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Jack De Mave, who portrayed a U.S. forest ranger on Lassie and an unconventional date for Valerie Harper’s Rhoda Morgenstern on the second episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died. He was 91.

De Mave died Jan. 16 in hospice care in Macon, Georgia, his friend Vickie Lovett told The Hollywood Reporter. He had suffered a heart attack on Thanksgiving Day, she said.

The hunky De Mave also appeared in such films as the Rock Hudson-starring Blindfold (1966), 1776 (1972) — as John Penn — and Mel Gibson’s The Man Without a Face (1993), and in the 1970s, he played The Lone Ranger in a series of Frito-Lay commercials that led to appearances in parades and in front of kids as the wholesome lawman.

The stage-trained actor joined the cast of the enduring CBS drama Lassie at the start of its 15th season as Forest Ranger Bob Erickson in 1968 and worked on 23 episodes over two years.

Marla Adams, best known for her 37 years in the role of Dina Abbott Mergeron on the CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless, died Thursday in Los Angeles. She was 85 and the cause of death was not disclosed.

Born in Ocean City, NJ, on August 28, 1938, Adams’ love for the stage was ignited after winning the Miss Ocean City and Miss Cape May pageants. She also finished as a runner-up in the Miss New Jersey pageant and was the Miss Diamond Jubilee Queen during the 1954 celebration of the 75th anniversary of Ocean City’s founding.

A student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Adams appeared on Broadway in the 1958 production of The Visit at the Morosco Theatre with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. She also starred as June in the 1961 feature film Splendor in the Grass.

Adams starred as Belle Clemens on The Secret Storm from 1968-74 and joined...

Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages are Davis’ assessment of the current standings of the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any film or performance. Like any organization or body that votes, each individual category is fluid and subject to change. Predictions are updated every Thursday.

Last Updated: Jan. 19, 2022

2023 Oscars Predictions: Best Animated Short

Category Commentary: Filmmaking legend J.J. Abrams has 10 Emmy nominations and two wins (for directing and outstanding drama series for the first season of “Lost” in 2005), but he’s never been nominated for an Oscar. That could all change on Tuesday, Jan. 24.

Abrams is one of the producers of Apple’s “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,...

Actor Colman Domingo is on a path to making history.

This year, the “Zola” star produced and co-wrote the animated short film “New Moon” with his husband, Raul Domingo, and if it manages to snag an Oscar nomination, it’ll be a new first.

Read More: Jimmy Kimmel To Return To Host The Oscars For A Third Time In 2023

In the event that “New Moon” is one of the five nominees for Best Animated Short Film, Colman and Raul would become the first LGBTQ married couple nominated together in the same year.

Couples being nominated at the same time is nothing new. Most recently, in 2021, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem were each nominated for their work in “Parallel Mothers” and “Being the Ricardos”.

But the feat dates all the way back to 1932, which Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt were both nominated for Best Actor and Actress for their performances in...

Over a dozen married couples have been nominated for Academy Awards in the same year. The list begins with Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt, who were both nominated in best actor and actress in 1932 for “The Guardsman.” Most recently, that roster includes Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, nominated for “Being the Ricardos” and “Parallel Mothers” in 2021. This year, if the animated short film “New Moon” is among the five films given a nod on Jan. 24, co-writers and producers Colman Domingo and Raul Domingo will become the first same-sex married couple ever nominated in any category.

On this episode of the award-winning Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, we talk to both Colman and Raul Domingo about collaborating on their new short film, which was announced as one of the 15 shortlisted by the Academy Awards. The duo discusses working together and bringing this personal story to the screen. In addition, Colman Domingo teases...

Judging by recent winners, the Best Actress Oscar category is the only acting one in which voters do not have a clear performance length preference. Over the last decade, women with the first or second highest screen times in their lineups have won just as often as those with the first or second lowest amounts, and two wins have gone to those who have fallen in the middle. Nonetheless, since Olivia Colman triumphed for her relatively short performance in “The Favourite” in 2019, the award has only been won by actresses who cross the 80 minute and 74% marks, which seems to indicate increasing favor toward larger lead female roles.

In 2020, Renée Zellweger triumphed here for her work in “Judy,” which amounts to one hour, 27 minutes, and 29 seconds, or 74.01% of the film. She was followed last year by Frances McDormand, whose performance in “Nomadland” is six minutes and 33 seconds shorter but 1.20% longer. She...

Conrad Nagel, the handsome matinee idol and co-founder of the Academy Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was the host of the fifth annual Academy Awards on Nov. 18, 1932. The evening marked Nagel’s second stint at Oscars host; the then-academy prez had hosted the festivities two years earlier. He turned on the charm in his sophomore outing at the glamorous banquet at the Fiesta Room of the Ambassador Hotel honoring films released between Aug. 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932. (Nagel would later co-host the first televised Oscars with Bob Hope in 1953.)

Eight films vied for Best Picture: John Ford’s medical drama “Arrowsmith”; Frank Borzage’s marital drama “Bad Girl”; Mervyn LeRoy’s examination of tabloid journalism “Five Star Final,” Edmund Goulding’s stylish drama “Grand Hotel”; Ernst Lubitsch’s pre-Code musical comedies “One Hour with You” and “The Smiling Lieutenant”; and Josef von Sternberg’s luscious pre-Code melodrama “Shanghai Express,” starring his muse Marlene Dietrich.

Well, if Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz didn’t know who they were taking to the Oscars before, they do now. The married actors earned matching nominations: Best Actor for “Being the Ricardos” and Best Actress for “Parallel Mothers,” respectively. They’re the sixth spouses in Oscar history to earn Oscar acting nominations in the same year.

SEESassy Oscar nominations reactions from our film forum posters: Cheers for Kirsten Dunst, jeers for Lady Gaga snub

Bardem and Cruz join five other couples: Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt; Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner; Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton; Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts; and Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

This is the first time Bardem and Cruz are nominated together, but they have had remarkably similar Oscar track records. Both are nominated for the fourth time. Both won their Oscars on their second try for supporting roles. And both have been...

On Thursday, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz became only the sixth married couple in Oscar history to be nominated in the same year – but when TheWrap told Bardem that the most famous couple to achieve that feat was Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, he had a quick response.

“I hope we don’t end up like they did, right?” he said, laughing as he remembered the famously combative couple who were married in 1964, nominated for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1967, divorced in 1974, remarried in 1975 and divorced again in 1976.

In fact, three of the five previous Oscar-nominated couples did split up post-Oscars. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne stayed together after their 1932 nomination, as did Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester after their dual noms in 1957. But in addition to Burton and Taylor, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were nominated in 1953 and divorced four years later, while Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts...

Every Academy Awards season provides a little slice of history, but more Oscar records could fall with Tuesday’s announcement of the nominations. Here are some of the landmarks that could conceivably be reached:

• If Kenneth Branagh is nominated for both Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for “Belfast,” he’ll break the record for nominations in the largest number of different categories. Branagh has previously been nominated in five different categories: Best Actor (“Henry V”), Best Supporting Actor (“My Week With Marilyn”), Best Director (“Henry V”), Best Adapted Screenplay (“Hamlet”) and Best Live Action Short (“Swan Song”). George Clooney, Alfonso Cuarón and Walt Disney have all been nominated in six different categories.

• If Jane Campion is nominated for Best Director for “The Power of the Dog,” she’ll become the first woman ever nominated twice in the category. (She was previously nominated for 1993’s “The Piano.”)

• If “The Power of the Dog,...

On Christmas Eve 1951, NBC aired the very first “Hallmark Hall of Fame” with the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Christmas opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” Rosemary Kuhlman and 12-year-old Chet Allen starred in this Peabody and Christopher Award-winning holiday story of the three Magi who stay with a young physically disabled boy and his widowed mother on their way to Bethlehem to find the Christ child. The presentation was so popular, the cast reprised their roles the following April. The production was done three more times in the 1950s on NBC, but Bill McIver played Amahl because Allen’s voice had changed.

The “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” which would air on NBC, ABC and CBS and is now exclusively on the Hallmark Channel, is the longest-running primetime series in TV history. In the past 70 years it has won over 80 Emmy Awards and dozens of Peabody Awards, Golden Globes,...

Peg Murray, who won a 1967 Tony Award for portrayal of Fräulein Kost in Cabaret and later recurred for 13 years on ABC’s daytime drama All My Children, died Nov. 29. A resident in recent years at an assisted care community in Greenport, Long Island, Murray had been in declining health following a stroke. She was 96.

Her death was first reported by the Long Island newspaper The Suffolk Times. Deadline only recently learned of her passing.

Murray first appeared on Broadway in 1956 in the play The Great Sebastians starring the reigning theatrical duo Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt. In 1959 she had a small role in the original Gypsy starring Ethel Merman, followed by appearances in She Loves Me, Anyone Can Whistle and The Subject Was Roses.

In 1966, Murray originated the small but pivotal role of Fräulein Kost in Harold Prince’s staging of the Kander & Ebb musical Cabaret. Fräulein Kost begins as a largely comedic character,...

The 1970s was the Golden Age of the “Movie of the Week” with the three networks –ABC, CBS and NBC — not only offering theatrical flicks several days a week, but also made-for-tv movies. These ran the gamut from the silly — 1973’s “The Horror at 37,000 Feet” — to such acclaimed award-winning fare as 1970’s “Tribes,” 1971’s “Brian’s Song” and “Duel,” 1972’s “That Certain Summer” and “The Glass House,” 1974’s “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and 1975’s “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom” and “Love Among the Ruins.”

I have especially warm memories of ABC’s “Love Among the Ruins,” which marked the only film pairing of Oscar-winning legends Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier. I was a junior in college when it originally aired and I recall an Sro crowd at the Brooks Hall TV lounge at Allegheny College in Meadville (Sharon Stone’s hometown) Pa to watch the exquisite romantic comedy.

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,...

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,...

Robert 'Bob' Ullman left, the legendary theatre press agent, whose career included 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, died on July 31, 2019 in Bayshore, Long Island, New York. He was 97. The cause of death was cardiac arrest. Bob's death was announced by Rev. Joshua Ellis, a long-time Ullman friend, a former Broadway press agent, and now, an Interspiritual minister.

It might be hard to believe, but Angela Bassett has never won an Emmy before. She’s now her fifth nomination after making the Best Narrator lineup for her work on Nat Geo’s “The Flood.” If she prevails, not only will she get her first statuette, but she and husband Courtney B. Vance will join the club of Emmy-winning married couples.

Vance has a perfect record at the Emmys, converting his first nomination into a win in 2016 in Best Limited Series/TV Movie Actor for his performance as Johnnie Cochran on “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.” He gave a brief but memorable speech in which he dedicated the award to his wife of now nearly 22 years — or “the woman that rocks my chain.” #truelove

Bassett’s previous nominations were for “The Rosa Parks Story”, “American Horror Story: Coven”, “American Horror Story: Freak Show” and “Master of None”. In “The Flood,...

Jessica Biel received her first career Emmy nomination last week, for Best Limited Series/TV Movie Actress for “The Sinner,” and her husband Justin Timberlake was just as pumped as she was. He tweeted his excitement and commented on her Instagram post. Proud hubby all around. And if Biel takes home the gold, she and Timberlake will join a long line of married couples who’ve won acting Emmys.

A four-time winner, Timberlake has “Saturday Night Live” to thank for all his statuettes. He won two for songwriting (“Dick in a Box” in 2007 and his 2011 monologue) and two for Best Comedy Guest Actor, in 2009 and 2011. He has an addition guest nomination for “SNL” and three other songwriting nominations, two for “SNL” and one for the 2008 ESPYs. Too bad he didn’t host “SNL” last season because then he and Biel could’ve been nominees in the same year (you know...

First The Visit, a haunting musical drama, based on the 1958 play by Friedrich Durrenmatt, which originally starred the legendary acting team of Lynn Fontanne as the world's wealthiest woman and Alfred Lunt as the disloyal former lover on whom she seeks revenge. Broadway favorites Chita Rivera and Roger Rees star in this stirring adaptation and appear on Theater Talk to discuss their roles in it. Joining them are The Visit's innovative director, John Doyle, and composer, John Kander, who wrote the score with lyricist Fred Ebb the pair's last collaboration before Ebb's death.

Ten Chimneys Foundation has announced the ten actors who will participate in the 2014 Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Program, a widely acclaimed national program to serve the future of American theatre. July 13-20, the Lunt-Fontanne Fellows will join Master Teacher David Hyde Pierce for an intensive, weeklong master class and immersion experience at Ten Chimneys, the National Historic Landmark estate of theatre legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin.

Ten Chimneys Foundation announces its 2013 Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Master Class with Academy Award nominee, six time Golden Globe winner, and five time Emmy Award winner Alan Alda serving as the Master Teacher. From today, July 21 - 28, Mr. Alda will focus on spontaneity on stage, and will lead ten accomplished theatre actors in a master class and immersion experience on the grounds and within the inspirational rooms of Ten Chimneys, the National Historic Landmark estate of Broadway legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin.

Dead at 99: Opera star and Crosby's ex-girlfriend in 1944 Best Picture Oscar winner Risë Stevens, the Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano that moviegoers remember as Nelson Eddy's romantic partner in Roy Del Ruth's 1941 musical The Chocolate Soldier and as Bing Crosby's ex-girlfriend in Leo McCarey's 1944 Oscar-winning blockbuster Going My Way, died on Wednesday, March 20, at her Manhattan home. The former singer was 99 years old. (Pictured above: Stevens in her most famous operatic role, that of Bizet's anti-heroine Carmen.) Born in The Bronx, New York City, Stevens sang at the Metropolitan from 1938 to 1961; among her most popular roles were Dalila in Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila, Mignon in Ambroise Thomas' opera of the same name, and most notable of all, the lead in Bizet's Carmen. After leaving the stage, she became an arts administrator with the Met and president of the Mannes College of Music.

Ten Chimneys Foundation announces its 2013 Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Master Class with Academy Award nominee, six time Golden Globe winner, and five time Emmy Award winner Alan Alda serving as the Master Teacher. From July 21 - 28, Mr. Alda will focus on spontaneity on stage, and will lead ten accomplished theatre actors in a master class and immersion experience on the grounds and within the inspirational rooms of Ten Chimneys, the National Historic Landmark estate of Broadway legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin.

Hollywood actor known for playing wholesome wives and Ma Kent in Superman

Although Phyllis Thaxter, who has died aged 92, had a successful career in films throughout the 1940s and 50s, many will remember her for her last movie role, in Superman (1978). It was the small but key part of Ma Kent, the childless farmer's wife who adopts a foundling baby and names him Clark. Together with her husband (Glenn Ford) – both made intentionally to resemble the couple in Grant Wood's American Gothic painting – they bring up the abnormally physically gifted boy until he's ready to fly off "to fight for truth, justice and the American way".

At one stage, she tells him: "We Kents don't like show-offs, ain't that so? A body's got to be humble even if he knows that he's better'n his neighbours." A fragile beauty, Thaxter was never a show-off, but made an impact in a gentle way,...

Ten Chimneys Foundation has announced the ten actors who will participate in the 2012 Lunt- Fontanne Fellowship Program, a widely acclaimed national program to serve the future of American theatre. Today, July 22-July 29, the Lunt-Fontanne Fellows will join Broadway legend Joel Grey for an intensive, weeklong master class and immersion experience at Ten Chimneys, the National Historic Landmark estate of Broadway legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin.

Ten Chimneys Foundation has announced the ten actors who will participate in the 2012 Lunt- Fontanne Fellowship Program, a widely acclaimed national program to serve the future of American theatre. July 22-29, the Lunt-Fontanne Fellows will join Broadway legend Joel Grey for an intensive, weeklong master class and immersion experience at Ten Chimneys, the National Historic Landmark estate of Broadway legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin.

The Kennedy Center Honors have been handed out since 1978. Recipients hail from various branches of the American performance art world — including film, stage, music, and dance — even though performers more closely associated with British show business have managed to sneak in every now and then, e.g., Paul McCartney, Roger Daltrey, Elton John, Pete Townshend. Since recipients are supposed to attend the Washington, D.C., ceremony in order to take home their Kennedy awards, Doris Day has remained unhonored by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Katharine Hepburn kept putting it off until she finally relented in 1990. (Irene Dunne, see above photo, was one who managed to be honored though absent due to ill health.) Ginger Rogers, for her part, was present at the ceremony, but her films with Fred Astaire weren't — because Astaire's widow, Robyn Astaire, demanded payment for the televised clips. At the time, Kennedy Center Honors...

Two-time Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep (right), singer Barbara Cook, singer and songwriter Neil Diamond, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and saxophonist and composer Sonny Rollins will receive the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' 2011 Kennedy Center Honors. The Kennedy Center Honors ceremony will be held on Sunday, December 4, on the Kennedy Center Opera House stage. The Kennedy Center Honors medallions will be presented on Saturday, December 3, at a State Department dinner hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. An edited version of the ceremony will be broadcast on CBS for the 34th consecutive year as a two-hour primetime special on Tuesday, December 27, at 9:00 p.m. (Et/Pt). The event will be produced by George Stevens Jr. and Michael Stevens. From the Kennedy Center Honors' press release: "The Honors recipients recognized for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts—whether in dance, music, theater, opera, motion pictures,...