The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 47

if I Unpetrifyiiig the Southland's Forest Potential ft I 1 XV'i i ,1 I 'T I View PART IV MONDAY, JULY 9, 1973 BY JOHN PASTIER Tlm Architecture Critic i CRITIC AT LARGE A Film Slice of Social History TOR vw't'' -'S 4 s. lis 4' K'r- -i if J' 11 cSV" -rl Only a generation ago, quite a bit of Southern, California looked like the old orange crate label that are being sold today as decorator items. Ar undefiled Countryside of citrus groves, clean air; and distant mountain views was reality, not nosn talgia. 1 But since 1940, smog has become a fixture of loj cal life, the population has tripled, cars have inf creased fivefold and agriculture has given way tefs housing tracts and shopping centers. 1 Our oncat pastoral scenery is now a collage of concrete, as-t phalt and stucco.

Southern California's unprecedented urban: sprawl is not beautiful, but it has let many people; prosper and it is here to stay. While it will never again proceed as furiously a It did in the boom years, the outward push, and scatteration of development will most likely con tinue. Coastline protection commissions and en vironmental impact assessments may prevent or at least soften the worst transgressions against the landscape, but real planning will likely be as ekU sive as ever. I One of Our Classic Sights Grand solutions are probably beyond us, but palliatives aren't. The people who built Southern California during its first booms were no.

regional planners either, yet they did exercise some foresight. They planted trees. No doubt most were commercial investments bearing citrus, Wocados or nuts. These have been the worst victims of suburban growth. Some were utilitarian, like the great walls of eucalyptus planted as windbreaks.

Still others were decorative, like the rows of palms along older highways' and residential streets. These have probably survived the best and the tall graceful rows of Washingtonia palms that sway above the low metropolitan skyline constitute one of our classic In some cases, entire towns became arboretums." Claremont was settled by New Englanders who planted their streets profusely to make theitv new home resemble their old The six colleges that Please Turn to Page 6, i ijLjttJuk 'v' RELIC OF PALMIER DAYSWestmoreland Ave. lower Hecicluous trees, reflects a nearly vanished near Olympic flanked by 80-foot palms and attitude toward such large-scale public landscaping. Times photo by Tjny Barnard BY CHARLES CHAMFLIN Timet Enttrtalnmnit Editor On Friday night the County Museum of Art begins its most ambitious film retrospective to date a tribute to the output of 20th Century-Fox that will include no fewer than 73 movies spanning the years from 1933 to the present. The tribute is designed as more than a tribute.

It Is a rare and useful chance to reevaluate a major Hollywood studio, one of the half-dozen or so whose works have had a terrific if incalculable influence on the psyches of all of us who came of age In the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s and, to a slightly lesser extent perhaps, on everyone growing up in the age of television. The faults of the studio system have always been easy enough to see, probably because the most pained sufferers under it were also the most articulate: the writers who, before and after Scott Fitzgerald, have dramatized the insults to their intelligence, integrity and intentions. It has taken a different perspective the studios seen by the blue light of television as thin, dull shadows of their old gaudy and exuberant selves to reveal all the strengths that went along with the Not teast, there is the still-unsurpassed technical mastery. The straight-ahead story telling, the pace, the quick, sure delineation of characters (however superficial they may have been), the glistening photography, the grandly eloquent the ingenious ability to create the whole world past, present and future on the soundstages and back-lots all of these excellences, once taken for granted as part of the ticket price, are now seen to be the superior artistry they always were. And the films selected from some 250 that were made available will be seen in thenearest equivalent to their original glory.

The prints, says the museum's assistant film curator, Ron Haver, are top quality and at full-length. "Many of the films have been on television," says, "but so chopped and edited, faded as to be unrecognizable." The series gels away Friday night at 8 with a double-feature: Henry King's "Alexander's Rag- time Band" (1938) with Tyrone Power, Alice Faye and Don Ameche and Irving Cummings' "Hollywood Cavalcade" (1939) with Faye and Ameche joined by Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops, Al Jolson and Rin-Tin-Tin (whose career also launched the career of a young writer named Darryl Zanuck, destined to be the principal architect of Fox's most glorious years). Paul Strand Reflects on Photography BY WILLIAM WILSON Tlmej Staff Writer PauI5trandKS3, is back at photographing, flowers' in his garden. Since 1916 when he held his first exhibition at New York's legendary gallery, "291," Strand has been counted among the world's most distinguished camera artists. His photographs find stillness in the bustle of the city, immortality in flickering facial expression, classical calm in places where earth and peo-" pie still belong to each other.

In 1968 Strand completed a pictorial essay in Romania. Soon after he found himself victim of that weird affliction that makes musicians go deaf and stiffens the fingers of sculptors; Strand's eyes dimmed. Last week he visited here for the County Museum of Art's opening of a 540-work retrospective of hi3 career. LACMA curator Charles Millard was forced to edit one-fourth of the photographs because of limited gallery space. "The selection seems very good," said Strand with a tired smile to the young curator, "but perhaps s6mething could be' done about the Lots of Strand's eyes appeared big as half dollars behind thick glasses.

Operations improved his sight so that he can work, back Wne in Orgeval, France, where the Strands moved in 1955. His retrospective tours six big American museums accompanied by a 382-page monograph. It i3 a good time for him and the art of photography but long jet rides are cramped and tiring. Airline food gets limp. Strand loves to eat, especially desserts.

Over lunch, Strand speculated on reasons for the welcome, albeit tardy, recognition of photographic art. His lengthy answers sometimes failed to reach the point; Like his photographs, conversation. l3-con-. cerned with precision: To find answers he, would often begin with, say, his. first studies with Lewia Hine in 1907,.

an interest in abstract art beginning in 1913 with Picasso, Braque and By the time an answer was forthcoming it mattered perhaps less than a build-up laced with allusions to the people and events that forged America's colloquial high culture. It was like having lunch with a history book. "The vitality of abstract art," he said finally, "has moved in a direction tMat is rather sterile, purely decorative and lacking in content. This is true the world over. People miss content that com-.

municates. Perhaps that need to find human communication in art is one reason that photography 1s playing a larger role today." Strand's own reputation is as a doyen of so-call- Flease Turn to Page 8, Col. 1 Scanning the titles makes clear that more than technical wizardry will be on view. The stars can be seen again, and probably now more a3 the projections they were of the audience's fondest if most impossible dreams. It is an ironic coincidence that the series starts a week after the death of one of the brightest and most engaging members of the Fox stable of stars.

Four of Betty Grable's movies will be in the series. "Pigskin Parade" (1936 and also featuring Judy Garland) is on the matinee program Aug. 4. "Down Argentine Way," "Springtime in the Rockies" and "How to Marry a Millionaire" will be along subsequently. If the principal diet of Fox, as of all the studios, was escapist fare, mind-blowing sheer entertainment which left no villain unpunished, no' hero unrewarded, no foolish misunderstandings unresolved in the last reel as the sun set or the moon rose, there were also the attempts to get at the social urgencies as well.

From Fox, along with "Heidi" and the Ritz Brothers in "The Gorilla," came "Wilson" (the final evening attraction on Saturday, Sept. 15), "Margie," a racial drama more daring in the film context of its own times than it may seem now, and "The Grapes of Wrath," the John Ford-John Steinbeck-Niwinally Johnson masterpiece: which 33 years later is undiminished evidence of the power of the movies to deal with social realism and to touch us profoundly. Grapes of Wrath" and "The Gunfighter," also scripted by Johnson, are double-billed Thursday night, Aug. 8). All the titles, from "The Bowery to "The Hustler" by way of "All About Eve," document an art form's most ebullient years, and one way and another are a huge and affecting slice of the social history of us all.

After-the opening night, the series will offer programs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 (with a few Saturday triple-headers starting at 7), and Saturday matinees at 2. Jack Smith is on vacation. fs" '4 -'H Vj 'h -vS 4.rr..,.. -j w- 1irr in ,1 lMlln mAi for new 8 '2-hour news program on Channel 34. Times photo by Kathleen Ballard' ANCHOR CORPS From left, Alan Sloane, John Harlan, Dick Sinclair and James Newman will serve as the anchormen 8 Hours of News tarts Toclay THE VIEWS INSIDE BOOKSt "The Obscene Bird of Night" by Alan on Page 3.

MUSIC: Los Angeles Philharmonic by Daniel Cariaga on Page 12. Mass in minor by Albert Goldberg on Page 12. Claremont Music Festival by Fred Pleibel on Page 13. BY MAURY GREEN Late last week a mind-bending, picture-splitting machine called Chroma-key, having passed the hijack detectors at New York's J.F.K. airport, was strapped into a passenger seat on a transcontinental jet and flown in style to Los Angeles.

During the flight it said not a word to its seat mate, drank no cocktails, ate no meals and pinched no stewardesses. But it came here in a pinch, which was the reason for the red carpet shipment. It was needed for this morning's premiere of NFB, on KMEX-TV Channel 34. NFB (which stands for News, Finance, Business) is the most revolutionary concept to hit TV news in more than a decade. If it succeeds, TV news will never be the same again which would not be entirely a bad thing to happen; it has been old "wheel" format, in that, whenever you tune you'll be no more than 10 minutes away from a complete five-minute report on the hard news of tjie moment.

The top story of the day will be recapped briefly every five minutes. In short, you won't have to wait half an hour to find out what's going on jn the world as happens sometimes on all-news radio. Nor will it be one of those cheap "rip and read" affairs put together off the wire services with scis-' sors and a stapler. For NFB, the station has assembled a special staff of 28 people, including 11 "talent" (those who appear on the air), most of them veteran professionals in TV. All of them will bring their own special features to the program.

The anchor chore will be split among four men: Jame3' Newman, director of programming lor Flease Turn to Page 15, Col. 1 looking poorly of late, as my grandmother would have said. NFB is TV's first equivalent of radio's successful all-news format. The program will last for 8V2 count" 'em SV2 hours! You'll have to get up at 6:30 a.m. to catch the beginning (even earlier if you go to the bathroom first).

And it will be entirely in English. Not 3 p.m. will KMEX-TV revert to its original Spanish-language programming. For this. Channel 34 is going bilingual Monday through Friday (never on weekends).

"Spanish-speaking people are out working during the day," says Rene Anselmo, president of Spanish International Communications Corp. (SICC), which owns KMEX-TV. "So we're going to provide an English-language news service that doesn't exist anywhere in the United States." The show will be a fast-paced variation on the AND OTHER FEATURES Dear Abby 5 Comics Page 17 Zoology Page 9 Joyce Haber 14 Bridge 9 On Fashion 7 Boutique Beat Page 2 Television Pages 15, 16, 18.