Banner Graphic, Volume 12, Number 94, Greencastle, Putnam County, 29 December 1981 — Page 8

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The Putnam County Banner-Graphic, December 29,1981

People in the news Celebrity Santas thrill 12-year-old BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) Christmas was long over but actors Charlton Heston and David Doyle were still playing Santa Claus for a boy who recently returned from the Soviet Union after treatment for progressive blindness. Heston, honorary chairman of Retinitis Pigmentosa International, on Monday gave 12-year-old Todd Cantrell an electronic night vision aid valued at $2,800. Todd, of Dalton, Ga., had tested the device the night before. "I never thought I would get to see a star until last night,” he said at the presentation luncheon. Doyle, of the television series “Charlie’s Angels,” gave Todd S2OO sunglasses that filter out strong light thought to aggravate a disease called retinitis pigmentosa, in which the eye’s light-sensitive cells gradually deteriorate. Todd, who has suffered from the disease since he was 6 months old, returned from Moscow a week before Christmas after undergoing a series of injections which Soviet doctors say may help save some of his sight. - U.S. physicians insist the Soviet treatment is ineffective, but Todd’s mother says the peripheral vision in his left eye „ is improving, and a small amount of the peripheral vision •in his right eye has been restored. • NEW YORK Burt Sugarman. The Hollywood producer who has acquired the film rights to two highly praised plays on Broadway, “Crimes of the Heart” and “Children of a Lesser God,” has decided to come to the source. He will make his debut here as a theatrical producer late this season with “Extremities,” a new drama by William Mastrosimone, whose “The Woolgatherer” had a successful run at Circle Repertory last year. The director will be Robert Allan Ackerman, best known for his staging of “Bent” on Broadway. The producer says he hopes to sign the female lead in the next few weeks and open the play in April. In the meantime, he is moving ahead with his films. “Crimes of the Heart” will star Diane Keaton, with Jonathan Demme directing. Beth Henley, the author of this Pulitzer Prizewinning play, is writing the screenplay. „ “Children of a Lesser God” will be directed by Alan Pakula. There is no cast yet, but John Rubinstein, who won a Tony Award for his portrayal of a teacher of the deaf, is a strong contender to star. Sugarman is also making a film of an Off Broadway hit, “A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking.” The movie will star Susan Sarandon, who appeared in the stage version, and Jill Clayburgh, and will be directed by Jack Lemmon in one of his rare forays behind the camera. • BABYLON, N.Y. (AP) The White House often sends congratulations to people who reach their 100th birthday, but a Suffolk County legislator got his 56 years ahead of time. “Maybe the president knows something I don’t,” Anthony Noto said. “I’m happy to know he expects me to reach such an advanced age.” Last week, Noto received a letter signed by Ronald and Nancy Reagan, which said they “congratulate you as you celebrate your 100th birthday. We are delighted to share the joy of this happy occasion.” The note was dated Dec. 14 Noto’s 44th birthday. But apparently that was just a coincidence. Noto called U.S. Rep. Gregory Carman’s office Nov. 30, asking that Reagan send a letter marking the 100th anniversary of the Babylon Village Fire Department. The letter was to be used in a celebration Dec. 5. “I was a little concerned when the letter didn’t arrive on time, but I told the chief that a letter was on the way,” Noto said. Then came the birthday letter. A spokesman for Carman, John Palafoutas, said the congressman’s office normally writes to ask for congratulatory letters, but telephoned this time because of the short notice. “That’s where the mistake was probably made,” he said.

Intriguing? People's choices may be 'interesting/ but...

“ By Diane White (c) 1981 Boston Globe People magazine is out with its annual issue listing the 25 most intriguing people of 1981. My favorite high school English teacher would have been appalled by this use of the word intriguing. She always told us never to use it as a synonym for interesting. The People magazine 25 may be interesting, but they’re not really intriguing, not in the sense that they have an air of mystery or excite our curiosity. Oh, maybe one or two or even three of them qualify as intriguing. Liz Taylor is always full of surprises. David Stockman has certainly proved himself unpredictable. And Rabbit Angstrom is something of an enigma. But is Barbara Mandrell intriguing? Or Tom Selleck? Or Mick Jagger? Some of the most truly intriguing people of 1981 didn’t make the People list, for example: Helen Dolan Wilson. Her story is the stuff of genuine intrigue. Exactly what is the nature of her friendship with John Patrick Cardinal Cody? We’ll never know. But will that keep us from speculating? Not on your life. Evangeline Gouletas Carey. Did she deliberately fudge the number of husbands she admitted having before she married the governor? Or did she just lose count? Camilla the Chicken. Why hasn’t this talented fowl become a Muppet superstar? Could it be that a certain green-eyed pig has quashed the chicken’s chances? Deborah Ann Fountain, Miss New York in the Miss USA pageant, who was caught red-handed padding the front of her bathing suit in defiance of contest rules. Her explanation for her action is intriguing, if preposterous: “I was raised in a strict Catholic house. The swimsuit, it was too big, it had a plunging neckline and I could have popped out.” Wayne Newton is intriguing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is his announcement that he plans to star in a film biography of Errol Flynn. Apparently Newton suffers from a delusion that he resembles the late, great wastrel. With all his millions can’t he afford a mirror? Barbara Cartland. Why didn’t the grande dame of shlock romance attend her step-granddaughter’s wedding? Did Buckingham Palace refuse to issue the egregious author an

DOROTHY HAM ILL: Soon Mrs. Martin

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) Former Olympic figure skating champion Dorothy Hamill will marry Dean Paul Martin, son of entertainer Dean Martin, on Jan. 8 in Beverly Hills. It was announced Monday that the wedding will be held at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills. Martin is an Air Force lieutenant. Miss Hamill will continue to guest star in selected engagements of Ice Capades throughout North America. Martin, in addition to his military duty, is continuing his acting career. He is a former professional tennis player. • MERIDA, Mexico (AP) Fernando Valenzuela, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitching sensation, has married an elementary school teacher here in a brief civil ceremony, but the couple will repeat their vows again tonight in church. Present at Monday night’s ceremony was his business manager, Tony De Marco, and the man credited with having discovered him, Mike Britto. Tonight’s ceremony for Valenzuela, 21, and Linda Burgos, will be held in Merida’s church of the Immaculate Mary. Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda is expected for the church wedding. Valenzuela, the National League Rookie of the Year and winnerof the Cy Young award as the league’s best pitcher in 1981, is a national hero in Mexico. Miss Burgos, also 21, is a native of Merida, a city of about 500,000 on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The two met here when he was playing in the Mexican leagues. • Monday was the first wedding anniversary for Alvin and Suzanne Maas, whose romance began in the classified advertisements. Last year Maas, the president of a California hotel company who had been frustrated in his attempts to find a wife, inserted a personal ad in The San Jose Mercury and News. Mrs. Maas said Monday from the couple’s home in Saratoga, a suburb of San Jose, that she had spotted the ad. “because the personals column was right next to the animal column.” Mrs. Maas said she had been looking at the animal column to see if anyone had found her two Gordon setters, Reno and Bogie, who were missing. Maas’s ad caught her eye because it promised extensive travel, visits to the symphony and ballet and evenings filled with good food and wine. She responded and the two hit it off so well that they were married on Dec. 28, 1980. Now Mrs. Maas is resting at home for a while. She is expecting their first child in February. How has the classified marriage worked out? “I have no regrets,” said Mrs. Maas, who is now 29. “A 1 doesn’t have any bad points. He’s a verv good husband.” As for the dogs, Mrs. Maas said she never did get them back.

invitation? Or did she decline because she didn’t want to upstage the bride? Another intriguing question to which we’ll probably never know the answer. Teri Shields, Brooke’s mother, is intriguing only because it’s difficult, but not impossible, to believe anyone could be as awful as she seems. “The Phantom Cake leer.” This prowler crept into a Virginia Beach, Va. apartment armed with two cans of storebought frosting and forcibly decorated a woman’s face and body with chocolate and vanilla icing, telling her that this is the sort of thing she should expect if she leaves her door unlocked. Will he strike again? John Reed and Louise Brooks. Can they really have been as silly as Warren Beatty paints them in “Reds”? Janet Cooke. The Pulitzer perpetrator sunk without a trace. What ever happened to her? Everyone who went on the Beverly Hills Diet. The intriguing thing about them is how they could all be so stupid. Rita Jensen, the newspaper reporter who shared a Manhattan apartment with Kathy Boudin, said she never noticed anything odd about her roommate. The FBI probably finds that pretty intriguing. Garfield. Why hasn’t someone arrested that furry curmudgeon for impersonating a cat? David Brown, a 17-year-old West Hartford high school student, went to court and divorced his parents, exciting the curiosity, and envy, of many. The Jenrettes. OK, so they gave passion free rein right there on the Capitol steps. But how, exactly? And when? And, even more to the point, why? The spectral L.A. Dodger’s fan whose jaw broke George Steinbrenner’s hand is intriguing whether or not he exists. Suzanne Somers. Intriguing as she is as an actress, or whatever, she is even more so as a poet. A sample from her collection, “Touch Me,” published this year: “I thought of a friend last night And almost calledßut I decided not toßecause my hair needed washing And I don’t know him well enoughTo look like I really do.” Sigmund Freud. Did he really have an affair with his sister-in-law? And if he did, what does it mean? D.B. Cooper. The most intriguing man of this or any year.

Holiday movies Very few new Christmas film releases causing box office cash registers to jingle

c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service HOLLYWOOD Paramount’s $33 million “Reds” is doing poorly at the box office. Universal’s “On Golden Pond” is doing splendidly. Some Hollywood experts feel that both movies have been marketed improperly. Making a movie is only half the agony and half the expense. On what day in what season of the year in how many theaters with what kind of publicity and what kind of advertising campaign should a movie be sent out to meet the world? Should difficult subject matter be disguised, as M-G-M has disguised its “Whose Life Is It Anyway?”, about a man’s right to die, with vague “Human Comedy” ads? Or should it be clearly laid out, as 20th Century-Fox has done for “Taps” with an ad showing armed adolescents in military uniforms and the copyline, “This school is our home, we think it’s worth defending”? Releasing movies at Christmas is particularly tricky. The 10 days starting Dec. 25 are often the 10 best days of the year for theaters, but the two or three weeks before Christmas are among the worst. Yet some movies use the headstart of being in the marketplace a little earlier to build to massive Christmasweek business. Orion’s “Rollover” and M-G-M’s “Buddy Buddy” opened nationally on Dec. 11. “Neither of them was strong enough to hold for two weeks, and they’re going to be dead by Christmas,” said Norman Levy, head of sales and vice chairman of Fox. Levy’s “Taps” opened last Friday in 455 theaters and earned $2.1 million over the weekend, a per-theater average of $4,637. Ordinarily, those digures would be disappointing. Columbia’s “Stir Crazy” earned SIO,OOO a print in its opening weekend last December. “But in a sea of disaster, ‘Taps’ and ‘Neighbors’ did best,” Irv Ivers, advertising vice president at Fox, said. So far this Christmas, Hardly anybody is going to the movies, and, surprisingly, the per-theater average for “Taps” almost equaled that of Columbia’s “Neighbors,” which was widely considered the only Christmas movie anybody was waiting to see. “Taps” was opened in New York a week ago “in order to get the good national reviews we expected so we could quote them in our subsequent ads,” Levy said. But the critics didn’t much like “Taps,” so the early opening, he adds, was “a waste in advertising money of $300,000.” Fox’s second Christmas movie, “Modern Problems” a comedy starring Chevy Chase as an air controller —will open on Christmas Day, often a sign that a picture is perceived to be in trouble. While declining to comment specifically on “Modern Problems,” Levy said, “If you think you’ve only got 10 days’ worth of audience on a picture, it might as well be the best 10 days.” “Reds,” a complex biography of the journalist John Reed set against the background of the Russian Revolution, has already been chosen best picture of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle and shared the best-picture award of the National Board of Review. But it is becoming increasingly likely that “Reds” written, directed, produced by and starring Warren Beatty will be a box-office failure. After earning a good but not spectacular $2.4 million its first weekend in 389 theaters, “Reds” fell to $1.6 million, a drop of more than 35 percent its second weekend. Last weekend, when “Reds” expanded to 665 theaters, it earned only a fair $l.B million. The consensus in Hollywood is that “Reds” should have been opened in a single theater in three or four major cities and allowed to become an “event” movie with lines around the block. “Reds” also lost immense amounts of publicity, including probable cover stories in Newsweek and The New York Times Magazine, because Beatty threw a news blackout over the movie. In addition, executives at other studios fault the movie’s newspaper ads which show the back of Diane Keaton as she hugs Beatty; the two actors look from a distance like two sacks of old clothes as the worst since Jane Fonda was dangling

Worry clinic

By George W. Crane, Ph.D.,M.D

Eva will become prematurely senile by looking backward instead of into the tomorrows. So try the 7 methods below for keeping your brain young, which youthfulizes your face, too! CASE A-710: Eva S., age 47, is in the middle age doldrums. “Dr. Oane,” her devoted husband began, “Eva has been a wonderful wife and superb mother to our 3 children. “But now that they are grown and married, Eva seems to feel she is suddenly old and on the shelf. “She spends a great deal of her time looking through the photograph albums that show our children in various periods of their development. “So how can I get Eva to think forward, as you so often have recommended? “If she keeps on dwelling in the yesteryears, she’ll be pre-maturely senile before she reaches 50.” HOW STAY YOUNG Women routinely spend millions on cosmetics to make their faces look younger. But it is inside your brain that you have the key to eternal youth. The real secret is to cultivate more habits of looking forward instead of backward! Backward gazing produces early senility whereas forward looking keeps you young, agile and full of zest. So plant the seeds today for harvests that you will be eager to glean in the tomorrows. Here are some types of

such planting: (1) Buy a few shares of low-priced stocks in sound corporations, for your mate and yourself; then you will enjoy competing with your mate to see who is ahead each day as per the Dow Jones figures. You will also read your newspaper more widely, for you will wish to see the printed New York Stock Exchange figures every day. (2) Buy tickets for concerts and stage shows for the future to give yourselves something exciting ahead. (3) Become active in your age group in church so you have monthly meetings, plus Sunday church services to entice forward thinking and action. (4) Millions of people even stay younger by hoping their ticket in a state lottery will bring them wealth! (5) Plan many little surprise gifts, games and excursions for your young children, or grandchildren when they crane home for Christmas or other gala holidays. (6) Keep a scrapbook of this and other instructive columns in your newspaper ; then send some of those clippings to your children or grandchildren in college or in Military service, or to hospital patients and shutins. (7) Join my Compliment Club, plus your Senior Citizens (if elderly) and go on their various bus trips to scenic spots, or Washington, D.C., etc. (Always write to Dr Crane. Hopkins Bldq Mellott Indiana 47958. enclosmq a lonq stamped, addressed envelope and «V to cover typinq and printinq costs when you send lor one ol his

from Robert Redford’s back for “Electric Horseman.” “The ads should have shown the sweep of the movie,” said Marvin Antonowsky, president of marketing at Columbia, who added that he “loved the film.” Another marketing executive, who preferred not to be quoted by name, said; “Frank Mancuso” president of distribution at Paramount “is too smart to have made all those mistakes. The whole campaign had to have been directed by Warren.” On the other hand, Universal is being faulted for opening “On Golden Pond” too slowly. The-consensus is that, instead of being in two theaters, the movie should have been in 800 theaters by Christmas Day. Universal was obviously concerned-that “On Golden Pond’s” subject matter, old age, and its stars, Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, would be a j”hard sell,” so the studio chose to play the movie only in Los Angeles and New York during December and to move into national release at the end of January, when “On Golden Pond” was expected to win many Academy Award nominations. Ironically, the movie seems to appeal to all audiences, including the all-important teen-agers. “It’s a Hallmark card,” Antonowsky said. “And when does Hallmark sell the most cards? At Christmas.” In addition, the teaming of Miss Hepburn and Fonda for the first time got immense attention from the press, including a Time cover. “They got all of those newspaper and magazine articles when the movie was only playing in two theaters,” a vice president of publicity at a rival studio said. “And now it’s over. They’ll never get that kind of publicity again in January.” However, Ashley Boone, vice president of marketing for the Ladd Company, said: “This is all hindsight. Given the fact that the movie’s major appeal isn’t to youth audiences, Universal had to build a base.” Robert Rehme, president of distribution for Universal, said; “The hardest thing to achieve is audience ‘want-to-see’ for a movie, and we’ve accomplished that for ‘On Golden Pond.’ Given the horrible figures on the Christmas movies, maybe we lucked out not being in the Christmas market.” Marketing executives are, in general, pragmatic men, and their job is to squeeze as much money as possible out of audiences. Thus, last Friday Columbia opened “Neighbors,” a bizarre comedy starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, in 1,400 theaters, the largest opening in Columbia’s history. That decision was made after a negative preview of an early cut of the movie. “We knew that the appeal of Belushi and Aykroyd was so strong that we could get the film open,” said An- * tonowsky. “What we didn’t know was how audiences would respond to seeing them in a black comedy, what the word-of-mouth would be. So we decided it was better to get the maximum dollar as quickly as possible.” Columbia’s strategy for its other Christmas movie, “Absence of Malice,” was to “get it away from the competition,” according to Antonowsky. “If we were the last picture in the marketplace, we knew we’d be buried by ‘Reds,’ ‘On Golden Pond,’ ‘Whose Life Is It Anyway?’ They’d get the reviews.” So Columbia opened “Absence of Malice,” the story of a newspaper reporter who destroys lives with a careless article, in New York and Los Angeles late in November and gradually pushed it into more and more cities. So far the strategy seems to be working. Occasionally, just occasionally, strategy can consist of loving and trusting a movie. “Why can’t we just say, ‘Here’s a good movie, go see for yourself’?” asked Boone. That is exactly what the Ladd Company did with its sweet-natured “Chariots of Fire,” about two runners in the 1924 Olympic Games. “Chariots of Fire,” which shares the National Board of Review’s bestpicture award with “Reds,” was opened early last fall in a small number of cities where theater owners promised to cherish the film. Now in its 12th week, it is doing almost as well as it did in its first.

by THOMAS JOSEPH

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22 American playwright 23 Deuteragonist, e.g. 26 Join in 27 God to the Chinese 28 Craze 29 Nucleus 30 Lustrous 34 Be wrong 35 The face (si.) 36 Beetle 37 Crown 39 Radial, e.g. 40 Repeat performance 41 Her name means gracious

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19 Gave forth light 20 Indian language 23 Consented 24 Revue dancer 25 Balcony 26 O’Brian TV role