J. C. Williamson

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James Cassius Williamson (August 26, 1845 - July 6, 1913) was an American actor and later a theatrical manager in Australia, born in Mercer, Pennsylvania. He was the son of a doctor, James Hezlep Williamson, and his wife Selina.

1 Life and career
2 World War I and beyond
3 Williamson's Gilbert and Sullivan productions
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Life and career

[edit] Early years

About 1856, the family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where young James appeared in amateur theatricals beginning in 1857. That year, his father died in an accident. In 1861, Williamson worked for the local theatre company of Messrs. Hurd and Perkins as call-boy, general assistant and scenery and props maker. There he made his official stage debut. He later recalled: "I used to act in amateur theatricals, and when I was sixteen I got an engagement with a company at the Milwaukee theatre. I was full of energy and enthusiasm, and did pretty well everything. My mornings were spent in learning fencing and dancing. In the afternoon I'd look after the box office, and at evening help the stage manager and take my part - sometimes three or four parts."[1] The next year, he joined the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Toronto, Canada and then moved on to New York where he found work as a dialect comedian and then played for several years at Wallack's Theatre. From his seven year apprenticeship there, Williamson emerged with a thorough knowledge of acting, play production and stage management. He then played in a musical comedy at the Theatre Comique in New York under the management of W. H. Lingard. Although Williamson was not a good singer, his talent for comedy carried him.[2]

In 1871, Williamson was engaged as leading comedian at the California Theatre, in San Francisco, where he met comedienne Margaret Virginia Sullivan (1851-1926, known as Maggie Moore) in 1872, whom he married at St. Mary's Cathedral on February 2, 1873. Shortly after that, they starred together in a comedy called Struck Oil in Salt Lake City, Utah. Williamson purchased the script for $100 and had it rewritten by his friend Clay Greene.

[edit] Visiting, and then moving to, Australia

The Williamsons then visited Australia, travelling on the S.S. Mikado. They opened a season at The Theatre Royal, Melbourne, beginning with Struck Oil, which became an instant success. Its run of 43 nights was the longest yet known in the colonial theatre. In February 1875 the Company sailed for Sydney, playing various pieces, including their successful Struck Oil, which yielded even larger profits than its Melbourne run had. The Williamsons returned to Melbourne repeating their success. They then traveled on to Adelaide and eventually to India, playing several pieces. Everywhere they went, Struck Oil was their biggest success. They finally opened that play at the Royal Adelphi Theatre in London on Easter in 1876. The Williamsons returned to San Francisco in June 1877 after their round-the-world professional tour, which had covered five continents. Again, Struck Oil was a major success for them, and they toured it throughout the United States.

In 1879, Williamson acquired a one-year exclusive right to perform H.M.S. Pinafore in Australia and New Zealand for £300. They began their 1879-80 Australian season with Struck Oil and staged the first legitimate Australian production of Pinafore at the Theatre Royal, Sydney in November with great success, with the Williamsons playing Sir Joseph Porter and Josephine. In early 1880, Williamson formed his Royal Comic Opera Company. Williamson then acquired the Australian performing rights from the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for The Pirates of Penzance for £1,000 and opened that work at the Theatre Royal Sydney in 1881. Between their appearances in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas James and Maggie Williamson continued to play engagements of Struck Oil along with similar popular favourites, The Danites, Arrah-na-Pogue, The Colleen Bawn and Rip Van Winkle (operetta).

[edit] The beginning of the J. C. Williamson Ltd. theatrical empire

On September 8, 1881, Williamson became the sole lessee of the Theatre Royal, which was newly renovated, introducing modern technical facilities and lavish sets. This transaction marked the beginning of Williamson's long career as Australia's foremost theatrical manager. After a tour of New Zealand, in 1882 Williamson entered into partnership with Arthur Garner and George Musgrove. This triumvirate was often criticized for creating a monopoly, crushing the old repertory system and discouraging local actors, but it brought to Australia such artists as G. R. Rignold and Dion Boucicault senior, as well as training new talent such as Nellie Stewart. In December 1886, they opened the luxurious (New) Princess's Theatre in Melbourne with The Mikado.

Musgrove left the partnership in 1890, and Williamson, Garner & Co. then had a major success when they brought Sarah Bernhardt to Australia in 1891. At the end of the year Williamson bought Garner out, but Maggie Moore left him for the actor Harry Roberts, making extensive financial claims upon him. Musgrove rejoined Williamson in 1892, and in 1896 they broke box-office records with an original Australian pantomime, Djin Djin. Williamson married Mary Alice Weir, a dancer, in 1899, and his partnership with Musgrove dissolved that year unpleasantly. Among other ventures, Williamson leased the Sydney Her Majesty's Theatre, and in 1902 mounted Ben Hur at a cost of £14,000. A bubonic plague outbreak temporarily closed the theatre, and it was burnt down with huge losses. But Williamson organized a Shakespeare company at the Theatre Royal and rebuilt the theatre in 1903. The next year he entered partnership with George Tallis, his Melbourne manager, and with Gustav Ramaciotti as legal adviser. Visually sensational shows were now 'the Firm's' speciality, and the organisation had grown to employ 650 people.

[edit] Williamson's later years

From 1907 Williamson reduced his managerial work and spent more time with his wife and their daughters Marjorie and Aimée, moving the family to France and spending most of his time in Europe. He also became involved in raising racehorses. In 1910, the company was renamed J. C. Williamson Ltd., with Ramaciotti as managing director. The company achieved outstanding successes with tours by H. B. Irving and (Dame) Nellie Melba. Williamson successfully opposed an application by Australian actors to form a union in 1913. In February 1913, Williamson performed in a benefit in Sydney for the widows of Captain Robert Scott's Antarctic expedition. Returning to his family in France via the United States, his heart condition worsened, and he died in Paris on 6 July. He was buried, contrary to his wishes, in the Williamson section of Oak Woods cemetery, Chicago, Illinois. He left an elaborately divided estate, valued for probate at £193,010.

[edit] World War I and beyond

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After Williamson died in 1913, his company — at one time the largest theatrical firm in the world — continued to operate under various managing directors, including the Tait brothers. In addition to staging Gilbert and Sullivan operas, J. C. Williamson Ltd. also produced seasons of operetta, musical comedy, straight plays, pantomimes and occasional musical revues, grand opera, ballet seasons, and concert tours by visiting celebrity singers and musicians, at the many theatres that it owned or leased throughout Australia and New Zealand up until 1976, when the company wound-up and leased out its name. The company's activities even extended to London's West End, where it produced seasons of the musicals High Jinks (in 1916), and Mr. Cinders, together with the revue Coo-ee! and the plays Little Accident and Coquette, in 1929.

[edit] Williamson's Gilbert and Sullivan productions

The J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company was a successor to J. C. Williamson's Royal Comic Opera Companies. The company staged touring seasons, initially in Australia, of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas from 1879 to 1963. J. C. Williamson Ltd. secured exclusive rights to stage professional productions of the Gilbert and Sullivan (G&S) operas in Australia and New Zealand. The company continued this licensing arrangement with D'Oyly Carte family until the expiry of copyright to the operas in 1961.

Initially the G&S operas were staged by Williamson amongst the repertoire of his Royal Comic Opera Companies, where they shared the bill with seasons of Offenbach, Alfred Cellier, Charles Lecocq, Robert Planquette, and others. Although repertory seasons solely devoted to G&S had been staged at individual theatres throughout Australia from around 1885, the first specially organised G&S tour began in 1914 and played for a year. Williamson toured the operas throughout both Australia and New Zealand in the years 1920–22; 1926–28; 1931–33; 1935–37; 1940–45; 1949–51; 1956–57, with a final tour by the company in 1962–63. Williamson also sent G&S touring companies to South Africa between 1913 and 1933 and to India and the Far East in 1922–3, headed (on this occasion) by C. H. Workman (It was on the return voyage to Australia from this tour that Workman died at the early age of 49).

Unlike the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, the J. C. Williamson G. & S. Opera Co. was not in continuous operation but was organised specifically to tour the operas for a duration of two or more years, depending on how popular the season was with audiences, after which it was disbanded. The company would then be re-formed, after a variable interval of years, for another tour in response to perceived audience demand. During the years of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the popularity of the G&S company, in fact, helped to keep the firm financially viable when a number of their musical comedy productions lost money. The operas were directed and choreographed by Melbourne-born Minnie Everett. She was believed to be the only woman director of Gilbert and Sullivan at the time, and was one of the first female directors of professional theatre companies in the world.

Many members of D'Oyly Carte, or former members, were engaged for Australasian G&S tours on the recommendation of the D'Oyly Carte management. Savoyards who toured Australia and New Zealand over the years included Frank Thornton, Alice Barnett, Leonora Braham, Courtice Pounds, Charles Kenningham, C. H. Workman, Fredrick Hobbs, James Hay, Ivan Menzies and wife Elsie Griffin, Evelyn Gardiner, Winifred Lawson, Richard Watson, Viola Wilson, John Dean, Marjorie Eyre and husband Leslie Rands, Richard Walker and wife Helen Roberts, and Grahame Clifford, among others.

In 1925 Sydney Granville, with a number of other D'Oyly Carte principals, sailed to Australia to join the J. C. Williamson Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company for its 1926-28 tour of Australia and New Zealand, playing the "heavy" baritone G&S roles that he later played when he rejoined D'Oyly Carte in Britain. The G&S operas played in Australasia during that tour were mostly re-costumed in accordance with the D'Oyly Carte designs supplied by Rupert D'Oyly Carte.

In 1949, J. C. Williamson Ltd. brought Granville's wife, Anna Bethell, to Australia to direct its season of G&S operas, which then toured throughout Australasia for the next three years. Bethel was a former contralto with D'Oyly Carte and had served as that company's stage director in 1947 and 1948. The former Savoyards who participated in that tour included Menzies, Gardiner, Manning, Dean, Rands and Eyre, and Walker and Roberts. This tour also marked the farewell appearance of Menzies, who had been principal comedian with the Williamson company for all of their G&S seasons since 1931.

[edit] See also

Gilbert and Sullivan performers

[edit] References

Stephens, A. G. (ed.) J. C. Williamson's Life-Story Told in His Own Words(Sydney, 1913)
Dicker, I. G. J. C. W.: A Short Biography (Rose Bay, 1974)
Bevan, Ian (1933). The Story of the Theatre Royal. Sydney: Currency Press.
Parsons, P (ed.), Companion To Theatre In Australia, Currency Press, Australia, 1995.
West, J., Theatre in Australia, Cassell, Australia, 1978.
Stewart, N. My Life's Story (Sydney, 1923)
Lauri, G. The Australian Theatre Story (Sydney, 1960)
Porter, H. Stars of Australian Stage and Screen (Adelaide, 1965)
Williamson, J. C. (?). Life-Story Told in His Own Words with Valedictory Messages. ?: ?.
Cellier, François; Cunningham Bridgeman (1914). Gilbert and Sullivan and Their Operas. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
de Loitte, Vinia ([c. 1935]). Gilbert & Sullivan Opera in Australia, 1879–1935, 13th edition, Sydney: Privately published.
Murphy, Frank (1949). "Gilbert and Sullivan in Australia", J. C. Williamson Theatres Ltd. Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Season Souvenir.
Parker, John, ed. (1978). Who Was Who in the Theatre: 1912–1976. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Co.. Compiled from Who's Who in the Theatre: Volumes 1–15, edited by John Parker, [orig. pub.: Pitman Publishing Ltd., London, 1912-1972]
Rollins, Cyril; R. John Witts (1961). The D'Oyly Carte Opera company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas. London: Michael Joseph Ltd..
Wearing, J. P. (1984). The London Stage 1920–1929: A Calendar of Plays and Players — Vol. II: 1925–1929. Metutchen, NJ & London: unknown publisher.

[edit] External links

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