- Hayes Gordon
infobox actor
caption=Hayes Gordon on the cover of biography by Lawrence Durrant
birthdate=birth date|1920|2|25
birthplace=Boston, Massachusetts
deathdate=death date and age|1999|10|19|1920|2|25
deathplace=Sydney, Australia
occupation=Stage,film actor
spouse=Helen Terry
children=KatiHayes Gordon AO OBE (
February 25 ,1920 –October 19 ,1999 ) was an American actor,stage director and acting teacher.Gordon was born in
Boston, Massachusetts . He was mentored byOscar Hammerstein , and appeared on Broadway in several musicals, including "Oklahoma! ", "Show Boat " and "Brigadoon ". He also appeared in America's first television soap opera "Fashion Story". In 1951 work became scarce because he had been named in a newsletter "Red Networks" that specialised in naming alleged communists and sympathisers, and after he refused to sign a loyalty oath declaring that he was not a communist, work dried up completely. [Katrina Strickland, article "An ideal life", in "The Weekend Australian , 23-24 August 1997, p. 11.]He went to
Sydney, Australia in 1949 to star in the musical "Kiss Me, Kate ". He stayed in the country and established theEnsemble Theatre Company cite web | title= AusStage - Gateway to the Australian Performing Arts | publisher= AusStage (contributor Hayes Gordon) | url= http://www.ausstage.edu.au/indexdrilldown.jsp?xcid=59&f_contrib_id=3733|accessdate= 2008-04-29 ] , inNorth Sydney with a group of young students he tutored from theIndependent Theatre . This was a co-operative style theatre and also Australia’s firsttheatre-in-the-round . He also established Australia’s longest surviving acting school, the Ensemble Studios, in the 1950s. He was Principal of the school for the rest of his life. Toward the end of his life he published "Acting and Performing" which outlined his Stanislavsky-influenced acting methods. He passed on directorship of The Ensemble Theatre toSandra Bates in 1986.He had one daughter, Kati, who lived with her mother in the USA. He remarried in the early 1980s to Helen Terry and remained with her until his death.
He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1979, and an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1997, for his contribution to the arts.
He died in Sydney of heart disease.
References
External links
*ibdb|88727
*imdb|0330249
* [http://www.ensemble.com.au/company_history.asp Ensemble Theatre website]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
