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Collection Data
- Description
- Actor, writer, director, vaudevillian, and broadcaster, Bert Bertram began acting as a teenager in his native Australia. He emigrated to the United States in 1923 with his first wife, the actress and dancer, Rubee Raymond, and enjoyed a long career on stage, film, radio and television. The scrapbooks contain photographs and clippings documenting the acting careers of Bertram and Raymond.
- Names
- Bertram, Bert, 1893-1991 (Creator)
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1915 - 1984 (Approximate)
- Library locations
- Billy Rose Theatre Division
- Shelf locator: *T-Mss 1994-022
- Topics
- Theater -- Australia
- Theater -- United States
- Vaudeville -- Australia
- Vaudeville -- United States
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Theater and the war
- Bertram, Bert, 1893-1991
- Crabtree, Paul
- Raymond, Rubee, -1974
- Bert Bertram Players
- Royal Poinciana Playhouse (Palm Beach, Fla.)
- Genres
- Scrapbooks
- Clippings
- Photographs
- Notes
- Content: .75 lin. ft. (3 volumes)
- Biographical/historical: Bert Bertram was born Arthur Bertram on Christmas Day, 1893, in Peterborough, Australia and claimed he ran away from school to go on the stage. He had his first acting success as a teenager in a long-running comedy, On Our Selection, for the Australian impresario, Bert Bailey, and went on to play many other roles in vaudeville for Bailey and other managers. Bertram married actress and dancer Rubee Raymond (later known as Raymon) and the two often performed together. They emigrated to the United States in 1923 and toured in their song and dance act.
During the Depression, Bertram produced and acted in the Bert Bertram Players, a stock company that performed under a tent in Augusta, Georgia, and then created and directed a radio acting company, Theater of the Air. He was also a dancing instructor at his own Bertram Studios, a dancing school in Augusta, and president of the Georgia Dancing Masters Association in 1938. During World War II Bertram produced, directed and played a leading role in Civilians in Action, a radio play in Augusta in 1942, and managed and played in USO companies in Europe. In 1950 he was in France as a correspondent for New England radio stations and appeared in a film, How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn.
Bertram often appeared as a character actor on stage, film and television, playing beside Tallulah Bankhead, Judith Anderson, Billie Burke, Charlton Heston, and others. He also acted, directed and taught at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse, Palm Beach, Florida, ca. 1954-1959. In his later years, he lived in Hampton Bays, New York and worked as a reporter for the Long Island News-Review, where he had a column, "East End Wanderings". He retired in 1981 and died in 1991, at the age of 97.
Bertram's only child, Arthur, was born in 1917, became an actor and dancer, and died in World War II. His first wife died in 1974; his second wife, Marion Tomanek Bertram, survived him.
- Content: The collection consists of three scrapbooks; one of photographs is mostly of Bertram on the stage, and two, primarily clippings of reviews, document the acting careers of Bert Bertram and his wife Rubee Raymond. The material in the scrapbooks covers Australian vaudeville, the Bert Bertram Players, Civilians in Action, productions at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse and elsewhere, dance instruction in Georgia, and the Bertrams' travels to France and Australia. It is not chronological. The collection also contains a few letters, programs and brochures.
- Physical Description
- Extent: .75 lin. ft. (3 volumes)
- Type of Resource
- Still image
- Text
- Identifiers
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b11992535
- MSS Unit ID: 21322
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): db3ed6c0-c608-012f-877b-58d385a7bc34
