Hard-driving dancer found fame and fortune as the choreographer of Cats
Last month the New London Theatre was renamed the Gillian Lynne Theatre in honour of the choreographer of Cats, which played there from 1981 to 2002. Lynne, who has died aged 92, was carried on stage, seated on a golden throne, by four topless men in a flamboyant spectacle produced by Cameron Mackintosh with Andrew Lloyd Webber in attendance.
Without her as choreographer, dancer or director, it sometimes seemed there would be little movement of any sort on television, theatre or in films. She worked with everyone from Noel Coward to Cliff Richard, and from the Bolshoi to the Muppets. A new production of Cats ,oranew cast, would require her to fly out to
Stuttgart, New
York or elsewhere to supervise rehearsals, yet she would often find time to create new pieces for regional companies.
Lynne’s approach was to treat each member of the dance chorus individually. ‘‘One might have corns, another might be in the middle of a row with her boyfriend,’’ she explained in 1979. ‘‘The more I work in drama, the more important this becomes.’’
Even in the 1960s she had a reputation for driving her dancers hard, with classes starting at dawn. She drove herself in the same way. ‘‘It’s because of my training,’’ she said. ‘‘Ballet is the most gruelling discipline there is.’’
She was born Gillian Barbara Pyrke in Bromley, southeast London, the only child of Leslie Pyrke, who ran a clothing store. Because of Gillian’s constant fidgeting, her mother Barbara took her to a specialist, who prescribed dancing lessons.
Gillian was 13 when her mother and three female friends were killed after their car skidded into the path of a petrol tanker. ‘‘I remember Daddy coming in and sitting on my bed, and he couldn’t speak,’’ she recalled in 2001. ‘‘He was crying, but he managed to get the words out that Mummy was dead . . . I put my arms around him and said, ‘Don’t worry, darling. I’ll look after you.’ ’’
Her father served in the Royal West Kent Regiment during the war and, aware that Gillian missed both her mother and dancing, he sent her for an audition at the Cone Ripman School. ‘‘It changed my life,’’ she said. ‘‘I was a lost soul. I wanted company.’’
At age 16, she was spotted by Ninette de Valois, who thought the surname Lynne sounded better. Within two years she was a member of Sadler’s Wells Ballet (later the Royal Ballet). After the war she danced for British troops in Dusseldorf. ‘‘They hadn’t seen a girl for ages and here there were lots of girls with long legs, slim and pretty,’’ she said. ‘‘I think that was a turn-on, but I also think it was the start of the adoration of ballet in this country.’’
When the Royal Opera House reopened, she alternated with Beryl Grey and Moira Shearer in works by de Valois, Frederick Ashton and George Balanchine. ‘‘I adored him,’’ she said of Balanchine. ‘‘He was such a sexy beast.’’
Margot Fonteyn introduced her to Patrick Back, a lawyer, and they were married when she was 19. On their honeymoon she spent an hour every morning practising her ballet steps. ‘‘I was a virgin when I married and sexually didn’t know where I was going,’’ she recalled. They divorced after five years.
She had an affair with Errol Flynn while in Sicily making her first film,
The Master of Ballantrae (1953). ‘‘It was an amazing breakthrough . . . It was enough to show me that I wasn’t frigid.’’ A great many lovers followed: ‘‘I was working in the theatre with attractive people, and dancers are passionate, physical people, totally uninhibited about their bodies.’’
A visit to New York, where she saw the musical Kiss Me, Kate, opened Lynne’s eyes to forms of dance other than classical ballet. Back in London, feeling that de Valois was favouring Fonteyn over her, she made the leap into the West End theatre.
Her first film as a choreographer was the Cliff Richard movie Wonderful Life (1964), and in 1967 she directed Half a Sixpence.
For Cats, Lynne not only received an Olivier award in 1981, but she also negotiated a share of the show’s future revenues, an approach she repeated later for her work on
Phantom of the Opera. This brought her a mansion in Gloucestershire, a 38th-floor apartment in New York, a villa in the south of France, a house in New Zealand and another in Knightsbridge, central London.
She continued working at breakneck speed. ‘‘I’m in the gym at 8am twice a week using the weights, pulleys and the treadmill,’’ she explained in 2001 when she had three shows – Cats, Phantom and The Secret Garden
– in the West End. Retirement was unthinkable. ‘‘The only question is, can you still be creative, come up with original ideas?’’
Her second marriage, in 1980, was to the actor Peter Land, 27 years her junior. They couple separated in 1997, but were reconciled four years later. She made no secret of her desires. ‘‘The day you cannot be bothered with sex, you’ve really had it,’’ she said, ‘‘so I want to be continuously desirable.’’ She had no children and Land survives her. –
She drove herself [and her dancers]. ‘‘It’s because of my training. Ballet is the most gruelling discipline there is.’’