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Stella Stevens, Star Of ‘The Nutty Professor,’ Is Dead At 84

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Actress Stella Stevens and actor Robert Vaughn, nominated for best supporting actor for “The Young Philadelphians,” arrive at the Academy Awards fashion show in Hollywood on April 4, 1960. Stevens, a leading lady in 1960s and 1970s comedies best known for playing the object of Jerry Lewis’ affection in “The Nutty Professor,” died Friday. She was 84 years old. (Photo courtesy of A.P.)

Stella Stevens, who played Jerry Lewis’s love interest in “The Nutty Professor” and was a big star in comedies in the 1960s and 1970s, has died. She was 84 years old.

According to her estate, Stevens died Friday in Los Angeles after a long illness.

Estelle Caro Eggleston was born in 1938 in Yazoo City, Mississippi. She married at 16, had her first and only child, actor/producer Andrew Stevens, when she was 17, and divorced two years later. She started acting and modeling while she was at Memphis State University. In 1959, she had a small part in the Bing Crosby musical “Say One for Me,” but “Li’l Abner” was what she thought of as her big break.

“The head of publicity at Paramount turned me into a global sex symbol,” Stevens told FilmTalk in 2017. “He had me doing a lot of layouts with photographers — indoors, outdoors, here and there — being seen in different places, going to the best restaurants, meeting with wonderful actors and directors … those were the golden years of Hollywood. It was a thrilling time.”

Stevens Was Named PLay Boy Of The Month

Soon after, she was named Playboy’s Playmate of the Month and signed with Paramount Pictures, which led to film work and “Girls! Girls! Girls!” with Elvis Presley, which she only agreed to do because she was promised a Montgomery Clift movie if she did it. She said it was a miserable six days of filming because of director Norman Taurog’s temper, though she said Presley was nice. The Clift film also failed to materialize, at least with her promised co-star. It became “Too Late Blues,” by John Cassavetes, with Bobby Darrin.

“Bobby was a very fine actor, but he was no Montgomery Clift,” she explained.

“The Nutty Professor” then appeared as Lewis’ student, Stella Purdy, with whom he is in love.

“Jerry Lewis had told the Paramount bosses he wanted to cast the most beautiful ingénue working at the studio — or something like that,” she explained. “We all tried to make the characters he’d created in the script special, wonderful, and unique — and I believe that’s why the film still holds up after all these years.”

Stevens

Stella Worked On Television Series For Most Of the 70’s And 80’s

She’d appear as a nun opposite Rosalind Russell in “The Secret of My Success,” “The Silencers,” and “Where Angels Go Trouble Follows” for Columbia Pictures. Other notable roles include “Slaughter” with Jim Brown, “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” with Sam Peckinpah, and “The Poseidon Adventure,” in which she played Linda Rogo, Ernest Borgnine’s character’s wife.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Stevens worked steadily in television, appearing in pilots for “Wonder Woman,” “Hart to Hart,” and “The Love Boat,” as well as series such as “Night Court,” “Murder She Wrote,” and “Magnum, P.I.”

In 2017, she’d say her favorite director she’d worked with was Vincente Minnelli on “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” which was released in 1963. She also directed several films, including the documentary “An American Heroine,” which was never released, and “The Ranch.” She left the company in 2010.

Stevens stated in a 1994 interview that she was concerned that she was not bringing out the best in her directors and that her ambitions had changed.

“I aspired to be like my idols, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. “I wanted to be a burst of youth, and then when I got crow’s feet or age, I’d be off the screen,” she explained. ” But I also planned to be a director… At 83, I saw (Bob Hope) cracking jokes and having a good time. I stated at the time that I never intended to quit. I aspire to be like this man. I want to go on and on. “I’d like to die on a movie set.”

SOURCE – (AP)

 

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Jason Kelce Smashes Football Fan’s Phone

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Jason Kelce Smashes College Football Fan's Phone

Retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce destroyed a Penn State football fan’s phone after the alleged heckler called his brother, Travis Kelce, a fag.

In now-viral footage published on X (previously Twitter) on Saturday, Nov. 2, the retired Philadelphia Eagles great was seen accompanied by football fans outside Beaver Stadium in State College, Pa., for the Penn State-Ohio State game.

As the individual capturing the tape lifted a fist to Jason, 36, and called his name for a fist bump, another man nearby hurled the homophobic slur at the retired Philadelphia Eagles star.

Hey, Kelce. How does it feel that your brother is a queer dating Taylor Swift?” the man questioned, referring to Travis, 34, who has been seeing Swift since 2023. Jason turned around seconds later, snatched the man’s phone, and crushed it to the ground.

“Looked like a Penn State student was getting in Kelce’s face for no reason,” the original X user who submitted the video remarked. “Wild scene in State College.”

Additional footage on X shows Jason smashing the phone on asphalt before picking it up and walking away. The phone’s owner, wearing a Penn State hoodie at the time of the incident, was shown in many videos strolling closely behind Jason and recording him before the conflict occurred.

Another footage published on X, which appears to have been filmed after Jason shattered the man’s phone, showed the hooded Penn State supporter trudging through a mob to pick up his phone off the ground.

“Give me my phone, bro,” he seemed to say to Jason.

The NFL alum seized the gadget first, then stood in front of the man and asked, “Who’s the fag now?” Others appeared to interfere.

The incident occurred while Jason was at Beaver Stadium for an appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay. The Ohio State Buckeyes won Saturday’s game 20-13 over the Penn State Nittany Lions.

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Shaun White’s Proposal To Nina Dobrev Was Romantic Gold

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Shaun White, the Olympic snowboarding champion, already has an impressive medal tally, but his surprise proposal to Nina Dobrev deserves a gold medal.

On Wednesday, the couple announced their engagement on Instagram. Dobrev posted photographs of the two hugging under an arch of white roses and showing off her five-carat Lorraine Schwartz engagement ring.

“RIP boyfriend, hello fiancé,” Dobrev said in the caption.

However, the photographs only tell half the tale, as Shaun devised an elaborate plan to surprise Dobrev with his proposal.

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Shaun White’s Proposal To Nina Dobrev Was Romantic Gold

According to a Vogue interview published Wednesday, Shaun said he assembled a team of people from the couple’s inner circle and Vogue personnel to trick Dobrev into thinking she had been invited to an intimate dinner party with Anna Wintour.

White claimed that his publicist emailed Dobrev a forged invitation to the event, which was scheduled to take place at the Golden Swan in New York City.

Dobrev accepted the invitation, joking that Shaun made it “look so legitimate.”

He even asked Dobrev’s stylist to outfit her in Chanel for the event.

Dobrev said she recognized what was happening when she entered the venue and saw White standing beneath the flowery arch.

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Shaun’s Proposal To Nina Dobrev Was Romantic Gold

“I went into shock,” Dobrev admitted, later adding that White “said all the right things” before she agreed.

According to the publication, after Shaun proposed, the couple partied into the early morning hours with close friends and relatives.

“Best night of my life,” Shaun captioned his Instagram story on Wednesday.

The duo first became romantically involved in 2020, and they have since publicly recorded their relationship, globe vacations, and White’s Olympic farewell on social media.

SOURCE  | CNN

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Hollywood Actress Teri Garr Passes Away at 79

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Hollywood Actress Teri Garr Passes Away at 79
Teri Garr, known for her roles in classics like "Young Frankenstein" and "Tootsie," has passed away at 79.

Hollywood actress Teri Garr, known for her roles in classics like “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” has passed away at 79. She died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” said publicist Heidi Schaeffer.

Admirers took to social media in her honor, with writer-director Paul Feig calling her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more” and screenwriter Cinco Paul saying: “Never the star, but always shining. She made everything she was in better.”

Throughout her career, the performer, often known as Terri, Terry, or Terry Ann, seemed destined for show business from a young age.

Her father was Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comic, and her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original high-kicking Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Their daughter began dancing classes at six and was performing with the San Francisco and Los Angeles ballet companies by age fourteen.

She was 16 years old when she joined the road crew of “West Side Story” in Los Angeles, and she began starring in small roles in films as early as 1963.

In an interview from 1988, she described how she landed the role in “West Side Story.” After being rejected at her initial audition, she returned the following day dressed differently and was accepted.

Teri Garr, a comedian

Teri Garr then found steady work as a movie dancer, appearing in the chorus of nine Elvis Presley films, including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Roustabout,” and “Clambake.”

She has also appeared on various television shows, including “Star Trek,” “Dr. Kildare,” and “Batman,” and was a featured dancer on the rock ‘n’ roll music show “Shindig,” the rock concert performance “T.A.M.I.,” and a cast member of “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”

Her breakthrough role was as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller The Conversation. This led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who offered her the Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant role in Young Frankenstein if she could speak with a German accent.

“Cher had this German woman, Renata, making wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr once said.

The film established her as a great comic performer, with New Yorker film writer Pauline Kael calling her “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on screen.”

Her big smile and off-center appeal helped her land roles in “Oh, God!” with George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife), and “Tootsie,” in which she played the girlfriend who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange and discovers he has dressed up as a woman to revive his career.

 A gift for spontaneous humor

Teri Garr, best known for comedy, has shown in films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion, and The Escape Artist that she can also tackle drama.

She had a gift for spontaneous humor, frequently playing David Letterman’s foil during early guest appearances on N.B.C.’s “Late Night With David Letterman”.

Her appearances grew so frequent, and the pair’s good-natured bickering so convincing that rumors of romantic involvement circulated for a while. Years later, Letterman acknowledged those early appearances with helping the program become a success.

During those years, Garr began to experience “a little beeping or ticking” in her right leg. It started in 1983 and expanded to her right arm, but she thought she could handle it. By 1999, her symptoms had gotten so bad that she saw a doctor and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

After disclosing her diagnosis, Garr became a spokesman for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, giving hilarious remarks at events in the United States and Canada.

Source: AP

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