Lew James

b. London, **/**/1878/ – d. **/**/****). Actor, vaudeville performer. Lew James (originally Laurie Cohen) was born in London of East European Jewish parents who arrived in England in the late 1850s. He was the youngest of 15 children and the family lived in the London borough of Stepney. He eventually shortened his name to Lou and married Reine, the daughter of Flora Solomon, a music hall entertainer who eventually immigrated to South Africa and opened a theatrical boarding house in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. Reine and Laurie formed a comedy and dance duo, first performing in England and then following Reine’s mother to South Africa. They worked in vaudeville as Potash and Perlmutter, the characters created by Montague Glass, at theatres like the Orpheum and the Standard, while Laurie was also billed as Lou (Lew) James as a stand-up comic. While in South Africa he acted in the film The Madcap of the Veld (1920) for African Film Productions and it is likely that the actor referred to in Filmverlede as Lew Jones, who appeared in The Stolen Favourite (1919), was also him. Both these films were directed by Joseph Albrecht. In 1919 the couple were offered a tour of Australia and New Zealand and though there is a record of Lew James attending a 1921 meeting held at the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg to organise an actors’ union in South Africa, he seems to have returned to Australia not long afterwards. Incidentally, in 1913 he had become the father of Sidney Joel Cohen, the future Sidney James.