Lou Stein, the first artistic director of the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, London, said recently that on opening the Gate he encountered a group of very imaginative people who gave of themselves. One of these was Harry Webster.
Harry was born in Kilmainham, Dublin, on February 19th, 1915, and trained initially as a doctor at the Royal College of Surgeons. In those days, Harry told me, they would send the students over to the Abbey Theatre to role-play with the actors in order to learn a thing called bedside manners; but the notion stuck and Harry never returned to medicine.
Not only did he act with the Abbey; he also managed the company for a time. He shared a house in Dalkey with Denis O'Dea, Cyril Cusack and Liam Redmond. After his time at the Abbey he worked with the Civic Players, toured America with the Ronald Ibbs Company and even found film locations for John Ford. On to London and his first film with Deborah Kerr and Trevor Howard: I See A Dark Stranger. He later appeared in Carol Reed's celebrated film Odd Man Out with Robert Newton and James Mason and in 1949 a play called The Money Doesn't Matter with Maire O'Neill (Molly Allgood, sister of Sara) who had been engaged to John Millington Synge. He starred in Red Roses For Me by Sean O'Casey in London and also took the role of Pat in Brendan Behan's The Hostage.
Harry was also a lover and admirer of poetry and of poets such as Patrick Kavanagh, whom he knew: "He was a very fine poet - a rather awkward person but very lovable. People used to take a rise out of him. He often walked around with his hands folded and I remember standing outside the Bank of Ireland in College Green and Paddy roaring across the street at me: `Webster, could you lend me half-a-crown? I've got a great tip for a horse.' It's an awful pity he hasn't lived. I think he was growing from strength to strength."
Another poet he knew was F. R. Higgins, with those haunting lines about the father and son in Meath: "With whom he is one, under yew branches,/Yes, one in a graven silence no bird breaks."
In 1975 Harry joined the National Theatre and moved with the company from the Old Vic to the new building, appearing in the inaugural production of The Plough and the Stars, directed by Peter Hall. This was followed by Marlowe's Tamburlaine with Albert Finney, with whom Harry became great friends. In the late 1970s Harry mentioned to two friends, Pat Bailey and Tom McCabe (the latter of which founded the Gate Theatre), in Jack Doyle's bar of The Prince Albert public house in Notting Hill Gate, that he would like to see in the millennium and be drinking in that particular bar at the time. I believe he got his wish. His ashes were scattered in Dalkey, Co Dublin, after we had raised a multitude of glasses to Harry in the Gate Theatre.
M.McC.