ustxtxb_obs_1956_04_11_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

Page 1

by

BROWN AND ROOT’S NEW ROLE HOUSTON Brown & Root, Inc., the worldwide construction firm with political influence which has on occasion caused consternation among liberals; is now exerting another influence of radically different genre. The firm is spOnsoring a GulfCarrihean Art Exhibition. Ten artists were awarded $5,000 in prizes last week at the Houston Museum of Fine arts as the 137-artist, 16-nation .exhibition went on display. After its Houston showing, the exhibition will be shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute at Utica, New York, the Carnegie .Institute at Pittsburg, and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Twentyfive Texas artists entered, while Florida provided five, Lou isiana seven, MissiSsippi four. Entries from South of the Rio Grande came from Mexico,’ Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Surinan, Trinidad, and Venezuela. The three top purchase prizes of, $1,000 went to Seymour Fogel of Austin for an oil, “Remembrance of Childhood”; to Alejanclo Obregon of Colombia for an oil, “Cattle Drowning in the Magdalena”; and’ to Cunda Bermudez of Havana for “Havana’s Sextet,” a figure. study. Two University of Texas art faculty members, Luis Eades and Michael Frary, won $500 purchase prizes, Eades for “Museum Piece,” Frary for “Provincetown,” Mass. Awards of $200 went to Carlos Merida of Guatemala for vinylite sculpture, “Arcuitecturas” ; A. Morales, Nicaragua, for “Birth of a Personage”; Charles T. Williams of Fort Worth for a steel sculpture coated with brass, “Eight”; and William Lester of Austin for “Reflections in Still Waters.” The award jury was composed of the several directors of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Santa Barbara, California, Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Institute, PAGE 6 THE TEXAS OBSERVER APRIL 11, 1956 mem. I’s Booh…..q4… The best from the bookworld for the intelligent Texan WE ADVISE ALL READERS OF THE TEXAS OBSERVER OF A COMING BOOK”THE FABULOUS DEMOCRATS” BY DAVID L. COHN, WITH FOREWORD BY THE HON. SAM RAYBURN . . . BEING A HISTORY OFTHE DEMO-CRATIC PARTY IN .TEXT AND PICTURES . . . HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY, IN CARTOONS, CAMPAIGN RECORDS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND PRONOUNCEMENTS, FROM THE ORIGINAL EGGHEAD, THOMAS JEFFERSON, RIGHT DOWN TO ADLAI AND ESTES . . . . THE GREAT AND THE ALMOST SO, THE BAD AND THE HORRID WALK AGAIN IN THIS STORY OF .THE PARTY WITH A HEART, THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE, THE PARTY OF PROGRESS, AS TOLD BY A GOOD BUT NOT UN-CRITICAL DEMOCRAT \(A MISSISSIPPI LIBERAL, NO SCHOLARSHIP AND RARE HONESTY . . . . EVEN A REPUBLICAN MIGHT ENJOY IT !.. . . . THE FUN AND FURY OF POLITICS, AS WELL ITS MORE SERIOUS SIDE, HAVE SELDOM BEEN BETTER EXEMPLIFIED . . . . IT WILL BE PUBLISHED MAY 4 . . . @ $5.95 … . USE THE COUPON BE-LOW AND WE WILL GUARANTEE YOU A FIRST EDITION COPY COME PUBLICATION DAY. McMURRAY’S, The Personal Bookshop, 1411 Commerce nerce Street., Dallas , 1, Texas acct. Name Address City & State A Stratford in the Southwest A Distinguished Director, Steeped in Professional Tradition Tells Some Stories, Raises Some Questions in Broadcasts AUSTIN B. Iden Payne is working at the University of Texas now only by a turn of circumstance. A leader of modern theater in Britain and then in America, he retired from Carnegie. Institute at Pittsburgh under a mandatory rule and moved to Austin ill 1946 : Since then he has made Hogg Auditorium at the University a Stratford of the Southwest…. “A lordly shaper of things theatrical in America,” John Rosenfield . calls him. I will attest that he is lordly, and in the true and dignified sense. As a *freshman fresh, very fresh, from a senior play, I won a very minor role in Payne’s Romeo . and Juliet \(Old privilege, usually not accessible to laymen, of watching him direct a play. Almost a fundamentalist in Shakespearian meanings, he simply extracts from each performer, by a patient, but occasionally sharp repetition of insist tence after insistence; the meaning he desires and the most of the style he finds in his actors. His students idolize him, and they fear him becauSe criticism from an idol is devastating. Payne, the first recipient of the Southwest Theater C o n f e r e n c e Award in 1952, was the dominant figure at Stratford in England from 1935 to 1943. In this country he directed Helen Hayes in what was her first appearance on Broadway. The University has built him an Elizabethan stage that can be set lip in Hogg for ‘his annual Shakespearean production, which is one oaf the real events in Austin every year. The occasion for this comment is Payne’s mustering-together of his convictions and memories for a 13-program series, “Variations on a Theater Theme,” which is being broadcast Thursday nights at 10:15 on WFAA’s powerful 820 hand out of Dallas. Five of the programs have been presented through this week. In the first he gives a clue: My hope is that listeners may, . in Shakespeare’s words, by indirections find directions out. He accepts as definitive Bernard Shaw’s position that the theater should be a factory of thought, a prompter of conscience, an elucidator of social conduct, an_ armory against despair and dullness, and the temple of the ascent of man. “Should be but is not.” The living theater has been his life’s workshop, but his animating passion is a theater that does not exist, “unless it be eternally . in heaven as a Platonic, ideal.” Perhaps his perfectionism as a director helps explain his remark : I was never able, except in my early days as a neophyte, to be really happy in the theater as I have known it. But that is a personal tragedy that may or may not be revealed as these variations proceed. And as they proceed, week after week, Payne conveys his belief that the two outstanding dramatic peaks in Western civilization, in Athens in the fifth century before Christ and in London at the end of the 16th and start of the 17th centuries, were both rooted in religion; tells of his experiences with touring companies in England at a time when actor-managers were dic AUSTIN “Daily Texan editorial independence is _being -killed.” That is the judgment of the Texan’s present editor, Willie Morris. He says “a subtle creping paralysis born of fright and appeasement,” is doing in the University of Texas student newspaper which has been an object of controversy since the University Regents said in a formal statement that the Texan was banned by law from discussing state and national issues or candidates. The. Regents met last weekend and delayed action on the new editorial policies set up by the Board of Publications. These policies permit the editor t`the privilege and -the responsibility of developing an editorial program … and of expressing his own views.” The Texan is barred from endorsing candidates or discussing “personalities” but not from discussing “issues” in an election. The board entered into its minutes this statement “for the guidance of editors” now and in the future : It is recognized that violent or personal criticism of legislators or other state officials may influence legislation affecting the University and the student body. The Board of Directors of Texas Student Publications will expect that when criticism is made in this area, it shall be tolerant, reasoned, and well-founded in factual situations. Monday the publications board approved a reorganization plan which places. the editorial director, a member of the .faculty, in the position of “night supervisor” over the Texan staff. He will,: in effect, supervise everything that ‘goes in the paper, starting next September. “He ; will bring to The Daily Texan neweand editorial offices each night the ‘sensitivity of high salary and position,”.Morris said in an editorial. Says Texan. Being Killed By a ‘Subtle Paralysis’ Morris says the board’s rulesto which he was the only dissenter, five other student members in general going along with the faculty majority is “in a sense a surrender to the Regents, a sort of appeasement.” “I think I can serve the Texan best by not resigning. I want to stay on and just fight it and write editorials that don’t coincide with the handbook and see what happens,” Morris said. In September he’s going to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. The University faculty has not debated the matter. Recently at a .meeting of the general faculty Professor R. S. Stephenson of the English Department did raise certain questions about the implications of limiting free discussion in a student newspaper for the Tree discussion a university theoretically encourages. A debate was put off. The Observer has received a report from an authoritative source that a number of faculty members have written a letter to University President Logan Wilson inquiring about the implications of the matter for faculty members’ freedom of discussion, but a copy of the letter has not been obtained. tured in the highest traditions of his profession”profession then,. please remember, not show business”must grieve at the commonness of present mass entertainment. In total effect there is, in this entertainment, a texture which Payne inadvertently described when referring to pre-Ibsen drama :_ “they had nothing to say.; they were hidebound by the conventional viewpoint on all social questions; the life they expressed was one of empty propriety ; if they did deal with any social question they never challenged . the accepted standard.” But he need not grieve for the stage on this count today. What will he say now by the Shavian lights ? Listen if you can, theater fan or not; he is giving delightful and civilized commentaries on more than his profession. R.D. In a speech at the University -, Bennett Cerf, humorist and publisher, lauded . the Texan’s “courageous fight for the freedom of the press.” “It burns me up to see the way that both goyernment and citizens in public and private life are trying to tell people what to say,” he remarked. “If this continues, the world will begin to wonder which country is shrouded in an iron curtain and which is the land of the free.” REESE CASE SET LONGVIEW Trial of two white men accused of the spray-bullet murder of 16-year-old Negro John Earl Reese is set for April 23 here, Gregg County District Attorney Ralph Prince told the Observer this week. . “So far as we’re concerned, we’re going to announce ‘ready’,” Prince said. The two men, Dean Ross, 22, and Joe Simpson, 21, are charged in connection with Reese’s deainhe night of Oct. 22. Reese and three others were dancing in a rural cafe. Bullets fired from a car speedingpast killed him and injured two younger Negro girls tators of such companies; speaks of some of the great actors, and of William Gillette, “the first gentleman of the theater,” the last defender of the rigorous separation of the theatrical “behind the scenes” from the people “out fr,pnt”; and reflects upon the generally low social status of actors. \(He recalls an unrepealed law in Scotland ‘ which calls for the expulsion from any 6ity of all “rogues, vagabonds, playSurely such a splendid man, ma Student Editor Pessimistic