Letter
Ida Carroll, Geoffrey Griffiths
1938

Geoffrey Griffiths is expected at "the Night Club" - friendly card game, but Ida Carroll has given up cards. Ida would like to go to the Chauve-Souris and Geoffrey would like to come too (likely the theatre troupe by Nikita Balieff performed in Manchester's Opera House in November 1938).
He chats about a game of cricket, stating that "everyone was happy with the probable exception of the visiting team."
He comments on the pleasing performance of Mischa Auer in "You Can't Take It With You" (a film first showed in the US in 1938), and admits that "it's the first time I've heard of the wrong - and apparently uncorrected - delivery of a typewriter to be an excuse for becoming a playright - playwright!"
Fun fact: Mischa Auer used his grandfather's surname for his acting career. Leopold Auer was a famous musician who Tchaikovsky dedicated his complicated Violin Concerto op.35 to when it was written. Auer never played it - dismissing it as too unpleasant and too complicated. So, violinist Adolph Brodsky gave it a bash, giving it its first public performance and him and Tchaikovsky became sort of pen pals. Brodsky became the second principal of the Royal Manchester College of Music. We have Tchaikovsky's letters and Brodsky's marked up score of the music in the archives at the RNCM. It really is a small world!

Ref: CARROLL/IGC/3 GG
With thanks to the Ida Carroll Trust
Date is unknown.

Part of the #NSM2020 project "A 20/20 Legacy: the centenary of the Northern School of Music" supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.