(3 of 4)
STAIRCASE. Among other things, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison are known for their heterosexuality. Here they show their acting talent by portraying a pair of middle-aged homosexuals, and they do it most convincingly.
ALICE'S RESTAURANT. This is a film about young people that is, as they say, very much together. Taking Arlo Guthrie's hit song of a couple of years ago, Director Arthur Penn has, with a master's touch, fashioned a sad, funny, tragic, beautiful picture of a way of life.
THE GYPSY MOTHS. Director John Frankenheimer once more brings courage to the fore in this tale of three stunt parachutists bound together by danger. The story bogs down somewhat in heavy-handed philosophy, but Frankenheimer manages to pull the rip cord in time with a brilliant skydiving sequence that makes the moviegoer's time well spent.
TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN. Woody Allen makes his debut as a film director. He also co-authored this zany crime flick and plays the starring role of a crook. What's more, he makes it all work.
EASY RIDER. A major movie on an old theme—youth searching for where it's at. The props are familiar—drugs and motorcycles—but Director Dennis Hopper (who also co-stars with Peter Fonda) puts starch in what has become worn material. Though self-pity gets more footage than it deserves, a brilliant performance by Newcomer Jack Nicholson, plus the use of hard-core Americans playing themselves, makes the youths' odyssey Homeric indeed.
TRUE GRIT. It's the Duke at his best. In what could have been just another western, John Wayne shows true grit in this cornball shoot-em-up.
BOOKS
Best Reading
AMBASSADOR'S JOURNAL, by John Kenneth Galbraith. Kept during the author's two years as Ambassador to India, this diary is rare both for first-rate prose and succinct, irreverent opinion ("The more underdeveloped the country, the more overdeveloped the women").
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, by Antonia Fraser. A rich, billowing biography of a pretty queen who, by casting herself as a religious martyr, has upstaged her mortal enemy, Queen Elizabeth I, in the imagination of posterity.
THEM, by Joyce Carol Gates. A family's battle to escape the economic and spiritual depression of urban American life is the theme of this novel by the author of A Garden of Earthly Delights and Expensive People.
CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS, by Vine Deloria. A savagely funny and perceptive book by a young member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe examines the modern plight of red men beset by white plunderers and progressives alike.
MY LIFE WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., by Coretta Scott King. Intimate touches and a personal context lend new dimensions and drama to the life of her doomed and dedicated husband.
DR. BOWDLER'S LEGACY: A HISTORY OF EXPURGATED BOOKS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA, by Noel Perrin. Examining the literary atrocities of squeamish expurgators, the author has created a brilliant little work of cultural history full of wit and learning.
THE WATERFALL, by Margaret Drabble. The author's finest novel is a superb audit of the profits and losses of love for a woman threatening to destroy herself.
THE EGG OF THE GLAK AND OTHER STORIES, by Harvey Jacobs. Bizarre urban fairy tales delivered with the kick and rhythm of a nightclub comedian.