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Emily Marshall, who parlayed a gig as a secretary for producer Fred de Cordova on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show into a two-decade career as a sitcom writer on Newhart, Rhoda, Wkrp in Cincinnati and Designing Women, has died. She was 79.

Marshall died March 17 of lung cancer at her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, her friend and mentor, Emmy-nominated writer-producer Barry Kemp, said. She served as a staff writer on Newhart, which he created, from 1982-84.

Marshall was the third wife of Doc Severinsen. She married the colorful Tonight Show bandleader and trumpet player in 1980 and was with him for nearly 40 years through 2013.

Marshall also created the 1988-89 CBS sitcom Coming of Age, which starred Paul Dooley, Phyllis Newman, Alan Young, Glynis Johns, Kevin Pollak and Ruta Lee. The comedy, set in an Arizona retirement community, opened with Severinsen performing the boisterous big band number “Sing, Sing,...

“Soon to be a major motion picture.” From its publication in 1986, that was what British actor-writer Peter Turner expected of his Gloria Grahame memoir “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool.” But it took three decades for the May-December romance starring Annette Bening and Jamie Bell to finally hit theaters December 29.

This could have been yet another film that never got made. But James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli knew Turner back when the young actor was in love with Grahame, his fellow lodger twice his age at a Primrose Hill rooming house. “I’ve known Peter Turner for 40 years,” said Broccoli. “I met him and Gloria together. It was a special relationship. Sometime after she passed away he wrote the memoir, and gave me the manuscript. I thought it was so beautiful.”

Columbia Pictures chairman David Puttnam optioned the book shortly after its publication, but the project went into turnaround...

“Soon to be a major motion picture.” From its publication in 1986, that was what British actor-writer Peter Turner expected of his Gloria Grahame memoir “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool.” But it took three decades for the May-December romance starring Annette Bening and Jamie Bell to finally hit theaters December 29.

This could have been yet another film that never got made. But James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli knew Turner back when the young actor was in love with Grahame, his fellow lodger twice his age at a Primrose Hill rooming house. “I’ve known Peter Turner for 40 years,” said Broccoli. “I met him and Gloria together. It was a special relationship. Sometime after she passed away he wrote the memoir, and gave me the manuscript. I thought it was so beautiful.”

Columbia Pictures chairman David Puttnam optioned the book shortly after its publication, but the project went into turnaround...

By Todd Garbarini

Cy Howard’s 1970 film Lovers and Other Strangers, which stars Bea Arthur, Bonnie Bedelia, Michael Brandon, Anne Jackson, Diane Keaton, and Cloris Leachman, celebrates it’s 45th anniversary this year. The Royale Laemmle Theater in Los Angeles will be holding a special one-night-only showing of the 104-minute comedy on Wednesday, May 20, 2015 at 7:30 pm. Scheduled to appear in person are actress Bonnie Bedelia, Cloris Leachman and the Oscar-nominated co-writers Joe Bologna and Renee Taylor for a post-screening Q&A with film critic Stephen Farber.

From the press release:

Lovers And Other Strangers was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1970 and won the Oscar for best original song, "For All We Know." This sharp and poignant comedy examines the relationships of a dozen characters involved in preparing for a family wedding. The superb ensemble cast includes Oscar winners Gig Young, Cloris Leachman, and Diane Keaton (in her first...

Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson on the Oscars' Red Carpet Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson at the Academy Awards Eli Wallach and wife Anne Jackson are seen above arriving at the 2011 Academy Awards ceremony, held on Sunday, Feb. 27, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. The 95-year-old Wallach had received an Honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards in November 2010. See also: "Doris Day Inexplicably Snubbed by Academy," "Maureen O'Hara Honorary Oscar," "Honorary Oscars: Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo Among Rare Women Recipients," and "Hayao Miyazaki Getting Honorary Oscar." Delayed film debut The Actors Studio-trained Eli Wallach was to have made his film debut in Fred Zinnemann's Academy Award-winning 1953 blockbuster From Here to Eternity. Ultimately, however, Frank Sinatra – then a has-been following a string of box office duds – was cast for a pittance, getting beaten to a pulp by a pre-stardom Ernest Borgnine. For his bloodied efforts, Sinatra went on...

This story first appeared in the Jan. 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. A Los Angeles home with longtime ties to Hollywood has changed hands. Barbara Warner Howard, 79 -- daughter of Jack Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros., and wife of the late TV writer Cy Howard -- has sold her Whitley Heights property to Nick Weidenfeld, head of Animation Domination High-Def (Fox's new Saturday late-night animation block) and his wife, Amantha. Photos: Capitol Records Building, Hollywood's Iconic Tower, Gets Transformed The 2,600-square-foot home sold for $1.6 million and sits on one of the

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Lynn Redgrave Dies Though less renowned than Vanessa Redgrave, the London-born (March 8, 1943) Lynn appeared in dozens of other movies and television productions, most notably Nicholas Sgarro’s The Happy Hooker (1975), in which she played a character — the title role — that was actually not that different from her Georgy. Also of note was David Greene’s made-for-tv movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1991), in which she and sister Vanessa were two reclusive former stars living in a decaying mention. Lynn had the old Bette Davis role as the aged Baby Jane; Vanessa was the invalid played in the 1962 original by Joan Crawford. Among Lynn’s other better-known films and TV movies are Cy Howard’s comedy Every [...]...

Beatrice Arthur, the witty television star in the hit shows Maude and The Golden Girls, and a Tony winner, died today at her Los Angeles home. Arthur, who was suffering from cancer, was 86. Born Bernice Frankel on May 16, 1922, (1923 according to some sources) in New York City, Arthur — generally known as Bea Arthur — first caught critics’ attention with her performance in the 1954 off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera. Also onstage, she originated the role of the matchmaker Yente in Fiddler on the Roof in 1964, and two years later won a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Mame, in which she plays Mame’s buddy Vera Charles. Although Arthur worked mostly onstage and on television throughout her 50+-year career, she did appear in a handful of films, including Cy Howard’s well-regarded Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), as an ardently Catholic mother who has one [...]...