MEMORIES OF FRED FOLEY

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 7 November 1935, Page 6

MEMORIES OF FRED FOLEY

FAMOUS ENTER TAT NEK PASSES PIONEER OF MOVING PICTURES The following paragraph with reference to the late Mr Fred Foley, who was a well-known resident of Stratford as licensee of the Club Hotel, besides being a popular figure as a magician on the theatrical stage, appeared in the Auckland “Star’" : “Fred Foley has taken the last curtain call. To thousands of New Zealanders, even in pre-picture days, Fred gave much entertainment —he was, the writer considers, one of the greatest single-handed entertainers south of the line. Giving a two hours’ show, he travelled extensively throughout .Australia, New Zealand and the East. Music, shadcgraphy, magic, sleight-of-hand and ventriloquism comprised a talented offering that was welcomed in villages from the North Cape to the Bluff. Somewhere about thirty years back I met the show in Naseby, then largely populated by Chinese fossickers, and these comprised the bulk of the audience. One of Fred’s tricks was that known as the “Inexhaustible Bottle,” from which came any drink asked for by members of the audience. On this particular occasion several Chinamen partook freely of the bottle, but loud and long were the yells, culminating in a noisy exit from the hall, v hen the magician, ‘finding’ a blockage in the bottle, broke it to produce a live guinea pig.” There are few people who were in the habit of attending entertainments thirty years ago who do not remember the genial personality of Fred Foley. He was a pioneer in many forms of entertainment, and was responsible for presenting to many thousands of people their first opportunity of seeing moving pictures. He travelled ' from one end of New Zealand to the other showing pictures, among them being “The Battle of Waterloo,” and “Robbery Under Arms.” Those were the days when effects were mechanically arranged— f when coconut shells were used to imitated horses trotting on the hard roads, etc. Fred's show was half pictures and half vaudeville, with himself and his ventriloquial doll being the vaudeville. He was a pioneer of the “one-man show,” and many people in all parts of New Zealaud and Australia will regret his uassing.