Screen and Stage

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26776, 20 May 1948, Page 2

Screen and Stage

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Audiences in Tokio recently heard a performance of Rossini's “ Barber of Seville ’’ sung in four languages. The Pacific Stars.and Stripes explains it this way: “It was translated into Japanese for the people. At least two arias—- ' Largo al factotum ’ and ‘ Una voce poco fa ' —were sung in the original Italian. For her lesson scene Rosina chose Schubert’s ‘ Heidenroeslein,’ which she sang in German. And on the night the Americans saw the show, the Japanees singers, as they often do when, playing to Americans, threw in an occasional English phrase here there.” Last January Alfred Newman, head of the Twentieth Century-Fox music department, went to work on the score for " The Iron Curtain,” the studios’s treatment of the Canadian investigation of Russian espionage in 1946. In order to capture the spirit of Soviet Russia in music as thoroughly as possible, Newman decided to base the score on the works of Shostakovich, ProkofiefT, Miaskowsky and Khatchaturian. Although the works of these contemporary Russians are in the public domain in the United States, Fox began negotiation with the Leeds Music Company and its subsidiary AM RUSS for the right to use the Leeds editions of the four composers. A deal was eventually concluded for 10,000 dollars, a moderate price since, for example, the studio recently paid 750 dollars for the use of eight bars from “Alabainy 'Bound ” in a film. In the meantime, however, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party also took an interest in the four composers, who, along with three of their colleagues, were denounced because their works smell strongly of the spirit erf current modernistic bourgeois music of Europe and America. They were accused of formalistic distortions and anti-demo-cratic tendencies alien to the Soviet people and their artistic tastes. Despite the Central Committee’s opinion, however, the studio has started recording the score for “ The Iron Curtain ” this week. Whether any of the 10,000 dollars will ever find its way to the composers is a matter for conjecture.

Sidney Box has dropped one of the short stories, “ The Sanatorium,” from his Somerset Maugham omnibus, reducing the original title of “ Quintette ” to “ Quartette.”

Stewart Granger is to appear with the French star, Edwige Feuillere, in a comedy called “ Woman Hater,” about a misogynist who poses as his own estate agent to avoid the proposals of the ladies. And all the players in the film, states a publicity release, “ are happily married." That should make everything fine. * * ' * Hollywood’s annual feat of selfacknowledgment, the Academy award ceremonies, went off smoothly at the Shi'ine Auditorium and cleared a handsome profit for the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, estimated by some sources at as much as 30,000 dollars. The sole threat to the gentility of the proceedings, the arrival of a man dressed in a gorilla skin, was dissolved by the quick thinking of a factotum of the Producers' Association, who explained that only the working press were permitted to but evening dress. “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein ” has started production at Universal. despite three broken ribs being nursed by Bud Abbott. He suffered the fractured bones in a fall from a horse at Phoenix while on vacation. Irving Berlin will make his first screen appearance since " This Is the Army,” and one of the few during his life, when he joins Judy Garland and Fred Astaire in the final sequence of M.G.M.'s “ Easter Parade.” Berlin wrote the score, including eight new songs, for the Technicolor musical.

In 1946 Lili Kraus, talented Hungarian pianist, arrived in New Zealand intending to stay only eight weeks. But so much did she like the country and its people that she remained for more than a year, giving recitals in the cities and small towns alike. Writing to a friend in New Zealand, her husband stated that two days after their arrival in London they left for Holland, where Lili Kraus had a most successful tour. After her first recital in The Hague, she was immediately re-engaged for 12 more performances in October—three of them being with the leading orchestras. “We returned to London,” adds Dr Mandl, " on April 23, and already Lili has four engagements with the 8.8. C., and on a date yet to be fixed she will give a television broadcast. Also, she has already commenced making records, and has a very full programme ahead of her.”

From George Bernard Shaw, the American Theatre Guild heard recently: “My plays are now classics open to all managements, like Shakespeare’s except for the royalties. First come, first served.”

Just what is being said when a character in a film or a play rattles off a line or two in a foreign tongue is a problem which has always baffled linguistically weak theatre-goers. One critic, imbued with a strong sense of duty, took it upon himself to discover for his readers the meaning of a Chinese passage from n current Broadway offering, " Strange Bedfellows.” The actor concerned, Tom Chung Yun, volunteered the information that a petulant telephone conversation was addressed to the author thus: “When I joined this play you said it was a story of 1893, now it’s 1896. Which is it? Oh, it is 1896. That’s what I 'thought.” When at the end he tries to keep out the fancy lady from the Barbary Coast he was saying, ” She show is almost over, get ready to applaud and don’t forget your goloshes.”

Despite the talk of economy and ruthless firings of little people, big names are still getting big money in Hollywood. Bing Crosby’s new contract makes him the highest-paid actor ever. He will make 18 pictures for Paramount in the next 10 years and will receive bonuses and a percentage of the gross as well as/ a salary around a quarter of a million dollars per picture.