The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 359

'Rosebloom A Six-Day Play Finally Arrives BY. HARVEY PERR Hepburn Has Enthusiasm to Spare for Films BY MARY BLUME I had to write it came out of me in a compulsive rush, each 'page -nervously feeding into image piling upon image; sometimes getting out of hand; sometimes settling into place, all in six days during the early autumn of three years ago. It was a kind of purge. Six days, I like to say, to: write, but 29 years, I like to think, to i- put it together until it was finally aWe i to get from my gut to the typewriter. It-was difficult and, because it was it was exhilarating.

And it was a purge because it was the fir it full-- length play I had written in almost two A playwright who doesn't write a play In almost two years gets to feel-: ing less and less a playwright. ''-I'm ho good really at telling stories. You know, starting from the beginning, proceeding- to the middle, reaching the end. In' logicar order. So I'm bound to go back and forth in time and space now and but I am at least going 'to try to start at the beginning.

ATIENZA, If you want to make a movie, do try, by all means, to get Katharine Hepburn. Not only does she have three Oscars, a record, but she is also a first-rate all- around production assistant, coach, tireless cheerleader and daily purveyor of cakes, chocolates and biscuits to eve-' ry member of the crew. She Is always on the when she Isn't needed, a custom that unnerves some directors. 'I'm curious. I like to see what everybody does, then I know what I'm up against." Tne com- bative tone is self-mockihg.

In truth she is plain crazy about movie-making and is a living example of Emerson's dictum, "Nothing great was achieved without enthusiasm." She has enthusiasm to spare. When is no action on the set she is off She is especially keen on St, Theresa of Avila: "She's so funny, I'm always fascinated, by "what pushes people to become saints. She was an or- 1 ganizer, of course." On her first trip to-Spain, to play Hecuba in Michael annis' film version of "The Trojan Wo- she has invented an efficient pa-. '-j tois and enjoys close if inchoate conver-; -sations with Pedro the Umbrella Man, wrinkled peasant whose job is to shade An Invitation l-i- niii fii in -n-f iifiir -wm n.n.mn,. n.

ntn i an in irrwir rrrilii mrrmnrrr irwn il with a huge, dotted parasol, keep- ing hdf'Tinfceckled as befits a tragic queen. here in 1965, my, wife and daughter and because Universal Studios called me long distance one day, one particularly wet and gray late summer New York, day, and asked" if I'd come to Hollywood and be a writer, a proposition I had to think; over for about three seconds before reaching a decision (we were living at the time, you see, on $85 a week minus deductions). During my very first week at Universal I finished a play: In those days, one was always finishing a play, start Albert Finney portrays miserly Ebenezer Scrooge in Cinema Center's musical "Scrooge." Ho Hurabug Family Movie Scrooge7 PremiereThucsday ing a new one. But then inertia set in. -Tere wasn't much to do.

I'd get to the coffee, read, the trades, BY CHARLES CHAMPUN stroll back tothe.office, go out to lunch, get back in time to go-home and wait for the next And, of course, a true New Yorker, curse Hollywood every other day. And I didn't write. I suppose 'if I had to do it I would; after all as a child I spent so much time in dark movie houses that, for all that was awful about the year at Universal, I was able to live-out some of those Me, I kept saying, working at a movie studiotri Of course, once you see Cary Grant, nobody else on the lot is too impressive and a lot of the glamor rubs off pretty quickly after that. So even the. studio hwsmp anothpr darlc nifvi bfiii'ji th Much Enthusiasm She has also built up a fossil collection by climbing around Michael Cacoy-annis' calcareous outdoor location some 90 miles north of Madrid in the high plains of Guadalajara province.

"I have to climb to the top of that 1 mountain to get a rock I left there. Come on." This brisk announcement follows an early-morning helix The. climb begins, Miss Hepburn sprinting ahead, chatting and partly v. from sheer high spirts and partly, no doubt, as a tactful measure to drown out the panting behind her- You don't have a heart condition, do you?" She turns solicitously. v- She soars to the top alone and is back In no time.

"I couldn't find that fossil, Suddenly her sneakered toe turns over a stone with a delicate shell imprint. "This one is very good." There must be a moral jto this no luck with- out effort, perhaps? Miss Hepburn descends and heads for her rented house where she serves lunch to the film's other stars each day. The house, dreary modern but with a fine view and a garden where the fos- sils are on show, is a haven from what must be one of the dustiest and windiest movie sets of all time. On her first visit to the house, Miss Hepburn pulled -out her pocket compass so she could choose the bedroom that is first touched by the rising sun (she rises with it or before it). She then ordered the furniture removed and drove to Madrid to buy rugs and rent furniture from a place that specializes in dressing film sets.

The result is faintly Hispanic and de- Christmas may. still be eight weeks away, but the presents have started arriving. The. first is now in hand, and a memory- warming-delight it is. It is "Scrooge" the latest screen visitation from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas.

Carol," which opens for regular trade on Friday, at Loew's Hollywood after a splashy premiere Thursday nighty It is one of the best pieces of news for the family since the. invention of toys. I'm not sure quite where we stand with screen possessives these days. Dickens" has a claim here. Ronald Neame Prime of ean wag the very able director here.

Leslie Bricusse was executive producer and wrote the adaptation as well as the music and lyrics. Robert Solo was producer. But "Scrooge" belongs wholly and unforgettably to Albert Stooped, grizzled and grimacing, snarling unregenerate misanthropy, cowering in ghastly ghostly Fin-. ney catches all the classical cartoon comedy In Scrooge's scowling ness and all the jumping joyousness of his conversion to kindliness. People," the brightest moment' lyrically in the with a-fine and withering Humbug and Balder- dash have rarely been said quite so em- phatically.

But Finney does a good deal more than that for the old boy. He gives hihv something like depth, and -makes his; i progress from to lover, gradual and subtle, like the sun finding its way through morning1: mists. Finney's -hands, Scrooge may be a grotesque man when we first meet him, but he is a man and not a' grotesque. The effect of giving Scrooge such humanity is that the flashbacks to Christmas Past, when the handsome young Scrocge loses the love of his girl (Suzanne Neve) to the love of gold, become astonishingly touching and revealing. (The advantage of having so young an actor as Finney 'play Scrooge becomes obvious In the same flashbacks.

Through trick photography, the old Scrooge watches helplessly as the young Scrooge, the young Finney, throws away his hope of happiness. Seeing Finney in the real prime and time of his life gives the scene unusual power and a curious immediacy.) Please Turn to Page 26 screening room my adult fantasy trrtli4 T'ci iiinf Viri TTmitrAnnnl trAit run out of films to screen pretty fast. You can see "The and "A Touch T7i.jin i. oi xlivu jusi su.uictiiy umes. --I I did discover when I ran out of Universal flicks that I could turn to the old Paramount catalog and that way I was able to spend lazy afternoons with sef von Sternberg and Preston Sturges.

Nice enough work while it lasts; if you don't mind getting fat and bored, you do at least get to see some great films. Still, in all that time, I didn't write one word that meant anything to me. Please Turn to Page 36 Please Turn to Page 31 He rasps his way through "I Hate.