Garden (known as "the actors' church"); Ashton represented Princess Margaret, Fonteyn gave the address, a tribute was read from de Valois, and the British ballet and theatre were represented by some of their best-known members. Honours, reputation and legacy In 1954 Helpmann was appointed to the Royal Order of the Polar Star (Sweden) and in 1957 he was created a Knight of the Cedar (Lebanon). He was appointed CBE in 1964, named as Australian of the Year for 1965, and was created a Knight Bachelor in 1968. In The Daily Telegraph, de Valois wrote in an obituary tribute: To work with Robert Helpmann was always an inspiration. There was at work an alert intelligence with an acute sense of perception. ... Bobby had a sense of humour that surmounted everything. Sometimes it was expressed by word of mouth, sometimes by an outburst of "mime"; at other times by just a look – and the latter could prove to be the most potent of all, for his timing on such occasions was as faultless as it was fatal. An unsigned obituary in The Times caused upset by calling Helpmann "A homosexual of the proselytising kind, [who] could turn young men on the borderline his way." It was quickly pointed out that Helpmann kept his professional and private lives firmly separate. An assessment in The Guardian ranked him as capable in "princely" roles in classic ballets, but "peerless" in dramatic parts, and best of all in comic roles. The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) describes Helpmann as "the complete man of the theatre", but adds that in some people's view he worked in too many fields to achieve supremacy in any one of them. Malcolm Williamson observed, "he never became a Gielgud, Olivier or Redgrave, or an Ashton, Balanchine or Petit because he was the most pluralistic of the lot"; the ADB quotes the dancer Moira Shearer: "he wasn't a great dancer – he wasn't a great actor – but he was most certainly a great mime, the perfect bridge between the two". The New York Times said of him: While some critics question whether he would measure up to today's rigid standards for great classical dancers, Sir Robert was a dancer who could act and an actor who could dance. His personality and talent played a vital part in building the fledgling British ballet. The Helpmann Academy in South Australia was