Jack Bligh

(b. Kent, England, 29/11/1889 – d. 25/09/1967, England). Jack Hodges Bligh was an English actor who travelled widely. After turning down an offer to play soccer for Arsenal, he became a member of the stock company at the British and Colonial Kinematograph Company. Originally he was a stunt man and with the outbreak of World War I he was with Vitagraph in the United States. He saw service in France, probably with the Northumberland Fusiliers, and after the war he returned to the stage.

In 1926 he toured South Africa with Dennis Neilson-Terry and Mary Glynne, while back in London he acted in a number of Edgar Wallace plays and as early as 1929 acted on television. His first wife, Henrietta, had divorced him in 1922 and in 1929 he married Mary Holder, an actress with Frank Benson’s Shakespeare Company, who appeared with Tallulah Bankhead in As You Like It. In 1930 she and Jack performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, with Mary in leading roles and Jack in supporting ones. The company then also toured the United States and Canada.

In 1932 they came to South Africa, intending to stay for a year, but eventually settling there. They founded a theatre company in Johannesburg and also appeared on radio. It appears as though early in 1935 Jack might have been in Australia, but later that year and up to 1937 he produced a number of plays at the Little Theatre in Cape Town, while in 1938 he played Simon van der Stel in the film Die Bou van ‘n Nasie / They Built a Nation (Joseph Albrecht/Andries A. Pienaar). During the 1940s he was a radio producer with the SABC in Johannesburg, though he also took time off to tour with the Gwen ffrancon-Davies / Marda Vanne Company. In 1941 Mary produced Arms and the Man at the Little Theatre and in 1946 The Circle for the Johannesburg Repertory Theatre.

Jack spent a year-and-a-half in England, watching plays and working for the BBC, returning to South Africa in 1948 to take charge of dramatic production for the SABC in Cape Town. Here he produced numerous radio plays, including The Passionate Heart, on Olive Schreiner and The Beaux Stratagem. In 1955 Mary is known to have produced The Taming of the Shrew for the Johannesburg-based Children’s Theatre, while in 1959 Jack acted in Leonard Schach's production of Look Homeward Angel at the Hofmeyr Theatre. During the 1960s Jack Bligh appeared in a few British films, including two by Terence Fisher, and took occasional guest parts in numerous television series, including Z Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Till Death Us Do Part and Doctor Who. (FO)