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“All my background is military,” singer, songwriter and actor Kris Kristofferson, who died Sept. 28, said during my 2002 interview with him about playing an aging soldier turned-expatriate-writer based on author James Jones in the movie, “A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries.” He was in Champaign for Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival with Jones’ daughter, Kaylie, and the movie based on her novel. “My father, both my grandparents (were military), One was in the Swedish Army; the other guy was in the Philippine Insurrection. Had his eye put out by a spear, and I have the spear, still. “And my daddy was the first guy to ‘fly the Hump’ at night,” he said, referring to the famous route over the Himalayas that American airmen used to get supplies to Chinese troops fighting on the side of the Allies against Japan in World War II. “That was his place of duty, assigned to Chennault’s ‘Flying Tigers.’” After the war, Kristofferson’s father flew as a commercial airline pilot, stayed in the Army Reserves, served in the Korea War, flew again as a civilian pilot and retired as a major general. Following the family tradition, Kristofferson joined the Army in the early ‘60s after graduating from Pomona College in California and spending a year at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. In the Army, he went to jump school, Ranger school and flight school before serving a three-year tour in Germany. It was there that he first thought about leaving the Army and on the way back, he made the “detour down to Nashville to be a songwriter.” That was the end of his military life, and he started writing songs and pushing brooms. Out of that period came a number of his signature songs that everybody from Johnny Cash to Janis Joplin to Kristofferson himself has recorded. Every fan of his music has a favorite or two, including writer Kurt Vonnegut. “He liked ‘Sunday Morning Comin’ Down,’” Kristofferson said. So did Betty (Scott) Frye, a Robinson woman whose fiancé was killed in Germany during World War II and who watched after me […]
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This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has
The British realist director Mike Leigh loves the term “character actor,” which he uses often and with zeal. To him,
