Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 738, 4 September 1953, Page 24

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

INDEN H. MARTIN, A.M.LE.E., A.M. Brit., LR.E., engineer in charge of the NZBS Receiving and Monitoring Station at Quartz Hill, Makara, has been appointed District Engineer for the NZBS at Dunedin in succession to L. A. Halcrow, whose death occurred recently. Mr. Martin, who has

been on the staff of the NZBS for 14 years,-has spent the last four years at Makara. In 1946, with Ulric Williams, now Officer-in-charge of Radio New Zealand, he left to represent the NZBS and the AEWS with J Force, working on similar lines to the broadcasting unit in the Middle East, with the exception that there were no battle actions to record, Linden Martin took over his new job at the beginning of this month.

INFANT CONDUCTORS

. of SIR THOMAS BEECHAM is at it again. During a Press conference in London recently he was asked what he

thought about infant conductors. He replied that obviously there was no future

for mature ones, and te told of a

friend in South America who has trained an orang-outang to conduct, and is sending it on tour dressed as a Red Indian. Delius, he also told the conference, was one of the modern composers who annoyed him least, and he had discovered that. the Delius Trust ‘was receiving much more in fees than it used to. That showed, he added, either that Delius’s work was becoming much more popular or that more people were paying fees without’ playing his music. ei, 7

GIRL FROM SNOWY RIVER

‘4 A LONDONER, Elizabeth ~Bauman, "has succeeded Prudence Gregory (who left recently to be married) as Assistant to the Supervisor of Women’s Programmes for the Commercial Division of the NZBS. She came here from England a little wnore than five years

ago, but before that she had held a variety of interesting jobs. In London, for instance.

she worked with the Children’s Adoption Society, and when the war came found herself appointed to the staff? of a secret war station of the Foreign Office drawing maps and looking after a map library. But let her tell you herself. "One of the joys of my life at ‘Station X’ was a scrambler telephone connected with the War Office. This was not an ordinary black utility job, but distinctly unusual for war time. It was coloured a very pretty pale green!" Later she was directed to the htadquarters of the Ministry of Labour and National Service, and after nearly two years there she transferred to Ontario

House, London, to work under the Canadian Government on an air immigration scheme. The next move was to Auckland, where she got a job in the citv and also took. parts in radio serials produced im the Albert Street studios.

it Having" ot this far what better than a trip to Australia? "I set off on a holiday that was to take a month, but ran into two years because I’d spent my return fare to New Zealand and it took me a couple of ‘years to save it up again. At one stage of the holiday I worked as assistant to a hospital dietician and at another for the Royal Australian Air Force Memorial Appeal. But because that job did not pay very well I had to find something supplementary and became a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. A customer had a disagreement with the management and I considered that on this occasion at least he (the customer) was undoubtedly right, and took his part. I got the sack. So I moved off to Katoomba and became a_ hotei receptionist-a hard job but very pleasant. By this time I’d saved up that return fare and a bit over, made for Sydney and took a temporary job with the Snowy . Mountains Hydro-Electric ‘Scheme, working all by myself at a meteorological station near Sydney Harbour Bridge. This job meant going through weather reports of the Snowy Mountains area for as long back as 25 to 35 years, to compile an overall meteorological picture, and it earned me the nickname of ‘the girl from Snowy River.’ " When she returned to New Zealand. she spent a holiday at Whangarei. Then Station 1XN’s Shopping Reporter left and Elizabeth Bauman took her place. That was two and a half years ago. Her hobbies, she told me the other day, were nothing out of the usual-reading and repertory, "fiddling about with flowers as modern home decorations, walking, and, yes, of course, talking." +

RACE DAY

\ EHUDI MENUHIN was only 15 ‘years old when he first met Elgar, He had been asked to make a, recording

of the Elgar Violin Concerto, and was anxious that the composer should

first hear his playing of the work. The story goes that it was arranged for Menuhin to play it with piano accompaniment on a certain afternoon, The

violinist visited Elgar on the day ap-’ pointed, expecting to do anything up to 10 or 12 hours’ hard work. They started the concerto in the great man’s study, but after the first page or two Elgar stopped them and said he was confident the concerto would be safe in Menuhin’s hands; it was such a lovely day and, after all, the races were on. & >

~ LIGHT TOUCH

uw ALTHOUGH you wouldn’t think it by "the way he conducts light and airy orchestral pieces in the BBC programmes, Time for Music and Music of the People, Gilbert Vinter was brought

up in the military tradition of music. He studied at the

Royal Academy and the Royal Military School of Music and in 1930 joined the BBC Military Band. For the. next 10 vears he played with

many leading orchestras, and in 1938 was appointed Professor of Bassoon at the Royal Academy of Music. This information is given in answer to an inquiry by "Trombone," of Taieri (Dunedin), and, by the way, there’s only one "n" in Vinter. ~

KNOCK, KNOCK, WHO'S THERE?

nw Y now the majority of New Zealand listeners must have heard the BBC programme, Everest, 1953, in which Colonel Sir John Hunt and members

of the_ climbing party tell their story. But for ‘the heneht at thaAaco wha

have missed previous broadcasts or who would welcome a repetition, the saga of Hillary’s famous knock-off will be heard again from the four YC stations this Friday, September 4, at 9.30 p.m. .

MAN FROM HAMPSHIRE

"PENNY" (Wellington) writes that he was! glad. when the Cricket

Tests ended, and goes on to explain: "I am recovering from an appendicitis operation,

and John Arlott’s quaint’ comments

imperilled the anchorage of my stitches. A man who can pluck a classical allusion out of the air and fling it fittingly into a cricket field is tops as a sporting broadcaster."

DIGESTS

\V HEN life’s irksome or meaningless I suppose all of us have, at some time or other, found escape in stories which have made us laugh-made us shudder, or carried us off to a fictitious

world of wishful fulfilment where we can do the heroic or successful things we've

longed in vain to do in the world of harsh reality. But when life is buoyant we turn to» stories that appeal and challenge not only our héarts and emotions but our minds and our thinking, Like all pleasure-rewarding pastimes it requires effort and concentration

but it satisfies because it makes us think as well as feel. There are times, however, when we're, just not in the mood for this kind of reading. We must resort to the "Lemmy, Cautions" or the "Commodores." This is the void which the innumerable forms of Digest seek to fill-from a NZBS Book Shop talk by R.. A. Lowe.