Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 13

THURSDAY, APRIL 1 ZONA REPUBLIC C3 I Gunplay punctuated Phoenix's first election hoenix was started in 1867-68, later than several other Arizona towns, but it grew rapidly. The 1870 census recorded 164 adult men (92 James E. Cook Republic Columnist 1 But the election was concluded quietly: 212 votes for the Phoenix Townsite, 150 votes for Mill City, and 64 for Mowry's Ranch, which I can't locate. Barney said that later, at the Murphy Store, near present-day Ninth Street and Van Buren, Swilling encountered a Mexican who had not supported him. Although accounts vary, Swilling apparently peppered the man with birdshot A newspaper reported: "A committee of citizens headed by Jake and Andy Starar immediately waited on Jack Swilling and quietly told him that, at the very next lawless act, he would die like a dog without judge or jury." There had been three candidates for sheriff of the new county.

"Whispering Jim" Favorite and J.M. Chenowith were the most conspicuous. Thomas Barnum was a quiet candidate, and no one gave him much of a chance. Favorite and Chenowith loudly questioned each other's parentage, morals and manners. Their campaigns "peaked" the day before the election, when they got into a gunfight Favorite was killed.

The city's leaders suggested to Chenowith that he leave town at his earliest convenience. Barnum was elected handily. A month later, the Tucson Citizen reported: "Phoenix town lots, selected last year at this time, must be good investments. A year or two ago, the land there was vacant; now it is a county seat of what will eventually be a populous county." Talk about understatement. In 1871, however, it was highly optimistic.

The town was served by stagecoaches, and the Wells Fargo freight lines. When two transcontinental railroads were buijt across Arizona a few years later, they missed Phoenix. That was not remedied until 1887, when the Phoenix Maricopa connected with the Southern Pacific. Phoenix was incorporated in 1881. Frame buildings now outnumbered the adobe structures of the original settlement Swilling'8 Ditch grew, and other ditch companies were formed, but they delivered a limited supply of water In 1885, William J.

Murphy began building the 35-mile long Arizona Canal, and a crosscut canal to connect all four canals north of Salt River. The Arizona Canal was finished 100 years ago this year. That was the year Phoenix got a fire department, the year the railroad arrived, and the year a horse-drawn streetcar system was born. The maturing city was getting ready to serve "a populous county." of them farmers) and 64 women. Early in 1871, a Phoenix correspondent reported in the Prescott Miner 'Our once little settlement is becoming a populous region.

We number now between 500 and 600 souls and the immigration docs not yet abate." Those settlers had a 100-mile horseback ride to the i Yavapai County seat at Prescott- Early in 1871, the Territorial Legislature created Maricopa County to serve the Salt River farmers. It was the first of several counties taken from Yavapai, largest of the four original jurisdictions and the "Mother of Counties." Creating a county apparently was easier than organizing it The political processes of 1871 involved at least two instances of gunplay, one of them fatal. The bill creating Maricopa provided for an election May 1 to select a county seat and elect officers. That rekindled a dispute between proponents of the. TNIfiwntown" Phoenix townsite, surveyed in 1870 by Ctfpt.

William A. Hancock, and the original residents of Mill City or "East Phoenix." One vociferous proponent of the East Phoenix location was Jack Swilling, whose ditch company was making the desert blossom. The late historian James M. Barney reported that Swilling had threatened physical violence to anyone who opposed him. Swilling apparently wasn't a bad sort, but he used morphine and whiskey to ease the pain of old wounds, and he admitted they drove him mad at times.

One account says Swilling persuaded many of the Valley's Mexicans to vote for the eastern settlement Swilling gathered them at Hellings Mill, and plied them with whiskey. (Swilling was not the only one to exploit Mexicans this way. Another Arizona pioneer bought his sheepherders new straw hats on the day of an election and ran them through the polls once hatless, a second time wearing hats.) Barney said advocates of the downtown site formed a vigilance committee and stashed 30 rifles in Hancock's store at First Street and Washington, one of the polling places. Hancock had been appointed interim sheriff. Calendar i Onstage Navaho Great Arizona Puppet Theatre, 2:30 p.m.

Saturday, Kerr umurai uenter. 1 Popular music Well-used formula makes comedy a success i vf. I 7, ZV. ries Movies Review By MARSHA McCREADIE Trw Arizona Republic The Secret of My Success is a studio executive's dream: a fantastically popular star, Michael J. Fox; a commercially reliable director and sure hand, Herbert Ross (Goodbye, Mr.

Chips; The Turning Point); some flashy photography and music; plus a trendy topic, business success in New York City. And lo and behold it works So what if there's really very little story? Or if that story is predictable to the max, as Michael J. Fox plays a late '80s version of a Horatio Alger story? Or even if it could never happen in the real world? The Secret of My Success delivers, and in the fairy tale realm of wish fulfillment, this is what counts. It's a kind of combination of Midwestern happy-go-lucky hokeydom and The Official Preppy Handbook. Fox plays Brantley Foster, a cheeky young business graduate from Kansas determined to go to Manhattan, make it in the world of corporate one-upmanship and have, as he explains to his mother, a "meaningful relationship with a beautiful woman." "What have they got in New York that we haven't got right here?" Foster's farmer dad ironically asks.

This opening sequence on the farm is cleverly intercut with shots of New York City some of the swiftest, most clever opening montage shots since Footloose, which Ross also directH. Immediately the pace and feel as well as the colors, the fashionable women, and the ethnicity of New York City are captured. And just as immediately, you know why Brantley wants to go there. When he does, of course, there are the inevitable difficulties: the terrible apartment ridden with bugs and worse), the loss of a first job, the parodied horrific interviews with personnel directors as the Catch-22 of looking for experience with no experi- THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS Directed by Herbert Ross, written by Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr. and A.J.

Carothers; photography by Carlo di Palma, edited by Paul Hirsch; music by David Foster. Cast: Michael J. Fox, Helen Slater, Richard Jordan, Margaret Whitton.Rated:PG-13. ence is explained over and over to him. Fox is charming and ingenuous.

He's ambitious, but without the calculating quality of a Duddy Kravitz, or the confusion of a Benjamin Braddock. It's as if this role were written for him. (Maybe it was.) Richard Jordan is fun as a most obnoxious CEO who happens to be related to Brantley, and Margaret Whitton is superbly comic as a voracious corporate wife, married to Jordan. She's just as sleek as Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson, but with all the spunk of Bette Midler in Down and Out in Beverly Hills.

When "Aunt" Vera (Whitton) skewers the young Brantley in a pool to the accompaniment of the theme from Jaws, it's hilarious. And when she first decides to go after him, in a limousine driving north from New York City to Connecticut, it's a crafty piece of craftsmanship with music, close-ups of actors' reactions and editing all paced perfectly. The only imperfect piece of casting may be Helen Slater as a frosty corporate Grace Kelly look-alike. She looks vapid at times rather than cool. The Secret of My Success, however, is slick and makes few such mistakes.

If this group of film makers decided to perform a corporate takeover, you just know they wouldn't slip. Lee Castle In a Tribute to Jimmy Dorsey 8 p.m. today, 'I I Sundome. Sukay South American folk group, 8 p.m. Saturday, Unitarian Universalist Church, 4027 E.

Lincoln Drive. The Temptations 8 p.m. Saturday, Celebrity Theatre. China Crisis 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, After the Gold Rush.

Husker Du and Christmas 7 p.m. Wednesday, Prisms. Classical music 1 I Phoenix String Quartet 8 p.m. today, Ethington Theatre, "Grand Canyon College. Phoenix Symphony Conducted by Theo Alcantara, with violinist Elmar Oliveira, 8 p.m.

today and Friday, Symphony Hall. Sheila Roberts Musician and composer, 8 p.m. Friday, I Kerr Cultural Center. Phoenix Symphony Conducted by James Sedares, and 5 the Masterworks Chorale conducted by Mary Ann Dutton, 8 p.m. Saturday, Glendale Community College Performing Arts Center, 6000 W.

Olive, Glendale. Dance ASU Dance In Concert 8 p.m. today and Friday, i Gammage Center. Lydia Torea Spanish Dance Company With Desert Dance Theatre, 8 p.m. Saturday, Scottsdale Center for the Arts.

Theater 1 Little Shop of Horrors 8 p.m. today, Friday and Saturday, Mainstage, Phoenix Little Theatre. Effects of Gamma Rays on Man In the Moon Marigolds 's: Scottsdale Community Players, 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and April 24-25, May 1-2; 2 p.m. Sunday and April 26, May Stagebrush-Theatre, 7020 E.

Second Scottsdale. The Faithful Footman or Hearts Aflame 8 p.m. Friday, Jjaturday and April 24-25, Pierre's Playhouse, Cave Creek. On Golden Pond Copper State Players, dinner theater, 6 "p.m. Friday, Saturday and April 24-25, Max's Dinner Theatre, N.

47th Glendale. i Pajama Tops Desert Foothills Community Theater, 8 Friday, Saturday and April 24-25, May 1-2; Melody Tent, ave Creek Plaza. The Runaways Junior Acting Company of Actors Lab 7 p.m. Friday; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday; 7624 E.

Indian -School Road, Scottsdale. Rnsom ot Red Chief Phoenix Little Theatre's Cookie Company, 2 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and April 25-26; 25 E. Coronado Road. College theater Charley's Aunt Scottsdale Community College Theatre Department, 8 p.m.

today, Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; i SCC Performing Arts Center. 'f Grease University Theatre, 8 p.m. today through Saturday, Tuesday. Wednesday and April 23-25, 28-30, May 1-2; 2 p.m.

Sunday and April 26, May Lyceum Theatre. Coming up 1 Phoenix Symphony Pops With Eric Knight, April 23, Sundome, Sun City West; April 24-25, Symphony Hall. Europe April 24, Mesa Amphitheatre. Holy Smoke With No Compromise and The New Men, April 25, Prisms. Pearl Bailey April 25, Sundome.

Donovan April 26, Anderson's Fifth Estate. John Holmquist Guitarist, April 26, ASU Music Theatre. Los Angeles Baroque Players concert Presented by Phoenix Early Music Society, April 26, Womack Recital Hall, Central United Methodist Church. 'X' With Hunters and Collectors and Concrete Blonde, April 27. After the Gold Rush.

Phoenix Symphony Conducted by Theo Alcantara, with pianist Alicia DeLarrocha, April 30 and May 1, Symphony HalL Sesame Street Llvel May 1 -3, ASU Activity Center. Phoenix Symphony Conducted by James Sedares, May 2, Symphony Hall. Choral concert Arizona Choral Arts Society, May 2, St Mary's Basilica. Billy Idol With the Cult, May 4, Veterans Memorial i Coliseum. 1 i Phoenix Symphony Conducted by James Sedares, with trench horn player Paul Chambers, May 7, Scottsdale Center tor the Arts.

Vermeer String Quartet Presented by the Phoenix Michael J. Fox is an '80s version of of My Success, a story that could a Horatio Alger hero in The Secret never happen in the real world. 'Rumpelstiltskin' mirrors Grimm magic Moviemaker plans series of fairy tales Chamber Music Society, May 8, Scottsdale center for the Arts. KOol and the Gang May 8, ASU Activity Center. Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers May 9, Sundome.

Symphony Conducted by Theo Alcantara, with Ballet Arizona, May 9-10, Gammage Center. fhree Divas, Three! Claudia Kennedy, Beverly Laubach and Ann DeVries Richardson with pianist Ann Nagell, May 11, Womack Recital Hall, Central United Methodist Church. Dan Seals May 1 2, Toolies Country. The Far Side By Gary Larson Movies Review sag Mmhm felli RUMPELSTILTSKIN Cannon Films, directed and written by David Irving, based on the classic fairy tale by The Brothers Grimm, photography by David Gur-finkel, costumes by Debbie Leon, music by Max Robert. Cast Amy Irving, Clive Revill, Billy Baity.

Rated: G. By MARSHA McCREADIE The Arizona Republic After you see Amy Irving in Rumpelstiltskin, you'll know why a real-life prince, Steven Spielberg, married her. She is a charming miller's daughter in the Cannon Films version of the fairy tale. You feel her plight as she sings imprisoned while working at the impossible task of spinning straw into gold. She never looks tragic, but sad, which is just the way children's fairy tales should make you and kids feel.

Rumpelstiltskin is the first film in the Valley of a series of fairy tales from Cannon Films (formerly known mainly for its Rocky films, but now moving into other, classier areas). It's a literal John Moulder Brown is the Prince and Amy Irving is Katie, fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin. The film launches in the Valley the charming miller's daughter who has been ordered to a series of children's fables from the studio formerly best spin gold from straw, in the Cannon Films version of the known for its Rocky films. translation perhaps too much so. acceptable, even believable, and never be accused of overacting as the greedy The language is prosaic, contem- silly.

king, porary. I missed the "Today I bake, Billy Barty is the right combination Still, it's a better bet for kids than all tomorrow I brew" refrain Rumpel- of wicked and klutzy as Rumpelstiltskin, the minor Disney films that are periodi-stiltskin goes through. But the film's though British actor Clive Revill might cally re-released. "Well, this Isnl very promising." 4 rtffd a tim.