The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 87

CALENDAR Cos Ancjclcs (Times Television Listings Thursday, January IS, 1987 Part VI ROBERT CABR1EL DISMAY IN THE VOICES DISMISSED FROM KFAC By DENNIS McDOUGAL, Times Staff Writer icsV L'. Wk 7 program director, Robert Goldfarb, told four veteran announcers and six engineers that their services were no longer needed. Princi had been told he was leaving two weeks before and was the only one who had prepared a farewell statement for his audience. "If we had been told what the new owners wanted, I'm sure we could have adapted," said Dixon. "But we were merely told that we didn't fit in with their plans." Both Heifetz and Argow said the firings are just part of their belt-tightening and their attempt to begin appealing to a much wider audience.

To begin with, they have mortgage payments, they said. The stations, which simulcast their classical programming, have been traditional cellar dwellers when the quarterly Arbitron radio ratings come out. Heifetz's plan is to cater to a wider audience that would include younger classical music lovers a plan that has no room for old-timers like Crane, Princi and Dixon. Please see DISMAY, Page 8 1 w. Fred Crane with the existing staff." "I have no quarrel with being fired," Dixon said.

"It was just the heartless way it was done. Not even the symbolic 'gold But Heifetz said her actions were necessary, not heartless. "Were we heartless? I certainly don't think so," Heifetz told The Times. "Did we terminate people who had been here a long period of time? Yes. But I don't think we were heartless." On Jan.

2, Heifetz and her new you want to learn how to play a new concerto, why away the Stradivari- us?" asked ex-KFAC announcer Fred Crane. Crane echoes the sentiments of his listeners listeners that even he was never quite sure he had during his 39 years as a classical radio deejay. There were marketing surveys and occasional letters from listeners, but nothing to indicate that he had much of an audience. With his firing 13 days ago, those listeners have proven to be numerous and fiercely loyal. They've come out in droves to protest the sudden face lift at the only commercial classical radio station in Los Angeles.

The calls and letters have been coming into KFAC by the hundreds. "They had to hire extra help at the switchboard just to handle the negative calls," said Crane's former engineer, Pablo Garcia. Garcia also was fired but continues to work at KFAC through the end of this week. Officially, station management says that the complaints are tapering off and even some compliments on the new format are starting to filter through. But even the new owners cannot disguise the overwhelming angry response since Crane and most of the others of the KFAC Old Guard were unceremoniously fired 13 days ago.

Crane's place in history is assured as the actor who portrayed Stuart Tarleton and spoke the first words of dialogue in "Gone With the Wind." But he is far better known to his listeners as the host of the early morning show, which was heard weekdays beginning at 6 a.m. over KFAC-AM (1330) and FM (92.3). The day after New Year's he was fired by new owners Louise Heifetz and Ed Argow who bought the stations last year from George CHRISTINE COTTER Lot Angeles Times Marry Fond Memories of the 'Old' Cannon Filmif Menahem Golan, left, and Yoram Globus. "We are taking a step back," Golan says, "but we will be here forever." THEY'RE LOWERING THEIR SIGHTS AT CANNON FILMS By DAVID T. FRIENDLY, Times Staff Writer On paper, December looked good for Cannon Films.

Chairman Menahem Golan had finished the biggest creative assignment of his career, directing Sylvester Stallone in the $20-mil-lion "Over the Top." At the same time, Cannon also was making the $25-million "Superman IV." After eight years in Hollywood making movies like "The Last American Virgin" and "Revenge of the Nin-ja," Golan, 57, and cousin Yoram Globus, 42, seemed to have finally shed their reputations as schlock -meisters and were penetrating Hollywood's thick walls of respectability. As it turned out, though, December was a long-running nightmare. On the first of the month the second installment on the 1986 $275-million buyout of British en- CRITIC AT LARGE Tom Dixon Carl Princi Fritzinger for $33.5 million. Most of the stations' on-air and engineering staff also were fired. In all, 11 of the KFAC Old Guard were given the heave ho, including program director Carl Princi, who put in 33 years at the station, and morning man Tom Dixon, who had been at the station for 41 years.

"I can understand when a new owner comes in and wants to make changes," Princi said. "What I can't understand is why they don't make those changes gradually, over time, 'New' KFAC Sparks By MARC SHULGOLD I grew up with KFAC the "old" KFAC. The KFAC of "Piano Parade," "Sunset Serenade," "Evening Concert," etc. One of my most cherished memories is of KFAC coming through an ugly black-and-gold Packard Bell table radio during family meals. Sometimes my father would turn down the volume when the next piece was announced so we could all play "Name the Compos-er.

Perhaps more than the programseven more than the timeless music I grew to know and love my clearest memories of the station are of the announcers who, By MARTIN BERNHEIMER, Times Music Critic the familiar saga concerning a tempestuous Gypsy girl who works in a cigarette factory and breaks assembled hearts in picture-postcard Seville. Now, dear, old, romantic "Carmen" has gotten grimy and mod. The opera has become trendily significant. It has been updated, partially rewritten, drastically re-focused. For better or worse probably worse it has undergone the Frank Corsaro treatment.

The "new" opera takes place in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. Carmen is no ordinary vamp obsessed with tracing the unruly path this kind of documentary," said Henry Hampton, executive producer of the series, which premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m. on PBS (Channels 28 and 15). "We went to 100 corporations and you can see their eyes go opaque when you say civil rights." But Hampton, appearing alongside former civil rights activist and series narrator Julian Bond, was able to present glimmers of a dual victory Tuesday to the nation's TV critics gathered at the Century Plaza. The series, presented by Boston PBS-station WGBH, to i I .1 WOODS' 'SALVADOR' GONE -BUT NOT FORGOTTEN i mi i 1 1 es suddenly had faces.

Seated at a long table onstage, Dixon, Crane, et al. appeared rather uneasy suddenly thrust in the public eye. too, felt a bit odd as I gazed at them. I recall muttering to myself, "They look like the chairmen of the board." Radio was supposed to be hip and young and slick. These guys were none of the above.

The more I thought about it, though, the more that appealed to me. I think of those faces as I listen to the hip, young, slick announcers now in place at the "new" KFAC. The voices recite the repertory just fine, they gamely fight off the stuffy classical-music image by offering spontaneous attempts at Please see'NEW KFAC, Page 10 STAGE REVIEW '42ND STREET AT THE NEW FREEDMAN By DAN SULLIVAN, Times Theater Critic Anaheim's new Freedman Forum, which opened Tuesday night with "42nd Street," may be an idea whose time has come and gone. It's a throwback to the hardtop music tents of the 1950s and 1960s, with actors running up and down the aisles and a circular stage that imposes its shape on all the dance patterns. This time the stage revolves.

Happily for the "42nd Street" dancers, it doesn't revolve too often. The virtue of arena staging is that it puts a large audience relatively close to the show. The Freedman Forum (its builder, Leo Freedman, also built Melodyland in the 1960s) seats 2,300 people, and its outer ring of seats is within 50 feet of the curved stage. Comfortable seats, too, with good leg room. But the viewer doesn't feel that close.

The stage itself is big, maybe another 50 feet in diameter, and when a performer is working the other side of the house, you're aware that he's a good distance away. There's also a sense of being momentarily excluded from the energy flow of the show. Director Phillip Randall and choreographer Jon Engstrom try to make things interesting from every angle, but the danger there is hubbub, and some of the dance numbers fall into it. Focus is a problem, and we don't all register the moment where the uppity Broadway star (Constance Towers) twists her ankle. The circular stage is perfect for Please see' Page 6 RANDY LEFF1NGWELL Los Angeles Times Julian Bond will narrate "Eyes on the Prize" series for PBS.

decade after decade, remained a constant fixture on the radio. I had never met them, never seen them. Yet, Tom Dixon, Fred Crane, Carl Princi and Thomas Cassidy were a part of my household. Later, as a college student, I answered the station's invitation to Commentary become a charter member of the KFAC Listeners' Guild, and attended an introductory meeting at a packed Ahmanson Theatre. Public response was so enormous, we were told, that three sessions had to be scheduled in the hall.

One by one the announcers were introduced to the crowd. The voic- of the flighty bird she calls love. The lady now is an obsessive Loyalist rebel who uses her wiles to get at the munitions guarded by a dumb but susceptible Fascist soldier named Jose. Get it? Later, she uses similar wiles to ensnare a popular matador named Escamillo. He happens to be an alcoholic pushover who also happens to be an influential Franco sympathizer.

Get it? There is a lot of noisy, anti-musical shooting in this bleak and gratuitously violent "Carmen." There also is a lot of gimmickry. The erstwhile-innocent urchins who mimic the soldiers are now a pack of Fascistic mini-sadists who Please see Page 5 scrounged together adequate fundingmuch of it at the last minute from 44 corporate sources. And, perhaps more significantly, "Eyes on the Prize" presents the historical triumphs of the civil rights movement with a distinctly black voice. An example shown the critics is the final installment on the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, which intersperses news footage and televised commentary of the day with recent interviews with many of the event's participants. Bond calls the series "a case study in how to affect our democracy." By showing the struggle for change that came from within the black community, Bond said, "Eyes Please see PBS, Page 9 tertainment conglomerate EMI was due and Cannon, a studio that last year produced about 40 movies, simply did not have the money.

Suddenly, "Hollywood's Go-Go Boys" (Newsweek) were stalled out. There was talk in the industry that Cannon was a house of cards about to fold. "We slept very little that month," says Golan, dressed in a nylon "Over the Top" jacket and leaning back in an oversized leather desk chair at his office, which has a view of the Hollywood sign. "There is no denying we went through a crisis in the last two months of the year." Please see CANNON, Page 7 be helpful when a film had a brief and spotty initial release and isn't on view at the moment. And "Salvador" isn't.

Woods recently won a Golden Globe nomination for his work opposite James Garner in the television movie "Promise," but the Hollywood Foreign Press voters bypassed or, quite possibly, had forgotten "Salvador." The actor is disappointed but philosophical about the invisibility of "Salvador." The work exists and he is very proud of it, and everything else in his life is going splendidly. He has jobs stretched out ahead of him and he leaves in a few days for a leisurely Caribbean cruise on a sailing ship. "Five years ago I wondered why I got all these villainous roles," Woods said at breakfast early this week. "Then I looked at myself and realized it was because I was a raging I was angry at everybody and everything." He had made an important screen impression as one of the cop-killers in the film of Joseph Wambaugh's "The Onion Field." At best he had risen to roles that were ambiguous: as a crude, tough-talking deprogrammer in "Split as a fast-talking poor boy-turned-successful writer in "Joshua Then and Now," both with Ted Kotcheff. He was one of the baddies in Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America" and in "Against All Odds." Woods' marriage ended bitterly.

He sought a psychiatrist, who proved helpful. He has found a new Please see WOODS, Page 6 Carmen (Susanne Marsee) flirts with soldiers in Act I of City Opera "Carmen" at Segerstrom Hall. OPERA IN ORANGE COUNTY 'CARMEN' GETS LOST IN CIVIL WAR By CHARLES CHAMPLIN, Times Arts Editor There are times when an actor can justifiably feel that he is snake-bit, or that his guardian angel was looking the other way at a crucial moment. James Woods gave the performance of any actor's life in "Salvador," Oliver Stone's low-budget, high-intensity film about a scruffy, scuffling counterculture journalist who becomes reluctantly but deeply involved in that country's bitter strife. The film was listed as being eligible for consideration in the 1985 Academy Awards.

But this, as it turned out, was wrong. "Salvador" had been announced to play a week in Los Angeles at the end of 1985, which is the basis for eligibility, but it never did. It played a week in San Antonio instead, to fulfill some other contractual commitment. When "Salvador" did open in Los Angeles early in 1986, it earned blazingly good reviews overall and for Woods' role in particular, and it did excellent business for three weeks, until it had to be pushed out for a previously booked film. The distributor recently ran a trade ad to remind academy voters that "Salvador" and Woods' performance are, in fact, eligible for the 1986 Oscars.

Woods' name was misspelled in the ad. It is not necessarily true that a film which opens early in the year is forgotten when the academy voters mark their nominating ballots nearly a year later. But it can't Times change. Especially in the wondrous and irrational world of opera. When the New York City Opera last appeared in Southern California, during the dark and distant December of 1982, the company held forth at the Music Center in beautiful downtown Los Angeles.

Now, for the next two weeks at least, Beverly Sills' brave and not-so-little operatic band is calling the Orange County Performing Arts Center its Western home away from home. When last we saw the NYCO edition of Bizet's almost indestructible "Carmen," it was a shabby but not unreasonable facsimile of PBS UNVEILS CIVIL RIGHTS SERIES, MOYERS SPECIALS By MORGAN GENDEL, Times Staff Writer The Public Broadcasting Service's moving, six-part series "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965" was almost called "We Shall Overcome." The latter title was rejected as perhaps limiting the potential audience, but it might have aptly described the producers' perseverance. "American corporations are not anxious to become involved with INSIDE CALENDAR FILM: "Sherman's March" reviewed by Sheila Benson. Page 3. JAZZ: Jimmie Smith's State of the Art Trio at Alleycat Bistro reviewed by Leonard Feather.

Page 2. STAGE: LATC gets support from Sylvie Drake reports in Stage Watch. Page 4. TV: Tonight on TV and cable. Page 11..