Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Canadian businessman and theatre owner, best known as Honest Ed for his discount emporium and theatrical venues.
On the island
Eight records
Mona LisaFavourite
I think to be on a desert island The soothing voice of Nat King Cole, I I think I'd really enjoy it. It just fits in with palm trees and gentle breezes. I think it would be just great.
it must be twenty or twenty five years ago, my wife and I we were taking a Caribbean cruise and we were on an Italian boat. Every night they would play Are Viderce Roma and in the dining room where the band was in the dance floor they'd roll the roof back and just under the stars there and you know we would rumba and it was just very memorable because every night without fail they would play Arriver Derce Roma.
Claude François & Jacques Revaux
I think the reason I chose that was because I think it's a case of ego. Power. How you want to see yourself, whether you are that way or not. And uh I think it's just a great record.
It's played our theater over the last twenty years a few times. And I think it's amazing because It's a musical where every song is really beautiful and that's so rare.
Original Broadway Cast of Hair
that was a very important show at the Royal Alexandra Theatre because it was almost a turning point. It played for fifty-three weeks and that is a long run for Toronto, and it played to full houses, and uh it was a big help to us.
it's a very beautiful song, Maria, and I think this song will speak for itself. It's just beautiful.
another show that was very important to us, a chorus line. The chorus line that played the Royal Alexandra Theatre originated in Toronto and that same company went to London, England and played here for six months, which is all Canadian show can play here, and then a British took over.
When my wife was a teenager, she used to sing for Jewish societies and benevolent societies, and she would sing this song, and when she sang it all the people around would be crying and have tears in her eyes. It was just great.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:37How well could you adapt to loneliness?
I don't think I could adapt too well to loneliness. But if I have no alternative, I guess that's where I'll have to be.
Presenter asks
2:34How far back do your New World roots go?
Well, I was born in Virginia in Colonial Beach, but we came up to Canada, my father and brought the family up when I was nine years old. So really I'm a Canadian citizen. I've lived there practically all my life.
Presenter asks
4:23Was your childhood deprived? I mean, was it really tough?
I did start at a very early age because my dad died when I was fifteen. My mother was left a widow with three children and I had to leave school. So I was really a high school dropout.
Presenter asks
21:33Whose idea was it that you should buy another theatre three thousand miles away [the Old Vic]?
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Set of Webster's English Dictionary
Noah Webster
because now that I'm spending more and more time in England, I think it's time that I learned how to speak English. And you know, if I even learn a few words every day, I think I might eventually get there.
The luxury
Because I'm so ashamed, you know, when everybody goes out and eats gourmet food and I eat the junk food, I think I would like a barbecue. And I could perhaps pick the vegetables and try and come up with something that would be more exotic.
I had never seen the old Vic, but I knew a lot about the old Vic because many of the important actors who worked at the Old Vic and were important to the Old Vic, Sir Ralph Richardson and Sir John Gilgood and Peter O'Toole, and they would tell me stories of the old Vic and uh I began to know about Emma Kahn's and Lillian Bayliss. I was interested in this particular theatre.
“I always felt that uh all advertising really is, is to focus attention on what you have. Once you have the people, then unless you can service them or treat them right, you don't get the return business.”
“They say everything I touch works, but everything I touch doesn't work. That was one of them. But when it doesn't work, I don't say anything. When it works, I tell the whole world. That's the only difference.”