The Windsor Star from Windsor, Ontario, Canada • 21

LOCAL NEWSEVERY HOUR-EVERY DAY WINDSOR IWW WINDSOR INFORMATION STATION SECTION a A--J A k. ''fc 2 l-Mfi, '( O.u iV if i i i ri if L.HJ i FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 1990 THE WINDSOR STAR w- 1 mar -v. 1" Si i uS Vfc, 'f i jfr -S: kM V'- ft'1 if 1 t- A lj I I siimvA-v an ACTRESS on the TV soap All My Children was arrested for allegedly using a stolen credit card, police said. The 20-year-od actress, Tichina Arnold, plays the character Sharia Valentine on the ABC show. Arnold was arrested at a department store in the New York City borough of Queens after she charged perfume, cosmetics and a typewriter to a stolen American Express card, authorities said.

She told police she paid a stranger the equivalent of $30 Cdn for the card, said Richard Piperno, spokesman for Queens District Attorney John Santucci. The Amencan Federation of Television and Radio Artists said a contract star like Arnold would make at least $630 an episode. -s. --1 jj' 9 -S smv fc; 4 v' It -f vVfi 4 I r- 4 'vWSffc'S '4 -lu4'k- J. tx sSW.

--v A Aii ST fc "Vv f- i3 I 1 5 O- fi I A Roy Acuff will be away from the Grand Ole Opry stage for two to three weeks because of minor eye surgery, spokesman said this week. Acuff, 86, had surgery on his right eye to prevent his glaucoma from getting worse, said Opry spokesman Deb-pie Logue. She said the singer (would wear an eye patch for a hile. 1 1- T.v' jL- 4 i Vi xai fi vi i ii Star photo Mike Weaver ON THE SET OF THE 10 OClock News, station manager Duane Kell says Channel 50 is looking to improve on several things, including the news Channel 50 goes from sports station to TV contender By Ted Shaw But sports won over enough of a devoted Channel 50 following to keep the station on the air through the lean first few years. Its 350-metre transmission tower in a barely developed field in Southfield beamed a signal into homes as far away as Lansing, Ann Arbor and Windsor.

Eventually, Channel 50 would become the largest and most successful independent off-air station in North America THE HONOR ROLL at the station includes great sports names like Gordie Howe and Dave Bing, along with local television talent like Bill Kennedy (who joined the station a few years after it opened from Windsors CKLW-Channel 9) and the late Lou Gordon In later years, the station established its reputation on fictional characters like Radar, Hawkeye, Klinger and a cast of thousands from all the late-night movies over the years. On Monday night, TV 50 will celebrate its silver anniversary in a special tribute show at the Fox Theatre, featuring singer Smokey Robinson. The still-irascible Kennedy will be there, along with Gordons wife, Jackie, and some of the stations valued customers, the advertisers. WKBD, which was named after the original owner, Kaiser Broadcasting, has gone through many changes, both in appearance and approach, over the years. Although it began as a mainly sports station with some morning kids shows, it wasnt long before programming was being supplemented by old movies and reruns of TV shows In its middle years, WKBD was really the station you turned to for those old movies every night at 8 m.

when there wasnt basketball or hockey. Afternoons were taken up by Bill Kennedys At The Movies program, while evenings you could watch Lou Gordon skewer some local official or politician. The Lou Gordon Show was the first and so far only local political commentary show in the Detroit TV market. Its possible it might still be going strong if Gordon hadnt died in his sleep of a heart attack in May 1977. Even now, Jackie Gordon said this week, people recognize her on the street.

Jackie appeared on the air with her husband in later editions of the program. WE WERE REALLY starting in a new field of broadcasting we knew little about, she said The station at the time was located in a far-flung section of the city down a dirt road, but the sense of being a broadcasting pioneer spurred the Gordons on. You either hated Lou or you loved him, she said, but everybody watched him Lou Gordon was credited with waylaying Michigan Gov. George Romneys presidential aspirations the 1970s when, in a nationally publi cized interview, Romney said he had been brainwashed by the American military in Vietnam. The Lou Gordon Show was eventually syndicated in several other cities.

FOR YEARS, the station remained a middle-level player in the Detroit market, relying on its sports, movies, the celebrity status of Kennedy and Gordon, and old TV shows, like I Love Lucy, Gilligans Island and The Beverly Hillbillies. The station still airs those old programs. During the late 70s and into the 1980s, Channel 50 began acquiring recent network programs that had gone into syndication The major purchase was MASH November 1984 while George Williams was station manager Williams was a well-known television man around the US He is credited with having turned TV 50 into an influential operation in Detroit. Getting exclusive local rights to the reruns of MASH, which the station aired for several years at 7 m. weekmghts, marked its move into the first ranks of syndication buying in Detroit See CHANNEL 50, C2 Star Entertainment Writer HANNEL 50 started out 25 years ago as a feisty little independent TV station Southfield, then the outskirts of Detroit.

Southfield is now the hub of much of the citys corporate activity and WKBD-TV is growing right along with it. Its a thriving, brash, aggressive concern that retains a youthful edge even after a quarter century. Channel 50 began as primarily a sports station, airing live college, high school and professional sports. When it hit the air in January 1965, its evening lineup was dominated by high school basketball games, Detroit Red Wing hockey, Detroit Pistons basketball and regional skiing reports. It was the first UHF station in the market at a time when only the most expensive and up-to-date television sets were equipped with UHF dials.

rz. Webb Pierce, a country music linger popular in the '50s and 60s, as recovering this week from bdominal surgery, a hospital pokeswoman said. Pierce had extensive surgery last Friday and is now recovering Swell, said Anna Austin, a spokesman at Southern Hills Medical Centre in Nashville Further de-ails about the surgery were not released. Pierce, 63, has been semi-re-tired for several years. The J.

Paul Getty Museum said has bought Vincent van Goghs aainting Irises, which was sold ess than three years ago for a re- ord $53 9 million US A spokesman for the museum, me of the richest in the world, would not say how much it had aaid for the Impressionist paint-ng. The work had been in the col-ection of Australian businessman Man Bond. Art experts in Los Angeles said hey would estimate a price be-ween $50 million and $70 million The film Coming to America, he subject of a lawsuit by column-st Art Buchwald, is at least $17 million in the red, although it $125 million, Paramount hctures says. Preliminary accounting of the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy was eleased this pigffP' veek as part if Buchwald's awsuit igamst the itudio, which laimed the movie was )ased on a oncept he reated. A Superior BUCHWALD ourt judge ruled in January that Duchwald and partner Alain 3ernheim are entitled to $250,000 ilus 19 per cent of the films net irofits Under accounting by Par-imount, which is appealing the the film has no net profits Pierce ODonnell, Buchwalds awyer, called Paramounts finan-tal report misleading His accounting shows that Com-ng to America is $112 million hort of turning a net profit.

Film director Maurice Cloche, est known for his Oscar-winning novie Monsieur Vincent, has died it his home in Bordeaux after a ong illness, the French media re-lorted this week He was 82. Monsieur Vincent, a moving lramatization of the life of St. de Paul and starring Pierre won the Academy Award 1947 for best foreign film His best known films include a a Cage aux Oiseaux, (The Bird age), Le Docteur Laennec, the lory of the inventor of the stetho-cope, Ne de Pere Inconnu, Unknown), and La Cage aux (The Girl Cage). Soprano Rebecca Caine, injured an on-stage fall while singing he Christine Daae role in The jhantom of the Opera in Toronto as returned to the lineup after an ight-week absence. Caine, who sings the lead female ole opposite Colm Uilkinson as phantom, suffered a torn hga-ent when she fell Jan 24 Star Wire Services THE LATE LOU CORDON Scheiders Cold War more personal v.

By Jamie Portman Southam News ROY SCHEIDER had never been so physically miserable in his life There he was submerged in the frigid waters of the Bow River, 100 km west of Calgary in the foothills of the Rockies and wondering how many more seconds he could hold out. He and co-star Jurgen Prochnow portraying rival American and Soviet border patrol commanders were locked in a fight to the death in the crucial scene that provides the climax to the new Cold War thriller, The Fourth War, opening today at Windsors Forest Glade cinema. Laycock review, C2 Months later, sitting in the snug atmosphere of a New York hotel room and preparing for the movie premiere, Scheider still shudders at the memory of filming during the rigors of an Alberta winter. I was as cold as I can ever remember being in my life, he recalls. And that one scene was the worst of all because Scheider and Prochnow had to do it again and again all day long The Fourth War is the latest film from veteran director John (The Manchurian Candidate) Fran-kenheimer Set the icy winter of 1988 along the Czech-West German border, its subject is the thaw in East-West relations and its impact on the professional soldier whose entire life has been conditioned by the military mindset of confrontation and aggression the middle of a Canadian winter.

The very first night of shooting, a major scene involving Scheiders character and three young Russian officers had to be postponed because it was too cold Sure, there were plenty of doctors and nurses and people standing around with handwarmers We took all sorts of precautions But, Scheider, emphasizes, conditions were still miserable. During the shooting of that final watery sequence, doubles were used for the long shots. But for the close-ups, Scheider and Prochnow were the ones who took the icy plunge. THERE WAS JUST Jurgen and myself in that hole in the water with a wire net beneath us to keep us from being carried down the river The problem was that neither the stunt people nor Jurgen and myself could stay in for more than 15 seconds because even with thick wet suits on the cold was too intense A routine was established. The two stars would go in for their 15 seconds and then while they were on land trying to warm up, the stunt men would take over the scene for the long shots.

Then the actors would hit the water again. After 11 or 12 seconds, Scheider would be losing any real sense of feeling. Frankenheimer stresses nobody was ever in jeopardy during filming You don't do foolhardy things as a movie director, he says bluntly We knew that to make this picture work, we had to have something very exciting at the end The solution throw the two antagonists in the water See COLD WAR.C3 ROY SCHEIDER, left, battles Jurgen Prochnow in The Fourth War Scheider, 54, is no stranger to discomfort while filming. Jaws had some tough scenes, and his Oscar-nominated performance All That Jazz contained musical sequences that taxed his physical resources to the hilt. When he filmed Sorcerer for director William Fnedkin in the jungles of the Dominican Republic, he thought his misery quotient had reached its peak.

We had this terrible heat, and I was convinced nothing could be worse than that He was wrong He hadnt worked outdoors in In particular, it focuses on two capable but embittered officers Col Jack Knowles (Scheider), a cynical relic of Vietnam, and his Soviet counterpart, NA. Valachev (Prochnow) who is still seething over the humiliation of Afghanistan FACING EACH OTHER across the border, hostile towards the new peace initiatives, they indulge in an increasingly violent contest of nerves which culminates the face-to-face battle (hat gives the film its climax..