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    Tony’s Booth From ‘Sopranos’ Finale Sets Off Online Bidding War

    The New Jersey ice cream parlor where “The Sopranos” abruptly cut to black in 2007 put the booth on eBay, hoping to fetch $10,000. Within days, bidders had pushed the price above $82,000.Tony Soprano puts a quarter into the jukebox to play “Don’t Stop Believin’” and orders onion rings for the table. His wife and son join him as his daughter struggles to parallel park outside. A bell chimes every time a customer arrives, deepening Tony’s anxiety: Will the next person to walk through the door kill him?What happens next has kept fans guessing since the final scene of “The Sopranos” abruptly cut to black in 2007. It has also kept a few of them energized enough to bid tens of thousands of dollars to own the diner booth where the much-dissected sequence was shot.Holsten’s in Bloomfield, N.J., which is preparing for a renovation, put the burgundy booth and yellow Formica tabletop up for auction on eBay on Feb. 28. Chris Carley, a co-owner of the ice cream parlor, set the opening bid at $3,000, hoping he might get $10,000 for it to help cover part of the estimated $60,000 cost for a new floor and new booths.Within 24 hours, the price had jumped to $52,000. By Monday afternoon, there had been more than 230 bids, pushing the price above $82,000.James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano cuing up “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey on the jukebox.Will Hart/HBOThe auction ends just after 10 p.m. Monday.The winning bidder will get the booth, the table, the divider and the family plaque that reserves the seats for the Soprano family. (Not included: the jukebox, which was added by the film crew.) The buyer is responsible for pickup.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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    There will be many onstage reunions for the 75th Emmys anniversary.

    Monday’s ceremony will be the 75th edition of the Emmy Awards, and Anthony Anderson, the show’s host, will get some support in the form of onstage reunions from celebrated shows.Several cast members from “Cheers” — the beloved NBC sitcom that aired from 1982 to 1993, winning four best comedy Emmys along the way — will join together, including Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammer, Rhea Perlman, John Ratzenberger and George Wendt. Two cast members from “The Sopranos” — Lorraine Bracco and Michael Imperioli — which celebrated the 25th anniversary of its premiere last week, will be there; so will several actors from “Ally McBeal,” the 1999 best comedy winner (Calista Flockhart, Greg Germann, Peter MacNicol and Gil Bellows). There will also be cast reunions for “Grey’s Anatomy” and the 1990s Fox sitcom “Martin.”Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, former Golden Globe hosts and “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update anchors, will also present.Emmy producers expect to pay tribute to many other beloved classics, including “I Love Lucy,” “All in the Family” and “The Carol Burnett Show.” More

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    Suzanne Shepherd, Actress Known for Playing Mothers, Dies at 89

    After establishing herself as a teacher, she started a prolific screen acting career in her 50s that included roles in “Goodfellas” and “The Sopranos.”Suzanne Shepherd, an influential New York acting teacher who found success in midlife as a character actress, including memorable turns as the mothers of Edie Falco’s character on “The Sopranos” and Lorraine Bracco’s character in “Goodfellas,” died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 89.Her daughter, Kate Shepherd, said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and kidney failure.After establishing herself as a stage actress and director, Ms. Shepherd became well known as an acting instructor — her students included Gregory Hines, Bebe Neuwirth and Christopher Meloni — before she began acting in film and on television when she was in her mid-50s.She began her big-screen career with two 1988 romantic comedies: “Working Girl,” in which she secured a role from its director, her old friend Mike Nichols, appearing alongside Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford; and “Mystic Pizza,” playing an aunt of Julia Roberts’s character. She would accumulate about 40 film and television credits in the decades to come, with maternal roles a signature.In Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” (1990), Ms. Shepherd turned in a fiery performance as a protective suburban Jewish mother who is horrified when her daughter Karen (Ms. Bracco) starts dating Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), a charming young associate of Italian American mobsters from Brooklyn. “You’re here a month, and sometimes I know he doesn’t come home at all,” her character seethes to Karen in a memorable scene in the family’s living room. “What kind of people are these?”Her other films include the John Candy comedy “Uncle Buck” (1989), the Tim Robbins psychological thriller “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990) and the 1997 film version of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” starring Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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    Best Thanksgiving Episodes to Stream: ‘Friends,’ ‘Succession’ and More

    Thanksgiving episodes are an underrated TV staple. Here are some of the best to enjoy while you cook, eat or fade away on the couch.Note: This is an updated version of a list that originally ran in 2017.Preparing for the big binge? Whether you call the upcoming holiday Friendsgiving, Slapsgiving, the Feast of Feasts — or just, you know, Thanksgiving — this year, you can be thankful that there is plenty of TV to keep you company. Join these fictional families and friend groups while they break bread or break each other’s spirits, depending on which feels more comforting as you cook, eat and fade away on the couch. Yes, you may have seconds.‘Friends’Matthew Perry, who died last month, at 54, was the king of many a “Friends” Thanksgiving episode. Or as his character Chandler put it, the king of bad Thanksgivings. Or, as Monica’s mother put it, the Boy Who Hates Thanksgiving. (His disdain for the holiday stemmed from learning about his parents’ divorce one Thanksgiving as a child and vomiting in response.) Gradually, though, Chandler conquered his aversion, bailing out the gang with cheese sandwiches at the first Friendsgiving and later helping to prepare a batch of cranberry sauce (made, in his parlance, of tasty Chanberries). Fans with only enough room for one episode should seek out “The One With the Thanksgiving Flashbacks,” from Season 5. (Streaming on Max.)‘Rick and Morty’For the mad scientist Rick Sanchez (Justin Roiland), Thanksgiving is an ideal time to break into the National Archives and try to steal the Constitution. So what if some other national treasures are destroyed in the process? “Rick and Morty’s Thanksploitation Spectacular,” from Season 5, finds Rick on the outs with federal authorities and fomenting an elaborate scheme to score a presidential pardon. Pretty soon people start turning into turkeys while turkeys turn into humans. Your job, if you choose to accept this episode, is to make sense of all the gobbledygook. (Streaming on Max.)Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing a “Master of None” Thanksgiving episode that tracked her character’s efforts to come out to her mother.Netflix‘Master of None’This series’s Thanksgiving episode is one of its very best. Shifting the focus from our indecisive hero, Dev (Aziz Ansari), to his lifelong friend Denise (Lena Waithe), it presents a sequence of vignettes following her through two decades of Thanksgiving dinners as she struggles to come out to her mother as a lesbian. Every element of this touching half-hour feels carefully crafted, from Angela Bassett’s emotional guest performance as Denise’s mother to the nostalgic 1990s R&B soundtrack. Waithe won an Emmy for the script — which was inspired by her own family history — becoming the first Black woman to win the award for writing in a comedy. (Streaming on Netflix.)‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’For mere mortals, Thanksgiving is a harvest festival. For witches, however, the equivalent Feast of Feasts is a very different celebration, with a very different main course — human rather than avian. In “Feast of Feasts,” from Season 1, the young witch Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka) is shocked to learn about this barbaric holiday ritual. (“Are we seriously taking about cannibalism?” she asks in horror.) Her rejection of this ancient tradition puts a damper on any festive feelings. (Streaming on Netflix.)‘Bob’s Burgers’A Season 3 episode is titled “An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal,” but don’t worry — Bob and Linda Belcher’s marriage is safe. The proposal in question comes from the rich landlord, Mr. Fischoeder, who offers the Belchers five months’ free rent for a chaste evening with Linda and the family’s three children, with Bob on hand to cook. Like other schemes on the show, this one is a disaster. But Studio Ghibli fans should look out for a lovely dream sequence that pays tribute to “My Neighbor Totoro.” (Streaming on Hulu.)‘The Sopranos’Most of the episodes on this list are somewhat uplifting and work well as stand-alones. This one, titled “He Is Risen,” won’t make sense if you’ve never seen “The Sopranos,” and it is no more uplifting than any other hour of the show. But if you’re already a Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) fan, you probably don’t mind a dark holiday tale. This Season 3 episode features a car wreck, a funeral and the beginning of an extramarital relationship, along with a Soprano family Thanksgiving dinner that is surprisingly pleasant, thanks to the conspicuous absence of Tony’s most reprehensible associate, Ralph Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano). (Streaming on Max.)James Cromwell, left, and Brian Cox in a Thanksgiving episode of “Succession,” which offered extra helpings of recrimination.Peter Kramer/HBO‘Succession’The Roys serve up the usual feast of familial animosity at their Thanksgiving bash. The patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) is especially disruptive, culminating with his lashing out at an innocent child. In “I Went to Market,” from Season 1, party chat includes touchy but relatable topics such as political ideologies and movie selections, but business concerns naturally trump everything. Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) has to skip most of the festivities — it seems there are some sensitive documents at the office in need of shredding. (Streaming on Max.)‘black-ish’It’s always fun to watch Laurence Fishburne and Jenifer Lewis on “black-ish,” picking at each other as the divorced grandparents Pops and Ruby. The Season 3 Thanksgiving episode, “Auntsgiving,” threw a third veteran actor into the fray, casting Lorraine Toussaint (“Orange Is the New Black”) as Pops’s older sister, Aunt A.V. — whom Ruby hates. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘Gilmore Girls’Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and her teenage daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel), can barely boil water, but they do love to eat. In “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” from Season 3, they make cameos at no fewer than four different dinners. Rory’s friend Lane (Keiko Agena) offers a meal featuring Tofurky and a budding relationship. The perfectionist chef Sookie (Melissa McCarthy) watches in horror as her husband deep-fries a turkey. Romantic tensions for both mother and daughter are on the menu at the local diner. Lorelai’s parents serve up the usual stew of guilt and resentment. Just like Thanksgiving dinner itself, the episode is a plate piled high with sweet, salty and deliciously tart moments. (Streaming on Netflix.)‘Happy Endings’Midway through the third and final season of this zany hangout comedy, in an episode called “More Like Stanksgiving,” we finally learn how the crew’s resident married couple got together. It turns out that Jane (Eliza Coupe) and Brad (Damon Wayans Jr.) met when he and her friend Max (Adam Pally) were castmates on an unaired season of MTV’s “The Real World” in 2002. A decade later, Max still has the scrapped footage. In just over 20 minutes, the reliably lightning-paced “Happy Endings” pulls off a perfect reality-TV parody and sheds new light on a few longstanding relationships. (Streaming on Hulu.)“Big Mouth” used a turkey dispute to explore issues of generational trauma.Netflix‘Big Mouth’Nothing says love more warmly than a perfectly roasted turkey (or even tofurkey). Such is the lesson learned by Andrew (John Mulaney) in this Season 5 episode. Andrew’s father (Richard Kind) has anger-management issues related to prepping poultry — he believes insulting the bird is the key to keeping its juices inside. Andrew decries this “turkey tyranny” and refuses to eat. In the end, though, he and his father have a heart-to-heart about their troubled family history. Despite the usual gross-out humor, there is a genuine attempt to address issues of generational trauma — and of course the power of sharing food. (Streaming on Netflix.)‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’Many Thanksgiving episodes sprinkle in references to the holiday’s complicated history. “Buffy” takes the reckoning to an extreme in “Pangs,” from Season 4, in which the bumbling Xander (Nicholas Brendon) inadvertently unleashes the spirit of an Indigenous warrior. As the ghost starts murdering people who disrupted his sacred burial ground, the Slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her friends debate whether it’s right to kill a “vengeance demon” whose grievances are legitimate. The result is a reasonably nuanced debate about whether Americans are responsible for the sins of their ancestors. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘Gossip Girl’Forget, for a moment, the way “Gossip Girl” fell apart at the end. Its first season was a sublime confection sweetened with glamorous costumes and forbidden love, and tempered by heated conflict. All of those elements come together in the Thanksgiving episode, “Blair Waldorf Must Pie!,” which jumps back in time to compare the previous year’s festivities with those of the present. In the past, the beautiful and troubled Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) got wasted before a dinner with the family of her best friend, Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester). A year later, Serena has cleaned up and Blair is struggling with bulimia. Although the girls are often framed as frenemies, this unusually sentimental episode is a tribute to the way they take care of each other. (Streaming on Max.)‘South Park’If a long weekend of family togetherness makes you desperate for a triple dose of irreverence, Season 17 of “South Park” has you covered. In a trilogy of episodes that begins with “Black Friday,” a local mall braces for the yearly blood bath that begins as soon as the plates are in the dishwasher. For Cartman, that means assembling an army of pint-size gamers to procure the new Xbox at a deep discount. When a pro-Playstation faction splinters off, South Park’s own “Game of Thrones” breaks out, complete with Kenny as Daenerys and a Red Robin Wedding. (Streaming on Max.)“How I Met Your Mother” turned Slapsgiving into one of TV’s abiding holiday traditions.Monty Brinton/CBS‘How I Met Your Mother’It is a holiday of firsts in “Slapsgiving,” the Thanksgiving episode from the third season of this beloved CBS sitcom. Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Segel) are hosting their first Thanksgiving as a married couple. Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin (Cobie Smulders) have just broken up and are figuring out how to be friends for the first time. This is the first of three Slapsgivings (the others are in Seasons 5 and 9), named for a bet in which Marshall wins the right to slap his obnoxious pal Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) that culminates in the glorious original song “You Just Got Slapped.” Be sure to read Entertainment Weekly’s oral history of the episode after watching. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘Family Ties’This quintessential 1980s family sitcom outdid itself with “No Nukes Is Good Nukes” from Season 1. As the Keaton kids endure their grandmother’s awful cooking, Elyse (Meredith Baxter) and Steven (Michael Gross) relive their hippie youth at a festive Thanksgiving Day nuclear disarmament protest. Of course, the boomer parents end up in jail and their Gen-X children couldn’t be more mortified. It’s a dated story line, but the episode’s message about standing up for your beliefs never gets old. (Streaming on Paramount+.)‘Adam Ruins Everything’Need some ammunition for semi-friendly arguments around the Thanksgiving table? This animated episode, called “The First Factsgiving,” helps dispel many of the beloved myths that have grown around the holiday, including the role of the Native warrior Tisquantum — commonly known as Squanto — in the original Thanksgiving feast in 1621. And about that date: The celebration of Thanksgiving as a fixed, nationwide holiday didn’t come about until the Civil War — a day of mourning for turkeys everywhere. (Streaming on Max.) More

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    Tony Sirico, an Eccentric Gangster on ‘The Sopranos,’ Dies at 79

    A familiar face in Woody Allen movies, he became widely known for his portrayal of Paulie Walnuts on the hit HBO series.Tony Sirico, the actor best known for playing the eccentric gangster Paulie Walnuts on the hit HBO series “The Sopranos,” died on Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 79.His death, in an assisted living facility, was confirmed by Bob McGowan, his manager. No cause was given.Paulie Walnuts — that was Paul Gualtieri’s nickname because he once hijacked a truck full of nuts (he was expecting television sets) — was one of the mob boss Tony Soprano’s most loyal, oversensitive and reckless men. Paulie was the kind of guy who would participate in an intervention for a drug addict and, when it was his turn to speak, punch the guy in the face. He loved his mother (although he found out she was really his aunt), and she loved him because he wrote the checks to keep her in an expensive nursing home.Paulie wore track suits, slept with hookers, was phobic about germs, hated cats and watched television in a chair covered with plastic. He hated being stuck with an almost $900 restaurant check but could appreciate a tasty ketchup packet on a cold night in the Pine Barrens when there was nothing else to eat.When the “Sopranos” cast appeared in a group shot on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2001, Paulie stood with a baseball bat casually slung over his right shoulder. No hairdresser on the “Sopranos” set was allowed to touch Mr. Sirico’s hair — dark and luxuriant, with two silver “wings” on either side. He blow-dried and sprayed it himself.Mr. Sirico’s face was also familiar, in quick glimpses, to fans of Woody Allen films. He appeared in several of them, beginning with “Bullets Over Broadway” (1994), in which he played the right-hand man of a powerful gangster turned theater producer. He was a boxing trainer in “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995), an escaped convict in “Everyone Says I Love You” (1996), a matter-of-fact jailhouse cop in “Deconstructing Harry” (1997) and a gun-toting gangster on Coney Island in “Wonder Wheel” (2017).Gennaro Anthony Sirico Jr. was born in Brooklyn on July 29, 1942, the son of Jerry Sirico, a stevedore, and Marie (Cappelluzzo) Sirico. Junior, as he was called, remembered that he first got into trouble when he stole nickels from a newsstand. He attended Midwood High School but did not graduate, his brother Robert Sirico said.“I grew up in Bensonhurst, where there were a lot of mob-type people,” he told the publication Cigar Aficionado in 2001. “I watched them all the time, watched the way they walked, the cars they drove, the way they approached each other. There was an air about them that was very intriguing, especially to a kid.”He worked in construction for a while but soon yielded to temptation. “I started running with the wrong type of guys, and I found myself doing a lot of bad things,” he said in James Toback’s 1989 documentary, “The Big Bang.” Bad things like armed robbery, extortion, coercion and felony weapons possession.While serving 20 months of a four-year sentence at Sing Sing, the maximum-security prison in Ossining, N.Y., he saw a troupe of actors, all ex-convicts, who had made a stop there to perform for the inmates. “When I watched them, I said to myself, ‘I can do that,’” he told The Daily News of New York in 1999.Mr. Sirico was an uncredited extra in “The Godfather: Part II” (1974) and made his official film debut in “Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell” (1977), directed by Larry Buchanan, a self-proclaimed”cinema schlockmeister.” He followed that with more than a decade of small television and movie roles, capped by his part as the flashy mobster Tony Stacks in “Goodfellas” (1990).Mr. Sirico filming a scene from “The Sopranos” with James Gandolfini, who played Tony Soprano, in Kearny, N.J., in 2007.Mike Derer/Associated PressHis first advocate among directors was Mr. Toback, who put him in a crime drama, “Fingers” (1978), with Harvey Keitel; a romantic drama, “Love & Money” (1981), starring Ray Sharkey and Klaus Kinski; and a comic drama, “The Pick-Up Artist” (1987), with Molly Ringwald and Robert Downey Jr., as well as featuring him in his 1989 documentary.Before “The Sopranos,” he was a police officer in “Dead Presidents” (1995), a suburban mobster in “Cop Land” (1997) and a Gambino crime family capo in the TV movie “Gotti” (1996).Once “The Sopranos” hit the air in 1999, it became enormously and widely popular. Mr. Sirico soon knew he was very famous.“If I’m with five other Paulies,” he told The New York Times in 2007, imagining a fairly unlikely situation, “and somebody yells, ‘Hey, Paulie,’ I know it’s for me.”After “The Sopranos” ended in 2007, he often worked with his co-stars.He played Bert, to Steve Schirripa’s Ernie, in a “Sesame Street” Christmas special (2008), and went on to appear with Steven Van Zandt in the series “Lilyhammer” (2013-14), with Michael Rispoli in “Friends and Romans” (2014) and with Vincent Pastore and others in the film “Sarah Q” (2018).He also voiced a street-smart dog named Vinny in several episodes of the animated series “Family Guy.”He appeared in a crime drama, “Respect the Jux,” this year. Mr. Sirico married and divorced early. In addition to his brother Robert, he is survived by two children, Joanne Sirico Bello and Richard Sirico; a sister, Carol Pannunzio; another brother, Carmine; and several grandchildren. He brought at least one admirable lesson from the mob world to “The Sopranos”: He insisted that his character never be portrayed as a rat, someone who would snitch on his crime family. He was also reluctant to have his character kill a woman — Paulie smothered an older nursing home resident with a pillow when she interrupted his theft of her life savings — but he was pleasantly surprised that people in the old neighborhood didn’t seem to think less of him after the episode was shown.Early on, however, it sometimes slipped his mind that he had rejected the dark side.“I was this 30-year-old ex-con villain sitting in a class filled with fresh-faced, serious drama students,” Mr. Sirico recalled in the Daily News interview. The teacher “leaned over to me after I did a scene and whispered, ‘Tony, leave the gun home.’ After so many years of packing a gun, I didn’t even realize I had it with me.”Vimal Patel More

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

    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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    Paul Herman, Mainstay of Gangster Movies, Is Dead at 76

    Over a four-decade career, he was perhaps best known for his role on “The Sopranos.” But he also had dozens of film credits, including “Goodfellas” and “The Irishman.”Paul Herman, who put in appearances as wiseguys and schlemiels in movies like Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” and “Casino” and three seasons of “The Sopranos,” died on Tuesday, his 76th birthday.His manager, T Keaton-Woods, confirmed the death in a statement but did not specify the cause or say where Mr. Herman died.Over a four-decade career, Mr. Herman was perhaps best known for his role on “The Sopranos” as Peter Gaeta, known as Beansie, the owner of pizza parlors who gets in trouble with a mobster — his travails include being hit on the head with a pot of hot coffee — but who manages to re-establish himself.Mr. Herman also appeared for five seasons on another beloved HBO series, “Entourage,” as an accountant who pleads unsuccessfully with his celebrity client to be less of a wastrel.He frequently played unnamed characters in the roughly half-dozen films by Mr. Scorsese in which he appeared, but in the director’s most recent feature, “The Irishman,” he had a more notable part: Whispers DiTullio, who, like Beansie, is a businessman involved with the Mafia who angers the wrong people and comes to grief.Mr. Herman at an awards show in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2014.John Shearer/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Herman’s dozens of other film credits include such crime-themed movies as “The Cotton Club” (1984), “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), “Heat” (1995) and “American Hustle” (2013), a screwball comedy about political corruption for which he and other members of the cast shared a Screen Actors Guild Award.“The only one who ever gave me the chance to play a saint is Marty,” Mr. Herman told The New York Times in 1989, referring to his role as Philip the Apostle in Mr. Scorsese’s 1988 film, “The Last Temptation of Christ.”Paul Herman was born on March 29, 1946, in Brooklyn. His movie career got going with “Dear Mr. Wonderful,” a 1982 West German film about working-class life in Newark and New York City that featured Joe Pesci in his first starring role.From there, Mr. Herman made a specialty of using his haggard but trusting mug to play bit characters like a burglar (in Woody Allen’s “Radio Days”), a headwaiter (in another Allen film, “Bullets Over Broadway”) and a bartender (in Sondra Locke’s “Trading Favors”), along with a motley assortment of gangsters.Information on survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Herman had homes in New York and Santa Monica, Calif.Offscreen, he was known for being friendly and well connected. “If you visited NYC from LA, he was the entertainment director,” the actor Tony Danza said on Twitter after his death.The music executive Tommy Mottola posted an undated black-and-white photo on Instagram of Mr. Herman sitting at a restaurant between young versions of Robert De Niro and the actress and the director Penny Marshall, who died in 2018. Mr. Mottola said Mr. Herman had been on a “first name basis with every superstar actor and musician in the world.”Mr. Herman was a part owner of the now closed but once buzzy Upper West Side restaurant Columbus, where one evening in 1989, sitting beside Al Pacino, he told The Times that he served as the nightly “social director.” The restaurant’s patrons included Mr. Scorsese, Mr. Allen and Francis Ford Coppola — all friends who had cast him in their movies over the years.Those three men had very different directing styles, Mr. Herman told The Times in 1989.With Mr. Scorsese and Mr. Coppola, “you can give them your ideas on a scene,” he said. “But with Woody, well, you just don’t do that with him because he has ideas he’s working out. You really can’t say one style is better than another, though.” More

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    How the ‘Many Saints of Newark’ Stars Remade Key ‘Sopranos’ Roles

    Actors in the prequel had to put their stamp on favorite characters from the original series, whether they had watched it or not.From its debut in 1999 to its blackout finale in 2007, “The Sopranos” set a seemingly unsurpassable benchmark for acting. The cast members of that HBO crime drama, leading players and supporting performers alike, became synonymous with the menacing mobsters and manipulative family members they portrayed. When it was all over, you couldn’t imagine anyone else playing those roles.This posed a problem for the creators of “The Many Saints of Newark,” the cinematic prequel that explores the origins of “The Sopranos” during the 1960s and ’70s, and that enlists new actors to play younger versions of those indelible characters.It also a presented a challenge for the actors in “The Many Saints of Newark” — some of whom were “Sopranos” fans and others who had never watched the series — and who had to walk a careful line between preserving what audiences already expected from their characters and putting their own stamps on the roles.Vera Farmiga, who plays the film’s Livia Soprano, explained that their task was complicated by the typical time constraints of making a movie. “We didn’t have the luxury that a series allows you — that indulgence to get to know your character and get multiple tries at them,” she said. “I could do the ‘Saturday Night Live’ version, but you have very little time to get it right. And what does right even mean?”Here, five stars from “The Many Saints of Newark” discuss how they landed their roles and prepared to live up to the standards of “The Sopranos.”Vera FarmigaRole: Livia SopranoOriginated by: Nancy MarchandWatched original run of “The Sopranos”? NoWhen Farmiga, a star of “Up in the Air” and the series “Bates Motel,” was approached to play the role of Tony Soprano’s controlling mother, Livia, she knew that it was significant — but only by proxy. “There were loads of giddy responses around me,” Farmiga said. “My husband was freaking out. My agents were freaking out.” Though she hadn’t seen the series when it first aired, she said, “I understood that it was a cultural phenomenon. I understood it came with a legacy.” Farmiga also found it meaningful that David Chase, the “Sopranos” creator and “Many Saints” co-screenwriter, did not require her to audition: “All he wanted to do is meet up at a really beautiful spot and eat together,” she said. “So we blasted through a couple bottles of white wine at dessert. We got loaded and jacked up on sugar.” For her performance, Farmiga studied the work of Marchand, who died in 2000, and requested a prosthetic nose to more closely resemble her. Farmiga also sought guidance from Chase, who based Livia on his own mother. But the screenwriter proved to be characteristically tight-lipped, as Farmiga recalled: “I would press David — let’s talk about your mother. ‘Nah, she just was.’ But why? Was she dissatisfied with maternity? She wanted a career? ‘Nope. She just was. That’s who my mother was.’” Eventually, Farmiga said she found her answers in the screenplay: “You know what? Just give me the words,” she said.Corey StollRole: Corrado “Uncle Junior” Soprano Jr.Originated by: Dominic ChianeseWatched original run of “The Sopranos”? YesStoll, the ubiquitous star of television (“Billions,” “House of Cards”) and film (“Ant-Man”), was a “Sopranos” devotee who watched the series to its conclusion, then binged it again with his wife, Nadia Bowers, when she was pregnant with their son and yet again in preparation for this film. But Stoll said he may have gained just as much from catching a serendipitous revival-house showing of “The Godfather Part II,” in which Chianese, then in his 40s, played the mobster Johnny Ola. As Stoll explained, “It was super-helpful to see that Dominic Chianese, kind of like me, was always a little bit older than his years. I’ve been playing old men since I was 11. It was good to see that I didn’t have to do back flips to make him a young man. Just being in my body and in my voice, that is different enough.” His key to Uncle Junior, Stoll said, was listening to Chianese’s rhythmic speech patterns: “He has this staccato — he can speak very quickly and ratatat — and then he also has this wistful, lyrical mode that he goes into.” For extra motivation, before a scene Stoll would utter an obscene phrase favored by Junior that can’t be fully reproduced here — the first two words are “your sister’s.” “Sometimes shouting it, sometimes whispering it,” Stoll said. “But there’s something about those three words that just brought me right into character.”John MagaroRole: Silvio DanteOriginated by: Steven Van ZandtWatched original run of “The Sopranos”? YesMagaro (“First Cow”) became close with Chase when he starred in the writer’s 2012 directorial debut, “Not Fade Away.” As their friendship progressed, Chase shared a crucial piece of information: “David said that he was going to do a ‘Sopranos’ prequel,” recalled Magaro, who had no expectation he would be involved. “Then a couple of years passed and he and his producing partner Nicole Lambert, started mentioning, would you be willing to shave your head? Would you be willing to gain a lot of weight? It seemed like there was an idea of someone I could play in the film.” That turned out to be Silvio, created by Van Zandt, whom Magaro also knew from “Not Fade Away.” And there was plenty of source material that Magaro could study from the guitarist’s performances and interviews with the E Street Band: “There’s a confidence, there’s an ease to his language,” Magaro explained. “Even the way he carries his shoulders raised a bit from years of playing guitar. I kept an eye on that stuff and let it inform where I would go with the young Silvio.” The movie also confirms what some “Sopranos” viewers suspected about the older Silvio: that he is bald and wears a hairpiece. “To achieve that,” Magaro said, “I agreed to shave the horseshoe shape in my hair. For the ’60s version we would shave that every morning and make it look like a balding man. For the ’70s we would throw on a really crappy toupee.”From left, Samson Moeakiola as Big Pussy, Corey Stoll as Junior Soprano and Billy Magnussen as Paulie Walnuts.Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.Billy MagnussenRole: Paulie “Walnuts” GualtieriOriginated by: Tony SiricoWatched original run of “The Sopranos”? NoMagnussen, a dashing star of films like “Aladdin,” “Into the Woods” and “No Time to Die” and TV’s “Made For Love” may not immediately strike you as a young Paulie Walnuts, but he was just flattered to be a part of “The Many Saints of Newark.” As he explained, “I had the opportunity to audition for a different role” — he did not say which one — “and so I did an audition that way.” Through exaggeratedly clenched teeth, he added, “I guess I didn’t get that role. But they came back and they were like, hey, what do you think about trying Paulie? Would you want to do that? Knowing the ‘Sopranos’ legacy, I would be honored. Because, yeah, I think it’s a stretch. But isn’t that what acting is about?” To get into his role, Magnussen used a prosthetic nose (“My nose isn’t that wide, is it?”) and watched Sirico’s speech patterns on the TV series: “I had noticed how he talked out of the side of his mouth. And then it’s just sitting there with it, over and over again, to where you don’t have to think about it.” Magnussen may have undertaken other efforts to get to know his predecessor, too: “I broke into his house,” he said. “I went through his trash. I’m sure I slept in his underwear.”Samson MoeakiolaRole: Salvatore “Big Pussy” BonpensieroOriginated by: Vincent PastoreWatched original run of “The Sopranos”? NoMoeakiola, who is appearing in his first Hollywood film, didn’t have the benefit of a full immersion in the “Sopranos” TV series (“My parents wouldn’t let me sit around to watch it as a 7-year-old,” he said) or even know quite what he was auditioning for when he tried out for what he was told was called “Untitled New Jersey Project.” But as he remembered, “on the breakdown you can see who’s directing and who’s producing. I saw Alan Taylor and then I saw David Chase, and I was like, oh, this is ‘The Sopranos.’” But once he landed the role, Moeakiola got a leg up from Pastore, who befriended him and helped him practice dialogue. “We were on the phone at first and he was like, ‘Let me hear you, you do it first,’” Moeakiola said. “Finally I was like, just record it, bro.” Moeakiola also visited an acting class that Pastore teaches, but had to maintain strict omertà about his involvement in the film. “He was like, this is my nephew — don’t bother him, he’s not even here,” Moeakiola said. “Some students were like, you know, they’re making a prequel to ‘The Sopranos,’ you should play Vinny. I’m like, ah, I’m not an actor.” More