I believe so. A bit before my time. Apparently he died in a very ugly car crash, and she immediately gave up live performances altogether after that.
That is correct. Perhaps not known: Esmé never owned a car and in fact couldn't drive one. All those years she was transported by a taxi, under contract with the SABC.
If I may be allowed a few minutes of nostalgia:
The year is 1955 (no typing error). As an engineering student I did compulsory 6 weeks vacation work at the SABC, Rocklands, Cape Town. That building was then newly finished.
Apart from repairing many Leak TL12s, then used as studio monitors (I think the loudspeakers were Peerless), service to the Neumann recorders and Studer stuff were also on the daily list. The record players were actually used as instant-start (on cue) and instant-stop play-backs. Tape recordings were not then considered as 'permanent' as records, which were often used to 'cue in' at exact moments and exact places. The record blanks were shellac-coated aluminium discs, that could be 'cleared' and re-coated for repetitive use. This was done outside the SABC, not sure where, but these arrived regularly.
For e.g. dramas, (mostly done after hours because actors had other day jobs), the 'sound man' previously copied the relevant cuts of music onto the temporary discs, edited/lined up onto a final disc (including sound effects. And no, we did not wave sheets of metal up and down; by that time everything was available on disc, either commercially or made by the SABC.) At the 'take' actors sat in a studio, fully visible by and audible to the sound-man (there were often two of us). Here I must correct; the recording took place on tape (30 inches/sec) so that corrections could be made by splicing. (A lot of tape - 1/4 inch Scotch mostly, single track - was really wasted. There were no qualms about cutting and throwing away. Us students got permission to wind that on our own reels and made good use of it at home; a 'little' 17 cm reel was easily filled from a day's 'wasted' tape!) To cut short, it was good experience but matters could get tense. The last thing a producer tolerated on top of sometimes moody actors, was a lousy sound engineer! Especially Suzanne van Wyk - an excellent producer, rest her soul - could come down on you like a sack of sand if someting even small was not exactly correct.
As far as I can recall the announcer, say on a musical request programme (like Esmé did) did do announcing and putting up records all by him/herself. There were two record players and the cueing was done by headphones, while the other turntable was playing. I sometimes helped there but it was not the usual thing at the time; there was easily enough time for one person to do that.
Coming back on topic then (sorry!), those turntables had to be capable of instantaneous and exact starting, especially when used for effects in dramas. As is probably known, the distance between turntable and thin platter was very small, probably <1mm. No bump was heard on start-up. And there was not much of volume adjustment required; this was set beforehand from a tone of standard amplitude corresponding with 0dB VU, and somehow recordings were mostly of standard volume/amplitude. (Those were not the days of crazy recording engineers, at least in my experience.)
Sic transit gloria mundi
