Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 16, 1990                   TAG: 9004160013
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PEOPLE

If not she will return "as a struggling actress," Bullock said in an interview with The Charlotte Observer.

When Bullock graduated from East Carolina University in 1986 she headed for New York to try for an acting career. Now she is the star in the Wall Street sitcom "Working Girl" that is on tryout this spring to see if it will become part of NBC's fall lineup.

Bullock said she auditioned for a supporting part but was pushed into the lead. She said she was working as a waitress when she auditioned.

Bullock sees herself in the same position as the character she portrays on the show. "She wants to get ahead but she wants to keep her roots intact."

Chuck Norris piloted a 50-foot speedboat to victory in an offshore powerboat race, while a second actor-laden boat came in fourth.

Norris, the martial arts film star, averaged 81.2 mph Saturday in the 140-mile Super Boat class of the 1990 Offshore Powerboat Races.

Fellow tough guy actors Don Johnson and Kurt Russell were aboard the fourth-place boat, "Team USA."

The race was marred by two unrelated accidents in which boats overturned. Their occupants were rescued by Long Beach lifeguards and medical teams from the Offshore Professional Tour, race officials said.

Michael Bolton says he learned about music from his older brother's rhythm and blues records.

"I grew up singing along with Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Otis Redding and Stevie Wonder," the raspy-voiced Grammy-winner said in the April 23 People. "I had hair down to my waist and I sounded like a 50-year-old black guy."

Bolton, who had a successful career as a songwriter for stars like Barbra Streisand and Cher, said his own singing career took off when he returned to his rhythm and blues roots.

His album "Soul Provider" has gone platinum and he won a Grammy in February for his song, "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You."

Paul McCartney blames Yoko Ono's penny-pinching ways for a delay that allowed Michael Jackson to buy publishing rights to many Beatles classics he wrote with John Lennon.

McCartney says in the May issue of Musician magazine that the songs were up for sale for $20 million four years ago. When he suggested he and Ono put up $10 million each she hestitated, saying the price was too high. Meanwhile, Jackson bought the songs.

Sam Havadtoy, a spokesman for Ono, said the price was $50 million, not $20 million. And anyway, Havadtoy said, if McCartney had wanted the songs he could have bought them himself. "Yoko does not control Paul McCartney," he said.