which he conversed for want of better occupation, but that one day he would find his friend, one who was truly worthy of him, and at that moment he should be taken from my happiness. Sometimes to the contrary, seated at his side on the warm wet tile, I let myself go into a blissful torpor. Then I would imagine that he would give me leave to touch him with my finger, simply his skin, near the lower ribs, in order that the contact might produce. . . I know not what miracle. And this desire became such an obsession that I contrived to satisfy it without his taking note. As no miracle produced itself, I then took to account my slowness, or more likely it was himself who disturbed my veritable ceremony, arose or began to speak, dissipating without knowing of them the magical seas by which I had surrounded him..

I heard him, attentive, without any sense of his speech but fastened to his voice, which I allowed to filter into me, rejecting the significance of his words. And that voice lulled me as the roll of a raft. He ceased being Struwe, the inaccessible Struwe, "that one who was different from the others," and became a land, certainly still strange and foreign, a country of which he was simultaneously the frontier and the capital, and toward which I moved in a demiconsciousness..."

(Nicolas Struwe, pages 54-58)

-Arcadie, May 1955

CINEMA

HOLLYWOOD:-About the only thing that the picture "THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING" proves is that SIN DOES NOT PAY. With all the ballyhoo about this movie, we need only say that it depicts the story of EVELYN NESBITT, outstanding theatrical Broadway beauty of her day, and the two men in her life, and how their lives hit the newsstands of the world. JOAN COLLINS plays Evelyn Nesbitt, RAY MILLAND Stanford White, world renowed architect who was her lover; and FARLEY GRANGER her multi-millionaire husband. What should have been the most interesting part of the story, the MURDER TRIAL of Evelyn's homosexual husband for shooting White was given a very small play in the picture. Perhaps if this had not been the case, the film would have held MORE INTEREST. Miss Collins in her FIRST AMERICAN PICTURE handles her part capably, as does FARLEY GRANGER as the insane Harry Thaw, but Ray Milland, who has had more experience in acting than the two principals mentioned, puts in one of the HAMMIEST PERFORMANCES of his career. "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" is LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT, of that there is no doubt, but the TRUE STORY of Evelyn Nesbitt was not light nor was it very entertaining. Once again Hollywood CHANGES THE LIVES of the people they depict on the screen to their OWN ADVANTAGE, and this time it is done in colour and CINEMASCOPE. Lavish, it is true, but factual-ah, that is ANOTHER STORY..

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