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      Melinda Dillon, 2-Time Oscar Nominee, Is Dead at 83

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      She was a Broadway star at 23 and then quit acting, but later re-emerged in films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “A Christmas Story.”Melinda Dillon, who shot to Broadway stardom at 23, withdrew from acting after a mental breakdown, and then, in her late 30s, staged a comeback, receiving best supporting actress Oscar nominations for her roles in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Absence of Malice,” died on Jan. 9. She was 83.Her death, which was announced by a cremation service, came to public notice in recent days. The announcement did not specify the cause or location of her death.Ms. Dillon was best known for playing mothers coping with grave or silly problems in popular movies of the 1970s and ’80s. In “Close Encounters,” the enduring Steven Spielberg hit from 1977, she played an artist and single mother living on a rural farm who watches her son get abducted by aliens.She played more explicitly archetypal mothers in “Harry and the Hendersons” (1987), a family comedy about having Bigfoot as your pet, and “A Christmas Story” (1983), a series of vignettes depicting an all-American Christmas in midcentury Indiana.The latter film, long a classic of the holiday season on television, inspired a 2020 tribute in The New York Times, which hailed Ms. Dillon’s character, a frazzled Everymom, as a “damn hero.”In “Absence of Malice” (1981), Ms. Dillon played against maternal type as a Catholic woman who must admit to having an abortion.Her star turn of that era came late for an actress — in Ms. Dillon’s late 30s and 40s — and it constituted an unexpected re-emergence, following a crisis that seemed to halt her promising career.Ms. Dillon in the 1983 film “A Christmas Story” with, clockwise from left, Peter Billingsley, Ian Petrella and Darren McGavin.PictureLux, via AlamyMelinda Ruth Clardy was born in Hope, Ark., on Oct. 13, 1939. Her father, Floyd, worked as a traveling salesman, and her mother, Noreen, was a volunteer at a U.S. Army hospital. Noreen fell in love with Wilbur Dillon, a wounded veteran, and Melinda’s parents divorced when she was 5.She took her stepfather’s surname and had the peripatetic upbringing of a child of the military, living for a while in Germany. She left home at 16 and soon began pursuing an acting career.She moved to New York City in 1962, fresh out of acting school. In just a matter of weeks, she landed one of four parts in the Broadway debut of Edward Albee’s play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”She played Honey, the wife in a young couple invited to the home of an older couple for a drink. The premiere, on Oct. 13, fell on her 23rd birthday.“Critics unanimously hailed her performance as superb,” The Daily News announced in a profile published that month that described Ms. Dillon’s “overnight rise from obscurity to stardom.”Her agent, Peter Witt, told The News, “What has happened to her is a one in a million shot paying off the first time out in the theater.”In a 2014 New York Times review of a recording of the play’s original cast, the theater critic Charles Isherwood called the production “one of the seminal theatrical events of the 20th century” and said the actors’ performances, including Ms. Dillon’s, “still feel fresh, fierce and definitive.”But as time went on, the pressure bore down on Ms. Dillon. Sometimes she would perform in a three-hour matinee in the afternoon, then study acting with Lee Strasberg for two hours, and then do another three-hour performance in the evening. Talking to sophisticated, powerful people in the New York theater world terrified her.Ms. Dillon in 1998. After suffering a breakdown, she said: “I had had the American dream — to go to New York and study with Lee Strasberg. I guess I just wasn’t prepared for it all to happen so quickly.”CBS, via Getty ImagesAfter nine months, she left the play and checked into the mental ward of Gracie Square Hospital in New York, where she found herself feeling suicidal.“I had had the American dream — to go to New York and study with Lee Strasberg,” she told The New York Times in 1976. “I guess I just wasn’t prepared for it all to happen so quickly.”After her release from the hospital, she took a few acting roles but then sought safe harbor in marriage, to the actor Richard Libertini, and in motherhood, raising their son, also named Richard.But she did not find contentment in life away from the spotlight. By the mid-1970s, she was single and being cast in multiple major Hollywood productions, including “Slap Shot,” a 1977 film starring Paul Newman.“I spent 10 and a half hours naked in bed with Paul and absolutely loved it,” she told People magazine in 1978.After the apex of her Hollywood career, she continued acting, and into the 21st century she occasionally made appearances on television shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”Information about her survivors was not immediately available.Ms. Dillon sang in the choir of a Methodist church as an adult, and she threw herself into film roles as mothers. But she came to reject what she had once sought in the life of a traditional suburban housewife.“I left home so early that when I found somebody who wanted to take care of me, I just stopped everything; I could have soared ahead — I really know that — and I chose not to,” she told The Times. In marriage, “I got buried alive,” she continued. “That’s what got me to act again.” More

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      in Theater

      Charles Kimbrough, Actor Best Known for ‘Murphy Brown,’ Dies at 86

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      In a career that included a Tony nomination for “Company,” he specialized in playing uptight characters, notably Candice Bergen’s stuffy straight man.Charles Kimbrough, an actor known for his patrician looks and stately bearing who was nominated for an Emmy Award for portraying a comically rigid news anchor on the hit sitcom “Murphy Brown,” died on Jan. 11 in Culver City, Calif. He was 86.His son, John Kimbrough, confirmed the death.After decades of stage work in New York, including a Tony Award-nominated performance in the original 1970 Broadway production of the Steven Sondheim musical “Company,” Mr. Kimbrough finally got his first taste of mainstream fame alongside Candice Bergen on “Murphy Brown,” the popular series set in a television newsroom that ran for 10 seasons on CBS starting in 1988. (He reprised his character for three episodes of the 2018 reboot.)As Jim Dial, Mr. Kimbrough artfully toyed with the wooden archetype of a 1980s newsman, with his lacquered helmet of hair, Walter Cronkite-like air of seriousness and old-boy swagger (he lovingly referred to Ms. Bergen’s investigative reporter character as “Slugger”).The cast of “Murphy Brown,” from left: Faith Ford, Candice Bergen, Mr. Kimbrough, Grant Shaud and Joe Regalbuto.Byron J. Cohen/CBSHis rigid, pompous manner made him the ideal straight man for the show’s ever-topical plotlines. In one 1997 episode, Jim is tasked with finding marijuana for Murphy, who is seeking to ease the symptoms of her chemotherapy. “Wow, look at all of this, you must have spent a fortune,” Murphy exclaims as she holds aloft a large plastic bag of cannabis. “Damn right I did!” Jim responds. “Nickel bag, my Aunt Sally.”It was hardly the first role that allowed him to explore fussy or priggish characters. In the 2012 Broadway revival of “Harvey,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1944 play about a man (played by Jim Parsons) who ends up in an sanitarium because of his friendship with a six-foot-tall imaginary rabbit, Mr. Kimbrough played the exacting psychiatrist who is obsessed with the image of his institution.Mr. Kimbrough received strong reviews for his performance in the 1995 production of A.R. Gurney’s “Sylvia” at the Manhattan Theater Club. He played Greg, a middle-class husband struggling with midlife crisis, a wobbly career and his marriage to Kate (Blythe Danner), which grows more complicated after he brings home a new dog, Sylvia, played in very human form by Sarah Jessica Parker.Not that Mr. Kimbrough ever sought to play stiffs. “Unfortunately, I’m really good at playing jackasses of one kind or another,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2012. “I’ve always been slightly self-conscious as an actor, and I guess that sometimes reads as pomposity.”Mr. Kimbrough with Tracee Chimo, left, and Jessica Hecht in the 2012 production of “Harvey” at Studio 54.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Starting when I was 30,” he continued, “I somehow gave off an impression at an audition that had them mentally put me in a three-piece suit or put an attaché case in my hand. If there was a stiff-guy part, the director would brighten up when I came in. That wasn’t the response I wanted. I was in anguish.”It was not always so. As a younger actor, “he played a wide variety of characters who were much more dynamic,” John Kimbrough said in a phone interview. “Some of my earliest memories are of watching him in ‘Candide’” — a 1974 production of the Leonard Bernstein musical, in which Clive Barnes of The New York Times described Mr. Kimbrough’s performance as “brilliant” — “he played five different characters, and he was a dynamo, jumping in and out of costume changes.”That was not his only kinetic performance. As Mr. Kimbrough put it in a 2002 interview with Newsday: “When I first came to New York I’d played these sweaty, physical guys who bounded all over the stage. I didn’t do a show when I wasn’t soaking wet at the end.”Even so, he had a natural feel for playing emotionally repressed characters, in part because of his own family background.“He came from a buttoned-up Midwestern family, and so he had grown up with people very much like the characters he played,” his son said. “They felt very deeply, but kept it hidden beneath a facade of manners and propriety. Somehow he was able to communicate that feeling to audiences, even as the guys he played were keeping it all inside.”Charles Mayberry Kimbrough was born on May 23, 1936, in St. Paul, Minn., the older of two children of Charles and Emily (Raudenbush) Kimbrough. When he was a young child, the family moved to Highland Park, Ill., near Chicago, where his father sold commercial heating equipment.A lover of music, particularly opera, Mr. Kimbrough majored in music and theater at Indiana University and later received a master’s degree from the Yale School of Drama.Moving to New York, he endured the typical struggles of a young actor until he got his big break as Harry, a hard-drinking husband fighting off the lure of the bottle, in the Harold Prince production of “Company,” the celebrated Sondheim musical about a single man, his girlfriends and the couples he knows as they navigate the complexities of loneliness and love in New York City.In a roundabout way, Mr. Kimbrough found love himself through the production, albeit three decades later. In 2002, years after his divorce in 1991 from his first wife, Mary Jane (Wilson) Kimbrough, an actress he had met at Yale, he married Beth Howland, who had played alongside him in “Company” as an anxiety-ridden bride, and who later found fame as Vera, the flighty diner waitress, on the long-running sitcom “Alice,” which debuted in 1976.Ms. Howland died in 2016. In addition to his son, Mr. Kimbrough is survived by a sister, Linda Kimbrough, and a stepdaughter, Holly Howland.Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Kimbrough continued to work steadily, appearing on television shows like “Kojak” and in films like “The Seduction of Joe Tynan” (1979), with Alan Alda, while also paying the bills as a wholesome American in television spots for Imperial margarine and Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs.But it was only with “Murphy Brown,” his son said, that he found the degree of fame where fans recognized him on the street. And his success allowed him to make peace with being typecast as stodgy.He came to realize that “stuffiness is not dullness,” Mr. Kimbrough told Newsday. “And that gave me a new lease on life.” More

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      It’s Beyoncé’s Time to Shine at the Grammys … Right?

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      With a dominant new album, “Renaissance,” and the chance to become the most awarded artist in Grammy history, all eyes are on the pop superstar ahead of Sunday’s show. What could go wrong?Beyoncé enters the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday in rarefied air — a pop deity festooned with trophies, supported by one of the music world’s most ardent fan bases and on the precipice of Grammy immortality. So why does she also feel like an underdog?Already the winningest woman in Grammy history, with 28 victories, Beyoncé has a field-leading nine nominations this year. She is tied with her husband, Jay-Z, for the most nods collected by any artist, with 88.In what could make for dramatic television, Beyoncé needs just three more Grammys to match — and four to beat — the record for most overall wins, a position currently held by the conductor Georg Solti, who died in 1997. And for the third time in her career, Beyoncé, 41, is nominated in all three top categories — record, song and album of the year — raising the possibility that her crowning moment could come at the climax of a show that in recent years has struggled to find an audience and generate positive headlines.And yet.While many Grammy watchers believe Beyoncé will enter from a position of strength, with “Renaissance,” her dance-infused album, garnering both commercial and critical success, the singer’s coronation is far from assured, thanks to her own complicated history with the awards. Despite Beyoncé’s oodles of wins, she is just 1 for 13 in the major, all-genre categories for releases on which she was a lead artist.As the ceremony approaches — with stars like Adele, Harry Styles, Lizzo, Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny also in contention for the premier prizes — the key question for fans and industry insiders isn’t how big she will win, but rather: What if she loses, again?Harry Styles, who is slated to perform at the Grammys, has six nominations, including album, record and song of the year.The New York TimesThis year more than most, public perception of the Grammys’ relevance may come down to the fate of a single artist. A prominent win for Beyoncé could be seen as an overdue make-good, which is something of a Grammy specialty. But a notable loss could call into question the redemption narrative that the Recording Academy, the institution behind the awards, has been carefully tending for years, as it has tried to address longstanding criticism that the show too often fails to recognize Black talent with top awards.The Grammy Awards 2023The 65th annual ceremony will be held on Feb. 5 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, after two years of delays and complications caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.Beyoncé: With a dominant new album and the chance to become the most awarded artist in Grammy history, all eyes are on the pop superstar ahead of the ceremony. What could go wrong?Bonnie Raitt: Long renowned as an interpreter of songs, the musician has quietly built a catalog of her own. Up for song of the year, she talked about her lifetime onstage in an interview with The Times.The-Dream and Muni Long: Ahead of the first-ever Grammy Award for songwriter of the year, the two musicians, who are both up for awards, trace their unique journeys to recognition.That complaint, along with suspicions about the voting process, has led some high-profile Black artists to abandon the Grammys in recent years, like Drake, Frank Ocean and the Weeknd. But there are also some signs that the awards may be changing. Last year, Jon Batiste, the Black jazz bandleader, took home album of the year, and in 2021 a Black Lives Matter protest anthem by H.E.R. won song of the year. A push to attract a younger and more diverse voting pool has resulted in 19 percent more women and 38 percent more members of “traditionally underrepresented communities” since 2019, the academy says.Those numbers would seem favorable for Beyoncé. But her track record in album of the year, traditionally the most coveted prize, is especially wrenching. In 2010, her “I Am … Sasha Fierce” lost to Taylor Swift’s “Fearless.” In 2015, Beck’s mellow “Morning Phase” was the upset winner, beating out Beyoncé’s internet-breaking, self-titled surprise LP. Two years later, when Beyoncé’s paradigm-shifting visual album “Lemonade” lost to Adele’s “25,” Adele seemed almost embarrassed to accept the award, calling Beyoncé the “artist of my life.”Should Adele win a third album of the year trophy on Sunday, with “30” — or if Styles, Abba, Coldplay or Brandi Carlile comes out on top — it would be the fourth time that Beyoncé has lost that prize to a white artist, noted Paul Grein, the awards editor at Billboard. “The Grammys would get beat up,” he said. But, he added, “I don’t think it’s going to happen.”After two years of disruption by Covid-19, the Grammys are finally back in Los Angeles, on their home court, the Crypto.com Arena (formerly known as the Staples Center).Bad Bunny, Lamar, Lizzo and Mary J. Blige round out the competition for album of the year, and besides Beyoncé, the night holds some potential buzzy moments. Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” a streaming juggernaut, is the first release entirely in Spanish up for album of the year. After five failed nominations in song of the year, Swift could finally win for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” an extended remake of a track she first released in 2012.The performers on Sunday will include Styles, Bad Bunny, Lizzo, Sam Smith and Kim Petras, Steve Lacy, Blige, Luke Combs and Carlile. Fan cults and industry gossips have been speculating for weeks over whether Beyoncé, Swift, Lamar or Adele will also perform.Lizzo is also nominated in the top three categories, for her album “Special” and single “About Damn Time.”Scott Legato/Getty Images For SiriusXMBut the story line that has drawn by far the most attention is Beyoncé’s. And as much as fans desire a triumph, pessimists have history on their side. Only three Black women have ever won album of the year — Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston and Lauryn Hill, all in the 1990s — and of Beyoncé’s 28 wins, only one has been in a top category, song of the year. That was more than a decade ago, when she was recognized as a songwriter for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”“The fact that she has not won a major award since 2010 is insane,” said Brandon Katamara, a student in Cardiff, Wales, who has run @rumiyonce, a Beyoncé fan account with more than 400,000 followers on Instagram, since he was 13.Katamara, now 20, said that even if Beyoncé’s No. 1 hit “Break My Soul” came away with wins in song or record of the year, it wouldn’t lessen the sting. “We don’t care if she just takes one award,” he said. “We just want her to win album of the year.”And should she lose? Katamara predicted a “9.5 out of 10” on the social-media backlash scale. (The nightmare scenario for the BeyHive: a shutout that results in their heroine being passed by the Americana artist Alison Krauss, who has two nominations in genre categories this year and trails Beyoncé by only one win as the most-awarded woman.)Harvey Mason Jr., a producer who is the chief executive of the Recording Academy, said it would be unfair to look to a Beyoncé victory or loss in any single contest as a test of changes to the voting membership, which numbers about 11,000.“If voters are more diverse,” he said, “my hope is that the results would be more diverse across the entire field, not in just one category.”According to figures provided by the Recording Academy, the largest voting blocs by genre are pop at 23 percent and jazz at 16 percent. Rock and alternative are counted separately but, if combined, would make up 25 percent of voters; R&B sits at 15 percent.In 2018, the academy also expanded the number of nominees in the top categories to eight from five, and increased that number again to 10 nominees in a last-minute change in 2021, potentially adding more unpredictability to the results.Yet for many Grammy observers, Beyoncé is indeed a barometer of the awards’ complex treatment of Black musicians overall.“It’s always rocky,” said Cipha Sounds, a veteran radio personality now with 94.7 The Block, a throwback hip-hop and R&B station in New York. “It feels like they don’t give the same amount of love that they do to other genres, but when they do it feels kind of forced,” as if the academy has to “check the diversity boxes,” he added.Still, he said, Black artists and fans crave the affirmation that comes with winning a Grammy. “We just want regular credit,” he said.For the academy, a nonprofit group that draws the bulk of its revenue from fees related to the television broadcast, attracting eyeballs to the annual show is vital. Those numbers have been sliding for years. In 2021, 8.8 million viewers watched the show, an all-time low; last year, it was 8.9 million.At the same time, the Super Bowl halftime show has emerged as perhaps the most gargantuan media event in music — last year an average of 103.4 million people watched a nostalgic hip-hop segment with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent and others — and this year’s show, on Feb. 12, featuring Rihanna, has been bubbling for weeks as a huge pop-culture moment. Recently, an email bounced around the offices of Billboard magazine. “Music’s Biggest Night is coming up,” it read. “And a week earlier, there’s the Grammys!”In recent years, the Grammys have been buffeted by a series of controversies over nominations, performances and even the power struggles within the academy. As unpleasant as those may have been for the organization, they did drive a certain amount of interest. This year, there has been much less buzz, good or bad. Is the Beyoncé question enough to make it a successful show?“I’m OK with there not being controversy before the show,” Mason, the academy chief, said diplomatically. “I like to think it’s going to be about the music.” More

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      in Television

      Jimmy Kimmel Addresses Netflix’s Plan to Charge for Shared Accounts

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      “I understand. You don’t like paying for TV,” Kimmel said. “So, let me just say this: My name is Jimmy and I’m free every night, no charge.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Netflix and ShillNetflix is cracking down on password sharing outside of an account user’s household.“This is going to be a huge blow to Nick Cannon,” Jimmy Kimmel joked. “This could cost him millions of dollars.”“Some people may have to go back to stealing Netflix the old-fashioned way, sitting with binoculars in your neighbor’s tree.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And to those of you who are out there piggybacking on someone else’s account, I get it. I understand. You don’t like paying for TV. So, let me just say this: my name is Jimmy and I’m free every night, no charge.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Another One Edition)“It’s Groundhog Day — again. It keeps happening.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Groundhog Day is a tradition that was brought to the United States in the 1800s by German settlers. The boring German settlers — the fun ones brought us beer.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“OK, but did he see his shadow or a calendar? Of course winter’s not over — it’s Feb. 2. There’s still football. Can we at least move this stupid ritual to mid-March where there’s a little mystery?” — SETH MEYERS“I read that he’s only right 40 percent of the time. When they heard that, Weather.com was like, ‘You’re hired — when can you start?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, you can’t trust Punxsutawney Phil. He’s basically the George Santos of the groundhog world.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Thursday’s “Late Show,” The Last of Us” star Pedro Pascal talked with Jimmy Fallon about hosting “Saturday Night Live” this weekend.Also, Check This OutBeyoncé needs three wins to match the record for most Grammy victories by any artist.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressAlready the winningest woman in Grammy history, Beyoncé has nine nominations for her album “Renaissance” at this Sunday’s Grammy Awards. More

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      Reflections on Star Quality From a Golden Age of ‘Junk TV’

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      In a new memoir, a longtime casting director revels in memories of a bygone Hollywood, matching actors with the roles that made them stars.Stop to consider the movie and TV characters that are most permanently seared into the American psyche, and their impact is rarely a function of screen time. Usually, the effect on audiences is immediate: Think Tim Curry’s first appearance in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” or Stockard Channing breezing into Rydell High alongside her fellow Pink Ladies.Whether they were memorable because of their abrasiveness (Danny DeVito in “Taxi”), their rebellious streak (Ms. Channing in “Grease”) or their ability to solve a crisis with a slice of cheesecake (the titular golden girls of “The Golden Girls”), every actor who eventually went on to make Hollywood history first had to clear the hurdle of a casting department. And for many of the biggest movies and TV shows of the last half century, Joel Thurm was a central part of those teams, handpicking the actors whose performances would resonate for decades to come.In his newly released memoir, “Sex, Drugs & Pilot Season: Confessions of a Casting Director,” Mr. Thurm, 80, details what he saw in stars like John Travolta, whom he cast in “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.”“I knew he wasn’t Vinnie Barbarino,” Mr. Thurm said of managing to look past the actor’s biggest role to date, on the ABC sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter.”Being able to spot the je ne sais quoi that many refer to as star quality is a skill, one that Mr. Thurm has capitalized on throughout his 35-year career.“The best example I have is when someone walks into a room and has something special that you haven’t seen in other people,” Mr. Thurm said in an interview this week. “Are they astoundingly beautiful? Are they so incredibly good-looking? They could be bad-looking! It’s individual; you can’t really explain it.”Mr. Thurm had a hand in casting some of the biggest hits of film and TV, including “The Love Boat,” “The Golden Girls,” “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Airplane!”Charles Sykes/Getty ImagesThat “it” factor is the common denominator among all the stars who go on to become household names, according to Mr. Thurm, who said he had seen it immediately in Farrah Fawcett when she auditioned for the role of a stewardess on “The Bob Newhart Show.” She didn’t get the part, but Mr. Thurm said he had known “there was something special about her.” He also instantly saw it in a 17-year-old John Travolta when he met him in New York.“He had a presence, and you can feel it,” Mr. Thurm said. “They had that little extra something.”At the time, Mr. Travolta was most popular for his role on “Welcome Back, Kotter,” and producers would not move ahead with “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble,” a TV movie, unless a big star signed on to the project, Mr. Thurm said. He spent a lot of time with Mr. Travolta’s manager sitting on his “back deck getting melanoma and reading scripts,” Mr. Thurm said. When the script came up, they both lobbied Mr. Travolta, who agreed to sign on. Mr. Thurm later cast Mr. Travolta in “Grease,” and the rest is Hollywood history.Mr. Thurm, who retired from a full-time casting position with NBC in 1990, hasn’t kept especially close tabs on the stars of today, but he does know enough to recognize that they tend to skew young.“They’re all 12-year-olds,” he said. “I have only seen them once they are already stars. Ariana Grande, she’s already a star.”Whether or not star quality has changed since Mr. Thurm started his career, Hollywood itself certainly has. In addition to snippets of back-room scenes detailing how some of TV’s most beloved characters came to appear on some of America’s favorite sitcoms, “Sex, Drugs & Pilot Season” is also filled with personal anecdotes that would — at minimum — raise eyebrows in a world reshaped by the #MeToo movement.It’s difficult — painful, even — to imagine a world in which Tim Curry never put on the chunky pearl necklace of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. In that sense, the most essential duty of a casting director is to save us all from what might not have been.United Archives/Getty ImagesAs a gay man living in Hollywood in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, Mr. Thurm often found himself in situations that almost certainly wouldn’t fly today — like massaging the actor Robert Reed’s back after he had to undergo several hair treatments for his role “The Boy in The Plastic Bubble.”“I started to rub his back, then I rubbed, you know, started rubbing a little lower,” Mr. Thurm said of Mr. Reed, best known for playing Mike Brady in “The Brady Bunch.” “He was just miserable on the set because he was not used to not being the center of attention.”In his memoir, Mr. Thurm also details an encounter with his teenage idol, Rock Hudson. At a party with other gay men in Hollywood, Mr. Hudson motioned to Mr. Thurm to follow him to a room upstairs.“I was so anxious and nervous that my body below the waist could not cooperate,” Mr. Thurm wrote.It was a moment he has never forgotten.“I saw every single movie that he ever did and so even to find myself at that party, I thought was amazing,” Mr. Thurm said. “This is my introduction to Hollywood.”Besides detailing his sexcapades, Mr. Thurm also takes full accountability for “the damage you may have suffered while watching David Hasselhoff,” he wrote. He initially cast Mr. Hasselhoff as Snapper Foster on “The Young and the Restless” in 1975. He later cast him in “Knight Rider” — a high-water mark in what he described as an era of “junk TV” — after a contentious standoff with producers, who originally wanted Laurence Olivier. (“Yes, David Hasselhoff and Laurence Olivier on the same list,” he wrote.)The memoir is not just about Mr. Thurm’s dealings in Hollywood but his upbringing: growing up on a kosher milk farm in East New York. Attending Hunter College in Manhattan when it was nearly an all-girls school. Hanging out in Greenwich Village in its bohemian heyday. Flunking out of college and traveling through Italy in his early 20s.“To me, it was just my experiences — you know, growth going through life and growing up,” Mr. Thurm said. “I have no regrets. Nobody died.” More

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      in Television

      ‘Cunk on Earth,’ a New Mockumentary on Netflix, Is Not Afraid to Get Silly

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      The new Netflix show “Cunk on Earth” looks like an ambitious BBC documentary. Until its fictional host, created by Charlie Brooker, starts to ask some deeply silly questions.On her BBC show investigating the history of humanity, Philomena Cunk interviews Martin Kemp, a professor at the University of Oxford, about the Renaissance period.“Which was more culturally significant, the Renaissance or ‘Single Ladies’ by Beyoncé?” she asks the academic with all seriousness.Kemp pauses before patiently answering. The Renaissance was trying to reform culture as a whole, he says, and “whatever Beyoncé does, I don’t think she’s quite got that ambition.”Cunk responds with bewilderment: “So what, the work of a few straight white men just blows Beyoncé out of the water?”The fictional Cunk, played by the actress Diane Morgan, is confident, impertinent and almost always wrong. At once too normal and too weird to be presenting real documentaries, Cunk has fronted satirical BBC programs and segments about topics as lofty as Britain, time and Shakespeare over the past decade.“I quite like the idea of her not being from any time or place,” Morgan said in a recent video interview. Charlie Brooker, who created the character, described Cunk as “otherworldly,” adding, “It’s like she’s off our plane by like 25 degrees or something.”In “Cunk on Earth,” a five-part mockumentary now streaming on Netflix, Cunk grapples with the herculean task of exploring the entirety of human civilization. (In Britain, the series aired on the BBC last year.)The show has all the hallmarks of a highbrow BBC documentary, with sweeping drone shots of the presenter standing amid vast landscapes and dramatic re-enactments. Morgan, 47, plays Cunk completely straight, never cracking a smile.“Cunk on Earth” is shot like a highbrow BBC documentary, including sweeping shots of Morgan standing amid vast landscapes.BBC“We don’t tend to do too many things that tell you it’s a comedy,” said Brooker, who executive produced the show. “If you were watching this with the sound off you’d be like, ‘That looks like a real show.’”But Cunk’s observations range from the absurd (“Was the invention of writing a significant development or more of a flash in the pan like rap metal?”) to the surprisingly insightful (is Jesus “the first celebrity victim of cancel culture?”). Her recollection of facts is also questionable — she refers to Christopher Columbus as Christopher Columbo, an “Italian sailor and detective.” In interviews, her questions often leave the real-life academics bewildered or reeling.Morgan is “not afraid to leave an extremely awkward pause in, or could say incredibly ridiculous things with a completely straight face,” Brooker said. “I would find that more terrifying than doing a bungee jump.”“Cunk on Earth” fits perfectly into Brooker’s satirical oeuvre, which is partly defined by commitment to a bit: The first episode of “Black Mirror,” the anthology show he produces and writes, is a thriller that opens with a British prime minister being blackmailed into having sex with a pig. Elsewhere, he masterminded “A Touch of Cloth,” a series that has dramatic actors parodying British police procedurals.Cunk began life on “Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe,” a BBC satirical news show which premiered in Britain in 2013. She was originally conceived as upper-class and clueless, but the character’s trajectory changed after Morgan suggested in her audition that she should speak in her own northern British accent. Initially a bit part as a talking head, the character soon had longer segments on the show, which led to spinoffs and even a book, “Cunk on Everything,” released in 2019.For Morgan, while the character’s appeal has a lot to do with the writing and her own dry performance, Cunk also offers the audience some catharsis. “A lot of people fantasize about being able to say whatever they want and not care,” the actress said. “She just genuinely does not give a toss, and that’s almost like a superpower.”At a time when the mockumentary form is often imbued with resonance around real-life issues — in films like 2020’s “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” or shows like “Abbott Elementary” — “Cunk on Earth” feels somewhat different. For its creators, the show isn’t necessarily trying to make a specific point about politics, academia or even the documentary form. Its first priority is silliness.“It’s funny to take something which should be awe inspiring and serious and grandiose, and doodling bums in the corner of it,” Brooker said. “It’s a childish urge.”Still, the script contains moments of biting commentary. In her appraisal of human history, Cunk makes comments about religious hypocrisy, genocide and whitewashing. Brooker and the writers have also made the Cunk of this most recent series more “post-truth” than in previous iterations of the character, he said.During a segment on math, Cunk tells an academic that she saw a video on YouTube saying numbers only go up to 700, after which they are just given different names so people think they’re still going up. “That’s something that frightens me in the real world,” Brooker said. “The confidence with which people will start asserting things that they’ve read.”Still, the show is a comedy vehicle first and foremost. “I just want to make something really funny,” Morgan said.“It doesn’t have to have any big meaning for me,” she added. “I’m not trying to change the world, I just want people to enjoy it.” More

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      Jimmy Fallon Jokes That President Biden’s Document Drama Is a ‘Humblebrag’

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      “First, they searched near Biden’s Corvette, now they’re searching his beach house,” Fallon said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The Search ContinuesThe F.B.I. conducted a search of President Biden’s family vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., on Wednesday but found no classified documents.“First, they searched near Biden’s Corvette, now they’re searching his beach house. I’m starting to think Biden created this whole scandal as a humblebrag,” Jimmy Fallon said.“[imitating Biden] ‘Why don’t you check by my infinity pool? Maybe there’s something behind the Picasso, I don’t know.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Biden’s attorneys found documents at his main house in Delaware last month, and the president has a regular house and a vacation house, both in Delaware. I don’t know — how’s that a vacation? Can you vacation from Delaware to Delaware?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“They didn’t find anything classified, but they did find a 1982 Zenith TV and three boxes of Parcheesi.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The F.B.I. reportedly searched President Biden’s Delaware beach house today as part of the ongoing investigation into his handling of classified documents. And I think he might be getting nervous, because he said, ‘You know what you should be searching? Hunter’s laptop! Crazy stuff in there!’” — SETH MEYERS“Speaking of Biden, today the White House announced that he will get his annual physical on Feb. 16. It’s going to be crazy after Biden’s colonoscopy when the doctor says, ‘There’s no easy way to tell you this, but we found more classified documents.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bye-Bye, Brady Edition)“Tom Brady announced he’s decided to retire, but for real this time. Every year on the first of February, Tom Brady comes out of the locker room to announce his retirement. Then if he sees his shadow, he goes right back to the N.F.L.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This dude retires more than Cher.” — D.L. HUGHLEY, guest host of “The Daily Show”“He was around for a long time. Let’s just say Brady was the only active N.F.L. player to see ‘Top Gun’ 1 and 2 in theaters.” — JIMMY FALLON“Brady is done and, in a related story, tickets to next year’s Buccaneers games are now free.” — JIMMY FALLON“Brady is moving on to bigger and better things. Yesterday, he was walking the red carpet for the premiere of his new film ‘80 for Brady.’ I hear it went pretty well until he tucked Rita Moreno under his arm and spiked her in the end zone.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Sadly, without football, he’s going to have to fill his days with nothing but being insanely rich, accomplished, fit, handsome and single.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingD.L. Hughley quizzed people in a man-on-the-street segment about Black History Month for “The Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightJonathan Groff, who stars in “Knock at the Cabin,” will appear on Thursday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”Also, Check This OutOscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan will lead the cast of the stage revival of a Lorraine Hansberry play. Erik Tanner for The New York TimesOscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan will star in the first major New York revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1964 Broadway play “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” at BAM this month. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Puts Mike Lindell Inside a Claw Machine

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      The MyPillow founder and election denier wanted to appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” again, but the host had one condition.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The Man in the MachineMike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, who known for his elaborate conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, returned to “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Tuesday, complying with Kimmel’s one condition: that he appear inside a claw machine at an arcade.In his monologue, Kimmel joked that the mustachioed Lindell was “here to finally answer the question: ‘What if Ted Lasso was on the F.B.I. watch list?’”“I do want to make something clear. I did not insist that Mike be in a claw machine because he’s not vaccinated; I insisted he be in a claw machine because it’s hilarious. This isn’t a political statement — this is just for fun.” — JIMMY KIMMELKimmel asked Lindell about his recent failed campaign for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. But Lindell kept bringing the conversation back to his insistence that machines had rigged the 2020 election.“First question, Mike, is why do you think people don’t take you seriously?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Mike, I know that you’re distrustful of machines. Now that you’re inside one, do you feel differently?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, they’re cool, right?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You know, one of the differences between you and the claw machine is claw machines let go. And you will not let go of this voting thing, will you?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (That’s a Wrap Edition)“President Biden informed Congress yesterday that he will officially end the coronavirus pandemic emergency declaration in May, which means that everyone can finally stop wearing their mask a year ago.” — SETH MEYERS“The timing makes sense. Might as well squeeze in one more spring break public health emergency for old time’s sake.” — JAMES CORDEN“Take that, Covid, we beat you. Shove that up your nose and rotate it five times!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This has been a long time coming. I wish you could see the smiles on the faces in my audience. And I wish I could, too, because they’re still wearing masks.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’m pretty sure the public ended the health emergency a while ago. Today, I saw a guy open a Starbucks bathroom with his tongue.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Daily Show” correspondent Jordan Klepper spoke with superfans of Donald Trump in South Carolina, some of whom insist he is still in office.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe newly minted Oscar nominee Jenny Slate will appear on Wednesday’s “Late Late Show with James Corden.”Also, Check This OutBonnie Raitt has won 10 Grammys since 1979. She’s up for four awards on Sunday, including song of the year.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesBonnie Raitt has been nominated for four Grammys this year, including her first for songwriting. More