Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 30

r1 MOVIE PAGE 2 CLASSICS 5 TELEVISION 10 DETROIT FREE PRESS psgss 12-10 Call Entertainment: 222-6828 curtain cz Versa May Day signals top-notch talent No one medium for Ben Vereen Mr. 0 tility back Mayday is the international distress signal. It's also the Sunday of this weekend, which turns out to be one certainly not to be distressed about. Oh, Carol Channing and "Helly, Dolly!" are leaving the Masonic after two weeks that passed all too quickly. But there's Ben Vereen at the Fox (see story on this page) and several new films, including "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "The Hunger" and "Baby, It's You." Detroit's Latin-American community will keep Hart Plaza warm both in spirit and stomach with this week's' Ethnic Festival.

The mad mimes of Mummenschanz prevail at Music Hall. And Sterling Heights' Premier Center offers Marilyn McCoo and Waylon and Madame, a couple of TV refugees. If you can't be a tube refugee well, can anything good come from the local Ghoulmania that seems to be gripping Detroit TV? Now maybe that's worth crying "Mayday." performance in Bob Fosse's film, "All That Jazz." The right film roles, though, have been scarce a predicament unfortunately not uncommon for black actors. And while he tours in live shows, Vereen is not reticient on speaking about how blacks are treated at the hands of the film industry. "We need support from the business," Vereen said, but adding that support must ultimately come from the audience.

"They need our supplying our creating." VEREEN IS NOT afraid to create himself. Such creativity led to controversy several years ago, when Vereen, with blackface makeup and painted white lips, portrayed legendary black vaudevillian Bert Williams at Ronald Reagan's pre-inaugural gala. Television editing snipped the piece to a few brief scenes without explanation. "I was told it was bad timing," Vereen says. 'I said your bad timing, not I'm proud of my heritage.

It was not buffoonery, there was no shame." Since then Vereen has played the role again, live on stage, where no editing can cut his introduction and explanation of his tribute to Williams, who was the only black comedian in the Ziegfield Follies. In Detroit, Vereen said, "I might even do Bert Williams" so audiences can see the entire piece and judge for themselves. "An Evening with Ben Vereen" is at 8 p.m. Friday at the Fox Theatre. Tickets at all CTC outlets.

By CATHY COLUSON Free Press Asst. Entertainment Editor Ask Ben Vereen what he likes best film, dance, television and he answers with a chuckle, "I like employment." The versatile entertainer, in Detroit Friday for a Mt. Carrael Mercy Hospital benefit at the Fox Theatre, ran't be pinned down these days to one medium. True, he has been touring again with May O'Donnell Concert Dance Company. But between those dates he's managed to wedge in live shows like the one in Detroit, where the troupe is one man Ben Vereen.

He also hints of a Broadway show this fall. WHAT WILL Friday night's audience see in the benefit? said Vereen. Seeing Vereen should be plenty. In a phone interview from his home in Saddle Hill, N.J., Vereen said he can still remember his last stop in Detroit where "we really got down" in the Music Hall (in 1979) and at least one night spot named a drink in his honor. The enthusiasm for Vereen is mutual.

"I love the people in Detroit," he says. Audiences seem to be no problem for Vereen, whether television fans of his "Chicken George" in "Roots," or screen fans of his Detroit and Ben Vereen make up a mutual admiration society. "I love the people in Detroit," the performer says. Free PressMOSES HARRIS A wait of 21 years ends for Bradbury Catharine I I movies LiiSitttjitfwUfc-18 Jimmy's, a ritzy little L.A. lunch favorite.

Bradbury began work on a film of "Something Wicked" 25 years ago, before he wrote the novel. "I worked on it with Gene Kelly, and when that didn't work out, I turned it into a novel," he says. "Over the years, I've done various versions of it which would have starred Jason Robards as the carnival master instead of the librarian. Now I'm so familiar with it that I wish I could go back 25 years so I could see it fresh." AT ITS SIMPLEST, "Something Wicked" is about temptation and love, and the powers both have. "Everyone in the world is a fool when it comes to love and sex," Bradbury says.

"That's the See BRADBURY, Page 4C 1 ii on top of it U.S. actor picked for Stratford plum The Stratford Festival always a newsmaker in Detroit because of the extent to which area residents support the Ontario thespian fest has found its (rih long-sought Willy Loman for its first Hf production of Arthur I I Miller's American t.X fS classic, "Death of a I I Salesman." The plum in, .1 roie win fan to char-Persoff acter actor Nehemiah Persoff, cast after several weeks of searching by the Canadian festival for a U.S. leading man to play the famous role originated in 1949 by Lee J. Cobb. Persoff, a journeyman performer in some 30 films, is perhaps best known for his appearances in "On the Waterfront" and "The Harder They Fall." Persoff currently is appearing onstage in a one-man show, "Tales of Sholem Aleichem," in the Chicago area.

"Salesman" plays Sept. 1-Oct. 22 at Stratford. GETTING CLOSER Detroiter Rob Abate's dream of getting his musical with a Detroit setting, "Scattin'," to Broadway is a bit closer to reality. It'll open at least parts of it on Madison Avenue.

But not in New York. Detroit's Music Hall on Madison will host what are being termed glimpses of the whole show at 7 p.m. Sunday. The purpose of the preview snippets is to raise money for a planned September run of the whole thing. MORE PINE KNOB DATES Pine Knob Music Theatre announced a spate of new dates Thursday.

Tickets go on sale Monday at 10 a.m. at the Clarkston box office and all CTC outlets for Arrowsmith May 30 and Flock of Seagulls and the Fixx June tickets go on sale at the same time and places Tuesday for: Kool and the Gang June 19; the Charlie Daniels Band June 22; Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin and Paco DeLucia June 24 and Joni Mitchell July 4. For performance times and general information, call 647-7790 anytime. FAST FROZEN The Frost is back, and it may be for more than its Friday and Saturday reunion at Detroit's Harpo's. Three members of the original rock band guitarists Dick Wagner and Don Hartman and drummer Bob Rigg plus new bassist Andy Merrell and keyboardist Wayne Calkins will resurrect an era that began in Alpena in 1967 and ended in 1971 after four albums with two modest hits "Mystery Man" and "Rock 'n Roll Music." Says Rigg: "We kept pretty much in touch over the years." Some impromptu jam sessions sounded so good they decided to put the Frost back together for four shows at the Hideaway in Alpena and were buoyed by the results.

"It created so much interest," Rigg said, "if you weren't at the bar at 7:30, you didn't have a place to sit. We turned people away every night." This time, record industry representatives will be watching to see if a wider comeback is viable. Says Rigg: "We're gonna see what happens. There are a lot of ifs here." Written by John Smyntek from reports Jy Free Press entertainment staff. career and Light, of English descent who numbered among his ancestors Mary Bradbury, tried for witchcraft In Salem, Mass.

Books include "The Martian Chronicles," "The Illustrated Man," "Dandelion Wine," and "Fahrenheit 451." His screenwriting career includes scripts for television's "Alfred Hltchock Show," and the "Twilight Zone." Movie scripts include "It Came from Outer Space" (1953) and "Moby Dick" (1956). Excerpted from Current if Ed the bartender (played by James Stacy), a former football star HOLLYWOOD Ray Bradbury, a studied charmer if ever there was one, claims to be a shy man. "My wife even had to propose to me," he says. "And that's true of all the men I know." Bradbury, 62, finally has seen his own favorite novel, "Something Wicked This Way Comes," made into a movie 21 years after it was written. The movie opens Friday in Detroit.

NOT THAT HE HASN'T been busy. Between working on an opera for the Seattle Opera Company, producing more short stories (he has had almost 400 published) and writing his first murder mystery, Bradbury has had his share of things to do. He looks good short, square, very tan with a mop of snowy hair, snappy blue eyes and it is no secret that he loves an audience. Bradbury also loves plenty of good red wine, and he holds it well as he talks over lunch at A review of "Something Wicked This Way Comes" appears on Page 3C. About the author Carnival magician started a Ray Bradbury was born Aug.

22, 1920, in Waukegan, a town similar to Green Town, one visited by carnivals and traveling tent shows. At 12, he met Mr. Electro, a carnvial magician who talked of reincarnation and Immortality. The encounter was the catalyst for Bradbury, leading him to withdraw from athletic competition with his peers and begin writing. His favorite month is October; if he could have chosen his birthday, he would have picked Halloween.

Wlc father uas' a linpmnn with the Waukegan Bureau of Power Bradbury Ron Sweed, here with Froggie, is back as the Ghoul. Ron, whose life has been based on the premise that there's a sucker born every min-vute, refused to let the memory of Ghoulardi die. seeking past glories, puts his strength to the test at Mr. Dark's Pandemonium Carnival in Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes." Bradbury began work on a film of "Wicked" 25 years ago, before he wrote the novel. THE GHOUL IS BACK TV horror wars are heating up "To say that the Ghoul show is one long Polish joke interrupted by a boring monster movie, to say that it is sleazy, unrehearsed and entirely lacking in taste, is not far from the truth.

But it is also in a spontaneous, crazy way a very funny show." Detroit Free Press, 1977 For better and for worse, the Ghoul is back. Like a bad penny wrapped in garbage, he has returned. The goombah of the gross, the titan of tasteless and the Ratso Rizzo of horror-movie hosts somehow has managed to land another Detroit job. Beginning Friday, you can catch him once again in all his slovenly glory at midnight on Channel 20 (WXON-TV), the station he left in 1978. "You can call me anything as long as the check clears," ripostes the Ghoul.

Well, why not. Once upon a time, a punk named Ron Sweed was growing up absurd in Euclid, Ohio, just outside Cleveland. Then one day, possibly searching for a wino to befriend, he found a gorilla suit in an Uey. It's been all sion was a spaced out nudnik known as Ghoulardi, portrayed by one Ernie Anderson. Are you beginning to get the picture? Anyhow, Sweed shows up in the gorilla suit when Ghoulardi is making a personal appearance at a Cleveland amusement park.

Ghoulardi is smitten with the young whippersnapper's brash, trashy attitude and adopts him as his protege. Well, during his full-boor internship with Ghoulardi, Sweed learned enough monkey business to last a lifetime. And he's been trying to shock the monkey and us ever since. Anderson hung up his Ghoulardi shtick in 1966 and split to Hollywood to find fortune, if not fame, as a champ voice-over man on commercials. In fact, he's the voice of all those promos for the ABC network's entertainment programming, from "Dynasty" to "Love Boat." BUT SWEED, terminally enchanted with his hero, refused to let the memory of Ghoulardi die.

So he created him all over again as the Ghoul. Complete with apricot fright wig, See GHOUL, Page 10C Mike Duffy television downhill ever since he put on that suit. SWEED, 34, is the Ghoul. But it's hard to separate one identity from the other. And Sweed only adds to the confusion.

"I'm really Bill Kennedy," he says. "No, actually Lou Gordon never died. I'm here. I'm here." Remember, this is a man whose whole life has been based on the time-honored premise that there's a sucker born every minute. And who, armed with M-80 firecrackers, blows up junk food, toys and a nervy little doll called Froggie, who is based on the legendary Froggy the Gremlin.

Meanwhile, back at the gorilla suit IT'S 1963, and Sweed is 13. Have gorilla suit, will travel. At the time, the hottest goofball aromdon late night Cleveland televi.