Give 'Em Hell, Harry! Ten days ago, after driving all day through dairy lands, north into lakes and woods, we pulled into a little campground (which doubled as a chain saw outlet and vendor of used snowmobiles) a mile or so outside the proud community of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Three dollars for a little plot for the tent, a picnic table, and a bunch of rocks in a circle to start a fire in, a fire which I later couldn't get started because of wet wood, an episode ending in a most unwoodsman-like display of burned fingers, smoldering copies of the Milwaukee Sentinel, and constant invocations of deity piercing loudly and unecologically through the bucolic serenity of the Northland forest. Earlier, we pulled in to pay and encountered an old woman who began to babble about mushrooms--she was hell-bent, she told us, for the mushroom watcher's club meeting at nearby Nicolet College. She clutched her mushroom directory. Her daughter, a pious-looking woman with butterfly glasses who ran the place, rolled her eyes in embarassment after her mother had bustled out, and remarked that gee I had even remembered my license plate number in filling out the form. She advised us not to sleep too near the lake because it was very cold, and indeed, we almost perished, reading thrillers by candlelight in the tent. Anyway, the shack that served as rest rooms was the wonderful thing about the place. Absolutely spotless, immaculate, and furnished in Alaskan dentist's office splendour. Shivering from the woods with pine-smeared toothbrush, you enter a room with a mirror in the shape of a crucifix. The walls are neatly papered with church directories, to worship at the place of your choice, which in this case was every Lutheran Church within 100 miles. No temples. Also, shelves packed tight with ancient copies of Reader's Digest, and a calender or two sponsored by the very same publication. Best of all was that rural passion for personal signs--dozens of them, informing people not to throw cigarettes down the toilets (ashtray provided), not to run the water too long, quiet hours 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., bingo, if you're interested, at a location in downtown Rhinelander. All very polite and designed to be helpful, please, please, please. Then the newspaper clippings, yelowing with age, in the main picturing grinning and slightly embarrassed men furling out large fish caught in the area. In the center of all the clips was the shining star in this institution's galaxie--Famed Actor Visits Rhinelander Campground (I'm getting to the point). Noted television actor James Whitmore spent last night at Franz and Irma's Camp Park (all bars, and there are many in Wisconsin, are like this, Dick and Judy's Supper Club, Fritz and Jean's Keyboard Lounge). The star was spotted on the street by several Rhinelander residents almost immediately, and they reported it to this newspaper, which gained an exclusive interview. The who-what-when-where continued: Whitmore had been on a fishing trip with his wife and two teenage sons in Canada, and no, he hadn't stopped by Rhinelander for any particular reason, only that it was on the highway, but yes, it looked a fine community, and there sure were some great muskies, he'd heard, in Canada, but he hadn't been able to reel any in. Then two Kodakolor snapshots of Whitmore trudging across the campground puffing on a pipe, wearing sneakers. Picture courtesy of Mrs. Ellen Scholl, Sheboygan, Wisc. The clip was ten years old--1965. Anyway, poor James Whitmore, star of the early fifties sci-fi feature Them, the hero of a couple of short-lived series like The Law and Mr. Jones, and a dead ringer for Spencer Tracy, is now getting a lot of attention for his portrayal of Harry Truman in this new movie, created from a play which Gerald Ford and a lot of other people loved, the much-advertised and obvious product of the recent Time Magazine-reported craze about the straight-talking, poker-playing, president. It started at the Circle Theatre in Cleveland Circle, Brookline--one of the most art-gallery in the-lobby-ish, popcorn-at-a-dollar-a-kernel, fancy-carpeted moviehouses in town--yesterday.
Bergman. Three weeks of Bergman at the Orson Welles. If you're new in town, go to one, if not to view the Cambridge aficionados of the great director, at least to visit one of the great treats of living here, the Welles itself. Get existential.
Off the Wall. This place on Main Street in Cambridge was always impossible to list last year because the programs they would run were so damn complicated--the prices, times, and length of programs varied as randomly as the images in an avant-garde film. This, in fact, is what they tend to show--Off the Wall sees itself as an alternative moviehouse, showing shorts, experimental films video, non-sexist and non-violent film. Now they've changed to showing programs for longer stretches, and the program of shorts they're running now is there is their kick-off flick. Short films by Lindsey Anderson (If, O Lucky Man!), by Mel Brooks, by Roman Polanski, Brian DePalma, Truffaut, Godard, and a famous Belgian animator named Servais. I just examined their announcement and see that the prices and times are still insanely garbled. Maybe you should call 354-5678 for details.
