C. Aubrey Smith

C. Aubrey Smith(1863–1948)[1] was an English Test cricketer who became a stage and film actor,

Biography

Born Charles Aubrey Smith on 21 July 1863, he was educated at Charterhouse School and St John's College, Cambridge. He died from pneumonia at home in Beverly Hills on 20 December 1948, aged 85.

For more on his cricketing career and his international acting career see the Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Aubrey_Smith

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Smith settled in South Africa for a while to prospect for gold in 1888–89. While there he continued playing cricket and captained the Johannesburg English XI, as well as captaining the England team in his only Test match, the one played against a South African team at Port Elizabeth in 1888–89.

Though he never seems to have acted while living in South Africa, he does make at least one appearance as a performer, when he appeared in black-face to perform a Christy-style rendition of a comic ditty called "The Man that Struck O'Hara", as part of a Smoking concert held in the Exhibition Theatre, Cape Town, on 24 December, in honour of the two teams involved in the first English-South Africa cricket test.

In this period he also developed pneumonia and was wrongly pronounced dead by doctors, and soon returned to England, where he would .

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Aubrey_Smith

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1923. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p. 389.

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