• September 05, 1983
• Vol. 20
• No. 10

Take One

By Rebecca Bricker

As Dr. Fiscus on NBC's St. Elsewhere, Howie Mandel wears a Boston Red Sox cap in the operating room. Onstage for his comedy act, Howie (formerly a Toronto carpet salesman) carries a bag loaded with zany props, including a rubber alligator and surgical gloves, and he replaces the Red Sox hat in favor of a stuffed elephant head. Imagine then the horror of a woman living in an apartment across the street from The Comedy Store in La Jolla, Calif, when at 2 a.m., Howie led more than 150 patrons to her front door after the club's bar closed. "I just brought a few friends over for coffee," Howie explained as the wary woman inexplicably opened her door to these strange strangers. About 80 people in the crowd piled into her living room, while Howie (wearing his elephant hat) made a pot of coffee in the kitchen. The next night, the same woman walked into the club in the middle of Howie's routine. "The nerve of her," Howie later said in mock disgust. "She didn't even call to tell me she was coming."

After a brief fling with Johnny Carson (who has been seen around L.A. with Angie Dickinson of late), Morgan Fairchild is back with her old flame, Craig Denault, 36, a camera operator on Robert Red-ford's new movie, The Natural, now filming in Buffalo, N.Y. While visiting Denault on location, Morgan was dismayed to find herself pictured with Carson on the cover of a magazine (which had made the mistake of thinking that she was still Johnny's "new lady"). Fearing Denault might get jealous, Morgan reportedly bought up every copy of the magazine in the newsstand of the Buffalo Hilton, where the crew was staying. Who said love is blind?

Casting a celebrity to talk about AIDS for a 60-second TV spot that began airing last week was no easy task. In the commercial, sponsored by the Episcopal Church, Sammy Davis Jr. dispels myths about the disease and encourages viewers who have questions to call the federal Public Health Service's hotline [phone]-AIDS). "Sammy was the first one who responded wholeheartedly," says an insider of the commercial's production company. Hill St. Blues' Daniel Travanti and St. Else-where's David Birney also indicated interest. But the agency got the most resistance from country and Western circles. The predictable response: "People will think I'm gay."

General Hospital's Steve Bond (who plays sexy Jimmy Lee Holt) has been ordered by ABC's program practices department to leave his Jockey briefs in the bottom drawer. Nothing but boxer shorts on the show from now on, the taste arbiters ruled. But the censors were more lenient with fellow cast member David Groh (D.L. Brock), who in a fight scene to air Aug. 31 let slip a certain four-letter word beginning with "F." Rather than re-shoot the scene—in which D.L.'s lover, Bobbie Spencer (played by Jackie Zeman), is about to be raped—the producers decided to use a foghorn to cover up his faux pas.

The only things that come between John Travolta and his new dance-wear line by Carushka are his Fruit of the Loom briefs. According to a male model who chatted with John backstage at a recent fashion show for Travolta's togs, "They're the only kind [of undies] he'll wear. But he turns them inside out so the tag won't scratch."