Leita and the Summer of ‘67

From Tauranga City Library’s archives
A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

“B1164 4/1/67 Leita Lawn & Elizabeth Robertson resting at Soundshell”
Glassine envelope and 120-format cellulose acetate film negative
Bay of Plenty Times/Gifford-Cross Collection, Tauranga City Library

Leita – it was the name scribbled in green pencil on a crumpled glassine envelope that jumped out at me. For the last eighteen months I have been engaged part-time as a contractor, working through boxes of negatives from the Bay of Plenty Times/Gifford-Cross collection in the Tauranga City Library, rehousing the negatives in archival enclosures, transcribing metadata from the envelopes and digitizing the photographs. After digitization and processing, the images eventually appear online as the Gifford-Cross Collection on the Library’s web site Pae Korokī.

After handling many thousands of envelopes one could be forgiven, perhaps, for becoming a little jaded and glossing over much of the content, but this first name is pretty unusual. I’d only ever come across one “Leita” and she was a friend of my brother’s in Zimbabwe, half a world and half a lifetime away. So my eye was drawn to it, and then I saw her surname – “Leita Lawn.” She was married but I also knew her brother, and thus that her maiden name was Lawn. Likewise I was aware that her brother was originally from New Zealand, and had returned here. Could it be the same person?

Leita Lawn & Elizabeth Robertson after a performance at the Tauranga Soundshell, 3 Jan 1967
120-format film negative, Gifford-Cross Collection (Ref. gca-14151), Courtesy of Tauranga Library

To cut a long story short, I got in touch with Leita through my brother, sent her the digitized image, and she confirmed that she was indeed one of the two girls pictured.

“I was one of Max Cryer's first batch of singing children. I'll forward this to Elizabeth and the others. Two years after this my family had settled in what was then Rhodesia. Not long after Max died, I listened online to a radio interview given by someone who was on that tour with us.  Such a blast from the past - like your photo!”

Print from microfilm, Bay of Plenty Times, 4 Jan 1967, Courtesy of Tauranga City Library

A quick look at the Bay of Plenty Times on microfilm at the Library revealed the photograph was one of several taken that day at the Mount 5000 Club talent quest semi-finals at the Tauranga Soundshell. Other acts included the Nicholas Sisters (winners of the second heat, instrumental medley), Bill Swinton (second placed, vocal solo) and David Pearson and Peter McGregor (third, piano accordion and double bass duet).

Town Cryer, LP by Max Cryer and the Children (Leita Lawn, Judy Waite, Elizabeth Robertson, Sonia Carter, Bruce Matthews, Garth Jacobsen, Graeme McMahon, Neil Rowlands) (Spotify)

Max and the children, Auckland, 1966
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections Footprints Ref. 06997

Leita continued:

“I'll attach a photo of us recording that Town Cryer album - one of me looking cross-eyed, Elizabeth just behind me. We only ever did one or two takes - all in one go, sharps and flats included ... I feel sad when I look at Sonya and Graeme in that photo. My mum and I went to Sonya's funeral not a year later after she drowned during a fishing trip with her father and his friend. And then Graeme died just a few years later.”

The caption for the photograph in the Auckland Libraries Heritage Collection includes a reference to the planned tour which would include the appearance in Tauranga:

Entertainer Max Cryer and his group of young singers from Otāhuhu record 'Eidelweiss' for the Zodiac label at Stebbing Recording Studios in Auckland. The soloist at the microphone with Max is Neil Rowlands. The group had been asked to record songs for an LP, 'Town Cryer', after a successful appearance at the TV Festival Review earlier in the year. Future plans included an appearance on the Christmas edition of Revue 66 and a tour of beach carnivals over the New Year holidays. Photograph published in the South Auckland Courier Central Edition, 30 November 1966, p. 26

Max Cryer and the Children on Revue 66, Auckland Town Hall, NZTV, 1966
Photo courtesy of Max Cryer Collection and audioculture.co.nz

Cryer, who died in August last year, recalled to Audioculture in 2017:

“Suddenly everyone wanted to know. We were hired by big department stores, shopping malls, beach carnivals, movie premieres and TV shows. Of course, as time moved, the children grew up and were gradually replaced. But each and every one of them was a cheerful singer, lively but well-behaved not precocious, and never nervous. Over time, we recorded nine albums with hardly ever a studio second take.”

Reunion of Max Cryer and “the children,” Bombay Hills, 2011
(Leita with her hands on Max’s shoulder)
Photo courtesy of Bruce Matthews

“We old ‘children’ from the original group had a lovely reunion with Max about ten years ago at Bruce’s alpaca farm in the Bombay Hills.”

Leita now lives in a Bronte-like cottage in the English North Pennines.

References

Geraden Cann & Glenn McConnell (2021) Max Cryer remembered as ‘showbiz through and through’ after dying at 86, on Stuff, 26 Aug 2021, https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/300392377/max-cryer-remembered-as-showbiz-through-and-through-after-dying-at-86

Gareth Shute (2019) Max Cryer, published on Audioculture, 4 Jul 2019 https://www.audioculture.co.nz/profile/max-cryer

---

This archival item has been digitised and will be available to view on Pae Korokī. For more information about this and other items in our collection, visit Pae Korokī or email the Heritage & Research Team: Research@tauranga.govt.nz

Written by Brett Payne, Digitisation Contractor at Tauranga City Library

The Baptist Church

Image courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 24974

The Baptist Church was constructed in 1911 on the western side of Cameron Road between 10th and 11th Avenues. Newspaper reports at the time described the architectural style as Pelladian, a European style derived from the designs of a Venetian architect Andrea Palladio.

By the 1950s the building was too small for a growing congregation and it was sold. In following years it was used as a theatre by The Gateway Players and was also a second hand store called The Web. In 1985 it was relocated to the Historic Village in 17th Avenue. It is now the home of the Detour Theatre.

Arthur Dagley

Dagley building, c. 1920s, Photographer unknown
Image courtesy of Tauranga Library Ref. 99-1154

This largely self taught artist was born in Hastings in 1919 but resident in Tauranga from toddlerhood where his father had a large drapery. Arthur worked there as a young man but studied and took courses with other well known artists such as Claudia Jarman, Paul Olds, Louise Henderson, Rudi Gopas, Garth Tapper and Colin McCahon. 

He spent at least 3 decades as a professional artist, first exhibiting in Elizabeth St in 1966 and the Hamilton Art Gallery the following year.

Tauranga port scene, by Arthur Dagley
Private Collection

One of NZ’s most underrated painters, possibly as a result of his loyalty to this city. Dagley had his own private gallery but it was his vision to see Tauranga with a pubic facility. Ironically there was a posthumous exhibition and sale of many of his works in the Tauranga Public Art Gallery many years after his passing in 1998.

Arthur had a love affair with the port and shipping as a subject but also produced landscapes, seascapes and figures. A lot of his work was rather abstract and he also used mixed media.

Tauranga harbour scene, by Arthur Dagley
Private Collection

Dagley was a prolific artist whose style was forever developing and changing. During his full-time painting career of three decades, he exhibited in approximately 50 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows, and was a 1968 Benson & Hedges Art Award finalist and recipient of the National Bank Art Award in 1973. Examples of his work are held in several collections including the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

He was an elder of St Peter’s Presbyterian Church and contemporary and friend of other well known residents such as Lynne Harpham (nee Christian), Alf Rendell and Duff Maxwell.

Claudia Jarman (1908-1986)

Claudia Jarman
Image courtesy of the Jarman family

Claudia was a celebrated Art and Art History teacher. She arrived in Tauranga in 1939, and first taught at Tauranga District High School (Hillsdene), and from 1958 at Tauranga Girls College. Claudia was also involved in the Tauranga Repertory Society, and, with her husband Reg, she was a foundation member of the Tauranga Chamber of Music Society and the Tauranga Art Society.

But it was at school where I encountered her, and I still remember my first Art History lesson. We discussed a painting by Wassily Kandinsky – ‘The Battle’. Her passion for Art inspired two generations in the Bay of Plenty to practice and to appreciate art, and my siblings and I were just a few of them. She enjoyed young people and encouraged her students to express their own style and to extend it.

In discussing Claudia with my family, one said “She epitomised all that was great about that era – 1940’s-1970’s -where the emphases were more about art, music and culture. It was more about bringing together the most interesting people rather than those with money and high-status jobs”. In that era Tauranga had a strong dramatic and Arts culture.

Claudia was tiny in stature but she made a huge impression on the community. She campaigned for decades for an Art Gallery here in Tauranga and she sowed her dream seeds into the community through the pupils she taught and the people she encountered. She would be thrilled to know Tauranga now has its own Public Art Gallery.

Undine Clarke (1902-1986)

Undine Clarke as a young woman

One of the most remarkable people who contributed to Tauranga art and culture during the 20th century was the colourful Undine Clarke, a renowned dance teacher. Even if you didn’t learn ballet or other forms of dance, you still knew who she was. She was hard to miss with her hair drawn back by a Spanish comb, her jangling bracelets, and her Spanish dancing shoes. She didn’t look like the other mothers.

For decades she locally trained and encouraged the art of dancing be it ballet, Spanish, musical comedy, ballroom, or tradition highland. On top of all that, her numerous qualifications acknowledged her to be the highest qualified teacher of dancing in New Zealand in her time. And she belonged to Tauranga.

She came from Auckland, where she had a career as a solo dancer, to Tauranga when she married local farmer Hector Clarke. With him she raised a family of five children. As if this wasn’t busy enough during this time, she went to Australia for a year’s study and examinations to obtain Advanced Teacher’s Certificate (Royal Academy of Dancing). Once her family had grown, she furthered her career by going to London for personal, expert tuition in ballet, Latin American, Spanish and Greek dancing.

All this knowledge and experience benefitted Tauranga’s aspiring young dancers at the Undine Clarke School of Dance. Some of her pupils attained the ‘Solo Seal’, the highest degree of Ballet, notably Yvonne Edwards (nee Parnell).

Local performing societies benefitted from her skilled services as a choreographer and teacher. She received the British Empire Medal for cultural and community services in the 1969 New Year’s Honours List.

This remarkable woman pioneered the art of dance in Tauranga, and her legacy is the many dance schools led by those who learned their art under her tutelage.

Reference: Tauranga 1882- 1982: The Centennial of Gazetting Tauranga as a borough. Edited by A.C. Bellamy, published by Tauranga City Council .