This year he had been living in semi-retirement in a cottage at St Veep, Cornwall.
He was unmarried. Born in Halifax, he joined the local repertory company at 19 and made his first appearance on the London stage at the Savoy Theatre in 1924 as Antipholus of Syracuse in "The Comedy of Errors."
He joined the Old Vic Company at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. An early triumph was as Stephen Undershaft in "Major Barbara." He won the Ellen Terry award for the nest actor of 1948.
Other films included One of Our Aircraft is Missing, We Dive at Dawn, A Canterbury Tale, The Mark of Cain, Corridor of Mirrors, The Blind Goddess, Cairo Road, The Good Companions, The Colditz Story, and Freud.
Desmond Pratt writes: Eric Portman was as Yorkshire to the theatre as Freddie Trueman to cricket. He loved his native Yorkshire and one will never forget his brave efforts to keep the Grand Theatre Halifax alive in 1954 by bringing his entire London production of Terence Rattigan's "Separate Tables" to the theatre for a Sunday charity performance to try and raise funds so the theatre could survive. He failed.
Respected as an actor, not only in this country. but on Broadway, he was an amiable person to meet and a heavyweight actor, a splendid portrayer of ruminating, truculent, heavyweight parts.
Yet, he had a great sensitivity in his interpretation of the problems that faced man and one has only to think of his heartbreaking performance as the major in "Separate Tables" to realise how deeply he probed the fallibility of men.
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