Books: Something for the Boys

YOUR KIDS AND MINE — Joe E. Brown — Doubleday, Doran ($2).

MIDDLE EAST DIARY — Noel Coward —Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Joe E. Brown, oldtime burlesque clown from Holgate, Ohio, and Noel Coward, dapper London sophisticate, have two things in common. Both have traveled thousands of miles, singing and gagging their heads off for G.I.s and Tommies from Nome to Karachi; both have now published accounts of their adventures.

Brown’s book is a timely answer to the recent Army newspaper charge that he and other U.S.O. entertainers shirked their duty when the going got tough in Asia (TIME, Oct. 23).

Joe Up a Tree. Joe traveled 150,000 miles, played in jampacked halls, hospitals, gun emplacements, rainy ditches, jungle outposts. Once he climbed Canton Island’s sole palm tree to entertain the solitary G.I. on lookout duty. Sometimes Comedian Brown would mutter prayers: “Listen, God, this is your kid, Joe. . . .

You want me to go on with this job, please keep it from being so tough. I’m not a sissy, God.” Joe’s incredible reception everywhere just about bowled him over — until he came to understand the G.I.s’ “days of monotony, each one a carbon copy of the day before.” The G.I.s were so starved for laughs that they would ignore any thing to see him open his famous trap.

At Guadalcanal, when blinding rain drenched Joe and audience alike, they only roared “Go on! Go on!” Joe went on.

Before long, softhearted Joe E. was so overcome with affection for “the kids” that he scarcely had a dry-eyed moment.

His book, as a result, is as honestly waterlogged as his eyes, probably more so than most people can take. But when Army psychiatrists followed in the wake of Joe & friends, he says they reported: “The mental condition of our boys [is] 71% improved.” Noel’s Days. Suave, mauve Noel Coward also sang till his pipes cracked, but he found ample time to comment on life in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Bits of Middle East Diary have the peculiar flavor of “My Day” (“Today I drove into Spain . . . and lunched out-of-doors at a little inn called Miraflores.

. . . The conversation alternated between Spanish and French despite the fact that they could all speak English. . . . However, this all added a touch of cosmopolitan charm . . .”). But most of the book is characteristic Coward.

In Cairo he found the five U.S. Senators (Mead, Brewster, Lodge, Russell, Chandler) who made a round-the-world inspection junket last year. “Why,” moaned Coward, “when there are so many millions of delightful Americans . . . should such an uninspiring group of men be sent on an overseas mission? . . . Oh, my God, they were dull.”*

Recipe for Teeth. Soon Comedian Coward found himself in Syria, surrounded by the “comparatively Free French.” There he sang to a huge R.A.F. audience, unaware that the rafters of the hangar were teeming with nesting birds. When Mr. Coward piped up, shrill cries answered him from above. “Just bloody little dickybirds,” said the colonel.

In Tripoli, at a Royal Artillery concert, French girls recognized the hero of In Which We Serve, “attacked me shrilly with cries of Voilà le fameux capitaine anglais!” Mr. Coward hurriedly sat down beside General Giraud. “His mustache was slightly frayed and lay uneasily on his cheeks.” Author Coward thought this was due to the Royal Artillery’s rendering of Gilbert & Sullivan, “but Humfrey told me [Giraud] had just had another set-to with General de Gaulle.” Behind sat Adolphe Menjou, wearing a beret and talking (“rather hysterically, I thought”) about the American colored troops in England. “I said that … a little colored blood would ensure us … better teeth.”

*Frothed the Boston Herald’s Columnist Bill Cunningham, on reading this passage: “It’s indeed to be regretted that the sybaritic ease of this singular swish should have been interrupted by these official representatives of the U.S. Government. . . . It’s to be fervently hoped that from Britain’s agony there will be born a new and entirely different type of Englishman.”

Wrote Senator Chandler to Cunningham: “I think it would be all right for me to say that we did not find Mr. Coward such an interesting fellow either.”