On Your Toes Reviews

Variety

BroadwayWorld.com

Pitbullshark

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).

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.”

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.

Celebrity Do Gooders

Check out this interview with Stefanie Powers.

http://tinyurl.com/2uo9fq

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.”

Misspelled Her Name

Check this out. Her name's misspelled.

http://tinyurl.com/ys9pfs

Stefanie Powers | AfterElton.com

Check this out:

http://tinyurl.com/2lwzv2

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.

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!

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

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.

Stefanie Powers on Paul O'Grady

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.

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).

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).

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".

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.

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.

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?"