Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

enthralling. For all that he brought great truth to his roles, modern actors would find his work method remarkably technical. His scripts were covered with hieroglyphics — meaningful only to him — that guided his vocal inflection through his performance. Spontaneity was not a key ingredient of radio drama in that period. Television was not kind to John Drainie; his career declined and he died at the young age of fifty. Others also saw their careers abate, for instance, Ruth Springford, John Bethune, and the king of accents, Jack Mather.
    For others, dare I say it, television was a bonanza. Many years later when working in Scotland, I was invited to dinner at my girlfriend’s house and we were to watch this wonderful new television show. When that urban sophisticate, that voice of the news that got us through the war, rode up on a horse, I just about fell out of my chair. Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright was a sight to behold.
    As a child actor with big ears and little understanding, I would overhear conversations about the coming of television. I don’t recall a single actor saying, ‘I can’t wait, it will be wonderful.’ The tone was always anxiety, or at best cautious apprehension. As for this particular actor, it would be more than fifteen years before I made my first appearance on television.
    I’m not sure how it came about, but in 1950 I found myself, aged twelve, at my first audition, a reading in the office of one of the leading radio drama producers of the time, Esse Ljungh, an intimidating Scandinavian, who was now supervising producer of drama for the CBC in Toronto. He was casting a mental health drama called Life with the Robinsons . What is a mental health drama, you ask. The Robinsons were a fairly typical Canadian family with two children. Each week in this half hour commercial-free program some family problem would be dramatised. At the conclusion of the program, a noted psychologist would analyze the issues and suggest approaches the family could take to the problem. The shows were written and narrated by playwright and screenwriter Ted Allan, who would work with me many years later at Festival Lennoxville.
    At this audition I was asked to read from a script I had not seen, a normal practice for auditions at this time. Mr. Ljungh told me the other young boy role in the series was going to be played by Warren Wilson, now well known for his contributions to the music department at the CBC, but then a young actor who was, Esse proudly announced, a member of the union. I did not let on I had no idea what union he was speaking of. However, he asked me to read and since I read rather well he was somewhat pleased. I suspect in those days I also read as though I were reading and not as though I were speaking. His instruction to me was to put the script down and simply say the lines without looking at the text. After I did that he seemed satisfied and I got the role.
    The role in question was Mickey Robinson, the older of the Robinson’s two children. My younger sister on the show was played by the older Maxine Miller who worked with me many years later when we were both playing septuagenarians on a television series called Robson Arms . We had a big argument at the time as she insisted that she had played the older sibling in the radio play. What can I say? She was wrong. I do remember though that she and the other adult members of the cast were very helpful to me, showing me around, helping me with annotating my script, and, most important to a young boy, showing me where the cafeteria was.
    It’s important to understand that all radio drama at the time was live. As I recall, the cast would meet the producer in the studio at 2:30 in the afternoon and we would go live to air at 8 the same evening. The first order of business would be a reading of the script, to get a feel for the piece and so the script assistant could get a timing, time being a critical factor when broadcasting live. Although to me, it