#which included characters from your film and which ran first on ABC and later on Fox?

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Rare Media Found: GLAGO'S GUEST

Have you ever heard of GLAGO'S GUEST?

It is a 2008 Walt Disney Animation Studios short film directed by Chris Williams, who would later get a co-directing gig on BOLT.

This short was apparently supposed to be attached to BOLT, as it was screened at Annecy in June of 2008. Much like the Pixar tradition, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull's WDAS was supposed to put shorts before the feature-length movies. MEET THE ROBINSONS, completed under their watch, came with a classic short attached. If you saw that movie in 2D, you got the 1938 short BOAT BUILDERS before the movie. If you saw it in 3D, you got the 1953 short WORKING FOR PEANUTS. Later in that year, 2007, they readied the then all-new Goofy short HOW TO HOOK UP YOUR HOME THEATER for ENCHANTED, but later put it before NATIONAL TREASURE 2. Smart choice, that movie made a lot more money, though I think ENCHANTED is a lot more remembered.

So it seemed like there would be shorts before new WDAS movies, and even shorts before other Disney movies...

2008 rolls in, GLAGO'S GUEST screens at Annecy, Lasseter apparently is very impressed with it, yadda yadda yadda... And yet it's not put before BOLT. The uploader of this screener claims that GLAGO'S GUEST tested very poorly with an audience, so they opted to leave BOLT short-less...

That was, until about 3 weeks into its run... Disney decided to take one of those CARS shorts that were being made for The Disney Channel and ABC Family (now Freeform) at the time, and bump it up to theatrical status: TOKYO MATER ran before BOLT starting in mid-December. So we had a Pixar short before a WDAS movie, a move that seemed unusual at the time... Both for the two studios sharing a double-bill, and because the short was attached to the movie as it was playing rather than from the get-go.

GLAGO'S GUEST remains unreleased outside of that Annecy screening. It strangely did not appear on the Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection Blu-ray that was released in 2015, which had almost every other short from that period (from THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL - 2006 - all the way up until the latest, FROZEN FEVER) included. Even TICK TOCK TALE was on that set, and that too was hard to find for a while.

I wonder why... Now having seen it... It's not unreleasable. Sure, you have purring eyeball-looking aliens and a Soviet Russia setting, but I really can't tell you why this didn't see any kind of release. Did it really - should we believe the uploader - test *that* poorly back in 2008? I don't understand why, if Lasseter liked it, it got buried.

It's a fascinating, sort-of experimental film for the studio. Walt Disney Animation Studios fully started doing all-CG animated movies with CHICKEN LITTLE in 2005, when the company was like a ship in a raging typhoon, with the animation wing bearing the brunt of it. CHICKEN LITTLE took on a very cute and cartoony style, which differentiated it from a lot of other CG films at the time of its release. It rung more MADAGASCAR and ICE AGE than it did FINDING NEMO and THE INCREDIBLES.

The next feature they did, which was significantly overhauled after Lasseter and Catmull took over, was MEET THE ROBINSONS. Being based on a book by William Joyce, the character designs in that movie were very much like something Joyce would've illustrated, with a bit of that Disney look to them. But they definitely look much more like Joyce characters than anything. Much like how ATLANTIS was Mike Mignola by way of Disney, and HERCULES was very much a Gerald Scarfe-looking picture. Also, unlike CHICKEN LITTLE, it mostly had a human cast. These were, in a way, our first CG Disney Animation humans.

GLAGO'S GUEST is pretty much the Lasseter/Catmull era's first CG short, because HOW TO HOOK UP YOUR HOME THEATER was - of course, being a Goofy cartoon - done in traditional animation. Right down to even re-using backgrounds from 1940s sport Goofy cartoon shorts. Maybe it was treated as a test film more so than anything.

ROBINSONS, GLAGO and BOLT are like different attempts at styles for a Disney Animation CG film... That was, until TANGLED came along... And I think TANGLED, which had Glen Keane involved as animation supervisor (formerly the straight-up director of the movie), really set the course going forward for character design in a WDAS movie. Created a house style, if you will. In terms of backgrounds and utilizing a subtle painterly style, that all begins with BOLT... But the *character design*, I think, begins with TANGLED. TANGLED looks unmistakably stereotypical Disney, with those big expressive eyes and proportions and whatnot... and it made a lot of money at the box office...

So, the house style was pretty much set from there on out. In terms of the features, only the WRECK-IT RALPH movies (and ZOOTOPIA to a lesser extent) seemed to do their own thing. Calhoun definitely gets bit by this design bug, as earlier concept art of her suggested something less stereotypically Disney, less TANGLED-looking.

But... FROZEN, BIG HERO 6, MOANA, RAYA, ENCANTO, WISH, etc... STRANGE WORLD was kind of an exception here, that looked more comic/cartoony to me. Yeah, that TANGLED style really, really stuck...

So it is fascinating to see what other styles WDAS played around with, styles that could've very well - I think - worked for features, but they chose to largely stick with one style going forward.

Only the shorts really continued to play with character design. INNER WORKINGS and some of the Short Circuit entries have the more interesting and dynamic character designs of their recent output.

[theultimatefan]

Bernthal, Weller, Charmed Duo, Parrilla Added To FAN EXPO Portland Celebrity Lineup, January 12-14

Jon Bernthal (“The Punisher,” “The Walking Dead”), Peter Weller (RoboCop, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension), the “Charmed” duo of Holly Marie Combs and Rose McGowan, and Lana Parrilla (“Once Upon a Time,” “Spin City”) have been added to the celebrity lineup at FAN EXPO Portland, set for January 12-14, 2024, at the Oregon Convention Center.

The five join the first wave of stars announced earlier this month that includes Danny Trejo (Machete, The Book of Boba Fett), the "Daredevil" tandem of Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio, Peter Cullen (Transformers) and Jason Lee (Vanilla Sky, Almost Famous).

Bernthal played the lead “Frank Castle” in the Netflix Marvel series “Daredevil” after a popular run as “Shane Walsh” in the AMC hit drama “The Walking Dead.” The classically trained Bernthal most recently starred in last year’s “American Gigolo” on Showtime and has appeared in such large-scale productions as World Trade Center, The Pacific and Rampart, and has had guest roles on top TV series like "CSI: Miami," "Boston Legal," "Without a Trace" and "How I Met Your Mother."

Accomplished actor, director, voice over artist and occasional professor Weller’s amazing career has taken him from the mean streets of old Detroit to the final frontier of space. He has appeared in more than 50 films and television series, notably in the title role in 1987’s RoboCop and its sequel RoboCop 2 and as the title character in the quirky 1984 sci-fi cult film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Combs starred in "Charmed," which ran for eight seasons and has adopted a huge, loyal following since, as "Piper Halliwell," one of three witch sisters fighting evil in modern day San Francisco. That followed her breakout role in 88 episodes of the hit series "Picket Fences" and later led to appearances in more than 30 series and movies and a long run as "Ella Montgomery" on "Pretty Little Liars."

Her “Charmed” co-star McGowan played long-lost sister "Paige Matthews" for the final five seasons of the series. The Italian-born actress first caught major attention for her role as "Tatum Riley" in the horror blockbuster Scream (1996) opposite Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette. She has appeared in more than 60 films and shows as an actress and is also an accomplished producer and director.

Parrilla appeared in 156 episodes of the ABC hit fantasy/adventure series “Once Upon a Time” between 2011-2018, for which she earned several awards, including TV Guide’s Favorite Villain, and numerous nominations. She has had recurring roles in hits “Spin City,” “Boomtown,” “24” and “Windfall,” and co-starred as “Lana Trammell” in this year’s Netflix release of the second season of “The Lincoln Lawyer.”

FAN EXPO Portland features the biggest and best in pop culture: movies, TV, music, artists, writers, exhibitors, cosplay, with three full days of themed programming to satisfy every fandom.

Single-Day Tickets, Three-Day Passes, and Ultimate Fan Packages for FAN EXPO Portland are available now. Advance pricing is available until December 28, 2023. More guest news will be released in the following weeks, including line-up reveals for comic creator guests, voice actors, and cosplayers.

Portland is the second event on the 2024 FAN EXPO HQ calendar; the full schedule is available at fanexpohq.com/home/events/.

[selimamir98]

Jacoba Francisca Maria "Cobie Smulders" (April 3, 1982) is a Canadian actress. She is known for her starring role as Robin Scherbatsky in the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother (2005–2014) and as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films The Avengers (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), as well as the ABC action drama series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (2013–2015), the Disney+ animated anthology series What If...? (2021), and the upcoming Disney+ limited series Secret Invasion (2023).

Smulders' other films include Safe Haven (2013), They Came Together (2014), Results (2015), and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016). She also starred in the Netflix comedy drama series A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017), the Netflix comedy series Friends from College (2017–2019), the ABC crime drama series Stumptown (2019–2020), and the FX true crime series Impeachment: American Crime Story (2021).

Smulders was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, to a Dutch father and a British mother. She was raised in White Rock, British Columbia, and later moved to the affluent West Point Grey neighbourhood to attend high school at Lord Byng Secondary School. She was named after her great-aunt, from whom she gained the nickname "Cobie". Smulders describes herself as "a fluent listener" of French. She has four sisters. Smulders was also a member of the Girl Guides of Canada as a child, participating as a Brownie (Girl Guide program for 7- to 10-year-olds).

Smulders worked in modelling, which she later said she "kind of hated", adding that the experience made her hesitant about pursuing acting as a career: "You know, you go into these rooms, and I've had the experience of people judging you physically for so long and I was over that. But then it was like, 'Oh no, I have to actually perform. I have to do well, and I have to have a voice, and I have to have thoughts now.'"

In her youth, Smulders aspired to be a marine biologist. She took an interest in theatre throughout high school and briefly studied at the University of Victoria before returning to acting.

Smulders' first acting role was as a guest in the Showtime science-fiction series Jeremiah; she subsequently made multiple appearances on television, including a recurring role on The L Word. Her first role as a series regular was in the short-lived ABC series Veritas: The Quest, which ran for one season. After the cancellation of Veritas, Smulders was cast as television reporter Robin Scherbatsky on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother in 2005. The show continued for nine seasons, winning 10 Emmy Awards. In June 2010, Smulders made her off-Broadway debut in Love, Loss, and What I Wore at the Westside Theatre.

Smulders played Maria Hill in the 2012 film The Avengers. She received training from a Los Angeles SWAT team trainer to handle guns to portray the character. Smulders has since reprised the role in three episodes of the television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and in the films Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019).

In 2013, Smulders had a supporting role in the romance film Safe Haven. She also starred in the comedy-drama Delivery Man and They Came Together. Smulders voiced a Lego version of Wonder Woman in the 2014 animated film The Lego Movie. It was the first time the Wonder Woman character had a theatrical film appearance. In July 2015, Smulders was reported to have exited the made-for-TV film Confirmation because she had broken her leg; Zoe Lister-Jones was then confirmed to replace her in the role of Harriet Grant.

In 2016, she appeared in the comedy-drama The Intervention and the action adventure film Jack Reacher: Never Go Back opposite Tom Cruise. In 2017, she played the recurring character "Mother" in the Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events. From 2017 to 2019, she starred in the Netflix original series, Friends from College, in the main role of Lisa Turner. She starred as Dexedrine "Dex" Parios, a PTSD-stricken military veteran turned private detective, in the ABC crime drama Stumptown, which premiered on September 25, 2019.

In 2022, she returned to the role of Robin Charles Scherbatsky for the first season finale of the HIMYM spinoff How I Met Your Father, which airs on Hulu, titled "Timing is Everything".

https://instagram.com/cobiesmulders?igshid=OGQ2MjdiOTE=

[aion-rsa]

25 Best Sports TV Shows

https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TV-High-School-Travel-Guides.png?resize=400%2C400

Sports stories have traditionally belonged to the movies. Something about the rhythms of competition, in which an athlete or team trains, plays, and then either wins or loses, is a natural fit for the film world’s three act structure.

Television, with its multiple episodes and seasons, is often more discursive and therefore less viable for truly great sports stories. Thankfully, that all seems poised to change. While some sports TV shows have found success in the past, now the medium has really kicked things up a notch. Sports stories like Brockmire, Ted Lasso, Cobra Kai, and more are not only welcome on television, but an essential part of the cable and streaming landscape. 

Read more

TV

The United States of TV High Schools

By Alec Bojalad

Movies

The Best Sports Documentaries To Stream

By Scott Fontana and 2 others

With that in mind, it’s high time we pay homage to TV’s great sports programs. What follows is a list of 25 of the best sports TV shows of all time, hand selected by Den of Geek (i.e. me: the arms-crossed weirdo in the picture at the bottom of this article). 

It’s important to keep in mind that these are the best scripted sports TV shows. Television is, of course, no stranger to live sports and the various programs that surround them. Consider these unscripted American sports shows as honorable mentions: Hard Knocks, Last Chance U, Ken Burns’ Baseball, The Last Dance (and most other 30-for-30s), Cheer, Inside the NBA.

Enough of the undercard, now onto the main event. 

25. Red Oaks

Amazon Prime’s Red Oaks examines the bougie tennis lifestyle of the 1980s. It all comes through the lens of David Myers (Craig Roberts), a college student looking to pick up some cash by taking a summer job at an upscale Jewish country club in New Jersey. Sports stories and coming-of-age stories fit particularly well because the end goal of each one is usually growth. It’s hard to say whether David grows during his time at Red Oaks, but he certainly changes over the series’ three seasons. 

24. The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers

A TV show based on Disney sports movie behemoth franchise The Mighty Ducks was all but an inevitability, particularly when the major conglomerate secured its own streamer in Disney+. We’re all lucky then that The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers turned out to be quite good rather than completely perfunctory. The show is bold enough to recast its Ducks’ franchise as the villains and to rally around the radical idea that youth sports should be fun. 

23. One Tree Hill

At first glance, One Tree Hill doesn’t seem too different from the other teen shows of its era on The CW (though The CW was still “The WB” for One Tree Hill’s first two seasons). It’s about high schoolers in a small town, doing high school things. Where One Tree Hill excels (at least in its early, still high school seasons) is the introduction of basketball as a storytelling crutch. Half brothers Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan Scott (James Lafferty) have a turbulent enough relationship to begin with. What better way to contextualize that relationship than through the high stakes lens of high school basketball?

22. Lights Out

Not to be confused with the 2016 horror film of the same name, Lights Out is a boxing series from FX that ran for one excellent season in 2011. Holt McCallany (best known now as Agent Bill Tench on Mindhunter) stars as retired heavyweight champion Patrick “Lights” Leary. Despite displaying signs of neurological trauma from his career, Lights can’t help but want to return to the ring for one more shot of glory (and to pay off his family’s many debts). Lights Out is a sad, elegiac little story about how one man who sees a sport that broke his brain as the only realistic option for success. 

21. Big Shot

Big Shot premiered shortly after its bigger-named Disney+ cousin The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. And while Game Changers made a slightly bigger splash, Big Shot might be the better sports show. The story follows Marvyn Korn (John Stamos), a tempermental basketball coach who ends up at an elite all-girls prep school to shepherd its basketball program. Big Shot runs through all the tried and true tropes and beats of sports stories and does so with aplomb. Consider it Hardball meets Hoosiers with plenty of Stamos charm. 

20. Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper

Sports are somewhat incidental to Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper’s mission. Sure, lead character Mr. Cooper (Mark Curry) is a former Golden State Warriors basketball player turned PE teacher. But like its TGIF programming block peers, this show is a charming hangout comedy with few lasting conflicts to speak of. Still, you don’t spend that much time in a gym without some three-pointers and lay-ups. 

19. Coach

Before Craig T. Nelson was Mr. Incredible (or made this truly amazing televised statement), he was best known for portraying the title role in ‘90s ABC sitcom Coach. In fact, many of our archetypical perceptions of what makes a football coach likely come from Nelson’s portrayal of Coach Hayden Fox (who first coached for a fictional NCAA football team and later an NFL one). This is a man whose skill at molding young athletes belies his lack of skill at…well, everything else. Ultimately, Coach is a worthwhile multiseason experience in which a grown man grows up.

18. Kingdom

Kingdom is probably the best sports TV show that you’ve never heard of. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. That’s just the kind of thing that happens when a show is damned to languish on AT&T’s ludicrous “Audience Network”. Kingdom is set in an MMA gym and captures all the drama provided in the heightened world of mixed martial arts combat. The show is blessed with some great characters and an even better cast. Frank Grillo (Captain America’s most annoying foe, Brock Rumlow), Kiele Sanchez (Lost), Matt Lauria (Friday Night Lights), Jonathan Tucker, (Justified)  and Nick Jonas (yes, that Nick Jonas) all make their mark on the series.

17. The White Shadow

Premiering in 1978, CBS’s The White Shadow was uncommonly progressive for its time. The series follows Ken Reeves (Ken Howard), a white NBA player who retires after a knee injury and elects to take up coaching at Carver High School in South Central Los Angeles. Coach Reeves’s team is made up primarily of Black and Hispanic players and the show deals with the social ills of life in the inner city. It’s also quite funny and charming and features a commitment to realistic basketball scenes.

16. The League

FX comedy The League works as a sports show (and as a TV show in general) because it has a deep understanding of sports from a fan’s perspective. Sure, fans watch collegiate and professional sports to marvel at the athleticism, training, and skill on display. But more importantly, they watch sports to have something to talk about with their friends. Though the participants in the titular fantasy football league at the center of The League grew up as friends, who’s to say they would have stayed friends so long without this league keeping them together? Ruxin (Nick Kroll) is an asshole. Andre (Paul Scheer) is annoying. And Taco (Jon Lajoie) is, well…Taco.

15. Rocket Power

If the ‘90s taught us anything it’s that extreme sports are sports too, man! Rocket Power is a lovely little slice of life Nick Toon that follows four kids in a fictional California surfing community. Otto Rocket, Reggie Rocket, Maurice “Twister” Rodriguez, and Sam “Squid” Dullard spend their days skateboarding, surfing, playing street hockey, and occasionally snowboarding. It’s a wonderful ode to childhood and all the athletic activities that make the day (and years) go by far too quickly. 

14. Luck

If things shook out differently, perhaps Luck could have been considered one of the five or so best sports shows of all time. All of the pieces were in place. This 2012 HBO series had the right creative team (created and run by Deadwood’s David Milch and starring Dustin Hoffman with a pilot directed by Michael Mann) to go along with an intriguing premise (complicated characters’ lives intersecting at a horse track). But alas…the dead horses. Oh so many dead horses. Despite stringent safety measures put in place, Luck lost three hoof bois during filming of its first season and was canceled shortly thereafter. May they all rest in peace.

13. All American

High school is a turbulent time in all our lives. And when the high stakes world of competitive football is added in, things can only get more intense. The CW’s All American opts to take the world of high school football and opts to add in a welcome dose of sociopolitical commentary. This series is loosely based on the life of former New York Giants linebacker Spencer Paysinger and follows his character “Spencer James” as he is recruited from South L.A. to play for the affluent Beverly Hills High. The show wisely understands that sports (particularly when they involve Black teenagers) are a marvelous portal to explore American society. 

12. Pitch

Cruelly cut short after just one season of 10 episodes, Pitch is the kind of sports show that will inspire sports stories for years to come. This baseball series for Fox comes from Dan Fogelman (This Is Us) and Rick Singer. It follows the saga of Ginny Baker (Kylie Bunbury), who becomes the first woman to play in Major League Baseball when she’s called up to pitch by the San Diego Padres. Pitch was blessed with an excellent cast including Bunbury and Mark-Paul Gosselaar as a veteran catcher nearing the end of his Hall of Fame career. More interestingly, it was blessed with an actual MLB licensing deal. There are no silly fictional teams in this show like the Tuscaloosa Barn-Burners or the Helena Hellcats. It’s all real MLB team names and logos, adding to the realism of a cool premise.

11. Ballers

Of course, Elizabeth Warren’s favorite show has to be on this list. Ballers has a bit of an unearned reputation for being cringe thanks to its ridiculous name and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s delightful cornball energy. In reality, this is an exceedingly watchable TV show and one that examines the corporate side of professional sports quite well. It’s also noticeable for being most viewers’ introduction to eventual Tenet star John David Washington. 

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10. GLOW

Is professional wrestling a sport? Vince McMahon would argue that it’s “sports entertainment.” I would argue that that’s more than good enough to get the excellent GLOW on this list. GLOW tragically fell victim to Netflix’s whimsical cancellation procedures. Why the almighty algorithm decided a show needed to be canceled after it was already renewed is beyond me. But don’t let that sour three seasons of superb sportsy storytelling. GLOW follows the fictionalized rise of the very real “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling” and it centers it on the conflict between two former best friends, Ruther Wilder (Alison Brie) and Debbie Eagen (Betty Gilpin). GLOW differs a bit from the usual sports fare in that the “sport” at its center wasn’t necessarily plan A for the athletes. But the experience of watching the ladies train, grow, and succeed is pure and sublime sports story stuff.

9. Cobra Kai

Cobra Kai absolutely could have been phoned in. The streaming world runs on nostalgia and there’s nothing more sweetly nostalgic than The Karate Kid franchise. Instead, this Netflix series changes the original franchise’s perspective by focusing on the “villainous” Cobra Kai dojo and re-examines things from Johnny’s point of view. Ralph Macchio and William Zabka deserve credit for embodying realistically adult, yet flawed versions of their original characters. Equally deserving of credit though is a whole host of young actors bringing the martial arts to a whole new generation. 

8. Blue Mountain State

A lot of the shows on this list are, let’s say, reverential to the sports, teams, and athletes they cover. Spike comedy Blue Mountain State is decidedly…not. This series, following the Mountain Goats football team for the fictional college Blue Mountain State, understands that not all depictions of athletes have to be saints. Sometimes college football player can just be the big dumb animals you want them to be. Through three seasons, this show developed a cult following that would follow it over for a lifetime of reruns on Netflix. Blue Mountain State is crass, dangerous, and entertaining, not entirely unlike football.

7. Sports Night

Speaking of being reverential to sports…like all Aaron Sorkin-created TV series, Sports Night can be a bit full of itself sometimes. That only works when the topic at hand, like the federal branch of the U.S. government, is consequential. Thankfully, sports can be pretty important sometimes too! This late ‘90s show follows the goings-on at a Sportscenter-esque news program hosted by Dan Rydell (Josh Charles) and Casey McCall (Peter Krause). It has all the witty dialogue you’d come to expect from a Sorkin venture. And if you can make your way through the inexplicable laugh track of the early episodes, you will find a mature, entertaining show that properly understands and contextualizes professional sports’ role in American society. 

6. Survivor’s Remorse

Survivor’s Remorse came into the world with two strikes against it. One is a bizarrely overwrought name, and the other is that its home network, Starz, isn’t a given on many cable packages. Still, this LeBron James-produced comedy is shockingly one of the best sports TV shows ever (and perhaps still the best creative venture James has been involved in yet). This story follows NBA athlete Cam Calloway (Jessie T. Usher) as he tries to balance the business and basketball aspects of his life. At first the show focuses on Cam’s guilt for having got out of his impoverished neighborhood when so many couldn’t (hence, the show’s title), but ultimately it evolves into a family comedy drama featuring some truly remarkable characters and performances like Cam’s cousin and manager Reggie Vaughn (RonReaco Lee) and his baller half-sister “M-Chuck” (Erica Ash). Even Monica Rambeau herself, Teyonah Parris, is a part of the proceedings. 

5. Playmakers

Sometimes I can’t even believe that Playmakers is real. Surely, this ESPN series about a fictional football team in a fictional league that is clearly the NFL was just a post-9/11 fever dream we all endured together. Alas, Playmakers was real and it was awesome. This series follows the players on the Cougars as they navigate a football landscape filled with ripped-from-the-headlines strife including Performance enhancing drugs, good old-fashioned drugs, domestic abuse, concussions, and more. The series even introduces the outing of a gay player more than a decade before Michael Sam and Carl Nassib revealed their sexual orientations. Naturally, Playmakers was canceled when the NFL intimated to its broadcast partner ESPN that it wasn’t too pleased with the content of its show. And enraging the National Football League alone is enough to make this an all-time classic.

4. Eastbound & Down

Eastbound & Down creator and star Danny McBride isn’t necessarily a huge fan of baseball. But he is, thankfully, a huge fan of weirdos and creeps. When McBride discovered just how bizarre and poorly behaved certain flamethrowing relief pitchers could be, Kenny Powers and the show around him was born. The baseball “action” in Eastbound isn’t much to write home about. The show isn’t too concerned with the results of any given baseball game and McBride always looks like he’s throwing a javelin and not a baseball. It’s still a phenomenal saga about athletes that dives into Paul Bunyan-esque tales of legendary misbehavior that fame encourages. It’s no coincidence that in the follow ups to Kenny Powers, McBride has delved into megalomaniacal vice principals and bejeweled, sweaty televangelists – all different aspects of the white American male id.

3. Ted Lasso

Of all the sports shows in the TV canon, none feels more like a traditional sports movie than Ted Lasso. This Apple TV+ series plucks an American football coach-fish and gently places him out of water in the English Premier League. The affable Lasso (Sudeikis) is charged with reversing the fortunes of EPL side AFC Richmond. Little does he know, however, that spiteful owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddington) is counting on him to fail, Major League style. Ted Lasso isn’t interested in reinventing the wheel. Instead it perfects it. This is a tale of relentless optimism and unconditional positive regard. Ted breaks the mold for what we expect from coaches, which is probably why so many actual coaches are fond of the show. Simply put: sports stories can’t be done much better than this one. 

2. Brockmire

Sometimes commentators like to bemoan the modern state of baseball. What was once American’s pastime has now supposedly fallen behind things like football and videogames in the pop cultural pecking order. Then along comes something like Brockmire to teach us that baseball as a continuous, seemingly eternal American presence is just as vital as ever. In a career-defining role, Hank Azaria plays disgraced baseball broadcaster Jim Brockmire. Once at the top of his game, an on-air drunken meltdown loses him his job and his sanity. In season 1 of this superb IFC show, Brockmire returns to the booth, this time for an independent league team in Morristown, Pennsylvania. The four seasons that follow are one big love letter to not only baseball, but the messy human experience itself. It’s rare that you get something this funny and this affecting. The fact that it’s wrapped in a stylish diamond-shaped bow is just icing on the cake. 

1. Friday Night Lights

Not only is Friday Night Lights the best sports TV show of all time, it’s hard to imagine it ever being supplanted from its throne. Simply put, Friday Night Lights is a sports television masterpiece. Each of Friday Night Lights’ five seasons (save for the writer’s strike-shortened second) fully capture the ecstasy and agony of high school football in a small Texas town where high school football is the only thing that matters. Friday Night Lights doesn’t shy away from the unsavory institution that is big time high school athletics.

The series opens with a life-changing injury before following it up with tales of corrupt boosters and garden variety West Texas racism. And yet, the show never looks down on its characters. If winning state is important to Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler), Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford), Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), Smash Williams (Gaius Charles), and Vince Howard (Michael B. Jordan), then it’s important to us too. In fact, when Friday Night Lights is really rolling and the W.G. Snuffy Walden’s Explosions in the Sky-style soundtrack is swirling, you might not recall anything ever mattering to you as much as the Dillon Panthers or the East Dillon Lions winning a football game. Clear eyes, full hearts, absolutely cannot lose.

The post 25 Best Sports TV Shows appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[papermoonloveslucy]

MY THREE SONS at 60!

September 29, 1960

“My Three Sons” was a situation comedy produced at Desilu Studios. It premiered on ABC TV on September 29, 1960 and finished its first run on April 13, 1972, with 380 episodes making it the second-longest running live-action sitcom in TV history after “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett” (1952-66). 

Seasons 1 through 5 were aired in black and white on CBS.  In 1965 it moved to CBS when ABC declined to underwrite the costs of airing in color.  The series was initially filmed at Desilu Studios in Hollywood, but at the start of the 1967–68 season, the cast and crew began filming the series at the CBS Studio Center in Studio City, California due to Lucille Ball’s sale of Desilu to Gulf + Western, which owned Paramount Pictures. The sale also affected the filming location of another family sitcom, “Family Affair.”

Incredibly, “My Three Sons” ran concurrently through both “The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy.” Both Steve Douglas and Lucy Carmichael (and later Carter), where single parents raising children. 

September 16, 1965 was a big night for CBS airing the very first episode of “My Three Sons” after moving from ABC titled “The First Marriage”. It was also the first episode of the series broadcast in color, something “The Lucy Show” did three days earlier with “Lucy at Marineland” (TLS S4;E1). The premise of the series is a widowed father (Steven Douglas) raising his three boys with help of his extended family.  Initially, the three sons were Chip, Robbie, and Mike, but in 1967 Mike was written out and replaced by Ernie, whom Steve adopted.  The extended family at first consisted of Bub, Steve’s father-in-law and the boys’ maternal grandfather, but in 1964, that character was replaced by Uncle Charley, Steve’s uncle and Bub’s brother. 

The leading role was played by film star Fred MacMurray, who the series was built around - including his hectic schedule. To suit MacMurray, scenes would be shot out of sequence and even alone on a soundstage and later edited to create a complete episode.  This was not MacMurray’s first time at Desilu. In 1958 he played himself on the “Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” in “Lucy Hunts Uranium” set in the Nevada desert outside Las Vegas. He was joined by his second wife, actress June Haver. MacMurray (1908-91) appeared in over 100 films in his career but is perhaps best remembered for the film Double Indemnity (1944), which Lucy references in this episode. MacMurray’s name was first mentioned by Ethel in 1953 in “The Black Eye” (ILL S2;E20) when flowers arrive for Lucy mistakenly signed “Eternally yours, Fred.”

Although Lucille Ball was their landlord (and ultimate boss) she never acted on the show, but many of the actors who appeared on Lucille Ball’s sitcoms did appear on “My Three Sons”.

From 1960 to 1965, MacMurray was joined by William Frawley as Bub O’Casey, the family’s live-in maternal grandfather. Of course, Frawley came to fame on “I Love Lucy” as the crusty landlord Fred Mertz. Frawley had worked with MacMurray in the 1935 film, Car 99. When Frawley had to leave  the show due to ill-health (and it was too costly to insure him) he was replaced by another Desilu alumni, William Demarest, as Uncle Charley. Like his previous co-star, Vivian Vance, Frawley was not especially fond of Demarest personally or as an actor. Demarest had, however, done three films with Lucille Ball. Frawley kept watching “My Three Sons” on his TV set bitterly. He never really got over being replaced by Demarest. On March 3, 1966, Frawley died of a heart attack.

For Christmas 1959, Frawley and Demarest both appeared with Lucy and Desi in “The Desilu Revue” (above with “December Bride’s” Spring Byington). At the time, Demarest was working on the Desilu lot appearing in NBC’s “Love and Marriage.”

On “My Three Sons” two of  Steve Douglas’ boys had been seen on “The Lucy Show”: Don Grady (Robbie Douglas) had played Chris Carmichael’s friend Bill and Barry Livingston (Ernie Douglas) had played Mr. Mooney’s son Arnold. Ted Eccles, who assumed the role of Arnold Mooney when Barry Livingston was busy on “My Three Sons,” also did an episode. 

The children of “The Lucy Show,” Ralph Hart (who played Viv Bagley’s son Sherman), Jimmy Garrett (Jerry Carmichael), and Candy Moore (Lucy Carmichael’s daughter Chris) were also on episodes of "My Three Sons.”

Other “Lucy” performers who were on “My Three Sons” include: 

Mary Wickes ~ Jeri Schronk (1964)

Doris Singleton ~ Helen & Margaret, 8 episodes (1964-70)

Shirley Mitchell ~ Sally, 2 episodes (1968) 

Barbara Pepper ~ Mrs. Brand (1966)

Verna Felton ~ Mub (1962)

Kathleen Freeman ~ Lady Checker (1967)

Jerry Hausner ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1964 & 1966) 

Reta Shaw ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1962 & 1965) 

Elvia Allman ~ Maude Prosser (1967) 

Eleanor Audley ~ Mrs. Vincent, 9 episodes (1969-70)

Burt Mustin ~ Various Characters, 5 episodes (1962-70)

Olan Soule ~ Various Characters, 5 episodes (1963-70)

Alberto Morin ~ Professor Madoro (1967)

Herb Vigran ~ Caretaker (1967)

Maurice Marsac ~ Various Characters, 3 episodes (1964-72)

Tim Mathewson ~ Various Characters, 3 episodes (1962-63)

Bill Quinn ~ Doctors, 4 episodes (1964-66)

Barbara Perry ~ Mrs. Thompson & Mrs. Hoover, 3 episodes (1964-72)

Nancy Kulp ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1962)

George N. Neise ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1960 & 1967)

Maxine Semon ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1964 & 1967) 

Roy Roberts ~Various Characters, 2 episodes (1965 & 1967) 

Lou Krugman ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1966 & 1967)

Richard Reeves ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1962 & 1965)

Dorothy Konrad ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1961 & 1962)

Ed Begley ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1962 & 1968)

Gail Bonney ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1965 & 1970)

Rolfe Sedan ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1968 & 1971) 

Tyler McVey ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1962 & 1967)

J. Pat O’Malley ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1963 & 1964)

Paul Picerni ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1965 & 1967)

Sandra Gould ~ Various Characters, 2 episodes (1963 & 1964)

Richard Deacon ~ Elderly Man (1960) 

Mabel Albertson ~ Mrs. Proctor (1964) 

Joan Blondell ~ Harriet Blanchard (1965) 

Leon Belasco ~ Professor Lombardi (1966) 

Dayton Lummis ~ Dr. Blackwood (1963) 

Lurene Tuttle ~ Natalie Corcoran (1968)

Robert Foulk ~ Pop Action (1962) 

Dick Patterson ~ Bunny Baxter (1963)

Jamie Farr ~ Itchy (1964)

Larry J. Blake ~ Policeman (1968) 

Amzie Strickland ~ Cora Dennis (1968) 

Barbara Morrison ~ Mrs. Murdock (1969) 

Louis Nicoletti ~ Caddy Master (1962)

Frank Gerstle ~ Policeman (1964)

Gil Perkins ~ Painter (1963) 

Tommy Ferrell ~ Mr. Griffith (1964) 

Eve McVeagh ~ Clara (1966)

Remo Pisani ~ Pepe (1970) 

Dub Taylor ~ Judge (1963)

Frank J. Scannell ~ Emcee (1968) 

Ray Kellogg ~ Henshaw (1965) 

Romo Vincent ~ Charley (1964) 

Stafford Repp ~ Sergeant Perkins (1969)

Jay Novello ~ Vincenzo (1966) 

Leoda Richards ~ Restaurant Patron (1966)

CHILD STARS!

Other child stars who appeared on “My Three Sons” included Butch Patrick (“The Munsters”), Jay North (“Dennis the Menace”), Oscar-winner Jodie Foster, Angela Cartwright (“Make Room for Daddy”), Flip Mark (”Lassie”), John Walmsley (”The Waltons”), Tony Dow (“Leave It To Beaver”), Erin Moran (“Happy Days”), Maureen McCormick (”The Brady Bunch”), Ann Jillian (Gypsy), and Heather Menzies (The Sound of Music). 

On November 22, 1977, ABC TV (and Dick Clark Productions) brought together a reunion of two of television's favorite sitcoms "The Partridge Family" and "My Three Sons." Hosted by Shirley Jones and Fred MacMurray this would be the only time that the surviving cast members would get together to celebrate the series which included clips, a song from David Cassidy, and an update of what each cast member was doing in 1977.

Also in 1977, some of the stars of the series reunited on a morning program titled "The Early Show", including Stanley Livingston (Chip Douglas), Barry Livingston (Ernie Douglas), Tina Cole (Katie Miller Douglas), and Don Grady (Robbie Douglas).  

TRIVIA

In “Lucy Helps Danny Thomas” (TLS S4;E7) in 1965, there is a large framed photo of Fred MacMurray in the studio hallway.  He is joined by other Desilu stars like Jim Nabors (of “Gomer Pyle USMC”), Andy Griffith (of “The Andy Griffith Show”) and Danny Thomas (of “The Danny Thomas Show”). 

[curlytemple]

niche interests list 

okay sure yes this is fun! i havent posted a thing like this in such a long time. thank you new gal pal @scottspack for tagging me! 

pigs????

alright first lets throw it back to preschool! my fav childhood toys were my baby doll (snookums) and a plush pig that my grandma got me that i just called ‘pig’ ...i watched the babe movies countless times, and piglet? that anxious little guy GETS ME bro. when my preschool did a nativity play and my class got to choose an animal to be in baby jesus’ manger, my mother recalls me saying that i would be a pig because jewish people (jesus christ) wouldnt eat me. she has no idea how or when i learned about kosher foods. ironically despite my namesake i was too afraid of the movie charlotte’s web to watch it more than once because the scary farmer tries to kill wilbur for being small and the pretty spider dies. 

sugar creek gang 

OKAY this is a book series from the 40s-70s about a group of christian little boys in indiana who went on adventures in the woods and helped people. my dad read a LOT of chapter books to me as bedtime stories when i was little (see also the mandie series, nancy drew and the hardy boys, little house on the prairie) but sugar creek gang is one that really hit. i read all 36 books with dad and at least once again on my own. there was a series of 4 or 5 movies in the early 2000s when i was the Perfect age to have a crush on most if not all of them. this might be too much detail but i have to tell you about these boys. we WILL not be revisiting the heavy religious themes. 

 the narrator is bill who is Good and Kind and wants to be a doctor when he grows up. his best friend is a chubby boy nicknamed poetry because he memorizes and quotes poems, he is the Detective of the group. BIG JIM is the leader of the group who is supposed to be like, 14, which was very cool and hot, to me. and yes there is a little jim, who is the baby of the group. then there is CIRCUS who is known for his climbing and acrobatics, and his FIVE SISTERS AND BEAUTIFUL SINGING VOICE. dreamboy. i’m almost done listing boys, i promise. a boy called dragonfly who is allergic to everything and hella superstitious. later in the series a new boy named tom moves to town and tom has an older brother bob who is NOT A CHRISTIAN (bully) 

tangentially, the buttercream gang, a movie from 1992 that was almost definitely made by some christians who grew up reading the sugar creek gang series which i’m guessing on vibes alone. will spare you Good Boy details but scott is in love with his best friend pete who moves to chicago and falls in with a bad crowd and scott just refuses to stop LOVING HIM. very gay christian film in retrospect. 

peter pan

so i know liking disney’s peter pan isnt niche, but it was the way i liked it. tinker bell stan from day one, i watched all of those disney fairies movies, even the ones that came out after i was definitely not intended audience. there was an online pixie hollow game where you could design your own fairies and play mini games where you gathered dew drops or something. had a HUGE CRUSH on jeremy sumpter in peter pan (2003) then i got really darkly obsessed with the idea of growing up when i was 12 or 13, and everything peter pan was deeply My Shit for my entire adolescence. i read the original book and every other twisted version of the story i could find and seriously freaked myself out about wasting my youth. 

shug

you’ve probably heard of jenny han now, or at least the netflix adaptations for to all the boys i’ve loved before and the sequel ps i still love you (always and forever, lara jean, coming soon?) but before she wrote THOSE, she wrote my first ever Favorite Book, about annemarie “shug” wilcox, a girl in the summer before starting middle school. it is SO engraved on my heart i cannot explain. i felt so incredibly understood and cant even tell you how many times i read it. thinking about all of the ways it made me feel SEEN is actually making me very tender so i’m gonna go on.  

the summer series

on the subject of jenny han, since she was now my Favorite author, when she came out with the summer i turned pretty in 2009, i was ALL IN. it’s not summer without you, and we’ll always have summer were published the next two years. a coming of age series about a girl isabel “belly” conklin who stays at her mother’s best friend's house at the beach in the summers. i really could talk about it forever yall. i actually dont know how to be succinct about it. i will try. her mom’s friend has TWO BOYS. one brother, jeremiah, is the golden boy and her best friend who is in love with her! the older one CONRAD is her childhood crush who's just sort of around while belly is firmly getting over her childish feelings and going out and experiencing teen beach life with jeremiah for the first time and figuring out who she is and wants to be! by the end of the summer he admits he feels differently about her (hence belly internalizing this as The Summer I Turned Pretty) and they get together. this is already too much so i will just say that the next two books deal with a PROFOUND LOSS and the selfishness of grief and the SELFLESSNESS OF CONRAD and i will absolutely lose my shit if netflix picks it up for a second jenny han series adaptation. 

pappyland

this was a kids show in the 90′s that features a character named Pappy Drew-It, an artist dressed like a 49er who lives in a magic cabin in pappyland. there’s tons of characters and music and life lessons but the meat of every episode is a detailed drawing how-to (pappy is actually a cartoonist, michael cariglio) and i have a hard back cover sketch book from my grandpa that i FILLED with drawings that pappy and DOODLEBUG taught me to do. there is a running gag that pappy always breaks his crayons.  

boy meets world

i KNOW this is beloved by many but i’m counting it because i’m simply too young to have such an obsession with it! the show ran from 1992-2000. i was born in 1996, but reruns on the disney channel and abc family cemented it as one of my favorite shows. cory and shawn, closer than brothers, shameless homoromantics, shawn is cory’s first wife!!!!! truly showed me what a best friend can and should be!!!!!! the great love of your life!!!!! TOPANGA, the og weird feminist girl who said stop shaving your legs and start speaking your mind, ladies! the characters are so richly developed that they are real people to my heart. YES every character on this show is in their late 30s-early 40s and YES i feel like we grew up together. in season one they’re in the 6th grade and we follow them all the way to COLLEGE. countless poignant life lessons, often literally dictated by the wise and hilarious MR. FEENY, cory’s next door neighbor and somehow one of his teachers for YEARS. my love was only solidified by the 2014 girl meets world reboot, centered on cory and topanga’s daughter and her best friend. (which was literally cancelled because disney didn’t want to transition from a kids show to a teen show, something essential to the original. also because that teen show would have had CANON LESBIANS. extremely shameful move in 2017!) boy meets world lives rent free in my heart and i will never evict it!!!!!!!

i consulted my mother when i got stumped for more and she reminded me that i had obsessions with the impressionist art period and babies and ANYTHING fairies or pixies, and i was way too young when my love of the canadian teen after school special degrassi began. she also said bob ross, which i was hesitant to include because he’s been super ~trendy in recent years, but to be fair (To Be Faaairrr) she’s right! i don’t think people really watched the joy of painting as much as i have throughout my life. best sick day show of all time.

lastly i could honestly list anna herself as a niche interest, my mom actually metioned that ive always hyperfixated on my girl friends (gay) but i’ll just note that YES friday night lights, YES barry lyga novels. love to share so many things with you, niche or not, they’re niche in Our Mind.

[the-marx-brothers-will-live-on]

Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian, actor, writer, stage, film, radio, and television star. A master of quick wit, he is generally considered to be one of America's greatest comedians.

Julius Henry Marx was born on October 2, 1890, in Manhattan, New York. Marx stated that he was born in a room above a butcher's shop on East 78th Street, "Between Lexington & 3rd", as he told Dick Cavett in a 1969 television interview. The Marx children grew up in a turn-of-the-century building on East 93rd Street off Lexington Avenue in a neighborhood now known as Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side of the borough of Manhattan. His brother Harpo, in his memoir Harpo Speaks, called the building "the first real home they ever knew". It was populated with European immigrants, mostly artisans. Just across the street were the oldest brownstones in the area, owned by people such as the well-connected Loew Brothers and William Orth. The Marx family lived there "for about 14 years," Groucho also told Cavett.

Marx's family was Jewish.[7] His mother was Miene "Minnie" Schoenberg, whose family came from Dornum in northern Germany when she was 16 years old. His father was Simon "Sam" Marx, who changed his name from Marrix, and was called "Frenchie" by his sons throughout his life, because he and his family came from Alsace in France.[8] Minnie's brother was Al Schoenberg, who shortened his name to Al Shean when he went into show business as half of Gallagher and Shean, a noted vaudeville act of the early 20th century. According to Marx, when Shean visited, he would throw the local waifs a few coins so that when he knocked at the door he would be surrounded by adoring fans. Marx and his brothers respected his opinions and asked him on several occasions to write some material for them.

Minnie Marx did not have an entertainment industry career but had intense ambition for her sons to go on the stage like their uncle. While pushing her eldest son Leonard (Chico Marx) in piano lessons, she found that Julius had a pleasant soprano voice and the ability to remain on key. Julius's early career goal was to become a doctor, but the family's need for income forced him out of school at the age of twelve. By that time, young Julius had become a voracious reader, particularly fond of Horatio Alger. Marx would continue to overcome his lack of formal education by becoming well-read.

After a few stabs at entry-level office work and jobs suitable for adolescents, Julius took to the stage as a boy singer with the Gene Leroy Trio, debuting at the Ramona Theatre in Grand Rapids, MI, on July 16, 1905.[9] Marx reputedly claimed that he was "hopelessly average" as a vaudevillian, but this was typical Marx, wisecracking in his true form. By 1909, Minnie Marx had assembled her sons into an undistinguished vaudeville singing group billed as "The Four Nightingales". The brothers Julius, Milton (Gummo Marx) and Arthur (originally Adolph, but Harpo Marx from 1911) and another boy singer, Lou Levy, traveled the U.S. vaudeville circuits to little fanfare. After exhausting their prospects in the East, the family moved to La Grange, Illinois, to play the Midwest.

After a particularly dispiriting performance in Nacogdoches, Texas, Julius, Milton, and Arthur began cracking jokes onstage for their own amusement. Much to their surprise, the audience liked them better as comedians than as singers. They modified the then-popular Gus Edwards comedy skit "School Days" and renamed it "Fun In Hi Skule". The Marx Brothers would perform variations on this routine for the next seven years.

For a time in vaudeville, all the brothers performed using ethnic accents. Leonard, the oldest, developed the Italian accent he used as Chico Marx to convince some roving bullies that he was Italian, not Jewish. Arthur, the next oldest, donned a curly red wig and became "Patsy Brannigan", a stereotypical Irish character. His discomfort when speaking on stage led to his uncle Al Shean's suggestion that he stop speaking altogether and play the role in mime. Julius Marx's character from "Fun In Hi Skule" was an ethnic German, so Julius played him with a German accent. After the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915, public anti-German sentiment was widespread, and Marx's German character was booed, so he quickly dropped the accent and developed the fast-talking wise-guy character that became his trademark.

The Marx Brothers became the biggest comedic stars of the Palace Theatre in New York, which billed itself as the "Valhalla of Vaudeville". Brother Chico's deal-making skills resulted in three hit plays on Broadway. No other comedy routine had ever so infected the Broadway circuit. All of this stage work predated their Hollywood career. By the time the Marxes made their first movie, they were already major stars with sharply honed skills; and by the time Groucho was relaunched to stardom on You Bet Your Life, he had been performing successfully for half a century.

Marx started his career in vaudeville in 1905 when he joined up with an act called The Leroy Trio. He was asked by a man named Robin Leroy to join the group as a singer, along with fellow vaudeville actor Johnny Morris. Through this act, Marx got his first taste of life as a vaudeville performer. In 1909, Marx and his brothers had become a group act, at first called The Three Nightingales and later The Four Nightingales. The brothers' mother, Minnie Marx, was the group's manager, putting them together and booking their shows. The group had a rocky start, performing in less than adequate venues and rarely, if ever, being paid for their performances. Eventually one of the brothers would leave to serve in World War I and was replaced by Herbert (Zeppo), and the group became known as the Marx Brothers. Their first successful show was Fun In Hi Skule (1910).

Marx made 26 movies, 13 of them with his brothers Chico and Harpo. Marx developed a routine as a wisecracking hustler with a distinctive chicken-walking lope, an exaggerated greasepaint mustache and eyebrows, and an ever-present cigar, improvising insults to stuffy dowagers (usually played by Margaret Dumont) and anyone else who stood in his way. As the Marx Brothers, he and his brothers starred in a series of popular stage shows and movies.

Their first movie was a silent film made in 1921 that was never released, and is believed to have been destroyed at the time. A decade later, the team made two of their Broadway hits—The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers—into movies. Other successful films were Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, and A Night at the Opera.[11] One quip from Marx concerned his response to Sam Wood, the director of A Night at the Opera. Furious with the Marx Brothers' ad-libs and antics on the set, Wood yelled in disgust: "You can't make an actor out of clay." Marx responded, "Nor a director out of Wood."

Marx also worked as a radio comedian and show host. One of his earliest stints was a short-lived series in 1932, Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel, costarring Chico. Though most of the scripts and discs were thought to have been destroyed, all but one of the scripts were found in 1988 in the Library of Congress. In 1947, Marx was asked to host a radio quiz program You Bet Your Life. It was broadcast by ABC and then CBS before moving to NBC. It moved from radio to television on October 5, 1950, and ran for eleven years. Filmed before an audience, the show consisted of Marx bantering with the contestants and ad-libbing jokes before briefly quizzing them. The show was responsible for popularizing the phrases "Say the secret word and the duck will come down and give you fifty dollars," "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?" and "What color is the White House?" (asked to reward a losing contestant a consolation prize).

Throughout his career, Marx introduced a number of memorable songs in films, including "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" and "Hello, I Must Be Going", in Animal Crackers, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It", "Everyone Says I Love You" and "Lydia the Tattooed Lady". Frank Sinatra, who once quipped that the only thing he could do better than Marx was sing, made a film with Marx and Jane Russell in 1951 entitled Double Dynamite.

In public and off-camera, Harpo and Chico were hard to recognize, without their wigs and costumes, and it was almost impossible for fans to recognize Groucho without his trademark eyeglasses, fake eyebrows, and mustache.

The greasepaint mustache and eyebrows originated spontaneously prior to a vaudeville performance in the early 1920s when he did not have time to apply the pasted-on mustache he had been using (or, according to his autobiography, simply did not enjoy the removal of the mustache because of the effects of tearing an adhesive bandage off the same patch of skin every night). After applying the greasepaint mustache, a quick glance in the mirror revealed his natural hair eyebrows were too undertoned and did not match the rest of his face, so Marx added the greasepaint to his eyebrows and headed for the stage. The absurdity of the greasepaint was never discussed on-screen, but in a famous scene in Duck Soup, where both Chicolini (Chico) and Pinky (Harpo) disguise themselves as Groucho, they are briefly seen applying the greasepaint, implicitly answering any question a viewer might have had about where he got his mustache and eyebrows.

Marx was asked to apply the greasepaint mustache once more for You Bet Your Life when it came to television, but he refused, opting instead to grow a real one, which he wore for the rest of his life. By this time, his eyesight had weakened enough for him to actually need corrective lenses; before then, his eyeglasses had merely been a stage prop. He debuted this new, and now much-older, appearance in Love Happy, the Marx Brothers's last film as a comedy team.

He did paint the old character mustache over his real one on a few rare occasions, including a TV sketch with Jackie Gleason on the latter's variety show in the 1960s (in which they performed a variation on the song "Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean," co-written by Marx's uncle Al Shean) and the 1968 Otto Preminger film Skidoo. In his late 70s at the time, Marx remarked on his appearance: "I looked like I was embalmed." He played a mob boss called "God" and, according to Marx, "both my performance and the film were God-awful!"

The exaggerated walk, with one hand on the small of his back and his torso bent almost 90 degrees at the waist was a parody of a fad from the 1880s and 1890s. Fashionable young men of the upper classes would affect a walk with their right hand held fast to the base of their spines, and with a slight lean forward at the waist and a very slight twist toward the right with the left shoulder, allowing the left hand to swing free with the gait. Edmund Morris, in his biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, describes a young Roosevelt, newly elected to the State Assembly, walking into the House Chamber for the first time in this trendy, affected gait, somewhat to the amusement of the older and more rural members. Marx exaggerated this fad to a marked degree, and the comedy effect was enhanced by how out of date the fashion was by the 1940s and 1950s.

Marx's three marriages ended in divorce. His first wife was chorus girl Ruth Johnson (m. 1920-42). He was 29 and she was 19 at the time of their wedding. The couple had two children, Arthur Marx and Miriam Marx. His second wife was Kay Marvis (m. 1945–51), Catherine Dittig, ormer wife of Leo Gorcey. Marx was 54 and Kay was 21 at the time of their marriage. They had a daughter, Melinda Marx. His third wife was actress Eden Hartford (m. 1954-69). He was 64 and she was 24 at the time of their wedding.

During the early 1950s, Marx described his perfect woman: "Someone who looks like Marilyn Monroe and talks like George S. Kaufman."

Marx was denied membership in an informal symphonietta of friends (including Harpo) organized by Ben Hecht, because he could play only the mandolin. When the group began its first rehearsal at Hecht's home, Marx rushed in and demanded silence from the "lousy amateurs". The musicians discovered him conducting the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the overture to Tannhäuser in Hecht's living room. Marx was allowed to join the symphonietta.

Later in life, Marx would sometimes note to talk show hosts, not entirely jokingly, that he was unable to actually insult anyone, because the target of his comment would assume that it was a Groucho-esque joke, and would laugh.

Despite his lack of formal education, he wrote many books, including his autobiography, Groucho and Me (1959) and Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (1963). He was a friend of such literary figures as Booth Tarkington, T. S. Eliot and Carl Sandburg. Much of his personal correspondence with those and other figures is featured in the book The Groucho Letters (1967) with an introduction and commentary on the letters written by Marx, who donated his letters to the Library of Congress. His daughter Miriam published a collection of his letters to her in 1992 titled Love, Groucho.

Marx made serious efforts to learn to play the guitar. In the 1932 film Horse Feathers, he performs the film's love theme "Everyone Says I Love You" for costar Thelma Todd on a Gibson L-5.

In July 1937, an America vs England pro-celebrity tennis doubles match was organized, featuring Marx and Ellsworth Vines playing against Charlie Chaplin and Fred Perry, to open the new clubhouse at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. Marx appeared on court with 12 rackets and a suitcase, leaving Chaplin – who took tennis seriously – bemused, before he asked what was in it. Marx asked Chaplin what was in his, with Chaplin responding he didn't have one. Marx replied, "What kind of tennis player are you?" After playing only a few games, Marx sat on the court and unpacked an elaborate picnic lunch from his suitcase.

Irving Berlin quipped, "The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl". In his book The Groucho Phile, Marx says "I've been a liberal Democrat all my life", and "I frankly find Democrats a better, more sympathetic crowd.... I'll continue to believe that Democrats have a greater regard for the common man than Republicans do". However, just like some of the other Democrats of the time, Marx also said in a television interview that he disliked the women's liberation movement. On the July 7, 1967, Firing Line TV show, Marx said, "The whole political left is the Garden of Eden of incompetence."

Marx's radio career was not as successful as his work on stage and in film, though historians such as Gerald Nachman and Michael Barson suggest that, in the case of the single-season Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel (1932), the failure may have been a combination of a poor time slot and the Marx Brothers' returning to Hollywood to make another film.

In the mid-1940s, during a depressing lull in his career (his radio show Blue Ribbon Town had failed, he failed to sell his proposed sitcom The Flotsam Family only to see it become a huge hit as The Life of Riley with William Bendix in the title role, and the Marx Brothers as film performers were well past their prime), Marx was scheduled to appear on a radio show with Bob Hope. Annoyed that he was made to wait in the green room for 40 minutes, he went on the air in a foul mood.

Hope started by saying "Why, Groucho Marx! Groucho, what are you doing out here in the desert?" Marx retorted, "Huh, desert, I've been sitting in the dressing room for forty minutes! Some desert alright..." Marx continued to ignore the script, ad-libbing at length to take the scene well beyond its allotted time slot.

Listening in on the show was producer John Guedel, who had a brainstorm. He approached Marx about doing a quiz show, to which Marx derisively retorted, "A quiz show? Only actors who are completely washed up resort to a quiz show!" Undeterred, Guedel proposed that the quiz would be only a backdrop for Marx's interviews of people, and the storm of ad-libbing that they would elicit. Marx replied, "Well, I've had no success in radio, and I can't hold on to a sponsor. At this point, I'll try anything!"

You Bet Your Life debuted in October 1947 on ABC radio (which aired it from 1947 to 1949), sponsored by costume jewelry manufacturer Allen Gellman;[23] and then on CBS (1949–50), and finally NBC. The show was on radio only from 1947 to 1950; on both radio and television from 1950 to 1960; and on television only, from 1960 to 1961. The show proved a huge hit, being one of the most popular on television by the mid-1950s. With George Fenneman as his announcer and straight man, Marx entertained his audiences with improvised conversation with his guests. Since You Bet Your Life was mostly ad-libbed and unscripted—although writers did pre-interview the guests and feed Marx ready-made lines in advance—the producers insisted that the network prerecord it instead of it being broadcast live. There were two reasons for this: prerecording provided Marx with time to fish around for funny exchanges and any intervening dead spots to be edited out; and secondly to protect the network, since Marx was a notorious loose cannon and known to say almost anything. The television show ran for 11 seasons until it was canceled in 1961. Automobile marque DeSoto was a longtime major sponsor. For the DeSoto ads, Marx would sometimes say: "Tell 'em Groucho sent you", or "Try a DeSoto before you decide".

The program's theme music was an instrumental version of "Hooray for Captain Spaulding", which became increasingly identified as Marx's personal theme song. A recording of the song with Marx and the Ken Lane singers with an orchestra directed by Victor Young was released in 1952. Another recording made by Marx during this period was "The Funniest Song in the World", released on the Young People's Records label in 1949. It was a series of five original children's songs with a connecting narrative about a monkey and his fellow zoo creatures.

An apocryphal story relates Marx interviewing Charlotte Story, who had borne 20 children. When Marx asked why she had chosen to raise such a large family, Mrs. Story is said to have replied, "I love my husband"; to which Marx responded, "I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while." The remark was judged too risqué to be aired, according to the anecdote, and was edited out before broadcast. Charlotte Story and her husband Marion, indeed parents of 20 children, were real people who appeared on the program in 1950. Audio recordings of the interview exist, and a reference to cigars is made ("With each new kid, do you go around passing out cigars?"), but there is no evidence of the claimed remark. Marx and Fenneman both denied that the incident took place. "I get credit all the time for things I never said," Marx told Roger Ebert in 1972. "You know that line in You Bet Your Life? The guy says he has seventeen kids and I say, 'I smoke a cigar, but I take it out of my mouth occasionally'? I never said that." Marx's 1976 memoir recounts the episode as fact, but co-writer Hector Arce relied mostly on sources other than Marx himself—who was by then in his mid eighties, in ill health and mentally compromised—and was probably unaware that Marx had specifically denied making the observation. Another anecdote that may or may not be apocryphal recounts how Warner Brothers threatened to sue Groucho when they learned that the next Marx Brothers film was to be called "A Night in Casablanca", contending that that title was too similar to their own film Casablanca. Groucho is reported to have replied: "I'll sue you for using the word Brothers."

By the time You Bet Your Life debuted on TV on October 5, 1950, Marx had grown a real mustache (which he had already sported earlier in the films Copacabana and Love Happy).

During a tour of Germany in 1958, accompanied by then-wife Eden, daughter Melinda, Robert Dwan and Dwan's daughter Judith, he climbed a pile of rubble that marked the site of Adolf Hitler's bunker, the site of Hitler's death, and performed a two-minute Charleston. He later remarked to Richard J. Anobile in The Marx Brothers Scrapbook, "Not much satisfaction after he killed six million Jews!"

In 1960, Marx, a lifelong devotee of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, appeared as Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, in a televised production of The Mikado on NBC's Bell Telephone Hour. A clip of this is in rotation on Classic Arts Showcase.

Another TV show, Tell It To Groucho, premiered January 11, 1962, on CBS, but only lasted five months. On October 1, 1962, Marx, after acting as occasional guest host of The Tonight Show during the six-month interval between Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, introduced Carson as the new host.

In 1964, Marx starred in the "Time for Elizabeth" episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, a truncated version of a play that he and Norman Krasna wrote in 1948.

In 1965, Marx starred in a weekly show for British TV titled Groucho, broadcast on ITV. The program was along similar lines to You Bet Your Life, with Keith Fordyce taking on the Fenneman role. However, it was poorly received and lasted only 11 weeks.

Marx appeared as a gangster named God in the movie Skidoo (1968), directed by Otto Preminger, and costarring Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing. It was released by the studio where the Marx Brothers began their film career, Paramount Pictures. The film received almost universally negative reviews. As a side note, writer Paul Krassner published a story in the February 1981 issue of High Times, relating how Marx prepared for the LSD-themed movie by taking a dose of the drug in Krassner's company, and had a moving, largely pleasant experience.

Marx developed friendships with rock star Alice Cooper—the two were photographed together for Rolling Stone magazine—and television host Dick Cavett, becoming a frequent guest on Cavett's late-night talk show, even appearing in a one-man, 90-minute interview. He befriended Elton John when the British singer was staying in California in 1972, insisting on calling him "John Elton." According to writer Philip Norman, when Marx jokingly pointed his index fingers as if holding a pair of six-shooters, Elton John put up his hands and said, "Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player," thereby naming the album he had just completed. A film poster for the Marx Bros. movie Go West is visible on the album cover photograph as an homage to Marx. Elton John accompanied Marx to a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar. As the lights went down, Marx called out, "Does it have a happy ending?" And during the Crucifixion scene, he declared, "This is sure to offend the Jews."

Marx's previous work regained popularity; new books of transcribed conversations were published by Richard J. Anobile and Charlotte Chandler. In a BBC interview in 1975, Marx called his greatest achievement having a book selected for cultural preservation in the Library of Congress. In a Cavett interview in 1971, Marx said being published in The New Yorker under his own name, Julius Henry Marx, meant more than all the plays he appeared in. As a man who never had formal schooling, to have his writings declared culturally important was a point of great satisfaction. As he passed his 81st birthday in 1971, however, Marx became increasingly frail, physically and mentally, as a result of a succession of minor strokes and other health issues.

In 1972, largely at the behest of his companion Erin Fleming, Marx staged a live one-man show at Carnegie Hall that was later released as a double album, An Evening with Groucho, on A&M Records. He also made an appearance in 1973 on a short-lived variety show hosted by Bill Cosby. Fleming's influence on Marx was controversial. Some close to Marx believed that she did much to revive his popularity, and the relationship with a younger woman boosted his ego and vitality. Others described her as a Svengali, exploiting an increasingly senile Marx in pursuit of her own stardom. Marx's children, particularly Arthur, felt strongly that Fleming was pushing their weak father beyond his physical and mental limits. Writer Mark Evanier concurred.

On the 1974 Academy Awards telecast, Marx's final major public appearance, Jack Lemmon presented him with an honorary Academy Award to a standing ovation. The award honored Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo as well: "in recognition of his brilliant creativity and for the unequalled achievements of the Marx Brothers in the art of motion picture comedy.” Noticeably frail, Marx took a bow for his deceased brothers. "I wish that Harpo and Chico could be here to share with me this great honor," he said, naming the two deceased brothers (Zeppo, still alive, was in the audience). He also praised the late Margaret Dumont as a great straight woman who never understood any of his jokes. Marx's final appearance was a brief sketch with George Burns in the Bob Hope television special Joys (a parody of the 1975 movie Jaws) in March 1976. His health continued to decline the following year; when his younger brother Gummo died at age 83 on April 21, 1977, Marx was never told for fear of eliciting still further deterioration of his health.

Marx maintained his irrepressible sense of humor to the very end, however. George Fenneman, his radio and TV announcer, good-natured foil, and lifelong friend, often related a story of one of his final visits to Marx's home: When the time came to end the visit, Fenneman lifted Marx from his wheelchair, put his arms around his torso, and began to "walk" the frail comedian backwards across the room towards his bed. As he did, he heard a weak voice in his ear: "Fenneman," whispered Marx, "you always were a lousy dancer." When a nurse approached him with a thermometer during his final hospitalization, explaining that she wanted to see if he had a temperature, he responded, "Don't be silly — everybody has a temperature." Actor Elliott Gould recalled a similar incident: "I recall the last time I saw Groucho, he was in the hospital, and he had tubes in his nose and what have you," he said. "And when he saw me, he was weak, but he was there; and he put his fingers on the tubes and played them like it was a clarinet. Groucho played the tubes for me, which brings me to tears."

Marx was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with pneumonia on June 22, 1977, and died there nearly two months later at the age of 86 on August 19, four months after Gummo's death.

Marx was cremated and the ashes are interred in the Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. He was survived by his three children and younger brother Zeppo, who outlived him by two years. His gravestone bears no epitaph, but in one of his last interviews he suggested one: "Excuse me, I can't stand up."

Litigation over his estate lasted into the 1980s. Eventually, Arthur Marx and his sisters were awarded the bulk of the estate, and Erin Fleming was ordered to repay $472,000.

[keepingupwithlinmanuel]

The Complete List of Lin-Manuel Miranda Projects

Where possible I have noted availability for purchase/viewing/listening. For future projects I’ve included as much detail as we have and I’ll keep updating the post when we have more. Cameos are listed separately at the end. If you think I’m missing anything, drop me a message/ask. 

This is a very long post because Lin works a lot, so I have saved your dashes and put the content behind a read more. Let’s go.

Freestyle Love Supreme (2003-)

What is it? Freestyle Love Supreme is an improv hip-hop comedy troupe started by Lin, Anthony Veneziale and Tommy Kail. It has had a long life playing clubs and comedy festivals all around the world and spawned a TV show in 2014. 

What did Lin do in it? Lin is one of the main MCs in the group.

How do I find it? For answers to all the FLS questions you’ve ever had, please see my incredibly comprehensive masterpost. The TV series is available for streaming if you have a Seeso subscription and can be purchased from iTunes/Amazon if you have US accounts.

In the Heights (2000, 2007, 2008, 2010)

What is it? In the Heights is a musical originally conceived, written and directed by Lin while a college sophomore. It was eventually developed into an Broadway show.

When was it on? Off-Broadway at the now defunct 37 Arts in 2007, on Broadway from 2008 to 2011. It had a US touring production from 2009 to 2011 and numerous authorized international productions since.

What did Lin do in it? He wrote the music and lyrics. He also starred as Usnavi in the entire off-Broadway production, the first year of the Broadway production and for the LA and Puerto Rico stops of the touring production.  

How do I find it? You can purchase the cast album wherever you buy music. It is also available on Spotify. If you want to see a production, there are plenty of regional/local productions running in the US, including the first authorized all-Spanish version in DC. Here are some clips from the Broadway production.

In the Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams (2008)

What is it? Chasing Broadway Dreams is a fantastic documentary by PBS on the making of In the Heights. Handily it also contains performance excerpts from the show. 

How do I find it? Right here on Youtube.

Working (2008)

What is it? Working is a musical with a book by Nina Faso and Stephen Schwartz and music by a small group of composers that originally ran on Broadway in 1978. In the late 00s Schwartz put together a new version (known as the 2012 revised version), adding new songs and trimming characters. 

When was it on? The new version has had a bunch of regional productions and is about to debut in the UK (as at May 2017).

What did Lin do in it? He contributed two new songs, Delivery and A Very Good Day. The first is about his own experiences as a McDonalds delivery boy, and the second about an immigrant nanny and an elderly care worker.

How do I find it? You can go here to see Lin talk about writing the songs and there are some videos floating around Youtube from regional/local productions. The London production produced a cast recording which includes Lin’s new songs.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (with Karen Olivo) (2008)

What is it? A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Junot Diaz about a nerdy Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey

What did Lin do in it? He read the UK version of the audiobook with Karen Olivo.

How do I find it? Amazon, Audiobook.com and an excerpt here.

West Side Story (2009)

What is it? The classic 1957 musical by Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins, recently revived by the surviving members of the original creative team (Sondheim and Laurents).

When was it on? The most recent Broadway revival opened in 2009 and closed in 2011.

What did Lin do in it? Lin was hired by the creative team to translate the dialogue spoken and lyrics sung by the Puerto Rican characters into Spanish. This included translating iconic songs such as I Feel Pretty, Tonight and A Boy Like That.

How do I find it? There’s a cast recording which is available for purchase and on Spotify. Here’s a sizzle reel of performance clips.

Sesame Street (2009-2013)

What is it? You know.

What did Lin do in it? Lin made his first appearance as the villainous Freddy Flapman in season 40 and also voiced a lamb (Lamb-Manuel, ahem) and performed the theme song of the Murray Has A Little Lamb segment. He composed the music for 5 songs in seasons 42-45, including “Rhymes with Mando”, which was nominated for a Day Time Emmy.

How do I find it? Should you wish to explore this aspect of Lin’s career, here is the segment with Freddy Flapman. Here is Lin as Lamb-Manuel. Here is the Emmy-nominated Rhymes With Mando and here’s a very familiar voice singing the Murray Has A Little Lamb theme.

The Electric Company (2009-2010)

What is it? Classic 1970s children’s TV series from PBS, revived in 2009 for 3 seasons.

When was it on? The revival produced 3 seasons which ran on PBS from 2009 to 2013. Members of Lin’s hip-hop comedy troupe Freestyle Love Supreme were heavily involved in the production as musical directors, cast members, composer/lyricists and guest stars.

What did Lin do in it? Lin wrote a number of songs and appeared on the show to perform them. He also appeared briefly as a character in season 2.

How do I find it? Here are all the songs and clips I can find:

Hard/soft 'c' Silent 'e' is a ninja Hard/soft 'g' Bossy 'r'

Here’s One Bad Apple parts 1 and 2. (A rap battle between an apple and Lin as a hot dog. Yep.)

Here’s a cute BTS segment with Shockwave and Lin.

House (2009-2010)

What is it? A medical drama that ran on Fox from 2004-2012.

What did Lin do in it? Lin guest-starred in season 6 episodes 1 and 21 as Juan “Alvie” Alvarez. 

How do I find it? On DVD, Bluray and streaming, if you are that way inclined. Here is a BTS interview about Lin’s return in which he refers to Alvie as “the other woman” who comes between House and Wilson.

Sad Sad Conversation (2010)

What is it? Hard to explain. Lemme quote from my own masterpost:  Sadsadconversation was an experimental Youtube vlog series started by the comedian Michael Ian Black and the actor Josh Malina in which a bunch of semi-famous people trying to make it in the entertainment industry posted videos of themselves, in MIB’s words, “bitching about our careers and how badly everything was going”. The videos gained an interactive element as the “cast” grew - the participants responding to each other’s videos and to comments below the line. It became a bit of a group therapy session between internet buddies.

When was it on? 2011-ish.

What did Lin do in it? Lin was invited by Josh Malina to join and participated enthusiastically for a while, although as the other founder Michael Ian Black later said, “you never really fit in because you’re never sad.“

How do I find it? I have helpfully compiled a masterpost of all Lin’s appearances for your viewing pleasure.

Vivo (2011-)

What is it? An animated movie musical about a “capuchin monkey with a thirst for adventure – and a passion for music – that makes a treacherous passage from Havana to Miami to fulfill his destiny”, originally developed by Dreamworks Animation.

When was it on? Good question. Lin started working on Vivo around 2010, only for the project to flounder in pre-production. It was picked up again by Sony in 2016 and is now slated for a 2020 release, with a script written by Lin’s good friend and frequent collaborator Quiara Alegria Hudes.

What did Lin do in it? He wrote all 11 of the songs.

How do I find it? In movie theaters in late 2020, if all goes well.

Tonys Awards Closing Number (2011)

What is it? The closing number of the 2011 Tony Awards, a patter verse written by Lin with the help of Tommy Kail which recapped the events of the ceremony itself.

What did Lin do in it? You can see Lin and Tommy writing the thing during the Tonys in this BTS video.

Modern Family (2011)

What is it? A comedy that’s been running on ABC since 2009.

What did Lin do in it? He guest-starred in episode 22 of season 2 as a dodgy salesman named Guillermo. My favourite thing about this whole deal is that he looked way too respectable so they had to give him a dodgy haircut and weird glasses.

How do I find it? On DVD, Bluray and streaming, if you are that way inclined.

Bring It On (2011-2012)

What is it? A musical very very loosely based on the movie of the same name, directed by In the Heights and Hamilton choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, with a libretto by Jeff Whitty and music and lyrics by Tom Kitt and Amanda Green.

When was it on? Bring It On premiered in Atlanta in 2011 and toured the US before playing a limited engagement on Broadway in 2012.

What did Lin do in it? Lin wrote about half the music and lyrics in collaboration with Tom Kitt and Amanda Green.

How do I find it? There’s a cast recording which is available for purchase and on Spotify. Here is a sizzle reel of clips from the Broadway production. Here is Lin and a few cast alumni doing selections from It’s All Happening at Ham4Ham.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012)

What is it? A Disney fantasy comedy drama film starring Jennifer Garner.

What did Lin do in it? Lin played Reggie, a botanist who was old friends with Jennifer Garner’s character.

How do I find it? On DVD, Bluray and streaming, if you are that way inclined.

Merrily We Roll Along (2012)

What is it? A musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim that was directed by Hal Prince. It opened in 1981 to disastrous reviews and closed after 16 performances.

When was it on? In 2012 Encores mounted a limited concert production incorporating significant revisions which ran in February of that year.

What did Lin do in it? Lin played one of the main characters, lyricist Charley, at the request of Stephen Sondheim.   

How do I find it? Miraculously, there’s a cast recording which is available for purchase and on Spotify. You can see some clips from this production here and here.

Tony Awards Opening/Closing Number (2013)

What is it? Lin teamed up with Tom Kitt to write “Bigger”, the opening number of the 2013 Tony Awards. He also repeated his 2011 trick with the closing number, but this time with a twist - he and Tommy rewrote Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys to fit the events of the evening as they happened. (“Bigger” was an enormous success and won Lin his Emmy.)

How do I find it? Here’s the opening and here’s the closing.

How I Met Your Mother (2013)

What is it? A sitcom that ran from 2005 to 2014 on CBS.

What did Lin do in it? He guest-starred in episode 11 of the final season as Gus, a fellow passenger on the bus with Marshall. (Fittingly, an episode written entirely in rhyme.)

How do I find it? On DVD, Bluray and streaming, if you are that way inclined. Here’s a small clip from Lin’s appearance.

Do No Harm (2013) 

[Don’t ask me why this photo is the way it is. Let’s just say it made the series look a lot more interesting than it actually was.]

What is it? A very short-lived medical drama that was cancelled by NBC after airing only two episodes due to horrific ratings. There were 13 episodes filmed.

What did Lin do in it? Lin played Dr. Ruben Marcado, a pharmacologist who is friends with the main character (played by Steve Pasquale). In his own words:

Do No Harm was like a writing residency for me. It was a bad NBC show and I was sixth on the call sheet and I took the job because I was like, it shoots in Philly and you’re going to be killed off in the 11th episode. So it was like signing a potential seven-year contract, which I was not interested in doing or going to L.A. I wanted to have time to write. I would have days free in Philly to write.

How do I find it? Should you wish to watch it, the show is available on NBC.com, Hulu and Amazon. Here’s a clip of Lin doing technobabble like he’s been in sci-fi all his life.

200 Cartas / Looking for Maria Sanchez (2013)

What is it? An indie romcom about a struggling Nuyorican comic book writer who falls in love at first sight with a woman named Maria Sanchez and goes on a journey to Puerto Rico to find her. Also starring former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres, and Jaime Camil.

When was it on? Limited release in 2013 in New York, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The film also played a bunch of festivals.

What did Lin do in it? He played the main character, Raul.

How do I find it? It is available on DVD, although you will have trouble finding it. I have also heard that it is available on HBO Go and would appreciate confirmation. Here’s the trailer with English subtitles.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2013)

What is it? An award-winning coming-of-age YA novel about queer Latinos set in Texas.

What did Lin do in it? He read the audiobook.

How do I find it? Here it is on Amazon, Audible and Audiobooks.com. Here is an excerpt of Lin reading it.

21 Chump Street (2014)

What is it? A 15-minute musical based on a true story reported by This American Life, starring Hamilton’s Anthony Ramos.

When was it on? One night only in 2014.

What did Lin do in it? He wrote the musical.

How do I find it? There’s a cast recording which is available for purchase. You can also buy the video of the live performance here. Here’s a taster of the first song. Warning: incredibly catchy.

…tick tick BOOM! (2014)

What is it? An autobiographical one-man musical by Jonathan Larson, adapted into a 3-actor piece after his death.

When was it on? Encores mounted a production starring Lin as Jon in June 2014 with the other parts played by Leslie Odom Jr and (at Lin’s invitation) Karen Olivo.

How do I find it? Unfortunately there is no cast recording. There are a bunch of clips on Youtube from the production though: here and here. And you want to watch this dress rehearsal video.

Hamilton (2015)

What is it? Hamilton: An American Musical began its off-Broadway run at the Public Theater in 2015 and moved to Broadway - you know what, if you’re here, I assume you know.

When was it on? On Broadway at the Richard Rodgers since 2015, in Chicago at the PrivateBank Theater since 2016, on tour in the US since 2017, and at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London starting in November 2017.

What did Lin do in it? He wrote the book, the music and the lyrics and co-arranged the music with Alex Lacamoire. He also starred as Hamilton during the off-Broadway production and the first year of the Broadway run, and in the #andpeggy company for the Puerto Rican stops on their tour.

How do I find it? See above. The cast album is available to purchase everywhere and on Spotify. Here are some clips from the off-Broadway and Broadway productions and from Chicago.

Ham4Ham (2015-2016)

What is it? In hindsight, difficult to explain. Ham4Ham was originally the name for the live Hamilton lottery outside the Richard Rodgers. Due to the number of people who showed up to the first one, Lin and Tommy Kail decided to do a little something for the waiting crowd. The frequency and medium of the performances varied over time and they’ve now stopped being a regularly scheduled thing but there are over 130 for you to enjoy in clip form. 

When was it on? The very first Ham4Ham took place before the first preview performance of Hamilton on Broadway. The very last featuring Lin was on the day of his last performance.

What did Lin do in it? He organised and hosted the majority of the Ham4Hams and performed in quite a lot of them.

How do I find it? I’m glad you asked. Here is a comprehensive masterpost for your viewing pleasure.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

What is it? Lin jokingly offered to write the cantina music for Force Awakens when he met JJ Abrams in 2015 and JJ Abrams took him up on it. (He did not tell the Moana people that he’d taken on yet another gig while he was starring in Hamilton and writing songs for Moana.) The song, as described by the Star Wars Wiki:

A lyrical song performed in Huttese, "Jabba Flow" was named after Jabba Desilijic Tiure, a Hutt crime lord. It's opening verse began by repeating "Oh, Jabba," followed by a repeated "No bata tu tu, muni, muni," which roughly translated as "No, lover, lover. It wasn't me," in Galactic Basic. The song featured mellow instrumentals, which included a hypolliope horn cluster, a seven-string hallikset, and a xyloxan.

What did Lin do in it? Lin co-wrote the song and sings on it.

How do I find it? The track is available for purchase and on Spotify. There’s also a Rick Rubin remix. Here’s Lin and JJ performing it on Star Wars Day.

Hamilton: the Revolution (2016)

What is it? Hamilton: The Revolution (aka the Hamiltome) contains both an annotated libretto of Hamilton and a moving, engaging account of the making of the show written by Lin’s good friend Jeremy McCarter.

What did Lin do in it? He contributed the annotations (which are not the same as the ones on Genius) and read them in the audiobook.

How do I find it? There is an ebook but I don’t recommend it. (This is a gorgeous book and the ebook doesn’t do it justice at all.) The actual book can be bought wherever you buy books. Here’s the audiobook.

Drunk History (2016)

What is it? A comedy series produced by Comedy Central which features comedians getting sloshed and retelling historical events, and having that retelling simultaneously re-enacted by other famous people.

What did Lin do in it? Unusually, the show devoted the entirety of season 4 episode 9 to Lin telling the story of Alexander Hamilton, being hyperverbal and giggly, singing loudly and drunk dialing people.

How do I find it? You can find the episode on DVD and via various streaming sites. Here are some clips from the episode.

Saturday Night Live (2016)

What is it? An American institution. For fellow non-US people, SNL is a late night TV sketch comedy/variety show which features a different celebrity guest host every episode.

When was it on? Lin hosted the second episode of season 42 which aired in October 2016. His opening monologue, which was built off My Shot from Hamilton and written the night before the show by him with the help of some of the SNL writers, went viral both because of its virtuosity and because it directly attacked one of the presidential candidates. Other notable sketches included one about Stranger Things, a sketch about a Latino immigrant which was almost entirely in Spanish, and an ode to high school cast parties.

How do I find it? If you are in the US you can watch the sketches and opening on NBC’s Youtube channel. I believe the episodes themselves are available for purchase on iTunes. The ode to high school cast parties is also available for purchase as a single.

Hamilton’s America (2016)

What is it? A movie-length documentary about the making of Hamilton and about Hamilton the man, featuring performance footage and interviews with everyone from Obama to Nas.

When was it on? Hamilton’s America premiered at the New York Film Festival and then on PBS in October 2016.

What did Lin do in it? He was one of the producers, featured heavily in the documentary as a performer and interview subject, and conducted some of the interviews in the film. 

How do I find it? If you are in the US you can stream it on PBS’ website. Otherwise here are a bunch of clips on YT.

Moana (2016)

What is it? A Disney animated movie musical set in the South Pacific and starring Pasifika/Maori actors in all the speaking roles.

What did Lin do in it? He co-wrote the music with Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’i and performs on the track We Know the Way.

How do I find it? The movie’s out on DVD, Bluray and streaming and as someone from that region I really do wholeheartedly recommend it. The soundtrack can be purchased wherever you buy music and it’s also on Spotify.

The Hamilton Mixtape (2016)/#hamildrops (2018)

What is it? A collection of demos, remixes and songs inspired by Hamilton, some with music videos.

What did Lin do in it? He co-produced the album, organised artists and basically oversaw the whole operation. He also contributed some unpublished Hamilton demos and a deeply personal verse to the track Wrote My Way Out. He performs on Found/Tonight and Cheering For Me Now.

How do I find it? The album can be purchased wherever you buy music and it’s also on Spotify. Here is a link to the Hamildrops.

Ducktales (2017-)

What is it? Reboot of the 80s animated series with an all-star voice cast.

What does Lin do in it? Lin plays Gizmoduck, aka Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera — a superhero who protects Duckburg, but also spends his days as an intern for Scrooge McDuck’s personal mad scientist, Gyro Gearloose.

How do I find it? It airs on Disney XD/Disney channel.

Curb Your Enthusiasm (2017)

What is it? HBO comedy starring Larry David.

What did Lin do in it? He guest-starred in 2 episodes of season 9 as an AU mean version of himself, complete with America Ferrera playing Vanessa.

How do I find it? On DVD, Bluray and streaming, if you are that way inclined. 

Gmorning, Gnight! (2018)

What is it? Collection of Lin’s good morning / good night tweets, illustrated by Jonny Sun.

How do I find it? Available in all the usual places books are sold. Also available as an audiobook read by Lin. 

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

What is it? A Disney musical fantasy comedy film directed by Rob Marshall adapting more of P L Travers’ Mary Poppins books. (So it’s a sequel to the 1964 classic, not a remake.) The film stars Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Angela Lansbury and Colin Firth.

When does it come out? It is schedule for release on 25 December 2018.

What does Lin do in it? Lin plays Jack the lamplighter, a friend of Mary’s. He’s doing a lot of singing and dancing.

His Dark Materials (2019)

What is it? BBC/HBO adaption of the beloved Phillip Pullman trilogy with an all star cast and crew. Already renewed for a second season.

When does it come out? No idea at this stage. Season 1 was filmed in Wales in 2018.

What does Lin do in it? Lin plays the balloonist Lee Scoresby.

Fosse/Verdon (2019)

What is it? Limited series about the famous choreographer and his muse.

When does it come out? No idea at this stage.

What does Lin do in it? He is executive producer. The rest of the Hamilton Cabinet are also heavily involved.

In the Heights (2020)

What is it? The long-awaited movie adaption of Lin and Quiara’s show, directed by Jon M Chu.

When does it come out? June 26, 2020!!!

What does Lin do in it? Lin is co-producing and might possibly write a few new songs. (I say this because he wrote extra music the last time the movie was in development back in 2010.) He has the last word on casting.

Kingkiller Chronicle (?)

What is it? A series of fantasy novels by Pat Rothfuss which are being adapted into films and a TV series. John Rogers has been announced as showrunner for the latter.

When does it come out? No idea at this stage.

What does Lin do in it? Lin is the “creative producer” of the whole enterprise alongside Pat Rothfuss and will be in charge of writing all the music. Rothfuss has expressed a desire for Lin to also be involved as an actor. 

The Little Mermaid (?)

What is it? Disney’s live-action remake of the classic animated film. 

When does it come out? No idea at this stage.

What does Lin do in it? He’s not quite sure himself, although Alan Menken is going around telling everyone that he and Lin will be writing new songs for the movie. The rest is all rumour-mill stuff.

Tick Tick...Boom (?)

What is it? A film adaption of the musical by Jonathan Larson (the one Lin starred in a production of in 2014).

When does it come out? No idea. Filming hasn’t even started yet.

What does Lin do in it? This will be his directing debut!

Cameos and guest appearances:

The Sopranos (2007)

Legally Brown: the Search for the Next Piragua Guy (2008)

The Polar Bears (2012)

Submissions Only (2012)

Smash (2013)

Studio Heads (2014)

Inside Amy Schumer (2016)

Difficult People (2016)

Love Make The World Go Around (2016) (and video)

Speech & Debate (2017)

My Brother My Brother & Me (2017)

Residente (2017)

BoJack Horseman (2017) 

Bartlett (2018)

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/rip-iconic-james-bond-roger-moore-dies-89-battle-cancer/

RIP: Iconic James Bond Roger Moore dies at 89 after battle with cancer

Best known for his iconic role playing James Bond, Roger Moore has died at the age of 89 after a battle with cancer. The Englishman also was suave as another hero, Simon Templar, in the British TV series 'The Saint.' “I would have loved to have played a real baddie,” he once said. Roger Moore, the handsome Londoner who portrayed James Bond in more films than anyone else and did so with cartoonish, cheeky charm and probably for a bit too long, has died. He was 89 (born on Oct. 14, 1927). Moore, who earlier made his reputation as a suave leading man on the television series Maverick, The Saint and The Persuaders!, died, with a message from his children shared on the actor's official Twitter account reading: "It is with a heavy heart that we must announce our loving father, Sir Roger Moore, has passed away today in Switzerland after a short but brave battle with cancer." It is with a heavy heart that we must announce our loving father, Sir Roger Moore, has passed away today in Switzerland after a short but brave battle with cancer. After George Lazenby was one and done as Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Moore took on the guise of Agent 007 in Live and Let Die (1973) and stayed for The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983) and A View to a Kill (1985), which hit theaters when he was nearly 58. He said it was his choice to leave the franchise. His Bond was more of a charmer than a fighter, more of a stirrer than was the shaker embodied by the first Bond, Scotsman Sean Connery. Moore took on the role with a grain of salt, not to mention cigars — as part of his contract, he reportedly was given unlimited Montecristos during production. “My personality is entirely different than previous Bonds. I’m not that cold-blooded killer type. Which is why I play it mostly for laughs,” he once said. Moore’s devilish smile and famously cocked eyebrow made his Bond a more polished, albeit less pugnacious, chap than former bodybuilder Connery’s robust warrior. The late Amy Winehouse apparently was a fan. On her song “You Know I’m No Good” from the 2006 album Back to Black, she sings, “By the time I’m out the door, you tear men down like Roger Moore.” “I probably just rhymed with door,” he once said. “Or she couldn’t find anything to rhyme with Connery.” Moore played Bond more than any other actor — while bedding a total of 19 beauties, by one count — and his films earned more than $1 billion at the box office. But he considered himself to be the fourth-best 007, trailing Connery, Daniel Craig and Lazenby. And after leaving the series, he acted only sporadically. Earlier, Moore starred for six seasons as the slick Simon Templar, who makes a living stealing from crooks, in the popular 1962-69 series The Saint, which aired in the U.K. on ITV and in the U.S. on NBC (an international hit, it sold to more than 80 countries.) In an October 2014 interview, Moore lamented the fact that he pretty much always played the good guy. “I wasn’t an Albert Finney or a Tom Courtenay,” he said. “I didn’t have their natural talent, I had to work quite hard at acting. My life’s been all right, but people like that get to play wonderful parts. I spent my life playing heroes because I looked like one. Practically everything I’ve been offered didn’t require much beyond looking like me. I would have loved to have played a real baddie.” Roger George Moore was born on Oct. 14, 1927, in Stockwell, England south of the River Thames in London. An only child, he was evacuated as a teen during World War II to Worthing, Sussex in southern England while his father remained in London, serving as a police constable who sketched crime scenes. His first job was with Publicity Pictures Production, a film company in London, which specialized in animated cartoons. He worked as a tracer and filler-in, made tea and ran errands. After he was fired, a friend suggested he could make some easy money serving as an extra on Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), then filming outside London. He played a Roman soldier in a crowd scene in the film that starred Claude Raines and Vivien Leigh, and the experience put his life on a new course. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (with future Miss Moneypenny Lois Maxwell), and by the end of the first term, he managed to get into a West End production of The Italian Straw Hat. Moore quickly landed more parts, including a role in another West End Theater production, The Circle of Chalk. In 1945, Moore was drafted and entered officer training school. He was sent to Germany after winning his commission, commanding a small supply depot. During his tour of duty, he joined the Combined Services Entertainment Unit in Hamburg, doing traveling shows throughout Europe. Upon his discharge, Moore landed a role in the musical comedy Trotti True (1949) but then experienced a long period of unemployment. During this time, he joined a repertory company, the Intimate Theatre; performed in such plays as Noel Coward’s Easy Virtue; and supported himself as a model for things like knitwear and toothpaste. After he understudied for David Tomlinson in a West End production of The Little Hut, Moore moved to Hollywood and within days got a role on a 1953 episode of the live NBC anthology series Robert Montgomery Presents. He played a tennis player who is the object of Elizabeth Taylor’s flirtation in the MGM drama The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), followed by parts in such films as the biopic Interrupted Melody (1955), starring Eleanor Parker and Glenn Ford; The King’s Thief (1955), with Ann Blyth and David Niven; Diane (1956) with Lana Turner; and The Miracle (1959), with Carroll Baker. Moore’s pretty-boy looks and confident manner elicited comparisons to a young Errol Flynn, and he landed his first starring role, portraying the title knight in the U.S.-British swashbuckling TV series Ivanhoe. He played swindler Silky Harris on the 1959-60 ABC series The Alaskans, and when James Garner quit Maverick in a breach-of-contract dispute, Moore stepped in as cousin Beauregarde “Beau” Maverick, even going so far as to wear the costumes that Garner had left behind. He would later quit the show as well. Disillusioned with television in the U.S., Moore starred in The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961) with Angie Dickinson and returned to England to make Romulus and the Sabines (1961), an Italian film about the founding of Rome. His co-star was Italian actress Luisa Mattioli, whom he married in 1969, after his divorce from singer Dorothy Squires was finalized. They had three children together before divorcing in 1996. British media mogul Lew Grade wanted Moore to star as Templar, the character created by author Leslie Charteris and played on the big screen by George Sanders in the 1940s (and by Val Kilmer in a 1997 film). His savoir-faire was perfect for the part, and Moore became an international celebrity. Grade also signed him to star in the big-screen thrillers Crossplot (1969) and The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) — he considered the latter to be his best film — and then approached him with another TV series, The Persuaders! Moore played English nobleman Lord Brett Sinclair opposite Tony Curtis as rogue New Yorker Danny Wilde, and the mismatched pair solved crimes in exotic locations in the 1971 ITV-ABC series. Around that time, Moore also served as the European managing director of Brut Productions, the show-business wing of Faberge cosmetic works. Working around his 007 assignments, Moore appeared in Shout at the Devil (1976) with Lee Marvin, The Wild Geese (1978) with Richard Burton, The Sea Wolves (1980) with Gregory Peck and Niven and The Cannonball Run (1981) with Burt Reynolds. He also starred in the 1976 NBC movie Sherlock Holmes in New York (Patrick Macnee played Dr. Watson and John Huston was Professor Moriarty). In 1999, Moore was awarded the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, and knighthood followed in 2003. He spent the past several years doing charity work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Survivors include his wife Kristina, whom he married in 2002, and children Deborah, Geoffrey and Christian. After to describe his version of Bond in relation to others, Moore told NPR in November 2014: “I look like a comedic lover, and Sean [Connery] in particular, and Daniel Craig now, they are killers. They look like killers. I wouldn’t like to meet Daniel Craig on a dark night if I’d said anything bad about him. “George [Lazenby], Timothy [Dalton] and Pierce [Brosnan], we’ve been together, the four of us. But Sean, Sean really was sort of not that enamored of being confused with James Bond all the time. Sean … damn good actor, but he felt that he was only being remembered for Bond. I personally don’t give a damn. I just want to be remembered as somebody who paid his debts.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

[aion-rsa]

Kung Fu: Inside The History of a Martial Arts Classic

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It’s been a long journey for The CW to snatch that Kung Fu pebble from the master’s (Warner Bros.) hand, but the new reboot of Kung Fu could not have come at a better time.

Issues of diversity and representation have been at the forefront of our cultural conversations for years now. The rise in Asian hate crimes – nearly a 150% increase in 2020 – has made #StopAsianHate a frequent trending topic on social media. For The CW to launch a show with a Chinese leading actress and a largely Asian cast right now makes a bold statement for inclusivity that lives up to the network’s longstanding slogan “Dare to Defy.”

What’s more, Kung Fu is promoting itself as an Asian family drama which could fill a newly opened gap. Two wildly successful Asian family sitcoms just went off the air – ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat ended its six-season run in 2020 and Kim’s Convenience announced that their final episode after a five-season run will be April 13, 2021 (In the wake of Kim’s Convenience, CBC is launching a spinoff series, Strays, following the character of Shannon Ross, the only white actor credited in show’s opening). This leaves the door wide open for Kung Fu to capture fans of Asian family dramas. Plus it’s The CW, a network that thrives on soap opera-esque dramas. 

CW’s reboot is a complete reimagining of Kung Fu, but what of the legacy of the original franchise? Will this new version bring honor to the Kwai Chang Caine a.k.a. Grasshopper? The original Kung Fu series was groundbreaking in its own way. The show garnered critical acclaim including three Primetime Emmys and two Golden Globe nominations. Even though David Carradine’s Kwai Chang Caine would be called out for whitewashing today, with its heavy reliance on Daoist philosophy, Kung Fu provided many Americans with their first taste of many aspects of Chinese culture, especially Shaolin martial arts. It also had the largest Asian supporting cast of any show for decades to come. 

The Shaolin Temple Days

When the original Kung Fu premiered in 1972, it was the right time too. The pilot was such a big hit that the network decided to show it again (remember this was long before the invention of VHS – back then your only chance to see a show was to watch it when it was broadcast). However, the second showing was preempted by President Richard Nixon shaking hands with Chairman Mao Zedong. China was opening its bamboo curtain to America at the same time Kung Fu was telecast. 

Kung Fu ran for only three seasons on ABC and yet it holds a special place in the hearts of its long standing fans. Kwai Chang Caine was a barefoot half-Asian mendicant monk from the Shaolin Temple who travelled the old west in search of his long-lost half-brother, Danny Caine (Tim McIntire). Caine was a wanted man because he took revenge. He killed the Emperor’s nephew who killed his beloved blind master, Master Po (Keye Luke). Beyond casting almost every Asian actor in the business back then, Kung Fu had an astonishing list of guest stars like Gary Busey, Jodie Foster, Harrison Ford, William Shatner, and many others. 

The Chinese Connection: Bruce Lee Vs. Kwai Chang Caine

For decades, it was rumored that Kung Fu was ripped off from martial arts legend Bruce Lee. Lee had written a treatment that was remarkably similar – a story of Chinese immigrant martial arts master who landed in America during the Wild West era. However, in the definitive biography Bruce Lee: A Life, biographer Matthew Polly uncovered substantial evidence that Warner Brothers already had Kung Fu in development prior to Lee’s pitch. Nevertheless, Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, claims that her father auditioned for the part of Caine and was rejected because, ironically, he was Chinese. She went on to develop her father’s treatment into Cinemax’s Warrior (another recent show with a predominantly Asian cast that was cancelled last year).

After the original show ended, Carradine returned to the iconic role of Caine several times. In 1986, Kung Fu: The Movie aired on ABC, reuniting Carradine with Keye Luke and introducing Caine’s estranged son Chung Wang. Even more ironic, Chung Wang was played by none other than Bruce Lee’s son, Brandon Lee. 

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Kung Fu: The Movie was a steppingstone towards a spinoff series attempt, Kung Fu: The Next Generation, with Brandon Lee playing Johnny Caine. Carradine was not involved in this series. Set in modern times instead of the Old West, Johnny Caine was the great grandson of Kwai Chang Caine, but not the Kwai Chang Caine of the original series. The TNG Kwai Chang Caine was named for his great-grandfather – Carradine’s original character – and played by David Darlow. Brandon Lee was cast as both Kwai Chang Caine’s son and his great great great great grandson. Kung Fu: The Next Generation was not picked up. It was only telecast on an unusual short-lived TV showcase called CBS Summer Playhouse, which ran failed pilots every week. Six years later, Brandon Lee died in a tragic on set accident while filming The Crow.

Twenty years after the original series, David Carradine reprised the role of Kwai Chang Caine, or rather the grandson of Kwai Chang Caine, also named Kwai Chang Caine (not the father of the TNG Kwai Chang Caine because the failure of the pilot removed it from canon). That was the first real reboot of the series – Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Set in modern times again, Caine was paired with a new son, Detective Peter Caine (Chris Potter). The series ran for four seasons, logging twenty-four more episodes than the original. 

After that, Carradine never returned to Caine. He went on to promote martial arts with his book, Spirit of Shaolin, which he wrote in 1991, and some instructional Kung Fu videos that he made in the mid-90s. Carradine was never able to completely shake being typecast by the iconic role of Caine. Over the course of over 200 roles, a few more Carradine parts echoed Grasshopper. Fans were delighted to see him play the flute as Bill in Tarantino’s Kill Bill films (the flute was Caine’s signature accoutrement). Tarantino also referenced Kung Fu in Pulp Fiction when Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) tells Vincent (John Travolta) that he plans to walk the earth like “Caine in Kung Fu.”

In 2008, Carradine played “Crane”, a martial art monk just like Caine, in Kung Fu Killer, a two-part mini-series for Spike TV. Carradine claimed that the role was based on an actual historical figure, which he alleges is how the production worked around Warner Bros.’ copyright on Caine. But Carradine was never able to provide the name of that historical figure. He believed that Crane and Caine were ‘diametrically opposed’ but aside from being more violent (in one fight, Crane knocks an opponent so hard that his spine graphically bursts out of his back) viewers are hard pressed to separate them. The series was slated to have three more installments, but those never happened.

The Barefoot Journey to The CW

Kwai Chang Caine had to walk a lot of rice paper before the character could become this new incarnation of Nicky Shen (Olivia Liang) for CW’s reimagining of the franchise. The first major talk of reboot was back in 2011 (on Halloween no less). Bill Paxton (Aliens, Predator 2) was in talks to direct a screen adaptation. John McLaughlin (Black Swan, The Patriot) was tapped to write the script. The production was from Legendary Entertainment and plans were being made to shoot in China. Paxton said they had intended to follow the original story more or less – Caine ventures across the American West of the 1870s in search of his birth father instead of his half-brother. Paxton claimed that his new production would enrich the scale and grandeur to the level that the show always deserved. This was to be feature films under Warner Brother’s Chinese cooperative venture, Legendary East. As the project developed, other writers who became associated with the reboot film included Cory Goodman (Priest) and Rich Wilkes (xXx)

In 2014, Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!) was in talks to direct Kung Fu for Legendary. If the deal had been signed, Luhrmann planned to rewrite McLaughlin’s script. Paxton died in 2017 but his name had faded from talk of the reboot prior to his passing. 

In an unexpected twist, Universal announced that it was opting Kung Fu for a feature length film in early 2020. At the helm is none other than stuntman-turned director David Leitch (John Wick, Deadpool). Leitch has also been attached to a remake of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (another property with a long history of attempted remakes). However, since the initial announcements, there’s been no information on the further development on either project from Leitch. 

On the TV side of things, Fox grabbed Kung Fu in 2017 for a new series. Greg Berlanti (Arrow, The Flash) came on board to produce with Wendy Mericle (Arrow, Desperate Housewives) penning the script. This incarnation was the first mention of changing the gender of the main protagonist. The new lead was to be Lucy Chang, a Shaolin nun. Instead of being set in the Old West, she was to be living in the 1950s. And instead of searching for her half-brother, it was her kidnapped child. 

In a successive treatment, Lucy was set in modern times. She was to inherit her father’s Chinatown Kung Fu school, only to discover that it secretly operated as a center to help those in desperate need. Lucy was partnered with a Korean War veteran named J.T. Cullen. The reboot moved to the CW in 2019 with Christina M. Kim (Blindspot, Hawaii Five-0) taking over as writer and producer and Berlanti still attached as a producer. The story is reimagined with Nicky Shen as a young Chinese American woman in contemporary times, who leaves to find herself at a monastery in China, and then returns to her family in America.

In the pilot, there’s no explicit connection given between Nicky and Kwai Chang Caine so far (save for the quick appearance of a grasshopper). Kung Fu is a complete re-imagining, so all bets are off. But as the season progresses, who knows what references and homages are possible? Reboots thrive on their Easter eggs nowadays, and even if Nicky isn’t within the Caine bloodline, Kung Fu will be well served by tucking some call-backs to the original show. 

Will Nicky have to walk rice paper and snatch pebbles from her master’s hand? Will she get those classic Shaolin Dragon and Tiger forearm brands? If she does then perhaps Kung Fu will be the right show for its time while still honoring what came before it.

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Kung Fu premieres on the CW on April 7, 2021.

The post Kung Fu: Inside The History of a Martial Arts Classic appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[papermoonloveslucy]

THE LUCIE ARNAZ SHOW

April 2, 1985

Produced by Sam Denhoff Productions and Taft Entertainment Television

Producers: Susan Seeger, Kathy Speer, Terry Grossman

“The Lucie Arnaz Show” was based on the British television sitcom “Agony” (1979-81) starring Maureen Lipman as Dr. Jane Lucas. The original series ran for 20 episodes on LWT (London Weekend Television). Guest cast included actors like Bill Nighy, Rosalind Ayres, Miranda Richardson, and Phyllida Law.

On “Here’s Lucy” there was an attempt to spin off Lucie’s character of Kim Carter for her own sitcom. In 1972, the last episode of season 4, “Kim Cuts You-Know-Who’s Apron Strings” (HL S4;E24), essentially served as the pilot for a story that had Kim moving to her own apartment, introducing a new cast of characters, one of whom was Lucy’s brother Herb, an uncle invented for the new series. CBS did not pick-up the pilot for production and Arnaz remained part of the regular cast of “Here’s Lucy” in seasons 5 and 6. While it seems unlikely that Lucille Ball was incapable of convincing CBS to pick up the new series, most likely Ball didn’t want to pressure CBS due to Vivian Vance’s sudden illness. Without Vance to fill-in as Lucy’s side-kick, Lucie was needed on “Here’s Lucy.” 

After viewing the pilot CBS made a six episode commitment to the show, but recast everyone but Lucie and Karen Jablons-Alexander (Loretta). Broadway’s Chip Zien was one of the casting casualties. CBS aired all six episodes (with a two-month break after episode 4) but they declined to pick up the show for their Fall 1985 schedule. 

CBS also made the executive decision to change the title from “Agony” to “The Lucie Arnaz Show,” a decision Lucie was conflicted about. While she was flattered to have her name on a show she felt good about, she felt it was not a show about Lucie Arnaz, but Jane Lucas. In England, the term ‘Agony Aunts’ applies to those who give advice, much like Dear Abby or Ann Landers in America. CBS insisted the title was too short to be quickly found and understood in the TV listings. 

Unlike her mother’s sitcoms, the show was NOT filmed with three cameras in front of a studio audience, but on location in New York City with one camera. 

Between the time the pilot was shot (late 1984) and production resumed after CBS gave the show the green light, Lucie Arnaz became pregnant with her third child, Kate. Production was sped up and Arnaz’s wardrobe successfully hid her pregnancy from viewers. Coincidentally, Lucille Ball herself was pregnant with Lucie when filming the pilot for “I Love Lucy” in 1951. 

CBS picked up the show as a replacement series for “Alice”, a sitcom starring Linda Lavin that ended its 9 season run on March 19, 1985. Although Monday nights had been lucky for Lucille Ball, Lucie Arnaz was given Tuesday evenings, taking the 8:00pm time slot of “The Jeffersons” which moved to 8:30pm for its final months on the air. “The Jeffersons” aired its final episode on June 25, two weeks after the end of “The Lucie Arnaz Show,” so CBS moved it back to 8pm and aired it alongside a rerun of “Alice” at 8:30pm. 

Series Premise 

“Advice Radio 88 - Your spot for music and mental health in the afternoon”.

Lucie Arnaz plays Dr. Jane Lucas, a radio call-in host in New York City, who also writes a newspaper column and holds down a private practice. She has to deal with her eccentric secretary Loretta, her chauvinistic boss Jim, her immature co-host Larry, and her interfering sister Jill. 

“The always ingratiating Miss Arnaz as a psychologist who not only writes an advice column, but also takes calls from listeners on her own radio program." ~ New York Times

The show features Jane contending (by phone) with her over-protective mother. Viewers cannot help but think of the real-life mother Lucille Ball, who looms large over the CBS sitcom world. In fact, promo material for the series touted 'You'll Love This Lucie!’ 

In the mid-1960s, CBS employed Abigail Van Buren to bring her “Dear Abby” advice column to the airwaves just as Dr. Jane Lucas did on Advice Radio 88′s “The Love and Lucas Show” in the mid-1980s.

CBS also recruited Lucille Ball to do a daily 15 minute talk show (as herself) titled “Let’s Talk To Lucy”.  Although not strictly an advice show, Ball was known to speak her mind if she was so inclined. 

In addition to her co-hosting duties at WPLE, Jane writes a column for the Daily Mirror, which was also the name of the newspaper that Lucy Ricardo read about Rosemary in “Lucy is Jealous of Girl Singer” (S1;E10).

Although it was a real-life newspaper, New York’s Daily Mirror ceased publication in 1963, making it fictional in Jane Lucas’s New York, but not Lucy Ricardo’s! 

Jane lives in Apartment 4A on East 70th Street. From 1951 to May 1953, the Ricardos lived in Apartment 4A on East 68th Street. 

Jane plays short-stop for the WPLE softball team. Lucy Carmichael and Viv Bagley played softball for the Danfield Volunteer Fire Department in “Lucy and Viv Play Softball” (TLS S2;E23) in 1963. 

Although she played music instead of dispensing advice, Lucy Carmichael hosted a radio show in “Lucy the Disc Jockey” (TLS S3;E26) in 1965. 

In 1981, the same year “Agony” ended in Great Britain, Desi Arnaz Jr. was in a TV movie titled “Advice to the Lovelorn” starring Chloris Leachman as an advice columnist named Maggie Dale. The telefilm served as a pilot for a series that was not picked up for production. 

In 1933, the same year Lucille Ball arrived in Hollywood, United Artists released a film adaptation of the Nathaniel West novel “Miss Lonelyhearts” titled Advice to the Lovelorn (later changed to Advice to the Forlorn), about a newspaper reported demoted to writing the lonely hearts column of his newspaper. It featured “I Love Lucy” character actor Charles Lane.  

In 1958, the story was remade again, this time with Montgomery Clift as the demoted reporter writing to the heartbroken. This version was titled Lonelyhearts and was adapted by Dore Schary, and produced by Walter Reilly, both of whom were characters on “I Love Lucy”. 

Finally, just a year before “The Lucie Arnaz Show” started filming its pilot, PBS presented a more faithful adaptation of “Miss Lonelyhearts” starring Eric Roberts as the writer. 

In 2020, “The Lucie Arnaz Show” began streaming on Tubi, a free TV streaming service. 

“I wasn’t anxious to do a television series. I have no desire to become any more famous than I already am--and I don’t mean that egotistically. It’s just that I’ve been well known for...well, really ever since I was born, because of whose daughter I was, and I’ve never had a burning ambition to be famous. I grew up with it; I know what it’s like.” ~ Lucie Arnaz, Los Angeles Times  

REGULAR CAST

Lucie Arnaz (Dr. Jane Lucas) is the real-life daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. She was born in 1951 just before the premiere of “I Love Lucy.” Lucille Ball was actually pregnant during the filming of the show’s pilot. Despite rumors to the contrary, Lucie Arnaz never appeared on “I Love Lucy.” Lucie played Cynthia (as well as other characters) on “The Lucy Show.”  She has been twice married, to actor Phil Vandervort (1971) and actor-writer Laurence Luckinbill (1980–present). She has three children  with Luckinbill: Simon, Joseph, and Katharine. She now lives in Palm Springs, California, near the home once owned by her parents. 

Jane is 31 years old and a graduate of New York University. Arnaz was actually 33 and did not attend college. 

Tony Roberts (Jim Gordon, Jane’s Boss) and Lucie Arnaz were both presenters at the 1981 Tony Awards aired on CBS.  Coincidentally, Roberts was on Broadway in They’re Playing Our Song, although he joined the cast after Lucie Arnaz’s departure, playing opposite Anita Gillette as Sonia Walsk. In March 1985, just prior to the airing of this sitcom, Roberts, Arnaz, and Lucille Ball were three of the “Night of 100 Stars 2″ at Radio City Music Hall. In 2018, Roberts and Arnaz were two of the many stage stars interviewed for the Rick McKay documentary Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age.

Karen Jablons-Alexander (Loretta, Jane’s Secretary) was born in 1951 in Trenton, New Jersey. Aside from this short-lived series, she only has two other screen credits, both in 1991: a day player on “General Hospital” and a background character on the film True Colors.  Aside from Lucie Arnaz, Jablons-Alexander was the only actor CBS retained from the pilot episode. 

Lee Bryant  (Jill, Jane’s Sister) is probably best remembered as Mrs. Hammen in both Airplane! and Airplane 2: The Sequel. From 1978 to 1979 Bryant starred in TV commercials for Yuban coffee, where she played a wife who can't understand why her husband never wants to drink a second cup of her coffee. She also played Fran, ex-wife of  “T.J. Hooker” (1982-83). 

Todd Waring (Larry Love, Jane’s Co-Host) made his series TV debut with this show. He has been continually working ever since. He is married to actor Eve Gordon and has two children. 

Tippy (Larry’s Invisible Dog) 

Each episode began with a different handwritten note from a listener, after which, the credits begin. 

EPISODES (aired in filming order)

April 2, 1985 - “The Old Boyfriend” (S1;E1) 

Synopsis: Discovering that her old beau had indulged in a few lies, Dr. Lucas decides that ''after 12 years, I can put down the torch.''  At the half-hour's end, she advises a listener that ''happiness is being aware of the fact that you're not going to be happy all of the time.''

Director: Ed Feldman

Writers: Susan Seeger

Rating 12.6 ~ In its first outing, the show attracted 20% of viewers, a sliver better than “Three’s a Crowd” on ABC, but well below “The A-Team” on NBC, which got 37%.

GUEST CAST

John Getz (Scott, Jane’s Old Boyfriend) is an Iowa-born theatre actor who appeared in the workshop and very first production of the musical The Robber Bridegroom. Goetz was standby for Robert Klein in Broadway’s They’re Playing Our Song starring Lucie Arnaz. One of Getz's earliest roles was as ‘Shampoo Man’ in a Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo commercial shot in the late 1970s. He has recently been seen on “Better Call Saul” and “Grace & Frankie.”

Gene Klavan (Mel, Engineer) was born on May 4, 1924 in Baltimore, Maryland. Klaven was a popular talk radio personality although on screen he was primarily a voice actor. He left radio in 1980 and died on April 8, 2004.

Thomas Quinn (Cab Driver) is best known as Desk Sergeant Martin on the CBS sitcom “Baker’s Dozen” (1981). 

TRIVIA

555-WPLE was the advice line phone number, adhering to the old film and TV practice of using 555 as a telephone exchange.  

The opening scene was filmed on location in front of the Ed Sullivan Theatre (above today), then home to the CBS sitcom “Kate & Allie”. Coincidentally, in 1987 “Kate & Allie” did an episode where Allie (Jane Curtain) dreams she is in “I Love Lucy.”

Across the street from the Ed Sullivan Theatre is the Broadway Theatre, where Anthony Quinn was performing in a revival of the 1968 musical Zorba. The revival ran from October 16, 1983 to September 2, 1984, which means the scene was shot sometime in late summer 1984.

On her office bulletin board, there is a Playbill for the musical My One and Only which opened on Broadway on May 1, 1983 and closed on March 3, 1985. It then launched a National Tour starring Sandy Duncan and Tommy Tune. Lucie Arnaz replaced Duncan on the second half of the tour. Lucie won the famed Chicago Sarah Siddons Award for her performance.

A view of the Empire State Building starts the final scene at the baseball diamond. Location footage of the Empire State Building was also seen in “Bon Voyage” (ILL S5;E13) as the helicopter carrying Lucy Ricardo toward the SS Constitution flies over Manhattan.

One of the most memorable episodes of “I Love Lucy” involved Lucy and Ethel (dressed as women from Mars) scaling the observation deck of the New York City landmark, although there was no establishing footage and the episode was filmed entirely in Hollywood. 

The final scene of the episode takes place at a Central Park baseball field. Could this be the same field where Lucille Ball played for the Broadway Show League in 1961, batting for Wildcat with Julie Andrews (Camelot) as catcher and Joe E. Brown as ump? 

April 9, 1985 - “Sisters” (S1;E2) 

Synopsis: Jane's sister visits her for the week while her family is out of town.

Director: Ed Feldman

Writer: Susan Seeger, Kathy Speer & Terry Grossman

Rating 10.5 ~ The show fell to third place in its time period, drawing just 16% of the audience.

GUEST CAST

Melissa Joan Hart (Sarah, Jane’s Niece) was an 8 year-old from Long Island when she made her TV debut with this episode. She is best known for playing the leading roles in “Clarissa Explains It All For You” (1991-94) and “Sabrina The Teenage Witch” (1996-2003). 

Sandy Schwartz (Billy, Jane’s Nephew, uncredited)

Gwyn Gilliss (Peggy Gordon, Jim’s Wife) is a NY stage actor who is best known as Lisette Grummond on over 800 episodes of the soap opera “Loving”.  She was also seen on the daytime dramas “All My Children,” “As The World Turns,” “Another World,” and “Ryan’s Hope.” 

Kate McKeown (Sister Bernadette) 

Richard Zavaglia (Sam, Engineer)

Douglas Seale (Mr. Beverly, Jane’s Neighbor) was born in London in 1913. He was a New York stage actor seen in the original casts of The Dresser (1981) and Noises Off (1985), which earned him a Tony nomination. He was the voice of the Sultan in Aladdin (1992) and the voice of Krebbs in The Rescuers Down Under (1990). He died in 1999 at age 85.

Jane attends an event at the Club El Morocco. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were just two of the many celebrities who spent evenings at the Club, known for its zebra-print banquettes. 

PRESS

“Will Miss Arnaz get better scripts to showcase her decidedly appealing personality? Perhaps only Sam Denhoff, the creator and executive producer, knows for sure.” ~ New York Times, April 9, 1985

April 23, 1985 - “Good Sports” (S1;E3) 

Synopsis: Jane gets a poor review from a Sports writer (Danny Aiello).

Director: Allan Baron

Writers: Kathy Speer & Terry Grossman

Rating 9.2 ~ The show was not aired the previous week due to the mini-series “Space”. This week the show was up against two repeats, and still lost its time slot. 

GUEST CAST

Danny Aiello (Dick Rosetti, Sports Columnist) was nominated for an Oscar of 1989′s Do The Right Thing. In 2016, Aiello and Lucie Arnaz were both voices in the animated film Henry & Me. He appeared with Tony Roberts in the films Key Exchange (1985) and Radio Days (1987). He died in 2019 at age 86.

Dick Boccelli (Dominick, Bar Patron)

Frank Gio (Frankie, Bartender)

Richard Zavaglia (Sam, Engineer)

April 30, 1985 - “Larry Writes the Songs” (S1;E4) 

Synopsis: Jane reviews Larry's song lyrics.

Director: Allen Baron

Writer: Bob Colleary

Rating 7.5 ~  Once again the show was up against two repeats, and still lost its time slot.

GUEST CAST

Ray DeMattis (Vitto, Mr. Gordon’s Barber) made his TV debut with this episode. He is a New York stage actor who was also seen in several TV shows featuring Bill Cosby. 

Melissa Joan Hart (Sarah, Jane’s Niece)

Sandy Schwartz (Billy, Jane’s Nephew)

Ted Schwartz (Buzzy Cone, Emcee)

Carol Siskind (Cookie, Stand-Up Comic)

Richard Zavaglia (Sam, Engineer)

Douglas Seale (Mr. Beverly, Jane’s Neighbor)

June 4, 1985 - “Jane’s Desperate Hour” (S1;E5) 

Synopsis: Jane helps a young woman with an abusive husband.

Directed by: Peter Baldwin

Written by: Len Richmond & Sam Denhoff

Rating 6.4 ~ Not only did the episode lose its time slot to reruns, it was the lowest rated show of the evening on all three networks.

GUEST CAST

Kit LeFever (Marie, Jane’s Patient)

Raymond Baker (Ralph, Marie’s Husband)

Clarence Felder (Rocky, Jane’s Patient)

Mark Kaplan (Cop)

Richard Zavaglia (Sam, Engineer)

Douglas Seale (Mr. Beverly, Jane’s Neighbor)

June 11, 1985 - “Birthday Blues” (S1;E6)

Synopsis:  Jane puts together a 'surprise' birthday party for Mr. Gordon.

Director: Peter Baldwin

Writer: Laura Levine

Rating 6.6 ~ Once again the show was the lowest rated show of the evening across the board. Although the rating share was up 2 tenths of a point from the previous week, it was too little, too late to give confidence for a fall 1985 renewal.

GUEST CAST

Douglas Seale (Mr. Beverly, Jane’s Neighbor) 

Richard Zavaglia (Sam, Engineer)

FAST FORWARD!

In 1991, Lucie Arnaz was part of another failed CBS series, “Sons & Daughters”. Lucie played Tess Hammersmith in all 7 episodes that aired. 13 episodes were filmed, but the show was canceled on March 1, 1991, with six episodes that never aired. Five years earlier Lucille Ball experienced the same disappointment when “Life With Lucy” was canceled by ABC with several episodes still un-aired. 

[colourupuniforms]

Top 3 famous dancers in Australia

Adam Gabriel Garcia

Adam Gabriel Garcia (born 1 June 1973) is an Australian stage, television and film actor who is best known for lead roles in musicals such as Saturday Night Fever and Kiss Me, Kate. He is also a trained tap dancer and singer. Garcia has been nominated twice at the Laurence Olivier Awards in 1999 and 2013 respectively.

Garcia was born in 1973 to Jean Balharry and Fabio Garcia in Wahroonga, New South Wales. His mother Jean is Australian and his father Fabio is of Colombian descent. Garcia's mother is a retired physiotherapist. Garcia attended Knox Grammar School where he completed his high school education. He also received formal training in tap dancing at Capital Dance Studio in Sydney, Australia. Garcia attended Sydney University but did not complete his education as he left the university to take the role of Slide in the production of the musical Hot Shoe Shuffle, which toured Australia for two years before transferring to London, England. On 26 March 2015, Garcia married his long time girlfriend Nathalia Chubin in London. Chubin worked as a senior marketing executive for PlayStation previously.

Garcia began his film career in 1997, playing the role of Jones in Brian Gilbert's Wilde. Garcia played Tony Manero in the stage version of Saturday Night Fever, which premiered on 5 May 1998 at the London Palladium, and closed on 26 February 2000. He was nominated for his work in the play at the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical category in 1999 but lost to the cast of Kat and the Kings. Garcia also reached number 15 in the UK Singles Chart in 1998, with his cover version of the Bee Gees song "Night Fever", taken from the film version of Saturday Night Fever (1977). In 2000, he played a major role in his second feature-film, Coyote Ugly. Later that year, Garcia also appeared in Dein Perry's Bootmen, playing the lead role. In 2003, he voiced the title character in the film Kangaroo Jack, but was not credited for that role. In 2004, he also played alongside Lindsay Lohan and Megan Fox in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, as the character Stu Wolff, a drunk rock star, who is part of the band Sidarthur and is, in Lola's words, "a greater poet than Shakespeare". Between 2006 and 2007, Garcia played the character of Fiyero in the original West End production of Wicked alongside Idina Menzel, Kerry Ellis and Helen Dallimore. He previously played the same role during the show's early Broadway theatre workshops in 2000. Garcia appeared in two ITV dramas, Britannia High and Mr Eleven, in 2008. In January 2010, Garcia appeared with Ashley Banjo and Kimberly Wyatt as a judge on the British reality show, Got To Dance. He was a judge in the four seasons of the competition from 2010 to 2012 and then in 2014. In 2011, Garcia co-starred with Mischa Barton in The Hen Do, but the film never left the cutting room floor. In 2012, he appeared in Cole Porter's musical Kiss Me, Kate at the Chichester Festival Theatre, directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Stephen Meare. Garcia was nominated for his role at the 2013 Laurence Olivier Awards in the category Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical.

Garcia appeared in Threesome, a 2011 British television sitcom which began airing on 17 October 2011 on Comedy Central. Garcia became the fourth judge during the thirteenth season of the Australian version of Dancing with the Stars. In 2018 Garcia was cast in Dance Boss, an Australian reality television dance competition on the Seven Network presented by Dannii Minogue. He judged the competition alongside singer and dancer Timomatic and actress and performer Sharni Vinson. In 2019, he starred in a pantomime in Ipswich, England as Prince Charming. 

Caroline Ann O'Connor

Caroline Ann O'Connor AM (born 2 September 1962) is a Helpmann Award-winning, Olivier Award-nominated Anglo-Australian singer, dancer and actress (theatre, film, TV). For her theatre work she has won three Helpmann Awards: Best Female Actor in a Play for Edith Piaf in Piaf in 2001 and the same category for Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow in 2006, and Best Female Actor in a Musical for Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes in 2015.

O'Connor was born in Oldham, Lancashire, England, to Irish parents. After her family migrated to Australia she was brought up and educated in Sydney. She took Irish dance lessons, with Joy Ransley and Valerie McGrath. She joined a touring dance troupe by August 1974, which travelled to Ireland, Paris, London and the United States west coast. The troupe's members, including O'Connor, competed in the Irish Dancing World Championships held in Dublin. At the age of 15 she returned to Dublin to appear in a dance competition and finished third.

O'Connor later recalled, "When I was growing up in Rockdale as a little girl of Irish parents singing show tunes I didn't really fit in. Everyone was in their denim shorts and thongs and wanting to go down to Cronulla and I wanted to stay home and listen to Doris Day." At 17, she returned to London and trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet School. She worked for one year at the Australian Opera Ballet. She became an Australian citizen in 2007.

O'Connor made her musical theatre debut in an Australian tour of Oklahoma! in 1982, she later reminisced, "I was about 20 and I got into the show [and] I thought, 'This is where I'm meant to be.' I feel so fortunate." In the following May she took the role of Consuelo in West Side Story at Sydney's Her Majesty's Theatre. Subsequently O'Connor worked both in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Upon return to London she was a member of the ensemble cast of Me and My Girl at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre in 1984 and then at the Adelphi Theatre Other British theatre credits include, A Chorus Line, Cabaret, Hot Stuff, Chicago, Damn Yankees, West Side Story and as Ellie May in Showboat for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Opera North in 1989. She understudied, and went on to perform, the role of Angel in the 1988 London production of The Rink by Kander and Ebb. She appeared in the UK premiere of the musical, Baby. Several of her successful early lead roles in the UK were in the town of Oldham, where she was born.

The entertainer returned to Australia by February 1994, where she took the role of Anita in a national tour of West Side Story, performing in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney and then Auckland in New Zealand. She won a Green Room Award. Back in London, her West End theatre performances included Mabel in Mack and Mabel for which she received an Olivier nomination for Best Actress in a Musical in 1996.

In 1998 O'Connor was back in Australia as Velma Kelly in Chicago for which she won a Green Room Award and the Mo Award for Female Musical Theatre Performer of the Year. She followed with roles in Man of La Mancha, Oklahoma! and concert productions of Funny Girl and Mack & Mabel. Her portrayal of Édith Piaf in Pam Gems's play Piaf in 2000 gained her three Australian theatre awards.

O'Connor's musical film work includes the role of Nini Legs in the Air in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! (2001), and Ethel Merman in the Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely (2004). She featured on the De-Lovely soundtrack, singing "Anything Goes". In 2003 she made her Broadway debut as Velma Kelly in Chicago. Thereafter she performed in Australia, UK and United States.

The one-woman play, Bombshells (2004), was written especially for O'Connor by playwright, Joanna Murray-Smith. The original production was filmed for a broadcast by ABC Television. Bombshells toured to the Edinburgh Festival (where she won the Fringe First Award), London's West End at the Arts Theatre (for which she received a second Laurence Olivier Award nomination), and at the World Stage Festival in Toronto, Ontario.

O'Connor starred as Judy Garland in the 2005 world premiere of Peter Quilter's play, End of the Rainbow, at the Sydney Opera House. Following its Sydney and Melbourne seasons, she recorded a tribute album, A Tribute to Judy Garland, and reprised her Helpmann Award winning role in Sydney at the Theatre Royal in 2006.

She starred in the premiere production of the musical The Hatpin, which opened in Sydney on 27 February 2008. In June of that year she played the title role, specifically written for her, in the premiere of David Williamson's play, Scarlett O'Hara at the Crimson Parrot, at the Melbourne Theatre Company.

In March 2009 O'Connor reprised her role as Kelly in the 2009 Australian production of Chicago where she starred alongside Craig McLachlan and Gina Riley. In May 2010 she appeared as Mrs Cooper in the TV series, Lowdown. Also in that year she performed at the BBC Proms celebration of Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday at the Royal Albert Hall. In May 2011 she starred as Mrs Lovett in the Théâtre du Châtelet production of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in Paris, with David Charles Abell as musical director. Sondheim has said that O'Connor was "the best Mrs Lovett I have ever heard."

In 2012 O'Connor originated the role of Miss Shields in a limited run of A Christmas Story: The Musical. It ran for 51 performances in late 2012, and received a nomination for the 2013 Best Musical Tony Award, for its track "You'll Shoot Your Eye Out", featuring O'Connor, which was broadcast live on CBS during the 67th Tony Awards show on 9 June 2013.

As a recording artist O'Connor has released four solo CDs, What I Did for Love 1998), A Tribute to Piaf (2001), From Stage to Screen (2001) and A Tribute to Garland (2005). She has contributed to numerous cast recordings and compilations.

From April 2017 through to March 2018 O'Connor played Countess Lily in the musical, Anastasia, at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway, New York. From May to June 2018 she starred in a London production of The Rink and in mid-August she portrayed Garland in The Production Company's The Boy from Oz in Melbourne.

O’Connor began 2019 by starting in the critically acclaimed and sold out Darlinghurst theatre Co. production of ‘The Rise and Fall of Little Voice’ (directed by Shaun Rennie). She followed this with a staged concert of the rarely performed musical Applause, playing the leading role of Margo Channing.

Sharlene Marie Zeta Robinson

Sharlene Marie Zeta Robinson, known professionally as Charli Robinson and previously as Charli Delaney (born 8 March 1980) in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia), is an Australian television and radio presenter, most famously known as an original member of children's musical group Hi-5 and the television series of the same name. She left Hi-5 in February 2008 after ten years with the group. She is known now as a presenter on Nine Network travel program Getaway.

Robinson was born in Newcastle, New South Wales and she has an older sister named Cassandra. She attended Hunter School of the Performing Arts at Broadmeadow, Newcastle, before featuring in various TV shows and soap operas.

Robinson was the youngest original member of group Hi-5.

Robinson chose to leave Hi-5 in February 2008, officially announcing on 22 February 2008 that she would be leaving the group. She indicated that she would continue with the show until a suitable replacement was found. Robinson noted her plans for the future include other presenting work, and acting in television and films, to challenge herself. She served as a judge on Battle of the Choirs in 2008, and also appeared on the eighth season of Dancing with the Stars.

In 2009, Robinson co-hosted the celebrity singing show It Takes Two with Home and Away actor Paul O'Brien and signed a three-year contract with the show. She also appeared in the short film Tegan the Vegan

Robinson had a show on the Today Network's 2DayFM and Fox FM on late nights initially [Monday to Wednesday] with Chris Page and had co-hosted the Top 6 @ 6 with Danno on the Today Network for one hour. 21 August 25 July

In May 2011, Robinson filled in as the host on The Kyle & Jackie O Show while Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson were off on sick leave.

Costumes various over time but dance are common between people. Step up to aboriginal culture with Colourup Uniforms.

Categories:

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Reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Garcia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_O%27Connor_(actress)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charli_Robinson

[onthegoinmco]

Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts and Bob Carr Theater are always hosting amazing events, and here is the latest news and what is on sale now at the venues!

Just Announced – Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts:

THE MASKED SINGER NATIONAL TOUR

On Sale: Monday, February 17, 2020 at 10 a.m. 

Show Date:  Friday, June 26, 2020 

Show Time: 8 p.m.

Venue: Walt Disney Theater

Tickets: Start at $24.74. VIP Packages available. 

Presented by: Dr. Phillips Center in association with Live Nation

An all-new live production based on the hit TV show….The Masked Singer National Tour is coming to Orlando!

Your favorite characters from the hit Fox TV show brought to life live on stage, as well as surprise celebrity hosts, and amazing new performances. Can you guess who’s behind the mask?

A mystery celebrity will be unmasked in every city in this can’t-miss spectacular live show for audiences of all ages!

On Sale Now – Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts:

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

Show Date:  Monday, April 6, 2020

Show Time: 7:30 p.m.

Venue: Bob Carr Theater

Tickets: Start at $49.50. VIP packages available

Presented by: Dr. Phillips Center in association with Bill Blumenreich

“Delusions of Space Enthusiasts”

In this illustrated talk, Neil deGrasse Tyson will explore the perennial mismatch between collective expectations of where we should be in space by now and the geopolitical, cultural, and economic realities that limit it.

ELI CASTRO

Show Date:  May 15–17, 2020

Show Times Vary

Venue: Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater

Tickets: $30 

Presented by: Dr. Phillips Center 

One of the most innovative comedians around, Elizardi Castro uses language and culture to create humor that appeals to audiences of all ages. He has written and performed eight one man shows including “Made in Puerto Rico” and most recently, “Words Cannot Explain”. 

His one man show “Made in Puerto Rico” made its Off-Broadway debut in 2019 and ran for seven weeks, selling out thirty two shows! His critically acclaimed shows have been reviewed and recommended by numerous publications including the Chicago Sun-Times and the Orlando Sentinel. 

His shows have also been featured on ABC’s The View; Telemundo’s Emmy-winning morning show, Un Nuevo Dia; Fox’s Good Day New York, WGN-TV, and the Univision network, among others. He recently won “Best Stand Up” at the acclaimed United Solo Festival in NYC.

Russian Ballet Alafaya ALADDIN BALLET

Show Date:  Saturday, April 11, 2020

Show Time: 7 p.m.

Venue: Bob Carr Theater

Tickets: $24.50 

Presented by: Russian Ballet Alafaya/Ballet Fedotov

Vizier Jafar dreams of obtaining the Magic Lamp. Jafar makes a plan on how to brutally take over the throne. Jasmine and Aladdin are reunited at the Palace. Jafar is furious and orders Aladdin to be cast into the abyss. The Genie comes to Aladdin’s aid and they escape together after trapping Jafar in the Magic Lamp forever. Jasmine and Aladdin are finally able to be together.

Russian Ballet Alafaya/Ballet Fedotov presents original choreography by Vadim Fedotov with original music by David Goldstein “Aladdin”. Based on the Arabian tale “One thousand and one nights”.Special guest artists, Principal Ballet dancers from Ukraine and Japan.

Celebrate African American Artistry With These Great Shows

February Features – Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts:

ALVIN AILEY

Photo: Pierre Wachholder

The iconic dance company returns to the Dr. Phillips Center with powerful new works and their signature piece, Revelations.

Show Date:  Tuesday, February 18, 2020 

Show Time: 7:30 p.m.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater grew from a now-fabled performance in March 1958 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Led by Alvin Ailey and a group of young African-American modern dancers, that performance changed forever the perception of American dance.

The Ailey company has gone on to perform for an estimated 25 million people at theaters in 48 states and 71 countries on six continents – as well as millions more through television broadcasts, film screenings, and online platforms.

Today, the Company continues Mr. Ailey’s mission by presenting important works of the past and commissioning new ones. In all, more than 235 works by over 90 choreographers have been part of the Ailey company’s repertory.

GREGORY PORTER & LEDISI

Jazz, Soul, Gospel – these exceptional artists showcase their award-winning vocals.

Show Date:  Saturday, February 22, 2020 

Show Time: 7 p.m.

GLADYS KNIGHT

The legendary artist, fresh off her star turn on The Masked Singer, makes her debut at the Dr. Phillips Center.

Show Date:  Thursday, January 30, 2020

Show Time: 8 p.m.

Very few singers over the last fifty years have matched her unassailable artistry of Gladys Knight. This seven-time Grammy winner has enjoyed #1 hits in Pop, Gospel, R&B and Adult Contemporary, and has triumphed in film, television and live performance.

Knight has recorded more than 38 albums over the years, including four solo albums during the past two decades: “Good Woman” (1991); “Just for You” (1994); the inspirational “Many Different Roads” (1999); and “At Last” (2001). “At Last” showed the world that she still has what it takes to record a hit album, employing the talents of contemporary producers like Randy Jackson, Gary Brown and James D.C. Williams III, Jon John, Jamey Jaz, Keith Thomas, Tom Dowd and Tiger Roberts.

Keep the Romance Going 

IL VOLO 

Celebrate the best of 10 years and experience this trio’s remarkable vocals.

Show Date:  Thursday, February 20, 2020

Show Time: 8 p.m. 

From their debut in 2011 to the present day, IL VOLO has performed over 300 concerts in 210 cities on 3 continents, mostly sold out. 

The new album, 10 Years – The Best of, offers all the best of Il Volo’s repertoire, from “O Sole Mio” to “My Way” to “Grande Amore.” The tracklist is comprised both by songs recorded in the studio and by new live recordings such as the June show in Matera, Italy which was filmed and will be broadcast later this year. 

Il Volo: Ten Years will make its premiere on PBS stations nationwide beginning November 30.

DANCING WITH THE STARS LIVE

The hottest dance show on TV is live onstage.

Show Date:  Sunday, February 23, 2020 

Show Times: 3 & 7 p.m.

America’s favorite dance show is going back on tour this winter with “Dancing with the Stars – Live Tour 2020.” Kate Flannery will be joining the show to wow live audiences across the country by performing fan-favorite routines from this past season.

The all-new production will feature fan-favorite professional dancers wowing audiences with every type of dance style as seen on ABC’s hit show Dancing with the Stars. The show continues its legacy of performing showstopping routines alongside new numbers choreographed just for the live show ranging from the time-honored dances of the Cha Cha, Foxtrot, Salsa, Tango – and everything in between. In the longest and most expansive North American tour to date, audiences will have the opportunity to experience the excitement, glamour and glitz they see in the ballroom every Monday night live in their hometowns.

Courtesy of Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts

How to Buy Tickets – Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts

Tickets may be purchased online at drphillipscenter.org, by calling 844.513.2014 or by visiting the Bill and Mary Darden Box Office in person at Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts at 445 S. Magnolia Avenue between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, or 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. Saturday. Online and phone ticket purchases are subject to handling fees. Prices, shows, artists, dates and times are subject to change at any time without notice. 

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The post On Sale Now at the Dr. Phillips Center appeared first on On the Go in MCO.

[blackkudos]

Curtis Mayfield

Curtis Lee Mayfield (June 3, 1942 – December 26, 1999) was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer, and one of the most influential musicians behind soul and politically conscious African-American music. He first achieved success and recognition with The Impressions during the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1950s and 1960s, and later worked as a solo artist.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Mayfield started his musical career in a gospel choir. Moving to the North Side he met Jerry Butler in 1956 at the age of 14, and joined vocal group The Impressions. As a songwriter, Mayfield became noted as one of the first musicians to bring more prevalent themes of social awareness into soul music. In 1965, he wrote "People Get Ready" for The Impressions, which displayed his more politically charged songwriting. Ranked at no. 24 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, the song received numerous other awards, and was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, as well as being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

After leaving The Impressions in 1970 in the pursuit of a solo career, Mayfield released several albums, including the soundtrack for the blaxploitation film Super Fly in 1972. The soundtrack was noted for its socially conscious themes, mostly addressing problems surrounding inner city minorities such as crime, poverty and drug abuse. The album was ranked at no. 72 on Rolling Stone's list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Mayfield was paralyzed from the neck down after lighting equipment fell on him during a live performance at Wingate Field in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, on August 13, 1990. Despite this, he continued his career as a recording artist, releasing his final album New World Order in 1996. Mayfield won a Grammy Legend Award in 1994 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995, and was a double inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of the Impressions in 1991, and again in 1999 as a solo artist. He was also a two-time Grammy Hall of Fame inductee. He died from complications of type 2 diabetes in 1999 at the age of 57.

Early life

Curtis Mayfield was born on June 3, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Marion Washington and Kenneth Mayfield and grew up one of five children in an impoverished family. Mayfield's father left the family when Curtis was five; his mother moved the family into various Chicago projects before settling at Cabrini–Green when he reached his teenage years. Mayfield attended Wells Community Academy High School until dropping out his sophomore year. His mother taught him the piano, and she, along with his grandmother encouraged him to enjoy gospel music; when he was seven he was a singer with the gospel quintet, the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers. When he was 14 years old he formed the Alphatones when the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers decided to try their luck in the heart of Chicago. Fellow group member Gooden was quote "It would have been nice to have him there with us, but of course, your parents have the first say." Mayfield stayed behind. When he was 14 he joined his school friend Jerry Butler's group the Roosters in 1956, with Arthur and Richard Brooks. He wrote and composed for this group who would become the Impressions two years later.

The Impressions

Mayfield's career began in 1956 when he joined the Roosters with Arthur and Richard Brooks and Jerry Butler. Two years later the Roosters, now including Sam Gooden, became the Impressions. The band had two hit singles with Butler, "For Your Precious Love" and "Come Back My Love", then Butler left. Mayfield temporarily went with him, co-writing and performing on Butler's next hit, "He Will Break Your Heart", before returning to the Impressions with the group signing for ABC Records and working with the label's Chicago-based producer/A&R manager, Johnny Pate.

Butler was replaced by Fred Cash, a returning original Roosters member, and Mayfield became lead singer, frequently composing for the band, starting with "Gypsy Woman", a Top 20 Pop hit. Their hit "Amen" (Top 10), an updated version of an old gospel tune, was included in the soundtrack of the 1963 United Artists film Lilies of the Field, which starred Sidney Poitier. The Impressions reached the height of their popularity in the mid-to-late-'60s with a string of Mayfield compositions that included "Keep On Pushing," "People Get Ready", "It's All Right" (Top 10), the up-tempo "Talking about My Baby"(Top 20) and "Woman's Got Soul".

He formed his own label, Curtom Records in Chicago in 1968 and the Impressions joined him to continue their run of hits including "Fool For You," "This is My Country", "Choice Of Colors" and "Check Out Your Mind." Mayfield had written much of the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, but by the end of the decade, he was a pioneering voice in the black pride movement along with James Brown and Sly Stone. Mayfield's "We're a Winner" was their last major hit for ABC. A Number 1 soul hit which also reached the Billboard pop Top 20, it became an anthem of the black power and black pride movements when it was released in late 1967, much as his earlier "Keep on Pushing" (whose title is quoted in the lyrics of "We're a Winner" and also in "Move On Up") had been an anthem for Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.

Mayfield was a prolific songwriter in Chicago even outside his work for the Impressions, writing and producing scores of hits for many other artists. He also owned the Mayfield and Windy C labels which were distributed by Cameo-Parkway, and was a partner in the Curtom (first independent, then distributed by Buddah then Warner Bros and finally RSO) and Thomas labels (first independent, then distributed by Atlantic, then independent again and finally Buddah).

Among Mayfield's greatest songwriting successes were three hits that he wrote for Jerry Butler on Vee Jay ("He Will Break Your Heart", "Find Another Girl" and "I'm A-Tellin' You"). His harmony vocals are very prominent. He also had great success writing and arranging Jan Bradley's "Mama Didn't Lie". Starting in 1963, he was heavily involved in writing and arranging for OKeh Records (with Carl Davis producing), which included hits by Major Lance, Walter Jackson, Billy Butler and the Artistics. This arrangement ran through 1965.

Solo career

In 1970, Mayfield left the Impressions and began a solo career. Curtom released many of Mayfield's 1970s records, as well as records by the Impressions, Leroy Hutson, the Five Stairsteps, the Staples Singers, Mavis Staples, Linda Clifford and Baby Huey and the Babysitters, a group which at one time included Chaka Khan. Gene Chandler and Major Lance, who had worked with Mayfield during the 1960s, also signed for short stays at Curtom. Many of the label's recordings were produced by Mayfield.

The commercial and critical peak of his solo career came with Super Fly, the soundtrack to the blaxploitation Super Fly film. Unlike the soundtracks to other blaxploitation films (most notably Isaac Hayes' score for Shaft), which glorified the ghetto excesses of the characters, Mayfield's lyrics consisted of hard-hitting commentary on the state of affairs in black, urban ghettos at the time, as well as direct criticisms of several characters in the film. Bob Donat wrote in Rolling Stone magazine in 1972 that while the film's message "was diluted by schizoid cross-purposes" because it "glamorizes machismo-cocaine consciousness... the anti-drug message on [Mayfield's soundtrack] is far stronger and more definite than in the film." Because of the tendency of these blaxploitation films to glorify the criminal life of dealers and pimps in order to target a mostly black lower class audience, Mayfield's album set this movie apart. With songs like "Freddie's Dead", a song that focuses on the demise of Freddie, a junkie that was forced into "pushin' dope for the man" because of a debt that he owed to his dealer, and "Pusherman", a song that reveals how many people in the ghetto fell victim to drug abuse, and therefore became dependent upon their dealers, Mayfield illuminated a darker side of life in the ghetto that these blaxploitation films often failed to criticize. However, although Mayfield's soundtrack criticized the glorification of dealers and pimps, he in no way denied that this glorification was occurring. When asked about the subject matter of these films he was quoted stating "I don’t see why people are complaining about the subject of these films”, and “The way you clean up the films is by cleaning up the streets.”

Along with Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, this album ushered in a new socially conscious, funky style of popular soul music. He was dubbed 'The Gentle Genius'. The single releases "Freddie's Dead" and "Super Fly" both sold over one million copies each, and were awarded gold discs by the R.I.A.A.

Super Fly brought success that resulted in Mayfield being tapped for additional soundtracks, some of which he wrote and produced while having others perform the vocals. Gladys Knight & the Pips recorded Mayfield's soundtrack for Claudine in 1974, while Aretha Franklin recorded the soundtrack for Sparkle in 1976. Mayfield also worked with The Staples Singers on the soundtrack for the 1975 film Let's Do It Again, and teamed up with Mavis Staples exclusively on the 1977 film soundtrack A Piece of the Action (both movies were part of a trilogy of films that featured the acting and comedic exploits of Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier and were directed by Poitier).

One of Mayfield's most successful funk-disco meldings was the 1977 hit "Do Do Wap is Strong in Here" from his soundtrack to the Robert M. Young film of Miguel Piñero's play Short Eyes. In his 2003 biography of Curtis Mayfield, People Never Give Up, author Peter Burns noted that Mayfield has 140 songs in the Curtom vaults. Burns indicated that the songs were maybe already completed or in the stages of completion, so that they could then be released commercially. These recordings include "The Great Escape", "In The News", "Turn up the Radio", "What's The Situation?" and one recording labelled "Curtis at Montreux Jazz Festival 87". Two other albums featuring Curtis Mayfield present in the Curtom vaults and as yet unissued are a 1982/83 live recording titled "25th Silver Anniversary" (which features performances by Mayfield, The Impressions and Jerry Butler) and a live performance, recorded in September 1966 by the Impressions titled Live at the Club Chicago.

In 1980, Mayfield decided to move to Atlanta with his family, closing down his recording operation in Chicago and effectively ending the era of the Chicago soul sound. The label had gradually reduced in size in its final two years or so with releases on the main RSO imprint and Curtom credited as the production company. Mayfield continued to record occasionally, keeping the Curtom name alive for a few more years, and to tour worldwide.

In later years, Mayfield's music was included in the movies I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Hollywood Shuffle, Friday (though not on the album soundtrack), The Hangover Part II and Short Eyes (1977) where he had a cameo role as a prisoner.

Social activism

Curtis Mayfield was known for introducing social consciousness into African-American music. Having been raised in the Cabrini-Green projects of Chicago, he witnessed many of the tragedies of the urban ghetto first hand, and was quoted saying “With everything I saw on the streets as a young black kid, it wasn’t hard during the later fifties and sixties for me to write my heartfelt way of how I visualized things, how I thought things ought to be.”

Following the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his group the Impressions produced music that became the soundtrack to a summer of revolution. It is even said that "Keep On Pushing" became the number one sing along during the Freedom Rides. Black students sang their songs as they marched to jail or protested outside their universities, while King often used "Keep On Pushing", "People Get Ready" and "We're A Winner" because of their ability to motivate and inspire marchers. Mayfield had quickly become a civil rights hero with his ability to inspire hope and courage.

Mayfield was unique in his ability to fuse relevant social commentary with melodies and lyrics that instilled a hopefulness for a better future in his listeners. He wrote and recorded the soundtrack to the 1972 blaxploitation film Super Fly with the help of producer Johnny Pate. The soundtrack for Super Fly is regarded as an all-time great body of work that captured the essence of life in the ghetto while criticizing the tendency of young people to glorify the "glamorous" lifestyles of drug dealers and pimps, and illuminating the dark realities of drugs, addiction, and exploitation. His work influenced many, and it is said that Mayfield truly introduced a new style of black music.

Mayfield, along with several other soul and funk musicians, spread messages of hope in the face of oppression, pride in being a member of the black race and gave courage to a generation of people who were demanding their human rights, without abandoning the struggle for equality. He has been compared to Martin Luther King, Jr. for making a lasting impact in the civil rights struggle with his inspirational music. By the end of the decade Mayfield was a pioneering voice in the black pride movement, along with James Brown and Sly Stone. Paving the way for a future generation of rebel thinkers, Mayfield paid the price, artistically and commercially, for his politically charged music. Mayfield's "Keep On Pushing" was actually banned from several radio stations when riots began flaring up in some cities. Regardless of the persistent radio bans and loss of revenue, he continued his quest for equality right until his death. His lyrics on racial injustice, poverty and drugs became the poetry of a generation.

Mayfield was also a descriptive social commentator. As the influx of drugs ravaged through black America in the late 1960s and 1970s his bittersweet descriptions of the ghetto would serve as warnings to the impressionable. "Freddie's Dead" is a graphic tale of street life, while "Pusherman" revealed the role of drug dealers in the urban ghettos.

Later years and death

Mayfield remained active in the 1970s. Then his career began to slow down during the 1980s.

On August 13, 1990, he became paralyzed from the neck down, after stage lighting equipment fell on him at an outdoor concert at Wingate Field in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York. Afterwards, though he was unable to play guitar, he continued to compose and sing. He also directed the recording of his last album, New World Order.

Mayfield's vocals were recorded, usually line-by-line, while lying on his back.

Mayfield received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. In February 1998, he had to have his right leg amputated due to diabetes. Mayfield was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on March 15, 1999. Health reasons prevented him from attending the ceremony, which included fellow inductees Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Dusty Springfield, George Martin, and 1970s Curtom signee and labelmate the Staple Singers.

His last appearance on record was with the group Bran Van 3000 on the song "Astounded" for their album Discosis, recorded just before his death and released in 2001.

Curtis Mayfield died from complications of type 2 diabetes on December 26, 1999, at the North Fulton Regional Hospital in Roswell, Georgia; his health had steadily declined following his paralysis.

Awards

Hall of Fame

As a member of the Impressions, he was posthumously inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2003.

Along with his group the Impressions, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.

In 1999, he was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist making him one of the few artists to become double inductees.

In 1999, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame just prior to his death.

Grammy

He was a winner of the prestigious Grammy Legend Award in 1994.

He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.

He is a 2-time Grammy Hall of Fame inductee: for the song People Get Ready with the Impressions, and for the award-winning album Super Fly as a solo artist.

Mayfield was nominated for Song Of The Year with "Same Love", performed by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis featuring Mary Lambert, on the 56th Grammy Awards due to the duo sampling the piano from "People Get Ready".

Rolling Stone

The Impressions' album/CD The Anthology 1961–1977 is ranked at No. 179 on Rolling Stone′s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

The Impressions hits, "People Get Ready" and "For Your Precious Love" are both ranked on Rolling Stone′s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, as No. 24 and No. 327 respectively.

Mayfield is ranked No. 34 on Rolling Stone′s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Mayfield is ranked No. 40 on Rolling Stone′s list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.

Mayfield's solo Super Fly is ranked No. 69 on Rolling Stone′s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Mayfield No. 98 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Other

The Impressions' 1965 hit song "People Get Ready", composed by Mayfield, has been chosen as one of the Top 10 Best Songs Of All Time by a panel of 20 top industry songwriters and producers, including Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Hal David, and others, as reported to Britain's Mojo music magazine.

Legacy

Mayfield was among the first of a new wave of mainstream black R&B performing artists and composers injecting social commentary into their work. This "message music" proved immensely popular during the 1960s and 1970s.

Mayfield taught himself how to play guitar, tuning it to the black keys of the piano, giving the guitar an open F-sharp tuning that he used throughout his career. He primarily sang in falsetto register, adding another flavour to his music. This was not unique in itself, but most singers sing primarily in the modal register. His guitar playing, singing, and socially aware song-writing influenced a range of artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Tracy Chapman, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Sinead O'Connor.

Filmography

Super Fly (1972) as himself

Save the Children (1973) as himself

Short Eyes (1977) as Pappy

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) as Guest

Wikipedia

[latestnews2018-blog]

Neil Simon, Broadway Playwright, Dies At 91

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/neil-simon-broadway-playwright-dies-at-91/

Neil Simon, Broadway Playwright, Dies At 91

By MARK KENNEDY, AP Entertainment Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose laugh-filled hits such as “The Odd Couple,” ″Barefoot in the Park” and his “Brighton Beach” trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died. He was 91.

Simon died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia surrounded by family at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, said Bill Evans, his longtime friend and the Shubert Organization director of media relations.

In the second half of the 20th century, Simon was one of the American theater’s most successful and prolific playwrights, often chronicling middle class issues and fears.

Starting with “Come Blow Your Horn” in 1961 and continuing into the next century, he rarely stopped working on a new play or musical. His list of credits is staggering.

Simon’s stage successes included “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” ″Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” ″The Sunshine Boys,” ″Plaza Suite,” ″Chapter Two,” ″Sweet Charity” and “Promises, Promises,” but there were other plays and musicals, too, more than 30 in all. Many of his plays were adapted into movies and one, “The Odd Couple,” even became a popular television series.

For seven months in 1967, he had four productions running at the same time on Broadway: “Barefoot in the Park”; “The Odd Couple”; “Sweet Charity”; and “The Star-Spangled Girl.”

Even before he launched his theater career, he made history as one of the famed stable of writers for comedian Sid Caesar that also included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.

Simon was the recipient of four Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the Kennedy Center honors (1995), four Writers Guild of America Awards, an American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement honor and, in 1983, he even had a Broadway theater named after him when the Alvin was rechristened the Neil Simon Theatre.

In 2006, he won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which honors work that draws from the American experience. The previous year had seen a popular revival of “The Odd Couple,” reuniting Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick after their enormous success in “The Producers” several years earlier.

In a 1997 interview with The Washington Post, Simon reflected on his success. “I know that I have reached the pinnacle of rewards. There’s no more money anyone can pay me that I need. There are no awards they can give me that I haven’t won. I have no reason to write another play except that I am alive and I like to do it,” he said.

Simon had a rare stumble in the fall of 2009, however, when a Broadway revival of his “Brighton Beach Memoirs” closed abruptly after only nine performances because of poor ticket sales. It was to have run in repertory with Simon’s “Broadway Bound,” which was also canceled.

The bespectacled, mild-looking Simon (described in a New York Times magazine profile as looking like an accountant or librarian who dressed “just this side of drab”) was a relentless writer — and rewriter.

“I am most alive and most fulfilled sitting alone in a room, hoping that those words forming on the paper in the Smith-Corona will be the first perfect play ever written in a single draft,” Simon wrote in the introduction to one of the many anthologies of his plays.

He was a meticulous joke smith, peppering his plays, especially the early ones, with comic one-liners and humorous situations that critics said sometimes came at the expense of character and believability. No matter. For much of his career, audiences embraced his work, which often focused on middle-class, urban life, many of the plots drawn from his own personal experience.

“I don’t write social and political plays, because I’ve always thought the family was the microcosm of what goes on in the world,” he told The Paris Review in 1992.

Simon received his first Tony Award in 1965 as best author — a category now discontinued — for “The Odd Couple,” although the comedy lost the best-play prize to Frank D. Gilroy’s “The Subject Was Roses.” He won a best-play Tony 20 years later for “Biloxi Blues.” In 1991, “Lost in Yonkers” received both the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. And there was a special achievement Tony, too, in 1975.

Simon’s own life figured most prominently in what became known as his “Brighton Beach” trilogy — “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” ″Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound” — which many consider his finest works. In them, Simon’s alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome, makes his way from childhood to the U.S. Army to finally, on the verge of adulthood, a budding career as a writer.

Simon was born Marvin Neil Simon in New York and was raised in the Bronx and Washington Heights. He was a Depression-era child, his father, Irving, a garment-industry salesman. He was raised mostly by his strong-willed mother, Mamie, and mentored by his older brother, Danny, who nicknamed his younger sibling, Doc.

Simon attended New York University and the University of Colorado. After serving in the military in 1945-46, he began writing with his brother for radio in 1948 and then, for television, a period in their lives chronicled in Simon’s 1993 play, “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”

The brothers wrote for such classic 1950s television series as “Your Show of Shows,” 90 minutes of live, original comedy starring Caesar and Imogene Coca, and later for “The Phil Silvers Show,” in which the popular comedian portrayed the conniving Army Sgt. Ernie Bilko.

Yet Simon grew dissatisfied with television writing and the network restrictions that accompanied it. Out of his frustration came “Come Blow Your Horn,” which starred Hal March and Warren Berlinger as two brothers (not unlike Danny and Neil Simon) trying to figure out what to do with their lives. The comedy ran for more than a year on Broadway. An audience member is said to have died on opening night.

But it was his second play, “Barefoot in the Park,” that really put Simon on the map. Critically well-received, the 1963 comedy, directed by Mike Nichols, concerned the tribulations of a pair of newlyweds, played by Elizabeth Ashley and Robert Redford, who lived on the top floor of a New York brownstone.

Simon cemented that success two years later with “The Odd Couple,” a comedy about bickering roommates: Oscar, a gruff, slovenly sportswriter, and Felix, a neat, fussy photographer. Walter Matthau, as Oscar, and Art Carney, as Felix, starred on Broadway, with Matthau and Jack Lemmon playing the roles in a successful movie version. Jack Klugman and Tony Randall appeared in the TV series, which ran on ABC from 1970-1975. A female stage version was done on Broadway in 1985 with Rita Moreno as Olive (Oscar) and Sally Struthers as Florence (Felix). It was revived again as a TV series from 2015-17, starring Matthew Perry.

The play remains one of Simon’s most durable and popular works. Nathan Lane as Oscar and Matthew Broderick as Felix starred in a revival that was one of the biggest hits of the 2005-2006 Broadway season.

Besides “Sweet Charity” (1966), which starred Gwen Verdon as a goodhearted dance-hall hostess, and “Promises, Promises” (1968), based on Billy Wilder’s film “The Apartment,” Simon wrote the books for several other musicals.

“Little Me” (1962), adapted from Patrick Dennis’ best-selling spoof of show-biz autobiographies, featured a hardworking Sid Caesar in seven different roles. “They’re Playing Our Song” (1979), which had music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, ran for more than two years. But a musical version of Simon’s movie “The Goodbye Girl,” starring Martin Short and Bernadette Peters, had only a short run in 1993.

Many of his plays were turned into films as well. Besides “The Odd Couple,” he wrote the screenplays for movie versions of “Barefoot in the Park,” ″The Sunshine Boys,” ″The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and more.

Simon also wrote original screenplays, the best known being “The Goodbye Girl,” starring Richard Dreyfuss as a struggling actor, and “The Heartbreak Kid,” which featured Charles Grodin as a recently married man, lusting to drop his new wife for a blonde goddess played by Cybill Shepherd.

In his later years, Simon had more difficulty on Broadway. After the success of “Lost in Yonkers,” which starred Mercedes Ruehl as a gentle, simple-minded woman controlled by her domineering mother (Irene Worth), the playwright had a string of financially unsuccessful plays including “Jake’s Women,” ″Laughter on the 23rd Floor” and “Proposals.” Simon even went off-Broadway with “London Suite” in 1995 but it didn’t run long either.

“The Dinner Party,” a comedy set in Paris about husbands and ex-wives, was a modest hit in 2000, primarily because of the box-office strength of its two stars, Henry Winkler and John Ritter. A hit revival of “Promises, Promises” in 2010 starred Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes.

Perhaps Simon’s most infamous production was the critically panned “Rose’s Dilemma,” which opened at off-Broadway’s nonprofit Manhattan Theatre Club in December 2003. Its star, Mary Tyler Moore, walked out of the show during preview performances after receiving a note from the playwright criticizing her performance. Moore was replaced by her understudy.

He wrote two memoirs, “Rewrites” (1996) and “The Play Goes On” (1999). They were combined into “Neil Simon’s Memoirs.”

Simon was married five times, twice to the same woman. His first wife, Joan Baim, died of cancer in 1973, after 20 years of marriage. They had two daughters, Ellen and Nancy, who survive him. Simon dealt with her death in “Chapter Two” (1977), telling the story of a widower who starts anew.

The playwright then married actress Marsha Mason, who had appeared in his stage comedy “The Good Doctor” and who went on to star in several films written by Simon including “The Goodbye Girl,” ″The Cheap Detective,” ″Chapter Two,” ″Only When I Laugh” and “Max Dugan Returns.” They were divorced in 1982.

The playwright was married to his third wife, Diane Lander, twice — once in 1987-1988 and again in 1990-1998. Simon adopted Lander’s daughter, Bryn, from a previous marriage. Simon married his fourth wife, actress Elaine Joyce, in 1999. He also survived by three grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

“I suspect I shall keep on writing in a vain search for that perfect play. I hope I will keep my equilibrium and sense of humor when I’m told I haven’t achieved it,” Simon once said about his voluminous output of work. “At any rate, the trip has been wonderful. As George and Ira Gershwin said, ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me.’”

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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[ralphmorgan-blog1]

They’re each famous for different reasons. But as kids, these women wore the same uniform.

When was the last time a Girl Scout inspired you to follow your dreams?

If your answer involves dreaming of Girl Scout cookies, then I don't blame you — getting your hands on those Thin Mints can be a real motivator.

But what you may not realize is that Girl Scouts have influenced the world in much bigger ways that don't involve their awesome cookies. In fact, some Girl Scouts have changed the course of history.

We're talking astronauts, political leaders, activists, and more. Girl Scouts of the USA reports that an incredible 64% of today's American women leaders were once Girl Scouts.

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

This organization helps girls understand what they're capable of by giving them badges for accomplishments in areas such as entrepreneurship, citizenship, and STEM. The girls practice an incredible range of skills, from running a business to creating art to tackling cybersecurity.

And if their roster of prominent former scouts is any indication, every Girl Scout is capable of greatness. Here's a look at seven of them.

1. Lucille Ball created her own space in an industry that hadn't yet made space for her.

When a Girl Scout named Elizabeth dressed up as Lucille Ball in 2017, she wasn't just wearing a costume. Ball was a former Girl Scout, and Elizabeth was portraying her spirit and determination in a Girl Scout photo shoot celebrating Women's History Month.

Lucille Ball cracked people up with her wacky physical comedy, her expressive face, and her "I Love Lucy" character's knack for getting into hilariously troublesome situations. And while audiences laughed, Ball was making history.

She became one of the first female comic leads on television and often defied traditional gender stereotypes in her role. "I Love Lucy" was also a massive hit, ranking as the #1 show in the country for four of its six seasons.

Off-screen, Ball was also a trailblazer. She and Desi Arnaz co-owned the production studio Desilu Productions until she bought out his shares and ran it on her own. That made her the first woman to run a major television studio. And the hits that came later on her lot, like "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "Star Trek," and "Mission: Impossible," show that she did a fantastic job.

2. Tammy Duckworth changed what it means to be a United States senator.

In this digital age, nearly all of our senators are on Twitter, and if you follow Tammy Duckworth's account, you might have seen messages like this one: "Thanks, @girlscouts, for teaching me leadership skills I use in the Senate everyday."

Happy #GirlScoutDay! Proud to be a #GirlScout & thankful for all the lessons and skills @girlscouts taught me. I think my old uniform could use a few more badges!

A post shared by Senator Tammy Duckworth (@senduckworth) on Mar 12, 2018 at 1:07pm PDT

Duckworth still has her Girl Scout uniform and sash, which carries an impressive number of badges. The skills she learned to earn those badges no doubt helped her become the incredible trailblazer she is today.

In fact, Duckworth just can't stop making history. She served as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot in Iraq, where she lost her legs in a 2004 grenade attack. In 2012, she became the first woman with a disability elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the first member of Congress born in Thailand.

Image via U.S. Senate Photographic Studio/Renee Bouchard/Wikimedia Commons.

And in 2016, she was elected to her current position, making her the second ever Asian-American woman senator.

Then Duckworth did something that the Founding Fathers probably never saw coming. In April 2018, she became the first U.S. senator to give birth while in office. At just 10 days old, baby Maile followed in her mom's footsteps by making history of her own as the first newborn to grace the Senate floor.

3. Katie Couric broke into the boys' club of nightly news anchors.

When the Girl Scouts reached their 100th anniversary in 2012, news anchor Katie Couric went all out to celebrate them. She wrote about the organization on her ABC blog, interviewed Girl Scouts on her show, and even donned a vintage Girl Scout uniform for the occasion.

"Girl Scouts taught me some of the basic and essential principles and values that I still hold dear today, like being truthful, helpful, and independent," she said in 2012.

Couric has demonstrated these values throughout her career as a journalist by bringing attention to important issues, including colon cancer and gun violence. She's also held top anchor positions at all of the three major television networks: ABC, NBC, and CBS.

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

Breaking into the news industry's boys' club took some time, but she never gave up. She started at the ABC News bureau in 1979 and eventually became the host of the CBS Evening News in 2006, making her the first solo woman anchor among the "big three" weekday nightly news broadcasts, according to Reuters.

Now, as a Television Hall of Famer and a New York Times bestselling author, Couric continues to use her platform to show girls that it's possible to overcome the obstacles they face.

I swear I loved being a Girl Scout!https://t.co/jhRSVZwa8L @girlscouts pic.twitter.com/c1dVA1fUU3

— Katie Couric (@katiecouric) May 15, 2018

4. Susan Collins has set the second longest consecutive voting streak in the Senate.

Growing up in Caribou, Maine, now-Sen. Susan Collins had some great role models: Both her parents served as the mayors of her hometown. Not only that, but she was also a Girl Scout with some amazing troop leaders who inspired her to always persevere toward her goals. "[Girl Scouts] helps to build strong women," Collins told a young scout who interviewed her in 2014.

In 1994, when Collins ran for governor, she became the first woman to become a nominee for a major party in Maine. Then, in 1996, Collins was elected to the Senate, and she has kept her seat ever since.

Image via U.S. Senate Photographic Studio/Wikimedia Commons.

Collins is now the most senior Republican woman in the Senate. She has spent her time focusing on causes including Alzheimer's research, diabetes research, and support for small businesses. In fact, Collins has had a say in every single one of the more than 6,600 decisions that the Senate has voted on since 1996 because she has never missed a vote. In 2015, she even broke her ankle running in heels to make sure she cast a vote.

Collins is also proud to be one of 73% of women senators who were once Girl Scouts. "That to me just proves that Girl Scouts learn leadership ability, have confidence in themselves, and learn to work together as a team," she said.

5. Dolores Huerta gave us the rallying cry we need to make the world a better place.

When civil rights icon Dolores Huerta steps up to a microphone, you'd never guess that she was once a shy child. However, in a 2009 interview, Huerta credited Girl Scouts for helping her come out of her shell and learn to speak in public.

"In Girl Scouts, I learned how to be strong, to believe in myself, and to be open to new ideas," Huerta wrote to young girls.

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

It's no wonder she ended up coining the rallying cry "Sí se puede" — Spanish for "Yes, we can." Her work as a community organizer began in the 1960s and became a blueprint for how many activists mobilize today.

Through her advocacy for women's rights, workers' rights, and immigrant rights, Huerta influenced labor laws that we still have today. She co-founded the United Farm Workers, a labor union for farmworkers in the United States, with Cesar Chavez.

Huerta is often hailed as an inspiration for activist movements and has received a number of major awards including the 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was a Girl Scout from the ages of 8 to 18. At the age of 83, she was still continuing her community organizing work as president of the Dolores Huerta foundation.

6. Susan Wojcicki has carved out much-needed space for women and girls in tech.

Susan Wojcicki was only 11 years old when she started her first business: She went door to door selling homemade "spice ropes" made with braided yarn.

Since then, Wojcicki has proved herself as a go-getter in the world of business. For example, you may have heard of a "little" company known as Google — which started with co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in her garage in 1998. And as the company's first marketing manager, she became known as the most important person in advertising.

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

Wojcicki eventually became the CEO of YouTube, the second most popular website in the world — just behind its parent company, Google.

She uses her influential position to help other women and girls get into tech by collaborating with the Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization she was once a proud member of herself. She mentors Girl Scouts who are working to earn their cybersecurity badges, and she also leads Google's Made with Code, an initiative to inspire girls to get involved with tech activities like coding and 3D printing.

7. Queen Latifah is leaving her mark on every corner of the entertainment world.

Name a major award for entertainers, and Queen Latifah probably has a win or a nomination for it.

She first made her mark on the entertainment world as a rapper, releasing her first hip-hop album in 1989 at the age of 19 and kicking off her success as an MC. This is especially remarkable considering how much men have dominated the hip-hop scene. And now, she's also known for her work on television and in movies, including the 1990s hit sitcom "Living Single," the 1996 film "Set It Off," and more recently, the massively successful 2017 film "Girls Trip."

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

Throughout her career, she has earned a Grammy Award, a Golden Globe Award, an Emmy Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award nomination. But before she released that very first album, Queen Latifah was a Girl Scout and earning badges for her sash.

Today Latifah clearly appreciates Girl Scouts for helping start off on the right foot. She narrated this video to celebrate the Girl Scouts tradition of "Preparing girls for a lifetime of leadership."

These actresses, musicians, scientists, and politicians all have one thing in common.

Posted by Upworthy on Thursday, July 26, 2018

Perhaps the next time a woman in comedy makes you laugh or a piece of digital technology leaves you in awe, you'll think of the Girl Scouts.

Being a Girl Scout helped these women develop their leadership skills, confidence, and ambitious attitudes. In order to earn Girl Scout badges, they had to prove themselves capable of helping people. And they've certainly done so in their careers by inspiring countless other women to forge their own paths across a wide range of industries, including sports, science, philanthropy, and business.

What's more, they all uphold the Girl Scouts value of making the world a better place.

Keep their stories in mind the next time you see a Girl Scout — you might be looking at one of our future leaders.

Original Article : HERE ; This post was curated & posted using : RealSpecific

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They’re each famous for different reasons. But as kids, these women wore the same uniform. was originally posted by News - Feed