Neuigkeiten

Kenneth Washington, who made several TV appearances and was the last surviving main cast member of the CBS series “Hogan’s Heroes,” died on July 18. He was 88.

A familiar guest star on TV series in the 1960s, Washington’s appearances included roles in “Star Trek,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “My Three Sons,” “The Name of the Game,” “Petticoat Junction,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” “Adam-12” and “Dragnet 1967.”

He landed his “Hogan’s Heroes” role as Sergeant Baker in 1970, but the show was canceled the following year by CBS. Washington’s work in the 1970s included an appearance in the 1973 film “Westworld” as well as roles in the TV series “The Paul Lynde Show,” “The F.B.I.,” “The Rockford Files” and “Police Story.” One of his last TV appearances was alongside Jasmine Guy in “A Different World” in 1989.

Born in Ethel, Miss., Washington and his family moved to California, where he was raised in the...

Exclusive: Actor-comedian Billy Eichner and producer Tom McNulty are developing Man in the Box, a biopic based on the life of groundbreaking TV icon Paul Lynde. Eichner plans to star. They’ve optioned a script by Edwin Cannistraci, and Eichner and McNulty are currently meeting with creatives to round out the rest of the production team.

After his breakout turn in Bye Bye Birdie, Lynde became a big TV star with his guest turns as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, and in his role on the long-running game show Hollywood Squares. While Lynde was never publicly “out,” he never lied about his sexuality either, as most famous gay actors of that era did. His unique comic persona often and overtly nodded to his “barely-closeted” lifestyle in a way that still feels groundbreaking for his time. But he was not on the same lists for roles as straight actors. One of the...

Sam Bobrick, the creator of NBC’s Saved By The Bell whose writing career stretched back to Captain Kangaroo, The Flintstones, classic episodes of The Andy Griffith Show and included the Broadway play Norman, Is That You?, died Friday, Oct. 11, at Northridge Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles following a stroke. He was 87.

His death was announced by his daughter Stephanie Bobrick in a Facebook post. “Our dearly beloved Sam Bobrick, extraordinary playwright, husband, father, grandfather, pug father, brother, uncle, friend, mentor, and all around outstanding person passed away peacefully today, October 11, 2019, surrounded by family and friends. He was as hilarious as he was kind and will be missed by all who knew him.”

In a remembrance on the Medium website, Bobrick’s friend, producer and actor Adam Carl, wrote that Bobrick recently suffered a massive stroke.

Bobrick’s death comes less than a month after NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming...

Novelist, screenwriter and biographer whose subjects included his father, Groucho

Arthur Marx, who has died aged 89, grew up in the shadow of his father, Groucho, and was steeped in the controlled chaos of the Marx Brothers. Torn between trying to distance himself from a demanding father, yet also prove worthy of his genius, he enjoyed a long career as a writer of screen and stage comedies, novels and biographies. Not surprisingly, however, his most successful work capitalised on the public's interest in his father and his uncles, Chico, Harpo, Gummo and Zeppo.

Marx wrote several works about Groucho, the first of which, Life With Groucho (1954), published at the height of his father's television popularity, was a warts-and-all portrait punctuated by Groucho's own annotations. (Marx wrote that he would like to correct the impression that his father was a miser; Groucho's footnote read: "You'd better or I'll cut you off without a nickle.