This edited article about fencing originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

A bout with the foils

Many fencers call their sport “high speed chess” because you cannot win a proper sword fight without thinking out your moves several steps ahead of your opponent.

The dashing film actor Errol Flynn, who did as much as anybody to popularise fencing with his many exciting swashbuckling roles, once said he felt more like a ballet-dancer than an actor when rehearsing a fight sequence for the screen.

“Every move you make has to be according to a plan,” he said. “It’s worse than remembering lines – that’s why nobody ever speaks in the course of a fight.”

Duelling with swords – outlawed in Britain since the early 19th century – has a very long history. The Ancient Egyptians of over 3,000 years ago made temple carvings of men fencing.

Originally, of course, it was developed as part of the training soldiers needed to remain alive in the heat of battle and set “moves” taught to them were still being used by cavalrymen in training drills in the Victorian era.

No man armed with only a sabre could have hoped to have lived long in the Battle of Waterloo or survived the Charge of the Light Brigade without being so efficient at what is called the “Cut, thrust, parry” of swordsmanship, that he could do it in his sleep.

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This edited article about Randolph Hearst originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 700 published on 14 June 1975.

THE CLEANSING OF NEW YORK. The long arm of the law holds Joseph Pulitzer and Randolph Hearst by their collars above the skyline of New York, by Louis Dalrymple

The Hollywood guests assembled in the great hall. Gaudy Spanish banners hung 22 feet above them from a ceiling that once graced a palace in Brescia. Suits of armour stood in grim parade around the oak walls. A long table edged with medieval chairs beckoned with sparkling, cut glass and glinting candelabra.

The amiable chatter ceased. In the expectant hush on the stroke of 7.30 p.m., their host appeared, stepping through a panel set in a 16th century choir stall. A big, dominating man with hard features exuding the power that only millions can provide: William Randolph Hearst, newspaper tycoon, master of the sensational smear campaign, the Press king who revolutionised journalism with blaring banner headlines in black, red and even emerald green ink, the “Lord of San Simeon” – the fortified Spanish-style castle that he had carved out of solid rock, 200 miles from Los Angeles.

It was there that Hearst loved to entertain Hollywood stars, directors and producers on a scale that a Roman Emperor would have envied. They could hunt buffalo on its 240,000 acres, in area bigger than Bedfordshire, fish, send falcons after their prey or swim in the castle pool inlaid with gold. They arrived either by air, touching down on San Simeon’s airstrip, or by train over Hearst’s private railway.

He imposed only two rules on his visitors: they had to gather in the 100-foot long great hall for his staged entry every night and the word “death” must never be uttered in his presence.

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This edited article about Charlie Chaplin originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 688 published on 22 March 1975.

Charlie Chaplin

The Canteen Theatre in Aldershot was an entertainer’s nightmare and many regarded an engagement there as a week of terror. Most of the audience were soldiers who simply came to jeer. One night a charming lady singer got “the bird” when her voice cracked and became a mere whisper, and she was howled off stage.

The stage manager was a friend of hers and, recalling that her five-year old son had proved a good comedian in front of his mother’s friends at home, decided to gamble to keep the curtain up. He sent on the little boy.

Out went the toddler to appease the soldiers, and when he sang them a song called Jack Jones they started throwing money on the stage. He stopped singing and announced that he would pick it up first and sing again afterwards, which earned him his first laugh. Charlie Chaplin, now Sir Charlie, was on his way to the top.

But fame did not come at once for, from that night onwards, his life was bleak in the extreme for many years. He had been born in 1889 and brought up by his loving mother. When he was not roaming the shabby streets of South London, he was flitting from job to job, including selling newspapers, making toys, and acting as a doctor’s errand boy.

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This edited article about the cinema originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 685 published on 1 March 1975.

Count Dracula by Oliver Frey

Pioneer film-maker Georges Melies was astonished!

He had begun by viewing film he had developed after shooting a street scene in front of the Paris Opera House. Then he found to his amazement that a bus had changed into a hearse before his eyes. He realised that the camera had jammed for a few seconds and the flow of film had been interrupted, accidentally causing this extraordinary effect.

It was the beginning of all cinematograph trickery: films of fantasy were born!

Between 1896 and 1897, more than a dozen film halls were opened in the centre of Paris and movies were much in demand.

Wearying of the somewhat stereotyped programmes provided by the American pioneer, Thomas Edison, the public flocked to see the imaginative fantasy films created by former stage illusionist Melies, who came to be known as the Magician of the Screen, the King of Phantasmagoria.

Recognised as his masterpiece and a major achievement in the first decade of moving pictures, was “A Trip to the Moon” (1902), which he adapted from stories by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. It is full of invention and the first screen version of science fiction and interplanetary travel. Using the camera’s full bag of tricks – the fade, the dissolve, double and multiple exposure, fast, slow and stop motion, he produced incredible effects.

By 1908, films everywhere were taking on a more sophisticated look and Melies fell from favour, but he must always be regarded as the father of the supernatural fantasy film.

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This edited article about the American cinema originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 684 published on 22 February 1975.

Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed

In the cosmopolitan cities of the United States, with their mixed races and nationalities, violence speedily became established as a way of life. The early film-makers realised this and a string of films were made which turned men like the trio above into a part of the Hollywood legend.

The big, black saloon swerves and skids around a corner at top speed, bullets spraying from a flung-open door. Bodies slump on to the pavement as, one by one, the members of the rival gang are eliminated.

“Cut!”

The director gives this instruction to stop filming and the “dead” men get up and dust themselves down, ready for another “take”, this time in close-up.

A gangster film is in the making, but this scene is not just a figment of a screen-writer’s imagination; it was happening in many cities across America in the early Thirties when crime had reached a frightening peak.

Gang warfare was front-page news and Warner Brothers’ Company in Hollywood, sensing that the public would appreciate seeing reality, however harsh, in their pictures, decided on a new policy. Movies based on headline items in the newspapers would henceforth be given top priority.

In 1930, they made “Little Caesar”, starring Edward G. Robinson. It was an instant success and started a cycle of gangster films which were immensely popular both in America and in Britain.

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This edited article about the Western originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 680 published on 25 January 1975.

John Ford’s favourite outdoor location is Monument Valley which spreads over Utah and Arizona

The hot, dusty street is deserted, the stillness broken only by the creak of a rusty saloon sign, gently swinging.

A lone cowboy, hand poised over gun-holster, walks slowly into view. From the shadows emerges a dark, menacing figure.

The classic Western confrontation scene, the showdown, is about to be played – a scene so familiar that it has often been parodied, yet it remains part of an action pattern, a ritual which seldom fails to grip an audience.

The story of the Western is nearly as old as the Cinema itself.

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This edited article about Walt Disney originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 678 published on 11 January 1975.

Donald Duck and Goofy are famous Disney cartoon characters

Mention the phrase ‘Cartoon film’, and the chances are that most people will immediately bring to mind the name of Walt Disney.

For the cartoon films of this delightful film maker have been charming audiences of all ages ever since the first sound films appeared in the cinemas in 1928.

Walter Elias Disney was born at Chicago on December 5th, 1901. Trained as a commercial artist, he went to Hollywood in 1923. There, he built his first studio, in a garage, and drew animal cartoons. It was when he created one particular animal cartoon, Mickey Mouse, in 1928, that the garage developed into a huge film factory in order to keep pace with the sudden demand for Disney productions. Soon, Disney was employing hundreds of draughtsmen and controlling his own studios.

Mickey Mouse, the most famous of Disney’s creations, was followed by Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy.

In 1932 Disney began to make short colour films, featuring all these and a host of other characters from nature in his musical Silly Symphonies, of which Three Little Pigs is the most famous.

In 1938, Disney brought all the wit, brilliance and beauty of his film techniques to his first full-length musical cartoon film, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. This was followed by the moral fantasy Pinocchio. In 1942 came Dumbo, the baby elephant and Bambi, the baby deer. But a year before this, Disney produced his most ambitious creative work, Fantasia in which he set patterns and stories to eight pieces of classical music.

In 1948 he produced the first in a series of brilliant factual nature films.

In 1955 Disney opened a huge amusement park in Anaheim, California, with scenery and characters based on some of his films. He called it Disneyland, and today, eight years after his death, the park, together with the films which are being shown over and over again, both in cinemas and on the television, continue to give pleasure and delight to millions of people all over the world.

This edited article about cinema originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 652 published on 13 July 1974.

Marx Brothers stills

Sam looked on, aghast. Seeing his wife’s face twisted in pain, he knew her leg must be broken. Minutes earlier, Minnie had been happy and excited, standing on a chair, having her new dress fitted for the great occasion next day. Then she slipped and fell.

He was sure that she would never make the opening night now. But he was wrong. The following evening, encased in plaster, his wife, Minnie, was carried triumphantly into the Casino Theatre in New York on a stretcher and deposited in a front-row box seat.

This was an event Minnie was determined not to miss – “the culmination,” said one of her sons, “of twenty years of scheming, starving, cajoling and scrambling. A little thing like a broken leg was not going to rob her of that supreme moment.”

The hit-show was “I’ll Say She Is,” a Broadway musical comedy, and it starred her sons, the Marx Brothers, a team of crazy comics whose zany antics brought a fresh approach to comedy more than half a century ago and whose films still delight modern audiences today.

Sam Marx was a dapper, young, European immigrant from Alsace when he married Minnie Schoenberg, a pretty eighteen-year-old girl whose family had left Donum, in Germany, when she was quite young to make a new life in America.

Sam was a tailor, but not a very good one. After their five sons had been born, between 1891 and 1901, it was Minnie who took charge of the family and left her husband to do what he really did well – the cooking. This culinary talent proved useful in later years. After one of Sam’s delicious meals, theatrical booking agents were put in a good mood, and Minnie was able to extract favourable deals from them when getting jobs for her boys on the stage.

Each son had a nickname, earned when they were grown up. In order of age, Leonard was Chico; Arthur, Harpo; Julius, Groucho; Milton, Gummo and Herbert, Zeppo.

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This edited article about cinema originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 650 published on 29 June 1974.

Laurel and Hardy

The doctor was firm. The actor’s arm was so badly scalded that work the next day was definitely out of the question.

His patient’s work was film-acting and he was due to play the part of the butler in a silent comedy being made at the Hal Roach Studio in Hollywood, U.S.A. The director, who happened also to be a comedian, agreed reluctantly to act as substitute and gave a good performance.

Fit again, the injured man reported back to the studio, this time to appear in a film called “Slipping Wives.” Although he preferred directing and writing, the director was persuaded to play a small part in this picture, too.

Film history had been made! Stan Laurel (the thin director) and Oliver Hardy (the injured fat man) had made their first film for Hal Roach together. Not as the world-famous partnership, which would come later, but as two supporting players who just happened to be in the same picture by accident.

If Hardy had not poured boiling fat over his arm that day in 1926, the team of Laurel and Hardy might never have come into existence.

Their partnership lasted for many years and survived the difficult change-over from silent to sound comedy. In their first sound film, made three years later, they used their successful visual comedy techniques which were helped and not hindered by their voices. They were two of the few top silent comedians to conquer the coming of “sound.”

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This edited article about Charlie Chaplin originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 649 published on 22 June 1974.

Charlie Chaplin

“Fellow’s pretty funny.”

“Think he’d be good for pictures?”

“He might be.”

“I don’t know.”

This conversation took place in New York in the year 1912. Mack Sennett, head of the Keystone Studio, was talking to his star comedienne, Mabel Normand, after they had seen an English actor, wearing an enormous red nose, performing as a drunk in a comedy sketch called “A Night in a London Music Hall” at the American Theatre in 42nd Street.

Back in California, some time after their trip, they could not remember the details of the Fred Karno show nor the name of the Englishman they had seen. Was it Chapman, Champion, or perhaps Chaffin?

The chief of the Keystone Cops, Ford Sterling, was leaving Sennett at that time and a replacement was needed urgently. So a telegram was sent to the manager of the Karno troupe, then on tour in Philadelphia, asking “the man who played the drunk in the stage box” to get in touch with the Keystone Studio. He did so. His name was Charlie Chaplin.

Sir Winston Churchill said of him, “No mere clown, however brilliant, could ever have captured so completely the affections of the great public. He owes his unrivalled position as a star to the fact that he is a great actor who can tug at our heartstrings as surely as he compels our laughter.”

Yet, as a boy, he was a waif, a ragged young urchin, searching the streets of the big city for food and shelter.

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