OBITUARY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 92, 18 April 1940, Page 5

OBITUARY

MR. VICTOR BECK

Mr Victor Beck, who died in hospital yesterday morning, aged 74, had a career of ovei fifty years in association with the theatrical profession. He began conducting entertainment enterprises in 1879 and toured the British Isles, South Africa/India, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the South Sea Islands. He managed ,the. tour of one of the first barnstorming airmen in New Zealand, Mr. W. S. Scotland, in 1914. After a successful tour of the South Island, the machine, an old Caudron biplane, crashed and the North Island part of the programme was not fulfilled. Another form of entertainment in which Mr. Beck pioneered was the Edison phonograph and in> 1891 in association with MacMahon Bros, he toured New Zealand with the instrument which was not then available as household equipment. It was not much later that, still in association with MacMahon Bros., he introduced the motion picture to New Zealand.

He was also associated with many noted theatrical, concert, and opera companies, not to mention some famous vaudeville shows. The companies of George Reynold, J. C. Williamson, Alfred Dampier, Bland Holt, the Boucicaults, Nellie Stewart, Jennie Lee, and Carrie Swain were all "advanced" ty Mr. Beck and he also brought three magicians, including Carl Hertz, to New Zealand. Lecture tours he conducted included those of Annie Besant, Mark Twain, Clement Wragge, Haweis, Archibald Forbes, and Dr. Talmadge. He compiled the first New Zealand telephone directories in book form for Sir Joseph Ward. Recently, Mr. Beck had been living at Island Bay.