Glad Tidings

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 801, 26 November 1954, Page 15

Glad Tidings

"HRISTMAS is coming, the geese are getting fat, and listeners are promised some fat chuckles, too, in this week’s NZBS-produced comedies. Glad Tidings, by R. F. Delderfield (who wrote the stage hit Worm’s Eye View) is the tale of a retired Army officer who brings home a prospective step-mother for his grown-up family. They decide that the wealthy Mrs. Stuart is not exactly what they had ordered for Christmas, although she is far from being a stepmother in the Cinderella style. The R.A.F., establishing itself on the village golf course, plays fairy godmother on this occasion in its own peculiar fashion, but it wouldn’t be fair to tell you any more. Glad Tidings was produced in the Auckland studios of the NZBS by Earle Rowell. with Athol

Coats and Honor Bretherton in the leading roles, The ZB stations and 2ZA will feature Glad Tidings on Sunday, December 5, at 9.35 p.m. Before Terence Vaughan migrated to Australia recently he did some musicmaking for the NZBS which had extremely happy results in the play Dear Appointment, by C. Gordon Glover. "Terry," Productions Department said to him, "you've got to write us a song which will go right round the worlda hit number. Oh, and we’d like a musichall ditty, too." Nothing daunted, maestro Vaughan wrote "I’ve Got a Date on My Mind" and "They Call Me Coster Lilly." Right round the world was no vulgar exaggeration. He wrote "I’ve Got a Date" as it would sound in a British Palais, in Harlem, Spain, Russia and China. Then he persuaded John Hoskins to sing it and conducted the orchestra himself-and the result? Well, they say Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers po Rg Coward are forming a picket ine! Dear Appointment, the private and public life of a musical entrepreneur, was produced by Bernard Beeby, with Hector Ross and Kenneth Firth. It will be heard from 1YA on Thursday, December 2, at 8.5 p.m., and later from other YA and YZ stations.