Media Share 9/MEDIASHARE_09.ISO/mag&info/e_form11.zip/OVERBYTE.EXE/ET.DOC

Text File | 1992-09-16 | 15KB | 229 lines

            NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: "ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT" - THE EARLY YEARS

                                By Ben Falke


                   Whatever happened to Ron Hendren?
                   You remember Ron. He was that smart (for television,
          at least), cheery, vaguely Southern, round-faced fellow with
          even worse hair than David Letterman who came out of NBC
          News and was one of the three hosts when "Entertainment
          Tonight" first went on the air on September 14th, 1981.
          Together with a former beauty queen named Marjorie Wallace
          and a once-and-future soap opera actor named Tom Halleck,
          Hendren gently nudged early E.T. viewers into watching
          stories about a town in Washington that banned rock 'n' roll
          dances, an exclusive interview with Burt Reynolds that went
          on all week, chats with Brooke Shields, Walter Matthau,
          Barry Manilow and Lana Turner, and other simple pleasures.
                   Halleck survived for just two weeks before
          disappearing from E.T.'s syndicated screens forever. Wallace
          was out by Halloween, replaced by the spunky Dixie Whatley.
          As for Hendren, he coasted along relatively smoothly for two
          years - until his agent confused the show's growing
          popularity with his client's and made Paramount an offer it
          was glad to refuse. A bland and pleasant fellow named Rob
          Weller replaced Hendren. Ron then tried a variety of other
          TV formats before moving to Hawaii to sell real estate.
                   I think about Hendren often these days as I watch
          "Entertainment Tonight" - wondering how his well-developed
          sense of personal integrity would cope with having to
          introduce stories on whether or not Elvis slept with his
          mother. I also think about some of the other people who have
          passed through E.T.'s revolving doors: Producer Vin Di Bona,
          who once made a gentle, artistic film about jazz musicians
          called "Down at the Dunbar," and who has now cornered the
          amateur embarrassment market with his "America's Funniest
          Home Videos" and its offspring. Robin Leach, an obscure
          stringer for seedy tabloids who turned a funny voice and an
          insatiable curiousity into a rich and famous lifestyle of
          his own. Ben Stein, the former Nixon speechwriter who played
          the nerdy science teacher on "The Wonder Years" and as far as
          I can determine is the only former E.T. player to launch a
          successful on-camera network career. George Willig, who once
          climbed the outside of the World Trade Center and wound up
          working as a gofer (we affectionately called them
          "dirtballs"). Shorter-timers like Geraldo Rivera, David
          Frost, Barbara Howar, Rona Barrett, Joyce Jilson and Ron
          Powers, who made E.T. just another pit-stop on the Indy
          tracks of their careers.
                   There's no doubt that "Entertainment Tonight" is a
          tremendous success story - one of the top four programs in
          syndication, watched by an estimated audience of 12 million
          every day, imitated and poked fun at on everything from CNN
          to "Saturday Night Live." The same publicists who refused to
          let their clients come on the program in the early days now
          routinely beg for a few seconds of air time. In "The Player,"
          E.T. plays an important part - and gets an on-screen thanks
          in the closing credits.
                   In fact, the show has become a veritable American
          Cultural Icon: Mary Hart's legs will probably wind up in the
          Smithsonian, next to Archie Bunker's armchair. And Mary's
          co-host, John Tesh, earned his own share of immortality when
          he announced on a magazine cover that he and his
          bride-to-be, actress Connie Selecca, had forsworn premarital
          sex.
                   But still, as it prepares to start its twelfth year,
          with the show heavily involved in TV's Tabloid Wars and its
          edges hardening and its voice turning just a bit rude and
          raucous, some of us who were there in the early days prefer
          to remember E.T. for other reasons...
                   Such as the time even before it went on the air that
          Jack Haley Jr. lost E.T. in a poker game at Barry Diller's
          house. Haley, son of the Tin Man of "Wizard of Oz fame", had
          produced the original pilot which sold the show, and was
          announced in press releases as the annointed executive
          producer. Suddenly, just a few weeks before the start of
          production, Haley was out and a young, relatively
          inexperienced chap named Andy Friendly (son of another
          famous father - former CBS News guru Fred Friendly) was in.
          When I asked a Paramount executive what happened, he
          replied, "If you play poker with Barry, keep your mouth
          shut." The way he told it, Haley, one of the regular players
          in Diller's weekly game, had referred to E.T. as "his" new
          show - so angering the propietary Paramount production chief
          that he bounced him from the E.T. job, although Haley's name
          stayed on the credits as a consultant.
                   Diller was in and out of E.T.'s first set of
          offices, in Merv Griffin's big brown studio on Vine Street
          in darkest Hollywood, often during our first few months, no
          doubt imprinting it with his own successful stamp. But the
          only comment I ever heard him make was about the theme song.
          Six weeks into our run, Barry complained that the music
          which Michael Mark had written to open the show (and which
          my children had already started humming maddeningly around
          the house) wasn't memorable enough, and should be replaced.
          Luckily, he was talked out of it; more Americans probably
          now recognize the E.T. theme than the opening of Beethoven's
          Fifth Symphony.
                   The news that ace agent Michael Ovitz tossed a giant
          surprise (I'll bet) 50th birthday party at Morton's for
          Disney chief Michael Eisner made me wonder if Eisner
          remembered how E.T. celebrated his 40th birthday. I
          certainly do. Paramount hired the USC marching band to wake
          up Michael and a few hundred of his neighbors while a crew
          taped the moment. Then I was asked to take the tape and put
          together a mini-"This Is Your Life" to be shown that night at
          a studio party. As much effort and money went into that
          five-minute private production as into any piece which E.T.
          ever aired. And Eisner loved it: I still have his thank-you
          note among my souvenirs...
                   It was also Eisner who gave E.T. its first big scoop
          and helped establish it as a news program. On March 5th,
          1982, Eisner was supposed to be lunching with comic actor
          John Belushi about a movie set in California's wine country.
          But minutes before the appointed hour, Belushi's publicist
          called Eisner's secretary to say that the star had died of a
          drug overdose in his bungalow at the Chateau Marmont Hotel.
          That night's program had already been finished, but we
          hurriedly inserted a short piece and actually beat some of
          the nightly news programs.
                   There was also the morning when Eisner left his
          Paramount office and noticed his executive vice president in
          charge of television, John Goldhammer, lurking around
          outside in the shrubbery. "What in hell are you doing?"
          Eisner asked. "Waiting for Warren Beatty," Goldhammer
          whispered - indicating the camera crew also hiding in the
          bushes in hopes of catching the then-reclusive Beatty who
          was working on "Reds." Eisner gave them all a strange look,
          but didn't blow their cover...
                   Speaking of Ron Hendren, one of his most memorable
          journalistic moments came on the morning after Natalie Wood
          drowned off Catalina. Hendren walked into our office as we
          started writing the story. "I know Catalina pretty well, and
          I've got lots of sources of my own there," he told us. "Let
          me handle this one my way." He strode to the phone, dialed
          information, asked the operator for the Catalina Police,
          then called that number. "Hello, this is Ron Hendren," he
          announced. "Can I speak to your public realtions
          department?"
                   Then there was the time when Army Archerd, the Daily
          Variety columnist and perennial Oscar sidewalk host, capped
          his brief E.T. career with an interview with Richard Burton.
          "Richard will talk about anything but Liz Taylor," cautioned
          his publicist. "Please don't even mention her name." Archerd
          accepted this condition - so well that when Burton himself
          started to talk about Liz, Army cut him off and moved on to
          another question.
                   Filling the daily half-hour (and the weekly
          hour-long wrapup provided free to subscribing stations as a
          bonus) quickly became a nightmare. How many celebrity
          fund-raisers featuring tape of Ed Asner and Ed Begley Jr.
          eating the shrimp would viewers sit still for? How many Don
          Ho concerts could we cover, or unveilings on Hollywood's
          tacky Walk of Fame? How many Paramount stars could we
          interview? How many stories could we steal from the
          Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety at 6 a.m. and whip into
          E.T. pieces by 10 a.m.? The insatiable hunger of daily
          television forced us to become inventive: we did mini-series
          on everything from stars and their pets to famous Hollywood
          murders.
                   One thing that tends to be overlooked now that
          "Entertainment Tonight" is as much a part of our daily lives
          as Cheez Whiz is how the program really broke technological
          ground. True, the $350,000 mobile vans which were supposed
          to help us broadcast live - as writer Bob Flick once joked -
          "from Ringo's garage" kept breaking down. But as the first
          non-network show to use satellites to reach the stations who
          aired it, E.T. paved the way for all the "Hard Copies" and
          "Inside Editions" to follow - perhaps a dubious achievement in
          cultural terms but quite significant in the areas of science
          and finance.
                   This progress also had its lighter moments. Two
          dirtballs (in case one got hit by a truck) had to run copies
          of the tape of each day's show a few blocks down Hollywood
          Boulevard to the Wold satellite transmitting station in a
          daily race against the clock, and several times Flick and I
          were seriously tempted to call the police and report a
          robbery in progress just to see what might happen. Without
          our interference, a pigeon once flew through the laser
          signal and knocked us off the air. And every day for the
          first six months, another dirtball had to drive 150 miles to
          Bakersfield and back so that a station there without a
          satellite receiver could still bring its viewers the latest
          from Hollywood.
                   In those days, people came and went at an
          astonishing rate. Andy Friendly didn't make it through
          Christmas; Dixie Whately was replaced after a year by
          another former beauty queen, Mary Hart, and went on to team
          up with Rex Reed before moving back into local television;
          the likes of David Frost, Geraldo Rivera and Larry Merchant
          came on, took a few bows, and exited stage left. Barbara
          Howar, Ron Powers and Rona Barrett lasted somewhat longer,
          but in the end they too wound up making news by resigning or
          being sacked. To fill their ranks, interviews were
          constantly in progress: such respected journalists as Linda
          Ellerbee, Chris Chase and Judy Woodruff were inspected but
          didn't make the final cut.
                   But my all-time favorite story from "Entertainment
          Tonight's" Golden Years has nothing to do with breaking news
          or backstage gossip. It was a slow news day, also
          Shakespeare's birthday, as my British colleague, assignment
          editor Bridget Byrne, pointed out. The lovely Shakespearean
          actress Helen Mirren was in town to promote a movie called
          "The Long Good Friday." Why not take Helen out to the
          Shakespeare Garden at the Huntington Museum in San Marino
          and tape her reading her favorite sonnet - the one that
          begins, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
                   The producer gave his approval. He also liked the
          resulting piece - except for one thing. At 50 seconds, he
          felt it was a little slow. Cut it down to 30 seconds, he
          ordered. Bridget and I took turns explaining to him that
          this wasn't some scribbingly by a TV writer that could be
          hacked around - this was a sonnet, 14 lines of iambic
          pentameter, none of them disposable. Cutting it would be
          like slicing off the top of the Mona Lisa. Finally, he got
          the point and ran the piece in its entirety.
                   The sad thing is that on today's tough and
          successful E.T., grappling as it does for ratings points
          with some of the very same shows which its success created,
          the problem wouldn't even come up. All the crews would be
          out shooting stories on the sex lives of female
          impersonators; Shakespeare and Helen Mirren would be
          ash-canned before they ever made it to tape.

                                ENDS

Copyright (C) 1992 by OVERBYTE