i Top Canadian women of 1955 Marilyn Bell, Toronto’s 17-year-old swimmer, was chosen Canada’s outstanding woman for 1955 in a press poll of daily newspaper women’s editors. Miss Bell (left) also-won the honor in 1954. In a poll of dise jockeys, Gisele Mackenzie of S. Boniface, Manitoba was voted top Canadian artist of 1955. 3 i Fernandel wins wide acclaim — for performance in French film Q* the strength of one film — The Sheep Has Five Legs — Fernandel can lay claim to being the finest French com- edian yet to appear on. Canadian screens. This, despite Jacques Tati’s many attractions. Tati’s grotesqueries are often obvious and rather crude. Com- paring him with Chaplin (as some persist in doing) plates him at a great disadvantage. The . horse-faced Fernandel, on the other hand, is never obvious and always polished, even with ele- ments of farce (as well as Satire) creeping in. He links a unique personal charm with first. class acting technique. The Sheep Has Five Legs, currently in its third week at Tour of India by Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, shown here with Indian Premier Nehru, is the subject of an official Indian government film to be shown Friday, January 13, at 8:15 p.m., in Pender Auditorium by B.C. Peace Council. Other films show tour of USSR made by Nehru. the Studio, is actually -six stories fused into one, with all six principals played by Ferna- ndel ! Alex Guiness’ Kind Hearts and Coronets unavoidably comes to mind at this point, but néither film suffers by the com- parison. : The story concerns a crusty old villager who is prevailed upon to preside at a reunion of his .quintuplet sons.- As each son is located, his individual story is told. They include a beauty specialist, window clean- er, sea captain, reporter, and cure. Despite assembly line ‘pro- duction of the five sons’ stories by five writers, they hang to- gether well without the mech- anical results which might so easily have ocurred. Naturally, Fernandel dominates every scene, and that is.to the good although the supporting cast is uniformly good. : Many novel and hilarious ideas are introduced, not least of which is a sequence where a common housefly plays a Jead- ing role. The witty dialogue is unusually well conveyed through English titles. Recommended for its mature good taste and sensative humor. : N. E. STORY xt xt 5o3 There’s nothing miserable about Raising a Riot, the new British comedy in which Ken- neth More has to cope with three bouncing small children in a converted windmill with no mod. con. Everyone con- cerned works desperately hard at raising laughs. Se koe Every joke ever made about the husband blundering in the kitchen when the wife’s away is thrown in.. Puddings are burnt, sausages are eaten by the-dog, dirty plates pile up in the sink, meals are served out of tins. - The trouble is that while these jokes, neatly put across with More’s easy amiability, are good enough to help a story along, they are not good enough to serve as substitutes for a story. The introduction of an Ameri- ‘can airman’s family into the story to provide Anglo-Ameri- can humor, as here, is coming - to be a sure sign of imaginative malnutrition, The American family is pitchforked into a British comedy nowadays when the basic situation isn’t good enough to stand on its own feet. Mandy Miller, her big sister Jan, and numerous small fry provide plenty of youthful gusto and high spirits and the color is pleasant. But it’s a thin dish. THOMAS SPENCER Success not sincerity — American way of life N considering the American Way of Life it is a fact of some significance that no major American writer appears to be in favor of it. There are two. noticeable schools of novelists in this con- nection. There is the expatriate highbrow, taking his soul on a tour of the oh-so-old Europ- ean world, and the plainer, stay- at-home type, disgusted with some aspect of his not-so-new world. This disquiet. cuts through class and brow divisions. Take John P. Marquand, whose novels get Pullitzer Prizes .in the United States and are Book Society choices in Britain. No proletarian, no highbrow he, as Time magazine would say. His speciality is the sober, detailed and lovingly long- winded portraiture of the U.S. Business Man. In his latest novel, Sincerely Willis Wayde, the title, after the book has been read, takes on a masterly touch of satire. For what is “sincerity” to Willis Wayde? An engineer’s son, he is taken up by a patri- can New England family and given an executive job in their plant. ; : It is a two-way process for they need fresh blood and he has a good eye for the main chance. He sells out to a rival company and then to a bigger company yet and finishes up in the biggest company of all, a Captain of Industry. The horrible business negotia- tions in which he is involved, where self-aggrandisement is buttered with self-depreciation, are more satiric because of the being successful. quiet naturalism of the details. _ Finally, he shuts down the plant of the family who gave him his start, throwing unem- ployed the whole of the small township, a thing which he had given his solemn. promise he would not do. Yet he never re- calls the deed without saying what a warm place he has in his heart for the old plant, Sincerity here is an irrele- vance. Success is the standard. If a thing is*successful it must be right, and every decent American believes in success, doesn’t he? ; When you appreciate the phil- osophy you realise the futility . of arguing as to whether high- powered American religious preachers or. exhibitionistic crooners or illiterate lyrics are really sincere? They are busy That is the standard. ; Even Wayde’s wife, who orig- inally Was not success-minded, is eventually so overcome by his single-mindedness that she sympathises with him against people who don’t seem to under- stand him. i Eight pages from the end, Some one calls him a Uriah Heep. He doesn’t understand it. When Wayde expresses deep gratitude, avers loyalty, makes pious promises, all such pro- fessions help him a step for- ward to the success of which the next step can be taken only by denying those professions. Should he be loyal and a fail- ure, keep promises and be Pass- ed by others? That would be silly, wouldn’t it? In fact, it would be damn nearly un- American.’ _JAMES FIELDING Czerny-Stefanska to give city recital ape Czerny-Stefanska, Pol- and’s foremost pianist, whose Canadian tour opens Jan- uary 9 with a radio concert over CBC in Montreal, will give a recital in Vancouver January 14 at the Art Gallery Audi- torium. Mme. Czerny-Stefanska comes to Canada after a most success- ful tour of the United States. She is the first musician from Pol- and to tour North America in more than eight years. A descendant of the famous piano virtuoso, pedagogue and composer, Karl Czerny, student of Beethoven and teacher of Franz Liszt, Mme. Czerny- Stefanska won first prize at the Fourth International Chopin Competition held in Warsaw in 1949, Since then she has toured all parts of Poland, and more than 20 countries of West and East Europe, Latin America, and both the Far and Near East. Just prior to her American debut she gave a series of recitals in Switzerland. The Canadian tour of Mme. Czerny-Stefanska will include recitals in Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto. She is CZERNY-STEFANSKA | represented in Canada by Jerome Concerts and Artists Ltd. “Not since Paderewski has a pianist of such magnificent artistry come out of Poland,” write Marie Hicks Davidson in the San Francisco Call-Bulletin last month of Mme Czerny- Stefanska’s recital at Veterans’ Auditorium, San Francisco, on December 12. “Her hands are magic. Her keyboard technique is marvellous, swift, sure.” PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 6, 1956 — PAGE 8