Wisconsin State Journal from Madison, Wisconsin • 17

Features Editor: Brian Howell, 252-6180 Wisconsin State Journal Mi Coning up: i wu nvws ouuui nmnimg mm DAYBREAK aeiWiB Sutday, September 30, 1995 sscKness. dee monaay Daybreak. BUSTER! HEY WILLIAM WINEKE COMMENTARY Equating good marriages with sainthood misses the mark Film festival pays tribute to the comic genius By Scott Eyman Cox News Service It's Buster Keaton's year, and it's about time. There's a good, new biography Keaton: Cut to the Chase," by Marion Meade), Keaton's classic films have been released by Kino Video, and the same sterling line-up will be shown this week during American Movie Classic's Third Annual Film Preservation Festival (on Cable Ch. 23).

This year's festival focuses on comedy, with 24-hour marathons devoted to Laurel and Hardy, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, and to Keaton on Wednesday, which also happens to be his 100th birthday. The Keaton films are new to television, and they will be a revelation to newcomers and a balm to the already converted. "He'd be completely flattered and amazed that people were still interested," says Keaton's widow Eleanor, by phone from Los Angeles. "And he'd be pleased at the way they've been cleaned up. He didn't make them with all this in mind.

"At the end of his life, we were over in Europe for a reissue of 'The and he couldn't believe the fuss that thousands and thousands of people made over him. He was just astonished that people would remember things that long ago." In celebrating her husband's centennial, Eleanor Keaton is doing a lot of traveling. "I went to Berlin, then I went to the Napa Valley, and I just got back from Rio, and next week I go to Kansas. In October, it's Michigan, and a couple of in-between things, then the Museum of Modern Art on Nov. 9.

Then they'll put me in a home." At 77, Eleanor Keaton shares many of her late husband's character traits: tough-mindedness and a distrust of rhetoric, either verbal or aesthetic. Keaton's stoic objectivity was formulated early, as he traveled around America with the rough-and-tumble family vaudeville act headed by his father, a heavy drinker the end of his life, we were over in Europe for a reissue of "The General," and he couldn't believe the fuss that thousands and thousands of people made over him. He was just astonished that people would remember things that long Eleanor Keaton Buster Keaton's widow Keaton leads off series at Madison Civic Center If iti gnpTfc ail Hp? fife 1 mn Known as the great stone face, silent film star Buster Keaton was anything but stony on screen. One of the most gifted physical comedians in movie history (along with Chaplin and Lloyd), Keaton used his trademark stoic expression as a comic counterpoint to his wild physical stunts. Both those qualities will be on ample display at the Madison Civic Center this afternoon, as the annual "Sounds of Silents" silent film series kicks off its 1995 schedule with four celebrated Buster Keaton shorts: "The Scarecrow" (1920); "The Haunted House" (1921); "The Frozen North" (1922); and "The Electric House" (1922).

All four films showcase Keaton's incomparable stuntwork, his witty use of mechanical devices and his silent eloquence as one of the greatest of all movie clowns. In "The Electric House" Keaton creates a whimsical gadget-filled home in which a small electric train is used to serve meals (the automated house is an idea author Ray Bradbury later borrowed for his memorable short story "There Will Come Soft Rains. In "The Scarecrow," Keaton plays a living scarecrow who pursues a solitary existence in a shack filled with homemade mechanical devices. Watching Keaton in these films, it's clear that his slapstick style greatly influenced nearly every physical comedian who followed him from Ray Bolger to Lucille Ball to Jerry Lewis. Although it may be a bit of a stretch, you can even see a little of Keaton's influence in Ace Ventura himself, Jim Carrey.

The four Keaton shorts will begin at 3 p.m. in the Oscar Mayer Theatre. R. Cameron Monschein, a veteran of the "Sounds of Silents" series, will accompany them on the theatre's Grand Barton Organ. Tickets are $5 and available today at the box office, 211 State St Russ Evansen who could be abusive.

A child star, Keaton gained fame for his impassivity in the face of the spectacular falls he could take. He received no formal education whatever. By 1917, the stage was serving as a direct conduit to the movies, and Keaton was no exception. Although he was only 22, he sensed that this was his future. He took a large pay cut to go from vaudeville headliner to second banana for Roscoe "Fatty" Ar-buckle.

Three years later, his screen character and style fully formed, he was starring in and directing his own films. With Keaton, agony and passion alike are cooly understated. With eyes as expressive as Keaton's, he didn't need to smile any more than silent films needed to talk Less really is more. "The Boat," a wonderful two-reeler from 1921, is typical. Keaton and his family have proudly christened their new boat the "Damfino." A storm comes up and Buster telegraphs an SOS.

The telegrapher asks the name of the boat in distress. "Damfino," replies Buster. "Well, if you don't know, neither do snaps the telegrapher. It was just a brief item in last week's Catholic Herald newspaper, but it may be a little stone that creates a large ripple. The Vatican, it seems, is looking for married couples to make saints.

Most saints, it seems, are unmarried. If you want to be a saint, it is better to become a nun or a priest or, barring religious orders, to live a lifetime of celibacy. But Monsignor Helmut Moll, identified as a "consultant to the Congregation for Sainthood Causes," says the time has come to canonize married folk "Staying together in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, shows a heroic degree of virtue," he said in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. Moll undoubtedly means well and the world can always use a few good saints. But isn't there something depressing in the idea that developing a lasting marriage is cause for sainthood? Despite the rising divorce rates, tales of extramarital affairs and the difficulties of two-income households, we'd like to think that good marriages can exist among couples who are less than saints.

Lord knows, my own marital history will never be canonized. Ask my former wives. The fact that my wife Jacqueline and I have a happy marriage today is due more to God's grace than to my sainthood. And, I suspect that if you were to ask Jacqueline, she might admit that putting up with me takes some heroic dedication at times. Neither of us would qualify for sainthood, however.

Nor would some of my friends who have been married for many years, apparently happily. One fellow, who had better remain anonymous, once told me he was ready to leave his wife and start over after a particularly unhappy squabble. The only thing that stopped him is that the marital spat took place on a Monday and he wanted to watch professional football on television that night By the time the game ended, my friend lost his determination to walk out He and his wife have a good, supportive marriage. But they aren't saints. Even the Vatican seems baffled about how to find authentic examples of heroic degrees of virtue in marriage.

"Yes, such couples exist!" Moll told the Vatican paper. "The majority lead hidden lives. Most of them avoid the glare of public opinion." In other words, Moll doesn't know who those married saints are any more than the rest of us do. He wants local churches to seek the saintly couples out and nominate them to the pope. The problem is going to be that no married couple with the requisite virtue for sainthood would ever agree to such a nomination.

To do so, each would have to agree that the other was due the honor. In real life, each part of a spousal unit is secretly convinced that the main reason he or she well, she is eligible for sainthood is that she has put up with the miserable character she married. Perhaps that is the stuff of which sainthood is made. Perhaps it was easier for a teen-age virgin in the Middle Ages to put death before dishonor than it is for a middle-age homemaker to spend yet another night sleeping next to a snoring husband, knowing in the despairing pit of her stomach that she will live with that snoring until death do they part Perhaps. But, also perhaps, a successful marriage is a gift from God, a sacrament, if you will, that combines the mystery of God's grace with the ordinariness of daily human existence.

Such a marriage is to be desired and such a marriage is to be appreciated. Such a marriage is not, however, so extraordinary that it is deserving of sainthood. The beauty of sacraments is that they are available to the most common of people and that they take neither extraordinary virtue or heroic attitudes to participate in them. It just takes a willing heart and a certain degree of luck Wisconsin Center lor Film and Theater Research photos Top: Buster Keaton in the "The General," 1927, which will air at 12:45 a.m. Wednesday night, which AMC, Cable Ch.

23, is devoting largely to Keaton. Above: Keaton in "The Electric House," 1922. The boat sinks, as boats and everything else tend to do in Keaton films, and the family is left standing in shallow water. As they start to walk toward shore, Buster's wife asks where they are. "Damfino," he mouths, as they plod on into the Please see KEATON, Page 6C MMMMM Teens do more than wear faith on sleeves HBBHrsK By William R.

Wlneke Wisconsin State Journal Teen-agers wear T-shirts to make all sorts of statements but it takes guts to wear a T-shirt to advertise one's faith. So, when members of the youth group ot St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, 602 Everglade Drive, bought 150 shirts to distribute reading Pope should find plenty of approval on upcoming trip By William R. Wlneke Wisconsin State Journal When Pope John Paul II arrives in America next week, he is likely to receive a warm welcome from American Catholics. A Wirthlin Group Poll released this week shows that 86 percent of American Catholics approve of the job is doing as "leader of the Roman Catholic Church" and that 92 percent describe the pope as a "strong voice for moral values in the world." The results are based on a telephone survey of 516 Catholics in the Mid-Atlantic region of Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Of those polled people who are supposed to represent the church as a whole in the region 83 percent said the pope "shares my values" and 80 percent say the pope is "more of a unifying force in the Catholic Church" and "makes the right choices for the Catholic Church." Interestingly enough, the Catholics polled have a dim-Please see POPE, Page 3C Stale Journal photoCAROLYN PFLASTERER Memorial High School students Erica Hamblin, left, Lisa Hendrickson and Emily Hayner used T-shirts to advertise a prayer event at the school's flag pole.

event "We wanted to show the Christian students at the school that they weren't alone, that there were other Christian students out there," explained Lisa Hendrickson, co-president of the youth group. Hendrickson, 16, is a junior at Memorial. The other co-president, Chris Malayter, is a senior at Middleton High School and was active in the promotion there. "We ordered 150 T-shirts, but we were getting scared that no one would wear them," Hendrickson noted. Her father, David Hendrickson, youth minister at St Thomas Aquinas, was even more scared.

"I put the church on the line for $1,300 worth of T-shirts and, when we bought them, we weren't sure we'd ever sell them." What happened, however, is that all the shirts sold within a couple of days and students wanted more. "I ended up selling my own shirt," David Hendrickson confessed. Lisa Hendrickson said she was surprised to see the "See You at the Pole" on one side and "Pray" on the other, they weren't sure anyone would wear them. The T-shirts were an effort to advertise a recent prayer gathering at flagpoles in front of area schools. The national "See You at the Pole" promotion is a public way to introduce prayer to schools.

A year ago, students at Memorial High School distributed posters calling attention to the event, but the posters were quickly removed by school authorities. This year, the St Thomas Aquinas youth members thought T-shirts might advertise the Other high schools had varying numbers of students. Perhaps the most lasting impact of the promotion, however, is that the students are now forming a prayer club to meet in the school. Although schools can't promote religion, students who find a faculty adviser are able to form extra-curricular clubs for religious activities in the same way they might form a camera club or a drama club, Hendrickson said. T-shirts appearing all over her school.

"Half the kids who were wearing them, I didn't even know," she said. "There are kids from every community and from all different religions wearing them." The shirts cost the church $7 each and were sold for $5. Students who couldn't afford the $5 received free shirts, Hendrickson said. At the actual event on Sept. 20, there were 112 students at the Memorial flagpole, she said..