Hilda Attenboro

Hilda Attenborough (b. England, 21/08/1896? - d. New South Wales, **/02/1967?) was a British-born actress, resident in South Africa and Australia. Also credited as Hilda Attenborough.

Biography

Known both as a vaudeville performer and a dramatic actress, Hilda Attenboro made some of her earliest appearances on the London stage in Sapho (1912), A Trip To Chinatown, Queen of Thieves and The Woman Conquers (all in 1913). Late in 1913 she was part of the Hoffman-King Company that came to South Africa and performed at the time that martial law was proclaimed in response to the miners’ strike. In 1913-1914 she appeared in various plays for Maurice Hoffman and Ethel King, including The Sorrows of Satan and Tommy Atkins at the Palladium Theatre and Uncle Ham at the Orpheum Theatre, followed by Motherless for the London Repertoire Co., also at the Palladium. It was during this time that she first met another visiting British actor, Dan Thomas (Thomas Henry Daniels), a noted pantomime dame, who at the time was the manager of the Palladium. In September 1914 Thomas moved on to Australia and in December she and Thomas were in Sydney to appear in The Babes in the Wood. Thereafter she went to Melbourne to act in Mary Latimer - Nun for the George Marlow Company. While in Australia she was named as “the other woman” in a 1916 court case in which Daisy Yates, the wife of Dan Thomas, sued her husband for divorce. Apparently Attenboro and Thomas had been living together as husband and wife and were reported to have had a child together.

In 1917 Thomas returned to South Africa and in October of that year he and Attenboro appeared in the revue S’Nice at the Empire Theatre. This was followed by plays such as Damaged Goods, Daddy Long-Legs, Turn to the Right and Nothing but the Truth, all but the first for the visiting American Dramatic Company. Following the arrival of Marie Tempest, she joined this touring company for Good Gracious, Annabelle!, The Marriage of Kitty, Penelope and The Duke of Killicrankie, all in 1918 at His Majesty’s Theatre in Johannesburg. By this time the South African newspapers referred to her as Mrs. Dan Thomas and, in fact, they were married in Pretoria in August 1918, possibly in order to legalise the status of their daughter. It was also during this time that she acted in three films for African Film Productions, namely Bond and Word (Dick Cruikshanks/1918), The Voice of the Waters (Joseph Albrecht) and The Bridge (Dick Cruikshanks/1918). However, later in 1918 she separated from Thomas and became involved with a bookmaker called Clifford Roberts, who was shot at the Carlton Hotel on 27 November of that year. She and Thomas were officially divorced in January 1920.

In 1910, the British comedian Claude Dampier and his wife, Irene Vere, had left for Australia and, in 1917, embarked upon an extended tour of South Africa that was to last up to October 1921. When he returned to Australia he was accompanied by Hilda Attenboro and there was some speculation that Ms. Attenboro was Dampier’s second wife as together they toured the vaudeville circuit in Australia and New Zealand. They were a most popular duo and the local critics used adjectives such as “clever”, “charming”, “beautiful”, “vivacious” , “piquant” and, on one occasion, “plumply graceful” to describe her qualities. The Vice-Regals (1922) was especially popular. The following year she took the title role in the play Our Liz at the Grand Opera House in Sydney. However, by that time Dampier had established a new partnership with comedienne Billy Carlyle and Ms. Attenborough joined first Stuart Mack’s Dramatic Players and then the Frank Neil Comedy Company. For the latter she acted in such plays as Meet the Wife, Ladies’ Night in a Turkish Bath and The Best People. In 1935 a vaudeville programme called Quick Fire on national radio featured Attenboro and her Professional Idiot and as Claude Dampier used to bill himself as such, it is reasonable to assume that the Attenboro in question was, in fact, Hilda. (FO)

(Note: The dates of birth and death are somewhat speculative, but based on currently available evidence.)