Screen and Stage

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26902, 14 October 1948, Page 2

Screen and Stage

By I AXON

When the new play, “ The Limping Devil,” finally opened in Paris recently, Sacha Guitry leaped to the front pages again. The opening night saw actors spilling off the stage to engage in fisticuffs with a critic who, presumably unable to wait until he could get back to his office, whistled his disapproval in traditional European fashion. The other critics rushed to his defence and after a while the show continued on the usual side of the footlights. Tire next day the critic who whistled was joined by his colleagues in a unanimous array of bad notices. They all thought the play was not a play at all, but a series of tiresome episodes.

Author of 115 plays, 21 films and numerous volumes of memoirs and reflections, this actor-dramatist has been for more than 30 years the number one wit of the boulevard theatre. In 1945, after the liberation, he was accused of having collaborated too closely with German occupation officials and was summarily thrown into prison. Later tried and exonerated, he has since been waging a one-man campaign to restore his name; and the venerable comedian's sharp tongue and genius for taking centre stage are now making a real-life farce out of his enemies’ efforts to wreck his long career.

Sacha, after being thrown out of 11 schools, wrote his first hit at the age of 19, and has been grinding out plays at the rate of two or three a year ever since. Indeed, quantity has been the keyword in both his public and private life. Parisians disagree on the number of his wives; some say five, some say more. However, while tolerating the famous Guitry egotism and casting a sceptical eye on the current accusations of collaboration, the public has never ceased to admire his wit. M. Guitry does not like to talk about other actors or plays by other writers. Indeed, he never goes to any theatre except his own —because he cannot stand being a spectator. As a man born to the theatre, Sacha Guitry is happy in just one place—on stage.

It Is reported that Danny Kaye, who had an extraordinarily successful season in the London Palladium recently, may make a brief vaudeville visit to Australia and New Zealand next year. • • •

The first M.-G.-M. picture to be made at the company’s fine new British studio at Elstree—“ Edward, My Son is keeping up to schedule, with Spencer Tracy and Deborah Kerr in the starring roles and George Cukor directing. The subject is the rise and fall of a ruthless industrialist, who sacrifices his life, and that of everyone around him. for a worthless son. Mr Tracy, in the gaps between shooting, has been wandering around the English countryside with a box-lunch for company. There is a professional reason for this, he says. He wants to come back to England next summer and do a picture about a circus clown, based on Paul Galileo’s “ The Romance of Henry Menafee.” He has already had long talks on the subject with Emmett Kelly, star of Ringling, Barnum and Bailey Circus. The Gallico story had the hero, a college professor become circus clown, meet a tragic end in the London blitz, but Mr Tracy would like to change all that and make a timeless human story of it—something along Chaplin lines, with the immortal clown stumbling away into the eternal distance.

Margaret Lockwood has an “ historical " role in her latest film—she plays Nell Gwynne to Syd Field’s Charles I in the Rank technicolor picture " Cardboard Cavalier.” This will be the first of e new cycle of British comedies.

Charlie Chaplin says he will never play the beloved tramp again. He said, “ I am different now. I could no longer feel like a shabby little man who turned out tears and laughter.”

* • • Madeleine Carroll is appearing on the American stage in “ Good-bye, My Fancy,” a new comedy opening in November.

Robert Cummings will co-star with Greta Garbo in her return. The film actress will receive £50,000 and a percentage. When James Mason asked for similar terms to play opposite Joan Crawford in ’* Flaming Road ” he was turned down.

The news that Douglas Fairbanks, jun., is planning to star in a musical most likely came as a surprise to constant filmgoers. who naturally associate him with “ The Prisoner of Zenda ” and other portrayals similarly loaded with calisthenics. The actor cleared that up, however, by flatly stating that he did not consider himself either a singer or a dancer. At the moment all he and Cole Porter, who will write the score, have is " an amusing idea, with a certain amount of fantasy, which can be told nicely in terms of a musical.” They are keeping the plot secret until it is all worked out lest someone else walk off with it, but Mr Fairbanks elaborated to this extent: "In my role the action will be done almost like a dance, or perhaps I might even say vice versa. The songs will develop from the story, and what their exact number will be we don’t know yet, But,” he added, “ there will not be any elaborate production numbers. This will be a musical done strictly in movie terms, and we believe we have really got something different.” * • • Leslie Henson, one of London’s bestknown comedians, Is the latest entertainer who wishes to visit New Zealand and Australia. Plans for a tour are well advanced. * * * Paul Vincent Carroll, playwrightauthor, and Sir Alexander Korda, as industrious a movie-maker as any, are joining forces for the filming of a Carroll story titled " Saints and Sinners.” It deals with an old Irish woman with the gift of foretelling the future, who correctly predicts, among other things, the winner of the Irish sweepstakes. Leslie Arliss will produce and direct, with a cast featuring the Abbey Theatre Play • * * The fourth of the " Little Women ” has been chosen Margaret O'Brien as the gentle Beth joins June Allyson (Jo), Elizabeth Taylor (Amy) and Janet Leigh (Meg) in M.-G.-M.’s technicolor production of the famous story.