Conceivably the most anti-American Hollywood picture ever made–I certainly can’t think of any competitors–Cy Endfield’s brilliant and shocking thriller (also known as The Sound of Fury) was adapted by Jo Pagano from his novel The Condemned, which was inspired by a lynching that occurred in California in the 30s. A frustrated and jobless veteran (Frank Lovejoy), tired of denying his wife and son luxuries, falls in with a slick petty criminal (Lloyd Bridges), and the two work their way up from small robberies to a kidnapping that ends in murder....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ben Joravsky’s cover story on Bill Ayers [November 9] proved to me that there is still room in the alternative press for the kind of quality journalism which can tackle the complexity of personal choices made by someone like Ayers without reducing the whole thing to some academic “checklist” of politically correct–or “incorrect”–actions. The fact that Ayers, through and through, is a true radical–radical in his beliefs as well as his actions–invites a far more loaded examination of the issues than you will normally have, and, to his credit, Joravsky allowed the complexity of those issues to come through, without succumbing to pat resolutions to the questions those issues raise....

From the start, it was a Chicago version of David versus Goliath: a middle-class taxpayer, represented by one rather disheveled public-interest attorney, up against a giant corporation, with its money, clout, and legions of lawyers. Of course, Sears disputes that the property is underassessed. To plead their case before the board they hired Kevin O’Keefe, a feisty and well-connected Loop lawyer. By the time O’Keefe had finished ridiculing Quinn and his argument, the board had dismissed Duffy’s case....

A meeting of B.B. King and Buddy Guy–King’s impeccable musicianship and elegant sophistication paired with Guy’s gut-tearing intensity and pyrotechnic flash–would be major news in any event. But the addition of genuine R & B legend Etta James makes this show even more tantalizing. Since her first recordings for Modern in the mid-50s, she’s shown an uncanny ability to manipulate the most unlikely material (“At Last,” for example, which was made popular by Glenn Miller of all people in the 40s) as well as extract every ounce of meaning from the blues and R & B classics (“Don’t Cry, Baby”) she’s made her own over the years....

Friday 11 In 1904 Charles Carpenter, the Field Museum’s chief photographer, went to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis to photograph Native Americans who attended. Thirty-five of his portraits, made from glass-plate negatives, of people from the Hopi, Pomo, Pawnee, Navaho, Arapaho, and Kwakuitl tribes–including a fine picture of Geronimo–will be on display at the Field Museum through March 17. Many of the photos in this exhibit, which opens today, have never been displayed or published before....

The 60-some one-acts (three per night) in Bailiwick Repertory’s Directors Festival 1992, produced by Cecilie Keenan, range from plays and musicals to performance art and monologues; some are well-established classic and contemporary selections, while others are brand-new pieces. They’re mounted by a slew of directors, most of them little known, who are looking for an avenue to showcase their work and get their names out to the public. See? It’s working already....

Click. The video screen goes black. Then we find ourselves in the middle of a classroom where a bunch of all-American kids are learning French. Someone points to a drawing of a poodle on the blackboard, beside which are written the words “Le chien.” Poof, the poodle jumps off the blackboard and is transformed into a gray cartoon poodle with a bright pink bow and a big red tongue lolling out of her mouth....

In Chicago, even-numbered years bring the odd productions from around the world to town. At least they have since 1986, when Jane Nicholl Sahlins, Bernard Sahlins, and Pam Marsden first launched this sometimes controversial, visionary biennial event. When the festival was founded, Chicago was routinely omitted from major national theater tours, whose producers gauged that the attentions of Windy City audiences were preempted by local shows. Although that has changed in the past year, the festival is still Chicago’s only affirmation that there’s more to French, British, and Canadian theater, say, than Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Aspects of Love....

KIKU’S KOMEDY WORKOUT (2) Character jokes aren’t funnier when the actors don’t take their characters seriously. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Yes, I had plenty of time to ruminate philosophically on laughs because only one of the acts the Saturday I was there achieved any consistency in generating them. Kiku’s Komedy Workout is a revolving showcase for various Chicago comedy acts. The lineup my night consisted of three stand-up comics–Tim Joyce, Ty Phipps, and Jim Kopsian–and two comedy troupes, Creature Feature and the Underground Theatre Conspiracy....

LLOYD’S PRAYER O’Hare’s got that great raccoon tick sound, like an overwound egg timer or a squirrel on a wire. He’s got the quick gestures and the spastic yawn, the cocked head and the curious eyes. He’s got the little shivers; and those moments of pure, surprised absorption in whatever odd thing he happens to have noticed his hands doing. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Which otherwise might have just floated away, lifted on angel wings of cuteness....

The career of Lowell Fulson exemplifies the evolution of the blues from an indigenous folk music to a popular art form. Born in Tulsa in 1921, Fulson played in an Oklahoma string band in the late 30s. He traveled throughout western Oklahoma and Texas, eventually teaming up with the legendary singer Texas Alexander, whom he accompanied for several years. After World War II he migrated to California, and his music developed a more sophisticated edge....

METAMORPHOSIS Werner Krieglstein, whose adaptation of Metamorphosis is currently running at the Project, fundamentally fails to tell Kafka’s story–or any story, for that matter. His play–set in Gregor’s bedroom, behind a huge white scrim and illuminated by black light–takes several episodes from Kafka’s tale and runs them one after another. But there is little attention to connecting these episodes. I finished reading the story an hour before going to the theater, and I was still lost....

RANDALL DEIHL: RANDY DOES THE WEST Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Even the legendary shoot-first lawman looks so calm in Deihl’s Wild Bill Hickok that it appears he must have tamed lawless towns by example. Deihl bases his portrait on one of the few photographs of Hickok’s final days in Deadwood, where he was later shot in the back and killed. The original James Butler photo (Deihl credits him in the painting itself) shows Hickok only from the shoulders up....

Lead Story A physician at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reported in April that a 21-year-old college student suffers from phantosmia, a condition that causes her to emit an odor so foul that she cannot eat or engage in ordinary school activities because she cannot concentrate. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last year, after Galaxy Cheese Company’s factory in New Castle, Pennsylvania, burned to the ground, the owner relocated to Orlando, Florida, taking along 23 employees but leaving the rest behind....

“The medical society’s lock on psychiatric care in this country is starting to break up,” says Barbara Alexander, “and they’re really hysterical about it.” Clinical social workers are among the major providers of mental-health-care services, along with psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, and psychologists. Right now, insurance companies that provide reimbursement for outpatient mental-health care are required by law to pay for services only by MDs and PhD psychologists; but many do pay voluntarily for the work of clinical social workers....

Though the name conjures up tinkling teacups and Nancy Reagan types meeting for lunch, Society Cafe is a serious restaurant. It offers an ambitious menu in a gracious, civilized setting. A superb sound system played Bach, on the evening we were there, at just the right volume–low enough for conversation, loud enough to take up the slack when table talk flagged. Located in the south wing of the Chicago Historical Society, Society Cafe offers a two-tiered, semicircular space whose curved windows look out onto Clark Street and a flowered garden abutting Lincoln Park....

SOMALIA, ETCETERA The setting of Somalia, Etcetera wanders about in space and time with less of a purpose than the vague idea of filling the stage for three hours. Yet time and again the focus returns to the “Radical Feminists’ Caucus of Somalia,” where Spike, Malodorous, and Worm (played by Barbara Thorne, Lisa Black, and Sarah Brown) plot to free Somali women from the shackles of, well, you know, those shackles that women have to wear....

Atrocity buffs, it was a boffo year in local politics, with scenarios that approached–but could not quite match–that international epic George of Arabia Meets the Thief of Baghdad in Desert Hell at High Noon for the Love of the Seven Sisters. Nor could we quite rival that beltway blockbuster The Dead S and L Society, with sound track by the Keating Five, or the comedy classic Abbott and Costello Meet Gramm and Rudman, with all 435 members of the House collectively playing the role of Abbott and 100 senators doing Costello....

Nahaz Rogers, a 68-year-old south sider, never eats at fast-food franchises. “You might as well be back in slavery if you’re working to benefit white folks,” Rogers says. “You’re sharecropping if what you produce ends up with somebody else. And most blacks are sharecroppers. Blacks in Chicago go to Evergreen Plaza to shop. They go to Oak Brook. If they stay in the community, they buy from white stores. For groceries, they buy from Jewel or Dominick’s....

In 1897, when Samuel Insull engineered the first franchise between the city of Chicago and the Commonwealth Electric Company, he could not have imagined that two contracts later a major issue would be what is loosely called conservation. When the city signed that first contract with Insull, and even in 1947, when Chicago renewed the exclusive franchise held by the successor Commonwealth Edison Company, electrical power was an exciting, expanding industry....