A Bad News Bear Gets a Blast From the Past
A mystery is solved, but it was a dismal week for dignity and decorum.
There’s good news for one of the Bad News Bears. As Los Angeles’ Family Court continues its search for long-lost child performers whose savings bonds are stashed in a courthouse basement safe, the person at the top of the list has surfaced. Chris Barnes, who was 10 when he played Tanner Doyle in the 1976 baseball classic, last week phoned the court’s research attorney, Barbara Greenwald, from Utah, where he works at a flower shop.
Barnes, now 32 and going by Christopher, confirmed that he got in touch with the court after being tipped by friends. Greenwald said she expects him to pick up his bonds next month. Because the bonds are kept in a sealed envelope, it is not known how big Barnes’ payday will be.
According to court records, 25% of Barnes’ pay was set aside in U.S. savings bonds. His contract called for him to be paid $604 a week for five weeks of work.
The money was set aside under the 1939 Coogan Law, enacted in response to the scandal that ensued when 1920s child star Jackie Coogan came of age and learned that his mother had spent his fortune.
Meanwhile, the search continues for 10 other onetime child performers who have money waiting for them. They are:
Anthony Paul Byrne, 51; Diane Cassidy, 68; John L. Clark Jr., 42; Franca Faldini, 67; Bridget Margaret Hayes, 60, also known professionally as Victurina Hayes; Julian Lawrence, 33; Michael Morgan, 38; Pamela Smith, 49; Jean VanderWilt, 60, also known professionally as Jean Van; and Karen Verros, 51.
If your name’s not on the list, don’t call us. We’ll call you.
ONCE A PLAYMATE . . . Being named Playmate of the Year is a lot like winning the Heisman Trophy or an Academy Award. The title is yours for life.
So wrote a judge in U.S. District Court in San Diego, denying Playboy Enterprises Inc.’s request for a restraining order against Terri Welles, the bunny empire’s 1981 Playmate of the Year. Playboy, claiming trademark infringement, had sought to wipe Welles off the World Wide Web if she mentioned the P-word on her Web site.
Her attorney, Michael Plonsker, argued that Playboy had gone along with her plans--until it set up its own CyberClub site on the Web and tried to pressure Welles to join.
Judge Judith N. Keep agreed.
She wrote in an 11-page decision that a Playmate’s title “becomes part of (her) identity and adds value to (her) name.” She added: “In this case, Ms. Welles has used [Playboy Enterprises’] trademarks to identify herself truthfully as the Playmate of the Year 1981.”
Playboy’s lawyer in New York could not be reached for comment.
SHE SAID WHAT? That business dispute between Elke Sommer and her former partners is getting downright catty. Sit down, pour yourself a fresh saucer of milk and read on.
Sommer, the bombshell actress with the 145 IQ and 60 film credits, is engaged in a legal battle over a company that makes golf putters. It has spawned a half-dozen lawsuits in Los Angeles and Nevada.
Sommer’s personal manager says it’s all just sour grapes and harassment.
The most recent suit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by former friend and business partner Kenny Bauer, whom Sommer befriended in 1991 when she invited him to her Beverly Glen estate to play tennis.
One thing led to another and he eventually moved into her guest house and became involved in deals involving Sommer’s paintings and a small company, Squirrel Canyon Golf Inc. She was supposed to invest $300,000 and lend her celebrity to the company, the suit stated, but instead tried to take over the board of directors. When she failed, Bauer alleged, she defamed him. His court papers claim he is in good company.
Sommer “has a pattern and practice of defaming people in public in front of third parties,” Bauer charged. His suit lists examples of the alleged Elke-isms:
Her former husband is a “worm” and a “bad writer.” A rival actress has a fat posterior and is “stupid and arrogant.” One erstwhile friend is a “pig” and a pedophile; another is “the worst producer in the history of the world.”
Meow!
She even referred to the jurors who awarded her $3.3 million in her slander case against Zsa Zsa Gabor as “morons,” according to Bauer’s lawsuit. It claims that Sommer groused, “It seems the only way I can make money anymore is by suing people.”
Sommer is in Europe and could not be reached for comment. But her personal manager, Leonard Grant, said the allegations are false.
“There’s not one iota of truth to them,” he insisted. “That’s not Elke. . . . You don’t call jurors in a case you’ve won morons. You call them brilliant.”
“I AM NOT A CROOK”: While Hollywood’s glitterati wore borrowed baubles with their Vera Wangs and Armanis at the Academy Awards last month, South Bay electrician Jared A. Adrian allegedly decked himself out with an especially eye-catching accessory.
Producer Jon Peters charges in a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court that Adrian libeled him by carrying a sign that called Peters a crook. Adrian, owner of Capital Electric in Redondo Beach, apparently resorted to drastic measures to make a point in his $22,400 dispute over work performed at Peters’ Beverly Park home.
Peters’ suit claims that the electrician has been paid in full. Peters also says he had to hire another electrician to redo Adrian’s work.
Peters’ lawyer, Michael Weiss, had no comment, and Adrian could not be reached.
Peters, who co-chaired Sony’s Columbia Pictures with Peter Guber during the early 1990s, charges that Adrian, a subcontractor, picketed him at the glitzy gathering of his peers “to extort monies.”
