October 8, 1979

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COVER STORY

POPE AS SUPERSTAR

In one brief year his style has revolutionized the stolid Vatican. He attracts unprecedented numbers of fans to his Wednesday audiences in St. Peter’s Square. There, he weaves through the crowds standing on the back of a white jeep nicknamed the Popemobile. By Warren Gerrard10 min

Music

They just won’t fu-fu-fade away

Rock 'n' roll stars never really die: they wind up with their faces plastered on the back or front of tacky T-shirts, along with a maudlin slogan like REST EASY KEITH. The T-shirts were selling for five and six bucks apiece on New York’s Seventh Avenue last month, and they had a gluey smell to them. By Judith Timson7 min

Frontlines

Eleanor, for the record

Eleanor Sniderman, Canada’s onewoman band in the business of recording classical music, is pacing the Manta Sound recording studio. In the costly world of the control booth, the only thing accumulating faster than dust on the studio’s two-inch tapes are her recording costs, rising to the tune of $120 per hour. By Kaspars Dzeguze7 min

Frontlines

Tears and sweat: the Mac-Paps back in Spain

"Franco must be rolling over in his grave,” whooped Johnny Johnson, as Iberia flight 974 from Montreal touched down in Madrid early on the morning of Aug. 27. Johnson first saw Spain one dawn 42 years ago from the top of the Pyrenees. Then 26 years old, he had spent all night crossing the mountains on foot, carrying on his back for two-thirds of the way a young Scotsman who had twisted his ankle on a rock. By Eve Drobot7 min

People

It is becoming a habit for Catherine Deneuve’s tiny perfect pores to grace the screen with vacuous boredom—be it as a huckster for Chanel No. 5 or as the criminally bent cellist in Claude Lelouch’s cinematic yawn A Nous Deux. Deneuve’s next project, however, offers hope that she will play a part that offers her more emotional range than the stopper of a perfume bottle. By Marsha Boulton7 min

Canada

The shoe, whether it fits or not, is on the other foot

A soft fusillade of bubbles emanates from a hidden gun, effervescing in the delicious autumn light over Place Jacques Cartier. Cameras sweep the scene for one of a rash of movies being produced in Montreal with the backward-bending co-operation of municipal officials. By David Thomas6 min

In the end, it wasn’t over till it was over

Since the days when the myth began that Abner Doubleday invented a game called baseball, there has evolved, year in and year out, an allencompassing phenomenon of Americana—the pennant race. It was decided in a smoke-filled New York saloon on St. Patrick’s Day, 1871, that the baseball team with the best record at the end of the season was entitled to fly the championship streamer at its ball park. By Hal Quinn6 min

44b

Theatre

Stage fright in London

One of Britain’s greatest natural resources is threatened with possible extinction: the theatre. “Next time you want to go to the theatre,” cautions a flyer being handed out to London audiences, “it may be CLOSED.” The warning has been heeded by actors, playwrights, directors—all those concerned with the future of the British stage. By David McCaughna6 min

Frontlines

A con game that fakes real art

"There are many, many fakes on the market. Art forgery is a worldwide problem and anyone who believes otherwise is only naïive,” says Dr. Max Stern, owner of the Dominion Gallery in Montreal who offered expert advice in a recent art fraud trial in that city—the Routhier case, due for sentencing this month. By Shona McKay6 min

Business

Uneasy lies the head that sells the Crowns

Treasury board President Sinclair Stevens’ office overlooking the copper-topped parliamentary citadel is more pulpit than corporate aerie, his economics more revisionist than visionary. So when he sat there last week and explained his intention to “privatize” eight more Crown corporations, the message was clear as if it had been written on a parish billboard: By Jane O’Hara5 min

October 11979