Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 28, 1992 TAG: 9203280271
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I've got to be the best I've been in my life," he said during a recent taping of the NBC program "First Person with Maria Shriver." The interview will be broadcast tonight. "It's strange, not to mention pressured," Crystal said.
Crystal, who started as a stand-up comedian and went on to television and movies, credits Sammy Davis Jr. as a big influence because "he was someone my size doing everything. God, he was great."
Bea Arthur bid farewell to her fellow "Golden Girls" during taping of the last episode of the NBC series.
Nearly 300 people attended a party in Los Angeles after the Thursday night taping. Highlights and outtakes from the show's seven years were shown and signed scripts were passed out.
Rue McClanahan, Betty White and Estelle Getty will be featured in their old roles without Arthur on a new CBS show, "Golden Palace," which is scheduled for the fall and will have them running a hotel.
"It was bittersweet for Bea; a tearful taping," said show spokeswoman Pam Ruben Golum. "It was an emotional farewell."
Brigitte Bardot and 73 other people were honored by the United Nations for environmental work. The actress will receive a Global 500 Award from the U.N. Environmental Program during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June. She is head of the Bardot Foundation for the defense of animals.
Peace activist Rev. Philip Berrigan was released Friday after serving one day of a five-year contempt-of-court sentence that was slapped on him Thursday when he refused to apologize to a Howard County, Md., judge. The sentence is being appealed.
"I knew that [the sentence] was ludicrous," Berrigan said. "I knew that it wouldn't stand."
He was sentenced Thursday when he refused to apologize for comparing a judge's procedures to those in Nazi Germany. The judge had refused to let activists on trial for trespassing during a demonstration talk about weapons research they say is carried out at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Columbia.
Loretta Lynn took the witness stand in defense of her son, Ernest, 38, who was sentenced to probation rather than prison on a cocaine-selling conviction.
"Ernest is not violent," the country singer said Lynn Thursday during testimony in Waverly, Tenn.
"I never knew him to be involved in drug dealing and he's worked with me since the summertimes when he'd get out of school," she said.
Ernest Lynn, a guitarist in his mother's band, said after the hearing: "I've done my last courthouse show. I'm a new man."
He was sentenced to eight years of probation, fined $5,000 and ordered to serve 500 hours of community service for selling 1 gram of cocaine to an undercover agent.
Oprah Winfrey and companion Stedman Graham declared war on the sensational tabloid newspapers Thursday when their attorneys filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a tabloid that reported Graham had a homosexual affair with his cousin.
The federal lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $300 million from the News Extra and alleges defamation of character, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
by CNB