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The Oshawa Times, 30 Apr 1960, p. 23

The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Twinkle, Little Star Joyce Hahn Has Been Called One Of The Few Real Pros In Canadian TV BY WILLIAM DRYLIE HIS fall CBC singing star Joyce Hahn will begin her sixth year as one of Canadian television's top variety artists. That is, if CBC- TV executives decide to pick up the option on her two-year contract. If they don't the 92- pound small type won't be on your screen in her singing role beside Wally Koster, partner through five Hit Parade years. At the CBC rumor factory on Toronto's Jarvis St, Joyce hasn't been ignored this year, because some felt the hour-long Hit Parade was now too big for her. She was adequate when CBC television was small-time, they said, but might be a weak sister now. And so theyre wondering whether Joyce will be back next September when the high-cost winter programs kick off a new season. Her director, Bill Davis, discounts all the rumors. He says that in Canadian: television's parade of stars Joyce Hahn shines out as one of the few real professionals. Joyce herself isn't saying much about it. "I hope they pick it up and I haven't heard that I'm on the way down," she says. "I cer- tainly don't feel I'm on the way down anyway." Unlike other television personalities, she is not in a panic about the contract for next year -- perhaps because she's been in show business since childhood and has experienced her share of set-backs, disappointments and tears. When she was a child she trailed across Canada and through the U.S. with her family, singing and dancing to earn a buck. Sometimes her father was one step ahead of the police because Joyce was 'way under age and not allowed by law to perform in the saloons of New York and New Jersey. The Hahns tra- velled some 50,000 miles by trailer in those early 1930-days with Papa Hahn leading the Harmony Kids from one spot to another in order to keep the wolf from the door. The Har- mony Kids were composed of Joyce, her sister and two brothers, Bob and Lloyd who played accordion and guitar while the two girls sang and danced. After leaving their Saskatchewan homestead, it was a hard, seldom rewarding life, but they stuck at it hoping for a future in show business, a future incidentally which only came true for Joyce. After the first twenty years of her life Joyce began the decade which was in one way just as insecure and confused as her previous life. In ten years she's been married three times, the last to Norm Collier, one of CBC's audio experts. They now live at Rouge Hills in a 10-room home overlooking the Rouge River. With them is Beverlee, 10, born of the first marriage. For the first. time perhaps, Joyce is convinced there can be a good measure of security in her life and that all the running and reaching for a place in the show business sunburst is over. When she isn't singing on your television screen every second Monday night, Joyce is not necessarily sitting at home looking out at the Rouge. Recently she flew to Winnipeg on her off week for a Stage Door performance on Winnipeg television with Juliette and Wally Koster. The next day she was in Ottawa en- tertaining at a Board of Trade affair and in April she's scheduled to travel to Dartmouth, N.S. to help open a new shopping plaza. Like many other TV stars she finds that what they might disdain in Toronto, they love in the rest of the country. She finds warmth and affection' when she travels outside the Toronto business world and is accepted as a TV star across the breadth of Canada by people who have watched her and listened to her through the years on television. In Toronto, of course, she doesn't rate that treatment be- cause Torontonians have never accepted Joyce or any other CBC variety star as real stars, still looking down their noses at home-grown talent. Joyce has had a bid to appear all summer on the Breakfast Club, one of the old and famous radio productions from Chicago. This would mean a three-month hitch away from her home, however, and right now she doesn't think she'd like that. Turning it down wouldn't leave her idle and she's sure she can keep busy with the personal appearances. This year she feels is her first year on CBC television in which she has been able to perform the way she thinks she's at her best. In other years of Cross-Canada Hit Parade she has always been fitted in here and there long enough for her to sing some of the worst popular music ever written. But in the Music Sixty series, which presents the Hit Parade (no longer Cross-Canada and no longer a hit parade) she has been able to move into production numbers with dancer; she has been given talking parts and is included in some of the interviewing of guest stars. Joyce, at 30, still looks ahead to years of successful television for herself, although if that vision fails she doesn't seem to be too worried about what happens then. She's got her home, perhaps the first that's given her real con- fidence in the future no matter what happens to her career. She has her daughter, Beverlee, who is an image but who will probably sprout a little higher than Joyce (4'11") ever did.

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