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      How Jennifer Hudson Prepared to Play Aretha Franklin

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      For the new biopic “Respect,” the singer researched the life of a yearslong friend and role model to better understand the circumstances that shaped her.Jennifer Hudson had plenty of time to think about how to portray Aretha Franklin onscreen. In 2007, soon after Hudson won the Academy Award for best supporting actress — for playing a girl-group singer in “Dreamgirls” — Franklin told Hudson she should play her in a biopic, starting a decade-long friendship filled with weekly conversations. Like Franklin, Hudson grew up singing in church, and she has poured gospel virtuosity into pop songs. And like Franklin, whose mother died at 34 of a heart attack, Hudson experienced sudden, devastating loss: her mother, brother and nephew were murdered in Chicago in 2008. In her career, Hudson has repeatedly paid tribute to Franklin, from using a Franklin song for her “American Idol” audition in 2004 to singing “Amazing Grace” at Franklin’s funeral in 2018. Now, Hudson is playing Franklin in the biopic “Respect” that comes to theaters this week.“Every artist, every musician, you’ve got to cross paths with Aretha, especially if you want to be great,” Hudson said in a video interview from Chicago, where she lives; her gray cat, Macavity, prowled in the background. “She’s always been present in my life in some form, even when I didn’t know it.”As Hudson explained the choices that went into her performance, she said that through the movie, she came to understand just how much of a “blueprint” Franklin was. “Our church music was based solely on her. The ‘Amazing Grace’ that I grew up singing in church came from her ‘Amazing Grace’ album. I didn’t realize that until we were doing research on the film.”Hudson, 39, is both the star and an executive producer of “Respect.” The film chronicles Franklin’s life from her childhood — as a vocal prodigy singing in church alongside her father, the eminent Reverend Clarence L. Franklin — through her pregnancy at 12, her frustrating years singing jazz standards at Columbia Records, her triumphant emergence as the Queen of Soul at Atlantic Records, and the pressures and drinking that threatened all she had achieved. Its story concludes in 1972 with Franklin reclaiming her church heritage to record her landmark live gospel album, “Amazing Grace.”Hudson as Aretha Franklin opposite Tituss Burgess in “Respect.”Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM“Respect” is the first film directed by Liesl Tommy, who was born in South Africa under apartheid and has worked extensively in theater, directing reconceptualized classics and politically charged new plays like “Eclipsed,” about women during the civil war in Liberia. (She was nominated for a best director Tony for that production.) To write the screenplay for “Respect,” Tommy brought in the playwright Tracey Scott Wilson, whose grandfather was a preacher.“When I pitched my idea of the film,” Tommy said by telephone from Los Angeles, “it was that it should start in the church and end in the church. The theme of the film was the woman with the greatest voice on earth, struggling to find her voice. I wanted to know how a person sings with such emotional intensity.“A lot of people have brilliant voices,” she continued, “but she’s the only one who delivers songs the way she does. I don’t think you become the Queen of Soul if you have an easy ride. There was a lived experience that allowed her to sing like that.”Franklin was celebrated anew after her death in 2018. The long-shelved concert film made when she recorded the “Amazing Grace” album was finally released that year. And National Geographic devoted a full season of its television series “Genius” to Franklin, with Cynthia Erivo in the title role. “Aretha Franklin lived a life where there’s room for many, many versions of many stories about her,” Tommy said. “She deserves that.”“Respect” juxtaposes the personal and political currents of Franklin’s career: forging a feminist anthem with “Respect” while grappling with an abusive husband, appearing regularly with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while supporting controversial figures like the Black Power activist Angela Davis. One of the rawest scenes involves Franklin singing at King’s funeral. “Imagine being Aretha Franklin in that era and Dr. King, whom she was so close to, being assassinated,” Hudson said. “Imagine the suffering and the pain she was going through. But in her position, she still had to be that person to be the light in such a dark time. That’s hard.”Though Hudson had spoken regularly with Franklin, she still had to conduct research: “Aretha wasn’t a person who verbalized too much unless it was through music.”Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesStill, Hudson and Tommy were determined to place Franklin’s music at the center of the film. “Everybody is, like, ‘We’ve never seen a biopic with this much music, where you get to hear the songs,’” Hudson said. “This is not a musical. It’s a biopic about artists, musicians. But I can’t think of any biopic or musical that has been done this way.”As executive producer, Hudson said, “I wanted to make sure the right songs were in the film. I wanted ‘Ain’t No Way.’ If I’m just an actor, I don’t really get a say, but with this, it’s like, ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t do this unless “Ain’t No Way” is a part of it.’”In an extended recording-studio sequence, Aretha’s sisters, Carolyn and Erma Franklin, sing all the backup vocals — not Cissy Houston, whose wordless soprano counterpoint transfigures the song. “That is part of artistic license,” Tommy said. “You can only have so many characters. You have to keep it focused.”To create immediacy, Hudson delivered Franklin’s onstage performances by singing live on camera — not lip-syncing, not dubbing in vocals afterward. “I wanted to experience it as she did in her life,” Hudson said. “Whatever we were re-enacting and recreating that she did in her life, if it was live, it’s like, ‘Well, let’s do it live.’ ‘Amazing Grace’ was live. ‘Ain’t No Way’ was live. ‘Natural Woman,’ we’re going to sing it live. So it could be authentic to what really was in her life.”Franklin was an accomplished gospel pianist as well as a singer, skills forged in her childhood in the church. Her early, commercially unsuccessful albums for Columbia backed her with celebrated jazz musicians and elaborate orchestral arrangements. It was elegant but in the 1960s, it was already old-fashioned.Hudson — with Marc Maron, left, and Marlon Wayans — learned to play piano for “Respect.” Quantrell D. Colbert/MGMHer return to the piano was one catalyst for her indelible Atlantic hits, defining the groove with churchy foundations and building a visceral call-and-response between her fingers and her voice. Hudson, after a career of working solely as a singer, set out to learn piano. “It was an actor’s choice to say ‘I cannot play Aretha Franklin without learning some element of the piano,’” Hudson said. “And now, when I’m learning music, I no longer just look at the top line, the melody line, the singing line. I’m considering it as an arranger. What key is that in? What is the progression?”Hudson also pondered how to reinterpret Franklin’s songs. Their voices are different: Hudson’s is higher and clearer, Franklin’s bluesier and grittier, and Hudson wanted to emulate Franklin without copying her. “I was using her approach, just allowing whatever that influence is that she’s had on me to come through, while using her inflections and different nuances,” Hudson said. “It was more about the feeling than matching the notes.”Despite their years of conversations, Hudson still had to research Franklin. “Aretha wasn’t a person who verbalized too much unless it was through music,” she said. “I know from my experiences of being around her, I used to be like, I can’t really tell where I stand. She didn’t give you much.” So Hudson set out to understand the era in which she grew up and other circumstances to get a sense of what it was like to be a woman then. “It wasn’t for me until literally in the middle of scenes that I realized, the things she had been saying to me, she was speaking from experience. Her greatest expression was through her music — and that was real.” More

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      in Television

      Una Stubbs, Veteran Actress Known for ‘Sherlock,’ Dies at 84

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      Ms. Stubbs, a fixture on British television for more than half a century, was best known to American audiences as Sherlock Holmes’s cheerful landlady in the popular BBC series.Una Stubbs, the veteran British actress best known to American audiences for her role as Mrs. Hudson, the landlady to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series “Sherlock,” died on Thursday at her home in Edinburgh. She was 84.Her death was confirmed by her agent, Rebecca Blond.Ms. Stubbs was a recognizable face in Britain, where she had appeared in comedic and dramatic roles onstage, onscreen and on television for more than half a century, including in the long-running soap opera “EastEnders” and the sitcom “Till Death Us Do Part.”American television viewers knew her best as Mrs. Hudson, the motherly landlady to Sherlock Holmes in “Sherlock.” The show, which aired from 2010 to 2017, was an international hit, and Ms. Stubbs turned Mrs. Hudson into a fan favorite by making the character a cheerful foil for the show’s darker themes.The landlady was a bit of a phantom in Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous stories about Holmes, on which the show was based. So Ms. Stubbs and the show’s creators built Mrs. Hudson into a comedic parental figure with a checkered past.“I am the mother of three sons, so I thought that would be a good angle to go on,” Ms. Stubbs told The New York Times in 2016. “I once told Benedict that my sons go straight to the fridge and make themselves sandwiches, and he did that in one episode.”She added that the creators of “Sherlock,” Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, “have made me more saucy now, and a bit grubby, which I enjoy.”Mr. Gatiss echoed that statement when he said of Ms. Stubbs on Twitter on Thursday that “mischief was in her blood.”“We were so blessed that she became our imperishable Mrs. Hudson,” Mr. Gatiss said.Una Stubbs was born on May 1, 1937, in Welwyn Garden City, England, north of London, the second of three children of Angela and Clarence Stubbs. She was raised in Hinckley, in Leicestershire. She told The Guardian in 2013 that one of her earliest memories was hiding under a dining table as the area around her childhood home was bombed during World War II. Her father, who was known as Clarry, served in the Home Guard in London during the war, she said.Ms. Stubbs trained as a dancer, and in the 1950s appeared in advertisements for Rowntree’s, a British candy company. She would later learn that her paternal grandfather, whom she never met, had been a confectioner for the company in York, England.Her breakout role was in the 1963 film “Summer Holiday,” a musical starring Cliff Richard, as a singer in a traveling musical trio. Other television credits include “Fawlty Towers,” “Keeping Up Appearances,” “Call the Midwife” and “The Worst Witch.”She is survived by her sons Christian Henson and Joe Henson, both of whom are composers and musicians, and Jason Gilmore, as well as six grandchildren.Her marriages to the actors Peter Gilmore and Nicky Henson ended in divorce, and Ms. Stubbs raised her sons as a single mother. She told The Guardian that she spent most of her life “doing two jobs, motherhood and acting, and only being so-so at both of them.”“And now,” she added, “I’m trying to do one job really well, with a bit of grannying thrown in.” More

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      in Movies

      With ‘The Kissing Booth 3,’ Joey King Closes a Chapter of Her Life

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      The actress started on the Netflix movies when she was 17 and grew along with her high school character, Elle: “I went through a lot of important life moments in her shoes.”In hindsight, it’s somewhat of a miracle that “The Kissing Booth 3” got made in the first place.Not because the 2018 “The Kissing Booth” was initially a stand-alone film — before the summery rom-com, about a high schooler who falls for her best friend’s brother, became an unexpected hit on Netflix. And not because of the pandemic; this final chapter was shot earlier, in 2019, at the same time as “The Kissing Booth 2.”With workdays that included wrestling in massive inflatable sumo suits, shooting a montage at a water park and racing go-karts in Mario Kart-like costumes, it’s remarkable that Joey King and her colleagues, who had a ball in the process, were able to focus enough to get the job done.“If you put us in a room and you expect us to get much done that’s productive, it’s going to be hard,” King, the franchise’s 22-year-old star, said in a video call. “We’re like 12-year-old boys.”The trilogy’s final film, which begins streaming Wednesday, follows Elle, King’s character, through her last summer before college as she juggles dating her boyfriend, Noah (Jacob Elordi), and checking off the aforementioned antics with her friend Lee (Joel Courtney) in a last-ditch effort to complete their childhood bucket list.One of her next projects has a different vibe: King described “The Princess,” which she’s shooting this summer in Bulgaria, as an action movie, “‘The Raid: Redemption’ meets Rapunzel.” She sat down for a video interview (energetic as ever, it’s worth noting, at 6 a.m. local time) to discuss the end of the series that has defined this phase of her career and how Elle’s coming of age has mirrored her own. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was it like shooting the last two films back to back?Actually, we shot them at the same time — meaning in one day, we’d be shooting scenes from both movies. It was so confusing.How did you keep everything straight?I can’t give myself that kind of credit, because I didn’t. I knew exactly what I was doing every day, but when I was on set and my director [Vince Marcello] would come over and say a note or something, I was like, “Wait, are we in Movie 3 right now?” He’s like, “No, we’re still in Movie 2.” It’s not like they were very similar, because their story lines do take crazy different turns. But it was kind of fun to marry them together.King filmed “The Kissing Booth 3,” above, and the previous film in the trilogy at the same time. “It was so confusing,” she said.Marcos Cruz/NetflixWas this film — along with “The Kissing Booth 2” — the first project you executive produced?It is, which was lovely. I’ve been putting my hand more into producing lately; I’m actually producing “The Princess” as well. But it was really special for me to start on those movies since I’ve been with them for such a long time.I’m a bit of a sponge. On set, it was more of me absorbing stuff from Vince and being like, “So why did we make that decision?” Just asking more questions. He was so willing to be even more collaborative with me and ask my opinion. I felt like I had a voice on set, but my voice really did come in on the back half of filming. I had a lot of say on what the final product was, and I also am very heavily involved in the marketing process. I’m very passionate about both of those things, and I feel like I am one of the target audiences. It’s fun to be able to have a say in something that I would want to watch at the end of the day.At the heart of these movies is a coming-of-age story. Did you find similarities to your own experiences at this stage of your life?I’ve always felt very connected to Elle. I remember receiving the script for the first movie. I called my team, and I said, “When can I audition for this? I want this so bad.” And they were like, “You don’t have to audition for it; it’s an offer.” If I had had to audition for it, I would have done anything to get that job.So when I started playing Elle, I felt like [she] and I were very, very similar. Her vibe, her sense of humor; I felt very in tune with it. And same thing goes for the second and third movie, if not more so — I went through a lot of important life moments in her shoes.King with Jacob Elordi in the final film in the series. King said, “I went through a lot of important life moments in her shoes.”Marcos Cruz/NetflixHow do you feel you’ve changed since then?I have changed so much. It’s actually quite unbelievable to me. I never thought I was going to change as a person, and I was so wrong. That’s the beauty of being young. My perspective on life changed — my perspective on family, on relationships, on career. So that’s why, when I feel like I’ve really gone through so much with Elle, it’s because I have changed so much as a person and learned so much.In what ways?I became a little bit more present. I started meditating. I found a very incredible relationship [the director and producer Steven Piet]. Obviously I’ve always loved my family, but I have found a deeper appreciation for them. And career stuff, too: I started becoming more zeroed in on exactly what I wanted to do and how much I didn’t want to do certain things. And that was really interesting, just to feel a little more empowered in my own abilities to make decisions. I’m actually quite an indecisive person. If you take me to a restaurant, I have no idea what I want. And that’s even if we decide where we should go. But when it comes to my career, my brain switches over to a decisive mode. That’s a new development for me.You’ve had such a range of roles at this point — “The Kissing Booth” is very different from “The Act.” [King was nominated for an Emmy for her performance in the Hulu true-crime drama, as a young woman convicted of killing her mother.] When you talk about narrowing down what you want to do, do you hope to keep that sort of variety? Or do you prefer certain roles?I personally love to keep a wider range, and I never really have a specific “this is what I want to do next.” I want to keep excited about it. I love the fact that they [“The Kissing Booth” and “The Act”] were polar opposites. And I’m hoping that people are excited to see me in different kinds of roles, because I very carefully decided that this is what I want to do.This was, as far as we know for now, the final “Kissing Booth.” But if the opportunity arose, can you see yourself returning to Elle and this story in the future?I started these movies when I was 17. We were just like, we hope people like it — if anyone even sees it. Little did we know what a big impact this would have. I’ve never tired of playing Elle. It’s so fun. Watching this story be wrapped up so nicely in like a beautiful bow, I think it would be a little hard to come back after that. We made this ending exactly what I think it needed to be. Selfishly, do I want to play Elle again? Absolutely. But I think that the story is on its final chapter. More

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      in Movies

      Elizabeth Banks Swears By Rob Reiner and Finger Sandwiches

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      The actress, Hollywood power player and host of a new sex and sexuality podcast discusses classic sitcoms, summer at Tanglewood and the revelation that is canned wine.“I’ve never met somebody who said, ‘Gosh, my parents talked to me about sex too much,’” Elizabeth Banks said.Banks, 47, an actress, writer, director and producer, is a mother to two boys. And as one of them neared puberty, she knew she would have to start talking soon. To prepare, she created “My Body, My Podcast,” an intimate, chatty series that Audible released on July 29. Its six episodes explore sex, sexuality, gender and body image with guests including Laverne Cox, Lindy West and Banks’s own mother. Peggy Orenstein stops in to discuss hookup culture; Jameela Jamil puts the diet industry on blast.Banks, speaking from Dalkey, Ireland, where she is shooting the comedy “Cocaine Bear,” refers to the podcast as her “continuing sex ed” and the most personal work she has ever created. Like all of her recent projects — the “Charlie’s Angels” reboot, the “Pitch Perfect” franchise, “Shrill” — “My Body, My Podcast” centers women’s stories, without apology. “I’m trying to be quietly revolutionary,” Banks said.Huddled in a cozy sweater and drinking a glass of warm tea with a few ice cubes tossed in — “They don’t have iced tea here. It’s not a thing,” she sighed — she discussed the art and ideas that influence her current work and the cultural experiences and artifacts that bring her pleasure. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Girls and Sex” and “Boys and Sex” by Peggy Orenstein These are books in which Peggy Orenstein interviews young people about all of their sexual experiences. I read “Girls and Sex” with my book club, and we were all a little bit devastated at how Peggy presented just how little fun any young women are having. It was a total wake-up call for me as a woman, as a parent, as an advocate and as an artist. It really inspired me to create “My Body, My Podcast.” Peggy followed it up with “Boys and Sex,” which I also read, which confirms that boys and men are desperate for connection and that the standards for them are just as insanely high as they are for girls and women.2. Female Athletes I was sporty as a kid. I’m a sporty person. I just celebrate every single woman who undeniably reaches the top of her field and then uses that platform to make the world better for the rest of us. For me, it started with Billie Jean King fighting for Title IX and pay equity. U.S. women’s soccer, Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, Serena Williams. Even right now with the Olympics, these are women who are doing the absolute most and best with their female bodies. And yet those same bodies are still up for discussion and dissection.3. Tanglewood Tanglewood is a music venue in Lenox, Mass. I grew up in Pittsfield, a factory town just north of Lenox. Looking back, I can see how aspirational it was to go there as a kid. I got to listen to John Williams and the Boston Pops. It was fancy music for fancy people. True bliss for me is laying on the lawn on a warm summer night bathed in music, watching the stars with family and friends by my side.4. Jackson Browne, “Running on Empty” It was a favorite album of my aunt Barbara, Auntie Babs, who passed away during the early Covid lockdown. I started listening to honor her. She introduced me to that album on a road trip that she and I took together, and the album is all about a road trip. There’s a comforting feeling of nostalgia that I get listening to it.5. “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari “Sapiens” is a book about the history of humanity across culture. As a woman and a feminist, this book was an important reminder that we, as humans, just kind of decided that birthing and caring for babies was not as important as selling cows, tilling land, using weapons. So women don’t amass any of that wealth and power. This book clarified for me why I feel so strongly in my bones that reproductive rights are the basis for women’s equality.6. “Stand by Me” I love Rob Reiner’s films. I aspire to a filmmaking career like his. This one is an incredible treatise on the damage of toxic masculinity, which were not words when this movie came out, and the obvious antidotes, which are connection, support, brotherly love. My husband and I are raising boys, and we want them to feel connected to us, to their family, to their friends, to nature and to appreciate every day. All of those lessons are in that film.7. Nia DaCosta and Chloé Zhao There is this Hollywood narrative about men who make a small personal film that goes to a festival and then immediately get the keys to the kingdom, the big Hollywood job. The continuing narrative is that women either don’t want those jobs or can’t handle those jobs. Nia DaCosta and Chloé Zhao just busted that narrative all up. They made their personal films, and they also got the big jobs. Chloe’s doing “Eternals”; Nia is doing “The Marvels.” They’re being allowed to have ambition, which is very tricky for women in any industry. It’s that blatant ambition that inspires me the most. I want that.8. High tea I’ve recently rediscovered it, here in Ireland. Growing up, I would go to Boston and have high tea with my great-aunts. For me, it’s a scone with clotted cream and jam, finger sandwiches, petit fours, English Breakfast tea with a little milk and a sugar cube dropped in with real silver tongs. It’s something I love doing no matter where I am in the world.9. Canned wine We do so much hiking, biking, trails, lakes, rivers. And I just don’t really love beer. But I do love wine. A can of wine in the cooler floating down the river? It was like light bulbs going off. I saw how canned wine fit into my life immediately upon being introduced to it.10. Classic sitcoms David Wain, the writer-director on “Wet Hot American Summer,” we’re working on a project together right now. We just started talking about our appreciation for well-crafted jokes, starting with “I Love Lucy” and Jackie Mason. A well-crafted joke and the ability to deliver it, and the timing, it’s just something that is top of my mind as an artist right now. “Friends,” “30 Rock”? Those guys were perfect. More

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      Jane Withers, Child Star Who Later Won Fame in Commercials, Dies at 95

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      As a girl, she landed leading roles that were the antidote to Shirley Temple’s. As an adult, she was known as Josephine the Plumber in ads for Comet cleanser.Jane Withers, a top child star in the 1930s who played tough, tomboyish brats in more than two dozen B films and achieved a second burst of fame as an adult as Josephine the Plumber in commercials for Comet cleanser, died on Saturday in Burbank, Calif. She was 95. Her death was confirmed by her daughter Kendall Errair.In her first major movie role, in 20th Century Fox’s “Bright Eyes” (1934), the 8-year-old Jane played a spoiled rich kid who wanted a machine gun for Christmas and took a ghoulish delight in sending her dolls to the hospital. She was the antidote to the movie’s star, Shirley Temple, the always cheerful, always obedient, always smiling orphan.The titles of some of the films in which Ms. Withers starred said it all: “The Holy Terror” (1937), “Wild and Woolly” (1937), “Rascals” (1938), “Always in Trouble” (1938) and “The Arizona Wildcat” (1939).At the end of most of her movies, “just to satisfy everybody, I get a good spanking,” Ms. Withers told Norman Zierold, the author of “The Child Stars” (1965). “The minute they slapped me in ‘Bright Eyes,’ everybody just yelled and waved, they were so happy. Well, I don’t mind. I had my fun.”As an adult, Ms. Withers played Vashti Snythe, the neighbor of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson who delighted in spending her oil money in “Giant” (1956); appeared in several TV series; and voiced the gargoyle Laverne in the animated “Hunchback of Notre Dame II” (2002), a role she first took on after the death of Mary Wickes in 1995.But her most memorable and long-lasting role was as Josephine the Plumber, in a white cap and overalls, in the 1960s and ’70s. Nearly 40 years later, she was still being recognized for that character.“I can be at a market and I’ll be talking to somebody there about a can of peas and all of a sudden they’ll say, ‘I knew that was you! I recognized your voice right away,’” Ms. Withers told The Long Beach Press-Telegram in 2007.Ms. Withers and Richard Clayton in “A Very Young Lady” in 1941.LMPC, via Getty ImagesMost of her films were made at Fox’s small studio in Hollywood. Shirley Temple’s mother, Gertrude, who was said to be choosy about who was allowed to play with her daughter, had Ms. Withers banished from the studio’s grand Westwood lot, according to another former child star, Dickie Moore. In his memoir, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” Mr. Moore wrote that Gertrude Temple was so protective of Shirley that Jane was not even allowed to say hello to her when the children performed together in “Bright Eyes.”Although her Hollywood success did not survive adolescence, Ms. Withers was the rare child actor who entered adulthood prepared for the real world — and with money in the bank. Her parents “taught Jane bookkeeping at age seven,” Mr. Moore wrote, in contrast to almost all the other parents, who refused to allow their meal tickets to grow up and, in most cases, squandered their money. It was a point of pride for her father, a Goodrich executive, that his salary paid the family’s expenses.Jane Withers was born in Atlanta on April 12, 1926, to Walter and Lavinia Withers. Her mother, a movie fan, picked Jane as a name because she thought it would look good on a marquee. By the age of 4, the pudgy child with the Buster Brown haircut was singing, dancing and imitating Greta Garbo; billed as “Dixie’s Dainty Dewdrop,” she had her own local radio program.When Jane was 6, the family moved to Hollywood. After two years of department store modeling and bit parts, she was cast as Joy Smythe in “Bright Eyes.”Like Ms. Temple, Ms. Withers played an orphan in most of her films. In “Paddy O’ Day” (1935), her rescuer was Rita Cansino — soon to be renamed Rita Hayworth — in her first leading role. In “45 Fathers” (1937), she was adopted by a group of old men.By 1937, Ms. Withers was in sixth place on theater owners’ list of the Top 10 box office stars, despite the fact that she performed only in B movies. And sales of Jane Withers paper dolls, hair bows, socks and mystery novels similar to the Nancy Drew series earned her more money than her movies.Stardom also brought Ms. Withers thousands of dolls and teddy bears, most of them sent by fans. Those fans included President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had his wife, Eleanor, hand deliver a teddy bear.Jane Withers in 1935. At the end of most of her movies, she once said, “just to satisfy everybody, I get a good spanking.”Film Publicity Archive/United Archives, via Getty ImagesAs she entered her teenage years, Ms. Withers wrote a story for herself, under the pseudonym Jerrie Walters. It was made into the movie “Small Town Deb” (1942). As her contract with Fox ended, she starred as a peasant girl in Samuel Goldwyn’s “The North Star” (1943).Ms. Withers married a Texas oilman, William Moss Jr., in 1947. They had three children and divorced in 1955, leaving Ms. Withers with several oil wells. That same year she married Kenneth Errair, who had been a member of the singing group the Four Freshmen. He was killed in a plane crash in 1968. (Information on her survivors was not immediately available.)In August 2004, Ms. Withers auctioned several hundred dolls, many of them likenesses of film and radio stars and characters of the 1930s, including Sonja Henie, the Lone Ranger and Snow White.Ms. Withers may never have surpassed Ms. Temple’s popularity on the screen. But in the 2004 sale, a Shirley Temple doll dressed in her “Little Colonel” costume sold for $3,100; a Jane Withers doll sold for $5,600. More

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      Ashley Nicole Black Is Competing Against Herself for an Emmy

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      The comedian was nominated twice in the same Emmy category for her television writing. She’s just getting started.At first, Ashley Nicole Black didn’t get why people kept sending her the meme of Spider-Man pointing at an identical Spider-Man, an image often used to joke about situations in which two incredibly similar people face off.But when someone Photoshopped Ms. Black’s face onto both Spider-Mans, it clicked. The 2021 Emmy Awards nominations had just been announced, and Ms. Black, 36, had been nominated twice in the same category.She was competing against herself.Ms. Black was nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for “The Amber Ruffin Show” and “A Black Lady Sketch Show.” Two other people have been nominated twice in this category in the past five years: John Mulaney and Seth Meyers, both in 2019.I CANT WITH YALL 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 https://t.co/YE7gBnqjw0— Ashley Nicole Black (@ashleyn1cole) July 14, 2021
      “I feel like that kid still, who’s on the side of the playground, who nobody’s noticed,” Ms. Black said in a recent video interview. But that’s just impostor syndrome talking. Ms. Black has been nominated for an Emmy eight times: twice for writing for a variety special and six times for writing for a variety series. She also won once, in 2017, for her work on “Not the White House Correspondents Dinner” with Samantha Bee.Ms. Black has written for many critically acclaimed series and shows, including “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee,” “Ted Lasso” and “Bless This Mess.” Although “A Black Lady Sketch Show” is Ms. Black’s first time as a series regular, she was a correspondent on “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” and acted in “Drunk History” and the 2014 film “An American Education.”Robin Thede, the creator of “A Black Lady Sketch Show” on HBO — which was also nominated this year as an Outstanding Variety Sketch Series, and twice for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (Yvette Nicole Brown and Issa Rae) — sees Ms. Black as “a force of nature and of comedy.”“I have been lucky enough to work with her as a writer and performer and know firsthand how ridiculously good she is at both,” Ms. Thede wrote in an email. “She’s truly a powerhouse who will leave an indelible mark on this industry.”Ms. Black described herself as “someone who’s observing what’s going on in the world, and trying to reflect it back to people.” “To me,” she said, “that’s art.”She is from a family of musicians, so singing in an ensemble, she said — whether it was musical theater or show choir — meant learning to breathe with others and sound like one voice. This set her up for the moment she found improv comedy, because she already knew how to collaborate — and how not to steal a scene. “I was, I think, picking up all the pieces I needed to get where I was going,” she said.After graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2007, she began a Ph.D. program in performance studies at Northwestern University. She hated it and was anxious all the time, she said, so her parents bought her an improv class at the Second City comedy club in nearby Chicago to blow off steam.When she took a comedy writing class there, a teacher pulled her aside to let her know she was a writer.“People had been telling me, ‘You should try this. You should try this,’ and I had been uncomfortably trying it,” Ms. Black said. “But ‘you’re a writer’? I was like, ‘yes.’ I completely shifted my view of myself to be a writer first. And that was when everything started to fall into place.”Chicago, Ms. Black said, is the best place in the world to learn comedy writing. There’s an “emotionality” she found in Chicago that she values in many of her collaborators, including Ms. Bee and Ms. Ruffin.“What attracted me to Sam and Amber is that they’re admitting to you that they live in the world,” she said. “And they might be upset about it, and they might be angry about it, and they might cry about it on camera, because they’re not removed from it. They’re a part of it.”This is the “good stuff” of comedy, in Ms. Black’s eyes: The stuff that happens when characters have feelings, and when they’re flawed. People who have been to therapy and have their lives together aren’t nearly as fun to embody, she said. A good example of a character who embodies that tension: Ashley’s perfectionistic alter ego on “A Black Lady Sketch Show.”In the show, Ms. Black plays a woman (also named Ashley) who is a bossy know-it-all. She is trying for total control, and in the process, irritating her friends. “I am not like that and take great pains not to be,” Ms. Black said, “but it’s so much fun to play.”“All day, you have anxiety. You’re trying to make sure everyone around you is comfortable,” she said of real life. “You’re thinking about what you say and what you do and how it affects people. And then, when you get to play those characters who aren’t that way, it’s so freeing.”Ms. Black said she tends to be quiet and a little shy, and that she used to worry that not being “on” all the time might disappoint people. “But I’ve sort of released feeling bad about that,” she said, “because I just try to be present and have honest experiences.”During the pandemic, those experiences included spending time with her family in Los Angeles, being a hardworking dog mom to Gordi the Sato and watching every Marvel movie ever made. “I just wanted to watch good guys win some things,” she said.Right now she’s evaluating what she wants to do next and what percentage of her time she wants to spend on each thing. Ms. Ruffin wrote in an email about Ms. Black, “she’s gone from ‘a writer’ to ‘theeeee writer.’” But Ms. Black is still hoping for a 70-30 or 60-40 writing to acting split, she said.For now, “It really made me so happy that people — oh my gosh, I’m getting emotional — care what I’m doing,” she said. “So I’m just really grateful that anybody noticed that I was working so hard.” More

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      Udo Kier’s Latest Provocation: Leading Man

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      In 1966, a pouty-mouthed Udo Kier made his movie debut in a zippy short called “Road to Saint Tropez,” playing a gigolo who has a fling with an older woman. Their day at Baie des Anges is a romp, but by the time they get to the film’s title beach town, he breaks her heart.This summer, Kier is again in a movie that was shot by the water. But it’s nowhere near the French Riviera, and he’s no lady killer.In “Swan Song,” a new movie from the writer-director Todd Stephens, Kier plays Mr. Pat, a flamboyant former hairdresser languishing in a grim nursing home outside Sandusky, Ohio, a working-class city on the Lake Erie shore. With the promise of money, he hitchhikes into town to fulfill the wish of his recently deceased ex-client Rita (Linda Evans): that he style her corpse’s hair and makeup for her open-casket funeral.While roaming Sandusky, Mr. Pat crosses paths with Dee Dee, a protégée turned rival (Jennifer Coolidge), and Dustin, Rita’s gay grandson (Michael Urie). But here’s the thing: Rita is a “demanding Republican monster,” as Mr. Pat sasses, and he’s torn over whether to “make a dead bitch look human.”When it came to the role, Kier said he “had no fear whatsoever,” a tombstone-worthy way to describe his own career, which has been defined by unreserved performances as outré characters for renegade directors.“I was looking forward to making the movie because I don’t ever want to say: I can’t do that,” he said. “I would go as far as to say it was like a dream project for me.”Kier as a retired hairdresser in the film. He said he “had no fear whatsoever” about the role.Chris Stephens/Magnolia Pictures“Swan Song,” now in theaters and on demand starting Aug. 13, completes Stephens’s indie Ohio Trilogy, which began with writing “Edge of Seventeen” (1998) and co-writing and directing “Gypsy 83” (2001), stories of Gen X gay boys itching to leave Sandusky for New York. With Mr. Pat, the trilogy shifts its spotlight to an older gay man who built a life in Ohio.Stephens said he spent more than a year trying to cast the right actor to play a Stonewall-generation peacock who favors fancy fedoras and mint-green leisure suiting. Then a casting director brought up Kier.“I hadn’t thought of him because he’s German,” said Stephens, who based the character on Pat Pitsenbarger, a hairdresser and drag performer he encountered as a teenager exploring his own sexuality in Sandusky’s gay circles in the ’80s. “I had always thought of him in villain roles. But on the other hand, he’s so amazingly fabulous. Mr. Pat had big blue eyes like Udo. As soon as I met him, I knew he was Mr. Pat.”Over five decades as an actor, Kier has put those ice-blue eyes to provocative use as a vampire for Paul Morrissey (“Blood for Dracula” in 1974), a psychiatrist for Dario Argento (“Suspiria” in 1977), a john for Gus Van Sant (“My Own Private Idaho” in 1991), and a demon and a baby for Lars von Trier (“The Kingdom” series in the ’90s). He was Madonna’s dungeon companion in her 1992 book “Sex.”Still to come for the prolific actor are the dark comedy “My Neighbor, Adolf,” in which he plays a man suspected of being Hitler, and a recurring role in the second season of the Amazon Prime series “Hunters,” about Nazi hunters.With “Swan Song,” Kier scored a rarity for an actor at 76: a juicy leading role. Over the phone from his home in Palm Springs, Calif., Kier took the conversation in multitudes of directions. These are edited excerpts.How does it feel to have a leading role?In all the films I did, from “Blade” to “Shadow of the Vampire,” I always had — I hate that word supporting — I had smaller roles. This is the first time after “Dracula” and “[Flesh for] Frankenstein” that I played the lead. I’ve always wanted to play a villain in a James Bond film, but somehow that didn’t happen.Kier opposite Dalila Di Lazzaro in “Flesh for Frankenstein” Compagnia Cinematografica ChampionTell me about shooting with Linda Evans.In Germany, they called “Dallas” and “Dynasty” street cleaners because when they were on television, nobody was in the street. [Laughs] I first met her in a restaurant the night before we were going to shoot, and she was so normal. I was surprised because she wanted to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. I liked that.When we were shooting, we were real. There was no acting. I learned over the years that the good actors are the nicest people. It’s only the insecure who complain all the time. Linda is one of the nicest.How much did Sandusky influence your making of the film?Everything was wonderful, easy. The main street became for me like the studio at Paramount. I wanted to make the movie as chronologically as possible. Since we started in the retirement home, I slept there alone without a camera and got a feeling for the corridors and for the bathrooms. Then I had an apartment in Sandusky.Was there a gay man from your past who inspired your performance?There were many. There were still friends of the real Pat around, and they told me how he’d hold his cigarette. There were also little things over my life that I have seen in clubs or privately, how people, when they sit down, put one leg over the other just so. But I also wanted to go away from clichés. I did not want to say, “Yes, girl.”Do you identify anywhere under the L.G.B.T.Q. umbrella?When I was a young man in Germany, if two men lived together and the neighbors could hear erotic noises, they would call the police and the people would be arrested. I think it’s wonderful what has been achieved everywhere, especially in America.“I’ve always wanted to play a villain in a James Bond film, but somehow that didn’t happen,” Kier said.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesYou’ve worked with some true gay auteurs, including Fassbinder. What’s your favorite memory of him?I met Fassbinder when he was 15, and I was 16, in Cologne in a working-class bar with a mix of truck drivers and secretaries. I went to London to work and learn English. One day I bought a magazine with his face on it calling him a genius and an alcoholic, and I thought, that’s Rainer from the bar.When I went back to Germany, he offered me a role in “The Stationmaster’s Wife” and that was our first work together. We made a lot of movies together. We also lived together. Somewhere it says that we had an affair, but that’s a lie. He was the only director who captured how Germany was after the war.Is there a film of yours people might not know about but you wish they’d discover?I did “House of Boys,” a very important film for the gay community. It’s set [in 1984] in a nightclub in Amsterdam, which my character runs. The boys are there doing stripping, and I come out like Marlene Dietrich. The film is important because AIDS was coming, and nobody knew what AIDS was. I think it’s something people should see.In “Swan Song” and in real life, there’s a generational divide between older gay men who remember the worst years of AIDS and younger men who don’t.Cookie Mueller, my good friend, died of AIDS. I also lost many friends in Germany. In front of the camera, I had that in mind.Have you thought about what you’d like to look like when you die?[Laughs] I don’t care. I guess if someone said that I had seven hours to live, I would have a party with wonderful drinks. After seven hours, I would jump in my pool and not move anymore. People would say, “He’s so good! Look at how long he can hold his breath!”The problem would be if I was 85 and I had no more hair. I would find somebody to polish the top of my head. More

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      Arthur French, Negro Ensemble Company Pioneer, Dies at 89

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      He more or less stumbled into a career as an actor, but it proved to be a long and prolific one, on film, on television and especially on the stage.Arthur French, a prolific and acclaimed (if relatively unsung) actor who was a founding member of the Negro Ensemble Company, died on July 24 in Manhattan. He was 89.His death, in a hospital, was announced by his son, the playwright Arthur W. French III, in a post on Facebook.Mr. French more or less stumbled into his theatrical career. After abandoning early plans to become a preacher, he aspired to be a disc jockey, but when he showed up at the D.J. school he had hoped to attend, he found that it had closed after bribery investigations began into the radio payola scandal of the late 1950s.Fortunately, the Dramatic Workshop, where Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler taught, was located in the same building, and Mr. French signed up for classes. He was coached by the actress Peggy Feury; he caught the attention of Maxwell Glanville’s American Negro Theater; and his career as a supporting actor was born.Mr. French made his professional debut Off Broadway in “Raisin’ Hell in the Son,” a spoof of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1962. Three years later he appeared in Douglas Turner Ward’s “Day of Absence,” which spawned the Negro Ensemble Company. He first appeared on Broadway in Melvin Van Peebles’s musical “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death” in 1971.“That’s when I decided to quit my Social Service job,” he said in a recent interview with the arts journal Gallery & Studio. He had been working days as a clerk with New York City’s welfare department.Mr. French appeared in Broadway revivals of “The Iceman Cometh” (1973), “Death of a Salesman” (1975) and “You Can’t Take It With You” (1983). His films included Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” (1992) and “Crooklyn” (1994). Among his many television appearances were three episodes of “Law & Order,” two of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and one of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”Reviewers often called attention to his sonorous voice and the civility of his performances; his notices in The New York Times were consistently positive. Reviewing his portrayal of Bynum, a “conjure man,” in a 1996 revival of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at the Henry Street Settlement, Vincent Canby called it “a variation on the seer, sometimes the idiot savant, who turns up with regularity in Mr. Wilson’s work but never as fully realized as the character is here.”When Mr. French was seen in “Checkmates” at the same theater that year, Lawrence Van Gelder wrote in The Times, “The real treats are Ruby Dee and Arthur French as the Coopers, gifted old pros who tickle the funny bone and touch the heart.”He occasionally directed, most recently a 2010 production of Steve Carter’s 1990 play “Pecong,” a retelling of the Medea story set in the Caribbean, at the Off Off Broadway National Black Theater.Mr. French taught at the HB Studio in New York. He received an Obie Award for sustained excellence of performance in 1997 and a Lucille Lortel Award for his supporting role in August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” in 2007. In 2015, he was awarded a Paul Robeson Citation from the Actors’ Equity Association and the Actor’s Equity Foundation for his “dedication to freedom of expression and respect for human dignity.”Mr. French, right, with Frankie Faison in the Signature Theater Company’s 2006 production of August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running.” Mr. French won a Lucille Lortel Award for his performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesArthur Wellesley French Jr. was born on Nov. 6, 1931, in Harlem to immigrants from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean. His father, a former seaman, died young; Arthur himself survived a bout with asthma. His mother, Ursilla Idonia (Ollivierre) French, was a garment workers’ union organizer, and Arthur helped her earn extra money by embroidering material she took home.His mother encouraged him to take music lessons, which led to a piano recital at Carnegie Hall. He attended Morris High School in the Bronx before transferring to the Bronx High School of Science; after graduating, he attended Brooklyn College.In 1961, he married the singer Antoinette Williams. She died before him. In addition to their son, he is survived by a daughter, Antonia Willow French, and two grandchildren.In the Gallery & Studio interview, Mr. French was asked what he had learned about himself during his 50-year career.“I like the world of fantasy,” he replied. “And my father told me, ‘Learn something so well that you won’t have to lift up anything heavier than a pencil.’” More