European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - December 8, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Growing old gracefully or otherwise is a Tough act by Walter Goodman new York times he most touching scenes in Francis Coppola s Peggy sue got married come when 45-year-old Peggy sue finding Hersell 25 years Bach in Lime visits her grandparents. The old folks Are played by Leon Ames and Maureen o Sulvan with a Hind of distracted of Lee lion the Way grandparents Are Ollen seen by kids doling yet Somo whal unconnected Bui Peggy sue is no longer a kid and by the Lime we get into our mid-40s, connections with people in their 60s and Over Are being formed or reformed the elderly who in one s youth seem like a different species become Only too pertinent. Life has begun Laking is loll by Ihen and we can feel the ache of at every Lime we Bend. So it is Wilh Peggy sue her meeting in Middle age Wilh Iho grandparents she loved As a girl is poignant she seems to want to cry Oul with Robert Lowell grandpa have me. Hold me cherish me1" a we sense intimations of our own tale in our grandparents decline and disappearance. Iho meaning of i hair toss deepens movies Alx Mil old people Are nol generally thought of As to office draws. But owing to medical wonders and government programs thai keep More of us Alivo. Wilh spending Money for Many More years an aging nation has Nahi Aily been giving More attention to the elderly nol everybody can Kvetch in the Comfort that Jack Lemmon enjoys in the Glossy that s Lite but most of us can look Forward to the democratic right to Suiter the stir mimics of age with coming attractions available in creaking oils and children going off and friends dying of that Means to be crass about it there s a considerable Market out there of people in their 60s and 70s and 80s Wilh a lot of Lime on their hands the demographics translate into a big tier audience far movies and plays about the elderly who May nol care to have themselves served up Marty As subjects Tor robbers or objects of ridicule and the response is visible around town. There s the entertaining Tough Guys in which the age of the stars. Burl Lancaster and Kirk Douglas is Iho main source of the Lua on Broadway. I m nol of Rappaport a comedy about an old Black Man and an old jewish Man. Has recently changed casts and seems destined to Goon unlit present audiences enter their Dol ago Samuel Beckell s grimly funny look Al old age Krapp s last tape is Back in a new production the Gin came starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy shows up on Public television now and then and video cassettes Are available of Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda doing their Sunset duet in on Golden Pond. Tho use of aging or aged stars to play once again the Personas that have endeared them Loos Over the years has Beon a show Biz Shlick since Al least 1962, when Randolph Scoll and Joel Mccrea teamed up in a neat Whsle in about a couple of Over the Hill cowboys their movie flite the High country was. Really a Ude into nostalgia such stars w la whom audiences of a certain age have grown up have always functioned As our surrogates now in their wrinkles we see our own we hear the changes in our voices in the weakening of theirs yet because Thoy arc Slars. They also shield us irom the realities of aging like Bright tights shining directly into our eyes. So they play a somewhat contradictory role Al once bringing the years Home to us and protecting us rom their Lull Impact Tough Guys i a Good example. Butt Lancaster and Kirk b Ouglas Are still handsome still fit at least on screen and in no danger of being dumped in a nursing Home. When the character played by Lancaster winds up in the Golden Sunset Home we know he s there to Start a rebellion Bolh men of course made it big in action movies and Tough Guys thrives on our memories of their youth and Energy. The movie s question what Are a couple of Bank robbers of yesteryear to do after 30 years in jail might be rephrased. What Are the heroes of sunlight Al the . Corral to do when their reflexes slow and agility gives Way to arthritis Well be assured they do better than the rest of us the Slars continue to feed our Wishful thinking the less Happy truth As we might have Learned from Shakespeare before our own failing a cities began to relay the message is that growing old is no fun. The Mure is Mere oblivion sans Teeth sans eyes sans taste sans maybe that s Why popular Tough Quay with Burl Lancaster left and Kirk Douglas thrives on Ourn Moriet Olathe actors youth and Energy. Shows have Ollen treated old age in the comical sentimental Mode easy to Swallow like the coated drugs that some old people live on. Neil Simon s Sunshine says gave us a couple of feuding old comics who Kepi churning out one liners even As they Laded. Look at the cute curmudgeons a movie like cocoon transforms the aging process info fantasy Seo Don Meehe or somebody playing Don Ameche playing a Clapper codger do a bit of break dancing and then let s Board a spaceship to the land of eternal non deals. And who is going to lose sleep Over Julie Andrews deluxe troubles in thai s life a Slick movie that touches some of the painful realities of aging but cushions hem with Interior decorating the playwright who has ambitions to dig into the pains of age almost needs a Star or iwo to make his work palatable. Consider the Gin game despite a string of gags along the Way. The play carries a Prelly sour message. The physical mental and spiritual condition of the male player is far irom Tiptop but when he is Hume Cronyn doing a virtuoso duet Wilh his wife Jessica Tandy the show changes ils nature. Now. The play goer cannot forgot thai he is watching the Broadway couple Al work. We Are Able to leave the theater admiring the performances and not dwelling on what the play says about growing old. The Gin game goes Down smooth in. And there s no hangover similarly the glow of the movie version of on Golden Pond a More sentimental exercise Man the Gin game cannot be separated from the glow of out old favourites Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda who must remain forever Young to every fan of the flicks of the 1930s and 40s hardly a Weeh passes that some television station in t showing a Vintage Fonda or Hepburn movie that returns us to our own younger sometimes very Young years seeing the grapes of Wrath or Little women is about As close As we Are Likely to come to recapturing things Long past Fonda and Hepburn Are too big for us wholly to identify with but what could be More flattering than to have one s generation exemplified by those iwo it is a somewhat spooky though that the Youthful Charm of a Star like Fonda will go on and on indefinitely while the actor rests in his Linal peace. The one writer who has bean cutting through to the disagreeable truths about age since Well before he was old enough to eel its depredations is Samuel Beckett although Beckett is nol one to provide Many details about his characters most of them in his novels As Well As his plays seem to be ancient and in some degree of decrepitude. In Krapp s last tape perhaps Beckett s most direct exposition on being old. He jives us a Cranky Sou who Wilh the assistance of a i ape recorder is reviewing his life his reactions jump irom disgust to longing to bored exasperation Krapp seems to be asking the same question Hal carries Peggy sue into the past and is the theme too of Simon Gray s new play the common Pursuit where did it All go wrong you Don t have to be an intellectual to be kept awake nights by that and the years Only add to the Opportunity Lor error. No biography in Beckett s determinedly unsentimental telling can be very satisfying life tilled with silly rituals and lost opportunities is a somewhat ludicrous Way to pass the time until the never Happy end. Thai s not an easy message to Lake and we can expect to have it softened by less unrelenting playwrights and movie makers with the help of jokes fantasy and above All stars. In the color of Money Paul Newman re Lleces on where it All went wrong and determines to make it right again a resolve that would surely set Krapp to cackling. One of the great gifts of popular Cultura. Even in its Shoddie forms such As soap operas is Hal Al least Lor a while it keeps one s mind off the diminishment a of life that accompany what some advertising Menla Lily has labelled the Golden years it 8 nol Art and it s nol ennobling but for Many people it s no Small Blessing. Swing Krupp t last Rar Poa few weeks ago i was reminded of one of the first Broadway shows i Ever saw it must have been in the Early 1940s. It was a comedy but i Don t remember the title or much about the plot except thai one of the comic turns was delivered by an actor playing an old near Blind doctor who kept bumping into the furniture. The joke was Hal this feeble Nona Genaria was supposed to be treating somebody a lol less infirm than the doctor himself. What i remember most clearly from that evening came after the show As we passed the stage door. The actor emerged. He was holding a Cane and was being assisted to a waiting car. He was really old and i was not too Young to see that that was no Joka. Monday decembers 19b6 the stars and stripes Page 17
