THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1958,

Patricia

INTERVIEWING THE

Use the

Lewis OFF-CENTRE PEOPLE

Mr. "Here-to-Eternity

GIVING

(IN DRESSING-GOWN)

HIS MILLION-DOLLAR

FORMULA

'LTHOUGH I am just a poor relation, it is very nice to claim some kinship with the men who have managed to make money out of letters. And I am not referring to blackmail.

Because-better than some moneyed individual prepared to pay for his indiscretions-there is today a whole industry held to ransom for words. Write a book.... write a play....write good dinlogue write situations....write a bald, bold plot....write nothing but a fragment-an idea in embryo. (But preferably write a panorama). And the men who make million-dollar movies will make you a dollar millionaire.

rather splradio

I have struck this materialistic robe. It was mood after meeting Mister Jamen and reflected the glow from his puce cigarette- Jones, a name you will probably pink gin and

not remember, but whose book prick. "From Here to Eternity" you ho

doubt will. (Others may straply recall the

"Gee, I'm sorry about this,"

film-of-the-book or he said heavily. "But I guess

the book-of-the-alim, depending I'll be confined to my room

for

on the way you glean your high-couple of days. It's funny, but

I'm never stek at home." er education.)

Mr Jones is 30. He has a jul- Inwed face, after Van Hellin; u blonde

your's wite, after marriage; a lot of money, after selling the Bm rights of two books; a red foulard dressing gown, after Sulku;

after rather retching stomach, living it up on his Arsi Trans-

loniic boat-trip.

Ambushed

and

עוד

Ile intercepted

glance. "Well, I read Bomewhere that gin and bitters is good for the stomach,"

Mrs Jenes, wearing grey, pearls, and dark klussco, ihrew me a narrow look and a wide smile.

"Jim

a novel wants to do with Farls background," she said.

in one

WRITER JONES AND WIFE GLORIA' ETERNITY WAS FOUR YEARS LONG

again. So I guess I'm not mak- ing much headway."*

The telephone rang, and Mr Jones took time out to tell the B.B.C. that he felt as much like facing the TV cameras as he did food.

Mrs

Janez

poured

Place"

and Normin Mailer's "The Naked and the Dend"

ant John O'Hatu's "Ten North, Frederick"

it's easter to see where both the values and the power lle.

What made

Mitzi's

Measurements

AYRE I was feeling a after the Joneses but having rend that Mitzi Gaynor, star of "South Pacific," had lost 35 lb. in 12 weeks (see page 5) I thought I would nak her just how she did it.

Mittle flatulent

סמיי

Shiny as a fashion plate in a red linen pack and multi-strand river pearls, Miss Gaynor smiled brightly and said it was ing made. •her own million pl... no doctors dolints out

Just will-power." of three books shots totalling one-third the size of And, I leaned, a husband who the usuut American best-seller. had gone on the diet with her.

So I asked Mr Jonea why he and his contemporaries were all writing at such length.

He another Alter-Upped cigarette.

6

Power

Policy

2

PREFER to write a pano-

ramle story, he said, “A novel

no

For three months the stalwart but by no means over-weight Mr Jack Bean shared, with. his wife, the following meals;-

BREAKFAST

Half Grapefruit,

Two eggs, holled or poached. (No toast, salt or pepper)

of Sagun-siz? loses so much, 1s easier to get a richer plcture of life with more characters, mora Alb. margin, thare when restricted form.

you use

of

+

Black_coffee..........

LUNCHEON

hamburger with plain

› spinach.

OF

Lablespoons of cottage cheese with alleed tomatoes.

DINNER

"You see, there's a tradition Two in U.S. letters-a tradition rebellion against falling values seme and the present generation is trying strongly to keep this well- spring of vitality going in our Work

While not making headway with his overall pinn, Mr "Gloria! I have two novels Janes is still not wasting time.

of buck- The 700 pages

"Eternity" planned with European

a brought him around £350,000 coffee and said life for the INTENT on keeping up with grounds," said Mr Jones,

trifle testy."One from France from Its 4,000,000 sales and the past few weeks had been Just a the Janescs, i had asked

from fly. To me: dlm rights, and the 1,280-page series of parties to say "Good them to lunch at one of those

to "Soma Came Running” has bye" and parties to say "Hello," and even she was feeling a bit cute old Mastair puby full of "I've been making nolcs

nauseous and no wonder. atmosphere and iced water, but them for a number of years, and been sold to the movies for I wan ambushed at the lift-gate now seemed as good Uric as quarter-million dollars, plus

percentage of the gross. by Mrs Jones, whe explained any to sell up and come over." that her husbund was not feel- ing quite up to food.

"However," she said in the best il-biz tradition, "the inter- view must go on."

I

askeri

planned vance

Mr Jones if he all his novels in a

11

J

4

which

Half

A rilled chicken with

_string_beans, Grapefruit (the olber half). That is what I call devotionl

But if your husband is on a tubby-hubby diet, don't trust him is so out of your sight. He will cheat.

our

"My friends and 1. gel together und we talk about writing, und what the true I meanwhile, was wondering values are, all the time. It's why the European novel, a this searching, epitomised by Miss Sagan's necessary, that is giving us 100-odd-page volumes, was gel- power, ting simmer as its American equivalent got fatter.

Maybe it all reflects Europe's unshouldering of responsibility on to the United States since the war, but then Miss Sugan should worry, har

Course It took me four years to do the first and nearly seven to do the second," added Mr Jones. "But I visualise my novels covering the social struc

from ture

the of Americu 'tweatles to the present day deliberate

like the circles of a rather weather-mag overlapping both back to 11 time and space."

"Well, I began with planned," he said. "I wrote two Mr Jones From Here To Eternity' and - We discovered sprawled on his bed, a mile wan Some Came Running-bui since and naked (I assume, but for then I got those two new ideas the aforementioned red foulard which brings

inc

Lunching at a business-man's rendezvous counted 14 men When you think not only of in the Immediate vicinity, and Mr Jones but of Irwin Shaw's 11 were woofing up the most- £30,000 film-rights deal for tiered, most-colourful. most- most- and creamy, most-whipped. "The Young Lions" Grace Metalous's £45,000 from Melbard sweets 20th-Century Fox-for "Region elaborate menu

On the most

No, We AREN'T The Only Country

That Can't Make A Railway Pay!

DRITAIN is not the only country faced with trouble on the railways-nor the only country that cannot make

BR

railway

its railways pay. In an uneasy world there is one point of wide international agreement: running a without truuble and with profit is a tough business.

Canada:

IN Canada a strike looms up Now

the

sel

France:

France. It is appro priate that there is a gam- A bling game with the same name French for railway: up a the

Chemin de Fer.

for

privately owned Canadian Paciile Railways. Royal Commission fallowing a previous strike has found that remen serve no оп diesel useful purpose

CPR locomotives working in freight yards. CPR intend to cut the number of such firemen from May 11. The men's union vigorously opposes the decision --and a strike appears inevit-

able,

Coming now, this would be a particularly biller blow to CPR.

For the French national rail Eystem is run 08 game h which the taxpayer always losen. The gamble concerns Just how rauch he has to find yearly for his railwaye.

By JOHN WATERMAN Germany:

ariohe

An

plus another £25 a year for Tota nightwork.

A guard-ticket-colleclar Un Rail wages, too, are,

traits earns roughly £10-£20 the highest in the world.

a week with the same family engine-driver first-class

carns allowances, 00-102 a month plus £170 After 40

If he driver

OVER the border in Wesitation a year menge al town

years' service, a receives ៥: monthly

railmen are given pensions of approximately half their highcat salary scale,

Yet there is a smog to this story of the splendid Alpine

many the Teutonic reputation ¡lves in a principal town he gets pension of more than 150: other for emciency does not prevent another C42 a year. If married The State railwaya losing money, he gets another £12 a year plus on a similar scale to the French.

£25 a year for each child. The deflell for 1957 has not been

A signalman carns from £44 But at the head- to £71 a month with the same announced.

of this Deutsche 'quarters

Bundesbahn In Frankfurt they family allowances as drivers, wage peaks. estimale the figure will be around £60 million,

This, they hasten to point not, subsidised by the out, is taxpayer as the French loss is. The West German Government benevolently allows credits to the railways. These are expected Last year total credits amounted to more than

The extent of the latest loss has not been published yet. But to be repaid. the average deficit over the last few years has been £00 million. £00 million,

In 1980 their railway earnings In return, the

A

French have For all this outlay, the Ger-

were record. But last year the undoubtedly the best rallways man does not got such a slick company suffered a sharp drop in Europe

than some

44

13

for speed and service ta the French. The top Their crack train, train is the Frankfurt-Basle In income because of the slow- punctuality.

you from diesel express which covers 211 down In Canada's economic the Mistral, whisks expansion. Ten per cent less Paris to Dijon at an average of miles in three and a half hours freight was moved than in the more than 80 miles an hour. The an average of 60 miles an previous year. Net railway distance is approximately the hour,

fell

London. 10 by more

trom cornings £1,000,000 to about £13 million. Berwick. The Flying Scotsman

does this journey in six hours Dividends were clipped.

20 minutes. The Mistral's time The state-owned Canadian is four hours. National Railways had, if any-

Even faster journeys are pro- Much of thing, a worse Ume.

French engineers are their income is swallowed by jected.

charges nxod

of talking in terms of operating ai stock on

were 125 miles an hour. the companies that nationalised.

For this go-ahead system the Frenchman pays-in addition to of Evch before 1957 ended his subaidy at the rate deficit of up to £2,000,000 for lightly less thon 3d, a ille. the year with forecast. The final for first-class travel, and less Brure has not yet been made than 21⁄4d, a mille for second'

-Cost of a "return feket *£0 158.-drarer than the £5 is. Arst-class return from London to Preston, almost exactly the same distance.

it this fore appears higher than the English equivalent, German wages are on a slightly lower scale. Engine drivers average £55 10s, a month,

The Swiss!

public, but it may well class in Britain the coat la 3d. ASTLY State railway that shows a profit-iho Swiss. In represent an even greater loss and 2d. a milo, then this. And the Canadiens And wages? Engine drivers, 1950 they netted £2,100,000. toxpayer will foot the bill,

and foremen earn between £38, The Agure for 1957. is expected and £00 a month including to be even higher, many bonuses and gratulice. "Gignal- At the same time, · cónalant men get from, 236 to 252 16. renewal of rolling stock on this all-electric system good forward a month,

This compares with the rapidly andy hope to make Bellish average of £50 198 86. Switzerland'a railways highly for engine drivers and between efficient and certainly 64 and £18: for signalmen, cleanest in the world.

To complete the homely, familiar look of these Canadian railway both companies re- cently applied to increase their freight charges ten per cent and both face new wage domnende.

the

Cast of travel is exceedingly high. A 60-mille Journey costs Us. Bc. first class ond [4s. 6d. second class.

Brian

Compare the price of a ticket from Victoria to Brighton. It is 12s. Pd. Arst, and Ba. Ud. second class.

Presumably if Slr Robertson jacked up the charges to Swiss heights even British Rallways could be made to pay and the railmen would not be threatening a strike again.

-(London Exprms Service).

Page

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