Music: Tank Corps

In the California desert 175 miles east of Los Angeles row upon row of darkly tanned U.S. tank soldiers sprawled and squatted, Indian style, in the dry dust. A battery of klieg lights lit up the overcast, night. One soldier climbed a telephone pole and perched there all evening.

The men were there to hear mop-maned Leopold Stokowski and the Los Angeles Philharmonic play Shostakovich’s new Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony (TIME, July 20). Black-tailed musicians filed out in the jerry-built unpainted shell. When a shapely blonde violinist took her place in the rear row, the fun began. “Bring her up front,” yelled the soldiers.

Then the chant changed to: “We want Stokowski!” The dapper conductor tripped across the stage. Shouted the tank corps: “He needs a haircut.”

Unruffled, Stokowski leaped to the podium, introduced the guest of honor, Mme. Ivy Litvinoff, wife of Russia’s roly-poly Ambassador. The soldiers were asked to sing the Soviet national anthem (The Internationale). Most of the men had never heard the words.

Still unruffled, Stokowski got down to the main business of the evening, Shostakovich’s 80-minute masterwork. Discreetly Conductor Stokowski had cut the symphony’s tortuous length by nearly half, but as he boomed and rattled into the home stretch of the first movement the audience shuffled and groaned impatiently, electricians began jabbering over their microphones, newsreel men noisily ground their cameras. Suddenly Stokowski stopped the orchestra. Said he: “Men, there is a little more of this symphony to play. I do not know whether you want to hear it and it does not matter to us, but I notice that there is some talking over there (nodding right) and those over here (nodding toward Mme. Litvinoff) who want to listen, can’t hear. Do you want us to play the rest of it or not?”

Loyally the khaki-clad audience roared: “Yes!” Unwisely Conductor Stokowski asked: “How many say no?” Following an old U.S. custom, a lone dissenter piped: “No!”

“You can go home,” Stokowski shouted at the rugged individualist. The tank corps listened politely to the rest of the program.