Thursday, December 18, 2025
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The Emmys Are More or Less Over: HBO Donates the Money it Spends on Lavish Annual Party to LA COVID Charity

The Emmy Awards will be presented, but not in the usual way. For one thing, there will be no lavish glamorous HBO after party at the Pacific Design Center.

Today HBO donated the money they would have spent to the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles Emergency COVID-19 Crisis Fund.

“On behalf of Bob Greenblatt and myself, we are proud to make this contribution from HBO instead of using it for our traditional Emmy party and FYC events,” said Casey Bloys, president, HBO Programming. “I am tremendously proud of all of our shows in Emmy® contention this year, and I am hopeful they will receive the recognition I believe is richly deserved for all of our talented collaborators, in front of and behind the camera. We look forward to being able to get back to the work we love.”

Per HBO, “The Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles Emergency COVID-19 Crisis Fund is providing essential support to emergent, critical needs identified with the City as it responds to the pandemic, including support for families and small businesses, relief for healthcare workers, critical healthcare equipment, victims of domestic violence, and services for the city’s homeless population.

The HBO Emmys after party is one of the great annual events. Everyone goes there when the show is over. Last year, HBOscored big time with a record number of nominations and wins. I was looking forward to “Succession” and “Barry” and several other HBO shows doing very well this year. Alas, they will, but we’ll have to Zoom into the party.

2021 can’t come fast enough!

Two Arrests in One Day: William Sadleir, A Movie Producer You Never Heard of, Is in a Lot of Trouble with the Law

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You’ve never heard of William Sadleir (whose name might be pronounced “Sad liar.”) His movie company, Aviron, made bad movies with stars. They were D movies but the stars like Anne Hathaway, Matthew McConaughey, and so on didn’t mind the payday and hoped you’d not notice these releases.

In January, Aviron started laying off a lot of people.  Sadlier was ousted from the company.

Today, Sadleir was arrested in Los Angeles on charges that he filed bank loan applications fraudulently seeking more than $1.7 million dollars in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration under the CARES Act, according to the Department of Justice. He took money from the government that was supposed to be for Aviron and paid off personal debts.

But Sadleir’s legal problems are bi-coastal. The US District Attorney in New York is charging him with engaging in multiple fraudulent schemes relating to investments made by a New York-based investment fund. The SEC alleges BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust, a registered closed-end management investment company, invested approximately $75 million in Aviron. They say Sadleir used $14 million of the money, again, to pay his expenses.

Whoops!  Sadleir was charged in the Complaint with two counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.  The wire fraud charges each carry a maximum prison term of 20 years.  The aggravated identify theft charge carries a mandatory sentence of two years in prison.

United States Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said:  “As alleged, William Sadleir orchestrated a massive fraud, embezzling approximately $14 million of investor funds from his film company to pay for a Beverly Hills estate, among other fraudulent acts.  Thanks to the dedicated work of our law enforcement partners at the FBI, Sadleir will be held accountable for his behind-the-scenes misdeeds.”

FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said:  “William Sadleir, the chairman and CEO of Aviron Pictures, is charged today for his alleged role in a nearly $30 million fraud scheme.  He allegedly even went so far as to pose as a female employee of the sham New-York based company he created to further his illegal activity.  Today’s arrest serves as a reminder of the FBI’s dedication to holding people accountable for egregious financial crimes of this nature.”

Aviron’s movies were mostly awful except for one good one, Matthew Heinemann’s “A Private War,” starring Rosamund Pike and Jamie Dornan. The best of the Aviron bunch, it made just $3.8 million.

Taylor Swift’s Sunday ABC Concert Moved 20,000 Copies of Her “Lover” Album, Most of them from Streaming

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I told you on Monday that Taylor Swift’s “City of Lover” special on ABC Sunday night was a so-so ratings getter.

The show scored just 3.5 million viewers, most in the older demos.

Now the figures are in for record sales this week. Instigated by the special, the “Lover” album sold 20,000 copies this week. Most of those were from streaming. Hard sales came to 4,400.

That’s also kind of meh. Of course, most Swift fans probably own “Lover” already or have streamed it previously. We could probably surmise these customers were the hold outs.

Swift is going to have to come up with something for the second half of 2020 if she’s going to stay in the game with Katy Perry. Adele, Lady Gaga, and Ariana Grande, her peers in the female pop game. All the others are busy releasing new material or losing lots of weight. The ball is in Taylor’s court.

 

Tony Bennett Celebrates the 70th Anniversary– Yes, 70th– of His First Hit Single for Columbia Records, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”

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The amazing Tony Bennett today celebrates the 70th anniversary of his first hit single for Columbia Records, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Tony, who will turn 94 on August 3rd, has been with Columbia nearly every day of those 70 years. (Will Dominic Fike be able to say that one day?)

Here’s a video recap of Tony’s extraordinary career:

Tony’s first really big hit was 65 years ago, when “Stranger in Paradise” went to number 1 in 1955:

(Listen) Lady Gaga Features Ariana Grande on a Hit Duet from Her Forthcoming “Chromatica” Album

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Lady Gaga’s coming with a new album, “Chromatica,” next Friday. Tonight she releases the second single, “Rain on Me,” a duet with Ariana Grande.

These two have pretty much the best voices of their generations. A duet seemed inevitable. Ariana is just coming off a duet with Justin Bieber, “Stuck with You,” but “Rain on Me” at least was recorded in the same studio, not over iPhones or whatnot.

Both women have their share of diva like disasters. Gaga has run through boyfriends and fiancees. She’s also dealing with serious incidents in her past including rape. Ariana broke up with Pete Davidson after her previous boyfriend, Mac Miller, died. She also had to go through having a concert in Manchester, England end with a bombing that killed 22 people.

Gaga told Apple Beats1 radio host Zane Lowe: “[Rain On Me] is also a metaphor for tears and for the amount of alcohol I was taking to numb myself. I’d rather be dry but at least I’m alive, rain on me.”

Anyway, here’s the song:

 

 

Netflix Movie Studio PR in Chaos as Chief Julie Fontaine Exits Her Post And Everything is Up in the Air

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Netflix’s PR office has been a mess for a long time. Tonight comes news that Julie Fontaine, formerly of Lions Gate, is out as publicity chief in Los Angeles.

Only a few weeks ago, Nancy Bannister, who everyone loved and depended on, formerly of Paramount, left the New York office.

What’s going on? Too many movies, too many cooks in the kitchen, no clear delineations. In Los Angeles, who remains is Lisa Taback, head of awards, whose surgically precise campaigns yielded Netflix dozens of nominations but just two Oscars last season, for Laura Dern, as Best Supporting Actress, and the documentary, “American Factory.” Taback’s budget was said to be north of $100 million.

Netflix really had a hot hand last season, with Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story,” Fernando Mereilles’s “Two Popes,” the documentary “American Factory,” and the animated film, “Klaus.”

Fontaine’s exit comes just a couple of weeks before Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” is going to hit the platform. It might have had a small theatrical release, but with the pandemic, that’s not happening. Still, Spike’s movie will be eligible for Oscars.

Whoever takes over the PR department, Netflix has some advantage this year since they can release movies without putting them in theaters and still be eligible. Thanks to the pandemic they also avoided their annual fight with the Cannes Film Festival.  Will this make the season more pleasant? I certainly hope so since last year was something no one wants to go through again.

And the question is, can anyone in the entertainment press and the “Oscar business” that has developed so grindingly over the last few years, can anyone endure the mishegos of past seasons post-pandemic? (Uh, not me, that ship has sailed.)

So hang on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

 

 

Cindy Bitterman Did it Her Way: One Time Girlfriend and Galpal to Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Was 89

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EXCLUSIVE Cindy Lou Bayes (Sigman) grew up in Beverly Hills, CA. While still a teenager, she was named Miss Stardust of 1948. The contest had over 28,000 entries, and she was chosen by a distinguished panel of judges that included “Star Dust” songwriter Hoagy Carmichael. She was offered movie contracts by Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn and others, according to her son, Michael, now 70. She died this week after a decade of fighting Alzheimer’s. She was 89.

Cindy’s uncle was Mack Miller, one of Frank Sinatra’s publicists, which may be how she met him. But by the late ’40s Cindy, who modeled, became fast friends with Sinatra and in time with Sammy Davis Jr., comedian Jack Carter, Mel Torme, Judy Garland and a host of celebrities. Before there was a Rat Pack, there was Cindy, dating the guys, partying with them, hanging with them. For a moment in 1950, she gave up the high life, married Leonard Bitterman, and had a baby. But the pull of Hollywood — and Sinatra — was too much for her. In short order she got a divorce, parked young Michael with her parents in Merrick, Long Island, and went back to the nightlife.

Author Wil Haygood puts Cindy with Sammy Davis Jr. the night he lost his eye in a 1954 car accident. Haygood writes in his Davis biography that it was Cindy who made Sinatra take Sammy to Palm Springs to recuperate. Kitty Kelley, one of Sinatra’s erstwhile biographers, mentions Cindy in her book, “His Way.” Sinatra is hearing Mel Torme sing in December 1954 at the Crescendo in Hollywood with a pregnant Judy Garland as a guest plus Cindy and a Texas oilman.

One reason Sinatra liked Cindy: “She reminded him of Ava Gardner,” Michael says. But by 1956, Cindy married Jack Sobel, who was, among other things, Lenny Bruce’s manager. He was also head of head of General Artists Corp, rival agency then to William Morris. Still, she was in regular contact with Frank and Sammy. Before she married Sobel, she even dated comedian Jack Carter. Cindy was never far from the center of the action in the entertainment world. The Sobel marriage didn’t last more than couple of years. When it was over, she returned to the father of her son, Mr. Bitterman. She and Bitterman had one more child, a girl, now deceased. By the early 1960s the door to Cindy’s showbiz life was closed for good. .

Or so it seemed. Michael Bitterman says he only learned later, around 15 years ago before his mother’s mind was affected by the Alzheimers, that she’d continued seeing Sinatra at least through the 1970s. “Barbara Marx, Sinatra’s wife, hated her,” Michael tells me. (Sinatra married Marx in 1976.) That didn’t stop Sinatra from giving Cindy presents. “I have a locket he gave my mother that’s inscribed “Come chase away the lonelies with me.” In the early days, Sinatra had a Bosendorfer grand piano delivered to Cindy’s parents house as a gift (cost was upwards of $100,000). “My grandfather made her send it back,” Michael says. “He said, We’re not taking gifts from that hooligan.” Michael adds: “My grandmother loved him.”

Sinatra, Cindy told her son, wanted to marry her. Why didn’t she? I asked. He was famously unmarried from the time Ava Gardner left him in 1957 until Sinatra hooked up with Mia Farrow in 1966. (In the intervening 9 years, he was engaged to Lauren Bacall and to Juliet Prowse.) “She said he was a manic depressive, and you can’t live with a manic depressive.” Cindy had a lot of violent scenes with Sinatra, he said, both public and private. They always ended with him sending her massive amounts of flowers.

A real friendship — a platonic one– Cindy had seemed to have been with Sammy Davis, Jr. Michael wrote in her obit, “She played the role of blunt-talking sister to Sammy. She took him around to Atlantic City in the early 50s and got the DJs to play his records.” Michael recalls, “She took me to see Sammy in “Mr. Wonderful” on Broadway and I met him backstage.” Michael was 6 and little idea who any of his mom’s were, and why they were important.

It’s too bad Cindy Bitterman wasn’t more forthcoming before became ill. She reminds me a little of the writer Joyce Johnson, who wrote about her relationships with Jack Kerouac and other beat poets in her great memoir, “Minor Characters.” Cindy Bitterman was a great minor character, a witness to history. And she didn’t completely give up showbiz. In 1994, her son says, Cindy became a trusted friend and mentor of the acclaimed jazz singer Mark Murphy; she co-produced several of his recording projects and performances.

Watch the New Trailer for Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” The Movie That Will Bring Everyone Back to the Theaters

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Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” is coming to theaters July 17th, and people are going to show up with masks, without them, and who cares. Warner Bros. is counting on that from the looks of this trailer. John David Washington and Robert Pattinson star along with Elizabeth Debicki and Michael Freakin’ Caine. The trailer looks great. Like all non-Batman Nolan movies, it’s all about the reversal of time. Watch “Memento” while you’re waiting, just to feel the rhythm. I can’t wait, personally. PS Here’s a clue: Tenet is a palindrome. The whole movie is a palindrome.

Famed Hollywood PR Firm Baker, Winokur, Ryder Succumbs to the Economy, Consolidation, and Generational Change

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Baker, Winokur, Ryder was one of my favorite PR firms in the 90s and 00s. Nanci Ryder was simply the best there was in the biz. Larry Winokur was a pleasure to deal with. (I didn’t really know Paul Baker.) But as of today, the agency, founded in 1987, is gone.

They succumbed to the changing generations, the economy, and consolidation. All these PR agencies that handle movie, TV, and Broadway talent live on monthly or annual fees from studios and stars. But if no one’s making any entertainment, and everyone is laying low, no one want to pay. It’s as simple as that.

Leslie Sloane, who has her own firm now, was a BWR star. We always had a good time getting ourselves into trouble on a variety of issues. But she’s moved on. Cindy Guagenti is still with BWR, wherever she goes people will be lucky to have her. She steered Brad Pitt’s career through thick and thin. Nicole Perna and Melissa Raubvogel have made their Imprint with a new agency that includes Dominique Appel, Brett Ruttenberg, Jeffrey Chasen and Ashley Mokma.

Nanci Ryder has been battling ALS for some time now. She’s retired. She’s so loved that her star clients are looking after her. You can read all about it here. The end of BWR is probably hard for her in the abstract, but her health is more important. I hope she knows how many fans she has on the East Coast.

So farewell, BWR. You had a great run!

 

Daytime Emmy Award Nominations Are Here: Valerie Bertinelli, Alex Trebek, Susan Seaforth Hayes Among Most Buzzed About

The Daytime Emmy Award nomination were announced today, the day after CBS said they’d carry a virtual version of the Emmys on June 26th. What a coincidence. Among the most buzzed about nominees: Alex Trebek, who has to win because he’s made it this far with grace and elegance; Valerie Bertinelli, because she’s a breath of fresh air in those stale kitchens; and Susan Seaforth Hayes, who has waited 50 years in soap operas and was better than ever this season on that zany “Days of Our Lives.” Other should-wins in bold face.

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
The Bold and the Beautiful
Days of Our Lives
General Hospital
The Young and the Restless

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Finola Hughes (Anna, GH)
Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke, B&B)
Heather Tom (Katie, B&B)
Maura West (Ava, GH)
Arianne Zucker (Nicole, Days)

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Steve Burton (Jason, GH)
Thorsten Kaye (Ridge, B&B)
Jon Lindstrom (Ryan/Kevin, GH)
Thaao Penghlis (Tony, Days)
Jason Thompson (Billy, Y&R)

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Tamara Braun (Kim, GH)
Rebecca Budig (Hayden, GH)
Susan Seaforth Hayes (Julie, Days)
Christel Khalil (Lily, Y&R)
Annika Noelle (Hope, B&B)

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Mark Grossman (Adam, Y&R)
Bryton James (Devon, Y&R)
Wally Kurth (Justin, Days)
Chandler Massey (Will, Days)
James Patrick Stuart (Valentin, GH)
Paul Telfer (Xander, Days)

OUTSTANDING YOUNGER ACTOR OR ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Sasha Calle (Lola, Y&R)
Olivia Rose Keegan (Claire, Days)
Katelyn MacMullen (Willow, GH)
Eden McCoy (Josslyn, GH)
Thia Megia (Haley, Days)

OUTSTANDING GUEST PERFORMER IN A DRAMA SERIES
Elissa Kapneck (Sasha, Y&R)
Michael Knight (Martin, GH)
Eva LaRue (Celeste, Y&R)
Jeffrey Vincent Parise (Simon, Y&R)
Chrishell Stause (Jordan, Days)

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES WRITING TEAM
B&B
Days
GH
Y&R

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES DIRECTING TEAM
B&B
Days
GH
Y&R

OUTSTANDING DIGITAL DAYTIME DRAMA
After Forever
The Bay The Series
DARK/WEB
Eastsiders
Studio City

OUTSTANDING GAME SHOW HOST
Wayne Brady, Let’s Make a Deal
Steve Harvey, Family Feud
Alfonso Ribeiro, Catch 21
Pat Sajak, Wheel of Fortune
Alex Trebek, Jeopardy!

OUTSTANDING GAME SHOW
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
Double Dare
Family Feud
Jeopardy!
The Price Is Right

OUTSTANDING CULINARY HOST
Valerie Bertinelli, Valerie’s Home Cooking
Frankie Celenza, Struggle Meals
Giada De Laurentiis, Giada Entertains
Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa: Cook Like a Pro
Rachael Ray, 30 Minute Meals

OUTSTANDING CULINARY PROGRAM
Barefoot Contessa: Cook Like a Pro
Giada Entertains
Milk Street
30 Minute Meals
Valerie’s Home Cooking

OUTSTANDING LEGAL/COURTROOM PROGRAM
Hot Bench
Judge Judy
Judge Mathis
Lauren Lake’s Paternity Court
The People’s Court

OUTSTANDING MORNING SHOW
CBS Sunday Morning
CBS This Morning
Good Morning America
Sunday Today With Willie Geist
Today

OUTSTANDING ENTERTAINMENT NEWS PROGRAM
Access Hollywood
E! News
ET
Extra
Inside Edition

OUTSTANDING INFORMATIVE TALK SHOW HOST(S)
Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Meghan McCain, Abby Huntsman & Ana Navarro, The View
Tamron Hall, Tamron Hall
Larry King, Larry King Now
Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager, Today With Hoda & Jenna
Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris, Red Table Talk

OUTSTANDING INFORMATIVE TALK SHOW
The 3rd Hour of Today
Rachael Ray
Red Table Talk
Today With Hoda & Jenna
The View

OUTSTANDING ENTERTAINMENT TALK SHOW HOST(S)
Michael Strahan, Sara Haines and Keke Palmer, GMA3 Strahan, Sara & Keke
Kelly Clarkson, The Kelly Clarkson Show
Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest, Live With Kelly and Ryan
Maury Povich, Maury
Sara Gilbert, Sharon Osbourne, Sheryl Underwood, Eve, Carrie Ann Inaba and Marie Osmond, The Talk

OUTSTANDING ENTERTAINMENT TALK SHOW
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
GMA3 Strahan, Sara & Keke
The Kelly Clarkson Show
Live With Kelly and Ryan
The Talk