page_title: Albert Wilhelm Anton Brandon-Cremer
section_title: New Zealand
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Wilhelm Anton Brandon-Cremer / New Zealand
caption_attribution_description: English: Logo representing the AWA Brandon-Cremer theatrical company, 1910
context_page_description: Albert Wilhelm Anton Brandon-Cremer, was a key player in the history of the New Zealand and Australian theatre industry from 1896 to the mid-1950s. From his start as an actor in Auckland to his heyday in the early 1900s as a company manager and owner, he toured virtually every town in Australasia with the Brandon-Cremer Players. Brandon-Cremer has the distinction of a record 54 weeks of non-stop stage production in 1917. He also produced at least two early silent films. His directorial debut was the first silent movie travelogue ever shot in Tasmania in 1927. His daughter, Gertrude Brandon-Cremer, was a child star of the stage during the first 20 years of the 20th century and his son, Ernest Gustav Brandon-Cremer, was a well-known adventurer and documentary film maker. The family name generated thousands of newspaper articles over the course of Albert's life.
  In Adelaide, 1952, Brandon-Cremer was once introduced in an interview by Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio with "its really, um… rather difficult to think of any theatre movement in Australia, in the total history of the Australian theatre, without thinking of you".
context_section_description: At the age of 19, Albert departed England for a new life in New Zealand aboard the SS Rangatiki on 22 August 1891, arriving in Wellington, New Zealand, on 22 December 1891. By early 1892, he was working as a farmhand at the Frimley Sheep Station, outside Wellington. His acting career began shortly after, while working with the Vivian Theatrical Co., then the Duncan Theatrical Co., before joining the Cowan & Amy Vaughan Amazon Co.—all in quick succession. The first mention of Albert working in New Zealand was for the Amy Vaughn Company in July 1892.
  On 7 January 1893, while touring New Zealand, in the small booming gold mining town of Kumara on New Zealand's South Island, Albert married Annie Beaton, stage name Annie Wyniard, an opera singer. The couple registered the births of three children - Dorothy Saretta, born 1893; Ernest Gustav, 1895; and Leonore Frances, 1896. During this time Albert was managing the Frances Ross Dramatic Company.
  In August 1897 Albert left for London to find work. London news clippings from February to June 1898 show that Albert was on stage in London. Albert returned to New Zealand in September 1898; in the same year he began touring there with the Robert Henry Theatrical Company.
caption: Logo representing the A Brandon-Cremer theatrical company, 1910
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