Word: caesar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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While published polls get all the attention (giving the pollsters entree to far more lucrative market research), private pollsters work for candidates much as augurs labored for Caesar. No longer sure of his personal instincts, the modern politician has upgraded the pollster from the rank of technician to that of campaign tactician. Says a leading pollster, Joseph A. Napolitan: "Polls never won an election, but you can win an election with what you do with your polls...
Today's trainees, virtually reared on the tube, are hooked on the Army's version of Ding-Dong School. Unwittingly, they are participants in one of the few radical advances in teaching the arts of war made since the days when Julius Caesar's centurions were bawling out greenhorns as they learned the goose-stepping passus Romanus. Replacing hoary drill instructors are cool specialists; no longer mechanical spiels learned by rote and replete with undigested, ill-pronounced jargon, lessons are couched in the G.I.s' everyday language; small items of equipment once invisible to troopers...
Endecott-played by Kenneth Haigh with the weary administrative sanity of Shaw's Caesar-is aware of the mourn ful carnage of retribution and revenge, and initially is reluctant to take any brutal measures against the colony. But then a clerical emissary from England arrives to announce that King Charles I intends to revoke the charter of the Massachusetts Colony and place it under the direct rule of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Morton taunts Endecott with this promise of lost authority, and suddenly the Governor becomes as steely as his armor. Delivering a flaming polemic against the King...
...members individual justice. But special mention must be made of Sheila Hart and Arthur Friedman (Ftatateeta and Pothinus). Their overbearing presences manage to evoke most of the corruption and tension in the atmosphere of the Egyptian court. Ed Etsten (Rufio) is physically and vocally perfect as Caesar's comrade-in-arms, though his performance lacks a good deal for variety. And when Leland Moss (Brittanus) drops the strange, epicene mannerisms which he has imposed on the character of the super-sophisticated reform barbarian, he has several moments of rare and special dignity...
...these are precisely the qualities lacking from too much stage comedy, and especially from comedy of ideas. An audience must be able to laugh, but it must also be able to respect itself and the object of its amusement afterwards. Among the many, many moments of laughter in this Caesar and Cleopatra, none is cheapened or distorted. And that is an accomplishment in itself...