The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 44

2- THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, Monday, January 21, 1980 Good Material Is Saving Grace For Windom 9s Ernie Pyle Review minutes he presented the audience with a relaxing reading of Ernie Pyle observations of rural Americana. Windom played for comfort, not for articulation. His renditions, alternately recited from memory and read from the copy, were much like a performance delivered in someone's living room after a dinner party: effective and engaging, but unbrilliant. One or two touching Pyle vignettes, however, incited applause. After a 20-minute intermission, Windom strolled again onstage, this time outfitted in Army fatigues, and carrying a mess kit cup.

His personification of the war correspondent was as a bulky, slow-moving dullard, who wrote with style and sensitivity, but who must have been a dreadfully boring creature in person. (Pyle was most certainly not like that.) At one point, Windom spoke to the audience "out of character" to explain he had once been introduced to a soldier Pyle wrote about during the war. The lapse, although amusing, slowed down the already-dragging performance. As a further distraction, Windom interjected a slide show of Howard Bro-dy's war-time line drawings into the second act. It was unnecessary for the audience to witness Windom-as-Pyle, decked out in Army fatigues, punohmg the clicking button of a modern-day slide projector.

Still, what the mostly-middle-aged audience had come to hear was Ernie Pyle and Windom's selections of the writer's work was well-chosen. The two-hour evening afforded a glimpse of an American whose love and concern for people endeared him to millions. Pyle was a good man, and he believed in an important ideal: that although there is trouble and hatred and torment all around us, the fidelity of goodness in the human character, deeply-buried as it may be, is a strong, worshipful thing. lonely, hungry, exhausted, afraid and determined to win. He was the nation's true-hearted connection with soldiers, and to the soldiers, he became a heroic friend.

William Windom, probably best-known as an Emmy-winning televion actor, appeared at the Tampa Theatre last year with his one-man tribute to humorist James Thurber. Saturday evening, his Ernie Pyle tribute was divided into two parts: Pyle in America before the War and Pyle in war-torn Europe. Windom appeared for the first act dressed in a gray suit, green white shirt, polka-dot tie and brown fedora. He is a fuller-framed man than Pyle was, and has a mellow, engaging smile. Setting his water glass on a small writing table, he removed his hat and coat, produced some worn newspaper copy and proceeded quoting excerpts from Pyle early works.

Unfortunately, Windom was plagued with either a cold or a case of voice strain. From early on, his vocalizations were strained. But for 50 By JEFF DUNLAP Tribune Staff Writer William Windom's interpretation of the life of Ernie Pyle, performed before a near-capacity house at the Tampa Theatre Saturday night, offered one saving grace: Windom had good material to work with, Ernie Pyle, a columnist for Scripps-Howard newspapers for 18 years until he died on Okinawa during the final stages of World War II, was one of America's last great champions of the "little man." He celebrated the pithy, in-bred courage of ordinary men and women, and focused in his writing on the virtues of humor, honesty, common sense, home-town sentiment and freedom from fear. Collected, his best known works before the war formed a patchwork quilt of American colors: he wrote about small towns in Montana; Eskimos who owned all kinds of unnecessary electrical gadgets; garter snakes; happy drunkards; and the aroma of coffee in the morning upon waking up lonesome in some strange hotel. By the time he departed for England in 1940, Pyle was loved nationwide because his readers knew him as a mortal man; they understood him for what he was an Indiana farm boy who had grown up curious about the fragile layers of pride people tend to wrap around their lives.

As Pyle once accounted, after years of dragging a typewriter across the continent, "I've found that the happiest people in America are not those who are wonderous wise but a little crazy!" To the war, Pyle took along his typewriter and his homespun respect for ordinary life-living. Dug in with the dogfaces of Europe and North Africa, he wrote about courage (which he considered uncommon, although it was everywhere) and most of the other human elements that emerge when men are Low-Budget fThe Godsend' Exploits Our Basic Fears Movie Review Movie King. THE GODSEND Critics's Rating: Rated: Stars: Cvd Hayman, Malcolm Stoddard, Angelo Pleasence Contains implied violence, implied sex. Now playing at the the Varsity 6, the Horizon Park 4, the Hillsborough Drive-in. know; he was here just a momant and to nearly everyone wjjpjjas spent time around small children.

The entire melodrama is playect'in common English surroundings a country cottage, the seashore, an apartment and with unfamiliar if not tin-talented actors. Malcolm Stoddard plays Dad; Cyd Hayman plays Mom; Angela Pleasence plays the mysterious pregnant woman. Thus the only remarkable aspect of the film is this calculated exploitation of fear, and that is made remarkable by the fact that Beaumont refuses to inject blood or guts into the proceedings. The deaths occur mostly offscreen, and without the gory detail we've come to expect as standard in movies with tiiles like "The Godsend." vu And while "The good use of its limitations, it retalss'the look and feel of a limited effor'C I it weren't for those few squirmy foments, the film's appeal would beevcn more limited. George Meyer is an assistant prlKs-sor in the Department of Mass Communications at the University of South Florida.

By GEORGE MEYER In "The Godsend," producer-director Gabrielle Beaumont serves up a marvelous lesson for would-be filmmakers: how to make a scary movie without access to special effects, exotic locations or large amounts of money. Surprisingly, the Beaumont method works moderately well. Even though "The Godsend" might have benefited from injections of expensive Hollywood slickness, it nonetheless offers some moments interesting enough to make the film seem attractive during the excruciating movie drought that annually follows the Christmas deluge. Instead of frightening the viewer with costly gimmicks, Beaumont exploits some basic human fears, most of them involving our protective feelings about children. One day on an outing, Mom, Dad and the kids meet a very nice and very pregnant woman.

When rain threatens, the family politely invites the woman home with them. Without warning, the woman goes into labor. Dad rushes for the doctor, but the baby won't wait and Mom helps deliver a healthy baby girl. Thinking He may not be any great shakes as a moviemaker, but Ecenia has also had a brush with success in producing several feature films locally. "Let's just say they all made money," Ecenia said, taking the much shorter cigar out of a wide grin.

"My films, 'Scream Bloody Willie and Scratch, 'My Brother Has Bad Dreams' and 'Agnes' they all made money." The native New Yorker a veteran of many professional and amateur stage plays and a long-standing member of the Screen Actors Guild also has starred in most of his films. His wife, Rita, was also a performer with such acts as the acrobatic team the Appletons. The couple met in a club where she was singing and dancing. In those days, Ecenia had visions of becoming a big-name film star. He acted in a few '40s films, such as "Aloma of the South Seas," starring Dorothy Lamour.

And he was all set to fulfill a contract with Paramount Studios upon his scheduled release from the Army at the Pearl Harbor Naval From Page ID And his daughter, Tandy, is a theatrical set designer in Texas, taking after her parent's love of the performing arts. Ironically, Ecenia's obsession with film loving and collecting started 20 years ago as a result of the fence business. "One of my customers couldn't pay his bill and asked me if I'd take a 16-millimeter projector and a film as payment. Now, my greatest pleasure is in collectlfig, preserving and watching great movies," said. He'gets his movies through houses that have bought out lots of films from movie companies and TV stations and by trading with other collectors.

A 16-rnm print may cost anywhere from $60 "to $300, he said, depending on the film and the Shape it's in. I Andprvhen he describes himself as a classic film collector, Ecenia pronounces that word collector, with more than a touch of reverence. Base on Dec. 8, 1941. Of course, the day before he was due to get out, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and that, as they say, was that.

"I always blamed the Japs for me not being an actor," he said, laughing. "It was like they did it on purpose." But apparently it takes more than a mere world war to stop this trooper. There is yet another Ecenia film in the works, he said. "My son and I are going to do another movie, one that we wrote. I play kind of an Art Carney part in it," Ecenia divulged.

"It's a comedy-vampire film. And it's 50 times funnier than 'Love At First "And I'm not just saying that because I wrote it either," he said. About the only personal, informs tion the businessman-actor-movie nut wouldn't reveal during the several-hour tour through his filmdom, was his age. "You can presume from everything I've told you, I'm no spring chicken," Ecenia said, savoring the last of that afternoon cigar. the woman needs rest, they leave her alone.

But by morning, the stranger is gone, and the family is left with a new child. The family adopts the baby girl and all seems fine until the other children begin dying unnatural deaths one is smothered in its crib; another drowns; a third dies in a fall. Eventually, Dad suspects -something's a little strange with the foundling daughter, but Mom is so emotionally damaged by her natural children's deaths that she clings furiously to the adopted child. What's a mother to do? By the end of the film that question is resolved, unsatisfactorily, but not until the viewer has endured some squirmy moments common to most parents the baby?" "I don't Greene. From Page ID "Dear Michael: This is a very awkward kind of thing for me to do, because I'm not very good at writing letters in general and also I've never written a letter like this before to someone I've 'never met.

But I felt that I had to do it anyway, "because I wanted to let you know that I agree with what you are doing. I am also looking for someone who I can share my life with "Dear Michael: All of my three sisters are married and they are younger than I am. My mother and father are beginning to worry that I But really, that's not it. You don't have to be a particularly sensitive person to realize that, behind the brave front, so many people men and women are longing after lifetime companions. "Letters to Michael" confirms that but the confirmation is only secondary in importance to another truth.

Which is this: Not only are the women desperate they are so desperate that they are willing to put a childlike faith in the possibility that the man in the subway ad is somehow different than all the rest of the men they have met in their real lives. The women know nothing about Michael Block, other than that he looks like many other men they see on the street, and that he placed a somewhat awkwardly phrased 49-word ad in the subways. But that is enough. Apparently things are so bad out there that a Michael Block can seem like magic. Like a fantasy.

And what does it say that, in our time, the object of fantasy for 8,000 women is not a movie star, is not a television personality, is not a famous singer but is a fellow who advertises for a wife in the subway? I'm not sure, but I think it says something about hope. may never get married. I am not so worried myself, even though I am 35 years old. Every now and then, though, I begin to worry that maybe I won't find the right man. I was feeling that way a few days ago until I read your ad.

It struck me that maybe the right man had come along "Dear Michael: I would love to meet you, but I think it is only fair to warn you that I don't believe in foreplay "Dear Michael: I hope what you are doing is not a joke. I want very much to believe in it, and I am assuming that you and what you are doing are the real thing. I will proceed on that basis At first when I read the letters, I thought the thing that was striking me was the fact that there were so many lonely women, so desperate to find a husband that they would resort to answering an ad. We live in a time when it's supposed to be OK for women to stay unmarried; as a matter of fact, most of the women glorified in popular culture are independent, single types, and so maybe it ought to be surprising to find that there are so many who are yearning for a husband. SPECIAL THIS WEEK Estrada.

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9:00 to 5:00 Got something to sell? Call Classified 272-7500. VISA CALL 879-8005 Designers of Personalized and Original Cold Jewelry From Page ID Estrada doesn't want to get caught in bars either, noting that his forays into the social life of Hollywood are discreet. He won't ever do beer cials, although he did admit to drinking the stuff on occasion. In talking about all these constraints on his life, Estrada finally conceded, "I'm not happy all the time. "All I ever wanted to be was an actor with a job," he said, noting he never dreamed he would wind up with millions of little girls panting after his exhaust.

But faced nevertheless with such a high profile to so many children, Es trada said he has tried to live a proper, life. "Kids need someone to push them," he said. With some wistfulness, Estrada recalled his early days as a struggling Puerto Rican actor in New York, who would offer his bilingual services to movie companies shooting in the city. From that, Estrada parlayed his way into bit parts in several films, making his way eventually to Los Angeles and television. He once shot a priest on a "Hawaii-Five-O" episode.

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