Judy Cannon looks at the eventful life and times of a showman Frank Gerald (1858–1942) may well have been a scallywag, but he must always have been an entertaining man—personally, as well as professionally. Born in England, he initially visited the Antipodes in the late 1880s as an actor, and returned to Australia (broke again), in 1909—before returning to England to eventually build a late, successful career as a writer. Hopelessly in love with the theatre, his early wealthy background receded as his enthusiasms led him in and out of poverty on a seesaw journey through life and drama. His volatile life was shared by at least two wives, their children, and the clamour of creditors. Yet, despite many public failures, neither despair nor regret seemed ever to touch him. In his book, A Millionaire in Memories (1936), Gerald wrote quite happily of the hard times he and his Adelaide backer Stilling Duff had earlier endured touring widely in Australia:
Extensive material on Gerald—actor, manager, explorer, traveller, member of the Variety Artistes Federation, and author—was deposited in the National Library by his daughter, Beatrix Walsh, of Oxford, UK, who died late last year. (She herself also wrote a monograph on her father’s life, which is held in typescript among these papers.) The collection includes handbills, leaflets, newspaper reviews and other cuttings, programs (some silk), photographs, posters, correspondence and diaries. There are also theatre documents (1884–1888 and 1888–1942), a signed copy of Gerald’s book mentioned above, and material concerning the Nat Gould production of The Chance of a Life Time, including programs, script-parts and musical scores, and photographs; along with documents about the management of Gerald’s own company, and the Gerald–Duff company in New Zealand. There is also a copy of Beatrix Walsh’s book A Lost Leader—the story of the UK music hall strikes which her father led in 1906–07. From their separate writings, it is clear that father and daughter looked at life’s events through widely diverging eyes. Frank Gerald was a stage name—he was born Francis Gates Pearson, at the home of his grandfather (William Roberts, an English lawyer of distinguished ancestry)—one of the eight sons of Justly and Blanche Pearson. After his grandfather died, the family moved to Liverpool, where their privileged life included running an amateur dramatic society. As Beatrix Walsh wrote of her father:
After leaving Oswestry School, the future Frank Gerald became articled to his father, but soon gave up law and shortly appeared at the Royal Amphitheatre, Liverpool. Beatrix Walsh surmised that he had paid a premium to join the company in order to gain experience backstage, or by ‘walking on’. He joined F. Dewhurst’s ‘classical’ company and progressed from ‘My Lord, the carriage awaits’, to the part of Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice—but left because he did not like small parts, and wanted to earn more than £1 a week. Gerald’s mother subsequently arranged a good job for him with a New Zealand shipping company at Auckland, but on the way he stopped at Cape Town for a game of cricket. It was 1879 and the first Zulu War had broken out. Assisted by godparent money, he bought a horse and equipment to volunteer as a Cape Mounted Police courier. As Beatrix sees it:
It was an irony of ironies that so much expense and trouble should have been gone to in order that Frank Pearson be weaned away from Frank Gerald when there, in Auckland, he found a city every bit as keen on the drama as people were in Liverpool. Frank Pearson, amateur actor, became Frank Gerald, professional, when a major Australian touring company offered him a job. As Beatrix notes:
Frank Gerald’s ability to make friends brought sponsorship as well as companionship. Stilling Duff, an early backer, was co-owner with his brother of an Adelaide vineyard. The brothers financed a number of Gerald’s Australian ventures over 10 years, until star-struck Stilling, fingers burnt, finally returned to the safer slopes of vine-growing. Gerald’s book tells how he and Duff on tour contended with floods, dust storms and other hazards. Even so, at Broken Hill they took £1,200 the first week, and £1,000 the second, making a profit of £1,200.
Gerald was equally unfazed at an interruption to a performance during a Brisbane visit by the British Fleet:
On another occasion, as he and Duff were leaving the Tattersall’s Hotel in Sydney, the law tapped their shoulder. Over drinks, two detectives made it clear that so long as all four of them reached Darlinghurst gaol by midnight, the day was their own. The four made an outing to Bondi. And just before midnight the two detectives were helped into cabs so that Gerald and Duff could reach the gaol in time. In the prison’s ‘best quarters’, with an armed sentry outside, Gerald wrote breezily: ‘We turned in … it had been a perfect day.’ While awaiting the court case outcome, the hours dragged so slowly that Duff tried to light the fire—there was a terrific bang, the chimney collapsed, and a cloud of smoke and smut covered them. As Gerald records:
In his career, Gerald attracted some good press notices, including an 1885 review of His Natural Life at Sydney’s Theatre Royal, which recorded:
An 1886 review of The Pearl Divers, at Sandown Royal Princess Theatre, added:
The company played some unlikely places, including a railway shed, and seven levels down a Broken Hill mine. At Malvern, Victoria, they performed on a hotel billiard table fixed with a golden plaque declaring: ‘On this billiard table G.V. Brook, the actor, played Othello.’ (Brook, a famous Shakespearean actor, had toured Australia in the 1850s and 1860s.) Gerald was able to persuade the Duff brothers to back a major fashionable Drury Lane melodrama. As Beatrix Walsh records:
In consequence, as mentioned above, Stilling Duff returned to the vineyard—and, after hiding for a while, Gerald reappeared in Western Australia, planning yet another big show. Local papers made hints about his possible marriage to the leading lady, who showed promise, but clearly no experience. The show, however, was suddenly stopped. Of this situation, Beatrix wondered: ‘Was the angel the young actress—she was a minor at 18—and had her family maybe discovered Gerald’s background included a wife?’ Gerald returned to England, landing at Plymouth in 1893. He subsequently successfully toured his own dramatisation of Harrison Ainsworth’s The King’s Highway—playing the ride-on-stage hero Dick Turpin himself for 10 years or more. Although on a sure winner, he changed course again to take up the grievances of music hall artists—leading them in a successful strike in 1906–07, for which he was subsequently blackballed out of the union and the theatre world. Failing to get work for nearly five years, Gerald decided to try Australia again, intending to unionise antipodean entertainers. This unionisation did not happen, but Gerald did meet Nat Gould, a worldwide best-selling author who wanted to write a racing drama though knowing nothing about the theatre. According to Beatrix, the result was a wooden script entitled The Chance of a Life Time, about an attempt to steal Ascot’s Gold Cup. Performance, however, required:
In England the show nonetheless failed, leaving Gerald, his new wife and baby facing starvation. Six months later he met leading impresario Robert Courtneidge. A job with Courtneidge was normally regarded as a job for life, but as Beatrix records: ‘Gerald was not the man to do anyone’s else’s bidding for long.’ After other theatrical ventures, an independent production, The Sinner, acted largely by members of Gerald’s wife’s family, followed. As Beatrix notes:
The years 1919–1931 more or less spelt penury, until Gerald turned to writing. His yarns appeared from 1932 onwards, as short stories in Tit Bits, John Bull’s Weekly and The Empire News. As Beatrix comments:
Gerald received fan mail as never before, and his last broadcast, on his eighty-second birthday on 13 September1940, was in the middle of the Blitz. He afterwards spent a happy night in a hotel cellar, telling yarns for others dodging the bombing. Gerald died two years later, in 1942. Of his eventful life, we might let Beatrix have the last word:
JUDY CANNON is a freelance writer based in Brisbane. Kind permission for the use of this material was given by Steve Walsh, son of the late Mrs Beatrix Walsh. |
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