Eric Portman

Eric Harrison Portman, born Eric Harold Portman on 13 July 1901 in Halifax, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was an English stage and screen actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1937 to 1962. The second son of Matthew Portman, a wool merchant, and his wife Alice, née Harrison, Portman later adopted his mother's maiden name as his middle name. He was educated at Rishworth School in Yorkshire and in 1922 took work as a salesman in the menswear department at the Marshall & Snelgrove department store in Leeds, while also performing with the amateur Halifax Light Opera Society.

Portman made his professional stage debut in 1924 with Henry Baynton's company. That same year, Robert Courtneidge's Shakespearian company arrived in Halifax, and Portman joined them as a passenger, appearing in a production of Richard II at the Victoria Hall, Sunderland. The engagement led to a contract with Courtneidge, and Portman made his West End debut at the Savoy Theatre in London in September 1924, playing Antipholous of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors. He was subsequently engaged by Lilian Baylis for the Old Vic Company, where in 1928 he played Romeo at the rebuilt Old Vic. In 1933 he appeared in Diplomacy at the Prince's Theatre alongside Gerald du Maurier and Basil Rathbone, and in 1936 he had a stage success playing Lord Byron in Bitter Harvest.

His film career began in the 1930s with an uncredited appearance in The Girl from Maxim's (1933), directed by Alexander Korda. He appeared in four films in 1935, among them Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn with Tod Slaughter and Hyde Park Corner with Gordon Harker. He reteamed with Slaughter for The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936) and played Giuliano de' Medici in The Cardinal (1936). His first important film role came in 1941, when he played Lieutenant Hirth, a Nazi on the run, in Powell and Pressburger's 49th Parallel. The film was a major success in both Britain and the United States, establishing Portman as a star and leading to a long-term contract with Gainsborough Pictures. He appeared in two further Powell and Pressburger productions, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942) and A Canterbury Tale (1944). In 1945, exhibitors voted him the tenth most popular star at the British box office, a ranking he maintained the following year. Later film credits included The Colditz Story (1955), The Good Companions (1957), The Naked Edge (1961), Freud: The Secret Passion (1962), The Bedford Incident (1965), and The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966). Near the end of his life he appeared in The Whisperers (1967) and Deadfall (1968), both directed by Bryan Forbes, and took the role of Number Two in the television series The Prisoner, appearing in the episode Free For All (1967). His final film was Assignment to Kill (1968).

Portman first came to Broadway in 1937, when he appeared in Madame Bovary for the Theatre Guild of America, having traveled to the United States and briefly worked in Hollywood, where he had a small role in The Prince and the Pauper (1937). He returned to Broadway in I Have Been Here Before by J. B. Priestley. His most celebrated Broadway performance came in Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables during the 1956–57 season, in which he played the bogus Major. That performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play in 1957. In 1958 he appeared on Broadway as Rochester in a production of Jane Eyre. The following year he appeared in Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet, which enjoyed a long run. By contrast, his appearance in Flowering Cherry by Robert Bolt, in which he played the title role, lasted only five performances on Broadway. In 1962 he appeared in a stage adaptation of A Passage to India, which ran for 109 performances. His Broadway credits also included Table by the Window.

In his personal life, Portman died on 7 December 1969 at his home in St Veep, Cornwall, from heart disease, at the age of 68. He was buried in St. Veep parish church. Decades after his death it emerged that he was gay and that assistant director Knox Laing (1913–1974) was his partner. A blue plaque was erected in his honor by the Halifax Civic Trust.