page_title: Oswald Yorke
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Oswald Yorke / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Oswald Yorke, left as Black Dog and Tim Murphy, right as Bill Bones
context_page_description: Oswald Yorke was a British character actor who had a near sixty-year career performing on both sides of the Atlantic.
context_section_description: Oswald Yorke first performed on stage in 1884 and later as a member of a company headed by British actor Sir Francis Robert Benson. Yorke’s London’s debut on 26 February 1889, at The Royal Strand Theatre, was followed early the next year by performances at London’s Vaudeville Theatre in such plays as School for Scandal, "A Pair of Lunatics" and "Meadow Sweet". Oswald Yorke would remain a principal player with the Vaudeville Theatre throughout  the balance of the 1890s.
  In 1896, Yorke toured America with Edward Smith Willard performing Henry Jones’ play The Rogue Comedy. The following year, he returned with Willard’s company with another of Jones’ works, The Physician. In October 1900, he played an attaché with the French Embassy in The Eaglett, an adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s L’Aiglon by Louis Napoleon Parker that starred Maude Adams. By the next year, Yorke became associated with the Empire Theatre on Broadway, first appearing as Lieutenant Sir Walter Mannering opposite John Drew and Guy Standing in Roger Marshall’s The Second in Command. Yorke stayed with Empire Theatre, then under the management of Charles Frohman, for a number of seasons. He went on to play Bill Walker in  George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara with his actress wife Annie Russell at the Court Theatre in London and Broadway’s New Theatre, and later as Malvolio at the Century Theatre in Shakespeare’s The Twelfth Night.
  Over the remainder of his life, the balance of Yorke’s career was spent in New York. He played in at least thirty-one Broadway productions between 1900 and 1938. Yorke was Black Dog in a 1915 adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; Mr. Breen in the 1931 comedy "The Social Register" and Carter Hibbarb in George S. Kaufman’s 1938 success, First Lady. Yorke’s last Broadway performance, Justice Willis, came in the 1938 hit Oscar Wilde.
  During World War I, Yorke was put in charge of the entertainment of soldiers attached to the American Expeditionary Force in France. He was a member of The Lambs in New York and The Savage Club in London.
caption: Ooswald Yorke (left) as Black Dog
   with Bill Bones (Tim Murphy)
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