Jimmy Durante: Last News

Lola Dee, whose 1951 hit “Pretty Eyed Baby” under the name Lola Ameche rose to No. 21 on the Billboard singles chart, has died at 95. She died of natural causes in a Hinsdale, Illinois nursing facility, her publicist said.

Jaden Thompson Lola Dee, a popular singer in the 1950s who toured with Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante and Johnnie Ray, has died. She was 95. The pop singer, who was signed to Columbia and Mercury labels in the ’50s, died of natural causes in Hinsdale, Illinois at a nursing facility, as announced by her publicist and CD producer Alan Eichler.

Todd Gilchrist editor “Fair to middling” is how Angie Dickinson is feeling this morning as she talks about “Rio Bravo,” the 1959 film that made her a star. “Somebody who says they’re great at 90, you can figure out that they lie a lot.” It’s a line that could have come straight from Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett’s script for the film — and a reminder that Dickinson’s gift for delivery isn’t dependent on working with a brilliant director, though she has many times in her seven-decade career. Dickinson has more then 350 screen credits — an enormous body of work that includes “Ocean’s Eleven” (the 1960 original), “Point Blank” and “Dressed to Kill.” She’s set to appear April 13 at the TCM Film Festival to introduce a 4K restoration of Howard Hawks’ classic Western, whose boys’ club cast of John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan she breaks up with that same brisk humor. Ahead of the event, Dickinson speaks with Variety about catching the acting bug after spying Frank Sinatra (later a lifelong friend) on the set of “The Jimmy Durante Show,” working with Brian De Palma, and other highlights from a lifetime of memories.

Jules Bass, whose work as a producer and director of stop-motion and animated television specials such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town and The Year Without A Santa Claus has become an integral part of the holiday season for generations, died today in Rye, New York, of age-related illnesses. He was 87.