The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 288

A XL Ttow st Slji iHiatni Hcralii Sunday July 30 1972 rpj LI Cl Jl li Tough Eddie Egan Is as Busy Being an Actor As He JFfls Tracking Down (The French Connection 9 By EDNA BUCHANAN i I Herald staff Writer II IS FIRST DAY out of New I York Police Academy Officer Eddie Egan noticed a minor traffic snarl building up into what could have been a major tie-up As his veteran police partner disappeared into a doorway Egan waded in waved cars on and cleared the problem The veteran cop emerged when traffic was moving smoothly and offered advice tell you something The only way you get in trouble in this job is if you do your job If nobody ever hears of you do Egan took no heed EVERYBODY has heard of him the su-pernarc upon whom the central character in French was based And trouble never was a stranger to the blue-eyed barrel-chested narcotics cop with Harlem as a beat Less than six hours before his retirement was to become effective last year Egan the man who made more than 8000 arrests was fired for violating rules Egan 42 an ex-Marine who first wore a badge as a Port Authority patrolman and then fought crime for 16 years with the New York Department took the fight for his pension and his reputation to the State Supreme Court and won was a reason why I violated those he says never denied it The investigator assigned to the case said done no more than anybody else in the job common THE CHARGE stated that Egan take evidence to the property bureau immediately Another rule was that prisoners be immediately taken to a hearing 6 Police ivork? Outside in livo and four degree temperature night after night Freezing our bunnies off eating pizza in a doorivay I loved it obeying one you had to violate the Egan says The rules have been changed since his case Rumors were that the real reason was that the image of Egan created on the screen by actor Gene Hackman nettled some officials and that Egan in his explosive career had stepped on political toes Egan leans to the former discounting politics operate like that in New York ghetto areas The people there even know who their congressman is The ads for the picture said bends the rules but a good a slap in the face that somebody is bending the Egan stepped jauntily from police work into acting portraying supervisor in the film He was so good it cost him money He was paid by the day and six days had been budgeted for shooting his scenes They finished in two IT WAS Hackman who researched the life of the man whose part he was to portray and felt aghast of the life of a policeman who persuaded Egan to give up police work for acting The pair became close friends "Hackman sat me down and said this is the life of a He said it was no decent life to live in two and four degree temperatures through the holidays night after night Freezing our bunnies off eating pizza in a doorway while everybody else is eating in a big fancy restaurant know how to relax I had no personal life There was no such thing as planning things in advance was married to my partner Sonny Grosso for 13 years the type that puts on a uni- Ex-Cop Eddie Now Working on a form and works nine to five hoping nothing happens and trying not to see when it did I loved it I was completely obsessed with the job I wait to get to work work until 5 am grab a few hours sleep and be back at 11 the people I arrested they had rights They were innocent until proven guilty But police are guilty until proven innocent I was a second-class citizen arrest somebody and be out back in my precinct doing The same thing while I was still doing the paperwork "Everybody gets a copy of everything Eventually New York City will be buried under paper had to make out 40 forms for every arrest Then I made a 41st one for my girlfriend to explain what took me so long A detective get a dime more if he works around the clock A detective that does nothing gets the same while you make all the arrests I had to be Egan has not abandoned police work however ASK why-1 get out of it sooner something in your blood Turn Page 1 1 Good Time Music Makes a Comeback By HOLLIE I WEST Miami Herald-Washington Post Wirt Say the word ragtime and many people immediately have visions of a dark barroom sawdust on the floor and perhaps gaslight fixtures A man wearing a straw hat and red white and blue striped shirt is slapping a crumbling tinny-sounding upright piano Everything he plays sounds the same but all happy music Great as background for gulping down pitchers of beer boisterous talk and a round or two of group singing UNTIL RECENTLY this may have been close to the image most people had of ragtime But times started changing about two years ago Ragtime is being performed by classical pianists studied by musicologists and written about by music crit- ics Alan Mandel professor of music at American University and a pianist who in cludes rags in his repertoire says: think an authentic American art form very exhilarating for me as a classical player to find an American music I can identify Joshua Rifkin a Brandeis University music professor -and Juilliard graduate says ragtime is rhythmically and technically demanding RIFKIN HAS a record album of rags that has sold more than 100000 copies and because it is listed in the slow-selling classical category this makes it a best-seller Recently he has been taking ragtime into the concert hall and recently played an allrag piano recital at prestigious Ravinia Festival 'In addition the New York Public Library has issued a two-volume edition of the works of Scott Joplin the father of ragtime at $50 a set The editor Vera Brodsky Lawrence a former sical pianist and one of those inventive and complete lagtime composer One of the first rags published 1 came into print in 1897 But it until 1899 when Leaf was published that the ragtime craze hit the country with full impact Leaf sold more than a million copies a phenomenal number in those days Everywhere there was popular music played in pool halls bordellos cafes' there was ragtime I JOPLIN became well known and attained financial success He had come a long way from his beginnings Bom in 1868 in Texarkana Tex the son of an ex-slave Joplin grew up in a family of five children: After showing talent early his father bought young Scott a piano and by the time the boy was 11 he was taking lessons from a local man in the German music tradition But after turning 14 or 15 the father insisted that young Scott relinquish music and get a job Scott refused and left home to seek his fortune as a musician He wandered around Texas and Lou- responsible for the ragtime revival says the initial printing of 1000 copies has sold out and another printing is being prepared the opera Joplin wrote in 1916 and that drew enthusiastic reviews after its first performance in Atlanta last January will be performed at Wolf Trap Farm Park this summer What is ragtime? Basically it is a composed syncopated -piano music marked by an oompah left hand a sprightly intricate ornamental right hand arabesque melodies and a multitheme structure Classical musicians are attracted by its complexity and precision and compare its best works with the minor piano compositions by Chopin and Mozart It is delicate rococo and warm RAGTIME flourished dur- ing the late 1890s 'and up to about World War I and was played mostly in bars and sporting houses by itinerant pianists Overexposure and the rise of jazz drove it to swift obscurity The musician who has emerged as the hero of the current ragtime renaissance is Scott Joplin dead almost 55 years but whose influence permeates the music from its beginnings If he the first to write in the form he was the most authoritative I Say anti jou conjure up a tinny upright and a beer-swilling piano player But lately that raggedy rhjthm of the turn has become the darling of the concert hall as well as of the sawdust-floored saloon a A COf 0.