The Radiobiography of JESSIE MATTHEWS
Presented by Leslie Baily and Charles Brewer
This is the story of a little Cockney girl whose father ran a fruit barrow in Soho ; she became Britain's leading musical-film star. It traces Jessie Matthews 's career as a child dancer, a chorus girl, as one of Mr. Cochran's most celebrated leading ladies, and so to film stardom
The story illustrated by songs and scenes from her stage shows and films, including
' This Year of Grace ', ' Evergreen ', ' The Good Companions ', ' First a Girl', 'It's Love Again ', ' Gangway ', and ' Sailing Along' with a glimpse inside the film studio during the making of her latest picture, ' Climbing High ' and a foretaste of the new musical play ' I Can Take It', in which she will shortly return to the stage
The programme compered by the Playgoer, with: Charles B. Cochran
Sonnie Hale
Rosie Matthews
Arthur Rigby
Victor Saville
Jessie Matthews and the recorded voice of Noel Coward
The cast also includes
J. B. Rowe , L. Patrick Greene , Renee de Vaux, and Ernest Sefton
The BBC Revue Chorus and Augmented Variety Orchestra
Conducted by Charles Shadwell
Few figures of stage or screen can point to a career more romantic, and in itself theatrical, than Jessie Matthews. Shortly after the war she was selling apples from her father's barrow in Soho. Today she is a film and stage star of international repute. The story of this career will be unfolded tonight as Jessie, and many of those with whom she has been associated in her rise to fame, come to the microphone. Among these will be Arthur Rigby , at one time a famous pantomime 'dame', who gave Jessie her first chance at the Kilburn Empire when she was a child. Soon after she was dancing in a Charlot chorus, and within a very short time was signed up with Cochran. Just now Jessie Matthews is rehearsing her new show, I Can Take It, which opens at Sheffield on January 23.
' Star-Gazing' will be broadcast again tomorrow (Regional, 6.0)