Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 24, 1957)

April 24, 1957 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Page 5 Vieux Carre AH, NEW ORLEANS! Soft water, soft air, soft accents— and loud Dixieland music. Here there is veneration for the old and enthusiasm for the new. The Old City, spoken of as the French Quarter or the Vieux Carre, is filled with stories of an enchanted past and offers matchless dining amid shabby architectural elegance that is cherished by the owners and guaranteed to remain in that state by the law. Beyond the Vieux Carre are superstructures of stone and steel that excite with their modernism. Behind those ancient Franco-Spanish plaster-and-grillwork fronts of the Vieux Carre are surprisingly roomy interiors that hold restaurants in which each morsel is the fruit of centuries of the chef’s art. All have the air = of refinement and leisure that we have been led to believ belonged to an age much more adventurous and with greater romance than the one in which we live. Go With Bib and Tucker Through Brightest New Orleans and you will have much to remember. Herb Allen did. He and his Bertha had lunch in a famed cafe. When he got the bill Herb addressed the waiter. ““What are you trying to do here?” he asked. “Get even for the Louisiana Purchase?” Having dined in a quiet and charming place, the visitor exposes himself to the blare and glare of Bourbon Street, where men are musicians and ladies are strippers. Outside each place a gentleman informs you loudly of the charms for the ear and eye waiting inside and urges that you avail yourself of them. I knew Bourbon Street through a visit in 1952 and found the raucous and rolling rhythms that reach out for your ears as stimulating as before. There was the promise of a good time there when I decided to motor with Jack Fitzgibbons to the annual Variety convention. The promise came true — and for Varieteers from places far and near. Chief Barker Ed Tobolowsky of Dallas told the guests at the Humanitarian Award dinner how much his tent fellows love New Orleans — and that some might even settle there. “A few who disappeared into the French Quarter last night haven’t come back yet,” he explained. Then there were the admiring comments of the ever-amiable and always witty Jim Carreras of the London tent, on the same dais to give England’s greetings. Jim said he loves New Orleans, “especially those quaint tea shops on Bourbon Street, where they serve tea and crumpets all night.” About the convention: it was interesting and enjoyable. Besides those mentioned earlier in this account there were the Dan Krendels and the Nat Taylors. The Taylors, Nat and Yvonne, arrived in New Orleans with a feeling of having been hounded across half the world by a vengeful, relentless sorcerer who kept changing into the disturbances of Nature. They sat in their boat off Hawaii for hours because two miles under it a tidal wave boiled that might or might not engulf it and the Islands. It didn’t. In San Francisco they had just entered the library of their host, Chief Barker Irving Levin, when the books began tumbling off the shelves. The biggest earthquake since the 1906 one that destroyed the city was on. In Dallas the pilot was told from below not to land. At last he did. The hostess urged all passengers to leave everything and get the heck out of the plane fast. A few minutes later they stood in the port building, holding hands and horrified at the distant sight of the evil thing called a twister — the one that tore through the countryside taking life and property with it. They doubled their scotches as they told me about it. It was a good convention; even the Taylors enjoyed it. It was nice to see Nat Golden, George Hoover, Ed Emanuel, John Rowley and the others again. Next year: London. The year after that: Las Vegas again. Then perhaps Toronto. Every Canadian was asked the same question many times: “When are we going to Canada?” ae Observanda Festina WED OSSW J! SOCIAL SIDE of the Variety International convention provided some very interesting moments, a few of them amusing. At one of the luncheons Jimmy Stewart, on the road for Spirit of St. Louis, bowed off with this: “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll see if I can drum up some business for the picture”... At the Award dinner Hugh O’Brian, the Wyatt Earp of the TV screen, got a laugh with his comment about the business of stars putting their feet in the cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood: “One day you might be standing in it and the next day you might be mixing it.” And Father Edward Murphy, author of 14 books, said the Variety workers “deserve a special blessing from Heaven.” For his own he borrowed an Irish one: “May you be in Heaven a half-hour befor the devil knows you’re dead.” Most touching was the address of Dr. Emery Ross, chairman of the Albert Schweitzer Foundation, who received the Humanitarian Award for Schweitzer, a man with “a spirituality that draws.” He told about Schweitzer’s characteristics, one of which was a lifelong regard for the value of money, since he does so much with it. Schweitzer, Dr. Emery said, carries his money in a cloth bag with a drawstring — as he did in his student days. Once, observing that this had caught Dr. Ross’ eye, he said: “Don’t laugh. People like me who need money save much of it that way. When I was a student we often had snacks together. By the time I got my pouch open someone else had always paid the bill.” The African medical missionary and musician sums up his philosophy in three words: ‘“‘Reverence for life.’ That philosophy is also Variety’s, as Ralph Staub’s film, The Heart of Show Business, and one made for the London tent by Warwick, The Heart of Variety, clearly indicated by their review of VCI work for the halt and the lame and the blind. This work, International Heart Chairman Nate Golden revealed, has cost $39 million in 17 years. “Like you, he gives his heart to all in need,” Dr. Ross said of Schweitzer. “He’s a one-man Variety International — not yet affiliated.” THEATRICAL artists need personal managers to help them on their way to the Big Time and there are very few in Canadian Show Business. Lucky for that singing foursome, The Diamonds, that Nat Goodman, one of the town’s top musicians, entered the field. Under his guidance they have arrived at a hit record and an appearance on the Como show ...A book about the adventures of a German in the Canadian West, Canadian Scherzo, has Germany laughing and I hear an English-language edition will be issued in the USA... Jack Chisholm and his three-man Showcase Productions crew — Ernie Kirkpatrick, Bill Dineen and Jim Kennedy — are due out of their hospital beds, where a liver bug put them. They, like many others, picked it up while shooting in the Northern Ontario mining country . . . That long-stemmed Indigo Room lensgirl with the face like Grace Kelly’s is a University of Toronto student. Nothing like a night club to learn about life, I guess .. . Pat McNee, local actor who worked in Les Girls, had to turn down another Hollywood part in MGM’s Until They Sail .. . Hugh McKandy won’t be handling theatre ads for the Globe and Mail any more. He’s now editor of its new house organ, The Inside Story ... Nothing comatose about Como. At RCA’s party for him, at which Len Headley was the busy host, Perry had his hands full of the pencils and books of a couple of hundred signature seekers, all the while answering professional quizzers. That easygoing manner has just got to be a character part after a half-hour of this but he played it through. I asked him about films. Leo McCarey has been after him, he said, but he can’t work out enough time. THE BAND of the Black Watch Regiment of Britain will tour Canada for Variety Village ... NY Times carried a 56page insert about Ontario, apparently paid for by the Province (Continued on Page 8)