Singer, actor, comedian, manager, entrepreneur, businessman.
OVERVIEW
After starting out his career as a vaudeville tenor and occasional stage manager, Harry Clay went on to become one of the three most important variety entrepreneurs operating in Australia during the early twentieth century, the others being Benjamin and John Fuller (Fullers' Theatres Ltd) and Harry Rickards. He was also the only one born in Australia. During his early career as a performer, Clay established his reputation as a singer by working for a number of minstrels and variety organisations, notably Frank Smith, Dan Tracey, F. E. Hiscocks, and Harry Rickards. He put together his own touring company in late 1900, sending it through New South Wales and Queensland annually until 1918 (with the entertainment including minstrelsy/ vaudeville, films, waxworks and the latest entertainment technologies. At the same time he developed a suburban circuit in Sydney and smaller touring circuits along the New South Wales South Coast and South-West train lines as well as in the Hunter Valley region. In 1912 he built the Bridge Theatre (now The Hub) in Newtown and was associated for many years with the Coliseum Theatre, North Sydney, and the Royal Standard, Princess and Gaiety theatres in Sydney's CBD.
As a producer, Clay played a key role in helping to develop and establish the Australian-written revusical (one-act musical comedy) as the most popular form of variety entertainment in this country between 1915 and the mid-1920s. His most significant achievement, however, was to provide constant employment opportunities for thousands of artists and associated practitioners for over a quarter of a century. In this respect, he helped develop the early careers of some of Australia's most popular variety stars, notably Roy 'Mo' Rene, George Wallace, George Sorlie, Amy Rochelle, Charles Norman, and Harry Sadler. Indeed, Harry Clay's circuit was seen by most Australian performers as the stepping stone to a Fullers or Tivoli contract. His reputation was also such that many international stars remained in Australia after their contracts with the Fullers, the Tivoli, and J. C. Williamson's etc ended, so as to take advantage of his extensive operations.
DETAILED BIOGRAPHY
1865-1889: Harry Clay was born Henry Clay in May 1865, the youngest surviving child of a London-born dealer, John Clay, and his wife Mary, who came from the Windsor district of NSW. The family was initially based in Sydney, but by the early 1860s were living in the Patrick's Plains area of NSW (now known as the Singleton district). When Henry was around eight years old, the Clays relocated to Newcastle, where Henry began his entrepreneurial activities at an early age by operating a delivery service. It was run 'not with goats and boxes, but with real horses and carts,' recalls Clay, who drove one of the carts, while employing a man to drive the other one (Theatre Magazine September 1914, p.25). By age 18, he was apprenticed into the plastering trade, while filling his spare time performing with several amateur theatre groups and developing his singing voice through an association with the local church choirs. He later became identified with the Great Northern Variety Company around Newcastle. It is also known that Clay toured the northern rivers of NSW with an amateur minstrel troupe in the early 1880s.
Harry Clay's professional career seems to have begun in late 1885 through an eighteen-month engagement with Sydney-based entrepreneur Frank Smith. Smith, who was the proprietor of the Alhambra Theatre, also ran Sunday concerts at the Sir Joseph Banks Pavilion and Pleasure Grounds out at Botany. Some of the solo songs most associated with Clay during his first five years as a professional variety singer were 'When the Corn is Waving, Annie Dear,' 'Baby Boy Has Passed Away,' 'He'll Return to Me,' 'He's Coming O'er the Sea,' 'Leave Me Not in Anger,' 'Mama Where is Baby Gone?', and 'Only a Dear Little Flower.' His most popular songs from the mid-to-late 1880s, which he continued performing for over twenty-five years, were 'White Wings' and 'Essie Dear.'
Although opportunities in the upper echelons of the variety industry during this period were limited for local artists, several performers had made their mark on the Australian scene, chief amongst them W. Horace Bent, Will Whitburn, Lance Lenton, Charles Fanning, and the dance trio Delohery, Craydon and Holland. The vast majority of Australian-born performers were therefore forced to find engagements with small-time managements, playing inner-city halls and touring the suburbs and country regions. In support of this is the September 1914 Theatre Magazine article profiling Clay, in which he recalls several years 'skirmishing in the bush' (p.25). Although this may well have been discouraging from the point of view of establishing a high-profile career, these years effectively provided Harry Clay with the opportunity to forge his reputation with audiences in the regional areas of Australia. This, in turn, provided him with a foundation from which he could later establish his own regional touring company.
In early 1888, Clay performed at Sydney's Protestant Hall under the management of Walsh and King, and, later the same year, as part of the People's Popular Concerts. His name also appears on programs staged at the Manly Aquarium. It was also in 1888 that his only child, Essie, was born. By 1889, Clay's reputation was such that he was able to secure short engagements with several larger operations, including W.J Wilson's Anglo-American Frolics, Herman Florack's Federal Minstrels, the Great Faust Perman Combination, and, in October of that year, a season with F.E. Hiscocks' London Pavilion Co.
1890-1899: The early 1890s saw Clay begin to establish himself within the upper echelons of the Sydney popular theatre industry, starting out with an extended engagement at Sydney's Gaiety Theatre with Dan Tracey. Clay's association with Tracey would last some eighteen months, including a headline season in Melbourne, when the American dancer/entrepreneur started operating in that city's Gaiety Theatre. And it becomes clear, too, that from this point onwards, Clay was considered by his peers as being among the top tenor vocalists performing in the country.
During the 1890s, Clay found engagements with a number of significant companies, including Harry Rickards, an association through which he further established his reputation as a local star. He also began learning the ropes as a manager and stage manager with a number of companies, touring Queensland on several occasions. One of these tours was the ill-fated 1893 Brisbane season with Walshe's Novelty Company, which was forced to close a week into its season due to the massive flood that hit the city. Several of these tours included amongst the troupe his wife Kate and daughter Essie, the latter having been a performer since infancy. Kate Clay more often than not worked under the stage name of Kate Henry, taking her husband's birth name as her surname. He, on the other hand, had taken to using Harry rather than Henry by the mid-1890s.
From around 1894, and shortly after his Harry Rickards engagement, Clay began his long association with the Newtown district, taking on a managerial role at St George's Hall. He is believed to have remained there at least until 1898. Later that year, he undertook another Queensland tour, this time as a tenor and stage manager for the Continental Vaudeville Company (operated by J. L. Travers). Also involved in this tour were his wife Kate and daughter Essie and two performers who later had long associations with Clay's company: Wal Rockley and Tom Edwards.
1900-1911: In 1900, Clay undertook his last tour under another entrepreneur's banner, this being the Walter Bell Waxworks, Boer and London Vaudeville Company. Interestingly, Bell's tour shows remarkable logistical similarities to Clay's own Queensland tours, particularly in aspects of style, content, and itinerary. It is also clear that Harry Clay was by then viewed throughout much of northern New South Wales and Queensland as somewhat of a household name, a response that can be seen as an essential ingredient in his initial success as a vaudeville entrepreneur.
In 1901, Clay put together a troupe comprising seven performers and musicians, and took them on tour through Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales, and Queensland. He augmented the live performances with a waxworks display, photographic exhibition, and examples of the latest entertainment technology, the theatrephone (a type of gramophone). Operating what was essentially a minstrel troupe, Clay acted as interlocutor, manager, front-of-house manager, and stage manager. Will Bracey (musical director) doubled up as Mr Tambo and comedian Sam Wilson played the role of Mr Bones. The other members were the Smith Sisters, Flo Murray, and Kate [Henry] and Essie Clay. From the start, Clay initiated a strict policy of providing value for money and making sure that he connected with his audiences. He invariably greeted his patrons at the door and worked hard at remembering names and details. His advance representatives were also instrumental in keeping both Clay and his comedians abreast of news in each town. Although the prices for his shows remained low throughout his career, he never attempted to sacrifice quality, realising full well that to do so would affect audience numbers when he later returned to a town.
At the conclusion of his first Queensland tour, Clay returned to Sydney and organised a small circuit of venues, playing engagements in each venue once a week. In March the following year, he put together another touring company. Possibly staring out in Bathurst, the company travelled by train north to Newcastle and Maitland and then north via Tamworth. The Queensland circuit began with Toowoomba and Ipswich. Interestingly, Clay never played Brisbane with a variety troupe, seeing no value in competing against Ted Holland's domination of the city's popular culture audience. The troupe instead travelled through to Gympie and then northwards, either by train or steamer, to the major coastal towns. For more than a decade, however, Clay's most successful city was Charters Towers (10-14 days). Reports indicate that he rarely failed to fill the 3,000 seat Theatre Royal during each season.
Harry Clay's Queensland and NSW tours quickly established themselves as annual events, and made the entrepreneur wealthy despite his low pricing structure and a policy of providing the artists with first-class travel and accommodation. His amiable and professional manner, in addition to the length of his tours, guaranteed Clay a steady supply of quality performers, including Wally Edwards (who later managed the tours for Clay), Joe Rox, Ted Tutty (arguably Clay's most popular comedian), Con Moreni, Maud Fanning, Roy Rene, Art Slavin and Lily Thompson, Billy Cass, Billy Maloney, George Pagden, and Bert Desmond and Mattie Jansen to name but a few. Indeed, the tours were so successful that within a few years they were being hailed in many regional newspapers as Queensland's most popular touring vaudeville show.
By 1906, the success of the northern tours enabled Clay to turn his full attention to the Sydney venture. Before this, his Sydney circuit had been operating in the six-month off-tour season, approximately September to February. Initially, the circuit comprised the Petersham, Newtown, Balmain, and Parramatta town halls, along with the Masonic Halls at North Sydney and in the city, relocating in 1910 from the latter venue to the Standard Theatre in Castlereagh Street. Evidence of Clay's increasing prosperity comes from records that show that in 1905, he set up a trust fund for his daughter, opening the account with £300, while in 1908, only days after his company returned from its eighth consecutive NSW/Queensland tour, Clay purchased in cash a property in Glebe for £1,500 (Djubal 'Harry Clay,' p.22).
Reviews published during the first six months of 1910 further indicate that Clay's Sydney operations were doing tremendous business. The Theatre Magazine records, for example, that 'The House Full sign is always in requisition' (January 1910, p.23). In May, however, Clay closed down his vaudeville shows and turned to film exhibition, citing competition from the film industry as the reason. He subsequently travelled north to Queensland to join his touring party. Speaking to the Theatre Magazine in June, Clay expressed his intention to return in August and give the city and suburbs another try (p.23). Over the next decade, Clay was forced on several occasions to suspend his city and regional circuits in response to film industry competition (and, in 1919, due to the Spanish influenza epidemic) but these were only ever temporary, and in each instance he managed to divert his business operations into other areas so as to maintain income.
The final years of the first decade of the twentieth century saw Clay move into serious drama in addition to his vaudeville operations. His first foray into dramatic theatre was in 1908, where he sent a company through NSW and Queensland. With a repertoire of plays that comprised The World Against Her (Frank Harvey), Camille (Alexander Dumas fils), The Irishman, and The Marriage of Mary Anne, the company was essentially a vehicle for his daughter to take on the role of principal actress. Among the other members of the company were Albert Lucas (lead), John Cosgrove, Lancelot Vane (brother of Jim Gerald), and Walter Whyte (later a member of Nat Phillips' Stiffy and Mo Revue Company).
The following year, Clay arranged to tour Scottish tragedian Walter Bentley through Queensland, presenting a selection of Bentley's most popular roles: David Garrick, Hamlet, Dubose Lesurques (The Courier of Lyons), Mathias (The Bells; or, The Murder of the Polish Jew), Jock Howieson (Crammond Brig), and Felix O'Callagan (His Last Legs). To complement Bentley's standing, Clay organised a company of leading Australian actors, notably J. B. Atholwood, S. A. Fitzgerald, Johnson Weir, and Helen Furgus (mother of Nellie Ferguson). Essie Clay once again took on the principal female roles. The tour's success was not only due to the quality of the company and the dramas staged, but also due to the rarity of such productions having been staged in regional Queensland during the past decade. The Morning Bulletin records, for example, 'If anyone has played Hamlet in Queensland since Mr Bentley last toured the state he has not come north of Brisbane. Probably the reason is that outside the larger towns poetic drama does not pay. Not even Mr Bentley has dared restrict his repertoire to Shakespeare, but has diluted it with modern comedy and melodrama' (15 October 1909, p.6). According to the Brisbane Courier, professionally staged Shakespearian productions had similarly been infrequent since the late 1890s, a period when Bentley had resided in the city and south Queensland for several years (6 September 1909, p.6).
Although Harry Clay did not mount any further dramatic tours after 1909, he did not distance his operations entirely from such ventures. During the war years, he initiated several seasons of drama at his Newtown headquarters, and engaged such actors as Roy Redgrave, John 'Jack' Cosgrove, and John 'Jack' Ralston (all three are also known to have presented short dramatic pieces as part of the entrepreneur's vaudeville programs).
In mid-1911, Clay arranged with emerging entrepreneur Stanley McKay to tour Harry Taylor's new pantomime Bo-Peep through several northern Queensland centres. Staged under a massive mining tent (with a capacity for 2,200 people), the production had premiered in Mudgee (NSW) in November the previous year. It later toured NSW and Sydney under McKay's leadership before linking with Clay's circuit around May/June. The cast included Bruce Drysdale (dame), Phyllis Faye, and Vicky Miller (Bo-Peep).
1912-1918: In 1912, Clay formed the Bridge Theatre Company in partnership with Harold T. Morgan (solicitor, alderman, and past and future Newtown mayor) and Archibald R. Abbott (businessman). That same year, the new company purchased a block of land opposite the Newtown railway station and applied to the local council to erect a theatre on the site. After demolishing the blacksmith's shop that had been operating there, Clay began building the Bridge Theatre in early 1913. After it opened, sometime between July and October 1913, Clay made the decision to concentrate his energies on the theatre, and subsequently closed down the suburban circuit except for the Coronation Theatre in Leichhardt (Saturday nights only). By 1915, however, only the Bridge Theatre was open.
In September 1916, Clay re-opened his suburban circuit in response to the growing demand for live variety entertainment that Australians were seeking in an attempt to deal with the war. It was also a time when the Australian-written revusical was becoming more and more popular, largely in response to the productions then being staged by Nat Phillips and his Tabloid Musical Comedy Co (aka Stiffy and Mo Revue Company), Bert Le Blanc's Travesty Stars and Arthur Morley's Royal Musical Comedy Company (later Harry Clay's No 1 Revue Company). Such was the demand that in a matter of weeks after reopening his Sydney suburban circuit, Clay also put together a south-western NSW circuit, which ran west from Katoomba through Bathurst and Lithgow and then south through Cowra, Yass, and Wagga Wagga, and on to Albury. Initially taking in some ten to twelve towns, the circuit lasted a fortnight.
By 1917, even his Sydney operations were forced to expand to two simultaneous circuits. By this stage, Clay was employing well over a hundred people a week, with four companies rotating through the two suburban circuits and the south-west line (which by late 1917 comprised at least fourteen towns). Clay also opened up his own agency. Known as Clay's Vaudeville Agency, it was situated at 256 Pitt Street in the heart of the city. Although he employed James 'Whitey' White to manage the business side of the venture, he was a familiar face at the office, taking a hands-on approach to securing both new and experienced talent. In 1918, he became President of the Newtown Keystone Glee Club following the resignation of Bluey Anderson due to business pressures (Australian Variety 1 February 1918, p.20).
Clay's Sydney operations continued to expand throughout 1917 and 1918, with new venues opening up in Manly (Eden Gardens), Mascot (Rosebury Theatre), Mosman (Town Hall), Surrey Hills (Crown Theatre), and Bondi Junction (Coronation Theatre). In early 1918, Clay negotiated with Fullers' Theatres Ltd to take over the lease of the Princess Theatre. He opened there in March and effectively established his name in connection with the theatre to an extent never realised by the Fullers. Clay's company continued its association with the Princess Theatre until 1925.
1919-1921: Harry Clay's greatest period of expansion (1916 to 1918) was halted in 1919 by the Spanish Flu epidemic, which forced the closure of most public entertainment activities around the country, and subsequently led to the cancellation of his Queensland tour for the first time in eighteen years. With increased competition from rival variety organisations and the film industry making these tours less financially viable, Clay decided to discontinue them in order to concentrate on his Sydney and NSW circuits. Following the re-opening of theatres in NSW, Clay initially contracted his operations to Sydney only, opening a single circuit that comprised the Bridge and Princess theatres, the North Sydney Coliseum, Eden Gardens (Manly), and venues in Bondi Junction, Ashfield, Leichhardt, Surrey Hills, and Bankstown.
1919 also saw one of his most promising performers, Amy Rochelle, leave his organisation and sign with the Fullers, a move that was, in fact, orchestrated by Clay himself (Theatre Magazine April 1919, p.15). This decision to let a big act go to an opposition firm was not unusual for the Australian industry. Even though Clay and the Fullers competed for patrons in Newtown, their theatres being barely a hundred metres apart, each firm still relied on the other to provide infrastructure support and personnel. Even leasing arrangements between rival companies was not uncommon. Although Clay lost the draw power of Rochelle, he knew that her celebrity was far too great to be supported by his company alone and that greater opportunites lay with the Fullers. The Fullers would in return arrange for some of the high-profile performers going off contract (including international acts) to undertake engagements on Clay's circuit. Rochelle went on to become one of the Fullers' most popular pantomime principal boys and a leading member of Nat Phillips' Stiffy and Mo Revue Company.
Although Clay had lost one of his most popular performers in January of 1919, later that same year he signed up a young comedian who had just returned to Sydney from several years in Queensland. That comedian, George Wallace, went on to form with Jack 'Dinks' Paterson the most popular comedy duo ever associated with Clay's company: Dinks and Oncus. Wallace also later went on to become one of the Fullers' biggest drawcards and one of Australia's great comedic icons.
Clay's decision to reduce his Sydney operations to a manageable nine venues did not last long. Following the death of entrepreneur Harry Sadler in mid-1919, Clay was asked by bookmaker and Australian Variety manager Andy Kerr to include the Gaiety Theatre as part of his circuit. Kerr owned the theatre and had engaged Sadler to run it, but with no actual experience in managing a variety operation, he needed some with the relevant expertise. Situated in Oxford Street opposite Hyde Park (and not to be confused with an early Gaiety Theatre in Castlereagh Street), the Gaiety's client was similar to Clay's and he therefore agreed to lease his artists to Kerr. By 1920, however, Kerr persuaded him to oversee the theatre's management and it eventually became one of Clay's branded venues.
In 1920, Clay took over the lease of Boland's Theatre in Wollongong and, around the same time, returned to operating two simultaneous Sydney suburban circuits. The following year, Clay renamed his management agency the Australasian Theatrical Bureau and began promoting the business as a supplier of not just artists but also theatrical supplies, such as scenery, travelling trunks, baskets, etc. Despite Clay's ability to successfully manage the production side of his business, it appears that the company was finding competition from both film and the greatly expanded variety industry increasingly difficult to overcome. Reports published in the trade magazines indicate that his shows were still being well patronised, but a letter from A. R. Abbot to the Commissioner of Stamps (held in Clay's Deceased Estate File), shows that each of the three financial years leading up to his death in 1925 involved losses of around £1800 to £2300 (ctd. Djubal 'Harry Clay' pp.151-152). The increased demands on his time and resources and the additional pressure this created may have played a role in the stroke that Clay suffered during the months of 1921. Everyone's reported in its 31 August edition that the manager was slowly recovering, and indeed he returned to work the following year, but it appears that his health and vitality was never the same again.
1922-1925: Upon returning to work in 1922, Clay took over Ike Beck's Hunter Valley circuit, which included the townships of Cessnock, Wallsend, West Wallsend, and Maitland. A little over a year later, however, Beck bought the circuit back. That same year he also sent a company back through Queensland for the first time in almost five years. In 1923, an action was taken against Clay by one of his former artists, Fanny Levarto (aka Francis Rose Phillips), who claimed she was owed £106 in wages. The Theatre Magazine notes that this was not only the first time that Clay had appeared in court but also, to anyone's knowledge, the only allegation of impropriety ever levelled against him. According to the magazine, the judge awarded the verdict in Clay's favour (March 1923, p.27).
A few months later, the Theatre Magazine began reporting that Clay's health had deteriorated markedly, noting that he looked a very ill man on his way to the Princess Theatre one night (June 1923, p.27). A 1951 'Byways of History' article records an anecdote from around this time :
It was hard, with his tremendous vitality, to stay in bed. He gave his coloured vocabulary full play. In desperation he got up and went to the theatre. To one of the cast he said, "You know, I think it's time I got off this earth." The man was startled. "Why Mr Clay?" "Because" - and Harry emitted a stream of well-chosen adjectives - "when I walked past the newsboy outside, I heard him say "There goes that old so-and-so Harry Clay." "Now I don't mind being called a so-and-so, but I'm damned if I like that "old" business. (The News 23 September 1951, n. pag.)
By early 1924, Clay's health had worsened to such an extent that he could no longer manage all his affairs. Jimmy Boyle, his long-time friend and one-time Queensland advance rep/manager, took over the day-to-day affairs of the Bridge Theatre with assistance from Bill Sadler (brother of Harry Sadler), while Clay managed the Gaiety. Although the suburban circuit is believed to have still been operating, lessening coverage in newspapers and magazines for vaudeville makes it difficult to establish where all his venues were located. Around mid-year, Clay could no longer manage his workload and effectively retired to his home. The 1951 'Byways of History' article indicates that from that point onwards 'artists and fans at the theatres never saw him again' (n. pag.).
In November 1924, Jimmy Boyle died unexpectedly, and the shock is said to have placed a heavy toll on Clay's health. A few months later, on 17 February 1925, he died at his home in Watson's Bay. He was survived by his wife Kate and daughter Essie.
Clay's Bridge Theatre Ltd continued operating after his death, with a collective of former artists and managers taking control of the company. Chief among these was Maurice Chenoweth, who remained at the helm until 1927. The Bridge Theatre itself was managed by long-time employee Stan Kerridge. He is thought to have stayed on until the company ceased its vaudeville operations there in 1929.
The company gave its final performance at the Princess Theatre on 5 September 1925, after it was sold by the Fullers. Clay's relocated to the Sydney Hippodrome later that same month, remaining there until late 1926 or early 1927. The North Sydney Colisium was closed down in 1927 after the company decided not to undertake renovations required under the Theatre and Public Hall Act. The Bridge Theatre was leased out from 1929 onwards, with Amy Rochelle and her husband Harry Kitching being among the first to take up a lease. The theatre was later renamed The Hub and run by various individuals and companies right through until the 2000s. For much of this time, it was used as a cinema.
In addition to its Sydney operations following Clay's death, the company also sent two troupes through Queensland in an attempt to expand its options. The first, with Nellie Kolle as headline artist, was in 1927. The second tour, undertaken in mid-1929, starred Roy Rene and Sadie Gale.
