somewhere near tears.
Tonight's episode of Homefront is the final one for the time being as the show goes on a lengthy hiatus.
Cast member Wendy Phillips hopes loyal viewers will help campaign to save the show.
Whatever the spirit moves them to do would be great.
But anyway, it's hard for me. It's been a great run.
I have a fever and hardly any strength at all.
The show is also emotional for Phillips because in this episode she's stricken with polio,
the dreaded crippling plague of the 30s and 40s.
I was cranky at my fellow actors who I usually adore because I felt that they did not have a clue
about how uncomfortable and how frustrating trying to manage this wheelchair was.
Surprisingly, one fellow actor did help her understand more about the disease.
Dick Anthony Williams had suffered from polio as a child and recovered.
I've told her about other people that I was exposed to and about my limbs and the pain.
I couldn't do certain things like I couldn't put my neck more than this.
Phillips says that the polio epidemic with houses quarantined and towns living in fear
has some similarities to the current problem with AIDS.
There were houses under quarantine and that kind of hands off that we're fighting today with AIDS.
Moving on to the ABC Thursday night lineup as replacements beginning in January are Matt Locke,
the series starring Andy Griffith, which was dropped by NBC last season,
and Jack's Place, an hour-long romantic comedy starring Hal Linden.
It is two years away, but CBS has already named the man who will anchor its 1994 Winter Olympic Games.
Here's the lowdown.
Greg Gumbel, host of NFL Today, will be the network's primetime Olympics host at the Games to be held in Millhammer, Norway.
He's going to be busy summers as well.
CBS has also named Greg as a baseball play-by-play announcer for next season.
After 18 successful seasons on the air, Saturday Night Live has won high honors from Entertainment Weekly magazine.
In next week's issue, the lowdown is that the entire Saturday Night Live cast will be named Entertainer of the Year.
Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney is negotiating a multi-million dollar deal with ABC for three specials about his 1993 concert tour.
According to Today's New York Post, Paul would also become a spokesman for the ABC TV network.
Not so, according to a McCartney spokesman.
The lowdown is that the contract would only be for music, not for talking.
At her last photo session, Marilyn Monroe rejected many of the proofs.
Now, 30 years later, the photographer is publishing all of them in an $800 coffee table book.
They call it a girl next door, but there's just a magic that seems to be still alive.
Marilyn Monroe, the last photo session, the inside story coming up.
I couldn't just stand there watching shoot those people.
The suspense.
We're strong, Miller.
The mystery.
He's never gonna let us go.
The excitement.
Based on the bestselling novel.
Get down!
Harrison Ford, Patriot Games.
Now available at your local video store.
Next on ET, you'll find out what Kermit says that gets him punched by Miss Piggy.
Sure, all the good frog rolls come his way, but as Kermit the Frog said himself, it's not easy being green.
Right now, he's starring in the Muppet Christmas Carol, but that also meant facing an interviewer who got personal and pushy.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Diggie!
Woo!
The Muppets give Charles Dickens classic Christmas tale a new twist.
Kermit the Frog plays Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy plays his feisty wife, Emily, and Michael Caine stars as penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge.
One might say that December is the foreclosure season.
Half his time for the money lenders.
To get a feel for what it was like to work on the movie, we asked Miss Piggy to interview Kermit for us.
How does it feel playing opposite moi?
Do you say what I told you to say?
It was a wonderful experience to play opposite you, and you're a beautiful and talented star.
Thank you. Next, what do you think moi's next movie should be?
I think you should have a starring role which will undoubtedly win you an Oscar.
Oh, how dear. Thank you very much.
Piggy, Piggy, I can't do this.
Too much.
I have to, if I'm going to answer these questions, I have to answer them with my own answers.
That would be kind of boring.
Well, yes, but it would be honest, Piggy. I have to do it. I have to be truthful.
All right, fine, fine. Do it your own way.
Okay.
What about your personal life, your romantic life?
And easy on the stuff we don't talk about in front of people.
I have a wonderful personal life when I'm not working.
I spend a lot of time thinking and reading and spending time in a swamp.
No, I think what you mean is there is there someone you truly adore.
There's nobody that you're interested in.
Well, what do you mean interested?
I mean, as in love, as in obsession.
No, not really.
Nobody.
Nobody. Not a soul.
Okay.
I'm just going to go back to the studio to marry Hart now.
Goodbye.
Bye, Mary.
Did you mean that?
What?
About not having a soul?
Well, I have a soul. I just don't...
No, but you don't love me?
Well, I like you very much, but...
That's not enough.
Hi-ya!
And storms off the set. We knew that was going to happen.
Kermit will recover, we hope.
Meanwhile, a Muppet Christmas Carol is in theaters right now.
What happens to a kid star when he stops being cute?
Michael J. Fox's new movie, Life with Mikey,
looks at that problem from a comic angle,
but Michael says he knows what the real pressure is like.
That's better. A little bit louder, okay?
Michael J. Fox is a former child star who runs a third-rate talent agency.
He is reduced to showing the young clients he represents the ropes.
And for Fox, playing the has-been actor was eye-opening
to the many problems that can come with childhood stardom.
It's an opportunity to kind of address this thing that everybody wonders about.
What happens to these kids?
What's it like to be 19 years old and washed up?
Oh...
In this comedy, Fox and his secretary, Cindy Lauper,
think they've discovered the next big star,
played by 11-year-old newcomer Christina Vidal.
What do you think?
The hair looks great. Come on, we gotta get going.
Gina.
Watch your nails.
Thanks.
The story hits close to home for Fox,
who starred in the hit sitcom Family Ties for eight years, of course.
He says he understands the pressure of being a young kid in show business.
I've been around the business long enough to know,
and I've been around these kind of shows long enough to know
what that's like for these kids.
Michael is not totally jaded, however.
He and his wife, actress Tracy Pollin, would be thrilled
if their three-year-old son Sam wanted to follow in Dad's footsteps.
But Fox says he's relieved they don't have to worry about that just yet.
Happily, my biggest puzzles in life are, you know,
my son dressed for school in the morning,
and, you know, how I kind of try to get him to eat
something other than happy meals, you know.
Michael does say it is a constant battle
to keep his son out of range of the paparazzi.
He says he has seen photographers frighten his three-year-old
just to get a shot of Michael's angry reaction.
Tonight, the heart file opens on Notts landing star Stacey Galina.
She's a television veteran at age 26,
but acting wasn't the first career she tried,
and now she has designs on still another line of work.
Her four seasons on Notts landing have seen Stacey Galina
go from college co-ed to steamy seductress.
I can't. I can't.
But before she ever set foot on a soundstage,
Stacey was dancing to the beat of a different drummer
as a professional ballerina.
That's what I wanted to do.
I mean, I wanted to be a dancer,
and I couldn't imagine doing anything else.
She danced with the American Ballet Theatre in New York
and the Atlanta Ballet, but in the prime of her career,
a foot injury ended her dreams of going on.
It was horrible.
I was, like, in and out of wheelchairs and crutches,
and then I started thinking that maybe there were
some other things I wanted to try.
One of those things was acting,
but when a friend introduced her to the world of jewelry making,
Stacey found yet another creative outlet.
She's begun designing her own pieces
made from rare coins and precious metals.
I just really wanted to do quality stuff,
like this coin and then the coin that's in my ring,
a Roman coin that's about 300 years old
that I got from a collector.
Stacey sells her jewelry privately
and often wears her designs on the show.
She says the combination of careers
adds a good balance to her life.
The jewelry gives me another purpose,
and I think a creative purpose,
that sometimes the acting doesn't give you,
but between the two, it's a good combination.
True fans of Notts Landing will remember Stacey
as Mary Frances Sumner, a character who was killed off
after a very short run, but Stacey was so popular
with the fans that she was brought back
in true soap fashion as her own cousin,
and that's an update from the Heart File.
The CBS series Street Stories is looking back
at a year of riots, games, war and disaster,
using music from some big-name stars to go with the images.
A look and sound of 1992 leads off tonight's coming attractions.
I can recall the smell of the rain
Mary Chapin Carpenter recalls Hurricane Andrew.
David Benoit jazzes up Olympic highlights,
and the R&B group Take Six perform a song about the L.A. riots.
It's a different concept, says anchor Ed Bradley.
I think that you can look at it 10 years from now,
and it's like looking at a family album.
Street Stories airs tonight on CBS.
You're free now
It was a crazy year in the world of music.
MTV recaps the year in rock.
1992 saw controversies galore about rap lyrics
and Madonna's erotic escapades.
U2 had the hottest concert tour,
and a new style of music broke into the pop charts,
according to host Kurt Loder.
This was a big year for what used to be called
alternative music, music that was confined to college kids
previously and is now taking over the mainstream.
Year in Rock 92 premieres tomorrow on MTV.
Silver bells, silver bells
Bob Hope hosts a Christmas fiesta from San Antonio.
Among his guests are Clint Black, comedian Rita Rudner,
Dolores Hope, and Texas Governor Ann Richards.
Hope says he loves the sentiments of Christmas.
We traveled overseas for so many years
and did Christmas shows, you know, all over the place.
It's that time of the year where you think about family
and friends and everything else.
Bob Hope's four-star Christmas fiesta from San Antonio
airs Saturday on NBC.
And fascinating figures in American culture are highlighted
in three new books.
Our own Leonard Malton has co-authored a film history
on The Lovable Little Rascals.
Choreographer Twyla Tharp takes stock of her life
in an autobiography,
and a biography on oil tycoon Armand Hammer
reveals the dark side of power.
All three of these books are in stores right now.
And this seems to be the season of the star biography.
There are new books by or about celebrities
from Marvin Hamlisch to Frank Capra,
and there are three new books out just about Marlena Dietrich.
Burt Stern was behind the camera for Marilyn Monroe's final photo session.
When she got tired of fashion shots, the session turned sexy.
She ran off into this bathroom or dressing room, whatever you call it,
and came back with this thing on,
and lifted up the chiffon piece and said,
I'm going to take the 36.
In a hotel room with just Marilyn and a camera,
the inside story is next.
When Marilyn Monroe died, every photograph,
whether rare or exotic or ordinary, became precious.
For 30 years, photographer Burt Stern has been sitting on a gold mine.
He took the pictures of Marilyn's last sitting.
Today these pictures expose the vulnerable star inside,
and they are today's inside story.
I like Marilyn. I think the pictures show that.
When photographer Burt Stern took these pictures in 1962,
he had no idea that 30 years later he would be publishing
an $800 coffee table book he would call The Last Sitting.
Stern, a young star photographer for Vogue magazine,
had never taken Miss Monroe's picture.
It was to be a plum assignment.
Well, it was, I guess, like a dream.
You dream things, and in a way, if you want them, they come true.
The Last Sitting, with its unusual semi-nude and marked up cover photograph,
contains every single picture taken during the session,
which occurred six weeks before Marilyn's death in August of 1962.
Many of the shots were of high fashion. Many were nude shots.
It was Marilyn. She picked up this bed jacket and said,
I'm tired of... do we have to do any more fashion?
The shoot was set up for Vogue,
and when one of the magazine's editors who was present
objected to the nudity, according to Stern, Marilyn took over.
She ran off into this bathroom or dressing room, or whatever you call it,
and came back with this thing on, and lifted up the chiffon piece,
and said, how's this for 36?
I wasn't sure if she meant her age or her butt size, to be honest with you.
With that, Stern and Marilyn Monroe enclosed themselves in a nearby hotel room.
We finally ended up late, you know, in the night, all alone in this room
with everyone else sitting out in the other room on a bed with a bed jacket,
which no one liked, so we just wrapped her, started to wrap her in a sheet,
and I said, this is unbelievable.
So I found a mirror, and I put it on, I said, I've got a picture of this.
The most unusual feature of the last sitting is that among the 2750 pictures taken,
there are many that Marilyn rejected.
Even though she did not have picture approval from Vogue,
she scratched many of the negatives with a bobby pin
and used a red felt tip pen on many of the others.
Marilyn didn't know that the technology would change all that.
Here at this Texas photographic company, they specialize in restoring damaged pictures,
and Bert Stern brought in his damaged negatives.
Computer artist Debbie Eggertz did the repairs.
This line here is real thin.
I can go in and take areas of another part of her skin and replace it to remove the scratches.
The variety and quality of the pictures don't seem to indicate the extent of Marilyn Monroe's personal problems at the time.
Stern says he was too busy to notice, but his editor, Babs Simpson, who was present at most of the shoot,
apparently knew something was wrong.
Babs, when we left on the last day, said, what's going to happen to that poor girl?
Marilyn Monroe committed suicide just six weeks after the session.
Today, 30 years after that extraordinary last sitting,
Bert Stern still has no real answer for the amazing Monroe legend.
I don't know what's different, but she was just, everybody just liked her.
I mean, I liked her.
They called her the girl next door, but there was just a kind of magic that seems to be still alive.
The last sitting is not available in bookstores.
The book is only being sold at New York's Staley Wise Gallery, where the pictures are being shown.
Two major groups of movie experts made their picks for the best of 92,
and that leaves everybody wondering, will Oscar agree?
The National Board of Review picked the lavish epic Howard's End as its choice for best picture.
Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson star in this look at life and love in the British class system.
I'm very proud of you.
Thank you.
It's very successful.
Emma Thompson won as best actress for the film, with Glenn Gary Glenn Ross star Jack Lemmon picking up best actor.
The National Board of Review's supporting winners are Judy Davis for Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives,
and Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.
I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.
No Schwarzenegger, no Pat's Hollywood Endings, no car chases.
This is an American tragedy.
The New York film critics have chosen the player escaping look at Hollywood filmmaking as their best picture.
Denzel Washington won actor honors for his title role of 60s activist Malcolm X.
Emma Thompson was their choice for actress, the only acting duplication on the two lists.
Gene Hackman won supporting actor for his sheriff in Unforgiven,
and British performer Miranda Richardson was the New York critics' choice for supporting actress for her work in three 1992 releases.
Promotional assistance provided by MasterCard.
This holiday save up to 25% with the Master Values program at dozens of merchants nationwide, only from MasterCard.
Celebrating a birthday today, actress Marilyn Hassett is 45, actor Eugene Levy is 46, and actor Ernie Hudson is 47.
In 1960, a little town by the name of Mayberry was about to become very, very famous,
and so were a number of people who lived there, including the sheriff.
Hi, I'm Andy Griffith.
32 years after the series first aired, some of the original cast members of the Andy Griffith show have reunited for an upcoming TV special.
This was the first scene filmed for the series.
Griffith recalls nothing extraordinary about that first day on what was to become a TV classic.
We had no idea what was coming or what would happen to it, but we had a good time that first day.
Look, Pops, ain't it slick?
For Ron Howard, the only drawback to the show was his character's name.
People that would always tease me, Opie, Opie, hey Opie, Opie, Dopey, Opie, Sopie. I mean, it just, it was endless.
Share the laughs, memories, and good times with the Andy Griffith gang. That's the inside story tomorrow on Entertainment Tonight.
What a great show.
Yes, we're going to close out the show with a song from John's new album, A Romantic Christmas. It's a beautiful album.
Here's the homecoming, if I may say so.
Take care, everybody. We'll see you.
Bye bye.
Thank you.