Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 938, 2 August 1957, Page 20

Open Microphone

ond NEWS OF BROADCASTERS ON AND OFF THE RECORD

SINGS HARRY

HEN | the singer-actor Harry Belafonte made love to a white woman, Joan Fontaine, in his recent film, Island

in the Sun, he apparently made American movie

history as the first Negro to do so. After it was announced that

he was to break this old colour bar he received letters threatening his life. The picture of Harry at the top of this column is from this film. Still only 30 years old and on the crest of a wave of popularity for his calypso recordings, Harry Belafonte has risen to the top in the entertainment world in _ five years. It all started from two theatre tickets a tenant gave him as a tip when he was a maintenance worker in an apartment house after the war. The tickets were for an all-Negro play. Seeing it made him want to become an entertainer. Though New York is his. home town, Harry spent five childhood years in his mother’s old home in Jamaica. He went there when he was eight but later returned to New York for the main part of his school-

ing. During the war he left high school to join the United States Navy, and on a. fi

his discharge he took that apartment house job. Once he had decided to enter the entertainment world, Harry went about it in the most practical way. He enrolled in a drama school and while studying earned a living pushing a dress cart around the clothing manufacturing district of New York. From his visits to a Broadway jazz club for recreation came his first break-a chance to tour night clubs throughout the country for two years, singing popular songs. Then a talent scout from Hollywood saw him and he was offered his first film part in Bright Road. From that he went on to Broadway musicals, but he first became widely known in this part of the world when he appeared with Dorothy Dandridge a few years back in Carmen Joties. Miss Dandridge also has a leading part in Island in the Sun. Nine years ago Harry married a teacher of child psychology at New York University, and they had two daughters. Recently their marriage broke up, and soon after he married 28-year-old Julie

Robinson, a former member of the Katherine Dunham dancers. Said to be earning £4000 a week, Harry Belafonte has still not realised all his ambitions. For one thing, he’ wants to write plays dealing with American folk-lore. With many irons in the fire he says confidently: "No matter which one I grab, I’m sure I won’t get burned." +

SECOND CHOICE

OU wouldn’t think to look at Lita Roza today -or to hear her — that she was an air raid victim who had been forced to give up her career, but that’s how it was back in the war years. As

a child Lita wanted to be a dancer, and

she had made a good start_on this career in Tom Arnold’s Pantomime when a leg injury in an

air raid put a stop to it. But Lita was an optimistic and ambitious 15-year-old. If ‘she couldn’t dance, she decided, she would sing, so she got herself a job as a girl singer in a restaurant at Southport. That gave her a good start and next year she took a ticket to London-one-way, of course-where she got a job singing with Harry Roy’s Band and at the same time made her first broadcasts for the BBC. Later she broadcast with Ted Heath and his Band while she was their regular singer, and in other BBC series. Qn British television she has appeared on Eric Barker, Dick Bentley and Mantovani programmes. She has also appeared on television in the United States. Lita Roza is well known in this country as a recording star whose discs are frequently broadcast. "The Doggie in the Window" and "Jimmy Unknown" have been among her biggest successes. os

DOUBLE LIFE

Two, four, six, eight... Who... do we... appreci-ate? For members of the Wallace Greenslade Fan Club in New Zealand who have been clamouring for a picture of their pink-faced, tubby, smartly-suited hero we print one on this page. An assiduous propagandist for the

Radio Times, which he has frequently quoted in

the course of his more menial chores as Goon Show announcer, Mr Greenslade has often shown signs of developing into an entertainer in his own right. Keep it up, Greenslade! A former ship’s purser who during the war was a naval lieutenant-commander, Wallace Greenslade — he’s plain "Bill"

to his friends-leads a double life. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds, however, for his ability to do so depends very much on his ability to seem the same. The voice that gives the news in BBC sound and television programmes comes over with the same vibrant power in The Goon Show. In fact, the art which Mr Greenslade has cultivated most is the art of keeping a straight face-and a_ straight voice. "Anything funny I say with the Goons," he explains, "must sound like a straight announcement, otherwise it wouldn’t be funny. Sometimes I’m sorely tempted to forget what programme I’m doing. But then as I sound the same, does it matter?" UR recent reference to the English teacher of piano Miss Lander has brought. a note from Helen Young, of Castor Bay, who learnt the piano from Miss Lander

many years ago when she was a boarder at St. Felix School, Southwold. She corrects our mistake about Miss Lander’s first name-"her initials were M. J. and her first name was Mabel’’-and adds:

"T had coffee with her in. her flat in Baker Street in 1949 and she spoke so highly of both the Princesses. Moritz Moszkowski had lived in the flat when he was first married."