“Within Our Gates” Returns As Salute To Oscar Michaux CHICAGO (API- Seventy-two ymn efter centers burned pioneer fltauaeker Oscar Micheaux’s “Within Oar Gatea,” the sometimes yWwt, sometimes caustic look at black life has been shown without cots in the city wiMre it was made. Micheaux, a native of rural southern Illinois, moved to New York after Ida run-in with the Chicago Board at Caneors in 1090. The movie he wrote, produced and directed was filmed in Chicago in M° the year of the city’s worst race itou. The all-white censor board banned the 1H0 premiere of the black filmmaker's second movie because it considered certain scenes too inflammatory. , Two scenes considered inflammatory depicted a lynching of a sharecropper family and a Mack Baptist pastor as a secret foe of racial “Micheaux went before the board with Ida B. Wells and other leaders of the black community and finally got pormlaaion to show the film, but only with 1,000 feet cut out of it,” said neyd Webb, program director and founder of the Blackllght Film Festival. “Urn preachers were on Ms case just as much as the white power structure.” Webb said. The festival on Friday night presented an uncut version of “Within Our Oates” that was dtacovered in MOO in Spain. -The subject matter of “Within Our Oates’’ was surprising for a movie marts in Mlt. It deals with literacy crusades, urban crime, alcoholism, raps and miscegenation. In Its shortened form, the movie ployed for month* in Chicago, imHiH —«m(Ii imtmy for Mlrheeirr to continue his cinematic career. Bet he was barred from showing it in other parts of the nation and the film itiesppfirrul It was the first cinematic setback far the former railroad porter and farmer, whoee first movie, “The Homesteader,” was bankrolled by white South Dakota farmers. Webb sees “Within Our Gates” as Micheaux’s answer to D.W. Griffith’s ISIS “Birth of A Nation,” which glorified the KuKluxKlan. TbeKlan makes no apperance in Micheaux’s film, but it features a lynch mob of vidous, Mississippi townspeople. .Members of the Southern aristocracy are depicted as money-grubbing dunkards not above raping a young black woman. “Within Our Gates" deals with literacy, crusades, urban crime, alcoholism, rape and miscegenation as a caustic perspective of black Hfe... Most of Micheaux’s later movies were shot in his apartment in Montclair, N.J., or in a small studio in nearby Fort Lee. He ntwmaHy used a rented camera and produced his movies on budgets of >10,000 to ~«i $18,000. Budgets of up to $1 million were the rule then in Hollywood. Of 48 features Mlcheaux nude between 1919 and 1948, fewer than a doaen are known to exist. Most are either what Webb calla “ahuffle along” mueicala or melodramas such as the 1984 “Body And Soul,” which introduced Paul Robeson to movies. He played a hypocritical preacher. “Something happened to him after! “Within Our Gatas”Webb said. “The Homesteader’ was a socially; conscious movie, and so was this one, but his later works Just aren’t the same. “Maybe he realised that the American people Just weren’t ready for propaganda— propaganda in the good sense, before the Nazis and Communists gave the word a bad meaning,” be said. Mlcheaux died in 1961. By then, a new generation of Mack filmmakers’ had rediscovered his work, but only the later, studio-bound movies made in New Jersey. In 1980, American film scholar Thomas Crlpps was called to the Spanish Film Archive in Madrid to identify a mysterious silent movie : found in its collection. Crippe Identified it as the loot, uncut “Within Our Gates” and it was screened last year during a conference in California. But Friday was the first screenini in Chicago. Because Spanish titles had been inserted in the Madrid print, an interpreter read the dialouge to the crowd at die Art Institute of Chicago. A Jazz octet provided accompaniment. Jay Leno Wants HaU End Feud NEW YORK (AP)—Jay Leno aqu ho wants peace between him self and rival television talk show boat Areenio Hall. "What you have hate appears to bs two millionaires fighting it out,” Laos told Entertainment Weakly mags rim in its Aug. 14 issue. “Itfe fins if it gets mare people watching the show, but why throw rocks at each other?" he said. In April, Hall told ths magazine that he was "gonna kick Leno’e "What is this attitude?” Leno "He makes $12 million a : Are bis monologues worth $9 a year more than mine?” said he does not want ths to continue. haven't eaid anything nasty it Urn. I don't dislike him. I’ve him, although I realize no going to call *n® back.” ‘Rappin’ ranny Reacts CHICAGO m. (AP)—A Chicago grandmother's rappin’ rasponao to Ice-Ts "Cop Killer* controversial heavy metal eong apparently haa ' struck a responsive chord. Tve gotten phone calls from ra dio stations as far away as New 'York,* said Dolores Dent, 64, who wrote and recorded "Granny’s Rap* on a cassette recorder at her home. Dent, who has two detectives in her family, mailed the cassette to the Illinois Fraternal Order of Po lice, and suddenly everyone wants to interview the Rappin’ Granny. "I was just letting off a little steam. I was just upset about somebody sitting down and writ ing about cop-killing. The majority of oops in America are good police,” she said. Dent is a retired secretary and part-time jau singer. She says her son, Tilton Dant, is a detective in San Diego, andfeer son-in-law, Pat Collins, is a defective with the Illi nois State Polios. But "Granny’s Rap’ is the begin ning and end of Dent's recording career, she says. This is really wild. Never in a million years did I think there would be this kind of reaction. I think Fll stick to switchboards and computers. They’re safer,” she said. Gumbel Breaks Wrist NEW YORK, N.Y. -The act ing offer* didn’t com* after Louis Gossett Jr. won an Oscar for the 1982 film "An Officer and a Gen tleman." Anger and depression set in, and he blamed the lack of offers on racism. "I want on a personal search, and I grabbed at everything I could to help me," Gossett said in a recent interview at his home. "The big mistake was thinking that I could find the answers out side myself.” "I bought a' Rolls-Royce, I hung out with pr*tty*'wfefrien, I bought nice homes, weiit to the right church and studied with all the right gurus. But those were all outside things, and this was an in side job.” it's taken nearly a decode Gossett, 55, to overcome the pression. He plays a boxer i on man in the movie “Diggstowi which opens Friday. “Resentment is self-destn.icti he said. “Even if what you’re sentflil about is true, it’ll only > worse if you carry it around " “There was some sublimina1 dsm involved in what happened me, but it wasn’t just racism think people thought I was too > pensive after I won the Osceu “When that happens, they go the second level, and the soco level at the time was Den:., Glover. When Danny got too ex pensive, they turned to Morg Freeman. Now we’re all expen sive.” “I’ll Fly Away” Bringing Civil Rights Era, Money As TV Series MADISON, Ga. (AP)—Four times a month, this middle Geor gia dty goes back in time to the 1960b as the crew of the television series Til Fly Away* brings the dvfl rights era to life. The series, just nominated for 16 Emmys, does more than bring excitement to these streets. It brings money—nearly $200,000 in its first season last year. “If it wasn’t for these guys, dur ing certain seasons we’d just have to dose down and go home,* said Rhonda Erwin, whose Washington Street Antiques shop supplies the show with period furniture and dothing. “It’s great to watch the show and see something from our store in a scene.” “HI Fly Away" is the story of ra ti al and sodal polities in the fic tional Southern town of Bryl and. It focuses particularly on the rela tionship between a white district attorney, played by Sam Water ston, and his black housekeeper, played by Regina Taylor; The ehow’s producers chose Madison as the set for the series because of its historic look. The careftilly cultivated town, about 60 miloa east of Atlanta, has numerous renovated historical houses and an old-fashioned down town square complete with court house and shops that don’t need a lot of camouflage to depict the 1960s. In fact, there are only two stoplights for camera crews to avoid filming. Twice a week every other week, the series’ stars and crew haul into Madison. They usually start film ing on Wednesdays, when the stores close at noon and there’s less traffic. But townsfolk and tourists do gather to watch the taping. Alice Jean Zay sidled up to Waterston last week, Mending into the crowd of extras until die got dose enough to tell him how much die enjoyed the show. "He’s much younger looking in person,” she said. *Tm fascinated by all they do to tape this televi don show here.” In addition to the money the ae ries spends in town—on motels, food and supplies—fans spend too. A single episode brings about $8,600 to the town, said Henrit Arnold of the Madison-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce. “You wouldn’t believe how many people come to visit Madison be cause they know 111 Fly Away' taped here,” she said. “We’re lucky to be shooti here,” he said. “Being in the Sou being in Madison contributes the character of the show. WeY also having a very good time her and that has a lot to do with ur being here too.” The show has also provider' some extra income to some local residents. The/re often called o to be extras, forming street crowd. or playing court spectators or sto patrons. Jim Puster, a graphic desi:;:! artist from Macon, is the shor permanent extra—he was on 17 o last season’s 21 shows, working 12- or 14-hour days for $46 a day He’s been filmed so much that h*' friends with the show’s earner; man, who gave Puster a little tra footage the time he played jury foreman. “Bebe’s Kids” Takes Hilarious Act To Blacks In Film Venture LOS ANGELES (AP)—Comic Robin Harris convulsed night club audiences with his routine about taking for pestiferous toddlers to an amusement park. Harris died at 36 in 1990, but his hilarious act live on in the new animated film “Babe's Kids.” The Paramount Pictures release started promisingly with an open ing weekend gross of $3 million, providing a $4,661 average in 646 theaters. Quite an achievement for a film without tag-names or an es tablished story. What’s more, it’s the first full-length animated film by and about blacks. Harris’ routine was expanded into a script by Reginald Hudlin who directed Eddie Murphy in “Boomerang.” Reginald and brother Warrington served as ex ecutive producers of “Bebe’s Kids.” The director is Bruce Smi t:. Smith shepherded the movie ■; record-breaking time at the R> perion Studio in downtown Glen dale, a few miles north of ix«s An geles. The studio is a bare ..-bones operation occupying three floors a renewed urban center. A t slender man in his early Smith talks calmly about must have been a hectic erto ence. It fmTihi passtto wi«ln| plant. DaBarge Is rHHng on the anal at Na Maat tala atom, “Storm,’’ and plans to wcard a laiptoatoam tor Ms naxt malar prajact.