Radio Times Archive

SUPPLEMENT TO RADIO TIMES, JANUARY 22, 1937 RADIO TIMES TELEVISION SUPPLEMENT PROGRAMMES FROM JANUARY 25 TO 30 JIMMY CHAPPELL, forward, two members of the British Olympic team, are to be televised on Tuesday RADIO TIMES TELEVISION SUPPLEMENT, JANUARY 22, I937 THE LISTENER prints the best of the broadcast talks and from them it derives its exceptional qualities—its remarkable range and variety of interest, its combination of information and entertainment, the easy style in which its articles are phrased, the distinction and authority of its contributors. Articles are specially contributed on music, books, and many other subjects. The illustrations are a feature in themselves. In essence, THE LISTENER is a weekly magazine for everyone who is interested in the many aspects of present day life and the important events that are influencing the way life will be lived in the future. Published by the British Broadcasting Corporation, THE LISTENER is obtainable eveiy Wednesday, price threepence, from newsagents, bookstalls and booksellers everywhere. TheLislener RADIO TIMES TELEVISION SUPPLEMENT, JANUARY 22, I937 3 PEOPLE YOU SEE BY GUY FLETCHER eowa entu HE BBC were marvellous to me. Poison in poppies made him a comic those nights when he was free, accom• TThey were the only people who said after nearly killing him. panied his father. to me : " Here is your chance'—take it! " Leonard Henry Ruming was the son of He put in an eighteen-hour day, and They made me.' It is characteristic of Harry Ruming, entertainer. From the age ten shillings a week was his reward f::om Leonard Henry to admit it. of ten he played his father's accompani• science, which nearly killed him. ' I write music, but I'm a comic' And ments, being then so small that he had to And yet whenever he gets near a he's one of the very best comics going. be lifted on to the piano stool. His pedigree chemist's works he sniffs around and He has been in the concert-party seems to have made doubly certain that wants to go in. He is keenly interested in business for twenty-five years; he has he was to entertain, for his mother's the modern trend of science, and very been sound broadcasting for ten years. mother was a ballerina, who danced herself much wants to meet Sir Oliver Lodge and He appeared in the Royal Command Per• to death in her early twenties. let him talk and talk and talk. formance of 1932, and has starred in half- Yet at school the boy found something Leonard was about seventeen when he a-dozen radio pantomimes. He has acted in more entertaining than entertainment. He got poisoned by opium through sieving Shakespeare, is a favourite with listeners to was thoroughly happy in the chemistry lab., poppy-heads. He was ' dopey ' for days. the London Children's Hour and with and a thorough dud at everything else. It was curious that his father was entertain• children in the wards of hospitals, After leaving school he went to the ing at Westcliff with the ' Pick-Me-Ups'; has twice been elected in news Battersea Polytechnic for science, and, of course, being at the sea, his father paper ballots as the most popu and also took music there. In sent for him. lar comedian; yet this man the daytime he worked in a Whether it was the sea air or watching of small stature and terrific chemical factory in the Mile every night a concert party with such a energy, who has been help• End Road, helping to pro• tonic of a title, young Leonard felt fit in a ing to make people laugh duce drugs, essential oils, fortnight. Then someone fell out, and he since he was a lad in his ointments. In the evening was invited to join the company.' 'teens, might never have he studied theory at the He borrowed his father's second-best been a comedian at all but Polytechnic several dress suit, which was sizes too big, and for poppies. nights a week, and on sang at the piano one of the songs he knew—'Itdoesgo'. It did! Hestayedwith the company for the rest of the season. t \ It was good-bye to science. ' I began trying to open the oyster of the profes• sion, and found how difficult it was. It was all very lovely in the summer, but for many years life in the winter was full of battles.' V For about five years he was with this concert party and the other. In one at Seaford there was a girl—a sister of Thorpe Bates—in the company. The girl is known now as Mrs. Leonard Henry. ' Whenever I was in London I used to buy a bob seat in the gallery and watch the " Follies " with awe and reverence.' In 1913 he and his father started their own concert party, the ' Mountebanks '. It ran all through the war, lasted for twenty years, and toured all over the country. In 1925 he was at the Prince of Wales Theatre, London, in Chariot's Revue, and he appeared with Beatrice Lillie and Gertrude Lawrence in the first midnight matinee ever given in this country. On September 29, 1926, he made his radio d£but as compere in a Variety show. During the next two years he broadcast in shows like ' Chariot's Hour' and Leonard Henry is evidently ' The Radio Follies' (of both of which delighted with this caricature- he was producer and part-author). But model of himself he was given no solo broadcast, and nobody took very much notice of his performances. (Continued on paee 4) 4 RADIO TIMES TELEVISION SUPPLEMENT, JANUARY 22, 1937 People You See : Leonard Henry (Continued from page 3) NEWS for YOU VIEWERS Then one night he had ten minutes to Cafe 'Somewhere in Europe' Figures himsdf on the air, and everyone went mad There is not much Continental atmosphere Some person with a love of statistics has about him. From that day he broadcast about any part of Alexandra Palace at the compiled the following figures for ' Picture once a week. moment. On February 11, however, there Page '. There have been over 162 programme And so he says from experience: ' In will be a startling transformation in the items in which Leslie Mitchell interviewed, a musical show people listen to the show studio. Viewers will see a cafe', location Joan Miller connected, and the bugler-boy and not so much to the artist. But in a somewhere in Europe. The idea originally saluted, 168 men, 90 women, 24 boys came from two members of the Television (including 12 choir boys), 1 elephant boy, Variety turn the artist has to stand on his Orchestra, Harold Stuteley, the pianist, and 6 girls, 1 fairy, 3 accompanists, 1 Siamese own two legs and listeners take more Guy Daines, who plays the fiddle. ' Cosmo• cat, 1 Alsatian dog, 1 string of onions, notice of him.' politan Cafe*' will be its name. There will 1 monkey, 1 model of Bond Street, 1 tray of He has broadcast in revue, musical be an orchestra of six players—'cello, fiddle, muffins, 1 box of herrings, 1 Guy Fawkes, comedy, vaudeville, the London Children's accordeon, piano, guitar, and percussion. and innumerable silkworms. Hour, surprise items, and comic opera. There will be guest singers and dancers. Very shortly, possibly before this appears In May 1934, he broadcast as Lancelot There will be, provided the drink is exhilarat• in print, there will be the first outside Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice to the ing enough, diverting broadcast for a ' Picture Page' programme. dialogue from the regular Shylock of Abraham Sofaer and the Portia The first person to travel on clientele. There will be a the lift that is now being con• of Celia Johnson. At Christmas the same setting that will charm structed to reach all the five year, in the radio pantomime Blue Beard^ the eye. And, an essential floors of offices in the tower at he played Sister Anne to the Blue Beard in any Continental cafe', Alexandra Palace will be tele• of Dick Francis. there will be a verbose and vised as an item in a ' Picture Another of his great successes was as informative proprietor. Page' programme. James Smith (Simplicitas) in The Arcadians, Peter Bax is already busy both in February 1934 and again last designing the scenery and „ Mozart instead of Strauss October. Dallas Bower is working One of the most remarkable out production details. In the early days of television he was figures in eighteenth- televised from the Crystal Palace to the century France was High Yellow Beaumarchais, who Press Club, and astonished everybody Last week a programme besides being a play• there by telling viewers (not that they called 'Au Clair de la wright was a watch• were called that then) that a- certain Lune ' was announced for maker, musician, poet, celebrity was wearing a buttonhole, and February 5, but Spike diplomat, and financier. what the flower was, and so on and so Hughes has been so busy Today, however, his forth as if he could see his audience. that he has not had suffi• name is best remem• It was exactly like him to ring up Jack cient time to devise it. In bered by his being the Cannell beforehand and get his local colour. preference to a hurried author of the plays. In the first television supplement of production of this pro• The Barber of Seville gramme, another Spike and The Marriage of the RADIO TIMES Cecil Lewis described Hughes show will be Figaro, of which the latter, how this resourceful little comedian made given, High Yellow, a after being banned for his first television appearance at Alexandra ballet which was sug• many years in France, was Palace and took part with Gerald Cock in gested by Constant produced in Paris in 1784 the first television outside broadcast.

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