Dick Cruikshanks

(b. Walthamstow (West Ham), London, **/**/1874 – d. East London, South Africa, 17/03/1947). British-born actor and director. Richard Wheatley Cruikshanks, the son of actor Charles Cruikshanks, was a stalwart of the silent film industry in South Africa. As an employee of African Film Productions, he directed or co-directed 12 of the films the company produced and acted in more than half of their total output. He clearly had the confidence of I.W. Schlesinger and when Harold M. Shaw walked out before The Symbol of Sacrifice commenced production, this prestigious film was entrusted to Cruikshanks.

In the English Census of 1901, Cruikshanks, then aged 26, was said to be in the music profession and in 1907 his military drama entitled La Vivandiere, based on the Ouida novel “Under two flags”, was staged in London (the cast included two horses who had “fought” in the South African War). In February 1900 he had married actress Florence Elizabeth Dentry, who was eight years his senior. She had taken the stage name of Florence Creagh, and in 1908 she acted in his play Daddy’s Boy. According to The Stage Year Book of 1911, the couple were both members of The Sketch Association and in 1914 they came out to South Africa with a H.G. Brandon play.

Later that year he joined Johannesburg’s Palladium Theatre and is said to have acted in some 40 roles over a period of just more than a year. In between films he continued to appear on stage, including the hit Goodness Gracious, Annabella (1918) with Marie Tempest, Hilda Attenboro & Harcourt Collett in the cast and also in Tom Moore at the Palace Theatre in Salisbury in 1921. In 1924 he and Florence performed in The Rising Generation for African Theatres and in July 1925 he acted in Baby Mine at His Majesty’s in Johannesburg. The following year he was part of a theatrical company that left for a tour of East Africa. After playing the historical figure of Piet Retief in De Voortrekkers (Harold M. Shaw/1916), he made a last film appearance in 1938 in the role of Paul Kruger in the English-language version of They Built a Nation (Joseph Albrecht & Andries A. Pienaar/1938), and was singled out by the Cape Times for a “sensitive and, at times, extremely moving portrayal”. When he died in East London in 1947, his profession was given as cinema manager.