Read in today's paper that Connie Francis was rushed to a hospital last night with dangerously high blood pressure. She's doing well and is expected to be released today.
This is a particularly bouncy number from Connie, 'cause I hope she bounces back from her health problems
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=51KucB8Rf-Y&feature=related
edgar, loved that Hank Williams'song, His voice was great in that one, and thanks.
firefly, The Spice Girls were ok, but designed to have sex appeal as opposed to talent, methinks. Also appreciate your update on Connie Francis. That poor gal has had a difficult life, and I hope she does well.
Here's one by another Hank that I really like. I know that Homer and Jethro did a parody on this one, but I can't find it on YouTube. Goes something like: My old tom cat was feeling mean til he backed in to the sewing machine, he's moving on. He'll soon be gone. He split a stitch as he jumped the ditch, he's movin' on.
TV, just as Minow predicted, has become a vast wasteland, folks.
Movin' On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQunHYfQs5U
Walter Brennan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born Walter Andrew Brennan
July 25, 1894(1894-07-25)
Swampscott, Massachusetts
Died September 21, 1974 (aged 80)
Oxnard, California, U.S.
Spouse(s) Ruth Wells (1920-his death)
Awards won
Academy Awards
Best Supporting Actor
1936 Come and Get It
1938 Kentucky
1940 The Westerner
Walter Brennan (July 25, 1894 - September 21, 1974) was a three-time Academy Award winning American actor. He is remembered as one of the premier character actors in motion picture history.
Early life
Born in Swampscott, Massachusetts to Irish emigrants, he was christened Walter Andrew Brennan. His father was an engineer and inventor. Walter Brennan studied engineering before becoming an actor.
While in school, he became interested in acting, and began to perform in vaudeville. After service in World War I (where, according to legend, his vocal cords were damaged by mustard gas, which also caused him to age prematurely), he moved to Guatemala and raised pineapples, before settling in Los Angeles. During the 1920s, he became involved in the real estate market, where he made a fortune. Unfortunately, he lost most of his money when the market took a sudden downturn.
Career
Finding himself broke, he began taking bit parts in as many films as he could, including The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and also worked as a stunt man. In the early 1930s, he began appearing in higher quality films and received more substantial roles as his talent was recognized. This culminated with his receiving the very first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Swan Bostrom in the period film Come and Get It (1936). Two years later he portrayed town drunk and accused murderer Muff Potter in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Throughout his career, Brennan was frequently called upon to play characters considerably older than he was in real life. A 1932 accident that cost him many teeth, his rapidly thinning hair, thin build, and raspy voice all made him seem older than he really was. He used these physical features to great effect. In many of his film roles, Brennan wore dentures; in Northwest Passage -- a film set in the late 18th century, when most people had bad teeth -- he wore a special dental prosthesis which made him appear to have rotting and broken teeth.
Director Jean Renoir gave the character actor a leading role in 1941; Brennan played the top-billed lead in Swamp Water, a drama directed by Renoir and featuring Walter Huston.
In the 1941 Sergeant York, he played a sympathetic preacher and dry goods store owner who advised the title character played by Gary Cooper. He was particularly skilled in playing the hero's sidekick or as the "grumpy old man" in a picture. Though he was hardly ever cast as the villain, notable exceptions were his roles as Old Man Clanton in the classic 1946 film My Darling Clementine opposite Henry Fonda, the 1962 Cinerama production How the West Was Won as the murderous Colonel Jeb Hawkins, and as Judge Roy Bean in The Westerner, for which he won his third best supporting actor Academy Award, in 1940.
In the 1950s, he starred in the ABC's television series The Real McCoys, which costarred Richard Crenna, and Kathleen Nolan. The comedy about a poor West Virginia family which relocated to a farm in southern California ran on ABC from 1957-1962, before switching to CBS for a final season as The McCoys. Brennan appeared in several other movies and television programs, usually as an eccentric "old-timer" or "prospector". He also made a few recordings, the most popular being "Old Rivers", released as a single in 1962 by Liberty Records with "The Epic Ride Of John H. Glenn" on the flip side. Brennan starred as wealthy executive Walter Andrews in the short-lived 1964-1965 series The Tycoon. In 1967, he starred in another series, The Guns of Will Sonnett, in which he played a man in search of his gunfighter son, James, with his grandson, Jeff, played by Dack Rambo. After the series went off the air in 1969, Brennan continued working in both television and feature films. He received top billing over Pat O'Brien in the TV-movie The Over-the-Hill Gang in 1969 and Fred Astaire in The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again the following year. From 1970 to 1971, he was a regular on the show To Rome With Love, which would be his last TV show as a member of the permanent cast.
Legacy
Film historians and critics have long regarded Brennan as one of the finest character actors in motion picture history. While the roles he was adept at playing were extremely diverse, he is probably best remembered for his portrayals in movie Westerns, such as trail hand Nadine Groot in Red River and Deputy Stumpy in Rio Bravo both directed by Howard Hawks. He was the first actor to win three Academy Awards. He remains the only person to have won three Best Supporting Actor awards. However even he remained somewhat embarrassed as to how he won the awards. In the early years of the Academy Awards extras were given the right to vote. Brennan was extremely popular with the Union of Film Extras and since their numbers were overwhelming, each time he was nominated he won. Though never described as undeserving of the awards he won, his third win was one of the catalysts leading to the disenfranchisement of the Extras Union from Oscar voting.
Unlike many actors, Brennan's career never really went into decline. As the years went on, he was able to find work in dozens of high quality films, and later television appearances throughout the 1950s and 60s. As he grew older, he simply became a more familiar, almost comforting film figure whose performances continued to endear him to new generations of fans. In all, he would appear in more than 230 film and television roles in a career spanning nearly five decades.
Private life
Brennan was politically conservative. In 1964, Brennan endorsed and made appearances on behalf of U.S. Senator Barry M. Goldwater, the Republican nominee that year. He supported American Independent Party candidate (and former governor of Alabama) George C. Wallace, Jr., over Republican Party nominee and former Vice President Richard M. Nixon in the 1968 presidential campaign because he felt Nixon was too liberal. He also supported Ronald W. Reagan for governor of California.
In one of his films, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968), Brennan portrayed a Democratic supporter of U.S. President Grover Cleveland. Buddy Ebsen, who played Brennan's son in the film, was depicted as a supporter of Cleveland's 1888 rival, Benjamin Harrison. In the comedy film, Brennan disparaged Ebsen's character as "never too bright for he was a gol-dern Republican". Ironically, both Brennan and Ebsen were considered Hollywood Republicans.
For his contribution to the television industry, Walter Brennan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6501 Hollywood Blvd. In 1970, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where his photograph adorns a wall.
On his death from emphysema at the age of eighty in Oxnard, Brennan was interred in San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles. His widow, Ruth, whom he married in 1920, lived to be ninety-nine and is buried next to him. They had a daughter and two sons.
Woody Strode
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode (born July 25, 1914, Los Angeles, California; died December 31, 1994) was a decathlete and football star before finding even greater fame as a pioneering African-American film actor. He was nominated for a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor for his role in Spartacus in 1960.
Early athletic career
Strode attended college at UCLA. Strode was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter organization established for African Americans.[citation needed] His world class decathlon capabilities were spearheaded by a fifty foot plus shot put (when the world record was fifty seven feet) and a six-four high jump (world record at time was 6-10). Strode posed for a nude portrait, part of Hubert Stowitts's acclaimed exhibition of athletic portraits shown at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (although the inclusion of black and Jewish athletes caused the Nazis to close the exhibit).[1]
Strode, Kenny Washington and Jackie Robinson starred on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team, in which they made up three of the four backfield players.[2] Along with Ray Bartlett, there were four African-Americans playing for the Bruins, when only a few dozen at all played on other college football teams.[3] They played eventual conference and national champion USC to a 0-0 tie with the 1940 Rose Bowl on the line. It was the first UCLA-USC rivalry football game with national implications.
Professional football
Strode and fellow UCLA alumnus Kenny Washington were two of the first African-Americans to play in the National Football League, playing for the Los Angeles Rams in 1946. UCLA teammate Jackie Robinson would go on to break the color barrier in Major League baseball (in fact, all three had played in the professional Pacific Coast Professional Football League earlier in the decade). In 1948 and 1949, he played for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. He also spent a few years in professional wrestling, wrestling the likes of Gorgeous George.
Acting career
As an actor, he was noted for film roles that contrasted with the stereotypes of the time. He was 6' 4" (1.93 m) tall. He is probably best remembered for his brief Golden Globe-nominated role in Spartacus (1960), in which he fights Kirk Douglas to the death.
Strode made his screen debut in 1941 in Sundown, but became more active in the 1950s, in roles of increasing depth. He played dual roles in The Ten Commandments (1956) as an Ethiopian king as well as a slave, and in 1959 portrayed the cowardly Private Franklin in Pork Chop Hill.
He became a close friend of director John Ford, who gave him the title role in Sergeant Rutledge (1960) as a member of the Ninth Cavalry falsely accused of rape and murder; he would later appear in smaller roles in Ford's later films Two Rode Together (1961) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Strode was one of the last friends of legendary director John Ford. He came to visit Ford while the director was feuding with the Hollywood film studios. A studio head called as the two were talking and Ford said "Tell him I'm busy, sitting here with my good friend Woody Strode."
Strode played memorable villains opposite three screen Tarzan's. In 1958, he appeared as Ramo opposite Gordon Scott in Tarzan's Fight For Life. In 1963, he was cast opposite Jock Mahoney's Tarzan as both the dying leader of an unnamed Asian country and that leader's unsavory brother, Khan, in Tarzan's Three Challenges. In the late 1960s, he appeared in several episodes of the Ron Ely Tarzan television series.
Strode played a heroic sailor on a sinking ship in the 1960 film The Last Voyage. In 1966 he landed a major starring role in The Professionals, a major box-office success which (almost) established him as a major star. Another notable part was as a gunslinger in the opening sequence of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968); after this, he would appear in several other spaghetti Westerns of lesser quality. His starring role as a thinly disguised Patrice Lumumba in Seduto alla sua destra (released in the U.S. as Black Jesus) garnered Strode a great deal of press at the time, but the film is largely forgotten now, despite his impressive performance. He remained a visible character actor throughout the '70s and '80s, and has become widely regarded (along with Sidney Poitier and Brock Peters) as one of the most important black film actors of his time. His last film was The Quick and the Dead (1995).
Personal life
Strode was the son of a Creek-Blackfoot-black father and a black-Cherokee mother.[4] His first wife was Princess Luukialuana "Luana" Kalaeloa, a descendant of Liliuokalani, the last queen of Hawaii.[5] Strode was a dedicated martial artist under the direction of Frank Landers in the art of SeishinDo Kenpo.[6]
Death
Strode died of lung cancer on December 31, 1994, in Glendora, California. He is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, Calif.
Pop culture references
Author Stephen King pays an homáge of sorts to Strode, in the King/Peter Straub collaboration Black House. Woody Strode is the Twinner of the Territories lawman and Gunslinger, Speedy Parker.
Barbara Harris
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born July 25, 1935 (1935-07-25) (age 73)
Evanston, Illinois, U.S.
Awards won
Tony Awards
Best Actress in a Musical
1967 The Apple Tree
Barbara Harris (born July 25, 1935) is an American Tony Award-winning Broadway stage star and Academy Award-nominated motion picture actress.
Biography
Early life
Barbara Harris was born in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of Oscar Harris, an arborist who later became a businessman, and Natalie Densmoor, an accomplished pianist. She began her stage career as a teenager at the Playwrights Theatre in Chicago. Her fellow players included Edward Asner, Elaine May and Mike Nichols.
She was also a member of the Compass Players, the first ongoing improvisational theatre troupe in the United States, directed by Paul Sills, to whom she was married at this time. Though the Compass Players closed in disarray, a second theatre opened by Paul Sills called The Second City opened in Chicago in 1959 and attracted national attention. Despite the fact that Sills and Harris had divorced by this time, Sills cast her in this company and brought her to New York to play in a Broadway edition at the Royale Theater, opening on September 26, 1961. For her performance in this, she received her first Tony Award nomination.
Broadway career
Harris received a nomination for the 1962 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her Broadway debut in the original musical revue production From the Second City (1961), which ran at the Royale Theater from September 26 to December 9, 1961. The revue also featured the young Alan Arkin and Paul Sand. Produced by the legendary Max Liebman (among others) and directed by Paul Sills, the production presented Harris in such sketches as Caesar's Wife, First Affair, Museum Piece, and The Bergman Film winning critical and audience acclaim.
In a rare 2002 interview in a Phoenix, Arizona newspaper, she recalled her ambivalence about even bringing the troupe to New York from Chicago. She said, "When I was at Second City, there was a vote about whether we should take our show to Broadway or not. Andrew Duncan and I voted no. I stayed in New York, but only because Richard Rodgers and Alan Jay Lerner came and said, "We want to write a musical for you!" Well, I wasn't big on musical theater. I had seen part of South Pacific in Chicago and I walked out. But it was Richard Rodgers calling!"
While Rodgers and Lerner were busy working on their original musical for her, she won the Theatre World Award for her role in playwright Arthur Kopit's dark comedic farce, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad. Next, she received a nomination for the 1966 Tony for Best Actress in a Musical for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965), a Broadway musical created for her in the end by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane, but not by Richard Rodgers, who left the project. She starred as "Daisy Gamble", a New Yorker who seeks out the help of a psychiatrist to stop smoking. Under hypnosis, the apparently kooky, brash, and quirky character reveals unexpected hidden depths. During her hypnotic trances, she becomes fascinating to the psychiatrist as she reveals herself as a woman who has lived many past lives, one of them ending tragically. While critics were divided over the merits of the show, they praised Harris' performance. The show opened on October 14, 1965 at the Mark Hellinger Theater and ran for 280 performances, earning a total of three Tony nominations. Harris performed numbers from the show with John Cullum on The Bell Telephone Hour - The Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner, broadcast on February 27, 1966.
She had previously appeared on Broadway with Anne Bancroft in a 1963 production of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage, staged by Jerome Robbins, at the Martin Beck Theater; the production received five Tony Award nominations.
Harris gave another memorable performance in The Apple Tree, another Broadway musical created for her, this time by the team of composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick, known best for Fiddler On the Roof. The show, in which Harris co-starred with Alan Alda and Larry Blyden was directed by Mike Nichols, opened at the Shubert Theater on October 5, 1966 and closed on November 25, 1967. The show was based on three tales by Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton, and Jules Feiffer and Harris starred in all three, again receiving exceptional reviews, even if the show did not. Richard Watts Jr. of the New York Post wrote "[t]here are many high triumphs of the imagination in the vastly original musical comedy", he added "but it is Miss Harris who provides it with the extra touch of magic." Walter Kerr famously called her "the square root of noisy sex" and "sweetness carried well into infinity". Harris captured the 1967 Tony for Best Actress in a Musical. Of her friend and colleague Mike Nichols, she said in 2002, "Mike Nichols was a toughie. He could be very kind, but if you weren't first-rate, watch out. He'd let you know."
Just as Harris appeared poised to join the first ranks of Broadway stars, she stopped appearing on stage after The Apple Tree, except for the off-Broadway first American production of Brecht and Weill's Mahagonny in 1970, in which she played the role of Jenny, originally created by Lotte Lenya. That her Broadway career was so legendary but so brief has long been considered by theater fans to be a major and baffling loss. Always a mercurial, private person, in a 2002 interview, Harris shed some light on why she stopped performing regularly on stage despite all the acclaim. She said, "Who wants to be up on the stage all the time? It isn't easy. You have to be awfully invested in the fame aspect, and I really never was. What I cared about was the discipline of acting, whether I did well or not."
Hollywood career
From 1962 through 1964, she appeared as a guest star on such popular television series as Naked City, Channing, The Defenders and The Nurses. In 1965, she made an auspicious feature film debut as social worker Sandra Markowitz in the screen version of A Thousand Clowns. She co-starred opposite Jason Robards, who played the freewheeling, eternally optimistic guardian of his teenage nephew, the custody of whom is threatened by authorities' dim view of his bohemian lifestyle. The New York Times critic wrote on December 9, 1965 that the movie "has the new and senational Barbara Harris playing the appropriately light-headed girl". Harris and Robards won Golden Globe nominations and the film won four Oscar nominations, with Martin Balsam winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Robards' brother.
In Neil Simon's Plaza Suite with Walter Matthau, the British entertainment magazine Time Out called the "delightful" Harris' gifts "wasted". She had only slightly better opportunities in The War Between Men and Women with Jack Lemmon, and the screen version of Arthur Kopit's darkly comic Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad with Rosalind Russell as the monstrous mother of Robert Morse who takes the stuffed corpse of her dead husband along on trips. Reviewing the latter film for the New York Times on February 16, 1967, critic Bosley Crowther wrote, "Barbara Harris from the original play cast is as wacky as she was on the stage -- casual and direct and totally blase about the boisterous business of sex. Her tussle to accomplish her purpose, with the corpse falling out into the roam every time she is about to score a field goal, is still the funniest scene."
She earned an Oscar nomination for the 1971 film (which co-starred Dustin Hoffman) Who Is Harry Kellerman And Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, about a rich, successful, womanizing pop song writer suffering a debilitating but oddly liberating mental crisis. The script was by Herb Gardner, who also wrote A Thousand Clowns.
Harris and Two Master Directors
In 1975, Harris appeared in one of her signature film roles in Robert Altman's masterpiece Nashville, playing "Albuquerque", a ditzy, scantily clad country singing hopeful who may be far more opportunistic and calculating than she would first appear. Accounts of the film's chaotic and inspired production, particularly in Jan Stuart's book The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman's Masterpiece, indicate a clash between actress and director. Still, even among rich and inventive performances by Lily Tomlin, Karen Black, Henry Gibson, Ned Beatty, Ronee Blakely, Shelley Duvall, Keenan Wynn, Keith Carradine, Barbara Baxley, Geraldine Chaplin and others, Harris' wildly eccentric performance and her impassioned singing of "It Don't Worry Me" in the devastating finale stands out. Harris earned a Golden Globe nomination (one of 11 for the film); as Oscar-nominated co-star Lily Tomlin put it, "I was the hugest of Barbara Harris fans; I thought she was so stunning and original." Although the two were set to reunite with Altman in a sequel, that film was never made.
The following year, Alfred Hitchcock cast her in Family Plot as a bogus spiritualist hunting with her cab driver boyfriend for a missing heir and a family fortune. Among a cast that included Bruce Dern, Karen Black and William Devane, Hitchcock was particularly delighted by Harris' quirkiness, skill and intelligence. She received critical kudos for the film, which was based upon the novel The Rainbird Pattern by Victor Canning and which marked a reunion of Hitchcock with Ernest Lehman, who created the original screenplay for North by Northwest. In a rare interview published in a 2002 edition of the New Times of Scottsdale, Arizona, she admitted, "I turned down Alfred Hitchcock when he first asked me to be in one of his movies." But, finally agreeing to star in Family Plot, she recalled, "Mr. Hitchcock was a wonderful man."
Later Career and Vanishing Act
Harris continued to appear in films of the '70s and '80s including Freaky Friday with a young Jodie Foster, Movie Movie for director Stanley Donen, and The North Avenue Irregulars with Cloris Leachman. She co-starred in The Seduction of Joe Tynan with one of her former Broadway leading men, Alan Alda (who also wrote the screenplay), a tale of a liberal Washington Senator caught in an affair with a younger woman, played by Meryl Streep. In 1981, she starred in Second-Hand Hearts for esteemed director Hal Ashby as "Dinette Dusty", a recently widowed waitress and would-be singer who marries a boozy carwash worker named "Loyal", played by Robert Blake to get back her children from their paternal grandparents. The film, based on a highly sought-after "road movie" screenplay by Charles Eastman, was a disaster that tarnished the careers of all concerned. Critic Vincent Canby in his negative New York Times review on May 8, 1981 opined, "[t]he film's one bright spot is Barbara Harris, who plays Dinette as sincerely as possible under awful conditions. She looks great even when she's supposed to be tacky, and is genuinely funny as she tries to make sense out of Loyal's muddled philosophizing, which, of course, the screenplay requires her to match."
A combination of career frustrations, personal challenges and other issues kept Harris off the movie screen until 1986 when she played a supporting role as the mother of Kathleen Turner in Peggy Sue Got Married for Francis Ford Coppola. Her last films to date were the 1988 black comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin and Grosse Pointe Blank, in which she played John Cusack's mother.
Many have tried to lure back Harris with other film, stage, and television projects, including Bette Midler who called her "the greatest thing I've ever seen on stage", and tried unsuccessfully to cast her as one of the star strippers in the show-stopping You Gotta Have a Gimmick number in the 1993 TV version of the Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne musical Gypsy.
Harris currently teaches and directs. Asked if she might one day be lured back to mainstream stage, film or television, Harris said in 2002, "Well, if someone handed me something fantastic for 10 million dollars, I'd work again. But I haven't worked in a long time as an actor. I don't miss it. I think the only thing that drew me to acting in the first place was the group of people I was working with: Ed Asner, Paul Sills, Mike Nichols, Elaine May. And all I really wanted to do back then was rehearsal. I was in it for the process, and I really resented having to go out and do a performance for an audience, because the process stopped; it had to freeze and be the same every night. It wasn't as interesting."
In 2005, she briefly resurfaced, guest starring as "The Queen" and "Spunky Brandburn" on the Radio Repertory Company of America audio drama, Anne Manx on Amazonia, which aired on XM Satellite Radio.
Matt LeBlanc
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born Matthew Steven LeBlanc
July 25, 1967 (1967-07-25) (age 41)
Newton, Massachusetts, United States
Spouse(s) Melissa McKnight (2003 - 2006)
Matthew Steven LeBlanc (born July 25, 1967) was an Emmy and Golden Globe Award-nominated American actor, best known for his role as Joey Tribbiani in the NBC sitcoms Friends and Joey.
Background
His father is Paul LeBlanc, and his mother is Pat Grossman. He is of mixed Irish, Dutch, English, and French descent on his father's side, and of Italian ancestry on his mother's;[citation needed] he is almost always cast as Italian.
When Matt was 8 years old he wanted to be a motorcycle racer. He entered into junior competitions before giving it up. Matt trained and did well in carpentry when he was young, winning the "Golden Hammer" award while attending high school. He was also cast as Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar at the Cultural Arts Playhouse.
LeBlanc graduated from Newton North High School in 1985. Before Newton North, Matt attended Frank Ashley Day Junior High School located in Newtonville, Massachusetts. After high school he attended college at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA. He left shortly after starting his second semester.
Career
In the late 1980s, Le Blanc began appearing in a number of television ads, including well-known spots for Heinz, Levi's and Coca-Cola. Matt has said that with one ketchup commercial he was able to buy a house, a car, a motorcycle, and a wardrobe full of clothes.
In 1988, he landed his first regular TV role on the drama TV 101 which ran for one season. In the late 1980s, he also starred in Bob Seger's "Night Moves" music video. In 1991 he starred in the music video for Alanis Morissette's single "Walk Away", in which he played her boyfriend. In 1991, he went on to star in a spin-off of Married With Children entitled Top of the Heap. The short lived series only lasted 7 episodes in April and May of 1991. He also played his Top of the Heap character Vinnie Verducci in a number of Married With Children episodes. Le Blanc also appeared in one episode of Red Shoe Diaries in 1991.
Le Blanc finally made it big when he landed the role of Joey Tribbiani in 1994 on Friends, and went on to play this character for twelve years; in ten seasons of Friends and two seasons of Joey. When Matt LeBlanc auditioned for the role as Joey Tribbiani he only had $11.[citation needed] When the cast got their paychecks, the first thing he bought was a hot dinner.[1] Friends was hugely successful and Le Blanc, along with his co-stars, gained wide recognition among television viewers.
Le Blanc's most notable movie roles have been in the films Ed (1996), Lost in Space (1998), Charlie's Angels (2000) and All the Queen's Men (2001).
Le Blanc has not appeared on screen since Joey was cancelled in 2006, but is now concentrating on producing, as he formed the production company, Fort Hill Productions, with partner John Goldstone. Under his production company, he has co-produced the made-for-TV movie, The Prince in 2006, and is set to co-produce the James Wong directed movie, The Watch.[2]
Awards
From 2002-2004, Le Blanc was nominated three consecutive years as Best Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy Awards, while from 2003-2005 he received three consecutive Best Actor nominations at the Golden Globe Awards. In 2000, he won Editor's Choice in TV Guide Awards (as Friends). In 2002, he won TV - Choice Actor - Comedy at the Teen Choice Awards (as Friends). In 2005, he won Favorite Male Television Star at the People's Choice Awards.
Personal life
On May 3, 2003, LeBlanc married his girlfriend of six years, Melissa McKnight, and the couple had one daughter, Marina Pearl LeBlanc, who was born February 8, 2004. Marina Pearl was diagnosed as having a rare brain disorder. This disorder affects the motor abilities, causing seizures. He also has a stepdaughter, Jacquelyn, 13, and a stepson, Tyler, 17, from Melissa's previous marriage
In August 2005, LeBlanc publicly apologized to his wife and the public for having inappropriate contact with a stripper during a vacation in British Columbia. The couple separated on January 1, 2006, and in March of that year, LeBlanc filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce became final on October 6, 2006. According to Entertainment Tonight, LeBlanc has been dating Joey co-star Andrea Anders.
From A Mother With Love
Dear Child,
I am writing this slow because I know that you can't read fast.
We don't live where we did when you left home.
Your dad read in the paper that most accidents happen within 20 miles from your home so we moved.
I won't be able to send you the address, as the last family that lived here took the house numbers when they left so that they wouldn't have to change their address.
This place is real nice. It even has a washing machine. I'm not sure if it works too well though.
Last week I put a load in, pulled the chain, and haven't seen them since.
The weather isn't too bad here., it only rained twice last week, The first time it rained for three days and the second time for four days. The coat you wanted me to send you, your Uncle Steve said it would be a little too heavy to send in the mail with the buttons on, so we cut them off and put them in the pockets. We got another bill from the funeral home.
They said if we don't make the last payment on Grandma's grave, up she comes. John locked his keys in the car yesterday. We were worried because it took him two hours to get me and Shelby out.
Your sister had a baby this morning but I haven't found out what it is yet, so I don't know if you're an aunt or an uncle. If the baby is a girl, your sister is going to name it after me, she's going to call it Mom.
Uncle Pete fell in a whiskey vat last week. Some man tried to pull him out but he fought them off and drowned. We had him cremated and he burned for three days.
Three of your friends went off a bridge in a pick-up truck. Ralph was driving. He rolled down the window and swam to safety. Your two friends were in the back. They drowned because they couldn't get the tailgate down.
There isn't much more news at this time. Nothing much has happened.
PS, I was going to send you some money but the envelope was already sealed.
Hey, hawkman. Thanks again for the bio's, and the funny letter from mother, was delightful. "...burned for three days?" Hee hee.
Until our Raggedy arrives, here's that parody on Hank Snow's Movin On by Homer and Jethro.
MOVING ON 2
The old hound dog was feelin' fine
Till he fell in a barrel of turpentine
He's A-Movin' On, He's A-Movin' On
He passed the gate, like an eight-eight, He's A-Movin' On.
There was a smart guy from the city
And he picked up a stripe'd kitty
He's A-Movin' On, He's A-Movin' On
We held our nose, as we burried his clothes, We're A-Movin' On.
I let a man work on my car
Then he grabbed a-hold of a spark plug wire
He's A-Movin' On, He's A-Movin' On
He turned it loose, when he felt the juice, He's A-Movin' On.
The old Tom cat was a-feelin' mean
When he caught his tail in the sewin' machine
He's A-Movin' On, He's A-Movin' On
He ripped a stitch, when he hit the ditch, He's A-Movin' On.
The old man's face got white as a sheet
When he slipped and fell in his cream of wheat
He's A-Movin' On, He's A-Movin' On
He flapped his ears, as he shifted gears, He's A-Movin' On.
Uncle John got awful clean
When he fell into the washing machine
He's A-Movin' On,He's A-Movin' On
He couldn't straddle, that doggone paddle, He's A-Movin' On.
We travel a lot to make our showin'
The way we sing we have to keep goin'
We're A-Movin' On, We're A-Movin' On
We've gotta go, here comes Hank Snow, We're A-Movin' On.
firefly, Your tribute to Estelle was beautiful. I had forgotten all about The Golden Girls, gal, and it was one funny show.
Also enjoyed that fast movin' Irish song. Yes, we do feel like exhaling when we finish listening.
There's our Raggedy movin' in. Love that little puppy in the crystal ball.
Thanks for the quintet, PA
I don't know if any of our listeners or contributors have seen the movie Lake Placid, but Betty White was hilarious in the film. She still is, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9bfpu9jWVY
As a tribute to Estelle Getty, Lifetime is re-running 10 episodes of The Golden Girls, highlighting her Sophia character, back to back today starting at noon ET. If I can, I might try to watch some of them.
Tragically, Estelle Getty suffered from severe dementia the last several years of her life. The devastating ravages of that cruel condition remind me of the title of this song, perhaps because, as the person "disappears", due to the disease, all that is left is silence.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YhdGkZ6Fngw&feature=related
Thanks, firefly, for all the great music. Love Winton Marselis and he's the one that called Rap modern day minstrel.
The Sound of Silence is one of my favorites as well.
I see Bill Ray does more than just Achy Breaky Heart. That was a special tribute to the Cherokee Indians, and Andrew Jackson didn't win many points with that trail, I'm afraid.
News from the world of science, folks.
Scientists expose mystery behind northern lights
By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer Fri Jul 25, 7:31 AM ET
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Scientists have exposed some of the mystery behind the northern lights. On Thursday, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or aurora borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky.
The findings should help scientists better understand the more powerful but less common geomagnetic storms that can knock out satellites, harm astronauts in orbit and disrupt power and communications on Earth, scientists said.
and, folks, here's a wonderful song by a very talented lady that says it all.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aPyCwPFjE8g
Movin' right along. 
