Alderson Burrell Horne

Alderson Burrell Horne (1863–1953) was a British theatre director, under the pseudonym Anmer Hall.[1]

Life

He was the son of Edgar Horne (1820–1905), and younger brother of William Edgar Horne;[2] and was educated at Westminster School from 1876 to 1880.[3] He entered Pembroke College, Oxford in 1884.[4]

Horne was a solicitor, at 50 Lincoln's Inn Fields.[5] He had a large house, Ditton Place, built near Balcombe, Sussex, in 1904, with a formal garden by Reginald Blomfield.[6][7] In 1914 he was chairman of Morib Plantations, Ltd.[8]

Ditton Place, now a school, in 2009

Beginning an involvement with theatre, initially as a backer, Horne ultimately became an actor-manager. He supported Johnston Forbes-Robertson in 1905 at the Scala Theatre, which was enlarged by F. T. Verity and continued to 1911, when it became a cinema.[3][9] Again, in 1911, he supported John Eugene Vedrenne and Dennis Eadie, who took over the Royalty Theatre.[3] He requested a curtain raiser from his friend A. A. Milne, around the beginning of 1914.[10]

During World War I, Horne was involved in entertainments for the troops, organised with Lena Ashwell and the YMCA.[3] He supported Nigel Playfair's takeover in 1918 of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, with Arnold Bennett.[11]

Horne in 1925 took over management of the Festival Theatre of the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club. He brought in Tyrone Guthrie as resident director.[12] That year, the company had a run of three weeks for James Bernard Fagan at the Oxford Playhouse, playing Ibsen, Somerset Maugham and Roland Pertwee.[13]

The licensee of the Westminster Theatre from 1931 to 1947, Horne took leading roles in productions there, under the stage name Waldo Wright.[3][14] He brought from Cambridge a company including Robert Eddison, Evan John, Flora Robson and Gillian Scaife. Early in his tenure at the Westminster, the overlapping company of the Group Theatre of London emerged, with outsiders such as Rupert Doone and Ormerod Greenwood.[15] Horne directed The Dance of Death by W. H. Auden in its October 1935 production by the Group Theatre.[16]

The Westminster Theatre was bought from Horne in 1946 by the Westminster Memorial Trust, who ran it on behalf of Moral Re-Armament.[17] He died on 22 December 1953.[18]

Family

Horne married in 1887 Maud Porter, daughter of Frederick William Porter of Moyle Tower, Hythe. They had a son David Edgar Alderson Horne, known as an actor, and a daughter Janet Maud.[2] Maud, who died in 1952, was a councillor for the St James ward in London, from 1925 to 1949.[19]

Horne was married a second time, to Gillian Scaife, who survived him.[20] She had children Christopher Scaife and Susan Scaife, mother of Sally Flemington.[21][22]

Notes
  1. "Horne, Alderson Burrell : Who Was Who - oi". oxfordindex.oup.com.
  2. "The Pedigree Register". London : published by the editor.
  3. "The Elizabethan". March 1954. p. 92.
  4. Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "Horne, Alderson Burrell" . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
  5. "Boyle's fashionable court & country guide, and town visiting directory". London, Court Guide Office. 1903. p. 169.
  6. Historic England. "Ditton Place including attached terrace wall and sandstone wall to west, Ansty and Staplefield (1096143)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  7. Bingham, Neil (1993). "Two letters from Percy E. Newton to John Summerson". Architectural History. 36: 159–167. doi:10.2307/1568589. JSTOR 1568589. S2CID 195017348.
  8. The Directory of Directors for ...: A List of the Directors of the Joint Stock Companies of the United Kingdom and the Companies with which They are Concerned, with Such Other Particulars as are Considered to be of Use and Interest. Thomas Skinner & Company. 1914. p. 531.
  9. Hibbert, Christopher; Weinreb, Ben; Keay, John; Keay, Julia (2011). The London Encyclopaedia (3rd ed.). Pan Macmillan. p. 826. ISBN 978-0-230-73878-2.
  10. Thwaite, Ann (2014). A. A. Milne: His Life. Pan Macmillan. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-4472-5308-2.
  11. Hartnoll, Phyllis (1957). The Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Oxford University Press. p. 487.
  12. Lorch, Jennifer (2005). Pirandello:Six Characters in Search of an Author. Cambridge University Press. pp. 125–6. ISBN 978-0-521-64151-7.
  13. Chapman, Don (2008). Oxford Playhouse: High and Low Drama in a University City. Univ of Hertfordshire Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-902806-87-7.
  14. "Theatre and Music Hall Licensees – individuals – Society for Theatre Research". www.str.org.uk.
  15. Sidnell, Michael J. "Group Theatre of London (act. 1932–1939)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/107544. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  16. Wearing, J. P. (2014). The London Stage 1930-1939: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 470. ISBN 978-0-8108-9304-7.
  17. Belden, Kenneth David (1965). The Story of the Westminster Theatre. Westminster Productions. p. 26.
  18. Who was who: A Companion to Who's Who, Containing the Biographies of Those who Died During the Period. A. & C. Black. 1961. p. 543.
  19. "Westminster News, Autumn 2010" (PDF).
  20. Belden, Kenneth David (1965). The Story of the Westminster Theatre. Westminster Productions. p. 17.
  21. Cornwell, Paul (2004). Only by Failure: The Many Faces of the Impossible Life of Terence Gray. Salt. p. 178. ISBN 978-1-84471-050-8.
  22. Coveney, Michael (11 May 2007). "Obituary: Sally Flemington". The Guardian.
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