Early years Helpmann was born in
Mount Gambier, South Australia, the eldest of the three children of James Murray Helpman (1881–1927), a
stock and station agent and auctioneer, and his wife, Mary,
née Gardiner (1883–1970). Mary Helpman had a passion for the theatre, and her enthusiasm was passed on to all three of her children. Helpmann's younger brother Max (1914–1987) and their sister Sheila (1916–1994) both made their own careers on stage, television and screen. After being what his biographer
Kathrine Sorley Walker calls "an uninterested and recalcitrant scholar" at
Prince Alfred College, Adelaide, Helpmann was taken on as a student apprentice by
Anna Pavlova when she was on tour in Australia in 1926. He then joined the theatrical producers
J. C. Williamson Ltd, as principal dancer for musicals, revues, and pantomimes, beginning with
Franz Lehár's
Frasquita in 1927. Robert Helpmann cited Melbourne eccentric, beautician, radio broadcaster, actor and dancer
Stephanie Deste as one of the influences over his dancing and acting career.
Vic-Wells Ballet The English actress
Margaret Rawlings, who was touring Australia, was impressed by Helpmann. She encouraged him to pursue a career in Britain, and provided him with an introduction to Ninette de Valois, director of the
Vic-Wells Ballet (later named the Sadler's Wells Ballet). Helpmann left Australia in 1932, and did not return until 1955. De Valois accepted him into her company. He impressed her – she later wrote "Everything about him proclaims the artist born" – although she noted not only his strengths but also his weaknesses: "talented, enthusiastic, extremely intelligent, great facility, witty, cute as a monkey, quick as a squirrel, a sense of theatre and his own possible achievements therein" but "academically technically weak, lacking in concentration, too fond of a good time and too busy having it". In the mid-1930s, probably at Rawlings's suggestion, he added a second "n" to his surname, to give it a more foreign and exotic air. in
Frederick Ashton's
Façade In April 1934 de Valois created a new ballet,
The Haunted Ballroom, with Helpmann and
Alicia Markova in the leading roles.
The Times commented that of the soloists Helpmann "had the greatest opportunities, and made fine use of them". He co-starred with Markova in
Swan Lake, danced in operas, and appeared at the
Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park. At
Sadler's Wells he danced the principal role in another new de Valois ballet, ''The Rake's Progress
, and in 1936 Frederick Ashton choreographed a highly romantic ballet, Apparitions
, to music by Liszt, featuring Helpmann and the teenaged Margot Fonteyn. Sorley Walker writes that he and Fonteyn were a "perfectly matched partnership", exemplified by "their superb rendering of the Aurora pas de deux in The Sleeping Beauty". The drama critic of The Times'' wrote: :It will be useless in future for Mr. Robert Helpmann to pretend that he is exclusively a dancer of the first rank. Certainly his dancing gives strength to his Oberon; he glides into imagined invisibility; but that is not all: his verse sings with his thought, his Oberon flashes with power, and presides, as Oberons do rarely, over the whole magic of the wood. While at the Old Vic Helpmann met the director
Michael Benthall; they formed a lifelong personal partnership and frequently worked together in the theatre. Helpmann's workload often required him to dance leads in three performances in one day, and when Ashton was called up for active service in 1941, Helpmann took on the additional role of choreographer to the company. Ashton, in his enforced absence from the company, observed Helpmann's rise to pre-eminence with feelings of envy, and their relationship became edgy on Ashton's part. The ballets that Helpmann created for the wartime company were
Comus (1942, based on
Milton),
The Birds (1942, to
Respighi's Gli uccelli),
Miracle in the Gorbals (1944, a story of redemption with a plot by Benthall and music by
Arthur Bliss), and a version of
Hamlet set to
Tchaikovsky's music. While on leave from the
RAF in 1943, Ashton created a new ballet for Helpmann,
The Quest, a patriotic tale of
Saint George, with music by
William Walton, who commented that Helpmann in the lead "looked more like the Dragon than St George." The music has survived but the ballet has not. Agate called Helpmann's prince "most heart-breaking" and the young
Peter Brook found Helpmann's fast-paced performance highly exciting, but other critics thought it a lightweight interpretation, and opinions varied about the quality of Helpmann's verse-speaking. During the war Helpmann played his first film roles: the supercilious traitor De Jong in
One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942) and the comically fussy Bishop of Ely in
Laurence Olivier's
Henry V (1944). At the end of the war
David Webster was appointed chief executive of the
Royal Opera House, tasked with reopening it for opera and ballet after its wartime closure. He invited de Valois and her company to base themselves there to complement the new opera company he was setting up. In due course the companies became
The Royal Ballet and
The Royal Opera. Helpmann and Fonteyn led the ballet company in the opening gala performance of
The Sleeping Beauty. The work was well received and was revived the following year, but has not held a place in the repertoire. In 1947, together with Benthall, Helpmann took over the artistic direction of the
Duchess Theatre in the
West End of London. They presented a revival of
John Webster's tragedy
The White Devil with Helpmann as the villainous Flamineo and Rawlings as his equally villainous sister. This was well received but their next production, a revival of
Leonid Andreyev's
He Who Gets Slapped, quickly folded. In the same year Helpmann worked on the film
The Red Shoes, which he and
Leonid Massine choreographed and appeared in. The following year he joined Olivier and Vivien Leigh at the
St James's Theatre, where they presented Shakespeare's
Antony and Cleopatra and
Shaw's
Caesar and Cleopatra. Helpmann played Octavius Caesar in the first and Apollodorus in the second. Between these plays Helpmann acted in the
Powell and Pressburger film
The Tales of Hoffmann, conducted by
Sir Thomas Beecham and choreographed by Ashton. Helpmann played all four of the villains in the various stories within the opera, his singing voice dubbed by the Welsh bass Bruce Dargavel. In 1953 Helpmann returned to the Old Vic, directing a new production of
Murder in the Cathedral with
Robert Donat as Becket. On
Coronation night in June 1953 Helpmann returned to Covent Garden as a guest artist to dance Prince Siegfried in
Swan Lake. The following year brought two contrasting directing engagements: the first was
The Tempest at the Old Vic, with
Michael Hordern as Prospero,
Richard Burton as Caliban and
Claire Bloom as Miranda. Then followed
Noël Coward's musical
After the Ball, based on
Oscar Wilde's ''
Lady Windermere's Fan''. Helpmann discovered that the combination of Coward and Wilde was not a success: "Everything that Noël sent up, Wilde was sentimental about, and everything that Wilde sent up Noël was sentimental about. It was two different points of view and it didn't work." In May 1955 Helpmann returned to Australia, leading a tour of the country by the Old Vic company, with Hepburn as a guest artist. He played Petruchio in
The Taming of the Shrew, Angelo in
Measure for Measure and Shylock. a production later given on Broadway. and then took over the lead part of Sebastien in Coward's comedy
Nude with Violin in London. The role had been created by
John Gielgud, who had been succeeded, not altogether satisfactorily, by
Michael Wilding. Helpmann's vitality revived the spirits of the company, and the play continued its run into the following year. Helpmann toured Australia in the piece in 1958–59, after he had returned to ballet for a season at Covent Garden in ''The Rake's Progress
, Hamlet
, Coppélia
, Miracle in the Gorbals
and Petrushka''.
1960s At the start of the 1960s Helpmann worked mostly in non-ballet theatre, forgoing the opportunity to create the role of 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 performed again for Australian audiences in another Old Vic company, this time headed by Vivien Leigh, which appeared in the Far East, South America and Australia. He also supervised a new production of
Swan Lake for the company, with important new choreographic contributions from Ashton. In the same year he played Prince Tuan in the film
55 Days at Peking. Van Praagh approached Helpmann to create a new work for the company and he suggested a story based around the native Australian
lyrebird. He was keen to promote Australian talent, and recruited
Sidney Nolan to design the costumes and scenery and
Malcolm Williamson to compose the score. The work, titled
The Display, was premiered at the
Adelaide Festival in March 1964, with
Kathleen Gorham in the leading role, to an enthusiastic reception. he appeared in a TV special
Half an Hour with Robert Helpmann. Back in London, Helpmann directed and choreographed the first British production of
Lerner and Loewe's musical
Camelot in 1964. He had been approached by its authors to play Merlin in the original Broadway production, but nothing came of the suggestion. For the London production he sought to recapture, more than the American production had done, the sprit of
The Once and Future King, the book on which the show was based. The musical received tepid reviews, but Helpmann's production, with designs by
John Truscott, was praised as a "dazzling" and "gorgeous spectacle"; the show ran for well over a year. in the 1968 feature film
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.|285x285px The success of
The Display led to Helpmann's appointment as co-director of the Australian Ballet in 1965. His biographer Christopher Sexton comments that Helpmann and van Praag "complemented each other with their different personalities and skills: she the pedagogue, teacher and administrator; he the restless 'jet-setting' star who spent six months of the year overseas and attracted international names to perform with the company". others called Helpmann's performance "the most sinister presence I have ever seen on film", and "a devastating turn" that would give children nightmares. In 1968 Helpmann was appointed artistic director designate of the Adelaide Festival of 1970, and spent much time seeking out the performers for it. As well as showcasing Australian talent he aimed to attract internationally prestigious performers.
1970s Under Helpmann's direction the line-up for the 1970 Adelaide Festival was, by common consent, exceptionally impressive. Among those appearing were the
Royal Shakespeare Company, led by
Judi Dench and
Donald Sinden, in ''
The Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night'';
Benjamin Britten and
Peter Pears brought the
English Opera Group; there were art exhibitions from
Pompeii and Mexico. Dance was represented not only by the Australian Ballet, but also by the Royal Thai Ballet, the Balinese Dance Company and the
Georgian State Dance Company. Nureyev was guest artist with the Australian Ballet in a revival of Helpmann's
Hamlet, new to the company's repertoire and greatly admired. In 1972 Helpmann succeeded in getting Ashton to join him for a production by the Australian Ballet, but despite Helpmann's urging, Ashton never created a new work for the company, although he restaged his
La fille mal gardée for them. Helpmann's biographer
Elizabeth Salter comments that 1974 was "a year of disaster" for both directors of the Australian Ballet. Van Praag was forced by arthritis to retire, and Helpmann's partner, Michael Benthall, died. The two men had lived together in London since the 1940s, and although both had extracurricular affairs they remained devoted to each other, and Helpmann felt 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 finding neither satisfactory he turned at the last minute to
Sibelius's First Symphony. The late changes caused inadequate preparation time for the dancers, and the piece was not well received. The following year disagreements between Helpmann and the board of the Australian Ballet came to a head. He was outspoken about the inadequacy of the company's budget, and refused to cut costs, on the grounds that doing do would be artistically and technically damaging. He made it publicly clear that he felt the board had become "dominated by money-men who had no experience or understanding of artistic matters". In 1977
Peter Wright, director of the
Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, invited Helpmann to appear with the company in two of his old starring roles – the Red King in
Checkmate and Dr Coppélius in
Coppélia. British ballet audiences had seen little of him in leading roles for some years, and his return was greeted with enthusiasm. The ballet critic of
The Times described his Coppélius as "a legend come to life", and his
Financial Times colleague wrote of Helpmann's "riotous and wonderful control", concluding, "British ballet owes Helpmann a vast debt – his present performances in
Coppélia and
Checkmate increase it still further".
1980s In 1981 Helpmann staged another revival of his ballet
Hamlet, this time featuring
Anthony Dowell. The production was given first at Covent Garden and was later taken to New York. A
cast recording produced by
Carl Doy was made of the show at
Mandrill Studios. In 1983 there was a Hawaiian production of the show, followed in 1985 by a
Michael Edgley revival production starring
Patricia Morison at His Majesty's Theatre, Auckland, directed by
Joe Layton with Derek Williams rehired as Musical Director. New Zealand-born singer
Derek Metzger starred in all
Aloha productions. The following year Helpmann appeared with
Diana Rigg in
Harvey Schmidt's musical,
Colette, which opened in
Seattle but folded before reaching Broadway. In 1983 Helpmann directed
Gounod's opera
Roméo et Juliette in Sydney, and later in the year appeared there as the elderly
Bosie in
Justin Fleming's play about
Oscar Wilde,
The Cobra, with
Mark Lee as Bosie's young self. He was given the rare tribute of a state funeral, held on 2 October at
St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney. In the
Senate all senators present stood in silence. This was noted as a rarity, and it was put on record that "it is only in exceptional circumstances that motions of condolence are moved for distinguished Australians who have not sat in the Parliament". ==Honours, reputation and legacy==