Antony Holland, actor, playwright, & theatre director, died at 95

  Dead Famous

 

Dead, Antony Holland, British-born Canadian actor, playwright, and theatre director, dies at 95

 

Antony Holland CM (28 March 1920 – 29 July 2015) was an English actor, playwright, and theatre director. Currently he lives on Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada.
Holland completed his drama training at the Labour Stage in London. Shortly after, he was called into His Majesty’s Armed Forces as a signalman at the onset of the Second World War.
While training at the coastal town of South Shields, he put on a play in a local abandoned theatre. Holland continued to mount productions in his spare time throughout the course of the war.
He was granted the officers’ lounge for rehearsals and cast approximately 100 men in a wide variety of roles, including parts that required playing women.
His plays continued through the North African Campaign, crossed the desert, and made it to Cairo where he would mount productions at the Khedivial Opera House.
So successful were his plays that the military requisitioned stage materials for more elaborate productions.

Holland was transferred into military intelligence where he served out the remainder of the war.