Charles Hawtrey (actor, born 1858)

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Charles Hawtrey in Money (1911)
Cartoon in Punch, 25 August 1920, showing Hawtrey accompanying Joan Barry

Sir Charles Henry Hawtrey (21 September 1858 – 30 July 1923) was an English actor, director, producer and

Somerset Maugham
.

Born to a long-established

county family, Hawtrey was one of three of his parents' five sons to pursue a theatrical career. Before going on the stage he had considered joining the army, but failed to apply himself to the necessary studies to qualify for a commission. Once established as an actor he quickly took on the additional role of a manager, boosted by an early success with his own adaptation of a German farce presented in London as The Private Secretary
, which made his fortune. A lifelong gambler, both with theatrical productions and on horseracing, to which he was addicted, he was bankrupted several times during his career.

Regarded as Britain's leading comedy actor of his generation, Hawtrey was mentor and role model to younger actors including Noël Coward. Towards the end of his career Hawtrey starred in a handful of silent movies.

Early life

Charles Hawtrey, 1907

Hawtrey was born at

Provost.[1] At the age of eight Hawtrey entered the lower school of the college. Three years later John Hawtrey left Eton to found St Michael's School, Slough; Hawtrey was educated there from 1869 to 1872, when he returned to Eton for a year, before moving to Rugby. As a schoolboy he became known as "a sportsman of dash and endurance".[1] At the age of fourteen he became a keen follower of horse-racing, a lifelong obsession that continually disrupted his finances. He commented that his first encounter with racing was "a fatal day for me. I had one bet and lost half-a-crown, and I have been trying for fifty years to win it back."[2]

From Rugby, Hawtrey went briefly to a crammer in London, to study for a career in the army, but soon abandoned the idea. He worked as a private tutor from 1876 to 1879 and then he began his theatrical career. It started badly: he broke his collar-bone while playing football and had to withdraw from the cast before the opening night.[3] In February 1881 he matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford,[4] but withdrew in October, having been cast in the supporting role of Edward Langton in F. C. Burnand's The Colonel at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, London. Uncertain of success, he temporarily adopted the stage name Charles Bankes. He was well received in the play, and was given valuable lessons in stagecraft from the producer:

He taught me a great many elementary rules which were most helpful – such as the actions of my hands and arms, walking on the stage, holding myself as easily as I could, and above all things he would never let me put my hands in my pockets. Of course my hands always felt like two great hams and I never knew what to do with them, but I found that eventually I forgot all about them and then they behaved naturally![5]

Actor-manager

In early 1882 Hawtrey played Jack Merryweather in The Marble Arch, which starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Later in that year he toured in The Colonel in a cast headed by Charles Collette.[6] Two of Hawtrey's brothers, William and George (father of the economist Ralph Hawtrey),[7][8] had also become actors, and in early 1883, Charles and William led a small touring company to towns in south-east England.[9]

Illustrated London News
called "essentially a Charles Hawtrey part", in Inconstant George (1910)

In 1884 Hawtrey had a huge success in London presenting his own adaptation of a German farce by Gustav von Moser, Der Bibliothekar, rewritten as

The Manchester Guardian "the audiences steadily laughed it into a success."[10] The production ran for 785 performances,[11] and Hawtrey made £123,000 from it – an enormous sum for those days.[1][n 1] The play was revived in London eight times during his life.[13]

Hawtrey pursued a career as an

After the war Hawtrey appeared occasionally in silent films:

A Message From Mars (1913) as Horace Parker, Honeymoon for Three (1915) as Prince Ferdinand, and Masks and Faces (1918) with George Alexander, George Bernard Shaw and J. M. Barrie
.

Poster from a performance of Hawtrey's The Private Secretary at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh in 1886

Hawtrey was generous in fostering talent. Among the young actors whose careers he encouraged was Noël Coward, who wrote in his memoirs about "the kindness and care of Hawtrey's direction. He took endless trouble with me ... and taught me during those two short weeks many technical points of comedy acting which I use to this day."[16] One of the dramatists that he promoted was Horace Newte whose one act drama A Labour of Love Hawtrey presented at The Comedy Theatre in 1897.[17]

Personal life

Hawtrey was twice married. His first wife, whom he married on 3 June 1886, was Madeline ("Mae") Harriet, née Sheriffe; he left her in 1891 and she divorced him in 1893.

Hanky-Panky cocktail
, which she created specifically for him.

Last years and posterity

From 1920 Hawtrey's health deteriorated.[19] He was knighted in 1922. He died, aged 64, on 30 July 1923 and is buried at Richmond. His memoirs were edited by Maugham and published in 1924 as The Truth at Last.[20]

Notes and references

Notes
  1. ^ Hawtrey liked to claim that he introduced the queueing system to the West End, to control the crowds who came to see the play,[9] but Richard D'Oyly Carte had anticipated him by three years, instituting queueing at the Savoy Theatre in 1881.[12]
References
  1. ^ a b c d e f g Read, Michael, "Hawtrey, Sir Charles Henry (1858–1923)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, online edition, May 2008, retrieved 27 September 2013 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  2. ^ Hawtrey, p. 32
  3. ^ Hawtrey, p. 88
  4. Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource
    .
  5. ^ Hawtrey, p. 104
  6. ^ Morley, p.
  7. required.)
  8. ^ The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal, Essex volume, Melville Henry Massue, Genealogical Publishing Company, 1994 (reprint), p. 611
  9. ^ a b c Child, H H. "Hawtrey, Sir Charles Henry", Dictionary of National Biography, 1937, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography archive, retrieved 27 September 2013 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  10. ^ "Theatre Royal", The Manchester Guardian, 14 April 1885, p. 6
  11. ^ Parker, p. 1198
  12. ^ Cellier, p. 129
  13. ^ Parker, p. 1153
  14. ^ "Lord and Lady Algy", The Era, 23 April 1898, p. 15
  15. ^ Morley, pp. 167–168
  16. ^ Coward, p. 66
  17. ^ At the Play. The Observer 25 July 1897
  18. ^ "Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division", The Times, 20 April 1893, p. 3
  19. ^ Morley, p. 169
  20. ^ Hawtrey, passim

Sources

External links