4
Friday, September 19, 1975
University Daily Kansan
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
'The Fortune' impoverished despite magic names, script
By CHUCKSACK
Reviewer
Early in 1974, when Columbia announced that it would produce "The Fortune" film with a screenplay known dooley with anticipation.
The project had come together outside the studio when director Mike Nichols and stars Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson paid screenwriter Robert Sayer reported $100,000 for her script.
Never mind that Nichols had just completed the soon-to-flop mission, he didn't know anyone who could make "Who's Afraid of Virgin Woolf." "The Graduate" and "Carnal Entitlement" entitled to some mistakes.
Joyce's inability to sell anything approaching her script for "Five Easy Pieces" was just the caprice of moronic producers. Any package including Nichols, Joyce, Joyce, and Joyce thinking went, couldn't be all bad. Of course, there was no guarantee that it would be good, either. It isn't.
THE STORY IS SET IN THE '20s when the Mann Act (which prohibits the transportation of a woman across state lines for immoral purposes) was rigidly enforced. Nicky Stumpo (Warren Beaty) loves heresie Fredrika Quentinta Bigard and he has always been a man can't marry, because Nicky is already married and his wife won't grant him a divorce. Neither can they run off together because heress 'Freddie' s father would have
them hunted down and would prosecute Nicky for violating the Mann Act.
Nicky's hare-brained solution to the problem is to blackmail Oscar Sullivan (Jack Frede) and marry him. Frede and move with them to California. Oscar has embellished $15,000 from the bank where he is a teller. Nicky persuades him to join him and Freddie by asking Oscar, "Do you want to go to California?"
Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Stockard Chaffee characterized to the story, but no sooner is the marriage performed than it becomes intolerable detractors are not going to mesh.
Beatty, because he must play the straight man, fares the worst. His Nicky is a sauvety overprotective boy who confused whenever his plans go awry. But often, when he should appear confident, Beatty mumbles befuddledly, as if he's being forced to wolf the ensemble together.
Jack Nicholson opts for a farcical interpretation of Oscar, the rumped teller. The myopic bumbling of his character is always backed by an inspired maniacal gleam in Nicholson's eye which somehow makes Oscar's schemes attractive.
Newcomer Stockard Channing gives a good account of the 1930s, with a probable blend of Lynn Redgrave and Liza Minelli, and handles her comic turns very well. She also beats either Beaty or Nicholson alone
work well too, but when the three are on the screen together, the performances disintegrate.
NICHOLS' STYLE OF DIRECTION is incompatible with the style of comedy the script demands. Joyce has provided the director with three nutty, but lovable characters, and their story cries out for sympathetic comic handling.
Nichols, however, is more at home with the colder forms of comedy. Virginia Woolf's *The Playwright* for its effects, and "Carnar Knowledge" is a social satiate. Even "The Graduate" doesn't demand compassion for Mrs. Catherine or anyone of her generation.
Compassion is what the blundering Freddie, Nicky and Oscar need, but Nichols maintains an icy detachment from the trio throughout the film.
"The Fortune" has many good moments, and John Alonzo's camera work is inspired throughout, but the magic names that made the project irresistable on paper are unworthy of this film. It doesn't allow for fragments, without helping the picture coalesce into an artistic whole.
At the end of the film Oscar and Nicky learn that the fortune they wanted not the money, but the girl. Maybe the toured foursome of the original stars and their names the audience wants, but an entertaining movie.
Malcolm Frager will conduct two sessions of master classes Monday in Swarthout Recital Hall, the first beginning at 10 a.m., the second at 2 p.m. He will perform, as will the students enrolled in the classes. The public is welcome.
Frager's precise, masterly art
By JACK WINEROCK
Assistant Professor of Piano When I first met Malcolm Frager several years ago, he was wandering the halls of the School of Music at the University. Michael Kuhn that he was in town to play a concerto with the visiting Philadelphia Orchestra four days later, I asked him if I could show him around.
Frager inquired about my musical background and, learning that I was a piano student, asked what pieces I was presently studying. I said that I would love to play for him sometime, and he said he would like to play the musicius. I quickly gathered three of my colleagues, and we went to my teacher's studio.
He informed me that he was in a foul mood, because his rehearsal with the orchestra was too long and had arrived in Ann Arbor a day earlier than necessary. He explained that he was coming from his home in Massachusetts and, as an artist who played for him every year, the time spent with his family was especially precious.
The next two days were spent listening to Frager's ideas on music and the pianist's life. Frager listened and offered suggestions on major works of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms. He was obviously familiar with
everything we played, and he demonstrated at another piano, often without a score.
In the Schumann concerto I played for him, he crossed out the incorrect ornamentation indicated in my edition and added a new version from the Paris Bibliotheca manuscript.
Most concert pianists have a rather sloppy attitude toward original sources. But there is nothing sloppy or casual in the music-making of Malcolm Framer.
Fragar, a native of St. Louis, Mo., didn't graduate from a leading conservatory such as Harvard, but studied privately with the noted Carl Friedberg while completing his undergraduate degree in Russian at Columbia University. He made his New York debut in 1952 and drew the attention of theorists by winning first prize in the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium International Piano Competition. Since that time, he has appeared with all the major concert halls of the United States and Europe.
The students and faculty of the School of Fine Arts have been looking forward to Frager's appearance Monday. Indeed, it it's reported that we may be invaded by carloads of students from the State, Wichita and Emporia. Frager will listen to a selected group of graduate and undergraduate pianists during master classes Monday and will perform a recital in the evening at the Murphy Hall. All are invited, and admission is free.
Rosenberg book questions guilt
Staff Writer
By BRUCE SPENCE
WE ARE YOUR SONS: THE LEGACY OF ETHEL AND BENG, by Robert and Michael Benggol. Houghton Mifflin, $10.
After the Soviet Union denoted its first nuclear bomb in 1949, a series of events led to a nuclear attack on American trials in American history.
In 1950, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British physicist, confessed to supplying the Soviet Union with atomic information. Harry Gold, a German-born physicist, fessed 'o having been the America's courier for Fuchs. David Greenglass, brother of Ethel Rosenberg and former army machinist at the Los Alamos Atomic Project during World War II. Greenglass confessed to the existence of the Greenglass said his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg, had recruited him to steal secrets for a Soviet spy ring.
On June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed. It was the end for them but only the beginning for their two sons, Michael, 10, and Robert, 6.
THE ROSENBERS,
ARRESTED and charged with
conspiracy to commit
insisted in
Greenclair and Gold had
perceived themselves in order to
earn. But there was no avail.
On the heels of numerous books written about the emotional-charged case, which Mr. Perry has mysteries of the McCarthy period, the sons have come out with an account of their own. Though it hardly qualifies as a literary masterpiece, it is a poignant and moving chronicle of events that shaped their lives.
The book contains letters written by their parents while imprisoned during the trial, during the subsequent appeals
and while awaiting their executions. These are inpressed with autobiographical accounts of the sons.
The last message the Rosenberg's children received from their parents was "Always be innocent and could not wrong our conscience." Their sons have taken that theme to heart, and it is exactly that premise which they must hold the book together.
But it is not enough. The authors hold a complete, unwavering faith in their parents, yet offer no new evidence that would clear their parents' name.
THEIR PARENTS' LETTERS seem to the brothers to be one of the strongest proofs of their parents' innocence. The letters are offered in an attempt to establish the portrait of their parents, and, if nothing else, the letters at least reveal the intense anguish
suffered from the dissolution of the family.
However, the young Meeropols, who have retained the names of their adoptive parents, dismiss too easily their parents clear realization that the letters could be, and indeed were, used in a campaign to save them. How much weight the parents can lose under the full knowledge that the content was for public consumption? Is it a fatal flaw in the Meeropols' reasoning.
Despite that weakness, the emotional impact is strong, and it is here that the power of the book lies.
The most difficult time for the boys was from 1950 to 1953, when they were shuttled between institutions and reluctant relatives. Late in 1953, Michael and Robert were placed under the care of Abel and Anne at the University, where the affection of the boy benefited for
As they grew older, the elder Meeropols helped the boys deal
Staff Photo by GEORGE MILLENER
The open-air Weaver Sculpture Court, adjacent to the Museum of Art, provides a quiet break in a day of classes. The exhibition
ketread retreat
was organized by the late Dave Woods, Humboldt junk sculptor,
before his death last year. The Kansas Kansan Arts
Center is dedicated to preserving his work.
with their identities as they tried to cope with their situation.
BEFORE THE BOYS had taken the Meeropol name in 1957, Abel helped allay Michael's fear that his new friends would uncover his identity by showing him page after page of Rosenberg listed the names of his friends directory. Simple, concrete acts such as that relieved much of the tension the boys felt.
In 1973, they chose to break their silence and drop their anonymity. They sought to counter a best-seller by Louis Sachs with the book *spiracy*, which they thought distorted their parents' case.
Their decision to surface initiated a move to reopen their parents' case. They are now seeking access to a number of information systems at Rosenberg case through the Freedom of Information Act.
Perhaps the young Meeropolis' charge that the government prosecuted against a court case has substance. Whatever the case, for better or for worse, they are irrevolvably committed and there is some doubt that are probably hidden away in those closed government files.
The program will consist of a Mozart fantasia, two sonatas by Beethoven, and a prelude and a sonata by Chopin. "Fantasia in D Minor," by Mozart, is a work that many students play after four or five years of piano training. The composer incorporates the darker elements of Mozart's musical palate. It is not the stereotype of elegant melodies, facile fingerwork and avoidance of extreme rhythmic and harmonic contrasts. Rather, the program features "classical" music. It is written in an improvisational and rhaphic style, presenting extremes of harmony, melody,
The two Beethoun sonatas, in E flat and C sharp minor, ("The Moonlight") are highly experimental in form, in which Beethoun tried to find the musical means by which he could bring form to his personal vision.
rhythm and, as a result of these sentiment and emotion.
To achieve this, he had to break with the traditions of classism established by Haydon, Mozart and their contemporaries. Thus, instead of a dramatic movement, the sonata of Opus 27 have first movements of a much more intimate character.
If the particular Mozart and Beethoven works on Frager's program suggest a "Romantic" solution to the musical form by "Classical" composers, the Chopin sonata shows us a composer of the Romantic Period attempting to write in the traditional sonata form. In a sense, the program exemplifies the most complex way presenting the composer in a light which is not expected.
And as I recital Malcolm Frager and his music, I think of a musician whose completely organized performances are capable of the flights of fancy we call inspiration.
Sizzle your synapses
Ever so slowly, the night sounds—the ethereal rattle of trees and chirps of crickets or occasional cat screeches and flushes—give way to the sound of music somewhere close.
By TIM BRADLEY
Your pace quickens, you're following the sound of that saxophone 'cause some guy is blowing his whole soul through a hole in your mouth source. A great adrenal buzz sizzles your synapses till you can think of nothing else but the music. It's so good, so good that the notes seem, like some rocking music, to be dancing in the sky.
It must be your ears that get you to 602 E. 12th street, the feet aren't touching the ground. You've found the Reno Club.
Inside, the senses shift into high. In the dim light, dark hookers are hanging around like wholesale harms and the air is thick with carbon dioxide, questionable origin and the aroma of barbecued pig snout and chicken-feet sandwiches. You cup a cream soda because your mouth is dry from the moment. Everything is magic.
On the bandstand is Count Basie's base band backlapping all the jamming horn players and others in the other—to see who can outplay whom. Lester Young is up there now, blowing like he's discovered the link between her hereafter, and it's his horn.
subtly switch to the Kansas Union Ballroom, because it's all too much.
in the shadows, other horn players wait to solo. You spot Buddy Tate, Paul Quinichette, Buck Clayton, Ben Webster and Tyler Mulligan. The named Charlie Parker watches the proceedings, mouth agape. Drummer Jo Jones and bassist Gene Ramey keep everything in place. Blur of the predawn crazies, you don't even notice the scene
Thanks to Student Union Activities, KU will get the chance to share in the music and the magic of the Kansas State University Reunion *will* occur at 8 p.m. Friday in the Union's Ballroom. Saxophonists Henry "Buster" Smith and Paul Quinchester, both students (doubles on guitar) and trumpeter Buck Clayton will join drummer Jo Jones, pianist Jay McSann, bassist Gene Ramey and guitarist Floyd Williams. Students of history and the K.C. Swing.
The concert will last three hours and include an extended jam in the Kansas City tradition. There will be plenty of room for sitting, dancing and just plain old struttin'.
These men have played variously with Count Basie, the singer of "Bonnie Goodman and a spate of others. The concert will be the perfect assurance that Lester has not gone to the worm forgotten.
(At 1:30 p.m. Sunday in Woodruff Auditorium.)
( At 7 and 9:30 p.m. tonight and Saturday night in Woodruff Auditorium.)
LA JETTE and PARIS QUI DORT—A good double-bill. "La Jette" is a short French film
CHARLOTTE'S WEB and OLD MACDONALD's FARM—Two delightful children's and adult's animated movies. The sequel, written by the fine book by E. B. White and features the voices of Paul Lynde, Rebecka Reynolds, Henry Gibson and Agnes Moorehead. Macdonald's Farm" is a short play. Follow the bouncing ball.
This Week's
THE LONGEST YARD—Machismo disaster aims to put hair on the chest Stupid and ill, Machimo, Aldrich, who should know better, and starring Burt Reynolds who doesn't know how
Films
HIGHLIGHTS
(At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Woodruff Auditorium.)
HAMLET - This version was directed by Laurence Olivier in its first two installments, Simmons, Félix Alayri, Elenne Herile and Basil Syndney. Some people prefer the more recent Russian version of the movie.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas weekly
journal. Subscription period. Second-class postage paid at Law-
niversity or $1 a year in Douglas County and $1 s
subscriptions or $1.53 a semester paid through the
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Editor
Dennis Ellsworth
PERSONA* of the more complex *Ingmar Bergman* an acclaimed life of two women. With Lil Ulihan and Bil Anderson, It's a bizarre and haunting movie. It's also a day in Woodruff Auditorium.*
Associate Editor Campus Editor Game Writer Associate Campus Editor Betty Hailegow Assistant Campus Editors Bette Hailegow Assistant Campus Editors Heather Dickman David Don Smith Chief Photographer George Millner III, George Millner Sports Editor Yael Abuhakulah Editor State Media Allen Kumabun Entertainments Editor Copy Chiefs Gary Berg John Hickey Contributing Writers Ward Baker Ainner Penner David Olson News Editors Stewart Beek Stuha Hanne Wire Editors Javier Beck Susan Hannie Janet Mature Clynda Morgan
(At 7:30 p.m. Monday in Woodruff Auditorium.)
that warps time for your pleasure. It was directed in 1962 by Chris Marker, "Paris Quai," and in 1973 by Renee Clair's first film. It's another fantasy in which a professor's invention puts all of Paris to sleep and silence. Clair wrote and directed this film in
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NANOKOF THE NORTH—Robert Flaherty's classic documentary of Eskimo life, filmed in 1922. Double-billed with "The Bailled of Crowfoot," by a Canadian Indian tribe.
(At 3 p.m. Sunday in Museum of Art.)
BITE THE BULLET—Gene Hackman, James Coburn, Candice Bergen and Ben Starr. The director Richard Brooks' gruelling tale about a 700-mile horse race. Despite soggy dialogue about winning and the American way, the movie also gives some solid entertainment.
THE HAPPY HOOKER—Lynn Redgrave does the trick portraying Xavier Hollander. Ms. Redgrave took off 40 pounds to play the role, but the biggest one is the viewer's time and money.
WIN, PLACE AND STEAL—
comedy about gambling and the horses.
Co-starring Dean Stockwell,
Bilby and McLean Stevenson.
Check advertisements for theaters and times.
JAWS—The ultimate fish story.
Check advertisements for theaters and
Exhibits
MIKE OTT AND JOE CLOWER—Landscapes, graphics, prints and portraits by KU's
(Through Sept. 28 in Kansas Union Gallery.)
Ott and Colorado's Clower. Vivid and unusual.
THE ART OF THE INDIAN BASKET—North American native art and ingenuity.
(Through Oct. 5 in Museum of Art.)
HISTORICAL QUILTS • Douglas County residents contributed 19th and 20th century sculptures, art content or artistic design.
(Through Oct. 2 at the Lawrence Arts Center and the Elizabeth M. Watkins Community Museum.)
FIVE ARTISTS
CRAFTSMEN—Pewter, pottery, enamels and batiks.
(Through Sept. 30 at 7E7 Gallery, 7 E. 7th St.)
Opera
CAPTAIN JACKS OF THE HORSE MARINE-Premiere production of an opera based on the novel played by that boosted Ethel McCormack. Wilcox, soprano, a KU School of Fine Arts graduate who moved to the Met and success, stars with her husband, Robert Owen
(8:15 p.m. Saturday in Lyric Theater, 1029 Central, Kansas City, Mo.)
Concerts
MALCOM FRAGER—The MALCOM FRAGER—The Frager's an Internationally known pianist whose concert promises to be vibrant and engaging.
(8 p.m. Monday in University Theatre. Admission is free.)
HAIRA FOLK DANCING
SINGERS, dancers and musicians
performing dances on the
multinational traditions of
their culture.
(8 p.m. Sunday in University Theatre. Admission is free.)
LAWRENCE SYMPHONY-
Opening concert of the sym-
phonic orchestra by
Beethoven, Schubert,
Charles Ives and Rimsky-
ski. Formed by the mo-
tion, Conducted by Charles
professor of music theory
(3 p.m. Sunday in Central Junior High School's auditorium. Admission is free.)