Robert Michaelis

Robert Armand René Michaelis (22 December 1878 – 29 August 1965) was a French-born actor and singer whose career centered on musical theatre, primarily in England, with additional appearances on Broadway between 1907 and 1922. His birthplace is given variously in sources as Saint Petersburg or Paris. He was the son of Guillaume Paul Hermann Michaelis, a German-born schoolmaster who had been naturalized as French, and Marie Léonie Héloïse Michaelis, who was French. Michaelis received his education in London and Paris and undertook vocal training in Vienna under Felice Bottelli.

By the time of the 1901 census, Michaelis was residing in Latchmere, Battersea, with his parents, and listed his occupation as actor. That same census recorded his father Herman, then fifty years old, and his mother Marie, aged forty-five. The family had settled in Hampstead by this period. His Broadway career began in 1907, when he appeared in Gustave Kerker's musical The White Hen at the Casino Theatre in New York, a production that ran for three months. He returned to Broadway in subsequent years, with credits also including Mlle. Modiste and the musical Orange Blossoms, in which he played Baron Roger Belmont at the Fulton Theatre in 1922.

The greater part of Michaelis's stage career unfolded at Daly's Theatre in London, where he became a recognized presence in a succession of musical productions. In 1908 he assumed the role of Prince Danilo in The Merry Widow for the final four months of its run at Daly's, and the following year was cast as Freddy Fairfax in The Dollar Princess. He took a leading role in The Marriage Market in 1911. In 1912 he sang the title role in an English production of Franz Lehár's operetta The Count of Luxembourg, appearing alongside Phyllis Le Grand, Eric Thorne, Lauri de Frece, and Daisy Burrell, a group the Musical News collectively described as "all consummate artists in their own style." That same year he also appeared at Daly's in Gipsy Love, playing Jozsi. English theatre historian Walter MacQueen-Pope, writing in his 1956 volume Nights of Gladness, characterized Michaelis as "one of the very best performers Daly's ever had."

In 1913, at Hampstead, Michaelis married Phyllis Le Grand, the actress with whom he had starred in The Count of Luxembourg the previous year. The couple's daughter, Rosemary Evelyn Helene, was born in March 1914 and later pursued a career as a nurse and radiographer. Michaelis was naturalized as a British subject in 1914, at which time he was living at 8 Eton Villas, South Hampstead, and declared Paris as his place of birth. His father, Herman, had died at St Pancras in 1912, and his mother, Marie, died in 1933 at the age of seventy-eight, leaving an estate valued at £2,293.

In 1920, Michaelis appeared in the silent film The Little Welsh Girl, in which he played the character Rhys Bowen. That same year he began a London engagement in Irene at the Empire Theatre, singing the part of J. P. Beaudon in a production that ran for 399 performances across 1920 and 1921. When probate was granted on his mother's estate in 1933, Michaelis was identified in the records as a manager, indicating he had by then left the stage. During the Second World War he was registered as an air raid warden and retired actor, living at Wychwood, Tickenham, Somerset. His daughter Rosemary married John A. Parsons in Somerset in 1940, and three grandchildren were born between 1943 and 1949.

Michaelis died on 29 August 1965 at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, with his address recorded as Summerlands, Nailsea. He left an estate valued at £7,051. His widow, Phyllis Le Grand, survived him until 15 May 1981.