Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 87

ALL EDITIONS i i WEsLKIS The Arizona Republic SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1988 Shout Takes ORE Format to change atKOY Move to music idles 12 workers Hometown help Pop singer Whitney Houston, whose songs have earned hundreds of millions of dollars, is investing in a $100 million housing development in Newark, N.J., for low- and middle-income residents, her father and a city official said Thursday. "Here's a young lady that's become very successful and she's coming back to her roots, to w.hcre her heritage is from and she's saying, 'I did not forget you, said Whitney Houston Puts her money where her roots are. CI if' A AM? I City Councilman Henry Martinez. 1 He said the City Council is considering calling the project Hous-ton Estates. Houston's father and business manager, John Houston, said she might end up putting up an investment covering up to 40 percent of the project's cost.

The project involves rehabilitating old structures and building new ones on about 180 acres in east Newark. Vintage acting Sir Alec Guinness has returned to the London stage for the first time in a decade. Guinness, 74, appeared in Thursday night's opening of A Walk in the Woods, playing a Soviet arms negotiator. Another acting veteran, Burt Lancaster, celebrated his 75th birthday Wednesday. "You have to recognize that you're not the young leading man or the box-office star you used to be, and the picture is not going to sit on your shoulders 100 percent," he said.

Congratulations to another old star: Art Carney, who turned 70 On Friday. Moving right along Six Women With Brain Death came out of its coma long enough to make a move. Actors Lab Arizona presented its play Thursday night at its new location, 7223 E. Second St. in Scottsdalc.

That will be home base until the 350-seat theater in the yet-to-be-constructed Galleria opens up. Brain Death plays through Dec. 31. For information, phone: 990-1731. Look-alike in a suit That Wheel of Fortune letter turner, Vanna White, is the latest celebrity to file a lawsuit to protect her image.

She wants $1 million from Samsung Electronics and its ad agency; she says they used her photo without her OK. Advertisements selling Samsung televisions and stereos show a likeness of White standing on a copy of the game-show set, her manager said. Calls to Samsung and the ad agency, David Dcutsch Associates, were not returned. Looks good in a suit Dan Quayle is the winner of at least one contest: He is the best-dressed man in politics, according to the Tailors Council of America. "Although Quayle may have been criticized in many areas, his choice of wardrobe is above criticism," said Jack Taylor, president of the council.

The rest of the best-dressed: Eddie Murphy in the movie category, hockey star Wayne Grctzsky in sports, Lee Iacocca in industry, Don Rickles in comedy, game-show host Monty Hall in the world of philanthropy and ABC anchorman Peter Jennings in the media. Bono spotlights the distinctive guitar playing of band mate The Edge In U2 Rattle and Hum. By Bud Wilkinson Republic TVRadio Columnist In a cost-cutting move that will save radio station KOY (550 AM) at least $500,000 annually in salaries, a dozen employees were dismissed Friday in anticipation of a format change. The switch from the station's talk-intensive approach to a satellite-delivered nostalgia-music format will take place next week. KOY's air staff and its seven-person news department were let go.

The staff included talk-show hosts Sam Steiger and Steve "Boom-Boom" Cannon, who heard the news of the changes as he wrapped up a weeklong series of remote broadcasts from Los Angeles. Also released were operations manager Denny Nugent, commentator and New Times columnist Tom Fitzpatrick and news staffers Ned Foster, Marty McNeil, Denis Martyn, John Gibson, H.G. Listiak, Camillc Kimball and Mike Sauceda. Edens Broadcasting Chairman Gary Edens and Mike Home, general manager of KOY and top-40 sister station Y-95 (KOY-FM), gave reasons for the change to an AM Only format delivered from Los Angeles by the Transtar Radio Network. Edens said the change was "partly motivated by the economics of running an AM station." For KOY to have continued its evolution into a full-time talk format would have "just taken forever, and it's extremely costly," Edens said.

It also would have put the station into direct competition with newstalk leader KTAR (620 AM) and newstalk KFYI(910AM). "Anytime you introduce a new format to the marketplace, you don't make money with it," Home said. "That's what we were experiencing in taking KOY to more of a talk format. We were setting ourselves up to lose well over a million dollars next year." He said employees dismissed from KOY will be offered severance pay and job-placement counseling. In recent ratings, KOY ranked 19th in metropolitan Phoenix, with 1.2 percent share of the audience.

Besides saving money with the format switch, KOY also will enjoy format exclusivity. AM Only is designed to fill the musical niche between a soft adult-contemporary format, a la KKLT (FM 98.7) and KAMJ-FM (101.5), and big-band, which KLFF (1360 AM) plays. The music will come predominantly from the '50s and '60s. The target audience is 45-to 64-year-olds. "What KOY will be is the AM music alternative," said Edens, who feels the format can siphon listeners See FORMAT, page E3 Anton Corbijn Jot fans Ely U2 film fails to get beyond concerts MOVIE REVIEW U2 Rattle and Hum Directed by Phil Joanou.

Cast: Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr. Rated: PG-1 3. Excellent Good Fair Poor be somewhat disappointed. After all, U2 has been hailed as one of the most popular rock groups in the world, and one of the most politically and socially conscious ones as well. A little insight into what makes these guys tick would have been nice.

As it is, the film is a fairly straightforward presentation of the group's live performances, including several songs from its Dec. 19 and 20 shows at Arizona State University's Sun Devil Stadium. The group performs solidly in these concerts, and the sound is superb. But this film really works when U2 is performing in less structured environments. A rehearsal with blues guitarist B.B.

King is both refreshing and humorous (King tells lead singer Bono, "I'm no See '112 pageE2 By Hal Mattern The Arizona Republic Early in U2 Rattle and Hum, a new film about the popular Irish rock group U2, director Phil Joanou tries desperately to interview the four members of the band. They all appear quite uncomfortable as Joanou attempts to generate a meaningful dialogue. They chuckle nervously and appear genuinely self-conscious. So Joanou simply gives up on the interview, and the next thing we see is U2 in concert. By including this awkward and somewhat humorous scene, Joanou seems to be apologizing to the audience for the film's lack of insight into the lives of the band members.

It's almost as if the director is saying, "Hey, I tried to get these guys to talk Still smokin Smokey Robinson, crafter of a jukebox full of hits since the 1960s, has received the highest award of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Robinson, who performed Friday at the Arizona State Fair, became a star with Motown records during the 1960s as lead singer of the Miracles. He received ASCAP's Founders Award on Wednesday for his prolific career, which included such hits as Ooh, Baby, Baby and The Tears of a Clown. Some prior winners: Bob Dylan, about themselves, but it just didn't work. So I decided to let them do their talking through their music." And that is exactly what we get in Rattle and Hum.

This is a concert film pure and simple, with only an occasional glimpse into the band members' lives offstage. As such, its appeal is sure to be limited to people who enjoy U2's music. Fans who are expecting to learn a little more about the group and its members probably will Smokey Robinson Earns top honor of artists' organization. Stevie Wonder and songwriter Jule Styne. Our daily quote Curt Curtis, a real estate agent who is trying to sell Bob Dylan's boyhood home in Hibbing, rawing on 'the concerns of children' "A lot of people remember him as that little Jewish boy who didn't fit in.

They laughed at him when he sang at the school variety show." Compiled by Michael Clancy of The Arizona Republic from reports by The Associated Press, United Press International and Knight-Ridder. The Far SideBy Gary Larson jf It." it, 1 I 3 days, but it actually is 30 years. When she finally leaves, he reveals himself to be St. Joseph and gives her a rosebud, saying she will return when it is fully bloomed. The guardian angel returns the child to her aged and heartbroken mother.

"Ah, dear child," the mother says. "God has granted my last wish, to see you once again before I die." "All evening they sat happily together," the story says. "Then they went to bed calmly and cheerfully, and next morning the neighbors found them dead. They had fallen happily asleep, and between them lay St. Joseph's rose in full bloom." "It moved me tremendously," Sendak says.

Sendak's children's books have often been greeted by controversy, specifically about their suitability for children. Where the Wild Things Are was thought by some to be too scary, and In the Night Kitchen drew complaints about its anatomically complete drawings. Sendak hopes there will be no battles over Dear Mili, yet he realizes there may be a few because of its subject matter war, separation, life, death. He feels, of course, that the material is totally appropriate. "These are all concerns of children," he says.

"I know children think about these things. "Some people say they don't, that if you put these things in children's minds, it'll frighten them. But that so underestimates 5ee KIDS, pageES Illustrator braces for controversy over latest book By Mervyn Rothstein The New York Times NEW YORK "When you hit 60, you get so maniacal," Maurice Sendak says. "You want to do everything, in case you don't hit 61." Sendak is sitting in the dining room of his Greenwich Village apartment. This fall, he is designing an opera and has three books coming out.

The opera is Mozart's Idomeneo, which he ai.d Frank Corsaro are preparing for the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, with a target opening of January 1990. The books are the 25th-anniversary edition of his classic Where the Wild Things Are, a collection of his essays, called Caldecott and the book he most wants to talk about Dear Mill, a previously unpublished story by Wilhclm Grimm discovered a few years ago in a letter Grimm wrote to a little girl fn 1816. Dear Mili, translated by Ralph Man-heitn and illustrated by Sendak, is being published this month by Michael di Capua Books-Farrar, Straus Giroux, and it already is making publishing history. The first printing is 250,000 copies, an unheard-of figure in children's books and there already are orders for 230,000. The largest first printing anyone could remember for other children's books was 140,000 copies.

1 J- "1.1 )L- JL Stephen CagtagnetoThe New York Times "I suppose, in the end, there has to be some controversy," Maurice Sendak says of Dear Mili. "The kids will win out in the end." An exhibition of Sendak's drawings and from an impending war. watercolors from Dear Mili also opens The child is led by her guardian angel to Nov. 3 at the Pierpont Morgan Library. the hut of an old man who gives her The tale is about a mother who sends shelter, whose kindness she repays by her daughter into the woods to save her serving him faithfully for what she thinks is "This is just not effective We need to get some chains.".