Daphne Pollard

 

 

Author's note: this was originally set out to be posted on Instagram, but I decided that it rightfully belongs on the blog. Here are a few paragraphs I compiled together on Daphne Pollard, an Australian comic, singer, actress, and dancer, who possessed one heck of a career. Daphne Pollard is best remembered for her comedic performances in the early motion picture era, but her stage career was even more memorable. Born Daphne Trott in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Australia, she joined the Pollard Lilliputian Opera Company at the age of six, where she adopted her stage name like many other members of the company, including Snub Pollard.  

 

Daphne and her sister Ivy toured their native homeland, Australia, New Zealand, and the US with their company since the late 1890s. As a child performer, she received excellent reviews for her work in opera comedies and was often described as 'cute' due to her diminutive stature. When she grew into adulthood, however, her 4'9 figure left her with only one role to play in show business...a comedienne. Luckily, she was already adept in that field.  

 

A singer, dancer, and actress -- comedienne particularly -- she had all the talents equipped for a prosperous theatrical venture. Daphne's burgeoning career in America began in 1901. 1908 was a triumphant year for her beginning with her Broadway debut in Eddie Foy's Mr. Hamlet of Broadway. Shortly after, she appeared in The Bohemian Girl at the Los Angeles Theatre, the Ziegfeld Follies, and in the Winter Garden Theatre shows. She would appear in the Follies again in 1914 in the Passing Show of that year alongside Marilyn Miller and many others. 

 

In London, she starred with George Robey in the lavishly staged revue, Zig-Zag! (1917), which ran for 648 performances at the Hippodrome and later moved to the Folies Bergère in Paris toward the end of the year. Daphne continued to participate in other successful London productions for the next few years until she returned to New York to perform in The Greenwich Village Follies, 1923-24. 

 

In the 1920s, after retaining an extensive body of work in the theatre, Mack Sennett cast her in several two-reel Sennett Girl Comedies; most notably with young Carole Lombard. Daphne went on to work for RKO, Vitaphone, and Universal Pictures and gained notoriety for her memorable performances in various Laurel and Hardy pictures. Her final film role would be in Kid Dynamite (1943). At the end of her cinematic journey, she returned full-time to the stage.  

On February 22, 1978, she passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 85.