H. F. Maltby

Two published obituaries contain information about Maltby's life and career. The Birmingham Daily Post, 29 October 1963, wrote: ‘H. F. Maltby, who has died a month before his eighty-third birthday, was among the most prolific dramatists of his time. He wrote steadily until his last year, though none of his later work ranked with his early plays, the astringent The Laughter of Fools, The Rotters and A Temporary Gentleman. All were written in London during the first World War or just after it. Maltby is remembered too for the “book” of a musical comedy, For The Love of Mike. Also an actor and a cheerful raconteur, Maltby made his debut 64 years ago in The Sign of the Cross at Aberystwyth. He recalled playing six parts on tour for Ben Greet in a Drury Lane melodrama, The Great Ruby: they were a shop assistant, an ostler, a waiter, an officer’s batman, an Oxford University cricketer, and an officer of an Indian regiment, dark-faced and bearded. Unluckily, in spite of elaborate make-up, he was easily identifiable. “I have always found,” he said once, “that to be six feet tall, and broad in proportion, is a curse”'. The Stage, 31 October 1963, wrote: ‘Henry Francis Maltby, actor and dramatist, died in Hove on October 25, aged 82. After starting life as a bank clerk, he made his first appearance as an actor at Aberystwyth in 1899 with the Ben Greet Company in “The Sign of the Cross”. He learned his craft with several stock companies and with Miss Horniman and Osmond Tearle. It is as a dramatist that he will be remembered. His play, “The Rotters”, written in 1916, has been performed throughout the English-speaking world. Apart from many other plays, he wrote dialogue and scenarios for scores of films. He was last seen on the London stage as Ronald Austin in his own play, “The Shadow”, at the Playhouse in 1936. He published his reminiscences in 1950 under the title of “Ring Up The Curtain”'. Further details can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._F._Maltby, which mentions that Maltby served in France in the Great War as a bombardier, and https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0540763/bio.