Who Can Buy Radio Comedy a New Suit?

Radio Record, 12 August 1938, Page 6

Who Can Buy Radio Comedy a New Suit?

AN this article, Jehn Sydney accuses radio comedy of being cheap in more ways then one. What do YOU think? Does the "mike’’ give you as many laughs es thrills?

COOD dribbling ont of the speaker on to the carpet in the. sittingraom;. crooners calling to the moon about love, and wisecratkers shaving the whiskore of old iokes, lifting their

faces, and trotting them out in modern garb. All. these things I had nightly for 25/- a year. But what have I had of comedy?-Nothing. Is it that listeners prefer bloody serials and all the rest? Or is it that comedy, per se, is out of the range of the microphone? There are comedians. Oh, yes. There are humorous serials. Oh, yes, too. But in the final analysis they are merely transplanted music hall comics depending on nuances instead of red noses and baggy pants, They are outside the pale of this argument, for real comedy is something that has to be written into a script before it can be put through the mike. Every time I ask a radio writer I get the same answer: "‘Oh, it’s easy enough to write the stuff, old boy. I’ve written yards of it, but they don’t want it." I wonder. And the more I think about it the more I am convinced that it is one of those things that just cannot be done, at least not until television comes along to help us. For, as matters stand to-day, it is seemingly the lack of visual contact between the

artist and his audience that is necessaty for comedy to live: One of the greatest obstacles is that the artist cannot see what particular line tickles the funny bone of his listeners and he cannot give that pause

to allow them to get their laugh over and come Up for more. The line he thinks a scream passes over their heads, and the fill-up gets the laugh. None of which can be foreseen, even if rehearsed in the studio. The consequence is that whenever comedy is attempted it is in the first place hampered because the listener can’t laugh for fear of missing some of the dialogue necessary to an understanding of the whole show. So, after a first glance, we give it up, shrug our shoulders with the remark: ‘‘Just too bad,’ and let it go at that. , But should we do so? Are our first cursory impressions right, or does the fault lie deeper-with the script writers themselves? I am not suggesting that radio script writers are incapable of creating radio comedy of quality. There are one or two professionals who know their job, and a dozen or so outside the two services who can turn out top-grade material. But these men write for money. They don’t care what happens to comedyor, if anything happens to it at all. So they write what will sell-cheap drama; wisecracks and inane nothings. They are shockingly paid but apparently think a quarter-loaf better than a tight belt. Good comedy, with that subtle something in it (Continued on page 24.)

Radio Comedy

(Continued from page 6.) that can get over without visualisation, is not the sort of copy a writer can batter out of his machine ad lib. It is copy in which every word, every phrase and every suggestion has to be weighed and tested, and then, finally, it must be polished with the same care given a diamond. It is as rare as diamonds, to», not only in the radio studio, but even in the world of letters. If you doubt this, count up the authors who have made 2 world name by writing comedy. Atter Wodehouse comes-well, who? All of which leads me up to the real point I wish to make, and which, had J been really modern, I would have slammed into the opening paragraph and then recapitulated for the rest of the chapter. Here it is: Newspaper and magazine pages in this country are cluttered up with syndicated materia! to the exclusion of New Zealand talent-except at rates that can tempt only the veriest tyro anxious for the passing flicker of limelight. To-day radio offers a new vehicle of creative expression, and as time goes on will do so even to a greater extent. What, then, is going to happen to our national humour? Isit tobe allowed to die stillborn because it is rare and. therefore expensive? ‘The economics are beyond me-but not the implication as it affects the creative work of New Zealand writers,