["The Heartland"]
Will there ever be another movie year like 39?
Did Hollywood score big last night in The Heartland?
Guess who's getting married in this dress, this time for real?
Would the world be a better place with Jerry Lewis, M.D.?
Entertainment Tonight remembers this day in 59 on the third day of February 1987.
I think the answer is yeah.
["The Heartland"]
Hi everybody, I'm John Tesch.
And I'm Mary Hart.
Cleveland, Ohio has been a city with an image problem in recent years,
but last year's announcement that Cleveland had been chosen as the site for the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame brought a glimmer of hope.
Last night, the lights were blazing on the State Theater marquee.
Cleveland hosted the world premiere of Light of Day, the new rock movie with Michael J. Fox,
that could signal a new dawn for the city's image.
["The Heartland"]
It was a homecoming of sorts for the cast and crew since the film was shot on location here last year.
The fans turned out to cheer the stars, the movie, and their city.
The folks in Cleveland have a lot to celebrate tonight with the premiere of Light of Day,
bringing a touch of Hollywood to the heart of the Heartland.
["The Heartland"]
Michael J. Fox plays Joe Rasnick, and Joan Jett makes her motion picture debut as his rebellious sister, Patty.
The film is a drama of sibling rivalry set against the backdrop of the city's bar-band scene.
I think people will be touched by it, and I've met a lot of rock and roll people who are really excited about
the integrity with which it deals with the whole bar-band scene.
I thought it was really nice to be able to perform in a natural bar where bands do play, because it was authentic.
The original title of the screenplay was worn in the USA, but when Bruce Springsteen borrowed it,
it became too identified with the song to work for the film.
He said, well, I'll write you a new song. So he wrote this song, Light of Day, which became the new title.
It's not what people might expect me to do. It's not a quote-unquote Michael J. Fox movie kind of thing.
I knew that. I just love the story and want to see it get made.
Here in Cleveland, Nina Blackwood, Entertainment Tonight.
Cleveland might well be the perfect setting for a movie about bar bands.
The city's clubs have nurtured such rock and roll stars as Joe Walsh, Chrissy Hynde, and Eric Carman.
Hollywood is celebrating its 100th birthday, and although some years were better than others,
one year stands out as the greatest in filmmaking history.
It was the year of Scarlett and Rett's Mr. Chips and Toto, too.
1939. War had broken out in Europe, but the Hollywood dream factory was in its heyday.
Movie studios like David O. Selznick's here were turning out more films destined to be classics than in any other year.
Sir, you are no gem. And you, miss, are no lady.
Gone with the Wind swept the 1939 Academy Awards,
but it was just one of the gems from Hollywood's most opulent year.
There's that little city. Oh, we're almost there. At last, at last.
Why was 1939 so glorious? Well, things just happened.
It was the creative peak of Hollywood's golden age.
The greatest talent came together with the greatest stories.
WANTER!
Charles Lawton was unforgettable in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
I'm about as shapeless as the man in the moon!
Hollywood's newest box office sensation was Bette Davis,
and in Dark Victory she was at her best as a frivolous socialite
whose strength only really emerges when she learns she's dying.
You see, it's so much worse for him than it is for me.
Oh, really, that's true. I'm a lucky one.
All I'll miss is growing old and being tired and worn out.
Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Victor McLaughlin
gave us rip-roaring excitement in Gunga Din.
Could be first-class soldiers' site. Oh, don't make me laugh!
One of the loveliest movies Hollywood ever produced was Goodbye, Mr. Chips,
which featured the Oscar-winning performance of Robert Donut.
In my mind, you remain, boys, just as you are this evening.
Jimmy Stewart made two of his finest films in 1939,
Destry Rides Again, opposite Marlene Adhietrich,
and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Well, I'm not licked, and I'm gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause,
even if this room gets filled with flies like these.
Moviegoers have long cherished the 1939 classic Wuthering Heights,
with Dashing Laurence Olivier falling in love with radiant Merle Oberon.
Make the Moors never change, and you and I never change.
The Moors and I will never change.
Don't you, Kathy?
I can't. I can't.
No matter what I ever do or say, Heathcliff, this is me now,
standing on this hill with you.
Standing on this hill with you. This is me forever.
Memorable lines, images that are forever etched in our minds.
It's easy to see why 1939 was Hollywood's greatest year.
All of these movies hold interest for the home viewer,
with Gone With the Wind leading the 1939 packet,
number 16 on the video sales charts, selling in excess of 300,000 copies.
Nearly half a century after its 1939 high water mark,
the Hollywood movie industry is still firmly in place.
Mannequin, a 1987 movie, is the subject of today's exclusive movie preview.
Mannequin stars Andrew McCarthy as Jonathan, a Mannequin warehouse employee
who falls in love with Emmy, a Mannequin played by Kim Cottrell.
Jonathan knows that Emmy is alive, but she has one little fault.
The dummy just keeps freezing up around other people.
It's the most beautiful window I've ever seen.
Come on, you ready to go?
Are you really sure that you want to do this?
Absolutely. You've been cooped up in that store too long.
Besides, who cares what people think?
Just put your arms around me and hold on tight.
With pleasure.
Jonathan!
Look, Jonathan, I know about your problem.
What problem?
Jonathan, you're riding around town with a Mannequin on the back of your motorcycle.
What is wrong with this picture?
Oh, right, you two haven't met.
Roxy, this is Emmy. Emmy, Roxy.
Looks strange.
Mannequin will come to life at a theater near you on Friday, February 13th.
Coming up next, Jerry Lewis isn't joking about his first dramatic TV movie role.
And ahead, if Gene Hackman had acting to do all over again,
he says he wouldn't.
Just you know why, why you and I, will by and by, know true love why.
NBC won the primetime Nielsen Derby last week with an average rating of 17.3,
well ahead of second place CBS, and in third place, ABC.
Just the opposite, however, in the evening news numbers.
The CBS evening news was first at 13.9.
NBC's nightly news was a distant second at 12.4, and ABC was third.
Each rating point represents 874,000 television homes.
Jerry Lewis has made a career out of being a clown,
but when he was offered a TV movie script called Fight for Life,
Lewis quickly signed on for what is not at all a laughing matter.
Serious or silly, Lewis considers himself lucky to be in show business.
Most people in our business are childlike, juvenile, wackos.
You can't be normal to be in this business.
Most normal people milk a cow, they go to church, they stand and wait for a bus,
they go to work, they're stamp collectors.
We have to stand up in front of a whole audience and say, watch me show off.
How normal is that?
Normal or not, Jerry Lewis has been added in nearly 50 films over his 50-year career.
Now in his first movie for television, Fight for Life,
Lewis temporarily puts aside his funnyman image to portray real-life Dr. Bernard Abrams,
whose epileptic daughter's life depends on a drug not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
I expect you to ship promptly or I'll take my business elsewhere.
I never ever saw a script that was presented to me in the last 20, 25 years
that would move me into doing a television movie.
Then this script came and there was no way I could turn it down.
He's got a big mouth, I identify with that.
He says what he thinks, I identify with that.
He has tremendous courage and I identify with what I hope I should be identifying with.
Dr. Abrams takes his case to Washington with an impassioned appeal for the approval of the drug.
Eventually his efforts help scores of Americans lead normal lives.
Lewis said it was the chance to play a crusader that brought him to this rare dramatic role.
We could possibly be playing to 35 or 40 million people when this airs.
If we're lucky and everything is as we hope, that's a lot of people.
And I'm asking of 35 or 40 million people, maybe we get one more Bernie Abrams.
Wouldn't that be something?
I look forward to seeing him do that, good dramatic role.
Fight for Life, incidentally, is scheduled to air later this season on ABC.
Coming up tomorrow, an exclusive movie preview of Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam War epic, Full Metal Jacket.
Thursday, Hollywood's rising stars, a report on one of television's newest sex symbols.
Travel arrangements made by Pan American World Airways.
Pan Am, which is now offering the two for one in the sun special.
Get the fly pan Am to Europe now and take a friend to the sun for free. See your travel agent for details.
Oscar winning actor Gene Hackman has had a roller coaster career starring in commercial blockbusters such as the Superman movies,
but frequently cast in films that require more of his talent but achieve far less at the box office.
In part two of his conversation with Barbara Hauer, Hackman talks about his latest film,
the critically acclaimed Hoosiers and how his roller coaster career affects those around him.
What has my drinking got to do with my knowledge about basketball?
You can't drink in front of these boys.
If I smell even a trace of liquor on your breath, you'll be finished.
You have done so much, so well, and for so long.
How do you keep from being jaded, from being burned out and thinking I need a new profession?
That occurs to me a lot. I think most actors have a sense of wanting out most of the time
because it's a terrible commitment and in order to do it really well you have to be terribly selfish.
And it's just deadly on relationships of people around you.
And sometimes it's really chilling that you say to yourself, is it necessary to be that selfish?
I think the answer is yeah. If you're committed to doing what you know best,
you really have to be so self-involved that nobody can stand you.
Do you mean to say that to be as good and as successful as you are at your career,
you've got to constantly pay these emotional personal dues?
You really do and you suffer from it and the people around you do too.
I'm talking about my family. I think if I had to do over, I may not have done this
because it's really tough on the people around you. The people really care for you.
One of the nicest quotes I ever read in my life is attributed to you. I want to read it back to you.
When I get puffed up, I remember that my wife kept things going for me so I could study to be an actor.
That's a wonderful appreciation and a testament to a former wife.
But does that kind of understanding of women and what they do, does that carry over into your life now?
Many men need a great deal of support in what they do and I was one of them.
I really needed a lot of support and encouragement.
It's terrible when those things don't work later on in your life and you feel bad
because somebody has supported you, but that's what life is about in many ways,
is dealing with those kinds of trials and tribulations.
This whole thing I was talking about, being selfish certainly contributes to the lack of response in some of us.
Does this mean you're not going to have another relationship, that you're not going to fall in love again at 56?
Oh, I don't know. I think you do get a bit scared off though.
I date, you know, but I feel like I want to keep things just real cozy for a while.
Alright, if you insist, pretend you're as selfish as you say, what would you pick personally?
Well, just that my children understood me and loved me in my old age.
And a sweetheart somewhere down the line, Gene.
Okay, and a sweetheart somewhere down the line.
This spring, Hackman will co-star with Kevin Costner in a suspense thriller, No Way Out.
And this summer he'll be seen once again as villainous Lex Luthor in Superman 4.
It'll be America versus America.
In a quirk of programming, part three of the ABC mini-series, America,
will air opposite the Miss USA Beauty pageant on CBS.
The red-letter day for the two Americas is Tuesday, the 17th of February.
Now, the winner of the Miss USA pageant goes on to the Miss Universe contest,
the one that's run into a beauty of a problem.
Gene Wolfe with Inside Entertainment has more on that for us. Gene.
John, Mary, Miss France may say merci but no to this year's Miss Universe pageant
to be staged in Singapore in May.
For the first time in its 35-year history, the pageant will not provide airfare for the international beauties.
That may be a hardship for some contestants.
The director of the French pageant told me that paying to send her contestant to Singapore
creates a problem for their small organization.
And when she threatened that Miss France would stay home,
the Miss Universe pageant threatened to substitute their own Miss France candidate.
But now they've changed their minds.
George Hunter, president of Miss Universe, Inc., told me the show is a profit-making business,
and directors of contests around the world were informed that they'd be required to foot the airfare bill.
He pointed out that the winner of Miss Universe can win up to $200,000 in cash and prizes.
Nevertheless, some countries may keep their Mrs. away from the contest,
which aims to foster good international relations.
Kristen Alfonso of Days of Our Lives will be flying to St. Martin in August for her honeymoon.
She'll wed Simon McAleigh, who lives in St. Martin.
Kristen is one of the most popular actresses on daytime soaps.
I've learned she'll be getting married in the same $20,000 dress she wore when she got married as Hope on the series.
As she ties the knot, Kristen is also getting divorced in a sense.
She's leaving Days of Our Lives in March after four years, and she said it'll be like leaving her family.
I was brought out from New York by the show, and I didn't know anyone out here.
I didn't even drive when I came out here.
And I was so afraid to leave my apartment, so I was afraid I was going to get lost.
But I think that's the hardest, that's really going to be the hardest thing,
is really leaving a lot of the people that I work with every single day.
And now for a man-eating exclusive.
Your first glimpse of the mechanical star who played the title role in Jaws 87, The Revenge.
A brand new toothsome shark designed to frighten.
Jaws, The Revenge started shooting this week.
To get the shark to the Bahamas, it took a cross-country truck ride and a special barge purchased by Universal.
All of this just to chew up some Hollywood actors.
And I understand lots of people wanted to audition for that job.
I'm Jean Wolf, Inside Entertainment, and that's a wrap.
Do you ever talk to the guy hanging inside the Jaws house?
Oh, listen, that's a complicated thing.
What's with the barge? I thought that thing got paid to swim.
It might rust.
Oh.
Ha ha, Jeannie, thank you.
The private dancer takes a stroll down the walk of fame on Tina Turner's greatest moment in Hollywood.
We'll have that, plus a look back at some vintage Buddy Holly when we return.
[♪upbeat music playing -♪].
Celebrating a birthday today, actress Morgan Fairchild is 37.
Pop star Melanie is 40.
Comedian Shelly Berman is 61.
Joey Bishop is 69.
And author James Mitchner is 80.
[♪upbeat music playing -♪].
In today's People Postscripts, playwright Neil Simon is in fair condition in a Los Angeles hospital
after undergoing adrenal gland surgery yesterday.
That operation was a follow-up to surgery Simon had last year.
And in the category of the show Must Go On, singer Peggy Lee fell and injured her hip
after making her entrance in a Las Vegas showroom.
Lee got up, asked for a chair, and performed her hour-long set sitting down.
The 66-year-old singer was hospitalized overnight and was expected to be released today.
In honor of Hollywood's 100th anniversary, all this month entertainment tonight will present
Hollywood Memories, personal anecdotes from Hollywood's biggest stars.
On the memory train today, movie and music star Tina Turner.
[♪upbeat music playing -♪].
When I was a very young girl, I envisioned acting and singing, big stage, big star on the door.
I read chiffon dress and a fan and entering, and I was a big star.
And I thought that I would enter Hollywood as an actress.
Instead, I entered as a singer, and my success has come with two movies and a star on Hollywood Boulevard.
So it came from all of the years of work in my music, all of the television shows, all of the videos,
all of my life is what made my dream come true for Hollywood.
It has not been a disappointment for me because I do have a star on Hollywood Boulevard,
and it says that I did make it.
Because of hard work, obviously.
Tomorrow on Hollywood Memories, Uncle Miltie Milton-Burl talks about crossing paths with the movie's greatest comic.
And your chance for the first look anywhere at Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam War drama Full Metal Jacket.
Twenty-eight years ago today in 1959, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash near Mason City, Iowa.
It was a tragic end to a remarkable career. Nevertheless, his music endures.
And here he is on Dick Clark's Best of Bandstand home video performing Peggy Sue back in 1957.
See you tomorrow.
Take care, everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.