Paul de Groot

Paul de Groot (1887-1942) was a Dutch elocutionist, singer, actor and director.

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Biography

Born Paul Christiaan de Groot 11 January 1887 in Soerabaja, Dutch East India, to a father in the Military, trained at the Teaterskool ("Theatre School"), Amsterdam (1904-1907).

He is appears to have been twice married: in 19** to a Mabel Roylance and in 1935 to an English widow, Katherine May Harris (born Manchester 1896). He at one time also proposed to the juvenile actress Lydia Lindeque, but this marriage was prevented by her parents.

His career seems to fall into three periods:

The Dutch period: 1907-1923

He became an apprentice for, and later member of, Eduard Verkade's De Hagespelers company (1907-1912; 1913-1917; 1921-1924), and in the same period also had stints with some other companies, inter alia Het Princessetooneel and the company of Cor Ruys. He undertook various tours in the East as well (e.g. as performing as singer and doing some amateur work in Suriname, 1919-1920) and joined Anton Verheyen on a tour to Dutch East India in 1923.

He also did film work in this period, for example playing "John Herwood" in George André Beranger's 1922 silent film, Was She Guilty? (alternative title: Thou Shalt Not; and known as Gij zult niet Dooden - "Thou shall not kill" - in Dutch)[1]

The South Africa period

De Groot claims that he then negotiated with African Theatres, and came to Cape Town in November 1924. His first recital was in the Afrikaanse Koffiehuis, and his first produced plays Zaken zijn Zaken ("Business is Business" - Mirbeau) in December 1924 and Overschotje (Scampolo by Niccodemi) in January 1925, both at the Railway Institute, Cape Town.

After touring a few towns, he devised and publicised a plan for the first Afrikaans professional theatre company. His first recital in Pretoria was on 2 April, 1925, in the Nationale Klubsaal ("National Club Hall") of the Nederlandse Vereniging, followed again by two plays in Dutch - De Gentleman Inbreker ("The Gentleman Housebreaker", probably an adaptation of an Arsene Lupin adventure) and Claire Bellerosa on 23 April in the same venue. More significantly, two original Afrikaans plays - Lenie (J.H.H. de Waal) and Die Heks ("The Witch", C. Louis Leipoldt) - were presented in the Opera House, Pretoria, on 2 May 1925, in association with Stephanie Faure and utilizing the cream of local amateur performers including Iris Martin, Wena Naudé, Jessie Breedt and De Groot himself (*??). On 9th July 1925 he opened with a successful production of Huis Toe (Heimat by Südermann, tr A.E Carinus-Holzhausen) and in June 1926 he joined forces with Hendrik Hanekom, to found the Paul de Groot Toneelgeselskap. The company initially consisted of Hendrik Hanekom (Business manager), Mathilde Hanekom, Simon Malherbe, and Anna Marais from the Hanekom Company, Paul de Groot (Artistic director) and Wena Naudé from the former De Groot group and two novices, Gert Borstlap and Maxie Botha.

Their first production was Huis Toe (Südermann - 1926), then As Mans Huishou (Jan van Ees - 1927), Gerieflike Huwelik (A. Dumas snr - 1927), Die Inbreker (Van Ees, 1927, toured by a second company led by Wena Naudé) and Besigheid is Besigheid (Octave Mirbeau, 1928). In March 1928 (Binge has 15 March 1929) Hanekom and De Groot split company, apparently because of De Groot's avarice. De Groot continued on his own, touring i.a. with Rosekrans (Barclay/Bisson) with Lydia Lindeque, Haar Twede Man (Géraldy) with André Huguenet (Gert Borstlap renamed), Henry van Wyk and Rena la Roche and Geleende Geld (Ibsen) with Hélène Botha, Huguenet, Van Wyk, Peter Coetzee. Both very successful. By the end of 1929 he had already (by Binge's calculations) produced and toured with 8 Afrikaans plays (a total of 891 performances) and briefly returned to Europe for a while, then continued with Rosekrans till October 1930.

In 1931 he undertook a short (3 month) "world tour" to the Belgian Congo and India as part of a Dutch company. He returned in April 1931 and formed a new company to celebrate his 25 jubileum and toured with Besigheid is Besigheid again (83 performances). The cast consisted of a number of Free State amateurs, including Lydia Lindeque, Roekie van Rensburg, J. Lückhoff, David Muller, F. Botten and P. van Ingen. He then went on to do Die Verliefde Indringer (later known as Die Oorwinnaar- 1932) and Bodemvas (1932) a dramatisation of S. Bruwer's Afrikaans novel, the latter in association with the Universiteit van Stellenbosch se Dramatiese Vereniging. The cast included Yvonne Liebenberg in the lead, and Maria van Dyk, P.J. Loots, Margeret Webb, Gideon Boshoff, Nic Laubscher, J. Scholtz and Elsa Dreyer. The play failed miserably.

He was then invited to work under the auspices of African Theatres and did Verborge Sonde (La Monaco by Pierre Frondaie) with Henriëtte de Waal (August-October 1933), Misdade van die Vaders ("Misdeed of the Fathers" by Albert du Biel), Kain (also by Du Biel - 1934). This cast consisted of Henriëtte de Waal, Bettie Reitz, Nell van Nieuwenhuizen, Rosa du Plessis, John Brill, Johannes Coetzee, Dewald van der Merwe, Tommie Beckley and Frits de Lange. The next play was Eerloos ("Without Honour" by **, translated by A.J.A. Roux - 1935) and opened in the Eendragsaal in Johannesburg with Tommie Beckley, Hetta Beckley, Queenie Vorster, Jacobus Swanepoel and Jan Swiegers.

In April 1935 De Groot was asked to substitute for Walter Huston (in the role of Cecil John Rhodes) in certain scenes being shot in Rhodesia for the Gaumont-British film on Rhodes of Africa[2] and as a result the De Groot company broke up. It was in this time that De Groot met and married an English widow, Katherine May Harris (born Manchester 1896).

After the South African sojourn

There is a great deal of uncertainty about the details of De Groot's career and life after he had left South Africa and, sadly, it seems that De Groot largely disappeared from the public eye in this final period, though a few tantalizing snippets of information have been found by various authors, in which one finds only sporadic, sometimes contradictory, and not always reliable, information about his later life. Even the date of his exit from the South African theatre milieu is uncertain, varying from 1930 to 1937:

For example, according to Siegfried Mynhardt (cited by Danie Botha, 2006: p.96), by 1937 De Groot's spirit was broken and he was basically destitute and living in a boarding house in Johannesburg. It seems that he then returned to Holland to live in Wassenaar and work in film for a while. Danie Botha (2006, p. 97) cites an undated newspaper report from the F.C.L. Bosman archives, saying that De Groot had travelled to Durban by fast train, to take a boat back to Holland, and adds that the actor Anton Verheyen , Verkade . However, Ludwig Binge (1978, p. 181) suggests that he first went to England, before settling in Wassenaar, a suburb of Den Haag.

In contrast to this, the Dutch Theaterencyclopedie[3], states that he was once more performing in Dutch East India from 1930 onwards and that he was back with the Verkade company (presumably in the Netherlands) by 1935, before leaving again for "his fatherland" in April 1939, where he either acted for the the Nederlandsch-Indische Tooneelgroep of Leo de Hartogh[] for a brief period. (The entry on De Hartogh in the Theaterencyclopedie states that he had founded the company when he had to flee to Dutch-East India at the start of the war, and that the company included the performers Pam Henning, Paul de Groot, Herman van Eelen and Kitty Posthumus), and/or became an hotel (this according to the Dutch actor Anton Verheyen, as cited by Danie Botha, 2006, p. 97).

The only formal record of performances by De Groot listed in the Productiedatabase of the Theaterencyclopedie for the period after 1922 are De twee vrouwen van mr. Carroll (The two mrs Carrolls), seemingly done by De Groot's own company (February, 1936) and Weenen in 3 dagen (*"Vienna in 3 days") by the Vereenigde Schouwburgspelers (January, 1937).

What seems to be certain is that De Groot died in Padang on 2 Oktober 1941, two months before the Japanese invasion of **, so the speculation that he may have died in an internment camp seems to be false.

His impact

De Groot had an enormous artistic influence on the growth of Afrikaans theatre, both in terms of technique and quality (an autocratic director of the Meiningen school, he insisted on effective texts and quality staging), and of theatre administration. If nothing else he discovered and trained numerous prominent theatre personalities, among the most notable of them being André Huguenet, Lydia Lindeque, Siegfried Mynhardt and Wena Naudé, who all had an enormous impact on the development of indigenous professional theatre, particularly in Afrikaans. According to the TheaterEncyclopedie he also gave lectures "aan de universiteiten van Johannesburg [sic] en Stellenbosch", an inaccurate and possibly somewhat dubious claim.

However, what is undeniable is that, whatever they thought of him as person, he was revered for his inspirational role in the period by friends, colleagues and enemies alike, as attested by virtually all the biographies and theatre histories that appeared in the second half of the 20th century.

Sources

Binge, Ludwig Wilhelm Berthold 1969. Ontwikkeling van die Afrikaanse toneel (1832-1950). Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik.

André Huguenet, 1950

https://theaterencyclopedie.nl/wiki/Paul_de_Groot

https://theaterencyclopedie.nl/wiki/Leo_de_Hartogh

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348352/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_of_Africa

E-mail correspondence from Anthony Akerman, 10 September 2022.

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