Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 21

Variety Minneapolis Star and Tribune cc CO er CO Monday May 131985 GOOD DATE OF GQ SALE ONLY 1C CO Ex-Bowery Boy defends his 'adolescent' gang ri: 4 -4 mPV I If kK, II S-aff Photo by Darlene Pfister Huntz Hall stood in front of a poster at the Bowery Boys Co. restaurant showing the Bowery Boys Hall is the one at left in their heyday as movie stars. "wrongheadedness of calling old people old. By Dave Matheny Staff Writer Huntz Hail, best known as Satch, almost as well known as Horace Debussy Jones, Leo Gorcey 's sidekick in half a million Bowery Boys movies, sat at a table a few days ago and searched through his pockets for something, eventually coming up with a packet of matches. The search was a vague one, with a perpetual quality.

Whether he found the object or not seemed less important than the act of searching for it. The "business," as actors call it, gave him some cover while concentrating hard on finding the right words to say about everything from the demise of the family farm to the Satch may have been second banana to Gorcey, but his long-faced mug dominates Gorcey's in almost all the posters. It was Satch the kids loved and identified with, not Gorcey's Slip Mahoney, Satch with the bulging eyes, the dumb ideas and the indomitable good nature, the tall one with the turned-up baseball cap. (He looks tall in the movies. Hall actually is about 5-foot-9 and the rest of the Boys much shorter.) He pulled a match off the row and put it and the packet down on the table and started another search.

He alternated between smiles, ruminative frowns and the famous eye-rolling look, the fish-eyed, sideways look with the eyebrows raised, while explaining how the Bowery Boys could have been kids for so long. "We should call them the happy people, you know that? It's the wrong word. I hate the word old. A baby is old when he comes out of the womb one day old, two days old. We're old from the time we're born.

Howdaya like that? We should say 'of like '2 1 years of Hall, who is 65 years of age, was in town to make a publicity appearance at and for the Bowery Boys Co. restaurant, which Just opened. Satch and his interviewer sat at a Bowery Boys table, surrounded by Bowery Boys memorabilia, including scores of posters. Restaurant owner' Danny Stevens had earlier said he has paid as much as $2,400 for a poster. It's a question he must have fielded hundreds of times in assorted forms: You guys weren't kids, you were in your 30s and playing adolescents, how could you get away with it? This writer had seen Whitey (Billy Benedict), another Bowery Boy, make a stage appearance when the writer was a kid and Whitey definitely was not.

The universal reaction among the kids in the audience had been dismay that Whitey was so (dare it be said) old. He would have been about 31 at the time. It wasn't that the Boys were really supposed to be kids, Hall explained. "Age didn't have anything to do with it. If people were sitting there laughing, they weren't thinking agewise, you see what I mean? The Bowery Boys were a gang.

Hall 6C ji i Investigation of new' Coke uncovers lots of vawns Nick Coleman vmminmmitm llllilllli WUSA-it's Channel 11 by another name mM Mi- wm lit By Jim Fuller Staff Writer We skulked among the cabbages and carrots, scrunched down behind piles of tekey Gooey Breakfast Cereal rot your teeth too waiting to pounce on unwary buyers of thenewCoke. 1 Otto of us was tall, cadaverously thin, with -beady eyes; a camera hung from a Strap around his neck. The other was short and bearded and bore a notebook. Shoppers avoided us. We bagged some anyway citizens can avoid a team of journalists driven by the need to cover the Big Story, and our research quickly demonstrated that this was one of the hottest since the c6met Kohoutek limped across the night skieS In 1973.

secret essence of Coca-Cola," would be changed. After 99 years as "It," Coke would become sweeter. -V Retailers quickly rallied Vound. "I think maybe they're making a big mistake," -said Steve Apptebaum, vice president of Rainbow Foods. "I can't imagine their screwing around with something like that," commented Mike Mulligan, director of communications for Super Vatu Bob Allison, general manager of the Twin Cities marketing division of Coca-Cola Midwest, allowed that some people were asking, "How can you change something that's been with us an our Wusa matter witchyou? Ain't you got no patriotism? As of Independence Day, July 4, WTCN-TV will be no more.

In its place will be WUSA-TV. Most people, of course, will continue to -call it by its position on the dial, Channel 1 1 But on formal occasions the station will be known as WUSA, as in Bruce Springsteen's hit, "Born in the USA' or in that moronic mnemonic chanted at Olympic events, "USA, USA, USA," ad nauseam. Channel 1 i 's owners, the Gannett Broadcast Group, announced the change Friday. And it must be Coleman 6C On AprH 22, it was announced that 7X, "the "We just ted them the truth: 'We're going to give -BEST FILE COi AVAILABLE".