UA 1 TH

0 TUTS Sacer

: Vancouver's Theatre Under The Stars opened its fourteenth an-
nual season this week with “Kiss Me Kate,” directed by Dorothy

Davies.

_ Other productions this season will be “Rose Marie,” “The
Desert Song,” “Song of Norway” and “Carousel.”

Among the coun-

try’s top dancers to be featured in TUTS productions, including
many members of the National Ballet Company and Royal Winnipeg
Ballet, are (above) Peggy-Rae Norman and Marina Katronis,

CURRENT FILMS

Hollywood mixes syrup,
pixie dust in Peter Pan

IT IS NOT necessary to have
any special reverence for Barrie‘s
middle-class whimsy to find Dis-
ney’s Peter Pan. distasteful.

. For the most of the faults of
this new full-length cartoon are
the faults of all the Disney car-
toons—empty slickness, lack of
real character and an essential
vulgarity. x

This is a thoroughgo:
ericanisation of the Britis
dle-class nursery clasisc.

Tinker Bell has been tained
into a miniature dumb blonde
cutie and the mermaids, from the
tail up, seem to have strayed in
from the chorus of a Hollywood
musical.
Wendy and her mother are
idealised cardboard cut-outs.
Most of the rest are caricatures
in the familiar Disney style.

Books banned on
McCarthy's order

AS A RESULT of attacks by
Senator Joseph M. McCarthy, the
U.S. State Department has re-
moved books written by prom-
inent Americans from the shelves
of all Amerika Haus libraries in
Germany.

: Among writers whose books
-have been removed: are foreign
correspondent Walter Duranty,
Vera Micheles Dean, editor of
Foreign Policy Association Pub-
lications, mystery writer Dash-
jell Hammett, Richard E: Laut-
erbach, Edgar Snow, Theodore
White, Annales Jacoby, Lawrence
K. Rosinger, Owen Lattimore,
Howard Fast, Langston Hughes,
well known Negro poet; John
Abt and Paul B. Anderson. A ma-
jority. of the books deal with
eyewitness accounts of develop-
mentsin China and the Far East.

Foreign writers whose books
have been banned include French
novelist Jean Paul Sartre and
Russian novelist Ilya Ehren-
burg.

.

Am-
mid-

There are some genuinely amus-
ing moments, but this mixture
of pixie-dust and syrup is. far
from nourishing fare.

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Public relations man who
made vices into virtues

One of the many surviving an-
achronisms of the pre-war period
finished by the war was the
Jeeves joke.

Jeeves, you may remenes
was the smooth, resourceful gen-
tleman’s gentleman created by
P. G. Wodehouse. He and his
employer, Bertie Wooster, were
the heroes of a whole succession
of humorous novels in the twen-
ties and thirties.

The books were light. They
were funny. They were extreme-
ly easy to read.

They all deal with a world in
which work is something ex-

tremely comic and certainly not °

done by most of the characters.

The important things in life
are clothes, cuisine and the cur-
rent romance. World affairs can
be dealt with by Jeeves.

It seemed good fun at the
time. It seemed that people were
getting a good laugh at the ex-

“pense of the dim-witted aristoc- '

racy. It also seemed to many pun-
dits that the creator of Jeeves
was one of the finest flowers of
English literature.

Oxford made him an honorary
Doctor - of Literature. Hilaire
Belloc described him as “the best .
writer of’ English now alive.”

,- All that was before the war. °

Postwar readers found nothing
particularly funny in a world of
wealthy young idlers. They had
little time, either, for Jeeves’
creator. Wodehouse, caught in
France by the advancing Ger-
‘mans, had broadcast for the
Nazis and. had allowed himself
to be housed at Berlin’s. best
hotel during his internment. .

People were not amused by
Wodehouse’s attempt to laugh off
the war as some slight friction
threatening in Europe. —

Far from being immortal,
Jeeves is today a dusty reminder

“he was quick to see the cash

RUSSIAN
FILM
FESTIVAL

Mon., Tues., Wed.
- July 29, 30, July 1
5 Two pictures

of what amused the middle clas-
ses before the war.

We can see today that in
Wodehouse the wealthy idlers -
had the best possible public re-
lations man.

He took all the degenerate
qualities of the wealthy—their ‘in CHAPAYEV
idleness, their ignorance, their eee:
arrogance—and turned them into Thurs., Fri., Sat.
virtues. ° : duly 2, 3, 4

Like many of his characters,

Lubov Orlovo
in VOLGA VOLGA |

plus Boris Bobochkin

Two pictures
STONE FLOWER
in magnificent color
plus ALEXANDER NEVSKY —
Continuous showing _
1-5 p.m. 35¢ :
«= 12: noon - 1 p.m. 35c. Bo
1-5 pam. 50c _
After 5 p.m. 60c
Children 15c

AVON THEATRE.

" 142 East Hastings
TA. 2734

-value in the U.S. of his essays
in snobbery, and nearly all his
novels were published ‘first in
the Saturday Evening Post.

Today his novels, written. in
the U.S., have taken on an in-
creasingly bitter tone of com-
plaint at the difficulties and in-
conveniences of life for the
‘wealthy in Britain. |

The Penguin reprints show
that Wodehouse in his prime had
a neat turn of phrase, a mastery
of his chosen technique. But
there was no quality.in his writ-
ing which could survive the
test of war.

—PATRICK GOLDRING

Seas SS
eS
’ SCANDINAVIAN MIDSUMMER
FESTIVAL :
Swedish Park, North Vienkouves

SUNDAY, JUNE 28

Festivities start af 11 a.m.

‘Program starts at 2 p.m.

EVERYBODY WELCOME

. . . ‘
Auspices: Scandinavian Central Committee

;

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 26, 1953 — PAG