Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6-March 22,1973
LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
Aubrey
And Aubrey was her name
A not so very ordinary girl or name
But who’s to blame
For a love that wouldn’t bloom
For the hearts that never stayed in tune
Like a lovely melody that everyone can sing
Take away the words that rhyme it doesn’t mean a thing
And Aubrey was her name
We tripped the light and danced together to the moon
But where was June
No it never came around
Maybe I was absent or was listening too fast
Catching all the words but then the meaning going past
And God I miss the girl
And I’d go a thousand times around the world just to be
Closer to her than to me
And Aubrey was her name
I never knew her but I loved her just the same
I loved her name
Wish that I had found a way
And the reasons that would make her stay
I have learned to lead a life apart from all the rest
If I can’t have the one I want I’ll do without the best
Oh, how I miss the girl
And I’d go a million times around the world just to say
She had been mine for a day.
By David Gates
cl972 Screen Gems-
Columbia Music, Inc. (BMI)
The secret ingredients for making successful Bread:
Knead Soflty: 4 studio musicians who have been carefully sifted through
other singing groups.
Add: 1-100 bars of a very light song to highlight David Gates’ tenor voice
5 heaping tablespoons of poetry. (Serves the same purpose as sugar. - The
variety produced by Gates has proven most successful in the past.)
Add (to taste) dated memories from the years between childhood and
adulthood. ( - for impressionalistic effect.)
Work until the mixture is very smooth. (Violins may be added at this point to
emphasize the overall smoothness.) Allow the dough to rise and you have
another creation to thrill your relatives and friends.
The latest culinary delight which has followed this predictable formula is
“Aubrey,” the third hit song of Bread’s “Guitar Man” album.
Aubrey is a dreamy creation too light to be confined to any pan. It is the
story of a delicately remembered fantasy girl, one who might have belonged to
any one of us. She resides in our memories in those first happy years of love
when we caught a fleeting glimpse of the girl at the beach, or the time when we
felt a flutter over a cheerleader from the other school. Aubrey is the same girl,
even the same feeling, that emerged from the film, “The Summer of ’42.”
We all realized, even at that time, that Aubrey was not so much real as she
was a hope that we nurtured. We dared to fantasize about a beautiful and
sensitive person who would one day appreciate and fulfill our every hope. “I
never knew her but I loved her just the same. I loved her name.”
Aubrey’s unreality was further confirmed when, after the passage of time, we
had the chance to meet her again. We found her somehow different than our
memories. We must have spent more time dreaming of Aubrey’s perfection than
truly hearing what she had to say. “Maybe I was absent or was listening too fast,
catching all the words but then the meaning going past.”
But there is little doubt that Aubrey is special to us. We know that it was she
who first made us believe in love. She was the fresh and happy beginning of love.
And after missing the meaning once, we found ourselves being much more
careful and sensitive about the next time.
Aubrey made us conscious of taking our time and valuing the gift of a person.
When we looked long and hard at ourselves we began to realize that we would go
to all ends just to be blessed with someone like Aubrey. “And God I miss the
girl, and I’d go a thousand times around the world just to be closer to her than
to me.”
Aubrey was the first step towards a more conscious and sensitive love. And
Aubrey will always be special because she was the happy and dreamy beginning
to something important to us - the ability to give ourselves in love - Aubrey, a
not-so-very-ordinary girl or name.
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans, St. Joseph Church, P.O. Box
5188, 216 Patton Ave., Shreveport, La. 71105)
TV Movies
SUNDAY, MARCH 25 - 8:30 p.m. (NBC)
- DOUBLE SHOCK - Peter Falk gives a nice
performance as the tough, hard-bitten
detective Lt. Columbo. Here he is challenged
to find out if one or both of a set of twins
(played by Martin Landau in a dual role)
is/are guilty of murdering his/their rich uncle.
MONDAY, MARCH 26 - 9:00 p.m. (ABC)
-- GUNN (1967) -- Seamy, occasionally brutal
full-length feature based on the once-popular
Peter Gunn TV detective series, with Craig
Stevens impeccable as ever in the title role.
The movie is a minor effort that offers little
more than an extended series of routine TV
private eye segments, a passel of TV-type
“cameo" appearances by major stars, and a
twist ending copied from other flicks
(HOMICIDAL and CAPRICE come to mind).
Don’t bother. (B)
TUESDAY, MARCH 27 - 8:30 p.m. (ABC)
- NO PLACE TO RUN - Recycled TV
feature, starring Herschel Bernardi and Scott
Jacoby in a grandfather and grandson story
which capitalizes upon the currently relevant
issue of adoption agency procedures. When
Jacoby’s adoptive parents are killed the
authorities seek to prevent Bernardi from
gaining custody of his son’s adopted child.
Jay Fox plays Bernardi’s lawyer in the
struggle with Stefanie Powers, a social worker
appointed to the case. The film's climax
invovles the flight of grandfather and
grandson to Canada where they hope to
escape the ruling of the adoption agency and
the courts.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 9:00 p.m. -
THE MIDTOWN BEAT - TV film, a repeat, is
worth your attention only if you go for
Richard Widmark in the role of Madigan, the
haggard city detective.
THURSDAY, MARCH 29 - 9:00 p.m.
(ABC) - PUEBLO - This isn’t a film, exactly,
but it promises to be an absorbing dramatic
examination of the story surrouding the
North Korean seizure of the U.S. Naval
destroyer PUEBLO of a few years back. Hal
Holbrook plays the episode’s central figure,
Commander Lloyd M. Bucher. Andrew
Duggan, Gary Merrill co-star.
SATURDAY, MARCH 31 - 9:00 p.m.
(NBC) - DOUBLE FEATURE - That is, two
trial baloons in the form of pilot programs
looking for time-slots in next season’s line-up.
HITCHED stars Sally Field and Tim Matheson
as a cute pair of newlyweds whose wedded
bliss is somewhat amiss. SAVAGE casts
Martin Landau and Barbara Bain as TV news
commentators looking into the murky
background of a nominee for the U.S.
Supreme Court. It’s your move.
1111
THE POOH AND THE POLE -- Upcoming television specials include
“Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree,” April 4 on NBC, and
“Appointment with Destiny -- Peary’s Race for the North Pole,” March 28
on CBS. In the cartoon, the Pooh bear, grown fat from eating too much
honey, struggles to extricate himself from the doorway of his house. The
drawing at right shows Adm. Robert E. Peary, who left his mark on the
North Pole April 6, 1909, by planting the American flag and his signature.
(NC Photos)
“MORALITY!”
Musical with Adam and Eve, but No Nudes
NEW YORK (NC) - “Morality!” is
the name. It’s probably the cleanest
show in town-no nudes, no pot, no
homosexuals, no bedhopping, no
brawls.
It is religious without a Jesus. It has a
lot of good music-17 songs to be
exact-ballad, rock, calypso, folk, with a
touch of music hall.
NEW YORK (NC) - The Motion
Picture Association’s unrestricted PG
rating of “Lolly-Madonna XXX” - a
film which depicts extremes of sex and
sadism - is a “textbook example” of the
questionable rating practices according
to the U.S. Catholic Conference’s
Division for Film and Broadcasting
(DFB).
The USCC unit said the movie,
starring Rod Steiger, Robert Ryan and
Jeff Bridges, should have been
designated as having material morally
objectionable for persons of all ages.
Lolly-Madonna XXX, according to a
DFB review, portrays the feud of two
Tennessee mountain families, the
Feathers and the Gutshalls, over a
pasture. The Feathers steal the
Gutshall’s hogs, the Gutshalls destroy
the Feathers still, two of the Feathers
rape the Gutshall girl, Mrs. Gutshall and
the eldest Feather boy are shot, Pa
Feather stomps one of his own sons to
death, and Ma Feather blows off the top
of the youngest Gutshall’s head with a
shotgun blast.
The film “is intended as a realistic
commentary on the absurdity of war
and on the demonically escalating acts
of violence that, once they begin, are
simply beyond human control,” the
DFB review said.
However, the review added, “all
concerned seem hell-bent on graphic
displays of violence for its own sake.
This is the true ‘message’ of this
perfectly pretentious, self-indulgent
film.”
In a press release, the
film-broadcasting unit noted that the
Motion Picture Association had
concluded the film is suitable for all but
perhaps pre-teenagers in giving it a PG
designation. It protested that, “the
bloodbaths aside,” the film contained
two sequences which “are
unquestionably adult in nature.”
V.
Those sequences are:
- Pa Feather’s stomping to death of
his son is linked with the earlier killing
of the boy’s horses.
- Ma Gutshall’s conversation with
her sexually assaulted daughter in which
she recounts her adjustment to married
life.
-Even though he knows “theater in
New York is about the worst risk there
is,” Charles V. Peters, a 21-year-old
University of Connecticut honors
student and playwright, has mounted a
new musical for a showcase run at a
Greenwich Village theater.
“It wasn’t written to be clean, and it
wasn’t written to be dirty,” said Peters,
a lean youth with long hair and
The DFB asked what parent would
consider such material suitable for
teenagers and, especially, children below
12. It also questioned how the MPA
could defend its PG rating.
“For anyone who wants a crash
course in how the Motion Picture
Association is rating the movies these
days, the PG symbol applied to
Lolly-Madonna XXX is a textbook
example,” the division stated.
C — Condemned
WATTSTAX (Columbia) js not quite the
black answer to WOODSTOCK, but it serves
up enough soulful music and colorful
on-the-street interviews with the residents of
the Watts ghetto in Los Angeles, that it will
entertain and interest anyone who knows,
say, who Isaac Hayes is or that in black street
patios BAD means GOOD. The film
accomplishes little in trying to do too much,
but it does have some nicely visualized
performances from groups such as the Staple
Singers, Albert King, Rufus Thomas and Mr.
Hayes in all his bare-chested, shiny-pated
magnificance. Too bad, though, that most of
the music itself does not come up to the same
level of interest. Some of the best moments
are outside of the concert, in fact, which was
held to celebrate the sense of black
community awareness that grew out of the
ashes of the burning seven years ago. The
interviews are candid — funy and sad,
frightening and reassuring. They’re also
heavily sprinkled with street language - so,
watch out, Baby, if your ears burn easily.
(A-lll)
SUCH A GORGEOUS KID LIKE ME
(Columbia) is an example of the mature,
mellow Francois Truffaut at his good-natured,
satiric best. His tale, full of little social
comments and naughty asides, follows a
distaff rake's progress as an incorrigibly
sensual peasant girl manipulates her crafty
way to stardom as a pop personality -- at the
expense of a string of infatuated men ranging
from her cloddish farmer husband, to a
pietistic exterminator, a rock- ‘n’ -roll singer,
a gullible sociologist and (after the girl frames
the sociologist for murder) the professor’s
own defense lawyer. The film plays for
knowing, mature laughs, and makes several
healthy comments along the way, chiefly
about who is exploiting whom and how the
battle of the sexes is basically a battle of
survival. All's fair, and for the most part, all’s
funny on a strictly adult level. (A-lll)
dreaming brown eyes. “It was,” he
continued, “just written.”
“Morality!” makes its bow with first
class credentials-a three-week run at the
Edinburgh Festival last summer, and
only one negative review out of 15.
Peters wrote the book and lyrics with
Melvyn Morrow, an Australian, who is
director of drama at the Jesuits’
Stonyhurst College in England. The two
collaborated in putting the show
together, based mostly on Peter’s ideas,
in the summer of 1971 in New York.
Then they put it into the hands of
Wilfred Usher, director and founder of
the Stonyhurst chamber orchestra, John
Mallord, music master, and two
members of the college musical staff. It
was first played by the drama company
of the college and then at Edinburgh.
Besides being principal writer, Peters
played the lead at Edinburgh. In New
York he is a producers’ representative
and company manager.
The format of “Morality” is, in
Peters words, “not preachy; it is
balanced, and seasoned with healthy
touches of humor. It starts with a
10-minute adaption of the Cain and
Abel cycle of a medieval morality
production, during which Adam and
Eve manage to get through an entire
appearance fully clothed. Though
BLACK CAESAR (AIP) Apart from a
musical score by James Brown the only
distinguishing mark of this standard
blaxploitation flick starring Fred Williamson
is its total indifference to the basics of
competent film making. Written, directed and
produced by Larry Cohen, BLACK CAESAR
trades exclusively in the ruthless violence of
the genre which presumably is at the heart of
its dubious appeal. The excuse, this time out,
for all the mayhem, sex and street language is
Williamson's take-over of a Harlem-South
Bronx crime syndicate through his acquisition
of a set of payoff ledgers that incriminate
New York politicos and corrupt, brutal cop
Art Lund. Typical of the film’s fantasies is the
climatic chase through New York’s midtown
that has Williamson getting shot outside
Tiffany’s and then wandering the city streets
as Cohen’s cameras catch all those hapless
strollers gawking at the film crew. Tiffany’s --
not to mention the citizenry of New York --
should sue for defamation of character. (C)
TEN FROM YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS
(Walter Reade) offers some choice cuts from
the classic Sid Caesar show of the early
Fifties, when Sid, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner
and Howie Morris had as much fun doing
their wacky skits as the audience had
watching them. Among the segments are a
riotous domestic scene erupting over a “little
accident” the little woman had with hubby’s
car, a mechanical breakdown in an old
Bavarian town-square clock in which the four
stars pantomime the figures that pop out to
announce the hour, a madly condensed
take-off on FROM HERE TO ETERNITY,
and a knowing spoof of the too-familiar “This
Is Your Life show. How eronic it is that you
cannot find comedy as good or intense as the
old YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS on today’s
television, but must seek it out in darkened
and for the most part sparsely peopled movie
theaters. Although a few of the skits seem
overlong, and all of them silly, there is a deep
“naked, they were not ashamed-or
commercial,” the audience is told.
There follows a contest between
Earth (the pragmatic) and Sky (the
aspirational).
How does “Morality!” differ from
“Godspell” and “Jesus Christ,
Superstar”?
“Well, I don’t like the idea of people
going out of the theater thinking
they’ve got a new religious fervor,
because it’s all theatricality,” Peters
said.
“In ‘Morality! you get the depth
from it the depth you want to get from
it. We’ve tried to be fair.
“One must be aware of theatrical
manipulation - the audience goes in
wanting to be manipulated, to be
entertained. It’s a kind of willing
suspension of disbelief-and it’s also a
willing suspension of independence.
“While we are doing this in
‘Morality!’ we are not foisting our ideas
on people. What are people looking for
in theater? Escape, mostly. I don’t mean
to be derogatory. Maybe they go for a
bit of philosophy and invention. You
can get a lot of thought over to people
when they are being entertained, while
their guard is down.”
seme of fun - for the audience (including the
original live audience on the sound track) and
for the performers. In fact, watching Caesar
ET AL. blow lines (at one point Sid accuses
Imogene of being a “one woman man,”
instead of the other way around) and break
up at one another’s mugging and ad libs,
heightens the hilarity considerably. For those
old enough to remember fondly, for those too
young to know why, and, in general, for
anyone looking for a load of laughs dished up
with a heaping spoonful of plain old nostalgia,
TEN FROM YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS is
unsurpassed entertainment. (A-1)
FEAR IS THE KEY (Paramount), from
the novel by Alistair MacLean, is a
moderately engrossing but wildly improbable
melodrama of the “everything-is-not-quite-
.what-it-seems-to-be” kind. Barry
Newman implausibly plays an implausible
ex-salvage operator who drives into a lazy
Louisiana hamlet and in the space of minutes
is carted off to court where he promptly
shoots (or does he?) oil heiress hostage (Suzy
Kendall), and after a chase scene that wilt
rival neither BULLITT nor THE FRENCH
CONNECTION, ends up in the oil baron’s
palatial home where he is expected, of all
things, to dredge up a sunken treasure. No,
we’re not making this up; never in so short a
time has the victim become the victor, the
villain the hero, or the upright the corrupt.
The climax, for those who can piece together
the plot, should have everyone literally
gasping for breath as Newman shuts off the
oxygen supply in the bathyscaph to wring a
confession out of culprit John Vernon.
Directed by Michael Tuchner, the film is
mercifully short on sex and violence and is
not better or worse than any of television’s
Movie of the Week. The tube is definitely
where it belongs and where, no doubt, it will
end its days. (A-ll)
“Lolly-Madonna XXX”
PG Rating Questioned
Film Classifications
A — Section I — Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A — Section II — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section M — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B — Morally Objectionable in Part for All
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