I'm John Tesch. And I'm Mary Hart. The long-awaited and much-anticipated movie, The Godfather Part 3, doesn't open until Christmas Day,
but we have an early present for all of you. Here's an exclusive first look at some key scenes and a tour behind the cameras to see the action on closely guarded sets.
Everyone look toward me, nice and beautiful smile, the Corleone family.
For this third chapter of the Corleone family saga, producer-writer-director Francis Ford Coppola has Al Pacino reprise his acclaimed role as family leader Michael Corleone, now called the Godfather.
Talia Shire returns as his sister, and Diane Keaton is his estranged wife.
In this exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, you get a sense of the massive effort which is going into this epic.
Coppola assembled an international production crew to film the stars for six months on stages and on locations ranging from the streets of New York to Sicily and Rome.
Here in Hollywood, Francis Ford Coppola's father, Carmine, who won an Oscar for his previous Godfather music, created a new score to reflect the turmoil of this family drama.
Carmine wrote the music after watching selected scenes, and he says inspiration hit him at some odd hours.
I would absorb that and I would go to bed with it, and then maybe in the middle of the night I might hear something and write it.
I would have to get up and write it down because if I didn't in the morning it would be lost.
The Godfather Part 3 begins 20 years after the events of Part 2 have ended. It's 1979.
Michael Corleone is in his 60s and is trying to leave organized crime. Instead of casinos, he owns real estate and television stations.
If every drug pusher in this room would have dropped dead, I would be the only one alive.
Dance with your daughter! Dance with your daughter!
Newcomers to this long-awaited sequel include Coppola's daughter, Sophia, as the Godfather's daughter.
I'm a Corleone.
And Andy Garcia stars as Sonny Corleone's illegitimate son. He's full of fire and temper and is dedicated to defending the Godfather from his enemies, even if it means breaking the law.
I know you're into banks and Wall Street, but everyone knows you're the father of war. You're like the Supreme Court. All I want to do is protect you from these guys, and your lawyers can't do that.
But still seeking inner peace, the aging Godfather looks to the Catholic Church for spiritual redemption and even for a financial partner.
We have no interests or investments in anything illegitimate.
In the tradition of the first two Godfather films, which won a total of nine Oscars, the struggle to do good is always pitted against the evil of the underworld.
If you're thinking it's Andy Garcia trying to bite that guy's ear off, you're right. That's a Sicilian challenge for a duel to the death over a woman they both love.
The Godfather movies have proved big business for Hollywood, the Mafia story on the big screen.
In real life, the Mafia played a starring role in turning a little town in the middle of the Nevada desert into a glittered glitz capital of the world.
It is fitting that Las Vegas glitters like gold in the Nevada desert because the story of the town is a story of money.
It was, after all, money which led the Mafia to Las Vegas. Mobster Bugsy Siegel built the Flamingo Hotel in 1946.
Today, the old structure still stands in the shadow of the towering newer Flamingo.
Inside it, Bugsy's suite with the original bar area intact and still beneath it, an escape ladder and secret passageways Siegel built to help him escape his potential enemies.
But for a man whose life was crime, the passageways weren't enough.
Siegel got hit in Beverly Hills, California, less than a year after building the Flamingo.
But he proved to be a pioneer for organized crime in Las Vegas.
Former FBI agent Bill Romer tracked the mob for decades through Las Vegas. His book says the mob skimmed in casinos all over town.
The mob had a toehold in Las Vegas and they expanded with the Desert Inn and the Flamingo.
And of course, then the Riviera and the Stardust became the flagship station of the Chicago mob.
And coexisting with organized crime in Las Vegas were Hollywood's elites.
The Rat Pack became fixtures in town, an average evening made for odd pairings on stage, and even new sensations came to see what Las Vegas was all about.
On occasion, entertainers themselves fell victim to the gambling bug.
Veteran Las Vegas newsman Don Neff has watched high-roader entertainers turn into big losers.
There have been some stories about some big name entertainers that would play, I mean, just to pay off their debts.
I mean, their gambling debts. There's a few of them that had it real bad.
One entertainer who today admits to having had a Las Vegas gambling problem is Eddie Fisher.
He says in his heyday in the early 60s, he had trouble keeping his paycheck.
Within a couple of hours, I was in five hotels. I lost 25,000 in each hotel. I lost 125,000 back just like that.
Another entertainer on whom Las Vegas took its toll was comic Shecky Green.
At home today in Los Angeles, Green says he's been sober for 15 years.
But in those early wild days in Vegas, his drinking landed him and his car in the fountain outside Caesar's Palace, and then in jail.
When the cops said it came over to me, and I said, no spray wax, you know, and I said to the guys, I suppose I'm arrested. And they took me down.
Money also buys you a peek at some skin in Las Vegas. They began stripping on the strip in the mid-50s.
It continues today in the showrooms and the strip joints all over town.
Today Las Vegas has cleaned up its act. Involvement with organized crime has diminished, according to Roemer.
At one time we had seven or eight big, big hotel casinos that were mobbed up. Today we've got two or three.
And perennial Vegas headliner Wayne Newton says although the old image of so-called Sin City still lures visitors, it's now outdated.
There's just something about people thinking that the mob is still in Las Vegas, that, you know, girls walking up and down the street propositioning people.
Obviously those things don't exist anymore.
Eddie Fisher and Shecky Green weren't the only stars to be bitten by the gambling bug in Las Vegas.
As the story goes, Sammy Davis Jr. once played the new Frontier Hotel, appearing on stage for 50,000 bucks a week.
He started on Wednesday, and by Saturday night he owed the hotel $250,000 in gambling losses.
Now on our Inside Story tomorrow, another Entertainment Tonight exclusive.
A first look at Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, and Bruce Willis in the new movie, The Bonfire of the Vanities.
I want to see the truth come out and burn every one of them, and there's only one way to do that.
What's that?
Lie.
An exclusive look at the all-star scenes from The Bonfire of the Vanities, the Inside Story tomorrow, right here on Entertainment Tonight.
Coming up next, will Anthony Perkins kill again in the newest Psycho movie?
And later, a professional wrestler puts the muscle on Minnesota voters and wins.
A tormented Norman Bates made taking a shower a deadly undertaking in Psycho.
The next two Psycho sequels had Norman Bates cured.
Now Psycho 4 takes us back to the beginning to learn what drove Norman to murder in the first place.
Matricide. That's what they call murdering your mother, and matricide is what we're talking about on the Fran Ambrose show tonight.
Anthony Perkins' alter ego, Norman Bates, is seemingly rehabilitated when a late night radio talk show reawakens the demons that lie within his tormented soul.
Since the original film, Perkins has spent his life living up to and living down his famous scream persona.
Perkins says no one treated this third follow-up like any old rehash.
If you're making a sequel to a film and if you're approaching it from an honest point of view, you have to assume that the picture you are working on will be the only one.
You have to spend everything you have. You have to empty the bank account of your ideas and your inspirations.
Much of Psycho 4 is devoted to depicting young Norman and his mother, Norma, who's screwier than he is. The parts are played by Henry Thomas and Olivia Hussey.
Now hold me.
I always get cast as very sweet, young, innocent girls, and this woman is not. There is a vulnerable side to her, but she is a, she's crazy. And it's a great chance for me.
Action.
When Henry stepped into Perkins' shoes, he got advice from his co-star, but not the advice he was expecting.
He never really set me down and told me, you know, exactly what kind of person Norman was, you know.
He asked me questions like, what do you think about Norman? And what do you think about this? And what do you think about that?
You're wrong, show's over.
Psycho 4, the beginning, airs Saturday night on Showtime as part of a special Psycho Night. It will be hosted by Janet Leigh, of course, the victim in the infamous shower scene.
Two years ago, Child's Play was a surprise horror movie hit. It made the doll Chucky a star, but by the end of the film it seemed that Chucky's career was over.
However, he's back in a sequel he guarantees will terrorize audiences while scaring up some healthy receipts at the box office.
Sorry, Jack. Chucky's back.
Chucky the demonic doll is back, trying to possess the soul of an eight-year-old boy played by Alex Vincent.
Vincent says he's not really scared. Scary movies are right up his alley.
I'm basically used to scary movies. I see, if you name a scary movie, I probably saw it.
Chucky was destroyed in the first movie, so the sequel starts with him being put back together at the factory.
Alex says his favorite part was the sets.
I like seeing these sets with, you know, a bunch of designs in them, and, you know, it's pretty amazing that they could actually build, like, a whole set in about a month.
Did you miss me, Andy?
In the first movie, audiences found Chucky funny. Alex says this time will be different.
The first one is just, seems like a big laugh. I think this one, it doesn't have any funny parts. It's all just serious.
You've been very naughty, Miss Kelly.
Co-star Christine Elise, who plays Vincent's foster sister, says Chucky is more realistic this time, with a true personality.
Chucky gets to go nuts in this one. Chucky gets his personality exploited this time.
First time, he was just a violent, plastic thing. This time, he's actually got a sense of humor.
Oh, that's great. Chucky is bringing child's play to theaters everywhere tomorrow.
In 1972, Superfly was the baddest guy on the block. He was a drug dealer out to make one last killing before he retired.
Superfly has returned with a new actor in the lead role, and as the times have changed, so has Superfly. He's on the right side of the law.
So, were you a cop or what?
No, man. No cop.
In the return of Superfly, the Young and the Restless star Nathan Purdy makes his movie debut as a reformed street hustler out to get drugs off of Harlem streets.
Nathan says the film has a message he hopes audiences will listen to.
I think the message here is that we really have to take the responsibility as individuals or as a group, as a community, to do what we can do to get drugs off the streets.
Before his acting career got going, Nathan lived in Denver working as a bounty hunter for bail bondsmen. Those years spent in the seamy side of town have helped this actor.
For seven years working in the streets, I learned a lot, and I think because of that experience, I was able to take that and use that in the film, and I still use it today when I'm on the streets.
The original Superfly came under heavy criticism for its glorification of drug use. Ron O'Neill, who was Superfly then, played a drug pusher. When the film was released in 1972, it hit home for Nathan.
I was living here in Denver, Colorado at the time. It was a pretty heavy scene going on here at the time, a drug scene. A lot of the people that I went to high school with, people that I grew up with, were either in jail, doing drugs.
I knew there was a lot more out there for me than just getting involved in that, and I wanted out.
The return of Superfly opens across the country tomorrow.
It was turnaround jump shots and cowboy boots as country music stars combined the two in a unique fundraising event. And after you see them play basketball, you'll know why they took up music.
In Nashville, country stars were strumming in concert and dribbling on the basketball court to benefit the music program at a local college. Singer Vince Gill organized the fundraiser.
We're really going to try to showcase that we can come out here and have a good time and not be a bunch of macho idiots and try to hurt each other and everything. So we're looking forward to a lot of fun.
In Beverly Hills, the Arts Council of Los Angeles honored Rita Moreno and Quincy Jones for their lifetime contributions to the cultural growth of the city. But a lifetime award does not signal retirement.
It's like that's it. It's all over, and I feel like I'm just starting it all over again.
And Boston toasted the show Cheers at a celebration which began at the bar the show was based on. Later, a parade went through the streets as today was proclaimed Cheers Day in honor of the series 200th episode.
It was very exciting, crowds, yelling and all that. It was fun.
Next, the Cheers stars reveal what happened behind the scenes during the show's funniest moments.
It is tonight that Cheers toasts their 200 episodes of award-winning television comedy. As the cast was putting together the hour-long special, they remembered their favorite moments and they revealed how their backstage hijinks sometimes spilled over on camera.
Hey, what's happening, Norm?
It's a dog-eat-dog world, Sammy, and I'm wearing milk phone underwear.
Imagine 200 nights out on the town with your best drinking buddies. Former barmaid Shelley Long says it was the fun behind the scenes that made time at the Boston beer joint so special.
I think I missed the laughter most of all because we had some great laughs. Many of them not on camera, of course, laughing at the just ridiculous things that would go on in rehearsal.
Sam Malone, kiss your butt goodbye.
No one ever knew this rowdy food fight was ad-libbed. Sam's new challenge, Kirsty Alley, says the crazy cast is enough reason to stay with Cheers for a long time.
To not go back to Cheers the next year just for the loss of those friendships and the loss of getting to spend all day long goofing around with those guys would be, I think, where the real loss would be for me.
The close-knit cast shared some stories of their behind-the-scenes pranks.
They all revolve around Woody because, you know, to play a practical joke on George or, you know, Kelsey or somebody, it's not the same.
There's no, you know, huge amount of testosterone that you find in Woody. We're all over the hill and it's nice to have a young body around to pick on.
My specialty is spitballs because I have access to those cocktail napkins and those cocktail straws.
And so I pommel Woody usually, you know, sometimes Dad, sometimes John.
I tend to go right for the juggler. If one's played on me, you know, I don't like to go tit for tat. I go right to the nuclear weapons.
The mischief even carried over to a recent appearance on the Arsenio Hall show, and Woody says with his Cheers family, what you see is what you get.
The great thing about this show is when we emote that we're liking another person, we do. I mean, we genuinely do.
And the dislike and the contempt for John Ratzenberger, for example, that's real.
No, Johnny, I'm kidding you.
Tura, lura, lura, lura, that's when I reach la, la, la.
She's asleep.
Well, congratulations. Although Cheers celebrates 200 shows tonight, the actual 200th episode airs next Thursday.
That one will be called Bad Neighbor Sam.
The candidates in the Brooklyn Park Minnesota Mayor's race brought the campaign into the ring, and when it was over, the incumbent was body slammed to the mat, pinned by an opponent who knows how to win.
Jesse the Body Ventura will stop at nothing to win a match.
Former pro wrestler Jesse the Body Ventura slammed his opponent on election day to become Jesse the Mayor Ventura, mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
We felt we could, we ran a strong candidacy. We stuck to the issues. We didn't take any personal shots.
And I think the mudslingers felt the wrath of the people this time.
Are you ready to handle it? Yeah. 1996, we go to the White House.
Ventura's victory was an overwhelming one. He swept all 21 of the city's precincts.
He credits his success and the town's record 60% voter turnout to his grassroots style campaign.
My name is Jesse Ventura and I'm running for mayor of Brooklyn Park.
Our door to door style grassroots was the total thing.
Maybe some of these political geniuses should come down and talk to us about how to win.
Because I bet you my margin of victory will stack up with anybody in the country right now.
Payback time.
Ventura plans to balance his mayoral duties of Minnesota's sixth largest city with his booming acting and broadcasting career.
But he admits his future in politics may extend beyond the Minnesota state line.
We did get an overwhelming victory and I would have to say in all seriousness that it has opened my eyes up that there could well be political aspirations down the line.
I mean, I've always dreamed what it would be like to play frisbee at the backyard of the White House.
Ventura will be sworn in on January the 2nd. Being mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota is a part time job. It pays $975 a month.
Another professional wrestler Jesse knows well, Andre the Giant has been fined $100 for putting a headlock on a television cameraman outside the ring.
The wide bodied Andre, whose real name is Andre Rusimoff, is 7'4 and weighs 540 pounds.
His dispute with the cameraman was over authorization to videotape the match.
Arnold, the perfect body, Schwarzenegger, meantime has rounded up 50 tons of bodybuilding equipment for shipment to troops in the Middle East.
Schwarzenegger arranged to have the weightlifting gear together after he heard that GIs were using makeshift equipment to keep in shape over there.
And Jane, always in shape, Fonda paid a visit to the Tiffany jewelry store in Los Angeles with media mogul Ted Turner.
Ted bought her an engagement ring with an oval set between two diamonds.
A spokeswoman for Fonda says the couple has yet to make formal wedding plans.
Celebrating a birthday today, actress Alfred Woodard turns 37.
Singer Bonnie Raitt is 41. Newscaster Morley Safer is 59. Singer Patty Page is 63.
Actress Esther Rohl is 66. Actor Norman Lloyd is 76. And actress Catherine Hepburn turns 81 today.
And my most favoritest birthday girl today, Mary Hart, celebrating a birthday today. Congratulations.
Thanks, John. It's so easy to be...
32.
Oh yeah, thank you.
Another bombshell best seller is coming to the big screen.
An exclusive look at the bonfire of the vanities on our show tomorrow, right to the heart of the action with Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, and Tom Hanks.
It should be exciting. And we want to say congratulations once again to everybody at Cheers for the Big Number 200 show.
Here's a treat as we say goodbye for this Thursday music from all the gang from Thursday Nights Gone By.
Enjoy. Bye-bye.
Hello, this is Ann Devlin. You know when most people take their marriage vows, they really believe only death will part them, but they expect that time will be a long time away.
But what happens when the death occurs unexpectedly?
Join us tomorrow on Pittsburgh's Talking with Dr. Joyce Brothers. That's at 10 on WTAE-TV.
We'll see you then.