PISTURE BY
DESINALD BUNKETT
THE BOOK PAGE:
THE CHINA MAIL,
SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1961.
WILL SHE SOON BE A STAR?
Her name is Virginia Vernon. Sho's in "Bollo" the new musical about Dr Crippen. An unlikely subject for a musical? Reports of its provincial try-out aro adulatory, with high praise for Virginio as Ethel Le Neve, Crippon's girl friend.
Roderick Mann
Well-there I was, with cobra coming at
Ouarzazate, Morocco.
A
VERY funny thing happened to me оп my way here.
I was standing in the market square at Mar- rakesh watching the snake charmers at work when a cobra-tempor- arily unobserved de tached itself from its box and slithered across the dust towards me.
I remembered the gipsy'c warning: "Keep still. Pretend nothing is happening."
1 did just that-but the shoke st spat angrily at my shoća before being cusually retrieved by its owner and thrust back
into its box,
Not enough
"It is an omen," one of the Arabs auld. “This day you must not travel. Allah whils it,"
Well, that snake knew a thing or two. I should have stayed put in the lush tropical garden of
the Mamounia Hotel in Marrakesh, drinking Tom Col- hns and listening to the hiras.
Instead I pressed on over the Atlas Mountains-150 miles and 1,000 stomach-churning bends to the village of Ouarzazate (say it War-as-at the desert location of the new epic The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah,
Now
do not know how much
money Its stors Stewart Granger, Stanley Baker. Pier Angell, and Rossana Podesta arc getting. But I do know this: it is not enough.
For it is the
"with, on
"Never Again,”
Stewart
the reverse, here," he said. "I'm having my
Christmas cards printed ak Granger himself ready-crossed scorpions on [ Wish You welcomes weary travellers with sea of sand with "Welcome to Hell" But he was Were Here at the bottom. But if always one to see the cheerful zide of things. Hell cannot be like this--an endless vista or sand, infested with snakes and corplans, all nicely roasted to oven-temperature.
Tough
Everyone has been lil. Stanicy
Fot
Slewart gout; Baker Granger's blood pressure fell to 40: Rossano Podesta was carted
to
with heart Home way, trouble.
No wonder the man who chose the Jocation-director Robert Aldrich-always sleeps facing the dour. A midnight attack bý his actors would surprise no- body.
They all hate me," Aldrich agreed, when we talked in his tent. "And they're right; it is tough. You see it only grew into an epic after we started, so there are no proper facilities here. But If nothing else, it's interesting.
Why, we found a 911, cobra In one of the tents the other day."
I started to tell him my Marrakesh cobra story but he wasn't impressed. "All you've got to do is stand still. There's nothing to it," he said.
he was
I asked him where hiding the 850 Moroccan troops lent him for the film.
me...
things get really tough there's always the coward's way out- I asked: "Did you see the bite from the horned viper." gft. cobra they found the other I started to tell him my day?"
"No." she Bald. "You're Marrakesh cobra story, but he wasn't impressed either. "That's kidding!" nothing," he said. "All you've "I'm not," I said. "And talk- got to do is stand still." But ing about cobras, a funny thing with the horned viper-dad, two happened to ane on my way minules and it's all over. It here.
you've got to go, that's the way But she was gone, running
to go."
"Any last mirasages?" I ask- cd.
- Mr Baker said he didn't think this very funny.
I found Pier Angeli eliling on at the a stone looking sadly sand,
She is a pretty, sloe-eyed girl, Miss Angell, and sitting there in the desert she looked as out of place as a pig in a synagogue.
"Why are we here?" shc demanded accusingly, as if it
were my fault. "Tell me that! We could have found the same Spain-anywhere. location in
But we had to come here.
"On top of all this I'm in trouble. The Prince of Morocco ---Moulay Abdullah-sent dis plane down the other day to fly w to Rabat for the weekend, but I didn't go.
"Then he flow here himself to organise a hunt, and again 3 didn't go. 1 was just 100 tired, you see.
"Now the director is afraid
it I oftend the that
prince the again he may withdraw horses he's lent us for the film. 'You director: I asked the mean you'd trade me for a lot of horses?" He said he wouldn't Boker WDS also but I'm not so sure."
gloom. "Nobody
The day the Algerian crisis blew up someone said 'To horse, and they all look off to guard
Aldrich toughest loca- the frontier,"
sald tion have ever seen. They "The picture may be delayed should au be getting danger for weeks."
Stanley money. And there should be o special medal struck for them, plunged in inscribed "We was of Ouarza- knows when wo'li anish with her feet.
Now
even
She sighed, kicking the sand
the Customs doff their hats to Mr Lawford
VANDERBILT TAKES AAS he lies abed in his suite at the Carlton Hotel, Cannes
LONG LOOK AT LIFE
MAN OF THE WORLD. By Cornelius Vanderbilt, jun.
Hutchinson. 30s.
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT was once taken on a breathless tour of the "new Italy" by Mussolini. Their car, he tells us, knocked down a child, and Vanderbilt turned round in dismay.
"Then I tell a hand on my one place to another; and -he right knee and i heard a volce here devotes a whole back to anylag Never look back, Mr looking back. At the end of it Vanderbilt, never look back in one rather feels that Mussolini's
where he is attending the Film Festival that small-time British-born actor Peter Lawford must be reflecting on the extraordinary change in his fortunes.
ship with Frank Sinatra and assorted cronies brought him into minor Until a year or so ago you rarely heard his name. Then his friend-
prominence.
Now-us the brother-in-law Robbery. He wears only one of the President of the United costume in
that; д train Kennedy)he is, without doubt, has 08 suits and twice as many States (he is married to Pat porter's uniform. And Sammy
IN, IN, IN.
་་
how
neckties," Indeed, down in Cannes he is
FOOTNOTE: Presidential being treated as minor zoyalty. Visiting Hollywood film execu- "pull" only goes so dar,
ever, The other day, tho tives refer to him simply s
Lawfords "Mr L" as though fearing that tubirosa and his wife-took a together with
bring President wrath upon broke down. All four had to their balding heads.
0313 take to the
and row it Thirty-seven-year-old Lawford, I am sure, is enjoying back to Cannes. the situation thoroughly.
life, and we reared on into the barbaroda advice was not al-familiarity such as "Pete" might speed boat to Monte Carlo. It
mountains."
Vanderbilt has spent most of his life dashing urgently from
And for
your bookshelf
together without merit.
As a young man Vanderbilt outraged his millionaire plan by becoming a newspaperman. Ilia speclailty has been interviewing the great and the famous,
The truth is, though, that in all his accounts of his meelings with Als subjects he seldom has much that is new or percep- tive to say.
Me
And he is playing the part well. While his wife Pat walks briskly through the Festival brilion! Kennedy smile, autograph hunters, flashing her "Mr walks discreetly two paces
So discreet
The most curlous part of his carcer was his period as "presi-behind. dentiol agent" for Franklin Roosevelt.
FOR was his hero and he served him by supplying items of news or gossip and even brash judgments on pubile men The title presidential agent" would seem more impressive Vanderbilt had not reproduced the text of some of his reports:
Big-name hunter
"In the old days," Lawford says, "people in the street would sotellines say: 'Ten't that Peter Lawford? Now they say There's the President's brother-in-law.* "We do not, however, SCO much of each other. Since the
Candid look
In his fat in Curzon-street this morning, Dennis Price will be putting the finishing touches to his autobiography. At 43. this quiet, gentle actor has de elded to take stock; to lift the covers on the troubled years and Bist both the wreckage and the treasure.
I believe it will be an honest book. For Mr Price is an honest
man.
Today Dennis Price is able to review this black period of his Ife with detachment.
He has climbed back from the abyss to become one of the most successful feature actors in British films. And his perfor-1 mances in such films as Tunes of Glory and No Love Jor have shown both subtlety and Johnnie even in tiny parts- sensitivity.
"But there aren't many paris like that," Price said. "One takes what one can get. My eldest daughter Susan rang me up the other day about some dim in which I had only small part and sald; 'Doddy- what are you doing in a film' like that? 'Earning money, darling, I sold."
The critic
Insists
In America, Marlon Brando's
● LAUGHTER IN THE DARK
had some fine reviews. new film. One-Eyed Jacka, has Vladimir Nabokov. Weldenfeld.
But Brando himself 16-Rich German art dealer
the fum is "Just fair," leaves his wife for a mistress
When he camo to see no to who rewards his love with
talk about it he said: "I have film, Mr Karl Malden, explains Ifis friend and co-star in the decolt and colf-Interest, and
no illusions about myself. I am
why. utterly degrades him by her re-
à second-rate feature octor. I Jationship with another mon, A
election we have only ance mm not a star and never was— "Marlon just can't go along clammily cold essay
in sell-
been to the White House for even in the old Rank days. I with the crowd even when it. "My dear Mr President... desirucilon written In Nabelov's I think Bill Bullit is doing a
dinner and to stay the night." jack the essential oparit, you involves a picture he anode him- earlier, simpler slyle, end with great job. I can't say so much
There are, of course, many sec. But I have lived a fairly self. If the writics had called n diabollently nasty ending.
for Joe Kennedy, In fact have
advantages in being a relative of eventful life and met a lot of One-Eyed Jacks just fair' Вс THE NEXT BEST THING. been very dissapointed (sic) in the President. The Lawforda people both in and out of the would have insisted it was the Charles Merrendah). Muller.lm.
trip to Europe, for instance, was acting profession, 50 feel I greatest film ever made. Believę 16. That sure-fire formula, love
Ly the President's have something to say. no doubt arranged
ino,"
I bellevo him.
same course in hovel writing?
•
FIE TREND 18 ur.
Roosevelt
Was
1,
Under-rated
in a small American town, allamused to have an admiring Press Attache, Mr Pierre Salin-
"In my book I have tried to ger. supplying this surt over again. Straight of the Vanderbilt
But perhaps best of all is the say something which may help assembly line along with count-of thing, but it is hard to be
fact thint U.S. Customs officials those people who, like me, ar- lieve it shaped history. less other identical chromium- plated, machine-turned producis. Vanderbilt has obviously been no longer inspect the Lawford rive at a cloge in their lives where they feel they cannot go Did the authors all take the happy and successful big-bags.
Discussing the Sinatra "Clan" on. You'll remember I reached
DAVID NIVEN — who is at namo hunter for the American Press, and it is to hla
present in Israel maldog a new emult (Sinatro, Peter Lowford, Dean that slage soven years ago,..* that he so effecilvely broke with Martin, Sammy Davis Jat, 1 remembered, though it was im Two Enemies warns those Anthony West, Hamish Kamu- the foudladen,
Jocy Bishop) Mr a subject I still found almost star who recently claustrophobic comedians ton, 18. The story of a young family atmosphere.
Lawford Days:——
impossible to discuss. For Dennis Academy Awards not to take: Bostonians who, rejecting the
their Oscars too seriously. But his book purports to benim a year until the public me, then and still shocks
"We have decided to make a Price's sukide bid had shocked family traditions. decides 10 on account of an epoch, and as
720 "My accountant recently took make a million by the age of such it is a lightweight.
tires of us. This month we bes now.
an inventory of my homechoki thirty, and does 10,
"I was unsuccessful,” But hap-
gina Western--Badlands,
Price effects in Switzerland," he says. piness is more elusive than
"Sammy Davis to very upset went on "so my experience may "When he was through I found about our pians for next year's help others. I am quite frank my Olear listed as a "book-end,” filma however-The Great Train about it in my book."
-¿London Express Heroics).
money.
"-{Londen Express Bervizi),
J. W. M. Thompson
won
ncross
the sand fowards her tent.
As I say, I should have stay- ed in Marrakesh. There they appreciate a good cobra story.