News

Piper Laurie Keeps Her Chin Up

By Alex Simon

Few living actors can claim to have experienced the Hollywood machine in all its iterations more than three-time Oscar nominee Piper Laurie. Signed by Universal Pictures at 17, their youngest contract player in years, she was in the last generation that were part of the Hollywood “factory,” pushed into “cheesecake” roles that accented physical attributes, as opposed to talent. It was the beginning of a journey.

She was born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Michigan, on January 22, 1932, to immigrant parents of Polish and Russian Jewish descent. When she was still five, the family sent her and her sister to a children’s sanatorium in the mountains to see if her sister’s asthma could be cured. Three years later after being reunited with her family she decided she wanted to become an actress and studied with Benno and Betomi Schneider for several years...

Everett Kevin Spacey in “Margin Call”

In the new film “Margin Call,” to be released on Oct. 21, Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey plays Sam Rogers, the deeply conflicted trading floor manager at a Wall Street investment firm. The movie, which, despite having a low budget of $3.4 million boasts an all-star ensemble cast including Mr. Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci and Zachary Quinto, zeroes in on a group of executives grappling with the moral price of the...

David Gerber, a seminal figure in American and international television for a half-century as a producer, studio executive, industry statesman and philanthropist, died Saturday at Los Angeles County-usc Medical Center. He was 86.

Gerber earned an Emmy (and six other Emmy noms), a Golden Globe, a Peabody award and a Christopher award -- not to mention honors from the American Film Institute, the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors and others -- by taking on serious, often controversial subjects.

He was a pioneer of multiracial programming and an industry innovator with such series as "Police Woman," "Batman," "Room 222," "thirtysomething," "In the Heat of the Night," "Medical Story" and dozens of TV movies, including his last longform effort, the critically acclaimed "Flight 93" in 2006.

His miniseries included "George Washington," winner of a Peabody award; "The Lindberg Kidnapping Case"; "Nothing Lasts Forever"; and "Beulah Land."

In 1974, Gerber produced "Police Woman," the first successful...

Tom Everett Scott, who starred on ABC's legal drama Philly last season, is returning to the ABC fold in a talent deal with the network and sister studio Touchstone Television to topline a series project, most likely a comedy. Under the pact, the studio and the network will develop projects targeted for fall 2003 as potential starring vehicles for Scott. He is doing a multiepisode arc on NBC's hit drama ER, playing Eric Wyczenski, brother of nurse Abby Lockhart (Maura Tierney). Scott's TV credits also include Darren Star's short-lived Wall Street drama The $treet, the hit comedy Grace Under Fire and the telefilm Inherit the Wind. On the features side, Scott has starred in such movies as the Tom Hanks-directed That Thing You Do! An American Werewolf in Paris, Dead Man on Campus and Boiler Room. Scott is repped by the Gersh Agency and Anonymous Content.