Asbury Park Press from Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 21

Asbury Park PressTues. Nov. 4, 1980 B5 The rich and famous live on in sleazy television biographies On the Air more's life while that poor chap was still saying the long goodbye. Schiller took photos of Monroe on the set of her uncompleted film "Something's Gotta Give" and this, according to ABC, made him an expert on her life. But "Marilyn: The Untold Story" should have stayed that way.

"The Jayne Mansfield Story," however, was even worse, a slack heap of camp prt duced by Alan Landsburg, who has given America "That's Incredible!" and "Those Amazing Animals," two giant steps backward for mankind. Poor Loni Anderson of "WKRP in Cincinnati" was encumbered with the role of blonde bombshell Mansfield, a part Anderson seemed neither physically nor even intellectually equipped to play. TV movies are to film what the Rolodex is to literature. They tend to be perfunctory, prosaic exercises with no style or oomph! There may be many things worth learning about the lives and careers of movie stars and sex symbols like Monroe and Mansfield, but the producers of films like these aren't interested in that. They simply use the lives of celebrities in order to extend the careers of melodramatic cliches that are older than Ronald Reagan.

Hence the dubious scoop that Marilyn was scarred by her childhood, grew up craving love, and died of an overdose. And that Mansfield was scarred by her childhood, grew up craving love, and died in a car crash. Both were really Serious Actresses beneath baby-doll exteriors. "Someday I'm going to find somebody who respects me," the Marilyn Monroe mannequin was made to say in Schiller's film. And Mansfield, so the other movie had it, went around pledging to peddle her epidermis on the silver screen only "until I'm a household name.

Then they'll give me the scripts I want." There was at least a kitschy kookiness to the Mansfield film that gave it some redeem ing value. You can't beat the casting of mus-cleman Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mansfield boyfriend Mickey Hargitay for sheer, silly chutzpah. Who'll ever forget Arnold's embalmed, phonetic line-readings of such memorable dialogue as, "Jayne, ve've been tru dis before" and "Dis picture 'Las Vegas Why, Jayne?" Anderson's squeals and peeps as the public Mansfield, and her sobs and wails as the private one, never did ring true. But then, how true could anyone ring while sitting in a bathtub drinking champagne and shouting out, "Get me the Playboy mansion! I want to talk to Hugh Hefner!" Not even the telephones ring true in junk like this. Yet, the public watches, by the millions.

Why? As producers like Schiller and Landsburg (and there are too many like them) must know, when you do a TV movie about a sex symbol, it looks perfectly justified to put in lots of sexy stuff. You can claim in your The Washington Post WASHINGTON If you were ever even slightly famous and now you're dead, look out. Somebody may use you as the excuse for a TV movie. The best advice for the stars of today, such as they are, Is: Tie up the rights to your life this very minute so you can never be sunk into the grubby ignominy of a TV movie. At the least you should order your executors to hold out for a theatrical feature.

Or you can follow the smart move of Sophia Loren, who recently not only starred in the story of her own life on TV but played her own mother as well as herself. It's one way to keep these things under control. When the movies went on a Hollywood Bio bender a few years ago, the results Included such box-office limburger as "Gable and Lombard" and "W.C. (Fields) and Me." Asbury Park Press Nov. 4, 1980 1 1 TV networks ready to cover the election Leisure 1 I own defense that you're just examining the nature of sex symbols in America.

Of course that's what the films never really do; they don't look into the personal ity of the audience, only of the stars. If you started looking into the voyeuristic personality of yesterday's audience, you might both er the audience sitting at home and voyeur-ing today. No great harm is done by this kind of flim-flam, but there's something awfully hypocritical about it. Obviously these movies will continue until there are no more dead stars to exploit. Maybe 50 years from now audiences will be sitting at their laservision sets watching "The Loni Anderson Story." In the meantime, still-living stars, espe-; daily sexy ones, should take heed; they may wind up as fodder for the pulp-grinder.

We can update that old tune "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" to a more appropriate, "Talk About Me All You Want But, Please Don't Turn Me into a TV Movie." B5 Skfcjy from a building in "The Stunt Man." but good film with zest and packs it with funny situ tions and some wild stunt work that is both eye-catching and uproarious. There is a fine sense of the moviemaking world, and that in itself makes the film enjoyable. By keeping the suggestion of menace near the surface and intertwining this with the comedy, Rush creates an off-the-wall atmosphere that keeps us guessing as to what's afoot. What's real? What's imagined? Is life the same as making a movie? There are also strong antiwar undercurrents, as the film being shot is about war, and Cameron has a history of having been in Vietnam. "The Stunt Man" is uneven, and it sometimes is a case of energy triumphing over the material, but O'Toole is so remarkable and the milieu is so bizarre that this is a good audience picture, and a refreshing change of pace from some of the other fare that is around.

Rated R. toiler gift, Tom Shales The public stayed home in its proverbial droves. But what people won't pay to see, they will often sit still for on the living room couch, and within a month, TV filmo-graphies of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield recently drew huge audiences to ABC and CBS. Neither film was any good. The Monroe movie was produced by Lawrence Schiller, the photographer-turned-producer who grabbed the rights to condemned killer Gary Gil- CBS will introduce AVA for Ampex Video Art an electronically controlled map specially designed for the network, while ABC will use a computer-run map of its own.

The objective in each instance is to display graphically states won by each of the candidates. In addition to the commercial networks, the Public Broadcasting Service will provide a series of 55-second election updates on the hour and half-hour between 4 p.m. and 3 a.m. EST, while the National Spanish Television Network will present live coverage to its 68 affiliates beginning at 7. The Cable News Network, on the air 24 hours a day, also will offer subscribers complete coverage.

THE THREE NETWORKS and National Public Radio also will provide bulletin-style as well as more comprehensive election night reports. Each of the commercial networks will survey pre-selected voting precincts in an effort to project a winner in the presidential race as quickly as possible, and will question thousands of voters as they leave the polls in an effort to determine why they voted the way they did. Each of the network's samples will be different ABC will question 6,000 voters in 300 locations, NBC and The Associated Press will poll between 15,000 and 20,000 voters across the country, and CBS and the New York Times will survey about 15,000 other voters nationwide. "We all do what we think are the key precincts," says NBC's Crystal, "we all do our exit polls, we all do our own analysis. There is competition, but we want to be accurate first, and there's no real push to go beyond that." "OUR OBJECTIVE is to announce the winning candidate when the chance of mistake is less than l-in-200," says Warren Mi-tofsky, who runs CBS News' election and survey unit.

"It's not an infallible system, but it's pretty reliable." All three networks receive the raw returns from the News Election Service, a cooperative formed by ABC, CBS, NBC, The AP and United Press International. Television coverage will not stop at the presidential election. Each of the networks will watch all congressional and gubernatorial contests. Arts CBS, ABC and PBS plan post-election programs for tomorrow night. CBS will broadcast "What Happened Last Night" at 11:30 p.m.

EST, while ABC will consider the election in a special hour-long edition of "Nightline," also at 11:30. Public TV's "None of the Above" will be offered non-commercial stations at the same time. Here, in capsule form, is a look at the way the commercial networks' election night plans: ABC 7 p.m. to conclusion, anchored by Frank Reynolds and Ted Koppel, from special ABC Election Night Center in New York City. Barbara Walters will provide special interviews, with Max Robinson reporting on gubernatorial and other state races.

Robert MacNeil from public TV's "MacNeil-Lehrer Report," along with columnists Tom Wicker and George Will, will offer analysis. Sam Donaldson will report from the White House and from President Carter's election night headquarters, Barry Serafin will be with Reagan and Ann Compton with Anderson. CBS 7 p.m. to conclusion, anchored by Walter Cronkite from Studio 41 at the C8S Broadcast Center in New York City. Correspondents will cover balloting in the presidential and other races on a regional basis Harry Reasoner the East, Dan Rather the Midwest, Bob Schieffer the South and Lesley Stahl the West.

Bill Moyers from PBS' "Bill Moyers' Journal," and, later in the evening, Jeff Greenfield and James J. Kilpatrick, will provide analysis, and Bruce Morton will report on trends. Jed Duvall and Lee Thornton will cover Carter, Bill Plante and Jerry Bowen will be with Reagan, and Bob Faw and Eric Engberg with Anderson. NBC 7 p.m. to conclusion, anchored by John Chancellor and David Brinkley, from Studio 8H at NBC headquarters in Rockefeller Center.

Tom Brokaw will cover Senate races, and Jessica Savitch will report on House and gubernatorial contests. Theodore H. White, the political historian, will provide analysis. John Palmer and Judy Woodruff will report from the White House and Carter headquarters, Jim Cummins from Anderson headquarters, and Chris Wallace and Heidi Schulman from Reagan headquarters on the West Coast. By TOM JORY The Associated Press NEW YORK The "famous NBC News map" the network's own description was installed for the 1976 presidential election, and the huge illuminated construction was tested a few days ahead of time.

"The lights behind the map were turned on," recalls Lester Crystal, now senior executive producer of political coverage for NBC, "and in a very short time, Minnesota started to melt and the Great Lakes began to drift to the south." Stagehands hurriedly rigged a cooling system behind the wall-sized prop, and NBC's election night coverage progressed as far as the map was concerned without a hitch. The map, now fully air-conditioned, will be in focus tonight, beginning at 7 p.m. EST, an important element in NBC's coverage of the 1980 presidential election. THE COMPETING NETWORKS CBS and ABC will begin their own coverage at the same time, using similarly conceived graphic techniques to track the distribution of electoral votes among President Carter, the Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, independent John Anderson and other candidates. Station presents 'Jazz 88 Week' NEWARK Highlights of the past year's best jazz programming ranging from live festivals to interviews with some of the jazz world's most famous artists wll be the focus of a five-day celebration on WBGO, 88.3 FM, beginning tomorrow.

"Perpetuate Jazz 88 Week," also will be a major fundraising effort for WBGO, a listener-sponsored station. Among the highlights of the week will be encore broadcasts of "The 1980 Newport Jazz Festival;" "The Boston Globe Jazz Festival" featuring Freddie Hubbard, Carmen McRae, Dizzy Gillespie and Scott Hamilton; "The Chicago Jazz Festival;" the WBGO Tribute to Rahsaan Roland Kirk; and "The Jazzmobile Sunday Festival," which featured the first national radio debut of Frank Foster's "Lake Placid Suite." Steve Railsbach as a fugitive-turned-stunt man gingerly prepares to jump 'Stunt Man' bizarre By WILLIAM WOLF Special to The Press "THE STUNT MAN" is certainly one of the most unusual films of the year. It pulsates with energy and a maniacal undercurrent that makes us wonder about illusion and reality while entertaining us with characters locked into the business of risking lives for the sake of moviemaking. On the surface this is a story of a fugitive who is inadvertently involved in the death of a stunt man who drowns when he drives a car off a bridge. The director, played by Peter O'Toole, is intrigued with the fugitive and gives him shelter by having him pose as the dead stunt man and taking on the same job.

Steve Railsback is virile and interesting as Cameron, the man on the run, and O'- Movie Review Toole gives a smashingly entertaining, larger-than-life performance as Eli, the director, who is god-like in his behavior, and has a grand time manipulating everyone for his own purposes. Cameron soon gets the impression that Eli is really trying to kill him. Is he or isn't he? The stage is thus set for plenty of action and suspense, plus some romance when Cameron becomes involved with the leading lady (Barbara Hershey.) The build-up is toward a repeat of the stunt that resulted in the death, with Cameron being briefed on how to escape from the car underwater. Director Richard Rush approaches the II Red Lobster Lobster. Treat yourself to the seafood loverls first love.

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