George Tallis

Sir George Tallis (born October 28, 1869 in Callan , County Kilkenny , † August 15, 1948 in Wagga Wagga ) was an Australian theater entrepreneur.

Tallis worked as a local reporter for the Kilkenny presenter when he was sixteen . In 1886 he went to Australia and became an office messenger to the "triumvirate" James Cassius Williamson , George Musgrove and Arthur Garner . Williamson made him his private secretary, and soon he became the treasurer of the Theater Royal and the Princess Theaters . In 1898 he married the actress Amelia Young , a sister of the singer Florence Young .

Tallis had also had a financial stake in Williamson's theater company since 1896, and in 1904 Williamson formed a new company with him and Gustave Ramaciotti as partners. In 1910 this became JC Williamson Ltd ("The Firm") with the new shareholder Arthur Wigram Allan . After acquiring Ramacoitti's shares, Tallis held more than 60% of the company.

After Williamson's death in 1913, Tallis became director of the company and one of the most powerful figures in Australian theater. The First World War brought significant financial losses to the Australian theater, and in 1917 Australian theater entrepreneurs founded the Theatrical Proprietors 'and Managers' Association (now Live Performance Australia ), whose first president - alongside Vice-Presidents Hugh D. McIntosh and Benjamin Fuller - Tallis became .

In 1922, Tallis was raised to the nobility for his services to the Australian theater and his charitable work. At the height of his success he brought actors such as Oscar Asche , Marie Burke and Ada Reeve , the singers Nellie Melba and Gladys Moncrieff and the dancer Anna Pawlowa to Australia and brought American musicals and operettas by Gilbert and Sullivan to the stage. He also took part in the first Australian radio stations in the 1920s, and in 1926 he merged JC Williamson Films Ltd under the direction of Francis William Thring with Hoyts Pictures Ltd and opened more than seventy cinemas a. a. in Melbourne (1925), Perth (1927), Adelaide and Sydney (1928), Melbourne and Brisbane (1929).

In the late 1920s, Tellis met a series of setbacks: the lavish show production Show Boat was a failure, its broadcasting stations were taken over by ABC , Her Majesty's Theater in Melbourne burned down and Williamson's Tivoli went bankrupt. From 1931, Tellis retired from the board of directors of his company for several years for health reasons. In 1937 he sold the majority stake in JC Williamson's Inc to the New Zealand entrepreneur John McKenzie and retired.

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• Australian Dictionary of Biography - Tallis, Sir George
• Life Performance Australia - Hall of Fame - Sir George Tallis