1961-06-17 — Page 21

WHY THIS UNJUST

WILLIAM STRANG BRITAIN IN WORLD AF-

always an odd

FAIRS. By Lord Strong, Faber/Deutsch, 30s.

ex-

THE CHINA MAIL, ́SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1961.

Roderick Mann

The tough Mr. Widmark is so conventional

AND HIS FAVOURITE DRINK?-MILK

actors, you sec. People Uko Holden, Tracy, and Grant get first look at all the good scripta; the ruff sent me has already been turned down by one of them. So the only thing is to ferrot around on one's own.

"I found one script, which I Iked. The Secret Ways, and

I KEEP hoping for a change in Mr Richard Widmark. But without my in Vienne

"Now I'm going to make uri«'

success. He remains-as thoroughly agreeable fellow.

I first discovered

gome years ago-a

Mr Widmark, of course, is not anxious for this to get around. He has built up an impressive film reputation (and a substantial bank ac- count) as a chilly-eyed menace; a man with an interesting line in laughs ---somewhere between a graveyard giggle and a cretinous chortle.

Good publicity could well ruin him,

'HISS SWEETNESS "

GETS A BREAK

→ June Thorburn, the 29- year-old baby-faced actress They call "Miss Sweetacas- itself," has been trying for years to break away from' her usual girl next dose " films roles. Al last, 11 seems, she has surrooded. She appears with lebard Todd in a new romanije comedy, Don't Bother to Knocki The film han Bim gala premiere in London on June 1.

ATTACK

ON EDEN?

It all started, of course, when he pitched an old lady in a wheelchair down some steps in an early film. Since then it has been widely accepted that, he is meanfo.

a

Says his biography: "With his gangster's alouch, his machine-gun dietion, and his stiletto grin, the only place he really looks at home is in an electric chair.”.

A alight exaggeration, 1 fear. In truth, Mr Widmark la a. quiet, cultivated actor with a piquant sense of humour. And his favourite drink-dare I say 117 is milk.

L

"Rummars were buzzing next wrote: day. Then a columnist

Saw the Widmarka acting cosy the at Chasen's Restaurant other night so there can't be anything in the rumours. You

other

Independent. one overT here The Tigers Roar, 'It's about U.S. atom-bomber bases

in Britain

"It's not difficult to raise the

There'll be airplanes in it, you seo something TV doesn't have. So the backcers get tris terested. They don't care that I may also have something in- teresting to say in the fan; all they care about is the fact that we'll have airplanes,"

money for a picture like that.

We got up to go, and I'walk- ed with him out to his car.

"Mind you" he spick " not all that good a judge of scripts. Or people.

"Nine years ago I made a im with Marilyn Monroe. She used to sashay into the com- may at 20th Century Fox where we were having lunch and we all used to which that

Mr Widmark is also a better sec, I can't even date my own walk of hero.

daughter.

actor than one might suppose.

"Although I got A lot of Ella Kazan, who once directed him, calls him vastly under- scripts sent me," Wichmark con- rated." And Trover Howard, Unued, "most of them are junk, the second echelon of no slouch himself at the acting I'm in game. rates him "mally splendid."

"And I'm on record as saying: That broad will never get ani- where. She's much too obvious.

London Express Service.

In demand TAKE-OVER BID FOR

Only in one respect does Mr Widmark qualify as unconven- tional. He has been married to the same womans for 20 years. It is a souren of continued amazement to his friends that he has not long ago boon arraigned

un-Hollywood

activities.

As Mr Widmark is in London

at the moment I arranged to

Junch with him. And found him

in remarkably good humour.

"Since I made The Alamo,"

THE GOON

WITH A VIEW

by Tom Hutchinson

SPIKE MILLIGAN, the brilliant rebel writer of "The Goon Show," whose controversial tem-

he said, "I am in great demand perament frightened the BBC, is reluctant to

ngain. Not because

Was a

good film; simply because it was a box-omce success. That's the only criterion these days.

"Look at the im St Joan,

take a chance-on stardom.

His performance in his new film "Invasion Quartet" so pleased MGM's British bosses that

In which I played the Dauphin they gave him star billing-and a comedy of his

It was

a disaster. When the reviews came out I was scared to leave the house for almost two weeks.

"I had top billing, you 500, so I got blamed for the plcture. pretensions, it is hard to

They always blame the actor: peet that it would consent to majority shall preval, That never the man who made the future will was clearly and vigorously Alm. That Wildmark, they expressl throughout those said, 'can't draw flies into the momentous days in 1058, It was box-office,"

favour of action against

man out at the Foreign Office. Long before BC tion was taken to demo- cratise that institution, he was one of the first the economic and social life of red- Great Britain to be taken by non-public school,

a majority of continental. re- against the

brick university men to make his way rapidly on sheer merit.

emit a whole range of decisions Intimately affecting

presentatives

British vote."

The House of Commons

own to star in.

Yet Milligan is proving to be could buy anyone they liked. the most unwilling star tho The Americans are taking us studios have known,

over, without our knowing it," Every night as he poses Milligan told me, through the MGM studio gates I feel the reluctant star does he pleads with the porter to himself an injustice. MOM unlock imaginary handcuffs on may be as cynical about choos- his wrists,

ing star material as Müllgan Ho talked to me about the take a chance on anybody,

says they are--but they don't "MGM elavo colony" And

Quartet "I tell you, after St Joan [described "Invasion came out I wasn't worth ave las "marvellous stuff for Had Eden wished to stand in bucks. I couldn't give myself children's matinee, the way he would not have away.

hits party, he would have ended his

in Egypt.

is split unly career.

Eventually he became Per- indeed a jealous body, and manent Hend of the Foreign rightly, But of nothing is it Office, retiring in 1953, having more jealous than of the prin- the will of the been kept on beyond the normal ciple that retiring age of 60 at the express request of Sir Anthony Eden.

It is therefore all the more remarkable that at the end of this survey of Britain's role in world affairs from Henry VIII to the present day, Lord Strang should make an astonishing and completely unfounded aftack upen Eden over the Suez crisis.

'PARTY CRISIS'

Strang asserts: "It is a legill- mate surmise that In deelding to embark on the operation, as inter

the events unfolded,

Prime

Minister may in some nieasure

own

Dorek Marks

PORTRAIT OF A LEADING LADY

MRS PATRICK CAMPBELL. ship

By Alan Dent. Museum Press, 30s,

AS

сп

23

the roscuers," Alexander Woollenti sald,

Some of the feels about her life remain tantalisingly obscure in Mr Dent's book:

Big hit

Q

And, as though to rupture still more his chances of star- dom, be said about the comedy which he "Postman's Knock"

is currently making "Till turn out to be the serious version of that comedy Jacques Tati made about a postman.

"The only good things was that it wasn't widely shown in America. But not long ago my 15-year-old daughter Ana sak: 'Dad'— you're In trouble. They're showing St Joan on to act ice one, who has TV. And sure enough they ram extravagant as they are.

money to promote his actions, It about twice a week from then

cp.

I

"So when I was offered. The Altimo I decided to take ik knew it was bound to be a commercial success.

"I'm not a star," he says, “A star is a man who can afford

the

OVERDRAFT

"How can I be a star? I take a tube to the bus home. I don't behave like a star; I'm concerned about causes and people.

"John Wayne went to great lengths to ensure its box-offics appeal; he even found out who was the top record-seller of the moment-Frankie Avalon and

"I have an overdraft of £237 that cast him in the ploture for the S the first of the shadowy childhood, for instance,

at the bank and three kids to teenage market. And it came

support. the Micawberish father, of. The film was a big hit.

Kids whom I love have been swayed by the needSecond Mrs Tan- with

dearly the Italian mother, and the my- to avoid what might have been

Acting is a meal ticket the first serious Uncle who helped to querays and

Ever since than I've been for me. Something to

I made Bew Western | money. Eliza Doolittle (at the bring her up and keep her out busy.

with James Stewart called Two age of 491) Stella Pat- of debt.

Rode Together, directed by John Ford.

a serious party crials,"

In other words, the charge is

that Eden jeopardised his coun-

try to avert a party spitt. rick Campbell muy claim This is a grotesque distortion a small niche in thea-

of the true situation, as is known trical history.

to anyone who was able to be in

the Chamber of the House of - Commona In the key debates in

November 1968.

Leaving asids whether the Action Suez was right or wrong the plain fact is that it was supported by the vast majority of Tory MPs.

"ASTONISHING

In the koy division on the night of November 8, 1955, when the Socialists moved a consure motion, procisely six Torics fall- ed to support Eden.

This aberration on the part of

Strang

the moro Lord astonishing since elsewhere in the book ho shown himself peculiarly alive to Westminster feelings. Writing of the idea of Britain joining the European Free Tråds area ho gaya!"

Yet it is for her life rather than for her art that Mrs Pat is remembered, if at all, today. As an actress her heyday was over, Mr Dent suggests, by 1901. Sho never took the theatre really seriously.

1

Lacking in dedication or slamino, she wok an amateur to the end. "This gorgeous head- long creature"--as her new blo- grapher adoringly calls her would wreck, a performance for the sake of practical joke, or destroy a play's run out ef piquo or boredom. She wanted her talents and aquandered chances.

Her voico

her

Her marriage

make

For Milligan explained that ho needs the money that stardom could bring in order to

"Nobody will pay me to write

"I don't know what sort of a write again. picture it'll turn out to be. For Her strange Arst marriage to Mr Patrick Campbell, who went usually gets bored with a plc- these days. I'm too prickly for off to Australia to mako his

ture before the end and takes them. Beneath my zaninesi I'm fortune and never returned, a

off. And as he mukes a film în | too sincere," made rather more perplexing by

such a complicated way that nu- At the BBC when "The body else can put it together. Goon Mr Deni's Indifference to dates.

Show" blossomed into this can create problems

eccentric flower, Milligan, its And he blankets in tactful

"Now I've just finished a part with a Vlow. The

icteater, was known to The Goon silence the details of Mr Pat's

view was with Spencer Tracy in Judo- always Left wing, sccond and apparently unhappy marriage to George Cornwallis-ment at Nuremberg. West which happened a few hours after the bridegroom was divorced by his first wife (who happened to be the mother of Sir Winston Churchili).

Nor does Mr Dent do much more than report those contem- porary rumours which credited hor with taking to her bed Forbes-Robertson and indeed all her lending man, though he die aniESCE the notion that QDS. was over her lover,

Mrs. Pat had `n voloe which・ What this new blography does could throb like "the first siring provide fa a speaids of farcinate of a double-base,” and she used, ing now evidence exiled from a It to vent a cruelly malicious host of solingeses "and" deftly wil without mercy on Wolf--, tootes by Mr Dant into his por« When one thinks how jealous Interest. Often she directed 11 traie, of Mrs Pat, 555 the House of Commons la of ita-ngutust the people whose belp powers, ita privileges and its she needed most, "like a sinking

Richard Findlater

Just junk

Tracy asked me if l'a mind

Milligan said: "The BBC is the hostel for penaloned - off ideas. The Goon Show ball- hour ran for 10 minuten of ite That was so that "While we were making itocording

the BUC could de-sex the representing him at the Oscar ad-libs by 10 minutes," awards in Hollywood. I was going anyway-my daughter Ann wanted to zoO. Tracy had been nominated as Dest Actor, He didn't want to go himself, but just in case he won he wanted someone thera to pick up the wward.

Widmark grinned.

st and

TAKE-OVER

The BBC tried to live with its tame, genlus. ·IL found it couldn't.

Which is where seiing came !

"My going to the Award Wřibli MUM looked down at the Ann œrsated quite a lot goesto, pile of talept and me. BART- Nobody knew who she wail said" pin's face" "shining" up "at" that su shoá à, pretty girl ́everyone ("They saidi "We'll have him? uspored her to be a girl friend. They could have anyone amor

—London Express Service).

Inexpensive