Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 794, 8 October 1954, Page 28

Open Microphone

GAG MAN

S‘¢"TN those days I went under my stage name of Will Henry. I used} to write scripts for three voices and play them all myself-a straight part, a comic Irishman, andta Roches-ter-type Negro. But I didn't like radio work then. To stand up on your own in a studio and be funny without an audience is difficult. I’m an audience man. You’ve got to build om your laughs and learn to handle an audience." Bill

Entwistle, who is leaving at ae end = the month with the Sixth Korea Concert Party as its compere and com-

edian, was telling The Listener the other day something about his twenty years in the entertainment business. Like the

other members of the party, which was described in The Listener last week, he has had long experience of camp concert work. During the war he was with the George Miller shows which gave concerts mainly in American camps in and around Wellington. But lately he has also become a familiar face at Waiouru and. Linton, where he has compéred a number of the 2YA Camp: Concerts broadcast in the series Troops at Ease. Bill is proud of his record as an entertainer, especially as he is self-taught. He is a juggler and a tap-dancer, and he can also play two instruments at once -the mouth organ and the banjo-man-dolin. But the main part of his comedy routine, he says, lies in the gags. It’s the nimble tongue that he relies ‘on rather than quickness of hand or nimble toes, and this ability has brought him praise from the troops as. one of their favourite comic entertainers. He lives in Wellington and has one son, now aged 26. His favourite hobby, apart from entertaining, is fishing. "I have a boat on a trailer and go out to Paréemata," he said. "I have a place out there that I'm fixing up at the moment so that we can get in plenty of good fishing at Christmas, after we come back from Korea." : os

WOODY WOODCHOPPER

T isn’t every jazz musician who gives a concert in Carnegie Hall, New York, or who plays at that concert a composition specially written for him by Igor Stravinsky. But that was the luck of Woody Herman in 1946. The. gods smiled on Woady at that time,

-__ because in the previous year his orchestra, known as the Herman Herd, was

chosen bDand of the year in the Esquire poll, and captured the Down Beat an

Metronome polls as well. The Stravinsky work he played was, of course, the Ebony Concerto, but it isn’t generally known that Woody later reciprocated with a hot little piece dedicated to Stravinsky and titled Igor. It was recorded by the Woodchoppers, a small band-within-a-band of the Herman group, and was composed by Red Norvo and Shorty Rogers. Herman is still a top favourite with the public. He was born in Milwaukee in 1913, and was a vaudeville trouper at eight. He began playing the saxophone at nine and the clarinet at eleven. He sang with Tom Gerun’s orchestra for a while, and later played and sang with the bands of Harry Sosnik, Gus Arnheim, and Isham Jones. In 1936 ‘he formed his own orchestra, known as The Band That Plays the Blues, but as the blues were out of favour at the time the band went through .a Jean period until the war years. At the end of 1946 WHerman’s original Herd broke up, but Woody formed a mew one in the following year. When it too broke up he forméd the Third Herd in 1952. He also has his own recording firm. A programme by Woody Herman and his Orchestra to be broadcast from 4YA at,10.30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 13, includes a Ralph Burns arrangement of "Moten Stomp," "Sorry About the Whole Darned Thing" (with Herman singing the vocal), Gershwin’s "This is New," and "Bean Jazz," with Herman at the clarinet. pe

WENTY Wellington primary school choirs are taking part in a Music Festival on Wednesday, October 13,

which 2YA will give a delayed broadcast of at 9.30 p.m. The children have been trained by. their teachers, and on the big night Harry Botham will conduct the orchestra and choir. Folk songs, modern songs, carols old and new, will be sung by the choir, and orchestral

items, organ solos and music from an Intermediate School recorder and percussion group make up an agreeable and interesting programme. Conducting is only one of the activities of Harry Botham, who is better known to the

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD

SCHOOLS’ FESTIVAL

" public as a Safety Consultant. As an

industrial safety OUftecer with the Department of Labour he is concerned with

the vital problem of safety and health in industry, and is conducting Dominion-wide campaigns in connection with this work. He is a former scholarship student at the Trinity College of Music, where his instrument was the double-bass, and for some years he was a professional musician in England. His conducting work has included deputising for Terry Vaughan, in the days when he was a member of the old 2YA Studio Orchestra. Harry Botham has _ three B children, all misly,: and is a_ keen cricketer.

VIOLIN AND PIANO

Fs. Sale seers x 4 ORA ALACK, formerly Dora Deal, was well known as a_ broadcasting and concert violinist in Christchurch

before the war. As a foundation mem-

ber of the Laurian Club, founded by Harold Beck (later principal ‘cellist of the famed Hallé Orches-

tra), she had an early insight into

chamber music. Playing with string groups for such visiting artists as Percy Grainger. and Florence Austral, or broadcasting sonatas with Ernest Jenner, were all in the day’s work for her. Mrs. Alack is now on the teaching staff of the Nelson School of Music, and now, too (following an absence of some years), she is playing again in the time left to her after attending to the unbounded energies of her two children. With Thelma Robinson she will play

Dvorak’s Sonatina for Violin and Piano from Station 2XN at 9.4 p.m. on "Sunday, October 17. ~ *

JOY ON TY

"\/ HATEVER happens, viewers are going to see a new Joy Nichols," the former T/FH star said shortly before her reappearance in London: the other day in a TV show with Tommy Trinder at the National Radio Show at Earl’s Court. In July of last year Joy suddenly walked out of her TIFH contract, taking with her Roberta, her 18-

months-old daughter, and her American-born husband Wally Petersen. She told listeners she was leavine because "No

one will give Wally any work. How can our marriage be a success when we hear the jibe, ‘There goes Mr. Joy Nichols.’ We've got to get straightened out, and Australia is the place to do it." But after only 12 appearances in an Australian revue Joy had a nervous ¢ollapse. The trio moved on to New York, but there Joy came up against difficulties over a working permit. A few weeks ago she arrived back in England, leaving her husband behind in New York to study American TV _ techniques so that he could come over later to work as a TV producer. Joy now plans to make a musical comedy appearance, and . this will be followed by a new TV series which her old script-writers, Muir and Norden, have written for her. But it’s unlikely that she will ever again anvear in Take It From Here.