El Paso Times from El Paso, Texas • 137

'Off The Rack' is ABC's best offering this year 1 11 "Off The Rack" airs at 8:30 p.m. Friday on Channel 7-KVIA. By Tom Shales Washington Post WASHINGTON Warner Bros. Television is claiming that a "positive reaction" from critics, indeed a "tremendous re-ponse from the press," has forced ABC to bring back "Off the Rack," a new sitcom set in the garment business that got a trial outing in December. The response wasn't all that tremendous, really, but as one of three comedies ABC tested on the air that month.

"Off the Rack" was certainly the least awful. In television, that's virtually the equivalent of excellence. And so the show returned for a regular run Friday. It definitely has possibilities, though there's always the question of whether the writers and producers will actually investigate them. The biggest plus is the casting: growly old care-bear Ed Asner as clothing manufacturer Sam Waltman and Eileen Bren-nan as Kate Halloran, the widow of his partner.

Much to Sam's displeasure, Kate decides to succeed her husband in the firm. The premiere picks up six months into this uneasy alii- Eileen Brennan stars as a widow who inherits half a business. The other half is owned by Ed Asner. In the nremiere. Asner's son Matthew is seen briefly in the role of a punk designer.

New to the cast are Cory "Bumper" Yothers as Kate's little boy and Dennis Haysbert, who keeps his dignity in the role of Cletus Maxwell, the only employee not intimidated by the bellowing Sam. Cletus is tall and black, and thus the role is conceived in terms that are demeaning. Haysbert makes the best of a bad situation. The subject of selling out and compromising one's ideals comes up on the premiere as it seems to come up on every television show. "Ethics are a terrible burden," Kate laments, and when a young designer declares, "Somewhere out there is a person who appreciates honesty and integrity and originality and class, and I'm going to find him," Sam shoots back, "What you're leaving L.A.?" Those who make TV shows in Hollywood are plagued with guilt about the work they do, the exposure it gets, and the money they make.

This often comes through in the scripts. Of course, they're not so guilt-ridden that they don't go on strike for still more money, as the writers recently did. It would be simplistic to say they already are paid too much, because everyone else is paid too much as well. The writers deserve to be have called people he worked with, but I didn't." Presley returned to Memphis last year to tape a special for the Showtime pay television network commemorating what would have been Elvis' 50th birthday. Their daughter, Lisa Marie, is IHEKWEDfC For instance, a simple command like "Park, it Corky," becomes pretty darn funny when Brennan fires it off.

Looking over a designer's sketches that she hopes will be terrible, she manages to deliver with an agonized groan a line like, "Oh. just look at this! I mean, it's positively fabulous." The writers have made Sam disagreeable to perhaps an excessive degree, but Asner warms him up a little. His best line is near the end of the show: "Kate, you said it best when you quoted me." Famous name didn't help Priscilla Presley get into show biz paid in excess proportionate to everyone else's excess. Especial ly now that it appears that nothing put on tape or film will ever disappear; that someday, somewhere, somebody will be playing a videocassette of "Off the Rack" no matter what we may think of it now. Writers are still the most important component in the formula for success in television fiction, because nothing can be done until there's a script.

On the other hand, it is possible to foresee the day when scripts for routine weekly TV shows will be turned out by computers. A producer will just punch in elements like "grouchy garment manufacturer" and "testy widow of late partner" and out will pop a script, much the way Johnny Carson puts make-believe shows together in one of the funniest recurring bits on "The Tonight Show." But no computer ever will be able to tear off a retort the way Eileen Brennan does. When you watch "Off the Rack," you are aware that there are not a lot of bright ideas in the script, but Brennan and Asner have found whatever there is and proceed to make it as good as it can be. "Off the Rack" is probably the best new comedy ABC has come up with this year. It's too bad that isn't higher praise.

now 16. Presley said the girl has shown no interest in acting. "I want her to enjoy her life as long as she can as a teen-ager," she said. "I think there's a lot kids should learn before they get into the business. It's not a business for kids." MATTRESS SALE M60 KINO 3 PC.

LIMITED QUANTITIES BRASS-BED OR DA BED ceonoiAN queen beocompletc (meaoboawd, ootboano ANORAILl) 593-5002 Saturday 10-5' H1 3 i a ance. Many the TV comedy that has been built around long-running spats. The Brennan-Asner match-up is in a venerable comedy tradition, and it's not unlikely that even Hepburn and Tracy would be amused by it. Or by them, anyway. Asner, fat again, seems to have become perfectly round.

He looks like the bad-guy wizard on the "Smurfs" show. And when Brennan issues a rejoinder, it stays issued. Or rejoined. There's plenty of crackle in her snap. r'i Priscilla Presley plays Jenna Wade on "Dallas." tress to play Jenna Wade.

Morgan Fairchild played the character in one episode in the 1978-79 season. Francine Tucker had the role for several appearances in the 1979-80 season. Presley took over for the 1983-84 season. Jenna got into deep trouble last December when she was kidnapped by her ex-husband, Marchetta, and forced to remarry him. He already had abducted their daughter, Charlie.

The next week, Marchetta was dead and Jenna was being accused of his murder. "Renaldo was carrying a gun and he wanted her to join him and their daughter in Italy." Presley said. "You see a hand coming out of the door which grabs her. The next thing she knows she wakes up with a gun in her hand. QUEEN SIZE SET.

1 PC. M98 i "I think Jenna essentially is a kind person. I play her definitely as her own woman. She had money and lost it. She has lived in Europe and she has seen life.

Even at a young age she has seen and done a lot. She was born into wealth, but her father lost it. After Europe she came back to Texas and worked as a cocktail waitress. That was how she met Bobby, although she knew the Ewings when she was growing up. I wanted to play her as not having to depend on the Ewings.

She can make it on her own." Presley divorced Elvis in 1973 and made her professional acting debut in a television movie, "Love Is Forever." "When I married Elvis I had no acting ambitions," she said. "But after we divorced I had a boutique. But I sold that. I needed to expand. I was in a lull.

I couldn't just sit around and go to lunch and get my nails done. I went to the advertising agencies in New York and did commercials. I was the spokeswoman for a shampoo for three years. "I was quite shy and realized my contract would require public appearances. I was unsure of myself so I took acting lessons.

I found I liked acting. It was an opportunity for me to let things out and be something 1 wasn't." She said her famous name didn't open many doors. "I knew nothing about the business," she said. "I didn't know anyone in the business. I kind of just worked my own way.

I did not use Elvis in any way. I could By Jerry Buck Associated Press writer LOS ANGELES It's all been a trial for Priscilla Presley, who just can't remember the crucial facts about the murder of her character's husband on "Dallas." Presley, who stars as Jenna Wade, is on trial for her life on the CBS program. A verdict was expected to be reached March IS. Jenna, who's engaged to Bobby Ewing, is accused of killing her husband, Renaldo Marchetta. Will Bobby Ewing turn gray waiting for her to get out of prison? That may be a moot point since Patrick Duffy, who stars as Bobby, is leaving "Dallas" at the end of this season.

"I really don't know what's going to happen." Presley said. "They don't tell us what's coming up. But it looks like Jenna might be going to jail. At this point let's just say I'm out on bail." Presley says Jenna doesn't know who committed the murder because she blanked out. "In acting it becomes very interesting," the actress said.

"It goes against everything you learned in acting class. Where you've been, where you're going. This is like actually living each scene. It's realistic to the point where you have self-doubt. You have to be in present time to play the moment.

All the questions run through your mind." Presley, the former wife of Elvis Presley, is the third ac-" aucLL FINANCING LA YAWAYS AVAILABLE WMTE IROX WITH PURE r5J runirtii DAVtIO lON AND ItAtt INtlMllI CNOICI Of ONI MAT1MIS 01 TIUNOII IIMUAI 10 MimiAtlON 9S1S Gateway Wl Monday-Friday 10-8.