The Old Un's Notes
The Old Un has got his zither out to commemorate the 70th anniversary of his favourite film, Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Its première was on 1st September 1949.
Tipped off by Oldie reader Mari Nicholson, the Old Un tracked down a small building hidden down a residential side street in the Margareten neighbourhood – the Third Man Museum.
The museum is a treasure trove of over 2,000 original film posters, costumes, pieces of sheet music, sound and film recordings, autographed photos, zithers, CDS, books, and recordings of that marvellous theme tune played by Anton Karas in the film.
It even has little Hansel’s cap and a still-functioning 1936 Ernemann 7b projector – used when the film was first shown in Vienna, and now used to play back a short film sequence. Part of the wonder of the movie was Carol Reed’s unusual, atmospheric shots of the Vienna sewers, and Orson Welles’s shadow jinking through the city streets. Reed shot scenes with such crazy ‘Dutch angles’ (ie nonhorizontal ones) that the crew gave him a spirit level as a present.
The museum is the life work and consuming passion of its owners, collector and historian Gerhard Strassgschwandtner and his wife Karin Höfler. Being unsubsidised, they have to work to support their passion – so it’s open only on Saturdays, from 2pm to 6pm.
A few doors down from the museum is another building. This houses, among other things, Trevor Howard’s original script and the hallowed zither on which Karas wrote and recorded the theme tune. There are also many cover versions of the music, including one performed by the Beatles.
Altogether now: ‘Dum di dum di dum, di dum. Dum di dum di dum, di dum…’
If you think Donald Trump is a clown, why not vote a dog into office?
That’s what’s increasingly happening in America. A line-up of willing canines, as well as cats and goats, have at one time or another served as the mayor of towns in Minnesota, Alaska, California and Texas.
Recently, a three-year old Nubian goat called Lincoln became the first mayor (of the animal variety) in Fair Haven, Vermont. During his tenure, Lincoln will be expected to make an appearance at local events, such as the Memorial Day parade, hooves freshly shined, sporting a speciallymade sash.
Mayor Maximus MightyDog Mueller II, a golden retriever, has been winning hearts and minds in Idyllwild, California. His mission? Peace on earth, according to his chief of staff – and human comrade – Phyllis Mueller.
No animals have yet declared their intentions to run for president – although, in the land of the free, anything is possible.
So what to make of Americans’ penchant for electing their four-legged companions to positions of power? As country signer Tom T Hall crooned back in the 1970s, tongue firmly in cheek, ‘Would you rather have a monkey up in Washington DC? Or have those people making monkeys out of you and me?’
Who said print is dead? And who said youngies don’t read papers?
Enter Silas Brown, 28, who has just launched a new satirical magazine, The Fence, sold online – but also in magazine shops. He is
one of four editors, all aged between 28 and 30.
The Fence blends fact with fiction and all contributors work under pseudonyms. Jane Austen is their agony aunt; Patrick Bateman – aka American Psycho – is their critic at large; and Flann O’brien their Westminster correspondent.
In its first issue, the magazine attacks the ‘fauxphilosophising’ of conservative guru Jordan Peterson. And there’s a glorious skit, imagining Meghan Markle’s emails to Prince Harry about renovating Frogmore Cottage, the Sussexes’ new Windsor home:
Prince Harry: ‘Darling, do you think I could have my photographs in the loo – just saw that my photos are still in the box. What about the photos of me and Skippy in Vegas?’
Meghan Markle: ‘This English thing of putting embarrassing kids’ photos in the restrooms is so offensive to me. Amal and George have a painting of them with the Dalai Lama in their rest room.’
All the contributors in The Fence are under 35. Normally, the Old Un loathes such anti-oldie behaviour, but in the case of a new funny magazine he’ll make an exception.
Writing about the new venture, Brown says, ‘We aim to exonerate our generation from the charge that it is killing comedy.’
Silas Brown is, incidentally, the son of two venerated Oldie contributors, Frances Welch and Craig Brown – the greatest living satirist and author of the Private Eye celebrity diaries. Are we witnessing the birth of a new Private Eye?
Everything comes back into fashion eventually. Gin, once consigned to the back of the drinks cupboard, is now doing a roaring trade among millennials.
Is it now time for the comeback of the monocle? A new website – monoclemadness.co.uk – specialises in the single
spectacle. For £29.99, it will sell you a monocle in silver, black or gold.
The website gives handy advice on how to wear a monocle: ‘The monocle should not be “gripped”, using the muscles around the eye. The gallery (the raised top and bottom rim of the monocle) should be horizontal and is there to keep the lens away from the eye for improved comfort and a more secure fit.’
Monocle-wearers should first tip the monocle – ‘so the top gallery makes contact first with the loose skin between the eyebrow and the top of the eyelid. Then, with a slight upward motion, the bottom gallery should be brought in to contact with the skin at the bottom of the eye socket.’
And is there any greater way of showing surprise – say, at the sight of a lady in a short crinoline, or a motor car exceeding 10mph – than letting a monocle pop out of your eye?
The Oldie’s motoring correspondent, Alan Judd, was taking a pleasant stroll through All Saints churchyard in Staveley, North Yorkshire, when he came across this sign. He wasn’t sure whether he should accept the invitation.
The sign reminded the Old Un of the old Bernard Miles routine, in which he played an ancient figure in a rural part of the country:
‘Saw ol’ Nobby mowing the
churchyard this morning. He’s just turned 98 – ’ardly worth his going ’ome.’
Eighty years ago, on 3rd September 1939, the Second World War began in Britain.
Evacuees didn’t always have the best of times, as Lionel Levine describes on page 31.
The other problem with evacuation was that it wasn’t entirely clear where in the country would be safe.
Trevor Smith, a Liberal Democrat peer and author of Workhouse to Westminster, was two years old at the outbreak of war.
‘Children were dispersed near and far away by the Luftwaffe’s bombing raids,’ he says. ‘I left home along with my mother but, unlike the rest, went towards the German bombs.’
Smith’s father was a conscripted soldier, stationed in Gosport, guarding the Royal Navy’s submarines. As an uxorious husband, he wanted his family to join him. ‘We slept most nights in an air-raid shelter to shield us from the incessant bombing,’ says Lord Smith. ‘When we returned to London six months into 1940, the Blitz was in full swing. I felt Adolf Hitler was targeting me personally.’
The family then moved for a brief period to Lanarkshire, where Smith’s father went for officer training, but he was injured and invalided out of the military.
‘We returned to London and regular bombing raids,’ says Lord Smith. ‘We would go “up west” to central London from the suburbs where we lived. I would see the many hundreds of iron bunk beds on the platforms of the Underground stations, where local residents could sleep protected, as evacuations had largely ceased and families were reunited once more.’
By mid-1943, the German air raids had been largely superseded by the pilotless V-1 buzz bombs, or doodlebugs.
‘As people had earlier watched the dogfights between the Spitfires and Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes, so now we stared at the V-1s propelled by their rear-end flares,’ Lord Smith remembers. ‘When these cut out, they would glide for a further mile or so before exploding at ground level. This afforded enough time for onlookers to dive into a shelter.’
At the end of 1943, the V-1s gave way to the very swift and silent V-2 rockets which constituted a quite different magnitude of threat.
‘When one blasted the Pyrene factory on the Great West Road, about a mile from our house,’ says Lord Smith, ‘it was decided that my mother and my newborn brother should move away from the range of the V-2s and we went to stay with my uncle in Edinburgh. He was the railway transit officer at Waverley Station, where troops abounded, preparing to travel for D-day. This was the one time we moved away from the Nazis.’
Three months later, the RAF destroyed the V-2 launch pads and the Smiths were finally able to return safely to London.
It’s all reminiscent of Spike Milligan’s 1971 war memoir, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His
The death of beautiful new country houses has been exaggerated – as you will discover on reading Henbury:
An Extraordinary House, the new book by Jeremy Musson, published on 5th September.
Henbury Hall in Cheshire was built in 1986 for the Ferranti family (as in Ferranti, the electronics company) by architect Julian Bicknell.
Like all great architecture, Henbury has withstood the test of time. But, then again, it was bound to. It was inspired by Andrea Palladio’s sublime Villa La Rotonda, which has survived for more than 400 years as the exemplar of the Palladian villa. Four porticos wrapped round a dome – what could be more pleasing? And how delightful to transfer a chunk of northern Italy to northern England.