Review

To the Confederacy's infamous prison camp of Andersonville near Americus, Ga. went 50,000 Union soldiers; one-third of them died there. For causing the death of at least 12,000 inmates, Captain Henry Wirz, the suffering incompetent who ran the camp, was tried and executed. In a sometimes thoughtful attempt to bring this trial to TV, CBS's Climax foundered over a tepid script which, presumably, actors and director felt they could heat up with hysteria. The result was a shrill, cloying show from the usually skillful hands of Emmy-winning Ralph (Requiem for a Heavyweight) Nelson, Climax's new producer. With a loud and thick accent that added the Wurst to Swiss-born Wirz, Actor Everett Sloane insisted that he was only a soldier acting under orders, that the "real crime I have committed was that I chose the losing side." But the relentless prosecutor, thundered by Cinemactor Charlton Heston, saw in Wirz "the devil that lurks in all men," and insisted that his moral considerations should have come before his military ones ("We are each endowed with responsibility for our acts"). This earnestly stated conflict of moralities was largely obscured by the general frenzy. Drums rolled. Wirz raved. But viewers could only sympathize with him in the end when he allowed: "I should have died in battle."

It seems, after all, that U.S. newspapers did not completely exhaust the story of Dublin's Jewish Mayor Robert Briscoe during his extended visit to the U.S. There was enough left from Briscoe's colorful and contorted career for TV to potter with, and in the hands of Playhouse 90's talented Producer Martin Manulis and Scriptwriter Elick Moll, it proved to be one of the most attractive plays of a dying season. As The Fabulous Irishman, Comedian Art Carney displayed the many gifts that raise him far above the sewer-cleaner role he plays for Jackie Gleason; he made what might have been an intolerably whimsical role one of dignity, humor and quiet purpose. With a commendable lack of blarney and Irish Mist, Carney made convincing the Jew who was Irish only "by conviction"--but by such conviction that he fought in the Republican army in the 1918 "trouble," ran guns from Germany, traveled in secret to the U.S. to take over the Irish Free State consulate. Actor Carney was equally adept at singing the Had Gadya during the Feast of Passover and wooing a wistful colleen, sweetly underplayed by Katharine Bard; and he put a delightful strain on fantasy when he told his children tales of Goldilocks and the Three Englishmen and, as his first official act as mayor, declared a holiday for himself.

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