THE PASSING OF A SONG

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 87, 9 October 1937, Page 24

THE PASSING OF A SONG

A song which once sold millions of copies all over the world, now brings its composer a royalty of about 12s a ye The song is "The Miner's Dream of Home," and its composer, Mr. Leo Dryden, one of the most famous music-hall personalities of the nineties, is now, at th<. age of 74, almost paralysed, and, except for his old-age pension, practi, cally penniless. In the three-acres garden of the Variety Artists' Benevolent Institution at Twickenham, Mr. Dryden told a "Daily Mail" reporter of the days when audiences at the Alhambra laughed or cried' as he wished "Strange, isn't it," he said, "to think that once I n.ade as much as £60 a week and that my songs earned me thousands a year, But since revue and the cinema began to kill the music hall, I have been dogged by ill luck. Yes, I still sing a bit. I entertain the company down here occasionally with some of my old •hits.' I have many friends here whom I used to know in the old days."