Daneman as Richard II at the Old Vic in the early 1960s
Daneman as Richard II at the Old Vic in the early 1960s |
This obituray was from The Telegraph 30 April 2001.
He established his reputation in the early 1960s as Richard III and Dr Faustus. He later moved to the small screen and in the 1980s, while receiving from a heart attack, wrote the television series Affairs of the Heart.
Paul Daneman was born in London on October 26 1925 and educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School and Sir Wiliam Borlase's School, Marlow, Bucks and at Reading University, where he read fine Art.
He developed his passion for the stage during the Second World War when entertaining troops in the RAF, in which he served with Bomber Command from 1943 until 1947. After the war he abandoned a career as a painter in order to go to RADA.
His stage debut came on Boxing Day in 1947 in Alice in Wonderland at the New Theatre, Bromley as the front legs of a horse.
During the 1950s he became steadily more successful. In 952 he appeared as a memorable Richard in Henry VI Part III, in the most important British revival of the play since the Stratford production of 1906. It led to staging in Birmingham of the entire trilogy the next year.
After two years with the Old Vic Company, Daneman gave a touching performance in 1955 as Vladimir in the first London production of Waiting for Godot. He returned to the Old Vic to Play Henry VI in all three parts of Shakespeare's trilogy in 1957-58 and the title roles of Richard III and Dr Faustus, four years later. It was while playing Dr Faustus that he met his second wife, who was a ballet dancer in the same production.
Early in 1963 Daneman toured West Africa with the Nottingham playhouse Company and later that year he visited Australia playing King Arthur in Camelot. In 1969 he played Rolfe in Hadrian VII, a part that he enjoyed immensely, and which required him to smoke furiously on stage.
Although he played the title role in Macbeth in 1976, the 1970s general brought Daneman lighter roles, such as Charles Condamine in Blithe Spirit. In the 1980s he appeared in a disastrous revival of Graham Greene's The Living Room (1987) in which he was described by Charles Osborne , the theatre critic of The Daily Telegraph, as "quite colourless".
But since the late 1960s Daneman had enjoyed success on screen, His first significant television role was as Henry Corner in the series of Not in Front of the Children (1967), a sitcom that was both middle class and middle of the road. The following year he played Ronald Baldock in another comedy, Never a Cross Word.
In 1972 Daneman starred as Commander Ryan, RN in Spy Trap. He went on to make guest appearance in The Professionals (1977) and had two notable screen roles in 1991, as Mervyn Sloan in Alan Bleasdale's GBH and as Douglas Hurd in Thatcher: The Final Days.
Daneman also wrote a television series, Affairs of the Heart (1985), a mixture of situation comedy and light drama as a man going through life after a heart attack. Daneman wrote the series having himself had a heart attack during a London stage run - playing a man with heart trouble.
Ten years later Daneman wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, If I Only Had Wings, which one reviewer declared was "as staid, solid and comfortable as an old armchair and as smooth as a blended whisky".
His few film roles included fine performances as Sgt Maxfield in Zulu (1964) and as Tsar Nicholas II in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969).
Daneman enjoyed painting, photography and walking.
He married first in 1952, Susan Courtney, with whom he adopted a daughter. The marriage was dissolved. He married secondly, in 1965, Meredith Kinmont, who survives him with their two daughters.