BAD LUCK FOR A WELSHMAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 141, 6 March 1942, Page 7

BAD LUCK FOR A WELSHMAN

*« O become famous enough as a boy soprano to attract the attention of Hollywood, to have one’s voice break shortly after arriving in the film capital, and then to be frustrated by the outbreak of war when ready to return to America as an adult singer, has been the experience of the young Welshman, Cyril Lewis, whose voice was heard in a special St. David’s Day broadcast from 1YA last Sunday. Three times before he was 11 years old Cyril Lewis won the boys’ vocal championshir at the Welsh National Eisteddfod-first at Wrexham when he was nine, and at Swansea and Cardiff in succeeding years. And he has also sung in the BBC session, In Town Tonight. He was not ten when he was selected to sing as soprano soloist at the marriage of Princess Marina and ihe Duke of Kent-he ‘sang "O For the Wings of a Dove "-and it was not long after that that he travelled to Hollywood. There he made one film and was just beginning on a second when his voice broke. He went back home. His film contract, however, provided for a further test if he should develop a tenor voice. He did develop as a tenor and tested successfully from the film point of view as well, but when all seemed to be shaping satisfactorily the call came for air pilots and other F: A.F. personnel and so to-day Cyril Lewis, at the age of 19, is in the Air Force and his next assault on Hollywood has been postponed "for the duration." Sister in Auckland Lewis has a link with New Zealand in the person of his sister, Mrs. R. Presley, of Point Chevalier, Auckland, whose

recordings of her brother’s voice were used in last Sunday’s programme. Mrs. Presley accompanied her husband, an aircraft test mechanic, to New Zealand just a few weeks after the outbreak of war. Though he gained such high honour$ as a Welsh singer, her brother did not speak the national language, Mrs. Presley explains. She finds that most New Zealanders she meets are surprised that a Welshwoman cannot speak the Welsh tongue, yet it is hardly more commonly spoken than is Gaelic in Scotland.