Continuing the series of passport portraits in my collection.
Peruse and wonder.
Harold Valetta Chapin is the child of theatrical parents: Harold Chapin, actor & playwright and Calypso Valetta, actress. Before young Harold reaches the age of four, his father is killed at the Battle of Loos where he was serving with the London Field Ambulance section of the Royal Medical Corps.
This photograph is of Harold now at the age of seventeen. Presumably having finished his academic education he obtains this British passport in 1928 and then undertakes a journey to Greece, travelling overland through the newly named Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He returns by ship to Venice, then by train through Italy, Switzerland and France to London in time to appear as an extra in Hamlet at the Queen's Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue in 1930. The following year he is a messenger in King Lear at the Old Vic. Whilst acting in 1066 And All That at the Birmingham Rep. in 1936 he visits Germany, Austria and Switzerland and continues his acting and stage managing career until his death in 1950.
