"HELLO FROM HOLLYWOOD"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 122, 24 October 1941, Page 12

"HELLO FROM HOLLYWOOD"

Glamour Of Three Famous Pacific Coast Night Clubs For ZB Listeners

HREE of the "swankiest,"’ most glamorous night spots on America’s Pacific Coast, are the Cocoanut Grove, Ciro’s and the Biltmore Bowl. At any of these you can rub shoulders with dozens of Hollywood’s brightest stars; movie directors are three a@ penny; if you are particularly lucky, the waiter will. bring you a featured player with the hors d’oeuvre. Many fine dance bands are engaged to play at these night clubs, and the artists who appear with them are usually equally famous. A list of the. artists who have been billed at the Cocoanut Grove, for instance, reads like a Who's Who in Hollywood musical circles, and would include such names as Rudy Vallee, Paul Whiteman, Bergen and McCarthy, Dorothy Lamour, Alec Templeton, Eddy Duchin, Morton Downey, Freddy Martin, Joe Reichman, Wayne King, and Veloz and Yolanda.

When B. T. Sheil, deputy-Controller of the Commercial Broadcasting Service, was in Hollywood recently, he arranged for a series of programmes from the Cocoanut Grove, Ciro’s, and the Biltmore to be recorded for New Zealand listeners by the C, P. MacGregor Studios. The completed programme is entitled Hello From Hollywood. Hello From Hollywood will be heard on three nights a week from all stations, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday -at 7.30 p.m. It will start off with broadcasts on Monday from the Cocoanut Grove by Henry King and his orchestra, with Anita Boyer as guest artist; on Tuesdays from Ciro’s (Chuck Foster’s band with "the Three D’s" as guests artists); and on Wednesdays from the-Biltmore Bowl (Fred Nagel and his orchestra with "the Town House Boys," a vocal trio, as guest artists). Later on, different bands and different guest artists will be introduced. Hello From Hollywood started from 2ZB_ on

October 20, and will start from 1ZB on October 27, 3ZB on November 3 and 4ZB on November 10. On this page are pictures taken at the Cocoanut Grove, together with studies of Henry King, Anita Boyer, and Harry Owen’s Royal Hawaiian Band. Henry King conducts a "society" orchestra which is known from coast to coast in America for its distinctive tango and rhumba music. He has played in many leading night clubs and ‘hotels. Anita Boyer, King’s guest artist, has been vocalist with Artie Shaw’s orchestra, and broadcasts frequently over the Columbia network. The "relays" from the Cocoanut Grove, Ciro’s, and the Biltmore Bowl will be varied with programmes by Harry Owens and his Royal Hawaiians, specially recorded in Hawaii by C. P. MacGregor. Owens, who composed the familiar "Sweet Leilani,’ plays at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Honolulu,