William Gill, also known as William Bain Gill, William B. Gill, and W. B. Gill, (10 May 1842, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland – 1 April 1919, Schenectady, New York) was a Newfoundland-born Australian playwright, actor, theatre critic, journalist, and theatre manager. He is most famous for authoring Broadway's first hit musical, Adonis.Fisher, p. 193Ganzl, p. 294
William Gill was born in what is present day Canada and raised primarily in Australia, he began his acting career in 1862 at the age of twenty; working alongside his mother, the stage actress Mrs. Gill, at the Theatre Royal, Ballarat under the management of William Hoskins. The pair continued to work together during Gill's early career with theatre troupes managed by George Fawcett Rowe and G. B. W. Lewis; the latter managing a touring company in Asia. Initially an actor in minor parts, he gained a reputation as a gifted leading comedic actor in Melbourne between 1865 and 1868. He also worked briefly as the manager of the Princess Theatre, Melbourne.
After the theaters in Melbourne were closed during an economic downturn, Gill traveled to India in June 1869 with Lewis's financially profitable Calcutta based company where he remained for more than three years; ultimately replacing Lewis as the company's manager. There he married his wife and frequent stage partner, the Australian actress "Waddy" Deering (later known by the stage name Elinor Deering), in December 1869; just prior to which he had starred in the title role of his first known play, That Dear John Timothy. After returning to Australia in 1871, he became manager of first the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney in 1872 and then the Royal Lyceum, Sydney in 1873; presenting three more of his original plays at the Royal Lyceum. He relocated to the United States in 1874 where he became manager of Piper's Opera House in Nevada for a short time. After this he briefly managed a repertory theatre in Salt Lake City where a scandal involving copyright infringement brought Gill to the attention of the American press in February 1875. Mark Twain successfully sued to prevent an unauthorized performances of a play adaptation Gill had crafted of Twain's novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.
Gill worked periodically as a journalist, theater critic, and a contributor of humorous short stories for American periodicals; particularly The Clipper. As an eyewitness news reporter, he covered the events of the gold rush in Wyoming in 1876–1877. Gill ultimately arrived in New York City as a member of Colville's Folly Company; making his Broadway debut as an actor at the Eagle Theater as the lead male comic in Oxygen, or Gas in a burlesque metre in December 1877. On Christmas Eve of that year his first stage work of sorts debuted on Broadway, the pastiche Babes In The Wood, or Who Killed Cock Robin? which Gill and Willie Edouin had co-created by splicing together excerpts of pre-existing materials by other writers, mainly pantomimes and burlesque material, into a new original format.
William Gill's first entirely original work to reach Broadway was Horrors, or the Rajah of Zogobad in 1879 which received positive if not enthusiastic reviews, and ran for a respectable 48 performances at the Union Square Theater. This began a series of several popular but critically mixed successes on Broadway, including The Magic Slipper (1879) and Our Goblins (one act version, 1879; two act version, 1881). From 1882 through 1886 he had a prolific partnership with the Irish playwright George H. Jessop with whom he co-authored many plays of which In Paradise (1882), Facts, or His Little Hatchet (1883), A Bottle of Ink (1884), and Mam'zelle, or the Little Milliner (1885) all had successful Broadway runs and tours. The pair also penned a series of flops, including Muddles (1885), Bluff (1885), and Aphrodite Still in the Ring (1886) which ultimately led to the end of their partnership in 1887.
As a playwright, Gill's plays were typically written for the talents of specific performers and for this reason the majority of his works were never re-created after the original artists ceased performing them. He had a tremendous success with the 1884 musical burlesque Adonis which was written as a starring vehicle for the actor Henry E. Dixey. The original production broke records at that time for both financial profits for a play and longest-running Broadway shows, and Dixey repeatedly returned to the role for revivals and national tours through 1899. Gill's burlesque, My Sweetheart, which was written for the actress Minnie Palmer and premiered in 1881, became an international hit with lengthy runs on the West End, the Royal Strand Theatre, the Princess's Theatre, Glasgow, and frequent touring productions in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States into the first decades of the twentieth century. He later penned the Broadway plays The Alderman (1897, for the actor Odell Williams), The Honest Blacksmith (1901, for the boxer-turned-actor Bob Fitzsimmons), and Mrs. 'Mac,' The Mayor (1905, for the drag artist George W. Munroe). In addition to writing several plays starring himself and his wife, Gill also created stage works for the husband and wife performing duo William J. and Malvina Pray Florence; actors Jefferson De Angelis, Richard Golden, John T. Raymond, Harry St. Maur, and Francis Wilson; actresses Hattie Starr, Eliza Weathersby, and mother and daughter Jennie and Corinne Kimball; and sopranos Marie Aimée, Ida Mülle and Dora Wiley.
Early life: 1842-1861 Born William Bain Gill on 10 May 1842, at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, Gill was the son of William Robert Gill and Janet Bird Gill (née Bain).Ganzl, pp. 5-6 His father was a surgeon who had earned a place in the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in 1835, and at some point in time prior to 1841 had settled in Newfoundland and established a surgical practice.Ganzl, pp. 8 Janet Bird Gill was the daughter of Scottish Royal Navy officer and steamship inventor and captain Sir William Bain who was knighted by Queen Victoria on 20 March 1844.Ganzl, p. 6 Janet and William Robert were married in Cramond, Scotland on 21 August 1841 just nine month's before William's birth.Ganzl, p. 8
William was still living with his parents in Newfoundland as late as 1846, but the whereabouts of the family are not known until an 1852 ship record lists William and his parents as passengers on the Hope bound for Australia from Liverpool, England. William's father was also listed as the ship's doctor of record, and he oversaw 17 deaths and five births during the ships 92 day voyage. Upon arrival, the family settled in Castlemaine, Victoria with the intent of getting rich through gold speculation during the 1852 Australian gold rush.
Early career in Australia and Asia: 1862-1868 William Gill spent the early part of his career as an actor in Australia and Asia. The first record of his work as an actor was in July 1862 at the Theatre Royal, Ballarat portraying small roles in a production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal with his fellow cast mates including the actors T. S. Bellair, Henry Edwards, and William Hoskins and actresses Julia Harland and Anne Lockhart.Ganzl, p. 11 William's mother, using the stage name Mrs. Gill, was also an actress in this production in the role of Mrs. Candour.
William Hoskins was the manager of the Theatre Royal, Ballarat at this times and both William and his mother were members of his professional company of actors. Hoskins departed from this post in December 1862, but in the five previous months that William and his mother performed in Hoskin's troupe they shared the stage with several well known performers of the 19th century; including Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, Shiel Barry, and multiple members of the Howson family; including Emma Howson and John Jerome Howson.Ganzl, pp. 17-18
After the Hoskins company disbanded, both William and his mother were hired into the acting company of George Fawcett Rowe at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne; making their debuts at that theatre in 1853 in supporting roles in Fawcett's American Civil War drama North and South in 1862, or the War in Virginia.Ganzl, pp. 19-21 William appeared in mainly small roles in Fawcett's company that season, but did tackle his first larger part as François de Noailles in Fawcett's The Tower of London in October 1853. After the conclusion this season William and his mother once again joined the roster of players at the Theatre Royal, Ballarat in 1854 after the return of Hoskins. With this group they toured to the Lyceum Theatre in Bendigo.Ganzl, p. 24 Among the company was the celebrated English Shakespearean actor Charles Kean, and the season included a production of Macbeth with Kean in the title role and William Gill as Seaton; a role which gained Gill his first positive reviews as a comedic actor in the press.
While William and his mother were performing in Bendigo, his father died on 11 April 1864 from "hepatitis and fatty degeneration of the heart."Ganzl, p. 26 Shortly thereafter, economic depression in Australia led to a downturn in theatre work in that nation, and the Gills ended up leaving Australia for Asia in the touring company of G. B. W. Lewis. This tour was financially very profitable, and the company began its tour in Shanghai in 1864; and continued to perform through the end of 1865 in such locations as Hong Kong, Japan, and India. The company was notably the first theatrical group to perform a pantomime, Bell's Life in Victoria, in China.Ganzl, p. 27
In early 1865 William left the company of his mother to join a theatre group in South Adelaide whose company of players included the seventeen year old actress "Waddy" Deering; the daughter of actress Eliza Mossenton and the British born theatre manager and actor Henry Deering (b. 1814, London) who had a prominent career in Australia.Ganzl, p. 30 Waddy, who was already on her second marriage and had one child, became romantically involved with William soon after they met, and it is likely that he was the biological father of her second child, Horatio Ernest Fieldwick Smith (born 6 December 1866).Ganzl, p. 31 Shortly after the death of her second husband, Mr. Smith, William and Waddy married in Calcutta, India at the Great Eastern Hotel on 20 December 1868.Ganzl, p. 41
Prior to his marriage, William's career as a celebrated actor in Australia blossomed, particularly in comedies, between 1865 and 1868. This started with several critical triumphs at George Coppin's Haymarket Theatre, Melbourne. His roles there included the Vizier in Lord Byron's Aladdin; Winterbottom in the Australia premiere of Dion Boucicault's Arrah-na-Pogue; Lord Buckhurst in Court and Stage; Zimple Zimon in the Christmas pantomime The Four Champions of Beautee; David in The Rivals, and Sam in The Ticket of Leave Man.Ganzl, p. 32 After this he performed in a minstrel show at a music hall in Melbourne called the Varieties organized by Edward Harvey that was a starring vehicle for the American actress Rollin Howard. He then returned to the Haymarket, now under the management of Hoskins, where he starred in several Shakespeare productions alongside the actor James Robertson Anderson. Gill had particular success as Rodrigo in Othello with Anderson in the title role and Robert Heir as Iago.Ganzl, p. 34 This was followed by leading roles in several comedies, including Captain Crosstree in Black-Eyed Susan (with Kate Denin in the title role), the hairdresser in Thomas Egerton Wilks' comedy How's Your Uncle?, and the Demon Dwarf in the Christmas pantomime Harlequin Rumpelstiltskin, or the Demon Dwarf of the Goblin Gold Mine and the Prince and Miller's Daughter.