Word: turneritis
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Soon after the MGM news broke, Turner arranged simultaneous press conferences in New York City, Moscow, London and Phoenix, which were broadcast live on his SuperStation WTBS, to announce a groundbreaking agreement with the Soviet Union. As Turner grinned at reporters at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, TBS Executive Vice President Robert Wussler clasped hands with Soviet sports officials in Moscow. Turner said that TBS and the Soviets would co-produce and broadcast the Goodwill Games from Moscow next July. The games are expected to draw top athletes from around the world for 160 events, and will be repeated...
...uneasy about Turner's apparent moralistic streak. In 1982, in his only editorial for CNN, he called upon viewers to write to their Congressmen to protest the sex and violence in Hollywood films. Studio executives are now speculating about the entrepreneur's designs on MGM productions. Joked an MGM/UA executive last week: "Does Turner want to make movies? He did his Rhett Butler imitation when he was in here Monday." Turner, whose favorite movie is Gone With the Wind, named his son Rhett, 19, for the Clark Gable character in that film...
Sure enough, Turner told MGM/UA officials last week that he wanted to make "family pictures," citing The Right Stuff and Shane as examples of what he liked. Said a top producer: "If he starts to let his personal convictions affect what pictures get made or what themes they have, he will drive the company into the ground." Maybe so, but it was not Turner who said, "Public morality is a very important factor on the screen. I seriously object to seeing on the screen what belongs in the bedroom." That was Samuel Goldwyn, and his philosophy helped produce...
...like a herd of buffalo stampeding toward a firing squad. United Artists took a $44 million bath on the film and within a year was absorbed by rival MGM. Now, in a delicious triple irony, Final Cut, a UA executive's memoir of the debacle, wins raves; Ted Turner agrees to buy MGM/UA; and the studio releases Cimino's new melodrama...
...Africa President Ken Kragen has already lined up Tina Turner, Bill Cosby, Pete Rose, Kenny Rogers and Lionel Richie to lend support, and Coca-Cola has signed on as the first sponsor. Kragen hopes to raise some $50 million; in the first days after it was announced, "Hands" raked in some $365,000 in $10 to $35 telephone pledges from enthusiasts around the country who called...