Richard John Smith (1786 – 1 February 1855) was a British actor of the early Victorian era. He was among the first to play Frankenstein's monster on stage, which he did in 1826 in The Man and The Monster; or The Fate of Frankenstein.
Early life
In the theatrical world Smith was commonly billed as O. Smith. He was the son of an actor named William Smith, whom John Doran, in his three-volume Annals of The English Stage, from Thomas Betterton to Edmund Kean (1860) confuses with William "Gentleman" Smith. Richard John Smith was born in York in 1786. His mother, Miss Elizabeth Scrace, played leading parts in Dublin. His father was almost killed in Dublin by Samuel Reddish who as Castalio ran him through the body while he was playing Polydore in The Orphan. Smith senior brought his wife in 1779 to Yorkshire. At Hull and York under Tate Wilkinson, Mrs. Smith appeared as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and speedily became a favourite. She accompanied Tate Wilkinson to Edinburgh, and in 1791 made, as Estifania in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, her first appearance in Bath.
Stage career
Richard John Smith is said to have made his theatrical debut in Bath as Ariel in Hawkesworth's Edgar and Emmeline: a Fairy Tale. He played there other juvenile parts. Put into a solicitor's office by his parents, he neglected his duties, spending his time in the painting-room of the theatre, and finally ran away and embarked from Bristol as a sailor for the Guinea Coast. He later claimed to have had some romantic, perhaps even fanciful, adventures, assisting upon the river Gaboon in the escape of some slaves, an incident related in A Tough Yarn, which he published in Bentley's Miscellany. The governor of Sierra Leone, struck by his painting, offered to befriend him, but the captain of the vessel refused to release him. Returning to Bath, he found his parents obdurate, and again ran away, rambling in Wales and Ireland. Seized in Liverpool by a press gang, he was taken on board the receiving ship, but was released on stating that he was an actor, and giving as proof a recitation. Engaged by William Macready the Elder as painter, prompter, and actor of all work, he was rewarded with twelve shillings weekly, and all but lost his life in a snowstorm while travelling on foot from Sheffield to Rochdale. He then went to Edinburgh and Glasgow theatres, returning to Bath in 1807, and playing in the pantomimes.
His performance as Robert in the pantomime of Raymond and Agnes attracted the attention of Robert William Elliston, who engaged him in 1810 for the pantomime at the Surrey Theatre. Taking in Bombastes Furioso the part of Bombastes, vacated through illness by another actor, he gave an exhibition of intensity such as established his position in burlesque. A performance of 'Obi' in the melodrama of Three-fingered Jack (1819) got him his sobriquet of 'O' (otherwise Obi) Smith. In 1813 Smith accompanied Elliston to the Olympic Theatre, where he played Mandeville in the False Friend, a rôle in which Edmund Kean was to have appeared. After acting at the Lyceum Theatre, he is said to have been engaged in 1823 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, at which house he had previously been seen in pantomime. He also seems to have played at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. His performance in the Bottle Imp at the Lyceum Theatre attracted attention, leading him to complain, but half in jest: "For the last five years of my life I have played nothing but demons, devils, monsters, and assassins, and this line of business, however amusing it may be to the public or profitable to managers, has proved totally destructive of my peace of mind, detrimental to my interests, and injurious to my health. I find myself banished from all respectable society; what man will receive the Devil upon friendly terms, or introduce a demon into his family circle? My infernal reputation follows me everywhere". A writer in the Monthly Magazine declared him "eminent in assassins, sorcerers, the moss-trooping heroes in Sir Walter Scott's poems, and other wild, gloomy, and ominous characters in which a bold, or rather a gigantic figure, and deep sepulchral voice could be turned to good account." Smith had, however, some control over tenderness, his performance at the Lyceum, in the Cornish Miners, of a maniac who visits the grave of his dead child, being very pathetic. At Drury Lane he was, on 10 November 1824, the first Zamiel in Soane's version of Der Freischütz.