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Fred Leslie

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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FRED LESLIE [FREDERICK HOBSON] (1855-1892), English actor, was born at Woolwich on the 1st of April 1855. He made his first stage appearance in London as Colonel Hardy in Paul Pry in 1878. He had a good voice, and in 1882 made a great hit as Rip Van Winkle in Planquette's opera of that name at the Comedy. In 1885 he appeared at the Gaiety as Jonathan Wild in H. P. Stephens and W. Yardley's burlesque Little Jack Sheppard. His extraordinary success in this part determined his subsequent career, and for some years he and Nelly Farren, with whom he played in perfect association, were the pillars of Gaiety burlesque. Leslie's "Don Caesar de Bazan" in Ruy Blas, or the Blasé Roué, was perhaps the most popular of his later parts. In all of them it was his own versatility and entertaining personality which formed the attraction; whether he sang, danced, whistled or "gagged," his performance was an unending flow of high spirits and ludicrous charm. Under the pseudonym of "A. C. Torr" he was acknowledged on the programmes as part-author of these burlesques, and while on occasion he acted in more serious comedy, for which he had undoubted capacity, his fame rests on his connexion with them. In 1881 and 1883 he played in America. He died on the 7th of December 1892.

See W. T. Vincent, Recollections of Fred Leslie (1894).