Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 728, 26 June 1953, Page 24

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, . ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

OTTED about New ZeaD land -some still working briskly, others long retired from active service-are people who love to recall this country’s early sources of entertainment. They talk interestingly about plays, players and theatres and the parts they

themselves took in amusing the public. A few of them have been interviewed by The Listener-Frank Crowther, Jim McKenna and Bob Hardie, of Wellington, come to mind-and NZBS announcers have had some of the old hands in front of the microphone. Listeners to all the YC and YZ stations are soon to hear some of the reminiscences of Edwin Hill, aged 93,- elder brother of Alfred Hill, as interviewed by John Gordon (formerly of the NZBS but now with the New Zealand Players). Mr. Hill does not keep to organised entertainment, but goes into all sorts of amusing events. For instance, he tells of a sports meeting at Foxton years ago in which a very tall competitor in a foot race carried a suitcase. Near the tape he dropped the case and out fell brother Alfred who finished the race and won a huge cup made by a local tinsmith. Since taking part in the Auckland Competitions when he was a small boy "Ted" Hill has sung in all the main centres, and appeared in hundreds of performances, including Grand Opera and Oratorio and in music festivals both here and in Australia. Although his singing career has covered 80. years he has had no strictly formal tuition; but he never missed hearing a visiting artist and picked up ell he could. His memory goes back to the days when the first Christy Minstrels visited New Zealand, and he claims he was the first man in this country to sing "Mollie Darling." Edwin Hill’s broadcast, called Alt Played the Cornet, will be heard first from 2YC at 8.0 p.m. on Tuesday. June 30, from 3YC at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday, July 4, and from other YC and YZ stations —

WENT FOR A SONG

|?’s many years since white-gloved young men bowed formally and said, "T believe this is mine," young women consulted their dance programmes, re-

turned the bow and waltzed off with their partners to the tune of "Three O’clock in the

Morning." It’s also quite likely that some of the telegraph messengers who

helped to make the melody popular in New Zealand by whistling it as they trick-cycled round Christchurch’s Cathedral Square are now I.P.’s in the P. and T. Department, if not Postmasters. That song made about a million pounds in royalties, according to Leslie Jeffries, whose Grand Hotel Trio is popular on the BBC Light -Programme. "And to think I could have bought it by topping a bid of five pounds!" he says. Jeffries has never forgotten the time he spent as violinist of a trio playing in a Buenos Aires night club. During that period the pianist of the trio wrote the waltz tune which he sold outright for a few pounds. Jeffries was once employed by an American film studio as a "mood man." He had to stand behiyd a screen playing sad violin music so that the actors facing the cameras could more readily register the bitter sorrow called for in the script. Three stars he was called upon to depress in this manner were the Gish sisters and Mary Pickford.

TIDINGS OF JOY

OY NICHOLS has been booked for a tour of the Australian Tivoli Circuit and also for a series of broadcasts for

the ABC during a 17 weeks’ Australian season. It is reported that she returns to the Tivoli at a

salary six times greater than the one she was earning before ‘she left Australia. +

NEW BBC REPRESENTATIVE

SEVERAL appointments have recently been announced in the staff of the BBC’s External Services. They include

the return to Kngland on completion of his tour of

duty of Patrick Jubb, BBC representative in New Zealand and Australia. He is being suc-

ceeded by Robert Stead, Head of North Regional Programmes since March, 1948, and deputy to the Controller of North Region. Patrick Jubb joined the BBC 17 years ago as an announcer with the Empire. Service. He did a considerable amount of administrative work until 1942, when he enlisted with the Royal Engineers. In 1944 he was sent to the Middle East as Director of two broadcasting stations in Cairo and Jerusalem,

sending language broadcasts to SouthEastern Europe. He was later posted to Vienna as Senior Broadcasting Officer in the Information Services Branch, Patrick Jubb was appointed BBC tepresentative in New Zealand and Australia in 1949, and since then has visited this country on broadcasting business periodically. *

THE TENOR AND THE SCHOOLGIRL

a ISETTA" (Wairoa, Hawke’s Bay) writes: I have been an admirer of Joseph Schmidt for many years 20a and was very interested to read your article about him in a recent issue, In response to your request for further information, I would like to give a few

details which I have collected over a number of years.

ihe sources of my information are radio programmes from New Zealand and Australia, and two Australian correspondents, one of whom was a close friend of Joseph Schmidt, living almost in the same street and growing up with him. They studied music together, sang alto in a church choir as boys, and were sometimes given small parts in plays. According to my records, this is his story. He was not German, but was born in- 1899 in Cernauti, Bukovina, province of Rumania, of poor parents, Because they were Jewish he met with a great deal of hardship and bitterness in his struggle for success. He studied singing and languages, and was ready to sing in German, Italian, French and Spanish. But he found it very difficult to ge opera or concert engagements because of his very small stature-he was just over 4ft, tall. His friends helped him to get to Berlin, and he won a radio competition against thousands of competitors. Radio contracts, opera, operetta and concert work followed, and he _ became the rage of the Continent. He + made several films there and then went © to England, where he made two films, My Song Goes Round the World and A Star Falls from Heaven, and made a fairly successful concert tour. His first ~ visit to England must have been in about 1934 or 1935, because I saw My Song Goes Round the World here in New Zealand in 1936. After I had seen that film I wrote a letter of appreciation to him, addressing it to the film studio in London, and ‘some months later he sent to me from Vienna an autographed photograph, with the message on, it, "Many Kind Regards" and the date, "16/2/38." A Star Falls from Heaven must have been made in approximately 1936, according to an English film magazine. The following is an extract from an Australian periodical. The information contained therein was obtained from the Jewish Information Bureau: "When war broke out, Schmidt, who was in Vienna, escaped to Belgium. The Nazis captured him, but he again escaped, this time to Switzerland. Eventually he was again captured and placed in a concentration camp. He contracted a heart disease, and then the larynx became infected. On November 14, 1942, he was removed to Nuremberg, where,, two days later, he died in the concentration camp." I heard the announcement of his dean’ — from Station 2GB Sydney in 1943, and iH later from the same station I heard thats.

he had been used for Nazi experiments and had been deliberately infected with T.B, In the December, 1950, issue of the magazine Musical America there appeared a review of the film The Joseph Schmidt Story. The following extract may be of interest: "The Joseph Schmidt Story based somewhat loosely .on the life of the diminutive tenor, is interesting chiefly from a_ historical standpoint. The film, made by Richard Oswald in Venice in 1933, was banned by the iNazis after a year’s run, because beth Schmidt and Oswald were Jews, and the negative and all prints but one were destroyed. This one was saved by a Gestapo officer, Captain Heinz Zimmerman, whose servant stole it and was captured at the Swiss border when he tried to escape. Years later, the United States Army of Occupation recovered the film and returned it to Oswald, who brought it to Hollywood. Schmidt, persecuted through Germany and France, died in a Swiss internment camp. "According to several accounts," says "Lisetta," "he had a very engaging and generous personality, and according to his friend was an ideal person, and remained quite unspoilt by his success. Certainly he was’ very kind indeed to an unknown schoolgirl in far-away New Zealand." *

MASTER OF STAGECRAFT

[HE late James Agate said of Peter Ustinov that he is "probably the greatest master of stagecraft now writing in. Britain." Ustinoy has written plays and films. Offstage he is noted as a mimic, and can turn with ease from

an aspiring American seeker after culture to a -monosyllabic Rus-

Sian, a Lithuanian refugee, a Scandinavian scene-shifter, or "my uncle, the Arab." All this he puts down to what he calls his "mongrel blood." He feels very strongly that this is just what is needed to -break down artificial barriers of frontier throughout the world. and he thinks that ardent

nationalistic patriotism has. outlived its usefulness. A mongrel race, he says, will eventually be the salvation of Europe. Putting forward his claim to be one of its first members, he mentions his Russian grandfather giving up the life of a country gentleman and cavalry officer, becoming a Protestant, adopting the nationality of Wurtemberg and settling down via Italy, in Jaffa after marrying a German girl. His maternal grandfather, son of a Venetian mother, was court architect to the Czar. His grandmother ran a caviar fishery and "found time to give birth to eight children between board meetings." His mother, a painter, has a French name. "With such a riotous background," he asks, "how could I ever explain to the inquisitive from what race I come and in what language I think?" His own place of birth was London, and his wife is Irish. Station 2YA’s International Showtime at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday. July 29, will present, among other people, Peter Ustinov. *

LOOKOUT MAN

‘| His Saturday, June 27, at 9.15 p.m., listeners to Lookout: A New Zealand Commentary on _ International Affairs (all YA and YZ stations) will hear Fergus Murray, of Christchurch.

Mr. Murray, an old boy, of Christchurch Boys’ High School,

was Assistant Master at St. An-

drew’s | College from 1924 to 1928, and in 1929 he went on an extensive tour of Britain and »Europe, making a particular study of France. In 1930 he became Assistant Master at Christchurch , Boys’ High School, and. for the last four years he has been Senior History Master. I’m told that off duty. he likes: nothing better than. puffing ‘his pipe and concrete-mixing. .He says that the complete. rest from thinking when making a six, two and one mix appeals to him enormously. *

CHOIRS FESTIVAL

ISTENERS who like choral musi¢ should tune to 2XN Nelson on Saturday, July 4, at 8.0 p.m., for the Third Annual Provincial Choirs’ Festival organised in Nelson by the Regional

Council of Adult Education, Victoria University

College, ihe festival was conceived as a means of giving-small choirs an oppor-

tunity to sing in massed and part items . which they’ could not attempt with their small. numbers. Some of the choirs are nearly 200 miles apart,, but unanimity has been secured by the help of voluntary instructors who have visited them all. There is no spirit of competition among these choirs; it is simply the joy of singing that brings them together. Choirs taking part are: Richmond Musical Society, Nelson College Evening School, Nelson Male Voice Choir, Nelson Singers, Motueka Women’s Institute, Motueka District High School, and choirs from Collingwood, Takaka, Ngatimoti, The Hills, Upper Moutere and Brightwater. Five conductors and five accompanists take part, and for items by the massed choirs the School of Music organ will be used. As July 4 is the date of the Festival, "Reuben Ranzo," from Fantasia on American Folk Songs, by Richard Donovan, has been included in the programme. The director is Ralph Lilly, of Nelson, and the annotations are by Myfanwy Cook, a well-known broadcaster, and the wife of W. C.. Cook, Nelson Tutor in Adult Education.. Mr. Cook, who was business manager for the last two festivals, is on leave with the Coronation Contingent. Ge

BRANSBY WILLIAMS NOW 82

ADIO actors who imitate birds, railway trains and perhaps half a dozen film stars are often described as "versatile." Bransby Williams, now 82 years old. who recently made a return to the

BBC microphone, thought nothing of impersonating 35 different char-

acters in a one-man, show lasting two hours, and rounding off with impromptu impressions of popular stars named by the audience. Williams, who visited New Zealand in the 1920’s as headliner in a Celebrity Vaudeville Company, has recently recovered from an illness, and the effects of what he calls a "horrible winter." I can remember him freezing on the stage of the Theatre Royal while playing a season during a Christchurch winter, and the solicitude of his wife who stood in the wings with his heavy winter overcoat at the ready. Bransby Williams is still active. He paints water colours and has written a play and his autobiography. Older theatre-goers may recall his monologue, "A Cowboy’s Description of Hamlet,’ which made a great hit when he recited it during a tour of the United States 30 years ago.