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    America Came on Down, and Bob Barker Was Thrilled Every Time

    At the helm of “The Price Is Right” for 35 years, Barker eased many sick days with his knack for turning silly games and giddy contestants into fun television.On YouTube, fans have posted multiple compilations of contestants summoned to come on down to the podiums of “The Price Is Right.” They are screaming, they are hyperventilating, they are fully freaking out. All this before they have even bid on a luggage set, a roll-top desk, a home stereo system.Bob Barker, the show’s longtime host, who died Saturday, was the still point in this delirious world. He joined the show in 1972 — an original version had run from 1956 to 1965 — and stayed on its Television City stage for 35 years. Eventually the stage was named for him. Over the decades, his ties narrowed, his collars shortened. His tan remained the finest that the sun or, just possibly, the aestheticians of Burbank, Calif., could provide, even as his hair went from brown to gray to white. His eyebrows were twin carets, inserting pleasure or gentle mockery into a scene. He had the gift, which great hosts have, of making inane, repetitive games feel risky, exciting. Each new contestant, tens of thousands of them during his tenure, seemed to delight him.I watched “The Price Is Right” like a lot of us probably did: at home, sick, when nothing else was on and I couldn’t convince my mom to drive to a video store. I associate the show with the scents and flavors of those days — mentholated cough drops, chicken Cup O’ Noodles, children’s Robitussin. Woozy on phenylephrine, I followed games like Plinko, Bullseye, Cliff Hangers, in which bids sent a yodeling mountain climber up a cardboard slope. I could have sworn I’d hallucinated that last one. I had not.Reliable, consistent, even courtly, Barker smiled through it all. And at the end of every episode, he reminded us to spay and neuter our pets. He wanted us to choose responsibly, to bid judiciously. He saw us through inflation, recession, bubble and boom and bust. He was America’s dad. Then its granddad. Had a sexual harassment suit by Dian Parkinson, one of “Barker’s Beauties,” gone forward, he might also have been seen as America’s lechy uncle. (The suit was eventually dropped, though other women received payments after suing the show for sexual harassment, racial discrimination and wrongful termination.)There’s a frenzy, a late-capitalist absurdity to “The Price Is Right,” which continues under the gleeful ministrations of the comedian Drew Carey and requires little in the way of knowledge or skill, beyond a vague sense of what things cost at the supermarket. (An unusually dark aspect of the Carey era: a new game called Pay the Rent.) The show supports the very American notion that everyone deserves something for nothing — or at least, something for knowing the price of a box of raisins and having the upper body strength to spin a wheel. A show in which men made the rules and did the talking while women posed in short skirts, that feels an unfortunate kind of American, too.Contestants lucky enough to come on down won prizes that some of them could not have afforded otherwise, prizes that they may not have wanted and. cars excepted, probably did not need. People populated that studio audience because they weren’t at work, because work couldn’t substitute for the excitement of being on television. Most jobs would not give them an RV just for nudging a number higher or lower. There are reasons that it is America’s longest running game show.If we watched the show in the Barker years, if we watch it now, that likely means that we weren’t at work either. The hunger for wealth, for merchandise, can feel like a fever. So it makes sense that this is what we tuned into when we were sick, when we were low, when we had slipped, owing to illness or age or some other factor, out of the workday world.Barker worked hard. No one could deny it. He seems to have been paid handsomely for his labor. (The models who caressed all that stereo equipment, not so much.) He was calm while the contestants had hysterics, smooth while they behaved erratically. If he wanted a new car, no yodeling would be required, no frenzy. He understood his position, his reputation, and could happily satirize it in side projects like his cameos in “Happy Gilmore,” “The Nanny,” and “How I Met Your Mother.”So raise a glass — or a plastic cup of cough syrup — to a man who knew his own worth. More

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    Bob Barker, Longtime Host of ‘The Price Is Right,’ Dies at 99

    The winner of numerous Emmy Awards, he was almost as well known for his advocacy of animal rights as he was for his half a century as a daytime television fixture.Bob Barker, whose warmth and wit as the host of “The Price Is Right” for nearly four decades beckoned legions of giddy Americans to a stage promising luxury vacations and brand-new cars, died on Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles. He was 99.His death was announced by a spokesman, Roger Neal.Mr. Barker, who was also a longstanding and prominent advocate for animal rights, was a fixture of daytime television for half a century — first as the host of “Truth or Consequences,” from 1956 to 1974, and, most famously, starting in 1972, on “The Price Is Right,” the longest-running game show on American television.He began his 35-year stint as host of “The New Price Is Right,” as it was then known, when it made its debut on CBS as a revised and jazzed-up version of the original “The Price Is Right,” which had been on the air from 1956 to 1965. (The “New” was soon dropped from the name.) He was also host of a weekly syndicated nighttime version from 1977 until it was canceled in 1980.Mr. Barker with Janice Pennington, left, and Anitra Ford — two of the models known as Barker’s Beauties, whose main function was to display the prizes — on the set of “The Price Is Right” in 1972.CBSAlmost a decade before he retired in 2007, Mr. Barker estimated that during his tenure more than 40,000 contestants had heeded the announcer’s familiar call to “come on down!” and collected some $200 million in small and large prizes, from beach blankets to Buicks, by guessing the prices of various objects.Mr. Barker won 14 Daytime Emmy Awards as host of “The Price Is Right” and four more as executive producer (as well as a lifetime achievement Emmy in 1999). He once said that the show had lasted as long as it did because “all our games are based on prices, and everyone can identify with that.” He added, however, that he personally never knew the price of anything, and that if he were ever a contestant on such a show he would be “a total failure.”Mr. Barker was widely known for his longstanding dedication to the cause of animal rights. He quit as master of ceremonies for both the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants in 1988 because they gave fur coats as prizes. He also protested the mistreatment of animals by their trainers on the sets of various movies and television shows. He ended every installment of “The Price Is Right” by saying: “Help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered.”Almost a decade before he retired in 2007, Mr. Barker estimated that during his tenure more than 40,000 contestants had heeded the announcer’s familiar call to “come on down!” and had collected some $200 million in prizes, from beach blankets to Buicks.Photographs by Getty Images and Associated PressRobert William Barker was born on Dec. 12, 1923, in Darrington, Wash. His father, Byron, was a power line foreman who in 1929 died from complications of injuries he had received in a fall from a pole several years earlier. Shortly thereafter, his mother, Matilda (Tarleton) Barker, took a job teaching in Mission, S.D, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.“Cowboys tied up their horses at hitching rails,” Mr. Barker recalled of those years. “It was like I was growing up in the Old West.”Mr. Barker in a publicity photo from 1956, the year he began hosting “Truth or Consequences.” For two years he was seen on both that show and “The Price Is Right.”Elmer Holloway/NBCU, via Getty ImagesWhen Mr. Barker was 13, his mother married Louis Valandra, a tire salesman, and they moved to Springfield, Mo. He received a basketball scholarship to Drury College in Springfield but dropped out to enlist as a Naval Aviation cadet when World War II broke out.He was waiting for a combat assignment when the war ended, and he was discharged as a lieutenant junior grade. He returned to Drury, majored in economics and graduated summa cum laude in 1947.Even before he earned his degree, Mr. Barker had begun his first radio job, at KTTS in Springfield, where he was a disc jockey, a news writer, a sportscaster and a producer. After college he worked at WWPG in Palm Beach, Fla., and KWIK in Burbank, Calif.In 1945, he married Dorothy Jo Gideon, his high school sweetheart, who once explained the secret of their marriage this way: “I love Bob Barker. And Bob Barker loves Bob Barker.” She died in 1981, and Mr. Barker never remarried.Mr. Barker is survived by his half brother, Kent Valandra. Mr. Barker’s longtime friend Nancy Burnet, a fellow animal rights activist who had been overseeing his care — and about whom he wrote in his autobiography, “Our relationship has gone on for 25 years, off and on. Mostly on.” — is an executor of his estate.Mr. Barker with his wife, Dorothy Jo, and their dogs in 1977. He was widely known for his dedication to the cause of animal rights.CBS, via Getty ImagesMr. Barker’s big break came in 1956 when the producer Ralph Edwards heard him on KNX, a Los Angeles radio station, and asked him to audition for “Truth or Consequences,” a long-running game show (it had begun on radio in 1940) on which contestants were required to perform wild stunts. He got the job, and he and Mr. Edwards became lifelong friends.Mr. Barker was still the host of “Truth or Consequences” when he was offered “The Price Is Right” in 1972, and for two years those jobs overlapped. For a long time after that he was among the busiest people on television, with duties that also included hosting the Rose Bowl parade and the Pillsbury Bake-Off for most of the 1970s and ’80s.He occasionally showed up in movies as well, almost always as a comically exaggerated version of himself. His most memorable appearance was in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore,” in which he gleefully engaged in a brawl with the title character, a boorish hockey player turned golfer played by Adam Sandler.Mr. Barker occasionally showed up on the big screen, usually as a comically exaggerated version of himself. His most memorable appearance was with Adam Sandler in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore.”Universal PicturesTo many viewers “The Price Is Right” was, as one critic put it, among television’s last “islands of wholesomeness.” That image was challenged in 1994 when Dian Parkinson, who for almost 20 years had been a model on the show — one of the so-called Barker’s Beauties, whose main function was to display the prizes — sued Mr. Barker for sexual harassment.Ms. Parkinson, who had left the show the year before, said she had sex with Mr. Barker because she thought she would lose her job if she didn’t. In response, Mr. Barker acknowledged that he and Ms. Parkinson had had a relationship for a number of years, beginning in 1989, but insisted that it had been consensual.“She told me I had always been so strait-laced that it was time I had some hanky-panky in my life,” he said, “and she volunteered the hanky-panky.” Ms. Parkinson withdrew the suit in 1995 because, she said, she lacked both the emotional endurance and the money to pursue it.Mr. Barker announced his retirement in October 2006. “I will be 83 years old on Dec. 12,” he said at the time, “and I’ve decided to retire while I’m still young.”His final episode as host of “The Price Is Right” was taped on June 6, 2007, and shortly shown twice on June 15: first in its regular daytime slot and again in prime time.Mr. Barker’s chair sat empty after the taping of his final episode of “The Price Is Right” in June 2007.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressAfter an extensive search, the comedian Drew Carey was chosen as Mr. Barker’s successor in July 2007. In an interview with The Times, Mr. Carey called Mr. Barker a “legend” and praised him for the “empathy” he showed contestants.“He wants them to win. You can hug him,” Mr. Carey said. “He went from being your dad and your uncle to your grandfather.”Mr. Barker returned to the show as a guest in 2009 to promote his autobiography, “Priceless Memories,” and again in 2013, to celebrate his 90th birthday, and 2015, as the unannounced guest host, an April Fool’s Day gag. He promised to come back when he turned 100.“People ask me, ‘What do you miss most about “Price is Right”?’ And I say, ‘The money,’” Mr. Barker said in a 2013 interview with Parade magazine. “But that is not altogether true. I miss the people, too.”Richard Severo, a Times reporter from 1968 to 2006, died in June. Peter Keepnews and More

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    Bob Barker Fought Animal Cruelty Through Philanthropy and Activism

    With millions in donations and a powerful bully pulpit, Mr. Barker became one of the most prominent allies of the animal rights movement in Hollywood.Bob Barker, the longtime host of the television game show “The Price Is Right” who died on Saturday, made animal rights advocacy a hallmark both of his career in show business and his life after retirement.Over decades as the host of the longest-running game show in American television history, Mr. Barker, beginning in the 1980s, used his bully pulpit to remind millions of viewers to “help control the pet population; have your pet spayed or neutered.”In one instance in 1996, he powered through his announcement even as an excited contestant clung at his arm, unable to contain her joy at having just won $51,676, or $99,602 when adjusted for inflation.He continued that tradition for more than 20 years, until his very last show on June 15, 2007.“There are just too many cats and dogs being born,” he explained in an interview with The New York Times in 2004. “Animals are being euthanized by the millions simply because there are not enough homes for them. In the United States, there is a dog or cat euthanized every 6.5 seconds.”Mr. Barker supported a wide range of efforts to fight what activists saw as rampant animal cruelty in American society.Bob Barker, at 11 years old, with his dog Brownie, in South Dakota.Bob BarkerAs one of the most prominent allies of the movement in Hollywood, he became a strict vegetarian, stopped dyeing his hair because the products were tested on animals and quit his job as host of the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because their organizers refused to remove fur coats from the prize packages.“I am so proud of the trailblazing work Barker and I did together to expose the cruelty to animals in the entertainment industry,” Nancy Burnet, a fellow animal rights activist who had been overseeing his care, said in a statement on Saturday.Mr. Barker put $25 million into founding the DJ&T Foundation, which finances clinics that specialize in spaying and neutering. The foundation was named after Mr. Barker’s wife, Dorothy Jo, and his mother, Matilda Valandra, who was known as Tilly.Estimates show that the number of dogs and cats euthanized in shelters has been reduced to a fraction of what it was in the 1990s, at least partially attributable to “the drive to sterilize pet dogs and cats,” according to a 2018 study.Mr. Barker also donated $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society at the urging of its founder Paul Watson, who used the money to buy a ship named for Mr. Barker for use in the organization’s anti-whaling campaigns.Bob Barker donated $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to buy a ship for the group’s anti-whaling campaigns. The ship, left, was named The Bob Barker in his honor.Selase Kove-Seyram for The New York Times“He said he thought he could put the Japanese whaling fleet out of business if he had $5 million,” Mr. Barker said of Mr. Watson in an interview with The Associated Press. “I said, ‘I think you do have the skills to do that, and I have $5 million, so let’s get it on.’”Ingrid Newkirk, the president of the animal rights group PETA, said in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Barker had a “profound commitment to making the world a kinder place.”Ms. Newkirk added, “To us — and to so many animals around the world — Bob will always be a national animal rights treasure.”Mr. Barker’s efforts were born from a lifelong affinity for animals.“I always had a pack of dogs with me,” he said in 2004, recalling his upbringing in the small town of Mission on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. “There were a lot of dogs in Mission. Not many people, but a lot of dogs.”His dedication to opposing animal cruelty continued well into his retirement, as Mr. Barker continued to donate to organizations like PETA, which named its West Coast headquarters in Los Angeles for Mr. Barker after he made a $2.5 million donation in 2012 for renovations. More

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    Jeff Daniels Unwinds With Hidden-Camera TV

    The actor, musician and playwright has made a career out of finding ways to stay creative between “Dumb and Dumber” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”Jeff Daniels has accomplished a lot battling boredom.Before he moved to New York in 1976, he bought a guitar to play when he wasn’t getting work. After he moved back to Michigan in the 1980s, he started getting bored between movie jobs, so he formed the Purple Rose Theater Company. That’s why today, in addition to being an actor known for portraying Atticus Finch on Broadway and Harry Dunne in “Dumb and Dumber,” Daniels, 68, is an accomplished musician and playwright who sometimes performs a one-man musical at a theater he helped bring to life.“Alive and Well Enough,” his 12-episode audio memoir that Audible plans to release Sept. 7, incorporates skits, bits, songs and stories from his career. It leans heavily on his passion for the work, regardless of whether it resonates on the level of his role in the 1983 film “Terms of Endearment.”“The rush is between action and cut, when you’re doing it,” Daniels said in a phone interview this month. “The curtain call has always been kind of a silent movie for me. I walk out and I see them, I hear them, but that’s not the climax. That’s not what happened. For me, by that point, it’s over.”Daniels talked about pursuing his other endeavors — creative and athletic — while avoiding ticks. These are edited excerpts from the conversation and an email.1‘The Beatles: Get Back’I loved every minute of Peter Jackson’s documentary. Seeing the band’s creative process, to watch people of that caliber face the same mountain that everybody else does — whether they’re writing a song or a play or a musical or a poem — was affirming.2Golf in the BackyardDuring Covid, when we all had to kind of bunker, our family put together a golf course on our property. We play with plastic balls, and we each use one club. We’ve got a creek and a pond and some things you have to work around. But you never have a problem getting a tee time, and there’s never a slow foursome in front of you.3My KindleI love the portable library aspect of it, and I read more because of it. I recently read “Grinning at the Edge,” Paul Allen’s biography of the playwright Alan Ayckbourn. And I’ve got Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act” queued up now.4Detroit TigersThey’re young and they’re talented and they’re getting better every season. For me, it’s fascinating to watch the management manage the talent and the contracts and who you need. It’s the same uniforms, the same game, the same field, and yet the players change. The cast changes. It’s this living, breathing thing that’s evolving.5Clearing Your Head in the WoodsThings get unlocked when you’re walking or biking through the woods. If you’re stuck on something, then just go for a bike ride and wait. Across the street from my house, there’s a state recreation area. It’s kind of like having 10,000 acres of your own, which you didn’t have to pay for. It’s terrific, especially in the winter when there aren’t any ticks.6Circle RepWhen I went to Circle Rep Off Broadway in the 1970s, they had a whole bunch of playwrights there, including Lanford Wilson and John Bishop. That’s where I fell in love with that kind of theater — live, creating, new play stuff. I wanted to create that creative place at Purple Rose Theater Company, where I’m surrounded by like-minded people who have to do this thing because it’s what we do.7‘Impractical Jokers’When I was doing “To Kill a Mockingbird” on Broadway, I would come back to my apartment and turn on the hidden-camera show “Impractical Jokers” to wind down after a show. Whatever Atticus Finch might’ve watched if he were around, it probably wouldn’t have been “Impractical Jokers.” It was a way to disconnect from the show and just unplug. And the guys just crack me up.8New York CityI go to New York for the theater — to see it and be in it — but also to remind myself of who I am. It’s all about the imagination and the art and the creativity, and imagining all those writers who were in New York and kicking around. It’s a good place for me to write.9My GuitarFor my entire career, an acoustic guitar has kept me creatively alive. Over the past 20 years, I’ve played in clubs all over the country, but my regular gig is on my porch looking out at the lake.10Writing, Even When It’s HardThere’s a battle to it. But when it happens, when you unlock it and that thing launches you toward your ending in a way that you never saw coming, that’s the fireworks. Writing that line that’s going to end the scene, and you close your laptop because you’re going to take the rest of the day off, that’s what keeps you going. You hang onto those euphoric moments. More

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    David Jacobs, ‘Dallas’ and ‘Knots Landing’ Creator, Dies at 84

    As the creator of “Dallas” and its spinoff “Knots Landing,” he did more than anyone to change the landscape of nighttime TV.David Jacobs, who more than anyone invented the modern prime-time soap opera when he created “Dallas,” the long-running CBS series about an amoral oil baron and his feuding family, and followed it a year later with “Knots Landing,” died on Sunday in Burbank, Calif. He was 84.His son, Aaron, said he died in a hospital from complications of a series of infections. Mr. Jacobs had also recently received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.Mr. Jacobs had written for several television shows when, in 1977, he pitched CBS on what he called an American version of “Scenes From a Marriage,” Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 mini-series, which was later turned into a film. His story shifted the location from Sweden to a Southern California cul-de-sac with a focus on four middle-class couples.CBS showed some interest but passed, asking him to write a glitzier saga instead.“Which meant Texas to me,” Mr. Jacobs recalled in a 2008 interview with the Television Academy. Working with Michael Filerman, an executive at Lorimar Productions, he wrote a script about the wealthy Ewing family.When Mr. Filerman sent the script to CBS, he gave it the title “Dallas.”“‘Dallas?’” Mr. Jacobs recalled saying to Mr. Filerman. “‘Kennedy was killed in Dallas. I don’t want to do this in Dallas. First of all, it was oil people and Houston is the oil city. Dallas is the banking city.’ And Michael said, ‘Who knows that? Who cares? Do you want to watch a show called “Houston”? ’”The title “Dallas” stuck, and the series made its debut in 1978, becoming a megahit for CBS. It took its basic cues from the daytime soap-opera genre — long-running melodramas with core casts that were originally known for being sponsored by soap manufacturers.The cast of “Dallas” featured Larry Hagman as the oil baron, J.R. Ewing; Patrick Duffy as his brother Bobby; Barbara Bel Geddes and Jim Davis as their parents, Miss Ellie and Jock; Linda Gray as Sue Ellen, J.R.’s wife; and Victoria Principal as Pamela, Bobby’s wife.The cast of “Dallas” in a 1979 promotional photo. Front row, from left: Charlene Tilton, Jim Davis and Linda Gray. Back row, from left: Patrick Duffy, Victoria Principal, Barbara Bel Geddes and Larry Hagman. CBS Photo Archive/Getty ImagesIn a cliffhanger to end the third season, J.R. was shot. In the fourth episode of the next season, the identity of his assailant was revealed:It was his sister-in-law and mistress, Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby). The episode generated a 53.3 Nielsen rating, a record at the time for an entertainment program. (That record would be broken in 1983 by the final episode of “M*A*S*H.”)Mr. Jacobs soon had another series in mind, about a postapocalyptic utopia. But when he pitched it to CBS, a top executive demurred, opened a desk drawer and handed Mr. Jacobs his old script about the couples in the cul-de-sac. It was “Knots Landing.”“Is there any way we can make this a ‘Dallas’ spinoff?” Mr. Jacobs recalled the executive asking.Mr. Jacobs spun off two recurring characters from “Dallas” — Gary, another Ewing brother (played by Ted Shackelford), and his wife, Valene (Joan Van Ark) — and added an ensemble of other characters. “Knots Landing” made its debut in 1979 and became another long-running hit, lasting 14 seasons.Joan Van Ark and Ted Shackelford as husband and wife in a scene from “Knots Landing,” a long-running “Dallas” spinoff also created by Mr. Jacobs. CBS via Getty ImagesDavid Arnold Jacobs was born on Aug. 12, 1939, in Baltimore. His father, Melvin, was a bookie, a cabdriver and an insurance salesman, among other things. His mother, Ruth (Levenson) Jacobs, was a homemaker.By his own account, Mr. Jacobs disliked school until he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, from which he graduated with a degree in fine arts in about 1961. But while he had artistic talent, he said, he recognized that he wasn’t talented enough to make a living as a painter.He moved to New York City and turned to writing. Over the next dozen or so years, he said, he wrote entries for The Book of Knowledge, a children’s encyclopedia; articles about art, architecture and other subjects for various publications, including The New York Times Magazine; biographies of Beethoven and Charlie Chaplin; and short stories for magazines like Redbook and Cosmopolitan.Mr. Jacobs moved to Los Angeles after his divorce from Lynn Oliansky to stay close to their daughter, Albyn, and found work in TV.He was hired early on to rewrite scripts. One was an episode of “Delvecchio,” a 1976-77 crime drama starring Judd Hirsch as a detective studying to be a lawyer. (A producer threw the script in a garbage can.) Another, in 1976, was for “The Blue Knight,” a police procedural starring George Kennedy.Mr. Jacobs was hired as a staff writer for “The Blue Knight,” but the series was canceled soon after. It had been a Lorimar production, and the company’s Mr. Filerman gave him a deal that led to the creation of “Dallas” and “Knots Landing.”Mr. Jacobs at a TV Land Awards ceremony in 2009 in Los Angeles. His series “Knots Landing” received a 30th-anniversary award. With him, from left, were three of the show’s stars: Donna Mills, Michelle Phillips and Michele Lee.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesThe key casting decision in “Dallas” was who would play J.R. In the academy interview, Mr. Jacobs recalled being on a conference call with the actor Robert Foxworth, who was being considered for the role.When Mr. Foxworth asked how the ruthless J.R. could be made more sympathetic, Mr. Jacobs recalled, he told him that was not going to happen. “He likes being the son of a bitch,” Mr. Jacobs said, “and he believes that you get them before they get you.”Mr. Foxworth turned down the role, but he would later be was one of the stars of “Falcon Crest,” another prime-time soap.“Dallas” ended its long run in 1991, “Knots Landing” in 1993. Mr. Jacobs was a creator, producer and executive producer of several other series through the 1990s, but none were as successful. He returned to his roots as an executive producer of “Dallas: The Early Years,” a 1986 TV movie presented as a prequel to the series; ”Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-De-Sac,” a 1997 mini-series; and “Knots Landing Reunion: Together Again,” a 2005 TV movie.A “Dallas” reboot ran from 2012 to 2014 on TNT. But Mr. Jacobs told Forbes.com that he had been excluded from any creative input into the series and later said in an interview with The Daily Beat that he had hated it.In addition to his son, Mr. Jacobs is survived by his wife, Diana (Pietrocarli) Jacobs; his daughters, Albyn Hall and Molly Jacobs; and two granddaughters.In 1981, the debut of “Dynasty” — a much more opulently staged prime-time soap starring Joan Collins, Linda Evans and John Forsythe — provided formidable competition for “Dallas.”“‘Dynasty’ was a better expression of second Reagan administration values than ‘Dallas,’” Mr. Jacobs wrote in an article for The Times in 1990, “because, while ‘Dallas’ was about the quest for money, ‘Dynasty’ was about the things that money could buy. In ‘Dallas,’ money was a tool, a way of keeping score.”He added: “During almost any other period, ‘Dynasty’ would have been regarded as more vulgar than ‘Dallas.’ In the mid-’80s, however, ‘Dynasty’ was widely viewed as the classier of the two shows.” More

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    Léa Garcia, Who Raised Black Actors’ Profile in Brazil, Dies at 90

    Best known internationally for her breakout performance in the 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” she challenged racial stereotypes over a seven-decade career.Léa Garcia, a pioneering actress who brought new visibility and respect to Black actors in Brazil after her breakout performance in the Academy Award-winning 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” died on Aug. 15 in Gramado, a mountain resort town in southern Brazil. She was 90.Her death, of cardiac complications, was confirmed by her family on her Instagram account. At her death, in a hospital, she was in Gramado to receive a lifetime achievement award at that town’s film festival. Her son Marcelo Garcia, who was also her manager, accepted the honor in her place.Over a prolific career that began in the 1950s, Ms. Garcia amassed more than 100 credits in theater, film and television, from her early years with an experimental Black theater group to her later prominence on television productions, like the popular 1976 telenovela “Escrava Isaura” (“Isaura: Slave Girl”), based on an 1875 novel by the abolitionist writer Bernardo Guimarães; it was seen in more than 80 countries.Recounting her career in a 2022 interview with the Brazilian magazine Ela, Ms. Garcia said she felt blessed by her success. “I often say that the gods embraced me,” she said. “Things always arrived for me without me running after them.”Still, laboring to change racial perceptions in the world of film and television involved tremendous perseverance and discipline. “Much more was demanded of us,” she told Ela. “We had to arrive with the text on the tip of our tongue, always smelling good and elegant. Others could be wrong. We could not. We could play subservient characters, but we needed to show that we ourselves were not.”Léa Lucas Garcia de Aguiar was born on March 11, 1933, in Rio de Janeiro. Growing up, she was drawn to literature and aspired to be a writer. That changed one day in 1950.“I was on my way to pick up my grandmother to take her to the movies,” she recalled, “when someone came up to me and asked, ‘Would you like to work in theater?’”The voice belonged to Abdias do Nascimento, the writer, artist and Pan-Africanist activist who created Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN), a Rio-based group that aimed to promote the appreciation of Afro-Brazilian culture. (The two would become a couple and had two children together.) Ms. Garcia made her stage debut in 1952 in Mr. Nascimento’s play “Rapsódia Negra” (“Black Rhapsody”).As the decade drew to a close, she took her career to a new level of international recognition when she was cast in the French director Marcel Camus’s “Black Orpheus,” a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice adapted to the frenzy of Rio’s carnival and featuring music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá. It won the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 1960.With its lush exuberance, the film was anything but classical in feel. “It really is not the two lovers that are the focus of interest in this film; it is the music, the movement, the storm of color,” Bosley Crowther wrote in a review in The New York Times.Even in her 80s, Ms. Garcia remained productive. Adriano DamasEven in a supporting role, Ms. Garcia showed an ability to beguile. “Léa Garcia,” Mr. Crowther wrote, “is especially provoking as the loose-limbed cousin of the soft Eurydice.”Among her other notable films was “Ganga Zumba,” the debut feature by Carlos Diegues, a pioneer in Brazil’s reformist Cinema Novo movement, which was made in 1963 but not released until 1972. She brought power and complexity to the character of Cipriana, the lover of the title character, who escapes a sugar plantation in the 17th century to lead Quilombo dos Palmares, a haven for other fugitives from slavery.“It’s not shameful to be a slave,” Ms. Garcia often said, according to family members. “It’s shameful to be a colonizer.”The pace of her career scarcely slowed over the years; she spent decades as a staple of Brazilian soap operas like “O Clone” (“The Clone”), “Anjo Mau” (“Evil Angel”), “Xica da Silva” and “Marina,” and was seen on other TV series as well.Even in her 80s, Ms. Garcia remained productive. She starred in the drama series “Baile de Máscaras” in 2019 and returned to the stage in 2022 in the play “A Vida Não é Justa” (“Life Is Not Fair”), in which she played three characters and explored themes of diversity, equality, justice and relationships.Complete information on her survivors was not immediately available.In the Ela interview, Ms. Garcia discussed her hopes for her great-great-granddaughter, who was 7 months old at the time. “I hope for a fair and egalitarian country that respects diversities,” she said. “That’s what I want, and much more.”Julia Vargas Jones contributed reporting from São Paulo, Brazil More

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    ‘Billions’ Season 7, Episode 3 Recap: Confidence Games

    Mike sets a trap for a certain new U.S. attorney. At least he thinks he does.Season 7, Episode 3: ‘Winston Dick Energy’Chuck Rhoades is a man of action — most of the time. His proprietary blend of intellect and emotion is what made him the man he is today; his best friend and newly hired deputy U.S. attorney, Ira (Ben Shenkman), tells him this in so many words.But that combination has unmade Chuck several times over, and he’s not the only one who knows it. His protégé turned foe, Kate Sacker, tells her boss Mike Prince that Rhoades’s emotion is what stops him from harnessing his full intelligence, which is every bit the equal of hers or Mike’s. So when Kate and company proffer a filing for a political super PAC to back Prince’s presidential campaign — a deliberate provocation meant to keep Chuck’s operations in plain sight — Chuck does not bite.Which would be fine if Chuck were operating in a vacuum. Instead, he has an office full of lawyers champing at the bit for the opportunity to unleash their full skills on unsuspecting white-collar criminals everywhere — the kinds of cases that turned their freshly reinstated boss into a beloved man of the people. His reticence in choosing his opening salvo frustrates everyone: his right-hand man, Ira; his father, Charles Sr. (Jeffrey DeMunn); his button man, Karl; and the Southern District’s bold up-and-comer Amanda Torre (Hannah Hodson).Given his overall winning track record, Chuck’s colleagues understandably want him to aim at a target, any target, and pull the trigger. Karl, Ira, and Charles père even enlist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (appearing as himself) for a pep talk, staged in Grant’s Tomb no less. (Watching Chuck extrapolate a whole grandiose rationale behind the location’s selection before finding out the real reason is one of the episode’s funnier and more insightful moments.)And so the writer of the episode, Mae Smith, sets up an exciting dilemma. We viewers know that Chuck’s braintrust is well-intentioned and that their admiration for Chuck as a hard charger is both genuine and, 99 times out of a hundred, well-placed. We viewers also know that this is the one-in-a-hundred case, and that if he does what has always served him best, he’ll fall right into Prince’s trap. It’s clever writing, building tension by ensuring both of Chuck’s possible choices seem wise from different angles but never revealing the correct angle to the character himself.In the end, Chuck’s perspicacity serves him well. He deliberately takes Prince’s super PAC bait but instructs Karl and Ira to keep digging. Then he selects Amanda’s case for his real first big win. He is still the emotional intellectual we know and love, but he now has the power to keep that emotion in check until needed — kind of like the Hulk in “Avengers.”Chuck isn’t the only character at a crossroads this episode. His ex-wife, Wendy, discovers that nearly all of her patients at Prince Cap are seeing a second psychiatrist on the side for “real” therapy. Unwilling to accept that what she does is mere performance coaching — and more than a little jealous that her fief has been raided — she makes an appointment to confront the interloper, Dr. Eleanor Mayer (Holland Taylor) … and winds up becoming one of the good doctor’s patients.Mayer, it happens, really has Wendy’s number. She correctly points out that performance-based therapy necessarily requires continued high performance, a goal prioritized at the expense of anything that might free her Prince Cap clients from their “hamster wheel.” She also ferrets out that this leaves Wendy feeling one of two ways: like an “errand girl,” doing her bosses’ bidding to keep the cash flowing, or “Christlike,” suffering in order to save her patients’ souls to whatever extent she can. Perhaps Mayer’s therapy will offer a way out for all of them.The third and final character in search of his lost mojo in this week’s episode is Wags. Once a legend on the Street, his association with a do-gooding politician has sunk his reputation in the eyes of his fellow creeps and killers. Like Chuck, he needs a big score, a sure thing, a way to get back on the map in spectacular, even theatrical, fashion.Then along comes Winston (Will Roland). A twerpy quant who’s been a core part of the Taylor Mason team for some time, largely in spite of himself, Winston quits the firm and immediately — like, within eight hours — goes into business for himself. The risk management software he is peddling was obviously designed on Prince Cap time and on the Prince Cap dime; if he’s allowed to sell it, the financial and reputational damage to the firm would be considerable.Acting on advice from Wendy (you can see why Dr. Mayer is concerned, no?), Wags storms into Winston’s apartment, where an attempted come-to-Jesus meeting with Taylor and Philip is already underway, and all but attacks the guy. His real purpose, though? Planting a bug on behalf of Hall (Terry Kinney), the firm’s mercenary investigator. Hall digs up not only Winston’s potential client list but also every dirty deed (and dirty Google search) the one-time hacktivist has ever committed.All of which information Wags, Taylor, Philip and Kate present to Winston in the very conference room where he is to make his final pitch to potential buyers. Unless he comes back to Prince Cap, software in tow, as a sort of indentured servant, Wags will see to it personally that Winston’s reputation and finances are left about as intact as ancient Carthage.Watching a good episode of “Billions,” which this undoubtedly is, is like watching someone expertly play a puzzle game — solving a Rubik’s cube, say, or beating a level of “Tetris.” You gaze in admiration as skilled hands slide pieces and panels from one place to the next until everything lines up exactly where it should. Chuck’s friends and enemies inadvertently guide him to the correct course of action. Wendy’s petulance puts her on the path toward a major breakthrough. Winston’s defection provides Wags with the fresh kill he requires. “Billions” makes it look easy, but if it were, everyone would be doing it.Loose changeNotably absent from this episode, barring a pointed glance or pained look here and there: Taylor, Wendy and Wags’s quest to stop their boss’s rise to power. Perhaps, chastened by Axe’s rejection last week, they’ve taken his “if you can’t beat him, join him” advice to heart, at least temporarily. (Also notably absent: Axe.)Notably present in this week’s episode: the much-missed Sarah Stiles as Bonnie. The profane Axe Cap alumna returns to her old stamping grounds to narc on Winston’s new venture, then rekindles her affair with Dollar Bill before the elevator doors close on her.Another key informant in the anti-Winston campaign: Rian, who doesn’t let her kinda-sorta sisterly affection for the little worm get in the way of nuking his dreams when Wags comes asking around.Key cameos in this episode include the author Michael Lewis as himself, hosting the “Liar’s Poker” soiree at which Wags is humiliated, and the talented character actor Michael O’Keefe as the jerk who does the humiliating. (By the way, when he and his buddies were swapping old Wags war stories, did they remind you, too, of the old Bill Brasky sketches on “Saturday Night Live”?)“What’s with you?” Wendy asks Wags. “Nothing,” he mumbles, eyes downcast, desultorily dipping a tea bag in a mug of hot water over and over. He’s been Tom Hagen’d out of the initial run at Winston by Taylor and Philip, and he’s having himself a good old-fashioned childlike sulk about it. And why not? Life is nothing to Wags if not a big NC-17-rated playground, and he’s just been knocked off the monkey bars.Without going into detail, this episode features an off-color joke about the life and death of Ivanka Trump in such gleefully bad taste that I laughed at the audacity as much as at the joke itself.Before Wags takes charge of the operation, there’s some concern in the Prince Cap inner circle about destroying Winston publicly. Mike is running for president, after all, and America is a very pro-labor environment these days. More

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    ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 2 Finale Recap: On the Verge

    Carrie gets an unexpected phone call. Aidan has some unexpected news.Season 2, Episode 11: ‘The Last Supper Part Two: Entrée’This sophomore season of “And Just Like That …” finishes almost exactly as it started: with everyone getting laid. We have “you love me too” sex, “moving on from my ex” sex, “giving up control” sex and “I’ll love you forever but might not see you for five years” sex. But the experiences between the lovers in the season finale are deeper, more meaningful and more evolved, much like this season — and in some ways, like this whole franchise.We know this because we were all flies on the wall at “The Last Supper” — Carrie’s final hurrah in her walk-up apartment near Barneys — where, between drink clinks and olive tastings, we got some major, albeit concise, self-reflection out of every single character. As Che puts it to Lisette during some impromptu heavy chitchat, Che is transitioning “emotionally.” But it’s clear Che isn’t the only one.Carrie did, in fact, despite my doubts, sell that apartment for good to Lisette and move to a four-bedroom Gramercy Park palace, which, at least for now, will house just her and her teeny kitty, Shoe.Aidan won’t be there, as was the plan. As we learned in last week’s episode, Aidan’s almost 15-year-old son, Wyatt, is in dire straits, and Aidan believes Wyatt needs his “constant” father nearby, in Norfolk, Va., and not in New York.But he and Carrie aren’t breaking up. They are simply entering a five-year holding pattern that Aidan promises will go by in a silent snap.This is, if you’re looking at it realistically, kind of bull. Yes, Wyatt needs steady, present parents right now, but this idea that his recovery will take precisely five years, and that they couldn’t still visit each other during that time, is contrived. Still, we know already that Season 3 is a go, and Carrie and Aidan — as much as many of us are rooting for them — need to be pried apart somehow if Carrie is to keep having new romantic adventures.It isn’t public knowledge how early the “And Just Like That …” team got the greenlight for Season 3, but it’s fair to speculate that it happened well before the renewal was announced this week. The Season 2 finale doesn’t feel final at all. Instead, it feels as if each character were on the verge of becoming richer, more seasoned versions of themselves.First and foremost, Woke Charlotte is in full effect, and I couldn’t be happier for her. Who would have imagined 25 years ago that the traditionalist Charlotte would become the most vocal feminist of them all? Taking down the patriarchy in her own home, Charlotte once again speaks for women across America in telling Harry that doing a few things around the house does not mean he is doing “it all.”In fact, he is doing the “bare minimum,” she says, of what has been expected of her and pretty much every wife and mother of the modern era (in heterosexual marriages). He deserves no applause. But she does. They say not all heroes wear capes, and in this case, our hero is wearing a disheveled gallerina dress that probably smells like booze and slaying, and that’s just fine.Miranda is taking on a new mind-set as well, addressing finally her pattern of discarding past loves and instead choosing to face that pain head-on. Carrie’s dinner party, which Carrie forced Miranda to attend (a decision I disagreed with!), turns out for the best in terms of Miranda and Che, who land on being a “good train wreck” and end up on at least amicable terms.Miranda was in a relationship with Steve far longer. She was married to him, had a child with him, shared a life and home with him. With Steve, she wants more than niceties, so she goes out to Coney Island to ask for it. Steve’s demeanor lets us know she will likely get it.But even more exciting is the fact that Miranda, too, is stepping up professionally. She is rapidly ascending at Human Rights Watch, enough to be trusted with an impromptu interview on the BBC. She is, well into middle age, finally doing work that matters to her, and I, for one, can’t wait to see more of that in Season 3.Kim Cattrall briefly reprised her “Sex and the City” character in the Season 2 finale of “And Just Like That …”MaxNya’s star is rising quickly as well, with a fast and unanimous vote to elect her into the American Law Institute. She is dismayed that she doesn’t have a man to share that joy with, and it’s easy to feel dismayed in hearing Nya say such a thing. This show is supposed to be about empowerment, right? These women don’t need men around, do they? But her lament, considering she is still grieving a divorce from a longtime love, is honest, and of course wanting a partner isn’t something to apologize for. Happily for Nya, sparks fly by the end of the episode with a Michelin-star chef (Gary Dourdan) who seems, rightly, very, very into her.Lisa, having miscarried her pregnancy in the previous episode, is free from the worry that a baby will derail all that she has worked toward. But more important, she resolves to free herself from the guilt of not having wanted it. Lisa is ready for “her time,” and she is dedicated to pursuing it. (Herbert better get that vasectomy this time.) Che, too, is moving toward whatever new version of themself is yet to come. Che is in, as Lisette calls it, a “cocoon stage.”Which is probably the best way to describe Carrie as well. Her next step is the most mysterious of all. Will this next phase of her life involve Aidan, who is technically still her boyfriend? Will she write another book? Will she become editor-at-large at Enid’s Vivante? Will she take up feeding pigeons every day in Gramercy Park? We don’t know. But we do know, as Carrie tells it, that she will be trying to move forward without expectations.Admittedly, my expectations for Season 2 were relatively low. I was hoping for a more fun, less grief-stricken story, and I got that. But over the past 11 episodes, I’m pleasantly surprised to say I got a lot more. It has been rocky along the way, but I think the show has taken meaningful steps toward inclusivity, achieving richer story lines for the newer characters while also allowing the whole cast, especially its original characters, to mature appropriately.Sure, this series is a little less fancy-free than the original. But it is challenging the ways in which we dismiss women of a certain age, forcing us instead to consider that, maybe, if we let them, women can step more and more into their power with each passing year. And as Carrie would say, that’s just fabulous.Things still taking up space in my brainI think we were all hoping Samantha (Kim Cattrall) would be more than a footnote, but the rumors were that her appearance would be only a cameo, and it was. Considering the bad blood Cattrall has said exists between her and Sarah Jessica Parker, and her insistence that she wanted nothing to do with this series, it is surprising that Cattrall appeared at all. But if this is a setup for Samantha to be more formally incorporated into Season 3, I would truly be thrilled.Aidan says he has provided a sense of normalcy and constancy for his boys over the years, but frankly, I want to hear Kathy’s side of this story. She was always jaunting off to China, but wasn’t Aidan on a work trip in Abu Dhabi the last time he bumped into Carrie? Kathy was the one who had the wherewithal to ask Carrie keep their sons out of her writing. Her protective instinct is very much there. Justice for Kathy in Season 3, please. 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