PHOTOS OF THE DAY: FINAL PHOTOS OF THE STARS - 2025 EDITION

Here is another addition of the last photos of celebrities. Some people may think it is morbid, but it is proof that celebrities are just like us....

Bunny Berigan (with a band member). Photo was from May of 1942 and Bunny died on June 2, 1942

Angela Lansbury on December 31, 2021. She died on October 22, 2022.

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Red Skelton in October of 1996. He died on September 17, 1997

Robert Redford from Christmas 2024. He died on September 16, 2025.

Chris Farley on December 17, 1998. He died a day later of an overdose.

Ryan O'Neal with his daughter Tatum on April 20, 2023. He died on December 8, 2023.

Past editions:

APRIL 4, 2024

OCTOBER 31, 2022

OCTOBER, 31, 2016

OCTOBER 30, 2013

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD WEDDINGS

To commerate my 21st wedding anniversary today, I wanted to take a look at some classic Hollywood weddings...

Dick Powell & Joan Blondell, 1936

Frank Sinatra & Mia Farrow, 1966

Angela Lansbury & Peter Shaw, 1949

Audrey Hepburn, 1954

Judy Garland & Vincente Minnelli, 1945

Lucille Ball, 1940

THE PASSING SCENE OF 2022

 As we bid this year a fond farewell, we can not help but also say goodbye to the entertainers and icons that we have lost in 2022...

Angela Lansbury

Entertainer ANGELA LANSBURY died at the age of 96 on October 11th. She was a star of stage, screen, and television for 80 years. To escape the Blitz, she moved to the United States in 1940, studying acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed to MGM and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944), National Velvet in 1944, and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning her two Academy Award nominations and a Golden Globe Award. She appeared in eleven further MGM films, mostly in minor roles, and after her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances. Although largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her role in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim and is often cited as one of her career-best performances, earning her a third Academy Award nomination. Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury finally gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), which won her her first Tony Award. She reached a new audience as Jessica Fletcher on TV's Murder She Wrote from 1984 to 1996. She also moved into voice work, contributing to animated films like Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Don Bluth's Anastasia (1997). She toured in a variety of international productions and continued to make occasional film appearances such as Nanny McPhee (2005) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). Her last work was a cameo appearance in Rian Johnson's 2022 detective drama Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

Singer LORETTA LYNN died at the age of 90 on October 4th. In a career which spanned six decades in country music, Lynn released multiple gold albums. She had hits such as "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)", "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)", "One's on the Way", "Fist City", and "Coal Miner's Daughter". In 1980, the film Coal Miner's Daughter was made based on her life. Loretta suffered a stroke in 2017 and broke her hip in 2018. She released her last album in 2021.

Actress ESTELLE HARRIS died on April 2nd at the age of 93. She was best known as George Costanza's mother on the television show Seinfeld from 1992 to 1998. Estelle also provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head in the Toy Story cartoon franchise. She did not start acting until her children was grown up, and her first role was in 1977. Her last role was in 2019's Toy Story 4.

Singer BOBBY RYDELL died at the age of 79 on April 5th of pneumonia. He was a singer and actor who mainly performed rock and roll and traditional pop music. In the early 1960s he was considered a teen idol. His most well-known songs include "Wild One" and "Volare". In 1963 he appeared in the musical film Bye Bye Birdie as Ann-Margret's love interest. In the 1980s, he joined a trio called The Golden Boys with fellow former teen idols Frankie Avalon and Fabian Forte and he continued to tour up until his death.

Comedian LOUIE ANDERSON died of cancer at the age of 68 on January 21st.  Anderson created the cartoon series Life with Louie and wrote four books, including Hey Mom: Stories for My Mother, But You Can Read Them Too, which was published in 2018. He was the initial host of the third revival of the game show Family Feud from 1999 to 2002. For his performance on the FX comedy television series Baskets, Anderson received three consecutive Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series nominations and won once in 2016. Anderson performed a stand-up show called Louie: Larger Than Life in Las Vegas, Nevada, from 2003 through 2012.Louie's last role was in 2021's Coming 2 America with Eddie Murphy.

Sidney Poitier

Actor SIDNEY POITIER died on January 7th at the age of 94.   In 1964, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming the first Black male and Bahamian actor to win the award. He received two further Academy Award nominations, ten Golden Globes nominations, two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations, six BAFTA nominations, eight, and one Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination. Poitier was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema, and after the death of Kirk Douglas in 2020, was the oldest living and earliest surviving male Academy Award winner until his own death in 2022. He continued to break ground in three successful 1967 films which dealt with issues of race and race relations: To Sir, with Love; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. He retired from acting in 1997, but continued to be involved in the cinema and in his homeland of the Bahamas. 

Actor CARLTON CARPENTER died on January 31st at the age of 95. Carpenter signed with MGM in 1950, where he starred in a bunch of supporting roles. He he made eight films in three years: Father of the Bride, Three Little Words, Summer Stock, Two Weeks With Love, Vengeance Valley, Fearless Fagan (his one-of-two leading roles there), Sky Full of Moon (his other leading role there) and Take the High Ground!. He gained fame when teamed in 1950 with Debbie Reynolds in Three Little Words and Two Weeks with Love. In a guest sequence in Three Little Words, they perform “I Wanna Be Loved by You” as vaudeville players Dan Healy and Helen Kane, with Reynolds dubbed by Kane. In Two Weeks with Love, where they have featured roles, their duet "Aba Daba Honeymoon" was the first soundtrack recording to become a top-of-the-chart gold record, reaching number three on the Billboard chart. He worked as a stage actor through 2015.

Actress PAT CARROLL died of pneumonia on July 30th at the age of 95. She was known for voicing Ursula in The Little Mermaid and for appearances in CBS's The Danny Thomas Show, ABC's Laverne & Shirley, and NBC's ER. Carroll was an Emmy, Drama Desk, and Grammy Award winner, as well as a Tony Award nominee. She largely retired from acting in 2014.

Child star and voice actor PETER ROBBINS died at the age of 65 on January 25th of suicide. At the age of nine, Robbins provided the voice of Charlie Brown, whom he considered to be his childhood hero, in one television documentary, six Peanuts television specials and one movie from 1963 to 1969, including the film A Boy Named Charlie Brown and the television specials A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. At the age of fourteen, Robbins was replaced by younger child actors in the Peanuts specials produced after the 1960s, but his trademark scream of "AUGH!!", first used in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, continued to be used in later specials for Charlie Brown and other Peanuts characters. Peter suffered from mental illness and was arrested numerous times and jailed from 2015 to 2019.

Actor RAY LIOTTA died at the age of 67 on May 26th. His best-known roles include Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989), Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990) and Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002). His other roles included Ray Sinclair in Something Wild (1986), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, as well as starring in Unlawful Entry (1992), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), and Marriage Story (2019), as well as the drama series Shades of Blue (2016–2018). Ray was currently shooting a movie in the Dominican Republic when he passed away in his sleep.

Robert Morse

Actor ROBERT MORSE died at the age of 90 on April 20th. He best known as the star of both the 1961 original Broadway production, for which he won a Tony Award, and the 1967 film adaptation of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and as Bertram Cooper in the critically acclaimed AMC dramatic series Mad Men (2007–2015). He won his second Tony Award for playing Truman Capote in the 1989 production of the one-man play Tru. He reprised his role of Capote in an airing of the play for American Playhouse in 1992, winning him a Primetime Emmy Award. Robert made his last movie and television appearances in 2019.

Singer JONI JAMES died on February 20th at the age of  91. Signed at MGM records in the early 1950s, James had numerous hit records like: "Why Don't You Believe Me?" (No. 1 in 1952) "Have You Heard?" (No. 4 in 1953) "Your Cheatin' Heart" (No. 2 in 1953) "Almost Always" (No. 9 in 1953) "My Love, My Love" (No. 8 in 1953) "How Important Can It Be?" (No. 2 in 1955) and "You Are My Love" (No. 6 in 1955) as well as sixteen other Top 40 hits from 1952 to 1961. She left the music scene in the mid 1960s, but returned to performing in the 1990s.

Actress LOUISE FLETCHER died at the age of 88 on September 23rd. She was best known for her portrayal of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award. She was also well-known for her recurring role as the Bajoran religious leader Kai Winn Adami in the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–99), as well as for her role as Helen Rosemond in the movie Cruel Intentions (1999). She was nominated for two Emmy Awards for her roles in the television series Picket Fences (1996) and Joan of Arcadia (2004). Her final role was as Rosie in the Netflix series Girlboss (2017).

Comedian BOB SAGET died at the age of 65 on January 9th. His acting roles included Danny Tanner on the sitcom Full House (1987–1995), its sequel Fuller House (2016–2020), and the voice of narrator Ted Mosby on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother (2005–2014). From 1989 to 1997, he was the original host of America's Funniest Home Videos. Saget was also known for his adult-oriented stand-up comedy, and his 2014 album That's What I'm Talkin' About was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. He passed away in his hotel room where he was performing in Orlando, Florida.

Actress MARSHA HUNT died on September 7th at the age of 104. She was blacklisted by Hollywood film studio executives in the 1950s during McCarthyism. She appeared in many films, including Born to the West (1937) with John Wayne, Pride and Prejudice (1940) with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, Kid Glove Killer (1942) with Van Heflin, Cry 'Havoc' (1943) with Margaret Sullavan and Joan Blondell, The Human Comedy (1943) with Mickey Rooney, Raw Deal (1948) with Claire Trevor, The Happy Time (1952) with Charles Boyer, and Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun (1971). She appeared in a documentary of her life that was made in 2014.

Olivia Newton-John

Actress and singer OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN died of cancer at the age of 73 on August 8th. She was a four-time Grammy Award winner whose music career included five number-one hits and many other Top Ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100, and two number-one albums on the Billboard 200. In 1978, Newton-John starred in the musical film Grease, which was the highest-grossing musical film at the time and whose soundtrack remains one of the world's best-selling albums. It features two major hit duets with co-star John Travolta: "You're the One That I Want"—which is one of the best-selling singles of all time—and "Summer Nights". She made a handful of movies, and she is considered one of the great recording artists of the 2nd half of the 20th century.

Actor WILLIAM HURT died of prostate cancer on March 13th at the age of 71. Hurt garnered three consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Children of a Lesser God (1986), and Broadcast News (1987), winning for the first of these. After playing character roles in the following decade, Hurt earned his fourth Academy Award nomination for his supporting performance in David Cronenberg's crime thriller A History of Violence (2005). His later career films roles include turns in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), The Village (2004), Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), Mr. Brooks (2007), Into the Wild (2007), Robin Hood (2010), and the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, in which he portrayed Thaddeus Ross.

Comedian GILBERT GOTTFRIED died on April 12th of muscular dystrophy at the age of 67. His persona as a comedian featured an exaggerated shrill voice and emphasis on crude humor. His numerous roles in film and television include voicing the parrot Iago in the Aladdin animated films and series, Digit LeBoid in Cyberchase, Kraang Subprime in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Aflac Duck. He appeared in the critically panned but commercially successful Problem Child in 1990. Gottfried hosted the podcast Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast (2014–2022), which featured discussions of classic movies and celebrity interviews, most often with veteran actors, comedians, musicians, and comedy writers.

Actor JAMES CAAN died at age of 82 on July 6th. After early roles in Howard Hawks's El Dorado (1966), Robert Altman's Countdown (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969), he came to prominence playing Sonny Corleone in Coppola's The Godfather (1972) – a performance which earned him Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor. He reprised his role in The Godfather Part II (1974). Caan gained acclaim for his portrayal of Brian Piccolo in the 1971 television movie Brian's Song for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination. Caan received Golden Globe Award nominations for his performances in the drama The Gambler (1974), and the musical Funny Lady (1975). He remained a popular actor in films like Misery (1989) and Elf (2003). He continued making movies until the end of his life.

Actor LESLIE JORDAN died on October 24th at the age of 67 in a car crash. Leslie was on countless TV shows and movies. His television roles included Lonnie Garr on Hearts Afire (1993–1995), Beverley Leslie on Will & Grace (2001–2006, 2017–2020), for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series in 2006, several characters in the American Horror Story franchise (2013–2019), Sid on The Cool Kids (2018–2019), and Phil on Call Me Kat (2021–2022). In theater, he played Earl "Brother Boy" Ingram from Sordid Lives, and also portrayed the character in the popular cult film of the same name.

Louise Tobin

Big band singer LOUISE TOBIN died at the age of 104 on November 26th. She appeared with Benny Goodman, Bobby Hackett, Will Bradley, and Jack Jenney. Tobin introduced "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" with Goodman’s band in 1939. Her biggest hit with Goodman was "There'll Be Some Changes Made", which was number two on Your Hit Parade in 1941 for 15 weeks. Tobin was the first wife of trumpeter and bandleader Harry James, with whom she had two sons. She helped to discover Frank Sinatra in the late 1930s.

Actor TONY DOW died of cancer at the age of 77 on July 27th.Tony was an actor, film producer, director and sculptor. He portrayed Wally Cleaver in the iconic television sitcom Leave It to Beaver from 1957 to 1963. From 1983 to 1989, Dow reprised his role as Wally in a television movie and in The New Leave It to Beaver. He largely retired from acting in the 1990s, but he directed many TV shows.

Actress KIRSTIE ALLEY died on December 5th at the age of 71 of cancer. Her breakout role was as Rebecca Howe in the NBC sitcom Cheers (1987–1993), for which she received an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe in 1991. From 1997 to 2000, she starred as the lead in the sitcom Veronica's Closet, earning additional Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Alley appeared in various films, including  Look Who's Talking (1989) and its two sequels (1990–1993), It Takes Two (1995), Deconstructing Harry (1997), For Richer or Poorer (1997), and Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999). She won her second Emmy Award in 1994 for the television film David's Mother. Her last appearance was on TV's "The Masked Singer" in 2022.

RIP: ANGELA LANSBURY

Angela Lansbury, who enjoyed an eclectic, award-winning movie and stage career in addition to becoming America’s favorite TV sleuth in “Murder, She Wrote,” has died, according to a statement from her family provided to NBC, whose parent company produced the long-running series. She was 96.

“The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 AM today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” her family said in a statement.

CNN has contacted representatives of Lansbury for comment.

Not yet 20 years old, Lansbury garnered her first Oscar nomination for her movie debut, “Gaslight,” in 1944. Her second came the next year for “The Portrait of Dorian Gray,” and again in 1962 as the mother who betrays her son and her country in “The Manchurian Candidate.” (She received Golden Globes for the latter two films.)

The actress accepted an honorary Oscar in 2013, to go with the five Tony Awards she collected over a 40-plus-year span – beginning with “Mame” in 1966, and finally for a revival of the Noel Coward play “Blithe Spirit” in 2009. Lansbury also amassed 11 Emmy nominations for her role as Jessica Fletcher in “Murder, She Wrote,” but never won.

Lansbury went from ingenue to playing more middle-aged roles practically overnight. She was just 37, for example, when she portrayed Laurence Harvey’s conniving mother in “Manchurian Candidate,” even though her co-star was just two years younger than her.

Born in London, her mother, Moyna MacGill, was an actress, and father Edward Lansbury a politician. He died when she was just nine years old, and not long after the onset of World War II the family moved to the US in 1940, settling in New York.

Lansbury studied drama before moving at her mother’s urging to Los Angeles, where she briefly worked in a department store until landing her breakthrough role as the young maid in “Gaslight,” starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.

Other films included “National Velvet” (playing Elizabeth Taylor’s sister), “The Harvey Girls,” “The Three Musketeers,” the Danny Kaye comedy “The Court Jester” and the Elvis Presley vehicle “Blue Hawaii.”

Lansbury made her Broadway debut in 1957, later starring in iconic Tony-winning roles in “Mame,” “Gypsy” and “Sweeney Todd.” 

Generations of children revered Lansbury for her Disney roles, first in the 1971 movie musical “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” and later as the voice of Mrs. Potts in the 1991 Oscar-nominated animated film “Beauty and the Beast.” She also played a small role in the 2018 sequel “Mary Poppins Returns.”

“Oddly enough, children recognize my voice,” she told The Huffington Post in 2012. “They’ll hear me and say, ‘Mom, that’s Mrs. Potts!’”

After a short-lived marriage to actor Richard Cromwell, Lansbury wed British actor Peter Shaw in 1949. They stayed together until his death in 2003 and had two children, Anthony – who directed many episodes of “Murder, She Wrote” – and Deirdre. Shaw eventually became her manager, and was instrumental in the deal that made them the producers of the series which premiered in 1984.

Lansbury achieved her greatest fame in her 60s for her starring role in “Murder, She Wrote” as a crime-solving mystery writer. Of all her roles, Lansbury said Jessica Fletcher was most like her. 

 ”I had a lot of say in it, and I didn’t want the character to be quirky,” she told The New York Times in 2009.  ”I wanted her to be real. I didn’t want to have to put on any kind of veneer for 24 hours a day, which is what a television schedule sometimes feels like.”

Despite “Murder, She Wrote’s” success, the audience skewed older, and CBS irritated Lansbury by moving the series to Thursday night opposite NBC’s “Friends” in 1995, in what turned out to be the mystery’s final season.

“I’m shattered,” Lansbury told the Los Angeles Times, adding, “I really feel angry for all the people who watched us” on Sunday, where the show had consistently delivered big ratings following “60 Minutes.”

After the series ended, Lansbury starred in several “Murder, She Wrote” TV movies. She continued to work into her 80s and 90s, including a 2017 miniseries version of “Little Women” and starring in a 2015 Great Performances production of “Driving Miss Daisy,” opposite James Earl Jones.

 “I love this industry and I love being in it,” Lansbury said in a 1998 interview with the Archives of American Television, adding in regard to the “Murder” audience, “They loved it, and they were loyal.”

SPECIAL GIVEAWAY - HOLIDAY DVD AND CD

2020 has been a difficult year for everyone, so now more than ever we need some good hearted family entertainment. Director and composer Tim Janis has defintely supplied us with some great entertainment that is suitable for the whole family.

Firstly he directed Buttons: A Christmas Tale in 2018, which starred such legendary actors Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury. Also Mr. Janis has put out a CD, titled "All Is Bright". If this does not get you into the Christmas spirit then you are a scrooge. 

You can buy the DVD of Buttons: A Christmas Tale HERE.

You can buy the CD "All Is Bright" HERE.

However, Tim Janis himself has been kind enough to donate a few copies of each, and I would love to give them away to readers of my blog. All you need to do is email me at davidlobosco@yahoo.com and share with me your favorite Christmas memory. I will pick winners on December 7, 2020 and also use your memories in a future blog story.

Again, we need to share great heart warming memories more than ever! Also please support the work of Tim Janis. He is a brilliant entertainer that deserves our support. You can learn more about Tim Janis HERE

Happy Holidays and get your entries in!

THE GOLDEN ERA OF HOLLYWOOD IS OVER

Yes, we will always have the films. But the stars are mostly gone — with due respect to the few who remain, de Havilland was our strongest surviving link to the Golden Age. The era has truly ended.

Of all that happened in her eventful life, Olivia de Havilland is best remembered for her role as Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in Gone With The Wind (1939). This is unfair for two reasons. Memorable as she is in GWTW, it is by no means her finest role. Her countless fans will point to the two roles that won her Academy Awards, the two others (besides the supporting role in GWTW) that won her nominations, and more. The second reason is that her legacy goes beyond her roles. Film historians, even law historians and labour activists, will point to the De Havilland Law.

De Havilland, who died this week at age 104, fought the system — and won. In 1943, when Hollywood’s powerful studios controlled the fate of actors, Warner Brothers refused to let her go at the end of their seven-year contract. The studio tagged extra time to the contract to compensate for periods when she had not been working. She sued in a California court, leading to the landmark 1944 ruling — informally known as the De Havilland Law — that the years in the contract mean calendar years. It loosened forever the studios’ grip on actors.

From her life, that is the biggest takeaway. From her death, the big takeaway is sobering: The Golden Age of Hollywood is slipping away. Yes, we will always have the films. But the stars are mostly gone — with due respect to the few who remain, de Havilland was our strongest surviving link to the Golden Age. The era has truly ended.

We are at that stage of history when this was inevitable. Actors who were old enough to play the lead when talking pictures arrived (not de Havilland, who was 11 when the first sound film released in 1927) would have been at least 110 today if it were possible to live that long (Greta Garbo, for example, would have turned 115 this year). Those old enough to have played the lead towards the end of the Golden Age (mid-1960s or thereabouts) will now be at least in their 70s, and more likely in their 80s or 90s. Or gone already.

Ingrid Bergman and Bette Davis, de Havilland’s closest friend in the industry, left in the 1980s. Barbara Stanwyck and Audrey Hepburn died in the 1990s, Gregory Peck and Katharine Hepburn in the 2000s, and Elizabeth Taylor and Lauren Bacall in the following decade. Then Kirk Douglas and now de Havilland have left in the very beginning of the 2020s — both of them past 100.

How many are still with us? An online search throws up long lists that bring a false sense of relief. Most of the names, it turns out, are of actors who played smaller roles, or who were child actors during the Golden Age. Indeed, every link is vital in a vanishing chain, including Mickey Kuhn, now 87, who played Melanie’s young son in GWTW 81 years ago. But it’s the stars we want to count.

I found about a dozen names more familiar than others. Two of the bigger ones are Angela Lansbury and Jane Powell, both in their 90s now. Five others will be familiar to fans of Alfred Hitchcock — six if you count his daughter Patricia, now 92, who appeared in three of his films. Vera Miles, 90, is Marion Crane’s sister from Psycho (1960) and Henry Fonda’s disturbed wife from The Wrong Man (1956). Shirley MacLaine, 86, made her debut in Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry (1955). Tippi Hedren of The Birds (1962) and Marnie (1964) is now 90. Kim Novak of Vertigo (1958) is 87.

The most important among them is Eva Marie Saint, who turned 96 on July 4, three days after de Havilland turned 104. Saint was in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant (died 1986), and in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954) with Marlon Brando (died 2004). We saw Saint at the Oscars in 2018, as a presenter. Cherish these moments, for a day will come, inevitably, when we will have only their films.

De Havilland never did a Hitchcock film. Her sister Joan Fontaine (died 2013 at age 96) did two, winning an Academy nomination for Rebecca (1940) and bagging the award for Suspicion (1942). They remain the only siblings to have each won one or more Academy Awards. Joan got there first, beating Olivia in the 1942 race, but this is not the time to reflect on their famed sibling rivalry. For today, we only have their films...

SOURCE

RIP: JERRY HERMAN

Legendary Broadway songwriter Jerry Herman has died. The author of the hit musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage aux Folles was 88.

Publicist Harlan Boll said Herman was taken to a Miami hospital Thursday night complaining of chest pain and later died of pulmonary complications.

Born July 10, 1931, Herman grew up in Jersey City, N.J. His parents held elaborate costume parties and took him to the theater often. Seeing Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun changed his life, as he told NPR in 1994.

"I walked out of that theater singing all those wonderful Berlin songs and, from that moment on, that's all I wanted to do with my life," he said.

Herman had some modest success on and off-Broadway in the late 1950s and early '60s, but didn't hit the big time until producer David Merrick called him about working on an adaptation of a Thornton Wilder play, The Matchmaker.

"I went home with a script that he had given me to look at," Herman told NPR, "and I wrote four songs over a weekend and came back to his office on Monday morning with four brand new songs and bowled him over, not only with the songs, but with the speed that I had been able to work at. And I got the job!"

Not only did the 1964 show, starring Carol Channing, become a smash hit, it won Herman his first Tony Award. A recording of the title tune by Louis Armstrong knocked the Beatles off the Hit Parade, Herman told the Press in 2000.

"When a man from my publishing company called me and said, 'Louis Armstrong wants to record that,' I laughed," Herman recalled. "I thought it was the silliest idea that I had ever heard! And when I heard the recording, I fell out of my chair, because he turned my 1890s valentine into one of the most famous pop songs of all time!"

Jerry Herman's next show, Mame, starring Angela Lansbury, was another smash. He says he wrote songs for the eccentric character of Auntie Mame in memory of his mother, who passed away when he was a young man.

"It really was very natural material to me, because I had a mother who was a glamorous lady who believed in all the things that Mame believes in. And so, I didn't have to study the subject matter! I grew up with it."

But as the 1960s came to an end, Jerry Herman's kind of bright, gaudy show tunes seemed to go out of style. He suffered several failures in a row. Then, in 1983, he wrote the gay-themed hit La Cage Aux Folles, which won him a second Tony Award.

Shortly after the show opened, Herman's companion, Marty Finkelstein, died of complications from AIDS. And Herman was diagnosed as HIV-positive at a time when that seemed like a death sentence.

Herman was one of the first people to receive the complex cocktail of drugs that has kept so many HIV patients alive, and he helped raise millions of dollars for AIDS research. Co-author Marilyn Stasio says Herman's HIV status spurred him to write his memoirs — and to also set some things straight.

"One thing that really got him mad was he thought people really felt he was putting it on, the optimism and the joy and the happiness and the way he loved life. And he wanted to make it clear that it was true. He did. He loved every minute of life."

COMING SOON: BUTTONS - A CHRISTMAS TALE

It is amazing and terrific that well into their 90s that entertainment icons Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury are still make great movies - and a new musical at that! The two legends play guardian angels.

Buttons is a Christmas Tale is the magical, musical story that shows believing can be the greatest gift of all. Follow the heartwarming journey of two orphan girls whose only wish is to find a home for Christmas. With a little help from their guardian angels (screen legends Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury), they discover that miracles really can happen when you find the power to believe. From director Tim Janis, this inspiring holiday film for the whole family features an all-star cast including Jane Seymour, Roma Downey and Abigail Spencer, and is narrated by Kate Winslet and Robert Redford.

The release date of the DVD is December 3, 2019, but you may pre-order at https://paramnt.us/Get.Buttons now! Digital copies of the film will be available, starting November 19, 2019. The digital copy may also be purchased at the same link.

ANGELA LANSBURY AT 89

The most shocking – in a most delightful way – theater news arrived in my email without fanfare. It said that Angela Lansbury will be going on a four-city tour from December through March with “Blithe Spirit,” the Noel Coward comedy for which she won her fifth Tony in 2009.

 At most, stars just want to do 14 weeks on Broadway in a high-profile, high-ticket burst of charismatic marketing, then head back to their real jobs in Hollywood.

It was not always so. As veteran Broadway producer Elizabeth McCann remembers, “Touring was the way of life. Helen Hayes and Katharine Cornell would play in New York for a season and tour for a season. That was the way it operated.” Sarah Bernhardt did nine American tours from 1880 until 1918.

Decades before plays were taped for limited showings in movie houses, people across the country learned to love theater by seeing its royalty – the originals, not second casts – in the flesh in their own cities. McCann isn’t sure exactly when and why the road died for plays, though she agrees the years and years of Carol Channing trouping the land with “Hello, Dolly!” are long gone.

Ah, but it appears that nobody told Lansbury. “I think I didn’t realize that people don’t tour,” she told me in a recent phone interview, probably at least half joking. “But they don’t, you’re absolutely right. And, in some respects, I’m kind of asking myself, ‘Why’? I enjoy going somewhere else … setting the place on fire for a few weeks.”

She understates. After all, last year, she and James Earl Jones did a four-city Australian tour of “Driving Miss Daisy.” That came immediately after she played an irresistible gorgon of a backroom powerhouse on Broadway (with Jones) in “The Best Man” in 2012 and immediately before she brought “Blithe Spirit” to London last spring – her first appearance there in 40 years.
“Dammit,” she said, sounding not a bit like a Dame anointed by Queen Elizabeth in December, “if you still have the guts to get out there … why not?”

In “Blithe Spirit” on Broadway, I remember marveling at her Madame Arcati, the dotty spiritual medium in Coward’s sophisticated 1941 drawing-room comic-fantasy. She appeared to be channeling the lighthearted shrewdness of her iconic Jessica Fletcher from her 12 years in “Murder, She Wrote,” and the impeccably wild comic timing of her Mrs. Lovett from “Sweeney Todd,” the diabolical baker of human meat pies she originated (and for which she won her fourth Tony) in 1979.

Even she admits the response in London was “quite extraordinary. I was like a rock star. The young people, thank God, knew me from ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks.’ People knew me from those movies and from ‘Murder, She Wrote,’ which is shown in the morning and in the evening in England. People in Europe and the Far East know ‘Murder, She Wrote.’ I am very famous in far-flung places.”

She is amused and pleased by how many “illustrious people love that show,” she says about the series in which she played a mystery writer and master sleuth, pleasantly resolving grisly slaughters against particularly jaunty theme music. “There’s something good about it,” she acknowledges at a distance. “It’s one of the most calming, feel-good shows.”

That can’t happen in theater. She unflappably calls this a “very manageable tour. First, I’ll be in Los Angeles, where I live, so I can drive to the theater or have somebody drive me. Then we do two weeks in San Francisco. That’s a pretty damn nice place to visit, isn’t it? Toronto is a special kind of town. … I did my first ‘Gypsy’ there.” That was before she brought the show to Broadway, where she won her third Tony. Then “Blithe Spirit” goes to Washington, D.C., where she performs in the same National Theatre where she made her first pre-Broadway stage debut nearly 58 years ago to the day.

Jeffrey Richards, a lead producer of the play on Broadway and on the tour, says simply, “She wanted to do it, and we wanted to do it.” More seriously, he continues, “There are these people for whom the stage is sacrosanct.”

He and Lansbury have been planning a Broadway revival of “The Chalk Garden,” Enid Bagnold’s 1955 drama. “It’s very hard to turn down a great role,” she says, “And every role I’ve done seems to have had something wonderfully interesting.” There was a time, shortly after she ended her Jessica Fletcher years, when theatergoers worried that every Lansbury performance would be their last time to see her. When I told her that she faked them out, she laughed and adorably defended herself, “But I didn’t mean to do it.

“I am an elderly woman who still acts like she is 35 and feels that way most of the time, except in the late afternoon.”

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CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD NEWS: NOVEMBER 2013

Hard to believe another month has passed, and we are headed into the final innings of 2013. Here is some of the classic Hollywood news that has made its way on to my desk...

British actress Vivien Leigh had that undefinable star quality. For 30 years, the exquisitely beautiful Leigh captivated film and theater audiences with her well-crafted, magnetic performances. In fact, Leigh won lead actress Oscars for creating two of the most indelible characters in screen history — the strong-willed, manipulative Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara in the beloved 1939 Civil War epic, Gone With the Wind, and Tennessee Williams' fragile, faded Southern beauty Blanche DuBois in 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire. Her accomplishment is all the more remarkable because Leigh, who died at age 53, made only 19 movies. A new book is out on the interesting actress called "Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait" by film scholar Kendra Bean. The recently published, lavishly illustrated biography commemorating the actress' centenary combines historical material, including documents from the archives of her second husband, Laurence Olivier, as well as interviews with those who knew her.

 

 

 The eve before Halloween is known as Mischief Night. A few days ago it marked 75 years ago that on Oct. 30, 1938, a 23-year-old Orson Welles caused more than a bit of mischief with his landmark radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds." Most of the 6 million who tuned into Welles' "Mercury Theater on the Air" innovative adaptation of H.G. Wells' sci-fi classic about a Martian invasion realized it was drama. But because of its realistic news bulletin format, some believed aliens from the Red Planet had actually landed and overrun the small town of Grover's Mill, N.J., and were on the move through the rest of the country. Even in this pre-Twitter and Facebook era, the reaction was instantaneous. Listeners called into Chicago newspapers in a panic during the broadcast, while in San Francisco people fretted that the Martians were heading West. And in New Jersey, National Guardsmen were calling their armories to find out if they needed to report.

 

 Broadway legend Angela Lansbury has made a lot of movies, but she never won an Oscar. Lansbury has received three Academy Award nominations for her supporting performances in 1944's Gaslight, 1945's The Picture of Dorian Gray and 1962's The Manchurian Candidate. Her other credits include Blue Hawaii, The World of Henry Orient and Mr. Popper’s Penguins. She also did voice work for the first animated feature to receive a best picture nomination, Beauty and the Beast. Finally though it was announced that Ms. Lansbury will receive an Honorary Oscar at next year's Academy Award ceremony. It is about time... ...and that's the classic Hollywood news for this month!

WHAT A CHARACTER: WILLIAM WINDOM

There are a lot of very talented character actors that you know their faces but not their names. The late actor William Windom was just one of those stars.

He was perhaps best known for his work on television, including several episodes of The Twilight Zone; playing Glen Morley, a fictional congressman from Minnesota based on Windom's own great-grandfather and namesake in The Farmer's Daughter; the character of John Monroe on the sitcom My World and Welcome to It, for which he won an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series; as Commodore Matt Decker, commander of the doomed U.S.S. Constellation in the Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine"; and as the character Randy Lane in the Emmy-nominated Night Gallery episode "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar". I remember him most from his most common recurring character on the Emmy-winning series Murder, She Wrote, Dr. Seth Hazlitt.

Windom was born on September 28, 1923 in New York City, the son of Isobel Wells (née Peckham) and Paul Windom, an architect. He was the great-grandson of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury of the same name. He served in the U.S. Army in the European Theater of Operations in World War II, as a paratrooper with Company B, 1st Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.

Windom's first motion picture role was as Mr. Gilmer, the prosecutor of Tom Robinson in 1962's Academy Award-winning To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1968 he also starred in The Detective with Frank Sinatra as a homophobic killer, and received great reviews from The New York Times.

From September 1963 to April 1966 he co-starred on TV with Inger Stevens in The Farmer's Daughter, a series about a young Minnesota woman who becomes the housekeeper for a widowed Congressman. In the 1969–70 NBC-TV series My World and Welcome to It, Windom played the James Thurberesque lead and received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series. After the show's cancellation he toured the country in a one-man show of Thurber's works.

                            

He was a regular for a decade on the series Murder, She Wrote, playing Dr. Seth Hazlitt. His initial appearance in the role was in October 1985. (He had previously appeared as a guest star playing another character in April 1985.) The producers enjoyed his work, and consequently invited him to return at the beginning of the second season to take on the role permanently. He briefly left the show to work on another series in 1990, but the show was short lived and he returned to Murder, She Wrote as a semi-regular for the remainder of the series' run.

To fans of science fiction television, Windom is well known for his performance as the tortured Commodore Decker in the Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" , a role he reprised nearly 40 years later for Star Trek New Voyages.

According to his widow, Patricia Tunder Windom, the actor died on August 16, 2012, aged 88, at his home in Woodacre, California, from congestive heart failure. His name may not be exactly recognizable, but his memorable character roles are a lasting legacy to a truly great actor...

 

 

 

ANGELA LANSBURY AT 86

The Sunday Conversation: Angela Lansbury
By Irene Lacher

Angela Lansbury, 86, returns to movie theaters on Friday as the lovable teapot Mrs. Potts in "Beauty and the Beast" as Disney Studios rereleases the popular 1991 animated film remastered in digital 3-D. The five-time Tony Award winner also returns to Broadway this spring in a revival of Gore Vidal's "The Best Man."

Was it challenging to imbue a teapot with charm?

I think the way you approach her is as a little fat woman who was the cook and who happened to be in the guise of a teapot for the purposes of an animated movie by the Disney Studios. Consequently you attack it purely as a whole person, not that she's made of china or that she's breakable but that she's a little busy, fat, overweight lady who's a bit of a charmer, who cares very much about her little boy and is a strong member of the workforce at the castle. You play a whole person.

Was this animated role your highest-profile one to date?

Absolutely. It's high on my list of credits, as they say. Funnily enough, I was looking at the Turner Classic Movies [site] this month as the star of the month, and I was looking at all the things that I've done, and you realize that this is the one and only time in which I was able to play a very warm, cuddly, little person who's a teapot, and it's not included in the group of movies, sadly. But nevertheless, it did strike me as I was reading through, and I thought to myself, "Thank goodness, I'm so grateful to Disney for letting me do this."

I guess this would be the anti-Mrs. Iselin, your ruthless "Manchurian Candidate" character.

Totally. [Children] don't know that I've done those other things. They know me by my voice because children hear me in a supermarket; sometimes I'll be chatting with a friend about lettuce, and suddenly a child will say, "Mrs. Potts!" It's enchanting.

So was the '90s a decade when the only film work you did was in animation?

In the '90s I was doing "Murder, She Wrote" through '96. Really up until 2000, I was involved with "Murder, She Wrote" two-hour movies, extension of the series.

I've read that while you were doing "Murder, She Wrote," you felt like you were trapped in your home in Brentwood.

Yes, I did.

Because shooting a TV series is a 24-hour job. You work Monday through Friday; you get up at 5:15, you get home at 7:15. You have no social life; you just have time, maybe if you're lucky, with your family over the weekend, your grandchildren and so on, and that's OK. But you have no other life whatsoever, and this went on for 12 years. After a while I was dying to get out of it and move on. But you get trapped by success sometimes.

Why couldn't you just leave the series?

Because there were too many people involved. You have to consider that my whole family was on board — my husband, my sons, my brother. We were Corymore Productions, and we produced the show for Universal. You feel an allegiance and a fondness for the workers, the gaffers, the electricians, everybody involved dependent on the show, a show that was as highly rated as we were for all the years that we played, except at the end where they moved us from Sunday night to Thursday night. We lost half of our audience and then we were replaced. So that was the end of that.

Why did you move to New York in 2006 after so many years in L.A.?

I love New York. My most happy, wonderful years were spent in New York with my husband, Peter [Shaw]. And after he died, I was here alone with some members of my family very much there for me but nonetheless involved in their own lives. I was left here, being in Los Angeles having had no life here, no social life. So I thought, 'Well, I think I'm going to get an apartment in New York and spend part of the year there. I'll go back and see lots of shows and go to concerts and opera and see lots of museums and live the New York life,' which I hadn't been able to do in the past because I was always in a hit show on Broadway.

So I find an apartment in New York, a very modest, small apartment, and buy it, and I'm not there for very long before I get a request from my friend, Terrence McNally, the playwright, who said, would you consider doing a play? ["Deuce."] So then I started back into the theater again, which I absolutely love. I come back for the holidays, do Christmas and cook the dinner and do all the good stuff that one enjoys as a family. And now I'm getting ready to put the house to sleep again and go back to New York and start rehearsals on the 10th of January for a play ["The Best Man"]...

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