Loading...
The Seaforth News, 1959-03-19, Page 2Tricks Of The Movie Camera Donald I. Ker, a well-known hunter who has conducted safaris for filming units in East Africa, was once a lion! The script called for one charging' the cameras — a difficult shot to arrange -- so the director de- eided that a long shot of Ker springing out of a bush horizon tally into tall grass would make a good fake, Three men, placed at ten -foot Intervals in the low bush, were. ordered toshake each bush in turn to make it appear that the lion was charging through the scrub. With a' khaki jacket over his head, his arms outstretched through the sleeves, Ker dived on to cushions hidden in the grass. The "white hunter" fired. The "client," supposed to be a coward, ran off down a rocky slope, But during several rehearsals and takes Ker's limbs became bruised, the "client" sprained an ankle, the onlookers couldn't restrain their mirth at the un- realistic scene, So permission was obtained to locate a real lion and film it close up, well within the 200 yards legal limit from a vehicle. Some film companies, Ker says, in "Through Forest And Veldt" spend huge sums sending a unit out, take up to 200,000 ft. of film, then probably use only about 1,000 ft. of it. The rest of the film is made on painted screens of "Africa" in the studios, or "African" settings outside Holly- wood or in Mexico. Where stampeding zebra had to jump over rooks sheltering the heroine, the "zebras" were Mexi- can mules painted with black and white stripes and worked into a frenzied panic, Tame African elephants are rare and difficult to obtain for films, so an Indian one from zoo or circus is often used instead; but as its ears are much smaller artificial extenhions are added. Once he worked with a photog- rapher who wanted a lion kill- ing a native. They concentrated on a pride of lions which, after some weeks, became tame and accustomed to them. Then they stuffed a pair of Ker's old khaki bags and shirt full of zebra meat, to resemble a human body, and drove with it to the pride which were sitting waiting for the daily meal they had now come to ex- pect. The "native" was thrown to them from the back of the truck, and one of them pounced on it, shook it, and ran off into cover. Later, the bloodcurdling death cry of the "man" evidently strug- gling in the lion's jaws was add- ed in Hollywood. Ker once lent his second gun - bearer, a Masai, to a film com- pany which wanted him for a leading part in a picture being shot partly in Kenya. Later, he had to go to Holly- wood for six months to complete it. He then returned to Nairobi with much money, six well -cut lounge suits, two gold teeth, a command of U.S. Negro's Eng- lish, and some incredible stories of what happened there "The . hwanas made some big rubber things," he said, that looked like hippos. They were inflatedand pulled under water by wires. A canoe carrying people was pad- dled down -river, and as it floated ever the "hippos" the wires were released, they bobbed to the surface, upsetting the craft, and everyone swam to the shore in the "crocdile"-infested waters, In recent years some profes- sional photographers have made Alhns of captured animals living ISSUE 11 — 1959 in compounds surroundedby strong mesh wire camouflaged with bushes and trees to re semble the African wilds. The cameras are set up behind the wire, or even iron bars, and the "brave" photographer gets a pic- ture of the beast "ferociously charging" in answer to its name being ealledi While some faking may be ne- cessary, within reason, Ker con- siders that educational films of natural history should be free from sham. It is a pity that pro- ducers are not forced by law to declare whether their 'films are part faked or wholly genuine, and that all natural history films for the general nubile are not certified by a Board of Natural- ists and any fakes disclosed. He has seen many films of big game, tribes and African life in general so badly faked, and with such misleading narration that they give an entirely false impression, The Martin Johnson's, whom he knew well, were among the first to take excellent pictures of game iii their natural hibitat, Their first, he thinks, was the best — unfaked and genuine, with no tame or zoo animals brought into it — whereas in some later pictures captive ani- mals played -a large part. The rest of Ker's book is a vivid account of his own hunt - experiences, with intimate studies and photographs of the wild game he knows so wed. Who started This Trouser Business ? Attempts are being made by a group of social historians in France to discover the identity of the first man to wear trousers in Europe. They believe it was a French- man, but no one can 'say for cer- tain. What is certain is that it was not an Englishman. One learned professor who has done months of research into this. question has found that leg -wear of a trouser type — not trousers as we know them to -day — was introduced to Western civiliza- tion by the northern tribes who broke up the Roman Empire. Up to that time men were trouser -less. The man who went about in a short skirt and bare knees reckoned himself well dressed. Trousers were first worn in England about 160 years' ago. Those early English trousers, in- troduced by the dandies of the period, were terribly tight -- so tight that men attending social functions in them for the first time complained that they could not sit down. An unsuccessful quest was be- gun in Britain six years ago for the name of the first man to turn up his trousers permanent- ly. Sir Henry Bashford, a one- time physician to King George VI, even suggested that there should be a permanent memorial to his great feat. "No philoso- pher, hero or statesman can ever have set an example so long and so fervently followed by somany millions of men," he remarked, A man who lost his trousers flew into London Airport from Ceylon not long ago and stepped on to the windy tarmac after flying 6,000 miles in pale -blue swimming trunks, white plim- solls and a thin nylon shirt. The temperature was round about the 100 mark when he stepped aboard the 'plane in Col- ombo, so he put on the trunks for the first stage of the journey, intending to change into his trou= Sers as the weather cooled down. But when the airliner reached Rome he found he had left his trousers in his registered luggage in the freight hold underneath scores of their suitcases. There was no time to get them before the 'plane took off for London, LONG WAY ROUND — A Ted Mack contest winner, then a oafs singer, it took years in Tokyo to bring Jimmy Shigeta, canter, to a real break in U.S. movies, He was born In Honolulu and had to learn Japanese when he started his Tokyo career. Hes shown 'here :with Producer -Director Samuel Fuller and co-star Victoria Shaw. HIS ROME AWAY FROM HOME — Ricky Noel, 2, is back in the hospital for the seventh time in his short _life. The hard -luck kid, son of Mrs. William Noel of Cleveland, Ohio, tipped a pot of scalding coffee over his legs and right arm. Once he dived off his bed and cut his head; then he fell in a wash bucket and knocked out a tooth, etc., etc. His fatherfigures he's had 16 stitches taken to his head and face so far. TABLE TALKS ,I II ., 6c T e Aratkews. Stuffed peppers are good any time. If they seem expensive now, use a half a large pepper, for each serving instead 'of a whole one. STUFFED PEPPERS 6 green .peppers 1 cup ground beef (3 pound) a/4 cup whole grain corn 1 cup corn chips, crushed I/4 cup onion, -chopped 1 egg 3/s cup milk 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/s teaspoon pepper Corn chips for garnishing Remove tops and centers from peppers. Mix beef, corn, corn chips, onion, eggs, milk, and sea- sonings. Fill peppers. Arrange whole corn chips around top of peppers. Place in pan with 1 inch of water. Bake at 350 de- grees F. for 1 hour. Serves 6. * * * STUFFED SQUASH 3 acorn squash Salt, pepper 11/2 cups chopped cooked ham 1 cup chopped tart apples 2 tablespoons chopped onion 1/4 teaspoon monosodium glutamate 3/ -1 teaspoon dry mustard Cut squash in halves length- wise; remove seeds. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and mono- sodium glutamate. Place pieces, cut side down in baking pan. Bake at 425 degrees F. for 30' minutes. Remove from oven and reduce • oven temperature to 375 degrees F. Turn squash halves cut -side up. Combine remaining ingredients for filling,' adding mustard to taste. Fill cavities. Bake again for about 30 minutes. Serves 6. Note: Chicken or sausage may be substituted for the ham and chopped celery for the apple, In this case use much' less mus- tard and use a pinch of your favorite herb, or omit the mus- tard entirely and use curry powder for spicing. In his cookbook, "Curtains Up at Sardi's," 'written by the fa- mous Vincent Serif and Helen Bryson with a foreword by Vic- tor Borge, there are almost 300 recipes of dishes regularly serv- ed in the restaurants: Here, for instance, is Sardi's way of pre- paring broccoli , from the cook- book. BROCCOLI PARMESAN 1 bunch broccoli weighing about 2 pounds' 2 teaspoons salt 1 quart boiling water 3 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese Trim broccoli heads, Scrape stalks, remove -tough parts, wash carefully and drain. Wrap heads in brown or parchment paper and tie with string below head, Put into salted, rapidly boiling water and cook covered for 15 minutes. Take out and drain thoroughly, Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a frying pall. Saute cooked broccoli lightly in the pan. Cover with Parmesan cheese and dot with remaining butter. Place under broiler until light brown. Serve at once. Serves 2, STRING BEANS WITH CHEESE l4 tablespoons butter or margarine 4 tablespoons Hour $ cups . milk pound Canadian cheese, shredded Malt and pepper 3 cups hot cooked seasoned green beans 3 hard -cooked eggs, coarsely chopped rife cup chopped onion Make cream sauce with butter, flour, and milk. Add three- fourths of the cheese and stir until melted, Season. Place hot greenbeans on a platter and cover with the cheese sauce. Sprinkle with chopped egg and onion, then with remaining shredded cheese. Place under low broiler heat just long enough to melt cheese, Serves 6-8. * * * •PEANUT CREAM PIE 3'.tbsps. cornstarch 2 cups milk s/4 cup sugar 3 egg yolks,slightly beaten r/z cup peanut butter 3/2 teaspoon vanilla 1 baked pie shell Meringue: 3 egg whites 1/4 tsp. salt 8 tbsps. sugar Mix Ye cup of milk with corn- starch until. smooth. Add this to remainder of milk in, top of double boiler. Add sugar and egg yolks and mix well. Cook over bailing water until mixture be- gins to thicken. Blend in peanut butter. Cook until smooth and thick. Add vanilla. Allow to cool and then spoon into, pie shell. Beat egg whites and salt until 'frothy. Add sugar gradually, continuing to beat until stiff and, glossy. Pile meringue onto pie filling being careful to seal the meringue onto edge of crust • to prevent shrinking. Bake 1245 minutes at 350 de- grees F. 'air 4 minutes 1st 425 degrees F. Cool before serving. Serves 7-8. "Daisies", of peanut halves and chocolate bits for centers may be used as garnish, s CHAMBER MUSIC — Cleveland Orchestra's Chester • Roberts totes his sousaphone to the tune of the rock-and-roll of the New York City subway. Note "Cham- bers Sh" sign , Members of the. dignified orchestra were en route to an engagement in Carnegie Hail, ahsard a special subway train. Ticker.Tape Parade Technique Willy Brandt the Mayor of West Berlin, rode in what all the newspapers called "the tradition- al ticicer-tape parade," The hat- less smiling' Mayor stood in his, flag -decked limousine and waved to ,the lunch-hour crowds, Scraps of stock tape, floating down from the skies, came as a free gift. from Wall Street. The ticker -tape parade has become as much a part of America's cul- ture as the hot dog and the double -feature movie. Only a select few ever ride the "magic mile" ' from Bowling Green to City Hall;- the parades skirt Wall Street at its intersec- tion with Broadway. Last sum- mer, pianist Van Cliburn was ac- claimed with a tick -tape recep- tion. The honor list for previous ticker -tape parades includes the Prince of Wales, Georges . Clemenceau, Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, golf- er Ben Hogan, Gen. Dwight D, Eisenhower, Queen Marie of Ro- mania, and Gertrude Bderle, the English Channel swimmer. The New York Stock Ex- change, 'which supplies blank tape for stock tickers reports: ""We get a hurry -up call for more tape right after a big pa- rade, Most brokerage firms throw unprinted tape out the windows: It's too much trouble to save up the baskets of used tape for a parade." Long curling ribbons of ticker tape give a parade much of its festive atmosphere. For optimum results a slight breeze should be blowing. The term "ticker -tape parade," is all-inclusive for scraps of paper. Enthusiastic onlookers also tear up telephone directories (much to the dismay of the Bell System;), old bills, office station- ery, and even cardboard. Veterans of the financial dis- trict say there even is a proper way to dispense a tight roll of ticker tape: The spectator pushes the spool from the, center of the roll and holds the outer edge as the wind catches the tape. (One excited secretary, the Wall Street story goes, simply held the end of a hard tape roll and let it drop — like a rock — to the sidewalk three stories below, narrowly missing a pedestrian and causing a fresh crack in the pavement.) Exactly what is ticker tape? Its prime function, of course, is not to 'festoon parades but to provide up -to -the -second .trans- actions on rans-actions.on the stock market. "The tape itself , is three- -quarters of an inch, wide," ex- plains an official 'of the Stock Exchange. "It is 35 per cent sul- phite and 65 per cent wood pulp: the sulphite give it strength. "Below Chambers Street in -lower Manhattan all stock tick- ers use white tape, These 1,058 tickers are owned and operated by the exchange, Above Chant- hers Street there are 2,000 more tickers owned 'by Western Union and leased by the exchange; these tickers use a canary yellow tape, "Nearly 'all the. tickers in this country are located in broker- age houses. Others are in banks and newspaper offices. We often have to refuse requests for the ticicer service. We turned down a restaurant in Philadelphia and also a hotel in New Hampshire which wanted to spruce up its lobby with a stock ticker." But even the "Big Board" makes concessions with its stock tickers. Two small restaurants near the exchange buildings at 11 Wall Street are allowed tick- ers, These are Hargus and Eber- lin's, eating places patronized by Stock Exchange personnel. Evan when dallying over a ham sand- wich and apple pie, it, seems, the broker wants to know what the stook market is doing, writes V. G. Vartan in the Christian Science Monitor. Veteran New York photog- raphers say they' spot a trend to- ward less ticker tape' in the parades. "Nowadays, we've gal to look for ticker tape to frame a good picture," says one camera expert. "And, of course,. today's parades are nothing at all like ' the Lindberg pare 1e," For ticker -tape' tonnage, the frenzied welcome on Tbne 13 1927, for air hero Charles A Lindbergh takes the prize, "Lucky Lindy' motored up Broadway in a blizzard of ticker tape (the stock market was booming merrily, too, in 1927), He sat hatless on the hack of an open touring car beside Mayor James J. Walker. Four million persons lined the streets and, after the parade, the city appro- priated $16,000 to reinove the 1,800 tons of ticker tape, con- fetti, and other paper,' Broadway saw its first ticker - tape parade in 1919 when Ame- rican troops returned home from World War I. Grover Whaen, then famed as Gotham's official greeter, ' is credited with the ticker tape idea. For the Lindbergh parade, an extravaganza before the days of television, airplanes also drop- ped 50,000 flower blossoms, then spelled out in smoke the greet- ing, "Welcome Lindbergh." Aside from itsc parade poten- tial, th'e ticker tape,,can serve other uses than.' telling stock- holders what their shares are selling for. One couple, unable to ' find a baby sitter, took the' chil- dren along for a visit with the broker. While the parents talked about stocks and bonds in 'the Wall Street board room, the Youngsters found'a new toy; they played with handfuls ' of used ticker 'tape. No man goes before his time —unless the boss has' left early. Printed Pattern MORNING' WORK—Cool, crisp and fresh in the classic shirtwaist Updated in interest with a wide -away collar,' narrow waist, rippling Skirt, . An easy -to -sew fashion, made doubly simple with Talon's new, Magic Zip dress Zipper (12 inches) that's a zip to put in be- cause of the' new woven sewing guide linea ' Pripted Pattern 4750 is available in Misses' Sizes 12, 14:16,18, 20, 40, 42, To order', Bond 40 cents (stamps cannot be accepted; Use postal •note for safety) for this pattern. Please print plainly YOUR NAME, AD- DRESS, SIZE and STYLE NUMBER. Send your' order to ANNE ADAMS, Box 1, 123 Eighteenth St., New Toronto,, Ont,