The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 28

8-C Tuesday, Feb. 17, 1987 The Philadelphia Inquirer Jack Scalia: The beer to Remington Steele's champagne playing dress-up, he was ready for acting classes. One year later, he won his first role. Despite five series, two mini-series, three movies of the week and a feature film. Jack Scalia has yet to become a household name.

But Scalia, who could never be accused of having an attitude problem, refuses to view them as anything short of major accomplishments. "They haven't worked out as successes in television," he grants. "But they've been personal successes wings in the sense that I was cast in the part, shot the. pilot andor. went to air with 13 episodes.

So it's just like rungs on a ladder, just keep moving up. Keep moving up, and sometimes the ladder goes parallel but you keep moving." If NBC decides to renew Remington Steele, there won't be any new episodes before fall, as Brosnan is in Hong Kong shooting the network's adaptation of James Clavell's Noble House through May. Until then, Scalia will continue training for triath-lons, cooking huge meals for friends and sleeping with his two Rottwci-' lers Tara and Nitro the Electric; Warrior which look like "Dober-" mans that lifted weights for five' years." If things don't work out, it's hard to imagine Scalia having a tough time taking it all in stride. "This has to be fun," he insists. "Because if I think, 'Geez, I got to do all these cities, all these stupid then there is no fun.

And I walk around like Joe the Dope, and I'm not having a good time you know, Danny Depressing." With that, he heads for the limousine waiting to whisk him off to yet another interview. "So do you like! berries all over your food?" he eyeing another diner's entree on the way out of the restaurant. "Next time, we should go to a famous Scottish restaurant," he says. "McDonald's, eh?" more like he's just dusted himself off after a tough stickball game. "He was the beer to Remington's champagne," Gleason says.

"Remington will take the moment to pick a lock, while Tony just kicks the door in." Of course, the two share one essential ingredient for any series suffering lackluster ratings. "Jack's obviously a very good-looking guy," Gleason allows. "He's one of the best-looking men I've ever seen in my life," Krantz says. "He could be in a Renaissance portrait hanging in the Met!" Sounds like a full-scale hunk alert. The sky-blue blazer, white pleated pants and matching bucks would certainly win him admission to a cocktail party on a yacht.

And the diamond stud in his left ear? A yacht moored in Marina del Rey. The sculptured chestnut mane could only have been professionally blow-dried. But the man whose 1978 Eminence underwear ad reportedly had women bidding for his baby-blue briefs is struggling to shed the image of the model who can't act the same image that hounded him from his 1982 TV series debut as Rock Hudson's son in The Devlin Connection to last year's equally short-lived Hollywood Beat. "There's some truth to what the critics said," Scalia admits. "In the sense that I went from modeling right into acting.

I mean, I only studied for a few months before I got my first job." Two months after shooting The Star Maker, a mini-series with Hudson, Scalia got the call offering him the part in The Devlin Connection. There wasn't much of a choice to be made. "There's part of me that says, 'I'd really like to study for another year before I do but what am a jerk? You go out there, you learn, you're working with Rock, you know Rock'll take care of you." But even Rock couldn't win over enough critics or viewers. After three months. The Devlin Connection headed for that great TV graveyard, along with reviews that dubbed Scalia the "model-not-quite-turned-actor." You can bet the son of a 21-year veteran of the New York police force isn't about to take such criticism sitting down.

"I just tell people, 'Whenever you want to do my job and you think you can do better than me, get up here and do he says. 'But first, you have to go before the network and read, and then you have to go before the producers and read, then go before both of them and read, then get cast in the part, shoot the pilot and hope that they don't take you out of the pilot because maybe you're not doing the job you thought you could do. Then let the show get picked up for 13 lepisodesl, and then hope you make So I say, 'Be my You know, if the job were so easy, everybody would be doing it." It seems that Scalia's been perfecting his pugnaciousness since childhood. Growing up in Brentwood, N.Y., with five brothers and sisters, he began his training for Hollywood deal-making by learning the rules of the streets. "If one kid in our neighborhood had a kite, we all had it," he remembers.

"Because if he didn't let us play with it, we broke it." Although his eyes shine and his conversation quickens at the mention of his parents, Scalia never had any intention of following in his father's footsteps. "I always knew that somewhere down the line, I was going to get out that sports for me was my ticket out." He says he was offered 60 full athletic scholarships to colleges and chose Ottawa University in Kansas "because it was as far away as I could get." In 1971, he was the No. 1 draft pick for the Montreal Expos (third in the country). Then, he says, one day in spring training, he threw a pitch and heard his shoulder capsule snap. His pitching days were over.

The next morning, the players were called to the field. "I was at the other end of the locker room and hearing all their cleats go out, and then you hear the door close, and then, completely alone, and all the thoughts and all the dreams, and I'm standing there, no tears, I'm looking, just numb. It was like, now what do I do with my life?" He didn't want to go back to school. And he really didn't want to return to New York. "I would have gone back a failure.

I just would have been another one who had left the neighborhood to come back and be an also-ran." So he headed for California, where he worked in construction and then made Chunky Beef Burger soup at a Campbell's factory. "It was very motivating," he says wryly. "I used to stand in front of the machine and load 8,000 pounds of hot liquid starch and hamburger patties into it. But it was a living. It got me off welfare.

I was a happy camper, you can be sure of that." Then came the revelation. The moment of intense soul-searching that would change his life. "This real buddy said, 'Hey, look, Jack, you know, you like doin' what you're I said, 'Yeah, I love throwing this He said, 'Well, why don't you do something And I said, 'Well, what am I going to He said, 'Why don't you try I said, 'Yeah, I'll try And model he did. In Sacramento, San Francisco, London, Milan, New York. The clothes, the women, the money, the drug-and-alcohol problem.

But Scalia has no complaints. "There are wonderful rewards. I mean, I had to work with girls like Christie Brinkley and Cheryl Tiegs and Renee Rousseau and Cristina Ferrare. After four or five years By Trustman Senger WASHINGTON Joining the cast of Remington Steele this season was like being cast adrift in a lifeboat with a pair of litigants from Divorce Court. But after surviving four failed TV series in two seasons and three careers in 36 years, Jack Scalia still anticipates only smooth sailing.

Even though the lifeboat carrying Remington Steele may go down tonight (Channel 3 at 9 o'clock), making it five series in two seasons. Scalia is almost philosophical about star Pierce Brosnan's outrage at losing the lead in the latest James Bond flick last year, when NBC first decided to resurrect Remington Steele. "You win some, you lose some," offers the former model and baseball pitcher as Iiis eyes race through a menu of watercress, trout and fried taro root. "There are lots of actors who, because they were committed to one thing, they couldn't do something else. Like me they wanted me to do the, um, Mickey Mouse Show, but I couldn't because I was very busy with things." Busy he is.

In September, he left Toronto after shooting CBS's eight-hour adaptation of Judith Krantz's I'll Take Manhattan, made a quick cross-country publicity tour for Remington Steele, then headed for Manza-nillo, Mexico, to shoot the series' two-hour return episode. Scalia orders enough bread, pasta and seafood to feed at least half his old Italian neighborhood. Then, the man Krantz claims is the standard by which all beauty should be judged turns his attention to the business at hand. "This show lives or dies with me," he says with a grin. "And that's a lie!" Executive producer Michael Glea-son says he had Scalia's character in mind long before NBC first decided to ax the show a decision that prompted about 10,000 letters from Ratings for: 'The Ten 77.0 Apr.

May June July 1986 A "awv 5.0 SHARE RATING I yvmjrrtwmlyvW. 0 -c I i iimii.in.iiii tnMiiiiii Xcn Critics laud debut four years in the making 5 5.0 0 VTF 1 ft- Mint I I fl RATING: Percentage of households with TVs tuned to a show. Locally, each rating point equals 24,000 TV homes. SHARE: Percentage of TV sets in use tuned to a show. tvV'1 1 In ill in i ig jT SJLis mfim 4i I 3 1 jrwanym SOURCE: A.C.

Nielsen Co. The Philadelphia Inquirer AMY HUN TOON Simpson at home; a small California flag hangs on the wall. 'Ten News' celebrates a successful first year Jack Scalia "Keep moving up the ladder" fans and a temporary reprieve from the network. "A lot of times out here in Hollywood, it looks like we're having three-martini lunches and not watching the show," Gleason says. "But we actually did kind of know what we were doing." The idea was to create new tension in the romance between Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) and Remington Steele by introducing a rival for Laura's affections.

"I had a character in mind," Gleason recalls, "and I always kind of focused on Jack as the incarnation of that character." He was searching for a contrast to the Irish-bred Brosnan, who looks like he just stepped out of a perfume commercial. Scalia looks and sounds O'clock News" 7.0 H7 Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov.

Dec. Jan. 1987 The Philadelphia InquirerFRANK PONTAHI chor McCarthy, attracts many viewers who tune in specifically for him. "Particularly in the first six months, people would say, 'Oh, the station where Howard Eskin I'm known to one or two people just as 'the guy who hired Howard "My feeling was and it turned out to be true that he could be the guy who could get us out of the initial doldrums, put us on the map, give us marquee value. He was a great fit for us.

We wanted to be known as an underdog, scrappy, aggressive, and certainly those are words among others that Howard has been labeled." McCarthy believes the biggest improvement in Ten News is in its audio. "I think the writing has vastly improved," he said. "That was one of my biggest concerns. Our scripts are more tightly written, more direct." LaMay seems proudest of the video. "We set out at the beginning to have a strong photography staff," he said.

"The quality of our video is the strongest part of our staff our shooters." Ten News had hoped to expand to an hour newscast sometime this year, but because of the pending ownership change, those plans are now on hold. "Because we've been sold, we have to wait for the dust To settle," McCarthy said. Ten News expects to get another ratings boost soon when Phillies telecasts resume on Channel 29, preceding the newscast on many nights and supplying a good spillover audience. Summer is a good season for independent stations generally because the networks mostly air series reruns, and the baseball games last spring and summer helped give the Ten News its first Nielsen averages higher than 3. Network series premieres last fall knocked Ten News back down below 3, but the show has rebounded since then to post its best numbers ever this winter.

"As long as this program stays reasonably straightforward," LaMay said, "I think it'll be gradually I no one comes into the office. And the" office is tiny." Simpson's short stories have been published in the anthologies 20 Under 30, Best American Short Stories oj 1986'and the '86 edition of The Push-carl Prize Best of the Small Presses. She is well along on her second novel now, tentatively titled Stories From the Lives of My Friends (the name of an unfinished work by Chekhov), which she says is the history of a fictitious town in the West. "It might even be two books, I have I so much stuff," she says. "It's morel about young people, people in their late teens, 20s and early 30s, making" the big life decisions." Friends have termed Simpson an almost obsessively dedicated writer, someone who bangs away at her typewriter or word processor (she uses both) all day, nearly every day, even on vacations.

Simpson, smiling gently, denies it. "That's not true. I don't know any writer who works 12 hours a day maybe in the final days, reading over the galleys you could work that long. "Usually, I get up in the morning, make coffee, work till 1 or 2 and then have my afternoons free," she says. "I do have sort of a simple life.

I don't like to run around a lot. But it's not because I'm working a lot," she explains. "It's because I don't like to run around." Low Air Fares Deserve Fair Room Rates as low as With airlines offering low bargain airfares, why settle for less when it comes to room rates. Many Travelodges are now offering special low rates throughout North America to help you put together the best possible travel package. But call now, because we wouldn't want you to miss these great rates.

For reservations call toll free- 800 255-3050 Somt' HMrh Mfltll thin with am trtht'f ftuMniM-fntr IV il I 10 LJ mother in the book has messy purses. My mother took that to heart and totally revamped her purses. She put all these little bags in them, organized everything into tiny compartments." Born in Green Bay, and reared in Los Angeles, Simpson started writing in high school. "I wrote poems," she recalls, "but doesn't everyone write poems in high school?" As an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley, she studied with the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. She published poems in some literary magazines and quarterlies, but she winces thinking about it.

"Bad. Really bad," is her self-appraisal. In the late 70s, Simpson freelanced for the San Francisco Examiner and for a Bay Area alternative weekly, reporting on area politics. And she began writing fiction, sell WFLN Boston Symphony Chris-toph Eschenbach, conductor-pianist. Beethoven, Piano Concerto No.

Symphony No. 1. 11 -Midnight WHYY (90.9) Sound Pat sages Potpourri of musical styles. WFLN Sleepers Awake Herbert. Suite for Cello A Orchestra; Elgar, Symphony No.

2. Easy poprockdance 10- 2 WPGR (1540) Hy Lit Oldies 11 -noon WPEN (950) Frank Sinatra Noon-1 WMMR (93.3) Workforce Blocks Sets of songs by written request. Noon-1 WIOQ (102.1) Leicht Lunch Helen Leicht plays listener requests. Noon-1 WUSL (98.9) New Music Barbara Sommers plays latest dance music. 3-5 WXPN (88.9) Yesterday's Now Music Today SIMPSON, from 1-C bought in the New York Times Book Review).

But she's not jumping up and down about it. "I have nothing to compare it to, really," explains Simpson, who acts as if she doesn't jump up and down about much of anything. But clearly she's pleased that the novel she began while she was in Columbia University's graduate writing program, and which took her four years to complete, is hitting some nerves. Simpson has lived with Adele and Ann for a long time, getting inside them the way an actor gets inside a character. "I felt I knew them in my mind," she explains.

Although Simpson acknowledges "some broad autobiographical similarities," the story of Adele and Ann is not the story of Mona Simpson and her mother. "I did move to California when I was the age that the character in the book was from Wisconsin that's very true," says Simpson, 29, a small woman with straight red hair and keen blue eyes. "But the circumstances were very different. We did not get there in a stolen car. I was not pushed into being a child star quite the opposite.

"Sure, a lot of the emotions are autobiographical, but I don't think very much of the actual details or plot is." In fact, says Simpson, her mother likes the book, despite the fact that Adele is portrayed as an overbearing, neurotic huckster, one who is captivating nonetheless. Says Ann: "Strangers almost always love my mother. And even if you hate her, can't stand her, even if she's ruining your life, there's something about her, some romance, some power. She's absolutely herself." "My mother told me over Christmas that she didn't think the book was autobiographical," Simpson reports, "except this one thing: that the Radio today "Hall of Fantasy," "Fibber McGee Molly" and "NBC Short Story" will be old-time broadcasts on Radio Classics at 8 tonight on WCAU-AM (1210). Violinist Suzanne Lai Leon and pianist Joanne Pearce will be featured in a special Curtis Institute broadcast at 7 tonight on WFLN-FM (95.7).

Selections include Tartini's Violin Sonata in minor and Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23. Topics on Carol Saline's program at 9:30 a.m. on WDVT-AM (900) include spiritual energy and prostate cancer. Rashidah Hassan, director of Blacks Educating Blacks About Sexual Health Issues, visits Anita Gevin-son at 10 this morning on WCAU-AM (1210).

Bonnie Maslin, author of Not Quite Paradise, discusses making marriages work, at 11 a.m. on the same program. At 3 p.m., Moira Johnston, author of Takeover: The New Wall Street Warriors, visits Harry Gross on the same station. Classical music WFLN (95.7) Morning Con cert Highlight: Prokofiev, Symphony No. 1.

1-3 WXPN (88.9) Aeoha Unusual classical music. not prove successful, DeLorenzo said he was convinced that "it's only a matter of time before we find the right one." He said his animal studies had uncovered blockers that are very specific to brain cells, and "we are proceeding with developing them for humans." DeLorenzo addedthat these blockers, in theory, would be useful in ending epileptic ing short stories to Mademoiselle and Ploughshares, winning some awards and fellowships along the way. After college, she applied to creative writing programs at the University of Iowa and Columbia. When the latter accepted her, Simpson headed east, where she studied with novelists Elizabeth Hardwick and Richard Price and New Yorker fiction editor Charles McGrath. At the same time, Simpson landed a work-study job at The Paris Review, reading manuscripts, writing rejection letters, conducting the occasional author interview.

She still works for the quarterly two days a week, devoting the rest of the time to her fiction. "It's been a good job, although I'd say it's maybe exhausted itself," she says. "It's not much in terms of any kind of experience. There are four people working there total. We never meet anyone else, WMMR Psychedelic Supper Songs from the 1960s and early '70s.

6-10 WDAS Best of Oldies 8- 8:30 WCAU-FM BiH O'Brien end the Hot Eight at 8 Countdown 9- 10 WMMR All-Request Hour 9:00 WUSL (98.9) Top Nine at Nine 9-1 WMGK (102.9) Lover's Magic Love songs. 9-1 WKSZ (100.3) Nrte Lite 11-2 WUSL (98.9) The Quiet Storm 11-2 WXPN Roots, Rock, Reggae Midnight-1 WKOU (91.7) Maximum Rock-and-RoN Midnight-1 WYSP (94.1) Classic Album 1-6 WFIL Jukebox WCAU Rick Dees' American Musk Magazine For sports broadcasts: Page 2, Sports section. See Calendar, 424-4411 8S7-OSOO 566-0300 757-9333 LEARNING CENTER' Lvrninq Crnlm. Im "NEWS," from 1-C watching for one of two reasons," LaMay said. "Either they'd rather watch news than entertainment, or they want to watch news but they don't want to wait until 11.

"That means we have to give them the news, because that's what they turn to us for," LaMay continued. "We don't need to spend a lot of time on non-news features. We don't spend a lot of time on specialty stories or how-to segments or supermarket features." McCarthy, 43, a hard-news veteran who spent a decade with NBC in Washington and Boston before coming here last year, feels right at home with this no-nonsense approach. Local news formats of the type commonly called "happy talk" make him uncomfortable. Like LaMay, McCarthy believes that Ten News' biggest advantage is its time slot.

"We have a lot of viewers who live in the suburbs and commute," he said. "They don't want to wait until 11 to see the news, and the early news lat 6 p.m. on Channels 3, 6, and 101 is over before they get home." So the top half of Ten News is all news, delivered by McCarthy from his anchor desk or from the field by a staff of about a half-dozen reporters, including Charles Thomas, Jill Chernekoff, Sam Ringgold, Kathy Hart and Dan Mechem. Ten News has a total staff of about 30 people, while the other stations each employ more than three times as many in their news departments. But since the other three stations each offer three newscasts, the staffing discrepancy is largely explained by the greater amount of time they must fill.

The closing half of Ten News is devoted to Marie Michelini reporting oh the weather and Howard Eskin on sports. Eskin gets almost twice as much time as Michelini. For many viewers, Eskin's jump last year from Channel 3, where he was sports director, legitimized the Ten News as a serious and ambitious operation. LaMay believes that Eskin, 35, who is paid almost twice as much as an Drugs tested STROKE, from 1-C take up too much calcium for days, spreading the damage, he said. DeLorenzo said that he and his colleagues had developed specific enzymes, known as channel blockers, to keep extra calcium out of the cells and to protect them from damage.

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Cherry Hill Abington Media Langhorne blood pressure, he said. Clinical trials, using one such blocker for brain cells, are under way, DeLorenzo said. An experimental drug is being produced by Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in East Hanover, N.J. "I'd say the results are good, but the experiment is still under way and so it's Deally too early to tell," DeLorenzo said. Even if this partic'-'- does THE HUNTINGTON Mb.

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