SHORT TAKES

CLAUDINE (20th Century Fox):: Diahann Carroll is a welfare mother of six who secretly works as a maid to supplement her subsistence-level checks. James Earl Jones is a garbage man. They meet over the trash cans in some suburban driveway, start spending nights together and end up being, quite realistically, in love. But if he wins over her suspicious kids (or most of them), he finds he can't fight the welfare system, and, frustrated, gives into his impulse to just disappear.