1960-07-16 — Page 21

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THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960,

Roderick Mann

SHOW BUSINESS

HATE MEN? I LOVE THEM SAYS MISS SUZY PARKER

'I was doomed -right from the start...'

G.

A sample of the pleasure bargain of

By PETER FORSTER

WITH sales running at well over 2,000,000 a

best

all!

many of this generation feel that he mirrors their own predicament.

What's more, I'll marry again

...and have ten children ENCOUNTERING Miss Suzy Parker is not unlike one's first sight of Niagara Falls. However much you expect you invariably get more than you bargained for. That she is one of the more distractingly-attractive women in the world is immediately apparent from her photographs, That, as a successful advertisement model, she could sell sheep shearing equip ment to an octogenarian ferryboat captain on the Liffey is also quite clear. What is not obvious from those wickedly seductive advertisements and photographs is that Miss Parker can also talk. And talk she does.

("When you meet her," ad that and I kept throwing up all inherit the Wind Fredric March vised a mutual friend, you'll the time. Everyone must have wears a hair-piece to make him discover that she can talk you thought it was because of the look, as it he's bald. In the same

film Gene Kelly wears a hair into anything. Equally, I'm script. afraid, she can talk you out of "I couldn't act properly, you piece to make him look as if he's anything.")

see, because I was too busy not..... being married to a Frenchman. My mind was always cluttered up with problems. This new film is the first time I've ever heard Destruction Test, I'm making

director properly. I Was always in a daze before."

"Does this

She walked into the re staurant where we were lunch. ing with an extravagant, coltish grace, Copper hair: blue grey eyes; slightly mocking. She look- ed good. She also looked as it she didn't give a damu.

MARVELLOUS

Alm look though it's going to be good?"

"I hope so, for Fox's sake. If

"You are not looking," she it makes a profit, it just about sald, at a woman. You are pay Elizabeth Taylor's domestic looking at a property. I always expenses when she comes over film Cleopatra" for thought I was a woman. But here to my studio says No. I am a then,"

20th Century Fox property. I. TOO HONEST

belong to them for ever."

"A a property,

sald

"how are you finding London?" "I have a feeling you're soon "London is being marvellous going to tell me you hate all to me," she said. "I've never men," I said.

been so-social. I am being Her eyes opened wide. "But treated like a 17-year-old deb, I don't," she said. "I love men. slster whereas I'm really a 27-year-old I'm not at all like my mother.

Dorian. She thinks all men are "Perhaps it's that I'm just rollen. I think they're wonder- coming alive again after being ful-though if there is a b married to that man (the around, he's almost certain to gentleman in question is her be the one I marry, now being divorced husband "The Marquis de Portago Pierre de la Salle). You see, always used to say I was too 'You must before I got married I knew honest with men. nothing. I couldn't even dance. deceive them more, he'd say. That was the way I'd been Well, I never took any notice

and look at the trouble. I've brought up.

"I'd been sheltered for years landed in. But I still like them. and then, suddenly I was And I'm going to marry again," pitched into life.

My wicked And have 10 children.

Still

sister Dorian (Dorian Leigh, And with that Suzy Parker, also a famous model) introduced former model, promising actress me to all her wicked friends and permanent property, was

the

Still mocking. director; gone. Roger Vadim, Christian Marquand, the actor; looking good. Still not giving Brando; the Marquis. de a damn Portago, And was doomed.

W month, it is becoming obvious that paper-wering inded her brandy Can wit

backs are the most successful gimmick in publish ing since diaries.

Ironically, authors used to feel that stiff covers made a book an entry in the Immortality Stakes. Now we recognise the pocket-size posterity of the paperback.

Jimmy et last explains why he

"That was the second terrible Mr Billy Wilder, who made thing Dorian did to me. The that astonishingly successful film first was when she persuaded Some Like it Hot, now has an my parents to christen me other runaway success on tim The text is as infuriating, Cedila Renee Anne Farker. hands. The Apartment. entertaining, (at end, Can you imagine going through

Mr Wilder now hopes to pro- those initials? For-

duce a film based on the tragic as moving to read as to see tunately my father called me

career of Nijinsky. He offered But I offer one suggestion. Suzy

the idea to Sam Goldwyn--but Surely the play falls down when "What happened after your Goldwyn had never heard

became doomed?"

of Nijinsky, is angry, giving the reason "I got married, of course," that he had to watch his father, she said. "Accident prone, that's was a great ballet star who Mr Wilder explained that he

a Frenchman. a British working man, die of me. I married

spent his find years in an wounds received in the Spanish And I started trying to act. My asylum suffering from the delu Civil War

first flm was Klas Them" for Deplorebly, though, there heroine into dark caves of Now Mr

Sald Goldwyn; "You imagine Osborne is, like Me. I was a nervous wreck; I sion that he was a horse. law tendency to slap tormented conscience where myself, of this day and age, and went through the entire picture I'm going to make a picture

Spain was bairshirt for the as if I were paralysed.

"Of course I was quite terrible about a man who thinks he's a he has no equal as a guide. Thirties, not the fifties. He

"Well," said Wilder, some- should bring the play up to in the finished film, but it was

a quite terrible picture, so for Old friend

tunately nobody realised how what irritated, "we could have a great ending. In the last reel There are plenty of bad I was.

"Then I made Ten, North we could show him winning the From major to minor leag Take, for example, FATAL

ually improbable reasons Frederick, which was a

little Derby hat a Left-wing intellec- better, and The Best of Every- INTIMACY (Elek Besteller. I have been devouring

There's But I was six months 35 6d.). No service is done to gee and nostalgia half a doz Emile Zola's wholly serious adventures of an old friend who 'l could think of for the thing. study of obsession by a lurid makes his paperback bow this father's death today. What pregnant while I was making show business. In the new film

Simm Templar, THE about a bite from a royal cover, showing a distraught month: looking girl at a window with SAINT (Hodder, 2s. 6d. each). corgl....blisters received

The debonair Saintt has her bosom lo, what can only be described as

an anti-aircraft always seemed to me the most on the march from Alder- position.

endearing of the pre-war maston....poisoned by a adventurers in action. He was Cape grape?

19 a

2

Irrelevant nude on paperback's cover whenever possible! Misconceived na smart salesianship, it is a trend worthy neither of the readers nor of good books.

date.

For Zola, writing nearly 100 not such a fool as Bulldog HERE are some other new years ago, remains a novelist of Drummond.

a power which makes pupy the In these re-issues I cannot paperbacks, out soon.

work of some over-boosted con- find the episode, cherished from temporary American writers, my schooldays, in which the who think realism a matter of Saint is immured in an under- lape-recorder dialogue and four- ground letter expletives.

Coincidence

and

gigged manacled, with (as I recall it)

*

-a couple or so of gorillas, a

the chapter ending with memorable line, "Then Simon This his first major book: Tamplar went mad

The next, naturally enough, ("Madeleine Ferat," before the began with him insouciantly rather pointless re-thing) is sipping martini in the the story of a marriage, demon- Berkeley, and casually inspect haunted by the memory of the Ing the faintest trace of a wife's former lover. It begins bruise on his knuckles. on a quiet, pastoral note (not for nothing is it dedicated to The Saint is timeless Edouard Manet, first of the Im (heroes never age, only pressionist painters, whom readers) and there is a Zola championed) as Madeleine durable quality, easy to un- and Guillaume fall in love, derrate, in Leslie Char- marty, have a daughter Gull Lerie's fluent, frequently laume's best friend had been witty, styl

Then it emerges that

her lover, and appallingly the child seems to be developing some of the other man'a characteristics

Moreover, the lover himself who was thought; to have dieg Bing makahipwreck turns

unexpectedly, ono. Bay

The aime Itala Lass

the

some

stage you

Mirror

Athird excellent new buy First" paper-back

John Osborne's BACK IN ANGER

For Insomniacs: "Kiss Be-

fore Dying," by Ira Levin | (Penguin, 38. 6d.), with the best surprise I have ever met in a thriller. For Balletomaniacs: "Nijinsky," by Romola Nijinsky. "Diaghilev. Bal let" by S. L. Grigoriev (Penguin, 58, each). For Touring Actors: "Camping** (Penguin, бы.).

For American Diplomats: "China, New Age and Outlook".' (Penguin, 8ă. Ed.),

For Spies: "Spycatcher," by Lieut-Colonel; Oreste Pinto (Four Square, 24. 6d.)

For the Old who are Young In Heart: "Blaze of Love," by Denize : Robins

(Hodder. 287 (6d.);

edi. Here Is Jimmy For the vary

the Midlands Hamlet

to Kerstbizton

at the angry young

Please:****Clotilde, Coell Saint Laurent (P

the very

Iris Murdoch

guin, 3 8.)

horse?"

10

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-(London Express Service).