Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 789, 3 September 1954, Page 24

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD

HOUGH the academic life of the Old Country is reputed to go round in little circles, and Cambridge is one of the older Universities, there are still plenty of goings-on to enliven the existence of its daughters. Sarah Campion, a University daughter of long standing, remembers very few stretches of boredom in her forty~years’ experience of the place; and, in a series of four talks now being heard from 4YC, she describes what life in this East Anglian backwater was like-for her. Her father, the medieval historian G. G. Coulton, was one of the town’s many eccentrics, and a lively, exasperating companion: through him, his daughter met a good

many notables, from Sir James Frazer, of the Golden Bough, to Ronald Searle, of St.. Trinian’s. Her memories cover changes in Cambridge during the two major wars of this century: the emergence of women into full academic life as a result of, though (characteristically) a good while after the 1914 war; and the even more appalling changes which resulted from the Second World War, when, to its unveiled horror, the University had parts of the London School of Economics quartered upon it, all seething with alien ideas which could not but leave their mark. In this way Cambridge, which Sarah Campion first knew in 1910, has at last emerged from being a University mainly for people with money, to a University in which the only true aristocracy is that of brains and character-it has become, with a great deal of trouble to itself, democratic. It has always been full of odd ‘and interesting people, most of whom can be remembered with pleasure. Rupert Brooke posing in a punt on the river during a hot summer afternoon: Sir James Frazer courteously suffering the buffetings of Lady Frazer: A. E. Housman ruefully explaining that his poetry has a great attraction for the criminal classes: the present Bishop of Durham, then an insufferably self-assured schoolboy, treading on the speaker’s toes during a hop in the Guildhall: Harold Laski bursting like a small bomb into the sleepy circles of academic life: Lydia Lopokova (now Lady Keynes) describing the pleasures of washing-up -all these form the texture of the

Cambridge life Sarah Campion knew when she .was young-the life about which she reminisces with the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of sentimentality. A certain amount of nostalgia there must be, since for so long Cambridge was "home." Like so many of its daughters, Miss Campion wandered away from the University a great deal: in one of her talks she describes what looking back to Cambridge was like, whether from Germany or Queensland, Capetown or Toronto-and what sort of a homecoming the University gives to its Antecaaee wanderers.

KEYBOARD HEART-THROB

NE of the current phenomena of the" phenomenal United States tntertainment business is a 34-year-old pianist named Liberace (pronounced Liber-ah-chee), with a huge following — mainly feminine. Television made him a star on 100 stations. His flair for showmanship has sold a solid 250,000 albums of re-

coras, and iast year he was the only concert artist to pack the 20.000-seat Hol-

lywood Bowl. Liberace (for R. L. Walton, Auckland, and others who may be interested) is the son of Italo-Polish parents and was born in Milwaukee. Paderewski visited the family when Wladzui Valentino was seven. He heard the boy play and advised professional training for him. It was Paderewski, too, who suggested using the surname only. Formally trained at the Wisconsin College of Music, Liberace was inclined towards popular music, and toured the night clubs for ten years before rocketing to success on television and the lucrative "pop" concert circuit. Liberace makes his Own arrangements of the classics, and varies his programmes | with an occasional baritone lyric, sometimes sentimental, sometimes satirical. His audiences are two-thirds women, from bobby-soxers to grandmothers, who love his greying hair, the romantic aura from the silver candelabra on the piano, the engaging comments made into a strategically-placed microphone. Liberace’s aim: "To be to the piano what

Bing Crosby is to the voice." Home for Liberace, his mother and brother, is a beautiful. multi-storied new house in Royal Oaks, California. It has a swim-ming-pool-shaped like a grand piano, of course. *

BACKBLOCKS WIFE

\VHEN Mary Scott went to live in the backblocks, she thought that hoggets were little pigs and that sheen

farming meant putting some sheep in a paddock and waiting -for

them to multiply. Enlightenment came quickly, but not dis_illusion. Today, after more _ than 30

(Ses) ee eee a years of farm life, Mrs. Scott is still writing of it with zest. Listeners to the Women’s Hour from commercial stations will soon be able to hear some of her stories in her Journal of a Backblocks ° Wite. Descended from George Clarke, a Protector of Aborigines in early North Auckland, Mrs. Scott was born at the Bay of Islands and educated at Auckland. She graduated M.A. from Auck-

land University College, winning firstclass honours in English, and the University’s Tinline Scholarship. She was a schoolteacher for two years before | marrying Walter Scott, and going to live on what was then only partly-de-veloped land near Te Awamutu. Her adaptation to country life and its vicissitudes has provided the stimulus for much writing both for publication and for radio. She is the author of the Barbara Books, of a number of one-act plays, and of several novels. The latest of these, Breakfast at Six, has run into three editions so far. As a writer and farmer’s wife and mother of four, Mrs. A

Scott is kept. very busy indeed, but she finds time for breeding dogs as a special hobby, and for reading and taking an interest in "practically everything." Journal of a Backblocks Wife will be broadcast first in the Women’s Hour from 2ZA on Monday, September 6, and later from the ZB stations and 1XH. The talks will be read by Valerie Spencer. Answer to Correspondent R. L. Walton (Auckland): The Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra and the Melodi Light, Orchestra are controlled by the same publish--ing firm. The former has not been appearing in record catalogues lately, but whether it has been superseded by the Melodi "Light Orchestra is not known here. —