Today's quickie. Well, it's Christmas day (no excuse for a day off) and there's a nice bottle of Bailey's which says 'DRINK ME'. Would I dare disobey? But history first ...
Photo in the splendid shop of 'You-can-trust-Alf'. I guess I'm the only fellow in the world to whom the signature went YES!!
Date? 1890s. 'Mr Edwardes'? An aspiring touring melodrama 'heavy' man. He turned out to be better than that .. 'Edwardes', of course, was a stage name. Inspired doubtless by the famed George of that name.
He was born Felix Edward HILLE in Brentford, 1870, the fifth child of Prussian 'civil engineer', Fritz Hille, and his English wife Maria[nne], and worked as a stationer's assistant, before devoting himself to showbusiness -- the music halls, melodrama, anything -- before finding his niche. As follows (taken from a certain Mr Gänzl's 25 year-old Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre):
EDWARDES, Felix (b Brentford 17 March 1870; d Hendon, London, 6 February 1954).
An actor in Britain, then from 1903 an actor and stage director in America, Edwardes worked largely with touring companies and in stock, winning his most notable credits as a director with the travelling companies of Lily Langtry and Maxine Elliott, until he was engaged by Grossmith and Laurillard to direct the American comedian Raymond Hitchcock in the London musical Mr Manhattan(1916). He subsequently staged Kissing Time and Baby Bunting for the same partnership, The Cousin from Nowhere at the Prince’s, and then began a fruitful association with the Astaires with his staging of the London version of Stop Flirting (1923). That association with Fred Astaire continued through Lady, Be Good!, Funny Face and Gay Divorce.
In 1925 he directed the London production of Rose Marie at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and, thereafter, staged the Drury Lane productions of Show Boat, The New Moon, The Three Musketeers, The Land of Smiles and The Song of the Drum, as well as mounting Lady Luck for the opening of the Carlton Theatre, Frederica at the Palace, The Dubarry at His Majesty’s, Grossmith’s production of Tell Me More! at the Winter Garden and Friml’s Luana which closed out of town. He retired from the theatre in 1934.
Oh, Felix married twice. First (1907) to Eveline Mary Hill, and in later life to Mrs Phyllis Kate Glyn Simmons or Gorman, known to the stage as Phyllis Beadon.
Bailey's :-) Happy Christmas.
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