Page 4 - The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, November 25, 1982
M-T
By DAVID BIRKAN
The English theatre's Lilian Mary Baylis died on Nov. 25,1937: She turned one derelict music hall into the home of Shakespearean productions and another into a centre of opera and ballet — the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells, respectively.
Lilian Baylis was born in 1874, to a family of entertainers prominent in the circle of music halls and theatres that provided some relief and escape for London's Jewish and non-Jewish poor alike. Lively and vivacious, she became a proficient dancer and musician while still a child. A harelip prevented the sensitive girl from pursuing her own career as a stage performer.
Lilian turned to teaching. In 1890, she accompanied one of the many troupes shuttling back and forth to the developing frontiers of South Africa, and taught dancirigi violin and banjo.
Lilian's aunt, Emma Cons, became a temperance crusader. She bought London's Royal Victoria Music Hall and replaced its beer and liquor — whp.se purchase paid Jor^'the enterta^ihment — with coffee and calTes. Instead of flocking to it from the pubs, working men stopped coming to the music hall altogether. In 1890, Lilian was invited back from South Africa to try managing it.
The music hall had been originally been built, in 1818. for the theatre. Renowned thespians like Edmond Kean performed there in its early glory.
After several unsuccessful years of trying to lure working men to watch dancers; acrobats, mimes and comics in one of London's few such establishments that were liquor-free, Lilian decided to restore the music hall to its original calling.
Taking complete control in 1912, she renovated the premises and made it home to a generation of brilliant actors and to their successors, as the Old Vic: Sybil Thorndyke, Edith Evans. Ellen Terry, Genevieve Ward, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Laurence I' Olivier. Vivien Leigh, Richard Burton, Alec Guiness and others. Its producers included Matheson Lang, Philip Ben Greet, Robert Atkins. HarcoUrt Williams and Tyrone Guthrie..
Lang was Montreal-born. In 1950, Canadians Tony Van Bridge and Pierre Lefevre played in Twelfth Night; In 1952, 23-year-old. John Colicos played King Lear there.
The success of the Old Vic prompted Lilian to help dancer Ninette de Valois organize England's ballet. In 1931, Lilian took over Sadler's Wells, in a neglected former resort site built over allegedly medibinal waters in the district of Islington. A fledgling company, which soon became known as the Sadler's Wells Ballet, gave its first performance there that year. By 1939. it was world-class in stature and repertory. It took its current name in 1956,. the Royal Ballet. , .
In 1963, the Old Vic company formed the foundation Of the National Theatre aind moved to new grand premises almost nisxt door on Waterloo Rd.
A postscript: The Old, Vic building; damaged by German bombs during the war' and by insufficient, and .mismanaged renovations afterwards fell into a lingering decline. In June, 1982, it. was bought by another Jew, Canadian , entrepreneur Ed Mirvish. Years earlier, he transformed a Toronto theatre at the : point of demolition into One of North America's theatrical institutions.; V The neglected shell of Lilian's legacy is .
once more under renovation. A new season will ppenneit Sieptember.; : ■ /
UIA PRESIDENTS
New leaders of the United Israel Appeal of Canada are Morton Brownstein [left], newly elected president, and Gay Berger, Women's Division president. Joe Aln [right] Is Immediate past president. [Dnunmond photo]
notv
exejcutive
MONTREAL —
Waiter David Hess was named executive vice-president of the United Israel Appeal of Canada Inc. at the recent annual meeting held in Montreal. He had served as nationa!l executive director since January of 1981.
Hess, 44, was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He received a Biachelor of Arts degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, and a post-graduate diploma in education from the Johannesburg College of Education. ■
Following a teaching
a n d a d m i n i s t ra t i V e career in Jewish day schools in South Africa and England, Hess served as administrative director of the South African Zionist Federation, the umbrella organization of all Israel oriented institutions in that country.
In 1976, Hess was appointed executive director of the United Jewish Appeal of Vancouver and British Columbia. He assumed the additional position of executive director of the Western Region of the United Israel Appeal in 1979.
Hess is based in Toronto.
VOWS to oppose restrictions
JERUSALEM [JTA] —
Jewish agency chairman Leon Dulzih has vowed to '^fight with all our strength" against newly promulgated regulations in Romania that threaten drastically to curtail Jewish emigration from there.
"As we succeeded in the past against the Russians, so too we will succeed again," Dulzin said in a sharp statement issped in Jerusalem.
The new Romanian rules require would-be emigrants to pay baick to the state, in hard currency, everything spent on them over the years for health, education and other state welfare cares.
According to top Israeli experts, the regulation will mean in practice a very substantial sum in dollars to be paid by each and every Romanian seeking to leave . the country.
The new regulations caught both Israel's government and the Jewish
Agency entirely by surprise, it is reliably learned here. There was no word of their impending promulgation mentioned during recent contacts^ through intermediaries, between Premier Menachem Begin and Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu.
Israel Radio reported that a senior Romanian minister had visited Jerusalem recently on a mission from the President to the Premier. Some weeks ago, Be-gin's director-general, Mattityahu Shmuelevitz, undertook a similar mission — unpublished at
the time ^ to Bucharest.
These quiet diplomacy contacts are understood to be in the context of Ceausescu's long-standing and ongoing efforts to play a role in Mideast peacemaking^ and especially to act as middle man between' Israelis and Palestinians.
Dulzin in his statement noted that in 1982 some 1,500 Romanian Jews are making aliya to Israel. "But there are. thousands more waiting to leave," he added. "We will not rest until all Romanian Jews who wish to do so are enabled to come home."
Walter Hess, UIA executive vice-president
Montreal
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