a style that in some ways anticipates the stand-up comedy boom of the present era. This was the story as Cosette told it in a 1966 interview, and was one that is found in other interviews she gave over the course of the final decade of her life. In a 1963 interview, she gave a less rosy-coloured image of her early life: "Born Cosette Le Gassicke, the oldest of five daughters, Miss Lee had no encouragement from her parents in her acting aspirations. Too precarious a living, they said; take a business course. She took one, and loathed it. "[Cosette remembered:] 'Then at 16 I got a part in "The Trial of Mary Duggan" at the Grand Opera House. And I knew I could not turn back.' "From 16 to 22 she put in an apprenticeship in the U. S., learning 'the craft' with people like Wallace Ford, Leo Carillo, Walter Kingsford, Spring Byington. They were good years. "[Cosette continued:]'Then, in 1932, I got a telegram as I was reading for a part in New York to say that the clothing business my father had worked for had gone under, and I was needed back home. Depression was sinking showbusiness in Toronto; the stock companies like the Grand Opera, the Empire, the Vaughan Glaser and the Cameron Mathews, were folding. I had to do something, and there seemed nothing to do.'" It seems to have been at this time that she worked as a puppeteer, among other jobs. In this interview, Cosette gave the date 1936 for the date of her first radio play, organized by Win Barron. This was described as a half-hour murder mystery titled Vitrol, presumably a serial. It was at this time that the actress adopted the professional name of Cosette Lee. Vitrol, and other productions which followed, was produced on radio station CFCH (which subsequently became the CBC). Cosette remembered: "... we all sat around a squat little microphone placed in the centre of a table in a very small room, and each in turn would speak into the object. We also did our own sound effects, and at the appropriate moment, would scramble from our chairs, race to a corner of the room near the controls, and rattle some cellophane to imitate the sound of fire, or use some other elementary sort of approach. It was fun, and I think that the young people