The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1959, Side 31

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
29
Playwright— GEORGE SALVERSON
George Salverson
The name of Salverson has been a
notable one in Canadian literature for
a good many years. One of the busiest
writers in the field of Canadian broad-
casting is George Salverson (formerly
of Winnipeg, now living in Toronto),
son of the novelist Laura Goodman
Salverson.
My first acquaintance with George
Salverson was made more than a decade
ago while I was working as a script
editor in the CBC’s Drama Departmen
in Toronto. Even at that time, the tall
scholarly-looking young writer was
regarded as one of the four or five
most able and promising playwrights
turning out scripts for the CBC.
A recent edition of the CBC Times,
in a special article on Salverson, quotes
him as follows “It’s too lonely. I sit
in isolation with my typewriter, wait-
ing for an idea or fighting with words.
This can go on for days or even weeks
and no one can help me. And when
I finally emerge front solitary confine-
ment, I don’t even know whether what
I’ve written is any good! That’s why I
don’t like the writing business.”
A surprising remark from one of
Canada’s free-lance radio-TV drama-
tists—'the article goes on to say—but
George Salverson, who says he was
shanghaied into writing 20 years ago,
is now so fascinated by the game that
he would not be happy doing any-
thing else, lonely as his working life
may be. He turns out his warmly enter-
taining scripts in an office he fixed up
in the basement of his Toronto home
tie keeps his FM radio tuned in to
soft, relaxing music to help counteract
the sensation of sitting in a vacuum.
“That way the silence of my typewriter
is less accusing!”
When he comes up for air period-
ically, his actress wife—an attractive
brunette called Sandra Scott, gives him
a hot meal, he has a brief romp with
the children (Julie 4, Scott 1%) and
then goes back downstairs to tackle
the drama dragon again. The life
seems to suit him. He used to look like
a bean-pole, tout Sandra’s cooking has
filled him out into a husky football
type.
George limits his writing to the day-
time except when an idea has sudden-
ly crystallized and then, like all writ-
ers, he works with feverish haste into
the night, even if he has no urgent
deadline. He finds documentaries more
fascinating than straight dramas when
they investigate a real-life human
problems, “but I wouldn’t get a kick
out of preparing a script about how