The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 131

THE ARTS Section I Sunday February 10, 1974 Stormy Maria Callas Starts Her U. Academy of Music Concert Sold Out ComebackHere By DANIEL WEBSTER nulnr Jfurio CHMo 2 displayed briefly to whet the appetites of the buyers. The crimson rosette in his lapel seems like a stop light for Hurok is not going to let anyone ask a stiff question or probe into any unpleasant area which might dampen sales on her three-month tour that will touch such major cities as Toronto, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston, include benefits at Carnegie Hall and reach all the way to the west coast. Why has she come back Why has she, at an age when singers retire, decided her retirement was premature? "I felt like it," she says. "I was always working toward this comeback.

I stopped singing because I was not happy with the way I was singing. I knew it was not like it used to be, so I began to sing in another way, to use my diaphragm, but these are details and I don't want to get into details. See CALLAS, Page 4-1 when most people's sexual encounters are regarded as casually as crossing the street, the world wants to know about whether SHE had had friends outside marriage. Now, at SO, she is asking to be heard again by audiences who have known only her recorded voice since she sang Tosca in 1965 at the Metropolitan Opera. She continually rubs the large pearl ring on her left hand as she faces the cameras to answer questions not about her voice but her heart! "Marriage?" she widens her eyes.

"But I am already married and she pauses two beats," to Mr' Hurok." That is plain. -Hurok, however, is playing the grumpy grandfather, introducing the soprano as "a very loyal person," then speaking of her as only a manager can as a commodity to be Mi 1 i sing together here Maria Callas The Rembrandt Room of the Stan-j hope Hotel is draped in rose velvet, and its crystal chandeliers and mirrors are there to divert attention from the dingy copies of Rembrandt paint-; ings that hang apologetically about the room. It is a "function" and its musty respectability is the setting for Maria Callas first appearance before the media -on the eve of her American comback tour, i The soprano's return after nearly nine years away from the opera stage in this country is enough to bring out the thunder and lightning of the TV corps, and before the soprano's appearance, photographers read their meters from each other's faces while juggling snifters of Courvoisier provided by some unnamed sponsor. Callas has always exerted this kind of attraction. An aura of tension surrounds her, raises the question of her very appearance, or her mood and willingness to speak.

She made it her first order of business on this American tour to cancel her concert in Boston, thereby giving Philadelphia the splendor of her recital debut, tomorrow might at the Academy of Music. But on this day at the Stanhope Hotel she does appear, punctually, smiling warmly at the critics she says she never reads, walking with Sol Hurok and Giuseppe di Stefano, the tenor who said in 1959 he would never sing with her again, but who is now her companion onstage and off. Her entrance is theatrical. Her floor-length dress is emerald green, large pearls hang to her waist and her dark brown hair is pulled back strongly from her lineless brow. She is nervous, for the world has always wanted more of her than her voice.

In an age a young Serpico (second from left) In Philadelphia, "the note" is frequently highly organized. For example, in one section of the city, a number of businessmen subscribe, willingly or not willingly, to the "Lambskin Club." On a fancy business card the Seal of the City of Philadelphia there is certification that the bearer is cooperating with the Police, Firemen Par Guards." It also notes that the bearer is a "safe driving Pledgee." At a 15th street bar, officers distributed a Christmas "roll call" list a couple of years ago. The names of officers who were to receive payments were neatly checked off. 'Serpico' Has Some Holes in It Police i A Seasoned Investigative Reporter Looks at the Film Sol Hurok, her tour manager For weeks, or even months, there' will be no hint that the older office is "taking." The time is used to size up the young officer or to make him "pregnant" (a distinctly Philadelphia term). In "Serpico" we see Frank Serpico as a rookie offered a piece of the action early in the game.

At one early point, the "note" is $800 a month. The fact of the matter is that few of the corrupters among veteran cops would dare make such an offer to a rookie. A seasoned officer "on the note" will talk to ahe kid about his wife and kids. Does he moonlight? (Have a side job.) Has he a mrtgage? Does he drink? Any money needed for his mother's operaiton? The questions are subtle. A seasoned "taker" can spot a man he can make "pregnant" very quickly.

"Getting pregnant" can be as simple as accepting a free cup of coffee or a meal from a businessman on the beat. Or it can be as obvious as taking half ahe "note" for the month. There is another sort of infection in police corruption, an important one not really dealt with in "Serpico." It is the awful infection that spreads in a large department when its members are proven corrupt. I mentioned earlier that the State Crime Commission said corruption was widespread here. My own pendent investigations for a number of year have also prompted me to conclude that police corruption is rampant in Philadelphia.

Earlier I said thaa police corruption See SERPICO, Page 4-1 buoyed the spirit of a nation engaged in the grimmest of business. That damn train keeps stranding them on metaphorical sidings. It is not going where they They wave and sing a little and try to pretend they are in an old Andrews Sisters movje but their simple and direct charm is out of place in a show that labors incessantly and witlessly to prove how foolish they were and how laughably gullible, or venal, or racist everybody else was. Something odd and revealing happens at the Shubert at the end of the show. The company takes curtain calls, and Patty and Maxene move to stage front and begin a medley of their hits.

The audience has sat with great good will through a couple of hours of lame parody (instead of the "Beer Barrel Polka" or the "Pennsyl-(See ANDREWS, Page 8-1) The diva gets an embrace from has some sordid lessons to learn In that same district, officers ignore illegally parked cars belonging to people who attend a regular weekly bingo game in a hotel. Furthermore, the officers stand by after the game while the money is being counted. For years, the Locust street "strip" with its heavy traffic in drugs and prostitution (to say nothing of a few murders) has been allowed to operate virtually unhindered. Frank Serpico would, legend tells us, have closed them down. Police corruption is infectious.

Very often a perfectly honest rookie will be put in a patrol car with an older officer who is "on the note." By WILLIAM B. COLLINS Inquirer Entertainment Writer "Over Here!" is a new musical about a train that is crossing the continent in the Second World War. Not many trains have had musicals written about them but this one is special. It's a metaphorical train carrying America through the wartime experience. Draftees undergo basic training in transit; the passenger list is made up of a cross-section of homefront types, from the crnfed couple called Mother and Father to the Nazi spy who could easily be mistaken for Marlene Dietrich.

Also aboard are the Andrews Sisters, Patty and Maxene. The Andrews Sisters? Why? They aren't "types," they aren't a "cross-section." They are as real and hearty and reassuring now as they were back in the days when, with Laverne, they with tenor Giuseppe diStefano. They'll Serpico might just as well have appeared in drag. He was an intense and unpredictable man who sported "hippie" clothing. Fellow officers never knew that he dated a wild variety of beautiful girls, including a prostitute; that he drove a Honda 350 motorcycle and loved the opera and ballet.

If they had, Serpico might have been mercifully driven from the police force and might not have ended his career and almost his life with a .22 slug in the face. Unfortunately for him and fortu- nately for the citizens of New York Serpico kept his personal life to himself. Eleven years after he joined the police department, his near fatal shooting brought about the Knapp Commission investigation which led to a long overdue housecleaning among New York's finest. Police corruption is a frightening thing in any society. The tSate Crime Commissions says it is widespread in Philadelphia and yet relatively few men are directly involved.

One of "Serpico's" most glaring failures is that it gives the impression that every man on the New York Police force is either corrupt or intimidated by those who are. The fact is that in a corrupted police force there are many men who stick it out hoping to make changes from within as they rise in the ranks. Some, like Serpico, survive with their integrity (if nothing else) intact while others become part of the system by counting the months and years until they can retire. It is not easy to make a distinction between the two breeds. And to confound the problem, those who would change the department from within quite often never make it to a position where what they do or say could erase the stench.

And then, there are just plain bad cops. In a center city bar last Friday night two plainclothesmen appeared and picked up $20. The owner who passed the $20 considered it a good investment, nothing more than "a salary" to insure that cops will be there if he needs them and that they will keep an eye on his place after he closes. In Philadelphia this is known as a "clean note" that is, no crime was involved. Clean notes come in the form of cash or services or goods.

Sometimes it is as seemingly innocent as the classic situation of a cop taking an Corrupt ion: By GREG WALTER Inquirer Staff Writer Most cops are not going to like "Serpico." They -are not going to like it in New York (where Frank Serpico apparently tried to be an honest cop) and they're not going to like it in San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia. Nor, for that matter, are many police officers anywhere going to appreciate "this movie. Z' Some of their reasons will be valid. First, "Serpico" is largely peopled with one-dimensional caricatures slob cops, dumb cops, sadistic cops and "pusseys" (a cop term for a man who'g all talk and no action.) Except for Frank Serpico (played by Al Pacino of Godfather" fame), the people in the film are largely unreal. But some of the things they do are very real, indeed.

And those things comprise what may be some of the not so invalid ob- i jections to "Serpico." Unfortunately, in this film, they get lost in the director's interpretation of 1 Peter Maas's coldly objective reporting of what happened to one cop in a i big city who tried to buck "the system," of "the fraternity," or whatever it is called in your home town. Frank' Serpico was quite publicly, what many cops might in fact privately want to be: He was an honest man willing to speak out against the 'entrenched corruption of a police de- partment he loved. By making virtually every other police officer in this picture a snarling or insipid ass, the filmmakers have done a disservice to a large number of cops in an effort to emphasize Serpico's commitment; As New York Police Commissioner Michael J. Codd said the other day, "It tends to imply that Serpico was the only honest cop in the whole department." To author Peter Maas, Serpico was an oddball but an honest oddball. When he reported for work in a' Brooklyn precinct in March, 1960, GREG WALTER has spent some 17 years as an investigative reporter for The Inquirer as well as Life and Philadelphia magazines, The Bulletin, The Camden Courier Post and Channel 10.

His stories have won several major national awards, 1 7n tiiot Mirp li A lists ered very closely the State Crime Commission's investigation into of- and the Andrews Sisters Revisited Graduating from Police Academy, apple off a 'fruit peddler's standi Or it can escalate to a "pad" (as it's called in or "the big note," (as it's called in Philadelphia) with dozens of officers in one district sharing a bookmaker or a loan shark's profits. "Serpico" the movie and not the book by concentrating on heavy graft at which even a veteran would be taken aback, could well to make people feel that only thej "big note" is bad. But as a cop friend of mine said recently," You get first cup of coffee, the first couple of newspapers off some guy's stand for free you get a suit wholesale, and from there on in it gets easier every time." 'Over Here Mazene and Patty Andrews In "Over Here," at the Shubert iini.