Oswald Yorke (born Oswald Parkinson Harker) was a British character actor whose career spanned nearly sixty years on the stages of London and New York. Born in Poole, Dorset on the coast of England on November 24, 1866, he was the youngest of six children and was educated at Christ’s Hospital Boys’ School in London. He made his stage debut in 1884 and performed with Sir Francis Benson before becoming a principal player at London’s Vaudeville Theatre in the 1890s.
He toured the United States beginning in 1896 and eventually settled in New York, where he became a familiar presence on Broadway. Between 1900 and 1938, he appeared in more than thirty productions, including Major Barbara, Twelfth Night, a 1915 adaptation of Treasure Island, The Social Register, and Lamb George S. Kaufman’s First Lady. His final Broadway appearance was in 1938.
Elected to The Lambs in 1901, he was also an active member of London’s Savage Club. During World War I, he directed entertainment for soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force in France.
Married three times and with no children, Yorke died on January 25, 1943, at age 76, at his apartment at the Hotel Schuyler (57 West Forty-Fifth Street) following a battle with lobar pneumonia.
–Written and Reserached by Lamb Bruce Roberts (2026)