Frenchman's U. S.

Forty million Frenchmen think of the U. S. as the country of skyscrapers, rattlesnakes and riches, democracy, oil, ice water, le wild West and le jazz hot. With the hope of broadening that conception, and with the blessing of the French foreign ministry which io all for Franco-American good will, two cheerful French radiomen showed up in the U. S. last summer. They were Jacques F. Friedland, 41, president of a French radio production agency, Agence Radiophonique Universelle, and Didier van Ackere, 29, Paris correspondent of Columbia Broadcasting System. They came to make 30 half-hour recordings of U. S. sounds, songs, scenes. These recordings they planned to take back for broadcast over the 17 stations of the Government-owned French National Radio Network.

Last week, after much traveling and much help from CBS, Messieurs Friedland and van Ackere finished their series. Their recordings, packed with fascinating fictions as well as facts, pictured the U. S. just about as their compatriots at home picture it. The editors explained that too many variations from preconceptions would merely make their compatriots lose faith in the programs. In accordance with the French idea of the U. S., everything moves at a dizzy pace. Efficiency, machinery, wealth are stressed.

First program is a slam-bang kaleidoscope of the whole country--snatches of history, honky-tonk Chinatown music from San Francisco, sentimental plantation songs from the South, descriptions of Boulder Dam and Bonneville Flats, the U. S. national anthem (La Banniere Par-semee d'Etoiles}. Three broadcasts are devoted to New York City, describing everything from Harlem's dance halls to Wall Street ("la maison Morgan, voila guelque chose de drole!").

In the history of U. S. oil, a 30-minute script which van Ackere wrote in less than 60 minutes, two sentries at a Texas outpost hear coyotes howling.

"Oh," says one, "je n'aime pas le cri de ces animaux." Better than Indians, says the other. By the way, says the first, you haven't seen any snakes tonight, have you? No, not tonight--"Ce sont de sales betes, ces serpents a sonnettes. . . " At the end of the Revolution, Lafayette cries: "C'est la victoire . . . l'alliance entre les Etats Unis et la France a triomphe!" Last program is a grand roundup of U. S. noises, including the roar of "les chutes du Niagara" birds twittering, a bear's grunt. Coney Island's tinkles and cries, the voice of Monsieur Thomas Dewey.

The two who have pressed the U. S. on these 30 wax surfaces are a perfect team: van Ackere, short, excitable and voluble; Friedland as tall, quiet and phlegmatic as a Frenchman can be. Friedland is a producer and businessman who speaks no English whatsoever; van Ackere is a showman and artist who speaks English with no accent whatsoever. Together they work fast and smoothly. M. Friedland's most cherished souvenir of U. S. culture, which he says he will show to every one in France, is a folder of matches from a New York hotel. The matches are fully-dressed cardboard maidens. Of them M. Friedland says with Gallic awe (his assistant's translation) : "America, it is wonderful. Here it is only needed to rub the young lady in order to make the fire."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.