The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 10

io ARTS GUARDIAN Saturday December 4 1971 WHAT THE CENSOR SAW Derek Malcolm on new directions pointed by the London Film Festival SHIRLEY HASSEY: Bis business ai halliv CHottfln sap mlHIInoims Charles Hamblett tours the northern variety dubs which are big show business these days and football stars. There's also hospital benefits, fund raising for spastics people are always willing to help the sick." Another showman, Jimmy Corrigan, 45. who runs the famous Batley Variety Club, told me Here in Batley we've relied solely on a policy of good entertainment not necessarily star to keep our customers happy. We've made mistakes, but we've got over our teething troubles. I foresee all sorts of new developments in club entertainment.

Suzch as well. I'm thinking of musical shows, revues, music hall bills that can run for a month. After all. that's where all this modern televised stuff originates from. "The cabaret clubs are the old music halls in a new architectural setting.

As long as we keep on our toes and continue to please the customers we'll stay in business. Bob Monkhouse, our most literate comedian, has regularly toured the northern clubs since the early 'sixties, when the gambling boom accelerated the business and many promoters were drawn by the lure of the roulette wheel." Those days are over," says Bob. I'm afraid many people south of Hatfield still regard the running of a northern club as an automatic licence to mint new pence. On the contrary, it's a tough business. Many clubs have gone to the wall and fortunes have been lost.

The men who originally went into the business were a motley lot of ragbag characters. It's taken a man like Stan Henry and a few others, to rationalise the scene. But it has needed enterprise and guts to turn what might have become a depressed business into a booming industry." People will always seek the catharsis of laughter, the brief nirvana of music, wine and song. Thanks to a few enterprising men there's plenty of it available in the North. THK EUPHORIC textile manufacturer, flushed on scampi and Spanish plonk, leaned across from li is table and tugged my sleeve.

What do you think of it then, lad?" he asked cheerfully. "Thur's nowt like it in't South, is thurV I had to agree. We were in the vast 1.200-seater Theatre Club in Wakefield, Yorkshire, and there was nothing to match the sheer, unbuttoned enjoyment the easy atmosphere in any similar place of entertainment I have visited south of the demarcation line between Bristol and Hull. For two hours the audience had been hammered with non-stop folksy entertainment. The Irish patter comedian.

The blonde ballad belter. The female contortionist. The musical act with comic asides on the subject of mothers-in-law. All this packaged and presented by compere Martin Dale, ex-Bradford policeman. None of these act.

have made it big. None have appeared at London's Talk of the Town or the Palladium. Gut for entertainment value and enjoyment this was Show Business. It is also big business. This -scene is repeated in similar fun empona throughout the North and of England.

Some, like the Variety Club at Bat ley (Yorkshire's biggest rival to Wakefield) do pull off occasional scoops like the famed appearance there of the late Louis Armstrong and the current booking of Shirley Bassey. But sin-M Tom and Engclbort Ilum-perdinck have been virtually priced nut of the clubs circuit the provided relies more on well-loved regional rnmics and sexy spectacular shows. The man most responsible, in recent years, for changing the "cloth cap" image of provincial club entertainment is Stan Henry, who. as chairman of the multi-million Bailey Organisation. overlords the biggen chain of clubs in England with booming ramifications across continental Europe.

I spoke with him in his luxurious office suite situated, surprisingly, in the unpretentious suburbs of South Shields. Yet once you step into the premises of his Club Latino, headquarters of the Bailey network, you are in the playbov world of high rolling gamblers, dolly hostesses, cigar 'smoke and champagne. He greeted me in his inner office wearing a bathrobe, having just emerged from an hour of relaxation (and financial contemplation) in his adjacent sauna bath. Looking like a sparkling Northern version of James Bond (he's 41. sleek, meticulously barbered, highly sophisticated) he carefully explained to me the workings of his clubland empire.

Jt has assets in excess of 3 millions, a membership of well over 150,000 in seventeen clubs in towns which include Newcastle, Sheffield, Sunderland. Stockton and since August Hull, the Bailey Clubs are a show business phenomenon. I'm a great statistics man." he said, pointing to an enormous wall chart behind his huge executive desk. I have a breakdown of exactly the number of persons in each Bailey Club per day. They're spending on the average 10 per cent less than they v.ere The vision of Stan Henry is extraordinary.

What's good for Show Biz is good for the North in general for increased tourism, better business, and for reviving the spirit of England. Even frank Sinatra would not complain about the backstage facilities, the big star dressing rooms, the loveliness of the North Country broads." Piledriving energy goes into the running of these clubs, for the customers don't just drop into the impresarios' laps. At the Theatre Club (not a Bailey) compere-manager Martin Dale told me Economically, Wakefield is a grey area. If we relied solely on local support we'd be out of business in no time. Thanks to the new we draw regulars from as far afield as Manchester.

Birmingham, Oldham and Hull. "We also get support from big business organisations planning staff outings. Aye, and there's a heck of a lot of grass still around in the heavy woollen districts of Leeds and Bradford and Halifax yes. and lleckniondwyke. But it's no use sitting back and waiting for the customers to show up.

Every year the Yorkshire Cricket Club stages a benefit night. Then we issue block tickets to approved charities to sell off to their supporters. There's race meetings and football matches to be canvassed, and along with the fans we get the sporting personalities. Jockeys last year, but more members are coming in month after month. Many local authorities are actively encouraging us to establish clubs in their towns.

As Britain improves its living standards so will our clubs increasingly come to be considered as the entertainment centres of a generation that has revolted against the cloth cap image." The Minister of the Environment and the Common Market have Stan Henrys warm approval. Television, higher education, improved working conditions, have completely changed the North. And we never underestimate our customers. There are many things which go to make a good social environment. Not the least of these are the facilities for people to enjoy themselves in sophisticated and elegant surroundings and to be entertained in pleasant company.

As for the Common Market the political rights or wrongs, advantages or disadvantages are for the politicians to decide. That's what they are elected and paid to do. But for the entertainment industry of this country, the advent of the Common Market offers a new challenge and new opportunities." With this in mind, he is planning to dot the entire Continent with Bailey Clubs. For artistes, this offers opportunities which, if grasped, will bring them even higher levels of reward." PITY THE poor censor He is assailed on all sides with advice on how to do his job, takes note of this and that attitude, tests the breeze, dips his toe in the water and usually ends up flat on his face. No sooner is he applauded for allowing the Academy to play WR-Mysteries of the Organism without cuts than he is castigated for letting Paramount get away with Straw Dogs." And when he jibs at Trash by refusing it a certificate, we are down on him again like a ton of bricks.

Should Trash be virtually banned and WR let through intact The two decisions certainly seem a nonsense beside each other. And it is by putting the two films beside each other, as the London Film Festival has done, that this annual movie feast really justifies itself. It does so. of course, in other ways. This year there were not only more films than ever but also more customers.

Almost 40,000 seats were sold, no loss will be made and Ken WMaschin. the Director, can stand up and take a bow. He is particularly pleased that at least 10 movies which arrived in London without a distributor now look like getting one. This is the biggest justification of all. Last Sunday morning, the Odeon.

Marble Arch, was packed to capacity for the Festival showing of Stuart Rosenberg's WUSA." Can its distributors really still believe that it doesn't now deserve a run in England But back to the censor. What possible justification can he have for turning his back on It is centrally about a heroin addict who, because of his addiction, can't have sex. Docs he suppose this will really lead to a run on the drug 7 I agree with him that it isn't a very moral movie. But then it isn't immoral either. It just observes in the familiar Warhol-Morrissey manner.

You come to your own conclusions. Personallv I find it extremely watch-able, since it is the "easiest" Warhol yet. with almost too man'- concessions to mainstream film-making. But 1 also find it desperately depressing, however funny and accurate its observation of life on the fringe of society. No one in their right minds could consider it in any way likely to encourage drugs, sex.

dropping out or what-havc-vou. Its real virtue is that it tells the truth, and I wish Jimmy Vaughan. its would-be distributor, the best of luck in his campaign to show it. I wish him luck too with Philip Trevelyan's The Moon and the Sledgehammer," a new British film which Vaughan produced and which was one of the major successes of the new directors section. The film looks with great tact and sympathy at a family of oddities who live on "a little plot of woodland some twenty miles out of London.

At first, the film cherishes the old man. his two daughters and two sons as if pointing out the fact that they have found a way to live satisfactorily outside society: -Then we begin to realise that, in reality, the tensions between them are considerable. What started as an idyll ends much more disturbingly. There isn't much point at this stage in writing about those films which are shortly to be seen elsewhere, but I can't resist saying that one of the Festival films most likely to survive was Karoly Makk's Love." which the Academy arc to show in due course. Makk.

a very experienced film-maker from Hungary but not one generally considered of international calibre, has now come up with a superb study of what the title word really means. In the Budapest of the Stalinist era. a woman, whose husband is a political prisoner, feeds her old mother-in-law with stories of his success in America as a film-director. The old lady dies just before her son is released. It doesn't sound very exciting, but it is in fact intensely moving, brilliantly acted and beautifully filmed in black and white.

Lili Darvas, Ferenc Mol-nar's widow, is the old lady and worth going miles to see on her own. After that. Jancso's "The Pacifist." an international co-production starring Monica Vilti and Pierre Clementi, looked brimful of bathos and pretension. Jansco's camera scans the balletic movement of his characters as intensely as ever, but the story about a television journalist who falls for a doubting young revolutionarv is quite unsaveable. 1 didn't see Agnus Dei." his other film, but most people thought it better.

Surprisingly, since half the English press dubbed it a masterpiece at Cannes. Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer hasn't yet found a distributor. Based on Dostoievsky's White Nights about a girl who waits for an errant lover while a young painter tries to claim her, it has been updated to present-day Paris. Not verv successfully in my opinion, since the young people look thoroughly fake and one or two of the more lyrical passages seem suspiciously like ethereal commercials. Joel Seria's first film "Don't Deliver ts from Evil," which also got a lot of attention at Cannes, has been banned in France as wickedness itself and has a distributor in this countrv who is just submitting it to the censor.

I hope he lets it through, since this story of two young girls at a convent school who dedicate themselves to evil instead of good is often great fun and makes its point about the two faces of innocence with some wryness. Anyone who thinks it a masterpiece, however, must surelv be more touched with de Sade than I am. I hope someone takes a chance with Walerian Borowczvk's Blanche." Jacques Demy's "Donkey's Skin," and Robert Kaylor's Roller Derbv'' before they are all whisked awav from this country again. "Blanche." Borowczvk's bizarre and stunningly decorated "tale of medieval passion, looks considerably more of a commercial proposition than his previous "Goto, Isle of Love," while Demy's charming fairy-tale seems to me ideal family entertainment for this time of the year. Catherine peneuve.

Delphine Seyrig, Michel Legrand songs and all. "Roller Derby." which Cinerama shows no sign of releasing vet. tells the story of a young man trying to make the tough roller derbv skating circuit in such a way that it "discover almost as much about the underside of America as Barbara Loden's Wanda." review COVENT GARDEN Philip Hope-Wallace Ashton Rainbow would sound played the same way. Crashing into heavy rock with "Alcatra. he kept the drv, clipped-off rhythm and introduced roiling piano.

As the music got louder. Russell just got cooler and. instead of becoming a Fifties raver, became a Southern preacher. Halfway through Dylan's new song on George Jackson, he lectured hU audience. "This is an important verse listen to it." They listened.

Hock events like this are a rarity. Much of the praise must go to the Rainbow Theatre (once the Finsbury Park Astoria) which is now the friendliest venue in London, and seems to be attracting the very best artists. RAINBOW THEATRE Robin Denselow Leon Russell QEHRFH Edward Greenfield LMPRPO Hindemith. played in fine attacking style by Raphael Sommer. He was fearless in coping with the gritty double- stopping which abounds in this score, and it was a pity that his toughness did not the orchestra to more resilient accompaniment.

The long Passacaglia third movement, for example, held its shape only through the efforts of the soloist. The orchestra's playing was also disappointing in Pulcinella," not nearly crisp enough for a neo-classical work and with Zaliouk's flamboyant gestures producing a strangely unrelated mood from the players. Only the oboe playing of Janet Craxton held promise of better things later, and so it proved. After the interval the orchestra was transformed, with performances of the Ravel and Prokofiev stylish, witty and expressive. 0 WITH three soloists and a conductor all in their twenties (ages totalling 104) it was not surprising that Thursday's account of Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra acquired something of a party atmosphere, a flavour of a Prom performance transferred.

Usually in this work (no longer a concert rarity) you find one or other performer dominating, but here the partnership was remarkably even. The most natural leader in Beethoven's design is the cellist, who has first bite at most of the ideas, but here the Finnish cellist, Arto Noras was if any thin too discreet. Both Kyung Wha Chung, the violinist and Radii Lupu. the pianist are more positive artists, and here they restrained their individuality while keeping the music on its toes. It was daring to choose so fast a tempo for the final Polacca.

but the risk of scampering proved worth taking. Miss Chung's fire in the dactylic ryhthm of the central episode was infectious. The conductor was the Israeli, Yuri Segal, who set the right Prom atmosphere at the very start in a delightfully witty account of Stravinsky's "Scherzo a la Russe. full of squeeze-box effects. His Brahms was less individual but still very the Firt Symphony sounding fresh and unaffectedly exciting.

Samurai (Academy One. Two, Three), Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday and Rohmer's Claire's Knee (Contiri-entale), Bertolucci's The Conformist (Curzon, tall Dec 9), Visconti's Death in Venice (Times, Baker St), Losev's The Go-Between (ABCI), Paluka's Klute (Warner West End), Altman's MASH (Studio One). Bergman's The Touch (Cinecenta 4). Kubrick's 2001, Space Odyssey (Cameo-Poly, till Dec S). Bunuel's Belle de Jour (Studio Two.

Ealing). Fellini-Satyricon (Gau-mont, Notting Hill Gate), Boorman's Point Blank (Studio 7, Lewisham). Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest and Forman's Blonde in Love (Venus, Kentish Town), Forman's Taking Off (Odeon. Kensington). Recommended Monty Python And Now for Something Completely Different (Columbia), Hill's Butch Cas-sidy and the Sundance Kid (Gala Royal), Nichols's Carnal Knowledge (Leicester Sq Theatre), Russell's Tlie Devils (Warner Rendezvous), Russell's The Music Lovers (Odeon.

Haymarket), Wadleigh's Woodstock (Times. Baker St). Nicholson's Drive He Said (Classic. Piccadilly), Seigel's The Beguiled (Odeon, St Martin's Lane), Waion Green's The Hellstrom Chronicle (Studio Two), Losey's Modestv Blaise (Rialto). Perry's Doe and Gorman's The Red Baron (London Pavilion, till Dec.

8). Parks's Shaft (Ritz). Tati's Traffic (Prince Charles). Varda's Lions Love (Paris Pullman). Perry's Diarv of a Mad Housewife (Essoldo, Chelsea), Joe Cocker in Mad Dogs and Englishmen (Essoldo, Shepherds Bush), Hopper's Easy Rider and Brando in The Wild One (Classic.

Praed St). Peckin-pah's The Wild Bunch (Brixton Classic). Axel's Danish Blue (Jacev, Piccadilly). Warhol's Flesh (ABC, Bayswater). Maysles Bros' Gimme Shelter (Kilburn State), Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (ABC.

Blackheath). Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George (Kings Cross Cinema). Fleming's Gone with the Wind (Essoldo, Maida Vale), Widerberg's Ballad of Joe Hill (ABC Bayswater). Films on TV Troell's Who Saw Him Die (BBC-2. Thurs).

Ford's How Green Was My Valley (BBC-1. Sun). Fleischer's Compulsion (BBC-2. Forbes' The L-Shaped Room. Hatha- Dwort Fox, Penn's The Chase (ITV.

Sun). THIS programme for the balletomanes at Covent Garden might have been designed to choke the cat with cream, on a high romantic diet. First there was Ashton's beautiful version of The Dream which ekes out all Mendelssohn's music care and love and tells Shakespeare's story in a way which will seem quite as economic and suitable to some tastes as either treatment by Benjamin Britten or Peter Brook. The scenery by Peter Farmer was much admired, being perfectly in style with the mid-Victorian mood, a darkening green glade with a bridge, off-prompt side, which signals the arrival of the various parties. Merle Park and Anthony Powell as Fairy King and Queen and Wayne Sleep a nimble Puck were a pleasure to watch.

Mr Grant makes much of Bottom. After the interval, Jerome Robbins's Dances at a Gathering arguably the best setting of Chopin piano pieces since Fokine not slavish visual equivalents of the music but each a perfect creation oF a fitting mood, danced lithely with as little apparent effort or search for novelty as the gentle patterns of Giselle pure dance, ten pieces in couples and trios, with and Wall and Lesley Collier and Monica Mason giving notably fine performances. Anthony Twiner makes the piano accompaniment important, not at all diminishing. The sequence had the audience in thrall. Film trailer DEREK MALCOLM selects films of interest in the London area and on television over the next week.

Programmes are sometimes changed at short notice and it is advisable to check. Highly recommended Bunuel's Tristana. Makavejev's WR-Mysteries of the Organism, Kurosawa's Seven HALF past midnight, yesterday morning. Blues man Freddie King shakes ami the last bars of Holi Over Beethoven" from his guitar. Claudia Linne.ir wriggles and shrieks the chorus, and behind the piano, half hidden in long grey hair and moustache, the dead-pan, dead-beat face of Leon Russell almost allows itself a smile as the packed ranks of the Rainbow erupt around him.

After years in the shadows, as high-powered session man for Phil Spector or The Stones. Russell now takes the limelight himself. He is still a showman who likes appearing with other big names Joe Cocker, and more recently. Dylan and who acts as though he enjoys pulling the strings lrom behind the scenes. He conducts his band.

Zappa-style, as he plays, and guides the whole show into a state of frenzy over which he has complete command. Dry and laconic, he is almost ridiculously cool until he starts very gently sending himself up. He can get away with it because he knows about music as well as playing the ringmaster. His piano solos "Wild Horses and "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," were stark and rhythmic he startled everyone by suddenlv demonstrating how "Somewhere Over the FOR two nights running talented young Israeli conductors have been in charge at concerts on the South Bank. On Thursday it was L'ri Segal conducting the Royal Philharmonicat the Festival Hall.

Last night it was his contemporary, Yuval Zaliouk, who directed the London Mozart Plavers at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the latest of their Five Styles scries. The idea behind Five Styles mav sound too didactic for comfort, but with this concert at least it worked well. The stylistic theme was neo-elassicism, which allowed an agreeably wide sweep between Stravinsky's Pulcinella and Hindemith's Chamber Concerto for Cello in the first half, and Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin and Prokofiev's Classical Symphony in the second. Where Barber's Adagio for Strings stood in relation to neo-classicism I was rather uncertain, but at least it is very traditional-sounding and in Zaliouk's hands it was less sentimentalised than usual. The rarity of the concert was the THAT THINKING FEELING radio reviewed by Gillian Reynolds THE FAMOUS and fascinating film critic turned 45 degrees to his left over the scrubbed pine dinner table and, politely proffering the crudites, asked me how much radio 1 actually listened to.

He was interested to compare quantities since he started cutting himself down to one movie a week winch is probably a healthy thing to do what with the goings-on you read about on the big screen these days. I'm not verv well up on the cinema myself and from what I heard George Molly telling Michael Billington about "The Straw Dogs on Radio 4's Scan the other week I'm not likely to be. Fancy going out into the cold and paying a pound to get scared sick watching a film when I can stay home and bring on all the nausea a body could ever desire bv cooking cheeseburgers. No, what I want from the cinema is a dozen chorus girls singing Flying Down to Rio while perched on the wings of a biplane or Irene Dunn making Swedish meatballs in I Remember Mama" or Ethel Merman saying to Billy do Wolfe "Call Me Madam. And when you call me Madam, smile." And from what I hear there's not much of that about in the cinema But to get back to the question of how much I listen to on the radio, a fair average might be about 70 hours a week of daytime radio, most of it pretty non-discriminatory, and about seven hours of selected night-time programmes.

Now I've to work out the sum. the ratio surprises me. Ten hours of background noise, information intervals and conditioned self-indulgencjs like Waggoners' Walk for every one hour of planned listening seems rather disproportionate. The trouble with half of mv planned listening, too. is that it is habitual and so rarely gets written about in the proportion it deserves.

Take "A Word in Edgeways" (Radio 4. Saturdays) which I almost always make an effort to hear and which maintains an extraordinarily high standard of discussion. I feel hesitant about plugging it for two reasons. One. because I've been on it myself in the p3st.

And, two, because it is produced in the North and thus brings out my regional chauvinism. But. honestly. I think over the past couple of months it really has got better and better. The conversation has become more determinedly linked to a particular question and the choice and balance of talkers is always admirable.

Last week's programme provided a discussion on Northern Ireland (stemming from the original question of how to go about getting one's own way) which raised and tackled many issues in the most varied and satisfactory way. Similarly, this year's Reith Lectures have me literally standing bv mv set Listening to Richard Hosgart (Radio 4, Tuesdays and Radio 3. Sundays) is one of the year's greatest pleasures as I keep trying to tell people. But as soon as you say Reith Lectures thev get this set. enduring look on their faces as if you are trying to enrol them in some boring secret society.

No matter how often I say Don't go by what you see printed in the Listener when vou hear it you understand it much better," the very idea of lectures on the radio is enough to put them off. In the faint hope that I can persuade the odd straggler, however, let me say again Professor Hoggart's address to his audience is warm and immediate, his observations are acute and his language is the essence of English. There is no jargon, no plibnev mystique, and no fund of alienating assumption..