Beth Porter obit

Beth Porter, actress who helped to establish the fringe theatre scene in London – obituary

She appeared in Woody Allen’s Love and Death and in The Great Gatsby, but she never had the high-profile career her talent deserved 

She was not on the list.

Beth Porter, the American actress who has died aged 81, played a vital role in establishing the British fringe theatre scene of the 1970s, after arriving in the UK in 1968 to set up the Wherehouse, a London-based version of New York’s off-off Broadway La MaMa Troupe. The company’s high-energy, confrontational attitude spearheaded the movement in the UK, which transformed dusty rooms in back-street pubs.

Beth Porter may have been memorable for her beauty but she also possessed a fierce intelligence and a lack of compromise – the latter allowing her to forge her path through life but often alienating friends and colleagues. She made full use of her energy and appetites, from studying primate ethology by sharing cages with orangutans to reinventing herself as a web designer and writer of books on the internet, of which she was an early adopter.

When her friend, the writer David McGillivray, suggested that her autobiography was, at a couple of million words, perhaps a bit too long, she replied, “Well, I’ve had a more interesting life than most people.”

Conceived on Love Lane in Brooklyn, Elizabeth Jane Porter was born a few blocks away at Long Island College Hospital on May 23 1942 to Ralph Porter, and Maryan, née Portnow. Her parents were respectful though rejecting of Judaism, but her home life was unhappy: both her father’s acting career and her mother’s academic ambitions were stunted by their ill-preparedness for parenthood.

They were liberal and progressive, determined for their children to be creative and cultured, and the family walked about the house naked and unashamed, but Beth found her mother cruel and scornful. She once called a family meeting and told her parents that she felt it was better that they divorced, but they laughed and stayed together for nine more fractious years.

Beth excelled at the Robert Vernam School in Queen’s and won a scholarship to Bard College in New York state, where she majored in drama, and also studied literary criticism, history of theatre and art history at Hunter College.

She had won her first professional part aged 12, in a summer tour of Hansel and Gretel. She studied under Helen Menken, the former wife of Humphrey Bogart, and after graduating from university she secured a role in The Importance of Being Earnest. She rang her mother to tell her. She replied: “Why don’t you ever ask me what I’m doing?”

She searched for a replacement family, temporary ones easily found on theatre and television productions. At the off-off Broadway theatre Caffe Cino she met Andy Milligan, who cast her in one of his first films, The Naked Witch (1967), a tortured love story now believed lost.

 

Filmography

 

Films

Year     Title            Role            Notes

1967    The Naked Witch            Beth    

1969    Me and My Brother                 

Futz!    Majorie Satz     

1971    Long Drawn-Out Trip: Sketches from Los Angeles            Various            Short, Voice

1974    The Great Gatsby            Mrs. McKee           

1975    Eskimo Nell      Billie Harris  

Love and Death   Anna   

Dick Deadeye, or Duty Done            Yum-Yum     Voice

1976            Feelings           Mrs. Lustig  

1978    The Ballad of the Daltons Miss Worthlesspenny          Voice

What's Up Superdoc!            Melanie           

On a Paving Stone Mounted            American Woman       

1980            Superman II            Football Fan            Uncredited

1981    Reds               

1983    Yentl            Sophie 

 

Television

Year     Title            Role            Notes

1973    Thirty Minute Theatre            Joanna            Episode "The Baby's Name Being Kitchener"

Armchair Theatre            Barbara            Episode "Verite"

1974            Mousey          Sandra            aka Cat and Mouse

1975    Baretta            Doreen            Episode "Nobody in a Nothing Place"

1976    Kojak            Clara            Episode "By Silence Betrayed"

1977    Seven Faces of Woman            Anne Liebowitz            Episode "She: Anxious Anne"

Rock Follies of '77       Kitty Schreiber            6 episodes, 1977

1978    Crown Court   Betty Lou            Episode "Scalped"

1979    The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe            Jadis, The White Witch   (voice)

The Deep Concern            Carrie Stone   (6 episodes)

1980    Tales of the Unexpected            Joanna Bligh            Episode "Taste"

1981    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy            Marketing Girl            Episode #1.6

1982    Blue Money            Barmaid         

1988            Floodtide            American Woman            Season 2 Episodes 4 and 5

1988    Square Deal     Hannah            Episodes #1.1 and #1.7

1990    Ruth Rendell Mysteries            Davina Ilbert            Episode "Put on by Cunning"

1994            Pleasure          Amber            aka Alan Bleasdale Presents Pleasure