Typhoon Jane

In Japan, the storm warnings were up. Jane Fonda--or, as local newspapers described her, "Typhoon Jane" --was blowing into the country to stir up the peace movement, lash the resident U.S. military brass and crack a few thunderbolts at male chauvinism. After whooshing through five Japanese cities, Jane had generated formidable gusts of publicity and scattered showers of four-letter words. But the impact was considerably less than tropical force.

Along with Fellow Movie Star Donald Sutherland, Jane was leading a scraggly, 15-member troupe of entertainers called the Free Theater Associates. Formed last winter largely to produce antiwar programs for U.S. servicemen, the F.T.A. is a sort of counter-U.S.O. and its initials conveniently stand also for "F-- the Army," a slogan familiar to all overseas G.l.s. "Ours is a political vaudeville created out of materials found in G.I. newspapers," says Sutherland. In mid-November the group began a five-week holiday tour with a show near Fort Dix, N.J. From there it went on to play near (never on) bases in Hawaii, the Philippines, Okinawa and finally Japan.

Misguided Hope. Occasionally the F.T.A. crisscrossed the route traveled by Veteran Troop Entertainer Bob Hope and his annual Christmas show. Although many people inevitably viewed the F.T.A. venture as an attempt to undermine the Hope tour, Jane insisted: "Bob Hope is not our enemy. He's no more misguided than any of us have been in the past."

Still, the F.T.A. revue was fashioned as an alternative to Hope's, and others like his, and it offers plenty of pointed contrasts. Where Hope's show has glossy production numbers, Les Brown's band and a succession of sexy starlets, the F.T.A. has makeshift props and a small combo, and the performers determinedly hide their physical charms most of the time under jeans and baggy sweaters. More important, the Hope show clips along on brisk one-liners spiced with patriotic flourishes. The F.T.A. loosely mixes readings, songs and satirical skits to underline such inflammatory assertions as Jane's: "We must oppose with everything we have those blue-eyed murderers--Nixon, Laird and all the rest of those ethnocentric American white male chauvinists."

No Barbarella. This year, as usual, Hope has been whisked from base to base like the VIP he is, and last week he went beyond that role, appearing at the North Vietnamese embassy in Laos, reportedly to seek permission to visit U.S. prisoners in Hanoi. Meanwhile, Fonda and company have continually encountered red tape ranging from visa problems to being virtually declared off-limits by American commanders.

Judging from the mixed success of last week's performances in Japan, the authorities may have been overestimating the F.T.A.'s appeal. In Iwakuni, one-third of the G.l.s in a large gymnasium walked out before the show was over, apparently bored. The Japanese seemed somewhat disenchanted by Jane's transformation, as one weekly put it, "from a scandal actress to a pacifist." One fan who had expected to see Barbarella onstage lamented: "She looks too undistinguished and sounds too shrill."

As she and the F.T.A. flew back to the U.S. at week's end, Jane was undaunted. "This definitely is going to be the main part of my life," she said. "I'm sure the remembrance of the evenings, and of how many of their fellow G.l.s were there, will come back to many servicemen at their moment of decision in the future."

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