"CARTOONIST IN SOUND"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 371, 2 August 1946, Page 30

"CARTOONIST IN SOUND"

Ted Kavanagh, the New Zealander Behind "Itma"’

Written for "The Listener"

by

A.

M.

actress. You travel about the world and have all day to yourself, and play to crowds in the evening." That, or something like it, was once said by a young New Zealander to an older woman. It deserves a prize for fatuousness. Where is the imagination which should see that plays don’t play themselves, that there is such a thing as rehearsals? Yet, in varying degrees, this fallacy is widely held. It is by no means everyone who realises the truth that nothing can be done well, from making runs to making jokes for a living, without a lot of trouble. I am dealing here especially with the world of ‘entertainment, and in that world circumstances govern the extent to which this truth sinks into the minds of audiences. It is plain enough that a first-class violinist or pianist must have worked hard to acquire perfection, The fingers teli the story. It is not so plain that an actor who moves and speaks so smoothly and effortlessly, has served a hard and long apprenticeship. Here, art conceals art. "How natural" we say to ourselves, and we may be foolish enough to think the player is only "being natural," not understanding that to appear natural on the stage is the result of jolly hard work. I say "appear," -because if you behaved on the stage exactly as people do in real life, you wouldn’t put it across. With "variety," failure on the part of the audience is even more common. Among the arts, humour is a menial: you laugh at him, but he isn’t quite the thing socially. His gifts may be indispensable, but they don’t enjoy the prestige of "serious" work. So probably most people who enjoy comedians don’t realise that just as much effort may have gone to the perfection of their quick patter and facial expressions, as to voice and gestures of a man who plays Ibsen and Shakespeare. The frothiest item may have been polished and polished over hours, days, or weeks. This brings me to the British institution known as Itma. You have all ce l’ must be so nice to be an

heard this BBC feature. It’s very amusing, but very light, isn’t it? Hardly anything in it. Well, try your hand at this sort of thing, and see. The main points about Itma are these, that it is team work, and that the builders of the script

labour as a real team for hours and days before they are satisfied with -his one feature. After that, of course, the script has to be "produced." But first of all a personal note, New Zealand has a direct interest in Jtma, because its script-writer-in-chief, Ted Kavanagh, is a New Zealander. He is a brother of Paul Kavanagh, of Auckland and Wellington, who has followed the staider profession of law. Many years ago, before the first world war, Ted Kavanagh was a student at Auckland University College, and I know contemporaries of his who still talk about the brilliancy of his part in college burlesques. His takeoff of the ‘then Mayor, the late Sir James Parr, was a joy to be remembered. It is also told, as an example of Ted’s reddiness, that at a wedding breakfast where the best man was struck suddenly by stage fright and could not propose the toast of "The Bride and Bridegroom," Ted, a young man of twenty, was called on to do the job at a moment’s notice, and this is how he began: "The happy couple are about to start their career in double harness. Let us hope that neither will prove a > nag.’ Studied Medicine Ted Kavanagh served inethe war of 1914-18 with the New Zealanders. He had studied medicine at Edinburgh before that, and during the war he did bacteriological work at Hornchurch Hospital. He resumed his medical course again after the war, but gave it up to go in for journalism before sitting for his final. Before broadcasting became popular, he had a wide connection as a free-lance writer. Like many humorists, he is a serious-minded man. He was one of the early contributors to the weekly ‘that Chesterton founded. He wrote his

first script for the BBC in 1927, and since then, says a writer in an English journal, "he has lost count of the songs, records, scripts, sketches and music-hall acts he has written.’ Tommy Handley is not the only star comedian who owes his success partly to Ted Kavanagh’s gifts. Itma actually started shortly before the last war broke out, but it was as a war-time show that it captivated England. "People were suddenly deluged with a host of new restrictions and regulations," says Ted Kavanagh, "there was the black-out and the call-up, and coupons and rationing. I deliberately aimed to show people that there could be a lighter, a humorous side, to all these difficulties. Tommy Handley was. installed as Minister of Obstruction and Irritation in the Office of Twerps." The fame of Itma went all over the world. The team got letters of thanks from prison camps, from occupied countries, from the jungle. Ships in convoy under air-attack broke formation to the signal: "After you, Claude," with its answering message, "No, after you, Cecil." Firémen fighting bombs in English cities used the same gags. The whole thing was typically Eng-lish-or, if you like, British. It made fun of grave issues. It was based on character. Ted Kavanagh created'a line of stage-radio people who became favourites with listeners at home and overseas — Mrs. Mopp, the Colonel, Miss Hotchkiss, Mr. Fusspot, and others. Ted Kavanagh won't use the books of gags that are available to script writers in America — "There if you want a joke about sardines, you turn up an index card and find every joke there ever was, and is ever likely to be, about sardines." (Francis Worsley, the third member of the team, admits that they use a gag-book occasionally for one charecter). Kavanagh’s view is that for a series you have to build up characters which the public — at any rate the British public-are going to get to know and to like. Experiment with Sound Experimentally and technically the series was highly interesting. According to Kavanagh, Itma was an experiment with sound. Walt Disney had made sound live in his screen cartoons. Kavanagh wanted to "cartoon sound." He did this with the voices of his characters, and with the incidental music. His idea was that from the voice alone, with- out any other traits, listeners should fill in their own mental pictures of the character. So musical* portraits of the characters were designed by the best arrangers they could find. Academic musicians played round with popular tunes. It has been said of Kavanagh not only that he has become a radia writer. incomparable in’ his own field, but that he is as great a cartoonist in sound as David Low in his medium. This should give some idea of the amount of work that went on behind the scenes. There were the ideas in each script to be thought out; the script to be completed; the music to be provided; the feature to be rehearsed. The routine was for the three partners-Ted Kavanagh, Tommy Handley, and Francis (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Worsley-to meet on the morning after the broadcast; and having heard the show played back (and shuddered slightly) to decide on the main outline of the next ohe. Then Ted Kavangah would go away and write a draft at the week-end, and submit it to the BBC. After that the three "builders" sat down together on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and hammered out the finished article. The three worked over the script line by line, discussing all the possibilities of the situations, re-twisting sentences, and putting in new gags. It is here that such a feature gets its speed and smoothness. "We need a funnier line here-when the Colonel makes his exit. How about something topical? Think boys!" So they think, and to someone’s mind comes the title of the book that is the rage in America, "Forever Amber." "H’m, doesn’t give much scope: how can ‘Forever Amber’ be tied up with the Colonel? Wait-the colour of ale and the colour of his moustache. Dear old Colonel. Still the same mous-tache-forever amber! There’s your laugh." And ther? about eight hours for rehearsal. ‘ Constant Polishing And so it goes on. Work, work, and more work is put into what sounds so spontaneous over the air. "Ideas may come easily," says one appreciation of Kavanagh’s work, "but only constant shaping, re-shaping and polishing give the lines their full effect and maintain the speed of production that makes the programme so consistently amusing." If you look at an Itma script carefully," says Worsley, "you will see that every situation or every entrance of a character is carefully planned, so that we get the maximum value out of the material around it and so that we get a good build-up for the next thing that happens. It is not just a lot of nonsense stuck together anyhow, as so many of pur correspondents seemed to think." In other words, inspiration alone is a poor tool to depend upon. Inspiration plus perspiration gets there. As a very successful contemporary English playwright has said, the only way to get ideas is to sit down at your desk and dredge for them. But when you've fished them up, there is a lot of work to be done before they are ready for the market. There is a lesson for radio writers and producers everywhere in the success of Itma-and for listeners. If listeners would get rid of the idea that these entertainments are things thought up on the spur of the moment, they would en_joy them more and encourage the entertainers. Easy reading, it has been said, is damned hard writing. Easy listening, it might be said, is damned hard broadcasting. :