Robert Porterfield

Robert Huffard Porterfield was born on December 21, 1905, near Austinville, in Wythe County, Virginia, the third of six sons of Daisy Huffard and William Breckenridge Porterfield. His family represented the fifth generation of Porterfields in the United States, descended from an ancestor who emigrated from Scotland to the American colonies around 1760. In 1909, his father accepted a position overseeing approximately 20,000 acres of land and relocated the family to Saltville, Virginia, where William Porterfield later served as mayor from 1920 to 1924 and again from 1926 to 1929.

Porterfield's early exposure to performance came through a schoolteacher who conducted Shakespeare quotation competitions, which prompted him to study his family's volumes of Shakespeare at home. He staged his first play at age seven in the family barn, with cousins as performers and extended family as the audience, and by age ten had announced to his father his intention to become an actor. He joined his school's debating society and organized class productions at Saltville High School before enrolling at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where he performed with the college acting company, the Jongleurs, and became a member of the Kappa Alpha Order. He attended the college for two years before eventually making his way to New York City. In the fall of 1926, he enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he studied for two years.

Porterfield went on to establish a Broadway career that spanned from 1929 to 1938. His stage credits included They Shall Not Die, Prelude, 200 Were Chosen, Everywhere I Roam, and Abe Lincoln in Illinois, among other productions.

During the Great Depression, in 1933, Porterfield founded the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, allowing audiences to exchange food for admission during economically difficult years. That practice gave the theatre its name. In 1941, the Virginia legislature designated it the State Theatre of Virginia and promised a grant of $10,000, though the funds were delayed following the United States' entry into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The theatre went dark from 1942 to 1945, during which time Porterfield was drafted into military service. He returned to Abingdon in 1946 to reopen the theatre, and the legislature fulfilled its earlier commitment with the promised $10,000 grant. Porterfield served as the theatre's artistic director for the remainder of his life, and through the Barter Theatre he provided early career opportunities to actors including Gregory Peck, Ernest Borgnine, Patricia Neal, Ned Beatty, Hume Cronyn, Gary Collins, and Larry Linville. The theatre also participated in the Actors' Equity Association's Equity Membership Candidate Program.

Beyond the stage, Porterfield appeared in occasional film roles from 1937 to 1958. His most prominent screen credit was in the 1941 film Sergeant York, in which he portrayed Zeb Andrews, a local rival of the title character played by Gary Cooper.

Porterfield married Helen Fritz on May 12, 1934. She died on January 1, 1949. He married Mary Dudley on October 6, 1964, and in 1968 the couple adopted a five-year-old boy whom they named Jay Payne Porterfield. Porterfield died on October 28, 1971, in Abingdon, Virginia. Hampden-Sydney College annually awards the Robert Porterfield Prize in Theatre to a senior student in recognition of contributions to the college's theatrical community.