Grafia Artis

In the grand days of the Empire, Hollywood's relation to Art was that of an indulgent but faintly contemptuous uncle. Now, in the parlous years of the Republic, the relation is altered: Art is the uncle, and Hollywood is the loving, overindulged nephew. But family conversations are still fascinating.

Last week Producer Jerry Wald, whose last two films have been Grace Metalious' Return to Peyton Place and Elvis Presley's Wild in the Country, and whose heart's desire is to film James Joyce's Ulysses, said in self-defense: "I'm not idiotic enough to put Metalious on a level with Joyce." (He had been quoted as saying that Ulysses would make "as exciting a film as Peyton Place") "It's like talking about hamburger and steak. They're both meat, but one of them tastes better."

Smacking his lips, Wald went on: "Ulysses is the only original novel written in our time, and you have to respect it. I think Mr. Joyce was an excellent screenplay writer. I've been going over and over the book to see what the camera can do. There's Stephen the artist, searching for someone to replace his drunken father, and Mr. Bloom, searching for the son he's lost. Ulysses is essentially an adventure story. The characters have to do with the perennial struggle between all men because of their desire to compete."

In another part of the forest, Writer-Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve) announced that his version of Cleopatra, which stars Elizabeth Taylor (naturally; who is Pharaohess of them all?), would be considerably different from Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. (Work had begun on the movie when Liz took sick last fall.) "Shaw's life," Mankiewicz explained, "is full of letters to naive young girls, instructing them in the ways of the world. He wrote Caesar and Cleopatra as if he'd come upon Cleopatra himself in that pile of rocks. The play is a Shavian dream of intellectual omnipotence, but it has nothing to do with Caesar or Cleopatra."

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