Alfred Holtzer

(b. Hornsey, North London, 09/10/1874? - d. Cape Town, 03/11/1958). Lecturer (speech training and literature), theatrical producer, playwright. Alfred Holtzer was the son of a barrister. From his youth he had a keen interest in music and the theatre and regularly attended first nights, seeing many of the famous actors of his day. Although he is said to have studied dramatic art at the London Polytechnic, he did not take to the stage himself and came to South Africa in 1905 because of his health. Initially he had a small holding on the Cape Flats but eventually he joined the Standard Bank and stayed in its service until the late 1920s.

Always passionate about Shakespeare, he played Orlando in As You Like It when it was staged at Kelvin Grove, then still a private home. On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, was one of the cast members of a Shakespearian Concert held in the Cape Town City Hall on the occasion of the Shakespeare Tercentenary celebrations. In 1919 he became one of the founder members of the Cape Town Repertory Theatre Society and, in fact, the first play ever performed by that organisation, The Broken Chain, was written by him. It was staged at the Railway Institute and was directed by Ralph Kimpton. Another play, a musical comedy entitled Cheat the Calender, was performed at Cape Town's Opera House in March 1929. He was also responsible for several one-act plays.

Like his near-contemporary, Edward Vincent, he was a member of the Owl Club and served as its Honorary Secretary from 1914 until his death in 1958. He also taught elocution and dramatic art at various educational institutions, including the South African College School, and produced a number of Shakespearian plays for the SACS Dramatic Society, including Richard II (1935), Julius Caesar (1943) and Macbeth (1944), all staged at the Little Theatre. He was for many years a part-time lecturer at the Cape Technical College.

A young Leonard Schach made one of his first appearance in a play staged by Holtzer, as did Margaretha van Hulsteyn, better known as Marda Vanne. Schach gives an amusing account of Holtzer's approach as a teacher at SACS in his autobiographical The Flag is Flying. As an actor he appeared in Jerome K. Jerome's Passing of the Third Floor Back and in the Victorian melodrama The Dover Road. He also took the role of Bartolomeu Dias in the film Die Bou van 'n Nasie / Building a Nation (Joseph Albrecht & Andries A. Pienaar/1938). In addition he was Secretary of the S.A. Society of Artists and was President of the Cathedral Players. A portrait of him by Frank Wiles was painted to celebrate the 500th meeting of the Owl Club. He was married to Dorothy May Kuys, who died in 1987. (FO)

Note: A manuscript of the play Cheat the Calender is in the collection of the National Library in Cape Town.

(FreeBMD records Alfred Holtzer as having been born in Islington, London in 1869. In 1898, at the age of 28, he married Irene Lloyd, who was eight years his senior. Immediately after the wedding they left for South Africa and there is a record of a Mr. and Mrs. Holtzer arriving in Cape Town in 1898. In 1914 she sailed to England for a holiday, but failed to return. Eventually, in 1923, he sued for divorce, which was granted the following year. Because of the discrepancy in the years of birth it could be supposed that there were two individuals named Alfred Holtzer, but in each case the father is identified as barrister George Edwin Holtzer and both Alfred Holtzers were employed by the Standard Bank. According to the official records he was born in 1869, but other sources give the date as 1874.)

Sources

The Cape, 8 March 1929

Rosenthal, Eric - The third Tuesday: a history of the Owl Club 1951-1981

Schach, Leonard - The flag is flying

Who's who in South Africa 1940

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