News and weather with Marty Bass, weekday mornings at 6.
It's intensely stressful, constantly, so there's not time to bounce back from it, you know, when it gets really nuts.
Will Delta Burke still be a designing woman by this time next week? The story is on entertainment tonight for Monday, August 6, 1990.
Hi everybody, thanks for being with us once again. Mary Hart's away today, I'm Lisa Given.
And I'm John Tesh.
Designing Women goes back into production a week from today and the cast and crew are returning for a fifth season, embroiled in a huge controversy.
I don't know, you know, sitcoms aren't what I thought they were going to be. This is some hard work.
The honeymoon apparently is over between designing woman star Delta Burke, here with husband Gerald McRaney, and the show's producers, Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth Thomason, shown here with Burke during Happier Times.
Responding to Burke's recent criticism of the show, Harry Thomason responded, quote, we are all mentally and physically exhausted from the daily trials and tribulations of Delta Burke.
This is an individual who week in and week out has done her best to make it darn near impossible for us to produce this show, end quote.
Thomason's statement says that Burke caused production delays while she holed up in her dressing room with various members of her entourage.
Burke sees the working environment this way.
It's intensely stressful, constantly. So there's not time to bounce back from it, you know, when it gets really nuts.
The producers say they have been more than patient with their star and her trials, adding, as for her weight gain, I think there are very few producers who would say no problem to someone who shows up having undergone such a substantial weight gain when they were hired to play a beauty queen.
Linda Bloodworth Thomason even wrote an episode of the show called They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?, for which Burke received great reviews.
Finally, the producers say that there will be no power struggle on their own series, quote, if anyone goes, it will be her, not us.
And if she wants to stay, that remains our option, not hers.
In case you didn't know this, Designing Women is a successful show. It was the third highest rated series in the CBS lineup last season.
When the time comes to enshrine Phil Collins on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they're going to have a problem on their hands.
Will it be Phil Collins the singer, Phil Collins the drummer, or Phil Collins the actor?
Triple threat man Phil Collins, our celebrity profile today.
Please give me one more night, just one more night.
For Phil Collins, it's more than just one more night when he kisses his baby daughter goodbye and heads for center stage.
I'm here to make sure you get to the stage. The guys in the band told me to make sure you got there.
I don't want to go on stage. I'd rather go to this class dinner.
Well, okay.
Collins' casual dinner invitation is just another way of showing just how laid back this self-described regular bloke can be.
We don't go on there. We dance through there.
Overhead at the Forum in Inglewood, California, 17,000 fans are stomping their feet.
You seem almost too calm for this. Do you get any rush of nerves before you go on it?
Yeah, well I start off playing the drums, so you know I can do that.
When I get to the front and I have to start singing, that's when it gets a bit hairy.
Good luck. Thanks for having us.
See ya.
See ya is right because Phil Collins packs them in night after night.
Phil Collins' last time on a solo tour was five years ago,
but it seems as if hardly a minute has gone by without this modest Englishman being somewhere, performing somehow in one way or another.
Live Aid, Miami Vice, Buster, Arsenio Hall, beer commercials, Genesis, and hit song and video after hit song and video.
Phil Collins has literally done it all.
Looking at all the things that you can do, why is it important that you continue to do them all?
I don't know. In some respects, I don't want to be the one to say stop.
Here's a man who still conducts a sound check every night in every town he plays,
and he's a man who wants the messages in his latest album to be heard.
The Homeless song really wrote itself. I didn't have any desire to champion a cause.
The Homeless song is of course Another Day in Paradise.
It's the keystone of Collins' latest album, but seriously, the album is full of songs that have a theme of social consciousness.
I suppose because you have been so successful when you came out with this album,
there was a little bit of criticism that you should be demonstrating this through your music. Did that hurt you?
It angers me, irritates me, because A, it's not new for me.
On my last album, there were songs that people just didn't really listen to, but they were also just as strongly about social issues.
There's A Long, Long Way to Go, a song which was about Northern Ireland and terrorism.
There's a song called Take Me Home, which was about being in mental asylum.
So I have written songs that have been just as socially conscious to me,
but obviously people were listening to One More Night in the studio and they didn't really hear them.
Phil Collins winds up his current world tour, September 28th, with a grand finale at New York's Madison Square Garden.
Now on our inside story tomorrow, it's a pop music turf war. The new kids on the block versus the guys next door.
Of course there are going to be comparisons between the guys next door and the new kids on the block,
but I feel that the world is big enough for two of us, two groups like us.
The guys next door take on the new kids on the block. That's the inside story tomorrow on Entertainment Tonight.
Coming up next, problems for Problem Child as animal rights groups bare their teeth over the movie Treatment of Cats.
And later, they've crowned her the queen of mean, but Suzanne Plachette says playing Leona Helmsley is really a love story.
Problem Child is facing several problems. Not only has the comedy about an ornery adopted child inherited the wrath of animal rights groups,
it's also under attack by adoption agencies.
I can't believe it. For once you behaved yourself. Thank you, Lord.
Problem Child deals with a seven-year-old terror who's adopted by an unwitting suburban couple and who wreaks havoc on their lives.
The National Committee for Adoption, headed by Bill Pierce, says the movie sends the wrong message about adopting older children.
It contains nearly every negative stereotype, nearly every negative slur in language that's ever been invented about adoption.
They apparently think that adoption is something that you don't have to portray accurately and sensitively.
This scene showing the tormenting of a cat has another group up in arms.
Poor fuzzball. She'll never be the same.
PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, picketed a Washington, D.C., theater over the weekend protesting the movie and the ad campaign, which depicts a cat locked in a dryer.
We have already requested that Universal pull the ad campaign, and they have flatly refused to do so.
That's why we're here today. We want to make sure that parents know that telling children animal abuse is OK is a very dangerous thing to do.
A Universal spokesperson says the poster is an illustration in the spirit of the film about the nastiest kid in America,
and Universal certainly is not encouraging anyone to do this or to mistreat animals in any way.
Well, Problem Child is also experiencing problems at the box office.
It drops from third to fourth place this week, with ticket sales down over $3 million.
Young Guns 2 began its ride at the box office in third place this weekend,
Presumed Innocent slipped to second place, and Ghost is back in the number one spot.
Marlon Brando, Matthew Broderick, forget those guys.
The four-footed stars of their film are the ones who receive royal treatment, and $450 a day and all the fresh chicken necks you can eat is enough to keep any lizard happy.
I agree to help you. I'm not going to put my life in danger.
You've got to help me out here, for God's sake.
In The Freshman, Matthew Broderick gets involved in smuggling a Komodo dragon lizard for Godfather-type boss Marlon Brando.
The Komodo dragons in the film were actually water monitor lizards supplied by Jules Sevester and his partner.
They are extremely aggressive, and of course they're totally untrainable as far as training goes.
They're not like the average cat and dog, but they are manageable.
A total of seven lizards were used in the film, including this one named Brutus, who was the crew's favorite.
It took six months to get them all ready for filming.
He's got some good claws there, you can see them digging into my skin.
It does make your eyes water on occasion.
The first three months were very painful for us. We got wallets clawed. Didn't actually quite get bit, but we sure got hit a lot.
Apparently, lizards don't do as they're told.
The lizards had us do stuff, and they did their own thing.
The lizard, like in the shopping mall scene, we found out which way the lizard wanted to go, and we adjusted.
They can run as fast as you and I, and they take off across the parking lot and head for cover.
You find them under a car. Occasionally, they turn around and run into the crew. That was really funny.
Sevester handles many other animals, including the tarantulas and arachnophobia, this lethal king cobra snake, scorpions, and even frogs.
It seems that Brutus the lizard is his favorite for now.
How could you not love that face?
Heck of a tongue in that guy.
Marlon Brando was reportedly indifferent about working with the lizards, but Sylvester says the lizards weren't all that impressed by Brando.
He says they aren't interested in being stars, just lizards.
Right. Well, Mel Gibson is interested in being a star, and in his new movie, Air America, he's willing to deliver anything, anywhere, anytime to prove it.
Don't worry. I crash better than anyone I know.
In Air America, Mel Gibson plays a thrill-seeking airborne adventurer flying for the CIA in the Vietnam War.
In real life, Gibson had a real fear of flying.
It's not the most comfortable thing for me to do. Not a phobia. It's not that. I wouldn't take lessons anyway to get over it.
So you learned to fly for this movie?
I partially learned to fly. I mean, I didn't. It takes a lot of hours to get the ticket and everything and to become a real good pilot.
But I started to learn to fly. The guy who was teaching me, he said it's like trying to balance on a greased golf ball.
Okay! The kid likes a fly.
The action-adventure comedy co-stars Robert Downey Jr., who teams up with Gibson as part of the CIA's secret airline, carrying out some risky missions.
Shooting on location in Thailand had its share of risk as well.
Didn't you have an earthquake while you were there?
It was wild. It was funny. We all came out reacting differently.
I sort of like stood in the doorway in the middle of this. I mean, they're not engineering geniuses in Thailand.
The place is built of sticks and bamboo sort of scaffolding. They work, but don't shake them around too much.
And it was like a 6.1. We finally went out in the hallway and I sort of went out.
Everyone came out in their various states of dress and undress.
Oh, good. What did you have on?
I had a good pair of Calvin Klein underpants on.
There's no two ways about it, you know. We got to drop.
As usual, Gibson plays a character who lives on the edge, a guy who jumps at the chance for adventure.
As for Gibson and his co-star, well, they made their own fun on location.
Downey went to this plumbing supply store and bought all these pipes and things and made a cannon.
And we used to put skyrockets and readily available fireworks and we'd light them and so they'd do this, you know.
And they would do all these...
Just the kicks?
Yeah, they'd do all these weird and wonderful things. They'd do spins in different colors and make noises.
We were behaving like five-year-olds.
Next up, from Mel Gibson, the starring role in a feature film version of Hamlet, Air America, opens in theaters nationwide on Friday.
While Leona Helmsley is trying to overturn her conviction on tax fraud and evasion charges, CBS is charging ahead with a movie version of the Queen of Means personal life.
This is a story about greed, power and arrogance, but it's also a story about love.
The tax evasion troubles of Leona and Harry Helmsley are still fresh in the minds of America.
But when the story of the self-promoting queen and king of New York real estate comes to TV this fall,
Suzanne Fletchette, who plays Leona, says it's their personal relationship audiences will remember.
It's a great love story, which I think most people don't really know or don't really believe.
I think they think that Leona marries Harry for his money if they're just reading surface headlines.
But I think this is one of the great love matches of all time.
Leona, would you care to dance?
Lloyd Bridges plays Harry Helmsley in the movie, which spans four decades of the couple's lives.
He says Harry's 1972 marriage to Leona, who was 11 years his junior, was based on one factor.
Sex, the power of sex is tremendous.
And, you know, he was like a child, a virgin, and he didn't know what this kind of world was like.
And he gave up 33 years of marriage with his wife, Eve, and said,
look what I've been missing, I've got to go with this gal.
To play Leona, Plachette wore a wig, severe makeup, and a set of false upper teeth to duplicate Leona's features.
She says she also had to change her own attitude about the billionaires.
To take a woman that's considered a great American bitch and try and find out what the reality of her emotional life was,
certainly she doesn't think of herself as a bitch.
And there must be some reason that she does everything that she does.
I have no doubt that we will get together sometime, because I think a piece of her is guiding me through it.
CBS will broadcast the two-hour movie on Sunday night, September the 23rd.
You know, Leonard Maltin suffers from arachnophobia, but he's overcome his fear just long enough to join us
with a report on a Hollywood theme that's been around since before the days of sound.
Leonard?
Well, Lisa, by now you probably know what arachnophobia is. It's the fear of spiders.
But this isn't the first time a spider movie has scored a hit.
I'm going to show you a remarkable silent film from 1919 called The Spiders
that uses those creepy crawlers as a kind of symbol in an adventure yarn that's a blueprint for Indiana Jones.
You can even find this silent gem on video.
A group of ninja-type assassins called The Spiders.
A secret passageway to an underground hideout.
A lost city of gold.
Those are the ingredients you'd expect to find in a Saturday matinee cereal,
or in one of the films they inspired with Indiana Jones.
I didn't see a kitchen sink, but this film has just about everything else.
A note in a bottle.
A dashing hero who finds the note and an accompanying treasure map that tells of an ancient Incan city and its underground gold mine.
And a seductive villainess who's the secret mastermind behind the spiders.
The spiders leave their calling card with our hero after knocking him out,
but that can't stop him from traveling to the other end of the world to find that Incan treasure.
He also finds a beautiful princess.
Our unstoppable hero battles the lost civilization of Incas,
rescues the doomed villainess from a human sacrifice,
and manages to keep one step ahead of the bad guys at every turn.
Sounds like Steven Spielberg material, doesn't it?
The color tints you see in this print are the same ones that were used in 1919 to spice up the film.
The music is newly composed and performed by the Dean of Silent Movie Organists, Gaylord Carter.
And the film is a lot of fun.
So, can our leading man outwit his cutting rival and bring back the gold?
Will the explosion of the holy candles destroy the mine?
And where will the spiders strike next?
Don't tune in next week.
Just pop in a videotape and learn the answers for yourselves.
And that video, which is a lot of fun, is available from Kino International.
Incidentally, the spiders was directed by a man who went on to become one of the great directors of all time,
Fritz Lang.
In 1926, he made a film called Metropolis that's considered a science fiction classic.
You'll notice in those films there's a lot of this, everybody's doing this.
We also need to rethink the beautiful, seductive, starring leading lady, too.
Well, taste can change.
Thanks, Lewis.
Thanks, Leonard.
One of Hollywood's most notable couples calls it quits.
That and more when we get back.
Air transportation furnished and a promotional fee paid by Delta Airlines.
Delta's ranked first in passenger satisfaction among all major U.S. airlines for 16 straight years.
At Delta, we love to fly, and it shows.
Celebrating a birthday today, actress Soleil Moonfry is 14, actress Stephanie Kramer is 34,
actor Peter Bonner turns 52, and actor Robert Mitchum is 73.
Twenty-four years and one month after it began, one of Hollywood's celebrated marriages is on the rocks.
Actress Tyne Daly has filed divorce proceedings against George Stanford Brown,
citing irreconcilable differences.
The couple married in June of 1966 and has three children.
Three bandits armed with guns and a fake hand grenade invaded the counting room yesterday
at Montreal's Olympic Stadium while a dozen people were tabulating proceeds from a new Kids on the Block concert.
The Roberts handcuffed a dozen employees and escaped with $260,000.
Actor Kelsey Grammer, who plays psychiatrist Fraser Crane on Cheers,
entered a no-contest plea in Los Angeles to a charge of cocaine possession.
Grammer was sentenced to three years probation, ordered to enter a drug rehabilitation program,
and he must wear an electronic beeper to verify his whereabouts for the next 90 days.
And actor Al Rosen, best known for his portrayal of a grouchy bar regular on Cheers, is dead at the age of 80.
Rosen moved to Los Angeles in the 30s as a prize fighter and broke into show business playing bit parts in the movies.
Hollywood's He-Man, Brockbusters, and Fetching Cowgirls saddled up over the weekend for a bit of rodeoing.
It was a great big event for a very good cause.
In Los Angeles, Bruce Boxleitner, Lee Horsley, Richard Roundtree, and Linda Blair were among the stars saddling up at the benefit for several children's charities.
The competition ranged from roping to bull riding.
It's pretty hard to beat these younger fellas, you know, but they don't have any more fun than I do anyway.
In Washington, D.C., actress Connie Selica received a National Mothers Against Drunk Driving award
for her volunteer efforts in fighting alcoholics behind the wheel.
I'm very honored to receive it, but I feel that the other people here tonight really deserve the acknowledgement for the work they do.
In Los Angeles, Byron Allen was master of ceremonies at a tribute to the late comedian Robin Harris,
co-star of House Party, Do the Right Thing, and Mow Better Blues.
Harris died unexpectedly last spring.
It was just a joy, and we're here tonight to celebrate the short time that he's been here on Earth.
And also in L.A., punky Brewster star Soleil Moon Fry celebrated her 14th birthday with teen star pals and also with donations of food for the homeless.
There's so many kids out there, teenagers especially, that are dying because they don't have food, and it's such a simple thing to give.
She's right about that.
The new kids on the block, you know, they're on the cover of this week's People magazine.
I knew that.
But competition, Keshi, is waiting in the wings.
We're going to have the inside scoop tomorrow on the new group, The Guys Next Door.
It's going to be a war, too.
And Phil Collins, who joins us now with his brand new video to help us close the show, Here's Something Happened on the Way to Heaven.
Enjoy it.
We'll see you tomorrow.
Bye, folks.
We had our...
We had our father burn among your son, yeah
Y'all need to be believed in me