Naomi Rutherford

(b. 13/04/1892 – d. **/**/****). Actress. Despite the fact that, during 1918-1919, she was a member of the American Dramatic Company when they toured South Africa, Naomi Rutherford seems to have been a South African. Born Winifred Naomi Georgina Widdas in 1892, for some reason she was only baptised in 1907 and at the time one of the sponsors was Adele Fillis, who would have been close to her own age.

As early as late 1911 she played the title role in The Flapper for the Stephen Black company, taking the play to Bulawayo, where she received a favourable notice in The Police Review. At some stage she must have been recruited by producer George R. Montford and appeared in a series of plays, primarily at His Majesty’s Theatre: Daddy Long-Legs, Turn to the Right, The Cinderella Man, Nothing but the Truth, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, The Thirteenth Chair, The Silent Witness, Business Before Pleasure (all 1918), Romance, Seven Days’ Leave, Within the Law, The Little Brother, Nobody’s Widow, Peg o’ My Heart, Madame X, The Yellow Ticket and Parlour, Bedroom and Bath (all 1919). In February 1918 she had married Montford.

In September 1919 her husband left for England and after the end of her contract she must have joined him as in 1921 she toured the counties with Paddy, the Next Best Thing. He returned to South Africa in March 1923 and the following year they were both in Trilby, presented by Maurice Moscovitch at the Cape Town Opera House. When Moscovitch took his company to Australia, they went with him, opening at Melbourne’s Theatre Royal under the J.C. Williamson management. Montford died in Natal in 1940, but in 1949 Naomi Rutherford still took part in Adventure Story, a radio play produced by Cedric Messina in the Durban studio of the SABC. (FO)

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