BC Entertainment Hall of Fame Mourns the Passing of Founder and Starwalk Inductee Norman Young
The BC Entertainment Hall of Fame mourns the passing of founder and member of Starwalk, Norman Young. Norman was a well-known fixture in Vancouver and BC’s live entertainment universe since the 1950’s.
His home base for most of those years was UBC where he worked with the founders, Dorothy Somerset and Dr. John Brockington to create what would become the Theatre Department in 1961. Previously he had provided production services (scenery, props, lighting, stage management, technical direction) with theatre programming in the original Frederic Wood Theatre, 2 Second World War Army huts joined in T-formation and the Old Auditorium. He also supervised productions put on by the UBC Players Club including provincial tours, and MUSSOC, the Musical Theatre Society.
Previously as a student in the late 1940’s he had originated the role of Joe Beef in fellow student Eric Nicol’s “Her Scienceman Lover”, a one-act spoof presented annually for many years at lunch time in the Old Auditorium, and continued playing the role well into the 1960’s. Norman had perfect comic timing.
In the late 1980’s he and old friend, Impresario Hugh Pickett, were lamenting the lack of recognition and knowledge of the history and stars of BC’s entertainment world. Norman had been chair of the Civic Theatres Board for a number of years and so had excellent connections into City Hall. Hugh had worked with others in the 1970’s on the Save the Orpheum campaign which was successful in convincing the City of Vancouver to save the 1927 Orpheum from the wrecker’s ball and renovate it to become the home for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and many other touring shows, reopening on the 50th anniversary in 1977. Ten years later they were able to convince the City’s Department of Social Planning to fund an exhibit of the history of Showbiz in BC, to be housed in the Orpheum lobbies. A collection of artifacts was assembled for display and a historical photo exhibit. As part of the exhibition, Norman and Hugh contrived to honour the careers of the initial inductees into the nascent BC Entertainment Hall of Fame: Juliet, Dal Richards, Jeff Hyslop, Hugh Pickett. The initial exhibition opened in November 1990, with sponsorship from Gevalia Coffee Company.
Norman and Hugh did not leave it at that. They determined to carry the idea of the Hall of Fame forward, basing it in the Orpheum and building on the idea of Hollywood’s stars in the sidewalks. They brought in new sponsors, Zlotnik Lamb and Partners, William Tell Restaurant. The Civic Theatres Board formed a committee led by Norman and Hugh that included Art Jones, Dal Richards, Richard Archambault, Murray Goldman, Councillor George Puil, Rae Ackerman. This Selection Committee assembled a long list of potential inductees out of whom a short list of 40 was agreed on. City Council approved a request to install plaques in the sidewalks of Granville Street from Nelson to Georgia, “Theatre Row”. Norman found a company willing to create and install round plaques made of black granite engraved with the logo and names in gold. And so in 1994, Starwalk (and Starwall of photos of inductees in the Orpheum, 1996) was born.
~ Rae Ackerman
