Will Waspe's Whispers
It was announced last week that Peter Hail would direct a musical about Henry VIII called Great Harry for impresario Bernard Delfont. The news is probanly reliable — but would you bet on it?
Two years ago, there was a similarly firm announcement about another show about another of our late monarchs, Charles II. It was called His Majesty's Pleasure. Hubert Gregg wrote it. impresario John Gale was putting it on. Kenneth More left The Secretary Bird to take a holiday and do some film work. after which he was to play the lead. They reckoned it would be the next show into Drury Lane after Mame. But suddenly the backers' money was no longer there. and 'the Lane' was no longer available.
And yet, still, I think you probably could bet on Great Harry's chances, for it has one little advantage over His Majesty's Pleasure — it has the backing of Bernard Delfont, and Bernie, one way or another, just about owns show business. As a matter of fact it was his show, The Great Waltz, which was the next musical after Mame into Drury Lane
The first exhibition in London of the French sculptor Eugene Dodeigne, has arrived at David Talbot Rice's Buckingham Gallery in Old Bond Street — somewhat behind schedule. It seems that HM Customs impounded the stuff (ten bronzes and one work in granite), mostly because they thought they just had a shipment of stone and metal on their hands. The shipping agent transporting the sculpture had disappeared without filling in the necessary forms — and it took a visit from representatives of the Tate, who accompanied Talbot Rice and Dodeigne himself to Dover, to convince them that these were. indeed works of art and not subject to duty.
Visitors to the gallery will be able to judge whether HM Customs should be censured for low standards of art apprevciigaitliaonn ce. or complimented upon their
Her own thing'
Some of the most convincing personations of drunks have been given by men who never touch the stuff; ruthless villains are often played by the gentlest men; chaste nuns by the most wanton girls. Meeting such gifted deceivers off-stage or offscreen can be startlingly disillusioning.
Paradoxically it can be almost as disillusioning to discover that a performer really is playing himself. 01 herself — as people who have encountered one of the Pork leading ladies off-stage report. Get her in the right mood at a party (and I'm told she hits the right mood at the drop of anybody's briefs) and she'll entertain the gathering with a practical demonstration of acts which, even in these permissivt; days, she can only talk about in the shc,\\
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