The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 198

nferioinm ent umlfXkiiiHmm Dick Van Dyke 'Cold Turkey9 Is Fresh and Cynical By Vincent Canby NEW YORK The art of Norman Lear is not a subject that's likely to occupy a great deal of time at your next deep-think cocktail party, at least, not in connection with his new film, "Cold Turkey," which he wrote, directed and produced with his longtime partner, Bud Yorkin, as executive producer. If Lear's name comes up at all, it will probably be because of his CBS television series, "All in the Family," which has been either hailed or condemned because it has a semi-hard-hat hero named Archie, who uses words like "spic," "spook" and "polak" to define his outlook on life. I SUPPOSE this is understandable since both the defenders and the detractors of "All in the Family" agree that it is a situation comedy that attempts to attack bigo-atry and racism by means of comedy. That, as we all have been conditioned to believe is relevent and important. It is something worth talking about quite humorlessly, especially in the context of television, which isn't as much a wasteland as a jungle where missed opportunities, buried beneath each half-hour segment of flowering non-sequitors, disintegrate to provide the loam in which non-sequitors will thrive.

Both "All in the Family" and "Cold Turkey" are what is known in the trade as "gimmick" comedies, that is, comedies based on a single idea that usually stops being funny long before the work that contains it. Most comedies with gimmicks are bad, and thus the word itself is automatically pejorative which is unfortunate when one comes to consider the clever, hustling, topical comedies that Lear makes. LEAR'S GIMMICK for "All in the Family" is lower middle class prejudice, which has won for the series a reputation of controversy that is, to my way of thinking, largely spurious. Depending on which television critic you read, the series is a TV breakthrough in satiric boldness, or an affront to good taste and manners. Actually it is neither.

It is another 30-min-ute family comedy, one that has a warm heart and whose vocabulary could only seem liberated when compared to that used in deodorant commercials. Much more engaging in its fashion, is "Cold Turkey," guaranteed to turn you off, even if its title doesn't. Its main joke, simply stated, is what happens to the citizens of a town (Eagle Rock, Iowa, Popular 4,006) when they try to give up smoking for 30 days in order to win the $25 million prize offered by a tobacco company, whose president (Edward Everett Horton) hopes to be remembered for his philanthropies, rather than as the man who sold 13 trillion cigarettes in his lifetime. The gimmick is essentially harmless. It doesn't insure for the film the kind of controversy that has obscured the fact that "All in the Family" is most fun as an example of formula comedy, done about as well as it can be done within its limitations.

The hub of Lear's comic wheel is the handsome, healthy, Rev. Clayton Brooks (Dick Van Dyke), a man who jogs every morning and gives sermons in which he says such things as "the powers and principalities of darkness have sapped our strength" and "God is in our corner." "My father, in his good Jewish mind, decided to do something for his son. Put him in a movie big. I had played the 'Summertree' part in Ron Cowen's original play when it was tried out in Waterford, at the Eugene O'Neill Memorial theatre. My father then decided to star me in a movie of the play.

Well, the thing has dragged on for years. Meanwhile, I've gotten two movies of my own, 'Hail, and 'Adam at Six A.M.' Dad didn't have anything to do with those at all." "Summertree" will finally make its debut in May with Brenda Vacarro, Barbara Bel Geddes and Jac Wardon, all top Broadway performers, in the main roles. Michael Douglas was raised by his mother, Diana Dill, an actress (recently seen on Broadway in "Cactus Flower" and "Everything in the and his step-father, Bill Barrid, who has been a Broadway producer Andersonville actor and now screen writer. Going into the acting business was almost second nature to him. In fact, he says, "I never really decided to become an actor at all.

I didn't know what to do. After Choate, I enrolled in Berkeley, where I studied English simply because I didn't know what else to do. Then gradually I started doing a little acting and just floated into the business. When I left school, I went to visit my father in Norway, where he and Richard Harris were doing 'Heroes of I got a job as 'assistant The title sounds great. In translation it means, 'a You know, go for coffee, go for scripts.

But it helped me realize that I really did want to become an actor." MICHAEL DOUGLAS'S decision to do a role in "Pinkville," off-Broadway, where the salaries, often add up to taxi fares, is part of his determination to gain experience and a reputation on his own. He is tired of even the first acclaim he received, which always associated him with daddy (one critic said, after his TV debut: "The younger Douglas could easily go as far as his father'). His friends figure if he keeps at it at the rate he's going some critic next time will say: "Michael Douglas, the son of Diana Dill Michael Douglas: He's oi His Own By William Raidy NEW YORK Six feet and soft-spoken, Michael Douglas is the first to admit that "being the son of Kirk Douglas can't hurt an acting career." Then he adds very quickly: "It can't make you a star, either." Michall, 26, has been an actor for three years. His best reviews were garnered last week in the George Taboris anti-war play, "Pinkville," presented in a church a few blocks away from Times Square by the American Place Theatre. While most critics noted he was the son of a famous father, they did it briefly and without comparison.

Instead, every reviewer remarked the young man had an extraordinary amount of talent. The "Douglas Dilemma" has bothered Michael from the very start of his career. At first, there was even the problem of the name "Michael Douglas." According to the rules of the theatrical union, Actors Equity, only one performer can use the name. And it belongs to the first to TV's Mike Douglas, naturally, might cause a bit of name confusion, so someone suggested Michael use his middle name (Kirk) with a Jr. on the end.

The young man shuddered and shook his head at the same time. (For a while he was reduced to calling himself "M.K.") AS FOR THE "father thing," Michael says: "I'm less aware of it than most people. Oh, I can hear the whispers. Let me get this straight with you. People in the business and my friends know you're not going to get a lead in a picture or become a star simply because you're Kirk Douglas's son.

The movies don't work like that. Things are far more realistic. There's too much money riding on a film." Michael Douglas laughs a great deal about his "father's movie," "Summertree," in which Mike (oops, I'm sorry, Michael) plays the lead. Florida Accent i i Sunday, March 28, 1971 25.