Arthur B. Bell

Allardyce Nicoll, English Drama 1900-1930, lists Bell as the author of a few sketches produced at music-halls. The Hull Daily Mail, 10 October 1919, noted that ‘Mr Bell … has had considerable experience, both as an author and actor’. He certainly wrote ‘The Toils of Terror’ (mentioned in the Port Glasgow Express and the West Lothian Courier, both 20 September 1901, and revived by Moss’s Selected Players in 1922) and ‘A Light o’ Love’ (the play which occasioned the comment in the Hull Daily Mail and which was reviewed in The Stage, 16 October 1919, and The Era, 22 October 1919). Bell had a long career as an actor and producer. The Western Times, 26 September 1899, mentions Arthur B. Bell playing in the comedy Brother Officers at the Theatre Royal, Exeter. In 1917-1920 he acted in and produced plays for C. Watson Mill's repertory company, especially at the Alexandra Theatre, Hull; in 1920 he was with the Denville stock company; in 1921 he managed a stock company for twenty weeks at the Marina Theatre, South Shields; and he then spent four years touring with Moss’s Selected Players. The Stage, 2 August 1928, published four ‘in memoriam’ notices for Arthur B. Bell who died aged 62 on 24 July 1928 at 133 Denmark Street, Plaistow. One notice began: ‘In everlasting memory of our old comrade Arthur B. Bell on whom the curtain rang down for the last time, Tuesday, July 24, 1928. Will be sadly missed by his brother and sister artists’. One notice was inserted by ‘his sorrowing widow, son Douglas, and daughters’, and others by members of Moss’s Selected Players.