Edward Laurillard

Edward Laurillard (20 April 1870 – 7 May 1936) was a cinema and theatre producer in London and New York City during the first third of the 20th century.

He is best remembered for promoting the cinema early in the 20th century and for Edwardian musical comedies produced in partnership with George Grossmith, Jr., including Tonight's the Night (1914), Theodore & Co (1916) and Yes, Uncle!

[1] The Savoy Theatre in London, closed in 1903 after the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company discontinued producing its Savoy operas there, was reopened under the management of Laurillard in February 1904 with The Love Birds, by Raymond Rôze and Percy Greenbank, starring George Grossmith, Jr., who would later become Laurillard's producing partner.

[1] With Grossmith, he brought the ethnic comedy hit, Potash and Perlmutter by Montague Glass, to London in 1914 for a long run at the Queen's Theatre.

At that theatre, he later produced two shows in 1921: Faust on Toast, a burlesque starring Jack Buchanan, and Maurice Maeterlinck's play The Betrothal, featuring Bobbie Andrews and Gladys Cooper, with incidental music by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and costumes by Charles Ricketts.

[5] The partners also purchased the Winter Garden Theatre in 1919, where they produced Kissing Time (1919, with a book by P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton and music by Ivan Caryll) and A Night Out (1920).