Dancer-Actor Sir Robert Helpmann Dies at 77

Sir Robert Helpmann, whose work as dancer, choreographer, director and actor spanned the dawn of 20th-Century ballet with Anna Pavlova, “The Red Shoes” and Walt Disney comedies, has died.

A spokesman at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital said the Australia native died there Sunday of a chronic respiratory illness. He was 77 and had worked nearly until his death, including a staging last year of “The Merry Widow” at San Diego.

Known around the world as “a man for all theaters,” Sir Robert as a young artist was Dame Margot Fonteyn’s partner in Britain’s Sadler’s Wells Ballet and the noble Hamlet in the 1944 Old Vic production. As an older character danseur he was Dr. Coppelius in “Coppelia,” Albrecht in “Giselle” and Don Quixote in Rudolf Nureyev’s dancing adaptation of the Cervantes classic.

In 1970 he became the nasty Childcatcher in Disney’s “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and the next year the Mad Hatter in a version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” which also featured Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers and Sir Ralph Richardson.

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But his reputation most probably will evolve from two films devoted to the dance--”The Red Shoes” in 1948 and “Tales of Hoffman” in 1951. Both were praised for their faithfulness to dance and their understated production techniques showcasing the performances.

Born and raised in the South Australian country town of Mt. Gambier, Helpmann overcame the objections of his sheep rancher father to study at age 13 with Pavlova, who he had seen with her company in a tour of Melbourne.

He was a student-performer with the legendary ballerina’s company and then moved to London, where he joined Vic-Wells Ballet before it made its metamorphosis to Sadler’s Wells and eventually the Royal Ballet. The dramatic talents he mastered for the dance, coupled with his acting ability, enabled Helpmann at 28 to play Oberon in the Old Vic Theatre’s 1937 production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” That led to “Hamlet” at Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-on-Avon and the Old Vic.

He thereafter wandered comfortably among opera, theater and dance, producing “La Boheme” and “Coq d’or” for the Royal Opera, T. S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral” for the Old Vic and “Camelot” when it came to London.

He choreographed the ballets “Miracle in the Gorbals,” “L’Histoire du Soldat,” (The Soldier’s Tale) “Elektra” and “Red Shoes,” in which he was also partnered with ballerina Moira Shearer.

With Katharine Hepburn he appeared in Shaw’s “The Millionairess” in New York and in Shakespearean plays in Australia.

Helpmann and Sir Frederick Ashton became the best known of Dame Margot’s partners in the 1940s and ‘50s before Nureyev’s talents helped extend her career into the 1970s. He wrote and recorded popular songs (none of which were popular) and in 1965 formed the Australian Ballet with Peggy Van Praagh, where he created new ballets and restaged the classics on a continent he had once left because it offered little to dancers.

Known to intimates for wit as well as talent, Sir Robert was knighted in 1967 for his achievements on behalf of the British Empire and had no trouble, he said in an interview with The Times, in adjusting to the honor. “My dear, I had been visualizing it for years.”

Thereafter he insisted on being referred to by his title, saying, “It’s no good having the bloody thing unless you use it.”