Have the movies gone music crazy?
Could Pee Wee Herman use a bigger suit?
Does Bert like maxi work in miniseries?
Can Christopher plummet the depths of Shakespeare?
Entertainment tonight gets all worked up for Tuesday, November 26, 1985.
Say it, not spread.
Hello again everybody, I'm Mary Hart.
And I'm Rob Weller.
The Cosby Show got a Nielsen rating of 35.3 last week, its highest ever,
and the best for any regularly scheduled series episode since 1981.
Family Ties also got its best numbers ever, a 32.4.
In spite of that one-two punch atop the Nielsen list,
NBC managed only second place for the week.
CBS won the week with a prime time average of 18.
NBC was second at 17.9.
ABC a distant third with an average of 14.6.
After Cosby and Family Ties, the top ten list looked like this.
60 Minutes, Murder, She Wrote, Miami Vice, The Golden Girls,
Part Two of Cain and Abel, Dynasty, Dynasty Two, The Colby's, and Dallas.
An international telethon Sunday featuring Latin stars Julio Iglesias and Vicky Carr
raised six million dollars for victims of the Colombian volcano disaster.
And some of America's favorite cartoon characters will be doing their best
for charity Thanksgiving Day.
Mara Lee Beck reports.
It's called the Cartoonist Thanksgiving Day Hunger Project,
but it could easily be cartoon aid.
Doonesbury, Peanuts, and Steve Canyon's creators are appealing to fellow cartoonists
to help the hungry in Africa.
We sent out this letter with our names attached asking each cartoonist
to do something special about hunger for Thanksgiving Day,
which would be unique and just bring a little more attention to the problem.
Millions read the funny pages, so there will be ads and coupons
opposite the comics to ask for donations.
Cartoonists Gary Trudeau, Charles Schulz, and Milton Kniff
feel it's a way to focus attention on the problem.
There will be 175 cartoons on Thanksgiving Day about hunger.
A part of it is just simply to point the way.
And we're against hunger. It comes to that.
Right next to the comic page that day, there will be a coupon
that people can fill out to donate to USA for Africa.
So we're hoping it will do something for the problem.
The Thanksgiving Day strips will all be collected in a fundraising book,
and then the original artwork will be auctioned off,
all to benefit USA for Africa.
Mara Lee Beck, Entertainment Tonight.
Animated cartoon stars are also busy in the holiday charity season,
many of them in Washington, D.C. Peter Kwinhakas has that story.
With Mickey Mouse just over the half-century mark now,
his friends at Disney are gradually expanding his charitable promotion duties,
like this Washington fundraiser for the Hospital for Sick Children
that featured a sizable cast from the Florida theme park
and brought in a lot of people at $150 a ticket to see them.
Mickey Mouse got us out here.
We have a household where the Disney characters are it.
This is the first year Disney has done this sort of major outside promotion
that boosts Mickey and company while selling a good cause.
Mickey Mouse and all of those people are probably more respected,
more legitimate in the eyes of the public than any politician, than any spokesperson.
That doesn't keep politicians from joining forces with cartoon characters, though.
Witness the Secretary of Transportation off for a ride with Fred.
They're wonderful, wonderful salesmen.
It's to kick off a new DOT AAA Hanna-Barbera buckle-up campaign.
These people know cartoon promotions on serious issues work,
such as this recent California earthquake campaign
that's turned preparedness into a serious effort there.
Now, with similar ads, officials hope to turn around that 85 percent of the population
that doesn't buckle up via word of kid.
The children will educate the parents, and I think that the parents will,
when they see the child's concern for this, will respect it.
But Dad usually doesn't buckle up, so I go buckle up.
In Washington, Peter Quinhacus, Entertainment Tonight.
Rock singer David Crosby failed to show up for a court hearing yesterday in Dallas,
so Texas authorities have issued a warrant for his arrest.
The hearing yesterday was to determine if Crosby should be imprisoned
to prevent him from committing more narcotic or weapons violations.
And in Los Angeles, singer-actress Ronnie Blakely filed for divorce from director Vim Venders.
Blakely was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Nashville.
Venders directed the critically acclaimed film Paris, Texas.
More dismal news for the movie companies.
Last weekend's movie grosses totaled $44 million,
down $22 million from the same weekend last year.
And good news for home movie viewers.
A new pay-per-view service called Request Television will debut Thanksgiving Day.
The service will be available in seven states,
offering such movies as St. Elmo's Fire, Gremlins, Godzilla 1985, and Beverly Hills Cop.
Request Television, unlike HBO or Showtime, does not charge any monthly fee,
so that the consumer just pays for what he watches.
Now, in addition, if they have HBO or Showtime, but they want to see movies earlier,
when they're first released on videocassette, for instance,
then they may decide to pay $4 to watch a particular movie that's their favorite,
and then see it again when it comes on HBO or Showtime.
Pee-wee Herman was off on another big adventure yesterday,
bound for Harvard University in his too-small suit.
The band was there in full force, wearing their crimson blazers
and striking up Hit the Line for Harvard, sort of.
Many Harvard luminaries were also on hand, sort of.
And the reason for the celebration? Pee-wee Herman has come to Cambridge
to pick up the Harvard Lampoon's prestigious Elmer Award for lifetime achievement in comedy.
I know you are, but what am I?
Now that Herman has received the award, named for longtime Lampoon janitor Elmer Green,
the press wanted to know if Pee-wee was ready to do Shakespeare.
Well, I don't think Shakespeare is exactly what.
Maybe check off or, you know, something to work up to a little bit, you know.
Maybe do like Richard Chamberlain and go over and study in England for a little while, you know.
So they can come back and go, oh.
My plan right now is that just in a couple of years, you know,
I mean, lifetime achievement award, I might as well retire now, you know, so.
Oh, I spit on myself.
Sorry, I say it, not spray it.
Anyway, what was the question?
According to Herman, his next big adventure is a secret.
As a matter of fact, he told the students it hasn't even been written yet.
In New York, Children of Many Nations held a memorial service this past weekend for Samantha Smith.
The young actress's TV career was cut short when she was killed in a plane crash this year at age 13.
Smith led what seemed a magical life.
She corresponded with the chief of state, the late Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.
She had visited the USSR on a mission of peace.
But the wicked carried us away, captivity,
we were from us a song.
More than 600 school children gathered in a New York cathedral to sing her praises and make a call for world peace.
Emanuel Lewis, who led the audience in a prayer for peace, reflected on the 13-year-old's accomplishments.
Samantha wrote letters and told the grown-ups just what she thought.
She knew that a child could be heard and have the power to change things.
And you know what? They listened.
For those in attendance, it was a moving evening, one that left them with renewed hope that children can make a difference in a grown-up world.
Just by showing that one person could write and move that many people, one child with a pen, you know, it was very special.
The New York Daily News reported today that Billy Martin, the often fired manager of the New York Yankees, will become a Yankee broadcaster next season.
Yankee owner George Steinbrenner told Entertainment Tonight the story is a bit premature.
Martin may become a Yankee broadcaster, Steinbrenner said, but nothing is firm.
Expect a decision sometime after Thanksgiving.
And coming up right after this, you can expect Rona Barrett's report on media-shy stars and Burt Lancaster on location in Mexico City.
Here's the ET Digest for Tuesday, the 26th of November.
On home video, Willard starring Bruce Davidson, Elsa Lanchester and Ernest Borogni.
Godzilla, 1985, starring Raymond Burr.
In the record store, Dallas, the music story, based on the TV series.
Pack Up the Plantation, live by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
And celebrating birthdays today, Tina Turner is 47, Rich Little, also 47, Robert Goulet, 52, Charles Schultz, 63, and Eric Severide, 73.
If people in prominent positions had their way, we'd hear only what they want us to hear about them.
That's why presidents have press secretaries and celebrities hire press agents.
Senior correspondent Rona Barrett has discovered a new way celebrities are using to spread the news, usually good, about themselves.
Rona?
Thank you, Mary.
There's a new trend in entertainment journalism.
It's a new dangerous twist on the problem which haunts old journalism.
It's called controlling the news.
Getting the real story is always tough, but now some performers have decided to make it tougher.
Instead of being interviewed by legitimate reporters, they are using their friends to ask them not-so-hard questions in so-called interviews.
One of them is rock star Prince, who's notoriously press shy.
He recently submitted to an interview taped for MTV, in which he was grilled under the harsh, probing eye of his manager, Steve Fagnoli.
Then there's Barbra Streisand, who in a video interview to promote her new Broadway album is third-degreeed by William Friedkin,
who, it just so happens, directed a video for one of the songs on her record.
And then there's Frank Sinatra, who's interrogated by his daughter, Nancy, not only for a book she's written about him,
but also for a recent series of interviews on Our Magazine.
As you might suspect, such hard-hitting interviews rarely break new ground, much less produce anything really newsworthy.
Seriously.
Actually, famous people interviewing famous people is nothing new.
Fan magazines used to be filled with such things in the 50s, but that's when show business was considered frivolous and fluff.
Today, entertainment and communications represent a multi-billion dollar industry,
which has taken its legitimate place alongside politics, sports, and economics in the news.
And performers such as Prince and Madonna are newsworthy subjects with undeniable social impact.
There is no doubt, for example, that Prince's sexually explicit songs helped ignite the recent record labeling battle.
In addition, the success or failure of such artists' work can dramatically affect the bottom line of major corporations.
In short, these performers are important on several levels,
making it important for us to understand them as completely and candidly as possible.
Friends interviewing friends is a disservice not only to the industry in which these performers work,
but also to the public, which pays to see and hear that work.
Rob?
All right, Rona, thank you very much.
Earlier this month, Burt Lancaster celebrated his 72nd birthday.
He's not an actor given to reminiscing.
He much prefers action.
Eric Burns did the reminiscing for him and then tracked him down in action in Mexico City.
You'll not meet them tomorrow.
All right.
The year was 1946, and an unknown actor named Burt Lancaster made his movie debut playing a washed-up boxer in The Killers.
Well, next time.
There isn't going to be a next time.
Oh, but there was a next time, and a next, and a next, and in the next four decades, Lancaster made more than 70 films.
He's still at it.
Get the rifle.
His latest venture is the five-hour NBC miniseries on Wings of Eagles.
The movie, which was shot in Mexico City, is based on something that really happened.
Lancaster plays retired U.S. Army Colonel Arthur Bull Simons, who led a team of mercenaries into Iran in 1979
to rescue two American businessmen from a heavily fortified prison.
What kind of man is Bull Simons, Burt? I mean, what was the attraction for you to play him?
A very quiet-spoken man. Never raised his voice.
He was obviously a great legend in the Army, and it was very appealing to attempt to play a character of this nature.
What are your thoughts about making a miniseries?
Is it something that's harder for you to do than making a feature film?
We're doing five hours of film, 250 pages of script, and we're doing it in something like 11 weeks,
and I don't mind telling you it's rough. I have to jump down their throats sometimes and say,
I'm sorry, I'm an old man. I'm not going to work beyond this hour.
Sometimes he did have to work beyond the hours he wanted to.
Long days of shooting ran into night scenes, and then day scenes again next morning.
Another thing that makes it terribly difficult on television is there is no continuity.
We are jumping all over the place.
So as an actor, you have to keep thinking all the time, where am I? What am I doing at this time?
What my attitude should be now relating to scenes you haven't even shot that might lead to that conditioning?
But that's the problem that actors face in all pictures.
But in this picture, I have never seen it to this extent. We're all over the place.
Let's get out of here.
The final installment of Rock and Real moves to the steady beat of the music box office bonanza of the 80s when we return.
Take your passion and make it happen.
Our Rock and Real series has until now concentrated on the history of rock and roll on the big screen.
Today in our final installment, a report on how the two forms, music and the movies, are faring at the box office in the mid-80s.
I thought this was a party! Let's dance!
That's music to Hollywood's ears.
And here's some other dance numbers keeping music and the movies in step in the 80s.
Footloose, a 72 million dollar box office gross, three top ten hits.
Flashdance, 92 million dollars, two top ten hits.
Beverly Hills Cop, a 230 million dollar box office gross, three top ten hits.
Purple Rain, 68 and a half million dollars, four top ten hits.
Has Hollywood gone too crazy with music?
Will the public turn a deaf ear on the idea of mixing music and videos to boost box office receipts?
I think in general it's getting abused pretty bad right now because I think that every producer is sticking music in his film whether it fits or not.
I think it's more helpful to the artist musically than it is to...
It's helpful for the movie too but the effect lasts longer for the music.
I think it'll probably go too far before people start to realize that we don't need a record in every single movie that we make.
I don't think they'll get sick of it because there'll never be a time when films are just music. That's what MTV is for.
Music television is an important promotional vehicle in Hollywood saving millions of dollars in advertising costs.
Even before its release, White Nights had two videos airing frequently on MTV along with widespread airplay on the radio.
The grandmasters of mixing music to the movies are Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer who produced Beverly Hills Cop and Flashdance and who now are completing post-production for next year's Top Gun.
We pick with our guts. I think the difference between paying attention to your mind and paying attention to your gut is your mind talks to you and your gut just is there and you feel it.
And oh what a feeling.
Music was a very important element and since that was our first musically oriented picture we were learning as we went along and didn't have all the music until almost the very end.
Movies and music have enjoyed a happy and lucrative 30 year marriage as music video directors and superstars switch to making movies.
And as long as audiences continue to rock to the beat, Hollywood will continue to roll out the rock and reel.
Hey, what do you call that? It's rock and roll.
Christopher Plummer reads Shakespeare's newly discovered poem When We Come Back.
Coming up this week on Entertainment Tonight, tomorrow Yoko Ono, Raymond Burr, Thursday, Terry Gahr, Red Skelton, Friday, Roger Daltry, Barry Frans.
All this week, all on Entertainment Tonight.
A 32 year old scholar from Topeka, Kansas studying at Oxford University in England has discovered a previously unknown love lyric by William Shakespeare.
Gary Taylor's Find is the first edition to Shakespeare's body of work since the 17th century.
Distinguished actor Christopher Plummer in Hollywood shooting the ABC miniseries Crossings feels the poem has the quality of Shakespeare, particularly the characteristics of the Bard's youthful works.
Shakespeare, of course, wrote his work to be spoken and we asked Plummer to recite a few verses of the newly discovered poem.
Shall I die? Shall I fly lovers' baits and deceits? Sorrow breeding.
Shall I fend? Shall I send? Shall I show and not rule my proceeding?
In all duty her beauty binds me, her servant, forever. If she scorn, I mourn. I retire to despair, joying never.
In a dream it did seem, but alas dreams do pass as do shadows. I did walk, I did talk with my love, with my dove, through fair meadows.
Still we passed, till at last we sat to repose us for our pleasure. Being set, lips met, arms twined, and did bind my heart's treasure.
Whilst I dreamt, I exempt from all care, seemed to share pleasures in plenty. But awake, care take, for I find to my mind pleasures scanty.
Therefore I will try to compass my heart's chief contenting. To do they, some say, in such a case, causeth repenting.
Thank you, Christopher Plummer. Very nice.
Terrific. Well, our interview with Garrison Keeler, which was scheduled for today, will be seen later on this week.
Tomorrow on Entertainment Tonight, Yoko Ono, Raymond Burr, and Leonard Maltin's review of Rocky IV.
No Shakespeare in that. No.
Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase have a new comedy about to open called Spies Like Us, and Paul McCartney has a new video, the title song, Spies Like Us.
We'll see you. Bye. Bye.