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The Brussels Post, 1955-01-19, Page 6Different Sort Of "Classified Ad" Why George qobel Makes Folks laugh G PARTY APRONS of nylon sheer are making fashion news. Most sophisticated pre often black like the one at left which features pockets twinkling with star-shaped pieces of mirror. White nylon sheer at right's embroidered with a huge black and gold colored bumble bee, Both are as washable and sturdy as their kitchen counterparts. The casual reader was letting his eye rove over the classified ads a few days ago. "I am not responsible for any debts and obligations of my wife, . ." read lie mechanically, and Yawned. The same old Prelude to divorce. 1\1.9! He suddenly sat up and read the words again: "I am. rea- ponaible for all debts and obli- gations of my wife, . . ." his eye skipped over the unfamiliar words, "and am more than happy to be the provider for a woman who . . . has made the past 1 years of loving kindness the nicest years of my life." Why not? Aren't the great majority of men grateful for their wives and happy with them? Does a man have to sue his wife, or leave her, or hit her with a hammer to make news? Isn't the fact of three stable marriages out, of four are of sufficient importance to make page one? That's what Philip Lucido got to thinking as his 21st wedding anniversary approached. So he marched down to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ad counter and in- serted this unusual declaration —the first of its kind, says that paper, in 75 years, The American male is a •shy animal who covers up his bash- ful ego with a show of brusque- ness. "Meet the boss," says the 200-pounder, introducing his minute mate. (He really stands in awe of her cleverness and jumps at her command.) "My ball and, chain," says the domin- ating go-getter of his better half. (He knows he'd be utterly lost without her.) We don't know a thing about Mr. Lucido. Judging from his name, lie is of Latin extraction, a strain a bit less inhibited than the Edwins, the Particks, and the Duncans. Whatever his line- age, he has said what a good 50 million coy American males would like to say. (But would cheerfully take a beating first.) — From The Christian. Science Monitor, Japan Land Of Queer Religions A ohceentpired) --',Floeal 'leis of Hawaii inspired the designer of these chalk-white porcelain-and- rhinestone costume jewelry pieces. Mountings are made of gold-tinted metal. • But he is not likely to go far- ther and dispense with live 'audiences. He feels more secure with an audience than he does without one. He says he enjoys the show much more than the , rehearsals. This might be partly because he is a "quick study' when it comes to learning lines and besides, his style of deliv- ery giVes him a little extra time to think ahead. But he actually doesn't believe his 'particular kind of fun could be filmed. He can't understand how se-come- dian can "time anything" unless people ,out in front interrupt him •with all those lovely laughs. He seldom interrupts himself in such fashion. I asked'him if he made'a point to smile at least once on each• show. "No, I don't laugh," he mused, "I only laugh when something funny happens. "You know, when it's some- thing" he coks his eyebrows — "something altogether un- foreseen!" On one of his shows it was announced that he was actually going to play his guitar -- and sing. "I know what you're think- ing," he said as he prepared' to Him up to the announcement. thing" — he cocks his eyebrows "You're thinking. 'That clown isn't really going to sing — he's just joking,' Well, you Should know by this time there's one thing we don't do on this show, We don't joke." Over in japan, land of the rising sun, religion has run riot. Since 1889 the Japanese people have enjoyed liberty of religious worship. Shintoism, Buddhism and Christianity are recognised officially, but under Japan's post- war constitution any commun- ity can obtain recognition as a religious body. This has resulted in, the reg- istration of many sects of dif- ferent religious persuations. No fewer than 120 new denomina- tions are reported to have been registered in the last few years, The strange thing about the average, modern Japanese is that he belongs to several reli- , gions at the same time! His ar- gument is that if he belonged to only one religion, he might find, when he died, that all the rival deities were ranged against hina so he plays for safety .by becotn-' ing a worshipper of as many as he can. • One creed call itself "The Re- ligion of CoMplete Freedom." It teaches •that its adherents may do •absolutely anything they wish according to impulse `or plan. Another, "The Religion of Electricity," holds that every- thing in life and the universe is electrical, and has as its god the famous. inventor, Thomat A. Edison. A temple has been erected in his honour, ' and the faithful pray to him there daily. SNAKE-EATER Water snakes arc often charg- ed with holding down fish popu-, laticei by eating small fish of Many In at least one case, hoWever, the Wain has turned. Barney Wanie of the Wisconsin' COti, terVatiOn Department thinks that ,trout may also be a factor in holding down the water' snake 'population. In eeatialiiihe a nine inch break trout taken from the ecan River in Wie- eehein, Warne foUnd 11 small *titer snakes in its tstornadhl In feet, there well only One shiner and a night crawler in addition. to the snake making there the thief Iood lei' this Pettlett= trijutt feel guilty, or even despoedent "I don't think every little problem you get comes to some kind of conclusion," he says in explanation of the way his sketches don't either. "After you've had a big talk with the boss about, something or other, why, you have to tell it to your wife, sure — but you do it in some way that makes you feel bettei'. You *don't just come home and announce "Well I lost!'" To Hollywood publicists and columnists banqueting in down- town Los Angeles, he gave a 'title of " thurrib for self-respect. "I play the guitar, 'you know, I taught myself to play it.. Of course I. don't play very good. That's because I'm not a very good teacher. . . But I've got a brother who can't play it at all!" There is no evidence what- ever that Mr. Gebel thinks about his comedy in any very philosophical manner, He is the first to brush aside analytical interlopers. His way is just to grope around till he finds some- thing that sounds funny. It works — as attested by the millions of people who have been telling each other about,, him since Oct. 2, It works, as he is at pains to point out, very largely because he has been ab- sorbing the axioms and prac- tices of show business ever since. he was a teen-ager. He was first "discovered" as a boy musician when he was singing in an Episcopal Church choir on WLS, Chicago, Radio station executives invited him to join the weekly 'National Barn Dance." lie learned to play the, igniter and became "Little Georgie," working with Pat Buttram, the master of Cere- monies, who later left to become 'the cemtade-in-arms of a cow- boy on the program named Gene Autry. Those eight years, and the years he ,hung around his father's grocery store in ChiCago; and (for all anybody kneivs) the years he spent dreaming about being a profes- sional baseball player — what a short shortstop he would have made! — were all solid prepara- tion for his postwar "discovery" by- David O'Malley, 'a" Chicago agent, arid the eight years of night club, hotel, and conven- tion engagements that followed, Mr. Kanter, too, has had solid preparation for his writing arid - directing jobs. -He started out as a cartoonist, but jokes were better than his, drawings, and he found himself ghost- writing for another fellow who Was supposed to be ghost-writ- ing a comic stripe Determined to emerge froth this double clOak of obscurity he went to work for' Jack Oakie, followed this with a series of dramatic radio scripts, did one show for Joe Penner, kept "Helisapoppin" topical for Olaen and Johnson, arid then joined. Goodinah Ace in writing Danny Kayo's radio material. Lately he has written radio scripts for Amos 're Andy and tinge droShyr TV 'shows for Ed Wynn, and films for Martin and Lewis.. The' star of the George Gabel the* is fully aware that he needs writers, This is one clown who llaS no allusions about Man- nerisms substituting for inater-- lel. knows' he has taken leave of the'easier days *hen le* routines were enough When hie fade Wag I :s lc/thine. Weeks cf voracious half hours lie ahead, Waiting to Ceti- Shine his best gags. Central Heating For Jasper ',Bears Who said beats are dumb? Eight of Jasper's fanneuS'bleek bears have moved in on the Canadian Netionel' Railways stores department here; and. it looks like there's nothing the railway can do about it The' bears have taken up 'win., ter quartere Wider. a platform btulding.CNR einplOyeee;°ptizz- eled by the bear's choice; warily investigated and found therea, son: A covered, steam pipe en- ters* the Lttliditig Uhdek the plat-`' form, The bears lotind that by removing the Insulation from a 'small" section Of it they lied COSY winter liorne, So far the Weather. in Jaspet has not been very Old, and the bears ,have been. editing out 'ev- ery afternoon ,foe ten minutes to get a feW Whiffs Of :the hi, .vigokating air, then returning to' 'their' '.ateatitAiedied den, The game Warden for Jasper' National Park has Veen &Ina stilted about evicting the "giieStsfr 'hilt advised against it.. "Beers you know, 'become quite vicious, diving the ,hiber, flatten season" he said, "They leave Of their own accord in the Spring." weeks ago, for instance, when we were supposed to run head- en. int() a page in the script Where it aaid, 'We've gone out to lunch — signed, Your writ-ers, the Bront4 sisters,'" ,At this point Mr. Gobel was supposed to exclaim, with as' deeply pained a look as he could muste r: "That's Charlotte's work! Emily wenld never have done that!" This literary allusion got such a howl from the studio audience that he surrendered forthwith to any and all — well, almost all — literary or historical non- sequiturs. "We try to keep peo- ple as confused as poSsible," he adds hopefully. So there (as he says) you are: confusion, incongruity and sur- prise — actual or verbal. A com- bination, if you will, of common, down-to-earth grumbling with unexpected take-offs into the wild blue yonder — a kind of high-flown simplicity which looks, as really difficult trapeze stunts often do, ridiculously easy. These,plus a relaxed Mid- western twang in the voice, an almost-frozen face which only rarely breaks into a smile, and an over-all innocent air of amazement — these are what Americans have been discover- ing, writes Richard Dyer Mc- Cann, Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor. Have Americans also been discovering themselves? Mn Kanter, for his part, is willing to think so. He is will- ing to pry a little deeper into the reasons why the technique brings laughs. He hazards the guess that this new comedy star represents simply "a middle- class man who is aware of the upper classes but , is perfectly content to be middle-class." If the man's appeal is a broad as this implies, then it may be only a matter of time before Gobel goes global. Neither the' middle class itself nor its liking for drawling cowboy humor has ever been restricted to the con- tinental limits of the United States. Certainly the Gobel appeal is not merely a result of his lowly 5-foot, 5-inch stature. Nor does it come from the „fact that he sometimes wanders off leaving sentences hanging in mid air. His drawl reminds us of Will Rogers. His verbal facility is worthy of Robert. Benchley. But he is above all, in the manner of Charlie Chaplin, a little man who is often at a loss but never quite defeated. He must cope with a spouse of bewildering moods (she is even played by a different act- ress every week), a car that "just sits there and sulks," a "silent butler" that squeaks, and many other trials and tribula- tions familiar to the average. American, and about which he can roar with laughter when they happen to some one else. But he never allows himself to be cowed by it all. He demon- strates his superiority to his own inferiority by a mildtbei of the head and a devastating joke,' calmly spoken, at the expense of anybody who happens to be around, including himself. Admittedly a man who is "al- ways an hour late Or a dollar ehort," he is full of the vague anxieties of our time, but he doesn't see any special need to America's newest Indoor sport on Saturday evenings is trying to guess why George Gobel makes so many different kinds of people laugh. Now the $yl. vania award committee has ad- ded urgency to the mystery by dubbing him the year's best TV comedian. NBC's master of glum tern- foolery has been trying to figure it out himself. He hasn't been trying very bard, because when you come right down to it, he'd rather have people stay cOntnsed about the whole thing. But he's an even tempered, obliging fellow, this man from Chicago, and he has been hold- ing more or less monosyllabic conversations with scores of writers and columnists. Most Of the interviewers have asked him, straight out, why he thinks he's so funny. And then they ask that other question: "How does it feel to be suddenly famous?" "Well, it's kind of tough," he'll say, and then lapse into silence. Or he may brighten up and add, "It's nice to be working steady." As he closes his half-hour "nonformat" program, he is like- ly to remark, with a placid air, "This is Lonesome George," and then go into his closing line. Why, you may ask, does he choose to lie known as Lone- some George? "Because it's incongruous," he will reply flatly, looking, up at you with that guileless stare which isn't totally expression- less but is certainly a long way from being revealing. "You see," he shrugs almost noticeably, "in the hillbilly game, especially when you play a guitar, you have to have some kind of a tag to sign off with. Nobody just says his name right out and then goes away that'd be too simple. You have to be Cowboy Jack or Red Sam or something. So one night I happened to say I was Lonesome George. And soembody laughed. So there I was — stuck with it," Comedy, for George "Gobel is like that — a process of discov- ery. He was surprised when of- ficers' club audiencei in Fred- rick, Okla. (where he spent most of the war glumly instruct- ing B-26 pilots), laughed and laughed at his simplest stories. He was glad to find, after the war, that he could make "a lot more money in a lot less hours" If he gave up the idea of pilot- ing civilian airplanes and nego- tiated instead the barrel rolls and tail spins of the night club circuit: "I'm a pretty lazy guy, you know." He was solidly pleased when his TV guest appearances and his summer work on NBC's "Saturday Night Revue" were to be followed by a weekly show this fall. He sighed with relief when George Rosenberg brought him a veteran radio and screen writer, Hal Kanter, to head the writer's staff. "Everything seemed to be just eight about this man," he nods solemnly. "I have lots of con- fidence in' him now, and in the others, Jack Douglas, James' Al- lardice and. Harry Winkler. No, I don't contribute very much in the weekly script conference. It just goes along fine. The things I do suggest usually come out all different anyhow. "For a while, there, I thought maybe they were gettin' a lit- tle highfalutin. That time a few BIGHT UNSEENe-Sketthing Francois while he is blind, faded. task .16P PrenCh artist Denis Olivier: While. On, a painting four in Ncirth:AfriCa, he dicetuted several studies Of On WOinde such at 'thee ohei Seen' above his eater. When .11xhibited in they prOVecl to :bear a Marked' reterriblante le the pretty singer, whOrri he had never seen before the paint, Ines Were' Mad& Cream shorteping thoroughly. Add sugar. Cream until light and fluffy. Stir in egg and vanil- la. Beat until smooth, Dissolve soda in applesauce. Sift together flour, apices, and salt, Add to batter alternately with applesauce. Peer batter into 'two greased 13 1/2 x4V2e21/2 loaf pans. Decorate the top with a row of walnut haleee. Bake in mod- orate (350°) oven for 50 to 60 minutes. * RUTTIER, SPONGE CAKE 4 eggs, separated 2 c. sugar 1 tblsp. vanilla c. sifted cake flour 2 tsp. baking powder his tele salt I c. milk 2 tblsp. butter Beat egg whites until stiff. Add egg yolk to whites, one at a time, beating continuously, Add sugar gradually, beating continuously; add vanilla. Sift. dry ingredients; add to egg mixture. Stir until flour is absorbed. Heat milk to boiling point; add butter. Add milk and butter mixture all at once to batter; continue mixing until well balanced. Pour into 9x12-inch cake pan. Bake in moderate' (350°) oven 40 minutes. Frost with Caramel Icing. * * * DEVIL'S FOOD CAKE 1/2 c. butter or shortening 11,e sugar 3 eggs, separated 4 tblsp. cocoa 134 tsp. soda 1 e. milk 2 c. flour, sifted 14 tsp, salt 1 tblsp. vinegar Cream shortening thoroughly. Add sugar and cream mixture. Add egg yolks and cocoa. Beat Dissolve soda in milk. Sift flour and salt together. Alternately add flour and milk to batter. Beat egg whites until stiff; fold into batter. Stir in vinegar last.. Pour into two 8-inch greased cake pans. Bake in moderate (350°) oven 30 minutes., Frost with Seven Minute or Mocha Butter Icing. Hqw minister and his wife turned their retirement into profit for themselves and their community is the tale told by Ralph E. Helens in an article, titled "The Story of 65,000 Cakes" appearing in a recentt• issue of The Farm Journal (Philadelphia), * * * prIetssi011 startedl „ye.of during the m de; doctor advised me to quit the ministry and get back to the country. So my wife and r made a down payment on a 5-acre ranch in Lane County, Oregon, and put- all our spare money in- to renovating the old house. When we moved in, our assets totaled $25 in cash, 500 baby chicks, and a pure-bred Jersey cow and calf. It was soon evi- dent that we'd have to support the Chickens and cow; there weren't enough of them to sup- port us. So, one morning, Mrs. Rolens announced that she was going to bake cakes and sell them at the Producers' Market in nearby Eugene. She's always been a top-notch cake baker. By Christ- mas time of the same year, she w sales job I'd taken on, to help her. as so busy that I quit the Our first two years were real- ly rugged, We were at it fronr early morning until late at night, making cakes and pies, and delicatessen items. But the cake business outgrew the rest; and by 1942 we were turning out just cakes.— average, 4,000 a Lyeaasi. t" count shows that, so f;r, we've totaled 65,000 cakes -- 8 miles of them, end'to end: or a pile 4 miles high! Some of our best sellers are our Butter Sponge, Devil's Food, and Applesauce cake — you'll find the recipes here. We keep the quality high by using only the best ingredients. Our cake business has given us a good living, let us save to- ward our retirement, and has made -it possible for us to con- tribute regularly toward the new chapel and Sunday School in our community. That's where our tithes and offerings go. Mrs. Rolens. and I feel that the money and time we've given to the Sunday School is among the best investments we ever made. Since we moved here, we've expanded our orginal 5 acres to 20. We rent out all but one acre, our, garden. When Farm Jour- nal asked • us about our cake business, I was glad to put our story on paper, in hopes that it would show others that "retire- tmioe:t" can bring- profits,' new in- terests, and very real satisfac- .. * * APPLESAUCE CAKE 14 C. shortening c. sugar ” 1 egg 1 tblsp. vanilla 1 tsp. soda 1 c. applesauce 2 ,c. sifted cake flotir laa,tep„'.cloves 34 tsp. allspice 'tsp: nutmeg 1 lep.,cinnamon SALLY'S SALLIES "You sold me this for a parrot but It's Just a grouchy old crab!' ltowt 1 ' • `'BR Nr'::"Ibi S THE .NAMY—Th'61,tie oval. ednd ne* Research taleblatoe. -(top); recently' built fora tii; US. Navy's Bureau of ordnance by International BOsine.ts mattones Corp.; Is the lastest electronic 'aohipUtee in the avdrld, Known OS the NORC, 'if con add, subtract and multiply numbers as fast as it can -read thern—at the rate of a Million digits a seOcinct, One of the jObt, the -NORC will de, to speed the NeiVy'al. weapons prodealei Will be perfbrming the billions of mathernatidial operations necessary to' determine .the gee arid shape of the 'ale cavity' that ;farina Ciedretict an Objett thrOUgh water Fai• excimple,HCOrifrot of rtiissile 1, Shown hi the tIrdwirag, Wotild 160' because its' shape and' speed 'eeezild tovIty—so large that' rubber surfatts do not latach the Water4 No,1 treatteS"citriialler the stearire' ealealge the wafer; and! Oriel' Ciatiirced course to thetarget it -insured.