Underdogs Have Their Day; New Film Aids Homeless

--Hollywood merged with the homeless when “Samaritan,” a made-for-TV movie portraying social activist Mitch Snyder, was screened at the seedy shelter he runs several blocks from the nation’s Capitol. Tickets for the sold-out evening showing ranged from $50 to $5,000. The film will be seen on CBS Monday. Martin Sheen appears in the role of Snyder, 43, who gave up a $50,000-a-year job as a Madison Avenue executive to campaign for the rights of the nation’s underdogs. Sheen and actress Valerie Harper, who did not have a role in the film, were swarmed over by many of the shelter’s 905 residents as they drove up in a mini-van. Cicely Tyson, Sheen’s co-star, was not present. Harper and actor Dennis Weaver are founders of the Los Angeles-based LIFE (Love Is Feeding Everyone), an organization paralleling Snyder’s Community for Creative Non-Violence. “Samaritan” details Snyder’s fight for the homeless, including a hunger strike in an attempt to push President Reagan to make good on a 1980 campaign promise to turn his shelter into a model facility. Snyder said: “God chooses the people he needs. This place is all God’s work.”

--American theologian Dr. James McCord received the $261,800 Templeton Prize in London’s Guildhall. Past recipients of the annual award include Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The prize, donated by American philanthropist and investment counselor John Templeton, is given for “progress in religion.”

--When Ethan Reid’s mother said he could do a little coloring and gave him the run of the house, he called in a little help from his little friends. The result after neighborhood youngsters finished their efforts was a two-story, four-bedroom home covered with graffiti and scribbles and scrawls in pink, blue, yellow and purple chalk. The boy’s parents, Paul and Susan Reid, were pleased with the results. Their house in Hartford, Conn., was to be painted this week, so they took the opportunity to allow Ethan, 8, a little creativity.