"YOURS FAITHFULLY, ANNE"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 555, 10 February 1950, Page 9

"YOURS FAITHFULLY, ANNE"

"Green Gables" Star Visits N.Z.

¢€¢ CYOMEBODY’S been eating my porridge, and they’ve eaten it all up"-Baby Bear’s classic observation, made in 1934 by nine-year-old Ngaire Thomson in the interests of @ wellknown Australian brand of breakfast food, marked the beginning of her caree: in commercial broadcasting. Now, afte: fifteen~ years, Miss Thomson's youthful vcice is familiar to thousands of listeners in Adstralia and New Zealand, as that of Anne in Anne of Green Gables, the Australian serial adaptation of a girlhood classic, at present being broadcast by several NZBS stations. Ngaire Thomson is a New Zealande: -she comes from Eastbourne, where she lived until her family went to Australia when she’ was nine. She can scarcely remember the time when she wasn’t interested in broadcasting. All through her schoo) years in Melbourne she took part in Saturday afternoon Children’s Sessions, and was \no stranger to the microphene at the time of the Three Bears incident. Leaving Shelford Girls’ Grammer School, Caulfield, when she was fifteei... Ngaire Thomson kept up her interest in radio. : : BOUT this time she took part in Junior Amateur Time, a session run by Don Baker, ‘a Canadian who took an active part in Melbourne’s broadcasting in. the middle ninetéen-thirties. Baker thought her work showed sufficient promisé to warrant her entry into com. mercial broadcasting. However, as she was still very young, Ngaire took a commercial course and became a_ stenographer in an electrical firm. During the week she took dictation and typed. At the week-end she was on the air, in amateur teen-age shows. This spare-time interest in broadcasting led, after eight months, to an audition with a firm of commercial radio producers, several of whose serials were about to go on the air. For one of them they wanted a girl to play the part of an orphan. So Ngaire Thomson, aged nineteen, left the electrical firm, and took the nart of an eleven-year-old orphan in Heritage Hall. : Although her part ‘in that serial was comparatively small-she recorded only twice a week, three episodes at a timeher decision to make radio her career was justified. Soon she was free-lancing for the ABC, who wanted a little girl for the Schools Broadcasts. At the same time she continued her work with the commercial unit. There is an essential difference between’ the two units-all the commercial broadcasts (are recorded, but the ABC ones ere done ‘"direct’’Australian broadcasters call it "doing it live." , "A visible audience makes broadcasting a pleasure and much easier to do," o

Ngaire Thomson told The Listener. "A lonely microphone is so unsympathetic and cold." Ste has sometimes faced a flesh-and-blood eudience of more than 100,000 when taking part in Music for the People. These programmes. are broadcast by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, from the Botanical Gardens on occasional Sunday afternoons during the summer. She took part in the programme dramatisations= which accompanied, the broadcasts--once, for example, as the little girl who had no toy but the nutcracker, in Tchaikovski’s famous Suite. e . ALTHOUGH many teen-agers listen to the Anne broadcasts, much of Ngaire Thomson’s fan-mail comes from middleaged people-women mostly. Since the dramatisation of Anze of Green Gables four and sa-half years ago, Ngaire has played Anne in ‘three more radio adaptations of the popular series, each book running to roughly 52 episodes. Her successful portreyal of Anne has been _pafalleled by her equally successful portrayal of another L. M. Montgomery brain-child, Pollyanna. Ngaire Thomson’s recent characterisations have included small boys. In the Halliday Stories, originally recorded in Australia ten years ago, and recently re-

acted, Ngaire is heard as the little boy | of nine, to whom Halliday tells a goodnight story. Ngaire takes the part ‘of Margaret, a seventeen-yecr-old girl, in another serial, Stepmother-being broadcast at the moment to New Zealand listeners. She enjoys playing mothers, particularly in scenes with children (in the course of dramatisation of eight "Pollyanna" books, their heroine hes grown up and Pollyanna has children of her own now). She finds light’ comedy fun, but prefers drama. So now after more than six years’ successful freelancing in commercial radio, Ngaite Thomson is going back to Australia. in a week or two, to Sydney, where ‘the ,future--and the longer commercial pro-grammes-beckon. She feels she portrays best the unsophisticated teen-age | girl and more than in any other part | she has ever played. she is "Yours, faithfully, Anne" {To listeners in this country Ngaire Thom. son’s voice must be one of the most familiar on, the air-she is currently being heard in four or five serials from New Zealand stations: Anne of Green Gables from. 1XH..1XN and 2XG, Heritage Hall from 3ZB, 2XA and 2ZA, Stepmother from 1ZB, 2ZB, 3ZB, 4ZB ) and 2ZA, and’ Pollyanna from 1XH. Interviews with Ngaire Thomson will be broadcast in the Women’s Session from .2YA, at 11.0) a.m. orf February 21 and 28.)