podcastHarry Rickards 1843-1911

Rickards’ own appearances became less frequent. He toured interstate occasionally, leaving
the running of the Sydney Tivoli in the capable hands of Jack Leete. Rickards realised his future was as an entrepreneur. In 1895 Rickards leased the old Opera House in Bourke Street, Melbourne, making it the headquarters for his company in that city.

That same year Harry Rickards received the first challenge to his supremacy in Australian vaudeville. J.C. Williamson backed two Americans Henry Lee and James G. Rial, who imported a company of second-rung acts, which they called ‘The World’s Entertainers’. They met with only moderate success, so Rial announced that he was returning to the United States to recruit fresh talent – but wily Rickards sailed on an earlier ship. He made engagements up to two years ahead.’ This stratagem cost him some £30,000 – but it made him. His first big star was Charles Godfrey, who made famous the song ‘After the Ball is Over’.

Rickards’ early programs consisted of a minstrel show style ‘sit-around’, usually with local artists, followed after interval by a succession of top variety acts – comics, singers, ventriloquists, jugglers, acrobats, male and female impersonators, illusionists, even performing animals, from rats and cats and dogs to birds and even seals. Later Rickards dropped the minstrel ‘First Part’ and concentrated on straight vaudeville bills. He occasionally ventured into musical comedy, drama and pantomime, but usually with lesser success.

Rickards purchased the freehold of the Sydney Tivoli, but lost heavily when it was ravaged by fire. He rebuilt it immediately. He also commissioned the great theatre architect William Pitt to design a new Opera House for Melbourne. It opened in 1901, and was later renamed the Tivoli. Soon Rickards was shuffling acts around Australia. Under his astute management the Tivoli Circuit became one of the most respected, lucrative and powerful vaudeville enterprises in the world. Harry’s brother, wife, two daughters and several other family members were involved in the business at various times. The Rickards family lived in baronial splendour at Canonbury, the grand harbour-side mansion that Rickards built at Darling Point in 1905.