Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 784, 30 July 1954, Page 24

Open Microphone

ROYAL TOUR MEMORIES

O British broadcaster is better known to New Zealandets than Wynford Vaughan Thomas. Not only is he heard frequently in feature programmes, he was also one of the BBC team that came here for the Royal Tour. When he got back home in May.

after. six months of "leaping into aircraft, driving at breakneck

speeds across iong dusty roads in the ‘outback, or recording our despatches at midnight in bed-

rooms of lonely hotels," he recalled in the Radio Times some highlights of the tour which will interest listeners in this country. "Wherever we went," he said, "we were welcomed and _= supported by our fellow broadcasters of the Dominions and Colonies, and. it

was an inspiration to see how commentators in Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon, for example, tackled what was to them a completely new kind of job. . . . The broadcasters of the Commonwealth came magnificently out of this ordeal." Mr. Vaughan Thomas recalls from the New Zealand tour the Queen’s entry into Parliament Buildings, the little boy at Arthur’s Pass who had written asking the Duke to come and play trains with him, and the sound of pipes in Dunedin welcoming, as the pipers said, "a Scots lassie to her own home in the South." "His most bitter regrets centred around Mt. Cook. When he had been taken by Guide Harry Ayres up some of the easier routes, he said, "We

were all filled with burning desire to stand on the summit of Mt. Cook and wave our homage to the Queen as her aircraft flew down the West Coast. Alas, the mountain-and certainly I myselfwas out of condition, and our great moment passed uncommemorated." But Mr. Vaughan Thomas did, as Listener readers know, get to the summit of Mt. Egmont, where he recorded "three of the feeblest cheers" the summit can ever have heard. "Somehow or other," he says, "I don’t think that these sounds will be kept in the _atchives!"

GEOFF OF 2YZ

aA NNOUNCER-IN-CHARGE at 2YZ and in charge of the Children’s Session there for the last few years, Geoff Haggett is never happier than when he is producing plays for children, working on shows in which children are taking part, or reading stories to them-which is a daily chore for him at bedtime for his own youngsters, if he is at home.

For as long as he can remember Geoff has been associated with some form of entertainment. According to his

family, in fact-for he only vaguely re-members-he first appeared on the stage as a chicken when he was five. While still at school he became interested in the Youth Hostel Association, and toured not only his native England but several European countries. Later, when he became interested in motorcycling and wanted a machine of his own, he took a part-time job with one of the smaller theatres as "general stage hand, rouseabout, feed man and what have you." "Naturally," says Geoff, "the bug bit hard, and I stayed in the entertainment field. finishing as

drummer-vocalist with one of the smaller Birmingham dance bands." When the war came Geoff Haggett joined the Royal Corps of Signals. In 1941 he was commissioned and later served on the North-West Frontier and in other parts of India, where one of his jobs was to teach young Indian soldiers to drive heavy trucks on the mountain roads. After promotion to the rank of major, Geoff was put in charge of the welfare of all troops in the Delhi area, There he engaged in radio work and met and looked after ENSA artists and helped to produce their shows. He served five years and a half in India, and then came on to New Zealand, where his grandparents had come wi the early settlers and where his mother was born. He joined the NZBS and soon after toured with Leo Fowler and the mobile recording unit. Geoff is a keen supporter of\the production of children’s programmes-a field in which quite a lot of work has been done at Napier. Both children and adults, he has found, get a great deal out of working on productions. When engaged in this work Geoff always plays over to the children all music and effects so that they will know. just what is happening, and he finds that at times they are able to make useful suggestions. Apart from the pleasure the children get out of taking part in plays, Geoff thinks that such youngsters will later be an asset to the amateur theatre movement. * |

DYLAN THOMAS

NIQUE and great are words that anyone who respects the language ~ uses sparingly, but those who have listened to Dylan Thomas on the airfor instance, in his A Child’s Christmas in Wales-will probably agree that they don’t exaggerate in describing his wor as a broadcaster. They were used om

his verse-reading by another fine broadcaster, John Arlott, in a tribute to "Dylan"’-as he alwavs was

-published in The Adelphi after the poet’s death. Arlott worked with Dylan 20 or 30 times a year ffom 1945 to 1950, and found him always openminded to experiment-in his own word "easy." "Each word he read was delivered shaped and carefully, lest its values should be lost in haste. He read with care for rhythm, and with a subtle gift for indicating a line-end when the meaning ran on unpunctuated without destroying the flow by a pause." Arlott

NEWS .OF BROADCASTERS, , ON AND OFF THE RECORD

thinks the weight he gave to each word, idea and line demanded strength of thought and structure in a poem, and once when Dylan thought a piece by Coventry Patmore arrogant he said, "Please don’t ask me to read it: I hate it too much." On the other hand he could be amusingly helpful, as he was in a programme on Doughty when he had to read a piece in ‘which occurred a word whédse meaning the producer, script-writer and reader all admitted they did not know, although it appeared to be the key-word of an essential passage. The problem was pondered at

some length until Dylan said comfortingly, "Never mind, I'll say it with conviction." Arlott gives this picture of Dylan at work: "He would sit through rehearsals smoking endlessly: he took production like a professional actor and, when he stepped up to the microphone to read, made a happily extravagant figure. Round, with the roundness of a Tintoretto urchin-cherub, and in a large, loose tweed jacket, he would stand, feet apart and head thrown back, a dead cigarette frequently adhering wispily to his lower lip, curls a little tousled and eyes half-closed, barely reading the poetry by eye, but rather understanding his way through it, one arm beating out a sympathetic. double rhythm as he read. His voice would be sometimes. almost naively young and clearly tenor, while, at others, a dynamo throbbing seemed to drive him to an intense rolling depth." we

KRUPA COMES SOUTH

HE American jazz drummer Gene Krupa, who was mentioned on this page a few weeks ago, will pay a brief visit to Australia in August. His weekly salary of £A4460 (over and above expenses) is said to be the highest ever

paid to an overseas artist visiting Australia. Krupa, who has been plaving at

_ the Blue Note night club, in Chicago, will fly to Australia, and in seven performances in five cities is expected to play to about 50,000-people. Accompanying Krupa will be other members

of his trio-the pianist Teddy Napoleon and Eddie Shu, who plays saxophorie, clarinet, piano, trumpet and_ several other instruments. Edwin Duff will sing with the trio at their concerts throughout Australia. *

KEY MAN

‘THE Keynotes -the close-harmony quartet which is now associated in most listeners’ minds with Messrs, Ed-

wards, Bentley and Co.-came into being at the same time as Take It From Here. They first sang together in Tanuarv. 1948.

when a vocal group was needed to feature in TIFH and their appeal was

immediate. Hach member was an accomplished solo performer, who could read music at sight (Pearl Carr has since proved her worth as a comedienne as well), and they had the additional advantage of a skilful and experienced; leader in Johnny Johnston.

The latter (about whom Miss D. Kearney, Lower Hutt enquires), not only leads the group, but is responsible for all' their vocal and orchestral arrangements, and acts as the group’s business manager. He is a radio veteran who first faced the microphone in 1935 (when he was 15), and has now well over 1000: broadcasts to his credit.