Reginald Rose: Eloquent Writer of Wrongs

Reginald Roseeloquent writer of wrongs

The prevailing mood of The Defenders, an admirably articulate Saturday-evening hour of TV courtroom drama created by adroit Reginald Rose, is one of illuminating reflection on the causes and effects of social justice. In his Januslike role as script editor and ofttime writer of the program, Rose, a man of rare gifts and discernment, has stressed a single theme: that the law often lags behind changing social needs and is woefully inconsistent with the requirements of morality. His favorite situation is one in which the individual is thwarted by the outmoded prescriptions of established authority; and he pursues it doggedly on The Defenders, where he deals with such topics as capital punishment, mercy killings and abortion. By uncompromisingly eschewing the shopworn plotlines, cardboard characters, glib dialog and souped-up suspense that customarily festoon so many courtroom mellers, the show already has earned four Emmys and, despite all canons to the contrary, has gained and retained an audience of 21,000,000 viewers. For Rose, this success has come after 30 years of fruitless trysting with his typewriter. Born in Harlem (whose heterogeneous society was the seedbed of his social consciousness), he began to write at 10, composed some 100 unpublished short stories and three unfinished novels before selling his first TV script. Today, responsible for the most respected dramatic show on the air, he finds the cup well worth the running. "We have proved," he says, "that the legend of a conspiracy to keep thought-provoking drama off TV is as empty as the heads of those who talk so much about it."

Anthony Newleycoming up in the world

Perhaps the most highly touted British performer to appear on a U.S. stage since Noel Coward's arrival in The Vortex in 1925 is a 31-year-old multithreat showman named Anthony Newley, versatile star, director, co-author, co-lyricist and co-composer of the new Broadway musical, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off (see Playboy After Hours, this issue). World, a seriocomic blend of mime, melody and melodrama detailing the womb-to-tomb Odyssey of an Everyman called Little-chap, has had Britishers appreciatively rolling in the isles for the past year and a half, but has drawn mixed notices from Manhattan critics. If the ambitious pastiche lost something in its trans-Atlantic transplanting, the show made it crystal-ball clear that the Newley-wedded blend of astute showmanship, supple versatility and Cockney-eyed humor will be heard from again. Plucked from London's Italia Conti Stage School at the age of 14 by movie mogul Geoffrey de Barkus, Newley cut his acting teeth in a starring role in a now-forgotten epic, has since made more than twoscore film appearances (most memorable: as the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist), conceived and acted in a controversially original TV series (The World of Gurney Slade), and as a pop singer has had several discs poll-vault into England's Top 20. A man given to brooding introspection and trenchant self-analysis, Newley is growing restless as a stage performer: "It's a love affair -- and you can't hold a love affair for a year. More than anything else, I want to direct my own films. The real stuff of entertainment is imagination, and we've got to get back to it."

Sherwood Egbertcyclone in south bend

When hard-jawed Sherwood Egbert, onetime construction worker and ex-Marine, was picked to revivify Studebaker-Packard in February 1961, he found the South Bend firm suffering badly from hardening of the autories. The introduction of the Lark had been a pro tem palliative, but sales and optimism quickly dwindled when the Big Three flooded the compact-car field. Egbert, as president, immediately instituted an ennui-jarring shake-up; weak executive links were severed, the gone-to-seed plant was refurbished, the Lark line was restyled in record time, a new Gran Turismo Hawk went from drawing board to prototype in 18 1/2 weeks, and in April 1962, the Raymond Loewy-designed Avanti debuted at the Studebaker stockholders' meeting. The results produced by the 42-year-old Egbert's whirlwind take-over have been therapeutic; with Studebaker's domestic sales for the 1962 model year up almost 50 percent over 1961, South Bend feels that at last it can give Detroit car makers a real fight for the American auto dollar. Pushing diversification (home appliances, an airline, chemicals), Egbert also had a few more automotive tricks up his sleeve; he introduced in the 1963 line the Wagonaire, a revolutionary sliding-top station wagon, and put future Studebaker designs up for competition between the Avanti's Loewy and Wagonaire's Brooks Stevens. Egbert, supercharged and steel-nerved ("I have no personal emotions when it comes to business"), occasionally co-pilots the company plane, is determined to get Studebaker off the ground. Those who know him have no doubts that he can do it.