THE CHANGING WIND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 97, 2 May 1941, Page 47

THE CHANGING WIND

-To Young Listeners: EOPLE say that if the wind changes you are making ugly faces, you stay like that for the rest of your life. If the Young Listener says "I don’t believe you," the person either says "Don’t contradict" very sternly, or laughs and says "Don’t you?" Then you laugh because you know that some day you will be grown-up too and can say quite safely to your children, "If you eat up your crusts your hair will curl. Don’t make faces-if the wind changes you'll grow like that." If the people in Hollywood, where most of the talking films are made, believe the old story, they must live in terror of a changing wind! Specially when they make the sort of faces they have to make so that they can look like the Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz, And if Charlie Chaplin believes it he would certainly have a special man out to watch the wind when he made The Great Dictator, because life wouldn’t be worth living for him if his face had stuck for life! Making Faces Jack Dawn, who is an artist and a sculptor, went to California and said to a chemist, " Give me something as soft as wax and elastic as rubber and sensitive as jelly." He wanted it for making actor’s faces like the faces of the characters they were meant to represent. The chemist said he hadn’t any such thing, good-by-ye. So Jack had to invent something himself, and he called the result "Number 6." If an actress*has to take the part of say, Queen Victoria, Jack makes a plaster shape of the actress’s head. Then he looks at the picture of the queen, and begins to make the plaster face like the queen’s face by adding either plaster pouches of flesh, and perhaps a rounder forehead and a curved nose, and another chin or so. Then he lifts the added pieces from the cast and numbers them. Then moulds are made of each piece. These moulds are filled with fluid "Number 6." When it,has hardened and the moulds are removed, there are the parts, light and pliable, ready to be pasted on to the actress’s face. Once they are on, the last coat of make-up is used. ; One of Jack Dawn’s greatest triumphs was Louise Rainer’s face in The Good Earth. No wonder he gets 250 dollars an hour! Gee! Try a Tongue-Twister A proper crop of poppies is a proper poppy crop, A copper cup of coffee is a copper coffee cup. * &:. * Invitation _ Do come and spend an air-raid in our shelter. Ay) time the warning sounds, you are sure to find us

Joke? Traveller: When I was in England I saw a bed twenty feet long. Friend: That sounds like a lot of bunk to me, * * Box of Tricks Henry wants a trick out of the box for his party. Get some safety matches, Henry, and when no one is looking rub the sole of your shoé with the striking part of the box. Then say to the party, " Now, everyone, watch me," and you will take out a match and strike it on your shoe. Then the party will all try unsuccessfully to strike safety matches on their shoes. Now someone will say-‘"I know-he used a specially prepared match." So then you will take one of their matches and strike it on your shoe, and the party will think you are quite magic because they haven't. guessed that it’s a specially prepared shoe instead of a specially prepared match! * o’ * Second-Hand Clothes "T’ve .sold everything in that room," said the helper at the rummage sale, proudly. "Dear, dear," said the Vicar’s wife, "That was the cloakroom." And Now, Book News If you want to keep the " Owl and the Pussy-Cat," you will find it in "A Book of Lear," from the Penguin series. A whole book of Edward Lear’s nonsense with a pretty yellow cover for a shilling and tuppence! But Billy doesn’t like that sort of book — he wants cowboys and Injuns. Something tough, Billy wants — well, he will find Indians and lots of excitement in "Hidden Valley" by Benet (Harrap).