70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

However, should architecture fail, I may yet get a job at Hollywood! Mrs Gordon Jenner has, for several years lately, while travelling in Europe as a foreign correspondent for her American paper, been doing a bit of talent spotting for some of the film companies. She works on a commission basis – either lump sum or sort of royalties on subsequent films in which her find appears. She says it is awful, as she goes about viewing possible young men as worth so much ‘gold’! And she told me she could sell me to one of the companies. I must say the experience would be fun, but I don’t think I should enjoy much of it even if I had the chance.

That reminds me that I should have mentioned another quite outstanding show that was put on towards the end of February. This was ‘The White Cliffs’ which is a poem about England and America written by an American woman. I believe it became very popular in America and England at the beginning of the war and was used extensively in America for propaganda purposes, being very pro British. An abridged edition, set to music, was recorded by HMV I believe, and John Sterricker, who produced it here, had possessed this set of records and had lent them to ZBW for broadcasting in Hong Kong. The poem in parts is rather heavily sentimental, but for all that it is intensely moving, particularly at a time like this. With musical background arranged by Betty Drown and provided by her choir of about 40 or 50 people, Roy Heasman, violin, drums and Betty at the piano, the whole thing lasted for 50 minutes. Winnie Cox recited the poem simply beautifully. It was a tremendous task she undertook in memorising it. She was the ‘I’ of the poem; the young American girl who comes to England and falls in love with and marries an Englishman. She stood on the stage on a low dais in front of a blue screen with the white cliffs of Dover in the background and seagulls wheeling round.