VERBAL UPPER-CUTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19965, 6 December 1926, Page 10

VERBAL UPPER-CUTS

TUNNEY AND SHAW FILM. ATTITUDE OF THE CHAMPION. LONDON, November 22. A disinclination to risk even verbally uppercutting the world champion is displayed in Mr Bernard Shaw’s unexpectedly mild comment on the refusal of Gene Tunney, world’s heavy-weight boxing champion, to appear in the film of his novel, “Cashel Byron’s Profession,” on the grounds of its silliness and immaturity “Tunny knows best,” said Shaw. “Pie’s right in describing the work as immature, and if he can rewrite and improve the play he had better do so.” Tunney expresses the opinion that Shaw does not understand the temperament and psychology of the professional boxer, with the result that Byron appears in the play as a “blundering vulgarian.” The Star savs that Tunney apparently forgets that Cashel spent his youth as a hanger-on in an Australian boxing saloon and had an hysterical actress-mother. “Within the limits of the period his environment and his parentage,” adds the paper, “Cashel was just as much a gentleman as Tunnoy may be.”