Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 47

ST. PETERSBURG TIMES FRIDAY, MARCH 18,1988 3D The facts: an education on alcoholism nnn LM1DER5 are diminishing. (The number of young female drinks ers has been increasing more rapidly than the number of young male drinkers. Girls also tend now to experiment with a wider variety of substances.) 12. It is estimated that increasing federal excise' taxes on beer, the favorite alcohol beverage among youth, would reduce alcohol-related motor vehicle' fatalities by 55 percent among 18- to 20-year-old young men and by 45 percent among 18- to 20-year-' old young women.

13. Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive and potentially fatal disease. It is sure to lead to psychological and physical dependency as well as damage to the' body, often irreversible. 14. Alcoholism is one of the most serious public, health problems in the United States today.

The same, is true in the Soviet Union, France and Italy. 15. One out of three American adults 56-million Americans say that alcohol abuse has brought trouble to their families. 1988, Creators Syndicate Inc. 7.

Nearly 100,000 10- and 11-year-olds reported getting drunk at least once a week in 1985. 8. Children of alcoholics have a four times greater risk of developing alcoholism than children of nonalco-holics. (There are 28.6-million children of alcoholics in the United States, 6.6-niillion of whom are under age 18.) 9. Many surveys suggest that the best predictor of the drinking habits of adolescents is the attitude and behavior of their parents regarding the use of alcohol.

(Adolescent heavy drinkers tend to come from homes where one or both parents are heavy drinkers, or from homes where both are abstainers.) 10. A child will see alcohol consumed an average of 75,000 times on TV before he or she is of legal drinking age. 11. Drinking differences between boys and girls Dear Readers: The National Council on Alcoholism does a superb job of educating the public. Recently something came in the mail that I feel should be read by every teen-ager, parent and teacher.

Here it is: Nothing but the facts 1. Alcohol is America's No. 1 drug problem among youth. (In 1985, an estimated 4.6-million adolescents, ages 14 through 17, experienced negative consequences of alcohol use arrest, involvement in an accident, impairment of health or job performance.) 2. Alcohol is twice as popular among college students as the next leading drug, marijuana, and more than five times as popular as cocaine.

3. Only 42 percent of fourth graders know that alcohol is a drug, compared with 81 percent who consider marijuana a drug. 4. The earlier in life a child starts using any dependence-producing drug, the more likely he or she is to experience health problems and go on to use other drugs. 5.

About 10,000 young people ages 16 to 24 die each year in alcohol-related accidents, including drowning, suicides, violent injuries, homicides and injuries from fire. 6. Alcohol-related highway deaths are the No. 1 killer of 15- to 24-year-olds. Parlor from 1-D Without Oscar, OToole will act just the same Come Into My Parlor Playwright: Joseph Mayes Cait: Elizabeth Ashley.

David Hedison, Ann Ducati, George Ede, Jay Garner, Jay Keye, Crista Moore, Steven Stahl Director Neal Kenyan Set design: Bennet Averyt Costumes: Franne Lee Lighting: Kirk Bookman Presented through Sunday by Zev Bulman's Broadway Series at the Playhouse, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. For ticket information, call 222-1010 in Tampa and toll-free (800) 544-9899 elsewhere in Florida. By VIRA LYNN JONES Reuters cast, evidently thrown off by the late curtain Tuesday night, plays like an out-of-sync B-niovie, Ashley spends much of her time braying, "Oh, God!" as the phone rings or someone strolls into her apartment at a tense moment. Give her credit for playing this ill-conceived character at full rant, although her dialogue places rather too much emphasis on the word. This is an embarrassingly overwrought performance in a play that is many levels beneath her talent.

Hedison has the good sense to play this nonsense for laughs and he earns a few even when he has to utter the obligatory "butler-did-it" line. You'd never consider him a scene-thief, but he was on opening night. Hedison's best scene comes when, after he is all but beaten silly by clues, Quen-tin finally figures out that he is being framed. Working himself into a rage, he does a nimble and funny impersonation of Serena, down to her vampish gestures. There are moments when you're certain that Hedison former first officer in TV's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea wishes he were back in khakis aboard the Seaviewmlh Richard Basehart.

A 26-minute delay before Tuesday's curtain went up and a half-hour intermission merely prolonged the agony of theatergoers who paid righteous bucks to see this twaddle. (The house lights weren't dimmed until four minutes into the play. What were the technicians doing, checking the early returns from the Illinois primary?) Technical shortcomings are annoying, to be sure, but the play Hayes' first in 20 years is considerably more than that. The great mystery is how Come Into My Parlor reached the stage in the first place. Even with- Columbia Pictures Peter OToole didn't receive any nominations for his role as Reginald "R.J." Johnston, in The Last Emperor.

"It was an amazing story set in this 15th century Ming maze of palaces," said OToole. "To us westerners, it was an Oriental fairy tale that took place in a span of a few years of our lifetime." Johnston became Emperor Pu Yi's tutor when the boy was 13. He remained as teacher, friend and adviser for 12 years, during the collapse of the Chinese empire. During research for Lawrence of Arabia (1962) one of several memorable roles that earned him an Oscar nomination but not the award OToole mastered Bedouin tribal customs, attained some fluency in Arabic, and learned to ride a camel. He approached his three-month role in China, however, more subtly, delving into Chinese history books in order to understand the complexity of his role and the country.

"Every day I felt there was another book to read to shed some light on this ignorance (about China) descending upon me," he said. When discussing his character, OToole said, "He was a senior colonial figure who disgraced himself by publishing a pamphlet in Chinese attacking the role of the missionary. "Johnston wanted to be governor of Hong Kong, but it looked like he had blown his career. He was given an opportunity to mold the great radical forces in China by becoming Pu Yi's tutor. "If you look at the man Peter OToole, he would loved to have had such an opportunity." After receiving acclaim and four Oscar nominations in the 1960s Lawrence of Arabia, NEW YORK Peter OToole sat groggy eyed in an early morning interview, chain-smoking cigarettes for breakfast.

The actor, now 55, was mumbling that he would "love to have an Oscar" but the seven-time nominee didn't have "the faintest idea" why the coveted award continually slips through his grasp. Even though The Last Emperor is in the running for nine Oscars, more than any other film this year, OToole was not nominated for his portrayal of Reginald Johnston, the Scottish tutor of China's young emperor. But, said the lanky Irishman, he is not concerned with accepting roles that might give him a shot at an Academy Award. He's just happy with any opportunity to act. "Whether it's radio, television or theater," OToole said, "I'm from a generation of actors who have multiple forms of expression.

But the form I prefer is the theater." OToole was in New York on a break from his upcoming movie comedy, High Spirits, being filmed in Ireland and England. It also stars Darryl Hannah and Steven Guttenberg. "I'm playing an Anglo-Irish owner of a rather dilapidated castle," said OToole. "He's looking for ways of cheering up the castle. So, he comes up with the idea of inhabiting it with ghosts." As for The Last Emperor, OToole said he decided to tackle the role because "it was a remarkable yarn a Cinderella fairy tale in reverse." out delays, this two-act monster is 40 minutes too long.

Director Neal Kenyon (Dames at Sea) moves the play along like a herd of lazy buffa lo, and the actors do their part with blown lines, missed cues and lots of scenery-chewing. We can hardly blame The dialogue is so stale "You're a wicked, wicked woman, Serena and Bennet Averyt's set design is so darned tasty looking, i with its gray-pink interiors, marble fireplace, spider-web windows and terrace. The fireplace is well situated beneath an illuminated portrait of a young Serena, before she became a jaded Broadway luminary. You want jaded? Take a close look at Ashley in her flame-red toreador tunic and black pants, stalking her intended victim like some outsized, deadly insect. Somewhat later, she slinks on' stage in a black mourning dress, the picture of a southern hothouse flower sprung to poisonous life.

We want her to gaze at us and drawl, "Dahhlings, isn't this be in something excellent and it is an excellent work, then redemption comes." His own redemption began in the 1980s with The Stunt Man, which brought him a sixth Oscar nomination. Number seven came for My Favorite Year in which OToole played Alan Swann, a swashbuckling, boozy matinee idol. Although he had been in Asia, The Last Emperor brought OToole to China for the first time. He called it "bewildering." "I sensed each day, more and more, my own ignorance of the place. My choice was to stand there, mutter a few phases and use my ears, eyes, nose and the bicycle," he added.

He said he spent his spare time in the museums and galleries of Beijing and managed a three-day trip to Qu Fu, birthplace of the "ole boy," which is how OToole referred to the Chinese philosopher Confucius. Becket, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and The Lion in Winter OToole's career and personal life went into a tailspin. Even today, his deeply lined face clearly tells of the well-publicized past excesses. In the 1970s, he got another Oscar nomination for The Ruling Class, but during most of the decade, hits were outnumbered by flops.

Doctors also told OToole that he would be dead within a few weeks from blood cancer, an incorrect diagnosis. OToole lit another cigarette and said slowly, as if reciting Shakespeare, "One's redemption is a good role in a good play which is successful." For Johnston, his role seemed to have been blown. He found redemption by becoming the emperor's tutor. "In my case or in any actor's case, if one has had a lean time, if the opportunity comes along to Adventure Island introduces 'Rambling Bayou' Saturday Associated Press Adventure Island is located at 4500 Bougainvillea Tampa. Phone: 971-7978.

Health from 1-D 'Unlimited visits! All year long I Buy one reg. admission at $5.95 Annual ticket Is only $2 morel TAMPA Adventure Island will open Saturday for its ninth season with a new "Rambling Bayou" float-trip attraction and an evening concert by recording artist Richard Marx. The newest attraction offers an experience reminiscent of a leisurely float trip down a gentle river, spokeswoman Glenda Gilmore said. "At one point, visitors can choose between two different waterways for a variety of surprises," she said. The shorter route provides "some extra fun" in a faster current, she said.

World (TjnnrrKrrv Famous! 1825 4th. St. North St. Petersburg 896-3186 cans who on average die each year prior to age 70, about 59,000, or 42 percent, would not die if black Americans had the same death rates as white Americans," Nick-ens told a news conference last week on minority health. AIDS is one of the more recent diseases that seem to afflict blacks and Hispanics in a different way than they do whites.

"In whites, AIDS is overwhelmingly a disease of bisexual and homosexual males," Nickens said. But among blacks and Hispanics, "AIDS is a disease of families," he said. "There are dramatic disproportions among women, children and heterosexuals." Some three-quarters of the women with AIDS are black or Hispanic, Nickens said, as are about 80 percent of the children with the disease. "The mother can't take care of the child with AIDS, because she is also sick, and the father may be sick, too." AIDS in the minority populations provides public-health officials "with a much more complex set of challenges," Nickens said. hope that their program can help more black men and women gain control of their high blood pressure.

HealthPITCH is following in the steps of a pilot program that last year made the rounds of the District of Columbia and 13 southeastern states. During its swing through the Southeast, HealthPITCH screened 1,900 people and found 391 cases of high blood pressure. Other illnesses High blood pressure is not the only condition that strikes blacks more often than it does whites in the United States. "Blacks tend to die of many of the same diseases that whites do, but at a greater rate," says Dr. Herbert Nickens, director of the Health and Human Service's Office of Minority Health.

Cancer, stroke, cirrhosis (or liver disease), diabetes, infant mortality and violent death (particularly homicide) all occur at higher rates among the black population than they do among whites. "Of the 140,000 black Ameri High Blood Pressure Education Program run by the NHLBI. Southeastern black women "are also more likely to take medication (for high blood pressure) than people in all other parts of the country," Roccella said. "Yet black women in the Southeast are less likely than their black counterparts or their white counterparts to control their blood pressure." One reason seems to be that black women get into the healthcare system for treatment of their high blood pressure, "but often don't stay there," for financial reasons, said the University of Maryland's Saunders. Obesity is another problem that may help contribute to the difficulty of controlling high blood pressure, particularly among black women in the Southeast.

The National Center for Health Statistics has found that 71 percent of these black women with high blood pressure are obese, compared with 46 percent of hypertensive white women living in the Southeast. Diet and cooking methods may also help raise the incidence of high blood pressure in the Southeastern states. "It may be that potassium intake is less in the Southeast," said NIH's Roccella. "We're not sure. It may also be the way they prepare their food; they may boil the potassium out." "Many blacks are also salt-sensitive, much more so than whites," said Saunders.

As for black men, they have a double problem, Saunders said. They are the least likely of any group to be aware of their high blood pressure, and studies show that they are 33 times more likely to have high blood pressure than are white men. And even when black men do know about their condition, they often don't stick with treatment to control it, Saunders said. The sponsors of HealthPITCH ty School of Medicine in Boston suggest biological differences that might account for the higher risk in blacks. They have identified a narrowing of large "branch" arteries in the skull, primarily among blacks and women.

People with these narrowed branch arteries in the brain were more likely to have high blood pressure than those without the harrowing, according to Dr. Louis R. Caplan, chairman of the neurology department at Tufts. But environmental factors may also play a role. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has identified a so-called "stroke belt" of the Southeast, which includes Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Blacks and whites in these areas suffer more high blood pressure and as a result more complications from the condition than do people in other regions of the country. In the Southeast, for example, the death rate for strokes for black males is 125 per 100,000 people compared with 67 deaths per 100,000 for the total population and 87 deaths per 100,000 for black men living in other regions. Black women living in the Southeast also lead the nation in stroke deaths with 98 per 100,000 dying, compared with 77 per 100,000 among black women liv-, ing in other regions of the country nd 62 per 100,000 for white women. What puzzles researchers is that studies show that black wom-en living in the Southeast are among the best educated in the nation about the problems of high 1 blood pressure. "Black women are Imore likely to be aware of their condition compared to all other categories," says Dr.

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