Henry Burkhardt Harris was one of the two Lambs to perish on the RMS Titanic in 1912. He was lost with fellow producer Charles Frohman. Harris was 45 when he died.
Henry B. Harris was born on 1 December 1866 in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of immigrants William Harris, a theatrical manager and Rachel Freefield. Harris married Bertha Prager in 1887 in Boston; she died 1895, at 27. Harris was noted as the manager of the Columbia Theatre at the time of his wife’s death.
He moved to New York at some point after the death of his first wife and married René Wallach in 1899; she was the sister of Lamb Samuel H. Wallach. Harris was elected to The Lambs in 1907 as a Non-Professional Member.
In the theatrical agency in which he was a partner (with his father and Charles Frohman) Harry’s office was in the Empire Theatre; he was managing plays not only in New York at the time but in Philadelphia and Boston.
His principal producing theater in New York was the Hudson Theatre. He also acquired the Hackett Theatre (1909), which he renamed the Harris Theatre (after his father) and built the Folies Bergére (1911) which he later named the Fulton Theatre.
His greatest success as a producer was won with Charles Klein’s The Lion and the Mouse (1905) which made him a millionaire. Henry, known as “Harry” to friends and his wife, had previously managed such personalities as Lillie Langtry and Amelia Bingham and launched Robert Edeson as a star. He also discovered Elsie Ferguson, Mae West and Ina Claire, among others. His later hits included The Chorus Lady (1906), The Third Degree (1909), The Country Boy (1910) and The Quaker Girl (1911). Harris also managed the sensational dancer Ruth St. Denis.
Harris was treasurer of the Actors’ Fund of America and was a trustee of the Hebrew Infant Asylum of New York. He had 18 companies on tour during the 1910-11 season. He was president of the Henry B. Harris Company and a director of the Theater Managers of Greater New York.
Harris and his wife boarded the Titanic at Southampton, they occupied cabin C-83.
Harris died in the disaster, his body, if recovered, was never identified. After his death, newspapers reported that he was in fact heavily in debt. His wife survived the sinking and went onto a long and successful career as a pioneer female Broadway producer. She rescued a portrait of her husband from the Hudson Theatre.