A respected Australian playwright and critic, Sydney Tomholt began writing one act plays in the early 1900s. He was the eldest of three children of Daniel John Tomholt, a Dutch-born waiter, and his Tasmanian wife Louisa, née Whelan. Tomholt was educated in state schools and worked for the Gloria Light Company from 1911 to 1915. He married pianist Hilda Merle Cotham in 1912.
Tomholt enlisted as a corporal in the 24th Battalion in 1915 and fought in France during 1916. He was evacuated due to illness in November of that year and attached to the Pay Corps in London from March to September 1917. Tomholt met many leading writers including J. M. Barrie, G. K. Chesterton and G. B. Shaw (qq.v.). In December 1917 he was sent to No. 2 Command depot, Weymouth, but John Drinkwater enabled him to study drama on six months leave without pay from September 1918. Tomholt attended the University of London from May to October 1919 before returning to Australia.
Tomholt became a businessman and editor in China, Mongolia and the Philippines. In the Philippines he met Tom Inglis Moore (q.v.) who became a lifelong friend. After returning to Sydney in 1932 he worked successfully as a radio scriptwriter at 2GB while also gaining recognition as a serious dramatist, principally as a writer of one-act plays. His serial, 'The Dreyfus Case', and several of his dramas were broadcast. 'Anoli the Blind' won a place in a Sydney Bulletin competition and was published in The Best One-Act Plays of 1936 (1937). Another play, 'The Woman Mary', won first prize in a British Drama League competition. Despite the acknowledgment Tomholt received, including encouragement from George Bernard Shaw, the deeply psychological themes of his plays proved too adventurous for Australian theatre of the day and were rarely staged.
Tomholt was film, music and drama critic for the Sydney Morning Herald from 1937. He worked for the Allied Works Council during World War II and later ran a literary agency. In the mid-1940s he was awarded Commonwealth Literary Fund fellowships. Nancy Keesing has recalled that Sydney Tomholt moved into Granville Buildings, Number 17 Bond Street, Sydney in January 1937 and lived there for more than twenty-seven years. 'Tommy's place was never called anything other than The Room... It was generally a casual "See you down at The Room tomorrow night?" which decided who would be coming to have a sherry and a sandwich.' It was an informal meeting place for poets, theatre people and academics. Tomholt had a close association with C. K. Bliss, Tom Inglis Moore, R. D. Fitzgerald, Hugh McCrae, R. G. Howarth, Nancy Keesing and Rosemary Dobson (qq.v.).
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1994) has the following assessment of Tomholt: 'A serious dramatist, as Bernard Shaw recognised, with a flair for atmosphere and emotional and dramatic intensity, he ranges from realism to poetic symbolism, anticipating the work of Patrick White.'
(Source: Nancy Keesing, 'Tomholt, Sydney John (1884 - 1974)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12, MUP, 1990: 242-243; Nancy Keesing Riding the Elephant (1988): 123-127).
