Harry Braham

Henry Nathaniel Braham was born on 13 September 1850 in West Street, in the Seven Dials district of London. His father, Nathaniel Henry Braham, was a Jewish artist, and his mother, Susan Dorothy Frost, was Anglican. Their interfaith marriage, solemnized at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 11 November 1848, caused a rift within the family. Braham had two younger brothers: Charles, who became an acrobat performing under the name Carl Robarts, and Edwin, who had mild learning difficulties and was cared for by the family before later dying of vascular dementia at age 58.

Braham's entry into performance came through his uncle, Frederick Burgess, who co-managed the Moore and Burgess Minstrels at St James's Hall in Piccadilly alongside George Washington Moore. Through this connection Braham became a minstrel, subsequently touring with companies including Wilson and Montague, with whom he performed before Queen Victoria at Balmoral in October 1868. He then developed a solo music hall act as a comic vocalist, exploiting his facility for facial expression across a wide range of characters. He called this act "Masks and Faces."

In 1871 Braham sailed to Australia aboard the clipper ship St Vincent, accompanied by fellow minstrel Thomas Pedder Hudson. After early success in Sydney's music halls, he met Lizzie Watson, born Eliza Stephenson, in Brisbane in June 1872. Watson, an Irish serio-comic and burlesque actress approximately ten years his senior, was the headline performer with Harry Rickards and Enderby Jackson's touring company. She and Braham formed a professional partnership after she parted acrimoniously from Rickards, and they married on 6 February 1873 in Brisbane. The two performed together across Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and regional towns including Bathurst, West Maitland, and Hill End, before extending their tour to New Zealand.

In June 1874 Braham and Watson joined the Billy Emerson minstrel company aboard the steamship Tartar, bound for San Francisco. The vessel ran aground on a coral reef, and the company disembarked at Honolulu, where they were unexpectedly commanded to perform before David Kalakaua, the last King of Hawaii. Continuing to San Francisco, Braham and Watson performed at the Bella Union Saloon in the Barbary Coast district for an uninterrupted run of 47 weeks. They subsequently traveled to New York, where vaudeville impresario Tony Pastor engaged them to tour with him. In 1876 Braham created a solo piece called "Silly Bill and Father," drawing on the traditions of Commedia dell'arte, in which he performed alongside a model of an elderly man while playing the role of the model's son.

Braham and Watson returned to the United Kingdom in February 1878 as among the highest-paid entertainers in their field, touring major venues including the Crystal Palace in London. Their marriage collapsed in 1881 when it emerged that Watson, who had listed herself as a widow on their marriage certificate, was still legally married to a man named Henry Hemingway.

Braham continued his solo career in the UK, sharing bills with performers including Dan Leno, Vesta Tilley, and Arthur Lloyd. Returning to the United States in 1887 with his "Masks and Faces" act, he was engaged for his first role in legitimate theatre, a transition uncommon for music hall artists. He played the blacksmith Ben Chibbles in Hoodman Blind, a play based on Othello, for 35 weeks. He next appeared in Steele Mackaye's Paul Kauvar, also known as Anarchy, as the character Dodolphe Potin.

In 1889 actor-manager William H. Crane, a personal friend of President Grover Cleveland, signed Braham to his company, which also included Georgie Drew Barrymore and later Agnes Booth. For five years Braham played Baron Ling Ching, the Chinese Ambassador, in Crane's most celebrated production, The Senator. In February 1891, while under contract, Braham's father died suddenly. Unable to break his engagement mid-season, he traveled back to the UK in June aboard the steamship City of Richmond. During the voyage the cotton-laden vessel caught fire in a mid-Atlantic storm and was assisted by three ships: the City of Paris, the Servia, and the Counsellor. During the rescue the Counsellor's captain, John G. Jones, died while signaling the Richmond's captain, Redford.

Braham parted from Crane in 1894 and starred in Moses and Son, a play written specifically for him, which proved a commercial failure. He then traveled to Europe to appear in Arthur Branscombe's Morocco Bound. Following the death of his mother Susan in 1895, he returned to the music hall circuit and appeared at the Crystal Palace in 1899 alongside Loie Fuller, the dancer and lighting innovator known for her serpentine dance. He subsequently appeared with Fuller again in the United States.

In 1900 Braham settled permanently in the United States and was naturalized as an American citizen on 8 March of that year. In 1903 he traveled to Jamaica as the headline act with the English Dramatic and Comedy Concert Party. He returned to the United States to take the role of Picorin the Baker in George R. White's production of Sergeant Kitty, a light opera also featuring Virginia Earle. The production premiered on Broadway on 18 January 1904 at Daly's Theatre and ran for 55 performances, closing on 12 March 1904. In 1907 Braham undertook a major tour of the western United States with a solo act titled "One Hundred Faces and Characters from Charles Dickens."

Braham moved into film work in the early 1910s, appearing in the short Suppressed Evidence in 1912, The Vengeance of Heaven in 1913, and The Fight in 1915. His most prominent film role came in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, in which he played, uncredited and in blackface as required by Griffith, the faithful servant of Dr. Cameron. He appears in both halves of the film defending Cameron, and is visible in a climactic sequence alongside Lillian Gish in which the characters race by cart to a hut and are cornered by soldiers. His final stage appearance was in the 1917 light opera Miss Springtime, produced by Klaw and Erlanger with lyrics partly by P.G. Wodehouse.

In his final years Braham developed a kidney ailment that left him unable to work and destitute. He became a resident at the Actors' Fund Home in West Brighton, Staten Island. Diagnosed with heart inflammation in August 1923, he was transferred to Staten Island Hospital, where he died on 21 September 1923, eight days after his 73rd birthday. His funeral was held at Frank Campbell's funeral home on Broadway. He was cremated, and his ashes were interred in the Actors' plot at Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.