Harry Vine

Harry Vine (b. Leyton, Essex, **/**/1889 – d. Rondebosch, Cape Town, 04/03/1960) was an actor.

Biography

British-born Harry Vine acted opposite Adele Fillis in the film version of H. De Vere Stacpoole’s novel The Vulture’s Prey (Dick Cruikshanks & William Bowden/1922). At one stage it was thought that he was a once-off actor, but ten years earlier, when he was engaged to Miss Fillis, they both appeared in I.D.B. (1912), made for the African Cinema Company. His full name was Harry Vine Gandar and he was the son of Henry J. Gandar, a senior manager with the Union-Castle Line, and his wife Jane Parks.

By 1912 he was in South Africa and in March 1913 he married Adele Vicenta Fillis, the daughter of Frank Fillis of circus fame. During World War I he served in East Africa with the 4th South African Horse, but by 1923 he was “in shipping”. In the 1920s his travelling records give his occupation as "shipping clerk", but by 1943 he is a "shipping manager". In 1935 he was appointed Honorary Consul of Norway based in Mombasa and the following year he became a member of the Kenya and Uganda Harbour Advisory Board. In 1939 this probably led to him being appointed to the Table Bay Harbour Advisory Board. He was also a director of the Mount Nelson Hotel and retired as manager of the Union-Castle Line in Cape Town in 1954. However, by December 1953 when he was travelling to England on the Carnarvon Castle, he was accompanied by Marjorie Gandar, so at some stage he and Adele must have been divorced. Harry and Adele’s son, born on 29 January 1915, was Laurence Gandar, the highly respected anti-apartheid editor of the Rand Daily Mail. (FO)