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February 2nd: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!


#QueerQuote: ”Always Be Smarter Than the People Who Hire You”. – Lena Horne

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Photo from NPR via YouTube

 

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (1917-2010) is my father’s favorite movie star. He has a story of filling her automobile’s tank at the gas station where he worked on La Cienega Boulevard in 1944-46.

Horne had a primary occupation as a nightclub entertainer, a profession she pursued successfully around the world for more than 60 years, from the 1930s into the 1990s. Besides her club work, she also had a recording career that stretched from 1936 to 2000 that brought her three Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989. She appeared in 16 feature films and several shorts between 1938 and 1978. She performed occasionally on Broadway, including in her own Tony winning show Lena Horne: The Lady And Her Music (1981/1982). She sang, acted and she charmed on radio and television.

Adding to the challenge of maintaining such an amazingly varied career was her life as an African-American woman facing racial and sexual discrimination personally and professionally. Her first job in the 1930s was at Harlem’s Cotton Club, where black people could perform, but were not be admitted as customers.

When Horne acted in the film Death Of A Gunfighter (1969), her character’s marriage to a white man went unremarked in the script. This was rather astounding for the time.

Horne was a pivotal figure in the changing attitudes about race in the 20th century. Her middle-class upbringing and her musical training made her talent perfect for the popular music of the day, rather than the Blues and Jazz more commonly associated with people of color. Her photogenic beauty was close enough to the Caucasian ideal that she was often encouraged to try to “pass” for white, something she consistently refused to do. But, her position in the middle of our country’s social struggle enabled her to become a leader in that fight. Horne worked hard, speaking out in favor of integration and raising money for Civil Rights causes. Horne lived a life that was never short on conflict, but that could be seen ultimately as a sort of triumph.

Horne is closely associated with the songs of her BFF, the openly gay composer, Billy Strayhorn.

Horne was born on the same day as Susan Hayward, but she did not screen-test for Gone With The Wind (1939), as Hayward did.

She gave us the legacy of her music and those images of her stunning beauty, remaining absolutely ravishing until her final curtain call in spring 2010.

“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”

#LGBTQ: Netflix Reboots “Queer Eye” For a New Binge-y Audience. Watch

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Bobby Berk, left, Karamo Brown, Antoni Porowski, Jonathan Van Ness and Tan France.
Photo, Gavin Bond/ Netflix

Yes, the Queer Eye is back with a new cast on Netflix. Producer David Collins says the reboot, besides the all-new cast, will be different. He told Deadline,

We have no commercial breaks! We don’t have recaps and tag-ins and tag-outs. We get to tell a whole story.

There’s no question that the water-cooler, appointment viewing and the Netflix experience are two different worlds. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, though. The unknown still is that we’re going to put eight episodes of Queer Eye, each one of them a little meal in itself. If you sit down, how many courses of that meal are you going to have?

It will be interesting to see how binge-y it is, or whether people say, ‘I don’t know, I think I’m going to have one on Monday, one on Tuesday and three or four over the weekend.‘”

The original Fab 5:
Filicia, Allen, Kressley, Douglas & Rodriguez

The original, of course, was called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (my ex, Roswell Hamrick worked on it as an art director) and it really did change the way the world looked at LGBTQ life.

The reboot’s brand new “Fab Five” are Antoni Porowski, Bobby Berk, Jonathan Van Ness, Karamo Brown and Tan France. Like the original cast that starred Kyan Douglas, Ted Allen, Jai Rodriguez, Thom Filicia and Drag Race Judge Carson Kressley, they will offer expertise to those who need it in areas like food and wine, fashion, grooming, culture and fashion. The new show’s first season was shot in and around Atlanta last spring, a change from the original’s NYC locale.

Collins said that so many new avenues are open to this 2018 version.

Fifteen years ago, we would never have been able to say ‘my husband.’ or ‘my boyfriend’ or, more importantly, ‘my kids.’ I’m a dad of twin 9-year-old girls and my life’s dramatically different. Fifteen years ago, the Fab Five sort of swooped in and they were the glossy version of themselves. This version is much more true, much more authentic.

It’s much more verité. We’re able to have much more of the flow of the docu-story that runs full. … As a viewer, I get to know the guys. I get to know that Bobby grew up as an evangelical Southern boy who had an interesting story. Tan France, a Muslim, ended up marrying a Mormon cowboy. All of these stories we get to learn now.

The guys really get to speak their heart.”

Here some classic quotes from the guys:

TAN FRANCE (fashion) A British-born fashion entrepreneur.
I’m sorry, but there’s no way that’s acceptable anywhere other than — God, I don’t even know where you’d wear that.

JONATHAN VAN NESS (grooming) A hairstylist with a gone-viral web series (Gay of Thrones) and a penchant for flinging his hair about.
How you take care of yourself is how the world sees you.

KARAMO BROWN (culture) A single dad, and the first openly gay black man on MTV’s The Real World.
I need [the makeover subject] to learn from me and I need to learn from him.

ANTONI POROWSKI (food/wine) Canadian-born protégé and eventual personal chef of original QE foodie (and current Food Network star) Ted Allen.
Introducing things that are fresh into [one’s] diet — that’s so simple.

BOBBY BERK (design) An interior designer and former creative director at Portico Home & Spa. “[He’s] really stuck in time in this space — it’s the room of a 12-year-old.

Queer Eye premieres Feb. 7 on Netflix. To binge to not to binge, that is the question?

(via Deadline)

Wait. Why Did Michelle Obama Forget SHE Gave Outgoing First Lady Laura Bush a Gift As SHE Arrived in 2009?

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It pains me to call out a Democrat on their shenanigans, but this IS a bit fishy.

Last week, you’ll recall, Michelle Obama gave her first post-White House interview to Ellen and revealed the answer to the question on everyone’s mind: What was in the blue Tiffany box that Melania Trump gifted her upon her arrival? (A lovely frame, it turns out). Then Michelle explained her utter confusion as to WHY she was given the box, WHAT was she supposed to do with it, it was all just so CRAZY and UNHEARD of. Those uncouth Trumps, not following protocol ALREADY.

Explained Michelle:

I mean, this is like a state visit, so they tell you that you’re going to do this, they’re going to stand here,” Obama said, while the exchange took place behind her on a big screen. She narrated what was going through her head for the audience: “Never before do you get this gift, so I’m sort of like, ‘O.K., what am I supposed to do with this gift?’ And everyone cleared out and no one would come and take the box. And I’m thinking, do we take the picture with it?

And then my husband saved the day. See, he grabbed the box and took it back inside. But everybody cleared out. No staff, no one. I was like, what do you do with the box?

But it turns out, back in 2009, incoming First Lady MICHELLE handed outgoing First Lady LAURA BUSH a similar gift upon arriving at the White House! (It even conveniently matched HER coat just as Melania’s did!)

Watch the video evidence below. And listen as the Today show hosts and Brian Williams express THEIR dismay at Michelle (“We’ve never seen THIS before!”).

So… you gotta ask… Did Michelle really forget she put Laura in the same position that Melania put her in? Or was his just a passive/aggressive dig at Melania?

#RIP: Connie Sawyer, Hollywood’s Oldest Working Actress, Dies at 105

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Connie Sawyer, the oldest working actress in Hollywood, has died after suffering a heart attack at the Motion Picture Television Fund retirement home where she lived. She was 105.

Sawyer, whose IMDB reveals she has appeared on everything from The Andy Griffith Show to Mary Tyler Moore to Will & Grace – and was most recently seen as the mother of James Woods‘ character in Ray Donovan –  was born Rosie Cohen in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1912 (the year the Titanic sank) to a Jewish family from Romania. As a teenager, she got her first gig on the radio, then went on to work the Vaudeville circuit and nightclubs.

“I learned all about show business,” she told People last year. “I played every nightclub across the United States in the ’30s, and some of them were real dumps. But that’s how I got into the biz.”

Her big break came in 1957 when Frank Sinatra‘s agent saw her in the Broadway comedy A Hole in the Head.

The singer purchased the rights for the play, and Sawyer was the only Broadway cast member hired for the film.

That led to roles alongside Jackie Gleason, Kirk Douglas, Milton Berle, Robert Mitchum, Susan Hayward and Dean Martin. She never stopped working, and Sawyer said she was perfectly happy not becoming a major star.

“On the whole, it’s been a good [career] considering I began in nightclub dumps,” she told The Spectrum in 2016. “Frankie (Sinatra) told me ‘Never give up and you’ll always find a good part somewhere, sometime.’ And I did.”

RIP, you’ve earned it Connie.

(via CNN)

Justin Timberlake Releases “Man of the Woods” Music Video Before Sunday’s Big Game

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Is he going to open with this? Close with it? I’m betting he opens his halftime show with “Can’t Stop the Feeling” then segues into this, THEN “Filthy.” And I’m betting you a THOUSAND BUCKS that “Filthy” will segue into “SexyBack.” Also: I’m pretty sure he fits “Suit & Tie” (which nobody cares about) in there. And that ‘N Sync will be the big finale. Yep. I think he’s desperate enough for big ratings and water cooler talk the next day to do it.

Anyway, back to the “Man of the Woods” video. How bad is it? Pretty bad. Watch below and decide for yourself if it’s the worst thing he’s ever done. (Spoiler Alert: I can confirm it’s the worst thing he’s ever done).

Other Sunday song choice musings: Will “Cry Me a River” make the cut? “Rock Your Body”? And what about the McDonald’s jingle “I’m Lovin’ It” – will he get big sponsorship bucks to include it? SO MANY QUESTIONS!

They’re Baaaaack! Spice Girls Reunite for a Series of New Projects – & You Have to See the New Pic!

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It’s happening! It’s happening! The Spice Girls are reuniting for the first time since the 2012 Olympics! ALL OF THEM! Even Posh – who was reportedly reluctant (I’ll BET) but then agreed after receiving assurances that she wouldn’t have to sing.

via NME:

A source told The Sun: “This is the pop reunion no one thought would ever happen again. But after a long period of negotiation Victoria agreed the time is right to work on new projects this year.

“It’s very exciting because she has always been adamant she wouldn’t go back.”

“Victoria and Geri agreed it would be impossible to be part of a fully-fledged tour because of family and business commitments”, the source added.

“Now that she’s a top designer Victoria is concerned about singing but she wants to make money to pump back into her business.”

The Girl Power pioneers plan to work on a series of upcoming projects, including TV shows, endorsements, and a greatest hits compilation.

Fabulous! And it only took $12 million apiece to get them back together!

Above, the girls in 1996. And, below, here are the girls meeting up at Geri Halliwell’s London house this morning!

“Great catch up with my girls! #bffs always, the future is looking spicy!” Emma Buntoncaptioned the image.

Great catch up with my girls! #bffs always ❤❤❤❤❤ the future is looking spicy!

A post shared by emmaleebunton (@emmaleebunton) on

SQUEEEEEEEAL!

(Top photo: Pacific Coast News)

Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman from Lifetime’s ‘Unreal’ & This Week’s ‘All Stars 3’ Joins Us for The WOW Report on Radio Andy!

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This week we have hunky Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman from Lifetime’s Unreal – which comes back for season 3 on February 26 at 1oPM – and guest judge on this week’s ALL-NEW episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3 – airing next Thursday at 8PM on VH1 – joining us for the Top Ten Things That Make Us Go WOW for Radio Andy!

WOWers, World of Wonder Co-Founder Fenton Bailey, Executive VP of Development Tom Campbell, and WOW Report Editor James St. James have collaborated with reality TV guru and friend of WOW, Andy Cohen, on a weekly Top Ten Countdown of the things from the past week that make us go…WOW!

It’s a pop-culture obsessed hour complete with colorful diatribes, opposing opinions, and a dissection-like discussion that will make your drive home from work more fabulous!

You can now WATCH us recording the WOW Report in our gallery storefront on Hollywood Boulevard, just across the street from Hollywood’s oldest restaurant Musso & Frank!

This week, we’re counting down the top ten stories of 2017 that made us go WOW!  We air TODAY at 3PM EST on SiriusXM, and again at 3PM PST (that’s 6PM EST). You can also catch the show on the SiriusXM app!

Let’s get started…

10) Unreal’s Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman 

Skip forward to Unreal’s Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman @01:00

9) Hot on Hulu: Future Man 

Skip forward to Hot on Hulu: Future Man @06:58

8) Sundance ‘18: Three Identical Strangers 

Skip forward to Sundance ‘18: Three Identical Strangers @11:52

7) Don’t Cry for Patti Lupone 

Skip forward to Don’t Cry for Patti Lupone  @19:57

6) The Assassination of Gianni Versace 

Skip forward to The Assassination of Gianni Versace @23:52

5) Netflix Pick: Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable 

Skip forward to Netflix Pick: Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable @29:38

4) Citizen Rose on E! 

Skip forward to Citizen Rose on E! @36:56

3) Japanese Robot Slippers 

Read more about these slippers here.

Skip forward to Japanese Robot Slippers @40:43

2) Sundance ’18: Jane Fonda In Five Acts 

Skip forward to Sundance ’18: Jane Fonda In Five Acts @43:49

1) Trump & Melania: D-I-V-O-R-C-E?

Skip forward to Trump & Melania: D-I-V-O-R-C-E? @50:04

Resistor of the Week – The First Purge 

AND John Kennedy III

Skip forward to Resistor of the Week – The First Purge/Joe Kennedy III @54:02

Listen in at 3:00PM EST and again at 3:00 PST (6 PM EST) on SiriusXM! Or listen whenever you want on the SiriusXM App!

And be sure to give your ears the gift of THE WOW REPORT on Radio Andy SiriusXM EVERY Friday.

Do something this weekend that makes YOU go WOW!!!


This INSANE “Drag Race: Thailand” Preview Doesn’t Need Subtitles (If You Already Speak Drag Queen)

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This is certainly one of the most entertaining things I’ve seen in a while. It’s the preview for the upcoming season of Drag Race: Thailand, and while we’ve been told that a version with subtitles is on its way, I almost prefer NOT knowing the exact words. It’s more fun to just let the shade, the tears, the cat-fights, and the cackles wash over you. Trust me. After 10 seasons of our Drag Race, you know EXACTLY what’s going on in every frame.

I. CANNOT. WAIT.

(Drag Race: Thailand will be on our streaming service WOW Presents Plus – STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS)

Watch below:

Chuckles and Awes END OF WEEK EDITION

Try to Get Through This Dance Video to Jussie Smollett’s Freedom Without Feeling Inspired

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Empire‘s star Jussie Smollett released a new song ‘Freedom’ last month and it’s a war cry for unity.

This week Michael Korte released a video to the song along with dancer Anthony Burrell (who has worked with such divas as Beyonce and Mariah Carey).

Ultimately, he’d like “Freedom” to “encourage community and promote conversation,” as well as “provide escape” in America’s divisive climate.

Watch Korte gracefully dance in an empty cathedral connecting choreography and lyrics. Korte also felt an extreme connection to Smollett’s work stating,

“We have very few gay artists ― especially gay artists of color ― to turn to, to respect and to idolize,” he said. “To have Jussie be who he is, singing about the freedom in loving whomever we so choose … proved to be more than enough inspiration for myself and my team to want to showcase the song.”

Check out the whole video below:

 

Content via Youtube and HuffPost.  

Courtney Act Crowned Winner of Celebrity Big Brother UK 2018!

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Condragulations! The power of the Drag Race fandom proves unstoppable as Courtney Act is crowned WINNER of the Celebrity Big Brother (UK) house!

Metro UK gives us a rundown of the events that led to her stunning victory:

Wayne Sleep, Jess Impiazzi, Shane L, Ann Widdecombe and Courtney Act all faced the public vote following Tuesday night’s triple eviction – which saw Amanda Barrie, Malika Haqq and Ashley James leave the house. Earlier in the night, Wayne Sleep and Jess Impiazzi finished fifth and fourth in the final, while Shane Lynch placed third leaving the pair to battle it out for the top spot. Anne Widdecombe however came second, leaving Shane J aka Courtney Act as the winner.

Below, the moment Emma Willis broke the news to Courtney and Anne:

From Courtney’s Twitter:

A huge thank you to everyone who voted and cheered along the way, we couldn’t have done it with you! 👑🦄🌈❤

#FirstLook: Jeff Hiller Stars Off-Broadway in Drew Droege’s “Bright Colors and Bold Patterns” Watch

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I wrote about Drew Droege‘s comedy Bright Colors And Bold Patterns on The Wow Report as one of the best of 2016. Well, now it’s back off-Broadway with the hysterically funny Jeff Hiller (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) who officially opens in this one-man show this Sunday, February 4 at SoHo Playhouse.

But don’t listen to me, Mama Ru says Hiller is

FANTASTIC!

Watch.

You can see 3 longer EXCLUSIVE clips here.

(via Broadway Box)

#LGBTQ: Rose McGowan Gets Into a Argument with a Trans Woman & Yells, “Don’t Label Me, Sister! Step the F*ck Back!”

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Rose McGowan attended a reading event for her new memoir, Brave, at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square in NYC. According to Vulture, the evening started off with McGowan answering pre-submitted questions from audience members, but it got intense FAST when a trans woman jumped in about something McGowan has supposedly said on Drag Race.

I have a suggestion. Talk about what you said on RuPaul. Trans women are dying and you said that we, as trans women, are not like regular women. We get raped more often. We go through domestic violence more often. There was a trans woman killed here a few blocks [away]. I have been followed home…

McGowan cut her off and said…

Hold on. So am I. We are the same. My point was, we are the same. There’s an entire show called ID channel, a network, dedicated to women getting abused, murdered, sexualized, violated, and you’re a part of that, too, sister. It’s the same.

The trans woman asked:

You do nothing for them. Trans women are in men’s prisons. And what have you done for them?

It then got VERY heated with the trans woman being escorted out by security while chanting “white cis feminism,” with McGowan continuing to yell…

Don’t label me, sister. Don’t put your labels on me. Don’t you fucking do that. Do not put your labels on me. I don’t come from your planet. Leave me alone. I do not subscribe to your rules. I do not subscribe to your language. You will not put labels on me or anybody. Step the fuck back. What I do for the fucking world and you should be fucking grateful. Shut the fuck up. Get off my back. What have you done? I know what I’ve done, Goddammit.

She then yelled about the truth…

And you can label this thing as a breakdown. That, motherfuckers, is a breakdown. Maybe not for me, but for you. I might have information you want. I might know shit that you don’t. So fucking shut up. Please systemically. For once. In the world. You know what I’m talking about. Just tell the God damned truth. Stop boxing everybody into shit. I didn’t agree to your cis fucking world. Ok? Fuck off.

Yelling about some other topics…

Trans women are women and what I’ve been trying to say is that it’s the same. The stats are not that dissimilar. When you break it down, it is a much smaller population. There’s not a network here devoted to your fucking death. There’s not advertisers advertising tampons with a camera lovingly going up a girl’s body as she’s being lovingly raped and strangled. Piss off. And until you can collect that fucking check, back up. My name is Rose McGowan and I am obviously fucking brave.

Yikes. And this is just the beginning of her book tour.

(Photos, Instagram; via Vulture)

#BornThisDay: Actor, Nathan Lane

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Photo via YouTube

February 3, 1956Nathan Lane:

“I’m one of those old-fashioned homosexuals, not one of the newfangled ones who are born joining parades.”

In the midst of all sexual harassment allegations that swirled around Harvey Weinstein last autumn, Lane recalled his own encounter with the film producer, and no, Weinstein did not jerk-off in a potted plant in front of Lane. Weinstein attacked him at Hillary Clinton’s birthday party in 2000. Lane told a comb-over joke about Rudy Giuliani, which resulted in Weinstein throwing Lane against the wall. Weinstein told Lane: “This is my fuking show, we don’t need you”. Lane retorted: “You can’t hurt me, I don’t have a film career.”

I channel surfed on to The Birdcage (1996) recently, and whenever I chance upon it, it seemingly ends up receiving my full attention. The Birdcage was a huge box-office hit 1996, grossing $200 million worldwide and receiving rave reviews. A remake of the even better French-Italian comedy La Cage aux Folles (1978), it is directed by Mike Nichols and stars Lane and Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, Hank Azaria, and Christine Baranski. Williams is astonishingly fun, but I think it is Lane’s movie.

I find it little junk, but I admit The Birdcage is boisterously entertaining and enchantingly witty. I also think it is an important gay film, because an unsuspecting viewer probably would not to realize that there’s a message.

GLAAD praised the film for:

“… going beyond the stereotypes to see the character’s depth and humanity. The film celebrates differences and points out the outrageousness of hiding those differences.”

“The Birdcage” via YouTube

 

Of course, the biggest Nathan Lane news is that Angels In America, Tony Kushner’s sweeping masterpiece, will be revived on Broadway beginning in three weeks, a quarter century after its winged title character first hovered over the Broadway stage. Lane plays the anti-Communist lawyer and mentor to young Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, plus Andrew Garfield as Prior Walter, a gay man with AIDS, and Lee Pace (Pushing Daisies, Halt And Catch Fire). The two-part play takes on themes of  identity, illness and Americanness, set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis and the Ronald Reagan Administration. Subtitled A Gay Fantasia On National Themes, it is one of most important plays of the 20th Century. This production played last year at the National Theatre, London, receiving ecstatic reviews, especially for Lane.

The announced revival started me thinking about Lane and how he somehow ended up with my career. I wanted to establish myself as the “go to” guy for comic musical theatre roles. I wanted to make my home on the Broadway stage, but not be afraid to venture into films; some Disney voice work would be nice and maybe do a sitcom at some point. I wanted to make room for all those Tony Awards, Emmys, SAG Awards, Drama Desk, Olivier, and Obie Awards on my mantle (really, I was going to list all of Lane’s awards for this piece, but it was just too much typing).

Like Lane, when I was firmly established as a comic leading man, I would come out of the closet and hope for the best. I wanted to play opposite Matthew Broderick in one of the biggest hit musicals of all time and follow that with turns in Samuel Beckett and Eugene O’Neill classics and maybe a new Davis Mamet play. I wanted to be Terrance McNally’s muse and have him write roles just for me in The Lisbon Traviata, Bad Habits, Lips Together/Teeth Apart, the Tony-winning Love! Valour! Compassion! and a film version of Frankie And Johnnie At The Claire De Lune. It would have been fun working with Christine Baranski on the The Good Wife.

I would have even been unapologetic when I starred opposite Bette Midler in that Jacqueline Susann biopic, Isn’t She Great.

I never did get to star opposite Bebe Neuwirth in The Addams Family on Broadway or make history with Douglas Carter Beane’s The Nance. Oh well, Nathan Lane is the toast of Broadway and I here I sit in my little hovel with a big ol’ chip on my shoulder.

He seems like he is Jewish, but Lane was born Joseph Lane in Jersey City, into a Catholic family. His father was a truck driver and an aspiring performer who died in 1967 from alcoholism when Lane was 11-years-old. His mother was a secretary who suffered from manic depression. Lane attended Catholic schools and he tried Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia for a year. He had received a Theatre scholarship, but it was not cover enough of his expenses, so he decided to leave, and work for a year to earn some money.

Because there already was a Joseph Lane registered with Actors Equity, he changed his name to Nathan after the character Nathan Detroit from the musical Guys And Dolls, a role he later made his own in a Broadway revival in 1992. He moved to NYC where he had a brief success doing stand-up comedy.

Lane soon was cast in a string of Off-Broadway productions before making Broadway debut in a 1982 revival of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter with George C. Scott, Kate Burton, and Christine Lahti. Since his big break, Lane has worked in an astonishing 50 Off-Broadway and Broadway shows, musicals, comedies, farces and dramas, plus terrific work in 40 films.

“Angels In America”, 2017, via YouTube

He has received 11 Emmy Award nominations for guest appearances on Frasier, Mad About You, Modern Family, and The Good Wife.

He is such a busy actor; in just the last five years, he has appeared in The Nance, a new gay-themed play by Douglas Carter Beane. He received Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations and won the Outer Critics Circle Award and Drama League Award. I cannot recommend this play enough, and you can actually see it on PBS Live From Lincoln Center, available in the PBS streaming archives.

In 2014. He appeared in Terrence McNally’s revised and updated It’s Only A Play, with F. Murray Abraham, Matthew Broderick, Stockard Channing, Rupert Grint and Megan Mullally. The show became one of the biggest hits of the season.
In 2015 he reprised the role of Hickey in the Robert Falls production of The Iceman Cometh at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 2016, he starred in White Rabbit, Red Rabbit Off-Broadway, and on Broadway to rave reviews in Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page, with John Slattery and John Goodman, for which he received Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle award nominations.

In 2016, he played F. Lee Bailey in American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson on the FX channel. It received 22 Emmy nominations and won the Emmy for Best Limited Series.

When Lane told his mother he was gay, she replied: “I’d rather you were dead”.  Lane replied: “I knew you’d understand”.

He came out publicly after the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, and has been a long-time board member of and fundraiser for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and has been honored by the Human Rights Campaign, Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and The Trevor Project for his work for the LGBTQ community.

Photo via YouTube

 

After nearly two decades of dating, Lane married Devlin Elliott in November 2015 in a small ceremony in NYC City Hall. They have one child, a French bulldog, Mabel, about whom they’ve written a children’s book together titled Naughty Mabel.

I hope the little fucker is happy today on his birthday.


February 3rd: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!

#YoMemoJokes: “Yo Memo Is Such a Disappointment That It Might Be Another Trump Son”

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Devin Nunes & high school yearbook pic

In wake of the lame, dud Devin Nunes’ memo being released yesterday, the day was filled with cable news analyzing every word to find basically nothing except the Trump‘s desperate attempt to get Robert Mueller off his back.

Of course, it didn’t take too long for #YoMemoJokes to start popping up on Twitter thanks to comedian George Wallace.

Steve Marmel got in a few good ones like,

“Yo memo so bankrupt, it used to be a Trump casino.”

And Alyssa Milano zinged a few times with,

“Yo’ memo so broke, the @GOP taxed it.”

&

“Yo’ memo is so unqualified, Trump made it a cabinet member.”

Here are some of the best, but you can also just got to #YoMemoJokes and read (and laugh) for 30 minutes.

(T/Y Angel; via Raw Story)

#QueerQuote: ”Art is an Elastic Sort of Love.” – Josephine Baker

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Photograph via YouTube

 

Endlessly fascinating, but still without a first-rate film biography, Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was born Freda Josephine McDonald. She grew up in a life of poverty in St. Louis. She was ambitious, alluring, accomplished, and the toast of Europe at the height of her fame. By the mid-1920s she was captivating audiences in Paris as a dancer, singer, and actor. Baker was the 20th century’s first international black female sex symbol.

Famous for her glamorous, extravagant lifestyle, Baker could be devious, manipulative, and relentless. She was also always willing to break the rules, especially those having to do sex. Her conquests were legendary. There were as many sexual liaisons with women as with men. Among her female lovers were Clara Smith, a black blues singer who secured Baker her first job as a chorus girl, the great French novelist Colette, and painter Frida Kahlo.

On stage Baker radiated such gay energy and high camp that by the end of her career most of her faithful audience consisted of gay men.

As part of her crusade against Racism, and because she was unable to conceive children herself, Baker adopted what she called her “Rainbow Tribe” of 12 children from different parts of the world. She was a regular Angelina Jolie, hold the Pitt.

She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the USA. Her insistence on performing for mixed audiences helped to integrate the casino shows in Las Vegas.

During WW II, Baker showed her loyalty to her adopted country of France by participating in La Résistance. She worked underground, smuggling intelligence info coded within her sheet music. After the war, Baker received the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Résistance, and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’ Honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.

On April 8, 1975, Baker starred in a retrospective revue at the Bobino Club in Paris titled: Joséphine à Bobino 1975, celebrating her 50 years in show business. The revue, financed by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, opened to SRO crowds and rave reviews. Her opening night audience included Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli. Four days later, Baker was found dead in her bed surrounded by the newspapers containing glowing reviews of her performance.

After her final bow in Paris, three funerals were held, one in Paris and two in Monaco, attended by much of the French government and entertainment elite. She was the first American woman to receive full French military honors at her funeral. At the request of her longtime friend and benefactor Princess Grace, Baker is buried in Monaco.

Who do you see portraying Baker when a film of her life is finally realized? Rihanna Fenty? Directed by Baz Luhrmann?

Oregon Transgender Female Prisoner Gets Transferred To Women’s Facility

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Wright, Katu2 News via YouTube

A dispatch from Portland, Oregon: a transgender female prisoner was transferred to a state women’s prison this week following a lawsuit she and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon filed against the Oregon Department of Corrections.

27-year-old Michalle Wright is now at the Coffee Creek Correctional Institution in Wilsonville. She was transferred 30 miles from the Men’s Oregon State Correctional Institution in nearby Salem, the Oregon State Capital.

Wright’s lawsuit claimed she was denied essential medical care while in custody.

The ACLU says the outcome of Wright’s lawsuit fundamentally changes how the Oregon Department of Corrections treats transgender and gender nonconforming prisoners. The institution will now provide inmates with access to doctors with experience treating transgender people, providing mental health treatment, hormone therapy treatment, and if medically necessary, gender confirmation surgery.

Basic Rights Oregon issued this statement:

“We are grateful that Oregon Department of Corrections is making improvements to safety and health of transgender people in Oregon’s prisons and applaud new management protocol to provide appropriate care.”

Wright was arrested in 2013 and convicted of attempted armed robbery. Her earliest release date is November 2018. She has identified as female since she was a teenager, and was unable to start hormone therapy prior to being incarcerated.

Basic Rights Oregon is a non-profit that works to ensure that all LGBTQ Oregonians experience equality by building a broad and inclusive politically powerful movement, shifting public opinion, and achieving policy victories.

#BornThisDay: Actor / Writer / Director, Ida Lupino

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Lupino in “Road House” (1948), via Youtube

February 4, 1918Ida Lupino:

“My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England. I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.”

Director, producer, screenwriter, actor… anyone one of these avocations in showbiz requires innate talent, knowledge and skill. Occasionally an artist can fill all four of these roles successfully.

She was stubborn, sullen, small (5ft 3in) and strong. With a mink stole over her shoulder-pads and an orchid in her hair, Lupino made it clear, in her silky, querulous voice, that she resented living in a man’s world. Like Joan Crawford, she was glamorous in different ways at different times in her career. Like Crawford, she was mesmerizing, but with a wider range. She was the archetypal Hollywood star, always surging back after a setback.

Lupino was born in London to performer parents. From an early age, she was encouraged to explore her creativity, and she began writing scripts when she was a kid.

She was only 15-years-old when she made her first film, Her First Affaire (1933), cast as a teenage vamp. Paramount Pictures spotted her in Money For Speed (1933), playing a good girl/bad girl dual role, so there was some surprise when Paramount signed her to play Alice in Alice In Wonderland.

When she arrived in Hollywood, Paramount did not know what to do with her, but she still got a five-year contract. She was shuttled between roles of her own age, ingenues and glamourpuss parts for which she was much too young. After that, she moved to Warner Bros. She convinced director William Wellman that only she could play the cockney whore who inspires Ronald Colman in The Light That Failed (1939), based on Rudyard Kipling’s first novel.

Her smart performance in a difficult role convinced Warner Bros that they had found someone to fill Bette Davis’s old shoes, perfect for their remake of Bordertown (1935) titled They Drive By Night (1940). It is a showy role, lasciviously pursuing truck driver George Raft while showing only contempt for her fond, much older husband, Alan Hale, who is, of course, Raft’s boss and best friend. At the climax of the film, she was required to go spectacularly mad on the witness stand. Jack Warner was so impressed by the first few days’ rushes that he signed Lupino to a seven-year contract. He even gave her billing over Humphrey Bogart in her next film, Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra (1941), even though she has a much smaller role as Bogart’s moll.

Warner had trouble with Davis, whose temperament, in the cause of better material, was equaled only by her talent and her popularity. Lupino had special value because she was a threat to Davis. Warner suggested replacing Davis, his leading female star, with Lupino in the many properties purchased for Davis to star.

In 1942, she refused to work opposite Ronald Reagan in Kings Row and was put on suspension at the studio. She spent a lot of time under suspension. My sort of girl.

She moved to Columbia Pictures and staked her claim to be the first of the many wicked women at Columbia in Ladies In Retirement (1942), as the housekeeper who conspires with her “nephew” to murder the blowsy babe who is her boss. In Walsh’s noir-ish The Man I Love (1946), she proves how effortlessly she inhabits those tough, world-weary dames, in this case a nightclub singer. Even more splendid is her work as a singer in Road House (1948), with Lupino greedily suggesting the small-time ambition and essential seediness of a girl who has spent too many nights on stage with stale cigarette smoke and booze, plus she gets to do the torch song, Again (It Mustn’t Happen Again).  Celeste Holm as the club cashier quips: “She does more without a voice than anyone I’ve ever heard…”.

The Man I Love (1947) Columbia Pictures, via YouTube

 

By the end of the 1940s, Lupino had appeared in over 30 Hollywood films.  Her frustration with the studio system led her to seek work without a contract. Lupino founded her own independent film production company that focused on creating low-budget/high-quality films, The Filmmakers. She was able to produce, direct, and work in front of the camera. Her first directorial gig was uncredited. She took over the direction of 1949’s Not Wanted (1949), a controversial film about out-of-wedlock pregnancy, when the original director had a heart attack in the middle of production. She starred in On Dangerous Ground (1951), taking on some of the directing work when director Nicholas Ray was sick.

Lupino’s most noted directorial efforts are The Bigamist (1953), the story of a man who secretly has a second wife and family, with Lupino and Joan Fontaine, and the top-notch The Hitchhiker (1953) about an escaped convict. Both were produced by The Filmmakers. And, like all the films she directed, they have a common theme of exploring controversial topics with a sensitive, but honest, unflinching perspective.

This past October on TCM, I caught her powerful black and white film Outrage (1950), which she wrote, directed and produced. If you ever get a chance to see it, you will be knocked-out. It is crazy good.

Lupino called herself a “bulldozer”, but the back of her director’s chair was labeled “Mother Of Us All”. She credited her move away from the studio system by claiming:

“I had decided that nothing lay ahead of me but the life of the neurotic star with no family and no home”.

She also made a point to seem nonthreatening in a male-dominated business, stating:

“That’s where being a man makes a great deal of difference. I don’t suppose the men particularly care about leaving their wives and children. During the vacation period, the wife can always fly over and be with him. It’s difficult for a wife to say to her husband, come sit on the set and watch.”

Through The Lens (1995, A&E, via YouTube

 

Although directing became Lupino’s passion, she took acting gigs to make money for her own productions. She became a wily low-budget filmmaker, reusing sets from other studio productions and talking her doctor into appearing in the delivery scene of Not Wanted. She was one of the first producers to use product placement, putting Coke, Cadillac, and other brands in her films in return for funds. She shot in public places to avoid set rental costs and planned scenes in preproduction to avoid technical mistakes and retakes. She joked that if she was “A poor man’s Bette Davis” as an actor, she had become “The poor man’s Don Siegel” as a director.

The Filmmakers ended in 1955 and Lupino’s last director’s credit on a feature film was the fun nun flick, The Trouble With Angels (1966) starring Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell.

Lupino formed Four-Star Productions, a television production company, along with fellow actors Dick Powell, Charles Boyer, and David Niven. She served as the host of the company’s first program, Four Star Playhouse (1952-56). She directed hundreds of television series episodes.

Lupino was the second woman ever to be admitted to the Director’s Guild. She wrote magazine articles, short stories and children’s books, and composed music.

She became an American citizen in 1948, and she was a tough old libtard, but no snowflake. A staunch Democrat, she actively campaigned for John F. Kennedy.

Lupino married and divorced three time. Her final credits rolled in 1995, taken by that damn cancer at 77-years-old.

Of the 200 films currently slated for release in next three years, only 24 have female directors attached to them.

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