The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 19

i I'm- Wit ifoncoiutr Sun sept. 1, 1979 B3 ENTERTAINMENT A romp with a master of shtick On 1 -i i Burns is in the same mould as Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, John Wayne What it was like in the old days BOYD Burns was making fine comedy movies in the '30s as straight man to wife Grade. They were a hit radio team before the movies and were television stars after. Burns is making movies again the recent ones include The Sunshine Boys and Oh God when he finds a moment between commercials, television appearances and playing bridge with the boys at the Hillcrest Country Club in Hollywood. As long as he gets the good lines his own he'll keep going.

And he has a new audience. The Varsity Theatre boasted a young crowd Friday, all of them approving of the Burns easy By JAMIE LAMB Swifts Premium doesn't make a better ham than George Burns. The man is shameless. At 83, not content with outliving every vaudevillian around, he's shuffling around up there on the screen, reminding us that comedy, or whatever passes as comedy these' days, still needs two things. Gags and timing.

And maybe George Burns. With the exception of the late Jack Benny, nobody has kept the well-timed com moving so well or so long as the bespectacled gentleman currently starring in the comedy film, Just You and Me, Kid, playing at the Varsity, West Van Odeon, Westminster Mall, Clova and Westminster Drive-In. lian, played by Burns. Burns shows the kid that he's a good guy; protects the kid from all the bad guys; shows her the world can be a fun place. Burl Ives makes an appearance as a traumatized "pres-didigitator" who the kid indirectly cures.

And there is the "No Shirt" gang, a bunch of retired magicians (played by Leon Ames, Carl Ballantine, Ray Bolg-er, and Keye Luke) who are Burns' card cronies. The gang gets its name from the way they play cards. No shirts. Magicians have many tricks up their sleeves. There are no tricks up director Leonard Stern's sleeve.

He knows all he has to do is puf Burns on camera, move the plot from time to time, and every thing will come out nice and cosy. Which it does. This is a very mild film and certainly not one to leave 'em rolling in the popcorn and chewing gum under the seats. It's simply a little romp with old friend George Burns who sings a few songs, shuffles a few steps, tells a few jokes. He is not hindered by co-star Shields who is pretty to look at but is rather wooden and lacking in warmth in her portrayal of the runaway kid.

But that's okay. You come to this film to see a master of shtick ply his trade in front of a camera. There's nothing you'd call acting, just a warm simple story featuring a guy you'd love to have as your grandfather. Just you and the audience, George. and Jimmy Stewart, actors who at first seem terrible because they seem to have such an easy go of it.

Many of us make the mistake of tresses because they don't deliver tortured dialogue. A generation raised on the overacting of Bruno Gerus-si and Don Rickles might have trouble adjusting to someone like Burns who makes it all seem easy, light and fun. Certainly, Burns does not have a heavy script to deal with in Just You and Me, Kid. Young girl (Brooke Shields) is hiding from the bad guys. She chooses to hide in the trunk of a 1934 Pierce Arrow belonging to an old vaudevil The worst day occurred just a couple of years ago and it went like this.

He was awakened early by a telephone call urging him to listen to Frosty Font. It was 6:30 a.m. when Davis tuned in to hear Forst announce that he was in love again. Forst's legendary love affairs have inevitably meant joyous highs at the start, trembling uncertainties in the middle and black depressions at the end, all three levels accompanied by an inability to perform a morning man's functions. Fearing the worst, Davis got up and went to the station, arriving in time to hear Al Davidson call someone "a silly bugger" on the air.

Davis called Davidson in and explained that the word is unacceptable as a noun and unthinkable as a verb and has no place in radio. With the beginnings of a slight headache, Davis spent the rest of the day trying to stop the defection of two major commercial accounts, which he was unable to do. That night, he did not go home. He went out and tried to revive himself with a good dinner. It was after 10 p.m.

when he got into his car, feeling weary but whole, shot at but missed. He turned on his car radio and heard Jack Cullen's voice, singing "They called her frivi-lush Shal, a pee-culier short of a gal This movie is mean, foul and witless bing them raw Hotelman Milan Martin was one of the first customers present when Peter Bonner opened The English Bay Cafe a couple of years ago. So when Martin attended the opening of Bonner's P.J. Burger Sons on Fourth Avenue this week, Bonner sent a cab to fetch up a chilled bottle of Dom Perig-non, with which Martin washed down his burger. I believe it is called chic Tracy Holmes, daughter of Keg Cleaver marketing man Dune Holmes, has been attending a music-theatre seminar in Las Vegas and got backstage at the MGM Grand.

She struck up a conversation with a statuesque chorus girl from the Hallelujah For Hollywood show. Tracy mentioned she was from Vancouver and the chorus girl said, "Vancouver Oh Tracy was waiting for the invevitable second line "Oh wow up there with the Eskimos and But the chorus girl said, "I'm from Maple Turned out she's Connie Brill, sister of world-rated high jumper Debbie Brill. So Tracy and Connie had a great time talking about the Dewdney Trunk Road while Vegas boogied down Never mind what Stats Canada says, with their charts and graphs. The unemployment across Canada can best be measured by the jobs openjob applicants quotient. When the Vancouver-based Elephant Castle people advertised for help in their Toronto operation, they got 700 applications for 85 jobs.

This week they ran ads for 75 job openings in the Guilford Town Centre C. restaurant, opening Sept. 11. They got 430 replies. And that's what's happening in Canada, Mr.

Prime Minister. By VAUGHN PALMER The Brood is an ugly movie. Even as New Westminster fought major flame and smoke for the second time in 13 years yesterday, Hal Davis was thinking about another fire, not as hot, not as smelly, but a fire that established some firm business principles for Davis. This week is the 35th anniversary of radio station CKNW and all week, veterans of the Royal City station have been turning their minds inside out and reviving What-It-Was-Like-In-The-01d-Days stories. Bill Re a started the station in 1944, 100 cheeky watts, founded on 25,000 of bank-rolling Rea was able to raise.

The accepted story is that the major backer was Sam Cohen, the man who founded Army Navy Stores. During the Second World War, Rea was a staff announcer at George Chandler's CJOR and one of bis promotions was asking listeners to send in 10-cent donations to buy cigarettes for Canadian troops overseas. The Army Navy matched all donations and it was that involvement that popularized the store with average-income buyers. In gratitude, Cohen readily agreed to help Rea get his own station started. By 1954 CKNW was thriving beyond Rea's dreams.

Hal Davis was the pro-, gram manager and he still recalls it vividly, the fire that broke out at 10 o'clock on the morning of Mother's Day. Davis, living close to the station, arrived soon after the firemen to find smoke pouring out of the building. Rea arrived several minutes later, scanned the situation and saw that it was in doubt. He grabbed Davis by the arm and dragged him to the door and into the billowing smoke. As Davis groped his way up the smoke-filled stairway, he was guided by Rea's urgent voice, crying, "Get the accounts And they did.

The building was gutted, equipment was damaged, the record and transcription library was ruined. But by hauliig out that filing cabinet containing the names of advertising clients who owed them, Rea and Davis saved the station's life. That was by no means the hairiest day in Davis's long career with 'NW. No sir. That was the end of Hal Davis's worst day in radio.

Now that's a horror story. Sleepy guards wake to charges PAVIA, Italy (AP) Two policemen who fell asleep while guarding the residence of Interior Minister Virginio Rognoni have been charged with negligence. Police said a passing patrol discovered Giuseppe Dori, 23, and Vincenzo Di Leo, 24, sleeping in their car while they were supposed to be alert for terrorists. Novelist dies HELSINKI (AP) Finnish novelist Mika Waltari, author of the best seller The Egyptian, has died in Helsinki after a long illness, his publisher announced Monday. He was 70.

The Egyptian, his most successful novel, was published in 1949, translated into several languages and made into a successful Hollywood movie. quence involving Eggar. Again, there is no dramatic impact to any of this, only a sense of disgust that a supposedly serious actress would wallow in such a manner. What is next for Ms. Eggar? Nude wrestling? A starring role in Bride of the Burro? As for Reed, he has seldom been seen in a more bad-tempered part.

"I'll get my agent for this," he seems to be saying. "I used to be star. Doesn't anybody remember Women in Love? What am I doing in this piece of David Cronenberg, however, hat no reason to be upset The Brood, which cost $1.3 million (thanx and a tip of the hat to the Canada Film Development Corp), grossed $685,000 after only 10 days in just two cities, Toronto and Chicago. The inevitable success of The Brood probably means Cronenberg will have no trouble getting enough money to make another of these little "art" films. comes a movie that says even that isn't safe.

Unfortunately Canadian writerdirector David Cronenberg, the man who gave us Rabid, doesn't have the stuff to bring it off. Reed's method is never examined, nor is his purpose really explained. And the fuzziness reaches preposterous proportions when we meet patient Samantha Eggar, whose pent-up hates have been literally detatched from her body to live a life of their own. Art Hindle, as Eggar's husband, Is supposed to make all this hang together with his struggle to free his wife from Reed's care, but he has neither the presence nor the lines to do so. Besides, any potential for real drama is deflected by a series of senseless, though not particularly frightening murders.

Several of the scenes in the movie are simply loathsome, with the top nod going to a "childbirth" se Do not go see The Brood if you want to be grossed out either. Save that for Dawn of the Dead, if it ever arrives, or the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, if it ever comes back. The only reason you should go see The Brood is if you want to be depressed about the state of filmmaking in Canada, or if you want to be just plain depressed. Here is the idea behind The Brood. What if all this probing of the psyche that's going on these days really unlocked the forces within us? Oliver Reed plays a shrink who has done it: He "heals" by actually drawing out the poisons of the mind through the flesh.

And of course, he should never have tampered with nature. So far so good. You go to all these horror films which freak you out about sharks, and demons and aliens, and then you want to go to your psychiatrist and calm down. So along It is not that the Canadian-made film is particularly gory, or horrific, or unspeakable in it's assumptions. It is just that it is mean and foul in spirit and witless in execution.

The people who made The Brood do not like people. They do not even appear to like themselves. Ttey just like money. And with The Brood, which opened Friday at the prestigious Surrey Drive-in they seem to have found a way of making some for themselves. I hope they don't take your money.

Do not go to see The Brood if you like being scared, and enjoy the thrill of a really fine horror film. There are plenty of alternative choices if that is what you seek. Go see Alien, which is devilishly good, or Phantasm, which is a playful little beast of a movie. ALL ABOUT THE TOWN Jack McPartlin is working the Red Barrel Room with both elbows heavily bandaged and therein hangs a tale. He booked off for a few days of vacation and took his kids to the Okanagan.

At an amusement park just outside Penticton, he talked the kids into going down one of those super-slides, where you sit on a square of old blanket. McPartlin's blanket slipped away halfway down and to keep himself from rocketing off the edge, he braked with his elbows, rub BOYD SEED Now that the Courier has gone from a weekly, to a twice-weekly, to a daily, a twice-weekly again and now to pffft, it is appropriate to reflect on Webster's definition of the word Courier: "One that carries messages, news or information either with urgent haste or in accordance with a regular, 1 1 ijThe Arts Club Theatre presents' NATURAL HAIR IN 8 WEEKS A NORTHWEST INTERNATIONAL HORSE Pacific locahonal Institute SHOW THURS. SEPT. 27 Canada's leading innovator in hair replacement can give you a full head of natural hair that is part of you 24 hours a day no matter what your activity. Regardless of the extent of your hair loss, Paragon Plus can offer you undetectable, permanent hair.

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