Literary Pick (****)

 Sofia: Living and Loving: Her Own Story

-by A.E. Hotchner 

 

Crossbay Movie Theatre

UA Crossbay 

9411 Rockaway Boulevard, Ozone Park, NY 11417

 

 

The 1,425-seat Cross Bay Theatre opened in December 1924. Located on the corner of Rockaway and Woodhaven Boulevards, the theatre was later known as the Crossbay. It was a Randforce house and then was operated by United Artists. In the 1970s the auditorium was twinned, and in the early 1980s a third auditorium was built in space once occupied by retail stores.

The UA Crossbay closed on June 23, 2005, and the building was converted to retail. 

-Cinema Treasures

 

Literary Pick (****)

 Keep The Faith

-Faith Evans

 

Gavin MacLeod

Gavin MacLeod of 'Love Boat' and 'Mary Tyler Moore' fame dead at 90

LOS ANGELES — Gavin MacLeod, a sitcom veteran who played seaman "Happy" Haines on "McHale's Navy," Murray on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the very different, vaguely patrician Captain Stubing on "The Love Boat," has died. He was 90.

MacLeod's nephew, Mark See, confirmed his death to Variety.

MacLeod played a relatively minor character on ABC hit "McHale's Navy," starring Ernest Borgnine, but as newswriter Murray Slaughter, he was certainly one of the stars of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," appearing in every one of the classic comedy's 168 episodes during its 1970-77 run on CBS. Murray was married to Marie (Joyce Bulifant) but was in love with Moore's Mary Richards. His desk was right next to Mary's in the WGN newsroom, so MacLeod was frequently in the shot during the sitcom, and Murray, like all the other characters, was richly developed — a hallmark of MTM shows.

MacLeod originally tried out for the part of Lou Grant, which went to Ed Asner, but claimed to be happy that he ended up playing Murray. He also auditioned for the role of Archie Bunker on "All in the Family," but of reading the script for the first time, he wrote in his memoir, "Immediately I thought, 'This is not the script for me. The character is too much of a bigot. I can't say these things.' " When Norman Lear called the actor to say that Carroll O'Connor had gotten the part, MacLeod was relieved.

The "Moore" cast — MacLeod, Asner, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman, Betty White and Georgia Engel (Ted Knight had died in 1986) — reminisced with Moore in 2002 on CBS' "The Mary Tyler Moore Reunion."

Asner, one of two surviving members of the cast, said Saturday that his "heart is broken."

"Gavin was my brother, my partner in crime (and food) and my comic conspirator," he wrote in a tweet. "I will see you in a bit Gavin. Tell the gang I will see them in a bit. Betty! It’s just you and me now."

My heart is broken. Gavin was my brother, my partner in crime (and food) and my comic conspirator. I will see you in a bit Gavin. Tell the gang I will see them in a bit. Betty! It’s just you and me now. pic.twitter.com/se4fwh7G1G

— Ed Asner (@TheOnlyEdAsner) May 29, 2021

MacLeod had the great fortune to roll right from one hit show to another in 1977, when "Moore" ended and ABC's "The Love Boat" began. The hourlong romantic comedy set on a cruise ship ran for 10 years. Even after the end of the voyage in 1987, the actor returned for telepic "The Love Boat: A Valentine Voyage" in 1990 and for the "Reunion" episode of rebooted series "Love Boat: The Next Wave" in 1998.

MacLeod may, indeed, hold a record for consecutive long-running series: He went straight from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (168 episodes) to "The Love Boat" (249 episodes). The actor's Captain Stubing was known for his signature salute.

The New York Times said in 2010: "Perhaps no actor has embraced a signature role the way Mr. MacLeod has with Captain Stubing. Since 'The Love Boat' went off the air, he has been a spokesman for Princess Cruises."

In a statement Saturday, the cruise line called him "our beloved global ambassador, dearest friend and treasured member of the Princess Cruises family for more than 35 years."

In 1997, the actor joined the rest of "The Love Boat" cast on "Oprah" in what was the first full cast appearance since the show was canceled. Another cast reunion occurred in 2013 on "The Talk."

MacLeod was born Allan George See in Mount Kisco, N.Y. His mother worked for Reader's Digest, while his father was an electrician who was part Chippewa. He grew up in Pleasantville, New York, and went to Ithaca College, where he studied acting and graduated in 1952. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he moved to New York City and worked at Radio City Music Hall as an usher and elevator operator while seeking work as an actor. During this time he changed his name. He lost his hair early, which proved a barrier as a young man looking for acting work, but a hairpiece solved the problem.

After a few uncredited film roles, MacLeod made his credited big screen debut in the 1958 Susan Hayward vehicle "I Want to Live," playing a police lieutenant, then played a G.I. in Gregory Peck starrer "Pork Chop Hill" the next year. His supporting role in Blake Edwards' World War II comedy "Operation Petticoat," starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis and focusing on the chaotic goings on aboard a submarine, gave the young actor a flavor of what he would be doing a few years later on "McHale's Navy." In the meantime he appeared in the 1960 thriller "Twelve Hours to Kill," which starred future "I Dream of Jeannie" star Barbara Eden; Blake Edwards' musical comedy "High Time," starring Bing Crosby and Fabian; and the critically hailed but now forgotten Korean War film "War Hunt." He also did a boatload of guest appearances on TV before his stint on "McHale's Navy."

-NBC News

Literary Pick (****)

 I Will Find You

-Joanna Connors

 

Charles Grodin (1935-2021)

Charles Grodin, Star of ‘Beethoven’ and ‘Heartbreak Kid,’ Dies at 86 

A familiar face who was especially adept at deadpan comedy, he also appeared on Broadway in “Same Time, Next Year,” wrote books and had his own talk show. 

The actor Charles Grodin with the title dog in the hit 1992 family movie “Beethoven.” “I don’t complain,” he said, “when the editor chooses my worst take because it’s the dog’s best take.”Credit...via Photofest

Charles Grodin, the versatile actor familiar from “Same Time, Next Year” on Broadway, popular movies like “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Midnight Run” and “Beethoven” and numerous television appearances, died on Tuesday at his home in Wilton, Conn. He was 86.

His son, Nicholas, said the cause was bone marrow cancer.

With a great sense of deadpan comedy and the kind of Everyman good looks that lend themselves to playing businessmen or curmudgeonly fathers, Mr. Grodin found plenty of work as a supporting player and the occasional lead. He also had his own talk show for a time in the 1990s and was a frequent guest on the talk shows of others, making 36 appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and more than 40 on David Letterman’s NBC and CBS shows combined.

Mr. Grodin with his co-star, Ellen Burstyn, and his director, Gene Saks, in 1975 at the first rehearsal for the Broadway comedy “Same Time, Next Year.” The play was a hit and a turning point in Mr. Grodin’s career.Credit...Bettmann, via Getty Images

Mr. Grodin was a writer as well, with a number of plays and books to his credit. Though he never won a prestige acting award, he did win a writing Emmy for a 1977 Paul Simon television special, sharing it with Mr. Simon and six others.

Mr. Grodin, who dropped out of the University of Miami to pursue acting, had managed to land a smattering of stage and television roles when, in 1962, he received his first big break, landing a part in a Broadway comedy called “Tchin-Tchin,” which starred Anthony Quinn and Margaret Leighton.

“Walter Kerr called me impeccable,” Mr. Grodin wrote years later, recalling a review of the show that appeared in The New York Times. “It took a trip to the dictionary to understand he meant more than clean.”

 Another Broadway appearance came in 1964 in “Absence of a Cello.” Mr. Grodin’s next two Broadway credits were as a director, of “Lovers and Other Strangers” in 1968 and “Thieves” in 1974. Then, in 1975, came a breakthrough Broadway role opposite Ellen Burstyn in Bernard Slade’s “Same Time, Next Year,” a durable two-hander about a man and woman, each married to someone else, who meet once a year in the same inn room.

 

“The play needs actors of grace, depth and accomplishment, and has found them in Ellen Burstyn and Charles Grodin,” Clive Barnes wrote in a rave in The Times. “Miss Burstyn is so real, so lovely and so womanly that a man wants to hug her, and you hardly notice the exquisite finesse of her acting. It is underplaying of sheer virtuosity. Mr. Grodin is every bit her equal — a monument to male insecurity, gorgeously inept, and the kind of masculine dunderhead that every decent man aspires to be.”

The show ran for three and a half years, with an ever-changing cast; the two original stars left after seven months. Mr. Grodin by that point was in demand in Hollywood. (Ms. Burstyn reprised the role in a 1978 film adaptation, but this time opposite Alan Alda in the Grodin role.)

 Mr. Grodin had already appeared in Mike Nichols’s “Catch-22” in 1970 and had turned in one of his better-known film performances in the 1972 comic romance “The Heartbreak Kid,” in which he played a self-absorbed sporting goods salesman who marries in haste, immediately loses interest in his bride (Jeannie Berlin), and falls in love with another woman (Cybill Shepherd) on his honeymoon. (Elaine May, Mr. Nichols’s longtime comedy partner and Ms. Berlin’s mother, directed.)

 

In 1978 he had a supporting role in the Warren Beatty vehicle “Heaven Can Wait.” Another signature role was in the action comedy “Midnight Run” in 1988, in which Mr. Grodin played an accountant who has embezzled a fortune from the mob and is being pursued by a bounty hunter, played by Robert De Niro.

Though Mr. Grodin acted opposite stars like Mr. De Niro and Mr. Beatty, what may have been his best-known role found him working with a dog. The film was “Beethoven,” a family-friendly hit in 1992, and the dog was a St. Bernard. Mr. Grodin played a cranky father who did not exactly warm to the new household pet. In one memorable scene, he crawls into bed with what he thinks is his wife and is enjoying having the back of his neck licked until he realizes that the dog, not the wife, is his bedmate.

“You’ve ruined my life,” he growls at the beast. “You’ve ruined my furniture. You’ve ruined my clothes. My family likes you more than they like me. Why? All you do is drool and shed and eat.”

The next year he reprised the role in “Beethoven’s 2nd.” If he was frequently upstaged by the title character in these films, he took it in stride.

“I don’t complain when the editor chooses my worst take because it’s the dog’s best take,” he told The Kansas City Star when the sequel came out.

Charles Sidney Grodin was born on April 21, 1935, in Pittsburgh. His father, Ted, was a merchant who dealt in sewing notions, and his mother, Lena (Singer) Grodin, was a homemaker.

He grew up in Pittsburgh and tried the University of Pittsburgh, thinking he might want to be a journalist. But he soon rejected that idea.

“I imagined that someday an editor might tell me to ask someone who had lost a loved one how they felt,” he wrote in a 2011 essay for Backstage magazine. “I see that all the time on the news now. Not for me.”

He often said that the 1951 movie “A Place in the Sun,” which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, caused him to shift his focus to acting.

“It was two things,” he told the Television Academy Foundation in an oral history. “One is I think I developed an overwhelming crush on Elizabeth Taylor. And two, Montgomery Clift made acting look like, ‘Gee, well that looks pretty easy — just a guy talking.’”

 

After six months at the University of Miami, he worked at the Pittsburgh Playhouse for a year and a half, then found his way to New York. From 1956 to 1959 he studied with Uta Hagen, though he often found himself questioning her methods, which he said annoyed her.

Mr. Grodin made guest appearances on “Shane,” “The Virginian” and other 1960s TV series before landing his first significant film role, as an obstetrician, in the 1968 horror hit “Rosemary’s Baby.”

In 1976 he played an unlikable oilman in a remake of “King Kong,” with some reluctance.

“I wanted to play the love interest with Jessica Lange,” he said. “I didn’t want to be the guy responsible for the death of the most beloved animal outside of Bambi. But they wanted me for the bad guy.”

By popular demand, his character meets a gruesome end.

“The only thing they changed after the first screening, I was told, is when Kong got loose and tried to step on me and kill me and missed,” he said. “The audience was so disappointed that they had to recut it.”

Mr. Grodin showed a different side in the mid-1990s when he hosted “The Charles Grodin Show” on the cable channel CNBC.

“They brought me in there to be a humorist,” he said in the oral history, “but pretty quickly I got caught up in social issues, and the show became just as much that, if not dominantly that. Some people like it better when you’re funny, and some people prefer that you’re taking cameras up to prisons and trying to help people who shouldn’t be in prison.”

Nicholas Grodin said his father had particularly been proud of his work for the Innocence Project, the prison justice organization, and related causes, and his work for groups that help homeless people.

After his talk show ended in 1998, Mr. Grodin largely stepped away from show business for a dozen years. Then he began to take roles again, including a recurring one on “Louie,” the comedian Louis C.K.’s series.

Mr. Grodin wrote several memoirs full of anecdotes from his career, including “It Would Be So Nice if You Weren’t Here: My Journey Through Show Business” (1989) and “We’re Ready for You, Mr. Grodin: Behind the Scenes at Talk Shows, Movies and Elsewhere” (1994).

His first marriage, to Julie Ferguson, ended in divorce. In 1983 he married Elissa Durwood, who survives him, along with his son, who is from his second marriage; a daughter from his first marriage, the comedian Marion Grodin; and a granddaughter.

 

A 1985 anecdote Mr. Grodin related on Mr. Letterman’s show was typical of the breath of fresh, if offbeat, air he brought to those appearances. He told Mr. Letterman that he had been gratified when, walking through the lobby on his way to the studio, the crowd that had lined up to get into the show burst into applause.

“I turned around to smile,” he said, “and they weren’t applauding me. There was a duck in a tuxedo walking by, and they were applauding the duck.

“But,” he added, “for the moment that I thought they were applauding me, it was a lovely, lovely moment.”

He offered no explanation for the presence of the duck.

-NYT

 

Stephan’s Folly

What words? Plush, lavish, regal, colorful … epic! This 1965 Palm Springs time capsule home — which was redecorated in glamorous 1969 style by the home’s second owner Jack Stephan, “Plumber to the Stars” — is currently listed for sale by Matthew Reader of Paul Kaplan Group. Almost all of the home’s 1969 decor and furnishings remain intact. Back in 1969, the interior redesign cost $150,000 – that’s a whopping $968,321 today! You will be amazed, we promise — thanks to the 23 photos, courtesy Lance Gerber of Lance Gerber Studio.

Jack Stephan founded his first business, Jack Stephan Plumbing & Heating, in 1946, and Adee Plumbing & Heating in 1949. The company is still in business, run by two of his sons. By the time he bought the house and redecorated it in 1969, his business must have been booming, because the decorators working on this house seem to have been given a blank check. Even so, Jack Stephan seems to have been bemused by his own extravagance and dubbed his estate “Stephan’s Folly.”

• Jack Stephan died in 2014. He was such a memorable fixture, the Los Angeles Times wrote a lengthy obituary here.
• Kinda sorta reminds us of our 2014 story about the 1962 time capsule house of Mel Brown — Furniture King of Los Angeles.

 And the “Adee Do!” in our headline? That’s from Stephan’s local TV commercials. What a hoot! NOTE: That’s actor Wally Sherwin in the commercial, not Mr. Stephan.

This house — it’s fantastique! From the listing:

• Price: $879,000
• Year built: 1965
• Square footage: 3,250
• Bedrooms: 3
• Bathrooms: 5

This grand 3,250 square foot estate style home is a showcase of design and Palm Springs style. This exceptional mid-century property was designed by architect Robert Lewis and constructed in 1965, and it is located in Deepwell Estates, one of the most desirable neighborhoods in South Palm Springs. This impressive home was made for entertaining, and it is rich in local history. Deepwell had many celebrity residents, and Loretta Young, Julie London, Jack Webb, Eva Gabor, Liberace, and Elizabeth Taylor all lived on Manzanita at one time.

The current incredible interior was designed and installed in 1971 [note, Matthew says further research indicates: 1969], and every surface has been meticulously maintained and preserved. The home was the 2015 recipient of the PS ModCom’s prestigious Residential Preservation Award.

This special home is centered around a kidney-shaped pool, and it features a sunken living room, curved wet bar, three bedrooms, den (or 4th bedroom), five bathrooms, pool cabana room, and an oversized garage for classic cars.

 

Stephan’s Folly has been so extraordinarily preserved that the Palm Springs Modern Committee just awarded its current owner of the home — Ross A. Klein — with a Residential Preservation Award. Realtor Matthew Reader, who sold the house to Klein, made the presentation and shared his introductory speech. It includes more background information (edited a bit by us for use here):

Adee do! Those words were drilled into pop-culture posterity thanks to Jack Stephan, a flamboyant entrepreneur with a flair for marketing who founded two of the region’s most heavily advertised plumbing companies in Southern California: Adee and Stephan’s Heating and Plumbing.

This fabulous residence, constructed in 1965, was designed by Robert Lewis & Associates. Originally built for Dr. & Mrs. Sanford Ehrens, it was later purchased by “Plumber to the Stars” Jack Stephan in 1969, who gave it the name Stephan’s Folly. Mr. Stephan founded Jack Stephan Plumbing & Heating in 1946, and Adee Plumbing & Heating in 1949. He passed away in 2014 at the age of 96 and left the home to his third wife of forty-five years, Barbara.

Ross purchased the home sight unseen after he was encouraged by yours truly of The Paul Kaplan Group. I was literally face-timing Ross from the house. He said it was love at first sight.

 Ross says he was inspired to buy the house because of the history of the previous owners and the exquisitely maintained period interior decor and custom furnishings. The house has amazing color theory and is a stunning example of early 70s design. It feels like an immersive piece of art. There are 16 different types of wallpaper and fabric cohabitating in perfect harmony from red to orange, and pink to fuchsia. Every lampshade and light bulb is spec’d to match the light fixture.

 The Stephans were incredibly social and many great card games and parties of Palm Springs luminaries were hosted at the house.  Mrs. Stephan was very generous in leaving many period accessories in the home from books and games, and cards and shufflers, to the Jean Naté and chafing trays for guests!  In keeping with his attention-grabbing advertising style, Stephan drove Rolls-Royces and maintained a flashy wardrobe, including mega-carat diamonds and suits in his favorite color, red.

 The interior is almost entirely original. In fact, the only items not original to the design are some of the appliances that were replaced over time. The house was the epitome of chic luxury and Palm Springs style.

 Every piece of furniture was custom designed, with many pieces featuring hand-applied gold leaf. There are matching fixtures in 23 karat gold, and up-to-date modern luxuries like electric drapes, a movie screen, 12 carousel 8-Track Player, and NuTone Sound System. There is even a professional salon hair dryer.

In contrast, the exterior is much more restrained than the interior. While the house was always “please, no smoking,” guests were given gold leafed wooden matchboxes inscribed with “Stephan’s Folly.”

On the phone with Matthew Reader, Pam discussed how to categorize the home’s interior design. How about: Arabian Nights meets Moroccan meets Hollywood Regency Taken As Far As it Can Go meets…. Steak House?! Indeed, Matthew says that everytime he goes into the house he immediately starts craving a steak, a baked potato and a Manhattan. “Even at eight o’clock in the morning,” he laughed. He underscores that inside, smoking was never allowed — the house does not feel musty or old. Pam declares that this home may not really be a “time capsule” — it’s a “time machine.”

Reader also told us that it’s believed that the interior redesign in 1969 cost $150,000. We went over to the online CPI Inflation calculator and that translated to nearly a million dollars ($968,321) today. That said, we don’t think you could even replicate these interiors today — some of these materials would be very difficult, and expensive, to find!

 Suffice to say: We love it. Fingers crossed the new buyers do, too, and don’t change a thing.
-Retro Renovation

Literary Pick (****)

You Get So Alone At Time That It Just Makes Sense

-Charles Bukowski

Olympia Dukakis Dies: ‘Moonstruck’ Oscar Winner Was 89

The beloved screen and stage actress passed away on Saturday morning, as confirmed by her brother Apollo Dukakis.

 

Beloved screen and stage actress Olympia Dukakis died May 1 at the age of 89. The news of the Oscar winner’s passing was shared by her brother, Apollo Dukakis, on Facebook. “My beloved sister, Olympia Dukakis, passed away this morning in New York City. After many months of failing health she is finally at peace and with her Louis,” Apollo wrote. Her husband, actor Louis Zorich, died in 2018 at the age of 93.

Olympia Dukakis starred in more than 130 stage productions, as well as more than 60 films and 50 television series. She won her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1988 for her role in “Moonstruck” as Rose Castorini. She won a Golden Globe for the film as well, and received Emmy Award nominations for “Lucky Day” (1991), “More Tales of the City” (1998), and “Joan of Arc” (1999). She released an autobiography, “Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress,” in 2003. Last year, a feature-length documentary about her life, titled “Olympia,” was also released in the U.S.

 

Her other film credits include “Steel Magnolias,” “Away from Her,” “In the Land of Women,” “Working Girl,” “The Cemetery Club,” “Look Who’s Talking Now,” “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “7 Chinese Brothers,” and many more. She also starred in the TV series “Tales of the City,” “Switch,” “Forgive Me,” “Bored to Death,” “Center of the Universe,” and “Search for Tomorrow.”

At a Sarasota Film Festival tribute in 2016, Dukakis talked about the influential role director Norman Jewison’s “Moonstruck” had on her life as an actress, and how the film made her a star in her late 50s. She said up until that point in her career, “My daughter was going to college on credit cards. I was doing every TV movie I could get my hands on. My husband had been in a terrible accident and for five years he didn’t work. I was hustling. It was not a pretty picture.” Dukakis said that during filming, Jewison predicted that she would win an Academy Award for “Moonstruck.” But Dukakis said she wasn’t stirred by the sentiment. “Only out of respect, I didn’t say, ‘You’re an idiot,’ ” she said. “Win an Academy Award for playing Rose? I don’t think so. And it turned out that he was right.”

Along with her film honors, she won an Obie Award for Best Actress in 1963 for her Off-Broadway performance in Bertolt Brecht’s “Man Equals Man.”

-Indie Wire

Literary Pick (****)

 Becoming Odyssa

-Jennifer Pharr Davis

 

Crazy Eddie

‘Virginia Woolf,’ ‘Goldbergs’ star George Segal dies at 87

LOS ANGELES (AP) — George Segal, the banjo player turned actor who was nominated for an Oscar for 1966's “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and worked into his late 80s on the ABC sitcom “The Goldbergs,” died Tuesday in Santa Rosa, California, his wife said.

“The family is devastated to announce that this morning George Segal passed away due to complications from bypass surgery," Sonia Segal said in a statement. He was 87.

George Segal was always best known as a comic actor, becoming one of the screen's biggest stars in the 1970s when lighthearted adult comedies thrived.

But his most famous role was in a harrowing drama, “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", based on Edward Albee's acclaimed play.

He was the last surviving credited member of the tiny cast, all four of whom were nominated for Academy Awards: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for starring roles, Sandy Dennis and Segal for supporting performances. The women won Oscars, the men did not.

To younger audiences, he was better known for playing magazine publisher Jack Gallo on the long-running NBC series “Just Shoot Me" from 1997 to 2003, and as grandfather Albert “Pops” Solomon on the “The Goldbergs” since 2013.

“Today we lost a legend. It was a true honor being a small part of George Segal’s amazing legacy," said “Goldbergs” creator Adam Goldberg, who based the show on his 1980s childhood. “By pure fate, I ended up casting the perfect person to play Pops. Just like my grandfather, George was a kid at heart with a magical spark.”

In his Hollywood prime, he played a stuffy intellectual opposite Barbra Streisand's freewheeling prostitute in 1970's “The Owl and the Pussycat;" a cheating husband opposite Glenda Jackson in 1973's “A Touch of Class;” a hopeless gambler opposite Elliot Gould in director Robert Altman’s 1974 “California Split;" and a bank-robbing suburbanite opposite Jane Fonda in 1977's “Fun with Dick and Jane.”

Groomed to be a handsome leading man, Segal's profile had been rising steadily since his first movie, 1961's “The Young Doctors” in which he had ninth billing. His first starring performance came in “King Rat” as a nefarious inmate at a Japanese prison camp during World War II.

In “Virginia Woolf,” he played Nick, one half of a young couple invited over for drinks and to witness the bitterness and frustration of a middle-aged couple.

Director Mike Nichols needed someone who would get the approval of star Elizabeth Taylor, and turned to Segal when Robert Redford turned him down.

According to Nichols' biographer Mark Harris, the director said Segal was “close enough to the young god he needed to be for Elizabeth, and witty enough and funny enough to deal with all that humiliation.”

Segal died 10 years to the day after Taylor.

He rode the film to a long run of stardom. Then in the late 1970s, “Jaws” and other action films changed the nature of Hollywood movies, and the light comedies that Segal excelled in became passe.

“Then I got a little older,” he said in a 1998 interview. “I started playing urban father roles. And that guy sort of turned into Chevy Chase, and after that there was really no place to go.”

Except for the 1989 hit “Look Who’s Talking,” Segal’s films in the 1980s and 1990s were lackluster. He turned to television and starred in two failed series, “Take Five” and “Murphy’s Law.”

Then he found success in 1997 with the David Spade sitcom “Just Shoot Me” in which he played Gallo, who despite his gruff manner hires his daughter (Laura San Giacomo) and keeps Spade’s worthless office boy character on his payroll simply out of a sense of affection for both.

Series co-star Brian Posehn was one of many paying Segal tribute Tuesday night.

“I grew up watching him, total old school charm, effortless comedic timing,” Segal's “Just Shoot Me” Posehn said. “Doing scenes with him was one of the highlights of my life, but getting to know him a little and making the legend laugh was even cooler.”

Throughout his long acting career, Segal played the banjo for fun, becoming quite accomplished on the instrument he had first picked up as a boy. He performed with his own Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band.

Born in 1934 in Great Neck, New York, the third son of a malt and hops dealer, Segal began entertaining at the age of 8, performing magic tricks for neighborhood children.

He attended a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania and as an undergraduate at Columbia University organized “Bruno Linch and His Imperial Band,” for which he also played banjo.

After graduating Segal worked non-salary at the New York theater Circle in the Square, doing everything from ticket taking to understudy acting. He studied drama with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen, and made his first professional acting appearance off-Broadway in Moliere’s “Don Juan.” It lasted one night.

After a stint on Broadway in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” he was drafted into the Army. Discharged in 1957, he returned to the stage and would begin getting small film roles.

In 1956 Segal married television story editor Marion Sobel and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Polly, before divorcing in 1981.

He married his second wife, Linda Rogoff, in London in 1982 and was devastated when she died of a stomach disease 14 years later.

“It was a time when I said, `It’s not adding up; I don’t get it anymore,” he recalled to an interviewer in 1999. “With Linda dying, I lost interest in everything. I worked just to make a living. Acting, like life, became a joyless job.”

Eventually he reconnected with Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, who had been his girlfriend in high school some 45 years earlier. They talked on the telephone, sometimes as long as six hours, and were married just a few months after reuniting.

“She helped me through the worst days of my life just listening to me unload,” Segal said in 1999. “It was magic.”

-Buffalo News

Bukowski Kicking Linda

 

Vestron Video

 

Vestron Video was the main subsidiary of Vestron, Inc., a home video company based in Stamford, Connecticut, that was active from 1981 to 1992, and is considered to have been a pioneer in the home video market. 

-Wikipedia

Literary Pick (**)

 Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World

-Haruki Murakami

 

Cepillín

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) — One of Latin-America’s most famous clowns has died.

Ricardo González Gutiérrez, who was best known as Cepillín, died Sunday, according to the Mexico City portal Milenio.

According to the website, Gonzalez died of complications from spine surgery, including cardiac complications and pneumonia.

His son confirmed his father’s death on social media, asking for prayers for his father.

Cepillín was a staple on Spanish television for decades. He had his own children’s television show — El Show de Cepillin — which combined education and comedy and had the occasional Hollywood star appear as a guest. Lou Ferrigno, star of the wildly popular “Hulk” TV series appeared on the show, which aired in 18 countries.

Cepillín also appeared in several films and is credited with giving singer Yuri and actress Salma Hayek a break early in their careers.

Cepillín was also a Grammy-nominated singer. He released 25 albums of children’s songs and sold millions of copies worldwide.

Before he became a TV sensation, Cepillín was a children’s dentist. In order to keep children from crying or getting scared, he painted his face like a clown. His stage name roughly translates to “tiny toothbrush.”

Cepillin was born in Monterrey, Mexico.

He was 75.

-Border Report

What Would They Say

 

What Would They Say

John Travolta

What would they say if we up and ran away
From the roaring crowd
And the worn out city faces
Would they carry on and on
When they found out we were gone
Or would they let us go
Would they tag along or would they just...

Leave us alone, we'd live in the country
Leave us alone, we'd make it just fine
Happy in a one-room shack
And we'd not look back
Now would we

What would they do if they found out we were through
With the little lies and the downtown aggravations
That we traded them away for a quiet country day
That we had hoped to share
Would they try to find out where we were, or...

What would they say if we up and ran away

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Paul H Williams

What Would They Say lyrics © Sunset Squid Music, American Broadcasting Music, Inc

 

Proust Questionnaire

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature. Here is the basic Proust Questionnaire.

__1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness?

__2.__What is your greatest fear?

__3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

__4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others?

__5.__Which living person do you most admire?

__6.__What is your greatest extravagance?

__7.__What is your current state of mind?

__8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

__9.__On what occasion do you lie?

__10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance?

__11.__Which living person do you most despise?

__16.__When and where were you happiest?

__17.__Which talent would you most like to have?

__18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

__19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement?

__20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

__21.__Where would you most like to live?

__22.__What is your most treasured possession?

__23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

__24.__What is your favorite occupation?

__25.__What is your most marked characteristic?

__26.__What do you most value in your friends?

__27.__Who are your favorite writers?

__28.__Who is your hero of fiction?

__29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with?

__30.__Who are your heroes in real life?

__31.__What are your favorite names?

__32.__What is it that you most dislike?

__33.__What is your greatest regret?

__34.__How would you like to die?

__35.__What is your motto?

__12.__What is the quality you most like in a man?

__13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman?

__14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

__15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life?

__16.__When and where were you happiest?

__17.__Which talent would you most like to have?

__18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

__19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement?

__20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

__21.__Where would you most like to live?

__22.__What is your most treasured possession?

__23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

__24.__What is your favorite occupation?

__25.__What is your most marked characteristic?

__26.__What do you most value in your friends?

__27.__Who are your favorite writers?

__28.__Who is your hero of fiction?

__29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with?

__30.__Who are your heroes in real life?

__31.__What are your favorite names?

__32.__What is it that you most dislike?

__33.__What is your greatest regret?

__34.__How would you like to die?

__35.__What is your motto?

 

-Vanity Fair

Literary Pick (****)

 Inside Out 

-Demi Moore

There should be a movie made about the relationship she had with her mother.

Heartburn

Manhattan food writer Rachel Samstat and Washington, D.C. political columnist Mark Forman meet at a mutual friend's wedding. Both have been married before and Mark has a reputation for being a serial womanizer. After a whirlwind courtship, the two marry, despite Rachel's reservations. They purchase a dilapidated Georgetown townhouse and Rachel struggles to adapt to being a wife in Washington's political high society. The ongoing renovations of their house create some stress in Mark and Rachel's marriage, but they are brought closer together when Rachel discovers she is pregnant. Rachel experiences a difficult labor in which the baby's life is briefly threatened, but she gives birth to a healthy baby girl named Annie.

Soon after, Rachel discovers evidence of Mark's extramarital affair with socialite Thelma Rice during her pregnancy with her second child. She leaves him and takes their daughter to New York, where she moves in with her father and gets her job back as a food writer. Although she insists that she has left him for good, Rachel is dismayed when he fails to call her after several days. She inadvertently leads a burglar to a group therapy session she is attending in her therapist's apartment; he robs the group and takes Rachel's wedding ring. Just after, Mark arrives and asks her to come back, insisting he will never see Thelma again.

Rachel gives birth to their second child, but struggles to fully forgive Mark. She spreads a nasty rumor about Thelma having an infection (possibly herpes) but is caught out by Mark. The New York police return Rachel's wedding ring after they catch the burglar. When she takes it to the jeweler's to get the stone tightened, she discovers that Mark has bought a very expensive necklace, which coincides with Thelma's birthday. Realizing that he has returned to the affair, Rachel sells her wedding ring and leaves with both her children for New York, this time for good.

-Wiki
 

Literary Pick (****)

 Apropos of Nothing

-Woody Allen

Husband and Wives

 

Literary Pick (****)

 Unsinkable a Memoir

-Debbie Reynolds

Cicely Tyson

Cicely Tyson, Trailblazing Hollywood Icon, Has Died at 96

Cicely Tyson, the iconic actress who starred in Sounder and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and served as a pioneer for Black actresses, has died at the age of 96. The news was announced on Thursday, January 27 by Tyson’s longtime manager, Larry Thompson, and comes just two days after the release of Tyson’s memoir, Just As I Am. “I have managed Miss Tyson’s career for over 40 years, and each year was a privilege and blessing,” Thompson said in a statement. “Cicely thought of her new memoir as a Christmas tree decorated with all the ornaments of her personal and professional life. Today she placed the last ornament, a Star, on top of the tree.”

The Emmy, Tony, and Honorary Oscar-winning actress blazed a trail for Black actresses over the course of her storied and historic career, which spanned over seven decades. Tyson was born in East Harlem, New York in 1924 to parents who immigrated from Nevis in the West Indies. She was discovered by a photographer for Ebony magazine and worked as a model appearing in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar before transitioning to acting, landing her first role in the NBC television series Frontiers of Faith in 1951. Tyson made her film debut in 1957’s 12 Angry Men and would go on to carve out a career for herself marked by her commitment to playing strong, fully-realized characters, refusing to play roles that she thought were demeaning to Black women. After a brief hiatus from the film industry in the late 60s, Tyson returned to Hollywood in 1972 starring as Rebecca Morgan in the acclaimed film Sounder, earned Tyson an Oscar-nomination for Best Actress in 1973.

Tyson would go on to make history on the small screen, becoming the first Black actress to win a Primetime Emmy for her work in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1974. Over the course of her career, Tyson would earn 16 career Emmy nominations, including 5 in a row for her work as Ophelia Harkness in How To Get Away With Murder, with her most recent nomination coming in 2020. Tyson was also no stranger to the stage, appearing on Broadway throughout the late 60s during her Hollywood hiatus, and winning a Tony Award for her work in A Trip to Bountiful in 2013. In her later years, Tyson became the true embodiment of a living legend, often appearing dressed to the nines at events like Aretha Franklin’s funeral and the 2018 Academy Awards where she became the first Black actress to receive an Honorary Oscar. With grace and poise, Tyson served as a sterling example of the indomitable spirit and courageousness of the Black men and women who paved the way for younger generations. RIP.

 -Vulture

Literary Pick (****)

 Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century

-Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger

Larry King

Broadcasting Legend Larry King Is Dead at 87

Larry King, the legendary broadcaster known for his frank and approachable interviews, has died at the age of 87, according to a statement from his company, Ora Media. King died the morning of January 23 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, after being hospitalized for COVID-19 earlier this January. Born Lawrence Zeiger in Brooklyn, New York in 1933, King began his decades-long career in broadcast media at a Miami radio station in the 1950s, where he covered news, sports, and DJ’d. In the late 1970s, King graduated from the Miami market to a nationally syndicated nighttime radio show, which eventually led to his flagship interview series, Larry King Live on CNN. From 1985 to 2010, King interviewed everyone from sitting presidents and world leaders to tabloid-buzzy celebrities and UFO-sighting believers. King won two Peabody Awards, for his work in both radio and television. Throughout his career, he also poked fun at his persona with appearances as himself on shows like The Simpsons, 30 Rock, and Gravity Falls.

After departing from CNN in 2010, King founded Ora TV and continued conducting high-profile interviews on his new series, Larry King Now. In 2013, he also began airing a weekly politics-based interview series, Politicking With Larry King, both of which King worked on until his death. King is survived by his sons Larry Jr., Chance, and Cannon.

-Vulture.com

Literary Pick (*****)

Debbie: My Life 

-Debbie Reynolds

Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman, Oscar Winner and Sitcom Star, Dies at 94

The film and TV mainstay—who played memorable roles in classics like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Young Frankenstein—had a career that spanned seven decades.

 Creative Until You Die, a series of Hollywood Reporter profiles of nonagenarians who were still creatively active. When asked if she ever thought of retiring, Leachman uttered a direct and defiant response: “Fuck you.”

Cloris Leachman, whose career spanned seven decades, has passed away at the age of 94, her longtime manager told Variety Wednesday. Her most celebrated role was Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, for which she won two of her unprecedented eight Primetime Emmys. The imperious Phyllis was best summed up in one of Leachman’s Emmy-winning episodes, “The Lars Affair,” in which she considered the male bee: “Once the male bee . . . has serviced the queen, the male dies. All in all, not a bad system.”

As with the characters Lou Grant and Rhoda Morgenstern, Phyllis earned her own eponymous spin-off series that lasted two seasons.

But beyond Phyllis, Leachman is indelibly associated with numerous iconic series, classic episodes, and era-defining feature films. Most notably, she was little Timmy’s foster mother for a season of Lassie, she was the mother of a 6-year-old monster on “It’s a Good Life”—widely considered to be one of the 10 best Twilight Zone episodes—and she was Frau Blücher (insert horse whinny here) in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein. In 1972, she earned an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her shattering portrayal of lonely high-school coach’s wife Ruth Popper in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show. She reprised her character in Texasville, which was released in 1990.

Though she was in her twilight years, the sun never set on Leachman’s career. She began in the golden age of live television in the late 1940s, and in 2017 at the age of 91, she had a pivotal role in the buzzworthy supernatural Starz series American Gods, playing Zorya Vechernyaya, a sassy Old God out of Slavic mythology.

She never considered quitting acting. As Leachman shared in her 2009 memoir, Cloris, which she co-wrote with George Englund—to whom she was married from 1953 to 1979; they had five children—her mother offered her some simple advice when she landed her first play with a community theater group: “If you like it, just keep doing it.”

Leachman was born on April 30, 1926, in Des Moines, Iowa. In a 1972 Playgirl magazine interview, she declared, “I knew from the very beginning that I didn’t belong in Iowa.” She studied piano, loved movies, and at the age of 15, earned a summer radio scholarship to Northwestern University in Illinois. She would attend the university to study drama, becoming close friends with fellow actors Charlotte Rae and Paul Lynde in the process.

Leachman was crowned Miss Chicago in 1946, her senior year, and went on to compete in the annual Miss America pageant. She was ranked in the top 16. Then she moved to New York. Early successes included understudying Mary Martin as Nellie Forbush during the original run of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific. In 1949, she chose to leave the Broadway-bound production of William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba, in which she costarred as a boarder who destabilizes a middle-aged couple’s household, to costar opposite Katharine Hepburn in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It. “I don’t think I could be successful as a sex symbol,” she wrote in her memoir. “I was first and foremost an actress.”

Leachman studied with the Actors Studio alongside Martin Balsam, Burgess Meredith, Julie Harris, and Anne Jackson. “I learned a lot,” she noted, “but I also made enemies . . . because I refused to take the ‘Method’ seriously.” She also fended off an ardent Marlon Brando. “I didn’t want to be one of the multitude,” she recalled. Instead, she introduced Brando to Englund and the two became lifelong friends.

Prolific would be one word to describe Leachman. IMDb lists 275 television and movie acting credits for her, beginning with the 1947 feature film Carnegie Hall. Among her most memorable are Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which she appears as Agnes, a prostitute briefly engaged with Paul Newman’s Butch, the Emmy-nominated made-for-TV movie The Migrants, in which she played the matriarch opposite Sissy Spacek and Ron Howard, and Jonathan Demme’s drive-in cult classic Crazy Mama.

Leachman played a lot of mamas, but never generically. “I’ve fought all my life against clichés,” she proclaimed in her Oscar acceptance speech. She was at various points mother to, among others, Shirley Temple (Shirley Temple Storybook); Meryl Streep (Music of the Heart); Diane Keaton, Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow (Hanging Up); Téa Leoni (Spanglish); and Ellen DeGeneres (The Ellen Show). She was housemother to the girls of Eastland School for two seasons on The Facts of Life, succeeding Charlotte Rae when she left that series.

She has also played grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers who were less likely to kiss boo-boos and more prone to stab their grandsons with a knitting needle (as in her Emmy-winning turn on Malcom in the Middle) or wander around topless (on Raising Hope).

Fearless would be another Leachman signifier. “If it’s funny,” she told Newsday in 2011, “I’ll do anything.”

She put this to the ultimate test in 2008 when, at 82, she became the oldest contestant ever on the reality series, Dancing with the Stars. She was eliminated in week six, but was all attitude when she joked to the judges, “I’m not leaving.”

Leachman described hers as a life with “some real bang and smash in it.” She had affairs with Gene Hackman, Andy Williams, and Bobby Darin, and never lost her ribald muse. In 2017, PETA honored her with a Lifetime Achievement Award. One of those who paid tribute was her American Gods director Bryan Fuller, who recalled the on-set celebration when she turned 90. “She blew out her candles and said, ‘Fuck me—I’m 90,’” he said. “And then she said, ‘Seriously—somebody get in here and fuck me! I want you to line up the crew outside of my trailer and get them in here!’”

-Vanity Fair