Born: 18 December 1926, Ireland
Died: 30 January 2016
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Evelyn Noelle Woodeson
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Angela Byrne. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Middleton, Evelyn Noelle (married name Woodeson) (1926–2016), actor and television announcer, was born in Ballysadare, Co. Sligo, on 18 December 1926, the eldest of the two children (along with her brother Gerald, b. 1930) of mill manager and fisheries owner Wilbram (Willbraham) Adam Gerald Middleton (1889–1960) and his wife, Lilian Harriet Martin (1902–c. 1979). Wilbram was of the Brethren congregation and Lillian was Church of Ireland; they married in St Paul’s Church of Ireland in Ballysadare on 8 December 1925. The Middletons were wealthy and socially well-positioned in Co. Sligo, while the Martins were well-off farmers. Wilbram grew up in Avena, a fine mid-nineteenth-century townhouse in Ballysadare, and was manager of a large mill in the town which had previously been part-owned by his grandfather; the Middletons sold their share of the business to their partners, the Pollexfen family, in 1883, but continued to act as managers. The Middletons were also related by marriage to the Yeats family; Elizabeth Pollexfen (née Middleton), grandmother of William Butler, Jack, Elizabeth and Susan, was a sister of Noelle Middleton’s grandfather, William Middleton. The Yeatses were regular visitors in childhood to Elsinore, the Middleton’s scenic seaside retreat at Rosses Point, Co. Sligo. There, W. B. Yeats collected folklore and ‘fairy stories’ (Foster, 71).
The Dublin stage
Known by her middle name, Noelle, Middleton had the benefit of an exclusive education at Hillcourt Church of Ireland boarding school for girls in Glenageary, Co. Dublin (now Rathdown School). In 1946 she enrolled to read modern languages at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where she was a member of the dramatic society, Dublin University (DU) Players. Reviewers frequently praised her performances for elevating otherwise mediocre productions, with one appearance positively reviewed as ‘add[ing] a touch of professional distinction’ (Irish Times, 26 Nov. 1946). Journalist and critic Ken Gray later stated that Middleton was ‘remembered with pride and affection’ by former members of DU Players (Irish Times, 22 Nov. 1977). Middleton abandoned her studies after two years, having briefly joined the Ulster Group Theatre (which had been formed in 1940 and quickly established a strong reputation) and having taken voice lessons from Dublin stage actor Meriel Moore.
Simultaneously, while still enrolled in TCD, Middleton had secured roles at the Gate Theatre. Working under the theatre’s co-founder, Micheál MacLiammóir, she was surrounded by some of the biggest names in mid-century Ireland’s cultural sphere. She was briefly the subject of writer Ernest Gébler’s affections when they both worked at the Gate in 1947, though she does not seem to have reciprocated. Her appearances at the Gate quickly established her as a new force on the Irish stage. Her Lucie Manette in MacLiammóir’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A tale of two cities in September 1945 was very well received; a review in the Irish Press enthused: ‘She has good looks, grace of figure and a good speaking voice. MacLiammóir says she has everything but experience’ (4 Oct. 1945). Middleton continued working with MacLiammóir until 1951, with roles including his adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s An ideal husband (which toured to Cork Opera House) and the 1920s farce ‘Home for Christmas’.
In 1947 Middleton became a founding member of Roibeárd Ó Faracháin’s Radio Éireann Players (REP). She was one of just twenty actors (eight women and twelve men) selected from hundreds of applicants to fill full-time permanent positions to work on radio dramas, documentaries, features, variety, talks, short stories and news announcements – roles that had previously been filled by contract actors. Producer Mícheál Ó hAodha later described the REP as ‘a “Who’s who” in the theatre […] there was scarcely an Irish playwright of note in those pre-TV days who did not get their first professional productions on radio’ (Irish Times, 13 Apr. 1987).
A new voice at the BBC
In late 1951 Middleton moved to London. While Radio Éireann (RÉ), the state broadcasting service, had been established in 1926, it did not incorporate television broadcasting until 1961, limiting opportunities for actors within the organisation to radio. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), on the other hand, began its television service in 1936. Middleton’s prospects at RÉ seem to have been further hampered by the fact that she did not speak Irish. Her departure for London was part of a wider pattern of mass migration by Irish women to Britain that was particularly pronounced in the years 1946–51, following the lifting of regulations that opened that labour market to Irish women.
Middleton quickly found success in London, making her début as one of the BBC’s first television announcers in January 1952, just two months after arriving in the city. She simultaneously worked as a presenter on BBC radio. The Irish Times praised Middleton’s voice as ‘admirable … [with] everything to recommend it’ (12 Jan. 1952). Her successes in London were widely reported in the Irish press as a beacon for the many Irish who sought improved prospects in Britain, even if very few Irish people had the facility to watch her on the small screen; television sets were then still a rarity in Irish homes (BBC television broadcasts were available along Ireland’s east coast in the early 1950s, with coverage spreading across much of the island from 1953 following the establishment of BBC Northern Ireland). In November 1953, Lilian Middleton travelled from Monkstown to Enniskerry to watch her daughter’s appearance in a programme about Elizabethan England on an acquaintance’s television set.
On the big screen
Television announcing quickly led Middleton to a career in cinema, and she was cast in several British films in quick succession between 1954 and 1961. Her early roles were her most popular and successful, especially the comedy Happy ever after (1954) and the legal drama Carrington VC (1954). Starring David Niven in the role of a man who inherits an Irish estate, Happy ever after was mercilessly reviewed in the Irish Times as ‘shamrock sauce’, a ‘technicoloured farce’ and ‘no more than an elongated vaudeville sketch […] the self-contained dignity of Noelle Middleton […] is pleasant but irrelevant’ (5 July 1954). Nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for her portrayal of Capt. Alison Graham in Carrington VC, Middleton starred opposite Margaret Leighton and David Niven, ‘gallantly undertak[ing] a thankless part as a “good” woman – a woman of such sphingine virtue that imperfect humanity is irredeemably shamed’ (Irish Times, 4 July 1955). There followed a string of comedies, dramas and thrillers: A Yank in ermine (1955), A phoenix too frequent (1955), John and Julie (1955, with Peter Sellers and Sidney James), The iron petticoat (1956, with Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope), Three men in a boat (1956), You can’t escape (1956), The vicious circle (1957), While parents sleep (1957), The angry flower (1959), The whistling sands (1959), Queen of Scots (1961) and A question of suspense (1961); over ten years then elapsed before her next and final film role in Waiting for a knighthood (1972). She also made appearances in British television dramas from 1954 until the early 1970s.
Middleton’s acting and announcing skills were well recognised, but she was also a celebrated beauty whose looks and style appealed to the mainstream aesthetic of the period. Following the publication of her photograph in TV Mirror magazine in 1954, the magazine claimed to have received 432 letters from members of the public requesting a date with her. She took the sexism to which she was subjected in her stride, stating the accompanying interview: ‘I am often asked by women viewers why we are so rarely shown […] full-length, so that our dresses can be seen in full. The main reason for this is in the very nature of the announcer’s job […] I’m afraid she is not there to display herself or her dress! Moreover, the BBC soon found that when an announcer is shown full-length, the viewers’ eyes are so occupied taking her in that what she says may not be properly heard’ (TV Mirror, 13 Feb. 1954).
In London in summer 1961, Middleton married Madison Avenue executive Keith K. Woodeson (1925–2007). Born and educated in England, he served in the Royal Air Force before becoming an advertising executive in London, Paris, Rome and, from the mid-1950s, New York, where he worked with Newsweek and Esquire before returning to London as European manager with Curtis Publishing. In the late 1960s he returned to New York – apparently without Middleton – and, following his retirement in 1972, he became a visual artist. He and Middleton divorced in the mid-1970s; they had no children.
Oyster farming
On the death of her father in 1960, Middleton inherited a nineteenth-century boathouse in Culleenamore, Co. Sligo, on the estuary of the Ballysadare River, just upstream from the house and mill where her father grew up. Along with the boathouse, she inherited a fishery license which had been in the family since 1847. Following her divorce from Woodeson, Middleton initially divided her time between London and Sligo, using the boathouse as a holiday home (her father had converted it for seasonal use when she was a child), before settling permanently in Sligo: ‘I came back … to sort things out and then I just sort of stayed because there was so much to do’ (Irish Times, 6 Jan. 1990). She started an oyster farm by buying 30,000 oyster seeds from a hatchery in Wales, contributing to the revival of a once-thriving local industry. Immersing herself in the business (‘I learnt about oysters just like I learned about acting. I just did it’ (Irish Times, 6 Jan. 1990)), she supplied local restaurants with high-quality hand-harvested gigas (Pacific oysters) – which grow quickly and can be eaten all year round – and ostrea edulis (European oysters).
Later life and appraisal
Middleton was described in 1990 as ‘a slight, agile and handsome woman’ who lived a ‘frugal, active’ life with her dog and cat, was (mostly) vegetarian apart from the occasional oyster eaten raw with a dash of cider vinegar, and joked about her theatre reviews being eaten by the boathouse mice (Irish Times, 6 Jan. 1990). She remained in the Sligo boathouse for most of the rest of her life, except for occasional visits to Dublin to record television or radio dramas; she had several roles in RTÉ television plays and drama series in the 1960s–80s. Her last screen appearance was in Rose dear (1988), a short period drama for RTÉ. She returned to the Gate in 1971 in the role of Gwendolyn in ‘The importance of being Earnest’, which she delivered ‘with such elegance’ (Irish Times, 23 Aug. 1971), and again in 1978–9 in MacLiammóir’s comedy ‘Where stars walk’. Her true passion, however, was the simple existence she made in Sligo and to which she devoted the greater part of her life. Later, she lived with Alzheimer’s with the assistance of carers, eventually moving to Summerville care home, Strandhill, Co. Sligo, where she spent her final years, and where she died on 30 January 2016. Her remains were cremated and her ashes scattered on the shore at Culleenamore.