THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21019, 7 May 1930, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND.

By Wayfarer. “ Anything but history, for history must bo false,” Walpolo once declared, and history is living up to its reputation to-day. Admiral Byrd has made history —that the most rabid Anglophile admits, but what part will Dunedin play in the history of his Antarctic trapesings? Let an American paper supply the answer:— Two-score lusty, hungry-eyed men knew . . what it is like to see the brown earth and green-growing things after 15 months amid ice, snow, rocks, and the winds of the end of the world. They were the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, heroes by radio and the .world press to all civilisation. . . . This reads like a book —a book by Russell Owen, one might suggest, or an extract from the Iliad—but then comes bathos and insult :• — The only two hotels in that portion of civilisation to which they returned— Dlincdin, N.Z. —were both full. A convention of wool dealers was in the city. By the waters of Leith may we well sit down and weep! If thk is putting Dun edin on the map, then Dunedin had best remain anonymous and unidentified Forty-six pubs wave their licenses in protest, and a score of private hotels go we' in sympathy. What availeth he flaunting banner which proclaimetb “ Admiral Byrd’s style cramped by the world! ” if this is the result of all the spouting of the southern whales? This is a Chamber of Commerce matter. To Mayor Jimmie Walker coulu the reply to this report be sent; “Dunedin has some 50 grog-dispensing pubs—can New York claim even one?”

We left these 40 lusty, hungry-eyed, snow-bitten seamen searching for shakedowns in the Dunedin suburbs. Let us return and find what next they did: — To wide-eyed housewives they rehearsed the first tales of their long privation, which their U.S. friends and relatives will hear ’in June, when they land in Mdnhattan. . . . This is better, but what will the housewives say ? For them is assigned, in the great American romance, the role of popeyed, open-mouthed, big-eared auditors—to listen like a three-years child while the mariners have their spill. In history, then, “Dunedin, N.Z.,” will have her place—the place which One Tree Point has. achieved in the Southland saga. Unlike the West. Coast towns famous because they can produce 32 public-houses to every member of the populace, “ Dunedin, N.Z.,” will be renowned for her two hotels to 80,000 thirsty Scots. A few short months ago, when the educated members of the community who form the congregations at the cathedrals of the motion picture in our city first heard Mr Jolson in his tear-provoking ballads, and first found their favourite “ stars ” becoming surprisingly vocal and nasal, they were inclined to think .that the dramatic art had touched its highest peak; that the golden age which Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Ben Travers, and Edgar Wallace envisioned, had at last arrived (an impression, be it said, not dispelled by a journey through the Golden Gates of the kinema box office). “All singing, all talking, all dancing ” is a great achievement of which the Hollywood hucksters were not unjustly proud, but their ingenuity did not stoj) at the talkies: U.S. Patent No. 1,749,187, was issued in Washington to John H. Leaveall, of Los Angeles, on a device to provide kinematic smells appropriate to images thrown on the screen and noises issuing therefrom. This advance should settle once and for all the dispute talkie v. the stage. Soon if the sea air at Anderson’s Bay becomes too sharp for our olfactory enjoyment, if a change from the aromatic' pungency of street excavations down Caversham way is desired, or the malty odour from the castle in Rattray street fails to please, we can easily obtain • variety “ Let’s go to the smellies,” will shortly be our national anathema. Talk of the talkies brings the mind to that aesthetic plane where the nobler things may bo discussed: Dear Wayfarer,—ln a note last week you stated that with the coming of the talking film the old appellation could no longer be applied to the stage artist, “ Mummer ” being no longer the word. That is indeed the case—as a film addict I can assure you thrft “Momma" often abbreviated to “ Mom,’’ is the equivalent. Film Fun. A new art, as our correspondent implies, naturally demands a new form of expression. ■ In no branch of the kinematic industry has more resource been displayed than in «the adoption of an Esperantic form of dialogue which may be said to bo equally intelligible to the New Zealander and the Eskimo. The old stage formula for discouraging the villain' ; who is making unwelcome advances to the j heroine went something like this:— I Hero: Hold! Cease! Unhand yon fair lady, varlet! • ~ Villain: Ha! We are discovered! Whence this intrusion, uncouth son of unnatural parents? Hero: Egad, sirrah, thou shalt but little longer defile the beauty of 6ur noble England. En garde!. Villain: Have at you, sir. (They draw their swords and fight). For the talkies a newer and simpler scene, but' not lacking in gallantry, has ■ been devised: — Hero: Sa-ay—waida minit! Villain: Yaih? Hero: Yeah! Villain: Sais you? Hero; Ses me! (They reach for their gats and the heroine, from the rear, plugs the villain through and through.) “ To let —Hairdressing Tobacconist ; all fittings.”- Including talkie apparatus, no doubt. “Ran into baby car—unusual accident —man badly injured.” These road hogs! remarks a' correspondent. There has been talk of late of a scheme for extracting nitrates from the air, round on the West Coast. It has a Doubtful Sound. Numbers of people are born with arms of unequal length, a newspaper article states. And many Dunedinites have blamed the cable cars. And something like 10 per cent, of the population, the paragraph continues, has odd legs. In the event of a change in feminine fashions this will not be so apparent. A Chinese cook beheaded seven offrhis fellow-employees at a leading Shanghai hotel and eloped with a household slave girl. “ One crowded hour of glorious life. . . .” Admiral Byrd believes that in all fundamental things the people of New Zealand and the people of his country are close in kinship. Or does ho moan kinemaship? M. Pcltcrie states that the construction of a giant rocket to take visitors to the moon is merely a question of patient experience. The real problem is finance, and who, he asks, will finance the journey to the moon? Has M. Pelterio never scon that magical announcement, “By kind permission of the Minister of Internal Affairs”?