Operation Successful
Sir:
Tremendous!
Your article on Surgery [May 3] tops the already superior efforts of your magazine to keep abreast of medical progress.
Here's hoping you continue to give the medical field its deserved coverage.
JOHN LAMMERS
Omaha
Sir:
My wife is to have major surgery this week. The caption on the cover, "If They Can Operate, You're Lucky," was the first news that settled my nerves since finding out about the forthcoming operation. My first restful sleep in a week came from reading your article.
LEE CARNEY
Westerville, Ohio
Sir:
One of the happiest miracles of modern surgery is that it is not carried out in my living room. You, alas, have changed all that.
PHILIP H. HARTMAN
Cambridge, Mass.
Sir:
I admired your guts.
PETER KUGEL
Boston
Sir:
It's worth a year's subscription price.
MRS. O. C. PARIS
Catawba, S.C.
Sir:
Congratulations and a bushel of orchids. The text, the pictures and diagrams were marvelous. TIME can really be proud.
JOHN L. BACH
Assistant Director
Department of Scientific Assembly American Medical Association Chicago
Princely Players
Sir:
Congratulations on John McPhee's cover story [April 26] on Richard Burton. I read it with mounting excitement--would he fall off the tightrope stretched between ruthless factual reporting and sensitive (and sophisticated) interpretation? He didn't; the subject was rendered in the round; and the subordination of the Elizabeth Taylor episode at the end was exactly right. Without either apologizing or moralizing, Mr. McPhee conveyed the pathos (tragedy would be too big a word) and the self-destructiveness (selling-out would be too small a word) of Richard Burton's career.
I note that Mr. Burton agreed to the story "on the condition that McPhee do all the interviewing of him as well as the writing." Perhaps the peculiar excellence of this article may be due to nothing more complicated than its being the product of one writer as against that of a committee of editors. May I suggest, tactlessly, that the "collective journalism" which TIME invented is sometimes inferior to the old-fashioned kind?
DWIGHT MACDONALD
The New Yorker
New York City
>TIME brings all things, tries all kinds.--ED.
Sir:
Don't worry about Burton. Unlike Cleopatra, the last scene will be tearfully happy. The end of the affair will come when the flick has been declared a smashing success; Richard will return to the legitimate theater; Liz will mark up another man; and 20th Century-Fox will gladly get its $40 million back.
J. RONALD PIERCE
Richmond, Va.
Sir:
I never said, "This man has sold out." Richard is too intelligent to do that and I to say it. Selling out would imply personal gain, which in any form is farthest, unfortunately, from Richard's aim.
I did say that he had been the most gifted of actors and that I wish he would accept the difficult challenges necessary to his form in order to maintain his marvel.
HARVEY ORKIN
Beverly Hills, Calif.
>TIME'S ears are sharp but not pointed. We heard the statement as we reported it.--ED.
Sir:
In reference to your citation that "only four actors have played Prince Hamlet more than 100 times in a single production" (Irving, Tree, Gielgud and Burton), your reporter must have meant only in London.
Edwin Booth, of course, acted the first 100 in 1864-65 in New York; Irving doubled this in 1874 in London for the record. Tree performed more than 100 at the Haymarket in 1892. John Barrymore ran 101 performances in 1922-23 (to purposely top Booth). Gielgud's London run in 1934 ran 155 performances, and he then was seen in the role in 1936 in New York and ran 132 performances. Maurice Evans almost equaled the latter run in 1945-46.
SCRANTON MOUTON
Department of Speech
Loyola University
New Orleans
Sir:
Poor, forgotten John E. Kellerd stretched his skein to 102 performances in 1912.
ERLING E. KILDAHL
West Lafayette, Ind.
Sir:
In 1961, at the Phoenix Theater in New York, Donald Madden's Hamlet achieved a record American-actor's run of 102 performances (some believe the figure to be 109). Mr. Madden was also the youngest American actor (27) to be in a major production of Hamlet.
LESLIE SPATT
Baldwin, N.Y.
Cuba
Sir:
As long as Cuba refrains from becoming an offensive state and does not attempt to invade other Latin American nations, its form of government is strictly an affair of the Cuban people in Cuba, and we should not be swayed by any hotheaded Cubans in this country who want to dictate our Cuban policy [April 26].
SAMUEL H. KOSMENSKY
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Sir:
There is a more positive way than war to end the threat to our security presented by Castro and Communism in Cuba. That is to help Latin America achieve the reforms it so desperately needs. The Alliance for Progress is a step in the right direction; it may not provide the ultimate solution, but it is a lot better than war.
IRA W. LIEBERMAN
Mexico City
Paris Press
Sir:
Reference is made April 26 to the alleged fact "that the proud masthead of first-ranked France Soir--the only French daily selling over 1,000,000--may not always be true."
May I inform you that the official audit bureau of the French press published on April 8, 1963 the following average figures for France Soir for the year 1962: circulation 1,280,662; sales 1,047,082.
The last reports we have for the first four months of 1963 show an upward trend as compared with the 1962 figures.
PIERRE LAZAREFF
General Director
France Soir
Paris
Aldermaston Men
Sir:
It was no pleasure to be quoted in justification of your nasty little report on the last Aldermaston March [April 26]. It is true that I have been involved with C.N.D. since its inception. It is equally true that I remain so. It is because of my continuing belief in what C.N.D. stands for that I deplore the aberrations that provide opportunities for publications like TIME to emphasize the fringe and ignore the basic meaning.
You would have been fairer to me, and more generous to tens of thousands of decent people, if you had recalled the gist of my piece, which was that the true spirit of Aldermaston and C.N.D. will survive all its snide misinterpretations, whether by anarchists from within or TIME from without.
JAMES CAMERON
Savyon, Israel
Sir:
I have been a reader of TIME for nearly 20 years and never before have I written to you about any reports, but the report on the Aldermaston March in the April 26 issue was so good that I must say thank you. How nice to read a really sane report. More power to that reporter.
MRS. A.V.A. CHURCH
Porton Down, Wilts., England
Wretched Mess
Sir:
The classified ad you mention [April 26] as the secret source of the epidemic of sick stickers sweeping the country is tucked away not only in the Village Voice (circ. 25,000), but also in the latest issue of the Wretched Mess News (circ. 97 1/2 paid and 2,345 moochers).
We protest that you have overlooked our advertising pulling power, since our Wretched Research Department reports orders for 1984 sets of Mr. Hollis' stickers directly attributive to Wretched Mess advertising, leaving Village Voice with credit for only 16 sets.
NORMA HALL
Vice Wretch
Wretched Mess Enterprises
San Francisco
>The Wretched Research Department may have miscalculated. According to Charlie Hollis, the $8.26 ad Underground Press placed in the Maypril issue of the Wretched Mess News has pulled no orders so far.--ED.
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