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    Olga James, a Star of ‘Carmen Jones’ and ‘Mr. Wonderful,’ Dies at 95

    An operatic soprano, she had high-profile roles on film and stage in the 1950s. But after that, she mostly spent her career away from the limelight.Olga James, an actress and operatic soprano whose career highlights occurred nearly back to back in the mid-1950s — as Harry Belafonte’s jilted girlfriend in the all-Black musical film “Carmen Jones” and as Sammy Davis Jr.’s love interest in the Broadway show “Mr. Wonderful” — died on Jan. 25 in Los Angeles. She was 95.Her death, in an assisted living facility, was confirmed by her niece Janet Adderley.Ms. James had performed with an opera company in France and in a popular musical revue in Atlantic City, N.J., when her manager, Abe Saperstein — the basketball impresario behind the Harlem Globetrotters — landed her an audition in 1954 for “Carmen Jones,” the movie version of Oscar Hammerstein II’s hit 1943 Broadway update of Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen.” The opera is set in 1820s Spain; the setting of the film, like that of the Broadway musical, is the American South during World War II.Auditioning for the role of Cindy Lou, whose boyfriend, Joe (played by Mr. Belafonte), a soldier headed for flight school, is seduced by Carmen (Dorothy Dandridge), a worker in a parachute factory, Ms. James sang an aria at the Alvin Theater (now the Neil Simon Theater) for Otto Preminger, the film’s imperious director.“It wasn’t a stretch for me,” she was quoted as saying in “Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King” (2007), by Foster Hirsch. “I was that character, a country-looking girl. I was just a little ingénue.”Ms. James with Harry Belafonte in a publicity photo for “Carmen Jones.” She did her own singing; his singing voice and Dorothy Dandridge’s were dubbed because they could not sing in an operatic range.20th Century Fox, via Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesShe won the role. “Carmen Jones” would be her first movie — and her last.Of the film’s three lead performers, only Ms. James did her own singing; Mr. Belafonte’s and Ms. Dandridge’s songs were dubbed because they could not sing in an operatic range.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3, Episode 3 Recap: It Wants More

    The Wilderness is becoming very vocal lately. And awfully demanding, too.Season 3, Episode 3: ‘Them’s the Brakes’In the third episode of this season of “Yellowjackets,” the Wilderness is playing mind games, but so are the girls. Which is worse? The fever dreams involving talking llamas and dangerous slap bracelets? Or the back-stabbing that comes with psychological manipulation? Honestly, it’s a toss up.This week’s episode highlights what has always been the strong suit of “Yellowjackets” — the ways in which being a teenage girl, or an emotionally stunted grown woman, dovetail with fantastical horror. The fights based on interpersonal drama can feel just as operatic as any hallucinogenic nightmare brought on by a mysterious woodland entity.Mari, perhaps the nastiest of the current Teen Yellowjackets, sums it up well when she is trapped in the cave with Ben. In Mari’s attempt to escape, they both were sprayed with mace, leaving them equally in pain and defeated. Ben starts lamenting his current situation, explaining how he only started being a high school substitute after tearing his ACL. He’s just a “normal guy” who goes to Dave Matthews Band concerts even though he doesn’t like them very much, he moans. The Wilderness wails.Mari responds with a story about when, as a 12-year-old, she watched her younger cousin die of cancer. It’s an oddly earnest tale from the usually sarcastic Mari. But she has a point. “I think maybe there are two versions of reality,” she says. “Most of the time the other one, the bad one, is just hiding or waiting, but it’s all real.” For Mari, it’s all one in the same: the supernatural horror they are facing and the cruelty of one another. Perhaps that’s why she herself is so cruel.Still, after what seems to be a shared moment of tenderness, she convinces Ben to let her go, promising to keep his secret. But Mari can’t discard her cynicism. As soon as she gets back to camp, her story falls apart. The other girls catch her in a lie, and she immediately spills Ben’s whereabouts.She invites her bad reality back to Ben. Shauna, furious, leads a witch hunt into the woods to find him with Mari as guide. They may as well be carrying torches and pitchforks. They do eventually find Ben, but they also encounter another terror.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Safe House’ Review: Singing a Song of Loneliness

    Enda Walsh’s formal experiment, at St. Ann’s Warehouse, finds him in pared-back mode.Wearing a meadow-green T-shirt that proclaims her an Irish Princess, Grace dances with a white stuffed bunny that is her confidant. The music is Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” waltz, and it’s a clue to how Grace’s life plays out — not the ballet’s storybook ending, just the tragic parts.In this snippet of a scene near the top of Enda Walsh’s new play “Safe House,” which opened on Thursday at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, the music gets speedier, more intense, all sense of comfort vanishing. Control, too, but that’s hardly a constant for Grace, a homeless young woman with a mind blurred by alcohol. Like Sleeping Beauty after the curse kicks in, she is exiled from a life that looked secure enough from the outside but was treacherous from the start.Fair warning, though: Woven through with songs by Anna Mullarkey that are sung by Kate Gilmore as Grace, Walsh’s Abbey Theater production feels more like a live performance of a concept album than a play. In his plumbing of trauma and abuse — think “The Walworth Farce” or “Medicine,” his most recent play at St. Ann’s — he can have a way of reaching right into your viscera. Not here, unfortunately.In “Safe House,” it is 1996 in rural Galway, and Grace is scrabbling together an existence on the margins. Guzzling box wine, trading her body for money, she plays grim bits of her sepia past on repeat in her head; for us, these are projections upstage or scraps of audio. Long gone though she is from the home she grew up in, which for her was a place of harm, she has not severed every family tie.On the other end of a phone, we hear her father pick up.“I can hear you breathing,” he says, in Irish. “Where are you, Grace?”The set and costume design are by Katie Davenport, while video is by Jack Phelan.Teddy WolffWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    10 ‘Saturday Night Live’ Catchphrases That Readers Love

    Hundreds of you told us about your favorite “Saturday Night Live” catchphrases. Here are the 10 that came up the most.To mark the 50th season of “Saturday Night Live,” we took a look at 50 memorable catchphrases from the show. We also asked readers to tell us about the ones you use with your friends and loved ones, and why. Hundreds of you responded. Here are the 10 phrases that came up the most, along with stories — some of which have been edited — you shared.‘More cowbell’“As a percussionist I think we ALWAYS need more rhythm in our lives. The skit spurred me to buy my own personal cowbell.”— Sheila Krueger, Phoenix“I teach art. There is often something just not quite right about a painting … it needs something.”— Gerard Brown, Philadelphia“We owned a restaurant. It was the perfect answer to any dilemma or flagging energy.”— Mary Beams, Grand Marais, Minn.“I play in a community band. When something doesn’t sound right someone will shout out ‘more cowbell’!”— Carol McMullen, Bowdoinham, MaineWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    After Netflix Success, ‘Suits’ Opens Another Firm

    The creator of the legal drama didn’t expect to make any more spinoffs. But after “Suits” became a rerun hit on Netflix, “Suits LA” was born.On a January morning, attractive people in tailored attire stood in a sun-skimmed California courtroom, arguing a motion in the murder trial.“Bring the venom!” the director, Anton Cropper, said encouragingly.This was on the set of “Suits LA,” a sibling of “Suits,” the legal procedural that ran on USA for nine seasons, from 2011 to 2019. (It is also a cousin of “Pearson,” a short-lived “Suits” spinoff.) Back in the courtroom, a clash over evidentiary rules turned vicious as one lawyer hissed at another, “You immoral piece of filth!” Time, it seemed, had not mellowed the mildly glamorous, majorly cutthroat world of “Suits.”The original “Suits” had done well on USA during its run — well enough to be renewed and renewed. But its hold on the cultural imagination was never especially strong and its reviews were, like the Season 1 suits themselves, muted. “Though the series begins amusingly enough, it quickly descends into cloying buddy escapade,” The New York Times wrote in 2011.It wasn’t much lamented when it ended, and as late as a year and a half ago, Aaron Korsh, the show’s creator, claimed another “Suits” spinoff was unlikely. Case closed.But when “Suits” moved to Netflix in mid 2023, it set a record for the most total weeks and the most consecutive weeks at the top of the Nielsen streaming ratings. Pacey, witty, cast with good-looking actors (Meghan Markle among them) and smart — but not so smart that you couldn’t follow along while also answering a few emails — “Suits” was the nice lawyer show an exhausted America needed.From left, Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams and Rick Hoffman in “Suits.”Ian Watson/USA NetworkWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Nick Jonas, Sadie Sink and More Had Broadway Debuts as Kids. Now They’re Back.

    Nick Jonas, Sadie Sink and Christian Slater are among this year’s unusually large cohort of stars who first appeared onstage as tweens or even younger.The New York stage has some notable nostalgia this year: More than a half-dozen performers in significant roles made their Broadway debuts as children. Some were in hits and some were in flops; they experienced joy and (in one case) trauma. A few have appeared onstage with regularity, while others pursued music or film and are now returning. Here they reflect on those early experiences.☆ ☆ ☆Nick JonasNick Jonas was just 8 when he landed a part as a Tiny Tim understudy in a 2000 production of “A Christmas Carol” at Madison Square Garden (Frank Langella was Scrooge). A year later, at 9, he made his Broadway debut as Little Jake in a revival of “Annie Get Your Gun” then starring Reba McEntire.He did two more Broadway shows in rapid succession: At 10 he played Chip, a teacup, in “Beauty and the Beast,” and at 11 he played Gavroche, a street child, in “Les Misérables.”Though he became a successful pop star in the years that followed, the stage kept calling: At 19, he returned to Broadway in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” And this spring, at 32, he is returning in the first Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown’s much-loved “The Last Five Years.”Like many of the actors interviewed here, Jonas said that in theater he found a group of peers who understood him in a way that classmates often did not. At school, Jonas said, “I definitely felt like I was strange to them.” But onstage, he said, “I finally felt like I was around my people.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Stephen Colbert Crowns Trump the Troll King

    President Trump referring to himself as a king “is the thing presidents are not supposed to do,” Colbert said on Thursday.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.King of the RoadOn Wednesday, President Donald Trump pre-emptively announced on social media that New York City’s congestion pricing “IS DEAD, Manhattan and all of New York is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”Referring to himself as a king “is the thing presidents are not supposed to do,” Stephen Colbert said on Thursday.“Yes, the classic domain of an all-powerful king. Yes, it’s what all kings do: regulate local toll roads. [imitating a king] ‘Behold! Camelot has been saved, for I have pulled Excalibur from the median strip of the Cross Bronx Expressway.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But you know he’s trolling us, and we shouldn’t take the bait. But with this guy, every troll is a trial balloon. So, here we go. Mr. Trump, America will never bow before any king not named ‘Burger,’ for he hath made us all part of the royal family.” — STEPHEN COLBERTColbert remarked that even though Trump has been “busy cosplaying as the czar of the Lincoln Tunnel,” congestion pricing has significantly reduced traffic and increased support for Broadway shows and local businesses.“Now, obviously, this seems like a good thing, so Donald Trump ruined it.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Governor Hochul immediately said congestion pricing wouldn’t end, posting, ‘The cameras are staying on.’ Governor, I love your defiance, but you know Trump loves cameras. This just means he’s going to do his next press conference strapped to the hood of a Camry.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (DOGE Dollars Edition)“DOGE-head Elon Musk says he’s considering giving 78 million Americans $5,000 per household. Half of these households will be benefiting from a DOGE dividend; the other are just his child support.” — GREG GUTFELD“I mean, the Dems are already floundering against DOGE, but DOGE plus a dividend? It’ll be more popular than that mall tour I did with Menudo.” — GREG GUTFELD“Perhaps it’s not exactly right. ‘Right’ would be all the cuts go to preventing a full default on the debt; otherwise, we’ll face an economic crisis that would make the Depression look like a trip to Sandals with Trace Gallagher.” — GREG GUTFELDThe Bits Worth WatchingTaylor Tomlinson explored the social media trend of mostly shirtless men doing meal prep on Thursday’s “After Midnight.”Also, Check This OutKenturah Davis, an artist in Altadena, is continuing the legacy of her parents, Keni Arts and Mildred Davis, who are also artists in Altadena, a community in Los Angeles County.Phylicia J.L. Munn for The New York TimesThis year’s Frieze Los Angeles highlights Altadena’s Black art legacy in the wake of the Eaton Fire. More

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    In Stephen Graham’s World, Nice Guys Finish First

    The British actor, who stars in the new Hulu show “A Thousand Blows,” has built a career playing intimidating bruisers. But behind the scenes, he’s a peach.In 2012, the actor Stephen Graham and his wife were having a quiet dinner at a chain chicken joint in London when a young man approached the table. The man, James Nelson-Joyce, told Graham that he had just left drama school and wanted to be an actor, too. Many would have sent the 20-something away with some polite encouragement, but Graham asked for Nelson-Joyce’s email, and kept in touch, offering him regular advice and eventually recommending the younger actor to his agent.More than a decade later, Graham and Nelson-Joyce are playing brothers in “A Thousand Blows,” a rip-roaring new Hulu drama set in the grimy East End of London in the 1880s.Graham’s character, a bare-knuckle boxer known as the East End Gladiator, is of a type with the intimidating bruisers that he built his career playing, including a skinhead English nationalist in Shane Meadows’s “This Is England” and Al Capone in HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire.”.But over cups of tea on a recent gray afternoon in London, Graham, now 51, choked up while recounting his history with Nelson-Joyce. It means a lot, he said, laughing at the tears in his eyes, to be able to pass “the baton on” to younger actors. It also reflects Graham’s ethos that “you’re never above anyone, and you’re never below anyone.”This egalitarian approach also applies when Graham works with some of Hollywood’s biggest names. In an email, Leonardo DiCaprio recalled that on the set of Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” more than 20 years ago, Graham’s “fearless unpredictability kept everyone on their toes. But more than that, he brought truth to every scene.”Graham with James Nelson-Joyce, who plays his brother in “A Thousand Blows.”Robert Viglasky for Disney+/ HuluWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More