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      in Television

      Lynne Marie Stewart, Miss Yvonne on ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse,’ Dies at 78

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      She was the “most beautiful woman in Puppetland” in the 1980s children’s show starring Paul Reubens, and more recently had a recurring role in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”Lynne Marie Stewart, who played Pee-wee Herman’s perky, bouffant-wigged neighbor, Miss Yvonne, in the 1980s children’s television series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” and the sweet, timorous mother of one of the main characters in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” died on Friday in Los Angeles. She was 78.The cause of her death, at her sister’s home, was cancer, said her manager, Bette Smith. Her doctors found a tumor shortly after Ms. Stewart finished filming a movie called “The Dink,” a comedy starring Jake Johnson and Ben Stiller, in December, Ms. Smith said.Ms. Stewart played a variety of characters in a career that spanned six decades, and had nearly 150 credits as a screen, stage and voice actress starting in 1971, according to IMDb, the entertainment database.But she was perhaps best known for her role as Miss Yvonne, or “the most beautiful woman in Puppetland,” in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” which ran for five seasons on Saturday mornings on CBS.She was a fixture on the show as Pee-wee Herman’s extravagant neighbor with creative hairdos and a chipper personality.With its whimsical and slyly subversive sense of humor, the show swiftly attracted an audience beyond its core demographic of preadolescent children, and Ms. Stewart and other members of its cast embraced its anarchic and surreal spirit of make-believe.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      The Restaurant Where ‘S.N.L.’ Celebrates Tuesday Night

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      Lattanzi doesn’t exactly scream “celebrity magnet.”Its brick-walled, burgundy-carpeted dining room, lined with black-and-white photos of Rome, feels more antique than affluent. The menu leans on old Italian standbys like veal scaloppine and chicken piccata. There’s no bouncer, no photos of famous regulars, no gatekeeping host. The location isn’t some trendy downtown neighborhood, but Restaurant Row, a stretch of West 46th Street that’s been a theater-district fixture for nearly a century.Yet every Tuesday evening before a new episode of “Saturday Night Live,” Lattanzi is where you’ll find Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and kingpin, and that week’s celebrity host, along with a rotating cadre of eight or so carefully chosen “S.N.L.” producers, writers and cast members.After decades at the helm — the show will celebrate its 50th anniversary this weekend — Mr. Michaels is well-known for his rituals: the basket of popcorn kept replenished at his desk, the so-called “Lornewalks” he takes to clear his head, and the Monday meetings in his office with the cast and host, said Susan Morrison, an articles editor at The New Yorker who wrote the forthcoming biography “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live.”Lattanzi, which specializes in Roman food, has been around since 1984. Mr. Michaels has been bringing celebrities and staff members there for decades.Nico Schinco for The New York TimesBut the Tuesday dinners are especially sacred, she said — one of the few predictable events in the weekly lead-up to a show that traffics in unpredictability.“In a week where everything is going 100 miles an hour and everything is hurtling toward Saturday night at 11:30, it was a moment of civilized calm,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      Marianne Faithfull Was an Unforgettable Style Paragon

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      Marianne Faithfull, who died on Thursday at 78, “seemed to touch all the moments,” helping define the look of the 1960s with an influence that is still seen today.She was a figure out of fiction, right down to her Jane Austen name. The daughter of a baroness and a British major (a spy during World War II), Marianne Faithfull — who died this week at 78 — was discovered by the Rolling Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, at a record release party in the 1960s while still in her teens. “My first move was to get a Rolling Stone as a boyfriend,” she was often quoted as having said. “I slept with three and decided the lead singer was the best bet.”The bet paid off for both parties. Mick Jagger and Ms. Faithfull dated from 1966-70 and during that time she recorded a series of pop songs, most memorably “As Tears Go By.” Mr. Jagger wrote imperishable Stones hits like “Wild Horses” under the direct inspiration of Ms. Faithfull — lovely, feckless, druggie and unfettered. She was “a wonderful friend,” Mr. Jagger wrote on Instagram this week, “a beautiful singer and a great actress.”She was also a style paragon from the outset.“She seemed to touch all the moments, from Mod to rich hippie to bad girl and punk, corsets to leather to the nun outfit she wore when she performed with Bowie,” the designer Anna Sui said this week by phone. “She was there, through all those periods — performing, participating in events, acting and singing and also in the tabloids, very much in the eyes of anybody loving those periods.”Ms. Faithfull was introduced to much of the world through her relationship with Mick Jagger, but her style and talent made her fame last.PA Images, via Getty ImagesA British journalist once described Ms. Faithfull, in the late 1960s, as “the flowing-haired, miniskirted, convention-knocking epitome” of a “drug generation” that her elders were challenged to understand. What more accurately she epitomized was a spirit of bohemian laissez-faire better located in class than any particular era.Cultured, if not conventionally educated, Ms. Faithfull was as offhand about her looks as only a natural beauty could afford to be. And she was as indifferent to the strait-jacketing conventions of the bourgeoisie as those of her background (she spent her early years in an upscale commune her father founded in Oxfordshire) often are.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Chappell Roan, Kai Cenat, Shannon Sharpe Are Among Our Breakout Stars of 2024

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      Audacious, original and wielding a clear vision, the stars who rose to the top in 2024 pushed boundaries and took bold, even risky, choices. Here are 10 artists who shook up their scenes and resonated with fans this year.Pop MusicChappell RoanIt’s almost incomprehensible to think that last year, Chappell Roan still had time to work as a camp counselor.It’s not that she hadn’t been pursuing pop. Her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” was released in 2023. One of its now-hit singles “Pink Pony Club” was released back in 2020.But it was this year that all the pieces coalesced: Her album hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart and No. 1 in album sales; her extravagant drag-inspired persona, 1980s-influenced pop sound, soaring vocals and edgy performances have become wildly viral; she outgrew her tour plans; and her dance-along anthem “Hot to Go!” was even featured in a Target ad and played at sporting events.All the while, her lyrics tackle queer issues frankly. Her track “Good Luck, Babe!” — about a relationship between two women that collapses because one is, as Roan has put it, “denying fate” — was one of the biggest hits of the summer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      At Opening Night at La Scala, Opera Is the Center of the Universe

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      Television reporters stood shoulder to shoulder delivering breathless, minute-by-minute commentary, part of a pack of more than 120 journalists from 10 countries.Celebrities, politicians and titans of industry walked the red carpet past paparazzi and officers standing sentry with capes, sashes, swords and plumed hats.Outside, protesters used firecrackers, smoke bombs and even manure as they sought to seize on the occasion to draw attention to a variety of causes.It was not a global summit, a Hollywood premiere or a royal procession. It was the start of the new opera season at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.Opera may be starved for attention in much of the world. But at La Scala, the storied theater that gave world premieres of works by Donizetti, Puccini, Rossini and Verdi, opera can still feel like the center of the cultural universe. It remains a matter of national pride and patrimony, a political football and an obsession for devoted fans.“This is sacred for us,” said the critic Alberto Mattioli, who writes for La Stampa, an Italian newspaper. “Opera is our religion.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      The Fleeting Comforts of the Celebrity Look-Alike Contest

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      It may be a coincidence that the celebrity look-alike competition returned to prominence just as American citizens were voting in what some called “the most significant presidential election in our lifetimes.” But once it happened, the appeal was obvious. Here was a different kind of democratic event: a totally insignificant one, in which attractive men with slightly off-kilter features were lined up in public and ranked by the roaring crowd.At the first contest, which convened a flock of Timothée Chalamet doubles in Manhattan last month, the New York Police Department showed up, deemed it an “unscheduled demonstration” and arrested four people. It was, in fact, only the police presence that made the event feel anything like a protest — as if the crowd were truly fighting for the right to be meaningless and absurd.In the coming weeks, as President-elect Trump revved up for his second term, doppelgängers were crowned of Jeremy Allen White in Chicago, Paul Mescal in Dublin, Dev Patel in San Francisco and Harry Styles in London. It was as if each city were electing its boyfriend. It all provided a populist diversion, though one with diminishing returns.These events have been comforting in their modesty. They are typically publicized with posters on lampposts, staged in public parks and accompanied by meager prizes. The Mescal double won 20 euro “or three pints”; the White winner received $50 and a pack of Marlboro Reds.Despite the stingy rewards, the contestants are frequently impressive — men seizing a long-awaited opportunity to put a useless talent to work. Each contest unfolds like a human scavenger hunt. The winner is a kind of modern Cinderella, the one unsung city boy who happens to slip perfectly into a fuzzy Willy Wonka hat or the blue chef’s apron worn by the star of “The Bear.”Part of what makes the searches feel pleasantly trivial is that they center on male celebrities (though not all of the contestants have been men). A Zendaya look-alike contest held in Oakland, Calif., this week is the rare exception. The public ranking of women risks activating an ugly history; it makes the apolitical political again. But also: Mimicking Hollywood femininity may require a degree of effort that intensifies the proceedings. The contest could inspire feats of makeup application, hairstyling, boob tape. The masculine look-alike, on the other hand, must simply exist. He’s just waiting to be discovered.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      How One Man’s Tale of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sex Tapes Landed Him in Court

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      Courtney Burgess, a one-time music industry bit player, said he had videos showing encounters involving celebrities. Prosecutors recently subpoenaed him.In federal court, the music mogul Sean Combs is facing a sweeping indictment that accuses him of running a criminal enterprise that engaged in sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.Online, a cottage industry of amateur sleuths, speculators and self-described past associates have accused him, often with little grounding, of far worse.After Mr. Combs was charged in September, the social media theorizing about rampant celebrity debauchery and additional victims only grew more feverish and conspiratorial. Soon, a man began showing up on true crime podcasts claiming he had been given videos that showed sexual encounters involving Mr. Combs and a variety of other stars, including some he said looked to be inebriated and underage.Media outlets have received anonymous emails offering to negotiate deals to provide the supposed footage, but none have published any images and it remains unclear whether such videos even exist.Yet in a startling twist that brought the internet rumor mill into the U.S. court system, prosecutors recently subpoenaed Courtney Burgess, the man who said he had the explosive videos, to testify in front of a grand jury considering additional charges against Mr. Combs.The surfacing of Mr. Burgess, a one-time music industry bit player, has only amped up the circuslike frenzy surrounding the case. With much of the investigation shrouded in secrecy, it is unclear whether the prosecutors view Mr. Burgess as a possible new witness — the keeper of a smoking gun — or simply wanted to test the online bluster of someone seeking to be part of the action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      The Best True Crime to Stream: The Fame Monster

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      Across television, film and podcasting, here are four picks that explore lesser-discussed crimes involving celebrities.There is an absolute glut of true crime content that involves the rich and famous. These stories also tend to be rehashed and retread because fame breeds fascination, of course, and name recognition helps when seeking the eyes and ears of an audience. But there are plenty of stories involving stars that are just as compelling even if they haven’t gotten the same attention. Here are four of them across television, podcast and film.Documentary film“Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara”The harsh realities of toxic fan culture have gotten more attention in 2024, with pop stars like Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish speaking more openly about the ubiquitousness of harassment and obsession that accompany fame.For this new documentary, the director Erin Lee Carr (“Mommy Dead and Dearest,” “At The Heart of Gold”) weaves together two sides of a shocking story that turned the lives of Tegan and Sara Quin, twin sisters who are the queer folk-pop duo Tegan and Sara, upside down.In the 1990s and 2000s, the sisters had a knack for building community at shows and online, with Tegan in particular feeling a responsibility to their fans. When this familiarity dovetailed with a catfishing scheme, Tegan and many fans became ensnared in a sophisticated identity theft operation that lasted over 15 years. “Fake Tegan systematically destroyed my life,” Tegan says at one point.As layers are peeled back, a more complex picture comes into focus. Unfortunately, the end brings little comfort, only underscoring the magnitude of the discoveries made along the way.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More