Thursday, October 28, 2010

Cyril Maude

English actor/manager Cyril Maude toured Australia in 1917.

He was born in 1862. A fragile child, he was sent to Australia to regain his health. He returned to England without his health, but still nursing the ambition to be an actor. He fulfilled that ambition in Denver, USA. From that time his career grew and he soon was leasing London theatres as an actor/ manager.

Maude was a character actor, he believed in using observation then building up his characters from there. He was best known for his role as "Grumpy" a spoilt old man, who as a retired lawyer solved a crime to keep his loved ones happy. He took this play to Australia and toured Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney with it. He was immensely popular here.


Cyril retired in 1924, but was convinced to return to Grumpy and performed the character on film. He appeared in other films as an elderly man and died in London in 1951.






Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Melbourne Theatres

I am from Sydney, so I don't know Melbourne very well. Fortunately I have a guide for the post today.

It's a book called Magical Nights at the Theatre by Charles Waller, a magician.
Actually it is a collection of Waller's accounts of vaudeville performances put together by Gerald Taylor. It's a rare book of 1000 copies, but it's a great reading and reference source.

In the first few pages of Magical Nights there is a map of Melbourne theatre locations.So thanks to Charles Waller and Gerald Taylor, here is some information about them.




Firstly, The Assembly Hall,located on Collins Street between Swanston and Russell.




Above is the Princess Theatre. Melbourne tends to preserve its buildings far better than Sydney and so the Princess Theatre can still be visited at Spring Street. It was here that J C Williamson ran his Melbourne business and it was here that 13 year old Carrie Moore auditioned for the great man. The black and white picture is dated 1908.




Her Majesty's Theatre on the corner of Exhibition and Little Bourke Streets. This was J C Williamson's other theatre. He leased it, renovated it and changed its name from the Alexandra. The Royal Comic Opera Company used this as their second home.




The Town Hall Melbourne. The Town Hall hosted some famous acts, including the amazing Davenport Brothers, the most famous spiritualists in the known world in 1876.




Finally a repeated photo to complete the set. The Opera House ( later the Tivoli) and Bijou Theatres in Bourke Street between Swanston and Russell Streets. As in Sydney where the Tivoli and National Amphitheatre were virtually neighbours, the two major popular theatres in Melbourne were also close together.



The people of Melbourne do not seem to be afflicted with the dreaded destoy and rebuild disease so prevalent in Sydney. I hope their immunity continues. Sydney, of course, remains the best city of Australia, despite her dreadful affliction.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Minne Tittell Brune

Born in San Francisco in 1875, Minnie Tittell Brune was the most popular actress on the Australian Stage between the years 1904-1909.


Her family were quite religious and so was Minnie, she once said she was "half a nun" She particularly disliked the way men looked at her, and how many people equated "actress" with bad moralily.

She was not very successful overseas but JC Williamson saw something in her that would appeal to Australian audiences. He was right, and she was tremendously popular on the Australian stage.

She played male and female roles and her most famous character was "Sunday" in the Western themed play of the same name.

When Minnie left Australia, her career dwindled. In her later years she returned to the US and after her husband's death,retired to a convent.


She died in Los Angeles in 1974 aged 99 years .

Monday, October 25, 2010

Music Postcards

Before the internet, the ipod and television there were music sheets,phonographs, and singers in the theatre next door.

To encourage people to buy music sheets and to return to the theatre, companies produced postcards. The ones here date from around the mid 1900s and the first three come from "Albert's Lyric series". There was an Albert's music store in Sydney in 1905 which specialised in sheet music and Edison phonographs, so the postcards may originate from there.


Firstly, here is the famous Florence Young, singing "Dearie". Florence was the star of J C Williamson's Royal Comic Opera Company. She was also a wonderful singer.





Below is the American Baritone Post Mason, singing Would You Care? A love ballad. Mason did a series of concerts around Australia in 1906-07





Heba Barlow is next, singing"Im trying so hard to forget you" For many years Heba was the leading lady of Irish American John F Sheridan's Company. After Sheridan's sudden death in 1908, Heba went to England to continue her career.




Finally, the song that everybody knows, "Home Sweet Home." Sung by Lilian Hallows and Sidney Howard of the Sidney Howard English Drama Co. They were presented by Harry Rickards at the Criterion Theatre in 1907 according to the reverse of the postcard. This postcard is English and it seems to have been altered to include details of the Australian season.







Sunday, October 24, 2010

Nance O Neil

American actress, Nance O Neil, toured Australia twice during the early 1900s. Both tours were managed by McKee Rankin a famous US theatrical manager.

When she arrived for the first tour in 1900, Nance was only 26 years old. She was just starting her career and probably came to Australia looking for experience and quick money.




She was a tall woman with long blonde hair (probably strawberry blonde) and blue eyes. She also had a good friend with her, a snow white Persian cat, which also had blue eyes. On the first tour she performed in "Magda" which was her most famous role.



Nance returned to Australia in 1905 and the white cat returned with her. She had lost weight but was the same imposing presence on stage.Below is her autograph on very stylish personalised stationery.







Nance died in 1965 at the age of 90. She acted in silent movies and made a successful transition to the talkies. However, she is best known for her friendship with Lizzie Borden, the alleged axe murderer who she met in 1904.


Friday, October 22, 2010

Jack Cannot's last letter

This is a sad story.

Jack Cannot was a very famous comedian in the 1920s, but the talkies and the depression came and life was difficult for Jack and his family.




This is his last letter.


Dear Old Charlie,

When you get this it will be a case of "Alas, poor Yorrick", and I want you to do the best for my family, who will be more or less destitute. I have fought against doing what I intend to do, but it is the only way I can see clear to enable my children to get a proper education and my darling wife to feel that every postman's knock does not mean a summons.

Charles, I have the greatest wife and children a man could wish for, so you can guess with what heart yearnings I am leaving all I love best, but I cannot get decent work. I have done 26 weeks work in two years and then I got scaled for 70 pounds in a pantomime.

Now old sport, you and Walter- God bless you both- will do what you can for my loved ones , especially the boy. Oh, what a grand little fellow and how I worship the very ground he walks on. He has been at college since he was nine years old, and he is 14 and two months now, and I am behind on his schooling fees.

If you get his letter before they find me, I would like a decent burial. We owe at least 15 weeks rent, but here again we have a wonderful woman for a landlady. If it hadn't been for her we would have been destitute long ago.

My daughter, Betty is just a sweet angel and I owe her school fees too. I have earned 66 pounds since "Clowns in Clover" finished and I am doing this really to get out of the way, as I havent any money to go abroad or anything. I was going to start a school for singing with the aid of a friend, but I feel it's no go before we open. So that's that. So long old pal. If I have helped make things easier for the profession, then I am glad, though I believe I have suffered in consequence.

God Bless you all

Jack Cannot.


In August 1929, Jack's body was found near Malabar in Sydney. His death was ruled a suicide.

More on Jack's Story


Thursday, October 21, 2010

Allan Wilkie

Allan Wilkie was an Englishman who set up his own company after becoming disillusioned with the established London theatre.

He and his wife Frediswyde Hunter Watts were most famous for their 5 year tour of various Shakespearean plays throughout Australia during the 1920s.

Here is Allan


and here is Frediswyde




When the letter below was written, January 4 1921, the company had just begun a Shakespeare season in Tasmania. The Hobart Mercury newspaper was very happy about this because the bigger companies tended to avoid little Tasmania. It was an expensive trip. The paper was convinced that the population of Hobart had the intellect to enjoy Shakespeare.





In the letter Allan says that he will return to Tasmania every year with a different repertoire because the reception he received was so 'flattering'.


Allan, his wife and the company stayed in Australia until about the 1930s, but the depression was too much for them and they disbanded. Allan returned to England. He married a third time after Frediswyde died.


He is remembered for his attempts to bring Shakespeare to places that were starved of theatre. Much like today, his plays were seen by school children who were studying the bard and perhaps the tradition of taking Australian pupils to see Shakespeare on stage was started by the Wilkies.


Allan died in 1970 in Scotland.