Word: cassius
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Made a name for himself--he was Cassius Clay then--in the amateurs. Won the light-heavy gold at the 1960 games in Rome. Won the world heavyweight championship in 1964 from the then invincible Sonny Liston. Made a name for himself as champ, now choosing to call himself Muhammad Ali, by successfully defending his crown against all comers with whirlwind hand and foot speed. And mouth speed...
...question that the man lives well, and the proposed $7 million paycheck he will receive for climbing in the ring against Tate will buy a lot of car batteries. But, is it worth it? Muhammad Ali is no longer the fighter he once was. A young and enthusiastic Cassius Clay, with the quick hands and feet that never touched the canvas, has become a chunky Muhammad Ali. The stomach muscles that withstood the barrages of Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman now hang over his belt. The face which had never been cut, unmarked all these years...
Freedman has given fresh significance to Pindarus--whom Cassius captured, forced into servitude, and finally frees-by assigning the role to a black actor (a forceful Joe Morton). Ray Dooley is sufficiently young-looking for the 21-year-old Octavius, and nicely captures the chill efficiency of this whiz kid with a fourragere on his uniform...
...second-longest role of Cassius, Brutus' brother-in-law who originates the murder plot, a bearded Harris Yulin makes his position more plausible and less villainous than we usually see--and perhaps it should be said that there are no thorough villains in this play, except for the gang that lynches a poor poet merely for having the same name as one of the conspirators...
...mentioning Robert Burr's disappointing Caesar. We are prepared for him by an onstage brass band and drum, but when he at last appears we see a most ordinary man (dressed up, to be sure), lacking all force of personality. By no stretch of the imagination could Cassius say that this Caesar " doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." In the brief colloquy between Caesar and Decius Brutus, the latter exhibits much more magnetism, as played by James Harper, and I wish the two actors had exchanged roles...