We are so amazed at the longevity at Cher, 75 and Barbra Streisand, 79 who both are still recording and pre-COVID, were still performing live around the world to sell-out crowds.
Well, they are just kids compared to amazing Angela Lansbury.
Miss Lansbury, the winner of a five Tony Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, an Olivier Award and an honorary Oscar, has had an A-list career that has spanned seven decades. She turns 96 today and is still going strong.
Miss Lansbury was signed on at MGM way back in 1942 and soon after earned Oscar nominations for Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). Her third Oscar nod came for 1962′s The Manchurian Candidate. She finally received an Honorary Oscar for her career in films which also includes National Velvet, The Harvey Girls, State of the Union, The Long Hot Summer, All Fall Down, Blue Hawaii, Harlow, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Something for Everyone, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Death on the Nile, The Pirates of Penzance, Nanny McPhee and The Mirror Crack’d. She is also beloved for her performance as the voice of Mrs. Potts in the animated classic Beauty and the Beast.
She would later go on to star for 12 seasons as Jessica Fletcher on CBS’s Murder She Wrote and be nominated for a total of 18 Emmy Awards for that and other television work. Where is her Lifetime Achievement Emmy television academy? It’s certainly deserved.
While Lansbury never won a competitive Oscar or the Emmy, she was showered with Tonys winning for her Broadway roles in Gypsy, Mame, Dear World, Sweeney Todd and Blythe Spirit. She was also nominated in recent years for the play Deuce and the musical A Little Night Music.
In 2012, Miss Lansbury starred in the Broadway revival of the Gore Vidal play The Best Man and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. In 2014, she starred with James Earl Jones in an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy and more recently appeared in a national tour of Blithe Spirit.. She co-starred in the 2017 miniseries Little Women and had a small role in 2018′s Mary Poppins Returns and that same year was one of the stars of the feature film Buttons, A New Musical Film.
She is one for the ages.
Below is a wonderful interview she did a few years ago with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, her five Tony wins, the American Theatre Wing Gala honoring Lansbury, her 2015 Olivier Award win for Blithe Spirit, and her accepting her Academy Award.
Barry Manilow’s classic “Mandy” found a new life on TikTok during lockdown when Canadian heartthrob William, aka @whiteyy18, went viral for his lip sync videos to the song. During a recent appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Barry reacts to the viral TikToks, and meets William for the first time. Barry also dishes on his Las Vegas Westgate residency, what it’s like to perform on stage after the lockdowns, and his new musical “Harmony” opening in NYC in 2022.
Mary Bono, widow of Cher’s ex-husband and former professional partner Sonny Bono, really outa know that.
The Los Angeles Times reports: Cher filed a $1-million federal lawsuit Wednesday against former Rep. Mary Bono, a trustee of the Bono Collection Trust, and other individuals, accusing them of breach of contract. The 75-year-old entertainer claimed that Bono’s fourth wife has tried to terminate provisions that entitle Cher to 50% ownership of the duo’s musical composition royalties, record royalties and other assets from their marriage.
This is a very nice interview with the British chat show This Morning. Tom Daley opens up about the highs and lows of his career and his personal life – which he chronicles in his brand new book, ‘Coming Up For Air’. The way he talks about his late dad just warms your heart and it’s encouraging to hear that his paternal grandparents are inching towards becoming more accepting of their grandson, his husband and child. I would hope so. There’s so much to be proud of.
I don’t remember every single detail of the 179 half-hour episodes of I Love Lucy and 13 hour-long specials that ran over nine seasons. Do you? So many of us know the lines and the nuances from those episodes like “Luuucccyyy, I’m hoooome” to “Lucy, you’ve got some splainin to do.”
It was on Oct. 15, 1951 that I Love Lucy premiered on CBS with the episode “The Girls Want to Go to the Nightclub” and that was followed by all kinds of antics and adventures that included stealing John Wayne’s footprints from Grauman’s Chinese Theater, impersonating martians on the roof of the Empire State Building, Lucy lighting her putty nose on fire in front of William Holden, Lucy and Ethel trying to eat 25 pounds of cheese on an airplane, Ricky and Lucy celebrating their anniversary in the living room closet, and the show’s gayest moment: Designer Don Loper playing himself during a fashion show in which Lucy has to fight a painful sunburn to appear.
Love, love, love them all. God bless the late Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance,William Frawley and their great company of guest stars.
Here are some I Love Lucy facts:
** “I Love Lucy” was one of the first TV shows shot on 35mm film. The film–unlike kinescope, which deteriorates very quickly–endured, making “I Love Lucy” reruns possible right up to the present.
** “I Love Lucy” continues to be enjoyed in more than 77 countries. The show is dubbed in 22 different languages!
** “I Love Lucy” was filmed on a converted movie sound stage. A live audience of 300 attended each taping. The audience sat on grandstand bleachers erected by a scaffolding company.
** When Lucille Ball became pregnant in 1952, the unprecedented decision was made to write the pregnancy into the show. It was decided that, no matter what the actual sex of the Arnaz baby, the Ricardo baby would be a boy. When the Ricardo’s TV son Ricky was born, more people watched that episode than watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. During Lucy’s TV pregnancy, the word “pregnancy” was never used. Instead, she was “expecting” (or as Ricky said, “specting”).
** Ethel actually had three middle names during the history of the show (Louise, Mae, and Roberta)
** The “I Love Lucy” theme song lyrics were sung only once–by Ricky, in the “Lucy’s Last Birthday” episode.
** Although “I Love Lucy” opened to generally favorable reviews, not everyone was impressed. Less than a day after the first show aired, the sponsor tried to find a way to get out of the contract, but reconsidered.
** Keith Thibodeaux joined the cast of “I Love Lucy” during its final season as Little Ricky. Keith was the only Little Ricky who had speaking lines. ** For the episode “Pioneer Women,” a metal shop custom-built a pan for the eight-foot long loaf of bread that shot out of Lucy’s oven.After filming “Pioneer Women,” the crew cut up the eight foot loaf of rye and divided it among themselves.
** On March 1, 1953, Jack Gould of the New York Times commented that “I Love Lucy” was so successful because “It’s very human–and so are we.”
Listened to this for the first time last night and thought it was kind of fascinating to hear longtime co-stars Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance not in character ass Lucy and Ethel or as Lucy and Viv!
This is an episode of Lucille Ball’s long forgotten about radio show Let’s Talk With Lucy.
Lucy is on the set of the 1965 film The Great Race to speak with Vivian who had a role in the film. Lucy and Vivian speak on the many layers of friendship that they share, and what it takes to build strong foundations for personal relationships. After Vivian talks about her work in hospitals with the elderly and underprivileged youth, the two friends wind down their conversations by contemplating modern parenting and who has the harder time, teenagers or their parents.
I’m still suffering withdrawals from my week at the BNP Paribas Open and the lovely grounds are a big reason why. Tommy Haas, retired from the ATP Tour and once ranked number 2 in the world, gives us a tour. Enjoy!
Remember when Rosie O’Donnell had that big “crush” on Tom Cruise? I did too at that time. This was the Jerry Maguire era and Nicole Kidman era. It was before the couch jumping and all the scientology stuff emerged in a big way. it was such an innocent time – ha! Anyway, I loved this Tom Cruise who appeared on the 113th episode of The Rosie O’Donnell Show.
This aired on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert a few weeks ago but I just came across it and wanted to share: What do Carlos Santana, Patti Smith and Stephen Colbert have in common? They each helped Anderson Cooper fill time on CNN after torrential rains brought an early end to the “We Love NYC” concert in Central Park.
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We are so amazed at the longevity at Cher, 75 and Barbra Streisand, 79 who both are still recording and pre-COVID, were still performing live around the world to sell-out crowds.
I don’t remember every single detail of the 179 half-hour episodes of I Love Lucy and 13 hour-long specials that ran over nine seasons. Do you? So many of us know the lines and the nuances from those episodes like “Luuucccyyy, I’m hoooome” to “Lucy, you’ve got some splainin to do.”
** For the episode “Pioneer Women,” a metal shop custom-built a pan for the eight-foot long loaf of bread that shot out of Lucy’s oven.After filming “Pioneer Women,” the crew cut up the eight foot loaf of rye and divided it among themselves.
