THE VOICE FROM FOOCHOW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 125, 14 November 1941, Page 7

THE VOICE FROM FOOCHOW

Talks For Radio and Talks For Films

OB POLLARD provides the voice which New Zealand listeners hear conducting the radio session, With the Boys Overseas. The same voice has lately become familiar to theatre audiences seeing and hearing the National Film Unit’s newsreels and other movie shorts. Listeners to 3ZB and 2ZB also know the voice. The Pollard vocal chords are almost public property. The personal Pollard story is less well known. It’s quite possible to work with Bob Pollard and get no further with his personal history than a story about Raetihi or Taumarunui, Rangiora or Mataura or any other place in New Zealand where he’s sold pictures for Columbia. It’s no secret that he’s growing a moustache at the moment, but no one would deduce from this that once he was a photographic model. But he was. He had a bad cold a month ago, and yet he’s studied pharmacy. He appears to be quite at home among the gadgets in the places where he works now, but this would not indicate by itself that he’s worked at engineering. Yet he has. é. He’s quite modest, and yet he’s worked with Frank Hurley, O.C. of Australia’s film unit overseas, Antarctic photographer, cameraman-adventurer.

He looks essentially respectable, yet he’s been a jackaroo on Moraro sheep station, Australia. He appears to be quite gentle. He doesn’t break things round the studio, nor produce lethal weapons when annoyed, yet he was, at a very early age, witness of a series of decapitations. We don’t know whether he can swim, but we do know that he was once very nearly drowned, in company with a large number of poultry that was only revived in time for the market by swinging it (or them), head first over burning paper. Fortunately, perhaps, his parents were present, and Bob was not so wet that he needed that sort of respiration. And he was born in Foochow; but it takes intensive cross-examination to discover such facts, Adventures in China To go into more detail: Robert Herbert Clarke Pollard was born on July 31, 1913, in Foochow, which as everyone should know, was then and is now in China, in spite of Admiral Togo and Wang Ching Wei, or Mr. Matsuoka himself, for that matter. Then, as might be expected, and as often happens, his adventures began. While still very young, he took part in war. Not willingly, of course, but nevertheless quite sufficiently intimately. The factions, pro and con, were predominantly Chinese, and were courteous enough to

try and avoid with their missiles the three European residences where he lived. However, the best planned wars sometimes come unhooked, and Bob had to be deposited in a corner behind some packing cases while the bullets flew. In the same district, some time before Robert Herbert Clarke Pollard was seven years of age, several missionaries were captured by pirates and discovered the truth about the Hereafter sooner, possibly, than they expected. Off With Their Heads! The local mandarin had humanitarian views, and determined to avenge them. A party of his retainers went forth and captured the pirates. The captives were taken to a city near Foochow and Pollards senior and junior travelled there to see how China goes on fete for executions. Somehow, Pollard junior happened to be around when all the fireworks had been lighted, the pirates led into the market place, and the executioners assembled. He watched, probably with the technical interest of the very young. while the pirates placed their heads on the blocks and had them hacked off. "No, not chopped off," says Mr. Pollard, whose memory of the event, naturally, remains quite clear — "hacked off. It took some time." In other respects, he remembers the Chinese as a very courteous people. The Pollard family would be invited to eat with the local big chief mandarin fellow.

In Sydney he went on the stage with the Gladys Moncrieff Company, and later toured New Zealand. Here he first came to anchor on the staff of the Radio Advertising Service. When Station 3ZB went on the air, he was on the staff, and made his first broadcast from 3ZB_ with "Aggie." He conducted the breakfast sessions for Christchurch listeners for several months and was then transferred to 2ZB. When he went back to 3ZB he went as production manager. His link with the movie industry revived when he took part in the New Zealand Centennial Film, and joined Columbia Pictures as traveller and publicity representative. Now he is free-lancing in radio and films, compéres the "Boys Overseas" programmes, does cémmentaries for a lot of the National Film Unit’s material, and may be heard in all sorts of radio features from many stations.