Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 758, 29 January 1954, Page 24

Open Microphone

auth. on wmxNEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

ce H aeveto education may all sorts of unexpected and amiable characteristics in the Islander. Perhaps understatement will be one of these. An Ellice Islander, well

educated locally, had been in Suva during a hurricane, where: the roaring, terrible wind had torn trees to shreds /and wrenched roofs from their build_ings. When asked what he thought of his _ experience, he said, ‘Sir, in all my past years up to date, never have I seen | such | a breeze.’" _ That Quaint comment is an extract from a series of broadcast talks on the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony by Douglas McKenzie. Robert Clifford Douglas McKenzie | went to England in 1937 when he was | 20 years old to take a short service com- _ mission. He joined Bo.82 (Bomber) Squadron in 1938, flying Blenheims.

During the Battle of France he was engaged in daylight bombing of German forces in Holland, Belgium and France. He was shot down and was a prisoner of war in various camps-for the greater time in Stalag Luft III. He visited New Zealand on leave in 1945, but during the following year he served in the Air Ministry, London. In 1947, he was demobilised from the R.A.F. with the final rank of Squadron-Leader. Douglas McKenzie joined the Colonial Administrative Service in March, 1947, as a cadet in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony and served in both the Secretarial and District Administration; he resigned last year, and is now enjoying a long rest in New Zealand. In 1949 he married Mildred Horne, of Cambridge, New Zealand, and they have one daughter, Susan, who was born at Funafuti, in the Ellice Islands, in 1951. se

THEY HUFFED AND THEY PUFFED

OHN CAMERON (Gore) would like ~ to read something about the American Hammond organist Milt Herth, and the Blackpool concert organist Reg. Dixon. Milt Herth set out on his musical way banging a drum-an art which not a few energetic small boys have been prac-

tising lately. That was in his birthplace, called Kenosha, in Wis-

consin, U.S.A. Then he learned the piano and at 16 he was leading a threepiece combination in the local i¢e-cream parlour. Herth’s parents had wanted him to take up law but instead the young man joined a travelling show and played the piano al] over the Middle West fox the "meller-drammers’" it put on. He married and his wife tried to persuade him to become a time-keeper in a factory. Milt preferred music and took up~ the Hammond organ. Sorry, I haven’t been able to find his photograph. Reginald Dixon was appointed organist at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool,

England, back in the thirties. Born in Sheffield, he went to Sunday school at a Baptist church, and it was there that he obtained part of his early musical education-blowing the organ. Yet when only 15 he became a church organist himself.. Since those days he _ has achieved outstanding success both as a broadcaster and a favourite personality with millions of holiday-makers who have danced to his music or listened to his concert recitals at Blackpool. t+

SHOW BUSINESS

"HERE'S No Business Like Show Business" runs the song, but the stage, the screen and the radio have no monopoly. Southlend farmers and Southland A. and P. Associations have

been busy lately with Royal Show Business. Since late November last vear

there have been five agricultural] and pastoral shows down

South, and between Winton, Gore, Wyndham and Otautau, exhibitors and breeders and the general public have followed the circuit. The Invercargill Metropolitan Association’s Royal Show was, of course, the event of the year. Station 4YZ’s microphone finds its way to all the Southland shows, and our photograph shows Lord Macpherson of Drumochter, being interviewed at the Otautau Show by Roy Woodward, a staff announcer.

STILL NERVOUS

a] "M USIC LOVER" (Gisborne) writes: "Would you please publish on your page some information about and a

photograph of (1) the tenor Jussi Bjorling, (2) the

pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch?"

Bjorling was born in Sweden in 1911. The death of Jussi’s mother brought on his father a wanderlust and he organised tho Bjorling Quartet, consisting of the father and his three sons; they toured America. When the father

died Jussi returned

to Sweden, and at 17 he made his first recording. Then he appeared as guest artist with opera companies in Prague, Vienna, Dresden and Copenhagen. His success was so great that when a special performance

of La Boheme took place in Paris, Bjorling was invited to sing the principal tenor role. Following .more triumphs he was engaged by the Metropolitan Opera-the youngest artist ever to receive a guest contract there. He made his debut at

Covent Garden in 1930. His hobbies are billiards and movies, and he sails boats, loves fishing, reading and tennis. He is said still to be nervous before a performance. ; Benno Moiseiwitsch was born at Odessa, Russia, in 1890. His education was begun at the Imperial Musical Academy at Odessa, under Professor D. Klomoff, and he won the Rubinstein Stipendiary Prize at the age of nine, later going to Vienna to study under Leschetizky. His debut was made at the Town Hall, Reading, England, in 1908, and he first appeared in London the following year. Moiseiwitsch has made several tours in the United States, ,Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the ‘ ar East. The story is told that once en he was at his home practising a concerto a maid who had ybeen away, recognised the famous theme. ‘It is so nice to hear the master playing in,’ she remarked to Mrs. Moiseiwitsch. "I have always liked that tune, although I have never heard the words." a.

A LITTLE LIGHT MUSIC

‘TWO correspondents, Robert Walton (Auckland) and "Torch Fan" (Invercargill), ask for information about Sidney Torch: One also inquires about Frank Chacksfield. Sidney Torch studied the piano as a child and got his first job in a theatre

at £3 a week. In 1937 he was a pianist at the Broadway Cinema. Strat-

d, England. There was an organ there-and he would practise on it when

nobody was about. This brought him a reprimand but also a job..as assistant organist when the talkies arrived and the orchestra went out. He has been described as having an "agreeable, no-nonsense-about-it air; but his apparent nonchalance and very real sense of humour mask the feelings of a sensitive composer." He claims that his bestknown work is the tune to which Kenneth Horne and Richard Murdoch sang their doggere] in Much-B-in-the-M. His friends prefer to remind you that Sidney Torch composed "Shooting Star," which was judged to be the best piece of light music of its year. In a remarkably short time he became famous as a conductor, composer and arranger. He is a Londoner and on the right side of 50. He _is six feet one, and married to a former BBC producer, Elizabeth Tyson. _ Frank Chacksfield is a young English band leader who has become a great success, in America with two of his re--cordings, "Limelight" (over 200,000 copies sold) and "Ebb Tide." Chacks-_ field started playing the organ when he was 14 in an English village church. These days he conducts BBC light music programmes, and composes music for films. His "Ebb Tide" opens with the cry of sea birds and the sound of waves washing on a beach.

CLAP HANDS FOR CHARLIE

* \ HEN the duo pianists Ivor Moreton and Dave Kaye were in Wellington in 1949 they told me that their pianist colleague, Charlie Kunz, had been having

serious trouble with his hands. Latest news of Kunz, who has been a radio favourite for 20

years, 1s that he has been in _ hospital undergoing a complicated plastic operation. Treatment on his’ right hand has been entirely successful.

INFORMATION NOTE

-OR "Baton" (Waimate): Cyril Stapleton, leader of the BBC Show Band, has been associated with several well-

known __ orchestras. He played in Henry Hall’s

Band in the first programme to go on the air from Broadcasting House.

QUEEN AND ANNOUNCER

x MOUNTAINEERING, sketching and writing verse are among the hobbies

of the BBC s Wyntord Vaughan Thomas, who is one of the commentators on the Royal Tour. His

Tavourite place tor indulgence in his

pastimes is Skye, where, with a friend, he sleeps under canvas and cooks his own meals. Our photograph shows him with Queen Salote, of Tonga.