The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 29

Section Television He's not Jerry Seinfeld but sometimes he signs the star's autograph. Gail Shister, C6. The latest in skin care, just for babies. C3. Ann Landers C2 Comics C8 In Performance C4 Personal Briefing C3 Prime-Time TV Grid C6 Radio Highlights C7 Society C5 Top 10 Video Rentals C7 Lifestyle Entertainment -1 Thursday, April 18, 1996 Philadelphia Online: http:www.phillynews.com Opera Company gets an offer to sing about 7 More and more, college graduates are going back home to live after getting their diplomas.

Yet the living isn't easy for the parents or their young adults. By Peter Dobrin INQUIRER STAFF WRITER fith new, stricter guidelines from the Pew Charitable Trusts looming, the Opera Company of Philadelphia Shawn Makatche at his job in Stratford. He, too, went home to live after graduation. Boomeran skids yesterday announced a $300,000 challenge grant that the troupe says will almost entirely eliminate its accumulated deficit. The gift, from Dennis Alter, chairman of Horsham-based Advanta and his wife, Gisela, is a 3-to-l challenge offer up to $300,000.

Alter will give the Opera Company $3 for every $1 it can raise, bringing the anticipated total $300,000 The Greater Phil Challenge delphia Chamber of prant mav Commerce yesterday gidiil liidy announced it would help end be the first to meet ripfirit challenge, mak- UCIIUl. ing a $5 000 promise. The opera's accumulated deficit as of May 31, 1995 was $413,208, according to its most recent audit, on a budget of $3.7 million. Robert B. Driver, the opera's general director, says he does not expect this season to add to the deficit, which has been gradually declining during the last six years from a high of $733,781 in 1990.

Driver says the opera plans to raise the rest of the money to erase the deficit an additional $13,000 with the help of an Oct. 6 benefit gala at the Academy of Music featuring principal singers from recent Opera Company productions. The event will be hosted by Tony Randall, actor and well-known opera booster. Asked in an interview why he chose to apply his gift to the opera's deficit, Alter, 53, said: "To save the opera. To save the 'Philadelphia Opera Company from the plight it would have been in had it not been in a position to eliminate the deficit See OPERA on C3 -4 in By Shelly Phillips FOR THE INQUIRER For two years, Shawn Makatche teased his big sister, Julie, about coming home to live after college graduation.

He was a bit chagrined when, following his own graduation, he ended up at the family's Broomall home, too. Shawn and Julie are boomerang kids. Like so many of their generation, they leave for college, only to return after getting a degree, often transforming an empty middle-class nest into a crowded one. The reasons? Few jobs, high rents, and the lure of being able to live well even if it's back in the family home you left four years earlier. "It's tough to come out of school with no job and lots of debt, and realistically to say 'OK, I'm going to go live in the city and have this great apartment and a car.

It doesn't work," said Julie, 25, who graduated in 1992 from Lycoming College in Williamsport, and is a senior sales representative for Kimberly-Clark Corp. The 1990 census showed that 21 percent of all 25-year-olds were living with their parents up from 15 percent in 1970. According to experts, more than 50 percent of college graduates return home to live and leave again within two years. "What's really too bad for these kids is the world doesn't seem to recognize how much harder it is" to be independent than it was for their parents' generation, Brown University sociologist Frances Goldscheider said. "So parents beat on them, and think they're Peter Pans, who can't grow up, and don't want to grow up," said Goldscheider, who, with her husband, wrote the 1994 landmark study, "Leaving and Returning Home in 20th Century America," published by the Population Reference Bureau.

When twentysomethings move back in with Mom and Dad, problems with housekeeping, social life, and parental worrying arrive right along with the computer, CD player and patched jeans. Parents who made it through the teen years often See HOME on C3 Ck 0 Review: Television 'Good Day Philadelphia': An a.m. rival for the networks ML The Philadelphia Inquirer DIRK SHADD Julie Makatche (left), who lives at home, crosses paths with her mother, Kay Makatche, before work. Anne Klein: The couture line is brought down EI The villains, it seems, were the times and the designers who turned out the recent collections. By Roy II.

Campbell INQUIRER FASHION WRITER fho killed the Anne Klein After a protracted period of fi By Jonathan Storm INQUIRER TELEVISION CRITIC Yesterday, Good Day Philadelphia celebrated a heroic occasion. 1 Channel 29's baby all-Philly-all-the-time morning show rounded up the four Coast Guard heroes who plucked those young men from the Perkiomen Creek Tuesday, and sat them down in the studio for a 15-minute interview. Like most heroes, especially men in uniform, the fellows pooh-poohed their accomplishment. "It Nowchnw was no doubt new snuw about it said on6) g0. delivers ing to the farthest fho Inral reaches of hero self- ine IUCdl congratulation.

gOOdS On Adding to the mo- Ph 9Q ment was ark n. Schmidt, live from creekside, thanking the men for saving him and his three bud- dies. "We owe you whatever," said Mark. A couple of the Coast Guardsmen misted up. There was no need for probing questions or investigatory revelations.

It was the perfect, exclusive feel-good feature rustled up by a hustling production team with a big old honker of a nose, for news. Sadly, for Good Day Philadelphia, groups of reckless, inarticulate young men won't be stuck in the trees every day, and well-trained, handsome, stoic saviors won't be available for interviews. The city's first two-hour, local morning TV show debuted April 1, and in its first 2V2 weeks, Good Day Philadelphia has pro- vided a surprisingly solid mix of news, weather and traffic, and an almost amazing parade of Philadelphia bigwigs for studio interviews. Mayor Rendell, Councilwoman Augusta Clark, Phillies owner Bill Giles, Flyers owner Ed Stiider, D.A. Lynne Abraham, and former WCAU reporter and community activist Harvey Clark, to name a few, have used the new venue for some positive See TELEVISION on C7 bescent clothes and ultra-slick advertising frightened away retailers and Anne Klein's traditional mature customer.

Many clues point to newcomer Patrick Robinson, a former Giorgio Armani assistant, who got word last week while on an island vacation that he was out of a job and that the line was closing. It seems the fatal blow came just three weeks ago when Robinson's third Anne Klein collection of gauchos and other 1970s forgetta-bles was savaged by critics. As in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, the truth is that all three suspects had a hand in the death of one of America's most venerable designer lines. In his own way, each also tried to restore the collection's deteriorating financial health in the face of life-threatening circumstances. These included a shift from pricey deluxe clothes toward less-expensive brand-name or no-name merchandise, as well as a series of retail bankruptcies, closings and consolidations.

Anne Klein, a petite, driven workaholic, founded her sportswear company in 1968 after years of success in the juniors market. She pioneered the concept of mix-and-match separates, creating pieces that could be combined for several ensembles and were perfect for the many women who were flowing into the workforce. Klein, who was born Hannah Goloski but changed her name for professional reasons, died of cancer in 1974 at age 51. Her assistants Karan and Dell'Olio carried on until 1985, when Karan started her own powerhouse firm in partnership with Frank Mori and others. Sales of the Anne Klein collection See ANNE KLEIN on C3 "It, i I l.i i nancial hemorrhage, the company announced last week that the designer collection was being laid to rest.

The line survived its founder by more than two decades and spawned a host of cheaper collections and accessories, which will live on. "Some people are saying that this is a horrible thing we are doing in deciding to close the collection," Frank Mori, company president, said in an interview yesterday. "We're a private company, but if we were a public company, a board and shareholders would have insisted we do this years ago." So who gets the blame for the demise? Was it Andrew Rosen, the former company president who struck the death blow? Rosen pushed out longtime designer Louis Dell'Olio three years ago in an attempt to transform the line into cutting-edge fashion a la Donna Karan. Or was it suspect No. 2: Hollywood designer Richard Tyler? He was hired at a cool $1 million a year to turn the line around.

He was fired with a $3 million payoff after just 18 months when his pu 1 Associated Press For Patrick Robinson, three $pllections and out. Robinson, shown last April, was vacationing when he learned the Anne Klein line was kaput..