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About Eugene register-guard. (Eugene, Or.) 1930-1983 | View Entire Issue (April 21, 1963)
Page 6E EUGENE REGISTER-GUARD. Sunday, April 21, 1963 Books Comedy Writer Creates 'New Dimension' By RAYMOND E. PALMER Of lh AIMCUU4 Fnu LONDON Spike Milligan, writer and actor, lay in kind of concrete coffin in his dressing room. He was dressed in tattered old clothes. An untidy gray beard straggled over his low er face. Hi eyes were sad. Tbey stared upward toward a grimy window that looked out on the River Thames. In the grime on the window '7 u X : a f Spike Milligan in Relaxing Bin bis finger had traced the words: "On a clear day you can see the other side of the glass." MiUigan calls the coffin like structure bis relaxing bin. He lies there snatching an occasional nap, thinking weird thoughts that enrich the English world of comedy. "I'm not really a come dian," said Milligan. "I'm a writer who has found out how to string words together in a way that makes people laugh." Some of those words strung together with a 24-year-old writer named John Antrobus produced one of the biggest recent hits of the British the ater, "The Bed-sitting Room." Milligan's sense of humor is primarily a sense of the ri diculous. One theme at which he constantly plugs away is bureaucracy. "People who regard other people as numbers or tickets or so many holes in e card have to be lampooned to let the cleansing power of laugh ter get at them," he said. Not surprisingly, his atti tude to life gets Milligan into some way-out situations. When he applied for a renewal of Reprints Portray Army Life NEW YORK (fl Mark Twain wasn't the only West ern traveler who distrusted, with humorous horror, the bills of fare at wayside eating places. The descriptions he wrote In "Roughing It" are reflected In two reprints by J. P. Lip pincott in its Keystone West ern Americana series, "Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border" by Randolph B. Marcy, $2.75, and "Mountain eering in the Sierra Nevadas" by Clarence King, $2.50, Marcy, an army officer pro vides this account of a meal ordered f or a a I c k 1 y friend who went West for his health: "The dishes before us con sisted ot fried bacon floating in grease, some corn bread in the shape of hand grenades, and a quantity of glutinous, half-baked hot biscuit, neith er of which seemed calculated to tempt the appetite of the gentleman from the East, who called for toast." King, telling of a meal in California, said the food con sisted of "beans swimming in fat, meats slimed with pale ropy gravy, and over every thing a faint mongol odor the flavor of moral degener acy . and of a disintegrated race." He means there were Chinese cooks. A U.S. geologist, King pro duced his book in 1872 and tells in careful, elegant English of his mountain climbing exploits. Anyone in terested in the High Sierra will find it extremely inter esting. Marcy, whose son-in-law was Gen. George B. McClellan, was an export explorer, map maker and hunter as well as a gifted writer and reporter. His book, first printed in 1868, provides a good look at the untamed West. He saw the Indians as .savages, but as savages who were being bad ly mistreated by the Indians. It Is a shame Marcy's sense of history was not stronger. He gives only a sketchy ac count of his meeting with Jim Bridger, the famous mountain man. If Marcy had taken time, he could have provided material toward a really good biography of Bridger. A book by J. Cecil Alter, University of Oklahoma Press, $5.05, attempts such a biog raphy but falls short. Alters "Jim Bridger" waters down too much the essence of a man who was as wild as Taos Light ning whisky. It also says thero was a report in 1790 of white Canadians reaching the Pa cific. Alexander Mackenzie, the first man to reach the Pa cific north of the Spanish set tlements, didn't do that until July 22, 1793. E. H. Sprungcr 174 W. BROADWAY FABRIC HOUSE 174 W. BROADWAY Ml 4 Tremendous Savings" DRAPERY FABRIC SALE! Antique Satin Dobby Weave Tweed Frosted Textured Weave Antique Satin Prints Textured Prints Tremendous selection of new decorator colors and weave. All 45" wide, Rayon and Acetate Blends We will custom make the above fabric for an Additional 60c a yard UNLINED. 40" minimum length Example: If your window takes 10 yards of fabric, your TOTAL COST, including fabric and labor will be $14.80 COMPLETE! bis British passport recently he was told that technically be was a stateless person. He was born in Abmadna ger, India, April 16, 1918, where bis Irish-born father was serving in the British Army. The father had not qualified for British national ity and therefore Milligan did not qualify. "They disowned me, just like that." said Milligan. "I suppose it was their way of getting back at me. So I took out Irish nationality. Now I'm Irish and a fully fledged rebel." His name really is Terrence Alan Patrick Sean Milligan. Everyone calls him Spike, but no one knows why. He was the. originator of a top radio program called "The Goon Show," which ran for eight years and introduced two other British stars, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe. This avante garde comedy show convulsed audiences throughout the Common wealth. Peter Sellers is con vinced that Milligan is a genius, a comedian years ahead of his time. But he is utterly unpredict able. His scraggy beard and ragged clothes are part of his war against the human race, says Sellers. "He likes to shock people." Milligan admits it. "You have to shock people some times to wake them up. They get into a rut and don't want to think. If I couldn't shock them into thinking and laugh ing. I think I'd despair of the human race." CAROLYN HUBBARD FOR A NEW SPRING HAIR FASHION! mmsh ttm If' T OPEN THURS. and FRIDAYS 9 to 9 j ELLIE HAROLD OPEN 9 io 5:30 DOROTHY COHTEZ OWNER OPERATOR DI 2-3342 A new you is just around the corner . . . you deserve the change. 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