Image Credit: Dana Edelson/NBC Things are going to be looking a little bit different around Saturday Night Live tonight. Not only will the ubiquitous Channing Tatum be on hand to host the show for his first time (musical guest Bon Iver will make his Studio 8H debut as well), but the SNL cast will be short one member tonight. And the rest of the season, for that matter, as we reported on Tuesday that featured player Paul Brittain has exited the cast for good to “to pursue other...
In a 60-year career that began on stage, the gravel-voiced Ben Gazzara appeared in more than 100 films and TV movies. He also starred in the 1960s series 'Run for Your Life,' enjoyed a renaissance in the '90s and won an Emmy in 2002.A New York native of Sicilian heritage, Ben Gazzara was a strongly masculine, subtly menacing screen presence with a gravelly voice that one writer described as “saloon-cured" and another said could strip paint at 50 paces.The veteran actor, who died Friday in...
When Ben Gazzara passed away on Friday, he left behind a six-decade legacy on stage and screen. He was one of those rare, unique actors whose sly grin and sandpaper voice could make any scene he was in instantly memorable…and he will be missed by everyone who loves movies. Gazzara’s career began in earnest in the mid-’50s, when starred in a pair of Broadway hits. First was Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which he played Brick (the role later went to Paul Newman when...
Image Credit: Louis Goldman In 2010, I wrote a story about Bill Murray that examined his unique status with the current crop of moviemakers and his unusual method of managing his career — no publicist, no agent, just a 1-800 number. In the course of reporting the story, I interviewed several filmmakers and costars who had memorable tales to tell, from his star-making days at Saturday Night Live to hit films like Zombieland and low-budget indies like Get Low. By far, my favorite anecdote was...
PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania's Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his lair to "see" his shadow on Thursday, in the process predicting six more weeks of winter. But, at this rate, that might not be so bad. The groundhog made his "prediction" on Gobbler's Knob, a tiny hill in the town for which he's named about 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Temperatures were near freezing when he emerged at dawn — unseasonably warm — and were forecast to climb into the mid-40s in a winter that's...
Veteran keyboardist, singer and songwriter Patrice Rushen, now serving as artist in residence at USC’s Thornton School of Music, was still a student at Locke High School in South Los Angeles in the early 1970s when she first came into contact with Don Cornelius and “Soul Train.” She landed more than a dozen hits on the R&B charts in the 1970s and '80s including “Feels So Real” and “Forget Me Nots” and subsequently became an in-demand studio and touring musician. “When he...
The idea was simple — but groundbreaking: Create a live showcase for black music, modeled on "American Bandstand."Don Cornelius pulled $400 from his own pocket to launch the dance show on a local Chicago TV station in 1970. As host and executive producer of "Soul Train," he was soon at the throttle of a nationally syndicated television institution that was the first dance show to cater to the musical tastes of black teenagers and also helped bring black music, dance, fashion and style to...
Enlarge Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Don Cornelius, circa 1973, Los Angeles. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Don Cornelius, circa 1973, Los Angeles. The significance of Don Cornelius to American culture — and to the American culture business — is told nowhere more eloquently than in one brief exchange between Cornelius and singer James Brown, a story that Cornelius himself recalls in VH-1's excellent 2010 documentary Soul Train: The Hippest Trip in America. It was the Godfather...
By FRAZIER MOORE AP Television Writer NEW YORK (AP) - In an era when Beyonce and Jay-Z are music royalty, when Barack Obama is the nation's chief executive, and when black stars in the cast of a TV show are commonplace, it may be hard to grasp the magnitude of what Don Cornelius created once he got his "Soul Train" rolling. Yes, the syndicated series delivered the music of Earth Wind & Fire, the Jacksons, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder into America's households, infusing them with soul in...
