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Laurie Birdplays herselfin first roleBBy DICK KLEINER to study acting, except that HOLLYWOOD — (NEA) — In ! costs too much and she doesn’t “Two-Lane Blacktop,” there’s a have much money. She just got girl — she’s just called The her driver’s license, but she Girl, never anything else — who can't afford a car. She thinks hops in and out of cars and maybe she’d like to be an on and off motorcycles. Without oceanographer, but she has much thought she goes with never studied that science, whoever seems to offer her the She says she doesn’t like | best opportunity, at the time. America and would like to live The Girl is played by Laurie in Europe, but there’s that Bird, and she’s traveled that lawsuit pending and she can’t \ route. In fact, because her leave the country until it’s experiences in her owm sad life settled.paralleled those of The Girl, she She doesn’t have much to do was first hired by screenwriter with her family. One brother j Rudolph Wurlitzer as a kind of is in the service somewhere; she : private research project. He hasn’t seen him in three years. 1 talked to her for hours about I The other brother, she says, isher own restless travels on theroad.Later, when they weifc castingthe movie, director Monte Heilman couldn’t find anybody to play The Girl. Wurlitzer ; suggested they test Laurie and they did and she got the part. She holds her own.Laurie Bird’s story, as she | tells it simply, directly and without emotion, is strictly 1971. It’s today’s youth, rolled into one neat, trim red-headed girl. It differs from others in only j two respects — it starts out more tragically and ends up with more promise.She’s a New York girl, the I daughter of an electrical engineer. She has two odder brothers. Her mother died while | “the three kids were still in . diapers.”Laurie doesn’t have much good to say about her father. He wouldn’t let her have friends, she says, or any i overnight guests or any slumber parties, any of that. She says he used to beat her.“He gave nie complexes,” she says, “and I’ve spent time in psychoanalysis as a result.”So she ran away, several •times. The first time, just after she finished grammar school, she went with some people she knew to Montreal, when Expo I was on. The people persuaded her to call home and she did and went back.The r.rtxt time she left home, her father put out a warrant for her arrest. She wound up in a New York institution for | neglected girls, she says.The first day she was there another girl hit her in the eye ind she was hospitalized for six weeks. She says she still has trouble with her vision — “If I read Newsweek from cover to cover I get a headache” — and she has a suit pending against New York for a half-m Ikon over that incident.She ran away other times, and would probably still be on the road if “Two-Lane Blacktop” hadn’t happened.She’s living in Los Angeles now, but she isn’t happy here, either. She says New York has so many unhappy memories that she can’t live there, but in l-os Angeles she has no friends and nothing to do.“Hollywood seems to be a city of orphan people,” she says.She i*ads some, hut her headaches bother her. She likes to work with her hands, making jcbiho.s and jewelry. She wanted to play tennis, but there was nobody to play with.Now .she feels she would likethe one she’s trying to get to move out of her father’s house, away from her father.But producers are interested in her. She photographs like a dream — she looks like an innocent Havley Mills — and she’ll probably make more movies. So her future is bright but. then, it could hardly be worse than her past.Humboldtschoolsopen Aug. 271t18rHUMBOLDT - The Humboldt Public Schools will open for 1971-72 at 8:30 a.m. Friday, !f August 27. Classes will be in session only until 11:30 a.m. School lunches wtll not be served.New students who have not registered or students who wish to change their registration are asked to see the guidance counselor between 9 a.m. and noon on Wednesday, August 25.The school lunch program will begin operation on Monday, August 30. Student ticket prices are 35 cents daily, $1.75 weekly. I or $6.50 for a monthly ticket of 20 meals.School bus routes are now being set up. When they are finalized, a copy of the route and pick-up times will be mailed to each family. New families moving into the district that will be using the bus service are asked to contact the school office at 862-4851.Classes for the Humboldt Public Schools will not be in session on Labor Day or during the Richardson County Fair scheduled for September 15-17.New teachers for this term are Lewis Evert, math; Tom Osborne, instrumental music; and Robert Williamson* elementary and secondary vocal music.BEADS W BURLAPDress up a burlap bag by adding colorful beads to it. Draw a design on the material with tailor’s chalk and then sew tiny beads over it.an/
Newspaper Details
Beatrice Daily Sun
Beatrice, Nebraska, US
Sat, Aug 14, 1971
Page 9
Full Page
Clipped by
Phil N.
IA, USA 21 May 2017
Other Publications Near Beatrice, Nebraska
Beatrice Daily Sun
