Elocutionist, manager, director, speech teacher.
Born in Melbourne but raised in Burnie, Tasmania, Harry Borradale is first identified with a juvenile production of Snow White in Balmain, Sydney in 1903. He initially came to prominence as a variety entertainer with Edward Branscombe's Dandies, performing with the Claude Dampier-led Red Dandies between 1914 and 1916. He then joined the newly reconstituted Orange Dandies, a troupe largely associated with Brisbane and regional Queensland up until ca. 1918.
After a season with the Scarlet Gaieties in Adelaide in 1919 he formed the Who's Who Costume Comedy Company. It undertook a tour of the southern states the company before settling in at the Palace Gardens, Brisbane in late 1920 as Harry Borradale's Sparklers. Comprising a changing selection of Brisbane, Australian and international acts, the troupe at various time included such prominent artists as George Edwards, Con Moreni, Joe Rox, Courtney Ford and Ivy Davis and George Sharratt. The company's repertoire typically involved an array popular songs, monologues, comedy sketches, novelty surprises, rollicking ragtime, artistic specialties, and occasional revusicals like The Toowong Cup and The Sultan of Sookemon.
From 1922 onwards Borradale turned his career towards the Brisbane community, teaching elocution for three or more decades and becoming actively involved in numerous facets of the Brisbane social and entertainment scenes. This included co-founding the Brisbane Repertory Society in 1922, directing programs for the Brisbane Shakespeare Society, the University of Queensland's Dramatic Society, the Dickens Fellowship among others and serving as an adjudicator for local and regional Queensland eisteddfods. He also performed regular recitals on stage and on radio, as well as for various community organisations between the 1920s and early 1950s, including social events put on by the Masons (for which he served as a lodge Grand Master in 1938). Borradale died in Brisbane in 1957.
[Source: Australian Variety Theatre Archive]
