The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 506

log Angeles; QHmetf SUNDAY JUNE 19, 1964 1 "-m -r- Theatrical Significance of ANTA Assembly Here ilili 1 A' 5 A I 1 J' f. BY CECIL SMJTH It 3 The shifting theatrical winds in this country cannot be better dramatized than by the presence here this week of the American National Theater arid Academy's seventh annual assembly. This is the first A NT A national assembly. to be held in the West. Only once before was an assembly held outside Broadway's traditional and hallowed theatrical center and that was in Washington, The theme of the conclave, "The Professional Actor, 1966," will, mark the first real exploration of the new frontiers of professional theater, the emergence of the theater as a cultural institution of civic pride and civic responsibility in cities from Minneapolis to Seattle to Houston.

It will examine the sharpening focus on the art of the theater as well as its bread-and-butter existence. And because the art of the theater is the art of j- mm The Mahdi'i dervishes attack the city of Khartoum from a fleet of feluccas in "Khartoum," a United Artist release in Cinerama opening Thursday at Pacific Cinerama. 'Khartoum' Exceptional Film Fare BY PHILIP K. SCHEUER on the training aiurdevc'lepjnent actor with Dr. C.

Lowell I-iees moderator and Stella Adler, Jeff Core Curt Conway, Francis Lederer, Ivai Dixon, Karl Maiden and James Keran. among participants. On Sunday, a symposium on the sta. vs. the ensemble performer will held with Rosamond Gilder as mod erator and Lucille Ball, Lee J.

Cobb Bette Davis, Jack Lemmon, Ross Hun ter, Robert Vaughn and Times enter tainment editor Charles Champlir among participants. For all of these sessions, both pro-" fessionals and general public can en roll through UCLA Extension, co sponsor of the meeting. Other major participants include ANTA president Walter Abel, its na tional chairman Donald Seawell UCLA Ohancelor Franklyn D. Murphy and most particularly Arthur O'Connell, president of the Southen California chapter of ANTA. A Tricky Business 77 Actor O'Connell the other day rubbed a hand wearily across a griz zled cheek and said: "Putting a thinf like this together is no way to mak.

friends. "People have got to bow out likt Greg Peck, he had to leave to make picture in Switzerland. But on the oth er hand, a guy like Paul Newmar comes to you and says what can I do Paul says he wants to be on all thx panels. All right. Let him be on all 'em.

"It's time actors down to look a what's happening. I think, basically, most of them have got the message-Broadway is finished. A new kind of theater is growing in this land. And ii an actor is smart, he'd better get onto it. "It's one thing for actors to si' around and talk among themselves.

But the real pi-ds function best in fishbowl. It's in the nature of the ani-. mal that if they've got people watch inf they'll off. and talk about their work. Don't get the idea this is going to Ik any dry academic session.

Not with nw running it. If you, got theater, peopk; talking about theater, let's be theatrical about it. Give it the old rat-a-tat-tat." He. grinned and added: "How did I get mt this thing anyway?" O'Connell got in the way John Kerr and Leon Ames and a number of other theatrical figures got in, A couple of years ago. a number of them had th feeling that.

ANTA, particularly it-Southern California, chapter, was hardly functioning as a leader and spokes-. man of the theatrical profession. ANTA, chartered by Congress if 1935 "for the purpose of furthering the living theater in every state of th union," did not seem to them to be th national voice of the profession they it should ha, Pleas Turn Page lft, Celumtt I the actor (he alone can stand oh a stage and make it happen), it. will take a thorough look at the conflicting demands of Broadway and Hollywood on the one hand and the growing needs of repertory companies on the other. The assembly opens Thursday with a reception at the new Century Plaza Hotel but the meat of its argument will be contained in sessions on the UCLA campus next Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Award to Be Presented These include luncheon meetings to be addressed by Gov. Edmund G. Brown, Roger L. Stevens, chairman of the National Council on the Arts, and Jack Valenti, new president of the Motion Picture Producers Assn. Hume Cron5'n, who has spent two seasons with the Tyrone Guthrie repertory in Minnesota, will give the keynote address Friday morning on the problems facing professional actors today.

The ANTA Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Performing Arts will be presented at Saturday's luncheon to Mrs. Dorothy Buffum Chandler for her leadership in building The Music Center here. Previous recipients of the award have included Leonard Bernstein, the Ford Foundation, Agnes DeMille, Jason Robards and Anne Bancroft. I Panel sessions Friday will explore the actor in show business and the actor in repertory. Moderator of the first will be the distinguished actress Peggy Wood and participants include actors Jose Ferrer, Jack Palance and Davis Roberts, playwright Ray Bradbury, director Rouben Mamoulian.

At the repertory session, Robert Loper of the Stanford Repertory will preside and panelists include the APA's Ellis Rabb, Theater Group's Gordon Davidson, National Repertory's Michael Dewell, the Old Globe's Craig Noel, the Actors a Workshop's. John Hancock and actress. Kind JFoch? A Saturday panel will lie conducted When you lell people about it be sure you pronounce it distinctly "Khartoum." Otherwise they 'may think you're praising cartoorv. I'll have it easier because I can spell it right out for you. And this I shall certainly do.

1 "Khartoum" is one of the ablest pictures of its kind I've ever seen. It is a truly great spectacle, not one synthesized mainly for the sake of a wide screen in this case Cinerama. It is also exceptional in that its man-to-man confrontations in themselves have drama. The confrontations are chiefly between a British general named Charles (Chinese) Gordon and a fanatical Arab, self-styled messiah, called Mohammed Achmed by Gordon and the Mahdi (the Expected One) by his equally fanatical followers. From 1883 to 1885 these two men "of vanity and vision" were locked in mortal battle the Mahdi as attacker of Khartoum in the Egyptian Sudan and Gordon as its defender.

Gordon is an Englishman and he has been dispatched by Gladstone, the prime minister, because England has "responsibilities" in Egypt but not, as Gladstone warns him repeatedly, to the extent of backing the general with troops. Gordon Final Fatality Thus Gordon must rely on friendly Egyptians, by whom he is" promptly ap-. pointed governor-general of the Sudan, and on an English aide, Col. J. Stewart, to devise and dairy out emer-- gency tactics against the wily Mahdi.

1 The. siege of the city continues for 317 days. One of the last fatalities though supposedly against the Mahdi's orders is Gordon himself, felled by a dervish spear on Jan. 20, 1885. Two days later British relief arrives.

Gordon himself had never flinched' from what he conceived to be his sol dier's duty. Once he had told the Mahdi that death was but the servant of his Between these two men existed an almost mystical lovehate relationship a theme developed in such other works as "Becket" and "A Man for All Seasons." A good deal of the strength of their confrontations; Charlton Hes-ton as Gordon and Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi must be credited to the author of the screenplay, Robert Ardrey. Nevertheless, Heston has never sustained a role this masterfully and Sir Laurence, of course, is in his element, still playing Othello." Praise for Directors In fairness, praise for the direction should be divided between Basil Dear-den and Yakima Cahutt of the second or "action" unit. Dearden stops indivi- duals and Canutt moves Blaustein produced 'the Unit- ed Artists film in London and Egypt, mostly Cairo, using Ultra Panavision i and Technicolor. Like the Mahdi, Gordon' had his own mystique, his own brand of religion and between brandies-and-sodas he prayed.

Heston invests him with depth of character and, rarer for this actor, humor. A savior to the Egyptians, Gordon charges himself with saving 13,000 inhabitants even though the Mahdi has assured him grimly, "I will take Khartoum and the streets will run in blood and every child, 'woman and man will die." Back in are many connivers besides but public opinion finally, forces the government, to intervene officially. Meanwhile, Gordon doggedly refuses to out of Egypt" even at the repeated insistence of his aide, Col: Stewart whom he regards as Gladstone's "spy." Stewart nevertheless sticks by Cordotivcn. at Please Turn te Pge 5, Column 3.