julian_craster

Nyree Dawn Porter (from the DNB - published by Oxford University Press)

Nyree Dawn Porter is currently to be seen on ITV4, with Robert Vaughn, in
ITC series 'The
Protectors'.....
Does anybody recall Nyree Dawn Porter's starring role
in the 1962 Charlie Drake comedy 'The Cracksman' ? (amazingly, this is not
mentioned
below....)

Porter, Nyree Dawn (1936-2001), actress, was born on 22 January 1936 in
Napier, New Zealand, the first daughter and first child of Kenneth Norman
Porter, master butcher and property developer, originating from Scotland,
and his wife, Edna May Porter. Her forename Ngaire, later phoneticized to
Nyree as her performing name, was a Maori word meaning 'little white
flower'. Her father left the family while Porter was a child, and she
subsequently saw herself as the carer of her sister (born when Porter was
eight) and her mother.

Porter first appeared on stage at three and a half. She opened a school of
ballet and mime when aged fourteen, and at sixteen trained in classical
ballet with the New Zealand Royal Academy of Ballet. However, her acting and
musical skills led her to the New Zealand Players Trust, touring a broad
repertoire from Shakespeare to revues. In 1958, after winning a world trip
as Miss Cinema New Zealand, a competition organized by the Rank
Organization, she decided to live in London; she had recently married the
actor Bryon O'Leary, a childhood friend, and he joined her. She appeared in
the revue Look Who's Here at the Fortune Theatre (1959) and as Connie in
Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn (1959) at the Prince of Wales. Film and
television work followed, with lead roles in Giles Cooper's adaptation of
Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1964), the first literary adaptation to be
broadcast on BBC 2, and (later in 1964) in an adaptation of Hugh Walpole's
Judith Paris.

Then in 1967 came the part that made Nyree Dawn Porter a household name and
earned her popular acclaim as 'the first romantic sex symbol of the
television era' (Daily Mail, 30 Nov 1995): the beautiful Irene Forsyte,
trapped in a loveless marriage, in The Forsyte Saga. This BBC 2
dramatization of John Galsworthy's sequence of novels about the Forsyte
family, produced and in part adapted by Donald Wilson, brought in record
audiences for BBC 2-which could then be received only by a minority of
television viewers-of six million. When the series was repeated on BBC 1 in
1968, audiences exceeded eighteen million. The rape of Irene by her husband,
Soames (played by Eric Porter), sparked a national debate on the
presentation of sexual relationships and violence on television, in which
politicians joined. The series was shown in twenty-six countries and was the
first BBC production to be sold to the Soviet Union. The role won Porter the
best television actress award from the Society of Film and Television Arts.
As a result of The Forsyte Saga, she was invited to a reception at 10
Downing Street, alongside astronauts and the Russian pianist Lazar Berman.
In 1970 she was appointed OBE for services to television. She noted later:
'No one prepared me for how The Forsyte Saga would change my life' (ibid.).
Yet she identified Irene and Madame Bovary as among the most rewarding roles
in a career spanning over thirty-five years, together with 'my first
television musical, The Polyvinyl Girl ... a weird, surreal thing, with
shades of George Orwell's 1984' (TV Zone, May 1996).

Porter applied herself assiduously to her craft: 'I liken it to being a good
cleaner. You go out there and hope people will like your clean floors'
(Daily Mail, 3 Dec 1994). For her, the excitement of acting lay in its
impermanence: 'you always think each new job is going to be your last' (TV
Zone, May 1996). Yet there was confusion and regret that success as Irene
prevented rather than generated other similarly stretching roles. She even
considered retiring to Greece, before she was offered Blanche in the film
Jane Eyre (1970) alongside Susannah York as Jane. She enjoyed further
popular acclaim as Contessa Caroline di Contini in The Protectors (1972-3),
a detective series with an eye on the international market, made for Lew
Grade's ITC, but it was 1980 before she was given another thought-provoking
lead role, in the ATV daytime serial For Maddie with Love, a powerful script
dealing with the issue of euthanasia for a young woman. She was the subject
of This Is Your Life on 20 February 1980.

Fame also threatened Porter's personal life: 'men would push past Bryon'. He
died from accidental barbiturate poisoning in 1970, following a nervous
breakdown: 'the irony was it happened while I was collecting my OBE' (TV
Times, 23 Nov 1978). He 'seemed to be sacrificed to my success' (ibid.). On
15 August 1975 she married Robin Bernard Halstead (b. 1950/51), an actor. He
was the father of her daughter, Natalya ('Tassy', born in 1975), but the
marriage ended in divorce in 1987.

Porter enjoyed motherhood, seeking to give Tassy the stability she herself
had lacked. She also campaigned for better understanding of anorexia after
nursing Tassy through the eating disorder for several years. Illness for her
was a learning experience. She had been blinded for three months after a
childhood accident. She suffered back strain while making Madame Bovary, and
in 1990 a Harley Street specialist identified crippling disc damage,
principally as a consequence of her role in the production (1975) of Monty
Norman and Julian More's musical The Perils of Scobie Prilt, which demanded
stiff robotic dance movement. Her determination, however, led her to
Alexander technique therapy: 'a miracle ... [it] kept me going through
Forsyte' (Sunday Express, 10 June 1990).

Porter's later television appearances included panel games such as Give Us a
Clue for Thames, and Blankety Blank for the BBC, as well as acting roles in
series such as the BBC's 1986 David Copperfield. Her final film role was
Margot Fonteyn in Hilary and Jackie (1998), the story of the cellist
Jacqueline du Pre. She found more work on stage, reprising Irene in a 1991
tour of The Forsyte Saga, and in 1994-5 touring as Miss Havisham in a
musical version of Great Expectations. She was appearing in a production of
Brandon Thomas's Charley's Aunt when she died, following a stroke, in St
George's Hospital, Tooting, London, on 10 April 2001. Her final home had
been at 118 Ravensbury Road, Earlsfield, London. She was survived by her
daughter.

Porter's classic beauty, elegant physique, and intelligent versatility
brought both success and limitation. She resisted the stereotyping that
nevertheless brought her roles in comedy and light entertainment, recalling
Milton Shulman's comment that she was 'handicapped by being too beautifully
blonde for credibility ... [my] roles just seemed to elicit that kind of
fever' (Daily Mail, 3 Dec 1994). Her photographic image remains a popular
icon of the cool femininity of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet her work overall is
clear evidence of her wide-ranging contribution to British theatre, film,
and, especially, television.

Verena Wright


Sources
SIFT database, BFI [summary of personal information on Nyree Dawn
Porter] + D. Pickering, 'The Forsyte Saga', Encyclopedia of television, ed.
H. Newcomb (1997) + J. Evans, The Penguin TV companion, 2nd edn (2003) +
'The up and down saga of NDP', Photoplay (Feb 1971) + 'When the longing for
a child seems an impossible dream', TV Times (23 Nov 1978), 81-3 + Daily
Express (19 Jan 1980) + TV Times (24 April 1980) + Sunday Express Magazine
(10 June 1990) + Daily Express (3 Feb 1993) + Daily Mail (3 Dec 1994); (30
Nov 1995) + 'Nyree Dawn Porter-ITC's glamour girl', TV Zone (May 1996) + The
Times (12 April 2001) + Daily Telegraph (12 April 2001) + The Guardian (12
April 2001) + The Independent (12 April 2001) + The Scotsman (12 April 2001)
+ Classic Images (June 2001) + m. cert. [1975] + d. cert.
Archives FILM BFI NFTVA, This is your life, P. S. Laing (director), Thames
Television, 20 Feb 1980 + BFI NFTVA, documentary footage + BFI NFTVA,
performance footage
Likenesses Vivienne, bromide print, 1960-69, NPG [see illus.] · Vivienne,
bromide print, 1960-69, NPG · Vivienne, three photographs, Theatre Museum,
London · L. Morley, photograph (with Michael Sarne), repro. in Daily Mirror
(12 June 1962); priv. coll. · J. Bratby, oils, priv. coll. · photograph,
repro. in The Times · photograph, 1960-69, PA Photos, London; repro. in The
Independent · photographs, 1966-77, Hult. Arch. · photograph, 1967,
Popperfoto, Northampton · photograph, 1966, PA Photos, London · Snowdon,
photograph, 1964, Camera Press, London · W. Conran, three photographs, 1998,
Camera Press, London · photographs, 1962-97, Rex Features, London ·
photographs, 1967-94, Universal Pictorial Press and Agency, London ·
photographs, repro. in Photoplay · J. Brown, photograph, repro. in The
Guardian

arty-dave

I love the Cracksman - my video copy is sadly not pristine anymore, and wish someone would release it on DVD.

Am amazed no mention of it

Allen Dace

I had the pleasure of seeing her amongst the cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical 'Sunday In The Park With George' at London's National Theatre. It was a memorable day as a few hours earlier I witnessed the fringes of the Poll Tax riots (keeping well out of the thick of it).

ShirlGirl

You would have to be a Kiwi to come out with something like that!