Saturday Letters

“A songwriter of no great depth or originality”? Excuse me, but how long has Sheryl Crow continued to make award-worthy music (“Dancer, Prancer, Vixen,” by Richard Cromelin, July 29)? How many Grammys has she won?

Crow is an extraordinarily talented, versatile artist who has performed with many other incredible artists in her career. The fact that she has been able to create and produce work that in Cromelin’s mind is evocative of other artists’ influence is--hello--no great surprise.

To put Crow down like that is tantamount to whining that Michael Jackson is a so-so dancer because he emulated James Brown and Fred Astaire, or that Albert Collins and Eric Clapton are insignificant guitarists because they were influenced by the likes of Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson, or that David Hockney is a shallow, unoriginal painter because his development was steered by Picasso and Monet, as no doubt they in turn were influenced by others before them.

PETER SHEERIN

Beverly Hills

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I did not see “All My Sons” at the Old Globe in San Diego, but I read Tony Perry’s grossly unflattering comments about the lead, played by multiple Emmy Award-winning actor Daniel J. Travanti (“A Grandfatherly Performance Undercuts ‘All My Sons,’ ” July 29).

I doubt there has ever been a more vicious butchering of an actor’s performance by any critic writing in the Los Angeles Times.

It is my hope that before Perry wrote his criticism, he was assured by the director that it was solely Travanti’s “idea of playing an old man ... continually pushing out his upper lip with his tongue” and that Travanti insisted “playing him more like 81 [than the text’s 61].”

If the director, Richard Seer, directed Travanti to play Keller as described above, then it is Seer, not Travanti, who should be the subject of Perry’s disappointment.

GENE H. WALSH

Burbank

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My wife and I have been going to the Hollywood Bowl for almost 50 years, and have always found the weather warm, the moon full and the music Mozart in spite of Mark Swed’s recent cavil (“Mozart and Moonlight: Twice in the Same Week,” July 25).

There’s no greater family entertainment anywhere that can match the experience of a night at the Bowl. Moon, schmoon. It makes no difference. If you’ve been, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, give the family a treat--a night under the stars (or the clouds). It’s something they’ll remember always.

MAURICE SEGAL

Sherman Oaks