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The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 85

Location:
Atlanta, Georgia
Issue Date:
Page:
85
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION pv SECTION jj Friday, November 30, 1984 TfTOTf (PuT ujm iihu.iijik.ji ml puluu imiuiib Society opens show of the grapeshots of wrath Cdesline Sibley 1 1 5 i jg-vfm- -'x lanta Historical Society's Clyde Lanier King Gallery when the AHS opens its permanent exhibit, "Atlanta and the War, 1861-1865." The display, organized by DuBose, chairman of the AHS board of trustees, directs visitors past 30 panels showing about 800 artifacts from the Civil War, including two striking life-sized dioramas, scenes of typical Union and Confederate encampments. Uniforms, canteens, firearms, artillery shells, documents and maps from the era provide a detailed glimpse of the North and the South, supported by photographs by Mathew Brady and oth-' er artists. 4 The astonishing array of clothing and tools came from dozens of donors and many private collectors. Private Johnston's uniform, for example, was given by his great-grandson, a Texas native, who didn't know, about plans for the exhibit but was looking for a safe home for the garment Unlike conventional museum exHibits, "Atlanta and the presents a chronological account of the conflict, emphasizing the Battle of Atlanta, which DuBose describes as the turning point of' the war. Among the unique articles on display are: The gray coat worn by Gen.

See SOCIETY, Page 9-D By Bo Emerson SlaH Wrltor Bullets passed through the rough, homespun fabric to strike Pvt John E. Johnston under the left arm and in the right thigh. Now the. butternut-colored jacket is in repose, draped over a headless mannequin, the violent, jagged holes seemingly at odds with its stylish lines, gold buttons and formal collar. Close by is a handful of the type of bullets low-velocity, slugs that probably killed Johnston, a member of the 29th Alabama Regiments.

He fell at the Battle of Peachtree Creek, and Atlanta fell shortly after. To see the slug, and the hole MICHAEL PUGHStaff .3 A display of cannon balls used during the Civil War in the jacket, is to suddenly see "History comes alive." the reality of the war, and, in the Such chilling Views of the Civ-words of Beverly Means DuBose il War open Saturday in the At r- Prince tour's ratim a royal PG by critics ri tX -s 2 Gone are the sinister trench coat and black bikini briefs that were trademarks of his earlier concerts, but Prince still appears topless. its 7. By Maureen Downey Staff Writ Audiences in cities where the "Purple Rain" tour has already played apparently have found Prince charming. Atlanta will become the 13th city to host rock's royal rascal when Prince brings his erotic funk to the Omni Jan.

3 and 4. Whether the prancing prince is fit entertainment for the teenage audience he draws may be a concern to some parents. If it's any consolation, the music scene's hottest act has visited four cities on his current world-wide tour, and reviewers in Detroit, Greensboro, N.C., Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia have given "Purple Rain" a PG rating. After last week's performances in Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Inquirer popular-music critic Ken Tucker wrote, "Where Springsteen is the brooding conscience of rock and Jackson its paranoid gremlin, Prince is its funky libertine, a haughty, naughty brat with immense talent and neuroses coming out of his ears." Susan Ladd, entertainment writer for the Greensboro News and Record, found Prince tame. "I don't think it's a bad show lor teenagers to see.

But I would think twice about sending my 10-year-old alone," she said Thursday. 'The elusive 26-year-old superstar has toned down his swagger for his first world tour. Gone are the sinister trench coat and black bikini briefs that were trademarks of his earlier con-, certs. His ascendance to the throne and bid for wider. consumption began two years ago with; his best-selling rhapsodic dance album "1999." 1 -The No.

1 album, "Purple Rain," and the hit movie of the same name, which transformed Prince into a national sensation this, summer, have infused Prince with a degree of respectability. The movie expanded Prince's audience from a rock-dance cult to platoons of American teens, who mimic his fashion preference for Edwardian ruffled shirts, body-hugging pants and purple satin brocade jackets. (Prince admits to a passion for the royal color and his-house, tour bus, BMW and motorcycle are all customized purple.) "Purple Rain" also established Prince as a sex symbol of the '80s: sensual, pouty and enigmatic. Born Prince Rogers Nelson, this new-wave Don Juan generally refuses interviews and presents an unsettling blend of defiance and vulnerability that has made him a favorite of teenage girls. However, his risque lyrics and his on-stage pantomimes of Iovemaking with his microphone have made him less than a favorite of some parents.

The songs on his four Warner Bros, al- Rawlings letters anything but dull i Our friend Forrest, the patriarch and permanent full-time settler on my favorite island, and I had received a post card sent in his care. "It's signed by Jill and Candace," he told me. "What does it say?" I asked. "I do not," he said virtuously, "read the mail of other people. Besides," he paused and grinned, "the older I get the duller I find other people's letters." Clearly Forrest, an omnivorous reader, hasn't got his hands on the "Selected Letters of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings" yet He would read this particular batch of mail with delight, an occasional surge of sympathy and a surprising amount of suspense.

I am such a Rawlings' fan I could read her grocery list with pleasure. Per1 haps especially her grocery list, for she was a famous cook. When the volume of her letters came to me from the University Presses of Florida I knew I was in for some good reading. It may be the last collection of letters between an author and her editor, her writing friends and her family, detailing the anguish and the occasional sense of satisfaction of writing. We are lucky in Mrs.

Rawlings' let-' ters because they were written at a time when people didn't think of picking up the telephone and holding long talk sessions over such things as whether to eliminate the profanity from "The Yearling" (she did, mostly), or to talk out her anxiety and uncertainty. She wrote out her problems for the sympathetic atten-; tion of the famous Scribner's editor Max-; well Perkins, pouring out page after page of them, and although we do not have the opportunity to read his answers here, he must have written her fully and richly Drinking problem Perkins' letters to her and to such other authors as Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and Scott Fitzgerald are in another book, which I have borrowed from my friend Dorothy Hibbert and can't bear to return Perkins, Editor of Although I remembered that the late Norman Berg, Macmillan's sales representative in this area for many years and later founder of his own press, was a friend of Mrs. Rawlings, I was unprepared for the intimacy with which she discussed her personal problems with him. Norman and his wife, Julie; honeymooned at her beach cottage and were frequent visitors at Cross Creek and he, at least, felt close enough to her to worry abut her drinking and to receive her confidences about her marriage to Norton Baskin. Apparently a recent movie called "Cross Creek" did not err when it pre-, sented Marjorie Rawlings as an alcoholic.

I couldn't believe that anybody who produced such quantity and quality in books and magazine stories would have time left over for boozing it up, but I must have been wrong. One of her letters to-Norman relates an incident where she invited Owen D. Young, former president of General Electric, and his wife, to dinner and got so drunk she had to leave the ta-. ble and go to bed. She warned- Norman not to tell her husband.

Some letters surprising The letters to Norton Baskin were also a surprise to me. I suppose I had assumed that he was an aggressive suitor, eager to have the famous author and chatelaine of Cross Creek for his own. On the contrary, Marjorie was obviously lonely, in love and bent on marriage. She wrote to him as "Dear Honey" and "Hello, Darling" ahd said frankly that she wanted marriage and he did not When they did get married in 1941 there were apparently stormy sessions and loving reconciliations. Mrs.

Rawlings was a good, generous woman. She had an acquaintance with the other literary greats of her day Hemingway, Fitzgerald and especially Ellen Glasgow, whose biography she was working on when she died in 1953. The interest she took in the work of other writers and the loving and caring criticism she gave theft are all here. I would strongly recommend this book to anybody who wants to write, particularly for the light it sheds on one writer's struggles, blocks, days and weeks of painstaking research, discouragement and constant rewriting. It is also for those who like to read because Marjorie Rawlings read everything, new books sent to her by her publishing friends, and old oft-forgotten volumes from the past.

Her comments will send you looking for books overlooked or by-passed and make you want to reread others. Gordon E. Bigelow, professor of English at the University of Florida, and Laura V. Monti, formerly librarian there and now keeper of rare books at the Boston Public Library, are responsible for this grand book. See PRINCE, Page 9-D Prince shed his frilly costume for bare-chested look in Detroit And now PBS viewers can get an eyeful of Liber ace 1 A Uf: j.

lohn Carman pi i Tiptoe through the TULA center on anniversary By Catherine Fox Staff Wrtttr For almost 30 years, the long brick building hidden behind a bustling Peachtree Street bar was an electrical manufacturing plant It started a new life a year ago when the building re- opened as an arts center called TULA. Lil Friedlander, TULA'S energetic founder and developer, is celebrating her center's first anniversary tonight with a "black sneaker, black tie" affair. The combination is appropri-. ate. TULA, sheathed in a handsome gray stucco facade and topped with a stylized neon sign and pink lines in the parking lot, is an unusual mix of artist's studios, commercial art galleries and offices for upscale design and architectural firms.

Ms. Friedlander, 36, has good reason to celebrate. Attracted by good working space, the potential as a center for artists and a location convenient to potential clients, artists have leased all the available studio space. And all but five of the commercial spaces are taken. Eve Mannes moved her gallery from Buck-head to TULA In May 1983 when much of the building was still under construction.

"I liked the rawness of the old building," she said. "It's become a unique environment for art and art-related fields. Even though TULA is not visl-1 ble from Peachtree Street and has no flow of foot traffic going through the area, Ms. Mannes said, "People are attracted to the novelty of the place and the parking is easy." Many of the TULA spaces cluster around a two-story atrium, created during the renovation, lighting the 50,000 square foot space. Both the galleries and studios have floor-to-ceiling windows to take advantage of that light and to offer eye-catching window shopping, especially when artists open their studios during gallery openings.

"I once read that an entrepreneur is a creative extrovert" says Ms. Friedlander, a photographer. "Artists need to develop the ability to manipulate the world just as we do our art materials. You don't have to be creative in just one area." Ms. Friedlander became an entrepreneur by Liberaca in Las Vegas: 6 p.m.

Saturday. WGTVChannel 6:30 p.m. Saturday, WPBAChannel 30. God is in heaven and Liberace is in Las Vegas. Who said there was no order to the universe? But you might wonder what "Liberace in Las Vegas" is doing on the vaunted airwaves of the Public Broadcasting Service, alongside calligraphy courses and "Masterpiece Theatre." Did last month's fire at PBS headquarters in Washington toast brains as wen as grant applications? Not exactly.

It's pledge week, when PBS stations traditionally leave the drawing room and rub shoulders with hoi polloi. Carolyn Kowalski, the public information director at WGTV, takes it a step further. She guesses that "Liberace in Las Vegas" will appeal to the same demographic core as "Wall Street Week" and "Masterpiece Theatre" little old ladies. Besides, she reasons, Liberace is a unique showman. Now, that is a fact Liberace is prima tacie evidence that America does not reward understatement This special, winding its way to PBS from the Showtime cable channel, begins with the doors of Liber-ace's Vegas mansion swinging open.

Upstairs, Liberace rises from bed, squeezes into a sort of Eastern Orthodox bathrobe held by his valet and bangs out a few notes of Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto. So much for practice. He splashes around in his swimming pool and then in his bubble bath. He checks out his clothes closet roughly the size of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium greets a litter cf his poofy poodles on the stairway, dons a virgin fox cape, climbs into a Rolls-Royce limo and emerges onstage at the Las Vegas Hilton. "Well," he greets his audience, "look me over.

I don't get dressed like this to go unnoticed." Which brings us to Liberace's musical salute to Mexico, complete with whooping and stomping by a Ballet Folklohco troupe from Mexico. Later, Liberace pillages the "Tales From the Vienna Woods" while jets of water spray skyward on the stage. The Vegas audience sounds especially thrilled by the chirping bird accompaniment I counted only four costume changes for the star. One of his outfits makes him look like a Roman candle. But the show stopper was a diamond and mink ensemble with solid rhinestone lining.

"Well, what do you think?" he asks, displaying the fur for the crowd's oohs and aahs. "Too much? It's not the loudest outfit in my wardrobe, but it's the most expensive." Then it's on to "The Beer Barrel Polka." The show isn't all fun and pearly teeth. Liberace sometimes has to suffer for hut art That reve lation comes when he shows off a sequined get-up to which you could tune the controls on your TV. "When you wear costumes like this, you have to be very careful how you sit down," Liberace explains. "No kidding, if the beads are turned the wrong way, it's murder." But give the man credit.

He proved back in the 1950s, which preceded the 1980s as the decade of conformity, that a fellow can live outlandishly by performing outrageously. Liberace made the world safe for Elton John. "Remember that bank I used to cry all the way to?" Liberace asks his Vegas audience. "I bought it" KENNETH WALKERStatf Most of the spaces in Lil Friedlander's center are taken chance. She discovered the TULA building in 1982 while looking for a new studio space and was instantly attracted to the building and its potential "I knew I didn't want a cooperative.

I wanted autonomous spaces with separate utility meters, nearly, it had to be more than low-rent studios." Ms. Friedlander has a long-term lease with an option to buy the building and leases the studio and commercial spaces. The renovation, designed by architect Gil-. ford Smith, now one of the occupants of TULA," started as "a shoestring operation," Ms. Fried-lander recalled, "but as the space became more appealing, we realized we had created a class act" At one end of TULA, Ms.

Friedlander built a capacious studio that can be rented by commercial photographers and filmmakers or by people who need a large room for a party. Ms. Friedlander hopes TULA'S success may be a catalyst in turning the area into a future arts district The Portfolio Center, a commercial art school, is already ensconced at the end of Bennett Street and Ms. Friedlander expects "other art-related concerns to move in. TULA'S First Anniversary Opening: Tonight from 6 to 11 p.m.

Includes open studios. 75 Bennett St. behind Harrison's parking lot. Free. 875-4490.

77.

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Years Available:
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