"I Am―Vidocq!"
MY heart sank as I heard the thick accents in the opening dialogue of The Fabulous Vidocq (1YC). Mercy, I thought, have NZBS producers reverted to the soap-opera convention of broken English for foreigners speaking their own language? I should have known better, for this introduction proved to be merely an extract from a 19th Century play incorporating one of the many myths about this fantastic criminal-turned-thief-taker. For the rest of the programme, impeccable English was the medium for the dramatic presentation of the career of Vidotq, forger, adventurer, master of disguise and galley-convict, who became first Head of the French Sireté. Ernest Blair and Earle Rowle, as the old and young
Vidocq respectively, made him a con‘vincing character, and with capable help, gave life to dramatic scenes, slightly tinged with period flamboyance, but in the main plausible. When Iwas a boy I devoured a series of paper booklets enshrining the legends of Vidocq, never for a moment dreaming them to be true. Yet the reality, as this radio biography showed it, was hardly less remarkable than the inventions.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570201.2.50.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 912, 1 February 1957, Page 26
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181"I Am―Vidocq!" New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 912, 1 February 1957, Page 26
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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