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Show JhiPhillipr f A LETTER TO MR. DISNEY Dear Walter Disney: I have just read in the papers that you do not think a child could possibly be scared by any of the weirder effects in your new picture, "Fantasia," particularly by the episodes epi-sodes in "Night on Bald Mountain," and while you may be right, what about the grownups? I give you my word, Walt, that the scenes in that episode had me creepy for days and I still ain't sleeping well. If that comes under the head of entertainment, enter-tainment, then a great idea for the Follies would be a night in a morgue. You are a genius in my book, 1 Walter, and nobody is even a close j second to you in movie entertainment, entertain-ment, but it would be okay by me and, I think, most movie fans, if you would cut out a tendency to go in for the creepy stuff. You could throw out the entire night on Bald Mountain and do the nerve doctors and psychopathic ward attendants a great favor. I know this is supposed to Interpret Inter-pret a musical composition for drums, bass fiddles, cymbals, horse pistols, dynamite caps and saxophonists saxo-phonists with the D.T.'s, but if it does so, then Moussorgsky should have stayed in bed where he could never make the hair of a movie fan stand on end, man or boy. "Fantasia" is a beautiful thing full of what the critics call enchantment, enchant-ment, but a smart spectator will grab his hat and make for the nearest near-est exit when the Bald Mountain stuff starts. It is nothing but 20 minutes of skeletons, ghosts, flib-berty-gibbets and assorted apparitions appari-tions flying across the screen like they was fugitives from Hades, and I mean the basement not the mezzanine mez-zanine floor. A skeleton rates at the bottom of the list for purposes of public entertainment, anyhow, even if it is a quiet, dignified unassuming skeleton. And when a skeleton turns out to be. a jitterbug acting as if it was being auditioned for a ballet it is no good to nobody nohow, even with the Philadelphia Symphony orchestra or-chestra as sponsor. The episode should be retitled "Heebie-Jeebies in Technicolor." Give them skeletons two weeks' notice, Walt, and give Bald Mountain Moun-tain back to Hitler, where it must have come from. Yours for fewer goose pimples, with sound. Elmer Twitchell. BACK HOME STUFF (In the other world war.) "Don't Talk War" signs hung behind be-hind the bars of all the cafes in town . . . The town's best-known saloon owner, who for years had worn his mustache Kaiser style, suddenly sud-denly found himself in a spot . . . There were German spy scares every ev-ery day ... A fellow dropped into the local newspaper office from the New York Tribune to promote a fund for "Marjorie's Battleship" Battle-ship" . . . There was talk of meatless meat-less days and heatless nights . . . Nearly every war bulletin men- tionea von Kluck's left wing . The kaiser had promised the troops Christmas dinner in Paris . . . President Pres-ident Wilson aroused a storm of edi- torial comment by declaring "There is such a thing as being too proud to fight" . . . Remember? BROKEN GENTLY At six, complete with cheek of tan, He wished to be a fireman. At ten ambition took a hop-He hop-He prayed to own a candy shop. At oh so sweet sixteen his heart Ached to play an actor's part. U twenty, spirits all aglow He hoped to own a Wall Street Co., And now that he's reached forty-eight forty-eight He wishes he could hibernate! Richard Avedon. DO YOU REMEMBER Away back when all school teachers teach-ers were above suspicion of being enemies of the American way of life? These are timet when the fellow who rose from newsboy to millionaire capitalist capital-ist wishes he could reverse the trip. The football rules committee made numerous changes at its recent re-cent January meeting, but still did nothing toward the most needed reform re-form of all: a rule making touchdowns touch-downs by officials illegal. e Harry James says It looks as if Mussolini was the type of man who could keap his chio np only in the newsreels. |