Horror Specialists

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28896, 16 May 1959, Page 10

Horror Specialists

[From the London Correspondent of “The Press”] LONDON, May 5. Two specialists in horror and ghoulishness have arrived in Britain from the United States. Boris Karloff, now 71, who in the thirties brought horror to the cinema, “came home” after 50 years in America. He said he would have no more to do with horror films in spite of the resurgence of the genre. He and his wife have a flat in Cadogan square. The other arrival, only a visitor, is the former Harvard mathematics professor, Tom Lehrer, specialist in writing and singing macabre lyrics such as:

One morning in a fit of pique, She drowned her father in the creek, The water tasted bad ail week And we had to make do with gin.

Mr Lehrer, whose grisly ballads became something of a cult in many parts of the world after he recorded a few of them privately for his friends, is in Britain for four concerts and television appearances.

“Net one television station that I know would let me sing this song. I admire your courage, sir,” he told a 8.8. C. announcer after he had sung one of his lyrics in a television programme. “I was fed up with the sentimentality of popular sdngs and ballads,” he said. “I think people are essentially depraved underneath—l merely have to fight off the ghoulish. My reservations about my songs are assuaged by the money they bring.” Mr Lehrer has left work at

Harvard and the Atomic Energy Authority at Los Alamos behind him and now lives on his night club acts and records, singing such songs as “The Old Dope Fiddler” ad “Poll Tax, How I Love Yah.” More than a quarter of a million copies of his record have been sold in the United States and it has had big sales in Britain without any publicity. Mr Lehrer is 31, six foot, has short, crinkly hair and a cheerful smile which engaged interviewers at a press conference in London. “I have a new song for my concerts in London,” he said. ‘‘lt is called ‘Poisoning the Pigeons in the- Park.’ That can’t offend anyone. Well, I mean, there is no religion here about pigeons, is there?”