Thursday, December 18, 2025
Donate
Home Blog Page 1006

Veteran Actor Mark Blum, 69, Dies from Coronavirus, Had Long List of Credits in Movies, Theater, TV

Roger Friedman
-
0
Veteran Actor Mark Blum, 69, Dies from Coronavirus, Had Long List of Credits in Movies, Theater, TV

Veteran actor Mark Blum has died just short of his 70th birthday from complications due to coronavirus. He was 69 and would have turned 70 in May.

Blum had a long, stellar resume in movies, theater, and TV. More recently he was a regular on “Mozart in the Jungle.” He was just seen in “Succession,” “The Good Fight,” and “Love is Blind.” According to the imdb he appears in a new episode of “Billions.”

Early in his 35 year career, Blum appeared in “Crocodile Dundee” and many other films. He also was featured in nine Broadway productions including Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man.” Survivors include his wife, veteran TV actress Janet Zarish. Many condolences. He will be sorely missed. I hope SAG honors all the fine journeyman actors like Mark at their ceremony next January. They’re what makes show business possible.

Universal Problem: Studio Chief Jeff Shell Says He Has Coronavirus, Joining Music CEO Lucian Grainge

Roger Friedman
-
0
Universal Problem: Studio Chief Jeff Shell Says He Has Coronavirus, Joining Music CEO Lucian Grainge

It’s not a happy scene at Universal Pictures or Universal Music Group.

Just revealed this morning: Universal Pictures chief Jeff Shell says he has contracted corona virus. He’s quarantined at home. The news came in a memo to the company, buried in the third paragraph according to NBC News’s Claire Atkinson (who apparently got the memo since the two companies are one).

Previously, UMG’s Sir Lucian Grainge was diagnosed with corona virus. He’s been in UCLA Medical Center for 10 days, battling the illness with his usual aplomb. After some tough says he’s said to be getting better.

Sir Lucian had thrown a party for himself recently at which many top execs including Apple’s Eddy Cue and Tim Cook attended. It’s unclear if Shell was there, too. Let’s hope everyone gets well as soon as possible!

The good news is that Shell says he’s making a lot of NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC programming free online for the time being.

Here’s the memo:

It’s hard to believe my last note to you was just two weeks ago. I know many of you share the feeling that lately each day feels like a week! We will all get through this difficult time together, but as we start to settle into our new normal, I find it helpful to think about things in two buckets: the short term, and what comes after.

In the short term, the goals are simple. Take care of each other and take care of our viewers. Taking care of each other means working from home. Many of you, like me, are working from home while trying to balance family commitments and other challenges, and I know this isn’t easy. But for those of you who can do your jobs from home, it is absolutely critical that you do so.

This will be the case for some time. While I can’t give you an end date, I can commit that we will give everyone ample warning before we ask you to return to the office. The other reason to work from home is that in the event you contract the virus, it will limit the number of your colleagues you inadvertently expose.

As some of you now know, I myself am in this category. I recently have been feeling under the weather and just learned that I have tested positive for Covid-19. Although the virus has been tough to cope with, I have managed to work remotely in LA and am improving every day. Unfortunately, one of our colleagues was not able to recover from the virus. Last week we learned Larry Edgeworth, a beloved audio technician at NBC News, passed away, and our hearts go out to his family, friends and co-workers.

Given the vital public service role of NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo and our local stations, many of our colleagues need to go into the office so we can tell the world what is going on. Their courage has been an inspiration and has made us all proud to work at this company. I want to thank this group for their dedication and commitment. I also want to commend our Operations and Technology group, which has seamlessly kept us on the air and enabled us to work remotely under challenging circumstances.

From morning to late night, our talent and news anchors have also been doing their part to inform and entertain from their homes. From Savannah reporting from her basement and Al doing the weather from his living room to Jimmy performing his monologue on his front steps and Seth hosting his new segment, A Closer Look, from home to Maria Celeste hosting Al Rojo Vivo from her dining room, and many CNBC, local stations and E! News correspondents reporting from home as well – we continue to deliver the best in live news and entertainment, despite the circumstances.

Additionally, to disseminate our news as widely as possible, we have made MSNBC and CNBC available to all video customers, regardless of their subscription package. Plus, our streaming service NBC News Now has expanded its coverage and our local stations are also streaming their newscasts. Obviously, most of our business is not operating normally. Our theme parks are temporarily closed. Our sports productions are paused, and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics has been postponed.

And most of our film and TV production around the world has been suspended. We are working to resume these activities as soon as possible, but of course not until it is safe to do so. In the meantime, we recognize that a sudden halt to production creates a significant financial hardship for many. To that end, we have committed over $150 million across our film, television and parks businesses to help our employees and other workers, and to at least partially bridge the period before normal operations can restart.

Despite these production challenges, the company has done a great job finding innovative ways to deliver content to our audiences at a time when people are at home and are looking for entertainment more than ever. On the film side, we announced our movies will be available in the home on the same day as their global theatrical releases. Titles including The Hunt, The Invisible Man and Emma are now available to rent on most popular on-demand services worldwide. Our tentpole animated film from DreamWorks Animation, Trolls World Tour, will be available April 10th and I hope many of you will have time to enjoy it at home with your families.

So here is the good news…while the short term is challenging, what comes after looks incredibly bright. Our parent company Comcast is strong and is doing a great job keeping a large part of this country connected. And when we think ahead to 2021, we have a lot to look forward to. The virus will pass, our world will return to normal, and when it does, we will be poised to have one of the busiest and most exciting years in our company’s history.

2021 will bring the opening of a new theme park in Beijing, followed by the Tokyo Olympics (followed in early 2022 by another Olympics, a Super Bowl and the World Cup!). We will have the return of our tentpole films like F9 and Minions: The Rise Of Gru, and an avalanche of new TV shows. And all of this will serve to supercharge our critically important Peacock streaming service, which will launch as planned this year while people are home, and then use promotion like the world has never seen in 2021 to grow.

The present may be challenging, but it is impossible not to feel optimistic about the future. In the meantime, please continue to take care of yourselves. I recognize how challenging these times are for everyone – both professionally and personally – and appreciate all that you do for this company.

Sincerely, Jeff Shell, Chief Executive Officer

 

Woody Allen Recalls the Great Restaurant, Elaine’s, Where “I ate dinner with friends every night for ten years…those times were my nicest memories”

Roger Friedman
-
0
Woody Allen Recalls the Great Restaurant, Elaine’s, Where “I ate dinner with friends every night for ten years…those times were my nicest memories”

Elaine’s and Woody Allen resonate in film history. The great clubhouse restaurant started by Elaine Kaufman in 1963 lasted just past her December 2010 death until May 2011. Woody Allen cemented his place there, and turned Elaine’s into a New York landmark forever in his 1979 movie “Manhattan.” Woody has dinner there with Mariel Hemingway, Michael Murphy, and Anne Byrne (then married in real life to Dustin Hoffman). For 16 years, Elaine’s had already been a tough reservation, with a room full of A list names on a nightly basis. After that, forget it.

Woody says in his memoir, “Apropos of Nothing,” that he ate there every night for 10 years. Some of that time was with Mia Farrow, the only companion of Woody’s she didn’t like. Woody and Elaine would forever be linked because of the movies. They also had a personal friendship; she adored him. For the restaurant’s 45th anniversary in 2008, I called Woody and asked him to come to a party the regulars had put together. His assistant took the information dutifully.

Sure enough, when the doors opened a black town car pulled up with Woody, Soon Yi, and their daughter Bechet. (She might have been 7 or 8.) They stayed quite a long time, and Woody talked to everyone in the packed room. Elaine beamed. We couldn’t know then that the end was near. But what a beautiful moment.

A couple of things: Woody mentions the prices at Elaine’s. I burst out laughing when I read this. My check was always the same no matter what I ate. Everyone was assigned a number that someone — Elaine, or the waiters– thought you could afford. You can have a salad or a steak and it was always the same. Also, the food, which was never great but nearly as bad as described by Woody. He got a lot of punch lines off that menu. But he ate there a lot. As Elaine would say, he didn’t look like he was suffering.

On meeting famous people at Elaine’s:
The fare there was a scandal but it was the most exciting piece of real estate
in the city, brimming with high-profile people every night
and all night long. Over the years I got friendly with Elaine
and, at one stretch, ate dinner there with friends every night
for ten years. Any night there, one might see Fellini, the
mayor, a Kennedy, Mailer, Tennessee Williams, Antonioni,
Carol Channing, Michael Caine, Mary McCarthy, George
Steinbrenner, Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney, Robert
Altman, Nora Ephron, just to name a tiny few. I got to
meet Simone de Beauvoir there and Gore Vidal and Roman
Polanski. You get the idea.

More on the food: It wasn’t the food, it was the atmosphere. A clean, well lighted
place. Well, a well-lighted place. And the prices were
like improvisational theater. You’d have the spaghetti and
clams Monday night and they’d be twenty-five bucks. Same
dish Tuesday could be thirty or twenty. If you were a New
Yorker in the arts or journalism or politics or a sports figure,
and you had no place to go at 1 a.m., you could go to
Elaine’s and it was six deep at the bar and you’d meet many
faces you knew and some new ones you were glad to finally
say hello to. Keaton and I, along with Jean Doumanian
or Tony Roberts and over time with Michael Murphy and
Jean’s boyfriend and assorted others, would dine there every
night and then Keaton and I would stroll home. In those
years New York was dangerous at night, and strolling home
to see if you’d make it was always exciting. Once in bed
we’d watch a movie on TV.
Those times are among my nicest memories

On meeting Mia at Elaine’s:
On this night it was a party that Mia happened to be
at. We were introduced, made some polite small talk, the
earth didn’t move, and we went our separate ways. I met
her once again years later in passing at Elaine’s. She came
in with Michael Caine, passed my table, we said hello, she
got seated elsewhere, and I lunged back into my tortellini.
Tortellini was one of the only things you could eat there and
that tasted passable if one’s demands for flavor were kept
at a minimum. I often told Elaine that her food would have
been turned down by the lost party on the Donner Pass.

Nancy Pelosi Secures Millions for the Arts Including the NEA, NEH, Smithsonian Institute, But Why the Kennedy Center?

Roger Friedman
-
0
Nancy Pelosi Secures Millions for the Arts Including the NEA, NEH, Smithsonian Institute, But Why the Kennedy Center?

The agreed upon stimulus bill makes sure the arts will continue in this country at a very perilous time. Our hero, Nancy Pelosi, and her team secured millions for the National Endowment of the Arts ($75 million), the Humanities ($75 million), the Smithsonian (only $7.5 million), and, curiously the Kennedy Center ($25 million).

I say curiously because the Kennedy Center is one of the richest organizations around. It’s run by David Rubenstein of the shady Carlyle Group, the same people who basically own the Washington Monument. Deborah Rutter, the CEO of the Kennedy Center, is paid $1.3 million, and the total executive salaries total over $4 million. Is Pelosi’s money going to them? It seems like it.

The NEA and NEH allocations are certainly needed. But it’s curious since as I reported exclusively three weeks ago, Trump was planning a White House ceremony on March 20th to hand out Medals of Arts in both groups. No one ever knew who was getting the awards, and then they were cancelled because of the virus panic.

As for the Kennedy Center, according to their Form 990 for 2018, they finished that year with net assets of $436,141,800. But they also spent $34 million on a construction project on the site. Even with the description below, it’s unclear where this $25 million will go. I hope we do see an exact accounting of it some time soon. A lot stray coins get lost behind Carlyle couch cushions, you know.

Now with this new $25 million, maybe the Kennedy Center Honors can be given to some people who deserve it and have waited a long time including Dick van Dyke, Jane Fonda, R&B singers Sam Moore and Gladys Knight, Liza Minnelli, Denzel Washington, and so on. One thing that should be certain: “West Side Story” has got be the Center’s new “performance arts” choice this December, what with Steven Spielberg’s movie coming out then.

Here’s how the Kennedy Center portion of the bill reads:

“funds provided under this heading in this Act shall be made available to cover oper-13ating expenses required to ensure the continuity of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and its affiliates, including for employee compensation and benefits, grants, contracts, payments for rent or utilities, fees for artists or performers, information technology, and other administrative expenses: Provided further, That no later than October 31, 2020, the Board of Trustees of the Center shall submit a report to the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and Senate that includes a detailed explanation of the distribution of the funds provided herein: Provided further, That such amount is designated by the Congress as being for an emergency requirement pursuant to section 1251(b)(2)(A)(i) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.”

Watch Jennifer Hudson NOW Live Here Celebrating Aretha Franklin’s Birthday and Singing Her Heart Out

Roger Friedman
-
0
Watch Jennifer Hudson NOW Live Here Celebrating Aretha Franklin’s Birthday and Singing Her Heart Out

Tony Awards 2020 Are Postponed Indefinitely from June 7th, Theater Season Is Probably Over for this Year

Roger Friedman
-
0
Tony Awards 2020 Are Postponed Indefinitely from June 7th, Theater Season Is Probably Over for this Year

update: The Outer Critics Circle has also postponed their nominations and awards indefinitely. The season is over.

The 2019-2020 theater season is basically over.

CBS and the Broadway League have cancelled the Tony Awards for June 7th. They will be rescheduled when a better time can be figured out.

Broadway went dark on March 13th and was supposed to return on April 12th or 13th. But that seems unlikely now.

The eligibility period for the Tonys was supposed to end on April 24th. But now that’s moot.

Some shows have already closed before actually opening, like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and “The Hangmen.” But now more will close, or try to open in the fall. The best thing the Tonys could so is have their show the first week of December. For CBS, that would conflict with the Kennedy Center honors. (I may have more on the latter soon.)

The financial hit to the Shuberts, Nederlanders, Jujacymyn Theaters, all of it is calculable– it’s hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s also devastating to the ancillary businesses in marketing, publicity, advertising, not to mention the actors, crews, etc. And then there all the local businesses that depend on Broadway in the theater district.

Rosie O’Donnell did such a good job Sunday night with her fundraiser. Please donate to the Actors Fund, to Equity’s Broadway Cares, and all the related theater charities if you want to see shows come back in the fall.

Coronavirus Cure, or At Least Preventative? Canadian Firm Ondine Having Success with New Treatment at Edmonton Nursing Home

Roger Friedman
-
0
Coronavirus Cure, or At Least Preventative? Canadian Firm Ondine Having Success with New Treatment at Edmonton Nursing Home

EXCLUSIVE

I’m not going to start running a bunch of stories about potential cures for COVID 19, but this seemed like it has some value.

Canadian health care firm Ondine Biomedical is having success with a nasal treatment for MRSA and other pathogens. The laser like treatment for the nose is said to be stopping the spread of disease, and may be useful for preventing if not curing coronavirus.

At a time when a number of different methods are being tested for use on coronavirus/COVID 19, it might not be a bad idea for our own health officials to check out this process, called Steriwave. Yesterday I spoke to Izabella Roth, who runs the Edmonton, Alberta nursing home called Westmount. They’ve been using Steriwave for their staff and finding excellent results.

A story about Ondine and Westmount first appeared on Canada’s Global News site on March 14th. “Have we proven this? No. This is a brand new virus and a brand new problem, but we think that having a really important and effective nasal decolonization tool is going to make a difference, we will have to study what that means and we are going to have to look at what that does for the infection rates,” Ondine Biomedical CEO Carolyn Cross said in the report.

Steriwave was invented more than 10 years ago to reduce surgical infections, and the company says those infections have been reduced by 80 per cent in the last decade.

Cross is no lightweight. She has a strong CV and 25 years’ experience running Canadian corporations.

According to a press release about Steriwave:

“The 6-minute treatment involves swabbing the nose with a blue gel (photosensitizer) followed by illumination with a red light for a few minutes. The protocol – applied by an LPN or RN nursing staff trained by the Ondine team – is intended to
build on infection control strategies (such as handwashing, social distancing, environmental controls) already in place.”
Can any of this be helpful to us now? I’m told there are more headlines coming from Ondine shortly. Click on the blue tab for Vimeo since there are no embed codes yet for Ondine’s videos.

 

MRSAid in Vancouver General Hospital from Ondine Biomedical Inc. on Vimeo.

Happy Birthday, Elton John and Aretha Franklin: Watch Them Perform Elton’s “Border Song” Together

Roger Friedman
-
0
Happy Birthday, Elton John and Aretha Franklin: Watch Them Perform Elton’s “Border Song” Together

 Today would have been Aretha Franklin’s 78th birthday. Her friends and family and fans miss her so much. Aretha and Sir Elton John shared a birthday, so we’re wishing him a Happy 73rd birthday, and hope to see him soon back behind the piano.

In the meantime, here’s a clip of Elton and Aretha singing “Border Song,” which Miss Franklin recorded also solo and a chart hit with years ago.

 

Jackson Browne Says He’s Tested Positive for Corona Virus, Other Stars He Performed with Live Recently Have, Too

Roger Friedman
-
0
Jackson Browne Says He’s Tested Positive for Corona Virus, Other Stars He Performed with Live Recently Have, Too

Doctor, my eyes! Rock star Jackson Browne says he’s tested positive for Corona Virus. He tells Rolling Stone that many of the performers he played with two weeks ago at the Love Rocks show at New York’s Beacon Theater have, too.

Browne played the charity show for Gods Love We Deliver included Bonnie Raitt. Dave Matthews, Cyndi Lauper, Chris and Rich Robinson, Leon Bridges, Warren Haynes, Macy Gray and many others. The show was sponsored by fashion mogul John Varvatos.

Browne says: “Now I wish I hadn’t gone to New York and done this benefit. I think to myself, “How much simpler would it have been had I just called in and said, ‘No, I’m not going to travel on a cross-country flight and spend two days in New York with all these people that are singing all over the country.’

But you know, in the end, Jackson helps so many charities and stands up for so many causes, it’s not likely he would have stepped back.

How’s he occupying himself? “I’m listening to music. I’m watching some shows. I’m spending a lot of time reading all these op-eds. There’s a bunch of medical bulletins and stories in the New York Times. When you called earlier, I was listening to the press conference with Governor Cuomo. It’s all really good, important information.”

Speedy recovery, Jackson!

Terrence McNally, Four Time Tony Winning Playwright, Author of “Master Class,” Has Died at Age 81 from Coronavirus

Roger Friedman
-
0
Terrence McNally, Four Time Tony Winning Playwright, Author of “Master Class,” Has Died at Age 81 from Coronavirus

This is really tragic: Terrence McNally is dead at age 81.

Four time Tony winner, Pulitzer Prize nominee, recipient of a 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tonys. Loved and respected by everyone in theater.

Terry’s Tony’s included “Master Class,” “Ragtime,” “Longtime Companion,” and “Kiss of the Spiderwoman.” But his total credits for great plays and musicals just goes on and on. They include the hilarious recent “It’s Only a Play,” as well “Anastasia,” “Frankie and Johnny,” and “Ragtime.”  He is simply irreplaceable and one of a kind.

McNally died in Sarasota of complications from COVD-19. He was a lung cancer survivor and suffered from COPD. He is survived by his husband Tom Kirdahy.

 

1...1,0051,0061,007...2,323Page 1,006 of 2,323

Hollywood to the Hudson

Company

Trending

Categories

© Showbiz411.com