My ddd is broken

And it is difficult to live without it!  I've posted the following on 
the gentoo forums.  I hope someone on this list may have an idea.  I've 
used ddd for years with few problems.  Thanks,
Fred

If I set a breakpoint in the gdb console window, ddd goes to sleep. If I 
then push the Interrupt button, it prints in the console window

^C^CQuit
not set

I've tried backing out of the latest ddd, gdb, and python, but none of 
those changes made a difference. I'm looking for ideas on what to look 
for or try. Although ddd is unusable as no matter what you doe it 
sleeps, gdb does work just fine. It's just that I'm used to ddd and find 
it much more convenient to use. It seems that ddd is changing 
~/.ddd/init in ways that are different than in the past.

I should have mentioned, if after the interrupt and the message in 
quotes above, if I try to exit ddd, I get this message: "GDB is still 
busy. Exit anyway (and kill it)?" so the problem seems to be in the 
interaction of ddd with gdb.

I have found an unsatisfactory "solution". If I "rm -rf ~/.ddd" and 
start ddd in a terminal window with no & at the end. I can set a 
breakpoint and the code will run. Frequently it hangs, but <cntrl c> in 
the terminal where ddd was started seems to get things going again. When 
it is hung, there is a message at the bottom of the ddd display saying 
"Disassembling location 0x408786 to 0x408886". Does all this suggest 
anything at all?

Wrong again!  Even this last "solution" is not working.