8 Friday, March 18, 1983 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Mitchum Calls Interview Prank' That Became 'Tragedy of Errors' PUBLIC NOTICE!! SENTRY DRUGS Lowers Hundreds of prescription prices! Check These "NEW" - Low Prices —DIABINESE 250 mg - (100 count) $ 2829 (30 count) $ 1 — K-LYTE 229 73 4 — ALDOMET 250 mg. (100 count) — PROCARDIA 10 mg. (100 count) $ 2549 SAVE EVEN MORE ON GENERIC DRUGS WHERE AVAILABLE. Call your friendly SENTRY PHARMACIST FOR OUR LOW price on your medication. SWITCH TO SENTRY Sentry Pharmacists Are Always Available to Answer your medication questions. SENTRY DRUGS 9 Mile & Coolidge 10 Mile & Southfield 547-1040 569-0233 12 Mile & Evergreen 559-9810 LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Actor Robert Mitchum says he got himself into trouble as a result of an interview in last month's Esquire maga- zine because he was play- acting in a prankish at- tempt "to string along" his interviewer. Mitchum, in a lengthy interview, emerged as an anti-Semitic, racist and sexist bigot. In a letter to Herbert Luft, the Jewish Tele- graphic Agency's Hol- lywood columnist, Mitchum said he is sorry "about the misunderstanding, espe- cially since it is so foreign to my principles." Mitchum's statements caused a stir in the Jewish community and' received rave reviews from bigots. In an effort to find out if the actor was quoted correctly, Luft wrote to Mitchum ask- ing him to clarify the cir- cumstances of the interview and to explain some of the statements attributed to him. Mitchum, in his letter to Luft dated March 9, said that under pressure "from a young lady em- ployed as a publicist by my employers" he reluc- tantly agreed to the interview. What fol- lowed, as presented in Esquire by the inter- viewer, Barry Rehfeld, amounted to a denial that the Holocaust had taken place, and a series of slurs and expletives re- garding women, blacks and the Irish. When Mitchuxn was asked about the slaughter of six million Jews, the actor replied, "So the Jews say." He added, "I don't know. People dispute that." After a series of questions and an- swers, Mitchum was quoted as offering the following statement: "How do you say trust me in Jewish? F . . . you." Later in the interview, Mitchum spoke about how, growing up in Philadelphia, "I had to go over and light the Sabbath candles. I was the only goddamed Gentile . . . I'd go to Mel Blumberg's house. He had a rabbi uncle who'd read from the Old Testament about angels pissing on sinners who were climbing Jacob's ladder." In his letter to Luft, Mitchum said that early in his meeting with Rehfeld he recited a racist speech de- livered by Coach Delaney in )5ei `t\o‘ Ø(Yoc) • Jason Miller's "That Cham- pionship Season," in which he appeared, which Rehfeld "mistakenly believed to be my own. From that point on, he approached me as the character in the script, and in playing the devil's advo- cate in a prankish attempt to string him along we com- pounded a tragedy of er- rors." Mitchum added that he is truly sorry that his misunderstanding has upset so many people, especially since "it is so foreign to my principle. The attendant mistor- tune is that it has brought me a spate of mail from people and organizations who are encouraged to believe that I share their bigotry and discrimina- tion." Ironically, the interview appeared at the same time that he was starring in the ABC-TV series, "The Winds of War," in which he por- trayed a U.S. naval officer in Europe sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish people in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. A month earlier, in January, Mitchum was an honored guest at a dinner of the American Friends of Techn- ion at which Kirk Douglas was given an award. German Rally for Former SS Men Opposed This handsome con- temporary set can be custom-designed to meet your indivi- dual taste and needs. Made of easy-care Formica on tops, fronts AND sides, it's available in a myriad of colors and shapes! 1 71 6 Telegraph, NORTH OF SQUARE LAKE RD., Bloomfield Hills Mon.-Fri. 9-9, Sot. 9-6, Sun. 11-5 358 16211 or 334 4593 - - sweet dreams from the use of rooms BONN (JTA) — Opposi- tion is mounting among anti-Nazi groups in West Germany against a rally of former SS members scheduled to take place in Bad Hersfeld, in the federal state of Hesse, this spring. The town's authorities, rejecting protests or ignor- ing them, have already made available- for the meeting a public hall sup- ported by the town's tax- payers. Until recently, the town of Nassau on the Lahn River had served as a--meeting place for the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler SS division. But after public protests and demonstrations in 1977 and 1978 the town officials ,declared the SS guests as unwelcome. Priests Complete Course at HU JERUSALEM — Twelve priests from the Pontifical Biblical University of Jerusalem have completed an eight-month study pro- gram in Hebrew and Latin at the University's Rothberg School for Over- seas Students. The priests came from Australia, India, Italy, Ja- pan, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland, the United States and Yugos- lavia. The program, 'which has been run by the university since 1976, is now an integ- ral part of the Pontifical Bi- blical Institute's four-year curriculum.