LIKE MANY OTHER UT-Austin ex-students, I recently received an e-mail from the Texas Exes organization asking:

“Would you please write or call your state representative and senator TODAY and express your support for amending the Top 10 percent law? SB 175 by Senator Florence Shapiro and HB 52 by Representative Dan Branch are specific bills we urge you to support, which call for a cap of the top 10 percent admits of the freshman class.”

I haven’t contacted my legislators; put me in the “undecided” camp in what seems to be a rural-urban conflict.

As you may have heard, UT-Austin for the last three legislative sessions has tried to amend the law that requires it to admit any freshman who graduated in the top 10 percent of his public school class. Shapiro’s bill would limit these automatic admissions to 50 percent of a university’s freshman class.

THIS YEAR THE UT-Austin Admissions Office has already sent acceptances to 10,500 students in the top 10 percent when the “normal” total for a freshman class is 7,000, according to the e-mail.

“We simply can’t provide a first class educational experience if even 70 percent of them accept the admission offer,” it continued. “It is conceivable that the entire class for fall 2009 could be top 10 percent.

“We will be unable to admit many students with extraordinary skills in music and art, or out-of-state students, or students from smaller rural or private schools, or international students. We are also running out of room to recruit minority students with exceptional leadership qualities who may not be in the top ten percent of their class. . . The diversity of the student body and the recruitment of future leaders depend on all these factors.”

THE MENTION of “smaller rural” schools surprised me, because the record indicates that rural legislators have opposed the change because they think kids from small town and country schools would have a harder time getting into either of the two Tier One public universities (UT-Austin and Texas A&M) without the rule. (Rice is the only other Tier One university in this state.)

I am almost persuaded by the Texas Exes position. And a Dallas Morning News editorial Sunday encouraged a new kind of thinking on the dilemma. Calikfornia has nine Tier One public universities, defined as being major research institutions; having three is hardly a point of Texas pride.

THE EDITORIAL argues that if Texas had more leading research universities there would be less pressure on UT-Austin or A&M to fill up their classes with only the top public school scholars. Backers of UT-Dallas, Texas Tech, UT-Arlington, University of North Texas, the University of Houston and perhaps other UT branches go for this idea.

The News’ editorial concludes that it’s the long-term answer, which both sides should pursue. In the short term, though, states from the Atlantic to the Pacific are strapped for cash, and more likely to cut back university funding than to inject new money.

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NEWS LAST WEEK that the actress Natasha Richardson had died at 45 of the head injury she suffered in a skiing accident brought back memories of her New ork performance in the musical Cabaret. I was fortunate to see the production in 1998 at the Roundabout Theater off Broadway.

The original, produced on Broadway in 1966, had been made into a movie starring Liza Minelli and Joel Gray in 1972. Though I had seen the movie, I had read that the new stage production was, in effect, a new show, darker than the original. It proved to be memorable indeed.

All three versions were set in the pre-Hitler Germany of 1930, with many emanations, musical and in the libretto, that bad, bad changes were on the horizon.

A REVIEW in the All Music Guide said that the 1998 Cabaret dug deeper and cut harder than the earlier versions, and was even seedier than the original and movie versions in depicting the German nightlife of the time.

Ms. Richardson played the role of Sally Bowles, an English girl whose mother thought she was at a convent in the south of France. Instead, she was a chanteuse in the Kit Kat Klub, where the emcee, played by the astonishing actor Alan Cumming, welcomed guests in three languages and sounded menacing in all of them.

Ms. Richardson won a Tony award for her role in Cabaret, and, according to the Associated Press report of her death, remained true to her classical training in the theater even though she had an active film career. Part of an acting dynasty, she was the daughter of the actress Vanessa Redgrave and the granddaughter of the distinguished British actor, Sir Michael Redgrave.

ANOTHER STORY, this one in the Los Angeles Times, brought back a much earlier musical memory. It described rehearsals for the play, Louis & Keely: Live at the Sahara, which opened last week in Los Angeles and will run through April 26.

The co-writers and actors, Jake Broder and Vanessa Claire Smith, portray Louis Prima and Keely Smith as they became one of the hottest nightclub acts in the country in the mid-1950s.

It was in 1953 that Ray Greene and I were vacationing in New Orleans and, as tourists are wont to do, were wandering down Bourbon Street in search of entertainment. We decided to try a club where Prima, his band and vocalist/wife Keely were the attraction.

PRIMA, multi-talented New Orleans native who I recall singing Just a Gigolo along with playing the trumpet and leading his band, was a zany clown in contrast to the cool vocalist Keely. I thought the show well worth the rather low price, and learned only later that Prima had met Keely five years earlier when she was only 16. In fairly short order she becane his fourth, but not last, wife.

The LA Times story said Louis and Keely were a Sonny & Cher act years before Sonny met Cher.

Louis Prima died in 1978 at age 68. Keely Smith just turned 77 and still does an annual Valentine Day’s show in Palm Desert, Calif.

Ms. Smith, the co-author/actor, grew up in Louisiana and knew all about Louis Prima from an early age. On her resume is a stint in Romeo and Juliet at the Texas Shakespeare Theater in Kilgore. That fine institution, incidentally, has just released its 2009 schedule, which includes Romeo and Juliet again.

sgreene@tatertv.com Sarah Greene Archives