Starter of this subject: Walt Pattinson
Last post in this subject: 5/3/2000
Messages in this subject: 1
| Walt Pattinson | 5/3/2000 1 replies |
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In the early thirties, George Edwards starred in at least 3 serials, 15 minutes each, as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (36 episodes), Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde (52 episodes), and Frankenstein (13 episodes). These are all excellent productions, but... Who was George Edwards? Was he a theatrical star? What else has he done? I have been unable to find any information on him at all.
Also, do the following episodes of Hunchback exist out there? According to Jay's compendium, they do (complete run is available) but I haven't found them yet: 5-8, 29-33. Also, my copy shows 39, not 36 episodes. Any idea which is correct? Thanks, Walt |
| Mike Ogden | 5/8/2000 0 replies |
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George Edwards and his wife Nell Stirling were the first superstars (and the first millionaires!) of Australian radio. In their heyday in the mid-Thirties they were on the air from dawn to dusk and beyond, doing a breakfast club-type show in the morning, a children's adventure serial in the late afternoon, a literature-based serial in the early evening, and some other type of dramatic anthology series later on into the night. Plus on Sunday evening the GEORGE EDWARDS SUNDAY PLAY. And, starting about '37 or '38, the long-running rural-humour serial, DAD AND DAVE (the first episode of which can be found at Clark Sinclair's website on "The Golden Days of Australian Radio."}
Nell appears to have been the business brains of the team, and, after a couple of years doing a gruelling schedule of live broadcasting all day long, she negotiated with another Sydney station to take on all their productions as transcriptions. Thus the George Edwards Company was able to expand out to many markets, including the BBC's chief rival in those days, Radio Luxembourg. One of the reasons that George became so popular with listeners was his great and almost uncanny skill to do several characters at once within the same sketch (which, before radio, he had mainly done just as a "parlor trick" for friends). It became a national past-time to tune in and try to guess which and how many of the voices in the night's episode or drama belonged to George Edwards. Later, in the 1940s, he cut back on his multi-parting and generally played just one role per sketch, but since the cast was never announced at show's end, most listeners continued to believe that most of the parts per show were still being played by the star. Mike Ogden |