This is cool news! Tony Award winner Neil Patrick Harris, who I saw on Broadway a year ago in the play Art, will return to The Great White Way next spring in the first Broadway revival of the classic musical Damn Yankees in more than three decades. Julianne Hough will also star.
The news was fittingly announced Sunday, Sept. 27, live from Yankee Stadium.
Based on Douglass Wallop’s novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, Damn Yankees puts a big league spin on the classic Faustian bargain, following a diehard baseball fan who makes a deal with the Devil to help his beloved team return to glory. The Devil transforms him into a young baseball star, but when he begins to have second thoughts about their deal, his seductive assistant is enlisted to tempt him and keep him from returning to his old life.
Harris, 53, will play the devilish Applegate, while Hough, 38, will take on the role of his temptress Lola. They’ll be ed by stage veteran Austin Scott as Young Joe, the baseball phenom at the center of Applegate’s scheme.
The newly reimagined production will begin previews at Broadway’s Marquis Theatre on March 24, 2027, ahead of an April 20 opening night. Tony Award winner Sergio Trujillo (Ain’t Too Proud, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical) will direct and choreograph.
Could I Leave You? is a song written by Stephen Sondheim for the 1971 musical Follies for the character Phyllis who sings to her husband about how apathetic she is to her marriage, yet she decides to stay.
When I came across a video of two-time Tony Award winner Donna Murphy performing the song,I became obsessed with the song – and her.
It’s simply brilliant storytelling and she managed to deliver a stupendous performance during an all-star concert celebrating Stephen Sondheim’s 80th birthday while sharing the stage with the likes of Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters, Audra McDonald and the late, great Elaine Stritch.
I think Murphy’s performance is the standard – never seen one better – but there are other solid efforts that I share with you below. I’m especially surprised at Sally Kellerman’s rendition which is sensational.
Village Voice legend and NYC icon Michael Musto s Michael Moynihan for a tour through the New York he chronicled from the inside, from growing up gay in Bensonhurst to the glory days of downtown nightlife, celebrity gossip, the Club Kids, Michael Alig, ACT UP, RuPaul, and the AIDS crisis. They also talk about outing celebrities, Rosie O’Donnell calling Musto a “gay Nazi,” the changing city, and what it meant to spend decades watching New York culture from just off center. Musto’s original blind item about the Michael Alig murder preceded the Village Voice article shown at 17:14. You can read Musto’s original item here: https://www.themoynihan.report/p/mich…
For so many of us, the oh-so handsome Kent McCord was our first crush as he starred in 175 episodes of the classic NBC police drama Adam 12 as officer Jim Reed opposite Martin Milner.
Kent, who turned 84 yesterday, went on to be of the leads in the ABC sci-fi series Galactica 1980 and on the 1989 series UNSUB and had a recurring role on seaQuest DSV in the mid-’90s. His semi-regular role of Jack Crichton on Farscape, a sci-fi TV cult hit that ran from 1999-2003, gained him lots of younger fans. There’s also been plenty of voiceover work, scores of television guest spots (Silk Stalkings, MacGyver, Murder, She Wrote) and some movies (Airplane II-The Sequel, Predator II, and Megiddo-The Omega Code 2).
It’s no surprise that the LA native’s first acting gig was on The Adventure of Ozzie and Harriet since he was a buddy of Ricky Nelson, whom he met at USC. McCord appeared in about 50 episodes from 1962-66, and re one scene particularly well.
“I started on that show working background, standing in for Ricky,” Kent told me in a 2008 interview. “One day, they were doing a fraternity show where there was a party going on — early-day ‘Risky Business’-type thing — while Ozzie and Harriet were away from the house. They came home early and I was standing at the door with at my date. Ozzie asked, ‘Where’s Rick?’ and I said, ‘Who’s Rick?’ Those were the first two words I ever said in pictures.”
Earlier this year, Kent did an interview with Steve Kmetko for Steve’s terrific Still Here Hollywood podcast which I always find time to watch. Long before Adam-12, Kent’s life was already taking remarkable turns. Kent shared never-before-heard stories about working with Jack Webb, the realism behind Adam-12, how the series became a training tool for police departments across America, and the surprising impact the show had on law enforcement.
Wishing a happy birthday to one of my favorite actors: Van Hansis who plays Dr. Lucas Jones on the ABC daytime soap General Hospital.
So good to have him back on television on a regular basis!
On the one hand, it’s hard for me to believe that this talented four-time Emmy nominated actor is 44! But then again, it’s been at least 20 years since I started watching him on the late great daytime soap As the World Turns.
Van was so good as Luke Snyder who we saw grow up from gay teenager in love with his straight best friend to confident young man who ends up in a lovely relationship with a brilliant and very sexy surgeon (Reid Oliver played by Eric Sheffer Stevens). In between, he was in part of one of daytime’s great gay couples – Luke and Noah (played by Jake Silbermann).
Next came another classic, Emmy-nominated role in EastSiders about a gay couple in Silver Lake dealing with infidelity and substance abuse. The series ran four seasons and 27 episodes and I’ve seen every one of them – more than once!
Van has many other credits but another one that is quite special to me is his 2015 film Kiss Me, Kill Me also starring Gale Harold. I got to be an extra in a nightclub scene and quite enjoyed the experience.
Anyway, Van came out as gay in The Fight Magazine in May 2014, in an interview with his EastSiders costar and creator, Kit Williamson. He has been with his partner Tyler Hanes since 2007.
Below is some of Van’s work on various shows. Enjoy!
What a pleasure it is to share this with Greg In Hollywood readers. I’ve known Frank DeCaro and Jim Colucci for decades as we circulate in some of the same entertainment industry and LGBTQ circles. Whenever I see them at an event, it always makes me happy and even happier if we get to chat a bit and sit together. Both have authors several books, live life to the fullest and are an inspiration to follow your ions. In this LGBTQ Archives video, they reflect on their decades-long journey as husbands and trailblazing voices in TV and queer culture. From a chance encounter sparked by a 1996 memoir and early AOL instant messages to building a shared life across New York and Los Angeles, they share the humor, resilience, and love that have defined their lasting bond.
With The Graham Norton Show returning to our screens this Friday, he’s revealing what’s in store for the new series, the famous faces ing him on the sofa and his star-studded night at Taylor Swift’s wedding.
As a member of the cast of The Carol Burnett Show throughout its entire run, few people got to work with the late, great Bob Mackie as closely and as long as Vicki Lawrence did. The Emmy winner posted this tribute on social media:
This is a monumental loss for the fashion world. Not only was he a genius, but how he did it every week for 11 years is beyond me. It was always such a treat to go to wardrobe fittings and find out what you were gonna get to wear that week. He was a lovely man. I don’t think I ever seeing him without a smile. I will always him young, when the Carol Burnett show first started. He was one of the only people that would sit down and talk to me. I was so much younger than everybody on the show, and kind of a fish out of water, you know? I would sit in the audience and watch rehearsals, he would come and sit next to me, and talk to a very shy girl about her life. He was so kind and funny, charming and OMG so good looking. I after I had my second baby, we had a huge CBS photo shoot coming up. A legendary photo with everybody who was or had been on CBS. Bob said to me, I will make you a brand new gown, if you lose the weight before the shoot. I did, and I felt so beautiful that day. The Guru of Glitter is in heaven tonight. Those angels don’t know how lucky they are.
Sarah Paulson talks with Jimmy Kimmel about how she feels when she watches herself on talk shows, Amanda Peet saying she’s her best friend, how she’d rank her closest friends, being in season 13 of American Horror Story, and playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.
Being Alive from the musical Company popped into my head this weekend and I started singing it on a walk through my neighborhood. God, I love this song with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
In the original show (the most recent revival had a gender switch), the song appears at the end of act two and is sung by Robert, a 35-year-old bachelor at the center of the show, who “… realizes being a lone wolf isn’t all it’s cracked up to be … he declares that he wants to take the chance, be afraid, get his heart broken—or whatever happens when you decide to love and be loved.”
The song has been performed and performed well by so many performers of both genders. Here are a handful of my favorite versions.
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