Actors’ Sexy Roles Turn Talk Shows Into Soap Oprah

--TV talk show hosts Oprah Winfrey, Sally Jessy Raphael and Geraldo Rivera have had many guests with unusual stories. In the case of two part-time actors from Chicago, the stories were also untrue. Tani Freiwald, 37, said she played the roles of a sex-hating wife on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and a sex surrogate on “Geraldo.” Wes Bailey, 33, who is employed as an aide to an elderly man, played an impotent husband on a “Sally Jessy Raphael Show” and a 35-year-old virgin on “Geraldo.” “This is something that goes right to the integrity of the broadcast itself,” Rivera said. Freiwald and Bailey said they were asked to appear on the shows by Chicago psychologist-author Dean C. Dauw. Producers for Winfrey and Raphael said they had trusted Dauw’s referrals. Dauw said that Freiwald worked for him as an office manager and a sex surrogate, and that Bailey was his client. “Millions of you people are watching these shows and we’re here to tell you they just ain’t always true,” Freiwald said.

--James S. Brady faced the White House press corps again, but this time it was part of the observance of his 48th birthday. Brady, wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan, was brought into the White House briefing room in Santa Barbara in his wheelchair. Reporters and White House aides joined in singing “Happy Birthday” to Brady, who carries the title of White House press secretary. Later in the day, Brady was on hand as President and Mrs. Reagan continued a tradition of their White House years and hosted a final summertime party for the press. The Western-style barbecue at a private estate overlooking the Pacific was an off-the-record affair with members of the traveling press corps, their families and White House staff.

--Researchers are trying to raise $1.4 million to retrieve a piece of American space history--a 1961 Project Mercury space capsule in the Atlantic Ocean off Grand Bahama Island. Curt Newport of Annapolis, Md., said he is seeking funds to pull the Liberty Bell 7 capsule from the waters where it sank at the end of Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom’s 15-minute flight on July 21, 1961. Grissom later was killed with two other astronauts when the Apollo 1 capsule caught fire in 1967. Side-scan sonar devices, similar to those employed in 1985 to locate the Titanic, would be used, said Newport, a NASA subcontractor involved in designing a space station.