Hayford Hobbs

(b. London, **/**/1892? – d. **/**/1957?). British actor.

Hayford Hobbs was born either in 1891 (IMDb) or 1892 (BFI). During his film career he acted in more than 65 silent films, starting in 1915 with 1914 (George Loane Tucker) and finishing with The Devil’s Maze (Gareth Gundrey) in 1929. As early as 1913 he appeared in Australia in small roles in stage productions of Antony and Cleopatra and The Taming of the Shrew for Oscar Asche, the future writer and producer of Chu Chin Chow. During his years in England he frequently worked with the prolific Maurice Elvey (including a version of Dombey and Son) and with the Italian immigrant director Arrigo Bocchi. In 1915 he also made four films with director Harold M. Shaw and actress Edna Flugrath, just before they left for South Africa. In addition he made Castles in Spain (1920) for H. Lisle Lucoque, after this director had returned from South Africa subsequent to making his two H. Rider Haggard films.

In 1922 S.A. Pictorial announced that he and Joan Morgan had been especially brought out from England to act in Swallow (Leander De Cordova/1922), based on another Haggard story, and he then stayed on for Sam's Kid (Leander De Cordova/1922). In 1921, after his contract with AFP expired, Hobbs left for Australia, acting in Franklyn Barrett’s A Rough Ride (1922). Soon after that he was in the United States and made eight films there before finally returning home. A ship’s manifest of 1924 states that his place of residence was Hollywood (and also that he was married). Back in England he continued to appear in films, but after the introduction of sound his acting career seems to have come to an end.

Between 1930 and 1950 he directed a few documentaries of no particular significance, though he also produced A Moorland Tragedy (1933) for director M.A. Wetherell, another filmmaker with South African connections (in fact, Wetherell had acted with him in both Swallow and Sam’s Kid, playing the villain to Hobbs’s hero). [FO]