AustLit

English-born actor, singer, comedian, stage manager, film director.

George Dean came to Australia in 1880 as a juvenile actor with George Musgrove's Tambour Major company and subsequently spent the next two decades on the 'legitimate' stage as comedian, actor and occasional stage manager. He turned to vaudeville in 1899, spending many years with Harry Rickards and also appearing in pantomime - notably William Anderson's Sinbad the Sailor (1904-1906) and Babes in the Wood (1909). Dean also worked for such firms as Rowley's Waxworks Co, James Brennan, Sadler and Beveridge, Dix-Baker, and the Fullers, and in 1914 directed the film A Long, Long Way To Tipperary. He continued performing on the stage and on radio well into the 1930s, and appeared as an actor in at least one film - Those Who Love (1926).