Just a Low Character

About
a year ago evidence was disclosed here indicating that Carl Foreman had
written the Oscar-winning screenplay for "The Bridge on the River Kwai" although Pierre Boule, who wrote the novel, got the salute. 

If I do say so myself, and I do, it was a smashing, brilliantly clever bit of literacy detective work.

Basis of the contention was that three characters in "River Kwai were named Weaver, Baker and Grogan
and that Foreman had used these names of close friends in previous
stories. They were usually shady characters or people he found it
expedient to kill off.

Weaver is John D. Weaver, a writer, who
on a clear night can see the lights of Inglewood, if he bothers to
look, from his aerie in the Hollywood Hills. Baker is Herbie Baker, who
worked on last week’s TV show "Some of Manie’s Friends." The three served together in the Army. 

Grogan is Alan Grogan, with whom Foreman is associated in Open Road Films, Ltd., London.

IN FOREMAN’S "Champion"
a fighter named Weaver was the No. 11 contender for the crown. In "High
Noon" he was a storekeeper. In "Young Man With a Horn" Dr. Weaver
operated a sanitarium for alcoholics. In "Kwai" Weaver was a prisoner
of the Japanese, killed trying to escape with Bill Holden. Baker has
likewise suffered, as a cowardly citizen in "High Noon" and so on.

In retaliation Weaver and Baker have repeatedly given the name Foreman to their villains and other low characters.

Little
did I realize, in innocently giving this story to the world, that evil
thoughts would form in the fertile, diabolic mind of this Foreman.
However, they did and now it seems that I have made his gallery of
undesirables.

My grapevine is throbbing with the news that Weaver, Baker and Grogan have been joined in Foreman’s current opus, "The Guns of Navarone," by a character named Weinstock.

The
way the club works, I’m told, is that a new member has to start at the
bottom, so to speak, and try to work his way up into decent human
society. Thus, this Weinstock is a very nasty fellow. In fact, he’s a
Gestapo captain. Not a nice clean-cut, post-war type Gestapo captain
but a real pre-cold war heel. 

All I can do to refute this libel is to report the truth, which is that I was a corporal in the ROTC, nothing more.

PIANIST George Shearing’s blithe indifference to his blindness has become a legend in the music business.

One time he arrived late for a date in Chicago and explained he’d driven over with Al Hibbler,
the sightless singer, who came with him, but en route a policeman had
stopped them and said, "Why don’t you look where you’re going?"

THE HIRED HANDS
at an east side industrial plant were agog the other day to hear the
girl on the public address system announce, "Miss Brandt, you left your
nightgown!" When the message was repeated, however, they got it
correctly, "Miss Brandt, you left your lights on!"

SHADES OF THE PONY EXPRESS
The stage of old is with us still,
And not just on TV.
How do we send up satellites,

These days, to such prodigious heights?
By three-stage rocket, see?
— RICHARD ARMOUR

AT RANDOM —
A student in Prof. John Smith’s literature course at UCLA devoted an
hour exam paper to the "togetherness" of Antony and Cleopatra . . .
Coffee is 5c with breakfasts at Blaine’s onLankershim Boulevard . . . When Kay Irwin, KNXT
secretary who is on jury duty downtown, drove her T-bird into a parking
lot the attendant said, "Okay, put it in the nursery over there" . . .
Sign of spring: Two quail came stomping boldly through my yard the
other day . . .