The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 97

or AMUSEMENTS, TV, RADIO, TRAVEL SECTION APIIl 191 RECORDS, p. 10 MUSIC, pp. 1, 8, 10, 11 MOVIES, pp. 1, 2, 12 THE THEATER, pp. 1, 3 ART, p.

9 TRAVEL, pp. 13, 14 RADIO TV, pp. 4, 5, 6, 7 it i ti inn show i Plaid Lucia Oscar Has Come A Long Way Since 529 i K.O.A. restoring heroine Janet Gavnor won the first statuette: and one year, even a mouse was chosen A 4 to her Scotland this week By WILLIAM MOOT Courier-Journal Music Editor A 1 I breaking open hard rolls and stuffing them with olives. She was given her prize by the late Irvin S.

Cobb of Paducah, and she later added it to her famous doll collection. Claudelle't 'f ir' A memorable Academy event was that of 1935. Claudctte Colbert, sure she had no chance of winning, had booked passage on a train for New York on the night of the awards. When "best actress" results were announced, Claud-ette won for her performance in "It Happened One Night." She was just getting aboard the train. She sped to the dinner at the nearby Biltmore Hotel, where she became the first star to receive an Oscar while dressed in a traveling suit.

In 1939, llattie McDonald became the jirst Negro to be voted an Academy Award, or her supporting performance in "Gone With The Wind." In 1947, the Academy awarded an honorary Oscar to James Baskette for his portrayal of ''Uncle Remus" on the screen. Dorothy Dandridge was nominated in 1954 as best actress for "Carmen Jones." Sidney Poitier in 1958 as best actor for "The Defiant Ones," and Juanila Moore in 1959 as best supporting actress for "Imitation of Life." HOOT, mon! Kilts and authentic tartans will deck the stage when the Kentucky Opera Association presents Donizettis' Lucia di Lammermoor" at Columbia Auditorium Thursday and Friday nights. Curtain time is 8:30. Although Italian by adoption when Donizetti chose her as the heroine of his famous opera, Lucia is Scottish by A ttory and photon on how K.O.A. produced "Lucia" i on Paget 2 1 through 27 of today' Magazine.

birth, having come by her heritage in the pages of one of Sir Walter Scott's most turgid novels. Most productions of "Lucia" are designed as a showcase for a famous prima dona. Producers, perhaps discouraged by the Italinate flow of the opera's melodies, usually pay little attention to the locale of "Lucia." So long as the leading lady's high "C's" are firmly in place, the opera could probably be set in the sands of the Sahara and still be popular. But K.O.A. director Karlos Moser is a strong believer in the theory that good opera must be good drama.

Hence, the emphasis on the Scottish aspects of Donizetti's plot. The kilts and plaids are part of a scheme cooked up by Moser and his technical director, Mrs. Albert C. Dick, to restore Lucia to the Highlands of her birth. A Scottish "Lucia" is rare, but not entirely without precedent.

Blum's "A Pictorial History of Opera In America" includes a handsome picture of Enrico Caruso as Lucia's lover Edgar. The famous tenor is resplendent in Scottish costume with kilts. Although Pasquale" and "The Elixir of Love" are generally considered Donizetti's masterpieces, "Lucia" is indisputably his most popular opera. Its lilting melodies, climaxed by Lucia's "Mad Scene" and the great Sextet, have firmly established it in the ranks of all time operatic hits. Porrrltn To Audrey Nossaman will sing the demanding role of Lucia this week.

Cast as her Edgar is Frank Porretta, one of the fine performers in the N.B.C. BDB HOPE, FOR the ninth year, will be master of ceremonies of the "Oscar" show of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on April 17, starting at 9:30 p.m. (Louisville time) over the combined radio and television networks of A.B.C. and the Canadian Broadcasting Company (Channel 3 here). The "Oscar," which will be presented for 1960 motion-picture achieements to 25 or more winners, is a 12 inch, 7-pound goldplated statuette made of 92Vi per cent tin and 7Vi per cent copper.

It is identical with the ones passed out at the first Academy Awards ceremony for the year 1927-28. The statuette got its name when a secretary in the office of the donor, the Academy, looking at it for the first time, exclaimed, "It looks exactly like my Uncle Oscar!" Regardless of what you think of the Academy Awards (and I have taken a dim view of them in the past because of the political tactics inside the motion-picture i stry), a great many colorful things have happened to Oscar over the last 33 years. Janet Gtrynor 'on The first awards dinner was held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, practically across Hollywood Boulevard from Grauman's Chinese Theater, on May 16, 1929. Janet Gaynor was voted best actress for her work in three films, "Sunrise," "Seventh Heaven" and "Street Angel." She was there to receive her Oscar, but Emil Jannings, cited as best actor for "The Way of All Flesh" and "The Last Command," had left Hollywood for his home in Berlin and was arriving that very day in Europe. He never returned to Hollywood, dying in Germany in 1950.

At the dinner in November, 1931, a mere boy named Jackie Cooper had been nominated for best actor in "Skippy" and was seated next to Marie 'iJ 14 Associatrd Press Newsfeaturf Pholo first awarded Imt I'ic-ture Art ami Sciences for work in throe films. miniature statuettes for the dwarfs. Shirley, by the way, was the receiver of the first miniature award for juvenile acting. This was 27 years ago, in 1934. Moppet Shirley was given her dinner at home, and so she sat through the banquet playing her own little game of It a el a A a 4.1 Ilol Hope for 0th year hibit a performer from being nominated in both acting categories for the same role.

Televisetl Since 1953 Oscar went on TV for the first time on March 15, 1953, and the awards have been televised since. It's a sort of hoopla affair, but millions of people watch the show, which, in addition to the awards has several "turns," most of which are given by soloists singing songs nominated for Oscars. The titles and their singers this year will be "Faraway Part of Town," from "Pepe" (Sarah Vaughan); "Never On Sunday," from the picture of that title (Connie Francis), and "The Second Time Around," from "High Time," (Jane Morgan). Vic Damone will deliver a vocal tribute to the late Oscar Hammerstein II, and Julet Prowse will perform a dance choreographed by Roland Du-Prce. Served Play'? Pi cm Writer 'Andersonville Trial' Slated To Play Here On Tuesday There were the 1944 ceremonies, too, when Barry Fitzgerald was nominated both as best actor and best supporting actor for the same role in "Going My Way." He won the latter award and lost the first to Bing Crosby, also for "Going My Way." Incidentally, rules now pro- 'I' Which Best-Seller As Basis For 'Best llv WILIJAM Aociated r' 1 0 I I TEW YORK, April 8.

Broadway's prize certainty: HE ANDERSONVILLE I trial," Saul Levitt's play based on one of the famous trials of American history, will play one performance Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. in Memorial Auditorium. Brian Donlevy and Martin Brooks are starred in the roadshow version of one of last season's big New York hits. Heading a large supporting cast will be Sam Gray and Owen Pavitt. During the last years of the Civil War, 41,000 Northern prisoners of war were packed into the Confederate Army's Andersonville Military Prison.

They lived in an open stockade for two winters and two summers, without shelter and with little food. They died by the thousands each month, and "The Andersonville Trial" is a dramatization of the trial that brought the prison camp's commandant to a legally questionable justice at the end of the war. Sam Gray will appear as Capt. Henry Wirz, commandant of Andersonville. Brian Don-levy will play Otis II Baker, the defense counsel, and Martin Brooks will be Lt.

Col. N. P. Chipman, the prosecutor. Tickets are on sale at Baldwin's.

There will be special-rate student tickets for both the lower floor and balcony. 1 Wriler A- I'll, 11 'l, Jiinct (iaxnor cliil(lis the 1 tlie Academy Motion as 1927-28" l.cst actress Dressier. Jackie fell sound asleep on Miss Dressler's ample shoulder, and when the best-actor winner was announced, it went to Lionel Barrymore. As he accepted the statuette for his work in "A Free Soul," he lauded his competitiors, including Jackie, who slept peacefully, never hearing him. When the best actress category was reached and Miss Dressier was named for "Min and Bill," she eased Jackie from her shoulder onto his mother's lap, rose and received her award from Norma Shearer.

The next year, the program was enlivened by the announcement that there was a tie vote in the actor division between Fredric March for "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and Wallace Beery for "The Champ." Each was handed a statuette while an Academy official looked on in horror. This would make the number of statuettes wind up one short, so the man raced for the Academy office and back with an extra trophy just before it was needed for best picture. Mouse Gels Oscar Back in 1932, a mouse got an Oscar.

It was, of course, Mickey Mouse; and his creator, Walt Disney, was the recipient. In 1937, a wooden statuette with movable jaws was given to Edgar Bergen for Charlie McCarthy, his famous dummy from his vaudeville and radio days. In 1938, Shirley Temple handed Disney a full-sized Oscar for "Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs" and seven are comedians," she said. "I love them. I laugh at them even when they're not telling my jokes.

They've all got their own problems, and I think they do the best they can. They belong in the human race." She agreed, however, that it can be very frustrating to listen to audiences laughing at the funny lines you have created and knowing that all the credit will automatically go to the comedian. "And the interesting thing is that by the time he has said it, even the comedian will regard this joke as his own creation. All comedy writers have to accept this, and we all know that the joke is only as good as the comedian, It's the delivery and timing that make it funny." 1 Frank Porretta Cast as Edgar Opera Company's recent "Boris Godunov." Porretta sang Edgar in Central City, last summer. He is a member of the New York City Opera, and sang in the New York premiere of Chavez's "Panfilo and Lauretta." Others in the cast will be J.

B. Davis as Lucia's brother, Henry Ashton; Grace Wieck as her attendant, Alice; Robert Davis as her ill-fated bridegroom, Clarence Smith; Bur-well Hardy, and dancers Jean Haas and Virginia Wooten. "Lucia" will be sung in an English translation by Robert A. Simon. According to Moser, Simon's English rersion is better as literature than the ori-ginal Italian libretto, which Moser calls "pedestrian and obvious." Tickets for "Lucia" are on sale at the box office of Columbia Auditorium, JUnipcr 3-6888.

II cated attraction," she said. "I had to make a living, and I couldn't think of anything else to do. As a kid, I used to make up my own bright sayings and send them to the newspapers. They paid five bucks for that stuff, you know. I made up a lot of them." Selma Diamond was born in London, Ontario, but her family moved to Brooklyn when she was a child, and she grew up and went to public school there.

"Then I went to New York University, the usual pattern for a tailor's daughter. My father was a tailor. I can still sew. I can sew and knit and cook. I'm very domestic.

In my family, that's what girls were taught to do. You should see the bolts of remnants I've got at home. If I quit tomorrow and started to sew, I'd never use up all those remnants." Mi Diamond, writer for Marx. Jimmy Durante, Tallitlah Ilankhead, Milton lierle and Hid Caetar, invj the ha indeed a further ambition. Sh tcanlt to get married.

"I've had it. I could quit tomorrow if I had a good Antoinette Perry), which rate as the profession's own self-salute and will be announced April 16. On the following Tuesday will come the journalistic encomiums of the Drama Critics Circle. Finally, on May 1, the academic accolade of the Pulitzer Prize is bestowed. In addition, many medals, honors and laurels are distributed by show clubs, trade groups and press committees.

For some of the hopeful, suspense-racked candidates, survival at the boxoffice hinges this slack year on the collective verdict. Two of the three prime drama prospects "Advise and Consent" and "The Devil's Advocate" are from novels of identical titles. "All The Way Home" stems from James Agee's "A Death In The Family." The latter and Allen Drury's "Advise and Consent" won the Pulitzer Prize for Another curious parallel between the two is that each was translated into stage shape by newcomers to the medium from television. Tad Mosel did the Agee work. Loring Mandel reshaped Drury's vas.

volume. The third, Morris L. West's "The Devil's Advocate," was dramatized by Dore Schary, veteran film impresario who also directed and produced. On a close decision, cast a vole for "All The Way Home." The best new American play is based on a best-selling book. The only question: Which one? The prime contenders in the dramatic division are "Advise and Consent," "All The Way Home" and "The Devil's Advocate." In musicals, another three-way race exists among "Do Re Mi," "Irma la Douce" and the about-to-arrive "Carnival." None from books.

A big array of performers and backstage craftsmen are in the running for assorted personal kudos. Some of the answers will come Sunday, April 16, when the American Theatre Wing cites "distinctive achievements" in 19 dramatic categories. That just starts the trophy parade. Unlike Hollywood, where "Oscar's" one-night spectacular hogs the limelight, the White Way gets its bouquets in a two-week marathon. For a Broadway grand slam, there are three major play First, the silver Tony medallions (named in honor of the Wing's wartime director, Sam Gray, left, is the defendant and Brian Donlevy is Ji is counsel in Trial' road fhow.

Claudelle Collurt Missed her train 1 A 'Born' Of Knockout from Canzoncri's lst-round punch willi 'My Fair Lady' and 'Camelot' MULLIGAN, AuMirialrd Press Writer Will Success On TV Spoil Selma Diamond? No Siree! Women in her field are outnumbered 100 to 1, but after her appearances on the Jack Paar Show, she's no longer anonymous. And now she's ready to give up her career to satisfy one more-am-bition to pet married because Tve had si 1 '''J! I in a MARGARET A IS She is going to make a recording, like Bob New hart and Shelly Berman. She may even write a book, like everybody else on the Paar show. Selma Diamond is a woman who doesn't want to tell her age, or give any clues, such as when she went to school. She has red hair which she dyes herself because she doesn't have time "for all that jazz at the beauty shop." Laughs ith Eyes She is of medium height, slim, wears skirts and sweaters or knit dresses, and has good legs.

She has brown eyes which show a great deal of kindness and understanding. She laughs more with her eyes than with the rest of her face. She has a lovely one-sentence philosophy: "If you live through the day and, at the end of it, you've had one good laugh out loud, you're ahead." I can't imagine a better working philosophy for a comedy writer, and perhaps this is why she was attracted to the field in the first place. "It was a simple, uncompli Composer Loewe went on lo garner fame Ry HUGH "VTEW YORK, April 8. If Hollywood is looking for someone to write authentic background music for heavyweight Ingemar Johansson's next movie, Frederick Loewe is their man.

The dapper composer of "Camelot," "My Fair Lady" and "Brigadoon" is singularly equipped to write a cantata for kayoed combatants. By reason of cold, cruel experience, he happens to be something of an authority on still life on the canvas. After a brilliant career as a child-prodigy pianist and before embarking on an even more brilliant career as a musical-comedy composer, Loewe was a not-so-brilliant professional boxer. Cansoneri Oo ps I "I was quite a dandy, very agile, quick on my feet and very deft with a slap-like jab," Loewe recalled his puglistic prowess over a weight-watcher's lunch of broiled mushrooms. "I'd won eight fights in a row in the 120-pound class, and then I ran into an up and coming fighter named Tony Canzoneri.

"He took me out with one punch in the first round. Other fellows who'd been knocked out used to tell me they actual Selma Diamond, loft, who lia earned rcpect and considerable money as a roniedy writer, is interviewed liy Margaret McMaini on lier plans for future. ly heard birdies singing. I guess that's where my musical background came in. I heard a whole symphony orchestra.

"When I came to in the dressing room, the string section was just going by. Playing very beautifully, too, I might add. No, it wasn't a lullaby. It was something triumphant." An original score perhaps? Can't Remember "Probably," Loewe conceded with an urbane shrug. "But I never could remember the melody again.

It doesn't matter, though. I'm always hearing the most marvelous music in my sleep; and then, when I wake up, it's gone. This used to worry me, but it doesn't anymore. "I tried jumping out of bed a few times and copying down that great masterpiece of my dreams. And, you know, it was horrible.

Just ghastly. What sounded immortal in my dreams instantly dissolved into the most wretched trivia in the cold light of dawn." An unquenchable optimist, "Fritz" Loewe (his writing as well as his fighting name) was not one to be kept down by a knockout, even at the hands of future champion Tony Canzoneri. He bounced back into the music business and soon was delivering some im pressive knockouts of his own on Broadway. Loewe shows the same indomitable attitude toward his heart attack of three years ago. "If you live through it, he fervently insists, "a heart attack is absolutely the best thing that can happen to you.

I never enjoyed life until I had my attack. I drank from five at night until five the next morning. I smoked three, four packs of cigarettes a day. It was a senseless, futile existence. "Now I live in moderation, and I enjoy everything to the fullest.

I don't worry about the things I used to worry about. A heart attack gives you new values. I don't smoke at all. I have a drink before dinner, a small glass of wine with my meal, and I'm careful about what I eat. But the big difference is that I enjoy my meal the way I never did before.

"The only real worry I have in life now is getting a little white ball into an un-co-opera-tive little cup. I've taken up golf for relaxation, but it's not coming easy. When Arnold Palmer took a 12 on a hole the other day, it was the best thing that ever happened to golf. It gave thousands of us a reason to go on living." By NEW YORK, April 8 Selma Diamond is a lady comedy writer. This in itself makes her fairly unusual, although she generously mentions two others, Madeline Pugh, who wrote for "I Love Lucy," and Lucille Kallen, who wrote for Sid Caesar.

So let's just say that in the field of comedy writing, the women are way outnumbered, like a hundred to one. Miss Diamond, currently among the five writers on the Perry Como show, led by Goodman Ace, has been writing material for the top comedians on radio and television for 17 years. Loses Anonymity She has had what she calls a "pretty good press," and she has earned enormous amounts of both respect and money within the profession. However, to the general public, she has been as anonymous as the lady down the block. Not so anymore.

After three appearances on the Jack Taar Show, she may be on the verge of becoming another national phenomenon. People are saying, "Did you hear Selma Diamond last night?" offer," she said. "I had $16 in cash when I got my first radio job in Hollywood, and I must say I ran that $16 into a nice little sum, but enough's enough. I'd like to stay home and sleep late in the morning." Fond Of Comedians She said nobody quite believes she could walk away from her apartment on Sutton Place and a weekly pay check of four figures, hut of her wish to wed, and her willingness to retire, she made a definite proclamation on the Paar show. This has nothing to do with her feeling about comedians.

She has fondness for some of them, compassion for all. "Some of my best friends.