TO-DAY
ONLY
AIR-CONDITIONED
At 2:30, 5.10,
7.15 & 9.15 p.m.
BEYOND 8,000 MILES
* DIALOGUE IN MANDARIN
4
THE RECORD-BREAKING CHINESE PICTURE OF ALL TIMES!
COMMENCING TO-MORROW
PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF TIME
12 NOON, 2.30, 5.30 & 9.00 P.M.
AT LAST! THE PICTURE YOU'VE
"You are
the first."
BEEN WAITING TO SEE!
IN TECHNICOLOR
Paramount's
FOR WHOM THE BELL
TOLLS
¿From the celebrated movel by... ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Starring GARY
Academy Award Winnor Katina Paxinou,
magnificent a Pilar!
COOPER
INGRID
BERGMAN
with
AKIM TAMIROFF ARTURO DE CORDOVA JOSEPH CALLEIA und KATINA PAXINOU B.G. DESYLVA, Exécutica Producer' Produced and Directed by
Sam Wood
Screen Play by Dudley Nichols
BOOKINGS NOW OPEN!
ADVANCE BOOKING OFFICE
ST. FRANCIS HOTEL, QUEEN'S ROAD, CENTRAL. Booking Hours: 11.00 am to 5.30 p.m. Daily
SHOWING TO-DAY AT 2.30, 5.15, 7.30 & 9.30 P.M.
SHE LOVED ALL THE WRONG GUYS
IDA LUPINO ROBERT ALDA ANDREA KING BRUCE BENNETT
HE SANG THE WAY SHE LOVED..... WITH EVERYTHING SHE HAD!
"THE MAN I LOVE"
WARNERIHIT Directed by RADUL WALSH
Hear her singin']}
"The Man | Low "Just Mary Elle "Why Was Dory "Dody and Sour
EMEN PLAY OF CATVERME, TURNE F + HOAPTATION SY DO PAZARO NO CATHERINE TURNEY - SHOW A NOVEL BY SHARPSTA MOUN
·ADDED ATTRACTION: LATEST BRITISH GAUMONT NEWS,'
ORIENTAL
FINAL SHOWING TO-DAY: 2.30—5.20-7.30-9.30 P.M. At fast a mighty romantic adventure aglow with their indomitablo courage.... their breathtaking deeds of daring
their thrill-filled. "lives and loves!
COMMANDOS STRIKE
AT DAWN
STARRING PAUL MUNI
ANNA LEE LILLIAN GISH
A LESTER COWAN PRODUCTION
A COLUMBIA, PICTURE
COMMENCING TO-MORROW: “OUTLAW”
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1947.
THE ART OF LAUGHTER
EDITORS FRESH SERVICE, ING. ***
"WHOA, hold it, hold it. give psychology one more chanco!"
YOR the past 30 years or so I have spent most of my time in trying to *make people laugh. The amount of material that I have written for stagd and radio comedians must now total, I suppose, several millions of wordą.
BY TED CAVANAGH
the man who created ITMA, and who has written tho script for it week by wook for the past eight years
Making people laugh is an art, not a science. You have to do it by to learn how
trial and error.
Eight years of writing ITMA week by wock themselves expérience, by guesswork, by amount to a respectable aggre- gate in quantity, if not in quality-and it appeared that more laughs were scored by the 255th edition than by the first.
I say this not at all out of
vainglory.(I can think, easily enough, of better ways of oc- cupying myself). But I sup-
pose it allows me to assert that I do not yet know the rules governing laughter it is certain ly not through lack of applica- tion.
There
aro no laws that govern it, there are only empl- You pre rical generalisations. dealing all the time with responses so unpredictable that the most experienced practi- tioner can never be altogether
'sure.;
a
One man's mirth is another man's poison. A jest that will set a West. End audience in roar will fall completely flat in Shepherd's Bush. There is a Are there any rules?
difference between the vast
of two adjoining. There are: but they are all humor rules of thumb.
counties-Yorkshire and Lanca.
Two brothers
make £3,000,000
Ky
in a year
BERNARD BAREIS
the brothers Oscar and Max Kleomann. it was a notable anniversary. For. since that June day a year ago, their family fortunes have risen by almost £3,000,000,
Few people in the City paid much attention last June when dealings started on the London Stock Exchange in the 2s. shares of O. and M. Kleemann, Lid., at 22s. 3d.
To them it was just another plastics business. But they soon sat up and took notice. These Kleemann 'shares boomed.as few shares had ever boomed before.
Within three weeks they had doubled in value. They went on with hardly a pause to break through the £5 mark.
At one time Kleemann's turnover 171 "Dearls" soared to between £150,000 and £200,000 a year, And iney had a profitable trade, too, in imitation jewellery slovakia.
from Czecho-
only of other husbands. nover of himself.
A pendant to this fact is the universal-popularity of the mother- in-law Joket never falls. The reason is--and I say it against, all" opposition-that most men like and ndmire their own mothers-in-law, In her they Bed what their own wives will be Ilkka Inter on. * The comedian would say, of course, that they are merely only trying to laugh it off but then comedians must have' their jokes.
I
The comic husband
husbands ceased to be funny
the galety of nations would ៥០ put like a candle,, and' persons like business. myself would go put of Fortunately there is no danger of either.
The laughter-provoking qualities of the Married Maa enn be made both visual and audible. There aro not so very many jests of which this is true. It may be that with the coming development of television the need for oxclusively audible humour will pass. But the last two decades of broadcasting have made Now the taste for mockery audible humour flourish as nover
The Imitations, on exclusively nu- Without
recesses
shire. There are class dif- is increasingly characteristic before.. ferences in humour, regional dif- of a great deal of American ferences, variations as between humour. It is the stock-in-dible humour are severe. Englishmen and Scotsmen, be- trade, for instance, of the ear- visual aid the comedian has to ex- tween Britons and Americans. toonists of the New Yorker, ploit every nuance of his voice, and Sometimes it becomes a mirth the man who provides the material
must explore the farthest There are woll-marked dif- less mockery, a bitter, acrid ex of the verbally incongruous. It is ferences between what men find hibition of human wanknesses because of this, I think, that radio. funny and what
It humour has exploited (and continues women find
and tuman shortcomings.
exploit) the art of the catch- funny.
word. (I do not say that is superiority without a smile. to women have
of по sense humour; but I know from ex- perience that women are hurt or puzzled or bored by humour that men find irresistibly funny. Knockabout
for comedy, example, amuses most men but very few women!.
Why men laugh
The more sophisticated the level at which you are aiming the larger the admixture of moc- kery you can permit yourself. You can heighten the sense of superiority to the point where it is not very far removed from contemp!.
Here, I think, a certain dividing
25.
and
Catchphrases
THE Englishman has a well-marked
catch-
weakness for the comic werd. In our humour, as in other to matters, we prefer the familiar
unusual. And the Victorian the music-hall comedian founded him- self very largely on this fact.
You could almost write the his-
can be drawn between the
The sense of superiority in tory of the Victorian music-hall in terms of its catchwords. We don't ET me venture cautiously, on
women is far more delicate
want to fight. Get your hair cut: subtle than it usually is in men. A What ho, she bumps; Have a banank. a few generalisations,
the follies woman tends to look on
The list is not complete, but any Generalisation No. 1 is this: and foibles of human beings with a middle-aged Londoner can re
Schge
much
a
on
think, as
The brothers' prosperity Increased The common factor in all tolerant good nature that is
of stronger than it is in a man. This is adding to it.
to .the udly unit the 1930s, when poli- humour is
I suppose, attributable, tical disturbances abroad and im-
The catchphrase Is, 1 port duties began to cloud their superiority. That 17th century maternal quality in every woman. much a part of English humour as prospects.
philosopher Hobbes got very
the kindly sense of superiority. provides the collective element, the near to the root of the matter
feeling of a shared falce, the touch when he defined laughter as
of
that makes human nature
be- sense of sudden glory.
men kin. A catchphrase has come something that you enjoy in common with everybody else who listens to the radio.
"Why, shouldn't we make the stutr in this country instead of importing it?", they asked themselves.
see
On the way home from Japan Max was shown some combs, which he
When you see someone slip ou admired. He was still more intera banana skin: when you ested when he was told that they had been made on a machine which turned them out ilke sausages,"
Took a risk
The combs were made from plastic on an injection moulding machine.
The
description of the machine
someone receive a custard pie in his face: when you see dignity discomforted by impudence- you laugh because you feel a sense of superiority.
This sort of humour can be
at the victim or with Then the directors decided to meant nothing to Max, but when he kindly or not. You can laugh split each 2s. share into two arrived in London he talked it over either
him. shares of 1s. cach, Today, those with Oscar. 18: shares are worth 568. each, cqual to £5 12s, for the shares which stood at just over £l last June.
They won't sell
The Kleemanns hold between them 1,300,000 shares, now worth about £3,640,000.
Oscar and his sons, Jack and Derrick, both of whom are directors of the business, have 650,000, and a similar number is owned by Max on his own ac- count or in trust for his son and daughter.
They decided to risk £6,000 in Most Englishmen (and nearly Importing two of the machines from all Englishwomen) prefer to the United States
The machines were installed in a laugh with rather than at. They miniature factory in Welwyn Gar- do not much like cruelty in den City, and on May 20, 1930, the their humour. Kleemann brothers started making their first plastic combs.
When war came were at work. Now came the new problem. "What abotit the raw
material?"
ten
machines
He de-
Oscar did not hesitate, elded that the flem must undertake the tricky job of making the cellu- acetate, moulding powders it needed.
The plant was bought and install- ed at Welwyn. But it produced the material for few combs. Nearly all Despite the astonishing rise in it output was needed to make com- vale none of the icemana family, ponents ordered by Government de- has sold a single share. Nor do partments for the war effort.
They intend to sell any.
a
In 1905 Oscar, then 23, had £30 He rented and plenty of ambition.
room in Redeross-street in the Cripplegate district of London and set up in business as an importer of hair slides and corabs from Üyon- aux, in France.
Output leaped
When the war ended the Govern- ment encouraged the company to extend its activities in one of the development areas.
She may laugh at a custard pie comedian: but if she does it is 21
tribute to her male companion rather than to the comédian.
Why women · laugh
IF I had to write a script for a per-
But if there is any formula
of successful
all
for. catch-
formance to be given to an au- the creation lence of women only I would base phrases, I have not been able to dis- myself on the Jest that every woman cover it. Like all other Jests, they entoys-tha jest at the expense of have to be found simply by trial and masculine utupidity.
crror.
It has been discovered experimen- The most accurate analysis of tally that you can draw laughter all these matters, so far as I know from an audience anywhere in the has been made by Harold Nicolson world, of any class or race, simply in his essay The English Sense of by walking on to a stage and uttering Humour, 11 is an admirable scrutiny the words "I am a married man." willy, penetrating and scholarly, Perhaps muy sum up the art of laughter by quoting what Mr Nicol
on by
son has to say about a radio show. that features comedian called
Handley:
Husbands are. Intrinsically comic Aristophanes knew that as well as any contemporary writze of rovues or fim scripts. The essential ab- their child- surdity of husbands,
"It is packed with descending in- like vanity, their universal willing-
expectation, their congraities, dentuls of news to be imposed wives; their infinite capacity for be- releases from constraint; it exploits ing duped, gulled, hoodwinkled, the naive-comle, all forms of rigidity pe.sued against their inclinations or pretension, silf-importance and
professionalism.". here is the basic stuff of laughter,
woman every It is a lest that
There you have-in language more. English (all right
woman formal than I would venture to use shares with every other
I understand British) humour is or the whole and that every man appreciates be- myself-exactly what cause he supposes that it is true by the art of laughter. kindly.
By Englishmen I include the Scots and the Welsh. I do not include the Irish, who like their laughter to have a large dash of mockery in it.
then
BY THE WAY by Beachcomber
Bias K Miss Sudders thought they should be left until the other nauplicate twos came in.
Suct; Havo they been up und
Miss K.: No, sir. : Mrs. Scowle has those, ready to return;
STAUNTON FARRAGOE— Getting organised
"lucky Staunton" to the
plan THE
to nake Sussex satellite county, and to evict City-stood to win four or five million, or lose his entire for its inhabitants to
Kent, is being down yet? stoutly opposed by the War Office, So it established a big factory at tune. I was wholly a one-man business. Avelle.
Yet, intent as he was on the deal, which has enr-marked both coun- near Darlington, and its Oscar did all the buying, and selling output leaped more than five times. he had time, as he sat tensely at his trics for a training area.
to To get over this difficulty," himself. Then, two years later, he
content wi
with doing more than
omce desk, to ring
Nimblesby up
Suet: Return where? gardener to quote an omelal, "the inllons of was joined by his younger brother; 1,000,000 combs a week and large and order he head Max, who, like himself, had no
to foreign tourists expected next sum of other articles, Klee send five hundred roses by car quantities of
recently Miss K To Miss Frazer, for money but ints of drive.
pending clr= a interim registration Gradually the brothers widered man's are selling raw materials to Mrs Wicker's lodging house in West mer will be diverted to
said seized bird sanctuaries, where and also overseas markets and
the Kensington. to
"It isn't, decent," said
for culation to sections S. V. M. and R. the basis of the business. They did combmakers in France from whom des Wicker, as the two chauffeurs holiday camp, will be opened
ers. them since all hotels are needed by Suet Very well. Send them back nowers. big trade in toys from Germany; they bought their first goods. blocked her hall with the
As soon as the others come in bought, fancy goods and electrical The one-time tiny enterprise "Very useful for counteracting the the Government:"
from Japan, tollet re-
Miss, K. Which ones, sir? commented 1, however, cabbage you equipment
er, these bird-sanctuaries quisites and glassware, from Czechc- now claims to have more large size reek
moulding injection
machines at Lynette cynically.
un are needed for rocket-ranges, land- Sucti Both. slovakin,
work than any firm in Europe. grateful," snapped her mother. "Do ing-grounds or dog-rocks, Hemp-
Acid From £30 in 1905 the value of you expect ine to wear them all? shire, Dorsetshire Wiltshire ...the business, based on the quotation asked the girl wearily. And at that will be nationalised as a Planners
the strug Zone. for its shares, has soared to £5,000,- mament Paul Treason, 000.
gling poet; as poor as a church mouse, II you ask Oscar the secret of called with a small bunch of prim- Office conversation success he will tell you, "Hard work, roses, With a pang Lynette realised....
touched that this humble offering
Suet: Mis Kippler, what are all That's all
Work, In fact, is Oscar's only her heart, and that this was the man these units of multiple registration
doing in the basket? hobby...
she lovedt:
•
Huge turnover
But what made the name Klee mann talked about in London was the Arm's huge business in imita ttom pearl necklaces. These were imported by the milliton and retail ed at 3d. and Od. cach.
7:
NANCY Stand-in
WHEN I THREW DIS BOOMERANG YESTERDAY, IT CAME RIGHT BACK AND HIT ME ON
TH' BEAN
CANIC
PUSHMIL
HHHH
Dre
Song from "Sordello'
A man with a face like a horse Eroke into a mansion by force,
They gave him some hay,
And sent him away. "Saying, “Thir
of course'
isn't Plumpton,
(Browning.)
By Ernie Bushmiller
When You Feel Tired
and Restless
Ask For
ELLIOTTS TONIC
On Sale at All Dispensaries