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The past several years haven’t been too great for Martin Short’s celebrity-interviewing alter-ego Jiminy Glick. After popping up in the canceled variety series Maya & Marty, Jiminy arguably hit an all-time low when he interviewed “Donald Trump,” as played by Jimmy Fallon, on The Tonight Show.

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But the Glick character rebounded in a big way this week, first with a lukewarm roast of Bill Maher, followed by an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! where the portly character hilariously questioned Bill Hader about the death of Willie Mays and life at Diddy’s pool house.

According to Short, he didn’t originally create Glick to parody bad journalists, but rather, to satirize “morons with power.” And to further immerse himself in the character, he donned an understandably controversial fat suit, inspired by a scene in the 1991 comedy Pure Luck, in which his character gets stung by a bee and swells up.

Conny Van Dyke, a Motown Records star who acted on television during the ‘60s and ‘70s and again in the ‘00s, has passed away at age 78. Van Dyke’s son, Bronson Page, told Variety that the singer-songwriter died of complications of vascular dementia on Saturday at home in Los Angeles. She also battled colon cancer during her lifetime and suffered a stroke that partially paralyzed her, the magazine reports. Born in 1945, Van Dyke got a start in the music industry writing songs for Wheelsville Records in her native Detroit. She signed with Motown Records in 1961, according to Variety, and in 1963, she released single versions of “Oh, Freddy,” written by Smokey Robinson, and “It Hurt Me Too,” written by Marvin Gaye. Everett Collection “I had Marvin Gaye playing the piano for me, Stevie Wonder playing the bongos. He really was 12 years old,” Van Dyke said in an interview with comedian Skip E. Lowe,...

Ed Fury, the Muscle Beach bodybuilder who starred as the mighty warrior Ursus in three Italian “sword and sandal” epics, has died. He was 94.

Fury died Feb. 24 at his home in Woodland Hills, his wife, Shelly, told The Hollywood Reporter.

In 1953 alone, Fury appeared uncredited in seven films, including Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Dangerous When Wet, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Island in the Sky and The Eddie Cantor Story.

Later, he showed up in The Country Girl (1954), Athena (1954), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), Hell and High Water (1954), Female on the Beach (1955), I Died a Thousand Times (1955), Raw Edge (1956), Bus Stop (1956), South Pacific (1958) and The Wild Women of Wongo (1958).

After he auditioned for Joshua Logan and landed a role on Broadway in the 1954-56 musical Fanny, Italian film producers in the audience visited him backstage and signed him to a contract.

Fury appeared opposite Rod Taylor in the Italian comedy Colossus...

Stella Stevens, the screen siren of the 1960s who brought sweet sexiness to such films as The Nutty Professor, Too Late Blues and The Ballad of Cable Hogue, has died. She was 84.

Stevens died Friday in Los Angeles, her son, actor-producer-director Andrew Stevens, told The Hollywood Reporter. “She had been in hospice for quite some time with Stage 7 Alzheimer’s,” he said.

Shining brightest in light comedies, the blond, blue-eyed actress appeared as a shy beauty contestant from Montana in Vincente Minnelli’s The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963), portrayed a headstrong nun in Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows! (1968) opposite Rosalind Russell and frolicked with the fun-loving Dean Martin in two films: the Matt Helm spy spoof The Silencers (1966) and How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life (1968).

Stevens also starred opposite Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), a movie she said she detested.

Her signature role, however, came in The Nutty Professor (1963), produced,...

In Lee Daniel’s upcoming “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” coming to Hulu on Feb. 26, Andra Day plays legendary Billie Holiday. The film centers around her 1940s court trial and her encounters with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

Leslie Jordan plays journalist Reginald Lord Devine, who sits down with Holiday for an interview to discuss “Strange Fruit.” The song, which condemns the U.S. history of lynching Black people, caused Holiday to come under fire by the agency.

Of Jordan’s casting, Daniels says, “I’m a big fan of Leslie’s and I’ve always wanted to work with him. When I was thinking about this character — a journalist who interviews celebrities down on their luck – I envisioned a fusion of Quentin Crisp and Skip E. Lowe, a role I knew only Leslie could bring to life.”

Jordan has built himself a varied career over the years. In...

Kevin Hart to guest-judge “Dancing with the Stars” The comedian will fill in for Len Goodman for next week’s Movie Night. In defense of “True Detective's” casting Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn There was plenty of Twitter hate greeting today’s long-anticipated announcement, but the "seen-better-days duo” of Farrell and Vaughn could actually work. Plus: HBO couldn’t have cast a better actor than Vaughn. Floyd Mayweather: My Showtime “All Access” show was all fake The boxer told Nevada boxing regulators today that his reality show was completely staged. "I don't want to just sell a fight," Mayweather said. "I want to sell a lifestyle." Click Read Full Post For More The NY Times’ TV critic’s “angry black woman” critique of Shonda Rhimes shouldn’t be surprising "This is what happens when voices that have normally been pushed to the background take center stage,” says Eric Deggans,...

Skip E. Lowe, who hosted a weekly talk show for public access cable television that aired in Los Angeles, New York and other major markets for more than three decades, has died. He was 85. Lowe, a former child actor who served as an inspiration for Martin Short's self-absorbed talk-show host character Jiminy Glick, died Monday in his Hollywood apartment, his publicist, Alan Eichler, announced. Lowe had been suffering from emphysema and other respiratory ailments though he never smoked, Eichler said, adding that he blamed the illness on years of working as a comic and emcee in smoke-

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