An old copy of The Picturegoer’s Who’s Who and Encyclopedia rests on the shelf of a Newcastle pub. Jordan Allen, a journalist for the BBC in Newcastle, paged through the volume during a visit and was intrigued by the small collection of news clippings tucked inside its pages.
Less than two weeks after I had posted my own findings, Jordan left a comment on the site asking if I knew anything more about actor Paul Cavanagh, aka local boy Billy Atkinson. I didn’t, but Jordan proposed an interview anyway.
If you recall the post, I had bumped into an old Internal Revenue case document on Google and it filled in many missing portions of Paul Cavanagh’s past. That post is here.
The following segment played August 15 on BBC Newcastle. Jon Harle introduces the piece before playing a brief excerpt of Cavanagh in Curtain at Eight (1933). Then it’s on to the conversation between Jordan Allen and myself. The clip runs about five and a half minutes, enjoy:
To any readers local to Newcastle, yes, that’s what a lot of us sound like on Long Island. And I really attempted to keep my accent as neutral as possible!
After the interview, Jordan was kind enough to email me photos of the article he found about Cavanagh. The undated, unattributed piece further confirms the findings in my Cavanagh post, and also provides enough additional information to ensure that I’ll need to update that post:
Thanks again for the opportunity, Jordan! And thank you, especially for sending those clippings along.
Very cool, Cliff! So that’s what you sound like! The background story that led to your interview about Cavanagh is most intriguing.
Yep, that’s me, Rick. I kind of felt like a Bowery Boy cast in a David Lean movie when I first listened to it! Thanks, the original post was one of the most fascinating I’ve ever put together. That document really brought a ton of info to light and it was amazing how well the pieces began to fit together.