Inside Story Of A Hit Play
T
HIS is a simple story
about an obstinate
oki Indy who
By JOHN BARBER:
hours every
chills, for three morning, every day, for four
усата.
She was writing shother play. Sho called It "The Chalk Garden."
wanted to write a one daughter' and grand- York with Glynis Johns as the
heroine. play that would be the rage, children. of New York.
She awed me at first, I should "I flew over to help with the As soon as it was finished, sho And who
with my have guessed she was fifty-ish. production,
little showed It In London but had then wrote the biggest flop She has a bolt-upright majesty, talent like a goldásh m my no luck.
Then an American of the season, ~
But she was surrounded by her breast. But the play was not producer, Mr Irene Seizniek, And who has just followed it growing things, azaleas and 'right'. I rewrote și Ave times inbled; 1 do if you can up with a glorious success: "The cyclamen and even
mustard on the pre-New York tour. The stond advice."- Chalk Curden," now on Broad and-cross. Suddenly she threw actors went mad, relearning the
way with Gladys Cooper and back her head and melted and line fought to get her
Bho
play
an
Ghastly
tour was ghastly. Rumour
Siobhan McKenna.
Inughed like a
girl. Soon this play will be seth in "People who go out to the right. She hated the funditure GAIN, 13 pre-Now York London, directed by Sir John theatre for an evening," she used or the stage...."Has Gielgud and s.arring Dasno said, "wont more than just a old Englishwoman got to arguer dunned it. The director ww Edith Evans and Peggy Ash- story, or plecs of life. They with a young American about sacked in New Haven, It play- croft. To win names like these want a your, an aroma up the taste?" she stormed at the de- ed
nostrils. That's all they will re- signer so let him have H, triumph want to tell you how the old member it for in the end"
they all laughed at shouted "I'll show 'cm!" And did.
She is 1lves at the
Bagnold, Enid
Sho
Anonymous
Then
Just
to half-empty Houses in Philadelphin. It limped into Broadway with one foot in the "Georgion, Regency, Empire, warehouse.
plain Victorian...It comes
Opening night from us! If you can't remember
Alter, to dawn, Enid She goes it through your lovely CHE
haze of radio, wards top of a
Bagnold of Hyde Sips China tex.
I blink to television, house south
to bed at ten.
super-markers, and rung Mrs Selźnick. "Any news? Regency
I come Advance papers?" Park, next door to Sir Winston heir of her business with high whirring stres when Churchill.
here to tell you, you've got to You look on to the powered showmen liko David garden where publishes Edward Selznick. About the time when take #!"
Beaton "blew
The designer blushed his top." Hulton gives his smart partica. Cecil She is the wife of Sir Roderick About Elizbaeth Taylor. Jones, former head of Reuter's.
Enid Bagnold is, of course, a On the floors below them vo
famous novellst. Her
story Long their children--threa
"National Velvet" Miss Taylor a star.
Her first book. "Serena Court Road?"
BEVERLEY BAXTER, MP
and
THE CANADIAN WITH
xeca
A DREAM
London. from the arriving ships
"How much money have to open a short season on Broad- naked. His way the following night. They had chosen "Tamburlaine the answer was: "Enough to get Great," written by Marlowe in the home if I don't stay very the 16th century. loug."
is a town in
What a pity not to be able
on the first night, but to go alus, my ship was to sail at noon next day. But there would dress rehearsal.
A telephone call soon fixed that up, and a party of four of us went to tie vash Winter Garden Theatre, which was completely empty save for the actors ch
1 always a strange could be loaded at once in you got'?' experience to come the waiting trains. back to London after
One might argue that the sogottening foreign peut The lights evel: of Parly Romans did much the strangely same thing when they came
I was impossible to ex- Pally
bd after the all night up the Thames and dumped plain to him that you can-
lance of Broadway and themselves upon the shore not build St Peter's in a town certainly be a
strip which HOW supports merely because somocne Fifth Avenue, And no one
the House of Parliament. named it Rome. Nor can you en to be in a hurry in Lacon, whereas in Newton was born on those have a Champs Elysees be York everyone appears to banks, but, fortunately, we cause there have a rendezvous with fate which cannot be delayed,
to dignify London with London in Ontario, but who Perhaps I should explain noble parks and splendid would try to build another,
those thoughts are driveways before material Westminster Abbey thero? engendered by having re- progress could lay cently returned from the Angers upon it. New World. And certainly my tour did not lack variety. Toronto, which has the doubtful distinction of being my birthplace, is enjoying
the stage and five trumpeters in a tho orchestra
had wise and sometimes diss Canada called Paris. For that solute kings who were able matter,
vandal furth are able
to itseesion by tenus. bak pertukar
The
in the wounds # prou a toxin which acts
48 VO DETVOUp system, It #
ne of the most powerful toxins known."
NIGHTMARISH
JOHNNY ve a losy
Lauper
whistle
atuek obert down at
of he thumb.
This teresti makes nervous system hypersensitive,"
the
I continues, ant the most trivial stumi produce a series of nightmarish muscular
GUESTS."
"Locking
Linc Jaw
other things." sald
"Gosh,"
Binong Johnny.
"Sulness of the jaw is one of the early symptoms."
duc or
children
now
that
People do not realise that the death rate from tetanus is twice that of diphtheria. Some
advise should be immunised whooping against diphtherin, cough, and tetanus at the same time. Hundreds of thousands hjrc-
01 purple have hod Lons service
after in the
wiring their milliary
Recident
street casualty de-
partment of a hospital without
knowing that the injections are Just part of the doctors' continuni
against the war teanus germs.
"And will doctors win this Oght?" asked Johnny,
HOW LONG?
"VERTAINLY, if all accidental
an
wounds were promptly and thoroughly cleansed and injection of tetanus buti-toxin employed in those clr- cumstances favourable to such an infection, this disease would ⚫ virtually disappear.
"Supposing there were some tetanus germs in this cut of
mine, how long would it take before I started getting those awful spoons?" Johnny ques- tioned me.
rese ves
of raw
A Balance
there is also
But how to get rid of the young man with the pleading eyes of a gazelle? "You will read a first-rate director, B0 you
had better look up Tyrone Guthrie."
He did. Guthrie is prob ably the most brilliant dires- tor in the London theatre
martinet. Tom Patterson of an arist, an executive, and a Stratford, Ontario, suught
incredible boom, and IT is hard for any nation there is no reason to oxpect
to keep a balance between that the boom will come to the material and the an end in any foreseeable spiritual. It is hard for the period. Canada e atlained artist and the dreamer to a population of 15 million make their voices heard him out and turned his help. people: Canada has endless above the clang and clamour less pleading eyes upon the
materials of industrial development.
mighty man. which are needed by the It is hard for the expres- world: Canadia has the sionist
to convince the "Alright," said Guthrle, lvantage of being a mem- realist that living is
struggle, "you go ber of the British Common- important than existing.
abead with your plans and wealth of Nations while at
I'll come out and produce." the same
Yet in every nation's life time being the partner of the USA in there are recurring moments developing the continent of when a pedlar of dreams North America.
emerges and invokes his will upon the realists and the materialista. Which
Beauty Spot
more after a
brings me to young Mr Ten Stratford,
Opening Night |
Pit
"กา
the play had begun, and I that 130-500 a lik Anthony quayle, the presiding genius of Britain's Stratford-on- Avon Theatre, was playing tho lead. With one other exception the huge cast was all from the Canadian Stratford Theatre,
For Edinburgh
content
B play was moving vigorous-
stalls called for a stop, it was ly on its cruci story when a voico from the peremptory Tyrone Guthriel Not with having presided at the ac couchement of the Stratford, Ontario, Theatre, here directing the Canadian Company on Broadway.
he was
Then I spied a rather sed-
a young man with plaintive eyes and an attitude of resigned helplessness. Yes, it was Tom Patteract. When the rehearsal was over we took him to supper at the Stork Club, where he gazed with awe at grandmother Marlene Dietrich as she chatted Ulko with Noel Coward. I felt
PATTERSON'S next victim telling them that they ought to
was Alec Guinness. A few be gazing at Patterson. Patterson of
weeks ago, in mid-Atlantic, This summer the Canadian Ontario, Canada.
Guinness told me the story Stratford Company are coming Stock Exchange in
"How could I say 'No' to to the Edinburgh Festival, and Some four or five years Toronto is second only to New York. The Chairman go he turned up in London him?" he asked. "Guthrief Tom Patterson feels like it That ends my story, at any invited me to visit the Ex- and came to my house. He couldn't and he's far tougher he will probably invade London. change, which is as scientific had dreamed a dream and he than I am. Anyway, I like for the time being. Yet
rate as it is noisy. There are unfolded it to me as we sat fishing."
something tells me that Patter- son will come to London at some computing machines which in my garden in St John's
So back home went Patterson future dato and turn his belp- can add a column of igures Wood,
to tell Canadians that he had less eyes
Str on
Laurence Rigned up Guthrie and Guinness, Olivier. Sir Laurence will cer- There is a town called Strat- to
Briefly this was his idea. Now all that was necessary was tainly say "No," but that will
bulld
theatre, organise not alience Mr Patterson, Olivier ford in England, a town so pilgrims, raise funds and then ness did: "The only way to net accommodation for the visiting will probably say as Alec Gula- identified with Shakespeare
get down to business,
rid of him was to say "Yes" Batteries of neatly dress that now it has become a
It
to would All 10 pages sit at shrine which draws pilgrims
(COPYRIGHT) ed young women mysterious machines and from all the world. Not only that ensued. The hotels and
describe the teething troubles w produce columns of figures do they attend the per boarding houses were scoptical, like a robot conjurer. No formances of Shakespeare's The gathering of a big cast doubt they are as other plays, but they pay hard was obviously” impossible. And young women whose inten- currency to the local hotels the money was running out, tion is to capture a husband and also for the purchase of and have a family, but they Shakespeare relles manufac- do not allow such thoughts tured in Birmingham,
in a split second, and the noise on the floor of the Ex- change is something quite remarkablo
to impair their efficiency.
But what a pity that the carly citizens of Toronto "About two weeks. Only a did not realise that their few daya if the contaminated | fair city was intended to be...+
faco a beauty spot. Hero TAS
wounds WCTO
though."
The Un
a perfect waterfront facing
"Anyway, this business about the Bay. On the other side cutting the skin between the Index finger and the thumb is which acts as a breakwater of the Bay Is Toronto Island, just jobbarwocky?" Johnny sold,
ryes."
"It's "funny"" 'what people believe, lan't it?" he went on, "My mum now. She thinks
that if you eat the white staff underneath orange pool poleons your blood."
abburwooky 22/1 said."
So what? That was my question-not his..
Pleading Eyes
STATU
WITHOUT
講
But there came the opening alght, alhough the workmen were still", hammering nails when the curtain went up. All sits of things wont wrong but the actors kept on acting. At intervals a train on its way to Toronto would drown the voices of the actors with its whistle, but no one cared, Shakespeare was being pinje..
pn Elizabethan stage, at Stratford-upon-the-banks of the
oh
moment's niver Avon.
hesitation he answer- A dream had come to lifŠI
ed: "Why not a Cana Shakespeare had found another nguinst the inroads of Lake dian Stratford-on-Avon? home in the New World Event
Ontario.
.Our
2
Ontario town of the businessmen of Stratford If only the pioneers, had Stratford is also built on the consod to soot. Tem Patterson thom, and realised that this was the banks of river Avon. All had dul-droomed
they had to somit defeat notting for a Naples of the we need is a theatre, a direc Stratford would go on and on Now World! But, alas, tor, 'some actors and some into the
unikisowa" funməyibe ke
It Democracy has so little time, money, People! would come ">"Now I must/ank you to adp
four of BVD srs and binime
to dream. They built the every year from all over In New Yoric in the Indus railway lines on the Bay Canada and than Uniteda gamaly of falam? “front”ko: that"the" "cargons-flas
made young
Blendish," is to be the next big
American musical. She wrote i
at 25, and published it anony- mously-"by a Lady of Quality"
"And WHAT are those eight ginger-pots doing?" ale roged.
"Those are Ming vases," explained.
Mrs 8.: "I'm crying." E.D.: "Why?"
Air S.: "You and I are gear.
ed for inilure,
he sem
The
mels".
.good, I can't take it,” Next day EB, kudy it was a All he same smash hit. She said: "It isn't so
God, what's much the pleasure of
"Eight Ming! sizel They're-Oh, the American for
Furious
Tottenham that
because her Victorian tathor THE play flopped. Critics said thought it unladylike for a girl
It was written backwardia when It wasn't written alde- to read novels, let alone write ways.
them.
cel
escape from
her
success
ot
as the glory humiliation."
It was 66th birthday.
Witat Is "The Chalk Garden" about? Two women in a crazy
minor.
the author. "It is
But its frivolily is
ping.
1
It came off after three like a fon, from behind which
truth Airnees. days. The author went sadly
I think "The Chalk Garden" "But I take so long DVGT horne, That a goldfish, her will succeed in Britain too.
talent, had been no traveller. Enid Bagnold is an exquisite
What would you have dono then?
novels. I wha 10 years on my last. Plays seemed so much less work. So I wrote 'Cartle' four
What she did was to sit, up years ago. No one here was in- terested. But Americans prompt right and furious, at her big ly arranged to do it In New table next door to the Chur-
!
artist, To me, it is already a of the courage never to yield. triumph-of indomitable will,
(COPYRIGHT)
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