Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 17

Willi Detroit ifrec Vxa The People Page SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1975 17-A i i nwn Quincy Jones Bing Crosby "My prescription for living is simple. It seems to me, in these changing times sometimes conditions and situations change overnight it is a healthier thing for everyone to have an abundance of interests other than work or obligatory pursuits. A hobby, charity or social efforts, recreation." James Caan jazz leader and writer: "This generation is supposed to be musically the most modern and progressive, but Duke Ellington was innovating all of this years ago and we are just beginning to catch up with Hey! Lee! Come Back! What's It Like Being a Hero? him. The kids discovered horns six years ago, but El actor: "I'm for anything lington was there years ago. Nobody can improve on his voicing of instruments.

To learn about horns, the kids have to get into -v J1 and everything on film. The movie industry has the obligation to inform as well as entertain. The facts of life play a large part in what makes the world go round. If the arts are to honestly mirror our life and times, filmmakers must include 1 JK 1 Ellington." Bor Orben presidential speech-writer: "Sometimes I get the feeling that an economist is someone who thinks inflation is caused by the poor having too much money." Christopher George Il Lee Majors, TV's "Six Million Dollar Man," doesn't like being interviewed. Recently, while filming on location, Lee spent much of the day.

trying to hide. Is this proper behavior for a bionic hero? actor: "I think Carpi Burnett is the world's sexiest woman. The longer you sit with the lady the more desirable she becomes. I believe it comes from within. Just because she is so at peace with herself and the world.

Besides, I think it's sexy for a woman scenes involving the sex act if such scenes are pertinent." Ramsey Lewis jazz pianist: "One of the best lessons I ever learned came from two men I greatly admire Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner. They said you have to strive to get your level of performance so high that when you have a bad night and everyone does people won't notice." Otto Preminger producer: "I am for complete equality for men, women -and children. Women producers and directors? Yes. A woman president? Why not? There are safeguards against mistakes in the Constitution for women and men, too." Phyllis to be terrific at what she does, and Carol is definitely that." Peter Ustinov actor-writer-director: "They are very similar, filmmaking and writing. The one thing I like about fiction is that you can get a 'voluptuous' sense of a phrase.

Film is a hybrid form at the moment. The critics treat it as an art form. But it isn't really an art form, it's a cocktail of artistic sympathies. It is, to my mind, at its best a poignant and appealing form of journalism set on an artistic base." Gunther GebeUWilliams "I have one theory you should never serve meals on time. You know the starving will eat anything.

So I use small plates, coasters as a matter of fact, and dole out little servings. It sure helps the hostess' morale if everything is cleaned premier circus animal trainer: "I have much respect for my animals and they have the same for me. There's nothing magic about what I do. No matter how long you work with an animal, how well you think you know, him, there's al- A up. I also turn the talk to-religion and politics so people will get into heated arguments and not notioe what they are eating.

This makes them think that the arguing was the cause of their indigestion." Freddie Hart country music singer: "Hank Williams helped me when I was starting out, with advice I've never forgotten. He said, 'Sing every song as if it's the last song you'll And he added, 'You'll make it, but you have to believe in yourself or nobody else will believe in William Ruckelshaus director of the S. Environmental Protection Agency: "The environment can be saved, but we need to focus less on the inevitable fate of man and more on the quality of his journey, whatever the fate." ways a chance that, one day, when you least expect it, he may turn on you. A trainer who puts total trust, in his animals is foolish. Trainers get hurt because they push too far and aren't careful.

Animals are very like children. You must have great patience with them, praising them when they' behave, scolding them when they don't. In that way they learn to respect you and learn that it is their advantage to do what you tell them." and Majors is away, burrowing through tall grass to a hideout down by the stream. Donna Mills as the captured cryptologist is in red riding gear and attempting to jump her scared horse over a barricade and into a puddje of water. On camera; she pulls to a halt near Austin in the shade of an old apple tree.

He's undercover, looking after her so the Commies don't torture her and gain that secret code. They make eyes at each other add trade double-entendre remarks, but you can bet that Steve Austin isn't going to fall in love; the kids wouldn't go tor it at all. For the six million dollar man, no hanky-panky, whatsoever. BREAK, and the publicist whips out two dozen black and white glossies for Majors to inscribe. They are all p.

tures of himself, the six million dollar man, in various poses and situations; jumping out of airplanes, stepping inm lions' dens, knocking people out, opening safes with his fingernails, caught underwater in a wet suit, picking up rear ends of gasoline trucks, rarmning his bionic head through fortified brick walls. i Fondly, Majors signs, nearly smiling as he writes the personalized; inscriptions on these glossies which will find their ways onto sub-teenage bedroom walls throughout America. "Well, are you satisfied now, Steve I mean Lee? Do you finally feel that you've got it made?" We trudge behind as he shoulders his way toward the sanctuary of his trailer. "I like six million dollar," Lee says. 'Like him a lot, even though he's cybernetic organism.

A body does take on some of his ways when you play him every day, though." "What's the hardest thing about the six million dollar man show, Steve -r I mean Lee?" Majors thinks a minute. "This show? The hardest thing? Well, I guess the hardest thing for me is to laugh on camera. Every show I ever done has been a drama, and 1 never laughed. On this here show, I get out there on camera and I can never give out more than just a little snicker. "It's funny, but you know what? When I'm giving them little snictfers on the outside, on the inside I'm laughing my big oP head off, get my meaning? I think it's kind of hilarious the six million dollar man maybe could earn himself that much." BY ROBERT KERWIN Sundiy Group Writtr You have to do a lot of chasing to catch up with the six million dollar man, and not because he can run 60 miles an hour.

It's because he hides out and doesn't want to talk to practically anybody. Six million dollar. Steve Austin. Lee Majors. Adults mix up who is which; but any kid in the country can explain it patiently: Majors is a TV actor who plays the part of Steve Austin, a former astronaut and NASA pilot who crashed and almost totalled himself.

They show the crash every week behind credits at the beginning. Also they show Austin (Majors) being wheeled frantically into surgery where he is supplied with a new pair of super legs, a strong new mechanical right arm 20 times stronger than the left and a new eye which can see 10 miles, over fences and through stone wafls. All bionic: bionic eye, bionic arm, bionic legs. Costing the U.S. government J6 million.

AT THAT COST, they have to make use of the guy, Government intelligence agencies need Mr. Bionic's super powers to get them out of whatever trouble they get themselves into. Austin is willing, but not stupid. talks projects over before racing into them blindly. He's a cyborg, but he's no robot.

He's got a life of his own. Another probjem: the Commies. Once they know of the six million dollar man, they want a piece of him. In every episode, practically, somebody is out to capture Austin, strap him into a lab, and extract his vital bionic parts, keep him under research for life, or torture information out of him about his bionic self. He keeps getting away, punching people up in the meantime.

They'll throw three of the toughest looking actors in Hollywood against him a couple of whites and a black, usually, In muscle-revealing T-shirts and Steve makes short work of them. In slow motion (that's what happens during any heavy bionic action) the face grimaces, the legs the bionic foot flies out to catch the goon in the chest, sending him slowly reeling, twisting, skidding away. Slowly another hoodlum swan-dives at Austin from a high ledge, but the bionic eye perceives, the bionic arm comes around, slowly chops the man into slow oblivion, sprawling across the slippery, snow-covered lawn. The third guy, panicky, usually runs away in fast motion. "MAJORS IS going to be rough," a publicist is saying as we drive to a ranch north of Hollywood.

"Lee won't say much about himself: He's happy with the show, and feels he's said it all. He likes to inscribe photos, thcugh. He'll stand there inscribing all day. What he doesn't like are personal questions. He's a private person." The limo pulls in through a gate to a ranch of about 9,000 acres: hills, valleys, rivers and trees.

A mile or so inside, in an almost unreal beauty of a meadow, are cameras and crew, and a blond in horsey clothes going over a jump, losing her mount, falling onto air mattresses; next to Tab Hunter, who's dead from losing his mount and falling as he attempted the same jump. The woman is supposed to be a U.S. cryptologist competing in the Olympic horse jumping championship; soon she'll be spirited away in a helicopter by foreign agents posing as American Secret Service. And that means Commie torture until she reveals the code. "Tab, you're dead," the director shouts to Hunter.

"Lee, you're alive," he shouts as Majors ambles out from behind trees. "Let's see some movement, action." Majors is husky in an orange-rust turtleneck, a beige suede coat, form-fitting khaki slacks. In real life he looks bionic: tight haircut, high cheeks, narrow chiseled eyes. Good casting. Six feet, 175, frozen frown, efficient, professional, and the kind of body that takes care of itself without much help.

The scene soon ends. The publicist makes the approach, trembling. "Hi, Lee. Got a few seconds?" Majors comes over, irritated. He wants to go to his trailer, out of the hot sun.

"Tell us about tthe six million dollar man, will you, Steve I mean Lee?" Squinting with bionic eyes, Majors says in a tight, wired-jaw bionic voice: "He has a superhuman body: artificial legs that run 60 miles an hour, a right arm 20 times stronger than the left. The arm was created at UCLA Medical Center; it straps onto the shoulder and operates off a battery. It's a prosthetic arm is what it is. "Getting the lead in this show was a big thing for me. In "The Big Valley' I was fourth banana, in "The Man from Shiloh I was about third banana, on 'Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law'.

I was second banana. Now I'm number one, first banana, my own show. And that is every actor's dream." A SIGNAL from the director and Majors disappears off to his trailer. Fifteen minutes later he emerges in $500 form-fitting denims, takes a cir cuitous route far from us, and hides behind some trees. We give chase, and catch him hiding back there.

"How about telling us more, Steve I mean Lee?" "You see," he continues nervously, "what cyborg means is that the six million dollar man is a cybernetic organism, do you understand? Cybernetic organism means part human, part machine. That's what cybernetic organism means. "But the thing is, we try to favor the (human element. Even though the American government paid the six million dollars to put the man together, he don't owe them his soul. Even though he works as an undercover agent, he can still, to some extent, be his own man.

"Scripts are hard to come by. We have to utilize his Achilles heel. What the six million dollar man is, is an old-fashioned hero. But he isn't Superman. The audience can empathize with him, don't you know." Majors gradually backs off, then dashes for a far clump of trees in hiding.

When we get there, he's in a crouch, peeking around a thick trunk. "What do you want to know? I do a lot of traveling in this show, all kinds of different locations. It's tough up every morning at 5:30 and work until 11 at night, and you have to smash your hand through walls and all that. You know, them walls are supposed to be light plaster base, more or less a powder, but it makes you wonder. "Sometimes the walls are so hard when I punch them that I think maybe the technicians are playing tricks on me.

I'm punching with my real arm, see; not the prosthetic arm you see in closeup on screen. I been bruised and-banged-up plenty on this show. "Besides, I already got a bad back from when I was a freshman at Indiana University, and had to give up football. They wanted to operate, but I told the doctors nothing doing, I nixed surgery. It don't bother me as long as I keep my muscles strong doing sit-ups each day.

"My wife, she worries about me doing sports, but she still lets me play football with my gang. And golf, too; I swing the clubs pretty good. And we do a lot of fishing. "My wife, she's in the business, too. I know you'd recognize her if you saw her; she's done thousands of commercials on TV.

She's just a little gal from Texas, but she's the Ultra-Brite toothpaste lady all across America. Being married to her is wonderful." Somebody deflects our attention, jili Raising the Flag: 1 wo Jima, 1945 Feb. 23, 1945. The morning of the fifth day. Before it is over, 31 days there will be 6,821 Americans killed and 19,217 wounded in the bloodiest single battle of the Pacific.

All this for a miserable piece of volcanic ash called Iwo Jima, an island five miles long and two miles wide at the widest. Tiny, but crucial in the grand arc of island-hopping that began in Australia and now reaches to within 700 miles of Tokyo. 10:15 a.m. Mt. Suribachi seems finally secured.

The peak 550 feet above the sea appears still, the enemy caves empty and smoking- The Marines raise a small flag. Two Japanese dart out of a cave with grenades. They are shot down. Now, Suribachi is secure. Offshore, a round, little, myopic man in glasses slips while transferring from the command ship to a landing craft.

He bobs helplessly in the roiled sea until he is fished out, without his helmet. Finally, he makes it to the beach and borrows a helmet from a dead Marine near a burned-out jeep. They tell him the flag is going up atop Suribachi and the myopic little man, Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press, huffs and puffs his way to the peak. 12:15 p.m. The Marines want no doubts; they will establish clear title to Suribachi.

The first flag comes down. A new flag is going up, five by eight feet, twice as large as the first. Joe Rosenthal scam- IRS Shuts Engine Inventor's Shop names faces I EDWARD LAFORCE, inventor of an engine he claims is more economical and efficient than any used by the auto industry, had a visit from the IRS, he says, and now his workshop is closed. The 60-year-old inventor said the IRS claims he owes $35,298 in withholding taxes for his 30 employes, and if he doesn't pay his equipment will be auctioned. LaForce's engine, a modified 258-cubic-inch American Motors engine, got 33 percent on, fellas, this is historic," he says, kidding.

The Marines wave their rifles and helmets at the camera. Joe Rosenthal shoots that, too, and wonders which of the three shots will make the papers, if any. He has, at the moment no sense of history, certainly no intimation of a huge sculpture cast in epic bronze that would become the centerpiece of a nation's tribute to its valiant dead. His picture won a Pulitzer Prize for 1945. pers around building a little cairn of rocks and stands on it for added height.

He raises his camera. The Marines lunge forward, driving the new flag home Joe Rosenthal shoots, hoping he caught the scene "right at the peak of the action. One tiny part of a second off and you lose it." Three Marines now steady the flag while the others search for rope to secure it. Joe Rosenthal shoots that. The whole group performs.

"Come itmwi www vi, wmt w-w v-v ii greater gas mileage when tested at a steady 30 miles an hour. U.S. officials refute the claims, however, saying the engine was tested under ideal, not normal, conditions. PRESIDENT FORD told the annual dinner of the U.S. Reserve Officers Association that in preparing for the occasion he had "made a tactical mistake I tried to put on my old Navy uniform." But Ford, who served in World War II, added: "Some of my critics might like to know that the cap I wore then still fits." KENNETH MOSS, former New Yorker who became nationally known as the Wall Street whiz kid, is expected to surrender in Los Angeles to face a murder charge in the drug overdose death of Robbie Mcintosh, drummer for the Average White Band rock group.

JOHN DEAN just can't seem to get his lecture tour going trouble-free: Now a professor and a student at St. John's University in New York have filed suit to block payment of a $3,000 speaker's fee to Dean. The reason given: It would mean "crime does pay." OTTO KERNER, former Illinois governor now serving three years in federal prison for his role in a racetrack stock scandal, has asked for an immediate release for health reasons. A prison physician says Kerner, 66, has a lung condition that could be tuberculosis. Marshall Supreme Court Justice Thurgocd Marshall, 66, is back home in Washington after spending 10 days in Bethesda Naval Hospital for pneumonia.

Meanwhile, Walter Reed Army Medical Center reports that Justice William O. Douglas, 76, continues to improve. Douglas, who suffered a stroke Dec. 31, works a few hours each day and receives physical and occupational therapy. FEB.

23, 1926 SOCIETY GAZES UPON DETROIT'S $7 MILLION JEWEL: MASONIC AUDITORIUM OPENS. FEB. 23, 1934 CATHOLIC STUDENTS BOYCOTT MUSEUM; DIEGO RIVERA'S MURALS "AN AFFRONT TO PATRIOTISM, RELIGION." FEB. 25, 1934 HITLER BECOMES AB FEB. 23, 1947 A CLICK; A TURN; A PHOTOGRAPH: POLAROID INTRODUCES MINUTE CAMERA.

FEB. 23, 1947 PITTSBURGH SIGNS HANK GREENBERG; $80,000 ENDS TALK OF HOME-RUN KING'S RETIREMENT FEB. 25, 1956 NO BOOST IN TAX RATE, MAYOR COBO PROMISES; HOLDS LINE FOR 7TH YEAR FEB. 26, 1956 GRACE KELLY PARES WEDDING LIST; MONACO CATHEDRAL HOLDS ONLY 400 FEB. 27, 1963 VENUS TOO HOT FOR LIFE; MARINFR 2 FINDS 800 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT UNDER COLD CLOUDS SOLUTE RULER TODAY.

Nepal's King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya participate in a religious ceremony in Kat- mandu in preparation for Birendra's corona- tion, set for Monday. The 29-year-old monarch, when crowned, will rule the world's only Hindu kingdom. Police have clamped a tight security net on the festive Nepalese capital as royalty and statesmen from 58 nations, including Prince Charles of Britain, began arriving for the glittery ceremony. The US. delegation is headed by Philip Buchen, President Ford's legal adviser.

FEB. 27, 1934 FIRST LA SALLE OFF PRO is ilk DUCTION LINE; MAYOR COUZENS ADMIRES CADILLAC'S STREAMLINED BABY. FEB. 28, 1939 MRS. FDR RESIGNS FROM DAR; CITES GROUP'S REFUSAL OF MARIAN ANDERSON CONCERT.

LI Douglas.