I've never been to Weymouth. But a century ago it was a favourite seaside holiday town, tricked out with all the 'traditional' seaside entertainments of the period ... bathing machines rather than bikinis!
I imagine the 'American Studio' was where you went to 'have your picture took'. The Gentlemen's Saloon? Beer, perhaps? But, of course, what interested me was the booth centre foreground ..
The Lyric concert party. Entertainment al fresco. Half a dozen gents in straw boaters and an eager audience of sunshaded holidaymakers ..
And this seems to be a snap of our chaps!
So, who were they? Well, they actually scribbled their names on the back of the card ...
So, with the help of the bill half-shown in the photo, I was able to decipher them ..
Amateurs? No, indeed! Several of these gents were to have long careers in music-halls, on piers and in entertainments of all kinds.
I wonder who put the team together. It is a bill of largely one type of material. Comic songs. Yes, Mr Daniels could tenorise out a ballad, Mr Sterling could tootle out a tune on his cornet, Mr Fredericks had a ventiloquist speciality ... but mostly it was comedy material ... all good holiday fun!
Alas, the signatures do not tell us which gent is which, but here they are ...
I know. Five only match the programme. Freddy MAYNE (of whom I know nothing) seems to be depping for the nonce for Mr Fredericks.
The 'best' name here is Tom CARNEY (b Islington 5 February 1860; d Barnsbury 4 December 1911). Born as Henry PENN[E]Y, he spent his early years as a carman, before I see him for the first time performing (1887) under his new name around Islington ('The Irish Restaurant', 'Kate Carney', 'Barnum's Exhibition', 'Nancy Magee', 'The Celebration of Mary Burke'), Hoxton, Hackney, Shoreditch et al. 'A real Irish singer'. 'A capital Irish comedian and an excellent dancer'. Newhaven, Chatham, Norwich and an engagement at the Britannia Pier, Great Yarmouth which would be repeated for many a year. Tom ('vocal comedan and dancer') made up many a bill in suburb and seaside, at the Sebright and the Bedford music halls, and by the later 'nineties ventures as far afield as Birmingham, Belfast, Newcastle and Sheffield, Hull, Shields and Dublin, returning always to the home counties and the seaside. He had just returned home from his latest season in Yarmouth, when he died suddenly, at the age of 52, in 1911, leaving a widow and five children.
Leo STERLING [KITE, Leonard Alexander] (b Portsmouth October 1873; d Sydney, Australia 29 October 1963) was the son of a serviceman (Royal Marines) and as a youngster himself joined the Corps as a drummer. In his early twenties, he became, instead, a 'humorous singer, cornet player and burlesque dancer' with Lowestoft's Olympian Pierrots. He appeared in pantomime with Graham Falcon and in 1899 supported Walter Cole, giving trombone imitations an a mini-operetta along with soprano 'Jeannette Latour' (Mary Adelaide LOVE). 'The Comedian with the Cornet' appeared at the Royal Aqurium for a considerable period, married Miss Love, and eventually the couple emigrated to Australia where they worked into the 1920s ('Jeannette' was now 'Addie Love').
Gus DANIELS (b 19 May 18**) is a little less transparent, so I am guessing he was not 'Daniels'. He began his working life in suburban London as a music hall tenor ballad singer ('Alice Where art thou?' 'My Sweetheart', 'Fill up your glasses with me boys', 'The World Went Very Well Then', 'I dream of thee', 'The Best of Friends Must Part', 'One of the Queen's Navee') from Tottenham to Kennington, to Poplar and Limehouse in the mid-'nineties. He soon became 'character vocalist' ('London Day by Day') or 'descriptive vocalist ('Visions from home') and covered the country - Newcastle, Hull, Belfast, Bradford, Manchester, Leeds -- and gave patriotic songs at the Bedford, the Marylebone, the Sebright, the Empire in Bow, the Grand, Clapham. By 1907 he was 'baritone' rather than 'tenor' ('The Flower of the Desert', 'Johnnie is coming home', 'It is a grand old story'). I know not what became of him, but he was still to be heard in Stamford Hill in smokos and working men's clubs thereafter, and at the end of the 'twenties he was still getting up for a song in his latter-day home of Southend. Of his personal life I know only that he fathered a son 30 August 1895 ... but it would help if I knew his real name!
Carl FREDERICKS [PINKETT, Charles Frederick] (b Bath 1867; d Weston-super-Mare November 1926) led life as a telegraph boy (sacked!), a grocer's assistant and a commercial traveller before going into show business (1894) as a 'ventriloquist and dancer, comedian and comic conjuror'. He advertised himself as 'the refined ventriloquist'. He appeared with Poole's Myriorama, on the beach at Teignmouth and in an act with his dancing wife-with-coloured-lights, Mdlle Cordelia (Gertrude Maud BOOL) and family. He developed a concert party, Les Vivandieres, around them ('very popular seaside artists') which kept going for something like a decade, as he mutated into 'Carlton Fredericks', producer of local pantomimes and even a musical comedy Little Babette featuring daughter, Della. He died, in the saddle, in 1926.
Alfred LIVERICK (b Thornton, Yorks 1866; d Penarth 27 December 1937) had a shorter career than his fellow players. I see him in 1899 in Croydon, at Hastings and several other southern dates as dame in pantomime, at Hastings, Whitstable and Exmouth in pierrot shows, and managing seasons in minor dates. 1907 (Merrymakers Pierrots at Duns) seems to have been toward the end of his performing career, before became manager of George H Pitt's filmhouse in Blaernavon, and then of the Golden Lion Hotel, Penarth. He had been mine host of Penarth seventeen years at his death.
Harry DOWSETT 'eccentric comedian' was allegedly from Taunton. Since he made his earliest appearance in the late 90s in Exeter and Tiverton, maybe that is so. His chief credit as a performer was with Poole's Myriorama, with which he featured over a number of years, but after 1913 I see him no more.
Bert HUNTLEY escapes me. Perhaps he's the BH 'a very capable humorous entertainer' in East Ham and West Ham in 1917-1920.
But, all in all, not a bad lot for a fit-up booth on a beach. I wish I could identify who is who, and precisely when ... but you can't have everything.
Oh, the photo of the boys came with another Weymouth item
Not the same group. Not named. Not dated ... but ...
No comments:
Post a Comment