The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 63

ONCE-OVER, TWICE Blue Ribbon 400 Sees Lib Playlet EW PART IV THURSDAY, JUNE JACK SMITH Fast Eddie Strikes Again A young lady who has just graduated from college came downtown to have lunch with me the other day, and after lunch we shot a game of pool. It was a rewarding experience for us both. Though nothing in the story should embarrass her in the least, I will call her Miss Allison, which is not her name, simply because she might wish to remain anonymous for reasons of her own. We had known each other previously only through letters', exchanged on only two occasions, the first being more than three years ago, the second a few days ago, on her graduation. The first time, she had asked for some advice about her education.

She wanted to be a writer. I don't know now what I told her, but it must have been harmless enough, because she did the right thing anyway. She went on to college and loved it and finished in three years. Then she wrote her second letter, thanking me for the advice given three years earlier. I wrote back, asking her to call me if she ever came downtown and would like to have lunch, and she did.

Miss Allison turned out to be a petite blonde, demure and trim, with a very pretty face. She was poised and straightforward. We decided to have lunch in the Bradbury Building because Miss Allison said she had never seen it and might never get downtown again. "I was supposed to see it once for a history class," she said, "Now I can go back and say I did." BY JODY JACOBS Tlmtt Society Editor Women's Lib got a once over lightly with a touch of humor at Tuesday morning's meeting of The Amazing Blue Ribbon 400 at the Mark Taper Forum. The dialog between members of the audience and the panel of speakers was just heating up when Mrs.

Seth Weingarten, one of the newest of the Blue Ribbon members, brought the meeting to a close. "Always leave them asking for more," she answered one of the ladies who asked why the session couldn't continue. Clara Boothe Luce's playlet, "Slam the Door Softly," introduced the subject. It's a two-actor play originally published in Life magazine and Mrs. Luce says, "I never thought it would hit the boards." It not only made it to the stage of tha Mark Taper Forum, but it has brought her $500 in royalties from Norway where it's been running on the same bill with the last act of Ibsen's "A Doll's House." The change in Women's Lib from the time when Ibsen's play and his Nora were considered revolutionary to today "is explained clearly in the play," according to Mrs.

Luce. Ibsen's Nora slams tha door on her marriage. Mrs. Luce's Nora slams it but softly. The implication is that solutions ara possible.

'Crucial Issue' Mrs. Kirk Douglas, Blue Ribbon president in charge of future planning, introduced the panel after the play. In total fairness there were four, two men and two women. Besides Mrs. Luce they included Joyce Haber who is a wife and a mother in addition to being a Times columnist.

Plus UCLA chancellor Dr. Charles E. Young and Dr. Judd Marmor whose field is psychiatry and neurology. "The crucial issue," said Dr.

Marmor, "is that women have a right to choose what they want to be, to seek their own fulfillment. Extremists in the Women's Lib movement would do away with the choice. The theory that 'anatomy is ha claims, "is a powerful put down." "Women are physiologically different from men. They do have experiences that are different cyclic menstrual changes, childbearing. But there is no reason to think women can't do the same intek lectual and physical work that men do." "Women's lib is old hat to Clare Boothe Luce," Mrs.

Douglas said in introducing the woman who made successful careers out of writing, editing, politics and diplomacy. Mrs. Luce feels that the idea of "great physical differences between men and women i3 part of the stereotypes men have about women. "In Russia and in any peasant civilization the physical differences, except for the genitalia, are very small. In this push-button world women can do anything." Concerned With Change With an expressive shrug she added, "Women are stronger than men, anyway." The audience listened to Dr.

Marmor, agreed and laughed with Mrs. Luce. But it was UCLA'g Dr. Young who stirred them up both men and womenwith his admission that "I am not emotionally involved in Women's Lib." Claiming he did not have "that gut kind of involvement," Dr. Young provoked a woman in the audience to challenge him on what she called discriminatory practices in the hiring of faculty.

The educator admitted that he was "concerned with things that need changing." He included "some existing regulations not designed to work hardships on women but they do. For example the rule that a person cannot be a regular member of the faculty if he works less than 50 of the time." He was asked how many women are now on the UCLA faculty. His answer was 115 out of a total of 1,800. "I had no idea he was so reactionary," a prominent woman in the audience commented a3 she filed out of the theater. "It was one of our most stimulating meetings," Mrs.

Richard H. Wolford, executive officer and one of the Blue Ribbon's three presidents, remarked as she led a group on to lunch at The Founders. Among the Blue Ribbon top Please Turn to Page 7, Col. 1 i blliHIIIfc-, L.A.'S POLICE CHIEF VISITS 'MONTE CARLO' tt looks as though" Police Chief Edward M. with Mrs.

Davis and Henry Fonda, Is inspecting the chips at KABC-TV's "Monte Carlo Evening," which introduced the station's fall programming) lineup. Guests playing in a replica of a Monte Carlo cqsino at Century Plaza exchanged chips for door prizes. Times photo by Larry Bessel We took the birdcage elevator to the second floor and had sandwiches and Cokes in the 1893 Pajjjour at a small table under the stained glass window. Miss Allison wasn't sure what her next step in life would be. Her immediate problem was that she looked too young.

She was actually 20, but could easily pass for 17. "I'd like to teach high school," she said, "but they say I'd look like one of the students." It was true. I could see that some of the boys might have difficulty thinking of Miss Allison as their teacher. "Well, one good thing about looking too young," I said, "is that it goes away. I got over it." She glanced away, dismissing the subject.

She saw the pool table in the side room. "Oh. They have a pool table?" Yes," I said. "Do you play?" She nodded. "I'm good." "Really?" I was truly surprised.

I couldn't imagine a demure young woman who had just gone through college in three years being much of a pool shot. She nodded again. Her eyes were matter of fact. She wasn't kidding. "Well," I said, "there are advantages, you know, in being older.

I can beat you at pool." MOVIE REVIEW Jane Fonda in Sex, Suspense Thriller BY CHARLES CHAMPLIN Timat EntM-tilnmant Editor Jane Fonda has become one of our most outspoken political persuaders, which I hope does not obscure the fact that she also has become one of the best actresses around. She gives her finest performance yet, I think, in Alan J. Pakula's very expert thriller, "Klute," which opens today at the Panta-ges in Hollywood. I know, I know: She also was the doomed lady of "They Shoot Horses, Don't a role and a ve- She shook her head. "No way," she said.

I was fascinated. Where had this young woman learned to shoot pool so well she assumed she could beat a stranger, a man of mature years? I had learned at my father's elbow. I could run the table, twice, by the time I wairK I had 6pent many a night away from my books, leaning over the green felt table in the smoky light. "Would you like to shoot a game?" I asked. "Yes.

I would." She was eager. The male ego is not easily suppressed. I had to accept this challenge. We finished our Cokes and went to the table. I racked the balls.

"What's your game?" I asked. Miss Allison chose eight ball. "Would you like to break?" "You break," she said. "I'm not strong enough to break." I gave the rack a sharp break. The four ball dropped.

I sank two more solid colors and missed a bank shot. Miss Allison sank a setup I'd left her and missed another. Her stroke was unsure, her eye untrue. She was not a pool player. I ran the game out quickly, and then another, though I hadn't played but once in 20 years.

My father would have been proud of me, beating a college graduate. Miss Allison was shaken. "I guess I haven't been playing with very good players," she said. I was pleased with myself. I had given Miss Allison a new standard of comparison.

The young should always aim for excellence. And also, I hope, Miss Allison now knows that it's better to look too young than to shoot good pool. hide she may have found more urgently relevant. But good as she was, I felt the portrayal missed perfection by being too strong and strident. Here, in a beautifully executed but unquestionably more conventional work, Miss Fonda creates a character who is hardly less a comment on the culture of her time than the marathon dancer was but who is a fully realized individual human being whose truths seem to emerge from deep within herself instead of sitting on the surface like makeup.

She is a cool call girl in Manhattan, wanting to be an actress but doing what she can meanwhile, and regarding it as another form of acting. The strength of the portrait is that Miss Fonda is nothing so simple as a hooker with a heart of gold. She is a cynical and terrified neurotic who thinks she prefers the control she; has over her professional encounters to the chaos, disappointments and uncertainties of genuine relationships. Confronted with a real man in a real situation, she lashes out like a cornered animal. Miss Fonda lets us see the brittle and wisecracking the fears and the concerned intelligence beneath; and she also lets us see change a character who is both revealed and altered as the film goes on.

Like "The Anderson Tapes," "Klute Is a movie in which old and new meet. Pakula deploys all the story-telling virtues of the past to look at present vices. "Klute" is visually stunning, full of surprises, bewildering and suspenseful, faultless in its timing. Trail to Truth It also discusses sex, including psychopathic sex, with a calm candor which startled me, and I don't startle easily any more. In fact, I thought all the linguistic barriers had fallen but it turns out there was one still It's down now.

It would be hard to take if it did not all ring so true; a3 it is, those who prefer a heavy curtain between sex and screen will certainly want to opt out of "Klute." Donald Sutherland is a small city Pennsylvania cop come to Manhattan to look for a missing friend, an industrialist who seems to have had seamy dealings with. Miss Fonda and sent herick letters thereafter. The trail to truth leads along a descent to hell, from a tony brothel (Rita Gam, prop.) all the way down to desperate junk-raddled streetwalkers. The descent is matched by an as- cending awareness of sick evil and The ending is traditionally suspenseful, unlikely to leave a dry in the house, however often we've been there before. Indeed, "Klute" turns out to have been a quite orthodox structure, Hitchcock hitched to some new and unlovely content.

Like Hitchcock, as a matter of fact, Pakula knows the power of indirection. We look at a tape recorder and listen to a murder; watching could not have been more horrifying. Like the best mysteries always, offers more than its diversions and redeems its sordid materials by understanding them and finding -them worth pity, not amusement The movie, an Please Turn to Page 21, Col. mm crfpiii I i I i pill I if if THE VIEWS INSIDE BOOKS: "James Monroes The Quest for National Identity" by Robert Kirsch on Page 13. NIGHTCLUBS: Kate Taylor by Robert Hilburn on Page 20.

Sonny and Cher by Jerrf Belgei on Page 19. AND OTHER FEATURES I 4 Dear Abby Page 6 Joyce Haber 17 Astrology Page 12 Margo Page 11 Bridge Page 14 Parties Page 2 Comics 23 Television 22, 24 LUCE ON LIBERATION Clare Boothe Luce feels that the concept of great physical differences between men and women is a "stereotype. Timet photo bj Harry Chase ON THE STREET Jane. Fonda plays role as a cool call girl in "Klute," the new Warner Bros, production which also stars Donald Sutherland, 1.