DIR
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1959.
FILM PREVIEW edited by GERARD GARRETT
IRK BOGARDE — back home in Buckingham- shire told me how he nearly walked out of his first Hollywood film in which he plays the com- poser Franz Liszt.
*The truth is that When I arrived in Vierina to start the alm I was told that 1. had to play all the pleces myself; they included 34 plano Bolos, four organ kolor, and severnt works with orchestra,
The sound would have been provided by someone else but the physical display would have been all mine."
The works of Liszt, of course, demand considerable dexterity of the performer even if you are not actually producing musle. Much more exhausting work than enacting the composer's love affairs, which occupy the rest of the Atm, another sphere in which Liszt was something of a virtuoso.
"I said that I could not do it and asked to be released from the picture," sald Mr Bogarde.
I'm glad...
Why
Bogarde nearly
walked out
"Don't expect anything but full-blooded Hollywood approach 19 the subject," warned Mr "This Is n picture Bogarde. Intended audience,"
for the family.
He is quite enthusiastic about Hollywood as a place to make ilms. "It's a bit like a cross between Goldery Green and New Delhi, but it's no place to live
"
British film producers, I feel, will soon lose their golden boy. After finishing his next film in Home with Ava Gardner our top actor returns to Hollywood artsen
Marcly over here. They would in have given me a double.
plcture.
The matter wouldn't have
"Bul in Hollywood It is different. They say, 'We're pay- ing you a fortune to do the film and you jolly well work,'
"I am glad that they finally persuaded me to change my mind. I saw the film just before I left Hollywood and I have
never been beiter on the screen.
"It meant working 18 hours a day and if I had to play the 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody in n scene it meant sitting up all night practising it."
The Aim, now called Cre cendo, runs three hours in full
clour and with stereophonic Columbia, Mr Bogarde sound. informs
to make
another
"I am still under contract to the Rank Organisation for the next two years," he said. "But they are finding it more profit- able to hire me cut-like a piece of furniture.”
said: "Few
Joan Crawford, movie queen of the thirties,
of my pic lures' were ever cut by the censor. But then we did so much by suggestion and implication."
Dark glasses
OLLYWOOD
actor me, consider it their best alm since 1039 and antle- pale making a lot of money out of it.
echool of screen stars who do not believe in over-exerting themselves.
When I spoke to him he was wearing dark glasses which I assume enable him to keep his eyes restfully elased during con- without actually versations
appearing impolite,
He lounged comfortably in bar of a pub near the saloon
and askod mo Regent's Park About English girls. He seemed to have an extensive knowledge of English girls and mentally weighed them up like so many pieces of local bric-a-bruc on display in Petticoat Lane.
TV influence
He was dressed In a loo60 jacket, odd trousers and a black tle draped around his neck like
a hangman's noose.
This in the ideol
pirl of the year
A.D. 802,701 of imagined by Hollywood. Shu is played by Tretth Mimieux in the
film version of H. G. Wella's The Time Machine, in the pictura e o zara reporing in the
orms of Rod Taylor, who oppeurs at the Time Traveller. The clinch remolat classical
20th-century, Hellywood period
Do insecure. Parties are start- ins to break out in private houses."
"I couldn't dress like this back home," he said. "Holly
Mr Ireland invested some of wood is much too conservative these days. It's the influence his Hollywood curnings in a of television. If you work for luxury Arizona tennis club television they practically make Unfortunately this coincided you wear pin stripe trousers and with the conventional and in- bowler hats."
secure period and Mr Ireland went bankrupt and lost his club,
I was glad to get Mr Ireland's ssurance that Hollywood was successfully fighting back on John is front, too.
Ireland who is in Britain appearing in a Alm called FaceN in the Dark, belongs to the
Here's an exhibitionist -and how
fascinating!
ROCKET WIFE
BY IRMGARD GROTTRUP
TRANSLATED BY SUSI HUCHES
ARNOLD DEUTSCH.
165.
IN discussions about Sputniks and moon rockets someone.always says the Russian achievements
"Things are
beginning to ilven up. People are not quite
"The place is real thriving now," he said. "I's gol A thousand members who pay: a fee of 1,000 dollars and dues of That's be. 25 dollars a month,
BOOK PAGE
IRMGARD GROTTAUP
SHREWD. BELFISH
are only made possible by German technicians. what they see, but they will
Passages in "Rocket Wife" indicate that it may gloss themselves. not be so.
This is not to say that the Russians after the did not snaffle every German rocket scientist they found and pick his brains. We did the same.
That venturesome baronet, Sir war Fitzroy Maclean, M.P., went back to Bussin us a de-luxe tourist in 1958. He bed Last been there in OUT Moscow Embassy 20 years earlier,
He now records, most charm- his impressions of the
fore they spend a penny in the bars. Just work that out."
He added: "I may get the club back soon,”
And for the first time I de- fected a ghost of a smile on his
face.
Moved out
George Sanders and his wife have moved out of the Norman Hartnell Suite at the Westbury Hotel and are staying in Kent
By George Millar
In order to make the dally trip to Elstree Studios where he i filming Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons, Mr Sanders In- quired about hiring a helicopter. He dropped the ideu when told that it would cost £90 a day.
Thomas
Viseman ♬