Our Eric, by Andy Owens, Sigma Leisure, £9.99

From 1924 to 1968, Yorkshire-born actor Eric Portman established a considerable reputation on stage and screen. Director Bryan Forbes and actor Richard Briers ranked him very highly. Kenneth Tynan wanted to write his biography.

The most remarkable thing about this versatile actor was not his homosexuality at a time when it was judged a criminal offence; but his willingness right from the start to learn his craft in repertory – he did not go to acting school.

He started off with a bit part in Shakespeare’s Richard II in Sunderland and ended up with his name in lights in the West End and on Broadway, acting in films with Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Edith Evans.

Known as ‘Long-run Eric’ for the longevity of the most successful of his theatre appearances, he starred in plays by Terence Rattigan and films by the multi-talented Forbes and the Oscar-winning team of Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger.

All this and more can be gleaned from Andy Owens’s respectful biography, billed on the back as the first of its kind about the actor who was born in Halifax in 1901 and died in Cornwall in 1969.

Because the book does not shy away from some of the demons that pursued Portman – his fondness for gin and occasional flashes of temper backstage – it is not a hagiography; but it is certainly a work of great affection and appreciation.

It includes synopses of Portman’s plays and films, quotes from people who knew him and critics such as Harold Hobson and T C Worsley who praised his work in The Browning Version, His Excellency, Separate Tables and other London stage productions. The author’s hero worship comes across most vividly in chapter eight when he recounts the amazing and uplifting story of how, in 1956, Portman tried to save Halifax’s Grand Theatre by bringing the entire cast of a West End play for a Sunday evening fundraising performance of Rattigan’s hit Separate Tables.

Portman paid for the train fares and overnight hotel bills out of his own pocket. The only thing he asked for was a nice bottle of something in his dressing room.

Owens writes: “The theatre was a complete sell-out, days before the big night. Every national paper was represented and theatre critics came north to this provincial theatre for this big event...

“Eric Portman paid all the expenses for the cast – a total of £200 – but he wouldn’t talk about that. ‘As long as we manage to save rep in Halifax and keep the theatre going, it doesn’t matter.

“‘The whole experience is an absorbing one for me. It was here I had my first glimpse of the theatre as a seven-year-old boy. It was a melodrama called A London Actress. I was thrilled,’” Portman said.

Robert Morley, Margaret Leighton, Laurence Harvey and Margaret Rutherford attended the Sunday night show. The Grand Theatre was saved – for a few months.