1960-01-09 — Page 17

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THE ITALIAN FROM BRITAIN

1111

11124

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1960.

Roderick Mann

REPORTING FROM TEXAS ON ONE OF THE TWO DATES. TEXANS RÉMÈMBER

And I'm still broke

sighs John Wayne

Brackettville (Texas).

HERE in this tiny town, only a few miles from

the Mexican border, John Wayne is spendirig £4,000,000 making a picture called The Alamo, 80 I flew over to see how he was getting along.

The last part of the trip was made in the film company's private aeroplane. They picked me up in San Antonio, 100 miles from here, and landed me in the middle of a barren, dusty field.

From there 1,was driven to the location by way of the Mexi con border, so that I might arst sample a lethal Mexican brew called tequila, which works equally well as lighter fuel and is obviously responsible for the glazed look mort Mexicans wear after six p.m.

They say she has that fikiran look that has made so many. star But her name is French and she was born in Britain. Wer name: Marir Devereux. Age 20: Background: A starring role in a Tommy Steele dun-with more film work to come.

Thanks to this last piece of Wayne hospitality I arrived bright-eyed at Fort Clark gucat ranch, where the entre unit is housed.

I was built 100 years ago u cavalry defence post against meruuding Indians and on my arrival

Mexican malit my assured me proudly that Robert E. Lee had slept in the samo bed I am using.

MANN and WAYNE'... Cockrustiņo drink»

SHOW

BUSINESS

Army (Ben

fought a huge Mexicon during the Texan fight for Independence.

บร which cost £5,000,000, was made in Italy.)

"The Alamo will make or So here in Texas, where break me. And I em noi taking ranches are sometimes 1,000,000 A salary. I am taking a pereen- acres big and they use sports tage of the profits but it has Jaguars to stand on while they to gross over £7,000,000 before wash their gold-plated Cadli- I get a dime." laca.. bir John Wayne is recreating this classic piece of American history.

BLOCKBUSTERS

After a fight of 5.000 miles It took Wayne, two years to to get here it seemed a pretty build a complete model of the good idea to establish right Alamo here, and when I arrived away exactly what the subject he was busy blowing it up. of the film was since before Icaving London, opinion

divided on the Alamo, been Some thought it was an Ameri-

had

can square dance, others that it was some king of rare trull, rather like an avocado.

THE OTHER DAY

but

Since 11 was his money, nobody tried to stop him, when it was all over and the mission WBS well and truly demolished, he came over and invited me to dinner,

fortified First we

ourselves with blockbusting drinks of un- In fact, it turns out to be believable potency called mar- up of tequila, one of the two things in the Paritas (made

cointreau, and time, world Texans take restly seri- orange

champagne glosses one served in "Son" drawled ously.

round the seven-footer when I arrived, with salt encrusted "Us Texans only

celebrate rime), and then Wayne talked two events a year. One is the about the film. anniversary of the Alamo, the other is the day the TRO model Cadillaos comb out"

The Alamo, I learn, was an abandoned mission in which 187 men-among them Jim Bowie, the knife fighter, and David Crockett, the Tennessee guide-

G

You wouldn't believe il" be said, "but I've made nearly 250 pictures, and I am still almost broke, So now I am thinking big. I planned The Alamo for over 12 years, and expensive the most. it is picture ever made in America.

Can A Proctor Really When a wife |...and for your

Be Called A Private Eye'?

by RICHARD LISTER

rebels...

...and for your bookshelf

the

year

CASEMENT. Peter and Maurice

While we sat down to dinner 17- what had he asked me pressed me most about the making of the Alm, and I said: (A) the tact that he had just blown up the set and (b) the man with the black eye Patch who kept loping around watching me suspiciously. Who was ho7 A spy from Kirk Douglas's company?

"No."

"That's Wayne said,

Ford has John Ford, "Pappy's been my friend for 30 years. and because I've got everything sunk in this

been Alm he's advice.

hc giving

In fact, directed one or two of my love scenes."

CALF-FIGHTER

A: hc was using four thousand Mexican extras in the fim I asked why be hadn't made the whole film in Mexico.

"I planned to," Wayne said, "but the President was afraid WO might meet poll leat trouble there As the Alamo doesn't reflect too much credit on the Mexicana. SG WO moved the whole unit here.

"It is a pity. I would like to have worked down there. I love Mexico. And the bullfights, Do you know they once got C primed up with tegulla and then pushed me into the ring 10 Sght a female calf?

"I didn't have a cape to wave so I waved a bad cheque instead."

"What happened?"

"She tossed me about 2011 into the air." Wayne Baid "That's what happened"

I asked Wayne: "Do you Spanish?" He looked suro

spcak

• THE MERRY MUSE. Eric at sitting targets like the Public round the door to make THE GOOD WIFE. Aurelio Linklater, Jonathan Cape. 184. Schools, Army, the City, Chil his wife, Pilor, was not about. "And isn't that Lovi. Hamish Hamilton. A bawdy, unpublished master- Service, Parliament and BBC, "No" he said,

piece by Robert Barno turns up probing for privilege. Attractive something-considering I've had 15%.

and dislocates the lives of a and amusing when done with a three 'Spanish wives? I guess LL the characters in salty batch of Scots characters, light hand (notably in the essay 1 just never listened to them." A1

by self-decribed ranging from a lusty Edinburgh on the Army

man to a melancholy pagan Simon Raven), but pme

HIS AMBITION this very curious business

poet. Linklater below his best of the others seize up under the

"Were there any tremendous novel are preposterously but still with a racy readability, strain of their own seriousness.

problems in making this pic- stupid, like the good wife 1914. James Cameron. THE BLACK DIARIES OF ture?" MY FRIEND JUDAS. Andrew Sinclair. Fober. 15s.

of the title, extremely Case 21. An impressionist ROGER

which Singleton-Gates

"You're kidding, of course." A Girodias. Sidgwick and Jackson, Wayne said, "Everything was a brought an era to an end. very clever unpleasant, like her picture of TR ANDREW SINCLAIR is a MR

young writer, and if his novel has some of the bullying tycoon of a hus-wonderful summer, the nation £5 51. The last word (it is to tremendous probient. For in- the Casement stance--we needed 1,500 horses. prosperous affair, comprising it. England more

the life and But we could not rent a horse defects you would expect from a very clever young band, or both, like their in cloudless humour" to match be hoped) on

imbecile-delinquent son. than ever; then the thunderboll. death of the traitor-pervert in all of Hollywood. There are

Western TV Beries/ man, you must like it or lump it.

Tha richest

Cameron deftly presents facts of hero (according to the point of so many and most

major and minor significance to view), plus the Congo and being made that every horse is unscrupulous businessman in a

Carter complete his picture The ro Putumayo reports, plus, at long under contract. We had to comb mail American town, Marden, treats his beautiful sult is not exactly history, but last, lengthy extracts from the seven states to and ours,"

a telling illustration to history. practically

themselves.

"And now what?" I said as Garnette, being quite i52-

Gary. wife, Garette, as a doormat,

dinner foished. problems takes refuge in dream world of amorous fan tasies. Nevertheless she does contrive one real affair a brief romance with young musician in his 209.

On

Cam-

A

● LADY 1. Bomain

unreadable diarice

In his first novel, The zine they run together, and, out Breaking of Bumbo, you may of spite, stuces the too-willing remember, he took the mickey Judy. cut of the Deba and the Guards.

takes This me he

Ben Birt can put up with being rent down, but losing capable of coping with her Michael Joseph. 152. Stylish, • TALES OF OLD-TIME bridge.

Judy really hurts. He les in Ben * Birt, undergraduate, front of the gas stove, and turns

it on and a

off, likes to think of himself es

He only half toughie. He moves among the means it, only quarter does it. smoothies, the

the And is soon on his Vespa again heurlics.

to the softies, the smarties, and the taking another tootmin funnies with the angular loung May Ball. Ang insolence of a Brando with

Cardiff accent.

THE PLOT

Mr. Sinclair has concocted a hotch-patch slang, half Amerl- ean, half English, for Ben Birt. she

Rejected

TEXAS. J. Frank Doble, Ham- witty, and with an acid taste. Her Ladyship in old age tells her mond. 30. The Texas of the great secret; how she led a dis- Rungers, not of the oil millo reputable Life sa murderous aires, is the background of this nistrese before anthology of yarns, legends and anarchist's marrying high into the English folk tales. Establishment.

THE

the London

“Well," Wayne said, “Ive only got one more ambition... to show the film to Churchill. The Alamo is the kind of thing he'd haya appreciated.

In fact, dammit, it's the - Kini of battle he'd have been. In if he'd been around. "I" only wish we'd had him running this country' instead of yours. We'd be the greatest country

in the world under a man ilko

s

Texas

• THE IDENTITY OF JACK of rebellion, MARCEL PROUST; Volume THE RIPPER. Donald McCor- In a moment

Chatto mich Jarrolda. 188. The author follows him to New York, 1. George: D.. Falater,

bo promptly

rejects and Windux: 20%. The first half belleves that Jack the Ripper His novel really stands or falls whore try the success of this jargon, her, not himself being in need of what promises to be a.maxic was a Russian doctor called ly definitiva blography, chiefly Fedachenko ellai Konovalov, and for me it falls.

of a doormat,..

After 25 years of vague and Proust's early years when he who died in a Petrograd asylum

Wayne Jumbored to' hla :: feet He is the hard-centred choco- * I can't really' belleyg in B

passive acquiescence she now we living the events later 20 years after

me to the door : late whom no one can hurt. He Cambridge where the Froctors eaves her husband, taking with turned into his classic work murders A full, it rather and aw

Much of the material is new. is the roll-then-in-the-hay hay are called private eyes, nor in her their younger son, Chant *-*

unstylish account of the caso. Outside pale po thone Until undergraduates who talk like who never gets caught.

drooling, almost

over the barren vacant,

FROPHET. UN-

DAVID AN LIVINGSTONE: Judy.

this even to themselves:

articulate who writes obeccal- ARMED: Trulsky, 1921-29. Imao ❤

“Bay,!" Wayne, said, "Do you Judy, that, pretty, sexy little "I was worried for me, what lies on walls with his foot. Bentober.. Ogard, 389, whI FAMILY LETTERS,VBII-158 landscape

Miss, Levi falls to solve her delve years in the life of Two eyelenggara Balika 2 think Churchill would 51 Something's I'd do when Judy peeked round

the end of which Schapers – Chatle and Władna, Hall, does catch him, and, for the edge of my door. I decided characters problems. All that Trotskyat me wonderful week he is happy to take that tough, 1 sat cross-bar.

changed is that Gematte tas briliant, erratic hero of the There, letters, throw light #e this: Him??...

extraordinśry interest on to be caught.

legged on my chair. I lit up a will now become a doormat to Civil"" "Waz goce intq, exile, des of

We teated by the more ruthless Then everything goes wrong: 100. it reckoned to look like. I her son. He and the get caught up in the was just lounging around his unpromising matsia) i silin described alglik was

hundled wffih kill and a

Uand scholarship. plot of that smooth smartio Winkle to get, sunt down in blaze of publicity!!

trollop

from

He prinds more of Emma's more blasphemous verses in the muga-

No doubt wore, all of us rapidly. becoming Americanised. pelling rending,

But have they got as far as that

yet ayan; in Cardint

London Express service),

Victor Palmer (London” Repruau Hartlce),

on the Africa

to

why don't you write and

· be said,” “I might do

osh, 7"might aÐ CARE?"

London-linepřem. Service,

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