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165073090d8d985af685f09c4f947b4b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-172-story.html | SAILING : Field Is Off in Cabo San Lucas Race | SAILING : Field Is Off in Cabo San Lucas Race
Twenty boats left Newport Beach in light, seven-knot southwest winds Saturday in Newport Harbor Yacht Club’s biennial race to Cabo San Lucas.
Six larger, faster ULDB 70s are scheduled to start at noon today. The 24-hour gap poses a challenge to the sleds to see if they can overtake the early starters in the 790-nautical-mile race.
The race record is 2 days 22 hours 2 minutes 40 seconds by the sled Blondie in 1987.
Chayah, Oscar Krinsky’s Vallecelli 50 from Alamitos Bay YC, was first over the line Saturday. Mel and Bud Richley’s Choate 49 Amante flew a protest flag against Jim Emmi’s Swan 431 Pele, which did one penalty circle.
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12fda725f27b24d50177967f28203cfa | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-181-story.html | GYMNASTICS UCLA INVITATIONAL : Umphrey and Keswick Give Bruin Men Lead | GYMNASTICS UCLA INVITATIONAL : Umphrey and Keswick Give Bruin Men Lead
They spent the summer on the U.S. Gymnastics national team, earning much-needed seasoning while competing against European superpowers and elite U.S. athletes who do not compete collegiately. Now, back at UCLA, juniors Scott Keswick and Chainey Umphrey are putting their summer experience to work by leading their team to the top-ranked spot in the country.
UCLA, ranked No. 1 in the nation, might have its best men’s gymnastics team since those of 1984 and 1987, says Art Shurlock, who has coached the Bruins men’s team since 1964.
“This team may be more like 1987, with Tony Pineda, Chris Waller, David Moriel, it is so strong,” Shurlock said. “We still have things to work on, but we are ahead so far this year.”
After three events of the UCLA-Times men’s and women’s gymnastics invitational at Pauley Pavilion Saturday night, the UCLA men are also ahead, leading second-place Nebraska in total points, 142.050 to 141.950. Arizona State is third at 140.850, followed by New Mexico and Minnesota tied at 139 and Illinois at 135.950.
Umphrey won the individual rings competition with a 9.9 score and tied Christian Rohde of Arizona State for first on the pommel horse with a 9.85. He tied for first in the floor exercise at 9.7 with three other gymnasts--teammate Brad Hayashi, Nebraska’s Che Bowers and Minnesota’s Leif Carlson. The all-around leader is Umphrey at 29.45, followed by Keswick at 29.15.
In the women’s field after two events, Oregon State leads at 96.4, followed by UCLA at 95.1, Arizona State at 94.7 and California at 92.650. UCLA sophomore Amy Thorne won the uneven bars with a score of 9.8 and Christine Belotti of Arizona State won the vault with a 9.9. The all-around leader is Oregon State’s Chari Knight, a freshman.
The remaining events and team competition concludes today at 2 p.m.
UCLA’s 1984 team, with Tim Daggett and Mitch Gaylord, was more celebrated than any other that Shurlock has coached. Those gymnasts went on to compete for the gold-medal winning 1984 Olympic team. But if Umphrey and Keswick get their way, their 1992 collegiate year will conclude with a trip to the Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
“That’s what I am aiming for,” Umphrey said. “This summer it was great competing, and with each competition I am improving, which is my goal.”
Umphrey, 21, works hard at building strength, to give him flexibility when performing. But he says he is somewhat lucky, because his muscular build is hereditary.
“My mom and dad are muscular and athletic,” Umphrey said. “And my sister, Frances, is a good high school basketball player. It kind of runs in the family.”
Umphrey Jr., as his brother Greg is called, is also on the Bruins’ gymnastics team. Umphrey, whose home is in Albuquerque, N.M., also has another brother and two other sisters.
Umphrey won the all-around title at the 1990 U.S. Olympic Festival and a gold medal on the rings. At the U.S.-Soviet meet, he scored 58.5 points out of a possible 60 and was the best American finisher in the all-around and the rings. He is ranked in the top 20 collegiately in every event except the vault, and is first in the rings and horizontal bar.
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ca15f95da729ec9e1280bc6b7bede2a8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-189-story.html | Miscellany | Miscellany
Rio Mesa High sophomore Marion Jones ran the 100-meter dash in 11.61 seconds, fastest girls time in the nation this year, in the Spartan Relays at Rio Mesa. Two other nation-leading marks were run: Deena Drossin, an Agoura High senior, clocked 10 minutes 40.2 seconds in the 3,200 meters, and the Agoura girls’ 4 x 800 relay team timed 9:40.42.
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539735b0d3ccc3059225a5021f222b2b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-228-story.html | Is the Time Past to Belittle Abner? : Baseball: Intent on making good as Padre center fielder, the 24-year-old is changing his ways. | Is the Time Past to Belittle Abner? : Baseball: Intent on making good as Padre center fielder, the 24-year-old is changing his ways.
He junked the earrings and left them home. His raunchy locker-room humor is being kept in check. He’s seeking advice from veteran players instead of snapping wet towels at naked men.
Shawn Wesley Abner, who has been little more than an intriguing sideshow to the Padres for the past five years, is changing his act.
“For me, this is it,” said Abner, vying for the Padres’ starting center-field job. “This is my do-or-die year. I’m on a mission. I’ve busted my ass all winter and didn’t even think about anything else. I don’t succeed, I’ll be the most disappointed guy in the world.
“Really, I’ve got no excuses, because they’re giving me every opportunity in the world. I wake up every morning thinking about the opportunity. I mean, there are two outfield spots wide open. The only other teams who have two spots open are the expansion teams, and they haven’t drafted yet.
“But I’m sure people are expecting me to fail so they can call me a failure again. I know I haven’t lived up to expectations. Don’t you think I know that? Everyone tells me that.
“But you know something? The hardest thing of all is not living up to your own expectations.
“That hurts more than anything.”
Shawn Abner is 24 years old.
He was supposed to be a star. The town of Mechanicsburg, Pa., was flooded with baseball scouts every time he played. He had speed. He had power. He could field.
“He had everything you’d ever want,” said Joe McIlvaine, Padre general manager, who scouted him while with the New York Mets. “He had all the tools and that great makeup. Who wouldn’t want him?”
The Mets, who had the No. 1 pick in the free-agent draft of June 1984, decided to take him. They picked him over Mark McGwire . . . and over Cory Snyder . . . and over Oddibe McDowell . . . and over Scott Bankhead.
“I remember sitting in his house that day,” McIlvaine said. “He didn’t have an agent, so I thought I’d have to be dealing with his father. But it was his mother, she was the force. And, let me tell you, she was stubborn.
“I finally said, ‘Mrs. Abner, why don’t you please call an agent, because it should sure would be easier dealing with an agent than you.’
“We signed him 10 minutes later.”
Abner received a $150,500 signing bonus, at the time the largest in the history of the game.
It took three years for the critics to emerge. He no longer had any power. He couldn’t hit a breaking ball. He didn’t have any discipline at the plate. He was a bust.
“It was crazy,” McIlvaine said. “He was the youngest player in the league, and all you’d ever hear about was that he couldn’t lay off the curveball. He keeps chasing curveballs in the dirt. The kid was 19 years old.”
He didn’t play again for the Mets. He was traded during the 1986 winter meetings to the Padres in a package that included Kevin Mitchell. The Mets got Kevin McReynolds.
Padre fans never have forgotten.
“I can’t blame them,” Abner said. “What have I done? It’s not like I’ve been completely awful. But I’m sure they want to guy who can do more than play defense and hit .240.”
When you’re the No. 1 pick in all of the land, mediocrity hardly is tolerated.
“I remember going to this card show over the winter,” Abner said, “where I was signing autographs. This guy comes up with about 1,000 of my rookie cards. He just walks up, doesn’t say anything, but he shows me his cards and gives me a look, like, ‘Look what I wasted my time on.’
“This other one came up and said, ‘You can play defense, but you can’t hit worth a (darn).’
“And this girl was 3 years old.”
There was the time Abner brought ferrets to spring-training camp, wanting to alleviate his boredom. There was the spring-training camp that Abner had designs shaved into his head, and after he grew tired of it two weeks later, shaved everything off. This year, he was all set to have U.S.A. shaved into the side of his hair, you know, for patriotic reasons, but his barber told him he couldn’t pull it off.
Yes, the dude can be a little peculiar.
Do you know anyone else that keeps his forearms clean-shaven--and occasionally shaves his chest hair?
“I don’t like hair on my body,” Abner said.
Then there’s the matter of his wedding. He married his high-school sweetheart, Kris, in the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas on Oct. 5, 1987. Or was it Oct. 6?
“I don’t know, one of those,” Abner said. “I can never remember that date. I just know it was the day after the season ended.”
The attire?
Abner wore high-top tennis shoes, shorts and a khaki shirt.
Kris wore a mini-skirt with sneakers.
“We just wanted to get it over with,” Abner said. “It only cost us $25, it was great. It was just us, and a secretary from the (Las Vegas) Stars. She had to be our witness because we didn’t have any.
“When it was over, we went grocery shopping.
“You know, I wouldn’t call it fancy or anything.”
The Abners spent their winters in Las Vegas, where he spent most his professional career, playing for the triple-A Stars. Every Friday night, you could find Abner at a casino playing blackjack.
“I was never one for all that glitter,” he says, “but I do like to gamble. My wife let me gamble once a week, so every Friday I’d go down to the Golden Nugget, and play blackjack. Fourth table from the left. I’d never bet no more than $5 or $10 a time, and as soon as I get up $50, I’d quit.
“Come on, $50, that’s a lot of money. That’s a pair of pants and shirt right there.”
It was the simple life. Just a kid growing up, exploring the world. Maybe he would have matured quicker if he had attended college and accepted the football scholarship offered by the University of Georgia.
Maybe his scholarship would have been revoked, anyway, considering that he never graduated from high school, and instead wound up obtaining his GED--general equivalency diploma.
“I got it through the mail,” Abner said. “Basically, my mom took it for me.”
It never mattered, Abner figured. He always had sports. His athletic skills would earn him a living.
Then, it dawned on him. Life without baseball? What would he do?
“I decided I better get damn serious,” Abner said, “and that’s what I’ve done.”
If his confidence has been shattered over the years, it was restored over the winter by Merv Rettenmund, the Padres’ hitting coach. Five times a week, two hours a day, Rettenmund worked with Abner in the batting cage.
The long, sweeping swing, the one that resulted in one strikeout every 5 1/2 at-bats during his big-league career, has been transformed into a short and compact stroke. Instead of his willingness to swing at every pitch within two feet of the strike zone, Abner has learned patience.
“I know it’s only the first week of camp, and the games haven’t started,” Abner said, “but this is the best I’ve ever felt. I’ve never hit line drives the first week like this.
“It’s such a great feeling knowing that their are jobs open. That’s the first thing I think about every morning. Even my wife talks about it. We’re having dinner, and she’ll say, ‘There’s two jobs open. After you’re done eating, why don’t you go out and hit some more.’ ”
There are five players vying for the center-field and left-field positions, but Abner is the only one who never spent a day in the minors last season. Let’s see, there’s Thomas Howard and Darrin Jackson in contention for the center-field job, and Jerald Clark and Oscar Azocar in left.
“It wasn’t like last year, if I hit .350 I was going to knock Joe Carter out of there,” Abner said. “I don’t think Jack (McKeon, former manager) ever wanted to go in the same direction as me. He never had confidence in me.
“Larry Bowa liked me. I think he was going to me the chance. But as soon as he got fired, I knew I was cooked. He even said, ‘They’ll probably send you to the minors now.’
“And then Jack took over, and everything went downhill. It was like, ‘Screw you, go to the back of the line.’ ”
When you have a .218 batting average, with six homers and 41 RBIs in a career spanning parts of four major-league seasons, managers have this funny habit of omitting your name from the lineup.
But now there is a new regime. He has Manager Greg Riddoch telling him that the job is his to lose. He has McIlvaine telling him that he’ll finally have a chance to prove himself. He has teammates telling him that this is a chance of a lifetime.
“It’s funny because so many people say it’s an advantage to me that Joe is here,” Abner said, “because he’s the one to sign me.
“But what people forget is that he’s also the one who traded me. . . .
“Listen, all I’m asking for is a fair shake, and now I’m going to get it. Look at what happened to Shane Mack. They never gave him a chance. They said he couldn’t hit. So they let him go, and he hits .327 with Minnesota.
“Now, I’d be a conceited SOB if I said I’m the only one who hasn’t gotten a chance. I know I’m not the Lone Ranger here. But I know I’m going to do it this year. I can feel it.
“I’m going to show people that they’ve been wrong about me. I’m going to show them I can play this game. You’ll see.
“Then what can what they say?”
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87359aff9508d1c87da6d5f90be6084a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-229-story.html | Woods’ Work Keeps Toreros in Tournament : College basketball: USD defeats Gonzaga, 72-62, with help from forward’s 23 points. Woods is selected to All-WCC first time, and now ranks top active player on tournament career scoring list. | Woods’ Work Keeps Toreros in Tournament : College basketball: USD defeats Gonzaga, 72-62, with help from forward’s 23 points. Woods is selected to All-WCC first time, and now ranks top active player on tournament career scoring list.
Kelvin Woods takes a workmanlike approach to most of this accolade stuff. And the past 48 hours have brought a lot of it.
Friday, on the eve of the West Coast Conference basketball tournament, Woods was the lone University of San Diego player named to All-WCC first team.
With his first basket Saturday morning, minutes into USD’s first-round 72- 62 victory over Gonzaga, the 6-5 junior forward became the tournament’s career scoring leader among active players.
By the time Woods scored his 20th point with 11:06 left, USD had built a 17-point lead and had all but wrapped up the victory, enabling the Toreros (17-11) to advance to a semifinal game against St. Mary’s tonight at 7:30.
USD never trailed, scoring the first seven points. It extended a five-point lead to 15 with an 11-1 run to start the second half. Reed Watson’s reverse layup with 10:45 left gave USD a 19-point lead, 50-31. From there, Gonzaga (14-14) never got closer than the final margin, losing for the fifth time in five tournament games.
USD, the No. 3-seeded team, evened its five-year tournament record at 3-3. The Toreros, which had lost their final four regular-season games, must win the tournament to advance to the NCAA tournament.
Woods supplied the push.
He finished with 23 points--one shy of his career high--and eight rebounds. Both were game highs. He made seven of 11 from the field, nine of 10 from the free-throw line. He was the biggest factor in USD’s biggest game of the season. You’ll never hear that kind of talk from him, though.
Woods is the kind of guy who has to be informed of what he’s just accomplished. Otherwise, he would never know.
He is frequently asked if it’s strange playing forward, when at 6-5, he is clearly undersized.
“Not really,” Woods said. “I always play against guys taller than me.”
Not particularly swift either, Woods is like a tree in a windstorm. He’s sturdy but sways a lot.
“He’s crafty,” USD Coach Hank Egan said. “He’s got great moves and pump fakes.”
Anthony Thomas he is not.
Thomas, the Toreros’ leading scorer who had 15 points and six rebounds against Gonzaga, is jack-rabbit quick with a leaping ability to match. Thomas thrives on fast breaks and power slams. Woods can’t recall his last dunk.
After his first two seasons, Woods had a .653 career free-throw percentage. This season, he has made 80.2%. With his 23 points Saturday, he moved up a notch to 19th on the all-time Torero scoring list.
“The play of Kelvin Woods down low was certainly the key in this ballgame,” Gonzaga Coach Dan Fitzgerald said.
Woods, with 12, had eight more points than any other Torero in the first half. USD raced to a 7-0 lead as Gonzaga didn’t score until 15:54. The Bulldogs managed to tie it twice, 18-18 and 20-20, but each time USD re-gained the lead.
The Toreros led 31-26 at the half, which was a testament to their defensive play. USD, the WCC’s top-shooting team, made only 37% in the first half, compared to Gonzaga’s 42%.
All nine Toreros who took shots in the first half made either half of them or none. Point guard Wayman Strickland was the coldest, missing all five of his shots.
USD made 11 of 21 (52.4%) in the second half to finish at 43.7%. That marked only the second time this season USD has won while shooting less than 50%.
USD had defeated Gonzaga, 89-80, in Spokane during the regular season. Five days later, Gonzaga returned the favor in San Diego, 70-64, as the Toreros shot only 39%.
“The last couple of games, we’ve been rushing our shots and haven’t been taking good percentage shots,” Woods said. “Today, we settled down a bit, especially in the second half.”
That appeared to be the case, but USD’s percentage was still lower than its cumulative 45% during its recent four-game losing streak.
“I thought the key today was, we were able to sustain our defense,” Egan said.
USD did precisely that in the first 10:14 of the second half when the Toreros limited Gonzaga to one field goal. The Bulldogs also committed 21 turnovers to only 12 for USD.
“They probably think they turned the ball over a lot,” Egan said. “And we probably think it was our defense.”
Gonzaga’s Jarrod Davis, the WCC’s second-leading scorer, led Gonzaga with 18 points, one under his average. Davis injured his left shoulder Friday in practice, but said the injury was not a factor. Davis made seven of 16 from the floor.
Strickland scored seven of his nine points in the second half to finish third behind Woods and Thomas. Center Dondi Bell had seven rebounds and two blocked shots.
Woods has 60 points in three tournament games, more than any other active WCC player.
Torero Notes
XTRA Radio will broadcast tonight’s semifinal game between USD and St. Mary’s live at 7:30 p.m. . . . The Toreros split the season series with St. Mary’s. USD lost the most recent game, 90-88 in double overtime.
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6fe45419a2ca24bcf4ac97c582c8d486 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-231-story.html | HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL PLAYOFFS : San Pasqual Does Its Cereal Number : Division II Boys: After Meek sparks a victory over El Camino for the title, the Eagles pass the cornflakes. | HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL PLAYOFFS : San Pasqual Does Its Cereal Number : Division II Boys: After Meek sparks a victory over El Camino for the title, the Eagles pass the cornflakes.
San Pasqual’s Eric Meek reached up and grabbed the box of cornflakes out of the air in much the same fashion that he grabs the basketball.
His coach, Tom Buck, fired a perfect pass. With a box of cereal. Not a basketball.
This happened minutes after San Pasqual’s 73-70 victory Saturday over top-ranked El Camino in the San Diego Sports Arena. The triumph gave the Eagles (19-7) the Division II boys’ basketball title.
Why cornflakes? Well, it seems Meek didn’t play in one of two earlier meetings with El Camino (24-5) this season. El Camino won by 13. And Wildcat forward Shaun Scurry was asked what it was like to play the Meek-less team. He responded: “Like cornflakes without the milk.”
The milk poured on Saturday. And poured it on, particularly in the fourth quarter. Feasting against a man-on-man defense for much of the second half, Meek scored 14 fourth-quarter points en route to a game-high 33.
Why the sudden burst?
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” Meek said. “Something just told me ‘You’ve got to do something now.’ ”
It might have had to do with his commitment to win this game and this title. Meek, who also grabbed 17 rebounds, didn’t plan to go home wearing a second-place frown.
“He told me (Friday) he was not going to let us lose,” Buck said. “And he didn’t.”
That isn’t to say it was simple. El Camino put up quite a struggle, trading leads with San Pasqual throughout the second half and leading by a point with less than two minutes to play.
In the end, the crucial points didn’t belong to Meek, but rather to guard David Prieto, who hit three three-pointers and finished with 13. His final two came from the free-throw line with 16 seconds to play. That gave San Pasqual a 71-67 lead and made Jeff Reeve’s late three-pointer off the glass virtually meaningless.
Believe it or not, Prieto says he wasn’t nervous. Not a bit.
“I couldn’t feel anything,” he said. “Just something I had to do.”
That, grouped with Meek’s effort, 13 points from Richard Stark and 12 from David Durst, gave San Pasqual its first section championship.
“I want to take a picture of the scoreboard,” Buck said. “What a great game.”
San Pasqual controlled the first half, though Scurry kept the Wildcats close using a short jumper and several shifty moves to score 10 of his team-high 19 points. Scurry also gave El Camino its first lead of the game, converting a 14-footer to make it 33-32 with 5:55 to play in the third. The lead changed hands nine more times in the game.
With El Camino down by three with two seconds to play, Scurry overthrew his teammates on an inbounds pass that traveled the length of the court and out of bounds. Coach Ray Johnson pointed to the spot where Scurry should have put the ball and squatted to watch his team’s title hopes melt with the final two ticks.
San Pasqual players celebrated by jumping around and thrusting their fists into the box of cornflakes and munching. The box was still making rounds by the time the team reached the locker room.
The loss cost Johnson a third section title, but he found consolation in looking ahead to the Southern California Regionals, in which his Wildcats and San Pasqual both will participate.
Asked if he regretted switching from zone to man defense, he said: “We were in a man in the third quarter. We did a heck of job. . . . We didn’t do anything different in the third than we did in the fourth.”
Problem was, Eric Meek did.
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8c4a22fd2d5ce9ed12fe4452ffa3e1bb | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-368-story.html | MIKE SCIOSCIA IS The Glue in Blue : The Dodger Catcher Has Been ‘Irreplaceable’ for More Than a Decade, but He Never Forgets Philadelphia or Family | MIKE SCIOSCIA IS The Glue in Blue : The Dodger Catcher Has Been ‘Irreplaceable’ for More Than a Decade, but He Never Forgets Philadelphia or Family
The Dodger history books tell the story of what happened when Mike Scioscia came to the plate against Dwight Gooden in the ninth inning of Game 4 in the 1988 National League championship series against the New York Mets.
Richie Phillips, Scioscia’s agent, tells a different story.
Phillips says he cannot tell it without crying. He is later proved right.
“I was sitting behind home plate with my wife when Mike comes up to bat with a runner on base and the Dodgers down two runs,” Phillips recalled recently. “All of a sudden, my wife turns to me.”
Phillips explained that his wife, Ellen, was a good friend of Scioscia’s mother, Florence.
The two women had each battled cancer. Ellen Phillips survived her fight, but Florence Scioscia had died in November of 1983.
“My wife said, ‘Mike is going to hit a home run,’ ” Phillips said quietly. “I said to her, ‘He doesn’t need a home run, just a single.’
“And she says again, ‘I know it, Mike is going to hit a home run.’ ”
Phillips paused, momentarily sobbed, then continued.
“She says, ‘I know he is going to hit a home run because of his mom,’ ” Phillips recalled. “And I said, ‘His mom?’
“And she said, ‘Yeah. I was just praying to her. And she told me he was going to hit a home run.’ ”
On the next pitch, Scioscia hit the home run. It tied the game and led to a 5-4, extra-inning win that led to an eventual league and World Series championship.
Things have often been like that with Scioscia, who in 11 Dodger seasons has transformed himself from an ordinary catcher to an undisputed team leader thanks to inspiration drawn from the strangest places.
When he takes the field for his 47th game this summer, he will become the all-time leading Dodger in games caught. He will be on top of a list containing such players as Roy Campanella, John Roseboro and Steve Yeager.
How has he done it?
He doesn’t have a particularly good arm. He is
not particularly fast.
Darryl Strawberry hit more home runs in the past two years than Scioscia has hit in his career. And Scioscia has made the All-Star team only twice, or nine times fewer than his likely backup Gary Carter.
“When you evaluate him, you can really only describe Mike one way,” teammate Orel Hershiser said. “ Irreplaceable .”
That might seem like a strong word, but it is no stronger than Scioscia when he stands in front of home plate and blocks speeding 220-pound men attempting to score. His blocks give the Dodgers as many as five victories a season.
“We go crazy when Scioscia collides with somebody,” reliever Tim Crews said. “From the way some guys shout, it sounds like we’re a football team.”
Irreplaceable might be a strong word, but it is no stronger than Scioscia’s voice on the mound in the middle of a pressure game when he both calms and inspires the pitcher at the same time.
“The guy comes out there, raises his hand, says, ‘Johnny, let’s go, let’s go, pitch to me,”’ John Wetteland said. “He redirects my attention from myself to him and the game. He brings me back to earth pretty quick.”
Irreplaceable might be a strong word, but it is no stronger than Scioscia’s memory. His knowledge of the league’s hitters and Dodger pitchers is considered one of the organization’s most valuable assets.
After a game, Scioscia can recall every pitch thrown by the Dodgers in the game, including location and velocity. He can remember the big-game pitches for years.
“Orel tied the 58-inning scoreless inning record on a sinkerball away to Keith Moreland (of San Diego),” Scioscia said of that Sept. 28 night in 1988. “I remember because we had thrown him a breaking ball in the dirt on two-and-two.”
Irreplaceable might be a strong word, but it is no stronger than Scioscia’s ties with his modest Philadelphia-area roots. His refusal to stray from the way of life cultivated in that two-story stone house that was his residence for 25 years has made him the most respected and beloved Dodger.
“Mike is still a good ol’ south-end kid from Philly,” said his older sister, Gail. “Only thing different is, he doesn’t walk down the street with his pockets hanging out of his pants anymore.”
It figures that his late mother would somehow be involved in a story about his biggest hit. Family members say he closely resembles her. He considers that a compliment.
“You won’t find a tougher lady,” Scioscia said.
Florence Scioscia had to be tough to teach first grade for nearly 40 years. She worked at Sabold Elementary School near their house in Morton, a suburb 15 minutes west of Philadelphia.
With her husband, Fred, who worked for a local beer distributor, she raised two sons and a daughter to value humbleness and hard work.
Education was pushed. Cursing and complaints were not allowed. Discipline was loud, and swift.
“It was your basic volatile Sicilian household,” said Fred, Mike’s older brother.
Florence followed these rules until the end. She taught school until she grew sick, then battled cancer for a year and a half before dying a few days before receiving her first pension check.
Even though Scioscia is the youngest in the family, he set up her funeral arrangements. He later helped start a scholarship fund in her name for students at Scioscia’s high school.
“Imagine that, working all of your life and then dying before you can really enjoy it all,” Scioscia said. “Sometimes you wonder about the fairness of life.”
But the Scioscias were taught not to wonder too long about such things.
“My mother was strong willed, she could accept anything,” Gail said. “We were taught to do the same thing. Accept the hand we were dealt.”
And so Scioscia, at age 32, has become a visible product of this background.
Nobody on the team plays with a stronger will. He has ignored the nicks of foul balls and the collisions with outfielders to average 134 games in each of the past six seasons.
“I see him in the shower after games with bruises the size of footballs,” said Mark Cresse, the Dodgers’ bullpen coach. “Some players, that would keep them out for 15 days. It doesn’t keep Scioscia out for 15 minutes.”
Nobody on the team plays with less politics. Scioscia treats rookies and veterans and clubhouse attendants with the same quiet respect.
This morning, 90 minutes before the major leaguers are required to be dressed, Cresse will conduct the annual catcher’s pop-up contest. It is a hokey affair in which the young catchers throughout the organization compete for prizes by catching high pop-ups.
But Scioscia is always there. Not only does he compete, several years ago he made a grand entrance wearing a turban, with a clubhouse attendant carrying his glove on a pillow.
“I can’t tell you what that does for the morale of the kids,” Cresse said.
When asked about his personality, Scioscia shrugged as he always does when asked about himself.
“I don’t think I am anything special, I know I don’t do anything special,” he said. “I don’t think I am one guy who you can say is a leader. This team has a lot of leaders. I’m just a guy doing my job.”
Just a guy. Scioscia says that a lot.
His friends believe it, as Scioscia returns to his neighborhood each time the Dodgers play in Philadelphia.
He sleeps in a spare room at the home of his aunt, Rose Buffington. He eats her pasta or a cheese steak from a local deli before games. He stays up late to chat with her afterward.
“It will be 1 in the morning, but we are all waiting up for him,” Buffington said. “My niece might come from up the street. I’ve got a sister-in-law living around the corner. There are cousins next door. When he is home, it’s always a big celebration.
“Late at night I always say, ‘Mike, you played great.’ And he always says, ‘Oh, Aunt Dee, I didn’t do enough.’ ”
During the afternoons he may be found playing Wiffleball at Decimal Stadium, a friend’s back yard that was built up to resemble a major league field, complete with a dugout and a scoreboard. Decimal was the name of his friend’s deceased dog.
One place Scioscia is certain to be found is Sabold Elementary. Every year, he passes out awards to the winners of a spelling bee that is held in his mother’s memories.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Scioscia said. “Not for anything.”
Going home also results in some painful memories for Scioscia. His father no longer lives there, and he suffered two strokes and moved to Normal, Ill., to be with Scioscia’s brother and sister.
“I wanted to do so much for him, and now that I can, I can’t,” Scioscia said of his father, who is no longer able to travel. “That takes some of the fun out of it.”
However, even though he has settled in the Los Angeles area with his wife, Anne, and two-year-old son Matthew, Scioscia is never too far from home.
A couple of years ago, his father, brother and sister surprised him on his doorstep for Thanksgiving.
They immediately sat down to a game of Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit, a family tradition.
“He may call a great game on the field,” said brother Fred, “but he is more known around the family for being the worst in Jeopardy.”
Family members traditionally visit him during spring training.
“And any time he is in Chicago or St. Louis, he just assumed we will drive up to see him,” Gail said. “No questions asked. It’s like, when are you coming?”
Scioscia was born on Thanksgiving Day in 1958, which might have been an omen. He loves to eat. His weight is the source of many clubhouse jokes, and the cause of concern among Dodger officials who always worry about his durability.
Since probable backup Carter has not been an everyday player since 1988, they are particularly worried about Scioscia this season.
“I know they would like for me to be a little thinner, but I play better this way,” said Scioscia, who carries 233 pounds on a 6-foot-2 frame, 13 pounds above his listed weight in the media guide. “I feel strong at this weight.”
Last year that strength helped him reach career highs in home runs, 12, and runs batted in, 66. Not that he looks at his statistics.
“I don’t look at how I do, I only look at if I helped the team win,” he said, repeating one of his favorite phrases. “I’m not the story, the team is the story.”
Said Hershiser: “He always says things like that. They sound good. But the guys on the team, we know better.”
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a46d295b9c2b871a16d2168ff9dd105a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-376-story.html | COLLEGE BASKETBALL NATIONAL ROUNDUP : Mississippi State Happy to Share SEC Title | COLLEGE BASKETBALL NATIONAL ROUNDUP : Mississippi State Happy to Share SEC Title
After 28 years of waiting, it didn’t matter to Mississippi State that Louisiana State was at less than full strength.
The No. 23 Bulldogs, picked for no better than seventh in the 10-team Southeastern Conference, beat No. 18 LSU, 76-73, Saturday to earn a share of the conference crown with the Tigers.
It was Mississippi State’s first SEC title since 1963 and only the fifth in the school’s 58 years in the conference.
LSU (20-8 overall, 13-5 in the SEC) played without sophomore center Shaquille O’Neal, who has a leg injury, and ailing three-point shooter Mike Hansen played only 14 minutes.
Mississippi State (20-7, 13-5) will be top seeded in the SEC tournament starting Thursday in Nashville because of its two victories over LSU.
Greg Carter scored 11 of his 20 points as Mississippi State took a 28-17 lead. LSU rallied in the second half, cutting the deficit to 68-65 with 4:40 left on Lenear Burns’ three-pointer.
Nate Morris’ basket gave Mississippi State a 71-65 lead with 3:23 left and after a flagrant foul was called on LSU’s Harold Boudreaux, the Bulldogs made one of the technical foul shots and got the ball back.
Geert Hammick had 20 points and 10 rebounds for LSU.
No. 5 Indiana 74, Wisconsin 61--Calbert Cheaney scored 24 of his 30 points in the second half as the Hoosiers beat the Badgers in a Big Ten Conference game at Madison, Wis.
The Hoosiers (25-4, 13-3) had a 46-38 lead with 11:41 left, but Wisconsin (13-13, 7-9) pulled to 50-48 on a free throw by Patrick Tompkins with 7:37 to play. Indiana opened a 60-52 lead, but Carlton McGee’s two baskets made the score 60-56 with 3:40 to play.
Indiana scored the next nine points, including two baskets and two free throws by Jamal Meeks, to clinch the victory.
Willie Simms scored 22 points for Wisconsin.
No. 11 New Mexico State 105, Fresno State 80--Tracey Ware scored 21 points and the Aggies overpowered the Bulldogs in a Big West Conference game at Las Cruces, N.M.
New Mexico State (23-4, 15-3) finished the regular season in second place behind top-ranked and undefeated Nevada Las Vegas.
Carl Ray Harris scored 20 points for Fresno State (12-15, 7-11).
Iowa State 68, No. 12 Oklahoma State 67--Skip McCoy scored five points in the final 2:30 at Ames, Iowa, and the Cyclones kept the Cowboys from clinching a share of their first Big Eight title in 26 years.
Kansas can win the regular-season title by beating Nebraska today.
McCoy, who finished with 10 points, made a three-point shot with 2:30 to play to pull the Cyclones (12-18, 6-8) to within 63-62. A minute later, McCoy made two of three free throws to give the Cyclones a 64-63.
Byron Houston scored 24 points for Oklahoma State (21-6, 10-4), but missed the front end of a one-and-one opportunity with 2:04 to play and the Cowboys holding a 63-62 lead.
No. 13 Kentucky 114, Auburn 93--Jamal Mashburn scored 21 points and Richie Farmer added 20 as the Wildcats, denied a share of the SEC title because it is on NCAA probation, finished with the best conference record by beating the Tigers at Lexington, Ky.
Kentucky (22-6, 14-4) will be able to participate in postseason play next season.
Ronnie Battle scored 21 points and Wesley Person had 20 for Auburn (12-15, 5-13).
Tulane 82, No. 14 Southern Mississippi 65--Anthony Reed scored 22 points and the Green Wave upset the Golden Eagles in a Metro Conference game at New Orleans.
Southern Mississippi (21-6, 10-4) wrapped up the Metro regular-season title two weeks ago. Tulane (15-12, 7-7) finished its second season since reinstating basketball.
Clarence Weatherspoon scored 18 points for Southern Mississippi.
DePaul 79, No. 17 St. John’s 69--David Booth scored 27 points and the Blue Demons strengthened their chances for an NCAA tournament bid by upsetting the Redmen at Rosemont, Ill.
The victory was the 10th in 11 games for the Blue Demons (18-8). St. John’s (20-7) has lost six of 10 road games.
Malik Sealy scored 17 points for St. John’s.
No. 19 East Tennessee State 104, Tennessee Chattanooga 71--Keith Jennings moved into second place on the NCAA all-time assist list and helped the Buccaneers beat the Moccasins to reach the championship game of the Southern Conference tournament at Asheville, N.C.
The two-time defending champion Buccaneers (27-4) tied a school record for victories set last season and will play Appalachian State (16-13) in a rematch of last season’s tournament final, won by East Tennessee State, 96-75.
Jennings, who scored 21 points and added 10 rebounds, had nine assists and moved past former Syracuse star Sherman Douglas on the all-time NCAA list with 965. North Carolina State’s Chris Corchiani has 1,004.
Derrick Kirce scored 23 points for Tennessee Chattanooga.
No. 20 Seton Hall 81, Boston College 74--Anthony Avent had 23 points and 11 rebounds, and Terry Dehere scored 14 of his 22 points in the second half as the Pirates rallied to beat the Eagles in a Big East Conference game at East Rutherford, N.J.
Seton Hall (19-8, 9-7) trailed, 52-48, with 12:05 to play when Dehere scored on a drive at 10:44 to make the score 52-50. After Avent made one of two free throws, Dehere sank consecutive three-point baskets, giving Seton Hall the lead for good, 57-52.
Boston College (11-18, 1-15) rallied to 69-67 on a free throw by Doug Able with 4:10 remaining, but the Pirates scored nine of the next 11 points, all on free throws, to wrap up their sixth victory in the last seven games.
No. 21 Princeton 56, Dartmouth 49--The Tigers completed the first undefeated Ivy League season since 1976 by defeating the Big Green at Hanover, N.H.
Sean Jackson scored 17 points for Princeton (23-2, 14-0), which will complete its regular season March 10 against Loyola Marymount.
The Tigers were the last team to finish with a perfect Ivy season, going 14-0 in 1975-76.
James Blackwell scored 15 points for Dartmouth (9-17, 4-10).
Connecticut 78, No. 22 Pitt 68--Chris Smith scored 18 of his 26 points in the first half as the Huskies beat the Panthers in a Big East Conference game at Pittsburgh.
Connecticut (18-9, 9-7) has won six of seven league games after losing six in a row.
Pitt (20-10, 9-7) led, 21-20, when Smith scored 11 consecutive points and 14 during a 16-3 Connecticut run. The closest the Panthers got in the second half was five points.
No. 24 Alabama 96, Tennessee 88--Freshman James Robinson scored 20 of his 25 points as the Crimson Tide took a 22-point lead at halftime and coasted past the Volunteers in an SEC game at Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Allan Houston scored 26 points and Jay Price had 20 of his 22 in the second half for Tennessee (9-21, 3-15).
Melvin Cheatum added 17 for Alabama (18-9, 12-6), which had a 53-31 lead at halftime.
Maryland 78, No. 25 Virginia 74--Walt Williams scored 21 points and Cedric Lewis made two free throws with 28 seconds remaining in overtime as the Terrapins beat the Cavaliers in an Atlantic Coast Conference game at Charlottesville, Va.
Virginia (20-10, 6-8) had a 39-27 halftime lead, but Maryland (16-12, 5-9) took a 67-65 lead on a basket by Kevin McLinton with 1:15 left. Two free throws by Ted Jeffries of Virginia tied the score, 67-67, with 50 seconds to play and sent the game to overtime.
Matt Roe and Kevin McLinton each added 18 points for Maryland, which won its first ACC road game. Bryant Stith had 23 points for Virginia.
REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
EAST
Eric Murdock had 30 points and 10 assists to lead Connecticut (16-11, 7-9) to an 86-75 victory over Villanova in a Big East game at Providence, R.I. . . . Steve Carney had 19 points and 18 rebounds as Northeastern (20-8, 8-2), the North Atlantic Conference champion, posted a 77-70 victory over Boston University (10-17, 5-5) at Boston.
MIDWEST
Jimmy Oliver scored 21 points, including a three-pointer with 31 seconds left, to lift Purdue (15-11, 7-9) to a Big Ten victory over Iowa (18-10, 7-9) at Iowa City. . . . Brian Grant had 20 points as Xavier (18-9, 11-3) clinched the Midwestern Collegiate Conference title with a 102-79 victory over Dayton (13-14, 8-6) at Cincinnati. . . . Doug Smith scored 23 points and Missouri (16-10, 8-6) routed Colorado, 76-51, in a Big Eight game, handing the Buffaloes (15-12, 5-9) their 20th consecutive defeat in games played at Columbia, Mo. . . . Northwestern (5-21, 9-15) broke a 67-year-old school record with its 17th consecutive defeat by losing to Illinois, 91-81, in a Big Ten game at Evanston, Ill. Larry Smith had 26 points for the Illini (21-8, 11-5).
SOUTH
Dale Davis had 23 points and 18 rebounds as Clemson (11-16, 2-12) ended a five-game losing streak with a 69-62 victory over Georgia Tech in an ACC game at Clemson, S.C. Kenny Anderson had 25 points for the Yellow Jackets (16-11, 6-8). . . . Chris Corchiani had 12 assists, becoming the first player in NCAA history to top 1,000, but Chris King and Anthony Tucker each sank two free throws in the final 23 seconds to help Wake Forest (18-9, 8-6) to an 89-84 victory over North Carolina State at Raleigh, N.C. Rodney Monroe scored 32 points for the Wolf Pack. . . . Ronnie Ellison scored 24 points as Texas San Antonio (20-7, 12-2) clinched the Trans-America Athletic Conference title by beating Mercer (2-24, 1-13), 91-63, at Macon, Ga.
SOUTHWEST
Derrick Daniels made a three-point shot with four seconds left to give Houston (18-9, 20-6) a 71-68 victory over Texas A&M; (7-20, 2-14) in a Southwest Conference game at Houston. . . . Keith Amerson’s three-point play started a 7-0 run by Kansas State (13-14, 3-11) in overtime that carried the Wildcats to a 101-98 victory over Oklahoma (16-13, 5-9) in the Big Eight.
TOURNAMENTS
NE Louisiana 87, Texas Arlington 60--Chris Crease had 21 points as the Indians (24-7) held the Mavericks (20-9) 36 points under their average to win the Southland Conference tournament at Monroe, La.
Coastal Carolina 89, Augusta 54--Tournament most valuable player Tony Dunkin scored 22 points and the Chanticleers (23-7) routed the Jaguars (14-16) to win their second consecutive Big South Conference title at Anderson, S.C.
Fordham 84, Holy Cross 81--Jean Prioleau’s three-pointer as overtime ended gave the Rams (24-6) the Patriot League tournament title over the Crusaders (18-12) at Worcester, Mass.
Jackson State 70, Texas Southern 66--Creig Charles scored 12 of his 19 points in the final 5:19, lifting Jackson State (18-12) over Texas Southern (13-17) in the Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament championship game at Houston.
Florida A&M; 84, Delaware State 80--Reginald Finney, who scored 23 points, had a key three-point play in overtime, and the Rattlers (17-13) beat the Hornets (19-11) to win the Mid-East Athletic Conference tournament at Norfolk, Va.
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a63dc70d3ddbdeb7cdefe93f25422aa9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-377-story.html | DODGERS : Martinez Signs, but He Wants to Talk Before Reporting | DODGERS : Martinez Signs, but He Wants to Talk Before Reporting
Ramon Martinez finally signed a contract Saturday, but he is still not in training camp and still not happy. Martinez has demanded and received a meeting with Dodger officials to discuss his grievances before he reports to Dodgertown.
Martinez, the club’s top returning pitcher, signed a one-year deal worth $485,000 three hours before the club was prepared to unilaterally renew his contract at about $450,000.
But because of issues involving his treatment by the club, Martinez will not report to camp until he has met with Dodger Vice President Fred Claire and lawyer Sam Fernandez Monday night in Orlando. The Dodgers hope he will begin workouts Tuesday, 12 days late.
“I know these negotiations were very hard,” Martinez said in a conference call Saturday. “I decided to take an aggressive position because I wanted to be compensated for my production.
“I am happy with the Dodgers, but I want to make sure everything is fine. I want to talk to them and clear everything up.”
The Dodgers say Martinez can be ready by April 9 and is expected to be the opening-day starter in Atlanta. Martinez said he had been throwing and running in the Dominican Republic.
“How many games did Ramon win last year? And when did he report then?” asked Manager Tom Lasorda, fully aware that Martinez went 20-6 and reported in late March because of the owners’ lockout.
Said Orel Hershiser: “If he is in shape, there is enough time left where he can overcome this. But I don’t think the team is that worried about him. He is young pitcher who can get in shape pretty easily.”
Dodger Notes
Jose Offerman, another client of Jim Bronner, also signed a one-year contract before a possible renewal Saturday. Offerman, scheduled to be the club’s starting shortstop, signed for about $110,000. The 40-man roster is signed.
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9470977ae27763630b7162beca777cb0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-413-story.html | SOUTHERN SECTION BASKETBALL PLAYOFF CHAMPIONSHIPS : Artesia Proves Worthy of Its Reputation : Division II-A: Jones, O’Bannon lead defending champions over Woodbridge, 58-40. | SOUTHERN SECTION BASKETBALL PLAYOFF CHAMPIONSHIPS : Artesia Proves Worthy of Its Reputation : Division II-A: Jones, O’Bannon lead defending champions over Woodbridge, 58-40.
It took an entire season of basketball to prove what everyone already knew. Artesia is the best team in the Southern Section Division II-A.
The Pioneers, the defending State Division II champions, made it official Saturday with a 58-40 victory over Woodbridge in the II-A final at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. The victory was convincing enough to be anticlimactic.
Only one team in California, Long Beach Poly, was able to beat Artesia (26-2). The Pioneers other loss was to DeMatha of Washington, D.C.
“It’s nice to know that with three sophomores and a junior in the starting lineup, we have a bright future,” Coach Wayne Merino said.
Bright? It’s downright blinding.
For one half, Woodbridge (21-10) was able to provide enough reasonable doubt to keep people interested. The end, though, was inevitable.
In a three-minute span of the third quarter, Avondre Jones, the Pioneers’ 6-foot-11 sophomore center, made his presence felt. He scored eight consecutive points to give Artesia a 38-27 lead.
“That’s when we broke it open,” Merino said. “We’re a much better team when Avondre is in the game. He’s our enforcer.”
Jones spent most of the first half in foul trouble. He picked up his third with 2 minutes 10 seconds left in the second quarter and had only three points at halftime.
But Jones got the Pioneers off to a good start in the second half with a 5-foot jumper from the lane to give them a 32-25 lead. He followed that with a layup off an offensive rebound, another 5-footer from the key and a jump hook along the base line.
Woodbridge never recovered from that onslaught.
“I had to make up for all that time I was on the bench in the first half,” Jones said.
He made six of seven shots and scored 13 points before fouling out with 2:45 left. Jones also had 12 rebounds, as the Pioneers dominated the inside play.
Artesia held a 51-37 rebounding advantage and often got second and third shots. In fact, during one sequence early in the third quarter, the Pioneers got five offensive rebounds, which finally resulted in a layup by Jones.
Charles O’Bannon, also a sophomore, led the team with 13 rebounds. He scored 12 points.
The Pioneers led by 15 at the end of the third quarter, 44-29, and the Warriors never got closer than 13 the rest of the way.
“We told our kids not to be fans, but students of the game,” Woodbridge Coach Bill Shannon said. “There had been a lot written about Artesia, but we wanted our kids to come out and play solid basketball. We wanted them to do their best.”
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0c9c331431d22fdeb368efa620fb830a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-sp-509-story.html | SOUTHERN SECTION CHAMPIONSHIPS : Palos Verdes Girls Crush Lompoc | SOUTHERN SECTION CHAMPIONSHIPS : Palos Verdes Girls Crush Lompoc
By fall, Palos Verdes High will be but a memory.
But on Saturday night, the Sea Kings girls’ basketball team gave the student body something to remember by blasting Lompoc, 69-36, in the Southern Section III-AA championship game at Cal Poly Pomona.
It was the third time in four years that Palos Verdes (28-2) made it to the final. The Sea Kings captured the 3-A title in 1988 and lost to Brea in the III-AA final last season.
But no more. This fall, former Palos Verdes students, along with those from Rolling Hills and Miraleste, will report to newly formed Peninsula High.
“I know that was in the girls’ mind and it was my mind, too,” Sea King Coach Wendell Yoshida said. “But these were the type of girls who always set high goals for themselves anyway so I’m not sure they wouldn’t have played this hard even if it wasn’t our final year.”
Yoshida’s an off-campus coach--under normal circumstances, a drawback for the Peninsula job. But he is regarded as one of the area’s most talented coaches and is expected to be considered for the job.
Asked if he will be the Peninsula coach next year, Yoshida said, “I hope so.”
Palos Verdes hit 48% of its shots while holding Lompoc (22-3) to 32%. The Sea Kings forced 29 turnovers and blocked three shots.
But for a time, the Braves were right in the game. They even led, 16-15, with two minutes left in the first half.
Palos Verdes then scored the final eight points of the second quarter, which trumpeted the start of a 34-5 spurt that secured the victory.
“I think they might have taken us a little lightly at first,” Lompoc Coach Sherm Hansen said. “But when they started playing, we really got out of our game and that was it.”
Lompoc could not contain Sea Kings guard Kristen Mulligan, who scored a game-high 24 points, had out four assists and made seven steals. Jeffa Gausepohl, a 6-foot-5 center, scored 15 points and neutralized her counterpart, 6--5 center Nicki Manzo, who scored 14 points but spent much of the game in foul trouble.
Palos Verdes doesn’t have to quit yet. The Sea Kings will probably be seeded No. 1 for the State Division III regional tournament next week.
“We’re ready,” said Yoshida, who has coached the Sea Kings for 11 years. “We don’t want to ever quit playing.”
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48e56607331d10d27bdc9b4fcf037c59 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-tv-548-story.html | Running in L.A. | Running in L.A.
Rising at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to watch television is not on most people’s agenda, but then there is hardly anything normal about a marathon, much less watching it for three hours on TV.
The sixth running of the Los Angeles Marathon will again be televised on KCOP. And, once again, many viewers will be baffled by the arcane terminology of running and miss the elements that can make this classic distance race a compelling and dramatic struggle of athlete against the elements.
It’s tough to discern the significant from the irrelevant in the info-blitz that often defines televised marathon coverage. In an effort to clarify, here are a few things to look for if you watch all, or even some, of the 26 miles and 385 yards.
The Start
Organized chaos. There are 20,000 runners straining to get to the front, dangerously pushing forward.
In theory, the runners are “seeded” according to time; in this way the fastest runners will be placed closer to the starting line and the slowest runners should be at the back of the pack. In practice, here’s what happens: Slower runners frequently fib about their best times and are placed among faster runners, getting in the way and clogging the course.
One curious aspect of the Los Angeles Marathon is its “celebrity runners"--soap opera actors, sitcom actresses and others are placed right up front with the world-class runners. Better for television, but not for the elite runners.
Bandits
These are the runners who jump in the race after it starts, without having paid the $25 entry fee. Some step onto the course in the first mile and run the whole way, others join in late in the race, apparently to have the distinction of crossing the finish line.
The most infamous bandit has to be Rosie Ruiz, the apparent women’s winner of the 1980 Boston Marathon. Ruiz quite literally came from nowhere to stagger across the finish line at Boston. Even though Ruiz was completely unknown, as the first woman across the line she was crowned the winner.
It eventually was revealed that Ruiz used various forms of transportation, including the subway, to traverse the course.
A favorite bandit stunt is jumping in the race and running among the leaders for a while. By the time television commentators have scrambled to identify the runner, he or she usually has dropped out, having had a moment in the limelight.
Splits
Television announcers frequently speak of “splits,” as if the runners were also performing cheerleading exercises. What they are talking about is the pace at which the lead athletes are running each mile. Based on the mile splits, it is possible to project how fast the runners will finish the marathon.
In the men’s race, look for miles splits of 4 minutes 57 seconds. That will translate into a 2:10 marathon, a good, world-class time. A split at five minutes and it’s a slow race.
Announcers may calculate from the splits that a runner is “running at world-record pace,” a pronouncement which may or may not hold up. Don’t get too excited; pace changes.
The Hills
Boston’s famed Heartbreak Hill is actually a series of three hills and are dreaded not so much for their steepness as for their coming late in the race, about mile 21.
The Los Angeles course is deceptive. While there is no one huge hill, the course is undulating and challenging. The highest point comes at seven miles, at Sunset Boulevard and North Hill Street. Watch for it: The incline comes early enough in the race so that runners have the energy to mount it, but it’s also a point where some of the leaders make a move.
The Weather
The weather for the L.A. Marathon is traditionally lovely ... for spectators. Marathon runners compete best in temperatures in the 50s and under overcast or even drizzly skies.
Often the temperature at the 9 a.m. start, in the low 60s, is acceptable but later on rises to a dangerous level. The better runners are off the course in less than three hours and escape the worst heat. However, the back of the pack or novice runners are still pounding it out five and six hours after the start. Thus, the runners who can least handle the heat are the very ones who must struggle through it.
The Aid Stations
There is an aid station every mile along the course, as much to amuse the runners as to refresh them. Volunteers at the stations will hand out about 30,800 gallons of water to the runners, who can be seen jogging by and snatching the paper cups, often spilling more than saving. These stations are crucial to the well-being of the runners. It used to be thought that drinking water along the route caused cramps. Now we know that a lack of water can lead to cramps.
The Wall
In a marathon, The Wall is the place where a runner’s body runs out of fuel; specifically, he has depleted his glycogen stores. In other words, it’s the point where a marathoner crashes and burns.
This usually happens at 21 miles. Watch the race dynamics here. The elite runners will not, of course, be wilting, but they will be feeling the strain of having pushed their bodies to the limit. This is often a time when the leader is “picked off” by a runner coming from behind.
Makes for good television.
The Sixth Annual Los Angeles Marathon airs Sunday at 8 a.m.-1 p.m. on KCOP (repeated at 7 p.m.).
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b3379678a78d0127d6cb345466c015fe | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-tv-551-story.html | Mighty Moose | Mighty Moose
America is bullish on Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket “Rocky” J. Squirrel of Frostbite Falls, Minn. The two are the beloved heroes of the classic animated TV series “The Bullwinkle Show,” which aired on ABC and NBC from 1959 to ’82.
The series was “The Simpsons” of its time, an adult satire masquerading as a kids show.
“The Bullwinkle Show” (still seen in reruns but not in the Los Angeles area right now) is filled with social commentary, silliness and painfully funny puns. It chronicles the adventures of the all-American moose and squirrel and their arch enemies, those no-goodnik bungling spies from Pottsylvania, Natasha Fatale and Boris Badenov.
Other segments of the series include “The Adventures of Dudley Do-Right,” featuring the noble Mountie who battles the evil Snidley Whiplash; “Peabody’s Improbable History,” in which a wealthy hound named Mr. Peabody travels through history with his adopted son Sherman; and the wacky “Fractured Fairy Tales,” narrated by the late Edward Everett Horton.
Buena Vista Home video has just released six 45-minute videocassettes, at $12.95 each, from the series. And PBS pays tribute to the show this week in a new special, Of Moose and Men: The Rocky and Bullwinkle Story, narrated by the series’ original announcer, William Conrad of “Jake and the Fatman”.
The one-hour documentary features clips from the series, interviews with writers and actors who provided the voices and profiles of the creative force behind the series, the late producer Jay Ward and animator/writer Bill Scott (who also was the voice of Bullwinkle, Dudley and Mr. Peabody).
Ben Magliano, who produced the special for PBS, fell in love with Rocky and Bullwinkle when he was 9. “It was so off the wall,” he said.
June Foray, the voice of Rocky and Natasha, believes the series is still popular after three decades because “it was witty and it was sophisticated. Children enjoyed it, but it was directed mostly to adults. Now baby boomers have grown up and can comprehend all the jokes and innuendoes.”
Ward, who died at age 69 in 1989, created the classic animated “Crusader Rabbit” for television in 1949. “His idea was that animation could be done in a limited form for a much lower cost directly for television,” Magliano said. “Then he decided to take a slightly different slant with something more ambitious and that is when ‘Rocky and His Friends’ came into being in 1959 on ABC.”
The series aired daily in the late afternoon for two years. In 1961, NBC lured Ward and his partner Scott to do the series for prime-time. It was renamed “The Bullwinkle Show.”
Ward’s publicity stunts for the series were as wacky as the show itself. In 1961, he unveiled a 15-foot fiberglass statue of Rocky and Bullwinkle that still stands today on Sunset Boulevard. “They roped off Sunset Strip for four blocks and had an 80-piece band and all kinds of entertainment,” Magliano said. “They gave out straw hats with antlers. Jayne Mansfield did the unveiling.”
In 1962, Ward bought an island off the coast of Minnesota and renamed it Moosesylvania and campaigned to make it the 51st state.
“He got this Ford van with a calliope and he and his publicist, Howard Brandy, rode around the country and had rallies,” Magliano said. “Ward was dressed as Napoleon and Howard was dressed like Dudley Do-Right.”
The recording sessions, Foray said, were great fun. “Everybody laughed,” she said. “We would explode into laughter because the scripts (Allan Burns of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was one of the writers) were so funny. Anything we found funny, Jay found funny. He was a cordial, affable, wonderful man to get along with.”
And a very shy one. “Jay was a complicated individual,” Magliano said. “He was a world-class recluse. The last 10 years of his life he rarely spoke to anyone outside of his close friends and family.”
“Of Moose and Men: The Rocky and Bullwinkle Story” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on KVCR; Thursday at 8 p.m. on KOCE; and March 12 at 8:45 p.m. on KCET.
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4c2c07d34f009ae0705dc575be125843 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-tv-553-story.html | TODAY’S NEWS, TOMORROW’S TELEVISION : Who is Dale Midkiff and why is he doing all these TV movies? | TODAY’S NEWS, TOMORROW’S TELEVISION : Who is Dale Midkiff and why is he doing all these TV movies?
Dale Midkiff is one busy actor. Last month he starred in two TV movies-of-the-week: NBC’s “The Marla Hanson Story” and CBS’ “Sins of the Mother.” On March 18, he stars with Alex McArthur of “Desperado” fame in the NBC drama “Death of a San Antonio Cop.” The drama chronicles the true story of two San Antonio cops who begin as best friends only to end up enemies.
This month, CBS’ “As the World Turns” will travel to Puerto Rico to shoot a storyline involving Duncan (Michael Swan), Tonio (Peter Boynton) and Sabrina (Claire Beckman).
Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and Toto, too, are back when CBS airs the classic 1939 “The Wizard of Oz,” March 19 at 8 p.m.
Mario Van Peebles, Polly Holliday and Susan Ruttan star in “A Triumph of the Heart: The Ricky Bell Story,” airing April 2 on CBS. The drama is based on the true story of the late Ricky Bell, the former USC and NFL running back and his relationship with a physically challenged young boy.
KCET highlights its March pledge programing with the 14-part series “Joseph Campbell: Transformations of Myth Through Time,” beginning with episodes one through three, March 17 at noon. The series, which will continue March 23, investigates the late Campbell’s philosophy of the commonality of themes in world myths.
Opera tenor Jose Carreras performs the music of Andrew Lloyd-Webber in the American television premiere of “Jose Carreras Sings Andrew Lloyd-Webber,” airing March 18 at 7 p.m. on Bravo. Taped October 1989 at London Dominion Theatre, Carreras sings “Memory” from “Cats” and “The Music of the Night” from “The Phantom of the Opera.”
World International Network and Dove Communications, Inc. have agreed to produce movies and miniseries for television. The first project under their new agreement is “Sidney Sheldon’s Memories of Midnight,” a four-hour miniseries based on Sheldon’s current bestseller. The series begins production in Europe this May and will air on KTLA in November.
Phyllis Logan has joined the cast of ABC’s “All my Children” as Arlene Vaughn, the alcoholic sister of Trevor Dillon, who has decided to move to Pine Valley. Matt Borlenghi also has joined the series as Pine Valley high school student Brian Bodine.
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004d969d410163697334a3a0adf5d294 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-03-tv-561-story.html | Gladys Nederlander: One-Acts for A | Gladys Nederlander: One-Acts for A
During the Golden Age of 1950s television, audiences had the opportunity every week to see classic theater and new drama performed by actors such as Henry Fonda, Helen Hayes, Mary Martin, Julie Harris and Dame Judith Anderson. Over the years, however, the commercial networks have all but abandoned adaptations of plays, making such theatrical showcases as “Playhouse 90" golden memories.
Gladys Nederlander is determined to bring theater back into the living room. As executive producer for Nederlander Television and Film Productions, she has executive-produced such TV movies as “A Case of Libel,” “Intimate Strangers” and “Vengeance: The Story of Tony Cimo.”
Last year she produced for the Arts & Entertainment Network “American Playwrights Theater,” which featured one-acts by such writers as Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill. Nederlander’s new one-act showcase for A&E; is “General Motors Playwrights Theater,” which debuted last month with “Clara”, a drama by Arthur Miller.
On Tuesday, Anthony Edwards and Annette O’Toole star in Jonathan C. Levine’s “Unpublished Letters.”
The monthly series also will star such actors as Olympia Dukakis, Edward Herrmann, Fisher Stevens and Ione Skye. Lauren Bacall is the host.
Nederlander, who also has co-produced six Broadway plays, including the 1980 revival of “West Side Story,” discussed “General Motors Playwrights Theater” with Susan King.
Q: How did the series come about?
A: I had lunch with Arthur Miller about two years ago. I said, “What are you doing?” And he said, “I have been writing one acts.” I said, “One Acts?” I left lunch and went back to my office and thought, “Here is Arthur Miller writing one acts. Where could you put them?” In the theater, people don’t feel like they are getting enough for their money, so I thought th only place is really cable.
We took the idea to General Motors and they loved the idea of being a part of something of “the elitist quality” and we got it on A&E.; people really look forward to seeing something different on cable. I have done a lot of work for CBS, NBC and ABC. I think I got one letter saying, “I thought Stacy Keach was handsome,” but none saying, “Thank you so much for bringing quality programming to TV of this nature.” I get hundreds of letters (stating that) from cable viewers.
Q: Did Arthur Miller write “Clara” specifically for the series?
A: He wrote this about five or six years ago. It only appeared at Lincoln Center and once in England. As Arthur says, he is so much more popular in England than he is in the United States; he can never understand why.
He came on the set and watched it and he was thrilled. That’s what made this whole project so unique and wonderful.
Q: Did you commission any of the plays?
A: I would love to do that. That was the case with Robert Anderson. He is a personal friend and he called me and said, “Look, I have got one-acts, but I have the most wonderful idea I have been wanting to write. So I am going to write it for you. There is no obligation. You can see if you want to use it.” He brought it in and it was beautiful and I wept.
Q: You got some really terrific actors to appear in the plays.
A: The word gets out in the industry. I have had different agents calling me and saying, “What have you got?” Certainly, it has happened with the agents for the stars, especially stars that are a little older. There are great parts for them.
The second play we did, “Unpublished Letters,” we got Anthony Edwards and Annette O’Toole, Another one was written by Israel Horovitz years ago-- “It’s Called the Sugar Plum.” It’s about two kids at Cambridge, one is a freshman and one is a senior. We hope these actors will attract younger viewers.
I am frightened to think that people aren’t aware of theater as they should be. It is scary. Q: Last year, you also produced the TNT production of Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending” with Vanessa Redgrave.
A: When we brought it (the play) to Broadway, I had the television rights. I went to all the networks and they said, “God, we loved to do it, but we couldn’t sell it.” I went to Ted Turner’s people and they came up to New York to look at it and they said, “Wow, we love it. We are going to do it.”
Well, you know what happened to that. I thought that certainly we would be critically acclaimed, but it went through the roof with viewers. They really turned it on and stayed with it.
Q: Why are the commercial networks generally scared of televising adaptations of plays?
A: They used to do them. I have had lots of talks with the networks about it. When we went into television production, it was with the hope we would be able to attract television companies to theater, but they all looked at me with this kind of glazed look. They would say, “Oh, theater. In the theater you are a captive audience, but when you are in your home, someone calls or the phone rings or you get up to get a drink.” I said “Don’t be silly. You don’t understand. We are not going to put it on as a play; we are going to put it on as a TV event.”
“General Motors Playwrights Theater” airs Tuesday at 6 and 10pm on A&E.;
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671284c4cc5c1a144b95f130667f123f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-04-me-189-story.html | Newsman and Author Leo Katcher Dead at 79 | Newsman and Author Leo Katcher Dead at 79
Leo Katcher, who interviewed the kidnaper of Charles Lindbergh’s baby, wrote novels of political intrigue, the sufferings of Jews in Nazi Germany and a biography of Chief Justice Earl Warren, has died. He was 79.
Katcher died Wednesday of a heart attack in Oceanside where he was a political columnist for the Oceanside Blade Citizen and Oceanside Breeze, his brother, Eddie Katcher, said Saturday by telephone from New York.
Katcher began his newspaper career at age 10 in Bayonne, N.J., when the Bayonne Evening News offered him a job as an office boy in exchange for his promise to quit hitting handballs off the side of the newspaper office.
He also worked at the Philadelphia Record, Philadelphia Ledger and New York Post.
His longtime friend Tim Mayer said Hatcher’s stories included an exclusive interview with Bruno Hauptmann, who was executed in 1936 for the fatal kidnaping of pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son.
Mayer said Katcher also was one of the first to report on the existence of President Richard M. Nixon’s “millionaires’ fund.”
The fund, organized in 1950 to help Nixon campaign for GOP causes, threatened Nixon’s vice presidential candidacy in 1952 and led to his famous “Checkers” speech in which he attempted to dismiss stories of his supposed wealth.
In the 1950s, Katcher turned to movies and books, writing such novels as “The Money People,” “The Blind Cave,” “Hot Pursuit,” “Now Is the Time,” “Post-Mortem: The Jews in Germany Today” and “Earl Warren: A Political Biography.” His screenplay for “The Eddy Duchin Story” was nominated for a best picture Oscar in 1956.
He also was ghostwriter and editor of “Million Dollar Blackjack” by William G. Bonelli, former Southern California member of the State Board of Equalization.
Bonelli conceived the book, Katcher said in 1956, to attack the Los Angeles Times and its then-sister paper, The Mirror, which had reported on Bonelli’s alleged solicitation of political contributions from prospective liquor licensees.
Bonelli fled to Mexico after being indicted on conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges and died there in 1970.
Katcher turned to politics in the 1960s, working as a California organizer for John F. Kennedy’s successful 1960 presidential campaign against Nixon.
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dcb42fa48d17a017cf20cfabf556ffe2 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-07-ca-3514-story.html | By Luck, a Treasured Moment With Jay Ward | By Luck, a Treasured Moment With Jay Ward
The one disappointment for me in tonight’s PBS special “Of Moose and Men: The Rocky and Bullwinkle Story” is that the producers weren’t able to include any archival interview footage of the show’s creator, Jay Ward.
Such material might have made the mysterious Ward a little more real to the legions of us baby-boomers who grew up with the moose and squirrel. So it’s disappointing. But surprising? Not at all. Ward, who died in 1989, was notoriously reclusive. Where his cohorts from the show--partner and writer Bill Scott (also the voice of Bullwinkle) and June Foray (the voices of Rocky, Natasha Fatale, Nell Fenwick, ad infinitum)--were regulars on the college circuit and at animation festivals, Ward shied away.
After such post “Rocky” productions as “George of the Jungle” and “Super Chicken” were canceled in the late ‘60s, Ward reportedly retreated to his home and barely was heard from except for the occasional Cap’n Crunch commercials he made through the years.
That’s why I’ll always treasure my one brief, unexpected meeting with him the year before he died.
Ward had left one door open to the public: his Dudley Do-Right Emporium in Hollywood, a memorabilia shop run by his wife, Billie. For about two years, I worked about two miles down Sunset Boulevard from the Emporium, but I never got around to stopping in. It was only a few years ago, while shopping for a Christmas present for a fellow Bullwinkle fan, that I made it to the shop during business hours.
Thumbing through the Ward Productions animation cels in a small basket, I saw the woman behind the sales counter--I assumed she was Billie--walk into the back room. And then, out came a short, older man with a gentle smile. It was Jay Ward.
Having picked out a “Whatsamatta U” sweat shirt for my friend, I made an exception to a personal rule of not pestering my childhood heroes, should I encounter them in person. “Would you mind signing this sweat shirt?,” I asked. “It’s for a friend.” It was, but it still sounded hokey, even to me.
He smiled, then fumbled a bit. “Well, I don’t think the pen will work well on this material,” said the man whose moose and squirrel had battled nefarious villains so amoral that they stooped to passing counterfeit cereal box tops. “I’ll be happy to sign a piece of paper or something else,” he continued, scouring the counter for a blank scrap of anything. “I don’t want to make you have to buy a card just for me to sign.”
I bought a card anyway. When I presented it to my friend, along with the autograph and the sweat shirt, he laughed slightly. Then a look of astonishment came over his face as it hit him: “Is this real ?”
It was. And for me, if only for those few moments, so had been the elusive Jay Ward.
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e11512dce556a95801a2823680816b4f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-08-ca-2717-story.html | MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Re-Animator’ a Grisly, Witty Romp | MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Re-Animator’ a Grisly, Witty Romp
“Bride of Re-Animator” opens today at selected theaters, but its most appropriate venue is Hollywood’s venerable Vista Theater, where it officially premieres Friday at midnight. That’s because it’s pretty gory for regular bookings, yet has a saving wit and style and overall sheer outrageousness that’s just right for the midnight circuit.
As the title suggests, it’s a sequel to “Re-Animator,” an adaptation of an H. P. Lovecraft novel that was one of the most imaginative horror movies of the ‘80s. The sequel is every bit as amusing as the original, though probably grislier. The linchpin element in both films is Jeffrey Combs, who plays a prim, bitchy, unflappable mad genius faultlessly. At Massachusetts’ Miskatonic University Hospital he discovered an iridescent green serum that brought the dead to life, but it had the unfortunate side effect of turning them into zombies with brutal killer instincts.
Five years have passed since the infamous “Miskatonic Massacre,” during which time West and the fellow resident doctor (Bruce Abbott) he has in his thrall have done penance by volunteering for medical duty in a bloody border war in Peru. When the two return to Miskatonic, Combs has brought back with him yet another scary discovery: by combining his re-animating serum with the amniotic fluid of a rare species of iguana he is able to re-animate severed body parts. In no time these guys have enough limbs and organs to create the “bride” of the film’s title.
Just when you think that director Brian Yuzna and his co-writers have gone too far in their displays of hideous morbidity--the film’s battery of special effects wizards have outdone themselves--Combs drops an hilarious bon mot with the timing of Bette Davis as Margo Channing in “All About Eve.” “Bride of Re-Animator” (rated an appropriate R), which benefits immensely from a lush, moody score by Richard Band (as did the original film), is absolutely not for children or for the squeamish, but it’s pretty funny all the same.
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14db28d771461c96c05d5ab3a8fde0af | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-10-ca-281-story.html | COVER STORY : So Happy... | COVER STORY : So Happy...
Peter Guber and Jon Peters were determined to acquire a fleet of corporate jets for Columbia Pictures Entertainment that would rival that of Warner Bros., where they had last made their home.
Fine, the word came back from Sony headquarters in Tokyo, but the planes were to be used for internal corporate purposes, not jetting stars around the country like their idol, Warners chief Steve Ross, was fond of doing. Impossible, said Columbia’s co-chairmen in Culver City. Who was going to tell director Ivan Reitman to find another way to get his family to Canada? How was Barbra Streisand to scout locations for “Prince of Tides”? How was Columbia going to treat its stars and directors to vacations in exotic locales?
“It was a huge point of contention,” recalls one highly placed source.
But Sony gave in.
So much for the heavy hand of Tokyo management that Hollywood had feared.
It’s been 16 months since the Japanese electronics giant installed this pair of hot-shot producers to run the studio it bought for $3.4 billion and took over on Nov. 16, 1989. But in many ways, last spring’s debate over the corporate jets remains the defining moment in the relationship with Sony: Insecure in the alien waters of Hollywood, the company has been willing--so far, at least--to go along with the grand ambitions of its American managers.
Guber and Peters see themselves as more than studio chiefs--they’re media moguls assembling a communications conglomerate. “The railroad industry made a big mistake in the 1930s,” Guber says, “when it saw itself as being in the train business instead of the transportation business. It would be the same mistake to view us as being in the motion picture business, rather than the communications business.”
Columbia, with its movie and TV production and chain of Loew’s theaters, isn’t in the same league as the gigantic Time-Warner Communications, where Ross is now co-chief executive. But that hasn’t stopped Guber and Peters from spending mind-boggling sums of money to build the infrastructure for their budding empire. Having a plane or two on the lot for business meetings may be fine for most studios, but not for two aspiring media barons.
So that Columbia’s stars would have some place to go on the corporate jets, Peters spent two of his 16 months on the job renovating his 22-acre Aspen ranch, using crews 24 hours a day to build guest houses and a main lodge (at his own expense, he says). He filled the grounds with reindeer and llamas, the house with Ralph Lauren and lace. Cher and Michael Douglas and Sylvester Stallone and Streisand all came and raved. There was even talk of a Columbia resort, modeled on Warner’s famed Acapulco retreat, in Hawaii--a sort of halfway meeting point between Los Angeles and Tokyo.
Inside the troubled and gutted company they inherited, Guber and Peters hired staff. And hired more. Orion co-founder Mike Medavoy came in with a fully appointed staff to run Tri-Star. Former Columbia chief Frank Price brought in his people to run the Columbia side of the company. Guber and Peters hired one of their crack former lawyers, Alan Levine, as chief operating officer, and their other lawyer, Paul Schaeffer, as executive vice president for corporate affairs.
They hired financial whiz Jonathan Dolgen from Fox, gave him the title of Columbia president under Price, but put him to work upstairs as yet another executive plotting overall corporate strategy. When Paramount chief Sidney Ganis resigned, they squeezed him in, too. Now there are rumors that they want to hire Warner production chief Mark Canton, but with the executive offices already brimming, no one knows where he would go.
Guber and Peters paid their new executives salaries that set competitors’ teeth on edge--from the $400,000 reportedly given to a 33-year-old vice president all the way up to their own $2.75 million plus a percentage of profits. They redecorated their historic Thalberg Building offices in elegant art-moderne. They planned the renovation of the tattered Culver City lot, which will cost $100 million in the next three years and hundreds of millions more over the next 15.
They paid top dollar for scripts and made deals with talent that were unprecedented in their size and cost: Top TV producer James L. Brooks, director Steven Spielberg, actors Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams. They set out making big-budget movies--like Tri-Star’s $50-million “Hook” and its $40-million “Bugsy.” They hired Michael Jackson to star in another lavish production, this one an action-musical, and in a few days they will announce that they are giving him his own record label. There were even whispers that Guber and Peters eventually hoped to take over Sony’s record company.
To pay for all these projects, they set about consolidating--and expanding--Columbia’s revenue sources. The studio’s nine-year-old video partnership with RCA was declared obsolete: Guber and Peters are convinced that when five-inch laser discs become a reality it will change the face of the video business and they want Columbia’s share all to themselves.
They huddled in meetings plotting ways to gain control of the ailing Orion Pictures, where Columbia stands to lose $125 million in distribution rights if the mini-studio goes under. They moved Columbia into cable TV, an investment that is likely to be announced in the coming weeks. They even looked over a proposal to buy the Hollywood Park racetrack, but passed.
They dreamed up Sonyland, a theme park that may or may not ever happen.
There are two ways to look at all this extravagant activity:
Either Guber and Peters are visionary empire builders, moving Sony’s company into new realms of opportunity, making the impossible possible, going where no moguls have gone before.
Or, the Japanese are being taken for a very expensive ride.
Sony swaggered into Hollywood with its wallet bulging nearly two years ago and fell right into a patch of quicksand. It cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars to dig itself out.
The misstep was Sony’s decision in September, 1989, to hire Guber and Peters to run its newly acquired Columbia Pictures while they were still under a production contract at Warners. Warners sued, Sony countersued, and after months of acrimonious litigation, the two companies finally agreed on a settlement that analysts said contained roughly $500 million in concessions from Sony--a figure that Sony executives dispute.
That was on top of the $200 million Sony had already paid for the Guber-Peters Entertainment Company, putting $80 million directly into the pockets of the two partners. Sony had also agreed to a one-time bonus pool of $50 million, to be split among Columbia’s top executives, plus an 8% share in any appreciation of Columbia’s value. The industry trade paper Variety has estimated that the value of these fringe benefits could balloon to $150 million to $200 million.
By and large, Japanese companies have not been successful at creative enterprises on foreign soil. But almost alone among its compatriots, Sony gives its American managers wide berth--as well as paying them truckloads of money. When it bought CBS Records in 1988, Sony left in place the company’s mercurial but successful chief executive, Walter Yetnikoff, and by most accounts let him run his own show.
But even under Sony’s soft touch, Yetnikoff could not survive. His erratic temper and troubles that landed him in a rehabilitation clinic in 1989, as well as public signs that he was loosing his hold on top recording artists Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen weakened his standing at Sony, said sources close to the company. But, these same sources say, the debacle over recruiting Guber and Peters also hurt him. Yetnikoff stepped down in October, 1990 after Sony agreed to pay off his contract for a reported $25 million. He has declined comment on his departure.
It was Yetnikoff who led Sony to Guber and Peters after Creative Artists Agency Chairman Michael Ovitz decided he didn’t want the job. It was Yetnikoff who backed Guber’s assurances that the Warner contract wouldn’t be a problem. And, according to sources close to Sony, it was Yetnikoff who stood up at a late-night meeting in the fall of 1989 and dramatically argued that Sony should go forward and hire the two producers--even after Warner had threatened to sue. Later, Guber and Peters would refuse to report to Yetnikoff.
Officially, top Sony officials have nothing but kind words to say about their new managers at Columbia Pictures. “I have enormous respect for both Peter and Jon,” said Michael P. Schulhof, vice chairman of Sony Corp. of America and president of Sony Software, the corporate division that oversees Columbia. “Sony is very pleased with their management.” Columbia executives also deny there was ever a dispute with Sony over the corporate jets.
But Yetnikoff’s fate suggests that Sony’s generous leash only extends as far as the bottom line. Even before Guber and Peters release their first batch of movies, there are signs that their leash may be getting shorter: Some sources close to the company say a shift in the management structure early this year that required the pair to report directly to Schulhof, rather than a management committee headed by Sony president Norio Ohga, was a sign that the Japanese are exerting tighter control over Columbia. Sony says the management committee was always considered transitional.
Moreover, rumors persist that Peters can’t survive press reports about his eccentricities. There were published reports, for example, that last year he used a corporate jet to send flowers to his girlfriend. Peters emphatically denies that story and others about his love life, but it’s clear the company has undertaken extensive damage control. For this story, Columbia executives suggested reporters talk to Peters’ lawyer, feminist activist Gloria Allred, about a $50,000 contribution he made to a woman’s shelter. And Peters has made a point of publicizing his new-found political activism. On Monday, he is hosting a fund-raiser for Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd.
Guber, always quick to defend Peters the way an older child backs his mischievous kid brother, says there’s no truth to the published reports speculating Peters may leave. “We enjoy a very tight relationship,” he says. “Not withstanding the noise you hear from time to time, we are together. . . . I adore him.”
Guber is equally concerned about his own public image. For this story, he and Peters appointed Ganis--a former publicist--to sit in on executive interviews, and afterward to engage in heavy spin-control with the reporters. Both executives refused to have their photos taken.
Most assessments of Peter Guber and Jon Peters dwell on their differences. The 49-year-old Guber is the one Hollywood insiders describe as brilliant, the guy who went to law school by day, business school by night, and ran production at Columbia when he was only 29. He’s been married to the same woman for nearly 30 years and, despite the ponytail he sported until Sony came along, he is at heart a conservative who cringes when he sees protesters burning the American flag.
At 44, Peters is still described as the one with the seventh-grade education and a history in juvenile hall, the guy who was married three times and has been romantically linked to women ranging from actress Kim Basinger to Swedish model Vendela. His real success, though, stems from his penchant for throwing out ideas, some ridiculous, some with promise, and then pursuing them with a vengeance.
Guber has the high-brow tastes, and an uncanny knack for fast-paced deal-making. He made “Gorillas in the Mist” after months of charming wildlife groups and the Rwandan government into cooperating. Peters’ taste run mass market, and he has an eye for design. He stuck with “Batman” for the better part of a decade before pushing it onto the world as Warners’ biggest hit ever. He designed the provocative Batman logo that appeared on billboards and bus stops everywhere.
Guber is nonconfrontational; Peters is deadly one moment, sweet and loyal the next. Peters once pointed an unloaded gun on workmen at his Aspen ranch, pulled the trigger, and then contritely confessed in a deposition that his troubled childhood had left him with a penchant for violence. At Columbia, insiders said his dressing down of former executive Roger Faxon last spring made his combative predecessor, Dawn Steel, look like the Good Witch of the East. He goes through secretaries so often he uses a temp agency.
Peters seems to derive his ego from being a powerful Hollywood player. Guber is more conflicted about his role. “My sense is that there is an aspiration in Peter to have more of a reflective life than he has now,” says Andrea Rich, vice chancellor of academic administration at UCLA, where Guber still teaches a film class once a week.
But this pair also has more in common than the sound of their names. They share an office and go to therapy together once a week. They both exude a charm gleaned from years of cultivating big-name stars and directors. They both have ranches in Aspen and houses in the Malibu Colony.
In a town where the top-floor corporate suites are dominated by buttoned-down financiers, Guber and Peters stand out as grown-up hippies. While Guber holds an M.B.A., he peppers his Boston-accented, free-form streams of consciousness with New Age-sounding maxims (“You can’t know where you’re going ‘til you know where you’ve been”). Peters displays a childlike exuberance over his own ideas.
They are equally hyperactive. Peters gets so worked-up when he’s making a point he grabs your knee; Guber goes for the foot. When you catch one of them alone, it’s hard enough to keep up with the verbiage that streams across the room like a falling star. When they’re together, it’s like witnessing a supernova.
“They’re an energy source,” says Columbia president Dolgen. “You can warm your hands against these guys on a cold winter day.” Between the two men, says actor Jack Nicholson, “there’s so much energy it’s scary.”
Most of the executives and producers who work for them profess to thrive under this exuberance. Says Columbia producer Laura Ziskind: “Are they cowboys? Yeah. But it feels good to me. There’s an energy that goes with that.”
Is all this energy and money is moving in the right direction--or in any direction at all? “It’s like lighting a six-booster rocket without having any direction,” insists one source close to Sony.
But Guber says he knows exactly where he’s going. “The idea was to design this mousetrap so that it was our own,” Guber says of Columbia Pictures. “They old management sold off many rights. They were constantly interested in a quick return on their investment.”
Neither Guber nor Peters is known for a long attention span, or an eye for detail. One former associate said Peters has “trouble focusing on anything for more than a millisecond.” And a friend of Guber’s notes that while he is “brilliant, this is not a man with a long attention span.”
When Guber first came in, for example, he wanted to launch a Sony film festival in Moscow. Nice idea, said sources familiar with the plan, but Guber wanted the festival to take off within a few months; he had no idea of the logistic complications involved. In another case, Guber and Peters signed a two-year contract with a vice president; when Price came in with his own people, they let the executive go, paying off his expensive contract.
Insiders also note that when Guber and Peters took over, they bought several high-priced scripts, including “Fire Down Below” for $750,000. Later, when Price was hired, he decided he didn’t like the script and put it into “turnaround,” studio jargon for putting the project back on the auction block.
They spent $1.2 million on another script, “Radio Flyer,” and committed to let the young writer David Mickey Evans direct. But after spending $5 million on the production, Peters fired Evans and started over with veteran director Richard Donner (“Lethal Weapon,” “Superman”). Donner made a $5 million salary, and his wife, Lauren Shuler-Donner (“Mr. Mom,” “Pretty in Pink”) received $1 million to produce. The budget on “Radio Flyer” has since swelled to over $30 million, even though there are no major stars in the cast.
“It’s possible they are restraining themselves now,” says Harold Vogel, Merrill-Lynch’s entertainment analyst. “But the first year was one of considerable upfront spending that distorted the economic balance of the entire industry.”
Critics contend that the most visible sign of disarray is the company’s seemingly top-heavy, and expensive, management structure. One highly placed source at Columbia said the company looks like a tulip--with a heavy bud and a thin stem. Some outsiders call Columbia “the elephants’ graveyard” because of all the big-name executives.
Levine, who as chief operating officer is heavily involved in the company’s day-to-day affairs, defends Columbia’s management structure. “There’s no question the people we have are collectively more experienced than other management teams,” he says. “But I don’t think we look expensive or out of line at all. We’ve built an infrastructure that we think we need. Maybe our goals are a lot larger than other studios.”
“Each of the people is a part of the whole puzzle,” Guber says. “It may be puzzling to somebody outside the company, but we know where we are going. We have our vision and our map of action, and we think we need these racehorses to get us there.”
But one source close to the company speculates that the pair is trying to remove themselves from the day-to-day operations of Columbia. (Guber has been known to describe their role as “inspiration versus perspiration.”) While the two maintain a joint office (Louis B. Mayer’s old suite) in Culver City, Peters primarily works out of his home and Guber spends most of his time at his office inside the Tri-Star building in Burbank.
Among the company’s 3,000 employees, there is also some resentment about the high-life these executives are enjoying at a time when most others at Columbia have to be content with 2-5% pay increases. The fleet of corporate jets, the private elevator set aside for top brass, the TV camera that monitors guests going in and out of the chairmen’s office, the VIP parking in front of the Thalberg building that eliminated much-needed spaces on the lot--all of this contributes to an atmosphere that one employee summed up like this: “There are the Pharaohs, and there are the citizens.”
The Medavoy Way
If Columbia’s movies hit pay dirt, such complaints will sound trivial. But those dice will be rolled by the two men--both very different in style--who run Columbia’s film divisions.
Mike Medavoy spent a dozen years counting pennies as the L.A.-based partner of Orion Pictures. But at Tri-Star, he appears to have inherited his new bosses’ passion for big ideas and big dollars. Around town, Medavoy is likened to a poor kid suddenly let loose in “Toys R Us.”
These days he probably feels more like Peter Pan. Inside sound-stages on the Columbia lot, Steven Spielberg is filming “Hook,” a modern-day version of Sir James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan legend. Medavoy found the script sitting among two dozen others when he came in, bumped its screenwriter out of the director slot, moved aside its producers, and convinced Spielberg to direct and Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams to star. The budget immediately ballooned from $35 million to $50 million--not including the salaries for Spielberg, Williams or Hoffman. Instead, those three will split an estimated 40% of gross ticket sales, a deal that critics say will make it difficult for Tri-Star to come out even unless the movie is a blockbuster hit with more than $100 million in ticket sales.
“It’s got to be the most expensive deal in history,” said one source close to the project. However, this source added, it would have cost another $22 million to pay salaries upfront to these men, bringing the total price tag on “Hook” to $72 million--more than two-and-a-half times the cost of an average movie. Medavoy notes that by paying Spielberg and the stars a percentage of gross ticket sales, “it takes a little longer to break even but the risks aren’t as high.” It’s also a project, say insiders, that the Japanese are thrilled about.
Another expensive, high-profile Tri-Star movie is director Barry Levinson’s “Bugsy,” starring Warren Beatty, a period-piece gangster film that outsiders estimate will cost $40 million. “Hudson Hawk,” a project that Medavoy inherited when it was well under way, ran substantially over budget, pushing its cost above $50 million, insiders say. The producer on that film is the notoriously hard-to-control Joel Silver.
Guber defends Tri-Star’s expensive movies, noting that “motion pictures are often locomotives for other parts of the company. . . . Something like ‘Hook’ will boost our merchandising, soundtracks, international sales, etc. " In contrast to Medavoy, Price seems distinctly out of sync with the go-go atmosphere that pervades Columbia. He eschews big-name stars and directors, emphasizing story development. “Frank’s theory has always been story, story, story,” says producer Steve Roth, who is making the boxing film “Gladiator” for Price.
Price is often tagged as the studio chief who passed on “E.T.” But he also released such Oscar-winning films as “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Tootsie” and “Gandhi” during his last stint as Columbia chief in the early 1980s. In keeping with his past, Price says he is emphasizing comedy and romance.
One of the few studio executives who started as a writer, Price gets involved in minute details on scripts--leading to some complaints that his style is too cautious, even plodding. The slate of films he recently announced appear to have modest budgets--and, some of his critics contend, modest ambitions.
This summer he is releasing a sequel to “The Blue Lagoon,” a film that made enormous profits for Columbia when he last ran the studio. He put into production a $6-million movie by a young black filmmaker, John Singleton, about coming-of-age in South-Central Los Angeles. Insiders say he expects “The Inner Circle,” the story of a Stalin aide by director Andrei Konchalovsky, to achieve the critical and commercial success of “Gandhi.”
But even Price isn’t immune to the lures of Sony’s fat checkbook: For a supporting role in the upcoming comedy “My Girl,” he paid “Home Alone” star Macaulay Culkin $1 million.
Courting Brooks
Much is made by executives inside the company about the autonomy that Price and Medavoy enjoy. But that doesn’t mean Guber and Peters are keeping their hands out of movie production, or Gary Lieberthal’s Columbia Pictures Television division, which produces such hit shows as “Who’s the Boss” and “Married . . . With Children.”
One of Guber’s first lunches after he took over Columbia was with TV and film producer James L. Brooks, whose contract at Fox was up. Brooks was impressed. “Every quirk of mine he knew,” he recalls about Guber. “He talked for some minutes about me more intelligently than I could talk about myself. “
Several months later, Brooks agreed to a film and TV deal that sent shock waves through Hollywood because of its cost. Sources familiar with the deal claim that Columbia won’t make money unless all three of the shows he is producing are hits. Brooks declines comment on the details of the deal, except to dispute that assessment. One insider says simply, “It will take significant success to meet expectations. But he’s clearly been one of the most successful TV producers. This is not a deal you do every day of the week. But for a studio starting up, you need this.”
Guber conducts most of his movie-making through GPEC, the Guber-Peters Entertainment Company, which Sony bought and merged into Columbia. The company line about GPEC is that Guber and Peters kept it intact because “the name in our community signalled a certain kind of product, what we think of as quality films,” as Stacey Snider, executive vice president of GPEC, put it.
But many friends and associates of Guber think GPEC is his annuity, a place to go if things don’t work out at Columbia. For now, it is clearly his personal playground, a place that will produce such literary-driven films as “Single White Female,” directed by Barbet Schroeder from the John Lutz novel; “Remains of the Day,” directed by Mike Nichols from the Kazuo Ishiguro novel; and “Mary Reilly,” based on the Valerie Martin novel about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s maid.
Guber even found time to attend a meeting in New York with children’s writer Chris Van Allsberg, during which he and Interscope executives convinced the reclusive author to sell the film rights to his book “Jumanji"--the first time Van Allsberg has ever sold a book to Hollywood.
If Guber is “completely story and literary driven,” as Snider describes him, then Peters is the original “high-concept” producer, summing up his ideas in “TV Guide talk.” “ ‘Tootsie’ meets ’48 Hours’ ” is how he describes “Girls Club,” a movie he recently dreamed up to pair Sylvester Stallone with Arnold Schwarzenneger. “ ‘Star Wars’ on Earth” were his instructions to the writers of the new Michael Jackson movie. “I have 50 movies in my head,” Peters says.
While Guber is heavily involved with both Tri-Star and GPEC, Peters works through Columbia--where his ex-wife, Christine Peters, has a production deal. She is currently developing “Girls Club” for Peters. Her Columbia deal prompted Peters’ critics to cry nepotism. Peters responds, “Christine is one of the best producers in Hollywood.”
As for reports that he has put former paramours, and his son’s girlfriend, on the Columbia payroll, Peters states, “I have never mixed my business and personal life, absolutely not.”
In the months before Price came on board, Peters basically ran Columbia, buying up scripts at steep prices, often from first time screenwriters. “Radio Flyer” was his project, a film that he said touched a personal chord because of his own past history of being an abused child.
Michael Douglas, the film’s producer, defends Peters’ willingness to go along with the expensive change of directors on the project, saying that Peters displayed “a courage and belief in the material.” Too often, he adds, when a film gets off on the wrong foot, studio executives are unwilling to step in and change course.
Peters has been instrumental in other projects at Columbia, including setting up Streisand’s next directorial effort, “Prince of Tides” and putting into development the 1920s adventure book “Strongest Man.” When he first came in, he tried to put together a movie featuring the kiddie-rock group, New Kids on the Block, but the deal fell apart when the band decided to tour instead.
Peters’ current obsession is the Michael Jackson movie, set to start filming this summer. The musical-adventure film is now being written by Caroline Thompson (“Edward Scissorhands”) and Larry Wilson (co-author, “Beetlejuice”), with sets designed by “Batman’s” Anton Furst. Peters sees it as Columbia’s “Batman” but many outsiders are dubious, noting Jackson’s minimal acting experience.
The film is part of an overall relationship Jackson is developing with Sony. Sometime soon, Columbia will announce the formation of the Michael Jackson Entertainment Company--Jackson’s own record label and TV/movie production house, to be financed by Sony. “I said to Michael, close your eyes,” Peters recalls. “Now picture yourself getting out of a limo, you open your eyes and it’s an Art Deco building that says Michael Jackson Entertainment Company on top. You walk in the lobby and there are guys with epaulets and hats standing there. It’s your family, your home and you’re the boss.”
Jackson already had a film production deal under former Columbia chief Steel, and Jackson’s then-attorney John Branca had been in negotiations with Yetnikoff about starting a record label before Peters showed up. Moreover, rumors that Jackson was on the brink of leaving Sony Records (formerly CBS Records) last summer appear to be overstated: The artist owed the company four more albums and probably would have faced an expensive lawsuit if he broke his contract.
But Jackson’s associates say Peters was instrumental in persuading the artist to make Sony-Columbia his creative home. “Jon saved the day for Columbia,” insists Jackson’s manager, Sandy Gallin.
Peters has clearly developed a close friendship with the artist. The two are regularly seen together, and a Michael Jackson video game--a present “with love” from Jackson--stands in the corner of Peters’ Culver City office.
Through his manager Gallin, Jackson says this: “Jon Peters is brilliant, original, sensitive and dynamic. His work bears the mark of a true visionary. He is the rare combination of effortless spontaneity, ferocity, and intensity. When he unleashes his creative potential, what comes out is breathtaking, beautiful and magnificent.
“He gets so enthusiastic: One day at lunch while talking about a movie idea, his glasses fell into his soup. I love him.”
Next Big Project
It’s so quiet in Jon Peters’ backyard you can hear a diamond drop. A hawk circles silently in the sky. Down below, beyond the pool and the tennis court, beyond the koi pond and the sculptured rocks, is the foundation of Peters’ next grand project--a guest complex consisting of a theater, bungalows and a food hall.
On most days, this is where Peters can be found--behind a stone guard’s gate in the hills high above Los Angeles, where mansion after mansion rises up out of lush shrubbery like some fairy-tale neighborhood. Friends say Peters is fond of showing his guests around his elegantly appointed home, announcing the prices of his art and antiques.
Peters displays the kind of thrill with money that one might expect from someone who is new to the stuff. But with Peters, it’s more than that: Even in Hollywood--where nepotism runs rampant, where studios were founded by junk dealers and fur traders--Peters can’t live down his roots. No matter how many movies he makes or studios he runs, no matter how many $100,000 Tiffany lamps he buys, in Hollywood’s mind Peters is still the ex-hairdresser who hustled his way into the business through a love affair with Barbra Streisand.
As a young child living in the San Fernando Valley, Peters came home one day to find that his dad, a Native American who worked as a cook, had died of a heart attack. His mother remarried, but her next husband was alcoholic and abusive. When he was 11, Peters decided he’d had enough of watching his stepfather beat his mother, so he slugged him back. The stepfather threw him in juvenile hall.
A year later, Peters took off to New York, where he cut hair in a low-rent beauty shop. He returned at age 14, with a 15 year-old-bride at his side, started cutting hair in a relative’s shop, and eventually took over an uncle’s Rodeo Drive shop. He made a splash with the Hollywood set when he stopped teasing hair in favor of a soft, blow-dried look--a style he had picked up during a trip to France.
He divorced his first wife and married actress Lesley Ann Warren in 1967. Seven years later, that marriage crumbled when he met Streisand on the set of “For Pete’s Sake,” where the actress had called him in to design her wig. “He saw me as this young, hip chick,” Streisand recalls. “At the time I used to wear Dior. I appeared older than I was. He made me feel young and beautiful. He said the public should see the sexy side of you--your legs, your tush.”
Peters produced Streisand’s next album, designed its cover (the idea to plop a housefly on a stick of butter and name the album “Butterfly” was Peters’), and packed the inside spread with photos of himself. When Streisand’s agent tried to persuade her to do “A Star Is Born,” Peters had no idea it was a remake of two classic films. But he persuaded her to take the role--and then announced that he would produce, direct and co-star. The latter two roles, Streisand insists, he suggested as a joke.
The production was a troubled one, and many on the set considered Peters a buffoon for the ideas he proposed, such as charging extras $5 apiece to sit in on a Streisand concert. (It worked: They paid up.) But the film was a hit, and Peters got his entree to Hollywood.
Peters hooked up with Guber at Polygram Pictures in 1980, after the former hairdresser had produced two bombs, “Eyes of Laura Mars” and “The Main Event,” and a commercial hit, “Caddyshack.”
The son of a junk dealer from Massachusetts, Guber got his start in the business as an executive assistant at Columbia. He walked in the door with an M.B.A., a law degree, and a university stint in Florence, Italy. Guber took the job because he had a wife and young baby to support; it could have been Fruit of the Loom for all the ambitions he had about the movie business.
The times were turbulent at Columbia when Guber joined. But he hung in, becoming one of the few islands of stability in a financially troubled company where executives moved in and out with the seasons. By 1973, he had risen to production president.
Guber had an eye for material, but he was also a savvy promoter. His first movie after leaving Columbia’s executive offices to become a producer on the lot was “The Deep.” Guber’s longtime friend and former studio executive Ned Tanen recalls that Guber promoted the film as if it was a sequel to the Universal’s blockbuster movie “Jaws"--much to the consternation of that rival studio. “The Deep"--whose claim to fame was the movie ad’s photograph of Jacqueline Bisset in a wet T-shirt--wasn’t a great movie, but with Guber’s promotion became a much-needed hit for Columbia.
Guber also was able to turn a movie as dark as “Midnight Express” into a commercial success. The Alan Parker-directed film about an American man’s experience in a Turkish prison cell earned an Oscar for screenwriter Oliver Stone.
The first teaming of Guber and Peters was not a successful one. At Polygram, they enjoyed some success with “Missing,” but also released a string of duds that left the company in the red. Guber blames the troubles on the fact that Polygram’s owners--reeling from a downturn in the record business--didn’t want to be in the capital-intensive movie business, even if it meant financing such potential hits as “Flashdance” and “Batman.”
The track record since then has been mixed: Warner chief Steve Ross complained bitterly in his company’s lawsuit against Sony that while the pair had some hits, Warner stuck with them through many lean years. Their bombs included “Who’s That Girl,” “The Clan of the Cave Bear,” “Caddyshack II,” and “The Legend of Billie Jean.”
Guber and Peters had a hand (a minor one, others on the project argue) in the blue-collar musical hit “Flashdance.” They bought the rights to “Color Purple” but had virtually nothing to do with the production once Spielberg came on board to direct. Ditto for the smash hit “Rain Man”: Detractors of Guber and Peters say the success of the film is the doing of their development executive Roger Birnbaum and director Barry Levinson, while allies of the pair point out that they found the project and kept it alive through a series of writers and directors.
Peters did serve as on-set producer for “The Witches of Eastwick,” which grossed nearly $65 million, but his battles with the producers and director George Miller were ugly--and expensive. Peters came up with the idea for “Tango & Cash,” a box-office disappointment here but a success overseas. Guber and Peters also were executive producers on last year’s groaner, “Bonfires of the Vanities.”
In the last 10 years, there are two other successes that Guber and Peters can claim extensive credit for. Guber was intimately involved in “Gorillas in the Mist,” a film that was a disappointment at the box office but earned lots of attention at Oscar time. The smash hit “Batman” was Peters’ baby. He nursed it through the years of development, and was a fixture on the film’s set in London.
Deal That Failed
On a Sunday afternoon in 1988, Guber and Peters sat contemplatively on the front steps of Thalberg building on the old MGM lot, knowing that their dream of running a studio had just slipped through their fingers. They had announced plans to take over MGM with their financial partner, Burt Sugarman. But at the 11th hour the deal fell apart.
So when Sony came along a year later, it wasn’t hard to lure the two producers to Columbia. Still, the ambitious partners managed to secure a generous compensation package, and an agreement that Sony would take back the MGM lot that they dreamed about owning just one year before. By then, Warners owned the property. So, as part of the settlement on the Sony-Warner lawsuit, Columbia swapped its 35% stake in Warner’s Burbank Studios for the 45-acre Culver City lot.
A three-year face-lift of the aging lot will cost $100 million--and that doesn’t even include two 13-story buildings and several other office complexes to come later as part of a 1-million square-foot expansion. Models sitting in the executive conference room show a complex that in 15 years will include underground parking, a grand circular driveway, an ornate gate for movie premieres, several new office buildings done in the cream-colored art deco style of the original MGM lot, upscale retail shops, fountains and park squares.
Peters already has plans for a new health spa, and intends to bring in his analyst to speak to employees each week about her 12-step program to inner happiness. He’s also been heavily involved in the look of the architectural plan, flying his design team--which includes “Batman’s” Anton Furst--out to his Aspen ranch for planning meetings.
While this will all bring plenty of new glamour to the featureless Culver City lot, municipal officials who must approve Columbia’s request for waivers to the city’s four-story height limitation are skeptical. “It’s very controversial,” says Mayor Steven Gourley. “Some say it’s the best idea since sliced bread. Others say we’d be ruining the city. We like their business. It brings a great deal of prestige to the city. But we’re not about to sell the farm.”
City officials have been wooed with tours of the lot, meals at the studio commissary and screenings. Columbia has also set aside staff to churn out a bi-monthly newsletter to city residents.
An Urgent Summons
It’s 8 p.m. on Jan. 24, and Tri-Star chief Mike Medavoy has cut short his 50th-birthday dinner with his wife, Patricia, and is racing back to Stage 7 on the Culver City lot. His boss Guber has called: He just got off the phone with Sony president Ohga, who is fuming over the cost of “Hook.” Time to powwow, quietly, where no one can see.
Medavoy shows up at the door of Stage 7, and 300 people scream “Surprise!” The Ohga call was a trick. In front of a backdrop of the glittering L.A. skyline, a full orchestra in dinner jackets is playing, Art Deco chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and stars like Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, Sylvester Stallone, Richard Gere, Gene Hackman and Sally Field roam the room. Even Sen. Dodd, Medavoy’s close friend, has flown in from Washington.
The idea for the party may have been Patricia’s. But the scale of the production was pure Jon Peters. He got so caught up with it that the event went 60% over budget.
“How do you think Frank feels?” muttered one guest in a reference to Price. “Can you believe the Japanese spent all this money on a party when they’re not even contributing much to the Persian Gulf War?” carped another guest the next day. The party cost $80,000, but unfriendly Hollywood insiders quickly spread rumors that it cost 10 times that amount.
Critics of Guber and Peters claim the Medavoy party was an example of the extravagance Guber and Peters have displayed since taking over Columbia. These detractors predict that the free-spending at Columbia will be their downfall--providing a lesson to the Japanese about what happens when an absentee landlord takes over a company run by Hollywood talent.
Guber and Peters say they aren’t disturbed by the talk: It’s nothing they haven’t heard before.
“Here’s the story,” Peters insists as the “story” comes to a close, “We have this dream. Now the question is this: Can they do it? Can they turn this empty shell into a jewel box?”
But, for now, time’s-a-wasting. Peters has to get back to his designs for the studio lot and his dreams for Sonyland. Oh, and there’s the Michael Jackson announcement party to plan.
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11ce91fd5b7c47c2e899faa38d6dd1d9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-10-mn-388-story.html | Rampage in Westwood: Hundreds Loot Stores : Riot: Officials seek answers after theater turns away youths. Police beating of black motorist cited by some. | Rampage in Westwood: Hundreds Loot Stores : Riot: Officials seek answers after theater turns away youths. Police beating of black motorist cited by some.
Shop owners were sweeping up broken glass and community leaders were searching for explanations Saturday, hours after hundreds of youths rampaged through Westwood Village, some looting stores, throwing beer cans, vandalizing cars and tearing branches off of trees to smash store windows.
Police said the melee erupted when hundreds of ticket buyers at the Mann Westwood Fourplex Theater on Gayley Avenue were turned away from the just-released movie “New Jack City,” a story about the violent rise and fall of a Harlem drug lord.
Theater officials denied that the movie had been oversold. Eyewitnesses said Friday night’s violence was fueled, at least in part, by tensions created by the highly publicized beating of a black motorist by Los Angeles police officers last week.
Some youths shouted “Black Power!” and “Fight the Power!” as they roamed the streets and made angry references to the videotaped beating.
Outraged merchants said that police had been warned about the possibility of violence linked to the opening of the movie, which features the volatile rap artist Ice-T. They said police appeared reluctant to stop the looters and blamed the timid response on the public outcry over the controversial beating of Rodney G. King.
Several merchants also expressed concern that the melee was part of a disturbing trend that threatens business in the Westside shopping village, where the release of movies popular with black audiences have been linked to street violence on at least two other occasions.
All showings of “New Jack City” in Westwood were canceled Saturday and today. A theater employee said a decision would be made Monday whether to continue screening it.
By Saturday night, Westwood had nearly returned to normal. The restaurants and cafes were doing a brisk business, pedestrians were strolling the sidewalks, and traffic was at its usual crawl.
But some reminders of the previous night’s violence remained. A few windows were boarded up. A dozen Guardian Angels stood in front of the theater, arms crossed, waiting and watching for trouble. Some people who had come to see “New Jack City” were upset to find that the show had been canceled.
Friday’s disturbance began about 9:45 p.m., when 600 to 800 youths gathered outside the theater complex to buy tickets for the 10 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. showings of “New Jack City,” said Sgt. Nicholas Barbara of the Police Department’s West Los Angeles Division.
Barbara said the theater sold too many tickets for the showings, which angered the crowd. “They took over control of the streets,” Barbara said.
He and about eight officers on patrol asked the crowd to disperse, but the youths spilled out into the streets, the sergeant said.
The police formed a line and tried to move the crowd south on Gayley Avenue toward Kinross Avenue. But some youths, black and white, began picking up rocks and bricks, ripped thick branches off trees and began smashing windows and looting stores, Barbara said.
About 100 officers in riot gear swarmed into the village after a tactical alert was called at 10:40 p.m., police officials said.
“It was like a stampede of horses,” said Remy Hiramoto, an employee at the California Sports Card Exchange on Gayley Avenue, across the street from the movie house. “It was so crowded, so rowdy. One guy picked up a rubbish can and threw it into the street. Another picked up a (traffic) barricade and threw it. Then people just got braver from there.”
Hiramoto said one man ran into the street with an American flag, threw it on the ground and others stomped on it.
At the height of the disturbance, which lasted about three hours, as many as 1,500 people tore through Kinross, Gayley and Weyburn avenues, Westwood Boulevard and Lindbrook Drive in moods that eyewitnesses described as ranging from angry to jubilant.
Police booked six people for burglary, failure to disperse and throwing objects at moving vehicles with intent to injure.
One man suffered severe cuts, apparently from broken glass, but ran before paramedics could treat him, police said. Three people were treated for minor injuries and released from UCLA Medical Center.
At least two youths were knocked over by a car speeding through an intersection, but they did not appear to be badly injured.
Looters struck 17 stores in the trendy shopping village and carried away merchandise ranging from leather jackets and bicycles to compact discs and athletic gear. Shoe boxes and clothes hangers from other stores were strewn across the street. Police said no damage estimate was available.
Many shopkeepers closed early when they saw crowds filling the streets.
“I was scared,” said Taher Nasseri, who sells leather goods at a stand on Westwood Boulevard. “People were jumping on cars, breaking everything, putting trash on the street, running this way and that way.”
Abu Bashar, 23, a UCLA student who was eating dinner near the theater when the violence erupted, said he was surprised by the inaction of police. He said he observed officers standing less than 100 feet away from looters and doing nothing to stop them.
Some observers said they wondered whether police were under orders to hold back in light of the King beating. West Los Angeles Division Capt. Willie Pannell said no such instructions were given. He noted that it took 45 minutes for all 100 officers to reach the scene and that by then “obviously a lot of people that committed crimes got away.”
Gene Stratton, a board member of the Westwood Village Merchants Assn. and owner of Stratton’s Grill, said merchants last week warned police that there would be trouble if “New Jack City” were shown so soon after the videotaped beating of the black motorist.
“The only problem we have in Westwood is when they show a black film,” said Stratton. “What happens is the black film brings in black gangs. These films (incite violence). I know it sounds crazy, but we’re not talking Sidney Poitier-type films.”
Last December, merchants also sent a letter to Mayor Tom Bradley listing their concerns about “certain types of black films,” Stratton said. Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler said Saturday: “To the best of my knowledge, no one is aware of such a letter.”
Last August, nine people were arrested in Westwood when a series of fights broke out after the premiere of the Spike Lee film “Mo’ Better Blues.” The incident prompted the city to close off several streets in the village on weekend nights.
Three years ago, 1,500 people were involved in a post-midnight fracas at another Westwood theater midway through a screening of Eddie Murphy’s “Raw.”
Los Angeles was not the only city to experience violence at a theater showing “New Jack City.” In Las Vegas, police said that 15 people were arrested Friday night after a fight broke out among 60 youths in a theater showing the film. Police said a number of those arrested were gang members, and one person was carrying a machine gun.
Pannell said concern over “New Jack City” prompted him to double the number of patrol officers on duty Friday night from four to eight. He said that after the “Mo’ Better Blues” disturbance, Westwood movie theaters agreed to warn police when films are shown that could pose problems.
The suggestion that films geared to black audiences cause disruptions angered many black moviegoers Saturday.
“They closed the movie because they don’t want black people in Westwood,” said Ava DuVernay, 18, an African-American student at UCLA who watched the melee Friday night. “It’s the same thing that happened with ‘Mo’ Better Blues.’ They’re using (the movie) as an excuse. (They’re afraid) this place is attracting too many black people, basically.”
DuVernay said she believed that much of the violence was spurred by anger surrounding the King beating. She said that if police had used a heavier hand in Westwood on Friday, the disturbance “would have been a Watts revolution. It would have been real nasty.”
Merchants were upset at the apparent passivity of some police officers.
The police “didn’t do anything,” said Drew Feldman, 42, a salesman at Century Electronics on Westwood, where a window was smashed. He said looters stole $100,000 worth of cameras, shortwave radios, keyboards and other equipment. “They just stood here and watched. I’ve never watched so much law breaking in front of officers.”
“I think it is a spinoff of the violence from the Police Department and that fellow they hassled,” said Larry Oakley, owner of Oakley’s Hairstyling, across the street from the Mann theater. “They were just (angry) and had to take their meanness out on something. It was bound to erupt. It was a time bomb.”
“It’s getting to the point where no one wants to come to Westwood anymore,” Oakley said.
Black community leaders hesitated to blame this weekend’s violence on racial tensions.
Jarone W. Johnson, Western regional director of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said he hoped the disturbance was not racially based, “but I believe it may have been.”
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said that whether the melee was sparked by anger over the King beating is “the kind of thing we can’t tell.” She added: “We are in a very, very tense environment and there is so much anger about the beating.”
Times staff writers John Lee, Anthony Millican and John L. Mitchell contributed to this story.
BACKGROUND
“New Jack City,” directed by Mario Van Peebles, depicts the rise and fall of a ruthless Harlem drug lord and the crusade of two undercover detectives to break up his crack-dealing business. Ice-T, whose career has been marked by criticism that his songs incite violence, plays one of the detectives who chase down the drug kingpin. Ice-T’s raps have been described by critics as profane, angry and bitter. He said in a recent interview that one of his singles, “Dog in the Wax,” was excessively violent. But Ice-T, who began rapping while a student at Los Angeles’ Crenshaw High School, also said that he does not favor violence, and that his raps deal with street violence and other realities of urban life.
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215227f74e7d3d4b729a35ca3902e1ae | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-11-mn-22-story.html | Vance Colvig; Roles Included ‘Bozo the Clown’ | Vance Colvig; Roles Included ‘Bozo the Clown’
Vance Colvig, son of one of the original Bozo the Clowns who followed in his father’s tradition portraying that character on KTLA for six years in the mid-1960s, has died at his Hollywood Hills home.
John Harlan, a longtime friend, said Colvig--also known as a film and television actor--was 72 when he died March 4 of cancer.
Colvig came to Hollywood in the early 1930s when his father Vance (Pinto) Colvig Sr. entered the film industry as the original voice of Walt Disney’s cartoon character Goofy. The senior Colvig later became the first Bozo on Capitol records.
The younger Colvig entered the entertainment industry as a page at NBC and then wrote for such radio shows as “Breakfast in Hollywood,” “Command Performance” and “Bride and Groom.”
He also acted on radio and in the early days of television. In addition to Bozo he was “Buck Sureshot” and “Nutsy the Clown” on other children’s TV shows. He was a frequent guest artist on “The Golden Girls,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Punky Brewster,” “St. Elsewhere” and many more TV shows.
He made television commercials, music videos, was seen and heard on commercials and played a series of characters at Knott’s Berry Farm, Marineland and sports and adventure trade shows.
His survivors include his wife, Gini, son Vance III and two brothers. Contributions in his memory are asked for the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
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be00eaa34687f933a2ae24fc82f9c3b7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-12-me-22-story.html | Suspected Drug Lab Found in Van Nuys : Narcotics: Police trailing a smoke cloud discover chemicals and equipment. One woman is arrested. | Suspected Drug Lab Found in Van Nuys : Narcotics: Police trailing a smoke cloud discover chemicals and equipment. One woman is arrested.
A Van Nuys woman was arrested Monday after Los Angeles police officers tracing an acrid-smelling smoke cloud stumbled on a suspected drug lab in a garage, authorities said.
Police arrested Bridgette O’Donnell, 27, an occupant of the house in the 6400 block of North Woodley Avenue, on suspicion of conspiracy to manufacture a controlled substance, according to Sgt. Bob Cedillos.
She was being held at the police department’s Van Nuys jail in lieu of $51,000 bail, said Cedillos of the Police Department’s Narcotics Division.
Five firefighters were taken to a local hospital for observation after coming in contact with the smoke, said Capt. Robert Rose of the Los Angeles Fire Department. The firefighters did not appear to have been injured and were taken to the hospital only as a precaution, he said.
Inside the house and garage, officers found 35 gallons of methamphetamine oil, a drug precursor, according to Lt. Richard Szabo. He estimated the street value of the finished drugs at about $3.2 million.
Investigators said the smoke was probably caused by chemicals reacting in the garage.
Cedillos said two officers from the Police Department’s Van Nuys division called the Los Angeles Fire Department and knocked on the door of the house after they saw smoke drifting across Woodley Avenue in front of the house about 4:45 a.m.
The officers thought a fire had started in the garage, Cedillos said.
O’Donnell answered the door and tried to stall the officers, Cedillos said.
While waiting, the officers saw O’Donnell and another woman try to hide a large amount of laboratory equipment, Cedillos said. “They really didn’t want to let the officers see what they had inside there, but the officers saw it right away,” he said.
Both women then ran from the house, but the officers caught O’Donnell. The other woman escaped, Cedillos said.
Cedillos said other arrests were possible.
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0b8a6b6d233b3cb75c51619b06689fbf | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-14-vl-389-story.html | PROFILE : The ‘Choice’ Is His : David Ciaffardini’s Ojai-based magazine reaches an underground of alternative music lovers. | PROFILE : The ‘Choice’ Is His : David Ciaffardini’s Ojai-based magazine reaches an underground of alternative music lovers.
The humble, idyllic town of Ojai means many different things to many different folks. To contemporary classical music lovers, the annual Ojai Festival is one of the finest small festivals in the world. Mystics of varying stripes have long gathered and repaired in this valley.
And to more than 5,000 alternative music lovers around the world, Ojai is the home base of Sound Choice, a magazine started in 1984 by self-styled magazine magnate David Ciaffardini. The Sound Choice headquarters is unassuming--a utilitarian, three-room, concrete-floored space behind an auto shop, located on a side street.
“Nobody in the town actually knows what I do here,” Ciaffardini said in his office recently. “You can’t even get the magazine here in town. There’s only one place in Ventura--Wild Planet--where you can get it.”
More than anything, Ciaffardini is known here as a mild-mannered reporter who does occasional work for the Ojai Valley News. “I’ve just been here, with a kind of low-key existence,” Ciaffardini said. “They know me on a first-name basis at the post office, because I get all my mail there. The postal workers say I get more mail than anyone else.” This may or may not be grounds for a civic commendation.
Ciaffardini is happy to base Sound Choice in Ojai, even though a college town might yield more volunteer office help. As Ciaffardini commented, “In a way, one of the advantages of being apart from a media center is that there is no problem with (music industry) people coming over, putting pressure on you.”
Sound Choice is the offspring of the now somewhat legendary Op magazine. College radio programmer John Foster founded that prototypical alternative music fanzine in Washington state. In five years, he intentionally published only 26 issues--one for each letter of the alphabet (John Zorn, for instance, was the lead subject in the final issue). The idea, according to Ciaffardini, was to create “a sort of encyclopedia of lost music.”
After Op finished its cycle, Foster held an independent music conference. In effect, he offered the blueprints for his operation--tips, a valuable mailing list and distributor information--to any takers. Ciaffardini, then a fledgling journalist looking for a worthy cause, was one of the attendees. “I was young, naive, fresh out of college,” he said.
Originally, Ciaffardini sent out an introduction to his proposed new magazine to a list of 1,000 subscribers and got a 50% response rate. What Ciaffardini didn’t anticipate was the amount of sheer legwork involved in putting out a magazine--even a quarterly. “Nine out of 10 man hours are spent on the logistics--mailing out your bills, making sure subscribers are taken care of.”
The large task of putting out a magazine, especially a specialist one with a small profit margin, must necessarily be a labor of love--and sometimes a matter of braving its opposite.
“I interviewed John Foster in our first issue,” Ciaffardini remembered. “I asked him ‘What did you accomplish in your five years of doing this?’ He said: ‘Getting a lot of people to hate me.’ He washed his hands of the whole thing.”
Timing worked in Ciaffardini’s favor. As the music industry fragmented into multiple directions in the mid-80s, a kind of independent music boom occurred, with college radio leading the charge. Before long, the major record labels caught wind of a new, lucrative demographic group and jumped on the bandwagon.
Still, as the do-it-yourself impulse spread and home recording became more and more affordable, a vast independent music network evolved. It was this “underground” world which Sound Choice addresses.
Ciaffardini takes the visiting reporter to his vault, where he roughly categorizes the bounty of cassettes and CDs he gets--in the mail, of course--for review in the magazine. Large plastic bins are marked by genre: folk, classical, rock, jazz, avant garde and the proverbial “other.” How is “other” defined? “It could be anything,” he said. “We’ve been getting a lot of children’s music now.”
Music, per se, isn’t the magazine’s only point of interest. The Winter ’91 issue of Sound Choice features an extensive interview with Timothy Leary, as well as a section on “music consciousness.”
“We usually don’t put people on the cover. In a way, I was against that. I wanted to be different, and that was a way of promoting rock stars. I also realize now that the magazines that sell are the ones with a face.”
UP CLOSE DAVID CIAFFARDINI
Who: 32-year-old publisher/owner.
Of what: Sound Choice, an alternative music magazine
Where: In Ojai.
For whom: “There is a variety of people who read Sound Choice,” Ciaffardini said. “Let’s look at the first ones I pull out here: an attorney, another attorney, a student, news reporter and broadcaster, an editor, produce man, psychotherapist, a musician-accountant. Most of our readers are in the 28 to 32 range.”
Why: “Our generation is one that didn’t really have their own music, so much. In the ‘60s, you had music that everybody listened to. In the ‘70s, you had people like me who were exposed to a lot of music, but there wasn’t any particular band that everybody rallied around. This generation, these people, since they don’t have one specific music, are looking. They’re into lots of different kinds of music.”
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057e776c6de37b26ca0c3f3e06e12d57 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-17-ca-544-story.html | Ray Manzarek Slams ‘The Doors’ | Ray Manzarek Slams ‘The Doors’
“Oliver Stone has assassinated Jim Morrison.”
That’s how one of the real Doors reviews the Jim Morrison film biography.
Ray Manzarek, the real-life keyboardist for the Doors, was legally bound from commenting on Oliver Stone’s movie about the legendary rocker before its release. Now he’s been unleashed.
“The film portrays Jim as a violent, drunken fool,” says Manzarek. “That wasn’t Jim. When I walked out of the movie, I thought, ‘Geez, who was that jerk?’ ”
Manzarek feels Val Kilmer’s portrayal of Morrison was “adequate--a nice attempt.” And that the lavish, re-created Doors concert footage was “brilliantly filmed, although over-amped and sensationalistic.”
But he insists that the movie fails to capture his band’s artistic vision. “The film comes from the entirely wrong philosophical base. The Doors were about idealism and the ‘60s quest for freedom and brotherhood. But the film isn’t based on love. It’s based in madness and chaos. Oliver has made Jim into an agent of destruction.”
As for the film’s alleged errors or alterations, Manzarek claims: “Jim didn’t light Pam’s closet on fire. He didn’t throw a TV set at me. His student film didn’t have images from ‘Triumph of the Will.’ That was totally made up. And Jim never quit film school. He graduated from UCLA.”
He also believes that the movie misses the Doors’ basic message.
“All you see is Jim as a drunken hedonist. The tragedy is that fame consumed him. But that wasn’t Jim’s message. He was intelligent. He was loving. He was a good man who believed in freedom and in questioning authority.
“But you’d never know that from seeing this film.”
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697aa0eb3bf7efb6f5d95c7930187ae5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-18-mn-366-story.html | Oil Tanker Rips Pipeline; Fuel Spilled in Bay | Oil Tanker Rips Pipeline; Fuel Spilled in Bay
An oil tanker chartered by Chevron, U.S.A., ripped open an undersea oil pipeline with its anchor a mile off El Segundo on Saturday night, spilling 27,720 gallons of a highly volatile oily fuel mixture into Santa Monica Bay, the U.S. Coast Guard reported Sunday.
The accident, which occurred at 7:05 p.m. but was not made public until nearly 11 hours later, forced the closure of the Marina del Rey yacht harbor as a 13-mile “safety zone” was declared from Venice to Manhattan Beach. Boat traffic without Coast Guard authorization was banned in the zone.
A small amount of the oily mixture of jet fuel and diesel oil reached shore at Topanga and Malibu beaches late Sunday night, Coast Guard officials said.
Chevron and the Coast Guard reported that 91% of the 307,440 gallons of the highly volatile mixture in the ruptured pipeline had been pumped back to Chevron’s El Segundo refinery before it could bleed into the ocean.
Protective booms were stretched in front of the Marina del Rey yacht harbor entrance as well as the mouths of Malibu and Ballona creeks--two sensitive wetlands areas that are home to the threatened brown pelican and least terns.
Swimmers and surfers were advised to stay out of the water, but most ignored the warnings.
By late Sunday, the spill had spread in a teardrop-shaped “near transparent” sheen 4.5 miles long and 2.5 miles wide and was being driven away from shore by 20 to 30 knot winds.
Bill Sheffield, operations manager for Chempro, said Sunday evening that 200 cleanup workers from his company would be deployed as needed along the beaches with shovels, rakes and absorbent booms. He warned that an expected Pacific storm could drive some of the pollution and tar balls onto shore.
Reed Smith of the California Fish and Game Department was more cautious. “What the storm is going to do this evening, no one can predict,” Smith said.
A phalanx of state and local authorities, along with Chevron and Chempro crews, augmented by bulldozers, massed at Malibu Lagoon on Sunday night and constructed a sand berm to protect the sea’s entrance to the environmentally sensitive area.
Late Sunday afternoon, Chevron spokesman Bob Cuneo had said: “We do not expect the oil to reach the beach. We are doing this as a precautionary measure only.”
But late Sunday night, county lifeguards reported smelling and seeing a small amount of oil on beaches at Malibu and Topanga. Full-scale cleanup efforts were to begin at daylight today after a helicopter crew surveys the area, Coast Guard officials said.
“There’s not a whole lot of sand along there; the beach is fairly narrow. It’s mostly rocky (shoreline) and there are homes built on pilings. So, we should expect to see some (homes’) seawalls stained and some rocks stained,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Mike Miles said.
Earlier, officials reported that the sheen was so thin that oil skimming boats were useless.
The accident occurred one year after the tanker American Trader gouged itself twice with its own anchor off Huntington Beach and spilled 400,000 gallons of Alaskan crude onto 15 miles of Orange County beaches. The American Trader, chartered by BP America Inc., was attempting to tie up to an offshore terminal. Crude is considered more troublesome because it takes longer to evaporate and more readily clings to wildlife.
That was the largest oil spill in Southern California since the blowout of an offshore well at Santa Barbara in 1969.
In the latest incident, the 50,000-ton, 616-foot tanker OMI Dynachem was attempting to dock at Chevron’s offshore oil terminal a mile from the beach when its anchor snagged a 26-inch underwater pipeline that carries crude oil and other products from ships to Chevron’s refinery at El Segundo.
“Chevron is taking full responsibility for coordinating the cleanup effort, and we are focusing our resources on minimizing any adverse impact,” said Will Price, president of the San Francisco-based company.
Chevron officials said that environmental impacts were expected to be minimal. Three birds were found oiled but alive.
“We’re not expecting any environmental impact except for those three birds,” said Karen Means, environmental specialist with Chevron.
Some environmentalists were outraged, and the accident was certain to fuel a controversy over further oil and gas drilling off the California coast.
“This is such an inexcusable kind of accident,” said Bob Sulnick, president of the Santa Monica-based American Oceans Campaign.
“If we have technology to intercept a Scud missile, we clearly have the sonar to avoid having one company drop an anchor on its own pipeline. Why don’t they have sonar showing where to drop anchors? Why aren’t there maps showing where the pipelines are?”
Chevron officials said the ship reportedly approached the terminal at the prescribed right-angle and dropped one of its anchors in preparation for the parking maneuver.
Then, a hose that powered a hydraulic wench burst aboard the ship, the officials said. Wenches are used to reel up the line that secures the ship to mooring buoys.
The line was dropped back into the water and the ship began to haul up its anchor to reposition itself for another attempt, according to Chevron spokesman Rod Spackman.
Spackman said the anchor snagged the underwater pipeline, ripping off a section and pulling it an estimated 60 feet to the surface. The 7,100-foot pipeline is one of several used to transport oil from ships to the onshore refinery.
Mooring master Mike Miller, a Chevron employee on the ship’s bridge, was the first to spot the damage.
“We pretty much figured we had a problem at this point,” Chevron spokeswoman Lani Marshall said. “The hard pipe usually sits at the bottom. The anchor basically pulled it to the surface. That’s not supposed to happen.”
The ship’s captain was identified as Tom MacDonald.
Within 10 to 15 minutes, Marshall said, the refinery had been alerted and its pumps were sucking the remaining fuel mixture out of the damaged artery back to the refinery.
Divers inflated a “balloon” inside the pipe to prevent more fuel from escaping and also assessed the damage.
The Coast Guard reported that the ship’s officers and mooring master were given routine breath analyzer tests. The results indicated no alcohol or drug use. Results of urinalysis tests are expected within 48 hours.
Chevron promised to work closely with investigators to find out exactly how the accident happened and what can be done to minimize future incidents.
The spill resulted in the mobilization of 300 oil spill workers, but their services were not needed except to help clear the beaches of seaweed and other debris to make the cleanup easier in case the spill reaches shore.
At the same time, Chevron alerted Clean Coastal Waters, an oil spill cleanup cooperative funded by various oil companies, which dispatched skimmers and other vessels to the scene. A total of 16 vessels, including four skimmers, were sent.
What impact the spill may have on fish is in dispute.
Sulnick of the American Oceans Campaign, which has fought proposals for new oil drilling off the California coast, said a mixture of jet fuel and diesel is highly toxic to fish.
Sulnick said the mixture dissolves in the water and can be ingested by fish. He said the pollution can cause reproductive defects and lesions on fish as well as oil the wings of birds, threatening them with hypothermia.
His view was shared by Mark Gold, staff scientist with Heal the Bay, a nonprofit environmental group attempting to rid Santa Monica Bay of pollution.
Chevron environmental specialist Means said: “I’m not anticipating any problems with the fish.” She said the sheen is so thin that only small numbers of fish would be affected. “I wouldn’t expect this one incident to impact the fish or the plant life,” she said.
Smith, of the Department of Fish and Game, said that if the spill reaches the wetlands there could be environmental problems.
“It could have some impact. There are several hundred birds in that area that could be impacted from El Segundo to Malibu,” Smith said.
Whatever the environmental impact, the spill was likely to add to political pressure on the Bush Administration to forestall plans for new drilling off the California coast.
“Thank God it’s not crude. . . . (But) the real point is this proves we’re playing Russian roulette with our beaches,” Sulnick said.
The ship was loaded with two octane boosters used in making gasoline, 71,000 barrels of methyl tertiary butyl either (MTBE) and 10,000 barrels of toluene. The cargo was not involved in the accident.
Chevron said public relations officials began compiling information on the spill about midnight. After adequate information had been gathered, the Coast Guard released the first information about 5:40 a.m. Sunday, Chevron officials said.
Staff writers Tina Anima in El Segundo, Roxana Kopetman in Long Beach and Ronald L. Soble in Malibu contributed to this story.
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18e5169cba52f847b4d9e24c6c716818 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-19-ca-692-story.html | Everything’s Cool in World According to Arlo Guthrie | Everything’s Cool in World According to Arlo Guthrie
For a ‘60s veteran like Arlo Guthrie, these are weird and confusing times.
Flag-waving support of America has taken hold with a febrile fury. War is in. Drugs are out. Conformity is trendy; individuality isn’t.
Still, in the world according to Arlo, who for a quarter of a century eschewed his father’s daunting shadow by singing his own folk songs with a smile, none of this is worth getting all worked up about.
“I think we’re in one of those transitional times, where you feel like you ought to feel good, but you’re not sure why,” Guthrie said during an interview last week. “It’s probably just because we don’t know what ‘the new world order’ means.”
With that, Guthrie laughs, as usual.
More than two decades since Woody Guthrie’s smart-aleck, 20-year-old kid wrote “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” an anti-draft novelty song that rallied a movement, spawned a movie and still tickles audiences today, Arlo is still grinning and needling everything, himself included.
“Basically,” he explains, “I think you need two things to get by in this world: a sense of humor and the ability to laugh when your ego is destroyed.”
Guthrie, 43, speaks from experience. Commercial success, for him, didn’t last much longer than the 18 minutes it takes to listen to the “Massacree” in its entirety. The closest he ever came to a hit record was his version of Steve Goodman’s “The City of New Orleans,” which peaked at No. 18 in 1972.
Consequently, for about two decades running, Guthrie has played mostly before small, loyal crowds in clubs across the country, except when he has teamed up with Pete Seeger for performances of larger venues.
Guthrie rarely records any more. His only release in the past dozen years was “Someday” in 1986.
He says he may return to the studio this year, however, to cut a new album. And he still has yet to record his updated version of “Alice’s Restaurant,” which he wrote and took on tour in 1987 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his most famous ditty.
His most likely upcoming project, though, is a children’s record that he has been asked to do by Warner Bros.
Through the years and the descent from relative stardom, Guthrie has retained a vision of optimism, about both his career and the world he sees around him. And not only because of his impish humor and longtime friendship with Seeger, the seemingly ageless, ever-hopeful activist/folk singer.
Beneath the rise of new conservatism through the 1980s and into the ‘90s, Guthrie says he has witnessed a heightened social awareness, on some level, among people of all ages and cultures.
“Most people really don’t want to be so distant from different people from around the world, I don’t think,” he said. “And we had been in America. But we’re entering a new, global age. And that means reconciling ourselves to living with much more diversity, which means a lot more tolerance than I ever thought we would have.”
Guthrie’s view of global convergence may smack of naivete, but can be better understood in the context of his live performances.
With his offbeat brand of comedy, philosophy and music, Guthrie draws a remarkably diverse audience that bridges generational and ideological gaps.
“Everywhere I go, I see all kinds of people at my shows--conservatives, liberals, new-agers, teen-agers, old pensioners,” he said. “And, for those people to have something in common is real interesting to me.”
Guthrie is joining in that generational unity himself these days, often performing with his son, Abraham.
On his current tour, which stops at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano today and Wednesday, the younger Guthrie will open the show with his band, Xavier, a metal outfit “that borders on spandex,” his father jokes. After Arlo takes the stage for a set with his own band, father and son team up for a few acoustic numbers.
“See, that’s normal to me. I think it’s nice when your kids want to do what you’re doing,” he said. “It’s a nice way to move through time.”
Guthrie then reflected back on his famous folk-singer father, who died while Arlo was in his teens. “I, unfortunately, didn’t get a chance to do that with my own dad, so this is really special for me.”
And, Guthrie adds, that timeless sense of shared celebration is what folk music was, and should be, all about.
“I don’t think that’s any new phenomenon. That’s the way it always was. It’s just that that was disrupted recently,” during the 1960s, he said. “We went through a cultural revolution here. And it’s taken a couple of decades to get it back to normal.”
For the past six years, even though he hasn’t been recording, Guthrie has helped to sustain that spirit by publishing a quirky, quarterly newsletter, appropriately called “Rolling Blunder Review.”
RBR started with a mailing list of a few thousand fans Guthrie had accumulated through the years. Its circulation soared to 60,000--before he started charging for subscriptions.
About 7,000 “blunderites” now pay $5 a year for four issues of the eight-sheet review. Typically it features Guthrie’s philosophical and satirical banterings, tour listings, “recipes from Alice’s Restaurant” and two pages of letters, complete with the editor’s wry responses.
And, as Guthrie acknowledges, it’s a handy way to merchandise his records, T-shirts and other paraphernalia offered through his Massachusetts-based Rising Sons Records.
“Plus, I have fun pretending to be a reporter,” he says.
But with the publication, as with Guthrie’s music, beneath the playful whimsy lies a fervent idealism, the same spirit that inspired his father’s ageless odes chronicling the struggles of the disaffected.
Indeed, upon being reminded of a slogan on one of Woody’s guitars proclaiming “This machine kills fascists,” Arlo turned serious, replying: “It still does. And maybe people are embarrassed about that, especially people who aspire to political power. . . .
“They’re all minute in comparison to what musicians have done the last few decades, in terms of changing the world, and making it a better place to live.”
* Arlo Guthrie sings at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $19.50. Also Wednesday. Information: (714) 496-8930.
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f4101b4e75f7d65a3d013508dbc4ae20 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-19-me-456-story.html | Slain Girl Was Not Stealing Juice, Police Say : Shooting: The incident in which the 15-year-old was killed by a market owner was captured on a security system videotape. | Slain Girl Was Not Stealing Juice, Police Say : Shooting: The incident in which the 15-year-old was killed by a market owner was captured on a security system videotape.
A security camera videotape that recorded the weekend shooting of a 15-year-old girl by a south Los Angeles grocer shows that the girl was not attempting to steal a bottle of orange juice, as the grocer apparently believed, police revealed Monday.
Police called a press conference to try to quell rumors that the shooting was racially motivated and that police were doing little about it.
The teen-ager, Westchester High School ninth-grader Latasha Harlins, was African-American; store owner Soon Ja Du, 51, immigrated from Korea 15 years ago.
Police Cmdr. Michael J. Bostic said that despite tension over the years between Korean immigrant grocers and black customers who frequent their stores, this incident did not have racial overtones.
“This was just a business dispute,” Bostic said.
The videotape corroborates accounts by two young witnesses who said that even though the teen-ager had put the juice in her knapsack, she was approaching the store counter with money in her hand, according to Bostic. After a brief scuffle with Du over the knapsack, he said, Harlins gave up, threw the orange juice on the counter and was apparently trying to leave the store when she was shot.
“There was no attempt at shoplifting. There was no robbery. There was no crime at all,” he said.
Du was arrested Saturday afternoon on suspicion of murder, Bostic said, just hours after she was treated at a hospital for what Bostic described as “superficial injuries” she sustained in the scuffle. She has been held without bail at the Sybil Brand Institute for Women, he said.
Joseph Du, the suspect’s son, said Monday that the shooting was an accident, and that his mother believed the girl was attempting to shoplift the juice and rob the store of money.
The dead girl’s aunt, Ahneva Harlins, who appeared at the press conference with other relatives, angrily declared that her niece was “shot in cold blood” in a confrontation that stemmed from a “disrespectful” way that she said Korean store owners in the southern section of the city treat customers.
Bostic consistently tried to de-emphasize any racial aspects. He said that there is no evidence to back up rumors that Du nudged the dead girl with her foot, kicked her after the shooting or that any racial epithets were uttered. He also denied an allegation by the girl’s family that Du was injured by her husband, who they contended attacked her after arriving at the scene minutes after the shooting.
At the news conference, Harlins, obviously upset, disputed police contentions that the shooting was not racially motivated. She also was angry at Bostic for characterizing Latasha as a runaway.
“She had had some problems at home the night before and went to spend the night with a friend,” Harlins said. “We knew where she was.”
Bostic acknowledged that there has been well-publicized tensions between Korean grocers and black customers in the past, but said efforts to ease those tensions had been successful in recent months.
Joseph Du said his family’s store, Empire Liquor Market, in the 9100 block of South Figueroa Street, had been plagued by thefts and occasional robberies since they began operating it two years ago. The family has operated convenience stores since 1981, and his mother had never before wielded the gun they kept under the counter for protection.
Soon Ja Du worked only on weekend mornings, when customers were few, said her son, to avoid frequent fighting with customers during busier periods.
After the incident Saturday, Soon Ja Du described the teen-ager to her family as “a woman in her mid-20s” who attempted to take money from the market register moments before Du grabbed the gun and fired.
Bostic said the videotape shows only “a scuffle” begun by Du over the knapsack, not an attack mounted by the teen-ager. He also said Du threw a stool at the girl before firing a single shot from a .38-caliber pistol.
Soon Ja Du’s husband, Heung Ki Du, who was sleeping in front of the store in his delivery van, was roused by the gunfire, Joseph Du said. The husband entered the store and found the teen-ager shot and his wife passed out on the floor, Joseph Du said.
After five killings of Korean merchants in 1986, efforts have been made to mediate differences among Koreans and African-American and Latino customers in south Los Angeles, said Jan Sunoo, chairman of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission.
“I hope that both the African-American and Korean communities will look at this as a moment of overreaction, nervousness, and that the leadership in the communities will set a tone that will allow for healing rather than for vindictiveness or revenge.
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24b0bd04b2698c4ec96be915f23c2769 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-20-me-384-story.html | A Senseless and Tragic Killing : New tension for Korean-American and African-American communities | A Senseless and Tragic Killing : New tension for Korean-American and African-American communities
The killing of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins presents a new challenge to African-Americans and Korean-Americans of this city. The fatal shooting of the African-American teen-ager by a Korean shopkeeper threatens to put new strains on relations between the two communities.
When Latasha entered Soon Ja Du’s store in South Los Angeles, she was going to buy a bottle of orange juice. Du shot the teen-ager, after Du believed that Latasha was trying to steal the juice, Du’s son said. A security camera videotape of the incident last Saturday reportedly shows otherwise. Police said the videotape corroborated witness accounts that Latasha had put the juice in her knapsack but was approaching the store counter with money in her hand. After a brief scuffle with Du, Latasha threw the orange juice on the counter and was heading out of the store when Du shot her in the back of the head, police said.
“There was no attempt at shoplifting. There was no robbery. There was no crime at all,” said Police Cmdr. Michael J. Bostic. Du was arrested on suspicion of murder.
The police have described the incident as a “business dispute,” moving quickly to try to deflate rumors that the shooting was racially motivated. Leaders of the African-American and Korean-American communities met immediately and jointly expressed shock at the shooting. “This senseless loss of a young girl’s life reflects the worst type of violence perpetuated upon a consumer by a merchant,” according to a joint statement.
The shooting should not be allowed to set back efforts begun in 1986 to ease tensions between African-American residents and Korean-American merchants in South-Central Los Angeles. Cultural misunderstandings and racial myths have long sparked black-Korean conflict, here and in other cities nationwide. It’s significant that both Koreans and blacks have condemned this tragic shooting. That’s a start, but the fragile relationship between the two communities cries out for more concentrated attention.
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974714e33cc766e37b256cc39a261afd | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-20-mn-602-story.html | Jack Webb Doesn’t Live Here Anymore | Jack Webb Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
I remember the show ran on Monday nights and I remember my father loved it. He was the family’s biggest fan of “Dragnet.” My mother refused to watch, probably on religious grounds, but the rest of us did, every week. “Dragnet” was part of our routine.
That took place in Memphis, Tenn., 1953 or ’54. We had one of the first TV sets on the block and “Dragnet” was our introduction to California. We saw palm trees growing out of the sidewalks and crooks wearing Hawaiian shirts.
But the important part was something else. Something we didn’t recognize at the time. We were watching the invention of the LAPD.
The uniformed officers on “Dragnet” were unlike anything I had ever seen in Memphis. These cops were tall, had flat stomachs and showed respect at the crime scene. They seemed professional. They addressed detectives with a “Sir” and displayed no cynicism. They visited victims in the hospital.
The LAPD was being created for the first time. I am not referring here to the Los Angeles Police Department. That’s a real police force with real people. The Los Angeles Police Department had existed for 100 years by the time “Dragnet” first appeared.
The LAPD is different. It was invented by television and to this day is still being invented by television. After “Dragnet,” there was “Adam 12" and then “S.W.A.T.” and “T.J. Hooker” and “Police Woman” and a dozen others. There has never been a television season without an LAPD cop show on the air.
This invented world was a place of simple moralities, simple virtues, and clean living. Every uniformed cop had a blond girlfriend and worried at night about the people he was hired to serve and protect.
And all this raises a question: After 30 years of having a mythical LAPD piped into our homes and our brains, did we come to believe the myth? Did we buy the notion that our clean, California cops behaved like “Adam 12?” And that only places like Philadelphia or Chicago had the other kind of cops, the kind who would accept a $10 bill to forget a speeding ticket.
I think we did believe in that invented LAPD, as did the rest of the world. And the shattering of that belief explains, in part, the sense of betrayal in Los Angeles over the past two weeks. Those officers swinging their clubs cannot be reconciled with the television version.
The next time you watch the videotape--which could be in five or 10 minutes if you have the television on--ask yourself just why the horror bites so sharply. After all, you have seen violence worse than the beating being administered to Rodney G. King. Unless you have been living on the moon, your television has shown you people--real people--being gunned down on the streets or burned to death.
Monks have immolated themselves in Asia, blacks have set one another afire in South Africa, soccer fans have been crushed to death in front of our eyes.
There’s usually a reaction of some sort, but nothing like this. So what explains the Rodney G. King affair?
I think it’s this: The King beating destroyed not only the way we thought of the LAPD but the way we thought of ourselves here in California. And we sense, with some anger, that there will be no going back. The California that was a separate world from the East, that had clean government and clean cops, has slipped away.
Not entirely, perhaps. I am not arguing that L.A. has turned into Philadelphia. But the sense of remove about California has been eroded in a serious way. We have watched our cops using their batons like rubber hoses just as, a year ago, we watched our Sacramento legislators taking their bribes in fat envelopes.
So it’s become much harder to believe that California is exempt from the petty corruptions and viciousness of the old world back East. The distinctions between their world and ours have blurred.
And maybe that’s not all bad, if we finally see the lies behind the television version of ourselves.
I remember one episode of “Dragnet” in which Sgt. Friday was forced to visit the East Coast during an investigation. He had a terrible time. It snowed, the crooks turned out to have connections in the Police Department, and Joe caught a cold.
He was so happy to get home. Life was simply better here, he said. In L.A. you knew who the good guys were and who the crooks were.
No more, Joe. But thanks for the memories.
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eb060fe8ac101577fc5b9c132569fcb0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-22-ca-595-story.html | Stahl Is Named to the Cast of ’60 Minutes’ | Stahl Is Named to the Cast of ’60 Minutes’
Lesley Stahl, CBS’ chief White House correspondent and a reporter at the network since 1972, was named Thursday to join the cast of “60 Minutes.”
The appointment had been expected. Stahl, who also moderates the public-affairs show “Face the Nation” and until recently co-anchored the weekday late-night program “America Tonight,” recently was in Europe on a “60 Minutes” story that will air later this spring.
She will join the high-rated news magazine as soon as she can wrap up her current duties, CBS said. There was no immediate word on who will replace her at the White House or on “Face the Nation,” which she has fronted since 1983.
“There’s nobody better than Lesley Stahl as a reporter,” said “60 Minutes” executive producer Don Hewitt in an interview. “I’ll assume she’ll just be getting started in her tenure on the show six years from now, when I retire.”
By CBS’ account, Stahl is replacing Harry Reasoner, who will be retiring from full-time work on “60 Minutes” this spring, although he will contribute occasional essay-type pieces. But that job had been expected to go to Meredith Vieira, who had been working part-time on the show for the last two seasons. However, she recently was dropped from “60 Minutes” after she asked to continue the part-time arrangement because she is pregnant with her second child.
Vieira will go on maternity leave at the end of the season and is discussing with CBS executives what other assignments she might take when she returns.
Despite the departure of Vieira, only the second female correspondent in “60 Minutes’ ” 22-year history, Hewitt said that he had not felt compelled to pick another female correspondent for the show. “I said when we picked Diane Sawyer (as the first female correspondent, in 1984) that her name could’ve been Tom Sawyer, that gender wasn’t a factor. That’s the way I feel about Lesley.”
Stahl already has engaged in some news-gathering dramatics in the “60 Minutes” tradition. For her coming story on the “buying” of Romanian orphans by couples eager to adopt, she disguised herself as a mother who wants to adopt a child.
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b715b5d998c98a00285465301e5fe1c6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-22-me-751-story.html | Girl Tells Court in Satanic Trial of Blood Ritual | Girl Tells Court in Satanic Trial of Blood Ritual
An 11-year-old girl told a Superior Court jury Thursday that she was sexually abused by her grandmother and made to drink human blood during satanic rituals in a secret cave.
Dressed in a pink flowered jumpsuit, the blond, cherubic girl testified that at the age of 2 she was taken in a limousine with both her grandparents while her grandfather, now deceased, picked up prostitutes.
When she was about 4 years old, she said, “I was forced to drink blood out of a glass and eat human flesh.” In another incident, she testified, “they gave me a drug so I would be hyper-vigilant.”
But the grandmother’s lawyer said Thursday that the girl has been coached by her mother into telling preposterous fables.
“We’re not hearing the words of a little girl but the words of other people . . . " attorney Tom R. Allen said outside the courtroom. “The little girl is a victim of the environment her mother placed her in.”
The girl’s mother, 48, and her aunt, 35, have filed a civil lawsuit against their 76-year-old mother, alleging she ritually abused them and her granddaughter beginning in infancy. The white-haired septuagenarian, now living in Mission Viejo, insists that none of it ever happened.
Allen has suggested that the 48-year-old woman, who has suffered a myriad of psychological problems, was led by psychotherapists to believe that she had been ritually abused. Then, he contends, she persuaded her younger sister and her daughter into believing that they were also victims of a satanic cult.
The women’s attorney so far has not presented any material or physical evidence to support the allegations, “I can’t say whether or not they believe it,” Allen said. “It didn’t happen.”
For three days, the 48-year-old mother has told Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert D. Monarch and his jury lurid and bizarre tales of black-robed adults committing ritual rape and incest; of being made to witness ghastly murders; and of being drugged, bound and tortured with knives and electric shocks.
In a tale reminiscent of the horror novel “Rosemary’s Baby,” the woman testified that she was impregnated by a cult member at the age of 11 or 12, then forced to murder her 6-month-old baby during a satanic ritual in a cave in “dusty local mountains” more than 35 years ago.
She became pregnant again at 14 after her father prostituted her in motel rooms, but cult members, including her mother, induced an abortion when it was discovered “that it wasn’t Satan’s baby,” she told the jury.
To cope with the abuse, the woman said, she developed more than 10 different personalities with names like “Rosie,” “Sarah” and “Thelda.” One of the personalities, a wolf, was deliberately induced when cult members drugged her, locked her in a cage and subjected her to electric shock, she told the jury Thursday.
The sisters’ attorney, R. Richard Farnell, said that while admittedly “sensational,” similar allegations about ritual abuse have been lodged across the nation.
“You don’t want to believe it. . .,” Farnell said. “The easiest way to deal with it is to say it doesn’t exist, it didn’t happen. . . . This is far more widespread than anybody realizes.”
The trial began Tuesday, and by Thursday the accusations had attracted a flock of television cameras and curiosity-seekers to a courtroom usually reserved for routine personal injury disputes.
Under a special arrangement with the court, the sisters were permitted to file a lawsuit using only their initials. The grandmother is being called by a pseudonym.
When the 11-year-old entered the courtroom Thursday and saw her grandmother, she burst into tears. After a visit to the judge’s chambers, she assured him that she did wish to testify.
The girl then recounted graphic tales of sexual abuse by her grandmother, bloody rites in the secret caves and violent threats about what would happen to her if she told anyone.
Asked why she thought the lawsuit had been filed, she replied: “Because my grandmother did some things to me that were not nice and abusive, and I guess we’re trying to make her literally pay for them.”
During cross-examination, Allen asked her how, at the age of 4, she could have known she was drugged or “hyper-vigilant.”
“I’m not a super hyper-vigilant person,” she replied. “I’m pretty sure they did.”
When pushed for details about another incident, she said, “I feel so blank now. My head hurts so bad and my stomach hurts. I’m really feeling so confused right now.” Her testimony was frequently interrupted when she either began to sob or announced she felt sick.
Like her mother, the girl testified that she had developed at least six different personalities, including the intelligent “Gina,” the young and frightened “Shawna,” the motherly “Sandy” and two babies.
Outside the courtroom, Allen suggested that the use of the word “hyper-vigilant,” the idea that a 2-year-old could identify a prostitute and other discrepancies suggested that the girl’s testimony was not credible.
“I think it confirms something I have suspected. . .,” Allen said. “We’re not hearing the words of a little girl but the words of other people.”
Farnell defended the girl’s testimony, saying she is highly intelligent and has a vocabulary that “is probably better than mine.”
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8c867491db3b5679928373faaef1b4b6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-22-mn-559-story.html | Police Say Tests Show King Was Legally Drunk | Police Say Tests Show King Was Legally Drunk
Los Angeles police officials said Thursday that blood and urine samples taken after the beating of Rodney G. King show he was legally drunk and had traces of marijuana in his system, adding yet another twist to the controversial case.
However, police officials emphasized that the test results stating that King was intoxicated in no way warrant the violent force used by officers in the March 3 incident.
“We’re not saying this proves Mr. King’s state was such that his behavior was something that would justify what the officers did,” said Lt. Fred Nixon, one of the department’s top spokesmen. “There is no level of alcohol that would justify what happened to Mr. King.”
The test results conflict with earlier reports from physicians who have examined King, both in the hours after the beating and in the days that followed. The police tests show no other illegal drugs present in King’s system, and contradict repeated statements from many officers at the scene and their supervisors who said King was under the influence of PCP.
The beating, videotaped by an amateur cameraman, has provoked a growing outcry and become a national symbol of police brutality. Four Los Angeles police officers have been indicted in the incident.
On Thursday, President Bush made his first lengthy comments on the beating. The President said watching the tape “made me sick,” but he also had words of support for Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who has resisted calls to resign.
“In many ways he has been an exemplary police chief,” Bush said in Washington. “I think the man’s entitled to a credible hearing.”
Gov. Pete Wilson echoed Bush’s remarks, condemning the violence he saw on the videotape but voicing support for Gates.
“I think there are people who are seeking to make him a scapegoat,” Wilson said at a Los Angeles appearance. “I don’t think the chief should resign, nor should people ask for his resignation, until a case can be made that there has been dereliction on his part.”
As Gates was receiving support from high-level politicians, he revealed Thursday morning in a nationally televised interview that he and his family have been the targets of repeated death threats. While refusing to discuss the nature of the threats, police officials said they have increased security for both the chief and the members of the Police Commission.
In a speech Thursday evening to the Los Angeles chapter of the Public Relations Society of America at the Valley Hilton, Gates reiterated that he has no intention of resigning or retiring. But he did say that once he had seen the department through this crisis, he might consider retiring.
“I’m going to remain,” he said. “I’m going to see this through.”
Gates added that once public confidence has been restored in the department, “then I will be satisfied and go ahead and retire and enjoy the fruits of 42 years of labor.”
The results of blood and urine tests, taken from King about five hours after the his arrest, were released by police late Wednesday at the request of reporters, Nixon said.
The tests showed that King’s blood-alcohol level was 0.079%, slightly below the legal limit of 0.08% at which one is considered intoxicated under California law. However, Nixon pointed out that because the tests were taken five hours after his arrest, King was above the legal limit at the moment of his arrest.
“He was well above the level at which one can legally be presumed under the influence,” Nixon said, adding that the tests were performed by a state-certified independent laboratory.
Although the tests showed traces of marijuana, Nixon said the drug could have been ingested months ago.
Nixon said the department received the results of the blood test on Monday and the urine test on Tuesday.
According to grand jury documents reviewed by The Times, there were contradictory conclusions made by police, witnesses and physicians about whether King was intoxicated at the scene.
Dr. Antonio Mancia, an emergency room physician at Pacifica Hospital in Sun Valley who examined King, said he found “no clinical evidence” that King was under the influence of drugs or alcohol when LAPD officers brought him into the hospital.
Mancia, the first physician to treat King, told investigators that the patient was “docile and cooperative.”
“King did not complain or make any accusations against anyone regarding his injuries,” Mancia said in the investigators’ reports. “King did not act like he was under the influence of PCP or alcohol at the time of the examination. King did not have slurred speech. His pupils appeared normal.”
King told investigators that he had consumed only one beer before he was arrested by police. However, California Highway Patrol Officer Melanie Singer, one of the officers at the scene, described to investigators how she first encountered King, who uses his middle name of Glen:
“I walked over to the driver and asked him what his name was and he said, ‘Glen.’ I couldn’t hear him so I leaned closer to him and smelled a strong odor of alcohol on his breath and noticed his speech was slurred.”
She also noted that he was smiling, laughing and dancing when he got out of the car after a police pursuit that ended in Lake View Terrace. She described his behavior as “very strange.”
The uproar over King’s arrest has placed Gates in a position of trying to hang on to his 13-year job as head of the Police Department in the nation’s second-largest city.
Defending his department from allegations of racism, Gates has appeared on numerous television news programs. Interviewed on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday morning, he was asked to gauge what effect the crisis has had on his personal life.
“Naturally it impacts on me and my family,” he said. “We’ve been subjected to a great deal of intimidation by those who threaten us and threaten our lives.
“But,” he reiterated, " . . . no one is going to force me out of this office.”
Nixon, the Police Department spokesman, said the department does not take threats against the chief lightly.
“Emotions are running particularly high right now,” Nixon said. “Even though we feel capable of keeping (the chief) safe, we continue to take such threats seriously.”
Two police sources said that in recent days a number of new security measures have been set in place.
Gates, who normally is seen with only one police bodyguard, has increased his personal security detail to two and sometimes three officers.
Seven to eight uniformed officers were assigned to provide security when Gates attended two rancorous Police Commission meetings at Parker Center, where many in the audience screamed for the chief’s resignation.
Ten detectives on the commission’s investigative staff who normally wear business attire have come to work in their blue uniforms and with holstered guns during the days of the commission meetings.
In other developments, police officials also said key officials have been transferred from the Internal Affairs Division, which is responsible for investigating police misconduct.
Cmdr. Robert Gil, the department’s chief spokesman, said the transfers were not linked to the King affair. Rather, he said, they were part of a top command staff shuffle begun with the departures earlier this year of Assistant Chief Jesse Brewer and Deputy Chief William Rathburn.
Gil said that Capts. Maurice Moore and J.I. Davis, who had supervised the Internal Affairs office for about two years, were replaced by Capts. Jan Carlson and Gary Brennan.
Assistant Chief Robert Vernon said that the Foothill Division watch commander who was on duty at the time of the beating--after less than a week in that position--was transferred from the division shortly after the incident.
New details were released Thursday on the extent of King’s injuries. Dr. Alvin Reiter, who operated on King last week, said that the number of facial bone fractures he suffered in the beating is difficult to quantify because the bones were “shattered like an eggshell.”
There is a chance King will never be able to feel food in his mouth or move part of his face, the doctor said. King could have continuing vision problems and pain in his jawbone and may have some facial disfigurement that could require further surgery.
An attorney for Bryant (Pooh) Allen, one of two passengers in King’s car on the night of the beating, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming that police “foster and tolerate an atmosphere of tacit and overt anti-black racism.” King and the men who were in his car are black.
Former Lakers basketball star Jamaal Wilkes, who also is black, referred to the King beating after his attorney filed a $250,000 claim Thursday against the city alleging mistreatment by two officers who pulled Wilkes’ car over and handcuffed him during a traffic stop he said was motivated by race.
“While I certainly was not beaten such as was Mr. King, I did suffer emotional distress,” Wilkes said. “The actions of the Police Department show a callous attitude toward African-Americans.”
Meanwhile, Kerman Maddox, a community activist and City Council candidate in the 8th District, attempted to officially serve Gates at Parker Center on Thursday with notice of a recall campaign to remove him from office.
After a brief press conference, Maddox was stopped at the front door of police headquarters, where Nixon arrived to accept the letter, promising he would deliver it to the chief.
“Clearly the public would like the chief to step down,” Maddox said. “Since he has refused to step down, we want to place this squarely where it belongs, which is before the people. This is democracy at its finest.”
The city attorney’s office later reported, however, that the recall notice which appeared in The Times was invalid because it was in Spanish. A Times spokesman said the paper had inadvertently deleted the English version of the legal notice and would publish it today.
Parker Center was also the site of another press conference--organized by a newly formed pro-Gates group, Citizens in Support of the Chief of Police. The group announced plans for a rally backing Gates on Sunday at the Police Academy in Elysian Park.
“We have been the silent majority,” said Peggy Rowe Estrada, a spokeswoman for the group. “The Police Department is a family. . . . In any family, if the parents get in trouble, they don’t put the parents in jail.”
About 15 people joined Estrada at the press conference held at the entrance to Parker Center, wearing blue ribbons showing their support for the chief and the department. But as the press conference drew to a close, the Gates supporters were confronted by an equal number of protesters shouting “Gates got to go!”
The multidenominational Council of Religious Leaders called for establishment of an independent citizens commission to “throughly but speedily” investigate problems in the Police Department.
And finally, in one of the day’s stranger developments, the Gun Owners Action Committee joined the dump-Gates bandwagon--they are still angry at the chief for his opposition to assault rifles.
Spokesman Mike McNulty appeared at a Hollywood press conference with Cedric Innis, son of Congress of Racial Equality founder Roy Innis, who also called for Gates’ resignation. Innis called the police chief “arrogant, hostile . . . totally insensitive to the needs of the community.”
Times staff writers David Lauter in Washington and Leslie Berger, Michael Connelly, John L. Mitchell, Shari Roan, Sheryl Stolberg and Tracy Wood in Los Angeles contributed to this story.
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7b302b3d677ad179662948d47eb73b9e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-24-me-1422-story.html | The Rodney King Affair : ... | The Rodney King Affair : ...
Principals: A motorist and four officers.
1. RODNEY G. KING, 25, an unemployed construction worker from Altadena, on parole after serving a one-year sentence for armed robbery. Pulled over by police on March 3 after allegedly leading them on a high-speed chase that ended in Lake View Terrace. Suffered numerous injuries in subsequent videotaped beating, including fractured cheekbone, 11 broken bones at the base of his skull, and a broken leg. Held for three days at the Los Angeles County Jail before being released; prosecutors later announce that no charges will be filed against him. His attorney says he is contemplating a $56 million lawsuit--$1 million for each blow he received. Secluded since his lone public appearance, in which he said: “I was scared for my life. So I laid down real calmly and took it like a man.”
2. SGT. STACEY C. KOON, 40, a 14-year LAPD veteran. Twice fired 50,000-volt electronic darts from his Taser stun gun at King. Apparently tried at one point to stop the beating. Later wrote in his daily report that King’s injuries were “of a minor nature,” but called beating “a big time use of force” in a computer message. Charged with assault with a deadly weapon, unnecessarily beating a suspect under color of authority, filing a false police report and acting as an accessory in an alleged “cover-up.” Maximum sentence if convicted: seven years, eight months.
3. OFFICER LAURENCE M. POWELL, 28, a three-year veteran. Shown on videotape kicking King and clubbing him repeatedly with his nightstick, including at least five blows to the head and neck. Computer messages from his squad car included one that said, “I haven’t beaten anyone this bad in a long time.” He later submitted a report saying that King had suffered only “contusions and abrasions.” Charged with assault with a deadly weapon, unnecessarily beating a suspect under color of authority and filing a false police report. Maximum sentence if convicted: seven years, eight months.
4. OFFICER TIMOTHY WIND, 30, Powell’s partner and a rookie probationer. Came to the LAPD after eight years on a 54-member force in a suburb of Kansas City, Kan. Also shown on the videotape striking King with his baton. Joins Powell in submitting a report that understates King’s injuries. Charged with assault with a deadly weapon and unnecessarily beating a suspect under color of authority. Maximum sentence if convicted: seven years.
5. OFFICER TED BRISENO, 38, a nine-year veteran. Shown in the videotape kicking King once. Was disciplined for use of excessive force in 1987, when he was suspended for 66 days without pay for hitting a suspect with his baton and kicking the man while he was handcuffed. Vowed at the time not to let it happen again. Charged in the King case with assault with a deadly weapon and unnecessarily beating a suspect under color of authority. Maximum sentence if convicted: four years.
CONTRADICTIONS: DISCREPANCIES IN INITIAL POLICE REPORT
INITIAL REPORTS
* LAPD officers wrote in their police reports that it was necessary to subdue King with “several baton strikes” and two shots from a Taser gun because he “attacked officers” and resisted arrest.
* Initial law enforcement accounts depict a high-speed pursuit of King’s white Hyundai reaching 110 to 115 m.p.h. along the Foothill Freeway and 80 m.p.h. on surface streets in Lake View Terrace.
* Officers say they suspect that King was high on PCP, a drug that can produce bizarre behavior.
* The LAPD says there were 15 officers on the scene.
CONTRADICTORY LATER REPORTS
* A video shows King being struck more than 50 times with batons. Other witnesses offer differing accounts, but a CHP officer at the scene reports she “didn’t see any need to hit him with a baton.”
* Tapes of CHP and police radio conversations make no mention of freeway speed, but say King’s car was clocked at 65 m.p.h. on surface streets. Hyundai officials say that the model can’t top 100 m.p.h.
* Tests show no traces of PCP, but indicate that King was legally drunk at the time of the incident.
* At least 27 officers were present, 21 from the LAPD.
FALLOUT: TURBULENCE IN THE AFTERMATH
CHIEF DARYL F. GATES
Facing the biggest controversy of his 13-year tenure, Gates describes the beating as “an aberration” and says the officers involved will be punished. A wide range of political figures--conservative columnist George F. Will, U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, among others--call for the chief to step down. Critics say Gates encouraged police racism with flippant remarks. His 8,300-member force rallies behind him, and Gates vows to steer it through the crisis.
MAYOR TOM BRADLEY
The mayor initially shies away from calling for Gates to resign, saying the chief “has to answer to his public.” He denies a report that his aides are orchestrating moves to oust the chief--but slowly turns up the heat, appointing ACLU board member Stanley Scheinbaum to the Police Commission and pushing for release of computer messages that reveal racist remarks by officers who beat King. Finally, late last week, he states that Gates’ removal is “the only way” for the LAPD to recover.
POLICE COMMISSION
The five-member citizens panel is appointed by the mayor to oversee the LAPD. Under orders from Bradley, it opens a wide-ranging investigation into the LAPD’s policies and practices, especially toward minorities. An initial public hearing draws more than 400 people, many demanding Gates’ resignation. Commissioners are briefed by the city attorney on their options in dealing with Gates. Commissioner Daniel P. Garcia says “there is a very serious crisis in leadership.”
THE INVESTIGATORS
While Gates says three officers should be prosecuted, prosecutors take the matter to a grand jury and obtain indictments against Koon, Powell, Wind and Briseno and vow to investigate officers who watched the beating. U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, under pressure from black congressional leaders, begins a review of 15,000 police brutality complaints received by federal officials nationwide. Justice Department lawyers weigh possible charges against officers who witnessed the attack.
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1969c4e516eb0dc44bcb0b46a7e24241 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-27-ca-1091-story.html | Black Crowes Bounced From ZZ Top Tour : Pop music: Opening act is removed for criticizing the affiliation with a corporate sponsor. | Black Crowes Bounced From ZZ Top Tour : Pop music: Opening act is removed for criticizing the affiliation with a corporate sponsor.
Black Crowes lead singer Chris Robinson is not afraid to bite the hand that feeds him.
After a concert Monday night in Atlanta, Robinson’s band was dropped as the opening act on the ZZ Top tour for criticizing the tour affiliation with the corporate sponsor, Miller Beer.
“They weren’t allowing us to be the Black Crowes,” Robinson said during an MTV “Rockline” television broadcast after the Atlanta show. “They were trying to censor what I was trying to say. . . . I don’t need a big corporation telling me about the only thing in my life I have control over really, which is my music.”
The Crowes’ troubles apparently began three weeks ago when ZZ Top’s Houston-based management company, Lone Wolf Productions, warned Robinson to refrain from making quips between songs about corporate sponsorship. Sample line at the beginning of the band’s set: “This is live rock ‘n’ roll being brought to you commercial free.”
The management firm threatened to fire the group if the group didn’t stop criticizing Miller’s involvement with the tour. A spokesman for Lone Wolf Productions confirmed Tuesday that the band had been dropped from the tour, which began in January and is due to end May 3.
“This decision was arrived at entirely within this organization and not as has been suggested as a result of corporate pressure,” the company said in a statement released Tuesday. “Miller Brewing has been a partner in this tour since its inception and has been very accommodating to ZZ Top and has asked absolutely nothing of the opening acts which have appeared. It is out of a sense of common decency and courtesy coupled with a moral and ethical obligation that this action has been taken.”
In the Rockline interview, Robinson said, apparently referring to the management company, “I can understand them being defensive about corporate sponsorship. But we’re not sponsored by anyone. We’re the Black Crowes. We’re sponsored by ourselves.”
One of the hottest rock debuts in years, the Black Crowes’ “Shake Your Money Maker” album has sold more than 2 million copies and is still No. 5 after 54 weeks on the national pop charts.
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8d3eaa982b0071255f599beefc7df315 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-27-mn-945-story.html | Widow Held in Murder of Gulf Veteran : Crime: The victim’s brother-in-law also is charged in the Detroit street shooting. Dead man’s mother says couple had marital problems. | Widow Held in Murder of Gulf Veteran : Crime: The victim’s brother-in-law also is charged in the Detroit street shooting. Dead man’s mother says couple had marital problems.
Army Specialist Anthony Riggs, whose murder on a Detroit street less than a week after he returned from the Gulf War provoked a national outcry over urban violence, was killed by his wife and brother-in-law, police charged Tuesday.
Police Chief Stanley Knox said first-degree murder warrants were issued against Toni Riggs, 21, and her 19-year-old brother, Michael Cato.
Cato was arraigned Tuesday afternoon on the murder charge and one count of possession of a firearm. Magistrate Robert K. Costello ordered him jailed without bond until an April 5 court appearance.
Riggs turned herself in Tuesday afternoon. Police said she would be jailed overnight and arraigned today.
Anthony Riggs, 22, had been loading belongings into a van to move his wife from where she was staying with her family to a new home in a Detroit suburb when someone shot him twice in the head and stole his car in the early morning hours of March 18.
He had returned the week before from eight months in Saudi Arabia, where he helped operate a Patriot missile battery.
Last week, police found the stolen car abandoned less than two miles away from the Catos’ home. They also found a handgun in a trash bin near the house.
“We traced the weapon through several hands and finally got to Michael,” homicide Inspector Gerald Stewart said.
Police refused to speculate on a motive for the killing, but Anthony Riggs’ mother said her son and his wife had been having marital problems while he was in the Gulf.
“I’m not at all surprised,” said Lessie Riggs, who lives in Las Vegas. “When he was in the Gulf, he found out she had drained the bank account, she had wrecked his car. She was never there when he called her at 2:30, 4:30 in the morning. Where could she be at those hours? He dreaded even coming back to a marriage like that.”
Soon after her husband’s death, Mrs. Riggs said she would use the proceeds of his $50,000 military life insurance policy, plus a private policy, to attend nursing school.
Riggs’ death seemed at first a chilling symbol of the tragedy of random violence in the United States. The story of a GI coming home from war and being shot to death on the streets of his own country drew international attention. The Rev. Jesse Jackson gave the eulogy at Riggs’ funeral, calling for an end to violence in black communities.
“We were too quick to judge and draw conclusions,” N. Charles Anderson, president of the Detroit Urban League, said Tuesday. “The steady negative messages that we get about our community made it too easy for us to accept the fact that someone hungry for drug money or a quick fix would actually walk down the street and shoot Anthony Riggs in the head.”
But Jackson said Riggs’ death still symbolizes the plight of black men in America.
“Whether his death was targeted or random, the easy access to guns is still leading to increased violence on our streets and in our neighborhoods,” Jackson said in a statement.
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13e23e5c14b1b55d64a66afb70176dc6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-27-mn-951-story.html | Schwarzkopf Says He Hoped for a Rout of Iraqi Forces but Bush Chose to Halt War | Schwarzkopf Says He Hoped for a Rout of Iraqi Forces but Bush Chose to Halt War
Gulf commander H. Norman Schwarzkopf says he wanted to annihilate Iraq’s armies as Hannibal once crushed the Romans, but President Bush pulled him up short.
In a television interview with David Frost scheduled for broadcast tonight, the U.S. Army general also said Baghdad’s cease-fire negotiators “suckered me” into letting Iraq keep flying the helicopters it is now using against Shiite and Kurdish rebels.
He said Iraqi generals had sought allied permission to fly helicopters for transportation when their real intent was to use the aircraft against the insurrections.
Discussing Bush’s decision to stop the ground war after four days on Feb. 27, when the goal of ousting Iraqi forces from Kuwait had been achieved, Schwarzkopf recalled that the allies were pounding the fleeing Iraqis “and it was literally about to become the battle of Cannae, a battle of annihilation.”
The Carthaginian general Hannibal, one of Schwarzkopf’s military heroes, encircled an entire Roman army at the village of Cannae in 216 BC and cut it to pieces.
“Frankly, my recommendation (to Bush) had been, you know, continue the march,” Schwarzkopf said.
“I mean, we had them in a rout and we could have continued to reap great destruction on them. We could have completely closed the door and made it a battle of annihilation.
“And the President made the decision that we should stop at a given time, at a given place that did leave some escape routes open for them to get back out, and I think it was a very humane decision and a very courageous decision on his part.”
He said historians would second-guess Bush forever and noted that critics were already complaining that the allies failed to destroy Iraq’s Republican Guard and other units.
“There were obviously a lot of people who escaped who wouldn’t have escaped if the decision hadn’t been made to stop us where we were,” he said. ". . . But again, I think that was a very courageous decision on the part of the President.”
The interview is scheduled to be broadcast on public television stations tonight.
Schwarzkopf peppered the interview with the contempt he often aims at Hussein--calling him “an evil man,” a liar and a killer, among other things--but said he appears to be beyond the reach of any international war crimes tribunal.
“What normally happens to people like Saddam is, at some point, they are taken care of by their own folks,” the general said without elaboration.
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7566383c2ba8788b592a09fd141d605f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-27-mn-961-story.html | World IN BRIEF : GERMANY : Ex-Security Chief Accused in Attack | World IN BRIEF : GERMANY : Ex-Security Chief Accused in Attack
Germany’s chief prosecutor accused former East German security boss Erich Mielke of aiding in a 1981 terrorist attack on a U.S. general and announced that five of Mielke’s onetime aides have been arrested. Mielke, 83, has been in investigative custody in Berlin since July. The prosecutor, Alexander von Stahl, said the five former Mielke associates were arrested in Berlin. U.S. Army Gen. Frederik Kroesen was slightly injured in the 1981 attack. Mielke and his aides also are suspected of helping in a 1981 car-bomb attack that injured 17 U.S. soldiers.
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e320ed3778fe9b99e8b9fd2452dd9e28 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-1017-story.html | Susan V. Cashion, chairwoman of the dance... | Susan V. Cashion, chairwoman of the dance...
Susan V. Cashion, chairwoman of the dance division at Stanford University, has been named a UC Irvine Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecturer in Fine Arts for the spring semester. Cashion will teach master classes and seminars in dance during an April 10-13 residency and will give a free public lecture on “Dance as Religious Experience: Mexico, Cuba, Brazil” April 11 at 7:30 p.m. in the UCI Fine Arts Concert Hall. Information: (714) 856-6929.
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5b6cd1ccfd8d0a99b6a6f332655e59c4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-1021-story.html | Coach House to Stage Weekly Comedy Shows | Coach House to Stage Weekly Comedy Shows
The Coach House, the county’s premiere pop-music venue, will launch a monthlong series of Wednesday night comedy shows next week.
Coach House publicist Nikki Sweet said the decision to branch out sprung from a decline in the availability of bands in recent months, coupled with the success of the occasional comedy nights that the club has been offering since fall.
Appearing Wednesday are Carmen Circillo, Robert Jenkins, Steve Marmell and Dan Reddington. Show time is 8 p.m., and tickets are $10. Mark Wilmore, Bob Worley, Peter Gaulkeand Doug Starks perform April 10; Chris Hendrix, Carl Wolfson, June Boykin and Harris Peet on April 17; and Tom Shiekman and Kary Odis on April 24 along with two comedians to be announced.
Information: (714) 496-8930.
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c21b733945846cdf5c50d6c917a5adbd | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-712-story.html | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers
Why does the uplifting, happy crowd-pleaser always have to beat out the dark and depressing but better-made picture? Whoopi Goldberg for best supporting actress? Steve Martin did a better job of acting nutty in “The Jerk.”
The Oscars no longer pick the best. Better yardsticks are the L.A. critics’ awards and the New York critics’ awards--they do not worry about politics or popularity.
JOHN LEGGAT
Thousand Oaks
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7e456d259fb0c940cef681691181fe6b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-713-story.html | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers
Concerning Monday’s Academy Awards broadcast: A 48-year-old doesn’t cry watching TV, a warrior doesn’t cry when a teacher speaks . . . usually.
As Michael Blake, “Dances With Wolves’ ” screenwriter, invited Sioux teacher Doris Leader Charge to translate his acceptance speech into the language of the Lakota/Dakota, I cried.
I thought of my grandparents, who throughout their lives, were forbidden to speak the words of our ancestors. I cried in anger as I thought of my relatives who were punished severely for uttering even a single word of “Indian talk” while at government or mission schools.
I also cried, unabashedly proud, as the world heard this important Okama teacher so beautifully articulate the message in the ancient voice.
We need resolve not to continue the destruction by assimilation of the culture and heritage of indigenous peoples. The roots of human existence may possibly be the only salvation of our species.
It is the belief of the Native American that all things are related. To succeed, we must walk in this balance. Thank you to Kevin Costner, Blake and the other visionaries of “Wolves” (for acting to achieve such a balance).
Today I cry once again, with hope that each of us will strive to work together for a world in symmetry. As the Lakota/Dakota teacher Little Crow says, do it for “all our relations.”
GREAT ELK WATERS
Western U.S. Representative
Shawnee Nation United
Remnant Band
Downey
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9dad13ab7f00f35c57db69b2d1a728a7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-714-story.html | Hard View of ‘Hard Copy’ | Hard View of ‘Hard Copy’
Rosenberg’s assessment of “Hard Copy” is correct. The sick phenomenon of “Hard Copy” furnishes the strongest proof yet that the comedian Fred Allen was not far wrong when he said, “Television is being entertained in your own home by people you wouldn’t have in your own home.”
RUSSELL KISHI
Glendale
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f9af4324cfcab1d161b32338c247c03a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-716-story.html | Hard View of ‘Hard Copy’ | Hard View of ‘Hard Copy’
I was pleased by Howard Rosenberg’s March 13 column about TV’s “Hard Copy.” As an investigator for Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, I can testify to the fact that “Hard Copy’s” treatment of MacDonald was beyond unethical. Not only did its reporters deceive MacDonald prior to doing their hatchet job on him, the promised information (sex letters) was nonexistent.
This kind of distortion is sleazy. Yet, as Rosenberg pointed out, many TV viewers actually watch this show as if it is news.
TED L. GUNDERSON
Santa Monica
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672a1169affb2ff715cd135a3b2231cc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-717-story.html | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers
Re “Oscar Endures Another Hard Day’s Night,” Rick Du Brow’s March 26 review:
Could we have future reviews of the Oscar ceremony written by people who enjoy the show? Du Brow called it “a TV disaster.” But he surely wasn’t watching the same show as the rest of us.
Unlike the shows of the pre-Billy Crystal years, we were treated to an evening with pacing and humor. The historical segment with Michael Caine, and a nifty segue to an on-stage dance sequence, was both enlightening and entertaining.
The only sour note of the evening was Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin’s ridiculous introduction, during which Basinger sighed loudly and inappropriately . . . a throwback to former years when indolence and stupidity were tolerated on Oscar’s stage.
Du Brow should change his name to High Brow. Oscar night is what it is--lowbrow entertainment, and we love it!
MALCOLM DEAN
Westwood
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08f7ee9c535c3aa2a3d022946b9a2052 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-718-story.html | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers
There was someone totally forgotten . . . the wolf himself. Talk about a movie star!
WENDY ELLIOTT HY
Hancock Park
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a0be339be4e0bb281189365a8a3b86c5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-719-story.html | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers | Oscar Show’s Winners and Losers
Now I suppose we can look forward to the inevitable imitations: “Dances With Gorillas in the Mist,” “Dances With Ninja Turtles,” etc.
EDWARD S. HILL
Van Nuys
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4a8e35a8a2c2795abd6665843ac1a721 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-730-story.html | Classical Guitarist David Russell Lets His Fingers Do the Working | Classical Guitarist David Russell Lets His Fingers Do the Working
A native Scot who still has a perceptible burr in his voice may not be the stereotypical classical guitarist, but David Russell came by his interest naturally.
“My father was an amateur guitarist,” says Russell, who plays next week at UCLA. “When I was about 6, we moved to Spain, and all the kids in the village were also playing.”
He took it up seriously when he was 14. “I was fairly lucky that things worked out well, that my fingers could do the work,” he said. “My career blossomed before I really knew what was happening.”
Now 37, Russell can boast as blue-blood a pedigree as any guitarist, taking first place in the Andres Segovia and Julian Bream competitions, plus the Tarrega Prize.
Tarrega, the patron saint of the modern guitar, is the focus of Russell’s Royce Hall recital Thursday. Russell has also recorded the complete works of Tarrega on a double CD last fall, which is due out this month.
The program has a modern homage to Tarrega on the bill, but none of Russell’s characteristic contemporary ear-stretchers.
“I got married six years ago, and my wife doesn’t like atonal music. It’s hard to practice, or even believe in it when those around you don’t like it,” Russell says. “That’s partly just an excuse. I got caught up in playing the big pieces in the big cities. We want music to be able to develop, but we don’t want to alienate audiences.”
When Russell is not touring, he calls Vigo--in the northwest corner of Spain--home. So far, though, he has spent only five or six nights there this year.
“This both good and bad, in the sense that we all want work, but this year things got out of hand,” Russell says. “Next year my management is trying to get me more time. It’s hard to develop my repertory this way--also my handicap is going up!”
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eacf5260665b3ff928e5f2d72c1fc2ae | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-731-story.html | Music Reviews : Ohyama Debuts With Japanese Philharmonic | Music Reviews : Ohyama Debuts With Japanese Philharmonic
Wednesday night the Japanese Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles gave its first concert with Heiichiro Ohyama in his new position of music director, a year and a half after the death of founder/conductor Akira Kikukawa. It proved an auspicious occasion.
Ohyama--music adviser to the JPO after Kikukawa’s death, former assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and in his last year as its principal violist--led a chamber-sized ensemble of local free-lancers. The orchestra gave polished readings of standard repertory in the Japan America Theatre.
Violinist Asako Urushihara, winner of the 1988 Young Concert Artist International Auditions, joined the group for a performance of Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A, K. 219.
Though offering a small-scaled reading, Urushihara imbued all of her music with unflagging energy and pure, glowing tone. With nary a note out of place, the rest seemingly took care of itself. Mozart’s tunes flowed naturally, unfussily, and though understatement was the violinist’s key, she clearly meant what she said. Ohyama and orchestra backed her up with equal spirit.
The conductor opened the concert with Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” in a delicate and elegant reading. Articulations had a cushioned softness to them, textures were airy, the pacing spacious, yet Ohyama guided every phrase firmly forward, and the whole blossomed effortlessly.
The concert concluded with a largely routine but pleasant performance of Schubert’s Fifth Symphony that was brightly textured and animated in the outer movements, steady and straightforward in the Andante. The facility with which Ohyama has brought this ensemble to play as an ensemble bodes well for the future.
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c5c1864d223601a828d8052634a63404 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-800-story.html | MOVIE REVIEW : Kids Going Nowhere Fast in a Colombian Barrio | MOVIE REVIEW : Kids Going Nowhere Fast in a Colombian Barrio
Not once in Victor Gaviria’s rigorous “Rodrigo D: No Future” (at the Monica 4-Plex) is there a reference to the sinister drug cartel that has made Colombia’s capital city of Medellin infamous. But its corrupting presence is felt in every frame of this film, which is suffused with the deadly calm of its makers’ anger.
“Rodrigo D.,” an important feature debut, is an uncompromising portrait of a poor Medellin teen-ager (Ramiro Meneses) and his friends. Not for Gaviria is the poetry of Bunuel’s “Los Olvidados” or the operatic quality of Hector Babenco’s “Pixote,” two films with which “Rodrigo D.” has been compared. Gaviria and his scenarist Elsa Vasquez steeped themselves for several years in the lives of Medellin’s pistolocos , a number of whom appear in the film and contributed to the development of the script.
Gaviria’s commitment to making a fictional narrative as painfully real as possible means that the rhythms of his film are set by the restless aimlessness of its people. He eschews the big dramatic scenes that might help draw us into his story. Neither he nor the kids tell us much about themselves. “Rodrigo D,” inspired by an actual Rodrigo, is a tough go and rightly so, for Gaviria wants us to feel what it’s like to be young and faced with virtually no opportunity to make anything of your life.
The compassion Gaviria feels for these young people is expressed in the discreet distance he maintains from them and in his refusal to sentimentalize their predicament. “Rodrigo D.,” shot by Rodrigo Lalinde, has the feel of fiction made documentary, and paradoxically, is beautiful and moving in its depiction of pervasive despair.
It is set almost entirely in a portion of the steep hills that surround Medellin. Rodrigo’s neighborhood has a raw, homemade look, but it is solidly constructed. The homes we visit are neat and clean. Nobody is starving. Yet there is little or nothing out there for the kids once they leave school, and the area is rife with crime and danger. The kids form gangs, and far more than each other, they fear the police, notorious for their brutality. This barrio could be anywhere in the world, including, obviously, Los Angeles.
Rodrigo stands slightly apart from his friends. Although despondent over the death of his mother and the loss of his construction job, he actually has a dream--of becoming a drummer and forming his own punk rock band. (The film’s frenetic punkero score is terrific.) As others all around him drift into petty--and soon not-so-petty--crime, Rodrigo tries to pursue his goal with as much determination as he can muster.
But “Rodrigo D” (Times-rated Mature for adult themes), which became the first Colombian film selected for the main competition at Cannes, is a film about kids going nowhere fast. As Gaviria, no doubt intends it’s almost impossible to work up much hope for its hero. Indeed, whereas Meneses, a musician and painter and here an actor of great concentration and focus, is now living in Bogota, at last report six of the film’s key actors are already dead, and two more are in prison.
‘Rodrigo D: No Future’
Ramiro Meneses: Rodrigo D
Carlos Mario: Resrepo Adolfo
Jackson Idrian: Gallego Ramon
Vilma Dias: Rodrigo’s Sister
A Kino International release of a co-production of Compania de Fomento Cinematografica (FOCINE)/Producciones Tiempos Modernos Ltda./Fotoclub 76. Director Victor Manuel Gaviria. Executive producer Guillermo Calle. Screenplay by Elsa Vasquez; based on an original idea of Gaviria, Luis Fernando Calderon, Angela Perez. Cinematographer Rodrigo Lalinde. Editor Gaviria, Luis Alberto Restrepo. Music German Arrieta.n Art director Ricardo Duque. Sound Sound Gustavo de Hoz. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.
Times-rated Mature (for adult themes, some violence).
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0d5ed1ad93a67a15048bd607bf88e84a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-804-story.html | TV Reviews : Kenya Is the Real Star in Poaching Adventure ‘Eyes of a Witness’ | TV Reviews : Kenya Is the Real Star in Poaching Adventure ‘Eyes of a Witness’
“Eyes of a Witness” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 2 and 8) is an embarrassingly shallow adventure movie starring Daniel J. Travanti and Jennifer Grey as an estranged father and daughter battling poachers in East Africa.
The production’s single redeeming value is that it was shot in Kenya. The streaked equatorial skies and occasional glimpses of zebra and gazelle seen from a chopper are welcome interludes in a story that otherwise belongs in a comic book.
Talk about the ugly American. Travanti and the writers (Charles Robert Carner and Walter Clayton III) create an insufferable (not to mention unbelievable) cultural snob who flies to Africa to save his daughter from imagined terrors. Actually, she’s doing quite well as a research biologist working on a cure for sleeping sickness ( zzzzzzzzz ), which this show perpetuates on its own.
Travanti’s bellicose dad sneers at everything African until he finds himself facing a bum murder rap. The plot is insultingly dumb. During one fray in the Kenya bush, an unarmed Travanti hurls himself onto a murderous, gun-wielding poacher; it’s at this point that you fantasize the dialogue materializing in little balloons above the heads of the characters.
Director Peter Hunt’s limited successes come from two unlikely players who survive the hokeyness surprisingly well: a little Masai boy named Muki (Dennis Ngoga) and Carl Lumbly as a no-nonsense police commissioner. Other poacher yarns have been shot in Africa and done much better than this.
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85eca2bb745c77545d8331722f2b66da | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-831-story.html | A High Giggle Quotient Keeps Youngsters Amused in ‘Stories’ | A High Giggle Quotient Keeps Youngsters Amused in ‘Stories’
It’s bare-bones theater--a couple of uninteresting screens, odds-and-ends costumes--and performance quality varies, but “Just So Stories” at the Encino Playhouse evokes generous giggles from a preschool audience.
Sitting on floor mats, toddlers and older siblings can be nibbled by a whale, eat imaginary snacks, aid and abet chases and shout directions at various characters during three Rudyard Kipling stories: “How the Whale Got His Tiny Throat,” “The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo” and “The Beginning of Armadillos.”
The three cast members play three roles apiece. Laurie Harrop--as the crafty mariner, Yellow Dog Dingo and Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog--offers professional spark and brings some life to Kipling’s rich, idiosyncratic language.
David J. McGee does best as the greedy whale who nibbles the audience and swallows the mariner, but seems tentative as Great God Nqong and Slow-and-Solid Tortoise and doesn’t fulfill the characters’ comic potential.
Elizabeth Bernstein’s youthful enthusiasm is likable, but her enunciation isn’t. She doesn’t convey Kipling’s verbal rhythms.
Adapted and directed by Scott Guy, it’s an appealing script that needs crisper handling. This production’s strength is its audience participation, and the a cappella songs that frame each story and give the cast a chance to shine.
“Just So Stories,” Encino Playhou s e, 4935 Balboa Blvd., Encino. Saturdays-Sundays, 1 p.m.; beginning April 6, 11 a.m. Ends April 28. $5; (818) 990-1613. Running time: 45 minutes.
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d698d9882978208efce8b67bb506444b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-966-story.html | Jack Lemmon and Jazz No Odd Couple, Album Proves | Jack Lemmon and Jazz No Odd Couple, Album Proves
“Sounds like fun.”
That was Oscar-winning actor (“Save the Tiger,” “Mister Roberts”) Jack Lemmon’s reaction when Grammy-winning producer Ralph Jungheim (Ruth Brown, Joe Williams) asked him if he would like to make an album playing piano and singing.
The results, which are definitely A-OK, can be heard on newly released “Jack Lemmon: Piano & Vocals” (LaserLight), in which the noted thespian, who made a couple of albums for Epic and Capitol “about 25 years ago,” plays and sings great standards such as “Embraceable You” and “Like Someone in Love,” and a few originals, accompanied by reed artist/arranger Tommy Newsom’s TV Jazz Stars. (Newsom is associate conductor of “The Tonight Show” orchestra.)
“Hearing from Ralph was a coincidence, in that I had been thinking of doing an album,” said Lemmon, who is about to start filming HBO’s “Getting There,” directed by Jay Sandrich and also starring Talia Shire and Jonathan Silverman.
Music is his secret love, though Lemmon, who appeared Wednesday on “The Tonight Show” playing a tune from the album, said he’s never taken himself seriously as a great musician. “For me, writing songs or playing is a great outlet,” he said. “It’s kind of like singing in the shower in a way. I like to fool around, play with other people.”
But getting into the studio with Newsom, trumpeters Conte Candoli and Snooky Young, drummer Ed Shaughnessy and others was a real challenge. “Being there with pros, live, and not being able to read music, it was scary,” he said. “Plus (on my previous dates), the band would do its track and then I could do mine. This one, we were all live and that put on added pressure.”
According to Jungheim--who is producing a new project with singer Brown, to follow up their 1989 Grammy winner “Blues on Broadway” (Fantasy)--Lemmon handled himself with aplomb. “This was no Milli Vanilli,” Jungheim said. “We only made two edits. Otherwise, whatever Jack played or sang ended up on the record. And we did it in three three-hour sessions. He was great to work with, very cooperative.”
Lemmon, who cites Art Tatum, Mel Powell and Oscar Peterson as personal favorites, found that what sounded like fun was fun. “The session was great, Tommy was great, and I’d be glad to do it again, if anybody’s crazy enough to want to,” he said in his patentable laugh. “The fun of it is to have something that’s there, like a hunk of film, and hopefully you can be proud of it.”
Rim Shots: A benefit is being held Tuesday, 8 p.m. to midnight, to defray medical expenses for trumpeter John Swan, who recently suffered two strokes. The event, held at the Castaway’s in Burbank, will feature the Rising Winds, of which Swan was a member, the Maiden Voyage big band, reedman Ray Pizzi and the Tony Terran jazz group. Donation: $10. Information: (818) 848-6691 . . . Kenny Garrett, the saxophonist whose “African Marketplace” (Atlantic) has been on the Billboard jazz charts for many weeks, has canceled his scheduled April 16-21 engagement at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood. Instead, Garrett will go on tour with his longtime employer, trumpeter Miles Davis. “When Miles called him, Kenny canceled all his dates,” said Didier Deutsch, consultant for jazz publicity at Atlantic. "(Kenny) gets so much from Miles that he stays with him. Right now, his own career comes second.” Replacing Garrett will be pianist Marcus Roberts, playing solo on April 15-17, and singer Sheila Jordan, backed by the Alan Broadbent trio, April 18-21. Information: (213) 466-2210. . . . “A Celebration of Jazz--1991,” an 18x27 1/2-inch flip-over jazz calendar spotlighting innovative reedman Eric Dolphy, features graphics, photographs, commentary and lists of musicians’ birthdays. Information: (203) 327-7111.
In the Bins: “Latino, Latino” (Rhythm Safari) is a sampler featuring L.A.-based Latin and salsa bands, among them Bobby Matos and Heritage Ensemble, Bongo Logic, Francisco Aguabella and Orquesta Siva. . . . Among eight new CDs from the Japan-based DIW line, which is getting widespread U.S. distribution, are trumpeter Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy’s “My Way”; “Segments,” with pianist Geri Allen, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian, and “PDB,” spotlighting bassist Jaco Pastorius, guitarist Hiram Bullock and drummer Kenwood Dennard. . . . Vibraphonist Gary Burton, baritonist Gerry Mulligan and bassist Ron Carter are among the folks on “Jim Hall and Friends” (Musicmasters), which captured the ace guitarist “live " in New York’s Town Hall in a program of originals and standards. . . . Texas tenorman James Clay is in good company--pianist Cedar Walton, bassist David Williams and drummer Billy Higgins--on his Antilles debut, “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart,” culling items from the jazz (“I Mean You,” “Trane’s Blues”) and standard (“Body and Soul,” “My Foolish Heart”) repertoires. . . . Higgins joins piano giant Hank Jones on bassist Ray Drummond’s “The Essence” (DMP). The men blow solidly on items like Benny Golson’s “Whisper Not” and Ellington’s “What Am I Here For?” . . . “West 42nd Street” (Candid) finds alto saxophonist Gary Bartz fronting a fivesome--John Hicks, piano, Claudio Roditi, trumpet, et al.--in lengthy excursions through a variety of straight-ahead stuff. The date was recorded “live” at the new Birdland club in Manhattan.
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ebffda7f529e8a7c319d242062bab006 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-967-story.html | SPORTS ON WEEKEND TV | SPORTS ON WEEKEND TV
College basketball’s Final Four will dominate the Easter weekend sports television viewing choices.
North Carolina faces Kansas at 2:39 p.m. today on Channels 2 and 8. The Duke-Nevada Las Vegas game will start 30 minutes after the conclusion of the first game.
Channels 2 and 8 will also air the women’s Final Four this weekend. Connecticut takes on Virginia at 9:30 this morning followed by Tennessee challenging defending champion Stanford at noon. The winners meet at 1 p.m. Sunday.
Exhibition Baseball: The Angels’ new television announcing team of Ken Wilson and Ken Brett will make its KTLA Channel 5 debut at 1 p.m. today when California plays the Cleveland Indians in Palm Springs. KTLA will also carry Sunday’s game 1 p.m. game against the Oakland Athletics. TBS (cable) will air the Dodgers-Atlanta Braves game at 10 a.m. today and KTTV Channel 11 will air the Dodgers-Montreal Expos game at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.
Pro Basketball: The Lakers play host to the Sacramento Kings for a 7:30 telecast tonight on Prime Ticket. NBC has the men’s basketball field all to itself Sunday when the Chicago Bulls play the Boston Celtics at 9:30 a.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39.
Hockey: The Kings close out the winningest regular season in their 24-year history when the skate against the Calgary Flames Sunday at 12:30 p.m. on Prime Ticket.
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9ed5a580869df2f47eff9be5c73d0ca7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-970-story.html | KCBS Refuses to Apologize to Bradley : Television: Questions from Bree Walker and Michael Tuck enrage the mayor. Channel 2 denies there was a conspiracy to ‘ambush’ him. | KCBS Refuses to Apologize to Bradley : Television: Questions from Bree Walker and Michael Tuck enrage the mayor. Channel 2 denies there was a conspiracy to ‘ambush’ him.
KCBS Channel 2 management refused to apologize Friday for a live interview with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley conducted earlier this week, despite a charge from the mayor’s spokesman that it “was the most biased and slanted interview our office has seen on local television in years.”
Bradley was so enraged by the tone and questions of the interview--which he understood was going to be a discussion of the Rodney King police brutality case but which quickly focused on the question of whether the mayor ought to resign himself--that immediately after the interview, he angrily declared, “I will never talk to those people again,” according to one KCBS employee, who asked not to be identified.
Since the interview Tuesday, station executives have held several conversations with the mayor’s office in an effort to mend the wounds, but Steven Gigliotti, KCBS station manager, would not reveal the details of those discussions.
Bill Chandler, Bradley’s spokesman, said that KCBS had promised to conduct a “thorough self-examination” of how the antagonistic interview came to be. He expressed hope “that when they’ve done that, they will give us a call.”
The flap began Tuesday afternoon when a KCBS news representative asked the mayor to appear in an interview on the station’s 5 p.m. newscast to discuss the status of the King incident, Chandler said. A representative for Bradley asked if there was anything new the station wanted to discuss with the mayor and, according to Chandler, was told “no.”
Just prior to the live interview, the station aired a piece about a talk show on KGFJ-AM the previous Sunday, in which program host Booker Griffin and several callers said that the blame for the Rodney King beating ultimately rests with Bradley.
Bradley saw this piece for the first time as it aired immediately before KCBS anchors Bree Walker and Michael Tuck began to question him.
Tuck’s first question: “You’ve heard some people saying that you should resign because you have not provided strong leadership in this whole thing. Your response to that.”
Bradley calmly answered, then Walker combatively began to pursue the point. When the mayor argued that the sentiments expressed on the talk show were not representative of the feelings of the black community of Los Angeles as a whole, Walker challenged him: “My friends who are black say it does.”
“It seems there was a conspiracy on the part of Channel 2 to ambush the mayor,” said Chandler, who accused KCBS of misrepresenting the purpose of the interview. “The mayor has no objection to answering a particular charge. But we do object that the opinions of this talk show host, who considers himself a self-appointed community leader and has been a critic of the mayor for 18 years, became the focus of the interview. They fell into a trap and gave him (Griffin) a forum.”
KCBS’ Gigliotti said that there was absolutely no conspiracy on the part of the station to ambush the mayor. The initial question coming out of the piece on Griffin was intended solely as a segue to other issues concerning the King incident, he said.
“It is unfortunate that we didn’t know about the long-running feud between Booker Griffin and the mayor,” Gigliotti said. “We stumbled into a sore spot and that became more of the focus of the interview. We have a long history of responsible journalism and objective coverage of the mayor and the mayor’s office, and that will continue.”
Gigliotti added that he was sorry that the mayor was upset by the interview, but he did not consider the interview to be a personal attack on him, nor did he consider the tack taken by his anchors to be unfair or unprofessional.
But not everyone agrees. Chandler said that the mayor’s office has received numerous calls from KCBS employees expressing concern over the way the interview was handled. One KCBS employee told The Times that the interview was “an outrage, sheer stupidity,” and added that many others at KCBS found the whole thing “embarrassing and unprofessional.”
The most heated part of the conversation, centering around whether Bradley is ultimately responsible for the King incident and for Police Chief Daryl F. Gates remaining on the job, went like this:
Bradley: Don’t shift that blame to me. Don’t shift that blame to me.
Walker: Well, in some ways, you have to admit, though, that since you do appoint the (Police) Commission, you are helping to create an atmosphere in which the police may be allowed to believe that they could get by with this kind of activity.
Bradley: Baloney! Baloney!
Walker: The black community says that it’s not baloney.
Bradley: Well, how many people did you talk with in the black community?
Walker: You heard them on the radio talk show.
Bradley: This is a half dozen people on the Booker Griffin talk show, where you can get this kind of negative comment from a group of his listeners any time you want. That does not represent the broad cross-section of this community.
Walker: My friends who are black say it does.
Bradley: You go out and talk to the broad cross-section of black people to get their opinions if you want them. Don’t listen to a talk show.
Gigliotti said that the questions asked of the mayor, as in the case of any other live-interview subject, resulted from a collaboration between the anchors, the show’s producer and the managing editor. He said that no action was planned to reassess how these types of interviews are handled or who conducts them.
Chandler said that the mayor will continue to answer questions posed by Channel 2 reporters at news conferences, and he would consider consenting to a similar live interview with KCBS in the future as long as his office was “confident that Channel 2 was being upfront with us.”
’ In some ways . . . you are helping to create an atmosphere in which the police may be allowed to believe that they could get by with this kind of activity. ‘
ANCHORWOMAN BREE WALKER
’ Baloney! Baloney!’
MAYOR TOM BRADLEY
Excerpts from Bradley Interview on KCBS-TV
Here is an excerpt from the interview that KCBS Channel 2 anchors Bree Walker and Michael Tuck conducted with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley last Tuesday:
Bradley: Now the public has a responsibility to call to the attention of Chief Daryl Gates what it is they want.
Walker: But they have, Mayor Bradley.
Bradley: Don’t shift that blame to me. Don’t shift that blame to me.
Walker: Well, in some ways, you have to admit, though, that since you do appoint the (Police) Commission, you are helping to create an atmosphere in which the police may be allowed to believe that they could get by with this kind of activity.
Bradley: Baloney! Baloney!
Walker: The black community says that it’s not baloney.
Bradley: Well, how many people did you talk with in the black community?
Walker: You heard them on the radio talk show.
Bradley: This is a half-dozen people on the Booker Griffin talk show, where you can get this kind of negative comment from a group of his listeners any time you want. That does not represent the broad cross-section of this community.
Walker: My friends who are black say it does.
Bradley: You go out and talk to the broad cross-section of black people to get their opinions if you want them. Don’t listen to a talk show for the purpose of trying to get a feel for what the total community feels.
Tuck: Well, let me ask you this. . . .
Bradley: I’m proud of the job that I’ve done as mayor. And to have been elected five times and to have received the highest rating of approval of any mayor, indeed, any politician in this country for 18 consecutive years is a pretty good indication to you I’m doing the job.
Tuck: Mr. Mayor, let me ask you this. Some of the criticism of you has been that you haven’t taken a strong enough stand in this whole thing. You have inched toward calling for Daryl Gates’ resignation, Mr. Mayor, so far, but you have not actually come right out and say (sic) it.
Bradley: If I called for Daryl Gates to resign, what would that accomplish? Daryl Gates has said that only he can determine when he’s going to resign. So you think my saying it . . . there’ve been thousands of people who have said “resign.”
Walker: . . . But you’re a former cop. What about the guys who just watched the beating? Do they belong on the force now?
Bradley: I believe that they ought to be disciplined. I think the sergeant who was on that scene was responsible for controlling those officers and I’ve said it from the outset. He bears the blame, the bulk of the blame in this whole matter, and he is being prosecuted.
Tuck: So those fellows who were just watching stay on the force. They can keep their jobs.
Bradley: I didn’t say that.
Tuck: Should they be fired?
Bradley: I think they ought to be disciplined but there is a procedure by which that’s done. They are going to be called by the Chief of Police and the Board of Rights to hear the complaints against them and I believe they are going to be disciplined.
Walker: Should it take this long? It’s taking a long time.
Bradley: Do you have any idea how long it takes for the average case of discipline against a police officer to be brought? They’ve got pending criminal matters that have to be taken care of first. Don’t worry about the discipline of those two officers. That’s an internal matter but it will happen. I assure you.
Walker: All right, Mayor Bradley, we’ll take you at your word. Certainly we’ll talk again. Thank you very much for giving us your time this afternoon.
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27368300158854be721b1b6e9fbafe22 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-974-story.html | ‘Quantum Leap’ Is Renewed for a Fourth Season by NBC | ‘Quantum Leap’ Is Renewed for a Fourth Season by NBC
“Quantum Leap,” which has seen its ratings increase by 58% since returning to the NBC schedule March 6, has been renewed for a fourth season, the network announced Friday.
The fantasy drama, in which Scott Bakula stars as time-traveling scientist Sam Beckett, has averaged a 12.3 Nielsen rating (about 11.4 million households) in its four most recent telecasts.
Also receiving renewal notices Friday were NBC’s “Law & Order,” and ABC’s “Doogie Howser, M.D.”
Meanwhile, “Twin Peaks’ ” renewal hopes suffered a blow when the serial mystery finished fourth in the 9-10 p.m. time period Thursday. In its first broadcast since Feb. 16, “Twin Peaks” received a 6.2 rating (about 5.7 million households) compared to 20.6 for “Cheers” and 16.2 for “Wings” on NBC, 8.6 for “The Antagonists” on CBS and 8 for “Beverly Hills, 90210" on Fox.
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eb4d6cd6829e4718e2a74320f516852e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-ca-975-story.html | CBS Drops Beijing Reporter John Sheahan | CBS Drops Beijing Reporter John Sheahan
John Sheahan, the Beijing correspondent for CBS News, has been notified by management that he is being let go for economic reasons.
Sheahan, who has been with CBS News since 1969, opened the network’s Beijing bureau and covered the uprising in Tian An Men Square in 1989. He is expected to leave the network in June or July after his contract expires.
CBS officials said that they hope to keep at least a cameraman in Beijing.
CBS executives have been meeting recently to discuss the recommendations of an outside consulting firm regarding cutbacks at the network. According to sources, CBS News could eliminate about 100 jobs.
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79a9ecaebb02109fffa28f0a6b5b84d9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-1015-story.html | Ocean Pacific Denies Charges by Partner : Lawsuit: Founder sharply disputes allegations, saying the Tustin surf-wear company is solvent. | Ocean Pacific Denies Charges by Partner : Lawsuit: Founder sharply disputes allegations, saying the Tustin surf-wear company is solvent.
Top officials of Ocean Pacific Sunwear Ltd., one of the nation’s largest surf-wear companies, on Friday denied allegations by its largest stake-holder that the company is “hopelessly insolvent.”
Elaine M. Ornitz, who owns more than 30% of the partnership that controls the Tustin company, alleged in a lawsuit that “nothing short of a sale” or a massive cash infusion could save the partnership from bankruptcy. The suit, filed Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, seeks dissolution of the partnership and more than $10 million in damages.
The suit drew a sharp response Friday from OP’s founder and president, Jim Jenks.
“The charges leveled against me and the company are blanketed with inaccuracies and innuendoes,” he said in a statement. “Reviewing complete financial information, not just the bits and pieces filed in the lawsuit, will prove that OP is a solvent, progressive company.”
Ornitz’s suit also accuses five fellow partners of having “acted fraudulently, maliciously and oppressively, with spite and ill will toward (her), and with intent to defraud and deceive.”
The suit lays out a series of alleged incidents of deception and fraud. In one case, Ornitz claims that Jenks admitted to her that he deliberately planted a false story in a trade publication. The suit says Jenks told a reporter last August that the firm had enlisted the help of an unidentified New York bank to reorganize OP’s capital structure and buy out Ornitz’s interest. Ornitz says the story hurt her attempts to sell her stake.
But OP officials, in a telephone interview, denied that Jenks ever planted a phony story in the trade journal. Instead, they said Jenks simply answered a reporter’s question with what he believed to be a truthful response.
The suit further alleges that the company’s financial condition has deteriorated in recent months. Earlier this month, the suit states, the partners were shown draft financial documents that indicated OP had a negative net worth of nearly $2 million.
The partnership has some financial difficulties, conceded Michael Balmages, a senior executive vice president. But it is far from insolvent, he added. The value of the OP trademark alone, which is generally not counted in financial documents, was recently appraised at a value of about $25 million.
“The company is on solid ground,” Balmages said. It incurred heavy debt when it tried to move into manufacturing three years ago, only to later switch strictly to the licensing business. But Balmages said that all elements of a financial plan developed by Jenks, who returned to the company as president two years ago, have been implemented.
Ornitz is the widow of former OP Chief Executive Lawrence D. Ornitz.
In his statement, Jenks speculated, “Perhaps Elaine is disgruntled with me personally for changing the course her husband set as manufacturer to a more profitable licensing operation.”
The Ornitz suit faults OP for selling its Jimmy ‘Z label last year to a group of investors who went bankrupt months later. OP, it states, did not take reasonable precautions to ensure the financial soundness of the purchasers.
Jeff Meyers, OP’s chief financial officer, responded that the buyers were fully investigated by one of OP’s largest creditors, which recommended the deal. In addition, he said OP was paid $3.7 million of the $6.8-million purchase price up front. He also said that the Jimmy ‘Z trademark, valued at $2.6 million, is back in OP’s ownership.
The Ornitz suit names as defendants Balmages, Ocean Pacific Sunwear Ltd., OP Management Inc. and partners Jenks, Robert Driver, Thomas Hilb and Brooks Gifford. Another OP partner, surfboard pioneer Hobie Alter, was not named in the suit.
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116fed92b08358e5cd3d7dad30e00c90 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-832-story.html | Richard Klopfstein, previously senior manager with KMPG... | Richard Klopfstein, previously senior manager with KMPG...
Richard Klopfstein, previously senior manager with KMPG Peat Marwick in Costa Mesa and San Francisco, has been named a partner at Putman, Klopfstein & Associates, previously Putman & Associates, Irvine.
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8dd7aa372ada1e438a60aefef40d55a1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-833-story.html | Dwyer-Curlett & Co., Los Angeles, has named... | Dwyer-Curlett & Co., Los Angeles, has named...
Dwyer-Curlett & Co., Los Angeles, has named G. Thomas Dudley Jr. president and a partner. Dudley, previously executive vice president, succeeds Roger C. Olson, now chairman.
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a79d6d42e165815b23c211ab33dbea57 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-835-story.html | Hank C. Wieseneck has been named vice... | Hank C. Wieseneck has been named vice...
Hank C. Wieseneck has been named vice president and division director for advance programs at the Rocketdyne division of Rockwell International. Wieseneck was previously head of the corporation’s strategic technology business activity.
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12279c57a726ddbd8fac0d1a37fdcc15 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-839-story.html | Thomas V. Brown, formerly vice president of... | Thomas V. Brown, formerly vice president of...
Thomas V. Brown, formerly vice president of U.S. sales and marketing at Emerald Systems, San Diego, has been named vice president of customer service and quality at Xircom, Calabasas.
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8c1a9f964d39abfeac06e0935384b881 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-843-story.html | Control Data Co-Founder Giving Up Seat on Board | Control Data Co-Founder Giving Up Seat on Board
Control Data co-founder and former Chairman William C. Norris will all but sever his 34-year-old ties with the Minneapolis-based computer company.
Norris will not stand for reelection to the board, becoming instead a non-voting director emeritus, the company announced in the proxy statement for its annual stockholders meeting May 1.
Norris was chairman and chief executive from 1957 until his retirement in January, 1986. Since then, he has been a board member and carried the honorary title of chairman emeritus.
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2d5b9b81bc6d00bc36d9da93380b48f6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-907-story.html | Fans That Rolls Could Do Without : Autos: The luxury car has become the vehicle of choice among many of Southern California’s white-collar criminals. | Fans That Rolls Could Do Without : Autos: The luxury car has become the vehicle of choice among many of Southern California’s white-collar criminals.
The image of the most prestigious car in the world is being tarnished by some of those who drive it--Southern California’s white-collar criminals.
“Whenever we get a case now, we always look for the Rolls,” said chief Assistant U.S. Atty. Terree Bowers in Los Angeles. Within the past two years, nearly every major white-collar criminal prosecuted in his office has driven one.
Orange County S&L; felons John Molinaro and Janet McKinzie each had a Rolls-Royce, hers with the license plate XTACI (ECSTASY). The Coughlans, a Newport Beach patriarch and two sons convicted last year of an $8-million real estate fraud, bought three matching Rolls in the same year. Douglas Blankenship, a Capistrano Beach man now awaiting trial on charges he conned banks out of $25 million, was arrested while parking his gold Rolls.
“We’d rather they drove one of those German cars,” said Rolls-Royce spokesman Reg Abbiss, quickly adding that “everybody who buys a Rolls-Royce or Bentley shows exquisite judgment no matter what his or her background.”
Some of the cars were bought at Newport Auto Center along Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach, the largest Rolls dealership in the United States. Last year, the firm sold 140 new Rolls and 80 “pre-owned.”
David Murphy, the British-born sales manager at Newport Auto, said he has personally served some of Orange County’s more infamous residents, including McKinzie.
“The criminal element can appreciate the finer things in life just as much as anyone else,” joked Murphy, who reported that McKinzie paid up front for her 1986 “magnolia” (light beige) Corniche II. “She was flush with cash,” he said, adding that McKinzie was “excited about the purchase . . . . We didn’t know where the money came from.”
Murphy refused to disclose the purchase price, but McKinzie’s car was eventually sold by the FDIC for $125,000.
McKinzie is serving a 20-year prison term for looting Santa Ana-based North America Savings & Loan and using the money to finance a lavish lifestyle that included her Rolls, $1,000 cocktail dresses and a birthday party with Sammy Davis Jr. as entertainment.
The Rolls isn’t the most expensive car in the world, but it’s probably the most prestigious. Each car takes months to assemble by hand, fetching anywhere from $130,000 to $226,000.
Don Ray Dixon of Vernon Savings in Texas, a former high-flier in the thrift industry, said in a 1988 Times interview that “you don’t access Florida development loans or Southern California construction loans by taking a Greyhound bus.”
Dixon, once the sole owner of a Rolls-Royce dealership, was convicted of 23 counts of bank fraud and is now awaiting sentencing.
Once someone is in trouble, the public relations value of a Rolls drastically depreciates. Prosecutors--and reporters for that matter--harp on the car if the money to buy it came from ill-gotten gains.
“I think the media makes a point of saying if the criminal is driving a Rolls-Royce,” said Jill Amadio, a Newport Beach public relations agent. “ ‘He arrived at court in his Rolls-Royce’ . . . . If he is driving a Cadillac, they don’t mention it.”
Newport Beach developer Kent B. Rogers, sentenced in October to eight years in jail for a massive bank fraud, said in an interview last week that he regrets ever buying a Rolls-Royce.
“It was the worst car I ever had in my life. It changed lanes by itself,” he reported, adding that the gas mileage wasn’t so great either. “You couldn’t go to San Diego from Orange County on one tank of gas,” he said. “You had to stop in Oceanside to fill up.”
SOME ROLLS-ROYCES AND THEIR INFAMOUS DRIVERS
John Molinaro
* Convicted of looting Ramona S&L; Rolls sold at auction.
Don Ray Dixon
* Convicted of looting Vernon Savings & Loan; owned a Rolls-Royce dealership in La Jolla.
The Coughlans
* John M. Coughlan Sr. and two sons convicted of $8-million real estate fraud; bought three Rolls-Royces.
Edwin T. McBirney III
* Convicted of looting Sunbelt Savings & Loan; Sunbelt paid $3 million for dozens of Rolls once owned by former Oregon guru Bhagwan Rajneesh.
Janet McKinzie
* Convicted of looting North America S&L; Rolls license plate XTACI.
Kent B. Rogers
* Convicted of helping to defraud Bank of America out of $118 million; sold his Rolls after three months because it wasn’t practical enough.
Barry Minkow
* ZZZZ Best owner convicted of securities, credit card and mail fraud with a scheme to bilk investors and banks of more than $100 million; rented a Rolls for the cover shot on his biography.
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5617a4356c45c5ec2558e80f3644eb55 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-908-story.html | Leading Indicators, New-Home Sales Advance Strongly | Leading Indicators, New-Home Sales Advance Strongly
In a double dose of good news for the U.S. economy, the government’s index of leading economic indicators surged 1.1% in February, and sales of new homes jumped 16.2% for the same month, it was reported Friday.
“Both reports are fairly positive and indeed suggest the economy may be nearing a turning point,” said Cynthia Latta, an economist with DRI-McGraw Hill in Lexington, Mass.
The Commerce Department’s index of 11 separate economic gauges has not risen since last June. The 1.1% February jump in the index was the largest in almost three years.
While many analysts took heart in the index’s rise, some warned that it was premature to declare the recession over. An uptick in the index has signaled a return to overall economic growth in each of the past four recessions, but the time lag has been from one to six months, Latta said.
Many economists expect the current slump to fade away by September; a smaller group has said the economy could start to bounce back in the spring, boosted by an end to worries about the Persian Gulf War.
Those who argue that the slump grinds on point to various fundamental measures of the U.S. economy--including employment, industrial production, auto sales and income growth--that have continued to reflect weakness. The government index in February was buoyed by gains in other areas.
“Although some parts of the economy, such as housing, are bouncing back, the overall economy continues to decline,” said Richard Rahn, chief economist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Seven of 11 leading indicators rose last month, including stock prices, consumer confidence--both considered highly changeable--building permits, the money supply and manufacturers’ orders for consumer goods, the Commerce Department reported.
At the same time, three signs of the economy pointed downward. Benefit claims for unemployment continued to rise--suggesting continued weakness in the labor market--the workweek declined and there were fewer contracts for plants and equipment. One indicator, the speed of vendor deliveries, was unchanged.
Economic optimists were given added ammunition Friday by a separate Commerce Department report that sales of new homes jumped 16.2% in February, the biggest advance in nearly five years. The increase, the first since last November, followed a 12.6% drop in January.
Like the government index, an upturn in housing is also believed to signal that the broader economy will register gains. Similarly, there may be a time lag of months before the housing gains are reflected in an overall advance of the economy.
The rise in home sales was experienced throughout the nation, although the West gained just slightly with a 1.8% increase for a 113,000 annual rate. In the South, new-home sales rose 9.1%, and in the Northeast they were up 5.9%. The Midwest experienced an extraordinary 70.3% rise, which analysts explained in part due to good weather.
“All of our measurements of buyer traffic, current sales activity and builder sentiment have brightened substantially in the past two months,” said David Seiders, chief economist of the National Assn. of Home Builders.
“It is pretty clear that the housing market has started to move upward and that should give us an end to the recession by midyear,” he said.
Despite the big February jump, the annual sales rate in February remained 23% lower than the 606,000-unit level recorded a year earlier.
Housing sales peaked in 1986 at 750,000 and sank to the lowest level in 1990 since the last recession, when they fell to 412,000.
Index of Leading Indicators
Seasonally adjusted Index, 1982 = 100
Feb. ’90: 144.1
Jan. ’91: 139.0
Feb. ’91: 140.5
Source: Commerce Department
THE ECONOMY The index of leading indicators rose last month for the first time since June and sales of new homes recorded the biggest gain in about five years.
THE CHANGES
Leading indicators: Up
New home sales: Up
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
The gain in the leading indicators index raised hopes that the recession would soon end, buttressed by the strong home sales. But worry persists--there is still weakness in the labor market.
Source: U.S. Commerce Department
NEW HOME SALES
Seasonally adjusted annual rate, thousands of units
Feb. ’90: 606
Jan. ’91: 402
Feb. ’91: 467
Source Commerce Department
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4f984eb4f53cb18d8ecc14f24e07d6aa | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-910-story.html | Rebuilding Kuwait Is Much Tougher Than U.S. Expected | Rebuilding Kuwait Is Much Tougher Than U.S. Expected
Mired in problems from the start, the U.S. emergency effort to put Kuwait back on its feet is taking far longer than anticipated and may cost twice as much, U.S. Army officials say.
Col. Ralph V. Locurcio, head of the Army Corps of Engineers unit here, said in an interview this week that it will take the Corps as much as a year to complete its relief work. The Corps’ effort had been expected to last three months and cost the Kuwaiti government about $46 million.
Long supply delays at the border of Saudi Arabia and misunderstandings about what work should be done by whom have plagued the rescue effort, according to Army officials.
“This is a most difficult job,” Locurcio said, “because there’s so much unknown here.”
The slow pace of recovery has dashed the early intentions of many Western business executives who had hoped to cash in quickly on Kuwait’s long-term recovery, a task estimated to cost from $40 billion to $100 billion. Reconstruction is expected to take as long as five years.
“All these companies think that the sky is the limit, and I’m going to tell them it is not,” said Joost Wolfswinkel, acting director of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Economic Affairs. He recently toured the city and spoke with U.S. Army officials.
An erstwhile commercial center of the Middle East, Kuwait City is struggling to regain its balance but has yet to get very far.
There are few signs of life in the downtown shopping area. One day this week, packs of stray cats could be observed roaming amid the omnipresent garbage while two U.S. Army combat medics rummaged through the remains of a TWA ticket office.
“We are just looking for some furniture for our tent,” said Eddie Robinson, 20, of North Carolina.
Even though Iraqi troops left here more than a month ago, commercial activity has barely begun to revive because much of the emirate remains without regular water service, electricity and a viable lending system.
The once-vibrant downtown business district with its gleaming skyscrapers is awash in debris and broken glass, its best hotels in blackened ruins and its once-crowded streets largely devoid of cars and pedestrians.
Merchants can be found sitting idly by outside their looted, gutted businesses, unsure of what to do.
“My whole life gone,” said a Jordanian man, sweeping his hand toward the charred shell of what was once a thriving jewelry kiosk.
Still, a few sprouts of commercial life are emerging, particularly in the areas beyond downtown where Iraqi troops were generally less destructive.
On Friday, for example, along Ahmed Jabar Street, optician Yousef Jannessar for the first time in seven months was reopening the eye wear shop he has operated for 30 years. Jannessar boarded up the shop shortly after the Iraqi invasion last August, hiding his inventory of more than 10,000 pairs of glasses in his home.
The businesses flanking his--a restaurant and a television repair shop--are still boarded shut.
As Jannessar swept up, his first customer drove up--a Kuwaiti needing the ear pieces tightened on a pair of Ray Ban aviator sunglasses. Regretfully, Jannessar couldn’t help. The tiny screwdriver he needed to fix the glasses was at home among the boxes of goods and supplies he had hurriedly packed to keep from the pilferring Iraqis.
“Come back this weekend,” he said, and the man promised to come back Sunday.
“Before war, 1 million people here. Now nobody here,” Jannessar said. “Look on street. You can’t get anybody. Maybe two, three years, business good again.”
A few kilometers up the coast, just off Arabian Gulf Street, pharmacist Fouad H. Awad sat in his darkened store, waiting for his first customer of the day. Awad had reopened Wednesday, doing a brisk business in vitamin tablets and contraceptives.
Though still without electricity--he must leave open the money drawer of his computerized cash register--Awad said he considered himself lucky. While the Syrian restaurant next door was thoroughly gutted, the Iraqis left his tiny Phoenicia Pharmacy untouched.
“Things would be better if we had electricity,” he said. “Maybe it comes tomorrow, Insha Allah"--if God wills it.
Among the greatest impediments to recovery has been the lack of electricity, but that has started to change in recent days as power has begun to come on in selected areas throughout the city.
“We have electricity. It’s wonderful,” Nadrah Al-Rasheed said after power was restored this week to her apartment where she lives with her husband, an accountant and businessman, and two young children.
According to the Corps of Engineer’s Locurcio, it will take another two weeks for full power to be restored, another month before the water system is fixed and as much as two more months before the sanitary system is functioning properly.
Local businessmen say the commercial life in Kuwait won’t begin to reappear in a major way until basic services are repaired and the banks, with government assistance, start making relief loans. Only then, they say, will Kuwait’s extensive and prosperous merchant class, much of which is living abroad, reappear in force.
Most of Kuwait has been without electricity since the final days of the war, when heavy fighting and Iraqi sabotage severely damaged the country’s sophisticated power generating system. There are four electrical power plants around the country. One of the plants, along the coast near downtown, was so badly crippled that it may not be salvageable, experts say. Another plant was spared direct damage, but it has been unable to generate power for customers because its transmission lines have been cut.
At the Doha power plant, west of Kuwait City across Kuwait Bay, Iraqi troops rendered the plant inoperative by blowing up the master control room with two huge charges. More than 6,000 electrical cables were damaged by the blast, said officials of National Power, a British utility company.
Though the master control room remained in shambles, workers did some hasty rewiring to get one of the turbines working. The plant began to regenerate its first electricity last Sunday, exactly one month after the facility was damaged.
According to J. R. Bullock, an engineering manager for National Power, the plant should have most of its turbines operating this summer in time to meet the peak demands of the hot Kuwaiti summer.
Meanwhile, south of here at Kuwait’s Al Zour power plant, the facility was not damaged, but the transmission lines from the plant were cut by deliberate sabotage and by heavy fighting between Iraqi and allied troops.
“The Iraqis tried to hide under the power lines,” said a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers.
The repair of those power lines has been a case study in frustration for one American company, Blount Inc., based in Montgomery, Ala., and a lesson in the sometimes enigmatic business ways of the Middle East.
While Blount’s men and equipment were stalled at the Saudi Arabian border earlier this month, an outfit known as Saudi Cable breezed through the crowded checkpoint and began doing Blount’s work at the Al Zour power plant, several sources said.
Blount eventually got through and is working on repairing transmission lines at the Doha plant.
The Al Zour lines still have not been repaired. Saudi Cable officials could not be reached for comment.
American businessmen are not the only ones who are frustrated. Members of Kuwait’s powerful merchant class are becoming increasingly angry with what they view as their own government’s paralysis in handling the immediate crisis.
Their gripes range from a lack of detail about what kind of government loans they will get to complaints about growing mountains of garbage that, with regular trash pick-ups still not restored, dot neighborhoods throughout the city.
Ibrahim Shaheem is the Kuwaiti government official in charge of the emergency rescue effort, but he has been unavailable for comment because he has been in Saudi Arabia.
The actual work of getting the electricity working and the water running has fallen to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which usually does not get involved in disaster relief outside North America. The Corps is the federal government’s primary arm of construction in disaster relief.
As the extent of the damage has become available, Kuwaiti government officials have asked the Corps to do more and more damage assessment and repair work. Talks are under way on additional work that would roughly double the original $46-million contract, Locurcio said.
“We’ll stay as long as they pay our salaries,” he said.
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2b9ff856f318613aba01e2969b002839 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-920-story.html | Feds Say David Paul to Get Break:... | Feds Say David Paul to Get Break:...
Feds Say David Paul to Get Break: Federal regulators are willing to grant hardship status to Paul, the ousted chairman of CenTrust, on the condition that he stay on a short financial leash, according to court documents. Paul, known for lavish spending on corporate luxuries and society galas before CenTrust was seized at a loss of $1.7 billion, applied for relief in January. He said he was unable to keep up with his legal bills and other personal and business expenses. The Office of Thrift Supervision, the federal agency in charge of cleaning up the national thrift crisis, attached an order approving the hardship request to a response to motions filed in the government’s civil proceedings against Paul. But OTS crafted the order in such a way as to keep tight control over Paul’s spending, requiring him to provide monthly bank statements to verify allowable expenses.
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2d7afa7b10165cf362fc9f900b79d49c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-921-story.html | Water Bed Inventor Wins Case: A jury... | Water Bed Inventor Wins Case: A jury...
Water Bed Inventor Wins Case: A jury in San Francisco has awarded Santa Rosa, Calif., inventor Charlie Hall $4.8 million after finding that a Long Beach company had been importing water beds from Taiwan that closely resembled the mattresses he made in the late 1960s. The six-member U.S. District Court jury took 1 1/2 days to reach its decision. It found that Intex Plastics Sales Co. of Long Beach had “willfully infringed” on Hall’s 1971 water bed patent.
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b71b84bb274a7d38cbd7747696bd675d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-923-story.html | ComputerLand Buys Nynex Network: The computer retailer... | ComputerLand Buys Nynex Network: The computer retailer...
ComputerLand Buys Nynex Network: The computer retailer has agreed to acquire the nationwide network of Nynex Business Centers in exchange for cash and ComputerLand preferred stock, the companies said. The deal, expected to be completed by June 1, will mean the integration of the 77 Nynex Business Centers across the country with ComputerLand’s 400 outlets, which are involved in the sale, service and other support of microcomputing products, the companies said.
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cf503e3a04f89ef5f0fba0b34f75f1a4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-925-story.html | Disney Sells Movie Package: Walt Disney Co.... | Disney Sells Movie Package: Walt Disney Co....
Disney Sells Movie Package: Walt Disney Co. has sold a package of 50 theatrical films to local TV stations for a record $125 million. The films, which include “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “Pretty Woman” and “Dick Tracy,” will begin airing on local TV stations in the fall of 1992 after they have finished their pay-TV runs. The deal is unique in that stations are committed to buying all 50 films even though only 17 have been produced so far. “This demonstrates remarkable respect and confidence in our future products,” said Mort Marcus, senior vice president at Disney’s Buena Vista TV division.
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19a5edebfbc0b7289ea18577c71487f7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-926-story.html | China, Japan Cited by U.S. for Barriers : Trade: The report lists 35 other nations that hinder the import of American goods. | China, Japan Cited by U.S. for Barriers : Trade: The report lists 35 other nations that hinder the import of American goods.
The Bush Adminstration on Friday cited China and Japan as among 37 nations with major barriers to U.S. goods, contributing to the $101-billion U.S. trade deficit last year.
It said in its annual report on Foreign Trade Barriers that China’s economic turn inward resulted in a 17% drop in imports from the United States last year. At the same time, U.S. imports from China rose 27%.
Joshua Bolten, general counsel at the trade office, said, however, that “the most significant trade barriers that the United States faces continue to be in the Japanese market.”
He told a news conference that many Japanese markets had been opened the past year--including those in superconductors, sound recordings, wood products and satellites--but others remained closed.
In addition, business practices there continued to make it hard for U.S. firms to break into Japanese markets.
U.S. Trade Representative Carla Anderson Hills said in a statement that despite global openings, many markets were still closed.
The barriers cited ranged from high tariffs and restrictive quotas to rules on investment and onerous standards and testing procedures designed to exclude foreign goods.
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e99c5aad7dd1682a04279c2c5425f1f0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-929-story.html | CBS Cutbacks Expected to Include 400 Layoffs : Television: The network has been hit by recession, costs of war coverage, losses on sports coverage and low ratings. | CBS Cutbacks Expected to Include 400 Layoffs : Television: The network has been hit by recession, costs of war coverage, losses on sports coverage and low ratings.
CBS Inc., hit by an industrywide recession plus the costs of covering the Persian Gulf War, is expected to lay off more than 400 employees over the next several months, executives said Friday.
The layoffs come at a time when the television networks are facing one of their worst years in history due to a sharp drop in advertising revenues and the costs of war coverage.
But CBS has been harder hit than the other networks because of losses associated with baseball and basketball programming as well as its third-place standing in prime time. The network lost $92 million last year on baseball and expects to lose another $190 million over the remaining three years of the contract.
CBS senior management had been meeting this week with consultants McKinsey & Co. at a Westchester County, N.Y., resort to review budget-cutting proposals to be presented to CBS Inc. Chairman Laurence A. Tisch.
Sources familiar with the proposals said the overall plan calls for CBS Inc. to cut its 1991-92 budget by more than $200 million, or 6%. At least 400 employees would lose their jobs over the next several months, executives said.
Layoffs are expected to occur in all divisions, including news, entertainment, sports and the company’s television and radio stations. CBS News, which employs 1,050 people, would lose about 100 jobs. CBS Inc. has 6,650 employees.
Budget cutbacks have become almost a way of life at the networks since they all came under cost-conscious owners in the mid-1980s. NBC closed its San Francisco news bureau two weeks ago, and late last year ABC shut down bureaus in Chicago, Boston and Dallas.
Such closings, however, are expected to pale next to the pending round of budget and staff cutbacks at all three networks, which are painfully adjusting to the new realities of the television marketplace.
Network revenues--as well as costs--grew at double-digit rates all through the 1970s and into the early 1980s. But in recent years, the growth of cable and the Fox network has siphoned off both advertising and viewers while costs have continued to climb.
NBC, which has 5,700 employees, is moving forward with more than $50 million in budget cutbacks that will include at least 8% in staff reductions over the course of the year.
ABC on Wednesday said the combination of war and recession would have a “significant negative impact” on its first-quarter results, adding, “There is every indication that the soft revenue environment will persist through at least the first half of 1991.”
That followed the disclosure CBS made last week that it expects operating income to “decline significantly” below the $85.3 million it earned in the first quarter of 1990. CBS had previously acknowledged that its TV network would lose money this year.
CBS employees noted with irony that senior management was mapping out the staff layoffs and budget cutbacks at the exclusive Trout Beck conference center in Amenia, N.Y., where the approximately 25 executives had the entire 440-acre estate to themselves and rooms cost $275 per night.
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9228ee435733a78a0757cfc7d3dd9b54 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-930-story.html | Experts Doubt U.S. Will Rescue Auto Industry : Cars: The Big Three get a cool reception at the White House when they complain of proposed new regulations and tough Japanese competition. | Experts Doubt U.S. Will Rescue Auto Industry : Cars: The Big Three get a cool reception at the White House when they complain of proposed new regulations and tough Japanese competition.
A rare White House meeting with the leaders of the beleaguered U.S. auto industry recalled the days of the Chrysler bailout, the import truck tariff and Democratic initiatives for an “industrial policy.”
But industry and political observers see more differences than parallels to 1980, and there seems to be no great groundswell on behalf of major policy initiatives aimed specifically at helping the troubled auto firms and workers.
Even some traditional supporters of government-industry-labor initiatives to improve the nation’s competitiveness doubt that Detroit’s latest troubles warrant any new intervention by Uncle Sam.
“I don’t think there’s a compelling rationale for any steps beyond what the government has already done,” said Stuart Eizenstadt, domestic policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter and now a Washington consultant.
The leaders of the domestic auto industry, hard hit by the recession and ongoing competitive inroads by the Japanese, pleaded their case in a meeting last week with President Bush. Participants included General Motors Chairman Robert C. Stempel, Ford Motor Chairman Harold A. Poling and Chrysler Chairman Lee A. Iacocca.
They talked about the burdens of new environmental and proposed fuel-economy regulation, the recession and Japanese cars. Press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Bush made no commitments at the unpublicized meeting.
The session was apparently triggered by what Chrysler officials called a sudden funneling of Japanese-built cars to U.S. shores this winter, the result of a weakening auto market in Japan and rising political barriers in Europe.
In a letter to Bush before the meeting, Iacocca portrayed the spurt in imports as “another market-share grab” that would lead to fire-sale prices in the depressed U.S. car market. He proposed a temporary freeze in Japan’s U.S. market share, now about 31%. Without restraint, their market share will reach 40% or more, he said.
“I can tell you, Mr. President, at a Japanese share of 40% in a depressed industry, Chrysler is gone and Ford could be mortally wounded,” Iacocca wrote.
Eizenstadt rates the chances of establishing a European-style ceiling on Japanese market share at “between zero and nil.” Not even Iacocca’s peers at GM and Ford advocate it, but they are sympathetic. The U.S. industry is headed for a $3-billion loss this quarter as foreign competition, plummeting sales and excess capacity force manufacturers into rebates averaging $1,100 per car.
However, Detroit’s biggest competitive problem is not imported cars but those built in the U.S. auto assembly plants erected by the Japanese during the 1980s. In general, sales of imports have been declining as sales of “transplant” cars have climbed.
Japan’s $6-billion-plus U.S. automotive investment has won important political allies from the states--notably Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee--where they erected plants and hired workers. Some past auto labor supporters now shy away from efforts to limit imports.
“Normally we see eye to eye with Al Gore, but not on this,” says Douglas Fraser, retired president of the United Auto Workers union, referring to the Democratic Tennessee senator whose constituents include auto maker Nissan.
Moreover, the success of the transplants is increasingly seen as a competitive failure by U.S. auto companies and less a result of unfair trade policies or other inequities. Japan’s U.S. auto plants went up after the Japanese government was persuaded to limit car shipments here.
“Past efforts indicate that to a large extent, domestic companies simply take advantage of reduced imports to improve profit margins rather than improve efficiency,” said a Treasury Department background paper triggered by Iacocca’s letter.
The Treasury commentary knocks down many of Iacocca’s complaints, suggesting that a lot of the industry’s problems are of its own making.
But the Bush Administration is already in the auto industry’s camp on some key issues raised by the auto bosses, notably its opposition to fuel-economy legislation from Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.) requiring a 40% gain in fuel efficiency by 2001. The White House has indicated that it would veto such a bill.
Bush’s Transportation Department has consistently opposed what it views as excessive safety regulation of the auto industry. And compared to early versions of the Clean Air Act, the final legislation was viewed as a victory for auto manufacturers.
Auto makers hope that Bush’s political pragmatism will ultimately pry him from the free-market ethic that would seem to rule out such Carter-vintage steps as another Chrysler bailout, although that particular step is seen as neither necessary nor politically possible.
Bush is encouraging joint government-industry research and development, routine in Japan and Germany and urged by many Democrats. And while Bush would have trouble advocating auto import barriers when the United States is trying to discourage them in Europe and elsewhere, major automotive job losses could quickly turn into a 1992 election issue.
“I think there’s a growing feeling in the country in hard times like this that we’re foolish to tolerate a one-way street in trade,” says Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). “I don’t know that the White House shares this feeling.”
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2a2ffc12fb2fb3ca30e04667ff631973 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-931-story.html | Ocean Pacific Partner Files Fraud Lawsuit | Ocean Pacific Partner Files Fraud Lawsuit
The biggest stake holder in Tustin-based Ocean Pacific Sunwear Ltd. has sued the surf-wear company for fraud, contending that it is “hopelessly insolvent.” OP officials Friday insisted that the company is healthy.
Elaine M. Ornitz, who owns more than 30% of the partnership that controls the company, alleged in a lawsuit that “nothing short of a sale” or massive cash infusion can save the partnership from bankruptcy.
The suit, filed Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, accuses five OP partners of having “acted fraudulently, maliciously and oppressively, with spite and ill will toward (Ornitz), and with intent to defraud and deceive.” It seeks more than $10 million in damages and dissolution of the partnership.
The suit drew a sharp response Friday from Jim Jenks, founder and president of OP, one of the nation’s largest and best-known surf-wear companies.
“The charges leveled against me and the company are blanketed with inaccuracies and innuendoes,” he said in a statement. “Reviewing complete financial information, not just the bits and pieces filed in the lawsuit, will prove that OP is a solvent, progressive company.”
The suit contends that Jenks told Ornitz that he deliberately planted a false story in a trade publication. The suit said he told a reporter last August that OP had enlisted the help of an unidentified New York bank to reorganize its capital structure in order to buy out Ornitz’s interest. Ornitz said the story damaged efforts to sell her stake.
OP officials denied that Jenks planted a phony story in the trade journal. The suit further alleges that the company’s financial condition has deteriorated in recent months. Earlier this month, the suit says, the partners were shown draft financial documents indicating that OP had a negative net worth of nearly $2 million.
The partnership has had its financial difficulties, said Michael Balmages, an OP vice president, but it is far from insolvent. The value of the OP trademark alone, which is generally not included in financial documents, was recently appraised at $25 million, he said.
“The company is on solid ground,” Balmages said.
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3f7a8cc5044735506dcbda855bce2bb7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-fi-933-story.html | Continental Airlines Seeking Help From Business Group to Raise Capital | Continental Airlines Seeking Help From Business Group to Raise Capital
Continental Airlines Holdings Inc. has asked a large Houston business group to help it raise capital from local investors, says Chairman Hollis L. Harris.
The company, operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, is trying to raise $550 million to help it expand, Harris said.
Harris is a member of the Greater Houston Partnership, the city’s largest business group. He met with other board members about two weeks ago to discuss how local investors could invest in the airline. More recently, he met with the group’s aviation committee.
The airline is seeking a $250-million line of credit and $300 million in investment capital. The capital, which probably would be raised through a stock sale, would be used to buy equipment, acquire new routes, spruce up terminals and paint planes, said Continental spokesman Art Kent.
Bankers Trust and Chase Manhattan Bank have tentatively agreed to lend Continental between $120 million and $140 million.
Kent said the Greater Houston Partnership meetings have been informal and no negotiations are under way.
On Tuesday, Continental will request a four-month extension of the deadline for filing its Chapter 11 reorganization plan.
It has been meeting with its creditors and investment bankers, Kent said. He declined to elaborate.
The airline is also renegotiating its leases to cut operating costs, discussing the sale of all or part of its stake in Air Micronesia and discussing the sale of its Houston in-flight meals operation, Chelsea Catering Co.
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cd4625a40720063d99fa755981fc9b98 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-hm-1025-story.html | Reviving Merry England’s Knickknack Knack | Reviving Merry England’s Knickknack Knack
Too many people think it’s a real chore to learn to decorate their homes like an English country house. It isn’t. It requires just one strategy: Go to half a dozen garage sales and buy everything. Then shove it all into your house.
To the English gentry in particular, everything is a potential knickknack, and there is absolutely nothing the countrified Brits love more than knickknacks. They would throw out their beds to make more room for knickknacks.
Ask about that lump of coal on the sideboard, and you’ll get a story of how eccentric Uncle Reggie used it to scrawl “Second Front” on the vicar’s old Austin in 1944. That bent hatpin was the very one used by Second Cousin Felicity to stab the milkman in the Great Devonshire Cream Riot of 1926. And that clump of lint on the mantle once dislodged itself from the Marchioness of Abergavenny’s saddle blanket when her horse kicked a hole in the bay window of the conservatory the year Grandmama Edith lost her mind.
One need go no further than the opening montage of “Masterpiece Theatre” to get the idea. The camera rolls and rolls over photographs here, books there, letter openers and magnifying glasses, trinkets and baubles and martini glasses and swizzle sticks.
Eclecticism among the out-of-towners, and many London folk as well, is absolute. The only items in the house that match are the plates, and you get the idea that even that makes the host vaguely uneasy. Too fussy. Smacks of fanaticism.
Mention that friends of yours have just furnished their house entirely in the Santa Fe style, right down to the bleached cow skulls on the windowsills, and you’ll get that tolerant but pained, oh-well-the-Yanks- would look.
British rat-holers are particularly fond of stocking their digs with at least one item that causes visitors to do a whiplash-inducing double take and blurt, “Good Lord! Where on earth did you get that ?”
It affords them the opportunity to effect mild surprise that the item was even noticed and say, “Oh, that. Little something old Dickie dragged home with him after the campaign against the Zulus. Keeps the hounds at bay, you know.”
It is for these sorts of people--who would put a stuffed alligator on the Chippendale highboy if it would fit--that Victoria MacKenzie-Childs and her husband, Richard, have designed a line of home furnishings, from plates to curtain pulls to furniture. The line was introduced last week at Neiman Marcus in Fashion Island (the sole distributor in Orange County), and it got the required double takes.
The stuff has been compared to items that might show up in an scene from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” and the description is fairly apt. Every item is painted in soft yellows, greens, blues, pinks and reds, highlighted with painted crosshatches, polka dots, zigzags, geometric shapes and other designs that might show up in a child’s finger painting. The furniture--chests of drawers, sideboards, chairs--get similar treatment.
Each piece is handmade, and nothing is conventional. Take the tuffet, for example. It’s a very low stool on stubby round legs, and the cushion is covered with black-and-white fabric. It looks more like a mushroom than a piece of furniture. But just try to keep any child with imagination from sitting on it. (Be warned, however: The price is an un-juvenile $500.)
Then there’s the fish chair. Painted in the same bright colors and shapes as the rest of the MacKenzie-Childs line, the straight-backed chair is distinctive for having back slats formed in the shape of large fish. Plunking this chair down in the same room with a cherry-wood dining table and a set of matched chairs would be like the orchestra wearing white-tie and the conductor showing up in Day-Glo warm-ups. Still, Victoria MacKenzie-Childs says, some customers have bought entire sets of them and furnished their dining rooms. Price: $950.
The Neiman Marcus display also includes a MacKenzie-Childs lamp, which looks like a cross between a totem pole and a pastel candy cane, for $1,850.
Not that you have to pull out the checkbook to come away with a MacKenzie-Childs creation. Chowder bowls, for instance, go for $44, and ornate drawer pulls cost $20 (if it looks like a fish, it’s another $6). Ceramic and string tassels also seemed to be a big hit at $65.
Trained as ceramic sculptors, Victoria and Richard moved to the English county of Devon for a couple of years in the early 1980s and worked at a pottery. When they returned to the United States and set up housekeeping in New York, they found success as designers and purveyors of the sort of offbeat furnishings their English neighbors seemed to love so well.
“In Devon it wasn’t a contrived existence,” she says. “It was very homey and simple, not like a highly educated American culture would be. There were Christmas cards from way back on their mantles, and just every little trinket--whatever came into their lives. It was a collection of their experience.
“What’s fun about our things is that they kind of represent the court jester in today’s refined society. Somebody said it’s like the Shirley Temple of the ‘90s. We’ve thrown off all the rules. I’ve always liked the fact that in Shakespeare the most important points are brought forth by the clown.”
This is great news, of course, to anyone who owns a lava lamp, a wagon wheel coffee table, a Kit-Kat clock, Flintstone drinking glasses, a set of pillows from the Seattle World’s Fair or a stack of plastic milk crates that they’re using to hold their collection of old R&B; records.
Keep that stuff. Invent stories about it. Tell guests the Betty and Wilma tumbler went on a Space Shuttle mission and once contained Hoot Gibson’s Tang. Pretty soon, people will start calling you eccentric.
And as any English country gent worth his salt can tell you, eccentricity is always in style.
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01dbb15ff2d4da0dbbfe7f19cf53cf33 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-hm-1026-story.html | Home Security Systems Ring in Some Alarming Developments | Home Security Systems Ring in Some Alarming Developments
There’s the suspicious-looking person sitting in a car parked down the street, the frightening tales from the neighbors of window tampering, a creak in the middle of the night--all triggers to make you wonder, “Is our home safe?”
Door and window locks, known as “physical security,” are considered by security experts to be the first line of defense against intruders. For most people, they’re the only defense. But as technology has advanced, sophisticated alarm systems once available only to businesses and the wealthy have become accessible to a wide range of homeowners.
They range from easy-to-install, simple arrangements of sensors that sound an alarm when a door or window is open to sophisticated systems that include a duress alarm that lets you silently signal the authorities if an intruder is attempting to enter your home.
“Some even have printouts to tell you what area (of the house) has been violated,” says Neil Coyne of Ferrell’s Electric Supply in Anaheim, which installs and repairs home alarm systems.
Despite their different features, alarm systems basically work the same way.
Magnetic sensors or switches on doors and windows are connected through hard wire or radio signals to a control unit. When a door or window is opened while the sensor is on, electrical contact is either broken or made and the alarm is activated.
Some sensors can pick up the breaking of a window, while others detect smoke and heat and relay the information to a control center that automatically alerts authorities.
Sensors connected by hard-wire systems are more reliable and less expensive but are usually more difficult to install. The wires have to be inconspicuous to prevent them from being a target for tampering, as well as for aesthetic reasons. Wireless systems are easier to install and can be transferred into your new home when you move, but have to be continually checked to make sure they’re working properly.
“Some wireless systems automatically check the transmitter and sensor to see if they’re operating,” says Mike McCoy, police service officer with the Santa Ana Police Department.
“Without that, because the sensor operates off 9-volt batteries, if one of the batteries dies, you won’t be protected at that door or window.”
“Interior alarms” are designed to sound after an intruder gets inside the home. These sensors use infrared beams, microwaves or ultrasound to detect unexpected heat or motion in a room or hallway. Police say it’s better to alarm the house so that you’ll know someone is trying to get in before they succeed.
“Chances are high with an interior system that the assailant and the merchandise will be gone when we get there,” McCoy says.
The control center, where information sent from the windows and doors is processed, is often placed in a closet or in some other hidden area to keep it from being tampered with by a burglar. A key pad by the front door or the master bedroom lets you arm and disarm the system with a code. Some systems have a remote control that lets you activate the alarm from anywhere in the house.
The alarm sounds a loud horn or bell when it detects an open door or window. An automatic dialer notifies the police or a security service of the break-in. Unfortunately, however, home alarms have a reputation for sounding for no apparent reason.
“False alarms are a real problem for us,” McCoy says. “They’re caused by sensors that react to various environmental factors other than intruders.”
Sgt. Glenn Deveney, community services supervisor for the Fullerton Police Department, says, “We’ve seen false alarms caused by insects. Spiders might build webs inside the sensing units, which sets them off. They can also be (activated) by dust or animal hair.”
A good number of false alarms are caused by systems that haven’t been regularly inspected.
“There’s no alarm system that’s maintenance-free,” Deveney says. “If the system you’re looking at comes with a maintenance contract, it’s a good idea to take it.”
Most Orange County cities allow up to four false alarm responses a year before fining the homeowner $50 a call. A state law requires home alarms to have an automatic siren shut-off in case the homeowner is not there to disarm a false alarm.
You can also program your automatic dialer to call a security monitoring company, which will call to see if it’s a false alarm. These monitoring services typically charge between $25 and $35 a month.
“The benefit of these services is you know someone will respond,” McCoy says. “When no one’s home, it’s a lot better than to have an alarm go off and hope the neighbors will hear it and call the police.”
The system you choose should allow you to tailor it to your needs.
“A lot of people aren’t good with key pads. They come home and try to disarm the alarm and end up causing it to go off,” Deveney says. “In that case, you need one with a variable delayed alarm that gives you enough time to deactivate it.”
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bf408a17b9a4d6823d043e64525afa1d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-hm-1027-story.html | DECORATING ADVICE : Stick With Soft Color, If It Pleases Your Taste | DECORATING ADVICE : Stick With Soft Color, If It Pleases Your Taste
Question: I am in desperate need of help redecorating my living room. My taste is conservative, and I love soft, light colors.
My tables and piano are Italian provincial and made of a light pecan wood. The walls are an off-white; the two-piece sofa is off-white brocade; the rug is a soft beige with a pink cast to it, and two small armchairs are deep rose with white antique wood.
I need draperies. To cut the cost, I thought I’d just have sheers with perhaps a sheer valance. I need some soft color in the sheers, walls, pillows and floral pieces. What would you suggest?
Joan Young
Answer: If you love light colors, stick with them.
Your rooms sound very traditional. On your soft beige rug, you might consider laying an Oriental rug in soft beiges, pinks, roses and blues for accent. The rug could also have some burgundy touches.
I believe the rug will go well with your off-white brocades and with your rose upholstery. At the windows, use sheers and use white sheers for the drapery swags and valances. You can trim or fringe the sheers in a rose and light mauve.
For wall covering, try a very soft aqua blue striped dado with coordinating floral pattern in pinks, roses and blues above. Paint all trim white.
Q: In my living room, I have a dusty-rose carpet and dusty-rose draperies. I have a mist-green swivel rocker and a flowered couch. The couch has rust, light green and light blue in it. The walls, which have never been painted, are off white.
This house is only 9 years old. Could you tell me what color would look nice for walls?
Mrs. B. Pyle
A: With the rose carpet and drapery, you are in a dusty-rose mood. With your rose and mint-green scheme, I would suggest that you paint your walls a very clear petal pink and paint your woodwork white semigloss enamel.
Perhaps you can recover your sofa in a quilted flowered fabric of light blues, greens, bright pinks and roses on a soft pink or white background. Accent your sofa with soft green and rose pillows.
Q: Can you explain checkerboard decorating?
Brenda Sand
Answer: As a child, I loved to play checkers. And my sons, Nick and Sebastian, grew up playing checkers as well. In fact, I’m sorry to say that Nick and Seb can outplay me on the checkerboard any day. But when it comes to checkerboard decorating, I hope that I take the lead.
Those of you who have seen my decorating work in hotels like Dromoland Castle in Ireland, the Greenbrier Hotel at White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia, or the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan know how much I love checkerboard floors--some in black and white, others in the stencil look, big dark-stained checks on bleached light wood.
I’ve done checkerboard floors of yellow and white in Florida. And in my own New York apartment, I have a bright red-and-white checkerboard floor with deep racing-green walls.
I especially like checkerboard floors when the checks are laid on the diagonal, as opposed to being laid on the square. Be that as it may, the check is just right in so many places in the home--on the wall, on the windows and on the bed, as well. And the check comes in all sizes and colors.
In the kitchen of a house I am decorating for a young couple and their five children in Lewisburg, W. Va., I am using all the colors of the tablecloth’s tavern check by the yard.
The kitchen walls are being covered in a vinylized yellow-and-white check wallpaper. The vinyl coating will keep the walls clean and prevent chocolate marks from lasting too long. And the young mother certainly wants to keep her yellow-and-white check walls clean and bright. The same check will also be used at the windows for swags trimmed in bright lipstick red. Chair pads will also be made of the vinylized check, piped in red.
In an adjoining family room, I’m covering the sofa in durable blue denim, and I’m accenting the seating piece with throw cushions of yellow and white gingham check, blue-and-white gingham check, and red-and-white gingham check, all of which combine to create a merry tavern look. And swags at the windows are to be white linen trimmed in blue-and-white check.
Blue-and-white checks can really pep up an attic bedroom. On a bleached floor, the beds might be covered in blue-and-white checks, which coordinate nicely with walls papered in a soft floral pattern with light-blue stripes on a cream background. The furniture can be of a white ash, and the windows can be decorated with lace. The look of florals with checks always works handsomely.
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7c9231ab52cd64f01bfd2a55cff2c155 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-hm-1029-story.html | GARDENING : Lifting, Kneeling Can Put Health Out on a Limb | GARDENING : Lifting, Kneeling Can Put Health Out on a Limb
Don’t overdo it in your garden this spring, especially if you are a senior citizen or are approaching that stage of life.
The American Physical Therapy Assn. cautions that gardening can lead to injury or stiffness in the back, knees, hips and hands. This is especially a problem for the many gardeners who are 50 or older.
To reduce pain and injury, physical therapists suggest that you:
* Not sit in the same position for too long. This can create stress on the vertebrae.
* Kneel on a pad to protect your knees.
* When lifting rocks, tree limbs, bags of peat moss and other heavy objects, bend at the knees rather than at the waist; keep your back straight and lift slowly.
* Prepare yourself for gardening by doing some simple stretching and limbering exercises, such as five repetitions of the following: turning your head from side to side; slowly raising each knee as high as possible above your waist; gently rotating your upper body with your feet apart and hands on hips; clenching your hands into tight fists and releasing; and rotating your wrists in circle.
Double-Duty Trees
If you plan to plant trees this spring, consider double-purpose trees, such as shade and flowering; shade, flowering and fruiting; or shade and nut-producing.
Suggestions in the first group are dogwoods in red, pink or white, the beautiful magnolia, fringe trees, silver bells, redbuds, catalpas, flowering cherries, the empress tree, and non-fruiting crab apples.
Among varieties producing edible or ornamental fruit are apple, peach, pear, plum, cherry, quince, orange, lemon and tangelo. All have attractive blossoms. To these, add most of the crab apples, hawthorns and mountain ash.
Then there are nut trees--walnuts, pecans and heart nuts, which produce large, broad trees; butternuts, Chinese chestnuts, almonds and hickories. Others are jujubes, papaws and persimmons, which are really considered fruit trees, but are less spectacular.
One of my favorites in the back yard is the medium-sized mimosa, which produces pink, brush-like blooms in July.
All these trees are deciduous--that is, leaf-dropping--so they will offer shade in summer and let sun through in winter.
Plant early in spring. Dig a large hole, at least 50% wider and deeper than the roots spread out. Before planting, soak roots in water for several hours.
After planting, add some dried cow manure and--or a handful of soluble fertilizer to the removed soil and mix it thoroughly with a hoe. Then fill it back in around the tree roots, firming it with your feet when two-thirds full.
Fill the remainder of the hole with water. When the water has soaked in, finish filling the hole with soil and make a large ring around the plant to retain water. Set the tree at the same depth as it was in the nursery, or to the top of the root ball.
In dry country, mulch over the root area to help retain water.
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a438883e0f3379518557aaf04a8ab14e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-1001-story.html | College Official May Swap Districts : Education: Trustees in Ventura County ‘are focusing on’ the chancellor of O.C.'s Rancho Santiago. Both districts have had recent controversies. | College Official May Swap Districts : Education: Trustees in Ventura County ‘are focusing on’ the chancellor of O.C.'s Rancho Santiago. Both districts have had recent controversies.
The leading candidate to be the new head of Ventura County’s three community colleges is Robert D. Jensen, chancellor of the Rancho Santiago Community College District.
Timothy Hirschberg, board president of the Ventura County Community College District, confirmed Friday that Jensen leads the four finalists under consideration for chancellor.
“We have not made him an offer,” Hirschberg said. “We are focusing on him at this point. That doesn’t mean the board has discarded the other three candidates.”
Hirschberg said Jensen will meet privately Tuesday with the Ventura board to discuss his candidacy.
Jensen could not be reached Friday for comment.
For six months, district officials have been searching for a new chancellor to replace Barbara Derryberry, 58, who announced in May that she will retire in June, 1991.
A selection committee composed of faculty, students, administrators and members of the community considered 60 applicants before narrowing the field last week to four.
Since 1984, Jensen, 50, has been chancellor of the Rancho Santiago district, which has campuses in Santa Ana and Orange. Students taking courses for credit total 25,000, with another 15,000 taking non-credit courses.
Before coming to the county, he was president of American River College and deputy chancellor of the Los Rios Community College District, both in Sacramento.
The Oakland native also held several administrative and teaching positions in 1969-76 at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, Ore. He received his doctorate in community college administration from Washington State University.
During his time at Rancho Santiago, he oversaw development of a new campus in Orange that will be larger than the Rancho Santiago campus in Santa Ana, district officials said.
If he is offered the Ventura job and accepts, he will be coming to a district embroiled in scandal. Trustee James T. (Tom) Ely was charged in August with conspiracy, embezzlement and fraud in connection with filing allegedly false travel claims with the district that amounted to about $15,000. Ely, who faces trial in May, has denied any impropriety.
Two months after Ely’s travel expenses came to light, Derryberry announced that she will retire. She has denied her decision had anything to do with Ely. She will leave at the end of June, when the new chancellor takes over.
Jensen’s district has been embroiled in recent controversy, as well. Early this year, two trustees asked the Orange County district attorney’s office to investigate the arrangement the district had with a private company that held weekly swap meets in a parking lot at the Santa Ana campus. The trustees alleged that the district was not getting its fair share of proceeds.
Rudy Montejano, a Rancho Santiago board member, said Jensen had nothing to do with the swap meets, which have now ended.
The two trustees were censured by the board for their actions tied to the swap meets, he said.
“Robert Jensen is the finest chief executive officer in California,” Montejano said.
Board member Pete Maddox, one of the two trustees who called for the investigation, had only praise for Jensen, who earns $102,980 annually from the district.
“He’s certainly very capable,” Maddox said. “Under his direction, the district remained fiscally sound, and a lot of good new projects were instituted.”
Derryberry said the Ventura board is aware of the swap meet controversy.
“It’s my understanding Dr. Jensen was not involved,” she said.
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a174fcf37a81842fe343df48916d390b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-1047-story.html | City Assailed in Keys Case | City Assailed in Keys Case
In watching the televised Ventura City Council meeting of March 11, the subject again came up regarding the use of taxpayer money by the city in the defense of a lawsuit brought concerning pollution of the Ventura Keys. I feel it is important to clear up some misinformation, or disinformation.
City taxpayers should understand this lawsuit was filed after repeated efforts to abate the pollution that exists within the keys. At first, the city denied that there were any water-quality standards. After I discovered that water-quality standards not only apply but have applied since 1978, the response of the city was that these standards were inappropriate. After I pointed out that the pollution levels were 24 to 160 times in excess of levels considered dangerous under state and federal law, the city finally conceded the issue--but only after they were told by the State Water Resources Control Board and the Environmental Protection Agency that both those agencies would oppose the city’s efforts in reducing those standards.
Still, the pollution continued, and I filed a lawsuit. Once the city was sued, it immediately put a clamp on the release of all public information, including the release of information relating to public health. The City Council then hired not one but two San Francisco law firms. If the city intends to spend a small fortune on two law firms to defend a solo practitioner homeowner, one would think they would at least use local talent.
To illustrate some of the wasted taxpayers’ expense, consider their “defense strategy.” After putting a claim on the release of public information concerning community health matters, I asked for documents that the statutes concerning litigation permit me. Not only did the city seek a court order preventing this (the city lost), but it flew a San Francisco attorney down to Ventura on this losing motion.
Next, I took the deposition of the coastal project manager for the city of Ventura to obtain information that should have been otherwise available to the public. This time, they flew down two attorneys from San Francisco to meet with me the day before the deposition, and we had a breakfast meeting at the hotel they were staying at--the Pierpont. No Motel 6 for our city’s defense team.
The next day, when I conducted the deposition, the city flew down another attorney from San Francisco from the other firm to represent the witness. What I find appalling is the sheer waste of taxpayers’ money on the defense of this indefensible case. There are probably illegal sewer lines running somewhere into the Arundell Barranca that account for the consistently high levels of pollution. Rather than investing city resources into tracking this down, as well as preventing the ongoing deposition of the city’s debris into our marina, the city has consciously chosen an expensive course of protracted litigation.
DONALD M. ADAMS, Jr.
Ventura
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44dffa9bc3951c85e0cd3aeb0ddc4340 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-682-story.html | Making the State Smoke-Free | Making the State Smoke-Free
A large minority in this country, and particularly in this state, is being trampled, abused and made to feel it has no rights. The sanctimonious anti-smoking crusaders are acting as if they are on a mission from God and the end justifies any means.
Many official policies call for accommodation of both sides. But practice gives us no-smoking offices, malls and airplanes whether there is a problem or not without even considering improving inadequate ventilation or other practical compromises. Some places are even banning outdoor smoking.
When the movement started with no-smoking sections in restaurants and moved to no-smoking areas in other places to protect nonsmokers, smokers felt that was only fair. But the anti-smoking jihad has gone far beyond concern for nonsmokers to pure harassment of smokers for its own sake.
It is one thing for them to promote a smoke-free society. It is another for them to use strong-arm legal tactics to force their will on everyone. With the news in recent years on the effects of coffee, eating habits and many other lifestyle factors on health, everyone should be worried about Big Brothers on the march. They are never satisfied.
TOM ERSKINE
Port Hueneme
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9dcbb16cf1f283e5995b00ce97573696 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-683-story.html | Making the State Smoke-Free | Making the State Smoke-Free
Recently I attended a Clippers-San Antonio basketball game. It was announced that L.A. fire codes prohibited smoking. I looked around and noticed many people lighting up; smoke was collecting around the ceiling lights. I can sympathize with any law enforcement person. I have never seen such utter disregard for laws, rules and regulations as I’ve seen in California since I moved here from Wisconsin. It takes in driving, parking, trespassing private property and just plain common courtesy.
Wake up, Californians, and appreciate what was created for you and consider you and your neighbors truly blessed.
GLENN STEFFEN
Marina del Rey
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6268e7837ea5fc049ea8a25705f0bb09 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-684-story.html | Making the State Smoke-Free | Making the State Smoke-Free
Someone tampers with Sudafed and three people are poisoned and die. The manufacturer and the retailers remove the product from stores. The public is frightened but comforted by the response.
No one tampers with tobacco products but they kill approximately 400,000 smokers a year, along with approximately 53,000 involuntary smokers. The manufacturers do not remove the product from the stores and deny the results of scientific studies. In addition, they provide sizable contributions to the reelection campaigns of some well-placed politicians so that effective laws and educational campaigns to protect the public are circumvented or prevented.
Three cheers for the California Medical Assn., which has decided to battle the cigarette companies. In the interest of public health (the EPA says that tobacco smoke is a Class A carcinogen), the CMA is calling for laws to prohibit smoking in public places (“Doctors Group Urges Toughest No Smoking Law,” Part A, March 12). The Tobacco Institute suggests that California is “from another planet.” The question is, if we can’t get the tobacco companies to become as responsible as the manufacturers of Sudafed, can we arrange to send the tobacco companies to another planet?
ESTHER SCHILLER
Los Angeles
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024c0e4601192f19472b61760c33acaf | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-685-story.html | Gen. Schwarzkopf | Gen. Schwarzkopf
Perhaps the reason Americans are so smitten with Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf is that they are not accustomed to competence in high places!
JEAN L. ROSENFELD
Malibu
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515aaeb886746319b3b013269a107a71 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-687-story.html | Making the State Smoke-Free | Making the State Smoke-Free
May I voice my opinion to the opponents of smoking? Especially to the CMA?
Their intention is to make California a smoke-free state by the year 2000. Good luck! My intention is to enjoy one of the few freedoms left me by continuing to smoke to the year 2000.
They insist that passive smoking is the cause of death of thousands of innocents, yet have not shown hard facts to prove it. What of the smog that we inhale daily, couldn’t that be a factor?
To make California a smoke-free state, wouldn’t it make more sense to ban all vehicles off the roads? This would in effect clean the air of more pollutants in one day than passive smoking would cause in one year or more.
Let us compromise! You opponents ban your driving and I’ll quit smoking. You will help clean the air more than we smokers; then your quest for a smoke-free California would become a reality. You could then proceed to make planet Earth smoke-free. Again, good luck!
MANUEL J. GONSALVES
Torrance
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20179a658de00a2bb22e773dbfd97978 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-688-story.html | Poland’s Debt | Poland’s Debt
Thank you, President Bush, from Poland for canceling $2.7 billion of debt and promising an additional $470 million for next year’s loan. Thank you, President Bush, from Saudi Arabia for canceling over $7 billion in debt last year. Thank you, President Bush, from the remaining Middle East nations, from the Latin American nations and all the other nations to whom you have loaned hundreds of billions of dollars, knowing full well they will never be repaid.
But no thanks, President Bush, from the millions of Americans across this nation who are homeless, hungry and in need of medical care. And no thanks for your “kind and gentle” philosophies being spread by your “thousand points of light” which have fallen everywhere except on the United States.
Unfortunately, it’s these same “generous” philosophies we will probably have to live with through 1996 much to the detriment of the elderly and a major portion of less affluent citizenry.
BEN URMAN
Van Nuys
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6e0d51b6c6796b32807be2dcb1525b2f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-689-story.html | Making the State Smoke-Free | Making the State Smoke-Free
In response to “Supreme Court to Weigh Cigarette Warning Labels” (March 26):
Nicotine is addictive. I’ve asked smokers about some of the outrageous things they’ve done to get another cigarette. Their answers include “walking a mile” at midnight and picking out the longest butts from an ashtray in a lobby. Perhaps warning labels should say: “Once you’re hooked, you won’t care about your health.”
REITA HAMILTON
Camarillo
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79ac28734e73ac0a6d498ebce008dcb2 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-691-story.html | Better Late Than Never | Better Late Than Never
Former President Ronald Reagan has added his influential voice to the chorus of support for a federal law to control handguns. While one wishes Reagan had changed his stance on the so-called Brady Bill sooner, that’s less important than the fact that his considerable political clout could finally tip the scales in favor of its enactment.
Adding to the power of Reagan’s announcement was the symbolic time and place he chose to make it--during a reunion ceremony at George Washington University’s emergency medical center in Washington, D.C. Ten years before, almost to the day, Reagan had been rushed there for medical care after a deeply troubled young man had tried to assassinate him with a handgun. Also wounded in that assassination attempt were a Secret Service agent, a Washington policeman and Reagan’s press secretary, James S. Brady.
The Brady Bill is named for the former presidential aide, who was so grievously hurt by the bullet that struck him in the head that he’s been confined to a wheelchair ever since. He and his wife, Sarah, have been in the forefront of a citizens’ campaign to enact a federal handgun law.
The Brady Bill would require a seven-day waiting period for the purchase of a handgun. During that time local law enforcement authorities could--but aren’t required to--check the background of the buyer for criminal records or a history of mental problems. Had such a law been in effect 10 years ago, it might have prevented John Hinckley from getting his hands on the pistol he used against the President. Unfortunately, the logic of the bill has not swayed a relatively small group of overly zealous gun enthusiasts who continue to oppose it, insisting that any gun controls weaken the Second Amendment.
Reagan had the right reply to that rigidly ideological view when he said that “it’s just plain common sense that there be a waiting period” before anyone can buy a handgun. Exactly.
The Brady Bill was only 36 votes short of enactment in 1988. May the simple eloquence of Reagan’s plea sway enough members of Congress to enact it this time. And may it also persuade President Bush to sign it into law.
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61607fe4bf9c244dec93896a868c55eb | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-692-story.html | Making the State Smoke-Free | Making the State Smoke-Free
I am for a crime-free society--not a smoke-free society. Kiss my Constitution--and go live in Iraq!
RICHARD H. ATWOOD
Santa Monica
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52fb2f208507ec4dceb9da1f7042b2b4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-693-story.html | Poland’s Debt | Poland’s Debt
Now that President Bush has forgiven 70% of Poland’s debt, how about forgiving 70% of the student loan debt? Let’s take care of our own first.
ABE JOSEPH
Los Angeles
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22a18daeb0e1589f321ba0f2832640ec | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-694-story.html | California IN BRIEF : SAN DIEGO : City Fined $3 Million for Polluting Ocean | California IN BRIEF : SAN DIEGO : City Fined $3 Million for Polluting Ocean
In a serious blow to San Diego’s bid to avoid a multibillion-dollar upgrading of its sewage system, a federal judge Thursday fined the city $3 million for “causing significant harm to the marine environment” through its inadequate waste water treatment. Accusing San Diego of having an “outrageous record” on a critical environmental question, U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster concluded that the city’s failure to comply with clean-water laws has damaged marine life off Point Loma, where the city pumps nearly 190 million gallons of treated sewage daily into the ocean.
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6974cd8e1162b7ddf99cba9d1914eb6b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-732-story.html | Russ Convicted in Beating Death of Artist Wife : Justice: Jury finds him guilty of murder, forgery and grand theft after three days of deliberations. | Russ Convicted in Beating Death of Artist Wife : Justice: Jury finds him guilty of murder, forgery and grand theft after three days of deliberations.
Smooth-talking Charles J. Russ was convicted Friday of the 1987 murder of his wife in what a prosecutor said was an attempt to collect $600,000 in insurance money to save a failing telemarketing business.
A Superior Court jury deliberated nearly three days but required only one ballot to convict Russ, 40, of first-degree murder and two counts each of forgery and grand theft, after a 10-week trial. Judge Michael D. Wellington will sentence the Leucadia businessman April 26.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Pettine said Russ will receive life in prison without possibility of parole. Jurors found that Russ was motivated to kill Pamela Russ, a 33-year-old artist, by the special circumstance of financial gain--specifically, to collect life insurance money.
However, the district attorney’s office chose early in the case not to seek the death penalty, which is often sought in special-circumstances cases.
Russ, who appeared ready to cry when he was escorted into the courtroom by two burly marshals, stared straight ahead as the verdicts were announced. Later, when he was handcuffed and led from the courtroom, Russ looked briefly at Pettine and shook his head but said nothing.
Genevieve Gamble, Russ’ mother, cried, “No! No!” when her son’s murder conviction was announced and dashed out of the courtroom.
The forgery and grand theft convictions stem from Russ bilking his mother-in-law, Ginger Allen, out of $78,000. He never collected on $600,000 in life insurance policies that he had taken out on his wife, who never earned more than $10,000 a year as an artist.
Pamela Russ’ battered body was found on North Torrey Pines Road early in the morning on Feb. 1, 1987. Pettine said she had been beaten and run over with her own Mercedes-Benz, which was abandoned nearby.
Allen testified that Russ told her his wife had abruptly left their Leucadia home at midnight on the night of her death to get some photo negatives from her rented artist’s loft in San Diego. Prosecutor Pettine ridiculed Russ’ story and persuaded the jury that he was lying.
“His credibility was really not too high. . . . His entire story was a fraud. His entire life was a fraud,” said jury foreman William Howell, a biology teacher at Serra High School in Tierrasanta.
Friday’s convictions signaled the end of a sensational case that spanned almost 2 1/2 years and kept Russ on the run from the law for almost 24 months. He was arrested in Hollywood, Fla., in August, 1989, after the murder case was featured on the nationally televised “America’s Most Wanted” show.
Russ did not emerge as a suspect in his wife’s killing right away. Four months after Pamela Russ’ death, Charles Russ moved to Taos, N.M. He vanished three months later, after San Diego authorities issued a warrant for his arrest.
By all accounts, Charles and Pamela Russ had led an idyllic life among the rich and trendy in North County. Giving every indication of success, the young couple seemed to have it all. Both drove Mercedes-Benz cars, and they partied at chic nightspots on the North County coast. They traveled extensively, for business and pleasure, to Australia, Hawaii and the Far East.
Allen described her son-in-law then as charming, articulate and a financial genius. But, after Pamela Russ’ death, Charles Russ’ financial empire crumbled overnight, and stories about his other disastrous business ventures began to emerge.
Beginning in 1975, Russ was involved in various businesses that folded in New Mexico, San Diego and Montana, leaving a trail of thousands of dollars in bad debts and lawsuits. An ex-business partner in New Mexico told The Times that Russ “was quite a talker” and one who could “charm the socks right off you.”
A longtime friend, whose parents loaned Russ $33,000 for a business to sell decorated T-shirts and cotton dresses, said he “came across as very personable and sincere.”
“That’s how he was able to get money from people,” said the friend.
The jury that convicted Russ heard testimony about these and other schemes, and prosecutors had little trouble persuading jurors that Russ was a con artist.
“He was hard to believe,” said jury foreman Howell. “Everyone who came in contact with him became a victim. There were just too many victims in his life to believe anything he told people.”
Although much of the prosecution’s evidence was circumstantial, Howell said the facts in the case were “simply too overwhelming” and pointed toward Russ’ guilt.
A sobbing Ginger Allen called the conviction an end to her “nightmare.” Speaking with reporters outside the courtroom, Allen said that justice was done.
“I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time,” she said. “This nightmare has finally been settled. . . . I feel that my baby can rest in peace now. Maybe I can close the doors now.”
Mark Allen, Pamela Russ’ brother, said that Russ “was a trusted and loved member of this family, until he did what he did.”
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6e9c981ba74983e2d1c9bc4c94bf5fe1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-739-story.html | Ojai Trades Project OKs for Plumbing | Ojai Trades Project OKs for Plumbing
In the most far-reaching agreement of its kind in Ventura County, two developers in Ojai have promised to install low-flow toilets for free in City Hall and a dozen other public buildings in exchange for the right to build new warehouses.
After a year’s review, the Ojai Planning Commission cleared the way for developers Dana D. Copp and Joseph L. Priske to obtain building permits once they refit public toilets, showers and faucets scattered throughout the city to offset their water use.
City Planner Marilyn Grauel said the conditions were the first for Ojai. The city requires water-saving plumbing in all new construction but has not imposed rules to refit older buildings.
Copp and Priske each plan to build a 16,000-square-foot office and warehouse complex in Ojai’s Business Park.
Consultants calculated that Priske’s project for 11 tenants would use 1.15 acre-feet of water per year. One acre-foot of water equals 325,851 gallons.
To offset that demand, Priske agreed to install low-flow fixtures in City Hall, the Police Station, the Chamber of Commerce building, the Boyd Recreation Center and gymnasium, Libbey and Sarzotti parks, the Ojai Unified School District offices and Chaparral High School.
Copp agreed to install 17 low-flow toilets at Matilija Junior High School to offset a similar amount of water that 12 tenants in his new warehouse would use each year.
Copp said he figures it will cost him $12,000 to retrofit the junior high school toilets this summer. “The water issue was complex and confusing,” he said. “It seemed expedient to accept this condition instead of extending the process further.”
Among other conditions the city imposed, the builders must replace proposed drought-tolerant landscaping with wood chips and rocks. And each is required to pay about $3,500 for a new traffic signal on Ojai Avenue.
Nancy Settle of the Ventura Countywide Conservation Program said a 36-member committee of water experts, builders and plumbers met March 22 to discuss how more low-flow plumbing installations could be encouraged in the county.
“That’s great the city of Ojai has started to pursue something like that,” Settle said.
The county was more than a year ahead of state law in requiring low-flow fixtures in new construction, Settle noted. But there are many ways that jurisdictions can begin to require retrofitting, she said.
In Ventura County, Port Hueneme may be the closest to establishing an ongoing program to require similar measures, Settle said.
Steve Canale, public services officer for Port Hueneme, said city staff members are exploring ways to require older buildings to be retrofitted when sold to a new owner, or for developers to pay fees the city would use to retrofit other buildings. He added that no specific plan has been presented to city officials.
Oxnard also is considering a requirement that would force developers of new projects to refit plumbing in the local schools.
Rudy Adrada, commercial plumbing inspector for the city of Ventura, said the city has not required developers to retrofit any but their own properties. Ojai Planning Director Bill Prince said the city has no formal retrofitting program planned at this time.
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7ffc7ff6da7e06364f40a464b0031196 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-744-story.html | 2, Possibly 4, of 6 Bank Robberies Done in 1 Day by the ‘A’s Bandit,’ Police Say | 2, Possibly 4, of 6 Bank Robberies Done in 1 Day by the ‘A’s Bandit,’ Police Say
The “A’s bandit” struck again Friday, robbing at least two--and possibly four--San Diego banks in one day.
In all, six local banks were robbed Friday. Authorities are sure that at least two of the robberies were done by the “A’s bandit"--a robber who only in recent weeks has abandoned his trademark Oakland A’s baseball cap. And there is a definite possibility that he struck two other banks a short time later Friday, according to Police Lt. Jerry Moody.
If the bandit is responsible for all four robberies, his total would be 24 banks--and about $25,000 in loot--since Feb. 11.
“I can safely say that all four of them were probably him,” Moody said. “We don’t have everything at this point to say for sure, but it’s real close.”
At 9:27 a.m., a man believed to be the A’s bandit robbed a Bank of America branch in the 4900 block of Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach--a bank he is also suspected of robbing Feb. 15. Dressed professionally in a dark brown sweater and wearing dark sunglasses, the suspect used a note that demanded money and stated that he had a weapon. He walked off with $700.
Twenty-three minutes later, a man fitting the same general description used a similar demand note to hold up HomeFed Bank in the 1000 block of Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach, Moody said. The robber wore a gray zip-up hooded jacket and mirrored tortoise-shell sunglasses.
Then, about 10:20 a.m., the Imperial Savings branch on Ivanhoe Avenue in La Jolla became what is believed to have been the bandit’s third target of the day. The robber this time wore a bright floral shirt.
In what was possibly his fourth heist of the day, a man fitting the A’s bandit description robbed a Security Pacific Bank in the 7300 block of Clairemont Mesa Boulevard at 11:23 a.m., Moody said. The robber wore a white zip-up, hooded jacket and cream-colored pants.
About two hours later, a man used a handgun to rob a second Security Pacific Bank branch on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, this time in the 4000 block, Moody said. According to witnesses, the suspect in the 1:30 p.m. robbery does not fit the description of the “A’s Bandit.”
The sixth city bank robbery reported Friday took place shortly before 2 p.m. at Peninsula Bank of San Diego in the 5300 block of Napa Street, Moody said. That thief, who brandished a handgun during the heist, was described as an older male.
The amount robbed from five of the six banks was undetermined. No one was injured in any of the robberies.
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149be4741a871191e049e5a9b455066d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-753-story.html | SIMI VALLEY : Grandmother, 76, Dies After Car Crash | SIMI VALLEY : Grandmother, 76, Dies After Car Crash
Dorothy Helliwell, 76, was on her way to buy flowers for her granddaughter’s wedding when she was fatally injured in a Simi Valley car crash, family members said Friday.
The Anaheim woman died of heart injuries in the emergency room of Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks at 5:55 p.m. Thursday, authorities said.
Five other people were injured in the accident, which began with a speed contest on Tierra Rejada Road, Simi Valley Police Officer Blair Summey said. An unidentified pickup truck and a Toyota Celica driven by Chris Brown, 19, of Simi Valley were racing east when Brown’s Toyota careened out of control, Summey said.
Brown’s car crossed into oncoming traffic and collided with a 1984 Toyota station wagon driven by Judith Tout, 51, of Simi Valley, he said. Tout’s mother, Helliwell, was a passenger in the car, which overturned, Summey said.
Helliwell was flown by Fire Department helicopters to Los Robles Regional Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, authorities said.
Helliwell and Tout were on their way to buy flowers for Tout’s daughter’s wedding today, said Helliwell’s grandson, Dave Tout, 25, of Simi Valley. Helliwell also planned to attend another grandchild’s wedding today, he said.
Judith Tout was listed in serious condition Friday at Simi Valley Adventist Hospital, a spokeswoman said.
Brown was treated for minor injuries and released, authorities said. Three of his passengers were admitted to local hospitals with more severe injuries.
Tina Melson, 18, of Moorpark was listed in fair condition and her brother Gene, 16, was in serious condition at Simi Valley Adventist Hospital, a spokeswoman said. David Ferguson, 19, of Simi Valley was taken to Los Robles Regional Medical Center, where he was listed in serious condition with multiple injuries, a spokeswoman said.
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14fd46d18812c0a67cafd7fa9caf1d73 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-759-story.html | OXNARD : City Urged to Retain Golf Course Control | OXNARD : City Urged to Retain Golf Course Control
The River Ridge Golf Course Commission has appealed to Oxnard City Council members not to turn management of the municipal course over to a private firm.
“Any time someone wants to come in and pay you a bundle of money to run your golf course, they’re going to make a bundle of money doing it,” Commissioner David Bedal said at a meeting Wednesday.
The council directed staff last month to hire a consultant to study future revenues and the possibility of leasing the course to a private contractor.
The course, built on a landfill next to the Santa Clara River, is expected to generate more than $100,000 profit on its $1.2-million operating budget this year. A commission task force projects that, under city management, profits could reach $1.8 million to $2.5 million in five years.
In weighing the merits of leasing the course, the council and commission discussed whether the city is running the golf course as a public amenity or as a magnet to attract wealthy people to the county’s poorest city.
Tournaments catering to Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley golfers have pushed out local golfers on many weekends, Bedal said. “I’m really concerned about keeping a golf course for the people of the Oxnard Plain.”
The possibility of leasing the five-year-old course also rankled several golfers playing the course Wednesday.
They called River Ridge the best maintained and most reasonably priced public course in Ventura County, and predicted that an outside firm would increase prices and scrimp on upkeep to boost profits.
“I’m retired, so green fees mean a lot to me,” said Harry R. Mason, 65, who plays 18 holes two to three times a week.
Only two city employees, a supervisor and secretary, are on the course payroll. A concessionaire operates the pro shop and collects fees, another runs the restaurant and snack bar and a third maintains the grounds and clubhouse.
The council did not act on the commission’s request to postpone the outside study because all council members in attendance, except Councilman Manuel Lopez, left before the meeting adjourned.
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fa8440ab35ed09bc88a21f201060d8ce | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-761-story.html | VENTURA : Library Sends Books to Schools in China | VENTURA : Library Sends Books to Schools in China
Duplicate and outdated books from a Ventura library are going to China to replace books burned two decades ago in China’s Cultural Revolution.
The library at the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge is packing its third shipment of books destined for some of the 1,070 universities in China. One in five Chinese students studies English.
“With the information explosion it’s more and more difficult to know what to do with the books” to be discarded, said Joyce Kennedy, Ventura campus director. She said she is “honored to share them with our colleagues across the sea.”
The California chapter of the American Assn. of University Women organized a statewide book drive for China, requesting materials mainly in the humanities and social sciences.
The Ventura campus’s latest shipment contains about 400 books, most of them duplicates of volumes already in the library. “We get books from Northridge campus and from retiring faculty,” said Kennedy, who said that one shipment included an entire set of donated encyclopedias.
The used books are shipped to San Francisco, with a Rotary Club in Ventura paying the costs. From there, the Bridge to China Foundation, a branch of American Friends of China, arranges ocean passage for the books.
“Before we began sending books to China we went to every library in the county and asked if they wanted the books. We tried correctional institutions too,” Kennedy said.
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ee8bb884366330239ca51c35331d8d15 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-769-story.html | Wind Knocks Out Attempt to Hang Huge Yellow Ribbon | Wind Knocks Out Attempt to Hang Huge Yellow Ribbon
One of the nation’s largest yellow ribbons to honor troops returning from the Persian Gulf didn’t quite withstand the wind as it hung briefly from the Coronado Bay Bridge on Friday.
The 135-foot bow twisted and began to rip as Caltrans workers struggled for several hours to lower it over the side of the bridge. Workers, afraid of causing more damage, finally gave up and will attempt to hang it again Monday, weather permitting.
About 50 passengers were aboard a Harbor Excursion tour on the bay to watch the hanging of the bow.
The ribbon, designed to withstand high winds when properly secured, contains more than 700 yards of yellow fabric and will be anchored to the bridge by 3,500 feet of rope and cable.
“The Coronado Bridge was chosen as the structure to display this yellow bow, since it is the most prominent landmark on our bay,” said Lois Silva of Western Lumber Co. “This promises to inspire our soldiers returning by sea and air.”
The ribbon was the brainchild of Silva and Bob Crowe of Flag Masters. The project was organized by the two San Diego firms and Caltrans.
“We’re very disappointed, but we’re more determined than ever to make this work,” Crowe said.
Silva said several San Diego sponsors contributed more than $5,000 in materials, labor and donations for the bow.
The bow will welcome more than 100,000 troops returning from the Persian Gulf the next few months, and it is planned that it will remain in place until July 4.
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5f7f3c28cdd8ad4a212a28765b40d503 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-778-story.html | Agreement Reached on Use of Drug Funds | Agreement Reached on Use of Drug Funds
A last-minute disagreement between the County Board of Supervisors and Sheriff Jim Roache over who controls funds seized from drug dealers was “nothing more than two attorneys arguing over where the comma goes” and was officially settled Friday, according to Supervisor George Bailey.
County officials announced an agreement earlier this month, but complications between attorneys for both sides arose at mid-week.
At a meeting Friday that included Roache, Bailey and their attorneys, it was agreed that the sheriff would apply to the federal government to use the funds, and that county supervisors would review the application to make certain it met federal guidelines.
“I’m relieved that this is all over with and the issue is behind us,” Roache said. “Now we can proceed with real issues.”
Differences that arose this week “were more of a misunderstanding than anything else,” he said. “Both sides were saying the same thing with different terminology.”
Federal guidelines allow property or drugs seized in drug raids to be converted into cash and split among the law enforcement agencies that participate. The rules originally held that the money could be used for “general law enforcement purposes only.”
Last year, the rules were changed to require the head of a police agency to submit a request for the funds in writing and to state exactly what they would be used for.
The Board of Supervisors sued then-Sheriff John Duffy last year when county officials discovered that Duffy had deposited the drug money into a checking account without the county’s knowledge.
Duffy said he did so to bypass the county’s spending authority because he believed the county had illegally spent the money on jail security improvements.
With the matter settled, Roache said he will make his first application from the $2.2 million in drug funds now accrued to establish a regional DNA testing lab. Roache said his department’s share would amount to $258,000.
The sheriff also must reimburse the county’s contingency fund for a $75,000 loan for equipment purchased for an emergency communications patrol car and a $180,000 loan for deputies to patrol Indian reservations.
Beyond that, the department has a list of 20 to 25 projects that need to be funded from drug revenue, including surveillance equipment and computers, Roache said.
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3f0dfc107d948432980136d1f27a74ce | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-30-me-779-story.html | Obituaries | Obituaries
Acedo, Linda F., 91, of San Fernando, homemaker. J. T. Oswald Mortuary, San Fernando.
Gloe, Lester, 78, of Sunland, carpenter. Forest Lawn Mortuary, Hollywood Hills.
Lyons, Dona Charla, 18, of Panorama City, student. Pierce Brothers Valhalla Mortuary, North Hollywood.
Nutt, Nedra, 85, of Van Nuys, retired speech therapist and teacher. Glen Haven Mortuary, San Fernando.
Perry, Ramona T., 80, of Hawthorne, Nev., formerly of North Hollywood, homemaker. Pierce Brothers Valhalla Mortuary, North Hollywood.
Russell, Marjorie E., 80, of Lancaster, retired electronics assembler for Litton Industries. Halley-Olsen Funeral Chapel, Lancaster.
Sagrestano, Nellie G., 84, of Granada Hills, homemaker. Pierce Brothers Valhalla Mortuary, North Hollywood.
Shapiro, Daniel I., 81, of North Hollywood, writer. Mt. Sinai Mortuary, Los Angeles.
Wong, Richard J. T., 85, of Glendale, grocer. Forest Lawn Mortuary, Glendale.
Information on Valley-area deaths is provided by cooperating mortuaries.
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