The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 90

7 V' -it Sexy shots of Sawyer: Did golden girl goof? ft 1 Am. At By SUSAN STEWART 1 1W Knight-Ridder Newsoopen Wien Diane Sawyer plays tennis with Tom Brokaw (mixed doubles, Thursday nights) or dines with Marvin Hamlisch, or just sits in her office at "60 Minutes," earning her $1.2 million a year, what does she think about? Does she think about the energy she must need daily to muster her massive personal charm? Does she think about her favorite writer, Henry James? Or the starving children she has covered for "60 The Saturday Evening Post wrote recently that Sawyer "sobbed" when reunited with a Malian boy she interviewed months earlier. Does she think about the USA Today poll in which 1 7 percent of readers voted for dinner with NBC correspondent Connie Chung, and only 1 2 percent voted to dine with Sawyer? Does she worry that she, Diane, the Great Beauty, the 41-year-old golden girl of news, the smartest Junior Miss in U.S. history, may have made a mistake? The September issue of Vanity Fair magazine features a cover photo of Sawyer. More inside.

Velvet. Sequins. Granted, this is no Playboy center fold, and Gloria Steinem has posed in miniskirt and bubble bath. The idea is that a woman can be smart and sexy. But there are degrees of sex appeal.

This is sexy. Maybe it wasn't smart. A New York Daily News TV critic: "Pure cheesecake." A Washington Post columnist: "However pleasing she may be to the eye, why does a respected professional surrender to the urging that she pose for come-hither photographs?" Don Hewitt, "60 Minutes" producer, defended Sawyer, in a way. "If that'! a provocative photo, somewhere I got lost in sex education," ha filH HQ A TnAau rnforriner tn an A Tracey Ullman may be answer to ehergy crisis By MICHAEL E. HILL 1 1917 Washington Pott It was a momentary downer in what has so far been an upbeat experience in American television for Tracey Ullman.

Something hadn't gone quite as it was rehearsed in the filming of her comedy show for Fox Broadcasting. There was a lull between take and retake, and Ullman seemed especially vexed by the snag. The stand-up comedian who keeps the studio audience occupied during such moments noticed that Ullman seems disturbed. "1 think Tracey could use a little Then, on cue, 300 people cried out in unison, "We love you, Tracey!" Ullman looked up from the huddle of actors and staff on stage, smiled, waved and went back to the sometimes grim business of series television. For Ullman, the talented British import, this warm evening in California marked the start of her second season on American television.

The filming of the first show was a less-than-auspi-cious second start that left some members of the crew grumbling that, well, it wasn't bad for the first day back at work. And it left Ullman talking about something she knows extremely well. "It was our first show," she said. "The energy is the important thing. We've got to keep the energy up." The second season's first show was constructed in the same way that the growing number of Ullman fans have become accustomed to: Three skits to be squeezed into her half-hour comedy show that can be seen on KDSM-TV in Des Moines and KLIB-TV in Davenport.

The evening's episodes displayed the diversity that has become the hallmark of Ullman's seemingly rubbery stage persona: One minute she was a golf pro in an ash-blond wig, consulting a psychiatrist about her fear of flying; then a woman in black wig and clothing, sending Ullman comes to American television with a commitment to do something seldom seen on this side of the Atlantic. her husband up the wall and out the door with her indecision over color choices for the kitchen; and finally a postal worker suffering quiet envy when her best and sexier friend finds true love (for the moment, anyway). What manner of television is this? Is it a companion piece to Benny Hill? Hardly. Is it a throwback to the skittish days of Carol Burnett? Sort of. But what it is mostly is a display of the remarkably diverse talent that is Ullman's.

That talent has been on display for some time in Great Britain, where she has made her mark as a comedian, TV star and pop singer. Now she comes to American television with a commitment to do something seldom seen on this side of the Atlantic, relying largely on her gift for character portrayal. While Oilman's show cannot lay claim to a mass following by television standards, it gives Fox Broadcasting one of the freshest programs on television. The show was nominated for five Emmys, including best variety, music or comedy program, and Ullman's sidekick, Julie Kavner, has a nomination for individual performance in such a program. Ullman credits the show's success indeed its existence to executive producer James Brooks.

"He has great faith in me," she said. "I met him and we became friends. He's my mentor. He's the star of the show because of the clout he has in Hollywood." Ullman once had a prime-time series in Britain "and I'd toyed around with various ideas here. But the ideas fell into cliche I'd be the British nanny who comes to New York and solves the problems of this nice family.

"Variety hadn't been done for sometime. We wanted to do a show that would allow me to do the things I like to do and can do." That covers a lot of territory. Foxhunt for talent turned up versatile Tracey Ullman. Or, as Brooks observed, you cannot see her talent and not want to showcase it. Or describe it: "I think, literally, you can use the word unique and mean it," he said.

"We're so obsessed with comparisons. The only one I could even think of comparing her to is Peter Sellers he's the only one you can mention. He could do a variety of Americans. And then you have to add that Tracey sings and dances." Ullman was born near London to a British mother and a Polish father. He died when she was 6.

Her mother recognized Ullman's talent early and encouraged her to perform. By the time she was 12 she'd won a scholarship to a stage school and at 16 she made her professional debut, dancing in a production of "Gigi" in Berlin. Back in England, she joined the Second Generation dance troupe and appeared on various television variety shows. Roles in several West End musicals followed. Her breakthrough came six years ago when she created the role of Beverly in an improvised play, "Four in a Million," and won the London Theatre Critics Award for most promising actress of 1981.

Within two years, she'd starred in a pair of TV series, "Three of a Kind" and "A Kick Up the Eighties," winning a British Academy Award for best light entertainment performance in 1983. She's played Kate Hardcastle in "She Stoops to Conquer" and appeared in the workshop production of "Starlight Express." Meanwhile, she also placed four singles among the top 10 on the British pop music charts. Ullman moved to Los Angeles 3'i years ago, a collision of personal and local cultures if there ever was one. She says she has mellowed in her critical attitude toward the foibles of Hollywood but also avoids much of the social whirl. "I've quit going to dinner parties," she said.

"Who wants to sit around and hear people talking about their jacuzzis and their face lifts?" She realizes she is a hairpin of a different bend, and she must seem as odd to Hollywood as it does to her. "There's nothing worse than listening to a Brit talking about a cricket team, youknow what I mean?" While Ullman sifted ideas that would put her on television, she came to the attention of Brooks, the man responsible for "Terms of Endearment" and TV series that have included "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Taxi" and "Lou Grant." The key to getting Ullman ready for prime time "was assembling the right people," said Brooks. Once that team was put together Brooks and co-executive producers Jerry Belson, Ken Estin and Heide Perlman the group went on retreat in Northern California to think through the show. "We wanted to tell a story, to be involved in character," said Brooks. "We did not want to do spoofs or take-offs" they were already being done well by others.

"You define a show by what you don't want to do as well as by what you do want to do. "We rushed on the air and have been finding the show while we're on the air. You lose a lot of sleep that way, but it's great. Now we have five or six characters we repeat from time to time, and new ones are candidates for repetition," Brooks said. Bringing the Ullman show to television, Brooks said, was contingent on his ability to assemble a staff that could produce the show.

"Fox sponsored that effort and committed to putting it on. It was helpful for us to do the show without any preconceived context. Not only were we new. but so was Fox. There was no notion of something to fit into." inside photo.

"She 'looks like she's DianeSawyer gone to sleep." A lone voice at CBS: "She did it; it's over; it'll go away." Barbara Matusow, author of the network news study "The Evening "She makes a big mistake to do something like this. The reason Barbara Walters fell on her face at ABC was that she started acting like a celebrity and stopped being a working stiff." It was a decade ago that Walters got a million dollars, nudged Harry Rea-soner over to one side of the anchor desk and ordered that her typewriter be spray-painted a particular shade of pink. Sawyer seems in no danger of that brand of egotism. She has never made decorating demands, especially not on herself. According to Vanity Fair, Sawyer doesn't own a dining room table.

Her apartment walls are covered with spackling. Born middle-class in Louisville, she is said to have retained the ability to talk to middle-class people. Listing Sawyer's attributes could take forever; her claim on perfection is firm. (An apparently devout Christian who recently wrote a hymn to Catherine Marshall for the Saturday Evening Post, she would modestly deny this.) This is Vanity Fair's toughest line: "The truest take on Sawyer may be that while her graciousness is heartfelt, she is keenly aware of its effect." Understanding the consequences of your actions is a trait common to adults. But Sawyer can't have foreseen the stir from these photos by Annie Leibovitz, who usually photographs celebrities in ways that surprise everybody, including the celebrities.

At the least, this looks like a lapse in judgment. At worst, it looks like Sawyer now believes her publicity. Matusow: "You may be right in suggesting she's America's media darling. She'd just better not be buying all that stuff. Tom Brokaw has been a social butterfly for a long time.

Something of a social climber. But he is very shrewd and keeps up relationships with the working stiffs. Diane had better remember that it's OK if Larry Tisch likes her, but she'd better keep up with Hewitt and the guys." Not long after Tisch became head of CBS, Sawyer negotiated a new contract. Her salary jumped from $800,000 to 1 .2 million at a time when CBS employees were being laid off by the hundreds. At a news conference with TV critics earlier this month, Hewitt made it plain that, while Sawyer is valuable to "60 Minutes," she's not so valuable that he will make exceptions for her.

There is talk of a prime-time interview show for Sawyer, a reprise of Edwin R. Murrow's "Person to Person." The job Sawyer really wants is an anchor slot. For months there have been rumors, consistently denied, that she will co-anchor the "CBS Evening News" with Dan Rather. Matusow: "Her big competition could be (Leslie) Remembering the disastrous pairing of Walters and Reasoner, nobody would force anybody on Rather." Nobody could: contract allows him to veto co-anchors. Evidently he has vetoed Sawyer.

Not, of course, because he doesn't like her; everybody likes Sawyer. But Rather might be more kindly disposed to Stahl, whose expertise is great but whose glow is slightly dimmer..