Leon Errol (1881-1951) Vaudeville star from Balmain*

Leon Errol at right with (fellow Australian-born) Joe Kirkwood Junior at left. Publicity photo for Monogram Pictures’ Gentleman Joe Palooka (1946). By 1946, both men had long since made the USA their home. Author’s Collection. [*Balmain is a well known inner suburb of Sydney]

The Five Second version
Sydney born Leon Errol is remembered today for his comedy work in US films – leading roles in shorts for RKO and supporting roles in features such as the Mexican Spitfire and Joe Palooka series. However he really should be celebrated as a pioneer of the stage. Born in 1881 and arriving in the US in about 1903, in a remarkably busy career he built a reputation in the US as a popular and successful stage comedian, singer, dancer, writer and director. His big breakthrough was a teaming with African-American comedian Bert Williams in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1911 and he continued to appear on the stage until the late 1920s. His two decades of success on Broadway was such (he was in the Ziegfeld Follies for five years) that he convinced his parents and siblings to move permanently to the US in 1913. He moved to Hollywood in about 1930 and appeared in films until his death in 1951.
Unfortunately much that has been written about Leon Errol is plainly incorrect – especially that which recounts the first thirty years of his life. It seems that while talented and hard working, he learned much of what he knew on stage in the US – there was no hidden Australian career. The retelling of his early career is hardly surprising, when we consider this narrative partly dates from the golden age of Hollywood. This was an era when Anglo-Indian Merle Oberon was said to be Tasmanian, and Tasmanian Errol Flynn was usually described as Irish.
(This article does not list all of Leon Errol’s many films, but links to some that are online can be found in the references)

Leon Errol remembers Sydney

Sometime in 1918, 37 year old Broadway star Leon Errol was interviewed by a US magazine about the most striking episode of my life. He chose to recount an event from his childhood, when he was swimming near Iron Cove bridge in Sydney harbour, and a friend named “Jimmy Carter” was killed by a shark.^[1]The Theatre (New York) Vol 28, 1918 via Hathitrust.com Doubtless many readers of The Theatre took this account from a well known comedian with a grain of salt. But the story had a firm basis in truth. An 11 year old child named Stephen Carter really had been killed by a shark at Balmain in December 1888 in circumstances identical to Leon Errol’s story.^[2]The hideous injuries the child suffered from an unseen shark would have worried every parent in the suburb. See The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Dec 1888, P5, via National Library of Australia’s … Continue reading Leon Sims, as he was then called, lived only a few streets from Stephen Carter in the inner western Sydney suburb of Balmain, and he would have been 7 years old at the time. Whether he really was there when poor Stephen Carter died or not, the story is one of the few Leon Errol told about his Australian upbringing.

Balmain photographed from the former naval yard at Cockatoo Island in 2023. The Sims home in Glassop Street was behind the wooded park centre left, while Iron Cove bridge (where the 1888 shark attack occurred) can be seen in the distance on the right. While many of the buildings are modern, 19th century terrace homes can be made out on the left. Author’s Collection {Click photo to enlarge}

Leon Errol’s family

Born in Sydney in 1881, Leonce Errol Sims was the first born child of Joseph Sims, an accountant,^[3]working at one stage for the very large bureaucracy that was the New South Wales Post Office and Elizabeth nee Adams, both originally from Cornwall, England.^[4]NSW Births Deaths & Marriages, Birth Certificate for Leonce Errol Sims, 2213/1881 Directories of the 1890s through to the 1910s show the family living in Balmain for over twenty years, most of this time at 74 Glassop Street, not far from the sea. Balmain was then a proudly working class suburb, and its residents were often closely associated with Australia’s feisty labour politics.^[5]The suburb was home to a number of Australian Labor Party figures, including State Premier Neville Wran, Prime Minister Billy Hughes, Federal Ministers Tom Uren and Herb Evatt As a child, Errol was also an outstanding swimmer, the passion being encouraged by his father Joseph, who was a leading figure in the Balmain Swimming Club.^[6]See Evening News (Syd) 23 Mar 1885, P5 and Balmain Observer and Western Suburbs Advertiser, 31 Mar 1888, P6 via National Library of Australia’s Trove

At least two of Errol’s younger siblings – Othelia (born 1885) and Roy (born 1889) were musically inclined and performed publicly as children. Later, his sister Leda (born 1891) also took a turn on the stage.^[7]See Times Union (New York) 24 Mar 1924, P2 But life for the family was not without its challenges. One female and three male children in the family had died at birth or in infancy.^[8]As noted on the birth certificate for the youngest member of the family born in 1893. NSW Births, Deaths & Marriages, Birth Certificate for Stuart Trahnver Sims, 5296/1893

A young Leon Errol. Unidentified US newspaper. Source: The American Vaudeville Museum ^[9]American Vaudeville Museum Collection, MS 421 Box 59 Folder 2, Courtesy of University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections.

Leon Errol did not attend St Joseph’s College, Sydney, as is usually claimed.^[10]This was confirmed by the St Joseph’s College archivist to the author in August 2023 Almost certainly he attended Balmain’s Birchgrove Road Superior Public School, which was near the Sims home.^[11]NSW’s Public Instruction Act of 1880 made schooling compulsory to age 14. “Superior” schools like Birchgrove combined primary and secondary education It is also likely that he was the “Master L. Sims” who performed in the school’s annual entertainment in December 1895.^[12]The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 14 Dec 1895, P10 via National Library of Australia’s Trove

Leon Errol goes on stage in Australia

An example of a typical Australian smoke night, c1923. Errol performed at similar environments in Sydney. Here, the Victorian Rifle Association celebrate.^[13]Errol did not perform at this. *Table Talk* (Melb) March 15, 1923, via National Library of Australia’s Trove

There are numerous claims about Leon Errol’s activities on the Australian stage, all of which appeared after he gained fame in the US. The only available contemporary Australian sources – newspapers – occasionally record Leon Errol^[14]now using that stage name in a very modest list of Sydney events – performing at smoke nights and benefit concerts between 1899 through to the later part of 1900. These include a performance with the “Balmain Literary and Musical Union” for the Balmain New Ferry Company employees’ excursion in April 1899^[15]The Sydney Morning Herald 27 Apr 1899, P6, via National Library of Australia’s Trove and at a fundraiser for Balmain’s Mort Dock Ambulance Corps in November 1899.^[16]The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 6 Nov 1899, P3, via National Library of Australia’s Trove After August 1900 he disappears completely from Australian records. There is nothing to verify the claim he appeared at Sydney’s Standard Theatre in 1896, as the usually reliable Hal Porter and others have since claimed.^[17]Hal Porter (1965) P134 At the age of only 15, he would have been a performer worthy of notice. The idea that he was an up and coming teenage performer also sits uncomfortably with the oft-repeated but also impossible to verify claim that he commenced a medical degree at the University of Sydney. In another variation of the story written in 1918, The New York Times suggested he had been placed “in a sort of medical apprenticeship, which continued through his school and college days.” But this is unlikely, because by the late 1890s, the University of Sydney’s medical school was well established and there was no other way to become a practitioner.^[18]See Milton Lewis (2014) Medicine in Colonial Australia, 1788-1900 This story of Errol’s study of medicine has been so regularly stated it is usually taken as fact in many biographies. To build some space for an emerging Australian stage career alongside medical study and the claimed arrival in the US in 1898, some biographies have incorrectly hinted his birthdate must have been 1876.^[19]See The New York Times, 7 July 1918, P36, via newspapers.com for a typical telling of the medical story

There is no evidence that Leon Errol matriculated from a school in 1897-9 and without this he would have been ineligible to study medicine. Not a single contemporary Australian report or memoir exists to support the claim he was a medical student who performed so well on stage, he decided to leave university. And it is also worth noting that his near contemporary, Billy Bevan, was also claimed to have studied at a Sydney University.

The real story is almost certainly much more mundane. Other than 1899-1900, there is no other documentation of Leon Errol as a performer in Australia. Even after his breakthrough in New York in 1911, it took several years for Australian papers to take notice of and “reclaim” him. Finally, in 1915, one Australian newspaper suggested Errol’s experience in Australia had been primarily as “a stage manager.”^[20]The Herald (Melb) 24 Nov 1915, P1,via National Library of Australia’s Trove In 1919, The Argus reported that he had once been in a circus in Australia and had performed with the Paul Martinetti touring pantomime company at age 15, before taking other uncredited stage roles.^[21]The Argus (Melb) 9 Apr 1919, P9, via Via National Library of Australia’s Trove In 1922, the national weekly newspaper The Bulletin described Errol as only ever having featured in Australia “in a small theatrical way.”^[22]The Bulletin 6 July 1922, P36, via National Library of Australia’s Trove In 1925, the same paper reported that he had “worked his passage” to the US, after “he found it hard to get a hearing in Australia.”^[23]The Bulletin 30 April 1925, P39, via National Library of Australia’s Trove In a 1934 report, apparently based on an account from someone who had known him, the Melbourne Herald flatly dismissed the study of medicine story, and again stated he had worked his passage to the US.^[24]The Herald (Melb) 11 Oct 1934, P20 via National Library of Australia’s Trove

Leon Errol c1926, at the beginning of his serious career in film.^[25]*Exhibitor’s Herald,* Jan 16, 1926, P59, via Lantern Digital History

Leon Errol arrives in the US c1903

On his US naturalisation papers, Leon Errol claimed he arrived in the US, aged 17, in 1898 – which in light of the few Australian reports mentioned above, is highly unlikely. While a US ship’s manifest listing Leon Errol’s name is yet to be found, his name can be found in reports of performances in Oregon state as early as June 1903.^[26]If he worked his passage to the US, his name would not have appeared on passenger manifests. For the earliest mention of Leon Errol performing in the US, see The Morning Astorian, (Oregon) June 19, … Continue reading By May 1904 he was reported as appearing with the Laurence stock company in Walla Walla, Washington state, in a season that commenced with Jack O’Diamonds, followed by Brother against Brother and The Blue and the Gray. This mix of melodrama and farce was hardly what Errol would be remembered for in later years, but highlights that he was a jobbing actor, taking the work that came his way. With Errol in the Laurence company was at least one other Australian trying his luck in the US, Al Winn, who left some recollections.^[27]Everyones (Aust) Vol.10, No.512, P122, 11 December 1929, via National Library of Australia’s Trove It was during this 1904 season that Errol also tried out a short comic “Dutch speciality act,” hinting at the direction his career would later take.^[28]The Evening Statesman, (Walla Walla, Wash) May 11, 1904 P4 via newspapers.com It was the start of a busy career and over the next few years Errol teamed with numerous partners.^[29]For example, see a photo of him performing with Cliff Trainor in January 1905, in the University of Washington Library, Special Collections, here A year later Errol was performing burlesque at the Star Theatre in Boise, Idaho, in company with Roscoe Arbuckle. Frank Cullen has suggested that Errol was the writer, manager and leading comedian of this troupe, until it went bust.^[30]Frank Cullen (2006) P357

Leon Errol in Idaho in 1905. Note the reference to “beautiful chorus girls” led by “Stella Chatlin”, almost certainly Stella Chatelaine, who he would marry two years later.^[31]*The Idaho Statesman* (Boise, Idaho),14 Oct 1905 P6 via newspapers.com

Years later, following his success on Broadway, Errol recalled how difficult his early years performing and touring through the US had been. “I’ve had a lot of hardships since I first started, until my present hit… I’ve barnstormed^[32]played small towns and been stranded many times in Australia and America…I was playing with a comic opera company in San Francisco at the time of the earthquake and for three days I lived in a cemetery.”^[33]From an unidentified US newspaper report dated about 1913, part of the Leon Errol collection held by the American Vaudeville Museum Archive at the University of Arizona It’s a good story and he really was in San Francisco on 18 April 18, 1906.^[34]See San Francisco Chronicle, April 23 1906, P6 via newspapers.com

Leon Errol and Stella Chatelaine performing together. **New York Dramatic Mirror**, July 2, 1913. Source: American Vaudeville Museum ^[35]American Vaudeville Museum Collection, MS 421 Box 59 Folder 2, Courtesy of University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections.

Leon Errol as a “German Knockabout comedian”^[36]The Boston Globe, 22 Sep 1907, P27 via newspapers.com

On August 10 1907, Leon Errol married fellow performer Stella Chatelaine (Bertha Nelson) in New York. The marriage certificate reveals Errol as a likely author of some of the misinformation about himself. On this document, for reasons unknown, both he and Stella gave incorrect dates and places of birth.^[37]We know this is “our” Leon Errol because their marriage date is cited again in other documents and the parent names are correct

Only a month later a significant professional development took place for Leon Errol and Stella Chatelaine – when they both joined the Jersey Lilies Extravaganza Company in Boston. Thereafter, they performed consistently in this company in the major cities on the US east coast, including New York in February 1908. Errol already had a “Dutch comic act”, but he had now morphed to being “a droll German comedian,” with some newspapers implying he really was German. It has been suggested he took on this dialect to disguise a strong Australian accent.^[38]Errol himself said the coster/cockney songs he sang in character when he was first in the US were not a success- see The Sun (New York) 28 July 1918, P16 via newspapers.com While this is possible, he would be unique amongst the many Australians working in the US in the early twentieth century if his accent was such a problem. After all, why not simply adopt a US or British accent, if one could do a German one!^[39]Notably also, none of the Pollard Opera Company performers – Snub Pollard, Daphne Pollard, Ted McNamara, or Alf Goulding – who came from comparable Australian working class environments … Continue reading

Leon Errol in makeup in March 1910. ^[40]*The Buffalo Enquirer* (Buffalo, New York), 26 Mar 1910, P7 via newspapers.com

While reviews of his work were increasingly effusive, interviews with Leon Errol never seem to unravel the truth about his Australian experiences. In November 1909 he told a New York paper:

“Whenever I hear stock company actors tell of their hardship because of constant rehearsals… it recalls my experience once in the Northwest. Performances… were continuous, the companies were small and to assume five or six characters was not unusual. We didn’t have to pay royalties for plays because I wrote a new one… every week. I had come from Australia where I had a thorough training in all branches of theatrical life, in dramatic plays, pantomime, comedy and farce, as a song and dance man and as an acrobat. My friends accuse me of being able to play the piano well and of having a fairly good voice so I suppose I was well equipped for the job.” ^[41]The Brooklyn Daily Eagle 8 Nov 1909, P20 via newspapers.com

In March 1911, Variety complimented Errol for writing, staging and being principal comedian of the latest The Jersey Lillies show. “He is the most clever and versatile player in burlesque… he can dance to the delight of the audience, and ranks with any ‘drunk’ this country has seen.” Errol had “developed into a musical comedy comedian of class.”^[42]Variety March 1911, P20 via Lantern Digital History

Leon Errol’s drunk act can be appreciated today by watching The Jitters (1938) (at the Internet Archive, here) – one of his many RKO comedy shorts of the 1930s that liberally borrowed elements of his successful stage acts. A highlight of the film is when his fully inebriated character lurches masterfully down stairs, soon after being mistaken for a premier dance instructor – after which “a roomful of lovely young women slavishly following his every [drunken] step.”^[43]Geoff Collins (2008) Rubberlegs

His was not just physical comedy. In this clip from the film The Jitters (1938) Errol plays a drunk asking to learn a dance called “The Jitters”.

With the Ziegfeld Follies and teaming with Bert Williams

In 1911, a long association with Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld began, when he took a part in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1911. Errol appeared in the hugely popular Ziegfeld Follies extravaganzas until 1916, the cast usually also included Bert Williams and often Stella Chatelaine. Williams and Errol worked in stand-out acts, and also alongside other performers of note – W C Fields, Raymond Hitchcock and Fanny Brice.

Historian Frank Cullen has observed that the 1911 teaming of African-American comedian Bert Williams with Leon Errol was a significant first for the US stage. “If there were other black-and-white comedy teams before them or at the same time, [they] remain unknown”^[45]Cullen (2006) P358 Williams was widely regarded as the leading comedian of the Follies in 1911, but it was the act he devised and performed with Errol, set in Grand Central Station, that attracted the strongest response from audiences. Errol played the inebriated English tourist Major Waterbrush, while Williams was Rufus Redcap, a station porter, who leads him up and down the half-built station’s girders – with a rope for “safety.” It was absurd and even with the distance of time, the reported dialogue was very funny.^[46]Often the skit was stretched out by the two comedians, improvising. For more on the skit see Cullen(2006) P358-9

Leon Errol and Bert Williams in their act in **The Ziegfeld Follies** of 1911. ^[47]*The Green Book Magazine*, Vol 7, Jan-Jun, 1912, via the Hathitrust

In the Ziegfeld Follies of 1912, their new skit was based around a hansom-cab driver (Williams), a reluctant panto horse and a very drunken passenger played by Errol – the funny inebriate now being a role Errol was regularly associated with. The relationship between Williams and Errol was apparently a personal as well as professional one. Frank Cullen notes that when Williams died in 1922, Leon Errol was the only white pallbearer.^[48]Cullen(2006) P358-9

Leon Errol as the drunk and Bert Williams as the cab driver in the **Ziegfeld Follies of 1912**.^[49]*The Green Book Magazine*, Vol 9, 1913. Via the Hathitrust

Errol’s stagecraft was such that he directed the Ziegfeld Follies in 1914 and 1915, and he also directed and appeared in Ziegfeld’s The Century Girl in 1916-17. Amongst other successes, he took the leading role of Duke of Czechogovinio in Ziegfeld’s three act musical Sally – which ran for over 500 performances from late 1920 to April 1922. The Broadway productions he appeared in during the 1910s often went on to tour the larger east coast US cities, further confirming his place as one of the country’s premier comedians.

Music sheet for the song *Look for the Silver Lining*, from Ziegfeld’s **Sally**, which was sung by Marilyn(n) Miller. Author’s Collection.

There were other important milestones in Leon Errol’s life in the 1910s. His youngest sister Leda joined him in New York in May 1912. A year later his parents and three other siblings arrived. Perhaps back in Sydney they really had once dreamed of their oldest son being a successful doctor. We might easily conclude that after ten years separation, Joseph and Elizabeth now wanted to see their son achieving a different type of success – on Broadway. Within a year, the whole family had decided to stay in the US, and Joseph wrote back to Sydney to resign his position as a Justice of the Peace.^[50]Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales 22 Jul 1914, No.126, P4186 Government Gazette Appointments and Employment At the time of the 1915 US census, the whole Sims family were living with Leon and Bertha in New York. There was no going back.

“My whole family came over to America in time for the opening of the Follies… It was the first time they had seen me since I left Sydney fifteen years ago. Father and Mother watched us at the first night performance and when the audience began cheering so enthusiastically after our dance, they just sat and cried – they were so happy with our success.”^[51]Unidentified US newspaper c1913, American Vaudeville Museum Collection, MS 421 Box 59 Folder 2, Courtesy of University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections

Following further Broadway successes, particularly the Raymond Hitchcock musical revue Hitchy-Koo, in 1919, Errol took a contract with British producer Albert de Courville, for his new London revue, Joy Bells. He travelled to Britain in February 1919, and the show opened at the Hippodrome in late March – to a very long run. Also featured were Shirley Kellogg, George Robey and fellow Australian Daphne Pollard.

In one skit his character was called “Fuller Beer.” His jokes around drunkenness assume a different meaning when we remember the US was in the process of adopting Prohibition – the Volstead Act being passed in October 1919. Errol is reputed to have told London audiences that the reason he was now in England was because he “wanted a drink.”

A snapshot of his film career

There are 165 film credits to Leon Errol’s name according to the IMDB. Errol first appeared in a film in 1916, in the two reel comedy Nearly Spliced. Variety reported this was “the old story of a ‘boob’ [who arrived] late for his own wedding.”^[52]Variety, 26 May 1916 via Lantern Digital History He also appeared in the comedy short Buggins, released in August 1920. Both these early films – like so many silents, are now lost and how seriously he viewed the new medium at the time we do not know – he was still occupied with the stage. However, in 1925, Errol appeared in a feature length version of the play Sally, where he reprised his stage role as the Duke of Czechogovinio. If he had been uncertain of the growing importance of cinema as an entertainment, this experience would have changed his mind. A fan magazine of mid 1925 reported that he “stole” the film, and was almost as funny as he had been in the stage version, even without his voice.^[53]Screenland, May-Oct 1925 via Lantern Digital History

Errol with Colleen Moore in the filmed version of **Sally** (1925) ^[54]*Screenland*, May-Oct 1925 via Lantern Digital History

Leon Errol was not the only vaudevillian to move from a successful stage career to film comedy. Daphne Pollard‘s career partly mirrors his – with a shift in 1927 to regular film work, following a long period singing, dancing and as a stage comedian in the US and in London. Snub Pollard also began to appear in films in about 1915. As noted, Leon Errol’s speciality became the comedy two-reeler, (an 18 minute short) so often the content of these resembled his stage turns. His final live performance was in Fioretta in 1929, after which Leon and Stella moved across the US to Los Angeles, where his screen career commenced in earnest. In a 1952 obituary Sight and Sound magazine daubed him “the king of two-reel comedies” and it is these film shorts that were amongst his best known.^[55]Sight and Sound Jan-March 1952 via Lantern Digital History As Cullen notes, the two-reel length was well suited to his comic talents ^[56]Cullen (2006) P360 and this matches the length of many of his stage turns. Now in the public domain, many of the RKO two- reelers can be found online or purchased as DVD collections. The plots of these comedies usually revolved around a domestic crisis – almost always caused by Errol’s character.

Screengrab from **Service With a Smile** (1934), with Leon Errol fantasizing about the perfect garage. Amongst the earliest of the three-strip technolor films from Vitagraph-Warner Brothers, the film can be watched at the TCM Intros and Wrap-Ups Channel on Youtube, here.

Slapstick, humorous patter and good looking girls were features – Cullen describes many as “essays of the late middle aged (man in) crisis … trying to recapture his youth.”^[57]Cullen (2006) P360 In the beautiful Vitaphone-Warner Brother three strip technicolor short Service with a Smile (1934) he played a grimy service station owner who thinks his business has been destroyed. To the insurance company he describes in preposterous detail what he needs to rebuild – and we see a service station fantasy with its endless rows of immaculate female service attendants, who – Busby Berkeley like – sing and dance as they work. Of course, his grimy station is still there – the report of its destruction was an April Fool’s joke.

Leon Errol and Lupe Velez in **Mexican Spitfire** **(1939)**. ^[58]*Cine-Mundial*, 1940 via Lantern Digital History

In addition to starring roles in the comedy shorts for RKO, he took other roles. In 1939 he took a dual supporting role in The Girl from Mexico, the first of a series of eight comedies with Lupe Velez, or “the Mexican spitfire.” (Errol played both Uncle Matt and Englishman Lord Epping) In 1946 Monogram pictures employed Errol to play manager Knobby Walsh in its Joe Palooka, Champ film and most of the sequels. Errol took a number of supporting roles in other feature films, even while appearing in RKO’s comedies. There were numerous other character roles.

Screengrabs of Leon Errol from **Never Give a Sucker an Even Break** **(1941)** and **The Invisible Man’s Revenge** (1944) ^[59]Philip Loyd Channel on Youtube and the Internet Archive

Leon Errol as the cockney Herbert Higgins, cooking breakfast for the Invisible Man (Jon Hall). The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944) via the Internet Archive

Leon Errol died quite suddenly in October 1951, Stella having predeceased him in 1946. The couple had no children. The Australian press recalled him in obituaries, sometimes highlighting the impressive estate he had left as another example of an Australian success in Hollywood, but otherwise they went along with international press accounts of his life.^[60]Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW), 22 Oct 1951, P1, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove

How much do we really know about Leon Errol? Apparently deeply professional off-stage, and devoted to his wife in private life, there still remains a sense of the unknown about the man. Was he a friend of Australian-born Paul Scardon, who appeared in three of the Palooka films? Or WC Fields, with whom he appears to have an association over a number of years? In April 1926 Errol apparently broke or sprained an ankle so badly it brought the Chicago run of Louie the Fourteenth to a close, but after initial reports, further commentary about the accident was muted. Perhaps this was what actors of the era did – manage their public and private profiles with such great care we have little sense of who they really were at all.

A note on births and deaths

Part of Leonce Errol Sims’ New South Wales birth certificate is shown here, to dispel the myth of an earlier birth, or the story that his real surname was Errol ^[61]See Parish & Leonard (1979) P243 or Simms.^[62]National Film & Sound Archives Australia

According to her 1946 US death certificate, Stella Chatelaine was born Bertha Nelson in Fargo, North Dakota in 1881. There is no evidence she arrived in the US with Errol, as is often claimed, but as already noted, they were working together as early as 1905.

Nick Murphy
September 2023

References

Thanks to Beverley Malone, Archivist, St Joseph’s College, Sydney.

Primary Sources

National Library of Australia, Trove
State Library of Victoria
British Newspaper Archive
Ancestry.com
Victoria, Births Deaths & Marriages
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Newspapers.com
Hathitrust.com
Lantern Digital Media Library@ the Internet Archive

Text

Frank Cullen (2006) Vaudeville, Old and New, an Encyclopedia of Variety Performers. 2 Vols. Routledge
Rob King (2017) Hokum! : the early sound slapstick short and Depression-era mass culture. University of California Press
Milton Lewis (2014) “Medicine in Colonial Australia, 1788-1900” Medical Journal of Australia, Vol 201, Issue 1, Supplement.
James Robert Parish & William T Leonard, (1979) The Funsters. Arlington House
Hal Porter (1965) Stars of Australian Stage and Screen. Rigby
Gale Research (1978) Who was who in the theatre, 1912-1976 : A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses, directors, playwrights, and producers of the English-speaking theatre, Vol 2 D-H. Gale Research Company
Steve Rattle “Remembering Leon Errol” in On Stage, Theatre Heritage Australia. Vol 13, Number 4, Spring-Summer 2012
Anthony Slide (1994) The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville. University Press Mississippi.
Rennold Wolf (1912) “The Greatest Comedian on the American Stage” The Green Book Magazine Vol 7, 1912, P1173-1184
Adolph Zukor (1953) The Public is Never Wrong. G.P Putman’s Sons

Web

The American Vaudeville Museum Archive at the University of Arizona. This important collection includes what appears to have been Leon Errol’s own scrapbooks. As can be seen in several of the photos reused here, the scrapbooks have been damaged by damp.

A selection of films available online

There are a large number of Leon Errol comedy shorts from the RKO studio available at the Internet Archive. Unfortunately most are quite low resolution.

This site has been selected for archiving and preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	The Theatre (New York) Vol 28, 1918 via Hathitrust.com
↑2	The hideous injuries the child suffered from an unseen shark would have worried every parent in the suburb. See The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Dec 1888, P5, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑3	working at one stage for the very large bureaucracy that was the New South Wales Post Office
↑4	NSW Births Deaths & Marriages, Birth Certificate for Leonce Errol Sims, 2213/1881
↑5	The suburb was home to a number of Australian Labor Party figures, including State Premier Neville Wran, Prime Minister Billy Hughes, Federal Ministers Tom Uren and Herb Evatt
↑6	See Evening News (Syd) 23 Mar 1885, P5 and Balmain Observer and Western Suburbs Advertiser, 31 Mar 1888, P6 via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑7	See Times Union (New York) 24 Mar 1924, P2
↑8	As noted on the birth certificate for the youngest member of the family born in 1893. NSW Births, Deaths & Marriages, Birth Certificate for Stuart Trahnver Sims, 5296/1893
↑9	American Vaudeville Museum Collection, MS 421 Box 59 Folder 2, Courtesy of University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections.
↑10	This was confirmed by the St Joseph’s College archivist to the author in August 2023
↑11	NSW’s Public Instruction Act of 1880 made schooling compulsory to age 14. “Superior” schools like Birchgrove combined primary and secondary education
↑12	The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 14 Dec 1895, P10 via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑13	Errol did not perform at this. Table Talk (Melb) March 15, 1923, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑14	now using that stage name
↑15	The Sydney Morning Herald 27 Apr 1899, P6, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑16	The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 6 Nov 1899, P3, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑17	Hal Porter (1965) P134
↑18	See Milton Lewis (2014) Medicine in Colonial Australia, 1788-1900
↑19	See The New York Times, 7 July 1918, P36, via newspapers.com for a typical telling of the medical story
↑20	The Herald (Melb) 24 Nov 1915, P1,via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑21	The Argus (Melb) 9 Apr 1919, P9, via Via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑22	The Bulletin 6 July 1922, P36, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑23	The Bulletin 30 April 1925, P39, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑24	The Herald (Melb) 11 Oct 1934, P20 via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑25	Exhibitor’s Herald, Jan 16, 1926, P59, via Lantern Digital History
↑26	If he worked his passage to the US, his name would not have appeared on passenger manifests. For the earliest mention of Leon Errol performing in the US, see The Morning Astorian, (Oregon) June 19, 1903, P4, via Library of Congress
↑27	Everyones (Aust) Vol.10, No.512, P122, 11 December 1929, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑28	The Evening Statesman, (Walla Walla, Wash) May 11, 1904 P4 via newspapers.com
↑29	For example, see a photo of him performing with Cliff Trainor in January 1905, in the University of Washington Library, Special Collections, here
↑30	Frank Cullen (2006) P357
↑31	The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho),14 Oct 1905 P6 via newspapers.com
↑32	played small towns
↑33	From an unidentified US newspaper report dated about 1913, part of the Leon Errol collection held by the American Vaudeville Museum Archive at the University of Arizona
↑34	See San Francisco Chronicle, April 23 1906, P6 via newspapers.com
↑35	American Vaudeville Museum Collection, MS 421 Box 59 Folder 2, Courtesy of University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections.
↑36	The Boston Globe, 22 Sep 1907, P27 via newspapers.com
↑37	We know this is “our” Leon Errol because their marriage date is cited again in other documents and the parent names are correct
↑38	Errol himself said the coster/cockney songs he sang in character when he was first in the US were not a success- see The Sun (New York) 28 July 1918, P16 via newspapers.com
↑39	Notably also, none of the Pollard Opera Company performers – Snub Pollard, Daphne Pollard, Ted McNamara, or Alf Goulding – who came from comparable Australian working class environments – faced this problem
↑40	The Buffalo Enquirer (Buffalo, New York), 26 Mar 1910, P7 via newspapers.com
↑41	The Brooklyn Daily Eagle 8 Nov 1909, P20 via newspapers.com
↑42	Variety March 1911, P20 via Lantern Digital History
↑43	Geoff Collins (2008) Rubberlegs
↑44	Via the Internet Archive
↑45	Cullen (2006) P358
↑46	Often the skit was stretched out by the two comedians, improvising. For more on the skit see Cullen(2006) P358-9
↑47	The Green Book Magazine, Vol 7, Jan-Jun, 1912, via the Hathitrust
↑48	Cullen(2006) P358-9
↑49	The Green Book Magazine, Vol 9, 1913. Via the Hathitrust
↑50	Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales 22 Jul 1914, No.126, P4186 Government Gazette Appointments and Employment
↑51	Unidentified US newspaper c1913, American Vaudeville Museum Collection, MS 421 Box 59 Folder 2, Courtesy of University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections
↑52	Variety, 26 May 1916 via Lantern Digital History
↑53, ↑54	Screenland, May-Oct 1925 via Lantern Digital History
↑55	Sight and Sound Jan-March 1952 via Lantern Digital History
↑56, ↑57	Cullen (2006) P360
↑58	Cine-Mundial, 1940 via Lantern Digital History
↑59	Philip Loyd Channel on Youtube and the Internet Archive
↑60	Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW), 22 Oct 1951, P1, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑61	See Parish & Leonard (1979) P243
↑62	National Film & Sound Archives Australia

Snub Pollard, the jobbing extra, writes to his family

Above: Snub Pollard in 1937. He made over 600 film and TV appearances between 1915 and 1962. Many of those made after the coming of sound were as an uncredited player. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.

Snub Pollard with two unnamed female friends in San Francisco, 1937. He sent this photo to his nephew in Australia. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.

Snub Pollard, born Harold Fraser in North Melbourne, Australia, in 1889, enjoyed a very long career on stage and in the US cinema.(See more about his professional life here) At the height of his success as a film comedian, he returned to Australia on a two month visit in 1923. He was well established at the Hal Roach studio, and told an Australian newspaper that he had a contract with Roach until 1927. Everything seemed to be going well. He was newly married, financially secure – to such an extent he could spend £2000 on a new house in Carlton for his mother.^[1]He also paid for her to visit California the following year

Most of his letters home, surviving at the Australian Performing Arts Collection in Melbourne, are addressed to his brother George or to his nephew, also named Harold, who lived in Portarlington, a pretty seaside town south of Melbourne. The collection of letters mostly date from after this visit home, from the 1930s -1950s, by which time he was appearing in supporting or uncredited roles. His letters give no hints about his change in fortunes – the transition from being a major silent screen comedian of the early 1920s to jobbing extra ^[2]an actor who is taking any work to maintain their career is never mentioned. The correspondence is too late to cover the mid 1920s when Snub left Roach and set up his own production company, which then failed. However, there are other insights to be had from reading his correspondence.

Snub Pollard returns to Australia. At left is Snub and his new wife meeting the head of Amalgamated Pictures in Melbourne. At right, Snub greeted on arrival by his large extended family.^[3]*Table Talk*, 22 March 1923, via State Library of Victoria

This writer has often wondered how strongly expat Australians working in Hollywood and Britain identified with their new cultural contexts and whether they maintained any sort of Australian identity. The evidence in the correspondence is that although Snub became a US citizen, he still regarded himself as an Australian and Australia as “home”. When he watched US newsreel footage showing the catastrophic 1939 bushfires near Melbourne, he said he felt homesick,^[4]Australian Performing Arts Collection, Pollard collection, Letter 24 March 1939 when he went swimming or enjoyed the hot weather ^[5]APAC, Letter 25 May 1939 he thought it was because he was Australian. He said he read Australian newspapers at the RKO studios to keep up with the news.^[6]APAC, Letter 25 May 1939

Snub’s trip home in 1923 remained a powerful memory. The very joyful time spent with brother George and his family at Portarlington seems to stayed with him for the rest of his life.“…Portarlington has a warm spot in my heart” he wrote.^[7]APAC, Letter 18 September 1939 Even as late as 1949, he expressed his desire to visit again, “then we will all go swimming together” ^[8]APAC, Letter 17 February 1949 but soon after he complained that there were now no longer direct ships between California and Australia, “so that’s that” – meaning it was too much effort to travel to Vancouver to catch one.^[9]APAC, Letter 14 March 1949

Snub posted a number of film publicity photos home to his nephew, including this one showing him in drag and without his trademark mustache. Unfortunately there is no notation as to what this film is. Australian Performing Arts Collection.

As might be expected, the topics covered in his letters include the mundane, like the weather in Los Angeles and how the seasons in California are the opposite to Australia’s, the opening of the baseball season, and comments about horse racing – a shared family interest that went back to Snub’s father. He also loved receiving family photos and regularly asked for more. He often listed the other family members he had just written to – it’s clear he took his family correspondence seriously.

Only sometimes does professional news feature in Snub’s letters, but several observations can be made from what he wrote. Westerns seem to have given him greatest pleasure; he mentions appearing in films with cowboy stars like Bob Steele and Tex Ritter and occasionally he mentioned the film titles by name. However, he worried that these Westerns might not be shown in Australian cinemas and therefore his family may not see them. Although he did not say so, these Westerns were second features, made quickly and on small budgets, usually with a running time of 60 minutes.

A photo sent home to Snub’s nephew in Australia. Tex Ritter with sometime sidekick Snub aka Peewee Pollard, cowboy stars of the late 1930s. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.

Interviewed in 1973, Tex Ritter seemed to suggest he had a role in Snub’s appearance as his sidekick in a dozen of his westerns made between 1936 and 1938. “I had seen Snub in his own little comedies when I was a kid. He was always one of my favourite comedians when I was growing up…I convinced them to put the old mustache back on him because a lot of people my age would remember him.”^[10]John Booker (2017) The Happiest Trails. P142-3. Ent Books. The interview was conducted by Grant Lockhart during Tex Ritter’s last UK tour in May 1973

The film Snub mentioned most often in letters sent during the period 1943-44 is the Pete Smith film Self Defence, one of a string of 10 minute comedy shorts made at MGM.^[11]APAC postcards, 12 June 1943, 26 May 1944, 21 June 1944, 4 Nov 1944 Unfortunately, it appears to be lost, although other Smith shorts have survived. Snub makes the point in one letter that as an extra, he didn’t really know how good his part would be until he started work on the picture.^[12]APAC Letter 14 March 1949 This may explain why he appears to have little awareness of the significance of some of the films he appeared in – such as the now classic sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still, in 1951 or the musical Singin’ in the Rain in 1952. In May 1948, he wrote of working on a Bing Crosby film for two weeks in San Francisco, although what this was seems difficult to identify now – possibly it was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. ^[13]APAC Letter 15 May 1948

Snub Pollard without makeup. c1940s. Australian Performing Arts Collection

One of the most significant matters alluded to by Snub was his involvement in the Screen Extras Guild, an association he joined in the later 1940s. ^[14]APAC Letter 23 March 1949 He was on the board of directors of the Guild by March 1949 and remained so for at least ten years, in company with another Australian actor, perennial Hollywood butler William H O’Brien.^[15]Valley Times (CA) 14 Jul 1952, P4 via newspapers.com While there is no evidence his politics were as radical as those of another famous Australian-born unionist in the US, Harry Bridges of the International Longshoremen’s Association, the activities of the SEG were designed to protect the rights of worker members who might otherwise easily be exploited. SEG’s efforts included demanding health and welfare benefits for extras ^[16]Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1955, P16. via newspapers.com and refusing compromising conditions to employment.^[17]The Fresno Bee (CA) 24 March 1949 via newspapers.com Snub’s first travel in a commercial aircraft was on SEG business in 1949. He wrote about the experience at some length and posted the United Airlines information packet home to his nephew.

The technology Snub often wrote about in the later 1940s was television – as he was beginning to be employed in TV shows and started to see his old comedies replayed. He seemed to have lived in hope that the new medium might see him making comedies again in his old makeup, and he wrote that he had some good proposals. Television in Australia was still being planned when he wrote to his nephew to explain how the exciting new medium worked: “you sure will like it. After dinner you go in your front room, turn on the television set and see all the pictures you want to, even Snub Pollard comedies.” ^[18]APAC letter 4 Jan, 1952 “Yes television over here is great I see a lot of my old comedies…”^[19]APAC Letter 15 (possibly) July 1952 Television began in Australia in late 1956, when to fill screen time, Australian TV stations no doubt turned to the readily available work of silent comedians like Snub.

A photo sent to Australia in the early 1950s. On the back Snub wrote *“this is… from a television picture I was in recently. What do you think of the girl?”* What the TV program was, remains unknown. Australian Performing Arts Collection.

Of Snub’s personal life, the surviving letters tell us only a little. After the Second World War he lodged with old friends, including a director of some of his old comedies.^[20]But he does not say who the ex director was. APAC Letter 13 May 1949 He spent Christmas and festive occasions with friends and still received fan mail. He had married three times, but by 1944 could assure his family he was no longer married and by 1946 had apparently decided he wanted to stay single.^[21]APAC Postcards 30 Sept 1944 and 30 April 1946

Occasionally Snub sent small gifts home in a parcel – combs and pens. He also sometimes posted the comic sections of US newspapers to his nephew, and forwarded on postcards he had been sent by fans, that tickled his fancy. Several of these were fairly risqué for the time, and might tell us something about Snub’s own sense of humour.

A 1948 postcard that had been sent to Snub by a US fan with the annotation *“Im wondering about your trip here last year”* and sent on to his Australian nephew. *“Sure is a funny one”* Snub added. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.

Snub Pollard did not return again to see his family, but stayed in California.^[22]Several Australian newspapers announced he had returned for a performance tour in 1931, however, there is no other evidence of this Although he never stated it directly, there is a sense of regret about this in his letters. However, he had spent most of his life at a remove from his family – first travelling the world with the Pollard child performers, then with older ex-pollard players, and then in Hollywood, which had more than a sprinkling of former Australian vaudevillians amongst them. Snub worked almost to the time of his death in 1962.

Snub Pollard on a holiday, late in life. c1950s. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne

NOTE 1

The collection consist of postcards, photos, Christmas cards and letters, the majority are dated between 1939 and 1953. Correspondence from the war years are all postcards. The recipient of most is Harold Fraser, the son of Snub’s older brother George. The Australian Performing Arts Collection purchased this collection in the early 1990s. As noted, Snub wrote to all his family, and we must assume this is only a partial record.

Thanks

Claudia Funder, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne, who convinced me to leaf through their Snub Pollard Collection.
Kevin Summers and Geoffrey Wright, whose patient persistence demonstrated that I was wrong and Snub Pollard did indeed appear as a taxi driver in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Further Reading

John Booker (2017) The Happiest Trails. P142-3. Ent Books.
Kevin Brownlow (1968) The Parade’s Gone By… University of California Press.
Ted Holland (1989) B western actors encyclopedia; Facts, photos and filmographies for more than 250 familiar faces. McFarland & Co
Kalton C Lahue and Sam Gill (1970) Clown princes and court jesters. Some great comics of the silent screen. A S Barnes
Brent Walker (2013) “Mack Sennett’s Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of his Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel” McFarland & Co
Matthew Ross. Lost Laugh Magazine, Number 13.

This site has been selected for preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	He also paid for her to visit California the following year
↑2	an actor who is taking any work to maintain their career
↑3	Table Talk, 22 March 1923, via State Library of Victoria
↑4	Australian Performing Arts Collection, Pollard collection, Letter 24 March 1939
↑5, ↑6	APAC, Letter 25 May 1939
↑7	APAC, Letter 18 September 1939
↑8	APAC, Letter 17 February 1949
↑9	APAC, Letter 14 March 1949
↑10	John Booker (2017) The Happiest Trails. P142-3. Ent Books. The interview was conducted by Grant Lockhart during Tex Ritter’s last UK tour in May 1973
↑11	APAC postcards, 12 June 1943, 26 May 1944, 21 June 1944, 4 Nov 1944
↑12	APAC Letter 14 March 1949
↑13	APAC Letter 15 May 1948
↑14	APAC Letter 23 March 1949
↑15	Valley Times (CA) 14 Jul 1952, P4 via newspapers.com
↑16	Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1955, P16. via newspapers.com
↑17	The Fresno Bee (CA) 24 March 1949 via newspapers.com
↑18	APAC letter 4 Jan, 1952
↑19	APAC Letter 15 (possibly) July 1952
↑20	But he does not say who the ex director was. APAC Letter 13 May 1949
↑21	APAC Postcards 30 Sept 1944 and 30 April 1946
↑22	Several Australian newspapers announced he had returned for a performance tour in 1931, however, there is no other evidence of this

Marjorie Bennett (1896-1982), from bathtubs to character roles

Above: Marjorie Bennett onstage and in the bath in Australia, in Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1922).^[1]Table Talk (Melb) 3 Aug 1922, P25 Via State Library of Victoria

The Five Second version

Marjorie Bennett, the younger sister of actress Enid Bennett, was born in York, Western Australia, in 1896. She travelled to the US in December 1916 to join Enid. Famous in later years for “cheerful, white haired woman” roles, by the time of her death she had over 200 film and TV appearances to her credit. (TCM and the IMDB provide lists of her screen appearances after 1946.) Much less well known is that before 1946 she had already enjoyed a long career as a stage actress, including a successful twenty-eight month performance tour back to Australia, where she developed something of a reputation for “saucy theatre” in the process. When she died in June 1982, she was so well known that almost every notable US newspaper carried her obituary.^[2]Australian papers did not report her death

Younger sister Catherine Bennett also briefly appeared in Hollywood films.

Left: Marjorie Bennett as an ingenue, in the play The Taming of Bab, at the Royal Playhouse, California, 1924. ^[3]News-Pilot (San Pedro, CA) 4 Oct 1924, P5. Via Newspapers.com

The Bennett family

The Bennett girls from Western Australia – Enid (born 1893)^[4]Western Australia, BDM document 1325/1893, Marjorie (born 1896)^[5]Western Australia, BDM document 2741/1896 and step-sister Catherine (born 1901)^[6]Western Australia, BDM document 5122/1901 all ended up living and working in California’s booming film industry. However all three women had a different experience – Enid preferred screen work, Marjorie spent twenty years on stage before returning to film, while Catherine briefly tried stage and screen and then rejected both.

Enid Bennett was the first to go the United States – in June 1915, appearing on stage in New York later that year.^[7]Cock O’ the Walk opened in New York at George M Cohan’s Theatre on December 27 1915, but it appears to have opened as early as October in Scranton, Pennsylvania This followed several years performing in Australia with the Fred Niblo–Josephine Cohan Troupe, and appearances in two Australian films directed by Niblo. Her Australian story is told here.

Enid Bennett and Fred Niblo, about the time of Marjorie’s return from Australia. c1923. By this time the couple were married and well established in Hollywood – Enid as a popular screen player, and Fred as one of its leading directors. Author’s collection.

While Enid’s path to the stage and screen is well documented, Marjorie’s is less so. It was US film critic Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times who gleaned much information from Marjorie while she was alive.^[8]See Kevin Thomas articles in The Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio) 28 Aug 1977, P49 and The Journal Herald (Ohio) 3 Jan 1978, P30, via Newspapers.com Reading these accounts today, one gains the impression she was a woman with a strong sense of self, a healthy sense of humour and held in high esteem by many in the industry. In 1977, Rick Rosner, a producer and writer for the popular TV series CHiPs told her “you are the sun on a cloudy day. When you arrive everything becomes beautiful.” A nice compliment for an 80 year old, still hard at work.^[9]Kevin Thomas (Los Angeles Times) via Asbury Park Press (New Jersey), 4 Sept 1977, P52, via Newspapers.com

Enid, Marjorie and Catherine’s mother was Nellie nee Walker. After the death of her first husband Francis Bennett in 1898 and second husband Alexander Gillespie in 1903,^[10]Both husbands were school principals Nellie Gillespie moved her family from Western Australia back to Sydney, to the comfortable suburb she had been born in – Woollahra, where she apparently ran a boarding house at No 20 Newcastle Street, Rose Bay.^[11]Now No 34 according to the 1917 Sands Directory of Sydney In response to letters from a homesick Enid in Hollywood, Marjorie was sent to keep her older sister company. Marjorie arrived in the US in December 1916 on the SS Ventura, accompanied by just two pieces of luggage and on a tourist visa. She recalled that she didn’t want to go to the US and certainly “didn’t want to be an actress.”^[12]Kevin Thomas, The Journal Herald, (Dayton Ohio), 3 Jan 1978, P30, via Newspapers.com By this time, Enid had already appeared on stage and in her first Thomas Ince film, A Princess of the Dark and her star was rising.^[13]Motion Picture News, 21 October 1916, P2523, Via Lantern Media History Digital Library The sisters lived together in an apartment in Los Angeles and there is some evidence they had a jolly time of it, socialising with various celebrities and sometimes the other Australians working in Hollywood.^[14]see for example a photo of the Bennetts with Sylvia Breamer in Ralph Marsden’s (2016) Who Was Sylvia? There are also reports of the Australian girls forming a “Kangaroo Club” for … Continue reading Soon after, Marjorie was also convinced to appear in a film for Ince, reportedly The Girl, Glory, where Enid had a leading role.

Marjorie and Enid reunited in late 1916. This newspaper report suggested the sisters were twins.^[15]*San Francisco Call*, Volume 100, Number 153, 26 December 1916, via UCR California Digital Newspaper Collection

The family together in the US

The Bennetts together for Enid’s marriage to Fred Niblo in 1918. *The Green Room magazine*, 1 June 1918, P34. Via State Library of New South Wales

Nellie Gillespie arrived in the US in January 1918, with her younger children Catherine and Alexander. Several dramatic events had impacted the family at this time. One was the tragic death of Francis or “Reg”, the oldest of the Bennett children and a Lieutenant in the Australian Army, killed in action in Belgium in October 1917^[16]The location of Reg Bennett’s grave was lost soon after his burial in the field, a fact that must have caused the family great distress. See https://www.guildfordanzacs.org.au/anzac/45 The second, a happier piece of news, was the impending wedding of Enid and Fred Niblo. The couple married in February 1918.^[17]Josephine M Cohan had died in July 1916 Niblo went on to become one of Hollywood’s leading directors while Enid’s fame as a star soared. By the early 1920s the couple were very well known figures in the industry – perhaps “Hollywood royalty” might be the term.^[18]See for example, a very inaccurate profile piece on Enid in Picture Show Jan 8, 1921, P8. Via Lantern, Media History Digital Library

An ad for for the film **Naughty Naughty** in late 1918.^[19]*The Bulletin* (Pomona, CA) 13 Oct 1918, P10. Via newspapers.com

Touring with Julian Eltinge and a return to Australia

Unlike Enid, it is difficult to find Marjorie showing any interest in acting while growing up in Australia. It appears she owed her entree to Hollywood films entirely to her sister Enid and the counsel of Fred Niblo.^[20]In this 1921 report in Australia, Marjorie specifically mentioned Niblo giving career advice to her – Table Talk (Melb) 8 Sept 1921, P39, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove Marjorie appeared in three films in 1918, including Naughty Naughty with Enid. Motion Picture directories of the time listed her as a suitable ingenue type.

Marjorie or Rosemary Theby being ravished in Thomas Ince’s *The Midnight Patrol* (1918)^[21]Advertising in *The Theatre Magazine*, 1 March 1921, via State Library of Victoria

And then at the end of 1918, as she recalled when interviewed by Kevin Thomas, she gave up the screen to try the stage.^[22]The Journal Herald (Dayton Ohio) 3 Jan 1978, P30 via Newspapers.com In fact, for the next eight months she performed with famous female impersonator Julian Eltinge(1881-1941), touring throughout the US.

Marjorie (left) heads off on tour with Julian Eltinge in 1919 ^[23]*The San Francisco Examiner*, 10 Jan 1919, P11, *The Seattle Star*, 1 Feb 1919, P10, *Los Angeles Evening Express*, 22 Dec 1918, P37. Via newspapers.com

Eltinge was very well known in the US and had appeared successfully in vaudeville, several films and musical theatre by the time of the tour.^[24]Mark Berger’s short documentary on Eltinge can be seen here, which also explains the origins of Eltinge’s act. In vaudeville, Eltinge spectacularly “revealed his male identity at … Continue reading His 1919 revue was firmly in the vaudeville tradition and included Marjorie and fellow Australian Arthur Shirley (1886-1967) in the cast. Historians Cullen, Hackman and McNeilly estimate that Eltinge may have been earning $3,500 per week before the tour, an enormous sum for a performer at the time,^[25]About $65,000 per week in 2022 money which possibly indicates how lucrative working with him was for Marjorie. But given that female impersonators soon came to be regarded as thoroughly improper entertainment, it is hardly surprising that later biographies of the careers of Marjorie Bennett and Arthur Shirley don’t make mention of this lengthy tour, while the memory of Julian Eltinge has also been buried.^[26]As Mark Berger indicates, Eltinge’s act was part of a long tradition that disappeared with the decline of vaudeville, and is far removed from what we might expect from a female impersonation … Continue reading

Marjorie Bennett in **Nightie Night** in Australia in 1921.^[27]*Critic* (Adelaide) 2 Nov 1921, P12, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove

In the later part of 1920, the Australian theatre firm JC Williamsons, enticed Marjorie back to Australia to perform with another import – Joseph Coyne (1867-1941) – in farces including Nightie Night, My Lady Friends and Wedding Bells. Clearly someone representing Williamsons, probably Hugh Ward, had seen her perform in the US and thought highly enough of her to bring her back.

The Coyne company tour of major cities in Australia and New Zealand was a success. Coyne left for England in December 1921, but Marjorie stayed on. She then performed in another string of farces and comedies – Johnny Get Your Gun, The First Year and Parlor, Bedroom and Bath, in company with other visiting actors brought in by JC Williamsons, including Louis Bennison and Phillips Tead.

Although she often spoke to reporters of her “home” now being in California, in August 1922 she told Table Talk that she didn’t want to go back to the US just yet. “All the rest of the family is in California, and mother keeps writing to ask when I am going back; but I want to make good in my native country before I leave it. I never realised how fascinating Australia is until I left it… There’s nothing like seeing other countries to make one appreciate one’s own.” The comment was the sort Australians liked to hear and was shared nationwide.^[28]Table Talk (Melb) 17 Aug 1922, P17, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove Significantly, she also expressed her preference for the stage very clearly, despite Enid’s success on the screen back in Hollywood.^[29]Table Talk (Melb) 8 Sept 1921, P39, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove

In Australia, Marjorie felt confident enough to speak publicly occasionally about Hollywood matters – including the death of Virginia Rappe in September 1921, after news broke.^[30]She claimed to know both Rappe and “Fatty” Arbuckle. This is possible – and Rappe had appeared in a Julian Eltinge film in 1920. See Newcastle Sun (NSW) 21 Sept 1921, P7 via … Continue reading Finally, in late March 1923, she boarded the SS Sonoma for California.

Trouble with Getting Gertie’s Garter

If Australian newspapers thought Parlor, Bedroom and Bath was a bit “saucy,”^[31]The Daily Telegraph (Syd), 12 Jul 1922, P10, SYDNEY SHOWS, via National Library of Australia’s Trove this was not the case with Marjorie’s first play on returning to Los Angeles. While the reports surrounding the court appearance of the cast of Getting Gertie’s Garter created a blaze of publicity – and what wonderful publicity – it seems likely the play really was pulled for “indecency” several weeks after the start of its run at the Frank Egan Theatre in 1923.^[32]The Los Angeles Times 6 Sep 1923, P19, via Newspapers.com Changes were apparently made to the script by order of the court.^[33]The Los Angeles Evening Post Record, 27 Oct, 1923, P5, via Newspapers.com

The cast, not looking very worried about a court appearance, with Marjorie, fourth from the right. Note fellow Australian cast member **Gwen Burroughs** in the big hat,^[34]*The Los Angeles Times* 7 Sep 1923, P9, via Newspapers.com

Of course, this was an era of publicity stunts and outrageously silly stories – all in the interests of self-promotion. For example, reports about Marjorie’s newly arrived Australian friend and costar Gwen Burroughs (1888-1968) made much of her reputation as a film star “vamp” (and impending divorce from Lewis Willoughby),^[35]The San Francisco Examiner 10 Apr 1923, P13, via newspapers.com yet she had only appeared in one Australian film and none in the US. Consider also the very dramatic story about Lotus Thompson and the “acid” on her legs stunt, which surfaced in early 1925 and continues to dominate accounts of her life, even 100 years later.

Marjorie back on the US stage as a “scarlet woman.” ^[36]*Los Angeles Evening Post Record*, 16 Feb 1924, P16, via Newspapers.com

Only a few months later, another newspaper report suggested that Enid was concerned with a part Marjorie had taken in the play The Adding Machine, as a “scarlet woman,” and insisted she withdraw. Possibly. But the story has all the hallmarks of another publicity stunt.

Marjorie’s stage performances over the next twenty years were many – and in a variety of theatre styles, but they reflected the popular tastes of the time, such as the romantic comedy Loose Ankles, which opened at Los Angeles’ Playhouse Theatre in early 1927. In the 1930s she was also in one act plays for the Writers Club ^[37]Daily News (LA)16 December 1930, P20 via, radio dramas and occasionally more traditional plays – including a stage version of A Tale of Two Cities in 1933 and the drama The Shining Hour at the Beverley Hills Little Theatre in 1937. Comedies and bedroom farces prevailed however – as a quick survey of titles suggest – Wedding Night (1941), Two in a Bed (1944) and Motel Wives (1945).

Marjorie with Nancy Carroll in **Loose Ankles** in 1927. ^[38]*The San Francisco Examiner*, 29 Jan 1927, P11 and *Los Angeles Evening Post Record*, 8 Jan 1927, P9. Via Newspaper.com

Unfortunately, we have few clues regarding the reason for her steady twenty-year preference for the stage whilst living in the midst of Hollywood’s thriving film industry – or her sister Catherine’s rejection of both stage and screen as a career in 1926 (see Note 1 below). It is noteworthy that in the 1940 US census she described herself as a “motion picture actress.” By contrast, in the 1930 US census, she had stated her occupation and industry as the “legitimate stage.” Unfortunately, US journalists, even the diligent Kevin Thomas, tended to brush over Marjorie’s activities for the entire period 1924-46. Perhaps Marjorie did some very mundane extra work in films in the later 1930s and early 40s, that has yet to be discovered.

Marjorie Bennett in a brief role in Universal’s **Dressed to Kill** (1946). Screengrab from a copy at the Internet Archive.

200 screen characters

Marjorie Bennett’s first known later-in-life film role was an uncredited appearance as a shop assistant in Universal’s Sherlock Holmes film Dressed to Kill (1946). Here, she portrayed a cheerful white haired woman character for the first time. With her white hair usually tied in a distinctive “crown braid,” she repeated this role numerous times over the next thirty years. Why she re-embraced the screen as a career at this time is unknown, but it was a successful move and by the 1970s – with more than 200 appearances behind her, she was so familiar for US audiences that she was also being used in television commercials – for Ford cars and Kentucky Fried Chicken.^[39]Kevin Thomas, The Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio) Aug 28, 1977, P49, via Newspapers.com

On her passing, Kevin Thomas wrote that she was the “classical little old lady with a mischievous gleam in her eye.“^[40]The Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 Jun 1982, P88. Via Newspapers.com But this writer is of the view her success was not simply because she was effective at playing a stereotyped older woman. She was also versatile – as shown by her appearance at the end of Have Rocket, Will Travel with the Three Stooges. Here, she dances cheerfully with Joe and then neatly pulls a punch thrown at Nadia Sanders. All those years learning stagecraft had paid off.

Marjorie Bennett in the 3 Stooges film **Have Rocket, Will Travel** (1959) with Larry Fine and Joe DeRita. In the party scene shown at right, Marjorie’s character is about to slap a tall girl, played by Nadia Sanders. Via the Internet Archive.

Marjorie also displayed versatility with her accent. In Limelight (1952), her second film with Charles Chaplin, she played landlady Mrs Alsop, sporting (what sounds like) a broad Australian accent. Set in London but filmed in Hollywood, most viewers probably heard Mrs Alsop as a working class Londoner. Yet in her many TV guest roles of the 50s and 60s, such as Lassie, The Real McCoys and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis her accent had changed to sit comfortably alongside a variety of American accents.

At left – Marjorie in **The Real McCoys**, Episode “Three is a Crowd”(1958). At right, as the troublesome customer in **The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis**, Episode “Deck the Halls”(1959) Screengrabs from copies mounted on Youtube.

Of the examples of her screen work reviewed by this writer, the trademark of her performances seems to have been an irrepressible good humour.

According to her many obituaries, she had finally retired in 1980, aged 84, due to failing health. She died two years later in June 1982. In May 1933, in Tijuana, Mexico, she had married Bill Cady, a singer, with whom she had occasionally performed. The couple had no children of their own but seem to have enjoyed close relationships with their nephews and nieces.

Marjorie’s recollections of Hollywood in the late 1910s, 1920s and 1930s appear in the press interviews she gave in the 1970s and her obituaries. Her accounts of meeting the likes of Valentino, Mary Pickford, mentoring a young Robert Taylor, and working with Charles Chaplin are generally based on real events, even if there are some errors in detail and timing.^[41]See for example Dion Thompson’s obituary in The Los Angeles Times, 21 June 1982, P28

Marjorie Bennett late in life.^[42]*The Philadelphia Inquirer* 20 Jun 1982, P88 via Newspapers.com

Note 1: Catherine Bennett (1901-1978)

Catherine Fanny Bennett (or Gillespie) was a step sister to Enid and Marjorie Bennett. Born in Perth, Western Australia on 17 January 1901, she arrived in the US with her mother and brother Alexander in early 1918.^[43]Alexander was born in 1903. Western Australia BDM document 6179/1903. Confusingly, both Catherine and Alexander variously adopted Bennett as a surname

Catherine Bennett with Stan Laurel in **When Knights Were Cold** (1923). Screengrabs from a clip on youtube. The film is part of a compilation available from http://www.flickeralley.com

After some extra work in Robin Hood in 1921, Catherine appeared in a leading role in a Stan Laurel short, When Knights Were Cold in 1923. But her few public comments reveal an ambivalence about a career in acting and suggests that she had little desire to try to copy Enid’s success.^[44]Picture-Play Magazine Sep 1923-Feb 1924, P74. Street and Smith. via Lantern Media History Digital Library Despite showing “a great deal of dramatic talent” ^[45]Photoplay 1925-12, Vol 29 Issue 1, P84, via Lantern Media History Digital Library and being heralded as a new MGM ingenue, by late 1926 she had left it behind, and taken up secretarial work in a studio – in some accounts she was also described as a scenario writer.^[46]Table Talk (Melb) 8 Sept 1921, P39, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove Although romantically associated with producer John Considine for a while, she did not marry. She died in 1978.

Catherine and Enid Bennett, c 1924. ^[47]*Photoplay* magazine, July-Dec 1924, P57. Via Lantern, Media History Digital Library

Enid, Marjorie and Catherine’s younger brother Alexander Gillespie (1903-1978) used the surname Bennett for much of his life and married silent actress Frances Lee (1906-2000) in 1933.^[48]See his marriage certificate 1933 here via Family Search While he is often described as an Assistant Director in Hollywood, his 1931 US naturalisation papers reveal he was an auditor-accountant.

Nick Murphy
April 2022

References

Text:

Kevin Brownlow (1968) The Parade’s Gone By… University of California Press
Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper (1980) Australian film 1900-1977, P224-226. Oxford University Press/AFI
Eric Porter(1965) Stars of Australian Stage and Screen. Rigby
Charles Fox and Milton Silver’s (eds)(1920) Who’s who on the screen, Ross Publishing, New York. Via the Internet Archive.

Media
Some of Marjorie Bennett’s screen appearances are now in the public domain, including the following;

Films

TV Series

Newspaper & Magazine Sources

National Library of Australia’s Trove
National Library of New Zealand, Papers Past
Newspapers.com
Lantern, the Media History Digital Library

Primary Sources

Familysearch.com
Ancestry.com
Western Australia, Births, Deaths and Marriages

This site has been selected for preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	Table Talk (Melb) 3 Aug 1922, P25 Via State Library of Victoria
↑2	Australian papers did not report her death
↑3	News-Pilot (San Pedro, CA) 4 Oct 1924, P5. Via Newspapers.com
↑4	Western Australia, BDM document 1325/1893
↑5	Western Australia, BDM document 2741/1896
↑6	Western Australia, BDM document 5122/1901
↑7	Cock O’ the Walk opened in New York at George M Cohan’s Theatre on December 27 1915, but it appears to have opened as early as October in Scranton, Pennsylvania
↑8	See Kevin Thomas articles in The Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio) 28 Aug 1977, P49 and The Journal Herald (Ohio) 3 Jan 1978, P30, via Newspapers.com
↑9	Kevin Thomas (Los Angeles Times) via Asbury Park Press (New Jersey), 4 Sept 1977, P52, via Newspapers.com
↑10	Both husbands were school principals
↑11	Now No 34 according to the 1917 Sands Directory of Sydney
↑12	Kevin Thomas, The Journal Herald, (Dayton Ohio), 3 Jan 1978, P30, via Newspapers.com
↑13	Motion Picture News, 21 October 1916, P2523, Via Lantern Media History Digital Library
↑14	see for example a photo of the Bennetts with Sylvia Breamer in Ralph Marsden’s (2016) Who Was Sylvia? There are also reports of the Australian girls forming a “Kangaroo Club” for social events in 1918
↑15	San Francisco Call, Volume 100, Number 153, 26 December 1916, via UCR California Digital Newspaper Collection
↑16	The location of Reg Bennett’s grave was lost soon after his burial in the field, a fact that must have caused the family great distress. See https://www.guildfordanzacs.org.au/anzac/45
↑17	Josephine M Cohan had died in July 1916
↑18	See for example, a very inaccurate profile piece on Enid in Picture Show Jan 8, 1921, P8. Via Lantern, Media History Digital Library
↑19	The Bulletin (Pomona, CA) 13 Oct 1918, P10. Via newspapers.com
↑20	In this 1921 report in Australia, Marjorie specifically mentioned Niblo giving career advice to her – Table Talk (Melb) 8 Sept 1921, P39, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑21	Advertising in The Theatre Magazine, 1 March 1921, via State Library of Victoria
↑22	The Journal Herald (Dayton Ohio) 3 Jan 1978, P30 via Newspapers.com
↑23	The San Francisco Examiner, 10 Jan 1919, P11, The Seattle Star, 1 Feb 1919, P10, Los Angeles Evening Express, 22 Dec 1918, P37. Via newspapers.com
↑24	Mark Berger’s short documentary on Eltinge can be seen here, which also explains the origins of Eltinge’s act. In vaudeville, Eltinge spectacularly “revealed his male identity at the end of his act…” while in musical comedy and his early films he generally “played a young male hero who had to assume a woman’s disguise in order to prevail or right some wrong.”(Frank Cullen, Florence Hackman and Donald McNeilly(2007) Vaudeville Old and New Vol 1. P353-355. Routledge)
↑25	About $65,000 per week in 2022 money
↑26	As Mark Berger indicates, Eltinge’s act was part of a long tradition that disappeared with the decline of vaudeville, and is far removed from what we might expect from a female impersonation act today
↑27	Critic (Adelaide) 2 Nov 1921, P12, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑28	Table Talk (Melb) 17 Aug 1922, P17, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑29, ↑46	Table Talk (Melb) 8 Sept 1921, P39, Via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑30	She claimed to know both Rappe and “Fatty” Arbuckle. This is possible – and Rappe had appeared in a Julian Eltinge film in 1920. See Newcastle Sun (NSW) 21 Sept 1921, P7 via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑31	The Daily Telegraph (Syd), 12 Jul 1922, P10, SYDNEY SHOWS, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
↑32	The Los Angeles Times 6 Sep 1923, P19, via Newspapers.com
↑33	The Los Angeles Evening Post Record, 27 Oct, 1923, P5, via Newspapers.com
↑34	The Los Angeles Times 7 Sep 1923, P9, via Newspapers.com
↑35	The San Francisco Examiner 10 Apr 1923, P13, via newspapers.com
↑36	Los Angeles Evening Post Record, 16 Feb 1924, P16, via Newspapers.com
↑37	Daily News (LA)16 December 1930, P20 via
↑38	The San Francisco Examiner, 29 Jan 1927, P11 and Los Angeles Evening Post Record, 8 Jan 1927, P9. Via Newspaper.com
↑39	Kevin Thomas, The Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio) Aug 28, 1977, P49, via Newspapers.com
↑40	The Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 Jun 1982, P88. Via Newspapers.com
↑41	See for example Dion Thompson’s obituary in The Los Angeles Times, 21 June 1982, P28
↑42	The Philadelphia Inquirer 20 Jun 1982, P88 via Newspapers.com
↑43	Alexander was born in 1903. Western Australia BDM document 6179/1903. Confusingly, both Catherine and Alexander variously adopted Bennett as a surname
↑44	Picture-Play Magazine Sep 1923-Feb 1924, P74. Street and Smith. via Lantern Media History Digital Library
↑45	Photoplay 1925-12, Vol 29 Issue 1, P84, via Lantern Media History Digital Library
↑47	Photoplay magazine, July-Dec 1924, P57. Via Lantern, Media History Digital Library
↑48	See his marriage certificate 1933 here via Family Search

Australian Accents from Cinema’s Golden Age

Above: Warner Bros photo credited to Schuyler Grail. Feb 1938, NBC radio announcer Buddy Twist interviewing Australian actress Mary Maguire. Author’s collection (Enlargement).

Above: In the lower section of the same photo, one can see Maguire’s fingers are heavily bandaged – presumably she had just caught them in a car door or similar. No matter how cultivated she might have sounded in this radio interview, one can assume a stream of Australian invective issued forth when the accident happened. Author’s collection.

It is generally accepted that the origins of the Australian accent are from southern Britain, and the conventional wisdom today is that there are three main variations to it:

Broad – think of the late Steve Irwin (link). The accent is alive and well in the fantasyland of TV – listen to how every single “Australian” speaks in S4, Ep 6 of the TV series The Crown. Sometimes this has been called “Strine”.
General – Margo Robbie Vanity Fair clip (link). This is actually how many Australians living on the urban fringe speak today.
Cultivated or refined – some writers suggest Cate Blanchett is an example, but this writer tends to the view that she too, speaks with a general accent. Listen to her flipping in and out of broad and general Australian accents here in a Vanity Fair clip (link)
Instead consider this real comparison of cultivated versus broad accents dates from 1983. Australia’s Prime Minister Robert “Bob” Hawke, with his broad accent, and an Australian Broadcasting Commission “4 Corners” reporter, with his (now less common) cultivated accent, discussing the forthcoming royal tour by Charles and Diana (link).

Of course, accents don’t really fall into such easy categories. Those labels might be better thought of as markers on a continuum, with any one accent sitting somewhere along it. Also, unlike the variations in British and US accents – that are sometimes regional, variations in Australian accents are usually attributed to social class. Parenting and education, as well as other social factors are believed to have a strong impact on how Australians speak. (Of course, physical features such as the tongue and jaw also impacts how people speak too).

In a very good survey of contemporary Australian accents for the ABC, John Hajeck (University of Melbourne) and Lauren Gawne (La Trobe University) note that Australians also often accommodate other accents with ease. Perhaps this explains Adelaide actor Damon Herriman‘s great success in adopting Dewey Crowe’s US accent in the TV series Justified, or Melbourne singer Kylie Minogue’s great ease in shifting from a contemporary British accent to a general Australian one.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elocution lessons, (sometimes a part of a private school education but also available from private tutors) were designed to remove all vestiges of a colonial accent, be it from Australia, South Africa or somewhere else. In a short article on actor Judith Anderson, and others, Desley Deacon of ANU has pointed out how common elocution lessons were, and how important these were in opening up a performance career. The resulting accent, found all over the British Empire and beyond, dovetailed nicely with the “transatlantic accent” preferred in US 1930s sound films.

Jane E Southcott has written of concern amongst politicians and the efforts made in South Australian schools to improve Australian speech. She cites School Inspector Maughan reporting in 1912 that “a few minutes spent daily in the practice of pure enunciation would to much to eliminate what is known as ‘the Australian twang.'” Similar sentiments were undoubtedly felt throughout the rest of Australia.

1. Australian accents **– tending to broad.**

The broader Australian accent still often appears in Australian-made films, continuing as part of a well established comedy tradition that has long worked on stage. It’s also used in contemporary advertising, and much loved by contemporary politicians, alongside acceptable slang words like “mate” and “g’day”. Yet, today, that’s not how most Australians speak – indeed it would take a conscious effort to speak like that all the time.

Broad accents from the 1930s can be heard in Australian made films such as Frank Thring‘s His Loyal Highness (Aust:1932) and Ken Hall’s On Our Selection (Aust:1932).

The broad accent rarely appeared in pre-war US and British films. Even in the late 1950s, John Meredyth Lucas commented that a distinctive Australian accent made casting very difficult for the TV series Whiplash. It was unattractive, he felt and by implication might have made sales of the series difficult. In a similar vein, when the US trade paper Harrison’s Reports reviewed Smiley (Aust:1956) they felt it was unlikely to be well received in US because of the Australian accents. But when Jocelyn Howarth was being introduced to US audiences (as Constance Worth) in 1937, Photoplay magazine assured readers she was free of the “caricatured Australian accent.” The distinctive broad Australian accent still had a few outings – such as in MGM’s very self conscious The Man from Down Under (1943). It also occasionally slipped into other films – here are two examples:

Brian Norman (1908-1995) in Search for Beauty (US: 1934)

Here Sydney-born Brian Norman, in his one and only film outing, forces some con-men to start morning exercises at the health farm. His broad Australian accent is unmistakable. He became a lawyer after returning from Hollywood.
Audio from copy of film in author’s collection. Photo – William Brian Molloy or “Brian Norman” in the Sydney Sun, 1 April 1934. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove.
Lotus Thompson‘s (1904-1963) one line as a random person at a ball, in Anthony Adverse (US: 1936).
Lotus Thompson from Queensland was briefly a silent star of some standing in Australia and the US, but her career was all but over by 1930. She appeared in some uncredited extra parts in the 1930s. Her few words as an extra here – “Please talk about them” seem to have an noticeable Australian twang.
Audio from copy of film in the author’s collection. Available through Warner Brothers Archive. Photo-author’s collection c.1924.
Bill Kerr’s (1922-2014) exaggerated Australian accent and stories featured in his popular British act, the “Man from Wagga Wagga”. Here is an example from 1951. Below, however, is an example of Kerr without the broad accent, singing with Joy Nichols.

2. The accents of former Australian vaudevillians

Although none of the following actors appear to have had elocution lessons and each had only limited formal educations, all arrived in Hollywood after very long careers on stage in Australia, the US and the UK – enough experience and time to give them an accent that might have come from anywhere.

Daphne Pollard (1891-1978) sings “The Ragtime Germ” for the stage review Zig-Zag! (UK: 1917).

Daphne Pollard (from Melbourne) had a very long career with other Australian child performers in Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company before branching out on her own. She first appeared in Hollywood films in the late 1920s. By the mid 1930s she had largely retired. She is credited with composing this song with Cass Downing and John T. Murray.
Audio from recording in the author’s Collection. Photo from author’s collection c 1920.

Snub Pollard (1889-1962) also from Melbourne in Just My Luck (US: 1935).

The prolific Snub Pollard also had a long career with Pollard Lilliputian’s before moving into Hollywood films in 1915. In this clip Mr Smith (Pollard) and Homer Crow (Charles Ray) discover they have lost their money, whilst eating at a cheap diner famous for beating up any non-paying customers. With the coming of sound Snub Pollard could only find work as an extra – but worked to the end of his life. Audio from copy of film in the author’s collection. Film is still widely available. Photo – Exhibitor’s Trade Review (Dec. 1922 – Feb. 1923) via Lantern Digital Media Project.

Paul Scardon (1875-1954) from Melbourne and Western Australia in Gentleman Joe Palooka (US: 1946).

Scardon had an Australian stage career before moving to the US in late 1905, appearing in US films from about 1911. Here, later in life, he plays an uncredited role as a clerk whose records are being stolen by Knobby Walsh, played by Sydneysider Leon Errol (1881-1951) Copy of film in the author’s collection. The Joe Palooka films are widely available. Photo – Picture Play Weekly. April-Oct 1915. Via Lantern Digital Media Project.

**3. Cultivated Australian accents and the importance of elocution**

Wealthy Australians living on the continent’s coastal fringe often sent their children to private schools, the only schools that could provide a pathway to universities and better careers. Today these schools still put resources into a young person’s rounded personal development – now less commonly through “Speech” (elocution) classes, but still through public speaking, debating and by encouraging the performance arts. In the early twentieth century, for these middle class Australians, there was probably a self consciousness about accents, and therefore a desire to speak without any hint of a colonial upbringing.

Finis Barton and JP McGowan in Stampede (US:1936). Finis Barton had extensive training in elocution in Australia before arriving in the US in 1928.McGowan had been in the US since about 1904.

Two expat-Australians doing a very good job of sounding like they belonged in the old West. Finis Barton (1911-1979) from Perth appeared with J.P McGowan (1880-1952) in Stampede (1936)

John Wood (1909-1965) from Sydney and Mary Maguire (1919-1974) from Melbourne and Brisbane in a clip from Black Eyes (UK: 1939).

Wood had attended the prestigious Shore School, (Sydney Church of England Grammar School, at the same time as Errol Flynn) while Maguire had attended the Academy of Mary Immaculate in Melbourne, the city’s oldest Catholic girls’ school. Maguire almost certainly had additional speech and acting lessons in Hollywood, before moving to England in 1938. This film was set in pre-revolutionary Russia, the two young Australians play Karlo and Tanya.
Interestingly, not long after, Wood told a journalist that Australian accents, presumably his, were preferred by some British producers to an Oxford accent.
Copy of the film in the author’s collection. The DVD is widely available. Publicity photo of Maguire and Wood in An Englishman’s Home 1939, author’s collection.

Nancy O’Neil (1907-1995) from Sydney in a clip from Something always Happens (UK:1934).

O’Neil had attended Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School before travelling to London to study at RADA in 1928. She appeared in film and on stage in England in the 1930s and like most of the other young Australian women in British films of the time, she sounds as English as everyone else.

Obituaries for these women often claim they “came to England to lose their accent”. But of all Australians, those who had been to private schools probably already had a “drawing room accent” – meaning they had little accent to lose.
Audio from copy of the film in the author’s collection. The film is available through Loving the Classics. Photo – Lux Soap Famous Film Stars card, c1933-4. Author’s Collection

Shirley Ann Richards (1917-2006) from Sydney as an Australian nurse in Dr Gillespie’s New Assistant (US: 1942), with US actor Richard Quine as an Australian doctor from Woolloomooloo (the Sydney suburb’s name is a source of great humour in the film).

Richards had a private school education at Ascham and The Garden School in Sydney and had the benefit of a mother who was an active member of the English Speaking Union. Later in life she also recalled the importance of the educated women who were close friends of the family. Although she is “laying it on with a trowel” in this clip, this is close to how she really spoke, even after 40 years in California. Audio from copy of film in the author’s collection. TCM currently have a collection of the Dr Gillespie films for sale. Photo – author’s collection.

Newsreader Michael Charlton welcomes viewers to Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Television station in 1956. Charlton later worked on British TV, but is Australian born.

4. Australian accents – tending more general

The decline of the cultivated Australian accent in the last 50 years is one marker of change in the way Australian English is spoken. At the same time, the general Australian accent seems to have appeared more often in the post war period. However, as the first example demonstrates, the general Australian accent was well and truly in established use before the Second World War.

Jocelyn Howarth (as Constance Worth) (1911-1963) from Sydney in the excruciatingly awful The Wages of Sin (US:1936) .

Here Howarth makes no attempt to disguise her accent, which sounds bizarre alongside the broad American accents of her “family members,” who are lazy and won’t get little Tommy his milk. Audio from copy in the author’s collection. This film is still available from specialist DVD outlets. Photo of Jocelyn Howarth on her way to the US, 13 April 1936. Honolulu Star, via Newspapers.com.

Joy Nichols (1925-1992) from Sydney in a Rinso soap commercial made with Bill Kerr (1922-2014), for release in cinemas in 1946.

(click to open and watch at the National Film & Sound Archive page)

Nichols, a butcher’s daughter from inner Sydney, began her long radio and stage career in Australia in wartime. This brought her in close contact with other well known Australian performers, and visiting Americans (she was even briefly married to one). One wonders whether her accent might have some American pronunciations?

Nichols was a skilled singer, comedian and radio performer. Here she is again with fellow Australian Dick Bentley (1907-1995) and Briton Jimmy Edwards at the British Daily Mail radio awards in 1950 – representing the popular radio show Take It From Here. (Click to follow link to youtube – from 5:30)
Photo – Turf cigarette collectable card, c 1950. Author’s collection.

Patti Morgan (1928-2001) from Sydney in Booby Trap (UK: 1957). In one of her few film roles, Patti Morgan’s voice seems firmly from Sydney.

Patti Morgan appeared in only a few British films, but continued her modelling and TV career with success. Audio from copy of film in author’s collection. The film is still available from Loving the Classics and Renown pictures. Photo of Patti on the cover of Pix, 6 Oct, 1945. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove.

5. Some other Australians speak

Errol Flynn (1909-1959) in a 1959 episode of The Goodyear Theatre – The Golden Shanty (US 1959) (Click to watch). Although Flynn went along with the studio story he was Irish etc., he made almost no attempt to speak with anything other than his general Australian accent. In this case, it is ironic that one of his last performances was an adaptation of a popular Australian goldfields story by Edward Dyson.
One can watch his first, very wooden outing in film 25 years earlier, In The Wake of the Bounty (Aust 1933) here (Click to watch). His accent is the same. It is occasionally claimed he “picked up” his accent during his two years at an English boarding school.
Al Daff (1902-1991) the Australian-born senior executive with Universal Pictures, interviewed in 1975 (click to watch). His accent shows a blend of Australian and North American features, developed over a long time living in the US.
Florrie Forde (1875-1940) – a compilation of songs sung in the film Say it With Flowers (UK: 1934 (Click to watch). As Theatre historian Frank Van Straten notes, Forde identified as Australian all her life, and according to many, sounded so.
Chips Rafferty (1909-1971) – in an extract from The Overlanders (UK 1946). Rafferty was perhaps the best known Australian actor of his generation using a broad accent. He can also be heard here, being interviewed in 1971 by ABC reporter Rod McNeil.
Enid Bennett (1893-1969) – Examples of Bennett’s accent can be found here. General perhaps?

6. Blended US-Australian accents

Much harder to find are examples of the blended accents of North Americans who now live in Australia, but here are a few:

Jane Badler (1953+) – Born in New York, actress Jane Badler moved to Australia in the late 1980s, where she now lives. She continues to act but also has a successful career as a jazz singer. Listen to her accent here, in a 2012 interview in London.
Kristina Keneally (1968+) – Born in Ohio, Kristina Keneally has lived in Australia for more than twenty years. She is an Australian politician having served at State and Federal level. Listen to her accent here, in an interview with ABC journalists Mike Rowlands and Virginia Trioli in 2011.
Bob Ansett (c1933+) – Born in Australia but Ansett spent many of his formative years in the US. He returned to Australia in 1965 to successfully start Budget rent a car. Listen to his accent here in a 2013 interview.

Little Dulcie Cooper & her father go to America

Dulcie Cooper (1903-1981), Ashley Cooper (1880-1952)

Above: Dulcie Cooper, “aged eight, in the part of Eva, St. Clair’s daughter in Uncle Tom’s’ Cabin at the Empress Theater, Vancouver, December 1912″. Enlarged from a public domain photo in the collections of the City of Vancouver Archives (See original photo).

The 5 second version
Dulcie Cooper was born Dulcie Mary Robinson in Sydney Australia on 3 Nov 1903. Active on the North American stage for over 50 years, she first appeared in Vancouver in 1910 with her parents Ashley and Emily. She appeared in films in the early 1920s but it was the New York stage where she was best known. She appeared in a handful of Hollywood films in the early 1920s, and one sound film. She died in New York on 3 Sept 1981.

Her father Ashley Cooper was born Cecil Augustus Robinson in Sydney Australia on 16 June 1880. A draftsman with an interest in acting, he arrived with his wife Emily and daughter Dulcie in the US in 1905. He later adopted Ashley Cooper as a name. He was appearing on the US and Canadian stage by 1910 and later in some Hollywood films. Ashley Cooper relocated to New York in 1925 and he became a regular Broadway performer and stage manager. He died in New York on 3 Jan 1952.

Was Dulcie Cooper really an Australian, as was often claimed? At first glance it seems not, as there is no record of anyone matching her name or profile being born in New South Wales at the time. And later in life, Dulcie confused her story by suggesting a birth in 1907, in San Francisco. But the answer is simple – she was born in Australia under another name. All the same, describing her as “Australian” in any way seems misleading, particularly when we consider that she left Sydney forever in 1905, at the age of only 2.

Undated photos of father and daughter, probably taken in the late 1920s. Left – Ashley Cooper, born Cecil Augustus Robinson in Australia. Righ t – Dulcie Cooper, born Dulcie Mary Robinson. Both photos from the Billy Rose Theater Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections. (Click name to link to the original photos)

Dulcie Cooper was born Dulcie Mary Robinson in Woollahra, Sydney, to Cecil Augustus Robinson and Emily nee Curr, on 3 November 1903. Cecil was the son of Australian businessman and well known map publisher Herbert Edward Cooper Robinson. We know Cecil took an interest in theatre, as he is listed as a player for Ada Hatchwell‘s Hasluck Dramatic Club in 1901. However, on Dulcie’s birth certificate Cecil listed his profession as draftsman for Sydney’s Gas Company, a sensible career that, perhaps, his father had encouraged him to pursue rather than the stage. Given the inaccuracies in accounts of Dulcie’s life, part of her birth certificate is given here.

Above – part of Dulcie Robinson’s NSW birth certificate. Via NSW BDM
Columns 2 – date and place, 3 – child’s name, 4 – child’s gender, 5 – Fathers name, profession, age and place of birth, 6 – marriage details, 7 – mother’s maiden name, age and place of birth.

In 1905 the young family decided to pack up and move to North America. Precisely what the circumstances of such a dramatic move were, we no longer know. Even today such a move would require sound financial resources and a degree of determination. Cecil, now borrowing his father’s name and calling himself Herbert Robinson, travelled first, arriving in San Francisco on the SS Ventura on 20 June 1905 – his profession still recorded on the ship’s manifest as draftsman. Emily Robinson and little Dulcie arrived a few months later.

We can partly reconstruct the family’s pathway onto the North American stage from existing records.

The Oregon Daily Journal. 20 October 1908, P14. Via Newspapers.com

Sometime in 1908 or 1909, Herbert and Emily saw an advertisement like this, or perhaps this very one. Theater reviews show they were members of the George W. Lowe touring company at about this time. Now calling himself Ashley Cooper, the 1910 US census shows him with Emily and Dulcie and the dozen or so members of Lowe’s company together in the small town of Dayton, Washington, on tour. Other up and coming actors like Bert Hadley were also travelling with their families. But life performing “on the road” was probably hard for young families and in late 1910, the Cooper family settled down in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ashley and Emily joined Walter Sanford‘s stock company based at the Vancouver Empress Theater performing popular favourites like Get Rich Quick Wallingford.

While it is a guess by this writer, it seems likely the couple owed this lucky break to the influence or reputation of Australian players from the old Pollard Lilliputian Opera Company, who were appearing for Sanford at the same time – including Teddy McNamara, Jack Pollard and Willie Pollard. These Australian-born players had stayed on in Vancouver after a Pollard tour wrapped in April 1909.

In December 1910, 7 year old Dulcie Cooper appeared on stage at the Empress Theater for the first time, as the child Jeannie, in the domestic comedy-drama The Little Church around the Corner. It was a great success and over the next two years her performances were increasingly well received. In August 1911, the Vancouver Daily World enthused “… Dulcie is a born actress and… somebody must have devoted a tremendous amount of loving care and time to her training.” At the age of 10, Dulcie took the lead role in a stage version of Oliver Twist, in May 1913. The City of Vancouver Archives photo at left dates from her success at Vancouver’s Empress Theater in the part of Eva, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, six months earlier.

In mid 1913 the family left Vancouver for the US west coast again. The “Ashley Cooper Players” (comprising all three members of the family) then appeared in Los Angeles and subsequently on tour in the Western states of the US, their “playlet” or sketch – The Newsboy’s Debt, reportedly written by Emily (using the stage name Emily Curr), with Dulcie in the lead. Dulcie was “the real life of the sketch” according to The Vancouver Sun. It allowed her “ample chance to show her ability in character work and the touching scene at the final fall of the curtain finds many eyes in the house tear dimmed.” After some prominent publicity about Dulcie being “America’s youngest player,” she suddenly disappeared from all advertising – although the play continued to tour on and off until 1917.

As in Australia and on the US East coast, the age children could appear on the stage was increasingly regulated by education and civic authorities. Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company had discovered this ten years before, when they were forced to abandon plans to tour the US east coast because of the influence of New York’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Above: Typical theater fare of the time. “Moving pictures” and vaudeville acts mixed in on the same program. Santa Ana Register. 30 October 1913. Via newspapers.com

In 1921 and by now aged 18, Dulcie appeared in half a dozen films, several with popular actress Clara Kimball Young. Young was struggling financially at this time, and appears not to have enjoyed making these films. Perhaps Dulcie didn’t either, as she soon abandoned film work for the stage again. In later years she seems to have been inclined to dismiss her outings in film, she was “at the awkward age” or “never felt at home in the movies” she variously explained. There was, again, familiar misleading publicity about Dulcie being “America’s youngest performer.” She was petite, and with her cherub like face she looked younger than her years, so it was believable.

Ashley Cooper also had some brief experiences in film in the early 1920s in supporting character roles – unfortunately most of these early films appear to be lost and details are confused. The Turner Classic Movie database provides the most accurate list – showing six credits for Ashley, while the IMDB lists only three. Norman Dawn‘s Son of the Wolf (1922) is one well documented example of a film that should be credited to Ashley Cooper rather than British actor Edward Cooper.

Ashley also continued on the stage in the mid 1920s, usually in vaudeville, while Emily Curr appears to have retired.

Above: Ashley Cooper in Partners of the Tide (1921) Moving Picture World – Jan-Feb 1921. Right 20 year old Dulcie Cooper in 1923. Camera! April 1923-1924, Via Lantern Digital Media Project.

A glance at Dulcie’s stage work in Los Angeles at this time highlights just how intense a career on the stage was. In 1924-25 she appeared in a constantly changing, back-to-back program of light comedies and farces at the Majestic Theater, usually with Edward Everett Horton. These included The First Year (October 1924), The Darlings (December 1924), Just Married (January 1925), Outward Bound (February 1925), Cuckoo Pleases (March 1925), The Alarm Clock (March 1925) and Beggar on Horseback (April 1925). In May 1925 Dulcie left the company to have a well earned rest and to visit her parents in New York. Horton, who had made Beggar on Horseback as a film while also performing it on stage, also left at this time.

Above. Left: Dulcie in Just Married at Los Angeles’ Majestic Theater in early 1925. The Los Angeles Times, 18 Jan 1925, P131. Right: Edward Horton and Dulcie in Beggar on Horseback. The Los Angeles Times, 29 April 1925, P51. Via Newspapers.com

The reviews of these comedies were generally enthusiastic. “Clean wholesome entertainment” reported The Los Angeles Times on 23 November 1924. The paper went on to praise Dulcie’s “excellent acting and charming winsomness.” Barbara Cohen-Stratyner points out that Grace Kingsley, a journalist at the Times was an enthusiastic supporter of Dulcie. Even before Hollywood’s golden years, this support could make all the difference to a young actor’s career. Eight years later, the same journalist at the Times was announcing that Dulcie was about to sign a film contract at Paramount or MGM. She did appear in one sound film that survives, The Face on the Barroom Floor (1932) but no contract was signed.

In February 1925, Dulcie married Stafford Cherry Campbell, the stage manager at the Majestic Theater. For reasons now unknown, but perhaps just following a family tradition of changing names when it suited, Dulcie used the name Mary Robinson when she married. Within a few years the couple had divorced, Dulcie claiming, amongst other things, that Campbell ridiculed her when they rehearsed together.

At about this time, Ashley and Emily Cooper moved across to the US east coast. They owed this to Ashley’s part in the musical Topsy and Eva, which starred popular vaudeville players Rosetta and Vivian Duncan. A retelling of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Ashley had a supporting role when it opened in December 1923 at the Majestic Theatre and was still in this role when it finally opened at the Sam H. Harris Theatre in New York a year later. Ashley and Emily settled in New York and he went on to develop his reputation as a reliable character actor, and sometimes a Stage Manager. He appeared in a string of plays on Broadway and in US east coast cities, including the drama Tobacco Road, a story of rural poverty in Georgia, where he played Henry Peabody as well as being stage manager for at least part of its run. It was not well received at first, the play being described by The Brooklyn Daily Eagle as “a picture of squalor… too realistic to be palatable.” However, it went on to a very long run and he was involved with it for at least the six years 1933-1939. He continued to be active on stage until well into the 1940s.

Ashley Cooper finally applied for US citizenship in 1941, having lived and worked in the US for more than 35 years. On these documents his various changes of name were revealed.

Above: Dulcie Cooper at the start of her New York career, in The Little Spitfire at the Cort Theater. Daily News (New York) · 26 Dec 1926, Page 154, via Newspapers.com

Dulcie’s 1926 breakthrough role on Broadway, as Gypsy the feisty chorus girl, in the comedy The Little Spitfire, was not easily won. As Barbara Cohen-Stratyner points out, she was the fourth and final choice for the role. But she made it a success. After its run in New York, she reprised the role for a season at the Hollywood Playhouse. The Los Angeles Times welcomed her back with generous coverage. She was in New York again in 1928, to take a leading role in Courage at the Ritz, now well and truly established as a leading player. She was active on stage into the early 1960s, her roles increasingly character parts and she also appeared occasionally on television. In July 1961, The Columbus Dispatch described her performance as the fortune teller in Blythe Spirit as a “scene stealer,” although she was performing alongside film star Zsa Zsa Gabor. Gabor took Dulcie’s hand for the curtain call, an acknowledgement of Dulcie’s skill and reputation.

Above: The Los Angeles Evening Post-Record advertises The Little Spitfire, 24 May 1927, P4. Via Newspapers.com

As previously noted, some of the commentary provided by Dulcie herself in later years only served to confuse her story, although this was not an uncommon phenomenon amongst actors of the era. Was she really in the 1934 film Men in White with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy? Dulcie also suggested she had appeared as a child star with Charles Ray in the 1910s. This claim is difficult to verify and given her known movements, seem unlikely.

Above: Dulcie Cooper still performing in 1957. The Wilmington Morning News,·(Wilmington, Delaware), 20 Jul 1957, P17. Via Newspapers.com.

Dulcie’s voice
Dulcie speaks with a nice trans-Atlantic accent here in The Face on the Barroom Floor (1932). The product of close association and performing with her parents? Perhaps elocution lessons? Another example of an acquired accent?

Source; Bill Sprague Collection – Internet Archive. This is a pre-Hollywood code film about the dangers of alcohol. The author thinks Dulcie is quite successful in this, her last film role.

Dulcie remarried in 1932. Her second husband was Elmer H Brown, an actor and director ten years her senior. Two sons were born of the union. She died in New York in 1981. Ashley Cooper kept working on stage for most of his life. He died in January 1952. Emily Curr died in New York in December 1944.

Nick Murphy
November 2020

Note 1
Cecil’s much younger sister Eileen Robinson (1896-1955) also acted, working in Australia, England and in the US. For a time she was married to US writer, stage and screen actor Alan Brooks (born Irving Hayward).

Note 2
An Australian dancer and beauty contest winner named Dulcie Cooper was a contemporary of this Dulcie. The song “Hello Miss Aussie, What are you doing now?” by Alfred Jarvis is about Dulcie Cooper the Australian dancer.

Special Thanks
Again to Jean Ritsema in the USA, who again assisted finding sources in the US.

Further Reading

Films
- Dulcie Cooper
  Bill Sprague Collection: The Face on the Barroom Floor (1932) at the Internet Archive
- Ashley Cooper
  Captain Fly-By-Night (1922) Fan magazines claimed Ashley Cooper was in this film as Lopez but the author is not able to confidently identify him.

On-line
- Anon. Dairy File. Digitized Historical Diaries and Letters. Extracts from the Diary of Clara Kimball Young.
- Barbara Cohen-Stratyner. Head Shots: Dulcie Cooper, New York Public Library. (December 7, 2015)
- John Sullivan. Topsy and Eva Play Vaudeville. @Stephen Railton’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture. University of Virginia (2000)

Original US archival documents sourced from
- Familysearch.org – Shipping manifests
- Ancestry.com – shipping manifests and citizenship applications

New South Wales Government. New South Wales Births Deaths & Marriages.

Text
- Hal Porter. Stars of Australian Stage and Screen (1965) Rigby

Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University
- G. P. Walsh, ‘Robinson, Herbert Edward Cooper (1857–1933)’ published first in hardcopy 1988,

National Library of Australia’s Trove
- The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 23 Nov, 1901, P2
- The Sydney Mail & NSW Advertiser. 1 March 1902, P559
- Everyones.Vol.6 No.367 (16 March 1927) P15
- The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 Jan 1933, P12
- The Australian Women’s Weekly, 29 Jul 1944 P 12

Lantern Digital Media Project
- Moving Picture World – Jan-Feb 1921.
- Camera!, April 7-April 15, 1922-1923, P528
- Camera! April 14, 1923 to February 16, 1924

Newspapers.com
- Enterprise News Record (Oregon) 23 July 1910, P3
- Vancouver Daily World, 8 Aug 1911, P10
- The Vancouver Sun, 8 July 1913, P5
- The Paducah Sun-Democrat (Paducah, Kentucky), 6 Sep 1915, P 8
- The Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug, 1921. P36
- The Los Angeles Times, 6 Nov 1924· P 25
- The Los Angeles Times, 23 Nov 1924, P69
- The Los Angeles Times, 28 Dec 1924, P52
- Los Angeles Evening Post, 14 Mar 1925, P10
- The Los Angeles Times, 29 Apr 1925, P51
- The Los Angeles Times, 22 May 1925, P25
- Daily News (New York) · 26 Dec 1926, P154
- The Los Angeles Times, 15 May 1927, P56
- The Los Angeles Times, 24 May 1927, P35
- Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, 15 Jul 1930, P16
- The Los Angeles Times, 24 May 1932, P7
- The Brooklyn Daily Eagle 5 Dec 1933 P 24
- The Daily News (New York) 5 Jan 1952, P23
- The Wilmington Morning News,·(Wilmington, Delaware), 20 Jul 1957, P17

This site has been selected for preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Ted McNamara (1893-1928) What Price Glory!

34 year old Ted McNamara from Australia and 26 year old Sammy Cohen from the USA seemed to be a promising comedy team, who appeared together in Raoul Walsh’s What Price Glory in 1925. 3 years later this title was used as a motto on Ted’s grave. Source PicturePlay Magazine, 1927, Via Lantern Digital Media Project.

Teddy enjoying success in the cinema. Motion Picture Magazine, July 8, 1927. Via Lantern Digital Media Project

Born September 19, 1893, in a small cottage in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran, Teddy or later just Ted (Edward Joseph) McNamara was the fourth child born to Patrick, a baker, and his wife Eliza nee Butler. He spent a large part of his childhood and adolescence on long overseas tours with Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company, developing and refining a reputation as a skilled character comedian. Two older sisters – Alice, born in 1889 and Nellie (Ellen) born in 1891, also went on the stage with Pollards.

Following 22 years on stage, Teddy enjoyed a prominent but very short Hollywood career. Over the three years 1925-1928 he appeared in a dozen films, mostly made by the Fox studio, and some of which survive today. His sudden death in early 1928 robbed Hollywood of a future film comedy partnership, as Fox had teamed him several times with Sammy Cohen, another comedian also emerging in Hollywood. The two comedians first appeared together in supporting roles in Raoul Walsh‘s film version of the popular play, What Price Glory in 1925.

Growing up with Pollards

Above: Teddy while performing in Vancouver. Vancouver Daily World, 3 Jan 1914, P11. via newspapers.com

Teddy was barely 10 years old when he joined Alice and Nellie on the SS Changsa for his first extended Pollard company tour overseas, in January 1903. Performing through Asia and then onto and across North America, this Pollard troupe did not return to Australia until April 1904. And then, after only three months at home, Teddy joined another Pollard tour, departing Australia in July 1904, without his sisters – who stayed in Melbourne, possibly to care for their ailing mother. This tour was away until February 1907, almost 30 months. The rotating program of musical comedies included HMS Pinafore, A Gaiety Girl, The Lady Slavey and the like. And of Teddy we know that while outwardly shy, he was also a joker, popular with his fellow performers and a favourite with the public.

It is tempting to judge this form of apprenticed child employment by 21st century standards – but it has no equivalent today in the economies of Western democracies. More importantly, we might wonder about the impact of these extended performance tours on the development of a young person.

Above: University of Washington, Special Collections. JWS21402. Teddie stands at the rear, clutching the pole. Taken sometime in 1905 or 1906, not all of Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company are in this shipboard photo. Used with permission

In the photograph of the 1904-7 troupe shown above, which can be enlarged at its University of Washington Library home (here), we can recognise Teddy and some of the other Pollard performers. Their experiences would end up being very mixed. A smiling 13 year old Teddy McNamara can be seen at the rear, right & holding the pole, behind Harold Fraser (later Hollywood’s Snub Pollard). Willie Thomas leans out to the left at rear. Within a few years Willie had left the stage and become a butcher. The Heintz twins, Johnny and Freddie sitting in the foreground, look bored and disengaged. Freddie later struggled to build a stage career, but Johnny gave it up and became a baker in Australia. Future Hollywood director Alf Goulding, looking very dapper in suit and cap, stands at right; Charles Pollard steadies Daphne Pollard at left. Both Alf and Daphne remained friends and would experience great success on stage and in film later in life. Leah Leichner beams with happiness in the centre front row. Three years later Arthur Pollard would send her home early from his Indian trip. After some more performances in Australia, she disappeared completely from the historical record.

Like many of the Pollards performers, Teddy saw his future in the United States and he returned again on a third Pollards North American tour departing Australia in July 1907. At the end of this tour, in early 1909, Charles Pollard announced his retirement as manager and came home with most of the company to Australia. But 16 year old Teddy joined a few of the older performers and stayed on in North America for a while. In July 1910, Teddy was performing with some of the old Pollards players in British Columbia. In 1912, Nellie Chester, Charles Pollards sister and one time partner, decided to establish a new company, now with adolescents (as required by the new Australian Emigration laws prohibiting children from travelling outside Australia to perform). Both Teddy and Nellie joined up again. Their mother had died in 1904. It seems sister Alice dutifully kept house for her father in Melbourne, and became a seamstress.

Teddy McNamara as a featured player with Nellie Chester’s final Pollard troupe in North America. Note that the word “Lilliputian” was no longer used in the company title. Left – Vancouver Daily World 23 May 1913. Right – Teddy with Queenie Williams – Marysville Daily 27 Jan 1916. Via California Digital Newspaper Collection.

Pattie (later Patsy) Hill back in Australia. The Call, (WA) 22 July 1927. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove

In 1912 there was a new repertoire of musicals to take on tour across Canada and the western USA – including Sergeant Brue, The Toymaker and later the company’s own original, Married by Wireless. The company was active touring North American cities, on and off, until about 1919, by which time the remaining performers had gone their separate ways. Not surprisingly, in the hot-house environment of a touring company, romances between these young Australian actors had blossomed. Star performer Queenie Williams married Ernest, one of company manager Nellie Chester’s sons. And in November 1913, while in Edmonton, Canada, Teddy married fellow Melbourne performer Pattie Hill (Phyllis Esther Pattie Hill). In 1914, a daughter was born of the union. Sadly, neither marriage lasted very long. Pattie and her daughter returned to Melbourne in 1915 – a divorce was granted in Australia ten years later. Pattie insisted Teddy had promised to regularly send money and follow her home when he could finish his commitments, but never did.

In the US and Canada, Teddy’s reputation as a clever comedian grew with these performance tours. A lengthy interview in The San Francisco Call of 1906 revealed Teddy as a shy and reluctant interviewee, alongside Daphne Pollard, the skilled self-promoter. But reviews of his performances were universally enthusiastic and became more effusive over the years. 19 year old Teddy had “few peers as a character comedian” reported The Vancouver Daily World in September 1912. By July 1916, The Victoria Daily Times predicted that he would “soon have his name written among the few strikingly clever comedians.” Indeed, it might really have been so.

By the early 1920s Teddy was based in New York. He was now a headline act and he continued to gain roles in variety and a range of musical comedies across the US. In private life he had a new partner, also an actor, and in 1923, a new baby daughter.

Ted McNamara headlines in Battling Butler on the Keith circuit. Evening Star, Washington DC, 27 December, 1925. Via Newspapers.com

To Hollywood

Screen grabs of Ted McNamara and Sammy Cohen on the screen – in Fox’s What Price Glory, 1926. The film is still widely available on DVD. Author’s Collection.

Now known as Ted, he was cast as part of the comic relief in Raoul Walsh‘s filmed version of the popular play What Price Glory in early 1926. (His first film had been Shore Leave, a romance). What Price Glory, a First World War Army – buddy film and a vehicle for Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe, was to be Ted’s breakthrough role. Using some easily recognised ethnic stereotypes, his was a supporting role as Irish-American soldier Private Kiper, alongside Sammy Cohen playing the Jewish-American Private Lipinsky. The story goes that Walsh had seen Ted on stage in New York and offered him the part. That is likely, as Ted had completed a long run of Battling Butler at the Selwyn and later Times Square Theatre in New York.

Ted and Sammy Cohen in What Price Glory. Dolores del Rio plays Charmaine tending the bar. Exhibitors Herald, 27 November 1926, P24, via Lantern Digital Media Project.

Seen today, the male stereotypes in What Price Glory appear well-worn at best, but the film was well received at the time and Ted must have been pleased with his work and the change of direction it represented. In his survey of military comedy films, Hal Erickson notes that Fox promoted the two comedians based on the film’s success, and as a response to MGM’s comedy team of Karl Dane and George K Arthur. The partnership was repeated several times, including in 1927’s The Gay Retreat, another film set against World War One, where Sammy Nosenbloom (Cohan) and Ted McHiggins (Ted) join the army to look after their employer.

Ted McNamara and Sammy Cohen in Upstream. Screen grabs from a copy on YouTube.

This writer’s favourite of the surviving Ted McNamara films is John Ford‘s 1927 film Upstream, a copy of which was found in New Zealand in 2009. Set in a theatrical boarding house, Ted McNamara and Sammy Cohen play Callahan and Callahan, two tap dancers, secondary comedic characters. The plot is slight and John Ford purists are unlikely to find much to enjoy in it, but it is one of those silent films that has stood the test of time – with every scene containing some sort of industry in – joke and Ford’s skill as a director already evident. Ted’s skills as a comic are also well displayed here.

Ted McNamara’s final film, Why Sailors Go Wrong, was about two rival cabbies who end up on the tropical island of Pongo-Pongo, again with Sammy Cohen as a foil. The film is a reminder of the very ordinary standard of some film comedies of the day, with its slender plot and “low comedy” situations – including sea-sickness, arranged marriages to unattractive island women, implied nudity and jokes about bird droppings. Within a few years, the Hayes office had been established to rid Hollywood of this sort of unrefined fare.

Ted died in February 1928, before the film was released. The stated cause of death was pneumonia, but as film historian Thomas Reeder notes, film gossip was that alcohol also played a part. Reeder quotes Ted’s contemporary Jimmy Starr as saying “Ted was pretty much of a drunk. Success had merely provided him with more money for booze.” Starr recalled that on a rainy night a drunken Ted had fallen into a gutter. “He just lay there.” Ted’s fondness for drink was also noted by Pattie Hill, who repeatedly mentioned his excessive drinking in her divorce petition.

According to newspaper accounts, Ted McNamara was farewelled at his funeral by many of his old Pollard colleagues – including Daphne Pollard, Alf Goulding and Billy Bevan, a testimony to his popularity with the company. What Price Glory was chosen as a motto for Ted’s monument at the Calvary Cemetery in California.

Sammy Cohen continued appearing in films, although he never established an effective comedy partnership again. Pattie Hill became Patsie Hill in Australia, married baritone Vernon Sellars and enjoyed a very long association with Australian theatre and radio.

Note 1
Nellie McNamara had a lengthy stage career of her own. In addition to travelling with Alice on Pollard tours in 1901-2 and 1903-4, Nellie also trained as a contralto and performed on the stage in Australia between 1909 and 1912, with significant acclaim, using the stage name Nellie Mond. The Victorian Premier Mr Murray heard her sing in April 1910, and declared he was quite sure that if given the chance, “she would distinguish herself and charm the public.” She did charm the public for several years, but in mid 1912 she threw it all away to join Teddy again, and Nellie Chester’s final Pollard tour of the US.

Years later Nellie explained to Everyone’s magazine that while a singer in Melbourne, her teacher had taken her to meet Madame Melba, who “nearly scared me out of my wits. She said ‘The voice is all right but for heaven’s sake, make her get rid of that awful Australian accent.’ ” As well as revealing a sharp wit, this anecdote appears to explain why she did not pursue a career as a classical singer. She married US vaudevillian Don Clinton and in 1920 returned to Australia to perform with him on Harry Clay’s circuit.

Unfortunately, the author has yet to find a clear photo of Nellie.

Nick Murphy
August 2020

Further Reading

Text

Gillian Arrighi (2017) The Controversial “Case of the Opera Children in the East”: Political Conflict between Popular Demand for Child Actors and Modernizing Cultural Policy on the Child. “Theatre Journal” No 69, 2017. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Gillian Arrighi, National Library of Australia. Child Stars of the Stage.
Patricia Erens (1984) The Jew in American Cinema. Indiana University Press
Hal Erickson (2012) Military Comedy Films: A Critical Survey and Filmography of Hollywood Releases Since 1918. McFarland
Thomas Reeder (2017) Mr. Suicide: Henry Pathé Lehrman and The Birth of Silent Comedy. Bear Manor Media

Films

Upstream (1927) Entire film on Youtube
What Price Glory (1926) -3 minute extract on Youtube
Poor quality copies of Shore Leave (1925) can also be found on social media.

Federal Register of Legislation (Australia)

Emigration Act 1910

University of Washington, Special Collections.
Sayre (J. Willis) Collection of Theatrical Photographs.
This invaluable resource contains numerous photos of the Pollard’s Troupes.

The Australian Variety Theatre Archive: Popular Culture Archive, 1850-1930. Clay Djubal and others

Lantern Digital Media Project

Fox Folks, 1926.
Picture Play, 1927
Motion Picture, July 8, 1927

National Library of Australia’s Trove

The Age (Melb) 19 April 1910
The Prahran Telegraph (Melb) 26 Oct 1912
The Age (Melb) 10 Jan 1914
The Bulletin (Aust) Vol. 41 No. 2083 (15 Jan 1920)
Everyone’s (Aust) 10 March, 1920
The Journal (SA) 8 Jan 1921
The Telegraph (Qld) 11 May 1926
The Call, (WA) 22 July 1927
Saturday Journal (SA) 14 Jan, 1928
The Daily News (WA) 23 Mar 1928

Newspapers.com

The Oregon Daily Journal, 30 Jan 1904.
The San Francisco Call, Sun, Mar 4, 1906
The Vancouver Daily World, 21 September 1912.
Vancouver Daily World, 23 May 1913
The Evening Times Star and Alameda Daily Argus (CA), 10 Feb 1914
Spokane Chronicle (WA) 18 Sept 1914
Marysville Daily Appeal, (CA), 27 Jan, 1916.
The Victoria Daily Times, 27 July 1916
Spokane Chronicle (WA) 27 Sept 1917
Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 21 May 1922
Daily News (New York) 15 Sept 1925
Evening Star, Washington DC, 27 December, 1925.

This site has been selected for archiving and preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Trilby Clark (1896-1983) goes to Hollywood

Above: Trilby Clark in Franklin Barrett’s Breaking of the Drought, in 1920. Photograph from the collection of the State Library of Victoria , now in the Public Domain.

The 5 second version

Trilby Clark – such a wonderful name! Born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1896, Trilby Clark enjoyed an episodic acting career in Australia, the US and Britain and endured two short marriages on two continents. Something of a restless soul, she made the long return sea journey back to Australia five times during her life. She died in London in 1983. She had at least twenty films to her credit, plus numerous stage and radio appearances

Born Gwendolyn Gladys Blakely Clark on 30 August 1896, she was the youngest of Edward Clark and Jane nee Long‘s nine children. Edward, the owner of the East Adelaide Brewing Company, died suddenly in 1900, when Trilby was only four. However, the family appears not to have suffered financially because of the tragedy, as her extensive travel history suggests significant on-going financial security.

Trilby Clark‘s unusual nick-name was derived from the play Trilby, popular about the time she was born. Years later, she claimed her father had chosen the pet name because she was born with six toes. Trilby attended Adelaide’s Dryburgh House School (also known as Presbyterian Ladies College) and excelled in her studies, and from her mid teens began to appear in charity performances and at dance clubs.

Following some experiences in amateur theatricals in Adelaide, from late 1917 she won a place performing professionally with the British actress Ada Reeve in Malcolm Watson‘s musical – Winnie Brooke, Widow. Reeve was hugely popular internationally, and this was one of her most famous roles – she had first performed it in London in 1904. This was a great breakthrough and a testament to her ability.

21 year old Trilby Clark about to appear with Ada Reeve. Sunday Times (Sydney) 16 December 1917. Via the National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Following this successful tour, Trilby appeared with Harry Rickards‘ Tivoli Players in the new musicals My Lady Frayle, and The Officer’s Mess, the latter produced by Robert Greig and featuring another up and coming actor in Vera Pearce. Then another breakthrough followed, in late 1919 pioneer director Franklyn Barrett cast her in a leading role in his film The Breaking of the Drought. Adapted from a stage play, extolling the virtues of an honest living made in the country as opposed to the lazy life of the city, the somewhat dated film (even for its time) seems to have been moderately well received in Australia. But the experience was more than enough to wet Trilby’s appetite for more. Soon after, she departed for England, where she said she spent six months studying voice under the Adelaide-born singer Arthur Otto (better known as Kingston Stewart).

The Breaking of the Drought (1920) The struggling Galloway family decide to find their wastrel son, who is spending the family fortune in Sydney. Nan Taylor as mother, Trilby as daughter Marjorie and Charles Beetham as father. Photograph from the collection of the State Library of Victoria.

Trilby arrived in New York in February 1921, and with some Australian stage experiences, and with the aid of some imaginative publicity about winning an Australian beauty competition and having modelled for wartime posters in Australia, she found a place in the cast of the Greenwich Village Follies. The show opened in August at the Shubert Theatre. She was the “most beautiful girl in Australia” according to the New York Daily News of July 31, 1921 (at left). Over time Trilby Clark proved herself a great self promoter, as so many Australians who travelled overseas at that time had to be.

She didn’t stay in New York for very long. She arrived home in late December 1921, making comment on the strenuous rehearsal schedule required for a New York performer. “Sunday brought no respite” in the schedule she complained, but otherwise the reason for her short season (it could only have been 8 weeks) remains a mystery.

She returned to see her mother in Young Street, Wayville, Adelaide, and she appeared briefly on stage for J C Williamson’s in Sydney again. Then suddenly, it was announced she was heading back to the US to pursue an interest in movies. She arrived in California on the Niagara in August 1922.

Trilby looking sultry in US fan mags. Left: Photoplay Jan-June 1924. Right: Exhibitors Herald, 1 Sept 1923. Via Lantern Digital Media Project.

Fox Pictures signed her up in June 1923 and William Wellman directed her in Big Dan soon after, a boxing drama starring Charles “Buck” Jones, and coincidentally in company with Australian-born actors Charles Coleman and Lydia Yeamans Titus. Good looking, 5’6″ tall (167 cm) with dark brown hair and dark eyes, this was the start of a busy three year period in Hollywood for her, although she did not stay with Fox for long. Over the next few years she appeared in contemporary and historical dramas, westerns for Hunt Stromberg and even a Ben Turpin short comedy for Mack Sennett. And then in 1926 she met and fell in love with a charming Italian actor newly arrived in the US, Niccolo Quattrociocchi (stage name Lucio Flamma) – they married in November. Unfortunately Niccolo had rather old fashioned views even for 1927. He commenced divorce proceedings against Trilby after six months, US newspapers taking great delight in reporting that, amongst other things, she refused to prepare macaroni for him.

Trilby smiling (at right) in a posed Christmas photo, with Harriet Hammond and director Scott Dunlap. Exhibitors Herald, Dec 1925, via Lantern Digital Media Project.

Trilby and Niccolo as they appeared in The News (Adelaide) 25 Jan 1927. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Trilby fled the US for England, where, without too much difficulty, she resumed her film career. She appeared in ten British films, including The Devil’s Maze (1929) which was dialogued after completion as a silent film and released in both formats. In 1930 she also appeared in Edgar Wallace‘s crime drama The Squeaker, directed by Wallace and based on his own popular novel and play. Her other sound films including the early British musical Harmony Heaven (1930), which also appears to have been her last – one of the few of her films that can be seen today. With a relatively unsophisticated “Show within a Show” plot, crude management of sound and music and uneven performances by some of the principals, seen today Harmony Heaven tells us much about the challenging transition to sound films in Britain. Trilby seems to have acknowledged this herself. Several years later she told an Adelaide paper “No one understood the adjustment of the microphone properly, so that the mere putting down of a piece of paper was reproduced like a gunshot, and walking made a deafening clatter.“

No sign of an Australian accent here! Trilby Clark in Harmony Heaven (1930) as Lady Violet. The film was supposedly also made in colour, although only a black and white version survives now. Available as part of the British Musicals series from Network.

Calgary Herald, 21 June 1932, via Newspapers.com

Following another short sojourn in the US in 1930, where she appeared in at least one un-credited supporting role – as a secretary in Doctor’s Wives, Trilby married stockbroker Ronald Stanley Anker Simmons in London in June 1932 – a union that brought considerable Australian publicity. Simmons was fifteen years Trilby’s junior, although she was already being creative about her age and claiming a birth around 1902, a practice common amongst so many actors of the time.

Like her marriage to Niccolo, her second marriage appears to have lasted only six months – she quietly initiated divorce proceedings against her husband in 1933. In early 1935 she travelled back to Australia again, visiting family and friends, and talking to the press about her film work in Britain and Hollywood. Having previously explained that she had retired, she was encouraged to appear on stage in Melbourne in the satire So This is Hollywood, with a young Peter Finch and Gwen Munro. Trilby played a temperamental film star. The play was not a success, reviewers feeling it was poorly scripted and amateurish, although there was praise for the actors. Trilby moved to an apartment in Sydney and in April 1936 she was on hand to farewell a young, hopeful Jocelyn Howarth, who was heading to Hollywood. In August 1937 Trilby departed Australia for England again, but via the US. In March 1939, she was back in Australia yet again, “on a holiday,” via the ship Dominion Monarch. She was still living in Australia when World War II broke out.

Trilby, now based in Sydney, performed on radio and joined the cast of several plays at the Minerva Theatre – Susan and God in 1941 and Jane Eyre in 1943. (She is shown at left in ABC Weekly, 17 July, 1943. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove)

We know she returned to Britain after World War II and that she spent some time living in the south of France. Having now knocked ten years off her age, she travelled extensively, back to Australia in 1957, also to the US and Canada, but it seems she had well and truly retired from stage and screen.

She was never interviewed again about her work across three continents, and was quickly forgotten in Australia. In the last decade of the twentieth century, Matthew Sweet, a British film historian, interviewed many of the surviving actors from the early years of British cinema. But he was too late to speak to Trilby. She was living comfortably at 40 Elm Park Gardens in Chelsea, London, when she died on 11 January 1983, aged 87.

Note: Nicky Quattrociocchi ran El Borracho restaurant in New York for many years. He wrote a memoir and recipe book entitled “Love and Dishes” in 1950. After wartime service in the Royal Navy, Ronnie Anker Simmons moved to the US and pursued business interests.

Nick Murphy
July 2020

Further Reading

Films

The Prairie Pirate (1925) A Western with Harry Carey & Trilby Clark
The Love Charm (1928). Lucio Flamma in an early colour film (not including Trilby)
The Breaking of the Drought (1920) 3 clips at the Australian Screen NFSA website.
The Breaking of the Drought (1920) Entire film. PELICULAS MUDAS / Silent cinema channel.

Text

Matthew Sweet (2005) Shepperton Babylon, The Lost Worlds of British Cinema. Faber and Faber.
John Tulloch (1981) Legends of the Screen. The Narrative film in Australia 1919-1929. AFI/Currency Press.

State Library of Victoria

Photographs from the film The Breaking of the Drought.

Small Town Papers Archive.

Boca Beacon Nov 1, 1982.

National Library of Australia’s Trove

The Bulletin Vol. 40 No. 2043, (10 Apr 1919)
The Sun (Sydney) 29 Dec 1921
The News (Adelaide) 25 Jan 1927
The News (Adelaide) 11 April 1931
The Australian Women’s Mirror Vol 8, No 29, 14 June 1932
The Australian Women’s Mirror Vol 10, No 14, 27 Feb 1934
The News (Adelaide) 19 Sept 1935
Weekly Times (Melbourne) Sat 21 Sep 1935 Page 28
The Sydney Morning Herald 31 Aug 1942
Bowen Independent (Qld) Fri 5 Mar 1943

Newspapers.com

Boston Post, 22 Jul 1921
The San Francisco Examiner 19 June, 1927
Victoria Daily Times (Canada) 12 May, 1930
Edmonton Journal (Canada) 5 July 1932
The Age (Melbourne) 20 Mar 1939

Lantern Digital Media Project

Exhibitors Herald, Jun-Aug 1923
Motion Picture News, 7 July 1923
Exhibitors Herald, Sep 1923
Photoplay Magazine, Jan-June 1924
Exhibitors Herald, Dec 1925-Mar 1926
Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World, Apr-Jun 1929

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is pandora_logo1.gif

This site has been selected for archiving and preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Nina Speight (1890-1965) of Hollywood, catarrh and colds

Above: 27 year old Melbourne girl Nina Speight on the cover of Lone Hand in October 1917. Via the National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Nina Speight arrived in California with her husband Rhodes Speight in April 1916. Within a year she was appearing in the supporting cast of Hal Roach comedies, especially those featuring Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels and usually in company with Snub Pollard, and sometimes at the direction of Alf Goulding.

Accurately tracing her films for the Roach studio is difficult, and the list provided by the IMDB today seems strangely incomplete and difficult to verify. In several of the films attributed to her, this writer was unable to identify anyone who resembled her. Several photos currently circulating on the net claiming to show Nina with Harold Lloyd may match known images of her, but by far the most reliable list of her work has been produced here by Jesse Brisson, on the very comprehensive website run by Dave Lord Heath. It seems her most active years at the Roach studio were 1917 and 1918.

Above: Screen grabs of Nina Speight with unidentified actors in Hal Roach’s When Clubs are Trump, 1917. Both these are from low res Youtube versions of the film.

Above: Screen grabs of Nina Speight – a fleeting appearance in The Flirt (1917) and at right in a longer part as Bebe Daniel’s maid, poking out her tongue at her mistress, in Hey There (1918), both taken from Youtube versions of the films.

Growing up in Australia

Below: Nina Speight on the cover of The Lone Hand, March 1916. Via The National Library of Australia’s Trove. The photo is attributed to Kenelm Stump. Readers interested in the challenge of identifying her in the Roach films are recommended to follow the link to the full scale photo.

Nina was born Simelia Präger in Fergie Street, North Fitzroy, Melbourne on 18 January, 1890. Her father, 39 year old Henry Präger, was a maker of waterproof clothing, describing himself on her birth certificate as a “mackintosh manufacturer.” Born in Prague in what was then part of the Kingdom of Austria-Hungary, he had migrated to Australia and in 1889 married 19 year old Isabella Nathan of Melbourne. In view of her age, Isabella’s father Samuel had to give permission for the marriage.

Although two other children were born of the union (Leslie in 1894 and Ruth in 1898), the marriage was not a happy one. In 1898 and now in Sydney, Isabella instituted proceedings against Henry because she feared he might abandon her and the children, and flee the colony. She had already been dragged from “colony to colony” at his whim – Victoria, South Australia, New Zealand and New South Wales. Her brother Isidore Nathan supported the family after finding Isabella and the three children destitute. None of this indicates a very happy or stable childhood for “Minnie” as Simelia now called herself (Minnie was also her grandmother’s name).

On to stage and screen

In 1910 in Sydney, New South Wales, Minnie married Reginald Rhodes Speight. Exactly how she drifted onto the stage we do not know, but from a young age she had been an artist’s model (Datillo Rubbio, Evelyn Chapman and Julian Ashton were mentioned as using her) and a vaudeville performer. The decorator for Brisbane’s Daniel Hotel reportedly based some of their murals on her. It is also likely that Minnie appeared in at least one early Australian film, Gaston Mervale‘s “The Wreck of the Dunbar” with Louise Lovely (then Louise Carbasse) in 1912, but little is known of this lost film and the claim is impossible to verify.

Rhodes Speight was also an aspiring actor and elocutionist, with a high opinion of himself and dreams of establishing his own actors school. He was also an investor, and involved with films made by the Australian Life Biograph company in 1911-12. He apparently produced and starred in another lost Australian film entitled “Saved by a Snake,” which he took on tour to provincial theatres in 1913, providing a narration with each screening. In 1915 he took the bushranger film “Thunderbolt” through northern Queensland, again providing audiences with an accompanying lecture. The concept of a live narration to a movie may boggle the mind today, but it was not uncommon practice in the early years of silent film.

Equally active in the partnership, Minnie Rhodes, as Nina then called herself, appeared in vaudeville troupes travelling through regional New South Wales, singing, dancing and acting as a foil for male comedians. By 1915 she had become Nina Speight and was performing on stage in Brisbane, Queensland. Both Rhodes and Nina were firm believers in the concept of re-inventing oneself, including by change of name, whenever necessary.

Above: Nina Speight appearing in Brisbane in July 1915. The Brisbane Courier, 3 Jul 1915. Via the National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Above: Well before arriving in the US, Nina had a high enough Australian profile to advertise a cold cure in the Brisbane Daily Standard Fri 24 September 1915 . Her achievements as a model were also listed. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove.

There is no conclusive evidence that Nina Speight was close to Louise Lovely , although they must have known each other through the Australian Life Biograph company. In December 1914 Louise Lovely and her husband Wilton Welch had sailed to the US and by early 1916 she was established in Hollywood, and her first film Stronger than Death, had been released. It was the start of a very successful career for Louise. It is very likely that this success, and that of other Australians working in the US like Enid Bennett and Arthur Shirley, played a part in what happened next. Nina and Rhodes packed up and left Australia for good in 1916.

Above: Nina in the “Vampire Dance” as reported in The Lone Hand. Vol. 5 No. 6 (1 May 1916), An entry in Theatre Magazine on 1 November 1915 suggests this was a vaudeville turn, probably in the US. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Nina wrote home soon after, with all the good news from the US. She was modelling for artists again, and working with San Francisco’s Sarsi Studio. She expected work with a Movie studio soon. A further report on her career appeared in the June 1917 edition of “The Moving Picture World,” alongside profiles of five other aspiring stars. By this time, she had been signed to work with the Hal Roach studio, being possessed of much “beauty and charm” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Above: Nina introduces herself to fans via The Moving Picture World. June 1917. Here, she claimed to have been born in Austria, while the typesetter had misspelled her name. Via Lantern, the Digital Media Project.

Trying something else

In mid-1918, after appearing in, perhaps, 18 films for Roach, where she generally took secondary soubrette roles, Nina joined Arthur Morse Moon‘s company onstage in The Wrong Bird, commencing a tour that started in Salt Lake City. Sadly Moon died of pneumonia only a few months later, and the tour was suddenly over. Returning to acting for the screen under yet another name – Nina Rhodes, she appeared in two films starring Eddie Boland. And then, no more. Her marriage to Rhodes Speight founded soon after, although she may have found some solace in the fact her mother had moved to the US, as had her sister Ruth, who married a US sailor. Her brother Leslie also briefly lived with her in Los Angeles, before moving to Europe and raising a large family in Belgium, a country he had seen when in Australian army service during the war. Rhodes Speight changed his name again, and pursued other interests.

We know little of Nina’s later life. Sometime in the 1920s she partnered with Louis Wagner, a studio carpenter, and bore him two children, both of whom died prematurely. Strangely, she was not completely forgotten in her native country. For almost twenty years she was one of the many celebrity faces advertising medicinal products in Australian newspapers. The last of these advertisments – for Hean’s Tonic Nerve Nuts, appeared in 1934, more than ten years after she appeared in her last Hollywood film, and long after she had left it all behind.

Above – Nina endorsing Hean’s “Tonic Nerve Nuts” in Australia. Left: The Bulletin. 18 Oct 1917.
Right: The Sun 21 December 1932. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove. You can read more about Hean’s products in an extensive article at the Australian Variety Theatre Archive.

She died in California in March 1965, as Nina Wagner.

Nick Murphy

May 2020

Further Reading

Text

Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper (1980) Australian Film 1900-1977. Oxford University Press/AFI
Andree Wright (1986) Brilliant Careers, Women in Australian Cinema. Pan Books

Web

Clay Djubal and others (2017) Australian Variety Theatre Archive. Research papers on Hean’s Essence and Hean’s Nerve Nuts.
David Lord Heath – Lord Heath (a large website devoted to the work of the Hal Roach studio)
Delamoir, Jeannette (2013) “Louise Lovely.” In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, (eds). Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries.
Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University
- Ina Bertrand, ‘Lovely, Louise Nellie (1895–1980)‘, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 22 May 2020
- Katherine Harper, ‘Ashton, Julian Rossi (1851–1942)’, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 22 May 2020
- Carmel Oakley, ‘Rubbo, Antonio Salvatore Dattilo (1870–1955)‘, published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 22 May 2020.
The National Film and Sound Archive. Part of John Gavin’s film Thunderbolt (1910) can be viewed online.

Lantern, the Digital Media Project

Moving Picture World, June, 1917

National Library of Australia’s Trove

Newspapers.com

San Francisco Chronicle, · Thu, Mar 29, 1917 · Page 6
Los Angeles Times, APril 1, 1917 Page 31
Los Angeles Times, Dec 20, 1917 Page 15
The Salt Lake Tribune, · 12 Jun 1918, Wed · Page 9

US National Archives

Passenger arrival lists, applications for citizenship and US census returns via Family Search and Ancestry.com.

Births Deaths and Marriages Victoria.

Paul Scardon (1875-1954) – pioneer actor & director

Above: Paul Scardon, aged about 45, photograph used in Charles Fox and Milton Silver’s (eds)(1920) Who’s who on the screen, Ross Publishing, New York. Via the Internet Archive.

The 5 second version

William James Raper was born in South Melbourne Australia on 6 May 1875. He died in Fontana, California, USA, on 17 January 1954. He was on stage in Australia from about 1900, when he changed his name to Paul Scardon, finding increasing success. He travelled with the Nance O’Neill company to the US in 1905. Following a busy 6 years on stage in the US, he appeared in his first film in 1911. He began directing for Vitagraph in 1915. After his Australian born wife died in the Spanish flu epidemic, he married actress Betty Blythe. He retired from directing in 1924, but stayed active in community theatre. From 1939 he returned to films as an extra

Scardon was reported to have been a contortionist in his youth. This unbelievably uncomfortable image from Photoplay (Sept 1919, P69 via Lantern), appears to show him in his teens, but the Australian context is unknown.

Sometime in 1900, William Raper, a 25 year old telegraph operator in the booming Western Australian goldfield town of Boulder, decided to throw in his safe job working for the Government and pursue his dream of being an actor. An active member of the Boulder Dramatic Society, he returned to Australia’s east coast, adopted a new name – Paul Scardon – and found roles in J.C.Williamson productions. Smart, athletic and good looking, the world was at his feet.

Above: An early photo of Scardon probably taken about the time he arrived in New York in 1906. Picture Play Weekly. April-Oct 1915. Via Lantern and the Internet Archive. See also University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections JWS13991 for a photo taken at the same sitting, but incorrectly dated 1924.

William James Raper was born in Melbourne in 1875, at his parent’s modest cottage in Bank Street, South Melbourne (then called Emerald Hill). His mother Eleanor (nee Sawyer) and father Edward were both English born but they had lived in Melbourne for some time, having married in the city in 1867. Melbourne was still a distant outpost of the British empire, but it was also a booming city after the great gold rushes of the 1850s. It continued to attract hopeful immigrants through the later half of the nineteenth century. Sadly Will’s father, who described himself as a coachman and groom, died in 1881 when Will was only 6. In about 1896 Will, relocated to Western Australia. Eleanor and Will’s surviving sister Ada most likely moved at the same time. (See Note 1 Birth Certificate)

Building a career
Writing about important contemporary filmmakers in 1920, Carolyn Lowrey included Paul Scardon in her survey of the “first one hundred men and women of the screen”. She claimed Scardon had spent some time in vaudeville and performed as a contortionist from the age of 15. Although these claims cannot be verified now, Paul’s career as a professional actor in Australia can.

Above left; Scardon earning his stripes with JC Williamsons and in company with Canadian born actor Cuyler Hastings. The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 4 October 1902. Via the National Library of Australia’s Trove. Above right: The very popular Minnie Tittel Brune, about the time Paul Scardon worked with her. Postcard in the author’s collection.

By mid 1902 he was a regular in the J.C. Williamson’s Dramatic Company, that travelled the length and breadth of Australia performing popular plays imported from London and New York. These included both comedies and dramas such as William Gillette’s play Sherlock Holmes, and J.M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton. Although he seems to have often been cast in supporting roles, what one writer described as the “heavy butler” type of role, it was more than enough to establish himself. From mid 1904 he performed with a troupe led by the popular Minnie Tittel Brune (and including Roy Redgrave) – developing his skills and earning increasing recognition for his roles in L’Aiglon and Romeo and Juliet. Then, after a year with Minnie, Paul left Australia to perform with Nance O’Neill and her troupe in the US. He arrived in the San Francisco on the SS Sonoma, on 4 December 1905, the troupe also included actors Mario and George Majeroni. (See Note 2)

Through early 1906 the company travelled across the US providing dramas which gave O’Neill the headline roles. But by June he had joined Australian actor Nellie Stewart in Chicago in the supporting cast for her perennial favourite Sweet Nell of Old Drury. By the end of the year he was appearing with British actor Kyrle Bellew in New York.

In December 1906, a Melbourne Punch correspondent reported a long letter from Paul, now in New York. It should be read in its entirety because, unusually, it reports on the doings of many Australian performers, like Marc McDermott and Nellie Stewart. It confirms that while Australians working in the US may not have all been friends, they knew each other and closely followed each other’s successes:

“There was quite a bunch of us here during the summer, chasing ‘the nimble engagement’, but they’re considerably scattered now. George Majeroni and myself being the only two in town at this moment—balance being out on the road.” (read the Punch article here)

Above: Two Australians who often represented a very similar “type” in pioneer films – the suave leading man. Left; Marc McDermott in 1911, Source; Motion Picture Story Feb-July 1911. Right Paul Scardon, in Moving Picture World Jul-Aug 1924. By 1924 Scardon was directing. Via Lantern Media History Project.

Elizabeth Hamilton and Paul Scardon
On 29 May 1907 Paul Scardon married Australian woman Elizabeth “Bessie” Hamilton in New York. Bessie and her younger sister Kate, or “Tottie,” had arrived in Vancouver in April, and headed more or less directly for New York where Paul was now based. These circumstances strongly suggest Paul knew Bessie already from Australia, and that the couple had decided to marry and live in the US. The 1910 US census shows Paul, Bessie (and Tottie) living together in New York. A daughter – Joan, was born of the union in April 1913. (See Note 3)

Above: A rather serious looking Paul Scardon in about 1917. Motion Picture and Studio Directory and Trade Annual, Jan 1918. Via Lantern and the Internet Archive.

Bessie and Tottie were daughters of William Campbell Hamilton (1834-1882), a wealthy pastoralist (Australians would call him a squatter) from the Broadford-Kilmore area north of Melbourne. Tragically, both sisters died within a week of each other during the New York Spanish flu pandemic, in the last week of 1918 and first week of 1919. The inscription on their headstone at the Hackensack Cemetery in New Jersey ends “erected by those who loved them in far away Australia”.

Based in New York, Paul was active on the US stage, appearing with E.H. Sothern and Mrs Minnie Fiske, until sometime in 1911, when he moved into acting in films for the Majestic studio. There are lists of his films in existence, but it is impossible to verify these, as many have long since been lost. At the time, Scardon was held in some esteem for his character portrayals and his clever use of makeup.

Above: Left – Paul Scardon in The Mighty Atom (1915) and right (centre) as an officer in an unidentified film. From a Picture-Play Weekly article on his use of makeup. Via Lantern and the Internet Archive.

In 1915, at the invitation of Vitagraph’s producer Albert E Smith, he began directing – The Island of Surprise and The Hero of Submarine D-2 amongst his early efforts. Plot summaries of many of his Vitagraph films survive, and indicate a mix of mysteries and romances was the preference, the scripts usually based on popular plays and characters lifted from novels – presumably these could be churned into films quickly and cheaply. The Alibi, a story of embezzlement and false imprisonment, was based on a recent short story. Arsène Lupin, based on a popular literary character from a series of novels, concerned a master criminal who is redeemed by love. The Green God was also based on a novel, George Majeroni playing the unfortunate victim whose accidental death is revealed at the end. (The green idol in the story has nothing to do with it). Similarly, The Maelstrom, a story of gangs, fog and trap doors, was based on a recent novel. Perhaps he found this repetitive work not particularly enjoyable. In 1920 he left Vitagraph, working for the Goldwyn Company for his remaining active years.

Paul Scardon married actor Betty Blythe (Elizabeth Blythe Slaughter) on 18 April 1920, 16 months after Bessie’s death. Born in California in 1893, Betty Blythe was given one of her first featured roles by Paul, in mid 1918 in A Game with Fate. Betty was a forceful personality and famous for her witty comments. She is reputed to have said “A director is the only man besides your husband who can tell you how much of your clothes to take off.” Betty’s reputation today rests on her exotic film roles and the flimsy costumes she wore in films made after her work with Scardon –The Queen of Sheba (1921), Chu Chin Chow (1923) and She (1925).

The IMDB repeats the oft-made claim Paul Scardon directed 50 films with Betty. The truth was he could arguably be said to have discovered her, and was director on eleven of her films, all made at Vitagraph between mid 1918 and mid 1919. But Paul directed as many films with old Melbourne friend George Majeroni as he did with Blythe, while his most frequently used star was Vitagraph’s very popular Harry T. Morey, who resembled Paul somewhat, except he had a healthier head of hair. Morey was the leading man in all of Paul’s 1918 and 1919 films. Paul went on to direct films starring Blanche Sweet and Miss Patty Dupont before retiring from directing in 1924.

Above: Scardon and Blythe, profiled together in 1925. However he had retired by this date.Film Daily Year Book, via Lantern and the Internet Archive.

Above: Paul Scardon and Betty Blythe on their 1923 US passport application. He was 49 years old, she was 30. He became a US citizen in 1922. These well known photos are found in US Archives, available via Family Search. Passport photos, then as now, provide a refreshing alternative to posed studio photos.

Life after Hollywood

Aged fifty, Paul Scardon devoted his later life to running a citrus farm in Fontana, California and directing plays for community theatre in San Bernardino – well into the 1940s, reminding us that for many actors, the “legitimacy” of theatre is preferable to cinema. Paul did return to acting on the screen in the late 1930s however, but now appeared without a toupee and usually in uncredited roles. He died suddenly in 1954.

Above left: Screen grab of Paul Scardon playing Rudyard Kipling in Warner Bros The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944). It is his one scene. Above right: Screen grab of Scardon as Hobbs from Today I Hang (1942). Australian Mona Barrie saves the film from being a complete bore. Author’s Collection.

Above: Leon Errol from Sydney as the fast talking Knobby Walsh, a regular character in the Joe Palooka films, and Paul Scardon as the doddery file clark being offered cigars while his files are stolen. This is a short audio clip from Gentleman Joe Palooka (1946). Leon Errol was 65 years old, Scardon 71. Source – Youtube. Paul Scardon was an extra in three of the Palooka films.

Betty Blythe also continued to act almost to the end of her life -she died in 1972. Her final film role was apparently as an extra in My Fair Lady in 1964. Before she died she gave film historian Kevin Brownlow a long account of working with director J. Gordon Edwards on The Queen of Sheba. Interviewed while sitting beneath a portrait of Scardon, she said Edwards was like her husband, a similiar “gentlemanly sort of person.”

Betty and Paul’s citrus orchard in Fortuna has long since been taken over for housing, however the modest little cottage in which Paul Scardon was born still stands in Bank Street, South Melbourne.

Note 1
Paul Scardon’s date of birth was 6 May 1875, as per his birth certificate

and his US naturalisation papers. Source above; Victoria, Births, Deaths and Marriages, Below; US Archives, via Ancestry.com. Unlike so many actors working in Hollywood, he apparently never felt any need to lie about his age.

Note 2
Mario Majeroni (born Italy, 1870) and Giorgio (George) Majeroni (born Melbourne, Australia 11 Jan 1877) arrived in the United States as part of the Nance O’Neill troupe with Scardon. Paul appears to have maintained a cordial relationship with the Majeroni brothers – he directed 3 films with Mario and 11 with George while at Vitograph. Unfortunately the Majeroni family’s significant contribution to theatre in Australia is not well documented, nor is their later work on stage and screen in the US.

Above: Signora Majeroni with her sons Mario and George in Melbourne. Talma Photographer, David Syme and Co. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Note 3
Paul and Bessie’s daughter Joan Scardon lived in Australia for some time in the 1930s, and gained acclaim for her costume designs for theatre. She married violinist and conductor Mishel Piastro in 1941. She died in 2003. Her descendants now all live in the US.

Nick Murphy
May 2020

Further Reading

Text

Kevin Brownlow (1968) The Parade’s Gone By… University of California Press.
Charles Fox and Milton Silver (eds)(1920) Who’s Who on the screen, Ross Publishing, New York.
Carolyn Lowrey (1920) The First One Hundred Noted Men and Women of the Screen. Moffat Yard & Co
J.O. Randell (1982) Pastoral Settlement in Northern Victoria. Vol II The Campaspe District. Chandos
Ken Wlaschin (2009 )Silent Mystery and Detective Movies: A Comprehensive Filmography. McFarland.

Heritage Council of Victoria, Database.

Glenaroua Station.

National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Punch (Melb) 14 Dec 1905 Page 38 Greenroom Gossip
Punch (Melb) 20 Dec 1906 Page 38 Greenroom Gossip.
Kilmore Free Press 23 Jan 1919 Page 2 Obituary
The Argus (Melb) 16 Jan 1919 Page 1 Family Notices
Everyone’s. Vol.2 No.86 ( 26 October 1921)
Leader (Melb) 9 Feb 1935 Page 36 Rhapsodies of 1935

US National Archives
Via Family Search and Ancestry.com

Newspapers.com

Los Angeles Times 20 April 1920
The Age (Melbourne) · 3 Jun 1935, Mon · Page 14
The San Bernardino County Sun, 24 Sep 1939, Sun Page 12
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette· 20 Jan 1954, Wed · Page 6

Lantern Digital Media Project

Films in the Public Domain

Ena Gregory (1907-1993)- the WAMPAS baby star from Manly

Above: Ena Gregory as the Queen, In the Palace of the King, 1923. Author’s Collection.

The 5 second version
Ena Jessie Gregory was born in the Sydney suburb of Manly on 16 April 1907. She died at Laguna Beach, California, USA on 13 June 1993. She was active in Hollywood after moving there in 1920 with her mother, who seems to have had an important role in developing her career. Ena’s films included comedy shorts for the Hal Roach studio, and numerous Westerns. She also appeared in the Hollywood film The Bushranger in 1928. She adopted the stage name Marian Douglas in 1927. She retired in 1931 after a few sound films and became a Realtor.

Ena Jessie Gregory was born in Sydney on 16 April, 1907 to Arthur Gregory and Jessie nee Prior (see Note 1 for Birth Certificate). Arthur was described at the time as a “tobacconist” but in later years was listed as an importer of manufactured goods (presumably tobacco products) and Sydney’s Sands directory shows he had a large office on the 6th floor of 204 Clarence Street. As Ena grew up, the family lived in a house (that has since been demolished) at 48 Sydney Rd Manly, very close to the famous Manly beach. Arthur and Jessie had married in 1901 – Ena was the only child of the union.

Ena’s name is found in the cast of a few Sydney wartime fund raising shows, and performing in 1918 as a child in Eyes of Youth – with other child actors like Esma Cannon. However, the best evidence of a passion for acting is her appearance in student performances run by Sydney actor-elocutionist Harry Thomas, in December 1919. His students recited selections from Shakespeare, Tennyson and Longfellow at an annual concert.

Above: Little Ena Gregory in an ad for “Heenzo”, in The Green Room Magazine, 1 May 1919. Via State Library of New South Wales. The decision to appear in such advertisements was undoubtedly her mother’s.

1920- Moving to the US

13 year old Ena and her mother arrived in the US on the SS Ventura on 2 February 1920, listing their intended stay as “indefinite.” Given her very young age and relative inexperience, Ena’s success soon after is remarkable and one wonders whether her father and mother used some connections to help set her up. Arthur had travelled on business to the US a number of times during the First World War.

Both Variety and the San Francisco Chronicle carried articles about Ena soon after her arrival. Amongst the overblown claims about her experience in Australia, the Chronicle also quoted Ethel as saying she wanted Ena to learn the art of acting in the US, a comment that has a ring of truth. Most likely, the state of the Gregory’s marriage also had something to do with it, as the couple appear not to have lived together again after 1920. Ethel and Arthur finally divorced in 1928. However, moving to a new country with a teenager was still an unusual occurrence. Jessie had a large and well established family back home in Australia, but she and Ena were choosing to leave them all behind.

Her US Career begins

Above: 15 year old Ena in Camera! Magazine April 1921-April 1922 aged 15.Via Lantern and the Internet Archive.

Regrettably, over time, Ena’s US film career has been inextricably muddled up with another actress with a very similar name – Canadian born brunette Edna Gregory. Even during their lifetimes, their names were continually mixed up. Tracking down Ena’s early Hollywood appearances is therefore difficult – and made doubly so because many of her films have not survived. One of her first films was a supporting role to Gladys Watson in Universal’s Short Skirts – but this film has also disappeared.

In January 1922, Ena’s press agent Don Hix illustrated just how much hot air was generated on behalf of up and coming actors, even during Hollywood’s silent era. Ena was, according to Hix, “adept at boxing, fencing, golfing, tennis, baseball, football and even wrestling”… She had been a “footlight favourite for six years in Australia.”

Comedies and Westerns

Ena’s early films included comedy shorts for the Hal Roach studio, some of which do survive today. On reviewing these, it appears her function was generally to play a straight role to the slapstick antics of the likes of Stan Laurel, Charlie Chase or Earl Mohan. Several of the surviving Stan Laurel films also include Mae Laurel (Mae Dahlberg), an experienced Australian vaudevillian and Laurel’s partner at the time.

Above left to right: Stan Laurel and Ena Gregory in Short Kilts (1924), Laurel and Gregory in Wide Open Spaces (1924), and at right Laurel and Mae Dahlberg in the same film. Source of screen grabs: Youtube.

Above left to right: Gregory and Charlie Chase in Jefferies Jr. (1924), Dahlberg, Laurel and Gregory in Rupert of Hee Haw (1924) and Gregory in Postage Due (1924) . Source of screen grabs: Youtube

A WAMPAS Baby Star

In early 1925, Ena was announced as one of the new WAMPAS “Baby Stars”. The Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers annually created a promotional campaign, profiling a dozen young women who were (possibly) on the threshold of stardom and providing them with publicity. At 18 years of age Ena was amongst the youngest, and the only foreign-born winner that year.

Above: WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1925 including the very blond 18 year old Ena Gregory, seated centre. She had been in Hollywood for five years. Picture-Play Magazine, March-August 1925. Via the Internet Archive

Through 1925 and 1926 she continued to be busy on the screen – she was also well enough established to appear in advertisements for soap and bathing suits. She had roles in numerous Westerns – popular rodeo star Jack Hoxie being a regular co-star – in such lurid macho titles as Red Hot Leather, Rough and Ready, Grinning Guns, Men of Daring and others. At the end of 1926 she married Al Rogell, the director of many of her films.

Becoming Marian Douglas

There are numerous newspaper stories associated with Ena at this time, almost all of them impossible to verify independently. In 1927 Picture Play magazine (see below) published an extraordinary piece written by staff regular Ann Sylvester, quoting Rogell as saying – to an Ena disappointed with her career;

” ‘Now listen Ena, suppose we give you a new shuffle of the cards – a fresh chance – and see what happens…’ Ena sighed and there was a slight glitter of tears in her eyes. ‘Oh I don’t know’ she said listlessly. ‘I just haven’t the heart to keep on trying… I don’t believe in myself anymore.’ Well, mused Al… ‘maybe you could believe in yourself if you were someone else… ‘ “

It’s a cleverly written piece, interspersed with photos of The Shepherd of the Hills, her latest film, also directed by Rogell. The article explains she has just had an operation to beautify her nose, and has changed her stage name to Marian Douglas in an effort to remake herself.

Above: Left: The San Francisco Examiner still muddling Edna and Ena on 17 Jul 1927. This was Edna‘s marriage and the paper had not done their homework. At the time, Ena had been married to Rogell for six months. Via Newspapers.com.
Right: Photoplay July -December 1927, also covers Ena’s change of name. Via Lantern and the Internet Archive

Of course, it’s absurd to think that an intimate conversation between Ena and Rogell would really find its way into a fan magazine. And a few weeks later the Daily News of New York was suspicious enough to start their report on Ena’s change of name by commenting on the “chicanery practiced by movie press agents.” All the same, the story gained ground that had she consulted a Hollywood mystic to determine a more “lucky” name, by some accounts one that had thirteen letters, or combinations of the names of other popular stars.

However, it is worth noting that at the same time all this was happening, Ena’s father was about to arrive in the US (they seem not to have seen each other for seven years), while at the same time Ena and Edna continued to be merrily mixed up by the press, as the example above shows – another compelling reason for a name change in itself. There is almost certainly much more to this event than we now know.

Above: Ena’s signature on a fan photo, where she signs her name Ena Douglas. This possibly suggests she was giving much greater consideration to a name change than reports of the time suggested. A number of these signed photos are circulating on the net. Author’s collection.

Ena made several films using the stage name Marian Douglas, including The Bushranger with popular cowboy star Tim McCoy. Filmed in California but set in colonial-era Australia, it followed some plot points similar to For the Term of his Natural Life, which had been made in Australia only a few years before; a wrongful conviction of the hero in England, transportation to Tasmania, adventures in the bush, romance and eventual redemption. Unfortunately, again, the film no longer exists, and we are dependent on reviews of the day for an understanding of the plot. Ena’s final film appears to have been Aloha, a romantic drama also directed by Rogell. Then, in 1931, at the ripe old age of 24, it appears her Hollywood career came to an end. There were no more films. Did the huge changes brought on by the coming of sound play a role in the demise of her career? We have no evidence, but it is quite possible. There were the inevitable “comeback” stories about Ena, yet similar stories have been a feature of Hollywood for a century, and these came to nothing. However, Ena did not disappear from the public eye altogether.

Above: Ena Gregory, Tim McCoy and Frank Baker in The Bushranger (1928). Photo, author’s collection.

Unseemly Language

In mid 1934, Ena’s marriage came to an end. Rogell sued for divorce, claiming Ena stayed out late at drinking parties, while he had to go to bed so he could perform his duties at the studio the next day. He claimed that Ena “was possessed of a violent temper and used vile language to him” and was “overly familiar with other men, embracing them and displaying other signs of affection”. The entire divorce played out for six very long months in newspapers across the US with claims and counter claims being made, before a divorce was granted in 1935. And a year later, Ena testified at the divorce of her friend Helen Twelvetrees from her husband Jack Woody. Twelvetrees had filmed Thoroughbred for Ken Hall of Cinesound in Sydney in early 1936, where the marriage had first run aground. Back in Hollywood, Ena testified that she had witnessed Jack using “unseemly language” with his wife.

Ena must have discussed Sydney and Australia before Helen Twelvetrees left the US to work on Thoroughbred. We can only wonder what she might have said.

Above left: Frank Leighton and Ena’s friend Helen Twelvetrees filming Thoroughbred in Sydney. State Library of New South Wales, Sam Hood Collection. In his memoirs, Director Ken Hall writes at some length regarding their relationship.
Above right: Ena Gregory and Frank Nolan discussing plans for their wedding, with Helen Twelvetrees, at left, watching on. The Los Angeles Times 28 Oct 1937, Via Newspapers.com

Ena married twice more – briefly to Dr Frank Nolan in 1937-9 and later to businessman James Thompson Talbot in 1951.

If Ena ever did really believe in lucky numbers or lucky names, she did not allow this to dominate her decisions later in life. After the Second World War she joined her mother in business and became a successful real estate agent (Realtor), specialising in the Laguna Beach area, in Orange County California. She worked happily in this profession for almost thirty years, until the mid 1970s, her company logo being Pleasing you is our Pleasure.

Ena died on 13 June, 1993, aged 86. She had become a US citizen in 1932. She never returned to Australia.

Above: Los Angeles Times, 3 February, 1974. Via Newspapers.com

Nick Murphy
May 2020

Note 1
It’s hard to believe biographers have struggled for so long with Ena Jessie Gregory’s name, place and date of birth. In the interests of clarity, part of her New South Wales birth certificate is given here:

Col 2- April 16, 1907, 53 Union Street, North Sydney [Date and place of birth]
Col 3 – Ena Jessie Not present
Col 4 – Female
Col 5 – Arthur James Gregory, Tobacconist. 30 years. [Born] North Sydney NSW
Col 6 – April 9 1901, Burrowa, NSW, Nil [Date and place of marriage, other children]
Col 7 – Jessie Elizabeth Prior, 30 years. [Born] Bourke NSW.

Source: New South Wales Births, Deaths & Marriages.

Further Reading

Text

Joy Damousi (2010) Colonial Voices: A Cultural History of English in Australia, 1840-1940. Cambridge University Press.
Ken G Hall. (1977) Australian Film: The Inside Story. Summit Books
George A. Katchmer (2009) A Biographical Dictionary of Silent Film Western Actors and Actresses. McFarland.
Andree Wright (1986) Brilliant careers. Women in Australian Film. Pan Books.

Surviving films

Many of the Hal Roach short comedies with Ena are available on Youtube. However, none of her full length films could be sourced.

State Library of New South Wales

Sam Hood Collection of Photographs

City of Sydney

Sands Sydney Directory online

Manly City Library Local Studies Blog

Ena Gregory of Manly

Immortal Ephemera website

Cliff Aliperti (2014) Helen Twelvetrees – Biography of a Tragic Pre-Code Beauty & Talent

National Library of Australia

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 17 December 1919
The Sunday Times (Sydney) 3 June, 1923
Sydney Mail, 30 May 1928
The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 Dec 1928
Werribee Shire Banner (Victoria), 2 May 1929
The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 1929
Sun (Sydney) 7 February 1930 (a wildly inaccurate interview with Jessie Gregory)
The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 April 1948

Newspapers.com

Oakland Tribune, 22 January 1922
The Los Angeles Times, 5 December 1924,
The Times Herald (Michigan), 20 January 1925
The San Francisco Examiner ,17 July 1927
Daily News (New York), 2 October 1927
The Los Angeles Times, 24 July 1927,
News-Pilot (California), 11 August 1934,
The Los Angeles Times, 18 Aug 1934,
The Los Angeles Times, 28 Oct 1937,
The Los Angeles Times, 3 February, 1974

Lantern – Digital Media Project – Internet Archive

Camera! Magazine, April 1921-April 1922
Picture-Play Magazine, March-August 1925
Photoplay Magazine, July -December 1927
Picture-Play Magazine, Sep 1927 – Feb 1928

This site has been selected for archiving and preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Leon Errol at right with (fellow Australian-born) Joe Kirkwood Junior at left. Publicity photo for Monogram Pictures’ Gentleman Joe Palooka (1946). By 1946, both men had long since made the USA their home. Author’s Collection. [*Balmain is a well known inner suburb of Sydney]

Leon Errol remembers Sydney

Leon Errol’s family

Leon Errol goes on stage in Australia

Leon Errol arrives in the US c1903

With the Ziegfeld Follies and teaming with Bert Williams

A snapshot of his film career

A note on births and deaths

References

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The Five Second version

Younger sister Catherine Bennett also briefly appeared in Hollywood films.

The Bennett family

The family together in the US

Touring with Julian Eltinge and a return to Australia

Trouble with Getting Gertie’s Garter

200 screen characters

Note 1: Catherine Bennett (1901-1978)

References

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Above: Warner Bros photo credited to Schuyler Grail. Feb 1938, NBC radio announcer Buddy Twist interviewing Australian actress Mary Maguire. Author’s collection (Enlargement).

1. Australian accents – tending to broad.

2. The accents of former Australian vaudevillians

3. Cultivated Australian accents and the importance of elocution

Two expat-Australians doing a very good job of sounding like they belonged in the old West. Finis Barton (1911-1979) from Perth appeared with J.P McGowan (1880-1952) in Stampede (1936)

4. Australian accents – tending more general

5. Some other Australians speak

6. Blended US-Australian accents

Further Reading on Australian accents

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Above – part of Dulcie Robinson’s NSW birth certificate. Via NSW BDMColumns 2 – date and place, 3 – child’s name, 4 – child’s gender, 5 – Fathers name, profession, age and place of birth, 6 – marriage details, 7 – mother’s maiden name, age and place of birth.

The Oregon Daily Journal. 20 October 1908, P14. Via Newspapers.com

Above: Typical theater fare of the time. “Moving pictures” and vaudeville acts mixed in on the same program. Santa Ana Register. 30 October 1913. Via newspapers.com

Above: Ashley Cooper in Partners of the Tide (1921) Moving Picture World – Jan-Feb 1921. Right 20 year old Dulcie Cooper in 1923. Camera! April 1923-1924, Via Lantern Digital Media Project.

Above. Left: Dulcie in Just Married at Los Angeles’ Majestic Theater in early 1925. The Los Angeles Times, 18 Jan 1925, P131. Right: Edward Horton and Dulcie in Beggar on Horseback. The Los Angeles Times, 29 April 1925, P51. Via Newspapers.com

Above: Dulcie Cooper at the start of her New York career, in The Little Spitfire at the Cort Theater. Daily News (New York) · 26 Dec 1926, Page 154, via Newspapers.com

Above: The Los Angeles Evening Post-Record advertises The Little Spitfire, 24 May 1927, P4. Via Newspapers.com

Above: Dulcie Cooper still performing in 1957. The Wilmington Morning News,·(Wilmington, Delaware), 20 Jul 1957, P17. Via Newspapers.com.

Source; Bill Sprague Collection – Internet Archive. This is a pre-Hollywood code film about the dangers of alcohol. The author thinks Dulcie is quite successful in this, her last film role.

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Teddy enjoying success in the cinema. Motion Picture Magazine, July 8, 1927. Via Lantern Digital Media Project

Growing up with Pollards

Above: Teddy while performing in Vancouver. Vancouver Daily World, 3 Jan 1914, P11. via newspapers.com

Above: University of Washington, Special Collections. JWS21402. Teddie stands at the rear, clutching the pole. Taken sometime in 1905 or 1906, not all of Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company are in this shipboard photo. Used with permission

Pattie (later Patsy) Hill back in Australia. The Call, (WA) 22 July 1927. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove

Ted McNamara headlines in Battling Butler on the Keith circuit. Evening Star, Washington DC, 27 December, 1925. Via Newspapers.com

To Hollywood

Screen grabs of Ted McNamara and Sammy Cohen on the screen – in Fox’s What Price Glory, 1926. The film is still widely available on DVD. Author’s Collection.

Ted and Sammy Cohen in What Price Glory. Dolores del Rio plays Charmaine tending the bar. Exhibitors Herald, 27 November 1926, P24, via Lantern Digital Media Project.

Ted McNamara and Sammy Cohen in Upstream. Screen grabs from a copy on YouTube.

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Above: Trilby Clark in Franklin Barrett’s Breaking of the Drought, in 1920. Photograph from the collection of the State Library of Victoria , now in the Public Domain.

The 5 second version

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Above: 27 year old Melbourne girl Nina Speight on the cover of Lone Hand in October 1917. Via the National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Above: Screen grabs of Nina Speight with unidentified actors in Hal Roach’s When Clubs are Trump, 1917. Both these are from low res Youtube versions of the film.

Above: Screen grabs of Nina Speight – a fleeting appearance in The Flirt (1917) and at right in a longer part as Bebe Daniel’s maid, poking out her tongue at her mistress, in Hey There (1918), both taken from Youtube versions of the films.

Below: Nina Speight on the cover of The Lone Hand, March 1916. Via The National Library of Australia’s Trove. The photo is attributed to Kenelm Stump. Readers interested in the challenge of identifying her in the Roach films are recommended to follow the link to the full scale photo.

Above: Nina Speight appearing in Brisbane in July 1915. The Brisbane Courier, 3 Jul 1915. Via the National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Above: Well before arriving in the US, Nina had a high enough Australian profile to advertise a cold cure in the Brisbane Daily Standard Fri 24 September 1915 . Her achievements as a model were also listed. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Above: Nina in the “Vampire Dance” as reported in The Lone Hand. Vol. 5 No. 6 (1 May 1916), An entry in Theatre Magazine on 1 November 1915 suggests this was a vaudeville turn, probably in the US. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Above: Nina introduces herself to fans via The Moving Picture World. June 1917. Here, she claimed to have been born in Austria, while the typesetter had misspelled her name. Via Lantern, the Digital Media Project.

Above – Nina endorsing Hean’s “Tonic Nerve Nuts” in Australia. Left: The Bulletin. 18 Oct 1917. Right: The Sun 21 December 1932. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove. You can read more about Hean’s products in an extensive article at the Australian Variety Theatre Archive.

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Above: Paul Scardon, aged about 45, photograph used in Charles Fox and Milton Silver’s (eds)(1920) Who’s who on the screen, Ross Publishing, New York. Via the Internet Archive.

The 5 second version

Scardon was reported to have been a contortionist in his youth. This unbelievably uncomfortable image from Photoplay (Sept 1919, P69 via Lantern), appears to show him in his teens, but the Australian context is unknown.

Above: A rather serious looking Paul Scardon in about 1917. Motion Picture and Studio Directory and Trade Annual, Jan 1918. Via Lantern and the Internet Archive.

Above: Left – Paul Scardon in The Mighty Atom (1915) and right (centre) as an officer in an unidentified film. From a Picture-Play Weekly article on his use of makeup. Via Lantern and the Internet Archive.

Above: Scardon and Blythe, profiled together in 1925. However he had retired by this date.Film Daily Year Book, via Lantern and the Internet Archive.

Above left: Screen grab of Paul Scardon playing Rudyard Kipling in Warner Bros The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944). It is his one scene. Above right: Screen grab of Scardon as Hobbs from Today I Hang (1942). Australian Mona Barrie saves the film from being a complete bore. Author’s Collection.

1. Australian accents **– tending to broad.**

**3. Cultivated Australian accents and the importance of elocution**

Above – part of Dulcie Robinson’s NSW birth certificate. Via NSW BDM
Columns 2 – date and place, 3 – child’s name, 4 – child’s gender, 5 – Fathers name, profession, age and place of birth, 6 – marriage details, 7 – mother’s maiden name, age and place of birth.

Above – Nina endorsing Hean’s “Tonic Nerve Nuts” in Australia. Left: The Bulletin. 18 Oct 1917.
Right: The Sun 21 December 1932. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove. You can read more about Hean’s products in an extensive article at the Australian Variety Theatre Archive.