[Starring] Henry Oscar as Mark Antony
"I am no orator, as Brutus is", says Mark Antony, after a flow of rhetoric and irony that is as fine as Shakespeare put into the mouth of any of his characters. This afternoon viewers will see Henry Oscar playing the role of Mark Antony in the most dramatic part of the play, the funeral oration scene, in which the crowd is subtly turned against Caesar's assassins.
Another of John Hilton's interviews, which will be illustrated as usual with photographs and diagrams.
Devised by Harold Stuteley and Guy Daines, and produced by Dallas Bower
with Carmen del Rio, Ernest and Lotte Berk, Wally Patch
The opening night of the Cosmopolitan, that rendezvous of the gourmet and the music-lover, would be a gay occasion even without the artists viewers will see today.
Carmen del Rio is well known to radio listeners for her songs - she can sing in half-a-dozen languages like a native. She made her debut on the air for the BBC in 1935, and since then she has broadcast frequently with the BBC Military Band, the London Zigeuner Orchestra, and Walford Hyden's Magyars. Born in Buenos Aires, her mother was a South American whose family had lived in the Argentine for three generations.
Ernest and Lotte Berk are famous on the Continent for their dancing. In Salzburg they produced dance ensembles for Max Reinhardt, and opera-goers will remember their appearance last year at Covent Garden.
Wally Patch was in an athletic act on the music-halls before the War. He has been a bookmaker and boxing promoter. The fact that he is really proud of is that he has played in more talking pictures than any other English actor. Outstanding pictures in which he has acted include "Balaclava", "Don Quixote", "Trouble", and "The Man Who Could Work Miracles".
This feature has been devised by two members of the BBC Television Orchestra, Guy Daines, who is a violinist, and Harold Stuteley, the pianist.
[Starring] Margaretta Scott and Henry Oscar as Beatrice and Benedick
In the opening scene of "Much Ado About Nothing" Benedick says with feeling to Beatrice, "I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer", and until the end of the play, even when the lovers are united, the dialogue between them is full of wit and banter, a strange contrast to the sentimental passages between Romeo and Juliet.
It will be interesting to radio listeners to compare Margaretta Scott's Beatrice and Henry Oscar's Benedick with the interpretations of Fay Compton and Godfrey Tearle in the sound broadcast on January 3.
Another of John Hilton's interviews, which will be illustrated as usual with photographs and diagrams.
Devised by Harold Stuteley and Guy Daines, and produced by Dallas Bower
with Carmen del Rio, Ernest and Lotte Berk, Wally Patch
