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Sandra Bullock Pulls Out of London Premiere

kty — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:18:49 -0700

Freshly minted Oscar winner Sandra Bullock has abruptly pulled out of the London premiere of her film The Blind Side."Due to unforeseen personal reasons a trip abroad to support The Blindside has been deemed impossible at this time," says a statement released by Warner Bros. "I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and thank you for your continued support of the film." The scrapped premiere comes amid tabloid rumors of infidelity involving the star’s husband of nearly five years, West Coast Choppers CEO Jesse James, 40. The usually red carpet-shy James had been a constant fixture by his wife's side during the recent awards season, and the pair repeatedly expressed their mutual affection. Bullock "is old-school Hollywood," James told PEOPLE at the Oscars on March 7 just after her win. "Nobody deserves this more and works harder. I'm so proud of her."

Lindsay's Wild Week: Partying – and Two Near Run-ins with Samantha Ronson

kty — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:04:08 -0800

By Catherine Donaldson-Evans
Lindsay Lohan recently declared she is healthy and happier and has put her substance-abuse problems behind her – but her recent behavior may suggest otherwise. After trips to London and Atlantic City, N.J., Lohan, 23, is back in Los Angeles, where she has been out late for three consecutive nights. On Tuesday, the starlet arrived at Bardot Hollywood after 1 a.m., where her ex-girlfriend Samantha Ronson, 32, was deejaying. According to a source, Ronson asked security to stay by her side until Lohan left the club. "She wouldn't leave, and at the end of the night, you could tell she was waiting for Sam," the source says, noting that Lohan texted her ex, who ignored the message. "They never talked at all, though, and Sam was definitely avoiding [her]," the source says. A similar scene played out the night before – this time at Teddy's inside the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where Ronson was also deejaying. Lohan, who asked for a table near Ronson and was denied, was "a total mess," a witness says. "She looked really drunk when she arrived and seemed so out of it," the witness tells PEOPLE. The actress was out again on Wednesday night, acting "aloof" at West Hollywood's Chateau Marmont – though this time her ex-girlfriend wasn't anywhere in sight.

'She Needs Help'

Friends of Lohan are concerned about her recent partying. “She needs help. She needs to solve her problems," a source close to the star says. "She’s just not taking care of herself." In a recent interview with Britain's Sun, Lohan admitted to using cocaine in the past, and pointed a finger at her father, Michael Lohan. "I was only aware of cocaine because of my dad," Lohan told the paper. "I was terrified of it. But I tried it because I was stubborn, stupid, and wanted to see what it was like." And she maintains that her substance use is behind her. "Now I'm in a place where I don't need to use anything," she told the paper, "and I can feel emotions because I choose to." She also told the newspaper that she drinks alcohol in moderation. "I'm allowed to drink now, but I know my limits," she said, adding that she sees a therapist every two weeks and attends weekly alcohol education lessons.

Her Father's Concerned

Michael Lohan, tells PEOPLE he's concerned about his daughter still – and wants to get her help. "The reason Lindsay tries to drown her sorrows and mask her pain was because of my divorce from her mother," he says, "which in turn tore her apart." Upon Lindsay Lohan's return to Los Angeles this past weekend, a source tells PEOPLE, "Her dad showed up at her apartment in L.A., and Lindsay alerted security to make him leave. She is dealing with her attorney to stop him from harassing her." Amid all the drama, Kristi Kaylor, who runs Lohan's 6126 clothing collection, scoffs at the notion that the starlet is in trouble. "She is very supportive of 6126 and very hands on," Kaylor tells PEOPLE. "She just finished styling and modeling in the photo shoot for the debut fall collection. I have to say, I was extremely impressed with Lindsay and think she is a very talented designer."

Globetrotting

On Thursday, Lohan was expected in Milan, to attend an Armani-hosted art event. Lohan is also expected at the designer’s Friday and Saturday runway shows. "She's going from hemisphere to hemisphere from party to party," says a source close to Lohan. “She needs to slow down a little bit and take time for herself and really figure out where she's going to do." Reporting by PERNILLA CEDENHEIM, DAVID CAPLAN, JENNIFER GARCIA and LIZ MCNEIL

Rob's interview with German 'Joy' magazine

athena4rob — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:39:16 -0800

‘Women swamp me’The man with the magic stare is and will be Hollywood’s hottest vampire. Robert Pattinson sat down with JOY author Frances Schoenberger and talked about the Twilight sequel, co-star Kristen Stewart - and his secret fears.
Robert Pattinson slips through a hidden entry into the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills and greets me with a shy ‘hello’. Plaid shirt, black leather jacket and sporting stubble: the 6ft tall Brit seems more like a casual bohemian rather than the most wanted celebrity. I have the feeling he doesn’t like the spotlight on himself: His eyes keep wandering to the floor. However, it’s exactly that, his vulnerability and insecurity that sum up his incredible charisma.
JOY: When I met you last year you were still a newcomer to this business. Despite your breakthrough career you don’t seem to have changed. You still appear down-to-earth, showing up to an interview by yourself. Do you pass on an entourage?
RP: Having lots of people surrounding me permanently makes me nervous. I don’t need an assistant or a mentor. The more people hover over you the more people will try to tell you what to do. I don’t care about their opinions most of the time (laughs). Although I should try not to be too self-deprecating when being interviewed and to not put myself down all the time because fans will probably think ‘It’s true, he IS an idiot.’ (laughs)
JOY: The first Twilight movie pitchforked you on the crest of the wave. How did your every day life change with all the fame?
RP: Most of the time I don’t even notice being a celebrity because I’m constantly working. We started shooting New Moon right after we finished Twilight and right now we are already working on Eclipse. On the set, it doesn’t matter if I’m famous or not. I get up at 5 in the morning and when I go home at night I’m so tired that I just want to sleep.
JOY: Which part of the fame don’t you like?
RP: It truly is bizarre, how the press keeps lunging at me and how much they find to say about me. That means that I can’t go out as much - I need to hide when needed or lay false trails. I mean, I don’t have issues with people chatting me up on the street but if there is a bunch of girls swamping me, things get out of hand.
JOY: Dakota Fanning, who plays the evil vampire girl Jane, explains the hype of the female fans as such: ‘Edward is the perfect man, he is handsome and has great hair.’ What do you think about that?
RP: If all that matters is being attractive and have great hair, those aren’t tough conditions, I’m not sure if I can live up to them though (laughs).
JOY: What’s the difference between you and Edward?
RP: I, too, have bad hair days (laughs).JOY: What was it like to work with Kristen Stewart again? Did your relationship evolve even more after working on New Moon?
RP: I love working with someone that I really like. She’s been a great co-actor ever since we started shooting Twilight. Edward’s authenticity depends on her performance and vice versa. We challenge each other.JOY: Would you say it’s easier to fall in love on a movie set?(A smart throw by the journalist)
RP: Of course we spend a huge amount of time together but that doesn’t mean I fall in love with all my co-stars. That would have meant starting a love affair with Javier Beltran after shooting Little Ashes (laughs).( And Pattinson dodges another one! )JOY: The female fans are all over the forbidden love between Bella and Edward. Do you think there is also a part, male fans can relate to?
RP: New Moon of all the movies provides the most exciting plot: because Edward is so in love with Bella, he is going through permanent self-doubt, thinking he’s not good enough for her. That way he destroys the relationship. I think every man can relate to that because we can be pretty confused when being in love!JOY: What does your family in England think about the Twilight hype?
RP: I don’t think they even notice it that much. The other day my mom called to tell me she liked the shirt I was wearing in a picture. Up to this point my parents have hardly been affected by the paparazzi. They are just really nice people, a story about them would be rather boring. When my sister visited me in LA the other day she was shocked about how many magazines had my picture on their covers.JOY: When was the last time you visited England?
RP: Almost a year ago when i was finally off work for 3 days. After that I only saw my parents at the New Moon premiere but we are planning to celebrate Christmas together!JOY: Back in London you were the singer in a band called ‘Bad Girls’. Will there be any performances in the future?
RP: I am still writing songs and if I happen to have enough time it is a possibility. Singing used to be a hobby of mine but now there would be a lot of people listening, or even criticize me. That scares me!JOY: What is your next project?
RP: Next year I will be in New Mexico, shooting a western movie called Unbound Captives, together with Hugh Jackman. This role will be so far off from the role of Edward, noone will be able to compare them. My dad is really looking forward to that movie. He is better with horses than with vampires (laughs).

Times Interview with Rob

athena4rob — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:10:58 -0800

On a balmy autumn day in Vancouver, Canada, a young man is longing for a walk outside in the sunshine, and deciding against it.
Far easier for him to stay in his hotel room, cocooned in five-star luxury, with a cellphone that has run out of charge, safe at least from the girls chanting his name outside.

Robert Pattinson, 23, from Barnes in southwest London, ought still to be one of Hollywood’s beautiful dreamers, moving up the ranks of movie acting, enjoying his American adventure, his guitar, his good looks. Instead he lives in danger of being trampled in a stampede of teen love. He plays the vampire Edward Cullen in The Twilight Saga, the biggest books-to-screen phenomenon since Harry Potter - in which, by the way, Pattinson was Cedric Diggory, heroic golden boy and victim of Voldemort. Boy, his life has changed since Hogwarts.
In Canada, he is shooting Eclipse, the third of Stephenie Meyer’s quartet of novels. The second, New Moon, was released this month in a publicity extravaganza that involved shutting down New York’s Times Square. The last time the actor was there, the square was also closed to traffic, for an event only marginally more fascinating to the world: the election victory of Barack Obama. We talk on the phone. Even now, a year afterTwilight’s release, Pattinson sounds utterly stunned by the hysteria swirling around him.
“It’s been a little frightening,” he laughs, a sort of embarrassed chuckle, the sound of someone negotiating the best bit of luck they have ever had, not wanting to sound blasé or overexcited. “In England, no one had heard of the series when I went for the audition, so it has been a total, utter surprise. The change to my everyday life is so extreme. Before this, I was used to working 10 days a year. Originally, I did a three-picture deal, but I wasn’t even really thinking about that . I had no idea I’d still be working on it now.”
Does the poor boy, who still calls London home, feel he has to hide? “I tend to stay in the hotel because where I’m staying is publicised all the time. There’s always a bunch of people outside. I can’t really be in Los Angeles now at all. It’s not that the fans are threatening, but the paparazzi follow me all night.” This hounding can evoke an absurd sympathy, considering the kid’s fortune and prospects. But then he brightens, telling me he was buying a guitar the other day and had to spell his name 12 times, and the guy still didn’t twig. “I loved that.”
When he read the first script, he had no idea how to play it. “I thought Bella, the heroine, would be a damsel in distress and I’d have to be the alpha-male hero type, so I thought I was never going to get it. But then they cast Kristen Stewart and she’s not really like that, so I realised there was a different way to play Edward, to show his vulnerability.” Could he get trapped and find it hard to move on to different sorts of roles?
“It worries me, because the whole Twilight thing keeps getting bigger and bigger, and now it’s so big, even my own ego can’t cope with it. A certain amount of success you can mentally deal with, but there’s a point where you think: ‘Jesus Christ, what is this? I’m not that great!’ I just wanted to make an American film, and I wanted it to be relatively good and to be good in it. I have never pushed to do anything . As soon as you start going to the gym every day and try to look like a movie star, you’re going down a worrisome track.” He laughs. “Being an English guy, you get a lot more breaks. You’re allowed to look a little worse. It’s that thing about English teeth.”
To say New Moon is eagerly awaited is like saying the Pope could use a miracle. Moreover, it promises to be twice as hormonally charged as Twilight, since it offers two poster boys for the price of one.Is Pattinson embarrassed to have millions of girls in love with him? “The only time it’s embarrassing is when you do a photo shoot and people try to force you to look clean-cut,” he says. “When they use pictures where you’re smiling sweetly and having your hair brushed, because that’s not what you want to be known for. I don’t really know why the girls love the movie so much. The series has become a bit of a cult. People like being part of the club. They’re obsessed

Obama and over exposure

Grandpa — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:36:56 -0700

Barack Obama Jumps the Shark

By Stuart Schwartz

Barack Obama has jumped the shark.
This past week was when the forty-fourth president of the United States tugged on his leather jacket, strapped on his water skis, roared off behind a motorboat and fearlessly jumped over a live shark

The term "jump the shark" comes from a late seventies Happy Days episode when the series, desperately trying to stop its ratings slide, had the character Fonzie, in his trademark leather jacket, water ski over a shark during a visit to Hollywood. Since then, a show or movie series that tries increasingly more desperate moves as its audience disappears is said to have "jumped the shark."

Desperation is the hallmark of such productions, and desperation has become the underlying theme of what leftist stalwarts like the Guardian of London and The Daily Show admiringly call "The Barack Obama Show." Lee Cary of American Thinker puts it bluntly: his "gift has stopped giving."

Happy Days continued its decline for another seven seasons, its pleasant characters and respect for ordinary people making up, in part, for increasingly thin storylines and lack of energy. But the Democrat-led Congress is no Happy Days, and Barack Obama is no Fonzie, the caring Henry Winkler character whose no-nonsense patriotism and good guy persona kept the show afloat while slowing its slide.

In classic jump-the-shark fashion, an administration built on managed television appearances is now providing the viewing public with increasingly bizarre plots (see the "Muslims Rule!" episodes), strange new characters (departed truther Van Jones, Ezekiel "Dr. Death" Emanuel), and breathtaking disconnects (or, as Joe Wilson put it, lies). The audience continues to tune out. A recent Rasmussen poll shows that 26% more voters strongly disapprove than approve of the president's performance. At the same time, the president's primetime television audiences have declined by almost 40%.

This week the "The Barack Obama Show" tried to end its ratings slide with a classic jump-the-shark technique, the Blossom maneuver. The nineties situation comedy earned a place in the viewer hall of disdain by devoting nearly half of its four-year run to special episodes designed to generate controversy in hopes of diverting attention from increasingly unpopular narratives and cast. Television critics named this desperate jump-the-shark approach "a very special episode."

And so we were treated to A Very Special talk to students by the president, A Very Special appearance before the AFL-CIO and A Very Special address to Congress on health care, to be followed by A Very Special appearance on 60 Minutes and A Very Special address on the financial crisis. This is Hollywood governance, designed to distract the nation from a show that has lost credibility and audience at an alarming rate.

Ordinary Americans -- the ones clinging to guns, God, health care and life -- are uneasy. They had been promised by the nation's elites a blockbuster of hope, a show set in Washington that would completely change the richly deserved popular view of beltway politicians as simply another variety of American cockroach.

The Media elite, for example, told viewers that the Obama show would be forever and smartly heroic. The New York Times columnist David Brooks, for example, praised Obama and his team as "twice as smart" as the journalists covering them, who in turn he saw as twice as smart as the average American.

Brooks, who has a thing about men's legs (he regaled cable viewers with an anecdote about a senator's hand wandering about his thigh during a political dinner), looked at Obama's "pants leg" and knew right away he was going to be "a very good president." Brooks is the Colonel Sanders of the elite pundit class: a leg and thigh man.

The Hollywood elite promised the first season of the Barack Obama show would drip inspiration. Demi Moore took one look at its star, hitched up her $3,000 Gucci jeans, and vowed to free one million slaves by the time the show completed its first season. Meanwhile, Obama inspired Eva Longoria so much that she took time out from rubbing elbows with the "celebrity fueled crowd" at her chic Hollywood restaurant and promised to plant 500 trees "for our leader."

However, viewers see a different reality, a uniquely unsympathetic Obama media production. Scriptwriters seem determined to insult every category of taxpayer in the country. A sampling of the venom pouring into family rooms: Whites are "cowards;" "them Jews" are what is wrong with the world; Republicans are "a-holes;" surgeons are greed-crazed Freddy Kruegers, sawing off healthy limbs for cash; and seniors waste valuable medical resources by living too long.

J.R. Dunn blames casting: to the average person, the star of the show is "smug, self-involved, and egotistical." Thomas Lifson called attention to a White House photograph of Obama striding ahead after a meeting, so "self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious" to the struggles with stairs of his handicapped friend, Harvard professor Henry Gates. Another commentator wrote "this president's self-regard is boundless."

Viewers were promised in Barack Obama the easy cool of Denzel Washington, the sincerity of Tom Hanks and the heart of Oprah. Instead, they see on their screens Al Bundy with a tan, pecs, and Harvard Law degree, the first jump-the-shark president.

And so, desperate to save the show, the White House production team decided to bring back a gentler, caring Obama, so much so that he had been labeled at one point our "first female president." This is a president, producers David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel vowed, who would confidently display his inner female which, when combined with a Harvard-honed intellect in a series of "very special" appearances projecting strength and compassion, would rock the Nielsen's (and Rasmussen's).

He did -- in the wrong direction. In a typical jump-the-shark character twist, the inner female on view was Maria from the musical West Side Story. And the Stephen Sondheim lyrics poured out of him/her all week.

"I feel pretty, oh so pretty," the president warbled to the schoolchildren of America, pushing aside parents as he preened before a national audience of K-12 children. "I feel stunning and entrancing" he sang to the AFL-CIO, inviting union thugs everywhere to join him in saving the country from its taxpayers.

And, finally A Very Special Episode, a "Leave it to Barack" primetime appearance before Congress belting out...

I feel charming, Oh, so charming-- It's alarming how charming I feel, And so pretty That I hardly can believe I'm real.

And so ended a full week of Very Special Barack Obama shows. Self-absorbed star, venomous supporting cast and offensive storylines. Barack Obama jumps the shark.

Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli -- call the White House. Production czar wanted.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/barack_obama_jumps_the_shark.html

all about Judy Garland

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:02:21 -0700

Judy Garland was an American singer/entertainer who is considered by most to be the greatest female musical star of Hollywood's Golden Era. Perhaps best known and loved for the magic she brought to stage, screen, television, and recordings, her intense acting ability, singular communicative power, humor, and powerful singing voice were - and still are today - considered nearly unequaled.

The Beginning

Judy (christened Frances Ethel Gumm and nicknamed "Baby") was born on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

She was the third daughter of Frank Avent Gumm and Ethel Marion (Milne) Gumm.

Judy performed with her family at their theatre, the New Grand, in Grand Rapids, with her sisters Mary Jane (nicknamed "Susie") and Dorothy Jane ("Jimmie"). They called their act "The Gumm Sisters."

Judy's stage debut came on December 26, 1924, at the New Grand. She sang and danced with her sisters and soloed on "Jingle Bells" - the latter repeatedly until her grandmother (or father, depending on which story one believes) had to walk on and carry her off.

In autumn 1926, the Gumm family moved to California, ultimately settling the next year in Lancaster, some 80 miles north of Los Angeles. The sisters continued to perform and to take dancing and acting lessons.

In 1929, Judy made her film debut with her sisters in the two-reel short, THE BIG REVUE.

"Baby Gumm" 1924. "The Gumm Sisters" (L to R: Susie, Jimmie and Baby) 1925. "Baby Gumm" 1925. "Baby Gumm" in her first film THE BIG REVUE, 1929.

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The 1930s

In 1933, the Gumm family moved to Silver Lake, a suburb of Los Angeles, where Judy and Jimmie attended Lawlor's Hollywood Professional School.

On October 21, 1933, Judy and Mickey Rooney appeared in a Lawlor recital together; it was their first professional association... and they'd go on to be co-billed in ten Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature films (between 1937 and 1948), to share the premiere taping of her 1963 CBS-TV series, and to share countless benefit, radio, and personal appearances.

In 1934, the Gumm sisters traveled to Chicago where they appeared at The Oriental Theatre. George Jessel, who headlined and emceed the bill, decided to change their stage names to "The Garland Sisters" because the audience laughed when he introduced them as "The Gumm Sisters."

To get away from the nickname "Baby," Frances chose to change her own first name in the summer of 1935, taking the title of the Hoagy Carmichael/Sammy Lerner song, "Judy," in its stead.

In 1935, The Gumm Sisters' act broke up when Susie got married.

In September 1935, when Judy was 13, she auditioned for M-G-M, singing "Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart." She was signed immediately to a seven year contract.

Also in 1935, Judy made her network radio debut on the "Shell Chateau Hour."

On June 12, 1936, just two days after her 14th birthday, she recorded "Stompin' At The Savoy"/"Swing Mr. Charlie" with Bob Crosby and His Orchestra for Decca in New York. This was the first Judy Garland record to be released. In 1937, Decca signed her to a long-term recording contract.

In 1936, after the one-reel M-G-M short EVERY SUNDAY (with Deanna Durbin), Judy made her feature film acting debut in PIGSKIN PARADE.

In February 1937, Judy was asked to perform at an onset birthday party for Clark Gable. She sang "Dear Mr. Gable" which led into the song "You Made Me Love You." Her rendition created such a sensation, it was written into her part in the already-scripted BROADWAY MELODY OF 1938 (in which she played the daughter of the great Sophie Tucker).

In 1937, she made her first film appearance with Mickey Rooney in THOROUGHBREDS DON'T CRY. They re-teamed months later for LOVE FINDS ANDY HARDY; earlier in 1938, she also duetted with the legendary Fanny Brice in EVERYBODY SING.

In the late 1930s, Judy was a radio regular, singing on scores of shows and assuming her status as the favorite of millions at that time.

She topped off the decade with the release of THE WIZARD OF OZ in August 1939, followed by BABES IN ARMS in October. As a result, she placed in the top ten box office stars for 1940 - a position she held again in 1941 and 1945.

On October 10, 1939, Judy placed her hand and footprints in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre with Mickey Rooney in attendance.

1934 publicity shot. Performing as "The Garland Sisters" in Chicago (L to R: Susie, Jimmie and Baby) 1934. Publicity portrait for THE WIZARD OF OZ, 1938. Mickey Rooney and Judy at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, 1939.

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The 1940s

In February 1940, Judy won a special Juvenile Oscar for her role as Dorothy Gale in THE WIZARD OF OZ. She referred to the miniature statuette as her "Munchkin Award."

Judy married composer and orchestra leader David Rose on July 28, 1941; they would divorce four years later.

In July 1943, Judy made her solo concert debut in Philadelphia, breaking all attendance records at The Robin Hood Dell: 15,000 patrons jammed into an amphitheatre designed for 6,500; another 15,000 gathered on nearby hillsides to hear the show, and thousands more were turned away.

In 1944, one of her most successful films, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, introduced three standards: "The Trolley Song," "The Boy Next Door" and "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas."

Other stellar Garland vehicles of the 1940s include: STRIKE UP THE BAND (1940), FOR ME AND MY GAL (1942; Gene Kelly's film debut), GIRL CRAZY (1943), THE HARVEY GIRLS (1946), THE PIRATE (1948), EASTER PARADE (1948; Fred Astaire came out of retirement to dance with her in this picture), IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME (1949), and SUMMER STOCK (1950). She actually appeared in 20 feature films during the decade, as well as cutting scores of sides for Decca, participating in well over one hundred radio broadcasts, and performing in numerous benefits, and three separate camp tours for U.S. servicemen and women.

On June 15, 1945, she married legendary director Vincente Minnelli (divorced 1951). They had one child, Liza Minnelli.

Costume test for "Esther Smith" and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, November 1943. Newspaper supplement ad art for MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, 1944. Judy stars as "Ginger Gray" in GIRL CRAZY, 1943. Judy stars as " Hannah Brown" in EASTER PARADE, 1948.

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The 1950s

On September 29, 1950, Judy Garland was released from her M-G-M contract.

On April 9, 1951, Judy began a series of legendary live appearances at The London Palladium, later touring the provinces for two months.

From 1951 to 1952, she played New York's Palace Theatre for a record-breaking nineteen weeks, receiving a special Tony Award for her revival of vaudeville-styled entertainment.

On June 8, 1952, Judy married producer Sid Luft (divorced 1965). They had two children, Lorna and Joey.

In 1954, after a four year absence, she returned to films in A STAR IS BORN, which is considered by many to be her best dramatic performance, and for which she received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination.

In 1955, the best selling album, MISS SHOW BUSINESS, was the first release of her ten-year association with Capitol Records.

Other albums released in the '50s included: JUDY (1956), ALONE (1957), JUDY IN LOVE (1958), GARLAND AT THE GROVE (1959), and THE LETTER (1959).

Also in 1955, Judy made her television debut as the star of "Four Star Jubilee," which won the highest ratings to that date for a special on CBS.

Judy made her Las Vegas debut in July 1956 at The New Frontier at the highest salary ever paid to a star in the desert up until that time.

On September 26, 1956, Judy reclaimed the Palace Theatre for a 17-week Broadway engagement.

Her other 1950s theatrical engagements included a return to London for a four-week season at The Dominion and a Royal Variety Show at The Palladium; stints at The Greek Theatre and Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles; and further triumphs in Las Vegas, and cross-country from Dallas to Detroit, Chicago, and Miami, among other cities.

In an unprecedented one-week stand in 1959, Judy Garland was the first American popular singer to appear at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. Her elaborate revue also toured to Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Poster for Judy's debut at The London Palladium, April 9, 1951. Facade and marquee of New York's Palace Theatre for Judy's first engagement there, 1951 to 1952. Publicity shot for A STAR IS BORN, 1954. Judy performing "Swanee" at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1959.

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The 1960s

Judy returned to the screen in 1961 playing a cameo role in JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, for which she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress.

On April 23, 1961, Judy triumphed at Carnegie Hall. Many would call her appearance there the "greatest single night in show business history." The double-album live recording made of the concert was a best seller (certified gold), charting for over 90 weeks in Billboard - 13 weeks at number one - and winning five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Best Female Vocal Performance. Judy duplicated the Carnegie Hall concert "live" over 60 times between August 1960 and December 1961, from London, Paris, and Amsterdam to the Newport Jazz Festival and The Hollywood Bowl. (At the latter show, a record-breaking crowd of 18,000 sat outside in a steady rain for 2.5 hours; after four encores, they refused to let Judy leave the stage and, when she'd run out of orchestrations, made her repeat a song from earlier in the concert.)

Her "comeback" to television in a 1962 special with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin won CBS a new high in audience ratings and virtually unanimous raves. It garnered four Emmy nominations and was repeated by popular demand.

Judy's final starring films were released in 1963: A CHILD IS WAITING and I COULD GO ON SINGING.

In 1963, CBS offered Judy a $24 million, four-year deal to produce a weekly television series, "The Judy Garland Show." Although critically acclaimed, the series lasted only one season and went off the air in 1964 after 26 episodes. However, the show won four Emmy nominations.

In 1964, Judy appeared twice at The London Palladium with her daughter Liza, and gave more than 80 solo shows as well between 1964 and 1966.

On November 14, 1965, she married actor Mark Herron (divorced 1967).

In the summer of 1967, Judy made a final, four-week appearance at the Palace Theatre, working 27 consecutive evenings - during which she broke her own box office record. Additionally, there were over 50 other concerts during her 1967 tour.

On July 20, 1968, Judy gave her last U.S. concert in Philadelphia.

From late December 1968 until early February 1969, she fulfilled a five-week engagement at London's Talk of the Town nightclub. Though frail and increasingly ill, she missed only three shows during the 30-performance schedule.

On March 15, 1969, she married nightclub owner Mickey Deans.

In March 1969, she gave her final concert in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Album releases in the '60s included: JUDY: THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! (1960), JUDY AT CARNEGIE HALL (1961), THE GARLAND TOUCH (1962), JUST FOR OPENERS (1964; soundtracks from her TV series), JUDY AND LIZA LIVE AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM (1965), and JUDY: AT HOME AT THE PALACE (1967).

During the 1960s, Judy also appeared as a special guest on more than 20 television programs, including "The Hollywood Palace," "Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall," the Jack Paar, Sammy Davis, Jr., Ed Sullivan, and Andy Williams shows, among others.

Judy Garland died in London on June 22, 1969, at the age of 47.

In 1997, Judy Garland was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

JUDY AT CARNEGIE HALL was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998; "Over The Rainbow" (1939) and her cast album of MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944) have also received that Grammy distinction.

"Over The Rainbow" has since been voted Song of the Century as well as the No. 1 film song of all-time.

Judy on stage at Carnegie Hall, April 23, 1961. Judy in the role of "Irene Hoffman" in JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, 1961. Judy in the 1962 CBS television special. Original poster art for I COULD GO ON SINGING, 1963.

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TRIVIA - things you probably never knew but will now...

Judy has a special variety of rose named after her. The petals are yellow (she adored yellow roses) and the
Judy Garland Rose
tips are bright red. At the behest of the officers and members of her London-based international fan club, a British rose developer spent several years in their quest to find a bloom that all felt worthy of the Garland name. After its success in England, U.S. firms began to stock the rose in 1991. Several Judy Garland rose bushes are planted outside of her mausoleum in Hartsdale, New York, as well as on the grounds of the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids.

Judy had songs written for her by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Ira Gershwin, E.Y. Harburg, Burton Lane, Harry Warren, Hugh Martin, Ralph Blane, and Johnny Mercer. Jerry Herman (HELLO, DOLLY!, MAME, MACK AND MABEL, LA CAGE AUX FOLLES) and Lionel Bart (OLIVER!) credited Judy as their inspirational muse when composing and writing lyrics.

Johnny Mercer also wrote the words to "That Old Black Magic," "I Remember You," and "This Time, The Dream's On Me" in recognition of his love for Judy.

Among those who orchestrated and/or arranged for Judy Garland were: Mort Lindsey, Nelson Riddle, Conrad Salinger, Gordon Jenkins, Billy May, Buddy Bregman, Saul Chaplin, Skip Martin, Mel Torme, Ray Heindorf, Kay Thompson, and the incomparable Roger Edens.

"Quiet Please, There's A Lady On Stage" was begun by Peter Allen in honor of cabaret star Julie Wilson, but it evolved into a paean to all great singing ladies - especially Judy.

Groucho Marx called her loss of the Oscar for A STAR IS BORN "the biggest robbery since Brink's." Hedda Hopper later reported that the 1955 voting for Best Actress was the closest to that time that didn't end in a tie... and Grace Kelly won for THE COUNTRY GIRL by just six votes. (Ironically, history has provided Judy with far more attention for missing out on the Academy Award than Kelly ever received for winning it...)

The day Judy died, there were tornadoes in Kansas.

Source and Photos: Judy Garland: World's Greatest Entertainer (Henry Holt and Company, 1992), and Judy Garland: A Portrait in Art & Anecdote (Bulfinch Press, 2003), both by John Fricke.

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John Fricke
How does one capture the essence of a legend as large as Judy Garland? That task is about as easy as cramming an elephant into a bottle… or at least that's how it felt when we set out to summarize the life of this celebrated woman for the readers of THE VOICE. We weren't sure where to begin. And then, like the tornado that plucked Dorothy from Kansas and delivered her to Oz, John Fricke came along to put us on the right path. He helped us navigate the yellow brick road of Judy's life, and deliver her story to you. We'd like to introduce him to you now…

VOICE: How did you become a Judy Garland expert?

JOHN: Well, it's something that just happened, I guess... although it's not a noun I use to describe myself. "Author/historian" and/or "archivist"… "producer" - somehow, those seem a bit more legitimate and less maniacally focused [smiles]. I figuratively fell in love with Judy when I was five; from then on, I wanted to know anything I could about her - especially in terms of her career and achievement and repertoire and the backstory attendant to the concerts and movies and TV shows and radio appearances and recordings. I guess I have (what I've since heard applied to others as) a "writer's memory." And so much of the masses of journalistic material I ingested over the years stayed with me... and has come in inordinately handy when it came time to write books and essays and liner notes and articles - and to advise, consult, produce product about her. The fact that it's Judy Garland material that I'm putting forth makes my job the easiest in the world. To give it an artistic allusion: all I do is try to create a suitable framework and fit it around a masterpiece. Then I get out of the way - and SHE does all the "work" [smiles].

VOICE: Did you ever meet Judy Garland? If so, what was she like?

JOHN: I met Judy at 2 a.m. in the Pump Room restaurant at the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago; this was the night/early morning of September 14/15, 1967. I was 16 and had seen her in concert that evening for the second time, this go-round at the Opera House. (I attended my first Garland show two years earlier, also in Chicago, at the Arie Crown Theatre on May 7, 1965 - and my third the evening after we met.) She was as welcoming, warm, funny, convivial, and quietly sincere and appreciative as I always knew she'd be... and as I had no right to expect her to be after she'd completed a 90 minute show and was in a comparatively private, post-performance "unwind" mode. What was remarkable in retrospect about our brief conversation is that neither of us could know then that I would end up being responsible for the preservation and presentation of so much of her legacy in the decades ahead. But how very grateful and (hopefully pardonably) proud I am to have been entrusted with that amazing artistic history... and to have the memory of her kindness and attention and humor and charm on that (to me!) historic occasion in 1967.

VOICE: When and how were you introduced to Linda's work?

JOHN: I've known of Linda for a long time... I used to hear her CDs played at Sam's theatrical hangout/restaurant on West 45th Street here in New York when I'd go in there for dinner; it's right across the street from where I've lived lo! these 31 years. And even as purported background music, her voice couldn't help but garner attention and interest. I think the first time I heard her in person came on the opening night of JEKYLL & HYDE; I knew one of the producers, so we were all out in support and enthusiasm on that occasion. And if I'd been an admirer prior to that, I became a fan as of that evening.

VOICE: Did you have a role in the background preparation of BY MYSELF? If so, could you tell us about it?

JOHN: No, I really didn't, in any way, shape, or form. I had heard - via the Garland grapevine - that Linda was in London, doing the sessions. And I was aware that she'd spoken about Judy with the former editor-in-chief of the International Judy Garland Club magazine around the same time as the recordings were being made. But my "connection" is a very minor, post-performance one; Jill Siegel and I have a mutual friend here in New York, who brought us together to "talk Judy/Linda" - and that's how I was asked to spread the word and provide a conduit to the Garland factions.

VOICE: Do you have a favorite song from BY MYSELF?

JOHN: Because of Linda's obvious emotional commitment to every melody and lyric, it's difficult to pick and choose. But I've always loved "It Never Was You" as a song - and I think she's especially tender and "introspectively communicative"... is that possible!? [laughs], on that one. And I have the same enthusiasm for "I'd Like To Hate Myself In The Morning" and the whoop-dee-do ride she gives it. I'm a major John Meyer fan, and I love hearing his words and music get the all-out, orchestral and vocal star treatment they warrant. I'd like to hear Linda take a flyer on his "It's All For You" (which Judy sang on "The Tonight Show" just months before her passing) and "When Do The Words Come True?" - which is a song John wrote after Judy died and which summarizes the life of a bravura entertainer who's given her all (and more) to her work.

VOICE: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions, and of course for all your help in preparing this issue of THE VOICE!

All about John Fricke...

Judy Garland: World's Greatest Entertainer by John Fricke
Widely acknowledged as the preeminent Judy Garland and WIZARD OF OZ historian/author, John Fricke received a 2004 Emmy Award as co-producer of the two-hour, PBS-TV "American Masters" program, "Judy Garland: By Myself." This was his second recognition by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences; he won similar honors in 1997 as co-producer and co-writer of the A&E "Biography" special, "Judy: Beyond the Rainbow," which was based on his acclaimed book, Judy Garland: World's Greatest Entertainer (Henry Holt, 1992).

Currently, John serves as consultant for the new, deluxe DVD sets of M-G-M's THE WIZARD OF OZ, to be released by Warner Home Video in October 2005. He selected the repertoire and wrote the liner notes for THAT OLD FEELING/CLASSIC BALLADS from "The Judy Garland Show," the Savoy Music compact disc which hit stores on June 14, 2005; his second Savoy CD is comprised of numbers Judy sang on her TV series with her guests - JUDY GARLAND AND FRIENDS: DUETS appeared in stores in August and includes performances with Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, Vic Damone, Mickey Rooney, Count Basie, Mel Torme, Martha Raye, Liza Minnelli, and others. John's 6,500-word profile about the career association of Garland and OZ/A STAR IS BORN composer Harold Arlen appeared in the April 2005 issue of The Cue Sheet/Quarterly Journal of The Film Music Society.

His most recent book, Judy Garland: A Portrait in Art and Anecdote, was published in 2003 by Bulfinch Press and includes a foreword by Garland's daughter, Lorna Luft. It was the first such participation in any author's treatise on their mother by one of Judy's children. John's other books include The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History (Warner Books, 1989) and 100 Years of Oz (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1999). Total sales for his four titles now approaches two hundred fifty thousand copies.

Judy Garland: A Portrait in Art and Anecdote
by John Fricke
John received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Album Notes for the compact disc, JUDY GARLAND: 25TH ANNIVERSARY RETROSPECTIVE (1996), which he produced for Capitol Records. In 2004, he served as DVD on-camera host for Warner Home Video, writing and delivering introductions to three classic Garland films (LOVE FINDS ANDY HARDY, ZIEGFELD GIRL, IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME); he also recorded complete historical commentary for the alternate audio tracks of two of other Garland titles in their DVD debut, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS and FOR ME AND MY GAL, and is similarly heard throughout EASTER PARADE, which was released on DVD in March 2005. Earlier, he was co-producer of the highly acclaimed laser disc box sets, THE ULTIMATE OZ (1993) and JUDY GARLAND: THE GOLDEN YEARS AT M-G-M (1995).

Between 1995 and 2002, he wrote the extensive booklets for the Turner Classic Movie Music/Rhino Movie Music series of Garland Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer soundtrack compact discs, thus providing detailed histories of THE WIZARD OF OZ, BABES IN ARMS, STRIKE UP THE BAND, BABES ON BROADWAY, FOR ME AND MY GAL, GIRL CRAZY, THE HARVEY GIRLS, THE PIRATE, EASTER PARADE, IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME, and SUMMER STOCK. John provided similar notes for the 2004 Sony compact disc of Garland's A STAR IS BORN.

Associate producer and writer for the two sold-out 1998 concerts, Carnegie Hall Celebrates the Music of Judy Garland, John also co-produced the 1992 Garland exhibition at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. That ten-week display drew the largest crowds for any such retrospective in the history of the venue.

John was, respectively, associate producer and creative consultant for the CBS-TV documentary, "The Wizard of Oz: The Making of A Movie Classic" (1990) and the PBS-TV "Great Performances" program, "Judy Garland: The Concert Years" (1985), both of which received Emmy Award nominations. He was consultant to virtually all production departments for LIFE WITH JUDY GARLAND/ME AND MY SHADOWS (2001), the top-rated, multiple Emmy Award-winning ABC television motion picture. He also wrote, hosted and co-directed the Telly Award-winning home video documentary, WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE MUNCHKINS in 1992.

He has discussed Garland, OZ, or both on literally hundreds of international radio and television programs, serving on many occasions as spokesman for Warner Bros., Turner Entertainment, Rhino Records, Capitol Records, or M-G-M/UA Home Video. Among many other TV appearances, John has been seen on "The Today Show," "Entertainment Tonight," "The Joan Rivers Show," the A&E "Breakfast With the Arts," CNN's "Show Biz Today," and the syndicated "Instant Recall."

Over the years, John has served The International Wizard of Oz Club, Inc., as president, vice-president, member of its board of directors, and as editor in chief and contributing editor of its magazine, The Baum Bugle. He is presently consultant to both The Judy Garland Heirs Trust and The Land of Oz Preservation Company.

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John Meyer
Songwriter and author John Meyer offers Judy Garland fans a rare glimpse into the life of "the legendary lady." He played a special role in the twilight of her life… meeting her in 1968 and quickly becoming her friend, her business manager and her lover. His book, Heartbreaker (Doubleday, 1983), chronicles their time together in the months before her sad and untimely death.

Here, John gives Linda's fans some insight into the Judy Garland he knew and loved…

VOICE: What did Judy enjoy doing when not performing?

JOHN: No hobbies, unless you mean appropriating other people's belongings. She needed to know that people would go to extremes to prove their love for her - she once asked a lady to part with her eyeglasses. And the lady did. This was a game to Judy.

VOICE: Did she get nervous before a live performance?

JOHN: Very. So much so that she kept you up all night worrying. She always felt she had to top herself, be better than she was last time out. She felt her public expected it. She was a bundle of nerves.

VOICE: Do you know if Judy had a favorite venue where she performed?

JOHN: Judy liked smaller venues, like the Kleinhaus in Buffalo. Three thousand seats. She didn't like big arenas, big stadiums.

VOICE: Did Judy have a favorite song to sing? Perhaps even one she would hum to herself - not necessarily on stage?

JOHN: She loved "It Never Was You" by Kurt Weill... and my song, "Hate Myself," I'm proud to say.

VOICE: Did she ever accompany herself on the piano? Could she play?

JOHN: No. But she had a great sense of harmony, and real swing instincts. I have tape of us - it'll be included with the new Heartbreaker (Citadel Press, 2006)- where she does a rhythmic riff that shows us a glimpse of her jazz sensibility.

VOICE: Did Judy Garland realize what a tremendous entertainer she was? Do you think she knew she would leave such a legacy?

JOHN: She knew she was good. She knew A STAR IS BORN would live. And the Carnegie Hall concert album. She didn't think much about the rest of her output. She took pride in her children.

VOICE: If you could sum up Judy Garland as you knew her in one word, what would it be?

JOHN: Volatile.

All about John Meyer...

John Meyer started writing nasty ditties about his teachers when he was in high school (Fieldston). Because he was getting laughs from his classmates, he figured this was the best way to get attention (and maybe girls).

When he went to college (University of Chicago), they had a theatre department that specialized in dreary one acts by Strindberg. John decided they needed a musical revue, so he wrote one: PHEASANT UNDER GLASS. It was a hit - and he was hooked for good.

Back in New York, John wrote a comedy number called MR. CLEAN about a woman who fell in love with a detergent. The publicity this number garnered at Julius Monk's revue club, Upstairs at the Downstairs, brought him commissions writing sly songs for some notable performers: Lily Tomlin, Joan Rivers, Gloria DeHaven, Julie Wilson, Madeline Kahn, and Bob Goulet, among others.

Heartbreaker by John Meyer will be reissued by Citadel Press in 2006 (cover above).
In 1968, John met Judy Garland and in addition to writing four songs for her (including "I'd Like To Hate Myself In The Morning"), he attempted to revitalize her career. He was partially successful, but then Judy died. John's memoir of the painfully emotional time he spent with Judy was published in 1983. It's called Heartbreaker. A new edition is due next May with a CD of John and Judy rehearsing at the piano. Also in line for off-Broadway is the musical adaptation of Heartbreaker, timed to coincide with the book's reissue.

With Paul Bartel, the director, John wrote an episode of THE AMAZING STORIES for Steven Spielberg. Called GERSHWIN'S TRUNK, it featured Carrie Fisher and Lainie Kazan (as Gershwin - don't ask!). John and Paul also collaborated on a feature film, NOT FOR PUBLICATION, which starred Nancy Allen. In addition, he did the scoring with orchestrator Larry Hochman.

In 1998, John wrote book, music and lyrics for a musical at London's Jermyn Street Theatre. It was a thriller called THE BETRAYAL OF NORA BLAKE with songs about a woman with amnesia who has to clear herself of the charge of murder. It received 12 rave reviews and is due for an off-Broadway production.

Linda's recording of "I'd Like To Hate Myself In The Morning" caps a fine year for John, as another of his songs, "After The Holidays," has been recorded by Paula West.

John recently married Suzanne Cogan and lives in Manhattan where he is pursuing his three great loves: musical theatre, Burgundy and Suzanne.

The true face of Hollywood (Just for Cinelover) ;-)

Grandpa — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:26:08 -0800

BREITBART: The true face of Hollywood
Andrew Breitbart
ANALYSIS/OPINION: The Washington Times

Sometimes I just don't get the Republican Party.

Back in 2004, a smart, good-looking moderate Republican Hispanic ran for Congress. At the time Victor Elizalde was just under 40 years old and working as an executive at a big-time Hollywood studio. As an ethnic minority, a family man and a rare open conservative in an industry dominated by liberals, Mr. Elizalde represented hope and change for the Republican Party.

Yet because he was running for Henry A. Waxman´s safe seat, Mr. Elizalde got no support from the Republican Party . In fact, no one in the party´s leadership took notice of him. As a result Mr. Waxman trounced Mr. Elizalde with 71 percent of the vote.

Mr. Elizalde has since moved on with his life and is no longer pursuing a political career. What a major waste of talent. Yet again, I blame the conservative movement and the Republican Party for writing off Hollywood completely.

Mr. Waxman has run virtually uncontested for 35 years now. And he causes nothing but problems for Republicans. To hear him speak, you´d think the Grand Old Party is the No. 1 scourge in the world. Yet Republicans are nice to him and do nothing to hold him accountable for his miserable failure as Hollywood's key congressional representative in Washington.

In 2006, Time magazine dubbed him “The Scariest Guy in Washington,” touting that Mr. Waxman has spent the previous “eight years churning out some 2,000 headline-grabbing reports, blasting the Bush administration and the Republican Congress on everything from faulty prewar intelligence and flaws in missile defense to the flu-vaccine shortage and arsenic in drinking water.” Two years later, Britain's Guardian newspaper similarly described him as “the scariest politician in Washington.”

Since Mr. Waxman was first elected to office in 1974 to represent much of the entertainment business's core working population, many of the industry´s rank-and-file jobs have flown the coop. Film and television production have gone to places like Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Romania and beyond - because California is no longer hospitable for doing business.

According to a recent report from the Center for Entertainment Industry Data and Research, Hollywood has been rocked by lost feature-film production. Despite a 30 percent rise in overall production, the value of productions in the U.S. has declined from $3.93 billion in 1998 to $3.38 billion in 2005, a statistic that when ripple effects throughout the economy are added in, the Center estimated has cost 47,000 jobs per year and $23 billion.

Where was Henry?

Over the same years, the Center wrote that “feature-film production in Canada grew from $430 million to $1.2 billion (179 percent). For the same period, production in the U.K. and Ireland increased from $486 million to $809 million (66 percent) ... production in Australia and New Zealand rose from $113 million to $717 million (531 percent) ... production in Eastern Europe jumped from $30 million to $308 million (927 percent).”

All that money should have stayed in the United States, and most of it should have stayed in California, most especially in Mr. Waxman's district, which covers much of Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.

Where was Henry?

Runaway production should be my congressman's biggest concern - but instead he continues to investigate the Bush administration. But that's what his daffy constituents elect him for, year in and year out. There's nothing a selfish, vain, vindictive and spoiled Hollywood liberal likes to hear more than to hear conservatives are to blame for everything.

During Mr. Waxman's 35-year tenure, Hollywood has not just shipped countless jobs overseas, it has become the ultimate outsourced industry. Films are invariably financed by foreign countries: Russians, Saudis, French and Germans, to name but a few guilty parties, now dictate the content of what many consider the DNA of American culture.

Where was Henry?

Ever wonder why the white American businessmen are always the bad guys and radical Islamists almost never are? More money is now made from foreign than domestic box office.

As a result, Hollywood now crafts its moral, ethical and political messages to assuage external sensibilities. Our top films are now premiered and showcased abroad, and standing ovations for anti-American films by elite festivalgoers in San Sebastian, London, Cannes and Toronto grant Hollywood celebrities a distorted picture of America´s worth. These economic dynamics contribute to why “they all hate us.”

Where was Henry?

I blame him for allowing America to become a dirty word abroad.

In this generation of Democratic Party dominance in West Los Angeles, dissent from the idea that America is to blame for everything wrong in the world is considered anything but patriotic. Free speech and the free exchange of ideas are noble concepts long extinct in the one-party, politically correct (and corrupt) culture of Hollywood. Maybe another congressional subpoena hurled at Halliburton by the “scariest guy” in Washington can get to the crux of the problem.

Hopefully, new Republican Party chairman Michael S. Steele, who promised in his acceptance speech last week to take the Republican message places it hasn't been taken previously, will see that in Mr. Waxman - a liberal Democrat who says all the right things but has done nothing to save jobs in his district - the Republicans have a fantastic poster child for the empty rhetoric of the modern Left.

Knock Henry A. Waxman out of a safe seat?

Yes, we can!

Robert Pattinson: Interview With the 'Twilight' Vampire

Ineedclarity — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:47:32 -0800

The 22-year-old British actor got off to a rocky start with fans when he was cast -- but what a difference a year makes. Now the darling of the Stephenie Meyer universe, the question becomes: Is he ready for the rush of fame?

By Karen Valby

Less than a year ago, Robert Pattinson, a British actor known only for a small part in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was picked to play Edward, the brooding, beautiful vampire at the center of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling Twilight saga. Fans revolted immediately. They were furious over the surprise casting of a relative unknown who failed to live up to their idea of the immaculate demigod from their book's dog-eared pages. By the time Pattinson's mother told him she'd read online that her only son was wretched and ugly and had the face of a gargoyle, the author found herself awash in guilt. ''I apologized to Rob,'' says Meyer, ''for ruining his life.''

But teenage girls have their mood swings. It wasn't long before the Twilight universe - 17 million worldwide readers addicted to the tortured romance between Edward and a mortal schoolgirl named Bella - embraced the 22-year-old actor. Twilight won't hit theaters until Nov. 21. (The series' debatable reputation as ''the next Harry Potter'' was reinforced when The Half-Blood Prince jumped to next summer and Twilight slid happily into its old release date.) Still, this past July, when the cast participated in a hype-building panel at the Comic-Con festival, all Pattinson had to do was smile or shift in his seat to send the thousands of besotted girls into fits of red-faced screaming. After the panel, the shaken actor bruised some tender hearts when he likened the sound of the collective squeal to something one might hear when entering ''the gates of hell.'' Fame, clearly, would take getting used to. ''There is going to be a group of girls who will follow his actions from now on,'' says Meyer. ''I asked the producer, 'Is Rob ready for this? Have you guys prepped him? Is he ready to be the It Guy?' I don't think he really is. I don't think he sees himself that way. And I think the transition is going to be a little rocky.''

For this story - the first in-depth interview of Pattinson's young career - the actor's manager suggested that Hollywood's next It Guy be interviewed at the Chateau Marmont hotel, in L.A., over a civilized lunch on the chic outdoor patio. So on a recent afternoon, Pattinson, looking slightly befuddled, wearing secondhand black jeans, what he assumes was once a rather large woman's bowling shirt, and old Chinese slippers with his big toes sticking sadly out of large holes, folds his lanky six-foot frame into a tiny chair. He speaks softly, hunched over his water. Tugging at his unkempt hair, he tries to explain why Jack Nicholson is his favorite actor, before admitting that he feels absurd. ''Why are we here?'' he wonders, looking around at the uptight crowd. ''I feel judged!''

After ditching the hotel - ''Okay, let's think, everything is all schmancy and industry around here'' - he suggests a low-rent heavy metal bar in West Hollywood where he's sung and played guitar at a couple of open-mike nights. Pattinson, who owns every album by his favorite musician, Van Morrison, hopes to record an album soon. He laughs at what a cliché he must sound like. ''Every actor I meet here says they're a musician as well,'' he says. On the ride to the bar, he apologizes for the state of his car, a rattling 1989 black convertible BMW that he recently bought for $2,000. The roof is broken, the old dashboard that caught on fire while he was driving on the highway is chucked in the backseat with the rest of his junk, and he insists that the red flashing light on the new dash is nothing to be alarmed by. ''If I crash,'' he pleads with an impish grin, after nearly rear-ending a sleek Mercedes, ''don't mention it in the article, will you?''

At the Rainbow Bar & Grill, where the waitresses look like world-weary biker chicks, with back tattoos and painted nails, Pattinson orders a Pacifico beer and describes his new life in Los Angeles. The studio has him set up in a temporary apartment (outside of which there's always a few eager Twilighters camped) where the only things he keeps in his fridge are peach Snapple and a freezerful of pepperoni Hot Pockets. ''And I wonder why I feel so terrible all the time!'' he says with a laugh. Pattinson has made only a few friends in town, most of them through cheesy industry events. ''So the only people who I hang out with seem to be club promoters and PR people,'' he says. ''I keep getting photographed coming out of these lame clubs. It's so embarrassing. There was a week where every single night I was going out and getting photographed by the paparazzi or TMZ and I realized 'Oh, my God, I look like a complete alcoholic!'''

Pattinson was 17 years old, and attending a prestigious private school in London, when he booked the part of doomed bloke Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter. After the film wrapped in 2005, his English agent pushed him to pursue similarly earnest roles, but they no longer interested him. Instead, he landed a lead as a troubled young man in the London stage production of the German play The Woman Before. ''At the time I really thought, 'Wow, I must be great, I'm like f---ing Brando!''' he says. ''I had this specific idea where 'I'm going to be a weirdo, this is how I'm going to promote myself.' And then of course I ended up getting fired.''

There followed a strange couple of years where Pattinson lived off his Harry Potter paycheck, drifting between obscure parts in small films and TV. In December, during a two-week run of auditions in Hollywood, he tried out for the role of Edward, a teenage vampire who is rich and perfect and princely in the way 17-year-old boys rarely are - and who falls not for the sexy cheerleader but the shy new girl in town. ''I'd read the book and liked the book, but it made me really uncomfortable trying to picture myself in this part,'' he says. ''Here's this guy who seems to be the embodiment of every single perfect guy. Okay, I'm going to look like a complete idiot if I just try to do that - like give a half-Fonz, half-George Clooney impression. I went in thinking I would just break into hysterical laughter. But then I did it with Kristen and it was completely different. We had this chemistry that just worked.''

Meyer, who had a fat book of head shots of the thousands of actors who wanted the role, says the producers needed someone who was both pretty and scary. ''The one guy that kids were always saying they wanted for Edward was Tom Welling from Smallville. He's beautiful! But could you ever imagine being afraid of him? We did not have a good option until Rob came along. And the movie rests entirely on his shoulders.''

Two months before filming began, Pattinson went alone to Oregon, where the cast and crew would eventually join him. He pored over both the script and Midnight Sun, Meyer's unfinished version of Twilight that is narrated from Edward's perspective, determined to mine the deepest meaning from every line. In the book Edward is described as being all sinew and six-pack, so he spent long hours at the gym, shedding pounds at an alarming rate. ''Then three weeks before shooting the producers were like, 'What're you doing? You look like an alien!''' he laughs. ''Oh, well, I thought it was a cool idea.''

Pattinson's idea to play Edward as a manic depressive also made people nervous. The producers took to trailing after him on the set with highlighted passages from the book of all the times Edward smiled. ''It was like, 'Argh! I was going to smile at some point.' Or everyone would be like, 'Well, let's try to make this bit funnier!' But it wasn't funny. I tried to play it, as much as possible, like a 17-year-old boy who had this purgatory inflicted on him. I just thought, 'How would you play this part if it wasn't a teen-book adaptation?'''

Director Catherine Hardwicke could see that her star was torturing himself. ''So I had a little thing - 'Rob, let's just rehearse the scene all the way through without tearing it down and criticizing it.' We'd get two lines out, and then he would say, 'No, no, no, it's not working!''' Stewart laughs when reminded of Pattinson's inner turmoil. ''Rob made himself crazy the whole movie, and I just stopped and patted him on the back through his neuroses,'' she says affectionately, then pauses. ''He would punch me in the face if he heard me right now.''

Pattinson and Stewart's onscreen chemistry is crucial to the movie's success, so the actor can be forgiven if he acted smitten with his costar when the cameras weren't rolling. ''In the beginning I thought to myself, 'Because she's so serious, I've got to be really serious,''' he says. ''I didn't speak for about two months so I would seem really intense. I would only ever talk about the movie. And I kept recommending all these books. It didn't really work, though. Then I started falling apart and my character started breaking down. I felt like an idiot just following her around, saying, 'You really should read some Zola - and there's this amazing Truffaut movie.' And she started calling me on things: 'Have you actually watched this movie? Yeah? What's it about?' 'It's about a guy on a train.' 'Did you just look at the photo on the cover of the DVD?!''' On more than one occasion, Pattinson was overheard asking Stewart to marry him - proposals that the actress, who's had the same boyfriend since she was 16, got used to shrugging off.

If the shoot had him in knots, Pattinson is determined not to be psyched out by the rigors of promoting a possible franchise. ''I got sent to media training and my agent got back messages like, 'He's resisting the media training,''' he says with an amused shrug. Before the Comic-Con panel, the cast was given prepared answers, but Pattinson refused to stick to the script. ''Even little kids don't want to hear you say the same pat stuff,'' he insists. ''It's boring! I'm thinking about my career in long terms, rather than just trying to milk one thing for whatever it's worth. You either have to be off book from the beginning or be on book forever. And I've never really seen the point of being on book.'' He laughs and signals the waitress for another round of beers. ''Watch, though. I'm going to be completely destroyed.''
While Pattinson is on deck for any Twilight sequels, he's also trying to take advantage of Hollywood's new interest in his career. ''It's funny how quick everything changes,'' says Pattinson. ''Literally, the trailer came out and people who've met me, like, six times are suddenly like, 'Hey! It's really nice to meet you.' After having a big period of unemployment, you think, 'Okay, I'm not going to mess this up again.' So no matter what the meeting is now, even if it's for some dumb movie, even if I don't want to do it, I'm going to go to the meeting and give the most complicated character breakdown I can think of.''

Pattinson stars as Salvador Dalí in 2009's independent film Little Ashes, and is set to play Dennis Hopper's grandson in writer-director Brian Horiuchi's still-unscheduled indie drama Parts Per Billion. He's sifting through higher-profile scripts, amused to find himself in the same conversation as stars like Shia LaBeouf for a role in a Gladiator-style period movie. And he's been pining for the chance to play Jeff Buckley in the biopic, though he imagines if the long-gestating movie ever gets made the role will go to the singer's look-alike James Franco.

It's hard for a boy on the brink of stardom to answer just what he wants out of sudden fame. Despite his appearances now in two wildly popular franchises, Pattinson says he's not interested in grabbing at big-money roles. As soon as he comes into cash, he has a tendency to blow it all anyway. ''Not on cars, obviously,'' he laughs. ''I have very, very low expenditures, but still I manage to spend it all. I guess Hot Pockets are more expensive than I thought.'' He orders another beer and grimaces at his ringing cell phone before putting it back unanswered in his pocket. (It was his agent, reminding Pattinson to read the script for the Sarajevo drama and not to be late to their meeting with a casting director. Which he was.) ''My only real answer, to be completely honest, is I don't want to be completely f---ed after this,'' he says. ''I don't want to be an idiot, and that's always a distinct possibility.''

When Pattinson was on the set of Harry Potter, he wrote obsessively in a journal that he carried around with him everywhere. ''It was my diary, but it became more and more and more about requests to the Fates: 'I will do this if you provide me with this.' It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I had so much faith in this little book. I remember one time I wrote, 'Please don't give me all my luck now. Make it all stretch. I don't mind waiting. Make it stretch for 70 years.' And now with Twilight - it was pretty lucky getting it, and I've been pretty lucky so far with all the attention, and if it's successful, then that will be a lot of luck used up. Maybe I'm just waiting for the point where I realize the luck has ended.'' He smiles ruefully, and rakes a hand through his messy shock of bronze-highlighted hair that the studio has forbidden him to cut. It's Edward's trademark, and he's stuck with it now.

Additional reporting by Nicole Sperling.

Jean Simmons

RubyDreams — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:27:07 -0700

Jean Merilyn Simmons, OBE (born 31 January 1929) is an Oscar-nominated English actress. Simmons was named an Officer in the Order of the British Empire in 2003.Born in Crouch Hill, London, England, to Charles Simmons (gymnast) and his wife Winifred nee Loveland - Jean Simmons began acting at the age of 14.In 1950 Britain lost their young star to America - and Rank sold her to Howard Hughes who then owned RKO studios.In 1950, she married the English actor Stewart Granger, with whom she appeared in several films, successfully making the transition to Hollywood. She made four films for Howard Hughes, including Angel Face directed by Otto Preminger. In 1953 she made The Actress, starring alongside Spencer Tracy - a film that is one of her personal favourites. Among her best-known leading roles are The Robe (1953) The Egyptian (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), The Big Country (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960) (directed by her second husband, Richard Brooks), Spartacus (1960), and The Happy Ending, again directed by Brooks and for which she received her second Oscar nomination.By the 1970s, Simmons turned her focus to stage and television acting. She toured the United States in the well-reviewed A Little Night Music, then took the show to London, and thus originated the role of Desirée Armfeldt on the West End[4] . Doing the show for three years, she said she never tired of Stephen Sondheim's music; ' No matter how tired or 'off ' you felt, the music would just pick you up.' For her appearance in the mini-series The Thorn Birds, she won an Emmy Award. In 1985 and 1986 she appeared in North & South. In 1988 she starred in The Dawning with Anthony Hopkins and Hugh Grant and in 1989 she again starred in a miniseries, this time a version of Great Expectations, in which she played the role of Miss Havisham, Estella's adoptive mother. Simmons made a late career appearance in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead" as a witch-hunt inspiring investigator named Admiral Nora Satie.She was married twice: in 1950 to Stewart Granger, divorcing in 1960, and in 1960 to director Richard Brooks, divorcing in 1977. Both men were significantly older than Simmons but she has denied she was looking for a father figure. Her father had died when she was just fourteen but she's said: "They were really nothing like my father at all. My father was a gentle, soft-spoken man. My husbands were much noisier and much more opinionated ... it's really nothing to do with age ... it's to do with what's there - the twinkle and sense of humour." [5] And in a 1984 interview, given in Copenhagen at the time she was shooting the film Yellow Pages, she had elaborated slightly on her marriages. "It may be simplistic, but you could sum up my two marriages by saying that, when I wanted to be a wife, Jimmy (Stewart Granger) would say:'I just want you to be pretty.' And when I wanted to cook, Richard would say: ' Forget the cooking. You've been trained to act - so act!' Most people thought I was helpless - a clinger and a butterfly - during my first marriage. It was Richard Brooks who saw what was wrong and tried to make me stand on my own two feet. I'd whine :'I'm afraid.' And he'd say: 'Never be afraid to fail. Every time you get up in the morning, you are ahead." She has two daughters, Tracy Granger (born 1956) and Kate Brooks, one by each marriage. Simmons moved to the East Coast in the late 1970's, briefly renting a home in the Litchfield County town of New Milford, Connecticut. Simmons sought treatment for alcohol addiction in 1986 and currently lives in Santa Monica, California.
Sports Day (1944)
Give us the Moon (1944)
Mr. Emmanuel (1944)
Kiss the Bride Goodbye (1945)
Meet Sexton Blake (1945)
The Way to the Stars (1945)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
Great Expectations (1946)
The Woman in the Hall (1947)
Uncle Silas (1947)
Black Narcissus (1947)
Hungry Hill (1947)
Hamlet (1948)
The Blue Lagoon (1949)
Adam and Evelyne (1949)
So Long at the Fair (1950)
Cage of Gold (1950)
Trio (1950)
The Clouded Yellow (1951)
Angel Face (1952)
Androcles and the Lion (1952)
Young Bess (1953)
Affair with a Stranger (1953)
The Robe (1953)
The Actress (1953)
She Couldn't Say No (1954) (AKA Beautiful but Dangerous )
Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
The Egyptian (1954)
A Bullet Is Waiting (1954)
Désirée (1954)
Footsteps in the Fog (1955)
Guys and Dolls (1955)
Hilda Crane (1956)

The Big Country (1958)
Home Before Dark (1958)
This Earth Is Mine (1959)
Elmer Gantry (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
The Grass Is Greener (1960)
All the Way Home (1963)
Life at the Top (1965)
Mister Buddwing (1966)
Divorce American Style (1967)
Rough Night in Jericho (film) (1967)
Heidi (1968)
The Happy Ending (1969)
Say Hello to Yesterday (1971)
Mr. Sycamore (1975)
The Dain Curse (TV) (1978)
Dominique (1978)
A Small Killing (TV) (1981)
The Thorn Birds (TV) (1983)
December Flower (TV) (1984)
Midas Valley (TV) (1985)
Yellow Pages (1985)
North and South (1985)
North and South Book II (1986)
The Dawning (1988)
Great Expectations (1989)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991)
Dark Shadows (1991)
They Do It with Mirrors (1991)
How to Make an American Quilt (1995)
Daisies in December (TV) (1995)
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) (voice)
Jean Simmons: Rose of England (2004) (documentary)
Howl's Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro) (2004) (voice)
Through the Moebius Strip (2005)
Shadows in the Sun (2008)

On Obama from across the pond

Grandpa — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:14:14 -0800

Barack Obama 'too tired' to give proper welcome to Gordon Brown

Barack Obama's offhand approach to Gordon Brown's Washington visit last week came about because the president was facing exhaustion over America's economic crisis and is unable to focus on foreign affairs, the Sunday Telegraph has been told.

By Tim Shipman in Washington (U.K. Telegraph)
Last Updated: 9:58PM GMT 07 Mar 2009

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.
British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.
But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.
Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.
A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".
A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. "I think it's right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn't quite understand the British concerns and didn't get what that was all about."
The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.
"That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they're finding it a hard thing to do everything."
British diplomats insist the visit was a success, with officials getting the chance to develop closer links with Mr Obama's aides. They point out that the president has agreed to meet the prime minister for further one-to-one talks in London later this month, ahead of the G20 summit on April 2.
But they concede that the mood music of the event was at times strained. Mr Brown handed over carefully selected gifts, including a pen holder made from the wood of a warship that helped stamp out the slave trade - a sister ship of the vessel from which timbers were taken to build Mr Obama's Oval Office desk. Mr Obama's gift in return, a collection of Hollywood film DVDs that could have been bought from any high street store, looked like the kind of thing the White House might hand out to the visiting head of a minor African state.
Mr Obama rang Mr Brown as he flew home, in what many suspected was an attempt to make amends.
The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.
The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." The apparent lack of attention to detail by the Obama administration is indicative of what many believe to be Mr Obama's determination to do too much too quickly.
In addition to passing the largest stimulus package and the largest budget in US history, Mr Obama is battling a plummeting stock market, the possible bankruptcy of General Motors, and rising unemployment. He has also begun historic efforts to achieve universal healthcare, overhaul education and begin a green energy revolution all in his first 50 days in office.
The Sunday Telegraph understands that one of Mr Obama's most prominent African American backers, whose endorsement he spent two years cultivating, has told friends that he detects a weakness in Mr Obama's character.
"The one real serious flaw I see in Barack Obama is that he thinks he can manage all this," the well-known figure told a Washington official, who spoke to this newspaper. "He's underestimating the flood of things that will hit his desk." A Democratic strategist, who is friends with several senior White House aides, revealed that the president has regularly appeared worn out and drawn during evening work sessions with senior staff in the West Wing and has been forced to make decisions more quickly than he is comfortable.
He said that on several occasions the president has had to hurry back from eating dinner with his family in the residence and then tucking his daughters in to bed, to conduct urgent government business. Matters are not helped by the pledge to give up smoking.
"People say he looks tired more often than they're used to," the strategist said. "He's still calm, but there have been flashes of irritation when he thinks he's being pushed to make a decision sooner than he wants to make it. He looks like he needs a cigarette."
Mr Obama was teased by the New York Times on Thursday in a front page story which claimed to have detected a greater prevalence of grey hairs since he entered the White House.
The Democratic strategist stressed that Mr Obama's plight was nothing new. "He knew it was going to be tough; he said as much throughout the campaign. But there's a difference between knowing it is going to be tough and facing the sheer relentless pressure of it all."