Frank Fillis Jr.

(b. Dundee, Scotland, **/**/1880? – d. Johannesburg, **/03/1961). Circus performer, theatre manager. The son of showman Frank Fillis (Francis Edward Fillis) and Elizabeth Jane Carr, Francis Alfred Fillis (known as Frank Jr.) initially was a horseman and ringmaster in his stepmother’s circus. He is known to have appeared in at least one film, featuring as the captain of the guard in H. Lisle Lucoque’s version of King Solomon’s Mines (1918). After Madame Fillis disbanded her circus in 1913, Frank Jr. joined the Schlesinger organisation as a theatre manager. According to Floris van der Merwe, in 1944 he was running the Astoria Theatre in East London and in the late 1940s managed a cinema in Johannesburg. He retired in 1949. He was the half-brother of Adele Fillis and Cecil Fillis. (FO)

Return to
Return to ESAT Personalities F

Return to South African Personalities

Return to The ESAT Entries

Return to Main Page