The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 281

NDAK CALE LOS ANGELES TIMES AUG. 20, 1978 'Girl Friends': On 'RockyV Road BY CHARLES CHAMPLIN 4-'' a -1, 7w o7 friends of "Girl Anita Skinner, above, and Mela-nie Mayron, left. The movies are legendary for their misshapen schizophrenia, as being part art and part commerce, with commerce always having the keys to the car and the combination to the safe. Very little changes, and it seems truer now than ever that the movies most admired as art succeed against the better judgment of commerce and in defiance of the conventional marketplace wisdom of the moment One of the small miracles of this year's Cannes Film Festival was, consequently, Claudia Weill's "Girl Friends," a candid, intelligent, informed, affectionate, deeply affecting and wryly funny examination of the lives of young career women in Manhattan now. It was, in fact, a double miracle.

The first was that it got made at all, an independent production stitched together with a small initial AFI grant, some tax shelter money and other borrowings and a large amount of love, patience and forgiveness. second miracle is that "Girl Friends" was picked up by a major distributor, Warner which has also had the wit to engage Ms. Weill for two future projects. The risk is not high by the standards of "War and Peace" or "Sorcerer," but it is a bet on a little-known film-maker a woman and on the kind of film (quite like which cannot afford to hire stars and so creates them instead. Lawrence Bassoff interviews Weill and other principals in "Girl Friends" on Pages 42 and 43.

The star generated by "Girl Friends" is Melanie Mayron, who had previously been one of Art Carney's confrontations in "Harry and Tonto" and the klutsy, endearing, love-starved cashier in "Car Please Turn to Page 40 Photoi by Maureen Lambray After the Ax: Postmortem of a TV Series BY JOE SALTZMAN SPOTLIGHT Melina Mercouri finds acting and politics are just two different performances. Joan Borsten interview, Page 32. tell them it is my favorite comedy and I personally will be on top of it" Groh, fresh after a bad marriage in Please Turn to Page vened, to be attributed to "an unidentified programming executive." No one would speak for direct attribution. Komack and the people who worked on "Another Day" were willing to talk: "I originally developed it for ABC right after 'Welcome Back, Hotter, but it didn't sell," Komack recalled. "The script sat in my drawer for a while.

Then the executive who liked it at ABC moved over to CBS, thought the script was a good one, eventually suggested David Life's all harps and clouds for Dyan Cannon after "Heaven Can Wait." Roderick Mann, Page 33. Groh, and I said marvelous. Despite protests from the Who, guitarist Pete Town-shend plans to quit the road for the family life. Robert Hilburn, Page 70. Joan Hackett was convinced to costar as a wife who takes a job in an insurance agency thinking she can get by with a little help from her husband (Groh), her growing kids (Al Eisenmann and Lisa Lindgren) and her widowed mother-in-law (Hope Summers).

Said Komack, "I'm telling you it was the best pilot I shipped out of California since 'Chico and the Everything was wonderful. We knew the show was going to be a hit. That was in April, 1977. Time passed and nothing happened. "Finally, New York calls," Komack said.

"They don't understand the pilot. 'You have to come to New York and explain it to them, to the top program they tell me. So I fly to New York and I talk to them for 15 minutes. I Canceled. An ugly word.

For many in the TV industry, canceled means fired. Most shows are canceled before they get on the air. Network executives look at and discard hundreds of pilots before they give any the go-ahead. Last September, 21 shows debuted on the three networks. Three months later, 13 were canceled.

The reason given invariably is the same poor ratings but it's more complicated than that "There was a time when we were not prepared to replace shows quite so rapidly and so quickly," said a spokesperson for CBS, "but now we have umpteen shows in various stages of preparation so if a program does not do well in the first few weeks we immediately start thinking of replacing it." One program that didn't make the September season was "Another Day," produced by the James Komack Co. CBS planned to use it in November or December as a replacement. The network then scheduled it for January, finally postponed it until April. By May it was off the air with nine episodes produced but yet to be seen. For those who worked on it, the cancellation was a bitter disappointment and something of a mystery.

"If shows do not prove themselves quickly I don't care how good its producers think they are they will not have a chance," said the CBS spokesperson, adding that the network doesn't like its programming executives talking about past seasons. Talk is about the new season. No executive wants to talk about failure which was borne out in repeated attempts over two months to elicit comments for this article. What few explanations the network was willing to give were, according to the CBS publicist who inter- Leonard Feather jazz violinist Joe Page 82. Detail of a necklace from "Peru's Golden Treasures" in San Francisco.

William Wilson review, Page 88. 0.