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The cherished screen team of William Powell and Myrna Loy met “cute” on their first film together, the gritty 1934 “Manhattan Melodrama.” According to TCM.com, first scene in the film required her to run out a building, maneuver through a crowd of people and jump into a car. The film’s director W.S. “Woody” Van Dyke, who was nicknamed “One Take Woody” because of his efficiency, didn’t bother to introduce the actress to Powell. So, when Van Dyke called “action “Loy recalled jumping into the car and landing “smack on William Powell’s lap. He looked up nonchalantly: Miss Loy, I presume?” I said, Mr. Powell? That’s how I met the man who would be my partner in 14 films.”

It was their next film, the smart screwball comedy/mystery “The Thin Man,” which opened May 25, 1934, transformed the couple into top stars at MGM. Directed by Van Dyke...

Rochelle Oliver, who starred on Broadway in Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and taught acting at New York’s respected Hb Studio since the 1970s, has died. She was 86.

Oliver died April 13, the Hb Studio announced. “Those who knew Rochelle will know what a luminous artist, sensitive and passionate teacher she was,” it said in an Instagram post. She died two days shy of her birthday.

For the big screen, Oliver starred in the Horton Foote-written 1918 (1985) and Courtship (1987) and appeared in such other films as The Happy Hooker (1975), Paul Mazursky‘s Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), John Sayles’ Lianna (1983), An Unremarkable Life (1989), Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman (1992) and Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending (2002).

She also recurred as Judge Grace Larkin on Law & Order from 1993-03.

A protégé of Uta Hagen — who also taught for decades at Hb and...

Lynda Gravátt, a mainstay of the New York stage, a seminal figure in the Washington D.C. theater community and a familiar presence on television through appearances in the Law & Order franchise shows, The Good Wife and the 1999 Showtime series The Hoop Life, died February 23 at a hospital in New Jersey. She was 77.

Her death was confirmed by the National Black Theatre. A cause has not been disclosed.

Born in Harlem May 24, 1946 (some reports indicate 1947), Gravátt made her Broadway debut at age 4 in The King and I, and would subsequently appear as a child performer and singer on local TV shows and in concerts.

A graduate of Howard University, Gravátt resumed her acting career as a founding member of the Living Stage, a company at Washington D.C.’s Arena Stage devoted to theater works promoting social justice.

Returning to New York City, Gravátt became a staple of the Off Broadway scene,...

The Academy Awards grew up at the 16th annual ceremony March 2, 1944. Since the first Oscar ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt’s Blossom Room in 1929, the Academy Awards were small banquet ceremonies for La La Land movers and shakers. But that all changed 80 years ago. World War II was in its third year and movies meant more than ever to war-weary audiences.

So, the Oscars moved to the then-Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and bleachers were introduced giving fans a chance to see their favorites walk the red carpet. And instead of a select industry audience, attendees included members of all branches of the armed services many of whom sat in bleachers on the stage at the Chinese. The ceremony was heard locally on Kfwb; Jack Benny hosted the international broadcast for the troops on CBS Radio via shortwave. And for the first time, supporting performers finally received a full-size Academy Award.

Nicolas Coster, the soap opera stalwart who starred on Another World, Santa Barbara and All My Children and appeared in such films as All the President’s Men, Reds and Stir Crazy, has died. He was 89.

Coster died Monday in a hospital in Florida, his daughter Dinneen Coster announced on Facebook.

“Please remember him as a great artist,” she wrote. “He was an actor’s actor! I will always be inspired by him and know how lucky I am to have such a great father!!

A familiar character actor who often portrayed officious types, Coster played chief of detectives J.E. Carson on The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo and later recurred as the millionaire father of Lisa Whelchel’s Blair Warner on another 1980’s NBC sitcom, The Facts of Life.

He appeared often on Broadway, and in his 1961 debut, he understudied for Lawrence Olivier as Henry II in Becket. Two decades later,...

Update May 2, with second extension: With the Tony Award nomination (Leading Actress/Play) for Jessica Hecht announced today, the Manhattan Theatre Company production of David Auburn’s Summer, 1976 has gotten another one-week extension. The play will now run through Sunday, June 18 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Previous, April 20: Summer, 1976, the new play by Pulitzer Prize winner David Auburn starring Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht, has received a two-week extension prior to its April 25 Broadway opening at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

The Manhattan Theatre Club production, currently in previews and set for an April 25 opening, will now play through Saturday, June 10. The world premiere production had initially been set to close May 28.

Directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan, Summer, 1976 follows an unlikely friendship over the course of one fateful summer, with Linney playing Diana, “a fiercely iconoclastic artist and single mom,...

This article contains House of the Dragon episode 7 spoilers.

Laenor Velaryon is alive. This revelation sent shockwaves through the House of the Dragon viewing community, astonishing book readers and the unsullied alike. Before the moment where a newly shorn Laenor (played briefly but poignantly by John Macmillan) removed his hood, viewers were led to believe they were witnessing the darkest moment of cruel betrayals: Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), Princess of Dragonstone and wife of Laenor, appeared to conspire in the murder of her husband. And, indeed, someone was definitely lying dead in a fire, adorned in Laenor’s clothes.

Yet the son of Driftmark lives still, even if in doing so he has now abandoned his titles and ancestral home in favor of a life at sea and presumably in Essos—a land where a man’s gold is more valuable than his name.

It’s a shocking twist, not...

Click here to read the full article.

Jered Barclay, the veteran stage and screen actor who performed in vaudeville and had voiceover roles in TV’s Smurfs and Transformers, has died. He was 91.

Barclay died Saturday in North Hollywood from Mds Leukemia, actress Myra Turley, his longtime friend with whom he performed in the two-person play A Tantalizing, directed by Harvey Perr, announced.

Jered Barclay in ‘His Model Wife’ (1961)

Also a director, photojournalist and acting coach, Barclay began his nine-decade career in 1934 at age 3, performing in vaudeville with Judy Garland, Shirley Temple and Sammy Davis Jr. At 6, he became a radio actor and at 12 traveled with the Clyde Beatty Circus before his theatrical debut at 14.

After receiving a B.A. in drama from the University of Washington, the Seattle native moved to Los Angeles and performed on three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, in Otto Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm...

“My heart jumped!,” recalls Christine Baranski about the moment she heard Julian Fellowes planned to write a series about the “gilded age” of American history. The Emmy-winning actress shares, “One is not often offered period pieces of any kind,” but especially ones set during the “very special… scenically rich period” of the late-nineteenth century United States. Years later, she would go on star in HBO’s “The Gilded Age” with Cynthia Nixon, who concurs that this period is “really exciting” to explore on screen because “the roots of what New York would become and America would become were crystalized” in this moment. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Baranski and Nixon play siblings Agnes van Rhijn and Ada Brook on the series, respectively, after previously playing mother and daughter on stage in Tom Stoppard’s play “The Real Thing” in 1984. Agnes is an urbane and hilariously rigid widow, but Baranski...

(For nearly 30 years, Susan Haskins-Doloff was co-host and executive producer of the classic PBS TV show “Theater Talk,” featuring fascinating and witty interviews with the leading stars and other creators of Broadway’s greatest shows.)

As the 2022 Tony Awards approach, and I think about handicapping this year’s nominees, I am also remembering some of the more outstanding dramatic performance I have witnessed over the years. Long, long ago, my mother took me to see “A Raisin in The Sun.” Lorraine Hansberry’s ground-breaking play, which opened on Broadway in 1959, had already received due praise, winning the Pulitzer Prize and The New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards. It didn’t get any Tony’s though. It was nominated in 4 categories, including Best Play, but lost that to The Miracle Worker. “A Raisin in The Sun” closed two months after the Tony Ceremony, with 530 performances.

It then went on the road...

Even in its fourth and final season — whose two parts debuted January 21 and April 29, respectively — Netflix’s “Ozark” saw numerous additions to its already sprawling cast. “Each season of ‘Ozark’ is almost like starting over because you kill so many people that you have these huge new characters that are going to carry big arcs,” casting director Alexa Fogel tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview (watch above).

Indeed, after the third season saw Janet McTeer‘s Helen Pierce and Tom Pelphrey‘s Ben Davis, among other characters, bite the dust, the fourth introduces a slew of new faces. Those include Alfonso Herrera as Javier “Javi” Elizonndro and Veronica Falcón as Herrera’s onscreen mother, Camila Elizonndro, who thereby play the nephew and sister, respectively, of cartel boss Omar Navarro (Felix Solis). “There are so many outrageous things that take place [on the show], but the style has to be completely naturalistic,...

Veteran actor and frequent scene stealer Bruce Davison joins Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss a few of his favorite films.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Extra School (2017)

Gone With The Wind (1939)

Willard (1971) – Joe Dante’s review, Lee Broughton’s Blu-ray review

Fortune And Men’s Eyes (1971)

Short Cuts (1993) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Longtime Companion (1989)

Last Summer (1969) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Short Eyes (1977)

The Manor (2021)

Ulzana’s Raid (1972) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review and All-Region Blu-ray review

King Solomon’s Mines (1950) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937)

Them! (1954) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary

Tarantula (1955) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Spartacus (1960) – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Ben-Hur (1959) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Psycho (1960) – John Landis’s trailer commentary,...

Actress Yvette Mimieux, who starred in movies including “Where the Boys Are,” “The Time Machine,” “Light in the Piazza,” “Toys in the Attic,” “Dark of the Sun” and “The Picasso Summer,” died Tuesday. She was 80.

The beautiful blonde Mimieux made most of her films in the 1960s, but she was also among the stars of Disney’s 1979 sci-fi film “The Black Hole.”

Among the films Mimieux made in 1960 were MGM’s glossy teen movie “Where the Boys Are,” in which four coeds including Mimieux’s Melanie head to Fort Lauderdale for spring break in search of fun and the “right” boy, and George Pal’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine,” starring Rod Taylor and with Mimieux third billed as Weena, Taylor’s romantic interest, who lives among the Eloi, a peaceful race living in the year 802,701.

In 1962 she appeared in four films, including the big-budget critical and...

Exclusive: Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play The Children’s Hour, set in an all-girls boarding school, is getting a shot at the small screen with Anonymous Content and Bess Wohl adapting.

The play was adapted as a feature film in 1961. starring Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, James Garner and Fay Bainter.

Set in the 1930s, The Children’s Hour tells the story of two women who run an all-girls school in a fictional New England town and are falsely accused of having an “unnatural” lesbian relationship by one of their students. The allegation upends the women’s lives, destroys their careers and forces them to reckon with the true nature of their friendship.

Wohl, who made her Broadway debut in 2019 with her play Grand Horizons and is writing an episode of Scott Z. Burns’ climate-change anthology series Extrapolations for Apple, is adapting the play as a limited series.

Two-time Pulitzer finalist Jon Robin Baitz,...

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,...

This past week I happily immersed myself in the latest book by protean film critic/biographer/sometime novelist David Thomson, A Light in the Dark: A History of Movie Directors. Even as he approaches 80, the author of the invaluable Biographical Dictionary of Film editions is able to find fresh things to say about such cinematic imperishables as Hitchcock, Welles, Lang, Renoir, Bunuel, Hawks, Godard and Nicholas Ray.

Midway through the new tome, Thomson delivers his most unexpected and welcome piece, a savory appreciation of a director who, almost defiantly, is not an auteur and therefore remains somewhat taken for granted, far too much so, despite having made any number of notable films of considerable class and merit. That would be Stephen Frears, who himself will turn 80 in June.

Like such Hollywood non-auteurs as Michael Curtiz, Raoul Walsh, Don Siegel, Henry Hathaway, Richard Fleischer and any number of others, Frears is not a writer.

Update Eric McCormack will join the previously announced Mary-Louise Parker in the virtual performance of Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, premiering on Thursday, April 29 as part of the virtual Spotlight on Plays series. Brandon Burton has also joined the cast.

Also announced today was the April 8 premiere date of Pearl Cleage’s Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous.

Previous, March 23 Meryl Streep, Mary-Louise Parker and Carla Gugino have joined the line-up of actors taking part in this year’s virtual Spotlight on Plays series benefitting The Actors Fund, with Streep reuniting with her Sophie’s Choice co-star Kevin Kline on Sarah Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth.

Parker is set to perform in Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz. Gugino will be teamed with the previously announced Ellen Burstyn in Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine.

Others previously announced, in addition to Kline and Burstyn, are Kathryn Hahn,...

Kathryn Hahn, Keanu Reeves, Debbie Allen, Ellen Burstyn and Bobby Cannavale are among the actors who’ll take part in this year’s virtual Spotlight on Plays series benefitting The Actors Fund.

Performers and directors were announced today by producer Jeffrey Richards for the series that kicks off March 25 with Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, to be directed by Leigh Silverman.

Other artists to be featured in the spring series include Kevin Kline, Audra McDonald, Phylicia Rashad, Heidi Schreck, Alia Shawkat, Heather Alicia Simms, Alicia Stith and more, with additional details to be announced.

The play series, launched last year on the Broadway’s Best Shows website, features actors performing the works remotely, with the readings pre-recorded and edited. This year’s line-up of plays and directors include:

The Thanksgiving Play (March 25)

By Larissa FastHorse, Directed by Leigh Silverman

Angry, Raucous And Shamelessly Gorgeous (April 9)

By Pearl Cleage, Directed...

It’s now widely accepted that despite being a beloved classic, “Gone With the Wind” needs an explanation of its context when it’s screened on TV or in theaters. HBO Max says it will eventually restore the Oscar-winning film to the service, but with “context and framing.” It’s a start, but Hollywood’s vaults are filled with movies that could benefit from an explainer or disclaimer about outdated depictions of race, sexuality, disabilities and more.

The films most often cited as racist, of course, are “Birth of a Nation” and “Song of the South.” But the range of problematic films is wide, including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (Mickey Rooney’s stereotyped role as a Japanese man is appalling), “West Side Story” (Puerto Ricans are shown almost only as gang members) and 1975’s slave-owner drama “Mandingo” (jaw-dropping and apparently aimed at the KKK demographic).

All films should be viewed with a critical eye,...

Performances begin tomorrow, Saturday, January 4, for the American premiere of the London Theatre Company Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr production of My Name is Lucy Barton starring Laura Linney Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, 'Ozark', by Elizabeth Strout Olive Kitteridge, adapted by Rona Munro The James Trilogy, and directed by Richard Eyre The Crucible, Notes on a Scandal. The New York production is produced in association with Penguin Random House Audio.

Scarlett Johansson has never been nominated for an Oscar, not even for 2003’s “Lost in Translation,” Sofia Coppola‘s riff on her own failed marriage to fellow filmmaker Spike Jonze. In Netflix’s “Marriage Story,” Johansson similarly is caught up in a film about another director’s marial situation gone bad — namely, director Noah Baumbach‘s failed marriage to actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.

It’s one thing to be suffocating in a relationship with priorities that lean in the direction of self-absorbed, unfaithful New York City theater director-husband (Adam Driver) — as is the case when it comes to Scarlett Johansson‘s actress and muse Nicole. But when she gets a chance to star in a TV pilot in Los Angeles and revive her career beyond her spouse’s stage productions, she decides to pursue a divorce. Yes, it puts her young son in the terrible spot of being a pawn in a broken union,...

William Luce, who wrote the 1976 Broadway play The Belle of Amherst for Julie Harris and the 1997 drama Barrymore that starred Christopher Plummer, died Monday. He was 88.

Luce died in a senior care facility in Green Valley, Arizona, after a battle with Alzheimer's disease, his godson, Grant Hayter-Menzies, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Over a 40-year career, Luce also worked with the likes of Zoe Caldwell, George C. Scott and Claire Bloom as he wrote about the private lives of Charlotte Brontë, Lillian Hellman, Isak Dinesen, Zelda Fitzgerald and others. 

The Belle of Amherst, his portrait of the reclusive ...

Musso & Frank Grill has catered to Hollywood players for 100 years and the venerable establishment is celebrating its centennial anniversary on Sept. 27. A book about the restaurant will be released. The Hollywood Award of Excellence, the first of its kind for a restaurant, will be presented by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Musso’s is also expanding, with three new private dining rooms set to open in early 2020.

“Our family and the Hollywood community can’t even measure the historic importance of the restaurant reaching its 100th anniversary,” says COO-cfo-proprietor and fourth-generation owner Mark Echeverria. “We’re so proud of the entire team and what the generations before us did. It’s an unbelievable milestone.

“We grew up with Hollywood. In 1919, Hollywood Boulevard was a dirt road and the industry was just starting to take off.”

When Musso & Frank opened its doors on the now iconic boulevard in 1919, it was in...

The Egot — an acronym for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony — is the greatest honor in entertainment. These stars are (or were) close to achieving it.

A select group of entertainers can round out their trophy cases with a competitive win from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Harry Belafonte (1927 – )

Emmy: Performance in a Variety or Musical Program or Series, “The Revlon Revue” (1960).

Grammys (2): Folk Performance, “Swing Dat Hammer” (1960); Folk Recording, “An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba” (1965).

Tony: Supporting Actor in a Musical, “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac” (1954).

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

Emmy: 7 individual wins, including for “Omnibus” (1957 and 1958); “Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic” (1961); “New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts” (1965); “Beethoven’s Birthday” (1972); and “Carnegie Hall: The Grand Reopening” (1987).

Grammy: 16 wins, most for best classical album.

Tony: Best Musical, “Wonderful Town” (1953).

Jerry Bock

Martin Charnin

Cy Coleman

Fred Ebb

Cynthia Erivo (1987 – )

Daytime Emmy: On-Camera Musical Performance in a Daytime Program,...

John Wesley, the actor best-known for playing Dr. Hoover on “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” has died. He was 72.

Wesley died from complications due to a long battle with multiple myeloma, his family confirmed to Variety.

Gerry Pass, Wesley’s manager and producer, said in a statement, “John Wesley was a gift to the world, for his kindness and grace are immortalized in his works of theatre, TV and film. I am heartbroken to have lost a dear friend today.”

Born on Aug. 3, 1947 in Lake Charles, La., John Wesley Houston went on to hold degrees from the University of California, San Diego and the University of San Diego. Before he began acting, Wesley served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. Over his expansive career, Wesley worked with talent including Denzel Washington, Albert Finney, Barbra Streisand, Tim Burton and Morgan Freeman.

Wesley holds more than 100 film and television credits,...

John Wesley, an actor known for parts in such films as Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot and Martin, has died at age 72. The death was confirmed by his family, who said it stemmed from complications in a long-time battle with multiple myeloma.

Wesley worked with such artists as Denzel Washington, Albert Finney, Robert Guillaume, Barbra Streisand, Tim Burton, James Earl Jones, Michael Apted, James Spader, and Morgan Freeman, among others. A veteran of stage, TV and film, he won an Atlas Awards for Best Supporting Actor in Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic at the Old Globe Theatre.

As the Artistic and Producing Director of The Southern California Black Repertory Company, he mounted a multitude of productions, including Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island, culminating in a three-year tour. Those productions led to an invitation to work with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.

Academy Award winner Alvin Sargent, who penned an extraordinary number of popular and critically successful films, from “Paper Moon” and “Ordinary People” to the “Spider-Man” sequels of the 2000s, died Thursday, his talent agency Gersh confirmed to Variety. He was 92.

Sargent won adapted screenplay Oscars for “Julia” in 1978 and “Ordinary People” in 1981 and was also nominated in the category in 1974 for “Paper Moon.” (He also received Writers Guild awards for all three films.) The writer worked with many of Hollywood’s top directors over the course of his career, including Alan J. Pakula, John Frankenheimer. Paul Newman, Peter Bogdanovich, Sydney Pollack, Fred Zinnemann, Robert Redford, Martin Ritt, Norman Jewison, Stephen Frears and Wayne Wang, though not always when those helmers were doing their best work.

Sargent started as a writer for television but broke into features with his screenplay for 1966’s “Gambit,” a Ronald Neame-directed comedy thriller starring Michael Caine,...

Manhattan Theatre Club, Lynne Meadow Artistic Director and Barry Grove Executive Producer have just announced the American premiere of the London Theatre Company Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr production of My Name is Lucy Barton starring Laura Linney Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, 'Ozark', by Elizabeth Strout Olive Kitteridge, adapted by Rona Munro The James Trilogy, and directed by Richard Eyre The Crucible, Notes on a Scandal as part of Manhattan Theatre Club's upcoming 2019-2020 season. The New York production will be produced in association with Penguin Random House Audio.

Manhattan Theatre Club's American premiere of The Nap, written by Olivier Award nominee Richard Bean One Man, Two Guvnors and directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes Rabbit Hole Proof is playing its final two weeks of performances. The play must close on Sunday, November 11th at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre 261 West 47th Street.

Melissa McCarthy is a lock for a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the true story of Lee Israel, a lonely, embittered author of celebrity biographies who took up forgery to pay the bills when her jobs dried up. The Academy previously rewarded McCarthy with a Best Supporting Actress nod for 2011’s Bridesmaids, the kind of raucous comedy that became her specialty. McCarthy gets laughs for sure here, but the demands of this role — a boozy, cranky woman with a battered heart and a backbone of steel — are primarily dramatic.

It might sound contradictory, but perhaps the greatest testament to Jane Fonda’s six-decade career is how many people are unfamiliar with every facet of it. Not everyone who grew up with Fonda as the face of 1980s workout culture is immediately aware of the ambitious artistic extremes of her screen acting career; younger viewers getting to know her through her breezy, Emmy-nominated work in Netflix’s “Grace and Frankie” may not all be aware of her serious Hollywood history of political and feminist activism. Fonda’s name means different things to different people, though one hopes her most enduring reputation — and certainly the one netting her a career Golden Lion at Venice last year and now a Lumière Award — will be as one of Hollywood’s strongest, most spikily intelligent leading ladies: gifted at her craft, yes, but an actor who also brought her progressive personal politics to bear in her work,...

For a comedian like Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey, it takes “serious” roles to get respect, but not so Melissa McCarthy, who earned an Oscar nomination for her breakout performance in “Bridesmaids” and has been a critical darling ever since. Still, that shouldn’t stop her from branching out, and it’s our gain that she does in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” an unexpectedly profound, incredibly true dramedy in which she plays Lee Israel, a miserable Manhattan author who resorted to forging letters by famous writers in order to pay the bills — and found the basis for her most successful book in the process.

Dowdy, half-soused, and frowning for nearly the entire running time, McCarthy earns nearly as many laughs playing this curmudgeonly cat lady as she does in her more irrepressible comedic parts. But, of course (and this is why critics love watching cut-ups reveal their more introspective...

As the 45th annual Telluride Film Festival begins to wind down, the landscape of lead acting Oscar contenders is beginning to materialize in the early days of the film awards season.

On the actress side, Nicole Kidman is turning a lot of heads with her de-glammed performance in Karyn Kusama’s uneven noir “Destroyer.” The film has been a bit divisive, but most agree that the 51-year-old Oscar winner delivers in a role completely unlike anything she’s ever tackled. It’s a true antiheroine, though, a character that could put some viewers off. But it’s thrilling to see Kidman go to such a bold and dangerous place at this stage in her career.

Fox Searchlight has at least a pair of possibilities, maybe a third if the reigning best-picture champ opts to widen the net for “The Favourite.” Yorgos Lanthimos’ outrageous period-piece comedy has critics going gaga (though...

Stage actor and director Brian Murray, who arrived in New York in 1964 with the Royal Shakespeare Company touring production of King Lear and would go on to earn three Tony Award nominations, died yesterday. He was 80.

His death was announced by a spokesperson, who attributed the death to natural causes.

An acclaimed stage actor for more than 50 years, Murray most recently appeared on Broadway in The Importance of Being Earnest with his lifelong friend Brian Bedford, Mary Stuart, Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter. His final stage credit was 2016’s Simon Says at the Lynn Redgrave Theater in 2016.

Murray made his Broadway debut in 1965 with All in Good Time. His Tony-nominated roles were in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1968), Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes (1997) and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (2002).

His other notable stage credits, among many were 1977’s Mtc/Public Theater production of Ashes, and 1978’s Broadway production of Da.

Currently in previews at at Mtc's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre is Manhattan Theatre Club's new Broadway production of Saint Joan, written by Nobel Prize in Literature and Academy Award winner Bernard Shaw and directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, Proof. Starring three-time Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad A Doll's House, Part 2 'Billions', Saint Joan will open on Wednesday, April 25, 2018.

The Oscar ceremonies have had their share of controversial moments over the years, from Marlon Brando sending a Native American surrogate to refuse his Best Actor Oscar for “The Godfather” to Michael Moore being booed off the stage when he tried to get political while accepting the Best Documentary trophy for “Bowling for Columbine.” No controversy was as big and dramatic though as the Best Supporting Actress category at the 1978 Oscar ceremony, which was awarded to Vanessa Redgrave for “Julia” (1977). On this the 40th anniversary of her win Gold Derby takes a look back at an incredibly memorable Oscar night.

Vanessa Redgrave was a popular and frequent nominee with academy members in her early years in film. She received three Best Actress nominations in quick succession for “Morgan” (1966), “Isadora” (1968) and “Mary, Queen of Scotts” (1971). For 1977 she received her first Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role in “Julia.” That film...

Lynne Meadow Artistic Director and Barry Grove Executive Producer in association with Eddie MarksOstar have just announced the principal cast for Manhattan Theatre Club's new Broadway production of Saint Joan written by Nobel Prize in Literature and Academy Award winnerBernard Shaw and directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, Proof, starring three-time Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad A Doll's House, Part 2 'Billions'.

By 1985 Hollywood had still only dabbled in movies about the ‘shame that cannot speak its name,’ and in every case the verdict for the transgressors was regret and misery, if not death. Donna Deitch’s brilliant drama achieves exactly what she wanted, to do make a movie about a lesbian relationship that doesn’t end in a tragedy.

Desert Hearts

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 902

1985 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 96 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 14, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau, Audra Lindley, Andra Akers, Gwen Welles, Dean Butler, James Staley, Katie La Bourdette, Alex McArthur, Tyler Tyhurst, Denise Crosby, Antony Ponzini, Brenda Beck, Jeffrey Tambor.

Cinematography: Robert Elswit

Film Editor: Robert Estrin

Production Design: Jeannine Oppewall

Written by Natalie Cooper from the novel by Jane Rule

Produced and Directed by Donna Deitch

Desert Hearts is a fine movie that’s also one of the first features ever about a lesbian romance,...

From film schools to DVD shelves, movies considered to be classics are largely made by men. Now, with Hollywood in turmoil, we asked women in film to nominate the movies that should be hailed alongside Scorsese and Spielberg

For as long as most of us have been around, the canon – those books, plays, films and TV series anointed as the most important of their kind – has been defined by a singular commonality: most of it was created by white men. When I entered graduate school in theatre management and producing in the 1990s, we were required to read a series of books entitled Famous American Plays of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s etc. Everything I was assigned, except for two plays – Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding and Lillian Hellman’s The Autumn Garden – was by men.

Sadly, it hasn’t changed over the last couple of decades. When I...

Lynne Meadow Artistic Director and Barry Grove Executive Producer have announced on-sale dates for Manhattan Theatre Club's new Broadway production of Saint Joan, written by Nobel Prize in Literature and Academy Award winner Bernard Shaw and directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, Proof, starring three-time Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad A Doll's House, Part 2, 'Billions'.

A big welcome to UK disc purveyors Indicator, or Powerhouse, or how does Powerhouse Indicator sound? Savant’s first review from the new label is a favorite from the Columbia library. The extras are the lure: they company has snagged long-form, in-depth interviews with James Fox and director Arthur Penn. Everybody’s written about The Chase but here Penn tells his side of the story.

The Chase (1966)

Blu-ray + DVD

Powerhouse: Indicator

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 134 min. / Street Date September 25, 2017 / Available from Amazon UK / £14.99

Starring: Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, E.G. Marshall,

Angie Dickinson, Janice Rule, Miriam Hopkins, Martha Hyer, Richard Bradford,

Robert Duvall, James Fox, Diana Hyland, Henry Hull, Jocelyn Brando, Clifton James, Steve Ihnat

Cinematography: Joseph Lashelle

Production Designer: Richard Day

Art Direction: Robert Luthardt

Film Editor: Gene Milford

Original Music: John Barry

Written by Lillian Hellman from the novel by Horton Foote

Produced by Sam Spiegel

Directed by Arthur Penn

Yes,...

Manhattan Theatre Club will produce a new Broadway production of Saint Joan, written by Nobel Prize in Literature and Academy Award winner Bernard Shaw and directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, Proof, starring three-time Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad A Doll's House, Part 2, 'Billions'.

Cynthia Nixon said her Tony-winning role in Broadway’s “The Little Foxes” represents the era of President Donald Trump because it offers a “very brutal examination of American capitalism” — despite the fact that Lillian Hellman wrote it back in 1939. “It’s a classic America play… it’s unbelievably Trumpian in just every way,” Nixon told TheWrap CEO and founder Sharon Waxman at the site’s Power Women Breakfast in New York on Thursday. Nixon, the Emmy-winning “Sex and the City Star,” earned her second Tony Award earlier this month for her role in a play that she called “gorgeous” and an indictment of “greed,...

Emmanuelle Devos on Frédéric Mermoud's Moka based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay: "The landscape does have an effect on your acting." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Moka star Emmanuelle Devos at the start of our conversation at the French Institute Alliance Française, mentioned seeing Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon in Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes and Laurie Metcalf and Chris Cooper in Lucas Hnath's A Doll's House, Part 2 on Broadway. She has a long history with her first director, Arnaud Desplechin (My Sex Life... Or How I Got Into An Argument, Esther Kahn, A Christmas Tale, Kings & Queen), who also directed her son Raphaël Cohen in My Golden Days. Desplechin and Mathieu Amalric regular Grégoire Hetzel is Moka's co-composer. Emmanuelle and I had spoken at the Tribeca Film Festival with Jérôme Bonnell for his Le Temps De L'Aventure (Just A Sigh).

Marlène (Nathalie Baye) with Diane (Emmanuelle Devos...

Ben Platt, Bette Midler, “Dear Evan Hansen,” and “Hello, Dolly!” were among the big winners at the 2017 Tony Awards, the biggest night of the year for Broadway—and the American theater. Hosted by a lively Kevin Spacey and aired on CBS from New York City’s Radio City Music Hall June 11, the 71st annual Tony Awards ceremony was co-presented by the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing. The night was a celebration of arts representation, the vibrancy of the Great White Way, and embracing individuality. “Don’t waste any time trying to be like anybody but yourself because the things that make you strange are the things that make you powerful,” said Platt in his rousing acceptance speech for leading actor in a musical. Laurie Metcalf of “A Doll’s House, Part 2” and Kevin Kline of “Present Laughter” took home the leading actor in a play awards. Cynthia Nixon...

There were major stars, multiple costume changes, chorus lines tap dancing their hearts out and a giant groundhog — and that was all just during the opening number of the 71st Annual Tony Awards.

But if you happened to miss Broadway’s biggest night on Sunday, there’s no reason you have to miss out on all of the glitz, glamour and high notes from the show. From host Kevin Spacey’s show-stopping opening number (featuring plenty of superstar cameos) until the best musical trophy was awarded to Dear Evan Hansen, here’s everything you missed from this year’s Tony Awards.

Laurie Metcalf is finally a Tony winner.

The veteran stage actress was crowned the best actress in a leading role in a play at the 2017 Tony Awards on Sunday night after a revered performance in A Doll’s House, Part 2.

“This is an honor,” Metcalf said in her speech before thanking her fellow cast members and the producers of the play. “And I must thank my daughter Mae and my son Donovan for putting up with me going away for long stretches of time so I can do what I love most, which is theater.”

Metcalf won in one of...

The 62nd annual Drama Desk Awards honored Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway, or as emcee and Drama Desk Award winner Michael Urie put it, “way the F-Off-Broadway,” on Sunday, June 4. The show opened with a performance by the Off-Broadway musical “Spamilton,” which featured rapping and singing about the rules for making acceptance speeches. The cast assured that there would be no “La La Land” debacle, as with the Academy Awards. The night’s first award for outstanding featured actor in a play went to Danny DeVito for his role as Gregory Solomon in Arthur Miller’s “The Price.” His acceptance speech began with these three words: “Holy shit balls,” later followed by “I’m going to get the hell off and enjoy this.” Backstage cover star Cynthia Nixon won for outstanding featured actress in a play for “Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes.” Nixon thanked her co-star, Laura Linney, for having...

Nathaniel R on one of the season's biggest Tony nominees and the most important for Actressexuals

Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes first debuted on the New York stage in 1939 with instantly classic characters, most notably the spiteful Regina Giddens and mousy drunk Birdie Hubbard, who Regina's brother married for her considerable fortune. The show was a hit and immediately scored a classic film version, released in 1941. In the intervening years the show seemed to disappear from the public consciousness a wee bit, despite being revived several times. It didn't help that the awesome 1941 film version was out of print for a long stretch. It's always a treat for fans of actresses since the roles are tailor made for starpower divas...

“It’s a wonderful play that hasn’t been done for a long time. We’re with a remarkable company,” said Laura Linney on “Today” about her Broadway play “The Little Foxes,” for which she was just nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress. This revival of Lillian Hellman‘s 1939 play is unique in that Linney and her co-star […]...