TAUBER’S NIGHTMARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1938, Page 5

TAUBER’S NIGHTMARE

VOICE FAILS AT ADELAIDE CONCERT CANCELLED. ’. ARTISTS’ CONSTANT FEAR. Once again, after a successful if strenuous season, Richard Tauber’s nightmare has come true —his voice cracked up before his last Adelaide concert and it had to be cancelled, says an Australian paper. The A.B.CJ had to return £5OO to *ticket-holders.l Tauber makes no secret of his constant L

fear that his voice might fail. Talking about it one day at the beginning of his present season in Australia, he said:

“The singer is in the hands of God —always over his head hangs the threat that, on the day of the concert, his voice will not be there. He can be quite fit physically, and even up to the moment of going on the platform be in good voice, only to find that at the last moment no sound will come.

“It is the torture of my life not to know from one day to the next whether those vocal cords will go on strike; and if they do no money in the world will make them sing.” Perhaps that fear may be the Cause of a habit noticed in him, when he is not concentrating bn anything or anyone, of walking to and fro with his hands clasped behind his back and singing sotto voce snatches from arias and lieder —always those liquid top notes. You might imagine his everpresent nightmare would make him nervous on the stage, but he says he never has stage fright before a concert.

He usually plays his piano in his dressing room until five minutes before a concert. Yet on one occasion when his voice failed, he had to disappoint 10,000 people in the Albert Hall, London, and lose his fee into the bargain—a cool £l2OO.

Germany spent £4.500.000 on film production in 1937. according to the League of Nations Motion Picture Bureau. France spent £2,225,000, and Italy £1.650,000.

Goldwyn-Mayer,” says Variety, “allows Selznick to select a player for the role of Scarlet O’Hara either from the Metro stellar ranks or from the outside.” .-«•

Mr Deeds Again. The latest mail from Columbia Studios brings important information concerning new season’s programmes. Following the completion of “You Can’t Take It With You,” the next Frank Capra picture will be “Mr Deeds Goes to Washington.” The story is based on an original, “The Man From Wyoming,” by Lew Foster, Columbia is attempting to get Gary Cooper, creator of the original Mr Deeds, for the picture. He is permitted to do several outside pictures under his Samuel Goldwyn contract. The studio’s intention also is to have Jean Arthur as the feminine lead. Motion Picture Power.

One time famous cruiser, H.M.A.S. “Australia,” is no more. Her rusty hull, stripped of everything of value, rests on the coral bed of the heaving Pacific, twenty miles due east fropi Sydney Heads. But the giant electric turbines which once provided pulsating power for her propellers are still doing an unfaltering job in another important branch of Australian industry. They form an integral part of the huge, generating plant at the Cinesound Studios, Waverley, where 14 all-Australian pictures have been produced in the past seven years. Smooth and silent, the mammoth 300.000 watt motors have never missed a beat since their installation 12 years ago. Designed for war time, they have played their part in an industry which thrives in time of peace —motion picture entertainment for the world.