... Pat Wallace Miss Lesley Storm's The Paper Hat is played for the most part in an atmosphere of good tem per and affection. This, of course, rules it out entirely from the category of contem porary misery probers and therefore means, I suppose, that it follows no fashionable trend. It poses no new problems and even the old ones it illus trates--of young love andfamily relationships are not ...

... I Pat Wallace The Solid Gold Cadillac is a somewhat delayed export from Broadway where it had a con siderable success a few years ago. As a play about American big business it could have been a formidable affair but happily it is treated as a combination of comedy and fairy story by Mr. Howard Teicbmann and the late George s. Kautman. i. nar rator's voice doggedly pursues a Cinderella theme ...

... ' Gerald Lascelles, People who heard Ben Webster --one of the few tenor players who mean anything today out side the clique of screeching modernists-- at his recent Lon don concert may have been surprised by the highly melo dic style he uses. In the closer confines of Ronnie Scott s club, where he is currently appear ing in an atmosphere more con ducive to the intimate and intricate music he ...

... ' J. Roger Baker; In any other country, the production of Billy Budd currently showing at the Royal Opera House would be a matter of public scandal. The only people to emerge with any credit are Britten himself (for writing what is clearly a moving, powerful and intellec tually strong work), and the conductor Meredith Davies, who captured the orchestral pat terns beautifully, particularly in ...

... ' Elspeth Grant/ You may be inclined to dismiss prostitutes and private detec tives as a bunch of soulless sluts and ditto snoopers but, according to Sylvia, you'd be very wrong to do so. Consider the case of George Maharis, the good-looking private eye hired by a cagey millionaire (Peter Lawford) to investigate the past life of Sylvia (Carroll Baker), the refined young woman he's thinking of ...

... ' Oliver Warner/ Instead of expressing my own opinion of Twenty One Years by Randolph Churchill (Weiden feld & Nicolson 21s.) I will quote from the opening. Diana and I were very naughty child ren. I remember throwing the nursery maid's wrist watch out of the window from a great height and it shattered on the ground I could never brook authority or discipline. The author seems to have ...

... Robert Wraight When his 20-year-old, original Ned Kelly series of paintings was on show in London last summer Sidney Nolan told me that, though he had returned to the subject of Kelly again and again, he was still not finished with it. In fact he was so moved by seeing those early paintings for the first time in many years that he must have gone straight back to his studio and started on a new ...

... I The living colour of Monticel I i Robert Wraight I am at present on a busman's holiday, visiting artists and galleries along the Mediter ranean coast from Marseilles to Menton. But before I get around to telling you, in a future column, what I have found down here I want to recommend to you an exhibi tion in London-- an exhibition of the paintings of a remarkable artist who lived and died in ...

... / J. Roger Baker When people ask me how I can stand going to the opera two or three times a week I usually reply: Because I like it. This is true, but there is another reason which is quite simply the eternal hope of witnessing a really stunning performance when everything integrates and goes magnificently well. This type of experience is not a i matter of great singers or of transcendent ...

... Elspeth Grant/ Jack Le Vien, looking as inno cent as years of successful operation in the newsreel busi ness would allow, anxiously told me he sincerely hoped I had liked his latest film-- A King's Story- As it seemed likely he would die of misery if I said No, I was glad to be able to say truthfully that I had enjoyed it very much in an emotional sort of way. Mr. Le Vien delightedly assumed ...

... ' Gerald Lascelles/ While conventional taste for the jazz ballad rests firmly in favour of the established favourites, another use for the human voice has been looming on the horizon for some con siderable time. The wordless bop singing, which in itself was an advancement on scat singing, came close to instru mental sounds and phrasings, and was developed into a fine art by the Lambert ...

... Pat Wallace/' There are so many things to be said about Mr. Noël Coward's Present Laughter, first pro duced in the early 40s and now entering on a fresh London season. Perhaps the first is that it is an indestructibly good comedy. It is not dated. It is not a period piece which neces sarily has to be dressed in comic, low-slung fashions. It is a very funny play which, as far as my crystal ball ...