CKRC o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-05-07 published
George SALVERSON,
Playwright: 1916-2005
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's first drama editor wrote
a thousand radio plays, switched effortlessly to television and
wrote a hit musical
By F.F. LANGAN,
Special to The Globe and Mail, Saturday, May
7, 2005, Page S9
Toronto -- He was Canada's king of radio drama in its golden
age. George
SALVERSON wrote about a thousand radio plays in a
career that began in 1945 and lasted until long after the arrival
of television. He was a volume man who never kept count and,
in fact, held few copies of his work. Week after week, Mr.
SALVERSON
generated a one-hour Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio
play with a careful story line and perfect dialogue. The phrase
"writer's block" didn't exist for him; he was a freelancer and
he had to eat.
He did have a routine, though. For many years he worked for Stages,
the main Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio drama of the
week. His work week started on a Tuesday or a Wednesday with
an idea. It could be something in the news, such as prison reform
or mental health. Radio dramas were used to deal with social
issues the same way television documentaries or long news items
are today.
After the idea was nailed down, Mr.
SALVERSON would write one
act a day, with almost all his plays having three acts. That
left him ready for the rehearsal, which took all day Saturday.
During and after the rehearsal, he and the director, either Esse
LJUNGH or Andrew
ALLAN, would work polishing the script.
"The live performance was on Sunday," remembers Alfie
SCOPP who
was one of the actors. "We could come dressed casually for the
rehearsal, but when we went live at 5 o'clock on Sunday we had
to be dressed in a suit and a tie."
Studio G on Jarvis Street in Toronto would be filled with as
many as 20 actors, including such well-known names as John
DRAINIE,
Aileen SEATON and Bud
KNAPP. No matter how long their part, actors
were all paid $45 a performance.
One example of the radio play as social commentary was a series
called Return Journey, which Mr.
SALVERSON wrote in 1951. It
was based on research done at Kingston Penitentiary on how hard
it was for a released prisoner to make it on the outside. The
story tells how a prisoner was afraid of the outside world but
also afraid of failure and a return to behind bars.
He did much of the research for that particular play while on
his honeymoon in Kingston, Ontario His wife
Olive
SCOTT, went
by the stage name of Sandra
SCOTT, and acted in many of his productions.
"George was always amazed that this glamorous actress married
him," remembers his friend Mr.
SCOPP.
The work on his honeymoon showed how an idea could be plucked
from the headlines. In a recent e-mail to his daughter, Julie,
he said the early Canadian Broadcasting Corporation almost invented
documentary drama for radio. "Now it's routine in Law and Order."
Later when Mr.
SALVERSON moved to television, he used the same
techniques for coming up with story ideas. Once he met a man
he knew who had been a successful advertising executive but could
no longer find work because he was over 45. "The trouble is,
I'm over-age and over qualified," the man told Mr.
SALVERSON.
The same line came out of the mouth of Walter, the fictional
version of the ad man in the television play, The Write-Off.
Mr. SALVERSON spoke to people in the business world, talked to
employment agencies and tried to find out just how many Walters
there were in Canada. He figured there to be at least 500,000
under-employed older people.
"The real Walter attended one of the taping sessions and he walked
into the control room as Rudi [director Rudi
DORN] was directing
the firing scene," recalled Mr.
SALVERSON in a 1968 interview.
"When I asked him was this anything like the way it really happened,
he gave me a long look and remarked, 'Have you ever been through
a nightmare twice?' "
George SALVERSON's early life read like an improbable script
for a radio play. His father, the
son of Scandinavian immigrants,
worked for the Canadian National Railway and the family lived,
at one time or another, in Port Arthur, Ontario, Winnipeg, Regina,
Saskatoon, Edmonton, Kamloops, British Columbia, Vancouver and
Victoria. Fortunately, he spent enough time in Port Arthur to
go to high school there. His mother, Laura Goodman
SALVERSON,
wrote and published 10 books. She won the Governor General's
Award twice -- for her novel The Dark Weaver in 1937 and then
for her autobiography Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter
in1939.
Even so, George
SALVERSON never wanted to be a playwright. He
set out to be a newscaster and was headed in the right direction
when he got his first job at
CFAR in Flin Flon, Manitoba He performed
every role at the tiny radio station, including writing and reading
the news. The highlight of his newscasting career occurred on
December 7, 1941, when he told the 7,000 people of Flin Flon
of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and he did it dressed
in a suit.
His second job came along in what was then the biggest city in
Western Canada -- Winnipeg. But at
CKRC, they had other plans.
He could read the occasional newscast if he liked, but it wasn't
news readers they wanted. They had plenty, thanks. What they
needed was a playwright, someone who could knock off a quickie
radio drama and also take a part or two.
His first play was a success, and Mr.
SALVERSON soon found himself
doing the writing, acting, producing and sound effects. He resolved
to perfect his dramas, drifting over to the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation to pick up pointers on how to write believable dialogue
and interesting story ideas.
For a couple of years, Mr.
SALVERSON wrote, produced and directed
plays for Eaton's, when the department store used radio dramas
to sell its wares. Then, in 1948, he was given work by the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation and moved to Toronto. Among his first
shows was Paper Railroad, a play based on his father's work life.
From the time he arrived in Toronto he was never short of works
or awards. He won a first in the Canadian Radio Awards of 1948
and, the following year, received another from Ohio State University.
In 1949, he adapted Dracula for radio, a play that starred Lorne
GREEN,
Alan
KING and Lister
SINCLAIR.
When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation turned to television
in the fall of 1952, Mr.
SALVERSON was soon writing both radio
and television plays and he became the network's first drama
editor. One of his plays, The Discoverers, was performed on the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and
on Kraft Theatre in the
United States. The play was about Banting and Best's discovery
of insulin.
Later on he wrote documentaries as well as dramas for television.
Perhaps his most famous was Air of Death. "That changed the course
of public affairs programming on television," said Jane
CHALMERS,
vice-president of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio. "In
October of 1967, this documentary report, written by George,
and dealing with air pollution in Canada, aired on Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation-television, pre-empting the top-rated The Ed Sullivan
Show."
His script laid the subject bare and resulted in a lawsuit.
"Dad worked for six months helping the lawyers and the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation with the lawsuit. They won their case,"
said Julie
SALVERSON. "He used to joke it was the only time he
had such steady work."
He wrote one production for the stage, the musical The Legend
of the Dumbells, which was produced at the Charlottetown Festival
in 1977. It was about a Canadian troupe of First World War entertainers
and used songs from the era. It travelled to the National Arts
Centre in Ottawa and the Elgin Theatre in Toronto and continues
to be staged.
When Studio G closed in July 1993, before the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation moved to its new Toronto headquarters, he wrote a
10-minute sketch for radio. It was called End Credits.
For many years, Mr.
SALVERSON taught writing at Ryerson University
in Toronto and, in the process, found that some people were unteachable.
He told his daughter Julie, in one of their many e-mails, the
story of a 50-year-old novelist who wanted to turn one of his
books into a screenplay. He just couldn't do it.
"When I dramatized, I always went into the scene myself. I was
sitting there doing the acting. And away went the characters,
whooping it up. My writer friend remained a writer. He stood
outside the scene and tried to tell you what was going on. And
nobody felt anything."
As he grew older, George
SALVERSON kept his mind in shape with
mental exercises. One of them was memorizing The Rubaiyat of
Omar Khayyam. He could recite any verse on command, and was working
on memorizing it backwards. He also wrote a lot of limericks.
On the Saturday before he died, he had a new one for Alfie
SCOPP.
It went like this:
A well-endowed woman from Brussels
Had a veritable plethora of muscles,
She said with some pride,
There are others I hide,
And bring them out only in tussles.
He also wrote a book called Around the World in 80 Limericks,
with bits of doggerel for each of the world's major cities. He
wrote until the end.
George SALVERSON was born in St. Catharines, Ont, on April 30,
1916. He died on April 9, 2005, after a fall at his apartment
at the Performing Arts Lodge in Toronto. He was 88. A public
memorial service will be held there at 6 p.m., Monday, May 9.
He is survived by his daughter Julie and son Scott. His wife
died in 2000.
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