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I
THE CHINA MAIL, FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1955.
FIRST
NIGHT RECOLLECTIONS
Beatrice Lillie
Reigns Alone
By SIR BEVERLEY BAXTER, MP
London, SAW that the woman opposite me at the dinner table was 'bursting with a'desire to startle us all but she was not going to waste it until she had our cars and eyes. At last she saw her oppor. tunity.
it or not," she "Believe said with & pretence of modesty that fooled no one. "I managed to get two seats in the stalls for Ben Lillie's first night."
་
How wonderful! How Having simply thrilling! lived in the world for some time did not spoil, her story by saying that I also had two seats in the stalls. There is no use having two Wellingtons for one Water-
1oo.
But when I got home my mind went philandering Into Telophone 52278 the distant past when, by
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sheer merit or something, I was promoted from office boy at the Nordheimer Toronto Plano Company" in
to answering the telephone
the switchboard in
sheet department and accepting payment of tuning and hire- purchase accounts.
It was fun to see customers come into our King Street store br- and go up to a salesman hind the counter and say: "Do you know a song about moon in June that goes da-da-da-doo- doo-doo-moon?" But it was when nn English. fun woman, who played the organ in church on Sundays, would enter the store with her two doughters-Muriel and Reatrice,
hore
High Spirits
FURIEL was the gifted one. In
M fact she played the plano
quite well, and in those dark, un civilised days, the ability
to
She sang a serious number marriage. There was still in and the audience laughed. She existence the English tradition nga funny sumber and the that the liveller members of the audience groaned. Piqued and peerage married into the theatre, defiant Beatrice looked at them So one day we learned that or if she were Madamo Melba Beatrico had weddod young Sle and the Duc), ♬s' of Westershire Robert Feel descended from the In one.
great 19th century statesman. He was a baronet by succession. Fourteen years later Sir Robert died. There was one san to the marriage, a fact which result- ed in Lady Peel having a small of course they kept alive boy named Bir Robert Peel for name of the great ancestor.
Incidentally Bautrice did tour of America as Lady Pool with the result that in a Middle West thoatro the audience stood up out of politeness when the came on the stage. Later in the when
she did programme
"I will now sing for your Possible approval irving Berus song "When I Lost You'." At the end of it they gave her the "bird" Her flop was com- what is known in England as plete
But in this heartbreak experi- ence she discovered something about herself. When she turned on the audience with lofty con- tempt they were startiod and momentarily quiot. What about laughing at the audience in the future? What about making them the joke?
About that time a remark- able Anglo-Frenchman named Andre Charlot was
producing something new at the ville Theatre in London,
DEA
Vaude-
the
11
song of lament about an im- poverished English lady, intend- ed to be very funny, the kindly American audience WIN most embarrassed.
Then came the second war So
and such is the long arm of co- Jong hed Lon-
only incidence that tho widowed don worshipped Beatrice took the house next to at the shrine of mine in St John's Wood. Where *The Merry once I gazed at her from the Widow," "The box in Nordheimer's Piano and Gaiety Girl Music Store I could now see her and Gilbert occasionally from my garden.
Sullivan
that ready change.
It waa
for
The
war had started
and the tempo
of life as well да dooth had quickened. Beatrice secured an audition, and Andre Charlot watched her from the dark, empty auditor
he Being a Frenchman jum. was interested in any mani- festation of the feminine and being a theatrical producer ho of some- also knew the value thing new,
gifted.
Here on the stage was some- thing he had never seen before. This girl from some place called Toronto was neither pretty-in the ordinary sense-nor Her singing voice was harmless and unimportant. Her dancing would not get her into the back row of the chorus.
Yet she had something. What was it? Suddenly he saw Here before him was the
play the plano was much goddess
esteemed. The years of cn- lightenment when girls would only have to learn to twiddle a knob were still far ahead.
very In- of indomitable effectuality. Dancers were A dozen for a pound singers could be found in any corner of Britain, and almost any female could act up to a point, This girl was different.
gon
►
Rebel In Her
BUT fate is a relentless thing. Her youthful son was in the Navy when the Hitler war be
and was posted
to the Battleship HMS Hood. You will remember when the mighty
battleship German
Blemarck made her voliant and deadly raid into the North Atlantic,
'CURTAIN UP IN TWO MINUTES {"
World Onpyright by arrangement with the Manchester Guardian
BERIA'S SUCCESSOR
MORE EFFICIENT
By Hugh Lunghi
OSOF SWIATLO, a Union, and in July of the same He was also ordered to "bring senior official of the year he became Deputy Com- over" to the Soviet Union, I missur for Internal Affairs for necessary by force, any German Polish Soviet Police
the whole of Soviet Union. scientists who were experts in before his light to the
rocket, от guläçd missile, West, said recently that the
During the war, as deputy development, and, of
scientists. Apart from downfall of Beria had made subordinate, Serov was chief this Se ov was in charge of
head of the NKVD and Beria's
course,
"no difference to Russian executor of the Kremlin's Soviet counter-espionage in Ger
forced labor for provision of The East German uranium mines. In 1950 the Soviet Govern- the historie ment published
"Great decrcos".
police methods in Poland." genocide policies. He Was In many and responsible for the He added: "Beria's succes- direct control of the operations HMS Hood was sent to hunt sor is, of anything, more for rounding up and owne
her down, and by one chance efficient." in a thousand at a distance of
hit miles the Bismarck
the Hood in a vulnerable spot. Something like 1,200 men went to their death, and among them was Beatrice's son,
After the war I called to see her in the flat she had taken in New York. She had studied painting and the walls were
her festooned with
canvases
to
В
the
Caucasian
end minority nationalities in the men autumn and winter of 1948 and decre
Launching the
Mr Swiatlo whs referring the spring and suminer of 1944.2uction Projects of Com
Ivan Aleksandrovitch
Serov, and having served in force subordinate to Serov, he should know what he was talking about.
rulers
1"-in other words,
under his building of canals and s
For this he had command the notorious DON electric stations (in which forces.
The initials stand for Labour was widely used). Sarov, Divisya Osobove Nezmachendys, or now First Deputy Minister for "Special Operations Division.”
Internal Affaire, played a major
It was not until after the war part in this programme, and in
Although the new Soviet that the Soviet Government February 1952 he was awarded were compelled to published the doerces which a third Order of Lenin, she was adopt a milder approach to legaled the wholesale deporth- their own people, they saw tion of these nationalities to the of Siberia and
Yet strangely enough utterly conventional in her choice of subjects. The rebel in her did not extend to CROVES.
Her
clearly, especially after the waste spaces
Central Asia. But even before workers' revolt in Eastern publication many eyewitnesses Germany In June 1963, that who had reached the free world
out,
CHAIRMAN
But in
After the execution of Berla She is a star that reigns alone in her particular heaven,
b December 1983, the Ministry" a relaxation of tension, bad given graphic descriptions of Internal Affal's was put in earnings are enormous but when the tax authorities of Britain would create particular of the callous and brutal manner charge of Sergei Kruglov. This and the USA. take their deadly dangers for Sovist rule in in which deportation was carried led many to believe that Kruglov toll I imagine that sho
had succeeded Berta. has the satellite countries. What little enough to carry to reservo,
was announced CIVO: better
than Serov,
Serov was awarded the Order April 1984 it
no State that the If she owned a biscuit factory
Department of
Over Later Security had been handed in either country she could sell therefore, could they have of Suvorov First Class for his
part in these operations. it at a profit which would not chosen as head of their fe received the title of Hero of to a committee directly respon be taxed. But having only
sibly to the Council of Ministers, security service? For the Soviet Union and a second The chairman of this committee Ontario she proved that in add the potentialities of a female peculiar gifts to sell she must Serov's career marks him Order of Lenin,
We were glad for Mrs Lillie's gifted sako that she had one daughter, because poor Beatrice could not do a darn thing. Her voice would hardly have got by in a church choir on a wel Sun- day, and when she joined ing stock company in Northern
Name In Lights
four- WIT
also
tion to being unable to sing or play the piano she could neither donee nor act.
of
But from the cage Nordheimer's shop 1 admired her for her high spirits. Some times she would address the salesman behind
the
with embarrassment.
WITH a flash of genius Charlot saw that Beatrice Lille had
Charlie Chaplin, But he was only partially right. Chaplin made himself a figure of pathos us well as of fun, whereas there
ho was no pathos in the girl was looking at She was in- domitable.
When I reached London Iri
pay
ruthlessly
to
the
her
tax
gatherer,
We have just come home from Beatrice's opening night which I mentioned a few. hundred words ago. What a performance! Her supporting cast was weak and the whole responsibility fell on her little shoulders."
mar
out as the greatest expert in "taking care" of non- Russian nationalities.
was
4
to be Ivanı announced After the war, Scrov, with the Aleksandrovich Serov,
In the end Serov may go the military rank of Colonel-General, was sent to Germany as "Deputy way of all Communist Secret Chief of Civil Affairs" under Pelco chiefs, but for he has Of average height and build, Marshal Zhukov. Here he had outlived not only his chief Beria,
algo but
his close amotiates In up with light hair, he is about 65, another job of rounding
This fact and those who know him say he doin this case, to find and re- the police apparatus, has a nervous but extremely patriate to the Soviet Union any alone testifies to his remarkablo
In his Soviet nationals who were in capacity for survival, and sup energetic temperament. She is too good a trouper not remarkable carver he has risen Germany, and particularly those borts the statement that "Borla's to what is probably the most who hesitated or refused to re- guccessor is, if anything,moro colleagues were not up to their important executive post in the turn to the Soviet Union, task. She beard the tepid USSR-Chairman of the State applause which is almost worse | Security Committee under the than siléncé ar booing“. But in | Council of Ministers, answerable the second half she wound up only to the top leadership. the show with some twelve songs that brought the London first nighters to their feet,
counter the war Beatrice had her name with the affected drawl of a duchess opening a Conservative in lights and I was lucky
get even a single seat for the garden
Next time sho fete,
Charlot Revue "chenp." There to would be so Middle West that her English mother would blush the stage was Bea (as she was known by that time) doing a dance with six chorus girls.
The others were perfect in every movement, but somehow Bea was just wrong-though not completely. When it came to a high kick she went at it with Only two people believed in her-Bratrice and her mother, a joyous smile and then stopped But I doubt if either of them to examine her finger nails in
stead. When the other girls
us
In fact she once horrified all by actually doing the dance of the dying swan and tripping up every time she did a twirl.
did
have known that her
Gossamer. Touch
ADJ
1
PROTECTORS
"
He is one of the few leading knew what they believed They wiggled their hips Bea's hips
officials of the Soviet Secret Police who have survived the scht her to a teacher who coach were also wiggling but in the CHE can ridicule without hurt- ed her in singing and acling wrong direction. When her coming, she can satirise without
upheavals and purges which are
ondzinie Zesture of that or-. but it was no use. At any rate panlons
Curtsy Bea there was still the other daugh- tripped but invariably recovered mental cong yet touch your partly due to the fact that he a sting, she cap mock à senti- | _ganisation...... This is no doubt ter who played the piano with
herself, and pretended that heart strings, she can roman, increasing promise.
has always had at least two nothing had happened.
tielso without being " maullin, powerful protectors in the and Later she sang a grand opera yet make you love
she can destroy a tradition and | Kremlin-M alankov aria and not too barby. As she thing she destroys.
the very Khrushchov.. where sho came to the point had to sail up to B. Flat adjusted her make-up instead as though just remembering it,
To London
ORTUNATELY for everyone For
some kindly folk in Toronto took up a fund to send Muriel Lillie to England for the pur- pose of studying to become
a
sho
The records show that she ta 66 years of age. She is not and never was beautiful. She can not dance and never could. I
be acted a serious role in a play the audience would with laughter but in a sketch or
And to give her credit she concert planist. It was with could do a sentimental "Good the feeling of a patron of the buy Boys" song with a akill arts that I
contributed one that made laughfor and tears dollar to the fund. So Mrs Lille close companions. But her basic who had become a widow sailed appeal remained unchanged And although for the country.
of her birth the appeal of indomitable in- with her two Torontonian effectuality. daughters.
The 1914 war was still lurk-
Ing in the wings" and: London,
was, the hub of the universo,
In Reverse.
a song" she can summon - your tears with
agossamer touch. sho bas only a tle voice she does not hesitate to sing twelve ; songs in six- cession with the audience shout- ing for more.
According to the most pro minent postwar Soviet defector, Colona! Tokney, Berov WEB brought into Stalin's personal secretariat under the supervision
of Malenkov in the late hd By 1939, he
had. resched
mank of Commissurard-Clas
and it was in this capacity that he signed the notoriou Order
No. 001229," outlining the proce
dure to be adopted, for the de- portation of "politically inreall sole olements from the Baltic States.
Well, that is my story, Lády.
In April 1940 he was decorated Pwet la sill with us in London Dukes were dukes them, people TN the 1920's she crossed to New although, she does not intend to with the Order of Lenin, and dressed to the gille to go to the York But at first, falled to make it an umaknited run. -I doc] it the momo time became chief theatre, Boedham," was “in his reproduce her London auoceam. I not know where) best albero is of u
the Ukrainian Secret Police, mory na director of Opera duly do not mean that stun, was but I am curtain that she plays He was also appointed to the "financed-By:his reventio- from complete Bop but the Amerie, the piano quite well enough to Central Committed / tor thum
Bootham Joplin J
cane being a younger race than justify the dollar (which 5 Pins: Politburo of the Ukrainian. Con the Brille, will had the; tende værted in her ourver, But alast Men Lille had no ing that the war," auen, endowinent, and plano ron ollit“ to be able citalista wire toss for spenny thing. They're falled to res Trio, francia i aktuation became west une Engliangkat serious pro serious that early in stando suponer 1914 Bondrios Buffed the mana aromaat of a provincial: (vsudós ville) hali, to give Une a week's
oficient."
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