Don (March 25, 1917- October 5, 1987) and Elsbeth (January 15, 1918-May 15, 2005).
Don and Elsbeth Gibson were professional actors with a long list of credits between them when they arrived in Bermuda in 1954.
They’d even appeared in the very first soap opera, The Laytons.
The couple came to Bermuda after Don landed a lead role in an NBC television series Crunch and Des, which was filmed at Darrell’s Island.
Don exited the series early because of numerous production problems.
Yet Bermuda exerted its hold on the couple. They stayed put with their daughter Laurie and son Neil and left an indelible stamp on the Island’s cultural life.
Elsbeth became known as Bermuda’s “grande dame of the theatre” and the “first lady of fashion”, while Don made his mark as a producer and all-round entertainment guru.
Their singular contribution to the cultural life of Bermuda was the Holiday Island Revue. Launched in 1959 as the Gulfstream Revue, it was a training ground and showcase for a who’s who of Bermudian entertainers, of whom Gene and Pinky Steede became the best known.
The Gibsons had worked in New York, Atlanta, Florida and Hollywood, California before coming to Bermuda.
Elsbeth was born in the state of Washington, Don in Pennsylvania and their paths first crossed as players at the University of Washington’s drama school productions.
The former Elsbeth Hofmann was an undergraduate, studying English literature and drama, while Don, a geologist’s son, was pursuing a master’s degree in drama, having taken his first degree in business administration and working, first in publishing and then with his father.
After she graduated, Elsbeth honed her acting skills at a theatre company in Pennsylvania, before moving to New York, where she found work in Broadway productions.
Don and Elsbeth’s paths crossed in Pennsylvania and again in New York, where they began their romance and were married in 1945, having endured three and a half years’ separation during the Second World War while Don was serving overseas.
The new medium of television brought new opportunities in the post-war years. In 1948, they played a married couple in The Laytons, a short-lived soap opera that was performed live. Elsbeth also had the distinction of being the first actress to take a shower on U.S.television.
NBC sent the couple to Atlanta where they worked in television and also ran a regional theatre, staging and performing in productions alongside such notables as Sarah Churchill, daughter of Sir Winston, and Boris Karloff.
By the time they came to Bermuda, they had racked up considerable experience, and had worked with future stars like Anthony Quinn, Charlton Heston and Kay Francis. Each had also appeared in a Hollywood movie.
Don sat it out for a year while he waited to get paid for Crunch and Des, but Elsbeth found a home almost immediately with the Bermudiana Theatre Company, which staged plays with professional actors from the U.S.
In 1955, Don opened a nightclub The Alibi Room and the Beefeater Restaurant in the old Windsor Hotel on Queen Street, Hamilton. He followed that up with Smuggler’s Lair at the Coral Island Hotel in Flatts.
Both ventures were a success with tourists lined up to take in the mix of local and overseas entertainment, according to Rudolph Commissiong.
Commissiong was leader of the Esso Steel Band, which Don hired from Trinidad in 1955 to play at the Alibi Room.
Don fell out with both Sir Howard Trott, owner of New Windsor Hotel, and David Barber, owner of Coral Island. Don then headed to Jamaica with the Lance Hayward Quartet and the Esso Steel Band, in an attempt to replicate the success he’d had in Bermuda at the Chatham Hotel in Montego Bay.
But the club foundered within weeks and entertainers and impresario went their separate ways.
In 1959, however, Don hit pay dirt in Bermuda with the Gulfstream Revue, which he launched with a cast of 10 singers and dancers.
Renamed the Holiday Island Revue the following year, the show, which rotated in hotels six nights a week, ran until 1974. Don was the front man, but Elsbeth was an equal partner—she trained the cast and also designed their costumes.
The Revue was the vehicle through which the Gibsons nurtured the talents of a host of Bermudian entertainers during the golden era of tourism.
Don was also the long-time producer of the Harvard University Hasty Pudding Theatricals, taking it over in 1964 a year after Department of Tourism first brought the group to Bermuda. Their annual performance in Bermuda, which is their last stop on their annual spring tour, is another of Don’s enduring legacies.
The Esso Steel Band eventually returned to Bermuda and was a fixture on the entertainment scene for more than 30 years.
Elsbeth for her part went on to produce memorable productions like This Island’s Mine, which was performed during Bermuda’s 350th anniversary year in 1959.
The couple directed and produced the first play to be performed at City Hall in 1960 and also enlivened cultural life by bringing in professional shows. Those theatrical ventures began with productions that starred then unknown actresses Rosemary Harris and Nancy Marchant in the 1950s and also saw Hal Holbrook performing as Mark Twain in a one-man show in 1986.
Don’s friendship with Academy-award winning production designer Gene Callahan was crucial to the decision to film Neil Simon’s Chapter Two in Bermuda in 1979.
The couple was also heavily involved in Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society productions between 1955 and 1960.
When Elsbeth, who was known for her elegance, became a last-minute replacement MC for a fashion show it would be the start of career producing fashion shows for the Department of Tourism.
The Gibsons’ partnership was so enmeshed they were often compared with legendary theatre couples Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne and Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn. They appeared on stage together throughout their long career. Their last performance as a couple was in On Golden Pond in 1983.
Their partnership came to an end with the death of Don in 1987. Elsbeth eventually recovered from the loss and carried on with her own projects.
She appeared in 200 productions during her career, taking her final bow in a production of Driving Miss Daisy that ran in 1997 and again in 1998, the year she turned 80.
In 1999, her work as a tourism tour guide and MC earned her the Visitor Industry Partnership Award of Excellence, which came with a $20,000 prize.
When Elsbeth died in 2005, she had racked up a string of honours including Queen’s Certificate and Badge of Honour. Elsbeth had relinquished her U.S. citizenship years earlier to acquire Bermuda status. Don, however, retained his U.S. citizenship.
She was buried at St. Paul’s Church in Paget, where Don had been interred 18 years earlier.
On November 22, 2005, they were the posthumous recipients of the Bermuda Arts Council’s Founders Award. Fellow awardees that year were Gene Steede (Lifetime Achievement Award) and the Esso Steel Band (Founders Award).
Andrew Trimingham, who had designed sets for many of their productions and accepted the award on their behalf, said Don and Elsbeth would have been delighted.
