The Knoxville News-Sentinel from Knoxville, Tennessee • 109

The Kiixville Newi-Settind Pag TV-1 Sunday February 13 1983 She Really Won't Be a Stark-Naked Lady Artist's sketch of 'Luck Lester's P51 downing German Mel 09 during World War 'Eagles7 Fly Into a Hurricane i By VERNON SCOTT HOLLYWOOD Viewers can spend a couple of hours with a stark-naked lady on prime-time television at 8 tonight but worse luck she will only be heard not -seen The undraped female is Alexa Hamilton who stars in Invisible Woman" an NBC-TV movie in which the brunette beauty spends about half her time starkers Or at least we think she is in the buff Actually- a trick Miss Hamilton is modestly clad at all times trussed in an iridescent blue body stocking with matching mittens and hood that covers her head entirely It is this brilliant blue blending invisibly with the walls floor and ceiling of a room covered in the same material that gives the invisible effect It is called chroma key- time consuming laborious and high tech For Alexa it was exhausting and on a couple of occasions dangerous The results are convincing the best special effects involving invisibility ever attempted on screen It surpasses the movie and TV versions of "The Invisible Man" by several light years Chroma key sophistication provides much more than simple indentations on a carpet to give the impression of an invisible person treading across a room or the outline of a body on a bed In the role of Sandy Martinson Miss Hamilton is covered with a chemical substance that leaves her wholely and presumably forever invisible Her face can be seen only by the application of makeup topped by a wig Her clothes of course are altogether visible To achieve total invisibility therefore she must strip nude which she does in several scenes It is curiously erotic watching a woman's clothes disappear until one sees only a disembodied brassiere and panties floating around leaving viewers to imagine who or what is in them When the lingerie is stripped away imaginations are allowed to run rampant especially in an elevator crowded with men and in a steam room We are given an outline of the naked lady in the steam room when the thick air provides a silhouette What we don't know is that Miss Hamilton shot every scene alone in the iridescent blue room while her fellow actors performed simultaneously on another set fully visible to the camera got lonely she said "With that hood on I couldn't see So they put sand bags on the floor out of camera range to stop me from walking out of the scene I bruised myself a lot walking into walls- "In one shot I had to fall into a mild puddle in the body stocking 1 I i I I I By GERRY SEGROVES They were black and fought two wars at the same time one against the German Luftwaffe and the other against the racism perpetrated by their own fellow countrymen Some 450 of them were sent overseas as US Army Air Corps pilots after the winds of World War II blew into a hurricane They were members of units named the 99th 100th 301st and 302nd Fighter Squadrons and the 332nd Fighter Group They compiled an impressive combat record III enemy aircraft destroyed in the air 25 damaged another 150 enemy aircraft destroyed on the ground 123 damaged during 1578 missions and a grand total of 157533 sorties But other numbers leap from their record book to provide even more fuel for thought Of the 450 pilots 66 were killed in action Ninty-five won the Distinguished Flying Cross The 332nd itself ended the war with a Distinguished Unit Citation Unlike Victor (Pug) Henry the most prominent character in "The Winds of War" ABCs audience-drawing epic which concludes at 8 tonight their story is captured in a four-part PBS series called Black Eagles A presentation of "Tony Journal" the first half-hour of the series "Clipped Wings" was aired last Sunday on WSJK-TV Channel 2 The second part "The Enemy Within" is scheduled to be televised at 5:30 pm today The story tells of the 10000 men and women who participated in a World War military "experiment" which resulted not only in formation of the 332nd Fighter Group but also the 447th Bombardment Group and the 477th Composite Group The series opened last Sunday by showing a middle-aged man quietly weeping at the "Black Wings" exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC Nearby a little girl saw the man and asked her mother "Why is that man crying?" Her mother replied "Perhaps he's a Tuskegee Airman" The girl glanced from the man to her mother "What's a Tuskegee Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama where many of the idiots were trained) has been a missing page from our history books for more than 40 years" Brown answered "It is certainly the story of a dramatic and visible victory oyer segregation still not documented in most history books" Through recollections by various veterans the show reviewed laws that excluded blacks from military flight training black response to discriminatory Air Corps policies and the establishment of the 99th Fighter Squadron The segment today focuses on the period when critics of the overseas performance claimed that blacks had failed the test based on the initial combat assignment in the North African Theater Operation Several veterans including Air Force Gen Benjamin Davis Jr recall the critical period which nearly signaled the end of black participation as combat pilots in the Air Corps Shooting down German airplanes rather than effectively carrying out the assigned duty of close ground support "where they do dive bombing and stating up near the enemy front lines" emerged as the criterion for the judgment of combat performance for the 99th explains retired Col Edward Gleed who was operations officer for the four-squadron group Because they were assigned to close support of ground forces the pilots of the 99th at first seldom encountered enemy aircraft Gleed explains "It was only after they (the Air Corps) started varying their type of work sometimes escorting medium bombardment aircraft like B25s that they were able to get into the areas where the enemy (aircraft) were" The third part of the series "Jim Graveyard" scheduled to air at 5:30 pjn next Sunday highlights the war record after the 99th joined the 332nd Fighter Group in Europe in July 1944 Using vintage combat footage several of the airmen recount their battles against the enemy Among them is Clarence (Lucky) Lester the pilot of a P51 Mustang who shot down three German planes in one day The series will end Feb 27 with "Red Tails and Black Aces" chronicling the evolution of the "Red-Tailed Angels" a name the fighter pilots acquired Alexa Hamilton and hood The mud congealed on the hood and I couldn't breathe I had to rip the hood off before I passed out" The aspect of the movie that Miss Hamilton found fascinating was speculation by cast and crew and herself about what a person would do if indeed he or she could become invisible She said sex and economics were the first things to come to minds the unseen voyeur and taking advantage of financial opportunities "There's some voyeur in all of us" she said "I suppose everyone has speculated about what they would do where they would go and what want to see if they were invisible I think it depends on what stage of your life find yourself It would change all the time I were invisible be less inhibited than the woman I play in the movie have more fon with it- "But we had to be careful with visual effects to avoid double entendres and too obvious situations involving a naked lady because the show will air at 8 looking for the family audience "Even so there is something erotic about knowing there is an undressed woman in a scene even if you cant see her "If we get good ratings we are supposed to become a weekly series But I don't know on opposite The Winds of War" WTVK To Drop Show WTVK Channel 26 has revealed plans to drop its weekday "Today at the show at the conclusion of this coming telecast The show has been televised since November from the Sunsphere Restaurant on the Fair site The program will be replaced by reruns of Facts of "That name applies to all of the black men and women who were part of an experiment during World War II to test the ability of black people to fight as combat pilots" the mother explained from the bomber crews they protected Gleed says Amazed' the child -responded mean there the name stemmed from the unit coloring on the were 'Mack pikrts during World War II? wonder fighter tail assemblies and the reputation his 'why I nevef leAfned that in i pilots gained in steadfastly guarding bomb- "The Tuskegee Airman Experiment (named for ers" B25s and later heavy B17s and B24s i.