He Takes His Job Seriously

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 89, 7 March 1941, Page 10

He Takes His Job Seriously

H ECTOR CHEVIGNY, author of "Lost Empire," the ZB feature, is widely known and respected among radio writers for his endeavours to raise the standards of. that field of writing. Until 1937 he was director of the Scripts Division of the Columbia Broadcasting System on the West Coast of the U.S. Coming from a man with a Hollywood background, the creation of a serious historical drama like " Lost Empire" would seem something of a phenomenon. However, Chevigriy, who comes of a pioneering French-Canadian family, is keenly interested in West Coast history, and is a serious historian. | In 1932 he dramatised over a Seattle station the complete history of the city of Seattle from the year of its foundation to 1900, finding material even in the files of the Fire Department and the Public Library. Later he was called on to settle a quarrel between two local pioneer societies, and to-day the scripts of his programme are in use in the National History classes of two Seattle colleges, The ability to assimilate a great mass of knowledge in a short time is one of Chevigny’s greatest assets. One characteristic story concerns his learning of music. After a few months of indifferent success as a staff writer on a Seattle radio station, he began keenly to feel his lack of musical knowledge, so he bought a piano and hired a_ teacher. Then, after three impatient months without much technical progress, he bought Prout’s classical but formidable work "Harmony, Its Theory and Practice," and studied it alone, Six months later, he was able to identify by name the chords of a concerto, Characteristically, after mastering the piano enough to play a Beethoven sonata, he lost interest. "I quit the third time I was introduced as someone who had learned the piano after 25." In 1935, deciding that his fame as a radio writer must have preceded him, Chevigny moved to Hollywood, where he found it had done nothing of the sort. The studios remained cold to his story, and unimpressed by his frail, thicke lensed, rather academic appearance, But, as always seems to happen in Hollywood success stories, he got his break-an important job with the Columbia Broadcasting System. A year later, he left with the title of Director of the Scripts Division to write a radio serial for May Robson, "Lady of Millions," which was heard in New Zealand over the ZB stations.