THE CHINA MAIL,
SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1961.
Roderick Mann
I'm no longer a freak' says
I HA
Diana Dors
HAVE been talking with Miss Diana Dors — who is back in this country after a year away in Hollywood. I would not go so far as to say that she is a new Miss Dors (after all she is still using the same old equipment) but undoubtedly some modi- fications have been introduced.
VALA
She has lost weight. She has stopped using make-up. And she has cut her hair short. Whereas before she could only peer hopefully through the peroxide Niagara festooned about her face, her vision today is quite
excellent.
At the heat of her much. publicised activities, there were some who thought Miss Dors would eventually be forced to do something really drastic about her life-like making a good picture or standing as a Liberal,
Instead she went to Holly
She
tells
wood.
And there,
Inc, she now lives a quiet, unsen- sational life.
'Ridiculous'
SHE'S BACK FROM HOLLYWOOD
-'I LEAD A QUIET LIFE NOW'
and that put of the 03 pic- that I'm a hard-working actress
tures I've made at least wo weren't bad. Yield to the Night and A Kid for Two Farthings. "It would have been so much easier if only Dennis had known when to stop. When I betran getting some reasonable paris I wanted the stunts to finish. But Dennis thought he knew best. The truth is he loved getting "You can't imagine what I into the act; he loved being had to live up to when I first "Mr Dors. He had no esteer, went there four years ago with you see, other than promoting Dennis her tre husband, the me.
"You see," she sold, "I'm no longer regarded as a freak
out there.
and
He's
lute Dennis Hamilton],
was billed as Britain's husband, comedian Dickie Daw- "With Dickie ther present Answer to Marilyn Monroe son), it's quite different. which was both unfair
got his own career. But it's been ridiculous. After all, look at the
awfully difficult for him, start Monroe had. When she Imagine trying to follow Dennis was making How to Marry Hamilton! How Aftonatre in Hollywood was that?
do you ion making My Wife's Lodger in Manchester.
"it's taken me since then to convince producers out there
WHAT WOULD KINSEY
HAVE THOUGHT
THE BURDEN
ABOUT ALL
THIS?
by RICHARD LISTER
Arthur
OF GUILT
ALL WE POSSESS. Edward
Hyams. Longmans. 185.
THE
title refers to the| THE CHAPMAN REPORT. By Irving Wallace, self-the power
Borker. 185.
to
WHAT
A RAT RACE
VICTIM
THE SHORES OF NIGHT. By Robert Muller. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 18s.
"But he's been wonderful, He's helped me both as an actress and a person, I'm very lucky. I've got ki wonderful husband and a marvellous baby 14-month-old Mark1. Dickie's only wish is that everyone could know me as he does."
"Maybe his wish will come true," I said, "Dldn't I see Eomewhere that your life story was going to be filmed?"
slic
Miss Dors linked blankly. "Why that's ridiculous," anid shortly. "I haven't finished Iving pct."
Progress?
SIR ALEC GUINNESS who is at present in Holly- wood playing the part of o Japanese industrialist in A Majority of One has been complaining about the short- sightedness of somo ducers.
pro-
"If some of them had their way," he says, "actors would only get one kind of role — the
DREAD of impotence same as their last. I made two
first
is one of the com- three successful comedies in a row-so all I was offered were mon afflictions of middle-comedies. Ther I did The Bridge on the River Kwal-and aging males,
of even
all I was offered were dotty outwardly successful colonels. Now I'm playing my ones. In his new novel, Mr Muller subtly and convincingly exposes this as the pattern underly-
Denham,
say "I," as Simone Well 77HÁT of any real value did Dr Kinsey discovering the life of Alexander
put it in a striking phrase which Mr Hyams
has borrowed as the text
of his new novel,
He is concerned with the bur- den of guill which we begin to accumulate early in life.
in those reports of his which measured sex statistically in terms of frequency and output?
Wife.
Japanese. Already I've been offered the part of a Chinese in another film."
a well-known/con
journalist.
Prejudice?
WHAT SORT of reception the British musical Oliver expect when it opens in New York?
Some American commentators
By examining this ques of the Sex Life of the American
You sense it in the bright, lion in a fictional
study
The novelist is able to intro-brittle nippancy of his conver-are already suggesUng of a similar
sallon with his associates. sort of reduce its to a litle cross-section port the American author, of middle-clans, suburban wives Mr Irving Wallace. is able who volunteer for interviews.
in to fill his novel the and to Dr Chapman and his staff as well. These include, besides science with a name of
The guilt
that it will flop-because it is unlikely that New York nudlences will rush to see a show in which a It weighs heavily on Edward
Jew is depicted as such a Tillotson by the time he gets his
reprehensible character, first job. And allows himself to
The fate of Alec Guinness's be drawn into an equivocni re-
You smell it in his disillu- brillant dim the highminded Paul who hero-
Oliver Two is lationship with the homosexual rather sickening amount of worships the doctor, the divorced stoned view of the younger gen-cited.
It caused a storm of son of the boss.
You see it peeping out protest eration. clinical detail
1 about the husband of total nympho-
when It arrived in manine, and a psychotic rapist. from behind the guilt be feels America 12 years
After ago, American
Which doesn't, you nay think over his highly neurotic German-only le previews it was speak well for Dr Chapman's Jewish wife. Judgment.
By the time he has drifted
into marriage and become an sex life of the expense account director in an suburban wife. electronles concern, his load of gullt has become almost insup-
portable.
Only
The wives
It is this dread which drives him to come out from behindt the executive desk of the prose perous features agency he has founded in Fleet-street, and once again try his hand at "creative reporting" in a series of articles on the renascent Nazism West Germany.
withdrawn.
I asked Lionel Bart-who wrote Oliver-what he thought of is chances,
The Interviews read like ex- His life is a sham, his motives
Irnets from n medical journal. are suspect, his human relation-
And then we see the result all this excitement has on some of
Fagin is a Jew is theme is that such sur- ships are based on lles." disaster, and a prison sentence vey leave out all that matters them. for fraud enable him to make a in the man-wonian relationship,
One wife decides to leave her new and perhaps rather facite and muy din unfold harm in the start, leading the simple life. stimulation they give to the in- husband and gets herself mur-
This intensely serious book terviewees
by-product, dered and assaulted after death. has its faults; a low beginning. Much of the same objection may One highly cultured young wo-
tries be brought against this novel, man however sincere the author's heroically
about with a bulit and very un- cultured footballer, and gets the shock of her life. The nympho His main character, Paul, is goes off to n down-town hot-
too much detail, too many coin- cidences,
Nevertheless, the story gains intentions may be. in momentum and inevitability |
as soon as Edward meets his chief alde to Kinsey's successor, spot and gets herself Involved wife, and the ellmax is worked single-track scientist, called in its rape, out with power and conviction. Dr Chapman, who is just com- HAROLD HARRIS pieting p survey for his Study
BOOKSHELF BRIEFS,
The swindle
of
It is this dread which drives him into ou obsessional offair with a television career girl,
And one by one these props
to his virility fall away. His Paul discovers that he hero blistering articles on Germany
I know who
"Listen," he said, "Tm a Jew. And the ma playing started the rumours that it won't go in New York the people who didn't manage to buy it. Oliver is going to be done all over the world-even in Israel. And if it's acceptable in Israel, I don't want to hear another word out of those New York Jews."
Gratitude
WHEN
MARILYN
is prepared to cover up these turn out to be fechie. His slip-MONROE plays the port of [seandals so that his standing pery partner in the agency hàn [Sadie Thompson in Somerset
as a scientist shall not be been swindling him.
| Maugham's "Rain on Ameri- smented; but his disappointment His mistress" proves an un-
is compensated for by the love satisfactory conquest; and, to can tolovision this autumn,
of a good woman, one of his crown it all, his wife leaves him, sho 'is to get the astronomi-
• A WORLD ON THE WANE, Nicolson. 21, Five hundred interviewees,
and is naily traced to a hon-[cat fee of £50,000. Claude Levi-Birauss, Hutchin- replies poured in when adver-
pital in Germany where she is This is easily the highest sum Eficiently organised, slekly dying. NON. 42. Part autoblography. tisements naked for stories by writion,
over paid a performer by any thoroughly readable. Alexander Dentum is a victim of the television networks. part travel book. But for most people who considered them-this novel has all the ingredients of the rat-race, whose sour readers, ita fascination will be selves underdogs. Eighteen have of success. But the author may flavour
But Miss Monroe is not going the exotic fritul life of central been selected to make a curious be disappointed to find that catches. But at the end, he is donating the entire rum to Muller expertly to held on to the money, She Brazil Indlang studied by anthology of "grievances," auch readers are drawn to it more not out. He picks himselt the New York Actors Studio- the famous French anthropolo- as being ill, unsuccessful, legi-by the salacity of its contents shaklly up, dusts himself down, which, the mys, helped her no gist in the 1930's.
timate, or perverted. One under-than the true sigacity of ito con- and prepares to fight and eur-much during a critical aloge, of
• UNDERDOGS. Edited by dog complains of being a ghost clusions, Philip Toyabre, Weidenfeld and writer.
vive.
Ther career. -(London Expresa Service).
***London Express Service).
Mr
-(London Express Servicej.