Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 255, Greencastle, Putnam County, 20 June 1985 — Page 7

People in the news Punky needs space to escape her fans The shady park, not far from her home, is one of the few places Soleil Moon Frye can get away from adoring crowds who know her better as the star of NBC’s “Punky Brewster.” Still, she couldn’t completely escape, because she was there with her mother, Sondra Peluce Frye, and producer, Rick Hawkins, to talk about her show. “Punky Brewster,” up against the formidable “60 Minutes” on CBS on Sunday nights, is consistently one of the lowest-rated prime-time shows. Yet NBC has enough faith in the show to renew it for another season. It has done better in that time slot than any other recent NBC entry. And Soleil, pretty, freckled and brown-eyed, with long brown hair, has become something of a phenomenon among child actors. She is mobbed on personal appearances. At an appearance at Easter at the White House, the crowd surged so close Secret Service agents took her into the White House, where she was fed fried chicken and biscuits. She is honorary chairman of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and was the guest of first lady Nancy Reagan at the White House on Feb. 22. Asked how she likes all the attention, she replied, “Fine. It’s nice to know that people watch your show.” Her mother added later, “She came back from one public appearance and cried. She asked, ‘Will people ever love me for myself anymore or will they love me only for Punky?’ It’s a big thing for someone so little.” Her mother said she does not get star treatment either at school or at home, where she lives with her mother and two actor brothers. Sean Frye, 17, was in “E.T. The ExtraTerrestrial” and Meeno Pulce, 15, was in the NBC series “Voyagers.” Her parents are divorced. Her father, Virgil Frye, was in the NBC movie “The Burning Bed.” Soleil, who will be 9 on Aug. 6, isn’t sure whether she wants to remain an actress. “I want to be an astronaut,” she said. “I also want to be a singer and an actress. I want to help people. I like to travel to places and give things to people. I want to be a doctor. I want to be everything there is to be.” # LONDON (AP) Elton John has earned more than sl9 million in royalties alone in the 18 years since he signed with music publisher Dick James, a music company lawyer said in the rock star’s suit against James. John, 38, claims James exercised undue influence in getting John to sign an unfair contract when he was an unknown 20-year-old. James denies it. John’s lyric writer Bernie Taupin, who also is suing James, made $1,380,858, the court was told Wednesday. James’s lawyer, George Newman, said in the High Court in London that James’ companies made $14.5 million on John’s records and music. He said the figures do not include money John made by performing.

Albert Brooks is 'lost' no more

c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK After the opening of “Lost in America,” Albert Brooks “took a deep breath and prepared for what I was going to tell my friends was an artistic success.” A half-dozen other major films had opened on the same date in mid-February, and business for “Lost in America” was so poor that two weeks later the film was disappearing from the 10 New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut theaters where it had been playing, remaining only at Cinema 2 in Manhattan. In Los Angeles, where he lives, Brooks consoled himself by driving up and down Sunset Strip, gazing up at a billboard advertising his film as “Opening March 1.” One day, he was horrified to discover that the sign had been changed to read “Coming Soon.” “There was this interim period where it was as if I had shot everyone who worked at Warner 8r05.,” he recently recalled. “I was treated like an assassin, people would not return my phone calls. It was horrendous.” But then a curious thing happened: “Lost in America” began to catch on. The reviews were good, and the word of mouth even better A radio interviewer recently asked Brooks whether he minded losing his cult-figure status. “Why don’t you come down to Hollywood,” Brooks replied, “and I’ll take you over to Warner Communications I’ll walk you into an office and we’ll bring a script with us. And I’ll say, ‘Listen, I’ve got a terrific idea here. And I know my seven hardcore fans will show up! ’ Let’s just see how well we do. Listen, if not being cult means I can continue to work, that’s fine with me.” But the success of “Lost in America” which was made for $4 million, has already grossed $8.5 million and continues to do steady business has done more for Brooks than simply make him marketable. It has given credence to his belief that “if people don’t love what you’re doing, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.” He learned this the hard way, he says, with his 1970 debut on the “Tonight” show as a stand-up comic, when he

THE FAMILY CIRCUS* By Bil Keane "But, I CAN'T stop crying! My eyes * are too full of tears!"

DAVID BRENNER SOLEIL MOON FRYE Helping the homeless Wants to be astronaut PHILADELPHIA (AP) Comedians Bill Cosby and David Brenner will headline a benefit concert for the 270 people left homeless by the fire that engulfed a neighborhood when police tried to evict the MOVE radical group. Rockers Robert Hazzard and the Heroes also will perform at the show July 2 at the 13,500-seat Robin Hood Dell East amphitheater, promoter Toni Nash said Wednesday. The event’s chairmen are basketball star Julius Erving of the Philadelphia 76ers and tenor saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. Washington and his band, Pieces of a Dream, will be unable to perform because of a previous engagement, Nash said. • NEWARK, N.J. (AP) When people think of music in New Jersey, they think of Bruce Springsteen and Frank Sinatra, says Hugh Wolff. He wants them to also think of the New Jersey Symphony. “I’ve become increasingly convinced that the New Jersey Symphony is at a critical point in its history,” said Wolff, 31, who was named the orchestra’s music director Wednesday. “I think the potential is there to leap to national prominence.” The Harvard-educated pianist, composer and conductor will take the podium for the first time as music director on Aug. 28. • DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) Singer Harry Belafonte drove nearly five hours over rough roads to see self-help projects runs by this food-short African country and found no one home. Belafonte, envoy to Africa from the artists who made the “We Are The World” record in aid of famine relief, visited the drought-stricken Shinyanga region 600 miles north of the capital Tuesday. However, he said Wednesday before meeting with President Julius Nyerere, no Tanzanian official or even curious villager was present to show him around. An embarrassed Tanzanian government spokesman attributed the mixup to a breakdown in communications.

played a talking mime and nobody laughed at all. Brooks was invited back anyway and became ever more familiar to the audiences of that and other television shows (one of them Dean Martin’s variety show, on which he became a regular performer) as he played, among other things, a lion tamer working with a frog, and a ventriloquist whose mouth moved more than his dummy’s. Then, in 1973, Brooks repeated the same mime routine on “Tonight,” and this time it went over well. “The difference was that by then I was accepted, and also that Johnny was laughing,” The 37-year-old Brooks, whose real name was Albert Einstein and who changed it after long years of teasing (his father, Harry Einstein, was a radio comedian using a Greek accent and the stage name Parkya Karkus), had long since learned to trust his own instincts by the time he made “Real Life,” his hilarious pseudodocumentary about a film crew trying to invade a typical American household. “Lost in America,” like all Brooks’ projects, developed idiosyncratically. The first thing he liked about the film’s story was its ending, which shows what happens “when people realize what a big mistake they’ve made and have to cut their losses.” The film’s intent was to show what happened to a young couple, both in their mid-30s, who decide to drop out of society. “If I were making the standard Hollywood movie, I would have had these people trout fishing and building their own log cabin,” Brooks said. “But one of the things I wanted to do was make a movie I had never seen.” At first, he thought of setting the film abroad, with two Peace Corps volunteers “who had a lovely weekend at the Jakarta Hilton before they had to start working in the buginfested jungle.” But that would have been expensive to film, and besides, Brooks had a better idea. One of his more distinctive touches was to send the characters crosscountry in a Winnebago. “I used to go with a woman whose parents bought a motor home and spent the last part of their lives drifting around,” he said. “She used to tell me this and instead of laughing, I wanted to be them.”

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June 20,1985, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic

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