People Australia

Albert Winn, c.1940

in costume; probably as a cast member of film 'Forty Thousand Horsemen', 1940

Albert Comer (Al) Winn, né Albert Comer (1874-1945) actor, theatrical producer and trade union official

Birth: 18 October 1874 at London, England, son of Alfred Comer (1850-?) and Rosa, née Bryzinski (1855-1934), born in Poland. Unmarried. Death: 30 July 1945 in Liverpool hospital at Liverpool, Sydney, New South Wales; late of Bourke Street, East Sydney. Religion: Jewish. 

• Arrived in Sydney, New South Wales, with his mother aboard the Camperdown on 9 June 1880. Their immigration documents described Rose as a housekeeper, both mother and son as Jewish, and neither as being able to read or write.
• In about 1884 Rose formed a relationship with Queensland-born Samson (or Sampson) John Winn (1861-1907), a plasterer, had several more children and married Winn on 9 April 1894 at the Congregational Church, Glebe, Sydney.
• Al took up acting, beginning a stage career in Sydney with George Rignold as “one of the brethren” in the production of Joseph of Canaan in 1895.
• He moved to the United States of America about 1902. Was a producer and actor for stock companies. Played with Maude Adams in New York in L’Aiglon. and was active in promoting African American productions of Shakespeare etc.
• Returned to Sydney in 1927. Worked as an actor and producer for Frank Neal, Stuart O’Brien and Sir Benjamin Fuller.
• Succeeding Charles Dunn, who resigned due to ill health, Winn was elected general secretary of the Actors’ Federation of Australasia in August 1929. It was the beginning of several years of hard times for the theatrical industry.
• Winn resigned from the post of federation’s secretary about 1931.
• He continued his career as an actor and director for several years. In 1940, he played a supporting role in Charles Chauvel’s most successful film Forty Thousand Horsemen, and was singled out for praise by critics such as the Sydney Morning Herald reviewer: “Outstanding in the supporting cast . . . [was] Albert Winn (with a superb portrait of the shrewd and wily Sheik Abu)”.
• In September 1944 he was reported to be one of the “old-time actors and showmen” including Bert Bailey, who met regularly at journalist Jim Donald’s Kings Cross apartment. In January 1945 in the Daily Mirror, Donald, reported that “Al Winn . . . [still] points a long accusatory ‘leftist’ finger at elderly theatrical Tories”.
• Cause of death: lung cancer.

Sources
H. J. Gibbney & Ann G. Smith, A Biographical Register 1788-1939, vol 2 (Canberra, 1987), p 350 [family details incorrect].