V
0
THE CHINA MAIL, MONDAY, APRIL 11, 1955.
ORSON THE TERRIBLE
CAN BE VERY ELUSIVE
London.
RSON WELLES, 1
kind of
artistic
• In a plainly-furnished top-floor flat in
pleasure, or because about fim octhig..."
edive
But I can tell you some of the
multiple-store, lockedLondon the one-time enfant terrible plans things he cares about, as though he was having a very expensive film on Spain. It is easier
a clearance sale. Bargains" to raise millions than thousands, he says. already disposed of: One
film version of Othello. One modern thriller, Mr. Ar- kadin.
Salesman Welles assured me that both would be seei in London soon.
By Thomas Wiseman-
He cares about food.. He can consume with ease and relish 18 oysters, an entire chicken, two numerous cream-cakes, bottles of wine and severnil brandles at one sitting.
But when necessary he will
Не
the He had discarded
The Terror was stalking diet rigorously and eat nothing duffel coat which he wears the room. As it was slightly but steaks. defantly even on trips to the smaller than the Albert
He cares about music. Dorchester bar. In it he Hall I could sense. It was will Ey a thousand miles to hear I made it clear I hadn't looks like an advertisement giving him a touch of a symphony. come to buy anything. So for a male Q-line." the creative syndicate took over from the salesman.
claustrophobia.
He will pick He made no attempt to take a He used to Be the enfant. terrible. Now that he is no bath, something he is liable to longer an infant he is 40 do three or four times a day.
I discovered he was dic- tating a play into a Dicta, he has become Orson the phone; typing a novel on a Terrible. typewriter: making notes
Modern Noah
I asked him how his plans for
Noah were progressing".
for his series of TV talks; I reminded him how he planning his next film; talk had bruised and terrified ing to Paris or the tele. Peter Finch (playing lago) making a film about a modern phone; resculpting his face with his impromptu epilep- with restless fingertips tic fit in the stage produc- and giving an interview to tion of Othello.
me.
Welles interrupted his cross- country walk and said:
"That's off. It was just a
"Sometimes," he boomed, modest little film about the end
He cares about conversation. up the telephone and ring someone at the other end of the world and say "Hello. This is Orson, What gives....?" He does NOT care about fame and reputation.
11
"Fame," he says, "is a com→ mercial thing. Like money it is Necessary so that you can do what you want to do,
A pessimist
All, more or less, at once. "that is a good thing. There of the world. Very difficult to remembered for anything. But
Are eertain figures like obtain finance for such a ven- Othello and Lear and Oedi- ture...."
IF I get bored
He said, endeavouring to remould his forehead,
pius who should inspire, He continued with Alice-in-
terror."
"Even in your cast?" inquired.
Wonderland Fogle: "So I shall
I make a very expensive film about Spain in CinemaScope. Vis very difficult to raise thousands. Much easier to raise millions."
He was working on that little matter right now.
"How can you rehearse an fit?" parried
"I always do several things at the same time. "Then if I get bored with one, epileptic
Welles.
I can get on to something else and that refreshes me,
I thought he seemed in
Has the girth
need of refreshment. and His face, from which a
I asked him why he assured the burden of financing his own films. Was it not enough to act in them, write them, direct them
"He said: "That is the only
had an awful premonition cigar projects like a per- and produce them? he might at any moment manent fixture, has scarcely attempt to form & French changed and is still as vital way I can get a job as a government to alleviate the and youthful as ever, but director, het in films just for he now has the girth to play the money. I don't like doing
boredom.
padding,
itit bores me, "For the actor
I had traced Welles, who Falstaff without abdominal it is a dead medium. I act in can be as elusive as the Third Man, to a plainly
He is such a brilliant man furnished top-floor flat (you ascend in an ancient hand- that even if he scared the work on Moby Dick. That's a propelled lift) off St life out of Peter Finch 1 good reason for doing it. Not
would forgive him.
James's.
"I got £7,000 for one day's
because it gives
me
any
"I do not suppose I shall be
I don't think about my werk in these terms, it is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.
"I take plasure in life, but I am a pessimist. I do not think the situation of the world cam make you an optimist. I happen to be tunale. But I am ex- ceptional."
I have the impression that Welles conquered the world when he was too young to ap- priate it.
But you can always ask for I have suspicion the moon. that he will,"
POCKET CARTOON
by OSBERT LANCASTER
Economic Gambles
Budger
'OF COURSE THE CONDITIONS MUST DEPEND ON HOW THE FAVOURITE FEELS"
World Copyright by arrangement with the Manchester Guardian,
TOM STACEY, the explorer, while Canada- bound, drops in on New York but finds the juke-box background is now set in a flatter key
Amid all that music I try (NAF) to get 'hep'
اد
HE music goes round
TH
and
and around, around, and it comes out here. Where? Here, in Harlem.
They tried to make me be- lieve. Harlem
had changed its gay colours since the days of my youth, when the Harlem" Footwarmers and Louis Arm-
ALL IN
in Harlem
It emanates from concealed juke boxes, from bar bands, and cab radios.
As we
My with
lure us in for a quick meal (including, one cup of coffee) at the bar next door.
STACEY ... "I iras warned"
"Yeah, I wanna ask you something," says the other feller pardon me, fellow.
"Shoot away, shoot away," says Sidney..
The white folks, down in the Waldorf, had advised my own films because that is a
enter the Funeral: Ribs in the Ruff, described way of getting a tree star.
me motherishly: "I wouldn't Home, the tune most percept- more fully in the menu 25
sizzling platter of ible happens to be "Il Be
barbecued go up to Harlem alone, son. Glad When You're Dead, You baby spareribs in a platter of Specially at night.”
Rascal You," Long Island curleyece potatoes," at 5s a portion and turn cabby, sell smile so
out to be the up-town end of over In a broad it in pork chops fried
So then the other man shoots: (1 can you coming up to Connie's? volves his ears, yummy special juice.
write like that too, see.)
session." We've got a jam questions me
Which we all decide to be a about England:
very good idea, if a little light- "So you don't. got..
hearted. yourselves iced up much over there?" And I confirm that embalming is rare.
ROLEX
www
The extraordinary accuracy of Rolex wrist-chronometers is attested by the fact that over 250,000 Official Timing- Certificates have been issued by Swiss Government Testing Stations three times as many as the rest of the Swiss watch industry combined.
ROLEX
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|"The management regret to announce that, owing to a laughable misunderstanding on the part of the Road Haulage Association, to night's Violetta has been. unavoidably prevented from reaching the Opera House !"
Strong's
Harlem
Blackbird's had the streets pulsating in rhythm and laughter.
And the coloured folk too, in Harlem, tried to make me think It had gone all grown-up and grave.
IGE? NO, THANKS
ERHAPS that was why my coloured cab driver swung me into Harlem's "Broadway," Seventh Avenue, and put me Funeral outside down
the Home.
But before we can get on to the devilled crabcakes (served with cole slaw and potato sul
are
to the tune of "Lazy-bones"), 1 At Connie's the cats find myself talking about "Jim really jumping. Hot modern crow" colour baron Ameri- jazz.pulses through the door to can TV with the menu's author Seventh Avenue, outside two It turns out the tune is not and proprietor of the bar. He saxophonists, a double busy, coming from the Funeral Home is the lofty, handsome, Jamalea and a planist.. but from the next-next-door torn Negro who played the bar's juke box, which now young pastor in the film "Cry changes to "Forty Cups of the Beloved Country." Name Coffee." My cabby wants to cf Sidney Poitier. take me across to the Amster- dam News and hold a solemn parley about siave rackets with the editor of Harlem's 3ll- Negro, weekly.
But inside the cosy, low-t bar everyone is merosing about as if they were in the funeral business. Connie himself is a Sidner and I are just warm- large Negro, in a green velour ing to a serious race-relations bat and two diamond fle-clips, confab, to the jukebox tune of not to mention the rest.
You "Nobody Knows
When But the music has already
You're Down and Out," when. started, Rhythm permeates But I have already been an old pal of Sid's Aings in and the stylish lazy-limbed crowds, discussing Nkrumah and the interrupts with "Hiya buddy, I who would tot up to half Gold Coast with singer Eartha wanna ask you something." million of all shades between Ku. So instead I let that carumet and coal, in this north swinging music, plus an electric
"You wanna ask me some end of New York's Manhattan, sign advertising Ribs in the Ruff, thing?" says Sid
FLASH POINT IN PARAGUAY
Asuncion, Paraguay.
HE history of
By BERNARD McTAGGART
13
Communista have spotted
Paraguay, Cinderella
...
.
MILK? YES, PLEASE
THEN Eternity Todd a' pretty THE
girl who would be gorised here as a "cool glass of milk." gets up there and puts across number named
2
Wanna Hug Ya, Kiss Ya Squeeze Ya Til My Arms Fall Off,"
Eternity sings it hot and strong, but my pals want to get
· Argentina and Brazil oven-me talking about labour condi-
tions in Britain.” Eternity ren«« tually wrote off their" shares,
Girl, realising that they never would ders "I'm a Small-town
I'm # Small-town Chicken." Since then they have been in- te met.
Red hot, she is. But we are on of the Americas, is
Paraguay, economically tattering, creasingly active-sufficiently so In the meanwhile, Lopez, to complaining (over our pire- one long illustration of the politically shaky, a good bet.. to make sure that Strosser has growing frantic, had also ordered apple cheese pie) what rotten thesis that "life is just And they have been working deals with Peron
done nothing to further any the executions of 68,200 people, fuck it is these Americans have including his mother, his two
no Princess Margaret. damned thing after hard at it. Mostly inflaming
And,
comes when it ancient nationalist feelings-but
to sisters, two brothers, and two another."
directing teeling constantly rationalist sentiments, they have brothers-in-law. Wars, revolutions, floods, against Argentina.
plenty to work on
one
Dead serious, we are.
$
Nobody gained much. But It is an hour or two after. having stood oft most of South midnight when we come out Hades, having covered every
subject from the tribulations of Negro Congressman, to exploita Fastor Clayton Powell, Harlem's
en of South Carolina workers,
sugar
famines, political intrigues It wasn't to much that they Paraguay was first put on the America for five year, the into the cold street as sad: as fill page after page of the didn't like Juan Peron and his map by the explerer Sebastian Paraguayans built up a mighty official histories.
activities in Argentima but that Cabot who trekked up river spirit of national prido. That Paraguay's strong man General from Argentina in 1527, following. Paraguay was just staggering Little wonder, then,
Alceda Stroesmer who personal the track of an unknown Spanish its feet when somebody dis- Paraguay is nuring the Bash ly took power last year after explorer
that Bolivia was en- point again and little wonder
the country, became a eroaching on Paraguayan that the situation has a dash of directing a "puppet" government in 1585 he never got out alive, covered
for several months saw economic Spanish colony and stayed that territory. all the ills that plague the world. union with Argentina as the way with 1811 when it got its Border skirmishes, want on
and on. Communism, the ambitions of Juan Peron, and a political
Eventually, in 1830) Benation declared war, Aituation that, to an outsider at
The whole went to war with a vengeance least, makes Kremlin capers look Like a Sunday school plenie all
Farm's ware lutk to the wornen. figure in the muddle.
POPULAR FRONT
solution to Paraguay's problems, independence.
Most of Paraguay's trade has always gone to Argentina for re- shipment. Two years ogo,
Paraguay, Argentina and Chic
BLOODY CARNAGE
The dist dictator was one Dr Men, badly, armed and even signed a trade agreement aimed Joes Francia. He was followed unarmed, marched off by the at forming a "customs union", by Carlos Antonio Lopez who tens of thousands. Even boys of and, Peron has been generous lasted long enough to band the 13 were called up.
in providing relief funds after government over to his son, Paraguay's regularly disastrous Francisco. floods.
CANNED CHEERS
TROUBLE AHEAD:
FIRE? WHO CARES?
I appears in the one buccice of fate, is on fire.
opposite, of one of the blocics
I reckon we ought to do something about the fire as no one else seems to have seen it. I truly begin to believe Harlem
is a sad and serious"
spot
Back in 1947 the Liberals and
I am just starting back into Commumits formed a/populer
Francisco's ambitions were.
Connie's for the telephone Front to Bght the Colorado Party
boundless, He saw himself as which had.. been in power
the ruler of all South America. Most of them were illiterate when my cabby asks me where virtually unopposed since 1941.
and few of then had any clear am going. When I explain, They started a revolution in the past autumn Peron came to In an outburst of enthusiasm idea of what the war officially he turns to the others with his provincial capital of Concepcion Asuncion, allegedly to
back for a dream, be simultaneously over the Grand Chaco area was at grin dawning over his and fighting blazed up in other fun of the booty Argentinians declared war on" Argentina, really about. All they knew was face
that somebody had had collected in the disastrous Brazil, and Uruguay,
challenged Do they laugh? Man, they cabby gurgles: the Paraguayanas population was Argentina
interfering - in someone
These were put Rozwinę? not before, Moscow heard about which lasted from 1865 til
provincial towns. But war between the two countries is bettle, there arepeat. My FicA25ttle confused a MOSTOW'S 1870 butasinefact100 stemmerhittled down, from 800,000 to But theported Parestay Brother,why-yDUSWEINA
Red Staz trumpeted this is part General Stresner about closer 250,000 and only 30,000 of the both.
of the struggle aganist unscru- links between the two countries, 250,000 were men. The other in a scrap today you could And as they drive me off, and ptalous fascist imperialism backed
American/ ofl-iccanganies,” Stroessner 14
·laid on e a great wel- live powers suffered 450,000 get just the same tum-out. And, I am thinking perhaps Harlem It happens that Paraguay's only come but canned cheers had to casualties between them as the anti-Strocasher forces grow a not so serious after an sizable exporte
are make up for the solid, stent But they also won the war and as Stroemer continues to can't be sure that the quartet vegetable oils,
reaction of his people. For the and saddled Paraguay with vest formulate his economic union Connie's isn't playing Em But the Rede were on the nationalists, backed by the Com- reperations which have never plans, there could be trouble any Gets in Your yes. I
time, Sance then the combats, were hard at work, been pild,