Today I found a new source for fresh material—Facebook. And I found one today with a Hollywood—Iowa connection. Author David Morrell (First Blood) posted some thoughts about why movie stars often have big heads—and he wasn’t talking about egos.
“Yesterday I posted about having watched Burt Lancaster give an acting seminar to the University of Iowa’s drama department when I was a professor in the English department. People ask, ‘What did he look like?’ The same as he did in his movies, especially his broad smile. Most major movie stars have one distinguishing characteristic. Their heads are large in a way that is out of proportion with their bodies. McQueen, Newman, Stallone, etc. Director Norman Jewison called move stars’ heads ‘Roman.’ The camera likes the perspective that a large head gives to an actor. In person, it looks a little unnatural, but onscreen, the large head allows them to dominate.”
David Morrell
Facebook post 9/11/12
And here’s the post Morrell wrote yesterday that led to today’s Facebook post:
“Rearranging my bookshelves, I came across a copy of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE that Anthony Burgess signed to me ‘with fond fellowship’. I was reminded of the circumstance. When I was a literature professor at the Univ. of Iowa, Burgess taught there for a year while he was readying an opera that the U. of I’s music department was producing. (Burgess wrote everything.) He had the office next to mine, and we frequently talked about all kinds of things. A fascinating, talented man. He and Burt Lancaster had done a Moses miniseries on TV. One week, Lancaster came to town to talk to Burgess about a new project. I had the thrill of watching Lancaster deliver a 90 minute acting workshop to the U of I’s drama department. Great memories.”
David Morrell
Facebook post 9/10/12
While Morrell is widely known for creating the character Rambo, among his other writings let me recommend his book The Successful Novelist. (I currently have the unabridged audio book on my iPhone and enjoy his thoughts and insights.)
P.S. If you’re unfamilar with Burt Landcaster’s 55-year career check out his Oscar-winning performance in Elmer Gantry as well as From Here to Eternity, Sweet Smell of Success, Atlantic City, and Local Hero to get a sweeping overview. (And, of course, he had a small role The Field of Dreams.)
Related Post:
The Juno-Iowa Connection
John Irving, Iowa, & Writing
(Yawn) Another Pulizer Prize
Screenwriting from Iowa 
Huh. I wonder if Mr. Morrell has his mentors confused? According to his bio on Wikipedia, Burgess “lectured on the novel” at Iowa in 1975. The head of the Workshop at that time was Vance Bourjaily, who most definitely was working on the libretto for an opera during 1974, the one that was supposed to open the brand-new Hancher auditorium. The project was an epic failure, as chronicled in Bourjaily’s novel, “Now Playing at Canterbury.” It is improbable that two famous novelists were working on librettos for operas to be produced at Iowa in the same year.
@Steve. According to Wikipedia, “His Symphony No. 3 in C was premiered by the University of Iowa orchestra in Iowa City in 1975.” I’m sure that was in interesting era. Geri Lipschultz in a post “Writers Who Passed Through Iowa” wrote; “Brodsky, Burgess, Bourjaily, Engle, and so many others, including Borges, and Kurt Vonnegut too I met in Iowa—all of them gone, now. If I wanted to, I could go on, with a list of names, writers of no small degree of vision and mettle passing through Iowa, on their way to their Maker.”
http://wewantedtobewriters.com/2011/10/writers-who-passed-through-iowa/
Steve, when I was a professor in the English Department at the Univ. of Iowa, I knnew Vance Bourjaily well, although he was in a different department, the Writers Workshop. We played in the same makeshift jazz band together, and I often went to his home in the country to visit him. I don’t recall him talking about his having written a libretto for an opera, but maybe he did (since NOIW PLAYING AT CANTERBURY is fiction, I don’t know how much faith to put in its facts), but for sure, the Univ. of Iowa persuaded Anthony Burgess to teach at there because it also offered the sewrvices of its music department. The date that Scott supplies (1975) fits–it’s the date on the copy of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE that Burgess signed for me.
Scott: So you’re saying what Morrell got wrong was the genre of composition Burgess was working on. Instead of an opera libretto, he was writing a symphony. This is why we can never hold a gun to the heads of memoir writers and demand facts. As an aside, it’s interesting that Mr. Lipschultz names people that the young writers at the Workshop today would have trouble recognizing.
Anonymous: “…Canterbury” is sold as fiction, but the legend of it within both the English and Theatre Departments has always been that it is roman a clef, Mr. Bourjaily’s response to the University’s decision to cancel the opera in favor of launching Hancher with a truck n’ bus tour of “Music Man.” . My memories of the book are dim, but I do recall that at least the portrait of Dr. Thayer was spot on.
Steve—According to Wiki at least, it was a symphony performance. Sounds like Burgess was quite the composer on top of being an accomplished writer. I attended two different film schools and the only film I can recall being shown at both places—for whatever reason— was “A Clockwork Orange” based on his novel. And it sounds like he was not a fan of what Stanley Kubrick did with his writinings.
And the plot thickens: I contacted Phil Bourjaily, Vance’s son (our sons were in Cub Scouts together) and he pointed me to this review of his Dad’s opera, “$4000,” produced in 1969 at the University of Iowa.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1146652/1/index.htm
He says that it was probably the only opera ever reviewed in “Sports Illustrated!” Ha!
I think what we’re seeing is that Mr. Morrell is misremembering the past. The music he remembers Mr. Burgess composing at Iowa was for a symphony, not an opera.
But apparently the story I’ve always heard about Bourjaily writing “Now Playing at Canterbury” in a fit of pique after the launch of Hancher Auditorium is apocryphal as well.
How’s that phrase go? “All men are liars.”
Love the 1969 Sport Illustrated article. “The University of Iowa has produced an opera called $4000, which is unquestionably the only opera in existence in which the characters sing about fishing, bait and the horrors of life in a place where fishing supplies are sold.”
I bet producers in Hollywood are scrambling for the rights to “$4,000” as they read this. Hot off the WordPress. Who gets the finder’s fee?
In similar news, the New York Times reported this month that “Big Fish” the music will begin a run in Chicago next spring:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/big-fish-musical-to-open-in-chicago/