The Road to Ishtar

If Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty can do it, so can Jack and Ruth Gourley . . . go to Morocco.

The couple, who reside outside St. Joseph, Mo., are the grand-prize winners of RCA/Columbia Home Video’s Road to Riches/”Ishtar” video sweepstakes drawing. Meaning they’ll hit the desert sands for eight days and seven fun-filled nights sometime between now and Dec. 31.

Speaking from his 40-acre farm (“Mostly in pasture now, but we used to have dairy cattle”), the retired Gourley, 69, said that he and his wife of 48 years have applied for their passports and this will mark their first trip outside the U.S.A. Up to now, they rate Carlsbad Caverns as their travel highlight. “We’re waiting to hear some details on the climate over there. And we’ll be getting some more information from the company that’s putting this together,” said Gourley. “We’ll be going on a regular tour. I imagine there’ll be a tour guide.”

The Gourleys rent four to five videos a week from Liberty Sound and Video in St. Joe and go out to the movies twice a month. Their last theater outing was for “Three Men and a Baby.” Said Gourley: “That was real good.”

And did he like “Ishtar”?

“Well, it was all right. But it could have standed a little better plot or something.”

Gourley knows a thing or two about the film: He watched it twice on video. That’s because, he confessed with a laugh, when he first heard he’d won the sweepstakes, “I thought I might be expected to answer some questions about the movie or something, so I rushed over to the store and rented and watched it again.”

There were two grand prizes offered. But Mrs. Donna Johnson of Milan (“It’s a little town, located sort of midway between Nashville and Memphis”), Tenn., didn’t want to go to Morocco.

A widow with two teen-age children, she thought there’d be sibling rivalry if she took one child and not the other. “And anyway, I didn’t want to go without an adult companion. . . . I’m not that adventurous.”

So she was awarded a 26-inch RCA Dimensia TV in place of the trip: “It’s fantastic!”

Not a bad haul, considering she never even rented the video. . . .

As she related, she wanted to see “Ishtar.” (“Renting movies is my main entertainment. I probably rent at least four a week.”) But between the three local vidstores, she could locate only one copy. And it was checked out. But she filled out an entry form anyway--with a sly help from someone in the video shop, who gave her the names of the Hoffman and Beatty characters in the movie. (Those names had to be on the form.)

“When I won, I felt kind of guilty for not having seen the movie,” she said. She’s definitely going to catch it. But . . . she’s not going to rent the tape: “Don’t tell anyone, but it’s on cable this month.”