Life under two flags
I COULD MAKE £56,000 TAX-FREE-JUST
LIKE ANY OTHER EXILE
I
by PETER CHAMBERS
Monte Carlo.
CAME to Monte Carlo on salary, but I started working piece-rates at All I did was buy some the Casino last night. This made money. plastic chips-the French call them jetons-and shove them on the nearest roulette table.
"Tick, tick, tick, tick, chuck." went the little white ball. The next thing, the croupier was pushing a pile of chips at me.
Winnings! Marvellous. Easy too, though I don't want to bousi,
The Casino opens about 11 o'clock in the blue-skled morning and rapidly fills up with oki ladies. Many of them are English and all of them carry note- books, in which they patiently write column after column of numbers as wheel spins through lunch-time into the afternoon.
Heaven knows what crazy "systems" They are following. watched one blue-rinsed latly for half an hitar,
which Piner during time she more one 3s but, the minimum stake at the Casino.
Trente-cing." rouge, impair red "1
(Thirty-live, payse." udd. high:) announced the bapassively roking croupier. away her chip.
She has six bets a day and this was her
Jast.
She walked aut into stunning suushing on the Place du Casino, and doubtless she is Tow studying her list of winning numbers.
No magic
It should help her lose again
Burrow. No "system"
can
beat that jiggling white ball. The old ladies who try it are Ike medieval pichemists, seeking the magic formula that change plastic to gold.
wif
A man who frequents this
cuasi told me:~
"Many of these
Englishwo-
Ave
31 to 349.
Sud exiles.
I
the
THE CHINA MAIL, WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 1961.
AN ART CRITIC GIVES HIS VIEWS ON THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION
HOW pleased the Royal
Academy's Hanging Committee must be that Signor Annigoni's exhi- bition opened three days before their own! Only Annigoni, with his blood- less mimicries, could make this year's Summer Exhibition look more than half-alive.
For, compared with the cour- ageous shows of the past three years, this one is sadly timid.
તુ The mixture
almost exactly as before, but thinned lavourless water- down 10 gruel in which the few nour- Ishing gobbels sink in the bottom and nre lot.
110
There is
Incontestable masterpiece, like the late Stan ley Spencer's Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: no bril ifunt purchase for the Chantrey Dequest, like Victor Pasmore's Thames-side View; nothing old er new by the most famous of living academicians,
Augustus
Jah, and nothing by many of hust year's newcomers, such as Inlander, John Sutherland Anthea Alley.
Even the red rags of yester- year have Inded to a gentle pink.
INSIPID,
TRIVIAL
TRITE
and
By David Carritt
Sunflowers and Jace curtains replace the sweating nudes and unemptied potties of John and Jean Bratby.
at a disadvantage, In the Immense hodge-podje at Bur→ Ington House,
Holding the fort
But it and for them, and monotonou for us that year after year they should halil the fort without assistance from
newcomers of equal merit and possibly greater modernity,
All the bigb-lights were pre- dictable. Ruskin Spear cracks turid jokes at the expense of his sitters Bill Bell-Syer leer- Ing knowingly from the bottoni of a big empty canvas, Nikita Khrushchev snarling bonhomie from a huge close-up like a still from a news-reel.
Norman Blaney continues the Spencer tradition of intensely- felt large-sente illustration with a powerla brt slightly arid scene in a physiotherapy clinic, The Bratbys go on transmut- ang their hugger-mugger Black- muscular heath life into raw,
Weight, with his haunted nubur. ban by-ways, John Nash, with his placid English landscapes, John Word, with his tasteful, truthful portraits-all these and many others contribute The agreeable and workmaḥnly plc- tures which wo have tome expect from them.
Landscape
by Lowry
10
Only L 8. Lowry breaks un- accustomed ground. Of his four exhibits, three are choracteristic studies in urban melancholy; ungainly Mancunions in fruitless encounter, a sad little woman
a promen- seated all alone on
Ada.
But the fourth is an empty landscape in Cornwall, empty of a primitive stone circle like a stunted and unheroie Stonehenge,
annoy these few die-hards whe
anding Me
everything except are not yet ured Willam and Gear at the Royal Academy.
Three to tease all by artists who have coniri paintwork.
Not a rner of 3-D vulgarity make the portraits of John Merion. Only F. E. MeWilliam's immense bronze megalith called Baal and two elegant abstract pabitings by William Gear may
la fact. the best exhibits are buted for some years past, and THEY show tile advance variation or their accustomed styles.
91*
We should be grateful to them at all when for contributing their works are bound to appear
HONGKONG
At first sight you would never guers who painted it, it seemy 60 remote from the Industriat David McFall gives us yet an- ether of his painfully truthful harth. But once you know it Churchill busts, as well us three 1 Lowry's you will find it full other excellent new portraits in of his strange funereal poetry.
bronze.
Eliot Hodgkin, with his ex- quisite small sub-lifes,
MOVIELAND
AL 11.30 m
walked Development Company), run lay Martin named the
American through
magnolia-stealed du Casino feeling like Dale, MEDEC produced a lavish Cinderella going to the ball. brochure last month. telling
Cinderellu made the fatal business men everywhere: gambler's mistake of pushing "Monaco can help your com. her fuck. She stayed till after pany."
No tax is the ball set out for mildnight.
are They foreign companies. "Never after nidnight,"
"manage- ruwed, spreading afteen shii invited to establish lings, over red and the numbers ment and sales headquarters" In Monaco, which is described. with delicate euphemy, as n "prefit sanctuary country."
in it far Monaco? What's are
More and more prosperity, and the State will take its cut in the registration form of conipany fees, business kences, and small export or turnover tax.
Already. In Monaco, it's as if 10,000-frane notes grew on the palin trees.
A massive Investment in
the fast five estate values in
way the years, and, the
aky-world news headlines in scraper blocks of fata fro
1958 by refusing to shooting up, Memacu is begin-
ing to look like mid-town model swimsuits in Manhattan buill on Mediter-
Americo. ranean rocks.
Nothing is more boring than a gambler's tale, even when thousands of pounds involved. So all i will say is that, at the stroke of midnight, when I qult, I had run £2 18s up to £10, les a tip of 15s to the croupiers,
13
T Beverley Hills
"A Hotel in Holly-
wood, I lunched with Anthony Quinn,” said Helen Li Mei, star of
"I took only 20 minuten." 1 reflected outside. A quick showed that I had calculation been making money at the rate of about £58.000 a year for an building has at least triples real MP & GI, who made eight-hour day six days a week.
Lovely
With bat sort
I
of money
live under
You would like to live here? How about a penthouse flut in the Sun Tower, n luxury block
"We made a deal then that someday we would picture
with Oriental flavour- he as the producer, and leading director man, and me the leading a girl in the picture."
men are the lonely widows of could afford to Army offlears and Colonial civil two flags. And that's living. servants. Is it not sad to see
The red and white flog now under construction? From co-produce
of them in the Casino, day after
Monacu in very day, trying to convert
convenient for the 22nd storey you will over- Monnet Harbour, an franes into fifteen?"
individuals and compantes who look
stretch of The Monte Carlo Casino whs want p lose the tax-man believably seenie
bive water which deserves to other founded in the Principality of (though
Nags of run- Monaco more than 100 years
venience-Liberia and Panama he renamed Tax Haven.
Price of these fats? ago, and its prufts have some for choice-utter over the in-
Just £100,000 each. times run at nearly 100 per lionaire yachts in the harbour).
Monaco is going places €71. Blue chips yield a pour Can you imagine the lovely
with a country
no right. rutturn compared with gamblers living fa chips
income tax, no property tax, no purchase tax, und virtually no death Juties? In u country where radio and TV sets licence-free and the Government Lakes only 14 Od a year you to licence a car?
Cinderella
want! "You
lose your muney" said a friendly Mona- cu barber when I told him I intended to play the tables. was having a Culogne friction at the time (who ever got out of French barber's without n
FA
Cologne friction?).
"I might win," I said,
"You ever see us locals in there, do you?" he said, grin ning cyatcally and making me feel nervous,
Does gambling innke
budy nervous?
every
Bait
are
ult
Dreaming
the It is moving in
same direction ns Bermuda and Nassau, thuse high-priced tax havens on the other alde of the Atlantic.
it
But £100,000 for a fat? Why even with my current luck, This lush Principality, with would take me two years to coax the roulette
that much out of
25,000 Inhabitants, mustly tables.
French has 10,000 registered Au revoir, Monaco, Au revoir, carst possibly the highest sad ladies of the Casino. vehicle count per head of popula- But I'm dreaming stl... tion in the world.
be Life could
nice, living above Tax Haven and under two
Monaco is pushing hard now for business. Newest thing is flags. MEDEC (Manaco Economie
- London Express Service).
THE POLITICIAN
WHO MAKES
U.N. LOOK AGAIN
New York.
MR KENNEDY SENDS AN ́ 'EYECATCHER'
of the most popular members of the United Nations at the present ONE
session is a pretty American "politician" with beige-blonde hair and tawny-green eyes. President Kennedy's representative on Human Rights Commission, Mrs Marietta Tree is also a socialite and a "one-shot" motion picture "bit player."
Tall, slender, and with fashion model's ability to wear
of America's depression. vention in Los Angeles, she was clothes, Mas Tree is what one years delegate described as an "eye As the daughter of an Episco- invited by friends to visit the palian minister she grew up in film set where Clark Gable's last catcher."
Minits, wer being When an American colleague New England textile-proue film, The
Gable invited Marietta fast escorted her into the Se- ing elty where, she says, "we made. curity Council, he later report- had a depression before it hit to play one short scene with ed that "suddenly, proctically the rest of the country."" every man in the room
lizim
covered he had something im
Into films
him that had to be filmed in front of a scheduled train.
Mrs Tree
She put down her glass of "And sherry and went on,
now
a chance has occurred,
I would Ilke Anthony to be my director and leading star In a pleturn to be financed by an Australian Interest." Helen. a college undergraduate actress a versatile and now
and owning a Alm company with an MP & G1 contract, said negotiations for the production
had begun.
'Occupied'
"Although the deal was made with Anthony Quinn some time go, both of us have been so that the plan was busy
while We pigeon-boted for a are going to pick up from where we left off."
BY DAVID LAN
Corel
Helen is going to
film with Anthony
Helon Li Mei at home in her Argyllo-street apartment
Miranda
Churchill and
Kelly
Not only the soft pale greens and greys are his, but the stones themselves seem to have acquir. ed the squat and slightly comie zilhouettes of his slum children.
Even
tho here, however, change is
of subject. maiter rather than style.
one
There are other praise,
thing to
like Sir Winston Churchill's The Bridge and Sir Gerald Kelly's Ma Bala Khin Dancing.
But even
If they were not
painted long ago (why on earth cannot the catalogue give us any dates?) they are in the style of
look 50 years ago, and should far more out of place than they do in an Academy which claims to be alive,
Sop to the critical
>
The end thing about this ex- hibition is that it betrays the hopes raised by its recent pre- decessors that the Royal Academy was ceasing to be just a convenient display ground for old-fashioned talent.
that are The few exhibits truly of our time now appear ca no more than a sop to the crliical Cerberus.
"Look!" one hears the com- miltee saying, "We'vve made McWilliam on ARA, we've hung come abstract puintings by Willem Gear, how dare you say that we are not completely open-minded and go-ahead?"
Some of them muy well be. But the Academy itself appear) to be so constituted that no it matter how hard it tries, simply cannot be anything but fusly.
The way it displays its wares is so unflattering that few suc- cessful artists who can exhibit elsewhere would risk contribut- ing.
And even if they could be sure that their work would be carefully hung, it would inevit-
bly seem out of place among the genteel banalities which make up the greater part of the exhibitions.
It was all because in Hong- keng last week a representative of AFCA Ply, Ltd (Australia). one of the world's three leading Anancing houses, had approached
will fly to Talwan her for a three-day talk on such tainly made a success of herself to long as I am honest with my
Besides, no serious modern a co-production, disclosed Helen on the screen,
work, I am happy regardless of for a weeks stay making per-
somal appearances with the artists need have the Academy's "The flim will be a specta- Some of her box-ofleo hits. what others say of me!"
picture there.
sanction to get important com- cular in elnemascope and East Lady "Muskeleer," "Bedside
*
the In the last fortnight she has missions. Perhaps with man-colour. It will be shot Story" "The Gloomy Sunday,"
record of partly in Tolwan and partly in and ""Tie Calendar Gir" and Tonight, protty Miss been busy making new dresses Academy's tragie
come-stupidity and prejudice, they Hongkong for eventual distri- currently she is shooting "Ven- Miranda Chung Ching, and rehearsing
may even dread finding them- bullon In Europe, Australls, fure of Lady Musketeer" and "The Little Wild Kitten,
selves ARAS. Japan and America as well as " The Ed Of Time."
will personally appear South-East Asia."
"I like dogs and horses und world conscious, dislike apples, even though
and sing on the stage at Always Helen, who originally aimed to don't know what they taste like the gala premiere of her be an authoress, has appeared herause I have never touched film, "The Legend of a In more international produc- them," she mid.
Ming Priester," at the Motropolo and the Zenith.
tlon than any other stors in Hongkong.
So far she has credit for 27 Alms of which there are four co-productions - one Korean,
In
I
Helen has a chauffeur but she prefers to drive her yellow-and- white car herself.
bacle,
for her
There
room
will always be Agnos for the sound academic arust, Mary-but he is a rare phenomenon, Hong-far too rare to All Burlington
Twenty-year-old
formor Wong, a knoll student in kong and now a drama student at the Pasadena
House.
Playhouse in Los Angeles, Only a handful
is coming back to make
a film in Hongkong in June.
She Le going
of the 88 RAS and ARAS,
Miranda Made by her own She knows there is a world of difference between the cultures Motion Picture Productions, this two Thai and one Philippine. of East and West but she will is her first picture after a bout
each Helen sprake the
Ko all out on the International of health..
to star in no more than a handful havo respective languages.
run in Hong- Following its co-production with Qulan In an Ifelen, who writes prose and attempt to reconelle them. kong, the film will do the rounds Mandarin picture to be produced made any significant contelbu creative stories, is paradoxically
some light on her of the South East Asian circuit by the Tungman Motion Picture on to art, and dince it is stor them that the Hanging Com a strong character of conflicting character when she said at the in Taiwan, the Philippines and and General Development Co. tmideneica
Born in Peking and proud of ber national traditions, Helen is most gregarious with interna tional friends.
#carlet
She keeps an immaculately beautiful luxury flat which has superbly decorated modern Chinese living-dining room with "Everything had to be ready parquet flooring. Her bedroom Her trips with her father to because the train stopped for is done in contemporary Wester portant to talk to me about."
style with wall-to-wall At 40,
can truth the bomen of the unemployed only five minutes," Min Tree
"So every morning | carpeting. fully claim that, her Interest in mado a lasting impression, and remembers. minority group problems dates led eventually, she belleves, to for three days, Mr Gable and i her career in civil and human took our places on chalk marka back about four decades.
on the platform and stood nose This Interest began,
the rights,
In 1900 she was on the com- to nose, waiting for the train to declares, In her early child-
the pull in. hood when she was the only mittee that helped writo girl in a family which included civil rights proposala Your brothers. "I was a minor Democratic Party platform.
This jou Jed Mrs ity group all by myself."
for the "It's interesting, what oddly impersonal conversationa you Treo have when you're standing nowe
But her first real concern for indirectly into her "one shot" to nose with someone you hard the welfare of less fortunate career in Hollywood flims, White by know."
the attending the Darsocratic con- people developed during
-{Londen Express Service),
She learns enough of a for- eign language in n few days, to shoot a Alm and unicorns it just as fast,
Hits
into flims by She plumbled accident her passport photo displayed int photo mudio, attracted the attention of a She has cor- Inovie producer.
She shed
interview, "I do what I нke and Malaya.
Agnes Wong ds she appears in "Dark of the
Moon" at the Pasadena Playhouse
Agnes who has been studying mittee is recruited, they are un- acting America for a your likely ever to raise the standard played the leading girl in the of Academy Exhibitions above stage drams, "The Dark of the their own high level of medio Moon," at the Pasadena Play-city. house theatre recently.
I hope that this year's show The film among other things is only dull by accident. Next will feature Chinese serobatics.
year, perhaps, we shall find As a result, Agnes has already belter things by old exhibitora started training in America and and promising things by new she will continue in Hongkong ↑ ones.
until dooling gets underway,
Agnes is the daughter
of #
But the omens are all agabat
well-known doctor iri the it. If the Royal Arsedmy really
Colony.
wants the right to quote Michef- "Ího siago and screen shall angelo on the front part of itr be my life-long esroot." wid catalogue, it should remember she when confronted with the that Michelangelo tons the arch- stter the enemy of the insipid, the - American prem
vial and the trite-tle chartc- performan00 cockstui
feristics, alas, of their Summer "The Dark of the MoonL.”*
Exhibition. Agnes is making use of her school holidays for, the filming.
—(London Bepreta Beroleh),'