Word: gospeleer
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...singer of the 1963 hit Just One Look, whose beginnings as a choir girl in her father's Harlem church inspired the long-running musical Mama, I Want to Sing; of emphysema; in Las Vegas. Under her birth name, Doris Payne, she wrote most of her own material, bridging gospel, soul and rock. As Doris Troy (from Helen of Troy) she sang backup for bands like the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd...
...GOSPEL ROAD...
...year for Jesus musicals, 1973 also saw the emergence in the Bible belt of a family production: "Gospel Road," produced in Israel by June and Johnny Cash. The Man in Black, who had recently embraced Christ, ambles through the Holy Land while quoting Scripture and telling a story of Jesus' life and sacrifice. As Cash intones the words, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased," it's easy to imagine that God just must have a Southern accent. The pauper-budgeted simplicity and naivete of "Gospel Road" - its irrefutable good intentions - overwhelm the weirdness...
...also lays out the plot to discredit Jesus: "He's to be followed and spied on by the Scribes and Pharisees throughout His ministry." As Gibson's film does, Cash's puts the blame on a corrupt segment of the religious hierarchy. And in the last 20 minutes, "Gospel Road" gets around to the Passion. Jesus is lashed, kicked and spat on a few clumsy times, then totes his cross up a deserted city street. He dies in close-up, and the camera pulls back to reveal a modern American city (L.A.? Nashville?) - a strange but potent payoff, indicating that...
...Wonderful Life" is to Christmas, and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" to Independence Day, this Franco Zeffirelli miniseries (6hr.26min. in the DVD version, of which the Passion section takes about an hour) is to Easter: definitive TV entertainment for a holiday, or holy day. Lusciously pictorial, elaborating on the Gospel narrative while tightroping above controversy, the film is the fullest standard text from which more extravagant versions like Pasolini's and Gibson's are encouraged to meander freely...