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The Hollywood Insider - Gypsy Revival starring Audra McDonald

From star-studded shows in New York to blockbuster national tours, here’s what theater lovers can’t miss this summer. Broadway is buzzing this summer with a sensational mix of hot new musicals, gripping plays, and crowd-pleasing tours that are lighting up stages from Times Square to towns across America. Whether you’re catching a matinee in NYC or planning a theater night in your hometown, this guide walks you through the top shows you simply can’t miss. Subscribe to The Hollywood Insider’s YouTube Channel, by clicking here. Limited Time Offer – Free Subscription to The Hollywood Insider Click here to read more on The Hollywood Insider’s vision, values and mission statement here – Media has the responsibility to better our world – The Hollywood Insider fully focuses on substance and meaningful entertainment, against gossip and scandal, by combining entertainment, education,...

"I'm new to this," says an excited Joy Woods when asked about what she's looking forward to at the upcoming Tony Awards ceremony. "I will just be taking in everything." The actress earned her first career Tony nomination for the Broadway revival of Gypsy in Best Featured Actress (Musical). She portrays Louise, the girl who evolves into the glamorous Gypsy Rose Lee, opposite Audra McDonald as Louise's mother, Rose.

In our exclusive interview, Woods discusses reuniting with old costars and why she doesn't describe her Louise as timid.

Gold Derby: In just under five years, you've performed in Little Shop of Horrors, Six, The Notebook, and now you're a Tony nominee for Gypsy. Have you had time to let the impact of all of these moments sink in?

Joy Woods: No, not one bit! But I know I will at some point. I think it's been nice to just be...

Audra McDonald became the most Tony-nominated performer in history Thursday.

McDonald earned her 11th Tony nomination for her star role as Rose in Gypsy on Broadway. She had previously held the title in a tie with the late Julie Harris and Chita Rivera, who had 10 nominations each.

The actress is already the most-awarded performer in Tony history, with six Tony Award wins for her roles in 1994’s Carousel, 1996’s Master Class, 1998’s Ragtime, 2004’s A Raisin in the Sun, 2012’s Porgy and Bess and 2014’s Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.

And yet, when McDonald was told by her husband, fellow actor Will Swenson, that she had been nominated and learned she had set a new record, she was in a state of disbelief.

“I’m so grateful, and that’s overwhelming to think about. I’m so lucky. The one thing I always wanted to do growing up,...

What do entertainers as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Rod Serling have in common? Each one adored The Andy Griffith Show. Serling, the brain behind The Twilight Zone, another enduring television classic, even described Andy Griffith as “one of the few genuinely funny comedies in the medium” in a 1963 TV Guide Magazine article that reported he often visited the nearby set. “What hits me is that the people are characters,” he added, “not caricatures.” That’s certainly been key to The Andy Griffith Show‘s longevity. The actor’s canny sheriff, Andy Taylor, and the other mildly eccentric and eminently lovable residents of the small Southern town of Mayberry have entertained generations for 65 years — even ones who weren’t yet born when the sitcom premiered on CBS on October 3, 1960. Viewers still laugh, cry, and empathize, which is why, each May, MeTV rolls out its annual “Month of...

Meghan Markle just attended one of the hottest shows on Broadway!

The Duchess of Sussex was joined by some of her friends while attending a performance of Gypsy on Thursday (April 10) at the Majestic Theatre in New York City.

Meghan attended the show with friends Nate Berkus, Jeremiah Brent (who recently joined the cast of Netflix’s Queer Eye), Tracy Robbins, Brian Robbins, and George Cheeks.

After the performance, the group went backstage to greet lead actress Audra McDonald and cast members Joy Woods, Jordan Tyson, Danny Burstein, and more.

Gypsy, suggested by the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, is Broadway’s ultimate tale of mothers and daughters, ambition and fame, and the lengths we’ll go in pursuit of the American dream. Get your tickets now to see Gypsy on Broadway.

Another very special guest was at the show a few weeks ago!

Victoria Preminger, daughter of director Otto Preminger, died Feb. 7 in Studio City, Calif. following a fall at home. She was 63.

Her mother was actress Hope Bryce Preminger and her uncle was film producer Ingo Preminger, the literary agent who represented clients such as Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner, who were both blacklisted throughout the McCarthy period.

Born in New York in 1960, Preminger studied at the Lycée Français de New York and later graduated with honors from Smith College. During her undergraduate career, she starred in a number of television soap operas as well as the 1988 feature “Spike of Bensonhurst,” which was directed by Paul Morrissey.

Four years later, she graduated from Pepperdine University School of Law. She spent the following six years producing audiobooks in Beverly Hills, Calif. for Dove Audio, one of the premier audio book companies nationally. She went on to produce, edit and lead celebrities including Glenda Jackson,...

Ask newer fans what the greatest musical of all time is and recency bias probably means the answer will be something like Rent or Les Misérables or Hamilton. Ask seasoned theater folk with wider frames of reference and Gypsy will usually land in the top three. For good reason. The 1959 warhorse is perhaps the ultimate tragicomic depiction of showbiz struggle, which makes it a strong contender for the ultimate Broadway musical.

It’s a cliché to call Rose, the archetypal pushy stage mother at the show’s center, the King Lear of musical theater. But that’s hard to dispute when you watch a consummate performer like Audra McDonald pour her heart and soul and every ounce of her gumption, her supple vocals and finely nuanced acting skills into the titanic role.

The six-time Tony winner humanizes this driven, achingly unfulfilled woman without ever softening her abrasive edges, her relentlessly self-serving determination,...

Audra McDonald is officially back on Broadway in the long-awaited revival of the classic musical Gypsy and we have the first photos of her as Mama Rose.

The six-time Tony Award-winning actress is starring alongside Broadway’s hottest rising star Joy Woods, who is taking on the role of her daughter Louise. Head into the gallery to see a photo of them together!

Gypsy, suggested by the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, is Broadway’s ultimate tale of mothers and daughters, ambition and fame, and the lengths we’ll go in pursuit of the American dream.

Rounding out the cast of beloved Broadway veterans include Tony winner Danny Burstein as Herbie, The Notebook‘s Jordan Tyson as Dainty June, and The Outsiders‘ Kevin Csolak as Tulsa.

Preview performances of Gypsy begin Tonight (November 21) at the newly renovated Majestic Theatre, making it the first show to play the iconic venue since...

Fred R. Krug, a producer, director and cinematographer who worked on such nature-focused TV programs as Animal World, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and The Magical World of Disney, has died. He was 94.

Krug died June 4 of natural causes at his home in Solvang, California, his daughter, Vivian Krug-Cotton, told The Hollywood Reporter.

A pioneer in wildlife TV documentaries and travel shows, the Swiss-born Krug dined with Picasso, worked with The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl and danced with the Nicholas brothers.

He also collaborated with the likes of Gypsy Rose Lee, Louis Armstrong, Cornel Wilde, Jayne Mansfield, Dana Andrews, Jean Simmons, Agnes Moorehead, Art Linkletter and Tippi Hedren.

Krug’s career took him to the jungles of Peru, Ecuador and Brazil; to India, Zululand, South Africa and the Serengeti in Kenya; to the high country of New Zealand; and to the mountains of Italy.

Friedrich Roy Krug was born on Aug.

Jerry Herman’s musical “Hello, Dolly!” dominated the 18th Tony Awards which took place at the New York Hilton on May 24, 1964. “Hello, Dolly!” entered the ceremony with 11 nominations and walked out with ten awards including best musical, best actress for Carol Channing, original score for Herman and for Gower Champion’s choreography and direction.

Other musicals in contention for multiple awards that year were “High Spirits,” based on Noel Coward’s classic comedy “Blithe Spirit,” “Funny Girl,” which transformed Barbra Streisand into a Broadway superstar, and “110 in the Shade,” based on the straight play “The Rainmaker.”

Bert Lahr, best known as the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” won lead actor in a musical for “Foxy,” based on Ben Jonson’s “Volpone.” The musical was not a hit closed after 72 performances. Also nominated in the category was Bob Fosse for a short-lived revival of Rodgers and Hart’s “Pal Joey.

Barbra Streisand has revealed that she has no plans to return to the big screen anytime soon.

The Egot winner, who hasn’t starred in a movie in more than a decade, recently told People Magazine that the movie-making process can be tiring.

“I mean, it was 2009 that I was fighting for the rights to play Gypsy,” she said. “In other words, it gets exhausting, trying to come up with the structure of the movie and then have it not happen.”

But Streisand admitted that if she could have made her movies, she “never would’ve written a book. I had such good movies to make, meaning they were about things I cared about, very interesting subjects.”

The actress-singer has tried to get several projects made over the years, including The Normal Heart, Gypsy and a sequel to The Way We Were. She recently said on The Howard Stern Show...

Actress Angela Lansbury, whose 75-year career encompassed triumphs on the big screen, in musical theater and on television, died at her Los Angeles home on Tuesday, her family announced in a statement obtained by Variety. She was 96 — five days shy of her 97th birthday.

Nominated for three Oscars, she won seven Tony Awards and holds the record for Emmy actress nods with 12 for her role on “Murder, She Wrote.”

As honored as she was in film and on stage, Lansbury achieved her greatest popularity on the small screen. In 1984 she stepped into a role originally offered to Jean Stapleton: the flinty crime-solving mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher on CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote.” The show became appointment TV for its fans on Sunday nights, and ran for 12 highly rated seasons. The actress captured four Golden Globe Awards for her turn. Between 1997 and 2003, she reprised the role in four telepics.

Discovered while...

Stephen Sondheim, the dominant voice in American musical theater in the second half of the 20th century and the composer with the most Tony Awards, has died. He was 91. The Broadway icon died Friday, November 26th at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 91.

His shows, from the comedic “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” to the ground-breaking “Company” to the operatic “Sweeney Todd” to the experimental “Pacific Overtures,” transformed the Broadway musical stage, influencing and advancing the medium. Sondheim, a protege of Oscar Hammerstein II, slowly moved away from that melodic tradition to incorporate complex and dissonant themes and structures of 20th century classical music into his works.

Sondheim won seven Tony Awards plus a 2008 Special Tony Award for lifetime achievement in the theater.

Though he never achieved popular success on the order of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sondheim altered and broadened the boundaries of American...

What can you say about a Grammy Night that begins with Harry Styles in a feather boa and ends with Billie Eilish saying, “What’s up, Ringo?” Just this: They should always do the Grammys this way. Last night was the best Grammy show ever, by an absurd margin — nearly four hours focused on artists doing their own songs, every performance excellent. No audience, and barely any awards. No stupid comedy bits. No presenters reading scripted banter. No Zoom screens. No “let’s ride the subway with Sting” montage. Just music.

Martha Stewart, an actress whose run of 1940s and ’50s era Hollywood hits included costarring roles in Daisy Kenyon opposite Joan Crawford and In a Lonely Place with Humphrey Bogart, died Feb. 17. She was 98.

Her death was announced by daughter Colleen Shelley.

“The original Martha Stewart left us yesterday,” Shelley tweeted:

She had a new part to play in a movie with all her heavenly friends. She went off peacefully surrounded by her family and cat.

Martha Ruth Haworth aka Martha Stewart

10-07-1922 – 02-17-2021 she had a good run.

Fare thee well Mommy

Born in Kentucky and raised in Brooklyn, Stewart began her show business career as a big band singer with Glenn Miller and Harry James, among others, and launched her Hollywood career with a singing and dancing role in the 1945 film Doll Face, about a burlesque star played by actress Vivian Blaine (the film was cowritten...

Brody Dalle is rarely seen without her sneer. It was there last year, when she was mugging into an iPhone camera, posting from the road with her punk band of two decades, the Distillers. It was there a month into the pandemic, when she Instagrammed her quarantine hair. It was there last summer, as she teased fans by posting from the studio, revealing that she and her bandmates were in the home stretch of a new record, their first full-length in 17 years. And you can almost hear a hint of...

In the Broadway show “Gypsy” — a biopic about stripper Gypsy Rose Lee — there is a song titled “You Gotta Have a Gimmick.” When you are a Oscar nominee, however, you gotta have a narrative to complement your performance, something you can talk and brag about in interviews and on TV talk shows to prove that you gave your all to the art of cinema.

How many times did we read or hear that Leonardo DiCaprio suffered for his art during a grueling shoot for 2015’s “The Revenant” in which he played 19th-century frontiersman Hugh Glass who is left for dead after he is attacked by a grizzly bear? Not only did he chat endlessly about eating raw bison liver, he spent nine months in remote and frigid regions of Canada and Argentina making the film. As the actor told Yahoo Movies, “I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of...

Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator and showrunner of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” is in talks to direct a remake of “Gypsy.”

New Regency is on board to finance with Joel Silver producing. Stx Entertainment had agreed in 2016 to finance Barbra Streisand’s proposed remake of “Gypsy,” but backed out a few months later.

“Gypsy” tells the story of the burlesque legend Gypsy Rose Lee, based on her 1957 memoir about her career and hard-as-nails stage mother. That book served as the inspiration for the highly successful 1959 musical, starring Ethel Merman, with popular songs including “Everything’s Coming up Roses,” “Small World,” “Let Me Entertain You” and “All I Need Is the Girl.”

The 1962 movie, starring Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood, was a financial success with $11 million in box office revenue and nabbed three Academy Award nominations, plus a Golden Globe for Russell. Bette Midler starred in a 1993 TV adaptation directed by Emile Ardolino.

Exclusive: Gypsy is coming back together. New Regency has come aboard to finance, and negotiating to direct is Amy Sherman-Palladino, who is coming off winning four Emmy Awards for writing, creating, exec producing and directing The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Joel Silver is producing.

Barbra Streisand has exited the previous incarnation of the project, where Barry Levinson was going to direct at Stx with a script by Richard Lagravanese, and Streisand was going to play the iconic Mama Rose. This plan cratered when Stx exited in 2016. This is a plum role and I am hearing names that include Melissa McCarthy, who is Oscar nominated for Can You Ever Forgive Me? and who worked with Sherman-Palladino on Gilmore Girls, but I am told that no casting decisions have been set and that call will be made by Sherman-Palladino once her deal is closed.

Based on the classic musical from Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim,...

The 2018 Broadway At Music Circus season continues with Gypsy, one of musical theater's most acclaimed and enduring works. This landmark show, with a celebrated score by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim, is based on the life of burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee. A singularly-focused mother takes her daughters on a cross-country adventure in pursuit of fame and fortune on the dying Vaudeville circuit.

A quirky, castle-like compound owned by retired New York Yankees superstar Derek Jeter in the quaint village of Greenwood Lake, N.Y., once a fashionable Upstate New York summer resort community that attracted the likes of Greta Garbo, Babe Ruth and Gypsy Rose Lee, is now available to be someone else’s home as long as they can stomach the monarchical $14.75 million asking price. A careful parse of tax records indicates the five-time World Series champion, now CEO and part owner of the Miami Marlins, acquired the two-parcel property in two transactions that totaled $1.625 million. The first recorded in October 2002 for $425,000, the second in January 2005 for $1.2 million and, as noted by The New York Post, it’s not such a terrific surprise Jeter bought the estate given it has a familial connection. As the adopted son of John and Julia Tiedemann, who purchased the property in 1952, Derek Jeter’s grandfather...

Veteran stage and screen actor Victor Garber, currently starring opposite Bernadette Peters in the Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly!” listed his multi-residence compound in the unsung Town of Woodbury hamlet of Highland Park, N.Y., about an hour and a half drive north of Midtown Manhattan, with an asking price of $1.649 million. The four-time Tony nominated Canadian thespian, also a six-time Emmy nominee — three for his early Aughts role on “Alias,” purchased the sylvan spread in 2009 for $1.3 million. All together the three parcels that comprise the bucolic compound come to 8.1 acres with a total of nine bedrooms and five full and three half bathrooms divided between a showbiz pedigreed main residence that dates to the turn of the 20th-century, a separate barn-style guest cottage/art studio and a rather quotidian 1970s ranch house.

Completely hidden from the road and approached by a long, tree-lined drive that lends the property a sense of serenity and seclusion,...

On the day a U.S. appeals court lifted an injunction that blocked a Mississippi “religious freedom” law – i.e., giving Christian extremists the right to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, etc. – not to mention the publication of a Republican-backed health care bill targeting the poor, the sick, the elderly, and those with “pre-existing conditions” – which would include HIV-infected people, a large chunk of whom are gay and bisexual men, so the wealthy in the U.S. can get a massive tax cut, Turner Classic Movies' 2017 Gay Pride or Lgbt Month celebration continues (into tomorrow morning, Thursday & Friday, June 22–23) with the presentation of movies by or featuring an eclectic – though seemingly all male – group: Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, Tab Hunter, Dirk Bogarde, John Schlesinger, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Arthur Laurents, and Jerome Robbins. After all, one assumes that, rumors or no, the presence of Mercedes McCambridge in one...

Jennifer Leigh Williamson Jun 13, 2017

As far back as the 1920s, cinema has brought us feminist heroes. Here's a bunch of films way ahead of their time...

“I never realised until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.” - Katharine Hepburn

Feminism, equality of the sexes. Often when watching old movies, the sexism of the time can catch you off guard. Bums are pinched, bimbos bounce, old maids glower and you shake your head and sigh, glad that those times have (mostly) passed. So when we see classic films with strong, intelligent, impressive, witty, ambitious, feminist female characters, equals to their male counterparts, we sit up and take notice. There are many great classic films with impressive female characters, too many to list here. This article is about the characters that have inspired me personally. Classic feminist films way ahead of their time.

Spoilers ahead...

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc...

“You like naked ladies huh? “ So I was asked by Hiroko Politz, a good friend of mine and a fellow Sgi member and Buddhist. I was telling Hiroko about my recreational time at Paradise Lakes and Lake Como, two of the many nudist resorts north of the Tampa, Florida area. This was in the 1990s and yes, one of the reasons I moved to Florida was to visit these nudist resorts. Because, to be truthful, yes I do like naked ladies. Ladies in general are my favorite people, undressed even more so.

Raised in a church going family I had a Mother was insisted the human body was never to be seen. Accordingly she burned a good many magazines featuring naked ladies. Not just mine but my three older brothers before me. Likely a good many of those magazines might be worth money now.

Being a typical American male, naturally...

Ok, so Screaming Mimi, based on eccentric cult crime/sci-fi scribe Fredric Brown's novel, is at best a hot mess of a film, more often only a lukewarm one. But you somehow can't tear your eyes away from it: it's a slow-motion car wreck with musical numbers.Anita Ekberg, just ahead of her elevation to iconic status by Federico Fellini, is cantilevered into the role of Virginia, traumatized by a knife-wielding psycho while taking a shower (yes, the scene anticipates Psycho, and yes, it shows that the same elements can be used in a lame, ineffective way). The staff of the asylum from which the maniac escaped then feel it only their duty to take Anita into their care, where she meets the controlling, Svengali-like Dr. Greenwood, who becomes her lover and business manager when she returns to her life as an exotic dancer in the big city.Most...

The studio will no longer distribute and co-finance the Barbra Streisand project about Momma Rose, according to reports.

Stx chairman of the motion picture group Adam Fogelson acquired the film in turnaround from his former employers Universal Pictures after that studio struggled to get the project off the ground.

According to Deadline Hollywood, the proposition became riskier for Stx after sources said financier Len Blavatnik pulled out of funding up to one-third of the $50m-plus production.

Streisand, director Barry Levinson and producer Joel Silver will continue to shop the project around Hollywood.

Richard Lagravenese adapted the screenplay from the Stephen Sondheim musical about a tough mother who drives the vaudeville careers of her two children, one of whom becomes the legendary striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee.

Sure, the Tony Awards’ musical categories are always competitive. But for the 2015–16 season, the four acting categories seem more crowded with brilliant contenders than usual. Get to know the 20 nominated actors in this year’s Broadway musicals below. And be sure to check out the nominees from this year’s plays! Leading Actress In A Musical Laura Benanti, “She Loves Me”Benanti usually excels at playing tough, from Gypsy Rose Lee to the resilient Candela in “Women on the Verge,” so it was as wonderful a surprise to find her as good at playing heart-meltingly sweet as it was delightful to hear her wrap her voice around those gorgeous Bock-Harnick songs. Now, who wants a scoop of vanilla ice cream? Carmen Cusack, “Bright Star”Plenty of this year’s nominees made smashing Broadway debuts, but Cusack stands out—and not just because she’s a relative unknown. The clarity she...

Barbra Streisand and Barry Levinson are in advanced negotiations to revive Stx Entertainment’s “Gypsy,” TheWrap has learned. Levinson will direct, while Streisand is set to produce with Joel Silver. Streisand will also be involved in the script, which Richard Lagravenese is writing. Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim‘s musical “Gypsy” tells the true story of Momma Rose and her two daughters, whom she is pushing to become stars of the vaudeville stage — one as the burlesque legend Gypsy Rose Lee. Also Read: Stx Entertainment's 'Bye Bye Man' Moved Up to June It is considered one of the best musicals ever made.

The Audubon Society battles plumage poachers in the Everglades, circa 1900. Legendary director Nicholas Ray suffered an on-location meltdown filming this early ecologically sensitive epic, but the finished product is still one of his better pictures. Burl Ives, Christopher Plummer and Chana Eden give top 'Ray' performances. The eccentric supporting cast includes Peter Falk, boxer Two-Ton Tony Galento and none other than the real Gypsy Rose Lee. Wind Across the Everglades DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1958 / Color / 1:85 enhanced widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date October 6 2015, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Burl Ives, Christopher Plummer, Gypsy Rose Lee, George Voskovec, Tony Galento, Howard Smith, Emmett Kelly, Pat Henning, Chana Eden, Curt Conway, Peter Falk, Sammy Renick, Cory Osceola, MacKinlay Kantor, Totch Brown, George Voskovec, Sumner Williams. Cinematography Joseph Brun Film Editor Georges Klotz, Joseph Zigman Art Direction Richard Sylbert Original Music Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter Written by Budd Schulberg Produced by Stuart Schulberg...

Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...

Martha Stewart: Actress / Singer in Fox movies apparently not dead despite two-year-old reports to the contrary (Photo: Martha Stewart and Perry Como in 'Doll Face') According to various online reports, including Variety's, actress and singer Martha Stewart, a pretty blonde featured in supporting roles in a handful of 20th Century Fox movies of the '40s, died at age 89 of "natural causes" in Northeast Harbor, Maine, on February 25, 2012. Needless to say, that was not the same Martha Stewart hawking "delicious foods" and whatever else on American television. But quite possibly, the Martha Stewart who died in February 2012 -- if any -- was not the Martha Stewart of old Fox movies either. And that's why I'm republishing this (former) obit, originally posted more than two and a half years ago: March 11, 2012. Earlier today, a commenter wrote to Alt Film Guide, claiming that the Martha Stewart featured in Doll Face, I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now,...

Here she is, boys; here she is, world… here’s Barbra! Well, maybe.

After years in development, it looks like a new film adaptation of the musical Gypsy is back on track with Barbra Streisand potentially directing herself as Mama Rose. Universal has now reportedly hired Richard Lagravenese to write a new script for the musical by Jule Styne, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim, a smart move for the studio. Lagravenese worked with Streisand before, on 1996′s The Mirror Has Two Faces, and wrote HBO’s splashy Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra. He also recently finished directing his film adaptation...

Following his March pact with HBO Films to direct and executive produce the Gypsy Rose Lee biopic Madame Rose, Rock of Ages and Hairspray helmer Adam Shankman has teamed with screenwriter David Kajganich (The Invasion) on a drama series project for HBO, which Kajganich will write and Shankman will direct. Set in the pre-Stonewall New York City of the late 1960s, Open City explores characters from disparate corners of Manhattan as they navigate the cultural revolutions and political turmoil of the era, including the unlikely alliance between the Mafia and the city’s gay community in the opening of a West Village nightclub. Ronnie Lorenzo, one of the original owners of the Stonewall Inn, the epicenter of the 1969 Stonewall riots that sparked America’s gay rights movement, is aboard as a consulting producer. Kajganich and Shankman will exec produce Open City alongside Shankman’s Offspring Entertainment producing partner Jennifer Gibgot.

“Deadwood” producer David Milch has signed on for a new two-year overall deal with HBO, a network representative told TheWrap. Also read: HBO Films Developing Biopic About Gypsy Rose Lee's Mother The TV writer/producer has had projects at HBO since the 2002 hit western series, which led to an overall deal in 2005. The new deal will extend Milch's relationship with the network through 2016. Also read: Nathan Lane Joins David Milch's HBO Pilot ‘The Money’ Since “Deadwood,” Milch has seen “Luck” and “John From Cincinnati” air at HBO. The 2008 pilot “Last of the Ninth” was not picked up by the network,...

(source)

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Adam Shankman will direct and produce Madame Rose for HBO Films, “based on the life story of Rose Hovick, the indomitable mother of burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee and actress June Havoc, who would do anything to advance her daughters’ career in show business.

HBO Films is taking a closer look at Rose Hovick, the mother of burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee and actress June Havoc, who was immortalized in the 1962 film, “Gypsy.” The company is developing the film, with Adam Shankman (“Hairspray,” “Rock of Ages”) set to direct and executive-produce, an HBO representative told TheWrap. Tristine Skyler wrote the script. Also read: ‘Hunger Games,’ ‘Boardwalk Empire’ Actors Join HBO's Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger Rock ‘n’ Roll Pilot The film will focus on the woman who would do anything to get her daughters into show business. Produced by their company Offspring Entertainment, Shankman will executive produce with Jennifer.

Exclusive: Rose Hovick has been called the ultimate stage mother, immortalized in the classic musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable, based on the memoirs of one of Hovick’s two performing daughters, Gypsy Rose Lee. Now HBO Films is looking to tell Hovick’s true story beyond the musical fable with Madame Rose, a movie in development, which has Adam Shankman (Hairspray) set to direct and executive produce. Written by Tristine Skyler, Madame Rose is based on the life story of Hovick, the indomitable mother of burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee and actress June Havoc, who would do anything to advance her daughters’ career in show business. Shankman and Jennifer Gibgot are executive producing via their company Offspring Entertainment. The project is expected to draw top talent for the title role, which has been played in Gypsy‘s stage productions and movie and TV adaptations by such actresses as Ethel Merman,...

The Inland Valley Repertory Theatre in Claremont, Calif. is seeking to talent for its production of “Gypsy.” Rehearsals begin Jan. 25, and the show runs April 9-23. “Gypsy” is the story of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and her mother Rose. “Gypsy” has given us many songs that define Broadway and show business including “Let Me Entertain You,” and “Everything’s Coming up Roses.” Every role in the production is being cast, and all ethnicities are welcome. A small stipend will be provided. For more details, check out the casting notice for “Gypsy” here, and be sure to check out the rest of our audition listings!

"Gypsy." "A Little Night Music." "Sweeney Todd." "Follies." "Company."

Stephen Sondheim's credits -- and that's a sampling -- are staggering. He's won eight Tony Awards, more than any other composer and lyricist. And though he has been an incredible force since he burst on the scene with his first Broadway project, "West Side Story," Sondheim, 83, is reserved about himself.

HBO's "Six by Sondheim" on Monday, Dec. 9, though, manages to paint an intimate portrait of the man, examining his career through six signature songs.

In one of very few interviews granted for this project, Sondheim tells Zap2it that though he had seen a few edits of this film, he doesn't like to watch himself.

"I am embarrassed to see myself," Sondheim says. "I have seen myself on-screen quite a lot."

This features wonderful footage of Sondheim, including photos from his youth, being mentored by family friend Oscar Hammerstein, and...

Prolific comedy actor who worked with Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan and Hattie Jacques

The stony-faced, beaky comedy actor Graham Stark, who has died aged 91, is best remembered for his appearances alongside Peter Sellers, notably in the Pink Panther movies. His familiar face and voice, on television and radio, were part of the essential furniture in the sitting room of our popular culture for more than half a century. A stalwart in the national postwar comedy boom led by Sellers, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Dick Emery, Eric Sykes and Benny Hill, he worked with them all in a sort of unofficial supporting repertory company that also included Hattie Jacques, Deryck Guyler, Patricia Hayes and Arthur Mullard. He was also a man of surprising and various parts: child actor, trained dancer, film-maker, occasional writer, and dedicated and critically acclaimed photographer.

Like Gypsy Rose Lee, he had a resourceful and determined...

Review by Sam Moffitt

I love strippers! Always have and always will. Having said that I have never been to a real burlesque show. Oh, I’ve been to tittie bars, sure, tittie bars, absolutely! Four years in the Navy and having been a bachelor all my life (I am engaged to a wonderful woman so cut me some slack here) I’ve been to plenty of bars where topless dancers do their shimmy and shake and hang from the pole and all that. But that isn’t really burlesque.

I can remember growing up in St. Louis in the 60s and 70s and looking at ads in the Globe Democrat and Post Dispatch for the Grand Burlesque downtown (was it on Washington?) and the Stardust Burlesque on DeBaliviere. How I wanted to go to those theaters, how I wanted to see Evelyn West and her $20,000 (was that the dollar amount?...

Elisabeth Moss' 2013 Emmy nomination for her lead role in "Mad Men" marks her sixth time up for a Emmy statue. She's also nominated this year in the Lead Actress in a Movie or Miniseries category for Sundance's "Top of the Lake."

And while she may be most famous as Don Draper's impressionable secretary turned ball-busting, glass ceiling-breaking copy chief at Sterling Cooper & Partners, Moss built quite the girlhood repertoire playing stars before they were stars in made for television movies -- does "Gypsy" or "Naomi & Wynonna: Love Can Build a Bridge" ring a bell?

Welcome to Before They Were Emmy Nominees. Each Tuesday and Wednesday between now and the Emmy Awards on Sept. 22, we're going to look back at some early and obscure roles of a few of this year's acting nominees. (See Zap2it's Before They Were Nominees photo gallery.)

Between 1992 and 1995, Moss had a recurring role on "Picket Fences" as Cynthia Parks,...

Natalie Wood: Hot Hollywood star in the ’60s - TCM schedule on August 18, 2013 See previous post: “Natalie Wood Movies: From loving Warren Beatty to stripping like Gypsy Rose Lee.” 3:00 Am The Star (1952). Director: Stuart Heisler. Cast: Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, Natalie Wood, Warner Anderson, Minor Watson, June Travis, Paul Frees, Robert Warrick, Barbara Lawrence, Fay Baker, Herb Vigran, Marie Blake, Sam Harris, Marcia Mae Jones. Bw-90 mins. 4:30 Am A Cry In The Night (1956). Director: Frank Tuttle. Cast: Edmond O’Brien, Brian Donlevy, Natalie Wood. Bw-75 mins. 6:00 Am West Side Story (1961). Director: Robert Wise. Cast: Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Simon Oakland, Ned Glass, William Bramley, Tucker Smith, Tony Mordente, David Winters, Eliot Feld, John Bert Michaels, David Bean, Robert Banas, Anthony ‘Scooter’ Teague, Harvey Evans aka Harvey Hohnecker, Tommy Abbott, Susan Oakes, Gina Trikonis, Carole D’Andrea, Jose De Vega, Jay Norman,...

Natalie Wood movies: From loving Warren Beatty to stripping like Gypsy Rose Lee Three-time Academy Award nominee Natalie Wood, one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the ’60s, is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" performer today, August 18, 2013. TCM is currently showing Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass (1961), a romantic drama written for the screen by playwright William Inge (Picnic, Bus Stop). Wood is fine as a young woman who loses her emotional balance after she’s seduced and abandoned by the son (Warren Beatty) of a wealthy family in Kansas shortly before the Great Depression. For her efforts, she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. (Sophia Loren was that year’s winner, for the Italian-made Two Women.) (See “TCM movie schedule: Natalie Wood Hot Hollywood Star.” Next in line is Richard Quine’s feeble attempt at screwball comedy, Sex and the Single Girl (1964), a movie that promises much more than it delivers,...

The Hangar Theatre continues its 39th season with one of the greatest American musicals of all time, Gypsy, which runs from tonight, July 4-20. Distinguished by more than 45 awards and nominations - including the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Theatre World awards - Gypsy has been revived on Broadway four times. Gypsy was inspired by the memoirs of the legendary burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. This gripping story follows the ultimate stage mother, determined to catapult her daughters to stardom in the waning 1920s vaudeville circuit. It's filled with Styne and Sondheim's popular standards, including 'Everything's Coming up Roses,' 'Small World,' 'Let Me Entertain You,' 'All I Need Is the Girl,' and 'Rose's Turn.'...

The Hangar Theatre continues its 39th season with one of the greatest American musicals of all time, Gypsy, which runs from July 4-20. Distinguished by more than 45 awards and nominations - including the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Theatre World awards - Gypsy has been revived on Broadway four times. Gypsy was inspired by the memoirs of the legendary burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. This gripping story follows the ultimate stage mother, determined to catapult her daughters to stardom in the waning 1920s vaudeville circuit. It's filled with Styne and Sondheim's popular standards, including 'Everything's Coming up Roses,' 'Small World,' 'Let Me Entertain You,' 'All I Need Is the Girl,' and 'Rose's Turn.'...

Gielgud, London

Peter Morgan struck box-office gold with his movie The Queen. He's likely to do so again with this play based on the private weekly audience given by the monarch to the prime minister. But I'd say that in both cases, Pm owes a great deal to Hm: in other words, Helen Mirren, who once again gives a faultless performance that transcends mere impersonation to endow the monarch with a sense of inner life and a quasi-Shakespearean aura of solitude.

As a dramatist, however, Morgan faces two problems. One is that no one ever knows what is said at these weekly tête-à-têtes since they are un-minuted. The other, more serious, is that in a constitutional monarchy, the Queen has no authority to contradict policy: simply, in the words of Walter Bagehot in the 19th century, "to be consulted, to advise and to warn", which would seem to rule out dramatic conflict.

Natalie Wood death: From "accidental drowning" to "drowning and other undetermined factors" Natalie Wood died on November 29, 1981. Her body was found floating about one mile from Catalina Island, located just south of Los Angeles County. According to a County coroner’s report publicly released today — though officially revised in June 2012 — at the time of her death Natalie Wood, a three-time Academy Award nominee and the star of the multiple Oscar-winning musical West Side Story, had several bruises on her body that might have been the result of injuries suffered before she entered the water. (See also: "Natalie Wood Death: Sensational Rumors Continue.") [Photo: Natalie Wood ca. 1970.] "With the presence of fresh bruises in the upper extremities in the right forearm/left wrist area and a small scratch in the anterior neck, this examiner is unable to exclude non-accidental mechanism causing these injuries," wrote chief medical examiner Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran. "The location of the bruises,...

If Rihanna has a reality show in addition to being one of the biggest stars in the world, shouldn’t Lady Gaga have a side gig or eight as well? Barbra Streisand certainly thinks so, and has that woman ever been wrong? Well, Has She? No. According to Time‘s Joel Stein, Babs is hoping to steer Gaga toward the big screen, fantasy-casting her in the upcoming remake of Gypsy, ostensibly as burlesque perfumer Gypsy Rose Lee. “I told [Streisand] what a mullet is, she told me she’s thinking of casting Lady Gaga as the lead in her remake of Gypsy.” Stein writes. Let’s see…singing, dancing, wearing fabulously trashy outfits. We might be crazy here, but this just might work. Dear God, would Barbra play her insane stage mother Mama Rose? This right here is why Streisand makes the big bucks. This is the best idea since Bette Midler...