I have lived my life for my family, for my parents, and now it's time to live my life for me.
Latoya Jackson wants her career to take off like her famous brother Michael, and she feels taking off a few things of her own for Playboy cannot hurt.
The inside story for Friday, January 27th, 1989.
Hello again everybody, I'm Mary Hart. And I'm John Tesh.
Latoya Jackson wants to be known as more than Michael Jackson's sister. She's embarked on her own career trying to make it on her own and proud of it.
Garrett Glazer has today's inside story.
I don't see anything wrong with it. I think that the body is a piece of art, a work of art.
I think it's the people who make it something awful.
I hope that it will make everything happen for me that I want to happen.
Again, I felt it was a good career move. I think it will slightly boost my career.
She is 32 now with four albums that haven't exactly burned up the charts.
Latoya Jackson, fifth in a family of nine Jackson kids, all grown up but still close, she says.
Did you talk to Michael before doing this shoot?
No. No. Actually he thought it was a good move on my part. And he told me he understood. He knew I had done it.
He wanted me to say, he goes, I know you have copies. I want you to federal express them to me right now.
I want them fresh. I go, no, you're going to have to wait until they're on the market and get them like everybody else.
Latoya won't discuss how much money Playboy paid her or how the photos fit in with her religious beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness.
But she does say she knows her mother and father don't approve.
You think about your parents and you say, no, I can't do this.
And then I thought about that I have lived my life for my family and for my parents.
And now it's time to live my life for me. And that's when I finally made the decision and said, OK, I'll do it.
I said to myself, God, this is great because I felt that I would be in such great company as
Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe.
Latoya has said yes to numerous offers recently. She debuted her live solo stage act last March in Atlantic City.
Signed a reported half million dollar deal to write her autobiography.
Agreed to put her name on clothes, makeup and perfume.
Not all the outside activities have been for money, though.
She joined former first lady Nancy Reagan in the Just Say No fight against drugs.
As she gains experience, Latoya sees herself breaking free of the strictures a famous family name can impose.
I'm my own woman, says Latoya. The pictures prove that.
She praises the photographer and his staff.
He handled me with kid gloves and he'd say, just a little bit more, just slip your top down a little bit more.
And it kind of worked that way. And to the point where I was very relaxed, he got me in a very relaxed state and he began to shoot.
The shot with the snake. Tell me about that.
Oh, that was my idea. I love snakes. I had asked them to bring a few snakes and they came with one.
And I was kind of disappointed about that.
But I think everybody else on the set was so terrified and frightened of the snake and that's why. But I just wanted them everywhere.
Any fears that these pictures could hurt you down the road?
No. It's a courageous move to do something like this.
I think a lot of people may think that, gosh, I had no idea that she would actually do this.
And I think it's just saying that I'm courageous enough to do what I want and go after it.
No regrets, says Latoya. She's pleased with the final product and hopeful about what these pictures might do for her career.
Garrett Glaser, Entertainment Tonight.
The Playboy issue featuring Latoya Jackson will be on the newsstands early next week.
Actor Tom Selleck, heartthrobbed to millions, was all dressed up and out on the town last night in New York.
The occasion was the premiere of his new movie, Her Alibi, which co-stars Paulina Poroskova.
Supermodel turned actress Paulina Poroskova and boyfriend singer Rick Okasek appeared at the New York premiere.
But it was her co-star Tom Selleck who stole the show.
Good?
Perfect. How was it for you?
Her Alibi is a romantic comedy thriller where a mystery writer, Selleck, comes up with a phony alibi for a mysterious woman who is charged with a murder.
The film puts Selleck into many precarious situations.
Ah! Ah!
The thing with physical comedy like in a movie like this is you have to play it for real and let the audience judge and that's always tricky.
Ah!
I don't know why serious pain is funny, but it seems to be.
And although he's a sex symbol to women, the celebrity men in the audience were won over by his charm.
It's like a sort of Gary Cooper affability.
The guy's a great guy. He was wonderful in the film. It's a very comedic film, very light, very wonderful to watch.
But the sex symbol has become a new father with wife, Jilly Mack, and life has really changed.
In bizarre and strange and obvious ways. We're sleeping less and enjoying it more, I guess.
Her Alibi opens across the country a week from today.
On our Inside Story Monday, the real life drama of actor Howard Rollins.
Cocaine was not part of the fun. Cocaine was a part of that excitement of being an actor, an excitement of being on,
and then you're working, you're working, you're working, and things are going. You're going here, you're going there.
And all of a sudden, boom!
Actor Howard Rollins picks up the pieces after his arrest on a drug charge.
Our Inside Story Monday on Entertainment Tonight.
Coming up next, Paul McCartney is back in the USSR via radio.
And later in Where Are They Now? find out if Ellie Mae Clampett is still love in those critters.
The hottest selling record in the Soviet Union is a collection of classic rock hits put together by ex-Beatle Paul McCartney.
The album includes the groups back in the USSR.
And yesterday in a live phone link-up with Russia, McCartney promised he would play the song for audiences in that country.
We have the Inside Story.
Copycat Beatles are among the most popular groups in Russia.
And McCartney's album sold out in 48 hours.
So it was no surprise when the BBC set up the live link with Russia that the lines were jammed.
One Soviet operator told people to give up.
Three days of calls were booked. About 1,000 got through from Siberia to the Afghan border.
Do you want to hear me do this?
Hello?
Russia.
McCartney's Russian was rusty, but the cue cards helped.
He was asked about family life, music, John Lennon, and plans for a McCartney concert in Russia.
If that inspires, then I'd love to come to Russia.
It's something I've wanted to do for a long time.
Because other people go to Russia and they sing back in the USSR.
I think it's about time I went and sang it.
McCartney said he was honored to take part in the broadcast and talk to some of his most faithful fans.
I think any friendship between nations, particularly Russia and the West, is something I want to try and encourage and be part of.
So this is just a small gesture from me, really.
Currently there are no plans to release McCartney's USSR album in this country.
But as soon as he's put together his band, he'll announce plans for a world tour.
If you think Meredith Baxter-Burney is too nice to ever play a crook, then think again.
The Family Ties mom teams up with Robert Yurik in a comedy caper made for a TV movie they hope steals laughs and ratings.
Yurik says it's a relief from the disappointment of his canceled series Spencer for Hire.
Let me ask you something. Have you had experience in this area?
Because I've got to tell you, so far you haven't shown me much.
Both stars are out to try something different in their new TV movie, She Knows Too Much.
Yurik plays a bumbling government agent in this light-hearted mystery comedy.
Well, this guy is easy. He's just a klutz. I mean, he's the kind of guy who gets his necktie stuck in his car door as he closes it. Okay?
You ask me, you're going to Max Security.
And Baxter-Burney, as a convicted cat burglar, won't remind viewers of Earth mother Elise Keaton.
Real departure from Family Ties. I could actually be vain for a while.
I got to wear mascara and I curled my hair and be aggressive. It's just a different kind of character.
Either it's going to be very funny or I'm going to be doing freeze sucker again, you know, real soon.
I don't work for you or anyone anymore.
Avery Brooks, Yurik's former sidekick in crime from the Spencer series, is also on the move.
Brooks' streetwise character finds a new home in Washington, D.C., where he takes center stage in his new show, A Man Called Hawk.
The challenge to address this notion of a contemporary mythological hero who is brown in the nation's capital is a provocative challenge.
And so one that I am ready to meet.
A Man Called Hawk debuts Saturday night on ABC.
The Baxter-Burney-Yurik movie She Knows Too Much airs Sunday night on NBC.
Shows on the Fox broadcasting network are earning a reputation for breaking new ground, usually taking on sex, drugs or nudity.
But this week, Duet is championing a group which usually gets unrealistic treatment on television.
Duet is letting one person tell it like it is.
Diana, this is our good friend Laura. Don't get up. I mean, how do you do?
Humor helps soften a serious issue on this week's Duet, which explores attitudes toward the disabled.
Actress Allison LaPlaca is visited by her older disabled sister, whose accomplishments have always made her jealous.
It's done with humor and it's done with love and it's done with the recognition that it's human, the things that happen to them, rather than disabled human.
That's important to disabled actress Chris Templeton, who plays the sister.
Templeton avoids taking parts that patronize the disabled.
Disabled people being special, you know, inspirational, that kind of stuff. It's just like, get me out of here. I don't want to do this anymore.
Producers hope the episode will provide a more realistic picture of the disabled.
That episode of Duet airs Sunday night.
Peter Strauss will star as Peter Gunn in a new movie version of the classic TV detective series.
The movie will air on ABC later this season and will feature a score you probably remember by Henry Mancini, who wrote the memorable theme for the original show.
Blake Edwards, who created Peter Gunn, will produce, write and direct the TV movie.
On to Martin Short. Now here is a guy who has had a meteoric rise to movie stardom.
He says the only problem is that he's had to take a lot of pratfalls along the way.
Now that's changing with his new movie Three Fugitives.
At no point in the film are Nick and I in a car where we both simultaneously look out the window and go, ahhhh!
Okay, so it looks like a buddy movie and it sounds like a buddy movie. This tale of two misfits on the lam dragging a child along with them.
But Martin Short says it's more than that.
Are you any better? No, I get a bobbin. Stick your head out the window!
This bumbling bank robber is a man trying to straighten out his life the only way he can.
I said stick him up!
It's all or nothing at all. He's going to rob the bank, get money and salvage his life and his daughter's life or not.
And it makes him very endearing. It makes the audience want him to succeed and somehow get out of this mess.
But they don't quite know how he's going to do it.
And it may be his humanity that makes Martin Short's most famous character, Ed Grimley, so endearing.
Ed, how about your education?
I've completed a portion successfully of my high school education, I must say.
Ed Grimley is a character who is, um, is unjaded by being an adult. He is as enthusiastic about life as he ever was.
Martin Short and Ed Grimley have come a long way from SCTV through Saturday Night Live and now on to a Saturday morning cartoon show.
You're telling my men are so I'm about to blow your head off!
He says he enjoyed working with Nick Nolte on Three Fugitives and describes him as a gentle guy off camera, tough guy on.
And he learned from Nolte on and off the set.
I learned that you, uh, if you go to the bar after you shoot, you don't order, you don't mix your drinks. I learned that.
I learned, uh, that was it.
Short's next project is a comedy special for Home Box Office scheduled to air later this year.
Donna Douglas played a popular TV character, but when her show The Beverly Hillbillies was canceled, she was ready to give up on show business.
Her fans weren't ready to give up on her, though, and that's our story in Where Are They Now?
For two generations of TV viewers, Donna Douglas is and always will be Ellie Mae Clampett.
So where would you expect to find her today?
Hi, y'all! Nice to see you.
In the Ozarks, of course, but now it's on a personal appearance visit. She makes a lot of them and still finds a lot of fans.
All sizes, ages, whatever. Little kids, little babies will come up and they'll just, they'll just sort of hug you and everything.
Just love, you know, just still love the show.
The Clampett clan is part of TV folklore. She played the tomboy who loved all kinds of what she called critters.
Now what you want to do? Dines? Arrest?
The story of the country bumpkins in Beverly Hills jumped to number one in the ratings not long after it went on the air and stayed there for two years, even though the critics hated it.
I know they said, well, New York didn't think too much of us. Los Angeles didn't really think a lot of the hillbillies.
Nobody loved us but the people.
After the show went off the air in 1971, Douglas went into real estate for a while, but she says she would act again if a quality part came her way.
God bless you.
She's divorced and has a son and lives in Los Angeles when she's not traveling.
Jeff Rose doing good. He's, I hadn't seen him in a while.
Right now, she says her primary occupation is playing the part of Ellie May at events all over the country.
I guess the two questions I'm asked the most is if I really like animals or if I really like critters.
And I think they're like kids. They, young people, they know if you really love them or not.
And then the other question is if I can really whistle.
Y'all be sure and come back now, you hear?
Douglas plans to market an Ellie May clamp it doll and she's co-starring with Butch Patrick, who played Eddie on the Munsters in a kids educational movie.
The CBS News magazine 60 Minutes has won eight DuPont Columbia Silver Baton journalism awards in its 20 years on the air.
Last night the show added the group's ultimate honor to its impressive collection.
Cited for two decades of reporting that changed the nature of television news, the popular CBS News program won the Gold Baton Award.
The DuPonts really are, I think, probably the Pulitzers. This and the Peabody's are the best of them.
It's a good award. I mean, it's one that you want to have. It's one of the best in the business.
Twelve other news programs or specials won the DuPont Columbia Silver Baton Award, including ABC's Ted Koppel and NBC's Tom Brokaw.
Koppel was honored for his special, Nightline in the Holy Land, and Brokaw for a conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev.
It's great to get a pat on the back from time to time. It's especially gratifying because a lot of people work very hard on this one.
I cannot think of an award in our end of the business that means any more than this one does.
Congratulations folks, and we want to congratulate our affiliate in Seattle, King TV. They won for their series, Looking for Lincoln.
And now for a switch. There is something kinky in Japan. The insider has details, of course.
Music
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At Delta, we love to fly, and it shows.
Celebrating a birthday today, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov is 41, actor Troy Donahue is 52, and conductor Skitch Henderson is 71.
The ET Insider has some kinky news to report. In Japanese, kinky means near the imperial residence.
In English, kinky means something entirely different. So kinky problems have cropped up in commerce between the US and Japan.
For example, Japan's second largest tourist agency is named the Kinky Nippon Tourist Company.
If the insider's maiden aunt planned to visit Tokyo, he doubts she would give kinky a call.
There's also the Kinky Broadcasting System, the Kinky Research Complex, and a tourist tabloid published in English called Discover Kinky.
The insider once read an entire issue while sipping a soft drink from the Kinky Coca-Cola bottling company.
The insider closes his Kinky report with a kinky incident at a rock concert in Columbus, Georgia.
Rocker Bobby Brown was in mid-concert when he brought a woman up from the audience and began simulating a kinky act, which is frowned upon in public in Georgia and lots of other places.
Brown was arrested, charged with violating an anti-ludeness ordinance, and fined $652.
Then, in the true spirit of showbiz, he returned to the stage an hour later to finish his concert.
We are indeed on the road to becoming a kinder and kinkier nation.
Ooh, movie director Sir Richard Attenborough was honored at a gala dinner last night at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The benefit attracted celebrities and friends of British director Richard Attenborough with proceeds to benefit the museum's television and film department.
Whenever I come to New York, I come to the Metropolitan, so to actually be here as one of the exhibits is marvelous.
In Los Angeles, superstars of the cartoon world gathered to kick off the third annual Los Angeles International Animation Celebration.
The nine-day event will showcase more than 800 works from 75 countries.
Pop singer Tiffany, whose own career started in a shopping gallery, is now part of a mall traveling exhibit,
part Hollywood magic and part showcase for other upcoming recording artists.
I think it's a great way of showing people, here's a new act, see if you like their music.
In New York, every kind of act, from magicians to dirty dancers, auditioned for the Steven Scott Organization,
which books novelty acts for all those big apple parties and special events.
You guys like that at your house all the time, don't you?
I can do that, actually. For months, critics have been talking about tabloid TV shows, pushing the limits, asking how far they can go.
Monday, we'll show you the next step. Geraldo goes for the bare facts at a nudist colony.
Tickle your fancy, doesn't it? Oh, yeah, I'm ready.
As we say goodbye for the week, Latoya Jackson sings, You're Gonna Get Rocked.
Have a safe weekend. Bye-bye, everybody.
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Coming up at eight, as Dangerous Curves Week winds down, Raquel Welch winds up the West with the help of Burt Reynolds and Jim Brown in 100 Rifles.
But right now, stay tuned for a current affair, next on Fox 25.
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