Results tagged “jerryorbach”

Marta Curro, Jerry Orbach's first wife, is defending her son's recent vitriolic letter to his step-mother, which was leaked to the Post. The letter accuses Orbach's second wife Elaine Cancilla-Orbach of screwing Chris Orbach and his brother out of the $10 million estate left by their father, which they can't dip into until she dies. (The letter also blames Cancilla-Orbach for manipulating Orbach to donate his eyes after his death.) But the 75-year-old Curro, who was married to Orbach for 17 years and remained close with the actor after their divorce, says her son is right to be angry at wife #2: "She's funny looking and she wears polyester pantsuits, and that just makes me laugh. There's nothing funnier to me than stupid people being evil, because they put a tack on your chair and expect it to kill you."

In an extremely angry letter to his stepmother, Jerry Orbach's son Chris blames her for the television detective's decision to donate the gift of sight to two New Yorkers. In a letter that was meant to be private but was leaked yesterday to the NY Post, Chris paints a nasty picture of Jerry Orbach's widow, Elaine Cancilla-Orbach, calling her a "double-dealing, lying, scheming, miserable fool."

When They Might Be Giants released their twelfth album, The Else, over the summer, The Village Voice called it “as tuneful and rockin' as all the rest, from the withering ‘I'm Impressed’ to the female-empowerment anthem ‘Take Out the Trash.’” Keeping it fresh is no small feat for a band with such an impressive body of work, accumulated over the course of the past 25-plus years. But a listen to The Else or, even better, a couple hours spent at one of their live shows is proof enough that the Johns remain as creatively resilient as ever. They spent most of the fall 2007 on the road and have since been putting the finishing touches on their next project for Disney, “Here Come the 123s.” Oriented for children, the CD/DVD package will feature a mix of animation and music like their previous “Here Come the ABCs”. On Saturday February 2nd they play a grown-up rock show at The Beacon Theater, with horns. [Tickets.]

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unstable building at 37th Ave. and 31st St. in Queens, a stabbing on State St. and 3rd Ave. in Brooklyn, and an organ transport on the Cross Island Parkway in Queens.
• GrandOpening on the LES is following up its single-table storefront Ping Pong concept with another slice of Americana: the drive-in movie theater. $75 will secure all six passenger seats in a ragtop Ford Falcon. We recommend burning the two extra tickets for a less awkward double date.
• In what to us makes NJ Gov. Jon Corzine seem like a candidate for a "Ripley's, Believe it or Not!" segment, the reformed seatbelt wearer had 10 pounds of excess bone growth removed from his femur during surgery today. Ten pounds!
• The Times' Freakonomics blog notes that panhandlers may earn more than low-ranking NYPD cops.
• Four tales of people who just had to leave the city.
• The New York Post will soon start publishing a Page Six glossy magazine that will weigh in at almost 100 pages and come as an insert with the Sunday paper.
• Friends and family gathered today for the official naming of the block at 53rd St. and 8th Ave. as Jerry Orbach Way.

No more naming streets like Joey Ramone Place, Peter Jennings Way, Bob Marley Boulevard, or Jerry Orbach Way. If one City Council member gets his way, the commemorative naming of streets would stop because it's too much of a time waster for the council. James Oddo, the council's minority leader from Staten Island, wants to give the Department of Transportation the authority to approve new street names. Currently, the City Council has to approve the names after they are approved by local community boards. We find it shocking that a politician wants to give away power.

This might be the first time a British actor has played a Law & Order regular: Linus Roache will be playing the new Executive District Attorney. (Sam Waterston's Jack McCoy is getting a promotion to DA, since Fred Thompson has left the show to pursue a presidential campaign.) We foresee sexual tension between his character and Alana de la Garza's Connie Rubirosa! Is it a coincidence that Roache is the second star from short-lived NBC show Kidnapped to join the L&O cast - Jeremy Sisto is the new detective, accompanying Jesse L. Martin. Martin is only signed on for about half the season, so there may yet another cast change. Wolf said that he wants to attract a younger demographic and teased some of what Jack McCoy may face. From the Daily News:

Sam is not going to be the pragmatist the elected politicians have been. He's also going to be someone who goes through changes in his own attitude because he is doing a different job, and a lot of it is going to be fascinating because we talked openly about what happens to men of a certain age and a certain stature when the next generation comes in. There's a lot to play here.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water rescue at Emmons Ave. and Knapp St. in Brooklyn, a serious assault on West 37th St. and 11th Ave. in Manhattan, and a bank robbery on Flatlands Ave. in Queens.
• The body of the Ecuadorian man who was killed in a bar fight earlier this week will be returned home at the expense of a businessman, also from Ecuador, who appreciated the man's abbreviated attempt to support his family from abroad.
• The woman thought to have been trying to throw herself from the Staten Island Ferry in a suicide attempt was actually just drunk.
• Showing up subway-riding Mayor Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff commutes to work on his bike. How is it again, with bike-riding DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, that NYC remains a bike-unfriendly city?
• Woody Allen is trying his hand at opera, from the safe distance of LA. He'll be staging one act of Puccini's three-part "Il Trittico" for the Los Angeles Opera company.
• A jury found that the author who published under the name JT Leroy did defraud a film company and she's been ordered to pay damages.
• The Snapple Theater Center has renamed the space currently hosting a revival of "The Fantasticks" The Jerry Orbach Theater.
• Politics reach a new level of childishness as Giuliani says of Bloomberg: He's copying me.

Now that Law & Order has been renewed for four more seasons, shakeups to the cast have been expected. And the most notable one is that Fred Thompson, who plays District Attorney Arthur Branch, is leaving the show to pursue a presidential campaign. We hope the writers work that in!

In the recent history of television, the people have been given three separate but still gritty police procedurals set in New York City: The police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders in Law & Order, the dedicated Special Victims Unit detectives who investigate especially heinous sexually based offenses in Law & Order Special Victims Unit, and the Major Case Squad detectives who chew scenery as well as they suss out suspects in Law & Order Criminal Intent. But some of their stories may end, as producer Dick Wolf is in the midst of negotiations with NBC over the fate of Law & Order as well as L&O CI.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A shooting in Brooklyn, a power outage in Queens, and scaffolding that fell on the 5 tracks - subway service on the 2 and 5 is messed up!
• A Bronx man pleaded guilty to terror plotting; Tarik Shah will serve no more than 15 years for offering to teach Al Qaeda operatives "how to wage jihad with hand-to-hand combat"
• New lawsuit to stop the Atlantic Yards lawsuit, on the grounds that the Pataki administration's Environmental Impact Statement was "fatally flawed"
• A man stabbed his father while in an SUV in Midtown last night; his mother watched from the backseat
• Brooklyn Record looked at the Williamsburg jeans from the Gap, but it's questionable how Williamsburg they really are
• The Police Academy will move out of its gross East 20th Street digs to College Point, Queens, where the College Point auto pound currently resides
• The missing British teen who ran - and flew - away to NYC after an argument with his parents was found at JFK; we're intrigued how he had enough money of his own to buy a ticket (credit card, probably?)
• Gridskipper lists the top sake bars in the city; old standbys Decibel and Angel Share make it
• The pet food recall now includes dog biscuits
• And, finally, Community Board 4 approved renaming the west side of 53rd and 8th Avenue "Jerry Orbach Way"
Continue reading "Extra, Extra"

Untitled, by Shveckle.

Untitled, by Dogseat.

Community Board 5 was not able to approve a street being named after the late, great Jerry Orbach at a meeting last Thursday. However, it was able to approve putting a public toilet in Madison Square Park!

With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing-- what's going on in the World of the -ist's?

What a strange way for Community Board 5 to decide whether to name 53rd Street at 8th Avenue after Jerry Orbach.

There's Joey Ramone Place and Peter Jennings Way. But getting a street named after the city's arguably most famous TV detective who was also a Broadway legend is no easy task. The NY Times has the full story about the quest for Jerry Orbach's name to grace a street corner. Specifically the corner of West 53rd and 8th Avenue, where he and his wife Elaine Orbach lived.

Fans of Late Night with Conan O'Brien are familiar with the hilarious Pale Force cartoons that feature comedian Jim Gaffigan and O'Brien as very pasty crime fighters. But recently, the series hit a new high with the Law & Order: Pale Face story arc.

Last week, the virtues of organ donation were extolled with news that actor Jerry Orbach had made sure to donate his eyes to two New Yorkers. But making sure that people know you would be a willing organ donor is not so easy. The Daily News points out the license format is not very donation-permission friendly. The surface quality of the licenses which is meant to prevent counterfeiting does a good job of not registering pen ink. (And it also turns out that simply signing the back of your license "doesn't constitute full legal permission to harvest organs, but it may at least indicate a desire to do so.")

We don't know about you, but it's friggin cold out there. Well, not for some of you. It seems as though places that are supposed to be cold are warm and places that are supposed to be warm are cold. Or maybe that's just us. Either way, we're freezing.

This morning's subway commute made us do a double take. Because we saw Jerry Orbach looking at us and the other riders from an ad! The Eye Bank for Sight Restoration has launched an advertising campaign to encourage people to become eye donors. As it happens, today, the Daily News has a story about the Orbach donation:

The Broadway and TV star donated his eyes when he died in December 2004, giving sight to two women who needed new corneas.

Continue reading "Jerry Orbach, Eye Donor"

A look at some noteworthy programs this week:

Have you taken Time Out New York's Essential New Yorker? It's a mammoth, challenging exercise that tests people's knowledge of the city and its people. Naturally, there was a Law & Order question (page 5 of the quiz) that challenged whether you could sift through, oh, about 100 names or so to find the needle in the haystack: "Which one of the following actors has never appeared on New York’s quintessential cop show?"

Alan at Amy's Robot rules! He uploaded this clip of Jerry Orbach in 42nd Street to YouTube. This scene is when Orbach, as director Julian Marsh, tells Peggy Sawyer (played by Wanda Richert) to star in his musical and he sings "The Lullaby of Broadway" (yes, it was a song in 42nd Street before it was a Milford Plaza commercial!). Jerry was a Broadway man before he made it to TV - let us know if someone uploads clips of his performances in Guys and Dolls, Promises, Promises, and Chicago. And thanks again, Alan.

If there is one thing we here at Gothamist love it is Pandas. We may not all agree on the merits of procedural dramas like L&O but who doesn't love a good panda?

Ex-Gawker editor Jesse Oxfeld joins New York just in time for the magazine's big story on where celebs are in the city! Well, he's only quoted (as is current Gawker editor Jessica Coen), but given that yesterday's Post went ga-ga over Brooklyn celebs and where you might see them, forget the locusts, it's the day of the celebs. For the record, Gothamist's favorite star-sighting is not seeing Harrison Ford (with, ugh, that earring!) have dinner at Cafe Luxembourg or Nicole Richie at Balthazar Bakery (so tiny - and with DJ AM!), but it was seeing Elaine Orbach at the Vitamin Shoppe on Broadway and West 72nd Street. It was just the combination of famous, obscure, and Jerry Orbach-related that makes us tick.

- And NJ reaches a budget deal, but it means a 1% sales tax hike

We hope you had a good time at Movable Hype 6.0 last night, which also served as a third birthday party for Gothamist (we really turn three next week, but details!). Thank you (and "Oh, hello!") to hosts Nick Kroll and John Mulaney, and thank you to the great lineup of bands, Burnside Project, Metal Hearts, and Slowlands. And big thank yous to Amelia and Loreal for making us wonderful birthday cakes. We enjoyed a chocolate skyline from Loreal's chocolate (with some coffee!) cake and Amelia's "Jerry Orbach Goes Undercover as a Panda" cake was almost not eaten because we wanted to preserve it.

We're always promoting the native photographers and painters of New York City-- but we've been remiss in not giving enough attention to another indigenous art form: cake decoration. Check out this set of cakes decorated by Ameliaaah on Flickr-- our favorites include the Spycake, the TaurusCake, and the FishCake. Her cakes make Fudgie the Whale look like a pile of poo!

People, this is yooge: Donald Trump is being sued by a trifecta of real estate brokers over $1.3 million in unpaid brokers' fees. The brokers, Barbara Corcoran, Carrie Chiang, and SusanCara-Madden, claim they were promised $4 million in total for helping broker the $1.8 billion dollar sale of some of his Trump Place/Riverside South buildings to Extell earlier this year, but that Trump has only paid $2.7 million. Clearly, these Corcoran brokers need some more money for their holiday shopping lists! Trump tells the AP, "The agreement is very clear. I only pay them when I get paid. We haven't gotten the money yet. For her to bring a lawsuit against me is insane." The brokers' lawyer says that Trump can't pay since he immediately reinvested money from the sale into other real estate, to avoid taxes. Well, that's the smart thing to do. We'd like to see Corcoran and Trump litigate this in a reality TV realm - perhaps the People's Court?