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You may have seen “Psycho Beach Party,” director Robert Lee King and writer Charles Busch’s wickedly funny send-up of classic Hollywood, while surfing on late-night cable channels in the early aughts. Based on Busch’s own play from 1987, which was itself inspired by Frederick Kohner’s late-’50s Gidget character and her initiation into surf culture, “Psycho Beach Party” is exactly as the title sounds: part slasher, part beach movie, and all pastiche and split-personality.

That’s apropos, as a then little-known, pre-“Six Feet Under” Lauren Ambrose plays Florence, aka Chicklet, a schizoid who becomes the prime suspect in a series of comically mounting beachside murders. She plays the role as a careening cross between Tallulah Bankhead and Sandra Dee — who of course originated Gidget, the original wannabe surf girl, onscreen in 1959. Screenwriter Busch, who, gay and in his 30s, played the 16-year-old teenage girl Gidget — sorry, Chicklet...

Exclusive: London and Belfast-based independent production company Finite Films & TV has optioned Jean-Noël Liaut’s The Many Lives of Miss K, based on the Dutch fashion model and secret agent Toto Koopman, for a TV adaptation.

The series will follow Koopman’s compelling professional and personal life. Born to a Dutch cavalry officer father and half Indonesian mother in 1908, Koopman’s mixed heritage exposed her to discrimination and prejudice that shaped her worldview.

Twenty years later, Koopman arrived in Paris in the 1930s and made history as the first model of mixed race to be featured on French Vogue. She continued to challenge cultural norms throughout her life; she was open about her bisexuality and her relationships with high profile socialites such as actress Tallulah Bankhead and media mogul Lord Beaverbrook.

When World War II engulfed Europe, she leveraged her social connections and multilingual abilities to gather intelligence for the Allied forces in Italy,...

A spirited rendition of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” during the opening credits gets the oddball dramedy Everything’s Going To Be Great off to a promising start, right in line with its optimistic title. What follows though is the story of a fairly dysfunctional family that takes to the road following patriarch Buddy Smart’s (Bryan Cranston) somewhat ill-considered dreams in the world of regional theatre. The idea comes from screenwriter Steven Rogers, who grew up in this world where his father worked putting on shows from town to town, something that inspired Rogers to take that idea, place it back in the late ’80s, and put on this show. The family here includes the practical and religious matriarch Macy (Allison Janney), wannabe-jock 16-year-old Derrick (Jack Champion) and his 14-year-old brother and budding star Lester (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and seems to be each following their own separate trajectory as...

Jon S. Baird’s family dramedy Everything’s Going to Be Great makes an impassioned plea to hopeless optimists everywhere to love and care for anyone with a wild dream—the people who know who they are and will do anything to find the place where they can be just that. That’s lovely and heartwarming if you’re making The Muppet Movie and the majority of your cast consists of giddily self-aware felt misfits buoying those emotions. But it’s more than a little irritating when it’s a family of flesh-and-blood but sitcom-grade theater weirdos.

Said family includes Buddy (Bryan Cranston), a wild-eyed regional theater director, Macy (Allison Janney), his pragmatic bookkeeper wife, and their son Lester (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), an unapologetically gay theater snob in training. Buddy and Macy’s older son, Derrick (Jack Champion), is the only normie in a family that spends their weekends playing dueling bagpipes in their backyard,...

The American road trip is a myth baked into the national consciousness, a promise of reinvention somewhere between the coasts. For the Smart family, the subject of Everything’s Going to Be Great, the road is not a journey of discovery. It is a hamster wheel. Set in the waning years of the 1980s, a decade of manufactured optimism, the film places us in the cramped confines of a station wagon carrying a peripatetic theater troupe of four. This is life as a series of opening nights and hasty exits.

The engine of this chaotic existence is Buddy, the patriarch, a man whose relentless optimism is so potent it borders on a clinical condition. He is a producer of regional theater, forever chasing the next big break that will surely make his family’s fortune. His wife, Macy, serves as the family’s anchor to reality, the quiet keeper of...

Lester Smart (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) is the sort of kid who cannot help but be exactly who he is. He daydreams conversations with theater legends like Noël Coward (Mark Caven) and Tallulah Bankhead (Laura Benanti) and recites Hair lyrics at would-be bullies; he dons ascots and berets in a milieu where faded Motley Crüe tees are the norm. If these are challenging qualities for a 14-year-old boy in late-’80s suburbia, they’re also bound to serve him well once he’s old enough to try his luck on Broadway.

Everything’s Going to Be Great, the movie he’s in, could have used a little more of Les’ irrepressibility. Instead, the new film by Jon S. Baird (Tetris) feels frustratingly non-committal, a mish-mash of wavering tones, disjointed story beats and themes explored only glancingly. It’s not entirely a bad time, as things involving Allison Janney and Bryan Cranston tend not to be.

“Everything’s Going to Be Great” is one of those movie titles that should have been ditched after the script attached to it was sold. It’s a title you can’t remember, one that feels too long because it voices a sentiment that’s too vague. (The one thing it lets you know is that everything that happens in the film probably isn’t going to be great. Not exactly a ringing invitation.)

The movie fully lives down to that title. “Everything’s Going to Be Great” is a ramble, an unconvincing grab bag, a domestic tall tale with too much stuffed into it. Set in 1989, it’s about a family of four whose members keep piling into their beat-up station wagon to travel from one town to the next, all because the parents are regional theater producers. They have to go where the work is. But wait a minute, you say.

A new production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives will be presented on Broadway in the 2026-2027 season, producers announced today.

Information about the director, casting, dates and theater will be announced at a later date.

The production is being produced by Jeffrey Richards, Playful Productions, Rebecca Gold and M/B/P Productions.

Alan Brodie, chair of the Noël Coward Foundation said, “We are thrilled that this sparkling new production of this iconic comedy will be coming back to Broadway in 2026/27. The Coward Estate will work with closely with the producers and creative team and open their extensive archive to them as well as providing support from its social and marketing team. All the royalties received by the Coward Estate on this production will go to the charitable Foundation set up by Coward’s partner Graham Payn and will be used to support...

by Chad Kennerk

All images courtesy of the Cinema Museum

Devoted to keeping the spirit of cinema alive, London’s The Cinema Museum is the city’s only museum entirely dedicated to the experience of going to the cinema and tells the story behind the rich cultural heritage of moviegoing in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1984, The Cinema Museum is the result of a life-long fascination with cinemagoing by collectors Ronald Grant and Martin Humphries. Set in the historic surroundings of Kennington, The Cinema Museum is a veritable treasure trove of movie memorabilia. It’s a glimpse of another time and an important period of moviegoing history. On display in the museum is a unique collection of artefacts, memorabilia and equipment from decades of exhibition history. With a mission to preserve the history and grandeur of cinema from the 1890s all the way to the present day, the collection highlights...

With the announcement for the 76th Primetime Emmys set for July 17th, let’s travel back 70 years and revisit the winners of the 6th Emmy Awards held Feb. 11, 1954 at the venerable Hollywood Palladium and telecast on Khj. New categories introduced that year included best new program and supporting actor and actress in a TV series. Prior to 1954, performers were nominated as individuals, but this year the program for which they were nominated was also included. NBC was nominated for 36 Emmys, while CBS placed second with 30 and ABC trailing far behind with just three.

CBS’s cherished “I Love Lucy’ won its second Emmy for best comedy series, while Vivian Vance took home her only Emmy for the show for her supporting role as Ethel Mertz. The other nominees for comedy series were CBS’ “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show,” NBC’s “Mr. Peepers,” CBS’ “Our Miss Brooks,” and CBS “Topper.

Azealia Banks has never held back in expressing her honest opinions, which often garnered attention online. Throughout her musical career, she was often noticed for her online beef with many artists and the latest in line is Queen Bey, Beyoncé. The latter has recently made a comeback with her new album, Cowboy Carter, which was released on March 29.

Azealia Banks (via Instagram | @azealiabanksforever)

The former recently took to Instagram to express her opinions on her new album, particularly, dissing the iconic singer for her remake of Dolly Parton’s 1973 classic, Jolene.

Azealia Banks Critized Beyoncé’s Remake of Dolly Parton’s Jolene

Beyoncé surprised her fans by dropping her new album, Cowboy Carter, which is the second part of her Renaissance trilogy. Her country genre album features Dolly Parton’s hit 1973 song, Jolene but the former chose to add her flavor into it.

Suggested“He’s like a brother to...

In 2017, The Hollywood Reporter gave me the opportunity to write an oral history about a passion of mine, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the groundbreaking variety program anchored by Tommy Smothers, who died Tuesday at age 86, and his brother, Dick. Airing on CBS from 1967-70, the controversial show offered an alternate television universe for a young generation, filled with sharp humor, political satire, rock music and relevance. Not ahead of its time but rather right on it.

I compiled countless interviews with what felt like every surviving performer from the show, including Steve Martin and Rob Reiner. Everyone except the brothers themselves, who had proved rather elusive.

Through back channels, I finally acquired Tommy Smothers’ cellphone number, along with a series of warnings. First, I was told, be persistent because he hardly ever answers his phone. Second, be persistent because he probably won’t return your call. And third, don...

Fear tends to multiply when viewers learn a horror film has real-life inspiration. However, not only killers from scary movies can be based on true events. Disney has drawn inspiration from numerous stars -- mostly classic Hollywood film actors -- to create many characters throughout its extensive catalog.

Even villains from classic Disney films were based on real people, like the Evil Queen in Snow White. The wicked Cruella de Vil first emerged in Dodie Smith's 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Viewers met her onscreen five years later in Disney's 1961 film 101 Dalmatians. Cruella had a cat and a husband in the novel, neither of which was included in the animated film. What was included was Cruella's vile attitude, which was actually based on a classic Hollywood film star. But how could someone be as evil as her?

Related: It's Official: The Little Mermaid Marks Disney's Worst 2023 Opening...

Pour one out for the poor unfortunate souls who aren’t at CinemaCon. Attendees of the annual exhibition trade show were treated to the first-ever glimpse of Melissa McCarthy as Ursula in Disney’s upcoming “The Little Mermaid” remake, including a show-stopping rendition of the character’s signature number, “Poor Unfortunate Souls.”

McCarthy didn’t perform live, but she came to Las Vegas to introduce a clip of the movie, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel. In the dazzling footage, McCarthy channels Tallulah Bankhead with pitch-perfect flair as the evil sea witch convinces Ariel to part with her voice. Sporting dramatic makeup and a short, purple-ish updo, Ursula whips around her tentacles and shimmies through the sea alongside her sidekicks Flotsam and Jetsam while belting the evil anthem.

A live-action remake of Disney’s 1989 animated classic, “The Little Mermaid” tells the story of a King Triton’s youngest daughter, who is fascinated with the world above.

William Dozier's 1966 TV adaptation of "Batman" remains, even at this late date, the high water mark for all Batman media. 

Colorful, whimsical, surreal, and borderline kinky, "Batman" served as an arch satire of the conservative underpinnings of most mainstream comic book heroes. Batman and Robin, played by the legendary Adam West and Burt Ward, were depicted as simultaneously heroic and terminally square, eschewing vice and indecency in favor of painfully wholesome, all-American activities such as camping, chess, drinking milk, birdwatching, and engaging in proper hygiene. Batman and Robin were walking 1950s classroom scare films, living in a bizarre universe of costumed vigilantes and horny criminals. The brilliance of the show came largely from West and Ward, who were able to deliver some of the strangest dialogue ever written without once ever winking or cracking a smile. "Batman" is a comedy masterpiece. 

Of course, the most appealing aspect of "Batman" were its villains.

Something wicked this way comes to theaters on Christmas Day: Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”. The latest interpretation of Shakespeare’s 1606 Scottish play stars Oscar-winners Denzel Washington as Macbeth, a brave general who hears a prophecy from a trio of witches that he will become king, and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, the general’s ambitious wife, who goads him into killing the King.

It’s the first film the Oscar-winning Coen has done without his brother Ethan. Coen directed his wife McDormand (they married in 1984) to the first of her three Oscars with 1996’s “Fargo.’ Could this film bag her a 4th?

Even though the play is considered “cursed” that hasn’t stopped directors and actors from tackling the powerful tragedy. The last screen version starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and directed by Justin Kurzel was released in 2015. Reviews were generally good; the box office wasn’t.

The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder’s 1943 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy-drama, will return to Broadway next spring in a Lincoln Center Theater production directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.

Blain-Cruz, the Lct’s resident director, will be making her Broadway debut with the production, which will begin previews Thursday, March 31 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, with an official opening on Monday, April 25.

The fantastical Skin of Our Teeth chronicles a New Jersey family as it perseveres through one apocalypse after another, including the Ice Age, the Biblical flood and war.

“The Skin of Our Teeth is a play for right now,” said Blain-Cruz in a statement. “It’s a title that has been in my consciousness for a long time and while searching for the perfect play with which to make my Beaumont debut I re-read it. I was so deeply moved by Thornton Wilder’s story of a family going through apocalypse after apocalypse,...

“Your name is Estella,” her mother says. “Not Cruella.” Not yet, anyway. Disney’s Cruella, headlined by Emma Stone, is named for its would-be villain rather than for the 90-something Dalmatian puppies she’s tried to dognap in the name of fashion, time and again, over the years. The original Cruella would probably have preferred a biopic more akin to The Devil Wears Pongo. But in line with Maleficent, another of Disney’s recent villain revamps, it’s our old ideas about these bad guys — these bad women — that are...

“Cruella” is loaded with pop-song needle drops throughout, but it’s the oft-used Rolling Stones hit at the end that ties it all together: The studio that gave us “Maleficent” and the director of “I, Tonya” have teamed up to rehabilitate yet another villain, in a film that could have just as easily been titled “Sympathy for the de Vil.”

Yes, the dastardly fashionista who wanted to skin 101 Dalmatians just to make a coat has been officially retrofitted here, but there’s plenty to enjoy if you don’t mind the fact that this new version of the character eschews fur, canine or otherwise, and doesn’t even smoke. Purists may balk, but viewers who think of this less as a reboot of Dodie Smith’s memorable monster and more as a Disney spin on Derek Jarman’s “Jubilee” for gay 8-year-olds will find “Cruella” to be flashy fun, even...

It’s true of most Disney films that the villain is the most memorable character, and often—like with Ursula in The Little Mermaid—the most beautifully drawn, as if even the animators enjoyed their company more. In no case is this more true than in 1961’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Outfitted in a huge mink coat lined with blood-red silk and with acid green cigarette smoke billowing around her, Cruella De Vil is more charismatic and entertaining than the upstanding protagonists (and this includes the dogs).

It’s probably inevitable in the current climate—where every thread of plot from Disney’s intellectual property is spun into a standalone project—that Cruella De Vil would get an origin story, one that explains how someone could be callous enough to murder puppies for a coat. But Cruella goes to great lengths to make the villain sympathetic on her journey from a Dickensian childhood,...

Billie Holiday didn’t particularly enjoy singing “Strange Fruit,” a chilling anti-lynching anthem that compared Black bodies to fruit hanging from a tree, but she knew it was too important to not be performed.

The song, which earned the sympathy of her Black and white patrons, made her a threat to the FBI and marked the early beginnings of the Civil Rights movement, serves as the centerpiece of Lee Daniels’ forthcoming The United States vs Billie Holiday.

More from TVLineQueen Latifah: 'Black Women Have Been Equalizing for Years and Years, From Hatshepsut to Kamala Harris'Genius: Aretha EP Suzan-Lori Parks: 'Black...

Director Lee Daniels was in the midst of wrapping up his latest movie — The United States vs. Billie Holiday, which tells the story of the late, troubled jazz singer and how “Strange Fruit,” the anti-lynching protest song she introduced to the world, brought her both triumph and troubles — when he noticed an unsettling parallel. He suddenly got a firsthand look at just how timely his new film project was. “We were in the middle of editing and that [George Floyd’s death] happened,” he recalls. “People were sending me [protest] videos...

Arriving on Hulu in the wake of “MLK/FBI” and “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” provides yet another angle on J. Edgar Hoover’s war against Black America. And while director Lee Daniels packs in as much righteous anger as those other films, he does so with his trademark love of melodrama and disdain for subtlety.

In her first major acting role, singer Andra Day gives an emphatic and multi-shaded performance as the legendary Lady Day, but she and her talented co-stars are subject to an often-clunky screenplay by the esteemed playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, not to mention Daniels’ signature sensibility of putting too fine a point on anything and everything.

The goal is to correct the conventional take on Holiday, one of the 20th century’s greatest singers, breaking from received ideas about her drug addiction and exploring the facts about her relentless harassment by the FBI,...

“[Bille Holiday] was such an avant-garde [figure], so it was trying to pull things that seemed new. There are so many pictures of her, it’s wild. She has so many looks within all these different times, so I just went towards images that drew me in, and stayed on the line of the year that we were working in. There would be times where we were coming directly from a moment, and matching to a moment in time, and then there were moments where we could take liberty. And that was where I got to create more.” — Paolo Nieddu

On The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Paolo Nieddu crafted period-accurate looks for Holiday (played by singer-songwriter Andra Day), showcasing the “Black glamour and excellence” she represented.

With script in hand, his first step was to create a timeline of historical images, charting her style trajectory from 1947 to 1959.

His lookbook featured materials from the Library of Congress,...

Paul Phillips, whose long career as a Broadway stage manager included work on such notable productions as Sweet Charity, Mame, Chicago and, in 1967, the now historic Judy Garland at Home at the Palace, died Dec. 5 of natural causes in Naples, Florida. He was 95.

His death was announced by publicist Harlan Boll.

Born in Pleasantville New York, Phillips enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard and was deployed to fight in the South Pacific during WWII. After the war he moved to Hollywood for an acting career, but soon returned to New York, where he would shift from acting to Broadway stage management, beginning in 1959 with director George Abbott’s Fiorella.

Abbott brought Phillips over to stage manage his next play, 1961’s Take Her, She’s Mine starring Art Carney.

Phillips’ next show was producer David Merrick’s short-lived production of The Rehearsal, and a 1965 City Center Revival of Guys and Dolls.

As festivals continue to cancel and studios retreat on release dates, the movie industry is resolutely pursuing what it acknowledges to be a perilous scenario. “Even Hollywood needs love now and then,” Samuel Goldwyn once proclaimed, but instead it faces stubborn exhibitors like AMC and Cineworld, who hammer studios for breaking the 90-day window. It also confronts streamers led by Netflix churning out content at a rate that would make Louis B. Mayer cower. And it faces binge-bonded TV audiences who may never again leave their couches, even if it means surrendering to cinematic malfeasance like Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood (more on that later).

Instead of love, the one certitude filmmakers can rely on this year is a new set of Academy rules permitting eligibility for films that debut on a streaming service or an on-demand platform. To be sure, flickers of optimism always reside with those films that no...

This article contains Hollywood spoilers. You can find the easter egg guide for the previous episode here.

In what might be the most glamorous episode of Hollywood yet, George Hurrell’s decadent photo sessions get name checked, and (probably) Mickey Cohen’s mob gets involved. Let’s get cracking at those eggs!

Hollywood Episode 5

-The episode begins with Avis and company lamenting how terrible Walt Disney’s Song of the South is. And they’re not wrong, although one of its stars, Hattie McDaniel, is about to get a pretty glamorous treatment beginning in this episode…

-As production of Meg gets underway, we hear Ethel Merman’s iconic “There’s No Business Like Show Business” playing.

-We are also introduced to Queen Latifah as Hattie McDaniel… and she’s in a three way with a man and woman?! This is based on speculation and rumors that she was part of...

This article contains mild Hollywood spoilers.

On Netflix’s new series Hollywood, the Stallions of the Gas Station, circa 1947, fill up a dinner party being thrown by legendary filmmaker George Cukor. In between bites, and biting remarks by the ever-incisive Tallulah Bankhead, we are treated to Vivien Leigh, played by Katie McGuinness, giving an impromptu reading of her captivating and iconic Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). At the after party, all of the celebrities entertain illicit passion for a predetermined price. Like his character on American Horror Story, Dylan McDermott’s fictional Ernie is renowned for a certain largesse, and he bestows his beneficence on Leigh, who also carries a secret.

Up until quite recently, Vivien Leigh, the legendary star of stage and screen, was branded with the label nymphomaniac, a derogatory-sounding term which makes it sound like she was a sex addict. In reality, she fought a...

This article contains Hollywood spoilers. You can find our easter egg guide for the previous episode here.

If you wanted a star-gazing episode from Ryan Murphy (or perhaps a different four-letter word to do with stars), then this is it. In one episode we get Vivien Leigh, Tallulah Bankhead, Alfred Hitchcock, Noel Coward, and some juicy gossip about Errol Flynn. So get ready to go to a George Cukor party!

Hollywood Episode 3

-The third episode begins to the sound of Ella Fitzgerald’s “I’m Beginning to See the Light.”

-Ernie reveals to the boys that they’re going to a George Cukor party. While I was aware that Cole Porter and, at this point, retired director James Whale enjoyed scandalous pool parties, I’d been under the impression that Cukor was more deeply in the closet, preferring urbane Saturday night parties with celebrities. Which is still true, but according to Scotty Bowers,...

I’ll say this about Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix drama Hollywood: The costumes are fantastic. With its characters decked out in fedoras, three-piece suits and bejeweled ball gowns, the 1940s period piece co-created by Murphy and his Glee co-writer Ian Brennan — debuting this Friday, May 1; I’ve seen all seven episodes — gives us a much-needed dose of old-school glamour during these sweatpants-heavy quarantimes. Ah, but if only the rest of the series lived up to the clothes. This sprawling, ambitious look at the actors, producers and studio executives that created the film industry’s Golden Age sets out to rewrite history,...

11 March 1987: The famous Hollywood chronicler and stills collector, who has interviewed everybody, meets Richard Boston

“I tend to forget what I’ve just said,” John Kobal said, and a couple of minutes later he said: “What have I just said?” It’s not surprising that he can’t always remember what he’s just said because he says so much. He talks nineteen to the dozen. He also listens.

He must do, because he’s interviewed everyone from Arletty, Tallulah Bankhead, Louise Brooks and Joan Crawford at one end of the alphabet to Mae West and Loretta Young at the other end, with Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Anita Loos, Joel McCrea and almost every other Hollywood star you can think of in between. Somehow they all managed to get plenty of words in edgeways and the result is a whole shelf of books.

In the fall of ‘64, while Hollywood was gently satirizing the battle of the sexes with Send Me No Flowers and What a Way to Go!, Europe was at work in the trenches, peppering art houses with piercing dramas like François Truffaut‘s The Soft Skin and André Cayatte’s dual release, Anatomy of a Marriage: My Nights With Francoise and My Days with Jean-Marc (“One Ticket Admits You to Both Theaters”). Perhaps most unforgiving of all was Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater starring Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch and James Mason.

Bancroft plays Jo Armitage, a fragile beauty who responds to her husband’s infidelities by getting pregnant. Finch is Jake, a screenwriter whose recent success has emboldened him to walk on the wild side thereby provoking Jo to over-crowd the nursery. Mason is, once again, the odd man out, the deceptively genial husband of one of Jake’s conquests.

“I didn’t bring your breakfast, because you didn’t eat your din-din!”

‘Classics on the Loop’ continues at The Tivoli next week with Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? Screenings happen on Monday October 21st at 4 pm and 7 pm . Admission is just $7.The Tivoli is located at 6350 Delmar Blvd, St. Louis, Mo 63130. A Facebook invite can be found Here

The 1962 shocker Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? blended Psycho with Sunset Boulevard to compelling effect. One of the great movies about the movies, (and the best movies about the movies bite the hand that feeds them), and the best of director Robert Aldrich’s ‘women’s pictures’. It’s about a couple of self-loathing sisters hauled up together in a decaying Hollywood mansion, a too-close-to-home study of the real life rivalry between stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford or even as a veiled study of homosexual self-depreciation with the sisters as aging drag queens.

Montgomery Clift has been viewed as a tragic case since at least the publication of Patricia Bosworth’s 1978 biography, where his image became set as an innovative and very beautiful gay or bisexual actor who destroyed himself due to the external pressures of society.

But his nephew Robert Clift seeks to give a more nuanced portrait of his uncle in “Making Montgomery Clift,” a very revealing documentary that is based around a collection of audio tapes and other memorabilia kept by Robert’s father Brooks, who was Clift’s older brother. The Clift remembered here is not the doomed victim of so many mythologizing books and TV programs but a highly intelligent, mordantly funny man who successfully fought to keep his creative and sexual integrity intact.

“Making Montgomery Clift” is a provocative title that Clift himself might have enjoyed because it has a double meaning; to “make” someone, in old-fashioned slang,...

by Nathaniel R

Emmy & Golden Globe winner Valerie Harper, who rose to considerable fame as Rhoda on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off Rhoda, passed away yesterday after a long battle with brain cancer which doctors thought would end her life years ago. And it wasn't her first such battle either. She'd survived lung cancer in 2009, returning triumphantly to showbiz with a smashing performance as Tallulah Bankhead in the play "Looped" in 2010. Though The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda were before our time as showbiz conoisseurs we did catch her in Looped on Broadway and were thrilled to see her justly Tony-nominated for what was surely a taxing but also a bewitching performance...

Tony Sokol Aug 31, 2019

Best known as Rhoda, Valerie Harper started as a dancer and never left the stage behind.

Valerie Harper, whose Rhoda Morgenstern character is an icon of television, died on Friday August 30, eight days after her 80th birthday.

"My dad has asked me to pass on this message," Harper’s daughter Cristina Cacciotti, confirmed on Twitter. “'My beautiful caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away at 10:06 a.m., after years of fighting cancer. She will never, ever be forgotten. Rest In Peace, mia Valeria. -Anthony.'”

The Emmy winning actor was battling lung and brain cancer, according to Variety. When her brain cancer was first diagnosed in January 2013, Harper was told she had three months to live. While she was never cancer-free, she responded well enough to treatment to compete on Dancing with the Stars. Harper started in show business as a dancer, and her defining...

Beloved television sitcom icon Valerie Harper died this Friday at the age of 80 after a long battle with cancer. American TV audiences in the 1970s grew up with Harper in their living rooms on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” in which she played the self-deprecating Rhoda Morgenstern. Rhoda served as the neurotic, comic foil to the otherwise buttoned-up Mary Tyler Moore. Harper won three Primetime Emmy Awards for her performance, and went on to reprise the cherished role in the spinoff series “Rhoda,” for which she also earned an Emmy, in 1975.

Online tributes have been pouring in for the late actress, who graced the big screen in such films as “Freebie and the Bean” (1974) and “Chapter Two” (1979), and earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play for her turn as actress Tallulah Bankhead in “Looped.”

Even when she was down she danced and showed the world that...

Losing Valerie Harper, who is dead on Friday at age 80, feels like losing a best friend. That’s because for a decade in the 1970s and continuously in reruns, Harper has been a best friend. She rose to fame first as Rhoda Morgernstern, Mary Richards’ upstairs neighbor and best friend on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and then continued the character in a spinoff series titled simply “Rhoda.” Rhoda’s wedding on the first season of that CBS comedy remains one of the most watched television programs in television history.

There was always something special about Rhoda/Valerie ever since she was first glimpsed washing the windows of Mary Tyler Moore‘s newly-rented apartment on the first “Mtm” episode. While the character was initially thought too abrasive for TV audiences, something clicked early on in the series and Rhoda became the buddy you always wanted. While Mary Richards seemed to move through life with ease,...

Friends and peers paid tribute to Valerie Harper Friday following the news of her death following a six-year battle with brain cancer.

“A beautiful woman, a wonderful actress, a great friend and with balls bigger than mine. Her brilliance burst through and shined its light upon all of us,” Ed Asner, her co-star on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” tweeted Friday. “Goodnight beautiful. I’ll see you soon.”

The 80-year-old actress was best known for portraying Rhoda Morgenstern, Mary Richards’ witty, edgy and loving neighbor on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the early 1970s before her “Rhoda” spinoff which ran from 1974 to 1978. From 1986 to ’87, her sitcom “Valerie” (later titled “Valerie’s Family” and “The Hogan Family”) aired on NBC. In addition, Harper appeared in more than a dozen feature films and won four Emmy Awards and was nominated for a Tony Award for her role as Tallulah Bankhead in “Looped.

Valerie Harper, the actress best known for playing groundbreaking sitcom character Rhoda Morgenstern from 1970 to 1978 on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and its spinoff “Rhoda,” died Friday. She was 80.

A statement from Harper’s husband Tony Cacciotti was posted on Twitter by their daughter, actress Cristina Cacciotti.

“My beautiful caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away at 10:06am, after years of fighting cancer,” the statement read. “She will never, ever be forgotten. Rest In Peace, mia Valeria. -Anthony.”

The actress had been battling brain cancer since 2013. In July, her husband wrote in an emotional Facebook post that her doctors recommended she be placed in hospice care. “I can’t [because of our 40 years of shared commitment to each other] and I won’t because of the amazing good deeds she has graced us with while she’s been here on earth,” he wrote at the time.

“We will continue going forward as long as the powers above allow us,...

Valerie Harper, the multiple-Emmy-winning sitcom star whose role as the somewhat neurotic Rhoda Morgenstern made her one of television’s biggest and most beloved actors in the 1970s, died today. She was 80 and had been suffering from various cancers for a number of years.

Her family told Kabc-tv entertainment reporter George Pennacchio that Harper had been in a coma for a while before succumbing,

The veteran TV and stage actress was best known for playing sidekick Rhoda Morgenstern on CBS The Mary Tyler Moore Show, then taking the character into her own popular spinoff, Rhoda.

She also starred in the 1980s sitcom, Valerie, which — thanks to some head-butting over creative control with the show producers – saw Harper’s character killed off as an explanation for her exiting the show. It then morphed into Valerie’s Family and later was retitled The Hogan Family.

Harper also had recurring roles on The Office and The Simpsons.

Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda Morgenstern, the brash, Bronx-accented sidekick to the Mary Richards character on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and went on to topline spinoff “Rhoda,” died Friday after being diagnosed with lung and brain cancer in 2009. She was 80.

Her daughter Christina tweeted the news.

My dad has asked me to pass on this message: “My beautiful caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away at 10:06am, after years of fighting cancer.

She will never, ever be forgotten. Rest In Peace, mia Valeria. -Anthony.”

— Cris (@cristicacci) August 30, 2019

ABC7 first announced the news.

On July 23, her husband Tony Cacciotti posted a message saying he would be “where I belong right beside her” for as long as possible.

Harper won four Emmys for the two hugely popular 1970s shows and performed on the stage and bigscreen as well on appearing on dozens of other series. Through she was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago,...

Robert “Bob” Ullman, a longtime Broadway and Off Broadway press agent whose career spanned Ethel Merman, A Chorus Line, Curse of the Starving Class and many others, died of cardiac arrest on July 31 in Bayshore, Long Island, New York. He was 97.

His death was announced by longtime friend (and former Broadway press agent) Rev. Joshua Ellis.

Among the many Broadway productions on which Ullman worked were Ethel Merman and Mary Martin: Together on Broadway, A Chorus Line (from workshop to Public Theater to Broadway), Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Visit, Lauren Bacall in Cactus Flower, The Dining Room, Driving Miss Daisy, Sunday in the Park with George, and over 150 additional Broadway and off-Broadway plays and musicals.

Actors and theater greats with whom Ullman worked include Tallulah Bankhead, Luise Rainer, James Dean, Dame Edith Evans, Geraldine Page, Phil Silvers, Bert Lahr, Rosemary Harris, James Earl Jones, Sam Waterston, Colleen Dewhurst,...

A crowdfunding page has been started to help TV legend Valerie Harper with the costs of her cancer treatments.

Harper, 79, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009. Then in 2013, doctors discovered she’d developed a rare brain cancer.

Harper’s husband, Tony Cacciotti, started a GoFundMe campaign titled The Valerie Harper Cancer Support Fund on July 8.

“Valerie is currently taking a multitude of medications and chemotherapy drugs as well as going through extreme physical and painful challenges now with around the clock, 24/7 care immediately needed, which is not covered by insurance,” the page says. “This is just part of the daily cost that is without a doubt a financial burden that could never be met alone. This GoFundMe initiative from Tony, is to ensure she receives the best care possible.”

When contacted by Deadline tonight, a rep confirmed that the page is real and said Cacciotti would offer additional comments at a later date.

In a career spanning more than half a century, he directed films in almost every genre – screwball comedy, musical, film noir, thriller, literary adaptations. With his gentle nature, he coaxed 21 actors to Oscar nominations (with five winning), helmed seven films nominated for Best Picture (with one win), and was himself nominated for Best Director five times (with one win).

Acclaimed director George Cukor was born on July 7, 1899, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City to Hungarian-Jewish immigrants. As a child, he became infatuated with the theater and performed in amateur plays, once with future friend and mentor David O. Selznick. His father was an attorney, and Cukor was expected to follow in his path; however, he did not last long in law school, and soon found odd jobs in theater houses. He co-founded a stock company and alternated between directing shows for that and some for Broadway.

In a career spanning more than half a century, he directed films in almost every genre – screwball comedy, musical, film noir, thriller, literary adaptations. With his gentle nature, he coaxed 21 actors to Oscar nominations (with five winning), helmed seven films nominated for Best Picture (with one win), and was himself nominated for Best Director five times (with one win).

Acclaimed director George Cukor was born on July 7, 1899, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City to Hungarian-Jewish immigrants. As a child, he became infatuated with the theater and performed in amateur plays, once with future friend and mentor David O. Selznick. His father was an attorney, and Cukor was expected to follow in his path; however, he did not last long in law school, and soon found odd jobs in theater houses. He co-founded a stock company and alternated between directing shows for that and some for Broadway.

A Cult Classic is born! And I don’t use that term loosely. I’ve been emceeing the midnight shows here in St. Louis at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater for a decade now and if Ma finds the audience it deserves, I can totally see it playing there in a year or two with an inebriated audience screaming its many memorable lines back at the screen. “Don’t make me drink alone!” could become the new “No more wire hangers!”

Octavia Spencer stars in Ma as Sue Ann (aka Ma), a 50-ish veterinary assistant who keeps to herself in a peaceful rural Ohio town. One afternoon, Ma is confronted in a liquor store parking lot by Maggie (Diana Silvers), a teen who’s just moved to town with her mother (Juliette Lewis) who asks her to buy alcohol for her and her new pals. Ma sees this as the chance to make some younger,...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Max Hollein with Camp: Notes On Fashion Co-Chairs Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, and Gucci Creative Director Alessandro Michele at the press preview Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In Susan Sontag's Notes On 'Camp' from 1964, she counts Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble In Paradise and John Huston's The Maltese Falcon as "among the greatest camp movies ever made." Marcel Carné's Drôle De Drame, Greta Garbo, Jean Cocteau, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Russell, Gina Lollobrigida, Victor Mature, Virginia Mayo, Tallulah Bankhead, Jayne Mansfield, Mae West, Edward Everett Horton, and Anita Ekberg's performance in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita are noted by her for their camp appeal.

Andrew Bolton when I asked him "Are dachshunds particularly Camp?": "Oh absolutely!" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Baz Luhrmann, Sienna Miller, Lupita Nyong'o, Emily Blunt, Elle Fanning, Emma Stone, Naomi Campbell, Ezra Miller, Cara Delevingne, Celine Dion, Bette Midler,...

Though headlined by a pair of actresses one would hope could elevate familiar material, Greta is at its core a lurid B-movie dressed in art-house clothing, poorly-written trash that ultimately bears more than a passing resemblance to the many disposable psychological thrillers it pilfers from. Greta tells of 20-ish waitress Frances (Chloe Grace Moretz) who’s recently moved into a lavish Manhattan loft with roomie Erica (Maika Monroe) after the death of her mother. Frances finds an abandoned purse on the subway and kindly walks to the owner’s home to return it. There lives Greta (Isabelle Huppert), a sad and fragile 60-ish French woman so thankful to Frances that she invites her inside for coffee and conversation. The women at first make a connection and Greta, who claims to have a mysterious daughter about that age, provides Frances a motherly presence. The friendship doesn’t last long. After a...

At the Writers Guild Awards this past weekend, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” pulled off an upset by winning Best Adapted Screenplay over the presumed front-runner, “BlacKkKlansman.” Six of the last eight WGA winners in that category went on to repeat at the Oscars, but our odds still favor “Klansman” to be the academy’s choice. Can “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” pull off another upset this Sunday night? If it does, it would be historic.

“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” tells the true story of biographer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy), who made her living in the 1970s and 1980s profiling the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estee Lauder, and journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. When Israel is no longer able to get published because she has fallen out of step with current tastes — and because of her abrasive personality — she attempts to make a living by forging and selling letters...