Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • Page 31

Southtmfi Cht Clanoit'LeDger 7 C-Thursday, August 23, 1978 8m A production BiKINISr- out of very little ft New Channel 16 owners1 -v promise improvements By HELEN VERONGOS Southern Style Writer More money, more personnel and more equip-ment will go into WAPT-TV when new owners take control of Channel 16. Jackson's ABC television station was sold this week to a communications chain for $7.5 million Jt according to Lewis Hopper, president and general -manager of the station. Hopper, who was one of six investors who bought the station in 1976, will remain with Chan- nel 16 when ownership shifts to Clay Broadcasting, a firm based in Charleston, W.Va. George Diab, president of Clay Broadcasting, will assume the title of president of Channel 16, and Hopper will serve as vice president, although his duties will remain essentially unchanged. Diab is in Jackson this week to finalize purchase y.

arrangements with the current owners of the sta-tion and to apply to the Federal Communications Commission for approval of the transfer. Channel 16 probably will become the property of Clay Broadcasting in November, pending FCC approval, Diab said. The only major change in operations Diab fore- sees is an upgrading of news and public affairs programming. "My company is in the news busi- ('r ness, and we expect to improve the product," he said. To help achieve that goal, new equipment for the newsroom and engineering department is on J-the WAPT shopping list.

The new owners also plan to expand the station's staff, primarily in the news and promotion departments. Diab would reveal no other specific plans for changes in programming or operations of WAPT. "We'll simply do what good management does. We'll improve equipment and improve the people," Diab said. He said no decision had been made about retaining the 24-hour programming i schedule.

Diab expects ABC to continue its affiliation with Channel 16. Clay Broadcasting is a division of Clay Communications, a firm that owns newspapers in Charleston and Beckley, W.Va. and television sta-tions in Wilmington, N.C., Wichita Falls, Texas and Port ArthurBeaumont, Texas. "We've been on the lookout for broadcast prop- erties in the Southeast," Diab said. "We found out from an associate that WAPT was available.

Word travels fast in this business." After a survey of the 1 broadcast market in the area, Clay officials decid-ed they liked what they saw, according to Diab. Hopper had no specific comments regarding the 1 future of the station. "Anytime a group ownership gets involved in a television property, it is usually to the benefit of that property," he said. dise "Bobbie's Strings" to tourists traveling U.S. Highway 90.

She's highly visible in her Kelly green string bikini and bronze tan, sitting in a lawn chair under a yellow umbrella beside the sea wall in Bi-lozi. For a mother with four children, aged 7 to 15, she's got a figure that'll stop traffic. And that's not bad for business, either. An ice chest full of lemonade and beer makes the hot summer sun bearable and, when her husband isn't there for company, she reads or watches the rented sailboats slide across the Gulf of Mexico. Cars honk, men shout and women inspect the colorful merchandise as carefully as they'd squeeze tomatoes in the grocery store.

A few skeptics choose to try on their $15-strings in the Winnett's van. They come out giggling but nearly always buying. "I could sell them for $20 easily," she contended, adding that her best customer is a local blonde who's bought 10 strings in a rainbow of. colors. "Most of the local people, I've already got, and there are lots of girls from New Orleans and Baton Rouge who buy a suit each time they pass." Mrs.

Winnett insists that all you have to do is wear a string bikini one time to understand their popularity. "With the clothes the way they are today, off the shoulders and everything, women By LYNDA SMALHOUT Sonltaeni Style Writer' ft'! BILOXI Bobbie Winnett hasdiscovered what those on the beaches of St. Tropea already know. There's noting like wearing But since that sort of thing's strictly forbidden on the beachea along the Mississippi Qulf, Coast, Mrs. Winnett.

has found that the next 'best thing to being nude is wearing a string bikini, Nothing fancy, just a couple of. triangles here, a couple of triangles there and a few a pencil-thin strings in between. "I wouldn't dare wear anything else," she said, vigorously shaking her head. "I like lots of sun if I'm going to be outside. It's about like going naked without going naked." Mrs.

Winnett, a California transplant, was unable to find a string of any sort when she moved to Ocean Springs from San Diego four years ago. So she designed and made her own, using basic sewing tipsfrpm a bikini pattern she'd bought eight years earlier. The little bikini went over in a big way with all her friends, and it wasn't long before she'd made several more and given them away. Then she took a few with her to the beach one day and, within hours, had sold every one. That's when Mrs.

Winnett, 36, became a businesswoman and a beach vendor, selling her small, but valuable merchan 1 Bobbie Winnett poses in one of her creations in front of her vending van. Staff ptioto by Fradrika Sherwood percent polyester. She's also had several requests for thongs, a suit with a bottom that's similar to a G-string. She's made a few of those for her regular customers, but shakes her head in an absolute no when it comes to making strings for men. The Mississippi Gulf Coast isn't ready for that yet.

60s. Mrs. Winnett knows of one- bashful woman who bought a string but has never worn it in public. She puts it on so she and her husband can "play beach." Bobbie's Strings is a two-day-a-week, summertime-only business, catching the tourist trade on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Like all beach vendors, she's paid her $250 license fee to the city, committing herself to selling only handcrafted goods made locally. Once her business reached the point where she was selling string bikinis faster than she was making them, she hired a girl to help sew during the summer months. Materials are special ordered terry cloth, 100 percent cotton and 100 don't want to get swim-suit lines all over," she pointed out. "They're great to play volleyball in and swim," she added, flapping her hand. "Lots of girls will start out with a large and come back for a small." Customers tend to be liberal, outspoken and talkative, ranging from children, to shy teenagers not-so-shy grandmothers in their Movie star's brother erects shrine to Monty X-ray of Cliffs jaw grimaces back, taken after a car wreck that forever smashed a once-perfect face.

It happened in 1956 as the actor lost control winding his way down a Hollywood canyon after a dinner party given by Elizabeth Taylor a close friend for life, from their first electrifying moments together in "A Place in the Sun" in 1951. The actress raced to the car, crawled in to cradle his battered head and raged at photographers who closed in around the car before the ambulance, "You bastards! If you dare take one photograph of him like this, I'll never let another one of you near me again!" It was a command the Hollywood paparazzi respected; Taylor was then the world's most sought-after actress. She would later recall of Clift, "By the time he reached the hospital his head was so swollen that it was almost as wide as his shoulders. His eyes had The accident was 10 years before Cliffs death of a heart attack at age 45, but the myth-makers who write of Clift say it began the longest suicide in Hollywood's history. For years bisexual, Clift off screen was a complex, tormented man whose behavior seemed at war with his luminous onscreen talent.

After the accident he turned more and more to pills and drunken days and lost nights with tawdry male sex partners. But the intensity and caring he brought to his acting of the sensitive, compelling loner, the first Hollywood rebel, who influenced a generation of Brando-James Dean-Al Pacino-Robert DeNiro-Dustin Hoffman followers, remain on film. His mesmerizing eyes under full dark brows, his enticing vulnerability won young girls in first pubescent flush from the moment he loomed soulfully on the screen in "Red River," that 1948 classic Western with John Wayne. Liz Taylor, then the exquisite teenager, loved him, and Marilyn Monroe, lost on pills by the time they did "The Misfits," was a kindred spirit. A small renaissance has begun this 13th summer since Cliffs death.

Two biographies are hot paperback beach reading. Warner Brothers has an option to do a film based on one biography, "Montgomery Clift" by Patricia Bosworth. Cinema clubs are showing retrospectives. Helping keep the Clift legend alive is his brother Brooks the By MYRA MacPHERSON The Washington Post WASHINGTON In a standard Northwest Washington colonial, on the third floor isolated from a house filled with the usual kid litter and conventional furnishings is a shrine to one of Ihe most gifted actors of the late Montgomery Clift. 'V- His beautiful-handsome face, captured like a butterfly under glass on the cover of Life magazine 31 years ago, stares from one wall.

Nearby leans a duffle bag with Robert E. Lee Prewitt stamped on the side the barracks bag Clift used while playing the tortured GI in "From Hereto Eternity" 26 years ago. It is. filled with Cliffs clothes: slacks duckbilled hats, The room is a Clift clutter: discs of his films, albums filled with letters and photos of Clift, an ashtray he made as a child, taped telephone interviews with his mother, a framed $5 check dated and signed by Clift 13 years ago, a silver dish that once held Cliffs cache of pate and caviar, his gleaming Italian espresso machine, his long wooden desk, neck brace. Turn on a small light-box and an owner of that phenomenal third-floor Washington room.

He generously rummages through his rainy-day trove for biographers and reporters and anyone who was enamored of Clift Long into an afternoon of reminiscing, Brooks Clift is asked If he resents being called, as he was by one interviewer, the Keeper of the Flame. "Why not?" he replies softly. "That's what I am." Gift was one of the most famous actors of the '50sr the puzzle of his life is why he systematically destroyed himself when he could have had it all. He was successful on two levels. Bobby-soxers sat outside his New York apartment for hours hoping to catch a glimpse of him, but the pretty-boy image was soon followed by solid critical praise and three Academy Award nominations for best actor.

With the possible exception of Brando, no actor was more sought-after than Clift in 1953 and 1954. Clift turned down role after role, helping to make other actors prominent in the process. He turned down "On the Waterfront," which became Brando's big vehicle. He Continued on Page 12C 1 Wh'1 cJTIjS! mm Washington Post Photo by Harry Nalchayan i Brooks Clift in his Monty Clift memorabilia room. I Women survive 'macho9 academy training 3 I I Gardeners meet statewide into a single bunk.

A green Army comforter is folded on top. Books must be stacked from the tallest to the shortest at the edge of each shelf. Although some male and female cadets date, marching side by side doesn't seem to do much for romantic involvements. I "When I see the men in 'their green fatigues coming out of the swamps they just lose their appeal, for me," said Miss Fennessy. Gregory Davis, 21, of Ashby, agreed.

"It's sort of like be ing on the same football team." The women who entered this stark, regimented world for the. Miss Fennessy said resentment of the women was open and harsh when she came to the academy. "There was a lot of hazing. One of the upperclassmen called me into his room and asked another cadet if I could wear 'this red stuff on my face," she said. "I stopped wearing skirts and makeup that first year.

I started talking in a deep voice. I just wanted to blend in." West Point women say they're not out to prove anything, especially their femininity. "If the people outside who doubt our femininity," said Miss Young. Capt Nancy Freebairn, who as an Army tactical officer supervises one of the 36 cadet companies, believes West Point women had to sacrifice outward femininity to succeed as cadets. "Fatigues are ugly," she said, "but to be competent in the field, you put them on." Miss Wildey, of Spokane, lives in quarters quite unlike the average college woman's room.

Army regulations allow one military poster on the outside of her barracks door, two inside. A gray regulation blanket is crisply tucked WEST POINT, N.Y. (AP) -Kathryn Ann Wildey, 20, spotted another young woman with hair hanging in her eyes. With a sharp "Miss!" she called the trembling underclassman out of line and ordered her to cut her bangs or get hairspray. Miss Wildey, dressed in a brown cadet uniform, white gloves, black boots, helmet and gleaming saber, is a "Firstie," a senior cadet at the West Point Military Academy, and she shows no special mercy for her sister plebes just setting out on a path she helped blaze.

Three years ago, 119 women joined the Class of 1980. This fall, the 62 who remain are among the leaders of 4,338 cadets at an institution which has touted "the whole man" concept for 177 years. Those first female plebes stripped off their makeup, lowered their voices, hitched up their fatigues and braced for eight grueling weeks of basic training and a year of intimidation from upperclassmen. "They didn't want us, and they were trying to turn us into men," said Cadet Carol Young. 21, of Fair-port, N.Y.

"There's still a lot who don't want us here, but they keep it to themselves." Male cadets say they have "lingering suspicions" that tokenism is why many of the women now hold positions of responsibility in the senior class. And there remains the question of whether the Army is ready for female leaders. It was 1802 when the academy started turning out disciplined, professional soldiers taught to prize the motto "Duty, Honor, Country." In 1975, Congress passed Public Law 94-106 ordering all U.S. military academies to admit womea "West Point has a reputation of being so macho, and some of the men think that if women can get through this place, it must not be so tough," says Cadet Robin Fennessy, 24, from Dyersville, Iowa. Miss Fennessy is one of several "Firsties" teaching combat engineering to second-year cadets during summer training.

The "Yearlings" are taught to camouflage Army bunkers, build bridges, clear Soviet mines and fire M-102 howitzers. On three-day "recondo" missions, they practice night attacks and climb mountains. All plebes go through hazing, but novelty of being the first West, sevations should be made by Sept. 21. Write to Mrs.

Tom S. Thorn-hill, 710 Williams St, Pascagoula, 39567. The Hills and Delta District Meeting will be held Oct 9 at the Baddour Center, Highway 51 S. in Senatobia. Lunch is $5 and reservations should be made with Mrs.

Jerry Brewer, 203 Brook Side Senatobia, 38668 by Oct. 1. The Tombigbee Valley District Meeting will be held Oct. 10 at the Starkville First United Methodist Church on Nelson Avenue. Lunch is $5 and reservations should be made with Mrs.

Cliff Bice, 114 Grandridge Starkville, 39759 by Oct. 1. The River Road District Meeting will be held Oct. 11 at the Waterways Experiment Station Con-fernece Room. Lunch is $4.50.

Reservation should be made by Oct. 3 with Mrs. Burton Boyd, 304 Montaign Vicksburg, 39180. Registration for all the meetings will begin at 9 a.m. The Garden Clubs of Mississippi have announced the schedule for their annual district meetings.

Anyone interested in becoming a garden club member may make reservations for the meetings. All meetings will begin at 10 a.m. and will include lunch. The Natcher-Trace District Meeting will be held Sept. 25 at the Hinds Extension Building, 1735 Wilson Blvd.

in Jackson. Lunch is $5.50 and reservations should be made by Sept 18 by writing to Mrs. Charles Deevers, 709 Pinehurst Clinton, 39056. The Southern Pines District Meeting will be held Sept 26 at Lake Teok-O'Khate, in Louisville. Lunch is $6 and reservations should be made by Sept 21.

Write to Mrs. C.H. Wood, 211 Pontotoc St, Louisville, 39339. The Spanish Trail District Meeting will be held Sept 27 at the LaFont Inn, Highway 90 in Pascagoula. Lunch is $5.50 and re- Point women have long since "washed out." "The novelty wore off the first' day," said Denise Dawson, 21, ot Woodbridge, Va.

Lt Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, tft academy superintendent believes the women's 48 percent attrition figure comes from the first year being so tough on the first The men's dropout rate was 36.9 I sunt percent Continued on Page 12C.