1956-01-21 — Page 8

1790

ĮREGISTERNO, TRADITI

SANDEMAN

SCOTCH WHISKY

The

King of Whiskies

'THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JANUARY

THOMAS WISEMAN

T

speaks to the Sphinx in slacks

HE sign on the padded studio door.at Pinewood was to the point. It guid: "Keep OUT,” in large red lotters. In smaller red letters it amplified this udvice: "To Have embarrassment 'to your self, KEEP OUT, unless on official business."

I went in, risking embarrassment to myself and the wrath of Katharine Hepburn, whose presence had inspired the warning. For over 15 years Miss Hepburn has been almost as elusive, publicity-shy and uninter- viewable as Burgess and Maclenn. She is addicted, in. equal parts.. to silence and the word "No."

I do.net hold this against her. On the screen she is almost as eloquent as Garbo, which entitles her to be almost as silent off.

'Come over here"

BUT today I report that the Silence

Barrier

broken. The sphinx in slacks spoke to me.

can be

This was the seene: At the far end of the set Bob

Hope was cracking jokes

technicians. I was talking

director Ralph Thomas.

MIN

Hepburn

was sitting alone,

18 foal away.

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Abruptly she turn-

ed round and said: "If you want

to

talk to me, you'll have to come over here. I can't hear you from there."

1 appronched the Great Uuapproach- able.

Min

Up close. Hepburn gives the impression of being sculpture by Reg Butler, all twisting

Wire and energy.

surrounded by JE dozen

to Robert Helpmann and

Nobody asked

Miss Hepburn to dinner

Her face is that of a P.. instructress with the soul of a post. It is true she in not built. on Rubensesque lines laut, she is rinet as a good epigram.

FLM

BUC-

Her nails are unlacquered and unmanicured; her facu is devoid of make-up; but as her she becomes animated features glow as if coated with phosphorus, and she seems to be burning herself

up.

**] used to KEL by in

films," she said, "on my eyes and my For teeth.

this

film

j

thought.

}

would have to

**Everyone foares me

which supply the electricity for the are-Jumps.

"Too hot," she explained, sit ting down ogafti. Sho would not have thought of asking any

one else to do this for her.

She manoeuvred restlessly on the narrow chair, twisting her Iris underneath her, hugging her knees, wriggling her feet.

Bob

who attempts to convert

She plays Hope to Communism, what is for her, by now, n traditional role: the hard, un- emotional authoritative woman melted by love.

When she had done her scene, I asked her whether she was as unemotional as people thought.

"I'm madly emotional," she sald. "Everybody Is madly emotional. And madly lonely."

"But you cultivate loneliness, Eating alone, for instance.”

KATHARINE

› HEPBURN,

› drassed for

́ her part as

a Russlan

pilot, jokes

with Bob

Hope on the

vot.

DE GAULLE MAY GO

INTO A MONASTERY

GE

From Joan Harrison

Paria his home in the Marne where he fought as a young leutenant in World War

ENERAL DE GAULLE country

may enter a monus has orders not to put enlls

This is believed to be through. the explanation for his isolation from Franer's new political crisiN.

"I can't eat in restaurants. Ittery. gives me indigestion. It's a very in a unnatural way of eating restaurant, sitting upright....'

No limitation

CHE took a swig of her bottle SHE

of mineral water. I had the impression that she was at any the three-minute mile. moment going to attempt

She is a woman who will not low her sex to be her limita

She believes that men and 11. women are equal, but that some than more equat women are

She sees no reason "I'm lucky." she said, "that I most men.

play the shouldn't sho leave a few very good friends. why But I don't care

for great male roles in Shakespeare. acquaintances,"

She is the answer to all those that Shaw's who say Passing acquaintanceske erfiles

Katharine co-stars tend to be frightened women are unreal.

Bob Hepburn of

might her,

have been Hope, 1 gather- written by George Bernard

alone..

they all think I'm having such

an exciting time “

manage on my teeth." She the woman I was playing. No- was referring to the fact body asked me to dinner. They

went off and left me alone.

that she had been suffering from styrs; but they have cleared up and her eyes, alternately as wily 114 an agent's and as inuoeent. a chili's ar

musmeric as ever.

49

Neglected

rather angry

about that 1 wandered off by myself na through

Venice, feeling very

mach

to ask her

"W 11 y

ed, had not yet. Shaw. worked

up

enough courage

10

But produced and directed by Katharine Hepburn.

dinner.

(COPYRIGHT)

arc

tened of you." I asked.

I'm

a}]

people so fright-

menn," she said.

"Because

"Reporters," I said, "are nervous of you."

"Oh. I'm real porters," sho unid.

"Why?"

mean to

re-

They ask me thluss they have

"Why do you wear pants?"

lonely and neglected, and I sat no business asking-Why i wear town by the cant and looked Punsts?" in the water, nud while 1 Wils like that a man came sitting over to me and said: come and talk to you? wasn't Rossano Brazzi. French plumber.

"Berause I like to."

'May

1

Only t

It was a

trousers an

HAD been told that she exists In the studio as a self-contained

"I was glad to talk to anyone. entity: eating alone (not in the restaurant, rejecting the atten- who looked reasonably all right.

normally so we went off together for lavished upon any star, drinking walk through Venice, from her own bottle of mineral water, +31 dolt everything for herself.

thus

thank

ате

"I suppose they all thought 1 would have madly

exciting Things to do, and left me to 11.

It happens everywhere to ne.

ven here,"

I suggested that

she

rather

She put her feet up on the dressing-table and let her hair, which she had been putting ap. full down to her waist. She encouraged people to leave her rammed cigarette a

in her alone". mouth.

"I'm not to fascinating," she pald. Everybody thinks I must have such an exciting, glanor ous Fire, so they keep away from

She was wearing

white vest.

berdine jacket oveT

Fish

E

One of the few men who still meet the general said: "For a long time his closest friends have believed he hix life in the may finish

He is a man of Church. deep religious convictions."

At 65, General de Gaulle has cut all his political links-as be threatened last year.

His announcement Chen-"My mention is not to Intervene in the conduct of public affairs shocked his followers.

*

To them General de Gaulle was sub the man who could lead France from chaDS.

But neither he nor his wife voted in thic

General recen! Election. Since then the general has refused to receive his former henchmen.

The

telephone exchange at Colombey Les Deux - Eglises

A villager who works on de Gaulie's estale

said: "The general has spent several after- ncons collecting mails in the garden. He speaks to no one."

De Gaullo's silence baffled polificlans,

EGYPT'S TANKS: THE REAL LOWDOWN

From

PETER HEDLEY {

Brussels

HEN is a tank not

a tank? Egypt will find tho answer

by

when those: 150 ex-British Valentines shipped Antwerp scrap dealer Jeff Peeters nro. unloaded in Alexandria.

For at Proters' docksido dopol in Antwerp. I examined hair n dozers other vehicles of the samo type, And they are not tarka be soldier knows them

They were once the chases of self-propelled guns. During the war the Valentines werd stripped

of their fitted with which

turrets and stock platforma on Acid Kuns-25-pounder picces or 17-pounder anti-tank guns were mounted.

Some of the Valentines that went

the to Egypt had

gun barrels, sald Peelers. But noud hot breech blocks. Nono had radios.

The vehicles were engined by A General Motors diesel. Pilco of these engines-similar to the London-bus engine with which most wartime Valentines wort fitted-wore tying in the yard.

For show

50, on the face of it, the Valentine Egyptians get 150 hulls which have fairly good motors and serviceable tracks.

But Bur a tank is not B tank without a gun and a gun is not agun without a breech block. Could anyone make a breech block to it these up as fighting A furthnight ag he saw his

Breech blocks vehicles again? once powerful

the Gaulist Party of require

Anest

precision 113 Deputies dwindle to 10. engineering. Only Arms ko Even these no longer acknow- Vickers or Germany's Krupps ledge his leadership.

or Czechoslovakia's Skoda could make them.

new

Said M. Jacques Feccart, one of his friends: "There will be

the not one Deputy in Assembly whom the general will recognise as a spokesman or a working colleague,"

Now General Charles Andre Joseph Marie de Gaulle

"France's man Winston

of destiny," Sir Churchill once said- writing In Iris study at Colombey.

alts

He Is Anishing the second volume of his memoirs. The tronie to is "Unity"

stumbles l

France

lenderless,

(COPYRIGHT)

WELL. WHAT D'YOU KNOW!

י

And

*** Split,

Hear By Vibrations

VEN though they are true, many being supported between their heads. When the nest is complete, it may be two to three feet in facts about fish sound very "fishy"

height and four feet in diameter. Indeed.

You might think, for example, that it's impossible

But to train a fish,

many have been made to respond to the sound of a bell or whistle, and to feed from the She said: "Being un actor is fingers of

Hawaiian a human being. such a humiliating business,

balloon fish will do it, and so will the "Becuase people

English perch and pike. about wearing pants?"

"Because you are selling your- self to the public, your face, your personality, humating. As you get older it becomes more humilinting. because you've got less to sell,

ask

you

Fish have no ears, but sounds are conveyed to their "auditory nerves" through the surface of the skin and flesh, In other words, vibrations acl upon their body. and that is

SPEED KING

Absurd

66TS really an absurd thing A

"Yes," she sold "It's my own fault. entirely. I have brought upon myself. I am a rather sharp person, I have sharp face and a sharp voice. When I speak on the telephone, 1 snap into It puts people off, I suppose." "Shall I tell you something? She suddenly lesped up, like When I was making "Summer a hurdler, and getting down on Madness" in Venice I had pretty the floor pulled apart the plugs what Sir Winston Churchill can rauch the same experience as connecting the heavy cables

me.

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being an actor, isn't it? child con do what the best- trained actor can do. Even if only for a moment. But a child can't, oven for one moment, do

do."

At this stago Miss Hepburn was called upon to do what no child could do, And not many actresses, either,

✡

Fastest member of the sh world is the swordásh, which can drive Its sword through 20 inches of hard wood, sheathed with copper, in bont's side. But it gets up speed to do more- more than mile a minute, in fact.

in

Another fish which can give its energies a nasty shock is the electric ray. It has electric organs on each side of the head-cells containing Jelly-like Uquid which correspond to those of

off given. an electric battery. Shocks are waves, hundred or more to the second. After giving a certain number of shocks, however, the "battery" rune out. Then the Ash has to rest, to accumulate more electricity.

Gayest inhabitant of the deep is the exuberant "flying" fish, which takes great leaps

out of the water, covering 150 feet at a time. The action is really a glide, since the extended fins are hold motionless when the fish is in the air.

Sometimes a "community centre" is built by Then the common nest as many as 50 lampreyn. ussumes the proportions of a damt

or

Silliest of air seems to be the puffer, halloon fish. It has the power of pumping air into the lower part of its body and, when blown out like a balloon to three times his normal size, the puffer ficals helplessly upside down on the surface of the water.

}

He turns turtle because his centro of gravity Is changed. Semne puffers have sharp spines but. others, poor fish, are smooth and without protec- tlon of any kind IDIOTIC ACTION

It is hard to find a reason for the pufferts Idiotic action, which puts him at the mercy of his enemies. Perhaps he hopes they will die laughing?

In India, flah are still regarded as sacred by many people, who think of them as the creatures into which the souls of the dead migrate-after death. A great carp in the Jhilaur at Srinagar, for example, was seriously thought to be "the inte Maharajah of Kashmir."*

more

Says Peeters: "The Egyptians Just want them to run around- to give a show of strength."

Dealer Albert De Backer has 400 than

completed Shervick tractors Sherman tanks demilitarised and con- verted by Vickers as tractors fut the Colonial Offico, for servico on the ground nuts scheme in Tanganyika.

They have a shortened track -two instead. of three acts of bogic wheels-and à now chassis and superstructuro.

"And it anyone thinks that convert these into they

could Lanits," said De Backer, "they are crazy."

TOW

The Shervicks would need a chassis and a complete armoured superstructure and guns--to become tanks again.

What military use could they have? A towing vehicle? That is a job an ordinary farm tractor could do just as well and much more economically.

Bulldozer? Yes, De Backer's firm is completing some for that job. But not for Egypt. None has been shipped out of Belguim

Now

recorde 1,000

Carriers

carriers: Ghent port show that more than carriers machine gun were brought into De Backer's and other yards between April and December of lust year.

•

They are Tlds, a Canadian of the British Army's version Universal-the main difference. being that they were steered by pillars like a tank Instead of a wheel as on the British version. Mr De Backer that no

SkyB

agent has Israel or Egyptian approached him to buy any.

Just down the road from his yard is another waste plot shared by three firms. There 550 carriers stand in the open- all in good condition.

in

Freddy Chavca, dormer captain and inside-left of Belgium's national Soccer team, wom chargo as sales maneger for the three firms.

"They are all for strap," he said.

Had Israell or Egyptian agents made any approach? No, he Bald

Tho carriers have no batteries

and: Cheyen sald he fte

order.

After the death of his mother, in 1780, the "assumed the engines Ford Anjah of Travancore is said to have implored the VS units were in runing English commander at Anjengo to issue order that no ono should fish in the sea for three days bother all could be put in run- Choves agreed that with little

But a orig: will ning order.

alve the engines and break up the rest,

(COFTRIGHT)

She was required to play a scene with Bob Hope in that POOR FISH distinctive style of "hura, Sho set about it like master Most hardworking fish is the lamprey, which The Rajah was afraid that the ash which strategist.

makes a nest of stones.. A site in a river bed is received his mother's soul might be caught and buy them, he said, " He plans to The film is called "Not For cleared, then stones are carried to the spot by Money." She is a Russian pilot the poor old lamprey and his mate, the load

JOHNNY HAZARD

|| STEPHAN, AS "COUNTERS STEPHANE, ARRIVES A

THE ARPORT

· MEER'S. PLANE SHOULD NEED REFUELING IN ABOUT AN HOURLIVETHE. HLAND: ALLI HIGO TO DESTROY BUMA-

UTTAMIS IN THIS BAGI.

AND THERE'S THE JUST A TANKER PLANE-THE ▼ MINUTE. MOTHER THAT: WILL MOTHERA [FEBI DEATH TO ITS ANGE [OFFSPRING MAMAN

MEERS

caton.

(COPYRIGHT)

[YOU FOLLOW THAT

By Frank Robbins

WELL, MAMAI

∙LIN

SAFRAID YOU'RE BOHLDEAK AIR, MY

WELD] W-WHERE ARE THE

SELENI OFFICIE

situation.

an

Miguel

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