Endman, comic, singer, writer.
African-American minstrel comedian Sam Keenan first arrived in Australia in 1877 with Charles B. Hicks. He was later associated with leading Australian-based minstrel companies run by Frank Smith, Frank M. Clark, W. Horace Bent, Charles Hugo, and Frank York and George A. Jones. Endowed with a mouth that one of the Bulletin's critics described as 'the most striking feature of the show' (29 August 1885, p.9), Keenan was regarded as a highly skilled endman, albeit as a comedian rather than as a singer. His considerable reputation is supported by Harry Clay who, in a 1914 Theatre magazine interview, said that Keenan, W. Horace Bent, Beaumont Read, and Alf Moynham formed the greatest-ever combination of minstrel comics to appear together on the Australian stage (September 1914, p.25).
Although little is yet known of Sam Keenan's life or career prior to coming to Australia, it is certain that as one of Charles B. Hicks's Georgia Minstrels, he would have previously established his credentials in the United States. The troupe's arrival in Australia was significant not only because of the high calibre of its performers but also because it was the first fully Negro minstrel troupe to visit the region. Among the other members of the troupe was comedian Johnny Matlock who, like Keenan, remained in Australia after Hicks departed and went on to establish himself among the upper level of Australian-based performers. Keenan and Matlock initially appeared together in several companies, including R. B. Lewis's Mastodon Coloured Minstrels (ca. 1881), but are thought to have parted company around 1882 when Keenan joined Bent and R. G. Bachelder's Anglo-American Minstrels. The following year, he and Bent helped found the original Hiscocks' Federal Minstrels line-up.
As with Bent, Sam Keenan's association with the Federal Minstrels between 1883-1889 saw him establish his reputation as one of the most influential and popular endmen to work the Australian minstrel stage during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Although Keenan temporarily left the Federal Minstrels in 1887 to take up a touring engagement with Charles Hugo's Buffalo Minstrels, he returned the following year to work for Hiscocks, first with Hiscocks and Friedman's New English Speciality Company and later with the Federal Minstrels. He remained with the troupe until Hiscocks disbanded it in 1889. Among Sam Keenan's last known engagements were appearances with Frank Smith (1890), F. M. Clark (1892), and York and Jones Empire Minstrels (1894-1895). He died in Brisbane in 1895.
