Comic, singer, manager, vaudeville entrepreneur.
OVERVIEW
A much sought-after vaudeville comedian and singer who also established his managerial credentials with Fullers' Theatres Ltd, Harry Rickards, and Harry Clay during the early 1900s, Harry Sadler also went on to become one of the country's more enigmatic and controversial entrepreneurs. A pocket-sized, energetic, feisty hustler, he came closer than any other locally born performer/manager to matching Harry Clay's record of achievement as a vaudeville showman. The height of his career saw him oversee the operations at Sydney's Princess Theatre, where he and Jack Kearns produced the first-ever Stiffy and Mo season for the Fullers. He was also equally well known throughout Australia (particularly in Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia) and New Zealand. However, unlike Clay, who'd learnt to curb his temperament and channel it constructively, Sadler found himself riding the waves of success and despair throughout his career, a career cut short by his suicide in the wake of financial problems and a highly publicised scandal. Sadler's greatest obstacle, it would seem, was himself.
BIOGRAPHY
Little is yet known of Harry Sadler's early life and career. His earliest recorded engagements were with Olivia Kemp's dramatic company (1895), Western Australian variety entrepreneurs Jones and Lawrence (ca. 1900-1901), and Newcastle's Jim Bell (1902). After accepting an engagement with the Fullers in 1902, he immediately went on their New Zealand Dominion circuit. His first engagement with Harry Rickards was around 1905. He also began working on and off for Harry Clay between ca.1904 and 1912, including management positions on Clay's Sydney and Queensland regional circuits.
By 1913, Sadler had moved into full-time management, initially in Tasmania, where he co-operated a circuit (the Sadler and Beveridge Vaudeville Company), and later in Melbourne at the Barclay Theatre, Fitzroy, and His Majesty's Theatre, Ballarat. As with several other small variety organisations--such as Ted Holland in Brisbane and Dix-Baker in Newcastle--Sadler occasionally booked acts from the Fullers' stable of artists. This association lead to him being offered the lease on the Fullers' Princess Theatre (Sydney) in early 1916, an opportunity he took in association with vaudeville comedian and part-time entrepreneur Jack 'Porky' Kearns. In July that year, after having presented a series of their own one-act musical comedies, Sadler and Kearns booked Nat Phillips's newly formed Tabloid Musical Comedy Company for a six-week season. Featuring Stiffy and Mo, the company's debut engagement was a huge critical and financial success for the lessees and the Fullers, and led to the season being extended by another six weeks. Sadler continued to run the operations at the Princess until early 1917, though Kearns left some time prior to concentrate on performing. Sadler also continued to perform on stage regularly in addition to his managerial career.
In 1917, Sadler returned temporarily to Tasmania with a semi-permanent company, before again taking up the lease of the Princess Theatre from the Fullers until March 1918. Immediately following Harry Clay's lease of the theatre in March, Sadler put together a new company and headed west to Perth, opening for a season at the Fullers' Melrose Theatre. Although the season began successfully, Sadler was soon afterwards embroiled in a controversial and much-publicised lawsuit taken against him by one of his female artists. After losing the case, he returned to Sydney to run the Gaiety Theatre for bookmaker and Australian Variety manager Andy Kerr (aka 'the Coogee Bunyip'). The association was short-lived, however, as Sadler succumbed to depression and drinking brought on by mounting gambling debts. When Kerr was eventually forced to ask Harry Clay to help him run the Gaiety around mid-1919, Sadler's career effectively ended. A few months later, he committed suicide.
The husband of well-known soubrette Nellie Searle, Harry Sadler was also the brother of Bill Sadler, a highly regarded manager for both the Fullers and Harry Clay and the man said by Roy Rene to have come up with the name 'Mo' (Mo's Memoirs, p.63).
