Word: cleavon
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Congressman Mickey Leland's charge that the show was a reversion to the "Stepin Fetchit syndrome" is a total injustice to Cleavon Little, a talented, intelligent and sensitive black actor. What actually was shown was a new Congressman in Washington weighing the advice of his more experienced staff, one of whom was a black woman. Indeed, in the last show we taped, Dugan learns that being a lawmaker does not give him a license to be pompous...
...trouble was that Mister Dugan who was played by Cleavon Little, was no only black but also a Congressman. After consulting with blacks in Los Angeles and Washington, Lear decided that Mister Dugan was not the sort of man he would want to vote for. "We felt we were ineffectively presenting a black Congressman as a role model," he says. "We want our black legislator to do as good a job showing how compassionate a politician can be as Marcus Welby did in showing how good a doctor could be. It's painful...
...excitement is not just box office. This season Broadway has offered something for everyone. Oscar Winner Ellen Burstyn is back in the hit comedy Same Time, Next Year, Rex Harrison and Julie Harris star in In Praise of Love, and Ingrid Bergman is in The Constant Wife. Cleavon Little escaped Mel Brooks' clutches long enough to run off with the notices in Murray Schisgal's flip farce All Over Town, and Elizabeth Ashley returned triumphantly in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The British sent over a generation of stars, including Alec McCowen and Diana Rigg playing together...
Sexually Irresponsible. The plot is thin. A young man named Louie (Zane Lasky) has impregnated five women, sired nine children by them and cast their support on the bowed back of the U.S. taxpayer. A black deliveryman, Lewis (Cleavon Little), is mistaken for this paragon of sexual irresponsibility, and his favors are courted by a family whose minds and hearts consist of liberal mush...
...comedian Richard Pryor) is threadbare in parts, and some of Brooks's cast need all the help they can get. Harvey Korman, better known for his boring slapstickery on the Carol Burnett Show, destroys the comedy of the villain's role by his overbearing and predictable gestures and expressions. Cleavon Little, another gift from the world of TV comedy, plays Black Bart like Stepin Fetchit. Such a portrayal lacks not only racial sensitivity; it lacks...