Word: kaplan
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CHARTING THE CAREER of world champion race car driver Shirley Muldowney from Schenectady housewife to champ, Heart Like a Wheel evokes expectations of an automotive Breaking Away. No such luck, Director Jonathan Kaplan gets us in the car, but the ride is always too short. We feel a bit like the little kid who puts his only shiny quarter in the plastic horsey, expecting an exhilarating ride but only receiving a few quick, neck-snapping bobs...
...Kaplan does his best directing in portraying Shirley's early years in Schenectady. He recreates the excitement of the Saturday night drag race and the Smokey, small town club, where Shirley's father sings, in a way that gives dimension and color to the unfolding scenes. In one scene Shirley, just married, stands in her wedding dress in front of a dilapidated service station while Jack exuberantly describes his future plans, and we believe his naive faith in the future. This youthful energy evaporates, however, when Kaplan transports us to the world of the racetrack. Instead of pulsating action...
...Kaplan briefly shows the greasy, macho, tree living lifestyle of the race car driver who is treated like a star. But the audience, like Shirley, is not completely let into this fraternizing crowd. Instead, we are only allowed brief glimpses and therefore never feel their full impact...
...Kaplan implies that Shirley must maintain this tough armor in order to compete as a drag racer. Indeed, Shirley is seldom discouraged by patronizing or chauvinistic comments and behavior. When a fellow racer blows her a kiss before they start a race she confidently gives him the finger. Shirley must concede slightly, however, to help herself get ahead. When she moves to California she puts on shorts and calls herself Cha-Cha Muldowney. Soon, however, she resumes her real name, adamantly claiming her womanhood. When she goes on a cooking show on Canadian T.V. as a special guest...
DIED. Henry S. Kaplan, 65, Stanford University radiologist and co-inventor of the first medical linear accelerator in the Western hemisphere, which became the cornerstone of modern radiation therapy and helped transform once fatal Hodgkin's disease, for example, into a relatively curable ailment; of lung cancer; in Palo Alto, Calif. In 1955 the Chicago-born Kaplan collaborated with Edward Ginzton in developing a 6-million-volt accelerator at the Stanford Medical Center, then in San Francisco. The device smashed atoms to produce high-dosage radiation that could be directed at various forms of cancer with much greater accuracy...