Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 800, 19 November 1954, Page 28

Open Microphone

SCHOOLS BROADCASTER

6c ID you know that wallabies are a menace in South .Canterbury and Otago?" Joy Rogers asked us recently. Joy is in charge of the current events session, The World We Live In, which is heard in the Broadcasts to Schools programmes at 1.45 p.m. every Monday. In this programme she usually has a guest speaker to talk about such subjects as "Antarctic Ex-

pedition," "Myxomatosis," "Wing Flapping Aeroplanes," "Is

the World Getting Warmer?" "Oil from Persia," or "Wallaby Control." It. was her work on the last-named, over which she had just been pondering with an officer of the Department of Internal Affairs, that prompted her remark to us. ¢ Joy Rogers has been a member of the Broadcasts to Schools section of the NZBS for over two years. Although she is a Hastings girl "born and bred," she first came to Wellington to attend the Wellington Teachers’ Training College. Subsequently she returned home for several years, when she completed her L.T.C.L. and L.R.S.M. She then came back to Wellington and took up her present position. In addition to her work for Broadcasts to Schools she helps in the

production of programmes for the Children’s Sessions, auditioning, scheduling, and reading and reporting on scripts. Each year she writes a number of scripts herself, and she is at present working on an adaptation of the children’s book, A Bow in the Cloud, by Marghanita Fanchiotti. She also helps to prepare the booklets issued each year for use in schools with T. J. Young’s "Singing Lesson with Studio Class," which is heard every Thursday in the Broadcasts to Schools. This involves working alongside School Publications and the Government Printer.

One of the best experiences which Joy remembers from her work is the time she persuaded children from the Kelburn School to send in questions to Sir Edmund Hillary and George Lowe, shortly after they returned from the successful Everest expedition. The two mountaineers were each given a list of the questions, and placed on either side of a microphone to answer them together. The resulting programme was so successful that it was later broadcast for adult listeners, too. On another occasion she had to organise an anniversary programme on the Girl Guide movement. She went up to the 2YA studios to meet the girls who were to take part in the programme-expecting to find a dozen or so-and was actually greeted by about 150 blue-uniformed youngsters. "But the programme was really quite a good one," she said. "We packed them all into the big studio and the resulting volume of sound as they sang their songs created a very pleasant mass effect." In her spare time, incidentally, Joy is a keen badminton player, and she also makes all her own clothes,

WOODVILLE BOY

* W HEN he came back to New Zealand for a few months last year, Alan Rowe, of Woodville, was lucky enough to take the leading role of Napoleon’s uncrowned son in an NZBS production of L’Aiglon, the play Edmond Rostand wrote for the great Sarah Bernhardt. The radio adaptation will be broadcast for the first time from 3YC this week

(see page 7). Alan Rowe is not new to broadcasting in this countrv. He

! began work under Bernard Beeby in 1945, taking part in, among

other programmes, Richielieu, Cardinal or King? He toured New Zealand in 1947-48 with Ronald

Forrt, and Gabriel] Toyne’s New Zea- ~ land Theatre Company, and went to England in 1948, joining the Ipswich Arts Council. After four years serving in various theatres, including the Arts Council Midland Theatre Company, the Playhouse, Sheffield, and St. Martin’s Theatre, London (where he played in Twice Upon a Time), he joined Si Barry Jackson’s Birmingham ™ Theatre. Here he played Somerset in the successful production of the three parts of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, which was subsequently put on also at the Old Vic Theatre, London. He came back home at the end of last year to revisit his mother, and during this time, in addition to playing the lead in L’Aiglon, he took part in Beginners, Act One, and The Life and Times of Buddha. On his return to England he took part in The Love of Four Colonels, and The Deep Blue Sea for the New Malvern Company. He then rejoined the Birmingham Repertory Company and has just concluded playing Lysimachus in Pericles, Prince of Tyre. He has also done considerable broadcasting with the BBC since returning to England. Bernard Beeby regards Alan Rowe as "a good boy with a lot of promise. He’s the type of fellow who, will learn as he goes on," he told us. ~

LIBERACE STRIKES OIL

* N a recent despatch from New York the columnist Don Iddon reported that Liberace, "the marcel-waved toot some pianist whose following grows and grows," will make a series of films for 4 Warner Bros. The studio claims that Liberace’s hold on American women is

as great as Valentino’s was. "I doubt this," Iddon added, but he con-

ceded that Liberace’s fan mail was probably the biggest in show business today. The pianist comes from Milwaukee, and is 34. In addition to his recordings and concert appearances, he has recently made a big name for himself as a TV performer, and has earned enormous fees for perform-

ances of such works as the Warsaw Concerto, Cornish Rhapsody, and so on, varying them with an occasional jazz piece like Twelfth Street Rag. Liberace started as a concert pianist when he played a Liszt Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra 14 years ago. But nowadays the long-haired

boys are inclined to look down their noses and call him a "cabaret headliner." This point of view was expressed the other day by Down Beat’s reviewer, who said, "Liberace insists on trying to kid the public into thinking he’s a classical virtuoso, but the public just won't kid. The gals who adore him don’t care about Bach and have never heard of Viadimir Horowitz. And the people who know about Bach and Horowitz laugh out loud at the mention of Liberace’s name." But this sort of criticism isn’t likely to worry the wealthy young bachelor, who is said to be more concerned at the moment with an oil well that he and his brother George own in Oklahoma. It recently began to flow at the "heartening" rate of 100 barrels an hour.

HE KNOWS HIS DICKENS

"HARLES LEFEAUX, the adaptor and producer of the BBC’s radio version of Nicholas Nickleby (2YA, 3.0 p.m. on Thursdays), was on familiar ground when he set about the production for the Home Service. He had previous ex-

perience of ‘producing Dickens on the air with Oliver T wist, in which

John Gabriel, the narrator of Nicholas Nickleby, played the part of Fagin. Lefeaux’s career in broadcasting has run parallel with his career on the stage. In 1928 when the BBC was in its early years, he made his first stage appearance and had his first broadcast. From then onwards he was busily employed in the theatre and on the air until the war, which he spent in the

R.A.F. After the war he returned to acting and producing, and was for a time a member of the BBC Drama Repertory Company. He is now on the staff of the Drama Department.

ART VAN DAMME

* "HE Art van Damme Quintet started as a trio in 1938 when its leader was 18. It was reorganised in 1942 and grew to a quartet, and finally to its present pliable shape as a quintet. Ben Bernie was a guiding influence in the

development of the group, inviting the original trio to play with his orchestra.

Art van Damme was the first accordionist to play with the group. He studied the accordion in his home town of Norway, Michigan, and made his debut as a professional at ten. Eight years later his musical stature was sufficient to form his trio, and now he is regarded as one of the most forwardlooking and inventive instrumentalists around. The acclaim he has. received from jazz-lovers, a group chary of genuine praise, has been loud indeed, and the reasons are easy to perceive from a selection by the Quintet at present being heard from YA stations. The other members are Charlie Calzaretta (vibraphone), Fred Rundquist (guitar), Lon Skalinda (bass), and Max Mariash (drums). *

NO IDLE TEARS

"TERESA _ DEL RIEGO, the popular. song-writer, celebrates this year the 60th anniversary of her debut as a song-

writer. some idea or the popularity of her music may be had from the fact

that "O Dry Those Tears" sold 28,000 copies within six weeks of publication,

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD