The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 181

SECTION JJ Sb iEiami Herald Sunday March 18 1973 Big Bad Bronson Fortune Is Smiling on Granite-Faced But Box Office Champ Smiling Back ByBOBLARDINE Hw York Nm Itrvlet fV LOVE or gang war Chariot Bron grim expression seldom crackt even when holding lovely Michele Mercier far left In Win Them alto right at home with knife and trenchcoat In "The Valachi ROME The assistant director shouts and the Italian movie crew plus the few English technicians on the picture "Wild obediently quiet down Charles Bronson strides onto the set shoulders back and a mean grim look on his face dressed in dusty cowboy togs for his confrontation with fellow actor Marcel Bozzufi in this frontier living room scene They exchange bitter terse remarks and then Bronson turns abruptly and tries to leave through the door But it opens outwardly and then Bronson stubbornly keeps tugging it towards him Finally he mutters in frustration: damn it! Somebody get me the hell out of Everyone laughs and director John Sturges bellows: do it THE ENGLISHMAN manipulating the sound apparatus shakes his head and whispers: a i there I thought Bronson was going to laugh too But not surprised he In nine weeks on the film never seen him Yet Bronson should be walking around in a constant state of euphoria grinning like a fun house fixture If ever a man had reason for laughing at the world Charley Bronson All he has to do is regard his present circumstances At 52 the number one box office attrac nored the special screening of his other recent movie tTpe JUST want to see he says stubbornly Luckily for him thousands of other people share his sentiments They have flocked' to the films creating a new wave of popularity for Bronson in Europe In America Valachi has brought him to prominence for the first time The last fact should please Bronson but still embittered that it took his own country so long to recognize his accomplishments tion who earns $1 jfiilHoh a picture rents castles in Italy drives mile-long Cadillacs sports Paris-made clothes and is the object of awe wherever he goes throughout Europe THAT SHOULD put a perpetual smirk on that ravaged face especially when Bronson recalls what he was: a starving kid named Charles Buchin-sky one of 15 children born to Rus-sian-Lithuanian parents in the impoverished coal mining town of Ehren feld Pa For years he worked for next to nothing while foraging through garbage pails for food Now Bronson mixes with tnttHon-aires as he savors the finest gourmet 11 dishes in the swankiest European restaurants But still suspicious still holds grudges still despises interviews still hates to give anything of himself still believe it has really happened to him so introverted and withdrawn that he even bear to watch his own films They held a preview of Valachi only a few blocks from his hotel here but Jronson refused to go He also ig- been on a Bronson Binge for three or four years but the actor received scant attention in the US Prior to Valachi Papers" his major claims to fame were the films "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Dirty He went to Europe in 1968 more out of desperation than anything else His very first movie created a sensation He followed it quickly with other hits Upon A Time In The West" and One picture "Rider On The Turn to Page 10H Jacqueline Susann II Say Anything You Like About Her But Spell the Name Right: S-u-s-a-n-n REX REED startling plot twists a hypnotic story and enough thinly-disguised public figures to keep cocktail parties guessing and every movie star in Hollywood fighting duels to get into the movie version for months to come a Mike 3odd type of figure whose daughter is in loye with him a legendary Greta Garbo reclust an Ernest Hemingway figure Look closely and find Truman Capote and John Simon too There are no plain folks Everybody is somebody astronauts millionaires Palm Beach hostesses stars of nude rock musicals speed-injecting Dr Feelgoods Like I said It dull TELL YOU something else I like Jacqueline Susann too She's generous and kind and candid and enormously intelligent The door opens to -tier lemony chiffon penthouse 25 floors aboVe Central Park and the first thing I see is a giant pop-art book cover that says Is Not in bright red neon lights All the salesmen for her new book chipped in and bought it talking to Doris Day on the phone about animal shelters so I settle down with a Dr Pepper in a Tiffany glass served on napkins advertising "The Love Machine" Then she flows ijyHike somebody in a Noel Coward play off say 'a for sake Just say I was bom in November 1963 because whin my first book Turn to Page HER FRIENDS call her Jackie Her enemies call her lots of other things Jacqueline Susann used to worry about it When Truman Capote called her a driver in on the Johnny Carson Show she threatened him with a law suit But now mellowed toward her critics She knows that writers are the bitchiest people in the world and since she has sold more books than any female writer in the history of literature she is going to turn some people green with jealousy and all there is to it Looking about as much like a truck driver as Raquel Welch now she just laughs at her assailants Especially Truman Capote THING You realize you that he has never written a full-length novel in his life There has to be something wrong with a man who in Tn Cold had more empathy for the two killers than he had for the murdered Clutter family because of his way of thinking the Clutters were middle-class you have to be slightly off-balance to say that Laurence Olivier Alec Guinness and Marlon Brando have no intelligence or that Sammy Davis one of the greatest entertainers has talent only He written a book since 1965" So Jacqueline Susann is crying all the the way to the bank and after this week be making several more trips This week is D-Day in the publishing world because it marks the publication of Jacqueline newest novel Is Not and there is no reason to suspect history repeat itself Of The sold 25 million copies and stayed on the best-seller list for 65 weeks Love on the list for 37 weeks sold 10 million and is still climbing The new one is expected to break alt previous records Forty-eight hours after her photo appeared on the cover of the Feb 5 Publishers Weekly 56000 orders had been taken The book even in the stores yet and it already has a guaranteed first printing of 150-000 copies So say anything you like about Jacqueline Susann but spell the name right tell you something read Is Not and all I can say is fasten your seat belts Not only is it the best book Jacqueline Susann has ever written it's like a pot of fudge You put it down IT HAS WARMTH humor wit sharply-defined characters complex relationships Author Jacqueline Susann new hook It published this week.