"Page"
THE CHINA MAIL, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 1987.
A TRUE-TO-LIFE MURDER MYSTERY SET IN ELSTREE. THE BACKGROUND IS THE SHOOTING OF AN ACTUAL FILM (ISLAND IN THE SUN) NOW AWAITING RELEASE.
A scream
n-then Mason finds the body
JOSEPH RAPPERLEY, a crooked private inquiry agent and
former scandal sheet publisher, wants to get into the film studios at Elstress. His secretary has told him that a man called Jerry Wilton is visiting the set of Island in the Sun. This is the film of Alec Waugh's novel starring James Mason, Joan Collins and Michael Rennie.
They all know and dislike Rapperley. "If he came on the set, I simply couldn't go on acting." James Mason tell's Joy Raymond, who is in charge of publicity on the set. But Rapperley won't take no for an answer. He bribes a van driver to smuggle him into the studio.
have arrived," Joy Ray-
secretary
THE visitors
mond's
"Four of them."
we
said.
"It's only 12 o'clock, and
are.
by Julian Symons
they weren't due I just sultants. That's a nice mixed
Now where's bug. Here we go." before one. that list
She went down to the car and of names?**
Visitors to film Pushing back her hair with greeted them.
studios always show a tendency Raymond one hand, Joy
to wander away on their own. searched desperately on her They get lost, penetrate into desk with the other. "Here fastnesses where Ju visitor
Goltz, should be, and it is the job o Louis
somebody in the publicly de- South African diamand merchant. A VIP obvious partment at once to extend them ly. Mrs Harriet Mary Mac- very hospitality, and quietly kintosh, president of the dirted them in the right South Eastern section Federated and Associated Women's Clubs of America. Oh, dear, one of those.
Baker, "Joseph
Yorkshire woollen manufacturer. Why Isti't he louring the Rank group, I wonder? Alvin Melville, vice president, Davison and Melville, New York, public relations con
ادا
This Joy Raymond now pro- ceeded to do. They would want Lo see what was going on, she suggested, and took them to see Joan Collins and Stephen Boyd unfinished sul playing: that love-making
in the elaborate combination set that had been built on Stage Three to simulate several rooms in a
setne
house at Barbados,
H.Maukenzie
Mayor Kelvin McConochy, of my own home city."
"WH this murder scene also be shot 071 Stage Three?" asked Alvin Melville, the public relations consultant, a bulky man in his fortics with neat moustache and beard,
"No, on Stage One. The scene on a large rostrum is played that's been specially built for it."
They walked up stops on to head
thrust
Men'
Jennie's Threat
DE
Francoise Sagan
F
By LES ARMOUR
RANCOISE Sagan and America are prepared, 10 shrugs. It is her first take her word for it.
Hor first novel "Bonjour and automatic reae Tristesse made enough money to last her auveral Heimes. Ske
maddon ocrtam rang [tion to anything.
through the studio.
Then she speaks slow- res 21,000 a throw for articles ly. "I couldn't write in American magazines. about war or fishing or farming could I?"
Hollywood will pay her 3 per cent of the take on a film based on "Bonjour".
She grew up in Paris in a luxurious apartment block Of course, she has already near the Madeleine. Her grown tired of "Bonjour Shie will no longer discuss it. And father grey and square he does not think it will and solid looking -18 A from Hollywood. prosperous manufacturer of "All the characters will be metal crucibles.
married and they will all have babies, I suppose." (One is left Francoise, one might to infer that having babies is think, could write about the ultimate low.)
metal crucibles.
Or
substantial, upright, geois citizens.
about In any case, she distrusts both bour- the Americans and the English.
"They cannot
She does not, however. She writes about people who have, in her own words, pano fixed morala".
They his face
Presumably, it is fair to
understand that
you can be a good person and not have fixed morals. They think the wicked always have to be punished and the good always have to
to be made happy. But this is not true,”. The excellent. philosophers and Cambridge and
forward, the sel, where James Mason and slightly apart, arms hanging Mictitel Rennie sat walling in loosely. Zanuck followed my ask how, at 20, coming from of Oxford chairs, while their stand-ins a small man in a crumpled grey lighting. Joy. went through a rehearsal for suit cating a large
Raymond saw expressionless.
watched Mra Mackintosh Lalidng as Michael Rennie offered James earnestly to one of the camera- Mason a drink, Mason refused men Was she getting on it and told Rennie to stay away original rhyme from him too?
from his wife, Rennie expressed astonishment, they argued
QUIET PLEASE
There was a lighting hold-up, however, and not until just before lunch-time did they begin lo shoot. For half an hour the visitors saw nothing more excit. Ing than the wardrobe woman
Joseph Baker, the Yorkshire al work executing running re-
woollen manufacturer, belched Now Mason and Rehale got pairs on Joan Collins's while slightly, "Pardon me. Seems to up, and director Robert Rorsin dresa. They seemed inclined to
me you flm people waste a deal nodded to were being
of money with all these fancy Gerry O'lfara. Immediately think that they cheated in some way, an iden
sels.
Go out with a camera and O'Hara called out: Very quiet that Joy Raymond did her best
get on with the job. I say, Tell
ΠΟΥ Ready for shooting. Very to dispet over lunch,
pleuse. He waited a bit more of that?"
HER REQUEST
"This afternoon you'll see the scens in which James Mason Michael Rennie, I think you'll find that interest strangles ing."
This little beauty does 74 in third gear
THE £100 million British Motor Corporation has launched a sparkling new small car on world markets.
It is the Wolseley Fifteen Hundred the smallest Wolseley since the war - {} 1 litre, four-seat saloon.
Sparkling Listen to this: I drove the car the other day and clocked 74 miles an hour in
third gear. All out in top gear I clocked 83 miles an hour,
Matching this terrine "steam" were these acceleration figures: 20 to 40 m.p.h, in 0.45 seconds, 30 to 50 m.p.h. in 9.48 seconds. 40 to 60 m.p.h. in 12.2 seconds. B.M.C. claims an average petrol consumption up to 50 miles an hour of 40 miles to the gallon.
So for a basic price of £505 you get a brilliantly precocious little car.
assistant
**
director
me now, why don't they do a ment, then pressed the but-
ង
an
uncommon
find them.
Now come the minutes for
which these days of preparation had been designed, as Rossen said quietly, "Action," the actors
"Cut," said Rossen suddenly. The tension eas:d, people began talking in low voices, Melville came up the steps to the set with an apologetic nervous smile
Rossen was talking quietly to "Something Jamca Mason, wrong Jimmy?"
Mason passed a hand across "There's something- his face,
I don't know what it is-sume-
"I'm just nervous, I expect.
again."
SHOOTING NOW
"Sure." Rossen gestured to Gerry O'Hara.
"That's enough, now," CTTY called. "All quiet, please. We're shooting."
have always
"With the del?" Rossen was Joy Kaymond was doing her ton that closed the outer doors. thing wrong with the set." best to explain why details had Where were Baker and Melville,
wondered, and surprised. to be exactly right, and why are Juy Raymond jumps had to be focused in cer- noted also with some irritation I'm sorry, Bob. Can we try it. tain positions, when she was that Mra Mackintosh had now vanished from the rostrum. She called away to deal with an moved to leave the rostrum and inquiry about some Prass photo-
that were Mrs Mackintosh beamed at graphs
urgently her through thick horn-rimmed needed and had mysteriously dis spectacles, "James Mason is my appeared. When she came back favourite actor. Do you think South African diamond mer- few minutes later only the he would write a little rhyming Louis Goltz remained at began to walk up the stairs and piece in my autograph book?
He was a go through their parts, and a the luncheon, table. a collection have
of original
crowd of technicians They went through the sCUDO rhymes written down for me by little brown bald man with a whole more than 200 famous people, face wrinkled yet puffy, like a moved after them across the set. again, this time to the end, with Rennle on the from Winston Churchill to walnut, and he seemed to have
capacity
Lighting cameraman, eamer Mason striking for
kneeling on the, silence. Now he told her that operator, focus man and loader jaw and then
To one side ground to strangle the prostrate the others had gone off, and had were in one group.
While his hands were on of them stood continuity girl mon. said that they would all be on
an environment in which Harvard who Stage One in a few minutes, Maggie Shipway, alert for any Rennie's throat a sudden scream
variations from the script which mi through the studio, she carried in her hand, director the hell-
"Cut," Rossen snapped, "What morals are very fixed in- taken it more or less for granted that, to be "good" meant, in deed, she can write about fact, that one had some sort of HIS INTEREST Robert Rossen and producer
Darryl Zanuck. After
them
The scream came from some them. One might, in fact, "xed morals" can trailed a random collection of where
below the rostrum, abe inclined to think that she selves as having been dismissed. "Let's go and find them, shall
of them known woman's voice high-pitched. Joy would know rather more They have been over-ruled by a we? Have you a professional People, most
higher court. cinema Mr merely by their occupations, as Raymond stepped down make-up wardrobe and hair the rostrum
and saw that about war
It is not discreet to ask a giri came from Mrs Harriot Mary fishing.
of 20 whether or not she her. "How do they manage to act Mackintosh
a face who, with
She has shed and her father self his "fixed morals" but and hom-rimmed name Goltz in Jo'burg and it with all those people around?" like pulty
does maintain a house in the nobody has, strangely enough, Ray- spectacles askew, stood beside means diamonds. But this cer Goltz whispered to Joy
one of the painted backgrounds country where she has spent six discovered any particular lack tainly is a remarkable expertence mond.
and pointed to something behind months out of every year in her of them in Mile. Sagan,
Hfe. She must, at least, have for me, remarkable experi-
It, still screaming.
Her one "vico" is--or ence:"
scen farmers Farm, Mr Goltz spoke as if he
It was James Mason who
until last week--fast cars. Sho wore watching a show of treaks.
reached her first, looked behind Still, her own view is that The murder set had been as
"overy little girl knows about likes to drive them down cou Raymond said, built on i The publicity woman, who had the background seche and saw
love. It is only her capacity to try roads in the dead of night.
Sometimes she drives bare- of it that in- creases." And, she adds, "a foot because "It increases the
thrill"
Last week one of her drives girl of 15 is a woman.
These are unusual views even ended in a crash which left her in Paris and, although Shake- unconscious for several days speare seems to have held them and it is taking all the skill of too (Jullet was only 13), one modern medicine to keep her might expect come arguments in
alive, support of them.
By BASIL CARDEW
Third
compressed into well under a ton of weight,
At 70 miles an hour I changed down from top to third with- out a trace of a jerk, Thiri gear la so smooth and so fast that you almost forget to reach top.
How has B.M.C. done it? It has taken its "D" type engine of 1480 c.c., developing 50 brake horse power and fitted it into a new, smaller chassis-body so that there is plenty of power with
"That," said the Wolseley man, "Is why we say this is a car a 'built-in' overdrive.
EXPRESS ANNUAL
from
Armin for Ddy si dil Arma
$10
South China Morning Post Ltd.
"HONG KONG & KOWLOON Z sippa vald Phone
Kear is sweeter
than normal top, to top really be- comes the overdrive."
Interest Goltz?"
in
the
"Why no, ma'am. Diamonds dressing.
are my businem. Mention the
"It baffes me.'
NO VIEW
from
Joy
to permit a shot of often asked the same question, the small body there, curied up: suffer because rostrum, James
She had just Its face puffy and purple. He Michael made no reply. Mason and
sight of Melville, kuceled beside it and said, in and caught Rennie, as angry planter Angle-Indian colonel, entering standing like a petrifled image tedes that mingled astonish the hall below and walking up
on the studio floor, below the ment and indignation: "It's that sheet reporter--it's stairs. The set itself contained rostrum. He won't see a thing, scandal two rooms in the colonel's house, she thought, but really I can't Rapperley." And with an actor's natural egoism be added. “I the most loving help it.
after Rossen moved
the new there Wus something There was an inner room
created with
care,
Close-up: Four cylinders; 1489 c.c.; compression ratio 72 to 1; set for dinner, and a living-room actors like a little thick-set bull, wrong with the set. 50 brake horse power; overall containing the characteristic re- length 12ft, 74in.; width 5ft. miniscences of such a man's lin; wheelbase 7A. 2in.; height life — regimental photographs, 4ft 11in; weight 18% ewt; rifles on the wall, boxes and tank capacity 7 gallons,
knick-knacks placed haphazardly Price: £5054 £253 p... £.768. about.
$16$
TOMORROW
The Inspector suspects James Mason
or farming or
To 'Francoise,
however, they are self-evident truths and ar- guments are not to the point,
She knows--or she thinks she knows. And several tens of thousands of readers in Europe
take them
..
Wal
It is unlikely that modern science will be able to do any thing for her black Jaguar cons vertible.
Perhaps the crash, will radical- y alter her outlook. But, up to the moment of it, she, was still concerned with love,
In the car was found the manuscript for another novel, It is called "Lea Pauperes Morter"-___"The Dead Eyelids"--- and in it business is as umani.
Apart from motor sar her principal interest is in five,
When she was in New York she wont every night to Har- rem's Savoy Ballroom,
She described it se "the most fantastic place I have over sten. Six thousand coloured men with beautiful bright shirts dancing. We danced from. 21. 11-six. i didn't know I could danoe'so much but in New York there la something tonic In the airf
At. homa" in Bt.- Gertuan des Prod she dances only till fours
Bo the Americans : do hayo something, even if they are cop fused about morals, for
Hiitto with her, days. She sleeps Jale and spends the early afternoon, seeing triends.
That leaves her the lato. afternoon in which to write before the round begins again
And what does her faller: think of this distinctly unbour- geois regimen? He im't saying [much."
·But perhaps ha zla, noticing that there is wornothing of the bourgtools; about her still, Kafka For, apart from an experislovar, fur coat and her Jaquat, Fran colsa lives, fairly frugally,"
Most of thai fabulous fortune is being salted, away.ne
And a productive, types | can be, de, HOUNSTUHL PEO
I