INSIDE
SHOW BUSINESS
THE CHINA MAIL, FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1958.
* * * * * * * * * *
THE TENSE MOMENT AS Bardot gets Boyd*
PICTURE BY EXPRESS PHOTOGRAPHER ALAN HEEK.
THE KINGDOM OF THE CAMERA WHERE ONCE THE INDIAN RULED
YOU
VOU may be one of those who know all there is to know about the celebrities of a fabulous district where the sidewalks have led many along the direct route to dollars and diamonds, and-where-any-more have found have you ever only disillusion and heartbreak. But pyused to wonder how that locality gained its name and ita fume-the extraordinary locality renowned throughout the world as Hollywood, capital of the Motion Picture Industry?
A hundred und
eighty-ninis
years ago this August, a amull force of Spanish soldiers under the command of
by S. FIELDS
DONAT
IS BACK
IN FILMS
HE WAITS AT THE SIDELINES AFTER THE FOUR LOST YEARS
ROBERT DONAT returned to a film studio the other day
knees
after four years of illness and anguish. trembled, his hands shook, and his voice stumbled again and again. Yet in spite of his fight to take the first step back he was n happy man.
Nobody at Elstree studios could remember a more tense time than the day that Donat returned. He is back to stor with Ingrid Bergman and Curl Jurgens in "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness." the Alm Everything and everybody-the vast £00,000 set, crew of 80 technicians-walled and depended on whether Donat could make it.
He had suffered from mounting panie over the week-end. For this was a return that most people, including his doctors, had sald could never be made.
from Britain as her new co-star
RIGITTE BARDOT
has a British co- star for the first time in her new lim "The Night That Heaven
Fell" He is Stephen Boyd,
the husky CX- cinema usher
who has now gone to Holly- wood.
This also is the frst im in which Bardot will make International impact. It will be retensed by 3 Hollywood company which has signed the French
kitlen" to a ven-
year contract-on her own terms.
One of her demands
Weas
That she should have her plek
candidate has already
He arrived at the studios at 9.45 in. The time-most fim of top men co-stars. One sult- stars have lo report at 7 o'clock was a concession to his con- able dition. As he walked on to the sel there was a strange moment been named: Frank Sinatra. of silence, then a cheer from the crew,
AND SHE PICKED HIM
After
The question Brises whether the YANK
There were dozens of lelegrams, some from Hollywood, and any other men would risk being there was a huge bouquet of carnations and daffodils from the film in Bardo picture. It seems that the sex kitten has a habit
crew.
Donat spent two hours in the make- department. up
Director Mark Robson and Curt Jurgens, mode up as a Eurasian Army officer paced up and down.
Stumbling.....
AL 11.15 Donat came on to the sel In his hands carried
D
he
throat spray ready in case he had an asthma attack. He looked ilker the most ner- vans beginner fac-
(cent suburb eight miles from Hollywood since it established ing the cameras for the centre of the now great and itself as the Film Capital has UM that cosmopolitan prawling city of Los Angeles rested the Santa Monica mountains, tural beauty of its setting and a suburb nestling at the foot of character, as well as on the na- enibelishments of Its handsome tree-lined the crisis with Mircels and boulevards running designers who have had a hand down from deep gleres to the in its planning. contal plain or stretching along le hilsides in winding terraces and drives.
He might have heard i des- cribed as a vast bower of foll-
actresses who have been drawn FIBINUJEN KEQJUE WIN a lowered trucant deed
Again, the surrounding coun- im officerry was remarkably varled in Get fall character, and breath-takely foul of a tund of Real Plans in
covered by there now Film City which is pet really a city in self but district of Los Angeles, the lending busi ness and Industrial cite if southern California.
the
by John Lambert
of lapping up all the attention of the camera and the audience, which her co-stars And less than endearing
*** ** ** *
at Oxford...
Cam-
TUE Rank Organisation is to
make a film about bridge University called "Light Blue." They say It will have the true spirit of a British univers Dirk Bogarde accepted the sity and all the typient fun of challenge once in "Doctor A student lite. But the surprising Sen." But Bardot was only
choice for the star role is Ger-
beginner then, and the camera man actor Hordy Kruger,
He
stayed mostly on Bogarde. culted
Brigitte "begulling." Since she became
big slurs PUBLICISTS are promis-
in nga "new look" Liberace when
the men stars have become more wary, Said Rossano Brazzi, London now: " am offered a role opposite Bardot in her next plcture.
be arrives in London this week- end. The ex-chubby charmer is
But I do not want to now 2nt. 121b. lighter after a long slimming elint. But he is still commit professional sufcide.
- "Leading men in her pictures wrighed down with sequins. spend most of their time
just
lookng at her. And so does the
audience, Few pelors are shy
enough to take that treatment A Vie Frankle
Bladly."
moves
AFTER Shakespeare at the Old Hinwerd the comly who is trying to establish Before he flew to Hollywood, a reputation in drama, after The Night That Heaven nyer to Moliere. Commercial TV Fell," Stephen Doyd said: "That is giving him the lead in Miles was the maddest
I have Malleson's adaptation of School. ever been in. I would not care for Wives" "a sort of Fe mandel
with part in eighteenth-century o
lume."
SHE HAD HER PICK...
to be in Bardot."
sorry
"It's been so
50
the Arst time.
that He asked
closed the set be to everyone except the camera crew. So from behind the lattice windows of The whole world has con- tributed in making it what it is
the
we" palace watched thron go Birst -in furnishing the great pro- through his
aclors und scene. ducers, directors,
Again and again, there, the operatie story. the his voice shook and
playwrights, dried up. I'm by Man and Nature in splendid u prestries, the easy reach of the men who were
the develop alone, with top-ranking sur- the technicians, and all who are sorry," he said. "casting " on
moving pleure veyors, architects and landscape associated with the glittering long." He looked imperious in a Furthermore, Los An- gardeners blending their talents Kingdom of the Camera. black skull-cap and cost over u comorZI. note: ilself was elty which to create a place to work and
blue costume. But his legs were had already earned something live which must surely
There is u reverse to the trembling. of a reputation in Atherica us a
The scene loveller than any this side picture, of course. It is in the Robson rehearsed Paradise.
unwritten stories of fallure and over and over. "Watch Donat," ihrntrical centre.
disappointment that belong in he said. "He's stumbling now. the hearts of so many who have Bul each timu it gets ensler. filed to realise their dreams, Soon he will be running." And and who know it as Heartbreaks he was right. Bollywood. It is in the well- publicised stories of some who galued the heights only to fall from grace.
on ground which has since wit russe countless dramas play out in the realin of mak belleve, and in the realms of real
ife too.
Yet for more than a hundred years after the time of Gaspar de Pertola nothing of oarticnit
certainty nole Courred there;
place nething to glve Tetown!
of the
In bal ero, Europe might have taken the lead in the lim
but in 1914 Industry.
thu
Fabulous etc. etc. etc.
The Spaniard would stared in meredulity spectacle of
risen built phenomenon
this
be
of
district,
Blazing.....
talent his
blazed
"Cut,"
Mark Robson
He dashed
Up Country:
THE
another
HIGH
thin
onu
FLY FOUR
by Thurlow Craig as the
TOUR huge birds hovered necks, big beaks, and long legs new marvel I was about to be-
the
thai
The blood spilled on th,
hutred August day
aud eighty-nine years ago gave brief noto iety in the site of what
the was later to become Hollywood. The light unacted there was the o'ng of pletures on the east recorded history side of the Atlantic was almost beginning of
I watching a duel to the death bands and knees.
At last I saw them!" Four head, dead black against a between three raging males for brought to a halt by a deadlie
After lunching alone in his kind of shooting with
have
dressing-room, which has an air-brilliant sky, wide wings one avidly watching female? sedate old herons steed knee- they swooped and deep in an evenly-spaced lino outbreak of World War 1. In
at the It is in the scandals, too, that purifying plant bullt into it, beating and snake-like necks, Lower
plunged on wide pinions, and Just like match anglers, fishing its zymote stronghold thousands of inlles away from the conflict,
brillant have shocked the world from Donat faced the cameras again. a'twisting.
then it seemed that two were away and attending strictly to from the time to time, the American Industry
Yet it has been This time
grim silence. A business, looking neither to ivit un serenely into a position vilds he had once known-and said, and perhaps with a good through.
But I could not identify fighting in is for the palaces In the fashion deal of justification, that other
дес So I have yet to
the Uces surrounding of prominence" which it still
There was no sound but his them and wondered what as they disappeared between right nor left. Hills able Beverly
was herons' maling dance. I didn't holds today.
homes of the Great Ones of the communities possess their dis-suddenly strong, confident volce they were. They seemed to quicl pool. The suspense
the sct,
even wait to ask what luck they Tr after
be engaged in some strange unbearable, Hollywood had Screen, these would have seem- creditable members of society in
Bent double, 1 shuffled fpst were having because my knees Tenene: that proud position, ed to him fabulous beyond be a ratlo neither greater or less shouted
than the Film Capital The towards Donat. "Robert, that duel.
and crablike towards the sins were wet and cold, and it was Gaspar de Portola could have Bef.
"Just Ane, difference is that the spotlight was, fine," he said
A long-overdue spring had ter spot, wondering what strange time for sea. returned to the scene of hus
all. brush with the Indian braves,
cosmopolitan character of universal attention does not You made it"
forcely
Donat on their
amiled warmly and Anally asrived and nearly bis astonished gaze would have of Hollywood Is expressed in shine to
it 115
does од architecture of its transgressors
said.
for being the wild things WELL/Occupied "Thank you
with family affairs. Our tame beheld one of the wonders of the varied
patient, it's good to be back."
Hob cut ferret Jill had turned of the nest to make it comfy for the babies soon to arrive. This meant that 1 had to fix up bachelor quarters in my room, for poor Hals hates to be stone. From the valley rose the lovely, nostalgic weil of the carlcws as they gracefully circled the wel lowlands, and I had gone to the river to sag if 1 could photograph a rimping otter: but there were mone about.
It could have been British
.
There was a time, during the 19th fury, when the future! Film Cantel might have become Briti
tilere. The whele of California, Mexican possession from 1 to 1848, was offered to Crit Britain by the Republie of Mayin in settlement of out- standing debts, but the offer was declined.
W33
In February of 1818 Upper California was ceded by Mexico to the United States. Still there no such place-name as Hollywood
the territory, though there was a city of the Angels. r Los Angeles-und there was spot on the trail to Los Argeles where Spalsh- American missionaries had erected a wooden cress, a spot to which
Redskin converts had
theke own. given name congue, Translated, the name was Holy Wood.
About, eighty years to an American who had rattled there and started up as a Truit-grower decided to call the cres of his homestead Hollywood,
And why did Hollywood blossom out as the capital ol the Moilo Pleture Industry? Firstly because climatic con. Hons in those parts were so ideally suited to the making of films. The carly matlon- pictures had to be "shot" out in The open under bright sunshine, and here there was plenty of runlight through the greater part of the year with little or no rain from May to November, and an 'atmosphere which was axceptional in its crystal clarity,
The
the modern world: A magni- buildings. Indeed the charm of Hollywood's.
| Lili
STAGE DOOR
French Follies
Millo
CLOSED FOR
ALTERATIONS
BRITISH AND
AMERICANS W.KEEP OUT! TUNIS-ALLERY GOOD OFFICES
"DON'T WORRY, I'LL USE MY GOOD OFFICES FOR YOU WITH THE NEW
LEADING LADY—WHEN THEY GET ONE!"
they Seeming to know that were out of season and there- fore safe from man, duck were flying about in dozens, or shoot- ing up and down the river In couples.
Then, nearing a placid sheet
of water that is connected to the river only in time of flood, I saw birds. Their high-flying "circus" was. something I hadn't Been before.
The
Country born and bred, "what knowledge possess is that of the pusant and gipsy, stemming from observation and hearany, plus a modleum of legend. We know the order of the seasons. We know what the different bcosts, birds, and Ash eat, and how they behave. But Latin Wa azmes mean nothing to us. don't care that the Swedish Ornithologist Linnteus tagged cur magpie with the ridiculous name of Pica Pies Pien, nor does It make any difference to tho bird concerned.
hugo
But what were there birds, Marming and tumbling hundreds of feet high,
what were they doing?"
Then
and
they fell below the jorged mountain skyline. Bluey-grey plumage, "serpentine,
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