News

Shecky Greene has sadly passed away.

The Las Vegas headliner and stand-up comedian passed away on Sunday (December 31) at the age of 97.

He died at his home in Las Vegas of natural causes, his wife of 41 years, Marie Musso Greene, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Along with his Vegas shows, he was also a frequent guest and even occasional guest host on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Keep reading to find out more…

In addition, he starred as Pvt. Braddock on the first season of Combat!, as well as movies like Tony Rome, The Love Machine, Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, History of the World: Part One and Splash.

He was a fixture on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace, as well as The Love Boat, Laverne & Shirley, The Fall Guy, The A-Team, Roseanne and as Paul Reiser’s great-uncle on Mad About You.

Shecky Greene, the legendary Las Vegas headliner and stand-up comedian who entertained audiences for years while battling demons that included stage fright, alcoholism, prescription-drug abuse and gambling, died Sunday. He was 97.

Greene died on New Year’s Eve of natural causes at his home in Las Vegas, his wife of 41 years, Marie Musso Greene, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

He also was known for his dozens of appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where he served as an occasional guest host.

Greene’s garrulous act in the 1950s and ‘60s helped transform the hotel lounge into another place for patrons to be entertained, turning Vegas into a 24-hour party town. His specialty was improvisation, and he could take virtually any situation and make it funny.

The stocky Chicago native sang, did impressions, told stories and often went off on wild tangents, and his brand of comedy was quite...

Arnold Schulman, who landed Oscar nominations for his screenplays for Love With the Proper Stranger and Goodbye, Columbus and found success with several incarnations of his Broadway hit A Hole in the Head, has died. He was 97.

Schulman died Saturday of natural causes at his home in Santa Monica, his son, Peter Schulman, told The Hollywood Reporter.

In two late-career triumphs, Schulman was recruited by Francis Ford Coppola to write the biopic Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and he scored an Emmy nomination and a Humanitas Prize in 1994 for his teleplay for HBO’s And the Band Played On, an adaptation of Randy Shilts’ nonfiction book about the onset of AIDS.

An original member of the Actors Studio, Schulman in the 1950s worked alongside the likes of James Dean and Paul Newman on live television. In 1962, he quit as the original screenwriter on the never-completed Marilyn Monroe movie Something’s Got to Give,...

If crises continue to mount and late-summer box office fails to catch a second wind, Hollywood might have to revisit one of its few remaining sure things: a good dog movie.

Sure, Netflix and Amazon always have vintage canine classics on the shelf to stream, from Benji to Lassie, but a new weepie is also needed in the plexes — one to ease public tensions.

Further, those of us who’ve adopted a best friend to cope with the pandemic now are going back to work or to school. Or simply facing the fact that a best friend is more than we can handle, and so are the vet bills.

Given all this, exhibitors might wonder whether the cast of The Suicide Squad shouldn’t have featured canine stars like Hachi, Marley or even Scooby-Doo rather than live actors cast as Bloodsport, Ratcatcher or Sylvester Stallone’s King Shark.

The pooches...

Actress Patricia Morison, who brought a touch of grace and style to even her anti-heroine film roles, has died at age 103. She passed at her Los Angeles home of natural causes.

Morison had a huge presence in films of the 1940s, and appeared in such classics as Song of Bernadette and Dressed To Kill opposite such stars as Basil Rathbone, Ray Milland, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, among many others.

Sporting long, flowing hair down to her hips, Morison often was portrayed as the villain in her many roles.

She also had an extensive Broadway career, appearing in the first staging of Kiss Me, Kate (based on a production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew) and with Yul Brynner in The King and I.

Morison was born in 1915 in New York and took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, studied dance with Martha Graham, and made her Broadway...

This Week in Home Video‘They’re Playing With Fire’ Blends Bloody Violence and T&A Thrills to Surprising EffectPlus 13 more new releases to watch at home this week on Blu-ray/DVD.

Welcome to this week in home video! Click the title to buy a Blu-ray/DVD from Amazon and help support Fsr in the process!

Pick of the WeekThey’re Playing With Fire [Kl Studio Classics]

What is it? A sexy college professor seduces her student, and then people start dying horrible deaths.

Why see it? I’ve been a Sybil Danning fan for more years than I care to recall, but somehow this one slipped past me before now. I’m not sure what teen me would have thought, but as an adult I’m in awe of just how off the rails it gets from its very clear T&A origin. From the cover to the copy the film sells itself as just another sex flick, but...

Dana Andrews movies: Film noir actor excelled in both major and minor crime dramas. Dana Andrews movies: First-rate film noir actor excelled in both classics & minor fare One of the best-looking and most underrated actors of the studio era, Dana Andrews was a first-rate film noir/crime thriller star. Oftentimes dismissed as no more than a “dependable” or “reliable” leading man, in truth Andrews brought to life complex characters that never quite fit into the mold of Hollywood's standardized heroes – or rather, antiheroes. Unlike the cynical, tough-talking, and (albeit at times self-delusionally) self-confident characters played by the likes of Alan Ladd, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and, however lazily, Robert Mitchum, Andrews created portrayals of tortured men at odds with their social standing, their sense of ethics, and even their romantic yearnings. Not infrequently, there was only a very fine line separating his (anti)heroes from most movie villains.

Uggie: 'The Artist' dog star. Uggie, 'The Artist' scene-stealing dog star, has died The biggest non-human movie star of the 21st century, Uggie, whose scene-stealing cuteness helped to earn Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist the 2011 Best Picture Academy Award, has died. According to his official Facebook page, Uggie had been suffering from prostate cancer; he was euthanized last Friday, Aug. 7, '15. Born in 2002, Uggie was 13 years old. An announcement posted on Tuesday night, Aug. 11, on the Fb page Consider Uggie read: We regret to inform to all our friends, family and Uggie's fans that our beloved boy has passed away. We were not planning on posting anything until we healed a little more but unfortunately somebody leaked it to TMZ and they will be announcing it. In short, Uggie had a cancerous tumor in the prostate and is now in a better place not feeling pain.

Sosie Bacon may only be 21, but she has a lot going for her. On top of being 2014's Miss Golden Globe, through her father Kevin Bacon, she is connected to nearly everyone in Hollywood - including every other previous Miss Golden Globe, most of whom are also the daughters (or sons) of industry power players. And while some have a connection through their famous parents, others, such as Laura Dern (who happens to have famous parents), are also connected through their own work. Don't believe us? Here's how you get from young Ms. Bacon to all of her famous predecessors,...

Death Wish: Michael Winner’s movie vs. original novel [See previous post: "Michael Winner Dies."] "The point of the novel Death Wish," adds author Brian Garfield, "is that vigilantism is an attractive fantasy but it only makes things worse in reality. By the end of the novel, the character (Paul) is gunning down unarmed teenagers because he doesn’t like their looks. The story is about an ordinary guy who descends into madness." (Photo: Death Wish Charles Bronson.) A few years ago, Sylvester Stallone had plans to remake Death Wish, which (probably not coincidentally) has elements in common with Stallone’s (perhaps even more brutal and more pro-vigilantism) Cobra (1985). Stallone’s Death Wish remake, however, never came to fruition. Early in 2012, The Grey‘s director Joe Carnahan stated that he was planning an updated version of Death Wish. Michael Winner’s other ’70s movies: Directing Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and more Charles Bronson Among Michael Winner...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Director Michael Winner has died in his native England at age 77. Winner's star rose in the early to mid 1960s with a string of innovative comedies such as The Jokers and I'll Never Forget What's'isname, that perfectly tapped into the emerging London "mod scene".  His eclectic range of movies covered many genres, from Westerns to WWII to urban crime thrillers. Among his more notable titles were Lawman, Chato's Land, Scorpio, Hannibal Brooks, The Games, The Sentinel, The Nightcomers, The Mechanic and The Stone Killer. His greatest and most unexpected success was the 1974 film Death Wish starring Charles Bronson which was released at a time when societies worldwide were bristling at an explosion of urban crime and the perception that the current laws were not protecting them. The film tapped into a vigilante sentiment in its depiction of a New York liberal who takes the law into  his...

Hollywood actor best known for the Hardy family films and her role as Careen, Scarlett O'Hara's sister, in Gone With the Wind

Ann Rutherford, who has died aged 94, was adept at portraying pluck and persistence. As Polly Benedict, Andy Hardy's ever-faithful girlfriend, in 13 of the 15 Hardy family film series made between 1937 and 1946, she had to wait around for Mickey Rooney's accident-prone adolescent to return to her after some dalliance with another girl. Andy would seek advice on romance from his stern but wise and fair father, Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone). "Dad, can I talk to you man to man? Can a guy be in love with two girls at once?" Inevitably, Andy would realise, with hints from his dad, that Polly was his own true love.

The Hardy series, one of the most popular in screen history, was the archetypal idealisation of small-town America and apple-pie family values, with...

Gone With The Wind Actress Ann Rutherford Dies. [Photo: Ann Rutherford as Carreen O'Hara, Evelyn Keyes as Suellen O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.]

Ann Rutherford‘s most notable screen roles were in films made away from both MGM and Wallace Beery. She was a young woman who falls for trumpeter George Montgomery in Archie Mayo’s 20th Century Fox musical Orchestra Wives (1942), and became enmeshed with (possibly) amnesiac Tom Conway in Anthony Mann’s Rko thriller Two O’Clock Courage (1945).

Following a couple of minor supporting roles — in the Danny Kaye comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) at Goldwyn and the Errol Flynn costumer The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) at Warner Bros. — and the female lead in the independently made cattle drama Operation Haylift (1950), opposite Bill Williams, Ann Rutherford retired from the screen. (Rutherford would later say that her Operation Haylift experience was anything but pleasant.)

She then turned to television, making regular television appearances in the ’50s (The Donna Reed Show, Playhouse 90,...