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® ViRY, Rea A Hh] tc 13 i > J : Ld » « i RS > 58 "than he lected his music with care. | Enterprise Pays "By Richard Hil Wilkinson < Paul Sparrow's vaudeville dct was " 'not "especially good, nor. was: it es- pecially poor. He did a couple of trick dance' steps, told. some fairly funny stories and sang a couple of ~ songs. There were dozens better Yet Paul always played the big-time, 'always got the best maney. We who were. in show * business at tlie time; wondered. The answer was simple when you stopped to think about it. Paul was enterprising. He gave himself a build-up. For one thing, he * se- He in- structed the orchestra what to play "and how to play it before he came on. mer. He made a stooge of the drum- He sold the' idea, generally, 'that he was terrific, 'We all "expected that Paul would be among the firit to go. . 'But he wasn't. I didn't see him' for almost.a year, then one fall 'up in San Francidéo, I ran across him again, It was rather a unique oxperience; because the gag he pulled that: night was epic. ~ It. seems that, despite his enter- prising faculties, Paul .was- due to get the air, He had exhausted his bag of tricks. Managers were get: ting wise to hin, On this night he "was trying gjt at the Olyinpia The- atre. 'Most of us thought it- would be his.swan song. On the other hand, if he went over big with his' Tarr La BA "Well," grinned Paul, "ut you're serious, that's tine . , . it my gag took in an old ip or like 'you, it worked better than I thought it would." audience, it would mean a 40-week gontract. - There wasn't a thance! We, watched him come' out 'from the opposite side of the wings. He was doing a quick little dance step, There was a smattering of applause _ that almost instantly .died away. Paul hesitated, then went into a routine. It was pitiful, because: the step was rotten 'and he had appar- ently lost his self-eonfidenpe- to boot. . Fa + I was standing s %0 1 could see Paul's /face.. For the first time - since I'd known him, I saw anger in his eyes, a red flush in his _ cheeks. He stopped dancing. "All right," he said. wise: buys, I'll show you." The hecklers booed at him, 'they . shouted catcalls. Paul's face went ~Mvid.- He:.suddealy galvanized into. "action. 2 ek I have seen-some good trick dancers in my day, but I've never seén anything to equal the antics "All right, of Paul Sparrow. that night. Thor- ougsly aroused, he became a con- tortionist. He performed feats: that were unheard of in the art of dancing. He threw himself around that stage like a madman. It was ~ marvelous to watch, Superb! Paul came out for three encores. ~ + He was a man inspired each time, - A "ning fo feel fanny. "step. i. and ' each- time the audience gave him an ovation. They clapped for five full "minutes after his last ap- pearance. After a while, | strolled back to Paul's dressing room. was just leaving. Inside, Paul was happily folding up a sheet of paper. I could tell by the expression on his face that it was the contract. "Hello, feller," 1 grinned. "You killed 'em. I guess the thing to do if you want to stay in.vaude.' Ville these days is get mad." "Why, " he said, surprised. you think I was mad? | wasn't." "Don't kid me. Those hecklers had you down for the count." Well," grinned 'Paul, "if you're _ serious, that's fine! [| mean, if my: little gag took in an old teouper like yourself, it even worked better than 1 thought it would." "Wait a minute," | said, "Did begin- "What arc you getting at?" { : "It was a gag, old horse. I hired © three" hecklers to do the job--you * know, make the audience feel sym- pathetic 'toward me_ by having scathing remarks hurled - at -me, Then I pulled my trick, My new step!" you know. [It only seemed that way. The audience was sym-= pathetic. They would have liked anything | did." He grinned broad- ly. "You see, I was on the skids, I had to think of something. I tell you, friend, if you want to stay in vaudeville these days, you 've got. to be enterprising!" - The manager It really wasn't much of a -| Scholarship Pays Of--Say you're a student in a certain school on New York's and you got grades of 90 or more, or just B-plus or better. Run. your report card over to -ice cream dealer Sam Miller and pick up, free, a half pint of frozen custard.!If your grades are lower, you get the cold shoulder. Miller is seen doing a rushing business alter posting : i - + his sign offering i ice cream awards for scholars. 1, [last Side Boxers Who Take ot 2 # On All Comers In Britain from Portsmouth to Inverness and from Cardiff-to Hull, on every fairground of any size the caravans "pull in and the 'canvas theatre is 'set up, with its boxing- ring inside. Then, over the blaring music of the fair, over. the shouted invitations of "other showmen, the age-old challenge to all comers . repeated again and again. The boxers are on view, standing --in--line--on-a-platform--outside--the-- booth, lending point to the barker's reiterated - phrases: - "Any weight from seven stone to fourteen! Pick "| "your own man," The charge for admission is small, generally' a shilling, but even then it is difficult to get the fairgoers "inside until they have seen a con- _ testant come forward. long one nowadays, Young men who have boxed in the Forces are "always eager to "have a go." Be- -sldes, every town and village has its favourite local boxer, who can gen- erally be relied _on to acceept the . challenge. As soon ag a fight has 14 been arranged the paybox 'becomes busy and the shillings flow 'in. Seats are seldom provided, and . the grass of the fairground field is the theatre's floor. In the centre the: boxing-ring is roped off, and the crowd stands around it. With many ceremonial phrases the contestants are introduced, and the bell rings. Long : - experience - and continual practice give the booth boxer an - initial advantage. Also, he knows and has to know, every trick of the fighting trade, True, he may face a top-ran i amateur in need of a little practice--and that night's pay will be hard-earned. But generally he is on his feet at the end. For if the booth boxer' loses too many fights, "You oan put a Took on the foe box, Mother, after we're married." Closet Held A Fortune--Millionaire hosiery manufacturer Stan- oris often Kicked out, he ceases to be a booth" boxer. It is a hard life by any standarde | Yet men stay in it and like it. Joe Beckett, later in the championship class, was a booth boxer for years. Jack Lockyer took on all comers at fairs_ until 'he was long past fifty, Red Pullen, "a welterweight, has boxed with a Wood's. saloon for. twenty. years, and is still: going __Strong. " five-pounds. When he concentrated --However, the delay fi-seldom-u--|--O\- coveriig_that soft spot, leaving ond nature, and that,may be the secret. Certainly my own first booth encounter was with 'a grizzled, fat- . twice in nearly Phelan tish man writes. Jim my age, "Answers." His midriff region looked so soft - that it seemed a shame to take the his "jaw unprotected, '1. pitied the poor, fat, old man. But I smote that uncovered jaw nevertheless. Nothing happeied,.and I smashed at fhe wideopen -point "again," Hé" still hung back, covering his vulner- able mid-region; and it was plain that he dared not risk even one --puiich: on his sofar=plexus;--Wheré- upon I myself risked everything if one terrific slam at the Yock-Hike jaw. Just before the punch landed I "saw a_ knowing glint in_ hig hard, ~in the fairgrounds up and down the - smaldgayes. That time he did leave his midriff unprotected. But I didn't know anything about that until. after [ came round. 4 -He knew no better move, that --grizzled man;-and #t served hinrwell --|- in a hundred different fairgrounds. Night after night that unprotected jaw lired strong young boxers, as' a I had been lured, into the all-or- nothing venture that ends with the monotonous chanting of *, | --eight--nine--out." But 'what kind of courage must it take to go on doing that for years country? It is difficult even to guess why men stay in such 'an occupation. Money'is not the answer--the booth boxers: seldom get any large sums. Nor it is mere love of fightin, either an the part of the booth boxer or of the man who accepts his challenge. "That: type woiild not last long. There is something deeper, per- haps resembling the snap-and-slash play of dogs or foxes, which le really a training for the bigger struggles of life. Certainly it needs a vast reserve of courage to face a different crowd each night with the offer to take on all comers. To take on all comers--it is not a bay slogan, for a man or a nation, ol ton Sanson and his wife, Maxine, look into the hall closet of their New York apartment from which thieves emptied eleven, jewel cases while both were out. Mrs, Sanson, an ex-model, said HE was a million-tollar haul, but open. scaled the figure down to They say that habit GeCoimes sec=~|" "chiefly French officers and - courtesans, they, . seven |. -ghedra, a - man, Do Their Dancing On Their Knees Gouliine, a former Foreign Le- 8 | gion outpost on the southernmost fringe of Morocco, is the only place in the world where the ghedra 'is being danced. And the - ghedra is . probably the only danée 'in exist- ence during which the dancer re- mains on her knees, without moving legs or feet. I was recently staying at Gouli- mine as guest of the French Com- manding Officer, and*dn my second ° night my host arranged the ghedra, the dance that I had travélled hun-- "dreds of miles 0 see, writes "Ron" We Europeans, their wives, and after a ceremonial din- ner. at the officers' mess, we moved into an adjoining reception room- to Landau in "London Calling." were about a dozen -await the dancers, It:was nearly midniglit when tiey arrived--tiny, dark 'women, exquis-__ Titely dressed in floating, night-blue robes that covered. them from head to foot. Though by profession they ranked not so much -as dancers -as behaved "with the dignity of duchesses, and moved with the grace of gazelles.. There were about twenty of them, and as soon as they had shaken hands with us, they let themselves glide onto 'the cushions prepared for them on the ground. Meanwhile, in front of the dancers a semi-circle of musicians formed, - magnificent- 'looking Blue-men, with the eyes of ~ hawks and the faces of eagles, Goulimirie is the heart of the Blye- men country, so called because of the exclusively blue garments worn' by" the population. Sometimes, the _ blue dye penetrates their skin, and gives them a dramatic appearance unlike that: of any people I had ever seen. Though there were over 'a dozen of thése men, only one of them played an instrument--namely,. the large, earthenware jar used as a drum. The other men were to provide the singing, and especially the hand- clapping which forms the main accompainment to most Berber dances. : .Each woman dances solo for about ten minutes, and is then re- placed by another one. Having re- moved her top garments, she now _ exposes the traditional silvery jew- ellery that covers much of her front, and _ her complicated hair- dress of scores of little plaits, ia which tiny jewels and ornaments have been entwined. Kneeling on the ground she dances chiefly with | her arms, hands, and fingers, in rapid, jerky, but beautifully sensitive movements that respond to each beat of the drum and of the clapping. © Each new sound ushers in a new movement and. a new _ pose of the dancer. You will naturally wish to know why _ the women 'crouch on the ground. The ghedrg is essentially a -- love dance; originally it was danced by one woman for one particular Since the 'desert Berbers all lived--and, to some extent, still do «in tente that are low and not very spacious, there was not enough room for the woman either to stand : up or to move about freely, and she was forced to remain kneeling on the ground. Bit because of these limitations, she put all hér artistry into the movements of torso and hands, and --T shoiitd be surprised if many teat dwellers 'could ever resist those hypnotic staccatos of head and toe- so, and the evocative rhymn of those tiny, supersensitive fingers. . oS ---- A "Parted 25 Years <.chance encounter on an island im Reunited By Radio (The author of this real-life story, Nina Epton, is in charge of B.B.C. "broadcasts to French-speaking "ada, and here she tells: how a Quebec Province led to a blitzed Londoner being reunited by. radio with the family that had brought bim up many years ago.) {n radio, as in any other profes- sion; one can go plodding along at one's normal routine for wecks and even months without anything par- ticularly exciting to remember until, sirddenly, the unexpected happens v--the 'highlight of an unusual oc- a casion, an exgpra good ! 'story," an encounter, perhaps, that makes you realize just how_ worthwhile the medium of broadcasting can be in helping to build up friendly inter- national relations. I'hat is how I am f(eeling at the moment of writing, after' having organized a reunion between friends who have not seen each other for 25 years--one in London -and the * other oun the Island of Orleans, in Quebec Province. © [t started while [ was on a visit to rench-speaking Canada, seeing some. of the people 1 broadcast to nearly every évening in our London contribution to the French "Actu- ality' Review." Unspoiled Part of the Country Just before*we left Quebec for a tour of the Island of 'Orleans, down stréam in the middle of the wide St. Lawrence, one of the chief announcers stopped us to remind us to be sure and call' on M. Eudore Letourneau, in the Village of Ste. Famille. 5 We called on hiin at the very last miguté, because there had been. so "many other people to see on, the the , explains how the only In French an unscripted interview - a personal message for Rudore and - island, which is perhdps. one. of counfry near Quebec. the romantic part of French Canada that. has rétained its old-world charm. [tis only a few years since Orleans was joined to the mainland by a steel bridge, and that probably the inhabitants have managed to keep "up the old, _French-Canadian taking and : way ~of lifew e-- I arrived on a bright, crisp, - - autumn day, and the maple leaves were flashing crimson between the fir and the spruce, almost the same color_as the apples which Madame Letourneau was carefully polishing in the barn when we called. Her husband rushed. out to greet us, very pleased to meet somebody from &reat Britain. He said English visitors to the island were rare, very rare--in fact, English- person he had on the island was his rotége, a man called William earson, who had come to his farm as a boy and had grown up with his own family. He scribbled an address on a piece of paper: "WIl- ever seen --liam Pearson, Reginald Road, Dept-~ ford, London." , Could I, when I got back, find out what had become of him? Pearson had left the island years ago--2§ years ago, to be precise. They had "corresponded intermittently up to the Second + World War, but, since then, there had been no-siews from Deptford. M. Letourneau was most;anxicus to know what had become of mon _petit Anglais, as he called the now- mature William, and one of the first things I did when I got back to London was to try to locate him, To my delight, after a few inquiries, [ found him, . He had been blitzed, ae I had 'feared, and had sustained an injury to his spine which means that he can do only light work now. 1 wrote and asked him to come to the B.B.C. and discuss the poassi-- bility of broadcasting a message to Eudore Letourneau: course, whether he would be able to remember any of -his French after such a long time, but perhaps, with a little coaching, he could read a short script. To my amazement, that William Pearson wae perfeatly capable, after a little preliminary discussion together, of broadcasting Dwith me about his, memories of the JUsland of Orleans, ending up with his family, and he spoke French still with the accent peculiar to the island. I had cabled over to Can- ada before the. broadcast so that Rudore Letourncau and all his friends on the island were advised beforehand; and they all sat and listened in, as they wrote after- wards, "with - the tears streaming down our. cheeks." : Since that day, the two of them are corresponding regularly Personally, I feel sure that William will manage to see beloved island and adoptéd famfy again. 3 begaking; "keeping records 'most unspoiled party of the |: This is still - I doubted, of - I discovered 1 With A Volcano As A Neighbor One "agin Nature has decldred war, On December 2nd, ag dawn was Mount Etna erupted from new craters, and the people of - Bronte 'found a stream of molten lava. five hundred feet wids and twenty feet high advaticing upon them at the"rate of half-a-mile" an ~ hour, They knéw that no power on earth could stop that advance, and they 'did the only possible thing. At ten o'clock thaf evening the town evacuated its 20,000 inhabi-' tants. : Eighty times since man started Etna has caused death and destruction, The last time was in 1928, when incandescent lava completely obliterated a railway and destroyed the towns of Hascati and Nunziati. © « Living on the slope of a volcano must be like living in a house on a frontier and knowing that an eneiny's entire heavy artillery is trained on .the house, When hos- tilities break out you will be the first to be hit. Why do people: live there, know- ing that at any moment they and their posseesions might be Mestroy- ed? One good reason is that tie sides of volcanoes are often the most fer- tile areas in the district. The slopes of Mount Etna, for instance, are so fertile that as many as flve crops are raised every year. There are between three and' four It's Cocoa Time -- Belted and bloused, this pure silk shantung afterrioon dress, done in warm -cocoa with white embroidery, ~ is shown in the French design- eot's salon. The full skirt is . topped or a belted blouse fea- e in the dropped shoulder- line and full long sleeve. Adie itive voloandes in world and - the elopes of ost thet are inhabited. In some cases the people know from past exper- fence that they wii recelve good . warning' before an eruption, but ie others they may have leas than as" hour to clear out with whatever val uables they can take with them, Vesuvius is ote of the moat une predictable, In A.D. 79 it erupted so quickly and so fiércely that three ~towns-- Pompeii; Herculaneum, and Stabiae--were completely destroyed. Pliny, commander of the Roman. fleet, sailed at once to Herculaneum to try to rescue survivors, but found the harbour completely chole- ed dy ash and lava, He sailed on to Stabine, only to find the population dead, suffocated by fumes. So well did Vesuvius do ite work that all three towns were effectively buried in lave and ash. Four hun- dred years later thir very tr were forgotten and 'the stories the eruption. were treated as a leo- gend They lay hidden until 1860. From that day in A.D, 79 Vesu- viug was quiescent, To all intents and purposes it was an extinot vol- canoand. towns and villages were built on the slopes while the people used to picnic on the lip of the huge erater. Mi 1,450 years later, in Dei - 1631, it awakened. Without od rk ft erupted, an . 18.000 people died. ~Since-then there has hardly besa EH x a year when Vesuvius has not belch od flames and red-hot lava. Ia 1900 the: explosion was so terrifies that 607 feat of the summit was blown off. The people of 8t, Pisrre, on the slopes of Mount Peles, in-Martlad _que, had plenty of warning but 4cols ~~ _ no notice of it. The volcano grumbl- "ed for several days, aud then covee- ad the town with a layer of fine ash, A few days later It erupted, and 150 people lost thelr lives. Then 's sister volcano on a near-by [sland erupted. The people of $t. Plerre thought: that the flreworke were over and continued their leisurely lives, Bug Hiirteen days after the first grumble, Mount . Pelee exploded, and 40, people died before they could reach safety, Best Way To Send Coins In A Letter Next time So "want to mail a quarter, dime or half-dollar to soméone, you'll probably wonder just how to do it. Many peopks use adhesive tape or Scotch tape to fasten the coin to the letter. But an editor says: "Don't do it that way. Tape sticks to the coin and causes trouble. "Better way," he says, "is to wrap the coin ina piece of paper. Then use transparent adhesive tape. The coin won't shake off or out." Ten years ago a Dutch scientist, Professor 8. W, Tromp, set out to-- prove water-divining was nonsense, Now he has published a 534- -page research report confirming the popu- lar belief that there is something in it. "_ He thinks. the power to detect underground water may depend on - the elictrlcal resiitance of the skin, " Dlviners can increase their sensi- tivity by rinsing thelr hands in salt water, . What's Cookin' In TV=Momi range "and television set. how it on television at the same time, Mrs. the cook can stir up a delectable. dish simply by following a step-hn step instructions on "video cain ook her ham and watch with" this combination gas Bea Reeder, above, shows -- ~~ ESTAR LI -- En pe