Train stops. Otto Lowy dead
s...@sfu.ca
[28]Click to play Paul Grant reports for CBC Radio News
Vancouver - Long-time CBC radio host Otto Lowy has died at the age of
81. Lowy had suffered a heart attack last month.
[lowy_otto020528.jpg]
Otto Lowy
For more than 20 years, Lowy welcomed CBC radio listeners aboard the
Transcontinental , his charming and nostalgic musical train ride
through Europe. "Every time he came into the studio to do the show, it
would be like he was doing it for the first time. He'd come in with
this fantastic energy and enthusiasm, and I'm going to miss that,"
says show producer Ede Wolk.
LINK: [29]Transcontinental Lowy was born in Czechoslovakia in 1921. He
came to Canada in the early 1950's and worked as an actor, writer and
broadcaster. For the past 15 years he also hosted Tea and Trumpets, a
hugely popular matinee series with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
In 1999, Lowy received the Masaryk Award, given by the Czechoslovak
Association of Canada. He was also honoured with the Czech Republic's
President's Award, brought to Canada for him by Czech president Vaclav
Havel. In 1998, he was inducted into the B.C. Entertainment Hall of
Fame.
Linkname: Otto Lowy dies
URL:
http://vancouver.cbc.ca/template/servlet/View?filename=bc_lowy0
20528
s...@sfu.ca
CBC RADIO MEDIA ADVISORY
Following the death this week of CBC Radio host Otto Lowy, his popular
radio show The Transcontinental will be replaced this Sunday with a
special tribute.
The special tribute will air at 1 p.m. (1:30 NT) Sunday, June 2 on CBC
Radio Two and, in British Columbia only, on CBC Radio One at 7 a.m.
Otto Lowy hosted The Transcontinental for 22 years and was one of CBC
Radio's most enduring and endearing personalities. His show was a
nostalgic and imaginary tour of the music of pre-war Europe. The tribute
features some of Otto's favourite musical selections. It's hosted by
Paul Grant and produced by Ed Wolk.
Daniel Say
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Document No. 1 of 1
Radio host took listeners on magic ride
His passion for music, knack for storytelling and cultured European
sensibility made him a popular CBC broadcaster, MICHAEL POSNER writes
space
By MICHAEL POSNER
Globe and Mail Monday, June 3, 2002 - Print Edition, Page R7
Broadcaster, actor and writer Otto Lowy, for 22 years the host of CBC
Radio's popular classical-music show The Transcontinental, and for 15
years the host of the Vancouver Symphony's Tea and Trumpets series at
the Orpheum Theatre, died last Tuesday in Vancouver. He had suffered a
heart attack in April, and returned home to convalesce. He was 81.
Born in Prague in 1921, Mr. Lowy lost virtually his entire family in
the Holocaust. He survived because, shortly before the German invasion
of Czechoslovakia in March, 1939, his mother sent him to England. He
later flew with the Czech squadron of the Royal Air Force.
In 1948, he came to Canada, settling initially in New Westminister,
B.C., and working in a sawmill. But before long, he had moved to
Vancouver. While continuing to work in a lumber company owned by
family friends, he started to be cast as an actor.
At the CBC, he became a regular voice on radio drama, largely because
his facility with languages -- he spoke several -- allowed him to
master European accents. He made his first acting appearance in a
budget series called Adventures in Europe.
"On a series like that, you always need a crazy Russian or a
villainous German," Mr. Lowy once said. "Suddenly I found myself
playing all of them."
Later, he took on bigger projects, scouring Europe for plays and
novels that could be adapted for radio, and became the CBC's point man
for Czech and German drama. He translated many of the scripts. In
total, he is said to have written, translated or adapted some 200
plays and novels.
The Transcontinental began as a Vancouver Symphony series during which
Mr. Lowy first began to spin his music and stories together. However,
his first CBC show was A Night at the Operetta, which he created with
Robert Sunter, the former head of music.
"It was hugely popular," Mr. Sunter recalled last week, "so much so
that I said, 'Let's do it again.' And Otto said, 'We can't. We've used
all the operettas.' So I said, 'Let's just repeat the season.' So we
did and it was again very popular. And then it occurred to me that it
was not so much the music, but Otto Lowy that the listeners wanted. So
we created The Transcontinental, an elegant if imaginary train that
could take Otto to different places and allow him to tell stories of
love and lust.
"I'm not an announcer." he once said. "I tell stories . . . I always
wanted to retain my emotional tie with Europe, and to express its
changing quality. This was only possible through music and the spoken
word, and the only forum for it was the CBC. . . . Even now," he once
said, "I still remember those cafis, not as self-pitying, sentimental
and self-tyrannizing hellholes, but as places with dark corners where
a quiet tear or a sad smile could give you, for a little while, a
measure of dignity."
Before The Transcontinental had even launched, Mr. Lowy was badly
injured in an auto accident -- broken ribs had pierced both lungs, and
he also had a broken pelvis and hip. For a time, there was some doubt
as to whether he would survive.
His then-producer, George Laverock, took the theme music that had been
chosen for the show -- The Oriental Express -- to the hospital and
played it for Mr. Lowy, saying "You gotta come back." And Mr. Lowy
said, "you're right."
"Otto was a real romantic," said Janet Lea, his producer for two years
during the early 1990s, and now area head of the CBC's
English-language music department. "The quality that came over the air
was the way he was. He had a wonderful gift for using his imagination
and taking people along with him."
Mr. Sunter said Mr. Lowy was "old world, with an e at the end of both
of those words. He was charming, cultured, educated and European. I
thought he was about 180 years old because he seemed to know
everything about the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the 20th."
His musical selections for the show reflected that sensibility, with
heavy emphasis on romantic composers such as Chopin, Lehar and Strauss
and singers of the past, such as Edith Piaf. The show's longevity
testified to its popularity. Across the country, on its
Sunday-afternoon time slot, it recently drew 5 per cent of the total
radio audience, which Ms. Lea called "very good for a classical-music
program." In Vancouver, where it was broadcast at 7 a.m. on Sundays,
it earned 24 per cent of all listeners at that hour.
Ms. Lea said Mr. Lowy always remained "haunted by his background. He
was a very sensitive, very romantic person. I think it was always in
his consciousness."
In 1997, he was featured in a CBC Television Man Alive episode called
A Journey to Prague, which explored the city's and his own Jewish
heritage, and examined artifacts that had been confiscated by the
Nazis in 1938.
At one point in the show, Mr. Lowy told the local Czech guide: "My
presence somehow unsettles you. I'm one of those artifacts, a part of
that legacy. And that's what you see in my eyes and you don't
understand."
Later, he told an interviewer, "This film was not easy. It was a
little bit like undressing in public. You're telling things that you
don't even tell friends very often."
Outside the radio studio, Mr. Lowy also worked as a stage actor in,
and director of, plays and musicals. He was a founding member of the
Vancouver Arts Club Theatre, directed 17 plays there, and acted and
directed at Theatre Under the Stars, a launching pad for many Canadian
musical performers. He also did interviews, and made radio
documentaries.
In addition to his great passions, opera and operetta, Mr. Lowy was a
serious student of the sport of kings, horseracing. Six years ago,
when a group of friends decided to celebrate his 75th birthday, they
went to the race track.
Otto Lowy leaves his wife, Barbara, and son David. A private funeral
was held in Vancouver last week, but a public musical memorial is
planned for the fall.
Otto Lowy, broadcaster, actor and writer; born in Prague, March 4,
1921; died in Vancouver, May 28, 2002.
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