Word: paragons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Rachel Sweet: Fool Around (Stiff/Columbia) and Lene Lovich: Stateless (Stiff/Epic) arrive via England from that paragon of excellent eccentricity, Stiff Records, where these young women are not only la-belmates but exemplars of the two extremes of rock vocal styles, contemporary female division. Lovich seems to have tak en vocal seminars from Nico and Patti Smith. Her songs (many co-written by Lovich) are feckless threnodies about lovelessness, entrapment and alienation. Sweet, who is sunnier in disposition, lays down a sort of teasing, jailbait rock that relies on snappy melodies and gum-cracking sensuality...
Marian (Tammy Grimes) is ultracivilized, a paragon of taste and class. She holds no lasting grudge over the divorce and even goes to bed with her ex from time to time. Estelle (Mary Beth Hurt), the most recently separated, is bewildered and scarcely able to cope with the enormity of the experience. An orphan who married an orphan, she had a glowing faith that building a nest would be the golden tie that binds forever...
Frady refines that conceit a bit and uses it as an underlying premise of his splendid biography: to many who have been ambushed by change, "Graham has become the only familiar American paragon left; the last hero of the old American righteousness." Through the racial convulsions of the late '50s and '60s, and then Viet Nam, writes Frady, "there finally began to hang over the country, worst of all, forebodings of some actual loss of our own native rectitude, of America's constitutional decency. Perhaps no one is finally so dear as he who returns and restores...
...real thing. Marlon Brando predictably dominates this tale of corruption on the docks of Hoboken; his amoral, streetwise Terry Malone will always be remembered in the same breath as his Stanley Kowalski, and last tangoer in Paris. The portrayal of Brando's relationship with Eve Marie-Saint's paragon of prudery rankles a bit, sugary in a few embarrassing moments. Yet Elie Kazan's otherwise slick direction salvages the plot, wisely allowing Brando to showcase his still developing talents and heart-melting looks. Studded with a brilliant supporting cast, that featured Lee J. Cobb as a tyrannical union boss...
Despite these failings, The Corn Is Green at times is carried by the sheer force of the Hepburn-Saynor tutoring sessions. Saynor makes Morgan's transition from scruffy youth to literate gentleman seem fully credible. Hepburn, as always, is a handsome paragon of moral rectitude and common sense. When this actress commands the screen, who could dare turn away...