A.V. Bramble

Biography

Portsmouth, 1880: a naval town’s brisk salt air greeted Albert Victor Bramble’s first cry. By twenty he had swapped dockside gusts for grease-paint, conquering West End boards in 1900 with a booming voice critics compared to a ship’s bell. Cameras soon beckoned: in 1914 he stepped before the B&C Film Company’s hand-cranked lenses, staying in silent frames until the Jazz Age faded. Two years later he traded acting for the quieter power of a megaphone, producing and steering pictures from the other side of the set. Twenty-five silent seasons drifted by before sound lured him back for a single swan song: as a weathered colonial in Outcast of the Islands (1951), he shared the humid screen with Ralph Richardson and Trevor Howard, closing his career as unexpectedly as it had begun.