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Griffin Daily News
'Midnight Cowhoy 9
Probable Big Hit
By VERNON Stott
IPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD UPD—Every
year or so a motion picture
erupts in vlocanlc popularity
without the usual Hollywood
fanfare.
This year it is “Midnight
Cowboy.”
It doubtless will be the hit of
1969.
New York critics already
have praised it with lavish
superlatives.
As might be expected, it’s not
a family film. Its rating is *‘X.”
The film is a story of two
small-time hustlers lost in the
soulless canyons of Manhattan,
depicting—often with humor—
BRUCE BIOSSAT
e Man Blights Croplands,
Compounds Food Scarcity
By BRUCE BIOSSAT
NEA Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NEA)
In Berkeley, a modest handful, of students and “street
people” is steamed up over an irrelevant patch of earth
called the “people’s park.”
If their professions of concern for humanity are genuine,
they might better address themselves to the fact that mil
lions of acres of the “people’s land” are yearly being
robbed of their productive usefulness by. the fanner folk
of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
These are the folk, struggling in ignorance and poverty,
who most need the help of young, bright, energetic, well
trained and dedicated Americans and Europeans.
It shows some kind of idealistic concern when young
people carry placards announcing their sympathies for
the starving Biafrans.
It would show a great deal more If even a few were to
Join in some kind of unflagging effort to halt the steady en
argement of the great Sahara desert which year by year
destroys more and more productive foodlands.
Along its 3,750-mile southern border, the Sahara ad
vances from one to 614 miles each year as primitive farm
ers overgraze the land, bum pastures to get quick new
growth.
In the past 50 years, scientists estimate, the Sahara’s
southern border has been extended 150 to 200 miles.
Africa, already the weakest producer of foodstuffs of
any continent, is growing proportionately weaker as man’s
ravages continue. Some 250 million acres protective tropi
cal forest south of the Sahara are stripped bare today.
But man’s sometimes irreversible misuse of the land
goes on in many quarters of the globe. Latin America
loses 25 million acres of tropical forest a year. Asia strips
20 million acres a year.
Fire is the great weapon. Land-hungry farmers bum off
the trees, quickly and crudely “mine” the earth for a few
good crops, then move on to spread hew havoc elsewhere.
World agriculture specialists estimate that erosion dam
ages 15 per cent of the world’s useful crop-and-pasture
land, some of it totally beyond repair.
In East African Somalia, a country of 2.7 million people,
90 per cent of all farmland is eroded or menaced. Even a
supposedly rich agricultural nation like Argentina finds a
fourth of its cultivated land suffering erosion.
The experts say 30 per cent of the globe’s exploitable
soils are exposed to erosion or infertility by the crude
farming practices of the underdeveloped peoples—and it
is they who most need the nourishment of richfc enduring
crops and livestock yields.
The reclaiming of soil-rich but dry land through irriga
tion is properly seen as one of the great, healthy counter
trends. But millions of farmers misuse Irrigation water so
seriously as either to waste it grossly or damage and
destroy millions of fruitful acres.
Moreover, U.N. farm experts say that with just a 20
per cent improvement in irrigation efficiency, the world’s
additional irrigation water needs estimated for 1985 could
be cut in half.
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5
Thursday, June 12, 1969
the cruel Indifference of our
nation’s mightiest city.
Stars Dustin Hoffman
"Midnight Cowboy” stars
Dustin Hoffman, the little actor
with the big nose and the huge
talent.
If Hollywood’s antennae are
on the beam, the film will be as
successful as “The Graduate”
which also starred Hoffman.
Young people especially will
be attracted to "Midnight
Cowboy”. They will admire the
acting of Hoffman and the
stunning movie debut of Jon
Voight, who plays the phony
Texas cowboy drawn to the big
city.
But these same young people
will dig even more the
frankness of the language, the
brutality of city life, the pitiful
homosexual scenes, the tender
and gentle relationship that
burgeons between two essential
ly innocent losers, Ratso Rizzo
(Hoffman) and Joe Buck
(Voight).
Curiously, the picture was
directed by an Englishman,
John Schlesinger, who has
given Americans a unique view
of certain of their numbers in
need of compassion rather than
disdain.
Testimonial For Losers
In one respect “Midnight
Cowboy”—from Waldo Salt’s
screenplay and released by
United Artists—is a testimonial
for losers.
A Texas dishwasher and a
consumptive New York drifter
hope to hustle the big city with
the crippled Ratzo acting as an
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ineffective agent for Joe Buck,
“the best stud ever to leave
Texas.”
Drearily their hopes and
fortunes decline. The establish
ment wins, as it always seems
to do. Perhaps as it always
will.
Unlike “The Graduate,”
which ends on a note of
possible hope for the future, the
final scene of “Midnight
Cowboy” is a requiem for the
world’s losers.
Without a publicity trumpet
ing campaign, this picture will,
by word of mouth, spread
across the land preaching its
message quietly and effectively.
Its message?
Love even the least of the
lost, the scum and the losers
because they are human beings
too.
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AN ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING PERFORMANCE? Not really, It’s just Eric Hoffer, a West Coast longshore
man and philosopher, venting his strong feelings about campus disorders. Hoffer is a member of the National
Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence and appeared before a Senate investigating subcommittee.