The Postcard
An M.K. Series postcard that was published by the Kashower Co. of Los Angeles California. The 'poem' is particularly awful.
The card was posted in Santa Barbara Ca. on Thursday the 25th. December 1919 to:
Miss Allyne Hayman,
1822, Santa Barbara Street,
Santa Barbara,
Calif.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"A Merry Christmas
from
Marjorie Holland".
The People's Freedom Union
So what else happened on the day that Marjorie posted the card to Allyne?
Well, on the 25th. December 1919, the People's Freedom Union had intended to march up Fifth Avenue in New York City in order to support persons imprisoned through the Espionage Act.
The march was to be followed by groups canvassing congregations attending Christmas church services in order to raise awareness of the situation. However, the New York City Police broke up the march before this could occur.
Noele Gordon
The day also marked the birth in East Ham, Essex, England of the actress Noele Gordon.
Joan Noele Gordon was a English actress and television presenter. She played the role of Meg Mortimer (originally Richardson) in the long-running British soap opera 'Crossroads' from 1964 to 1983.
Noele Gordon - The Early Years
Noele Gordon's father was an engineer in the Merchant Navy and she was born in East Ham (now part of the London Borough of Newham). She was given the middle name of Noele because she was born on Christmas Day.
After attending convent school at Ilford, she was taught to dance by Maude Wells, and later spent several years living in Southend on Sea.
She made her first public appearance at the East Ham Palace and shortly afterwards, sang "Dear Little Jammy Face" at a restaurant in London. After this event, her mother and her aunt were keen for her to begin a stage career.
Gordon was credited as the first woman to be seen on colour television sets, as she took part in John Logie Baird's world's first colour transmission on the 3rd. July 1928.
Noele Gordon's Career
Noele attended RADA, and appeared in repertory theatres. In April 1949, she took the role of Meg Brockie in the original London production of Brigadoon for 685 performances at Her Majesty's Theatre. She stayed with the show for a national tour.
In 1953 Noele toured as Mrs. Sally Adams in Call Me Madam after Billie Adams had played the role in the London season at the Coliseum. She appeared in two British films, 29 Acacia Avenue (1945) and Lisbon Story (1946) in minor parts.
Noele's acting career came to a halt in 1955 when she joined Associated Television in London where she presented their first-ever programme, The Weekend Show. She worked behind the scenes as Head of Lifestyle programmes.
Gordon then studied the television medium at New York University, and after her return helped Reg Watson and Ned Sherrin launch ATV Midlands in 1956.
As well as being a producer, Gordon became a presenter for the new Birmingham-based service. Her first television appearance for ATV in the Midlands, Tea With Noele Gordon, was the first popular ITV chat show, and while presenting this series, she became the first woman to interview a British Prime Minister, at the time Harold Macmillan was in office.
Initially commissioned as an emergency schedule filler, the show became so successful that Gordon gave up her executive position to concentrate on presenting. She then moved on to present a daily live entertainment show, Lunchbox.
Crossroads
In the summer of 1964 Lunchbox came to an end after more than 2,000 episodes. It made way for a new daily soap opera, Crossroads, in which Gordon played the role of motel owner Meg Richardson (later Meg Mortimer), a part which had been developed with Gordon in mind.
First in 1969 and over the following decade, she won the TV Times award for most popular television actress on eight occasions.
Gordon was the only member of the Crossroads cast who had a permanent contract; all other cast members were booked as and when on an ad hoc basis.
Gordon stayed with the programme until she was sacked in 1981, when ATV was in the process of being re-constituted into a new company, Central Independent Television. Central were obliged to continue ATV's commitment to Crossroads; however, Head of Programmes Charles Denton wanted to end the soap opera in favour of more expensive and lavish drama productions.
The decision to dismiss Gordon - the show's most popular cast member - was taken in the hope that viewers would desert the show, giving Central a valid excuse to axe it.
Noele returned to Crossroads in August 1983 for two episodes.
In 1985, it was decided to revamp Crossroads; one element in the updating if the show was its renaming as Crossroads Motel. The programme's new look was designed to bring back Gordon on an 'as and when' basis, starting with a three-month stint from April 1985.
However, Noele, who had already appeared in 3,521 episodes, was too ill to make the planned return.
Noele Gordon's Later Career
After the termination of her Crossroads contract, Gordon appeared in Gypsy at Leicester's Haymarket Theatre.
This was followed by a revival of Irving Berlin's musical Call Me Madam, touring the Midlands, and then at the Victoria Palace Theatre where it ran for only 88 performances.
Her last stage appearance was in The Boy Friend at Plymouth's Theatre Royal, although she became ill during the run and had to be replaced.
In an interview she gave to the TV Times in 1981 she announced that she might, once her stage work had come to an end, take up the offer of returning to presenting. In the same 1981 TV Times interview she commented that a future role as a breakfast television presenter was being negotiated. She would however not return to television full-time because of her theatre commitments.
Noele Gordon's Personal Life
For many years in the 1960's and early 1970's, Gordon lived in a large white-washed country house in Weir End, near Ross-on-Wye, beside the A40 road to Monmouth. Gordon never married.
It became known in 1982 that Gordon was suffering from cancer, for which she underwent two major operations.
The Death of Noele Gordon
Noele retired to her home in Birmingham, where she died at the age of 65 on the 14th. April 1985 of stomach cancer. She was laid to rest in the churchyard of St Mary's Church in Ross-on-Wye.
Tony Adams, who played Adam Chance in Crossroads, commented in 1985 just after her death that:
"There has never been a star of
Crossroads, although Nolly was
Crossroads."
