Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 27, 1995 TAG: 9507270094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The glad-handing by James Lovell, the real astronaut, and Tom Hanks, the actor, may have done the nation's beleaguered space program some good, and it didn't hurt the summer movie blockbuster based on the perilous 1970 moon shot.
``It's never too late to get on that old celebrity mule train and push a movie,'' Hanks, with appropriate self-deprecation, told a luncheon at the National Press Club.
And, in a public-relations agent's dream, the visit was highlighted by Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, who received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor from President Clinton in the Oval Office - with Hanks close by.
Hanks played it cool and stood to the side as Clinton and Lovell chatted after the presentation ceremony. But the president, at the urging of White House photographers, coaxed the star into the picture briefly for what clearly was the shot of the day.
Hanks had been in the Oval Office before; at least his image as Forrest Gump, in another box-office sensation, had been transplanted there by special effects for meetings with Presidents Johnson and Nixon.
Clinton praised the spirit of the endangered Apollo 13 flight, epitomized by the words of mission controller Gene Krantz: ``Failure is not an option.''
``In many ways,'' Clinton said, the words ``have become, for millions of Americans seeing that movie, a statement of the national purpose we all need as we move toward a new century and uncharted time here on Earth.''
The movie ``Apollo 13'' is based on the harrowing space mission of the same name, during which an external oxygen tank exploded, threatening the flight and prompting a tense trip around the moon, without the planned landing, and a hazardous return home for the three-man crew.
by CNB