Strong Canadian team for N.Z. screen

Press, 15 October 1981, Page 15

Strong Canadian team for N.Z. screen

Back home in Canada. Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster are regarded as two of the country's top TV stars. They have performed comedy on TV for more than 25 years. A 13-part series from these two begins on Two tonight. In an indirect way Johnny Wayne’s stage career was fostered by the Army. His university studies in English were interrupted by World War II when he joined the Canadian Army and became an infantryman. When the Army Show was created, he was transferred from Camp Borden, where he was serving as an advanced infantry instructor, and was re-united with his college show partner, Frank Shuster.

Together they wrote and performed in the big Army Show and later, when it was split into smaller units, took the first show into Normandy after D-Day. The team of Wayne and Shuster holds the official record for the greatest number of apperances in the history of the Ed Sullivan Show (67). They have won numerous international awards, such as the famous Silver Rose of Montreaux, and have twice been chosen by the TV critics and editors of the United States as the best comedy team in America — all without leaving Canada. On his own, Johnny Wayne has many non-showbusiness interests. He does a lot of work for the physically handicapped.

He has three sons, formidable young men who are scholars and athletes. They are Brian, a TV producer, Jamie, a journalist who works for the “Financial Post”; and Michael, who teaches American History at Yale University. Frank Shuster is from Toronto. His family has a longstanding show-business background. He graduated from the University of Toronto and was on his way to a master’s degree in English when the war intervened. Frank’s children are carrying on the showbusiness tradition. His daughter, Rosalind, has won two Emmy Awards for comedy TV-writ-ing. His son, Steve, is a musician and freelance TV writer.