Annotations of Annabel

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 29, 1 February 1929, Page 13

Annotations of Annabel

D®AREST t Accompanied by Richard the Good, recently I witnessed the film version of "His House in Order," starring Tallulah Bankhead, so great a favourite with London audiences, and for whose beauty and talent many good men and true have fallen, so to speak, with their sentimental hearts in their hands. A LISSOM, ingenuous young thing ap- . peared the American beauty, wearing I short, chic, charming gowns with frolicsome grace. Spontaneous and attractive was her bearing, though perchance not of a dignity commensurate with the weighty dullness and social requirements of worthy and prosperous spouse. Richard being a cool and clear critic of things dramatic, when he can be induced to forsake the latest acquisition of volume on economics or the modern verse of his eclectic taste, I ‘was intrigued to find his opinion coincided with mine, and that he preferred the acting of the slighted young wife in the filmed dramatisation to that of Miss Irene Vanburgh, for whom Sir Arthur Pinero wrote the play. Miss Vanburgh was seen here in this comedy, but appeared to less advantage than as the scintillating mondaine of "Aren’t We All?" One hears that Lonsdale’s witty and most modern "On Approval" is to be presented shortly, which is good hearing for those wh» like his delicious dialogue and diverting situations, REVERTING to literary type, I have gone back to perusal of the romantic '90’s. Well do I memember the fascinating and fantastic meanderings of "The Quest of the Golden Girl," written in Mr. Richard le Gallienne’s salad days. The author’s name was attractive to youthful and credulous ears, his hair so wild and woolly in fre-

quent photographs, his audacity enthralling in days when L’audace, toujours ’audace, had a quality denied it now when everyone is daring and dasbing, or tries to be. ON reading these intimate and delight-fully-conveyed recollections of Walter Pater’s wonderful physique and blunt conversation; William Morris’s exquisite home and unconventional manners; Swinburne’s petulance ; Meredith’s aloofness and Tennyson’s rudeness; Whistler and Ibsen and Oscar Wilde; one realises afresh that in those years veritably there were literary giants in the land. UNWILLINGLY deferring further contemplation of brilliant bygone period, and compelled to realism of the moment, the "unconquerable soul" extolled by Henley found itself wilting throughout past week, in that fate forced intimacy with inner workings and sordid issues of a court of law. What a human welter is encountered in those dim and dismal precincts; how battered the types with whom one rubs shoulders, and suspicious and censorious the eyes focussed upon us, however artless and unavailing the shred of evidence we offer with diffidence, being as unversed as any "unlesson’d girl’ in the paraphernalia of legal complexities. Willy-nilly, however, sometimes we must take a hand in elucidation of frenzied finance or detrimental domesticity ; and, though possibly not prone to butting in on other people’s affairs, we are invited to speak the truth from our particular angle, and in so doing possibly convert a former indifferent acquaintance to future inimical enemy. All admiration am I for machinery of the law as a wise and awesome vehicle of vengeance; but, having an eye on the gospel of gaiety and peace and goodwill to men, prefer to survey its effect upon AAVRUNVTURUEGENEUSLSNAUGLQNQUQUQUTUUURCETOTEUESESQSOSNUENEENSESESASRGNYESESSUGLESGLENSCOQU8 DURE BPEL!)

my fellow-creatures from a distance as considerable as its own long arm. Honour and glory and a royal road to publicity are opened for achievement by the Radio Broadcasting Company’s competition for Radio Playlets. Wit and sparkle of dialogue are essential, and that "snappy" plot so difficult to disinter from a brain that refuses to snap, mental processes that grow duller and duller in the present flaming weather. A great chance this, however, for those possessed of flair for dramatie expression, to deflect some of that fierce and enviable limelight that beats upon literary success, especially in a field that is yet practically unexploited in this Dominion. ‘Y ESTERDAY, escaping from the hurly-burly, very lovely looked the countryside through which I was driven by kindness of youthful and accomplished Jehu, who handled his car with a debonair discretion and skill, camouflaged as recklessness, that won my respect. Shimmering in the foreground, undulated gold and green expanses and sweet small valleys, in the distance rose blue hills of hope; all in that native clarity of atmosphere which Mr. Nugent Welch imprisons in his landscapes, hazing and softening, when evening fell, to a wistful radiance, haunting and pellucid as a lovely verse of Alice Meynell’s. In such a rare New Zealand twilight, if young and in love, a poet might be evolved. Our songs are sweeter far, The flowers about our feet Sweet and more sweci, And every star Is starrier Because of her. Your

ANNABEL

LEE