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The Brussels Post, 1962-11-03, Page 6Conquered Cannibals With An. Unibre i l q Working now in tile open, they Ore painting what they call 'ICUS- Mic art," '{iii. consist.; of oblongs, rectangles, jaeged. :thalu,s "which do not „exist e'n earth, but only in space arid on other planets," one painter explained. Haw far the .paria's cultural v,!atelli-gs will permit this trend to go remains to be, seen; hut nother painter :per:utiles, "Gattarin in the long run may du more for Soviet art. than Pi.. c a SF() " UrICI obi; edly the greatest poet hus been on Ma younger t. aeration, but a nat'.onal feeling of pride nvAie3 it .easier for many Russians to teeept the sacrifices they are making to stay ahead in apace race. As one thoughtful architect strict: "Of course, the sputniks haven't affected rny p ...rnal life directly, nor that of my family. We have been living in this -.;ime room for nine years. Mill share a bath with few, other • ,families, My wlte waits rut line for, niattt, apples, a id melons; Bctt, lac added with a ealek gesture, ,:athis is . not invortapt. 'What is mportant, is that ve • have bean able to'sendtour 411 ""around the .earth, • Anti: tp(ty have conic back. This is a- great ae- ' Thievemen t." '"Listen to him talk," snartS his wife, a short eneraebe eveman • who work.; in a hat store, "He can wait, but cannot! I want my own apartment, my own kitchen—and my awn ha:hr.:um. It's important to tette care of things on earth — they are bad enough. When everything is - ar- ranged here, then we can worry' about Venus." This kind of .dornistie squuo- ble sums up prevailing attitudes.. "Vet {taste myasol" (There's our meat!) says a young taxi driver, sarcastically thrustinc his thumb skyward as he rolls his cab down Berzon. Street. In short, the Russian peepie know the space race means belt- tightening, Russians Proud And Tiolitpp Eels • Vulva was a bad b;:y who would not learn his lessons. One day his teacher scolded him, arid Van:ea ran away to hide. He hid in a Soviet spaceship, and what do you think happened? Whoosh! The rocket took off taut More was Vanya inside, unable to eon- trol the rocket because lie could not read the instrument • panel. Vanya thought and thought, and pushed button after button. The rocket veered first toward. Mars, then toward Ventis, Vanya cried. Finally, as if M a dream, ho re- membered his teacher drawing the earth symbol on the black- board. He pushed the right but- ton, returned to earth, and is now the best student in his class, So runs a current television program for Muscovite moppets, reports Newsweek's Whitman Bassowa and, indeed, if ycla walk down almost' anyeetreet an Mos- cow you find yourself in a curi,- ous kind et Sputraikland, • Toy- shop windows display blue and yello,* celluloid 'spacemen :'dolls and pareheesi-like games Whose prizes. are.. imaginary trips.. to Mars acrd ;Venus. -A. stationery' shop sellil'f•Weaming,ehron-re'sPu0' nik papeaaaeights, and picture buttons of all'foar Russian astro- nauts. From rickety. wooden fence that shields some equally rickety shanties, glows a flaming red and orange poster: It shows a cosmonaut of heroic mien, his helmet emblazoned with the Cy- rillic initials for U.S.S.R. and caption that proclaims: "Glory to the Soviet People!" Within hours after Nikolayev lifted into orbit, Moscow TV exhibited four tou- sle-haired poets who declaimed their latest verses—on the new astronaut. The Space Age has also inspir- ed and provided a cover of sorts. for a small group of yotinger painters who have been working clandestinely in abstract style. DENOUNCES U.S. ACTION — Premier Fidel Castro denounces the American blockade of Cuba during a one-hour -and 23-minute telecast in Havana. (Photo and caption from a Cuban source,) BRIGHT HOPE — Actress Catharine Spook, teen - age niece of NATO Secretary-Gen- eral Paul-Henri Spook, won an award for being "the most promising starlet' at a film festival hel din Rome, Italy. the non-professionals. Fox all their splendour, how- ever, the new tall coiffures have already, antagonized theatregoers who would rather see past them than look at them. Since the opening of the Broadway season, the drama pages of The New York Times have been a plat- form far such critics. "A gentle- man," w ro t'e one theatregoer, "cannot ask a lady to let her hair down in public . . . Can't some hairdresser design a lady's coiffeur (sic) especially for at- tending the theatre?" A lady re- cently marooned behind two big hair-do's side by eide was in favour of a more di r e c t ap- proach. "I was ready," she wrote testily, "to stand up and shout, 'Off aeith their heads!"' But the n e w high style sometimes has its advantages in the theatre. At the Broadway premiere of a woeful play called "Step on a Crack," The N e w York Herald Tribune's critic spotted a woman in- the audi- ence "with one of those cotton- candy coiffures."' Kerr asked himself: "How does she expect anyone -to see?" In his review he admitted: "I took it all back. I wished site was sitting in front of me." Near-Deafness Hasn't Stopped Her Just before opening in Irving Berlin's new r. asical, "Mr. Pres- ident," star Nanette Fabray men. ticnod, that she could barely hoar the score without a hearing aid concealed under her chestnut hair. The bouncy, 40-year-old soubrette told of her nearly total deafness since childhood while visiting a class of deaf students at Gallaudet College, Washing- ton, D.C. "We're in the same boat," she told them, "but re- member—you can be anything you want to be." When the story of her handicap reached the press, Miss Fabray laughed it off: "I've never made any secret of the fact that my hearing is handi- capped," she said. "I've talked about it for years and lye visited a lot of schools. Women's Hair-Do's Get Even Crazier In an ornate ballroom at New York's Hotel Pierre last month, a dapper, precise man made deft passes with a tortoise-shell comb. Clutching a fistful of hairpins, Alexandre, France's famous coif- feur, quickly transfonmed a model's cropped black hair into a towering construction 1 a c e d with orange blossoms and yards of tulle. The whole process took only seven minutes — and three coils of additional hair. At the end, the applause from the knowledgeable audience—mem- bers of the Pan-American Con- gress of the Internationale des Coiffeurs de Dames — was long and loud. During a half-hour display of skyseraping new hair styles, Alexandre's girls modeled coif- fures that ranged from a sur- realistic brioche to a foot-high number topped by an ungainly loop like the handle of a Mar- tini pitcher. "Revolution, c'est mon principet" cried Alexandre, who was visiting the U,S. as a guest of the coiffeurs' congress, After the show, Alexandre kicked off his black silk pumps and collapsed on his bed in a 'hotel room littered with cham- pagne bottles, wigs, and tufts of newly shorn hair. The typical American woman, he announced, is too sluggish about changing her hair style. "She goes to her first ball and to ;her marriage in the same coiffure," he complain- ed, "I would like the American women to have more faith in their coiffeurs," They seem to have faith in Alexa.ndre — at least when they go abroad; the clientele of his Paris salon has included Jacqueline Kennedy, Greta Garibo, and Elizabeth Tay- lor. Although the high-rise hair-do still has a long way to go to match the popularity ca, an ear- lier Alexandre specialty, the beehive, one look at last month's opening-night audience at the Metropolitan. Opena season made the trend clear: The prevailing coiffure theme was onward and upward for off -duty sopranos like Roberta Peters as well as Success comes in cans: Fail- ure comes in cants. WARTIME TOGETHERNESS — Oscar-winning. Simone Sig. floret and Stuart Whitman embrace in a scene from their new film, "Today We Live." Whitman plays the role of an airman shot down over France, Simone that of a French- woman who harbors and protects him with her love. praetising black magic,, she tried to creep away. For' no intruder interrupting such rites ever lives to tell the tale. The pad of feet behind her told Mary she was discovered, and she was made to return to the group which set off through the forest taking her with them, writes Francis Collingwood in "Tit-Bits," Presently al,l squatted down tinder some trees, and were re- werded by monkeys dropping down among them to be picked off by nati.ve arrows. Then Mary understood what the • exercise was about. Those tribesmen had decked them- selves out to attract inquisitive monkeys down from the trees, • and thinking Mary the queerest •obaeet they had ever seen, they rightly judged her to be excel- lent monkey bait! To others her appearance brought terror, • es when two magnificent warraore,. covered in war paint, with four ,speara. each, saw her approaching the 'all-age they vci'OTe parding, .they lied in terror tai;theia hate; where theya evidently tohele -•"rnether".what gegen haat. seen. For it was "e, lifac cad woman .who came bravely Out to pai,ley. Later, those lame warriors proved their courage by defend- ing Mary against a Charging gor- illa! One native thought she looked so entertaining that he grabbed • at her canoe intending to use her as a curiosity to amuse his friends. But she soon ended his hop es by sharply rapping his knuckles with her paddle. Mary treated all ferocious .animals with the same consider- ation she used for cannibals. But not all were so friendly as the hippo she tickled behind the ear with her umbrella in a •success- hal bid to make him go away, She had several alarming brushes with leopards.. Once, while staying in a native village,. she was awakened by a violent uproar, and arose to interrupt a ferocious fight between a leo- pard and a boar-hound. With two weld-aimed stools she broke it up, only to face an enraged leopard poised to spring. Flinging a water-cooler at him, she fetched hien such a crack on the head that he was thankful to slink away. In another village, she was so disturbed by the howls of a cap- tured leopard that she decided to release it. As she pulled up the stakes to which it was bound, the frenzied animal made furi- ous rushes at her, Tipping her dress. Undeterred, M a r y continued, expecting it to dash away when free. Instead it crept closer to her, snaaaing and spitting. Even. at this terrible moment Mary's commonsense did not forsake her, Standing h e r g r o u n d, she shouted angrily! "Go home, you fool!" And the leopard obeyed her! Instantly a native prostrated himself at her feet — he had watched the incident from the safety of a tree. At the outbreak of the Boer War, Mary Kingsley volunteered for work at the front, and was drafted to a prisoner-of-war camp at the Cape. There, for two months, she nursed B o e r prisoners amid swarming bugs and the stench. of rotting bodies. She, who had been strong enough to withstand countless dangers in West Africa, now succumbed to enteric fever and died. She was only thirty-eight, According to her wish she was. buried at sea, the coffin on a gun-carriage escorted to a war- ship by soldiers. It Was a pom- pous way to bury her, and quite out of keeping for one whose only weapon had been an um- brella. Tall, handsome, eaneenler, With granite-hard jaw and steel-blue eyes " That's the soet of men- tal picture some people conjure up when thinking of those dar- ing men who explorecl and open., ed up the Continent of Aarina, Bat did you know that it took 4 Victorian spinster to face up to this sinister country of savage tribes and teeming animal life—, and to like what she saw? While the men refused to M ary Kingsley faced the constant threat of death at the hands of cannibals. And her only weapon was an umbrella! Miss Kingsley, the centenary of whose birth fell last month went to West Africa in 189a straight from her Kensington home. She didn't even stop to change her thick black clothes, which consisted of an ankle-length skirt, long-sleeved, high-necked blouse, 'and' a little black mole- skin hat tied under her chin by wide ribbons. . During her two visits to West Africa, Mary faced so many dangers that her escapes froth death were little short of =Ilea- calm's, She penetrated far into the Congo, where no whites had dared go, and mixed with the fierce Fan tribes — notorious cannibals. To contact them she posed as a trader, and persuaded some ivory hunters to canoe her many miles up river to the tribes' haunts. • As they neared their deetina- lion, they heard blood-curdling yells and saw a native brandish- ing what they took to be an ele- phant tusk. When they got near- er they saw it was a human leg! Undaunted, Mary entered the cannibal village, and the canoe went on without her. That night a huge hippo ran riot, crashing the native huts in all directions, and wrecking Mary's with the rest. Worse followed, for the canoe took so long to return that she ran out of trading goods, and remembered that Fans thought nothing of killing empty-handed traders to regain possession of their barter ready for next time. So she was obliged to dispose of her blouse, which looked co- mical worn by savage warriors alongside red paint and bunches of leopard tails. Her stockings, too, were popu- lar stuck capwise on the head, and Mary had nothing left but a toothbrush when the canoe ap- peared, and she was saved. On the return journey, with no goods to barter, they had to hide by day, and travel silently by night. For any non - trader risked death. To approach a vil- lage on foot meant danger from the swarming forest animal life. But there were other hazards, as Mar y discovered o n e day when she fell fifteen feet into a spiked pit. Only her thick skirt saved her from serious injury, and she was able to enter the village the pit was protecting, There she was well received by the chief and, worn out by adventure, sfhe was preparing for sleep when she noticed some bags hanging on her but wall. Taking one down, she peeped in- aide and, to her horror, saw it contained a hand, toes, and other bits of body. Later she learned that canni- bals like to keep mementoes of peole they eat! One day Mary disturbed a group of natives wearing extra- ordinary headdresses, and, fear- ing them to be a secret society ISSUE 45 — 1962 Some Memories. Of British Royalty My father was still, of course, a very busy man, He was not qtiite so fascinated by George V as he had been by Edward VII but he liked and respected him and he got on particularly well with Queen Mary. I have a pleas- ing photograph of the two of them taken at Balmoral during a fete. Queen Mary is standing on the ground smiling while my father, on a lorry, auctions a painting of St. Paul's Cathedral by Winston Churchill who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. By dint of assuring the crowd that the picture would be worth ten times as much in years to come, my father got the bidding up to 115 guineas. We went up to Scotland every summer as the King lent my father a house near Balmoral called 'Birkhall which is now the home of the Queen Mother, We used to love it. My father was a great organizer of fishing expe- ditions, golf tournaments and picnics off the beaten track, and we had lots of young companions from the other Household famil- ies with whom to lark about.... Birkhall was about seen miles from Balmoral, "Not too far and not too near," we used to say, which meant that though my father could get quickly to his office, it was too far for any "dropping in." For Queen Mary was a very inquisitive "dropper- inner" and our friends nearer the castle reported that sometimes, When they had been out, they would find her in the drawing- room moving the furniture or up- stairs inspecting the bedrooms. My mother used this as a threat to make us keep our rooms tidy. Fortunately she never came to see us without telephoning in ad- vance and a great fuss was al- ways made. On one occasion we had a new butler and a new foot- man, both anxious to do the right thing, and they stood on either side of the door and bowed so low that their heads met in the middle, making an impenetrable barrier. My mother, with her reputation as a hostess to keep up, always strained every nerve to make the tea unusual and I remember her scoring a particu- lar success with American waf- t ties and strawberry shortcake, — From "Grace and Favour," The .Memoirs of Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, A titerub girl is one who costs tivice as much as you ilreamett she would. A QUEEN (WEB BEAUTY — The RCAP't Yukon, Queen of Air Ttahsport Command, pictured ''here over _Niagara Falk, Will star in a combined Army-Air Force operation this year with t he'rotation of the 4th Canodiari Infantry Brigade Group from Cnnado Europe. Yukons of 437 "hlusky" Squadron- at rrani.on, Ont„ will airlift 2,700 array pereontiel to Dussel. clorf, Germany, with d similar number being returned to Carioda, tHATI THE BUB — ft seems French actress Michelle Mer.- ''er prefers the cord tease of d giant dinosaur to rub noses With. It all happened in a moment Ofjest Of the Zoo Museum' hi Rah* Italy. Anyway, dine seems to like It.