Showbiz life among the stars
Palmerston North’s slim, bespectacled and impeccably dressed Harry Muller knew a top vaudeville act when he saw one.
‘He is frequently mistaken for President Woodrow Wilson – not because of any airs he assumed when travelling, mind you, because he’s dinkum Australian, or rather, New Zealand, and the cut of his clothes is more Castlereagh St than Broadway.
‘‘He began his theatrical activities in Palmerston North . . . His career was chequered and frequently cheque-less, but he was good for anything where you could charge money at the door. In a business capacity he has been identified with many celebrities . . . Hobbies: Work. Vices: Surfing.’’
It was February 17, 1924, and the Sydney Truth newspaper was writing about Harry Patrick Muller, a slim, bespectacled, impeccably suited 40-year-old.
He did look like a politician, or maybe a bank manager. But Muller was a famous theatrical manager with a track record of choosing the greatest musical stars for lucrative touring shows in Australasia and the United States.
The Sydney article noted that Muller was often jokingly referred to as ‘‘the King’s representative’’ because of his association with the King’s Theatre, Adelaide. This was just one theatre of many well known to him.
After-hours craft
Muller was born in Palmerston North in 1884.
His mother, Margaret Hebden, was married twice. Harry and his brother Charles Muller were sons of her first marriage, and from her second, he acquired a stepbrother and two stepsisters, Queenie and Dolly Hebden, who would become professional actresses.
After leaving school, Harry Muller spent six years in a lawyer’s office, but after hours he headed for the Theatre Royal in Coleman Place, where, as the Manawatu¯ Standard later noted, ‘‘he was known to all the leading thespians and others who appeared at that place on occasions’’.
In the early 1900s, Muller plunged into the secretaryship of the Manawatu¯ Rugby Football Union and the Manawatu¯ Coursing Club, managed local community concerts, handled arrangements for the municipal band’s monster bazaar and various other public occasions, and was secretary of the A and P Society for a while.
The dusty lawyer’s office was left behind when Muller became official business manager of the Theatre Royal and advance agent for touring professional theatre companies. One of these was the Percy R Dix Star Company – a famous Australian group specialising in ‘‘cheap, wholesome and refined’’ vaudeville.
On March 4, 1905, he advertised in the Standard for ‘‘30 stalwart men to act as supers in the Anderson Company’s production, Tuesday and Wednesday’’.
When the town’s grand Opera House was opened in 1906, the outgoing Muller was the logical choice for its manager.
Meanwhile, he had fallen in love with a charming New Zealand actress, Dorothy Sheath, known onstage as Miss Dorothy Cope. They were married on Tuesday November 24, 1908, at All Saints Church in Kilbirnie, Wellington. Thirteen months later, their son Ron was born.
Percy Dix had been impressed with Muller’s competence and soon sent for him to become business manager of a theatre he owned in Wellington.
Vaudeville appreciation
During this time Muller increased his show business knowledge until he was, in the words of a reporter, ‘‘sound in every department of the game’’.
When the Dix theatre was closed by order of the fire authorities, Muller was noticed by the powerful Australian theatre entrepreneurs, Ben and John Fuller, who offered him a job.
The Mullers promptly auctioned off their Palmerston North house and everything in it.
No sooner had the family settled in Sydney, with Muller as manager of the grand Opera House, than the Fullers sent him to San Francisco, in the US, to secure new acts for their circuit.
There, he gained a new appreciation of the American style of vaudeville, and booked new star turns for Australia and New Zealand.
Several years passed, and then Muller was off again, to take up an offer with the Tivoli Theatres circuit.
A theatrical journal, Everyone’s, summed him up in a 1924 article entitled ‘‘From call boy to general manager’’.
It read: ‘‘Due to his pleasing personality, and a happy knack of taking things up with every performer who has a grievance, Harry Muller is generally well liked and respected.
‘‘He is a most attentive business manager, a very zealous worker and always out to do his best for the company he represents.
‘‘In his less strenuous moments, he is a most entertaining raconteur, whose stories deal mostly with actors and performers . . . He has an innumerable store of anecdotes and, when he feels like it, is a very brilliant entertainer.’’
No duds on this roster
However, there was much more, career-wise, to come, in the shape of James Cassius Williamson, the theatrical giant behind the wildly popular J C Williamson touring companies.
Muller was appointed a manager of the American side of The Firm, as the company was known, and he, Dorothy and Ron went to San Francisco, where they would live for the next five years.
Interviewed by the Horowhenua Chronicle while on a holiday back in New Zealand, Dorothy said she preferred her own country to the US. Clothes and shoes were cheaper there, but living costs were high and everyone used ‘‘time payment’’ for everything.
The women were well-dressed, she said, but heavily made-up. ‘‘It was refreshing [in New Zealand] to see fresh-complexioned women.’’
Soon, however, the muchtravelled family would be back on home turf again. With the death of Bert Royle, long-time general manager of JC Williamson, Muller had been promoted to one of the most responsible positions in the organisation.
Ten years later, towards the end of his career, Muller was paid an effusive compliment from Jack Musgrove in the Australian magazine Film Weekly. Musgrove was a former manager of Harry Musgrove Tivoli Theatres and the vaudeville side of Williamsontait Ltd.
He called Muller ‘‘one of the best buyers of talent that ever represented Australia abroad . . . He’s had less failures than any other man ever entrusted with such ticklish work. I don’t think he ever picked a dud.’’