Friday, August 25, 2017

George Manning-Sanders' short obituary from 1953

Ruth Manning-Sanders' husband, George, died in 1953, pre-deceasing her by what turned out to be 35 years. She never remarried, putting a huge amount of energy into her folk-tale writing from 1958 until her death in 1988.

With help from Newspapers.com, I tracked down a short obituary notice for George Manning-Sanders that appeared in the November 20, 1953, issue of The Guardian (of London).

I know you can read the image just fine, but I'll repeat the text here:
MR G. MANNING-SANDERS
Mr George Manning-Sanders, the writer and artist, who was injured when he was thrown from his electric wheelchair on Tuesday, died in the West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, last night. He was 72.
An artist and art master in his youth, Mr Manning-Sanders later turned to writing. He wrote three novels and many plays and short stories. His play, "Mr Boyce's Birthday," became well known through being broadcast by the B.B.C. For many years he was a regular contributor of short stories to the "Manchester Guardian."
You can learn a little bit about the George Manning-Sanders novels and see their covers at these two posts: The jaw-dropping dust jackets of George Manning-Sanders' novels and Jaw-dropping dust jackets of George Manning-Sanders' novels, Part 2.

Other than a confirmation that it aired on the BBC in the late 1940s, I can't find anything else about "Mr Boyce's Birthday."

It would be a neat project for someone to go through and collect his short stories from the "Manchester Guardian." I'm not aware that they were published anywhere else. Here's one I found, for starters: It's titled "Bad News" and it appears on Page 16 of the August 24, 1932, edition of The Manchester Guardian. It features characters named Sampy Collum, Martin Price and Henry Pope.

1 comment:

  1. Mr. Boyce's Birthday aired at least once in the United States, namely on WNYC-FM (93.9 MHz) in New York on Saturday morning, October 12, 1957 starting around 12:30 AM. Source: http://jjonz.us/RadioLogs/pagesnfiles/logs_files_OCR/NYT/1950s/55-60/1957/%5Bn%5D57-10-11-(Fri)ocr.pdf

    Even sixty years ago, quality programming was to be found on the FM dial (back in the days when radios still had dials).

    Note that the American rendering of the title of this play inserts the period in the abbreviation Mr. whereas the British rendering does not.

    Other than various references to the BBC and this one reference to WNYC, this play seems to be gone with the ephemeral wind.

    -- M.F.

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