Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1950-07-13, Page 3They Tried To Shoot Albert Chevalier With a comical little )tat set on the hack of his tread, wearing Iota. striped trousers, wooden shoes, blue shirt and huge white gloves, a small boy stepped on to the small stage of a cafe in a working-class sub. ;orb of 1'aris and began to sing, Staring at the ceiling and bawl. ing at the top of his voice, the diminutive figure shouted his way through two verses and choruses of a popular ditty. Little Maurice Chevalier, twelve- year -old son of a drunken house painter, had started his stage career. But his first attempt as a come - diet) was not wholly satisfactory, The hysterical shrieks and guffaws from the Saturday night tiudience of working people were induced not by the skill of the large -headed and small -bodied urchin, but by the fact that throughout the song he had consistently shrieked out the words in a voice that threatened to crack at any moment—three keys higher than the piano accompani- ment! Only one person who was pre- sent on that night in 1900 could have foreseen, even dimly, that this child, with no musical train- ing, would one day have not only Paris, but London, New York and Hollywood at his feet, And that one person was —Maurice. Tried Many Trades As he says in his autobiography, "The ivfan in the Straw Hat" he was never meant for the stage. He was expected, as the ninth child of a Poor family, to learn a trade. There nos no artistic precedent in the family. And since only three of ten children born to his mother had survived there were few to bring in money to the household. Maurice tried trade after trade. He was apprenticed in turn to 15 engraver, carpenter, electrician, doll painter; he tried his hand as clerk to a paint merchant, and he worked a machine snaking drawing pins, But his mind was on none of those jobs, He wanted to be a singer. Theexperienceat the cafe did not daunt the child Chevalier. He knew the laughter of the audience was not kind laughter, but he left the building more than ever determined to be a singer. As he puts it in his book; "At least I had _made a start and the hardest part was over. From tomorrow on I just had to sing better," And he did. At fourteen he was sole sup- porter of his mother. His father had deserted the family and his two brothers had married. After various successes and failures in provincial shows. Maurice got his first engagement on the Paris Boulevard at the Petit Casino— and failed. A summer of poverty followed as work eluded him. Then fortune smiled again with a six -months' contract for nine francs a day at the "I'arisiana" Music Hall. And so to the Folies Bergere—and a criticism from the critic of 'Le Figaro' that did a great deal to change Maurice Che- valier's style. The vulgarity that had succeeded so well elsewhere had to be cut out. Laughs would, in future, have to be born of skill and subtlety. Freed Ten Prisoners Between the two world wars Chevalier reached world fame. Then came 1940, when France was over- run by the enemy, Much has been said about Maurice Chevalier's part in the years of occupation, In his book he tells the story of his re- peated refusal to entertain German audiences and of the one slip he made that nearly cost him his life at the hands of the Maquis. Maurice agreed to perform once at Altera Grabow, where he had been a prisoner in World War I. In return ten prisoners from his cwn birthplace, 1lfenilmontent, were to be restored to their families. After the performance he returned to Cannes, where be was living. A German "Promise" Then the blow fell 'Despite a Promise from the Germans that no publicity would be given to the performance, the newspapers pub- lished long articles on his visit to Alten Grabow, They implied that Chevalier had visited many pri- son camps and made a tour of the German cities as well. A London paper stated he was pro -Nazi and had sung everywhere in Germany except in the prison camps. Years passed, during which Che- valier consistently refused to per- form anywhere. Then another blow fell, In February, 1944, London radio included In name in a list of French collaborators! Though Chat.,p Milker—Grand champion milker Frederick Phelps, age 13, presented a "Key to .Health" to Wanda M'.atuszczuk, queen of the Dairvlancl Festival. Phelps also provided the queen, and •her attendants with the milk they are drinking, He milked almost 19 pounds of it in three minutes, one of the leaders of the resistance ' movement got a message through to the broadcaster denying it, and the name was omitted from the lists after that ,the mischief had been done, Some time after the landing at Arramancltes a man and woman rushed into the post office where Chevalier was listening to the radio. "Maurice! Mauricei Don't go back to your home. The Maquis are looking for you—to shoot you)" The London broadcast! And in Cannes very few knew the music - hall star intimately, He was some- thing of a stranger—a refugee from Paris. Maurice fled on foot to Cedouin, four or five miles away, where friends bid hint for several weeks. Then the Germans burned a whole village nearby and the Swiss, Lon- don and Paris radio announced that Maurice Chevalier had been exe- cuted at the town hall. To add to the confusion, the German radio confirmed his death, but stated that he had been killed by French patriots because he had sung to ' German audiences and to prisoners in Germany, Death Warrant Out One day three armed men drove up to the house in Cedouin. Maurice was arrested and taken to Peri- gucux for questioning by a young Maquis fanatic known as "Captain Double Metre." It was abvious that given his way "Double Metre" would have executed Maurice there and then. "Two months ago," lie raved at Chevalier, "we would have had the pleasure of exposing you our- selves. We had orders for traitors like you who have been condemned by the court of Algiers. You know, don't you, that you have been con- demned to death? But unfortun- ately we are no longer allowed to execute the- death warrant without a superior decision from Paris. The interview ended with Maur- ice signing a statement covering Inc alleged collaboration with the enemy, IIe was free so far as "Double Metre" was concerned, un- less Paris reconfirmed the death sentence. That confirmation never came. Gradually, the cloud lifted. Maur- ice Chevalier returned to the Paris he loved. At fifty-seven he went hack to work harder than ever— back to the footlights and his straw bat. SALLYS" SALLIES 'So you got the answer to that $64 question!" Ship Stabilizer Engineers are developing a sta- bilizer which will take the roll out of rotting seas, It's an old idea. Sir fi'ienry Bessemer invented such a stabilizer in the last century. The present invention's _ purpose is to provide a steady platform for naval weapons and aircraft carrier land- ing, It may prove to be a boon on passenger vessels as a preventive of seasickness. The theory of the stabilizer was developed more than a decade ago by Dr. Nicholas Minorsky, Experi- ments made with a model named the U,S.S, Minorsky and built at the New York Naval Shipyard in 1938, gave such good results that Navy engineers decided to build a device which is now being tested on the minesweeper. U.S.S. Pere- grine off the coast of Virginia. Two large tanks are installed on opposite sides of the ship. The tanks are partially filled with water, and the bottoms are connected across the ship by a duct. The instant the ship begins to roll a sensitive instrument called an angular accelerometer, flashes a signal which immediately starts pumps that force water through the transfer duct to the tank on the side where the roll started. By shifting water front one tank to the other, Navy engineers hope to reduce roll- ing at sea by as much as 80 per cent. In recent experiments it has been found that the cross duct of the stabilizer should be placed above a ship's center of gravity. When this is done, the inertia of the moving water in the duct aids stabilization. BREAD TESTER Chemists have devised a machine which measures the freshness of bread by squeezing it, a familiar practice of housewives, George F. Garnatz, director of the Kroger Food Foundation, recently described such a machine before the American Chemical Society. A disc is con- nected with a platform by a vertical shaft. A slice of bread is mounted under the disc. Into a flask on the platform, mercury runs at a standard rate. The increasing weight of mer- cury progressively compresses the bread until the standard compres- sion is reached, Then an electrically operated signal notifies the operator that the flow of mercury is to be stopped. The weight of the flask and mercury is a measure of the freshness or staleness of the bread, because fresh bread compresses un- der a lesser weight than stale bread. Said one electron to another; "I don't know you from atom." New Answers To Old Riddles About The Planet Mars Because it is relatively near, Mare has attracted more attention than any other planet ever since the tele- scope was first turned upon it, le it alive in the sense that there are intelligent being oa it? Iso the re- gular appearance and disappearance of white caps at the poles indicate that snow falls there in winter and melts in the spring? Are dark re- gions vegetation? The questions were discussed for the tttlt time by Dr, Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, at a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Rack in 1877, Schiaparelli, a dis- tinguished Italian astronomer, made the first accurate map of Mars. In the course of Isis survey he discov- ered curious straight lines (actually arcs of great circles) which Ise called "canali." The English equivalent is "channels," but someone passed on the translation "canals„” with all that it implies. Thus arose a con- troversy ou the nature of the canals, which has not yet been settled. Lowell's Mars The late Percival Lowell, who founded the observatory at Flag- staff, Arizona, went much farther than Schiaparelli. His maps of Mars have never been surpassed for de- tail and for accuracy. He saw not only all that Schiaparelli saw but more, IIe was certain that the Polar caps were covered with hoarfrost cr snow, that intelligent beings had sing the canals for the express pur- pose of bringing the water from the melting polar caps to temperate and equatorial regions that could bring forth vegetation if irrigated. The planet certainly turns green, the characteristic color of vegeta- tion, as summer advances and the arid Martian soil is presumably irri- gated by canal water, according to Lowell; it also turns red as winter approaches and the canals dry up, red being the color of dying vege- tation. Along the canals there are also spots which Lowell called ''oases" and which he conceived to be the sites of great settlements. As a class, astronomers rejected Lowell's reasoning. The canals were optical illusions to many; the polar caps might be solid carbon dioxide as well as hoarfrost or snow. Be- sides, there was little if any oxygen on Mars, so that animal life like that of the earth was impossible. Yet there is no doubt that Lowell knew more about Mars than any astronomer of his day and that he trade it necessary to revise old not- ions. "Seas" Show Vegetation In the first place, the "seas," the name given to certain dusky mark- ings, were found at Flagstaff to be a mass of intricate detail quite out of keeping with water surfaces. Canals, for example, crossed the seas. Vari- ations in the color of the seas oc- curred synchronously with changes in the Martian seasons and justified the inference that they were vege- tation. The low oxygen content in rials atmosphere of Mars has been in- geuiously accounted for by Prof. Henry Norris Russell. Ile has sug- gested that the roelcs of Idars aro ted because the iron in theta has oxidized, which means that oxygen has been taken from the ek, never tc be returned. Some day the whole platlet will appear a changeless rusty PCU, Dr. Tombaugh holds that the red color of Mars is the natural color of its igneous'ttocles and not the result of oxidization of iron. To Ism the "oases" of Lowell may be craters left by the Impact of col- liding asteroids. The great dust clouds which have ben observed indicate that there are winds. Hence there must lie wind erosion, which would level off the high walls of the craters. Most astronomers now concede that the dark color that conies and goes seasonally on Mars is evidence of some low form of vegetation. Like others before him, Dr. Tombaugh suggests that lichens constitute this vegetation. But intelligent life on A1;:rsf Dr. Tombaugh spurns the thought, He is willing to accept the canals as seal, but he will not accept theist as artificial engineering works. Many of the canals radiate front oases, To Dr, Tombaugh the radii are just cracks in the surface caused by the impact of asteroids, Dr. Lowell, however, insisted that tate radii are geometrically straight line;, where- as natural cracks, whether they oc- cur in a sheet of glass or hi the earth's crust, are never geometri- cally straight. Some of these controversial ques- tions will possibly be settled with the aid of the 200 -inch telescope on Palomar Mountain, California, It has been proposed that motion pic- tures be made of Mars with that powerful instrument—not ordinary motion pictures, but pictures taken at intervals frequent enough to ob- tain a series of several hundred.. Iit such a series there would be a few "frames" in which details would be so clear that there could be no mistake about them. As it is, the canals have never been photo- graphed. A trained observer has to draw what he thinks he saw in a clear fleeting second. The at- n,osphere of the earth is constantly "boiling" as heat radiates from the surface, and it is this boiling that snakes it impossible to obtain a steady view of any detail of.Mars. —Waldemar Itaempffert in The New York Times. NO SALE A lady went to buy a drinking trough for her dog. The shopkeep- er asked her if she would like one with the inscription, "For the Dog." "It isn't necessary," she replied. "My husband never drinks water, and the dog can't read." Canadian Scientists Discover New Supply Source For "Wonder Drugg', The first reported extraction of the wonder drug ACTH from cattle glands was announced recently by a Canadian company, Frank \V. Horner Limited, Montreal. Company spokesmen said that the success of the process after many months investigation means that the world supply of ACTH could be greatly increased by large scale extraction from beef pituitaries. Until now, the very small quanti- ties of this agent available to meet the large demands of Canadian medical research could be obtained only from hog pituitaries in the United States. Previous opinion held that cattle pituitaries would not be a practical source. Despite this general impression the Horner lab- oratory showed that gland for gland the beef pituitary is just as good as the hog. ACTI3 (adrenocorticotropic hor- mone), although known to science for many years as one of the key agents in the pituitary, regarded as the master gland of the body, first carne into prominence in medi- cine just over a year ago. It had been known previouscly that it acts as a chemical messenger between the pituitary and the adren- als, two tiny hat -shaped organs above the kidneys. It stimulates these glands to secrete other hor- mones which in turn affect such bodily 'functions as carbohydrate metabolism and water balance. Through the work of such men as Montreal's renowned Dr, Hatrs Selye this pituitary -adrenal gland relationship has been established as a vital factor in the so-called "dis-. eases of adaptation" which include high blood pressure, certain kidney disorders, and arthritis. Then early last year, the Mayo Clinic revealed the spectacular effect of ACTH in arresting arth- ritis. Since then there has been a succession of medical reports on the near -miraculous action of this hormone in controlling other form- erly unresponsive human ailrltents. The material is potentially so dangerous in the wrong hands and the available supply so small, that the National Research Council keeps a strict control over its dis- tribution. Because its chief value is that of a research tool to study these various disorders, ACTH is used chiefly by medical investigators and - is not generally available as a cure for private patients. "At first," continues the Horner research director, "ACTH was con- sidered to be a protein, perhaps as complicated as -insulin, which - after almost thirty years of use still must be prepared from animal glands, But recent studies suggest that the activity of ACTH as it is isolated from the pituitary is concentrated in a small fraction of the product. And there is, therefore, the possi- bility that this simpler active portion or portions may be prepared chemically sotne day." Countless thousands of arthritis sufferers in Canada and throughout the world are hoping and praying for that day. 5 JITTER THERE, MY SHIP MODELS ALt WAS AND SHE'S A BEAUTY) NoWro sHow Ir TO sustsl WAIT'U YOu 55G t7 HONGY,..114 BET� IT WINS FIRST PRIZE IN THE MODEL SHOW, %Ts GONE! JUDY, DIDYOUTAKE ABoAT PROMM' WORKBENCH? By, Arthur Pointer 48mas NONSORCO BY PMK eQ�CD N4 BUT JITTER WENT DOWN TOWARD THE PARK WITH ONE. Dr, Leonard Mitchell (right), research director of Frank W. Horner Limited, Montreal, who recently announced the first isolation of ACTII from cattle glands, watches Dr. Lucien Delcourt, an assistant, carry out one of the many steps in the preparation of ACTH on an experimental scale in the Horner laboratories. Dr, Leonard Mittuelt (right), research director of Frank, W. Horner .Limited, Montreal, who recently annn_rtnceci the first isolation of AC".CII from cattle glands, confers with his assistant. Dr, I..ucten Delcourt.