LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Alfred Drake
built 237 days ago
With the bravura of a great Shakesperean and a singing voice of operatic proportions, Alfred Drake was the perhaps the most successful and in-demand leading man of the 1940s and ‘50s. After an early featured role alongside other talented youngsters in Babes in Arms, he won acclaim and became a first class star in 1943 as Curly in the revolutionary Oklahoma!, opening the show with “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” and flying in the face of the then-traditional opening chorus. Drake’s performance is remarkable, strong yet emotional, serious and witty too. The show made Drake a star and remains his most famous part.
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Alfred Drake is considered by many a musical theater legend. He had his share of flops, but his stage presence and lyrical tenor defined many of the roles he originated on Broadway, although he never reprised any of them in subsequent films.
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To see Kean play King Lear, said Coleridge, "is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." To see Alfred Drake, in his one lamentable lapse of the evening, act Othello is to read Shakespeare by the flash of a lightning bug. Drake is more than a star; he is a galaxy. Whether he is profile-preening for an expected lady love, slashing the air with his fencing foil, or parrying insults with the Prince of Wales, he has all the darkling dash, swagger and brio of a Renaissance man. He pours his voice like nut-brown ale through a melodic sieve of a score.
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By World War II Drake-Brockman had become the senior and most experienced judge. In 1939-40 he made awards in the coal-mining industry, previously governed by State awards. It has been claimed that 'the changes were the greatest ever made to the advantage of the workers in the mining or any other industry'. They included the 40-hour week for underground workers and paid annual leave. In his survey of the industry Drake-Brockman stated that the 'history of the coal-mining industry in Australia … may be described as an unbridled and unregulated contest between employers and employees … and actuated only by the rules of the jungle'. A system of local reference boards and a central reference board under his chairmanship was created, but in 1943 the dissatisfaction of the Miners' Federation led to his replacement.
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In 1927, Drake-Brockman was appointed to the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. As a judge, he cast the deciding vote in the 1934 Basic Wage Case, providing for a system of child endowment payment. In 1939 and 1940 he awarded a 40 hour week and paid annual leave to coal miners. In 1943, he lifted the female wage to 75% of the male basic wage in the clothing and rubber industries. In the 1945 Female Minimum Wages Case, he was with the minority in ruling that it should be extended to all industries. The majority did not come around to this view until 1950.
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