Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 11

THE HARTFORD COURANT: Monday, Octobar 22, 1990 B3 Hump erdinck trying hand at movies Can 30 unseat Will 18 live? Tune in Overzealousfans led 70 stampede 0 This year marks the '20th anniversary of tha-lstampede at an Englebert Humperdinck performance before 8,000 fans at Hartford's Dillon Stadium a day the singer remembers with a tinge of fear. "We were playing in the center of the park, and the front-row seats were 50 yards away from the stage," he recalls. "The place was jammed, but no one was on the grass." Instead, fans were surrounding him in the stands on all four sides for the show Aug. 6, 1970, sponsored by the Greater Hartford Jaycees. "Then all of a sudden people came out of the stands.

The police came in and tried to put them back, but their motorcycles got buried in the field, the musicians' stuff went scattering everywhere, and it lasted 15 minutes. They had to get me out" News accounts said the stampeding fans knocked out the stadium's sound system. "That was a very scary situation. That's why we don't play venues like that any more," Humperdinck says. blows my mind.

But I think it's the type of music I'm doing now, which attracts all ages." He describes his new album "Love Is the Reason," as having a "good commercial 1990 sound to it." What's more, it offers a lot of his own compositions for the first time. Humperdinck has written poetry for years and has published his poems in his tour books. But now, he's writing songs in earnest. like everybody else, sometimes find it difficult to sleep, so I go over to the piano and start messing around. I get inspired in the early hours of the morning and have been writing some pretty good material." He keeps it fresh sounding, too, by keeping an ear to what MTV is playing.

And already the audiences are responding, he says. But he won't listen to comparisons to Tom Jones, who similarly recharged his career with a hip-hop version of a Prince song a couple of years ago. "Not at all," Humperdinck says. "The comparisons stopped about 15 years ago. I went my way and he went his." It was easy to see how the comparisons started.

Both were good-looking, dressed-up singers from England with powerful voices who have appealed to older, largely female WORKS appoints director, merges with her company fllftt Lr-1 audiences. The early careers of both were steered by Gordon Mills. It was Mills who convinced the former Dor-sey to change his name to that of the composer of "Hansel and GreteL" An original composition, "Stay," led to his Decca recording contract in the mid-1960s, but Humperdinck made his name with remakes, such as "Release Me," originally a hit on both the soul and country charts. His subsequent hits included "There Goes My Everything," "The Last Waltz" and another country remake, "Am I That Easy to Forget" aU released in 1967. His next Top 10 hit didn't come until nearly a decade later, with "After the But Humperdinck has remained a top concert draw in part because he performs his old hits.

'That's what people really want to hear: the classics I've recorded. Which have kept me in good stead quite a lot of years without a hit record." Englebert Humperdinck performs Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Bush-nell Memorial In Hartford, where tickets range from $21 to $35. For more Information, call 246-6807. Saturday, be appears at the Paramount Performing Arts Center In Springfield at 8 p.m.

Tickets there range from $20 to $25. For more Information, call (413) 734-5874. Scout alumnae recruited for Evergreens Continued from Page Bl the Connecticut Valley Girl Scout Council, says Evergreens is aimed chiefly at women who have been affiliated with Girl Scouting as members, volunteers or campers, but anyone is welcome. Butler and Spitzer were council presidents in the early 1960s, during a period of unification of five councils into the Connecticut Valley council, which served about 10,000 girls in central Connecticut in the past year. Camping is what most appealed to Spitzer as a girl of 11.

Growing up in New Rochelle, N.Y., as Julia Else Kauzmann her initials prompted the nickname "Jeck" she was a regular at a Girl Scout camp in Kent She slept in tents, studied Indian history and developed a respect for nature. "We had wonderful council fires," Spitzer recalls. She could start a fire by rubbing sticks together. "Not many of the other campers did that," she says. At the Kent camp, she later served as a counselor until she married.

Counseling was good training for a job as a field worker with underprivileged girls in the Bronx, N.Y., and Paterson, N.J., she says. "To work with a child and watch her grow, you'll grow yourself," Spitzer says. "That girl is the reason we're there any girl that wishes to be a Girl Scout." She went on to conduct training sessions for many Girl Scout leaders over the years and became the first president of the Connecticut Valley council in 1961. Her love of the outdoors never waned. Even now, she rides a 10-speed bicycle and goes backpacking every year in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

Spitzer praised Butler's role in the development of the Girl Scout camp in Tolland, Mass. "If we didn't have Mrs. Butler, we wouldn't have the camp," Spitzer says. Succeeding Spitzer as council president in the '60s, Butler led a campaign to raise SI million for the camp. She and influential acquaintances, such as prominent Hartford businesswoman Beatrice Fox Auerbach, tapped sources in business and industry.

"We didn't hesitate," Butler says. "We went right to the top." Money from cookie sales also sweetened the pot. Still, nothing matches the satisfaction Butler found in her 10 years as a leader, which began in the 1940s when her daughter Judy joined the Girl Scouts at Sedgwick Junior High School in West Hartford. "Each troop is a challenge," Butler says. "The girls have different backgrounds." Those Girl Scouts, middle-aged today, benefited from the experience, she believes.

"It helps mature the people and keeps standards up such as morality. "Many are very successful people, not full of divorces. I had a big troop 25 to 30. None of them ran away from home." Part of the leader's job was to be a good listener. Butler believed she was a help: "It was a challenge.

And I enjoyed it" With Spitzer around, there was no chance for enthusiasm to fade, Butler says. At leadership training sessions, Spitzer would tell about something in a bag that "you could never get rid of." Then she would lift from the bag a strange-looking, homemade doll "with a warm heart shaped like a hot-water bottle." She has displayed it to the delight of class after class of Girl Scout leaders. She called it the "germ of enthusiasm." People interested In the Evergreens can contact the Connecticut Valley Girl Scout Council office at 522-0163. The opening event will be Dec. 3 affie Governor's Mansion.

Continued from Page Bl are stepping into it and doing it so weU like Cher and Bette Midler and Billy Crystal, all these people who have gone into movies and really done a good job with it" But he says singers and comedians are quite natural actors. "Basically we have that foundation from being on stage. Your acting is perfected on a platform instead of a studio." Don't expect him to abandon the stage, however. "I'll never tire of walking on stage. It's the biggest thrill any performer can ever have.

The applause is like the food of an artist." Rather than throwing food, though, fans have been known to throw undergarments on stage to their idol. "I never liked that, the women throwing their underwear on the stage," he says. "I used to get very upset. It's really such a waste." After a moment he adds: "That's my joke about the underwear. "But no, they stopped doing all that.

That's passe." The audience has other ways of showing devotion. "My fans have been with me a lot of years, and last night there was a lot of very young people 13-, 14-, 1 5-year-old girls rushing the stage. It at the Laban and Lincoln Center Institutes in New York. Glenn, who was a member of the Jose Limon Company for 11 years, has also received choreographic fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. The two companies will merge their artistic and administrative resources and will be based in Hartford, where they will do most of their rehearsing.

The new company will also have offices in New York and New Hampshire. "I know what it is like to survive the death of a founder," Glenn said, referring to Limon's death. "I am respectful of the transition process. But I feel very enthusiastic about this position, and I see the commonality between the two companies. I know this is going to sound strange, but I really feel that I was just meant to be there in Hartford." Glenn, whose parents lived in Hartford before she was born, says for the time being she will be "bi-city," due mainly to her teaching commitments at Juilliard.

The new combined company plans to makes its premiere in January with an evening of works by Glenn as well as a retrospective of Kowalski's choreography. A New Hampshire tour will follow in April and a second program will be presented in May. performs in tionally wrenching German refugee in Lillian Hellman's "Watch on the Rhine." "I love the play very much," he says. "I'm so surprised it's not staged so often. It was a lovely collaboration with Sharon Gless and Kim Hunter.

I would like to stumble over the part again." Peter Brook's "The Cherry Orchard," in which he played a raffish, playful Yepikhodov, the clerk, took him from the Majestic Theatre of the Brooklyn Academy of Music to Tokyo, and also back behind the then-melting Iron Curtain for the first time to Moscow, Leningrad and Tbilisi. But it was a role he played 600 times in the Los Angeles production of the environmental theater piece "Tamara" the flamboyant, womanizing Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio that prepared him for his return to Prague. Last Jan. 1, Triska was asked to repatriate himself to perform in a concert by the Czech Philharmonic based on the poem "The Martyrdom of San Sebastian" by none other than D'Annunzio. The date set for the concert was April 7, and it was to be, Triska says, "a big deal orchestra, singers, children's choir." "Because there were so many good coincidences, and the first opportunity to go back to free Czechoslovakia, I said, 'All right whatever happens with me or whatever is going to be happening on April 7.

Yes, I'll be in Prague, and I'll do the Triska says. "Well the resident came to his presidential ox and was present, as well as my family, also after 14 years of absence." It was an almost miraculous return. "None of us ever expected that these things would ever happen," he says. "When I was leaving Czechoslovakia, I knew absolutely for sure that I was leaving for good, that I of a counseling center in Glendale, Calif. "The interesting things for conversation are what's wrong in the world." This is not to say that children should be encouraged to emulate Pollyanna, he says.

Rose-colored glasses do not fit into his picture of an optimist Teaching by example may be best, he says. If, for instance, a parent and child are walking down the street and someone is acting suspiciously behind them, it may be a good oppor "Yet," he added, "we must reduce our expenses, and we must increase our revenues." All of this "is not very sexy or newsworthy," but that's the way it is, Franklin said. As a result, CPTV is taking a "draconian" approach to expenses. Still, it's a great year for PBS, the network of "The Civil War." "We are encouraged beyond belief. The ratings were just phenomenal," he said.

And CPTV has hired Mike Watt, formerly of WTIC (Channel 61), as senior vice president of membership and promotion. Watt is a highly adept promoter with deep roots in the local market. "Everything this company does has got to be related to membership from a promotion standpoint," he said, noting that these days "all other sources of funding are speculative, but our membership base is the firmest." WTWS (Channel 26) Channel 26 General Manager and Chief Executive Officer Dale Foshee says he fired his news director, Steve Virgil, a few weeks ago because "I think I have a direction and a vision, and it just wasn't parallel to his thinking," Foshee said. In any case, the news about "Newsbeat 26" didn't exactly shake up the Hartford-New Haven market. But that's because Channel 26 continues its battle for cable carriage (competing in some cases with Channel 13 for a slot.) Though some people forget, Channel 26 was the first independent in the market with a local weeknight newscast.

But with the recent addition of Channel 26 to Hartford-area cable systems, the station is trying its best to make people notice. In September, Channel 26 added an anchor in Hartford to complement its New London news team, broadcasting from both locations each night. It hasn't added much to the newscast, but it certainly sends a clear signal that Channel 26 wants a bigger piece of the Hartford-New Haven market. "We'll complete a triangle out of this," said Foshee, revealing intentions for a similar arrangement out of New Haven. WVIT (Channel 30) There are two ways to look at Channel 30.

One is from the perspective of news. "The fact that we have a very stable staff is our strength," said News Director Paul Frega. "That's why we're pretty confident about this rating period." For the first time in years, Channel 30 looks as if it has a realistic shot at No. 2 in news, though nobody's placing bets yet. On the other hand, the NBC affiliate is feeling the competitive heat of Fox affiliate Channel 61 elsewhere in the schedule.

Channel 30 Vice President and General Manager Al Bova doesn't seem to be worried, even though his counterpart at Channel 61, Robert Gluck, says, "We're poised to be right on top of Channel 30." Bova says the NBC prime-time plan is working and thinks Fox's decision to move "The Simpsons" to Thursday nights opposite "The Cosby Show" has been "a disaster" (though ratings seem to indicate otherwise.) Bova also said the station has assembled an editorial board. By year's end he hopes to start delivering on-air editorials. "I think the newscast has a very good image in terms of being journalistically sound," he said, "but I think it's lacked the depth of being involved and responsive to the issues. It's got to be more interactive." WTIC (Channel 61) This is yet another station with a new news executive; Coleen Marren took over "WTIC News at 10" in late July. Since her arrival, the weeknight newscast has been spruced up with some new graphics and on-air cosmetic work.

But Marren maintains, "Our format is a hard-news, local-news format." Among her objectives: pick up the pace, increase the number of stories covered, give weather renewed emphasis and offer unique features, like the Thursday-evening fall-foliage report. Bruce Avery, however, who has been sitting in as weather anchor without a contract for more than a year, will leave the station sometime in November. The station is looking for a full-time meteorologist. New England Weather Service's Dave Epstein and Joe Furey can be expected to sit in in the interim. Marren adds that she's happy with her anchor team and plans no changes except to take advantage of the upcoming election to showcase anchorman Pat Sheehan's formidable experience in Connecticut politics.

In fact, Channel 61 will have a special expanded one-hour broadcast election night As far as plans for a seven-days-a-week, 60-minute broadcast WTIC Vice President and Station Manager Gluck says, "There's no question that we win expand to an hour and to weekends," but Channel 61 is waiting to see what kind of national news service Fox Broadcasting comes up with. Gluck says he's aiming for the end of 1991 or beginning of 1992 at the latest Gluck said he was happy with the performance of the Fox network this fall. But he agrees the fourth network may have expanded faster than it was able to handle. "Nobody ever accused the people at Fox of not beinJj bold," he said. Continued from Page Bl "We definitely don't want to get beat, won't get beat on the breaking stories," Ef ron said.

(Channel 8) The past couple of years have not been good ones for the No. 2, New Haven-based station, which looked as if it might become the new No. 1 in the mid '80s. Now it's starting over at least in news. Former Channel 8 News Director Bob Feldman resigned in late August after a do-next-to-nothing, two-year reign.

Larry Manne, interim director of news operations (and program man-' ager since 1982) and acting news director Liz Grey Crane (wife of Channel 8 weekend anchor Jon Crane) are in charge these days. And they've decided to return to some Action News basics. "Over the last couple of months, I think we've awakened from a deep sleep and have started to move the product in the direction we want it to I go," said Manne, who is taking care of the big news picture. Crane, meanwhile, just back from materni-; ty leave, is handling the day-to-day operations. Manne and Crane have reorganized and streamlined the 5- local-news block, returning 1 to a hard-and-fast news at 5, softer, feature-oriented news at 5:30, and a 6 p.m.

weeknight show as local news-' cast of record. Channel 8 Vice President and eral Manager Lew Freifeld, mean-' while, says Channel 8's weeknight news is getting a push from the popu-" lar syndicated talk show "Live With -Regis Kathie Lee" from 4 to 5 p.m. But as an ABC affiliate, he's unhap- with the effect Steven Bochco ow-rated "Cop Rock" is having on "the Wednesday night 11 p.m. newscast. News and public affairs, says Freifeld, is the station's top priority.

W13BF (Channel 13) Easily the market's most unusual not most viewed station, Channel 13 bills itself as "the global supersta-tion" from Hartford. There's no arguing the global part. Channel 13, an affiliate of the Spanish network Te-lemundo, carries Italian-, Portuguese-, Polish- and Greek-language programming as well. (The station also produces local programming.) But it's not exactly a superstation yet. That's a bit of hopeful public relations.

Over the air, Channel 13 reaches the Greater Hartford area and not much else. But according to Channel 13 President and General Manager Lucio C. Ruzzier, the station continues to aggressively pursue cable carriage. On Nov. 15 it will be added to the Dimension and Heritage cable systems.

(Channel 13 is already carried by United Artists, and after some delay, the station says it hopes to expand its territory by broadcasting on W65BX in Springfield. WHCT (Channel 18) Against all odds, it's still alive and kicking. Though it took a Supreme Court decision earlier this year to resolve a longstanding legal 18 -still has to get itself out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings the result of more than $20 million in debts. But General Manager Terry Planell said, "I feel very encouraged. I'm looking ahead to continue to rebuild this television station," adding that she thinks Channel 18 will be out of Chapter 11 very soon, though she couldn't predict a date.

And though program-length com-' mercials still takes up a considerable portion of the Hartford independent's schedule, Planell has found a laudable and cost-effective solution in low-budget, locally produced programming. All-new syndicated shows have also returned in recent weeks. Channel 18 is also on its sports schedule including Celtics basketball. "I think people, our advertisers Tand just about everybody now look at us as a viable entity in the marketplace," Planell said. WTXX (Channel 20) A change in management five months ago hasn't meant a major change in direction at the Water-bury-based independent Vice President and General Manager Rod Bacon is heavily promoting reruns of "The Cosby Show" (previously on WVIT) and wants to Win back Channel 20's reputation as the market's big movie station.

Channel 20 also has the rights to V-w out ir tkm Hartford Whalers hockey this season. "I think that we will continue to grow, but this is a very tough television market, and with a lot of good stations," he said. Bacon also said the station is concentrating more on the February and May sweeps than on November, and he lists improving the station's overall on-air look and promotion as priorities. WEDH (Channel 24) CPTV President Jerry Franklin is thinking about money again, but that's nothing unusual for Connecticut Public Television's chief executive officer. "A lot of things beyond our control are impacting us negatively, and all those things stem from the soft economy.

So we're taking the position that we're not going to lay off any people (something the station has had to do in the past). By FRANK RIZZO Courant Staff Writer WORKS Contemporary Dance, the Hartford-based dance troupe, has a new artistic director, new dancers and a new name. Laura Glenn has been named artistic director of the company, which wUl merge with her New York-based modern-dance troupe. The new name for both companies will be WORKS it Laura Glenn Dance. The combined non-profit companies will have about 14 dancers, at least for the first year.

In a telephone interview, Glenn said that figure may change in the future due to the personal priorities of dancers in both seven-member companies. The 5-year-old WORKS has endured major changes in the last year. WORKS' founder and first artistic director, Rob Kowalski, died in May. His successor and co-founder, Ted Hershey, resigned at the same time, and the company's board of directors began a search for a new director. Hershey is currently a principal dancer with the Hartford Ballet.

Besides her own company, Glenn is also artistic director of the three-week White Mountain Summer Dance Festival in Littleton, N.H. Glenn is currently on the faculty of her alma mater, the Juilliard School in New York, and also teaches Czech actor Continued from Page Bl to get news happening four minutes, five minutes away from my house, from a distance of 6,000 miles. "So I went into my kitchen, where my wife was preparing lunch for my little daughters, and I said to her: 'Listen, what about we should My older daughter said, 'Oh Daddy, why? We have just finished our whole I said, 'WeU, darling, that's I mentioned something to her mother. And so that's it. And from that very day, we bent on immigration and emigration into the United States." Triska could not immediately bolt from Prague with his wife and daughters.

But he began to study English and to prepare his escape into an uncertain future. "Of course it is tough with two little kids, and if you don't speak English, and if you have to start from the very beginning. We pretended to go for a fortnight holiday in Cyprus, from which we left for Greece, where we asked for political asylum. We kept waiting in a refugee camp for three months to get immigration papers to Canada. "Then fortunately I started working almost immediately, thanks to my so-called, in quotation marks, reputation from Europe.

Andrei Ser-ban was preparing a production of Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" in New York, and he invited me from Toronto to fly down to New York to do an audition for him. And although my English was extremely thin, I got the part, and ever since I' kept working." Now a resident of Los Angeles, where he acts in film and television as weU as in the theater, Triska travels throughout the country and world in pursuing his acting career. Last season, he journeyed from his garden in sunny California to Springfield, where he acted a potent, emo WORKS Laura Glenn Laura Glenn, shown here in a performance of "Stages," is the new artistic director of WORKS Laura Glenn Dance. friend's play would never set foot on that soil again." Triska is in the midst of making a film in Prague, "Elementary School," for young director Jan Sverak, who won the Student Oscar in Los Angeles last year for his first short film, "Ropacy." After the run of "Largo Desolato," he will return to Prague to finish shooting. He interrupted the filming to come to New Haven.

But before returning to America, he says, "I had a couple of meetings with my friend Vaclav, and I told him that I was just about to start rehearsals at Yale Rep, and he was very pleased." As a young actor, Triska met Havel at Slavia, "a sort of artistic cafe." "Ever since, we saw each other, if not every day every second day, and spent all the weekends together. Somewhere in the mid-'60s, he bought a lovely house in the mountains, and we were always steady guests," Triska recalls. "We spent some wild times together in the '60s. "In 1967 or '68, he visited New York, and he was so incredibly impressed. He brought back from New York these psychedelic posters." With Triska's help, Havel filled his county house with "those posters which he brought from Greenwich Village." "Those things are still there, which is amazing," Triska says.

"I saw them again after 14 years. The president didn't change, and the decoration in his house is also the same." "Largo Desolato" begins previews Tuesday, opens Friday and continues through Nov. 17 at Yale Repertory Theatre, York and Chapel streets, New Haven. Performances are Mondays through Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 and 8:30 p.m., with additional matinees Oct 31 and Nov.

15 at 2 p.m. Tickets: to $26. Box of lice: 432-1234. tunity to stop and say, "Here's an example of when to stop and let this person pass you. "One of the surest ways to help a kid become a tough-minded optimist is to let him have a lot of smaU successes," says McGinnis, implying that this may take some parental intervention and again that crucial balance.

"You don't want to be so protective" that a child never fails, but a parent can often help a child make choices are likely to lead to Parents can teach kids optimism, author says Continued from Page Bl kids has to do with stream of consciousness. Unknowingly, we convey a view of the future of the universe," and often it is negative. Even though many parents are careful to to build self-esteem and security in their children, parents may not be fostering the same kind of positive spirit about other people and places. There isn't enough "good data about the world" being passed on to youngsters, contends McGin-nii family therapist and director.