Hayes Gordon

Who was Hayes Gordon?

Hayes Gordon AO OBE was an American actor, stage director and acting teacher with a considerable career in Australia.

Gordon was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein, and appeared on Broadway in several musicals, including the original production of Oklahoma!, Show Boat and Brigadoon. He also appeared in America's first television soap opera Fashion Story. He was named in a newsletter Red Networks, which specialised in naming alleged communists and sympathisers, and after he refused in 1951 to sign a loyalty oath declaring that he was not a communist, work dried up completely.

He went to Sydney, Australia in 1952 to star in the musical Kiss Me, Kate. He stayed in the country and established the Ensemble Theatre in North Sydney with a group of young students he tutored from the Independent Theatre. This was a co-operative style theatre and also Australia's first theatre-in-the-round. He also established Australia's longest surviving acting school, the Ensemble Studios, in the 1950s, which closed in 2009. He was Principal of the school for the rest of his life.