INNOCENTS ABROAD

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1938, Page 23

INNOCENTS ABROAD

A HILLBILLY QUERY. HER LAST STAKE LOST. AVIATRIX DIES IN CRASH.

(By CHARLES ESTCOURT.)

NEW YORK. Judy Canova. the Jacksonville, Florida, girl, whose hillbilly songs have registered, in the movies, on Broadway and over the air, has just returned from her first trip abroad. With sister Anne and brother Zeke, she went first to London, and got very fidgety over all the gas mask and war talk. So lo Paris, where she didn't get fidgety at all. '"They could talk gas - masks and war ail the time in Paris and it wouldn't bother me a bit. I can't understand a word of French." In London, she met the King of Denmark. '"He's not," she said, "what you would call a big King, but he's an awful nice fellow." And there, too, she learned something about the hillbilly songs from which she makes her living. Just Old English Ballads. "You know what they told me," she said. "They told me, 'Why, those aren't hillbilly songs at all. Those are old English ballads.' I got 'em in North Carolina." The only hillbilly songs the British would concede as genuine hillbilly were those manufactured specially for Miss Canova on Broadway. "Crazy, isn't it. but the craziest thing is what happened to my brother Zeke. He went down to Caledonia market and bought himself a big collection of antique crockery shoes. Silly little things." "Like that?" asked someone, pointing to a finger watch she wore on her little finger. "Well," she said belligerently, "this watch may look crazy, but it keeps time. I'd like to see Zeke walking around in [ his crockery shoes." ! Grief for Aviator*. It was at the aviation country club in Hicksville, L.1., a cozy little place where Long Island's flying millionaires park their 'planes* and wait for clear weather, that the news of the death of Baroness Eva von Blixen Finecke in a motor crash icear Bagdad, Iraq, fell with most crushing force in this country. That's where she spent most of two months waiting for the humiliating day when Kurt Bjorkvall, who was supposed to be her co-pilot on a transatlantic flight, should refuse to take her along with him. She was a tall, blonde, hazel-eyed, clear-skinned girl (only 29 when she died) with a soft voice and a warm, rolling laugh. She made friends quickly. Her only trouble was that everything eventually bored her. She competed in Europe's most dangerous cross-country auto races, and raced over ice with special nail-studded tyres. She hunted big game in Africa and stunted in 'p lanes. I remember her telling me, "Gambling for stakes you cannot afford to lose is all that makes life pleasant." The only stake she really could not afford to lose was her life. Now there can be no more gambling an< : '.ier restless search for the means to the end of boredom is over. (N'.A.N.A.)