The Courier-News from Bridgewater, New Jersey • Page 19

Bombeck's shoe rack C4 Television listings C5 Business Page C7 a THE COURIER-NEWSThursday, July 7. 1983 Some private eyes have been closed by no-fault divorce The returns oil the led! mem Photo By Waller Calahan scam By LOUISE SWEENEY The Christian Science Monitor News Service WASHINGTON A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away called Hollywood, not even the Imperial Starmasters of the Studios dreamed billions of dollars could be made from Wookiee cookies, Ewok pajamas, or Jabba the Hutt bubble bath. That was before filmmaker George Lucas blasted off with his "Star Wars" trilogy about the interplanetary battle between the forces of good (the Knights of the Jedi) and the forces of evil (the Galactic Empire). It resulted in over $2 billion in retail sales for the first two episodes even before "Return of the Jedi" was released In June, Now a massive Jedi merchandising campaign is rumbling out of the Tatooine Desert which threatens to crush all other movie merchandising re cords in its wake. For starters, there are 50 national licensees already distributing massed battalions of merchandise, from Princess Leia creme rinse to Yoda vases and $12 million worth of Kenner toys.

Some of the biggest corporate names in the United States are involved, among them General Mills, which owns Kenner; Campbell's Soup, with its Pepperidge Farm Jedi cookies; and Coca-Cola with its Jedi glasses promotion at Burger Kings across the country- Montgomery Ward's 339 stores nationwide have opened "Jedi Outposts" where only Star Wars-Jedi merchandise is sold tc Ward's 10 million annual customers. But the Force has really been with the Jedi merchandisers since July 1 when Jedi Adventure Centers opened at 350 major Shopping malls across the nation and will remain through July 17., For Central Jerseyans, the closest facility with a Jedi Adventure Center is the Quaker Bridge Mall in Lawrenceville. Each of the malls has paid $2,500 for the centers, which are billed as "modular environments'! to be set up in the mails themselves, not in This Jedi Adventure Center at Lawrenceville is one of 350 that The Jabba the Hutt play set (in Which a monster up toy figures that have plummeted through a trapdoor) should do close to three-quarters of a million dollars, he says, The most successful figures in terms of unit, quantity will be the piglike Gamorrean guards, because you need to buy several at once, he With the latest film, the mind boggles over the variety of items apart from toys being merchandised. Looking at a list of the licensees and their wares it seems everything but Jedi dental floss is being pushed. Among the products in the Jedi line: slumber bags, rubber masks, watches, roller skates, "activity waste-baskets, toothbrushes, wallpaper, curtains, plastic mugs, lunch boxes (with thermoses belt buckles, cork boards, comic books, soap, kit bags, combs, bubble bath, video games, 3-D board games, a record album, shoelaces, posters, pencil cases, bubble gum, underwear, T-shirts, and pajamas.

The books alone are a sales bonanza. Books is ready publishing five Jedi backs, with three more yet to be released. They include James Kahn's vivid novelization of the the Quaker Bridge Mall in opened nationwide July 1 flim, extraordinarily well written for this often scoffed-at genre; in its 12th printing (more than 2.5 million copies sold so far), it heads the New York Times paperback best-seller list. Among the other "Jedi" books: "Return of the Jedi Portfolio," with 20 full-color paintings; an illustrated edition of James Kahn's novelization, of the Jedi' Sketchbook," with sketches used in the film; and "My Jedi Journal," full of blank pages for incipient Luke Sky walkers or Princess Leias. Random House also publishes a best-selling hard-cover adaptation of the screenplay, with illustrations.

And the ovens at Pepperidge Farm's three cookie factories are busy baking up a Jedi storm. The "Star Wars" cookies, which come in vanilla, chocolate, and peanut butter flavors, are made from a crisp shortbread dough in a total of 17 characters. Jabba the Hutt, for instance, is chocolate; Chewbacca the Wookiee is peanut butter; and Wicket, the leader of the Ewoks, is vanilla. (Jabba's cackling little sidekick, Salacious Crumb, is not included.) How sweet it is for retailers, too. As a spokesman for a department store chain said, "The Jedi line promotes itself." Weil singled out three instances where he has needed a state-licensed private investigative agency: If a cause of divorce is disputed; if there are suspected additional assets; and whenever custody is involved.

In those cases, as before, some lawyers may call on private detectives to shadow a client's spouse or track down hidden assets for evidence to present to the judge. "I find that they file comprehensive reports, honest and above board," Weil said of detectives. "The one drawback is the fee. That's the one argument against it." Taylor said detective fees vary according to individual cases. They are based on an hourly wage, with living expenses and travel mileage extra.

Scanzo said his average fee is about $500 to $600 per case. For that reason, Richardson said he rarely uses detectives in divorce cases "What my client wants is a divorce," said Richardson, who estimated that 40 percent of his cases are in divorce court. "I suggest you can get a divorce on grounds other than proving infidelity. There's no difference, legally, between desertion and adultry. It won't make a dime of a difference.

The complications are economic issues, not divorce issues." There are still those who call upon private investigators to find out the most basic of information prior to any divorce case. "Some people just want to know for their own benefit," Taylor said. "They have deep suspicion about their husband or wife. Once they know, they can deal with it." a painful children By EUGENE KIELY Courier-News Writer The private eye business just isn't what it used to be at least for those detectives who specialize in matrimonial surveillance for divorce cases. There was a time when private detectives were almost as important to the divorce proceedings as the lawyers who handled the cases.

In New Jersey, it was so difficult to get a divorce that it usually required the help of a private detective to prove sufficient grounds. But since the liberalization of the state's divorce laws in 1971, commonly referred to as the "no-fault" law, that has all changed, despite the staggering divorce rate. "It used to be that you had to charge extreme cruelty, such as being physically or mentally battered," Somerville lawyer John Richardson explained. "Now, after 18 months of living under separate roofs with no prospect of reconciliation, two people can get a divorce with no one at fault. The thinking of the court is: A dead marriage should be buried.

"I don't use them very often," Richardson said. "I use them in criminal cases often, but not in divorce cases. Maybe once or twice." The loss of business has been devastating to some Pis. James Scanzo, who has been a private detective in Somerville for 36 years, recalled a time when about 75 percent of his work was matrimonial and 25 percent was criminal. Today, the numbers are reversed, with 80 percent criminal and only 20 percent matrimonial.

Scanzo was one of only two private detectives who consented to interviews about this part of their work. Bob Taylor, president of Probe Investigators, said, "Private detectives are not doing well. A lot of private detectives have taken on other jobs. I was at a seminar recently where I met one who heads her own agency, but now she does detective work part time and works full time for one of the (Atlantic City) casinos." Taylor told of one case he had involving a woman who wanted her husband watched. She was sus-.

picious because he had been taking entended lunch breaks at work, he explained. "We followed the guy for a week," Taylor said from his office in South River. "Every day he'd get into his car in the parking lot with a bag lunch and a newspaper. "I told her, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. She insisted, 'Maybe it's not that She was the one with the problem, not him." There are some lawyers who use private detectives in divorce cases more than other lawyers.

"I use them on a few occasions," said Manville lawyer Roger Jay Weil, maybe in about 15 percent of his divorce cases. "They present documented, first-hand, expert evidence." Divorce is puzzle for By NORMA COILE Gannett News Service Has every kid in suburbia gone through a divorce, or does it just seem that way? As one eight-year-old said when old of his parents' decision to split, "Oh Mommy, you're only doing that because all the other mommies are." But the commonness of the experience in recent years has not lessened the pain it inflicts on children, a researcher says. Dr. Judith Wallerstein, director of the Center for the Family in Transition in Corte Madera, and a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, has done a 10-year study of the children of divorce, and her findings are not reassuring. Thirty-seven percent of the children in her northern California study suffered moderate to severe depression during the "acute" stage of the divorce, which can last a year or more.

Many of them lost a year in their schoolwork. About 40 percent engaged in delinquent behavior or the "acting out" of their negative feelings in socially unacceptable ways within five years after their parents' divorces. Ten years after the divorces, these youths looked back on their childhoods with a profound sadness at having "missed something." And they were cynical about their abilities to succeed at intimate relationships themselves. One of the reasons children suffer the stores. Each will include a1 Jedi Hall of Fame, with original artwork; a wraparound photo center that will frame customers against a fantasy from the movie (such as the Ewok village); and a communications center for phone conversations with Darth Vader or See Tbreeplo.

The Jedi Adventure Center promotional package includes 1,400 prizes contributed by licensees and valued at $4,800, plus posters and a 60-page marketing pide. Adventure Centers have also been sent out to 20 foreign countries, including most of the English-speaking world, plus Japan and South America, But at Lucasfilm, which financed, produced, and owns "Return of the Jedi," they are reluctant to talk about anything so crass as merchandising sales and licensees. An industry source, however, says it's widely believed in Hollywood that Lucasfilm makes more from the merchandising of the films than, from the films themselves. Until the $2 billion in merchandising for the first two "Star Wars" films first began to pile up, Lucasfilm hadn't realized it was sitting on a gold mine in the sky. Although neither Lucasfilm nor Twentieth Century-Fox will discuss how much Lucasfilm reaps from the merchandising, a standard agreement is a percentage royalty on the sale of merchandise Of anywhere from 5 to 15 percent.

David De Mala, director of communications at Kenner Toys, says: "When Lucas and his people origi- i nally brought the first movie, 'Star to us, they had been turned down by three other companies. But when they brought the movie to us, we felt even if the movie is not successful, everything in the movie is a toy, like the X-wing fighter, everything in the Tatooine Desert." De Mala says that "Star Wars" toys have been a (100 million line annually for Kenner since they began in 1977, "and we expect an, other $100 million this year from 'Return of the The Ewok toys alone will result in $1 million in sales, he estimates body. But he continued through the next two dances on the program, and quickly left for the hospital where he received therapy and the neck brace. McRae says he is on the road to recovery and will be appearing with the company later this month. "It's true that the male dancer suffers continual stress to his body," says McRae.

"I've had a broken knee cap, tendonitis, sprains, and any number of painful injuries. "It isn't that the girls in the company don't have their share, too, except that since the males do the Continued on Page C2 KlP JpWWJWJKWM I vr1 1 I Courier-News Photo By Walter P. Calahan Paul McRae, a soloist with the New Jersey Ballet, discusses the problems encountered by male dancers. Grace hides grimace of male dancers Mothers still get custody of children In most divorce cases C3. during and following a divorce, Wallerstein said, is that their distraught parents "have a diminished capacity to parent and I mean this as strongly as I can say it.

Rarely is a divorce a mutual decision, she said. Anger accompanied by severe depression is common, and former spouses "continue to behave in ways that hurt themselves as well as each other. From the point of view of the children, this means the parents behave in bizarre, frightening ways. "Even circumspect and reserved people can become violently impulsive during divorce," she said, explaining why slightly more than half of the children in her study saw violence in the family during divorce, in homes where there had been very little or no violence previously. "The child, not knowing this is temporary, is feeling, 'My God, what has Wrapped up in their own hurting, parents often don't take time to talk to their children, Wallerstein said.

"Eighty percent of our preschool children had not been told there would be a divorce." Contrary to common belief, most of the children had no idea their parents were unhappy in the marriage, she said. Only 10 percent of the youngsters in her study welcomed the divorce as an end to fighting. Continued on Page C3 By MURIEL FREEMAN Courier-News Dance Writer The large brace wrapped around Paul McRae's neck is a grim reminder that physical injury is as much a part of professional dance as the grace of the performers. McRae, a black soloist with the New Jersey Ballet, discusses the problems of the male dancer in this back-stage look at the grimace behind the grace. The 27-year-old dancer was in the midst of his favorite ballet, "Fantasies," when he picked up a dancer and felt the pain shooting through his i.