CA This is LOSS Wie What CORRESPONDENT AIRS CAPSULE COMPLAINT Hollywood's half world ou You Deparjinent You Pease. ae tas A ee. ies ~ ics ane . } t; to get hep to other half GORDON THOMAS, Vancou- ver: I like the idea of the Pacific Tribune running capsule movie reviews. It has always seemed to me that the labor press was too highbrow about movies; it had to be Hamlet or Open City before you gave it a tumble. But most of us like to see a picture once or twice & month, and generally the choice is confined to Hollywood movies, so why not a guide to the best ones? As far as that goes, Holly- wood turns out some excellent movies; for example, in the past year, Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Snake Pit, Sitting Pretty, Champion, The Set-Up, Boy with Green Hair, Johnny Belinda, and Red River. You should also warn your readers against the stinkers Hollywood turns out, such as the trashy anti-Communist pic- ture, The Iron Curtain, which is still being shown at the smaller local houses, and The Red Men- ace, which should add to its box office losses in its current show- ing here. Another thing: why not con- duct a campaign to debunk some of the phoney type of Hollywood casting, and the affectations which are so patently absurd. _ that they make me want to Did you ever see a heroine eat a meal in a Hollywood movie? “Pm hungry!” she says, as the hero orders dinner. They sip cocktails. The meal comes. She puts a tiny bit of something on her fork. They talk. Neither eat. Comes a phone call. Our hero _ throws a bill at the waiter. They leave, Or take the tea-drinking scene. She pours maybe an inch of tea in a cup, sips it for half CLASSIFIED an hour. Or the scene when boy and girl meet for a midnight snack in the kitchen. She pours two ‘glasses of milk. They talk and sip, finally leave, with the milk practically untouched. Then there’s the matter of haircuts. Do characters like Or- sen Welles, Mickey Rooney, Dan- ny Kaye, James Mason and Sonny Tufts always have to look like refugees from a barbershop? And, of course, there’s always the ‘scene when the hero bounces out of bed in the morning, fresh as a daisy, and his pajamas ab- solutely beautiful, no creases or wrinkles anywhere. Then there’s the oldie where a baby is to be born in the farmhouse, and the doctor says: “Hot water—get me lots of hot water.” I'd like to see this corny line left out in at least one Hollywood shooting of the scene. LETTERS DIGEST Intimidation in Trail produces two results — A. BURTON, Trail: This is to inform you that I no longer wish to continue taking your slanderous and lying paper, which-so faithfully carries out your party’s tactics so ably and thoroughly. Your tactics of attempting to split the party I belong to is quite in keeping with your so-called and interpretation is not true Marx- ism and is not the old revolu- tionary socialism that I believe in, and though the CCF may have drifted somewhat away from that fighting kind of so- cialism there is more hope of them returning to it than the LPP can hope of attaining it. Your frequent switches are a travesty of Marxism and no- where can your party find any justification in Marxism-Lenin- ism for your tactics. So there- fore consider my _ subscription to your paper withdrawn, ef- fective immediately. No answer to this is either required or wanted so please do not waste either your own or my time by doing so. Editor’s Note: Reader Burton’s letter makes — A charge of 50 cents for each Open every day. New Modern Beauty Salon—1763 E. Hastings. tor boat for hire;-4 to 6 passen- gers; $5 by day.—FA. 7777R 4 to 6 or after 11 pm. J. Krasnikov. DR. R. L. DOUGLAS HAS OPEN- ed a new office at 9 EAST HAST- INGS STREET, cor. Carrall St. Phone TA. 5552. All old friends cordially invited to drop in for a visit. ‘ 2605 East Pender. Dance every Saturday night. Modern and Old-Time. Viking’s Orchestra. Hall is available for rent, -TAstings 3277. FOR RENT: 2 large, bright, bed- sitting rooms, furnished or un- furnished. Ideal location, North Vancouver, Phone ‘PAcific 5831 or North 628R. ATTENTION BOWLERS! The Pacific Tribune is interested in organizing a bowling team. For information please cal] MA. 5288. _ WHAT’S DOING? ‘Social — At Fishermen’s Hall, Saturday, August 13, 9 p.m. Refreshments, dancing, enter- tainment. Featuring John Goss. . Auspices Forest Products Club. . OPEN AIR DANCING AT SWE_ Saturday night. dish Park every Dancing from 9-12. Arne John- son’s Orchestra. perverted type of Marxism. That some strong accusations, but cites no instance wherein we err. We don’t even know which or what party we are “attempting to split,” but gather from Bur- ton’s blast that it is “... the CCF ... which has drifted some- what,’ and our current com- ments thereon which give him his present political cramps. We are always sorry to lose a@ reader whether he (or she) agrees with us or not, but since Marxism-Leninism is a_ science and not a Coldwellian formula for aping the Liberals, tactical “switches” are essential to the attainment of socialism. Even the CCF News of July 6 agrees with us on that score. Meanwhile, we must admit that the CM&§S will derive a great deal more pleasure from Bur- ton’s splenetic epistle than we do. ERNIE WEED, Trail: En- closed please find a money or- der for $7.70 in payment for two yearly subs and two six month subscriptions to the Pacific Tri- bune. x The workers in: this district are facing attacks organized by big business. Intimidation faces them at every turn; witness the firing of myself and three other workers by Consolidated Mining” and Smelting Company for “dar- ing” to hold opposing views to those of the management, and “daring” to express our views. In the face of this fear cam- paign by Consolidated and their prostitute press, the Trail Times, your paper is to be congratu- lated, for despite local intimida- tion, the Pacific Tribune sub- scription list in this area is growing—and will continue to grow, as more and more work- ers read the PT and get to know its fearless and true handling of . news. It is B.C.’s only genuine labor paper. Rest assured that the “press builders” jn the Trail district will never become intimidated by eompany fear campaigns and will continue to see that the Pacific Tribune gets into the hands of a wider and wider circle of workers. Keep up your good work! GUIDE TO GOOD READING | Sheean on Gandhi, © but mostly Sheean STANDING IN A New York bar frequented by newspaper men last year, a friend told me: “Sheean’s in India, contemplating his navel, studying up to be a Hindu.” Lead, Kindly Light: Gandhi House) is the book that came out the book grows out of Sheean’s guilty conscience, a guilt sense he shares with other Americans over the atomic war he sees in preparation by the present mas- ters of the !United States. Once upon a time, under the inspiration and hope the early days of the great Chinese revo- lution opened up for him, he wrote a far better book, Personal History. This one is merely an- other chapter in the long retreat in which he has been engaged ever since, In only one paragraph does he have courage to admit the identity of the new warmakers, And even then he only points them out inferentially, by draw- ing attention once again to Len- in’s statement. that differing sys- tems of economy can live _to- gether at peace in the world. He might have quoted a living leader to better effect, since Stalin has reiterated the same truism to interviewers. Since millions of people in North America feel the same fears for the future as does Sheean, his book may become popular. But reading it will be merely begging the question, dodging the decisions that must be made in our time. The real reason for Sheean’s book does not emerge until page 231, where he says: “I had always had my doubts about dialectical materialism be- cause it was too machine-like, too dogmatic. I now know that it was simply wrong.” And with that statement, a man who had never been a Marxist or known how to use the dia- lectical method, explains what he was searching for in the per- son. of Gandhi. But what he found was not in Gandhi, but in Sheean. In fact, it had been there all along. * * * SO INTENT is Sheean on him- self that he- has made . certain this mixture of low mysticism, fourth and fifth-hand recitals of the Sanskrit epics, and smudged glosses of great Indian thought, will never be referred to by any- one writing about Gandhi, or India. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Sheean, who can eas- ily disavow something he never was to become lost in the misty mazes of religion that was once used to enslave a continent. He contributes nothing to an under- standing of Gandhi's truly great role as a leader of a colonial people. More than anyone else of his time, Gandhi awakened | and the Key to Peace (Random of that contemplation. Primarily, the disarmed peoples of India to the possibilities inherent in | mass action. In the days of his true great- ness, Gandhi could seize upon an issue that was a daily misery to his fellow Indians, and so dramatize it by personal action that millions irresistibly followed — him. Yet Gandhi’s. vision of In- dia was the static, unchanging India which Karl Marx, with his great insight, predicted could no longer endure, the India that vanished forever with the com- ing of the first railroads and the creation of a working class that is about to take the same path followed by the Chinese people. But our “Marxist” Sheean pays no attention to such analysis in preparing his rejection of Marx- ism. He is too eager to wrap himself in Gandhian mystery. Even among Indian leaders, un- fortunately, there are similar cases. Nehru, Indian aspirant to the shabby. Chinese mantle of Chiang Kai-shek, is one such, as he revealed in his book, The Discovery of India. Relating there the long history of Indian though, Nehru says that India had once had a phil- \osophy of materialism. “It led to contempt for priests and princes,” Nehru says, “but un- fortunately all'these books have been lost.’ Anyone but a Social Democrat would readily perceive that if no trace Of these books remains, it is because they were deliberately destroyed. ‘Nor does Sheean, in his des- perate search for personal props, give any hint of the uses. to which Gandhi permitted his greatness to be put in the last days of his life. Mme. Sarojni Naidu’s witty way of putting it was: ; “If people only knew what it cost to keep Gandhi in poverty!” Even by 1946 the times had out-' stripped Gandhi, the leader of bourgeois nationalism. The Ma- hatma himself was one of the “most effective factors in extin- guishing the sparks provided by the revolt of the Royal Indian Naval cadets. Had that been per- mitted to develop, India could have taken a giant stride into the future, without being cut into three parts, as it is now. Some Indian Marxist, of peneé- tration and scholarliness, will some day write the biography of Gandhi and his time that is not even hinted at in Sheean’s book. — RALPH IZARD. CURRENT MOVIES — _ ** Acceptable **4 Song Is Born: music there’s Benny Goodman, strong, Lionel Hampton, more topnotchers. Gunga Din. ~ Danny Kaye's okay *** *Highly Recommended Now playing the smaller shows, this - Danny Kaye movie would rate three stars except for its worn- to-death plot. Last time the story popped up was in 1941, when Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck teamed up in Ball of Fire. Danny is the shy prof this time, Virginia Mayo the torch’ singer who pulls him out of the library and into the nightclubs. For Mel Powell, Charlie Barnet and a few ***Champion, Johnny Belinda. « * *Sorrowful Jones, The Red Shoes, Rope, The Search, The Stratton Story. ; *Johnny Stool Pigeon, The Lost Tribe, Northwest Stampede, * * * Recommended *Not Acceptable Tommy Dorsey, Louis Arm- The Naked City, The 7 egies. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 12, 1949—PAGE 10 & o ‘