Mike Snell This Is Your Scene

DERBY; Directed and filmed by Robert Kaylor; Cinerama Releasing

If you were from Dayton, Ohio, had a wife and two kids plus an assortment of girl friends, worked in a tire factory, fancied yourself something of a swinger, and hankered after a little glory, what would you do?

Right on, you’d join the Roller Derby. Think of it: travel, excitement, fame, money, girls. Doesn’t sound too bad, huh?

Derby is a doqumentary about those possibilities. If you’re lucky like Charlie O’Connell of the Bay Bombers you can become a big winner. Charlie O. started out as a New York street kid. Now he’s a bourgeois baronet with an all-electric home in the hills behind Hayward. “I thank God I got into the Roller Derby, and for giving me a good life and keeping me off the streets." So says I Charlie O.

Derby is definitely a masochistically intriguing film. For a good many reasons. Not only is it a chilling glimpse into the life style of a whole class — working lower middle — it is also a measure of just how far you’ve gotten into a different way of life.