Miscellaneous Celebrity News

[dagwood]

Alice Ghostley has died. She was Berniece on Designing Women and Esmeralda on Bewitched. R.I.P. Ms. Ghostley

ENTERTAINMENT - Comcast.net

Actress Alice Ghostley Dies at 81
By Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning actress best known on television for playing Esmeralda on "Bewitched" and Bernice on "Designing Women," has died. She was 81.

Ghostley died Friday at her home in Studio City after a long battle with colon cancer and a series of strokes, longtime friend Jim Pinkston said.

Ghostley made her Broadway debut in "Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952." She received critical acclaim for singing "The Boston Beguine," which became her signature song.

Miles Kreuger, president of the Los Angeles-based Institute of the American Musical, said part of Ghostley's charm was that she was not glamorous.

"She was rather plain and had a splendid singing voice, and the combination of the well-trained, splendid singing voice and this kind of dowdy homemaker character was so incongruous and so charming," Kreuger said.

In the 1960s, Ghostley received a Tony nomination for various characterizations in the Broadway comedy "The Beauty Part" and eventually won for best featured actress in "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window."

From 1969 to 1972, she played the good witch and ditzy housekeeper Esmeralda on TV's "Bewitched." She played Bernice Clifton on "Designing Women" from 1987 to 1993, for which she earned an Emmy nomination in 1992.

Ghostley's film credits include "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Graduate," "Gator" and "Grease."

She was born on Aug. 14, 1926, in Eve, Mo., where her father worked as a telegraph operator. She grew up in Henryetta, Okla.

After graduating from high school, Ghostley attended the University of Oklahoma but dropped out and moved to New York with her sister to pursue theater.

"The best job I had then was as a theater usher," she said in a 1990 Boston Globe interview. "I saw the plays for free. What I saw before me was a visualization of what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be."

She was well aware of the types of roles she should pursue.

"I knew I didn't look like an ingenue," she told The Globe. "My nose was too long. I had crooked teeth. I wasn't blond. I knew I looked like a character actress.

"But I also knew I'd find a way," she added.

Ghostley, whose actor husband, Felice Orlandi, died in 2003, is survived by her sister, Gladys.

[Google]

 

[Critical]

I'll never forget the Designing Women episode where Bernice wore the tree skirt. She was a terrific comedic actress. She'll be missed.

[barefootdyke]

everytime i saw her on designing women, i couldn't help but remember her as esmerelda ... loved bewitched as i was growing up

[femme fatale]

Dane Cook is starring in a new movie. Again. Not letting the fact that he’s not the slightest bit funny get in the way of his career as a comedian, Cook moved on to stinking up multiplexes across the nation with “Employee of the Month” and “Mr. Brooks,” and now he’s back with “Good Luck Chuck” and, before year’s end, “Dan in Real Life.” If you’ve ever watched Cook do stand-up or host “Saturday Night Live,” it’s apparent that his only real talent is in accruing MySpace friends and stating the obvious while making goofy faces.

And yet, somehow, he’s a movie star. But it shouldn’t really be all that surprising. The history of show business is littered with people who achieve the heights of fame without having any real talent whatsoever. (As you read this, Fergie’s album has jumped back into the Top 10.) To find out which celebs least deserve to have magazine covers and their own fragrances, a group of industry insiders, journalists and bloggers were asked to name the least talented famous people. (And since some of them would like to work in this town again, they have been assured anonymity.)

Oh, and one thing to clear up: Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were disqualified, since neither of them really do anything.

The full list of all big celebs with no talent is found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20895531/

I first saw the list at IMDb and wondered where Paris Hilton was, I got my answer in the article. But still, she has way too much fame. What does everybody think of the list?

[bewty]

Originally Posted by Critical

I'll never forget the Designing Women episode where Bernice wore the tree skirt. She was a terrific comedic actress. She'll be missed.

My favorite episode ever. She will indeed be missed.

[Unklescott]

Without a doubt the greatest mime of all time. I remember watching him on TV with my dad. RIP Bip.
Tennessean.com - Nashville news from The Tennessean, MUSIC CITY U.S.A

By ANGELA DOLAND
Associated Press Writer
Entertainment Video
Buy AP Photo Reprints

PARIS (AP) -- Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died, his former assistant said Sunday. He was 84.

Marceau died Saturday in Paris, French media reported. Former assistant Emmanuel Vacca announced the death on France-Info radio, but gave no details about the cause.

Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.

A French Jew, Marceau survived the Holocaust - and also worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children.

His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. Marceau, in turn, inspired countless young performers - Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."

Marceau performed tirelessly around the world until late in life, never losing his agility, never going out of style. In one of his most poignant and philosophical acts, "Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death," he wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes.

"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?" he once said.

Marceau was born Marcel Mangel on March 22, 1923, in Strasbourg, France. His father Charles, a butcher who sang baritone, introduced his son to the world of music and theater at an early age. The boy adored the silent film stars of the era: Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx brothers.

When the Germans marched into eastern France, he and his family were given just hours to pack their bags. He fled to southwest France and changed his last name to Marceau to hide his Jewish origins.

With his brother Alain, Marceau became active in the French Resistance. Marceau altered children's identity cards, changing their birth dates to trick the Germans into thinking they were too young to be deported. Because he spoke English, he was recruited to be a liaison officer with Gen. George S. Patton's army.

In 1944, Marceau's father was sent to Auschwitz, where he died.

Later, he reflected on his father's death: "Yes, I cried for him."

But he also thought of all the others killed: "Among those kids was maybe an Einstein, a Mozart, somebody who (would have) found a cancer drug," he told reporters in 2000. "That is why we have a great responsibility. Let us love one another."

When Paris was liberated, Marcel's life as a performer began. He enrolled in Charles Dullin's School of Dramatic Art, studying with the renowned mime Etienne Decroux.

On a tiny stage at the Theatre de Poche, a smoke-filled Left Bank cabaret, he sought to perfect the style of mime that would become his trademark.

Bip - Marceau's on-stage persona - was born.

Marceau once said that Bip was his creator's alter ego, a sad-faced double whose eyes lit up with child-like wonder as he discovered the world. Bip was a direct descendant of the 19th century harlequin, but his clownish gestures, Marceau said, were inspired by Chaplin and Keaton.

Marceau likened his character to a modern-day Don Quixote, "alone in a fragile world filled with injustice and beauty."

Dressed in a white sailor suit, a top hat - a red rose perched on top - Bip chased butterflies and flirted at cocktail parties. He went to war and ran a matrimonial service.

In one famous sketch, "Public Garden," Marceau played all the characters in a park, from little boys playing ball to old women with knitting needles.

In 1949 Marceau's newly formed mime troupe was the only one of its kind in Europe. But it was only after a hugely successful tour across the United States in the mid-1950s that Marceau received the acclaim that would make him an international star.

Single-handedly, Marceau revived the art of mime.

"I have a feeling that I did for mime what (Andres) Segovia did for the guitar, what (Pablo) Casals did for the cello," he once told The Associated Press in an interview.

In the past decades, he has taken Bip to from Mexico to China to Australia. He's also made film appearances. The most famous was Mel Brooks' "Silent Movie": He had the only speaking line, "Non!"

As he aged, Marceau kept on performing at the same level, never losing the agility that made him famous. On top of his Legion of Honor and his countless honorary degrees, he was invited to be a United Nations goodwill ambassador for a 2002 conference on aging.

"If you stop at all when you are 70 or 80, you cannot go on," he told The AP in an interview in 2003. "You have to keep working."

Funeral arrangements were not immediately known.

[Krom]

It's in the New York Post, so it's probably an outright lie. But here it is...

MARCIA! MARCIA! MARCIA! | By LUKAS I. ALPERT | National News | US News | Current National News

MARCIA! MARCIA! MARCIA!
'BRADY' STAR'S STEAMY SEX WITH TV SIS JAN

By LUKAS I. ALPERT
SISTERLY LOVE: Maureen McCormick (left), who played Marcia on the "Brady Bunch," writes that she and Eve Plumb (far right), who played Jan, had sex.


September 22, 2007 -- Here's the story - of a Sapphic love affair?

"Brady Bunch" star Maureen McCormick - who played the TV family's oldest girl Marcia Brady - will reveal in a new tell-all book how she had a steamy on-set sexual relationship with the co-star who played her younger sister Jan.

The book, titled "Here's the Story," will detail how a small crush blossomed into a romantic and physically intimate relationship between McCormick and Eve Plumb, according to published reports.

Due out next year on HarperCollins imprint William Morrow, the bombshell biography will also touch on topics such as McCormick's battles with bulimia, cocaine addiction and depression.

But what will likely shock most fans of the 1970s hit TV series are the details of the budding love affair between the two co-stars who played the highly competitive sisters.

It's not the first time salacious details of behind-the-scenes sex have emerged in the years since the campy classic went off the air.

In 1992, co-star Barry Williams, who played Greg Brady, wrote in his tell-all tome, "Growing Up Brady," how he dated not only his on-screen mom, Florence Henderson, but engaged in several romps with McCormick as well.

And in 1997, McCormick hinted at a lesbian tryst between her and Plumb when she told a Los Angeles radio host about the crush she developed for Plumb while the two worked closely on the smash series that ran from 1969-1974.

"We had really good times together," she playfully said at the time.

When asked if that meant the two had been "pattycake close or Ellen DeGeneres close," McCormick coyly revealed the two had swapped spit.

"Yeah, we kissed," she said.

Her publicist later clarified that she meant simply on the cheek.

But all the while, McCormick - like many of her young co-stars - was under serious emotional stress trying to balance her TV fame with the strains of being a teenager.

Now 51, McCormick is married with an 18-year-old daughter and lives in Southern California.

lukas.alpert@nypost.com

Why have all our cherished childhood memories been corrupted?

Again though, NY Post. Page Six. Not so reliable.

[bbnbama]

She looks pretty darn good to be pregnant....

[barefootdyke]

Originally Posted by Krom

Why have all our cherished childhood memories been corrupted?

not mine! i had a major crush on maureen when i was little
but i'm sure you're right that it's not true. i'm sure it's probably trying to drum up some interest in a book that nobody would probably bother to read otherwise.



as for marcel marceau, someone i know asked "so... do we still do a moment of silence, or bang pots and pans insdead?" he was just kidding!!!

[Amy Lee]

Originally Posted by femme fatale

The full list of all big celebs with no talent is found at Celebs with big fame but little talent - MOVIE OPINIONS - MSNBC.com

I'm also still trying to figure out if Cook is funny. I keep on missing it for some reason...

As for the list, my issue is with Nicole. Once she won an Oscar, i guess that gave her free reign to stop doing good work? I had no issue with Dogville but, Bewitched? Invasion(remake of The Body Snatchers)? I'm sure there is more but it's too tedious to remember. I'm actually disappointed.