Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 21, 1948)

Personalia The Magic of Melody Outside of knowledge itself, I would say that the richest heritage of each succeeding generation is music. For those of us who are not armoured with a fine fatalism when contemplating that eternal perplexity, the riddle of existence, the invisible and universal sedative that is music protects us against the unhappy results of too many unanswered questions. It takes the pain out of the puzzlement. The common effect of long familiar music is to stir the listener to sentimental retrospection. Indeed, my first inclination to write about this came when I listened to a blind man playing a violin on the street one wintry evening. The talent of this public serenader was obvious to the ear as he ‘played, moving along the edge of the sidewalk sideways, a step at a time. The piece he was playing caused me to stop and listen and the music soon transferred me mentally out of the swirling snow and into the sunny clime of California in 1935. Before that year I had long been haunted by this song but never knew its name nor remembered all of it. When I had my first look at Los Angeles, not the movie studios but the gay and robust quarter of its previous owners, the Mexicans, interested me most. Here I noticed that the song which played hide-and-seek with me often reached into the street from different stores. I was also attracted by a certain Spanish phrase which, appeared on quite a few of the shop windows. The very sound of that phrase was music too. I had come to Los Angeles to visit an older brother whom I hadn’t seen since he went there after serving in the Canadian army during the first World War. His most prized semi-tropical possession was a ten-year-old son named David who usually sang as he fashioned his model aeroplanes. One day I heard the boy humming the song that I was to hear years later played by the blind fiddler in accompaniment to the hurrying crowd and the falling snow. I asked him to ‘sing it and he did: Where are you going, lonely little swallow? _ ‘Your wings are weary, you have flown so far. I too am lonely. Would’st that I might follow Your flight to where my friends and loved ones are. It was a Mexican folk song learned at school and the name of it, David explained, was “La Golondrino.” That is, ‘The Swallow.” The swallow is the bird world’s common citizen and loved by Mexicans. “La Golondrino” — say it to yourself. Is it not music? For that was the phrase on the shop windows. _ Many Americans of Mexican descent live closely together in one of the meanest quarters of the brightest and largest city of what was a century ago the land of their fathers. Then it was the centre of the community. In the state which supplanted theirs they are not all its happiest citizens. Seeing them under these conditions, one sometimes felt that they were the descendants of the disimherited, living in crowded exile in their own country. Perhaps that is why they love the swallow so and sing of its envied flight. : * * % There is another song that brings back swallows to me. Once, when I was a small boy living in the ragamuffin realm in which immigrant families first settled when they came to Toronto, I felt ill. Not physically but overpowered by a longing for trees and grass, like those that could be seen on Toronto Island, a mile across the water at the end of our street, where the bay washed the feet of the city. Something like that instead of the hot pavement of the smelly street where I lay, looking upward. My mother’s anxious enquiries I answered with a plea for that green fairyland. She laughed a little sadly and, reassured, left me. No time-for that. As I lay there I saw a flock of swallows flying high in the cloudless sky. The music of a hurdygurdy, released by the wheeling arm of a moustached Italian, came to my ears as I watched the flight of the birds. The song, I learned years later, was “Santa Lucia,” an Italian boat song. And even now, when I hear it, as often as not my Weekly. We shared our cubicle with a New York lady, poetic Canadian FILM WEEKLY ————__*8i'2t 194, More Reading Matter John Rodney, in WB's “Key Largo,” is Raymond John Flynn of Bear River, NS... The staff club of 20th Century Theatres held its annual party at the Fiesta Room of the Prince Geoy e Hotel recently ... Amn article in the Peterborough Examiner telling of peep show movies says that “For five cents, at the expense of a stiff neck, you could see the complete story of the North West Rebellion right down to the sordid hanging of Loujs Riel in the Regina Barracks of the Royal North West Mounted Police.” Those pictures would be valuable historical records to. day ... The New Play Society’s “Spring Thaw,” featuring the best talent hereabouts, gave plenty of room for the talents of Jane Mallett, who is certainly one of America’s top mimes, A]. though Hollywood got quite a ribbing, it would have been a profitable evening for a talent scout ... I’m on my way to Variety's Miami convention, which accounts for the type of reading matter in this issue. mind goes back to a boy stretched out on a burning pavement and swallows moving swiftly against a cloudless sky. Ar * * * Years ago a group of youths, among them myself, used to spend the summer camping on the shore of the Humber, about 12 miles from the western limits of the city. The other tent in our part of the valley was that of two brothers from a nearby village. The older one was learning to play the guitar and the piece he twanged constantly was ‘‘Aloha.” He was a pleasant lad and when he died suddenly of a heart attack we were awed by the visit of Death so near, for we knew little of it at that age. ‘ The next day one of those who frequented the camp placed a wreath of new leaves, gathered in his beloved valley, on one of the flaps of the tent. As I passed along the trail the wind blew the other flap away. There, resting on his cot, was the guitar, now forever stilled of his music. ; And so that song and that scene are one in my recollec ons, %* * = Travelling by bus can be an interesting experience if you are caged in with nice folks. I was returning that way after my visit to Los Angeles. My companion was John Snetsinger, whose Hollywood scribblings were then featured in the Toronto Star and persistent, and a lass from Nashville who insisted that all uncomplimentary comment about the South was libel. po a After a while the porter ushered in a young Englishman aS the fifth member of our menagerie. He introduced himself as Graham Goss — of the London Mirror, I believe. Been doing Hollywood and the States, y’know. _We discovered soon enough that our newest recruit was companionable and slightly musical. He was obsessed with a new British song called “Red Sails in the Sunset” and all he kn of it were the first two lines. Nothing served to bring forth 4 third line or caused him to forget the first two. nfl I think I shall not easily forget the impressive panora that is the United States and its scenic jewels, such as tt Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, the mighty Mississippi an¢ the endless garden of sunflowers that is Kansas. ty Nor shall I forget that four-hour interlude in Kansas City, at which point Graham abandoned us, perhaps forever, and His fond but forlorn farewell — all of us being in various stages 0 fermentation. ; : : I hope if Graham ever reads this he will forgive me. But in my memories of the trip there will always be, in conspicuous © lief, Mr. Goss of London and the first two lines of “Red Sails the Sunset.” And it is my desperate wish that, should we ever meet again after what his part of the world has been through, ee will have within his conquering grasp the rest of that * Ps By now you are idi : t which probably riding the train of though ran through this article. So I will leave you to your own musi¢ally impelled memories,