Magyar Hírek, 1983 (36. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)

1983-11-12 / 23. szám

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TG© Utoafiac fest©

TEXTILE, GLASS, FOOD

The fact that the Hungarian industry is able to produce goods of world standard is proven by the circumstance that one-third to a half of the ready-made garments produced by Hungarian cooperatives arc exported to capitalist countries. Hungarian outworkers also enjoy a high reputation. For instance, Levi’s of jeans fame have contracted for the second five year term with the First of May Clothing Factory, and the Hunor gloves factory of Pécs has been exporting its wares for years to West and East Europe and to overseas countries including the United States. The ‘Innocence’ brand of shoes of the Quality Shoe Factory are worn by the women of West European and overseas countries.

Let me list a few facts about two Hungarian enterprises, whose products have won acclaim at the Budapest International Fair.

Bed linen, shirt materials, soft furnishings manufactured by the Győr Rábatex Textile Industry enterprise are now found in homes in 28 countries, and they got there almost unnoticed. It is unlikely that housewives living in England, Italy, West Germany, Austria, Japan, or the Canary Islands know much about the place of origin of the textile materials they use, that the material of their curtains, bedclothes, or table-linen was woven on the banks of the River Rába. Rábatex sells abroad some 15 million square meters of textiles annually. Buyers from the West purchase part of this quantity as piece goods, part as ready made products, such as bedclothes, handkerchieves etc.

The Ajka Glass factory looks back to 105 years of production. The handmade, blown or cut glass objects of the Ajka factory, prove, that maturity and trade expertese, are hard-won results which sound business policy can turn to advantage. The up-to-date designs, and classic forms of the factory’s leadcrystal cups, glass sets and plates stand up to competition with the best Bohemian or German products. Seventy per cent or the products of the glass-blowing and cutting masters of Ajka are exported. Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, the USA and Canada are established markets.

Of the consumer goods produced in Hungary, foods and wines enjoy the greatest popularity. About 25 — 30 per cent of the country’s agricultural products find their way into shopping baskets beyond the country’s bordere. The quant ity of food products exported has been increasing year by year. An increasing number of orders comes from developing countries, North and South America, and Japan. Hungarian wines, meat products, and special products of the food industry made and packed to the specification of buyers enjoy great popularity.

Agnes g. barta

THE LATABÁR SAGA

Father and son. Kálmán Latabár Jr, and his son Kálmán Latabár III.

“He shot through the door onto the stage and, like a canary escaped from its cage onto the Grand Boulevard, lie flitted about me, jumping and twitching, never for a moment standing still.” That is how Hanna Honthy that most famous of leading ladies of Hungarian operetta, described the first appearance of her partner, Kálmán Latabár Jr, on the first night of the operetta Stage Fright in Budapest in January 1931.

It was Latabár’s first-ever lead part, an appearance that changed the style of operetta and became the start of a fantastic career that made him the top comedian, the beloved “Latyi” of hundreds of thousands of admirers -theatre-going public and moviegoers alike. Here was an uninhibited jokeand-gag-spraying machine that dazzled audiences with a machine-gun fire of comic tricks, long gabby lines studded with puns, and intricate, twisted flights of fancy, all of which together made up what came to be known as the “Latabáriad”. He created a stock type, a devilishly mercurial schlemiel, a habitual bungler, one who is at once scared and brash, blundering and lucky.

Latabár, like the Marx Brothers, had brought with him the versatility of the vaudeville performer, the perfected skill of the acrobat’s art, the concise gestures, an arsenal of “improvisations” and gags at the ready. For Kálmán (bom in 1902) then already had a decade of performing experience behind him, minor roles in comedies, followed by toure of many European capitals and Johannesburg, in a duo (‘The two Latabars’ — with his younger brother Árpád) of comic dancers and parodist-acrobats.

Kálmán and his younger (and much taller) brother were the fourth generation of a dynasty of performers, actors, singers, directors, whose family history is intertwined with that of the theatre in Hungary. The line began in 1831, with Endre Latabár (1811 - 1873) and it did not end with Kálmán Junior’s death in 1970: his son, Kálmán Latabár III (b.1938) is at presept a member of a Hungarian theatre company.

The. Latabár saga is told in a book (A Satabúrok — “The Latabára”) by Fétar Molnár Gál, a critic and historian of the theatre. The Latabára, says-Molnár Gál, “were active chiefly in humble genres. They built up an

impressive record of creative achievement in a subculture underrated by aesthetes...” Some of the Latabárs were brilliant performers, others were lustreless, but all of them, fathers, sons and brothers, were associated with the stage. “It’s a kir.d of congenital illness running in the family,” Kálmán Senior (1855 — 1924), third son of the founder and grandfather of Kálmán Jr, told an interviewer three years before his death. Undoubtedly, Kálmán Jr was the most famous of them all.

The Founder

Endre, the founder, abandoned his studies in the Calvinist College in Debrecen to join a company of strolling players. He had a fine voice, and was a singer at first, but rose to fame as theatre manager. He was the man who transplanted French operetta to his country becoming the father of Hungarian operetta.

Endre Jr (1841 -1888) and Dezső (1849-1886) played in the country and Budapest. Their sons, Rezső (1888 — 1943) and Endre Gyula (1872 — 1901) were also actors. Kálmán Senior (1855 — 1924) had no singing voice — the only Latabár who was a straight actor. Later, he directed several productions, including “The Tragedy of Man” by Imre Madách.

Árpád Senior (1878-1951), grandson of the founder, was a popular comedian in the early 20th century. Off stage, Árpád was “a hard drinker

Árpád Latabár Jr

and a jovial bohemian with a roving eye”. His two sons, Kálmán Jr and Árpád Jr grew up in dire poverty.

The two Latyis'

Árpád Jr (1903-1961), ‘Latyi the Taller,’ played mostly in partnership with his more gifted, and shorter, (Oder brother. In the twenties, the two brothers went to Berlin, where they appeared in short stage acts preceding film showings. After five years of tours, they were spotted by Max Reinhardt, and he signed them up for this production of La belle Helene”. The Latabárs made their greatest hit in Vienna.

Kálmán has often been likened to Buster Keaton. He did have some of B. K.’s deadpan humour; but above all he had a talent for absurd comedy. It perfectly suited the ohanged times, that world grown absurd.

‘Latyi’ gained tremendous popularity in the 1930s; in the early 40s, in the space of four years, he appeared on stage 2,000 times, beside night-club and radio appearances and playing in films. In May 1944, his career was broken off abruptly, because of being been born of a Jewish mother.

Barely a year afterwards, in the early weeks of peace, he was back on stage. His popularity continued unabated, though he came under fire, because, as Molnár Gál writes “Some critics of the Fifties waged a war on Latabár’s person and acting style, claiming it was ‘alien’, ‘not progressive’.” Nevertheless, distinctions and prizes were showered on him even in those years—and Latyi continued to delight theatre and cinema audiences (15 of his 38 films were made after the war), even though he was seriously ill, suffering from diabetes.

Molnár Gál’s Latabár book is extremely well-researched. It abounds in fascinating details of and incidents of Hungarian theatre life over the past 150 years, and in lucid arguments on controversial aspects of the theatre. The 472-page book plus its 83-page appendix of contemporary photographs makes delightful, and instructive, reading. (In Hungarian)

ISTVÁN FARKAS

The two Kálmán in operetta „Lili”

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