The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 85

Section The Pittsburgh Press Sunday, April 3, 1983 Theaters 1-5 Presstige Events 4 Music 6-8 fft (- i 14: SA King -Of The Good Guys Chuck Norris Casts Self In Hero Roles, Fills Martial Arts Void Left By Bruce Lee By ED BLANK, Press Drama Editor VA ''VvrAv rtsV JL if 1 TTT EFORE CHUCK NORMS became the top I ir martial arts star 'n movies, he played a I Oj heavy. He says he won't do it again. "Bruce Lee and I were pretty good friends. We worked out together. That's why I did the big fight with him in the Roman Colosseum for 'Return of the Dragon' (1973).

And that was the end of Norris's on-screen villainy. At the time, Lee was by far the better known of the two martial arts champions. Naturally he played the hero. But Lee died in 1973 of a brain aneurysm. "I saw Bruce four days before.

He was in great spirits and had no idea anything was wrong. He'd just had a physical and was told he was in tremendous condition. "But his problem was congenital. The walls of the blood vessels in his brain were unusually thin." Japanese, Chinese and American producers and promoters tried to pass along Lee's box-office mantle. "Kung Fu" TV star David Carradine inherited one Lee project.

Through the mid-to-late '70s the world was deluged with cheap-jack Oriental martial arts pictures starring gymnasts not very coinciden-tally renamed Bruce Le, Bruce Li and Bruce Lei. Just about the time such movies had eroded what was left of their audience's remarkable indulgence, Norris's career happened with a little encouragement from the late Steve McQueen. "While I was in Hong Kong doing 'Return of the Dragon' with Bruce, I saw a Steve McQueen movie called 'On Any and I thought, 'Boy, I'd really like to meet "One day McQueen called me. His son had lost a fight at school, and he wanted to register him at my karate school in the States. Then he registered himself as well.

"Eventually I asked him what he thought of the idea of my going into movies. He said the camera is a strange instrument, that it can like you or not like you. He said, 'Why don't you give it a "Breaker, Breaker" (1977) contained Norris's first starring role. He played a trucker. It played, but not nearly so extensively as his second and more karate-related adventure, "Good Guys Wear Black" (1979).

His eighth starring role and eighth heroic part is in "Lone Wolf McQuade," opening here April 15. He plays a Texas Ranger loner, with a pet wolf, who takes on countless thugs including the comparably cool David Carradine. "I wouldn't do (a villain) now," Norris says. "I try to set a certain example. Everything is magnified on the screen.

In the minds of the kids, no matter what my character's name is, I'm still Chuck Norris. If I were to smoke pot or something like that, they'd say, 'Chuck does it so it must be But if he got an offer to be a heavy in a Clint Eastwood or Burt Reynolds picture? "I wouldn't do it. I'm not an actor's actor like Dustin Hoffman, with a wide range of roles. I'm a personality actor like Eastwood. And when someone like Eastwood tries to get out of that, as be did with 'Honkytonk it doesn't work." Norris can think of no recent roles he wishes he'd been given, but he'd like to star in movies comparable to those he enjoys most.

That includes at least two McQueen films, "Bullitt" and "The Great Escape," and Alan Ladd's finest, "Shane." "I love Lo-o-ove it. "Those roles are in the same classification as what I do." Because martial arts didn't splash across American movie screens successfully until the Chinese "Five Fingers of Death" became the least expected sleeper of 1973, Norris couldn't have guessed where his combative skills would lead. Not, at least, until the end of his 1968-74 reign as undefeated world middleweight karate champion. He was born in Ryan, 43 years ago as Carlos Ray Norris, the oldest of three sons of a Cherokee father and a strict Baptist Irish-English mother. His second brother is a Vietnam MIA.

The third was stationed in Vietnam, too, but returned safely. As a high school student, Norris rode the football team bench and pondered a career as a cop. While stationed in Korea with the U.S. Air Force, he took an interest in martial arts and eventually opened a school in California. Against odds that are particularly long in Hollywood, he is still married to his high school sweetheart, Dianne.

They have two sons, Mike, 20, and Aaron, 17. Chuck Norris's career has yet one more facet. Newly published is his book, "Toughen Up," which sells the self-confidence that is a byproduct of being in shape. Like anyone on screen, Norris looks taller and heavier than he is. At S-foot-10, he checks in at 167.

"I stay on a regimen of exercising. Even when I'm traveling I maintain a modified workout routine in my hotel room: stretching and cardiovascular aerobic exercises. The main thing is having a routine and sticking to it at a specific time. Mine at home is from 8 to 11 a.m." Three hours a day? Three hours a week sounds like a lot for those of us who like to delude ourselves that normal inner-office walking is sufficient. "Yes, but remember, exercise is my stock in trade." As is eating moderately.

"When you exercise, you're more aware of your eating habits. Some say exercise stimulates the appetite, but it curbs mine by tensing up the stomach muscles. I eat no breakfast. My first and main meal is at 1 in the afternoon. I eat a lighter meal at about 6 p.m.

"I drink a lot of water. I think eight glasses a day is recommended. You've got to flush your system out I sometimes drink wine or beer but no hard liquor." Throughout "Lone Wolf McQuade" he drinks beer. It seems to energize his McQuade the way spinach does Popeye. Norris decides for himself what is acceptable in (Continied on Page G-3.) 7 1 Chuck Norris took a tip from Steve McQueen and the result is a successful movie career.

In "Lone Wolf McQuade," Norris stars as a maverick Texas Ranger who battles David Carradine, right. Symphony's 3rd Junefest To Offer Musical Variety By CARL A PONE Press Music Editor in and Choral Fantasy. Guest vocalists will be announced later. The Mendelssohn Choir will be heard in the choral work. Beethoven wrote the Choral Fantasy as a kind of dessert for his big musical feast in Vienna, and the work has special interest for Beethoven students because it is somewhat a prototype for the finale of his famed Ninth Symphony.

June 28 Miss Vaughan and maestro Thomas, who won a Grammy Award for their Columbia recording of Gershwin's popular (Continued on Page G-3.) day Anniversary program with Dichter as soloist in the composer's Piano Concertos No. 1 and 2. June 25 A Beethoven Marathon which includes every work Beethoven presented in a memorable concert in Vienna in 1808. The concert will include Symphonies No. 5 and 6, "Ah, Perfido," Piano Concerto No.

4 and Piano Fantasy with Kahane as soloist; Kyrie and Gloria from Mass in Sanctus from Mass v. Rush will play at arena tomorrow. From left are Geddy Lee, Neil Peart and Alex Lifeson. Rock Group Rush Flies High With Down-To-Earth Sound C-lHREE YEARS AGO the Pitts- burgh Symphony quit its sum-U mer home at Ambler, and it's been trying to shape a summer program here ever since. In returning to Pittsburgh, orchestra officials sailed into uncharted waters, and with a recession blowing across the land, the winds have been against them.

Finding summer employment for 100 idle musicians is no easy task, especially in this tough economic climate. And because of the recession, the orchestra's plan to build a permanent summer home here has been put on hold. Thus far, managing director Marshall Turkin's principal thrust has been the Junefest at Heinz Hall, and July concerts at Point State Park. In its first Junefest in 1981, the orchestra had a Beethoven cycle at Heinz Hall conducted by Herbert Blomstedt of the Dresden Philharmonic, and the concerts drew fairly well. Last year, however, the orchestra ran into some scheduling problems at Heinz Hall because of the Kool Jazz Festival and some of the concerts were moved to Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland.

Business was way off. Undismayed, the orchestra is charting another Junefest, this time with Michael Tilson Thomas as guest conductor of all four programs. Thomas, former music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic and now a principal guest conductor, has been a frequent and popular guest here. Next weekend he will conduct the Pittsburgh Symphony in concerts at Heinz Hall, and April 11-15 will take the orchestra on a tour of Texas. Thomas, largely responsible for putting together Junefest 1983, has come up with a format which seems to have wider appeal.

The programs will feature "spectaculars" of the music of Brahms, Beethoven, Gershwin and Mahler. Soloists will be vocalist Sarah Vaughan and pianists Misha Dichter and Jeffrey Kahane. The schedule: June 22 A Brahms 150th Birth- By PETE BISHOP musicians get invited to the launch in the first place, let alone watch it from Red Sector A with more conventional bigwigs? Credit a publicity tour of Kennedy Space Center about four years ago that turned out better than Rush expected. "We weren't sure if we were going to be breezed through, if it was a promotional stunt or what," Lee says. we met some really fine people, and Gerald Griffin, who was deputy director in charge of something, and his family gave us a really great tour.

"We, of course, were very interested in what they were doing, but they were very interested in what we did, which surprised us. We kept in touch over the years, and when Columbia was ready to launch he (Griffin) invited us down and of course we went. "That open area, those speakers, all that technical data and in the distance this structure aimed at the sky. It really was a dramatic experience. "The closest you get is three miles away and the thing is still so large and the sound is still so deafening.

Everyone was hoping for it to go, and when the thing (Continued on Page G-5.) i) 41 1 OME ARE BORN to move the world to live their fantasies. But most of us just dream about the things we'd like to be." Rush drummer Neil Peart wrote those words about the eternal conflict between practicality and reverie in a song called "Losing It." Rush bassist Geddy Lee sings them. And when talking to Lee, who returns with Peart and guitarist Alex Lifeson to the Civic Arena for a 7:30 p.m. concert tomorrow, you uncover a man who's both pragmatist and visionary. He's practical enough to know that eight years on the road can cause burnout unless there's increasingly more battery-recharging time at home, that songs and settings must change with the times, that audiences are ever more aware of value received for money spent.

But he's also dreamer enough to have stood in awe from the VIP area, no less when the space shuttle Columbia blasted off on its maiden voyage on April 12, 1981. Even now he says, "It was so exciting it's hard to convey," although Rush tried to do so in a song called "Countdown." Just a second here! How did three Canadian rock 1. "i Sarah Vaughan will sing popular Gershwin songs in a Junefest program with the Pittsburgh Symphony..