Page 14,
PITMAN'S
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1958.
ROBERT Burning kisses while
the baby howled
book page
FROM the curious hot- house which is called romantic fiction, where M. novela labelled Ruby Ayres and Ethel M. Dell Bend out a cloying scent, I bring an unexpected story. A story of real-life tragedy and triumph,
It is the story which I stumbled on when 1 went to Britain's romance-writers: when I went down to Brighton and took a taxi to the sea-front flat of a lady called Netta Muskett.
"Retta Muskett!" you may exclaim. "Who on earth a sbc7**
You could not be blamed.
the
While the names ht bright young writers have been dancing across the headlines you will never
the пап Muskett at all.
Bec
But compare her with the brightest of those bright youths. In 1967 John Broine scored the triumph of the
year with his
novoj Room at the Top. Every- one talked about it. It has sold over 30,000 copies,
THE FIGURES
Yet, without any headlines, without any shouting, Netta Muskett sells 30,000 copies
of
HERE'S A MODEL FOR ALL THE HOUSEWIFE-NOVELISTS
Furs and jewels in the book
dresses
he klared the closed tids, his lips burning through them").
for other people, but mine was just threadbare.
"The editor arranged for me to write a serial of 60,000 words. Then he said: 'Our usual pay
Jew dropped. Не Si my expression and sold: 'Let's say
£210s, then.'
Martia
also do a lot of weaving on my Joom
I followed her down corridors
at the big fat to inspect the Joom, She said: "I have an- other at In Putney. And 1 travel a lot. I've been 10 South Africa, Jamales, Chile."
tell to well?
Muskett
Like all the best romance
women, she really feels for her
03
the
Alim heroines and bronzed heroes. But she brings in sume- one else as well. Freud. While most biben books romance shelf are stronger un sentiment then sex, you can De certain of realism every you plek up a Muskelt.
ume
THE BOOM IN LONDON'S TIN PAN. ALLEY.
Last year the public spant £11 million on rocords. Shoot music solos have slumped but there are still fortunas to be made in song publishing.
Refuse to listen- and you
THE little man with egg on his beard
THE
and bear on his breath came into the Charing Cross Road cafe, sidled over to Mark Pasquin and said in the curious accent of Tin Pan Alley: "I got a song, | boy-a hit song, boy,
"Remember Billy Reld's The Gipsy?
miss a hit
by Ramsden Greig
Add to that the la. id. profit on every 25. shoot of music sold and you will see that the music publisher is it a happy man.
Large cigars still stick out of the mouths of most music pub-
lishing executives.
NOTHING MISSED
ного does Nella manage it? Why do her books It made £30,000 for Billy and his publishers, didn't it? This one's just like The Gipsy, boy. It'll make a packet. Let me play it to you, boy,”
Mr Pasquin, who is profes- for the Mills storm manager Music Publishing Company, Indicated a piano In the corner, Gipsy was
When the song Just Like The well under way, Poaquin Bald to me. "They ferret you out everywhere. But of them.. You never know who's you've got to listen to every one
up with going to come possible hit."
When the little man with egg on his beard had struck his last resounding chord, Mark Pasquin stroked his own egg-tree beard and told him: "I'm sorry, boy, That song's too much like The Gipsy to be any good to any one,"
Netta Muskelt told me: can never turn my novels into serials, They're much 100 stronk. But sometimes I take one of my serials and pep it up into a novel,
"My readers aro mustly women, middle-class women. One of them wrote to me ante stying I was disgusted by your Infest book. But I noticed from the bits she mentioned that she'd read it from cover LO LOVET."
her romantic novels every year.
In her fat Mra Muskelt fold Not counting cheap editions or
"It started selling quite
Muskelt me: paper-backs. In 30. years Neits well. But I had a poor contract, Musketi has written 40 books, And 21 of them are still it really.
money. I did dress-making and print
embroidery for Liberty's to malce ends meet.
Impressive figures, the figures of a flourishing workshop. They
the figures were
which were ticking through my mind as I
the door stood at
of that fashionable flat in Brighton.
"You
# are going to meet shrewd little lady? I told my sclí "A business wornan someone who mapped out her career in the book market from the start,"
a
ELIT
today.
EDDIE STANDRING
More fun in the old days
In his office above a Denmark Street dairy, Eddie Standring, one of Campbell Connolly's direcios,
down put
the twentieth new song he had reed business-like he thinks: that day and said: "I separating the wheat from the chaff. There's an awful lot of chaff in this business, boy.
"Every day I get my I've got a-song caliers. The postman brings in around 60 songs each week. You read every word, play every note!
The business is too.
Ho
said:
"We made less money in the old days, but we had more fun. Nowadays your song plugger gets your song' on it's a hit overnight television and if it's any good
It took weeks and weeks to get "When I was plugging songs
a number on everybody's lips
"You chased performers all over tho country, badgering them
"That's how the music busi- ness found Show Me The Way them and pleading with To Go Home
口 (that sold
I didn't make much ment is two guineas.' 'Well, my enough. I could afford to send Sround Its Utle: FLAME OF in the music publishing business night Sweetheart and The More had achieved something if you
boiling pans on the stove
The little man, no doubt romances. We inspected them. She said:
NEW GROUND.`- thinking that Tin Pan Alley wes paved with sour grapes, said: "By my seventh book I was
With her latest book Netta "You've just let a fortune slip just about out of the wood, And oy the
breaks further new through your Angers, boy," time Peter was old
Are there fortunes to be made THE FOREST (Hutchinson,today? him to a public school. I've been 12s. 6d.), Its theme: the passiona paying surtax for years. But I and problems of
Pasquin told me: "From the young colonial still get up at four to work."
music, not any police officer in the Sierra Leono sale of sheet
The passions steam as sheet
Since the record boom Netta Muskett took me to the jungle. narrow room where the work is hotly as the jungle.
music rales have nose- dived. In the old days a hit- donc.
But the problems-about pay A dressmaker's dummy stood near the typewriter and the local cost of living song could sell a million copies. Muskett said: "I still maite all are deuit with in remarkably
TOP SELLER my own clothes. I made this cool detall. Just one thing seems "Our top tune last year was sult. I make clothes for my friends too, but I don't charge them now of course. Oh, and I.
made all the children's "It was right in the middle clothes, even the boys overcoats, of the slump. I needed any sort went on getting up of four. I of money desperately So I used to type in the kitchen. I
was only later that agreed. would pull up the kitchen table found out he meant 22 105. to the slove, so 1 could look per 1,000 wordt." after the cooking while I typed,
Above Netta Muskett's, head a I could deal with the tradesmen long shelf stretched along the there 100.
crammed with Muskelt
"The baby would be scream- And all the 'time' 'I was
STE
Then the door opened. A writing about lovely girls with housekeeper showed me down long corridor, and it seemed 1, was going to be proved right.
diamondst oodles of fur and end with servants willing on ther hand and foot.”
Natta Muskett shook her head and chuckled again,
In the big front room over- looking the sea I was met by u shrewd, We womanı with a cheerful Laec, I noticed
"When I was first asked to the smart write a serial, I know I wouldn't smart green su, the white hair. Netta Muskett's be able to take off my overcoat
Her in the magazine' ofee, irm hand shook mine. voice was firm too.
"Tea or something stronger?" she asked. I chose tea, and promptly there was a pol with a "Large cup on a table at my side.
Already in that room above the promenade my pleture of a romance-wrlier was being con firmed. Netta Muskett told me about her career. She told me how she had started as a teacher uf maths at a girls' school,
She said: Trying to teach Miria muths is an impossibility, i hated it. In 1914 got a jou doing statistics in Fleet Street instead."
I said: "I suppose that's how you started writing?"
"Oh, no, I married a man from The Times named Muskett. We had
big house la Streatham and a family to look after. '1 didn't have to write tatli I realised that my marriage was breaking up."
The
1
I put down my tea-cup. This was not what I expected. strong, cheerful voice continued. "You see, my husband was very jealous man. Not about olher inci-but about all kinds of things. About the children, about whatever I ald. Theru were questionings all the time.
"When our marriage ended, 1 had no money of my own, but I desperately wanted to be able to bring up the children myself. So I got up at four each mor- ing and started typing a novel. I was expecting my youngest boy, Peter, at the time."
- Notta
Muskett gave a jovial Jaugh. Her still-pretty eyes abane. She Zákl
"I knew so little. I even went to the local library and counted every word in a novel, because I didn't know how long one should bo. I found I was about 20,000 words short, So I added a new beginuding, it was called The Jade Spider"
HOT SALVO
I did not need to be told that. Today, 20 years later The Jade: Spider is still in print,
I had been reading it in the Brighton frain. It is about blue-eyed Pauline, wife of a Home Secre
Pauline spends some. Passionate nights I. chalet" Adar Lucerne.
ولار
But it is not the Home Becretary that she spends them with. A hat salvo from
thin
arly Muskettry: "His eyes burnt hara - until she closed them, unable to bear their light and
I modc
well
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"On any Sunday in winter you can see whole families. mother, father, and children, and sometimes even grandpa and grandma-with skis under their artna. crowding the railway stations. Trains teaving for the
hilly, anow-covered areas are crammed with skiers of all ages" from IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON, by Sergei Oratator, Sergei came here with his puppet theatre in 1054. The intriguing book, first published in Russie, gives his not always accurate memories of Britain. (Sidgwick. 10%. Gd.).
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
FOR DEADENING THE SENSES THERE'S [NOTHING LIKE LISTENING TO A LINE OF TALK PROPHESYING A WELTER OF DISASTER —
IT'S AS GOOD AS CHLOROFORM.
NOT ONLY ARE HANDS JUST AS GOOD AS SPOONS- THEY'RE BETTER —YOU CAN'T „SQUIDGE SPINACH
WITH A SPOON.
WE CAN'T ALL BE CELEBRITIES-BUTA
PAIR OF DARK GLASSES AND A CELERY SANDWICH CAN |MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE ONE,
more,
million copies of sheet music). Underneath The Arches, Good- We Are Together.
There are four planes in our other offices down the Arect. And they're going most of the time.
"It's true sheet music doesn't
have fantastic sales any more.
"Our best song last year was Little Darling. That sold 40,000
"Still, the gramophone records keep the profits steady. And, a publisher's royalty of £3 on every thousand records sold Is easy money"
Consider how easy. The sales of Eadle, Calvert's Oh Mein Paypal topped the million mark. So his
from the recording computry.
Standring has worked in the on the music publishing busincs for 31
Like the years.
Denmaris
improbable at first-s vastForgotten Dreams Our sheet copies, native Hot which the hero quelis music sale for that one WEA almost single-handed,
143,000 copies. When a person While the winter sea. sighed can hear a tune as often as he outside, I asked Mrs Muskett wants on a gramophone be about that rlot in her book, docen't have to sit down at a Pride gleamed, across her face, plano." From above the mantelolece she But it the record. ́boòm hɛa took down something in a frame.hit the sheet music sales it recording of It was
an extract from the makes up for the damage by London Gazette. It described paying handsome royalties to publishers would get £3,000 how, in 1956, a young colonial the publishers. police offer was awarded the For every record sold, the George Medal for his part in publisher of the song quelling * vast native riot record gets 1d. from aimost single-handed. The name record company. Half of it he Street veterans he thinks the of the officer? Peter Buskett, gives to the songsmith.
youngsters have
Just As Good
IF DINNER IS A WRECK, LOVE AND KISSES WILL DO FOR. AWHILE BUT THERE
ISN'T MUCH NOURISHMENT
IN THEM.
COM. INE BY METIERAL FEATUREF
COL, IWWERED RIGHTS BELEAVER,
YOU WILL NEVER CONVIACE SOME PEOPLE THAT A SMALL PIECE OF
ICE IN A GLASS ISN'T SUPERIOR TO A BIG HUAK OF ICE KNOWN AS A SKI SLOPE,
many
It too casy.
to sing your song on the music halls.
"In the old days you felt you
beat your Hutch to sing your song.
rival to it and got
"Hutch could make a for you."
song
Another new song was put on Standring's desk. Ho said: "We'll play this one course. But I don't think it will. do. It has, the common failing too many notes and too many
words.
over, :of
THE FORMULA "Simplicity, boF, that's what makes a good song. Sing your- selí #couple Show Me The Way To Go Homg. of choruses of.
and you'll see what I mean. It' got just the right number of words and just the right number of notes."
Thus I ended my journeys in Tin Pan Alley-singing a couple of choruses of. Show Me The Way To Go Home..
-London Express Servics).
By Harry Weinert
THERE ARE LOTS OF SUBSTITUTES FOR THE · CARD PARTY AND DANCE-
WHETHER ITS AN IMAGINARY HEADACHE OR SOMETHING ELSE DEPENDS ON THE
CIRCUMSTANCES.
OF COURSE BRAINS ́ARE IMPORTANT -- BUT A LOUD VOICE
IS JUST AS GOOD- ESPECIALLY
JA
POLITICS.
THE OLD REFRAIN THAT DRIVES WIVES BAT
A DAB OF PAINT AND A OF POLISH AND
IT WILL BE AS GOOD