Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 10

10 PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1972 lYIrs. Chuck Anthony Quinn asi LITS A Haitian General? Our movie critic, Joe Baltake, asked me last week about movieland's latest controversy should Anthony Quinn play a Haitian general in a movie? I hadn't gotten around to asking permission from the art and drama critic in the family, my wife, Louise, on how I should feel about it. I asked her for a short statement. (She's never written a short statement in her life!) Here is her view. I BY LOUISE DAVIS STONE A few weeks back, the New York Times opened its theater section with two letters about the filming of the life of a great Haitian general, Henri Christophe.

Black actress Ellen Holly's letter criticized Chicano actor, Anthony Quinn, for planning to play the historic Haitian in a film and beseeched him to change his mind. Quinn naturally defended his right to play the man. Like locusts, letters sought the drama desk of the Times and among those printed were many from blacks including Ossie Davis, urban-leaguing Quinn to drop the project because Henri Christophe, a black hero, should not be tampered with by a white actor in blackface for the sake of black children. What One can imagine the Times staff chuckling over blacks begging for a piece of the action and Quinn saying up yours. Later, the Times slyly included a letter on its pages from a Haitian who sounded off against American chauvinist pigs by declaring that only a Haitian should portray the role in a film produced and directed only by Haitians.

That really wiped the floor with Holly and Quinn." ALL THIS DEMOCRATIC forum show of balance is silliness. Here it is 1972. What blacks and other minorities should be saying instead is "Anthony Quinn. go ahead, paint yourself black and we will see that no black person enters the film's showing. We'll make you lose a bundle." Show some muscle, Ellen Holly institutional begging is out, institutional intimidation is in.

If Mayor Rizzo said to the Italian-American population, don't go to a film because it insults our group, the movie fools would hurt. Let's get off symbols for a moment. After all, symbols don't make revolutions. Henri Christophe is a distraction. The grit, the grind, the gigantic need is jobs, housing, health services, day care centers.

Henri Christophe wouldn't make it in Harlem 30 minutes. PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLLY, Anthony Quinn and Ellen Holly share the same rowboat. They are what the entertainment world types as "exotics," what dog-lovers call "soon-ers" (just as soon this as that), what romance novelists call "half-breeds" and what editor Neill calls "mulattos." Both Quinn and Holly suffered early in their careers because they weren't clean-cut WASP types. Ellen Holly is still penalized for not being Mack or white enough. Quinn has made it.

Holly has not. It's interesting that they should be at opposite sides of this forum. Type-casting is a fact of theater. Theater is a magic show. Magic comes from within the performer and meshes with elements such as words, lights, music.

Some pull it off, others can't. 1 BUT ANYWAY YOU look at it, the validity, the-greatness and the universality of black heroes cannot be destroyed or eroded by a single non-black performance. Does Laurence Olivier, looking ridiculous behind blue eyes and black grease paint, make Othello less a man? Hell, no. would the children think? Dear me, all this concern for the children. Every week, black Hollywood grinds out a new film about black life, black fantasy by black technicians, all glorifying the ghetto hero, the game-runner, the purple pants, penis-pushing, pot-smoking, Porsche-driving male who brutalizes women for sport.

But the real issue in this controversy whether art can rise above race. Quinn says it can, that one nationality should be able to play another. Ellen Holly, a recent black, seems to say that the few black heroes should be left for black actors one, because otherwise identity problems are worsened "Ok 'j Quinn for black children; and, two, there are so few opportunities for black performers that the decent thing to do is leave 'em be and eventually black folks will get around to recording on film. ALU THE CMIPET ODSES LIVING ROOM DINING ROOM STAIRS UP TO 40 SQ. YDS.

Two Indicted In Stock Fraud A former Securities Exchange Commission lawyer and a businessman, who allegedly used fraud to unload in stolen securities through brokerage houses and banks, were indicted yesterday by a Federal grand jury in New York. They were identified as Martin A. Forman, 54, the former SEC lawyer of 1120 Conventry Cheltenham, and Godred Fred Fugger, 53, of 2601 Parkway. Fugger, a part-owner of Tilecast in Moorestown, N. was arrested here Sunday.

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