Prelude to Shaw

Two things happened to George Bernard Shaw last week which he would never have predicted. He allowed himself to sign a contract to let his plays be cinematized (see p. 46). And he found himself set to music. Until pictures could talk, a Shavian film was obviously impossible. Almost as strange as a silent Shaw picture would be a Shaw opera. That, however, had not been attempted by the young German composer, Karl Friedrich Grimm, who mounted Shaw's steps last week, score in hand. He had merely written a prelude to Shaw's Caesar & Cleopatra. Shaw listened, pondered, approved.

Whether or not Composer Grimm knew it, Pundit Shaw is not without musical experience. He is at home with no instrument more musical than a typewriter, can barely carry a tune, but he once earned his living writing about music for his fellow-Irishman, the late famed Thomas Power ("Tay Pay") O'Connor. Explains Shaw: "He made me musical critic quite frankly and explicitly ... to prevent my writing about anything else than music. My other writings were ruining his paper [The Star']."

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