1954-09-23 — Page 4

IN THE PATHS OF NOVELLO AND

THE CHINA MAIL: THURSDAY

TWO young stars go stepping out to MUSIC...

PROM the names in bright lights JOHN BARBER picke out two young men in the gay stage, tradition of Lyor Novelle and Noël Coward,.. two young men of wit, music, and (sney ... both bound for an APPOINTMENT WITH FAME,

TWO young mon come JULIAN SLADE.......as

to London in the same year. They tako two different theatres, and each puts on his first show. Both aro! musicals. Both are wildly successful.

The young men - who have never met-are so un- sophisticated that one goes to a night, club in a sports jacket and the other washes his laundry in his bath.'

The first, is JULIAN SLADE, author of “Salad Days," The other is SANDY WILSON, who wrote "The Bby Friend."

I have talked to bolh and seen the same question behind their eyes. They want to ask not put

something they dare

words:-

my sucecis a flash in the pon? Or will the flash strike finder and act the Thames on

fire?

Which

of these. brilliant

youngsters has an Appointment

with Fame?

30

years ago

OR answer, go back 30 years,

FOR

Slade sees him

COLEGYED

CHAERE

A self-portrait,

Ever

since, Coward canoodled fame ke Д with an old rag doll.

older than themselves, of wide. theatro experience. Behind Wilson, the actress-producer Vida Hope. Collaborating with Blade, the actress author Dorothy. Reynolds, ̧ .

Just for fun VET. they are vastly different.

Wilson is dark, sleek, saturninely handsome, with low volcod dangerous wit. wrote his show in a Swiss Cottage Basement for fun.

Gangling boylah Slade was given the "Salad. Days" title by

d

barmaid, and worked out the

plot in a Bristol tenshop.

He

wrote the music In the prop- room of a theatre.

Wilson and Blade worked an similar lines...Both revolted ngainat the

all - conquering

American musicals.

Their shows are

not

"rom" "worldly;

innocent, pot

fresh, not allck; above all, un like somo recent American musicals, they plug no pompous message about race segregation or International relations,

The Boy Friend" is

not hit because it mocks 1920 hats. It is a hit because It does not mock 1920 lovers. You do not asks

lough when the pho

the

millionairess,

you?" and

#

she says, "Polly Brown," and he replies, "It's a child VTY pretty name and you live

up to it."

has

See history repeat itself. The first 1054 success went again to

A your when two other the young men burst through the Lust January his "Boy Friend"

We can 120 what became

bright dreams. yesterday's

The year 1024

You are touched. 'It tender and true.

So is "Salad Days," which

older man, Sandy Wilson. tells how London is turned upalde-down by a magic plano

hoops of mediocrity Today attracted its first-night audience which makes everybody dance. of to laugh at the cloche-hata and Says Julian Slade: "I believe

boop-a-doop of the twenties.

In the Ever since it has sent them out old things. in tears over is marshmallow romance.

June

a dark unknown of 31 is rub bing grease-paint over his hand, some note in London's Prince of Wales Theatre, He is about to appear in the first play he has written himself.

BUCCESS.

simple things, the old,

I try

to write a as I can. To avoid is a great step night, stall-ites cluster round his piano in

in the right direction.

And

every

the

later, orchestra-pit and make him the unknown

called play again. And they sing:---- Julian Slade turned up with a Oh, look at me! I'm dancing! modost show, "Salad Days." I'm going on one foot instead

11

proves

A

hugo

The unknown JUST over six months

boy

"It is called "The Rat,"

The

You

young author-star 19 Novello,

Ivor

know

the

Appoint-

ment he kept

with Fame.

The

Jade

arrived late-ish, but he detained

her long.

It 18 six months later.

Bull 1024. A tow haired, nervy

young-

ster of

24

tectors in the

wings of Lon-

don's draughty

Everyman

Theatre. He is

to star in his "ANDY WILSON

first melo-

drama. He does

Time to mile

not know yet that he will side it to triumph.

The play s "The Vortex."

He is 24, (va years younger thon Wilson. I went

of on two

for the It isn't a thing I'm accustomed

to do.

to Harrow

Hard working

candidate

third time last week. AL the end the audience refused to move, begging for encores.

Who are these young men? HO, then, is my What is the prospect that their W for fame in 30 years' time? talent will bring fame? -

I am not forgetting Svetlana They are similar in some Berlosova, the new wonder of Ways. Unlike Coward and Sadler's Wells. Nor that ver- Novello, both are expensively satile actor Paul Rogers, whose educated. Wilson, Manchester- Macbeth impressed me so deeply born, went

and at Edinburgh. Nor Dorothy Oxford. Slade, a KC's son, to Tutin, most sensitive of outr

and Cambridge. They younger actresses. wrote songs for both their But I foresee fame for Slade shows but neither is a trained and Wilson. musician.

I am sure of it: I know how Both are artists. Slade has hard they work. Sags Slade: published a book about a "I have forgotten what it is like squirrel. Wilson is bringing out to have outside interests." By

about cat. Both

a

are night he plays the piano In the written and illustrated by theatre. By day, he takes the themselves.

"Salad Days" cast through And note this. Gulding and keep-'em-up-to-it rehearsal.

Eton

one

The author-ster is Noel Coward. helping both men is a woman,

(Continued on Page 7, Col. 6)

New! No-streak makeup gives 'petal-perfect' finish in 5 seconds!

Heavenly blend of foundation and face powder!

Revlon's LOVE-PAT'

New PUFF ON all-in-one makeup

Who said there was no such thing as the perfect foundation-face powder combination? "Love-Pet" is just sehat you've been looking for and newer `hoped to find. Puffs on like powder, clings lika foundation! Won't dry ́ your skin, because It's cream-blended with Lanolite. Wan't streak, won'i

blotch, won't change color. Stúooths on evenly, easily in just 5 seconds! In 7 genius complexion shades, Discover "Love-)

Complete in one pink-and-golden compact!

ᄇ

1954.

SEPTEMBER

Giles

Father at bas

“WellTM-ive've seen Balmoral from the air, stalked our first deer

now what do we do?"

London Express Service,

Japan's Successes

S

at the

Venice Festival

By FRIEDL ORLANDO

Venice. its underlying philosophical (INCE /* 1951, when question, "Where is truth, "Rashomon" won the if every person sees the first prize of the Film same event differently?" Festival, Venice expects "Bhich Nin' No Samural is nothing but good from merely descriptive. It tells Japan. Rashomon's" re- the fifteenth century story sounding victory was of seven Samurai, seven secured not only by its knights errants, who make It superior quality, but also their task to defend poor because it had all the ele peasants against the Inva- ments of a surprise attack slow of bandits. It is a talo an advantage missed by of chivalry and prowess re- the Japanese films exhibited calling European” mediaeval in the two subsequent epocha.

Surprisingly enough, how- But "Ugestsu Monogo- over, the film ends with the tari

presented in 1961, words: "They (the pea-

years.

| and "O-Haru" in 1962, went sants) are the true victors. to show that "Rashomon" Because we | Samurai: pass was more than just one over the earth like a storm, particular good piece of whereas the peasants are the work, and that the Japan earth itself, unchangeable eas film industry, now more and immortal" This phrase productive than Hollywood which, in itself, smacks of with more than 500 pictures, rhetoric, seems pretty in-- a year, is capable of turning consistent with the film. Is out pictures of the highest it perhaps a sob to pubile artistic qualities.

opinion in democrátic Japan? One would hardly expect a director like Kurd- sawa to allow the

ear to

Startling Film

the

The rules of the Venice deny what the eye con-

ceives. Festival lay down that a

Ая in country's contribution must scenes of movement and dight-

"enshomon" be commensurate with the ing aro superb. With thou- number of films it produces sunds of extras, Cecil B. Do per year. Japan could have a does not contrive such

vivid

battlo scenes es Kuro sent four pictures this year, sawa does with a hundred. In Just like the US, and Italy. fact the suspicion creeps In

ho has She chose to present only that

discovered his three. Two of them have and that he finds it hard to own mastery of such scenes, been shown so far and it is abandon them and to get on already clear that once again with his story. she will be a close runner up for the prize.

Again, director Kurosawa has made a startling film. Like his "Rashomon", with

Away to the hills which once gushed silver and gold

I Visit a Ghost Town and

Find It Full of Spirits

Virginia City, Nevada. THIS is America's most celebrated ghost town, Queen of the Com

stock Lode, where the silver

When

they

All Violence

One third of the film is taken up by fighting, and for Euro- pean audiences at least, it would have to be cut. Then, surely, the film would not fail to appeal

men

Moving. Ds in a baillet. their faces torn to grimaces, their voices thrusting forth as in everlasting wrath. Even European

"No"

viewers who. know........nothing of Japanesa theatrical tradition, and of the old style of Japanese ballet, tho seo: that, all this violence is controlled and In- tended; and that all this is based traditional formal concep- tions according to which heroism is Inseparable front

on

Moderation and tranquillity, however, go with submission; as we can see in the other Japan- ese film "Sanshe Dayu"

And the beauty of 'submission

sion be-

* took over the comes apparent in the slow, Enterprise two and a half years small-stepped walk, in the timid ago it was the 19th in size in smalle, in the tearless sobs: Nevada, and there was no 20th, the two antrossess, Its gross business was less than The picture, based on the novel Tanaka and Kyoko "Kagawa," $4,000 a year. It was wither-

directed by ing away, as Virginia City itself by Ogal Mori, La It is Lucius

Beobe who has a few years earlier had seemed Kenji Mizoguchi who, two years revitalised Virginia City, al to be frail, forgotten, on the

showed in, Venico” › his though he saYS modestly that point of total collapse.

beautiful "O-baru,"

DON IDDON'S DIARY

ran in rivers and financed editor. Becbe is an old friend the American Civil War, of mine. helped build San Francisco,

and transformed the money visit the Bucket of Blood," and merely advertised it through his There were other signs too; he hasn't really, revitalised it,

markets of the New World. "Sco the Suicide Table,

Crystal Bar," "the

"the

Tragic Story

Klavye

Today the Enterprise is doing Sawdust paper, the Territorial En- $75,000-worth gross business A total of 750,000,000 Saloon." If ghosts were walk-

Du terprise.

and prints close to 10,000-not

In views which are pictures bed for a town with only 400 dollars in allver and gold Ing. it was obvious that they

in themselves, Sansho Dayu 1 do not usually write shop in or 500 permanent residenta. gushed from these baked wore making their way to the this Diary, but the story of the

tells the tragic story of a high- ** Beeba is one There are many. Territorial Enterprise-its · TO=

of America's born family. in eleventh- hills in the 'sixties and nearest bur.: 'seventies of the last century every six or seven residents,

The father, bars in Virginia City-one to porters heve carried six-shooters most famous journalists, and century Japan..

is to a large extent the story ho and Clegg have whipped the governor of a province, sides before the torrent dried up.

of Virginia City.

paper into shape and circulatèd | Wal

with the peasants against the it all over. the American con- arrogant warlords, and for this It was more than a newspaper tinent.

ho is sent into exile. When mother and her two children --it was the fabulous tremzure

And the Enterprise has are travelling to join him, they WHEN I got into town I found city's loud and imperative voice brought thew fame and new are caught by bandits. The two

telling the story of the great C Street blocked with car. Ands of allver and gold, the prosperity to Virginia Cily. children are sold as slaves to a

.It was one of the big- gest bonanzas of all time bonanza being a Spanish word meaning "in money" or "paying off" word cherished here.

Liveliest

the

4

Sports cars

The

R.DK

the

Slot machines

ruthless balliff, the mother be- comes a 1 prostitute.

good.

and I spotted two Jaguars, three triumphs

dlazadors, M.G.'s, and a Mercedes-Benz murders and suicides and rake- within the first Ave minutes.

The film is and in the way The now carriage trade was to hell rumpus that went on night

music is

is often sad; under quenting the old mining

and day.

garb of formal beauty that motropolis.

Enterprise prasses and its car and collects stamps. They make with measured steps TUCIUS collects private railway charms the senses it has R of tragedy There is a There must have been 10,000 Prosemen, who often doubted as are big, plush, old-fashioned TODAY, Virginia

City people, trippers, tourists, students a writers, wore lubricated with lounge cars, gold-trimmed; and walle Into the sunlit pond to calls itself the liveliest of Western Americana, tr a strong spirit called Valley Tan, when Beebe zou travelling he end; her life of Klavery;" she

and the present, owners, and ghost town in the world, In search of Beebe I turned post, editors, Lacius Beebe and his dew in one or another of his | does not cry, but we do.

He doesn't fy the beginning of the "plcture, am inclined to agree, Al- but still dedant, where the great Clegg, have Prest

the and has no faith in tying when the exlied governor though the present popula- names had sung and the cham- remedial qualities of high-proof machines, AVREDEN fogedly recalls scenes of her life with tion is only about four or pagne had flowed, and I found whisky Martinis they restore a

He was in man's confidence and almost The town is a ikile-like-Reno, her husband. Without fadings

in and out and other devices. everything that has alcohol in it. but not too much,... The slot the picture turns repeatedly the spacious days when

machines meezed and clanged from present to put and from the roulette wheels whirled and past to present, remindful of an the bars were doing boom oriental scroll which knows no

this

and after a look around I Piper's Opera House, decaying partner the ebullient Chine to an express

Charles private raliway cars hitched Interesting are flash-backs at

five hundred, compared with him right away..

shorts," "smbathing. 40,000 mined, did business, kwahion-plate of Good Businessmen

I have seen Luckas Beebe, the

and caroused here, there has Now York, the nation's leading been a revival in Virginia dude and dandy, in white City's fortunes.

wife

·Reno 901-48; strict division of icetien. EDG

A Message

and calls, morning-cond and top TUBEY are proud of their capocis the all Virginia hat, twadds ană. check, and Eity and welcomis its being back to locity I noticed the change Tattersall waistcoats, bowler publicised Luckis handed me. There is a faint way since my last visit five hat orderby, an elegant blue a yellow (amouncement, printed chance that allger and fold By European standards this

marydowe

years ago as 'I' drove in the senge or black, broadcloth," "but, in- Liontsticky terkay sold type rink to Semut not trany, Almi hai. ŝta ałów - momentsands.<

Read this

I had never seen him run- which commandet

Comstock, a rule. (Europeans, ses no paint hot midday sun along the bathing,

(skich ("The terrible-tempered which a includes silver City, why the-camera, should steep corkscrew:slerra roads

Verhamn Gold

HOL

A man walking «. for: MA and Virgini

City, Beebe - squinted in the glare - pulled towards the town.

¿Its :: punches ;!-

minute "two, unless him Kabet wald, redwho is it?", und ggromen,, Ite content

news *Two · •ot i'w mines Balo then recognised me

of the community rašifying dhood $190,000,000 in silver end

Planted on the hillsides and at the dizzy bends among the sagebrush were handsome red, yellow and black billboards advertising the Territorial Enterprise, famous ::journal of West

Mark Twain's ne

An apology

NCSENDET Orritorial :: Enterprise sow the has poured out arconiga traRSLITOA D

gold within a parkodt