The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 75

THE BOSTON GLOBE TUESDAY. APRIL 16, 1985 75 Deaths 78 Deaths 78-79 AMERICAN POP By NATHAN COBB TV dinners from the '50s to the '80s I FARE TO REMEMBER I vv a I i 4 h( WV? i I QUICK FROZEN I jj 1 WITH CtAVY. POTATOES. itUH fiki, AND COKtt MrtAr4tfp smEf a. Vtsmii in 1 turn V' it a.

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JC: tWMKi mA (SMIS(SBif BlMl. Hf'-'-' 4 sfb pscKts tin m. --mmmmmmmmmmmmmttmiitmiUKKmB'ti hiii'iii iimmt i. winnimimi i -m i Drobably the most remarkable thing about the TV dinner some people might say the only remarkable thing about the TV din ner is the fact that it never really captured palates in other countries. Like base Georgianna Powell-Pouzzner.

JOHN ROBINSON Insistent invitation to the dance One of the early TV dinners from Swanson in the mid-'50s. 4 dp 7- Swanson introduced Le Menu, its "premium" line, in 1982. ball and big cars, the one-stop frozen meal is an American idea that simply hasn't traveled very well. French families do not shout their bon appetits over microwaved chicken cordon bleu with baby carrots and rice pilaf from Le Menu, despite the fact that the company's advertising proclaims such meals to be "So extraordinary you'd dare serve them with a vintage wine." "It's completely baffling to us," says Sam Martin when asked why frozen dinners haven't washed up on foreign shores in appreciable numbers. Martin is the editor of "Quick Frozen Foods International," a trade magazine that claims circulation in 96 countries.

"It may have something to do with the fact they have different kinds of stoves in other countries," Martin tries, still sounding puzzled that the rest of the world has somehow passed up this red, white and blue contribution to gastronomy. "For God's sake, don't call them TV dinners," pleads DeWayne Whitehead, managing partner of Technomic, a firm that advises several food processing companies. Nor do frozen food executives tend to be amused by the old joke about the TV dinner, the one that says you're better off eating the box and throwing away the contents. The trade much prefers to talk in terms of "premium frozen meals," meaning those relatively upscale dinners of the 1980s, wherein chicken breast florentine laid out on a plastic platter now shares shelf space with plain old fried chicken served on an aluminum tray. Ah, but traditional-style TV dinners hang on.

You can find them tucked away in supermarket frozen food chests, where they increasingly play second banana to the likes of $3.59 concoctions featuring seafood newburg or beef burgundy. They offer Salisbury steak for $1.19 and imagine this! an entire fishcake dinner, with peas and potato puffs, for 85 cents. .1 Never mind the fact that R. Gordon McGovern, president of the Campbell Soup which makes Swan-son frozen dinners, once publicly referred to this kind of thing as "junk food." A nation's gotta eat, right? "The old frozen dinner market won't become extinct," insists Susan Hanley, a spokeswoman for ConAgra Frozen Food Companies, which produces six lines of both downscale and upscale frozen dinners, including the Armour products. "It's a whole different-market than the 'premium' dinners.

It's blue collar, kids and senior citizens. And that market will always be there." Certainly there was a market in 1953, when C.A. Swanson Sons, then an independent poultry-freezing outfit located in Omaha, unleashed a trade-marked TV Dinner of sliced turkey and gravy served on cornbread and accompanied by buttered peas and sweet potatoes. Frozen dinners had been offered in a few retail stores and on airplanes since 1945 the airline versions were called "Strato-Plates" but this was the first time that large numbers of earthbound Americans had gotten a taste of such fare. This successful debut into the mass marketplace was enough to spice up an otherwise dull year in which Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated President for the first time, the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee and the most popular song was "Doggie in the Window." TV DINNERS, Page 76 Dinner Classics from Armour were also introduced in '82.

Georgianna Powell-Pouzzner is constantly on the lookout for Boston's "brilliant young," whom she courts until they agree to attend her annual dinner-dance for the Alliance Fran-caise. Last Friday, for example, while surveying the lunch crowd from her corner table at the Downtown Harvard Club, she spotted Todd Saunders, twin son of Park Plaza owners Roger and Nina Saunders, and made a beeline to his table to invite him to the ball. She has been known to stop people on the streets in Cambridge, where she lives, and invite them it's really more of a command than an invitation -to the "Bal du Printemps," as it has been known since Mrs. Powell-Pouzzner founded the dance nine years ago. Her manner, which is direct and no-nonsense, does not admit contradiction.

She is called "little Napoleon" by her friends, as much because of her dictato- rial inclinations as her francophile leanings, and she is ruthless about standards of dress, behavior and accomplishment. As a result, the Bal du Printemps has developed a singular following of glossy, ambitious and often bright young WASPs who hanker for an opportunity to dress up and act out like their parents did in the days of low marginal income taxes. In addition, the ball has attracted some of Boston's distinguished elders and now boasts a national and international following and an assortment of regional ethnics (but, typical of Boston, no blacks). "A new psychological development" has occurred at the ball this-year, Mrs. Powell-Pouzzner said.

At least six people invited their parents to the ball, which she says she does not understand but Is delighted over anyway since one of her objectives is to mix the ages. This stew might have turned out lumpy. But, through the alchemy of careful selection, the 1985 Bal du Printemps Saturday at The Dome in Quincy Market was vellum smooth. It began with a series of cocktail parties around town for those who could cough up a tax-deductable $55 for the chicken dinner and dance ($75 for patrons). "The problem of accommodating so many people is novel and bewildering," Mrs.

Powell-Pouzzner said, adding that she did not want to raise the price of the affair because she wanted to be able to choose among a variety of younger people, some of whom are between fortunes. "Only people who need charity deductions can afford to pay the higher prices." she said. "It's what I call the martini crowd. You always see the same faces and not necessarily the ones you would choose for an enchanting evening." Despite her affection for her "brilliant young," Mrs. Powell-Pouzzner's cocktail Invitations went out to the elders.

It was held in the Beacon Hill home of Dr. Michael Wiedman, the ophthalmologist and physician to Everest climbing teams, which he often accompanies, and his wife, Lane Gregory, the graphic artist and fashion Illustrator. It was studded with distinction. Leading the cavalcade was 87-year-old Francis Parkman of Boston, said to be Irreslstable to women of all ages. A former headmaster of St.

Mark's School, Mr. Parkman, who was ROBINSON. Page 76 After the silence was broken Editor says book about lesbian nuns is a 'validation' of her life By Kay Longcope Globe Staff INTER PARK. Fla. Eighteen- year-old Lisa Curb says she feels funny about the subject.

But, she hastens to add, "I'm proud of my mom, proud that she's do Curb considers the book "a validation of my own life. In each story, I relived the pain." Though it's teen 20 years since she's had anything to do with the Catholic Church, "I cried and cried when I read the finished version." From the age of 8, "all I ever wanted to be was a nun," she says. "I was raised in Chicago, where I thought everybody was Irish and certainly Catholic. Since my father was a communications specialist for the archdiocese, our house was a revolving door for priests and prelates. The archbishop always called me 'the little princess'.

"I grew up on radio Catholic radio as part of a repertory group of kids doing weekly Saturday morning programs. One was 'The Fairy Land Express', fairy tales by and for kids. Another, my favorite, was 'Lives of the I didn't enter the convent because I was a lesbian; I went In because I always wanted to be a saint." At parochial high schools in Chicago and Madison, Curb was on debating teams and won public speaking awards. In Chicago, she says. "I won first place on radio for a dramatic monologue.

I was Joan of Arc." These days, she smiles, "I have a lot of Joan of Arc fantasies. I have a fantasy of 'leading the army' the forces of truth and Justice against the Catholic establishment, which te digging Its heels In, desperately hanging onto the old ways, trying to pretend the book isn't real." Page 7 am a lesbian. I feel no need to stop being a nun The vows are meant to set us free, not to shackle us I live my vow of celibacy, my vow to love all. I am committed to my group of sisters, as well as to my special friend and lover." The book', published this month by Tallahassee's Niaid Press, predictably has created an uproar, especially among Catholics. Publisher Barbara Grier says response has phenomenal.

"The book is putting Niaid an obscure lesbianfeminist press on the map. It should be a best-seller." In Boston and Baltimore, because of pressure from the Roman Catholic Church, local Westing-house stations have canceled "People Are Talking" TV programs featuring Rosemary Curb. In Phoenix, a station refused to air two. hour-long "Sally Jessy Raphael" syndicated segments with Curb and Manahan. Late last week, Group the country's fifth largest consortium of stations, canceled April 17 "Hour Magazine" programs with the book's co-editors in Boston.

Baltimore. Philadelphia. Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. "It's selective censorship," says Curb. In Boston recently to promote the book, Curb says the question she Is always asked is how many lesbian nuns there are.

"Ten percent is a number often given by experts when figuring homosexuality In the general population but I'm not sure. I (w can anyone be sure?" ing something controversial." Her mother Is Rosemary Curb, 45, an associate professor of English at Rollins College and director of its women's studies program. She is also co-editor of the controversial new book, "Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence." which she asserts could not have been completed without her daughter's support. Over the past three years in between teaching, parenting, addressing academic conferences, and researching, writing and publishing scholarly articles Rosemary Curb and co-editor Nancy Manahan, 38, of Napa, have compiled autobiographies of 51 nuns and former women religious who, for the first time, have "broken silence" about a taboo In the Roman Catholic Church. Like Curb and Manahan who, respectively, were members of Dominican and Maryknoll orders, most have left religious life sdVne because of conflicts about spirituality and sexuality, others because of the faith's patriarchal structure.

Writes one of the book's nine remaining nuns: "Only In the past four fears have I known that I.