Joseph W. Herbert

Joseph William Herbert (27 November 1863–18 February 1923) was a British-born American director, silent-film actor, singer and dramatist notable for being the first person to play Ko-Ko in America in a pirate production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado before joining D'Oyly Carte Opera Company touring companies across America (1885–1890).

Early career Herbert was born in Liverpool in 1863 to Irish parents and emigrated to America in 1876 aged 13, living in Chicago where, during his college days, he joined the local Church Choir Company as an amateur chorister. He deputised for a professional comedian who failed to show to play the Lord Chancellor in the company’s production of Iolanthe and when C. D. Hess reformed the company as the Acme Opera Company and sent it on the road (1884) as a professional musical stock company, Herbert went with it. He subsequently played the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, Gobo in Les cloches de Corneville, appeared in Fatinitza, The Pirates of Penzance and Patience, played Népomuc in La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein and Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore, etc, through the tour and, following the Acme troupe’s collapse, played with a stuck-together season of a stuck-together company in New Orleans.

In his latter years Herbert moved into the media of film, appearing in at least six silent films between 1917 and 1919 and wrote lyrics for The Top o' th' World (1907–1908). He authored a musical play The Prince of Borneo, which was staged in three different versions in three different continents under three different titles in search of success until it eventually emerged in 1909 as The Beauty Spot to music by Reginald De Koven. He wrote The Lamb of Delft (1911); The Duchess (1911); supplied the text for the Al Jolson vehicle The Honeymoon Express (1913); wrote lyrics for Alone at Last (1915–1916) and wrote Honeydew (1920–1921).