Saturday, October 07, 2023

Malcolm Saville on Children's Hour: More about Elaine Macnamara, the second Dickie Morton

A thousand thanks to the reader who left a comment directing me to a Radio Who's Who for 1947 and the entry for Elaine Macnamara, the actress who played Dickie Morton in two 1946 dramatisations of Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine books.

The most I could establish was that she had specialised in playing children's roles in BBC Radio plays, but the Who's Who entry tells us about her earlier career:
Started in ballet on the Continent, and was for three years with Andre Chariot at the Vaudeville Theatre, London. Appeared in many important parts in Repertory at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge. Before the war did much work in television, and later, as a war job,  became a programme engineer on the staff of the BBC.
It then gives us chapter and verse on her later speciality:
Left the BBC in April, 1945, to become free-lance actress, since when has broadcast as Florence Dombey in “ Dombey and Son,” Francesca in “ The Seventh Veil,” and in many other important roles. Can simulate the child voices of either sex from babyhood upward, and, apart from being well-known as a straight actress, has built up a separate reputation as a portrayer of child characters. So realistic are these that a Theatrical Producer recently tried to book a little boy he heard in a schools’ programme - the “little boy” was Elaine Macnamara!
The photograph of Macnamara above comes from the Who's Who.

One of the many things I learnt from years of writing press releases from psychology papers is that little boys speak with a deeper voice than little girls, even though there is no physiological reason why they should do so.

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