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PAGE 6—October 18,1973
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LIFE
MUSIC
«rT,
BY THE DAMEANS
We May Never Pass This Way (Again)
by James Seals and Dash Crofts
Life, so they say, is but a game and then let it slip away
Love, like the orange sun should be dyin’ but it’s only just begun
Like the twilight in the road ahead
They don’t see just where we’re going
All the secrets in the universe whisper in our ears
All the years that come and go pick us up, always up
Chorus
We may never pass this way again
We may never pass this way again
We may never pass this way again
Dreams, so they say, are for the fools and then let them drift away
Peace like the silent dove should be flyin’ but it’s only just begun
Like Columbus in the olden days we must gather all our courage--
sail our ships out on the open sea
Cast away our fears and all the years that come and go pick us up,
always up
So I want to laugh while the laughin is easy
I want to cry if it makes it worthwhile
I may never pass this way again
That’s why I want it with you.
You make me feel like I’m more than a friend
Like I’m the journey and you’re the journey’s end
I may never pass this way again
That’s why I want it with you.
(c) 1973 Warner Bros. Records, Inc.)
(Pawnbroker Music BMI)
James Seals and Dash Crofts are both followers of Bahaism, a religious system
which emphasizes the spiritual unity of mankind. Their music is full of
references to their religious beliefs and they often spend time at their concerts
rapping with their audiences about Bahaism. “We May Never Pass This Way
(Again),” a cut from their album “Diamond Girl,” has a lot to say about the
religious person, whether he is a follower of Jesus or Bahaullah or any other
prophet.
The first thing you notice in the song is a sense of optimism, a firm conviction
that no matter how bad things may look or how many “don’t see just where
we’re going,” life still makes sense and, “all the years that come and go pick us
up, always up.” Such a positive outlook on life can only live in those who have
goals in life. Only a freely chosen goal can make the journey worthwhile,
whether the goal is the conquest of space, establishment of world peace,
becoming one with God or one with the universe.
The goal gives a constant point of reference-Columbus’ search for the Indies,
NASA’s sights on the planets, and Jesus’ reference to the kingdom of his Father.
For the person without goals, life and love become sad games -- you win today
but you may lose tomorrow -- so what’s the use of trying? Failure in anything is
just another part of the game whereas for the person with a goal it can be a
challenge to pursue the goal with even more determination.
There are some things we need in our goal searching and certain things we are
better off without. We need friends to encourage us along the way, to whisper in
our ears when our heads begin to tire from confusion. We need dreams, those
“visions of life worth the effort, never impossible of achievement nor certain of
accomplishment,” as Father Anthony Padovano says in his beautiful book,
“Dawn Without Darkness.”
What we don’t need is fear. It happens to us every once in a while for sure,
but making fear a habit prevents us from taking risks which are sometimes
necessary in the pursuit of our goals.
Life is a journey and we are a pilgrim people. Sometimes we laugh and
sometimes we cry but always we live in hope of the final victory and with the
crazy dream that somehow we can make the journey a little easier for each
other.
(All correspondence should be addressed to: The Dameans, St. Joseph Church, 216
Patton St., P.O. Box 5188, Shreveport, LA 71105)
V.
J
VATICAN OBSERVER WITH UN OFFICIAL - UN Secretary General
Kurt Waldheim talks with Msgr. Giovanni Cheli, the Vatican’s new
permanent observer at the United Nations.
‘There is so much to see and
learn,” said Msgr. Cheli of his assignment in an interview with NC News.
(NC Photo)
BOOK REVIEWS
(NC News Service)
ABORTION AND SOCIAL
JUSTICE, ed. by Thomas W. Hilgers and
Dennis J. Horan, Sheed & Ward (New
York), 328 pp., $6.95. Reviewed by
Joseph A. Breig.
“Women are still big business for
men. Abortion now provides a new
multimillion dollar business in another
kind of feminine prostitution . . .when
women prostitute themselves to what is
called ‘the baby scrambler,’ the suction
machine for abortion.”
That passage is only one of scores
which the reviewer would like to quote
from “Abortion and Social Justice.” It
is from Mary Joyce’s striking essay,
“The Sexual Revolution Is Yet to
Begin.”
The book examines abortion from
many points of view--medical, legal,
moral, sociological, philosophical and
others. The central truth which
everyone sooner or later must face is set
forth by Dr. Bart T. Heffeman, M.D. --
“From conception the child is a
complex, dynamic, rapidly growing
individual.” That statement is
convincingly illustrated in
accompanying photos.
“Before the Abortion Act went
through in Britain,” writes Member of
Parliament Jill Knight, “all the public
communications media, and thus public
opinion, were vociferously in favor of
making abortion easily available. Now,
after four years, the reverse is generally
true. We have seen what a tiger we have
by the tail.”
The pro-abortion campaign is seen as
“Coercion in Liberation’s Guise” by
Victor G. Rosenblum, professor of
political science and law at
Northwestern University, “Economic
pressures and social stigma related to
child-bearing today,” he writes, “are as
much instruments of force and coercion
in ostensible choices of abortion as were
the economic pressures and fears in
ostensible choices not to join unions or
to work at less than minimum wages in
times past.”
A physician, a nurse and a mother, in
a joint essay, ask: “Why does a
‘civilized’ society become so threatened
by its own offspring that it seeks the
violence of human abortion to relieve its
anxiety?” And they find that “we are
literally abandoning women and
children, as we abandoned the Indians,
the blacks and others in the past .. .And
this is not all. The woman involved (in
abortion) begins to reject and destroy
herself.”
A warning of what all this can lead to
is sounded by a California Episcopalian
priest, the Rev. Charles Carroll, who was
with the U.S. military government in
Germany after World War II and
observed the war-crimes trial of the
doctors at Nuremburg. “We would have
to be blind with the blindness that
glories in being blind if we were not to
see the move from the voluntary to the
mandatory in all this; if we were not to
realize that abortion and sterilization on
demand of the individual can easily
become abortion and sterilization on
demand of the state.”
(Joseph A. Breig is associate editor of
the Catholic Universe Bulletin, diocesan
newspaper of Cleveland, and a
syndicated columnist in the Catholic
press.)
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21 - 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - LOVE STORY (1970) - The Big
One made from the enormously popular Erich
Segal novel invades the privacy of your home.
But don’t worry folks, the super-blippable
dialogue between brief (sob!) lovers Ali
McGraw and Ryan O’Neal, as they live out
their intense and doubtless mis-matched days
together, has been super-blipped by the
network blipper. Actually, all those naughty
words are the only thing that sparked the
sudsy melodrama, and all that is left is a limp
tear-jerker about two college kids Made for
Each Other. (A-lll)
MONDAY, OCTOBER 22- 9:00 p.m.
(NBC) - A BIG HAND FOR THE LITTLE
LADY (1966) — An outstanding cast (Henry
Fonda, Paul Ford, Kevin McCarthy, Burgess
Meredith, Jason Robards, Joanne Woodward)
are uniformly excellent in playing out the
most colorful comical poker game in the old
west. Emphasis is on the personalities, and the
plot’s ingenious bluffing makes for fascinating
entertainment even without the clever
surprise ending. (A-lI)
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23 - 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - THE PRESIDENT’S PLANE IS
MISSING - This highly improbable suspense
drama, made especially for TV, projects into
the near future and comes up with a pretty
sharp bite. The story takes a controversial
President (Tod (cq) Andrews) and has him
flying Westward at a time of great upheaval in
the nation -- the military is threatening a
coup. The plane crashes in the Arizona desert,
with no survivors - BUT the President’s body
is nowhere to be found. A newsman (Peter
Graves) sets out to investigate closely, but
runs into sinister opposition in the form of
presidential aide Rip Torn, who is pushing for
a quick swearing-in of the V.P., played by
Buddy Ebsen. Stay tuned for a surprise
twist . . .
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25 - 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) - GUESS WHO’S COMING TO
DINNER? (1968) -- Stanley Kramer’s fourth
film to deal with an aspect of racial or>.
religious bigotry is a bright if almost totally
irrelevant comedy starring the late Spencer
Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as parents
whose daughter (Katharine Houghton) wants
to marry a distinguished Negro doctor
(Sidney Poitier). Though the film stacks the
deck somewhat, since this particular couple
will never have to face the social
circumstances others would, the effort of
both their families to cope with the race issue
and the generation gap adds a dimension of
truth. Mr. Tracy and Miss Hepburn are at their
greatest as a team. Fine support by Roy
Glenn, Beah Richards, Isabell Sanford. (A-ll)
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 - 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - MONEY TO BURN - Made-for-TV
suspense flick about a convict who (E.G.
Marshall) manufactures $1 million in
counterfeit cash whilst he should be stamping
out license plates. His scheme involves
smuggling the money out to the woman in his
life (Mildred Natwick) and a pair of
accomplices (Cleavon Little and Alejandro
Rey). Once the phony dough is on the
outside, it will be substituted for real but
“retired” bills scheduled for incineration.
Nifty, tight, and bright, with Ms. Natwick
stealing more than her share of scenes.
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - CHISUM (1970) - Big
John Wayne here collaborates with his current
favorite director, Andrew V. McLaglen, in a
boisterous, rousing, good-old-fashioned
Western. The Duke, naturally, is cast as a
larger-than-life character, cattle baron John
Chisum, who figured prominently in the
bloody Lincoln County cattle wars that Pat
Garrett and Billy the Kid got involved in, too.
As usual, there is the standard Wayne fudging
of moral issues where the “Winning of the
West” is concerned (Chisum, after all, was a
pretty ruthless guy), but for folks who like
their Westerns full of slam-bang action at the
expense of historical accuracy, CHISUM is the
ticket. (A-l)
PUBLIC TELEVISION HIGHLIGHT -
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 10:00 p.m. (EDT)
-- FIRING LINE — Host William F. Buckley
squares off with political analyst Samuel
Lubell on the topic, “The Nixon Presidency.”
Lubell believes that Richard Nixon is a
“revolutionary” who has deliberately upset
the governmental balance of powers in order
to pit one group against the other in an
issue-oriented campaign.
THE PAPER CHASE (Fox) - Life, Love,
Law School. Serious drama about campus life
has been a topic for many doomed
contemporary films; witness DRIVE SHE
SAID, BEEN DOWN SO LONG, and THE
HARRAD EXPERIMENT. Perhaps the
intellectual life is a bit too abstract, its
tensions too self-imposed to make good
drama or even effective melodrama. THE
PAPER CHASE is the best of the
college-based films, but still leaves a lot to be
desired. Its picture of Harvard is pretty fair: it
captures the sense of an egalitarian student
body locked in a hierarchial society, indicts a
grading system which is so competitive as to
be inhumane, and presents a teacher-student
relationship that the Marquis de Sade would
be proud of.
Into this perverse testing ground comes
first-year law student Hart (Timothy
Bottoms) who quickly finds himself torn
between the cool, cruel, competitive life of
the intellect, personified in distinguished law
contracts professor Kingsfield (John
Houseman), and the warm, sensuous,
spontaneous life of the body, personified in
Kingsfield’s daughter Susan (Lindsay Wagner).
Complicating the struggle are Hart’s
involvement with a study group, five other
students whose varied personalities and
weaknesses seem to represent a cross section
of humanity. Our everyman Hart finds
himself incapable of meeting all his social
responsibilities and equally incapable of
attaining Kingsfield’s Olympian detachment.
The film sounds better in outline than it
actually is. Few of the characters are
developed enough to make the narrative
engrossing or the film’s analysis of its theme
particularly probing. Timothy Bottoms’
repertoire of attitudes and postures seems
depressingly limited to a vacant frown and a
puzzled smile. Thus his characterization of
the hero Hart resembles nothing quite so
much as a “little boy lost,” and there is little
in the script or in the presentation that
suggest how, when, or why he becomes little
boy found.
Similarly, Susan as played by Lindsay
Wagner offers small sustenance, and whatever
profoundly human significance the character
is meant to represent has been so blurred and
romanticized by James Bridges’ screenplay
(from the John Jay Osborn novel) that Susan
seems to signify more an escape from reality
than an alternative view. As a consequence
Hart’s symbolic transformation at the end --
which implies that he has been liberated from
Kingsfield’s domination - is unprepared for,
and at any rate director Bridges has made sure
to tell the audience that Hart has made the
grade.
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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
C — Condemned
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What is remarkable about THE PAPER
CHASE, however, is John Houseman’s
performance as Professor Kingsfield. THE
PAPER CHASE, is, in effect, Houseman’s
film. The detail he brings to the role, grading
blue books as if he were checking off a
laundry list, the feigned inability to remember
a name, the no-nonsense smile when the class
gives him a standing ovation on the last day,
add up to a fully conceived and rounded
characterization which is stunningly
convincing and so human in its implications
that it elicits from the viewer a compassion
and understanding for human failing without
lessening one’s realization of the man’s
terrifying indifference. For this reason, if no
other, THE PAPER CHASE provides an
interesting commentary upon one of the
central conflicts of present-day society.
(A-lll)
THE PYX (Cinerama) -- Religion,
witchcraft, and implied sexual rites are the
elements that strike sparks in this moderately
interesting psychological-horror-mystery.
Karen Black plays the central figure, a call girl
whose unexplained suicide prompts a police
detective (Christopher Plummer) to
investigate her background. His sleuthing
leads deeper and deeper into a bizarre
underworld of the occult. The film abounds
in perverse religious references - which,
though not meant to offend in any way,
possibly will — surrounding the young
woman’s weird way of life. This fact will limit
audiences, as will the film’s complex structure
of present action mixed with quick-cut
flashbacks. (A-IV)
SUMMERTIME KILLER (Avco Embassy)
stars Karl Malden, Olivia Hussey and young
Christopher Mitchum in a largely witless
Mafia-style revenge caper. Mitchum is out to
avenge the mob’s brutal murder of his father.
Not surprisingly, the bosses do not take
kindly to Mitchum’s systematic decimation of
their ranks, and they set corrupt cop Malden
on a trail that eventually leads to Lisbon,
where our young man with the telescopic rifle
has abducted the daughter (Olivia Hussey) of
his next Mafia victim and is holding her on his
houseboat anchored in a remote bay. Director
Antonio Isasi makes the most of Mitchum’s
skill with a motorcycle in the picturesque
Portuguese countryside but he has much less
success with tracking a plot that finally has
the two young people fall in love, get caught
and then released by Malden (who pays dearly
for the sentimental gesture when his Mafia
benefactors find out). SUMMERTIME
KILLER has such limited pretensions,
however, that the unquestioned amorality of
its characters and situations are as incoherent
and dismissible as the film itself. (A-lll)
LE GRAND BOUFFE (ABKCO) -- Four
puffy gourmands shut themselves up in a Paris
townhouse with the intention of eating
themselves to death. Three prostitutes and an
overweight schoolteacher (Andrea Perreol)
join them for dinner, the tarts leaving in
disgust but the teacher staying on to share
their meals and help them die happily. This
film about bourgeois decadence is itself a
disgusting monument to excess both of body
and spirit. More a curiosity piece than a film,
this misdirected effort by Marco Ferreri seems
to bring to a weary close the era of Italian
black comedies that began so brilliantly with
DIVORCE, ITALIAN STYLE. But whatever
the sense of desecration felt by the gourmet,
film lovers will feel a genuine sadness at
watching the once lively talents of Marcello
Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Philippe Noiret,
and Michel Piccoli dissipated into
self-caricature and middle-aged listlessness.
(C)
THE SLAMS (MGM) - Jim Brown flexes
more of his bulging muscles and unleashes
more of his dead-eyed sneers in this, his
thirteenth film. Alas, he shows no sign of ever
breaking out of his familiar role as the
super-bad, super-cool super dude. This time
around, he’s in the pen for ripping off $1.5
million in Mafia drug money, which is safely
stashed away against the moment of his
planned break-out, and of which, naturally,
all sorts of friendly folks would like to relieve
him. Amidst a hail of racial, sexual, and just
plain mean insults and episodes, Brown
remains invincible against the white mobs, the
black militants, the corrupt guards and the
prison officials who try to break his resolve in
keeping the loot to himself. Along the way,
the brutal and sadistic action is as relentless
and explicit as the prison language, and the
only time things relax a bit, in fact, is when
Brown excapes to join girl-friend Judy Pace
with the stash in the Carribbean. Aren’t
people getting a bit tired of this sort of thing?
But perhaps it is only fitting that in its movie
swansong, MGM offers this low note. (C)
RECENT FILM CLASSIFICATIONS
The Optimists (Paramount) -- A-l
Arnold (Cinerama) - A-lll
Corky (MGM) - A-lll
Day for Night (WarnerS) -- A-lll
Massacre in Rome (National General) --
A-lll
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