Norman Beaton

Early life

Beaton attended Queen's College in Guyana until he was expelled for truancy and bad grades. He was given a second chance at the Government Teachers' Training College and graduated with distinction. Beaton taught and played with the calypso band The Four Bees before leaving Guyana for London in 1960.

Early career

Beaton developed a parallel career as a calypso singer, scoring a number-one hit in Trinidad and Tobago with "Come Back Melvina" in 1959. He then obtained a post in the shipping department of a bookshop until his wife and children arrived in London in 1960. He then became a teacher in Liverpool, becoming the first black teacher to be employed by the Liverpool Education Authority. While in the city, he played guitar for Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough – who became known as the Liverpool Poets – including appearances at the famous Cavern Club. Beaton became increasingly unhappy with his work as a teacher and began writing plays, his first play being the musical Jack of Spades, which was about the doomed relationship between a black man and a white woman, quite controversial at that time. The moderate success of this play gave Beaton enough confidence to give up teaching and to concentrate on the theatre. He moved first to Bristol and then to Sussex where he played the leading role in a musical he had written, Sit Down, Banna, at the Connaught Theatre. This was the beginning of his acting career.

Success

In the early 1970s, Beaton began to perform in plays in London's West End. In 1970 he played the role of Ariel in Shakespeare's The Tempest, which he described in his autobiography as "the most important role of my acting career", and also played a small role in the Frankie Howerd comedy film Up the Chastity Belt the following year. In 1975, he helped to establish the Black Theatre of Brixton. In 1975 Beaton played Nanki-Poo in The Black Mikado, a modern version of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. In 1976, Beaton broke into television in the series The Fosters, which also featured a young Lenny Henry, and the following year played the lead role in a low-budget independent film about a West Indian community in London, Black Joy; he also appeared in the BBC series Empire Road. However, it was his six-year run (starting in 1988) in Channel Four's Desmond's, (written by Trix Worrell) as the title character Desmond Ambrose, that would become his best-known role. For Desmond's Beaton received the Royal Television Society Best Comedy Performer Award.

He played the lead role of Willie Boy in the 1987 comedy Playing Away, about a West Indian cricket team invited to play a rural white team. He appeared as a guest on The Cosby Show in 1991 (episode: "There's Still No Joy in Mudville"), and in Little Napoleons. He also appeared in several movies, including The Mighty Quinn (1989).

Personal life

M. Gloria Moshette (1958–?)

Granddaughters – Sabrina Gayle (Kim Beaton), Alexandra Beaton (Norman Beaton Jr), Mica Beaton (Jeremy Beaton) Grandsons – Marlon Beaton (Jeremy Beaton) Simon Beaton, Lorian Beaton, Raphael Beaton (Norman Beaton Jr)

With Jane Atto

M. Leah Garady (1976–?)

Beaton formed a more lasting relationship with Jane Cash in 1978.

His father William Solomon Beaton died in 1983, and his mother Ada Beaton (née Mackintosh) died in 1962.

Legacy

BBC Radio Drama have founded the Norman Beaton Fellowship (NBF) to "broaden the range of actors available to Radio Drama producers across the UK by encouraging applicants from non-traditional training backgrounds".

Death

After years of hard living began taking its toll on his health, Beaton retired to his home city of Georgetown in 1994 (just as his character in Desmond's was doing the same), where he collapsed at the airport from a heart attack and died a few hours later on 13 December 1994 at the age of 60. He was survived by five children from three marriages.

It was announced in the spin-off show of Desmond's called Porkpie that Beaton's character, Desmond, had died approximately a year before the spin-off's first episode.