Eric Lewis (actor)

Frederic Lewis Tuffley (23 October 1855 – 1 April 1935), better known by his stage name, Eric Lewis, was an English comedian, actor and singer. In a career spanning five decades, he starred in numerous comedies and in a few musical comedy hits, but he is probably best remembered today as the understudy to George Grossmith in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas of the 1880s who left the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company just in time to give Henry Lytton his big break.

Lewis began performing in comic musical sketches in Brighton in the 1870s. He made his London performing debut in 1880 and joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1882, where he understudied Grossmith until 1887. Lewis then performed in a number of very successful musical comedies and other comedies for the next decade but devoted himself to the non-musical comedy stage, performing mostly in contemporary comedies by Arthur Wing Pinero, George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie and R. C. Carton until 1925.

Lewis was born in Northampton and raised in Brighton.

Lewis made his first public appearance in comic musical sketches in local concert halls in Brighton in the late 1870s. He appeared at St. James's Hall in Brighton in October 1879 with Arthur Law and his wife Fanny Holland. By 1880, Lewis had begun presenting comic musical sketches at the Royal Polytechnic Institution and St. George's Hall, where he sometimes took the place of the comedian Corney Grain. In 1881, he made his London stage debut in Herbert Beerbohm Tree's company at the Haymarket Theatre as Pilate Pump in Blue and Buff. In 1882, he joined the touring Alice Barth Opera Company, playing a number of roles with them.

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