Richard Stone examines the career, and papers, of a notable theatrical entrepreneur In1902, George Tallis, the young Irishman who was business manager for the J.C.Williamson theatrical organisation, sailed for Europe via the United States. The long business trip involved many hours in theatres, negotiations with agents for rights to plays and musicals chosen for the Australian market, and signing up actors, actresses and singers to star in Australian productions. As well, Tallis looked at theatre design and facilities, such as heating, with an aim to improving Williamson’s theatres in Australia. At the Broadway Theatre in New York his interests extended to discovering how to ‘call cabs by electricity’, and the design of the uniforms for front-of-house staff. The fact that Tallis undertook the trip in 1902 is testimony to his successful rise in the Williamson hierarchy, as a trip of that nature was usually undertaken by the general manager, J.C.Williamson himself. Such overseas trips became standard practice in The Firm, as J.C. Williamsons Limited came to be known. Combined with staff based in London and New York, The Firm kept a close watch on the latest shows and stars in London and the United States, with an eye to profitably bringing them to Australia. The record of Tallis’ 1902 trip includes a handwritten diary with notes on appointments, pithy impressions of shows and actors, and a scrapbook of annotated reviews, programs and photographs. This vivid, personal document is in a collection recently acquired by the National Library, and now housed in its Manuscript Collection. As well as reflecting the life of the Tallis family, the collection documents George Tallis’ long involvement in the management of The Firm from 1886 until 1938. There are a large number of letters and cables between various members of the management team of The Firm, relating to financial dealings, staff matters, assessment of shows, along with copious notes full of the daily minutiae of running a large theatrical company.
There are also many letters to Tallis from J.C. Williamson himself, revealing Williamson’s working methods, his encylopaedic knowledge of theatre, his voracious appetite for work, and his hopes for the future of the company which he increasingly placed in the hands of Tallis. The Tallis collection substantially enriches the amount of primary source material on the theatrical company which dominated Australian mainstream popular theatre for nearly 100 years. Tallis had joined The Firm in 1886, aged 17, as a cadet reporter from Ireland who was visiting an ailing brother in Melbourne. Mindful of potential job opportunities in the colony, he brought with him letters of reference from the editor of the Kilkenny Moderator. One was addressed to James Cassius Williamson, the American-born actor-manager who had started his entrepreneurial company in 1880 by presenting drama and comic opera companies in Melbourne and Sydney. Williamson was impressed with the confident young Irishman, and his readiness to work his way up through the theatre management business. Tallis started as an ‘assistant’ in the Theatre Royal doing various jobs, including duties as a clerk, messenger, usher and general factotum. He progressed quickly, gaining extensive experience as tour manager for Williamson productions, managing theatres in Melbourne, and being private secretary to J.C. Williamson. The 1902 trip recognised his hard work and efficiency. Between 1902 and his next overseas trip, in 1912, Tallis increased his stake in The Firm as a senior manager and righthand-man to Williamson. He also became a significant investor and shareholder in the company. A prominent feature of the Tallis collection is the large number of letters and documents devoted to share transfers, loan arrangements and business dealings. During this period J.C.Williamson also continued to travel overseas. However, his health was declining and the trips combined exhausting business with visits to specialists and attempts at restorative cures in Europe. The collection contains a remarkable series of letters to Tallis, many marked ‘Private’, and written by Williamson from Europe in 1910 and in 1912. Although his health was quite variable, Williamson continued to give advice on shows, theatres, publicity, and how to deal with performers. For example, from Paris, in early September 1910, Williamson wrote: ‘You must always expect all sorts of troubles with Grand Opera people, especially Italians … the best way to deal with them is to bluff them by threatening to discharge them and forfeit their passports ...’
Two weeks later, in early October, writing from a sanatorium near Dresden, Williamson confided: ‘I am at last really trying to take the “rest cure” and I must confess that the hardest job I have ever tackled is trying to do nothing; as for trying to forget business, that is impossible …’ To prove the point, he then filled the next three pages of the letter with casting suggestions, and detailed scene-by-scene analysis of a show. Less than 12 months later, Williamson was back in Europe in a weakened condition. A trip to Bad Ems, a German health resort, was not successful. He wrote to Tallis: ‘it is more suitable for big fat Dutchmen and women who have plenty of adipose matter to work upon, but … [I am] so weak … the Doctor ordered me to give up the treatment entirely…’ Switzerland and Italy proved more beneficial, and by October Williamson bounced back yet again. His handwriting reverted to his customary bold style, and advice flowed on a range of matters, notably the alterations to His Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney and plans for a smaller theatre to be built in Melbourne. In the process he showed an intimate familiarity with Melbourne’s streets: ‘Russell Street is not so good but I don’t see what there is better available, it would of course be greatly improved if the public urinal could be shifted’. Williamson returned to Australia at the end of 1912 to settle his affairs and make an emotional final stage appearance at a benefit matinee. He returned to his family in Paris, where he died of kidney failure in July 1913. George Tallis soon assumed the role of Chairman of Directors of The Firm, a position he held for 18 years. This long tenure spanned periods of enormous change for theatre in Australia. The Firm’s activities extended overseas to New Zealand, South Africa and an unsuccessful attempt to break into the London theatre scene. Tallis also faced the impact of the First World War, the challenge of the new entertainment media of radio and motion pictures, and the onset of the Great Depression.
Tallis was a new breed of entrepreneur. Unlike Williamson, he did not come from the actor-manager tradition. Williamson was a transitional figure—beginning as an actor-manager in the late nineteenth century, to become a successful entrepreneur in the twentieth century. In contrast, Tallis was the practical, ambitious office worker who became general manager, gaining considerable social and financial status along the way. Although The Firm was a dominant player in Australian entertainment, it had to contend with competition from otherentrepreneurial enterprises. Vaudeville flourished under Harry Rickards. The Fullers team successfully established their own niche in the musical, dramatic and operatic market. F.J. Thring competed in live theatre, but also went into partnership with Tallis, building glamorous movie theatres such as the Regent in Melbourne. The Tait brothers were successful concert managers, but they eventually joined The Firm in the early 1920s, and by the 1940s were running the company. These entrepreneurs were very influential in defining the nature of popular, commercial theatre in Australia. The patterns they established continued through the twentieth century, with later generations of entrepreneurs such as David N. Martin and Wallace Parnell in vaudeville, and the Carroll family successfully producing musicals in the 1950s and 1960s. Later still came entrepreneurs and producers such as Eric Dare, Ken Brodziac, the Edgley family, Kevin Jacobsen, Harry M. Miller and Gordon Frost. Entrepreneurs are important in terms of choice of repertoire, the casting of shows, the appointment of directors, designers, conductors and production teams, the provision of venues, and of course the bottom line, the economics of show biz—salaries, marketing, ticket prices, publicity, length of a run, and the like. However, very little has been published about them. Actors, actresses, singers, directors, composers, and dancers continue to produce biographies highlighting glamorous and dramatic lives. But it seems that, with one or two exceptions, the businessmen and entrepreneurs of the theatre world are reluctant authors or shy subjects. One important factor is the absence in appropriate collecting institutions of the personal papers of such entrepreneurs, or the business records of the companies which they founded and managed. (One notable exception is the Harry M. Miller collection in the National Library.) Without more extensive primary research materials on entrepreneurs, potential biographers and students of theatre history are severely hampered.
Fortunately such is not the case with James Cassius Williamson and The Firm. Large collections of related papers, records, programs and photographs exist in a number of major heritage institutions such as the National Library, the Mitchell Library in Sydney, and the Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne, with smaller Williamson collections in other libraries and archives. Materials relating to Williamson and The Firm also occur in other collections of individuals who worked for, or with, Williamsons. Despite the availability of such collections, however, there remains a significant gap in Australian historiography, with no major work being published in recent years assessing either J.C. Williamson the man, or the organisation he founded. One important step towards remedying this gap occurred in 1999, with the publication of a biography of George Tallis, The Silent Showman, written by members of the Tallis family. It was that same family which ensured that the manuscripts of Tallis’ life and the records of The Firm which were in the family’s possession, found a suitable home in the National Library. The collection was bequeathed to the Library by Jack Tallis, the youngest of Tallis’ four children. Only a few days after finalising the bequest, Jack Tallis died, aged 85, at Beleura, the Tallis home on the Mornington Peninsular south of Melbourne—a handsome 1856 Italianate mansion which George Tallis bought in 1916 as a holiday house for the family. Beleura soon became a refuge for theatre associates, members of society, and visiting performers. The house and formal gardens, bequeathed to the State of Victoria, are currently being conserved and prepared to be opened to the public. Beleura retains the restrained elegance and comfort of a country retreat which frequently welcomed such visitors as Dame Nellie Melba (a friend of the Tallis family), and the Tallis collection has a delightful letter from Melba to Tallis’ daughter, Bid. In her inimitable, bold handwriting the venerable Melba gives practical advice on where to shop for bargains in California. There is also a letter from another great opera singer of the time, Enrico Caruso, declining an invitation to tour to Australia. This one, short letter quietly accords the great Caruso a footnote in Australia’s performing arts history—a history that, on a much larger stage, can be explored through the riches of the Tallis collection. RICHARD STONE is a former National Library staff member. He is currently a consultant on ephemera and performing arts resources |
| Back to NLA News Index | Back to July Issue | Back to NLA Home Page |
To order a particular issue of
the NLA News e-mail nlasales@nla.gov.au
or join the Friends of the National
Library of Australia and receive a copy each month by mail.