Swing (Feb-Dec 1951)

THE CREAM OF CROSBY 329 us next year, fellows. The fishing is still pretty good. To pass on to other matters, let us discuss the French child whom I found fascinating. We are all aware of television's grip on our own young and it is, I think, instructive to inspect the whelps of another nation where a television set is so mercifully expensive that few French children have ever seen one. It'd be just as well if they never did. The French child, I notice, is a very imaginative child. He is not overladen with toys as our own are (or if he is he doesn't carry them into a public park). Three or four French children with only a stick to draw circles on the ground can invent their own games and play for hours. They don't need the blessings of a Hopalong Cassidy suit, a pair of revolvers, a bicycle or wooden dogs that bark when you pull them. The play, in other words, is provided by the child, not by toys or machines. He is a very active par' ticipant. This applies to his entertainment. In one of the parks on the Champs Elysees you'll find a Punch and Judy show known as Vrai Guignolet. You'll have no trouble finding it because the shrieks from the children will guide you to it. Here, small children from two to five watch the puppets spell out the misadventures of M. Guignol. Most of the children have seen each show ten or twenty times, know the plots by heart, and shout advice, lamentations and encouragement to the hero and the villains. For the children, the show is M. Guignol. For the adults, the show is the children. If you have ever watched a bunch of kids sitting passive as dolls in front of a television set for hours, it is refreshing to see some youngsters enter into the game personally, become a part of it and draw some faint intellectual stimulation from it. Maybe television can give a child the same emotional and intellectual release. But I doubt it. The French Language FRENCH is an eloquent language which must be seen to be fully understood or sometimes even to be comprehended at all. That is why the telephone has always defeated the French. The shrugs, the gestures, the rolling eyes, the expressive hands are missing on the telephone which means the nuances — the essence of the message to be conveyed — are missing, too. Sometimes two Frenchmen can't understand each other on !e telephone. That means that radio is not for the French. The machine talks, yes, but it doesn't really talk. About 30 per cent of the French language cannot be conveyed by a box which simply stands there mo' tionless. The box has no soul. The French, therefore, have simply walked away from radio as we know it and employ it largely as an instrument for the diffusion — which is the French way of saying broadcasting — of music. The three national French networksProgramme Nationale, Programme Parisienne, and Paris-Inter (Only God and the French know what Paris-Inter means) — sound to these untrained American ears pretty much like WNEW and WQXR in New York. You get a mixture of popular and classical music on all three, though Programme Nationale is likely to be a little heavier in density than the other two. Apart from news, you won't hear much talk which is all right with me. Turn a radio on in a French hotel and you'll think you're home again. In comes Mademoiselle Judy Garland singing "I'm Tired of the City" dans cette language barbare, Anglais. American popular music is just as popular here as it is in America. Of course, it's not always sung in English. One of the most exquisite experiences I had in Paris was listening to "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" sung in French. (I'm going to learn how to sing "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" in French if it kills me.) The great thing about "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" sung in French is that the mood of the song is completely transformed. It becomes un chanson Parisien — haunting, delicate and somehow more elegant than the love song Rogers and Hart had in mind when they wrote it. I might add that this applies equally well to American songs sung in English — if sung by the French. A French chanteuse