Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6-March 1,1973
LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
The Cover of ‘Rolling Stone’
Well, we’re big rock singers,
We got golden fingers
and we’re loved everywhere we go.
We sing about beauty and we sing about truth,
at ten thousand dollars a show.
We take all kinds of pills
to give us all kinds of thrills,
but the thrill we’ve never known,
is the thrill that’ll get ya
when you get your picture
on the cover of the “Rolling Stone.”
CHORUS:
“Rolling Stone” . . .Want to see my picture on the cover,
Want to buy five copies for my mother,
Want to see my smiling face,
on the cover of the “Rolling Stone.”
I got a freaky old lady
name of Cocaine Katy
who embroideries on my jeans.
I got my poor ole gray-haired daddy,
driving my limousine.
Now it’s all designed to blow our minds,
But our minds won’t really be blown,
like the blow that’ll get ya,
when you get your picture on the
cover of the “Rolling Stone.”
CHORUS:
We got a little, teenager, blue-eyed groupies
who’d do anything we say.
We got a genuine Indian Guru;
he’s teaching us a better way.
We got all the friends, that money can buy,
so we’ll never have to be alone.
And we keep getting richer,
but we can’t get our picture,
on the cover of the “Rolling Stone.”
(c CBS, Inc. 1973 / BMI)
If you look hard enough you will probably see that nothing is absolutely
serious. Everything is ultimately laughable, even yourself. And sometimes things
get so seemingly overpowering that the only response is a good laugh.
Can you imagine the kind of laugh that the group responsible for this song
msut have had when it decided to name itself “Dr. Hook and the Medicine
Show?” It probably started by laughing by itself and then at everyone else who
could take such a name seriously. Funny thing; it never seemed to stop laughing,
right into its current hit “The Cover of the Rolling Stone.”
This song is basically a gag song and pokes fun at a number of things that have
gotten to be quite serious because they have set themselves up as important.
Among these is the whole Rock culture.
It wasn’t long ago that “movies stars” received a sort of worship for their
position in our culture. That role seems to have been taken over by the rock
artists who are “loved everywhere we go.” These new heroes carry the same signs
of importance, such as “limousines” and “all the friends that money can buy.”
They often bear the same double-standard of living by having “groupies who’d
do anything we say” only to be balanced by a “genuine Indian Guru . . .teaching
us a better way.” And their motivation is equally as good because they “sing
about beauty and sing about truth at ten thousand dollars a show.” All of this
means that the rock culture has grown to be big, serious, business.
The “official” source of information on this culture and its people is the
newspaper-style magazine called “Rolling Stone.” Besides its reviews of albums
and announcements of performances, the “Stone” gives inside information on
these rock artists as real people. To make the “Cover of the Rolling Stone,” is to
have made it in the rock culture and to really be somebody.
Perhaps Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show have taken time to look at it all,
including their own contribution to the scene, and laugh. Laughing at themselves
helps to remind them, and us, that this whole business is not as serious as it is
made out to be. Each of these artists is still an ordinary human being who is
subject to the common cold.
Laughing at what life holds up as serious can keep things in perspective and
remind us of their real worth. Besides, if you can laugh, “a smiling face” is
always more pleasant for “the cover of the Rolling Stone.”
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans, St. Joseph’s Church, 216
Patton Ave., P.O. Box 5188, Shreveport, La. 71105)
TV Movies
SUNDAY, MARCH 4 — 9:00 p.m. (ABC) --
VILLA RIDES (1968) - Buzz Kulik directed
this dissmissible, violent Western, Mexican
style, starring Yul Brynner as the menacing
Mexican revolutionary and Robert Mitchum
as a tough American gun-runner. Kulik
emphasized the violence and ignores the
historical complexity of the period. Midly
offensive, unless you like to see men lined up
and slaughtered, ad nauseam'. (B)
MONDAY, MARCH 5 — 9:00 p.m. (NBC)
- BROCK’S LAST CASE - Richard Widmark
can do these tough-guy detective roles in his
sleep, but there he stays awake long enough
to provide a nifty evening of fast, adult
entertainment. As a retired NYC cop,
Widmark interrupts his orange-growing in
sunny California to get involved in a murder
case in which his ranch foreman is accused of
the dirty deed.
TUESDAY, MARCH 6 — 8:00 p.m. (NBC)
-■ THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST (1967) --
As shrink to the Commander-in-Chief, James
Coburn develops a case of the jitters when the
revelations that relieve the President’s
tesnions also happen to be top state secrets.
Having acquired the Chief Executive’s psychic
demons, Coburn discovers that he is being
pursued by another kind of demon as well -•
friendly and unfriendly agents and
double-agents who alternately want him to
keep the lid on or blow it off. Viewers who
don't take these things too seriously will find
diversion in this adult comedy. (A-lll)
8:30 p.m. (ABC) - THE LETTERS - 90
minute TV feature has an intriguing gimmick
based on the “deliberate speed” with which
the mail is sometimes delivered. Here, in a
drama starring John Forsythe, Ida Lupino,
Dina Merrill, Leslie Nielson, and many others,
three letters arrive at their destinations a full
year late, and drastically change the lives of
the addressees. See what happens when you
don’t use Zip Codes?!
9:30 p.m. (CBS) - CRIME CLUB -
Original TV flick with Lloyd Bridges, Paul
Burke, rotund Victor Buono, Cloris
Leach man. Bridges is cast as an L.A. detective
who runs into several obstacles (Mr. Burke
being the prime example) whilst investigating
the mysterious auto-accident death of the son
of a wealthy, longtime friend, Ms. Barbara
Rush. Title refers to a fraternal society of
cops Bridges belongs to.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - CYBORG: THE SIX MILLION
DOLLAR MAN - TV feature is a high-flying
sci-fi number, starring Lee Majors as a test
pilot who “survives” a near-fatal air crash
with only half a body. Put together again by
the miracles of modern TV medical science
(and an imaginative script writer), Majors is
tapped for a mysterious but obviously
superally indestructible. Farfetched but could
be interesting. Darren McGavin, Martin
Balsam, Barbara Anderson co-star.
9:30 p.m. (NBC) -- DR. JEKYLL AND
MR. HYDE -- Not a movie, really, but an
absorbing remake of the famed R.L.
Stevenson horror classic, with Kirk Douglas in
the title role. The story of the kindly doctor
who takes to drinking potions of his own
mixture and being transformed into a
murderous monster is good enough on its
own, but this version has -- yipe! -- musical
numbers to liven up the proceedings. Michael
Redgrave, Susan George, Donald Pleasance are
also on hand.
THURSDAY, MARCH 8 — 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) -- THE MARCUS-NELSON MURDERS
- Fictional reconstruction of the sensational
Wylie-Hoffert murder case in New York a few
years back, in which an innocent man
“confessed” to a fiendish crime ultimately
laid to another. Telly Savalas and Jose Ferrer
star as, respectively, the city detective who
was never satisfied with the accused killer’s
“confession," and a defense attorney the
detective turns to for help in sorting out the
case’s discrepancies. Allen Garfield, one of the
best character actors around, is nifty as the
hungry Brooklyn D.A. looking for an
open-and-shut case.
FRIDAY, MARCH 9 — 9:00 p.m. (CBS) --
HORNETS’ NEST (1970) -- As any war-movie
fan knows, an American G.l. can wipe out an
entire German division. And when that
American is Rock Hudson, mustachioed
Marine paratrooper-commando leading a
rag-tag band of pre-adolescent waifs, nothing
sort of Rommel’s Afrika Korps is going to
slow things down. The sole survivor of an
abortive raid on an Italian dam ripe for
blowing up, Hudson is forced by the script to
enlist the aid of dirty two dozen
teeny-boppers to accomplish his mission. And
before they’ll help HIM, he must help the kids
wipe out the Nazi contingent that wiped out
their families and friends. Hudson must also
contend with Sylva Koscina, an
Italian-accented German doctor kidnapped by
the youngsters to provide some soulful looks
and to hang around for a couple of rape
scenes. If all of this sounds dramatically and
morally improbable and confused, it is only
because it is. (B)
SATURDAY, MARCH 10 — 9:00 p.m.
(NBC) -- TOPKAPI (1964) -- This adaptation
of Eric Ambler’s comic thriller about a poor
bungling con-man who becomes involved in
the fantastic plot to steal a famed jeweled
dagger from the Istanbul Museum is directed
by Jules Dassin (RIFIFI) with gusto. With
Melina Mercouri, Peter Ustinov, Maximilian
Schell, and Robert Morley in sparkling color.
(A-lll)
PROTESTING POVERTY CUTS, a large crowd gathers at the Capitol
in Washington, D.C. A fleet of buses brought participants mostly from
East Coast cities, but also from as far as Idaho and Washington State.
Police estimated that 10,000 took part, but protest leaders said the figure
was between 25,000 and 50,000. They were demonstrating against
proposals to dismantle antipoverty agencies and to cut funds for social
programs. (NC Photo)
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
Catholics Cooperate As Membership Is Studied
(Last in series of four articles.)
BY KAY LESLIE
(NC News Service)
If the Catholic Church decides to join
the National Council of Churches, the
action will not constitute a radically
new departure but a further step along
the path of mutual cooperation that was
accelerated by Vatican II.
When Pope John XXIII opened the
Second Vatican Council ten years ago,
officials in the NCC recognized that it
would likely lead to more active
participation by Catholics in the
ecumenical movement. So the NCC set
up a staff unit with special
responsibility for keeping in touch with
developments in this area.
In 1966 the NCC and the Catholic
bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and
Interreligious Affairs established a joint
working group to discuss common
interests. Relations developed so rapidly
that in 1969 a joint committee was
established with the specific task of
considering possible Catholic
membership in the council. The
committee included Archbishop Joseph
L. Bemardin of Cincinnati, then general
•secretary of the U.S. Catholic
Conference and the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops; Dr.
R.H. Edwin Espy, general secretary of
the National Council of Churches, and
other prominent representatives of the
council and the Catholic Church.
The committee worked under the
joint chairmanship of Dr. John
Coventry Smith, an executive of the
United Presbyterian Church, and Bishop
Charles H. Helmsing of Kansas City-St.
Joseph, Chairman of the Catholic
bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and
Interreligious Affairs.
Though the committee did not make
a specific recommendation that the
Catholic Church should join the council,
it concluded that the “close parallelism
of purposes suggests the likelihood that
the RCC (Roman Catholic Church) in
the United States might appropriately
seek to become a member of the NCC,
and that it would be welcomed in this
capacity.”
As the joint working group and then
the study committee were holding their
sessions, cooperation of Catholics with
the council was growing in a number of
ways. A study carried out by the
council in 1967 showed that some form
of Catholic participation had begun in
almost every area of the council’s life:
mission both overseas and domestic,
Christian education, theology,
ecumenical development on all levels.
One significant step came in 1966
when the council recognized the
Catholic Church as a church meeting the
standard for membership in the council
-- that its theological position was in
harmony with the preamble to the
constitution of the council. This formal
recognition made it possible to employ
Catholics as staff members.
A number of Catholics have served on
the council staff since its beginnings in
1950. In addition to numerous
secretaries and other appointed staff,
there are currently three at the elected
or executive levels.
Jesuit Father David Bowman, the
first Catholic to join the elected staff of
the NCC, in 1966, speaks as a Catholic
in commenting: “The Roman Catholic
community in the U.S.A. has the tools
at hand for a serious reevaluation of our
ecumenical interest: the special
committee’s Study Report on Possible
Membership in NCC, plus the follow-up
discussion guide that now accompanies
the report.
“The Decree on Ecumenism of the
Second Vatican Council,” Father
Bowman says, “commits us to
ecumenical life on all levels, without
prejudging any form it may take.
Conciliar ecumenism - the kind
manifested in a council such as the NCC
- is the only serious national form now
proposed which would involve us
precisely as church, and not just a
community of interested individuals or
groups.”
Speaking of the national council as he
knows it and has observed it first-hand
for the past six years, Father Bowman
says: “The NCC is a responsible and
evangelical interchurch organization. It
is not a church, but a servant of the
churches which constitute it.”
There is Catholic membership is two
units of the council. The Catholic
Medical Mission Sisters of Philadelphia
are affiliated with the Division of
Overseas Ministries, and in 1970 the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops voted in favor of Catholic
membership in the Commission on
Faith and Order.
SHAMUS (Columbia) Not content with his
image as a centerfold, burly Burt Reynolds
appears as SHAMUS, a tough, wise-cracking
private eye from the RED HOOK section of
Brooklyn. For starters, Shamus McCoy gets
himself hired by a sinister suburban
millionaire, who wants him to track down a
sackful of stolen diamonds. The trail leads
Reynolds into a variety of nasty scrapes, and
into the arms of Dyan Cannon, among other
female morsels. The plot continues to
thicken, and the shamus soon finds himself
smack in the middle of a complicated
gun-running scheme, involving a rough
organization with a respectable image, a
lucre-lusting Army colonel named C. C.
Hardcore, and the newly murdered brother of
the compliant Miss Cannon. In between
segments that actually advance the plot,
director Buzz Kulik throws in a number of
non-explicit but definitely suggestive love
scenes (that is, if you can call sex on the run,
love), as well as a number of savage beatings
and final shoot-outs. The action is all fantasy,
mind you, but rendered with a gritty reality
that will make many adults wince. (A-lll)
PRIVATE PARTS (MGM) Aside from the
lewd possibilities of its pun-filled title, this
creepy, campy little sex-horror thriller is
generally without distinction, as a young girl
falls somewhat willing victim to an assortment
of sinister types inhabiting a creaky flea-bag
hotel managed by her crazed aunt. Nudity
and cheap thrills abound. (C)
LADY CAROLINE LAMB (United Artists)
Robert Bolt wrote and directed this vehicle
for his wife Sarah Miles, and it is his dubious
accomplishment to have rendered as lush,
melodramatic nonsense the pathetic story of
an eccentric high-born lady who ran amoke of
poets and other playthings during the early
part of the last century. Wife of a patiently
suffering civil servant, Lady Caroline was a
self-made martyr on the Itar of flagrant
indiscretion, her chief offense being an
embarrassingly public affair with the
Romantic poet Byron, who had the good
sense to drop her after a short while. The
memory of Byron consumed the woman and
doubtless helped bring on an early death
(although she outlived the poet himself by a
dozen years). Moreover her lack of sense and
discretion very nearly wrecked the career of
her husband William Lamb, although he
survived to become Prime Minister under
Victoria. As a subject of dramatic interest,
however, Lady Caroline was probably more to
Five Catholic members were
appointed to the commission in 1971,
and participated in the annual meeting
of the commission for the first time in
1972. The NCCB is contributing $5,000
this year to help support the work of
the commission.
Faith and Order is of special interest
to Catholics because of its
concentration on theological questions.
It has recently been upgraded by the
council, raised from its former status as
a department within a division to the
status of a commission reporting
directly to the general secretary.
Another area of cooperation is the
Broadcasting and Film Commission. The
Catholic film office and the commission
now join together in consultation about
many ongoing projects, including joint
annual awards to movies they judge to
be most expressive of Christian values.
Catholic cooperation with councils
has increased not only in connection
with the NCC, but also on the local and
state levels in this country. Thirty-two
Catholic dioceses are now members of
twelve state church councils or
conferences, plus the ecumenical
agencies of Kansas City, Mo.;
be -pitied than to be marvelled at in the
fashion of the Bolt-Miles combine, which
ladles over all a suffocating layer of spurious
tragedy, with pathetic results. Miss Miles’
non-acting is perfectly complemented by
Richard Chamberlain’s non-limping parody of
Byron, and the sincere efforts of Jon Finch as
Lady C’s stoical husband Willie and of
Margaret Leighton as her acid-dripping
mother-in-law cannot offset the overall
absurdity. (A-lll)
THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS(United
Artists) Despite all of the ballyhoo in the
news media and the tremendous
word-of-mouth sensation this film has
generated in its pre-release, TANGO is neither
a particularly “dirty” film nor an outstanding
piece of film craftmanship. It does boast a
haunting, almost exhausting performance by
Marlon Brando (perhaps his movie swansong)
as Paul, a down-and-out American in Paris
trying to grasp at a last straw to keep his life
afloat. The straw turns out to be bourgeoise
nymphet Maria Schneider, who turns out to
be too casual a participant in his oppressive
lessons in degradation. His idea - and film
maker Bernardo Bertolucci, with only limited
success, means for us to see it as a hopeless
human waste — is to find release through sex
without personal involvement. The depiction
of the couple’s relationship, as they meet over
a period of three days in a vacant Paris
apartment, is visually explicit, although it is
only Ms. Schneider who bares herself for the
camera. Even the most sophisticated of adult
film goers will more than likely be put off by
the cruel depiction of sex itself and of women
(represented by the submissive Ms. Schneider)
in particular. There’s way too much out front,
as they say, with precious little thought
behind it. (C)
THE TRAIN ROBBERS (Warner Bros.)
There’s $500,000 in stolen gold stashed away
in the Mexican wastes, and how’s the poor
widow going to smuggle it home past a hoide
of avaricious outlaws? If she’s as smart and
shapely as Ann-Margaret, she just might
unload her burdens on the Magnificent Seven
rolled into one, John Wayne. Bringing along a
couple of professional sidekicks more for
company than out of actual need, the Duke
blasts his way through the baddies and brings
home the bacon, more or less. Along the way
there’s lenty of entertaining action, slowly
only by a few too many quaint, preachy
speeches on the old days with Ben Johnson
and Rod Taylor. Still, William Clothier’s color
camerawork sparkles, as does writer-director
Burt Kennedy’s witty dialogue. Where
Pittsburgh-Greensburg, Pa.; Columbus,
Ohio; and the Delmarva Peninsula
(Wilmington, Del.). Catholic parishes are
members of local ecumenical agencies in
nearly 100 cities.
The Catholic Church is also a full
member of national church councils in
eleven other countries: Denmark,
British Honduras, Fiji, Finland, Guyana,
Jamaica, the Netherlands, New
Hebrides, Sudan, Trinidad-Tobago and
Uganda. Membership has been under
consideration in Canada, Great Britain,
New Zealand and elsewhere.
The Decree on Ecumenism approved
at Vatican II calls on “all the Catholic
faithful to recognize the signs of the
times and participate skillfully in the
work of ecumenism.” In the light of that
call, Catholics are now considering
whether the time has come to join in
the ecumenical work of the National
Council of Churches.
As Father Bowman said: “Our
bishops encourage us to read the signs
of the times and follow the Holy Spirit’s
lead in ecclesial life. Please God, He will
lead us to a fuller national ecumenical
life soon!”
Kennedy’s comedy-Westerns were sometimes
overwhelmed with tasteless slapstick, the light
touch here keeps this essentially
melodramatic tale moving at a fast and breezy
clip. That THE TRAIN ROBBERS seems so
entertaining without vaguely approaching the
best of the Wayne Westerns is an impressive
indication of the Duke’s unchallenged
pinnacle in the basic genre of the American
cinema. (A-ll)
PAYDAY (Cinerama) Rip Torn gives a
powerful biting performance as a seoncd-rate
Country-Western singer whose career has
peaked without his even knowing it, and
whose life is about to go right over the edge.
The picture is anything but pleasant, as Torn
measures out Maury Dann’s final three days
against a series of roadside one-night stands,
cheap motel rooms, good bourbon,
hamburger palaces, popped uppers and
downers, and an assortment of culturally
stunted groupies and hangers-on. It’s a rough,
lonesome road with nothing at the end of the
line, and its ravages stand out on Dann’s
haggard face. Unfortunately, its a familiar
road, too, well traveled back in 1957 via Elia
Kazan’s A FACE IN THE CROWD, which
starred Andy Griffith in the singer role but
which, ironically enough, had a minor role
played by Torn. Yet with Tom's bravura
acting, and with fine support from Michael C.
Gwynne as Dann’s harried manager, among
many others, Canadian TV director Darryl
Duke’s teature debut is grittily impressive. It’s
also uncompromising in depicting Dann’s
casual immorality and in translating to the
screen the rough argot of the
Country-Western roadshow once the house
lights dim and we are taken behind the scenes.
(A-l V)
RECENT FILM CLASSIFICATIONS
Charlotte’s Web (Paramount) -- A-l
The Gospel Road (Fox) -- A-l
Baxter! (National General) -- A-ll
The Train Robbers (Warners) -- A-ll
Lady Caroline Lamb (United Artists) -
A-lll
Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (Columbia) —
A-lll
High Plains Drifter (Universal) - B
Last Tango in Paris (United Artists) -- C
Film Classifications
A — Section I — Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A — Section U — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section HI — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B — Morally Objectionable in Part for All
C — Condemned