Harvey Braban

(b. Brighton, Sussex, 19/05/1883 - d. Kensington, London, **/**/1943). Actor. Harvey Braban, born George William Chapman, was a British actor active on stage, radio and in film over nearly 40 years. He featured both in London's West End and on Broadway, appearing in major theatres such as Covent Garden, Drury Lane and the Savoy. He made his first stage appearance in 1905 with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and subsequently toured with Frank Benson. In 1910, at the first Stratford-upon-Avon Summer Shakespeare Festival, he played Florizel in The Winter’s Tale and in New York in 1912 he played Horatio in Hamlet.

He had just completed a film role in The Romany (1922) with Victor McLachlen when, in November of that year, he came to South Africa at short notice to take the part of the villain "Simon Macquart" opposite Molly Adair in Joseph Albrecht’s film adaptation of The Reef of Stars (1923), based on the novel by H. De Vere Stacpoole. He only stayed for a short while and by the end of March the following year he was back in England. Later that year he travelled to New York with Sir John Martin-Harvey and acted in Oedipus Rex, produced by Max Reinhardt.

The IMDb lists more than 40 movies for him, with his first role in Maurice Elvey's A Question of Trust (1920). He frequently played authority figures, including the Chief Inspector in Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929), which is regarded as Britain’s first talking picture. His last film appearance was as Lord Salisbury in Herbert Wilcox’s Sixty Glorious Years (1938), but he also acted in a number of the BBC’s earliest television plays, including a version of Karel Capek’s R.U.R. (1938), Sheridan's The Rivals (1938) and Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1939). In addition he frequently appeared in musicals broadcast by BBC Radio, including Blue Eyes (1940) with Anne Ziegler. He married Marjorie Liddard in 1930 and their son Roger (b. 1931) also became an actor. (FO)