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Tag: paul newman

  • ‘Heated Rivalry,’ ‘Bridgerton,’ and the Horny Comforts of a Cottage Romance

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    The cure for winter blues? Some good old-fashioned screen time, and maybe living vicariously through film and TV characters stealing away to a cottage for a romantic interlude.

    In the finale of Heated Rivalry, titled “The Cottage,” Russian hockey player Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) tells Canadian fellow athlete Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), “I’m coming to the cottage,” referring to the lakefront home where Shane invites Ilya to spend the offseason with him. On the surprise-hit show about a secret romance between rival hockey pros, Shane’s cottage offers a sanctuary away from prying eyes, allowing Ilya and Shane to test the waters on bringing their decade-long secret relationship out of the shadows. Outside, the pressures and risks of publicly revealing their relationship loom. But inside, they are untouched by such concerns, and therefore free to be together.

    Ilya isn’t the only one who accepted an invitation to the cottage. Heated Rivalry, produced by the virtually unknown Canadian streamer Crave and then licensed by HBO Max, where it premiered in late November with little promotion, has become the talk of the town. Celebrities from Pedro Pascal to Ayo Edebiri have expressed love for the series on social media. “You’re Ilya and I’m Shane,” Andy Cohen told Anderson Cooper as they celebrated New Year’s Eve together on CNN. When asked what she was watching in a recent Instagram video, Donatella Versace replied, “Is that even a question? Take me to the cottage already.”

    With no premiere date in sight for Heated Rivalry’s next installment, the fourth season of Bridgerton will offer audiences another cottage to visit when it arrives in two four-episode drops: the first on January 29, and the second on February 26. In the new season, Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) whisks Sophie (new cast member Yerin Ha) away to the Bridgerton family’s country estate, referred to as “my cottage,” after saving the maid from an assault by her new employer. Upon first seeing the palatial property, Sophie observes that “cottage feels somewhat…misleading.”

    An already injured Benedict falls ill overnight, and Sophie nurses him back to health as they share the kind of intimate moments only afforded to them inside the confines of the cottage. When they return to polite society, with Benedict getting Sophie a job working for the Bridgerton family, they remain physically close but are emotionally distanced by social class. “I do miss our time in the countryside,” a uniformed Sophie opines.

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    Savannah Walsh

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  • Poker’s NBA-and-Mafia betting scandal echoes movie games, and cheats, from ‘Ocean’s’ to ‘Rounders’

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The stakes. The famous faces. The posh private rooms. The clever cheating schemes.

    The federal indictment of a big-money poker ring involving NBA figures on Thursday, in which unsuspecting rich players were allegedly enticed to join then cheated of their money, echoed decades of movies and television, and not just because of the alleged Mafia involvement.

    Fictional and actual poker have long been in sort of a pop-cultural feedback loop. When authorities described the supposed circumstances of the games, they might’ve evoked a run of screen moments from recent decades.

    Poker in ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ ‘Molly’s Game’ and ‘The Sopranos’

    A 2004 episode of “ The Sopranos ” showed a very similar mix of celebrities and mobsters in a New York game whose players included Van Halen singer David Lee Roth and football Hall-of-Famer Lawrence Taylor, both playing themselves.

    In 2001’s “Ocean’s Eleven,” George Clooney finds his old heist buddy Brad Pitt running a poker game for “Teen Beat” cover boys including Topher Grace and Joshua Jackson, also playing themselves. Clooney spontaneously teams with Pitt to con them. And the plot of the 2007 sequel “Ocean’s Thirteen” centers on the high-tech rigging of casino games.

    Asked about the relevance of the films to the NBA scandal, which came soon after a story out of Paris that could’ve come straight out of “Ocean’s Twelve,” Clooney told The Associated Press with a laugh that “we get blamed for everything now.”

    “‘Cause we also got compared to the Louvre heist. Which, I think, you gotta CGI me into that basket coming out of the Louvre,” Clooney said Thursday night at the Los Angeles premiere of his new film, “Jay Kelly.” He was referring to thieves using a basket lift to steal priceless Napoleonic jewels from the museum.

    2017’s “Molly’s Game,” and the real-life memoir from Molly Bloom that it was based on, could almost serve as manuals for how to build a poker game’s allure for desirable “fish” in the same ways and with the same terminology that the organizers indicted Thursday allegedly used.

    The draw of Bloom’s games at hip Los Angeles club The Viper Room were not NBA players, but Hollywood players like Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and “The Hangover” director Todd Phillips. (None of them were accused of any wrongdoing.)

    In the movie written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Bloom, played by Jessica Chastain, describes the way a famous actor acts as an attractor for other players, the same way officials said Thursday that NBA “face cards” did for the newly indicted organizers.

    The unnamed actor, played by Michael Cera, was at least partly based on the “Spider-Man” star Maguire.

    “People wanted to say they played with him,” Chastain says. “The same way they wanted to say they rode on Air Force One. My job security was gonna depend on bringing him his fish.”

    In her book, Bloom described the allure for the players she drew.

    “The formula of keeping pros out, inviting in celebrities and other interesting and important people, and even the mystique of playing in the private room of the Viper Room added up to one of the most coveted invitations in town,” she writes, later adding that “I just needed to continue feeding it new, rich blood; and to be strategic about how to fill those ten precious seats.”

    Bloom would get caught up in a broad 2013 nationwide crackdown on high-stakes private poker games, probably the highest profile poker bust in years before this week. She got a year’s probation, a $1,000 fine, and community service.

    There were no accusations of rigging at her game, but that didn’t make it legal.

    The legality of private-space poker games has been disputed for decades and widely varies among U.S. states. But in general, they tend to bring attention and prosecution when the host is profiting the way that a casino would.

    A brief history of movies making poker cool

    Poker — and cheating at it — has run through movies, especially Westerns, from their silent beginnings.

    Prominent poker scenes feature in 1944’s “Tall in the Saddle” with John Wayne and 1950’s “The Gunfighter” with Gregory Peck.

    “The Cincinnati Kid” in 1965 was dedicated entirely to poker — with Steve McQueen bringing his unmatched cool to the title character.

    A pair of movies co-starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman really raised the game’s profile, though.

    In the opening scene of 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ a hyper-cool Redford is playing poker and refuses to leave until another player takes back a cheating accusation.

    In 1973’s Best Picture Oscar winner “The Sting,” 1930s con-men Newman and Redford seek revenge against a big fish and run a series of increasingly bold gambling scams that could’ve come from Thursday’s indictments. Newman out-cheats the man at poker to set him up for the big con, a phony radio horse race.

    The 1980s saw a dip in screen poker, with the subject largely relegated to the TV “Gambler” movies, starring Kenny Rogers, based on his hit song.

    But the end of the decade brought a poker boomlet from the increased legalization of commercial games.

    Then, at possibly the perfect moment, came “Rounders.” The 1998 Matt Damon film did for Texas Hold ’em what “Sideways” did for pinot noir and “Pitch Perfect” did for a cappella: it took an old and popular phenomenon and made them widespread crazes.

    Soon after came explosive growth in online poker, whose players often sought out big face-to-face games. And the development of cameras that showed players’ cards — very similar to the tech allegedly used to cheat players, according to the new indictments — made poker a TV spectator sport.

    The “Ocean’s” films and the general mystique they brought piled on too.

    Clooney, talking about the broader set of busts Thursday that included alleged gambling on basketball itself, pointed out that his Cincinnati Reds were the beneficiaries of sport’s most infamous gambling scandal, the 1919 “Black Sox” and the fixing of the World Series, “so I have great guilt for that.”

    “But you know there — we’ve never had a moment in our history that we didn’t have some dumb scandal or something crazy,” he said. “I feel very bad for the gambling scandal ’cause this was on the night that, you know, we had some amazing basketball happen.”

    —-

    Associated Press writer Leslie Ambriz contributed to this report.

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  • Susan Kendall Newman, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ Actress and Daughter of Paul Newman, Dies at 72

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    Susan Kendall Newman, an actress, Emmy-nominated producer, social activist and firstborn daughter of Paul Newman, has died. She was 72.

    Newman died Aug. 2 of complications from chronic health conditions, her family announced.

    Newman, whose mother was Paul Newman’s first wife, Jackie Witte, portrayed one of the six teenagers trying to wrangle their way into The Beatles’ first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), directed and co-written by Robert Zemeckis.

    She also had smaller roles in Slap Shot (1977), where she showed up as a pharmacist in the hockey film that starred her father, and Robert Altman’s A Wedding (1978).

    Earlier, Newman appeared on Broadway in 1975 in We Interrupt This Program …, directed by Jerry Adler, but the inventive production — involving “gunmen” who enter the audience and take over the Ambassador Theatre during a play — lasted just seven outings.

    In 1980, she produced an ABC Theatre presentation of Michael Cristofer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Shadow Box that was directed by her father and starred her stepmother, Oscar winner Joanne Woodward.

    And she produced a family-friendly audiobook series of classical literature for Simon & Schuster, earning a Grammy nomination for best spoken word album for children.

    Susan Kendall Newman and Paul Newman circa 1970.

    Everett Collection

    Her parents were married in Cleveland on Dec. 27, 1949, and they had three children — Scott (born in 1950), Susan (born in 1953) and Stephanie (born in 1954) — before their divorce was finalized on Jan. 28, 1958.

    The next day, her dad wed Woodward — they had first met while on Broadway in Picnic in 1953, then starred in The Long, Hot Summer (1958) — in Las Vegas. They had three daughters — Elinor (born in 1959), Melissa (born in 1961) and Claire (born in 1965) — before he died of lung cancer at age 83 on Sept. 26, 2008.

    Witte died in 1994 at age 64.

    After her brother, Scott, who had appeared in such films as The Towering Inferno (1974) and Breakheart Pass (1975), died in November 1978 from a drug overdose, her father founded the Scott Newman Center for drug abuse prevention.

    In 1980, she joined the Scott Newman Foundation and eventually became executive director. As a drug abuse prevention expert, she testified before Congress and was a frequent speaker at the Betty Ford Center and at universities, hospitals and community groups.

    Her family said that she was especially proud of a groundbreaking program in several states that invited 10th-grade students to create their own anti-drug TV commercials. Instructional materials guided students through research, storyboarding and production, with winning entries professionally produced and broadcast nationally.

    She also served as president of the Entertainment Industry Foundation and founded a consulting company that provided expertise to government agencies, corporations and nonprofits in developing prevention programs, outreach efforts and fundraising strategies.

    More recently, she focused her advocacy on education, juvenile justice, conservation and health care.

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    Mike Barnes

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  • The Legendary Bromance of Robert Redford and Paul Newman

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    On Tuesday, September 16, Robert Redford, the legendary actor and Oscar-winning director of Ordinary People, died at the age of 89. Redford made his mark on Hollywood in films like All the President’s Men and by starting the iconic Sundance Film Festival. But Redford only got his big break when the late acting legend Paul Newman handpicked him to be his costar in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

    Redford starred as Harry Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid, opposite Newman’s outlaw, Butch Cassidy. The film was a critical and commercial hit, winning four Oscars, including best screenplay and best song. The two actors would reunite four years later,  starring opposite each other in The Sting, which won eight Oscars in 1974.

    Newman reportedly fought for Redford when the studios were dreaming of a more established name. “The studio didn’t want me. I wasn’t as well-known as he was,” Redford said in an interview with ABC News in 2008, shortly after Newman’s death. “But he said, ‘I want to work with an actor,’ and that was very complimentary to me, because that’s, I think, how we both saw our profession—that acting was about craft, and we took it seriously, because we both came from the same background of theater in New York.”

    While Redford and Newman had similar backgrounds, that didn’t mean they were exactly alike.  On the set of The Sting, as producer Michael Phillips told The Hollywood Reporter, Redford was “chronically late.” Eventually, Phillips said, Newman, 11 years older than Redford, took the youngster to task. “One day, Newman tore him apart for it,” Phillips said. “Paul was the bigger star. And he said something like, ‘What are you—a movie star?’ Redford shrunk from it.”

    Robert Redford and Paul Newman in the Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

    Screen Archives/Getty Images

    Paul Newman et Robert Redford dans L'Arnaque.

    Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting

    Screen Archives/Getty Images

    The dressing-down may have only bonded the two actors further. In January 1975, Redford gave Newman a Porsche as a gift for his 50th birthday—but with a mischievous twist. “I started to get bored, because every time we got together, all he talked about was racing and cars,” Redford said in an interview at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in 2014. “So I decided to play a joke on him. I called a towing service and said, ‘Do you have any crushed automobiles? Do you have a Porsche?’” Redford had the crushed Porsche delivered to Newman’s home in Connecticut, wrapped in a bow.

    Redford didn’t immediately hear back from Newman after giving the gag gift. Weeks later, Redford found a big wooden box in his lobby, containing the remains of the sports car—now crushed into a cube. Redford called a sculptor he knew to transform the metal into a garden ornament and had it placed in Newman’s garden. The two actors reportedly never spoke about the prank.

    Redford and Newman eventually became neighbors in Connecticut, and spent a long time looking for a third film to make together. “It was hard because we didn’t want to duplicate anything,” Redford said. “But we also wanted to try to find a project that would still have the relationship they had in the other two. The first film we did, because I was young, I played a more dour character and Paul was the lively one. And then the next time out, on The Sting, he was the cool guy and I was the lively one. So we were looking for a third piece that would be different in terms of story but would have the same kind of characters.” Redford developed his 2015 film A Walk in the Woods as a project to reunite the two actors, but unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be. Newman’s health declined before production could begin, and the role was eventually taken by Nick Nolte.

    Although they never found a third project, the two actors remained close until the end. Shortly before his death from lung cancer,  Newman sent Redford a letter that concluded: “You were the Sundance to my Cassidy—always.” “I’ve lost a true friend,” Redford said after Newman’s death. “My life, and this country, are better because of his presence.”

    This story originally appeared in VF France.

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    Eléa Guilleminault-Bauer

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  • Barbara Rush on how she wants to be remembered in exclusive 1986 interview

    Barbara Rush on how she wants to be remembered in exclusive 1986 interview

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    Barbara Rush discussed her most cherished project, how she wanted to be remembered in exclusive 1986 interview

    Rush said, ‘I would like to be that kind of person’ about her portrayal of a women’s liberation pioneer

    Actress Barbara Rush, known for her work on film, TV and stage, gave an exclusive interview in 1986 about her most cherished project.The one-woman play showcased the extraordinary life of Bess Alcott Garner, a woman 50 years ahead of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Rush revealed a woman who liberated herself through a zest for life, learning and travel.Rush’s performance captured Garner’s independent spirit and intellectual curiosity, aspects that deeply resonated with Rush herself. Garner epitomized a relentless pursuit of knowledge and experience that Rush admired.Rush said the play was her most satisfying success, embodying the idea that it is never too late to explore new horizons or redefine oneself.As “A Woman of Independent Means” concluded its run, Rush hoped her epitaph would read, “To be continued,” a testament to her belief in the ongoing journey of self-discovery and adventure. WATCH the exclusive interview and hear in her own words how Rush wanted to be remembered. Barbara Rush died on Easter Sunday. She was 97.

    SAN FRANCISCO —

    Actress Barbara Rush, known for her work on film, TV and stage, gave an exclusive interview in 1986 about her most cherished project.

    The one-woman play showcased the extraordinary life of Bess Alcott Garner, a woman 50 years ahead of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Rush revealed a woman who liberated herself through a zest for life, learning and travel.

    Rush’s performance captured Garner’s independent spirit and intellectual curiosity, aspects that deeply resonated with Rush herself. Garner epitomized a relentless pursuit of knowledge and experience that Rush admired.

    Rush said the play was her most satisfying success, embodying the idea that it is never too late to explore new horizons or redefine oneself.

    As “A Woman of Independent Means” concluded its run, Rush hoped her epitaph would read, “To be continued,” a testament to her belief in the ongoing journey of self-discovery and adventure.

    WATCH the exclusive interview and hear in her own words how Rush wanted to be remembered.

    Barbara Rush died on Easter Sunday. She was 97.

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  • Marisa Pavan, Oscar-Nominated Actress in ‘The Rose Tattoo,’ Dies at 91

    Marisa Pavan, Oscar-Nominated Actress in ‘The Rose Tattoo,’ Dies at 91

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    Marisa Pavan, the Italian actress and twin sister of Pier Angeli who received an Oscar nomination for her performance as the daughter of Anna Magnani’s seamstress in the 1955 drama The Rose Tattoo, has died. She was 91.

    Pavan died Wednesday in her sleep at her home in Gassin, France, near Saint-Tropez, Margaux Soumoy, who wrote Pavan’s 2021 biography, Drop the Baby; Put a Veil on the Broad!, told The Hollywood Reporter.

    Pavan also portrayed the French queen Catherine de’ Medici in Diane (1956), starring Lana Turner; an Italian girl who had an affair years ago with a corporate exec (Gregory Peck) in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956); and the love interest of a former cop (Tony Curtis) investigating the murder of a priest in the film noir The Midnight Story (1957).

    In Paramount’s The Rose Tattoo (1955), an adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play that won four Tony Awards, including best play, Pavan was memorable as the headstrong Rosa Delle Rose alongside Magnani, Burt Lancaster, Jo Van Fleet and Ben Cooper. Williams adapted the screenplay with Hal Kanter.

    The film, directed by Daniel Mann and shot in Florida by James Wong Howe, was nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture, and won three. Pavan lost out on Oscar night to Van Fleet — who won not for The Rose Tattoo but for East of Eden — but she did get to the podium at the Pantages, accepting countrywoman Magnani’s trophy for best actress.

    Marisa Pavan with Ben Cooper in 1955’s ‘The Rose Tattoo’

    Courtesy Everett Collection

    Maria Luisa Pierangeli and her sister (birth name Anna Maria Pierangeli, who was older by a few minutes) were born on June 19, 1932, in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. Their father, Luigi, was an architect and construction engineer, and their mother, Enrica, was a homemaker who once dreamed of being an actress.

    “My mother adored Shirley Temple and took us to see all her movies,” Pavan said in Jane Allen’s 2002 book, Pier Angeli: A Fragile Life. “She even dressed us like Shirley Temple, hence the big bows in our hair.”

    The family moved to Rome in the mid-1930s and was threatened when the Nazis occupied the city.

    When she was 16, Anna was strolling along the Via Veneto on the way home from art school when she was discovered by Vittorio De Sica, and she portrayed a teenager on the verge of a sexual awakening opposite him in Tomorrow Is Too Late (1950). That brought her to the attention of MGM, which cast her in Teresa (1951), signed her to a seven-year contract and gave her the stage name Pier Angeli.

    Angeli and her sister then moved to Los Angeles, and Maria, with no acting experience, was signed by Fox. Newly christened Marisa Pavan, she made her big-screen debut as a French girl in John Ford’s World War I-set What Price Glory (1952), starring James Cagney and Dan Dailey.

    Pavan then appeared in 1954 in the film noir Down Three Dark Streets and in the Western Drum Beat, starring Broderick Crawford and Alan Ladd, respectively, before she broke out in The Rose Tattoo.

    Pavan also co-starred in a pair of epic adventures released in 1959, playing Robert Stack’s love interest in John Farrow’s John Paul Jones (1959) and the servant Abishag in King Vidor’s Solomon and Sheba (1959). In the latter, she worked alongside Yul Brynner, who joined the film in Spain after the sudden death of Tyrone Power.

    Pavan worked mainly in television after that, with stints on such shows as The United States Steel Hour, Naked City, 77 Sunset Strip, Combat!, The F.B.I., Wonder Woman, Hawaii Five-O and The Rockford Files.

    THE MIDNIGHT STORY, Tony Curtis, Marisa Pavan, on-set, 1957

    Marisa Pavan and Tony Curtis on the set of 1957’s ‘The Midnight Story’

    Courtesy Everett Collection

    In 1976, she appeared as Kirk Douglas‘ mentally ill wife in the Arthur Hailey NBC miniseries The Moneychangers, and she played Chantal Dubujak, mother of crime lord Max DuBujak (Daniel Pilon), in 1985 on the ABC soap opera Ryan’s Hope.

    Angeli, who dated James Dean before she married singer Vic Damone and portrayed the wife of champion boxer Rocky Marciano (played by Paul Newman) in 1956’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, died in 1971 at age 39 of a barbiturate overdose at a Beverly Hills apartment. It was never firmly established whether she died by suicide or suffered a reaction to prescribed medication.

    Pavan was married to French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont (her castmate in John Paul Jones) from 1956 until his 2001 death. Survivors include her sons, Jean-Claude (a cinematographer) and Patrick, and her younger sister, Patrizia Pierangeli, also an actress.

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    Mike Barnes

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  • Judy Balaban, High-Placed Participant in Hollywood, Dies at 91

    Judy Balaban, High-Placed Participant in Hollywood, Dies at 91

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    Judy Balaban, the daughter of a longtime studio mogul who dated Montgomery Clift and Merv Griffin, married Tony Franciosa and served as one of Grace Kelly’s bridesmaids at her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco, has died. She was 91.

    Balaban died Thursday night in a hospital in Los Angeles, her friend, author and documentary filmmaker Cari Beauchamp, told The Hollywood Reporter.

    Balaban was a champion for civil rights, serving on the board of directors for the ACLU of Southern California for decades.

    In a 2010 piece for Vanity Fair that she and Beauchamp co-wrote, Balaban described using LSD (then legal) as a form of therapy in the early 1960s when her good friends Cary Grant and his third wife, Betsy Drake, were using it, too.

    “What I had with Cary and Betsy was a kind of soul-baringness that the culture didn’t start to deal with until years later,” she says in the story. “We continued to have that even when our lives went off in different directions.”

    Balaban also talked about those days during an appearance in the 2017 Showtime documentary Becoming Cary Grant.

    Her 1961-67 marriage to Franciosa (A Hatful of Rain, The Name of the Game) was sandwiched between her marriages to high-profile Hollywood agent Jay Kanter from 1953-61 and to actor Don Quine (The Virginian) from 1971-96. All three ended in divorce.

    Judith Rose Balaban was born in Chicago in October 13, 1932, to Tillie and Barney Balaban. Her father co-owned a chain of theaters before he was elected president of Paramount in 1936, and he would preside over the studio through 1964.

    Her brother was noted jazz musician Red Balaban, and her half-brother was Burt Balaban, a producer of films including 1960’s Murder, Inc.

    She and her family moved to New York when her dad took the Paramount job, and she attended high school in Washington, D.C., before returning to Manhattan to work in the fashion industry.

    Balaban, who was in the gossip sheets as dating Clift in the early ’50s when he was making films like A Place in the Sun, was going out with Griffin and watching him sing at a nightclub when she was introduced to Kanter. Their marriage brought her to Hollywood.

    Balaban became fast friends with Kelly through Kanter, who was the actress’ agent (he also represented the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Paul Newman during his career). The star of High Noon, Rear Window and The Country Girl called her “Judybird”; she called Kelly “Graciebird.”

    When Kelly and Rainier wed at Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Monaco on April 18, 1956, Balaban was there alongside fellow bridesmaids Maree Frisby, a high-school friend of Kelly’s; Sally Parrish and Bettina Thompson, classmates from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; Carolyn Scott, a modeling companion; and actress Rita Gam, Kelly’s onetime roommate in Hollywood.

    All traveled to Monaco with the bride-to-be aboard the SS Constitution. (Ava Gardner, who starred with Kelly in 1953’s Mogambo, reportedly declined to be a bridesmaid.)

    Balaban wrote about the experience in her 1989 book, The Bridesmaids: Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, and Six Intimate Friends.

    She described Kelly’s dress — created by MGM costume designer Helen Rose — as “twenty-five yards of silk peau de soie, another twenty-five of light silk taffeta, ninety-eight yards of silk tulle and nearly three hundred and twenty yards of Valenciennes lace.”

    Balaban also appeared in 1983 and 2018 documentaries about Clift and one about Kelly in 1987 and was interviewed for Mark Cousins’ acclaimed 2011 doc series The Story of Film: An Odyssey.

    Survivors include her daughters, Amy, whom she had with Kanter, and Nina, whom she had with Franciosa; and a cousin, Oscar-nominated actor Bob Balaban. Victoria, her other daughter with Kanter, died in June 2020.

    Scott Feinberg contributed to this report.

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  • The Tribeca Festival Was the Eric Adams and Robert De Niro Show—Whatever the Air Quality

    The Tribeca Festival Was the Eric Adams and Robert De Niro Show—Whatever the Air Quality

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    “There were those who decided to flee,” he said, his tone shifting. “But we had someone that was clear. We had a raging bull.”

    Cue “Brother De Niro,” as the mayor called him. The star, who will be fêted with a three-day “De Niro Con” in September to coincide with his 80th birthday, glanced around the room at Matt Damon, who was standing by the bar, and his Killers of the Flower Moon castmate Brendan Fraser, standing in the center of the room.

    “John Lindsay, Abe Beame, Ed Koch, David Dinkins, Rudy Giuliani—I don’t know what happened there—Mike Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio,” De Niro said, deadpan. “This is just a partial list of New York mayors who did not give me keys.”

    Stephanie HsuBy Daniel Arnold / Chanel. 

    Soon after the remarks, I bumped into the mayor in the restroom, where I asked him how the day was going. He responded by saying, “There isn’t anybody more legendary than Bob,” and was whisked out by his detail. He did not grab a mask from the box on his way out the door.

    The air got better, and over the weekend dozens of films screened at a number of theaters throughout downtown, video games were played, and David Duchovny performed at Baby’s All Right with his band, which was probably awesome. On Monday, there was an annual Tribeca Festival event that’s technically ancillary programming, and very much invitation-only, and quite possibly the starriest Gotham dinner of the season. It’s the Chanel Artists Dinner that the French fashion brand throws at Balthazar, Keith McNally’s paean to bistro dining that out-glams the Paris spots that inspired it. Balthazar, with its hall-of-fame-eatery status enhanced by a serious post-pandemic glow-up, is the perfect place for a big buyout by a luxury juggernaut and a film festival owned by James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems that’s stuffed full of film legends and the fresh-faced rising stars of Tinseltown. Balthazar is exactly the restaurant a budding Hollywood star would probably want to come to anyway.

    “The first time I ever had a meal by myself, I showed up with a book at Balthazar and sat at the bar,” the actor Zoey Deutch told me, glancing around the space, still in awe.

    “They brought me a glass of Champagne on the house,” Deutch said, and I told her that’s a classic McNally move for any solo diners.

    Phoebe TonkinBy Daniel Arnold / Chanel. 

    On Monday, the Champagne was free, and nobody was dining solo. The three red booths in the back—tables 60, 61, and 62—housed De Niro and Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton and the French artist JR, a frequent De Niro collaborator. Rosenthal sat with Katie Holmes, with Oscar Isaac sitting with Fraser, and Tracee Ellis Ross at the end of the table. Mayor Adams probably would have really liked this party.

    Chanel had dressed nearly 30 attendees just for the evening, and dispersed them in their shimmering fits to different tables throughout the block-size eatery: Suki Waterhouse and Camila Morrone at one table, Lizzy Caplan and Rachel Brosnahan at another, Chase Sui Wonders and Ayo Edebiri at another. (The director Ari Aster was wandering around Balthazar as well, but it’s unclear whether Edebiri finally got through to him, ensuring that he was aware of her very strong thoughts on Beau Is Afraid.)

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    Nate Freeman

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  • Smokey Robinson Is 83 and Still Having Sex and He Will Tell You All About It

    Smokey Robinson Is 83 and Still Having Sex and He Will Tell You All About It

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    Children, gather ’round: Smokey Robinson wants to talk to you about all the sex he’s had, and you can’t stop him. The 83-year-old musician has a new album, and it’s called Gasms. Because it’s about sex, see? 

    “When people think of gasms, they think of orgasms first and foremost…I tell everybody: ‘Whatever your gasm is, that’s exactly what I’m talking about,’” he told The Guardian this week in a prerelease interview. 

    His gasms are certainly of the “or-” variety, as he made very clear in the interview, claiming that he had an affair long ago with Diana Ross while he was married to his first wife, The Miracles bandmate Claudette Rogers Robinson. (VF has reached out to a representative for Ross for comment.) 

    While he denied that he and Aretha Franklin ever had a romance (though he clarified that “she was fine”), he said that he and Ross had “a thing” for about a year. 

    “I was married at the time. We were working together and it just happened,” he said. “But it was beautiful. She’s a beautiful lady, and I love her right ’til today. She’s one of my closest people. She was young and trying to get her career together. I was trying to help her. I brought her to Motown, in fact. I wasn’t going after her and she wasn’t going after me. It just happened.”

    Ross eventually broke it off with him, he said, “because she knew Claudette, and she knew I still loved my wife. And I did. I loved my wife very much.”

    While Robinson was about as open as the book could be throughout the interview, he was curiously noncommittal about a certain urban legend: that he and Ross had a secret baby, and that that secret baby was Michael Jackson. 

    “Oh, my God! I never heard that one, man! That’s pretty good. That’s funny! That’s funny!” He said he would call Ross and ask her if she’d heard the theory. Which, again, not a no, just saying. 

    While the alleged Ross affair was decades ago, much of the interview centered on Robinson’s decision to center his new record on the 83-year-old libido. Then again, age is, as they say, only a number. He told The Guardian that “I feel 50.” He discussed how his sexuality has changed since his teenage years: not much! 

    “I still feel the same way, only I’m wiser with it,” he said. “When you’re young and you have those exploratory feelings about sex, you haven’t lived long enough to know the value of it. So yes, I have a different attitude to it, but I still feel sexual. And I hope I’ll always feel like that. Okay, chronologically, I’m 83, but it’s not really my age.”

    You know what? Good for him. Robinson joins the proud tradition of elder statesmen of entertainment sharing tales of their sexual exploits, with Paul Newman as a notable entry in the genre. In his posthumous memoir, Newman detailed his absolute horniness for wife Joanne Woodward and the dedicated sex room that they dubbed “the Fuck Hut.” 

    “Joanne gave birth to a sexual creature,” he wrote. “We left a trail of lust all over the place. Hotels and public parks and Hertz Rent-A-Cars.”

    And if you’re sitting here clutching your pearls gasping, “think of the children!” it’s fine—Newman and Woodward’s daughters are totally cool with all of us knowing details of their parents’ frequent trips to Bonetown. 

    “I mean, I knew they were affectionate,” Melissa Newman told VF. “You could sense that that was there all the time…. I always say, ‘They had two doors on their bedroom. With bolts.’”

    And the…hut? “Oh, I love the Fuck Hut,” she said. “I was just like, that’s very funny.”

    Given this new and apparently fertile territory of celebrity content to mine, we’d like make a humble suggestion to our aging entertainment icons. Why not add a bullet point to the estate planning? When they sit down with the lawyers and the notaries to make sure that specific taxidermied pets and beloved couches go to the proper recipients, they should also have the option to put their bedroom (or hut) exploits on the record, with a plan for how and if they’d like those tales to be released. A gasm to remember them by. Please. 

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    Kase Wickman

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