Orlando Martins was a pioneering Nigerian film and stage actor. In the late 1940s, he was one of Britain's most prominent and leading black actors, and in a poll conducted in 1947, he was listed among Britain's top 15 favourite actors.
Life
Martins was born in Lagos, Nigeria, to a Brazilian civil servant father and a Nigerian mother. He was related to the Benjamin Epega family. In 1913 he was enrolled in Eko Boys High School but dropped out. During World War I he served as a stoker on the RMS Mauretania to avenge German cruelty to his family. Following the end of the war, he moved to London; on arrival in 1919 he had no source of income and had to look for ways to earn money. Around the same time, the Lyceum Theatre was looking for "supers" at the rate of three shillings per day. Martins joined the theatre and from there took on various theatre jobs to survive. In 1923, Sanger's Circus wanted to have someone to display pythons, Martins took the part starting his performing career in the circus. He also worked as a wrestler.
Career
In 1920, Martins was an extra acting with the Diaghilevballet company, and was on the tour with the British company of Show Boat as a professional singer. He was an extra in silent films, having made his debut in If Youth But Knew. In the 1930s he went into acting on the London stage,playing Boukman in Toussaint L'Ouverture, a 1936 drama by C. L. R. James that starred the legendary Paul Robeson, with whom Martins had featured in the 1935 filmSanders of the River. After the war, Martins had films roles in The Man from Morocco and in Men of Two Worlds, alongside Robert Adams, becoming a sought-after character actor who was described by Peter Noble in 1948 as "a tall, powerful figure of a man with a deep bass voice, friendly, hospitable and with a grand sense of humour." Noble went on to say of Martins: "He is keenly interested in the foundation of a Negro Theatre in London. As he points out: 'If this ever comes into being it will mean not only that Negro talent in every theatre can be shown to the world, but a continuity of employment for this talent which is now going sadly to waste.'" He appears in the 1949 filmThe Hasty Heart playing the African warrior Blossom, which role Martins also undertook in the stage production. In the 1950s he made other appearances on the London stage, including in adaptations of Cry, the Beloved Country, and The Member of the Wedding, before returning to Lagos in 1959. He subsequently took roles in such films as Killers of Kilimanjaro, Call Me Bwana, Mister Moses, and Kongi's Harvest. Martins died in 1985 at the age of 85 in Lagos, where he was buried at Ikoyi Cemetery.
