"
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 1959.
CYRIL STAPLETON'S COLUMN
THE BOOK PAGE
Now, just for a change, Who Fixed The
meet the man those hit songs!
MEET Britain's Mr Music-Joe Henderson, who two years ago started his own music publishing concern with no capital, a lot of talent, and the laughs of Tin Pan Alley ringing in his ears. Even his friends said he was mad, tried to dissuade him.
His first publication, written before
Geluns
the recorded his intest by himself, was "No one." Come- composition, "St Tropez,"
recorded i Henderson Ind the dlan Jerry Lewis
techni- waited Ave hours. Bardot never came. He's still ready to make the record, which 1st goes lu show how deserves to succeed,
and
collected Henderson double dose of royalties,
Ho followed R up with Dream of Puradise," written David Whitfield by himself. recorded it.
Next, with lyricist Jack Fish
wrote "Why Don't he They Understand?" -
ΠΑΠ
£10,000 note
the
Amerieni singer Georze Hamilton IV recorded it, and it was at. Other versions by Giru Mason, John Frawer, and The Zodiacs nugmented Henrson bank balance:
That
song has earned Messrs. flenderson and Fish anan around £10,000,
Now everybody understands that Joe Henderson means big
business.
In Anerken it was voted one of the 10 most successful ditties of the year, and Henderson has been asked to fly over to pick up an award.
ค
Christmas Fur
he hat corded family ng-Song medley: "Sing It With Joe." This Christmas Jee has sime- thing to sing about,
In search of a hit
I forecast a bright future for young singer Craiz Douglas. He
way ot being
by phenomenon.
Among the ruck of young who mil around the hopefuls
ry studios currently, he stands out a mile. 1 looks normal.
He patronises an old-fashioned barber instead of a hair-styles
td he wears a collar and tie.
And he can sing. He is a
17,
ex-milk tripling of
from the Isle of Foundaman Wight, Down there they know of "Trudie"-written, published and recorded by Henderson him better as Terry Perkins.
But he is pushed for tire particularly since the triumph
which gave him a fat winning treble in our best sellers,
He played it in the TV show "Cool for Cats," Warwick Fung rang him, asked to use it
10
He was discovered in a lel talent show and before he could By British Railways he was on "6.3 Special" and cutting his Arst record for Decca.
His first flopped saleswige and ຕ theme for "The Man
"Are You Really Inside-starring Anita Ekberg his second.
Mine" is still in the lap of the and Jack Palance,
teenagers who make stars, the original They scrapped
There is some perplexity background music and com- missioned a fresh score written among his professional advisera.
The Douglas talents around the "Trude" theme.
whereas Despite the reshooting involved, toward lgbt ballads they
Ekberg the young record addicts go for renamed the
beefy beat. character Trudie.
One snag.
1
His only snag so far was whch Forks with Pelula he went to Clark to accompany her at the Furis Alhambra
He also hed
2 date with Brigitte Bardot to rehearse her
lenta
And to confuse the issue even nore, the kids who didn't rush to buy his records freeted hila "6.5" appearances rapturously.
told, is His fan mail, I'm
All that
standa enormous. between young Douglas and dazzling fame is the right song to make a hit record.
hope he finds it.
behind
Now see how
he rates in The Top
Ten
IT'S ALL IN THE GAME Tommy Edwards
(M. G. M.) (1)
Lord Rockingham's XI
(Decen) (3)
2 HOOтS MON
3 BIRD DOG
Everly Brothers (Loliden) (2)
4 A CERTAIN SMILE
Johnny Mathis (Fontana) (5)
5 MORE THAN EVER
Malcolm Vaughan TH.M.V.) (B)
6 ITS ONLY MAKE
BELIEVE
Conway Twitty (M.G.M.) (20)
7 COME PRIMA
Marine Marint (Darin) (4)
8 MOVE IT
CHI Richard (Columbia) (7)
9 STUFI CUPID
CAROLINA MOON
Connie Francis (M.G.M. (8) 10 TEA FOR TWO CHA Tommy Dorsey Orebestra (Brunswick)
CHA
Big Show Disc
By JOHN LAMBERT
***** "WEST SIDE STORY" (Philips) LP. The first show eord in a long time that sounds more exciting at the 20th playing than the first. None of the tunes in of ordinary "pop" standard. But at least two "Tonight" and "Cool"are outstanding songs by any standard, The score ranges from the rney to the ribald, the poulful ta th symphonic. Vocally the artists are a lang from perfect, but their way verve makes a muzzy role seein a minor point,
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
THE OLD FLAME YOU THOUGHT HAD A BROKEN HEART IS STILL AROUND
TAKING NOURISHMENT.
FICKLE FEMMES.
OFF
WITH
THE
OLD-
ON
WITH
THE NEW.
茶茶
Fuses At
St. Nazaire?
"
by George Malcolm Thomson
| THE GREATEST RAID OF ALL. By C. E. Lucas Phillips.
Heinemann. 18s.
THE morning after the raid on St Nazaire in 1942 it seemed that this heroic and costly exploit (25 per cent dead among the picked per- sonnel) had been something less than a success.
For once it was a raid with But Lucas Phillips speaks of a strategle purpose: to destroy a legend persisting in St Nazaire the great
British Normandy Dock so that a
officer-whom that it could not be used by the French workmen say they saw- Tirpitz, Germany's, and the went back on board the Camp- world's, most powerful battle belowa, and refired the quies- ship, as a bolt-hole after some cent charges, killing himself in attack on Atlantic shipping. the process.
her
Escape chance If the Tirpitz had to return to hier Norwegian fjord after
solly, Dien
chance of cscoping the British Navy would be greatly reduced.
Immediately after the raid was over, the position wan this!
an old destroyer, the Campbel- town, had rammed the gates of the dock, but the explosive charges inside her had falled to detonate; the pumping station had been blown up, disabilng the dock for a year; the British
Commandos. after a violent, gallant battle ashore, had most- ly been rounded up.
A magnificent coup, but as the German Intelligence officer sald to Lieut.-Commander Beattle:
Your peopic obviously did not know what a hefty thing that lock-gate is. It was really use- less trying to smash 11 with a
lmsy destroyer."
At that moment the glass from the window crashed on the door. The whole of St Nazaire shook
with an almighty explosion. Four hours after their due time, the fuses in the Campbeltown had done their work.
"That, I hops, is the proof,” sald Beattie, that we did not underestimate the strength of the gate."
lies
MY QUARREL WITH THIS PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN'S FATHER by Anne
Edwards
THIS WEEK the China: Mail is making a now departure in book reviewing to mark the publication of "King George VI," by John Wheeler-Bennett.* This first authorised biography of the late King is an exceptionally important addition to history, and so, to appreciate its significance more fully, the Express has invited four people of differing standpoints to examine the issuos it raisos. This is the second' opinion, this time from a woman's eyes...........
I WISH there could after dinner party with a tray
of drinks.
are
WAS
the
The Aunt Sophie "who there too," the Missy who was be some means for
He must have found it hard " great form," the "pour "The dinger of surmise" points at Captain W. II. Pritchard, letting someone like to keep a straight face when Mignon who was in bed all the
respectively tall, hery Weichman. The trou- Peter Ustinov loose on the Coronation the Isishops exiled Queen of Greece, Queen
(as he noted in his diary) at me" ble is that Pritchard's bcdy
of Durham, and Bath and Marie of Yugoslavia, and Queen buried with those of his the Royal Archives. comrades in a cemetery nene St In face of this new, official Wells Just the place in
the Marie of Rumania.
And when dear Unele Willy Nazaire,
word-portrait of King George ceremony when he had to take Certainly it would be remark- VI, I feel exactly as I do in face the Coronation gath, and the died co suddenly, King George V grieved Inst ie if no legend were to grow of any officiat royal portrait in Archbishop coming to the terribly shocked and vest
held down his book Tuesday, the und an incident so breatholis. 1 just wish it would come rescue
19th inst., to courageous as the Stylive. Nazaire raid. The daring, im
his receive the sad news that dear Meticulous, authentic, detalled, and unfortunately put
Unele Willy the King of Greece probable exploit may have had fair, scholarly, there is no error thumb over the words.
been
at assassinated a herole, improbable climax.
came to the had of tasto or judgment. It is an The story as told by Lucas important pubile record of the prem moment he wrote in Salonica, by a Greek.
"It is too horrible. He was complex and quite constitutional Ble of a Monarch. his diary: Phillips is enthralling.
"My Lord Great Chamberlain put for a walk as usual in the was supposed to dress me but I street when this brute came up shot him lound his hands fumbled and behind him and shook so I had to Ax the belt of through the heart." the sword myself.
takingly
The forces engaged were too light. The diversionary bombing
was not severe enough. Losses were heavy Indeed. Here is how 011 men salled into the estuary of death, how 100 died and how ive won the VC.
Muddled terror
No shocks
But it adds little to what we already knew of the King as a man.
It springs no per. вопи surprises. it Hinks under the loo general convic- THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION. tion that in writing about
By Alan Moprehead Collins |*****
ad and Hamish Hamilton. 30%. august royal persons,
of religious milling any human weakness would be treason.
From a morass manin, bureaucratic corruption, war, defeat and cynleism, there crawled one day a monster, the
Russian Revolution,
10
And when it
Gold plate
"As it was he nearly put the hit of the sword under my chir. trying to attach it to the belt.
"At last, all the various vest-
The economy cut, which he and the made voluntarily in the slump Ments were put on archbishop had given. me the of 1001, was giving up the hunt two sceptres.
with the Pytchler... "And 1 "The supreme moment came must sell my horses too .. the when the archbishop placed the picting with uum will 00 St Edward's Crown on my head. terrible."
had taken every precaution, ag When he modernises an old I thought, to SCC that the house and has trouble with the Ctown was put on the right boiler-It is Royal Lodge mul Way round, but the dean and Office of Works he is dealing
archbishop had been with. juggling with it so much that I never did know whether it was right or not."
Fragments
to
samo
When the wartime meals served at Buckingham Palace were cut
the mediocrity as "might have been served in any home in England,' they were still served on gold plate.
The admiring descriptions which are trocly scattered through the book are a trific Re-telling the extraordinary pompous: firmness of principle drama, Moorehead cannot, of
and punctillous the ... proctical course, rival the graphic, biased mind... simple faith In simple
.. selfless service eye-witness narrative of John beliefs After all, the St Nazaire raid Reed or, compete with Trotsky, his peoples personal self- had achieved its strategic pur- brilliant fotse historian and sacriflee... unsparing devotion pose. The destroyer, with over leading member of the cast.
to duty." Gorman visitors aboard, But he has freshness of And yet the King must have 300
humour, went to her violent and honour approach,
freedom had a slyer sense of the ridley- oble doom. The lock-gate was from partisan bigotry, a glit of
lous than all this suggests. He selection. smashed.
betrays it in his own account of
What we do get, and it is This is a most readable, vivid, the Imperial christening where only, by the way, in scatter.
wrote: "Food, account of the the baby tell into the font and ed remarks, Is a fascinating clothes, and fuel are the main well-balanced
muddle-in enormous
which he had to scoop it out. He must pictuure of the Royal Family's toples of conversation with smoke have giggled when the butler gift for living a simple, almost all," it was the King Emperor there was more tobacco How was it that the explosion than powder
smoke during at the White House fell into the middle-class life against writing from Sandringham to occurred so long after the ex- which Kussia passed from one treme limit of time expected? Terror to another.
Nobody knows,
London Express Service).
Until hor end in the fjord in the far north, the Tirpitz never preyed on the Atlantic convoy routes.
Old Flames
SOME
OLD
• Mamulan, 601.
FLAMES -END-UP.
THE ONE WHO DOESNT EVEN REMEMBER YOU -SAYS SHE DOESN'T NEED ANY BRUSHES
TODAY — AND
CLOSES
THE DOOR.
AS,
| HONORARY
UNCLES.
COPI, 2016 BY GENERAL MATURE CORP. THE WORLD dátt: KALIKA
CASUAL
MEETING.
GIVING-
THE
OLD
FLAME'S
THE GAL WHO TREATED YOU AS A CAT TREATS A MOUSE IS NOW MARRIED AND STEPPING- LIVELY TO THE ORDERS OF
A SHRIMP
SIZE HUSBAND
SPOUSE
THE
ONCE-
OVER
LIGHTLY.
grand and momenious back- ground.
By Harry Weinert
ITS DIFFICULT TO FORGET OLD FLAMES WHEN THEY'RE TATTOOED ON YOUR MEMORY.
DEAR, THIS IS YOUR 'UNCLE' CHARLEY
"I DON'T RECALL ANYONE NAMED BOCKO)—–
AM I SUPPOSED TO ? “
TRYING-
TO FAA THE EMBERS
OVER THE PHONE,
When he
the Duke of Gloucester.
My quarrel with the portrait is that it seldom comes alive. in all the 803 pages I never lound
one reference to the smallest falling, except that as a midshipman, when I will gastric ulcers, he was some- Times subject to "squalls temper."
ان
We know that he was often irritable. That he could swear
118
picturesque as Philip. That
he was more inclined to talk about the electrical installa- tion involved in lighting a great picture than the plcture itself. We get none of that.
Yet would anyone like him any the less for knowing he had a failing or two-or admire him any the lea, ciher?
NEXT WEEK
Lord Altrincham gives his forthright views
FICTION SHELF
By LAURENCE MARKS
• STRANGER IN GALAH. By Michael Barrett, Longmons. 13. Gd.
An Australian "Western" of the present day on the classic deme of the embittered stranger who rides into a planeer tawn and challenges the Telgning tycoon. Plenty of action. Told in brunque, vivid prose that gives the borrowed genre a dis- linetive Australian tang.
• THE SALT OF THE IDE. By Betty Singleton. Robert
Hala 12x..60.
Villing Comadian business- man's struggle to redeem hood- lum who has tried to cosh him on 4 London treol. Mrs Singleton's heart is in the right place, but most of her characters intly social worker, ovil old corrupter of youth-seen have wondered In nearby melodrama,
to
from
题
Hailey.
• FLIGHT INTO DANGER. John Castle & Arthur- Souvenir Press. 11s. 6d.
Mr Hailey's nerve-wracking TV play, about a plancloed of 100ball, farm who discover both pilote unconscious through food poisoning, has been adopted inte boy's magazine cliches. It makes a pretty tense thriller, aVOZA 20,
-{London Ezprem Service),