bill. From England came vaudevillian all-rounder Will Crackles; C.H. Chirgwin (‘The White-Eyed Musical Kaffir’); serio-comic and dancer, Jessie De Grey; and comedian Harry Shine. Among the locals there was soprano Florrie Esdaile; dancers Lucy Cobb and Millie Osborne; and ‘the clever contralto’ Hettie Patey.

The vaudeville season closed on 3 April 1897 ‘pending the new engagements now being made by Mr Rickards in Europe and America’.³

While waiting for his brother to return with the new artists, John C. Leete oversaw a varied programme of entertainment at the Palace. From 17–30 April 1897, star violinist Ovide Musin gave a series of concerts, and from 1 May, John Gourlay and Percy St John’s Musical Comedy Company presented a short season of plays, including Gourlay’s musical farcical comedy Skipped by the Light of the Moon. With the conclusion of the Gourlay season on 29 May, the Palace closed, and remained so until Rickards’ return from overseas in August 1897.

Rickards’ plan was to run the Palace along new lines from the Tivoli, with completely different entertainments at his two Sydney theatres. During the break, the Palace stage was enlarged by six feet to accommodate some of the new acts.

Among the novelties secured by Rickards was the Biograph—an early motion picture projector—billed as the ‘very latest and most wonderful invention’ and the ‘marvel of the Nineteenth Century’. Rickards was said to have paid £3,000 to secure the sole Australian rights for six months. In an interview, he described it as being ‘a great advance upon Lumière’s Cinematographe’, which Carl Hertz had introduced to Tivoli audiences in 1896.⁴

Made and operated by the American Biograph Company, the projector was the invention of Herman Casler (1867-1939). Unlike Edison’s Kinetograph, which used 35 mm gauge film, Casler’s Biograph employed 68/70 mm sprocket-less film which produced an exceptionally large and clear image. From September 1896 it was being presented at vaudeville houses in America, and in March 1897 it was included on the bill at the Palace Theatre of Varieties in London for the first time. It would remain an attraction at the London Palace until 1902.

Rickards’ Biograph-Vaudeville Company re-opened the Palace on Monday, 23 August 1897. The first night programme comprised twelve short films including ‘President McKinley Receiving the Result of His Election, ‘Union Square New York, ‘The Falls of Niagara’ and ‘The Horseless Fire Engine’. This last named film, which showed a New York fire engine ‘snorting out volumes of smoke and raising clouds of dust’ as it races off to a extinguish a fire, was one of the most popular and repeated on subsequent nights by popular demand.⁵

Sheet music for ‘The Little Tin Gee-Gee’, one of the songs introduced at the Palace by Fanny Wentworth in 1897

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Fannie Liddiard, c.1897

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The Biograph was just one of the highlights of a packed programme. Opening night also saw the first Australian appearance of Fanny Wentworth, an English pianist, vocalist and character entertainer, who introduced the song ‘The Little Tin Gee-Gee’; the return of Lilian Tree, an operatic prima donna, who had previously been seen in Australia with the Simonsen Opera Company; Master Arthur Sherwood, a boy mezzo-soprano; illusionist Professor Charles Marritt; and Australian popular favourite, operatic and character vocalist Fanny Liddiard. The Biograph-Vaudeville combination ran until 30 September 1897.

Scene from A Bunch of Keys, 1897, with Addie Conyers centre right. Stereo glass plate negative by an unknown photographer.

Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Sydney

A season of American musical comedies by Charles H. Hoyt followed on 2 October with A Bunch of Keys, featuring another of Rickards’ recent acquisitions, Addie Conyers, supported by Fannie Liddiard, Lottie Moore, Albert Bellman and George Lauri. This was not Conyers first Australian appearance, she had been seen in 1892–93 as a member of the London Gaiety Burlesque Company.

Binks the Photographer followed on 20 October, with William Gourlay, Addie Conyers, Minnie Everett, Marietta Nash and George Lauri, but it lasted only a week. It seems American plays were not a popular choice and audiences stayed away. The musical comedy season came to an abrupt end on 26 November 1897—and with it, Harry Rickards’ lease on the Palace.

With audience numbers at the Tivoli in decline, Rickards soon realised that Sydney couldn’t profitably support two vaudeville houses. He reluctantly decided, after eleven months, to give up his lease on the Palace and devote his energies to the management of the Tivoli and the Opera House in Melbourne.

With Rickards’ early departure, George Adams’ representative Harrie Skinner was given the task of finding a suitable tenant for the theatre, and soon communications were being issued to leading English, American and European agents and managers.

In order to keep the ‘lights on’ between seasons, the theatre was made available to amateur groups such as the Lotus Club and Sydney Comedy Club.

Oscar Eliason aka Dante the Great, c.1898

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

‘Dante the Great’ poster, 1898

Will Alma Conjuring Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

From 8 October 1898–9 December 1898, the theatre played host to an extended season by the 29-year-old American magician Dante the Great, who was making his first appearance in Australia. Hailed as ‘the greatest magician living’, Dante lived up to the hype and enthralled audiences with his ‘original experiments in sleight-of-hand’. He also performed a number of elaborate tricks including ‘The Marvellous Bicyclist’, wherein his assistant Mdlle Edmunda (the stage name of his wife Virginia Eliason] ‘cycles through the air, upside down, in and out, backwards and forwards, in complete defiance of all the laws of gravitation’. In another trick, ‘The Beggar’s Dream’, Mdlle Edmunda, wearing rags, is placed under a canopy on a platform, and almost immediately her rags vanish and she is wearing a magnificent evening dress. Dante kept audiences spellbound for two months.⁶

Skinner’s next big coup was the engagement of Orpheus Myron McAdoo, an American singer and minstrel impresario, who was making a return visit to Australia.

McAdoo was a big draw card, having cemented a position as a favourite with Australian concert-goers since his first trip in 1888 with Fisk’s Jubilee Singers. He made a second extended visit with Fisk’s company in 1892 and remained on until 1895 with his own company, McAdoo’s Jubilee Singers. McAdoo had a deep voice, described as an ‘A-flat basso profundo’.

Orpheus Myron McAdoo, c.1898. Photo by Talma, Melbourne.

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University Library, New Haven, USA

‘An Evening with the Jubilee Singers’ by Bert Levy

Sydney Mail, 21 January 1899, p.151

McAdoo’s Jubilee Singers, during the 1890s. McAdoo is in the back row, second from left, with Mattie Allen McAdoo on his right. Photo by Talma, Melbourne.

National Library of Australia, Canberra.

Flashlight photograph of a scene from The Sea Nymphs, an operetta performed by the Lands Department Draftsmen’s Association on 10 May 1899

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

The McAdoo company opened at the Palace on Saturday, 17 December 1898, for an initial three weeks, but ended up staying for two-months. The company specialised in singing plantation songs, jubilee choruses and glees. Favourite songs included ‘Steal Away to Jesus’, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ and ‘Hear Dem Bells’. In addition to McAdoo, the principal members of the company were Mattie Allan McAdoo (Mrs McAdoo), billed as ‘the only lady tenor’—her rendition of ‘Come into the Garden, Maude’ was warmly encored; and Susie B. Anderson—described as ‘America’s Black Melba’—who sang the ‘Queen of the Night’ aria from The Magic Flute.

The current season ended on 28 January 1899 and in March 1899, McAdoo departed for America to organise a full-size African-American minstrel troupe. He placed recruitment advertisements in the Indianapolis Freeman informing prospective artistes: ‘The Palace Theatre, Sidney [sic], is the handsomest and most complete vaudeville house in the world.’⁷

During McAdoo’s absence, the Lands Department Draftsmen's Association gave a performance of Farnie and Lecocq’s operetta The Sea Nymphs on Friday, 10 May 1899. The following night, Dante returned for a four-week season (11 March 1899–8 April 1899), bringing with him a raft of new illusionistic wonders.

In June 1899, McAdoo returned with his new company, the Georgia Minstrels and Alabama Cakewalkers. They opened at the Palace on the seventeenth of the month. The first part of the entertainment resembled an ordinary minstrel show, ‘but the numbers introduced were greatly above those in the usual minstrel show’, including comic songs and dances. One of his leading recruits was the singer Flora Batson, known as the ‘coloured Jenny Lind’. Another was William Ferry, a rubber-boned performer known as ‘The Human Frog’. The second part of the bill introduced the ‘Cakewalk’, which saw the complete company strutting about the stage amid ‘rousing roars of laughter’ from the audience.⁸

Two weeks into the season, a rival minstrel company opened at the nearby Criterion Theatre. The presence of two similar outfits in Sydney proved challenging for McAdoo, and after struggling on for a further fortnight, he closed his season at the Palace on 12 July 1899 and embarked on an extended tour of the regions.

Programme for the week commencing 28 October 1899. Richards’ recycled the front covers of his Tivoli programmes for his shows at the Palace.

Mitchell Library Performance Program Collection, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Programme for the week commencing 28 October 1899. The reverse side of the programme is headed Palace Theatre and lists the acts.

Mitchell Library Performance Program Collection, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

In the early hours of Monday morning on 11 September 1899, fire broke out in Harry Rickards’ Tivoli Theatre in Castlereagh Street. The building was entirely gutted, destroying valuable sets, costumes and personal belongings. Rickards had only recently purchased the freehold of the building, having leased it since 1893. Fortunately the theatre was insured, but only for half its value. Though Rickards was in England at the time of the fire securing new acts, manager Leete lost no time in finding a new venue and the following day the company re-opened at the nearby Palace at a matinee performance. As one journalist put it:

The pretty little Palace Theatre—one of George Adams’ white elephants—will now have a chance to return the owner some interest on the outlay in its construction and elaborate decoration, which was carried out on a scale that no one but a ‘sweep promoter’ could stand.⁹

Rickards’ company remained at the Palace for five months, while the Tivoli Theatre was being rebuilt. To save costs, they reused the Tivoli programme covers.

Pages from a scrapbook showing Palace Theatre programmes from 1899

Author’s collection

Pages from a scrapbook showing Palace and Tivoli theatre programmes from 1899

Author’s collection

Little Alma Gray, c.1899. Photo by Talma, Melbourne.

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Polish juggler Paul Cinquevalli, c.1900. Photo by London Stereoscopic.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Artists who appeared at the Palace at this time included the London comedian and raconteur G.W. Hunter; the world renown Polish juggler Paul Cinquevalli (said to be one of the highest-paid entertainers ever engaged by Rickards); opera singer Signor Jesse Brandani (who interrupted his walking tour of the world to appear for a few nights); character vocalist Tom Costello; and the Russian specialty performers the Newsky Family; along with numerous old favourites such as Little Alma Gray.

The Tivoli company gave their last performance at the Palace on 19 January 1900. As the new Tivoli was still not complete, Rickards relocated his company to the Criterion Theatre pending the launch of his new variety theatre on 12 April 1900.

With Rickards out of the way, Adams had big plans for the Palace.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Clarence and Richmond Examiner (Grafton, NSW), 6 April 1897, p.4.

2. Evening News (Sydney), 1 February 1897, p.3.

3. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 5 April 1897, p.6.

4. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 17 August 1897, p.6.

5. Sydney Morning Herald, 30 August 1897, p.3.

6. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 10 October 1898, p.9.

7. Bill Egan, African American Entertainers in Australia and New Zealand, p.72.

8. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1899, p.8.

9. Kalgoorlie Western Argus, 5 October 1899, p.24.

References

Gae Anderson, Tivoli King: Life of Harry Rickards, Vaudeville Showman, Sid Harta Publishing, Glen Waverley, Vic, 2008.

Bill Egan, African American Entertainers in Australia and New Zealand: A history, 1788-1941, McFarland & Company, Jefferson, North Carolina, 2019.

Frank Van Straten, Tivoli, Thomas C. Lothian, South Melbourne, Vic, 2003.

Charles Waller, Magical Nights at the Theatre, Gerald Taylor Productions, Melbourne, 1980.

Newspapers

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW); Clarence and Richmond Examiner (Grafton, NSW), Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW); Evening News (Sydney, NSW); Kalgoorlie WesternArgus (WA), Sydney Morning Herald (NSW); Table Talk (Melbourne, Vic)

Acknowledgements

John S. Clark, Mimi Colligan, Bill Egan, Frank Van Straten

Montage by Judy Leech.

Rickards’ tivoli companymade their last appearance at the Palace on 19 January 1900. With their departure, short-lease seasons resumed at the theatre, ranging from single performances to one or two week seasons. They included Victor the conjuror; the Sydney Comedy Club; the Sydney Liedertafel (who premiered a new opera by Alfred Hill called Lady Dolly), and McAdoo’s Georgian Minstrels (with a variety program and performances of Uncle Tom’s Cabin). During February 1900, the tragedian Walter Bentley was using the theatre for rehearsals prior to taking his company on an extended tour around Australia.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, manager Skinner was making arrangements for significant alterations to the theatre to make it suitable for large-scale dramatic presentations.

In May 1899 Adams had purchased the premises of Gowing Brothers, tailors and outfitters, which occupied the corner of Market and George streets, part of which backed onto the Palace Theatre. In addition to consolidating his property holdings on the block, it also gave him the opportunity to expand the rear of the Palace Theatre. Minor works had been undertaken in mid-1899 when the stage was increased by a few feet. Now it was proposed to increase the depth of the stage by a further sixteen feet, making it 46 feet deep. Other changes to the auditorium and the widening of the proscenium by two and a half feet, would provide better views of the stage, allowing for increased seating capacity of the theatre. While still one of the smallest theatre in Sydney, the house could now seat over 1,300 patrons. Contracts were struck with builder Alexander Dean, and James Bull Alderson, the architect, was engaged to draw up the plans. Alderson had been responsible for the design of Adams’ Marble Bar in 1891.¹

Ironwork design for the Palace Theatre, drawn by James Marriott, Metalworker, Melbourne, 1901

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Sometime in 1901 Adams and Skinner commissioned the firm of Melbourne-based metalworker James Marriott to design a new verandah and portico to the Palace Hotel and Palace Theatre. These drawings, dated 1901, are at the State Library Victoria. It is not clear if these designs were carried out, but the new wrought iron canopies may have been proposed ahead of the Royal Visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York who arrived in Sydney on 27 May after opening the first Federal Parliament in Melbourne on 9 May 1901.

With the re-working of the interior complete, the Palace could now welcome a wider range of companies. The plan was to open with a comedy season by Charles Arnold and company on 9 June 1900, but Arnold’s plans changed and the date was pushed back to 28 July, though this too was altered and he was expected to open in late August following the completion of his Melbourne and Adelaide seasons.

To bridge the gap, Johnstone Sheldon’s War Lecture (with limelight views) occupied the theatre for a week from 30 June, and Boar War films, under the direction of Messrs Wyld and Freedman, were screened from 28 July to 21 August 1900.

Poster for the American production of Why Smith Left Home, 1897

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Programme cover for Charles Arnold’s production of Why Smith Left Home at the Palace Theatre, 1900

Mitchell Library Performance Programme Collection, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Charles Arnold’s company finally opened at the Palace on 25 August 1900, launching their comedy season with What Happened to Jones. Arnold was well-known to Australian theatregoers, having made two previous visits, during the 1880s, and again in the 1890s with Hans the Boatman, Captain Fritz and other plays.

For his third tour, he brought with him several new comedies. The first, What Happened to Jones, a three-act farce by George Broadhurst, had been performed in New York in 1897, with George C. Boniface as Jones, the travelling salesman who disguises himself as a cleric in an attempt to escape the police. Having purchased the British and Colonial rights, Charles Arnold first produced the play at the Grand Theatre, Croydon on 30 May 1898 (with himself as Jones), prior to opening at the Strand Theatre in London on 17 July 1898, where it played for 325 performances. With the conclusion of the London season, he took it and other plays to South Africa. He arrived in Australia in April 1900, opening at the Melbourne Princess’s on the 18th of the month. The play proved a huge success and played an unprecedented eight weeks or 52 nights (76,000 people). Arnold was said to have made £5000, with the nightly receipts eclipsing all previous records for the theatre (with the exception of the Bernhardt and London Gaiety Burlesque seasons of 1895).²

In Sydney, What Happened to Jonesplayed to full houses for seven weeks. It closed on Wednesday, 17 October 1899, the occasion of its 54th night, thereby eclipsing Melbourne by two performances! As a result of playing Jonesfor the full term, Sydney did not get to see The Professor’s Love Story, which had been given its Australian premiere in Melbourne.

With the conclusion of the Arnold season, the company departed for New Zealand, via Hobart.

Pending the arrival of the Hawtrey Comedy Company in December, the theatre remained dark, with the exception of a few one-off performances. The most notable was the world premiere on 1 November 1900 of Thou Foolby the Rev. George Walters, author of Joseph of Canaan. The play was being performed for copyright purposes, with the prospect of producing it in London (though this does not seem to have happened). The play was staged by Philip Lytton, who also played the leading role. He was supported by a cast of amateurs.

The Hawtrey Comedy Company, with (1 to r) Henry Stephenson, Herbert Ross, Ruby Ray, E.F. Bradley, W.F. Hawtrey, Mrs Ross and Alma Allen. Photo by Talma, Sydney and Melbourne.

From Sydney Mail, 22 December 1900, p.1507

The next play at the Palace was A Message from Mars, a fantastical comedy-drama in three acts by Richard Ganthony, which was being performed for the first time in Australia on 22 December 1900. This play had been a huge hit in London, and was still playing at the Strand Theatre when the Australian production opened.³ The play was a morality tale, not unlike Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, whereby a selfish man is reformed after a visitor from Mars appears to him in a dream and shows him the effect of his actions on the people around him. When the play opened in London, the principal characters were played by Charles H. Hawtrey (Horace Parker), Arthur Williams (Tramp), Jessie Bateman (Minnie Templer) and G.S. Titheradge (Messenger from Mars).

Scene from the New York production of A Message from Mars, with Henry Stephenson (left) as the Messenger, Fred Thorne as the Tramp (centre), and Charles Hawtrey (standing right) as Horace Parker. Photo by Byron, New York.

University of Washington, University Libraries, Washington, DC

The Hawtrey Comedy Company was managed by Charles Hawtrey’s brother William F. Hawtrey, who also played the role of the tramp in A Message from Mars. Hawtrey had been working in Australia since 1897 as stage manager for Williamson and Musgrove’s Dramatic Company, but on the dissolution of the partnership had returned to England to arrange the current tour. The role of Horace Parker was played by Herbert Ross, Ruby Ray was Minnie Templer, and the Messenger from Mars was portrayed by Henry Stephenson, who had understudied the role in London. With the conclusion of the Australian season, Stephenson would join Charles Hawtrey in New York, making his Broadway debut in the role of the Messenger.

Ahead of the company’s arrival scenic artist Harry Whaite recreated the London scenery.

The play proved a huge success in Sydney and played to packed houses for eight weeks.

To mark the new year 1901 and the foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia, Sydney’s building were decked with lights. The illuminations along Pitt Street were considered particularly striking:

Tattersall’s Hotel and the Palace Theatre were prettily lighted up with electric lights, small coloured globes outlined the windows; over the verandah in the centre of the building was a transparency scene representing Her Majesty the Queen; above this likeness were the words ‘Our People, One Destiny’, underneath a representation of the British coat of arms, supported by the Australia coat of arms with the words ‘The Crimson Thread of Kinship Sealed with Australian Blood’.⁴

Herbert Ross, O.P. Heggie and Gregan McMahon as Tom, Dick and Harry, photographed during the Melbourne season. In Sydney, the role of Harry had been played by Philip Lytton. Photo by Talma, Sydney and Melbourne.

From The Arena (Melbourne), 28 September 1901, p.12

Ruby Ray, one of the leading ladies in the Hawtrey Comedy Company

Author’s collection

The second play of the Hawtrey season was Tom, Dick and Harry, a three-act farcical comedy by Mrs Romualdo Pacheco, described as a ‘hyper-inflated farcical version of The Comedy of Errors’ involving three identical red-headed men: one pair of twins and another who for reason of his own copies their appearance. First produced in New York in 1892 under the title Incog, it starred Charles Dickson, Louis Mann and Robert Edeson as Tom, Dick and Harry, with Clara Lipman as Mollie Somers. When Charles H. Hawtrey produced the play in England he changed the title and relocated the setting from San Francisco to Margate. The first production took place at the Theatre Royal, Manchester in August 1893, and it opened in London at the Trafalgar Square [Duke of York’s] Theatre in November 1893. In London, the complexity of the plot with three identical characters, confused audiences and when the play was sent on tour, Charles Hawtrey hit on the idea of adding an additional scene that showed the bogus twin applying his make-up.⁵ The play later formed the basis for the 1908 musical Three Twins.

Tom, Dick and Harry was performed for the first time in Australia at the Palace on 23 February 1901. The cast included Herbert Ross, O.P. Heggie and Philip Lytton as the eponymous Tom, Dick and Harry, with W.F. Hawtrey as Colonel Stanhope, and Roxy Barton and Ruby Ray as Molly [sic] Somers and Daisy Armitage. Also on the bill was the one-act play A Highland Legacy by Brandon Thomas (the author of Charley’s Aunt), with W.F. Hawtrey as Tammy Tamson MacDonnel. This Scots trifle, first performed in London in 1888, saw W.F. Hawtrey as a Scottish laird who disguises himself as an old Highland retainer in order to discover the character of an estranged nephew who stands to inherit a substantial fortune.

The double-bill played to packed houses at the Palace until the end of the season on 29 March 1901.

Poster for the American production of Why Smith Left Home, 1899

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Actor George Willoughby, c.1904

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

The following evening saw the return of Charles Arnold with the comedy Why Smith Left Home. This piece, like What Happened to Jones, had been written by George Broadhurst. In England, the title role had been created by Maclyn Arbuckle at the Grand Theatre, Margate, 27 April 1899. Arbuckle would go on to star in the first London (Strand Theatre, 1 May 1899) and New York (Hoyt’s Theatre, 2 September 1899) productions.

First produced by Charles Arnold during his South African tour, Why Smith Left Homewas given its Australian premiere at the Palace Theatre on 30 March 1901. The farce concerned a newly married couple who decide to spend their honeymoon at home, but are unable to get any time together when their house is filled with noisy servants and visitors. The roles of Mr and Mrs Smith were played by George Willoughby and Agnes Knights, with Charles Arnold as Count von Guggenheim and Dot Frederic as Julia. Smith was played until 3 May 1901.

Entertainer and baritone G.H. Snazelle, c.1898. Photo by A.H. Fry, Brighton, England. From Snazelleparilla, 1898.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

William Hawtrey’s famous brother, Charles Hawtrey, c.1899. Photo by Bassano, London.

Author’s collection

With the departure of Charles Arnold, there was a change of pace at the Palace.

On 4 May 1901, G.H. Snazelle presented Our Navy. This was not a play, but an illustrated lecture on the capabilities of the British Navy. Rather than simply a catalogue of achievements and a description of the Navy’s arsenal, Snazelle’s ‘lecture’ included anecdotes and songs delivered in his own inimitable way. The illustrations were provided in the form of a projected film made by G. West and Son of Southsea, which was made on board HMS Jupiter during manoeuvres. Snazelle was well known to Sydney audiences having toured Australia in the early 1890s, presenting his one-man show Music, Song and Story. The possessor of a fine baritone voice, during his first visit he also sang with the Royal Comic Opera Company, notably as Bouillabaisse in Paul Jones, alongside Nellie Stewart and Marion Burton.

Snazelle’s entertainment held the stage at the Palace for five weeks.

Poster for In the Soup, Richmond Theatre, London, 1901

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Playbill for In the Soup at the Palace Theatre, 1901

Author’s collection

On 27 May 1901, the Hawtrey Comedy Company returned to the Palace. A Message from Marsand Tom, Dick, and Harry were revived for the first four weeks of the season, and on 15 June 1901, they presented a new three-act farce, In the Soup by the late Ralph R. Lumley.

In the Soup concerned an impoverish junior barrister, Horace Gillibrand, who after marrying takes on an expensive London apartment. In order to maintain its upkeep and deceive a visiting uncle, the apartment is sub-let to a number of different tenants, the play culminating in an riotous dinner scene in which sleeping powder is added to the soup. Following a ‘tryout’ at the Opera House, Northampton in August 1900, a revised version of the farce was brought to London later the same month. Comedian James A. Welch (who would go on to score a huge hit in When Knights Were Bold) played one of the lead roles, supported by John Beauchamp, Audrey Ford and Maria Saker.

In Sydney, the role of the barrister was played by Herbert Ross, with W.F. Hawtrey as Monsieur Moppert, one of the tenants, Henry Stephenson as the peppery uncle, and Ruby Ray as Mrs Gillibrand. The farce, which had played for over a year in London, proved just as popular with Sydneysiders and played until the end of the season on 13 July 1901.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Australian Star, 6 January 1900, p.3; Sydney Morning Herald, 2 May 1900, p.4

2. Evening Journal, 2 July 1900, p.3

3. A Message from Mars was performed at the Avenue Theatre, 22 November 1899 to 30 March 1901, transferring to the Prince of Wales Theatre, 6 April 1901 to 20 April 1901, a total of 544 performances.

4. Sydney Morning Herald, 2 January 1901, p.14

5. Charles Hawtrey, pp.245-246

References

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

Guide to Selecting Plays, Samuel French, 1913

G.S. Edwards, Snazelleparilla, Chatto & Windus, 1898

Charles Hawtrey, The Truth at Last, Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1924

J.P. Wearing, The London Stage: A calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, 1890–1899, 2nd edn, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

Newspapers

The Arena (Melbourne); Australian Star (Sydney, NSW); Evening Journal (Adelaide, SA); Sydney Mail (NSW); Sydney Morning Herald (NSW)

With thanks to

John S. Clark, Judy Leech

 

Following the finalperformance by the Hawtrey Comedy Company on 13 July 1901, actor-manager Robert Brough (of the Brough Comedy Company) took on a short lease of the Palace Theatre. Rather than producing a season of plays, he introduced British magician Charles Bertram to Sydney audiences.

Known as the ‘Court Magician’ or the ‘Royal Conjurer’, Bertram was a master of sleight of hand, appearing before Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle on 23 occasions.¹ Bertram’s Australian visit was part of a world tour that also took him through India, China, Japan, New Zealand and America. Robert Brough, who had had been performing with his dramatic company in India and China, had seen one of Bertram’s shows and agreed to manage his Australian visit.

Charles Bertram: Now on a grand tour of the world, 1901

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Charles Bertram, c.1900. Photo by Elliott & Fry, London

Following a short season in Melbourne (8 June 1901), Bertram visited Bendigo and Wagga Wagga en route for Sydney, opening at the Palace Theatre on 20 July 1901. Announced initially for ‘twelve nights only’, he stayed on for an extra week, during which time he introduced some new illusions including ‘The Vanishing Lady’. Yet despite his cordial welcome in Sydney, his overall Australian tour was not deemed a success. His skilful manipulation of cards, flags, rings and flower pots was better suited to a drawing room and too small for audiences accustomed to watching much larger shows.²

The author of several books, Bertram wrote a comprehensive account of this tour which he called A Magician in Many Lands.³

Henry Lee. From The World’s Entertainers Souvenir, Palace Theatre, Sydney, 1901.

John Clark collection.

James G. Rial. From The World’s Entertainers Souvenir, Palace Theatre, Sydney, 1901.

John Clark collection.

Following Bertram’s departure, Henry Lee and J.G. Rial took over the Palace with a season of ‘polite vaudeville’, opening on 10 August 1901. Their company, known as the World’s Entertainers, had been formed in America and comprised a number of clever and accomplished variety turns. Key among them was Henry Lee (seen at Palace in 1896 with Phil Goatcher’s Stars of All Nations company), who impersonated ‘Great Men, Past and Present’. Through the use of lighting and changes in costume, he morphed from Shakespeare to Bismarck, to Tennyson, to King Edward VII and Pope Leo XIII. Other artists included the acrobatic comedians Kelly and Ashby who stunned audiences with their billiard table act; Josephine Gassman from Louisiana who sang songs supported by two ‘quaint and diminutive’ piccaninnies; and Charles R. Sweet, the ‘musical burglar’ who amused with humorous ditties and anecdotes. Edison’s latest movie camera, the Projectoscope also made an appearance. All in all it was deemed a ‘capital’ bill of entertainment.⁴

On the final night of the season, 30 October 1901, photographer Talma took a flashlight photo of the audience.⁵

Hans the Boatman at the Palace theatre – as seen by cartoonist Zif.

From Sydney Sportsman, 8 January 1902, p.2

Dot Frederic and Charles Arnold in a scene from The Professor’s Love Story. Photo by Talma, Melbourne & Sydney.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

With the vaudeville season over, the theatre was made available to amateur groups and others pending the return of Charles Arnold and his company on 26 December 1901.

Arnold, who had played two previous seasons at the Palace opened with a revival of Hans the Boatman, a sentimental play with songs that he had first performed in Australia in the 1880s. Hanswas followed by a reprisal of plays from his current repertoire: What Happened to Jones and Why Smith Left Home. Mid-way through the season, on 18 January 1902, he presented a new play, The Professor’s Love Story by J.M. Barrie.

The Professor’s Love Story first saw the light of day in New York in 1892 when it was produced at the Star Theatre, with E.S. Willard in the lead. It seems it had originally been written for Henry Irving who turned it down. Believing the play to be worthless, Barrie subsequently sold the American rights to Willard for £50. After touring the play successfully for two years, Willard eventually brought it to London (opening at the Comedy Theatre in June 1894), by which time Barrie had acquired an agent who secured a flat-rate royalty for the play that also covered any future American (and presumably Australian) performances.⁶

Charles Arnold obtained the colonial rights from E.S. Willard and The Professor’s Love Story was performed for the first time in Australia at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne in June 1900.

Like so much of Barrie’s work, The Professor’s Love Story is a quixotic piece. Its central character is a Scots physicist, Professor Goodwillie, who falls in love with his secretary, but unaware of why he feels the way he does, he consults a physician. Critics and audiences were delighted by Arnold’s performance. The Sydney Morning Herald for instance observed:

Mr Charles Arnold showed himself a light comedian who could touch the pathetic stop with a sure hand, and his portrait of the old-young professor was true to the picture drawn by the author … [He] played throughout with extreme quiet and refinement, showing with much simplicity of manner the professor’s entire unconsciousness of his love for Lucy. His professor was, indeed a man of many winning and endearing qualities.⁷

Arnold was supported by Dot Frederic as Lucy, with other roles filled by Inez Bensusan, Hope Mayne, Agnes Knights and George Willoughby.

The close of the Sydney season on 12 February 1902 brought Arnold’s 96 week Australian tour to an end. During that time it was estimated he had played before 750,000 people. He was also said to have netted £24,000 from the tour, £4000 of which went to George Broadhurst, the author of What Happened to Jones, in royalties.⁸

In a sad footnote to the tour, November 1901 also saw the beginning of the second wave of bubonic plague in Sydney, with cases peaking in February/March 1902.⁹ Two members of Arnold’s company succumbed, Sallie Booth on 27 February and Ada Lee (a younger sister of Jennie Lee) on 1 March. Miss Booth had played Alvina in What Happened to Jonesand Lavinia Daly in Why Smith Left Home, and Ada Lee had been seen as Helma in What Happened to Jonesand Effie in The Professor’s Love Story.

The World’s Entertainers, 1901/1902

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Violet Elliott, pictured in 1904, after she had moved to London. Photo by Lizzie Caswall Smith.

On 15 February 1902 the World’s Entertainers returned for an extended season, with new artists having arrived from America on 8 February. They were now under the management of J.C. Williamson, Lee and Rial. In addition to Henry Lee, Charles R. Sweet, Josephine Gassman and Arthur Nelstone, new acts included Bunth and Rudd (eccentric comedians); The Marvellous Lottos (novelty cyclists); Carl Nilsson’s Troupe (in their Original Flying Ballet); George Lyding (American tenor); Mdlle Ilma De Monza (Parisian singer); and Mdlle Adele (‘The Lady with the Wonderful Fingers’).

Over the next four months the line-up changed with artist swapping between the Palace in Sydney and Bijou in Melbourne, or going on tour. Some local artists also joined the company including Violet Elliott, often referred to as the ‘Lady bass’. The World’s Entertainers filled the theatre for four months, closing on 28 May 1902.¹⁰

Frank Thornton’s 5th Australian Tour, 1902

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Vera Fordyce, leading lady with the Frank Thornton’s London Comedy Company. Photo by Lallie Charles, London.

Frank Thornton was one of the most popular comedians to ever visit Australia, making his fifth trip ‘down under’ in 1902. During previous visits he had introduced some well-known farces including The Private Secretary, Charley’s Aunt, The Strange Adventures of Miss Brownand The Bookmaker. On this visit, he had two new plays: Facing the Musicby J.H. Darnley and A Little Ray of Sunshineby Mark Ambient and Wilton Heriot.

He also brought with him his London Comedy Company of eight players: Vera Fordyce (leading lady), Phoebe Mercer (aristocratic old ladies), Leonie Norbury (ingenue), Katie Lee (character), Joseph Wilson (comedian), Alex Bradley (principal juvenile), Galway Herbert (juvenile), J.H. Denton (character), and Frank Wilson (stage manager). Katie Lee was perhaps the best known of these players being a sister of Jennie Lee and the late Ada Lee.

Thornton commenced his tour in Melbourne on 3 May 1902 with the Australian premiere of Facing the Music, relocating to the Sydney Palace on 31 May.¹¹

Like so many farces, Facing the Music has an absurd plot. It involves two ‘John Smiths’, one a curate and the other the owner of racehorses, two ‘Mrs John Smiths’, a Colonel Duncan Smith, and two housekeepers.

First performed in the English provinces during 1900 with Thornton as Mr John Smith, Thornton also produced the first London production at the Strand Theatre (10 February 1900) with James Welch as the star.

Facing the Music proved something of a hit with Sydneysiders, playing for six weeks at the Palace, but it was withdrawn prematurely to make way for the first Australian production of A Little Ray of Sunshine on 19 July 1902. This comedy was in a different vein to Facing the Music. Rather than relying on broad humour for laughs, it was more of a character piece, and closer in sentiment to a morality tale than a knock-about farce. It had been a success in London, with W.S. Penley as Lord Markham, an eccentric millionaire who having deserted his family as a youth returns to the family seat and through various acts of benevolence helps them into become better people.

A Little Ray of Sunshineplayed until the close of the season on 7 August. Although not as engaging as its predecessor, it seemed to please much of the audience.

In August, J.C. Williamson Ltd. sub-leased the theatre from Messrs Lee and Rial for a four months period . Once again the Pitt Street venue was coming to the rescue of a company that had lost its usual theatre due to fire. In 1899 with the destruction of the Tivoli, Harry Rickards turned to the Palace. Now JCW was in need of a new venue following the burning of Her Majesty’s Theatre in March. Williamson’s maintained two Sydney theatres, Her Majesty’s in Pitt Street, and the Theatre Royal in Castlereagh Street. With one theatre out of action they needed somewhere to present their new raft of musical comedy attractions.

JCW’s first offering was San Toy, an original musical play by Edward Morton, with music by Sydney Jones. San Toy had its Australian premiere at Her Majesty’s in Melbourne in December 1901 and since that time it had toured throughout Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland. When it arrived in Sydney, only one of the original twenty-seven principals remained, namely Ernest Mozar, who played Lieutenant Harvey Tucker.

The key roles were now performed by Rose Musgrove as San Toy (replacing Carrie Moore); Lillian Digges as Dudley (in place of Grace Palotta); Fred H. Graham as Li (rather than George Lauri); Arthur Crane as Captain Bobby Preston (for Charles Kenningham); Charles Trood as the Emperor of China (instead of Hugh J. Ward); and Lulu Evans as Poppy (succeeding Florence Young). Fred H. Graham had also taken over from Spencer Barry as stage director.

Lillian Digges and Arthur Crane in The Messenger Boy, 1902. State Library Victoria, Melbourne.

San Toy had its initial performance at George Edwardes’ Daly’s Theatre in London in October 1899, with Marie Tempest in the title role. It held the stage for over two years during which time the lead was also played by Florence Collingbourne. The musical’s oriental setting provided the opportunity for superb costumes (designed by Percy Anderson) and settings (painted by Hawes Craven and Joseph Harker), the latter being copied from London models by JCW resident scenic artists John Gordon and George Dixon.

The next production was a revival of The Belle of New York, a musical comedy that had first been seen in Australia during 1899 with a largely American cast headed by Louise Hepner. At the Palace, it played from 13 September 1902 to 7 October 1902, with Lillian Digges as the Belle.

On 3 October a potentially fatal accident occurred when a member of the audience fell from the gallery balcony into the stalls. Miraculously no-one was below and he survived the fall suffering only from shock and a fractured knee.¹²

 The final offering for the present season was The Messenger Boy, which was being performed in Australia for the first time. Due to the elaborate preparations necessary for the production, the opening night was postponed from the Saturday to the following Wednesday, 8 October 1902.¹³

Featuring a book by James T. Tanner and Alfred Murray, lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenbank, and music by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton, The Messenger Boy had first been performed at the Gaiety Theatre in London during February 1900 following a try-out in Plymouth. With principal roles played by Edmund Payne, Harry Nicolls, Violet Lloyd, Maud Hobson and Connie Ediss, the musical was a ‘runaway success’, playing for 429 performance.

The Australian production featured artists from JCW’s comic opera company: Fred H. Graham as Tommy Bang (the Messenger Boy), Arthur Crane as Clive Radnor, Arthur Lissant as Hooker Pasha, Lillian Digges as Nora, Blanche Wallace as Lady Punchestown, Rose Musgrove as Rosa, and Fred H. Graham as the stage director.

The exotic locales in which the musical was set gave JCW scenic designer John Gordon the opportunity to impress with scenes of London, Brindisi, Cairo and Paris.

Henry Lee as Cyrano de Bergerac

From The Evening News (Sydney), 1 November 1902, p.2

Eugenie Duggan. Photo by Talma, Melbourne & Sydney.

Author’s collection

With the departure of the JCW company, William Anderson took over as sub-lessee and manager. He launched his season with Cyrano de Bergerac on 1 November 1902, with American Henry Lee (formerly seen with the World’s Entertainers) in the title role, and Eugenie Duggan as Roxane. This was the debut of Edmund Rostand’s play in Sydney. First performed in Paris in 1897, the play was adapted for the English-speaking stage in 1900 by Stuart Ogilvie and Louis N. Parker, with Richard Mansfield creating the title role in America and Charles Wyndham in the UK.

Anderson’s company had premiered the play at the Melbourne Bijou in August 1902, with Lee as Cyrano and Janet Waldorf as Roxane. It featured elaborate costumes designed and executed by Messrs Lincoln, Stuart & Co., and scenery by John Little and Alfred Tischbauer (Alta).

It seems Henry Lee prepared the text himself. ‘Lee’s is a bad translation, in which much of the point and relish of the comedy was lost’, wrote one critic, ‘Probably the Sydney gallery would have been just as uneasy had the play been well done, but I must claim for them that the Cyrano of the performance leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.’¹⁴

In fact the behaviour of the gallery so incensed Lee that on opening night he stopped the play during the last act to address the audience, declaring: ‘This is my first appearance in Sydney in drama, and were it not that I am under engagement to Mr Anderson, and am in honour bound to fulfil my contract, it would be my last appearance.’¹⁵ The following Monday, Lee called in sick with gout and Edmund Duggan took over. Despite suggestions that Lee would be back, he was not, and the planned four-week season came to an abrupt close at the end of the week. As a result, William Anderson had to rush in a new show: Walter Melville’s melodrama The Worst Woman in London. As the titular character, Frances Vere, Eugenie Duggan was at her evil best, and with a plot brimming with dastardly acts of blackmail, murder, arson and robbery, audiences were kept on the edge of their seats. With Anderson’s lease ending on 28 November 1902, The Worst Woman in London was withdrawn at the height of its success.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 July 1901, p.2

2. Charles Waller, Magical Nights at the Theatre, p.112

3. Charles Bertram, A Magician in Many Lands, G. Routledge & Sons Ltd., 1911. Bertram died in 1907 (aged only 53) and the book was finished by his wife.

4. The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 August 1901, p.3

5. The Evening News (Sydney), 30 October 1901, p.1. Unfortunately the photo does not seem to be extant.

6. Denis Mackail, The Story of JMB, p.203

7. The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 January 1902, p.5

8. The Critic (Adelaide), 22 February 1902, p.13; Brisbane Courier, 22 February 1902, p.9

9. The first wave of plague occurred in Sydney between January and August 1900, with 103 deaths. The second wave, which lasted six weeks, claimed 39 lives. See The History of Plague in Australia, 1900–1925.

10. For more information on the World’s Entertainers, see Australian Variety Theatre Archive, https://ozvta.com/international-tourists/

11. The Princess Theatre was required by George Musgrove’s company.

12. The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 October 1902, p.11

13. The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 October 1902, p.4

14.The Critic(Adelaide), 29 November 1902, p.13

15. Punch (Melbourne), 13 November 1902, p.31

References

Charles Bertram, A Magician in Many Lands, G. Routledge & Sons Ltd., 1911

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

JHL Clumpston & F. McCallum, The History of Plague in Australia, 1900-1925, Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Health, 1926

Denis Mackail, The Story of JMB, Charles Scriber’s Sons, 1941

Charles Waller, Magical Nights at the Theatre, edited and published by Gerald Taylor, 1980

J.P. Wearing, The London Stage: A Calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, 1890–1899, 2nd edn, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

J.P. Wearing, The London Stage: A Calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, 1900-1909, 2nd edn, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

Newspapers

The Critic (Adelaide, SA); Brisbane Courier (QLD); The Evening News (NSW); Punch(Melbourne); The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW)

With thanks to

John S. Clark, Mimi Colligan, Judy Leech, Les Tod

J.C. williamson took over the lease of the Palace Theatre in December 1902, but due to the success of his Royal Comic Opera Company in Melbourne he decided not to open in Sydney until Boxing Day night.

In the meantime, on the afternoon of Monday, 22 December 1902, Williamson made the Palace available to Dolly Castles, a young Melbourne singer who was making her professional debut in Sydney ‘before a few professional musicians and connoisseurs’. Sixteen-year-old Dolly was a younger sister of the celebrated soprano Amy Castles. The previous week, on 16 December, the two sisters had participated in the Grand Festival of Sacred Music at St Mary’s Cathedral. In addition to singing principal roles in Graun’s Te Deum, Dolly also sang ‘Viae Sion lugent’ from Gounod’s Gallia. For her recital at the Palace Theatre, she chose the ‘Jerusalem’ aria from Galliaand Tosti’s ‘Good-bye’. Described as having ‘a resonant soprano of firm, pure quality’, Williamson championed the young singer and arranged for her to appear in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane prior to her departure for Paris to study under M. Bouhy.¹

Miss Dolly Castles. Photo by Talma & Co., Melbourne and Sydney.

Author’s collection

Florence Young as Paul Jones, 1903. Photo by Talma, Sydney & Melbourne.

From The Australasian Stage Annual, 1905, p.27

On Friday, 26 December, the Royal Comic Opera Company opened at the Palace in a revival of Dorothy, first seen in Australia in 1887 with Leonora Braham in the title role. With this revival Florence Young was playing Dorothy for the first time in Sydney, with Celia Ghiloni as Lydia, and Maud Chetwynd as Phyllis. Two new leading men, Reginald Roberts and Harold Thorley, were Geoffrey Wilder and Harry Sherwood respectively, with George Lauri reprising his old role of Lurcher. The conductor was Leon Caron, with scenery by George Gordon. Dorothywas performed until 9 January 1903.

The following evening Planquette’s comic opera Paul Jones was revived with Florence Young in the title role, supported by Reginald Roberts as Rufino de Martinez, Hugh Ward as Don Trocadero, George Lauri as Bouillabaisse, Maud Chetwynd as Chopinette, Celia Ghiloni as Malaguena, and Carrie Moore as Yvonne. As the Sydney Morning Heraldreminded audiences, ‘Paul Jones is probably one of the most successful of comic operas ever produced in this country, and the revival will bring pleasant memories to playgoers of 10 or 12 years ago’ when Marian Burton created the ‘trouser’ role of Paul Jones in Australia.²

Overflowing audiences greeted the Royal Comic Opera Company at every performance during their all-too-short season. Paul Jones was withdrawn after only fourteen performances to make way for farewell productions of The Mikado (24–30 January), Robin Hood (2–6 February), and The Geisha(7–20 February).

George Willoughby, 1904. Photo by The Poulsen Studio, Brisbane.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Roxy Barton, 1903. Photo by Talma.

From The Australasian Stage Annual, 1904, p.43

On 21 February 1903 the Palace Theatre erupted with laughter when George Broadhurst’s The Wrong Mr. Wrightwas produced in Sydney for the first time. It was presented by George Willoughby and Edwin Geach, who had just concluded a successful ten month tour of Australia and New Zealand. According to newspaper reports, Willioughby and Geach had taken over Charles Arnold’s company and had been so successful that their ‘receipts even exceeded those of Mr. Charles Arnold’s phenomenal tour with What Happened to Jones, a record that would make many managers envious’.³

Like Broadhurst’s other farcical comedies, The Wrong Mr. Wright, as the title suggests revolves around mistaken identity, whereby a stingy businessman, after being frauded of $5000 by a trusted employee, engages detectives to capture the thief. He offers a reward, but when he hears that the culprit is at Old Point Comfort, he decides to go to the resort in disguise and capture the criminal himself, thereby saving the reward. He assumes the name of Mr. Wright, which also happens to be the alias of the thief. At the resort, completely out of character, he falls head over heels for a young lady, and starts spending money recklessly in an attempt to impress her. It so happens that the lady is a detective eager to earn the reward, and she assumes that he is the thief.

Scene from Act 3 of The Wrong Mr. Wright, 1902

The Wrong Mr. Wrighthad first been performed in Boston in 1896, with Roland Reed and Isadore Rush in the leading roles. They played a month at the Bijou Theatre in New York from 6 September 1897, prior to taking it on tour throughout the USA along with other Broadhurst comedies. When it was first performed at the Strand Theatre in London in 1897 with Thomas A. Wise and Constance Collier in the leads, it ran for almost a year.

At the Palace Theatre, The Wrong Mr. Wright played for a month. The lead roles were performed by George Willoughby as Singleton Sites, with Roxy Barton as Henrietta Oliver, closing on 20 March 1903.

The following evening, On and Offwas performed for the first time in Sydney. This was a French farce adapted by an unnamed hand (possibly Catherine Riley) from Le contrôleur des wagon-lits by Alexandre Bisson. The story defies summary but it concerns an unhappy husband, George Godfray, who attempts to escape the clutches of his overbearing parents-in-law by pretending to be an inspector of railway sleeping cars.

The play was considered a comedy hit in New York, running for three months at the Madison Square Theatre during 1898/1899, with E.M. Holland as Godfray, Amelia Bingham as Madeline (his wife), Maggie Holloway Fisher as Mme Brumaire (the mother-in-law), and Katharine Florence as Rose Martel (the other woman). The play was even more successful in London at the Vaudeville Theatre where it played for seven months from December 1898, with George Giddens, Elliott Page, Elsie Chester and Lucie Milner in the leads.

In Sydney, it was performed three weeks, from 21 March to 9 April 1903, with George Willoughby as the down trodden husband, supported by Roxy Barton, Roland Watts-Phillips and Ethel Appleton.

On Saturday, 28 March 1903, Willoughby and Geach hosted a Grand Combination Charity Matinee in aid of the Lord Mayor’s Drought Fund which saw The Players supported by Nellie Stewart and members of the Willoughby and Geach Company in The Ironmaster and The Grey Parrot.

With the final performance of On and Offon 9 April 1903, the Willoughby and Geach season came to a close.

George Giddens, c.1906. Photo by Biograph. Published by Rotary Photo Co Ltd, London.

Author’s collection.

Playbill for Are You a Mason?, which was performed for the first time in Australia on 11 April 1903

Author’s collection

Following the presentation of a Sacred Concert on 10 April for Easter, J.C. Williamson was once again lessee, opening a season of comedies with Are You a Mason?—for the first time in Australia. This comedy was adapted by Leo Ditrichstein from the German play Logen Bruderby Carl Laufs and Kurt Krantz.

Williamson’s New Comedy Company was a top notch one, with West End comedian George Gidden as Amos Bloodgood, the role he created when the play was first performed in England.

The fun begins when Frank Perry (played by Cecil Ward) promises his new wife (Ethel Knight Mollison) that while she is away on a visit he will become a Mason. However, during her absence, he goes out on the town and fails to fulfil his promise. On her return, rather than tell her the truth, he pretends that he has done what she has asked. When his in-laws arrive, he discovers that his father-in-law (Amos Bloodgood, played by George Giddens) is in exactly the same predicament. So when his wife’s unmarried sister starts courting a real Mason, the two pretend Masons are at risk of being exposed.

Are You a Mason?was first performed in New York at Wallack’s Theatre on 1 April 1901, with Thomas A. Wise as Amos Bloodgood, May Robson as Caroline Bloodgood, John C. Rice as Frank Perry, Esther Tittell as Eva Perry, and Leo Ditrichstein as George Fisher. This production ran for 32 performances. It was subsequently revived at the Garrick Theatre in August 1901 with a similar cast, where it ran for an additional month.

The London production, which opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre on 12 September 1901 (transferring to the Royalty Theatre on 31 March 1902), ran for a side-splitting seven months.

Hotel scene from the London production of A Night Out, 1896, performed in Australia as Oh! What a Night! George Giddens as Joseph Pinglet is sixth from the right. Photo by Dover Street Studios, London. From The Tatler, 28 August 1907, p.185.

The Comedy Company’s next offering was Oh! What a Night!on 23 May 1903. Adapted from the French farce of Georges Feydeau and Maurice Desvallieres, it was described in the advertising as ‘one of the funniest, wittiest, cleverist, brightest, sauciest, quaintest comedies ever written’.⁴

Originally performed as L’Hôtel du Libre échange in Paris in 1894, the play had many outings on the English speaking stage. It was seen in New York as The Gay Parisians(1895) and in London as A Night Out (1896), the same title given to the 1920’s musical comedy version adapted by George Grossmith and Arthur Miller, with music by Willie Redstone. More recently it formed the basis of Peter Glenville’s comedy Hotel Paradiso (1956) and John Mortimer’s A Little Hotel On the Side(1984).

It is probable that Oh! What a Night!was actually A Night Out under a new title, with George Giddens reprising his original character of Joseph Pinglet. It played until the end of the Williamson comedy season on 5 June 1903.

Maggie Moore as Lizzie Stofel in Struck Oil, 1903. This photo was taken during the NZ leg of her current tour by Hemus Sarony (NZ) Photo.

From The Australasian Stage Annual, 1904, p.35

Playbill for Struck Oil, which opened at the Palace on 6 April 1903

Author’s collection

The following evening, Saturday, 6 June 1903, saw the reappearance of Maggie Moore, Williamson’s former acting partner and ex-wife. Her opening piece was Struck Oil, the well-known comedy vehicle that she and Williamson performed when they made their Australian debuts in 1874. Maggie revived her ‘original, inimitable, and altogether remarkable impersonation’ of Lizzie Stofel, while Williamson’s old role of John Stofel, the Dutch shoemaker, was now played by John F. Ford.⁵

Struck Oil played for a fortnight. On Saturday, 20 June 1903, Maggie introduced a brand-new character to Sydney audiences: The Widow From Japan, a farcical comedy by Charles J. Campbell and Ralph M. Skinner. Audiences were promised:

Those who desire to be convulsed with hearty laughter and to be charmed with interesting episodes should not miss seeing this great Comedy Drama, which is one of those productions wherein Miss MOORE’s versatile powers find their fullest scope. In the title role she has a character that could not be more original had it been created for her.⁶

With these Australian performances, it seems that this play was being performed for the first time. Maggie had purchased the Australian rights for this and other new pieces while visiting America in 1902.

The Widow From Japan played for one week. It was followed by Way Down South; or, A Negro Slave’s Devotion (27 June–3 July 1903) and Killarney(4–10 July 1903). In Way Down South, Maggie ‘blacked up’ to play a faithful servant, Aunt Miranda, ‘her Great Negro Impersonation’. Described as a domestic comedy drama in five acts by P.B. Carter, this piece was being performed in Sydney for the first time. ‘New songs’ were performed as well as ‘dances, glees, and Negro Specialties’, including the ‘cake walk’.⁷

Maggie’s final offering was Killarney, a ‘romantic, and picturesque Irish drama in four acts’ by an unnamed author, in which she played the Irish colleen Kathleen O’Donnell, affording her the opportunity to sing several appropriate songs including ‘Ireland, I Love You’ and ‘Killarney’.⁸

Daniel Frawley, possibly as Lieutenant Denton in Arizona. Unknown photographer.

J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries

Mary Van Buren, c.1903. Photo by Talma & Co., Melbourne and Sydney

Author’s collection

With the departure of Maggie Moore, J.C. Williamson once again took over the direction of the theatre, introducing Daniel Frawley and his company of American players. Frawley’s troupe comprised some 20 artists, including the ‘brilliant young actress’ Mary Van Buren. The company had been founded in 1899 and had been touring the USA, Asia, India and New Zealand, prior to making their Australia debut at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne on 30 May 1903. They brought with them a vast repertoire of plays, having acquired the touring rights to high profile Broadway and West End successes including Arizona(1899) by Augustus Thomas, Madame Sans Gene(1895) by Victorien Sardou, and Secret Service (1893) by William Gillette.

Daniel Frawley and company commenced their six-week Sydney season on Saturday, 11 July 1903. Their opening gambit was the much anticipated Arizona, a play by Augustus Thomas. From its first performance in America, this play captured the popular imagination; a story teaming with ‘ranchmen, cowboys, Mexicans, Chinamen and other figures of life in the territory’.⁹ The hero of the play is the handsome Lieutenant Denton of the 11th Cavalry who woos one of the daughters of Henry Canby, the sun-weathered ranch-owner, and saves the reputation of the other. Theodore Roberts created the role of Henry Canby when the play premiered at the Grand Opera House in Chicago in June 1899. After an unprecedented season of three months, the play toured around America for a year. When it eventually reached New York in September 1900, it notched up a further 140 performances at the Herald Square Theatre. In February 1902, Roberts appeared in the first London production at the Adelphi Theatre (transferring to the Princess’s in April 1902), where it ran for 119 performances.

This piece had received its Australian premiere at the Princess’s Theatre in Melbourne the previous month, with Daniel Frawley as Lieutenant Denton, Jeffrey Williams as Henry Canby, Mary Van Buren as Estrella, and Eva Dennison as Bonita.

Augustus Cook, who created the role of Napoleon in the American production of Madame Sans Gene in 1896

Macauley’s Theatre Collection, University of Louisville

Daniel Frawley as Napoleon in Madame Sans Gene.

From The Australasian Stage Annual, 1904, p.35

Due to the limited number of nights scheduled for the Sydney season, a weekly change program was introduced beginning with Madame Sans Gene (1–7 August 1903). Victorien Sardou’s play, first performed in Paris in 1894 with Madame Rejane in the title role, focuses on Napoleon’s relationship with a former laundress, Catherine Hubscher, aka Madame Sans Gene. This play first appeared on the English stage in a translation by J. Comyn’s Carr in 1895 with Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. The same year, in America, Henry Charles Meltzer adapted the play for Kathryn Kidder and Augustus Cook. In 1899 Frawley secured the Pacific Coast rights to the Meltzer version and on 3 September 1899 played Napoleon for the first time in at the Burbank Theatre, Los Angeles, supported by Mary Van Buren.

The company’s next offering was In Paradise (8–14 August 1903), adapted by B.B. Valentine from Les Paradis, a farcical comedy by Messrs Billhaud, Henequin and Carré. On its first Australian presentation in Sydney, it featured Daniel Frawley as Raphael Delacroix, an artist, with Mary Van Buren as Claire Taupin, a Modiste, and Harrington Reynolds as Pico, a lion tamer. Enough said.

The following week saw a return to form with the Australian premiere of Brother Officers(15–21 August 1903), a military comedy-drama by Leo Trevor. Charting the trials and tribulations of a successful army man from a low class family, this piece enjoyed considerable success at the Garrick Theatre in London in 1899 with Arthur Bourchier as Lieutenant John Hinds VC and Violet Vanbrugh as The Baroness Roydell. When the play was given its American premiere in San Francisco (7 August 1899) and New York (16 January 1900), the leads were played by Henry Miller (William Faversham in New York) and Margaret Anglin, the roles now played by Daniel Frawley and Mary Van Buren.

Another Australian premiere followed with the 1893 drama The Girl I Left Behind Me(22–28 Aug 1903) by Franklin Fyles and David Belasco. Set on a small army base in Montana, against a backdrop of tension between the army and the local Indian tribe, the play focussed on the love story between Lieutenant Edgar Hawkesmore and Kate Kennion, the general’s daughter. Running for over 200 performances at the Empire Theatre, New York, in 1893, with Frank Mordaunt and Sidney Armstrong as the lovers, the play went on to achieve a similar success at London’s Adelphi Theatre in 1895 with William Terriss and Jessie Millward. For the Sydney production Daniel Frawley and Mary Van Buren played Edgar and Kate.

Daniel Frawley as Lewis Dumont (alias Captain Thorne) in Secret Service, 1901. Photo by Louis Thors, San Francisco.

J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington, Washington, DC

Playbill for In Mizzouri which was performed during the final week of the Frawley season

Author’s collection

The penultimate offering was a revival of the Civil War spy drama Secret Service (29 August–4 September 1903), with Daniel Frawley as Lewis Dumont (alias Captain Thorne), a Union spy who infiltrates the ranks of the Confederate army and falls in love with Edith Varney (Mary Van Buren), the  daughter of a Confederate general. This play created a sensation on its first production, making an instant celebrity of actor-playwright William Gillette, who created the role of Dumont when the play was first performed in New York in October 1896. The drama enjoyed huge success throughout the USA and England. The first Australia production in August 1899 had featured Thomas Kingston and Henrietta Watson in the principal roles.

The final week of the Frawley season saw a revival of Augustus Thomas’ romantic American drama In Missoura (or In Missouri as it was titled here) (5–10 September 1903). This play had first been performed in Australia by Nat C. Goodwin and his company in 1896. Goodwin created the character of Jim Radburn, an unsophisticated but tender hearted Sherriff, when the play was first performed in America in 1893. As Radburn, Daniel Frawley played the role ‘with a quiet, convincing force that left little to be desired’, with Mary Van Buren as Kate Vernon, the object of his affections.¹¹

The season terminated on Friday, 11 September 1903 with a revival of Arizona, also by Augustus Thomas.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Freeman’s Journal(Sydney), 27 December 1902, p.28;  Daily Telegraph(Sydney), 10 January 1903, p.6

2. TheSydney Morning Herald, 10 January 1903, p.7

3. The Australian Star(Sydney), 30 January 1903, p.8

4. Advertisement, TheSydney Morning Herald, 23 May 1903, p.2

5. Advertisement, TheSydney Morning Herald, 6 June 1903, p.2

6. Advertisement, TheSydney Morning Herald, 20 June 1903, p.2

7. Advertisement, TheSydney Morning Herald, 27 June 1903, p.2

8. Advertisement, TheSydney Morning Herald, 4 July 1903, p.2

9. The New York Clipper, 17 June 1899, p.304

10. Amy Arbogast, p.30

11. TheSydney Morning Herald, 7 September 1903, p.3

References

Amy Arbogast, ‘Rural life with urban strife’, Performing the Progressive Era: immigration, urban life, and nationalism on stage, edited by Max Shulman & J. Chris Westgate, University of Iowa Press, 2019, pp.17-34

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

William W. Crawley (ed.). Australasian Stage Annual: an annual devoted to the interests of the theatrical and musical professions, J.J. Miller, Melbourne, 1902-1905

J.P. Wearing, The London Stage: A Calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, 1890–1899, 2nd edn, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

J.P. Wearing, The London Stage: A Calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, 1900-1909, 2nd edn, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

Newspapers

The Australian Star (Sydney), Daily Telegraph (Sydney), Freeman’s Journal (Sydney), The New York Clipper, The New York Times, The New Zealand Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Tatler (London)

Papers Past, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

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

Pictures

J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries, https://content.lib.washington.edu/sayreweb/index.html

With thanks to

John S. Clark, Judy Leech, Les Tod

Following the departureof Daniel Frawley’s company on Friday, 11 September 1903, The Players commenced a six night season from 12 September, performing the A.W. Pinero comedy Dandy Dick for their first three nights and concluding with Sydney Grundy’s drama Sowing the Wind for their final three nights.

On Thursday, 17 September, the Musical and Dramatic Profession tendered a Testimonial Matinee Performance to Mr. W.J. Wilson (1833–1909). The seventy year old scenic artist, who was recovering from a long illness, had experienced a long career in Australia, having arrived in Melbourne from England in 1855. A mixed program was presented with members of the various Williamson, Anderson, Holloway, and Rickards’ companies participating.

Touring poster for Jacob Litt’s production of Mistakes Will Happen, depicting the Act 2 Carriage-House scene, c.1900s.

Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Saturday, 19 September saw the return of George Willoughby and Edwin Geach’s company with a new farce Mistakes Will Happen by Grant Stewart. Presented by special arrangement with Charles Arnold, the farce had first seen the light of day in June 1898 when it was given a trial run by the stock company at the Grand Opera House, St Paul, Minneapolis. By August it had been taken up by producer Jacob Litt and toured successfully for several years with Charles Dickson in the lead. It finally reached New York on 3 March 1902 where it was performed by the stock company of Proctor’s Fifth Avenue Theatre. Jacob Litt’s production didn’t reach New York until 14 May 1906 when it played a week’s season at the Garrick Theatre with Charles Dickson as Tom Genowin.

The play concerns an impoverished actor (Tom Genowin) who is seeking a backer for a play he has written; Dorothy Mayland, an actress, whom Tom has secretly married; Mr. And Mrs. Hunter-Chase who both have their own reasons for wanting to see the play produced—the former is in love with Dorothy and the latter is an aspiring actress. A key scene in the play is one where two rooms—a carriage-house (below) and a hayloft (above)—are both represented on the stage so the audience can see the action in the two rooms simultaneously; with Tom meeting Mrs. Hunter-Chase in the hayloft for acting lessons, and the Dorothy meeting with Mr. Hunter-Chase in the carriage-house for a play reading; at the same time the Chase’s coachman has a rendezvous with the maid.

This piece had its Australian premiere at the Melbourne Bijou at Easter 1903 with seasons in Adelaide and Brisbane to follow. The play proved something of a riot, especially the shenanigans of the carriage-house scene. The cast for the first Sydney production included George Willoughby as Tom Genowin, Roxy Barton as Dorothy Mayland, Tom Cannam as Mr. Hunter-Chase, Miss Roland Watts-Phillips as Mrs. Hunter-Chase, Edwin Lester as William Hawley (the coachman) and Mabel Hardinge-Maltby as Linda Kurtz (the maid). In their review, the Sydney Morning Heraldechoed the newspapers in the other capitals when it said: ‘Mistakes Will Happenproved to be marked success. [The] authors have certainly introduced almost the maximum of hilarity into the play, and have furnished a strong tonic for elevating depressed spirits and overcoming the most pronounced fit of the blues. The dialogue is racy, the incidents developed in the course of the plot are beyond even the suspicion of coarseness, and the funny situations follow so rapidly that the audience presents a fine illustration of “laughter holding both its sides”.’¹ It played util the end of Willoughby and Geach’s all-too-short season on 9 October.

Mary Fitzmaurice Gill, depicted on the cover of the sheet music for ‘I Send You Violets’, for which she wrote the words and music, published by the Pianola Company, c.1911

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Norwegian-American actor Albert Gran, c.1902

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

The theatre remained dark for the next few nights pending Mary Fitzmaurice Gill’s season. A young Australian actress who had played leading roles with the companies of Bland Holt and William Anderson was returning to Sydney following an extended New Zealand tour to perform with her own company. Her initial offering, Man to Manon 17 October, was being presented by arrangement with George Rignold. A drama of convict life, the play included numerous sensational scenic effects including a railway collision, the Portland Prison, and an escape during a fog. Miss Fitzmaurice Gill’s leading man was Albert Gran, who had made his Australian debut as Lord Jeffreys in Nellie Stewart’s production of Sweet Nell of Old Drury the previous year.

Plays that followed included The French Spy(24 October), The Bank of England(7 November), The Prodigal Parson (21 November), finishing with East Lynne, for one night only on 27 November.

The next attraction, which opened on 28 November, was Miss Cleopatra, a farce in three acts, adapted from the French by Arthur Shirley, with Australian-born actress-vocalist Maud Lita, in the title role. This play had first been performed in London in 1891 under the title Cleopatra, when a single performance was given at the Shaftesbury Theatre at a benefit matinee for W.H. Griffiths, with Maud Milton as Cleopatra. As the leading character is a prima donna, Maud Lita (an operatic contralto) introduced a number of songs that were performed with great verve, but unfortunately, despite her many accomplishments, houses were poor, and the season ended on 11 December.

Another period of closure followed.

At Christmas, Albert Gran returned, this time supported by members of The Conservatoire. Two double bills were presented: Pygmalion and Galatea and Comedy and Tragedy (23 December) and The Moth and the Candle and Comedy and Tragedy (24 December). Pygmalion and Galatea and Comedy and Tragedywere both early non-musical plays by W.S. Gilbert, while The Moth and the Candle was Gran’s own adaptation of Ouida’s novel Moths.

Charles J. Stine, 1909. Photo by Hall’s Studio.

J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries

Poster advertising vaudevillian husband and wife duo, Stine & Evans

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

New Zealand theatrical manager George Stephenson’s American Musical Comedy Company opened on Boxing Night, Saturday, 26 December 1903, with American vaudevillians Charles J. Stine and Olive Evans making their first appearances in Sydney.

The opening gambit, Mama’s New Husband, a three-act farce by Edwin Barber, revolved around the newly re-married Mrs. Pearly Brood (Margaret Marshall), who has concealed from her much younger husband, Henry Brood (Charles J. Stine), that she has a 17-year-old daughter—and when that daughter Maimie Dimler (Olive Evans) arrives home unexpectedly from boarding school, her mother persuades her to dress as a young girl in spite of numerous suitors hovering about—a premise reminiscent of Pinero’s 1886 farce The Magistrate, but the similarity ended there. During the action of the play twenty musical numbers were introduced, along with ballets and dancing. This piece had its first performance in America in September 1901 and shortly after Stine and Evans acquired the rights to the play and took it on tour. Having commenced their current tour in New Zealand and Tasmania, this piece had been given its Australasian premiere at His Majesty’s Theatre, Auckland, on 6 August 1903.

Touring poster for Brown’s in Town, 1902

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Program for Brown’s in Town, Palace Theatre, 30 January 1904

Author’s collection

A month later, Saturday, 30 January 1904, the same company performed Brown’s in Town, a three-act comedy by Mark E. Swan. Resembling a Broadhurst farce (What Happened to Jones, etc.), this play dealt with a mismanaged elopement whereby a young couple lead their parents on a merry chase—and like The Wrong Mr. Wright, the title character does not exist. Similar to Mama’s New Husband, songs and dances were dotted throughout, including a burlesque on the Florodora Sextette (‘Tell Me, Dusky Maiden’)—and what the play lacked in plot, it made up for in movement. According to the publicity it was toured by ten companies in America during 1902—and one run by Frank Hennessy, cleared over £30,000.² It seems this play was first performed in December 1898 in Minnesota, with Edward S. Abeles as Dick Preston, Kathryn Osterman as Letty, and James O. Barrows as the father-in-law Abel Preston. It reached New York in February 1899 and played at the Bijou Theatre for a fortnight with the same cast. According to the reviews J.J. Rosenthal, the manager of the Bijou, didn’t think much of the play and pulled the plug after a fortnight.³ It fared much better in the provinces.

Brown’s in Townhad it Australasian premiere at His Majesty’s Theatre, Auckland, 12 August 1903, with Charles Stine as Abel Preston and Olive Evans as Letty Leonard, the same roles they played in the Sydney production. The farce seemed to please Sydneysiders and held the stage at the Palace for four weeks. The season closed with a short revival of Mama’s New Husband from 24 to 26 February 1904.

On 27 and 29 February, The Players presented Captain Swift by Charles Haddon Chambers; returning on 30 and 31 March with Tom, Dick and Harry. And on 28 March, for one night only, Albert Gran, supported by Linda Raymond, presented Mary Queen of Scots.

Pending the re-appearance of the Willoughby and Geach combination for the Easter season, the Palace was given a lick of paint and refreshed. The company’s latest offering was the American farce A Stranger in a Strange Landby Sydney Wilmer and Walter Vincent. According to the publicity this piece had enjoyed huge success in London, New York and on the Continent. It had its Australian premiere on 5 March at the Melbourne Princess where it played to packed houses for three weeks. With George Willoughby as Jack Thorndyke, the fun of the piece lay in the hero’s claims to his sweetheart that he is an adventurous backwoodsman. During the play’s two week run, hundreds of people were reportedly turned from the doors. Postcards featuring scenes from the play were available for purchase. The final few nights of the season saw a revival of What Happened to Jones.

On Saturday, 23 April 1904, the Perman troupe arrived with the pantomime Little Red Riding Hood. Written by W.J. Lincoln, with original music by C.G. McIntosh, it was an entirely Australian creation, with an Australian setting and a finale featuring a patriotic tableau with each of the Australian states attired in glittering costumes. First performed in Melbourne at Christmas 1903, it had toured to Adelaide, Ballarat, Geelong and Brisbane prior to its Sydney opening. The principal characters were played by Harry Shine (Dame Trot), Bella Perman (Red Riding Hood), Maud B. Perman (Boy Blue) and Edith Maitland (Marjorie Daw). Two editions of the pantomime were given prior to its closing three weeks later on 13 May.

Dorothy Drew, c.1900s. Photo by J.U. Stead, New York.

New York Public Library, New York

The Great Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S. Porter, USA, 1903

https://www.loc.gov/item/00694220/?embed%21=share-controls

Tom Nawn’s Polite Vaudeville Company made their first appearance in Australia on 14 May 1904 under the direction of J.G. Rial (previously associated with the World’s Entertainers). This was Tom Nawn’s second visit to Australia. In 1902 he and his wife, Hettie Nawn, had been on the bill at Rickards’ Tivoli, when their playlet One Touch of Nature was performed in Australia for the first time. This same piece was included on the bill at the Palace, along with a line-up of American vaudeville acts including Pete Baker (America’s premier monologue entertainer and German dialect comedian), The Musical Johnstons (for years the Xylophone novelty with Sousa’s band), Dorothy Drew (singing comedienne in a repertoire of Negro melodies), The Tossing Austens (comedy juggling and eccentric pantomime specialty), Katherine Dahl (the brilliant lyric artiste in a repertoire of ballads), Hiawatha Troubadours (introducing original American Indians songs and legends) and Mirrored Melody (producing effects which greatly enhance the enjoyment of descriptive songs). Also on the program was Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope showing one of his most recent films, the $12,000 The American Train Robbery. Running 11 minutes, this film was directed by Edwin S. Porter and starred Justus D. Barnes as the head bandit. Today it is considered one of the earliest American narrative films, introducing many new cinematic techniques including double exposure, cross cutting, tracking shots and location shooting.⁴

During the season the bill changed to include some new performers and sketches. On 28 May, for example, the sketch Shipmateswas performed for the first time; on 6 June, Pat and the Genii, a comedietta seen during Tom Nawn’s 1902 visit was revived; and on 18 June, the new three-act feature play The Mishaps of Mr. Dooley, written by American journalist Finley Peter Dunne and based on his ‘Mr Dooley’ newspaper columns, was performed for the first time. Dooley was a fictional Irish bartender whose voice Dunne used to comment on national affairs.⁵

Sadly for Nawn, audience numbers at the Palace declined due to the ‘plethora of entertainment’ elsewhere, and the season came to an abrupt end on 30 June. By the following Monday, Tom Nawn was ‘ploughing his way to the land of Stars and Stripes’.⁶ Fortunately for many members of his company, they were offered positions at Harry Rickards’ Tivoli Theatre.

Maude Amber, leading lady with the American Travesty Stars company. Photographed in 1890 by Hubbell Studio.

J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries

Dutch dialect comedians Clarence Kolb and Max Dill, 1905. Photo by Lorne Studios.

J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries

The Palace was once again dark, but only for a short time. Another company of Americans was on its way.

Meanwhile, The Players returned with the double bill of My Little Girland Charley’s Aunt on the 7 and 8 July; and on the 13 and 14th of the month Frau Elsa Buhlow presented A.W. Pinero’s The Ironmasterin aid of the Kindergarten Union & German Benevolent Society.

The next big attraction was the American Travesty Stars, a company of 38 performers, with Harry James as musical director and W.S. Combs as general manager. This company was modelled on the Weber and Fields company in New York. Joseph M. Weber and Lew M. Fields were a highly successful pair of ‘Dutch comics’, so successful that in 1896 they opened their own theatre on Broadway, the Weber and Fields Music Hall. There they produced a series of vaudeville burlesques: The Geezer (1896), Pousse Café(1897), Hurley Burley(1898), Whirl-I-Gig(1901), Fiddle-Dee-Dee (1900), Hoity Toity (1901), Twirly Whirly (1902) and Whoop-Dee-Doo (1903); each show crafted to showcase their particular brand of knock-about comedy.

The company in Australia, headed by Clarence Kolb and Max Dill, had been granted permission to present the Weber and Fields’ repertoire, and had been doing so on the West Coast of America since 1901. The other principals in the company were Barney Bernard, a Jewish dialect comedian, who played the roles created by David Warfield on Broadway; Maude Amber and Winfield Blake, the leading lady and leading man, who doubled for Lillian Russell and DeWolf Hopper; and Lillie Sutherland, the soubrette, who performed Fay Templeton’s roles.

The company’s first offering in Australia was Fiddle-Dee-Dee which opened on Saturday, 16 July 1904. Written by Edgar Smith, with music by John Stromberg, it had originally been performed on Broadway in September 1900, with Joe Weber as Michael Krautknuckle, Lew Fields as Rudolf Bungstarter, DeWolf Hopper as Hoffman Barr, David Warfield as Shadrach Leschinski, and Lillian Russell as Mrs. Walford Meadowbrook.

Described as ‘A Potpourri of Dramatic “fol de roll” in Three Exhibits’, Fiddle-Dee-Deewas greeted by an overflowing house. With no plot to speak of, audiences were promised an entertainment abounding with original musical numbers, a large chorus of shapely girls, witty dialogue delivered with kaleidoscopic rapidity, all presented with the dash and vim of a first-rate American company. ‘The scenery, costumes and the paraphernalia have never been excelled for originality, and such a large company of superb comedians who tear the English language into shreds and reconstruct it in a manner that is extremely funny. They keep their audiences in a continual paroxysm of laughter during the time given up to their quaint sayings, happy repartee and dialogue work.’⁷

The piece lived up to the hype and audiences were not disappointed. It even included a travesty of the FlorodoraSextette.

Programs for Hoity Toity and Fiddle-Dee-Dee, Palace Theatre, Sydney, 1904

Author’s collection

Lillie Sutherland, 1904, who played the roles created by Fay Templeton on Broadway. Photo by White.

J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries

Fiddle-Dee-Deeplayed until 12 August. The next offering was Hoity Toity, described on the bills as ‘A Giddy Little Skit on Things Dramatic and Otherwise in Two Selections’, it was another mirth-filled burlesque extravaganza by Smith and Stromberg. First performed in New York in September 1901, this piece had a slight plot to tie together its ‘olio portion’. It involved a man who takes his daughters to Monte Carlo to find rich husbands for them. Instead they meet ‘sauerkraut’ millionaires and decide to start a bank, swapping the delicatessen counter for a teller’s bench. ‘Raising the money’ became one of Weber and Fields’ most famous sketches. When a customer arrives at the bank, Weber (Kolb) asks ‘Put in or take out?’ Of course everyone takes out until the bank is hopelessly broke.

Sheet music cover for a collection of songs from Pousse Café, published by Jos. W. Stern & Co., c.1898

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Comedian Barney Bernard. Photographed in 1912 by Silver and Friedman.

J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries

The company’s final offering was the double-bill of Whirl-I-Gig and Pousse Caféwhich opened on 17 September 1904. Described respectively as a ‘dramatic impossibility’ and a ‘conundrum’. In the first piece Dill played the inventor of a machine for ‘throwing living pictures on the naked air’, while Kolb was an architect who had designed a gaol ‘with all the comforts of home’. In the second piece, Barney Bernard is the inventor of a mechanical doll, La Pooh Pooh (an obvious parody of La Poupee, the comic opera by Audran), with Kolb and Dill as his two backers. These two short works provided a fitting end to a highly popular season which closed on 6 October 1904.

With the departure of the Travesty Company, things quietened down a bit. The Players returned for two nights with J.M. Barrie’s The Professor’s Love Story on 7 and 8 October. On the 11th and 12th of the month, Frau Elsa Buhrow made her re-appearance in Cyprienne(a translation of Sardou’s Divorcons) in aid of the Ashfield Infants’ Home. (Frau Buhrow had presented the same piece at the Palace back in September 1901.) And on 13th and 14th, The Players presented Haddon Chambers’ The Idler. Another long period of darkness descended on the theatre, punctuated by a production of the comic opera Giroffle-Giroffla on 14 November, performed by the Railway and Tramway Musical Society.

Finally, on Saturday, 10 December 1904, the American Travesty Company made a welcome return, bringing with them a weekly change program. The line-up remained the same with the exception of the Maude Amber and Winfield James who had been replaced by Celia Mavis and Edwin Lester. Hoity Toity was the first of the revivals, followed by Fiddle-Dee-Dee on 17 December, and Whirl-I-Gig and Pousse Caféon 24 December.

The season ended on 30 December—and the little theatre fell dark once more—pending the arrival of William Anderson’s Dramatic Company on 22 April 1905.

In a curious footnote, it seems that despite the full house and patrons being turned away from the door, the tour was not a financial success for the American Travesty Company. In February 1905, an article appeared in Sydney’s Sunday Sun headed: AMERICAN TRAVESTY STARS: Back in ’Frisco. “THICK-HEADED AUDITORS IN THE ANTIPODES!”. According to the report members of the company felt that much of their material was lost on Australian audiences who didn’t understand American humour and syntax. And as for any financial reward, it seems the manager, Henry James, was the only one who profited from the tour. He was said to have returned to the US sporting a diamond pin. The article also mentioned the conspicuous absence of Maude Amber and Winfield Blake during the return season at the Palace. She had a falling out with James and he was suing her for breach of contract.⁸ Another article that appeared in The Critic around the same time confirmed that the company had been asked to play the final three weeks at the Palace without pay—and that Miss Amber and Mr. Blake had refused to act and had sued James for damages.⁹

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Sydney Morning Herald, 21 September 1903, p.4

2. Auckland Star, 11 August 1903, p.3

3. New York Times, 28 February 1899, p.7

4. See https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/edwin-s-porter-the-great-train-robbery-1903/

5. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Dooley

6. Truth, 3 July 1904, p.1

7. Sydney Star, 13 July 1904, p.7

8. Sunday Sun, 26 February 1905, p.5

9. The Critic, 22 February 1905, p.23

References

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

Felix Isman, Weber and Fields, their tribulations, triumphs and their associates, Boni and Liveright, 1924

Anthony Slide, The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, University of Mississippi, 2012

Newspapers

Auckland Star, The Australian Star(Sydney), The Critic (Adelaide), The New York Clipper, The New York Times, The New Zealand Mail, Punch (Melbourne), The Sydney Morning Herald, Truth (Sydney)

Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection, https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/

Papers Past, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

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

Pictures

J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries, https://content.lib.washington.edu/sayreweb/index.html

Library of Congress, Washington, DC., https://www.loc.gov/

New York Public Library, New York, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/

With thanks to

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

With the new year, 1905, things got off to a rough start for the Palace Theatre. Following a meeting by the Sydney City Council on the 24 January 1905 concerning the state of Sydney’s theatres, it was determined that the Palace Theatre did not comply with current fire regulations. As a result its licence was suspended pending the implementation of necessary alterations of a ‘heavy character’.¹ At first the theatre’s Trustees² rejected the Council’s requests, but the authorities remained adamant and by April it was reported that the required changes costing in excess of £5000 (approx. $700,000 in today’s currency) had been carried out.³

Behind the scenes works included fireproofing of walls and gears and the installation of a fire sprinkler over the proscenium. Also, the boilers and engines had to be relocated to an adjacent building. The most obvious ‘improvements’, however, were the requested changes to Phil Goatcher’s auditorium, which had been declared a fire trap.

The Evening News (5 April 1905) reported:

Looking into the auditorium, … anyone who knew the Palace as a delight to the eye from its decorative beauties, is distressed to see what has had to be despoiled for fear of the fiend Fire.

The cupolas above the boxes have been demolished, and squab ornaments to take their place detract from the symmetrical ensemble of the past.

Elsewhere the steep rake of the gallery was curtailed for safety’s sake, and the number of seats reduced, notably the top most ones that were up against the roof. In addition a railing was introduced between each of the tiers in the gallery so that in case of emergency patrons would be prevented from jumping from one row to another.

Thus, with all these changes having been complete, the Palace’s licence was renewed in time for the Easter season 1905.

William Anderson, 1902

The Australasian Stage Annual 1902

Eugenie Duggan, c.1906. Photo by Talma, Melbourne & Sydney.

Author’s collection

The theatre re-opened with a season of melodrama by William Anderson’s Dramatic Company, with Eugenie Duggan as the star attraction. Eugenie Duggan (1870–1936) was an Melbourne-born actress and sister of actor/playwright Edmund Duggan. After making her stage debut in 1890, she performed with the companies of Dan Barry and Charles Holloway. In 1898, she married William Anderson (1968–1940), who in 1896 became joint manager of the Holloway-Anderson company. By 1900, he was managing his own company, with Eugenie as his leading lady. His usual theatre in Sydney was the Lyceum, which he shared with his friend and rival in melodrama Bland Holt, but as that theatre had recently closed following its sale to the philanthropist Ebenezer Vickery (1827–1906), he moved his operations to the Palace.

Advertising postcard for A Girl’s Cross Roads, London, c.1903

ebay

Anderson’s season commenced with the first Sydney production ofA Girl’s Cross Roads, a melodrama in four acts by Walter Melville, a melo-dramatist par excellence, who together with his brother Frederick was responsible for writing and staging some of the most popular melodramas of the late 1890s and 1900s. The titles of their plays were thrilling enough and their fertile imaginations, either singularly or in partnership, produced such plays as The Worst Woman in London(1899), Between Two Women (1902), Her Forbidden Marriage (1904), Married to the Wrong Man (1908) and The Bad Girl of the Family (1909), to name a few. Many of these plays were staged at their theatres in the East End, notably the Terriss (Rotherhithe) and the Standard (Hoxton).⁴ First performed at the Standard Theatre in October 1903, A Girl’s Cross Roads had its Australian premiere in Melbourne in February 1905. The cast was largely the same, but the role of the hero Jack Livingstone was now played by H.O. Willard rather than Vivian Edwards. A story of misery and despair, Eugenie Duggan was the heroine (or rather anti-heroine), Barbara Wade, the wife of Jack Livingstone, who on developing a liking for drink, loses the respect of her husband. When she leaves home and is believed to have perished in a shipping accident, Jack turns to a former sweetheart Constance Cornell (played by Ivy Gorrick) for comfort. On the day that Constance consents to marry him, Barbara is discovered to be alive, a slave to drink and drugs. Jack is determined to save his wife, but she is too far gone and soon dies in a fit of delirium tremens. The role of Barbara was a difficult one, but Eugenie Duggan, used to playing ‘wretched women’ delivered a realistic portrait of an unhappy soul whose life had been ruined by the demon drink.

Scene from the London production of A Female Swindler, 1903. One of a set of lurid postcards produced to advertise the play.

ebay.

Three weeks later, 13 May, A Girl’s Cross Roads was replaced by another new Walter Melville sensation drama, The Female Swindler. Anderson’s company had introduced this play in Melbourne in September 1904 and now it was Sydney’s turn. First performed at the Terriss Theatre on 12 October 1903 and subsequently at the Standard Theatre, with Violet Ellicott and Ashley Page in the leads, this play also spawned a series of lured advertising postcards.

As Lu Valroy (otherwise Miss Darwe), Eugenie Duggan had another unsavoury heroine to portray. In this play the title character is working as a maid in a rich household. When some valuable items go missing, a detective, Jack Coulson (played by H.O. Willard), is employed to track down the culprit. Against a backdrop of murder, theft and kidnapping, the detective pursues Lu Valroy and her sinister offsider, Geoffrey Warden (alias Captain Stanton) (played by Laurence Dunbar). In a struggle, Warden is killed, but just as Lu is about to stab the detective she is overcome by a new emotion—love—and instead of killing him the two fall into a passionate embrace. As the ‘fascinating adventuress’ Eugenie Duggan once again excelled.

The third play of the season, opening on 3 June, was Two Little Drummer Boys, an 1899 military drama by Walter Howard. With this play Eugenie Duggan was reprising her role of Margaret Rivers (aka Drunken Meg), a wretched woman filled with vengeance for the man who had ruined her life. An expansive story of jealousy, treason and murder set in a military barracks, and rival cousins, both drummer boys, who clash as their fathers did. Supported by H.O. Willard, this time playing the villain, Eugenie Duggan thrilled audiences with her portrayal of another desperately unhappy female.

The final offering, commencing on 17 June, was the oft performed East Lynne with Eugenie in the dual role of Lady Isabel and Madame Vine. The season closed on 1 July 1905.

With the departure of Anderson’s company the Palace entered a period of uncertainty. It is not clear why this was the case, but for the next twelve months the only tenants were amateur companies and short run entertainments. Why did the big companies and touring stars stay away? Perhaps the Palace was too small, seating only 1000 patrons, compared with the 1500 of the Theatre Royal or the 2000-odd that could be crammed into Her Majesty’s. When Anderson return to Sydney in July 1905, rather than return to the Palace, he opened at the Theatre Royal.

So instead of welcoming the likes of George Stephenson’s English Musical Comedy Company, J.F. Sheridan, or the Brough-Flemming Comedy Company (who were the big names of the current season), the Palace played host to one night stands by the Sydney Comedy Club (A Snug Little Kingdom, 3 July 1905); The Players (Dr Bill, 4 and 5 July 1905, 21 September 1905; The Weaker Sex, 16 November 1905; Lady Windermere’s Fan, 17 November 1905; A Gaiety Girl, 20–22 December 1905; Little Lord Fauntleroy, 6 July 1905; In Town, 9–20 September 1905); the Bank of New South Wales Musical and Dramatic Company (The Magistrate, 7 July 1905; Dandy Dick, 11 December 1905); the Academy of Dramatic Art (Under Two Flags, 25 August 1905); Sydney Liedertafel (the premiere of W. Arundel Orchard’s comic operetta The Coquette, 28 August to 2 September 1905); the Sydney University Dramatic Society (The School for Scandal, 28 September 1905); the Lands Department Musical and Dramatic Society (The Sleeping Queen, 29 September 1905); and the Sydney Muffs (Casteand ’Op o’ Me Thumb, 14 December 1905, with assistance from Nellie Stewart); as well as performances by Minnie Hooper’s dance students (18 December 1905) and the Students’ Operatic and Dramatic Society (19 December 1905). Although the commercial prospects of the theatre were not great, the Palace was providing the opportunity for students and amateurs to hone their craft in a professional theatre.

The Great Thurston

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Florence Lloyd

Author’s collection

In addition to the performances listed above, the Palace also hosted the Great Thurston’s farewell to Sydney when the magician presented a four week season from 22 July 1905 to 26 August 1905. He did however return for a second ‘final’ season from 23 December 1905 to 12 January 1906.

In mid-October, comedians J.J. Dallas and Florence Lloyd (under the management of Clyde Meynell and John Gunn) were seen in The J.P., the play having transferred to the Palace from Her Majesty’s Theatre for a week’s season.

Also, in late 1905, Lily Dampier (daughter of actor-manager Alfred Dampier) was seen in East Lynne and The Postmistress of the Czar. In the former, which was staged from 11–15 and 18–21 November, she played the double role of Lady Isabel and Madame Vine and in the latter, from 22 November to 2 December 1905, she appeared as Princess Olga.

The new year, 1906, got off to a reasonable start with a short return season by J.J. Dallas and Florence Lloyd beginning with a revival of The J.P. (27 January 1906 to 2 February 1906). This was followed by the first Australian production of There and Back, a three act farce by George Arliss (the British actor best remembered for playing Disraeli). Given a copyright performance in Bath in 1895 and produced in Bolton in 1900, this play received positive notices when it was staged at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London in May 1902 (transferring to the Shaftesbury in July 1902) with Charles Hawtrey as William Waring and Arthur Williams as Henry Lewson, two husbands whose wives go on holiday to Scotland, but pretend they are visiting a sick friend. The following year, it was performed at the Princess Theatre in New York with Charles E. Evans and Charles H. Hopper as the deceived husbands. In Australia, J.J. Dallas played the role of Lewson, a role he had performed when the farce toured the British provinces during 1902–03. He was supported by Aubrey Mallalieu as Waring and Florence Young as Marie Antoinette Smith. There and Back played for only a week at the Palace from 3–9 February 1906. On the same bill was a musical skit, The Bazaar Girl with J.J. Dallas and Florence Lloyd as Mr. and Mrs. Honeywood.

J.J. Dallas

The Australasian Stage Annual 1906

R.G. Knowles

National Portrait Gallery, London

The comedy season was followed by Canadian-American music hall artist R.G. Knowles (under the auspices of J.C. Williamson) with ‘songs and stories of the stage’ from 10–23 February 1906. This was a return visit to the Palace by Knowles, having been one of the headlining acts when Harry Rickards was in residence back in 1896-97. As on the previous occasion he was assisted by his wife, Mrs. R.G. Knowles (Winifred Johnson), the ‘delightful and brilliant banjo exponent’.

Julius Knight as Monsieur Beaucaire, 1903. Photo by Talma & Co., Melbourne and Sydney.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Maud Jeffries, c.1903. Photo by Falk, Sydney.

Author’s collection

From 24 February 1906, the popular matinee idol Julius Knight, supported by Maud Jeffries, played a brief season under the auspices of J.C. Williamson. Knight was making his reappearance in Australia following a lengthy tour of New Zealand. His three week season at the Palace saw revivals of some of his most popular plays: David Garrick, Comedy and Tragedy, The Sign of the Cross, Monsieur Beaucaire, Pygmalion and Galatea, The Silver King and The Lady of Lyons.

On Saturday, 17 March 1906, Edwin Geach presented West’s Pictures and The Brescians, pairing the latest cinematic offering from T.J. West with a group of concert party singers. The two acts had been touring the UK since the 1890s and from April 1905 had been causing a sensation in New Zealand. Having made a quick trip to England to obtain new attractions, West landed in Sydney just in time for the start of the Palace season. His newest film was the ‘mighty, throbbing, wondrous’ Living London. Filmed in 1904 by Charles Urban and edited by playwright G.R. Sims, this epic depiction of London streets and its people created a sensation—for two reasons. Not only was the film a splendid depiction of London life, but the Palace season saw the release of the film one week ahead of J.&N. Tait’s presentation of the same film at the Lyceum Hall. A fierce advertising war followed with each of the exhibitors extolling the virtues of their version of the film. ‘West shows in 20 minutes what other take nearly 2 HOURS to do.’⁵

Living London was screened at the Palace for the last time on 6 April 1906 (moving to the Sydney Town Hall as a special Easter event). During the last three weeks of the season West’s introduced several new attractions, including, from 21 April, Living Sydney, ‘showing animated Photographs of Hundreds of Sydney Citizens’. ‘COME AND SEE YOURSELF AS OTHERS SEE YOU’⁶ The season ended on the 27 April and the following day West’s transferred their operations to the Sydney Town Hall.

A rather special event took place on Saturday, 28 April 1906, when a new romantic comic opera called A Moorish Maid; or, Queen of the Riffs by Alfred Hill (with libretto by NZ music and drama critic J. Youlin Birch) was given its Australian premiere. Mounted by George Stephenson’s English Musical Comedy Company, the title role was performed by the twenty-five year old Rosina Buckman. Still at the outset of her career, the New Zealand born soprano was yet to make her name on the international stage, having returned home following her graduation from the Birmingham School of Music in 1903 on account of illness. Advertised on the bills as ‘the famous English Dramatic Soprano’, this was her first appearance in Sydney.

Rosina Buckman (second from left) and others in A Moorish Maid, 1906. Photo by Talma.

National Library of New Zealand

In June 1905, A Moorish Maid was given its initial performance in Auckland, with Lillian Tree and Frederick Graham in the lead roles. The piece proved a critical and financial success, and a subsequent season was planned for Wellington the following September. When Lillian Tree fell ill, Rosina Buckman took her place. This performance ‘marked the beginning of an operatic career which was to take her to Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and earn special praise from the doyenne of Australian singers, Nellie Melba’.

Alas, despite the rave reviews of Rosina Buckman—‘Miss Buckman was most brilliant and altogether made a most remarkable first appearance in opera’—the Sydney season was not a success. The libretto had been reshaped by Bulletin writer David Souter. A new second act was devised and the tenor role was eliminated. The work had been transformed from a comic opera to an extravaganza. At the end of the short season Alfred Hill was left with the scenery and costumes.⁷

A Moorish Maid was played until 5 May 1906, a total of seven performances. The final nights of the short season saw George Stephenson’s company in The Skirt Dancer and Bill Adams. On the 12, 14 and 15 May 1906 they presented The Dandy Doctor for the first time in Sydney.

The 16 May 1906 saw the return of the Sydney University Dramatic Society for one night only with Pinero’s The Cabinet Minister. The Sydney Muffs appeared the following night, 17 May, in The Private Secretary.

From the 19–25 May 1906, The Players under the direction of Phillip Lytton revived Planquette’s comic opera Nell Gwynne, the otherwise amateur company augmented by the engagement of W.B. Beattie in the role of Lord Buckingham.

Leslie Harris, c.1900s. Photo by Hall, New York.

Digital Commonwealth / Boston Public Library

Lydia Yeamans-Titus

New York Public Library, New York

From 26 May 1906 to 13 June 1906, having already performed seasons in Melbourne and Adelaide, Leslie Harris and Madame Lydia Yeamans-Titus opened at the Palace. Performing as the Society Entertainers, they presented monologues, songs and sketches. With this engagement, Leslie Harris was performing in Australia for the first time, while Madame Yeamans-Titus was making her reappearance having toured in 1902 and 1904. Harris was a performer in the Mel B. Spurr style, a polished monologist and raconteur. Madame Yeamans-Titus was a seasoned vaudevillian, accompanied on the piano by her husband Frederick J. Titus. Often referred to as the ‘queen of the child mimics’, several of her ‘baby’ songs were included on the program. Towards the close of the season Madame Yeamans-Titus was indisposed and her place was taken by Rosina Buckman.

Following a performance of Maritana on 20 June 1906 by the Railway and Tramway Musical Society,

Spencer’s American Theatrescope Company enjoyed a month-long season from 25 June 1906 to 20 July 1906.

From 21–28 July, a series of charity performances in aid of the King Edward VII Seamen’s Hospital were given under the patronage of the Lady Mayoress (Mrs. Allen Taylor). These were given the title ‘Enchanted Palace’ Carnival.

On the 3 August 1906 and 1 September 1906, the Bank of New South Wales Musical and Dramatic Society revived The Pickpocket.

And on 25 August 1906, a single copyright performance was given of Three Little Waifs, an original five-act musical drama by Phillip Lytton and J.C. Lee. A short season to follow from 15–26 September, with Mark Williamson, a new English actor specially engaged to play the wicked uncle. In the role of Mona, one of the waifs, was Louise Carabasse (‘may be commended for a very pathetic picture’, wrote the Herald⁸), who as Louise Lovely would go on to become a film star in Hollywood.

On 8 September 1906, Annie Mayor (an Australian actress popular in the 1880s and 1890s) returned to the Sydney stage in Drama in Camera, comprising scenes from The Silver King, London Assurance and other plays including Shakespeare, which ran until 14 September.

Edison’s Popular Pictures made an appearance on 1 October.

Hilda Bevege, c.1902

HAT Archive

Program for the Trafalgar Eve Grand Historial Pageant, 20 October 1906

Mitchell Library Performance Program Collection, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

On 4 and 5 October a Grand Complimentary Performance was given by Sydney elocutionist Hilda Bevege when the short plays In Honour Bound and Milky White were presented.

The 20 October 1906, to commemorate Trafalgar Day (27 October), a Grand Historical Pageant, comprising ‘TABLEAUX VIVANTS and LIVING SCENES’ was staged.

The first Australian production of the farcical comedy The ‘Dear’ Doctor by Kim Brament followed from 27 October to 2 November 1906 under the direction of Blandford Wright. Despite being advertised as ‘the World’s Greatest Rib-tickler, in Three Acts’, nothing is discoverable about the history of this play or its author. The performances were given in aid of the Benevolent Society of New South Wales and St. Margaret’s Hospital for Women.

On the 3 and 5 November 1906, the Elocutionary Society performed Our Boys and My Friend Jarlet.

The week commencing 7 November 1906, saw the production of The Emperor, a comic opera by W.J. Curtis, with music by W. Arundel Orchard. Set in Ancient Rome, the piece included a ‘graceful statue ballet’ in the first act. Orchard had composed the score for The Coquette which had been performed at the Place during 1905.

The original ‘Little Stranger’, Master Edward Garratt

Wellcome Collection, London

Master Willie Parke, Australia’s ‘Little Stranger’

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The year ended on a high note with the appearance of Meynell, Gunn and Varna’s New English Comedy Company. They opened on 17 November 1906 with the three-act farcical comedy The Little Stranger by Michael Morton. This piece had enjoyed some success in London earlier in the year, with Master Edward Garratt as the sixteen year old boy who is substituted for a baby. The play had its first Australian production at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne on 20 October 1906 with Master Willie Parke as Tom Pennyman, the ‘Little Stranger’ of the title. Billed as ‘the Child Wonder … direct from the Criterion Theatre, London’. Although Parke seems to have excelled as the wise-cracking, cigarette smoking youngster, he had not performed the role at the Criterion in London. Other principal roles were played by Violet Dene (Mrs. Dick Allenby), John W. Deverell (General Allenby), Pultney Murray (Captain Dick Allenby), Florence Leigh (Mrs. Allenby) and Harry Hill (Paul Veronsky). In London, Audrey Ford, John Beauchamp, Athole Stewart, Mrs. Kemmis and W. Graham Browne played the same characters.

Scene from the London production of The Little Stranger

Hippostcard

To be continued

Endnotes

1. The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 1905, p.6

2. In September 1903, George Adams, the owner of the Palace Theatre died aged 65. For the last decade he had been resident in Tasmania, having moved there in 1895 ‘for tax reasons’. With his passing, his estate was managed by a Trust made up of his nephew William James Adams, solicitor W.A. Finlay, manager D.H. Harvey, and solicitor G.J. Barry. Harrie Skinner continued as manager, a position he would hold for the next twenty years.

3. Evening News (Sydney), 5 April 1905

4. Elaine Aston & Ian Clarke, pp.30-42

5. Daily Telegraph, 20 March 1906, p.2. For a full analysis of the Australian screenings of Living London, see ‘The Living London Boom’ by Sally Jackson, Senses of Cinema, 2009.

6. Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 April 1906, p.2

7. John Mansfield Thomson, A Distant Music, pp.83-89

8. The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 September 1906, p.6

References

Elaine Aston & Ian Clarke, ‘The dangerous woman of Melvillean melodrama’, New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 12, issue.45, February 1996, pp.30–42

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

Sally Jackson, ‘The Living London Boom’, Senses of Cinema, issue 49, March 2009, https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/feature-articles/living-london-sally-jackson/#44

John Mansfield Thomson, A Distant Music: The life & times of Alfred Hill 1870–1960, Oxford University Press, 1980, pp.83–89

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

Newspapers

The Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), Evening News (Sydney)

Trove,  trove.nla.gov.au

Pictures

Digital Commonwealth,  www.digitalcommonwealth.org

ebay

HAT Archive, www.flickr.com/photos/hat-archive

Hippostcard

National Library of Australia, Canberra

National Library of New Zealand

National Portrait Gallery, London

New York Public Library, New York

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Wellcome Collection, London

With thanks to

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

On the 17 november 1906Meynell, Gunn & Varna’s New English Comedy Company commenced a short season at the Palace with the three-act farcical comedy The Little Strangerby Michael Morton. With the play’s withdrawal on 7 December, W. Arundel Orchard’s comic opera The Emperorwas revived for a single night on Saturday, 8 December.

The theatre remained dark for a fortnight pending the ‘first appearance’ in Australia of comedian Harry Macdona in The New Boyon 22 December 1906.

Written by Arthur Law, this three-act farce had been seen in Australia during 1894 with Ralph Roberts as Archibald Rennick. Since its first production in London that same year, with Weedon Grossmith in the title role, it had enjoyed much success throughout the UK and America.

John Cosgrove, c.1910, who was a member of the Macdona company and Harry Macdona’s brother. Photographer unknown.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Weedon Grossmith who created the role of Archibald Rennick in The New Boy, 1894. Photo by Hills & Saunders.

National Portrait Gallery, London.

In addition to Macdona, who played the eponymous ‘new boy’, the second husband of Mrs. Bolder, who somewhat younger (and smaller in stature) than his wife, is mistakenly believed to be her son. For various reasons, he is prepared to go along with the assumption and is enrolled at a local school. In reviewing the play, the Sydney Morning Herald reported:

A gentleman whose name was announced as Mr. Harry Macdona took the part of Archibald Rennick, the new boy, and Miss Vera Remee was Mrs. Rennick. Miss Remee may not have all the arts and graces of a highly finished actress, but she carried herself through her part with more than credit. She was natural, enunciation was clear, and distinct, and she was not in the least stagey. Mr. Macdona, on the other hand, was not a thorough success. He was boisterously rollicking throughout, and though he was expected to do a good deal of fooling, he did some of it too well.¹

As the Herald alludes, the claim in the ads that Macdona was a ‘distinguished English comedian … known throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom as the Greatest Laughter Producer of the modern stage’, ² seems to have little validity. The only acting Macdona on the UK stage during the early 1900s (as listed in theatrical journals/directories of the period) seems to be Charles Macdona, an Irishman, who would go on to establish the Macdona Players and become a champion of George Bernard Shaw. A small mention of the 1906/07 Palace season in the UK-theatre journal The Era, refers to Harry Macdona as a ‘Sydney comedian’.³ Indeed, closer investigation suggests he was none other than Tom Cosgrove, a local actor, whose brother John Cosgrove was also a member of the company. It is not clear why he changed his name as over the following few decades he can be spotted performing under both names.

Harry Macdona and company in a scene from The New Boy, 1907. Photo taken by Albert E. Gregory during the company’s season in Bathurst, NSW.

Bathurst City Library

Nevertheless, despite some lukewarm reviews of opening night, The New Boywas not a complete failure. The Bulletin noted for example: ‘At Sydney Palace Harry Cosgrove Macdona continues to give sparkle to the comedy of The New Boy. The Boy is having quite a run, and the people who a few weeks ago were merely good amateurs are now getting a professional touch in the quality of their performances.’⁴

On the 12 January, the company produced Jane, and on the 28 January, Dr. Bill, both farcical comedies that had been performed back in 1890 by the Brough-Boucicault Comedy Company.

‘Ned Kelly Shoots Fitzpatrick’: scene from The Story of the Kelly Gang, 1906

National Library of Australia, Canberra

‘Capture of Ned Kelly’: scene from The Story of the Kelly Gang, 1906

National Library of Australia, Canberra

With the departure of Macdona and co., concert and film promoters J. & N. Tait returned with the film The Story of the Kelly Gang which screened from 9–23 February 1907. The film, described by the promoters as ‘one of the most realistic types of cinematography yet placed before the public’⁵ had created a sensation in Melbourne where is ran for seven weeks. It had also just completed a two-and-a-half-week season in Adelaide. Now it was Sydney’s turn. Running for just over an hour (film historians continue to debate claims that it was the world’s first feature film⁶), it occupied the second half of a two-part entertainment, with the crowded house displaying ‘considerable impatience’ during the first part.⁷ Indeed, audiences were not disappointed in the main event, cheering and clapping at its conclusion. Yet despite the crowds who flocked to the Palace, the season was limited to only a fortnight, closing on 23 February.

On the 20 and 21 March, the Bank of New South Wales Dramatic Society presented The Brixton Burglary(another comedy made popular in Australia by the Brough Comedy Company in the 1890s).

Herbert Flemming as Captain Mowbray in Mrs. Gorringe’s Necklace, 1907. Photo by Johnstone, O’Shannessy and Co.

Hat Archive

Miss Gordon Lee as Vicky Jardine in Mrs. Gorringe’s Necklace, 1906. Photo by Tuttle & Co., Hobart.

Author’s collection

On Saturday, 23 March 1907, Herbert Flemming’s company commenced a six-week season. In partnership with Robert Brough, Flemming had been joint manager of the Brough-Flemming Company, and in early 1906 following Robert Brough’s death, had taken over the reins of the organisation. Still operating as the Brough-Flemming Company they opened their season at the Palace with the first Sydney production of Mrs. Gorringe’s Necklace, a four-act comedy by Henry Hubert Davies, which the company had premiered in Adelaide in September 1906. With this piece they were making their reappearance in Sydney after a twelve-month absence. The company had just returned from a tour of New Zealand with Florence Brough (née Trevelyan) (Mrs. Robert Brough) as leading lady. The tour had been a huge undertaking emotionally and mentally for Mrs. Brough and as her health was still fragile following her husband’s death, she withdrew from the Sydney season. Her absence necessitated a complete change of personnel among the female cast. Newcomer Madeline Meredith stepped into the role of Mrs. Gorringe, while Beatrice Day (the original Mrs. Gorringe), now played Isabel, one of Mrs. Jardine’s daughters (previously played by Kate Gair). Miss Gordon Lee continued as Vicky Jardine, her other daughter. Robert Brough’s sister Bessie Major made a welcome return, taking on the role of Mrs. Jardine, originally performed by Mrs. Brough.

When Mrs. Gorringe’s Necklacewas first performed at Wyndham’s Theatre in London in 1903, the title character was considered the lead role, with Mary Moore as Mrs. Gorringe and Charles Wyndham as Captain Mowbray (played in Australia by Herbert Flemming). Under Flemming’s direction, Mrs. Jardine was considered the principal female role as the personality of Mrs. Gorringe (whose necklace is stolen at Mrs. Jardine’s house-party) is considered a silly and flighty character, whereas Mrs. Jardine is more grounded and sensible—and admirably better suited to the persona of Florence Brough.

An interesting aside concerning Madeline Meredith who played Mrs. Gorringe in Sydney. Born Madeline Constance Tudway in 1873, she was the only daughter of Charles Clement Tudway and Lady Edith Nelson (daughter of Lord Horatio Nelson)—and consequently a member of the British peerage. But rather than follow family tradition, she decided to pursue a career on the stage, making her debut in 1892. She came to Australia in 1906 as a member of the Julius Knight-Maud Jeffries company (and was with them during their 1906 Palace season) and since that time had been playing second leads with the Meynell-Gunn company at the Criterion Theatre.

A scene from Dr. Wake’s Patient, Act III, with Mrs. Brough as the Countess of St. Olbyn (right), 1906. In Sydney the role was played by Madeline Meredith. Photo by Talma & Co., Sydney and Melbourne.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Miss Meredith’s performance in the Brough-Flemming Company’s next piece, a revival of Dr. Wake’s Patienton 6 April 1907, was much anticipated. Would she be as good as Mrs. Brough in the role of the Countess of St. Olbyn? Perhaps breeding would help. As noted by The Australian Star: ‘Her conception of the part was excellent, and she was equal to every emergency called for in the representation of the haughty and altogether selfish countess.’⁸ Other roles were filled by Herbert Flemming as Farmer Wake (his original role), with Carter Pickford as Dr. Wake, Beatrice Day as Lady Geronia, Bessie Major as Mrs. Wake, and Mary Milward as Mrs. Murdoch.

Scene from the London production of Peter’s Mother with Marion Terry and A.E. Matthews, 1906. Photo by Ellis & Walery, London.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Beatrice Day, c.1906. Photo by Alice Mills, Melbourne.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

The following Saturday, 13 April 1907, Peter’s Mother was presented for the first time in Australia. Mrs. Henry de la Pasteur’s three-act comedy had just closed in London after 149 performances, with Marion Terry (sister of Ellen Terry) as Lady Mary Crewys. Sydneysiders hoped that Mrs. Brough would make her reappearance, but she did not, and the role was played by Beatrice Day. Carter Pickford played her son, Peter, with Bessie Major as Lady Belstone, Herbert Flemming as John Crewys QC, and Miss Gordon Lee as Sarah Hewell.

Peter’s Mother was performed for a fortnight, and on the 27 April, another new play was given its Sydney premiere: What Would a Gentleman Do?

Cartoon by an unknown artist. This was published in The New Zealand Mail, 13 February 1907, during the Brough-Flemming Comedy Company’s recent tour.

A comedy by Gilbert Dayle, this play had brief run at the Apollo Theatre in London during September 1902. Prior this, under the title The Man from Australia, it had been seen at the Princess Theatre in Llandudno (Wales) the previous April. As What Would a Gentleman Do?,it had its first Australian outing in Perth in August 1906 with Herbert Flemming as Dickie Hook—the man from Australia—a wealthy but unsophisticated young Australian in England, who with the aid of The Complete Gentlemanattempts to understand the manners and customs of polished society. Other roles were played by Florence Brough (Agatha Kederby), Beatrice Day (Madge Kederby) and Emma Temple (Dolly Banter).

For the first Sydney performance Gregan McMahon now played the young would-be gentleman. Audiences sympathised with poor Dickie as his attempts at assimilation failed and he grappled with the problem of ‘What would a gentleman do?’. A complete change to the female roles saw Beatrice Day as Dolly Banter, Bessie Major as Agatha Kederby and Miss Gordon Lee as Madge Kederby. The curtain-raiser In Honour Bound by Sydney Grundy was also performed with Beatrice Day and Herbert Flemming as Sir George and Lady Carlyon.

Beatrice Day as Susan Throssell in Quality Street, c.1905. Photo by Alice Mills, Melbourne.

Author’s collection

Henry Irving as Dr. Primrose and Ellen Terry as Olivia in Irving’s 1885 revival of The Vicar of Wakefield. Photo by Window & Grove, London.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Two revivals followed, The Walls of Jericho (11–14 May) and Quality Street (15–17 May) with Beatrice Day as the heroine in each of these plays. The season closed with the first Australian production of Olivia, a play by W.G. Wills, based on The Vicar of Wakefield, and first performed in London in March 1878 with Hermann Vezin as Dr. Primrose and Ellen Terry as Olivia. A 1885 revival saw Henry Irving as the vicar with Ellen Terry again as Olivia. In Sydney, the play was directed by H.W. Varna (previously associated with the Meynell, Gunn and Varna company), who was said to be using a copy of Irving’s original script containing his marginal notes and directions.⁹ As Olivia, Beatrice Day was commended for her finished performance as the pretty muslin-clad heroine, supported by Herbert Flemming as Dr. Primrose.

With the close of the season on 31 May, Herbert Flemming re-badged the company as the Herbert Flemming Comedy Company and headed north for a tour of Queensland. Although his company would play one more season in Sydney during 1908, Herbert Flemming sadly died in October 1908, aged just 52.

The following evening, Saturday, 1 June, saw a change of pace with Charles Holloway’s company. Their opening piece was the melodrama The Coal King by Ernest Martin and Fewlass Llewellyn for the first time in Sydney. This play had first been performed at the Elephant and Castle in London in October 1904 and had enjoyed a successful provincial career. The first Australian production had been given at the Theatre Royal in Hobart by Holloway’s company in November 1906.

Beatrice Holloway and Mabel Russell as Dick and Wally, the title characters in the melodrama of Two Little Vagabonds. From The Theatre (Sydney), September 1906. Theatre Heritage Australia.

Charles Holloway’s company excelled at melodrama, and The Coal King was true to form. Tom Roberts, the son and heir of a mining magnate is brought up in humble circumstances, having been swapped at birth with his foster mother’s real son. Working in the colliery Tom has risen to the position of mine-manager. He is love with the village schoolmistress, Grace Shirley, which earns the enmity of Walter Harford, the fake heir, who is cruel and vindictive. Tom manages to avoid being accused of a crime he didn’t commit and a mine collapse to win the hand of Grace and his rightful position as the real son of the mine owner. Beatrice Holloway played Grace, with Robert Inman as the hero and Godfrey Cass as the villain.

The 1860 Irish drama The Colleen Bawn by Dion Boucicault followed on 15 June for six nights only, with John P. O’Neill as Myles-Na-Coppaleen (with songs) and Beatrice Holloway as Eily O’Connor.

The final seven nights of the season saw a revival of Two Little Vagabonds with Beatrice Holloway reprising her original role as Dick, one of ‘little vagabonds’. The other, Wally, was played by Mabel Russell.

On Monday, 1 July 1907 the Empire Pictures Co., under the direction of Edwin Geach, commenced a season of films presenting for the first time in Sydney scenes of ‘Bonnie Scotland’ and ‘Dear Ould Ireland’. On 15 July, they were supplanted by ‘Canada As It Is’ and ‘Magnificent Naval Display’ (depicting a torpedo-destroyer and submarine flotilla attack).

Florence Baines as Mary Ellen Thompson in Miss Lancashire Ltd., c.1907

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Poster for The Yellow Peril, Palace Theatre, Sydney, 5 October 1907

National Library of Australia, Canberra

On Saturday, 3 August 1907, music hall artiste Florence Baines made her first appearance in Australia. Accompanied by a company of fifteen English artists, she opened in an original musical play entitled Miss Lancashire Limited. This was performed with success throughout the English provinces during 1905 with Baines as Mary Ellen Thompson, a Lancashire parlourmaid who changes places with an heiress. The farce, written by Sydney Sydney, (yes! this was his name) was liberally interspersed with songs and ditties to demonstrate Florence Baines’ talent as an entertainer, including her popular ‘Laughing Song’. A lady of generous proportions, she was a larger-than-life figure, and her magnetic performance style earned her the title ‘the girl who set London laughing’. She proved one of the most popular attractions at the Palace in recent years.

Miss Lancashire Ltd. played to capacity audiences at the Palace until 1 October 1907—an extraordinary 59 performances!¹⁰ Florence Baines and her ‘Laughing Song’ continued to keep Australia and New Zealand in stitches until July 1909 when she returned to England.

The following Saturday, 5 October 1907, saw the production of a new drama in four acts called The Yellow Perilby Alfred Newcomb. Being presented for the first time by Charles W. Taylor’s New English and Australian Dramatic Organisation, the play was described as the ‘only DRAMA on a CHINESE SUBJECT ever written for the ENGLISH STAGE’, replete with magnificent Chinese costumes and scenic effects.¹¹ According to news reports, the play’s author was a New Zealander who had spent ’22 active years in the Far East’ and was therefore an authority on the ‘Chinese question’ and the perils of inter-marriage, the theme of the play.¹² Laura Roberts played the heroine Vera Montgomery, who becomes the unhappy wife of a Chinese potentate, the Marquis Lo-Feng-Sao (Harry Diver).

Unfortunately for Taylor and his company, The Yellow Peril did not ‘catch on’ in Sydney and it was abruptly withdrawn on 15 October. As a result, the theatre was plunged into darkness.

It was re-opened for a special ‘Irish Night’ organised by Dr. Charles W. MacCarthy on Saturday, 2 November 1907. The evening was dedicated to a certain Mrs. Kevin Izod O’Doherty, an Irish woman whose story of hardship and survival earned her the sobriquet ‘Eva of The Nation’. Andrew Mack who had just concluded a successful season at the Criterion Theatre gave his services as did ‘The Australian Queen of Irish Song’ Marie Narelle who contributed to a largely amateur program of songs and monologues.

On Saturday, 9 November 1907, Carter, the Great Magician, assisted by Miss Abigail Price, made his first appearance in Australia, presenting a program of Magic, Mirth and Mystery.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Sydney Morning Herald, 24 December 1906, p.3

2. Advertisement, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 December 1906, p.2

3. The Era, 2 February 1907, p.13

4. The Bulletin, 10 January 1907, p.8

5. Advertisement, The Daily Telegraph, 9 February 1907, p.2

6. See Graham Shirley & Sally Jackson, ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang: Restoring the world’s first feature’, n.d.; Ina Bertrand & William D. Routt, The Picture That Will Live Forever: The Story of the Kelly Gang, 2007.

7. The Australian Star, 11 February 1907, p.2. Henry William Varna (1865–1935) was an American-born, British educated theatre producer. In 1897 he joined Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s company at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London as stage manager. In this capacity he travelled to Australia to oversee the staging of Tree’s production of The Darling of the Gods with Julius Knight and Maud Jeffries. He next teamed with Meynell and Gunn and oversaw the production of The Little Stranger. During 1908, with Herbert Flemming’s Company he produced The Mummy and the Humming Bird. Settling in Australia he was subsequently associated with actor-manager Allan Wilkie and in later years ran his own dramatic school in Sydney and was a prominent member of the Actors’ Association.

8. The Australian Star, 8 April 1907, p.2

9. The Daily Telegraph, 4 May 1907, p.19

10. Advertisement, The Daily Telegraph, 1 October 1907, p.2

11. Advertisement, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 1907, p.2

12. The West Coast Times, 19 March 1907, p.3

References

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

Ina Bertrand & William D. Routt, The Picture That Will Live Forever: The Story of the Kelly Gang, ATOM, 2007, https://books.google.com.au/books?id=H-elDgAAQBAJ

Graham Shirley & Sally Jackson, ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang: Restoring the world’s first feature’, National Film & Sound Archive, n.d., https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/story-kelly-gang

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

Newspapers

The Australian Star (Sydney), The Bulletin (Sydney), The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), The Era (London), The New Zealand Mail (Wellington), The Sydney Morning Herald, The West Coat Times (Hokitika)

Papers Past, http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

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

Pictures

Bathurst City Library, Bathurst, NSW

HAT

National Library of Australia, Canberra

National Portrait Gallery, London

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

With thanks to

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

Following the departure of Carter, the Great Magician on 6 December 1907, the Sydney Muffs returned for a brief season from 16 December to 20 December 1907, presenting three plays: Rob Roy, The New Boy and A Village Priest.

Boxing Day saw the first appearance of Irish-American comedian J.F. Sheridan at the Palace. Playgoers were well-acquainted with Sheridan’s special brand of comedy. Since his first trip in 1884, he had been a regular visitor to these shores. Sheridan’s speciality was ‘travestie’ roles, which is to say he played female characters, typically buxom Irish widows!

Heba Barlow, leading lady with the Anderson-Sheridan company

Josef Lebovic Gallery collection no. 1, National Museum of Australia, Canberra

Sheet music cover for ‘Will he answer, Goo-Goo’, published by Allan & Co., c.1907

National Library of Australia, Canberra

The attraction at the Palace was Cinderella, a Christmas pantomime devised by J.F. Sheridan and Fred W. Weierter, with topical allusions by journalist Pat Finn (son of Edmund Finn, who as ‘Garryowen’ wrote Chronicles of Early Melbourne). Presented in association with William Anderson, this work had already been seen in Perth, Fremantle and Adelaide during the Christmas/New Year period 1906/07, though it seems it had its first outing back in 1902.¹

Naturally, Sheridan played the Baroness. Other roles were performed by Heba Barlow (Cinderella), Stella Selbourne (Prince Charming), Marie Eaton (Dandini), along with Olive Sinclair as the Fairy Queen, Miss Roland Watts Phillips and Percy Denton as the Ugly Sisters, and Joseph Lamphier as the Baron. Sheridan was the undoubted star of the show, as noted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 27 December 1907:

Probably, when the memory of this year’s Cinderella has become obliterated, or confused with other versions, there will still remain one outstanding feature of artistic distinction, and that will be John F. Sheridan’s inexpressibly quaint and ridiculous portrait of the Baroness Bounder. On his entrance the comedian presents the severe simplicity of some antique spinster of uncertain age and horribly certain ugliness, in the dress of the Early Victorian era, with crinoline, lace collar and cuffs, and a chastely discreet exhibition of fowl-like, sinewy neck. Probably an ugliness less insistent would make this character even more telling than it is because its whole value consists in the marvellous way in which the actor always keeps within the bounds of lifelike femininity. It is a real study; and the Baroness singing ‘Will he answer, Goo-Goo?’ in a prim little voice, and with a daintily dished style of old-maidenly dancing, is a thing to be remembered.²

The song, ‘Will he answer, Goo-Goo’ was published by Allan & Co., and the sheet music cover featured a portrait of Sheridan in his costume as the Baroness.³

The pantomime was a riot of colour and movement. As the Australian Star noted, ‘With limited stage accommodation Messrs. William Anderson and John F. Sheridan have succeeded in putting on some wonderfully good spectacles with more than 100 performers on stage.’ One of the highlights was the Porcelain March. Other attractions included a Snow and Robin ballet, Sappho and Rainbow ballets, and an amusing routine entitled ‘five minutes on ice’ by American champion roller-skater Fred Norris.⁴

Cinderellaran until 30 January 1908, and the following night, for one performance only, the company presented Fun on the Bristol, in which Sheridan played his most enduring character, that of the Widow O’Brien.

Thereafter, the company took Cinderella to Newcastle, and then on to New Zealand. In October 1908, Sheridan returned to Sydney and was seen in a matinee benefit at the Tivoli in aid of the NSW Vaudeville Club, in what would be his last appearance in the city. Two months later, in Newcastle, about to open his Christmas season, he died of heart failure. He was 65.

Thereafter a ‘mixed bag’ of tenants occupied the Palace stage.

Following the departure of the Sheridan company, Spencer’s Theatrescope Co. returned for a six-week season of novelties, from 2 February to 27 March.

From 28 March to 2 April, the NSW Sports Club Ltd presented amateur boxing and wrestling tournaments.

On 3 April, the Bank of NSW Musical and Dramatic Society staged the A.W. Pinero comedy The Parvenu.

Owen Clark, 1908

W.G. Alma conjuring collection, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Barclay Gammon, comedian with Maskelyne and Devant’s Co. at the Palace Theatre

From The Referee (Sydney), 13 May 1908, p.12

Magic returned from 4 April to 27 May with the Maskelyne and Devant’s Mysteries. Though neither John Nevil Maskelyne nor David Devant was in the company, the tricks that they perfected at the Egyptian Hall in London formed the basis of the show. Magician and illusionist Owen Clark was the principal performer, supported by Gintaro, a Japanese juggler, with comedian Barclay Gammon at the piano. Clark proved to be an able and popular performer, though on opening night he upset the gallery boys who not being able to see the stage clearly due to a piece of stage apparatus blocking their view, shouted to Clark to have it raised. But not understanding their calls, an altercation ensued, and the management had to bring the curtain down while the problem was rectified.⁵

Decorative program for the 1908 Australian and New Zealand tour of Edward Branscombe’s Scarlet Troubadours. Reed Gallery, Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand.

On 30 May and the following week, the Scarlet Troubadours made their first appearance in Sydney, having already achieved success in Perth, Adelaide, and Melbourne. Described as a ‘costume concert company’, this troupe was under the direction of the enterprising concert promoter Edward Branscombe. He had visited Australia several times before, notably with the Westminster Glee Party in 1903. Branscombe would go on to establish The Dandies, individual troupes of performers distinguished by the colour of their costumes—Red Dandies, Green Dandies, Pink Dandies, etc. During the summer months, these troupes performed throughout Branscombe’s network of open-air theatres.

The Scarlet Troubadours, 1908. Maude Fane is second from the left in the middle row. HAT Archive.

The line-up of the Scarlet Troubadours comprised eight performers. One of the ladies in particular, Maude Fane, would go on to enjoy a successful career in musical comedy with JCW. She was described as ‘a discovery of Mr. Branscombe … gifted with a soprano of unusual clearness and sparkle’.⁶

Then on 6 June, West’s Pictures settled in, presenting the ‘latest novelties and surprises in cinematography’, accompanied by De Groen’s Vice-Regal Band.

From 31 August, McMahon and Carroll commenced a four-week season of films.

Postcard commemorating Frank Thornton’s last performances in Australia. Photos by Talma & Co.

Author’s collection

Finally on 5 September, comedy returned to the Palace when Frank Thornton commenced a four-week farewell season, presenting revivals of his two most popular plays: The Private Secretary (in which he played the hapless cleric the Reverend Spalding) and Charley’s Aunt (where he excelled as Lord Fancourt Babberley, aka Donna Lucia, the Aunt from Brazil—‘where the nuts come from’!). Thornton was supported by an ‘all new’ company that included Templer Powell, Charles Stone, Belle Donaldson, Clare Manifield and Harriet Trench.

Like Sheridan, Thornton had been a regular visitor to Australia, making six tours between 1885 and 1909. Thornton made his final bow before a Sydney audience on 9 October, the Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 1908, reporting:

Laughter reigned supreme, however, until the very end, when, in a touching and dignified speech of farewell, Mr. Thornton revealed to a surprised and regretful audience his resolution to retire from the stage. In doing this he remarked that his heart was too full on that occasion of long leave-taking to do justice either to himself or them … He was now terminating his sixth return to the country he had learned to love so well.⁷

Thornton concluded his tour with appearances in Brisbane and Melbourne, and on his return to England, true to his word, he settled into quiet retirement. He died in 1918, aged 73.

Characters in Two Little Sailor Boys

From Sydney Mail, 7 October 1908, p.947

Lilian Meyers. Photo by Talma & Co., Sydney and Melbourne.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Saturday, 10 October 1908 saw the return of Meynell and Gunn’s Dramatic Company. During the following five weeks they presented two plays: Two Little Sailor Boysand A Miner’s Trust.

Two Little Sailor Boys, a drama by Walter Howard, the author of the highly successful The Midnight Wedding, was being presented for the first time in Sydney. The title characters were played by Louise Carbasse and Maisie Maxwell, though it seems they did not make an appearance until the last act. The real focus of the drama was the ‘handsome adventuress’ Lola (played by Lilian Meyers), described as an ‘utterly callous fortune hunter’. She is the mother of one of the sailor boys, Tom Yorke, who almost drowns when she pushes him into a swirling river, only to be saved by Cyril Grey, the other sailor boy of the title.

Sydney-born Louise Carbasse, who played the role of Cyril, would go on to have a successful career as Louise Lovely appearing in some fifty Hollywood movies between 1915 and 1924.

Other roles were played by Conway Wingfield, Maud Chetwynd and Lorna Forbes.

Poster for The Miner’s Trust. Colour lithograph by Troedel & Co., Melbourne, c.1909.

From Australian Theatrical Posters, Josef Lebovic Gallery, 1988

Conway Wingfield. Photo by Sarony Studios.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Three weeks later, on 31 October, the same company presented A Miner’s Trust by Jo Smith, ‘for the first time on any stage’. A former Melbourne businessman, Smith would go on to have further success with The Bushwoman (1909) and The Girl of the Never-Never (1912). With respect to ‘home-grown’ talent, Anderson was one of the few managers who was prepared to back Australian plays. This new piece, which was having its ‘world premiere’, was set in part on the Australian goldfields in the early days. The melodramatic plot concerns two miners, Alan Trengrove (Conway Wingfield) and Jack Howard (Wentworth Watkins), who having amassed considerable fortunes are returning to England after ten years in Australia. The two men are similar in appearance—and when Howard is murdered en route for home, Trengarth takes his place; not for any sinister reason, but to save Howard’s blind sweetheart, Alice Medway (Lorna Forbes), from certain shock should she learn the truth about the death of her fiancé! But the hero faces numerous dilemmas, when among other things, he falls in love with Alice’s sister Ida (Lilian Meyers) and having changed his name learns that as himself he has been left a fortune following the death of his uncle. A Miner’s Trust played until 13 November.

Advertising postcard for The Prince Chap, Criterion Theatre, London, 1906. Author's collection.

The following evening, H.R. Roberts (under the management of Harold Ashton and Allan Hamilton) made his debut at the Palace. This New Zealand-born actor, well-known in Sydney, was making his reappearance in Australia after nine years abroad. Roberts’ opening play was The Prince Chap, a comedy-drama by Edward Peple, based on Peple’s 1904 novel of the same name. This was the first Sydney production; the play having already been seen in Christchurch on 1 June 1908 and in Melbourne on 15 August 1908.

When The Prince Chap was premiered in New York at Madison Square Theatre in September 1905, the principal role of William Peyton was created by Cyril Scott. Roberts, however, played the role in London, when it received its British opening at the Criterion Theatre on 16 July 1906. Other players in the company included Hilda Trevelyan, Sam Sothern, Lilias Waldegrave, Janet Alexander and A.E. Greenaway.

Peple was taken by H.R. Roberts portrayal of William Payton. Quoting a letter from Peple to Roberts, the Daily Telegraph recorded:

It is rather a remarkable coincidence that, in writing both the play and the novel, I should have described the leading character as a man whose personality and temperament are so eminently in accord with your own; and indeed, had I called upon you originally as a model for the man himself, I could not have been more accurate in portraying the spirit and individuality of my hero.⁸

Set in London, it tells the story of a young sculptor whose loses the affections of his sweetheart when, after seeing him with a young girl, mistakenly believes he is the father. The girl, Claudia, is the daughter of one of his models (who in the play’s prologue, asks William to look after her daughter, before dramatically dying in his arms)—and he raises her as his own. The play spans some thirteen years, and when the final curtain falls, Peyton, now a successful artist, realises that he is in love with Claudia, who is now a young woman. The play’s three acts are subtitled: The Child (Act 1), The Girl (Act 2) and The Little Woman (Act 3), and to represent Claudia at each of these times, she is played by three different actresses.

In Australia, Claudia was played by Vera Huggett (Act 1), Beryl Yates (Act 2) and Justina Wayne (Act 3). Australian actor A.E. Greenaway reprised his London role of the Earl of Henningford, while other newcomers included Frank Lamb (Marcus Runion) and Mary Keogh (Phoebe Puckers), with Vera Remee as Alice Travers (Peyton’s former sweetheart).

The play was enthusiastically received, but due to the short season it only played for a fortnight. On 28 November, the company produced A Message from Mars. This play had been seen at the Palace back in 1901 with the Hawtrey Comedy Company. In this current revival, Roberts played Horace Parker, with A.E. Greenaway as the Messenger from Mars, and Fanny Erris as Minnie Templar.

H.R. Roberts

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Maggie Moore in Struck Oil, 1908

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Six nights later, Maggie Moore joined the company. She was reappearing after an absence of six years. Her last Sydney season had been at the Palace in June 1903. Maggie and Roberts, who had been performing together since the early 1890s, had ‘tied the knot’ in New York in April 1902. Maggie had first come to Australia in the mid-1870s with her then husband J.C. Williamson, but the two had separated by 1891, finally divorcing in 1899.⁹

On Saturday, 5 December 1908, Maggie joined her husband in a revival of Struck Oil, a play they had performed in together on many occasions, though it was Maggie and Williamson who had first created the characters of Lizzie Stofel and her father John Stofel back in the 1870s. In this current revival, Maggie introduced two new songs: ‘Dixie and the Girl I Love’ and ‘I’ll Be Waiting, Dearie, When You Come Back Home’.

Struck Oil held the stage until 24 December. On Boxing Day, Edwin Geach took over the theatre, presenting two shows daily: the Christmas pantomime Robinson Crusoeat 2pm and the drama The Woman Paysin the evening.

Robinson Crusoe, with libretto and score by Fred W. Weierter, featured an ‘all-juvenile’ cast headed by Louie Crawshaw (Robinson Crusoe), Florrie Johnson (Polly Perkins) and Walter Cornock (Will Atkins). The piece had been seen in Sydney the previous Christmas when it was staged at William Anderson’s Wonderland City, transferring to the Oxford Theatre in George Street in mid-January.

The pantomime was a hit: ‘the pretty little playhouse was packed with parents and their children, and a capital entertainment on a modest scale at popular prices was given by a great troupe of well-trained juveniles’.¹⁰

Nellie Fergusson

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Ethel Buckley. Photo by Talma & Co.

Powerhouse Collection, Sydney

The evening show was in compete contrast. Written by Frank M. Thorne, The Woman Payswas a sensation drama in which ‘Thrilling incidents follow one another in quick succession, and the action of the drama is worked out in melodramatic fashion’, including a spectacular waterfall scene and a shipwreck. ‘The old story of man’s inhumanity to woman, and of the woman’s revenge’, the central characters were played by Nellie Fergusson (Madge Threadgold), Kenneth Hunter (Sid. Armstrong), Jefferson Taite (Roger Marchant), and Ethel Buckley (Polly Stokes).¹¹ Having had its UK premiere in Gateshead in 1907, the piece was being performed in Sydney for the first time, the company having given the Australian premiere at the Victoria Theatre, Newcastle, on 8 September 1908, and it had been produced in Melbourne the following month.

At the Palace, The Woman Pays attracted crowded houses, but due to the brevity of the season, it was withdrawn on 8 January 1909 and replaced by the ‘the most popular drama of the century’, East Lynne, with Nellie Fergusson in the dual role of Lady Isabel and Madam Vine. It played for six nights—and on 15 January 1909, both it and Robinson Crusoe were performed for the last times. 

To be continued

Endnotes

1. See https://ozvta.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/1907-682019-1.pdf

2. Sydney Morning Herald, 27 December 1907, p.6

3. https://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn7052964

4. Australian Star, 19 December 1907, p.8

5. Magical Nights at the Theatre, pp. 145-146

6. Bulletin, 28 May 1908, p.9

7. Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 1908, p.16

8. Daily Telegraph, 18 April 1908, p.17

9. See Leann Richards, How Mrs J C Williamson Struck Oil | Stage Whispers

10. Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 1908, p.3

11. Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 1908, p.3

References

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

Peter Sumner, Australian Theatrical Posters 1825–1914, Josef Lebovic Gallery, 1988

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

Newspapers

The Australian Star (Sydney), The Bulletin (Sydney), The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), The Gadfly (Adelaide), The Referee (Sydney), The Sphere (London), Sydney Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald, Town and Country Journal (Sydney)

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

Pictures

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

HAT Archive

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Powerhouse Collection, Sydney

Reed Gallery, Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

With thanks to

John S. Clark, Judy Leech, Rob Morrison