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Hall Johnson, choir leader, has expressive fingers. They seem to touch invisible threads attached to each individual voice in his chorus.
By Miriam D. Light
BY THIS time you doubtless have acquired the Thursday night Maxwell House Showboat habit. It has been coming to you regularly at 9 o'clock EST. since the beginning of October over a WJZ network, keyed out of the NBC studios in New York. Showboat is one of the distinct radio hits of 1932. In fact it should go down in history as the first of a series of super-productions along the same line, culminating in the Five Star Theatre, which goes out five nights a week and uses both NBC and CBS.
On these two pages you see a few of the leading characters of this great radio production. There really are 60 in the cast. But this will give you an idea of who's who if you really have become a regular listener. And then there a lot of people who work on this program whose names and voices you never will hear. In fact there is one very clever and amiable young woman who acts a part, and her name is never mentioned because it would spoil the built-up illusion of the show if the fact of her part was known to the average listener. You would recognize her
Lanny Ross, aboard the Maxwell House Showboat, with dainty Annette Hanshaw at his side.
Show
name as the star in many another radio production if it were revealed to you here. But she is a good little trouper, and although she may make you cry, or make you laugh, her own personality is completely submerged. And there's a man who plays an unannounced part, and lie also is an artist of distinction.
So the Showboat has many important things going on behind the scenes to make it a great production, and to make the names of those who are known to shine with even a greater lustre. The Showboat is in the hands of a very capable crew, and everybody connected with it is able, efficient and fully competent. A great deal of credit for its success should properly go to Edmund B. "Tiny" RufTner, the production manager. "Tiny" is so small that most people come all the way up to the level of his Adam's apple. This Showboat is the biggest thing he ever tackled,
and he is giving it the best he has in him. It has to be good.
Lanny Ross, the hero, too is riding to fame and glory on the Showboat. It is giving him the opportunity he has long deserved, and to which he is entitled. Although he plays a character part, he still retains his own name of Lanny Ross. His sweetheart, the captain's niece, Betty Lou, is impersonated by Miss Audrey Marsh whom you see leaning over the rail there beside the captain. She has a fine voice for the part and Lanny does not find it hard to sing to her with a touch of sentiment. After all, if a fellow is going to sing love songs to a girl, even if it is only in play, she ought to have an appeal for him, and Audrey has it; not only for Lanny but for her listeners in the radio audience.
The cute little lass in the picture beside Lanny is Annette Hanshaw, "the