Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6-April 26, 1973
LIFE IN MUSIC
By the Dameans
STEP BY STEP
Step by step, I’ve got to get close to you.
Step by step, I’ve got to get to know you.
You came into my life, like a drop of rain falling from above.
And I knew when I first saw you, you were the one for me to love.
But as sudden as you came, you vanished into the night.
I knew my life wouldn’t be complete, without you to hold me tight.
Step by step, I’ve got to get close to you.
Step by step, I’ve got to get to know you.
My friends all tell me, tell me you’re a woman of the street.
0 but to me baby, you are all my eyes can ever see.
If we had one night together, maybe you’d understand
That I need your love, baby, and I surely want to be your man.
Step by step, I’ve got to get close to you.
Step by step, I’ve got to get to know you.
Everyday that’s all it takes, step by step.
I tell you baby, step by step.
c 1973 Poly dor Incorporated
Describe our “world” today? Everyone has his own personal view depending
on his background but most would agree that this world is fast-moving. We have
gradually become used to the “instant” approach. If it’s food, you just add
water and presto. If it’s electricity, or heating or cooling, you just push a button
and there it is.
The same immediacy is true also for communication between peoples far
apart. There is always the promise of a “quick relief.” When we get down to it,
we love it and wonder how people ever did without all of this convenience and
expediency.
However, in the midst of this approach there is also the more uncomfortable
realization that there are some things which do not “happen” simply by adding
water. There are no “instant”solutions; they require work, time, patience and
real effort in order to produce results. This is true in the area of love and human
relationships. “Step by step” we have to get to know someone in order to get
close to them.
The beat in this song gives one the feeling of walking and the rhythm provides
the “step by step” effect. It can easily be seen how the catchy beat is the main
thrust of this song. The opening words which are repeated quite often as a
refrain are very good and certainly open the door for reflection.
When a person talks about real love, this implies something dynamic and
growing, not something static and predictable. In trying to “know” someone and
“get close” to someone, one must hang loose in the relationship, constantly
groping, readjusting, renewing.
This requires time and effort. Erich Fromm calls love an “art” and states that
in the mastering of any art, there must be knowledge of the art and the
continuous practice of that art. This means that there must be a considerable
amount of patience and work.
“Knowing” and “getting close” to another “step by step” also means that we
utilize shared experiences to their fullest. Too often we let these moments slip
by without getting the most out of them. This can refer to either the good times
together or the trying ones. So often in life we rush through experiences without
slowing down long enough to truly enjoy or come to a better knowledge of
another in a given situation.
This might be what the song speaks of when it talks about the “one night”
together. Of course we know that real love is based on much more than one
night or one step. In looking at an entire love relationship, there are many steps
which form the foundation for its endurance but one should take full advantage
of each step.
Some things in life can’t be rushed - knowing, healing, forgiving, trusting and
loving. It is in experiencing these deep and essential elements of life that one
must be patient as one moves “step by step.”
(Direct all correspondence to: The Dameans, St. Joseph’s Church, 216 Patton Ave., P.O.
Box 5188, Shreveport, La. 71105)
^ ^ ^ - -r ^ y
TV Movies
SUNDAY, APRIL 29-9:00 p.m. (ABC) -
MY SON JOHN (1952) -- Solid drama probes
a conflict between a man’s loyalty to his
country and to his family. Helen Hayes and
Dean Jagger play the wartime parents of two
servicemen-sons and a third (Robert Walker)
who holds a sensitive post in Washington,
D.C., and who shows signs of having
tess-than-sterling loyalty to his country. Van
Heflin plays an investingating P.B.I. man.
(A-IO
MONDAY, MAY 1 9:00 p.m. (ABC) -
MAN TRAP (1961) — David Janssen and
Stella Stevens join Jeffrey Hunter in a tangled
marital drama focusing on Janssen’s attempts
to corrupt nice-guy-and-ex-G.I. Hunter into
joining him in a large-scale robbery of money
headed for a Latin American revolutionary
force. Adding to the low moral tone is Ms.
Stevens as Hunter’s spoiled, sluttish wife (who
goes to a concrete grave, midway.) Not
recommended. (B)
9:00 P.m. (NBC) - THE CEREMONY
(1963) - Robert Walker impersonates a priest
in order to gain access to his jailed
murderer-bank robber brother, Laurence
Harvey, and hatch a plot to spring the
convict. Waiting at home is sweetheart (and
escape mastermind) Sarah Miles-but the big
question is, which one of the brothers is she
waiting for??? (And who really cares?) (A-lll)
TUESDAY, MAY 2-8:00 p.m. (NBC) ~
MAGIC CARPET -- Repeat of a
made-for-television programmer starring
Susan Saint James, Abby Dalton, and Jim
Backus, and focusing semi-comically on the
complications that set in when Ms. Saint
James European tour is invaded by a
mysterious free-loader. Light adult
entertainment.
9:00 p.m. (ABC - GETTING AWAY
PROM IT ALL - 90-minute TV film stars
Barbara Peldon and Larry Hagman. E.J.
Peaker and vivacious Vivian Vance play a
middle-aged married couple who take off on a
whirlwind jaunt to escape their ho-hum
existence and get a kick out of life. Peldon
and Hagman are some folks who help out
with the laughs.
9:30 p.m. (CBS) ~ GARGOYLES -
Made-for-television flicker, and that’s all the
information we have at press time.
THURSDAY, MAY 3-9:00 p.m. (CBS) -
HOT MILLIONS (1968) -- Madcap caper stars
Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith as a
mis-matched pair of super-bumbling
embezzlers. This bright and witty comedy is a
fine example of purely excapist entertainment
that is its own reason for being. Ustinov and
Ms. Smith are perfect in their comic roles and
conspire amusingly to outwit a crafty
computer (and make off with the HOT
MILLIONS of the title). But we all know of
the best-laid plans of mice and
embezzlers . . . .(A-ll)
FRIDAY, MAY 4-9:00 p.m. (CBS) -
CHUBASCO ( 1 968) - Romantic
comedy-melodrama, with Susan Strasberg.
(A-ll)
SATURDAY, May 5 - 8:00 p.m. (PBS) -
BALLAD OF A SOLDIER (1960) -- The
1960 Russian feature, BALLAD OF A
SOLDIER, was an international success and
marked the beginning of a new era in the
Soviet film. It tells the story of a
nineteen-year-old soldier going home to visit
his mother on a six day furlough. His journey
through his war-torn country focuses on
various people and is a microcosm of the
Russian experience during the Second World
War. Directed by Grigori Chukrai, the film
avoids the blatant propaganda of earlier
Soviet movies and instead is a warm and very
human tribute to the goodness of the
common man. The participants in the
discussion following the film include experts
in Russian history and culture. (A-ll)
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - OPERATION KID
BROHTER (1967) -- When Sean Connery
decided back in the mid-1960’s that he wasn't
going to play James Bond anymore (although
he did return two years ago in DIAMONDS
ARE FOREVER) 007 producers United
Artists dug up his younger brother Neil to
play a Bond-type secret agent — with
distarous results. Watching this enept example
of how not to make a spy movie, we weren’t
sure whether Connery the younger was aware
he was in a spoof. The plot, such as it is,
concerns an international scheme to
hypnotize the world’s great powers into
surrendering most of their gold reserves to a
gang of crooks. (A-ll)
FREEDOM FROM HUNGER WALK - This was the scene in
Minneapolis - St. Paul, Minn., in 1971 when 35,000 walkers raised
$200,000 for the American Freedom from Hunger Foundation. The new
head of the foundatisn’s board of trustees is Lisa Young, 19, (right) a
pre-medical student at Augsberg College, Minneapolis. She coordinated
the 971 walks in the Twin Cities. About a million persons are expected to
walk 12 million miles in 300 cities in this year’s program in May. (NC
Photo)
BISHOP SWANSTROM:
“Closing Tax 6 Loopholes’ Could Stifle Welfare”
WASHINGTON (NC) - Bishop
Edward E. Swanstrom, speaking on
behalf of 42 voluntary agencies for
overseas relief, said that millions of
needy persons may become unintended
victims of legislative plans to wipe out
tax loopholes.
>Bishop Swanstrom, executive director
of Catholic Relief Services (CRS),
expressed this concern in testimony
before the House Ways and Means
Committee which is seeking to eradicate
the “loopholes.”
Ways and Means has as its basis in
seeking equitable tax laws the 1969 Tax
Reform Act, which Bishop Swanstrom
said has in itself drastically shackled
voluntary welfare agencies serving the
poor.
As an example, he pointed to the
Reform Act’s reduction of gifts,
particularly from the pharmaceutical
industry, to voluntary agencies serving
the world’s poor.
“Our anxiety is caused by the fact
that, unintentionally, those interested in
eliminating unjustifiable loopholes in
the tax laws may adversely affect the
programs of voluntary agencies and
therefore do serious harm to the tens of
millions of needy who depend upon
them.”
Bishop Swanstrom commended the
efforts of the committee to seek
equitable tax laws, but added that “we
do not believe charitable contributions
for fulfilling human needs represent a
tax ‘loophole.’ ”
One change brought about by the
1969 Tax Reform Act’s charitable
contribution provisions affected the
contribution of goods. Prior to the act,
a taxpayer was allowed to deduct the
“fair market value” of such
contributions. Now he is limited to a
“cost” basis deduction.
As a result, testified Bishop
Swanstrom, the size of gifts of
inventory or other income property that
voluntary agencies received prior to the
enactment on property contributions
has “significantly diminished.”
Bishop Swanstrom said the American
Council favors an amendment to the
Tax Reform Act that would eliminate
loopholes and unwarranted tax benefits,
while continuing to provide incentive to
donors of property contributions.
Bishop Swanstrom said that such a
goal could be accomplished by adopting
the principles of legislation proposed by
Congressman Hugh L. Carey (D-N.Y.).
Carey’s bill would allow a deduction
in the case of “ordinary income
property” equal to the cost of the
property contributed plus one-half of
the difference between cost and fair
market value.
Bishop Swanstrom said the American
Council agencies are also concerned
about the effect of the proposed two to
three percent “floor” under the
allowable itemized deductions for
individual taxpayers.
“To enact such a proposal would
deny the taxpayer itemized legal
deductions up to a stated percent of his
adjusted gross income for charitable
contributions,” Bishop Swanstrom said.
He cited 1970 statistics of the
Internal Revenue Service, which
indicated that of 35.5 million taxpayers
who itemize deductions, 29 million
deducted three percent or less for
charitable contributions. “By and large
it is from a portion of these 29 million
that voluntary agencies operating
overseas receive the majority of their
funds,” he said.
The enactment of a tax “floor”
would discourage what up to now has
been an incentive for support of
voluntary associations by citizens
assuming personal responsibility for
programs that serve society, Bishop
Swanstrom said.
Film Classifications
A — Section I — Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A — Section II — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section III — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B — Morally Objectionable in Part for All
Bishop Swanstrom said he was also
concerned over proposals for new laws
based on the 1969 Tax Reform Act,
some of which he saw as further
obstacles to the welfare agencies
working abroad.
He said that the 42 member groups of
the American Council of Voluntary
Agencies for Foreign Service believe
that no one stands to gain from
curtailing charitable contributions.
Any savings to the taxpayer derived
from slashing charitable contributions
would result in insignificant change in
revenues for the U.S. government, he
said.
“To cut or further reduce tax
deductions for charitable giving hardly
reflects the traditional American
concern for the less fortunate,” Bishop
Swanstrom said.
Costa Rica Asks
For Assistance
Following Quake
TILARAN, Costa Rica (NC) - An
earthquake here killed 21 persons,
injured close to 100 and left several
hundred homeless. It also damaged the
cathedral and destroyed a church.
“No one is thinking of rebuilding
churches. First comes the Christian
community,” said Bishop Roman
Arrieta of Tilaran as he arrived from
Rome a few hours after tragedy struck
his diocese April 14.
Tilaran is 150 miles southeast of
Managua, Nicaragua, which was
destroyed in December by another
earthquake.
Bishop Arrieta appealed for food,
medicine and bedding supplies and set
up emergency relief stations in this
diocese of 340,000 Catholics.
“As Christians we must accept God’s
will, but also Christ expects us to share
the anguish of our brothers and attend
to their needs promptly.”
The rest of Costa Rica’s five dioceses
have begun sending volunteers and
supplies.
C — Condemned
SCORPIO (United Artists ...Burt
Lancaster as a tough, desperate double agent -
Veteran Burt Lancaster stands out as a
singular double agent being double and
perhaps even triple-crossed in this
action-packed tingler sharply directed by
Michael Winner, who hasn’t had a winner in
quite a spell. Lancaster plays his CIA agent
with the same bedraggled, tired and harried
competence Richard Burton displayed in THE
SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, to
which SCORPIO owes more than a casual
nod. Freshly returned from a CIA-engineered
assassination which he masterminded with
French freebooter Alain Delon, Lancaster
senses that his number is up and decides to
cash in on the “insurance" he has stored up
for just such a moment. There are anonymous
friends, for example, who can be called upon
to take care of unwanted pursuers in order to
make clear Lancaster’s path to escape and to
the riches he has salted away from sales of
classified information to the Russians.
Unfortunately but inevitably, things come
unstuck, and as the plot thickens with secret
flights out of this country and into that one
and then back again, Lancaster's chances of
making it out alive, much less with his wife
and money, become more and more remote.
If the tone of sympathy here seems untoward,
it is only because one must see Lancaster in
action to appreciate the character he pours
into his role, and one also must recognize the
aura of complete amorality in which films of
thus sort float. The complexity of intrigue
here makes the real-life shenanigans of
Watergate seem like so much adolescent
deception-in the world of SCORPIO, the
“good guys” are not only bad, they are
non-existent. This sort of cynicism is
ultimately not be to taken too seriously,
although the presumptions it suggests about
agencies and operatives, domestic and foreign,
of which we have little true knowledge can be
potentially harmful to the impressionable.
Filling in the plot-which has enough twists
to satisfy the buffs of this spy genre-is a lot of
solid action and fast-paced excitement deftly
orchestrated by director Winner, who for
once is not out of his death. A foot-chase
sequence filmed in Vienna, particularly, has
Lancaster being pursued by Delon in a deadly
race through back alleys and construction
sites, and, best of all, has both men doing
their own leaps, scrambles, and falls. A special
bonus is Paul Scofield’s appearance as
Lancaster’s Russian analogue, an old friend
from the time during WW II when, ironically,
both men worked for the same Allied side.
With its fast action and well-played
characters, SCORPIO has considerable sting
for adult audiences. (A-lll)
BROTHER SUN, SISTER MOON
(Paramount) is one of those films about
spirituality and poverty that present these
themes on the most lavish and lush sort of
scale. It’s from Italian film-and-opera director
Franco Zeffirelli, and the story is about the
life of St. Francis. Special focus is on the
“original innocence” that underlay Francis’
conversion after coming home to Assisi from
a war with neighboring Padua, when he
decided to throw away his material riches (his
father was a wealthy cloth merchant) and
take up a life of purity and poverty and,
eventually, to found the order of monks that
bears his name. Unlike others who have
examined the same subject, Zeffirelli has
treated Francis as a secular saint and social
heretic — suspiciously, Francis comes across as
a sort of ennobled hippie. The film’s
strengths, then, are not its serious
examination of a saint and his spirituality.
Rather, they lie in the way Zeffirelli uses his
camera to present his beautiful actors
(Graham Faulkner as Francis, Judi Bowker as
Clare, a follower who went on to found a
parallel order of nuns) and capture the
beautiful Umbiran landscape where the film
was shot. What little of the deep-down
message comes through is nice, however: that
there is more to life than accumulating
material goods, especially when nature is
willing to share her beauties with alt. (A-ll)
PHEDRE (Altura Films) Marie Bell, the
legendary classical actress of the Comedie
Francaise, plays the tragic queen in Racine’s
17th century retelling of the Greek myth of
Theseus, the prince torn between two loves.
Director Pierre Jourdan has tried for more
than a record of a stage performance, and yet
by remaining faithful to Racine’s play the
movie is necessarily artificial and stage-bound.
For those who cannot follow Racine’s
complicated verse (the subtitles can only
suggest its power), Mile. Bell’s performance
becomes all the more spellbinding in its
mixture of passion and restraint. No one
interested in French culture or the art of
drama should miss seeing this PHEDRE.
(All)
THE VAULT OF HORROR (Cinerama)
Traditionally durable as the form is this latest
horror offering from Milton Subotsky and
Max Rosenberg is so short on laughs and
horrors that it is unlikely to please even the
occasional horror buff. Director Roy Ward
Baker uses five tales, once again taken from
the Fifties comics of William Gaines, framed
within a contrived situation involving five
men caught in an elevator who suddenly find
themselves in a sub-basement no-exit room of
a hi-rise. To pass the time each recounts a
recurring dream of his own violent death. The
cast, featuring such seasoned performers as
Daniel Massey, Terry-Thomas, Glynis Johns,
Curt Jurgens, Michael Craig, and Tom Baker,
are uniformly better than the material
warrants. One of the better sequences turns
about Thomas and Ms. Johns in a marital
squabble created by the former’s
fastidiousness, which induces Ms. Johns to
neatly package on an artist’s revenge upon
cheating dealers, by resorting to some
pin-pricking voodoo arts. On the whole,
there’s too much chopping and hacking for
younger viewers, but not enough real
psychological horror to chill the hearts and
imaginations of devotees. (A-lll)
I LOVE YOU ROSA (Leisure Media) His
habit of addressing this expression of
affection to his beloved without ever thinking
of a delaying comma speaks for the ardor of
the lover, even if he is only 11 years old. The
lad’s name is Nissim (Gabi Outerman), and he
is more than anxious to observe the
Deuteronomic Law which requires a man to
marry his brother’s widow if she has not
produced a son. The Widow is Rosa (Michal
Bat-Adam), beautiful, intelligent,
kind-hearted-and liberated. Rosa accepts
Nissim into her home mainly to rescue the
boy from his own crowded, brutalizing
family. The two work and worship with one
mind: she mothers him tenderly, sees to his
schooling and trade apprenticeship, and lets
him snuggle up to her in bed. Two years later,
after his bar mizbah, Nissim wants to do more
than snuggle. Angered, Rosa kicks him out.
Five years later the wanderer returns, grown
handsome and respectful. Rosa sleeps with
him, informs him he has fulfilled his duty to
his brother, and kicks him out again. Her
insistence on freedom of choice finally
mellows a year later when the lovers
accidentally come together in an elegiac
setting. Actually, Rosa’s whole story — set in
late 19th century Jerusalem and framed in
flashback as the aged woman addresses her
grandson-basks in a charmingly poetic,
humorously sentimental glow that many will
find irrestible. Granted the romantic appeal of
this Israeli film and the ancient religious
tradition which suffuses it, an awkward note
is sounded when writer-director Moshe
Mizrahi yields to the modern idiom (nudity,
crude dialogue and pantomimes) in depicting
Nissim’s sexual awakening. Then, too, one
wonders how the town’s sagacious rabbi can
smile at everything he sees. (A-IV)
RECENT FILM CLASSIFICATIONS
Godspell (Columbia - A-l
Guns of A Stranger (Universal) -- A-l
Class of ’44 (Warners) - A-lll
Money, Money, Money (Cinerama) — A-lll
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