TUP COLEHEN
OF SHOW DUSINESS
The Tennessee
Williams
Look...
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1959.
Roderick Mann IN HOLLYWOOD
Hollywood's such a bore, says Novak
Ipresent the latest recruit to a gallery of remarkable women
LIMELIGHT by THOMAS WISEMAN
FTER visiting two To play one of Mr Williams's
AF
have come to the conclu-
Southern fried chicks is clearly
Д
of Anna
They made me look like a zombio
...now I want to get away from it all!
IT was eight o'clock at night. One of those warm,
scented Californian evenings when the smell of the ocean and flowers finally prevails over the exhaust fumes of countless thousands of cars.
Kim Novak and 1 were at a drive-in restaurant on Sunset Boulevard eating cheeseburgers in Cary Grant'a Rolls-Royce..
I never did discover what a cheeseburger was, but, allting there in a borrowed Rolls with Miss Novak, it would have been boorish lo start analys- ing what I was eating.
"She's a beautiful, deep-thinking girl," Cary Grant who knows her well-hit asid.
"She's a dumb ox," my floor waiter who knows her not and sald
So I sat next to the beautiful, deep-thinking girl who might or might not be a dumb ox, and regulated the electrically-operated seat to a 45 degree angle so that I could Anish my cheese- burger and sill look at her at the same time (that fellow Grant thinks of everything).
And she said, in her soft, rather out-of-breath volee: "There's one good thing about being me. From now on I can only go up. I have hit rock bottom, you see, by being wrongly handled, wrongly ad vised, and made to look like an idiot.
"Now things have to get better.
Kim Novak..: have bit rock
bottom...now things must got better.
t
the
of the plays in a formidable task calling for rehearsal in London, I remarkable personality.
To the impressive Let actresses-they include
Vivien Leigh, Kim In my Inst 1m 1 play Stanley, Barbara Bel Geddes Tsarina and I think that is the
way to live for a woman. who have been brolled alive in
**To make love when she likes.
command men. That is the i
men--I am too much the
sion that the best pos- Magnani, sible training for any would-be playwright is a Mr Willams rich spell in the vice-squad, now be added the name of Iran
store will each every" thing he needs to know about human nature.
Mirenda.
must
She playsaysMyoman Williams's enthusiastic approval, in the Royal Court production of Orpheus Descending with Tony
a Richardson directing and Dlanc Cilento playing the nympho..
But I cannot command
Tragedy
"Publicists used to nek studio visitors.. 'You wanna meet Novak?' as if I were something In a cage. Do you wonder my morale satgod?
"My publiekty has been terrible. My name has been linked with so many men- Saramy Davis Jun. Frank Sinales, Mario Bandini In Rome—that if I had romances with them all I would never have time to set.
"But what's a single girl to do? I have to go out-and I would rather go out with men than women;"
I went through that door like a runaway..
stacr.....
We Anished the cheeseburgers "At night,” sald Miss Novak, and drove out along the neon- "this entire room is blue. It's splattered boulevard, through really rather romantle, 1 Beverly Hills and up the wind- think you would like it" ing cunyons to Miss Novak'a hill-top home,
Misa Novak went to the bar and mixed a beer and tomato juleo for me. "It's my own invention," she said. "Try It"
Try it! After Cheeseburger), what bad I to lose?
There was a Siamese cul turk- ing about called Pyo which seemed on good terms with Miss Novak. It was, I learned, the samo eat which had appeared with her in the film Bell, Book and Candle.
I told her I thought I would, 100, and she steered me into the hall, towards a locked door,
"I have shut myself oul from
the the back part of bouse by mistake," she said, . ""The keys are lost. I wonder
if you could break the door down?"
man
to prove myself a better
This, I know, was my chance than that shrimp Sinatra I went through the door like a runaway steer.
"That was clever," she said,
So romantic helping to reset my right arm.
So, together with Pye, we inspected the house.... the lavender dining room ("It's my favourite colours: I had to pet it out of my system”).......... the blue and white bedroom, with the king-size bed and the automatically operated TV get in the wall which swings out and has a blue screen 172 front of it.
She looks like a cross between a do-
glamorised Marlene Dietrich and--a
Sho and I am Pre went back into the living room. "It's nlee here," I said.
"I am selling it,” said Miss Novak. "This Is no way lo live. Luxury
and comfort
are no good for you. You Reed poverty and hardship to bo creative. Or bager,
"It you're hungry you're always alert and striving. When you're well fed you're mentally sleepy. And I don't want that.”
(Not interested
The girl who was so obviously not a dumb ox sat forward on the settee and curled her knees beneath her.
"To me Hollywood is a pro- vincial village,” she said. "Thu people who live here think newhere else exists. They have everything out of proDOSLION,
They read the gossip columns and trade papers and priso each other, and it's a bore-a great born.
"I want to get away to the great, cold, creative cities. New York, for instance. Or London. There life con really savoured,
"I am 26," she said, "and I I don't want to stay here. and stagnate Hike d. vegetable between tires. I am not interested in Hollywoodt. I don't even know had the people who bro in films here. And none of my real friends'are actors..
"No, I hust want to become better antress --- which I think I ton dates. Because I can't get worse--and I want) to continue with my painting and my writing and learning to be a real person, Kot 19 artificially erepied *per- sonality."
"When I fleet went to the studio, they
gave me a Jean Crawford mouth, somoone elar's
SYCH
someone else's hair. I looked like a zombie,
glamorisod Anna Maguanl, though sheWell, I didn't, face-look to
„abkora_comparisons...with_efthor__
Not to be outdone by the intellectual desperadoes of the Royal Court, the Old Vic
children-like Lolita.
1135
for tele
and British illm companies in order to stay on at the Old Vie
for about £45 a week.
"On £45 a week," says Miss
be starving for my art. And ar I am doing what I want to do, nobody need feel sorry for me."
Everyone who has acen Tennessee Williams play knows
On the terrace of her flat în dug up a neglected play by that what is wrong with humon
Bome stands a huge tree hung Shelley called The Cenel. It is Jefford, "I can hardly claim to beings is human nature, and the Having met this unusual with the decapitated heads of the perfect bedside budding playwright must feumai woman-reputed to have been plastic dolla
Mussolini's favourite actress and to make the worst of it.
She explains the has the dolls When I called at the Old Vic by heads hanging from her He will of course, have a hard admired from a distance
tree the other day I found the stage because her mother taught her designers industriously соп job competing with Mr Williams D'Annunzio
structing rocks in this respect, Me Willams, the. Williams should have written a that bables come from trees.
"and" fortura instead of for "You see, I cannot have wheels playwright with his own pri- play about her
babies. It is my tragedy," she One of the actors was com- already her, nil
adds.
plaining to a designer that the She looks like a cross between
And when you ask her why rack on which he had to play a de-glamorised Mariene Diet- she has chosen to sever the one of his ocenes was uncom
vate
hos ccaspool
through worked acknowledged vices.
the
felt that Mr
In doing this he has shown rich and a glamorised Anna dolls heads from their bodies, fortable and could something be ali the conscientousness of the Magnani, though she abhors she replies: "Because the head done about it, please". Old Vic working through the comparison with either,
is everything. The head is the The producer, Michael Bent. Bhakespeare First Folle.
of the hall, informed me that The an most important part being
body."
Cenci contained Incest, matri- practically
Milder
The latest play to emerge from his proline sub-conscious and to reach London is, I am lold, one of his milder efforts. It Is called Orpheus Descending" and with remarkable restraint, Mr Williama has included only one nymphomaniac.
There are no dipsomaniacs at all, and the illelt love is entire- ly heterosexual.
atrange
In addition to actress, the la a poet, a painter Talking to her, one has the cide, patricide and and a novelist. All the furniture of her apartment
sensation of having every other cide. All off-stage, In Rome, wandered into the action of which she rarely leaves to out anywhere, has been design- ed by herself.
Love is sad
go
Tennessee Williams play,
Reading between the lines of
Auf cothe..
Discovery
her fine free one can, make out
only brief episodes of a complex
plot.
"I fact Tericsson in America,” The Old Vic-clearly is moving
cho says. "We have many long with the timer. Pita horror With all those vocations it is beautiful talks. He encouraged monuera of Hammar Hound perhaps understandable that she me to write poetry. He is a who have already done preky hardly ever sleeps.
wonderful man. Yes, he is a well out of Shelley's wifo-the "I write at night," she says, neurotle man. Portuge that is creator of Frankendeln --Wert, "because I never sleep mora why he is no wonderful"
I am told, quite berkie thera than two or three hours. To All around her bed in her selves with. excitement en The hero meets his end by sleep is to waste time
I want London' hotel' muito aro her learning that, she had a huo- one of two alternative means all the time to live.
paintings, leods of worsen. But band who could also write. Ho la either (a)- tom to ploces by ferocious dogs or (b) burn- "I am very emotional I am books of poetry are stacked on to that beautiful and highly
no decapitated dolls' heads. Her Ploying Beatrice in Tho Centi
ed to death by means of a blow happy for nothing and I am un- the dressing table.
talented, autremi Babara (Juf» torch
happy for nothing. If I have "To be happy," Bay Lanford, who spends most of Apparently the producer can to love I have to die for love. Miranda, "is impossible. To bo time at the Old Vic or at Strat- Man isla diacretion as to which I feel everything to the most. Zappy in to sleep : 24 hours a ford-working with the nnert of these two techniques ahquid My poems are about love, mbin
be employed. Mr Williams dogs death. They are mad. Yes, love and, of counes, Mine Manda not mind one way or the other, is elvaga, aki -- in the end, hardly sloops, at a LENS.
actors' in 'the courtya
She is repeatedly tuned down offers diam (0.286llywood
London Express Service.
Fly by luxurious first-class or tourist DC-6B Service.
wipe it all of. And whatever
I may look like now, at least 1-100hHoy Kim Novak
It was dark in the room, and time to go.
MID Novak walked me to the door and shook hands. I zot↑ and started slowly off down the into the car, revved the engine.
canyol,
Thanks for breaking, down my door,” she called,
--(Londen Kapresa Service.),
Page: 311
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