Frederick Pope Stamper (20 November 1877 – 12 November 1950), usually credited as F. Pope Stamper or F. Pope-Stamper, less often as Pope Stamper, was an English stage and film actor who appeared mostly in Edwardian musical comedy.
Born at Hammersmith in 1877,[1] Stamper was a stage actor both before and after appearing in silent movies. He had little screen work after the arrival of the "talkies".
In 1902, at Lambeth, he married Daisy Leahy,[2] an Irish chorus girl and actress who used the stage name of Daisy Le Hay.[3]
In 1907 he appeared in the musical comedy Miss Hook of Holland at the Prince of Wales Theatre, creating the role of the Bandmaster; the musical enjoyed a run of 462 performances.[4][5] In 1911 he appeared in a Charles Frohman production of The Siren at the Knickerbocker Theatre on Broadway, and the same year he played Captain Charteris in A Quiet Girl, at New York's Park Theatre, with a run of 240 performances.[6]
Stamper was a good golfer, but while in New York with a leading role in the Broadway production of The Dollar Princess, he played a round of golf with a Miss Melrose at the Dunwoodie Country Club, in Yonkers, injured the lady by slicing a drive, and faced a claim which was reported as a notable case on the law of torts.[7]
Stamper had a brother, Charles William Stamper, who was motor engineer to King Edward VII, and a son, Henry Lionel Pope Stamper (1906–1985), who enraged his father by abandoning a job his father had got for him in the City of London to become an unsuccessful repertory actor. His granddaughter Rosemary Stamper is the mother of the comedian Jack Dee.[8]
Selected films edit
- The Girl from the Sky (1914): Harold Teale (as Pope Stamper)
- Ghosts (1914): The Man (as Pope Stamper)
- The Divine Gift (1918): Tristan
- The Lackey and the Lady (1919): Garrett Woodruffe
- Inheritance (1920): Walter Clifford
- The Pride of the Fancy (1920): Oswald Gordon[9]
- A Master of Craft (1922): Mate
- The Musical Beauty Shop (short film, 1930): John
- The Stickpin (short film, 1933): Simms
Notes edit
- ^ "Stamper, Frederick Pope", in Register of Births for the Fulham registration district, Oct-Dec 1877, volume 1a, p. 248
- ^ "Stamper, Frederick Pope", in Register of Marriages for the Lambeth registration district, Aug-Sept 1902, volume 1d, p. 846
- ^ Jack Dee, Thanks for Nothing (Doubleday, 2010), p. 161
- ^ Johnson, Colin M. Miss Hook of Holland cast list, The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, 2004, accessed 31 March 2018
- ^ Cannon, John. "Isabel Jay", Gilbert and Sullivan News, The Gilbert and Sullivan Society (London), Vol. V, No. 10, Spring 2016, pp. 14–17
- ^ Green, Stanley. Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre, p. 344
- ^ Wigmore, John Henry. Select Cases on the Law of Torts: With Notes, and a Summary of Principles, Volume 2, p. 910
- ^ Dee (2010), pp. 133–134, 161, 171
- ^ Variety Film Reviews 1921-1925 (1983), p. 32