February 15th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!
Hair: @infamousmstish Makeup: @reneemadeulook↧
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#QueerQuote: “You Mustn’t Let the Boys Upset You.” – Florence Henderson
Photo via YouTube
Gay actor Robert Reed, was the inspiration behind Florence Henderson’s Brady Bunch dance on season 11 of Dancing With The Stars in 2010. Henderson, 76-years-old at the time, along with partner Corky Ballas, danced to the television theme song that made Henderson and Reed camp culture icons. Henderson’s scores were her best of that season and she dedicated her dance to Reed, who played Mike Brady, her on screen husband on The Brady Bunch (1969-1974).
The Bradys were quite the All-American family: Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia, revealed a lesbian love affair in her tell-all memoir. McCormick seems to have enjoyed much more than a sisterly relationship with fellow cast member Eve Plumb, who played the less glamorous sister, Jan. Henderson dated Barry Williams, who played her on-screen son Greg, during the show. Williams also dated McCormick for two years during the series.
Henderson appeared in films, on Broadway, and hosted several long-running cooking and variety shows. Her theatre career began in musicals, beginning in a touring production of Oklahoma! and her Broadway debut was in 1952, in Wish You Were Here where she sang in an onstage swimming pool. While performing in Oklahoma!, she met her BFF Shirley Jones, who played the other iconic 1970s television mom on The Partridge Family. Henderson continued to work doing theatre up until the late 1960s.
She was a regular guest on variety and talk shows and appeared frequently on game shows from the late 1950s through the late 1970s.
In 1962, she became the first woman to guest host The Tonight Show during the period after Jack Paar left as the show’s host, and before Johnny Carson began his 30-year run. She also what was then called ”The Today Girl” on NBC’s long-running The Today Show, doing weather and fluff news. In 2015, sexual harasser Matt Lauer told her: ”There are just some things we can’t do at 81. Henderson replied: ”I didn’t get that memo”.
Henderson was taken by heart failure in November 2016.
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The Third Episode RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3 is NOW LIVE on WOWPresents Plus
If you live outside of these territories:
American Samoa, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Guam, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, US, Virgin Islands US.
Head over to WOW Presents Plus to watch the third episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3!
All Stars Snatch Game Episode 4 of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3 is now on WOWPresents Plus. Get ready for your All Stars to to enter the behemoth that is Snatch Game on an all new episode featuring Kristin Chenoweth.
Check out the sneak peak!
Check it out on WOW Presents Plus!
(excluding the following: American Samoa, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Guam, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, US, Virgin Islands US.)
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#QueerQuote: “I Want Freedom, the Right to Self-Expression, and Everybody’s Right to Beautiful, Radiant Things.” – Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was exceptionally famous during her era. If she were alive today she would have her own reality show: Blowin’ Shit Up With Emma on the TLC network.
During her lifetime, Goldman was described by the press as “the most dangerous woman in America”. She was a multi-hyphenate: Atheist-Feminist-Agitator-Prison Reformer-War Resister-Unionist-Birth Control Advocate-Cabaret Artist. After her death, and through the middle part of the 20th century, her fame faded. Historians viewed her as a great orator and activist but did not regard her as an important political philosopher or theoretical thinker.
But, her detractors were wrong. She played a pivotal role in the development of political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Goldman was a freethinking “rebel woman”. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality.
After decades of obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status with a revival of interest in her life in the 1970s, when feminist scholars rekindled popular interest.
At a time when it was nearly unthinkable, Goldman spoke out publicly in defense of gay individuals, defending their right to choose who and how they loved. She faced criticism from others on the Left who feared that embracing the cause of equal rights for homosexuals would damage their other political work. Goldman was as unaffected by these fears as she was by the condemnation of those on the right. She continued to support Gay Rights throughout her life. Goldman was the first American I know of to truly take up the Civil Rights of LGBTQ people before the general public. In her speeches and publications, she defended the fundamental right of gay men and lesbians and she condemned the fear and stigma associated with homosexuality. Goldman:
“It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.”
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#BornThisDay: Theatre Great, Brian Bedford
Photo from Playbill via YouTube
Brian Bedford was a brilliant British-born actor who played princes, kings, fops, fools and faded aristocrats in works by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, and especially Molière, on stages large and small.
He was a handsome, urbane man with a beautifully resonant speaking voice. Never a household name, Bedford was loved and appreciated by theatregoers and colleagues.
He was a protégé of John Gielgud and a theater-school classmate of Alan Bates, Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole. He had their shared their considerable talents, if not their celebrity, probably because he only performed occasionally in films and television. He was the sort of actor envied and adored by theatre types. He received seven Tony Award nominations, only Jason Robards received more, with eight.
He had a career that lasted for six decades, working mostly on Broadway and The Stratford Festival in Canada, which he made his home base. He probably played more leading Shakespearean roles than another other contemporary actor. He was also especially gifted at doing high comedy. His last Broadway appearance, an acclaimed Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest in 2011.
In “The Importance Of Being Earnest” (2011) Roundabout Theatre Company, via YouTube
He was a bright young star in the West End in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but Bedford thought he would have more freedom from tradition in America. He first came to New York in 1959, in Gielgud’s production of Peter Shaffer’s Five Finger Exercise. Bedford had played the role on the West End, after playing Ariel, in silver hair and wispy green veils, opposite Gielgud’s Prospero in The Tempest, directed by Peter Brook.
By 1967, Bedford lived mostly to NYC. In1975, when he played Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Angelo in Measure For Measure at the Stratford Festival, and he relocated almost permanently to a cottage in Ontario that he renovated and shared with his partner, actor Tim MacDonald.
Bedford was born into a working-class Irish Catholic family in Yorkshire. Their home had an outside bathroom and no running hot water. Three of his siblings died from TB.
He left school when he was 15-years-old and joined the Bradford Civic Theatre where he had an affair with Brian Epstein, the future manager of The Beatles, who was also a company member. In the early 1950s, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London, where Albert Finney, directed him in Noël Coward’s Private Lives with Alan Bates, briefly a lover, but a lifelong friend.
Bedford played Hamlet at the Liverpool Playhouse when he 21-years-old, and his talent came to the attention of the leading West End producer Binkie Beaumont and his partner, John Perry, who virtually adopted him, becoming, Bedford said: ‘‘the parents I always wanted”.
Before joining Gielgud in Stratford, he played the Sicilian immigrant Rodolpho in Brook’s British premiere of Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge, performed in a club because the Lord Chamberlain found the play obscene and refused a theatre license. Rodolpho is described by the play’s main character as ”walking wavy”. The notion that the character might be queer was most of the controversy.
On Broadway, after Five Finger Exercise, Bedford played an elegant, murderous gang leader in Pauline Macaulay’s The Astrakhan Coat (1967) and as one of the leads in a revival of T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party (1939) opposite Frances Sternhagen in 1968. He was the effete bridegroom of Estelle Parsons as a fading Burlesque star in Tennessee Williams’ The Seven Descents of Myrtle. I saw him for the first time in a superb Broadway revival of Private Lives in 1969, with Tammy Grimes, who won a Tony Award for her performance, as a gay alcoholic academic in a Los Angeles production of Simon Gray’s Butley (1973), and on Broadway opposite Jill Clayburgh in Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers (1974), my favorite of his performances.
Bedford won a 1971 Tony Award as the despicable Arnolphe in Molière’s mordantly moralistic comedy The School For Wives.
In “Private Lives” (1978) with Maggie Smith, photo by Zoe Dominic/Stratford Festival
But, Bedford will always be best remembered for his work at Stratford Ontario from 1975-80, where he was often paired with Maggie Smith. Opposite Smith, he played Richard III, Jaques in As You Like It and, once more, in Private Lives. When he played Benedick to Smith’s Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing in 1980, a critic compared their chemistry to Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. He played many of Shakespeare’s most challenging roles at Stratford included Brutus, Macbeth, and Shylock. He played more than 50 roles at Stratford and directed 20 modern and classic plays as well.
Bedford was a stage actor who was not afraid to work in television, he guested on Cheers, Frasier and Murder, She Wrote. He only has a handful of film credits including Grand Prix (1966), and as J. Edgar Hoover’s (Bob Hoskins) boyfriend Clyde Tolson in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995) with Anthony Hopkins.
But, he was really meant for the stage, perhaps one of the last old school flamboyant actors. In 1997, Bedford was inducted into the American Theater Hall Of Fame, and he won an Obie Award, the Outer Circle Critics Award, a Drama Desk Award, and the L.A. Drama Critics Award.
He was 80-years-old when he left us, taken by was cancer in 2016. He was with MacDonald for 30 years. They were married in 2013.
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February 16th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!
#latina↧
SJP Says Kim Cattrall’s Comments About Her Were “Really Hurtful” (Pal Andy Cohen Comes To Her Defense)
Cattrall told Piers Morgan she and her “SATC” co-stars “were never friends”
The pair have been fighting in public since Cattrall refused to reprise her role as Samantha in the Sex and the City 3 movie. She later told Piers Morgan in an interview that she was “never friends” with her SATC co-stars.
SJP said,
“I never talked about it, except [to say] that some of us were disappointed [about the movie not happening]. But I never responded to the conversation Kim had with Piers Morgan, where she said things that were really hurtful about me.
We had this experience and it was amazing, and nothing will ever be like it. We had a connection with an audience, and we had a connection with the city and with this crew, and we got to tell these crazy stories with each other. So I don’t want to mess with that.
I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing that part. So there was no fight; it was completely fabricated, because I actually never responded. And I won’t, because she needed to say what she needed to say, and that is her privilege.“
Cattrall shocked everyone last week when she blasted Parker on Instagram, accussing her of “exploiting” the tragedy of her brother’s death to restore her “‘nice girl’ persona.”
SJP’s longtime pal Andy Cohen jumped to her defense on his Radio Andy show this week,
“I thought it was fake. She was doing press all last week for Divorce. And you know, guess what? When you’re doing press, you’re asked the same questions about what’s going on. So people, I’m sure, were like,
‘What do you think of what happened?’
And she simply and concisely expressed her condolences. I would not call that exploiting a tragedy. What was she supposed to do? Say something bad? I don’t understand….
There’s only one person fighting here.”
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After Parkland Shooting, Trump (Who Made It Easier for the Mentally Ill to Get Guns) Comforts America’s Gun Owners
Trump signing something. The White House refuses to release photos of Trump signing legislation that makes it easier for the mentally ill to buy guns. Photo, YouTube
“We are committed to working with state and local leaders to help secure our schools and tackle the difficult issue of mental health. It is not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference. We must actually make that difference.“
Larry Pratt, executive director emeritus of the Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group based in Virginia said,
“That’s very encouraging that he’s not mounting up with the anti-Second Amendment posse. The response from gun owners will be principally that he didn’t say the kind of things Hillary Clinton would have said had she been president and the way Barack Obama reacted to other situations like this.“
The only gun policy-related law Trump has signed, so far, has been a repeal of the Obama-era rule that made it more difficult for those with mental illnesses to purchase guns. No POTUS has ever had a better bond with gun owners than Trump. He won 62% of their votes in 2016, and promised the NRA in April 2017 that he would,
“Never, ever infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
With Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress it seems very unlikely that Congress will act and send Trump any major change to gun laws anytime before the mid-terms.
David Bozell, president of the conservative group For America said,
“I’m confident that the president meant what he said: that he’s not going to pursue a potential solution that’s going to infringe on our constitutional rights. Gun owners like myself, we want the ability to defend our families against bad guys.“
Yesterday Trump signaled again that his focus is on the mental state of shooters, not the weapons they use to commit their crimes. He didn’t mention guns once. Or the fact that HE made it easier for those mentally ill people to get guns
Chris Waltz, president and CEO of AR-15 Gun Owners of America, a company that sells semi-automatic rifles said,
“The fact that the president didn’t talk about rifles today … that was good. He’s been, so far, the most outspoken president on gun issues, as far as supporting the Second Amendment.“
After any mass shooting gun-rights groups get nervous. Many worry that common sense and sympathy for the victims on Capitol Hill or in the administration might start to sink in.
Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights said,
“We’re always concerned after a tragedy that the response will be either poor, misguided or just emotional.“
For years, gun control advocates — mostly Democrats — have tried to enact new stricter gun control measures, and there is more public pressure on Republican lawmakers to after this latest deadly school shooting.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) who is in favor of tightening gun laws said,
“If you are not working today to try to fix this, to try to stop these shootings, then you’re an accomplice.”
#WhatHeSaid
Colt AR-15 Sporter SP1 Carbine, like the one used in the Parkland shootings. It was classified as an “assault-style” weapon and outlawed under the assault weapons ban. That ban lapsed in 2004. Photo, Wikimedia Commons
(via NBC News)
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#DNADate: Stormy Daniels Saved the Gold Dress She Wore on Her Alleged “Encounter” with Trump
Stormy (right) in a dress that looks a LOT like the one she says she wore to her alleged Trump tryst
Yeah. Yikes!
The Blast is reporting that the gold mini-dress with a plunging neckline was kept in good condition after her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump at the Lake Tahoe hotel suite. (You can see it here on the Blast’s website but it looks an awful lot like the screen grab we found above…)
Daniels’ legal team has put Trump’s legal team on notice. She believes her 2016 agreement was breached by attorney Michael Cohen and she is now free to spill the T about that now infamous (alleged, we have to say) night.
Cohen revealed that he had paid Daniels $130,000 out of his own pocket and tried to minimized Trump’s involvement by saying,
“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”
Sounds fishy but if the dress gets tested, any DNA found could prove Trump was indeed with her and make this payment more of a legal problem for the POTUS.
Cohen, you-know-who & Stormy
(Photos, YouTube; via The Blast)
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#NewBombshell: Trump’s Affair with Playboy’s Playmate of the Year (While Married To Melania)
Trump had an affair with former Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal that he met at a party for The Apprentice in 2006 while married to Melania. This according to a new report out today that details the great lengths to which the future president went to conceal his alleged indiscretions from the press.
McDougal wrote in an eight-page, handwritten note — which her friend John Crawford shared with the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow new piece, Donald Trump, a Playboy Model, and a System for Concealing Infidelity
McDougal said that Trump,
“immediately took a liking to me, kept talking to me — telling me how beautiful I was etc.
It was so obvious that a Playmate Promotions exec said, ‘Wow, he was all over you — I think you could be his next wife,’
I was so nervous! I was into his intelligence + charm. Such a polite man,” she wrote. “We talked for a couple hours — then, it was ‘ON’! We got naked + had sex.”
McDougal said she was stunned though when Trump offered her money as she was getting dressed after their romp,
“I looked at him (+ felt sad) + said, ‘No thanks — I’m not ‘that girl.’ I slept w/you because I like you — NOT for money’ — He told me ‘you are special.’”
She said she
“went to see him every time he was in LA (which was a lot).“
Trump introduced her to his family and took her to Trump Tower, where he pointed out Melania’s separate bedroom to her. She said Trump told her,
“She liked her space… to read or be alone.”
During a 2007 party for Trump Vodka in L.A., she said, she was seated at a table with Trump, Donald Trump Jr., his pregnant wife, Vanessa, and Kim Kardashian. And at an Apprentice party at the Playboy Mansion, McDougal said, Trump told her he had asked his son Eric,
“who he thought was the most beautiful girl here + Eric pointed me. Mr. T said ‘He has great taste’ + we laughed!”
McDougal said their affair ended after 9 months in April 2007, according to the article.
Of course, the White House said that Trump denies having had an affair with McDougal. A spokesman told the New Yorker.
“This is an old story that is just more fake news. The president says he never had a relationship with McDougal.”
The story comes as porn star Stormy Daniels says she saved a dress that she plans to have tested with Trump’s DNA on it.
We’re going to need a chart to keep all of these affairs straight.You can read the whole Ronan Farrow story here.
(via NY Post)
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The WOW Wrap Up: Adam Rippon Edition
‘I Can’t Explain Witchcraft’: Adam Rippon Has a Perfect Response After Killer Routine
“I can’t explain witchcraft.” – #AdamRippon pic.twitter.com/ucxLrpDFyG
— Amanda Price (@amandaruthprice) February 16, 2018
U.S. figure skater Adam Rippon nailed his routine in the men’s short program at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on Friday, landing four jumps.It was a solid performance by one of the breakout stars of the Games, and when he was asked by a reporter after his routine exactly why he’d been skating so well the past few days, he fired back with the fierce wit he has quickly come to be known by.
(Via HuffPost & Twitter)
What was the Craziest Line of Adam Rippon’s Crazy Interview
Adam Rippon: “It’s my world, and the rest of us are living in it.”
he clarifies that’s he’s joking
pic.twitter.com/v8bqN468o0
— Joon Lee (@iamjoonlee) February 16, 2018
That’s not to say every media session has been golden for Rippon, who seemingly has no filter (which is part of his charm). He gave an interview to NBC’s Andrea Joyce minutes after posting a surprising score in the men’s short program and, well, see for yourself:
(Via Yahoo!)
Watch Beloved Olympic Figure Skater Adam Rippon Play a Hilarious Game of Celebrity Eyebrow Swap
“I look terrible without brows. I’m putting on a brave face.”
Celebrity Eyebrow Swap with @adaripp was the production we all deserve.
pic.twitter.com/bTgWzNuXXp
— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 16, 2018
The idea originated from one of Rippon’s viral tweets, stating, “I was recently asked in an interview what its like to be a gay athlete in sports. I said that it’s exactly like being a straight athlete. Lots of hard work but usually done with better eye brows.”
(Via People)
Adam Rippon on his Winter Olympics Costume: I am essentially completely naked’
“Let me tell you a story,” Rippon, who skated a clean program to put himself into first spot after 19 skaters told USA TODAY Sports in a recent interview. “When I am on the ice in this costume I am essentially completely naked with crystals covering my nipples. Is that OK? The officials say it is OK.”
(Via USAToday)
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“RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato, and “Freak Show” Are All Nominated for Queerty Awards – VOTE NOW!
Our friends over at Queerty have announced the nominees for their annual Queerty Awards honoring the LGBTQ community’s brightest stars and innovators, and we are squealing with delight over the nods for Drag Race, WOW CEOs Fenton and Randy, and anti-bullying movie Freak Show!
RuPaul’s Drag Race is nominated for Best Series – VOTE HERE
Fenton Bailey and Randy Barabato are nominated for the Media Mogul Award – VOTE HERE
And Freak Show was nominated for Best Indie Movie – VOTE HERE!
Lots of other fun categories, including Biggest Badass, Queerty Crush, Rising Diva, Style Trendsetter and MORE! VOTE NOW! TELL YOUR FRIENDS! Vote once per day per category through February 25 and use hashtag #Queerties to share your votes and help your favorite nominees.
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What’s Your Tune For Today? Sarah Huckabee Sander’s Country Hit “Day After Day (After Day)” VS Aaron Carter’s New “I Want Candy” Dance Remix
Two fabulous new songs face off in today’s Hottest Tune contest. Which is your favorite?
First up, it’s singin’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who stands up for her man Donald Trump in the furiously frustrating country hit sensation “Day After Day (After Day)”
Nest up is cutie-patootie Aaron After who dusts off his old “I Want Candy” cover for a fab new 2018 dance remix:
Which is your SONG OF THE DAY? Tell me your fave in the Facebook comment section!
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Happy New Year!: The Year Of The Dog
“Isle of Dogs” photo from Twentieth Century Fox via YouTube
Happy Chinese New Year! Today marks the start of the Year Of The Dog, one of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac. Unlike Western astrology, each sign lasts for an entire year, and each year takes the name of an animal whose characteristics influence everything that happens for the next 12 months.
The Year Of The Dog means that the next 12 months should bring good fortune for most of those born in the ”Dog” years: 1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1982, 1994 and 2006. It also influences the fortunes of all the other 11 animal signs, depending on their relationship with the Dog.
Chinese New Year takes place on a different date each year because it is based on a lunar calendar. New Year’s Day normally falls between January 21 and February 20. Celebrations last for over two weeks with explosions of light, bell ringing, firecrackers and watching traditional lion dances.
Chinese families clean their houses to sweep away bad fortune on New Year’s Day. Traditionally, you are supposed to give away red envelopes stuffed with ”lucky money” and positive energy on New Year’s Day. Nowadays, there are red envelope apps, so your friends can cash their gift digitally.
A Dog’s defining characteristic is loyalty. They never abandon their friends, family or work. They are popular at parties. Everyone needs a Dog friend for advice and help. They are also good at helping others find and fix annoying habits. Despite how they act, Dogs are deep down worried and anxious on the inside. However, they don’t let this stop them. Once they decide on something, no one can persuade a Dog against it.
Perfect for the Year Of The Dog, I am rather excited about Wes Anderson’s new stop-motion film, Isle Of Dogs. Anderson is a top favorite of mine. He wrote and directed The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), among other great films. Isle Of Dogs looks to have all the characteristics of an Anderson flick: great music, brilliant art direction and cinematography, symmetry, and an off-beat ensemble cast of Anderson regulars including: Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton; plus Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Greta Gerwig, Courtney B. Vance, Fisher Stevens, Liev Schreiber, and Scarlett Johansson. There is also F. Murray Abraham being some sort of a sage.
The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last night, New Year’s Eve of The Year Of The Dog, and it is already receiving rave reviews, with some critics saying it is Anderson’s best yet.
It is Anderson’s second stop-motion animation film; the first being the fabulous Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). This one is set in Japan in the near future. The story is about how canine saturation has reached epidemic proportions, dog flu is terrifying the humans, and the government orders the round up and imprisonment of all dogs on nearby Trash Island, the Isle Of Dogs. A 12-year-old orphan flies and crashes a plane on the island as he tries to find his beloved dog, Spots. A pack of five starving, abandoned dogs clinging to the names of their former lives King, Boss, Duke, Rex and Chief help with the search.
Cat lovers: you might not be the right audience for this film. My sources tell me that felines haven’t been this synonymous with villainy since Lady And The Tramp (1955).
Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum is exhibiting a Wes Anderson show, featuring props, costumes and storyboards from his films, that runs from September 2018 through January 2019.
Here is the new, just released trailer for your viewing pleasure. Arf!
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Adam Rippon! Jeremy Scott! Obama Portraits! It’s 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) Quincy Jones Has No F’s Left to Give
Skip forward to Quincy Jones Has No F’s Left to Give @01:09
9) CNN’s The Radical Story of Patty Hearst
Skip forward to CNN’s The Radical Story of Patty Hearst @07:41
8) Royal Flush: The Fatberg in London
Skip forward toRoyal Flush: The Fatberg in London @13:51
7) Classic Flick Pick: Darling starring Julie Christie
Skip forward to Classic Flick Pick: Darling starring Julie Christie @21:10
6) Netflix Pick – Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer
Skip forward to Netflix Pick – Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer @26:19
5) The Cloverfield Phenomenon
Skip forward to The Cloverfield Phenomenon @30:12
4) Obama Portraits Rock the Establishment
Skip forward to Obama Portraits Rock the Establishment @35:50
3) Quackers: Henry the Goose Was Gay As a Goose
Skip forward to Quackers: Henry the Goose Was Gay As a Goose @42:27
2) Slow Burn: The Podcast All About Watergate
Skip forward to Slow Burn: The Podcast All About Watergate @46:27
1) Freezing But Hot: The Winter GAYlympics ‘18
Skip forward to Freezing But Hot: The Winter GAYlympics ‘18 @54:55
Resistor of the Week – Adam Rippon
Skip forward to Resistor of the Week – Adam Rippon @55:47
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!!!
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Catch Up with HEY QWEEN’s Valentine’s Day Special with Alexis Michelle from RDR 9!
This week on HEY QWEEN Alexis Michelle joins hosts Jonny McGovern and Lady Red Couture to spill all of the T on traveling the globe as Miss DickPig Continental 2016, 2017, & 2018. Alexis also speaks about her upcoming one-woman show, her upcoming album, growing up in NYC, and plays a rousing game of YASS or PASS.
Watch Part 1:
Watch Part 2:
Watch Part 3:
In case you missed it, Alexis Michelle also spills some T across a gambit of people from her past, present and future on LOOK at HUH. Check her out as she discusses Kris Jenner, Charlie Hides, Shea Coulee, Sasha Velour, Bob the Drag Queen, Dusty Ray Bottoms, Farrah Moan & Liza Minnelli
Watch Part 1:
Watch Part 2:
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Real News/Fake Puppets: A Time Traveler from 2030 Tells What to Expect with Trump, Mars Travel, Artificial Intelligence & MORE!
It’s our breakout video juggernaut “Real News with Fake Puppets,” starring felted versions of Sarah Barenberg and myself, giving you the hottest headlines from around the globe! Today we have nutty absolutely true story about a TIME TRAVELER from the year 2030 who has come back to warn us about the impending dangers of Articial Intelligence, the bizarre upcoming presidency of a 21-year-old woman, the continued threat of Donald Trump and MORE! We know it’s true because he took a lie detector test… and PASSED! Watch the puppet report, below, and read more about this strange story here.
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Watch Spineless Paul Ryan Giving the Same Response Over and Over Again
House Speaker Paul Ryan likes to say the same thing after gun massacres. And then do virtually nothing. Watch his witless idiocy and stunning lack of leadership below (via MSNBC).
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#BornThisDay: Consummate Character Actor, Kathleen Freeman
Via YouTube
February 17, 1923 – Kathleen Freeman:
“Comedy is more difficult. It’s very easy to make people cry.”
Kathleen Freeman appeared in films, television, and on stage in a career that spanned six decades. Diminutive, yet stout, she specialized in playing wisecracking maids, steely mothers, acerbic secretaries, tough teachers, stern nurses, hard-hearted battle-axes, belligerent landlords, nosy neighbors and irritating relatives, almost always for laughs.
Freeman began her career when she was just a toddler as part of her parents’ Vaudeville act. Freeman:
“Vaudeville was dead by the time I came on the scene. When the bottom really dropped out Ma and Pa took me to Los Angeles to try their luck in Hollywood.”
After graduating with a degree in Music from UCLA, she became a founding member L.A.’s The Circle Players (now the El Centro Theatre) along with Beverly Garland and Alan J. Pakula. The Circle Players directors included Charles Chaplin, Charles Laughton and Robert Morley.
Freeman made her film debut in Naked City (1948) starring Jerry Lewis. Her single line was: “Didja read about the bathtub murder?” That same year she played the nurse in The Saxon Charm, a film noir with Robert Montgomery and Susan Hayward, and then another nurse role in Behind Locked Doors, with Lucille Bremer, also noir. I see a pattern starting.
“Cry Danger” (1951) via YouTube
Freeman was soon making as many as a dozen films a year. She appeared in great films such as A Place In The Sun (1951) and The Bad And The Beautiful (1952), along with stinkers such as The Greatest Show On Earth (1952), very possibly the worst film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.
You might know her best as Phoebe Dinsmore, the frustrated vocal coach who tries to get the vain, cunning, and shallow silent film star Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) to properly to enunciate in Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s classic Singin’ In The Rain (1952).
With Lewis in “Ladies Man” (1961), via YouTube
She made 10 films with Jerry Lewis, in the mode of the Marx Brothers’ Margaret Dumont, the perfect comic foil and friendly adversary, though Freeman was no hoity-toity dame like Dumont.
She and Lewis became lifelong friends: Freeman:
“I gave him my father’s spats. In turn he gave me all sorts of wonderful things, including a solid gold statue of himself dressed as a clown.”
Lewis said of her:
“Kathleen Freeman was as talented a comic genius as Patsy Kelly, Lucille Ball and Judy Holiday.”
She made 100 films, sometimes in extremely brief roles, but, Freeman said:
“I think I’m a living example of the fact that you don’t have to be in every inch of a film or play to be important to it.”
“The Fly” (1958) via YouTube
Among her more conspicuous later film roles were as Sister Mary Stigmata in The Blues Brothers (1980); a bellicose landlord in Dragnet (1987); and hoodlum Fred Ward’s tough-as-nails mother in Naked Gun 33: The Final Insult (1994). She also appeared in Innerspace (1987); as Microwave Marge in Gremlins 2 (1996); and as Miss Olin in Hocus Pocus (1993). Her final film was as the voice of an old woman in Shrek (2001).
I was introduced to her by my friend, producer Robert Fryer, who cast her as Bobby Dean Loner in the insanely nutty Myra Breckinridge (1970). I gushed about her performance in Singin’ In The Rain. She came across asa warm and relaxed, but quiet, unlike her boisterous film roles. Freeman told me that she worked “with every tough bitch in this industry”. And, about Myra Breckinridge:
“Mae West was the most incredible phenomenon I ever encountered. There were fireworks between her and Raquel Welch and I made darn sure that I wasn’t caught up in the cross-fire.”
Freeman made her television debut in an episode of Buckskin in 1958 and went on to appear in almost every sort of popular television show: sitcoms, thrillers, variety hours, westerns, over the next four decades, including regular roles on The Donna Reed Show, as Mrs. Wilgus, the busybody next door neighbor, with Howard McNear as her husband, Wilbur; and on Hogan’s Heroes as Frau Gertrude Linkmeyer, General Hansi Burkhalter’s sister, who had the hots for Colonel Klink (Werner Klemperer). Plus, guest spots on stuff such as: Mister Ed (1958-1966), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-1971), I Dream Of Jeannie (1965-1970), The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68), Batman (1966-68), High Chaparral (1967-1971), Kojak (1973-1978), The Golden Girls (1985-1992).
Via YouTube
There was never a point in 50 years where it could be said that she was idle; Freeman was a working actor, never a star, and she liked to work. She quipped that if she had been a beauty like Hedy Lamarr she would have been obsolete by 50-years-old. Instead, as a character actor, Freeman kept working. She never complained about the roles she was cast in, and she was upbeat about living the actor’s life:
“It’s all about heading out on the same boat on the same ocean, hitting the same waves, if we can. Nothing is new in Hollywood. Everything is recycled from some time or another.”
Freeman taught an actors’ workshop and produced plays featuring her students. She was also a member of the California Artists’ Radio Theatre, which recorded live performances of classics for the soon to be defunded National Public Radio (NPR).
On stage, she toured as Miss Hannigan in Annie. Her first Broadway appearance was in Georges Feydeau’s 13 Rue de l’Amore (1978), opposite Louis Jourdan. In 1999, in L.A., Freeman did a one-woman show titled Are You Somebody?, the question autograph seekers always asked her.
Ironically, she finally became a big, celebrated star in her last role, the wisecracking piano player Jeanette in the musical The Full Monty (2000) on Broadway, with a show-stopping number called Jeanette’s Showbiz Number. Freeman: “People in the street used to say hello because they thought I was a neighbor, but now I have a name to go with my face.”
“I came full circle. There I was in Naked City over 50 years ago, and now I’m with naked men in The Full Monty; it’s been one hell of a joy-ride through an industry that can easily bump you off.”
In the summer of 2001, weakened by illness, Freeman was forced to take a break from The Full Monty. Five days later, she was taken by lung cancer. The next day it was announced that she had been nominated for a Tony Award. She was 82-years-old and had been working since she was two. Her ashes are interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
She had a longtime partner, Helen Ramsey, whom the obituaries seemed to have neglected to mention. The NY Times was coy, saying she “never married”, as cute a euphemism as “confirmed bachelor”.
The Full Monty’s director Jack O’Brien wrote:
“She was the perfect definition of the consummate pro; she played the last year of her life to full houses and standing ovations, and it seems like an appropriate curtain to a wonderful career”.
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