Banner Graphic, Volume 12, Number 47, Greencastle, Putnam County, 31 October 1981 — Page 8

A8

The Putnam County Banner-Graphic, October 30,1981

Dunaway quick to defend role as Joan Crawford c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service An alarm clock rings 4 a m. A woman makes her purposeful way to the bathroom to scrub ferociously at arms and an unseen face. Dressed, shoulders squared, the woman descends a palatial stairway to a waiting limousine and the movie studio. There, inside a trailer, makeup is applied to the still unseen face A knock at the door and a costume man peers in. * We re ready for you. Miss Crawford,” he calls. And Joan Crawford, film star of the 30s, swings around in her chair. “Let's go,” she says briskly. Her eyes shine with glamorous noblesse oblige. A brilliant smile tugs at the edges of that brilliant gash of mouth. The likeness is amazing. But it is Faye Dunaway who steps out of the chair and onto the studio set, in a portrait of the late Miss Crawford that is already being touted as a sure Oscar winner. "Faye Dunaway is Joan Crawford,” trumpet the ads for "Mommie Dearest.” “A star ... a legend ... and a mother ... the illusion of perfection." There are no movie legends left, but critics have noted that Miss Dunaway has that larger-than-life quality on the screen that the stars of Miss Crawford’s generation had. Like the star she plays, Miss Dunaway is even a mother, though a fairly recent one And Miss Crawford herself once described Miss Dunawsiy as the “only one” she’d like to have play her. On another occasion, the film star told an interviewer: "Of all the actresses, to me, only Faye Dunaway has the talent; and the class and the courage it takes to make a real star.” “Mommie Dearest” is hardly the kind of film, however, that Miss Crawford could have had in mind. Based on the book of the same name by Christina Crawford, one of Joan Crawford’s four adopted children, it paints a picture of a harrowing Hollywood childhood in which Miss Crawford beats her daughter with a wire hanger she has discovered in little Christina’s elegant clothes closet, shears her hair for a seemingly minor infringement of proper behavior, and practices humiliating mental cruelty on a child she has brought up to be as tough and independent as herself. Is this American motherhood gone wrong? Or was Joan Crawford a one-of-a-kind fiend and villain? Miss Dunaway who admits to havirg found the role “overwhelming” as she played it is fiercely loyal to the star. “I think the Joan-Christina thing connects with the American dream of mothers and daughters,” she said the other day, sitting in her light-filled Upper West Side New York apartment. “The mother does everything to make the child better off than site was. But she may not be able to. She works hard. There’s no man helping. Crawford was using her own frame of reference. The girl had none. I think she held back. Crawford reached out. But the girl was a little withdrawn, cool, Swedish. “It was a tragic misunderstanding. ‘Mildred Pierce’ (the 1945 film about a mother betrayed by her selfish daughter, for which Miss Crawford won an Oscar) turned out to be the story of her life. And I think Crawford loved and wanted kids. She’d had a lot of miscarriages. She wanted someone to love. It was absolutely not a publicity thing. God, no. That just wasn’t true. It was more complicated than that. ‘Christina darbng-Memmie dearest’ was a daydream. Crawford wanted a perfect world. She’d been able to make so many things ‘perfect.’ Unfortunately, unlike me now, her whole private life was public.” Miss Dunaway almost winces when she is asked if “Mommie Dearest” can be viewed as a film about child abuse. “I hope the movie will be seen as an attempt to show what was going on between two very difficult and complicated people, as an agonizing relationship between a mother and daughter I do think there are horrendous scenes in every family, when you have the blood feeling anyway. That’s where all that Greek stuff comes from. That unspeakable torment. The child grows up in all the turbulence of that relationship. She goes away and then comes back. She’s a person. And she understands her parents are people. With most children that becomes a part of the fabric of life. “Here it’s highlighted. If you saw a woman slapping her child in the street, you’d probably think the kid had been giving her a hard time. If you saw Joan Crawford slapping her child you’d think. ‘That’s Joan Crawford. My God, what a monster she is.’” She makes a face. “Public scrutiny ... does terrible things.” There’s a special sympathy in her voice. Like Miss Crawford, Miss Dune way has found her private life sub-

6:00 Q (D NEWS O WELCOME BACK, KOTTER O 0© NEWS (1 HR.) © HAPPY DAYS AGAIN © DICK CAVETT © ABC NEWS ©JIM BAKKER (1 HR.) ® MOVIE **★'/? “The Haunting’’(l963, Horror) Julie Harris, Claire Bloom. Four disparate people investigate a house with an infamous reputation for supernatural goingson. (1 hr. 52 min.) 6:30 0 NBC NEWS O LAVERNE & SHIRLEY © CBS NEWS © NEWS © OVER EASY “Alcoholism" Guest: Betty Ford. Q © MARY TYLER MOORE 7:00 0 M*A*S*H 8 LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE ABC NEWS O CBS NEWS © THE MUPPETS © © NBC NEWS © SNEAK PREVIEWS Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel review All The Marbles," "Chariots Of Fire" and “Southern Comfort." ©WILD, WILD WEST (1 HR.) © SEND FORTH YOUR SPIRIT 730 0 TIC TAC DOUGH 0 ENTERTAINMENT TON IGHT 0 P.M. MAGAZINE The bi::arre experiences of a pair of ghost hunters; a car powered by compressed air © P.M. MAGAZINE The bizarre experiences of a pair of ghost hunters; a car powered by compressed air; Joyce Kulhawik discovers computers that tutor, Steve Canev makes a Halloween scarecrow © FAMILY FEUD © LAVERNE 4 SHIRLEV

Friday's TV programs

© MACNEIL / LEHRER REPORT © RENEWED MIND 8:00 0 © © NBC MAGAZINE (1 HR.) O HAWAII FIVE-0 (1 HR.) O © AMERICAN BANDSTAND’S 30TH ANNIVERSARY Top names in the music world join host Dick Clark to pay tribute to the long-running teen-age dance show. (3 hrs.) 0 © SOMEDAY, YOU'LL FIND HER, CHARLIE BROWN Animated. Charlie Brown falls madly in love with a girl he sees on television and attempts to track her down. © WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW © LESTER SUMRALL (7) MOVIE ** “When A Stranger Calls” (1979, Suspense) Carol Kane, Charles Durning. While babysitting, a young girl is terrorized by phone calls from a psychotic killer. R’ (1 hr., 40 min.) 8:30 0 © IT’S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN Animated. Linus chooses to wait in a pumpkin patch (or a magical jack-o'-lantern to appear rather than go trick-or-treating with his friends. (R) © WALL STREET WEEK “The View From St. Lou” Guest: Derick Driemeyer, director of research for A.G. Edwards & Sons. © TODAY IN BIBLE PROPHECY 9:00 0 © MOVIE *** "Halloween” (1978, Horror) Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis. On Halloween night, a murderer escapes from an asylum and wreaks terror on a small town. O JOKER’S WILD 0 © THE DUKES OF HAZZARD Boss Hogg concocts a scheme to win the deed to the Duke farm (1 hr.) © MOVIE * * "Terror On The 40th Floor" (1976, Suspense) John Forsythe, Anjanette Comer Seven people are trapped on the top floor ol a burning skyscraper (2 hrs)

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FAYE DUNAWAY: 'Dearest' portrayal

jected to unwelcome attention in the business of being a star. There are other parallels. She, too, has been described as a sometimes difficult perfectionist. New York theatergoers still talk of her glowing portrayal of the downtrodden wife in “Hogan’s Goat” in 1965, her first big role. But Miss Dunaway has often played the kind of strong, selfsufficient women characters for which Miss Crawford was known, among them the outlaw Bonnie, in the film "Bonnie and Clyde,” a ruthless television executive in “Network,” for which she won an Oscar, and Eva Peron in a recent television special. And like the woman she plays in “Mommie Dearest,” Miss Dunaway has had her share of childhood and adult misfortunes. She was 13 when her father, a Florida farmer who later made a career of the Army, left his family. Her parents’ divorce was, Miss Dunaway says, “somewhat tempestuous.” As an actress, she admits to having “sort of dropped the ball” during the 10 years of film work that followed “Bonnie and Clyde.” And her marriage to the rock singer Peter Wolf ended after five years in divorce. Now, however, one senses Miss Dunaway is in control. But that chameleon face, so much more vulnerable-looking offscreen, blanks a little when questions about her performance suggest a connection with her personal life. “Any moment in a film is drawn from personal experience,” she said. “It comes either from personal experience or from the moment as it happens. But you play a role; you live a life. They don’t interrelate. I guess only a performer could know how separate they are.” Playing Miss Crawford wrapping her arms around the newly adopted Christina, for instance, she didn’t plunge back to the first time she picked up Liam, the now 18-month-old son of Miss Dunaway and the British photographer Terry O’Neill, with whom she lives. “Crawford wanted children for a long time. I did, too. And I found the right man. But thinking about the role from a mother’s point of view was difficult. My son is so much younger.” Miss Dunaway’s recollections of her childhood, she said, were helpful in preparing her characterization: “My own mother spoiled me to death. Like Joan and Christina, we wore the same dresses, which she’d sewn.” She smiled. “My mother’s an unmitigated fan now. But she had no interest in my being an actress at all. She was just one of those people who fights very hard in life. And that encourages you to do your best.” “I never met Joan,” Miss Dunaway continued. “I would like to have. I admire her. Christina didn’t come around the set. She seemed to be pleaded with the direction we were going in, but I think she may have been in some kind of conflict about the book. I didn’t feel I wanted to meet with her. I thought about it for a while and decided I’d read about Joan and talk to people, then try to figure Crawford out as an artist.” Miss Dunaway learned to use facial muscles to shape a Joan Crawford mouth. She dropped back to early Crawford mannerisms to indicate times when the actress, always “on.” was least in control of herself. “Playing Crawford was such a formidable task,” she said. “I didn’t want to mimic her but to inhabit her as much as I could. It was difficult because we had to trim so much from the film, but we tried to get that sense of the tenuousness of her professional existence, her drinking, her nervousness, her decorous behavior, her passion. Every scene, every moment I thought: Who was she? Why was she? “The scandal books about Crawford make me furious. That was one of the main reasons I wanted to do this movie. They are by far not the real story. She achieved And while monsters do achieve great deeds, she wasn’t one. Crawford was a warrior.”

© ENTERPRISE "Bankrupt" Eric Sevareid examines the effects on employees when their company goes down for the count. © TODAY WITH LESTER SUMRALL (1 HR.) 9:30 O TIC TAC DOUGH © BEN WATTENBERG AT LARGE "The United Nations Revisited" Ben Wattenberg discusses the future of the United Nations with leading authorities and critics. 10:00 O NEWS (1 HR.) 0 ffi DALLAS J.R. prepares to challenge Sue Ellen for temporary custody of John Ross. (1 hr.) © SOUNDSTAGE “Victor Borge - Comedy In Music” The master musician / comedian is captured in performance at Chicago's Drury Lane Water Tower Theater and Milwaukee's Washington Park. (R) g(1 hr.) ffi D. JAMES KENNEDY (1 HR.) (7) MOVIE +*'/! "The Shining" (1980, Horror) Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall Directed by Stanley Kubrick. A former schoolteacher hired as a winter caretaker for a remote, and apparently haunted, Colorado hotel, is snowbound there with his wife and clairvoyant young son. ’R' (2 hrs., 26 min.) 11:00 0 O Q © © © news O MOVIE **•*'/? "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" (1956, Science-Fiction) Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter. Outer space flora duplicate Southern Californians and sap their minds as they sleep. (2 hrs.) ffi DICK CAVETT Guest: John Irving ffi THE ODD COUPLE © PRAISE (1 HR.) 11:30 0 © © TONIGHT Host: Johnny Carson. Guests: Sheena Easton, Michael Landon O ffi ABC NEWS NIGHTLINE O NIGHTBEAT ffi NBA BASKETBALL Houston Rockets at Los Angeles Lakers (2 hrs.)

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© WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP 12:00 0 ffi FRIDAYS (1 HR., 30 MIN.) O SATURDAY NIGHT (1 HR., 30 MIN.) ffi LESTER SUMRALL 12:30 0 © SCTV NETWORK 90 (1 HR., 30 MIN.) © DAVE ALLEN AT LARGE ffi RENEWED MIND (7) MOVIE *★ "Friday The 13th” (1980, Horror) Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King. 1:00 O MOVIE *'/! "Beware! The Blob" (1972, Horror) Godfrey Cambridge, Marlene Clark. A frozen, shapeless mass brought from the North Pole by a geologist thaws out and goes on a killing spree. (2 hrs.) © SCTV NETWORK 90 1:30 0 EVENING AT THE IMPROV 0 AMERICA’S TOP TEN 2:00 0 © NEWS O RUBY POWELL ffi MARILYN HICKEY 2:15 ffi CHARLES CAPPS (7) MOVIE **'A “Fade To Black" 2:30 0 ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT © RAT PATROL ffi JIMMY SWAGGART 3:00 O MOVIE ★ A'/? "The Mummy" (1959, Horror) Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee. Archaeologists seek a 4000-year-old mummy, but are warned ot danger if they try to desecrate its tomb, ffi NEWS 4:00 (D MOVIE **'/j “The Shining"

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