D
I
Was it Au-or wool-aprtera'
ague?
RANG Van Johnson
at his London hotel to say I was coming round and he said I was very welcome but that he was prostrate in bed. It was either, he suspected, Japanese River Fever or wool sorters' ague. And if it wasn't either of those, it was flu.
So armed with a potion of great strength which the chemist assured me was the next best thing to a blood transfusion, I went round to his hotel.
And for
THE "CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, ́ 1960.
********* Roderick Mann
TOP COLUMN OF SHOW BUSINESS.
A pity I'm lazy, says
Van Johnson
Mr Johnson, you may recall,
"This kid Donen was always
One day I
has always been a great one for dragging me off to see movies, so while he swigged the stuff I'd gnid bought I asked him how he ex- got to get this kid out of my the fact that this was hair. He's driving me crazy
the horoscopes and crystal boils, He was film mad.
10 Gene Kelly: You've
plained supposed to be a splendid day with all these films.
for his sign (Virgo) while mine (Sagitarius) had advised that most of the day be spent safely hidden in a convenient broom-
closet,
'It terrifies me!
"Aw," said Mr Johnson, "I don't take that stuft too serious by any more. Come to think of it I don't take anything too seriously any more,"
carcer?"
"And Kelly Bald: 'Onc day
we'll all be working for young Donen. And how right he was.' (Donen is the bellllant director of such nims as Seven Brkles for Seven Brothers, On the Tower and Indiscreet),
"I've got great hopes for this TV series," Johnson sold. "I haven't been making too many pictures lately. You know me, i'm a lazy slob. I find it impossible to go hammering on producers' desks telling them
"What about your Johnson, how good I am.
"That," sald M locking startled, "I've never taken that seriously,"
"I didn't think there was on actor left in captivity who your said, "I wonder your
didn't take his career serious bookshelf
THE LISTENING WALLS Margaret Millor, Gollancz, 12. Gd, new variation, with a dazzlingly ingenious climax, on The theme Df The Lady Vanishes. In this case, middle
friends haven't made you see a psychiatrist," That's
another thing," cald
She's great
"Maybe I ought to get
"ilar she not
talent?"
s1 cyc
Wayne and is soon to start pro- ducing his own films.
"You've got to be careful in this profession," he said. "One slinker con nearly ruin you. Look
Otla Preminger'u
St Joan in which 1 played tho Dauphin. When Preminger chose this girl Jean Seberg to for play Joan I thought - it was a
gag. He couldn't be serious.
"But he pas serious. And wasn't look-what happened. I worth Ave bucks after the film come out. It took me years to live that down."
for
"Has she gat дп сус talent," he echoed. "She's great, When we first met Audrey Hepburn years ago she was just a chorus girl and I said: "That
But Evle said: anywhere.
akingy little girl will never get
'She'll be a great star."
we
met
"Years ago when Rock Hudson, I said: "That big goon hasn't got a chance. But Evle said: 'He'll be a big star,'
"I got pretty fed up with this one day so I said: 'Enough about these other people. What about me? What chance have 1 got?! And she took one long look at me and said: "You'll never get anywhere Johnson is too common a name.""
my
03
I left him sweating under a pile of blankets.
of
wife, Evie, working for me an agent. Sho's got plenty surplus energy. Since we moved to Switzerland she's always com- plaining she hasn't enough to do.
I'll put her out to work, That's it, And one of the first clients she can get work for is
Mr Johnson, "I'm about the only actor In Hollywood who has never been psychoanalysed. me." The only time I ever get on a couch is to sleep.
"All that psychiatry stuff that friends like Cary Grant go aged American tourist in Mexico in for terrifles me. I've got an whose disappearance involves a odd feeling I'm better off not suicide, a Blackmailer and a knowing. suspect husband.
"There's another thing, too. I'm too mean to pay bucks a session"
the 50
DEATH MASK, Ellis Peters, Crime Club, 10%, Gd. A mur- dered archaeologist, his beauti-
"If you went," I said, "you'd ful widow and her problem son, set a tough exercise in detection probably find that underneath that Taughing-boy Exterior and child-guldance for a down-
there's
mante-depressive at-heci oil man turned private Lutor: breezy, Intelligent struggling to get loose." thriller, awed by a slightly preposterous solution.
A GAME FOR
บ
Film-mad
THE "It is a cover," Mr Johnson LIVING. Patricia Iugh admitted. "Though I've never smith. Heinemann, 168. A been quite sure for what. You expatriate American painter in know, interviews are about tho Mexico City sels out to clear up only time I get to thinking or the murder of his mistress: arly-talking about myself. Maybe I crufty, recommended who like their detection larded ought to give you the 50 bucks?" with psychoanalysis and local colour.
for those
• GIDEON'S STAFF. J.J. Marrie. Hodder and Sloughton,
Mr Johnson has just flown in from Paris after completing the first of a series of TV. Aims directed by Gene Kelly called
123. sl, The battle against An American in Paris.
London's crime wave, as seen "It was interesting werking
he Gene again."
said. through the eyes of Scotland) with
Yard, described with more zest "You know, when he starred in on Broadway just than polish. The documentary Pal Joey
before the war I was dancing in details about paller work are convincing, unlike the picture the chorus. And next to me was another dancer named Stanley given of the criminals.
Donen,
-London Express Service).
..
POP
WELL?
REPLACEMENT!
Mr Peler Finch has been talking to me about his accept- ance of the most controversial film part of the year-the title role in The Trial of Wilde,
Oscar
"I took it because apart from the fact that it's abrilliant script. I was sick and tired of the boring parts olker people kept offering me," he says.
"What I'm doing in playing Oscar Wilde is replacing a sti
lower A loose upper lip with it out
one,"
NEARLY RUINED
I have been talking to that vastly under-rated actor. Mr Richord Widmark. He has just completed The Alamo with John
*
another
Says Miss Ava Gardner: "I think I die If marriage falls. And if I don't die I'll kill myself."
Her husband too?
-={London Express Service).
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