FROM NAVY TO STAGE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1262, 25 June 1914, Page 3

FROM NAVY TO STAGE.

Mr. Frank Harvey, whose acting of the role of Joe Allan, the burglar who does twenty years in “Sealed Orders,” was just before coming to Australia appearing at the Lyceum, London, in the same productions as Miss Tittell Brune. “Miss Brune,” he says, “often spoke of Australia and how she looked forward to revisiting the country. She is very popular with Lyceum audiences. Her performance in the namepart of ‘Nell Gwynne’ scored a big hit. I was cast as Fairfax, her lover, in that. I also played Robin Hood in ‘lvanhoe,’ Miss Brune playing Rebecca., and I was Cecil Barclay in ‘Under Two Flags,’ .she, of course, being Cigarette. “Most people experience great difficulty in getting a part when they want to go on the stage,” reflected Mr. Harvey. “I must have been an exception to the rule. The first engagement I got they gave me five parts to play. The audience received me with a roar of laughter at every entrance, on account of recognising me from the last part. In the first act I was a flunkey, in the second a general who was speedily murdered, in the third a gendame who arrested the murderer, in the fourth I was reincarnated as the flunkey, to the great joy of the house. “Up to ten years ago I was at the Naval College at Portsmourth. The idea that I was to be one of the bulwarks of Empire. It seems quite remarkable, now I look back, that not one of the three who slept in my dormitory ever went into the service. One died from typhoid immediately on passing out, the second slipped on the quarter-deck immediately he went on board his ship, and received injuries incapacitating him for life. He is now a coal expert in Wales for the navy. I failed in the eyesight test. “They were great days, though. I remember one day at Portsmouth there was a very willing fight between two dockers. We inveigled them to the dry moat of an old fort, and they went at it with murder in their hearts. One Of the officers of the engineers was directing the hostilities, but he was interruped every now and again by a square-set who wanted to referee. At last the officer said, ‘lf you don’t take your crimson self out of the way I’ll punch you.’ ‘lf you do,’ the other said, ‘l’ll stop the fight. My name is Fisher.’ It was Admiral Fisher —Jack Fisher. He refereed the fight from that on. “We had a born strategist at the college. I wouldn’t be surprised if he become a sea lord in time. One instance of his mastery of a difficult, situation was shown when five of us boys felt like a feed, and could only muster eighteen pence among us. There was an eating shop off the Hard kept by an - Italian. It was a gloomy, dingy place, lit by an old lamp and candles. The dago’s rule was that a boy could eat as much for eighteen pence as~he could get away with at a sitting. Our master strategist went in first, had his fill, got out the window, and was replaced by a second. He ate to repletion and slid through the window, to be replaced in turn. We all got our fill this way. The Italian still tells —if he is there to-day—of the boy with the biggest stomach in the wide world.”