Masks and Faces: The Life and Career of Harry Braham

by Janet Muir

Overview

Everyone on deck! All hands on deck! Fire! Fire! Bring the hose quick! As the steamship lurched in the heavy seas, Harry Braham grabbed what clothes he could and struggled with the other terrified passengers to climb the ladders. On deck, with the rain lashing down and the wind howling, he gripped the rails of the ship tightly, trying to stay upright. With horror he saw the flames leaping high in the hold and he thought his time had come. It was June 1891. A music-hall star famous for his comic songs and his ability to ‘pull mugs’, Harry - a seasoned traveler - was on his way from New York to his home in London, after a busy season appearing in a play by W H Crane. As the crew prepared the lifeboats, Harry looked back at his life - his apprenticeship with the Royal Christy Minstrels, his acclaimed tours of Australia and the USA, and his marriage to the vivacious but temperamental singer Lizzie Watson. Was this to be the end? In this well-researched and lively biography, full of fascinating social background, Janet Muir (Harry Braham’s great-great-niece) brings to life the world of the Victorian music-hall and traces Harry’s career from minstrelsy through to ‘legitimate’ theatre and finally to moving pictures, where he landed a part in D W Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781909183544
Publisher:	Andrews UK
Publication date:	06/26/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Janet Muir has been a civil servant for 30 years and since 2005 has also volunteered in the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall in Glasgow, the oldest music hall in the world where Stan Laurel made his debut, and currently co-ordinates its events programme. Born in 1963 as part of a military family, she has lived in Singapore, Germany, England and the Highlands before settling in Glasgow in 1982. A chance remark about a little-known ancestor led her on a voyage of discovery, to her first book, Masks and Faces: the Life and Career of Harry Braham, which developed from winning a writing competition in 2011.