PRODIGIES of their day turned on the charm for this 1940 photo. Mrs. Moreau appears in inset.

A Later group shot from 1940

The Kiddies Were Great -
As Mother Often Said

By MARY MIGLIORE 

CELIA MOREAU directed the WJAR Kiddie Revue from 1930 until the early '50s and she never tired of child singers, tap dancers, violinists, guitarists, accordion players, drummers and pianists. It was the stage mothers that got her down.

It's been almost 20 years since she retired and she's now a piano teacher in Cranston, where she was interviewed recently in her home.

"Those pushy mothers. It's a wonder I've got any hair 1eft in my head," she declared. "I had to be young to take it. I'd get calls at 1 a.m. from some mother who'd say I had her child sing the wrong song. Another mother was so mad because I couldn't appreciate her son's violin playing that I finally had to walk out of the studio on her."

In the old days children would come from all over New England to tryout for her musical variety show which played on Saturday mornings in the 1930s and was switched to Sunday afternoons in the next decade. Did she have any difficulties with the child prodigies?

"The children were no trouble," she recalled. "If they weren't talented or were difficult to work with, they weren't invited back. Some children are born with talent. Others weren't born with talent but their mothers think they were."

She used to gently apply the "don't call us, we'll call you" routine when it was necessary to let a child know he was all washed up at the age of eight.

She also had to contend with stage fathers." I remember a three year old drummer who didn't like to play and his dad would bribe him with a pony or anything he wanted to get him to perform."

Mrs. Moreau, a native of Cranston, started her radio career as one of the "Two Brunettes" singing on WEAN in the 1920s. She started the WJAR Kiddie Revue in 1930 with 22 moppets in knickers and white ankle socks. M. Sothern Abbott was her first announcer for the 15-minute show. It later became a half hour show but her bosses balked at giving her an hour unless she could prove the show's popularity.

"We invited people to write In for pictures and they printed up 1,000 but it wasn't nearly enough and the requests kept pouring in," she recalled. The Kiddie Review became an hour show and had to be moved from the radio studio to the auditorium at the Outlet company to handle the audience.

In those days directors didn't get paid and she worked two or three days a week on her own time making arrangements for the show and giving auditions. "I remember one time I was only auditioning accordion players and there was afire on Weybosset Street at the same time. The firemen complained about the swarms or accordion players leaping over the fire hoses on their way to the Outlet auditorium."

Mrs. Moreau was formerly married and her daughter also performed on the show at the age of three. Her daughter, Mrs. Lyndon Delfino of Cranston, now has three children.

Some of the performers went into broadcasting and are spread out all over New England--the veterans of the Kiddie Revue include announcers, band leaders, musicians and entertainers. She usually doesn't recognize them, but they know her.

"Somebody is always coming up to me and saying he was on the show. But I don't recognize them because 1 knew them as children."

So these days she isn't surprised at all when a strange man comes up to her in a restaurant and kisses her on the cheek. It happened again a couple of weeks ago and the man was an ex-trumpet player from the Kiddie Revue.

Then - Celia Moreau 1940

Celia Moreau in 1970's - Retired from broadcasting but teaching Piano still!