THE VOICES OF HISTORY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 800, 19 November 1954, Page 7

THE VOICES OF HISTORY

CCN January (1908)," wrote Alexandra Tolstoy, "Father received a present of a sort we had never seen before-a dictaphone sent him from America by Thomas Edison. When I had set it up, he tried to speak into it, but was so excited that he stuttered and forgot what he intended to say. ‘Stop the machine, stop it,’ he cried to me. ‘It’s dreadfully exciting, he added with a sigh. ‘Probably such a machine is good for well-balanced Americans, but it is not for us Russians.’ Nevertheless, he did on occasion make use of it. . ." But then, the Russians were always unpredictable, and Edison’s proud boast when he created the phonograph that "It will henceforth be possible to preserve, for future generations, the voices as well as the words of our Washingtons and Lincolns .. ." came substantially true. In "Hark! The Years!" the ZB Sunday Showcase programme to be broadcast at 9.35 p.m. on Sunday, November 28. listeners will be able to hear the actual voices of people who made history, from Florence Nightingale (repeating a prayer for her comrades in the Crimean War) and Thomas Edison himself, up to Albert Einstein and Gertrude

Stein, the controversial poet. In this programme, listeners are given a true scrap-book in sound, and can turn back the pages of history with the aid of a commentary by the well-known screen actor Fredric March and a musical score by Nathaniel Shilkret. The "Gay Nineties’ live again with the voice of Lillian Russell, who is heard singing in a Music Hall of the "Mauve Decade," recreating the gaiety and splendour of those fabulous years. Enrico Caruso also sings again, and the dramatic tones of John Barrymore at the crest of his career are heard once more. The new century dawns, and with it a mighty era of Polar exploration, which makes Commander Robert E. Peary’s description of his discovery of the North Pole in 1909 of particular interest. In the political field Teddy Roosevelt campaigns fierily for re-election at the head of his newly-formed Progressive Party. Eugene Debs, one of the foremost figures in American Socialism, and an advocate of trade unionism and pacifism, speaks again. Then, as war clouds gather in 1914, Woodrow Wilson, General Pershing and Marshal Foch are heard speaking of the gravity of the situation. But not only the threat of war with Germany was in the air. Russia was on

the eve of revolution, and Lenin, the revolutionist, is heard berating Capitalism and (in Russian, of course) advocating his own drastic remedy. The social conscience also stirs in America, where William Howard Taft speaks on the Rights of Labour, and Henry Cabot Lodge speaks on the League of Nations. From the concert halls of that time, too, the world-famous voice of Madame Schumann Heink, the Austrian-Czech contralto, is heard again. Sweeping into the "roaring twenties," listeners will hear the voices of President Warren Harding, comedians Will Rogers and W. C. Fields, cinema idol Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and the evangelist Aimée Semple McPherson. In the world of sport, personalities like Bobby Jones, Jack Dempsey and the "Home Run King" Babe Ruth, take the field again. The air age captures the world’s imagination with the return of the "Lone Eagle,’ young Charles Lindbergh, who is heard modestly giving thanks for the wildly sentimental acclaim accorded him. Political issues provoke bitter debate as we hear Calvin Coolidge, Jimmy Walker and Herbert Hoover on the war debits question. Another continent stirs when the gentle voice of Mahatma Gandhi reverberates throughout India as

he declares himself, on his way to prison, a "soldier of Peace." Then come the depressed thirties . . . the. applesellers at the corner, . . "Brother can you spare a dime?" ... the bread-lines twisting across America’s Main Street. And from across the Atlantic in Britain comes the voice of George Bernard Shaw scathingly lamenting the world’s. economic plight. Finally, Franklin Delano Roosevelt occupied the White House, declaring, "My friends... I still believe in ideals, . ." In "Hark! The Years!" each voice ig the actual recorded voice of the person described, heard in its historical setting. For the creation of this composite programme hundreds of old wax cylinders, disc records, transcriptions and sound tracks were auditioned. Many hours of research and selection, pre-recording and filtering, writing and editing, went into its making.