The Eyes Men Cometh
Sir: Your cover story on Jeanne Moreau [March 5] was a fine tribute. She is not just the greatest actress in films today—she is the only actress. You have portrayed her as someone of such inner strength and integrity that one need not fear that the success she so richly deserves will ever spoil her.
HOPE COBB
New York City
Sir: Viva Maria!, hell; Viva Moreau!
G. F. GRAVENSON
Elkins, W. Va.
Sir: La Moreau, the "Jeanne d'Arc of the boudoir"? Why not the "aardvark of the bourgeois"?
J. BYRNES R. FAVRETTO
J. McMuLLiN Washington
Sir: Jeanne Moreau is a hauntingly beautiful woman. TIME'S cover portrait was just plain haunting.
JOHN MCCLOSKEY
New York City
Sir: The cover portrait of Jeanne Moreau is as it should be. Shadowy and saintly—smooth and stony. Ready to move and become any or every woman. But how can it be Moreau with no eyes?
FRANK REGAN
New York City
Sir: For an artist to see the lyrical in the prosaic is comprehensible, and perhaps the essence of his trade—but the other way around? Moreau is a lovely woman, not a sloe-eyed Orphan Annie advertising 50 cigars to the 12th century. Please, next time find someone who can draw.
HANS LIPP
Chicago
Sir: Moreau by Tamayo looks like a rather sour Kore in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. Or perhaps Mr. Tamayo was influenced by the Kouros in the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Either way, let's leave the Greeks alone. Moreau, as your writer says, is all woman, every woman.
WILLIAM G. CONWAY
Orange, Conn.
Sir: Moreau's best film, which you mentioned in your fine article, has for some mysterious reason not been released in the U.S., in spite of its success in Europe. It is R. L. Bruckberger's Le Dialogue des Carmelites, in which she plays an 18th century nun rather than her usual 20th century love goddess. Moreau displays such remarkable strength and dignity in the film that the audience becomes convinced that these are personal virtues as well as professional tools. At the end of the film, all of the nuns are beheaded by French revolutionaries, except Moreau of course. She is left as the last Carmelite; only Moreau could carry it off.
HENRY WALKER
New York City
The Late Malcolm X
Sir: I don't think your article on Brother El Hajj Malik El Shabazz [March 5], better known as Malcolm X, was fair at all. As members of the Afro-American Unity Organization, we are not taught to hate whites but to judge a man according to his prestige. We are taught not to turn the other cheek to the Ku Klux Klan but to defend ourselves in event of attacks. You mentioned all the malicious things done during the life of Brother Malcolm, but you never mentioned the things he has done for Afro-Americans, such as scholarships given to Afro-American students to attend universities in the United Arab Republic. No matter what may be said about Brother Malcolm by the power structure and Uncle Toms, deep down in their hearts Afro-Americans are in accord with Malcolm X.
J. L. LILLY
Afro-American Unity Organization
New York City