Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1950-07-20, Page 3......-. .... . -m,, ..... .... _. ,,,.._..... a .... ,.,.... .. Harry Lauder's Gane But His .Songs Live On Rusty Is Back Even during his lifetime a nuns- Karen Is Happy; bet• of estimates were made of the Parents: Relieved fortune which Sir Harry Lauder was likely to leave, Though talking slims did not arrive until lie was too old to inaster the new technique, he amassed the bulb of his fortune In the days when bleonte , tax was negligible, when graitlophone re- cords and sheet music sold in millions, and when a top -liner like himself was easily able to command five hundred pounds a ween: oil the halls. Moreover, Harry never splashed his money about, But let's begin at the beginning, Harry was born of poor parents in Portobello, outside Edinburgh, and at the age of eleven was sent to the flax mills, where he worked for two shilling's a week, and was thrashed by his father for only handing over one-and-ninepence when he came home with his first week's wages. The missing threepence was ac - Rusty, a collie belonging to the Ed Voegeles was lost for 12 days and during that time, one -year-old Karen Voegele Dined for her doggie; scarcely ate and actually became ser'- iously ill, finally, after news- paper want -ads .like the one at right, and an unending search that tool: the Voegeles 1200 miles at a cost of $1250, Rusty was loated in a suburb of Kan- sas City, NVIien the collie was brougl.it hoarse, thin and weary, Karen screamed happily, hug- ged the clog and romped with frim for an. hour. Then she ate her first good meal in 12 days and went to sleep soundly. Daren and Rusty are enjoying each other's conananv below. counted for as follows: a penny bal- loon, a penny luck bag (contain- ing a wonderful assortment of mechanical toys,, sweets, and paper devices) and a pennyworth (mixed) of strippit balls and curly snurlies.. A "Gentleman Amateur". His first public appearance was in the Oddfellows Hall at Arbroath at the age of thirteen. The occasion was a singing contest for young amateurs organised by a travelling concert party. The chorus of the song was: "Though poverty daily looks in at my door, Though I'm hungry and footsore and ill, I can look the whole world in the face and can say Though poor I'm a gentleman still." Harry won the first prize, a watch, which he kept all his life. A second competition for "gentle- -inen amateurs" was held soon af- terwards. Once again Harry won it —with the same song. But this time he exchanged his prize, a six - bladed knife, for thick, black plug tobacco. A year later Harry and his family moved to Hamilton, where an uncle had said that work was plentiful for boys of all ages and the money was better than in the flax: mills• all over the country at salaries Sofor the next eight years Harry which looked fine at the time but worked in the mines as pit -boy, + t were all out of proportion in the trapper, pony driver, and collier, On one occasion he was saved from next few years; for the contracts j certain death by his pit pony, which were long-term affairs. ax suddenly refused to pass an old Quietly he waited hi oppor- working road which had fallen. A tunity. As the contracts ran out so moment later there was a heavy -' his price went up, and the people roof fall. who had made so much out of him A long time passed before Harry in the past had to pay through the t , . sang, at an amateur show in nose. One good song followed an - Glasgow, his first comic song. other. "We parted on the Shore," It was called "Tooraliaddie." But he "I love a Lassie," "Roamin' in the returned to the coal -mines on the Gloamin'," "The Saftest o' the following Monday. Family," "A Wee Deoch and Months went by before he was Doris," "It's Nice to Get up in the offered his first professional engage- Morning," and "Stop Yer Tickling ment as a comic in a small touring Jock." concert party. Wages were thirty- His Own Melodies ? five shillings a week, and his duties According to Harry, the original included thdse of baggage man, bill melodies all came out of his own 5:•' distributer, and ticket collector. The head, and so. did the idea for some trip lasted fourteen weeks, and in of the words. "hoamin' in the spite of tine fact that he was accom- Gloamin'," for example was the re - 3' panied by his wife and child Ise suit of a moonlight walk with Itis q save twelve pounds. Then back wife from Dunoon to Innelan, Ger- lie went to the coal -mines. ald Grafton and he wrote "I Love Various minor temporary en- a Lassie." In "Tobermory," Tom. gagements came his way until lie Glenn of Dundee collaborated with was booked at the Argyll at Birk- him. "The Saftest o' the Family" ennead, that famous music -hall was the result of a combination of which gave Charlie Chaplin, George words and music drafted out and ar- Formby, sen., and Flanagan and ranged by Harry and J. D. Harper Allen their first chance. Here lie of Glasgow. introduced "Tobermory" and "The As his success continued thou - Lass of Killiecrankie," had an int- sands of songs were sent to him by mediate success, and promptly went lyric writers and composers all over to London, Yet, lie could get no the world. But few, if any, suited his bookings until an engagement at very personal style, k Gatti's Hall in Westminster Bridge Really big money first carne his x Road came his way at the last min- way when he visited the United ute, Somebody had fallen sick. States and the British Empire, In ;It was Harry's chance, and it the United States, which he visited ,+ year after year, he became the per- 1overnight,Iii ex - mac a hien its citement he signed a series of cote- aortal friend of a series of U,S. tractsith agents and music lsalls Presidents, beginning with Theo- dore Roosevelt, and this stocky, 1JLHAROLD s ARNETT 1,H . r�. , = A ro ^ r... r AM,.�,, MIXES +CUT laOVVN REVOt-VING- VANtES 05 OLD EGG 5E NMR TO MAKE ENAM5 L, MIXER,, KEEP CENTER ROD 1_arlGEATOlIfEEP 040S O#FBOTTOM WMNo pawky, puckish litle Scot did more for Scotland, and, incidentally, for the popularity of the kilt, than any- body in history. His refusal ever to sing a doubtful song and his life- long rule of sticking to simple, homely melodies, all of them easy to whistle, made him unique. His friendly cheerfulness as soon as he strutted on the stage.streamed across the footlights in warns waves. You could not possibly help liking him and the inimitable rolls of his "R's" endeared him to audiences all over the world. One of his maxims was: "If ye ever go to entertain anyone, give your best, whether it is' an audience of thirty or thirty thousand." And lie did. Even on that very pathetic occasion in 1916 when he heard that his only son John had been killed in France just before lie went on the stage, he began well enough. Then came the verse: "When we all gather round the old fireside And the fond mother kisses her son, All the lassies will be loving all the laddies— - The laddies who fought and won," He broke down, and was never quite the same man again. The death of his wife in 1927 was another severe blow, but when World War II broke out he went straight off his sick bed to cheer up the survivors of the torpedoed Athenia, and almost throughout the war sang four or five times a week to all the troops within reasonable range of his lonely Scottish home, Lauder Ha', at Strathavon, Twice Winston Churchill quoted from his songs, one being "The Laddies who Fought and Won," and the other "Keep Right on to the End of the Road," The last time the great public !_card him it v Year's s Eve, as on Ac t �. 1948, when the B.B.C. did a record- ing of many of his favourites, lasting nearly an hour. It has been well said of Sir Harry Lauder (he was knighted its 1919) that his characters, like Private John M'1?eed or Doug•hie Balser, were not just stage Scotsmen to be dismissed contetn- tuously. His characters were drawn from the life of the lowland towns and mining villages, and his words, his actions and his thoughts were miraculously near to real life. Do you remember: ".The , wife went tip tae her bed. Bu' Ah got even. Ali cam' haute and Ali spat till Ali pit the fire oot"? Harry Lauder interpreted the Scot to Scotsmen as the stern con- ditions of l9th century industrial- ism made him—child of the pits and the mills and the tenement stairs, with a slaglieap for his playground and the fear of poverty making every joke a kind of snook cocked at the dark forces. Only Danny Kaye in more mod- ern times has approached Harry Lauder in his gift of turning a stage entertainment into a kind of family charade. But whether Danny Kaye is well advised—brilliant mimic and comic though he is—to attempt to portray Harry Lauder on the screen is a matter of grave conjecture. For one thing, Dainty Kaye is at least a foot taller than the "wee Scotch comic frae Hamilton," as lie was billed in his early days. VERY HEALTHFUL "Ls this a healthful town?" in- quired the home -seeker of a native. "Yes, certainly," was the answer. "When I came here I hadn't the strength to utter a word; I had scarcely a hair on my head; I couldn't walk across the room, and I had to be lifted from my bed," "You give ine hope!" cried the homeseeker,with enthusiasm. "How long has you lived here:" "I was born here," replied the native. Wrote ,about Deserted Maidens .--.-.JLeft One In The Lurch Himself Greatest of England's Lake Poets, William Wordsworth, died a hun- dred years ago last month, at Grasmere. "The Lake School" --as the colony of writers which grew. up around !tint became known—was a name given contemptuously at first because its three best-known members, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, chose to spend nearly all their lives among its inspiring scenery, Scorning the pseudo - romantic subjects then fa+ehionable assas- ins lurking in .vaulted doorways, or thwarted lovers who preferred death to separation—Wordsworth vowed to make everyday happen- ings exching. He saw more poetic beauty in a dewdrop, a butterfly, or the quaint village characters he met, than in flamboyant legendary heroes. Gibes of the Critics At first Wordsworth's extreme simplicity of language and theme raised a storm of derisive laughter. Who on earth, asked his critics, wanted to hear about Johnny Foy, the idiot boy? Son of a prosperous solicitor, steward to Lord Donsdale, Words- worth was born at Cockermouth, a Cumberland market town, in 1770, Both his parents died while he was a schoolboy, leaving their children to the care of an uncle. At seven- teen, Williain was sent tp Cam- bridge. A1tTiough the French Revolution was raging, he managed to get .to France and Switzerland in 1790, and stayed a year in Orleans. Long walks among the Swiss Alps, and wanderings with his sister, Dorothy, in the Wye Valley, produced a con- stant flow of beautiful verse. Wordsworth knew by now that he must become a serious poet. But even poets have to eat, Just then a consumptive friend and fervent admirer, Raisley Cal- vert, died and left him 8900. It was like a dream come true. Doro- thy Wordsworth had always want- ed to live with her adored brother. Now they could set up house together. More good fortune arrived when a Bristol merchant named Pinney agreed to let them live at his coun- try house, Racedown Lodge, in re- turn for 'Wordsworth acting as holi- day tutor to his son. Two wonderful years followed. It was at Racedown that they first met the poet Coleridge and were instantly drawn together. After a tour in Germany, William settled with Dorothy in pictures- que Dove Cottage, at Grasmere. His marriage to quiet Mary Hut- chinson was made possible by a further windfall. The payment of E8,500 by Lord Lonsdale, in settlement of a debt owed to his dead father, relieved William of financial worries. The marriage was strangely un- romantic. The Wordsworths had known Mary since childhood. She was rather plaits, and talked so little that somebody once remarked John Doe's" Gall Bladder Is Big Hit On Television By Richard Kleiner New York—John Doe's gall bladder, complete with four stones, is famous. To test a system of tele- vising operations, two cameras took in every detail of the removal of a diseased bladder from an unnamed patient. John Doe, under an anaethetic, slept peacefully through the whole thing, as two surgeons neatly re- moved the organ at Bellevue Hos- pital. About 20 blocks away, in the United Nations building, a gather- ing of medical and radio experts watched the demonstration. For two hours and 15 minutes, a sober -voiced commentator deliv- ered a slice -by -slice account of •1 in on T witnesses what was going he who knew what they were watching said ' that everything carie over clearly. Technically, the denionstra- tion was a success. Don't look up your video pro - grain, expecting to choose between an appendectomy on channel three and a tonsillectomy on channel six. Not even as summer replacements will operations be televised to the general public. They're purely educational in nature. They're designed to give medical students and interested surgeons an incision -side seat at the cperating table. The same equipment used to snoop oil John Doe's gall bladder will be loaded into airplanes in a few weeks, on the first leg of a South American tour. About five tons -480,000 worth—of sound and picture gadgets, accompanied by nine experts, will visit Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico. They'll televise operations in the five Latin and South American na- tions, with 20 TV receivers all tuned in. The receivers will be set up in hotels where medical conven- tions are going on. One, directly above the patient, is constantly fo- cussed on the incision. Viewers can watch the surgeon's hands at work, that all she could say was "God bless you." But perhaps this waa due to the volubility of her hus- hand and sister-in-law. To Dove Cottage also came other famous writers—Charles Lamb, Robert Southey and De Quincey, It was an idyllic life. Coleridge lived nearby. In 1813 the Wordsworths moved to Rydal Mount, at Grasmere. About this time the office of Dis- tributor of Stamps for the county of Westmorland fell vacant. The salary was 9500 a year with no heavy duties ataclted, and Words- worth was overjoyed when Lord. Lonsdale got flim appointed, for he now had three children and his poems still brought in little money, Secret Love Affair Soon the powerful pens of Car- lyle, Swinburne and Mathew Arn- old busied themselves in his favour, and the tide turned with the publi- cation of his long, tragic ballad, "The White Doe of Rylstone." On. Southey's death, in 1843, Words- worth became Poet Laureate, And when he died seven years later, aged eighty, lie was uncrowned king of the Lake . Country. But a strange sequel was to tonne. More than half a century later it was discovered that the only really romantic chapter in Words - worth's life had been carefully concealed by his family, As the result of a passionate love -affair with a girl named Ams- ette Vallon, an illegitimate daugh- ter had been born to the poet in France during the year he spent at Orleans after leaving Cam- bridge. Previous to William's mar- riage, this child, Caroline, had ac- companied her mother to Calais, where they spent a month with William and Dorothy before part- ing for ever. Letters Discovered In the British Museum he found letters from Dorothy Wordsw•ortit which mentioned a Frenchwoman named Vallon and a daughter, Caro- line, whom Dorothy called Iter "niece." During the 1914 war, Harper, stationed in Paris, spent all his spare time making inquiries. Eventually he discovered the birth and marriage certificates of "Caro. - line Wordsworth," in which her father's name was given. Harper got into touch with des- cendants of the Vallons, and the whole story came out. It was at Orleans that Words- worth, then twenty-one, had fret Annette. Attraction had ripened into love over French lessons she gave hint. Why did they not marry —for that he loved her passionately there seems no doubt? Poverty is the probable explanation. Whatever the truth, he left France before Annette's baby was born, his only confidante being the faithful Dorothy. But the fact remains that deserted maidens, with babies born. out of wedlock, provide the theme for many of his poems. the forceps holding back the skin Occasionally, the second camera goes into action. It is set on a movable dolly, and is used to bring its the surgeon's face or the oxygen tanks as they're turned on or nurses taking the patient's blood pressure. The second camera also focussed on the chief surgeon as he held up, one by one, marble -sized gall stones. The surgeon is also equipped with a chest microphone, so he may add comments front time to time. The regular commentator, in a room "off stage," did most of the talking, but every once in a while the surgeon put in a few sentences. "These knots," lie said, as his colleague began tying up John Doe's wound, "are tied with square Inots secured over,,,a double hitch." Medical students in hospital gal- leries could only catch a flash of the actual operation. Mostly, they got a good view of the surgeon's back. But this new television method gives them a cleat tn cture. They can see everything front the initial incision to the final stitches, John Doe, incidentally, was re- ported in "very satisfactory" con- dition after his surgery. He'll be tip and around, the doctor said, in. a few days. Some of the viewers Will take longer to recover. Operation Video :—.11'cdical and radio experts watch a surgical operation being leer 0noud at Bellevue I1`ospital 111d televf'sed to the queen tthey're � aUling at the INlttlil"diliw, 20 blocks; away.