The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 131

THE PALM BEACH POST 4J SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7. 2003 BOOKS DROP-DEAD TEE OSCAR RACE FUNNYNs-sv- tc" HAS Writing still makes Schulberg's motor run at 89 MAGDALENE SISTERS BASED ON A lit! ItOlt era i1 1 11 i p5 -J Jrfi Budd Schulberg's Moving Pictures entranced me when it was first published in 1981, and it entrancd me all over again when I reread a new IFChlms PG-13 -35. www.campthemovw.com NOW SHOWINGI MOVIE BOrNTON BEACH 1 SUP fANUArViO 541 Scott Eyman Books Editor Makes Sammy Run? (Louis B. Mayer told B.P. Schulberg his son should be deported.

"Where should we send him, asked Schulberg. his screenwrit-ing career, Schulberg's relationship with Elia Kazan and the House Un-American Activities Committee. A turbulent life, worthy of a novel and well-told by the man who lived it. Quote Unquote "The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything." Walter Bagehot it's about Hollywood in the 1920s and the early "30s, when the scent of orange trees wafted through the studios, and out-of-work actors in full makeup strolled down Hollywood Boulevard. It's all the more valuable because, as Schulberg noted in a recent conversation, he's "the last man standing" from that era.

Moving Pictures only takes Schulberg up to leaving Hollywood for college. Schulberg got sidetracked by other projects but has begun work on a sequel, which will include the firestorm of condemnation caused by What iMiIJM-i'ii trade paperback edition published by Ivan R. Dee. Schulberg, now 89, is the son of B.P. Schulberg, a fascinating, unfortunately forgotten producer and onetime head of Paramount Pictures.

He is also one of the few men to have achieved demonstrable excellence in every area he has attempted, from fiction (What Makes Sammy Run, The Disenchanted) to screenplays (On the Waterfront, The Harder They Fall, A Face in the Crowd) and the memoir. The book is full of delicious vignettes of people amid a continually moving narrative. Some of the people are forgotten (George Bancroft, Pola Negri), some are still names to conjure with von Sternberg, Dietrich and so forth. Mostly, NOW PLAYING HIONIX THEATRES LAKE WORTH I 964-5555 OKEE SQUARE BOSS QKtECHOKI BLVD. 561497 7714 I THECURSIOFTHC I MUVKO PARISIAN 0 CITY PLACE RCGAL CINCmaS OYNTON 8 CONGRESS GATEWAY 734 0097 00-FANDANGO 1 77 IOVHTON CINCMA 9T64 MILITARY IftAJL 561-366-7500 Rf GAL CINEMAS DELRAV 18 1 ooa FEDERAL HWK BT8 9900 OO-FANOAHGO tin BmC GREEN ACRES RIVERBRIDOE fl RlVEBBtlDGE CENTER 561-304-4000 51 OKttCHOBcE RD 1UST EAST OF I 94 56133-0400 PROMENADE EAST CINEMAS ALT A1A LIGHTHOUSE Oft.

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Harcourt; 289 pages; $25. The German film director F.W. Murnau once said that the greatest movie ever made would involve nothing more than two people, a couple of chairs and a table. I've always had a hunch he was right, and, in a couple of movies, Ingmar Bergman got very close to what Murnau was talking about. I used to think that the same thing could be said of fiction iaSii I If fflE "OVIDf NCI JOUIHAl "FUNHV AND IRRESISTIBLE!" jS5C, PJJBVVM RFGAL CINEMAS fl'JJ iff 1 JUPITER ta IJVirEii us 1 IUIANTOWN RD mMmALMm 800- FANDAN GO 190 RFGAI CINEMAS MIJVICO ROYAL PALM BEACH 18 PARISIAN 20OTY PLACE I0UJ VAJl ROAD 1 OKIKHOBff HO LAST Of BOO FANDANGO 707 561 B3 3 -0400 CROWN THFATRFS BMC CROWN ABACOA 16 OtEWOfiRrVBtatDGES 4686 MAm'Rifl KXiRO 561 3333456 561 J04-OOI5 BMC BMC PROMENADE PLAZA 8 OKEE SQUARE V10 A1IIRNAIIVE A1A i02l OHUCHOBIE BLVD 561 674 2664 561-697-7714 PHOFNIX THFATRFS RFF1 WOULD THFATRES 5 LAKE WORTH 8 WELLINGTONS LAKt WORiHHDo 57 AVE WIUINbTON MAHKFTPLACE 954 5555 56197-4448 '3 RFGAI CINEMAS JUPITER 18 1 HINDIANTOWN RD it's the less-is-more universal field theory applied to art.

But if you'd plowed through the forest of pseudo-literary tomes that I have, you'd begin to reconsider your initial theories, too. Then along comes Brian 800-FANOANGO 190 MUVWO PAW SiAN 2faXJTY PLACE LHOM RD LAST OF 195 561 833-0400 CROWN THEATHF5 RFGAL CINFMAS ROYAL PALM BEACH 18 100J SIATl R(JAl) BOO- FAN DAN GO 207 RFGAL CINFMAS BOYNTON 8 )CN CUN.RESSAVE 800- FAN DAN GO 177 BMC PGA CINEMA 6 4076 PGA BLVD 561-776-4000 RFFL WORID THFATRE5 WELLINGTON 8 WILLING TUN MARKETPLACE 561 792-4448 CROWN ABACOA 16 4b86 MAIN STKLtT 56t-333-3456 PHOFNIX THFATRFS LAKE WORTH 8 lAKt WtlRTH RD it STltl AVE Morton Morton's A Window Across the River, and the virtues of simplicity are once again es 954-5555 VISIT (eWwtr Wirld Morton is particularly strong with displacement the sense of not being able to find a comfortable niche. "When had men become women and women become men?" Isaac wonders. "It had happened at some point during his lifetime. When he watched movies from the forties and fifties, the men and women struck him as so different from the men and women of today that he sometimes felt as if he was watching science fiction.

The wimpiest man of the forties was manlier than the manliest man of today." Morton is a painstaking writer, but he's not a particularly solemn one. He lets his sense of humor out in asides, as when Isaac is watching a TV show that Nora can't abide, "one of those interminable Ken Burns things. The Civil War, baseball, New York City he somehow made them all seem the same. A cornball narrator, plinky banjos, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and everything slow, slow, slow." Nora would rather watch something with Cary Grant I'm with Nora. Morton's strongest suit is his ability to jab you with immediate vignettes of our shared humanity, even when it's unflattering or uncomfortable.

When Nora visits Billie at the hospice, she feels "overwhelmingly, shockingly aware of (the other patients) in some way she couldn't define. It was as though whatever animated each of them, whatever made each of them unique, whatever it was that would shortly vanish, leaving each of them a vacant house of flesh it was as though that animating principle, call it the soul, was rising up, trying to cast itself into her, trying to leap from the dying body and onto safe and welcoming terrain." Brian Morton's characters aren't just words on a page, they're voices heard across the park, vivid, accumulating snapshots of people glimpsed on a passing train. A Window Across the River is plangent and profoundly human, the literary equivalent of middle-period Woody Allen the setting may be in black and white, but the people radiate infinite emotional colors. scotteymanpbpost.com tablished. Isaac is 40, a compulsive photographer who has taken a newspaper job THEATRE OREN EVERY NIGMTI and found to his surprise that he likes it.

Unfortunately, he's stopped shooting, and when he gets a gallery show, he has to print up pictures that he took years before. That's troublesome, and he knows it. Then a pupil of his has some photographs accepted by The New Yorker. Crisis! 5G1 k--vg-i ButtateMASMiJ SUNlMT'ltlUnslMT 1IRJ3 FREE nrnw wci run at Nora is 35, a writer who has had a themselves and can't forgive her. It's not that she's actively malicious, or perverse a la Patricia Highsmith; it's just that she pictures people as if their worst fears about themselves are true.

Conflict: Can a person who compromises in their work find happiness with a person who can't compromise at all? "The only thing that could tempt Nora from the craft of fiction was a man in need. If her man was ailing, she dropped everything to take care of him; if her man was insecure, she stooped, morally and emotionally, in order to seem smaller than he was." While Nora is struggling with her career, she's also taking care of Billie, her favorite aunt, who's fading fast. Writing about writers is not my favorite literary category, but Brian Morton is some strange kind of magician; his novels have the luminous transparency of a great city at twilight. The vocabulary is basic, but the emotions aren't; the people are artists, but the questions they ponder which is more important, our responsibility to ourselves or to the people we love? are universal. )2anjua wanTH speouu open sun.

FT. LAUDERDALE SWAP SHOP CIRCUS OPEN EVERYDAY! Fr VINIIOB IPA' Monday Tt1Ul.dny a Ft. Ui.d.1 Hol Swop thop MARGATE SWAP SHOP OpTI Saturday, Sunday, Monday Tuotday) Monday Im Frm Day couple of stories published in anthologies but has not broken through. Isaac and Nora had an affair years before that was emotionally comfortable, but then Nora got pregnant and was adamant about an abortion in spite of Isaac's protests. They drifted apart.

They've come back together again. The worm in the apple, so to speak, is the problem of second acts. Isaac thinks of himself as an artist, but he's stopped working as an artist; Nora is a kind and considerate person, but when she writes a story she's very serious and writes what she sees as the truth. The people that she writes about see SSr sultmtm-. jg NOVSHOWtNCl Hsa 3 800-FANDANGO WI77 80O-FANDANGO i90 BOO FANDANGO 207 "''f'0 BMrriNFMA BMrriNFMAS BMrrtNIMAS WMSIANUJOTYFUCf CROWN AflACOA 16 OKEE SQUARE CINEMA 8 PROMENADE CINEMA I RECENCY SO.

CINEMA I OkMhtibeRdjult.oll9S 46BH Man Si 20J OFttdiobee Blvd. WMAHAlA 2448 Sfc Fedpial HW. S6IBJaO4O0 S6I-99-9302 S6I.69777H 561245664 I 'Serkin': Portrait of the workaholic pianist I By RICHARD DYER The Boston Globe RUDOLF SERKIN: A Life, by Stephen Lehmann and Marion Faber. Oxford; 344 pages; $35. This year is the centennial of the birth of Rudolf Ser-kin, and Stephen Lehmann and Marion Faber have commemorated the anniversary "A PeleirfleSS thrill hdfl." Giles Edwards.

CREATUfit -CORN ER.COM CHEENACRES 1 HOW SHOWING! am SQUARE CINf MA I PROMENADE CINEMA I REGENCY SO. CINEMA I LAKE WORTH 8 LAKE WORTH DRIVE IN S6I6VFH S6I614JM4 F73 2I9 880S 964SSSS ROYAL PALM BEACH II PARISIAN 10 CITY PLACE CROWN ABACOA 11 jUPITER 18 BOO FANDANGr BOO FANDANGO 07 S6lflJJO400U" S6iF999F03 by producing the first biography of the great pianist, chamber musician, and teacher and the best book about a pianist since Joseph Horowitz's Conversations With Arrau two decades ago. Serkin's life spanned most of the 20th century and was affected by its cataclysmic history. When it was no longer safe to live in Germany, he moved to Switzerland with his mentor and future father-in-law, violinist Adolf Busch, and Busch's family. STEPHEN UHMANN MARION FABER COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE dictions in the pianist's nature, which was seemingly gentle yet also extraordinarily driven, but they do provide many anecdotes that illustrate the various aspects of his personality even the occasional unflattering ones do nothing to diminish his stature.

This is not a scandal-driven biography, not that anyone could turn up many scandals involving Serkin, a man of fierce adherence to principle. The pianist's departure from the Viennese circle of the composer Arnold Schoenberg left many hard feelings that lasted for decades; without going into details, the book does not minimize this breach. It also notes the decade-long rift between Serkin and his son Peter, also a pianist of extraordinary gifts, but doesn't explore either the rift or the reconciliation. It's not that kind of book; instead it is a portrait of an artist. Supplementing their research into the Serkin family history, the pianist's comparatively brief formal studies, the launch of his career, and Serkin's widespread activities and influence in America, the writers also include sections of reminiscence from interviews with Serkin's pianistic colleagues and pupils (Richard Goode, Claude Frank and Lilian Kal-lir, Eugene Istomin) and with such Marlboro musicians as Philipp Naegele, Blanche Moyse, and Arnold Stein- hardt.

Often these observations are illuminating; so is a list of Serkin's Carnegie Hall programs, a discography (Serkin made a lot of records, but hardly began to record the full scope of his repertory), and a special CD, drawn from concerts in the Library of Congress between 1946 and 1950 that feature music Serkin never recorded in the studio, including Bach's Fifth French Suite and, of all unexpected things, Chopin's Etudes, Op. 25, which he negotiates magnificently. Probably no pianist in history practiced as unremittingly as Serkin did throughout his career, often putting in 10 to 12 hours a day at the keyboard, no matter what his other responsibilities might have been. His pupil Lee Luvisi once asked him why he still found it necessary to work so hard. Serkin's extraordinary reply was "You know, I'm not a natural pianist.

I never was. It always came very hard to me. If I don't work hard, I can't play. I'm no different from most musicians; I don't always feel like going out there and playing. But I want to be ready when that happens so it's still above average.

And I can't count on inspiration; that's a gift from God. But when it comes, I want to be ready." That's how Serkin spent his life, making himself ready. (n tj In 1939, the Serkin and Busch families, now united by marriage (Serkin had married Busch's daughter Irene), moved to America. Serkin became a major figure in the musical life of his new country, as a performer, recording artist, teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music and later its head, and a founder of the Marlboro Fes the piano was a tremendous struggle for him in his mind he could never be good enough to play the music he favored and that mighty effort always placed the audience on his side, and left it cheering when he triumphed against the odds, as he almost always did. The image was complex enough and made even more so by the media of which the pianist was so wary.

But the biographers also trace the complexity of Serkin the man. He was, they write, "both elitist and egalitarian, exclusive and inclusive, demanding and generous, controlling and liberating." When it came to questions of musicianship and musical honesty, he was as ruthless on others as he was on himself. The authors don't attempt to explain the contra HPE SPRINGS PG-13 hopesprings.movies.com Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution CBuena Vista International tival in Vermont. Between 1945 and 1985 he played 33 recitals in Symphony Hall, and often was a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Serkin had an extraordinarily appealing stage personality, and an endearingly shy, awkward smile.

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