Robert Helpmann

Dancer

Robert Helpmann was born in Mount Gambier, South Australia, Australia on April 9th, 1909 and is the Dancer. At the age of 77, Robert Helpmann biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, movies, and networth are available.

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Date of Birth
April 9, 1909
Nationality
Australia
Place of Birth
Mount Gambier, South Australia, Australia
Death Date
Sep 28, 1986 (age 77)
Zodiac Sign
Aries
Profession
Ballet Dancer, Choreographer, Film Actor, Stage Actor, Theater Director
Robert Helpmann Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

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Robert Helpmann Religion, Education, and Hobbies
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Robert Helpmann Life

Sir Robert Murray Helpmann, CBE (né Helpman, 1909-1989) was an Australian ballet dancer, actor, producer, and choreographer.

After early work in Australia, he migrated to Britain in 1932, where he joined the Vic-Wells Ballet under the direction of its designer, Ninette de Valois.

He joined Alicia Markova and later Margot Fonteyn to become one of the company's top guys, eventually becoming a part of the company's top guys.

As Frederick Ashton, the company's chief choreographer, was called up for military service in the Second World War Helpmann took over from him while still performing as a principal dancer. Helpmann was both an actor and a dancer at the start of his career, and in the 1940s, he began acting in plays, both in the Old Vic and in the West End.

The bulk of his appearances were in Shakespeare plays, but he has appeared in productions by Shaw, Coward, Sartre, and others.

Shakespeare to opera, musicals, and pantomime, among other things, as a director. Helpmann became co-director of the Australian Ballet in 1965, for whom he created several new ballets.

He became sole director in 1975, but company board inconsistencies led to his resignation a year later.

He supervised for Australian Opera and appeared in stage plays into the 1980s.

Although primarily a stage performer, he appeared in fifteen films between 1942 (One of Our Aircraft is Missing) and 1984 (Second Time Lucky), as well as The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffmann, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Helpmann died in Sydney and was given a state funeral in St Andrew's Cathedral.

In the Parliament of Australia, Prime Minister Bob Hawke paid a respect to his work, and a motion of condolence was accepted – a rare tribute to a non-politician.

Helpmann was honoured in the Helpmann Awards for Australian performing arts, which were established in 2001 in his honour.

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Robert Helpmann Career

Life and career

Helpmann was born in Mount Gambier, South Australia, the eldest of James Murray Helpman (1881–1927), a stock and station agent, and auctioneer, and his mother, Mary Gardiner (1883–1970). Mary Helpman had a passion for theatre, and her enthusiasm was passed on to all three of her children. Max (1914-1977), Helpmann's younger brother Max (1914-1978) and their sister Sheila (1916-1954) all worked on stage, television, and film.

Helpmann was hired as a student apprentice by Anna Pavlova when she was on tour in Australia in 1926 and was what his biographer Kathrine Sorley Walker describes as "an uninterested and recalcitrant scholar" at Prince Alfred College, Adelaide. Alexis Dolinoff, her leading male dancer, had him trained him. He joined J. C. Williamson Ltd as the principal dancer for musicals, revues, and pantomimes, beginning with Franz Lehár's Frasquita in 1927. He appeared in Katinka, The Merry Widow, The New Moon, Queen High, This Year of Grace and Tip-Toes, a film starring Gladys Moncrief, Marie Burke, and Maisie Gay. "His vitality and bravura presentation of dances has halted various shows," Sorley Walker writes.

Robert Helpmann cites Melbourne eccentric, beautician, radio broadcaster, comedian, and dancer Stephanie Deste as one of his influences on his dancing and acting career.

Margaret Rawlings, an English actress on tour of Australia, was captivated by Helpmann's work. She encouraged him to pursue a career in Britain and gave him an introduction to Ninette de Valois, the ballet director of the Sadler's Wells Ballet (later called the Sadler's Wells Ballet). Helpmann left Australia in 1932 but did not return until 1955. De Valois accepted him into her company. He impressed her; "Everything about him announces the artist born"; she later wrote: "talented, vivacious, incredibly strong, and dynamic center, quick as a squirrel, a sense of theatre, and his own potential success therein" but "academically poor, too eager for a good time and too cluttered having it." He added a second "n" to his surname in the mid-1930s, perhaps at Rawlings' request, to give it a more foreign and exotic air.

In April 1934, De Valois created The Haunted Ballroom, a new ballet starring Helpmann and Alicia Markova. According to the Times, the soloists Helpmann "had the greatest opportunities and made excellent use of them." He appeared in Swan Lake, danced in operas, and appeared at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park. He was the leading dancer in the revue Stop Press in 1935, with Irving Berlin's music. In 1936, Frederick Ashton choreographed a highly romantic ballet, Apparitions, starring Helpmann and the teenage Margot Fonteyn, to music by Liszt in Sadler's Wells. Sorley Walker describes the collaboration between Fonteyn and Fonteyn as a "fully united team," as shown by "their superb portrayal of the Aurora pas de deux in The Sleeping Beauty." Helpmann's gift for comedy was recognized early in life as well as romantic leading roles. In Coppélia, Ashton's A Wedding Bouquet, and de Valois' The Prospect Before Us, Sorley Walker singles out his character. The doddery Red King of de Valiant Checkmate, who performed at the age of 28 and then stopped dancing in 1986, when he was 77.

His Oberon appeared in Tyrone Guthrie's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Old Vic, which also starred Vivien Leigh as Titania and Ralph Richardson as Bottom in the late 1930s.

The drama critic of The Times wrote:

"The best I've ever seen or ever will see" was the doyen of London critics James Agate's ode to Helpmann's Oberon, which translates to "the best I've ever seen or ever will see." Michael Benthall, the director of Old Vic Helpmann, became a lifelong friendship and often worked together in the theatre.

Wells Ballet of the Second World War became a central contributor to public morale, offering London seasons interspersed with a demanding schedule of provincial tours. Helpmann's schedule often required him to dance leads in three performances in a single day, and when Ashton was called up for active service in 1941, Helpmann assumed the additional role of choreographer. Helpmann's ascension to pre-eminence with feelings of gleeping, as well as their company's union became edgy on Ashton's part. Comus (1942, based on Milton), The Birds (1942, to Respighi's Gli uccelli), and a tribute to Tchaikovsky's music were among the ballets created for the wartime company. When Ashton was on leave from the RAF in 1943, he created The Quest, a patriotic tale about Saint George with the lead actor's "looked more like the Dragon than St George." The music has survived, but the ballet has not.

In 1944, Helpmann returned to Hamlet in the original role, with the Old Vic Company. Many for his Hamlet were more divided after the laudatory reviews for his Oberon. It was "eager, creative, and thrilling," Agate said of Helpmann's "most heart-breaking" appearance, but some commentators deemed it "a lightweight interpretation," according to Ivor Brown's commentary, although other commentators deemed the detail of his helpmann's verse-speaking to be "emotional." Helpmann starred in One of Our Aircraft Missing (1942), and The commodious Bishop of Ely in Laurence Olivier's Henry V (1944).

After the Royal Opera House's closing due to wartime closures, David Webster was appointed chief executive of the house of Commons. He had invited de Valois and her company to base themselves in the area to support the newly founded opera company. The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera were the two companies' names in due course. In the first gala performance of The Sleeping Beauty, helpmann and Fonteyn led the ballet company. Adam Zero (1946), with a libretto by Benthall and music by Bliss, was the first new work staged at the revived house, with choreographed by and starring Helpmann as an Everyman figure. The work was well received and was revived the following year, but it hasn't been able to hold a spot in the repertoire.

Helpmann, a Belgian musician, took over the Duchess Theatre in London's West End in 1947. They presented a revival of John Webster's tragedy The White Devil, with Helpmann playing the villainous Flamineo and Rawlings as his similarly evil sister. This was well received, but Leonid Andev's He Who Gets Slapped was the next project, which was quickly dismissed. Helpmann appeared in and choreographed the film The Red Shoes earlier this year. During the 1948 season, Helpmann appeared in King John, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and in a new production of Hamlet, alternating with Paul Scofield.

For the first time, Helpmann directed an opera at Covent Garden, starring Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in the title role. After many revivals, the company's last performances at the Royal Opera House were in 1993. He and Vivien Leigh performed at the St James' Theatre in the spring of this year, where they performed Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, and Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. In the first and Apollodorus in the second, Helpmann played Octavius Caesar and Apollodorus in the first and Apollodorus in the second. He appeared in the same roles when the shows were taken to Broadway at the end of the year. In The Millionaires' second year, he appeared in another Shaw play, Doctor, opposite Katharine Hepburn as Epifania. Helpmann appeared in the Powell and Pressburger film The Tales of Hoffmann, directed by Sir Thomas Beecham and choreographed by Ashton. Helpmann portrayed all four of the villains in the opera's various tales, with his singing voice dubbed by Welsh bass Bruce Dargavel.

Helpmann returned to the Old Vic in 1953, directing a new version of Murder in the Cathedral with Robert Donat as Becket. Helpmann returned to Covent Garden as a guest artist to dance Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake on Coronation Night in June 1953. Mattiwilda Dobbs, Hugues Cuénod, and Geraint Evans performed and choreographed an opera there the following year. The Tempest at the Old Vic began with Michael Hordern as Pro Prosecutors, Richard Burton as Caliban, and Claire Bloom as Miranda. Then based on Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, Nol Coward's musical After the Ball. Helpmann discovered that the combination of Coward and Wilde was not a success: "Everything that Nol sent up, Wilde was sentimental about, and everything that Wilde sent up No.l was sentimental about." It was two different points of view and it didn't work."

Helpmann returned from Australia in May 1955, leading a tour of the country by the Old Vic company, with Hepburn as a guest artist. In Measure for Measure and Shylock, he played Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Angelo in Measure for Measure and Shylock. He directed John Neville and Claire Bloom in Romeo and Juliet in 1956, a performance later performed on Broadway. Later this year, he joined the company as an actor, appearing Shylock, Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Saturnius, and Richard III's title role.

Helpmann appeared in Jean-Paul Sartre's Nekrassov in 1957 and later took over the lead role in Coward's comedy Nude with Violin in London. John Gield, a musician who had been surpassed in some ways by Michael Wilding, had been given the role. Helpmann's vitality reignited the company's spirits, and the company's revival lasted into the following year. After returning to ballet for a season in the Gorbals and Petrushka, Helpmann performed in Australia from 1958-59. His role in the role of a lovelorn puppet was not well received: he was seen as both too overtly human and intelligent in the role of a lovelorn puppet.

Helpmann spent most of his 1960s in non-ballet theatre, forgoing the opportunity to create the Widow Simone in Ashton's La fille mal gardée in favour of directing Vivien Leigh and Mary Ure in Jean Giraudoux's play Duel of Angels on Broadway. In 1962, he appeared again for Australian audiences in another Old Vic company, this time led by Vivien Leigh, which appeared in Far East, South America, and Australia. He choreographed his sixth work for The Royal Ballet, the short-lived and critically ill Elektra, with music by Malcolm Arnold and starring Nadia Nerina, David Blair, Monica Mason, and Derek Rencher. He also supervised a new Swan Lake production for the company, with important new choreographic contributions from Ashton. Prince Tuan appeared in the film 55 Days at Peking this year.

Peggy van Praagh, a former Sadler's Wells, founded the Australian Ballet in 1962, which has steadily climbed to prominence as "a company dominated by young Australian talent," Sorely Walker writes, "aided by top-level international stars such as Erik Bruhn, Rudolf Nureyev, and Sonia Arova." Van Praaghen invited Helpmann to create a new work for the company, and he suggested a tale based on the native Australian lyrebird. He was keen to showcase Australian talent, so he recruited Sidney Nolan to design the costumes and scenery, and Malcolm Williamson to compose the score. The Performance, which was titled The Display, premiered at the Adelaide Festival in March 1964, with Kathleen Gorham in the leading role, to an enthusiastic reception.

Helpmann directed and choreographed the first British production of Lerner and Loewe's musical Camelot in 1964, which was based in London. The company's founders had invited him to perform Merlin in the original Broadway production, but no one was aware of it. He wanted to recreate for the London production more than the American production did, the sprit of The Once and Future King, the book on which the show was based. The musical received mediocre reviews, but Helpmann's performance, based on John Truscott's concept, was lauded as a "dazzling" and "gorgeous spectacle"; the performance lasted for nearly a year.

Helpmann was appointed co-director of the Australian Ballet in 1965 after the success of The Display. According to Christopher Sexton's book "Helpmann and van Praag" complement each other with their individual personalities and abilities: she the pedagog, tutor, and administrator; he the restless 'jet-setting' celebrity who spent six months of the year abroad and attracted international names to work with the company. Yugen (1965); an extended version of Elektra (1966) and Sun Music (1968). During the 1960s, Helpmann made two more films. He appeared in Weng in The Quiller Memorandum in 1966, and in 1968 he appeared in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, he was the Child Catcher. According to one reviewer, "He will eternally frighten children as the demented child catcher"; others characterized Helpmann's appearance as "the most sinister presence I've ever seen on film" and "a tragic turn" that will cause children's nightmares.

Helpmann was appointed artistic director designate of the Adelaide Festival of 1970 and spent a long time looking out the performers for the role. He wanted to attract internationally recognised performers in addition to showcasing Australian talent.

The 1970 Adelaide Festival's line-up under Helpmann's direction was, by common consent, spectacular. The Royal Shakespeare Company, led by Judi Dench and Donald Sinden, performed The Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night; Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears introduced the English Opera Group, and there were art exhibits from Pompeii and Mexico; the Royal Shakespeare Company, led by Judi Dench and Donald Sinden, was among those on display; Dance was not only represented by the Australian Ballet, but also by the Royal Thai Ballet, the Balinese Dance Company, and the Georgian State Dance Company. Nureyev appeared in a revival of Helpmann's Hamlet, which was new to the company's repertoire and much admired. Nureyev also performed his version of Marius Petipa's classic ballet Don Quixote, dancing Basilio, the romantic lead, and Helpmann in the title role of the deluded knight. This was the first time the two dancers had collaborated; they expressed admiration and continued their fruitful professional relationship. Nureyev continued to act as Hamlet in revivals of the 1942 ballet, and the two actors appeared in a film of Don Quixote directed by the Australian company in 1973, which was later released on DVD.

Helpmann and Ashton's Cinderella, a well-loved institution at Covent Garden in several revivals since its 1948 debut. Helpmann managed to recruit Ashton for a ballet by the Australian Ballet in 1972, but the company did not produce a new one, despite Helpmann's advice, although he revived his La fille mal gardée for them.

Both directors of the Australian Ballet, including Helpmann's biographer Elizabeth Salter, say that 1974 was "a year of regret" for both directors. By arthritis, Van Praag was compelled to leave, and Michael Benthall, Helpmann's partner, died. Both the two men had lived together in London since the 1940s, and although each had extracurricular interests, they remained committed to each other, and Helpmann mourned the loss deeply.

1974 was also the year of the last ballet created by Helpmann, the plotless Perisynthyon. He commissioned scores from two Australian composers in succession but came back to Sibelius' First Symphony at the last minute. The late changes meant that the dancers had no time to prepare properly, and the performance was not well received. Helpmann and the Australian Ballet's board came to a halt over the next year. He was outspoken about the company's inadequacy and refused to cut costs on the grounds that doing so would be both artistically and technically damaging. He made it public that he believes the board had been "dominated by money-men who had no expertise or knowledge of artistic problems." The board decided he must go and tried to talk to him quietly. He didn't cooperate and made it known that he had been shot: "I want the audience and the dancers to know that I didn't leave them dead." I would have stayed with them until they died."

Peter Wright, the founder of the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, invited Helpmann to appear with the company in two of his old roles: the Red King in Checkmate and Dr Coppélius in Coppélia in 1977. He had not seen him in leading roles for some years, and his return to them was met with excitement. "British ballet owes Helpmann a significant debt," the ballet critic of The Times called his Coppélius "a hero come to life" and his Financial Times colleague wrote of his "unique and beautiful leadership."

In 1981, Helpmann staged another revival of his ballet Hamlet, this time starring Anthony Dowell. At Covent Garden, the production was the first to be exported to New York later this year. Helpmann directed and choreographed Handel's opera Alcina in Sydney, and he directed Lilli Palmer in a one-woman show about Sarah Bernhardt, Sarah in America. He appeared with Diana Rigg in Harvey Schmidt's musical Colette, which opened in Seattle but then faded before reaching Broadway. He appeared in a revival of Sandy Wilson's Valmouth at the Chichester Festival and made his last British appearance in an acting role. "It is not a large part," Irving Wardle wrote in The Times, "but Helpmann's hooded smiles and sardined finger-tips, his ability to express refined sin, constitute one imperishable picture."

In 1983, Helpmann directed Gounod's opera Roméo et Juliette in Sydney, and as the elderly Bosie in Justin Fleming's play About Oscar Wilde, The Cobra, with Mark Lee as Bosie's youthful self. He appeared in Ted Willis' play Stardust in 1984 and with his sister Sheila to film two episodes of A Country Practice, which were first seen in 1985. He was in the United States early in the year, directing a revival of Opera The Mery Widow at the San Diego Opera. He directed Joan Sutherland in Bellini's I Puritani in June at the Sydney Opera House. In Melbourne and Sydney in May 1986, he appeared as the Red King in Checkmate with the Australian Ballet, as the Red King in Checkmate.

On September 28, 1986, Helpmann died of emphysema in Sydney. He was given the rare gift of a state funeral held on October 2nd at St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney. Both Houses of Parliament in Australia paid tribute. All senators present in the Senate remained in silence. This was regarded as a rare occurrence, and it was explained that "it is only in exceptional circumstances that condolence motions of recognition were moved for distinguished Australians who haven't sat in Parliament."

Senator Stan Collard said:

"No one should underestimate Sir Robert Helpmann's contribution to Australia's increasing maturity of art and culture," Prime Minister Bob Hawke said in the House of Representatives. ... "He displayed the richness and capabilities of this country's talents and capabilities," he told the world. A memorial service was held in London at St Paul's Covent Garden (known as "the actors' church"); Ashton paid their respects to Princess Margaret, Fonteyn's address, de Valois read the address, and some of the British ballet and theatre's best-known figures were on display.

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