Bob Danvers-Walker
Encyclopedia
Cyril Frederick 'Bob' Danvers-Walker (11 October 1906 17 May 1990) was an English
radio and newsreel
announcer
best known for his broadcasts on Pathé News
cinema newsreels during World War II
.
Born in Cheam
, Surrey
, Danvers-Walker spent much of his childhood in Tasmania
and began his radio career in Melbourne
, Australia
, in 1925, moving on briefly to ABC in Sydney
in 1932 before returning to the UK that same year.
From 1932 to 1939 he worked as a presenter for the International Broadcasting Company (IBC) network of commercial radio stations broadcasting in English
to Britain from the continent, becoming Chief Announcer at Radio Normandy. He also helped the IBC to set up radio stations at Toulouse
, Paris
, Lyon
, Madrid
, Barcelona
and Valencia, but Radio Normandy was always the company's flagship station,http://www.kent.ac.uk/sdfva/sound-journal/Street19991.html and Danvers-Walker was heard regularly over its airwaves until the station was closed down at the start of World War II
in 1939.
Danvers-Walker wanted to join the BBC as soon as the war started, but was prevented by a BBC rule against employing anyone who had worked on commercial radio. This rule was quietly dropped in 1943, and from then on he was deployed on a variety of morale-boosting wartime BBC radio
shows, including Round and About and London Calling Europe.
His rich, distinctive voice (though not his name) also became familiar to cinemagoers as the anonymous offscreen commentator for the twice-weekly British Pathe newsreel
, a job he held continuously from 1940 to 1970. The upbeat, patriotic, "stiff upper lip" style he adopted in this role soon became a kind of standard for the medium, and is still parodied to this day whenever television or film wants to suggest 1940s and 1950s news coverage. Kenneth Branagh
has stated that he was consciously imitating Danvers-Walker's "perky tone" in a cod "newsreel" segment in his 2000 film Love's Labour's Lost
.http://72.166.46.24/archives/2000/documents/00523891.htm
Bob Danvers-Walker also worked freelance for many radio and television outlets. He was the announcer on the "rebel" version of the comedy programme Much Binding in the Marsh
on Radio Luxembourg
when the show was in temporary exile from the BBC (1950-51), and for the science-fiction series Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future
on the same station (1951-55). He took part in the "stunt" programme "People are Funny" on Luxembourg, recorded around the UK and presented by Peter Martyn. As far as can be ascertained, however, he was never on the staff of Radio Luxembourg, even though his picture appears on several Radio Luxembourg fan websites. At about this time he registered the personal car number plate RAD 10 which became available in Gloucestershire
.
The arrival of ITV (commercial television) in 1955 brought many new opportunities, including as the announcer on Michael Miles
's popular networked game show Take Your Pick
(1955-68) and its successor programme, Wheel of Fortune (1969-71) -- not to be confused with the later (1988-2001) game show
of the same name.
At BBC radio he was one of the regular presenters of Housewives' Choice throughout the 1950s, and contributed to many other programmes, including in the 1960s Holiday Hour and Countryside. For BBC Television
he featured regularly in Saturday Night Out. He also appeared in a number of feature films, often as himself.
Danvers-Walker's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that he began to use the full name "Danvers-Walker" only in the 1950s. On a rare surviving audio clip from Radio Normandy, his colleague Roy Plomley
is heard referring to him as "Bob Walker", but he was described as "C. Danvers-Walker" in the station's programme schedules printed in Radio Pictorial on (for example) 3 May 1935.http://www.sterlingtimes.org/radio_sponsorship.htm Conversely, a 1962 Pathe News Issue Sheet lists him as "R.Walker". http://www.bufvc.ac.uk/databases/newsreels/learnmore/docs/PN62-103.pdf
It is claimed on several websites that Danvers-Walker (or, in some other versions of the story, Roy Plomley - or possibly both) narrowly escaped being captured by the Gestapo
at the radio station in Fécamp
on the Normandy
coast. This seems highly unlikely: all the available evidence suggests that IBC operations in France
had closed down entirely by January 1940, whereas German
forces did not invade the country until May of that year, arriving in Fécamp on 11 June.
He died in in Oxford
, England
in 1990.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
radio and newsreel
Newsreel
A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current affairs and entertainment for millions of moviegoers...
announcer
Announcer
An announcer is a presenter who makes "announcements" in an audio medium or a physical location.-Television and other media:Some announcers work in television production , radio or filmmaking, usually providing narrations, news updates, station identification, or an introduction of a product in...
best known for his broadcasts on Pathé News
Pathe News
Pathé Newsreels were produced from 1910 until the 1970s, when production of newsreels was in general stopped. Pathé News today is known as British Pathé and its archive of over 90,000 reels is fully digitised and online.-History:...
cinema newsreels during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Born in Cheam
Cheam
Cheam is a large suburban village close to Sutton in the London Borough of Sutton, England, and is located close to the southern boundary between Greater London and Surrey. It is divided into two main areas: North Cheam and Cheam Village. North Cheam includes more retail shops and supermarkets,...
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, Danvers-Walker spent much of his childhood in Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
and began his radio career in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, in 1925, moving on briefly to ABC in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
in 1932 before returning to the UK that same year.
From 1932 to 1939 he worked as a presenter for the International Broadcasting Company (IBC) network of commercial radio stations broadcasting in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
to Britain from the continent, becoming Chief Announcer at Radio Normandy. He also helped the IBC to set up radio stations at Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
and Valencia, but Radio Normandy was always the company's flagship station,http://www.kent.ac.uk/sdfva/sound-journal/Street19991.html and Danvers-Walker was heard regularly over its airwaves until the station was closed down at the start of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in 1939.
Danvers-Walker wanted to join the BBC as soon as the war started, but was prevented by a BBC rule against employing anyone who had worked on commercial radio. This rule was quietly dropped in 1943, and from then on he was deployed on a variety of morale-boosting wartime BBC radio
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...
shows, including Round and About and London Calling Europe.
His rich, distinctive voice (though not his name) also became familiar to cinemagoers as the anonymous offscreen commentator for the twice-weekly British Pathe newsreel
Newsreel
A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current affairs and entertainment for millions of moviegoers...
, a job he held continuously from 1940 to 1970. The upbeat, patriotic, "stiff upper lip" style he adopted in this role soon became a kind of standard for the medium, and is still parodied to this day whenever television or film wants to suggest 1940s and 1950s news coverage. Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...
has stated that he was consciously imitating Danvers-Walker's "perky tone" in a cod "newsreel" segment in his 2000 film Love's Labour's Lost
Love's Labour's Lost (2000 film)
Love's Labour's Lost is a 2000 adaptation of the comic play of the same name by William Shakespeare, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh. It was the first feature film to be made of this lesser-known comedy...
.http://72.166.46.24/archives/2000/documents/00523891.htm
Bob Danvers-Walker also worked freelance for many radio and television outlets. He was the announcer on the "rebel" version of the comedy programme Much Binding in the Marsh
Much Binding in the Marsh
Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh was the title of a comedy BBC radio and Radio Luxembourg show broadcast from 1944 to 1954, starring Kenneth Horne and Richard Murdoch as senior staff in a fictional RAF station battling red tape and wartime inconvenience...
on Radio Luxembourg
Radio Luxembourg (English)
Radio Luxembourg is a commercial broadcaster in many languages from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is nowadays known in most non-English languages as RTL ....
when the show was in temporary exile from the BBC (1950-51), and for the science-fiction series Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future
Dan Dare
Dan Dare is a British science fiction comic hero, created by illustrator Frank Hampson who also wrote the first stories, that is, the Venus and Red Moon stories, and a complete storyline for Operation Saturn...
on the same station (1951-55). He took part in the "stunt" programme "People are Funny" on Luxembourg, recorded around the UK and presented by Peter Martyn. As far as can be ascertained, however, he was never on the staff of Radio Luxembourg, even though his picture appears on several Radio Luxembourg fan websites. At about this time he registered the personal car number plate RAD 10 which became available in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
.
The arrival of ITV (commercial television) in 1955 brought many new opportunities, including as the announcer on Michael Miles
Michael Miles
Michael John Miles was a TV presenter in Britain, best known for the game show Take Your Pick from 1955 to 1968, produced by Associated Rediffusion and later by Rediffusion London....
's popular networked game show Take Your Pick
Take Your Pick
Take Your Pick was a UK game show originally broadcast by Radio Luxembourg in the early 1950s. The show transferred to television in 1955 with the launch of ITV, where it continued until 1968...
(1955-68) and its successor programme, Wheel of Fortune (1969-71) -- not to be confused with the later (1988-2001) game show
Wheel of Fortune (UK game show)
Wheel of Fortune is a British television game show created by Merv Griffin. Contestants compete to solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes...
of the same name.
At BBC radio he was one of the regular presenters of Housewives' Choice throughout the 1950s, and contributed to many other programmes, including in the 1960s Holiday Hour and Countryside. For BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
he featured regularly in Saturday Night Out. He also appeared in a number of feature films, often as himself.
Danvers-Walker's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that he began to use the full name "Danvers-Walker" only in the 1950s. On a rare surviving audio clip from Radio Normandy, his colleague Roy Plomley
Roy Plomley
Francis Roy Plomley , OBE was an English radio broadcaster, producer, playwright and novelist.-Early life:Plomley was the son of a pharmacist and was educated at King's College School, Wimbledon...
is heard referring to him as "Bob Walker", but he was described as "C. Danvers-Walker" in the station's programme schedules printed in Radio Pictorial on (for example) 3 May 1935.http://www.sterlingtimes.org/radio_sponsorship.htm Conversely, a 1962 Pathe News Issue Sheet lists him as "R.Walker". http://www.bufvc.ac.uk/databases/newsreels/learnmore/docs/PN62-103.pdf
It is claimed on several websites that Danvers-Walker (or, in some other versions of the story, Roy Plomley - or possibly both) narrowly escaped being captured by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
at the radio station in Fécamp
Fécamp
Fécamp is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Haute-Normandie region in northern France.-Geography:Fécamp is situated in the valley of the river Valmont, at the heart of the Pays de Caux, on the Albaster Coast...
on the Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
coast. This seems highly unlikely: all the available evidence suggests that IBC operations in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
had closed down entirely by January 1940, whereas German
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
forces did not invade the country until May of that year, arriving in Fécamp on 11 June.
He died in in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in 1990.
External links
- L'Histoire de Radio Normandie (website in French)
- Paul's Radio Museum (includes a 1930s recording from Radio Normandy presented by Roy Plomley in which "Bob Walker" puts in an appearance)
- British Pathe News (archive of hundreds of newsreel items, many of them commentated by Bob Danvers-Walker)
- Sponsored English Radio in Europe (from the Sterling Times website)
- Bob Danvers-Walker filmography at the British Film Institute
- A picture of Bob Danvers-Walker, probably in the 1950s (on a Radio Luxembourg fan website)
Other references
- Anne Pimlott Baker, "Walker, Cyril Frederick Danvers- (1906–1990)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
- Sean Street, "Radio For Sale: Sponsored Programming in British Radio during the 1930s", Bournemouth University, 1999
- George Nobbs, "The Wireless Stars", Norwich, 1972, SBN 903 61900 8