Hugh D. McIntosh

Hugh Donald "Huge Deal" McIntosh (born September 10, 1876 in Sydney , † February 2, 1942 in London ) was an Australian sports promoter, newspaper publisher and theater entrepreneur.

McIntosh was the son of a Scottish police officer who died when he was four years old, leaving the family impoverished. He briefly attended the Marist Brothers' St Mary's Cathedral School , ran away with a wandering tinker at the age of seven and was a prospector in Broken Hill. Around 1886 he returned to Sydney and worked there as a doctor's assistant. He is also said to have attended evening school.

At the beginning of the 1890s he worked as a farm worker, train driver and baker boy. In 1893 he was a stage singer and choir singer in Maggie Moore's pantomime Sinbad the Sailor in Melbourne. Then was a kitchen salesman and waiter in Sydney and in 1897 married the drawing teacher Marion Catherine Elizabeth Backhouse . In 1899 he took over a catering company with which he supplied, among other things, races and prize fighters in the Masonic Hall in North Sydney. There he also ran a gym and promoted some boxers.

From 1900 to 01 McIntosh was a cross cyclist, and from 1903 to 1907 he was secretary of the League of Wheelmen of New South Wales . At the beginning of this time he brought the cyclist Major Taylor to the Sydney Thousand Competition . The events surrounding this race are the subject of the film Tracks of Glory , in which McIntosh is played by Richard Roxburgh . In 1906, McIntosh became caterer for Charlotte Sargent's Company . Having made a fortune, he bought several hotels and moved to Park Street, but his candidacy for city council failed.

When the Great White Fleet visited Sydney in 1908 , McIntosh organized a match between world heavyweight boxing champion Tommy Burns and Australian Bill Squires in an open-air stadium hastily built in Rushcutters Bay . He then convinced Burns to take on Jack Johnson at Sydney Stadium on Boxing Day . He recorded the fight on film and performed it in 1909 with great financial success in Europe and the USA. On the occasion, he was nicknamed the Huge Deal . He then promoted Bob Fitzsimmons and John Wren in Australia and organized competitions in London and Paris in 1910.

In 1911 he returned to Australia to begin a career as a variety producer. He took over Harry Rickard's Australian Tivoli theater chain for £ 100,000 and opened other Tivoli in Adelaide and Brisbane, the latter based on designs by New Zealand architect Henry White . He brought in artists from overseas such as Ada Reeve , WC Fields and Maud Allan , brought ragtime and tango to Australia and promoted the career of actress Vera Pearce , a niece of future Prime Minister Harold Holt . Another attempt to gain a foothold in politics with the help of his friends WM Hughes and William A. Holman was again unsuccessful, but in 1915 he became local president of the British Empire League , and in 1917 he was finally elected to the Legislative Council .

With the outbreak of World War I, importing artists from overseas became virtually impossible, and McIntosh concentrated on revues by his friends Charles B. Cochran and Florenz Ziegfeld . The The Tivoli Follies were enormously successful and toured two and a half years by Australia and New Zealand. In 1917 he was one of the founders of the Theatrical Proprietors 'and Managers' Association (now Live Performance Australia ), of which he and Ben Fuller became vice-presidents .

From 1917 he turned to musical revues and musicals. With The Lilac Domino and Chu Chin Chow , he staged two of the most successful operettas of the time in 1919. The latter, in which camels, donkeys, and pigeons appeared on stage, was written by Oscar Asche , and Maggie Moore and Nellie Stewart participated in the production.

In 1916, McIntosh bought a controlling stake in the Sunday Times Company , which also published the Referee and other magazines. He became President of the Weekly Newspapers' Association of New South Wales and a member of the Empire Parliamentary Association and the Royal Australian Historical Society . In 1921 he retired from the theater business, leaving his show productions to James Cassius Williamson and the Tivoli theaters to other entrepreneurs.

In the following years he led an extensive life between Australia and England, tried his hand at film production with little success and ran in vain for a seat in the House of Commons . During this time he got increasingly into financial difficulties. In 1927 he sold the Sunday Times , which made losses, and in 1928 took over the Tivoli Theater in Sydney, where he starred Joe Lawman ( Toni Lamond's father ), Roy Rene , Robert Helpmann , Don Bradman , Nellie Stewart and others. Nevertheless, he had to close the house bankrupt in 1930. In 1932 his holdings were finally sequestered and he lost his seat on the Legislative Council .

He then tried again as a boxing promoter (with the young talent Ambrose Palmer ), organized a fight between Fred Henneberry and Ron Richards and, after the death of the entertainer Stuart Dawson, ran his Villa Bon Accord as a guest house. In 1934 he traveled to England with his wife. There he opened the Black and White Milk Bar on Fleet Street in London in 1935 , which he expanded into a successful chain in Great Britain. In 1938 this company also ended in financial collapse, so that McIntosh died practically penniless in 1942.

literature

• Frank van Straten: Huge Deal - The Fortunes and Follies of Hugh D McIntosh , Thomas C Lothian Pty Ltd, South Melbourne 2004, ISBN 0734406800

swell

• Australian Dictionary of Biography - McIntosh, Hugh Donald
• Live Performance Australia - Hall of Fame - Hugh D. McIntosh
• AusStage - Hugh D McIntosh