Banner Graphic, Volume 10, Number 86, Greencastle, Putnam County, 13 December 1979 — Page 18

B8

The Putnam County Banner Graphic, December IS, 1979

Houseman has entered different 'Paper Chase' now

c. 1979 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK As John Houseman turned into the lobby of the St. Regis to keep an appointment with a reporter, a man stared at him for a moment, pointed a finger and asked. ‘‘Say. aren’t you the man who... ?" “I am.’’ said Houseman, both dignified and wary. And. indeed, he is. A man who in his 70s entered upon two new careers. With ‘‘Paper Chase” and the television series derived from it and the current television commercials, he has found a new life as an actor. And with the second volume of his memoirs. "Front and Center.” just published by Simon & Schuster, he is making auctorial rounds, meeting readers, autographing books and thinking ahead to the completion of his next book.

Gamblers play on amid floodlights, Lancaster presence y. i:i7!l N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK A tall, broad-shouldered, white-haired man strode across the width of the vast casino of the ' Resorts International Hotel under the glare of floodlights . Among the hundreds of gamblers he passed scarcely a head turned. Perhaps he simply wasn’t recognized as being Burt Lancaster, one of the stars of "Atlantic City. U S A .” ' which was winding up its shooting schedule there last week, but a more likely explanation was provided hv one of - Ihe hotel’s executives. “I don’t think anyone would have turned around if it had been Susan Sarandon (who is also in the film) walking down that aisle stark naked.” he said. If nothing else, the day of shooting in the casino proved that the magic of film making was no match for fantasies of quick profit, not only among the high rollers at the craps tables but also among the men and women w'ho. hour after dour, fed quarters into the slot machines. In fact, one of the problems was to keep the I2T> extras who had been brought Hn from Philadelphia from wandering away to try their luck themselves. Standing behind the camera was the slim, dark-haired -Louis Malle, the French director of "Atlantic City. U.5.A.,” and John Guare. who wrote the screenplay. From time to -time they were joined by the key figure in the scenes being filmed that day. for whispered conferences about dialogue and bits of Easiness. “It’s like a homecoming for me,” said Lancaster. “I was born in East Harlem, in 1913. but I haven’t worked on the East Coast since ‘The Young Savages’ with Shelley Winters in 1960.” In the movie. Lancaster, whose roles in 70 films have ranged from "From Here to Eternity” to “Trapeze” to “The Birdman of Alcatraz” to “Come Back. Little Sheba” -to many action-adventure parts, plays a somewhat atypical role. “I’m a guy who used to be a bodyguard for a Mafia don.” he said. "I turned yellow in a showdown, but they like me and they don’t rub me out. Instead they set me up in a little barber shop here in Atlantic City and I handle some numbers action.” Guare said: “Essentially, the movie is about the conflict between the old Atlantic City and the new one that is replacing it.” Guare is probably better known as a playwright (“The House of Blue Leaves”) than as a screenwriter. (His only previous film credit is for Milos Forman’s “Taking Off.”) “I’ll say this, though,” he continued. “I’ve never been involved in a project that got going quicker than this one. It was exactly 12 weeks from the first telephone call from Louis Malle suggesting the idea until the start of shooting.” As for the director, who made his reputation in France but now resides in New York, the Jersey shore location provided another step in his exploration of the United States. It began with “Pretty Baby,” set in tum-of-the-century New Orleans and continued with “Gqd’s Country.” an as-yet-unreleased documentary about the Minnesota farm town of Glencoe. Malle and Miss Sarandon, who plays Lancaster’s girlfriend in the film, have been constant companions since the filming of “Pretty Baby.” which, the director said, did much better critically and at the box office in Europe.

Central National Bank invites the families and friends of the Cloverdale Girls’ Ensemble to a CHRISTMAS PROGRAM Friday, Dec. 14,1979 in the lobby of Central National Bank 2:30 P.M.

Houseman, whose career includes a long stint as a movie producer, a director of Broadway shows, the guiding hand at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn., and founder with Orson Welles of the famed Mercury Theater, doesn’t consider these comparatively recent activities as“new.” “No.” he said, “it’s all part of the same business.” Although the current book and the earlier one, “Run-Through” are personal histories, his reason for writing them, he remarked, is less personal than appears. “I was connected with significant and important events that need to be told,” he explained. “Others are dying off.” “Front and Center” for example, has an extended account of the New York bureau

of the Office of War Information, where Houseman helped to develop and guide the shows that were braodcast overseas in four languages as part of the United States propaganda effort. In the process he was involved with such personalities as Robert Sherwood, William (Wild Bill) Donovan, Elmer Davis and a whole cast of singular characters who transmitted this nation’s wartime messages to enemy and occupied countries. “And,” Houseman said, “there is no record of it at all.” “Front and Center,” which traverses the years 1942 to 1955, also offers a vivid picture of day-by-day movie making without myths, glamour and halos around the heads of the stars. Houseman has a good word to say, however, about the studio system for which he worked.

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“ Their machinery, the technical side, cameramen, set designers, were wonderful. Hollywood made 400 features a year and no picture really lost money because the audience was there. Today it is a time of enormous change. If you don’t make a blockbuster they may not even release the picture. An industry that depends on blockbusters is going to suffer. You end up making blockbusters not movies. Today the networks are taking over the positions once held by the major studios, and for the same reason. They have the audience.” For four years, 1956-59, Houseman was the head of the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn. “I never wanted to be totally away from the theater,” he said. “The final core of the art is the

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theater.” It was not all smooth sailing, however, and Mr. Houseman will tell more , about it in his next book. But he did indicate one reason for his departure. “I was convinced that a limited summer season doesn’t work. We needed a proper company and a longer season. There was even talk that we would become the classical arm of Lincoln Center. But the board of trustees lived in places like Westport, liked having a summer theater nearby and turned everything down. I resigned.” The mention of Lincoln Center emboldened his visitor to ask why repertory had failed there." New York has an allergy to repertory,” Mr. Houseman replied. “The theatrical establishment is geared to the hit or the flop. Everyone en-

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joys this situation; that’s how they like it.” As for his writing, he finds it fun. “It’s like living your life twice. You project yourself into the past.” He gathers notes, does research, does not try to use his diaries too extensively (“you get bogged down in details”), and writes out the first draft in longhand. After it is typed he polishes it. It took him six years to finish the second volume His foray into writing has not been without a certain dramatic touch. His editor at Simon & Schuster is Michael Korda, who this season has his own theatrical book out, “Charmed Lives” (Random House), about his family, especially his uncle, the English movie maker, Alexan der Korda “In a way he is my com-: petitor,” Houseman said with a smile. 1