The fourth wife of legendary singer Frank
Sinatra was 90 years old when she died, following "declining health"
in recent years.
The former model spent 22 years with the My
Way singer, after marrying him in 1976.
He sadly passed away from a heart attack
in 1998 at the age of 82.
John Thoresen, director of the Barbara
Sinatra Children's Center, reported to CNN that Sinatra died of natural causes.
The Las Vegas showgirl was surrounded by family and friends at her home in
Rancho Mirage, California.
She was the last of Sinatra’s four wives,
their partnership being the longest lasting of the Fly Me To The
Moon singer’s marriages.
She first met her future husband when she was
asked to be a doubles partner with his second wife, Ava Gardner.
Frank remained friendly with all of his
previous wives, something that Barbara said never bothered her.
"A very wise French lady once said to
me: 'You never worry about old flames. You worry about new ones,'",
Barbara previously said.
During her life, she raised funds and rallied
support for a number of charities – most notably, the Barbara Sinatra
Children's Center at Eisenhower Medical Center.
Don Rickles late night images http://www.spike.com/photos/7c2s9v/one-night-only-an-all-star-comedy-tribute-to-don-rickles-don-rickles-late-night-guest-images Don Rickles on Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts
Don Rickles was Mr. Warmth to a generation of comics as
the master of the put-down.
In a career that spanned more than 60 years,
Rickles, who died at age 90 Thursday at his Los Angeles home, appeared in
movies (fromBeach Partyfilms of the early '60s toCasinoin
1995) and sitcoms (CPO Sharkey) and he
voiced Mr. Potato Head in three of Disney’sToy Storyfilms.
(”It’s a beautiful check,” he said of the toy character, and his main
accomplishment in the eyes of his grandchildren. “I sit in a booth and just do
me.”)
But he made his living as a a self-described
“aggressive” stage comedian, whose act jelled by accident as he reacted to
hecklers he called “hockey puck.” He outlasted contemporaries such as Alan
King, role model Milton Berle (who dubbed him the Merchant of Venom) and Johnny
Carson, a good friend who hosted him onThe Tonight Showmore
than 100 times and affectionately called him "Mr. Warmth": "It's
sarcastic, but it's true," Rickles said.
His longtime spokesman, Paul Shefrin,
confirmed his death from kidney failure.
To many fans, he was known as the
prototypical insult comic. He didn’t do punchlines; his act was the ad-libbed
singling out of audience members for ridicule, a response to hecklers. It was
all an act; in person he was gracious and friendly, though not all of his
targets were in on the joke. Did he like the insult label? "No, I don't, but I got it, and it stuck with me and it didn't hurt me." he said. "Insult, tome, was always something offensive."
Rickles, born in Queens, N.Y., to a Lithuanian Jewish
immigrant father, served in the Navy during World War II and enrolled in the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1948, intending to become a serious actor.
But he grew frustrated by bit parts on television.
“I was too big for the screen,” he told USA
TODAY in 2012. “There was no director that knew how to handle me. My comedy, my
strength, my aggressiveness, nobody knew how to handle that. I (auditioned for)
all the big (Broadway) shows, but never got the part, so I started to get
discouraged.” It was then that he turned to stand-up comedy: “My father said,
'The (temple) wants you to do this; they’ll give you $50.' And then I
started to develop my own stuff.”
Comedian Jon Stewart says Rickles’ style is
“curmudgeon humor more than insult humor. He's a guy who's annoyed at you and
things that just bother him." But spend time with Rickles, and you realize
it's an act, Stewart says: "He's a comedic actor who created a character
antithetical to his heart. Some comedians exist as a cautionary tale; he exists
as an aspiration."
Rickles counted comedian Bob Newhart among
his closest pals (”we’re like the odd couple because he’s so low-key”) and was
especially fond of Frank Sinatra, who had "a lot" to do with his
success. While working a Miami Beach nightclub in the late 1950s, he famously
endeared himself to Sinatra after he spotted the mob-connected singer and
instructed him, “Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody.” Sinatra warmed to
an unbowed Rickles, the comedian said, because "I didn't show any
fear," and he affectionately dubbed him “bullet head” because of his bald
pate.
Their friendship extended for decades:
Sinatra gave Rickles, a lifelong Democrat, a career highlight by forcing Ronald
Reagan's 1985 inaugural team to include him, threatening he would otherwise
boycott the festivities. “Frank called me in Hawaii, says ‘Don, get dressed,
get the wife, pack your bags and meet me in Washington,’ ” Rickles recalled in
his staccato New York accent, which endured decades after his move to Los
Angeles. “I said, ‘Why, Frank?’ He said, ‘You’re going to be in the inaugural
for Reagan.’ I says, ‘Frank, what are you, nuts?’ He says, ‘Shut up and do what
I tell you.’ I had no idea what I was going to say.”
But it was a perpetually bemused Carson who
cemented Rickles’ stature by engaging him in ad-libbed banter, and Rickles was
forever grateful. "Johnny didn't mix (socially) as much as Frank,"
Rickles said. "He'd hide under the chair. But when the lights came on,
there was no one better."
After his comedy career took off, he
continued to do occasional serious film roles, appearing with Clint Eastwood inKelly’s Heroesin 1970 and Robert DeNiro in Martin
Scorsese’s 1995 filmCasino. He also was a frequent guest star in TV sitcoms. He
married his wife, Barbara, in 1965, and had two children, daughter Mindy and
son Larry, a producer who won an Emmy Award for a 2007 HBO documentary of his
father. Larry died in December 2011 of pneumonia, at age 41, in what his father
described as “the terrible heartache of my life.”
Rickles never cursed onstage, and his humor
was cutting but never mean-spirited. "I can't please the world. When
you're standing out there doing comedy, not everybody thinks you're funny. But
in my case, I've gained a great deal of respect for my age to still be going,”
he said in 2012. “I'm by the seat of my pants. I've never had a writer in my
life."
And until a few years ago, he was still
working, touring casinos across the country.
"I just feel like I got a lot of time
yet to do. And young people — 35, 22 — they go, 'Hey, Rickles is here, the guy
who calls you a hockey puck or dummy.' That's something that always keeps you
up there."
Barbara Hale, who
played secretary Della Street in the “Perry Mason” television series and
movies, died Thursday. She was 94.
According to aFacebook postby
her son William Katt, Hale passed away at her home on Sherman Oaks, Calif.
“Lost my beautiful wonderful mom Barbara Hale
yesterday afternoon,” Katt, star of the television series “The Greatest
American Hero,” wrote Friday. “She left peacefully at her home in Sherman Oaks
Ca surrounded by close family and dear friends. We’ve all been so lucky to have
her for so long. She was gracious and kind and silly and always fun to be with.
A wonderful actress and smart business woman she was most of all a treasure as
a friend and mother! We’re all a little lost without her but we have
extraordinary stories and memories to take with us for the rest of our lives.
Hale played Street, assistant to Raymond
Burr’s titular lawyer, in nine seasons of the series and 30 television movies.
She spent her early career under contract with RKO, and went on to star in
“Higher and Higher” with Frank Sinatra, “Lady Luck” with Robert Young and Frank
Morgan, “The Window,” “Jolson Sings Again,” “Lorna Doone,” and “The Far
Horizons” with Charlton Heston.
“Perry Mason” aired on CBS from 1957 to 1966
and starred Burr as a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney. The show was one
of the first hour-long series in television history. Hale won a Primetime Emmy
Award in 1959 for playing Street, and reprised the character when “Perry Mason”
was revived in the 1980s as a series of television movies by NBC.
Hale was given a star on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame in 1960. Among her later film roles were “Airport” and “Big Wednesday.”
Born in DeKalb, Illinois in 1922, Hale was
the second child of Willa and Luther Hale. Her father was a landscape gardener.
Her late husband, Bill Williams, starred in the western series “The Adventures
of Kit Carson” and died in 1992. She is survived by her son William Katt,
daughters Johanna Katt and Juanita King, six grandchildren, and three
great-grandchildren.
In the current ultra-managed, publicist-controlled, sound-byte-driven media atmosphere, you don’t get to hear stars really speaking their minds anymore — at least, not about anything fun, like how they really feel about their fellow stars. But occasionally a little something sneaks through the PR wall, both now and back in Hollywood’s golden age, sometimes as whispers, sometimes as gossip, sometimes long after the fact. And thus, we present another, long-overdue installment of our ongoing series (following authors, filmmakers, and musicians) of really famous people really cutting each other down.
1. Bette Davis on Joan Crawford: “Joan Crawford — I wouldn’t sit on her toilet!” “I wouldn’t piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.” “Joan Crawford — Hollywood’s first case of syphilis.” “She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.” “Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it’s because I’m not a bitch. Maybe that’s why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.” “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good… Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”2. Joan Crawford on Bette Davis: “Bette will play anything, so long as she thinks someone is watching. I’m a little more selective than that.” “She may have more Oscars… she’s also made herself into something of a joke.” “Miss Davis was always partial to covering up her face in motion pictures. She called it ‘art.’ Others might call it camouflage — a cover-up for the absence of any real beauty.” “I don’t hate Bette Davis, even though the press wants me to. I resent her — I don’t see how she built a career out of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. She’s a phony, but I guess the public likes that.” 3. Vivien Leigh on Bette Davis (after turning down Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte: “I could almost stand to look at Joan Crawford’s face at 6am, but not Bette Davis.” 4. Barbara Stanwyck on Marilyn Monroe: “Her body has gone to her head.” 5. Bette Davis on Cary Grant:“He needed willowy or boyish girls like Katharine Hepburn to make him look what they now call macho. If I’d co-starred with Grant or if Crawford had, we’d have eaten him for breakfast.” 6. Cary Grant on Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean: “I have no rapport with the new idols of the screen, and that includes Marlon Brando and his style of Method acting. It certainly includes Montgomery Clift and that God-awful James Dean. Some producer should cast all three of them in the same movie and let them duke it out. When they’ve finished each other off, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy and I will return and start making real movies again like we used to.” 7. Richard Burton on Marlon Brando:“Marlon has yet to learn to speak. He should have been born two generations before and acted in silent films.” 8. Marlon Brando on James Dean:“Mr. Dean appears to be wearing my last year’s wardrobe and using my last year’s talent.” 9. Richard Harris on Michael Caine:“An over-fat, flatulent, 62-year-old windbag. A master of inconsequence masquerading as a guru, passing off his vast limitations as pious virtues.” 10. Rex Harrison on Charlton Heston: “Charlton Heston is good at playing arrogance and ambition. But in the same way that a dwarf is good at being short.” 11. Harrison Ford on Shia LaBeouf: “I think he was a fucking idiot.” 12. Dean Martin on James Stewart:“There’s a statue of Jimmy Stewart in the Hollywood Wax Museum, and the statue talks better than he does.” 13. Sir John Gielgud on Ingrid Bergman: “Dear Ingrid — speaks five languages and can’t act in any of them.” 14. Frank Sinatra on Shelly Winters: “A bowlegged bitch of a Brooklyn blonde.” 15. Shelly Winters on Frank Sinatra: “A skinny, no-talent, stupid Hoboken bastard.”
16. Ava Gardner on Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra: “I always knew Frank would end up in bed with a boy.” 17. Traci Lords on Johnny Depp:“He’s the kind of guy that would be really sweet to a girl and bring her flowers, but still take a pee in the alley.” 18. Bill Murray to Chevy Chase: “Medium talent!” 19. Julia Roberts on Nick Nolte: “A disgusting human being.” 20. Nick Nolte on Julia Roberts: “It’s not nice to call someone ‘disgusting’. But she’s not a nice person. Everyone knows that.”
21. Sharon Stone on Gwyneth Paltrow: “[She’s] very young and lives in rarefied air that’s a little thin. It’s like she’s not getting quite enough oxygen.” 22. Katherine Hepburn on Sharon Stone:“It’s a new low for actresses when you have to wonder what’s between her ears instead of her legs.” 23. Susan Sarandon on Mel Gibson:“Mel Gibson is somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. He’s beautiful, but only on the outside.” 24. Walter Matthau to Barbara Streisand:“I have more talent in my smallest fart than you have in your entire body.” 25. Elliot Gould on Jerry Lewis:“This arrogant, sour, ceremonial, piously chauvinistic egomaniac.”
26. Graham Chapman on John Travolta: “How difficult can it be to fly an airplane? I mean, John Travolta learned how.” 27. W.C. Fields on Mae West: “A plumber’s idea of Cleopatra.” 28. W.C. Fields on Charlie Chaplin: “He’s a goddamned ballet dancer.” 29. Robert Downey Jr. on Hugh Grant:“A self-important, boring, flash-in-the-pan Brit.” 30. John Wayne on Clark Gable:“Gable’s an idiot. You know why he’s an actor? It’s the only thing he’s smart enough to do.”
Jessica Chastain is being lined up to play Marilyn Monroe in a new film biopic.
The 37-year-old red-headed actress is 'nearing a deal' to play the icon in a new adaptation of the 2000 historical novel Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, according to The Wrap.
The project will be produced by Brad Pitt's production company Plan B, with the actor reported by a source to have been 'instrumental in convincing [Jessica] to tackle the challenging role of Marilyn Monroe.'
Pitt and Chastain co-starred in Terrence Malik's 2011 film The Tree Of Life.
Andrew Dominik, who directed Pitt in filmsThe Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford and Killing Them Softly, will helm the film from his own script.
'My heart belongs to Marilyn,' Dominik told IndieWire when quizzed about the project back in 2012. 'It's a really sprawling, emotional nightmare fairy-tale type movie, and I really want to do it real bad.
'It's a story about an abandoned orphan who gets lost in the woods.'
A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Blonde is a re-imagining of the life of Marilyn Monroe in novel form, with Oates drawing on biographical and historical sources for her portrait of the fragile icon who was born Norma Jean Mortenson.
Despite being a natural redhead, Chastain appeared as a blonde for 2011 film The Help which won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.
Chastain's portrayal comes three years after Michelle Williams took on the role of the superstar in My Week With Marilyn which explored the troubled production of The Price And The Showgirl.
Madonna also played a version of Marilyn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in her 1984 Material Girl video.
However, The Wrap report that Chastain's portrayal is expected to be 'much different' with Blonde taking 'an unconventional approach to examining the Hollywood starlet's life and career.'
Blonde is slated to begin filming in August with a 2015 release date in mind.
Chastain has been particularly busy of late - she will star in a number of movies this year including Christopher Nolan sci-fi mystery Interstellar alongside Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey and Miss Julie - based on the 1888 play - with Samantha Morton and Colin Farrell.
She is currently filming Guillermo del Toro's horror film Crimson Peake.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kim Novak says that cruel jabs about how she looked during the Oscar ceremony amounted to bullying that left her crushed at first, but then determined to speak out in protest.
"It really did throw me into a tailspin and it hit me hard," Novak, 81, said in a telephone interview Thursday, after she released an open letter condemning remarks by Donald Trump and others about her appearance.
In her letter, Novak said: "I will no longer hold myself back from speaking out against bullies. We can't let people get away with affecting our lives."
She had initially remained silent after serving as a presenter with Matthew McConaughey at the March 2 Academy Awards because the comments were so painful, Novak said from her home near the Rogue River in Oregon.
"For days, I didn't leave the house, and it got to me like it gets kids and teenagers" who are attacked, she said.
Trump tweeted during the Oscars that Novak should "sue her plastic surgeon," while others noted how unnaturally smooth-faced the veteran star of "Vertigo" and other classic films looked — even though actresses are pressured to look forever young.
"I'm not going to deny that I had fat injections in my face. They seemed far less invasive than a face lift," Novak wrote in her letter, adding, "In my opinion, a person has a right to look as good as they can, and I feel better when I look better."
Novak's Oscar night speech, which some observers characterized as halting, was the result of a pill she had taken to relax and a three-day fast, she said in her letter.
Novak wasn't the only older actress targeted at the Oscars. She was disturbed, she said, when ceremony host Ellen DeGeneres singled out audience member Liza Minnelli, 68, and pretended to mistake her for a male impersonator. "Good job, sir," DeGeneres said.
Novak said she retains dark memories of her years as a young actress in Hollywood, when she suffered from untreated bipolar disorder and was acutely sensitive to the industry's casual snideness and harsh reviews of her lesser films.
But the Oscar sniping took her aback, Novak said, because she had been given such a gracious welcome during a visit last year to Cannes, France, and gets warm notes from fans.
"I thought, 'Perhaps Hollywood is ready to receive me in a different way.' I was just not prepared for such a negative reaction and it just caught me off guard," she said.
Comments spread fast and far online, she said, and people don't realize you're listening. "It goes over in such a public way now," she said.
It was a commitment to appear at the TCM Film Festival last week that changed her mind about going public with her concerns. Novak, an artist with an upcoming exhibit at the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio, also showed one of her works, a "Vertigo"-related painting, at the festival.
She was well received during her initial appearance but felt she had to "take the bull by the horns" and deal openly with the treatment of her and Minnelli, she said. Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne agreed to discuss it during an interview that preceded a festival screening Saturday of her film "Bell, Book and Candle."
Novak, who said she takes medication for her disorder, decided afterward that she wanted to spread her message more widely and asked her longtime manager, Sue Cameron, to release the letter.
"I realized that I had to stand up not only for myself but for other people that don't have the courage to do so," Novak said. "I feel like I have a mission."
