Harry Conor

Harry Conor (c. 1856 – April 1931) was an American comic actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1897 to 1918. He is best remembered for originating the role of hypochondriac Welland Strong in A Trip to Chinatown and for performing the song "The Bowery" in that production.

Conor was raised in Massachusetts and began performing at a young age, making an early appearance alongside William J. Florence in No Thoroughfare. He developed his skills performing comic songs and short pieces in and around Boston. At nineteen, he organized his own company to tour a play written specifically for him. The venture came to an abrupt end on its first stop in South Carolina, when Conor arrived in Columbia to find what he initially mistook for a sunrise was in fact the local theatre burning down, destroying all of his sets and costumes along with it.

His career gained significant footing when he was taken on by producer Charles Hale Hoyt, a professional relationship that lasted eighteen years. During that time Conor appeared in several Hoyt productions, including A Rag Baby, in which he played the Dude Tramp beginning in 1883, and A Tin Soldier, where he portrayed Willie Steele in 1885. He also appeared in A Stranger in New York, for which he composed the song "Miss Helen Hunt." The most celebrated of his Hoyt collaborations was A Trip to Chinatown, which opened in 1891. Conor performed the role of Welland Strong hundreds of times in New York and abroad over the course of many years.

His Broadway credits across the broader span of his career included The Chaperons, in which he played Adam Hogg in 1902, The Blue Mouse in 1908, Lulu's Husbands in 1910 alongside Mabel Barrison, Marriage a la Carte in 1911, and Alone at Last in 1915. He returned to the role of Welland Strong in the 1912 production A Winsome Widow. Among his musical credits were Fad and Folly, The Opera Ball, Lady Luxury, and Fancy Free in 1918. Conor died in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in April 1931. He is noted in The Oxford Companion to American Theatre.