MILESTONES
The Captain’s Paradise, Alec Guinness, yvonne de Carlo poster boy for adolescent bedrooms. He remains so today, irrationally, despite the horrors. But then nobody really believes the human mind is rational.
Among the most significant events of the immediate
post-war years – one which had little to do with personality and everything to do with the urge for personal freedom – was the creation of the Jewish national state of Israel: the country won United Nations recognition in 1947. For once, the Soviet Union had backed its capitalist enemies (who were themselves nervous about the move, but perhaps for the last time in history they gave way to a moral imperative) but did so largely, it seems, to undermine Britain’s dominant influence within the oil-rich region. Straightaway, war erupted INPRA
between the fledgling nation and its Arab neighbours, and hostilities in one shape or another have continued ever since. They are the sporadic symptoms of the most stubborn
ankle-socks and a well-fed look about them. Brigitte Bardot
running sore on the global body politic.
personified kittenish allure; Errol Flynn and John Wayne won the war all over again. Britain also made its cultural contribution: Lawrence Olivier’s superb Henry V had stirred
Pretence and reality
national pride towards the end of the war and continued to
do so afterwards; other now-classics followed. On the lighter
Popular culture during the late 40’s and most
of the 50’s remained, by and large, faithful to its pre-war
side Alfred Hitchcock frightened happy audiences out of their
heritage, although now it was even more American, indeed
wits; Ealing Studios turned out a string of brilliant comedies
overwhelmingly so. Its dynamic was Hollywood; Rita
(Passport to Pimlico was one); Alec Guinness (Kind Hearts
Hayworth was one of a dozen glamorous screen goddesses;
and Coronets, etc.) charmed with his po-faced comedy, and
Frank Sinatra the idol of the bobbysoxers, which was the
Genevieve, whose heroine was a vintage car, seduced with its
name given to American teenage girls with pony-tails, white
gentle humour. ‘Cruising Down the River’ was top of the pops in 1947.
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