The Wilmington morning star., 1940-01-15
Man bout

~ Georoe Tucker


NEW YORK, Jan. IA. - Several
wears ago Clifford c. Fischer, pro-
Queer of the Folies Bergere, sent
me a pet monkey, and as l waste
saw the ~least-caught unawares, l
turned to Ed Stanley, a newspaper.
man now handling publicity for
Paul v. McNutt, and asked him
what in the world I should do
with it.
He thought for a moment and
then said, "Why don't you give it
to Charles Norman. He's a lonely
sort of guy and it might be a lot of
comfort to him"
Norman at that time was a fea-
ture writer for the AP Feature
Service and spending his spare time
on a biography of Christopher Mar
lowe, the Elizabethan playwright
and contemporary of Shakespeare
who finally lost his life in a tavern
brawl. A chapter of this unfinished
biography has already appeared in
one of the popular periodicals.
We worked in the same office for
a number of years, and when he re.
signed l assumed he quit because
he wanted more time to work on
this biography. Once I went with
him to the home Of his very good
friends. the Carl Carmers, who
wrote STARS Fell on Alabama" and
while we were there Mrs. Garner
showed me a watercolor that Nor
man had done and presented to her.
I didn't even know he was inter
ested in painting.
But now it appears that he left
his job-not to write, but to paint.
That was just a little over two
years ago. This month New York
ers have been finding in the Julien
Levy Gallery. at Is East 57th street,
a showing of Is watercolors by this
strange and after a fashion unpre-
dictable e%x-confrere of mine. I say
unpredictable because one he pub
lished a couple Of books of poems,
and you must admit that poets are
nearly always unpredictable.
y
These watercolors of his are based
IN interior themes-a red pitcher,
a still life with oranges, a table
top. a blue rug, etc.
II paint furniture and common
household Objects" he says, ''be-
cause 1 see beauty in them just as
others see beauty in sky and trees.
-. I hope eventually to add va
riety to my work by painting out
door scenes, but thus far such eff
forts have led me only to this rue
full reflections: if trees grew in pots
I would be a landscape painter"
That is well put. AS to his paint
ings, I haven't seen them; but even
if 1 had I could make no comment,
knowing nothing Of art whatever.
But this much Of an opinion may
be put forward without hazard:
they may not be true art, but if
Charles Norman did them they are
at least interesting and different.
James Thurber, the one-time Col.
umbus, O., reporter who became
famous through his weird drawings
in the New Yorker, explains how
he came to c~ollaborate with Elliott
Nugent in writing their new play,
"The Male Animal:
well" he says, II had an idea I
wanted to write a play and all 1
could think of was the picture of a
woman fiddling with her husbands
typewriter. That was the opening
scene. So I wired Nugent in Holly
wood and said, Let's write a play
and he wired back, Nothing doing
So I went out to Hollywood and
walked in on Elliott and told him
I was ready to go to work. Then
he said, What's it going to be
about? and I said, Well, the first
scene is about a woma playing
with a typewriter But Elliott said,
That's OUT and 1 knew the COL
liberation was on"