Making the "Panel" Background White?

[Randy Kramer]

How do I make the background of the panels white?

I try to set the colors, using, for example,
xterm=normal=black,white:... in my ~/.mc/ini file, and it definitely
affects the colors, but the best I can do is get a gray panel (black
text on gray).  There are some other color oddities too -- when I
specify yellow as the background for "directory" it shows up as red (as
does red).

I am running GNU Midnight Commander 4.5.55 using S-lang library with
terminfo database, on Mandrake 8.1, but I have the same problems with MC
on Mandrake 7.2.

Randy Kramer