The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 21

Mrs. Ford and the Tension of Notoriety i i 1 iM Snselcs; Etmtf VIEW PART IV FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1973 mmwmimmmmiS mMmMmd imtsmmBimmmimma ysilllllBi Siilllliii'S. iX? 111 '-mffm mrn'mmmmm Msmmim -I ffj -w. BY MARLENE CIMONS Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON The tension cf having a husband away from home most of the time, coupled -with, the constant discomfort from a pinched nerve in her neck, finally got to Betty Ford about a year ago She began to see a psychiatrist here and, after several visits, the doctor asked to see her husband, Vice President-designate Gerald R. Ford.

"He saw him a couple of times," Mrs. Ford said in an interview with The Times. "But it had nothing to do with Jerry. It was just his dumb wife." Tuesday, Ford denied an allegation that he had undergone treatment by a New York City psychotherapist, Dr. Arnold A.

Hutschnecker, who first name to national attention in 1968 when it was reported he had treated Richard Nixon when Mr. Nixon was Vice President. The allegation was made by Robert N. Winter-Berger, a one-time Washington lobbyist and author of "The Washington Payoff." Ford had called the statement "a categorical inaccuracy." Mrs. Ford appeared unfamiliar with Hut-schnecker's name Wednesday, but said that her husband had visited her psychiatrist in Washington, and she emphasized it was only because the doctor had requested it.

"I would hate to rain my husband's career, but he went to a psychiatrist because I went to one. With the pain from the pinched nerve in my neck, I couldn't do the things I wanted to do," Mrs. Ford said. "The doctor who was treating me for the pain said he knew a psychiatrist I could talk to to help relieve the tension. He said he would get an appointment for me." She went, and said, "It was helpful talking over the problems of being here alone quite a bit of the time and having to make decisions about the children at a crucial stage in their growing up.

I had been assuming the role of both mother and father." Please Turn! to Page 4, Col. 1 A FAMILY CONFERENCE Betty Ford, the wife with their son Steven, a 17-year-old high school of the Vice President-designate, Gerald Ford, talks senior, in the family's Alexandria, Virginia, home. Times photo by James H. 1'kkerell MOVIE REVIEW Matthau Flees the Law and Mafia CRITIC AT LARGE S.F. Film Fest Gets Off to Stylish Start BY CHARLES CHAMPLIN Times Entertainment Editor FK NCISCO Like all film festivals everywhere.

San Francisco's has had some shaky years of debt and dissension. But the festival has survived and steadied down. It launched its 17th annual running at the Palace of Fine Arts here Wednesday night virtually deficit-free. Eight of its 12 nights are already sellouts and others are nearly so. It will show 23 films from 15 countries and give special tributes, with discussions and clips from their films, to Joanne Wood-ward, Rath Gordon, Robert Altman, David Wol-.

per, Shirley MacLaine and Francois Truffaut. Truffaut gets two nights one for his superb new film, "Day for Night," and the next for a retrospective tribute which has a champagne party included in the ticket price. San Francisco is not a marketplace like Cannes and it is not as important a showcase for foreign films as the New York festival. It does not burn with quite the same sacred film-buff fire of devotion to cinema that gives the struggling young Filmex in Los Angeles its special intensity. But tinder former actor Claude Jarman who has been director of the festival since 1967, and George Gund, the wealthy young rancher who is its president, the San Francisco festival has become a genuine civic event in the best sense, celebrating the cause of film and very stylishly, too, with the help of a lot of volunteers.

The ideal film festival would borrow elements from several. Cannes holds off its gala party until the last night, when everyone is so exhausted, glaze-eyed and sour that the event has all the gaiety of a bankruptcy hearing. San Francisco sensibly places its hoopla at the beginning with a very handsome post screening formal -dinner-dance, held this year in the stunning ballroom of the new Regency Hyatt House, with the beautiful dancing people reflected in the ballroom's black-mirrored ceiling and suggesting a scene from an elegant movie yet to be made. The festival's opening selection was admirably brave and unjoyous. It was "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams," a somber, rather slow and deeply felt study of a couple reexamining their marriage and themselves 24 years later.

Stewart Stem wrote the script for Joanne Woodward, for whom he also wrote "Rachel, Rachel." Martin Balsam, in the finest of all the fine performances he has given over the years, is the quiet, solid but by no means dull husband who is i-: ill able to see the values in his wife which she has ceased to find in herself. Miss Woodward, full of shrill self-pity until she can no longer escape seeing the suffering of others, does a portrayal I admired much more than her work in "Marigolds." Sylvia Sidney provides a vivid cameo as her mother. For all its somber intensity, Wishes" is finally an upper, not a downer, with its princi-nals finding wisdom, not despair, an ability to ac themselves as they are without the narcotics of memory and wistful fancj Gilbert Cates, who did "I Never Sang for My Father," directed this film with the same sensitivity and with considerably greater technical assur-' ance. It is a remarkable work. As splendid as Matthau (playing his first heavy in over a decade) and everybody else is, "Charley Varrick" is above all Don Siegel's film from start to finish.

Celebrated for such low-budget classics as "Riot in Cell Block 11" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," Siegel has at last come into his uvm with his recent series of pictures with Clint Eastwood and is now at the peak of his powers. The way in which he can make action and even violence expressive is nothing short of dazzling. "Charley Varrick" seems never to pause indeed, it proceeds most often at a breakneck pace yet all the while Siegel captures the still open and Please Turn to Page 18, Col. I scene. Varrick make's his getaway with the loot, but his wife (Jacqueline Scott) is shot to death.

Soon he discovers he's been left literally holding the bag, which is filled with about three-quarters of a million in cash. The sum is so astronomical he realizes he has struck a Mafia lode. Consequently, "Charley Varrick" is essentially a chase picture, with Matthau attempting to outwit the law on one hand and the Mafia on the other. Thanks to Siegel's impeccable direction and to the imaginative script Howard Rodman and Dean Riesner fashioned from John Reese's novel "The Looters," this Universal production becomes a compelling struggle between brains and brawn. BY KEVIN THOMAS Timet Staff Writer In the title role of Don Siegel's new film "Charley Varrick" (at the Cinerama Dome), Walter Matthau plays a canny crook who's deliberately a small-timer.

Knock over a couple of rural banks here and there, lay low for awhile and you're home free that's the way Charley figures it. So the in the tiny town of Tres Cruces, N.M., isa natural for Varrick, who was once a stunt pilot before being reduced to dusting crops. But a couple of local cops just happen on the SPRING FASHION: II Dresses in Tune With Variety This is the second in a series of reports on the California fashion market for spring. The clothes illustrated here will be available later in the stores. BY DOROTHY HARRINGTON Times Staff Writer It's as if the California misses dress market has been vamping until ready, ever since the influx of pants.

Now it's ready for spring 1974 and it's gone from strictly classical to rock Bach in its variations on the dress theme. In the 20 misses dress lines previewed, some of which will be shown next week at California Fashion Creators Press Week, pants are no longer carrying the tune even though they still augment the soore. But there's enough diversification in misse3 dresses to keep everyone happily in stitches. There's the wrap dress, the blouson, the dropped shoulder, long torso, smock, sweater, tent dress plus the everlasting shirt dress, often updated. The shirt jacket costume is important and the shirt jacket is taking precedence over the blazer in pantsuits.

The suit returns along with the coat costume. The sparkle seems to have gone out of the 30s flash for spring evenings; now it's more Scarlett O'Hara revisited with flounces and furbelows or Please Turn to Page 2, Col. 1 TRENDS IN DRESSES FOR SPRING From California lines in about-the-knee daytime lengths, from left, California Girl's shirt jacket costume in polyestergabardine, with print bodice; Emanon's navy crepe de chine printed wrap jacket costume; S. Howard Hirsch's one-piece taupe polyester matte jersey blouson dress with beige camisole; Anjac's dropped shoulder dress in Dacroncotton knit, clergy cellar. Drawings by Fernando Flores THE VIEWS INSIDE BOOKS: "The Unwritten War" by Robert Kirsch on Page 5.

MOVIES: "The Inheritor" by Kevin Thomas on Page 19. "Detour" by Fredric Milstein on Page 21. MUSIC: Cleveland Quartet by A I er Goldberg on Page 17. UCLA Baroque Ensemble by Melody Peterson on Page 17. OPERA: Operas by Mark Bucci by Daniel Cariaga on Pagft 15.

STAGE: "The Kramer" by Dan Sullivan on Page 22. WHAT'S DOING IN ORANGE COUNTY on Page 12. Bargain Rates for Getting Your Head Straight AND OTHER FEATURES used because this office at 5797 Beach Blvd. 'is only the first of 16 PSC offices being planned for Orange County. Since PSC opened nearly 430 clients have sought help here, everyone from a 4-ycar-old to a woman in her COs.

Some of the patients arc involved in private, one-to-one psychological counseling. Others are involved in group sessions. They arc charged a minimum of $10 per hour (half that for group counseling), with fees arranged on a sliding scale according to ability to pay. BY ANNE LaRlVIERE Timet Staff Writer BUENA PARK With the going rate for a private session with a licensed psychologist somewhere near $10 an hour, it's nico to know that at last there is a place where low cost help can be obtained. It's called the Psychological Services Centers (PSC), and it's an outgrowth of several years of study by members of the Orange County Psychological Assn.

(OCPA) and the Orange County Assn. of Educational Psychologists (OCAEP). The plural name (Centers instead of Center) is All the counselors volunteer their services and either see patients at PSC headquarters or in their own offices located from San Juan Capistrano to the north county cities. PSC had a long gestation period, rooted in several years of planning by local OCPA psychologists who met back in 1970 to discuss the county's needs in terms cf mental health. "We know that the ones who can afford psychological help are not the only ones who need it," explained Dr.

George Iloff, a member of the PSC Please Turn to Page 10, Col. 1 Dear Abby 26 Comics Page 25 Astrology Page 2 On View Page 3 Art Walk Page 6 Cecil Smith 23 Bernheimer 16 Stage Beat 21 Bridge Page 8 Television 23, 24.