"BILL" HOLDER: A Tribute

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 280, 3 November 1944, Page 18

"BILL" HOLDER: A Tribute

(By

A Colleague

N behalf of W. Graemie Holder ("Bill" to his many friends, who loved him) a strong complaint could be made against Fate. After a roving career in which he was many things, including sailor, salesman, photographer, actor, engineer and impresario, Holder found his true line writing plays for radio, and sold his wares round the world: then, after seven years of this regular work, when he was in the prime of his powers, death took him at 54. It was tragic for him and his family, a grievous blow to those who knew him, and a very severe loss to broadcasting. Capable writers of*radio plays do not grow on trees, and Holder, judged by standards anywhere, was in the front rank. Holder’s formal education finished early, but he learned to write good English. He knocked about the world a lot, and he must have owed much of his success as a playwright to his knowledge of men and his human sympathies. For, as a good writer should, he worked always through character rather than plot or situation. Character came first and plot afterwards. He was extraordinarily versatile. A colleague recalls that when, two days before a show-variety and farce, nearly all of which he had written him-self-the promised scenery was lacking, Holder painted it and turned out a firstclass job. When the orchestral score of an operatic number was missing, he went home and wrote it, Asked how he had managed this, he said he had picked up the knack. Through his talk, as so often in his plays, ran a sense of fun which no misfortune could subdue. When he was the accused in a full-scale mock trial in a New Zealand town he was so funny that the judge-now a K.C.-and the rest of the Court were doubled up with laughter. * * OLDER worked a good deal on thoughts that came to him suddenly, but as a radio playwright he took to heart the first rule in writing successfully for a living: Don’t wait on inspiration, but, as A. A. Milne has said, sit down at your desk and dredge for ideas. He worked regularly and hard, and his output was astonishing. Plays of his — notably The Time Factor, which won him the NBS prize and set him up as a fully-occupied radio writer--were broadcast in Britain, Canada, Australia and South Africa. He was a joy to arrangers of programmes, for if you gave him a theme he would follow the line laid down in A Message to Garcia, and cheerfully do the job without raising any objection. If he didn’t know anything about the subject, he would soon find out. We remember well telling him we wanted a play to commemorate the tercentennial of Tasman’s discovery of New Zealand. If he didn’t actually reply "What’s that?" he implied it. (Holder wasn’t a New Zealander and even if he had been he mightn’t have known much about Tasman.) But he was quite willing to give the thing a go, so we sketched out very roughly what we wanted, and told him where to get his data, and he (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) read up his material and turned out an admirable fictional reconstruction of an historical fact. The first need of the dramatist is not knowledge but instinct -flair-call it what you will. * * Ba IS greatest strength lay in his characterisation, and he combined with this a rare gift for dramatic situation, and a sense of the microphone. He saw very clearly the difference between a play you cap both see and hear and a play you can only hear. The success of a long series of Victoriana that he wrote to reconstruct the political and social scene of England in the 19th century was largely due to his sense of character. He made events and movements live through the talk of the persons in the plays, historical or fictional. He saw history as people rather than events. One remembers clearly Matthew and Thomas, the two commentators, The Great Exhi-. bition of 1850 was brought before listeners by the device of taking a family to see it, and in the process one got a vivid picture not only of the Exhibition itself, but of the manners and customs of the time. To cover the Crimean War Holder introduced into an ultra-respect-able English family a "black sheep" who had been in the Army, and the story is told through him. Holder had a real flair for historical plays. Ralph in Shakespeare’s England and In the Days of the Black Prince have been heard in the school broadcast sessions, and had he been spared he might have continued in this line indefinitely. Holder did a lot of radio acting, often in his own plays. The humour that, together with his fine spirit of comradeship, endeared him to his associates, helped to make him an excellent character actor. He will be greatly missed in and around the National Broadcasting Service- and among listeners everywhere. a ee ee RR