Month: May 2008

Brangelina rents French villa; twin births denied
CORRENS, France – The Brangelina clan began settling into a villa in the south of France as reports that the couple’s twins had been born were refuted by other celebrity news outlets.
“Entertainment Tonight” first reported on its Web site Friday that Angelina Jolie had given birth in France, citing a “source close to Jolie.” Then People magazine posted a story online saying that Jolie had not given birth, and E! and US Weekly followed with their own stories saying the babies remained unborn.
“Entertainment Tonight” did not immediately return a call for comment; visitors to the show’s Web site saw a blank screen or a message that read “technical difficulties.”
Representatives for Jolie and her companion, Brad Pitt, did not respond to phone and e-mail requests from The Associated Press.
Jolie has said previously that her twins are due in August. She and Pitt have four other children: 6-year-old Maddox, 4-year-old Pax and 3-year-old Zahara, who are adopted, and 2-year-old Shiloh.
In southern France, where locals say the couple recently moved, officials at the Etoile Maternite Catholique de Provence in Aix-en-Provence, one of the region’s top maternity clinics, said that Jolie had not been there and did not appear scheduled to come.
Privacy rules about health matters are extremely strict in France.
The pair recently moved into the Miraval Estate villa in the French hamlet of Correns, in the Provence region, according to the mayor and a local inn owner.
Traditionally, the region has lured tourists mostly for rock-climbing excursions on the rolling hills of the verdant region and leisurely strolls in its quaint medieval villages.
Mayor Michael Latz trumpets Correns as France’s first town where all locally grown produce is organic ó and his villagers teem with pride about that reputation, and seem mostly bemused about the invasion of Hollywood buzz.
“I like to joke that I’m happy to be able to contribute to the image of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, because Correns is so well known,” Mayor Michael Latz said with a smile outside the ochre-colored town hall.
Latz said that Tom Bove, an American businessman who owns Miraval, recently told him that Jolie and Pitt had agreed to a three-year lease on the property, known for producing high-quality organic wine.
The couple is “in the process of moving in,” said Latz, adding that he hadn’t met them and knew nothing about whether Jolie had given birth or not.
“They are people who I hope will live normally here,” he said. “I would think the choice of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie … is tied to the quality of life in Correns.”
Latz also rejected speculation about an imminent wedding, and said that under French law they’d need to alert local authorities if they want to officially tie the knot here.
Security guards were blocking the gates to the estate Friday, while a postal truck and other maintenance vehicles regularly passed in and out. The castle and accompanying buildings can’t be seen from public roads.
Onno Stijl, owner of the L’Auberge du Parc inn, said it was a good thing they were moving in and could help business. He said he gets his wine from the estate’s vineyards.
“It’s a couple living here now like everyone,” he said.
The area, he said, “is a bit isolated but that gives it a certain … privacy.”
According to its Web site, the Miraval estate dates from pre-Roman times. It includes fountains, aqueducts, moats, a lake and vineyards that produce an organic wine distributed worldwide.
Pitt and Jolie may be Miraval’s first movie stars in residence, but Miraval has seen its share of rock stars. The estate includes a studio which has hosted the likes of Sting, the Cranberries and Pink Floyd, who recorded tracks for “The Wall” album there.

Wife of entertainer Bill Murray files for divorce
CHARLESTON, S.C. – The wife of entertainer Bill Murray has filed for divorce after nearly 11 years of marriage, alleging he abused her and is addicted to marijuana and alcohol.
Jennifer Butler Murray filed divorce papers May 12 in Charleston County. She owns a home on Sullivans Island, S.C., where she lives with the couple’s four children.
The complaint was first reported by The Post and Courier of Charleston. It also alleges frequent abandonment by the former “Saturday Night Live” star.
Bill Murray’s attorney, John McDougall, wouldn’t comment on the allegations, but said the entertainer “is deeply saddened by the breakup of his marriage.”
“He and his wife made loving parents and they are committed to the best interests of their children,” McDougall said.
Jennifer Murray’s attorney, Robert Rosen, said he had no comment.
The couple signed a prenuptial agreement, which was filed as an exhibit with the divorce papers, before they married in 1997. As part of the agreement, both waived their right to alimony or support if the marriage broke up. However, Murray agreed to pay $7 million to his ex-wife within 60 days of a final divorce decree.
The complaint, which doesn’t specify instances of Murray’s alleged marijuana or alcohol use, alleges he would often leave without telling his wife and says he “travels overseas where he engages in public and private altercations and sexual liaisons.”
It also alleges Murray physically abused his wife and last November “hit her in the face and then told her she was `lucky he didn’t kill her.'”
The documents obtained by The Post and Courier were sealed by the court last week.
Murray, the star of movies such as “Ghostbusters,” “Caddyshack” and “Groundhog Day,” is a co-owner of the Charleston RiverDogs minor league baseball team.
The 57-year-old actor earned an Oscar nomination for his role in “Lost in Translation.”

“Star Trek” theme composer Alexander Courage dies
LOS ANGELES – Alexander “Sandy” Courage, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated arranger, orchestrator and composer who created the otherworldly theme for the classic “Star Trek” TV show, has died. He was 88.
Courage died May 15 at the Sunrise assisted-living facility in Pacific Palisades, his stepdaughter Renata Pompelli of Los Angeles, said Thursday. He had been in poor health for three years.
Over a decades-long career, Courage collaborated on dozens of movies and orchestrated some of the greatest musicals of the 1950s and 1960s, including “My Fair Lady,” “Hello, Dolly!” “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” “Gigi,” “Porgy and Bess” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”
But his most famous work is undoubtedly the “Star Trek” theme, which he composed, arranged and conducted in a week in 1965.
“I have to confess to the world that I am not a science fiction fan,” Courage said in an interview for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation’s Archive of American Television in 2000. “Never have been. I think it’s just marvelous malarkey. … So you write some, you hope, marvelous malarkey music that goes with it.”
Courage said the tune, with its ringing fanfare, eerie soprano part and swooping orchestration, was inspired by an arrangement of the song “Beyond the Blue Horizon” he heard as a youngster.
“Little did I know when I wrote that first A-flat for the flute that it was going to go down in history, somehow,” Courage said. “It’s a very strange feeling.”
Courage said he also mouthed the “whooshing” sound heard as the starship Enterprise zooms through the opening credits of the TV show.
“Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry later wrote lyrics to the tune, which were never sung on the show but entitled him to half the royalties, Courage said.
Among the many other projects Courage worked on was the 1987 TV special “Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas,” for which he won an Emmy for musical direction.
He and Lionel Newman shared Academy Award nominations for their adapted scores for 1964’s “The Pleasure Seekers” and 1967’s “Doctor Dolittle.”
A friend and colleague of movie composers John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, he also provided the orchestration for such movies as “The Poseidon Adventure,” “Jurassic Park,” “Basic Instinct” and “The Mummy” and supplied arrangements for the Boston Pops while Williams was conductor in the 1980s and early 1990s.
For “Star Trek” he composed music for only a few episodes, in addition to the theme and the music for the pilot. But that theme was reprised in the TV sequel “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and in the “Star Trek” movies.
Courage was born Dec. 10, 1919, in Philadelphia and raised in New Jersey. After graduation from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., in 1941, Courage enlisted in the Army Air Corps.
After the war, he became a composer for CBS radio shows and then became an orchestrator and arranger at MGM.
Beginning in the 1960s he composed music for TV shows, including “The Waltons,” “Lost in Space” and “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” although the only themes he created were for “Star Trek” and “Judd For the Defense.”

Steven Tyler goes to rehab for ‘quiet environment’
LOS ANGELES – Steven Tyler checked into a rehab facility in search of a “safe environment” to recover from several foot surgeries and physical therapy, the Aerosmith frontman said in a statement Thursday.
Tyler said the surgeries were to correct long-time foot injuries resulting from his physical performances as the singer for the blues-rock band.
“The doctors told me the pain in my feet could be corrected but it would require a few surgeries over time,” Tyler said in the statement. “The ‘foot repair’ pain was intense, greater than I’d anticipated. The months of rehabilitative care and the painful strain of physical therapy were traumatic. I really needed a safe environment to recuperate where I could shut off my phone and get back on my feet.”
The 60-year-old was known for heavy drug and alcohol abuse in the 1970s and early 1980s, but completed rehabilitation in 1986, after which Aerosmith enjoyed a successful revival.

‘Carol Burnett’ star Harvey Korman dies at 81
LOS ANGELES – Harvey Korman, the tall, versatile comedian who won four Emmys for his outrageously funny contributions to “The Carol Burnett Show” and played a conniving politician to hilarious effect in “Blazing Saddles,” died Thursday. He was 81.
Korman died at UCLA Medical Center after suffering complications from the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago, his family said. He had undergone several major operations.
“He was a brilliant comedian and a brilliant father,” daughter Kate Korman said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “He had a very good sense of humor in real life. ”
A natural second banana, Korman gained attention on “The Danny Kaye Show,” appearing in skits with the star. He joined the show in its second season in 1964 and continued until it was canceled in 1967. That same year he became a cast member in the first season of “The Carol Burnett Show.”
Burnett and Korman developed into the perfect pair with their burlesques of classic movies such as “Gone With the Wind” and soap operas like “As the World Turns” (their version was called “As the Stomach Turns”).
Another recurring skit featured them as “Ed and Eunice,” a staid married couple who were constantly at odds with the wife’s mother (a young Vickie Lawrence in a gray wig). In “Old Folks at Home,” they were a combative married couple bedeviled by Lawrence as Burnett’s troublesome young sister.
Korman revealed the secret to the long-running show’s success in a 2005 interview: “We were an ensemble, and Carol had the most incredible attitude. I’ve never worked with a star of that magnitude who was willing to give so much away.”
Burnett was devastated by Korman’s death, said her assistant, Angie Horejsi.
“She loved Harvey very much,” Horejsi said.
After 10 successful seasons, Korman left Burnett’s show in 1977 for his own series. Dick Van Dyke took his place, but the chemistry was lacking and the Burnett show was canceled two years later. “The Harvey Korman Show” also failed, as did other series starring the actor.
“It takes a certain type of person to be a television star,” he said in that 2005 interview. “I didn’t have whatever that is. I come across as kind of snobbish and maybe a little too bright. … Give me something bizarre to play or put me in a dress and I’m fine.”
His most memorable film role was as the outlandish Hedley Lamarr (who was endlessly exasperated when people called him Hedy) in Mel Brooks’ 1974 Western satire, “Blazing Saddles.”
“A world without Harvey Korman ó it’s a more serious world,” Brooks told the AP on Thursday. “It was very dangerous for me to work with him because if our eyes met we’d crash to floor in comic ecstasy. It was comedy heaven to make Harvey Korman laugh.”
He also appeared in the Brooks comedies “High Anxiety,” “The History of the World Part I” and “Dracula: Dead and Loving It,” as well as two “Pink Panther” moves, “Trail of the Pink Panther” in 1982 and “Curse of the Pink Panther” in 1983.
Korman’s other films included “Gypsy,” “Huckleberry Finn” (as the King), “Herbie Goes Bananas” and “Bud and Lou” (as legendary straightman Bud Abbott to Buddy Hackett’s Lou Costello). He also provided the voice of Dictabird in the 1994 live-action feature “The Flintstones.”
In television, Korman guest-starred in dozens of series including “The Donna Reed Show,” “Dr. Kildare,” “Perry Mason,” “The Wild Wild West,” “The Muppet Show,” “The Love Boat,” “The Roseanne Show” and “Burke’s Law.”
In their ’70s, he and Tim Conway, one of his Burnett show co-stars, toured the country with their show “Tim Conway and Harvey Korman: Together Again.” They did 120 shows a year, sometimes as many as six or eight in a weekend.
Korman had an operation in late January on a non-cancerous brain tumor and pulled through “with flying colors,” Kate Korman said. Less than a day after coming home, he was re-admitted because of the ruptured aneurysm and was given a few hours to live. But he survived for another four months.
“He fought until the very end. He didn’t want to die. He fought for months and months,” said Kate Korman.
Harvey Herschel Korman was born Feb. 15, 1927, in Chicago. He left college for service in the U.S. Navy, resuming his studies afterward at the Goodman School of Drama at the Chicago Art Institute. After four years, he decided to try New York.
“For the next 13 years I tried to get on Broadway, on off-Broadway, under or beside Broadway,” he told a reporter in 1971.
He had no luck and had to support himself as a restaurant cashier. Finally, in desperation, he and a friend formed a nightclub comedy act.
“We were fired our first night in a club, between the first and second shows,” he recalled.
After returning to Chicago, Korman decided to try Hollywood, reasoning that “at least I’d feel warm and comfortable while I failed.”
For three years he sold cars and worked as a doorman at a movie theater. Then he landed the job with Kaye.
In 1960 Korman married Donna Elhart and they had two children, Maria and Christopher. They divorced in 1977. Two more children, Katherine and Laura, were born of his 1982 marriage to Deborah Fritz.
In addition to his daughter Kate, he is survived by his wife and the three other children.