Hairy Hunch

When a Cuban Revolution hit the headlines a month ago actor Paul Fierro craftily played a hunch. Sooner or later, he reasoned, someone would make a movie about Fidel Castro. So he let his whiskers grow. It was perhaps the first instance of an actor raising a beard on spec.

He was stared at suspiciously by policemen and authentic beatniks. Women in supermarkets drew away from him. However, he rated very high with his creditors. An actor with a sincere beaver usually has just finished or is about to begin a picture.

Paul’s hunch was right. Well, partially. Edward Small is producing "The Havana Story" and Paul has been assigned a role, that of a police sergeant. For the part, however, he has been instructed to shave off the beard. They’re letting him keep the mustache, though.

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PRETENDING TO be serious, Dr. George Elmstrom suggested recently to the incoming 1959 president of the El Segundo Kiwanis Club that he name an outer space committee to cope with the social implications ofKiwanians going into orbit.

It was a joke, intended to accustom the new head man to the hazards of office. Elmstorm expected to be fined for frivolity.

But the new president, Sam Douglass, a mortician, thought it was a great idea and appointed Elmstorm chairman of the committee.

Inasmuch as he was stuck with the gag, Elmstrom decided to perpetuate it. He wrote Kiwanis International suggesting the outer space committee be established on a national level. Again he expected a friendly rebuke. Instead, the matter will be seriously taken up in Washington at a meeting this month.

So don’t fool around with the stratosphere. It’s serious business.

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REBIRTH
Rain washes the face of Los Angeles
Leaving it clean and green.
Without its smudges
It is a countenance serene.
–JAMES MATHIS

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WHILE ALL the fuss was going on about the Americans jailed in the Rosarito Beach gambling raid, a couple of L.A. flyboys, George Cowgill and Wendell Phillips, just sat in Federal Prison, Tijuana, charged with swiping an airplane. Authorities say they did, they say they didn’t. Meanwhile they’ve been in stir since last October.

To kill time they’ve been writing songs. Their latest is "We’ve Spent a Century in a Penitentiary but It Seems Like a Hundred Years."

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MUSIC NOTES — Errol Garner, en route here for his engagement at Pasadena Civic Auditorium Feb. 28, has a curious date Feb. 24, sandwiched between Cleveland and Phoenix. He will play at Navajo Civic Center, Window Rock, Ariz. Seems the braves on the reservation like jazz piano, too . . . Speaking of modern music, it’s strange how things work out. For years the progressive jazz boys have been hopeful of a wider audience. Now, since Henry Mancini’s jazz background on the "PeterGunn" show found favor, no private eye worth a punch in the jaw would think of solving a crime without a "far out" accompaniment.

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QUOTE & UNQUOTE — Overheard in the Redwood House: "Pay no attention to him — he’s one of the Angry Old Men" . . . To those who gibe about our smog, Bill Morgan retorts, "But it’s only a matter of time until we solve it and, after all, we have some of the best politicians in the country working on it!"

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MISCELLANY — So far, at least, no music lover has called the Philharmonic and asked if it’s Peter Ilich Tschaikovsky who will appear there tomorrow and Friday. It’s Andre Tchaikovsky- without the "s." Pete died in 1893 . . . I guess I finally made the team. Received an invitation to the L.A. Music Festival Ball March 13- $17.50. Thanks, no.