Star-Gazette from Elmira, New York • 7

ft Star-Gazette, Wednesday, September 18, 1985 Page 7A Caterer is fixing and dishing it out for movie stars By CATHY BECKHAM Gannett News Service EUGENE, Ore, Richard Pryor likes his steaks tough and chewy. Mickey Rooney won't eat lobster or filet mignon. He prefers barbecued food or meatloaf doused in hot pepper sauce. Andy Griffith likes to fry his own catfish. Robert Redford eats just about anything.

Ron Welch prefers fancy, continental food. Ron Welch? Welch, 37, is the Caterer who for the past seven years has fed the stars along with casts of thousands at movie locations around the country. Currently he is fixing breakfast, lunch and snacks six days a week for the young stars and crew of the film "The Body," written by Stephen King and directed by Rob "Meathead" Reiner and being shot in Oregon. Welch has to please everyone, or he's out of a job. So far he's prepared food for stars on almost every conceivable diet.

He also puts up with the sometimes-finicky tastes of directors and producers. A day for the former supermarket manager, who holds degrees in restaurant management and psychology, begins at 3 or 4 a.m. when he drives his $55,000 rolling kitchen to a West Eugene warehouse. By 8 he's ready for the arrival of cast and crew, who are driven to the site by bus. Breakfast consists of juice, cereal, bagels and doughnuts.

Eggs and sausage are extra and cost $1. Lunch is Welch's big meal. It includes five salads, two entrees, vegetable, starch, and dessert For a recent meal, he and cooking team members Ken Young and Steve Mason fixed fresh vegetable, zucchini, pasta, cucumber and cottage cheese salads. Fresh fruits filled another bowl. For the hungry, he prepared petrale sole stuffed with crabmeat, filet mignon with brown sauce, steamed broccoli and scalloped potatoes.

On the Eugene set, he estimated he serves about 100 people per meal. Most prefer "down-home" cooking. On the "Silkwood" set, Welch said director Mike Nichols complained the food was too fancy. He asked for a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Nichols was in charge, so Welch did it.

Now Welch mixes the fancy with the plain. Hamburgers, meatloaf, ribs and chicken are most popular, he said. The job is challenging because he's forced to provide enough variety every day to keep everyone happy. Now that he's the boss of his own company, he no longer works 100 hours a week for $275. He won't disclose his current income.

Welch said he competes for jobs with about 15 other catering firms, all based in the Los Angeles area. During seven months of work last year, he said, he fed about 40,000 people. He's worked on several major films including "Electric Horseman," "Ordinary People," 'Diner," "Silkwood," and "Places in the Heart." He won't do X-rated or horror films, he said. 2 The work does have its drawbacks, however. He's had te-give up his night life.

After work he usually goes to his hotel and. sacks out. Keeping up with his grueling schedule has been on his health. His blood pressure is up, and he's put on 30 The hardest part of his job, he said, is finding work. Most of jobs come after someone has recommended him.

He has a few leads on other jobs'1 when this film is completed. Nothing definite, though. And that's going to be the part. Greta Garbo celebrates her 80th birthday: By DOUBLAS BARCLAY Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) She wears privacy like a warm, winter coat and often is puzzled when a perceptive eye penetrates her customary disguise of slouched hat and dark glasses as she prowls the city streets in long, strong strides. However, try as she will to cloak herself from film, fans and frenzy, neither age nor disguise can veil.

the remnants of sensuality and haunting beauty of Greta Garbo. As she observes her 80th birthday Wednesday, only a tiny and tight fistful of friends might be rA7 GiU Atrbo lype 01 (itss) celebration. So many have died. And she likes so few. There were no marriages; there were no children born to the actress who once said "I want to be alone" in the movie, "Grand Hotel." "Marriage? I have said over and over again that I do not know," she once said.

"There is always my overwhelming desire to be alone." "Her birthday? It's just like New Years Eve," said an old friend, Ray Daum. "I once asked Hi ILL Karl, an unskilled laborer. Her father died when she was 14 and Greta went to work as a soap lather girl at a barber shop where she told all who would listen that she one day planned to be an actress. Her next job was at PUB, Stockholm's largest department store, where she was spotted by Captain Ragnar Ring, a producer of small commercial films. Young Greta demonstrated a horrible example of what the well-dressed Swedish woman should not wear.

It was a ridiculous part, but a gem to the aspiring actress. She soon met Eric Peschler, a Swedish film director, who gave her a screen test. She resigned from PUB. The Filmhistorical Archives in Stockholm has a copy of her employment card, which says: "Reason for leaving: To enter the films." She did more than just enter films, though: She consumed the cinema, sharing a rich beauty, husky vibrato and steely elegance that kept audiences in a thrall. She made 24 movies for MGM before mysteriously retiring at the age of 36 in 1941.

"I think she lost heart," Daum said. "A lot of arrangements fell through. She didn't have the studio behind her. Her last movie ('Two-Faced Woman') was a flop and the war came and they thought they had lost the European market for her." Her first American movie was "The Torrent." It was 1926, a A AX Greta Garbo (1934). Zamfir keeps ancient Pan flute known Exile doing well in country music her to do something with me on New Years Eve and she said, 'Oh, I'm going to bed and if I hear horns going off and sirens, I'll wake up and say happy New Year Miss "So it also is with her birthday." Daum, curator of theater, film and television archives at the University of Texas, met Garbo in the 1960s when he worked in television production at the United Nations, and he has written a book about her.

Despite a bout with arthritis in the '60s and a smoking habit, Garbo remains in relatively good health. When she thinks of death, Daum said, "she doesn't want to be remembered." He lived around the corner from her in the East 50s and they'd take long walks together. "She used to stop and give money to bums on the street," Daum said in an interview. "She always had an empathy with the poor because she was a very poor youngster." She was born Greta Lovisa Gustaffson in Stockholm, Sweden, on Sept. 18, 1905, the same year Debussy wrote "La Mer," Picasso slipped into his "Pink Period" and Einstein began working on relativity, The youngest of three children, she lived with her family in a four-room flat in a drab, gray section of Stockholm.

She inherited her sculpted beauty from her father, causes wars and crimes. "I think rock music is very bad for young people, for everybody. I'm absolutely sure if I listen to two hours of rock music I'm not in my best appetite, don't sleep well and can't create something valuable. I think it is vey important that humanity live a quiet life." "Opera is ill also. Opera in the present day is a part of aggressiveness." "I think all the planets who live around the earth need pure air and pure vibrations.

If humanity produces bad vibrations all the time it is catastrophe for all planets. "I think it is very, very important to make a little prayer for one minute, to say thank you for the sun's radiance and other things. It is not necessary to go to church and stay there for hours." A wonderful year for Hollywood: Laurel and Hardy came Walt Disney arrived and the world met Greta Garbo, who had changed her name after her first fUm. Her career soared with the silents. Then talkies startled a generation.

11- "Garbo Talks!" heralded the adja for her first talking movie, "Anna-Christle." Her first line to the bartender of a waterfront saloon! has become legend: "Gimme a viskey ginger ale on the side and don't be stingy, baby." By the 1930s, Greta Garbo one of the highest paid actors in movies, reportedly earning between $250,000 and $300,000 a picture. Her leading men included some of filmdom's greatest starjj Clark Gable, John Barrymore, Frederic March, Robert Taylor and Charles Boyer. I While other stars made publicity a sacrament, Garbo elevated JZ privacy to a holy order. "There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. You cheapen yourself, the Inside of yourself when you tell TTi them," she once said.

Daum said Garbo shared a thought with him she once had while walking in Klosters, Switzerland: "In a few days, it will be the anniversary of the sorrow that never leaves me, will never leave me for the rest of my life." He had no idea what she meant. "She's so baffling," he said. I struggling, songs by Its members weren't. Country artists were recording them -with great success. Alabama had big hits with "The Closer You Get" and "Take Me Down" (co-written by Pennington), and Janie Frickie scored with "It Ain't Easy" (co-written by guitarist-singer Les Taylor).

"We finally decided that for 20 years we'd been in the wrong field of music," Pennington said. Even though Alabama is a competitor, Exile does "The Closer You Get" and "Take Me Down" as part of a medley In its shows. "We're proud to do the songs," Pennington said. "We want people to know that we -had some involvement with Alabama, and the songs go really well. I think it turns a few heads, and this is something people didn't know." He said Exile writes strictly T-for itself these days.

Due out soon are the Just-finished album fi "Hang on to Your Heart" and a single by the same name. Exile wants to follow up quickly on its "Kentucky Hearts" LP, which made the 21 Top 20 country chart. "Over the life of the group, it's been mostly down," Pennington said. "We just had to learn things the hard way to learn not to do them again. "Back in our 'Kiss You All ml Over' days, we had a taste of success.

But it was nothing like it is now. Country artists work more than pop artists. We found that out." 3 AP Law photo Pan Flute," "Solitude" and "Christmas with Zamfir" are available on Mercury Records. "Music by Candlelight," on compact disc only, and "Rhapsodie du Printemps and Concerto No. 1" are on Philips.

His first North American tour is this faU, to 20 U.S. and 12 Canadian cities, from Sept. 27 through Nov. 26. A concert sounds like a lively affair.

A Romanian folk group of eight will be with him for folk numbers. Five Canadian musicians join him for pop. Three ballerinas will dance to some of the music. Zamfir will also play solos and he may sing, depending on "what I feel at this moment on the stage." He composed several film scores in Romania before he left in 1982. He composed for the French "Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe" and the Australian "Picnic at Hanging Rock" and performed on the soundtrack of "Once Upon a Time in America" and "The Karate Kid." He recorded a version of the "Missing" theme.

"I hope to write movie music," Zamfir says. "I think the Pan flute is marvelous in front of an image. My dream to compose some things and to have an Oscar. Why not? With my instrument I come to bring completely a new sound." For future albums, Zamfir is considering composing only music that can be used for meditation. He says, "Everybody is too excited now, doing many things.

Life is too exciting." "For concerts I'd like to develop piano with Pan flute. It's a very nice combination. And I'd like to use it in chamber music and with orchestras, to show that the Pan flute is a universal instrument." When Zamfir, who is 44, started studying Pan flute in Bucharest in 1961, he used one with 20 tubes. He By MARY CAMPBELL AP Newsfeatures Writer Pan, ancient Greek god of woods and shepherds, played a musical instrument which came to be called the pipes of Pan or the Pan flute. Gheorghe Zamfir, who plays the Pan flute currently, is from Romania.

He says the instrument was popular in Romania before the 19th century but went out of general favor because it drove many of its players crazy. The Pan flute is a series of hollow tubes, set side by side in a curve. There is no fingering. The player blows down into the tubes. The sound comes up from the tubes, emerging near the player's ears.

The vibrations inside the skull, Zamfir says, can cause madness. When he feels his head ringing during practice he switches to one of his seven Pan flutes with a softer tone. He constructs them from bamboo Bnd tunes them himself, a long and difficult process. It helps enormously, he says, that he has perfect pitch. He plays Romanian folk, popular, classical and music he composes.

To demonstrate the classical, he picks up music for Purcell's "Suite for Trumpet and Organ." "What tonality is this? Major. Okay. I'll try it." He begins to play his soprano Pan flute, then says, "The notes are exactly the same. Well, I changed one note. I play not with the trumpet but with the Pan flute." Zamfir has made many records, distributed in 28 countries and selling well, especially in Europe and Canada.

He lives near Montreal and has an apartment in Paris. His newest album is "Fantasy." In the United States, "Fantasy," "The Lonely Shepherd," "King of the Pan Flute," "Romance of the Georghe Zamfir i his own Pan flutes. By WARREN GERDS Gannett News Service On the surface, Exile is new and hot in country music. Actually, the five-man band started 22 years ago and has seen its fortunes run hot and cold. "It's been unbelievable," guitarist-singer J.P.

Pennington said by phone from California. "Two years ago, we were working in a bowling alley-bar in Lexington, simply because we couldn't find work anywhere else. We were pulling five nights a week there and going home every night. Now it's work all over the country all the time and rarely ever home." Recently. Exile's "She's a Miracle" was No.

1 in the Billboard country singles chart. Its other hits Include "Woke Up in Love," "I Don't Want to Be a Memory," and "Give Me One More Chance" all from its present incarnation as a country group. In the past, Exile did pop-rock. That's why it has that unusual name for the country field. la 1978, the group stirred controversy and sales of 5 million copies worldwide with the pop-styled "Kiss You All Over." "But that only took us through a year of work at best," Pennington said.

"Everything from then, album after album, was nothing but flops until we got Involved in country music." While Exile's records were now prefers 21. "At this moment the Pan flute was in danger of disappearing completely. My teacher, Fanla Luca, created the first Pan pipe school. It is for that that I and my colleagues exist today. I can present this oldest instrument in the world that is the most perfect and beautiful after the human voice, in my opinion." "Later, in the university, I studied piano, conducting and opera singing.

Then I thought, why not develop the life of the Pan flute. It is a magic, cosmic instrument. It would be too bad to follow another specialty." Rather than write "Baby, I Love You" songs, Zamfir believes, composers should write songs about plants and grains. The sounds today are not good for humanity's health and mind," he says. "If the mind is ill, that 1 I.