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Your article on the sad state of television was excellent. I have thought for several years that the industry would go through a shakedown period and would level off with some measure of quality. The situation has become progressively worse, and from the looks of next year's programs, it will not improve. Apparently the networks have forgotten that the airwaves belong to the American people and not the sponsors.
WILLIAM A. MCDONALD Durham, N.C.
Sir:
In personal defiance of this passing season, I have returned to reading.
MRS. GLORIA WELLER Brookline, Mass.
Sir:
Whoever writes the reviews on television doesn't know what he is talking about. I watch television to be entertained and to relax my mind from the everyday grind, and as such I do not like, and will not watch, any program that tries to delve into racial or religious or any other turmoil of the day. And it just makes me boil when some joker implies that people are jerks because they don't demand symphonies or opera or some other kind of high-toned programs.
CLARENCE N. COOPER
Port Huron, Mich.
Raisin on the Screen
Sir:
As co-producer of the motion picture A Raisin in the Sun, and, therefore, a very interested party in its critical reception, I would like to point out a stunning example of TIME'S tortured critical dichotomy.
What beats me is that the same script, written by the same author, played by the same cast, can evoke such antitheatrical opinions between the Cinema and Theater reviewers of your magazine. This seems less an illustration of journalistic democracy than critical anarchy.
Where Cinema calls Raisin "a writhing vital mess of tenement racism," Theater called it [ when it appeared on Broadway in 1959] "a well-crafted play."
If "conflict, a valid moral struggle, character development and people one can care about and respect" (Theater) is "superior soap opera in blackface" (Cinema) then we, who have been in radio and television these many years, have been doing Procter & Gamble a disservice.
DAVID SUSSKIND New York City
Sir:
Whoops—am afraid that TIME'S ever-diminishing pretenses to sophistication took yet another dip by way of its reviewer's baffling determination to employ ante-bellum terminology in his incoherent notation on the movie [Raisin in the Sun]. I don't have any idea what "Mammy" and "blackface" adjectives have to do with reviewing a motion picture, but save your copy; it is believed, in some quarters of the world, that the Herrenvolk may rise again !
LORRAINE HANSBERRY New York City
Dealer's Deals
Sir:
As an active participant in the motor game for the last 35 years, I was entertained by your article [on Auto Dealer Jim Moran]. It showed that the problems of the automotive trade are the same the world over.
Is not the much maligned motor salesman harmless in comparison with those members of the public who try to cheat the dealer?