WELL-KNOWN music-hall figures will get equal prominence with youngsters who have only just burst into the world of entertainment in ABC’s new fortnightly variety series, which starts next Saturday.

Say ABC: “We are out to provide variety — in the true sense of the word. And that means bringing along artists capable of satisfying the demands of all age groups.”

“The ‘pop’ music fans will be well looked after; but at the same time we shall balance the bill by introducing some of the older stars about whom there is a nostalgic appeal for many of our viewers.”

There will be a good example of this determination to cater for varying tastes in the second programmes of the series, on October 5.

George Formby, who has been drawing in record seaside crowds during his summer tour of the coast, will be making one of his rare TV appearances.

And in direct contrast will be the Charles McDevitt skiffle group, which in the last few months has had a swift rise to top billing in a successful provincial tour.

An interesting point about this show is that the McDevitt group will use it as an opportunity to introduce their new singer, recruited to replace Nancy Whisky, who is now a star in her own right.

To meet the demands of teenage viewers ABC is arranging to include skiffle groups or “pop” singers in every programme in the new series. Among skifflers booked are Lonnie Donegan, Johnny Duncan and Terry Dene.

Shirley Abicair and her zither will be in the first programme, and other singers lined up include Edna Savage, Eve Boswell, Michael Holliday, Jimmy Young and Garry Miller.

On the laughter side there are some popular comedians to follow Albert Modley (who is in the first show) and George Formby. Ted Lune, the lanky lad with the thin face and wide, staring eyes is one. Then there is pudgy Reg Dixon and that ever-young veteran of show business, Jimmy Clitheroe.

This is the first time ABC has originated its own professional variety show, although the company has presented many semi-professional acts in its long-running Bid for Fame.

To launch the series, ABC have signed up Arthur Lane, an experienced light entertainment producer.

The shows will come from the Manchester studios, where they will be able to take advantage of such aids to unorthodox presentation as a revolving stage with a 30ft diameter, and a giant bow fronted lift, 46ft long and 12ft wide, which can sink 4ft 6in below the studio floor.

Another unorthodox feature will be the way in which artists will be introduced. None of the shows will have the usual type of compere.

Instead, a novel substitute has been devised about which Arthur Lane and his team are keeping a discreet silence.

All I can say is that a group of dancers — four men, but only one girl — are this week rehearsing some unusual routines by which they hope to weave a thread of continuity between the acts.

Or, as ABC put it: “As far as presentation is concerned we are trying out a new and completely individual style.”

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IN this turbulent world it is not unusual for people to be puzzled, perplexed and bewildered by many of the things that go on around them.

Information and explanation are not always easy to come by. In local and national affairs there is a growing tendency to conduct matters of public importance behind closed doors.

How often do we read of hush-hush meetings, of confidential memoranda, of documents stamped TOP SECRET, STRICTLY PRIVATE, NOT FOR PUBLICATON? It is because it believes that the public is being needlessly kept in ignorance about many things in which they may be vitally concerned that ABC has decided to sink a lot of money into a fortnightly 45-minute programme that has one aim: to take viewers behind the scenes and find out exactly what is going on.

ABC Investigates is something new to television. Nothing like so complicated a technical set-up has been devised before. Each of these programmes will require the services of something like 150 people, for each in effect, is four different productions rolled into one.

The resources of three different studios — in Manchester, Birmingham and London — will combine with a complete outside broadcast unit, which might be located anywhere in Britain.

But ABC is confident it will be money well spent. As a new development in the use of television as a means of information, the opportunity to pioneer in this field has been enthusiastically welcomed.

A particularly strong team has been set up. Simon Kester, who made his name with brilliant cross-examinations in State Your Case, gets the star job of investigator-in-chief. As programme editor, ABC has brought in George Scott, Editor of Truth. From the world of films has come ace documentary director John Rowdon, who undertakes his first ITV job as producer of the programme. Under him are four directors.

There is also a team of journalists whose job it is to comb the country and ferret out the facts that will form the basis of these programmes.

Recently, I spent a day with them, and later I went out with Simon Kester and his OB team when ABC Investigates went on the air for the first time.

Although this was a full-scale effort, however, it was not seen by home viewers. The pictures and arguments were purely an experiment to see how the programme could be presented and to test the complicated technical details.

I think viewers will like Simon Kester in his new role. As the programme got under way, I found him still as sharp and pungent, if not quite as aggressive, as we knew him in State Your Case.

His task is a formidable one. As an interrogator, he has to bring out, in the most forceful way, the opinions of people he introduces to the experts. Then he tackles the panel on behalf of the people he has been interviewing, and conducts a free-for-all in an effort to thrash out the problem down to the smallest detail.

It is in this part of the programme, when Kester has the opportunity of standing up to the experts himself, that he returns to the punchy, incisive questioning that in State Your Case earned him the tag of “most hated man on TV.”

I talked to the programme’s “Big Three” in the Manchester studios afterwards. Said John Rowdon: “I like to think of the programme as a round Britain electronic conference in which we can attack those aspects of English life which, in our opinion, are not wholly democratic. We shall be out to expose things which some people would much rather keep quiet.”

Added George Scott: “Editing the programme as it goes along is a fascinating opportunity for any journalist. But then, this programme will itself be like a newspaper. We shall be following the news, and the way we treat our subjects depends on the latest news.

“The subjects themselves? Things like inflation, or the common market. Do they sound dull? No subject need be dull if you treat it the right way, if you feel the air of excitement in what you are doing.

I reminded him what John Rowdon had said about exposing matters which people in authority would rather keep quiet. How would he get such people to appear in the programme if they knew they were going to be attacked?

“We shall give them an opportunity to say their piece, and, if they refuse, we shall say it for them,” said Scott. “In that case, I think they will prefer to come along and say it for themselves.”

Simon Kester left me in no doubt about his feelings on his new job. “I think it has immense possibilities,” he said, “because of the way it brings members of the public face-to-face with so-called experts and authorities.

“Why ‘so-called’ experts,” I asked.

Replied Kester: “Often a man sets himself up to be an expert, but when he’s subject to cross-examination you find he’s not so much of an expert after all.

“This is where I come in. My purpose is to interpret the questions in the minds of the public and put them to these ‘experts’ in a challenging way. They will go through a tough cross-examination.

“I feel that I shall be doing a service for the public. This is the sort of job that would give any serious-minded citizen a great thrill. In probing public affairs, I shall not be as a compere who has learnt his script but as an ordinary, inquisitive human being.”

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To do it ABC will use all the many resources of this young but go-ahead company, as well as those of the powerful organisations with which it is associated.

The four-man committee responsible for this ambitious training scheme consists of ABC managing director Howard Thomas, his second-in-command Ron Rowson, senior producer S. E. Reynolds and drama supervisor Dennis Vance.

So far they have three pupils. Top of the form is a girl who has made a big name for herself since she joined ABC — Joan Edwards.

She first said “Hello” to viewers in Number Please, then created for herself a growing audience in that breakfast-time programme, Housewives Call the Tune, in which she performed such homely chores as washing dishes and darning socks between playing gramophone requests.

Next she proved how well she could sing and dance in the Joe Loss Show, and this summer she is showing another aspect of her versatility by her breezy interviews in Holiday Town.

Pupil Number Two is Bob Hatch, who got his big break in show business after thousands of viewers throughout the North and Midlands had voted him winner of the long-running Bid For Fame contest.

But even if he had not pulled off the top prize, Bob would still have been invited to join ABC’s exclusive training school.

His earlier appearances in Bid For Fame were seen by company executives who earmarked him as a boy who, given a helping hand, would go places.

Both Joan Edwards and Bob Hatch have already proved that the confidence ABC are placing in them is justified. Producer Reynolds — he has been in TV since its opening day in 1936 — told me:

“To get two artists like Joan Edwards and Bob Hatch in one year is out of all proportion.

“I have been watching Joan develop since she came into this company, and there is no greater joy for me than seeing her holding her own with more experienced artists.”

Baby of the class is 20-year-old Julie Stevens. She is another pupil who caught the eye of Howard Thomas while appearing in Bid For Fame.

“I decided to give her an audition,” he told me. “Dennis Vance and I tried everything on her. It was formidable, but she came out smiling.”

Explained Julie: “I was interviewed in front of the camera. Then they gave me a piece to announce without letting me see it first. And afterwards I was told to pretend I was telling my boss I was giving up my job — and make it sound funny.”

“The result,” said Howard Thomas, “was that we gave this unknown girl a contract. Now, to get her used to cameras, we are putting her in everywhere. She doesn’t always get a credit, but she comes bobbing up in one programme after another.”

Julie’s future is still undecided. “So far, we don’t know what she is going to do,” Mr. Thomas said, “but we believe she has the sparkle of a true TV personality. How do we make her into a personality? Well, first she has to be trained the hard way.”

To learn all she can about TV production and technique, Julie has been helping in many different programmes. She has been behind the scenes in Holiday Town, making brief appearances in crowd scenes or demonstrating in advertising magazines. One day I saw her with make-up only on her hands and arms. “That,” she said, “is all viewers will see of me today.” She was off to hold a booklet in front of a camera.

Said Reynolds: “From now on, we shall be studying Julie, Joan and Bob to see which way they ought to go, as it might take two or three years to get them on the right lines and doing the job for which they are best suited.”

The ABC training school is going to be no immediate stepping stone to fame and fortune. “As far as we are concerned,” said Reynolds, “there is going to be no star overnight business.”

But while ABC is determined to give Joan Edwards, Julie Stevens and Bob Hatch the best opportunities ever offered up-and-coming artists, they, on their part, know they will have to put in plenty of hard work to make this unique training scheme a success.

The post School for stars appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Foo Foo, the central character in this new weekly cartoon series for ABC, is the creation of Hungarian-born John Halas who, at 48, is one of Britain’s most prolific cartoon animators.

“The idea of the series arose because I had always wished to create a typically English character like Foo Foo,” he says. “And also because I felt that the best medium would be television rather than the cinema.

“So the idea was put up to Howard Thomas, Managing Director of ABC TV, and, after a lot of investigation and soul-searching into the nature and type of the character we should use, we decided to go ahead.”

Foo Foo, however, was not an overnight creation. First, Halas and his team devoted themselves to devising a new method of cartooning that would suit the requirements of television.

The technique they have created, after much trial and error, is much simpler than that used in the cinema yet retains all the qualities of full animation. One big difference is that it requires only eight stages of production instead of the 20 or 22 needed in the production of cinema cartoons.

“It is also a far more personal way of making cartoons,” says Halas. ‘The animator is doing practically the whole job himself instead of dividing the work between different departments.”

When the first of the new cartoons was completed, it was shown to Howard Thomas and other ABC TV executives. Their reaction was so favourable that a further six were made. One of them “The Cultured Ape,” won first prize at last year’s Venice Film Festival.

I asked Halas how he would describe Foo Foo.

“As a little man with a Chapiinesque exterior and a slightly Chaplinesque interior,” he said. “But as this is 1960 and not 1915 — when a little man could really protest against social injustice — our character is a little more benevolent and tolerant than Chaplin’s and not such a critic of society. You might say that we have retained a little of the Chaplin touch but given him a great deal more playfulness.”

The counterpart to Foo Foo is the villainous Gogo. And then there is the feminine interest, a middle-aged lady called Mimi. Halas explains: “She is a motherly feminine rather than a glamorous feminine. We hope she will be nearer to the British conception of a female—warm and more appealing to the family.” Halas calls the new Saturday afternoon programmes the largest series of British cartoons ever made for a British audience. And he adds: “We have tried to invent what I can call restrained British humour instead of the American type of humour usual in cartoons.”

A collection of Halas and Batchelor cartoons is available on Blu-ray from Network Distribution, via Amazon and other retailers.

The post Cartoon with the Chaplin touch appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Television came into the life of Eileen Killeen the day an ABC outside broadcast unit pulled up at the Liverpool toy factory where she works.

Picked from the thousands of girls employed at the factory, 18-year-old Eileen and five of her workmates appeared before the outside broadcast cameras in the Sing Along With Joe[1] pretty girl contest. She won her heat, passed through the section finals and semi-finals, and at the end of last season was awarded the coveted title of Miss Industry 1961.

But success didn’t go to her head. Of her £250[2] prize money, Eileen gave a donation to her church, bought refrigerators for her mother and sister, and put the rest in the bank.

She also turned down the chance of starting a new career as a model and decided to stay in Liverpool[3] doing the job she knew best.

Today, however, Eileen is being constantly reminded of the time the blue-and-grey outside broad cast vans arrived at her factory. For every day thousands of them are passing through her hands – scaled-down versions of the real thing.

Eileen is a toy inspector. She has been since she left school at the age of 15. She is the last girl at the end of a 100 ft.-long conveyor belt down which the models travel while the finishing touches are being put to them.

Her job is to make a final inspection and give them a “test run” before they are packed and sent to toyshops all over the world.

The first of two model ABC vans – a micro-wave links vehicle topped by a moveable disc-shaped aerial which beams the programme from the outside broadcast site to the studios[4] – is already being mass-produced.

The second is a model of the heart of a £36,000[5] outside broadcast unit – the mobile control room. This goes into production in the next few weeks, and with it will be a tiny TV camera and cameraman.

Putting a new model on the market is a long and involved task. Work on this outside broadcast unit started nine months ago, when photographer Warwick Bedford – who also took the pictures on this page – was asked to take colour transparencies of the vehicles in action. From these photographs. draughts men made detailed drawings and wooden models were prepared for engineers to make the die-casting tools which are now turning out zinc alloy castings at the rate of 2,000 a day.

From this stage the models have to go through more than 20 different operations and pass through hundreds of hands before they reach Eileen Killeen for final approval.

They are splashed with acid, plunged into hot and cold baths, go through nine sprayings and get plastered with tiny transfers in ABC colours[6] – all this before they are ready to start down the final conveyor belt.

Apart from Eileen, 56 other girls are employed on this last lap. It is one of the many production lines snaking through this six-acre factory.

Model vehicle bodies are being constantly fed in at the receiving end of the 2ft.-wide belt. And every few feet of the slow, 100-yd. journey they are being dexterously whipped off and replaced as one part after another is quickly fitted and revetted into position.

Said Eileen: “I cannot help thinking of the opportunities that were open to me after I won the title.

“But I have no regrets about staying in the factory.”

1. A now-lost ABC Weekend TV talent show presented by Glaswegian pianist Joe “Mr Piano” Henderson (2 May 1920–4 May 1980). ↩
2. In cash, and allowing for inflation, this is £5,150 in today’s money. The average salary for a monthly paid professional employee was £800 a year (£16,500 in today’s money) – Eileen would have been weekly paid and earned far less – and the average price of a new-build house was £2,500 (£50,000). ↩
3. Meccano Limited, Binns Road, Liverpool. The factory manufactured Meccano, Dinky Toy vehicles, Hornby Dublo trains, Bayko building blocks, Kemex chemistry sets and Elektron electrical sets. It was bought by Tri-ang in 1964, but collapsed in 1971 and was sold to Airfix. Airfix closed the factory in 1979 and themselves collapsed in 1981. The remains of the companies are now owned by Japanese toymaker Nikko. ↩
4. If you have one in your attic, it is now worth £139. ↩
5. £750,000 in today’s money. ↩
6. See right. ↩

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