The Leader-Post from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada • 56

56 The Leader-Post Regina, Saskatchewan Wednesday, October 1, 1980; Lee Grant loves fright roles Collection of movie scripts stored in Albany museum When the court struck down the censoring of a Scandana-vian film, A Stranger Knocks, in 1965 and declared New York's film regulation law unconstitutional in the process, the division quietly went out of business. crime." On the other stood the motion picture promoters who realized, as they do today, it never hurts to use promises of sex or violence on the placard to build up a film at the box office. The division censored about seven per cent of the movies it saw in those 44 years, said Richard Andress, an archivist for New York. If film distributors objected, they could appeal to the Board of Regents, then the courts. Andress said a few appeals went to the U.S.

Supreme Court. Starting in 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court began to undermine the power of state film censoring boards with a series of freedom of expression glamorous age of American filmmaking, like Gone With The Wind. Grapes of Little Ceasar, All Quiet on the Western Front and many others. About 13,000 of the scripts are in foreign languages, ranging from Yiddish to Indonesian, complete with Eng lish translations.

Another point of Interest for film buffs is the exhaustive file kept by the state on the battles the motion picture division waged over what Its members felt was the questionable content of some films. On one side In these showdowns stood the division, bound by law to cut out of films anything "tending to corrupt morals" or "incite to There'll be a hot time In the hot tub tonight! 4 vMmm iSSIllIlllll ALBANY, N.Y.(AP)-The world's largest collection of motion picture scripts is not in Hollywood or New York City but in Albany, capital of New York state. The scripts 53,000 in all, plus 20,000 files on other motion pictures without the actual dialogue and camera directions are all that remain from between 1921 and 1965, when Albany was censoring films shown in the state. During those 44 years, six reviewers from the motion picture division of the state education department required a print beforehand of each film, along with the dialogue. The films were returned, but the scripts were saved.

They now occupy 1,500 cardboard boxes on the 11th floor of the New York State Museum here, and are available to adults Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., for reading and remembering. "As far as we know, Pennsylvania was the last state to keep its large collection intact," said Zita Eastman, a museum employee. "But it destroyed all but a fraction of its collection because it took up too much space. What we have here we believe to be the largest collection of its kind in the world." Here one can delve into the celebrated history of American motion pictures, from the first talking pictures of the 1920s to the films that stirred the censorship battles of the '50s.

Scattered in the collection are the diamonds of the if Hospital movie site Ife llllilllllll company. But for the patients and their visitors the movie-making is great entertainment and topic of most conversations as they strain to see the action. Downstairs in the cafeteria, film extras including some off-duty nurses and other staff await the call to action. Working or waiting, they get paid while there, union members getting $10 an hour, non-members $4. lilllit OTTAWA (CP) The year is 2030, and the scene is the futuristic California Heart Institute.

But really it's 1980 and the place is the new, ultra-modern Ottawa General Hospital. The brilliant surgeon, Dr. Vrain, played by Canadian Donald Sutherland, is in the midst of a tense, emotional scene. Suddenly the hospital loudspeaker blares a call for a doctor in French. The California setting is shattered.

"Cut," roars director Dick Pearce. It's all part of the frustration of filming State of the Art, by a'Toronto production MONTREAL (CP) One way or another, Lee Grant has always had a startling effect on the movie screea Her debut as a shoplifter in Billy Wyler's 1951 cop classic Detective Story lasted less than 15 minutes, yet it got her the Cannes Film Festival's coveted best actress award. "It was a tiny part, but it got a lot of attention," says the modest Miss Grant, looking out from enormous blue eyes and brushing back a strand of brandy-colored hair, all the while failing to mention Cannes. Lately, those wide-set blue eyes, exquisite vulpine jaw and throaty voice have made her a natural for delivering fright. In Damien, the sequel to The Omen, she was superb as the serene, well-to-do, wife and mother who skewers doting husband William Holden in the guts.

In the television movie that launched the Columbo series, she was equally ominous as the dastardly lady lawyer who deftly disposes of her husband. Now she's in Montreal to star in The Fright, her first Canadian movie and a big-budget shocker with William Shatner and Linda Purl. Miss Grant plays an intrepid reporter who becomes entangled in horrific happenings at a hospital. How does an actress who started on Broadway, has won two Emmys and the coveted Oscar for her searing rich-bitch performance in Shampoo, feel about fright roles? "I love it," she says with a smile. "In Columbo, I shot my husband in the first frame.

Most of us fantasize about that kind of possession. I get to do it." Hard work Still, starring in movies like The Fright is not what the small, slender ac-' tress is primarily about. A forthright and highly intelligent woman, she possesses an amazing capacity for creative hard work, and this year has been her test of fire. As well as starring in The Fright, Miss Grant recently completed a horror spoof called Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen. She also directed her first feature movie with Melvyn Douglas and finished editing her first documentary, a film about striking female bank employees in a mid-West town.

And all this with one daughter starring in a Broadway musical, another in the fourth grade, producer husband Joe Feury down with hepatitis and a house in Malibu blown away by a small tornado. What she has accomplished is phenomenal, but the caring wife and mother side of Lee Grant is apparently nagged by guilt. "I couldn't fulfill anybody's needs this year," she recalls wistfully. "And I felt very alone. "We all just held on to each other to make it through." Miss Grant's career has not always been so full although it did get off to a spectacular start.

As a young actress starting out on Broadway, playwright Sidney Kingsley offered her the choice of the ingenue lead or a small role as a shoplifter in his play Detective Story a day in the life of a New York police precinct. She chose to be the play's shoplifter, fashioning the tiny role into something so memorable that she won a Critics Circle Award. "I think I was born with a sense of -AT- SK LENl RESTRICTED ADULT (Lang. Warning) Lee Grant Lefty Bach Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, the German composer, was left-handed. 12th.

AVE. AT SCARTH ST. 5226363 I il survival," she says, explaining why she chose the small character role. "I didn't want to start out in a lead on Broadway. "I wanted to have my time to play around with every color and every facet of life that I met." After Broadway, she went to Hollywood and did the same role in Wyler's screen version of Detective Story starring Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker, only to be singled out for the best actress award at Cannes.

She was young, she was a hit and it was 1951. Along came Sen. Joseph McCarthy's "red scare" steamroller and Miss Grant and her husband, the late New York writer Arnold Manhoff, found themselves among the thousands of blacklisted American writers and performers. Lee Grant was not to work in Hollywood or on television for 12 years. "The tragedy was not me," she recalls.

"I was able to re-emerge in my early 30s not without a certain bitterness, a certain paranoia, and very deep roots outside the establishment rather, it was among those actors who were then in their 40s. "There were suicides, illnesses, for many the McCarthy era meant the end of their careers." During that period, Miss Grant acted occasionally on the New York stage, taught at the Actors Studio, and set about to understand political life in the wide sense of the word. "I think what happened during the McCarthy era was an area of testing for all of us. That period gave me roots, my ethical beliefs. I didn't have any until then." This year in particular has allowed Miss Grant to exercise other kinds of beliefs creative ones, as a director and film-maker.

For her the current movie scene is mainly offering "fast-food cinema." "I think people are starved for a sense of value, a framework in which they can see themselves and their families reflected on the screen instead of Superman or people always running around having such a good time." She is confident that Tell Me a Riddle, the new movie she has directed starring Melvyn Douglas and Lila Kedrova, will have that sense of value. Based on a novella by Tillie risen, it's the story 'of an old couple who came to America in 1910 from Russia where they had been regarded as dissidents. "It's a beautiful film and it has meaning," says Miss Grant, whose own mother came from Odessa. Tell Me a Riddle is not a Hollywood film. "Hollywood, are you kidding?" she interjects.

The money, just over $1 million, was raised by three young San Francisco women. "I hope it's risky," Miss Grant says. "1 don't want to fit into any category. The only category I'm interested in is the human one." RESTRICTED PUL ADULT AVE. AT SCARTH ST.

S22 6363 CUFF ROBERTSON i mm Daily 7:15 9:15 p.m. RESTRICTED ADULT No One Under 18 Admitted Unless Accompanied By Their Parent THE P3DLA7IY Albert 11th ADULT 1773 BROAD ST. 522 6161 DAILY 7:00 9:00 -SHOWS AT Studio plans are opposed by council :10 and 9:00 p.m. ADULT (Lang.) 11th. AVE.

AT BROAO ST 522 7755 RESTRICTED ADULT Albert 11th HIBU Either way, hell get it in the end A This Brother Ambnwe, Lead him not Into 1P For he's sure to follow A "nil Dally 7:30 9:30 p.m. ADULT (Language) Albert 11th MfrMS5 OTTAWA (CP) Some quick moves by a Swiss woman anxious to turn neighboring Gloucester into Canada's movie capital has some members of the local council worried. Dorothea Athans planned to fly to New York to sign a $10 million movie contract, but Reeve Betty Stewart was wondering Monday if council was wise to waive zoning regulations to accommodate the project. Ms. Athans told council bluntly Monday: "Take it or leave it, ladies and gentlemen.

If you don't need it, I'll go somewhere else." She said she had until midnight Tuesday to sign a contract with producer Paul Winston or lose the film. "I can't tolerate this anymore." She said she has spent $300,000 in two years developing plans for the $6-million studio and 294-home luxury subdivision. And it's those plans that have the reeve concerned. "I have a sick feeling in my stomach," she said after her words of caution on the zoning approval were lost on council. "What bothers me is no one has seen the plans.

It's all so premature." But other members of council, faced with the loss of the project, the loss of the 2,000 or more jobs it would bring and the heckling of residents eager to have movie stars as neighbors decided haste was in order. Ms. Athans also told them she would spend money earmarked for the project to have current members of council ousted in November elections if they didn't go along. The project must still get final approval from the regional government. But the developer said once the contract is signed, she'll have millions at stake.

If she doesn't get approval for the first phase, a huge courtyard and 185 homes, "I may as well get a pistol and put it to my head." ft 1 PTC 'I ni 1 1 -X iiwuiMftiininr ii i nffly nii iwniinwumiiMfl iiiiriiinimnmriiiiriffi 'i riorum immn Hamming aaMiWwhiiiifnwiiffiWiiTiiti fWRAMOlINT PtCTURES PRESENTS A STEVE TBCH 0N AWfCT PRODUCTION A JOSEPH SARGENT (TIM RUNCANWH COASTTOCOASt DIRECTOR 01 PHOTOGRAPHY MARK) TOSI. A.SC EXECUTIVE PRODUCER WRITTEN BVSTANIEV WISER PRODUCED BV STEVE TBCH AND JON AVNET DIRECTED BY JOSEPH SARGENT A PARAMOUNT PICTURE Don't Miss The Boat Quebec Liberal leader Claude Ryan, portrayed by Jean-Guy Moreau in his political satire "Don't Miss The Boat," is shown as the captain of a submarine whose only ambition is to join up with a ship captained by Prime Minister Trudeau. The one-mam show, which premiered in Quebec City, will be in Montreal in November and is also tentatively planned for Ottawa. (CP). Daily 7:30 9:30 p.m.

ADULT (Language) Victoria A Broad 3SMB44 1773 BR0A0 ST. 522 6161.