Holy Hanna, Batman! Was that really you sharing cocktails and mango lobster hors d'oeuvres with J.R. Ewing, the Incredible Hulk and two-thirds of the gang from "Three's Company" in Centre Island?
By thunder it was. An eclectic mix of a dozen stars, from '60s Hitchcock heroine Tippi Hedren to "Married With Children's" David Faustino didn't let a little wind and rain keep them from descending Saturday night on Twinight, the multimillion-dollar manse of businessman Richard Baron Cohen (no relation to Sacha) to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Cold Spring Harbory Fish Hatchery and Aquarium.
"I wanted a good mix of people," said Baron Cohen, who's also a member of the trout rearing facility and environmental education center's board of trustees. "Adam West I've met several times, and my wife was a competitive bodybuilder once, so that's how I knew Lou Ferrigno. My mother loves Larry Hagman, so I asked him."
Guests also got to see the reunion of Joyce DeWitt and Priscilla Barnes from "Three's Company" as well as Hagman and Cindy Williams, she of "LaVerne & Shirley" fame.
"I did a movie for Larry that he directed called 'Beware! The Blob' and I played a girl who got eaten by the Blob," Williams said.
All of the celebrities on hand, including "Mr. ChiPS" Erik Estrada, who arrived late because of the storm, Emmy winner Ed Asner and '80s TV sex symbols Morgan Fairchild and Stefanie Powers, were asked because of their involvement in other green projects.
The stars, none of whom live on Long Island, were paid to attend the $250-a-plate gala. Some, such as Hedren, who operates the Shambala Preserve for wildlife in Acton, Calif., were familiar with the work of the hatchery. "Preserving animals and the environment is something that always has to be considered, to be aware of, to be thoughtful about. Otherwise, we are on a collision course," Hedren said.
For some, coming to Long Island wasn't just a socially conscious journey but a trip down memory lane. "I've sailed across from Larchmont to Oyster Bay and spent the night at your lovely yacht club," Powers said. "My boyfriend has a boat there and he sails and races up and down the Eastern seaboard."
Ferrigno also is no stranger to the area. "I was always involved with Long Island fishermen. I grew up in Brooklyn, but I used to come here to meet girls when I was 19 and 20," Ferrigno said.
Asner, as curmudgeonly as his TV alter ego Lou Grant, was more direct about why he attended: "I was asked, I was informed, and I hope to think that I'm an environmentalist. And I had nothing to do."
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Stefanie Powers Featured in Donruss Americana II
ARLINGTON, TX – In the true spirit of Hollywood , Donruss presents a sequel to its successful Americana trading card set which tapped into the world of entertainment, politics, sports and pop-culture. Donruss Americana II, released on July 16, includes even more heavy hitters from film, sports, history, classic television and pop culture, to truly capture the flavor of America ’s rich and storied history. Each four-card pack (SRP $40) offers collectors the chance to uncover autographs or memorabilia cards.
The base set features 100 common cards and is deep in star power such as John Wayne, George HW Bush, Buzz Aldrin, Jake LaMotta, Marilyn Monroe, John Cusack, Jackie Chan, Willie Mays and 30 of the hottest new Mixed Martial Arts fighters.
Each of the 100 cards is also presented in a variety of numbered parallel sets, including autographed versions and memorabilia cards featuring a swatch of the star’s clothing. As a result fans can collect up to ten different cards from many of the stars.
Other Donruss Americana II program highlights include:
- Hollywood Legends Card Set: This 25-card set is comprised of Tinseltown’s greatest in the shape of multi-swatch and combo cards. Hollywood legends John Wayne, Johnny Weismuller, Douglas Fairbanks, Burt Lancaster, Gary Cooper, Montgomery Clift, and Judy Garland are all found within the set.
- The Co-Stars Signatures: 15 different cards with less than 50 of each signed by such duos as George HW Bush/Barbara Bush; Burt Reynolds/Angie Dickinson; Married with Children’s Christina Applegate/David Faustino; Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn; and Different Strokes stars Gary Coleman/Todd Bridges; Hart to Hart’s Robert Wagner/Stefanie Powers.
- Headliners: Autographed cards and memorabilia cards highlighting important accomplishments including George HW Bush (elected President); Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11); Jake LaMotta (1949 World Champion); Hank Aaron (Home Run King); Willie Mays (4 Home Run game on 4-30-61).
- Stardom Triple Signature series is made-up of five different cards with famous trios such as Batman’s Adam West/Burt Ward/Lee Meriwether; and game show hosts Bob Eubanks/Chuck Woolery/Peter Marshall among others.
- The Hollywood Legends Materials features 25 different cards, numbered 1-500. The set has swatches of clothing from Tinseltown greats John Wayne, Johnny Weismuller, Gary Cooper, and others. (same as above)
- Ring Kings – The first trading cards, autographed cards and memorabilia cards of 30 of the top MMA fighters including: Randy Couture, George St. Pierre, Forrest Griffin, Urijah Faber and Gina Carano.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Hollywood Actress Preserves African Legacy of Late Film Star
Listen to interview
Hollywood actress Stefanie Powers is keeping alive the African legacy of the late film star William Holden, who established a well known game ranch and sanctuary in Kenya. Powers is president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, and she spoke with VOA's Mike O'Sullivan about her work on behalf of animal conservation in East Africa.
On the slopes of Mt. Kenya, thousands of schoolchildren arrive throughout the year at the William Holden Wildlife Education Center, where they learn about the animal and plant life of the region.
The center, which is adjacent to the Mt. Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, carries on the legacy of Hollywood actor William Holden. He fell in love with East Africa after going on safari there in the 1950s.
In 1959, he became co-owner of a famous resort, renaming it the Mt. Kenya Safari Club, and in the 1960s he and his partners set up the Mt. Kenya Game Ranch. Within a few years, it would house a sanctuary for orphaned animals.
After Holden's death in 1981, his partners and actress Stefanie Powers co-founded the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, which operates the educational center. She says it re-introduces African students to nature away from Kenya's bustling towns and cities.
"We do not allow boom boxes. We do not allow portable telephones. That all is left at the door," she says. "This is a natural experience. It is for students to come and understand nature, and to do so, you cannot have headphones on."
There are 37 species of wildlife on the preserve adjacent to the center, and the foundation offers programs on animal conservation and environmental protection. Powers says it also reaches out to youngsters through the schools.
"We combine our curricula, which is specifically adjusted to their level of education and understanding, as well as onsite programs, which we install, such as lessons on composting, what to do with biodegradable waste, how to create agro-forestry, where trees and crops can be grown harmoniously in a companion planting method where nitrogen-producing plants can actually enhance the soil." she said.
Powers divides her time between Hollywood and Kenya, and says her globe-trotting activism comes naturally. When she was a child, her family collected exotic birds and her stepfather bred racehorses. As a young woman, she owned dogs and acquired her own exotic animal, a Malaysian Sun Bear.
She recalls breaking the news to her boyfriend, who later became her husband.
"It was really not my most subtle moment," she says. "The little bear was in the kitchen playing with my Yorkshire Terrier. My boyfriend came home and I poured him a very stiff drink, and I said, 'You like bears, do not you?' I very subtly broke the ice."
Her fascination with animals outlasted her marriage. She was divorced in the early 1970s and found a new love in her life, one of Hollywood's top stars, William Holden. He had appeared in nearly 80 movies, including the classic war films Bridge on the River Kwai and Stalag 17, for which he won an Oscar. At this point in his life, he spent much of his time in Kenya.
Powers says that even before she met him, she loved to travel.
"I consumed every bit of free time I had by going off to some place, and I spent a lot of time in Central and South America, and Mexico," she says. "And I had traveled extensively through North Africa. But I had never been to sub-Saharan Africa, and certainly not to East Africa, which is where the game was. So Bill introduced me to his part of Africa, as he used to call it. And I was already in love with the man, so it was very easy to be in love with where he hung his hat."
Powers has appeared in films and on television since she was a teenager in the 1950s. She is best known for the popular series Hart to Hart, in which she costarred with Robert Wagner, playing husband and wife detectives, from 1979 to 1984.
But she has always spent time at her second home in Kenya, and has even been adopted by the local Kikuyu people. She says Africa is her passion, as it was for a British adventurer she once portrayed in a television movie.
"Oh, gosh, I guess I was bitten by the bug," she says. "And it is beyond me, now. I am helpless. It is part of my cells. You know, I think it was Beryl Markham who wrote, 'I will always remember Africa, but will Africa remember me?' I do not think Africa will remember me, but I will always remember Africa."
She says that whether working with preservation groups in Hollywood or with youngsters at Mt. Kenya, she is helping endangered species in a part of the world she loves.
Hollywood actress Stefanie Powers is keeping alive the African legacy of the late film star William Holden, who established a well known game ranch and sanctuary in Kenya. Powers is president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, and she spoke with VOA's Mike O'Sullivan about her work on behalf of animal conservation in East Africa.
On the slopes of Mt. Kenya, thousands of schoolchildren arrive throughout the year at the William Holden Wildlife Education Center, where they learn about the animal and plant life of the region.
The center, which is adjacent to the Mt. Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, carries on the legacy of Hollywood actor William Holden. He fell in love with East Africa after going on safari there in the 1950s.
In 1959, he became co-owner of a famous resort, renaming it the Mt. Kenya Safari Club, and in the 1960s he and his partners set up the Mt. Kenya Game Ranch. Within a few years, it would house a sanctuary for orphaned animals.
After Holden's death in 1981, his partners and actress Stefanie Powers co-founded the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, which operates the educational center. She says it re-introduces African students to nature away from Kenya's bustling towns and cities.
"We do not allow boom boxes. We do not allow portable telephones. That all is left at the door," she says. "This is a natural experience. It is for students to come and understand nature, and to do so, you cannot have headphones on."
There are 37 species of wildlife on the preserve adjacent to the center, and the foundation offers programs on animal conservation and environmental protection. Powers says it also reaches out to youngsters through the schools.
"We combine our curricula, which is specifically adjusted to their level of education and understanding, as well as onsite programs, which we install, such as lessons on composting, what to do with biodegradable waste, how to create agro-forestry, where trees and crops can be grown harmoniously in a companion planting method where nitrogen-producing plants can actually enhance the soil." she said.
Powers divides her time between Hollywood and Kenya, and says her globe-trotting activism comes naturally. When she was a child, her family collected exotic birds and her stepfather bred racehorses. As a young woman, she owned dogs and acquired her own exotic animal, a Malaysian Sun Bear.
She recalls breaking the news to her boyfriend, who later became her husband.
"It was really not my most subtle moment," she says. "The little bear was in the kitchen playing with my Yorkshire Terrier. My boyfriend came home and I poured him a very stiff drink, and I said, 'You like bears, do not you?' I very subtly broke the ice."
Her fascination with animals outlasted her marriage. She was divorced in the early 1970s and found a new love in her life, one of Hollywood's top stars, William Holden. He had appeared in nearly 80 movies, including the classic war films Bridge on the River Kwai and Stalag 17, for which he won an Oscar. At this point in his life, he spent much of his time in Kenya.
Powers says that even before she met him, she loved to travel.
"I consumed every bit of free time I had by going off to some place, and I spent a lot of time in Central and South America, and Mexico," she says. "And I had traveled extensively through North Africa. But I had never been to sub-Saharan Africa, and certainly not to East Africa, which is where the game was. So Bill introduced me to his part of Africa, as he used to call it. And I was already in love with the man, so it was very easy to be in love with where he hung his hat."
Powers has appeared in films and on television since she was a teenager in the 1950s. She is best known for the popular series Hart to Hart, in which she costarred with Robert Wagner, playing husband and wife detectives, from 1979 to 1984.
But she has always spent time at her second home in Kenya, and has even been adopted by the local Kikuyu people. She says Africa is her passion, as it was for a British adventurer she once portrayed in a television movie.
"Oh, gosh, I guess I was bitten by the bug," she says. "And it is beyond me, now. I am helpless. It is part of my cells. You know, I think it was Beryl Markham who wrote, 'I will always remember Africa, but will Africa remember me?' I do not think Africa will remember me, but I will always remember Africa."
She says that whether working with preservation groups in Hollywood or with youngsters at Mt. Kenya, she is helping endangered species in a part of the world she loves.
Friday, May 30, 2008
George Hamilton's book party
It was a crush of crepey cleavage and vintage Hollywood royalty Thursday night at George Hamilton’s book party at Il Cielo in Beverly Hills. We nibbled on porcini ravioli and tiny lambchops from hand-grown, organically fed micro sheep. We swilled house Chianti and watched as vintage 1980s television superstars paraded, air-kissed and lined up for photo ops.
There was leonine Loni Anderson, newly remarried and glowing behind her majestic cheekbones. She spooned chicly shagged and laid-back Stefanie Powers, who cocked a knee beside Linda Gray, still radiant nearly 20 years post-“Dallas.” Plumped lips curled into super-pro camera smiles all around. New York publishing lackeys watched in awe; this is why it’s good to hold Book Expo America in L.A.: star power, baby.
Suddenly the crowd parted and there was Hamilton himself, radiant in a bespoke suit and his signature 500-watt smile. His hair was shellacked to perfection, his teeth adazzle, skin burnished to the sheen of a fine, old wallet. The man, on the brink of 70, is still a total chick magnet. Women of all ages flocked to him, pulling wee cameras from tiny evening bags and jockeying for a photo, letting their hands linger in his as he smiled down at them.
It was an anticipatory party for his October book, “Don’t Mind If I Do,” an intimate look at behind-the-scenes Hollywood, and if his ghostwriter (William Stadiem) did his job right, it should be a pip. Hamilton was at the "Cleopatra" wrap party where Richard Burton declared his love for Elizabeth Taylor in front of Eddie Fisher; he witnessed one of Judy Garland’s suicide attempts and, apparently, skinny-dipped with JFK (giving new meaning to the phrase “I knew John F. Kennedy and you’re no John F. Kennedy").
“I came on the scene in the '50s, and I didn’t want to be stuck in that plastic era,” Hamilton told me as I tried to stay focused on his words and not be hypnotized by his animal magnetism. “I wanted to write about what really happened.” He was inspired by David Niven’s books “The Moon’s a Balloon” and “Bring on the Empty Horses,” which brought the insider Hollywood memoir to a giddy new level in the 1970s.
There’s hope for similar fun from "Don't Mind If I Do" because Hamilton clearly knows everyone -- and is in on the joke about himself. The promotional goody bag was an assemblage of personalized M&Ms, sunglasses and exotic tanning products. The book's cover photo has him posed in a leopard-skin chair, in ascot, nonchalantly gesturing toward the camera. He has a reality show in the works, also called “Don’t Mind if I Do,” in which he freeloads his way around the world on his charm and good looks without ever having to touch money.
In this new age of the stubbled, rude and tattooed, Hamilton is old guard Hollywood. Back in the 1950s, Hamilton told me, his idols were Rudolph Valentino and the Duke of Windsor. “I was 30 years out of date back then!”
There was leonine Loni Anderson, newly remarried and glowing behind her majestic cheekbones. She spooned chicly shagged and laid-back Stefanie Powers, who cocked a knee beside Linda Gray, still radiant nearly 20 years post-“Dallas.” Plumped lips curled into super-pro camera smiles all around. New York publishing lackeys watched in awe; this is why it’s good to hold Book Expo America in L.A.: star power, baby.
Suddenly the crowd parted and there was Hamilton himself, radiant in a bespoke suit and his signature 500-watt smile. His hair was shellacked to perfection, his teeth adazzle, skin burnished to the sheen of a fine, old wallet. The man, on the brink of 70, is still a total chick magnet. Women of all ages flocked to him, pulling wee cameras from tiny evening bags and jockeying for a photo, letting their hands linger in his as he smiled down at them.
It was an anticipatory party for his October book, “Don’t Mind If I Do,” an intimate look at behind-the-scenes Hollywood, and if his ghostwriter (William Stadiem) did his job right, it should be a pip. Hamilton was at the "Cleopatra" wrap party where Richard Burton declared his love for Elizabeth Taylor in front of Eddie Fisher; he witnessed one of Judy Garland’s suicide attempts and, apparently, skinny-dipped with JFK (giving new meaning to the phrase “I knew John F. Kennedy and you’re no John F. Kennedy").
“I came on the scene in the '50s, and I didn’t want to be stuck in that plastic era,” Hamilton told me as I tried to stay focused on his words and not be hypnotized by his animal magnetism. “I wanted to write about what really happened.” He was inspired by David Niven’s books “The Moon’s a Balloon” and “Bring on the Empty Horses,” which brought the insider Hollywood memoir to a giddy new level in the 1970s.
There’s hope for similar fun from "Don't Mind If I Do" because Hamilton clearly knows everyone -- and is in on the joke about himself. The promotional goody bag was an assemblage of personalized M&Ms, sunglasses and exotic tanning products. The book's cover photo has him posed in a leopard-skin chair, in ascot, nonchalantly gesturing toward the camera. He has a reality show in the works, also called “Don’t Mind if I Do,” in which he freeloads his way around the world on his charm and good looks without ever having to touch money.
In this new age of the stubbled, rude and tattooed, Hamilton is old guard Hollywood. Back in the 1950s, Hamilton told me, his idols were Rudolph Valentino and the Duke of Windsor. “I was 30 years out of date back then!”
Friday, May 23, 2008
Stefanie Powers Honored
Warren Cowan PR presented a Hollywood Salute to Veterans on Armed Forces Day, as Wayne Newton and Hollywood’s USO Entertainers are honored at the launch of Step Up 4 Vets, a non-profit organization benefiting Veterans. The Peace One Earth Medallion, designed by Step Up 4 Vets founder Patricia Kennedy, was unveiled.
Los Angeles, CA, May 23, 2008 -- The stars came out on Armed Forces Day to attend a benefit promoted by Warren Cowan PR at the Beverly Hills home of Patricia Kennedy, founder of Step Up 4 Vets and the designer of the Peace One Earth Medallion. Wayne Newton received the first Peace One Earth Medallion, and Stefanie Powers and Kate Linder were honored for their years of service to the USO. Brigadier General Michael R..S. Teilman, Executive Director of the USO of the Greater Los Angeles Area, served as Master of Ceremonies for the evening. In addition, legendary Astronaut Buzz Aldrin and World War II veteran and actor Hugh O’Brian (who at age 17 was the youngest Drill Sergeant in Marine Corps history) were honored.
The visual highlight was an aviation presentation from The Condor Squad of six vintage World War II planes flying over the home in the lost man formation. Other highlights included speeches from Congressman Bob Tilner, Chairman of the House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, and Shad Meshad, founder of the National Veterans Foundation.
Special presentations were made to the many Veterans in attendance, including four who recently returned from Iraq: SSgt. Paul McQuigg (Marines), HM1 Aaron Q. Seibert (Navy), HN Phillip A. Mishaga (Navy) and Cameron White. A special presentation was made on behalf of Mark Metherell, the former Navy Seal who was recently killed in Iraq. Accepting for the Metherell family were his parents Alex and Pamela Metherell, sister Alison Metherell, and former Navy Seal and friend of Mark Metherell, Tony Duchi.
Towards the end of the evening, all guests were presented with Peace One Earth Medallions, which were designed by Patricia Kennedy and which will be available to the public via the www.peaceoneearth.com website. A portion of the proceeds of these medallions, which the public is encouraged to purchase and inscribe to honor Veterans they may wish to recognize, will go towards Step Up 4 Vets (www.stepup4vets.org), a non-profit organization aiding returning vets as the readjust, redirect and rebuild their civilian lives.
Los Angeles, CA, May 23, 2008 -- The stars came out on Armed Forces Day to attend a benefit promoted by Warren Cowan PR at the Beverly Hills home of Patricia Kennedy, founder of Step Up 4 Vets and the designer of the Peace One Earth Medallion. Wayne Newton received the first Peace One Earth Medallion, and Stefanie Powers and Kate Linder were honored for their years of service to the USO. Brigadier General Michael R..S. Teilman, Executive Director of the USO of the Greater Los Angeles Area, served as Master of Ceremonies for the evening. In addition, legendary Astronaut Buzz Aldrin and World War II veteran and actor Hugh O’Brian (who at age 17 was the youngest Drill Sergeant in Marine Corps history) were honored.
The visual highlight was an aviation presentation from The Condor Squad of six vintage World War II planes flying over the home in the lost man formation. Other highlights included speeches from Congressman Bob Tilner, Chairman of the House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, and Shad Meshad, founder of the National Veterans Foundation.
Special presentations were made to the many Veterans in attendance, including four who recently returned from Iraq: SSgt. Paul McQuigg (Marines), HM1 Aaron Q. Seibert (Navy), HN Phillip A. Mishaga (Navy) and Cameron White. A special presentation was made on behalf of Mark Metherell, the former Navy Seal who was recently killed in Iraq. Accepting for the Metherell family were his parents Alex and Pamela Metherell, sister Alison Metherell, and former Navy Seal and friend of Mark Metherell, Tony Duchi.
Towards the end of the evening, all guests were presented with Peace One Earth Medallions, which were designed by Patricia Kennedy and which will be available to the public via the www.peaceoneearth.com website. A portion of the proceeds of these medallions, which the public is encouraged to purchase and inscribe to honor Veterans they may wish to recognize, will go towards Step Up 4 Vets (www.stepup4vets.org), a non-profit organization aiding returning vets as the readjust, redirect and rebuild their civilian lives.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Hollywood Star Joins Panto at The Mayflower
HART TO HART star Stefanie Powers is joining Matthew Kelly and starring alongside Christopher Biggins in Cinderella, The Musical Pantomime at The Mayflower this Christmas.
Christopher Biggins was crowned king of the jungle 2007 in ITV's I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! Biggins has had a long and varied career in television, film and theatre having appeared in numerous pantomimes across the country; he also appeared in the West End as Baron Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He will be playing Buttons at The Mayflower.
Matthew Kelly returns following his critically acclaimed performance as the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz at The Mayflower last Christmas. Donning a dress once more, and accompanied by his son Matthew Rixon, they will be playing the ugly sisters.
Stefanie Powers is a veteran of over 200 television and film appearances as well as the star of massive 1980s TV hit Hart to Hart and will be making wishes come true as the fairy godmother. She recently played Anna in The King and I on tour throughout America.
Cinderella, The Musical Pantomime will be a brand new production specifically designed for The Mayflower theatre featuring spectacular sets and costumes. Unlike other Christmas shows and pantomimes across the country Cinderella will have a full orchestra in the pit.
The Mayflower has again teamed up with Michael Rose and Chris Moreno, the producers of The Wizard of Oz, last year's box office record-breaking Mayflower Christmas show, and White Christmas, to present a delightful star studded new production for all the family.
This magical tale of rags to riches will be brought to life before your eyes in a dazzling musical feast of a show. Cinderella must battle against sinister stepsisters and a murderous stepmother with a little help from Buttons and her fairy godmother. When the clocks chime midnight, will all her dreams come true?
n Cinderella, The Musical Pantomime runs from December 5 to January 17.
Box office: 023 8071 1811 or online at mayflower.org.uk.
Christopher Biggins was crowned king of the jungle 2007 in ITV's I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! Biggins has had a long and varied career in television, film and theatre having appeared in numerous pantomimes across the country; he also appeared in the West End as Baron Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He will be playing Buttons at The Mayflower.
Matthew Kelly returns following his critically acclaimed performance as the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz at The Mayflower last Christmas. Donning a dress once more, and accompanied by his son Matthew Rixon, they will be playing the ugly sisters.
Stefanie Powers is a veteran of over 200 television and film appearances as well as the star of massive 1980s TV hit Hart to Hart and will be making wishes come true as the fairy godmother. She recently played Anna in The King and I on tour throughout America.
Cinderella, The Musical Pantomime will be a brand new production specifically designed for The Mayflower theatre featuring spectacular sets and costumes. Unlike other Christmas shows and pantomimes across the country Cinderella will have a full orchestra in the pit.
The Mayflower has again teamed up with Michael Rose and Chris Moreno, the producers of The Wizard of Oz, last year's box office record-breaking Mayflower Christmas show, and White Christmas, to present a delightful star studded new production for all the family.
This magical tale of rags to riches will be brought to life before your eyes in a dazzling musical feast of a show. Cinderella must battle against sinister stepsisters and a murderous stepmother with a little help from Buttons and her fairy godmother. When the clocks chime midnight, will all her dreams come true?
n Cinderella, The Musical Pantomime runs from December 5 to January 17.
Box office: 023 8071 1811 or online at mayflower.org.uk.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Attn: British H2H Fans
Hi Meredy,
I'm Dave - I work for So television in London. We're making the Graham Norton show and we're looking for Hart to Hart fans to come and join our audience for the programme. Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers will be Graham's guests on Wednesday the 30th of April in London. If anyone is interested in being in our audience we would love them to e mail me at davec@sotelevision.co.uk or call me on 02079602046.
Would you be able to advise me where would be a good place to find fans of the show in Britain?
Thanks,
Dave
Dave Coulson | Researcher
The Graham Norton Show
t: 02079602046
e: DaveC@sotelevision.co.uk
So Television, 18 Hatfields, London, SE1 8GN
I'm Dave - I work for So television in London. We're making the Graham Norton show and we're looking for Hart to Hart fans to come and join our audience for the programme. Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers will be Graham's guests on Wednesday the 30th of April in London. If anyone is interested in being in our audience we would love them to e mail me at davec@sotelevision.co.uk or call me on 02079602046.
Would you be able to advise me where would be a good place to find fans of the show in Britain?
Thanks,
Dave
Dave Coulson | Researcher
The Graham Norton Show
t: 02079602046
e: DaveC@sotelevision.co.uk
So Television, 18 Hatfields, London, SE1 8GN
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
APLA Blames It On Bacharach
Wow! Here's another fabulous event for you music lovers to go to.
Blame It On Bacharach! - The 24th Annual S.T.A.G.E. Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event on March 8th and 9th at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills.
The longest continuously running AIDS benefit in the world, the Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event (S.T.A.G.E.), has raised more than $5 million for HIV/AIDS services throughout Southern California. This year, enjoy two exciting performances of song and dance saluting legendary pianist and composer Burt Bacharach and benefiting APLA programs and services.
Scheduled to appear: Catte Adams, Carole Cook, Rita Coolidge, Nancy Dussault, Betty Garrett, Daniel Gurwin, Vicki Lewis, Pat Marshall, Marilyn Maye, Maureen McGovern, Donna McKechnie, Linda Michele, Adam Pascal, Valarie Pettiford, The Plaids, Stefanie Powers, Gene Reed and Jai Rodriguez. David Galligan directs.
Guests can also bid on a range of offerings including priceless musical memorabilia during the event’s silent auction.
To purchase tickets online or learn more, please click HERE. Or for more information, call (866) 679-0958.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Guantanamo Bay
Honorary Hollywood Mayor Johnny Grant, who traveled with Bob Hope for decades on Christmastime tours, says this year's trip to visit U.S. troops will be his last.
Actors Stefanie Powers, Kate Linder and Karri Turner, as well as some Victoria's Secret models, were accompanying Grant to Guantanamo Bay, where he was to be the grand marshal for Saturday's holiday parade on the military base.
Grant has been slowing down as he approaches his 85th birthday, and the Guantanamo trip for the United Service Organizations will reluctantly be his last.
"It will be a bittersweet trip for me," he said. "The USO and military have been a big part of my life, ever since WWII, when as a GI, I emceed a show and introduced Bob Hope."
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Bening, Felder, Kaye, Lewis, et al. Win L.A. Ovation Awards
It was neither Paris nor springtime, but it must have felt that way to the producers and creative artists behind writer-director David Lee's ebullient revised version of the Cole Porter classic Can-Can. The Pasadena Playhouse production of the musical led the winners at the Los Angeles Ovation Awards, which were presented on November 12 at the Orpheum Theatre.
For the second year in a row, actor Neil Patrick Harris was the amusing and amiable host, cracking jokes about the writer's strike and making good-natured jabs at sundry targets, such as actor Jason Alexander. Among the presenters were Kate Burton, Gil Cates, Garry Marshall, Stefanie Powers, Sheldon Epps, Yeardley Smith, and Heroes star Adrian Pasar (whose world-premiere musical Atlanta bows at the Geffen Playhouse later this month).
The Geffen's presentation of Hershey Felder in George Gershwin Alone tied Can-Can's total awards tally of four. Can-Can took home trophies for Lee (direction of a musical); Roy Christopher (set designer for a large theatre); Michelle Duffy (leading musical actress), and David Engel (featured musical actor). Meanwhile, Gershwin wins were for musical in a large theatre, Michael Gillian's lighting for a large theatre, Jon Gottlieb's sound design for a large theatre, and Felder for lead actor in a musical.
Other notable winners were Theatre@Boston Court's world premiere musical Paradise Lost: Shadow and Wings, Damon Cho's Film Chinos for world premiere play; August Wilson's Jitney for play in an intimate theatre; The Marvelous Wonderettes for musical in an intimate theatre; the Deaf West-Center Theatre Group co-production of Sleeping Beauty Wakes at the Kirk Douglas Theatre for world premiere musical, and Stephen Temperley's Souvenir for play in a large theatre. The Ahmanson Theatre netted the touring musical prize for its SRO L.A. premiere run of Jersey Boys.
Among several actors receiving performance honors were Alan Mandell in the Colony Theatre's Trying, Judy Kaye in Souvenir, and Vicki Lewis in Blank Theatre's world-premiere of Michael John LaChiusa's musical Hotel C'est L'Amour.
The James A. Doolittle Leadership Award was presented to the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles for its heroic efforts to aid local companies plagued by real-estate woes during recent years, helping in relocating theatres in rental facilities or possibly constructing permanent homes. An impassioned Michele Lee sang the praises of the Actors Fund, then presented the Community Outreach Award to this distinguished 125-year-old organization. And Center Theatre Group's artist director Michael Ritchie paid tribute to actress Annette Bening, who won the group's Career Achievement Award.
For the second year in a row, actor Neil Patrick Harris was the amusing and amiable host, cracking jokes about the writer's strike and making good-natured jabs at sundry targets, such as actor Jason Alexander. Among the presenters were Kate Burton, Gil Cates, Garry Marshall, Stefanie Powers, Sheldon Epps, Yeardley Smith, and Heroes star Adrian Pasar (whose world-premiere musical Atlanta bows at the Geffen Playhouse later this month).
The Geffen's presentation of Hershey Felder in George Gershwin Alone tied Can-Can's total awards tally of four. Can-Can took home trophies for Lee (direction of a musical); Roy Christopher (set designer for a large theatre); Michelle Duffy (leading musical actress), and David Engel (featured musical actor). Meanwhile, Gershwin wins were for musical in a large theatre, Michael Gillian's lighting for a large theatre, Jon Gottlieb's sound design for a large theatre, and Felder for lead actor in a musical.
Other notable winners were Theatre@Boston Court's world premiere musical Paradise Lost: Shadow and Wings, Damon Cho's Film Chinos for world premiere play; August Wilson's Jitney for play in an intimate theatre; The Marvelous Wonderettes for musical in an intimate theatre; the Deaf West-Center Theatre Group co-production of Sleeping Beauty Wakes at the Kirk Douglas Theatre for world premiere musical, and Stephen Temperley's Souvenir for play in a large theatre. The Ahmanson Theatre netted the touring musical prize for its SRO L.A. premiere run of Jersey Boys.
Among several actors receiving performance honors were Alan Mandell in the Colony Theatre's Trying, Judy Kaye in Souvenir, and Vicki Lewis in Blank Theatre's world-premiere of Michael John LaChiusa's musical Hotel C'est L'Amour.
The James A. Doolittle Leadership Award was presented to the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles for its heroic efforts to aid local companies plagued by real-estate woes during recent years, helping in relocating theatres in rental facilities or possibly constructing permanent homes. An impassioned Michele Lee sang the praises of the Actors Fund, then presented the Community Outreach Award to this distinguished 125-year-old organization. And Center Theatre Group's artist director Michael Ritchie paid tribute to actress Annette Bening, who won the group's Career Achievement Award.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
2007 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards - 11/12/2007
The 2007 Ovation Awards will be hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, and honor winners in 29 competitive categories and 3 honorary categories. The Honorary Recipients include: Annette Bening, The Actors Fund, and The Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles.
Monday, November 12, 2007
7:30 PM
At the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles
842 S. Broadway, LA, CA 90014
Complete with an OPEN BAR
at the Post-Show Party until midnight!
Kate Burton, Orlando Jones, Dan Lauria, Garry Marshall, Rex Lee, Vicki Lewis, Stefanie Powers and Yeardley Smith are among the names to appear.
Monday, November 12, 2007
7:30 PM
At the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles
842 S. Broadway, LA, CA 90014
Complete with an OPEN BAR
at the Post-Show Party until midnight!
Kate Burton, Orlando Jones, Dan Lauria, Garry Marshall, Rex Lee, Vicki Lewis, Stefanie Powers and Yeardley Smith are among the names to appear.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Hart pulls at heart
Former “Hart to Hart” actress Stefanie Powers has a one-woman musical all about nostalgic love.
Whether you spell it Hart or heart, the word fits actress Stefanie Powers.
Famous for her role as Jennifer Hart opposite Robert Wagner in the television series “Hart to Hart,” Powers’ one-woman show, “One from the Hart,” debuts at the Orange County Performing Artscenter this week.
Describing the show as a “nostalgic, sentimental journey of the heart,” Powers said the multi-media presentation accompanying her musical performance is “another member of the cast.”
“The screen is the backdrop upon which I tell the story,” she said. “It’s a celebration of love through the vocabulary of love that I was raised with.”
Her mother loved Broadway musicals, she said, was at the movies every Saturday, and her show is reminiscent of a time when “romance was a part of our vocabulary.”
“Hart to Hart” was about a self-made millionaire and his journalist wife.
They spent their free time as amateur detectives, and in spite of being busy solving murders or catching thieves, they always found time for romance.
“It was the ideal relationship — we all dreamed of that kind of love,” Powers said.
Powers said “One from the Hart” is old fashioned in a good way.
“All that we see [on screen] is so violent and vulgar — this vulgarity thrown in your face is unrelenting. When something steps out that’s a bit more of the finesse and style that fantasies are made of, it’s lovely,” she said.
While this show is part of the center’s cabaret series, Powers promises a show unlike any that’s been done before, and said she isn’t a cabaret performer.
With a background in musical theater and acting, she prefers more of a scripted, theatrical presentation — storytelling of a musical nature.
An animal lover all her life, Powers is president and co-founder of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, formed 25 years ago in memory of the actor and his lifelong dedication to animal conservation.
Holden established the Mount Kenya Game Ranch in 1956, and its Wildlife Education Center opened to the first group of students in 1982.
Powers is director of the ranch, which continues its education and conservation efforts, establishing breeding herds of more than 37 species.
“Education is crucial to wildlife conservancy.”
Powers was 16 when a chance encounter with director Blake Edwards gave her career the push-start it needed.
She was late for acting class, and running down the hallway when she ran into him — with an open door.
One thing led to another, she was offered a contract at Columbia Pictures and Powers credits Edwards with being responsible for her career.
“That’s how people were discovered,” she said, and given the Hollywood writers’ strike, she’s glad she’s able to fall back on her musical theater background.
“I’ve earned my stripes.”
WHAT: Stefanie Powers in her one-woman show “One From the Hart”
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 7 p.m. Sunday
WHERE: Orange County Performing Artscenter’s Samueli Theater, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
COST: $62
INFO: Call (714) 556-2787 or go to www.ocpac.org
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Stefanie at the Orange County Performing Arts Center
11/8/2007 - 11/11/2007
Samueli Theater
$62
Television audiences fondly remember Stefanie Powers for her Emmy-nominated role as luscious amateur sleuth Jennifer Hart opposite Robert Wagner’s Jonathan in the television series Hart to Hart. Now cabaret audiences are in for a treat as Powers unveils her “closely guarded secret”: the woman can sing, too! In her Center debut, she infuses her jazzy-bluesy-torch-tinged numbers with all the emotions of the veteran actress that she is, delivered with her trademark elegance.
Watch/Download Preview.
View/Download Program.
Samueli Theater
$62
Television audiences fondly remember Stefanie Powers for her Emmy-nominated role as luscious amateur sleuth Jennifer Hart opposite Robert Wagner’s Jonathan in the television series Hart to Hart. Now cabaret audiences are in for a treat as Powers unveils her “closely guarded secret”: the woman can sing, too! In her Center debut, she infuses her jazzy-bluesy-torch-tinged numbers with all the emotions of the veteran actress that she is, delivered with her trademark elegance.
Watch/Download Preview.
View/Download Program.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Large Pic from the Furr Ball - 10/20/07
Click here to download a large pic from last Saturday's Furr Ball.
Thank you, Rex Welton of the Forsyth Humane Society located in Winston-Salem, NC.
The 4th Annual "Furr" Ball was held at the historic Graylyn Manor House on Saturday, October 20th, 2007. This elegant, black tie celebration was a spectacular combination of delicious food, drink, shopping, music and dancing. It was a time for animal lovers to come together and make a real difference.
Thank you, Rex Welton of the Forsyth Humane Society located in Winston-Salem, NC.
The 4th Annual "Furr" Ball was held at the historic Graylyn Manor House on Saturday, October 20th, 2007. This elegant, black tie celebration was a spectacular combination of delicious food, drink, shopping, music and dancing. It was a time for animal lovers to come together and make a real difference.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Discovery Eye Foundation Gala and Awards Ceremony
On Thursday, October 11, 2007 over 300 people crowded into the Crystal Ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hotel to celebrate the successes of The Discovery Eye Foundation over the past thirty-seven years and also to recognize some incredible people committed to the field of vision research and treatment. Ms. Beverly Gelfand and Ms. Sue Marshall were the co-chairs of this evening, entitled “A Night for Discovery”.
Founded in 1970, by Morris and Rita Pynoos, the Discovery Eye Foundation (DEF) is dedicated to finding cures and treatments for corneal and retinal eye diseases while providing exceptional patient education through two outstanding outreach programs – Macular Degeneration Partnership and National Keratoconus Foundation. DEF has program and administrative offices in West Hollywood and has clinical research facilities in collaboration with the University of California at Irvine. DEF funded researchers are currently supporting research into treatment and cures for diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, ocular herpes, and keratoconus.
Entertainment during the evening was provided by Mr. Tom Sullivan and Ms. Stefanie Powers.
Ms. Powers began her career at age 15, dancing for Jerome Robbins. Under contract to Columbia Pictures, she appeared in 15 films, among them Experiment in Terror, The Interns, and McClintock! After her first television series, “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.”, came 12 more films, over 20 mini-series stage productions and the long-running “Hart to Hart.” She is co-founder of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, established in 1982 as a public charity, is a Fellow of the Los Angeles Zoo, Royal Geographical Society and Explorers Club of America, and she created the Jaguar Conservation Trust for Jaguar Cars North America. Powers will bring her new one-woman show, One from the Hart, to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in November.
Founded in 1970, by Morris and Rita Pynoos, the Discovery Eye Foundation (DEF) is dedicated to finding cures and treatments for corneal and retinal eye diseases while providing exceptional patient education through two outstanding outreach programs – Macular Degeneration Partnership and National Keratoconus Foundation. DEF has program and administrative offices in West Hollywood and has clinical research facilities in collaboration with the University of California at Irvine. DEF funded researchers are currently supporting research into treatment and cures for diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, ocular herpes, and keratoconus.
Entertainment during the evening was provided by Mr. Tom Sullivan and Ms. Stefanie Powers.
Ms. Powers began her career at age 15, dancing for Jerome Robbins. Under contract to Columbia Pictures, she appeared in 15 films, among them Experiment in Terror, The Interns, and McClintock! After her first television series, “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.”, came 12 more films, over 20 mini-series stage productions and the long-running “Hart to Hart.” She is co-founder of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, established in 1982 as a public charity, is a Fellow of the Los Angeles Zoo, Royal Geographical Society and Explorers Club of America, and she created the Jaguar Conservation Trust for Jaguar Cars North America. Powers will bring her new one-woman show, One from the Hart, to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in November.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers in Winston-Salem, NC 10/20/07
Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers are going to be in Winston-Salem, NC this Saturday.
FURR BALL: 6:30 p.m., Graylyn International Conference Center, 1900 Reynolda Road. Celebrity guests Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, live entertainment, cocktails, silent auction and dancing. Proceeds benefit the Forsyth Humane Society. Reservations required. Tickets are $75 a couple, or $50 a person. Call 336-721-1303, ext. 102, or send e-mail to Rex Welton at rweltonfhs@triad.rr.com.
FURR BALL: 6:30 p.m., Graylyn International Conference Center, 1900 Reynolda Road. Celebrity guests Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, live entertainment, cocktails, silent auction and dancing. Proceeds benefit the Forsyth Humane Society. Reservations required. Tickets are $75 a couple, or $50 a person. Call 336-721-1303, ext. 102, or send e-mail to Rex Welton at rweltonfhs@triad.rr.com.
Get happy with haute handbags
ALL ABOUT THE HANDBAGS
The fifth annual Handbag Happy Hour will feature celebrity, designer, unique and "previously loved" handbags in live and silent auctions. Here are some examples of what will be available:
• New designer handbags with such labels as Gucci, Bennett Liberty, COACH, Louis Vuitton, Prada and more.
• One-of-a-kind handbags that are handcrafted and/or artist-embellished.
• "Gentlemen Must Haves" such as messenger bags, golf bags, guitar cases, travel/shaving kits, luggage and briefcases.
• Celebrity handbags, with donations received from comedian and actress Phyllis Diller; "The Brady Bunch" matriarch Florence Henderson; Stefanie Powers, who portrayed Jennifer Hart in the 1980s crime drama "Hart to Hart"; and Grammy Award-winning Cuban-American singer and songwriter Gloria Estefan.
• An autographed guitar from Chris Daughtry, "American Idol" contestant and musician.
• A variety of handbags from local news anchors including Patrick Nolan (Fox4), Amy Wegmann (Fox4), Kellie Burns (NBC-2) and Mayela Rosales (Media Vista).
• "Pampered Pets" critter carriers filled with toys, outfits, treats and other goodies for beloved pets.
• "Previously Loved" handbags that are gently used.
IF YOU GO
• What: Handbag Happy Hour 2007 • When: 5:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2 • Where: Harborside Event Center, 1375 Monroe St., downtown Fort Myers, FL • Cost: $75 admission includes open bar, hors d'oeuvres and hundreds of handbags to bid on • Theme: It's "Medieval Soiree," with entertainment of the time period. Vintage Emporium, at 1937 Suwanee Ave., Fort Myers, is offering discounts on costumes to Handbag Happy Hour attendees. Call 936-4888. • For the guys: a gentlemen's cigar terrace and bar will offer another diversion. • Information: Register online at icanswfl.org or call (239) 337-2391
The fifth annual Handbag Happy Hour will feature celebrity, designer, unique and "previously loved" handbags in live and silent auctions. Here are some examples of what will be available:
• New designer handbags with such labels as Gucci, Bennett Liberty, COACH, Louis Vuitton, Prada and more.
• One-of-a-kind handbags that are handcrafted and/or artist-embellished.
• "Gentlemen Must Haves" such as messenger bags, golf bags, guitar cases, travel/shaving kits, luggage and briefcases.
• Celebrity handbags, with donations received from comedian and actress Phyllis Diller; "The Brady Bunch" matriarch Florence Henderson; Stefanie Powers, who portrayed Jennifer Hart in the 1980s crime drama "Hart to Hart"; and Grammy Award-winning Cuban-American singer and songwriter Gloria Estefan.
• An autographed guitar from Chris Daughtry, "American Idol" contestant and musician.
• A variety of handbags from local news anchors including Patrick Nolan (Fox4), Amy Wegmann (Fox4), Kellie Burns (NBC-2) and Mayela Rosales (Media Vista).
• "Pampered Pets" critter carriers filled with toys, outfits, treats and other goodies for beloved pets.
• "Previously Loved" handbags that are gently used.
IF YOU GO
• What: Handbag Happy Hour 2007 • When: 5:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2 • Where: Harborside Event Center, 1375 Monroe St., downtown Fort Myers, FL • Cost: $75 admission includes open bar, hors d'oeuvres and hundreds of handbags to bid on • Theme: It's "Medieval Soiree," with entertainment of the time period. Vintage Emporium, at 1937 Suwanee Ave., Fort Myers, is offering discounts on costumes to Handbag Happy Hour attendees. Call 936-4888. • For the guys: a gentlemen's cigar terrace and bar will offer another diversion. • Information: Register online at icanswfl.org or call (239) 337-2391
Monday, October 15, 2007
Claxton + Moffitt Go Another Lap Around the Sun
The height of chic remains lensman William Claxton and muse Peggy Moffitt, who marked their 80th and 70th birthdays, respectively, with a jazzy celebration this weekend hosted by Benedict and Lauren Taschen, completely filling Dominick’s in West L.A.
With pals Burt Bacharach and vintage guru Cameron Silver, art pioneer Irving Blum and Phoenix Art Museum curator Denita Sewell, this was one swellegant entry for the books. Platters of oysters kicked off the family-style supper, and a jazz quartet kept the mood pulsing, inspiring a still foxy Stefanie Powers (that’s right, Mrs. Hart to Hart) to rise up and share a song.
Wed since 1960, and together two years before that, these two living icons unequivocally changed the way we all think of the birth of cool—from Bill’s indelible photographs of jazz greats Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Billy Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie and many others, to Peggy’s signature kabuki-styled makeup and severe Vidal Sassoon hair cuts which defined the 1960s look and still looks as fierce as ever.
With pals Burt Bacharach and vintage guru Cameron Silver, art pioneer Irving Blum and Phoenix Art Museum curator Denita Sewell, this was one swellegant entry for the books. Platters of oysters kicked off the family-style supper, and a jazz quartet kept the mood pulsing, inspiring a still foxy Stefanie Powers (that’s right, Mrs. Hart to Hart) to rise up and share a song.
Wed since 1960, and together two years before that, these two living icons unequivocally changed the way we all think of the birth of cool—from Bill’s indelible photographs of jazz greats Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Billy Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie and many others, to Peggy’s signature kabuki-styled makeup and severe Vidal Sassoon hair cuts which defined the 1960s look and still looks as fierce as ever.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Moore gets star on Walk of Fame
James Bond actor Sir Roger Moore has been honoured with a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, Los Angeles.
The plaque is located in front of 7007 Hollywood Boulevard - a nod to the British veteran's most famous role.
"I've had a love affair with Hollywood for many, many years," said Sir Roger, who turns 80 this weekend.
The actor - who appeared in seven James Bond films in 12 years, beginning with Live and Let Die in 1973 - described unveiling his star as "a big thrill".
He was joined at the ceremony by his wife Kristina, daughter Deborah and sons Geoffrey and Christian.
Also present was actor Richard Kiel, who played Sir Roger's villainous nemesis Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.
Hart to Hart actress Stefanie Powers and Sir Roger's Live and Let Die co-star David Hedison were the guest speakers.
Sir Roger, now a Unicef goodwill ambassador, told reporters his advancing years had forced him to relinquish his secret agent role.
"Sadly, I had to retire from the Bond films," he said. "The girls were getting younger, or I was just getting too old."
Sir Roger's is the 2,350th star to be unveiled on Hollywood Boulevard, according to the actor's website.
Born on 14 October 1927, he began his acting career as an extra in the 1940s before studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
His other famous roles include Ivanhoe, Simon Templar in The Saint and Lord Brett Sinclair in The Persuaders.
Pierce Brosnan, who appeared in four Bond films between 1995 and 2002, is the only other 007 actor to have been honoured on the Walk of Fame.
Monday, October 08, 2007
The Thalians 52nd Anniversary Gala
The Legendary Sir Roger Moore to be Honored at The Thalians 52nd Anniversary Gala On October 21, 2007 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel to Benefit The Thalians Mental Health Center at Cedars Sinai
Sir Roger Moore, considered by millions worldwide as the most elegant and debonair "James Bond," will be honored by The Thalians at their 52nd Anniversary Ball on Sunday evening, October 21 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, it was announced by The Thalians founding members and ball co-chairs Debbie Reynolds and Ruta Lee.
The annual gala honors a legendary individual for their achievements and charitable contributions and raises funds to support the Thalians Mental Health Center at Cedars Sinai Hospital. This year, Moore will make a rare visit to the U.S. to accept this prestigious honor.
In keeping with the "James Bond" ambience of the evening, The Thalians will orchestrate a landmark reunion of some of the most celebrated "Bond Girls" and co-stars to fete Moore, including Maude Adams, Nancy Allen, Lois Chiles, Stefanie Powers, Gloria Hendry, Lynn Holly, Pam Shriver, Luciana Paluzzi, Serena Scott Thomas, Lana Wood, among others to be announced.
The special evening honoring Moore will also feature a live auction hosted by television's "Deal or No Deal" host Howie Mandell and the "Deal or No Deal" girls and a special guest performance by pop music legend Neil Sedaka.
Previous honorees have included Mary Tyler Moore, Sally Field, James Stewart, Liza Minnelli, Burt Bacharach, Angela Lansbury, Whoopi Goldberg, Carol Burnett, Jack Lemmon, and Phyllis Diller to name a few.
Founded in 1955, The Thalians continues to raise over $500,000.00 annually to support The Thalians Mental Health Center at Cedars Sinai, considered one of the top and most respected mental health centers in the world. As the main support group for the Department of Psychiatry at Cedars Sinai, The Thalians has proven to be an outstanding facility performing clinical care for in and out-patients as well as cutting edge neuroscience research and medical advances in the areas of Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, depression, substance abuse, bi-polar disorders and autism.
For information and tickets to this year's ball, please visit http://www.thethalians.com or call (310) 423-1040.
Sir Roger Moore, considered by millions worldwide as the most elegant and debonair "James Bond," will be honored by The Thalians at their 52nd Anniversary Ball on Sunday evening, October 21 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, it was announced by The Thalians founding members and ball co-chairs Debbie Reynolds and Ruta Lee.
The annual gala honors a legendary individual for their achievements and charitable contributions and raises funds to support the Thalians Mental Health Center at Cedars Sinai Hospital. This year, Moore will make a rare visit to the U.S. to accept this prestigious honor.
In keeping with the "James Bond" ambience of the evening, The Thalians will orchestrate a landmark reunion of some of the most celebrated "Bond Girls" and co-stars to fete Moore, including Maude Adams, Nancy Allen, Lois Chiles, Stefanie Powers, Gloria Hendry, Lynn Holly, Pam Shriver, Luciana Paluzzi, Serena Scott Thomas, Lana Wood, among others to be announced.
The special evening honoring Moore will also feature a live auction hosted by television's "Deal or No Deal" host Howie Mandell and the "Deal or No Deal" girls and a special guest performance by pop music legend Neil Sedaka.
Previous honorees have included Mary Tyler Moore, Sally Field, James Stewart, Liza Minnelli, Burt Bacharach, Angela Lansbury, Whoopi Goldberg, Carol Burnett, Jack Lemmon, and Phyllis Diller to name a few.
Founded in 1955, The Thalians continues to raise over $500,000.00 annually to support The Thalians Mental Health Center at Cedars Sinai, considered one of the top and most respected mental health centers in the world. As the main support group for the Department of Psychiatry at Cedars Sinai, The Thalians has proven to be an outstanding facility performing clinical care for in and out-patients as well as cutting edge neuroscience research and medical advances in the areas of Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, depression, substance abuse, bi-polar disorders and autism.
For information and tickets to this year's ball, please visit http://www.thethalians.com or call (310) 423-1040.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Hope for the Holidays
Saturday, December 8, 6:30pm
HOPE FOR THE HOLIDAYS –
A S.T.A.G.E. SEASONAL CELEBRATION
Each spring, the Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event (S.T.A.G.E.) benefits AIDS Project Los Angeles with an all-star gala that salutes Broadway’s most respected names. Now, enjoy this special, holiday-themed edition of S.T.A.G.E. with perennial cast favorites and surprise celebrity guests. Enjoy dinner and a live auction before the show. (Stefanie will be appearing).
Location
The Key Club
9039 West Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90069
www.keyclub.com
Contact
For more information, please call Madonna Cacciatore at 866.679.0958 or send an e-mail to mcacciatore@apla.org
HOPE FOR THE HOLIDAYS –
A S.T.A.G.E. SEASONAL CELEBRATION
Each spring, the Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event (S.T.A.G.E.) benefits AIDS Project Los Angeles with an all-star gala that salutes Broadway’s most respected names. Now, enjoy this special, holiday-themed edition of S.T.A.G.E. with perennial cast favorites and surprise celebrity guests. Enjoy dinner and a live auction before the show. (Stefanie will be appearing).
Location
The Key Club
9039 West Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90069
www.keyclub.com
Contact
For more information, please call Madonna Cacciatore at 866.679.0958 or send an e-mail to mcacciatore@apla.org
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Stefanie Powers Premieres 'One From the Hart' at OCPAC
Powers, who last month starred in the Reprise! production of “On Your Toes” at UCLA’s Freud Theatre, actually began her career at age 15, dancing for legendary choreographer Jerome Robbins. She soon found her musical skills overshadowed by a remarkable film career, working with many of Hollywood’s greatest talents, among them Lana Turner, Helen Hayes, John Wayne, Tallulah Bankhead, Bing Crosby and David Niven. She has starred in three television series, including “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.” and the long-running hit “Hart to Hart” with Robert Wagner, and in mini-series such as “Mistral’s Daughter” and “Beryl Markham: A Shadow in the Sun.” She has also regularly returned to her first love—the musical theatre—with star turns in the revival of “Applause—The Musical All About Eve” and “The King and I” in which she toured in England and throughout the United States in 2005. Her collaboration with noted jazz pianist/arranger Page Cavanaugh yielded the CD “On The Same Page,” a collection of great American standards.
The classic American songbook serves as the source for selections in "One From the Hart." Reminiscences from Powers’ often surprising, adventure-filled life supply the narrative. Powers is also internationally-renowned for her work in animal conservation and, this year, she is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, of which she is co-founder and president.
"One From the Hart" will play four performances, Thursday through Saturday, November 8-10 at 7:30 PM and Sunday, November 11 at 7:00 PM. The Samueli Theatre at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is located at 615 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa. Tickets are available through the Orange County Performing Arts Center box office, their website at www.ocpac.org or by calling 714-556-2787.
Powers to Debut One From the Hart Nov. 8-11 in California
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| Stefanie Powers | |
Stefanie Powers, most recently seen onstage in the Reprise! mounting of On Your Toes, will debut her new one-woman show this fall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center's Samueli Theatre.
Entitled One From the Hart, the evenings of song and story will play the Costa Mesa venue Nov. 8-11. The show, according to press notes, will "take audiences on a romantic holiday brimming with anecdotes and visual images from Powers' extraordinary life, underscored by some of the most evocative love songs ever written." Audiences can expect to hear tunes from the Great American Songbook.
Show times are Nov. 8-10 at 7:30 PM and Nov. 11 at 7 PM.
Stefanie Powers, who is best known for her TV work on "Hart to Hart," also starred in a U.K. revival and a U.S. national tour of The King & I. Her numerous stage credits include Oliver!, Annie Get Your Gun, My Fair Lady and the London production of Matador. She also starred as the legendary Margo Channing in a touring revival of Applause – The Musical All About Eve. She reunited with "Hart to Hart" co-star Robert Wagner in the play Love Letters in London's West End, followed by tours of the play in the U.S. and Canada.
The Samueli Theatre at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is located at 615 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa, CA. Tickets are available by visiting www.ocpac.org or by calling (714) 556-2787.
Friday, August 24, 2007
STARFAIR
Susan Stafford has been chosen as Ambassador of Entertainment for STARFAIR, founded by Bob Alexander, which will take place at the Palm Springs Convention Center Dec. 6-9, with countless stars like Stefanie Powers, Tab Hunter and Adam West to name a few. This is your opportunity to see great classic movies, and meet your favorite stars. For further info, please call 760-416-5811 or check out their Web site at www.palmspringswalkofstars.com.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Rodgers and Hart to Hart
The Reprise! Theater Group is an organization that stages musical revivals for short runs on shorter budgets. Four times per subscription season, they mount some semi-lavish production at Freud Hall at UCLA with minimal sets and even more minimal rehearsal time. But there's always a maximum of talent and it makes up for an awful lot.
About Stefanie Powers' performance in the revival of On Your Toes, the 1936 show by Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart and George Abbott:
Stefanie Powers played the rich lady who manages the ballet troupe and she seems to have aged about a week since she was The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. She had a nice star turn and handled her musical numbers quite well. (One joke was added to the script to reference her run as co-star of Hart to Hart).
About Stefanie Powers' performance in the revival of On Your Toes, the 1936 show by Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart and George Abbott:
Stefanie Powers played the rich lady who manages the ballet troupe and she seems to have aged about a week since she was The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. She had a nice star turn and handled her musical numbers quite well. (One joke was added to the script to reference her run as co-star of Hart to Hart).
Thursday, July 19, 2007
LIVING Commissions New Show from Ginger Productions
LONDON, July 19: Virgin Media Television-owned channel LIVING has commissioned Ginger Productions to produce a new clip-based show with the working title Who Do You Want To Solve Your Murder?
The new show will air over two nights on LIVING in September. It reveals which TV detectives people would trust to investigate their own murders, and will interview the actors who have played some of the most famous and legendary TV detectives, such as Kevin Dobson (Kojak), Eric Estrada (CHiPs), George Baker (DCI Wexford), Stefanie Powers (Hart to Hart), and Peter Falk (Columbo), along with pundits such as Melissa Joan Hart, Michael Winner, Ian Hyland and Colin Dexter (the writer of Inspector Morse).
Clare Hollywood, LIVING’s head of commissioning, commented: “TV detectives can be a hot topic when it comes to who is the best, and this show focuses on why people would trust one detective over another—especially if it was for their own murder! There is some great talent in this show, and it is a fun twist on a tried and tested format.”
The new show will air over two nights on LIVING in September. It reveals which TV detectives people would trust to investigate their own murders, and will interview the actors who have played some of the most famous and legendary TV detectives, such as Kevin Dobson (Kojak), Eric Estrada (CHiPs), George Baker (DCI Wexford), Stefanie Powers (Hart to Hart), and Peter Falk (Columbo), along with pundits such as Melissa Joan Hart, Michael Winner, Ian Hyland and Colin Dexter (the writer of Inspector Morse).
Clare Hollywood, LIVING’s head of commissioning, commented: “TV detectives can be a hot topic when it comes to who is the best, and this show focuses on why people would trust one detective over another—especially if it was for their own murder! There is some great talent in this show, and it is a fun twist on a tried and tested format.”
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Stefanie Powers to Headline L.A. Reprise! Staging of On Your Toes
Stefanie Powers and Dan Butler will lead the cast in the upcoming Reprise! staging of On Your Toes at the UCLA Freud Playhouse in Los Angeles. The show will preview on August 14, open on August 15 and continue through August 26, directed by Dan Mojica. Jason Alexander recently assumed the artistic directorship of the Reprise! series.
Also featured in the cast of On Your Toes will be Jeffry Denman, Beth Malone, Brett Ryback, Jonathan Sharp, Yvette Tucker and Diane Vincent. The ensemble features Shell Bauman, Seth Belliston, Quintan Craig, Jennie Ford, Casey Garritano, Jeff Griggs, Chelsea Hackett, Joey T. Marshall, Melissa Paris, Aaron Pomeroy, Mark C. Reis, Katie Rooney, Jean Michelle Sayeg, Leslie Stevens, John Todd, and Scott Weber. The show will feature musical direction by Gerald Sternbach and choreography by Lee Martino.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
Hart to Hart in OK
Oklahoma's The Cox Channel is expanding. The station also has added syndicated programming, including "Gunsmoke,” "Hart to Hart,” "Bewitched” and "Designing Women.”
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
TV Land Canada Announces Its Fall 2007 Schedule
On TV Land Canada, everything old is new again! New to the TV Land Canada schedule this September is Fantasy Island; Hart to Hart; Love, American Style; and It's Garry Shandling's Show.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Rabbit Faver on DVD! Pre-order Now!
Rabbit Fever, starring Stefanie Powers, is out on DVD on June 11.
You can pre-order now from www.rabbitfeverthemovie.com.
The first 200 customers will receive a free RABBIT FEVER key ring, so hurry while stocks last!
You can pre-order now from www.rabbitfeverthemovie.com.
The first 200 customers will receive a free RABBIT FEVER key ring, so hurry while stocks last!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
A night of stars to benefit Family Services of the Desert
You could really become jaded with all the charity fundraisers that offer a stellar line-up of performers here in the desert.
Most charity events with star quality offer up one or two, and on rare occasion three, celeb performers to sell the high-end tickets.
Photographer and film producer Michael Childers goes one better by assembling 21 stars for One Night Only: A Benefit for Family Services of the Desert on Saturday at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert.
The lineup for the night includes Chris Calloway (Cab's daughter), Wilson Cruz, Loretta Divine, Joely Fisher, Betty Garrett, Sally Kellerman, Andrea Marocovicci, Rod McKuen, Robert Morse, Valerie Pettiford, Stefanie Powers, Brian Lane Green, Nancy Dassault, Freda Payne, KT Sullivan, Kevin Spirtas, Bruce Vilanch, Ronobar Lahiri, Channing Cook Holmes, Susanna Guzman and emcee Doris Roberts.
Just one night
What: One Night Only: A Benefit for Family Services of the Desert
When: 6 p.m. Saturday, April 21
Where: McCallum Theatre, 73-000 Fred Waring Drive, Palm Desert
Cost: $95, $135, $175
Other details: $350 VIP tickets include after-party with the cast at Piero's Acqua Pazza at The River, 78-100 Highway 111, Rancho Mirage
Information: 340-2787 McCallum Theatre
Most charity events with star quality offer up one or two, and on rare occasion three, celeb performers to sell the high-end tickets.
Photographer and film producer Michael Childers goes one better by assembling 21 stars for One Night Only: A Benefit for Family Services of the Desert on Saturday at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert.
The lineup for the night includes Chris Calloway (Cab's daughter), Wilson Cruz, Loretta Divine, Joely Fisher, Betty Garrett, Sally Kellerman, Andrea Marocovicci, Rod McKuen, Robert Morse, Valerie Pettiford, Stefanie Powers, Brian Lane Green, Nancy Dassault, Freda Payne, KT Sullivan, Kevin Spirtas, Bruce Vilanch, Ronobar Lahiri, Channing Cook Holmes, Susanna Guzman and emcee Doris Roberts.
Just one night
What: One Night Only: A Benefit for Family Services of the Desert
When: 6 p.m. Saturday, April 21
Where: McCallum Theatre, 73-000 Fred Waring Drive, Palm Desert
Cost: $95, $135, $175
Other details: $350 VIP tickets include after-party with the cast at Piero's Acqua Pazza at The River, 78-100 Highway 111, Rancho Mirage
Information: 340-2787 McCallum Theatre
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Orange County Performing Arts Center 2007-08 Season
In the cabaret series, Stefanie Powers will make her center debut November 8-11, 2007.
http://www.ocpac.org/cabaret/index.asp
“In addition to the right mix of reserve and stately beauty, she also possesses a lovely soprano voice.” –Variety
As a Hollywood star, Stefanie Powers is known for inimitable style and sophistication. Now she brings those same qualities to the American songbook and unveils yet another facet to her remarkable talent.
http://www.ocpac.org/cabaret/index.asp
“In addition to the right mix of reserve and stately beauty, she also possesses a lovely soprano voice.” –Variety
As a Hollywood star, Stefanie Powers is known for inimitable style and sophistication. Now she brings those same qualities to the American songbook and unveils yet another facet to her remarkable talent.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
The Polish Americans
The Polish Americans
WQED, 9:30 p.m. Tuesday
Canonsburg's Bobby Vinton appears in The Polish Americans, along with actress Stefanie Powers; former U.S. National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland; author Suzanne Strempek Shea; and others.
This program is filled with human-interest stories, some lengthy, of how Polish-Americans maintained their heritage in a brave new country.
Archival footage focuses on the immigrants and how they built churches and communities that resembled European villages within American cities like San Antonio, Cleveland, Baltimore and New York. The program briefly sifts through Poland's political problems, then concentrates on the development of Polish pride in its food, music, dance and, surprisingly, as members of Notre Dame's "Fighting Irish" football teams.
Just be prepared to go on humming Vinton's part-Polish "Melody of Love" for the next few days.
WQED, 9:30 p.m. Tuesday
Canonsburg's Bobby Vinton appears in The Polish Americans, along with actress Stefanie Powers; former U.S. National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland; author Suzanne Strempek Shea; and others.
This program is filled with human-interest stories, some lengthy, of how Polish-Americans maintained their heritage in a brave new country.
Archival footage focuses on the immigrants and how they built churches and communities that resembled European villages within American cities like San Antonio, Cleveland, Baltimore and New York. The program briefly sifts through Poland's political problems, then concentrates on the development of Polish pride in its food, music, dance and, surprisingly, as members of Notre Dame's "Fighting Irish" football teams.
Just be prepared to go on humming Vinton's part-Polish "Melody of Love" for the next few days.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Stefanie on the Go
"I am en route to India for a conference on the Asiatic lion. I was asked to
replicate tour education center there and am giving a speech at the
conference. I go on to Hong Kong and Beijing for another set of meetings,
this time for the mutual funds, and then I go to Kenya so I am a bit busy
just now. Look on the site...www.sixdegrees.org and dial me up."
(Info from Nancy Dugan, Stefanie Powers On-line Fan Group).
replicate tour education center there and am giving a speech at the
conference. I go on to Hong Kong and Beijing for another set of meetings,
this time for the mutual funds, and then I go to Kenya so I am a bit busy
just now. Look on the site...www.sixdegrees.org and dial me up."
(Info from Nancy Dugan, Stefanie Powers On-line Fan Group).
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Stefanie, the Correspondent
Stefanie is the USA correspondent/interviewer for the UK's Sir David Frost television program. She'll be doing 20 interviews for the program and, there is a possibility that the show will be airing in USA as well. Several interviews are already in the can, including Micky Dolenz and Jacqueline Bisset.
She's also done several documentaries and is now trying to hook up with PBS for funding.
(Info from Nancy Dugan, Stefanie Powers On-line Fan Group).
She's also done several documentaries and is now trying to hook up with PBS for funding.
(Info from Nancy Dugan, Stefanie Powers On-line Fan Group).
Monday, February 05, 2007
Wildlife is no 'wild guess' for these experts
Saving endangered species from extinction, that's what a group of wildlife experts from USA, African and European countries will talk about at a two-day international symposium which begins on February 27 at Karnavati Club in Ahmedabad.
The symposium on 'Conservation of Endangered Species' has been jointly organised by the State Forest Department and Mumbai-based Vanishing Herds Foundation.
"Our main objective is to deliberate on conserving endangered species across the globe. More importantly, we wanted to get inputs on preserving Gujarat's wildlife from renowned experts in the field," said Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Pradeep Khanna on Monday.
Among the prominent wildlife experts expected to participate in the symposium are Don Hunt, chairman of Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy; Iris Hunt, who established Mount Kenya Animal Orphanage; Dr Betsy L Dresser, who is considered to be the world's foremost specialist in 'big cat' reproduction and genetics; Stefanie Powers, a Fellow of the Los Angeles Zoo and also a member on the advisory board of the Atlanta and Columbus Zoos;
Dr Stephanie Dloniak, a Zoology professor at Michigan State University and also the Director of The Mara Carnivore Conservation project, and, Scotland-based
Dr Roger Windsor, an expert in veterinary wildlife science.Giving profiles of the experts, Khanna said: "Don Hunt was part of a Kenyan Government project to stop wildlife, especially the rare White Zebra and Bongo antelope, from decimating.
The project, which lasted 35 years, is one of Africa's greatest success stories as not only did the decimation stop, the numbers of wildlife also increased significantly."
"Don Hunt's wife, Iris, is credited with the setting up of the Mount Kenya Animal Orphanage, a privately-funded animal shelter and refuge for wild animals with special needs.
The orphanage has become a model for a number of wildlife projects across the world. She has also been assisting her husband with wildlife translocations," he said adding that during the symposium, she will talk about the importance of an animal shelter in cohesive conservation programmes.
"Dr Dresser has worked with the University of Cincinnati's Medical Centre and is the senior vice president of the Audubon Centre for Research on Endangered Species. Her goal is to save endangered species from extinction through use of high-tech reproduction such as embryo transfers and in-vitro fertilisation.
Ms Winnie Kiiru, another eminent wildlife conservationist to participate in the symposium, will speak on "man-animal conflicts" and "large mammal translocation".
The symposium on 'Conservation of Endangered Species' has been jointly organised by the State Forest Department and Mumbai-based Vanishing Herds Foundation.
"Our main objective is to deliberate on conserving endangered species across the globe. More importantly, we wanted to get inputs on preserving Gujarat's wildlife from renowned experts in the field," said Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Pradeep Khanna on Monday.
Among the prominent wildlife experts expected to participate in the symposium are Don Hunt, chairman of Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy; Iris Hunt, who established Mount Kenya Animal Orphanage; Dr Betsy L Dresser, who is considered to be the world's foremost specialist in 'big cat' reproduction and genetics; Stefanie Powers, a Fellow of the Los Angeles Zoo and also a member on the advisory board of the Atlanta and Columbus Zoos;
Dr Stephanie Dloniak, a Zoology professor at Michigan State University and also the Director of The Mara Carnivore Conservation project, and, Scotland-based
Dr Roger Windsor, an expert in veterinary wildlife science.Giving profiles of the experts, Khanna said: "Don Hunt was part of a Kenyan Government project to stop wildlife, especially the rare White Zebra and Bongo antelope, from decimating.
The project, which lasted 35 years, is one of Africa's greatest success stories as not only did the decimation stop, the numbers of wildlife also increased significantly."
"Don Hunt's wife, Iris, is credited with the setting up of the Mount Kenya Animal Orphanage, a privately-funded animal shelter and refuge for wild animals with special needs.
The orphanage has become a model for a number of wildlife projects across the world. She has also been assisting her husband with wildlife translocations," he said adding that during the symposium, she will talk about the importance of an animal shelter in cohesive conservation programmes.
"Dr Dresser has worked with the University of Cincinnati's Medical Centre and is the senior vice president of the Audubon Centre for Research on Endangered Species. Her goal is to save endangered species from extinction through use of high-tech reproduction such as embryo transfers and in-vitro fertilisation.
Ms Winnie Kiiru, another eminent wildlife conservationist to participate in the symposium, will speak on "man-animal conflicts" and "large mammal translocation".
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Interview with Linda Evans
Not counting your battles on Dynasty, what's the meanest catfight you've ever been in?
I only did one other major catfight, in an episode of McCloud, before Dynasty. Stefanie Powers and I just went on for five minutes - beating the heck out of each other - and it was one of the best fights I've ever done with anybody. So when the Dynasty producers wanted Krystle and Alexis to have a fight, I told them what worked really well - what gave us the most punch for the least amount of injury. That was the pillows coming apart with feathers going all over the apartment.
I had learned to do my own stunts with Barbara Stanwyck on The Big Valley, because she's one of the few actresses who loved to do her own stunts, and it so pleased her when I did mine.
Of course, I love the fighting and Joan hates it. She hates being touched.
I only did one other major catfight, in an episode of McCloud, before Dynasty. Stefanie Powers and I just went on for five minutes - beating the heck out of each other - and it was one of the best fights I've ever done with anybody. So when the Dynasty producers wanted Krystle and Alexis to have a fight, I told them what worked really well - what gave us the most punch for the least amount of injury. That was the pillows coming apart with feathers going all over the apartment.
I had learned to do my own stunts with Barbara Stanwyck on The Big Valley, because she's one of the few actresses who loved to do her own stunts, and it so pleased her when I did mine.
Of course, I love the fighting and Joan hates it. She hates being touched.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Special Screenings - February 1
American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Bl, Hollywood, (323) 466-3456. Egyptiantheatre.com. Overlooked and Underrated � Experiment in Terror, 7:30; followed by Mister Cory. Discussion in between films with actress Stefanie Powers.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Sidney Sheldon, 89; master of flashy, trashy bestsellers
Sidney Sheldon, a writer whose keen grasp of popular tastes fueled a string of feverishly romantic and suspenseful books that made him a perennial bestseller with millions of copies in print around the world, died Tuesday. He was 89. Sheldon died of pneumonia at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, according to his friend and publicist Warren Cowan.
A multifaceted writer, Sheldon won a screenwriting Oscar and a Tony award and had created popular television sitcoms before starting his first novel at the age of 52. But it was through the novels that he gained his overriding fame.
His books usually revolved around characters of great wealth, beauty, brilliance and bedroom prowess — none of which protected them from infidelity, betrayal and indiscretion. Sheldon's protagonists were usually women and his plots were so artfully constructed that his books are the very definition of a page-turner.
He was one of the world's most translated authors, selling more than 300 million books in 180 countries. They were printed in 51 languages, including Urdu, which is spoken in Pakistan and India, and Swahili.
With his second novel, "The Other Side of Midnight" (1974), Sheldon broke into the blockbuster ranks; the book remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 53 weeks — a record at the time.
About half of his 18 novels — with such titles as "Rage of Angels" (1980) and "Memories of Midnight" (1990) — were turned into television movies or miniseries. Demand for his stories was so great that CBS executives reportedly paid Sheldon $1 million for the rights to make a miniseries of 1985's "If Tomorrow Comes" before they had even read it.
Some critics said his dialogue was banal and his plots were unbelievable, but many grudgingly acknowledged the author's unusual talent at producing what the Washington Post once called "good junk reading time after time."
After Sheldon's 1987 novel "Windmills of the Gods" debuted at No. 1 on bestseller lists, Charles Champlin, then The Times' arts editor, wrote that Sheldon had found "a statistically wider audience each time, evidently satisfying everyone except most literary critics, who regard popularity and quality as incompatible."
Fans admired plotlines that were amazingly complex yet easy to follow — and the colorful characters who could never be counted on to do the expected.
"Sidney's longevity secret is that he is a great storyteller, a master of the narrative tale," his literary agent, Mort Janklow, told The Times in 2004. "Readers care about his characters, many of whom are women under threat. He has an instinctive ability to read women's emotions."
For his part, Sheldon said: "I don't write for critics. I write for readers."
From the early 1940s until almost 1970, he had written mainly for viewers.
Wins Oscar in 1948
His wry and witty script for "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (1947) won him a 1948 Academy Award for original screenplay. The farce, which starred Cary Grant and Shirley Temple, was "uncloyed with cuteness," the New York Times review said at the time.
Sheldon was also a screenwriter for the Judy Garland-Fred Astaire musical "Easter Parade" (1948) and the Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical "The Barkleys of Broadway" (1949). After he helped adapt the Irving Berlin hit "Annie Get Your Gun" to the big screen, the 1950 Betty Hutton-Howard Keel vehicle received generally favorable reviews.
He wrote half a dozen plays for Broadway. His biggest hit was the musical "Redhead," starring Gwen Verdon, which ran for a little more than a year from 1959 to 1960 and brought him a Tony for co-writing the book.
After working on about two dozen films, he turned toward television, writing scores of episodes for two hit sitcoms he created — "The Patty Duke Show" (ABC, 1963-66) and "I Dream of Jeannie" (NBC, 1965-70), according to Sheldon's memoir "The Other Side of Me" (2005).
Creating a show for Duke was a challenge because "she was so extraordinarily talented I did not want to waste her abilities," Sheldon wrote. He decided she should play twin sisters but changed it to look-alike cousins to explain why the characters had grown up without knowing each other.
"Jeannie," which starred Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman, opened to mixed reviews but had a loyal fan base, Sheldon wrote. One episode, "Bigger Than a Bread Box and Better Than a Genie," featured Sheldon's wife, Jorja, as a fortuneteller and his mother as a character in a seance scene.
He also created the glamorous "Hart to Hart" series, starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, that aired on ABC from 1979 to 1984.
He was born Sidney Schechtel on Feb. 11, 1917, in Chicago, the son of Otto, a salesman, and Natalie, a homemaker. Unable to pay the rent, the family kept moving and Sheldon attended about a dozen schools.
Sheldon later remarked that his career as a writer was rather improbable considering his background.
Becoming a writer
"Both my parents were third-grade dropouts," he said. "My father never read a book in his life and I was the only one in my family to complete high school."
Sheldon won a scholarship to Northwestern University. Although he was forced to drop out halfway through his freshman year because of the financial pressures of the Depression, he recalled having an epiphany of sorts as he walked on campus one day.
"I saw all these well-dressed students, and I thought that years from now, no one will ever know they existed," he wrote years later. "I wanted to leave a mark, I wanted people to know I was here."
He made up the last name of Sheldon in the mid-1930s when he entered an amateur radio contest as an announcer.
At first, he worked in Chicago as a theater usher, shoe salesman and attendant in a nightclub checkroom. After the club's bandleader, Phil Levant, played a song Sheldon wrote, Sheldon left for New York City to try to make it as a songwriter. While there, he saw a lot of movies and turned his thoughts toward Hollywood.
Soon, he was in Los Angeles — he wanted to be a screenwriter but had promised his parents he would return to Chicago if he didn't have a job within three weeks.
Repeatedly, he was turned away from movie studio gates. As time was running out, he learned that producers hired readers to help analyze scripts. Since he had just read John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," Sheldon sent synopses of the classic to every studio and was soon working at Universal for $17 a week, he told The Times in 1992.
At his boarding house, Sheldon met a young writer named Ben Roberts and they began collaborating on "B" movies like "South of Panama," "Gambling Daughters" and "Borrowed Hero," all released in 1941.
"I can't even call them 'B' pictures," Sheldon once said. "They were 'Z' pictures. But we got paid and we got screen credits. We were professionals."
At the start of World War II, Sheldon enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces but within months he was discharged for medical reasons. He began collaborating with Roberts on a revival of the musical "The Merry Widow," which ran for nine months beginning in 1943.
Two other musicals they wrote, the comedy "Jackpot" and the fantasy "Dream With Music," had brief Broadway runs about the same time.
Back in Hollywood, Sheldon won an Oscar for "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" but couldn't wait to leave Shrine Auditorium.
"On what should have been the happiest night of my life, I was suicidal," Sheldon wrote in his autobiography of the paralyzing mood swings he experienced. A psychiatrist soon diagnosed him as manic-depressive, Sheldon wrote in his memoir.
In midlife, he turned to writing novels, a career change that came about almost accidentally, he often told interviewers:
"I had an idea for something complicated, that delved into people's minds and motives to a greater extent than I could put in any film or TV script. Trying to put it into novel form was the only answer."
"The Naked Face," published in 1970, did not sell well, but readers loved his second novel, "The Other Side of Midnight," the so-bad-it's-good guilty pleasure set in World War II. It centers on a beautiful French woman named Noelle Page who is spurned by a dashing American pilot and spends the rest of her life obsessed with him.
Almost all of Sheldon's books hit the bestseller lists after that.
In his fourth novel, "Bloodline," a beautiful heiress becomes the target of the man who murdered her father. In his sixth, "Master of the Game," the Blackwell family rises to riches in the diamond mines of South Africa. In 1991's "The Doomsday Conspiracy," a naval intelligence officer must find witnesses to the crash of a weather balloon that could actually be a UFO.
His 18th novel, "Are You Afraid of the Dark?," which was published when he was 87, was a New York Times bestseller shortly after its release in 2004.
In his personal life, Sheldon was the opposite of the love 'em and leave 'em cads who populate so many of his works.
A family man
After a brief first marriage, he was married to his second wife, Jorja Curtright, for 33 years; she died in 1985 of a heart attack. In 1989, he married Alexandra Kostoff. Besides his wife, he is survived by a daughter from his second marriage, Mary, who is a novelist; two grandchildren; and his brother Richard.
During most of his writing years, Sheldon and his family traveled the world together, researching and taking photos of the locations where he planned to set his next novel.
"If you read the description of a hotel, or of a restaurant meal, you can bet we actually stayed at that hotel or ate that exact meal…. That's what makes my books so realistic," he told an interviewer.
He wrote every day, first "ad-libbing" an initial and very long draft, which was transcribed by a secretary, and then rewriting and editing what he had written.
Over the years, he also wrote popular children's books. He owned a string of luxurious homes, finally settling in Beverly Hills and in a five-house compound in Palm Springs.
He told the Times in 2000 that he thought the profession of author suited him best.
"In a book, your imagination has no limits," Sheldon said. "There is no budget to worry about, you can have as many characters as you want, you can give them all yachts…. It's remarkable to write a novel, because the author is the star."
Services will be private.
The family suggests that memorial donations be made to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, 4650 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 90027. A celebration of Sheldon's life will be held later.
Profitable page-turners:
The novels of Sidney Sheldon
• "The Naked Face"
• "The Other Side of Midnight"
• "A Stranger in the Mirror"
• "Bloodline"
• "Rage of Angels"
• "Master of the Game"
• "If Tomorrow Comes"
• "Windmills of the Gods"
• "The Sands of Time"
• "Memories of Midnight"
• "The Doomsday Conspiracy"
• "The Stars Shine Down"
• "Nothing Lasts Forever"
• "Morning, Noon & Night"
• "The Best Laid Plans"
• "Tell Me Your Dreams"
• "The Sky Is Falling"
• "Are You Afraid of the Dark?"
A multifaceted writer, Sheldon won a screenwriting Oscar and a Tony award and had created popular television sitcoms before starting his first novel at the age of 52. But it was through the novels that he gained his overriding fame.
His books usually revolved around characters of great wealth, beauty, brilliance and bedroom prowess — none of which protected them from infidelity, betrayal and indiscretion. Sheldon's protagonists were usually women and his plots were so artfully constructed that his books are the very definition of a page-turner.
He was one of the world's most translated authors, selling more than 300 million books in 180 countries. They were printed in 51 languages, including Urdu, which is spoken in Pakistan and India, and Swahili.
With his second novel, "The Other Side of Midnight" (1974), Sheldon broke into the blockbuster ranks; the book remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 53 weeks — a record at the time.
About half of his 18 novels — with such titles as "Rage of Angels" (1980) and "Memories of Midnight" (1990) — were turned into television movies or miniseries. Demand for his stories was so great that CBS executives reportedly paid Sheldon $1 million for the rights to make a miniseries of 1985's "If Tomorrow Comes" before they had even read it.
Some critics said his dialogue was banal and his plots were unbelievable, but many grudgingly acknowledged the author's unusual talent at producing what the Washington Post once called "good junk reading time after time."
After Sheldon's 1987 novel "Windmills of the Gods" debuted at No. 1 on bestseller lists, Charles Champlin, then The Times' arts editor, wrote that Sheldon had found "a statistically wider audience each time, evidently satisfying everyone except most literary critics, who regard popularity and quality as incompatible."
Fans admired plotlines that were amazingly complex yet easy to follow — and the colorful characters who could never be counted on to do the expected.
"Sidney's longevity secret is that he is a great storyteller, a master of the narrative tale," his literary agent, Mort Janklow, told The Times in 2004. "Readers care about his characters, many of whom are women under threat. He has an instinctive ability to read women's emotions."
For his part, Sheldon said: "I don't write for critics. I write for readers."
From the early 1940s until almost 1970, he had written mainly for viewers.
Wins Oscar in 1948
His wry and witty script for "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (1947) won him a 1948 Academy Award for original screenplay. The farce, which starred Cary Grant and Shirley Temple, was "uncloyed with cuteness," the New York Times review said at the time.
Sheldon was also a screenwriter for the Judy Garland-Fred Astaire musical "Easter Parade" (1948) and the Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical "The Barkleys of Broadway" (1949). After he helped adapt the Irving Berlin hit "Annie Get Your Gun" to the big screen, the 1950 Betty Hutton-Howard Keel vehicle received generally favorable reviews.
He wrote half a dozen plays for Broadway. His biggest hit was the musical "Redhead," starring Gwen Verdon, which ran for a little more than a year from 1959 to 1960 and brought him a Tony for co-writing the book.
After working on about two dozen films, he turned toward television, writing scores of episodes for two hit sitcoms he created — "The Patty Duke Show" (ABC, 1963-66) and "I Dream of Jeannie" (NBC, 1965-70), according to Sheldon's memoir "The Other Side of Me" (2005).
Creating a show for Duke was a challenge because "she was so extraordinarily talented I did not want to waste her abilities," Sheldon wrote. He decided she should play twin sisters but changed it to look-alike cousins to explain why the characters had grown up without knowing each other.
"Jeannie," which starred Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman, opened to mixed reviews but had a loyal fan base, Sheldon wrote. One episode, "Bigger Than a Bread Box and Better Than a Genie," featured Sheldon's wife, Jorja, as a fortuneteller and his mother as a character in a seance scene.
He also created the glamorous "Hart to Hart" series, starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, that aired on ABC from 1979 to 1984.
He was born Sidney Schechtel on Feb. 11, 1917, in Chicago, the son of Otto, a salesman, and Natalie, a homemaker. Unable to pay the rent, the family kept moving and Sheldon attended about a dozen schools.
Sheldon later remarked that his career as a writer was rather improbable considering his background.
Becoming a writer
"Both my parents were third-grade dropouts," he said. "My father never read a book in his life and I was the only one in my family to complete high school."
Sheldon won a scholarship to Northwestern University. Although he was forced to drop out halfway through his freshman year because of the financial pressures of the Depression, he recalled having an epiphany of sorts as he walked on campus one day.
"I saw all these well-dressed students, and I thought that years from now, no one will ever know they existed," he wrote years later. "I wanted to leave a mark, I wanted people to know I was here."
He made up the last name of Sheldon in the mid-1930s when he entered an amateur radio contest as an announcer.
At first, he worked in Chicago as a theater usher, shoe salesman and attendant in a nightclub checkroom. After the club's bandleader, Phil Levant, played a song Sheldon wrote, Sheldon left for New York City to try to make it as a songwriter. While there, he saw a lot of movies and turned his thoughts toward Hollywood.
Soon, he was in Los Angeles — he wanted to be a screenwriter but had promised his parents he would return to Chicago if he didn't have a job within three weeks.
Repeatedly, he was turned away from movie studio gates. As time was running out, he learned that producers hired readers to help analyze scripts. Since he had just read John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," Sheldon sent synopses of the classic to every studio and was soon working at Universal for $17 a week, he told The Times in 1992.
At his boarding house, Sheldon met a young writer named Ben Roberts and they began collaborating on "B" movies like "South of Panama," "Gambling Daughters" and "Borrowed Hero," all released in 1941.
"I can't even call them 'B' pictures," Sheldon once said. "They were 'Z' pictures. But we got paid and we got screen credits. We were professionals."
At the start of World War II, Sheldon enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces but within months he was discharged for medical reasons. He began collaborating with Roberts on a revival of the musical "The Merry Widow," which ran for nine months beginning in 1943.
Two other musicals they wrote, the comedy "Jackpot" and the fantasy "Dream With Music," had brief Broadway runs about the same time.
Back in Hollywood, Sheldon won an Oscar for "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" but couldn't wait to leave Shrine Auditorium.
"On what should have been the happiest night of my life, I was suicidal," Sheldon wrote in his autobiography of the paralyzing mood swings he experienced. A psychiatrist soon diagnosed him as manic-depressive, Sheldon wrote in his memoir.
In midlife, he turned to writing novels, a career change that came about almost accidentally, he often told interviewers:
"I had an idea for something complicated, that delved into people's minds and motives to a greater extent than I could put in any film or TV script. Trying to put it into novel form was the only answer."
"The Naked Face," published in 1970, did not sell well, but readers loved his second novel, "The Other Side of Midnight," the so-bad-it's-good guilty pleasure set in World War II. It centers on a beautiful French woman named Noelle Page who is spurned by a dashing American pilot and spends the rest of her life obsessed with him.
Almost all of Sheldon's books hit the bestseller lists after that.
In his fourth novel, "Bloodline," a beautiful heiress becomes the target of the man who murdered her father. In his sixth, "Master of the Game," the Blackwell family rises to riches in the diamond mines of South Africa. In 1991's "The Doomsday Conspiracy," a naval intelligence officer must find witnesses to the crash of a weather balloon that could actually be a UFO.
His 18th novel, "Are You Afraid of the Dark?," which was published when he was 87, was a New York Times bestseller shortly after its release in 2004.
In his personal life, Sheldon was the opposite of the love 'em and leave 'em cads who populate so many of his works.
A family man
After a brief first marriage, he was married to his second wife, Jorja Curtright, for 33 years; she died in 1985 of a heart attack. In 1989, he married Alexandra Kostoff. Besides his wife, he is survived by a daughter from his second marriage, Mary, who is a novelist; two grandchildren; and his brother Richard.
During most of his writing years, Sheldon and his family traveled the world together, researching and taking photos of the locations where he planned to set his next novel.
"If you read the description of a hotel, or of a restaurant meal, you can bet we actually stayed at that hotel or ate that exact meal…. That's what makes my books so realistic," he told an interviewer.
He wrote every day, first "ad-libbing" an initial and very long draft, which was transcribed by a secretary, and then rewriting and editing what he had written.
Over the years, he also wrote popular children's books. He owned a string of luxurious homes, finally settling in Beverly Hills and in a five-house compound in Palm Springs.
He told the Times in 2000 that he thought the profession of author suited him best.
"In a book, your imagination has no limits," Sheldon said. "There is no budget to worry about, you can have as many characters as you want, you can give them all yachts…. It's remarkable to write a novel, because the author is the star."
Services will be private.
The family suggests that memorial donations be made to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, 4650 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 90027. A celebration of Sheldon's life will be held later.
Profitable page-turners:
The novels of Sidney Sheldon
• "The Naked Face"
• "The Other Side of Midnight"
• "A Stranger in the Mirror"
• "Bloodline"
• "Rage of Angels"
• "Master of the Game"
• "If Tomorrow Comes"
• "Windmills of the Gods"
• "The Sands of Time"
• "Memories of Midnight"
• "The Doomsday Conspiracy"
• "The Stars Shine Down"
• "Nothing Lasts Forever"
• "Morning, Noon & Night"
• "The Best Laid Plans"
• "Tell Me Your Dreams"
• "The Sky Is Falling"
• "Are You Afraid of the Dark?"
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Through the Keyhole
Micky Dolenz was interviewed by Stefanie Powers for David Frost's U.K. game show, "Through the Keyhole."
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Lively — and revealing — 'Legends'
BEVERLY HILLS — Joan Collins showed off more than her talents at Tuesday night's opening performance of her traveling stage play, Legends, when the zipper on the back of her dress slid down, exposing the 73-year-old's lingerie-covered backside to a theater packed with '80s TV legends.
Among those who were treated to the moon: Hart to Hart's Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers; Knots Landing's Michele Lee; Falcon Crest's Lorenzo Lamas; and Dynasty's Pamela Sue Martin, Al Corley, Gordon Thomson and Pamela Bellwood.
On stage, Collins' co-star and Dynasty rival, Linda Evans, 64, struggled in vain to zip Collins up. "I tried, but it just didn't want to stay," Evans sighed at the after-party.
So Collins momentarily broke the fourth wall, vocally acknowledging her "wardrobe malfunction" and inspiring Evans to ad-lib "nice (butt)." Collins, who also was battling the flu, spent the rest of the show delicately sidestepping her way across the stage, occasionally clasping her hands over her posterior.
"That poor thing; what a trouper," Powers said. "I once had a set fall down on me."
At the after-party, Collins shared a booth with sister Jackie, who just finished her latest racy novel, Drop Dead Beautiful, about the continuing antics of heroine Lucky Santangelo
"How embarrassing," Joan said of the mishap. "But I had to make it fun, because if you're not having fun, neither is your audience."
Joan's husband, Percy Gibson, is a producer on the show, which casts Evans and Collins as aging actress rivals. After its two-week engagement in Los Angeles, the show will continue to Phoenix, Denver, Chicago and Boston before concluding in New Haven, Conn., on May 13.
It also was a night to remember those who could not attend. The most missed face was Dynasty patriarch John Forsythe, who had colon cancer surgery in September and was released from the hospital three weeks ago.
Forsythe's wife, Nicole, said her husband, who turns 89 Jan. 29, is cancer-free but is now fighting a leg hematoma. "He thinks he can get up and walk, because he's not getting any pain to his brain," Nicole said.
She planned to make the two-hour drive back to their Santa Ynez Valley ranch the same night so she would not worry her husband, who "saw me getting all dolled up."
Among those who were treated to the moon: Hart to Hart's Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers; Knots Landing's Michele Lee; Falcon Crest's Lorenzo Lamas; and Dynasty's Pamela Sue Martin, Al Corley, Gordon Thomson and Pamela Bellwood.
On stage, Collins' co-star and Dynasty rival, Linda Evans, 64, struggled in vain to zip Collins up. "I tried, but it just didn't want to stay," Evans sighed at the after-party.
So Collins momentarily broke the fourth wall, vocally acknowledging her "wardrobe malfunction" and inspiring Evans to ad-lib "nice (butt)." Collins, who also was battling the flu, spent the rest of the show delicately sidestepping her way across the stage, occasionally clasping her hands over her posterior.
"That poor thing; what a trouper," Powers said. "I once had a set fall down on me."
At the after-party, Collins shared a booth with sister Jackie, who just finished her latest racy novel, Drop Dead Beautiful, about the continuing antics of heroine Lucky Santangelo
"How embarrassing," Joan said of the mishap. "But I had to make it fun, because if you're not having fun, neither is your audience."
Joan's husband, Percy Gibson, is a producer on the show, which casts Evans and Collins as aging actress rivals. After its two-week engagement in Los Angeles, the show will continue to Phoenix, Denver, Chicago and Boston before concluding in New Haven, Conn., on May 13.
It also was a night to remember those who could not attend. The most missed face was Dynasty patriarch John Forsythe, who had colon cancer surgery in September and was released from the hospital three weeks ago.
Forsythe's wife, Nicole, said her husband, who turns 89 Jan. 29, is cancer-free but is now fighting a leg hematoma. "He thinks he can get up and walk, because he's not getting any pain to his brain," Nicole said.
She planned to make the two-hour drive back to their Santa Ynez Valley ranch the same night so she would not worry her husband, who "saw me getting all dolled up."
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
The Streets of San Francisco coming to DVD in April
The first season of the show (actually, it's one of those "Season 1, Volume 1" deals) will be released by Paramount on April 3. It will be 10 episodes plus the pilot movie. No word on extras or commentaries yet.
It's amazing to see all of the famous faces that graced this show, including Martin Sheen, Deidre Hall, Robert Wagner, John Ritter, Stefanie Powers, Harold Gould, Brenda Vaccaro, Stuart Whitman, Jamie Farr, Shelley Morrison (Rosario on Will & Grace), Leslie Nielsen, Dick Sargent, Dean Stockwell, Bill Bixby, Nick Nolte, Jessica Walter, and some guy named Arnold Schwarzenegger. There was a reunion movie in 1992, but Douglas didn't want to be in it (his character "disappeared" and Malden looked for him).
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Marina del Rey: 44th Holiday Boat Parade selects Stefanie Powers as grand marshal
Organizers of the Marina del Rey Holiday Boat Parade have announced that actress Stefanie Powers will serve as grand marshal for the 44th annual parade, scheduled for Saturday, December 9th.
Powers will be riding aboard the grand marshal boat YachtSea, which, along with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Halibut, will lead the two-hour parade.
This year's parade theme is Water Winter Wonderland. A fireworks show will kick off the official start at 5:55 p.m. The parade is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
"Stefanie Powers has brought entertainment and excitement to the world for many years and we're thrilled she will take the helm as grand marshal to lead our parade," said parade president Cindy Williams. "We are delighted to welcome Stefanie to our boat parade family and hope she enjoys the experience as much as we will."
Powers' acting credits include 28 feature films, three television series, miniseries and on-stage musical productions. She portrayed Jennifer Hart on the television series Hart to Hart.
She has released four home videos and is involved with several American zoos, where she works with species survival programs and is a frequent keynote speaker, according to Williams.
"She has combined a natural curiosity and passion for knowledge, world travel and diverse cultures in both an award-winning acting career and an equally active life of heartfelt philanthropic work," Williams said.
Powers is also president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, a public charity dedicated to the preservation of wild animals, which she helped found in honor of the late actor.
The William Holden Wildlife Education Center serves 10,000 students a year and is located near the Mount Kenya Safari Club and the Mount Kenya Game Ranch started by Holden in the late 1950s.
Information, parade headquarters, (310) 670-7130, or www .mdrboatparade.org
Powers will be riding aboard the grand marshal boat YachtSea, which, along with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Halibut, will lead the two-hour parade.
This year's parade theme is Water Winter Wonderland. A fireworks show will kick off the official start at 5:55 p.m. The parade is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
"Stefanie Powers has brought entertainment and excitement to the world for many years and we're thrilled she will take the helm as grand marshal to lead our parade," said parade president Cindy Williams. "We are delighted to welcome Stefanie to our boat parade family and hope she enjoys the experience as much as we will."
Powers' acting credits include 28 feature films, three television series, miniseries and on-stage musical productions. She portrayed Jennifer Hart on the television series Hart to Hart.
She has released four home videos and is involved with several American zoos, where she works with species survival programs and is a frequent keynote speaker, according to Williams.
"She has combined a natural curiosity and passion for knowledge, world travel and diverse cultures in both an award-winning acting career and an equally active life of heartfelt philanthropic work," Williams said.
Powers is also president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, a public charity dedicated to the preservation of wild animals, which she helped found in honor of the late actor.
The William Holden Wildlife Education Center serves 10,000 students a year and is located near the Mount Kenya Safari Club and the Mount Kenya Game Ranch started by Holden in the late 1950s.
Information, parade headquarters, (310) 670-7130, or www .mdrboatparade.org
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
Galactic Gala at Griffith Observatory
L.A.: Luminaries mark attraction's reopening this Friday.
Stars gazed upon stars Sunday at a Galactic Gala at Griffith Observatory to honor this week's re-opening of Los Angeles' No. 1 landmark.
Hollywood stars, city officials and supporters of the $93 million makeover sailed across a heavenly blue carpet to hail the observatory's Friday public launch.
"We've been waiting five years and are really excited to be here tonight," said Leonard Nimoy, who played "Spock" on the epic "Star Trek" series and who has donated $1 million toward a 200-seat theater built in his name.
VIPs - from Buzz Aldrin, the second human to set foot on the Moon, to actress Angela Bassett - were awed by the observatory that shone atop Mt. Hollywood.
Built in 1935 as a gift to Los Angeles by Griffith J. Griffith, the art deco observatory has become one of the city's most cherished icons.
Now, after four years of meticulous restoration, what has been dubbed "the hood ornament of Los Angeles" will re-open its doors to the public on Friday.
"To all the people of Los Angeles: One of the greatest buildings in the world is coming online," said Councilman Tom LaBonge, an observatory booster. "This is the greatest spot in the whole universe."
Outside, the historic observatory gleamed in ivory, its bronze solar and planetary telescopes guarding its green rotunda and copper planetarium dome.
A terrace now surrounds the movie icon and home to 2 million visitors a year, for the best views of Los Angeles. An outdoor transit marks the seasonal path of the sun.
Inside, the 40,000-square-foot observatory is now twice its former size with a new planetarium, theater, cafe, classroom, bookstore and more than 60 exhibits.
But with less than 200 parking spaces and a crush of expected visitors, the observatory will allow no drive-in access in the first months after re-opening.
Instead, visitors must make advance timed reservations to shuttle up the hill for a fee. Hikers and cyclists can visit free with a 48-hour advance reservation.
At Sunday's gala, guests walked toward the bust of James Dean, with views of the Hollywood sign and a glorious sunset over the Pacific Ocean. The party, which was hosted by Friends of the Observatory and organized by the Los Angeles Sports Entertainment Commission, included such local celebrities as James Spader, Courtney B. Vance, Lucy Lawless, Art Linkletter and Stefanie Powers.
"I adore this place," said Powers, who visited the observatory as a child. "It has all the grace and elegance of the age in which it was constructed - it was the Golden Age of Hollywood."
But it was Aldrin who commanded the galactic celebration.
"We've been coming to the Griffith Observatory for 35 years" the astronaut said, gazing at the moon above the planetary dome. "This is the place to come for L.A. night life."
Stars gazed upon stars Sunday at a Galactic Gala at Griffith Observatory to honor this week's re-opening of Los Angeles' No. 1 landmark.
Hollywood stars, city officials and supporters of the $93 million makeover sailed across a heavenly blue carpet to hail the observatory's Friday public launch.
"We've been waiting five years and are really excited to be here tonight," said Leonard Nimoy, who played "Spock" on the epic "Star Trek" series and who has donated $1 million toward a 200-seat theater built in his name.
VIPs - from Buzz Aldrin, the second human to set foot on the Moon, to actress Angela Bassett - were awed by the observatory that shone atop Mt. Hollywood.
Built in 1935 as a gift to Los Angeles by Griffith J. Griffith, the art deco observatory has become one of the city's most cherished icons.
Now, after four years of meticulous restoration, what has been dubbed "the hood ornament of Los Angeles" will re-open its doors to the public on Friday.
"To all the people of Los Angeles: One of the greatest buildings in the world is coming online," said Councilman Tom LaBonge, an observatory booster. "This is the greatest spot in the whole universe."
Outside, the historic observatory gleamed in ivory, its bronze solar and planetary telescopes guarding its green rotunda and copper planetarium dome.
A terrace now surrounds the movie icon and home to 2 million visitors a year, for the best views of Los Angeles. An outdoor transit marks the seasonal path of the sun.
Inside, the 40,000-square-foot observatory is now twice its former size with a new planetarium, theater, cafe, classroom, bookstore and more than 60 exhibits.
But with less than 200 parking spaces and a crush of expected visitors, the observatory will allow no drive-in access in the first months after re-opening.
Instead, visitors must make advance timed reservations to shuttle up the hill for a fee. Hikers and cyclists can visit free with a 48-hour advance reservation.
At Sunday's gala, guests walked toward the bust of James Dean, with views of the Hollywood sign and a glorious sunset over the Pacific Ocean. The party, which was hosted by Friends of the Observatory and organized by the Los Angeles Sports Entertainment Commission, included such local celebrities as James Spader, Courtney B. Vance, Lucy Lawless, Art Linkletter and Stefanie Powers.
"I adore this place," said Powers, who visited the observatory as a child. "It has all the grace and elegance of the age in which it was constructed - it was the Golden Age of Hollywood."
But it was Aldrin who commanded the galactic celebration.
"We've been coming to the Griffith Observatory for 35 years" the astronaut said, gazing at the moon above the planetary dome. "This is the place to come for L.A. night life."
Friday, October 13, 2006
Thalians' 51st Anniversary Ball
"Desperate Housewives" creator Marc Cherry, comedian Jay Mohr, "Housewives" co-star Andrea Bowen and "American Idol" contestant Ace Young were among the youngsters at the Thalians' 51st Anniversary Ball last Saturday night.
"If you're wondering why it's so cold in here, it's to keep most of you alive!" Mohr joked to the mostly elderly members of the entertainment industry's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to the treatment of mental health.
Doris Roberts presented Cherry with the Mr. Wonderful Award at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel before a crowd that included Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens, Stefanie Powers, Barbara Eden, Mitzi Gaynor, Mamie Van Doren, Valerie Harper, Dick Van Patten, Hugh O'Brian, Jack LaLanne, Jayne Meadows, Jack Klugman, Ruta Lee and Jane Russell.
Cherry got the award for his efforts to focus on the need for mental health on both the screen and in life.
"What do I know about shaky mental health?" Cherry asked during the evening that raised more than $400,000 for the Thalians Mental Health Center at Cedars-Sinai. "Well, I work with four actresses over 40! You do the math!"
The Ms. Wonderful Award went to actress/entrepreneur Stevens and her actress daughters Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher. The family trio — as well as Bowen, Young and Reynolds — all sang during the evening, while Cherry playfully dissed his "Housewives."
"It's a man-eater," Cherry chortled when he bid $3,000 to name a tiger cub.
"So I'm calling it Eva Longoria!"
"If you're wondering why it's so cold in here, it's to keep most of you alive!" Mohr joked to the mostly elderly members of the entertainment industry's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to the treatment of mental health.
Doris Roberts presented Cherry with the Mr. Wonderful Award at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel before a crowd that included Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens, Stefanie Powers, Barbara Eden, Mitzi Gaynor, Mamie Van Doren, Valerie Harper, Dick Van Patten, Hugh O'Brian, Jack LaLanne, Jayne Meadows, Jack Klugman, Ruta Lee and Jane Russell.
Cherry got the award for his efforts to focus on the need for mental health on both the screen and in life.
"What do I know about shaky mental health?" Cherry asked during the evening that raised more than $400,000 for the Thalians Mental Health Center at Cedars-Sinai. "Well, I work with four actresses over 40! You do the math!"
The Ms. Wonderful Award went to actress/entrepreneur Stevens and her actress daughters Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher. The family trio — as well as Bowen, Young and Reynolds — all sang during the evening, while Cherry playfully dissed his "Housewives."
"It's a man-eater," Cherry chortled when he bid $3,000 to name a tiger cub.
"So I'm calling it Eva Longoria!"
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Newport-Bermuda Race
The 100th anniversary Newport-Bermuda Race proves to be more a test of cooking skills than seamanship
The closest we got to a healthy breeze in the 2006 centennial Newport-Bermuda Race were the gales of laughter that swept up from the saloon after lunch on the third day out. As my watch tried to coax an extra tenth of a knot out of Ceramco New Zealand, an aluminum Farr 68, the B watch sat on the sails below and roared at The Wedding Crashers on DVD.
We'd started out well. The bright sunshine had warmed the land enough to generate a 12-knot sea breeze out of the southwest, allowing us to point sufficiently high to lay the buoys at the entrance to Narragansett Bay. We decided to go for a very conservative start, figuring it didn't make much sense to be over the starting line early on a 635-mile race with 264 entries. As we close-reached out to sea at nine or 10 knots in smooth water, we waited for the wind to die as forecast. We were pretty happy to be the fourth closest boat to Bermuda when it finally shut down a day and a half later.
The race went downhill from there. We were parked in a cold eddy south of the Gulf Stream and still had three to four knots of current pushing us toward our destination. The problem with cold eddies is that they're roughly circular in shape. Soon, the current that'd been helping us started pushing us east and then northeast, away from our goal, as we struggled to keep the boat moving.
The boats that stayed just a little farther west seemed to make out best in the race. They ran out of wind at about the same time as we did, but they got out of the eddy and didn't have to battle the current to start making way toward Bermuda again.
Talking to other crews after the finish, I found that most enjoyed a very pleasant sail. It was calm, sunny, and warm, and everyone ate like kings. Except the crews on the flat-out raceboats who had freeze-dried food ("It really isn't too bad. They've improved it a lot." Right). Aboard Ceramco, owner Diane Masters first went to sea as the cook on the famous maxi racer Kialoa III, so she knows how to produce truly fabulous meals for a hungry crew. And produce she did, starting with lamb chops with rice and fresh veggies, followed by homemade strawberry shortcake. (I watched her make it, and no, I looked nothing like a vulture watching dinner get run over on a lonely road. I merely hovered around the galley to see if I could help.) She fed us a cooked breakfast daily (I think she used 35 to 40 eggs each day—and is there a better smell than that of frying bacon wafting out the hatch on a cool morning at sea?), and our "rough-weather" meal of shepherd's pie made with mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes was wolfed down on a warm, calm evening.
After spending a few years sailing on the maxi circuit, Diane decided she'd rather own boats than be paid to work on them. She started her own business installing flooring in houses and now employs several dozen people. A few years ago, she embarked on a search for just the right boat. It had to be big enough to accommodate a lot of friends, tough, fast, comfortable, and fun to sail. She found all that in Ceramco New Zealand, built as the late Sir Peter Blake's entry in the 1981 Whitbread Around the World Race.
Our skipper for the Newport-Bermuda Race was Robert "Whitey" Russell, a tremendously experienced ex-yacht captain who helped Diane find the boat and then refit Ceramco over the winter, all with a view to sailing the 2006 race. Afterward, Diane planned to spend the summer daysailing with friends and perhaps doing a cruise to Maine if her work schedule permitted. This fall, she plans to sail Ceramco down to Saint-Barthélemy in the French West Indies and commute back and forth over the winter before sailing next spring across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. There, she plans to cruise the Balearic Islands and spend time in Valencia, Spain, watching the America's Cup races.
Diane wasn't the only entrant in the Newport-Bermuda Race with exciting plans. This year's race was merely the first leg for Colin Golder, who sailed Morgan of Marietta, his Wauquiez Centurion 42, in the race for the sixth time. Instead of sailing home to New Jersey, Golder, now retired, intended his next stop after Bermuda to be Horta, on the island of Faial in the Azores. He took advantage of the fact that race organizers sent nine shipping containers to Bermuda to have his Monitor windvane, dinghy, and other cruising gear meet him on the island after the race. He planned to cruise the Azores for a few weeks, then spend the balance of the summer cruising in Portugal before leaving the boat in southern Spain for the winter. The best things about the race for Morgan's crew were the nice weather, finding the eddies in the Stream, and having literally dozens of dolphins play around the boat for more than an hour—letting the sailors know they were in the right place at the right time. The crew evened out varying degrees of culinary expertise by cooking ahead and freezing several meals before leaving the dock. Every evening they popped one in the oven, and the whole crew sat down and relaxed for an hour over dinner.
Because of the light airs, this year's race was the second slowest on record. New York businessman Tom Carroll's previous race was on a Sweden 38 in 1998, the slowest race. He entered this year with Siren Song, his new J/133, and a crew of friends from western Long Island Sound. But this wasn't just any random group of guys: Watch captains Butch Ulmer and Howie McMichael have sailed the race 19 and 15 times, respectively; navigator H. L. DeVore had sailed four Bermuda races. Tom's son was aboard, sailing his first.
Though he intended to spend most of his time on the boat racing this summer, Carroll seemed a bit too proud of the job his girlfriend, actress Stefanie Powers, had done decorating the interior to convince me that he was a cutthroat racer, his racing record with the new boat notwithstanding.
When I asked him the standard interviewer question about his motivation for sailing the Newport-Bermuda Race this year, Tom's answer was especially poignant: "One of my best friends developed brain cancer last year. He was only 53 years old. We spent a lot of time discussing priorities in the three months before he died. We talked a lot about doing things, about not putting things off. The funeral was in September. I ordered the boat in October, and I ran the New York Marathon in November."
Dan Biemesderfer, a professor at Yale Medical School, sailed Shearwater, his beautiful Mason 43, in the race. Docked at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club in a prime spot after the finish, her sweeping sheer, long cabin house, bronze ports, and gleaming varnish provided quite a contrast to the dedicated racing boats surrounding her. She's a lovely and elegant cruising boat, certainly no racer. When I asked why he'd enter such a boat, Dan explained that he loves Bermuda and has done the Marion-Bermuda race since 2001, competing in the celestial-navigation division last year. He enjoys sailing offshore and doing the work to prepare the boat beforehand. The rigorous requirements and inspections leading up to the race help him ensure that the boat's ready for any conditions when his family is aboard.
Dan's crew of, as he described them, "hard-core racers," kept the boat moving in the light airs that frustrated so many of the sailors in the race. Having a crew of committed sailors aboard didn't prevent them from having a bottle or two of wine with their gourmet dinner every night. But the crew, no doubt, was a factor in the boat's final placing: Shearwater crossed the finish line off St. David's Head at 2131 on Wednesday to take third place in Class 14 and seventh overall on corrected time in the Cruiser Division.
Finishing just eight minutes behind them was another boat named Shearwater—a Morris 40 sailed by Conrad Hall, CEO of Trader Publishing, the company that owns Soundings magazine. This Shearwater placed third in class and fourth overall in the Cruiser Division. Conrad sailed the boat in the last Newport-Bermuda Race with a six-man crew, but since a rule change in the Cruiser Division allowed the use of autopilots this year, he felt he could sail with one less person and have a little more elbow room.
He's no stranger to offshore sailing. Every year he sails Shearwater back and forth offshore from her winter home at the Morris yard in Bass Harbor, Maine, to her summer home in Norfolk, Virginia, a distance each way approximately the same as that of the Newport-Bermuda Race. He has a great deal of confidence in his boat. "The Morris is a wonderful ocean boat for its size," says Conrad. "The crew may fail the boat, but the boat's never going to fail the crew." He loves the adventure of sailing an offshore race: "It's such a change from normal life, and sailing with good friends makes it all the more fun."
Learning about the weather and offshore sailing were the prime motivations behind Iris and Alex Frowein's decision to enter the race with Alaeris, their Outbound 46. They used to spend summers cruising their C&C 34 around the New England coast. Every winter, they'd charter bareboats in the Caribbean, and inspired by an article in the August 2005 Cruising World, "Secrets Revealed," they chartered in Culebra and Vieques last winter.
In 2004, Iris and Alex started thinking about packing up and venturing farther afield in a boat of their own. They decided the C&C was too small to suit them as a liveaboard for an extended cruise, so they started looking at bigger boats. That summer, an Outbound 44 sailed into their marina, and they liked what they saw. They contacted Skip Pond at Outbound Yachts and ended up taking delivery of a new Outbound 46 last fall. Skip suggested that sailing in the Newport-Bermuda Race would be a good way to get themselves and the boat up to snuff right away. "The boat was 90-percent ready when I got it," Alex says. "Having the race coming up was a great motivating factor to complete getting the boat prepared. Buying storm canvas and making sure that the refrigerators' lids lock in place get put off longer than they should—this way, we got it all done at once, rather than piecemeal."
Self-described cruisers, they turned over nominal skippering duties for the race to Jim Binch, a Long Island sailor who's done several Newport-Bermuda Races in the double-handed division with watch captain Ned Brooks. Skip Pond also sailed on the boat. Alex appreciated having their talent available to tap into during the race. "Skip was a treasure trove of knowledge and experience, and the fact that he's sailed the Outbounds so many miles was very helpful, too."
Alex's position as navigator helped him ramp up his weather-forecasting skills as he learned more about weather routing and GRIB files. Iris loved the race, too. The helmsman of the pair, she also felt she'd become a better sailor, and she loved learning what the boat was capable of in light airs when you can't motor. Sailing offshore for the first time, they became an even better team, Alex says. "We've always been pretty dialed into each other on the boat, communicating well and sharing sailing duties." He notes that though they improved their skills immensely and became much more confident in, and comfortable with, the boat, they have no plans to take up racing full-time.
A few days after the finish of the race, Iris flew home to work while Alex sailed the boat back to Newport with two crew. Though they're thinking about entering the Marion-Bermuda race next year, Iris and Alex say their plans to go cruising in a year or two are now confirmed.
Because it was the centennial, this year's Newport-Bermuda Race saw more traditional boats entered than usual. Sailing under two different handicap rules used to predict theoretical boat speed, the race was won by two boats more than 25 years old: Lively Lady II, a 1970s-vintage Carter 37 owned by William Hubbard III, took handicap honors in the IRC Class, and Sinn Fein, a 1960s-vintage Cal 40 owned by Peter Rebovich, won the ORR Class.
The closest we got to a healthy breeze in the 2006 centennial Newport-Bermuda Race were the gales of laughter that swept up from the saloon after lunch on the third day out. As my watch tried to coax an extra tenth of a knot out of Ceramco New Zealand, an aluminum Farr 68, the B watch sat on the sails below and roared at The Wedding Crashers on DVD.
We'd started out well. The bright sunshine had warmed the land enough to generate a 12-knot sea breeze out of the southwest, allowing us to point sufficiently high to lay the buoys at the entrance to Narragansett Bay. We decided to go for a very conservative start, figuring it didn't make much sense to be over the starting line early on a 635-mile race with 264 entries. As we close-reached out to sea at nine or 10 knots in smooth water, we waited for the wind to die as forecast. We were pretty happy to be the fourth closest boat to Bermuda when it finally shut down a day and a half later.
The race went downhill from there. We were parked in a cold eddy south of the Gulf Stream and still had three to four knots of current pushing us toward our destination. The problem with cold eddies is that they're roughly circular in shape. Soon, the current that'd been helping us started pushing us east and then northeast, away from our goal, as we struggled to keep the boat moving.
The boats that stayed just a little farther west seemed to make out best in the race. They ran out of wind at about the same time as we did, but they got out of the eddy and didn't have to battle the current to start making way toward Bermuda again.
Talking to other crews after the finish, I found that most enjoyed a very pleasant sail. It was calm, sunny, and warm, and everyone ate like kings. Except the crews on the flat-out raceboats who had freeze-dried food ("It really isn't too bad. They've improved it a lot." Right). Aboard Ceramco, owner Diane Masters first went to sea as the cook on the famous maxi racer Kialoa III, so she knows how to produce truly fabulous meals for a hungry crew. And produce she did, starting with lamb chops with rice and fresh veggies, followed by homemade strawberry shortcake. (I watched her make it, and no, I looked nothing like a vulture watching dinner get run over on a lonely road. I merely hovered around the galley to see if I could help.) She fed us a cooked breakfast daily (I think she used 35 to 40 eggs each day—and is there a better smell than that of frying bacon wafting out the hatch on a cool morning at sea?), and our "rough-weather" meal of shepherd's pie made with mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes was wolfed down on a warm, calm evening.
After spending a few years sailing on the maxi circuit, Diane decided she'd rather own boats than be paid to work on them. She started her own business installing flooring in houses and now employs several dozen people. A few years ago, she embarked on a search for just the right boat. It had to be big enough to accommodate a lot of friends, tough, fast, comfortable, and fun to sail. She found all that in Ceramco New Zealand, built as the late Sir Peter Blake's entry in the 1981 Whitbread Around the World Race.
Our skipper for the Newport-Bermuda Race was Robert "Whitey" Russell, a tremendously experienced ex-yacht captain who helped Diane find the boat and then refit Ceramco over the winter, all with a view to sailing the 2006 race. Afterward, Diane planned to spend the summer daysailing with friends and perhaps doing a cruise to Maine if her work schedule permitted. This fall, she plans to sail Ceramco down to Saint-Barthélemy in the French West Indies and commute back and forth over the winter before sailing next spring across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. There, she plans to cruise the Balearic Islands and spend time in Valencia, Spain, watching the America's Cup races.
Diane wasn't the only entrant in the Newport-Bermuda Race with exciting plans. This year's race was merely the first leg for Colin Golder, who sailed Morgan of Marietta, his Wauquiez Centurion 42, in the race for the sixth time. Instead of sailing home to New Jersey, Golder, now retired, intended his next stop after Bermuda to be Horta, on the island of Faial in the Azores. He took advantage of the fact that race organizers sent nine shipping containers to Bermuda to have his Monitor windvane, dinghy, and other cruising gear meet him on the island after the race. He planned to cruise the Azores for a few weeks, then spend the balance of the summer cruising in Portugal before leaving the boat in southern Spain for the winter. The best things about the race for Morgan's crew were the nice weather, finding the eddies in the Stream, and having literally dozens of dolphins play around the boat for more than an hour—letting the sailors know they were in the right place at the right time. The crew evened out varying degrees of culinary expertise by cooking ahead and freezing several meals before leaving the dock. Every evening they popped one in the oven, and the whole crew sat down and relaxed for an hour over dinner.
Because of the light airs, this year's race was the second slowest on record. New York businessman Tom Carroll's previous race was on a Sweden 38 in 1998, the slowest race. He entered this year with Siren Song, his new J/133, and a crew of friends from western Long Island Sound. But this wasn't just any random group of guys: Watch captains Butch Ulmer and Howie McMichael have sailed the race 19 and 15 times, respectively; navigator H. L. DeVore had sailed four Bermuda races. Tom's son was aboard, sailing his first.
Though he intended to spend most of his time on the boat racing this summer, Carroll seemed a bit too proud of the job his girlfriend, actress Stefanie Powers, had done decorating the interior to convince me that he was a cutthroat racer, his racing record with the new boat notwithstanding.
When I asked him the standard interviewer question about his motivation for sailing the Newport-Bermuda Race this year, Tom's answer was especially poignant: "One of my best friends developed brain cancer last year. He was only 53 years old. We spent a lot of time discussing priorities in the three months before he died. We talked a lot about doing things, about not putting things off. The funeral was in September. I ordered the boat in October, and I ran the New York Marathon in November."
Dan Biemesderfer, a professor at Yale Medical School, sailed Shearwater, his beautiful Mason 43, in the race. Docked at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club in a prime spot after the finish, her sweeping sheer, long cabin house, bronze ports, and gleaming varnish provided quite a contrast to the dedicated racing boats surrounding her. She's a lovely and elegant cruising boat, certainly no racer. When I asked why he'd enter such a boat, Dan explained that he loves Bermuda and has done the Marion-Bermuda race since 2001, competing in the celestial-navigation division last year. He enjoys sailing offshore and doing the work to prepare the boat beforehand. The rigorous requirements and inspections leading up to the race help him ensure that the boat's ready for any conditions when his family is aboard.
Dan's crew of, as he described them, "hard-core racers," kept the boat moving in the light airs that frustrated so many of the sailors in the race. Having a crew of committed sailors aboard didn't prevent them from having a bottle or two of wine with their gourmet dinner every night. But the crew, no doubt, was a factor in the boat's final placing: Shearwater crossed the finish line off St. David's Head at 2131 on Wednesday to take third place in Class 14 and seventh overall on corrected time in the Cruiser Division.
Finishing just eight minutes behind them was another boat named Shearwater—a Morris 40 sailed by Conrad Hall, CEO of Trader Publishing, the company that owns Soundings magazine. This Shearwater placed third in class and fourth overall in the Cruiser Division. Conrad sailed the boat in the last Newport-Bermuda Race with a six-man crew, but since a rule change in the Cruiser Division allowed the use of autopilots this year, he felt he could sail with one less person and have a little more elbow room.
He's no stranger to offshore sailing. Every year he sails Shearwater back and forth offshore from her winter home at the Morris yard in Bass Harbor, Maine, to her summer home in Norfolk, Virginia, a distance each way approximately the same as that of the Newport-Bermuda Race. He has a great deal of confidence in his boat. "The Morris is a wonderful ocean boat for its size," says Conrad. "The crew may fail the boat, but the boat's never going to fail the crew." He loves the adventure of sailing an offshore race: "It's such a change from normal life, and sailing with good friends makes it all the more fun."
Learning about the weather and offshore sailing were the prime motivations behind Iris and Alex Frowein's decision to enter the race with Alaeris, their Outbound 46. They used to spend summers cruising their C&C 34 around the New England coast. Every winter, they'd charter bareboats in the Caribbean, and inspired by an article in the August 2005 Cruising World, "Secrets Revealed," they chartered in Culebra and Vieques last winter.
In 2004, Iris and Alex started thinking about packing up and venturing farther afield in a boat of their own. They decided the C&C was too small to suit them as a liveaboard for an extended cruise, so they started looking at bigger boats. That summer, an Outbound 44 sailed into their marina, and they liked what they saw. They contacted Skip Pond at Outbound Yachts and ended up taking delivery of a new Outbound 46 last fall. Skip suggested that sailing in the Newport-Bermuda Race would be a good way to get themselves and the boat up to snuff right away. "The boat was 90-percent ready when I got it," Alex says. "Having the race coming up was a great motivating factor to complete getting the boat prepared. Buying storm canvas and making sure that the refrigerators' lids lock in place get put off longer than they should—this way, we got it all done at once, rather than piecemeal."
Self-described cruisers, they turned over nominal skippering duties for the race to Jim Binch, a Long Island sailor who's done several Newport-Bermuda Races in the double-handed division with watch captain Ned Brooks. Skip Pond also sailed on the boat. Alex appreciated having their talent available to tap into during the race. "Skip was a treasure trove of knowledge and experience, and the fact that he's sailed the Outbounds so many miles was very helpful, too."
Alex's position as navigator helped him ramp up his weather-forecasting skills as he learned more about weather routing and GRIB files. Iris loved the race, too. The helmsman of the pair, she also felt she'd become a better sailor, and she loved learning what the boat was capable of in light airs when you can't motor. Sailing offshore for the first time, they became an even better team, Alex says. "We've always been pretty dialed into each other on the boat, communicating well and sharing sailing duties." He notes that though they improved their skills immensely and became much more confident in, and comfortable with, the boat, they have no plans to take up racing full-time.
A few days after the finish of the race, Iris flew home to work while Alex sailed the boat back to Newport with two crew. Though they're thinking about entering the Marion-Bermuda race next year, Iris and Alex say their plans to go cruising in a year or two are now confirmed.
Because it was the centennial, this year's Newport-Bermuda Race saw more traditional boats entered than usual. Sailing under two different handicap rules used to predict theoretical boat speed, the race was won by two boats more than 25 years old: Lively Lady II, a 1970s-vintage Carter 37 owned by William Hubbard III, took handicap honors in the IRC Class, and Sinn Fein, a 1960s-vintage Cal 40 owned by Peter Rebovich, won the ORR Class.
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