The curtains came down on the life of Jamaican media and the performing arts icon Leonie Forbes in the University Hospital of the West Indies on Tuesday, October 25. She was 85.

No cause of death was given.

A few hours after Forbes’ passing her close friend, Fae Ellington, herself an actress and broadcaster, remembered the woman she labelled “the doyenne of Jamaican theatre” as “the consummate artiste”.

“I remember her as an exquisite performer — her timing, her approach to preparation; when we were supposed to get to the theatre for call time — it’s an hour before the start of the show — Leonie is going to be there two, two-and-a-half hours before,” Ellington told the Jamaica Observer on her way home from a poetry book launch at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

Ellington admitted that while she had learnt of Forbes’ death earlier in the afternoon, she knew that her fellow thespian would not have wanted her to miss the book launch as she would have insisted, “The show must go on.”

She started at Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation in 1955 as an announcer. She was one of its first voices along with Dennis Hall, Desmond Chambers, Erica Allen, and Beverly Anderson.

Forbes had leading roles in 12 pantomimes and acted in plays such as Sea Mama, Miss Unusual, and Old Story Time. She has also appeared in the films Children of Babylon (1980), Club Paradise (1986), The Orchid House (1991), Milk and Honey (1995), What My Mother Told Me (1995), and Soul Survivor (1995).

Forbes also co-authored with Alma Mock Yen a book called The Re-Entry Into Sound, a standard text used to train broadcasters across the Caribbean.

In September 2012 she launched Leonie: Her Autobiography at Little Theatre in St Andrew. The book is a collaborative effort between Forbes and Professor Emeritus and former Poet Laureate Mervyn Morris, covering her life, as well as her work in theatre and broadcasting.

She was honoured with the Order of Distinction from the Jamaican Government and a Musgrave gold medal from the Institute of Jamaica.

— Brian Bonitto