Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Van Dyke earns historic Daytime Emmy nomination at age 98
LOS ANGELES | Dick Van Dyke is vying for a historic Daytime Emmy at age 98.
The actor was nominated Friday as guest performer in a daytime drama series for his part as amnesiac Timothy Robicheaux on Peacock’s “Days of Our Lives.”
Van Dyke is the oldest Daytime Emmy nominee. Producer Norman Lear was 100 when he received his final Primetime Emmy nomination in 2022 and died the next year.
Among those Van Dyke is up against is Australian actor Guy Pearce of Amazon Freevee’s “Neighbours.”
Van Dyke has won four Primetime Emmys, including three in the 1960s for his classic comedy series “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
Actor-singer Selena Gomez is nominated in the culinary series category for her Food Network special “Selena + Chef: Home for the Holidays.” Also nominated in that category is Food Network’s “Valerie’s Home Cooking,” the show hosted by actor Valerie Bertinelli that ended last year.
CBS is ending “The Talk” after its 15th season later this year. The show’s Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Natalie Morales, Jerry O’Connell and Sheryl Underwood were nominated for daytime talk series host.
The lead actress nominees are: Tamara Braun of “Days of Our Lives,” Finola Hughes and Cynthia Watros of “General Hospital,” Katherine Kelly Lang and Annika Noelle of “The Bold and the Beautiful” and Michelle Stafford of “The Young and the Restless.”
The lead actor nominees are: Eric Braeden of “The Young and the Restless,” Scott Clifton, Thorsten Kaye and John McCook of “The Bold and the Beautiful” and Eric Martsolf of “Days of Our Lives.”
The Daytime Emmys will be presented June 7 in Los Angeles and air live on CBS. The show is returning to its usual schedule after being postponed until last December because of strikes by Hollywood actors and writers. The hosts and Lifetime Achievement honorees will be announced later.
Mandisa, Grammy-winning singer and ‘American Idol’ alum, dies at 47
NASHVILLE, Tenn. | Mandisa, a contemporary Christian singer who appeared on “American Idol” and won a Grammy for her 2013 album ‘Overcomer’, has died. She was 47.
A representative for the singer told The Associated Press that the singer was found dead in her home in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday. The representative said the cause of Mandisa’s death was not yet known.
Mandisa, whose full name was Mandisa Lynn Hundley, was born near Sacramento, California, and grew up singing in church. She gained stardom after finishing ninth on “American Idol” in 2006.
As she left, host Ryan Seacrest told the singer that she was “a great spirit on the show.”
Mandisa moved on, releasing her debut album in 2007 called “True Beauty,” which received a Grammy nomination that year for best pop and contemporary gospel album.
She went on to release five more albums, including a Christmas album.
In 2014, she won a Grammy for best contemporary Christian music album for “Overcomer,” her fifth album.
Mandisa spoke openly about her struggles with depression, releasing a memoir entitled “Out of the Dark: My Journey Through the Shadows to Find God’s Joy” in 2022 that detailed her experiences with severe depression, weight-related challenges, the coronavirus pandemic and her faith.
On Friday, the Christian radio network K-Love paid tribute to the singer on social media, saying: “Mandisa struggled, and she was vulnerable enough to share that with us, which helped us talk about our own struggles.”
Recently arrested Wallen says he’s ‘not proud’ of behavior
NASHVILLE, Tenn. | Country music star Morgan Wallen, who faces charges stemming in part from accusations that he threw a chair off the rooftop of a six-story bar, says he’s “not proud” of his behavior and accepts responsibility.
The “One Thing at a Time” singer responded publicly Friday night on social media to his arrest in Nashville two weeks ago. He faces a May 3 court date after being charged with three felony counts of reckless endangerment and one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct, court records show.
An arrest affidavit said the chair at Chief’s bar landed about 3 feet from officers, who talked to witnesses and reviewed security footage. Witnesses told officers that they watched Wallen pick up a chair, throw it over the roof and laugh about it. Wallen was booked early April 8 and released.
“I didn’t feel right publicly checking in until I made amends with some folks. I’ve touched base with Nashville law enforcement, my family, and the good people at Chief’s. I’m not proud of my behavior, and I accept responsibility,” Wallen wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Wallen, one of the biggest names in contemporary country, is currently on a stadium tour, including a concert scheduled for Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Mississippi.
“I have the utmost respect for the officers working every day to keep us all safe. Regarding my tour, there will be no change,” his message said, signed “-MW.”
The “One Thing at a Time” album spent 16 weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 in 2023 and was the most-consumed album in the U.S. last year. Top 10 hits from the album included “Last Night,” “You Proof” and “Thinkin’ Bout Me.”
In 2021, the country singer was suspended indefinitely from his label after video surfaced of him shouting a racial slur. In 2020, he was arrested on public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges after being kicked out of Kid Rock’s bar in downtown Nashville.
Conductor Davis, who headed Lyric Opera of Chicago and orchestras on 3 continents, dies
Andrew Davis, an acclaimed British conductor who was music director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and orchestras on three continents, has died. He was 80.
Davis died Saturday at Rusk Institute in Chicago from leukemia, his manager, Jonathan Brill of Opus 3 Artists, said Sunday.
Davis had been managing the disease for between 1½ and 2 years, but it became acute shortly after his 80th birthday on Feb. 2. He had conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last December in the U.S. premiere of his own orchestration of Handel’s “Messiah.”
“A consummate musician, incredibly versatile and a phenomenal colleague, as well,” soprano Renée Fleming said in an email to The Associated Press. “It takes a special kind of command to be a great conductor, the power to make close to a hundred musicians (each one, at heart, a diva or divo) hang on your tiniest gesture. So it is remarkable that even with that strength, Andrew’s primary quality was his innate happiness. He was gifted with an infectious joy that somehow came through in every bar of music he made.”
As his 80th birthday approached, Davis was invigorated by the challenge of molding an orchestra, especially young players.
“Harnessing all that energy and that enthusiasm and that passion, and galvanizing it into a totally, totally unified conception and not just conception but — what’s the word? — realization,” he said during an interview with the AP last July after rehearsing the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America in workshops and then at New York’s Carnegie Hall. “I berate them more than I would, but I hope always with a twinkle in my eye.”
Davis was music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1975-88 and Britain’s Glyndebourne Festival from 1988-2000; chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1989-2000 and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra from 2013-19; then music director of the Lyric Opera from 2000-21.
Davis made his Lyric Opera debut in 1986 and led about 700 performances of 62 operas by 22 composers.
“He was a true artistic partner to me and a shining light for so many of us,” Lyric Opera general director Anthony Freud said in a statement. “We will miss his incredible artistry, his extraordinary wisdom, his irrepressible humor, his unfettered zest for life and his devotion to the arts and the humanities.”
Davis conducted a dozen Last Night of the Proms concerts, an annual celebration of Britain at London’s Royal Albert Hall. He twice gave the customary speech in the patter of the Major General’s song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance.”
Born in Ashridge, in the Hertfordshire county of England, Andrew Frank Davis played organ for his parish choir and joined the choir at the Watford Grammar School for Boys. He studied piano at London’s Royal Academy of Music in London, became an organ student at King’s College Cambridge, and played piano, harpsichord and organ with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields from 1966-70.
He made his conducting debut with the BBC Symphony in 1970, became an assistant conductor with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra, then in 1971 made his North American debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
“One of the finest conductors of his generation,” Carnegie Hall executive and artistic director Clive Gillinson said. “I worked with him on an ongoing basis at the London Symphony Orchestra, and the players and I were always totally engaged by his superb musicianship.”
Davis made his opera-conducting debut in Strauss’ “Capriccio” at the Glyndebourne in 1973 and the following year met his future wife, soprano Gianna Rolandi, when she sang Zerbinetta in performances of Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” that he led at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. They got married in 1989 and had a son, composer Edward Frazier Davis.
Davis became a Commander of the British Empire in 1992 and a Knight Bachelor in 1999. The family moved to Chicago when he was hired by the Lyric Opera.
During the pandemic, Davis translated Virgil’s “Aeneid” from Latin into English verse.
“I took an entrance exam in classics in New College, Oxford,” he told NPR, “but then a couple of weeks later I took the organ scholarship trials at King’s College, Cambridge, which much to my surprise I won, so that was the end of classics for me.”
His wife died in 2021. In addition to his son, he is survived by a sister, Jill Atkins, and brothers Martin Davis and Tim Davis. Funeral services will be private.
—From AP reports
