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- <text id=93HT0614>
- <title>
- 1983: Show Business
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1983 Highlights
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- January 2, 1984
- SHOW BUSINESS
- MOST OF '83
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Longest Goodbye: The 2 1/2-hour final episode of M*A*S*H*,
- telecast by CBS last February to unprecedented ratings, and
- followed by the Fastest Return: After MASH, unveiled just seven
- months later.
- </p>
- <p>Most Enchanted Evening: Sept. 29, when A Chorus Line became
- the longest-running show on Broadway and Director Michael
- Bennett restaged his musical as a dazzling class reunion of 330
- dancing alumni. Is A Chorus Line the best-ever Broadway
- musical? No. But that night it was.
- </p>
- <p>Least Enchanted Ten Weeks: The Broadway revival of Private
- Lives, in which Resistible Force Richard Burton met Immovable
- Object Elizabeth Taylor, and the play sank in a wave of critical
- catcalls.
- </p>
- <p>Sexiest Secret Agent: Sean Connery, who returned to play 007
- in Never Say Never Again and easily beat Mannequin Roger Moore
- (Octopussy) in the battle of the Bonds.
- </p>
- <p>Squeakiest Door: The homosexuality closet on Broadway, which
- was vividly pried open with the Tony-winning Torch Song Trilogy
- and the hit musical La Cage aux Folles.
- </p>
- <p>Saddest Alien: E.T., who found that being box-office champ
- could not keep him (and his creator Steven Spielberg) from
- getting trampled in the Oscar race by Gandhi.
- </p>
- <p>Happiest Aliens: The extraterrestrials who populated Return of
- the Jedi, the Star Wars sequel that took in almost $300 million
- at the motive theaters in its first six months.
- </p>
- <p>Longest War: ABC's 18-hour The Winds of...brought Herman
- Wouk and a platoon of stars to prime time and proved that, with
- a $40 million budget and $35 million worth of on-air promotion,
- a mini-series can still snag record numbers of viewers.
- </p>
- <p>Most Versatile Talent: Playwright-Actor Sam Shepard, who scored
- off-Broadway with his dynamo dramas True West and Fool for
- Love, and on-screen as the sexy incarnation of Test Pilot Chuck
- Yeager in The Right Stuff.
- </p>
- <p>Highest Rebound: Bette Midler, who stormed back from a jinxed
- movie career to recover her standing as Ms. Show Biz with as
- 50-city concert tour, a cable-TV special, a new album, and a
- bestselling book, The Saga of Baby Divine.</p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
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