Brandon Thomas (playwright)

Walter Brandon Thomas (24 December 1848 – 19 June 1914)[1] was an English actor, playwright and songwriter, best known as the author of the farce Charley's Aunt.

Born in Liverpool to a family with no theatrical connections, Thomas worked in commerce, and as an occasional journalist, before achieving his ambition of becoming an actor.

Although Thomas never repeated the prodigious success of Charley's Aunt, he maintained a career as an actor and dramatist until his death, acting mostly in comedy, but with occasional serious roles in the plays of Shakespeare and others.

[3] He learned bookkeeping and became a clerk with local Liverpool timber merchants, until 1875, when he took a similar post in Hull, where his family was by then living.

Thomas augmented his salary with occasional journalism; The Times noted that at 17 he published "a striking pamphlet" attacking the hymn-writers Moody and Sankey.

[4] Through the influence of a local businessman, Albert Rollit, he secured an engagement with William and Madge Kendal at the Court Theatre in London.

"[2] He was well received in two Scottish roles in this part of his career, Tammy Tamson in his own play A Highland Legacy (1888), and Macphail of Bullocheevin in Pinero's The Cabinet Minister (1890).

As the latter, "with practically nothing to say he made the uncouth young Highlander, tied to his mother's apron strings, stand out as one of the most diverting features of the piece.

At the instigation of George Edwardes,[2] he invested £1,000 in a production of three one-act plays: his own The Lancashire Sailor, Weedon Grossmith's A Commission, and Cecil Clay's A Pantomime Rehearsal.

[1] He took prominent roles in all three, displaying his versatility as "a romantic young lover, a delightfully cynical model and as the heavy, stupid Captain.

"[9] Penley produced the play and took the star role of Lord Fancourt Babberley, an undergraduate whose friends Jack and Charley persuade him to impersonate the latter's aunt.

In 1892, he played in W. S. Gilbert's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a parody of Hamlet, and Faithful James, by B. C. Stephenson, with Ellaline Terriss, both at the Court Theatre.