1959-11-07 — Page 17

AVA GARDNER UNBRIDLED

The incredible iceberg .

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1959.

PROBABLY

THE ONLY SECRET WEAPON TO BE TRIED OUT IN CHURCHILL'S BATH

PYKE, THE UNKNOWN GENIUS. By David Lampe.

Evans, 18s.

HE did not wear a tie. He wore spats in order to be spared the need for wearing socks. He had a little goatee beard, à face (as he said) "like an Assyrian wall painting," low blood pressure and an inordinately high flow of ideas.

Lord

by George

FIRST

VIEW

OF A

SHATTERING

FILM

Malcolm Thomson

of staff

Why I had to fly the Atlantic

just to see it

by

LEONARD MOSLEY

New York.

IT is the most shattering film ever made. It is

not a horror film-yet it will scare the living daylights out of you.

It is not a thriller-yet it will have you on the edge of your seat with excitement. It is not a weepie-yet it will draw a tear and a sad, sad sigh from the hearts of everyone who sces it.

It has no songs and it has no dances-yet one of its most superb performances is given by song-and-dance man Fred' Astaire, who shares stardom in the Bim with Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck.

I am talking about 4 fim which I saw here the other night

most of his crew, he had a family back in the States- wiped aut now by the Bomb.

But one day, at naval head- quarters, in Melbourne, a radio operator stumbles upon. a.

· kirange radio message coming from somewhere along the Call- forriani coast of America.

called ON THE BEACH. Bar Does this mean that there is

Time limit

$1011 someone left alive in the Northern hemisphere after all? Peck is ordered to take his submarine, under the South Pole, to America to investigate,

I was not supposed to see it. "On The Beach" is not due to have its world premiere until .next December when, in the week before Christmas, it will his periscope and trains it on The moment when he raises be simultaneously unvelled in 14 the silent, brooding, lifeless city different capitals and great cities of San Francisco is one of the -London, New York, Tokyo, most unforgettable I have ex-

Melbourne, Paris, and Rome among them,

But someone toldi me in London that the 2011 who mode it Stanley Kramer, was slipping it secretly into the ordinary programinic of # suburban New York cinema,

Не wanted to see how an unsuspecting audience would react to his latest film. I flew the Atlantic to be one of the guinea pigs. It has been An experience 1 am not going to

orget for a long time.

The credit titles dissolve into a street scene in Melbourne, Australia, The time is five years hence, in the summer of 1964.

perienced in the cinema. Shak- ing. Devastating,

Double drug Back in Australia, waiting for Peck to retum-and wondering whether she will still be alive when he gets there is Ava Gardner,

But this is not the glamour- girl Gardner you have been used to in other films. She wears hardly any make-up. Her figure is loose, ungirdled and buxom, Her behaviour is um bridied, too; for, as a defence against the thought of the

It might be an ordinary work- nuclear doom to come, she has ing day, with every man and taken to two different kinds of Rirl in sight on their way to drug drink and men.

shops or omce, except that no

onc seems to be using any of Miss Gardner gives the per- the cors which are parked at formance of her career in "On the kerbside,

the Beach."

And then, slowly, the signifi-

cance of the way people talk,

drink, act, begins to sink in,

Death wind

As one man remarked as he came out of the shenk pre- view: "After they've Beeh Ava in this Alm, you know - what's going to be the next fashion-fad-rings under the eyes for women"

excess of ice.. Habbakuk would It was hoped) be unsinkable.

Lord Mountbatten thought

You say to yourself: "These Some people thought that opinion inside Germany belier- that Habbakuk might be gold. people are behaving as itag i Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke was a ing that, if only he could con-

time. He put a block of Pykrete in someone's given them a

But it is Fred Astaire who has genius. He was at least, like vince Hitler that the German Winston Churchill's bath it did it as if they know they the real off-beat role in "On

• genius out of a bad novel. people wanted репес, the not thaw! He took a block to a have only a short time

live." the Beach." He has been cast During the war he became Fuchrer would retrain from stormy meeting of the Anglo-

That's just how it is. For "On as an English scientist whe one of the three principal war.

American chicfs

at The Beach" sets its story in the worked on the Woomera rocket scientiße advisers to

This simple minded project Quebec.

summer of 1964, at the end of range and helped to make the Mountbatten

first (and last) nuclear hydrogen bomb. Combined wins interrupted by the advent of General Arnold, chief of Staff the Operations HQ. It is difficult the war, On the recommenda- of the U.S. Alr Corps, hit world war. to understand why. For Pyke tion of Mr Leopold Amery, Pyke with a chopper. The chopper

Button crazy In the Northern Hemisphere. had no academic training in joined the staff of Lord Mount- bounced off. Arnold, who had Russia and America have science, and Was utterly betten GS Director of Pro- wrenched his arm, gave a yelp. Innhed hydrogen bombs upon

Now, raddled with gullt, destitute of talent for scientific grammes, Nc was known by Lord Mountbatten pulled out each other.

cynically waiting for the research.

some of his colleagues us The pistol and fired

0

nuclear clouds to descend, he Ozzard of Whizz.

Pyzrete The bullet ricocheted. The only peoples left alive in spends his time thering with The military, dignitaries ducked the world are those on theo, a sports car. Hr proposed that the great in alarm.

continent of Australia. But they Plocati oft installations

are doomed too.

at

Paper fortune

Faced by the necessity

of Rumania should be attacked by

making money, after the 1914-18 British paratroops, who, dis- His defeat

war, he watched the men enter. ing and leaving the Stocks Exchange.

guised as Aumanian dremen, would spray the oil refineries with small grenades instead of water.

ot the

Outside the room someone is supposed to have pid: "First they argue. Then they begin

bombs.

un-

Then, with nome of the last So far, owing, to a meteoro- petrol left in Australia, he logical freak, they have escaped lakes part in one of the most contamination from the deadly thrilling and macabre motor nuclear, gases released by the faces of all time a race be-

tween men who don't mind how- many risks they, take, because they will die 'Boom, anyway, liver the sharpest and bitterest and dialogue in this strange compelling alm

Asked who started the war of| annihilation, he answere "Albert Einstein," and then

My opinion is it all began when the world started

But the winds from the north inexorably driving clouds of

a plan for It won't be long now before

Australia too begins to through the Burmese Jungles in pipes, and die. The experts calculate

Pyko

"All of them appeared inpít- ably stupid," he said, "and many Pyke's supreme effort landed biting each other. Now they've have begun to blow their Way It Is Astaire who has to de of them were my relatives." He on Lord Mountbatten's desk one started shooting." decided that what. stupid men - September day in the form of a In the end, nothing came of death towartia them. could do, ons as brilliantly 65,000-word memorandum with the fantastic project. endowed as himself could do a two covering letters. "It may devoted himself to great dent, better, Pykte began be gold. It may only glitter.

transporting

soldiers

like oll

to play the metal markets on a modest capital.

At one moment, he claimed that he controlled one third of

the raw th in the world. Him

can't tell," wrote Pyke,

to

wither

It was called Habbakuk.

that there are just about four Habbakuk was a project for

After the war he immersed months to go before the end, making Дв artificial lenberg himselt in ever cloudler philo 2,000 feet long, with a displace sophical problem. One wintry of gradual annihilation that peace could be maintained by If in ugainst this background" accept the Idiotic principle that assets were worth £100,000 ment of 2,200,000 tons. It would day in 1948, one of them Stanley: Kramer, has met tris diam. Tarranging to defend themselves en peper.

move through the water ut defeated him. Fyke took his The remarkable than is how with aberate weapons Alas, Pyke, like some of the rate of seven knots, carrying a own life. "Ineffably Kupta" men, he crew of 3,000, pêm 200 Spitfirem Lame writes, with too many in

exciting and eveätail he makes couldn't possibly use to with-

́otit comunitiing, maleide? NEE dorided, fárad to observe that. ana 190 Mosquito bombers, Et gaps, and too little distinction,

Marthe devices foutgrew up. We alamp was coming. In a low would cost, at a rough guten tha; story of an odd and, finally, Gregory Peck in the captain couldn't control them Then dagu, sil; his paper fortune was £17 millon.

13. tragio: figured Tim: glary come of 3:15. kindlake-powated; nube, somanybarn i manera poor "bilniko dissipated.

It would consist of a mixture mands attention and mity marków", whichs hesupened to b#" probably looked : 12 a radar When Either, tone ko, power, of water and wood pulp, Pykete, coupled with casperatioK, ET in Australian waters when she, nurses and thought he w Prke organised a poll of public with a tensile strengih far in

-{London Exprem Berulcy). * extastrophio: war olmos. Like something.

FRED ASTAIRE WITHOUT DANCING

Pare

A bitter lesson in how science became the servant of Idiocy

"He knew i ho hesitated' In his first straight part, he is hours and a half seemed like 10 1,000th of a second his own devastatingly effective.

minutes 10 minutes 1 country would be wiped off the But then, so is the rim. "On which we had all been purmmel- map. So, he... pushed 4 the Beach" is shock-treatment led so hard, in the head and button. Then someone else on celluloid. I never lets up. the heart, that there was only pushed a button. Everywhere Its tension never slackens. one way to describe how we they were pushing buttons, and And then we came out of felt. Punch-drunks.

The the world went crazy!

sarak

preview,

two

-(London Exprezz Service).

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