It just may have been an ordinary week for a comic who has built his career around the plaint, "I don't get no respect." Shortly after Rodney Dangerfield taped 31 days of material for New York Telephone's Dial-A-Joke, 170,000 Manhattan phones went dead because of a fire in the company switching station. No matter, really, because the New York Daily News, which was to run advertisements and a phone number for the feature, was shut down by a strike. Dangerfield remained calmly pessimistic through it all. Said the cut-off comic to his nightclub audience in Manhattan at week's end: "Today was a good day. I got a dial tone."
Actor Ernest Borgnine has never been in demand for romantic leads, but his get-up for The Devil's Rain, an occult thriller just filmed in Durango, Mexico, gives eyesore new meaning. In the movie, which co-stars Ida Lupino and William Shatner, Borgnine returns from the dead as a disciple of Satan—with help from a three-hour facial by the makeup experts for Planet of the Apes. The citizens of Durango have seen 65 movies shot in their town, but this one has managed to unnerve them. Because of the film's supernatural goings on, people working near the sets have blamed the devil's rainmakers for everything from bad weather to leaky canoes. They left the 6-ft. Borgnine pretty much alone. Says the grinning actor: "Guess I'm lucky as the devil."
"How much I could have done for my country had I been given just 'musical freedom,' " lamented Soviet Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, 47, in a letter written recently to Le Monde. His claim was vindicated by his U.S. conducting debut before an audience of 2,700 at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington. Rostropovich, who had encountered growing repression in his homeland because of his loyalty to Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and other dissident artists, left the Soviet Union in May with his wife, Soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. The maestro's troubles seemed almost distant, however, as he guided an exuberant National Symphony Orchestra through an evening of Tchaikovsky for an audience that included another recent arrival from the U.S.S.R., Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. It was a rare evening. Said Washington Star-News Critic Irving Lowens: "In terms of enthusiasm and adulation aroused, about the only thing the concert can be compared to is the Second Coming."
Ben Cartwright, move over. NBC'S Columbo, the disheveled shamus portrayed by Peter Folk, has joined ranks with Bonanza and I Love Lucy reruns as one of America's top TV exports. Now shown in 75 countries, the series has just been voted Japan's most popular television show in a poll conducted by the Japanese TV Guide. Falk's international success has not come smoothly, however. When Rumania's state TV network ran out of shows, fans of the raincoated detective began to protest, and the beleaguered network cabled Universal Studios for temporary relief. Said Falk in Hollywood last week: "The Rumanian government got me to tape an announcement in Rumanian saying, 'Just be patient; there'll be more Columbos. Hold tight.' They flew here with a camera crew and gave me a piece of paper with what to say, and I did it." When Falk's pidgin Rumanian is heard back home, the crisis may be quickly resolved.