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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, April 11, 1961
A Loss of Friends
America's prestige? One good estimate recently made is that approximately 24,000 foreign students visiting America this year will carry an unfavorable opinion of the United States back to their countries.
There are currently 54,000 foreign students attending American colleges and universities. Though primarily here for study in specific fields, they also become familiar with that nebulous thing known as the "American-way-of-life."
Their governments are for the student exchange program; our government thinks enough of it to appropriate $5 million annually through the Fulbright and Smith-Mundt programs. On the surface (and so everyone has thought), the exchange would seem to work to the advantage of the United States in its death-struggle with the Soviet Union. But when sampled in depth, the fruits of the program prove to be rather bitter.
ONE ADMINISTRATOR AT THE CALIFORNIA Institute of Technology, who coordinates the school's foreign student program, estimates that one-half of the foreign students at American campuses today will leave with a bad impression of this country.
The reasons for this are many, but, primarily, the dissatisfaction with America is a result of the normal difficulties a stranger meets when thrown into a society different from his own. And America's failure to do anything about it is costing important friendships.
EVIDENCE OF THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL gap at KU has been pointed out by the necessity of the "People to People" program started last month. Through this, it is hoped that the canyon between the many different cultures can be bridged. But, in addition, the basic problem
of acquainting the visitors with the real America will also partially be solved.
It is imperative that foreign students become familiar with our problems as we are trying to understand theirs. We are aware of the struggle of the new African nations in loosening the bonds of colonialism. We realize that India, Indonesia, and Pakistan are desperately trying to keep their heads above water by being non-committal to either the East or West. We understand the significance of the revolutionally wave that is sweeping Latin America. But the foreign visitor is shocked to find that America has oppressed minorities, economic problems, and social inequities.
AMERICA, UNFORTUNATELY, HAS backed into an untenable position because of its power and activity in world affairs. In trying to sell itself to the people of the world in the propaganda war of the last decade, it has gone overboard in casting an image of perfection. No wonder the foreigner comes to this country with great expectations, only to leave disillusioned. All he has heard and read about is the wonderful opportunities afforded one and all in this land of freedom. Then when he finds that we too have our racial, social and economic conflicts, he is disappointed.
Perhaps, at some time in the past, America could have afforded the consequences of this disillusionment. Not now. For the crucial polarity of the Eagle and the Bear means the lesser powers and the so-called "neutrals have to align themselves with one of the two.
We can no longer afford to lose support, if we ever could. And those visitors to our campuses who return to their native lands will eventually be in positions to determine which way their countries turn. — Frank Morgan
Help Wanted
What's the matter with the Kansan? Why are you not drumming for the John Birch program? Where is your patriotism? Your Americanism, your loyalty, your love of country, constitution, home and mother?
Will you just sit on the sidelines and twiddle your thumbs while others fight the good fight for the preservation of our sacred institutions? Are you not evading your responsibility as American citizens by adopting what I suppose you regard as an "objective" attitude toward the activities of the insidious communists who swarm about us seeking whom they may seduce?
DO YOU NOT hear the battle cry of freedom-loving men and
... Letters ...
women in the field, girded and helmeted for sanguine patriotic war? Have you no spirit, no courage, none of the adventurous spirit of our pioneer forefathers?
HEAR THE CALL or our runner, you slackers, you poltroons, you men of little faith, and help us crush these commies and socialists and leftists and pinks and reds and conspirators and traitors and liberals! Help us to efface the stain of eight years of Eisenhower treachery and treason! Help us to wash our glorious flag clean of every damned spot that it may once more wave triumphantly over the land of Washington and Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill and Barnum and McCarthy and freedom and democracy. We need your help, we
demand your help — not money,
we have plenty of that; but do we
need brains!
John Ise
Professor Emeritus of
Economics
* * *
Everybody Knows That Editor:
As regards your recent comment on the now dormant lawyer-engineers' feud: though my boys have always enjoyed a good scrap, it is common knowledge among the fairier sex on campus that the Men of Green are primarily lovers, not fighters.
James Woods Green Green Hall
(Editor's Note: Mr. Green, common knowledge? With about 5,000 women at lawrence, that figures out to 25 of the Lawrences in Green. When do your boys study?)
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Short Ones
Joe and Marilyn are getting cozy again; but Arthur Miller is left out in the intellectual cold. Maybe Francois Sagan...
The Pathet Lao are using farmers as part-time soldiers. So is the government. Which all goes to show that if our farmers were just a little more aggressive, they might be able to get some help from Washington...
. . .
A tweedy procession of pacifists is once more on the march in England, agitating against the bomb. We're not sure which is worse — English pacifism or English food...
The Kennedy budget shows a sea of red ink, most of it from defense spending. This is a salutary way to get the economy out of its slump, though. Think of all those defense contracts. . .
It is impossible to work from two standpoints. — Mary Baker Eddy
The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.— Edward C. Simmons
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.—Samuel Johnson
Daily Hansan
UNIT BRITT
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Frank Morgan and Dan Felger ... Co-Editorial Editors
John Peterson ... Managing Editor
John Peterson Managing Editor Bill Blundell, Carrie Edwards, Lynn Cheatum and Ralph Wilson, Assistant Managing Editors; Tom Turner, City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor; Sue Thieman, Society Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
If you discard most of the fluff that has been heaped about her in millions of words, certain facts important to an understanding of the actress and the person inevitably emerge. . .
John Massa Business Manager
F. Mike Harris, Advertising Manager; Tom L. Brown, Circulation Manager; Richard Horn, Classified Advertising Manager; William Goodwin, Promotion Manager; Marlin Zimmerman, National Advertising Manager.
What changed her from a machine-made product of the glamor factory which inflated (and punctured) so many Barbara (and Hedy) LaMarrs, Jean Harlows, Kim Novaks, Jane Russells (and Mansfields) and Rita Hayworths? An examination of Marilyn Monroe's history will amply answer the question.
It is difficult, as always, to separate the real Monroe from the industry-packaged commodity, but it can be done. For she is a human being, a woman as complicated as they come; she has a history of suffering, aspiration and achievement that has little to do with her screen image, as originally created and promoted by Hollywood—but a great deal to do with her potential.
From the Magazine Rack
Her expressed interest in serious dramatic material has been the occasion for ridicule by the Broadway and Hollywood critics and by the industry itself—until recently. Her excursions into "heavy" reading, UCLA classes and her draconian decision to quit the industry cold and go to New York to study acting at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio (having just split with DiMaggio and finished Itch) made her the butt of endless gags by people with less talent in their entire carcasses than she has in her little finger.
Marilyn Monroe today is not only the American cinema's most glamorous star; she is also our leading comedienne and a dramatic artist in her own right. This contention, of course, has been (and is being) disputed not only by those who preside over the gossip columns, but also by presumably responsible critics in highbrow journals.
The bitch-goddesses hate her cordially and spare no pains to run her down, rip her up, castigate her for being late or "uncooperative" or not properly "grateful" to the industry. Of course her universal appeal is a sharp bone in the dry throats of the more dessicated (or obese) harpies of the gossip columns, but more important are other facts: she has not played the Hollywood game since her earliest days; she has not in years lent herself to the whole-cloth publicity which provides these parasites with their fillet mignon and champagne; she does not call up Dear Hedda or Louella Dear to let them "be the first to know . . ."
Marilyn Monroe: Artist
And still more important: she broke the Hollywood code, married a man held in contempt of Congress, stood by him while he was smeared all over the land and was finally vindicated by the higher courts. For there is no doubt that Miller's contempt is no small part of the contempt in which both she and America's leading dramatist are held by the movie columnists and gossips who are political reactionaries to a man or woman.
What has all this to do with Marilyn Monroe as an actress, a comedienne, a theatrical artist of no small calibre? Practically everything. For when you have winnowed the chitchat and the puffs, the "interviews" and "human interest" stories written by people who have never talked to her, the facts of her two-time flight from Hollywood and her personal history, the profile of a personality begins to emerge.
The salient details of that profile would include her wretched childhood, her native intelligence and mother wit, three marriage failures, her overpowering insecurity in the face of notoriety and "success"; her determination to make of herself something that corresponds to her insights and her image of herself, her daily battle to overcome her considerable handicaps. . .
Her comedy is bolstered by the sort of insight into human character that adds a pathetic dimension to laughter. In all her films, behind the familiar mask and the celebrated facade of flesh there is revealed a simple fact: within the most "stupid" person there lives, quite simply, a human being—an individual who has needs, aspirations, hungers and a longing for understanding, respect and love that cannot be denied.
Her "Cherie" (Bus Stop) might have been hilariously funny, but she was also close to tragedy. From behind her absurdly tacky clothes and deliberately over-painted face Monroe projected perfectly the uneducated, man-handled woman who is a lady beneath her vulgar exterior and who demands respect—and gets it.
Her "showgirl" (The Prince) was startling for more than one fact: the first is that Sir Laurence Olivier's prestige was such that she was in awe of him and he was apparently able to have the script tailored to suit his own talents and demands — yet Monroe romped off with the picture. The second: her showgirl revealed a delicious personality, a pervasive charm, and acting intelligence that rates among the best, for it was an off-beat performance of a standardized role.
Despite an impoverished script in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, Monroe achieved both low and high comedy in more than one sequence, through the manipulation of her odd combination of wide-eyed innocence, sexual sophistication and basic decency — projected simultaneously. And although Yves Montand dominated the Jerry Wald production of Norman Krasna's tired fairy-tale Let's Make Love, he could not diminish Monroe's charm, which is beginning to match that of the late Kay Kendall.
(Excerpted from an article by Alvah Bessie in the March, 1961 Frontier Magazine.)