1960-07-23 — Page 21

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THE CHINA MAJI SATURDAY JULY 28, 1960

Roderick Mann

Why Magnani and Brando went a-feuding

PAT BLAIR, the pretty girl pictured here, originally wanted to be a Journalist. But newspapers lost out to films when the hand of Hollywood beckoned. She will soon be seen in The Gazebo, with Glenn Ford.

O

P

I took Marlon Brando a long,

long time to agree

opposite Anna Magnank in

Tennessee Williams's

Fugitive Kind,

appear

film The

I am

And, now that he has, prepared to bet that they will never act together again.

The film opens in London in a few weeks' time, and among the advance publicity, I discover this choice item:

"Magnant and Brando brought out the best in each other. They formed what in, by all odds, the most unexpected mutual admiration society of the year."

Now this, I may tell you, is the bunk. They hated each other.

BRANDO says: "I wouldn't set with her again unless I had a rock in my hand,"

MAGNANI says: "Brando is a sadistic egocentric."

I'm the greatest"

How did this intriguing feud blow up? 'I suggest four possible reasons:——-

BECAUSE Brando's part was made big- ger than Magnani's during the shooting of the Alm..

BECAUSE, he got all the best close-ups. BECAUSE he got billing over Magnani, BECAUSE Magnani feels Brando was better photographed than she.

Says Tennessee Williams; "Magnani arrived in America saying simply that she was the "greatest acterss in Europe and that she was looking forward to meeting the greatest actor in Amerios,”

(There is no false modesty about the mer- curial Miss Magnant. When last in Hollywood she slipped a notice under the door of the next apartraent saying: "Please don't use the bath room in the morning. You are disturbing the world's greatest actress.")

A NEW NOVEL PROBES AN AGE-OLD MYSTERY

WHAT MAKES A MAN

CALABRIA, the scene of a remarkable new

Inovel, is that bit of Italy at the bottom of the map. Shaped like the bottom of an old-fashioned, worn-out boot. And in many other ways the bottom too.

A SAINT?

BOOKS

For poverty, ignorance, and superstition, it runs a close second to nearby Sicily. Calabrians rely on the sign of the evil eye as automatically and religiously as they rely on the Masses in the village by Dee Wells

churches.

But

he had fathered on

When rumours poured from two brutishly backward Calabrian illegitimate son, He had de hill towns that a saint had lately seried his mistress when the lived there, it was enough to was pregnant and had never make Vatican officials sit up and had dive basic stacei.or take notice.

By the time the Vatican did sit up the rumours had already become a cult. A cult that, in

own money on modern tree- sprayers to increase the yield of the orange.crop; who refuses to turn out the non-celibate Father Anselmo because he is an old man'with no place else to go.

And who says: "The Church - in Italy is in drastic need of reform we have too many It there is such a thing as a medals and "not" enough" medi Catholic Novel, then around this cine, too many churches and framework Australian writer not enough schools. ..I be Morris. West has built a very lieve that it's better to pro good one indeed.

claim a new deal in social THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE courage to return and give (Heinemann, 168.) probes much the Blessed Virgin.

justice than a new attribute of his son a name,

deeper than just whether a good man in a backward village TOO POWERFUL

There's Anne de Sanetis, who to block Monsignor

Could this man bè a salni? Some said no.. Others said

60 hervous

was a saint or not, and asks many disturbing questions.

Is it enough to save people's

the Hittle town of Gemelle possibly. And others said noth- Maggiore, was proving profitable. ing, their silence For the rumours of a martyred and furtive that it was more as souls for the life to come? Or is saint brought tourists. And the If they were hiding something shouldn't their minds and bodies Meredith's investigations because tourists brought money.

Money for souvenirs. Or for Giacomo Neroue.

about themselves than about be better nourished in this, the she doesn't want it known that

the village wine shop where'

One of those who kept silent second-hand. stories. of the saint's miracles were gobbled was the local contessa, Anne de

like canapes with the raw, local

grappa,

SO DIFFERENT

Sanctis, a young widow who

life that is?

she once tried to seduce the. alleged saint-and failed

Aldo Meyer, the doctor, whose silence is founded on guilt too. Guilt because be sided with the Communist partisans who,

to tolerate any com

their authority,

ANNA ADMITS HE'S A GREAT ACTOR... BUT THE METHOD!

IT SIMPLY MAKES ME LAUGH".

"I'll tell you this. What I've!

Continues Williams "When and Brando agreed to co-star, she and Brando rehearsed a was delighted. I suppose scene, Brando would mumble should have known, and Magnan who doesn't speak English too well couldn't seen of The Method makes me understand what he was saying. So she mumbled even more laugh. All that scratching and turn out mumbling. You can engineers by a method, perhaps but how the devil can you turn out actors? Tell me that, eh, tell me that."

The result according to New York columnist Walter Winchell is that "the Magnanie Brando mumbling in The Fugitive Kind sounds almost as intelligible as Sanskrit,"

After seeing the Alm Miss Magnani ripped off a few choice oaths (at her best she could turn a Billingsgate porter brown et the edges) and retired to Rome, where she is now, simmering.

Now

the

'All I need'

She laughed aloud, sitting there on the couch of her cara- van dressing-room

"I shouldn't talk. Though I feel strongly about it. Too much Magnani is not woman to take things lying of the so-called acting today is a joke. They turn out actresses down.

of the way they turn out cana

out peas. But they don't turn Magnanis, do they?

..

Admirers of the lady will re- member how when she caught her husband, director Goffredo Allessandrini, with another woman-stie rammed her car into his. And that, when Ros sellini left her for Bergman, she rained crockery upon his balding head.

But over the Brando feud she is being strangely' quiet, bl

To her close friends she has

"I don't need a method. All I need is love. And there las so little love in the world today. Now even the Oilvien have split. It makes me want to weep. For life without love is unbearable.".

Hours later, when I was back Bi my hotel, I remembered

muttered such endearmenta - Where I lied heard that phrase "I'd like to kill the goddam SOR-of-c-..." But coming:

volcanie Magnaal this is kid's stuff.

before. Said in the same way,

Brando said it to me, back in M Paris, when we last met,

from

Explains a friend: "Magnani

"Life without love unbearable..."

Perhaps they are two of a Brando,

is a great star. She does not kind, Magnani and raind being called temperamen- Both seeking love. Both not tal, but she could not bear to be knowing how to look for it. Or called jealous. And she is where. afraid that,

sheallacks. And both; understandably, Brando, people will say that is hating those equally bat what she is,"

Differences

I talked to Miss Magnaniat. length the other night in Rome, where she is making a new film Joyous Laughter.

She said: "Marion Brando is A great actor. That is all I will that was to be expected." Bay. We had differences, but

when

She looked at me for a moment, as though daring me to say something, and then mut tered: "You must understand-I am, not temperamental; I just 1 And get goddam mad someone going behind my back.

"I can

can stand anything, but that, I trist people. And when they let me down I get mad. But temperamental--- 110, I am not that. Just pro- fessional.

MARKED CARDS - ved idly in dissatisfied luxury Is the Church too sophisti

"I had looked forward to in a villa at the edge of Gemello caled, and too intolerant for

working with Brando. Ten- Minore.

many of its people? Too much unable

nessee Williams had written the Another was the local doctor, concerned with discipline-and petition to Aldo Meyer, a Jewish refugee not enough Concerned with decided that Giacomo Nerone play The Rose Tattoo for me, was too powerful and must be you know, and he wented who had devoted his life to the humanity and love?

And.....

executed.

Brando to star in it on Broad- ordinary enough The same as people of the valley. A sacrifice a hundred provincial legends that had brought him no To be a saint, must a man And Nina Sandur, who way with me.. But Brando was before it. A mixture of gossip reward. As a non-Catholic he have lived a full-time salatly knows that a miracle restored tied up, or so he said.

Tennessee and embroidered truths that was despised, and his medical life" Or can a saint be a man her illegitimate. blind son's eye-⠀⠀ "Then

The growing legend was

snowballed larger with each telling.

The man, Giacomo, Nerone, had been sent by God. A stranger, he came to the village, built himself a little hermitage and gave himself over to prayer and good works

knowledge distrusted.

Another was the village priest, old Father Anselmo, A man who had long since negated the vow of celibacy by living with Boca Benz,

DOUBLE CHECK He died at the hands of the Communists, and since then And another was Nina miracle after miracle had taken Sanduzzi, the simple peasant place at his tomo. The sick woman who had been the cured. The sinful made inistress of the man who had genuinely repentant, Alt due to been or had not been a saint.

one ment This saint, To untangle the truth to pry But had he really been a the secrets from the abent, to saint, this Glacomo Neronet check and double check the Had he really done the validity of the wild rumours pt miracles the vilage hinted at, miracle and martyrdom comes

Across the valley bwin

large, Gemelo

story was very differ

what

some cal

dial. A cold dosie

priest.

wrote who has lapsed from faith, com-sight; a miracle she has never Orpheus Descending, and again mitted many sins yet finds spoken of simply because he wanted me and Brando. But again faith in his God through Giacomo Nerane asked her not Brando was still busy. love for his fellow men?ata, nuo ATARA

"S6," when Tennessee Williams Descending

Mr Westa literary cards are Is Giacomo Nerone proved a turned Orpheus. "marked. He is a Catholle him- Saint? A

self. Now 46, married, and a Mr West doesn't go . that far. father, he is an ardent enough In fact, he goes backwards. Catholic to have spent 10 years Backwards to minimise evidence esa teaching brother in a that would be necessary for monastery. That he crashingly official beatification. To show affirms Falth to be a Good how scant a chance of sainthood Thing is no surprise Giacomo Nerone wou

Yet his book is not one to be with the Vatican aist tossed lightly on the bonfire by But Mr West also force anti-Catholics or neutral- non-oficial step non-believers. Nor is it one that day there has been! will be music to the ears of unrecognised, und staunchly orthodox Catholics.

who har led

DRASTIC NEED Monsignor

Coming #jar-f75does you, the Blake, heels of his Children of the Ban

which contained some very,

about the Eki

into the Alm The Fugitive Kind

TARGET

LLOW MENS

·words of

four letters

-London Euples Service),

Пчіл

can cure you in two or three, more, vžilts

mind you, that's only a rough ́est

"Four years of college and he can't even

Gibso

untie his diploma ribbon!"

"You'll have to hold him during the exam, Prod

we couldn't get a gitter,”

BANGKOK

BY

The Vanica of the Earl,

SWISSAIR

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