The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 98

GALEN DAR Cos Angeles (Times Television Listings Friday. May 21. 1982 Part I ro 13 -i fi3 1 Lfe a MOVIE REVIEW HIGH NOON: 'ANNIE' AND THE MEDIA By LEE GRANT, Times Staff Wrxter Carol Burnett, who plays the orphan-hounding Miss Han-nigan in the movie "Annie." swallowed a piece of institutionalized chicken and voiced defensive: "I'm not surprised at the (films) negative reviews. It's a confection and a lot of people are allergic to sweetness. However, I think there's enough pizazz and caustic wit in it for everyone." Albert Finney, the ruddy English actor who plays the skinhead billionaire Daddy Warbucks in "Annie," said: "This film may be review-proof.

It's a good, old-fashioned movie. People are going to love it. I tapped my feet and came out singing. No matter what the reviews said, people are not going to have a bad time." And the reviews said plenty. From Variety: this lumbering and largely uninteresting and unin-volving exercise where the obvious waste reaches almost Pentagonian proportions." From the Hollywood Reporter: for all its assets and good intentions, never manages to soar with any real movie magic.

What it desperately needs is a zap from Tinker Bell." Newsweek: for all the diligent work, something essential has been lost the story's simple, all-American warmth." Time: "For a production that means to bring children back to the movies, dragging their parents with them, 'Annie' has a dark, dour, mean-spirited tone (See The Times review on this page.) There were some positive reviews in publications like People, Playboy and the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, Burnett, Finney and other members of the cast, including 'Annie' herself, 10-year-old Ai-leen Quinn, and Ann Reinking, Ber-nadette Peters, Geoffrey Holder and Roger Minami gathered at a Bever-Please see HIGH NOON, Page 2 AN 'ANNIE' WITH ALL THE MOVES -EXCEPT MOVING Clutch of photographers close in on Aileen (Annie) Quinn and her mother, top. Ann Reinking, left, Roger Minami, Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, John Huston, dog Bingo, Quinn, Geoffrey Holder in group portrait. TONY BARNARD Lou AnnelM Tim- score and the thinnest of plots, so it must have had charm by the bolt to make up for it. Now we can only guess where the wonderment came from because there is no joy in "Annie" tonight.

Sorting out cause and effect in a film is invariably tricky unless you've been on the premises throughout production, yet certainly producer Ray Stark's notion of using John Huston to direct the first musical in his 41 years behind the camera was a strange gamble. Huston's brilliance is often also dark and ironic; his best films, "The African Queen," "Beat the Devil," "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," "The Asphalt Jungle," have dealt with misfits and eccentrics. Huston is perhaps terminally worldly for this frail fairy tale of father love and optimism played against the background of the Depression. But then, he has played down the Depression, too, as well as the musical's best-known number, "Tomorrow," which Annie sings a cappella to F.D.R. (Edward Herrman, who holds the franchise on the role) and Mrs.

Roosevelt (Lois DeBanzie). You are not even sure that Huston likes Annie. He tolerates her, Please see 'ANNIE, Page 4 Golly, Annie, how could they have put you in the movies and left out your heart? They certainly didn't leave out anything else. "Annie" (selected theaters) staggers under monstrous production numbers, orphans doing gymnastic flips, dancing maids and butlers and the Radio City Music Hall complete with Rockettes. It has three crackerjack performances: Aileen Quinn's meltingly lovable Annie; Albert Finney's Daddy Warbucks, which has dimensions you might not have believed possible given the comic-strip original, and Carol Burnett's Miss Hannigan, directress of the orphanage, who takes to gin as a sensible antidote to a single life bounded on all sides by little girls.

But a kid with Annie's moxie deserves more. Or perhaps less. What she deserves is an atmosphere of innocence, warmth and inventiveness, to let the film generate the joy that must have enveloped theater audiences over the past five years. I somehow missed "Annie" in the theater, so I can't make comparisons, but it has an immemorable OPERA REPERTORY 'BUTTERFLY' CLOSES THIRD SEASON By ALBERT GOLDBERG In the best of all possible worlds, the "Madama Butterfly" with which the Los Angeles Opera Repertory Theater closed its third season Wednesday night would not exactly create a big stir. But for the fallible, sickly world of opera in our town the production at the Wilshire Ebell Theater was respectable and promising.

It left some things undone and unpolished, but it made its points, sometimes emphatically. The only thing the company promised in its advertisements was that the opera would be "fully staged," and fully staged it was, though as applied to "Butterfly" the term does not mean what it would as applied to "Aida." Since the requirements of Japanese architecture are fairly simple, the company found no problem in duplicating Butterfly's dwelling, though the geography may have been a little askew with a snow-capped Fujiyama looming so large on painted canvas just across Nagasaki Bay. The kimonos may have seen better days but Butterfly came from an impoverished family, and economy may have dictated Butterfly's reluctance to punch out a real peek-hole in the shoji screen as she stood up all night waiting for a first glimpse of the returning Pinkerton. With all the props and the sets of Peter Dean Beck in working order, David Farrar's stage direction made fairly easy work of moving people around and getting them in the proper places at the proper time. It might have been better had more direction been lavished on the acting and less on the traffic, but at least there were no serious accidents.

This performance may well be remembered as the one in which Maria Abajian made her local debut as Cio-Cio-San. She is not unknown here, for after arriving from her native Armenia five years ago not knowing a word of English, she proceeded to win enough contests to get a contract from the opera company in Augsburg, Germany, to have success as Abigaille in "Na-bucco" in Switzerland, and to land a contract in Mannheim. Please see' BUTTERFLY, Page 12 KCET BENEFITS FROM HAMMER GIFT 1 S. fe fmmJJ Cio-Cio-San (Maria Abajian) introduces her child (Lindsay Dart) to Sharpless Conrad Immel) in "Madama Butterfly" at Wilshire Ebell. 'JEKYLL AND HYDE': A GAME OF NAME CALLING By DAVID CROOK, Times Staff Writer Daddy Warbucks looks a lot like petrochemical czar Ar-mand Hammer this week, at least to the budget-strained folks at financially troubled public-TV station KCET Channel 28.

A $250,000 grant from Hammer, chairman and chief executive officer of Occidental Petroleum is expected to put KCET near the top of the list of public-TV stations reaping the profits of a month-long, nationwide string of benefit premieres of the film "Annie." The Hammer grant, which doubled KCET's net proceeds from Wednesday night's premiere of the movie at Mann's Chinese Theater, was something of a windfall that matched $250,000 the station raised from selling tickets to the show and to a lavish party held after the movie. Most of the costs for the party were covered by Columbia Pictures, which is distributing the film. Although the Hammer grant was "income above and beyond what we had counted on," said Barbara Goen. KCET director of public information, the entire $500,000 raised will go toward the station's general operating expenses. Goen said those expenses include salaries, overhead, facilities and programming costs.

The money "will certainly help in the daily running of the station," Goen said. She also noted that half of the money raised already was factored into KCET's budget for the current 1981-82 fiscal year, which ends June 30. Gordon Reecc, vice president for public relations of Occidental, noted that Hammer had not been a major contributor to KCET prior to the grant. "I think he will feel he's made his Please see KCET. Page FILM CLIPS By DEBORAH CAULFIELD, Times Staff Writer What's in a name? When it comes to film titles-plenty.

Maybe. Some studio executives claim that a film's title can account for 50 of its success (or failure); others dismiss the idea, saying that a good film by any other name would sell as sweet. Paramount Pictures must lean toward the first theory. Consider the sad case of "Jekyll and Hyde Together Again," originally scheduled for a July release. In a spoof of the classic tale, ABC late-night comedy star Mark Blankfield plays a Dr.

Jekyll who inadvertently snorts his powdery formula and emerges as whacked-out punkster Hyde. Paramount executives approved the project, name and all, two years ago. Suddenly, months after the film was completed (as well as some of the advertising), producer Larry Gordon Warriors," "Hard and director Jerry Bclson were told by the same executives to come up with a new title. To com- were going to see." Did Mel Brooks have this problem with "Young Frankenstein," distributed by 20th Century -Fox? The name change was especially frustrating for first-time director Belson, who wrote "The End," "Smile" and numerous "Dick Van Dyke Show" episodes. According to Mark Blankfield, "Jerry was turning in lists with about 35 names a day.

About every 20 minutes or so he would calmly pull this little paper out of his pocket and write another one down." "I've stopped making any more lists," Bclson said in an interview. "Paramount has been very good and supportive until this title thing; unfortunately, now we're at odds. I like the title 'Jekyll and Hyde Together It's funny and good." Among the titles Belson and others have come up with: "A Tale of Two Nostrils," "The Other Side of Septum," "Nose Dive," and "Split Personality." "I even suggested 'The Wizard of Oz, Part Bclson joked, "At least it would make money." Bclson said the release date is un-Plrase see FILM CLIPS. Page 6 INSIDE CALENDAR ART: Galleries. Pages 10-12.

POP: Red Cross by Craig Ixx. Page 8. Tops in Pops by iX'iinis Hunt. Page 8. RADIO: AM FM Highlights.

Page 23. STAGE: Stage IVat by Ray Eoynd. Page 13. TELEVISION: Todays programming. Pages 16.

Mark Blankfield plays punkster Mr. plicate the task, the title could not include the names Jekyll or Hyde, Bclson said. Paramount president Michael Eisner claimed, "We never liked the title; it had a kind of cheapness Hyde in a movie with no name. to it." A Paramount spokesman said the studio was fearful that "audiences will think they've already seen the film or will be surprised when they see the film and find that it's not the one they thought they.