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LIMELIGHT:
THE CHINA MAIL, THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1958.
MEETS THE MOST PROMISING PLAYWRIGHT OF 1957
Mr. Bolt is afraid of earning
£300 a week
TO one has ever bothered
No give names to the
streets, such as they are,
by THOMAS WISEMAN
have also bought
in the small village of But- leigh (pop., 300), where Robert Bolt,
Already the play has been playwright, lives in a small translated
(charming: cottage
our
newest
TO FARRES
Into several lan- and productions are
a car, but it is unly a Stanford
mod. cons.) which is known being planned in Paris, aly, 10 and they sold simply as No. 56.
The approach is muddy and the house itself devoll of plumbing. The water comes from a well in the garden. The interior decor
that is to say, the white washing of the walls WAH done by Mr Bolt and his wife, Jo.
Two children
The Bolts have a great many records which they play at the house of friends because they have never been able to afford n accord player of their own, They were married 8 years ago and now have two child- ren. Sally (82) and Benedle! (5%) and a third is expreluc in April. They are happy and do not feel that being without
telsvision set puts them int the class of the under-privileg ed. Mr Bolt is n teuther of Engilsh Literature; his wife 1s a teacher who paints in n150 her are time.
But their rustic idyll has now been dramatically shattered, For Mr Rolf, in his spare time. wrote 9 pilny, Flowering Cherry, which has brought
him wide acclaim from the critics, an award as the most promising new playwright of 1967 from the Evening Stan- dard Drama Panel - and an income which is now close on £300 a week.
Germany,
Holland,
Norway There is also And New York. talk of a Cominonwealth tour and Eating Studies have ap- about writing pinched him Scripts for them.
It is, you see, a success story par excellence, but one with unusual ramifications. For Mr end Mrs Bolt are as fearful about success as most people
: about failure.
"I have no doubt," anid Bolt, "that success can corrupt, and though I hope and believe It will not corrupt us I am per- fectly aware of the sublie and Insidious way in which I can eaf Into one's life. We aer Lath constions of the dangers,
"It would be waive to think that one can go from being an unknown schoolmaster carning £20 a week to being a play- wright earning £300 without it having some effect."
What kind of effect is it that he fears?
"The danger la he Mall human "that one loses one's values, which are essential to n
writer, and substitutes for them the money-values,"
So far there has been very Httle change. It is true that they have for the first time employed a professional de- curator to paint the kitchen (about which they both feel a trifle unsy; could this be the
their four-your- old station wagon to make This purchase. Though ine
money 15 pouring in at the rate of £300 a week with every likelihood of con- tinuing on this Feale for at least a year, they still have 14 go 10 friends to play their records.
Full-time author
that the hoping Boltis moncy he is now making wit enable him to give up teaching job and set up full time as a playwright. But he has no desire to move to May- fair or acquire a Rolls-Royce.
At 33, he has not that virti- tent resentment of wealth and which has The Establishment
to a brought collective fam bulleh of young writers notes! for the shortness of their tem- pers and the largeness of their CEOS.
are
"What seeins to be wrong with all these furlous chaps is That although they
all furlous about different things, they have this in common; they are Identified by their hates, by what they are against,
So 1 ke Bolt what he was for.
He sald: "I um
to tell me
my
thin end of the wedge?) They family, which is the most im
SAV
"Keith Machiner
ROBERT BOLT rustic idyll hos keen skattered.
13 portam thing of all me; the wrling of George Orwell; writing. though 1 sometimes some of Tennessee Williams; hate my own; England, be- Rossini; Kandel; fish and
chips; cause I ke living here and I
the left
wing of the think is a good place to live; Labour Purly."
The Worst
propaganda
The evidence is most conclusive!
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SARAH ON A DRINK CHARGE
SARAH CHURCHILL, 43-year-old actress daughter of former British Premier Sir Winston Churchill, was gaoled for eight hours last week on a drink charge.
. Then when she was released on 50 dollars bail, to appear in a Malibu, California, court accused of simple drunkenness."
The reason for her arrest scems to have been not so much her alleged drunkenness but the fact that she had some harsh things to say about the USA when two de- puty sheriffs called on her.
They went out to her small rented beach house near Los Angeles in response to a call from an official of a telephone company who complained that she had used foul and abusive language for two hours over the tale. phone.
The deputies drove up, knocked on the door. It was opened a few inches by Miss Churchill.
"What the hall do you want?" She is said to have asked. The deputies say they convinced her they only wanted to talk to her and she let them into the house.
They began to leave when, they say, Miss Church- chill followed them to their car and began to shout "America is no good" and "The United States has had it." It was then they arrested her. When they reached the parking space by Malibu gaol she began to struggle and ripped deputy Barney Millor's uniform jacket and coat. So the deputies "forcibly restrained her."
Miss Churchill was formerly married to London Society photographer Antony Beauchamp. He was found dead last August following an overdose of drugs. --
R
Best Case
BAND CONTEST
World Copyright by artar yement with the Manchester Querdian
Prayers and Politics
Sarah got
raw deal
Wealth for Power
THE big talking topie on Broadway this week is still the case of Sarah Churchill. My closest Hollywood friends Deborah Kerr and her husband, Anthony Bartley are in town at the moment, and I dropped in on them to have a drink with Otto Preminger, the pro-
ducer,
a
The belief among show people is that the police had absolutely no right to in- vade Sarah Churchill's house. If she cared to have few drinks in her OWNL house, thût was her own business; if she delivered herself of some strong words over the phone, all the other party had to do was ring off.
They think she has been
{1
victim of a gross mis- carriage of justice, and un-
DON
DIARY
a
We
are
help ourselves. sending money and mate- own self- rials for our preservation and the pre- servation of the Western work."
He has also begun to open his meetings with a prayer.
I
Fascinating
SUPPOSE you know that
it is election year here- not for the Presidency but 'for the whole of the House of Representatives, third of the Senate, and several governorships.
опе
There is a fuscinating. fight for the New York
fortunately has surrendered taxes, and an emergency governorship between two to the juggernaut of co- that will last at least of the world's richest men, operation, publicity, society, throughout 1958.
both well-known in Britain. and family.
The big struggle is going On the Democratic side I have known Sarah to be over foreign aid. The we have Governor Averell Churchill for years. I last Americans have already Harriman, who inherited met her gn Yucca Flat near transferred to Europe in more than $100,000,000 Las Vegas, when I was grants, gifts or loans over from his father, the Union covering the atom
bomb 50,000,000,000 dollars since Pacific railroad inagnate E. explosions. Of course she the war. has temperament. Without temperament there is no talent,
H. Harriman; and on the
hava Where does this money Republican side we come from? From the Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, pockets and purses of the who inherited a large chunk As one of Sarah's friends ordinary American citizen, of the Rockefeller millions.
wrong many of whom live in very Nelson Rockefeller has with temperament if the modest circumstances, and been in public service all impulse comes out of the hundreds of thousands of his adult life, and Governor same hot tensions and pas- whom live in slums and Harriman has been 4
Bays:
"What's so
sions out of which strength of art comes?"
Resolute
the tenements.
THE Americans have be- come a deadly serious people. President Eisen-
trouble-shooting diplomat, The standard of living in Ambassador to Russia, and the United States may be a strong contender for the the highest in the world, Presidency.
but for millions it is & struggle and strain to pay
the rent and food bills.
Together
ONE comforting fact about
So when Europe swallows hower opened his regular its next five billion or so of
the present Congress is Cabinet meeting this week hard-earned American dol
the almost lack of opposi- with a minute of silent lars let it remember this.
Young Mr Richard Nixon, tion to sharing scientific prayer, followed by glasses the Vice-President, is knowledge and achievements
of chilled orange juice. At the end of the Cabinet
stumping the country from with Great Britain, Many the Atlantic to the Pacific. big companies, including
meeting there was also a and from the Canadian Curtiss Wright, have taken
brief, silent prayer.
border to the Deep South radio and television time and It is a grim, resolute in a full-blooded crusade for newspaper space to quoto America these days, and foreign aid. The man who Mr Eisenhower: "We en laughter seems to have fled once had isolationist over- not afford to cut ourselves the land.
tones and a tinge of Mc off・・ from " "the brilliant'· The debates that are rag- Carthyism in his make-up talents and minds of sciente ing all concern the missile has now become the in- ista in friendly countries, or man-made moon. Every opirod Internationalist, The task ahead will be hard one seems to be ready for shouting from the plat enough without handcuits greater sacrifices, bigger form: "To help others is to of our own making."