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New York City Opera’s Bryant Park summer series continues with From Vienna to Broadway!, a charming review of songs, duets, and ensembles that takes the audience on a musical journey through the 20th century. Beginning with Lehar’s The Merry Widow from 1905 and culminating with Sondhiem’s A Little Night Music from 1973, and in between featuring works by Herbert, Romberg, Gershwin, Loesser, and Bernstein, this performance features a stellar cast of seven New York City Opera stars. Performances are designed to be enjoyed casually – no tickets required – with ample seating available and free picnic blankets for audience members to borrow. For more information, visit https://bryantpark.org/calendar/event/new-york-city-opera-from-vienna-to-broadway/2023-08-18.

For anyone unable to attend in person, free livestream broadcasts of the performances will be available nationwide via Bryant Park’s website and social media platforms.

“We are delighted to return as a part Bryant Park Picnic...

Kit Hesketh-Harvey, the musician, composer and screenwriter, has died suddenly aged 65.

The multi-talented entertainer, who performed for King Charles, enjoyed a prolific career that included writing the screenplay for director James Ivory’s 1987 film Maurice, starring a young Hugh Grant in one of his first onscreen roles.

His agent told The Independent he died unexpectedly but peacefully, while listening to Radio 3 and preparing for a Kit & McConnel show.

He was the brother of Sarah Sands, journalist and former editor of the Evening Standard. His death comes as a double blow to the family during an ongoing search for Ms Sands’s former husband, British actor Julian Sands, who went missing two weeks ago while hiking in southern California.

Ms Sands spoke of the shock over her brother’s death. She told The Independent: “Kit was dazzling – clever, original, funny, kind. The last time I saw him he was busy mapping...

Kit Hesketh-Harvey, the musician, composer and screenwriter, has died suddenly aged 65.

The multi-talented entertainer, who performed for King Charles, enjoyed a prolific career that included writing the screenplay for director James Ivory’s 1987 film Maurice, starring a young Hugh Grant in one of his first onscreen roles.

His agent told The Independent he died unexpectedly but peacefully, while listening to Radio 3 and preparing for a Kit & McConnel show.

He was the brother of Sarah Sands, journalist and former editor of the Evening Standard. His death comes as a double blow to the family during an ongoing search for Ms Sands’s former husband, British actor Julian Sands, who went missing two weeks ago while hiking in southern California.

Ms Sands spoke of the shock over her brother’s death. She told The Independent: “Kit was dazzling – clever, original, funny, kind. The last time I saw him he was busy mapping...

The trailer for Damien Chazelle's long-awaited new film "Babylon" has finally been released by Paramount Pictures. Get ready to travel back to the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1920s, when the industry moved from the silent film era to that of the talkies. The title boasts a plethora of stars, including Margot Robbie ("Once Upon a Time in Hollywood") as young actress Nellie DeRoy, and Brad Pitt ("Inglorious Basterds") as Jack Conrad, a silent film star who isn't taking the change well. The character has been compared to real-life actor John Gilbert ("The Merry Widow"). 

Academy Award-winner Chazelle, who brought us 2014's "Whiplash," 2016's "La La Land," and 2018's "First Man," serves as both writer and director on "Babylon." He's reteaming with the award-winning "La La Land" duo of cinematographer Linus Sandgren and composer Justin Hurwitz for the film. In a recent Vanity Fair article, Chazelle said that...

“You know, being together every week is getting to be a very, very nice habit. I hope you’ll keep it up, will ya?”

This was Betty White’s line at the end of each episode of her very first sitcom, Life with Elizabeth, in which she and Del Moore played a married couple who kept stumbling into various hijinks. White first played Elizabeth in a series of sketches in Hollywood on Television, a local Los Angeles talk show that debuted in 1949. (When the sketches spun off into their own show in the early Fifties,...

Billie Hayes, whose portrayal of the flamboyantly and comically wicked witch Witchiepoo on the 1969-70 Saturday morning live-action children’s classic H.R. Pufnstuf, died of natural causes April 29 at Cedar’s Hospital in Los Angeles. She was 96.

Her death was announced by her family.

A Broadway veteran by the time she reached national fame as the flute-stealing nemesis to a psychedelic dragon, Hayes had starred as Mammy Yokum in both the Broadway and film versions of the popular late-1950s musical Lil’ Abner. She’d made her Broadway debut in New Faces of 1956 along with an ensemble that included actress Maggie Smith.

Following a couple of guest appearances on episodic TV in 1967 – including a Mammy Yokum-type matriarch in the “Hillbilly Honeymoon” episode of The Monkees – Hayes endeared herself to a generation of glued-to-the-tube Saturday morning viewers in 1969 as the eccentrically costumed, ever-cackling and always bumbling Witchiepoo (full name: Wilhelmina W.

Nicole Kidman and Donald Sutherland make a good team.

In “The Undoing,” Kidman stars as Grace, an Upper East Side therapist whose life unravels when her husband (Hugh Grant) is accused of a grisly murder. Sutherland plays Kidman’s wealthy, stoic father.

In one of the hit HBO series’ most powerful scenes, Kidman and Sutherland discuss Grace’s mother while playing the piano together in the patriarch’s apartment. “That was actually not set at a piano,” Kidman tells me on this week’s extra episode of the Variety and iHeart podcast “The Big Ticket.” “There was no mention of the mother. All of that was just the layers of a backstory that was coming to fruition that Donald and I shared and therefore turned into a scene, where I’m sitting at a piano and that reminds me of my mother. … The scene I think was set on a...

The third edition of the event brought together Vr professionals to discuss the challenges and possibilities of the medium. Before the festival's complete programme was brought to a halt last night due to the measures being taken against the coronavirus outbreak (read here), the tenth Luxembourg City Film Festival saw the third edition of the festival’s Vr Day take place as part of the festival’s Virtual Reality Pavilion in Neumünster Abbey. On Friday 6 March, the event brought together professionals from the Vr industry, who gathered to discuss the challenges, opportunities and trends at play in this still relatively young medium. The morning was taken up by several case studies demonstrating different approaches to the possibilities of Vr. The day opened with choreographer, dancer and film director Blanca Li presenting her project The Merry Widow, a collective and participative experience featuring dancers present both in the virtual and in the.

Above: Us one sheet for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Two weeks ago, as the 57th New York Film Festival kicked off, I griped about the uninspiring quality of the posters for the films in the festival’s main slate. 50 years ago it was a very different story. The posters I have found for the 19 films in the 1969 main selection make up a dazzling collection of illustration and forward thinking graphic design, even, or especially, the type-only poster for the only studio film in the festival: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice which was the opening night film on September 16 (notably a Tuesday evening).Of course, many of these posters might have been made months or even a year after the festival, since we’re looking back with half a century of hindsight, and many of this year’s designs will no doubt be updated, but this was also the era in which...

‘Upgrade’.

The nominees for this year’s Australian Production Design Guild Awards have been unveiled, with 106 nominees across 27 categories – six of which are new.

The production designers behind Winchester, Upgrade, Peter Rabbit and The Lego Ninjago Movie are in contention for the best production on a feature film award, while those who helped to put together Harrow, Top of the Lake: China Girl, Friday On My Mind and Picnic at Hanging Rock will vie for the equivalent award in TV.

Apdg president George Liddle said: “The Guild is thrilled to represent all the talent from the diverse areas of design and to highlight and award the outstanding work produced over the last year in our annual awards.

With a growing membership from screen and live performance design practitioners, and the inclusion of the six new categories, we can also highlight the achievements of designers working on international productions, web series and in the game industry.

For devotees of John Coltrane, whose adoration of the late, pathfinding saxophonist borders on the religious, 2018 has been a banner year.

In March, Sony Legacy released a four-cd set of Coltrane’s 1960 European live performances with trumpeter Miles Davis, with whom he had famously worked on and off since the mid-‘50s. The collection – the first legit issue of material previously available only in gray-market packages – compiled concert dates on which Trane upstaged his boss with boundary-pushing, screaming playing that drew cheers and catcalls in equal measure.

The import of those exciting sides is superseded this week with the materialization of an unexpected and thrilling treasure, finally unburied: a never-before-released session featuring Coltrane in the full flush of his solo fame, with his “classic quartet” of pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.

Titled “Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album,” the set released by Impulse!/Verve...

'Ben-Hur' 1959 with Stephen Boyd and Charlton Heston: TCM's '31 Days of Oscar.' '31 Days of Oscar': 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'Ben-Hur' are in, Paramount stars are out Today, Feb. 1, '16, Turner Classic Movies is kicking off the 21st edition of its “31 Days of Oscar.” While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is being vociferously reviled for its “lack of diversity” – more on that appallingly myopic, self-serving, and double-standard-embracing furore in an upcoming post – TCM is celebrating nearly nine decades of the Academy Awards. That's the good news. The disappointing news is that if you're expecting to find rare Paramount, Universal, or Fox/20th Century Fox entries in the mix, you're out of luck. So, missing from the TCM schedule are, among others: Best Actress nominees Ruth Chatterton in Sarah and Son, Nancy Carroll in The Devil's Holiday, Claudette Colbert in Private Worlds. Unofficial Best Actor...

'The Merry Widow' with Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald and Minna Gombell under the direction of Ernst Lubitsch. Ernst Lubitsch movies: 'The Merry Widow,' 'Ninotchka' (See previous post: “Ernst Lubitsch Best Films: Passé Subtle 'Touch' in Age of Sledgehammer Filmmaking.”) Initially a project for Ramon Novarro – who for quite some time aspired to become an opera singer and who had a pleasant singing voice – The Merry Widow ultimately starred Maurice Chevalier, the hammiest film performer this side of Bob Hope, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler – the list goes on and on. Generally speaking, “hammy” isn't my idea of effective film acting. For that reason, I usually find Chevalier a major handicap to his movies, especially during the early talkie era; he upsets their dramatic (or comedic) balance much like Jack Nicholson in Martin Scorsese's The Departed or Jerry Lewis in anything (excepting Scorsese's The King of Comedy...

Ernst Lubitsch: The movies' lost 'Touch.' Ernst Lubitsch movies on TCM: Classics of a bygone era Ernst Lubitsch and William Cameron Menzies were Turner Classic Movies' “stars” on Jan. 28, '16. (This is a fully revised and expanded version of a post published on that day.) Lubitsch had the morning/afternoon, with seven films; Menzies had the evening/night, also with seven features. (TCM's Ernst Lubitsch schedule can be found further below.) The forgotten 'Touch' As a sign of the times, Ernst Lubitsch is hardly ever mentioned whenever “connoisseurs” (between quotes) discuss Hollywood movies of the studio era. But why? Well, probably because The Lubitsch Touch is considered passé at a time when the sledgehammer approach to filmmaking is deemed “fresh,” “innovative,” “cool,” and “daring” – as if a crass lack of subtlety in storytelling were anything new. Minus the multimillion-dollar budgets, the explicit violence and gore, and the overbearing smugness passing for hipness,...

Gary Cooper movies on TCM: Cooper at his best and at his weakest Gary Cooper is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 30, '15. Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing any Cooper movie premiere – despite the fact that most of his Paramount movies of the '20s and '30s remain unavailable. This evening's features are Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Sergeant York (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957). Mr. Deeds Goes to Town solidified Gary Cooper's stardom and helped to make Jean Arthur Columbia's top female star. The film is a tad overlong and, like every Frank Capra movie, it's also highly sentimental. What saves it from the Hell of Good Intentions is the acting of the two leads – Cooper and Arthur are both excellent – and of several supporting players. Directed by Howard Hawks, the jingoistic, pro-war Sergeant York was a huge box office hit, eventually earning Academy Award nominations in several categories,...

Luis Buñuel movies on TCM tonight (photo: Catherine Deneuve in 'Belle de Jour') The city of Paris and iconoclastic writer-director Luis Buñuel are Turner Classic Movies' themes today and later this evening. TCM's focus on Luis Buñuel is particularly welcome, as he remains one of the most daring and most challenging filmmakers since the invention of film. Luis Buñuel is so remarkable, in fact, that you won't find any Hollywood hipster paying homage to him in his/her movies. Nor will you hear his name mentioned at the Academy Awards – no matter the Academy in question. And rest assured that most film critics working today have never even heard of him, let alone seen any of his movies. So, nowadays Luis Buñuel is un-hip, un-cool, and unfashionable. He's also unquestionably brilliant. These days everyone is worried about freedom of expression. The clash of civilizations. The West vs. The Other.

Taken 3 has topped the UK box office for the second consecutive weekend.

Liam Neeson's action-thriller earned £3.2 million to secure first place in the chart, with Bradley Cooper's American Sniper in second spot with a debut haul of £2.5 million.

Despite Sniper's huge success Stateside, UK audiences have been less welcoming to Clint Eastwood's war drama. The film narrowly pipped The Theory of Everything, on its third week in cinemas, to second place.

Into the Woods sits at number four, while Paddington continues its impressive box office run by charting at five after two months on general release.

Elsewhere, the chart sees new entries from Whiplash, Wild and the live broadcast of Met Opera's The Merry Widow.

The UK box office top ten in full:

1. (1) Taken 3 - £3,295,309

2. (-) American Sniper - £2,530,473

3. (3) The Theory of Everything - £2,326,539

4. (2) Into the Woods - £1,999,377

5. (5) Paddington - £943,320

6. (4) The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies...

When Deborah Voigt was fired for being too fat to fit into a (size 12) little black dress for a production of Strauss's Ariadne aug Naxos at London's Royal Opera House in 2004, public outrage was immediate. "It's incredible someone can get away with saying those words," Voigt, 54, tells People exclusively. "It's still open season on overweight women." Voigt details her lifelong struggles with food in a new memoir, Call Me Debbie (cowritten by former People writer Natasha Stoynoff). She writes about her first binge at age 5 (when she slugged back a jar of olives), her late night fast food runs once she got her driver's license,...

When Deborah Voigt was fired for being too fat to fit into a (size 12) little black dress for a production of Strauss's Ariadne aug Naxos at London's Royal Opera House in 2004, public outrage was immediate. "It's incredible someone can get away with saying those words," Voigt, 54, tells People exclusively. "It's still open season on overweight women." Voigt details her lifelong struggles with food in a new memoir, Call Me Debbie (cowritten by former People writer Natasha Stoynoff). She writes about her first binge at age 5 (when she slugged back a jar of olives), her late night fast food runs once she got her driver's license,...

It takes so long for the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of The Merry Widow to warm up that it barely reaches the temperature of day-old bathwater before the final dose of foam. How could Franz Lehár’s weightless meringue of charm, wistfulness, melody, and dance yield a performance so clotted and dense? How could so much onstage talent work so hard and produce so little? Why does a gig at the Met discombobulate so many confident directors? Susan Stroman, the genius of Contact, has strewn the stage with such sad mysteries. The answers may lie partly in insufficient rehearsal, misjudged chemistry, or a rigid operatic schedule that doesn’t permit previews or midcourse adjustments. But one glaring cause of this show’s dysfunction is its miscast star. Throughout her career, Renée Fleming has often glided around the lyric stage in a bubble of self-absorption so shiny and seamless that...

Beginning New Year's Eve, Rene Fleming has returned to the stage in her first-ever performances of 'Hanna Glawari', the title role in Lehr's The Merry Widow, at the Met. Five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman makes her Met debut as director and choreographer of this new production of the comic operetta, which also reunites Nathan Gunn Danilo and five-time Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara Valencienne. Let's see what the critics had to say...

Renee Fleming will add a new role to her extensive repertory when she sings her first-ever performances of Hanna Glawari, the title role in Lehar's The Merry Widow, at the Met this season. Four-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman makes her Met debut as director and choreographer of a new production of the comic operetta, in which a wealthy widow's countrymen launch a romantic plot to keep her -- and her tax dollars -- within their borders.

Beginning New Year's Eve, Rene Fleming returns to the stage in her first-ever performances of Hanna Glawari, the title role in Lehr's The Merry Widow, at the Met. Four-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman will make her Met debut as director and choreographer of a new production of the comic operetta, which will also reunite Nathan Gunn Danilo and five-time Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara Valencienne. The duo previously shared the stage in Carousel with the New York Philharmonic.

Beginning New Year's Eve, Rene Fleming returns to the stage in her first-ever performances of Hanna Glawari, the title role in Lehr's The Merry Widow, at the Met. Four-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman will make her Met debut as director and choreographer of a new production of the comic operetta, which will also reunite Nathan Gunn Danilo and five-time Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara Valencienne. The duo previously shared the stage in Carousel with the New York Philharmonic.

NBC has found Peter Pan Live's Mrs. Darling. Five-time Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara has been tapped to play the wife to George Darling and the mother to Wendy, John and Michael, the network announced Tuesday. O'Hara earned five Tony nominations in the past three years for her work in The Bridges of Madison County, Nice Work If You Can Get It, South Pacific, The Pajama Game and The Light in the Piazza. She next makes her opera debut on Dec. 31 at New York's Metropolitan Opera co-starring in Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow. She joins a cast that includes

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Bill Hader has come a long way since his stint on Saturday Night Live, creating many popular characters and impersonations such as Stefon, Vincent Price and CNN’s Jack Cafferty. He is one of the highlights in such films as Adventureland, Knocked Up, Superbad and Pineapple Express, and so it is easy to see why author Mike Sacks interviewed him for his new book Poking A Dead Frog. In it, Hader talks about his career and he also lists 200 essential movies every comedy writer should see. Xo Jane recently published the list for those of us who haven’t had a chance to read the book yet. There are a ton of great recommendations and plenty I haven’t yet seen, but sadly my favourite comedy of all time isn’t mentioned. That would be Some Like It Hot. Still, it really is a great list with a mix of old and new.

"Nobody's really captured the quality of a film festival," observed musician/composer Neil Brand, "You're doing something that's pleasurable, but then the fatigue sets in..." It's true—a celluloid feast like Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna is a particular case, too, since so many of the films are rarities. It's like being a cake specialist and suddenly somebody offers you fifty magnificent cakes of unique recipe but says "You have to eat them all in an hour or I'll take them away and you'll never see them again." You plunge in, and even when nausea starts to replace pleasure you can't bring yourself to stop...

Cinephiles like to grumble, and the venues of Bologna attract a certain amount of criticism (one has a bar which runs between the front row and the screen, cutting the subtitles in half; air conditioning is switched on and off at random; and then there's...

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Written and directed by Wes Anderson

USA/UK/Germany, 2014

More than perhaps any other director, the work of Ernst Lubitsch has been the most noticeable influence on Wes Anderson’s style. Though the great German-American writer-director, most prolific in the 1930s and 1940s, was never quite so aesthetically bold in the look of his sets, he too was preoccupied with meticulous staging for comedy within his chosen locales, be they the titular Shop Around the Corner or the Parisian hotel of Ninotchka; The Grand Budapest Hotel is set in a fictional European country, the Republic of Zubrowka, another Lubitsch trait from works like The Merry Widow and The Love Parade, though The Shop Around the Corner happens to be set in the city Anderson’s mountaintop lodging house takes its name from. He garnered the descriptor of ‘the Lubitsch touch’ thanks to the moving sincerity that...

Broadway stars Teri Dale Hansen Show Boat, The Boys From Syracuse Nat Chandler Scarlet Pimpernel, The Phantom of the Opera Jason Graae A Grand Night for Singing, Falsettos Mendel Jennifer Hope Wills The Phantom of the Opera, Wonderful Town and Eric van Hoven Candide, Master Class will be appearing with The Regina Symphony Orchestra at the Conexus Arts Centre in Saskatchewan, Canada in The Merry Widow tonight, January 11th at 800pm.

Broadway stars Teri Dale Hansen Show Boat, The Boys From Syracuse Nat Chandler Scarlet Pimpernel, The Phantom of the Opera Jason Graae A Grand Night for Singing, Falsettos Mendel Jennifer Hope Wills The Phantom of the Opera, Wonderful Town and Eric Van Hoven Candide, Master Class will be appearing with The Regina Symphony Orchestra at the Conexus Arts Centre in Saskatchewan, Canada in The Merry Widow on Saturday, January 11th at 800pm.

Marta Eggerth: Operetta and film star — a sort of Jeanette MacDonald of Central European cinema — dead at 101 Marta Eggerth, an international star in film and stage operettas who frequently performed opposite husband Jan Kiepura, died on December 26, 2013, at her home in Rye, New York. The Budapest-born Eggerth had turned 101 last April 17. (Photo: Marta Eggerth ca. 1935.) Although best known for her roles in stage musicals such as the Max Reinhardt-directed 1927 Hamburg production of Die Fledermaus, and various incarnations of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, Marta Eggerth was featured in nearly 40 films. The vast majority of those were produced in Austria and Germany in the 1930s, as the Nazis ascended to power. Marta Eggerth films Marta Eggerth films, which frequently made use of her coloratura soprano voice, include Max Neufeld’s drama Eine Nacht im Grandhotel ("A Night at the Grand Hotel," 1931); the Victor Janson-directed musicals Once There Was a Waltz...

Viennese operetta and film star of the 30s who fled to America after the Anschluss

Between the two world wars, during the so-called "silver age" of Viennese operetta, the coloratura soprano Marta Eggerth, who has died aged 101, reigned supreme on stage and, above all, on screen. In the films of the 1930s, the blonde, wide-eyed beauty's bright bell-like tones and charming personality provided a welcome relief from ruinous inflation, world depression and the approaching sound of Nazi jackboots.

The leading operetta composers of the day, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, Robert Stolz and Paul Abraham, all wrote songs for her films. However, by 1938, after the Anschluss, with the exception of Lehár, all of them, being Jewish, had fled Vienna for the Us. Eggerth and her husband, Jan Kiepura, the celebrated Polish tenor, who both had Jewish mothers, also left Austria for America, where they continued their singing careers.

Hitler loved Viennese operetta,...

With the back-to-back departures of Peter O'Toole and Joan Fontaine I've been really bummed about losing great artists from Hollywood's Golden Age. The Golden Age is roughly considered to be from Hollywood's 1930s through the 1950s. I still hadn't recovered from the loss of Eleanor Parker, an underappreciated actress I had honestly planned a retrospective of but never got around to.

This morning in my movie grief I inadvertently killed dozens of people off on twitter by claiming there were only six stars of the Golden Age still living. So consider this list my penance. In the past I've published a semi-annual list of all living Oscar-vets in any capacity. It ws never meant to be a morbid countdown list but a way for us to honor people while they're still theoretically conscious of our appreciation for their indelible contributions. So though I normally publish such a list on Ms.

Miklos Laszlo, a Jewish émigré from Hungary, penned his play Illatszertar in 1936 before he fled Europe in 1938 for New York City. Acquired by producer-director Ernst Lubitsch and brilliantly adapted for the screen as The Shop Around the Corner (1940) by the immortal Samson Raphaelson (who wrote nine screenplays for Lubitsch including Trouble in Paradise, The Merry Widow and Heaven Can Wait), the sublime cast included James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut and Felix Bressart. It represents perhaps the very pinnacle of transcendent romantic comedy in cinema: precise, subtle, intricately intimate. The material was remade as a

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No moss grows under Lady Mary, that's for sure. The Merry Widow may already have a new suitor. British TV heartthrob Tom Ellis reportedly had an impressive audition for the producers of Downton Abbey, to become what is being described as season 4's love interest for Lady Mary, played by Michelle Dockery. According to the U.K. Mirror, an ITV source said of the 33-year-old, married father of three: "He really showed his versatility, and he's also incredibly popular with the female viewers." Born in Wales, Ellis, whose wife is former EastEnders star Tamzin Outhwaite, appears in the comedy series Miranda.

No moss grows under Lady Mary, that's for sure. The Merry Widow may already have a new suitor.

British TV heartthrob Tom Ellis reportedly had an impressive audition for the producers of Downton Abbey, to become what is being described as season 4's love interest for Lady Mary, played by Michelle Dockery.

According to the U.K. Mirror, an ITV source said of the 33-year-old, married father of three: "He really showed his versatility, and he's also incredibly popular with the female viewers."

Born in Wales, Ellis, whose wife is former EastEnders star Tamzin Outhwaite, appears in the comedy series Miranda.

Musical theatre star known as 'the champagne soprano'

Lizbeth Webb, one of the great forgotten stars of British musical theatre in the 1940s and 1950s, has died aged 86. Known as "the champagne soprano", she was the first to sing one of the BBC's most requested songs of all time, This Is My Lovely Day, written for her by Vivian Ellis and AP Herbert and included in their musical comedy Bless the Bride (1947).

Starting out during the second world war as a teenage singer with dance bands – she worked later with such conductors as Mantovani, Geraldo, Max Jaffa and Vilém Tauský – Webb was discovered by the bandleader Jack Payne and turned into a West End star by the impresario Charles B Cochran in 1946. Over the next 10 years she made her mark as a soprano of great range (often singing in two different registers), vibrancy and vivacity. She was dark, petite and...

Our favorite "Golden Girl" Betty White turns 91 on Thursday, Jan. 17. Happy birthday, Betty!

The celebrated actress and passionate animal-rights activist is embracing her eighth decade in the business, with a résumé that's overflowing with game shows, talk shows, sitcoms, animated series, hosting duties and one particularly foulmouthed film performance. She currently hosts the NBC reality show "Betty White's Off Their Rockers," which features senior citizens playing practical jokes on their younger counterparts.

"Retirement is not in my vocabulary. They aren't going to get rid of me that way," she told USA Today in 2010.

We aren't arguing otherwise. We fully expect White still to be going strong at 100. In the meantime, here are 10 fun facts about this wonderful woman.

1. Betty White was born in Oak Park, Ill. Her family moved to California during the Great Depression. She discovered her love for performing when she wrote and played the lead in a graduation play in junior high.

Berlin -- Dutch-born entertainer Johannes Heesters, who made his name performing in Adolf Hitler's Germany and was dogged later in his long career by controversy over his Nazi-era past, died Saturday, his agent said. He was 108.

The tenor Heesters made his debut on the big stage at the Volksoper in Vienna, Austria in 1934. His career took off in Berlin where, starting in 1935 – two years after the Nazis took power – he became a crowd favorite at the Komische Oper and Admiralspalast.

He gained fame by appearing in films such as "Die Leuchter des Kaisers" ("The Emperor's Candlesticks") and "Das Hofkonzert" ("The Court Concert").

Despite his popularity in the Third Reich, Heesters was never accused of being a propagandist or anything other than an artist willing to perform for the Nazis, and the Allies allowed him to continue his career after the war, when he took Austrian citizenship.

Heesters died early Saturday...

photo: Mathieu Young TCM (C) Turner Classic Movies. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved

Wamg was in attendance among the many film enthusiasts for the 2nd Annual TCM Classic Film Festival. The multi-faceted Festival, which ran April 28 – May 1, 2011 in Hollywood, was filled with more than 70 screenings, including special introductions, guest appearances, panel discussions and more. The festival opened with the red-carpet gala screening of An American in Paris and TCM host and film historian Robert Osborne served as official host.

The 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival was sold out. The festival had total attendance of 25,000 at more than 70 screenings and events. There were passholders from 49 states and five foreign countries: Italy, Australia, France, Argentina and Canada.

Highlights of the 2011 festival included appearances by Julie Andrews, Alec Baldwin, Drew Barrymore, Warren Beatty, Leslie Caron, Kirk Douglas, Angela Lansbury, Hayley Mills, Peter O.Toole, Jane Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney and many,...

Club TCM to Offer Celebrities, Expert Panels, Exhibits, Music and More During 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival Exclusive Gathering Spot for Festival Passholders to Feature Appearances by Mickey Rooney, Debbie Reynolds, Leslie Caron, Marni Nixon, Marge Champion, Debbie Allen, Peter Guber and Brett Ratner

Legendary stars, fascinating presentations, panel discussions, live music and special exhibits are just a few of the exciting experiences on tap for Club TCM, the central gathering spot for the 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood. Located in the Blossom Room at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, the site of the very first Academy Awards® ceremony, Club TCM will be open throughout the festival, giving passholders a place to relax, meet new friends and mingle with special guests. Among those scheduled to appear are Mickey Rooney, Debbie Reynolds, Leslie Caron, Marni Nixon, Marge Champion, Debbie Allen, Peter Guber, Brett Ratner and graphic artist Michael Schwab, as well...

Ernst Lubitsch's The Merry Widow, Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald (top); George Stevens' A Place in the Sun, Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor (bottom) If the more rabid elements within the Republican party don't succeed in their attempts to shut down the Us government, the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, located in Culpeper, Va, will have a number of goodies to offer in the next few weeks. [Packard Campus April 2011 Schedule.] The Packard Campus April schedule includes a wide range of movies. Those range from Jane Withers in the B flick The Affairs of Geraldine to Steven Spielberg's big-budgeted Close Encounters of the Third Kind; from John Ford's Oscar-winning family drama How Green Was My Valley to Howard Hawks' iconic Western Red River; from the Elizabeth Taylor-Montgomery Clift pairing in A Place in the Sun to the Peter Sellers-Mai Zetterling pairing in Only Two Can Play.

Celebration of Actor.s Life and Career to Include Conversation with Robert Osborne,

Clips from One-Man Show and Special Screening of Spartacus (1960)

Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas will be a special guest at the 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood. During the festival, which takes place April 28-May 1, the three-time Oscar nominee and honorary Academy Award winner will join TCM host Robert Osborne for an interview on stage, leading into a screening of Stanley Kubrick.s epic film Spartacus (1960), which Douglas also produced. The evening.s festivities will include clips from Douglas. biographical one-man show, Before I Forget (2009).

.Kirk Douglas is an American icon whose performances have struck an indelible chord with moviegoers for more than 60 years,. Osborne said. .At the age of 94, he retains the great vitality and enthusiasm which has always been the Douglas trademark. We couldn.t be more pleased that Spartacus himself will be joining us at...

The Merry Widow (1934) Direction: Ernst Lubitsch Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel, George Barbier, Minna Gombell, Sterling Holloway Screenplay: Ernest Vajda and Samson Raphaelson; from Franz Lehár's operetta Oscar Movies Highly Recommended Jeanette MacDonald, Maurice Chevalier, The Merry Widow The Merry Widow is neither one of Ernst Lubitsch's most discussed nor best-liked films. Film critics and historians generally tend to focus on a couple of his early, pre-Code Paramount talkies, One Hour with You (co-directed with George Cukor) and Trouble in Paradise, and his later comedies Ninotchka and To Be or Not to Be. But that's the critics' and historians' fault. For the visually and aurally arresting The Merry Widow is a superlative musical, boasting sumptuous sets (production design by Cedric Gibbons), exquisite black-and-white cinematography (Oliver T. Marsh), and a magnificently staged ballroom-dancing sequence that should impress even those who couldn't care less about...

By Doug Gerbino

Warner Archive has just released three classic silent (or part-silent) films. The Merry Widow (1925), Don Juan (1926) and Noah's Ark (1929). These three films are among the best-remembered hits of the late silent, early sound era. First, let's start with The Merry Widow (1925, MGM). This film stars Mae Murray and John Gilbert and was directed by Erich von Stroheim. Much has been documented about von Stroheim's excesses as a director. This was his first film after the infamous debacle known as Greed. Hollywood legend has it that while going through the daily rushes of this film with MGM chief Irving Thalberg, von Stroheim showed a single 10-minute take of one the character's shoe closet. When Thalberg questioned the 10 minute shot of shoes, von Stroheim said, "This is to establish that the character has a foot fetish." Thalberg supposedly replied, "And you have a footage fetish!" Loosely based on the...

Turner Classic Movies Expands Road to Hollywood Tour to 10 Cities,

With Free Screenings Leading Up to the Launch of the TCM Classic Film Festival

All Screenings Free to Public; Tickets to be Available at tcm.com/roadtohollywood

As part of the buildup to the 2011 edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is expanding its second annual Road to Hollywood tour to 10 cities nationwide.  The Road to Hollywood tour features free screenings of classic films, along with live appearances by such enduring stars as Ernest Borgnine, Angie Dickinson, Tippi Hedren, Shirley Jones, Jane Powell, Angela Lansbury, Burt Reynolds and Eva Marie Saint.

TCM host Robert Osborne and weekend daytime host Ben Mankiewicz will appear in five cities each to introduce the screenings.  .Last year, we had a great time going on the road and bringing a taste of our first TCM Classic Film Festival to fans all over the country,...

Elegant star of Us TV series from the 1950s onwards

For any regular television viewer in the 1960s and 70s, the elegant actor Gene Barry, who has died aged 90, was inescapable. Most prominent was his portrayal of the Los Angeles police captain Amos Burke in 81 episodes of Burke's Law (1963-66). No ordinary cop, Burke was an immaculately dressed, jet-setting millionaire bachelor who left his Beverly Hills mansion in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce to investigate a murder. Barry as Burke, a wisecracking, sophisticated ladies' man, was the nearest thing on TV to Cary Grant.

Each episode – bursting with Hollywood guest stars, one of whom was revealed as a murderer – allowed Burke to deliver an aphorism such as "never drink martinis with beautiful suspects: Burke's Law", or "never ask a question unless you already know the answer. Burke's Law".

Before playing Burke, Barry had triumphed in the western TV series Bat Masterson (1958-...

Modesty is the last thing Betty White should be indulging in before she accepts a Life Achievement Award for her legendary 61-year career, to be presented at the 16th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, airing Jan. 23 on TBS and TNT. But when faced with the statement that practically everyone in the free world has grown up with the dimpled comedian and adores her natural presence, impeccable timing, and hilarious quips, the 87-year-old shakes her head. "Oh, have I got you fooled," she says with a smile. "No."Yes. If audiences didn't first notice White as Rose Nylund telling St. Olaf stories on "The Golden Girls" in 1985, then it might have been as the man-hungry "Happy Homemaker" Sue Ann Nivens on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" in 1973. Some might even recall when White produced and starred in "Life With Elizabeth" in 1953. All three roles earned her Emmys. Even kids born in...