Happy Birthday, Larry Luckinbill, Marlo Thomas, Juliet Mills and Goldie Hawn!

"Anyone can do any amount of work, Provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment."
-Robert Benchley, American humorist (born 1889, died this date in 1945)

Happy Thanksgiving Week!  


It's Monday. It's Thanksgiving week. And the holidays are in the air...whether we are ready or not. Danny and Horace and I will be shuffling off to Buffalo on Wednesday afternoon to spend Thanksgiving with his family. His father turns a very young 90 on Wednesday. I'm glad that we will be there to help him celebrate. True to the way his father has lived his life, no fan fare, very low key. The complete opposite of me! We will be back on Saturday so that I can devote Sunday to last minute preparations for another birthday celebration on Monday night, our tribute to Jerry Herman who turned 80 earlier this year. I hope you have your reservations! As of 1PM today, there were only 25 seats left.
This has been a year of celebrations for Jerry. Earlier this year, I saw Jane Curto, Peggy Herman (who has a CD coming out any moment now celebrating Jerry Herman), Jason Graae (who is coming back for two nights next month...do not miss this show), Marilyn Maye, I did my own tribute at The Sheet Music Society two weeks ago,  The Songbook Series did there tribute earlier this month and there is another tribute to Jerry Herman on December 5th. I think a birthday should be celebrated  a full year. It's a celebration of another year in our lives. I once had a conversation with Carol Channing on her birthday about birthdays. She was raised Christian Scientist and they don't celebrate birthdays. I suggested that it was nor for her but rather for us. We were celebrating the contributions they make to our lives. So today, there are many birthdays and I want to publicly thank them for the contributions they have made to my life.
Larry Luckinbill is a very young 77 today. I have had the pleasure of meeting him a few times through his wife Lucie Arnaz and mostly through David Friedman and Shawn Moniger's annual Christmas party. It is always a pleasure to meet him but I want to let him know through this blog that I am a fan and that I appreciate what he has given to the world of entertainment.



Luckinbill was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the son of Agnes (née Nulph) and Laurence Benedict Luckinbill.
He graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1956 and The Catholic University of America in 1958.
 He starred in the 1976 Broadway play Poor Murderer. He portrayed Spock's half-brother Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Sybok. (Laurence Luckinbill) is Spock's half-brother, a pure Vulcan.
However, Sybok rejected the path of pure logic and became a religious zealot, on a quest to find the mythical origin-point Ska-Ka-Ri. Jolly, charismatic, and ever willing to use his Vulcan physic abilities to his advantage, he finds followers. He sways many by taking their "pain," relieving a particular moment of guilt, loss, or sadness and freeing the mind of negative emotions.
To find his mythical planet he needs a starship, and hijacks the Enterprise. Sybok meets his match with Kirk, however, who "needs his pain" and can't be won over. Nor can Spock and McCoy, who stand by their captain.
When finally confronted with "God", Sybok realizes it's actually a malevolent alien, and sacrifices himself to destroy the being.
One of Trek's better "misguided" villains, Sybok shows the dangers of a Vulcan run amok, stronger than any human and willing to exercise this power.
He tests Spock's loyalty, which of course belongs to Starfleet.
 Larry also appeared in The Boys in the Band, reprising the part of Hank, which he originated on stage.
Other film appearances include Such Good Friends, Cocktail, and The Promise, and he has been seen in numerous television shows, including Law and Order, Barnaby Jones and Murder, She Wrote.

 
The Delphi Bureau is a drama that aired on ABC from 1972 until 1973. It was an espionage series involving an agency that does missions and research for the President of the United States of America. 
Laurence Luckinbill starred in the lead role. 
The series was one of three that aired as part of a trilogy entitled The Men. 
The other two rotating series were Assignment: Vienna and Jigsaw.

His acting career has also included writing and directing. He has written and performed in several one-man shows including, "Hemingway", "Teddy", "An Evening with Clarence Darrow", as well as, "Lyndon", which he didn't write, but has performed numerous times, including a schedule at the LBJ Museum in Austin, Texas, where Lady Bird Johnson was one of those in attendance.
 He narrated the documentary Moonwalk One which has recently been restored and re-released.
 He is married to actress/singer Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, with whom he has three children.
He has two sons from his previous marriage to actress Robin Strasser.
 Happy Birthday, Larry!



Today is also the birthday of That Girl, Marlo Thomas. Again, a very young 74!
I've never met Marlo Thomas but I would love to some day. I grew up watching her on Friday nights in Conway, South Carolina. 
I wanted to be just like her! She was an actor living in New York and that's what I wanted. 

That iconic opening is etched in my memory in a New York that I don't think really ever existed. 


I admire her tremendously. 
She is a feminist, she has shown how a high profile marriage works (all of the birthday people in this blog have!), she is inspirational, and she continues to honor her father's greatest legacy, St. Jude's Hospital.  
Margaret Julia “Marlo” Thomas (born November 21, 1937) is an American actress, producer, and social activist known for her starring role on the TV series That Girl (1966–1971). She also serves as National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
She is currently appearing in the Broadway production of "Relatively Speaking" in a one-act play by Elaine May called "George Is Dead."Thomas was born in Detroit, Michigan, the eldest child of Lebanese-American comedian Danny Thomas (1912–1991) and his wife, the former Rose Marie Cassaniti (1914–2000). On her mother's side, she is also the granddaughter of drummer and percussionist, Marie "Mary" Cassaniti (1896–1972).
Her brother, Tony Thomas, is a television and film producer, and her sister, Terre Thomas, is a former actress.

Marlo Thomas was raised in Beverly Hills, California.
Her parents called her Margo as a child, though she soon became known as Marlo, she told The New York Times, because of her childhood mispronunciation of the nickname.
She attended Marymount High School in Los Angeles. Thomas graduated from the University of Southern California with a teaching degree; "I wanted a piece of paper that said I was qualified to do something," she said. She was also a member of the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta.

Happy Birthday, Marlo Thomas!
 Today is also the birthday of Juliet Mills who turns 70 today.



Another part of my growing up in the 70s also on Friday nights with The Nanny and The Professor.

I  met Juliet a few years ago when her daughter was appearing in a production of Terence McNally's Corpus Christie. 



Goldie Hawn is 66 today! Monday nights were Laugh-In with this bubbly blonde who we all fell in love with.
I followed her film career through Private Benjamin and so many other iconic films.





In 1980, I loved her television special with Liza Minnelli. Now, a new generation knows her as Kate Hudson's mother. 

I love her numbers with Carol Channing on Laugh-In. I even did a tribute to her for a while in my show. 

Goldie Jeanne Hawn (born November 21, 1945) is an American actress, film director, producer, and occasional singer. Hawn is known for her roles in Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Private Benjamin, Foul Play, Overboard, Bird on a Wire, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club,  and Cactus Flower, for which she won the 1969 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Kate Hudson
She is the mother of actors Oliver Hudson and Kate Hudson.
Hawn has maintained a relationship with actor Kurt Russell since 1983.


Hawn was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Laura (née Steinhoff), a jewelry shop/dance school owner, and Edward Rutledge Hawn, a band musician who played at major events in Washington. She was named after her mother's aunt.
She has a sister, Patricia; her brother, Edward, died before she was born.
Through her father, Hawn is a direct descendant of Edward Rutledge, the youngest signatory of the Declaration of Independence.

Hawn was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland where she went to Montgomery Blair High School. 

Her father was Presbyterian and her mother was Jewish, the daughter of immigrants from Hungary; Hawn was raised in Judaism.

Hawn began taking ballet and tap dance lessons at the age of three, and danced in the chorus of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production of The Nutcracker in 1955. She made her stage debut in 1961, playing Juliet in a Virginia Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet.
 
By 1964, she ran and taught in a ballet school, having dropped out of American University, where she was majoring in drama.

In 1964, Hawn made her professional dancing debut in a production of Can-Can at the Texas Pavilion of the New York World's Fair.
She began working as a professional dancer a year later, and appeared as a go-go dancer in New York City.
 Hawn began her acting career as a cast member of the short-lived situation comedy Good Morning, World during the 1967-1968 television season, her role being that of the girlfriend of a radio disc jockey, with a stereotypical " dumb blonde" personality.
Her next role, which brought her to international attention, was as one of the regular cast members on the 1968-1973 sketch comedy show, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.
  On the show, she would often break out into high-pitched giggles in the middle of a joke, and deliver a polished performance a moment after.
Noted equally for her chipper attitude as for her bikini and painted body, Hawn personified something of a 1960s "It" girl.


Hawn's Laugh-In persona was parlayed into three popular film appearances in the late 1960s and early 1970s: Cactus Flower, There's a Girl in My Soup, and Butterflies Are Free.

 Hawn had made her feature film debut in a bit role as a giggling dancer in the 1968 film The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, in which she was billed as "Goldie Jeanne", but in her first major film role, in Cactus Flower (1969), she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Walter Matthau's suicidal fiancée.

 After Hawn's Academy Award win, her film career took off. She starred in a string of above average and successful comedies starting with There's A Girl in My Soup (1970), $ (1971), and Butterflies Are Free (1972), as well as proving herself in the dramatic league with the 1974 satirical dramas The Girl from Petrovka and The Sugarland Express, and Shampoo in 1975.
She also hosted two television specials: Pure Goldie in 1971 and The Goldie Hawn Special in 1978. The latter was a sort of comeback for Hawn, who had been out of the spotlight for two years since the 1976 release of The Dutchess and the Dirtwater Fox, while she was focusing on her marriage and the birth of her son. On the special she performed show tunes and comedy bits alongside comic legend George Burns, teen matinee idol Shawn Cassidy, popular television star John Ritter (during his days on Three's Company), and even the Harlem Globetrotters joined her for a montage.
The special later went on to be nominated for a primetime Emmy. This came four months before the feature film release of Foul Play (with Chevy Chase), which became a box office smash and revived Hawn's career in the film industry. The plot centered around an innocent woman in San Francisco who becomes mixed up in a murder plot. Hawn's next film, Mario Monicelli's Lovers and Liars (1979), was a box office bomb. In 1972 Hawn recorded and released a solo country LP for Warner Brothers, titled Goldie.
It was recorded with the help of Dolly Parton and Buck Owens. Allmusic gives the album a favorable review, calling it a "sweetly endearing country-tinged middle of the road pop record".
 Hawn's popularity continued into the 1980s, starting with another prime time variety special alongside actress and singer Liza Minnelli, Goldie and Liza Together (1980), which was nominated for four primetime Emmys. In the same year, Hawn starred in Private Benjamin, a comedy which was also her foray into producing.  

Private Benjamin, also starring Eileen Brennan and Armand Assante, garnered Hawn her second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actress.
Hawn's box office success continued with an assortment of pictures, including comedies like Seems Like Old Times (1980), Protocol (1984), and Wildcats (1986) — Hawn also served as executive producer on the latter two — and dramas like Best Friends (1982) and Swing Shift (1984).
 At the age of thirty-nine, Hawn posed for the cover of Playboy's January 1985 issue. Hawn posed in a giant martini glass wearing nothing but a white collar shirt, a loosened black tie, and a pair of red stilettos.
Her last film of the 1980s was opposite partner Kurt Russell for the third time in the 1987 comedy Overboard.
Thank you all for the gifts you have given us and continue to give us!


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GREAT NEWS!!!!!--- JOHN O'HURLEY (Seinfeld, Dancing With the Stars and others.
O'Hurley has also been the host of Purina's annual National Dog Show every Thanksgiving since 2002) has joined the performers roster for the Zani's Furry Friends Benefit on November 26 and the Laurie Beechman. GET YOUR TICKETS!

With Emily Buttner, Sean Harkness, Amy Ralske, Len Cariou, Phil Geoffrey Bond, Mark Janus, Eve Weiss, Tanya Moberly, Bill Zeffiro, Elena Bennett, Jonathan Russell, Peter Napolitano, David Vernon, and Deb Berman! 
See The Variety Show does exist!




Nov 28
8pm
THE TRIAD, 158 West 72nd Street
RICHARD SKIPPER CELEBRATES...JERRY HERMAN
This is the launch of a new series. Once a month, Richard will be celebrating a different theme. A Benefit for Carol Channing's Foundation for the Arts.

Anna Bergman,Diane J. Findlay, Peggy Herman, Sue Matsuki, Miles Phillips, Jana Robbins, Richard Skipper, Lee Roy Reams, Walter Willison, Bob Mattern, John Patrick Schutz, Sarah Rice.

RESERVATIONS A MUST! $25 show plus two drink minimum, $50 PREMIUM SEATS plus two drink minimum (includes complementary glass of champagne).

Have your voice heard – You can make a difference!






I have been fortunate enough to call among my friends several celebrities.
The one thing that I've gleaned from them beyond their bodies of work is their humanness.

Thank you to all of the artists mentioned in this blog for the gifts you ALL have given to the world!


REMINDER:
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