1955-05-28 — Page 7

DOROTHY

DANDRIDGE

"All women

have a bit of

Carmen."

Trigger-men, dogs, planes guard gem empire

SA

(CHINA MAIL SPECIAL REPORTER)

Johannesburg.

(AVAGE Alsatian dogs strain at their long leashes, snuffing over the heat- hazed sands. Two armed white men in ten-gallon hats hold them in, hard-bitten, tough-looking men.

They are men of the guard which patrols a hundred miles of fence which for security would make the Iron Curtain seem as easy of passage as a London park railing. -South Africa's Diamond Curtain.

On its impregnability rests the fate

of the £85,000.000 empire of Diamond

King Sir Ernest Oppenheimer.

For it encloses a 60-mile by 15-mile strip of the coastal Nambib desert, at the mouth of the Orange River,

DIAMOJED CLAST

500 miles north of Cape of Wreck Point. They have Town, in which millions of been trapped on underwater de- stones of every one of the fences laid in the Orange River,

32 hues lie in the surface

sand

-ing.

They have died of thirst as

ready for the pick- they trekked away from. airplane wrecks in the land which Bush- There" ore Iren call "Where Bones,"

You scruff them 4p from

the top-soil as you walk. They

I spoke to a

pilot who once

were coughed up from the great few for a smuggling group with volcanic diamond "pipe" When

their

the earth's crust was first cool-

hey lie there in They milions diamonds which can- not be sold for fear of sending the world's diamond market in a headlong lumble.

Searchlights

Sir Ernest Oppenheimer's £20,000,000 reserve fund against bad markets would not be sufficient to save him.

So

P

big money behind them. There! was a

wartime British major

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1955.

Dot's In The Big-Time

W

7ITH her 30th birth- day in sight, Dorothy Dandridge

has rung the bell of big- time success.

By DAVID HOLLIDAY

"earned her bread and butter the backwater security of "n When "Carmen Jones," in the night club entertain- parsonage,

overnight and was per- suaded to forgo temporarily her burning ambition act.

to

again

She hit the headlines when in 1951, after a period of voice training she opened

at

a hotted-up, all-Negro filming business and she made Inspired by the success of version of Bizet's tem appearances at London's Shirley Temple, Ruby Dand- the Club Gala in Hollywood.

Then came engagements in

on

44

But after a while 'Ruby Dandridge herself entered show business and made a

Las

In 1933 she

Janeiro and Sao

AT HOME. :

Like her mother, she has scored many successes on T.V. in America and has many times

a

her opera, exclusive Cafe de Paris. ridge took pestuous. Spanish

infant New York. San Francisco, was shown recently, hard-

to And not only had cafe daughters

Hollywood Vegas and London boiled critics run out of society had the opportunity where in hair ribbons and became the toast of cafe society superlatives to describe to judge her worth. Fercep frilly dresses they managed in Rio de

Paulo. Miss Dandridge in the title tive film-goers might have to cash in on the fringe of role.

noticed her in minor roles in the child-star boom. Typical of their ealogies productions like the were: An acting ability" "Tarzan" films. out of all proportion to her

ON THE MAP:

hit. She reached her graced the covers of such experience in films" "For sheer animal" attraction, I It took Oscar Hammer- popularity peak in America's periodicals as Life and Look.

At home, in her two-storey have never seen her equal stein's brassy interpretation topline radio production

commanding apartment any screen: "She has of "Carmen" to put Dorothy "The Beulah Show", and she panoramic view of Los Angeles, "dignity

Her career still makes frequent telefilm Dorothy -and simplicity:" on the map. "She has a personality as until then was just outside appearances. hot as an

open oven door. the limelight!- and an emotional kick like But that was not for want a mule" wonder how of trying, for from her in- Jane Russell and, Marilyn fant days Dorothy has been Monroe dare stay in the closely linked with show sume, town (or the same business. business) as her."

Her father ---- April Dan Yet it was not the first ridge was a minister of time London had had the religion in Cleveland, Ohio, chance to meet this sizzling But her mother had other

She became a success as personality. For until fairly ambitions for her daughters, recently Dorothy Dandridge Dorothy and Vivian, than a night club star almost

0

out

has little time for hobbies-but she does admit to a liking for trying

intricate In the meantime Dorothy French recipes in the kitchen. had started to study acting. And at home, away from the she favours com- But she still had to eat, and limelight,

ends meet took pletely casual clothes. Put aside, to make what small parts she could. then, are the Dandridge fashions in night club attire that have in films and plays and helped make her famous.

Off

T.V. these by supplemented

screen, away from cameras and the footlights, becoming a vocalist with a friends find her serious intense, dance band at a Hollywood hard-working. And when she has time she studies psychology night club.

and drama!

THE SENORA is

a career woman

But Her Excellency "knows

how to

run home, too

a

by ANNE SHARPLEY

London.

NTO the world's most re- morseless diplomatic round steps.. a graceful young widow with the

quick, istening air of a deer, the chic of a Parisienne, the honour of. being the first woman Minister to the Court of St James and

English. She is Senora Vir

de Gallegos, giria Prestinary

newly arrived Envoy Extraor dinary for Costa Rica, the Cen- tral American republic that was in the news this "January when there was border trouble" with next door Nicaragua.

по

The appointment of this dark- haired, bright-eyed diplomat,

will assure you, discussing her hubsand's death, but she plainly is not enjoying it.

There were two small boys to Alfredo and be looked after, Jorge,

Trement she has only one secretary-maid-companion. very pretty Costa Rican girl.

"Her Excellency is used to running a home," explains her Consul Gentral. Mr Frederick Wright, "and no more staff will unless it is

.

Her plans? Nothing immediate, she says.

From Logan Gourlay, at the Cannes Festival AND now at the end of

the

festival comes Dorothy Dandridge, as combustible AS | Miss Grace Kelly is cold. Her film, "Carmen Jones" is not a festival entry, and cannot be publicly shown in France be- cause of copyright laws, but it was given a special performance on the final night d

Miss Dandridge tells me what Carmen has done for her.

that "It's made me realise there's a bit of the restless man- eating Carmen in every woman."

won't say exactly much the

how there is in her own make-up.

She

be taken an necessary."

The two boys, aged 11 and 12,

"It's also brought me my first tall,

in worthwhile long-term film con- good-looking boys

one sults, will go to tract. I'm going to make "grown-up"

"it is film here, boarding school

year for 20th Century. planned, when they have learn-Fox. And it's sent up my salary ed a little more English.

a night club entertainer. some places I get as much

For their mother, too. English "I wanted to do something is an anxiety. active to

should be my career."

as a

2

In

Page

LIP

Time Precision

Style Perfection'

Rokler of the absolute precision record at the Besançon Observatory since”), 1936

TAI SHUN JEWELLERY CO.

Wholesaler & Retailer.

Diamond Jade

and Jewellery

Export orders accepted

am pleased to see she be- 72, Queen's Rd., C. Hong Kong. Tel: 20664 & 20618

In a few weeks time she will $1000 a work row." take my mind off

She evades talking about any I had go to the Palace to see the discrimination against coloured things." she explains.

entertainers like hersel and in Queen. "I muz learn Engiees." always bcen interested

decided diplomacy and

this she says, gazing at the vase, of' moves or to the champagne ball

tulips and daffodils that she saw which ends the festival. She became first secretary to for the first time in her life! the Costa Rican Legation in the when she came to London,

"Queekly," she adds. nearby country of El Salvador, and so quickly distinguished her- self that she was given a senior post in the Department of Foreign Affairs in

the Opsta Rican capital, San Jose."

DOUBLE first -- Senora de Gallegos, first woman Minister to London; and the tulips she had never seen before.

and some ex-cloak-and-dagger-one of her country's most bril- men and they planned to drainant women, was intended as a off some of King Diamond's special compliment to Great profits.

Britain by the Costa Rican Presiedent, Senor Jose Figueres. This pilot made three runs, "A queen for a queen," said proudly as she' The President paid her farewell visit to him in the Presidential Palace.

dropping a passenger who had! to meet the inside man.

He still has a big diamond, but he is too scared to try to sell it.

Though the Senora laughs The penalty in South Africa for shyly about his words now, they Having an uncut diamond expressed what her mission was

to be,

LIKE A QUEEN She was to grace her appoint-

seven years' in gaol.

And the recent mission In:

his sandy bank of gems must be guarded and the withdrawals South Africa of ex-M.1.5 chictment Uke a queen. restricted.

Sir Percy Sililice has not helped Certainly she will be a very to calm the nerves of the gay queen whether her English Day and night the fence and 1.D.B.-lidit Diamond Buying-improves

* not. Her laugh ils enclosed land aru

breaks into every sentence. She racireteers.

will throw her head back, her brown eyes bright, and laugh gloriously at anything that amuses her.

الله

*patrolled-inen and dogs, armed Jeep crews, with searchlights Zor their night watch, light air- -craft.

Top Secret

.

Her voice is clear and rapid, In the forbidden territory

Diamond business is top secret her glances vivid and her move strange face 15 immediately re-

menta quick and graceful, Sha ported by well-paid local far in the Union,

has the slender arms and lega and tribesmen." Cars, mers

and the unassailable look of

radios, and refrigerators taken

There is a reserve of stones

into the area stay there for ever, reckoned at not less than

It would be too dimcult to £30,000,000 worth

charm and pride that one finds only among Spaniards.

Something really, rather new

She 18,

·

Then came Costa Rica's "little war" in January

this year. It lasted only

ten days, and it is per- for haps easy us to dismiss as

"picturesque"

Was

war that settled by the verwhel ming advantage to the "Costa Ricans of four

Mustang fight-

ers sold to them for a nominal dollar wpiece through the Organisa- Lion of Ameri- can States.

But the Бепога

playedi

a vital part in the "little war,” She went to "the front' with the inves-{ tigating com- mission of the Organisation of American

Statea.

"They were not convinced that it was in fact an invasion and not just a rebellion," ex- plains the Senora, "I had to stay there with them until they were convinced "

The proof of the Senora's per- sistence and probably of her charm too, is that Costa Rica got those four airplanes from the OAS and the "little war" was won.

Then came the "wonderful" news of her appointment to London, a post that has been vacant since 1952,

to

In a way that will endear her the organisers of Western

the Senora does not. Defence, think us as London--we are

of "Europe."

"I have never been to Europe before," she says excitedly, "and I

am most impressed, Everyone I have met in Lon don lives up to their interna- tonál reputation for courtesy end good manners..

DIPLOMATIC COUP She even manages the major diplomatle coup of preferring Leadon to Paris which she passed through on her way here,

X-ray them on the way out, so: Where? Fossibly in the De in Ministers to the Court of St they cannot leave.

Beers-vaults at Kimberley, James, in fact These priceless treasure-bear- South Africa's diamond capital, ing sands were discovered in where man-illing 1927. Since then there has been-rift-toiing watchmen a steady trickle of adventurers brought in by the truckload killing themselves trying to get every night." into the desert El Dorado.

practically bowever, a great deal dogs and more than merely gay and good ure to look atrinke se

Or perhaps buried in the They have died in the depths of the Premier diamond treacherous off-shore currents mine, outside Pretoria,

Her Excellency has a career that would be remarkable in any country, GA

Seven years ago her husband, an engineer, died of a heart attack. She does not mind, abe

Her fe here, apart from the

daily Hiplomatic cocktail party or reception (and certainly she is going be, the most in demand) will be v simple, she tells me

"I am looking for a flat with not more than two or three bed- rooms in which to establish my Legation be gay. For the

comes the queen of the ball. The

other stars are not.

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