Joseph W. Herbert

Joseph W. Herbert (27 November 1863 – 18 February 1923) was a British-born American performer, composer, book writer, lyricist, director, and silent-film actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1888 to 1927. Born in Liverpool to Irish parents, he emigrated to the United States in 1876 at the age of thirteen and settled in Chicago, where he sang as an amateur chorister with a local church choir company during his college years.

Herbert's professional stage career began when he stepped in for an absent comedian to play the Lord Chancellor in the choir company's production of Iolanthe. When C. D. Hess reorganized the troupe as the Acme Opera Company and sent it on the road in 1884 as a professional musical stock company, Herbert traveled with it. During that tour he played the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, Gobo in Les cloches de Corneville, Népomuc in La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, and Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore, among other roles, also appearing in Fatinitza, The Pirates of Penzance, and Patience. After the Acme troupe collapsed, he performed with an assembled company in New Orleans.

Herbert holds the distinction of being the first actor to play Ko-Ko in the United States, taking the role in Sydney Rosenfeld's unauthorized production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado in Chicago in July 1885. He then appeared in a single performance at the Union Square Theatre in New York that same month, breaking a temporary injunction, nearly a month before the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company arrived with the official production. Herbert subsequently played Ko-Ko for two weeks at the Union Square Theatre beginning 17 August 1885, just two days before the D'Oyly Carte opened their authorized version, after which he and the cast transferred to the Grand Opera House in Manhattan.

His success in the role led Richard D'Oyly Carte and John Stetson to engage him as Ko-Ko in D'Oyly Carte's Third American Mikado Company, which toured from November 1885 to May 1886. Herbert continued working with Stetson and D'Oyly Carte-affiliated productions through 1887, playing King Gama in Princess Ida from November to December 1886, Reginald Bunthorne in Patience in January 1887, and Robin Oakapple in Ruddigore during the first half of 1887. In April 1887 he transferred to D'Oyly Carte's Third American Ruddigore Company to play Sir Despard Murgatroyd, briefly returning to the role of Robin Oakapple in New York in early May 1887. His final appearance with D'Oyly Carte came in March 1890, when he briefly assumed the role of the Duke of Plaza-Toro in the recast production of The Gondoliers at Palmer's Theatre in New York, taking over from Henry Lytton.

Throughout the 1890s and into the early twentieth century, Herbert accumulated an extensive list of Broadway roles. He played Sosoriki in the musical comedy The Pearl of Pekin in 1888 and 1889, Mr. Auguste Pompier in The Girl From Paris at the Herald Square Theatre in 1896, and Count Berezowski in the operetta The Fortune Teller at Wallack's Theatre in 1898. He appeared as Prince Pumpernickel in the comic opera The Singing Girl from 1899 to 1900, performed in The Rounders in 1900, and played Maurice de Champignon in The Little Duchess from 1901 to 1902. Further credits included Damon Marigold in Sally in Our Alley in 1902, Michael Dooley in The Street Singer in 1904, Washington Graft in The West Point Cadet in 1904, and the Duke of Toxen in It Happened in Nordland from 1904 to 1905. He played Captain Carmona in Mexicana in 1906 and the Laird O'Finnan Haddock in About Town in 1906, the latter production featuring his son, Joseph W. Herbert Jr. Herbert starred in A Waltz Dream in 1908, in which he also wrote the adaptation and played Prince Lothar, and appeared in The Orchid from 1907 to 1908, in which he wrote the book and played Toby Blockett. He also appeared in the musical Fascinating Flora in 1907, for which he wrote the book. Later stage roles included the Marquis d'Aucuneterre in Baron Trenck in 1912, Count Buzot in Oh, I Say! in 1913, and the Duke of Crowborough in Betty in 1916.

Alongside his performing career, Herbert built a substantial body of work as a dramatist, lyricist, and director. His writing credits began with the book for the comedy After the Ball in 1893, followed by his first musical, The Birth of Venus in 1895, with music by Edward Jakobowski. He wrote the burlesque Thrilby in 1895, a parody of Trilby with a score by Frank Osmond Carr, and The Geezer from 1896 to 1897, a parody of The Geisha. He wrote and directed the musical comedy Tommy Rot in 1902, and wrote, directed, and performed in Mam'selle Napoleon from 1903 to 1904. His musical play The Prince of Borneo was staged in three versions across three continents under three different titles before emerging in 1909 as The Beauty Spot, with music by Reginald De Koven. Additional writing credits included The Social Whirl in 1906, The Great Decide in 1906, lyrics for The Top o' th' World from 1907 to 1908, The Lamb of Delft in 1911, The Duchess in 1911, the text for the Al Jolson vehicle The Honeymoon Express in 1913, lyrics for Alone at Last from 1915 to 1916, and Honeydew from 1920 to 1921. He also wrote and directed the operetta Madame Troubadour in 1910 and Sue, Dear in 1922. As a stage director between 1903 and 1915, his credits included the comic opera Red Feather from 1903 to 1904, King of Cadonia in 1910, a 1910 revival of The Mikado, and The Red Petticoat from 1912 to 1913.

In his later years Herbert moved into silent film, appearing in at least six films between 1917 and 1919, including The Divorce Game in 1917, Laughing Bill Hyde in 1918, and The Teeth of the Tiger in 1919. A naturalized American citizen, he married four times: first in 1888 to Nanette L. Herbert, with whom he had a son, the actor and singer Joseph William Herbert Jr. (1887–1960); then to the actress Adele Ritchie, from whom he was divorced; then to the actress Billie Norton, whom he met during the run of It Happened in Nordland in 1904; and finally to Mary Lines Maynard. Herbert died of heart disease in New York on 18 February 1923 at the age of fifty-nine.