Show Career Ends Happily

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31383, 31 May 1967, Page 2

Show Career Ends Happily

Being bitten by the show business bug is usually like catching malaria the subject seldom loses the fever for good. But Coral Sussman is ending her career on a happy note. In six weeks she will leave Christchurch to return to Holland to marry Tony Teal, a leader of the band with which she sang for eight years. The band members decided it was time to disperse—-

“while you are still getting offers for contracts”—and settle down. Miss Sussman feels it is time she did just that, and is looking forward to setting up house in Rotterdam with her Dutch-born husband who will return to engineering. When she left her job as hostess in an Auckland restaurant in 1960 to visit friends in Holland she did not anticipate eight yean spent in the spotlight. A chance meeting with Mr Teal, a pianist who had played in Auckland for three years and was forming a band, set her on a circuit of clubs and restaurants in Holland and Germany. Accent Helped

Strictly an amateur in the beginning, Miss Sussman took singing lessons and worked hard to build a repertoire in German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. Her “Kiwi” accent was one of the band’s assets and she answered requests for “something Maori” with “Now Is The Hour,” which “kept everyone happy.”

Now fluent in Dutch, and “useful” with German, she speaks English with a slight Continental accent, but has by no toeans relinquished her New Zealand associations. Her pet Bedlington terrier Is proudly named Tiki. "I found New Zealand and New Zealanders were highly regarded,” she said. Facing an audience and finding suitable accommodation were her two most pressing problems in the band’s early days. The worst of her stage fright was overcome in six months as she found all that Mrs Ivy Collins had taught in her years of music and dancing lessons came back to her as she stood on the rostrum. Accommodation remained a problem during many contracts, making the staff quarters provided at her two favourite “stands,” the "plush” casino in Bad Neuenahr and the American Officers* Club, also in Germany, all the more memorable. "We really lived well then,” she said. Hard Work At times Miss Sussman envied New Zealanders their “hard . working” musicians’ union. Life on the Continent was by ho means leisurely with a six-day working week beginning quite early in the evening and continuing into the small hours. "We had to play the sort

of music the audience wanted to hear, and that could be anything from folk music to jazz or pops in almost any language. Club and casino patrons don’t go just for the music,” said Miss Sussman. Trusting to luck, Miss Sussman signed her last traveller’s cheque for £lO when she joined the band. She kept her venture a secret, and waited three months before writing of it to her family in Christchurch. Car Stolen “It wasn't easy at first, but we got more contracts all the time. For the first two years we travelled by train, after that by car. One of my worst times occurred in Holland when my new car was stolen.

For three months I was without transport and we were Working in a small town four miles from where I lived. I borrowed a bike and pedalled back and forth with Tiki in the basket.” While living in Europe was still novel, most free days and evenings would be spent “seeing the sights.”

“But that soon wears thin. After the first two years I usually had a quiet dinner out, or spent the time making my costumes.” Gift of Frocks

The beaded and sequined cocktail dresses which she sewed by hand have been sent to the Salvation Army in Holland. “Goodness knows what they will do with them, but the army does a good job. Perhaps they will be sold,” she said with a laugh. Spirited and quite unpretentious, Miss Sussman has no regrets about becoming a housewife. “I haven’t had much time to think about it yet, but after a while in show business you long to meet someone real. It’s great fun but all so artificial. It will be nice to be accepted for myself and not thought of as a performer,” she said.