The King of Coin --16-year-old Bruce MceConachy of

West Vancouver has stacked and anatched his way
Into the Guinness Book of World Records by balancing
178 colns on the edge of a standing allver dollar and by
catching 120 quarters flipped trom the back of his
forearm. Bruce, shown bere with 140 coins balanced

on the silver dollar, (10 more than the previous

record), in an effort Angust 21, at the Pacific National
Exhibition, managed to balance 170 colns August 24
just three hours after cracking the former snatching

record by 23 colns.

COMEDY:

A funny

TORONTO <«CP) —
Professional funny men
know the difference between
a comic and a comedian.

A comie is a:buffoon who
says funny things A
comedian is an actor who
says things funny.

Milton Berle, Red Buttons
and Lou Jacobi .-. three sea-
soned funny men who got
thelr start as stand-up
comics — now profess to be
primarily character actors,

The trio are in Toronto co-
starring in Off Your Rocker,
a $3-million comedy about
the hijinks of residents of a
home for the elderly. The
Yanadianowned Hal Roach
Studios International is
shooting the film.

In thelr dressing rooms
recently, the funny men took
off their clown masks and
talked about the joys and
tribulations of making
people laugh.

Berle said, “I know it

sounds hokey but really,
there's no business tike it.

“Gob knows, it’s more fun
than selling felt hats.”
,Berlewona speclal Emmy
Award on Aug. 9 for being
the original Mr. Television.
It came 66 years after the
boy from the Bronx became
a child actor in the Perils of
Pauline movie serials.

“It’s a very tough business
and people have the nuttiest
ideas about it,’ said the 71-
year-old former
vaudevillian. “They think
it’s all yuks and boffs and
laughs, that I get up in the
middle of the night to en-
tertain my wite with Jokes.

“They don’t realize the
years of discipline and
training it takes. My
childhood ended at five. I
was pushed into the business
by my very determined
mother, who makes Gypsy
Rose Lee’s stage mom seem
like Mary Poppins.”

Grants cause of
lack of quality

WINNIPEG (CP) —
Veteran actor Paxton
Whitehead says the problem
with Canads Council grants
to support live theatre is an
emphasis on quantity in-
stead of quality

Whitehead, former artistic
director of the Shaw Festival
at Niagara-on-the Lake, sald
that when theatre groups
began popping up in towns
acroas Canada, the emphasis
on quantity put ‘'the kiboah”’
on improvements in quailty.

“] just question the value
of the quantitative approach
to giving grants,’ he said in
an interview in Winnipeg,
where he is to appear in Tom
Stoppard’s: play Travesties,
opening Oct. 12.

“My quarrel didn’t have to
do with the over-all amount
of support, which is not too
bad. I disagreed with the
distribution of funds and the
priorities in distribution.”

Whitehead alsa criticized
fundl licy for penalizing
theatres that do well at the
box efflee —a problem at the
Shaw Festival.

In 1976, he said, the Shaw

played to  85-per-cent
capacity. The Canada
Council took a look at the
figures and decided the
festival was doing too well to
merit an increase in its
grant.

While with the Shaw
Festival, devoted to staging
Shaw plays “and other
classics, Whitehead seldom
clashed with advocates of
Canadian content in the
theatre,

But he questions the merit
of such arguments.

“The primary respon-
sibility of Canadian threatre
is to provide good, live
theatre for people, most of
whom don’t have the money
tofly to New York or London
to see a wide variety of
theatre,

If everyone could do that,
fine, Canadian theatres
could just do Canadian

plays.

“But the Manitoba
Theatre Centre, (MTC) for
example, is here to play to
Winnipegers and its mission
is to produce world theatre
at a price they can afford.

ey the ae

usiness

Berle said butterflies still
roam his stomach in the
hours before a performance

. and he sweats so badly he is

férced to make a complete
change of clothes aftet each
act. :

Through it all, He never
underestimates the’value of
stockpiling jokes. He has
compiled a cross-index file of
more than six million jokes
and he generously shares
them with any young co-
median who asks to copy
them at Berle’s Hollywood
office.

The comedian also has
reaped the financial benefits
of his trade. Berle is a
millionaire and he continues
to collect $125,000 a year
from his long-term NBCTV
contract which runs to 1981.

And thoughts of retirement
are still far away.

“] live to work. If I jay off
for two weeks without an
audience, I curl up and die.”

That desire to work also
has a hold on Red Buttons
who, at 60, has experienced
the best and worst of a
comedian's career,

“There's no joy like it
when you're riding a vehicle
that's a big hit. But, boy,
when you hit rock bottom, do
you feel sorry for yourself."

Buttons was born Agron
Chwatt, the son of a Polish
immigrant hat blocker in the
lower east-side — af
Manhattan.

“} don’t pretend ta be a
Charles Chaplin,” said
Buttons, who had his own
television show In the mid-
5a. “But from the age of two
J was jumping on the table
and singing songs to cheer up
my family.

“T became a pro en-
tertainer as a kid, singing for
nickels and dimes in saloons,
to help get my folka off relief
in the Depression and myself
out of the ghetto.”

The entertainer became
what he calla ‘ta batter from
four sides of the plate.”

“You've gol to be realilent
in this business. I've done
everything except work in a
circus. [ move from farce to
tragedy and back again to
comedy, Everything from
being a paratrooper stuck on
a German church steeple in
The Longest Day to esoteric
stuff with George C. Scatt in
Movie, Movie.”

Buttons says road work

keeps him away from his
third wife Alicia and their
two children.

A lonely life, he says, but it

does have compensations. «

“When you get inside a
character and touch people,
hear an audience Jaugh or
cry, you get a spiritual lift
that's indescribable.”” :

And laughs are what
comedian Lou Jacobi is
after.

The 64-year-old, Toronto-
born comedian remembers
when he was paid nothing for
the privilege of acting at the
city’s Old Theatre of Action
and then managed to scratch
together $75 a week as a
Yiddish dialect storyteller at
bar mitzvahs and stags.

At 66, Jacobi has some
wellknown credits behind
him, like the role of bistro-
owner opposite Shirley
Maclaine in Irma La Douce

and Wolsky, ‘Alan. Arkin’s”
impresario in The Magician ’

of Laiblin. ..

“J've been blessed’ with

sparkly eyeg,."a portly

stomach and’ the’ innocent:

face of a friendly fella.’*” -~
Jacobi said that in high
school the principal would

threaten him with a pointer:

but then take a icok at hia

face and collapse into’

laughter.

“In the theatre It given:

me instant identification..
People say, ‘He reminds me.
of funny Uncle Max or my
brother-inlaw, Joe' and.
they're ready to relate to
me."

Jacobi won slar-billing on
Broadway in Neil Simon's
Come Blow Your Horn as
well as Woody Allen’s Don’t
Drink the Water.

“The nicest compliment I
ever got came from Neil
Simon when I played the
blustering father in Come
Blow Your Horn.

"He stood at the back of
the theatre at its opening in
Philadelphia and remarked
to my wife Ruth, ‘You know,
iwrote the father a3 a villain
but Lou plays him with such
warmth and humanity, he
turns out to be lovable.”

Jacobi saya the clue to
being a successful comedian
is to think funny.

"It's a God-given gift and
it can’t be taught. [t’s an
attitude, a way of looking at
life through slightly off-
centre lenses.”

T=

was
tity

FOR NE

- HOT OFF

THE

PRESS!

n
puke

or

‘Get it all ...

TERRACE-KITIMAT

in the

daily hera

News of your community...your country...domestic
and foreign affairs. Everybody from the housewife
to the tycoon has found the pages of their newspaper
affecting their daily lives. Reports on shifts and trends
in the business and financial world. Money saving
advertisements covering every aspect of our daily
needs. Classified sections that find you employment,
a home, an automobile or sell anything you wish.
Entertainment in special features, comics, and sport
pages that enlighten a dull day. News as it happens,
firsthand in your community, province, nation, or
global affairs. Your newspaper is your best source
of information.

call 635-6357

daily herald |

Thee

oe

Mies ND oe

ah,

eae ree an ee 2k ee OR aE hae ep

er cat

eaters oe TOLLE et as Serre rer rete eee rer ee. teen

SY errr EERE)

ere)

2 We ae ee ERE

oe ewate

a