News

Terry Carter, who portrayed Pvt. Sugie Sugarman on The Phil Silvers Show, the sidekick of Dennis Weaver’s character on McCloud and Colonel Tigh on the original version of Battlestar Galactica, has died. He was 95.

Carter died Tuesday at his home in Manhattan, his son, Miguel Carter DeCoste, told The New York Times.

Carter appeared three times on Broadway early in his career and produced and directed a documentary on jazz legend Duke Ellington for PBS’ American Masters series in 1988.

The Brooklyn native appeared on all four seasons (1955-59) of CBS’ The Phil Silvers Show (also known as Sgt. Bilko) as Pvt. Sugarman. He then played Sgt. Joe Broadhurst alongside Weaver’s Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud on NBC’s McCloud from 1970-77 and Tigh in the 1978 Battlestar Galactica movie and 1978-79 ABC series.

An only child, John Everett DeCoste was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 16, 1928. He graduated from Stuyvesant High...

Ellen Holly, the first Black person to star in a soap opera with her lead role on One Life to Live, died Wednesday at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, N.Y. She was 92 and died in her sleep.

Her first roles on television included appearances on The Big Story (1957), The Defenders (1963), Sam Benedict (1963), Dr. Kildare (1964) and The Doctors and the Nurses (1963 and 1964).

Holly played the groundbreaking character Carla Gray on the hit ABC show One Life to Live from 1968 to 1980 and 1983 to 1985. She was personally chosen for the role by television producer Agnes Nixon after she saw a New York Times opinion piece that Holly wrote, called “How Black Do You Have To Be?” about the difficulty of finding roles as a light-skinned Black woman.

Holly was born on January 16, 1931, in Manhattan to parents William Garnet Holly, a chemical engineer, and Grayce Holly, a housewife and writer.

A graduate of Hunter College,...

“Becoming the director provided me a space to really create my own vision and my own voice in what I wanted to say,” explains director and choreographer Camille A. Brown of “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.” When this revival of Ntozake Shange’s landmark play opened Off-Broadway, Brown served only as choreographer. But for the Broadway transfer, she also took over as director. She earned two Tony nominations for her efforts. Watch the exclusive video interview above.

Brown’s dual roles and dual nominations have historic importance. She is the first Black woman to serve as both director and choreographer for a Broadway show in 67 years. The last time this happened was with Katherine Dunham in 1955. Additionally, she and fellow nominee Lileana Blain-Cruz (“The Skin of Our Teeth”) are just the second and third women of color to be nominated for Best Director of a Play.

The Makeup and Hairstylist Guild will be honoring Jon Favreau with their Distinguished Artisan Award at the 9th Annual Muahs Awards on Feb. 29.

“Jon Favreau’s list of creative, exotic, and memorable characters lives on in his plethora of films, television movies and series. Jon is the ultimate collaborator who has worked alongside many 706 artists to help create memorable characters of all kinds in a myriad of different roles. We are thrilled to present the Artisan award to Jon as he is highly respected by make-up artists and hair stylists worldwide,” said Julie Socash, President of IATSE Local 706.

Favreau is currently showrunner and executive producer of “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian,” which garnered 39 Emmy Award nominations, winning 14 Emmys as well as numerous nominations and awards; and “The Book of Boba Fett” for Disney+. Favreau, no stranger to the “Star Wars” galaxy, has played roles in both the “Star Wars: The Clone Wars...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Ailey (Jamila Wignot)

Has any choreographer mattered more to American dance than Alvin Ailey? The documentary Ailey, directed by Jamila Wignot, makes a good case that there has not. Comprised of amazing archival footage, peer interviews, and choreographer Rennie Harris prepping a modern-day performance in honor of the artist, Wignot paints a full picture of a complicated man. Born in the middle of Texas during The Great Depression, old recordings of Ailey recount his picking cotton with his mother (his father was non-existent in his life), then later on seeing Katherine Dunham (and her male backup dancers) perform live. The shock of watching somebody that looked like him produce such wonderful art emboldened him to pursue the work himself. – Dan M. (full...

This review of “Ailey” was first published after its premiere at January’s Sundance Film Festival.

A firm believer in what he called “blood memories,” everything that choreographer extraordinaire Alvin Ailey did, he charged with intentionality; the joy and pain of those before him influenced his artistry from the inside out. The American dance legend, a pioneer in making the Black experience part of the art form, gets a thorough and evocative documentary — if still veiled about his personal life — in director Jamila Wignot’s “Ailey,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

Audio, and occasionally video, from interviews with Ailey chronicle his earliest years as child of the Great Depression in Texas. His hazy voice comes through as if narrating from the distant past. Illustrative footage from the time, even if not always portraying Ailey himself, places him as a part of a the greater stream of...

Archive footage and interviews with African-American dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey - who died from the complications of AIDS in 1989 - enter a dance and a dialogue with a new work, Lazarus, in Jamila Wignot's documentary. The modern piece, performed by the dance company Ailey founded and choreographed by Rennie Harris in tribute to the dance pioneer, celebrates both his personal achievements and his legacy.

Wignot takes a chronological approach to Ailey's life, beginning with his dirt poor childhood in Texas before moving on to his move to LA as a child, and how he came to train with Lester Horton, alongside his sexual and dance awakening. The film touches on how important it is to see yourself and your history represented - and how shockingly narrow representation has been for too long - as Ailey recalls the revelatory feeling he got when he saw African-American dancer Katherine Dunham.

After offering up our picks for the best films of the first half of the year, we enter the second half with a strong release slate. Arriving this July is a stellar set of documentaries, a few promising wide releases, new films from some of the century’s most prolific directors, and much more. Check out my picks below.

15. Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) (Arie and Chuko Esiri)

Before an eventual Criterion release, Janus Films will bow the debut feature by Nigerian-raised, New York-educated twins Arie and Chuko Esiri, which recently played at Berlinale, New Directors/New Films, and more. David Katz said in his review, “Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven and Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express have been directly cited by the filmmakers as inspirations for Eyimofe, and I would also mention Amores Perros for its interleaving structure and top-to-bottom dissection of a megalopolis, teeming with...

With nearly every feature film at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival reviewed, it’s time to wrap up the first major cinema event of the year. We already got the official jury and audience winners here, and now it’s time to highlight our favorites.

One will find our picks (in alphabetical order) to keep on your radar, followed by the rest of our reviews. Check out everything below and stay tuned to our site, and specifically Twitter, for acquisition and release date news on the below films in the coming months.

Ailey (Jamila Wignot)

Has any choreographer mattered more to American dance than Alvin Ailey? The documentary Ailey, directed by Jamila Wignot, makes a good case that there has not. Comprised of amazing archival footage, peer interviews, and choreographer Rennie Harris prepping a modern-day performance in honor of the artist, Wignot paints a full picture of a complicated man. Born...

If, like me (and many others), you’ve seen performances by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and found them to be spellbinding but know relatively little about the man himself, a documentary like “Ailey” sounds like manna from heaven: a chance to immerse yourself in the life of a singular dance titan — to discover who he was as a human being and as a master builder of modern American movement. Yet “Ailey,” directed by Jamila Wignot, doesn’t always answer the questions you expect it to.

We learn about how Ailey, born in 1931, spent his early years in Texas, raised by a single mother (he never knew his father) with little money or direction; they wandered, and when he was a kid he picked cotton. Wignot uses black-and-white archival footage to evoke what the Texas childhood of a rural African-American during the Depression might have looked like, and the...

Has any choreographer mattered more to American dance than Alvin Ailey? The documentary Ailey, directed by Jamila Wignot, makes a good case that there has not. Comprised of amazing archival footage, peer interviews, and choreographer Rennie Harris prepping a modern-day performance in honor of the artist, Wignot paints a full picture of a complicated man. Born in the middle of Texas during The Great Depression, old recordings of Ailey recount his picking cotton with his mother (his father was non-existent in his life), then later on seeing Katherine Dunham (and her male backup dancers) perform live. The shock of watching somebody that looked like him produce such wonderful art emboldened him to pursue the work himself.

The structure of the film is fairly standard, utilizing all of its tools to walk through the timeline of the artist’s life; from his childhood, through his eventual arrival in New York City...

In Rolling Stone‘s series At Work, we go behind the curtain with decision-makers across the fast-changing music business — exploring a range of responsibilities, burgeoning ideas, advice for industry newcomers, and more. Read earlier interviews here.

Abou “Bu” Thiam owes a lot to his brother, Akon. “I was Akon’s A&r before I even knew what an A&r was,” recalls Thiam, who handled the singer’s 2004 debut album Trouble as his first industry gig. But the music manager has also since built his own legacy: He discovered and...

This documentary examines how Maya Deren shaped the course of avant-garde filmmaking in the United States through works such as the iconic Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and other films. Filmmaker Martina Kudlácek interviews those who knew Deren personally and features excerpts from her films as well as examining her unfinished work documenting Haitian voodoo rituals.

Starring: Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Alexander Hammid, Katherine Dunham...

Following up on Tambay’s piece (posted just before this one) about the 1943 MGM short "Shoe Shine Boy," here's another major studio short film that is definitely worth watching again and again. But, as always, some background first. During the beginning of the sound era in the late 1920's, through the end of the 1940's, studios (particularly Columbia, MGM and Warner Bros, who produced the most), made hundreds of short films. Running the gamut from comic to dramatic to musical to dance shorts, they were made to be shown with the studio's feature films and "B" pictures. In fact, there's one that Warners made back in 1941 with Katherine Dunham's dance company,...

Milestone Film & Video is one of the finest and most well-established U.S. distributor of docs and arthouse features. They have such great films like the classic "I am Cuba" and have been working on compiling all they can on the filmmaker Shirley Clarke ("The Connection") whose film in the 60s, "The Cool World," made me one of her avid fans forever. Their film, "Portrait of Jason," also by Clarke, premiered at Idfa 2014, the premium doc festival in the world and I was lucky enough to see it at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. Its clarity and humanity moved me so much that I feel obliged to publish this here. When Amy Heller and Dennis Doros of Milestone speak the way they do in the following blog, I listen. Since the film "Jason and Shirley" just premiered at BAMcinemaFest and Frameline Film Festival, both wonderful events, I think it is important for everyone to know what they have to say. "In 25 years, we have never weighed in on anyone else's film (except to recommend those we love), but Dennis and I felt the need to go on the record about Stephen Winter's new feature Jason and Shirley."

'Jason and Shirley': The Cruelty and Irresponsibility of 'Satire'

by Amy Heller

In the twenty-five years that we have been running Milestone Films, we have never before reviewed or commented publicly on anyone else’s film—except to recommend it. But we have now encountered a new feature film that purports to “satirize” a film and a filmmaker we represent and have spent years researching. While we are absolute believers in freedom of speech and artistic expression and do not dispute that the producers, writers and stars of Jason and Shirley have every right to make their “re-vision” of the making of Shirley Clarke’s great documentary "Portrait of Jason," we feel we must go on the record about the film’s inaccurate and simplistic portrayals of a brilliant filmmaker and her charismatic subject.

Director Stephen Winter (and co-writers Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters) have created a fictitious drama that imagines what might have happened on December 3, 1966 when Shirley Clarke spent twelve hours with Jason Holliday, Carl Lee, Jeri Sopanen, Jim Hubbard and Bob Fiore shooting "Portrait of Jason." The filmmakers claim the right to re-imagine the events that took place in that Hotel Chelsea apartment, but they fail to understand something that Shirley Clarke knew and conveyed in all her films: the need for integrity.

Clarke’s first feature, "The Connection," a fiction film based partly on real people, has enormous respect for all its characters, an understanding of humanity, and a love for cinema. Shirley knew that a genuine artist values inner truth, whether the film is a documentary or a dramatic feature. And of course, Shirley did not use real names. She knew that when you use real people’s names and identities, you need to seek and explore the truth in all its complexities. Ornette: Made in America, a film that she and Ornette Coleman were very proud to create, is an example of Clarke’s quest for meaning and authenticity.

We at Milestone are now in the seventh year of “Project Shirley,” our ongoing commitment to learn everything about Clarke as a director, an artist and a person. With the cooperation of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater and the Clarke estate, we have digitized nearly one hundred of her features, short films, outtakes, unfinished projects, home movies, and experimental films and videos. We have gone through thousands of pages of letters, contracts, and Shirley’s diaries. We have interviewed and talked to dozens of people who knew and worked with her.

We have heard wonderful stories, tragic stories, and stories of such real pain that they are almost unbearable. Shirley Clarke was a sister, wife, mother, dancer, lover, filmmaker, editor, teacher, and yes, for a sad period, a junkie. It wasn’t intended, but along the way we fell in love with Shirley and came to feel that we owed it to her to create a portrait of a real woman and an artist. Shirley’s daughter Wendy Clarke and her extended family have supported our efforts every step of the way, encouraging us to reveal what is true, for better or worse. We have shared our discoveries with the world in theaters, on television, on DVD and Blu-Ray, in lectures — and in our exhaustive press kits (available on our website, free for everyone).

We have strived for the highest levels of accuracy, knowing that critics, academics, bloggers, and the general public deserve and depend on our research. We corroborated all the oral histories we conducted using primary sources, including original letters, interviews, and contracts. Finally, we asked people who knew Shirley to check and proof all our work. We have shared this research with every filmmaker, scholar and critic who has asked us for information.

So it was truly agonizing for us to watch Stephen Winter’s "Jason and Shirley," a film that is bad cinema and worse ethics—that cynically appropriates and parodies the identities of real people, stereotyping and humiliating them and doing disservice to their memory. The filmmakers may call it an homage, but their complete lack of research and their numerous factual errors and falsehoods have betrayed everyone who was involved in making "Portrait of Jason."

Winter and his team call their film an “imagination” of the night (although they stage the filming during the day) of December 3, when Shirley Clarke shot "Portrait of Jason." But interestingly, they only use the real names of those participants who have died: Clarke, Jason Holliday and Carl Lee (perhaps because you cannot libel the dead). They did not interview the people who were on the set that long night and who are still around—filmmakers Bob Fiore and Jim Hubbard.

They also chose not to work with Shirley’s daughter, artist and filmmaker Wendy Clarke, whom they never bothered to contact (and go out of their way to mock in the film). Jason and Shirley even features a title card in the closing credits thanking Wendy, implying that she has given her approval for the film. In truth, Wendy’s response, when she finally saw Jason and Shirley, was: “I don’t want people seeing this film to think there is any truth to it. This film tells nasty lies and is a parasitic attempt to gain prominence from true genius.”

Similarly, the filmmakers never asked us at Milestone for access to the reams of documents we have discovered from the making of "Portrait of Jason." Instead, they preferred to pretend to know what happened, to create their own “Shirley Clarke,” “Carl Lee,” and “Jason Holliday,” rather than try to create honest and respectful portraits of these very real people.

Lazy filmmakers make bad movies and "Jason and Shirley" is false, flaccid, and boring—unforgivable cinematic sins. Perhaps its most egregious and painful crime is taking the strong, brilliant woman that Shirley Clarke truly was and portraying her as a lumpy, platitude-spouting Jewish hausfrau—an inept cineaste who doesn’t know what she is doing and eventually needs her boyfriend to “save” the film for her. In service of their alleged investigation into race relations (a topic Shirley explored far better with her powerful and intelligent films "The Connection," "The Cool World," "Portrait of Jason" and "Ornette: Made in America"), they reduced her to a sexist cliché—the little woman—and a tedious cliché at that.

Shirley Clarke was wild, creative, brilliant, graceful, challenging, incredibly stylish, vibrant, and alive with the possibilities of life. At home at the center of many creative circles in New York City and around the world, she was adored by countless admirers—despite (or sometimes because of) her faults and failings. And Shirley is still loved by those who remember her—the people who worked on her films, her friends, her family, and the audiences who are rediscovering her great films. She was incredibly special. The misshapen caricature of Clarke in Jason and Shirley insults and trivializes a great artist and pioneer.

We also find “Jason” in Winter’s film to be a one-dimensional and disrespectful distortion of the very complicated man who was born Aaron Payne in 1924. Jason Holliday’s life was difficult in many ways—as a gay black man he experienced police harassment, poverty, family rejection, imprisonment, painful self-doubt, and innumerable varieties of personal and institutional racism. But he was also vibrantly an original, a self-invented diva, a survivor, and a raconteur of the first order who was the inspiration for his own cinematic Portrait. Shirley decided to make her film in order to explore this extraordinary Scheherazade’s 1001 stories—and the fragile line between his reminiscences and his inventions.

And truly, it is not easy to tell what was real and what was not in Jason’s life. In his “Autobiography” (reprinted in Milestone’s press kit), Holliday talked about appearing on Broadway in “Carmen Jones,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and “Green Pastures” and about performing his nightclub act in Greenwich Village. And while much of his narrative may seem improbable, the Trenton Historical Society found newspaper articles from the 1950s corroborating Jason’s claim that he was a performer at New York’s Salle de Champagne. So did he study acting with Charles Laughton and dance with Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham? We may never know. But the man who spun those marvelous yarns was not the alternately maniacal and weepy loser in "Jason and Shirley."

Here are just a few of the other things that are obviously, carelessly and offensively wrong in "Jason and Shirley":

In the very beginning, there is a title card stating that the filmmakers were denied access to the outtakes of "Portrait of Jason." These recordings were available for all to hear at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, where all of Shirley’s archives can be found—or by contacting Milestone. In fact, all the outtakes (30 minutes of audio) were released on November 11, 2014 as a bonus features on Milestone’s DVD and Blu-Ray of the film. That was six months before "Jason and Shirley" was completed.

In "Jason and Shirley," “Jason” has never previously visited “Shirley’s” apartment and knows nothing about her. In reality, they had been friends for many years and Jason would often visit her apartment. The film states that the cinematographer on Portrait of Jason had worked on Clarke’s other two features. Actually, the film was Jeri Sopanen’s first job with her. Further, absolutely no crew member had an issue about working on "Portrait of Jason," as the new film portrays.

In the film “Shirley” says, “See that horrible painting on the wall? My daughter painted that… I have a daughter who is a terrible artist.” Fact: in several video interviews with Shirley (including one released as a bonus feature on Ornette: Made In America, which also came out last November) and in many of her letters and diaries, Clarke talked about how extremely proud she was of her daughter Wendy and her art. Mother and daughter worked happily together for years on many projects including the legendary Tee Pee Video Space Troupe. Wendy’s fine art, textiles, and video work have received critical praise for nearly 50 years. It was needlessly and maliciously hurtful for the filmmakers to include a line that is so obviously false and unkind.

In the film, “Shirley” says her maiden name was Bermberg. She was born Shirley Brimberg.

There is an Academy Award® statue for "Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World" in “Shirley’s” apartment and the other characters repeatedly mock her for it. The film did win an Oscar®, but although she received directing credit, Shirley had been fired from the final edit and producer Robert Hughes picked up the award. (You can see this on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOS70Tqsz7U)

“Shirley” asks “Jason” to go up on the roof of the Hotel Chelsea with her to talk. In reality, her apartment was famously on the roof.

In the film, “Shirley” is unable to finish Portrait of Jason and tells everybody to go home and “Carl Lee” comes in to take over the film and save it. This is ludicrous, wrong and misogynistic. Clarke was a consummate film professional and all her collaborators attest to her skill and drive.

The film ends with a title card stating that Shirley died in New York (which is simply incorrect) and that Carl Lee died of a heroin overdose. Tragically, Lee died of AIDS and this information is in the Milestone press kit.

Another title card indicates that when Jason Holliday died that there were no friends or family listed in his one obituary. In truth, the Trentonian on July 31, 1998 wrote that two sisters, six nieces and two nephews survived him. We found the relatives when doing our research.

The filmmakers have labeled "Jason and Shirley" a satirical work of fiction. We are just not sure who or what they claim to be satirizing. The film is not ironic, humorous, sardonic or tongue-in-cheek. We can only surmise that they are deliberately parodying the idea of cinematic integrity.

On behalf of Milestone, Wendy Clarke, and Shirley Clarke’s extended family and friends, we respectfully ask film fans not to base their appraisal of Clarke and her filmmaking on the unkind depictions in "Jason and Shirley."

Yours in cinema,

Amy Heller and Dennis Doros

Milestone Films...

Before Steve McQueen directed features like "Hunger," "Shame," and the Best Picture-winning "12 Years a Slave," he was a video artist whose work appeared in museums and galleries. "End Credits" was one such work, an audio/video installation projecting pages of the FBI’s McCarthy-era investigation of actor-activist Paul Robeson while a voiceover reads the reports’ cringe-worthy details aloud. McQueen’s topical explorations took experimental shape, many fascinations that first popped up in visual art have crept into his big screen work. According to the director, "End Credits" will undergo the same evolution — McQueen has announced that he’ll direct a feature film based on Robeson’s life. On Tuesday evening in New York City, McQueen accepted the Media Hero award stage at the Andrew Goodman Foundation’s Hidden Heroes awards. Taking the stage to say a few words, the director revealed that his next film would focus on the legendary...

Hollywood — At the 6th annual Governors Awards Saturday night, Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient Harry Belafonte brought things to a sober, classy close with a lengthy speech detailing some of Hollywood's history with social rights issues. It was a pretty powerful send-off (Michael Keaton seemed particularly knocked out from my vantage point). I've included the full text of the speech (the bulk of his remarks, that is) below, as it seemed like something worth sharing. For more on the evening, be sure to read our coverage from the event. *** America has come a long way since Hollywood in 1915 gave the world the film "Birth of a Nation." By all measure, this cinematic work was considered the greatest film ever made. The power of moving pictures to impact on human behavior was never more powerfully evidenced than when after the release of this film, American citizens went on a murderous rampage.

Just a couple of weeks after the sad death of Richard "Jaws" Kiel, the James Bond pantheon has lost another of its iconic villains. Geoffrey Holder, who played Baron Samedi to unsettling effect in 1973's Live And Let Die, has passed away from complications stemming from pneumonia. He was 84.There was much more to Holder than voodoo henchmen. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, he began his career as a dancer aged just 7, and by the time he was 22 was teaching at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance in New York. Four years later he won a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work as a painter, whilst still finding time to work as a principal dancer with New York's Metropolitan Opera Ballet. He made his Broadway debut in 1954 in the musical House Of Flowers (co-written by Truman Capote), and co-starred in an all-black Waiting For Godot in 1957.His first...

The Museum of the Moving Image will celebrate the life and legacy of legendary entertainer Katherine Dunham with a work-in-progress screening of Katherine Dunham: Dancing with Life. The event takes place this Saturday, June 22 and is free and open to the public. Additional details via the museum website and press release below: On the occasion of the 104th anniversary of Katherine Dunham's birth, Museum of the Moving Image will present a work-in-progress screening of a new documentary about the pioneering modern dancer and choreographer, by renowned actor and director Terry Carter (Battlestar Galactica, Julia), and followed by a town-hall discussion about Dunham’s legacy...

Top 10 Aliya Whiteley 28 May 2013 - 06:55

The 1930s to the end of the 20th century saw the release of some classic tap dancing movies. Here's Aliya's pick of the 10 best...

Either you love movies in which people suddenly break into tap dance routines to express their innermost desires, or you hate them. If you hate them, you’re in luck – they pretty much don’t exist in modern film any more.

Having said that, there have been some great dancing moments in the last few years, such as Amy Adams having a me party in The Muppets, or Meryl Streep bouncing up and down on the bed in Mamma Mia! But these aren’t tap dances, and they’re much more about enthusiasm than skill. Or High School Musical, Take The Lead and others give us great modern or ballroom dancing, but within the context of people putting on a show,...

Taking a look at older articles I’ve written for S & A, I thought this piece from two years ago is ripe enough to take a second look at. But think about it - just who was the first black man in outer space… in the movies? And I think I’ve discovered the answer. The guy on the right is Archie Savage, and anybody who knows the history of black dance in America should be familiar with him as one of its true pioneers. The Virginia-born Savage, who died in 2003, was one of real innovators of modern black dance, and for many years danced with the Katherine Dunham Dance Company as her partner. He went on to appear uncredited in several American films as a dancer,...

• As told to Roger Ebert

Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin walk into a hotel room, and that sounds like the set-up for a joke. It's more like a long-delayed punchline. These guys have been stars for more than 40 years, but until "Stand Up Guys," they've all three never been in a movie together. Arkin and Pacino were in "Glengarry Glen Ross" together, and Walken and Pacino were both in "Gigli," but that's as far as it goes.

I mention they go way back.

"Yes, absolutely," Walken says. "I've known Al for decades, from New York and from, you know..."

"He didn't know I was an actor," Pacino says, "until we did this movie. He'd just see me around the street a lot."

"We never worked together, you know, for 30 years or more, something like that," Walken says.

"Do you remember that time," Pacino asks, "When we almost got...

On July 28, 2012 National Dance Day the U.S. Postal Service will pay tribute to four influential choreographers who changed the art of dance Isadora Duncan, Jos Limn, Katherine Dunham, and Bob Fosse. Designed to look like posters advertising a performance, the stamp art captures the luminosity and mystery of a live dance performance.The stamp design for Isadora Duncan reflects her interest in classical Greek dance forms and shows the seemingly effortless style that she developed. Radical for its time, her linking of movement and expressiveness garnered her worldwide critical acclaim.

What better way to celebrate Black History Month than takein some vintage films about the black experience?

The folks behind the St. Louis Black Film Festival Presents a Classic Black Film Festival for Black History Month at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar in St. Louis. Loop) each Thursday in February. Last year the St. Louis Black Film Festival presented a series of new films by black filmmakers, but this year are going back into the vaults and digging out some vintage cinema for audiences with an interest in black history to enjoy on the big screen.

The event kicks off tonight, February 2nd, at the Tivoli Theater at 5pm with the 1943 classic Stormy Weather, about the relationship between an aspiring dancer (Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson) and a popular songstress (Lena Horne). Robinson was the world’s preeminent tap dancer of his day, and is remembered for his appearances with Shirley Temple...

The Kennedy Center Honors have been handed out since 1978. Recipients hail from various branches of the American performance art world — including film, stage, music, and dance — even though performers more closely associated with British show business have managed to sneak in every now and then, e.g., Paul McCartney, Roger Daltrey, Elton John, Pete Townshend. Since recipients are supposed to attend the Washington, D.C., ceremony in order to take home their Kennedy awards, Doris Day has remained unhonored by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Katharine Hepburn kept putting it off until she finally relented in 1990. (Irene Dunne, see above photo, was one who managed to be honored though absent due to ill health.) Ginger Rogers, for her part, was present at the ceremony, but her films with Fred Astaire weren't — because Astaire's widow, Robyn Astaire, demanded payment for the televised clips. At the time, Kennedy Center Honors...

Most professional dancers performing today came of age during the era of the megastudio, those enormous dance training facilities—such as Edge Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles and Broadway Dance Center in New York—that feature a vast variety of instructors teaching many different kinds of classes under one roof. The convenience afforded by these studios is fabulous, and their wide array of offerings is certainly enticing and seemingly necessary for any dancer wanting to succeed in today's versatility-oriented commercial dance industry.However, before real estate costs and other economic factors forced many dance teachers to close their independently operated studios, professional dancers often received virtually all of their training at only one or two studios and with only one or two instructors. While the megastudios have certainly made it easy for dancers to access a greater diversity of classes and instructors, they also provide the temptation to jump around from teacher to teacher,...

The following is a list of accredited, degree-granting acting programs at colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. It includes schools that grant either a degree in acting or a degree in another major that has an acting component or concentration. In general, B.A.and M.A.programs are more academic in nature (though they may offer a performance component or concentration),while Bfa and Mfa programs focus on training professional performers.An A.A.is a two-year junior-college degree.The list also includes nondegree acting programs that have a structured curriculum.THEATERUndergraduateALABAMAAuburn UniversityDepartment of Theater, 211 Telfair B. Peet Theatre, Auburn, Al, 36849-5422. Dan Larocque, chair, theatre@auburn.edu; http://media.cla.auburn.edu/theatre; (334) 844-4748; B.A. in theater, Bfa in musical theater, performance, design/tech, and management. Auburn University, MontgomeryDepartment of Communication and Dramatic Arts, P.O. Box 244023, Rm 223 Liberal Arts, Montgomery, Al,...

The following is a list of accredited, degree-granting acting and dance programs at colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. It includes schools that grant either a degree in acting, theater, dance, or a degree in another major that has an acting component or concentration.  In general, B.A. and M.A. programs are more academic in nature (though they may offer a performance component or concentration), while Bfa and Mfa programs focus on training professional performers. An A.A. is a two-year junior-college degree. The list also includes nondegree acting programs that have a structured curriculum.Undergraduate TheaterAlabamaAuburn UniversityDepartment of Theater, 211 Telfair B. Peet Theatre, Auburn, Al, 36849-5422. theatre@auburn.edu. http://media.cla.auburn.edu/theatre/. (334) 844-4748. B.A. in theater, Bfa in music theater, performance, design/tech. Auburn University, MontgomeryDepartment of Communication and Dramatic Arts, P.O. Box 244023, Rm 223 Liberal Arts, Montgomery, Al,...

The following is a list of accredited, degree-granting acting programs at colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. It includes schools that grant either a degree in acting or a degree in another major that has an acting component or concentration. It does not include programs in directing, playwriting, design, or other specialized fields. In general, B.A. and M.A. programs are more academic in nature (though they may offer a performance component or concentration), while Bfa and Mfa programs focus on training professional performers. An A.A. is a two-year junior-college degree. The list also includes nondegree acting programs that have a structured curriculum. Editorial note: Due to a file issue, names that should be uppercase are lowercase. Correct listings can be found online at www.backstage.com.Undergraduate Theatre ALABAMAAuburn UniversityDepartment of Theatre, 211 Telfair B. Peet Theatre, Auburn, Al, 36849-5422. theatre@auburn.edu.

Eartha Kitt, who used her seductive purr and sultry style to charm audiences as an actress, singer and cabaret star, died Thursday of colon cancer. She was 81.

The cancer was detected about two years ago and treated, but it recurred after a period of remission. Kitt recently had been treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York.

"She came back strongly; she had been performing until two months ago," said Andrew Freedman, a longtime friend and publicist. "We had dates booked through 2009."

Among Kitt's hits was the Christmas tune "Santa Baby," lending poignancy to her Christmas Day death. The song went gold this year, and she received the gold record before she died, Freedman said.

Slinky and catlike, Kitt described herself as a "sex kitten": She followed Julie Newmar in the role of Catwoman on the TV series "Batman" during the 1960s.

But the seductress also could be a political provocateur.

Groundbreaking actress and the sultry singer of the stylishly sexy Christmas standard "Santa Baby," Eartha Kitt, died on Christmas Day in New York City, her publicist confirmed to CNN. Kitt, 81, had been treated for colon cancer. Her daughter Kitt Shapiro was by her side at the time of her death. Known primarily for singing in her distinctively raspy voice and purring like a cat as Catwoman on the '60s TV series Batman, Kitt was a star of stage, the small and big screen and music. She was nominated for three Tony awards, two Grammy awards and two Emmys, according to her official Web site.