LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charles Durning grew up in poverty, lost five of his nine siblings to disease, barely lived through D-Day and was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge.
His hard life and wartime trauma provided the basis for a prolific 50-year career as a consummate Oscar-nominated character actor, playing everyone from a Nazi colonel to the pope to Dustin Hoffman’s would-be suitor in “Tootsie.”
Durning, who died Monday at age 89 in New York, got his start as an usher at a burlesque theater in Buffalo, N.Y. When one of the comedians showed up too drunk to go on, Durning took his place. He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as heard the audience laughing.
He told The Associated Press in 2008 that he had no plans to stop working. ” Read more…
Charles Durning, Durning
Jazz was begun by African-Americans in New Orleans, and its message of swing and improvisation spread throughout the country and then to the rest of the world.
It was always a combination of African rhythms, European instruments, and sometimes classical technique, and the influence of other cultures, such as the “Spanish tinge” that Jelly Roll Morton famously noted.
As set forth in several books by the late Czech writer Josef Skvorecky, based on his own experience, jazz was outlawed first by the Nazis and then by the Communists, but has outlived those regimes.
Jazz artists from around the world invariably come here to New York City to perform, study (many at Berklee College of Music), and often move to the city. Some r
Read more…
New, New York
Olympic gold medalist Lindsay Vonn is one of American’s sweethearts but her private struggle with depression would sometimes make it difficult to just get out of bed.
“Everything about my life seemed so perfect to people. But I struggle like everyone else,” Vonn revealed to .
In 2008, she says she felt “hopeless, empty, like a zombie.”
Though Vonn filed for divorce from her husband, manager and coach Thomas Vonn late last year, she feels like she’s finally in a good place again.
“I feel like I just needed to get everything off my chest,” she said.
“All the parts of my life are finally in sync. I accept who I am, and I’m moving forward.”
Related
Depression, Lindsay Vonn
NEW YORK (AP) – When “The Young and the Restless” climbed to the top of the daytime drama ratings, there were 13 soap operas on the air. Now there are four.
The CBS drama just marked week No. 1,248, or 24 years, at the top, the Nielsen Co. said. The series about the fictional Wisconsin town of Genoa City has been on the air since 1973, and its inhabitants are doing a little celebrating.
“It’s definitely not something that we take for granted,” said Angelica McDaniel, senior vice president of daytime for CBS.
“The Young and the Restless” had nearly 4.4 million viewers last week. Its streak has been going on so long that Nielsen has no reliable estimates of the actual audience size when the victory streak began. Read more…
Restless, Restless Hits
NEW YORK—Regicide seems the hot topic at the Metropolitan Opera this season. In “La Clemenza di Tito,” the ruler survives an attempt on his life, but the enlightened monarch is most forgiving—which explains the title, referring to Tito’s grant of clemency to his would-be assassin.
‘La Clemenza’ is a bit of an oddity, since it was composed in an opera seria style and not in the more innovative styles of Mozart’s more famous operas, “Don Giovanni,” “The Magic Flute,” and “The Marriage of Figaro.” (The opera seria of the Baroque period emphasized higher voices and solo singing in a florid style.)
Surprisingly, this is the last opera Mozart composed before his untimely death. Nevertheless, the work is i
Read more…
Clemenza, Clemenza Di