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      Rae Allen, Tony Winner and TV Mainstay, Dies at 95

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      In a varied career, she had memorable roles in “Damn Yankees” and on “Seinfeld” and was nominated for three Tonys. She later became a director.Rae Allen, a Tony Award-winning actress who was seen in both the stage and film versions of the hit musical comedy “Damn Yankees,” and whose many television roles included a world-weary unemployment counselor to the jobless George Costanza on “Seinfeld” and Tony Soprano’s aunt on “The Sopranos,” died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 95.Her death, at the Motion Picture & Television Fund retirement home, was confirmed by her niece Betty Cosgrove.Ms. Allen made her Broadway debut in 1948 and her big splash seven years later, when she was cast as the sports reporter Gloria Thorpe in “Damn Yankees, the story of a middle-aged Washington Senators fan who makes a Faustian bargain to become a slugger named Joe Hardy and help his team keep the hated Yankees from winning the pennant. She led a group of nimbly dancing Senators in celebration of Hardy’s beneficial impact on the team with the showstopping song “Shoeless Joe From Hannibal, Mo.” (“Who came along in a puff of smoke? Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo.”)Ms. Allen earned her first Tony Award nomination for that performance, which she reprised in the 1958 movie version, her first film. She received her second Tony nomination in 1965 for Jean Anouilh’s play “Traveller Without Luggage,” and won the Tony six years later, as best featured actress, for Paul Zindel’s “And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little,” in which she played a neighbor in a story about the relationship between three neurotic sisters.“The awful neighbors are also given precisely the right clumsy boorishness by Rae Allen and Bill Macy,” Clive Barnes wrote in his review in The New York Times. He called their scenes “among the most entertaining of the evening.”Her comedic skills were also on display in a memorable two-part episode of “Seinfeld.” She played Lenore Sokol, a deadpan counselor skeptical about George Costanza’s attempts to get an extension on his unemployment benefits, including his claim to have interviewed for a job as a latex salesman for a phony company, Vandelay Industries. She softens when he sees a photograph of her plain-looking daughter on her desk.Ms. Allen and Roberts Blossom in the 1961 Off Broadway production of Edward Albee’s “The Death of Bessie Smith.” Leo Friedman“This is your daughter? George says. “My God! My God! I hope you don’t mind my saying. She is breathtaking.”She asks if he wants her phone number, but after they briefly date, her daughter dumps him because he has no prospects.Ms. Allen later had roles in “A League of Their Own” (1992), as the mother of the baseball players portrayed by Geena Davis and Lori Petty,” and the science-fiction film “Stargate” (1994), as a researcher. She was also seen on TV series including “Brooklyn Bridge” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”In four episodes of “The Sopranos” in 2004, she played Quintina Blundetto, the aunt of Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and the mother of the mobster Tony Blundetto, played by Steve Buscemi.Steven Schirripa, who played Bobby Baccalieri on “The Sopranos,” wrote in an email that Ms. Allen was “acting royalty” who was “respected by everyone in the cast.”Rae Julia Abruzzo was born on July 3, 1926, in Brooklyn. Her mother, Julia (Riccio) Abruzzo, was a seamstress and hairdresser. Her father, Joseph, was a chauffeur and an opera singer whose brothers performed in vaudeville. At 15, Rae played Buttercup in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore” in Greenwich Village.After graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1947, Ms. Allen started her Broadway career as a singer in the musical “Where’s Charley?” She followed that with a role in another musical, “Alive and Kicking.” Her next three shows, also musicals, were “Call Me Madam,” “The Pajama Game” and “Damn Yankees,” all directed by the Broadway luminary George Abbott, who became a mentor and father figure.In the 1960s, Ms. Allen was in the Broadway productions of “Oliver!,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.”From left, June Lockhart, Betty Garrett and Ms. Allen in a 2006 episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.”Ron Tom / © ABC /Everett CollectionBy then, her television and film career had begun to take off; in the 1970s, she also started directing. In 1975 she was named director of the Stage West Theater Company in Springfield, Mass., and in 1991 she directed a revival of “And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little” at the Zephyr Theater in Los Angeles.She twice directed productions of “Cyrano de Bergerac” — the first in 1978 at the Long Beach Center Theater, in Long Beach, Calif., starring Stacy Keach, and the second in 2010 at the Ruskin Group Theater in Santa Monica, starring John Colella.Reviewing Ms. Allen’s staging of Ibsen’s “When We Dead Awaken” at Stage West in 1977, Mr. Barnes wrote that it had “speed, conviction and perception.”She also ran acting workshops and was a personal coach. In her 40s, she received bachelor’s and master’s of fine arts degrees in directing from New York University.Ms. Allen’s marriages to John Allen and Herbert Harris ended in divorce. No immediate family members survive. More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene Calls the Police on Jimmy Kimmel

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      Kimmel said of Greene’s angry tweets about a joke he made earlier this week: “She’s a snowflake and a sociopath at the same time — a ‘snowciopath.’”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.Marjorie Is the New KarenJimmy Kimmel struck a nerve with Marjorie Taylor Greene this week, prompting some tweets from the congresswoman in which she said she’d filed a threat report with the Capitol Police..@ABC, this threat of violence against me by @jimmykimmel has been filed with the @CapitolPolice. pic.twitter.com/nxYX1LF2jK— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 6, 2022
      Kimmel was chuffed, saying, “This is what she does instead of working — she tweets.”“On our show Tuesday night, M.T.G. — ‘Klan Mom’ as we call her — earlier in the day called three of her fellow Republicans ‘pro-pedophile’ for supporting Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court — which is lovely. A lovely thing to say. So I made a joke. I said, ‘Where is Will Smith when you need him?’ And the audience laughed. And then she saw it, and she decided she was going to get some political mileage out of this.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“She called the police. Not only did she call the police, she called the same police she voted against giving a congressional gold medal to for defending our Capitol against the insurrection she helped incite on Jan. 6. That’s who she called — the people she wanted to defund.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s amazing how quickly you can go from ‘These liberals! You can’t say anything anymore’ to ‘What did you say? I’m calling the cops!’ Must be that cancel culture they’re always talking about.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“So I, after processing the fact that someone called the police on me — believe it or not, that has never happened to me in my life — I tweeted back, ‘Officer? I’d like to report a joke.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This woman, remember, she is the one who endorsed fringe conspiracy theories and repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians. Now she’s dialing 911 because she got made fun of. She’s a snowflake and a sociopath at the same time — a ‘snowciopath.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And nobody does anything. I feel like maybe other Republicans like having her around to make the rest of them seem normal.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Justice Jackson Edition)“‘Ladies and gentleman, the newest member of the United States Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’ — is what I will be saying in a few months, when she’s actually sworn in. It’s a long process.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson today became the first Black woman to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, in case you’re wondering why the flag over the Fox News building is at half-staff.” — SETH MEYERS“Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. She got ‘yes’ votes from all Senate Democrats and three pro-pedophile Republicans.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s right, she’s going to be Justice Jackson. When Disney heard that name, they immediately added her to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Jackson will now debate the most important issues facing our country, like freedom of speech, states’ rights, and ‘Is it cake?’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe rapper Pusha T talked about his writing process and collaborating with Jay-Z for his new album on Thursday night’s “Desus & Mero.”Also, Check This OutQuinta Brunson, center, created and stars in “Abbott Elementary,” a surprise hit in its first season.Liliane Lathan/ABC“Abbott Elementary,” a sitcom about the dynamics of public school in 2022, is this season’s best new network comedy, James Poniewozik writes. More

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      ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Recap: This Is a Musical Now

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      An uneven episode leaves more questions than answers about the direction of the season.Season 2, Episode 6: ‘Two for One’Let’s begin with the most important “Picard” news of the week: The show is bringing on most of the original “Next Generation” cast next season. This is incredible, exciting news! It’s always fun to look forward to more content involving your favorite show.That is, until you consider that most of the post-“Next Generation” outings for the crew haven’t been well received by audiences. Of the four movies involving the cast, only “First Contact” was considered a hit. But it’s still exciting. We haven’t received a real update on what these characters have been up to since “Nemesis,” and I wonder if the reunion fun next season will include rekindling the romance between Picard and Dr. Crusher.Let’s table that and any further speculation for now, however, because we need to talk about something far less exciting: the current season, which seems to be going off the rails. This episode was the shortest of Season 2 so far, running slightly more than a half-hour. It’s also the rare “Trek” episode that takes place almost entirely in one room and in real time.I’ll give “Picard” this much: They’re willing to break conventions. But some of the choices seem shortsighted, and this week a choice the writers made last season came back to bite them.The biggest subplot of the episode involves the Borg Queen implanting her consciousness (or something) into Jurati. It is unclear why the Queen is so fascinated with Jurati. She seems bent on making Jurati into a confident person; to bring her out of her shell. It’s a noble aim, but the Borg Queen caring so much about an individual seems out of character for what we know about the Borg. Even the Queen’s fascination with Data in “First Contact” can be explained by Data locking out the main computer and the Borg needing access to those codes.Regardless, Jurati keeps putting herself in positions where she needs the Queen to do super-techie things in order to save the crew. This allows the Queen to push Jurati to live her best life, including making her passionately kiss Rios in public. (Side note: It feels like the show is headed toward Rios wanting to stay in the 21st century to be with the doctor who treated him when they arrived to this century.)There’s also the continuing presence of the Watcher, who tells Jean-Luc that she has never spoken to Renée or interacted with her thanks to some kind of Watchers “code.” This once again raises the question of what the Watcher actually does, or why the audience is supposed to care about her presence. (The Watcher says this is the best way to keep Renée safe. Don’t ask why. Just go with it.) If anything, the Watcher’s spying on Renée — reading her text messages, viewing her therapy sessions — makes her a highly unsympathetic character.Renée doesn’t seem ready for this mission, but Picard and his crew are intent on her going through with it, based on what they assume will save their original timeline. (The later conversation between Renée and Picard comes off as tone deaf and manipulative rather than as a pep talk to get Renée on the flight.)Adam Soong upbraids Picard and has him thrown out of the event. Soong is a wealthy benefactor for the Europa mission, and has enough juice that he can simply whisper to someone and have Picard removed. Later in the episode, Soong’s daughter discovers a bunch of headlines calling her father a “mad scientist” who is known for illegal genetic experimentation. So why does Soong have this much sway at an event like this? Why would money from such a toxic figure be accepted by the institution behind the launch? (It’s unclear whether this is a private expedition or something N.A.S.A. is funding.)Even so, Picard needs to be saved from Soong.This leads to one of the more baffling moments in the history of “Star Trek,” which is saying a lot. The Queen causes the lights to go out and Jurati begins to sing. No, really: sing. She belts out “Shadows of the Night” by Pat Benatar and the band joins in, as if this was all just part of the set list. (Alison Pill has an amazing voice!) The proper reaction from those around Jurati would be to have her escorted out for causing a disturbance. Instead, the band is like, “OK, I guess we have a singer now. Thank goodness we know the Pat Benatar song in this exact key just in case something like this happened!”Jurati takes a bow with the Borg Queen and is talking to herself the whole time. None of this seems strange to anyone in the audience!Not content with throwing him out of the event, Soong decides to run Picard over with his car. Here’s where some of the uneven writing undermines the plot: The show tries to build tension by implying that Picard’s life is in danger, but we know from last season that it is not. Picard is literally not human anymore. He died last season and was brought back to life as a synthetic being. Why is he even bleeding? When the doctor examines Picard later, she should be wondering why this human she is examining looks like a machine on the inside! (One other question: How did the crew get Picard to the doctor’s office?)The explanation seems to be that the Watcher will use something called a neuro-optic interceptor to go inside Picard’s mind and rescue him from the coma. (Here’s another idea: You could just repair Picard later. Because he’s a machine.)The episode ends with Jurati strolling away from the event, apparently now fully possessed by the Borg Queen. Maybe she was on her way to do karaoke. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Trips Out Over Mushrooms Talking to Each Other

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      “Anyone speak shiitake?” Kimmel joked of new research suggesting that fungi communicate.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.Sounds Like a ‘Fungi’A researcher in England recently discovered that mushrooms and other fungi communicate similarly to humans.“When they prodded them with electrodes, they exhibited spikes of cognitive activity that resembled vocabularies of around 50 words — like an Eric Trump-level vocabulary,” Jimmy Kimmel joked on Wednesday.“Anyone speak shiitake?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“They were able to determine that mushrooms say, ‘Hello,’ “Goodbye’ and ‘For the love of God, please stop eating us to get high.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Ironically, you know who would find this story most interesting is people on mushrooms, right? Isn’t that crazy? A mushroom might actually be a ‘fungi.’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Who’s Got Spirit? Edition)“Spirit Airlines may have a new owner soon. Back in February, Spirit announced plans to merge with Frontier Airlines, but yesterday, JetBlue swooped in with a better offer. JetBlue wants to buy Spirit for $3.6 billion, plus $55 extra for carry-on luggage.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Don’t worry, it’ll still be the same Spirit Airlines, except now every seat will have a TV that doesn’t work and a bag of blue chips.” — JIMMY FALLON“The JetBlue C.E.O. said, ‘Customers shouldn’t have to choose between a low fare and a great experience, and JetBlue has shown it’s possible to have both.’ And Spirit Airlines has shown that it’s not.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Spirit, in real estate terms, is what you’d call a ‘fixer-upper.’ This would be a clash in cultures for sure. Spirit is a budget airline, no frills. Ever fly Spirit? And then JetBlue offers things like free Wi-Fi, snacks, drinks — they have a real bathroom instead of a bucket that everyone passes around.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“If there’s no Spirit anymore, who are we going to make fun of? Look out, Allegiant, you’re on deck.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth Watching“Carpool Karaoke” returned from a two-year hiatus with Nicki Minaj joining James Corden on Wednesday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightPete Holmes, star of the new CBS show “How We Roll,” will pop by Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutChantal Anderson for The New York TimesThe actress Anya Taylor-Joy shared the beauty and wellness rituals she enjoys for comfort and self-soothing. More

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      Nehemiah Persoff, Actor With a Familiar Face (and Voice), Dies at 102

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      His most prominent roles included three tenderly caring parents, but he was most associated with the dapper gangsters he portrayed in the movies and on television.Nehemiah Persoff, a ubiquitous character actor whose gravelly voice and knack for conveying an air of menace magnified his portrayals of a bevy of sinister types, most notably a half-dozen Prohibition-era gangsters, died on Tuesday in San Luis Obispo, Calif. He was 102. The cause was heart failure, his grandson, Joey Persoff, said.For decades Mr. Persoff was one of most recognizable faces on television, by face if not by name; he was seen on hundreds of shows, beginning in the late 1940s. He usually played a supporting character, sometimes kindly, sometimes malevolent, but, given his gift for dialect, frequently with an undefined foreign accent.He appeared on such durable series of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s as “Gunsmoke,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Route 66,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Columbo,” and he continued into the 1990s, with parts on “Law & Order” and “Chicago Hope.”Mr. Persoff, a native of Jerusalem who emigrated to the United States when he was 9, was in real life an amiable father of four who was married to the same woman for seven decades, and who in retirement became an accomplished painter.His most prominent roles included three tenderly caring parents: a Jewish refugee escaping the Nazis and hoping to reunite with his daughter in Havana in the 1976 film “Voyage of the Damned”; the father of an Orthodox Jewish girl in early-20th-century Poland who poses as a boy so that she can study in a yeshiva, in Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” (1983); and the voice of the father of Fievel Mousekewitz, the Russian Jewish mouse who emigrates to the United States to escape marauding cats, in the 1986 animated feature “An American Tail” and its sequels.Yet he was most associated with the dapper gangsters he portrayed in the movies and on television. He was the underworld boss Johnny Torrio in the 1959 film “Al Capone,” which starred Rod Steiger in the title role. In the TV series “The Untouchables,” he played two different real-life gangsters: Jake Guzik, the financial brains of Capone’s bootleg liquor gang, in a few episodes, and Waxey Gordon, New York’s king of illicit beer, in a 1960 episode in which he gleefully aimed a Tommy gun into a competitor’s barrels.His most memorable supporting role may have been his outsize parody of a mobster, Little Bonaparte, in the classic Billy Wilder comedy “Some Like It Hot” (1959). Two of his lines from that movie are often quoted by film buffs.In one, addressing a mob gathering disguised as an opera lovers’ convention, he says: “In the last fiscal year we made a hundred an’ twelve million dollars before taxes … only we didn’t pay no taxes!”And after a hit man pops out of a huge birthday cake and machine-guns another mobster, played by George Raft, and his entourage, Mr. Persoff tells an inquiring detective, “There was something in that cake that didn’t agree with ’em.”Mr. Persoff as the real-life mobster Jake Guzik in a 1962 episode of the TV series “The Untouchables.” He portrayed the gangster Waxey Gordon in another episode.Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty ImagesMr. Persoff once said he loved working on “The Untouchables” because he could lock horns with Elliot Ness, the federal agent played with righteous hauteur by Robert Stack.“Bob Stack was so nose-in-the-air stuck up, he was so correct and superior, so aristocratic, that without any effort on my part it brought out the rebel in me,” he told the magazine Cinema Retro. “It struck a vein of anger in me, anger which in my mind is such an important part of what makes a gangster.”Nehemiah Persoff was born in Jerusalem on Aug. 2, 1919, during the years when the territory was transitioning from Ottoman rule to a British mandate. His father, Shmuel, a silversmith, jeweler and art teacher, decided that his prospects would improve in America and emigrated on his own. After six years he brought over his wife, Puah (Holman) Persoff, a homemaker, and his three sons and two daughters.It was the start of the Depression, and the family lived in a cold-water flat in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, though they eventually moved to the Bronx.Nehemiah attended the Hebrew Technical Institute to study the electrician’s trade, and his first job was as a signal maintenance worker on the old IND subway line. It paid him $38 a week, more than his father earned.His introduction to acting happened by chance: He was asked to perform a walk-on in a play that was the highlight of a Zionist organization’s function. The experience planted a notion, and after completing three years in the stateside Army, he took a leave from subway work and began studying acting.Mr. Persoff was among the first students at the Actors Studio, where his teachers were Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, proponents of method acting. His fellow students included Julie Harris, Martin Balsam, Cloris Leachman and Kim Hunter.His first bit part was in the 1948 film noir “Naked City,” but it was another small part that brought him to widespread attention: He was the silent cabdriver in the memorable taxi scene in “On the Waterfront” (1954). His face appears briefly after one of film lore’s most famous conversations, when Marlon Brando tells Rod Steiger: “I could’ve had class, I could’ve been a contender. I could’ve been a somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”Mr. Persoff was usually cast in small supporting parts, but he often turned them into gems of characterization. One was Leo, the crooked accountant, in Humphrey Bogart’s last picture, “The Harder They Fall” (1956). He coolly tells a furious Bogart that out of the $1 million gate for a championship fight, the story’s overmatched boxer will receive $49.07.In 1951, Mr. Persoff married Thia Persov, a distant relation who had been a nurse with the Palmach, a Zionist military group, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. She died of cancer last year. In addition to his grandson, Mr. Persoff is survived by three sons, Jeffrey, Dan and Perry; a daughter, Dahlia; and four granddaughters. He lived in the town of Cambria on the central Californian coast.In Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” (1983), Mr. Persofff played the father of an Orthodox Jewish girl (Ms. Streisand) who poses as a boy so that she can study in a yeshiva.United Archives GmbH / Alamy Stock PhotoWhile acting in Hollywood, Mr. Persoff kept his hand in live theater. In 1959, he starred on Broadway as the newspaper editor and essayist Harry Golden in a short-lived adaptation of Mr. Golden’s folksy book “Only in America.” It was the last of his more than a dozen Broadway appearances.In California, he starred as a cantankerous socialist in his 80s in the Herb Gardner comedy “I’m Not Rappaport” and as the milkman Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” And for almost two decades he appeared as Tevye’s creator, the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, in a one-man show for which Mr. Persoff adapted five of the writer’s fables.In 1975, he was awarded the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for his supporting role in “The Dybbuk” at the Mark Taper Forum.When high blood pressure and other health problems forced him to reduce his workload, Mr. Persoff took up painting, studying in Los Angeles and producing watercolors that have been exhibited in galleries in Northern California. He kept painting until the last week of his life. In 2021 he published a memoir, “The Many of Faces of Nehemiah.”Beyond dialects and accents, he had a telling philosophy about acting. “If I’m playing a good guy, I’ll try to show that he has some bad in him,” he once said. “If I’m playing a bad guy, I’ll give him some dignity and love.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Late Night Celebrates Obama’s First White House Visit in Five Years

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      Stephen Colbert joked that he hoped “they locked the doors to keep him in.”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.Obama in the HouseFormer President Barack Obama made his first return to the White House in five years on Tuesday.“Then, hopefully, they locked the doors to keep him in,” Stephen Colbert joked.“He was there to promote Obamacare and to get that pack of smokes he forgot in the Lincoln bedroom.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Former President Barack Obama today visited the White House, and out of habit, Jeanine Pirro called for his impeachment.” — SETH MEYERS“Yep, Obama said he would have visited sooner, but gas prices were too expensive.” — JIMMY FALLON“But it was fun to see the former president at the White House. Obama felt like a guy who was visiting his old high school, and Biden was like the old gym teacher who never left.” — JIMMY FALLON“It was great to see him today. It was like the ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ reunion at the Oscars.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Obama was there celebrating the 12-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, and also to help Joe set up his Roku.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s really got to bother Trump. All these lies and schemes and lawsuits to get back to the White House, Obama just strolls right in there.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (On Bezos’ Grave Edition)“Over the weekend, workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island were able to successfully unionize. It’s the first Amazon union. And the new president of the union said something funny. The president of the union said, ‘We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space, because when he was up there, we were signing people up.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is great news. That is fantastic. And Amazon is now going all out to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The app essentially censors anything that’s controversial at Amazon, including the word ‘restroom,’ which, you know, may not be missed. Many Amazon workers are more familiar with the phrases ‘empty Powerade bottle’ or ‘on Bezos’ grave.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT, on Amazon’s new internal messaging app“So these are all words Amazon will not allow: ‘Unions,’ ‘strike,’ ‘wages,’ ‘restrooms,’ ‘pee bottles,’ ‘empty Dasani,’ ‘bladder infections,’ ‘happiness,’ ‘life outside of work,’ ‘home,’ ‘going home,’ ‘I think I live at home but can’t remember,’ ‘help,’ ‘help us,’ ‘penis rocket,’ ‘overcompensating,’ ‘dork,’ ‘space dork,’ ‘bald space dork,’ and ‘I want to have sex with Alexa.’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Tuesday’s “Tonight Show,” Amanda Seyfried shared how she mastered Elizabeth Holmes’s falsified deep voice for “The Drop Out.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightNicki Minaj will join James Corden for the return of “Carpool Karaoke” on Wednesday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutTony Hawk, left, and Sam Jones as seen in Jones’s new documentary, “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off.”Sam Jones Pictures/HBO Documentary FilmsA new documentary about the professional skateboarder Tony Hawk explores his compulsion to continue skating at all costs. More

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      Ann Sarnoff, Warner Bros. Chief, Is Set to Leave

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      LOS ANGELES — Ann Sarnoff, the chief executive of the WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group, will leave the company, with an announcement coming as soon as this week, three people briefed on the matter said.Ms. Sarnoff, who declined to comment, was chosen to lead Warner Bros. in 2019 despite limited Hollywood experience, becoming the first woman to hold the role. She is departing as WarnerMedia, a division of AT&T, is set to complete a merger with Discovery. Ms. Sarnoff’s boss, Jason Kilar, who has been chief executive of WarnerMedia since 2020, announced his exit on Tuesday.Like Mr. Kilar, Ms. Sarnoff found herself without a seat in the game of musical chairs that accompanies the merging of competing companies, said the people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information. The Warner Bros. Discovery management structure is still unknown, but David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, who will run the new company, is expected to take over at least some of Ms. Sarnoff’s portfolio. She has had a dozen direct reports.Her job has involved oversight of HBO and HBO Max; the Warner Bros. movie and television studio; several cable channels, including TBS and TNT; and a large consumer products division. Breaking down the siloed nature of some of those units has been one of Ms. Sarnoff’s accomplishments.After news of her departure became public, Mr. Zaslav said in an email that Ms. Sarnoff had been “a passionate and committed steward,” leading “with integrity, focus and hard work in bringing WarnerMedia’s businesses, brands and work force closer together.” In an email of his own, Mr. Kilar called Ms. Sarnoff a “first-tier human being” and “the definition of a selfless leader.”Ms. Sarnoff’s job security has been the subject of Hollywood gossip for months, with agents and Warner-affiliated producers insisting that she was on her way out and some members of her team insisting the opposite. That kind of speculation can be deadly in show business, with whispers congealing into conventional wisdom, often resulting in an irrecoverable position of weakness in the view of Hollywood’s creative community.To be fair, Ms. Sarnoff, whip smart and affable, never got the opportunity to really do her job. The pandemic shut down the entertainment business roughly seven months after she started. AT&T, which hired her, decided to spin off WarnerMedia last May.Before joining WarnerMedia, Ms. Sarnoff held leadership roles at Nickelodeon, the Women’s National Basketball Association, Dow Jones and BBC America. More

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      June Brown, a Mainstay of Britain’s ‘EastEnders,’ Dies at 95

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      As the memorable Dot Cotton, she appeared in thousands of episodes of the hugely popular soap opera over 35 years.June Brown, who appeared in thousands of episodes of the British soap opera “EastEnders” across 35 years, portraying Dot Cotton, one of the more memorable residents of the fictional Albert Square, died on Sunday at her home in Surrey, near London. She was 95.Her death was announced on the show’s Twitter account. In one of many tributes shared by that account, Natalie Cassidy, another star of the show, called Ms. Brown “the best character actress ‘EastEnders’ has ever seen or will ever see.”Ms. Brown was classically trained at the Old Vic drama school and had a decent career in the theater until she and her second husband, Robert Arnold, whom she married in 1958, began having their six children.“Touring was difficult with children,” she told The Daily Telegraph of London in 1995, “so I did a great deal of television work. And, in 1985, ‘EastEnders’ and Dot came along.”Dot was the mother of the villainous Nick Cotton. Ms. Brown was originally contracted for three months.“Then I was asked if I wanted to be a permanent character,” she told The Express of Britain in 2020, the year her character was finally written out of the series. “I had no idea it was going to be for 30-odd years.”Ms. Brown, left, in an episode of “EastEnders” with, from left, Wendy Richard, Ian Lavender, James Alexandro and Natalie Cassidy. AFP/Getty ImagesIt turned out that audiences found Dot, a chain-smoking bundle of prejudices, oddly endearing. The Daily Telegraph, in the 1995 article, called her “the holy-rolling hypochondriac, one-woman moral majority of Albert Square.”Ms. Brown enjoyed creating a flawed character — so much so that in 1993, after playing Dot for eight years, she left the show when she felt the writers were dialing back some of Dot’s more objectionable characteristics.“In the early days Dot was a terrible racist,” Ms. Brown explained in the 1995 interview. “But she gradually became more and more politically correct, which was disastrous for the character and the program. It’s no good having a program that is supposed to reflect society but covers it all up and pretends that everything in the garden is lovely.”She returned in 1997. As the years rolled by, Dot continued to change, becoming less gossipy and more like the fictional world’s matriarch, and Ms. Brown was given some meaty story lines — a request from a friend for Dot’s help with euthanasia, for instance, and Nick’s death from a heroin overdose.A much-praised episode in 2008 was devoted solely to Ms. Brown, as Dot made a 30-minute tape recording for her comatose husband. The Observer called it “an absolutely brilliant 30 minutes of prime time — beautifully written, economically directed and faultlessly, movingly performed by June Brown.”Ms. Brown recently dealt with macular degeneration in real life, something that was incorporated into scripts. The character disappeared in 2020 without much fanfare — Dot moved to Ireland. The show’s producers said a return was always possible, but Ms. Brown wasn’t interested. “I’ve sent her off to Ireland and that’s where she’ll stay,” she said of Dot.In 2001, Ms. Brown and her fellow cast member Barbara Windsor were visited on the set of “EastEnders” by Queen Elizabeth II.Pool photo by Fiona Hanson“EastEnders” Twitter posts said she had appeared in 2,884 episodes.“There was nobody quite like June Brown,” Nadine Dorries, Britain’s culture minister, said on Twitter. “She captured the zeitgeist of British culture like no other in her many years on our screens.”June Muriel Brown was born on Feb. 16, 1927, in Suffolk, England, to Henry and Louisa (Butler) Brown. Her father owned an electrical engineering company, and her mother worked in a milliner’s shop.Ms. Brown’s childhood was marked by loss. A brother died in infancy. She was particularly close to an older sister, Marise, who died of an ear infection when June was 7, an event that affected her more deeply than her parents seemed to realize.“People weren’t concerned with psychology then,” Ms. Brown wrote in her autobiography, “Before the Year Dot” (2013). “Perhaps it was better because you learnt to survive without sympathy.”Ms. Brown grew up in Ipswich. A career in acting was not at all on her mind.“I once played the Virgin Mary at school,” she told The Daily Telegraph, “but only because my teacher thought I’d look lovely in blue.”During World War II she joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service — the Wrens — where one of her jobs was showing training films to airmen. She also performed in a touring revue that performed for troops.“We took it ’round the Southern Command area and I really enjoyed it,” she told The Independent in 2010. “I got laughs, and that was when the bug got me.”After the war she studied at the Old Vic and began appearing in plays. By the late 1950s she was turning up in roles on “ITV Television Playhouse” and similar TV programs. In the early 1970s she appeared in several episodes of “Coronation Street,” another long-running British soap.She credited Leslie Grantham, an original “EastEnders” cast member, with suggesting her for the role of Dot.“He’d seen me in an episode of ‘Minder,’” another British show, she told The Daily Mirror in 2003. “I’ll always be grateful to him.”A few dozen episodes into the series, Dot made her first appearance. At the 2005 British Soap Awards, Ms. Brown received a lifetime achievement honor for her work on the show. “EastEnders” has also been seen on various outlets in the United States for years.In 1950 Ms. Brown married John Garley, a fellow actor, who died in 1957. Her second husband, Mr. Arnold, also an actor, died in 2003. Her survivors include five children, Chloe, Naomi, Sophie, Louise and William. More