Frank Wilson

Biography

Frank Wilson first stepped into the spotlight as an actor–opera singer, his resonant bass-baritone landing him a coveted place with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1900. Over the next seven seasons he gave voice to a parade of Gilbert-and-Sullivan stalwarts: the silver-tongued Counsel in Trial by Jury, the ink-stained Notary in The Sorcerer, Bobstay or Corcoran on the quarterdeck of HMS Pinafore, the swaggering Pirate King (or his loyal lieutenant Samuel) in Pirates, the buttoned-up Colonel in Patience, Mountararat or Private Willis amid the fairies of Iolanthe, Hildebrand or Arac in the topsy-turvy realm of Princess Ida, the imperious Mikado himself, Meryll or Sir Richard in the shadowed Tower of Yeomen, the gondolier Giuseppe, and finally the financier Mr Goldbury in Utopia, Ltd. When he left the company in 1907, the curtain barely had time to fall before the camera began to turn. By 1910 Wilson had traded proscenium arches for flickering celluloid, writing, directing, and appearing on-screen with equal verve. Even a return to D’Oyly Carte between 1911 and 1916 could not lure him away from the new medium for long; thereafter he devoted nearly all his inventiveness to the world of moving pictures, letting the greasepaint fade while the projector whirred.