Icons: April 2008 Archives

My post yesterday marking Barbra Streisand's 66th birthday included some videos of her performances but not this one which is one of her most dramatic and memorable. At the end of the 2001 Emmy telecast - which had been postponed twice because of 9/11 - host Ellen DeGeneres introduced a surprise guest but never mentioned her name. Suddenly, she was just there. And her version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" was most powerful and meaningful.

I'll never forget it and neither will you.

...the legend turns 66 today. So many of us have loved Barbra for so long - virtually all our lives - and stuck with her through every hairstyle, every musical genre, every husband or boyfriend. She's always sang one helluva number and there really is no one else like her - no one.

Some Barbra videos, through the years:

Here is a wonderful 1997 visit to "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" where Rosie was overcome with emotion to be welcoming her childhood idol to the show. Barbra's music filled Rosie's house when she was a kid and was an absolute favorite of her late mother:

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One of my favorites: Streisand singing "As If We Never Said Goodbye" from "Sunset Boulevard" during her 1994 comeback tour...It's like buttah...

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Another fave: Barbra, in character as Esther Hoffman, singing "I Believe in Love" in a concert scene from 1976's "A Star is Born." Love the curly hair!

...Patti Lupone! The great star who has played Eva Peron ("Evita"), Maria Callas ("Master Class"), Mrs. Lovett ("Sweeney Todd") and now Mama Rose ("Gypsy") on Broadway as well as Norma Desmond ("Sunset Boulevard") on the London stage, turns 59 today. What a magnificant talent. Still, to my old pal Danny Sullivan, visiting from London this month, she will always be Libby from TV's "Life Goes On."

This is cool news: Beatrice Arthur, best-known as television's "Maude" and as Dorothy on "The Golden Girls," has been named one of the six 2008 inductees into the Academy of Television Arts and Science's Hall of Fame joining such past female TV icons as Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore.

We all know the gays love her because no one can deliver a bitchy line as well as Bea Arthur! But here's the official bio from the Academy: Bea Arthur is a two-time Emmy® Award-winning and a Tony Award-winning comedienne, actress and singer. In a career spanning six decades, Arthur is best remembered for her trademark role as the title character Maude Findlay on the 1970's sitcom Maude, in which she portrayed an outspoken feminist living in affluent Westchester County with her husband and divorced daughter. The show ran for six years, during which time many controversial topics, including abortion, were tackled. In 1985, she was cast as Dorothy Zbornak, the divorced substitute teacher on The Golden Girls. On stage, her many roles include "Lucy Brown" in the 1954 off-Broadway premiere of Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, "Yente the Matchmaker" in 1964's Fiddler on the Roof, and a 1966 Tony Award-winning portrayal of "Vera Charles" in Mame, a role she recreated for the film version in 1974. In 2002, she made a triumphant return to Broadway starring in Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends, a collection of stories and songs based on her life and long career. The show was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event.

Also being inducted are Dan Burke, Larry Gelbart, Merv Griffin, Tom Murphy and Sherwood Schwartz .

WIND BENEATH MY WINGS: When 'American Idol' judges talk to contestants about connecting with a song, they should instruct them to watch this video of Bette singing this song at the 1990 Grammys. It is a magnificant performance from her voice to her phrasing to the way she quietly owned the stage. Moments later, she would win the record of the year Grammy for what was her first number one hit.

THE ROSE: Bette was in her post-"Jinxed" period just before her big comeback in all those Disney comedies when she sang this live at a major Martin Luther King Tribute. The YouTube clip states 1984 but I'm thinking it was 1985 or 86 because I remember watching it on TV. Anyway, it's a wonderful rendition of the song and again, she sings the hell out of it.

I missed seeing Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert on Oprah this week but the show's Web site has a nice story on the pair. Here are some excerpts:

While the press loved to run stories about their rivalry, Chris and Martina say they completely supported each other off the court. "What's weird about tennis is you're both in the locker room before the match and after the match, and one is very happy and one is very sad," Martina says. "But we would put our arms around each other and say, 'You know what, I was lucky,' or, 'Next time you're going to get it, I'm sure', and, 'Are you okay?' Or we would leave notes in each other's racket bags for later."

Between defecting to the United States and being an openly gay athlete, Martina has been placed under scrutiny more than once and has become a role model for many. Chris says she knew Martina had guts from the moment she met her. "You lived your truth and you had a clear conscience and you felt great about yourself, so that is the most important thing," Chris says.

Love Sally Field and have basically my entire life. Love her in "Brothers & Sisters," "Soapdish," "Norma Rae," "Sybil," "ER," "A Cooler Climate" and, of course, "Gidget." But any gay man who is a Sally fan loves her the most for her performance as Julia Roberts mother in "Steel Magnolias." So many of us can do the entire scene at the cemetery by heart: "Shelby's riiiiight. My hair really does look like a brown football!'" She begins to fi her hair and surrounded by Shirley MacLaine, Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis and Darryl Hannah, she just loses it: "I wanna know whhhhhhhyyyyyyy!!!"
Here's a clip:

Anywho, why I just went off on that tangent I do not know. This is really just a set-up to share with you an interview Sally gives in the new Ladies Home Journal.

On "Brothers & Sisters," Sally plays the mother of a soldier injured in the Iraq War. The real-life mother of three sons hads this to say about our soldiers who come home injured: "What's really awful is how poor the help is for these brave men and women once they get home. This country has never respected the mental health of its returning soldiers and they deserve all the help they can get after serving their country. They need sophisticated, ongoing treatment but the expectation is, if you're a soldier, you swallow your feelings and move on. That's a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, and I hope we can address that issue on Brothers & Sisters."

On her Emmy speech which she concluded by saying that if mothers were in charge of the country "there wouldn't be any more goddam wars." "I went back and looked at it again and again," she said. "The only mistake I made was in the next line when I put god in front of damned. But I do think if God would ever damn anything it would be war. Unfortunately, what was lost in the tumult was my intention to pay homage to mothers."

On the acting front, Sally has no plans to have herself nipped or tucked: "I think about it all the time because I see friends who've done it and they look great and younger... I have an ego but it's an actor's ego more than a woman's ego. It's about roles. I'm 61, and as I get older I'm obviously going to be playing older characters. What I would like is to age into roles I want to play the way the great ones did, like Helen Hayes and Lillian Gish."

Sally is supporting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and here's why: "What dazzles me is how resilient she is. The times she gets slammed, she takes it and grows from it. She gets stronger. We need to get out of some terrible, terrible situations as a country, and I want a President who can take those blows and be stronger. Not stronger in the sense that, I'm going to blow your head off. But stronger in the sense that I'm going to be more informed, more honest, more honorable and those blows won't weaken me. Showing our might clearly didn't work over the last four years. I want stronger in the way that only a mother can be strong."
On feeling sexy, the twice-divorced woman who also had a five-year relationship with Burt Reynolds said: "...the feelings are still alive and thriving. And certainly, feeling that excitement with someone, that heated attraction--I miss that a lot. But too often in my life I've give up things for that. Women often give up pieces of themselves to feel the rush of excitement that comes with sex, usually because they mistake it for true intimacy, and they end up losing. I won't do that again."

On settling down again: "It's not that I'm difficult. I just have such a full life. I don't have any room to let someone else in... I don't look for it, I don't go out, so whoever my soul mate will be, if he's out there, he'll have to come up here and find me."

On pressure and media--and sympathy for Britney: "I can't imagine the pressure these young people are under. I thought it was rough, juggling a high-profile career with raising a family, but now you look at someone like Britney Spears and think, we had it easy. When I began, there were a few fan magazines but there was no Entertainment Tonight and certainly not the 24-hour medica force that the Internet has become."
While Britney appears to have been overwhelmed at being a superstar mom at a young age, Sally embraced motherhood which first happened while she was starring in her second TV series "The Flying Nun" in the mid-60s: "I went through most of my life not knowing who I was. But what saved me was my children. I had children so young--I was 23 when I had my first and had two by the time I was 25--that I didn't have time for anything else. I didn't have time to get real precious with myself. You have to make lunch. You have to get the kids to school. You go to work."

...movie legend Doris Day who turns 84 today!

Both my parents were big fans of Miss Day so whenever her movies were showing on television, we watched them. Particular favorites of ours were "Move Over Darling," "With Six You Get Egg Roll" and "Pillow Talk." Later, as an adult, I became more familiar witrh her pre-60s films including "On Moonlight Bay," "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," "Tea For Two" and - most significantly - "Calamity Jane" and "Love Me or Leave Me."
Here is Doris singing the Oscar-winning song "Secret Love" in a scene from "Calamity Jane"

And here is a funny scene from "Move Over Darling": with Polly Bergen who marries James Garner who doesn't realize his last-at-sea first wife (Doris) is not dead:

Miss Day followed up her movie career with five seasons of "The Doris Day Show" then later several pet-themed talk shows. She was also a major recording star for decades as well as the top box office star for a time.

So here's an idea: Why not award the great Doris Day with an honorary Academy Award next year. She was only nominated once and her body of work is stellar. Also, it is ridiculous that she has never been among those selected for the annual Kennedy Center Honors.

Let's honor this legend while we still have her around!

...the unsinkable Debbie Reynolds! On-screen, she was Grace's mom on "Will & Grace" (we all love the "I Told You So" dance!) and off-screen, the mother of Carrie Fisher who is just an interesting in her own right. I love Debbie in "Singing in the Rain" and really love Debbie in her Oscar-nominated role in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown." But It's been so great to see her later role including playing Albert Brooks' mother in... "Mother" which my sister swears was really about our own mother and me.

She also played Kevin Kline's mother in "In & Out" and starred with Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins in the critically-panned "These Old Broads" written by Carrie Fisher. "Broads" is worth watching mostly for the touching scene between Debbie and Elizabeth when they talk about the ex-husband they have in common: "Freddie Hunter." It was a poke at Eddie Fisher who famously left Debbie (and their two kids) for Elizabeth in the late 50s. It made her the Jennifer Aniston in the Brad and Angelina triangle. Whatever her private pain, Debbie always had a sense of humor about it in public and never stopped smiling.

Debbie, a star for nearly six decades, 76 today. She's still performing on stage and on screen, still dazzling us with her unsinkable personality.