Life and Career
Terry was born in London, allegedly the illegitimate son of Feargus O'Connor, Irish Chartist leader and advocate of the land plan. The younger Terry made his debut in 1863 as Wormwood in The Lottery Ticket. He began his stage career in small companies in the provinces playing in Shakespeare with the young Henry Irving and sometimes in pieces employing his singing talents.
In 1867, Terry played for a season at London's Surrey Theatre in both comedy and drama. Between 1868 and 1875, he was the leading comedian at the Royal Strand Theatre in London. He reached the peak of his popularity after he joined John Hollingshead's company at the Gaiety Theatre, London in 1876, starring in the musical burlesques produced there during the next eight years. With Nellie Farren, Kate Vaughan and E. W. Royce, he made the fortune of this house, his eccentric acting and singing creating a style which had many imitators. Some of the roles in which he appeared there included Mephistopheles in Little Doctor Faust (1878).
In 1887 he went into management, opening Terry's Theatre, built on the site of the old Coal Hole Public House and music hall on the Strand. There, he produced and starred as Dick Phenyl in Arthur Wing Pinero's Sweet Lavender, which was perhaps his greatest success, running for 670 nights. He then revived Pinero's The Magistrate and The Times. In subsequent years, he was only occasionally seen at his own theatre and made many tours in the British provinces and in Australia, North and South America, South Africa and India. He returned to Terry's in 1890, producing and starring in King Kodak, The Blue Boar and several other notable productions. Terry brought four plays to New York in 1904. Off the stage, he was well known as an ardent Freemason and an indefatigable member of the councils of many charities and of public bodies.
Terry married twice; his first marriage was to Ellen Seitz in 1870. He married his second wife, Lady Florence Harris, widow of Augustus Harris, in 1904.
Terry died of neuritis at his home in Barnes, England, at the age of 68.
Read more about this topic: Edward O'Connor Terry
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of an extreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“Our whole life is startingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)