F.T.A. because Hollywood looked the other way http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090226.wdvd0227/BNStory/Entertainment
WARREN CLEMENTS From Friday's Globe and Mail February 26, 2009 A great many Americans wish their country wasn't mired in Iraq, but for an all-consuming anti-war movement we must turn to the Vietnam War. Critics were being shot (by Ohio National Guardsmen in 1970 at Kent State University), beaten (at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago) and placed on president Richard Nixon's enemies list. In 1971, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland were asked by dissident Howard Levy to stage an anti-war response to the touring shows of Bob Hope, who thought the war was just peachy. They lined up a few other celebrities and visited military bases in the United States to perform skits and songs for like-minded soldiers. The first lineup didn't last long. Actors such as Peter Boyle and Howard Hesseman had signed on to the revue, called F.T.A., sometimes translated as Free the Army and sometimes given a more vulgar epithet. But as Fonda says in a bonus chat on the DVD of Francine Parker's 1972 documentary F.T.A. (Docurama Films), "I was going through my humourless, pedantic, politically correct phase." She wasn't happy that all the performers were white, save for visits by comedian Dick Gregory and singer Nina Simone, or that almost all were male. So she and Sutherland created a new version of F.T.A. four women, four men, split evenly between black and white and took the new show overseas in 1972 to perform in the Philippines, Japan and anywhere else they could find a willing audience of GIs. In response, senior officers did all they could to prevent ordinary soldiers from turning up at the off-base sites to hear the material. It is this tour that Parker covers, juxtaposing scenes from the show with interviews with the soldiers. Routines include the song Nothing Could Be Finer than to Be in Indochina and a skit in which Sutherland and Michael Alaimo offer play-by-play commentary on the war as if it were a sporting event. Fonda says she disappointed the soldiers by arriving on stage in street clothes with no makeup. They wanted the barely clad vixen she played in Barbarella. Fonda went on to play a housewife whose consciousness is raised by an injured Vietnam vet (Jon Voight), much to the chagrin of her husband (Bruce Dern). Coincidentally, that film, Coming Home (1978), was re-released this month by Twentieth Century Fox, in a two-for-one box with Norma Rae (1979). Fonda and Sally Field each won best-actress Oscars for those outings. ... . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
