Celebrity
Louis Gossett Jr the 1st Black Man To Win Supporting Actor Oscar, Dies At 87
Los Angeles — Louis Gossett Jr., the first Black man to win an Oscar for supporting actor and an Emmy for his role in the pioneering television miniseries “Roots,” died. He was 87.
Neal L. Gossett, the actor’s first cousin, told The Associated Press that he died in Santa Monica, California. According to a family statement, Gossett died on Friday morning. No cause of death was revealed.
Gossett’s cousin remembers a man who walked with Nelson Mandela, a fantastic joke teller and a family member who faced and combated racism with dignity and humor.
Louis Gossett Jr., 1st Black Man To Win Supporting Actor Oscar, Dies At 87
“Forget the prizes, the flash and glamor, the Rolls-Royces, and the large villas in Malibu. “It’s about the humanity of the people he represented,” his cousin explained.
Louis Gossett always viewed his early career as a reverse Cinderella narrative, with success finding him at a young age and propelling him ahead to his Academy Award for “An Officer and A Gentleman.”
Gossett made his television debut as Fiddler in the historic 1977 miniseries “Roots,” which exposed slavery’s miseries. The large cast includes Ben Vereen, LeVar Burton, and John Amos.
In 1983, Gossett became the third Black actor to receive an Oscar nomination in the supporting actor category. He won for portraying the intimidating Marine drill instructor in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” with Richard Gere and Debra Winger. He also received a Golden Globe for the same role.
“More than anything, it was a huge affirmation of my position as a Black actor,” he said in his 2010 biography, “An Actor and a Gentleman.”
He received his first acting credit in his Brooklyn high school’s production of “You Can’t Take It with You” while recovering from an injury that kept him off the basketball team.
“I was hooked—and so was my audience,” he writes in his memoir.
His English teacher encouraged him to go to Manhattan to audition for “Take a Giant Step.” He got the part and made his Broadway debut in 1953 at sixteen.
“I knew too little to be nervous,” Gossett wrote. “In retrospect, I should have been scared to death as I walked onto that stage, but I wasn’t.”
Gossett went to New York University on a basketball and acting scholarship. He quickly began performing and singing on television shows presented by David Susskind, Ed Sullivan, Red Buttons, Merv Griffin, Jack Paar, and Steve Allen.
Gossett made friends with James Dean while studying acting with Steve McQueen, Martin Landau, and Marilyn Monroe at a branch of the Actors Studio run by Frank Silvera.
Gossett garnered critical praise in 1959 for his performance in the Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun” alongside Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Diana Sands.
He became a Broadway star, succeeding Billy Daniels in “Golden Boy” alongside Sammy Davis Jr. in 1964.
In 1961, Gossett made his first trip to Hollywood to work on the film adaptation of “A Raisin in the Sun.” He had negative memories of the trip, including staying in a cockroach-infested motel that was one of the only places that allowed Black people.
In 1968, he returned to Hollywood to play a prominent role in “Companions in Nightmare,” NBC’s first made-for-television film, alongside Melvyn Douglas, Anne Baxter, and Patrick O’Neal.
This time, Gossett was lodged at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Universal Studios had hired him a convertible. A Los Angeles County sheriff’s officer stopped him after he picked up the car and told him to turn off the radio and raise the roof before letting him go.
Within minutes, he was stopped by eight sheriff’s police, who forced him to lean against the car and open the trunk while they called the auto rental business before releasing him.
“Though I understood that I had no choice but to put up with this abuse, it was a terrible way to be treated, a humiliating way to feel,” Gossett wrote in his account of the experience. “I realized this was happening because I was Black and had been showing off with a fancy car — which, in their view, I had no right to be driving.”
After dinner at the hotel, he went for a walk and was stopped a block away by a police officer, who informed him that he had violated a rule barring walking around residential Beverly Hills after 9 p.m. Two other cops came, and Gossett stated that he had been shackled to a tree and in handcuffs for three hours. He was eventually set free when the original police car returned.
“Now I had come face-to-face with racism, and it was an ugly sight,” he said. “But it was not going to destroy me.”
Louis Gossett Jr., 1st Black Man To Win Supporting Actor Oscar, Dies At 87
Gossett claimed that while driving his restored 1986 Rolls-Royce Corniche II on the Pacific Coast Highway in the late 1990s, police stopped him. The police informed him he resembled someone they were looking for, but he recognized Gossett and departed.
He formed the Eracism Foundation to assist in creating a world free of racism.
Gossett made several guest appearances on shows such as “Bonanza,” “The Rockford Files,” “The Mod Squad,” “McCloud,” and a noteworthy performance with Richard Pryor on “The Partridge Family.”
Gossett was partying with Mamas and Papas members in August 1969 when they were invited to actor Sharon Tate’s house. He went home first to shower and change clothes. As he was about to depart, he saw a news flash on TV regarding Tate’s murder. That night, Charles Manson’s associates murdered her and several others.
“There had to be a reason for my escaping this bullet,” he stated in an email.
Louis Cameron Gossett was born on May 27, 1936, in Brooklyn’s Coney Island neighborhood to parents Louis Sr., a porter, and Hellen, a nurse. He eventually added Jr. to his name in honor of his father.
“The Oscar gave me the ability to choose good roles in films like ‘Enemy Mine,’ ‘Sadat,’ and ‘Iron Eagle,'” Gossett remarked in Dave Karger’s 2024 book “50 Oscar Nights.”
He claimed his statue was in storage.
“I’m going to donate it to a library so I don’t have to keep an eye on it,” he stated in the book. “I need to be free of it.”
Gossett starred in television films such as “The Story of Satchel Paige,” “Backstairs at the White House,” “The Josephine Baker Story,” for which he won another Golden Globe, and “Roots Revisited.”
However, he stated that winning an Oscar did not change the reality that all his parts were supporting.
Louis Gossett Jr., 1st Black Man To Win Supporting Actor Oscar, Dies At 87
He plays an unyielding patriarch in the 2023 version of “The Color Purple.”
After winning the Oscar, Gossett struggled with alcohol and cocaine addiction for several years. He went to rehab and was diagnosed with toxic mold illness, which he attributed to his Malibu home.
Gossett disclosed in 2010 that he had prostate cancer, which he said was detected early. In 2020, he was hospitalized for COVID-19.
He also left behind two sons: Satie, a producer-director from his second marriage, and Sharron, a chef whom he adopted after seeing the 7-year-old in a TV segment on kids in perilous situations. His first cousin is actor Robert Gossett.
Gossett’s first marriage to Hattie Glascoe was annulled. His second marriage, to Christina Mangosing, ended in divorce in 1975, as did his third, to actor Cyndi James-Reese, in 1992.
SOURCE – (AP)
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.”
“Kelce how does it feel that your brother is a f****t for dating Taylor Swift?”
Jason Kelce proceeded to slam this kids phone on the ground.
Looked like a Penn State student was getting in Kelce’s face for no reason. Wild scene in State College pic.twitter.com/3PEdZXWhSg
— Chives (@jarrett_daveler) November 2, 2024
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, 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.
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.
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
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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