Stokowski at 88 - TV Documentary

Tom Slevin, director & producer

To mark Leopold Stokowski's 88th birthday in 1970, a television documentary surveyed his life and career. In this programme, we see him rehearsing his own American Symphony Orchestra; dictating a letter to Andrzej Panufnik regarding the first performance of the composer's 'Universal Prayer'; auditioning a young violinist in his New York apartment; receiving a prestigious Gold Medal award from the American Academy; travelling to England by boat (he never flew) to record Beethoven's 5th Symphony with the London Philharmonic (not the London Symphony as incorrectly stated) for the Decca / London 'Phase-4' label, with producer Tony'D'Amato and chain-smoking engineer Arthur Lilley; watching a baseball game between the New York Philharmonic and American Symphony Orchestra; and being interviewed by Glenn Gould for Canadian radio. 

The narrator mis-pronounces the Maestro's name (it should sound as if spelt "Stokoffski") but otherwise this is a well-produced programme. Remarkably, Stokowski lived to the ripe old age of 95 and was still energetically making records right up until a few weeks before he died in September 1977. 

Incidentally, to set the record straight, he was born Leopold Stokowski on 18 April 1882, son of Kopernik Joseph Boleslaw Stokowski and his wife Annie-Marion, at 13 Upper Marylebone Street (now New Cavendish Street) in London (see his Wiki bio entry). At no stage in his life or career did he ever change his name from or to "Stokes." This was a nonsense dreamt up by his detractors once he'd achieved international fame in the 1930s.