Latest news with #EGOT
Forbes
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Mel Brooks Turns 99: A Celebration Of An Extraordinary Career
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 21: Mel Brooks speaks onstage at the "Spaceballs" screening during the ... More 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival at TCL Chinese Theatre on April 21, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo byfor TCM) Mark your calendars - one year from today, Mel Brooks will turn 100! And today we wish the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award (EGOT) winner a Happy 99th Birthday! The irony of Brooks reaching age 99 is the classic sitcom Get Smart, which he created with Buck Henry in 1965 and featured Barbara Feldon as Agent 99. Get Smart, which aired through 1971 and won seven Emmys and two Golden Globe Awards, is just one of the endless accomplishments of Mr. Brooks, who is still actively working. Fun factoid: Don Adams as Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) talking on the shoe phone has been parodied by many comedians over the years. Don Adams (1923 - 2005) as Maxwell Smart/Agent 86 and Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 in the television ... More series 'Get Smart', circa 1965. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/) Another fun factoid: Mel Brooks is one of only 21 entertainers to win the EGOT. Born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926, Mel Brooks began his lengthy career as a comic and a writer for the groundbreaking Sid Caeser variety show Your Show of Shows, which ran from 1950 to 1954. There he worked with eventual legends Neil Simon and Carl Reiner, whom he remained best friends with until Reiner's death in 2020 at age 98. Did you know?: Mel's last name, Brooks, is an adaptation of his mother's maiden name, Brookman. Promotional portrait of American comedians Sid Caesar (left) and Mel Brooks in 'The Sid Caesar, ... More Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris Special,' which was originally broadcast on April 5, 1967. The special was a reunion of cast members from 'Your Show Of Shows.' (Photo by CBS) NEW YORK, NY - [August 18, 2016: The Writer's Room located at City Center 130 West 56th street, ... More where YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS came to life each week from February 25, 1950 until June 5, 1954. The writing staff included Sid Caeser, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Howard Morris, Mel Tolkin, Lucille Kallen, Tony Webster, Joe Stein, Danny Simon, Max Liebman and Woody Allen. It waslocated on the 6th floor. Photographed on August 18, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by) Sid Caesar then created sketch-comedy Caesar's Hour, which ran from 1954 to 1957 and included most of the same cast and writers, including Brooks and the arrivals of Woody Allen and Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H). Then, after creating live act the '2000 Year Old Man' with Carl Reiner and appearing on The Steve Allen Show with it, the pair segued to three comedy albums, a 1975 animated TV special, and a reunion album in 1998. Trivia note: Brooks adapted the '2000 Year Old Man' character to create the '2500-Year-Old Brewmaster" for Ballantine Beer in the 1960s. 1974: Actors Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner pose for a publicity portrait for their program "2000 And ... More Thirteen Year Old Man" in 1974. (Photo by Michael) Brooks headed to Broadway with the creation of the musical All American in 1962. Then came Get Smart. And, for several years, Brooks explored the ideas of a musical comedy of the notorious Adolph Hitler, which turned into his first feature comedic film, The Producers, in 1968. Brooks won The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and his film career skyrocketed. 1968: Actors Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel and Lee Meredith perform scene in Mel Brooks classic movie ... More "The Producers". Winner of two Academy Awards. (Photo by Michael) Next was The Twelve Chairs in 1970, and two more collaborations with Gene Wilder: Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, both in 1974. Fun factoid: the legendary actress Heddy Lamarr sued Brooks over the use of the name Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles and settled out of court. Actors Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman and Teri Garr in a scene from the movie 'Young ... More Frankenstein', 1974. (Photo by Stanley Bielecki) Actor Mel Brooks (left) sits on the floor beside Harvey Korman as Cleavon Little kneels atop a desk, ... More in a still from the film, 'Blazing Saddles,' directed by Mel Brooks, 1974. (Photo by Warner Bros./Courtesy of Getty Images) Brooks undeniably struck a comedic chord with audiences. Young Frankenstein was the third-highest-grossing film domestically of 1974, just behind Blazing Saddles with a gross of $86 million. Heading back to television, Brooks created the 1975 sitcom When Things Were Rotten, a parody of Robin Hood. Despite only airing for 13 episodes, he resurrected dialogue from the comedy, and other Brooks films, for Robin Hood: Men in Tights on the big screen in 1993. Cary Elwes and Amy Yasbeck celebrate in a scene from the film 'Robin Hood: Men In Tights', 1993. ... More (Photo by 20th Century-Fox/Getty Images) Later Mel Brooks features include Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977) and, through his company Brooksfilms, Frances (1982), The Fly (1986), My Favorite Year (1982), History of the World Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), Life Stinks (1991), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). There was also the one season TV sitcom The Nutt House with Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman in 1989. And, in 2001, came the blockbuster Broadway musical The Producers, based on the earlier film. 388331 01: People stand in line outside the St. James Theatre in New York April 25, 2001 to purchase ... More tickets for the Broadway production of "The Producers". "The Producers," a $10 million stage version of Mel Brooks'' classic film comedy is Broadway's biggest hit since "The Lion King" with $100 ticket prices which are the highest on Broadway. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Newsmakers) Fun factoid: Brooks guest starred as Uncle Phil in four episodes of the Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt sitcom Mad About You from 1996 to 1999 and won the Emmy Award three times for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. Not a bad gig! MAD ABOUT YOU — "The Penis" Episode 14 — Pictured: (l-r) Paul Reiser as Paul Buchman, Helen Hunt as ... More Jamie Stemple Buchman, Mel Brooks as Uncle Phil, Lawrence Mandley as Leon, unknown, Eric Allan Kramer as Skippy — Photo by: Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES: Comedian Mel Brooks points to his Emmy awardat the 50th Annual ... More Primetime Emmy Awards 13 Sept at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Brooks won his Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as Uncle Phil in "Mad About You". . AFP PHOTO Kim KULISH/mn (Photo credit should read KIM KULISH/AFP via Getty Images) In recent years, Brooks published his memoir All About Me in 2021. He wrote and produced History of the World Part II, a follow-up series on Hulu, also in 2021. And just this month he announced Spaceballs 2 is bring produced with a release date targeted for 2027. Oh, and now there is also Very Young Frankenstein, a television project, for FX, that Brooks is producing. The moral of this story: Staying active is the 'secret sauce' for longevity. And today we wish Mel Brooks a Happy 99th Birthday! American film director Mel Brooks, New York, New York, July 1976. (Photo by Jack Mitchell/Getty ... More Images)
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Whoopi Goldberg Issues Bold Statement Against Critics ‘Who Don't Know Me'
Whoopi Goldberg Issues Bold Statement Against Critics 'Who Don't Know Me' originally appeared on Parade. It seems like took the schoolyard adage of 'sticks and stones' to heart, because she's letting her haters know that their words can never hurt her. The EGOT winner issued a bold statement on the June 4 episode of The View after the panelists touched on the topic of not being able to please everybody. Related: It all started when they spoke about Jimmy Fallon's recent admission that he struggles with knowing that 'not everyone is rooting for you and some people want you to fail.' The group then pivoted towards online commenters who take to the internet to criticize the show's panelists, with asking Goldberg if she cares about the opinions of strangers. 'No. No, I don't,' Goldberg shared as the audience clapped. Related: 'Because nobody can make me feel worse about myself than I can do to me. So I don't need you, who don't know me, talking any crap to me, because you don't know anything,' Goldberg continued. 'So why am I taking time to be hurt by something you say, when either you don't listen, or you are choosing to take this the way you want to take it?' The Ghost star then concluded, saying, 'None of us start out to step in poop. But, we are in poop constantly, because people decide that you've said something that you didn't say.' Next: Whoopi Goldberg Issues Bold Statement Against Critics 'Who Don't Know Me' first appeared on Parade on Jun 4, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 4, 2025, where it first appeared.
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Barbra Streisand goes viral for thinly-veiled dig at Wicked and Ariana Grande
Barbra Streisand went viral on Tuesday for making a thinly-veiled dig at Wicked, the hit big-screen adaptation of the 2003 Broadway musical starring her upcoming duet partner Ariana Grande. 'I showed it to my grandchildren,' the 83-year-old EGOT champ told the Just for Variety podcast on Monday. 'They loved Wicked.' When asked again directly if she enjoyed Wicked, Barbra avoided expressing her opinion but offered: 'I was just watching their reaction and they were totally fine with the witches. I was surprised. A four- and a six-year-old, you know?' At that, X user @TomZohar mocked up a movie poster topped by Streisand's unenthused pull quote 'totally fine' along with the caption: 'Wicked's marketing team after reading this interview.' X user @HeyBuckHey tweeted a meme of Aretha Franklin similarly responding to the Wall Street Journal in 2014 about how she felt about Taylor Swift: 'Great gowns. Beautiful gowns.' 'Honestly the funnier part to me is the implication that children wouldn't be okay with/enamored by witches and magic,' X user @BenWambeke tweeted. 'As if Harry Potter, Frozen etc never existed LOL!' X user @norabird gushed: 'God she's perfect!' 'I love her,' X user @kikiballchange agreed. The Brooklyn-born grandmother-of-four enlisted the 31-year-old pop star's four-octave soprano pipes as well as Mariah Carey's five-octave soprano pipes to help her sing One Heart, One Voice on her 37th studio album The Secret Of Life: Partners, Volume Two, dropping this Friday. 'They're the hottest, biggest, most wonderful voices. And they both said yes to join me,' Barbra gushed of Ariana and the 56-year-old R&B diva who collaborated on a Yes, And? remix last year. 'They brought me people that were just superb. Everyone was different and yet marvelous.' Streisand's collection of duets also features Hozier, Paul McCartney, Sam Smith, Bob Dylan, Laufey, Tim McGraw, James Taylor, Sting, Josh Groban, and Seal. It marked Grande's (born Butera) third time performing with Carey, who hired her and Jennifer Hudson to appear in her Apple TV+ Magical Christmas Special in 2020. 'Honestly the funnier part to me is the implication that children wouldn't be okay with/enamored by witches and magic,' X user @BenWambeke tweeted. 'As if Harry Potter, Frozen etc never existed LOL!' On May 30, the two-time Grammy winner was cast as Henry Focker's ball-busting fiancée in John Hamburg's untitled fourth Meet the Parents movie already scheduled to hit US theaters November 25, 2026. Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Teri Polo, and Owen Wilson have all signed on to reprise their roles in the Universal Pictures comedy. But don't expect the Yentl director-star to reprise her part as frizzy-haired matriarch Roz Focker from Meet the Fockers in 2004 as 'They'd have to pay me a lot of money.' 'I didn't get paid what the other people got paid and so I'm pi**ed off,' Barbra scoffed. 'I was in the time when women were getting paid less than the men. The head of Universal was Ron Meyer at the time, and he actually sent me a bonus check. It was very sweet.' The prior three Meet the Parents films, spanning 2000-2010, amassed a combined $1.1B at the global box office. Meanwhile, Streisand - whose memoir My Name Is Barbra was published in 2023 - is currently in production on a multi-part documentary about her life directed by Frank Marshall. It marked Grande's (born Butera) third time performing with Carey, who hired her and Jennifer Hudson (L) to appear in her Apple TV+ Magical Christmas Special in 2020 July 1 will mark the 29th anniversary of the Love Will Survive singer and second husband James Brolin's first blind date after they were set up by a mutual friend following his 1995 divorce from second ex-wife Jan Smithers and her 1971 divorce from ex-husband Elliot Gould. The 84-year-old Emmy winner had to ask for Barbra's hand in marriage three times before she agreed, and they reportedly did not have sex until their wedding night. Streisand has sold over 150M records worldwide and topped the US Billboard Hot 100 five times throughout her six-decade career. Fans can catch more of Ariana as the Good Witch of the South Galinda Upland in Jon M. Chu's $150M-budget sequel Wicked: For Good, which hits US/UK theaters on November 21. The first fantasy flick received critical acclaim and amassed $756M at the global box office.
USA Today
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sánchez wedding heads to Venice: More stars who tied the knot in Italy
Move over, Paris, another city of love is in the running. As billionaire Jeff Bezos and his soon-to-be wife Lauren Sánchez descend upon Venice, Italy, for their extravagant nuptials, they follow in the footsteps of countless other celebrities who have tied the knot in the country. A couple Kardashian weddings have taken place in Italy, drawing famously on the Riviera and religious-inspired aesthetics of the country, and celebrity vacation hot spot Lake Como has also drawn several famous nuptials, the vast blue body contrasting romantically with old Italian villas. Here's a look at the other A-listers who have held their weddings in Italy. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez's wedding: Everything we know so far George and Amal Clooney George and Amal Clooney wed in Venice in 2014. Salma Hayek and François-Henri Pinault Salma Hayek and her billionaire husband, François-Henri Pinault, wed in 2009. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West The since-divorced reality star Kim Kardashian and the rapper now known as Ye tied the knot in Florence in 2014. Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker Following in the footsteps of her younger sister, Kourtney Kardashian also wed in Italy, saying "I do" to famed drummer Travis Barker in 2022. John Legend and Chrissy Teigen The EGOT winner and swimsuit-model-turned chef wed at Lake Como in 2013. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes Since-divorced couple Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise wed at Lake Bracciano, near Rome, in 2006. Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake The 2000s heartthrob and "7th Heaven" actress wed in Puglia, Italy, in 2012. Emily Blunt and John Krasinski "The Office" star John Krasinski and "The Devil Wears Prada" favorite Emily Blunt tied the knot at Lake Como in 2010. Kate Upton and Justin Verlander The model and actress married her MLB star fiancé in Tuscany in 2017. Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka The "How I Met Your Mother" star Neil Patrick Harris tied the knot in Perugia, Italy, with David Burtka in 2014. What else to know about the Sánchez-Bezos wedding Bezos and Sánchez have been rather tight-lipped about their upcoming nuptials, and the exact date of their wedding has not been revealed. Reuters and The New York Times reported that the three-day wedding is likely to occur between June 26 and 28. The couple has seemingly kicked off their wedding week with a foam party on Bezos' multi-million dollar yacht Koru off the coast of Europe on June 22, according to photos published by media outlets including Fox News and People. Bezos, Sánchez and their guests were photographed in swimsuits, playing with foam that bubbled up on the deck. Contributing: Saman Shafiq
Telegraph
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Disney legend Alan Menken: The dwarves are the whole point of Snow White
'Are we going to talk about Disney and woke?' Alan Menken makes a horrified face and draws a finger across his neck in a throat-cutting mime. 'I'm going to pull the plug on this interview if there is any mention of Disney and politics!' He's joking. Having composed some of the most memorable scores in the history of animation, including nine for Disney – from The Little Mermaid to Beauty and the Beast – Menken is not about to let a culture-war kerfuffle throw him off balance. 'It's fine,' he says. 'Ask me anything.' We are meeting a few months ahead of the West End opening of Hercules, a new stage-musical version of Disney's 1997 animated riff on Greek mythology, set to Menken's original gospel-driven score (with lyrics by David Zippel). 'It's a very sophisticated score stylistically,' he says. 'It has a lightness to it and a rhythmic propulsion.' A native New Yorker, Menken doesn't do false modesty – and why should he? After all, he's one of only 27 people ever to have achieved the EGOT, winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. His last Academy Award came in 1996, for Pocahontas, though he's been nominated multiple times since. 'The Oscars have dried up because I've won eight of them now.' Yet it's another Disney production, the live-action remake of Snow White – not a film that Menken had anything to do with – which is dominating the headlines when we meet and that will, in the weeks that follow its woeful box-office performance, come to be seen as a nadir in the studio's muddled, frequently controversial project to update its much-loved back catalogue. At the time, Rachel Zegler, Snow White's leading lady, was drawing criticism from some quarters for comments she had made about Palestine, while the decision to have computer-generated dwarfs in an otherwise human cast had gone down badly with just about everyone. 'How you deal with all this stuff, it's as tricky as hell,' says Menken, who is in two minds about the whole idea of updating the classics, although he is sympathetic towards Zegler. 'She's just a kid. Yes, she said 'Free Palestine'. It's the kind of thing any of us might have said. We all want people to be free. Although, of course, there are also the nuances of history. 'But when it comes to the dwarfs…' He pauses, takes a breath. 'I'm sorry, but the dwarfs are what Snow White is all about!' There's been a bit of 'that stuff' with Hercules, he admits. The story, in which Hercules, a demigod raised among mortals, learns to embrace his destiny, has been updated for the stage show and, says Menken, now allows for its hero – depicted in the cartoon as a buff, blue-eyed redhead and played on stage by the dark-haired, Surrey-born actor Luke Brady – to be portrayed as 'a racial outsider'. Menken applauds the 'richness' this brings to the character, but laments the toning down of the cartoon's randy satyr, Philoctetes, who, he says with a hint of regret, will not be seen on stage 'running around lusting over nymphs'. 'At the time, you play with certain clichés because it's fun,' he says. 'But each new adaptation has to be sensitive to the passing of time and the way people will look at certain issues.' Menken is a hyperactive speaker; he talks in stops and starts, and is as physically expressive as any one of the animated characters to whom he has given such glorious musical voice over the years. He and his writing partner Howard Ashman are widely credited with reviving Disney's fortunes during the late 1980s after a prolonged period of creative and commercial decline for the studio in the decades that had followed the death of Walt Disney in 1966. The duo, who had already had a theatrical hit in 1982 with Little Shop of Horrors, struck gold three times in quick succession with The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992), the lyrics for the last completed by Tim Rice following Ashman's death from Aids in 1991. Menken, who proudly calls himself 'the keeper of the flame', would go on to score Newsies, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Enchanted and Tangled. For him, the essence of Disney can be traced back to those classics of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that have enriched the childhoods of multiple generations, and to the spirit of which his own scores nod. 'Fantasia, Dumbo, the later Winnie the Pooh: they all had a depth and a beauty, a proper form, a moral,' he says. 'When the Aids crisis hit, or when 9/11 happened, I couldn't watch the news, I couldn't watch my favourite action adventure movies, it was just too fraught a time. But I would watch Disney. For me, those films were the only safe space in the world. I grew up on those films, but, by the 1980s, it had all gone. So Howard and I came along and rebooted it.' Now, the company to which he has dedicated his career once again finds itself at a turning point, caught between trying to appease the more progressive yet censorious Left and the diehard traditionalist Right. Although Menken is in favour of a live-action remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (initially announced in 2019), he accepts that, given the story's more 'problematic' aspects, it is unlikely to go ahead. 'People will go, 'Let's leave out the fact that Frollo [Quasimodo's clergyman nemesis] is obsessed with the gipsy Esmeralda.' They'll say, 'We can't have Quasimodo as a hunchback.' Well, f--- that. I'd love to make a Hunchback movie [that follows] what Victor Hugo wrote. But it can't be done.' However, he says, swerving onto a more diplomatic course, 'I don't think Disney is having an identity crisis. Obviously, Disney has been very open for gay people and diversity and woke. And then woke became a dirty word. Sometimes, when you press against limits, things push back. But I know Bob,' he says, referring to the Disney CEO, Bob Iger. 'I think he's pretty savvy about the business model.' Menken grew up in a Jewish household in New York City during the dawn of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s and, throughout his early years, set his heart on becoming a pop star. 'I didn't want to go to school, ever,' he says. 'I was very ADHD. My parents were appalled.' When he told them he wanted to be a songwriter, in the mould of his hero Bob Dylan, they insisted that he practise the piano every single day. 'They imprinted on me the need to dig in and work. They would say, 'You want to be a shoe salesman instead?' I find it very depressing to buy shoes now.' After graduating from college in 1972, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop – a well-respected incubator for future Broadway talent – partly to placate his parents, who were musical-theatre fanatics. That same year, he met and fell in love with Janis Roswick, a ballet dancer; half a century later, they remain married and have two daughters. Suddenly, the itinerant lifestyle of a touring pop star no longer looked quite so appealing, so Menken dedicated himself instead to composition. It's often said of his Disney music that it lacks an identifying style of his own, unlike, say, the higher-brow Stephen Sondheim, whose musical imprimatur is instantly recognisable. 'You can only pull on the stuff that's in your gut,' Menken says. 'And when it comes to audiences, the great thing about Disney is that it's a leveller.' All the same, he is keen to point out that his scores do have musical and emotional specificity, be it the 'apocalyptic' Phil Spector girl-group sound behind Little Shop of Horrors or the ragtime influence on Newsies. 'I'm not trying to be egotistical, but that was very much my and Howard's approach: we established throughout our scores a specificity of place,' he says. By comparison, 'a lot of the new Disney scores are generic…'. He stops, as if reconsidering what he is about to say. 'I think they have moved into a different place, where a Lin-Manuel score is very much Lin-Manuel,' he continues, referring to Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, who wrote the Oscar-nominated score for Disney's 2021 film Encanto. 'That's not what Howard and I did, but, hey, things evolve.' At 75, Menken still has multiple projects on the go – including both a live-action remake and a stage adaptation of Tangled, the 2010 Disney animation loosely based on the story of Rapunzel – and can't imagine himself retiring any time soon. 'Well, I can if I think what I'm producing isn't good enough,' he says, 'but I haven't reached that point yet.'
