Henry Vernon Esmond was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 and playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

.

Born Jack Esmond he began his career as an actor in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1889 where he had several successes in comedies

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

. He began writing plays, usually comedies, while in his early twenties. These plays were very popular and were also highly fashionable with their themes of light-hearted romance appealing to the audience of the day. He toured with a number of these plays and co-starred in them with his wife Eva Moore

Eva Moore

Eva Moore was an English actress. Her career on stage and in film spanned six decades, and she was active in the women's suffrage movement.-Early life and career:...

.

His plays were also well received in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 where nine of them were produced on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 between 1899 and 1907. For the next Broadway production, Eliza Comes to Stay, Esmond travelled to New York to appear alongside his wife and the popular actor Leslie Banks

Leslie Banks

Leslie Banks, CBE was an English theatre and cinema actor, director and producer, now best remembered playing gruff, menacing characters in black and white movies of the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:...

. This proved to be the greatest success of his career. He continued writing, acting and touring until his sudden death in Paris, France caused by pneumonia

Pneumonia

Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...

.

He was the father of the actress Jill Esmond

Jill Esmond

Jill Esmond was an English actress and first wife of Sir Laurence Olivier.-Early life:Esmond was born Jill Esmond Moore in London, the daughter of stage actors Henry V. Esmond and Eva Moore. While her parents toured with theatre companies, Esmond spent her childhood in boarding schools until she...

.