It's just incredible. It's a big thrill. It's the ultimate in entertainment.
Is that us they're talking about? Must be. It's Tuesday the 8th of April 1986 and this is Entertainment Tonight.
Hello again everybody. I'm Mary Hart.
And I'm Rob Weller. The first police officer on the scene of Marilyn Monroe's death finally speaks out.
It's election day in Carmel and candidate Clint hesitates to make a prediction.
And Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Wagner sign on the dotted line. Those stories are coming up.
But first, disability was a dirty word last night in Washington D.C. as they handed out the Human Spirit Awards.
Peter Kwinhakas reports.
The first victory of the Human Spirit Awards gathered a host of stars who benefited Washington's National Rehabilitation Hospital by providing a long evening of entertainment.
And tonight for my first election I salute Irving Berlin. Hi Irving.
The event also honored four people who have overcome their disabilities including Ann Gillian, forced by cancer to undergo a double mastectomy last year,
and Teddy Pendergrass who keeps on singing and recording despite being confined to a wheelchair by an auto accident.
When I suppose Teddy Pendergrass hit that tree everybody said that's it. He's finished.
And there he rolls out and lifts both arms tonight to show that much has come back to him.
And if that much has come back who knows what can happen in the future.
The best thing for me is just for people to just realize that, you know, these people are people and it's not a disease.
And it's not something you should be afraid to touch or ask if you don't know.
And it should be very inspiring to everybody in America to not quit no matter what.
I only represent so many thousands of people and so many ladies and their families who also have had to deal with breast cancer
and who also valiantly fought to come back and you can.
Actually what the National Rehabilitation Hospital is all about, these people have already accomplished, you know. They're an inspiration to all of us.
Organizers hope to air the Victory of the Human Spirit Awards program within the next few months.
In Washington, Peter Quinhacus, Entertainment Tonight.
Speaking of spirit, it's taking seven showgirls to replace Cheetah Rivera in the Broadway review Jerry's Girls.
The girls, all members of the chorus, will perform Rivera's numbers while she recovers from a broken leg suffered in a traffic accident yesterday.
In Los Angeles last night, some other singers saluted the people who write the songs. Al Owens was there.
The first singer salute to the songwriter was the pet project of Rosemary Clooney,
who organized the charity benefit to help establish a center for brain damaged young adults.
Music can do thin, all out or all in, and whether it's win, play, show, show.
It's usually the singers who get most of the attention, but this time it was the songwriter's turn to step into the spotlight.
The evening's honorees included Barry Manilow, Allen and Marilyn Bergman, Julie Stein, Sy Coleman, and Sammy Kahn.
These singers tonight are just, just, I never heard such singing. Almost as good as mine now and again.
I wouldn't have been in Hollywood and I wouldn't have had my Hollywood career if it hadn't been for a song called Thanks for the Memory.
This is the first time for me that I've ever been recognized solely as a songwriter, so it's a big thrill.
Well, I'm singing one of Barry Manilow's songs and I think he's just the greatest, so what would we do without the songwriters?
There'd be no songs.
I wasn't a number one, I wasn't food to let you buy. I wasn't something.
More trouble for the anti-drug concert called The Concert that Counts.
A lack of ticket sales has prompted the April 26th show to move out of the huge Los Angeles Coliseum and into the much smaller Long Beach Arena.
Frank Sinatra says the report in Italian newspapers that he would do a show for the Pope was to quote his publicist, a ridiculous and nonsensical rumor.
A legend of the jazz world was honored yesterday on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Treat me right, baby. And I'll stay home every day.
Billie Holiday is remembered by many as the greatest jazz vocalist of all time.
She set the standard for many popular singers who followed.
Yesterday, her contributions to the music industry were honored with a special tribute.
We welcome to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Miss Billie Holiday.
The event was held on what would have been Lady Day's 71st birthday and was attended by many who felt the influence of her music.
Because style was more than style, it was direct from the heart.
I'll find myself doing something and it's technically a Billie Holiday influence and I have to pinch myself and say don't do that.
Every girl singer, woman singer should get down on her knees and thank God that there was a Billie Holiday.
Sometimes when you think it's on baby, it has turned off and gone.
Before midnight West Coast time, America will learn whether or not another actor has been elected to public office.
Vote counters in Carmel, California say they should have the mayoral vote count tabulated around 10 p.m.
And we'll know whether or not Clint Eastwood is the new mayor.
Eastwood himself refused to make a prediction on election eve.
I can't predict it, but we're feeling good, he said.
He refused, however, to sign an autograph, Mayor Clint, saying he didn't want to become the Thomas Dewey of municipal politics.
In another politics acting transition, former actor John Gavin yesterday announced his resignation as the United States ambassador to Mexico.
Gavin, who had accepted the post at the request of President Reagan, said he planned to return to the private sector.
And Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Wagner will co-star in an ABC TV movie, There Must Be a Pony, based on the novel by James Kirkwood.
Mayhem fans must have thought they'd died and gone to heaven last night.
Two hundred American theaters got a close-circuit dose of pile-driving, back-breaking WrestleMania 2.
Good Guy Scott Osborne reports.
Is this wonderful? It's just incredible.
Incredible just might be the right word for WrestleMania 2, which after all summoned Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy to be an official.
I've been everything in the criminal justice system except the judge, and now I've been a judge.
At Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, Rowdy Rowdy Piper didn't use kid gloves with Mr. T.
Wait a minute! I know this is coming. I know it. It's the ultimate in entertainment.
In Chicago, 6,000 pounds worth of wrestlers were in the ring, until 300 pounds departed in the person of William the refrigerator pairing.
I don't know anything about how really, uh, all right, but I know that they give a good show.
In Los Angeles, Hulk Hogan conquered King Kong Bundy inside a steel cage to remain wrestling's biggest event.
Though, of course, there's always a difference of opinion.
You're the greatest professional wrestler in the world today.
Unbelievable, yeah.
Unbelievable? Well?
That's it! That's it!
Nope, it's probably not all over. Scott Osborne, Entertainment Tonight.
For the first time since February 1982, the NBC Nightly News has tied the CBS Evening News for first place, that according to last week's Nielsen ratings.
In the primetime race, the Cosby show, as usual, is the number one show for the week.
Family Ties is second. The CBS Sunday night movie, Nobody's Child and Murder, she wrote, tied for third place.
Cheers is next, followed by 60 Minutes, Who's the Boss?, Night Court, Perfect Strangers, and The Golden Girls.
Jim Belushi has joined the growing list of actors who have made the successful jump from Chicago's Second City Comedy Review to Saturday Night Live to starring in films.
Now Belushi has returned home to Chicago to work on a cable TV comedy special set to air this summer. Mike Liederman has the story.
Jim Belushi is writing and starring in a Cinemax comedy experiment. He plays a sporting goods salesman trying to sell basketballs to his old high school coach.
His old coach was kind of a mentor to him, you know, and he gets to the high school and he sees his old arch rival in a gym and then we have this really intense one-on-one.
And then I'm not going to tell you the rest of the story.
If Belushi looks at home on the court, the reason is it's his old home court, close to it.
Jim went to school here in the Chicago Western suburbs where he played on the basketball team, along with the show's producer.
Well, how good was Jim?
Jim was very good, but the coach didn't really see what he had to offer, I think, was part of the problem.
Yeah, I think that's the way to look at it. That's a polite way to put it.
I guess we both wanted to be, you know, like great basketball players and just didn't quite make it, you know.
Mike Liederman, Entertainment Tonight.
It's been more than 23 years since the death of Marilyn Monroe, but there continues to be interest in the circumstances surrounding her death.
Today in Los Angeles, a private detective called for a new investigation. Dick Shoemaker has that story in our newsroom. Dick?
Mary, among those at today's news conference, a retired Los Angeles policeman, the first officer to see Monroe's body.
He stated flatly he thinks the actress was murdered in 1962.
We gathered a great deal of information and we determined that it was, in fact, a murder.
This evidence was presented to the district attorney at that time, who refused to have anything to do with it.
What hard evidence do you have? I mean, you made a flat statement, Marilyn Monroe was murdered.
Yes.
What hard evidence do you have to prove that?
It's in the coroner's report.
What evidence, though?
The amount of barbiturates in the bloodstream.
Marilyn Monroe's house was being remodeled on the day of her death. There was no drinking water in the entire house.
How does one swallow 47 to 50 sleeping pills and yet during the autopsy it's not found in her stomach lining?
That brings up the question, if she didn't swallow it, how did she get it?
There's only two possible answers and neither one of them are very nice. One is by a needle, which is the most probable way.
The other is through a suppository.
But that's not evidence of murder.
It isn't?
No.
Well, it certainly does away with the suicide theory, I think.
The Los Angeles district attorney's position today is the same it was five months ago.
There isn't a scintilla of evidence to suggest any possibility, even the most remote, of murder.
Today the district attorney reaffirmed there will be no new inquiry.
However, private investigators say they'll continue to press for a reopening of the case surrounding the circumstances of how Marilyn Monroe died.
Rob?
Richard Dean Anderson's Action on Ice, also Action on Home Video. Those stories and more when we return.
Coming up on Entertainment Tonight, tomorrow, Bette Midler, Judge Reinhold and Danny DeVito behind the scenes on Ruthless People.
Thursday, Richard Chamberlain for his latest miniseries, The Wild Wild West is the story.
Friday, host Peter Strauss in 20 shows that change TV goes behind the clock with 60 minutes.
All on Entertainment Tonight.
After his tenure as Dr. Jeff Weber on General Hospital, Richard Dean Anderson made the move to prime time.
After two quick letdowns, one was a series called Emerald Point NAS, the other, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
He's now riding high as MacGyver. Lisa Gibbons talked with Anderson where he got his start on ice.
Well this is one way to take to the ice, but when MacGyver's Richard Dean Anderson puts his skates on, he's looking for the same thing his character wants, the action.
Richard Dean Anderson originally wanted to be a pro hockey player, but a broken elbow dashed that dream, so instead Anderson became an actor.
But that still doesn't keep him off the ice.
What would your producers think about you risking your good looks out here?
We'll be very quiet about that, won't we? If they knew I was here tonight, they're not real happy about it.
They don't feel real safe in their investment occasionally, but they also know that if they take that away from me, I'll be a very unhappy soul.
Your show, MacGyver, is not really a harbor from danger though, is it? And you do a lot of those stunts yourself.
Yeah, I have a wonderful rapport with the production company, the producers, and my stunt coordinator.
And they let me get away with murder because they know first of all that I love doing that stuff, and also I'm very capable of doing things.
I'm a pretty athletic sort of guy, even for the right old age of whatever.
So consequently, I do do as much as they let me do. I love it.
Have you ever had any mishaps, any freak accidents on the set? You think, oh, I'm an actor, what's going to happen to me?
Yeah, I tend to worry less about my cosmetic safety and bodily safety more than anybody else.
I broke my hand, not even doing a stunt, I was just running by a camera and snapped a couple of bones in my hand.
I had two episodes where I had to wear a cast. There were a lot of dings. I'm always bleeding from some limb.
My hands have always got little nubs from doing all the detail stuff and crashing around.
But you're fast as your fortune. How can you risk getting bruised and battered out there?
Well, so far so good. I'm looking for wood to knock on or anything, but I love activity and action.
And so consequently, MacGyver is probably the perfect vehicle for me to be a part of right now.
Action is also the word in this week's video preview from Eric Burns, action and some Oscar-winning movies.
Hi, I'm Pete Rose and I'm here to talk about what a lot of people believe is the hardest thing in sports, hitting a baseball.
And I'm Eric Burns, here to talk about what a lot of people think is the hardest thing in home videos, picking the best videos of the week.
This week, there are four contenders.
Do you really think that eating this avocado will make you spoiled and weak? Enjoy what life offers you.
William Hertz, Academy Award-winning performance as Best Actor of 1985, is available on cassette this week.
This is Kiss of the Spider Woman.
And this is Witness, which won two Academy Awards this year for original screenplay and film editing.
On one level, it's an adventure story. On another, the story of a clash of cultures, big city and rural Amish.
Samuel, wait for me downstairs.
John Book, while you were in this house, I insist that you respect our ways.
Right.
Remember Japanese director Akira Kurosawa being nominated for an Academy Award this year for Ron?
Well, two of his earlier movies are out this week on cassette.
They are The Hidden Fortress, which George Lucas has admitted was an inspiration for Star Wars,
and Ikiru, a touching film about a dying bureaucrat who learns how to live.
All four of these movies are best bets this week.
The worst bet? How about Devil Bat, starring Bela Lugosi as a man who has figured out a way to make bats bigger.
A few days ago, you were as small as your companion.
And now look at you.
And speaking of bats...
Some use a short bat, some use a long bat, some use a light bat.
The Pete Rose clip we showed you at the beginning of this segment was from an instructional video out this week,
just in time for the start of baseball season.
And that's it for this week. Thank you very much, and good luck in your future of choosing cassettes.
Thank you very much, and good luck in your future of hitting a baseball.
Eric Burns, Entertainment Tonight.
No comment. Leonard Malton reviews The Money Pit, and The Beatles are back in the USSR.
Those stories and more when we come back.
Here's the ET Digest for Tuesday, the 8th of April.
New in the bookstore, Garvey by Steve Garvey and Skip Rosen.
New in the record store, Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire from Bonnie Tyler.
In concert today, Lee Greenwood at the A.E. Woods Coliseum in Clinton, Mississippi,
and Echo and the Bunny Men at the Fox Theater in Detroit.
MUSIC
Interest rates are down, home sales are up, and a new Steven Spielberg comedy about a couple and their dream house has just been put on the market.
Here with a review of The Money Pit, the number two movie at the box office, is our critic and homeowner, Leonard Malton.
They say that a house is only as strong as its foundation.
If that's the case, The Money Pit is built on cream of wheat.
I just don't understand how a good idea can go so bad.
And the timing is perfect for this kind of film.
It's been nearly 40 years since Cary Grant and Myrna Loy made Mr. Blanding's Builds His Dream House.
And in this film, Tom Hanks and Shelley Long play the young couple who want a house in the worst way.
And that's just what they get.
So the plumbing's not perfect. We'll get it fixed. It's not the end of the world.
You didn't see that water.
Look, this is an old house. It's gonna need some work. You've gotta expect that.
I didn't expect that water. It had legs.
A little work, a little care, a little imagination, and it's gonna be great!
Well, it's not, and that's the basis of the film.
But a little of this stuff goes a long, long way,
despite the best efforts of Tom Hanks and Shelley Long to retain our sympathies.
Once you start doing wildly exaggerated gags and having your characters act silly,
you lose the whole point of a film like this, being able to identify with the people on screen.
What's more, I found the slapstick very mechanical.
The three stooges did it better.
Are there laughs in the money pit?
Sure, it's not a total dud, but it gets weaker and wearier as it goes along.
And there's just no excuse for that, given all the talented people involved.
I'm sorry, I can't build more enthusiasm for this one than giving it a four.
I'm Leonard Maltin, Entertainment Tonight.
Until recently, rock and roll was the pits in Russia.
A former foreign minister once said,
all this nervous and insane boogie-woogie and rock and roll are some kind of wild caveman's orgy.
But the pendulum began swinging the other way about three years ago
when an official of the Communist Youth League called The Beatles solid.
Now the first officially sanctioned Beatles album has been released in the USSR,
and within hours all 200,000 copies of a two-record set titled A Hard Day's Night were sold out.
And another 200,000 have been ordered.
Well, at the rate they're going, the first John Cougar Melloncamp album will get there in 2007, probably.
Maybe eight.
Julie Andrews, back home in England and back.
You don't know who John Cougar Melloncamp is.
Julie Andrews before the cameras and in England.
And Bette Midler, Judge Reinhold and Danny DeVito working hard to get big laughs in Ruthless People.
That's all tomorrow on Entertainment Tonight.
At last night's Singers' Salute to the Songwriter benefit,
Melissa Manchester was one of the stand-on performers.
She was saluting Barry Manilow and the song, Could It Be Magic?
We'll see you tomorrow.
See you. Bye-bye.
Could be.
Tomorrow at 4 on Our Magazine, Ed McMahon talks about fatherhood the second time around, plus a visit to New York's annual toy fair, tips for reducing high blood pressure and much more, all on Our Magazine. Now stay tuned for the A Team, next here on WJR-TV10.