ustxtxb_obs_1956_11_21_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

VVILCO’S SICK LEAVE PLAN Protects You On AND Off the Job! Available to small groups of employees from five to fifty To large groupsup to thousands And to individuals! WESTERN INDEMNITY LIFE INSURANCE CO. Affiliated with Home Office: 5011 Fannin, Houston, Texas AGENCIES THROUGHOUT TEXAS FOR XM WAR AND A PIECE OF TOLSTOY Hero Education AUSTIN Now, right now, before it comes slinking back to the neighborhood theaters under the palliative cover of regular prices, that Ponti De Laurentiis production of “War and Peace” should be investigated and those responsible for the wreckage made to stand trial. After all, the attack on Pearl Harbor was not allowed to pass unexamined. No stone of the Rapido River crossing was 1 ef t unturned. Nor should this Paramount release, which, in terms of men, money, and end result, is as disastrous as those undertakings, be allowed to go unprobed. Harris Green man and the Austrian of Helmut Dantine, will be given suspended a couple of Kuragins were transsentences for making the show ferred, intact, from the novel, sound as if it were a three and the defendants will claim, no a half hour session of the UN. doubt with some pride. Such efAll will then be dismissed and frontery, though, will not long director King Vidor brought in. be tolerated. The gentlemen will This worthy will receive the be shown that where Tolstoy had book, full in the face. Vidor may flesh and blood, they have sterprotest that, being the director eotypes, trimmed until light of such all-time greats as “Halenough to be carried along in the lelujah,” “The Big Parade,” and trickle of incident into which “Japanese War Bride,” he dethey dammed and banked the serves better treatment, but he broad flow of the book. All will be ignored. Instead he will howls of protest will be immedibe shown, prior to being senately squelched when the script tenced, selected portions of such itself is brought forward as Exfilms as “Moby Dick” and “A hibit “A” and shown to be woePlace in the Sun” to remind him fully licked up and stuck tothat it is the duty of a director, gether affair of entrances, exits, when filming a novel, to turn it and balls that last longer than into a motion picture. The efforts the battle of Austerlitz. Anyone of John Huston and George Stemumbling that a vast sprawl of yens will point up how woefully a novel cannot be compressed he, with his timid camera setsuccessfully into a unified meups and unimaginative editing, tion picture will be silenced” by failed to achieve this laudable a showing of David Lean and aim. Some of the earlier works Ronald Neame’s production of of D. W. Griffith will be reeled “Great Expectations.” All deoff to prove that battle shots fendants will be taken out, strung achieve their excitement by beup, and spanked. ing an assemblage of many One by one, the cast will then scenes, not merely a few of exbe brought forward for assorted tras on parade, and that the seencomiums and brickbats. Aucret is in the editing, not the drey Hepburn, Oscar Homolka, costuming. That splendid boom and Herbert Lam will be praised shot Vicf,or Fleming devised for for being faithful to Tolstoy in “Gone With the Wind” of the their interpretations of Natasha, dead and dying lying strewn in Kutuzov, and Bonaparte. Henry the Atlanta train yards under Fonda will be chided for making the tattered Confederate flag will Pierre appear as if he had studied be brought forward as an examabroad at Grand Island, Neple of how . a scene can be made braska, but praised for his sinto reverberate with visual effect and dramatic significance. Out of all of “War and Peace,” only two will be found to have even a tinkle: the lovely one of Miss Hepburn, gleaming nacreous in a darkened coach, and the one of Homolka, exultant over the retreat of Napoleon. None other exist, not in three and a half hours, with time out for intermission, hot coffee, and adrenalin. Vidor will be deprived of his megaphone and sentenced to television. The case will be closed. As was .mentioned before, there really should be an investigation of shows such as this. Someone should be made to pay. At the moment, it’s only the public that does. And through the nose. ,1111..1.4111.41.411../../Y.11.. AUSTIN Conductor Leopold Stokowski strode from the wings of cavernous, echoing Gregory Gymnasium at the University of Texas and took his place with the Houston ‘Symphony Orchestra. The five and a half thousand spectators who all but filled the gym fell still. But there was no music: Stokowski whispered something to an orchestra member, who walked’ back to the wings. A low murmur rose. Minutes passed, lengthened by expectation, then curiosity. Another player rose and left the stage; light laughter broke from the symphony goers. At last Stokowski himself walked off. After another wait Dr. Archie Jones, chairman of the sponsoring committee, announced that Stokowski “said he has too much respect for Bach and Beethoven to compete with the steampipes.” The gym’s heating apparatus was hissing and clanking, and the conductor insisted it be turned off before he would begin. While Stokowski waited in his dressing roomrefusing to see anyone for any reason runners searched for the en OUT OF THESE conflicting feelingsand who can avoid them?Bedichek has evolved the conviction that the “extracurriculum,” as refined and elaborated in the Inter scholastic League, affords young people with talent and ambition a better chance to find \(in Bedichek’s knowledge, self-reverence, selfcontrol.” Hold before the young “the same great theme of superior performance and the vision of greatness it inspires.” In the wellmatched contest, let the winner win, the loser lose; this “purges the emotions like a drama,” prepares the youth for resilience and progress in the world’s most corn gineer with authority to cut off the heating system \(which should have been done half an hour before the concert, as it a reporter, not the crowd that Stokowski “said some things about this not being civilization … He was pretty excited when he said that.” Although there was some indignation about the delay, only a handful left. At 9 o’clock, 45 minutes late, the pipes still popping and hissing, Stokowski returned, said he would leave the more delicate part ‘of the program “until that machine gets turned off,” and started with Bach’s Fugue in G Minor and then Beethoven’s Symphony in D Major, Number Two. Meanwhile the pipes fell silent, so he finished the first half of the program with three Bach selections that had been scheduled for the beginning. But he omitted Davies’s “Solemn Melody” from the second half of the program and, in spite of the usual ovations at the end, denied the faithful five thousand an encore. So ended the episode of the infernal steam pipes. petitive society, and yet gives him the experience, as a representative of his school, of group competition, which is also group cooperation. Admit that the Declaration of Independence is wrong, that men are created unequal; admit that even in democracy, an elite is 6reated by natural variations in physical and mental capacity. Then, Bedichek says, the schools must find a way “to discover and train these individuals who have in them the possibilities of leadership.” Competition, well devised and carefully controlled, is the means to the service of both the Jeffersonian ideal, “giving scope to ability,” and the Jacksonian, “the raising of the average.” Through most of his book, Bedichek calls on the ancients, Xenophon, Plutarch, Plato, Hesiod, Aristophanes; on Milton, Carlyle, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Thoreau, Kipling, Dewey, Conant, Einstein. At any juncture he may erupt with indictments of commercial propagandists trying to peddle school essay contests, or big business “ruling the country,” or a playwriting contest that excludes anyone involved in any kind of public controversy. \(“Nonconformiststhe type of human being responsible for nine-tenths of genuine progress in human affairs from Prometheus on downcannot enter the Samuel French AND OF COURSE there is the history of the League, which Bedichek piloted to its present massive influence in the schools of the state. How many thousands of young Texans have risen before the judges to debate, declaim, or extemporizehave vied in music, choral singing, one-act plays, journalism, spelling, readywriting, typing, shorthand, number sensehave fought for the match in football, basketball, track and field, baseball, tennis, volleyball, golf. Texas has more schools competing in interschool basketball, football, and track and field than any other state in the union. And consider what Texas youth has had to mull over, see both sides of, and argue, because of the league: government ownership of the ownership of light and power monopoly of munitions manufacat public expense \(1939 and 19anteed higher education to all qualified high school graduates Year in, year out, the league has challenged the students of the state, held before them a standard of achievement and a “habitual vision of greatness.” As the schools must bend their standards to save the slow from humiliation, so the league has held forth an unyielding spirit of competition and the integrity of conflict. Though he will deny his credit, it was Roy Bedichek’s second work, and we are all richer that he has done it, and now that he has written about it. R. D. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page a Nov. 21, 1956 First up at the bar will be the dozen or so writers whO hacked out the screenplay. These gentle. men will probably remind the court how manfully they refrained from wreaking what would have amounted to genocide on the families of Moscow. All the Bolkonskies, Rostovs, and cere effort. Mel Ferrer, who made the complex, introverted Andrey into little more than a moon-faced ROTC Hussar, Will be shot. All the peasant extras will be fined for speaking Cockney. And the remainder of the cast, ranging in. accent from the British of Barry Jones to the Anglo-Italian of Vittorio Gass Name Address A Steam Pipe Crescendo Mail the subscription to Texas Observer, 504 West Z4th Street, Austin, Texas. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Subscription Blank Please enter the following name for one year’s subscription : SPECIAL RATE: ……. e vi GIVE THE OBSERVER TO A FRIEND $4 for first gift subscription $3.50 for second gift subscription $3 for each additional