ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 7, 1990                   TAG: 9005070006
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


PEOPLE

Don Johnson has landed in hot water in a dispute over a hot tub.

The actor refused to pay a $20,762 bill for a hot tub in his residence in Aspen, Colo., saying it didn't work. A plumbing supplier sued Johnson in July for the money, and a Pitkin County judge recently ordered the actor to pay up.

The default judgment in favor of Kamen Supplies came after Johnson's lawyers failed to respond to the lawsuit.

Johnson said he didn't know about the suit because it got mixed with other papers in a lawsuit filed against him by Star magazine. That lawsuit was over shots fired at a helicopter hired by the magazine to shoot pictures of Johnson's wedding to actress Melanie Griffith in June.

Angela Lansbury is ready to move on and `Murder, She Wrote' is entering its final chapters. Shooting for the seventh and final season of the CBS series begins in July.

"Too much of a good thing is not good for the health," she said in the May 12-18 issue of TV Guide magazine.

Lansbury will star in only 13 episodes next season and introduce the other nine. Then she'll move on to comedy, a half-hour show in which she will star in the fall of 1991.

Joseph Wambaugh, the former policeman known for books describing society's violent side, has taken a softer approach in his 12th book, a cynical novel about his hometown.

"The Golden Orange" takes on wealthy beachfront suburbia in Orange County and focuses on the fictional life of ex-Newport Beach policeman Winston "Winnie" Farlowe.

It's quite a change from his police-oriented books, such as "The Blue Knight," "The New Centurians" and "The Choirboys."

"You find a kinder, gentler Joe Wambaugh," he said in a recent interview. That gentler approach "just seemed appropriate. I didn't think about it consciously. I just started writing and that's how it came out."



 by CNB