Charles Hallam Elton Brookfield (19 May 1857 – 20 October 1913) was a British actor, playwright and journalist, including at The Saturday Review.
He achieved success in a 20-year acting career, including with the company of Squire Bancroft at London's Haymarket Theatre in the 1880s.
His mother was a close friend of Thackeray and other literary figures, and his father was a devotee of the theatre, and young Brookfield grew up used to the company of artists and celebrities.
[2] He was educated at Westminster School, from 1871 to 1873, and over the next two years attended lectures at King's College London, while also studying French theatre and becoming a reviewer of novels for The Examiner and a member of the Savile Club at the early age of seventeen.
[2] Despite opposition from his family, Brookfield decided to try acting and made his professional stage debut in 1879 in a revival of Tom Taylor's Still Waters Run Deep at the Alexandra Palace Theatre.
In 1880, after a severe bout of ill health, Brookfield joined the company of Squire Bancroft at London's Haymarket Theatre, earning complimentary reviews for his performances in supporting roles.
[2] His Poet and Puppets, a travesty of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, with music by Jimmy Glover, was well received at the Comedy Theatre in 1892, starring Charles Hawtrey and Lottie Venne.
[6] One of his last acting roles was in The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, as Baron Grog, with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy Theatre in 1897.
He then focused, despite continued bouts of ill health and periods of convalescence in Europe, on journalism and writing farcical plays and musical theatre works.
[10] It therefore amazed the public, and amused The New York Times, that Brookfield became the Examiner of Plays in the Lord Chamberlain's office in 1911.