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University Daily Kansan Thursday. Jan. 18, 1962
A Step Forward
A Senate subcommittee of the Kansas Legislature is holding hearings on the proposed Prairie National Park north of Manhattan.
The committee is preparing to make a recommendation on whether the state should appropriate $250,000 for the park "as a token gesture of good faith."
The attorney for the proponents of the national park said the $250,000 would amount to only about 5 per cent of the total cost of the park, but that the gesture would be a "clincher" in gaining Congressional approval.
He also said that in the entire proposed park area of 57,000 acres only about 50 families (about 200 persons) reside.
IT IS DIFFICULT to see any sound reasons against the creation of this park. Yet strong sentiment against it has arisen in Kansas.
Most of it probably springs from that trait of American life, "I'm for the little guy."
A Pottawatomie County rancher, Carl Bellinger, symbolizes the little guy. He recently gained distinction by ordering Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior, from his land.
It's only natural that sentiment would then be erected against the park. Most Americans ache for the chance to tell the Federal government to go to hell, and quickly identify favorably with anyone who does.
They see this Kansas rancher as one of the last of the rugged individualists still holding out against the pervading force of government. They figure he deserves their support.
BUT THERE IS a bigger issue involved. The park offers Kansas a chance to preserve a price less American heritage.
The Kansas prairie land was an intimate part of the growth of America. Through this prairie land came the pioneers of the American West. The generations of the future deserve the preservation of this area.
Another argument in favor of the Prairie National Park is that it will bring tourists into Kansas. Areas around the park will benefit from increased revenues through fringe area development and tourist attractions.
THE PRINCIPAL argument against the park is that it will dislocate about 50 families. This is unfortunate, but the significance of a national park preserving the prairie land overrides it.
The people will be paid for their land. The Federal government will build the park and maintain it.
Kansas can take a step forward by having this park. It is a step Kansas should take.
Karl Koch
By Bill Charles
"The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" with Vivian Leigh, Warren Beatty, and Lotte Lenya. Directed by Jose Quintero. At the Varsity.
The film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' only novel, "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone," is loaded with fine acting and sensitive direction. If one happens to agree with Williams' opinion of human nature, "Roman Spring" is a movie of the highest quality. If not, it is still a very good film which presents a somewhat twisted view of life.
Vivian Leigh plays a fading actress who establishes residence in Rome upon the death of her husband. Being very wealthy, she attracts a young gigolo (Warren Beatty) who soon becomes one of the necessities of life.
THE WILLIAMSONIAN touch is present in the person of Lotte Lenya, a society madame who dispenses boys to rich, lonely women. She and her stable of studs split 50-50 any gifts the women bestow on their playmates. The film's ending is not pleasant, but it is very logical and very effective.
The film technique of director Jose Quintero is subtle and penetrating. For the scenes which tell the real story of "Roman Spring" he uses a highly cinematic method. His camera is always moving, and manages to be in just the right place at the right time.
The major characters are acted with a great degree of competence. It would be difficult to decide between the two women for the best performance. Miss Leigh utilizes everything at her command, from her walk to her raised eyebrow, to make Mrs. Stone come alive. Miss Lenya creates a character in whom one wants to believe. When the picture is over you realize such belief is impossible because the character wasn't a person at all, but a symbol.
WARREN BEATTY has a tough job for an inexperienced actor; he has to hold his own with the two ladies while playing an Italian. He holds well. Even his accent seemed reasonably accurate.
At the Movies
"The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" is not sweetness and light or hearts and flowers. It's rather depressing, but still a good way to spend two hours.
By Steve Clark
The photography is good, but other than that, "Blue Hawaii" starring Elvis Presley, now playing at the Granada is a bust.
The featured attraction, of course, is Elvis Presley. He supposedly is the whole show. However, the characterization of Maile Duval, played by Joan Blackman, often challenges Presley as the center of attraction.
There is a small remnant of a plot. What there is, is thrown loosely around 14 "hit" songs by Elvis.
EVERY device conceivable is used to work these "hit" songs into the plot. For instance, Elvis is rejoined with some native island boys who are good friends of his. Upon seeing them for the first time in two years, he says, "I picked up a new number. Wanta hear it?" The answer of course is yes.
The plot is filled with loopholes. Elvis clad in his army uniform steps off an airplane, sees Maile, takes off his hat, and there it is, a full head of hair. That army crewcut must have grown fast!
The show really isn't bad if you are a Presley fan. His music, if one cares for it, is well-performed. "Blue Hawaii" is essentially a musical production.
Elvis becomes the star of the show at a birthday gathering for Maile's grandmother. He just happens to have brought her a present from Austria. It is a music box and just happens to play "falling in love," one of Elvis' "hit tunes."
THE MOVEGGER will be pleased to know that the show has a "they lived ever happily" ending. It is such a weak story that one couldn't expect anything else. The background is beautiful, inviting, and well-photographed. There are a lot of scenic shots of Hawaii, the newest and certainly the most beautiful state in the Union. One could, I'm sure, get a much better look at Hawaii if he
Elvis, as in his other pictures, rocks and rolls, and is still a teenage idol.
would watch a travelogue on television or at a ladies aid meeting.
Daily Hansan
Letters
Defends World Crisis Day Editor,
(Dear Mr. Williams.)
In your letter which appeared in the Daily Kansan, Jan. 15, 1962, you presented several reasons for your condemnation of KU's World Crisis Day held last December. It was stated in your letter that Mr. Fomin, a Soviet embassy official, should have been denied the privilege of speaking in front of an audience of college students for fear that his speech might have harmful effects upon those present.
IT IS MY OPINION that your criticism is highly unwarranted for several reasons. Anyone who would advocate treating the communistic movement as if it were something to be avoided is living in the wrong century. On the contrary, the more the American people can find out about communism, the easier the job of conquering it will be. Mankind has not conquered tuberculosis by avoiding the germs which cause it because they are deadly. Why then should we, the people of the United States, cringe from communism and try to isolate ourselves from it.
COMMUNISM THIRIVES on ignorance. It gives people something to believe when they have nothing else. No, Mr. Williams, a program such as presented at the KU Crisis Day does not destroy democracy; it enhances it. We must have faith in the American people to recognize the falsity and evil of communism when they hear it presented or see it published. We must know about communism before we can successfully conquer it. It has been stated very eloquently that "communism will not win the world, democracy will lose it." This is the very problem with which we are faced if we allow you and your type of "patriots" to exert influence on our nation.
University of Kansas student newspaper
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Mr. Williams, empty barrels make a lot of noise when they roll around, but they don't contain much. Assuming that your intentions are good, I advise that you rechannel your efforts. We'll all be better for it.
Kenneth C. Lyle
Coffeyville senior
(Editor's note: Mr. Williams is the vice-commander of the Patrick Henry American Legion post in Wichita. His post objected strongly to KU's World Crisis Day.)
By Melvin Mencher Assistant Professor of Journalism
THE PRESS, by A. J. Liebling, Ballantine Books. 75 cents. (Paperback.)
The other day in the city room of the Los Angeles Mirror a well-dressed man was reading aloud an obituary. The speaker was Norman Chandler, the president of the Times-Mirror Publishing Co., and he was reading the death notice of the Mirror to its employees. The news accounts relate that Mr. Chandler removed his eyeglasses to dab his eyes with his handkerchief when he finished reading.
It's too bad A. J. Liebling wasn't there. It would have been a scene worthy of reproduction in the Wayward Press, a continuing series on the pecadilloes and predicaments of the press which he has been turning out for the New Yorker for the past 15 years. Over this period. Liebling has been the obstreperous mourner at the death of a score of big city dailies. But it's just as well he wasn't around. The sight of one of California's wealthiest men weeping while a few blocks away the Hearst press was at the same time interming the Examiner, the opposition paper to Chandler's Times, might have made him cackle.
MOST OF THESE PIECES appeared in the New Yorker and though many of the incidents he describes (meat rationing, Chiang's flexible batallions) have passed into the dim beyond, the Liebling deftness remains. Furthermore, he has written new introductions to many pieces, including one which prefaces an article on the New York newspapers' diligent search for "chiselers" on the welfare rolls. "The crusade against the destitute is the favorite crusade of the newspaper publisher, because it is the safest," Liebling writes.
Liebling's criticisms of the press are considered old hat to the new generation of press critics because he happens to have some quaint notions about newspapers. He's old fashioned enough to believe that a newspaper should print news, not treat acne, or build the female form, or pick all-league halfbacks, or advise the teenager how to handle his pubescent playmate, or unclog kitchen drains. He clings to the out-of-date concept that competing newspapers can do a better job of informing the public than a single newspaper.
"A city with one newspaper," he writes, "or with a morning and evening newspaper under one ownership, is like a man with one eye, and often the eye is glass... Each newspaper disappearing below the horizon carries with it, if not a point of view, at least a potential emplacement for one."
THE DIVERSITY OF viewpoint he seeks is not restricted to the editorial page. Liebling's most telling point is that the newspaper reader has access generally only to the wire service's view of things in Washington and abroad. Few newspapers, probably no more than 50 out of 1,500 dailies, have a Washington correspondent, and fewer have foreign correspondents. (They cost money, Liebling explains.) Consequently, the news from these key news spots which most Americans read comes from two sources only, the Associated Press and the United Press International.
Liebling does not say that press association reporting is distorted. The point is that news is so complex the more perspectives from which it is viewed, the closer the reader can come to seeing the event in its full dimensions.
To many of his critics, Liebling does not understand the economics of newspapering. Newspapers must print non-news, they argue, because the newspaper is in a battle for the reader's time against the seductions of television, PTA meetings, night baseball and the other diversions we're heir to. Let's meet titillation with titillation, they argue, and perhaps sandwich some news between the advertisements, columns and gimmicks. Thus, many newspapers have 6 to 10 per cent news and surrender the rest of their space to something else.
LIEBLING DERIDES this counting-house mentality. When the publisher-merchant shapes newspaper policy, the results are disastrous, he says. The California situation would seem to support Liebling's point. That vast journalistic wasteland, with the exception of the McClatchy Newspapers and a few small dailies, abounds with gimmick-laden newspapers. Two of the worst have gone under. Significantly, the new dailies there (west coast editions of the Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal and, soon, the New York Times) print news.
Virgil Pinkly, the founding editor and publisher, until 1957, of the recently-defunct Mirror, pins the blame for the disappearing daily on the publisher with no newspaper background. Too many newspapers, he said recently, are directed by former bankers, lawyers, promoters or people who "watch the box office returns." They have little feel or flair for news, "the basic content of any newspaper," he said.
This brings up the question that constantly devils the press: Can an enterprise operated for profit maintain its dignity and independence?
Until the newspaper reader is willing to pay 25 cents for his daily newspaper, or until a cheap production process is available, newspapers will have to rely on the community's business interests for their support — which makes all the more telling Liebling's dedication in his first collection of Wayward Press pieces:
"To the foundation of a School for Publishers, failing which, no School of Journalism can have meaning."