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Hermione Darnborough

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Hermione Maria Louise Darnborough (c.1915-29 October 2010), later Hermione Mathieson, was an English principal ballerina[1] who made her name at Sadler's Wells in the 1930s. She retired young after marrying the distinguished conductor and composer Muir Mathieson (1911–75).

Background

Hermione Darnborough came from a wealthy family who lived in Weybridge, Surrey. Her brother was the film producer Antony Darnborough (1913–2000).[2]

Career landmarks

Early promise

In 1929, at the age of 14, Darnborough auditioned for the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev during the final season that the highly influential Ballets Russes performed in London. He was evidently impressed and asked to see her again in three years time, but nothing came of this as he died a few weeks later.[3]

From an early age, Darnborough took part in a range of productions, including charity matinées and Christmas pantomimes. Among the latter were Beauty and the Beast (1928) and Puss in Boots (1929) at the Lyceum Theatre, London.[3] Darnborough's teacher was Miss Euphan Maclaren,[4] whose stage school in Kensington was often called upon when young people were required for films.[5] In 1930, she appeared in On with the Dance!, a short film for Pathé's cinemagazine for women, Eve's Film Review, as one of six Maclaren girls dancing in floaty gowns, while holding large balls and balloons. At one point, Darnborough performs pirouettes and dances towards the camera while the others look on.[6]

The following year Darnborough won the senior cup in the All England Solo Competition at the New Scala Theatre, London. Reporting on the event for the Dancing Times, which featured an early photograph of Darnborough, Arnold L Haskell wrote that she was "above the average, with the makings of a first class soloist", while noting that "competition conditions seem to affect the senior artists far more than the children" and that consequently there was in all of them "a certain strain and lack of spontaneity".[7]

Darnborough took additional lessons from some Russian teachers in London, notably Serge Morosov and Serafina Astafieva, and, with Maclaren's encouragement, joined the class of Ninette de Valois who, in 1931, founded the Vic-Wells company (forerunner of the Royal Ballet). Darnborough recalled that, when she first danced for her, the composer Constant Lambert was "watching amiably" and that de Valois was impressed by the height of her jump.[3]

Vic-Wells

In 1932 Darnborough joined the Vic-Wells company, where she remained for three seasons. Her early appearances included roles in Swan Lake, The Birthday of Oberon (as Summer) and The Snow Maiden (as, among other things, a lily, a swan and a tree).[3] In 1933 she performed in Les Rendezvous, Frederick Ashton's first major production at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London,[8] dancing a pas de six with Beatrice Appleyard, Sheila McCarthy, Freda Bamford, Nadina Newhouse and Gwyneth Mathews. Others who appeared in this landmark production included Alicia Markova, Robert Helpmann ("so pushy, but very funny with it" according to Darnbrough[3]) and de Valois herself.[9]

In 1934 Darnborough played a leading role in Les Sylphides with Helpmann, Appleyard and Ursula Moreton and, in her final season the following year, was Queen of the Wills in Giselle, a role for which she was coached by Anton Dolin.[3] With Margot Fonteyn making her first appearance at Sadler's Wells, as a snowflake in The Nutcracker, in 1934, Darnborough was part of the company during a period of major development in British ballet[10] and one in which, as the poet and novelist Robert Graves put it, "ballet extended its popularity from highbrows downwards".[11]

Wings of the Morning (1937)

In 1937 Darnbrough appeared as a gypsy dancer in Harold Schuster's Wings of the Morning, the first British film to be shot in technicolor[12] and one of the few British colour pictures to survive from the 1930s.[13] Film historian Leslie Halliwell described Wings of the Morning, whose cast included Leslie Banks and Henry Fonda (who met his second wife, American socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, mother of Jane and Peter Fonda, on the set at Denham studios[14]), as "great to look at and quite charming, though slight".[15]

Photographic model

As a young dancer, Darnborough was known for her pretty looks. One critic at the time described her as "tall, lithe and graceful ... as if she might play Peter Pan without wires".[3] In 1934, while still in her teens, she posed nude for the German-born photographer E.O. Hoppé, whose previous subjects had included Lillian Gish, Bernard Shaw and Mussolini.[16] In 2011 this portrait was to form part of an exhibition of Hoppé's work at the National Portrait Gallery in London and featured in the Sunday Times.[17]

Marriage and family

During the 1930s ballet to some extent replaced grand opera as "the great cultural event of London's summer season".[18] Darnborough took part in the annual summer productions of Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall, which were choreographed by Euphan Maclaren, among others,[19] and had a cast of some 800 singers and 200 dancers. During the 1935 production, in which she danced the lead,[3] Darnborough met Muir Mathieson while he was deputising as conductor for Malcolm Sargent.[20] They were married on 21 December 1937.[21]

Darnborough had seemed set to became a major star, but she effectively retired from dancing after her marriage. She appears not to have regretted her decision and, in old age, recalled both the relatively poor pay at Vic-Wells and the sternness of de Valois, who would "stamp her stick furiously" and had once castigated her for the untidiness of her dressing table.[3].

The Mathiesons moved into a old farmhouse near Alexander Korda's Denham studios in Buckinghamshire, where Muir Mathieson had worked since 1931. They had four children, Muirne, Niall, Shuna and Fiona,[22] the youngest of whom, the actress Fiona Mathieson (1951–87), played Clarrie Grundy in the radio serial The Archers. Muir Mathieson, who died on 2 August 1975, directed or composed the music for a very large number of celebrated films, including This Happy Breed (1944), Genevieve (1953) and Vertigo (1958).

Death

Darnborough celebrated her 90th brithday by watching Darcey Bussell dance at Covent Garden.[3]. She died peacefully on 29 October 2010, aged 95.[23]

References

  1. ^ Andrew Youdell, entry for James Muir Mathieson in Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)
  2. ^ Obituary of Antony Darnborough, Guardian, 18 October 2000
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Anthony Meredith, interview with Hermione Darnborough, Dancing Times, July 2009, pp 35-7
  4. ^ The Dancing Times, May 1931
  5. ^ Daily Telegraph obituary of Binkie Stuart, 16 August 2001
  6. ^ Eve's Film Review, issue number 480, released on 14 August 1930. The credits for On with the Dance! confusingly gave Maclaren's first name as "Euthan". [1]
  7. ^ Dancing Times, May 1931
  8. ^ First performed at Sadler's Wells on 5 December 1933
  9. ^ [2]
  10. ^ Martin Pugh (2008) We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars
  11. ^ Robert Graves & Alan Hodge (1940) The Long Week-end: A Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939
  12. ^ Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed., 1989)
  13. ^ Time Out Film Guide (1989)
  14. ^ Christopher Andersen (1990) Citizen Jane
  15. ^ Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed., 1989)
  16. ^ "Beatiful and the Damned", Sunday Times Magazine, 9 January 2011
  17. ^ The prominent reproduction of Hoppé's photograph caused one frustrated "blogger" to proclaim, "the only thing that cheered me up was an amazing picture of [H]ermoine [D]arnborough by E O Hoppé in today's [S]unday [T]imes magazine....but the picture isn't anywhere on the internet and [I] can't find a print to buy, so [I] got angry again": michael w, 9 January 2011 [3].
  18. ^ Robert Graves & Alan Hodge (1940) The Long Week-end. When President Lebrun of France paid a state visit to Britain in 1939, the cultural highlight was a Gala performance by the Vic-Wells company of The Sleeping Princess: Anne de Courcy (1989) 1939: The Last Season.
  19. ^ See, for example, Royal Albert Hall programme for Hiawatha, 8–20 June 1936
  20. ^ [4]
  21. ^ [5]
  22. ^ Notice in The Times, 4 November 2010
  23. ^ The Times, 4 November 2010

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