One of the greatest producers of melodrama in Australian theatre history, Bland (Joseph Thomas) Holt was born in England as the son of Clarence Holt, a theatre manager and actor who successfully toured Australia in the 1850s and 1860s. Bland spent much of his childhood in Australia and New Zealand and returned to Australia as a brilliant young comedian in 1876. He worked for Williamson and Musgrove, but also formed his own company and became famous for his opulent and sensational staging of (mostly English) comedy-melodramas. Sensations in Holt's production included live animals on stage, daring stunts, a bushfire, races and other spectacular effects. Although Holt had contacts with Australian writers, he drew mainly on foreign material, but he did engage for script writing Australian writers Edward Dyson and Henry Fletcher who assisted him in localising some English and American melodramas for Australian productions. The most famous melodrama staged by Holt was The Breaking of the Drought (1902) which was made into a film in 1920.
Holt and his wife Florence, an actor who had worked with him for 20 years, retired in 1909 due to health problems, but they continued to live comfortably in Melbourne for more than 30 years.
