The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 8

8 Saturday January 17 1970 Hi ARTS GUARDI AN Did he really think he was the best novelist around Of course." That's the creative conceit of an artist. But he1 did get the most awful notices, didn't he I once met Faulkner and he said my notices were nothing like his." 2 Gide, Mann, and me HAROLD ROBBINS TALKS TO TERRY COLEMAN HAROLD BOBBINS says candidly that he considers himself the best novelist around at the moment He writes novels like "The Carpetbaggers," novels in which girls have breasts that seem -to be constantly straining and men have loins into which strength seems constantly to be flowing. Mr Bobbins has come up the hard way. In his suite at the Savoy in London, in yellow pyjamas, black robe, and patent leather slippers, while being sketched by a girl artist, and in between answering constant telephone calls, he talked about his hard times. He was an orphan who never knew his parents, at 15 he ran away to join the US Navy but the Navy discovered he had falsified ills age, and at 17 he was shovelling snow in New York City, eight hours on' the West Side, and then straight away over to the East Side tor another shift, 16 hours at 50 cents an hour, working the double shift because the snow didn't last long.

For a while he was a bookie's runner, but the bets were only 25 and 50 cents because it was the Depression. Then he worked in a small grocery store, and noticed that the big stores were selling family-size cans of peas and corn for a nickel. So he borrowed $800, apent $200 of this on flying lessons, rented a Waco biplane, and so impressed the 'farmers of Kentucky and Virginia by flying there in his plane that they sold him the options, on their peas and beans for 50 cents an acre. He sold the options to canning companies and sold the canning contracts to wholesale grocers the crops were good that year, and he made $910,000. "I was 20," he says, I was a pretty big man already." People told him war was approaching, ami the last time there was war there was a sugar shortage, so he made a deal Sot Puerto Rican sugar, paying $4.85 per 1001b.

when the market price was $4.65. intending to store it in New York until the war came. The only thing was, he had four shiploads four days out of New York the day war broke out, and the next day Roosevelt froze the price of sugar at $4.65, Robbins lost $1,780,000, most of which he hadn't got He was three months short of 21. He went to Universal Pictures as a shipping clerk at $27.50 a week. He out of his skull, I tell you.

But I don't think I will." He chatted a bit about feeing an American, and paying two thirds of his income in tax though he could easily arrange not to, since tie lives in Franca six or seven months of the year. "I'm American," he said. I'm taking delii very of a new yacht-this Sunday, and she'll be flying the American flag." What about his television series, "The Survivors," which has been called Thunderbirds with- actors impersonating puppets, and 1 has' probi ably been his only flop The blurb put out by his English publishers says this series will have kept. alive tfie appetite for his books. But The Survivors hasn't survived, and Friday's episode on BBC-TV was the last What did he think about that It was a failure In America too, I think it's a pretty disgusting I can't stand it myself." It had been got at, and made into a kind of Peyton Place." They only made' 16 episodes, and they had planned 52.

So he had flopped Well, he says, they paid turn for the 52. And how much had he made from this flop? Mr Robbins calculates: "One million forty thousand dollars," he says. Jones, and in Irving Wallace, and in Mr Robbins's own always a couple make love in the ocean, and Mr Robbins's couple are the most thoroughly athletic yet, full of paroxysms of delight and notes of wonder, and one time the poor woman's head is thrust under water so that it's a wonder she doesn't drown. Well, asked Mr Robbins, hadn't I ever had a girl in the sea in the Caribbean Well, as it happens, no. "I have," he said, "the water's 80 degrees," Did he really think he was the best novelist around? "Of course.

That's the creative conceit of an artist. I'm sure Irving Wallace thinks he's the best around too." Mr Robbins thought Picasso might believe himself the best too, and Laurence Olivier. So yes, he was the best around. But he did get the most awful notices, didn't he? "I once met Faulkner and he said my notices were nothing like his." Would Mr Robbins accept 'the Nobel Prize, then? "Anyone who says he wouldn't like to receive recognition is remembers all these figures exactly they're not, he says, the kind of things you forget. Then he looked into the inventory system at the warehouse and found Universal had been overpaying freight charges for years.

On his own initiative he asked for three years' refund, and waited. One day a refund Of $37,000 arrived. I hoped the cheque would be made out to me," he says. I had plans to go to Mexico. That would have been delightful." But it was made out to Universal so he handed it in, and remembers that when he went to do this he was kept cooling in an outer office for two hours.

Soon after, ho was promoted. He was a vice-president by the age of 27, not writing or anything like that but always on the budgeting side. He wrote his first novel, "Never Love A Stranger," at the age of SO, sent it to the agent who had handled Gone with the Wind and Forever Amber," and has so far sold 14 million copies. It was on the Knopf list, and he says he was one of three writers on similar contract. "There was Andrfi Gide, there was Thomas Mann and me." After four books be bought his contract back for $100,000, and since then has made $6 millions from them, and abqut $30 millions altogether from his writing.

Better than selling corn Yes," he says, better than being on relief." He says there have been three Rabbins styles. The first three books were in the realist Chicago school; like Theodore Dreiser. Ah, yes. Then The Carpetbaggers for instance was in the picaresque style of "Anthony Adverse." And of Tom Jones Yes. he says, Tom Jones too.

His new books are, he reckons, in the style of Raymond Chandler and of the Hemingway of the short stories. Then of course there's a Harold Robbins school of imitators, to which Jacqueline Susann belongs, only it's a Eobbins style that he no longer practises. Painting and sculpture change. Why shouldn't the novel." But why all this sex and violence, for which he is famous? Well, violence, believe him it's there he spent three months with bandoleros in Colombia where no American went before, not even the New York Times." What about the inevitable all-Ameri-can sex scene. It happens in James GROTOWSKY AND OTHERS Katharine Brisbane on the Polish Theatre aluminium painted walls.dressed in deans, 'teaaier' anddSk glasses.

Ha worked the clock round) frenetically, often had to be dragged, from, his studio to sleep. He died of a- brain tumour at the end 'of the year. Now the is to disentangle the halo of martyrdom, the subsequent Stardust of the Beatles, from the original, intrinsic value of his Knowing-, nothing -of '-these ''facts, you could easily dismiss this' exhibition. The, paintings, are ambiguous patterns scrawled in thickly plastered and powdered paint They could be the work of an amateur who does not realise That secondhand iconography, even richly worked, Is no substitute for original form; are" Klee's ellipses and fishbones, Pollock's obsessive eyes, Paolozzi's totems. The elements of the pattern are extremely repetitive: circles and crosses all the the same size.

You could dismiss the work as amateur but something draws you back. Sometimes the limited form is used -as a skeleton-, for disciplined, subtle colour explorations. painting in a high key 'of palest blue and gold' leads to another in green and flame. The subject is the colour, And the, as in the Beatles' music, all on the present: what one note does to the next, what green does to flame. Sutdaffe seems to be -trying to evolve in paint what the' Beatles were evolving in music: simple rhythmic elements repeated and varied; What he could not evolve was the, visual equivalent for a tune or the, form to contain the elements.

You cannot help wondering if this would have come with time. For those who want to see the exhibition, today is the last chance, as it is closing: the poetic nationalism with, which the-Polish' classics tend to be celebrated and is working towards his own style of a simple, directly spoken satirical theatre, which he believes is a more immediate comment on the life of today. His need for simplicity and direct meeting with the audience is, he admits, the result of Grotowski's work and the intimate proportions of his theatre, and he also admits that there are few young directors in Poland whose work has not been affected by his theories. Erwin Axer, one of the directors best known abroad, is the leader among' those to whom the text is the. first and final criterion of the author's vision.

But he was also the one to defend Grotowski's methods most strongly. For 22 years he has been head of the Wspolczesny (Contemporary) Theatre, in which he has created a distinctive style and ensemble of great modesty and A special case "We have in our Polish theatre many different kinds of relation to the author," he said. Grotowski's experimental theatre is one in which through one or two years of work something is bom and grows on stage, I would say that not only the acting but the play if you can speak about -a play with Grotowski is his, not the author's. His is the most radical of our non-literary theatres." It is not without the influence of the spirit of a certain kind literature or he would not name his productions Apocalypse or Akropolis, after Wyspianski. But Wyspianski is only the source and not even the source of inspiration, only of material.

Grotowski is a special case. His kind of theatre is clean and original, entirely his own. But there are few directors so great that they can supersede the author." Asked if he thought a theatre, was right to make its auditorium so small, he said Grotowski calls his theatre an experimental school. He does not try to make a theatre. He tries to find new ways to develop the art of the actor.

It is a kind of theatre I appreciate very much but which is far from mine. He is a romantic and I am much more rationalistic." Television nancy' banks-smith Manhunt rr HAS BEEN my intention for some five years to write an illuminating; nay, incisive piece "on children's television. I have, however, been thor-i oughly scuppered because I have children. Their attention is ephemeral, their behaviour abominable, their taste television execrable. I have grown grateful to terrible -children's television, -knowing that mine can be immobilised for an lymr by something nasty in the living room.

One of the few progranunes we can watch together in moderate amity is Southern's How," which is hack this week. Though it is an improving programme, this is well camouflaged by the fact that the cast seem to be enjoying, themselves. Or the-men do. Almost any grown man can regress into short, pants at will. Picking up moles by their tails, dismembering dolls to see what makes, them squeak, or happily enlarging as Jack' Hargreaves did on the historical background of knickers.

,1 watched London Weekend's "Manhunt" for the first time because a reader wrote to me' about it in the rudest and, unfortunately, unrepeatable terms. This was only remarkable because I 'have found "Guardian" readers quite crushingly court eous. Iie phrase gentle reader might have been -minted for them. So polite, so' urbane, so reasonable, and restrained that I felt sure they hated me in hearts. What abomination had Weekend perpetrated so to, rouse this gentle man I did not find Manhunt all that bad.

It was, if anything, good of its kind the kind being an updated version of Bulldog Drummond's old war cry My God, the swine have got Phyllis again." The Schwein being in this case after Nina, a fleeing French resistance fighter. It is possible my roused reader caught his turn of phrase from Manhunt" Rseif which, even bearing Barlow in mind, is quite -the rudest piece of writing I have encountered recently. Well yes, rude in sense too. But particularly in the way everyone is consistently furious with and unforgive-able about everybody else. The Hun-on-the-Hunt and the Three-on-the-Flee are so scathing to each other that it is more like marriage than war.

It may be true of resistance warfare only a resistance fighter could saybut improbable, I should have thought. So tiring. "Manhunt" may be rather heavy-handed with the mustard but, as thrillers go, it Is quite edible. Illusion' which the theatre has acquired over the centuries and returns to the direct confrontation of the actor's body and mind with the audience. Further still, he excises all dramatic illusion from the text, taking Polish, Greek, or English classics and removing the poetic and visual elements of imagination until all that remains is a series of actions of which the text is an instrument.

The challenge he has made to the foundations of dramatic method have been revolutionary and far-reaching and directors and actors both inside and outside Poland have been forced to. recognise them. Stormy history Inside Poland one quickly becomes aware of how Polish Grotowski's theories are; how serious and deeply romantic he is, how poetic in a non-literary way and how his preoccupation with the spiritual resurrection of man through suffering is a vital part of the history of" Polish theatre and Polish politics and that both are strongly allied. "Our people go to the theatre to think," one theatre manager said, and while this is difficult to believe, it is true that in Poland's stormy and divided history the theatre has been a forum of political thought and nationalism. In times when the native language was banned in schools it was to be heard on the stage.

Today the theatre is still taken seriously by both the public and the Government as an instrument of national expression and dialectic, with both good and bad consequences for those involved in its creation. The directors of Warsaw are proud of Grotowski even though he is a thorny partner, and it is impossible to discuss theatre with them without leading at some point to his theories. The main complaint against him and it is a characteristic of the Polish theatre taken to an extreme is his total romantic seriousness. "I believe that theatre should begin with a smile," said Professor Bohdan Korzeniewski, a friend of Grotwoski and one of Europe most distinguished interpreters of Moliere. Grotowski believes it should begin with a cry." Grotowski's theatre is a police State," said Adam Hanuskiewics, the flamboyant young actor-manager of the Narodowy National Theatre.

If someone laughs in a serious moment he is put out. His rehearsals are conducted in such silence and solemnity and with such exclusiveness. I am strongly against closed rehearsals and performances. Theatre is created for an audience. When people knock at the door of my rehearsals I say Come in because they are part of the creation and help me create." What he admires about Grotowski is his development of the whole of the actor as a means of expression.

Polish directors, he said, were strongly divided between the extremes of literary and anti-literary interpretation. He belonged to the second division, in that he believed that ideas bred their own forms and that one should play the form rather than package the text, but he opposed Grotowski's distortion of an author's form and text to create a new form of his own. Grotowski, said Hanuszkiewicz, was the extreme of the anti-literary form and the advantage of it was that when his company travelled abroad they were understood in a way that literature was not. In relying totally on the actor and his body, however, Grotowski had created something that was neither pantomime nor theatre but was leading to an aesthetic of pantomime, not an aesthetic of theatre. Hanuszkiewicz's own productions of the classics are as deeply personal as Grotowski's but at the other extreme of strong rhythms, visual extravagances, humour, and incongruities the nearest thing Warsaw has to total theatre.

Helmut Kajzar, a new young director and playwright, is a former disciple of Grotowski who became disenchanted with his demands for a holy aesthetic and by his humourless-ness. He is equally disenchanted with THE Polish cultural attache in London had said- rather shortly over the telephone: "We do have other directors, you know, besides Grotow-ski." And he is right, of course. 1 can think of no other city the size of Warsaw (pop. 1.3 millions) which has such vivid directing talent or so many competitive theatre companies. But the Laboratory Theatre Wraclaw is very much an issue in the Polish theatre, where its work is regarded with respect but by no means total approval.

Grotowski is not much thought of in this country. He is just one of the directors was the first reference made. And it is true that as a prophet he and his followers have gained recognition" in Poland only in the last two or three years long after the recog-. nition of his theories abroad after the publication of his texts by his Italian disciple Eugene Barba, and after many foreign actors and directors had made -his tiny studio in the provincial city of Wraclaw the ashram of a new guru. Jerzy Grotowski is at 36 already a legend in the theatre world.

A graduate of the Kracow. Theatre School, he worked as a director in Kracow and other provincial centres before beginning active research in Opole in 1959 which eventually became the Theatre Laboratory. In 1965, with an official government subsidy, went to Wraclaw. He has never yet shown a production in Warsaw. The main reason for the mystique is that he is a teacher and research worker rather than a stage director and his concern is with his art and his profession rather than with the public.

His reputation is that of a new kind of Stanislavsky. His theatre for a dozen actors and 40 spectators is a holy ritual demanding vows of asceticism and discretion from the actors together with extraordinary physical and mental feats, and from the audience intense emotional participation. The poor theatre he describes in Ms writings does without every luxury of Alexander's bedtime waveband radio by gillian Reynolds Queen Elizabeth Hall EDWARD GREENFIELD Guarneri Quartet IF BEETHOVEN'S LIFE, like Shakei speare's, presented problems of chronology, I wonder whether we -should get the works of the three periods sorted 'out correctly, and in particular whether we should place the' cycle of string quartets in like the right order. It has long struck me that the three Rasoumovsky Quartets, opus 59, are closer to the last period than they are to any of the otiher works Beethoven 'was writing at the time. It says something for the Guarneri Quartet, which is just begtai sing a complete quartet cycle in fiv concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, that opus 59 no.

2, arguably the most visionary of the three Rasoumovsky works, added last period depth to a concert that until then was pitched on a disappointingly low key. It was perhaps asking for trouble to start the whole cycle on the flat, quartet, opus 127, admittedly less problematic for players than the three late quartets that follow it but touching in the slow movement the very peak of sublimity. Of sublimity I am afraid we had comparatively little from the Guarneri players. They were superb technically but skated too 'sweetly over the soaring phrases. Treated like this the melodic line sounded like Bellini, not late Beethoven.

One trouble was that the group seemed reluctant to play really softly. Just how" softly they can play, when the marking is a full pianissimo, came out fully in the Adagio of that minor Rasoumovsky. The story has often been told of Beethoven looking at the night sky and conceiving this celestial "music of the spheres," and the Guarneri performance made on believe it passionately. YOU MIGHT WELL think that a private room in a hospital would be the ideal place to get the old listening hours in. That at least was the assumption I was operating on this time a fortnight ago, as I set off, transistor in hand and the contractions coming every 20 minutes.

Hours, I thought, hours and hours to lie there and listen. No meals to get. No dishes to wash. No door to answer. No distracting tele.

No ringing telephone. What I reckoned without was the being in hospital bit This meant that just at the climax of Paul Stephenson's and Tony Aspler's hilarious programme, "You Don't Have to be Jewish" (January 6, Radio 3), my doctor walked in and took off on a flight of equally hilarious Scots' humour. I was very sorry indeed to miss Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks doing their man sketch," even though the doctor was in equally fine form on "difficult deliveries I have known." I cannot really say that I assimilated the programme's scholarly explanations of why Jewish jokes are like they are so I suppose it would be fair to say that I missed the real point of the entire programme. All I can say in mitigation is that I was laughing so hard at the jokes and revelling in the way they were being acted out like little plays by Miriam Margolyes, Harold Kasket, John Gabriel, and Jeffrey Segal, that by the time I stopped guffawing and rolling round the bed the explanation bit was over and we were on to the next joke. Not being therefore in a position to comment on the programme as art or craft, all I can say is that I loved it and it made me feel great and I hope -they repeat at soon.

I shall have to wait for the repeat, too, of "Gulliver's Way" (January 9, Radio 3, repeat February 1) to deliver a proper appreciation because in the middle of the play in came Night Nurse, Nuala to take my temperature, pulse, order for bedtime drink, and breakfast requests. If you heard any of Gulliver's Way (which seemed to me to be a sizzling funny piece of imaginative invention by a most artful new writer, Michael Sadler) you will know that it offered a voyage through a bizarre dream world which could not survive so prosaic an interruption. I came home on Tuesday, just in time to make the dinner, get into bed, feed the baby and listen to the Radio 4 report on The Private Wing of the Public Health." This, I can report, I heard uninterrupted except by my own loud comment. Keith Hindell, the producer, must be given credit for attempting to be scrupulously fair to a huge question in a very limited time. Robert Kee's presentation was matchingly meticulous.

Arguments on both sides were presented but the comment included towards the end that in the fairest of all possible worlds there would be no private sector, though at the moment the advantages private treatment can offer prove, where financially feasible, irresistible seem to me a gem of honesty. I wish Mr Hindell and Mr Kee could be given a whole series on the health service. Certainly both the subjects and their skills demand a more amplified discussion than their allotted 43 minutes permitted. "Night Ride" is not a programme I usually hear but the nocturnal demands of Alexander Charles Reynolds (that is the baby's name, of course) look like making it as regular a part of my listening pattern as Today," The World at One," and "The Archers." Quite the nicest surprise it has offered so far was the spirited and tuneful unaccompanied rendition of The Road to Mandalay early on Friday morning by the presenter Eugene Fraser. It made a most robust and welcome relief from the dreary canned sounds otherwise abounding at the ungodly hour of 1 45 a.m.

Liverpool Neptune MERETE BATES Stuart Sutclif exhibition THERE IS A timely exhibition -at the Neptune Theatre, Liverpool, to coincide with John Lennon's brief cavort into the artistic limelight at the London Arts Gallery. Stuart Sutcliffe was the original, painter member of the Silver Beatles. After passing his diploma at Liverpool College of Art, he was rejected from the teacher training course. Thoroughly disillusioned, he joined the group to play as bass guitar in Hamburg. Here he was persuaded to paint again and attended classes under Paolozzi.

Already he lived the image to the hilt: stayed in a black room with.