The Great Comedienne

I was hoping, like everyone else, that Betty White would make it to her one hundredth birthday later this month, especially when she herself was looking forward to celebrating it.  So when word came on New Year's Eve about her death, I was completely bummed, as was everyone else in America.

Betty White was a television and comedy legend, having played numerous roles on TV and having been known for her quick wit (particularly as a game show panelist) and her understated performances.  Her two best known roles sum up her talent perfectly - "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"'s Sue Ann Nivens, who was all sweetness and lightness as a homemaking show host but vicious and conniving off-screen, and "The Golden Girls"'s Rose, a naïve but kindly woman who loved people and was the sort of person who would have annoyed Sue Ann.  White played freewheeling matriarchal characters from Grandma Annie in the romantic comedy movie The Proposal to the very well-traveled Elka Ostrovsky in the 2010s TV series "Hot In Cleveland," and she excelled at just about everything she did.  

And she managed to keep us all entertained for six decades.  She was and remains an American institution  RIP. 😢

Debbie Reynolds: 1932-2016

All right, this can't be happening, but it has happened; Debbie Reynolds has died one day after losing her daughter?  Apparently the death of Carrie Fisher was too much for Reynolds to handle.  And of course this is a great loss, because Reynolds was a wonderful actress and an astonishing singer and dacner, as anyone who ever saw any of  her movies already knows.

I fee llike the world is coming to end.  As far as this development is concerned, I can only wish for strength for Todd Fisher, Reynolds's son and Carrie Fisher's brother. RIP. :-(      

Elizabeth Taylor: 1932-2011

I was never a big fan of Elizabeth Taylor, who died today of congestive heart failure, though not because I didn't think she was a good actress. By all accounts she was a great one - and one that knew how to be a celebrity and how to put fame to good use (consider everything this veteran actor did to help fight AIDS while another veteran actor, President Ronald Reagan, did not). I just never saw any of her films. I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that, but it's the truth; I have seen many classic films, and I have idolized many actors I was too young to see the movies of in the theaters rather than on TV. But Elizabeth Taylor movies? I somehow didn't get to seeing any.

But she was a formidable presence in Hollywood, and she left an indelible mark on our culture. The AIDS fight was one aspect, and so was the way she carried herself in public. Despite her many marriages, despite her fluctuating weight, despite all of that, she still knew how to be a star - how to be Elizabeth Taylor - and while she may have lent herself to parody, she never parodied herself. She was who she was. R.I.P.

Now I have to see some of her movies.

Lindsay Lowdown

I was in the gym a couple of days ago and the following news item appeared on MSNBC's news ticker as I was watching the tube from my treadmill. Lindsay Lohan, currently serving time in jail while trying to overcome her penchant for booze and speaking to Vanity Fair, says she wants her career back.

I love it when the cable news channels give me a little nugget I can build a blog entry on.

You might be expecting me to write a nasty entry about Lindsay Lohan in light of everything that's gone down with her . You'd be wrong. There are plenty of "it" girls in the past three decades whose careers have thrived and prospered because they either avoided the same pitfalls Lindsay Lohan fell in or got out of them rather quickly. Yet they all have one thing in common - they have no talent. Britney Spears? Pluh-EEZE!

Lindsay Lohan is not a bad actress or singer. Anyone who caught her performance in Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, the last movie Robert Altman ever directed, knows she can entertain audiences with the best of them - and did, since that movie (like most of Altman's pictures) was an ensemble. Lohan can and should get her career back, provided she can overcome her drinking once and for all and get into a good Alcoholics Anonymous program. To those who doubt her ability to do so, I urge you to consider Robert Downey, Jr., whose career was left for dead and that came back in a big way. Heck, if Downey could do it, anything is possible.

Please, Lindsay, get your career back and work your way to becoming the great twenty-first century entertainer you were meant to be, and do it as fast as you can - as fast as the justice system lets you - before Lady Gaga ends up starring in Desperately Seeking Susan 2: Daughter of Susan. You don't want to leave a void for someone else to fill, do you?

Goodbye Natasha Richardson

I feel lousy about the news that Natasha Richardson died of injuries sustained during a fall during a skiing lesson in Quebec. She was 45. She was as much an accomplished actress in her own right as her mother and aunt, Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, respectively, and her most esteemed role was neither in the movies nor on stage. It was being the love of Liam Neeson's life.

Not very cheery tonight. Sorry. . . .

R.I.P. :-(