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Dick Button, the two-time Olympic champion who revolutionized figure skating by completing the first triple jump in competition, then spun TV ratings gold with his pithy, Emmy-winning commentary, died Thursday. He was 95.

Button died in North Salem, New York, his daughter, actress Emily Button, told The Washington Post.

Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of his sport — as well as degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School — Button displayed a tart wit and passion that defined figure skating on network television for more than five decades, starting in 1960 on CBS with the Winter Olympics from what was then known as Squaw Valley, California.

Moving to ABC in 1962 — where he would remain for the next 40-plus years — Button presided over a new age in media and skating. With telegenic stars Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn, Dorothy Hamill and Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner rising on the world stage during the 1960s and ’70s,...

Before "Austin Powers," "Johnny English," and "Top Secret!" there was "Get Smart," the 1960s spy sitcom that mined the genre for laughs when the James Bond and "Mission: Impossible" franchises were still in their infancies. Co-created by comedy legends Mel Brook and Buck Henry, "Get Smart" ran for five seasons from 1965 to 1970, earning seven Primetime Emmys and plenty of other accolades along the way.

Stand-up comedian Don Adams starred as Maxwell Smart, the sometimes inept top-secret agent who regularly held the fate of the world in his hands ... and often almost fumbled it. By his side was the beautiful, super-cool Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon), who loves Maxwell despite his clumsiness and penchant for messing up missions. The central trio was rounded out by Edward Platt's The Chief, the supportive leader of the intelligence agency Control, which employed both Agent 99 and Maxwell.

"Get Smart" inspired a follow-up film, sequel TV show,...

The trailer for the mockumentary film Micro Budget features an array of notable comedy stars and launches ahead of the project’s festival debut later this month.

The Hollywood Reporter’s exclusive first look at the promo teases the comedy feature from director and co-writer Morgan Evans. Brandon Micheal Hall, Bobby Moynihan, Chris Parnell and Patrick Noth star in Micro Budget, which centers on clueless father-to-be Terry (Noth), who moves with his pregnant wife to Los Angeles to shoot a low-budget disaster movie that he aims to sell to a streaming service for a big profit.

Rounding out the cast are Maria Bamford, Mike Mitchell, Neil Casey, Emilea Wilson, Nichole Sakura, Jordan Rock, Jon Gabrus and Hal Linden.

“I read about this Paranormal Activity guy,” Hall’s character explains in the trailer. “He made that movie for like nothing, and then he sold it for a bajillion dollars. So I said,...

"Barney Miller" may not be one of the most talked-about sitcoms of the '70s these days, but perhaps it should be. The NYPD-set show was in some ways the "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" of its time, a socially conscious, funny series that set its action squarely in the precinct where members of the public came to ask the authorities for help -- or get arrested by them.

Like most shows about cops, it has its inherent biases, and some parts of the show have aged poorly. But "Barney Miller" is also surprisingly progressive at times. As TV historian Matt Baume writes in his queer sitcom history "Hi Honey, I'm Homo," the show broke new ground for gay characters on TV, facing off against network censors to portray New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood (post-Stonewall!) with authenticity and diversity.

Only two seasons of "Barney Miller" are currently available to rent digitally in the U.

June Walker Rogers, a singer, dancer and comedian who performed on Broadway and television and wrote several musicals and a book about how to survive in show business, has died. She was 97.

She died July 8 at her home in Westport, Connecticut, her family announced.

Born in Steubenville, Ohio, and raised in Queens, June L. Walker started dancing at age 5 and soon had a nightclub act, appearing on bills with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Louis Prima, Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield and, when he was known as the singer “Calypso Gene,” Louis Farrakhan.

After being placed in an accelerated pilot program for gifted children in the New York school system, she graduated from high school at 15. She accepted a scholarship to Columbia University but left college to make her Broadway debut in 1944 in the comedy revue Laffing Room Only, starring Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson.

The platinum blond returned...

If ever there was an actor who could convince you he burned his foot on a George Foreman Grill, it’s Steve Carell. And while Michael Scott has several Dundies to his name, Carell never won a single Emmy for playing the beloved Dunder Mifflin boss, something that still bugs the cast of The Office.

There isn’t a whole lot that gets the Creed Bratton character worked up, but the actor (also Creed Bratton) remains dumbfounded that Steve Carell didn’t take home a Primetime Emmy for The Office despite six nominations. As he put it, “There were other people who were against him – there was no comparison. That’s a travesty. So that’s still a bone of contention. I’m chewing it, boys, I’m gnawing on it.” As for who Carell lost to, there’s Tony Shaloub for Monk, Ricky Gervais for Extras, Alec Baldwin for...

Exclusive: Micro Budget is a comedy feature about an aspiring director who recklessly moves himself and his nine-months-pregnant actress wife from Iowa to LA to shoot a low-budget indie movie and sell it to a streamer for a “fuck-ton of money”. Sound familiar?

Saturday Night Live alum Bobby Moynihan and Chris Parnell and Lady Dynamite’s Maria Bamford star in the film, which is the debut feature from Morgan Evans, who wrote animated feature Merry Little Batman for Amazon/MGM.

Newcomers Emilea Wilson (Alternatino With Arturo Castro) and Patrick Noth (The Iliza Shlesinger Sketch Show) also star.

The film centers on Terry Terrison (Noth), who plays the director, Documented by his cousin Devin’s (Evans) behind-the-scenes camera crew, Terry finds that the only thing standing between himself and his dream is, well, himself. The mockumentary skewers the world of show-business and the depths some maniacal auteurs will sink to in pursuit of their vision.

Spoiler Alert: This interview contains spoilers for “Bulletproof,” the Season 3 finale of “Hacks.”

The hacks of “Hacks” are moving up in the world, but not without a cost.

After tireless work alongside Ava (Hannah Einbinder), Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter), the penultimate episode of “Hacks” Season 3 saw Deborah finally land the late-night hosting gig she’d been dreaming of since having her first chance taken away decades ago. In the finale, titled “Bulletproof,” her celebration gets cut short as she starts to prepare for the onslaught of pressure to come.

It hasn’t been long since Deborah reinvited her sister Kathy (J. Smith-Cameron) into her life after cutting her off years ago for having an affair with her husband, but she then distractedly whittles down a weekend they’d planned together to a single day, during which she reveals that she secretly had their parents’ remains removed...

There’s no IP more innately suited for adaptation as a pure two-hander than the tale of Adam and Eve, a story in which, initially at least, there are no other characters, excepting the creator of the universe, who quickly gets relegated to a supporting role in the wake of more fleshed-out human leads. Legendary television scenarist Ed. Weinberger has finally done the obvious and turned it into a two-person play in the style of “Love Letters,” read aloud from scripts, like A.R. Gurney’s highly portable, bare-bones model. Weinberger’s take on the world’s favorite creation myth, “The Journals of Adam and Eve,” premiered over the weekend with a very limited run at L.A.’s 110-seat Garry Marshall Theatre, where a total of six audiences saw that it was… good.

How good? That might be a little tricky to exactly figure out, or at least take another...

Norby Walters, a music agent who worked with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, Kool & the Gang and Public Enemy before gaining renown in Hollywood for his annual “Night of 100 Stars” Oscar party and weekly poker game, has died. He was 91.

Walters died Dec. 10 of natural causes at an assisted living facility in Burbank, his son, producer Gary Michael Walters (Whiplash), told The Hollywood Reporter.

Walters hosted his first Oscar night gala in 1990 and the last in 2017, most often inside the Beverly Hilton’s Crystal Ballroom. Among those who attended were Shirley Jones, Robert Forster, Charles Bronson, Patricia Neal, Richard Dreyfuss, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Landau, Louis Gossett Jr., J.K. Simmons, Cliff Robertson, Red Buttons, Jon Voight and Allison Janney.

Walters for years also presided over a weekly poker game at his West Hollywood high-rise condo. The low-stakes $2 game was, his son said, “designed to be a place where actors could kibbutz,...

Peter S. Fischer, the late-blooming TV writer and producer who co-created Murder, She Wrote after serving on such other crime-solving series as Columbo, Baretta and Ellery Queen, has died. He was 88.

Fischer died Monday at a care facility in Pacific Grove, California, his grandson Jake McElrath announced.

He became a prolific novelist after he exited Hollywood, writing murder mysteries, of course.

Fischer, who had worked with Columbo co-creators Richard Levinson and William Link on the iconic Peter Falk series as well as on the Jim Hutton-starring Ellery Queen, accompanied the pair to a meeting with CBS executives in 1984, he recalled in a 2011 interview.

“CBS wanted to do a murder mystery and they called Dick, who was our ringleader. He said, ‘Ok, I’ll bring the boys,'” Fischer said. “We went over there and pitched a premise called Blacke’s Magic, about a retired magician who solves mysteries. It became...

With TV and films stalled due to the ongoing writers and actors strike, director Judd Apatow and filmmaker J.J. Abrams sat down for a virtual conversation with Ed Solomon on Tuesday evening to talk in-depth about their writing process and working alongside filmmaker Matt Reeves as teenagers. During the 11th episode of The Black List’s Word by Word, the trio steered clear of conversations about the double strike.

At the start of the conversation, Solomon shared that Abrams and Apatow were eager to jump on the episode when learning...

Once Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn both lost on their 2022 Emmy nominations for “Better Call Saul,” their show joined “Murder, She Wrote” in first place on the list of drama series with the most unsuccessful TV academy acting notices and no wins, at 13. With six regulars and seven guests on this year’s first-round ballot, the recently concluded AMC program could potentially double its current acting Emmy nominations total and comfortably surpass that of its parent series, “Breaking Bad” (17). However, if it at least reaches 19 and none of its 2023 contenders triumph, it will set a new record as the show with the most failed acting bids and no wins, regardless of genre.

“Better Call Saul” ran for a total of six seasons, the last of which was split into two parts. After primarily beginning as a prequel series to “Breaking Bad” about formerly supporting character Jimmy McGill (aka Saul Goodman...

The 76th annual Tony Awards have already made history. For the first time, two of the acting nominees identify as non-binary: Harrison Ghee who is contending for lead actor in musical for “Some Like It Hot” and Alex Newell, vying for featured actor in a musical for “Shucked.” Their nominations have been warmly embraced. But 40 years ago, a history-making acceptance led to death threats.

At the 37th annual Tony Awards on June 5, 1983, producer John Glines thanked his lover when he accepted the best play honor for Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy,” a three-act drama set in New York in the 1970s and early 80s starring Fierstein as a gay, drag queen and torch singer. “He expressed gratitude to an assortment of people , ‘lastly but most importantly, to the one person who believed and followed the dream from the beginning, who never said ‘You’re crazy; it can’t be...

Sitcom mastermind Kenya Barris knows his way around the witty rat-a-tat, as a writer and an occasional director. At the helm of his first feature, the Black-ish creator choreographs a who’s who of comic talent and lets them shine — key among them Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jonah Hill, who shares screenwriting credit with Barris. In their L.A. story, the 35-year-old son of affluent white Jews and the daughter of affluent Black Muslims fall in love. Let the comedy of discomfort begin.

You People revels in tipping sacred cows (the Holocaust, slavery, liberals, Black Lives Matter), and yet it fits quite comfortably within a time-tested rom-com formula. The Netflix comedy, receiving a limited theatrical release a week before its Jan. 27 streaming debut, abounds with well-etched characters, a good number of them lovably annoying or just plain ridiculous. It comes on like gangbusters and keeps generating belly laughs well past the halfway point,...

Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan will star in the first major New York revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window this February at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Bam announced today.

The production, running Feb. 4-23, 2023, at the Bam Harvey Theater, will be directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman.

Described by Bam as a “sweeping drama of identity, idealism, and love,” The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window is set in 1960s Greenwich Village and focuses on a diverse group of friends “whose loudly proclaimed progressive dreams can’t quite match up with reality. At the center are Sidney and Iris Brustein, fighting to see if their marriage – with all its crackling wit, passion, and petty cruelty – will be the final sacrifice to Sidney’s ideals.”

The play debuted on Broadway in 1964, five years after Hansberry’s masterpiece A Raisin in the Sun and...

It was a night of record-making firsts and honoring legends from Hollywood’s Golden Era. John Forsythe and Marlo Thomas hosted the 34th Primetime Emmy Awards on ABC on September 19, 1982 — before cable TV and streaming services took over and network TV still ruled the small screen. Read on for our Emmys flashback 40 years ago to 1982.

One of the most celebrated dramas of all time set new records and dominated the acting categories. “Hill Street Blues” received 16 major nominations, breaking the two-decade record of 14 for “Playhouse 90” in 1959. It’s also the first series to receive nine acting noms in one ceremony. It would end the evening tied with “Fame” for the most wins with four, including Best Drama Series, a writing win (it received four out of the five bids in that category) and two acting trophies.

SEEEmmys flashback 20 years ago to 2002, when ‘Friends’ finally won and ‘The West Wing’ dominated...

What do the 25th and 75th Tony Awards have in common? The landmark Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical “Company,” Angela Lansbury and the beloved tuner “The Music Man.”

The gender-bender revival of “Company” is considered the front-runner for the Tony for Best Musical Revival as well as featured actress for Broadway legend Patti LuPone who brings down the house with “Ladies Who Lunch.” Elaine Stritch originated the LuPone’s character of Joanne; her rendition of “Ladies Who Lunch” is considered one of the indelible show-stopping numbers in Broadway history. Stritch was considered a shoo-in for lead actress but lost to Helen Gallagher for the revival of -the 1920s musical “No, No Nanette.” Go figure. Gallagher was good, but she wasn’t as great as Stritch.

The original “Company” waltzed into the Tony Awards — which took place at the Palace Theatre on March 28, 1971 — with a whopping 14 nominations and won six including Best Musical,...

Bobby, bubi, we need to talk about the Tony Awards! This season’s revival of the late Stephen Sondheim’s landmark musical “Company” earned nine nominations, the highest for any musical revival of the year and the fourth largest tally of any show. It earned citations for Best Revival, three for performers Matt Doyle, Patti LuPone, and Jennifer Simard, Best Director for Marianne Elliott, and four others.

Glaringly absent from this well-deserved list, though, is star Katrina Lenk, who plays the musical’s central character Bobbie; Elliott has reimagined the piece with a woman at the fore. If this snub seems egregious, it’s one that productions of “Company” past have had to contend with before.

See the complete list of 2022 Tony Awards nominees

Just as Bobby and Bobbie are notoriously unlucky in love, the character has never been particularly lucky with Tony nominators, dating way back to 1971. The very...

In this year’s Tony Awards race for Best Actress in a Musical, there are three classic roles that have been nominated before, but haven’t won: Bobbie in “Company,” Caroline Thibodeaux in “Caroline, or Change,” and Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl.” Can any of them finally prevail this time?

See‘Hangmen’ could finally earn Martin McDonagh a long awaited Tony Award for Best Play

As of this writing Sharon D. Clarke is the front-runner according to the combined predictions of Gold Derby users with 9/2 odds. In “Caroline, or Change,” she played Caroline Thibodeaux, a 39-year-old African-American maid and a single mother of four working for a middle-class Jewish family in Louisiana back in 1963. For the original Broadway production back in 2004, Tonya Pinkins was the odds-on favorite to win Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as the title character. In what was considered to be a hotly contested race that year,...

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Emmys ceremonies from film awards editor Clayton Davis. Following history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Emmy predictions are updated regularly with the current year's list of contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long: Draft, Pre-Season, Regular Season and Post Season. The eligibility calendar and dates of awards will determine how long each phase lasts and is subject to change.

To see all the latest predictions, of all the categories, in one place, visit The Emmys Collective

Visit each individual category, according to the awards show from The Emmys Hub

Link to film awards hub The Oscars Hub

Draft>>>Pre-season>>>Regular Season>>>Post Season

2021 Emmys Predictions:

Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series

Updated: Aug 10, 2021

Awards Prediction Commentary: How many ways can awards journalists write that Jason Sudeikis...

Anthony Anderson has notched six Emmy nominations in a row for Best Comedy Actor for his performance as Andre “Dre” Johnson on the ABC family comedy “Black-ish.” Predicted to land No. 7 this year in a field that is much more open than it has been in the past because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which unfortunately delayed production on a lot of shows around the globe, Anderson is currently sitting in third place in Gold Derby’s combined odds.

Anderson is trailing “Ted Lasso” star Jason Sudeikis, who has already earned a Golden Globe, a Critics Choice and a Screen Actors Guild award for his performance in the sports-centric Apple TV+ comedy. Michael Douglas of Netflix’s “The Kominsky Method” sits between Sudeikis and Anderson in second place, while Kenan Thompson (“Kenan”), Ted Danson (”Mr. Mayor”) and Ralph Macchio (“Cobra Kai”) round out the top six in the category.

The relative...

Martin Markinson, a producer and theater owner who took Torch Song Trilogy to Broadway and returned the venue now known as the Hayes Theatre to theatrical use, died Thursday, January 7 at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 89.

Arlena Markinson, his wife of 58 years, said the cause of death was cancer. The producer had been battling the disease for two years.

In addition to the Tony-winning Torch Song Trilogy (1982), Markinson, over a five-decade career, produced such notable Broadway productions as The Gathering starring Hal Linden (2001), Honeymoon in Vegas, Gigi and the Gloria Estefan musical On Your Feet (2015), as well as George Gershwin Alone (2001), Getting and Spending (1998), Corpse! (1986), Peter Nichol’s Passion (1983), Ned and Jack (1981). He served as associate producer on Chicago (1975), Poor Murderer (1976), Some of My Best Friends (1977), Cheaters (1978) and Whoopee! (1979).

Another of Markinson’s contributions to Broadway: The 1979 purchase, with nephew Donald Tick, of what was then called the Little Theatre,...

William Link, a writer and producer known for co-creating “Columbo” and “Murder, She Wrote,” died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles on Sunday, his niece confirmed to Variety. He was 87.

Over the course of Link’s decades-long television career, he became known for working alongside screenwriter and producer Richard Levinson. The duo collaborated on a number of projects, including both “Columbo” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

Steven Spielberg, who directed the first episode of “Columbo,” paid tribute to Link on Tuesday.

“Bill’s truly good nature always inspired me to do good work for a man who, along with Dick Levinson, was a huge part of what became my own personal film school on the Universal lot,” Spielberg said in a statement. “Bill was one of my favorite and most patient teachers and, more than anything, I learned so much from him about the true anatomy of a plot. I...

Lynn Kellogg, an actress and singer who originated the role of Sheila in the first Broadway production of “Hair,” died on Nov. 12, according to the New York Times. She was 77.

Her publicist, Timothy Philen, told the New York Times that Kellogg’s cause of death was Covid-19. According to Kellogg’s husband, John Simpers, Kellogg was infected at a recent gathering at a Branson, Mo. theater, where most of the people in attendance were not wearing masks. Kellogg had previously been diagnosed with a non-life-threatening form of leukemia, which made her more susceptible to the virus.

Kellogg was born on April 2, 1943 in Appleton, Wis., as one of four children. She attended the University of Wisconsin, but dropped out after one year. In 1964, she made her television debut on the series “The Edge of Night.”

In the original 1968 Broadway production of “Hair,” Kellogg played Sheila, who transforms from a debutante into...

Lynn Kellogg-Simpers, who played the original Sheila in the 1968 Broadway production of Hair, has died at 77. She had non-terminal leukemia complicated by Covid-19, according to her husband, John Simpers.

He said she had recently attended a gathering in a theater in Branson, Missouri. Many in attendance were not wearing masks.

In addition to Broadway, Kellogg-Simpers’s television appearances include the daytime series The Edge of Night, The Beverly Hillbillies, It Takes a Thief” and Mission: Impossible.”.

She also had a supporting role in the Elvis Presley film, Charro!

A talented singer, Kellogg-Simpers appeared on The Johnny Cash Show and entertained Vietnam War troops. She also toured as a folk musician.

Late in her career, she developed the Sunday morning series Animals, Animals, Animals starring Hal Linden, which won a Peabody Award and a Daytime Emmy for outstanding children’s informational series.

Anthony Anderson is now on his sixth acting Emmy nomination for his performance as Andre Johnson in “Black-ish,” but he has yet to win. The actor has nine nominations overall, earning three more because of his producing credit when “Black-ish” was nominated for Best Comedy Series. For his Best Comedy Actor submission to Emmy voters, Anderson has chosen “Love, Boat,” the Season 6 finale of the ABC sitcom.

In “Love, Boat,” Dre walks in on his previously separated parents, Ruby (Jenifer Lewis) and Pops (Laurence Fishburne) making love, which utterly stuns him. He is forced to grapple with the idea of his parents getting back together and trusting his father to not hurt his mother again, as he did in Dre’s childhood. Dre gives his mother an ultimatum: either she break up with Pops or move out of the house entirely. He later sees them off on a boat, letting...

It’s no secret that one of Emmy’s worst blunders in recent memory was to deny Steve Carell a trophy for his iconic performance as buffoonish boss Michael Scott on NBC’s “The Office.” Indeed, Carell lost Best Comedy Actor six times between 2006 and 2011, just one shy of the category record shared by John Goodman, Hal Linden and Matt LeBlanc. Now that Carell is back in the awards conversation thanks to his Netflix comedy “Space Force,” could Emmy justice finally be served?

SEEBen Schwartz (‘Space Force’): ‘We worked on making sure it wasn’t Jean Ralphio’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

According to Gold Derby’s 23 Emmy Experts from major media outlets, an even dozen predict Carell will be nominated for playing General Mark R. Naird, Chief of Space Operations for the new military branch. These 12 Experts are: Debbie Day (Rotten Tomatoes), Eric Deggans (NPR), Tim Gray (Variety), Libby Hill (Indiewire), Matthew Jacobs...

If you ask anyone, especially the internet, one of the greatest Emmy injustices is the fact that Steve Carell never won for “The Office” — and he still hasn’t won an Emmy at all. He accrued six Best Comedy Actor nominations for playing Michael Scott — who recently won The Ringer‘s Best TV Character of the Century bracket — and hasn’t been nominated, in any category, since his final bid in 2011. But he’s predicted to make a comeback this year, sitting in sixth place in our comedy actor odds for his upcoming Netflix series “Space Force.”

Obviously, a nomination after nine years — thus, another shot to win — is something to celebrate (Carell is also in 12th place in our Best Drama Actor odds for “The Morning Show”), but another comedy actor bid would bring the star’s total to an (un)lucky seven. If he doesn’t prevail, not...

“Schitt’s Creek” signed off on Tuesday with a simple and, well, simply “The Best” series finale, capping a remarkable six-season run that only grew in quality, acclaim, fan adoration and industry love as the years went on. The Canadian import broke through at the Emmys last year, netting four nominations, including Best Comedy Series, but didn’t win any. But this could be the year it grabs the top prize, and should it do so, it’d only be the third show to win its first Best Comedy Series Emmy with its final season.

The first one to achieve this was “Barney Miller,” the Hal Linden police sitcom that ran for eight seasons from 1975 to 1982. A seven-time Best Comedy Series nominee, “Barney Miller” only missed a nomination for its inaugural season, when it debuted on ABC as a midseason replacement. It lost to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (twice), “All in the Family...

The staffing crisis at Grey Sloan only got worse in Thursday’s Grey’s Anatomy. When a Meredith fan called out Bailey for canning the award winner, the chief turned around and dropped a pink slip on the individual who’d spoken up, thus making herself even likelier to be called a witch than the Charmed sorceresses who passed through the episode as part of ABC’s Cast From the Past stunt. Who was the latest to get the axe? And who else wouldn’t be scrubbing in again at Grey Sloan anytime soon? Read on…

‘Do Not Walk Toward...

Cast Members John Battagliese, Neil Starkenberg and April Nixon take you backstage during rehearsals of the West Coast Premiere of TV legend Tony winner Hal Linden, the beloved Cathy Rigby and Broadway's Ken Page starring in Grumpy Old Men The Musical They even found time to chat with Ken Page for this first rehearsal Vlog post Fasten your seat belt, it's going to be a grumpy ride...

1953: Love of Life's Vanessa waited for news about Beanie.

1987: Atwt's John pulled Lucinda into a hot tub, then married her.

1987: CBS aired the final episode of Capitol.

1990: General Hospital's Lucy resigned from the hospital."History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into d ifferent and unexpected images."

― Anselm Kiefer

"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.

On this date in...

1942: NBC's Blue Network aired the final episode of radio soap opera John's Other Wife, after a five and a half year run.

1953: On Love of Life, with Beaning (Dennis Parnell) missing, a tense Meg Harper (Jean McBride) complained that her sister,...

Last Year’s Winner: Bill Hader, “Barry”

Still Eligible: Yes.

Hot Streak: Showtime has the longest nominations streak of any network in this category, with eight years in a row earning at least one slot. Spread across three actors, 13 nominations, and dating back through 2011, William H. Macy (“Shameless”), Don Cheadle (“House of Lies”), and Matt LeBlanc (“Episodes”) have all helped keep the premium cable network in the race, year after year. However, a Showtime actor has never won the Emmy for Best Actor in a Comedy Series.

Fun Fact: John Goodman (“Roseanne”), Matt LeBlanc (“Friends” and “Episodes”), and Hal Linden (“Barney Miller”) have the most nominations without ever winning an Emmy in the category. LeBlanc and Linden have never won an Emmy period, but Goodman took home the 2007 trophy for Best Guest Actor in a Drama Series for — you guessed it — Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived NBC series “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip...

The Emmys weren’t over when the credits rolled on the NBC telecast.

In fact, the ceremony, hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che for the first time, was just the beginning of what turned out for many television stars and executives to be a very long night of party hopping.

First up was the Governors Ball followed by a slew of network and streaming service soirees held from downtown to West Hollywood.

Read on to get the inside details of what was happening into the wee hours of Tuesday morning…

Netflix

NeueHouse Hollywood

There was no one having a better time at the Netflix party than the young stars of “Stranger Things.”

Millie Bobby Brown hit the dance floor for a good part of the night along with her costars Noah Schnapp and Finn Wolfhard.

The @Stranger_Things kids are having a better time than anyone else at the @Netflix party.

Los Angeles-based theatrical distributor In8 Releasing has announced it will make its distribution debut with the Hal Linden-Ryan Ochoa drama, “The Samuel Project,” Variety has learned exclusively.

The independent company will open the film theatrically in New York on Sept. 28, followed by a limited national engagement in over 25 markets, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.

“The Samuel Project” is directed and produced by In8 founders Marc Fusco and Steve Weinberger, respectively. The film follows a high school senior, played by Ochoa, who dreams of becoming an artist and makes his grandfather, a dry cleaner portrayed by Linden, the subject of an animated art project. In the process, he discovers that when his Jewish grandpa was a boy in Germany, a young woman heroically saved him from Nazi capture.

The script was written by Fusco and Chris Neighbors, and produced by Weinberger, Rebecca Reyes, and Jeff Deverett. Rounding...

“Roseanne”’s already precarious Emmy chances took a major — irreparable? — hit Tuesday when ABC canceled the sitcom after Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet comparing Valerie Jarrett to an ape. ABC axed its Emmy campaign and our users don’t see anyone from the show making the cut, which might not actually be a bad thing for John Goodman, who is in the running for his eighth Best Comedy Actor nomination for “Roseanne.” An eighth nomination and a loss would make Goodman the category’s biggest loser.

Though he later took home Best Drama Guest Actor for “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” Goodman never won for playing Dan Conner and is currently tied with fellow seven-time losers Hal Linden (“Barney Miller”) and Matt LeBlanc (“Friends,” “Episodes”) in the category for most nominations without a win. Unlike Goodman, neither Linden, a three-time Daytime Emmy champ, nor LeBlanc, who’s in 15th...

I'm a sucker for a good love story.

It was only a small part of the plot of  Law & Order: Svu Season 19 Episode 21, but Hal Linden's guest appearance broke my heart. He was hopelessly in love with a woman who first rejected him for her husband, then forgot him altogether because of dementia.

And then at the end of the hour, he came to the nursing home with flowers and Maddie finally remembered his name, bringing tears to my eyes.

I'm grateful that these two people got somewhat of a happy ending rather than some bizarre twist in which he turned out to have raped her.

"Mama" wasn't really about the love story between Maddie and Leonard Maxwell, of course. That was just a sideline.

In some ways, the case was a subplot too. The real story here was the way elderly people in nursing homes are treated. 

These women,...

Fans of the Starz series Power may recognize a familiar — though not necessarily trustworthy — face in this week’s Law & Order: Svu.

Rotimi, who plays the power-hungry and morally shifty Dre in the cable crime drama, shows up in tonight’s episode of the NBC procedural (9/8c) as man who claims that his sister was gang-raped. But in the exclusive sneak peek of “Guardian” above, Fin doesn’t really seem sympathetic to the guy’s plight. (Maybe it’s because the victim’s brother admits to giving vodka to a 15-year-old high school student to “celebrate” a good grade?)

The...

In today’s roundup, “Glow” Season 2 gets a premiere date and truTV renewed “At Home with Amy Sedaris” for a second season.

Casting

Anne Archer, Fionnula Flanagan, Hal Linden and Joe Piscopo will guest star in “Mama,” a new episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” airing May 16 at 9 p.m. Et/Pt on NBC. Flanagan plays Madeleine, an assisted living home patient suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease who claims to have been raped, while other characters question her mental fitness to remember. Linden plays an enigmatic man from Madeleine’s past, while Piscopo appears as a Frank Sinatra impersonator working at the facility. Rounding out the guest stars, Archer portrays a notorious actress connected to the case.

Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and Michael Strahan will headline Fox Sports’ new “Thursday Night Football Pregame Show” live from New York City for the 2018 NFL season. The “Thursday Night Football Pregame...

Fionnula Flanagan, Hal Linden, Anne Archer and comedian Joe Piscopo are set to guest-star in an episode of NBC’s Law & Order: Svu that investigates a rape claim made by a woman living with Alzheimer’s Disease.

In the episode, titled “Mama” and airing Wednesday, May 16 at 9/8c, Flanagan (Defiance) plays Madeline, an assisted living home patient who lives with Alzheimer’s. When she claims to have been raped, her mental state brings her allegation into question.

Archer (Privileged) in turn plays a notorious actress connected to the case, while Linden (Barney Miller) guest-stars as a mysterious man from Madeline’s past.

http://www.lajfilmfest.org

The 13th annual Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival will begin on Wednesday, April 25, 2018 and conclude on Wednesday, May 2nd with films from around the world celebrating the Jewish experience.

The opening night begins with a Bar Mitzvah or 13th year, style party and a tribute to Sammy Davis Jr. with the premiere of a new documentary Sammy Davis Jr. — I Gotta Be Me, an amazing Documentary made for American Masters which I was elated to see when it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Sammy Davis Jr. was the ultimate performer. His worldview was unique and self made just as he was. It did not conform to the liberal “style” of the time, but it was not conservative either.

USA/2018/100 minutes

Directed by Sam Pollard).

Sammy Davis Jr. was recognized as a groundbreaking entertainer who frequently found himself bracketed by the bigotry of white America and...

Is Criminal Minds being cancelled? That question alone doesn’t exactly make it easy being a fan of CBS’ riveting series that pits a team of FBI profilers against a different serial killer who, conveniently, pops up each week just in time for a new episode. Cancellation is actually a bigger concern than occasional fluctuations in the cast or fear the writers can no longer come up with inventive ways of killing off victims (unnervingly, that never seems to be a problem). So, is Criminal Minds over? The short answer: We don't know yet. But don't be alarmed that Criminal Minds is getting canceled after Season 13 and won't be renewed for Season 14. CBS always keeps fans hanging on until the last moment. In fact, it's become a yearly, hang-on-to-your-seats guessing game until the series is inevitably renewed. Think we’re joking? Renewal for Season 13 was still an issue in March...

Despite seven Best Comedy Actor nominations for playing Dan Conner, John Goodman never took home the Emmy during “Roseanne”’s initial nine-season run. It wasn’t until 2007 that he won his first Emmy for his guest appearance on “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” With the return of “Roseanne,” Goodman could finally win for his most famous TV role, but if he suffers yet another loss, he’ll have sole ownership of a title no one wants: most nominations in the category without a single win.

See ‘Roseanne’ revival: Get ready for even more episodes in season 2 of reboot after record ratings for return

Goodman, who is seventh in our predictions, is right now tied with two other unlucky seven-time losers: Hal Linden and Matt LeBlanc. Like Goodman, all of Linden’s nominations were for the same character: the title role on “Barney Miller.” LeBlanc accrued his nominations over two shows,...

1953: Love of Life's Vaness waited for news about Beanie.

1987: Atwt's John pulled Lucinda into a hot tub, then married her.

1987: CBS aired the final episode of Capitol.

1990: General Hospital's Lucy resigned from the hospital."Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results."

― Machiavelli

"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.

On this date in...

1942: NBC's Blue Network aired the final episode of radio soap opera John's Other Wife,...

In the mid-1970s, ABC introduced a pair of unique comedies that tried to shake things up a little bit. One was the Hal Linden cop sitcom Barney Miller, while the other was stand-up comedian Gabe Kaplan’s high school-set Welcome Back, Kotter. The premise of the latter (which introduced John Travolta to the world) had Gabe playing Gabe Kotter, a teacher with a sense of humor who takes a job at his alma mater, James Buchanan High School, located in Brooklyn, New York. He’s given a classroom of juvenile delinquents known as the Sweathogs, and assigned by school assistant principal Michael Woodman to keep them “contained” until they either drop out or somehow manage to graduate. But, instead, Kotter, who was one of the original Sweathogs in his youth, tries to connect with them to make them better people in the process. It sounds more like a serious drama (going way back,...

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater presented the American Artist Award to Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor Hal Linden, who is currently performing in Arthur Miller's The Price in Arena Stage's Kogod Cradle. The award was presented last night, November 8, 2017, as part of the opening night celebration for the musical comedy The Pajama Game, directed by Alan Paul. Scroll down for photos from the festivities...

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater will present the American Artist Award to Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor Hal Linden who is currently performing in Arthur Miller's The Price in Arena Stage's Kogod Cradle.

Barney Miller is back. Recently, star Hal Linden spoke to the Av Club about the popular ABC sitcom.Created by Danny Arnold and Theodore J. Flicker, the series followed the detectives of New York's fictional 12th precinct. Linden played the lead, Captain Barney Miller, alongside Abe Vigoda, Max Gail, Ron Glass, Jack Soo, Gregory Sierra, and James Gregory. The show ran on ABC for eight seasons before ending in 1982.Read More…...

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.

The actor: Hal Linden made his Broadway debut in 1957, after he’d been singing and playing music for more than a decade. He became one of the most famous faces on the primetime landscape when he took on the title role in the long-running and critically acclaimed sitcom Barney Miller in 1975. Barney Miller came to a close after eight seasons, but Linden has yet to stop working. He’s tried his hand at a few more TV series (Blacke’s Magic, Jack’s Place) and guest-starred on many others, continued his work in the theater, and toured his nightclub act. He can currently be seen in the indie mob comedy Stevie D.

Hal Linden: When people ...