Mr. Culture

Readers of the Dallas News (circ. 163,212) sometimes wonder whether they have a symphony orchestra, civic theater and a dozen other cultural organizations for them to enjoy, or just to give the News's Amusements Editor John Rosenfield something to write about. The fact is that culture in Dallas has blossomed like a rose on the dry plains of the Southwest, thanks largely to Rosenfield. A secondary result is that his column and reviews are among the best-read of News features.

Since he became amusements editor 25 years ago, "Rosy" Rosenfield has continuously beaten the drums for talent and money to back new cultural enterprises. Among the enterprises he has promoted: the Dallas Little Theater (where he doubled as actor), the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Margo Jones's repertory theater, and the Civic Playhouse. As the arbiter of art in Dallas, Rosy has been behind almost as many feuds as first nights.

Last week he let his readers in on another feud at the opening of the Dallas Symphony season. Rosy did not care for the conductor, Walter Hendl, "whose continuance on our podium was in doubt as late as September." Even to readers unaware that Rosenfield himself had spread the rumor of Hendl's departure, the review was a tipoff. If Rosy has his way--and he usually does--Hendl's "continuance on the podium" was indeed in doubt.

Still fresh in the city's memory was Rosy's feud with Jacques Singer, whom he had enthusiastically welcomed as the first professional conductor of the symphony. Before long, Rosy turned against him. Singer became so enraged by Rosenfield's criticisms that he took to publishing handbills and making speeches in his own defense during concert intermissions.

Rosenfield's reviews, written with the raciness of a sportwriter's or pressagent's copy (both of which he once turned out), are backed by generally good judgment, but there are exceptions. After a local performance of George Sessions Perry's play, My Granny Van, Rosenfield told a friend of Perry's: "Remind George that I haven't forgotten that he misspelled my name" in a book Perry wrote on Texas. The next day Rosy wrote a stinging review of the play.

Born in Dallas, the son of a well-to-do real-estate man, Rosenfield broke into the arts doing second-string reviews for the late Burns Mantle on the old New York Evening Mail, later worked as a press-agent (he once drove a covered wagon down Broadway to exploit a movie).

When he got back to Dallas, he was offered a job by a News editor who said: "You can cover City Hall. It's a Ku Klux Klan administration and we are an anti-Klan paper. Now do you want it?" Rosenfield said yes, made good at the job and later got the chance to be amusements editor. When one of his first reviews praised a local production of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, Publisher George Bannerman Dealey called him on the carpet for saying nice things of a play about a prostitute. Rosenfield convinced Dealey that he had a right to express his own opinion and has had a free hand ever since. Now he also covers radio, TV, records and nightclubs.

A Falstaffian character, who recently dieted his rotund 293 Ibs. down to a paunchy 210, Rosy likes to sit up late talking and drinking (six bourbon highballs to the hour), collects tropical fish and books, now has a 5,000-volume library chiefly on music. But a lot of Rosenfield's vast store of information is in his head. When the Metropolitan Opera Company played Dallas three years ago, Rosenfield dashed off a history of it from memory, and the piece is still used as publicity by the Met.

No musical snob, Rosy prefers a good jazz song to a bad symphony, would rather boost a performance than tear it down. Says he: "A critic is happier when he can sail his hat over the moon than when he has to throw a wet blanket."

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