A Bird

Hollywood has found a sensational new comic of peerless proportions and undiscovered sex. He or she (nobody can tell) is a black-bodied, yellow-legged, orange-beaked Mynah bird named Raffles which has a positive genius for saying the wrong thing at the right time in an Oxford accent.*

On Duffy's Tavern (TIME, June 21) last week the bird laughed, whistled, sneezed and sang The Star-Spangled Banner. At the preshow rehearsal, with a full audience, the feathered guest star was in especially fine form. Raffles pondered the best lines of Duffy's star, rumpled Ed Gardner, and cooed: "Hello, darling." Once, when the audience guffawed at a Gardner quip, the petulant bird fixed a baleful eye on the customers and shouted: "Quiet!" It brought down the house. On Fred Allen's program last spring Raffles, who is crow-size, flew away with the show by the simple expedient of soaring up to the balcony, banking gracefully back toward the stage and coming in on the orchestra leader's head.

In Hollywood, Raffles has met Walt Disney, Charlie McCarthy, David Selznick, many other bigwigs. Elsa Maxwell gave a party for the bird. Paramount signed Raffles up for eight weeks at $3,500 to play opposite Dorothy Lamour in her forthcoming Rainbow Island. Qn the lot Raffles' dressing room, complete with nameplate, is next to Dorothy's.

Grape-Happy Orphan. Probably the highest-paid bird in the world ($500 a radio performance), Raffles belongs to the explorer-lecturers, Mr. & Mrs. Carveth Wells. Mrs. Wells adopted Raffles in Malaya four years ago after its mother was killed by a snake. Mrs. Wells worked hard on the bird's diction, avoiding profanity, and taught Raffles to speak only on cue (a process involving bribery with the bird's favorite food--grapes). A major crisis developed when Raffles picked up a Southern drawl from the Wells's Negro maid, but that crisis passed when the maid picked up its English accent.

The bird now has its own personal maid, whom it summons either by name or by making a noise like a buzzer. A noisily temperamental showoff, it breakfasts on hard-boiled egg yolks and orange juice, later polishes off a raw carrot and a slice of banana mixed with mockingbird seed. Good performances mean good meals of grapes. But this diet has to be regulated, because Raffles sometimes gets grape-happy and will not perform at all. Raffles sleeps in a nest of hot-water bottles. Being a tropical bird, it could not live otherwise.

*A natural-born mimic with a voice box in its trachea, the Mynah lives all over the orient, especially in India and the Malay Penninsula. Not all Mynahs can be taught to talk. Those that can are a gold mine for bird fanciers.

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