thumb|right|Brandon Thomas in 1901
Walter Brandon Thomas (24 December 1848 – 19 June 1914) At the age of 14, he enlisted in the Royal Marines but was bought out after six weeks and apprenticed to a shipbuilder. He learned bookkeeping and became a clerk with local Liverpool timber merchants, until 1875, when he took a similar post in Hull, where his family was by then living.
Thomas augmented his salary with occasional journalism; The Times noted that at 17 he published "a striking pamphlet" attacking the hymn-writers Moody and Sankey. Through the influence of a local businessman, Albert Rollit, he secured an engagement with William and Madge Kendal at the Court Theatre in London.
Early stage career
thumb|upright|right|Thomas the playwright depicted at work
In addition to playing small parts, Thomas continued to write, and the Kendals accepted his play Comrades for production after it was revised by B. C. Stephenson. This "new and critical comedy" opened at the Court in 1882, with a cast including Arthur Cecil, D. G. Boucicault and Marion Terry. When the Kendals moved from the Court Theatre in Chelsea to the St. James's Theatre in the West End, Thomas went with them and remained in their company playing small roles until 1885, when he joined Rosina Vokes's company as its leading man on an American tour that lasted into the middle of 1886. On his return to London, he continued to write, producing several plays in the mid to late 1880s, and to appear in supporting roles. He first attracted significant attention in Sweet Lavender by Arthur Wing Pinero.
As a character actor, Thomas had the great advantage of a facility for regional accents. Of one performance, the critic W. A. Lewis Bettany wrote: "The dialect was of course perfect; is not our actor the one acknowledged master of dialect on the stage?" Penley produced the play and took the star role of Lord Fancourt Babberley, an undergraduate whose friends Jack and Charley persuade him to impersonate the latter's aunt. The early performances of the play were given on tour in the English provinces, beginning at Bury St Edmunds on 29 February 1892.
The piece was successfully staged throughout the English-speaking world and, in translation, in many other countries. In 1894, it was given both German and French premieres and was produced in Berlin every Christmas for many years. In 1895, The Theatre recorded that Charley's Aunt had been taken up in country after country. "From Germany it made its way to Russia, Holland, Denmark and Norway, and was heartily welcomed everywhere." Thereafter, it was frequently revived for decades and successfully adapted for films and musicals.
thumb|150px|Thomas's gravestone, [[Brompton Cemetery]]
Thomas's career as a character actor continued to prosper. In 1892, he played in W. S. Gilbert's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a parody of Hamlet, and Faithful James, by B. C. Stephenson, with Ellaline Terriss, both at the Court Theatre. In 1895, he starred in a revival of The Rivals in another dialect role, Sir Lucius O'Trigger. Bernard Shaw wrote that Thomas succeeded in the part, "mainly by not doing what is expected of him". Other parts in which Thomas attracted praise were the Pope in Hall Caine's The Eternal City (1902) and John of Gaunt in Richard II to the King Richard of Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1903). He was also well known as an author and singer of "coon songs".