The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 11

sSs. 9XW i 1 rir in ii iiiiii ii i 1 1 I II I I I II II I 1 1 1 1 1 The Des Moines Register fl Tuesday, Dec. 26, 1978 rm The seitog off young Gary Coleman NBC PHOTO By RICHARD M.LEVINE Wl RkKard M. Ltvlnt NEW YORK, N.Y. Reggie Jackson, step aside.

The real star of the World Series was a baseball-bat-high 10-year-old black kid from Zion, 111., named Gary Coleman. Gary was there to pitch a series of his own. No sooner would Reggie finish his turn at the plate than a voice would announce: "Mr. Gary Coleman speaks out on air pollution." Then this chubby-cheeked, gap-toothed, wire-haired kid would say something like: "Don't look at me. I'm drivin' a tricycle." Or if it were marriage: "One thing at a time.

I ain't even had a dog yet." Then there developed, originally called "Forty-five Minutes from Harlem," was about a millionaire widower named Drummond who promises his black housekeeper on her deathbed that he will adopt her two kids, the younger of whom would be played by Gary Coleman. But by the time the pilot script was ready, Silverman had left ABC and nobody else there showed any interest in the series, which had a much sharper racial edge than the present version. The project was offered to NBC a few weeks before Silverman arrived, with Conrad Bain, the next-door newspapers and magazines including a full page in the all-important TV Guide for the "new Gary Coleman comedy series." Gary and his mother flew to Atlanta for a weekend-long round of interviews with national television critics and talk-show hosts. The strategy occasionally backfired, as in the last taping of a grueling day, when Gary was asked by some hot-combed host for the zillionth time, it seemed to him, "What do you like to do for fun?" "I do like to have fun," Gary said wearily. "I'm a fun person.

But how can I have fun when I got to do all these interviews?" As the premiere approached, NBC, a network notably short on comedy, was nervously awaiting what promised to be its first sitcom hit was clear that when it comes to being pushy, Judy Garland's mother had nothing on Freddy Silverman." mi ri i 51 11 I 't -V. ir since "Sanford and Son" in 1972. But Gary Coleman wasn't nervous. He was in his dressing room playing with his new Lionel trains. Model trains are the ruling passion of Gary's young life.

Back in Illinois, he has a setup of small-gauge HO trains and accessories that look like a miniaturized but complete Amtrak. That morning the show's director, Herb Kenwith, had given him a box of Lionel trains. Gary was desperately trying to get the trains working before he could be called back to the set, when in walked 14-year-old Dana Plato, who plays the millionaire's daughter, announcing that her smaller dressing room was "icky." She bent down to help Gary connect the tracks and fit them together backward. Now he was getting nervous. She picked up a train, and just as he cautioned her to "be careful," dropped it.

A moment later, much to Gary's relief, the cast call came over the loudspeaker. Before leaving, Gary, speaking out with some distaste on the fair sex, announced: "Girls and trains don't mix." Generally, Gary is the consummate 10-year-old professional. The day before "Diff'rent Strokes" premiered, he taped a "Today Show" segment, taking time off from a hectic shooting schedule at Fred Silverman's insistence. He helped his mother with her clip-on mike, asked for Scotch tape to remove some lint from his pants and knew exactly how far he would be pushed by interviewer Jack Perkins. would be a freeze frame while the announcer added: "Watch for the new Gary Coleman show, coming soon on NBC." No title, no time, just "the new Gary Coleman show," for this was a "teaser" campaign of 10-second promos designed less to plug a specific program than to create an overnight sensation, a child star in the old Hollywood tradition.

By the third game of the Series it was clear that when it comes to being pushy, Judy Garland's mother had nothing on Freddy Silverman. Black Child Star Silverman recognized Gary's "cuteness" as a way of domesticating something most Americans secretly fear or, in the case of Gary Coleman, two things children and blacks. From being conspicuously absent on television when the racial heat was on, blacks are now prominently featured in many programs and most commercials on the air. Given the laws of cultural expediency, a black child star was inevitable. For better or worse, the revolution was clearly behind us the moment "Black is Beautiful" became is Cute." Gary Coleman is the Charmin of kids, squeezably soft.

Total strangers are always stopping him on the street to pat his head, pinch his plump cheeks, rub his tummy, pick him up to hug him or kiss him. He's also a very bright and remarkably unspoiled kid with the manic energy of a wind-up toy. A victim of a congenital kidney disease, he had a successful kidney transplant at the age of 5 and has been, as his mother Sue Coleman puts its, "off and running ever since." Fashion shows for a Chicago department store led to an award-winning local commercial and then regional spots for Bisquick, Nestle and McDonald's. Then, the summer before last, a talent scout for Norman Lear's Tandem Productions company saw Gary. "We've got gold in that kid," Lear said.

Gary was signed to a long-term contract; he appeared last year in episodes of "Good Times" and "The JefTersons" and, most successfully, in "America 2-Night," as the host of his own talk show, ''America After' Lunch." "Diff "rent Strokes" Fred Silverman, then still at ABC, caught one of Gary's appearances, also spied the glint of precious metal, and asked Lear to build a series around him. The sitcom Lear's company neighbor on "Maud," cast as the millionaire and 13-year-old Todd Bridges playing Gary's older brother, Willis. The show was retitled "Diff'rent Strokes," the racial comments were "softened" and the location was changed from a Westchester estate to a Park Avenue penthouse. Care was taken that Gary would appear more vulnerable and less of a smartass than he was in the original show (a tearful scene was written into the opening episode for him). But the real creativity came with Silverman's promotional genius, which may turn out to be his most lasting mark on American television.

He had helped start ABC on its winning ways with a promotional blitz of the network's shows during the 1976 Winter Olympics, and was known to lavish an inordinate amount of his time and energy on in-house promos, often personally selecting which scenes in a show should be spotlighted. Under his tutelage, ABC had also proven conclusively that it wasn't the quality of a show that made it a hit, but what television people call "break-out personalities." Some of the most successful series were keyed to a single popular character, such as Henry Winkler's Fonzie or, this year, Robin Williams' Mork, and often had little else going for it. Now Silverman had a break-out personality and at the same time a World Series, with its nightly audience of 90 million. He devised the theme of the campaign and asked the show's executive producer, Budd Grossman, to write the lines for Gary. But the nice thing about a child star is that Gary can't miss.

It's cute if he reads the lines correctly, cuter still if he screws up. Grossman sent the outtakes of the taping session, along with the rest, to NBC in New York. In one of them Gary said to the director: "Hold it a minute. I got my blue socks on backwards." That became the best spot of all: Gary Coleman on men's fashions. Namath Sacked As soon as it became abundantly clear that Joe Namath was much funnier selling pantyhose than cracking jokes on his own sitcom, "Diff'rent Strokes" was scheduled to replace "The Waverly Wonders." Because a successful lead-off program can win the whole night for a network, promotional efforts for the show were redoubled.

In the week before the November 3 premiere, dozens of "episodic" promos for "Diff'rent Strokes" appeared on NBC. Large ads were taken out in many Gary Coleman: "I'm a fun person. But how can I have fun when I got to do all these interviews?" Perkins: When did you learn you were a comedian? Gary: "When I first started crackin' jokes. Perkins: "Crack one for us now." Gary: "Now I only crack jokes that are written for me. When Perkins tried to get Gary to Only 5 days left to buy a Perfect Sleeper at these low prices! talk about the shows goldfish, Abraham.

Gary said: "It's just an ordinary goldfish. Nothin' special 'bout it. They got three stand-ins for it and one of 'em already died." Perkins tried again. How long did Gary want to work in the series? "Until I get my railroad all bought," Gary said. It was only when Perkins asked him how he liked being a star that Gary got a bit wound up.

"I don't like it," he said, his feet kicking against the front of the couch. "Let somebody else be a star. Even my name is first in TV Guide before Conrad Bain, and he's been on TV long before I was. I get too much publicity, too many pats on the head and first choice of this and that. The only attention I want is from her (his mother) and Dad.

I'm just a normal kid." QUADRUPLETS ARE 'DELICATE' BUT DOING WELL CHICAGO, ILL. (AP) The four Christmas bundles belonging to the So tony, Alex Not guilty Eugene Ionesco, one of the world's most acclaimed living playwrights, says the United States is "masochistic" because Americans blame them-' selves "for all that is wrong with the world." In an article published Monday in the Paris daily Le Figaro, he wrote that, on a recent trip to the United States, he found "anti-American Americans" obsessed with guilt about Vietnam, Indian rights, and Watergate, among other things. Ionesco, author of the absurdist classics "The Chairs" and "Rhinoceros," said he often tried to bring up America's good deeds, such as rehabilitating post-war Europe, and its civil liberties. "But Americans want to feel guilty," he said. Harold Courlander says he feels a little sorry for Alex Haley, who has admitted that he used some material from Courlander's novel "The African" in the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Roots." "I wasn't interested in destroying the guy," said Courlander, 70, who reportedly received a $500,000 out-of-court settlement from Haley.

"I brought the suit because I wanted to protect my literary creation." Courlander's novel was not a big seller until he filed his suit and bookstores began displaying the books side-by-side. Courlander said his has sold about 250,000 copies. More than 1.5 million copies of "Roots" have been sold since 1976. T73.30 to set yjj Reg. 239.90 to 599.95 Walski family are still delicate, but doing very well.

The two boys and two girls born Saturday are in their own room off the special care nursery at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital, a spokeswoman said Monday. All but one of the infants are off intravenous feeding. The others, said spokeswoman Helen Ben-Simon, are taking food normally from "very tiny little bottles." The youngsters Richard John, Brandy Lynn, Kevin Edward, and Nicole Marie weighed between 4 and 5 pounds at birth. "They're very delicate and we're watching them very closely," Ben-Simon said.

"But we have nothing but good things to report Their condition is very good." The infants were still kept in Isolettes, plastic-covered incubator-like devices. medical bills for Keith and Linda Walski are almost $30,000, and the couple already has four boys at their Romeoville home. Keith Walski, a crane operator for Ryerson Steel took a second job and could visit Linda Walski only once a week, Ben-Simon said. Medical authorities say the odds of a quadruplet birth are more than 800,000 to 1, but because of the complications the odds of the Walskis births were higher. Goodbye, Santa The man and woman known in Drumright, as Mr.

and Mrs. Best buys on famous Serta Perfect Sleeper now! When the present inventory of our entire of Perfect Sleeper models is are today's prices. Now is a great time to treat yourself to the perfect combination of comfort and firmness. Enjoy the luxury of dramatic deep-quilted damask covers and get top quality construction. Choose Twin, Full, Queen or King, and get the comfort you want, the firmness you need.

Kings and Queens sold in sets only. Free delivery within 100 miles! Sleep Shop West Des Moines or call 223-2426. In Iowa, 1-800-422-3025. Santa Claus are retiring after more than 25 years of calling youngsters to assure them there really is a Santa Claus. Carl and Vlrglna Peters nave placed about 1,500 calls over the years, but Peters' hearing is poor and "he can't understand the children Quads beat the odds Florencio, Fabian, Fernando and Fermln Segura enjoyed Christmas together at their home in Artesia, N.

five years after doctors predicted that their chance of survival was 1 in 180 million. The quads, born on Christmas Eve in 1973, are so similar that strangers and their father cannot tell them apart. The Seguras also have a daughter, Katie, 8. Brandeis anymore," his wife said. "We don't know the kids anymore We don't know the names of toys anymore we care about you either, so it's hard to talk with the kids about them," she said.

1.