Owen Hall

Life and career

Born in a Jewish household, Hall was the eldest son of an English dentist who practised in Dublin and later became a portrait photographer in London, Hyman Davis (1824–1875), and his wife Isabella (1824–1900), whose maiden name was also Davis. The Davis family returned to London in the 1850s, Among his eight siblings were Julia, a successful novelist under the name "Frank Danby", who married businessman Arthur Frankau and was the mother of the author Gilbert Frankau and the comedian Ronald Frankau and grandmother of the novelist Pamela Frankau and the actress Rosemary Frankau; Eliza, who was the journalist "Mrs. Aria" and long-time lover of the actor Henry Irving; Harrie (1864–1920), who became a journalist in the US; and Florence ("Florette") a novelist who married Marcus E. Collins, brother of Arthur Collins, the manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

In the 1870s, Hall (still known as James Davis) married Esther Josephine (née Da Costa Andrade, 1854–1946) and had three children, Isabelle Davis (1877–1935), Hyman Davis (1878–1950) and Dorothy Davis (1880–1963). Isabel married Gerald Benjamin, the son of mayor Benjamin Benjamin of Melbourne, in 1912. Hyman married Helen Davis (so she didn't change surname) in 1914. Dorothy married a Belgian diplomat, Baron Marie-Georges-Gérard-Léon le Maire de Warzée d'Hermalle (1877–1931), and wrote of her travels in Persia, Peeps into Persia (1913), under the name of Dorothy de Warzée.

Early career

After practising from 1874 to 1886 as a solicitor, Hall gave up the law in favour of journalism, starting a newspaper called Pan, which "went to popularity and thence through an inexperienced direction to death", after which he "owned and edited in turn The Bat [1885–87], The Cuckoo and The Phoenix [after 1899], whilst writing industriously [and caustically] for The Sporting Times many paragraphs on ... racing, and dramatic criticisms, under the signature 'Stalled Ox'." He was assistant editor of Galignani's Messenger from 1888 to 1890. Hall was, for a time, interested in politics and ran (unsuccessfully) against the Liberal statesman Charles Russell for the Parliamentary seat of Dundalk in the 1880 election.

The change of career from critic to librettist came after he expressed a harsh view of a George Edwardes production, In Town (1892); the producer challenged Hall to do better. The result was the hit of the West End theatre season, A Gaiety Girl (1893), with music by Sidney Jones and lyrics by Harry Greenbank. Hall's satirical book included lines that jabbed in the style of an upmarket gossip columnist. The smart society back-chat was very popular with audiences, and A Gaiety Girl has a claim to being the first true musical comedy. Hall's next libretto was for An Artist's Model (1895), another success for the same writing team. He repeated the snappy dialogue style of the previous work, but joined it with a romantic plot, which Hall added at the last minute after Edwardes hired the star Marie Tempest, for whom Hall quickly wrote a new role. The result established the formula for two further extraordinary successes by Hall and his collaborators at Daly's Theatre.

The first of these was The Geisha (1896), which became the biggest international hit in musical theatre history, playing for 760 performances in its original London run and enjoying numerous international productions. The next collaboration for Hall, Jones and Greenbank was another popular work for Daly's, A Greek Slave (1898).

Hall declared bankruptcy first at the age of 29, during his early career as a solicitor, having run up debts of more than £27,000. He was back in bankruptcy court six years later, in 1888. Even after his theatrical success and high salary from Edwardes, he was bankrupt again in 1898. She wrote that, during his bankruptcy proceedings, Hall quipped irreverently: "Now I know that my Receiver liveth". His nephew Gilbert recalled that Hall said: "You can trust me with anything except a pretty girl or a sovereign."

''Florodora'' and later years

Hall wrote the musical Florodora (1899) for producer Tom Davis, which was set to music by Leslie Stuart, and the piece became another record-setting international hit, running for 455 performances in London, and then 552 performances in New York, followed by other international productions and revivals.

Hall wrote several more works in the new century, including two more musicals for Davis: The Silver Slipper (1901) with Stuart, and the unsuccessful The Medal and the Maid (1903) with Jones. For Edwardes, he wrote "perhaps the most delightful of all his libretti" and his last big success, The Girl from Kays (1902), and later The Little Cherub (1906). A 1904 piece was Sergeant Brue, written with Liza Lehmann.

He died in Harrogate, one day short of his 54th birthday,

Notes

References

References

1. [[Todd Endelman. Endelman, Todd M]]. "The Frankaus of London: A Study in Radical Assimilation, 1837–1967", ''Jewish History'', Vol. 8, Nos. 1–2 (1994), pp. 127–128
2. Frankau, p. 37
3. and James graduated from [[University College London]] as a [[Bachelor of Laws]] in 1869.Jacobs, Joseph. [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=160&letter=D Davis, James (Owen Hall)], JewishEncyclopedia.com, accessed 12 January 2013
4. Aria, pp. 27–53, pp. 84–157; Richards, Jeffrey. ''Sir Henry Irving: A Victorian Actor and his World'', Hambledon & London (2005), pp. 41 and 158
5. "Harrie Davis, Writer, Dead", ''[[New-York Tribune]]'', 15 January 1920, p. 6
6. Collins, Florence. ''The Luddingtons: A Novel'', Heinemann (1906)
7. Collins, Horace. ''My Best Riches'', Eyre & Spottiswoode (1941), pp. 11, 19, 34
8. Aria, p. 7
9. [https://www.ancestry.co.uk/interactive/8913/ONS_M18764AZ-0877?pid=7547588 James Davis marriage to Esther Josephine Da Costa Andrade], quarterly marriage index Q4 1876 in Marylebone, West London, Vol. 1a, p. 1162, via Ancestry.com, accessed 30 November 2017
10. [http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/120834038 "News and Views"], ''The Hebrew Standard'', 29 November 1912, p. 9: Wedding on 5 December 1912 of Gerald Septimus Benjamin of Melbourne to Isabelle Davis.
11. [https://www.ancestry.co.uk/interactive/8913/ONS_M19142AZ-0293/7546127 Hyman Davis marriage to Helen Elizabeth Davis], 1914 Q2, Marylebone, Vol. 1a, p. 1401
12. (1901). "La Noblesse Belge".
13. De Warzée, Dorothy.[https://archive.org/details/peepsintopersia00herm ''Peeps into Persia''], (1913), Archive.org, accessed 27 February 2014
14. Aria, pp. 15–16
15. Aria, p. 17
16. He also wrote for ''[[Truth (British periodical)
17. Frankau, p. 112
18. [https://www.gsarchive.net/british/authors/hall.html "Owen Hall"]. British Musical Theatre, accessed 26 July 2011
19. His sister Eliza was engaged for part of her career as such a columnist. See [[Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes. Lowndes, Mrs. Belloc]]. ''The Merry Wives of Westminster'', Macmillan (1946), p. 56
20. ''Histories of Tourism: Representation, Identity and Conflict'' (ed. John K. Walton; 2005), p. 105, Multilingual Matters Limited. {{ISBN. 1-84541-031-9
21. Aria, p. 20
22. Kenig, Marc. "Reviving a Legend of Musical Theatre", The Patter Post, Lyric Theatre, San Jose, California, May 2009, pp. 6–10