The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 99

2 Part VI Friday. January 1. 1988 CoaAnselea (Times I Is. The Artistic Odyssey of an Elusive Lady Makes It to the Screen After Many Detours MORNING REPORT Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press. FIRST Among the major network news operations, only CBS balking at broadcasting Soviet leader Mikhail S.

Gorbachev's New Year's message today to the American people in full, spokesmen said Wednesday. CBS decided against showing the entire Gorbachev speech, but "will use appropriate excerpts on our news broadcast," spokeswoman Donna Dees said Wednesday. All three networks plus Cable News Network plan to air President Reagan's address to the Soviet Union. Gorbachev's greeting, expected to be three to five minutes long, is being made available to the networks as part of a reciprocal agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. "Our feeling was that they were significant and they should be seen in their entirety," ABC spokeswoman Carol Olwert said.

NBC spokesman Andrew Freedman said network executives viewed the Gorbachev message Wednesday afternoon "and we decided it would be of interest to the viewers." The Soviet leader's address will be made available to local television stations as well. f' Judith Hearne' Finally By LEONARD KLADY Thirty-three years ago. an Irish-born, Canadian journalist named Brian Moore sat in a cabin in Northern Quebec and decided to write a novel. The result "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne" was an acclaimed work about an aging woman's struggle to find her identity as the secure elements in her life start to disintegrate. While never a best seller, the book has never been out of print.

It also has a remarkable history of being one of the all-time most sought after, fought for and elusive to produce screen projects. Timothy Knowlton, director of film and television rights at the Curtis-Brown literary agency, called the book's situation as a hot literary property "virtually unique. There are other books which have been under option for decades, but I can't think of another example of something as consistently active for such an extended period of time." The movie "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne," starring Maggie Smith and Bob Hoskins, adapted for the screen by Peter Nelson and directed by Jack Clayton, has just opened in the United States through Island Pictures. Why did it take so long, despite the interest of a who's who of film makers and performers? York's Imperial Theater in early February. "We haven't reached any conclusions about rescheduling.

We're dealing with people in England, Sweden. said Tyler Gatchell, executive producer and general manager of the production, in a telephone conversation from New York. "There just wasn't enough time to put it on this season." TV VIDEO An answer and question session on the TV game show "Jeopardy!" has the mayor of Kansas City, asking why his town is being neglected. The Kansas city was referred to on the show as merely a suburb of the larger Kansas City, and Kansas City, Kan. Mayor Joseph E.

Steineger Jr. telephoned "Jeopardy!" producer George Vos-burgh to complain. "This city has sat in the shadows long enough," Steineger told reporters this week. "The people that live in this town are so tired of being put down by anybody or anything. Kansas City, Kansas, is a city.

It's not a suburb of anything." Vosburgh said Wednesday that he was sorry, adding that "if I could soothe the ruffled feathers of the entire city, I'll try." "1 Gneplzx B. B. King will be at Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. OPENINGS POPROCK B. B.

KING (Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. (714) 496-8927). The master of blues guitar returns to Southern California fresh from a couple of well-received stadium dates in Arizona opening for U2. 8:30 p.m. JAZZ TEDDY EDWARDS QUARTET (Alfonso's.

10057 Riverside Drive, North Hollywood, (818) 761-3511). This warm, persuasive mainstream saxman just returned from another successful European sojourn. 9 p.m. Also Saturday. MUSIC LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center, (213) 972-72 11).

Simon Rattle leads the orchestra in a program listing Beethoven's three "Leonore" Overtures and music by Stravinsky: the Symphony in Three Movements and the Concerto for Piano and Winds with soloist Peter Donohoe. 8 p.m. CINEPLEX UNIVERSAL I A i I CENTURY PLAZA CINEMAS UNIVERSAt CITY bWN tU H-t I MpfMMIMtftlwrlfllMM MClMwMMM Carter I Mm Ml WILLIAM HURT ALBERT BROOKS HOLLY HUNTER IS UNIVERSAL CITY, BEVERLY CENTER SSisFrvtPTRF II thISun UNIVERSAL CITY I It tfWJ UNIVEH9L i iarbra rlVMU irtlllT II R'CHARD UNIVERSAL CITY, 1)1 CENTURY PLAZA. BRENTWOOD, IS I BEVERLY CENTER Jp Brian Moore, author of "Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne." "Well, it's pretty depressing stuff," said Moore. "I know it hits a chord for a lot of people, but that wasn't enough to raise the money in the past." Shortly after the book's U.S.

publication in 1956, director Daniel Petrie optioned it with plans to turn it into a stage production. "Moore ODEON Dolby Stereo Sound and the incredible LUCASFILM THX Sound Systems Continuous matinee and evening performances, seven days a week Advance ticketpur-chases for same day presentations, REAL BITTER served on fresh hot popcorn did several drafts, the final one setting all the action in the boarding house where Hearne lived." said Petrie. "We came very close. Cheryl Crawford was going to produce and Katharine Hepburn would star, but she'd only commit to a three-month run and that killed the deal." There were others, including director Jose Quintero, who envisioned "Judith Hearne" as a stage play. At different times Shirley Booth and Geraldine Page were approached to play the role if a script and financing could be arranged.

Petrie said that in the early 1960s he was approached by Broadway producer Arthur Cantor about rethinking it as a film. "We went to see Elliott Hyman at 7-Arts as a potential backer and to our chagrin he told us that he'd already bought the property for John Huston." Announced as part of a Huston package, along with "The Man Who Would Be King," in 1962. production was to begin the following summer. The director reportedly read his screenplay to Hepburn on a trans-Atlantic flight and she agreed to play the role. But Huston did "Freud" instead and the property languished.

The option was then taken up by producer Jerome Hellman in 1966 as a project for United Artists. Please see ELUSIVE, Page 4 CINEMA BRENTWOOD CINEMAS "COMPLEX FEATURES LISTED ABOVE 00 NOT APPLY IASTEMPERR A True Story. CENTURY PLAZA UNIVERSAL CITY UNIVERSAL CITY FAIRFAX Steve Martin John Candy PlanesTrainsand Automobiles UNIVERSAL CITV CITY Ml vC iiilii CINEPLEX ODEON CELEBRATES THE HOLIDAY SEASON WITH SPECTACULAR MOVIE GOING ENTERTAINMENT DANCE Although definitive tox-icological tests won't be ready for weeks, Hudson County (N.J.) Prosecutor Paul M. De-Pascale said Thursday that dancer Patrick Bissell Bissell appeared to have died from a cocaine overdose. The assessment was based on the preliminary results of an autopsy of Bissell, who was found dead in his New Jersey apartment Tuesday morning.

Bis-sell's family said the 30-year-old dancer, a principal performer with the American Ballet Theatre for nearly 10 years, couldn't handle the pressures of the highly competitive New York dance world and had a history of turning to drugs. "Of course Patrick's death was a drug overdose he never knew what hit him," Bissell's mother, Patricia, told the New York Post on Wednesday. "He told me he'd been shooting cocaine into his veins since he was 14." POPROCK American poprock group Mr. Mister plans to donate royalties from its tune "Dust," from the group's current LP, "Go On to the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, an organization that benefits Amer-asian children kids of American servicemen who were left behind when their fathers left Vietnam, Korea and other Asian countries.

"Dust" is about the Amerasian children of Vietnam who, because of their American appearance, are ostracized in their own country. "Without sounding philanthropic, I feel it's important to share," said Richard Page, Mr. Mister's singer-bassist. "When you write songs, you can't just be an observer and a magnanimous sort of soothsayer of what should be. You have to do things, not just sit in a lofty place and write about all the evils in the world.

There's a real hypocritical hype to that. We're just trying to do the most that we can." ART Yoko Ono showed up in Ketchum, this week to open an exhibit of art works by her late husband, John Lennon. Ono, who also displayed copies of Len-non's book Ono "Skywriting by Word of Mouth," said Lennon's death may be the only way the world would appreciate his work as an artist. "Strangely enough his fame in the music field was a hindrance to his working in the art world, in the sense that they didn't take him seriously," Ono said. The price of the original signed serigraphs range from $2,500 to $7,000.

The exhibit, at the Friesen Gallery of Fine Art through January. Luciano Llggio, alleged boss of the Sicilian Mafia's most powerful clan, wants to attend the Palermo opening of an exhibition of the paintings he's produced during his 13 years in jail, Liggio's lawyer said. Liggio, 62, the reputed leader of the Corleonesi clan, is serving a life sentence imposed in 1974 for the murder of a Mafia rival, though he was acquitted at the sensational Mafia trials in Sicily that ended two weeks ago. According to his lawyer, Liggio wants to be on hand to greet visitors to his exhibition, a collection of some 60 paintings depicting rural scenes of the fabled village of Corleone. No word from the Italian government as to whether Liggio will be allowed to go.

STAGE The much-anticipated Broadway production of the British musical "Chess" has been postponed indefinitely because of "insurmountable scheduling difficulties," Gerald Schoenfeld, president of the Shub-ert Organization, said in a telephone interview Thursday from his New York office. The Tim Rice musical, about a match between an American and a Soviet chess champion, has been running in London since May, 1986, and was set to start rehearsals at New 1 Actor Richard Dysart a.k.a. senior partner Le-land McKen-zie of NBC's A Law" was upstaged Wednesday by a one-eyed i i- 1 1 Dysart wmie shooting some public service announcements for the Maine Audubon Society. Samy, a barred owl that was nursed back to health after being hit by a truck, winked at a stuffed fox displayed in the background, exactly on cue. "I was upstaged What are you gonna do?" said Dysart, 58, who volunteered to participate in the Audubon project while on a Christmas visit to family members in his native Maine.

MOVIES A bizarre tale of the abduction of a South Korean movie director and his actress wife from Hong Kong to North Korea nine years ago under the orders of the son of North Korean President Kim II Sung came to light Thursday in a story from the South Korean Kyodo News Service. The news service said in a dispatch from Washington that it has obtained a tape recording "purportedly" of Kim Jong II (son of the North Korean president) telling film director Sin Sang Ok, 61, and his actress wife Choi Un Ki that North Korean agents abducted them because the younger Kim wanted the couple to make movies in North Korea. An unidentified lawyer for the couple, who defected to the United States in 1986 from Vienna, said they planned to submit the tape March 1 in a $50 million lawsuit against the younger Kim in Austria. Eddie Murphy wants to make a film version of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Fences" in 1988, the comedian manager said Wednesday. Robert Wachs said all things being equal, yes, he will" appear as the son in the story of a former Negro Leagues baseball player and his family.

Eddie Murphy Productions bought the rights to the play, according to a Paramount Pictures Corp. spokeswoman. Paramount will probably distribute the film, she said. James Earl Jones won this year's Tony award as best actor for his portrayal of the father and is said to be first choice to repeat the role on film. (Jones talks about the 41 screens in six locations in the Los Angeles area including Universal City 18 Cinemas, the world's largest cinema complex Elegantly-designed interiors Marble Floors Plush seating Wide -screened cinemas State-of-the-art projection equipment ODEON THEATRES BEVERLY CENTER CINEPLEX urn IN THE LOS ANGELES AREA 18 CINEMAS MM HOLIDAY ATTRACTIONS CHECK CINEPLEX ODEON THEATRE GUIDE FOR SHOWTIMES FAIRFAX CINEMAS SHOWCASE anct TEK UNIVERSAL CITY, CENTURY PLAZA, FAIRFAX EDDII jj role in an interview on Page 15.

A Rhode Island theater chain is continuing to play the national anthem before rolling the feature film in spite of growing protests to the practice. Since 1956, Stella Erinakes, a partner in the 20-screen SSC Cinemas of Rhode Island, has mandated the evening's entertainment be prefaced with the "The Star-Spangled Banner." "Maybe we're just patriotic," Erinakes told the Providence Journal-Bulletin. "Freedom, I hope, means the same thing to everybody. I'd have to be a cripple not to stand up for the anthem." Others do not agree. "I think it's completely offensive," said Libby Isham of Newport.

"I don't think it's right for a movie theater to have a military tone." -JOHNVOLAND CITY MURPHY STEVEN SPIELBERG iw. A MATTHEW ROBBINS Fn batteries not included MGM luwtisiiwauw IHX oosgr UNIVERSAL CITY, BEVERLY CENTER Wiiren and Directed by Woody Allen An OWOft prjj CENTURY PLAZA, SHOWCASE CITY, FAIRFAX striisand OREYFUSS Danny Billy mK DeVrro Crystal -Throw Momma From The Train Pulll BIBBiBI UNIVERSAL CITY, BRENTWOOD UNIVERSAL.