Biography & Autobiography Entertainment & Performing Arts
Silver Hair and Golden Voice
Austin Willis, from Halifax to Hollywood
- Publisher
- Nimbus Publishing
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2020
- Category
- Entertainment & Performing Arts, General, General
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771088527
- Publish Date
- Oct 2020
- List Price
- $19.95
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Description
Over his extensive career, Halifax-born film, television, and radio performer Austin Willis worked with luminaries from Orson Welles and Peter Sellers to a young William Shatner (his subordinate in CBC's Space Command—precursor to Star Trek). He bested Goldfinger at cards—with help from Sean Connery's James Bond—and with his prematurely white hair, he became the debonair, wry host of the 1970s CBC-TV quiz show, This Is The Law.
Through his formidable personal library, his insatiable curiosity, and his conversations with the man himself, oral historian and archivist Ern Dick has brought the voice of Austin Willis to life in the memoir Willis wanted to write—but didn't, because he never stopped performing.
Featuring a foreword by former CBC Radio personality Costas Halavrezos, afterword by arts and culture commentator Ron Foley MacDonald, and dozens of photos that highlight Willis's greatest moments of stage, screen, and airwaves, Silver Hair and Golden Voice offers a unique perspective on the life of one of Canada's most overlooked stars.
About the authors
Ernest J. Dick lives in Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia. His archival career has focussed on Canada's audio-visual heritage, first at the National Archives of Canada, then the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Costas Halavrezos is best known as the former host (1987–2010) of CBC Radio’s Maritime Noon. Costas grew up in Saint John, New Brunswick, where his parents operated Nick's Coffee Counter. Nick’s introduced him to people from all walks of life, an ideal training ground for public broadcasting and for selling spices, which is what he does every Saturday as “The Spiceman” at the Historic Farmers’ Market in Halifax. Costas loves pickup basketball, playing bass with the BBQ Kings, cooking for friends, and tending his grapevines in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Excerpt: Silver Hair and Golden Voice: Austin Willis, from Halifax to Hollywood (by (author) Ernest Dick; foreword by Costas Halavrezos; afterword by Ron Foley MacDonald)
Toronto Beckons
Once I got to Toronto I immediately got myself into radio drama, as this new world offered dozens of possibilities in those days. Everything the CBC sent to any competition invariably won and it was very difficult to get in as a young, relatively inexperienced actor.
Radio drama was also terrifying because it was broadcast live in those days—but at least we had our scripts in front of us. In rehearsal, directors would get you to do a scene over and over again. You would often do things you didn't know you could do. An actor named John Drainie gave me advice one day that I have never forgotten. We were rehearsing a fight scene and I knew I just wasn't getting it to sound right for radio. Drainie said, "Aust—you are not making any pictures. For every word that I speak on radio I make pictures in my mind. It's in colour, and that seems to get it off the page."
How I Started the Second World War
Shortly after I moved to Toronto to work for CBC Radio, I got blamed for starting the war. CBL was the "anchor" station for the network, because we broadcast news to the whole country. One day, I happened to be sitting in the CBL booth as we were playing "Smoke Gets in your Eyes." Someone came running in wild-eyed from the newsroom and handed me a piece of paper. I broke in and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen: I interrupt this program and bring you a special bulletin—Canada has declared war on Nazi Germany."
As required when announcing a bulletin of this importance, I read it a second time.
"Ladies and Gentlemen: I interrupt this program and bring you a special bulletin—Canada has declared war on Nazi Germany."
After making this grave declaration, I returned to regular programming. On this day, unfortunately, it meant listeners digesting the ominous news were served up an utterly ridiculous but popular novelty tune: "Inka Dinka Doo." (The Financial Post later reported that "incredible stupidity had been shown by Canada's state-owned broadcasting...with no sense of the sober gravity" that the announcement warranted.)
From that time on, I appeared in books as having started the war.
