Stars

How to make a singing star

Marty Wilde was the first of a series of young stars created and moulded by Jack Good.

The Svengali of Rock is seen left encouraging the tousle-haired youth who had only just discarded the name of Reg Smith, but who soon learnt how to put across a beat number.

Presently the hairstyle becomes smother and the jacket is gold lamé; eventually Marty is an engagingly assured young man, joking below with fellow artist Billy Fury.

As a popular teenage singing star, Marty returned to ABC as a guest on The Sunday Break, around the time the jumping craze hit Britain

Flair Photography
Bedford Studios

Some scenery!

The sixteen Vernons Girls found fame in ABC’s beat shows as a dancing and singing group.

The producer not only used their voices as backing for the singers but featured the Girls themselves as animated scenery.

Left are three of the Girls in the flesh and as they appeared on the TV screen

Stanley Allen

Personal celebrity came to Margaret Stredder, whose popularity proved that men do make passes at girls who wear glasses, and to Lyn Cornell with Margaret, right, who is now acclaimed as Britain’s new singing star of modern jazz

Building a reputation

Developing young talent has always been an objective of ABC Television. The current Drama season brought stardom to Ian Hendry, a young actor who gave a fine performance last Spring in Return to Base, an episode of Inside Story, the hour-long drama series about life in a block of flats which Ted Willis edited for Sunday afternoon viewing. During the Summer Ian Hendry added to his reputation with John Gregson in Flight from Treason; ABC then gave him his own series with the title role in Police Surgeon, edited by Julian Bond.

Right Ian Hendry is seen in Inside Story with Margaret Anderson and Ruth Dunning; below he investigates a car smash as Dr Geoffrey Brent, Police Surgeon

Warwick Bedford
from TRANSDIFFUSION
1960 // THIS IS TRANSDIFFUSION