A Liverpool Exemplar - Muriel Levy

Muriel Augusta Levy was born on the 2nd of August 1903 in Paddington, London, the youngest daughter of Polish-born Louis Levy, a boot and polish dealer, and his British wife Amelia. By 1911 the family had moved to the fashionable area of Bedford Street, Liverpool, just off Abercrombie Square, to live with her father's family and was educated at the prestigious Liverpool College for Girls in nearby Grove Street. In the early days of BBC Radio, Muriel's was one of the first voices to be heard on the Liverpool station, 6LV, which began broadcasting on the 11th of June 1924 and she soon became a radio personality, known to generations of children as 'Auntie Muriel', broadcasting every day at 5.15pm. Murial also took part in, and devised various types of, Revues, Afternoon and Evening Entertainments in which Violet Carson would play orchestral piano (a skill not easily acquired and very much misunderstood today); and during which she would also sing as part of a close-harmony group called 'The Three Semis' (the other members of which were Doris Gambell and Violet Carson). By the late 1920s she was also organising Children's Hour and Woman's Hour for 6LV. The first studio was above a cafe in Lord Street, Liverpool, providing programmes for a few hours each day for listeners via their crystal sets. Now living on Queen's Drive, Liverpool, she always took an active interest in promoting literacy, and from the 1920s, through her Saturday weekly column in the Liverpool Echo – Auntie Muriel's Treasure Chest – she encouraged children to read and draw for inclusion in her articles. One such column, in 1951, included a mention of a young man by the name of Paul McCartney, who would have then been aged eight or nine. Macca only receives a brief mention in the column, thanking him for his contribution, along with several other children. In 1954, the late Stuart Sutcliffe, then aged 12 or 13, would also get a mention in Muriel's column. It reads: "Stuart Sutcliffe, I have noted your views. Glad your Echo postal order brought you your pen."

Also as a scriptwriter for the Toytown series, she played the part of Larry the Lamb in many of these episodes partnering Doris Hare, 'Aunty Doris', in radio skits.

  

Muriel was a member of the Liver Sketching Club and was a cartoonist for the Dandy comic where she 'invented' Korky the Cat. A prolific writer and illustrator of books for Ladybird, she wrote a large number of the Ladybird titles for children, including Cinderella, Dick Whittington, The Adventures of Wonk, Fireworks, Sleeping Beauty, Seven White Gates and The Gay Dolphin Adventure. Her career developed as she began to write scripts for radio and in 1945 she adapted for radio in eleven parts the first book of Galsworthy’s 'Forsyte Saga', repeating the exercise with the second some ten years later. She also adapted 'Inheritance', a 1932 novel by Phyllis Bentley. Leaving the B.B.C. for more freelance creative work, she wrote over three thousand broadcast scripts, including original plays, revues, songs and dramatisations of famous books such as 'National Velvet', 'Anne of Green Gables', 'Arabian Nights' and 'The Man of Property'. 

 

 

She also sat on the Committee of the National Library for the Blind, helping to choose books to be translated into Braille. Muriel served as Chairman of the Liverpool Child Welfare Fund, and was Vice-President of the Women's Branch of the Royal British Legion. In 1927 Miss Levy was a Charter (Founder) member of SI Liverpool, and served as the Club's President in 1958. She was married twice, and had one daughter. She died on the 30th of March 1972, aged 68.

 

Note:- Muriel's uncle, Alderman Alf Levy, owned the Scala and Futurist cinemas on Lime Street. Muriel’s nephew, Captain Reginald Levy, went to the Liverpool Institute. He was the English captain of a Belgian Sabena Airliner which was hijacked by Palestinian Black September terrorists in 1972. When he was 18 he volunteered for the RAF immediately after Dunkirk and fought throughout the war. He was awarded the DFC for his part in Bomber Command and finished his combat career with three raids on Berlin.

 

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/08/a-liverpool-exemplar-thomas-cecil-gray.html