The Lexington Herald from Lexington, Kentucky • 5

SUNDAY IUNE 12 1938 Latest Books Theater Art Features Phil Cohan Makes wing Music A Fixture Diary Of French Trader Tells History Of West British General Writes Of Brutality Of Battle b- the ravages of the amallpox epidemic of 1837 to corral the rich fur business of the Upper Missouri Fort Clark one of a chain of fur trading posts along the Missouri river owned by the American Fur Company was located on the west bank of that stream about 60 miles i above the present site of Bismarck Here Francis A Chardon step- ped from the steamboat Assinni-boine June 18 1834 Five days after his arrival his diary drips with Man-dan blood and echoes the pitiless privation of the post Chardon was to know no peace but death thereafter Edited with a wealth of notes and appendices the proves one of the most vital source volumes of this particular era of American pioneer history ever uncovered Certainly there has been nothing more graphic in a long time The dank scent of wet beaver skins will stay with you long after you have turned the last page By Norman Siegel XEA Service Radio Editor NEW YORK June Jitterbugs naturally think of Benny Goodman Tommy Dorsey' Bob Crosby Bunny Beriban Duke Ellington Stuff Smith or Raymond Scott when the conversation turns to swing the that wail out the mad music these radio nights But in the background of the craze for hot licks and off-beats in popular music is a young lad by the name of Phil Cohan He has done as much to popularize swing music as any of the instrumental exponents Cohan young Columbia executive conceived and launched the Saturday Night Swing Club Program They told him it was just a passing fad and last six months when he launched the show On June 11 the program celebrates its second anniversary and still is tootin' as strong as ever Ex-Sax Tooter Cohan has been a swing fan since the days when he played saxophone in the college band at the University of Pennsylvania Cohan started out to be a business man receiving a degree from the Wharton Business School His first job was with the Paramount Long Island studios as an apprentice in the music department He organized orchestras for night club sequences in movie shorts Among the men he used in those orchestras were his own favorite swing musicians Tommy and Johnny Dorsey Benny Goodman Jackson Tea garden Gene Krupa Red Nichols Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang Phil got to know them well and they later formed the basis for his Swing Club radio guest list worth its own radio show and getting some available time on a Saturday night we had to consider these things: how to make good swing into good radio entertainment how to get the best men in the business as guest stars for little pay and how to get people who really understood and loved swing music to work on the Swtngsters Join Up found that we didn't have any trouble at all getting guest Phil went on of the boys were tickled to death to come They said they felt at home working on the Swing In the two years of its existence the program has offered swing music on everything from a to the enlarged 15-piece Original Dixieland Jazz Band The young man who led the band on the first program now has a band of his own Bunny Berrigan a boy from Wisconsin who plays a very hot trumpet Maxine Sullivan the dusky-voiced is another alumna of the program Swing Probably the outstanding Swing Club alumni are the six men who make up the Raymond Scott Quintet IN SHORT Plans are under way to shift the Marion Talley concert program from its present Sunday afternoon spot to a Wednesday night hour later this month Phillips Lord is readying a new thriller for the networks in the fall It will be based on the interesting files of of Lou Holtz the ace dialectician will be back on the Rudy Vallee Hour for some story telling June 16 Lupe Velez flaming screen star Good Acting Is Plentiful During Season i rj When Cohan left Paramount it was to go to work for the Columbia Broadcasting System There he met a young announcer by the name of Phil Douglas Douglas was picked to swing show when he started it a post he recently Telinquished to Ted Husing for the summer were three chief difficulties about getting the Swing Show 1 Lupe Velez above will bob up on tbo air Phil told us convincing people that swing music was By Richard Walts Jr There has been no performance during the last season that has dominated the theater as completely as did Maurice Evan's King Richard II ttie year before but good acting has been gratifyingly plentiful There have been some notably bad portrayals particularly in the revivals of Shakespeare and Ibsen but onthe whole when plays have failed it has been the fault of the playwright rather than of the actor Although the constant forays that Hollywood has conducted against the unprotected Broadway stage have made casting difficult it is certainly true that there has been no decline in the quality of the acting during recent seasons I do not say this as dogmatically as I say most things because it is so frequently impressed upon me that acting is some sort of mystic rite that should be discussed only amid breathless references to the word Since an actor's technique is to my mind a tort of private affair of his dealing with the means by which he achieves the qualities of a characterization that some author has written for him I am not nearly as much interested in it as I am in that of the author and I am concerned chiefly with the player's effects rather than the method that he employs to secure them If it is force of personality or pleasantness of feature rather than a knowledge of timing and spacing that secures the proper effects I am just as satisifed Because of my concern with results rather than causes in acting I find myself accused of being what the boys around the literary clubs call sucker for a pretty face" which is their cultured manner of suggesting that I am as susceptible as any tired business man to good looks in an actress It is only fair for me to confess that I have frequently written in such a way as to justify this belief Nor do I wish to destroy any such idea I would merely like to enlarge upon it My contention is not that good looks are necessary either to actresses or to good acting If I did not mind being less chivalrous than even a dramatic critic should be I might chakdox-s journal at tort CLARK By Annie Heloise AbeL SftUi Dakota Historical Society It e-'-rz across the west from invent orth to Boise the fur trad fortune in skins pushing back a frontier rt record is din now but 100 relis after these buckskinned pion- guided their boats up the mud-eVlIi ssouri from SL Louis another crj-ter has teen uncovered in the iJj tics cf the United States War rartment to shed new light on the t- 'trade of the west "Xsnie Eeloise Abel reconstructs story in an extremely rare book Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark Here is the almost in-reib'e day-by-day dairy of a trader whs defied warring yt-Va-K Sioux Gros Ventres and Young People Tell Of Lives By Diaries the BOOK OF HUGH AND NANCY By Eric Milner-White and Eleanor Shipley Duckett The Mac-Billu Company New York S3 of Hugh and Nancy" a C-ory of a short period in the Ivss cf two English children brother and sister They are the victims cf a disheartening tragedy while at-tt ziz private schools in England Ysncy is sent to America to live v-th an aunt and Hugh leaves Cam-trde to attend "common Sifsre the brother and sister part t-ey dec: he to keep diaries of their Lvm to be read to each other at f-t future cates The diaries form fce coiner: of the bock The (Lffivulties both children en-eocnfer ir adjusting themselves to ur environments both at home and school are recounted by them in caii Not exceptional children trey do no: tell an exceptional story For the most part the book is drab izi uninteresting It has no plot no nmsuce and seemingly no purpose is simply and straightforwardly vntfen and has a redeeming feature in that seems to typify the average a-d grl entering new schools lid sew homes Some chlnren might enjoy the tsrrative cf Hugh and Nancy but limits CErtainly would find it dull Fsrhaps the authors had juvenile inter i I- mind when they wrote the bok and then forgot to mention fce fact in the foreword WALLACE Irvin Anthony Writes Story Of Mutinies XEYOLT AT SEA By Irvin Anthony Putnam's Sons S3 From the trre when the first Fn-eni'le-i tracing vessel went Fopirg the Mediterranean the sa'cr ha- had a hard life Every often he has risen in mutiny faihst his 1' thereby contributing to the race's annals some of their tost bloody and exciting chapters Irvin Artnony reviews the long Lstury cf mutiny in a new book at It is an engrossing riry Mutiny has teen fomented on by d-sgruntled officers Mr Anthony cites the historic mutinies t'tuch Magellan and Drake had to and the teapot tempest created It a midshipman on the brig Somers At times it has a blind protest against hard -v-g and hard driving as in the i-e which led the famous clipper f--'? captain Waterman irto the hands cf the San Francisco vi-gasc committee At times an entire fleet has mu-L-ed The British fleet at Spithead Ja utterly paralyzed during the -pcleonic wars by a mutiny remarkably like a modern sitdown r-ke The great German mutiny Jhich helped to end the World War a matter cf recent memory mutinies however have and pointless They have feu-ei good deal of blood to be ard have led to innumerable ir-ings Mr Anthony has dug up remarkably gory examples i some cf chapters are as a-'c as melodramatic as any-fc-irg yea vould care to read All ail an extremely readable blot mention names which would suggest that I didn't always demand beauty in my favorite actresses My point is merely that no actress has ever yet been harmed by the fact that she was lovely to look at and that since the creation of beauty is one of the functions of dxamatic art physical beauty in the stage's women- should not be overlooked My crusade has been against those who regard acting as such a mystic rite that it can be learned only after decades of application and is a gift bestowed only upon the mature and the uncomely The fact that one of the most effective performances of the season was given by a 7-year-old boy named Peter Holden in Borrowed might be thought' to dispose of the legend that acting skill comes only after years of study and application But being a reasonably fair controversialist I will admit that any such contention is a bit extreme The number of fine portrayals given by children on the stage and screen certainly does go to suggest that there is something immature about this business of painting your face and pretending that yo'U are somebody else But to say that there is a touch of infantilism about the desire to become an actor and the capacity to be one is not to sneer at the profession as much as to explain certain aspects of acting The ability to mimic a complete lack of self-consciousness and a malleability of personality these are qualities of utmost importance in acting and they are qualities that a child possesses to a great degree Thus it is to be a competent player you must re-capture many of the traits of your childhood The child has the head start toward providing a good performance and the adult actor has to work hard to catch up to him That however does not mean that the more amiable qualities of childhood are the only ones that an actor must possess Until a 7-year-old child can play Richard II as well as Maurice Evans no one can say that acting is merely a juvenile business That it smacks of juvenility is true but British officer on that same day Did he like to do these things? Not in the least Then why did he do them? Because he had to because in war there are times when men can be steeled to hold fast only bv the knowledge that they will be shot if they fail It isn't but it is an inescaoable part of war Gen Crozier is equally frank in other respects The average British officer from 1915 on he says was all-round and the higher his rank the greater idiot he usually was His remarks on the blundering incompetence as he calls it of the British high command are enough to make Earl Haig turn over In his grave But the general doesn't stop there If war is so ugly and ghasUy ho asks why not keep out of war? Why not stop all this frantic preparing for the next war and try instead to remove the causes that are bringing that war on? Why not indeed? Story Of Flea Seems Entirely Too Human FREDDY FRIBBS (FLEA) By John Goodwin McFarlane Warde McFarlane 3151 It It difficult to remember while reading this intriguing story that Freddy is a flea Freddy seems entirely too human he has all the characteristics of little boys of today He wanted to join the Navy he did join a circus he was sent by his family as goodwill messenger to his old Uncle Augustus (who happened to be very very rich) His parents brothers and sisters wanted severally to visit relatives: to fish in Mountain Lake to visit New York to get a at the Seashore" to visit the Wild West to take violin lessons to go boating on the River Rhine and to collect butterflies in Brazil So you can see at once why Ft eddy's classification as a flea is difficult to keep in mind joining the circus was entirely inadvertant His rich uncle sealed him up with a rare stamp which he was mailing to hia fellow-philatelist Prof Havemeyer a busy man who had a famous flea circus and a famous stamp collection The Tiny Tent concealed zebra fleas Jo-Jo the caterpillar-faced flea Mira the tight-rope artist a flea chariot race and a flea ballet a lovely girl flea in a gold bathing suiti who jumped into a blue and red striped tank of water a bearded-lady flea and a fat-lady flea It was Tiny! Minute! MicroscopicI But the most marvelous goings-on of the entire performance was a Swan Lake dance with 11 ballet fleas under a pale blue light Freddy who joined the ballet the first day wore bows of silver ribbon on his head and dancing shoes on all four of his feet and both forelegs The story of how Freddy became a hero and a rich flea all at the same time is the highlight of the story which grown-ups and children should read with no further delay The illustrations by Richard Jones are both clever and amusing ALICE HOWARD Titled Salesman Traveling once from Austria to Germany at the height of the inflationary period Prince Loewen-stein was able to pay for the entire journey with the equivalent of $5 I arrived at he relates in his autobiography "Conquest of the Past" (Houghton Mifflin Company) discovered that I had miscalculated and had nothing left for my ticket to Klagenfurt All I had was several hundred cigarettes that I had bought in Munich So I unpacked my handbag put the cigarettes in it and began to sell them on the station platforms and in the restaurant I must have caught the intonation of the other cigarette boys properly for nobody was astonished and in a short time I had collected enough money for the fare" 50000 Answers Roger Whitman has Used his answers to more than 50000 questions addressed to his column in the New York Sun as a basis for a new revised and enlarged edition of his Aid for Ailing whieh is being published by Whittlesey House Books Recently Added To Our Rental Library SLEEP IN PEACE ij PhjrUI BcatUj TOWERS IN THE MIST ky Eliiftkctk Gall I MY SON MY SON! by Hewir Syrtat MINGLED TAEN by WUlla lira Elhridft MAN'S COl'RAGE by Jawyh Vasal THE MORTAL STORM by PhytUi Battama THESE BARS OP FLESH by SlrlbUnf SIXTEEN HANDS by Haaar Cray STRANGERS by Claeda Hasfhlaa PATHERLAND FAREWELL! by Gait Laruaa ANOTHER OPHELIA by Edala Lanhaai THE YEARLING by Marjarfa Rlaaaa Raallnf MORRIS BOOK SHOP UNION STATION VIADUCT I THE MEN I KILLED By Brig Gen Frank Percy Crozler Doubleday Doran and Company $3 It often that a general lets his hair down- and tells all Brig Gen Frank Percy Crozier of the British army does it in his new book Men -I and the result is something to keep you awake nights What General Crozier does is simply to take the veil off of ordinary combat procedure and let you see it in all its unadorned rawness War is a grim and pitiless business Gen Crozier shows why that must be so and how it works out So he tells about the things that must be done to maintain discipline in action tells of officers shooting thqir own men to avert a panic tells how he himself ordered machine guns turned on the retreating Portuguese troops during the German break-through of April 1918 tells indeed how he shot an unnerved Cities Termed De-Civilizing Influence THE CULTURE OF CITIES Lewis uniford Harcourt Brace and Company $5 By The modern big city has defeated its own ends Rising by the cult of sheer bigness around which are entwined innumerable tentacles of the profit motive it has grown so un-wieldly helpless and congested that it has developed the seeds of its own doom So says Lewis Mumford in Culture of a penetrating and acutely disturbing book The metropolis says Mr Mum-ford is no longer what a city is primarily supposed to be: a civilizing agent in which the national and racial heritage of culture and tradition is nurtured and enlarged On the contrary it has become what he calls a de-civilizing agent It destroys the very values which it was created to foster It must have because it is keyed to a set of values which make slums inevitable It must have an ever-increasing traffic congestion because any remedy for congestion simply paves the way for added congestion in the future And it cannot in a profit economy con' ceivably remove its disabilities for they are integral parts of large-scale capitalism So runs Mr indictment The remedy as he sees it is of industry of finance of human population with the development of semi-autonomous regions in which a number of small cities would fulfill the functions now reserved for' a few large ones With much in this book you may disagree profoundly You can hardly read it however without being forced to do some serious thinking about modern society and its effect upon the lives of the men who live in it It is by all odds one of the most stimulating books of the year Murder Yarn Has Setting In Africa MURDER ON SAFARI By Elspeth Huxley Harper and Brothers S3 As if detectives didn't have enough to cope with in their efforts to run down criminals amid ordinary everyday civilized influences Elspeth Huxley takes the sleuth in her new mystery yarn on into the wild and wooly jungle hunting country of East Africa There matters are considerably complicated by the constant presence of such distracting items as roaring lions trumpeting elephants belligerent buffaloes and pugnacious rhinos Gumshoe work in such a setting could hardly be simple even if there weren't such additional complicating influences as vultures which pick murder victims down to the skeleton state before the bodies have a chance to cool out Circumstances being as they are Vachell who in the Western frontier section is the representative of famed Criminal Investigation Department does a very creditable piece of work when he receives a hurry call from out on the Kiboko river location of Lord high-toned safari Out there someone has put the snatch on a whole sackful of jewelry value $30000 which the domineering Lady Bara-dale had insisted upon lugging into the interior probably for the purpose of dazzling the appreciative eyes of wild beasts Two murders are committed before the annoyed Vachell has his investigation well under way In the party are some of England's toniest and most unpleasant peers 'several white hunters some nondescript hirelings and a whole gob of native guides etc so it's a real job for the lone sleuth to cull over the lot and pick out the might-bes and the might -not-be Before the finish you may have a good suspicion as to the guilty party but you never could figure out the why and how The story is a good mystery tale and in addition a lively adventure yarn You are not apt to run across a more readable crime story thi summer SHROPSHIRE Edgar Hoover's best seller in Hiding" has been pur-j chased by Paramount Pictures as screen vehicle for Lloyd Nolan series of three films will be based! on the adventures of the G-men Lewinsohn Writes Life Of Prospector BARNEY BARXATO By Richard Lewinsohn Dutton and Company S3 Farm children playing on the banks of the Orange river first discovered diamonds in South Africa in 1867 and their find set the continent on fire By 1870 the strike had lured thousands to the scorching frontier land and $2000000 in diamonds had been recovered But the saga had scarcely begun One of the great dramas of ell time lay dead ahead That story Richard Lewinsohn recreates around perhaps the most striking figure of the whole South African adventure Here is an important biography I For Barhato who rose from the London ghetto to become in 10 years the richest diamond merchant in all Africa personifies the whole history of South Africa from the 70's to the turn of the century In a large measure he was responsible together with men like the Builder" Cecil Rhodes for the direction of colonial policy and his amazing business deals affected markets and finance around the world Through alternate boom and depression both at Kimberly and later at Johannesburg Barnato plunged on taking incalculable risks time land again for And at length he aligned with the indomitable Rhodes It was an astonishing combination the one scholarly visionary the other rugged practical impulsive In the end the alliance so ensnarled Barnato in politics that his business slipped he lost his mind temporarily jumped overboard from a London-bound vessel But at 44 he had lived the adventure of a thousand lifetimes Television Hailed Fhi! Cohan above has to success will bob up on the air with Al-Jol-son Co on June 14 Thurman Arnold author of the popular of will be heard over Columbia on June 15 when he addresses the Advertising Federation of America convention in Detroit Ruby Keeler Anne Shirley Fay Bain ter and James Ellison preview the movie version of on the June 17 Hollywood Hotel bill that is only one characteristic of it While indulging in these somewhat casual notes on the matter of thespianism I would beg leave to reply to some recent comments of my illustrious colleague Mr John Anderson of New York Jour nal and American" It was Mr Anderson's fear that the dramatic critics were not as searching and severe in their contemplations of acting as they should be and that they frequently fell for performances that were of the scenery-chewing sort presumably intended for yokels He sighted Joseph Buloff late of "The Man of as a performer who had received good notices from the reviewers despite the embarrassingly Westpalian qualities of his work As one of the professional observers who gave his approval to Mr Buloffs portrayal I must enter a rebuttal Man From was a bad play that required a lot of enlivening from its leading actor and Mr Buloff scenting what was needed tossed caution away and gave a one-man sideshow all over the place It happened however to be a good sideshow that supplied the only qualities of liveliness the unfortunate work possessed Had it been a good play the performance might have spoiled it But since it was a weak and collapsible vehicle Mr Buloff propped it up in just the way that it demanded and so his work supplied the only virtue of the shew It seems to me that to give the sort of performance that a play needs to bolster it up is one of the requisites of good acting For example Miss Ethel Barrymore has an actress' field day all over the place in doing almost everything but swing from the chandeliers to attract your attention and hold your interest Now if were a distinguished work of art that might be the wrong way to play the role of the 101-year-old grandmother of the drama It happens however that it is a feeble and bloodless play that requires heroic measures to give it life and excitement Miss Barrymore took advantage of the requirements added the necessary qualities of showmanship and vitality even at the cost of being accused of overacting and thereupon offered one of the most effective portrayals of the season in addition to supplying her play with a pulmotor Vehicles as 1 understand it are usually intended to carry some one When some one carries a vehicle that is news or in the case of a play like it is acting 1 wouldn't want to see either Miss Barrymore or Mr Buloff carry on so in a work that I admired but I am sure that they are both wise enough to know when extreme measures are required on the stage and when a bit of restraint should be used That's why 1 thought they were grand in their respective shows Praised By Einstein Prof Albert Einstein has sent the following letter to Random House publisher of have read Symphony with the greatest interest Whoever would see the true face of Germany must read this book It deals with the fate of a non-Jewish cultured husband and wife and Nazi Germany whoever reads it will see clearly just what fascism means! I want to create as much attention as possible for this was written by Eva Lips wife of a noted German anthropologist and waa translated by Caroline Newton Dorothy Thompson wrote the introduction How To Sleep Well In September Whittlesey House will publish Can Sleep Well" by Dr Edmund Jacobson a companion book to his Must Relax" which sold 38000 copies Dr Jacobson a medical experimenter in the field of sleep and relaxation is founder and head of the Laboratory for Clinical Physiology in Chicago Snyder-Gray Case Is New Book In Series THE TRIAL OF RUTH SNYDER AND JUDD GRAY By John Kob-ler Doubleday Doran and Company IJJt Every once in a while some murder case emerges from the ordinary ruck of undistinguished homicides and takes the w-hole country by the ears For a few weeks it seems to be ail that anybody talks about and even after it fades and is forgotten people recall it now and then for some queer quirk that makes it memorable Such a murder was the famous Snyder-Gray case in New York upwards of a decade ago and it is now embalmed for a curious posterity in another of the Notable American Trials books Trial of Ruth Snyder and Judd The bocks in this series are thorough jebs and this one is no exception First comes a comprehensive review of the case from the development cf the background to the actual execution of the criminals then comes the verbatim testimony from the trial page upon page of it with nothing left out except some of the minor bits All of which you might think would make rather dreary reading 'the Snyder-Gray crime having been a pretty messy and uninspired affair But 'somehow it Isn't a bit dreary it's fascinating For the thing that sets' this case apart is precisely the fact that the principals were so very ordinary and uninspired Here were no dashing romantic criminals but two every-day people who got tangled up in something that their own wits couldn't get them out of Many a reader will finish this book with at least a hint of the but for the grace of God feeling War Against Disease Seen As Necessary THE FIGHT FOR LIFE By Paul de Kruif liarcourt Brace and Company S3 A tremendously disturbing book is Paul de Fight for exploring the ravages of syphilis tuberculosis infantile paralysis and maternal mortality in this country today Medical science has recently achieved the greatest progress since the days of Pasteur Mr de Xruif tells us Actually science is ready to wipe out certain deaths which have plagued mankind from the beginning of time These deaths are absolutely without question preventable De Kruff takes you behind the scenes of present-day research writing the brilliant story of the health-men's battle on a half-dozen fronts to save human life of such death fighters as Thomas Parran Joseph Goldberger Charles Armstrong Edward Francis Wenger and many others It is a startling drama stamping out pellagra in the Mississippi flood zone syphilis in Chicago and other big cities tuberculosis in Detroit But the play de Kruif says has hardly begun The job now is to make the fight the people's fight an incredible task in the face of a shrinking national income and universal yowls for economy Yet de Kruif argues the time has come when the fight for life must be pushed by the whole community It is not too much he avers to seek a vast national health campaign under the direction of the Public Health Service The benefits of medical research will not otherwise reach the whole people and such a state he bitterly deplores That is de Kruifs challenge It should make his book one of the most important of the year a Publishers' Boners Rejection slips from publishers have caused many ambitious authors to doubt their ability to write their first noveL In some cases these same rejection slips have been boomerangs to those publishers who have turned down manuscripts that later became best sellers Foremost examples of such an error of opinion by publishers have been Four by Vincent Blasco Ibanez: Harum" by Edward Westcott and "All Quiet on the Western by Erich Maria Remarque As Artistic Success Week's Best Sellers F-ctia -e Marjorie Kinnan The Mcrtal Phyllis Bot-fcT filing" Nevil Shute My Son My Howard Spring -The Forbidden Neil Wedding" Mignon J-erhart 1 iction T't Louis Adamic ter Carl Crow -e Evolution of A snd S- Iftfeld ne Importance of Living" Lin Kurt Schuscknigg ke Uot Powerful Man in the -ro" Giyn Roberts -1 dances Alda author of I JCn ar-d Tenors" berates Amor--rgcrs for being too lazy to r--y Hailed a an euttUnding artistic and terhniral success by theatrical and radio critics the first television broadcast of a current Broadway play took a scene from the state success and and placed it sharply limned and clearly audible on receiving screen more than half a mile from the National Broadcasting New York studio Tirtured above Is the scene in the studio as Paul MrGralh and Gertrude Lawrence who took leading parts speak their lines before the special television cameras The recording which took 23 minutes was a terrific ordeal for the stars who acted in a confined space under tho white beat of the giant lamps.