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Griffin Daily News
SHOWBEAT
r
Letters to Laugh In
Gets Dear John Note
By DICK KLEINER
NEA Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)
“Something interesting just happened,” said Gary
Owens. “We were canceled.”
He was talking about his daytime show, Letters To
Laugh-In—not Laugh-In, of course. He thinks Letters was
successful but fell victim to the crossfire between NBC and
Laugh-In’s producers.
■
GARY OWENS
Caught in the crossfire.
“I guess that’s what we’re all in it for,” he says. “I
must admit I like it. But it does cut down on what you can
do—l couldn’t go to see ‘I Am Curious (Yellow)’ now.”
It’s a small sacrifice.
♦ ♦ 4
Everybody is talking and writing about how great it is
that the music business is giving kids a chance. Well, sir,
consider the other side of that coin.
Here’s Bob Russell. Over the years, he has written doz
ens of standards—“ Brazil,” “Ballerina,” “Frenesi,” “Ma
ria Elena,” “Don’t Get Around Much Any More,” to name
just a few beats—but he’s having problems in today’s
music market.
“I die a little every day,” Russell says. “It’s tough to
realize that the young people who run the music business
today despise you because you have gray hair.
“I go into a record company. Nobody knows me. In the
old days, we respected the veterans, for what they knew
and what they had done. There’s no respect today. They
never heard of your songs, they say, and won’t even
listen to you.”
» * *
Peter Haskell, who makes girls’ hearts go Peter-pat on
Bracken’s World, is beginning to live his part.
He plays a producer. So he’s becoming a producer. He
and two friends have acquired two properties and at least
one will be filmed this winter, when Bracken’s World lays
off.
He had wanted to produce before, but never got around
to it. When he was signed to play the producer on Brack
en’s World, he went out and researched the part.
“I spent two weeks following a producer around,” he
says. “And I learned a lot. One thing I learned is how
easy it is to reach people on the phone. I wouldn’t hesitate
any more to pick up the phone and call Dick Zanuck if I
needed to.”
♦ ♦ $
Lay this quote from Michael Cole on your teen-age kids:
“Generation gap? There’s no such thing. All you have to
do is talk to people—and there are some beautiful people
in the older generation.”
GOLD RUSH—Grab ’em while you can get ’em is the
word from Ken Irsay, New York’s foremost early ’sos rock
nut, who’s buying up armsful of old goldie-type albums at
$1.59. Success or Bill Haley and the return of other age
less rockers has Ken convinced that the old goldies will
be worth a bundle when a ’sos rock revival sweeps the
country soon.
6
Anyhow, he isn’t hurting.
He’s still the busiest man
alive. He is (a) probably
the most successful disc
jockey in Los Angeles, and
he just signed a new three
year contract “for a lot of
money,” (b) a busy voice
over guy, doing such things
as The Perils Os Penelope
Pitstop and records and
cartoons; (c) a record pro
ducer; (d) a screenplay
writer; (e) a book writer;
(f) a very busy banquet
master of ceremonies; and
(g) a husband and father.
It’s a good life for a kid
from South Dakota. It may
even be a “gooder” life.
They want him to do a
pilot film with him playing
a Harold Lloyd figure who
keeps getting into trouble.
After years of visual
anonymity, Laugh-In has
made him famous.
WIN AT BRIDGE
Top Competitive
Bidding and Play
By Oswald & James Jacoby
NORTH 1
♦ K
VQJ9
♦ AK9B3
4 A953
WEST EAST (D)
41096 4AQ8743
V7 V 43
♦ Q 654 4J102
4K10762 *QJ
SOUTH ,
4 J 52
V AK 108652
♦ 7
484
Neither vulnerable
West North East South
24 3 V
Pass 3 4 Dble Rdble
Pass 4 N.T. Pass 5 ♦
Pass 6 V Pass Pass
Pass
Opening lead—V 7
For the first hand of 1970,
we are going to sit you down
as Mike Lawrence in the
South seat opposite Bob
Hamman for the 114th hand
of the match to determine
the 1970 American team.
Jerry Hallee, sitting East,
opens one of those pesky
weak two-bids against you.
You only hold eight high
card points but you have a
good seven-card heart suit
and aren’t going to let him
shut you out of the bidding,
so you bid three hearts. Bob
Hamman bids three spades
and Jerry doubles. You look
at the bidding in the box and
see that you redoubled. This
redouble is used by Bob and
Mike to show a partial stop
per in the opponents’ suit
and your three spades to the
jack are a partial stopper.
For all you know, Bob may
want to go to three no-trump
with queen and one spade
among his cards.
It turns out that Bob was
heading for a slam all along
and he first Blackwoods to
check on aces and then puts
the contract in six hearts.
Paul Soloway, who has
been making the best pos
sible leads all match, opens
the seven of trumps.
You look over dummy
carefully and see that you
have 10 top winners and will
have no trouble with your
contract if you can ruff two
spades in dummy. So you
win the heart in dummy and
lead the king of spades.
Jerry Hallee puts on the
ace and leads a second
trump. This continues the
unkindness started by Paul
but you aren’t going down if
you can set up dummy’s
fifth diamond for a discard
of a spade.
Therefore, you play ace
king of diamonds to discard
a club and a small diamond,
which you ruff. When both
opponents follow to that
third diamond, you ruff one
spade, ruff another diamond,
return to dummy with the
ace of clubs and discard
your last spade on the last
diamond.
(Newspaper enterprise Assn.)
V-ICURL)
Q —The bidding has been:
West North East South
? ▲ Pace 3 ▲
Pass 4 9 Pass 4 N.T.
Pass 5 4 Pass 5 N.T.
Pass 6 V Pass ?
You, South, hold:
4QJ73 V 3 4K876 4A532
What do you do now?
A —Bid seven spades. The
odds are overwhelmingly in
favor of your partner holding
the spade king and, if he doesn't,
he will still have a finesse for
the grand slam.
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Mike Nichols
Adept at adapting
books to movies
By DUSTON HARVEY
SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) — Mike Nichols, who vaulted to the
top rank of Hollywood directors with “The Graduate.” has a
simple technique for converting a book to the screen:
“To make it as a picture, you have to kill the book.”
Nichols, 38, whose show business background includes the
popular Nichols and May comedy act with Elaine May and a stint
as Broadway’s most successful director of comedies, has had onlv
two movies released.
But his small output -- “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ”
and “The Graduate” - won a sell-out audience for a tribute at
the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Young admirers of “The Graduate,” one of the big box office
successes of recent years, jammed Masonic Auditorium to watch
clips from the two films and ask questions.
They wanted to know if he had captured the “exceptional
writing” and “cinematic style” of Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22,”
the surrealistic antiwar novel which Nichols is currently making
into a multimillion dollar film.
“You can’t put a book directly on the screen,” Nichols replied.
“To try to do it exactly would be a terrible mistake. You’d lose
the book.
“When you read a book, or think about filming something that
someone else has done, it (the original) just kicks you off. You
can only do an essay on what you felt while reading it.
“The director has to find a style for the movie, just as the author
found a style for the book. To make it as a picture, you have to kill
the book.”
Explanation
Nichols’ approach explained why he didn’t work closely with
playwright Edward Albee on the movie version of “Virginia
Woolf” or with Heller on “Catch 22.”
“It was a conscious decision,” he said. “I believe that when an
author finishes a play or a novel, he’s done with it and should
leave it alone and go on to other things.”
Nichols, who directed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in
his first film and Dustin Hoffman’s film debut in his second,
generally avoided questions about film personalities and others’
movies on grounds he opposed “opinion-mongering.”
But he conceded he would rather work with unknowns than
stars because audiences see the screen characters instead of
“loveable old so-and-so in another of his gallery of portrayals.”
Nichols - whose box office successes won him final “cut”
rights on “Catch 22,” a rarity for directors in Hollywood on films
with a price tag over $1 million -- also defended his pictures’ lack
of political orientation and the absence of newer screen techinques.
“I’m interested in political considerations only as they are
mirrored in personal lives,” he said. “I’m much less interested in
a kind of film journalism resembling magazine articles about social
problems. 1 know they have high objectives, but I can’t respond to
issues being raised 10 every four minutes and not being resolved.”
As for techniques: “I’m not interested in the new, newer or
newest techniques for themselves. The highest achievement in film
is where there is no apparent technique at all.”