Katie Holmes' latest Broadway run cut short

Katie Holmes plays Lorna in Dead Accounts by Theresa Rebeck. The plays Broadway run will end Jan. 6. (Joan Marcus/Boneau/Bryan-Brown/Associated Press)

Katie Holmes' latest turn on Broadway has been cut short after the play she starred in, Dead Accounts, received mixed reviews.

Originally scheduled to run another seven weeks, it will close Jan. 6 after 27 previews and 44 performances.

Holmes, formerly married to Tom Cruise, made her Broadway debut four years ago in All My Sons.

After Dead Accounts opened in November, she received a warm reception in her role as the sister of a man who returns to his home in the Midwest with a secret. Norbert Leo Butz plays Holmes' onstage brother in the drama.

"Let me assure you that Holmes, who was a tad unsteady in her Broadway debut four years ago in Arthur Miller's All My Sons, appears much more at ease playing a worn-down country mouse to the hyped-up city mouse of Butz," the New York Times said in its review.

"Holmes suggests what might have happened to Joey Potter, the ultimate girl-next-door she once portrayed on TV in Dawson's Creek had she never found true love or left town."

Criticism centred on the play itself, written by Theresa Rebeck, who created the first season of NBC's Smash.

Although Rebeck has created well-received plays such as Mauritius and Seminar, Dead Accounts was seen by critics as uneven in tone and unfocused in its storytelling.

It's not the only recent Broadway casualty — David Mamet's The Anarchist, starring Broadway legend Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, closed Dec. 16 after only 23 previews and 17 regular shows.

In the December issue of Vogue, Holmes said she was keen to do more theatre.

"It's exciting because there's no close-up, so a person has to use every inch of themselves," Holmes said. "So you're never done — and who wants to be done? It's just another opportunity to keep growing."

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Twitter followers are up for sale

In an age when having a strong social media profile is a mark of success, some comedians, musicians and artists are turning to services that sell Twitter followers.

It's a new business geared to the digital era – with companies that sell "bots" or computer-generated accounts that pose as Twitter followers. Also on the rise are professional followers, who are paid to tweet and re-tweet for the stars.

Lady Gaga, Mitt Romney and even Barack Obama have all been accused of buying followers, though all have denied it.

As Deana Sumanac reports, many social media experts oppose the practice, saying it is an abuse of Twitter and Facebook's power to represent grassroots popularity.

Steve Dolson says buying followers can skew the impact of social media.

"It was mostly supposed to be equal playing ground, where people who rise to the top will rise to the top and the people who love their fans and engage their fans, they should rise to the top. But now you have people who buy followers that look bigger than they are," he told CBC News.

But comedian Dan Nainan admits he did buy followers at the start of his career and sees it as part of the price of building an image and drawing new audiences.

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Ewan McGregor, Kate Bush on Queen's honour list

Actor Ewan McGregor, fashion designer Stella McCartney and Scottish physicist Peter Higgs, who gave his name to the so-called "God particle," are among the hundreds being honoured by Queen Elizabeth II this New Year.

The list is particularly heavy with Britain's Olympic heroes, but also includes eccentric English singer Kate Bush, author Roald Dahl, illustrator Quentin Blake, and Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, the royal aide who helped organize the watched-around-the-world wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton.

McCartney was honoured with the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire, or OBE, in part for her work creating the skintight, red-white-and-blue uniforms worn by British athletes as they grabbed 65 medals during the 2012 games hosted by London. McCartney is the designer daughter of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and his first wife Linda, and has set up a successful business and a critically-acclaimed label.

University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs' achievements examiine the nature and origin of the universe. (Fabrice Coffrini/Associated Press)

Higgs' achievements, which made him a Companion of Honour, touch on the nature and the origins of the universe. The 83-year-old researcher's work in theoretical physics sought to explain what gives things weight. He said it was while walking through the Scottish mountains that he hit upon the concept of what would later become known as the Higgs boson, an elusive subatomic particle that gives objects mass and combines with gravity to give them weight.

For decades, the existence of such a particle remained just a theory, but earlier this year scientists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said they'd found compelling evidence that the Higgs boson was out there. Or in there.

All of Britain's gold medallists from this year's games were on the list, with cyclist Bradley Wiggins and sailor Ben Ainslie honoured with knighthoods. Sebastian Coe, who masterminded the games as chairman of the London organizing committee, was made a Companion of Honour — a prestigious title also awarded to Higgs.

Honors lists typically include a sprinkling of star power, and this year was no different. Ewan McGregor, who came to public attention through his role as the heroin-addled anti-hero of British drug drama Trainspotting, was awarded an OBE. The 41-year-old actor is also known for his turn as a young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels.

Kate Bush out of public eye for many years

Babooshka singer Kate Bush said she was delighted to be made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE, for a musical career which has resulted in a string of quirky hits including Wuthering Heights, Cloudbusting, and Man With The Child In His Eyes.

The 54-year-old singer-songwriter has been out of the public eye for almost two decades but recently released a set of new tracks.

Singer-songwriter Kate Bush, 54, has kept out of the public eye for much of the past two decades. Last year, she released an album of new tracks called 50 Words For Snow. (Trevor Leighton/Associated Press)

Other art world honorees included artist Tracey Emin and Quentin Blake, whose spiky, exuberant illustrations are best known through the work of his collaborator Roald Dahl.

Politicians, policemen, and spies got honours too. Scotland Yard chief Bernard Hogan-Howe was awarded a knighthood; former British foreign minister Margaret Beckett was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife Cherie was made a CBE for her charity work. MI5 chief Jonathan Evans was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Bath.

Also honoured was the man credited with helping pull off the wedding of the decade: Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, principal private secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (as Prince William and his wife are formally known) was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.

Britain's honours are bestowed twice a year by the monarch, at New Year's and on her official birthday in June. Although the queen does pick out some lesser honours herself, the vast majority of recipients are selected by government committees from nominations made by officials and members of the public.

In descending order, the honours are knighthoods, CBE, OBE, and MBE — Member of the Order of the British Empire. Knights are addressed as "sir" or "dame." Recipients of the other honours, such as the Order of the Companions of Honour given to Higgs and Coe or the Royal Victorian Order personally picked out by the queen, receive no title but can put the letters after their names.

The New Year's honours carried the usual batch of courtiers — even the royal household's switchboard operator got a medal — as well as senior civil servants, soldiers, charity executives, successful entrepreneurs, established academics, volunteers, and community workers.

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Kanye West, Kim Kardashian expecting 1st child

A kid for Kimye: Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are expecting their first child.

The rapper announced at a concert Sunday night that his girlfriend is pregnant. Kardashian was in the crowd at Revel Resort's Ovation Hall in Atlantic City with her mother, Kris Jenner, and West's mentor and best friend, Jay-Z. West told the crowd of more than 5,000 in song form: "Now you having my baby."

The crowd roared. And so did people on the internet.

The news instantly went viral on Twitter and Facebook, with thousands posting and commenting on the expecting couple.

Most of the Kardashian clan also tweeted about the news, including Kim's sisters. Kourtney Kardashian wrote: "Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!"

West, 35, also told concertgoers to congratulate his "baby mom" and that this was the "most amazing thing."

Representatives for West and Kardashian, 32, didn't immediately respond to emails about the pregnancy.

The rapper and reality TV star went public in March about their relationship.

Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries in August 2011 and their divorce is not finalized.

West's Sunday night show was his third consecutive performance at Revel. He took the stage for nearly two hours, performing hits like "Good Life," "Jesus Walks" and "Clique" in an all-white ensemble with two bandmates.

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Rescue Me singer Fontella Bass dies at 72

Fontella Bass performs at New York's Apollo Theatre in 2010. The St. Louis-born soul singer died Wednesday in St. Louis. (Louis Lanzano/Associated Press)

Fontella Bass, a St. Louis-born soul singer who hit the top of the R&B charts with Rescue Me in 1965, has died. She was 72.

Bass died Wednesday night at a St. Louis hospice of complications from a heart attack suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, said. Bass had also suffered a series of strokes over the past seven years.

"She was an outgoing person," Mitchell said of her mother. "She had a very big personality. Any room she entered she just lit the room up, whether she was on stage or just going out to eat."

Bass was born into a family with deep musical roots. Her mother was gospel singer Martha Bass, one of the Clara Ward Singers. Her younger brother, David Peaston, had a string of R&B hits in the 1980s and 1990s. Peaston died in February at age 54.

Bass began performing at a young age, singing in her church's choir at age six. She was surrounded by music, often travelling on national tours with her mother and her gospel group.

Her interest turned from gospel to R&B when she was a teenager and she began her professional career at the Showboat Club in north St. Louis at age 17. She eventually auditioned for Chess Records and landed a recording contract, first as a duet artist.

Her duet with Bobby McClure, Don't Mess Up a Good Thing, reached No. 5 on the R&B charts and No. 33 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1965.

She co-wrote and later that year recorded Rescue Me, reaching No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 4 on the Billboard pop singles chart. Bass's powerful voice bore a striking resemblance to that of Aretha Franklin, who is often misidentified as the singer of that chart-topping hit.

Bass had a few other modest hits, but says she developed a reputation as a troublemaker because she demanded more artistic control, and more money for her songs.

She haggled over royalty rights to Rescue Me for years before reaching a settlement in the late 1980s, Mitchell said. She sued American Express over the use of the song in a commercial, settling for an undisclosed amount in 1993.

Rescue Me has been covered by many top artists, including Linda Ronstadt, Cher, Melissa Manchester and Pat Benatar. Franklin eventually sang a form of it too — as Deliver Me in a Pizza Hut TV ad in 1991.

Bass lived briefly in Europe before returning to St. Louis in the early 1970s, where she and husband, jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie, raised their family. She recorded occasionally, including a 1995 gospel album, No Ways Tired, that earned a Grammy nomination.

Bass was inducted into the St. Louis Hall of Fame in 2000.

She is survived by four children. Bowie died in 1999.

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Katie Holmes' latest Broadway run cut short

Katie Holmes plays Lorna in Dead Accounts by Theresa Rebeck. The plays Broadway run will end Jan. 6. (Joan Marcus/Boneau/Bryan-Brown/Associated Press)

Katie Holmes' latest turn on Broadway has been cut short after the play she starred in, Dead Accounts, received mixed reviews.

Originally scheduled to run another seven weeks, it will close Jan. 6 after 27 previews and 44 performances.

Holmes, formerly married to Tom Cruise, made her Broadway debut four years ago in All My Sons.

After Dead Accounts opened in November, she received a warm reception in her role as the sister of a man who returns to his home in the Midwest with a secret. Norbert Leo Butz plays Holmes' onstage brother in the drama.

"Let me assure you that Holmes, who was a tad unsteady in her Broadway debut four years ago in Arthur Miller's All My Sons, appears much more at ease playing a worn-down country mouse to the hyped-up city mouse of Butz," the New York Times said in its review.

"Holmes suggests what might have happened to Joey Potter, the ultimate girl-next-door she once portrayed on TV in Dawson's Creek had she never found true love or left town."

Criticism centred on the play itself, written by Theresa Rebeck, who created the first season of NBC's Smash.

Although Rebeck has created well-received plays such as Mauritius and Seminar, Dead Accounts was seen by critics as uneven in tone and unfocused in its storytelling.

It's not the only recent Broadway casualty — David Mamet's The Anarchist, starring Broadway legend Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, closed Dec. 16 after only 23 previews and 17 regular shows.

In the December issue of Vogue, Holmes said she was keen to do more theatre.

"It's exciting because there's no close-up, so a person has to use every inch of themselves," Holmes said. "So you're never done — and who wants to be done? It's just another opportunity to keep growing."

22.19 | 0 komentar | Read More

Twitter followers are up for sale

In an age when having a strong social media profile is a mark of success, some comedians, musicians and artists are turning to services that sell Twitter followers.

It's a new business geared to the digital era – with companies that sell "bots" or computer-generated accounts that pose as Twitter followers. Also on the rise are professional followers, who are paid to tweet and re-tweet for the stars.

Lady Gaga, Mitt Romney and even Barack Obama have all been accused of buying followers, though all have denied it.

As Deana Sumanac reports, many social media experts oppose the practice, saying it is an abuse of Twitter and Facebook's power to represent grassroots popularity.

Steve Dolson says buying followers can skew the impact of social media.

"It was mostly supposed to be equal playing ground, where people who rise to the top will rise to the top and the people who love their fans and engage their fans, they should rise to the top. But now you have people who buy followers that look bigger than they are," he told CBC News.

But comedian Dan Nainan admits he did buy followers at the start of his career and sees it as part of the price of building an image and drawing new audiences.

22.19 | 0 komentar | Read More

Music therapy offers hope for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

Music might help people with cognitive impairment, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, a study suggests.

Frank Russo, a cognitive scientist doing research at Ryerson University in Toronto, is using new technology to probe the link between sound and the parts of the brain that control movement.

Music therapy can help Parkinson's patients walk and people with Alzheimer's remember, with song lyrics surfacing in the brain even among people who have lost the ability to recognize their own relatives.

Russo is hoping to develop a clearer picture of how music can rehabilitate damaged circuitry and hopes to apply that research to conditions ranging from autism to stroke.

CBC's Kim Brunhuber reports on how music therapy might grow as the population ages.

22.19 | 0 komentar | Read More

Rescue Me singer Fontella Bass dies at 72

Fontella Bass performs at New York's Apollo Theatre in 2010. The St. Louis-born soul singer died Wednesday in St. Louis. (Louis Lanzano/Associated Press)

Fontella Bass, a St. Louis-born soul singer who hit the top of the R&B charts with Rescue Me in 1965, has died. She was 72.

Bass died Wednesday night at a St. Louis hospice of complications from a heart attack suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, said. Bass had also suffered a series of strokes over the past seven years.

"She was an outgoing person," Mitchell said of her mother. "She had a very big personality. Any room she entered she just lit the room up, whether she was on stage or just going out to eat."

Bass was born into a family with deep musical roots. Her mother was gospel singer Martha Bass, one of the Clara Ward Singers. Her younger brother, David Peaston, had a string of R&B hits in the 1980s and 1990s. Peaston died in February at age 54.

Bass began performing at a young age, singing in her church's choir at age six. She was surrounded by music, often travelling on national tours with her mother and her gospel group.

Her interest turned from gospel to R&B when she was a teenager and she began her professional career at the Showboat Club in north St. Louis at age 17. She eventually auditioned for Chess Records and landed a recording contract, first as a duet artist.

Her duet with Bobby McClure, Don't Mess Up a Good Thing, reached No. 5 on the R&B charts and No. 33 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1965.

She co-wrote and later that year recorded Rescue Me, reaching No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 4 on the Billboard pop singles chart. Bass's powerful voice bore a striking resemblance to that of Aretha Franklin, who is often misidentified as the singer of that chart-topping hit.

Bass had a few other modest hits, but says she developed a reputation as a troublemaker because she demanded more artistic control, and more money for her songs.

She haggled over royalty rights to Rescue Me for years before reaching a settlement in the late 1980s, Mitchell said. She sued American Express over the use of the song in a commercial, settling for an undisclosed amount in 1993.

Rescue Me has been covered by many top artists, including Linda Ronstadt, Cher, Melissa Manchester and Pat Benatar. Franklin eventually sang a form of it too — as Deliver Me in a Pizza Hut TV ad in 1991.

Bass lived briefly in Europe before returning to St. Louis in the early 1970s, where she and husband, jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie, raised their family. She recorded occasionally, including a 1995 gospel album, No Ways Tired, that earned a Grammy nomination.

Bass was inducted into the St. Louis Hall of Fame in 2000.

She is survived by four children. Bowie died in 1999.

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Katie Holmes' latest Broadway run cut short

Katie Holmes plays Lorna in Dead Accounts by Theresa Rebeck. The plays Broadway run will end Jan. 6. (Joan Marcus/Boneau/Bryan-Brown/Associated Press)

Katie Holmes' latest turn on Broadway has been cut short after the play she starred in, Dead Accounts, received mixed reviews.

Originally scheduled to run another seven weeks, it will close Jan. 6 after 27 previews and 44 performances.

Holmes, formerly married to Tom Cruise, made her Broadway debut four years ago in All My Sons.

After Dead Accounts opened in November, she received a warm reception in her role as the sister of a man who returns to his home in the Midwest with a secret. Norbert Leo Butz plays Holmes' onstage brother in the drama.

"Let me assure you that Holmes, who was a tad unsteady in her Broadway debut four years ago in Arthur Miller's All My Sons, appears much more at ease playing a worn-down country mouse to the hyped-up city mouse of Butz," the New York Times said in its review.

"Holmes suggests what might have happened to Joey Potter, the ultimate girl-next-door she once portrayed on TV in Dawson's Creek had she never found true love or left town."

Criticism centred on the play itself, written by Theresa Rebeck, who created the first season of NBC's Smash.

Although Rebeck has created well-received plays such as Mauritius and Seminar, Dead Accounts was seen by critics as uneven in tone and unfocused in its storytelling.

It's not the only recent Broadway casualty — David Mamet's The Anarchist, starring Broadway legend Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, closed Dec. 16 after only 23 previews and 17 regular shows.

In the December issue of Vogue, Holmes said she was keen to do more theatre.

"It's exciting because there's no close-up, so a person has to use every inch of themselves," Holmes said. "So you're never done — and who wants to be done? It's just another opportunity to keep growing."

22.19 | 0 komentar | Read More

Twitter followers are up for sale

In an age when having a strong social media profile is a mark of success, some comedians, musicians and artists are turning to services that sell Twitter followers.

It's a new business geared to the digital era – with companies that sell "bots" or computer-generated accounts that pose as Twitter followers. Also on the rise are professional followers, who are paid to tweet and re-tweet for the stars.

Lady Gaga, Mitt Romney and even Barack Obama have all been accused of buying followers, though all have denied it.

As Deana Sumanac reports, many social media experts oppose the practice, saying it is an abuse of Twitter and Facebook's power to represent grassroots popularity.

Steve Dolson says buying followers can skew the impact of social media.

"It was mostly supposed to be equal playing ground, where people who rise to the top will rise to the top and the people who love their fans and engage their fans, they should rise to the top. But now you have people who buy followers that look bigger than they are," he told CBC News.

But comedian Dan Nainan admits he did buy followers at the start of his career and sees it as part of the price of building an image and drawing new audiences.

22.19 | 0 komentar | Read More

Music therapy offers hope for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

Music might help people with cognitive impairment, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, a study suggests.

Frank Russo, a cognitive scientist doing research at Ryerson University in Toronto, is using new technology to probe the link between sound and the parts of the brain that control movement.

Music therapy can help Parkinson's patients walk and people with Alzheimer's remember, with song lyrics surfacing in the brain even among people who have lost the ability to recognize their own relatives.

Russo is hoping to develop a clearer picture of how music can rehabilitate damaged circuitry and hopes to apply that research to conditions ranging from autism to stroke.

CBC's Kim Brunhuber reports on how music therapy might grow as the population ages.

22.19 | 0 komentar | Read More

British film composer Richard Rodney Bennett dies at 76

Richard Rodney Bennett, a British-born composer for film, ballet, opera and the concert hall, died Christmas Eve in New York. He was 76.

Bennett, who had made his home in New York for the past 20 years, moved between the jazz and classical worlds throughout his career, but was best known for his film scores.

He earned a BAFTA award for his score for Murder on the Orient Express in 1974 and was nominated nine times for the British film awards his TV and film scores including Ghormenghast, Tender is the Night, Yanks and Equus.

'Richard was the most complete musician of his generation — lavishly gifted as a composer, performer and entertainer in a multiplicity of styles and genres'—Chris Butler

His best-known film is probably Four Weddings and a Funeral, but he has more than 50 film and TV scores to his credit including popular TV series Doctor Who. He was nominated for an Academy Award three times, for Murder on the Orient Express, Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967).

Considered one of the great jazz pianists of his generation, Bennett accompanied singers such as Cleo Laine and Claire Martin. He frequently performed at the Algonquin Hotel in New York playing songs from the American Songbook.

Jazz singer Ann Hampton Callaway remembered Bennett on her Facebook account.

"He was one of the first friends of the music world to welcome me to New York, teach me great songs, accompany and arrange for me and record with me. He had superb taste, great talent and a wicked sense of humour," Callaway wrote.

He also earned important commissions, such as Reflections on a Scottish Folk Song, a concert for cello and strings commissioned by the Prince of Wales to honour the memory of the Queen Mother in 2004.

Chris Butler, head of publishing for Music Sales Group, paid tribute to his versatility.

Richard Rodney Bennett, left, poses with Paul McCartney and Judith Bingham before a benefit concert for The Garland Appeal, charity dedicated to fighting cancer in honour of McCartney's late wife Linda. (Doug Kanter/AFP/Getty Images)

"Richard was the most complete musician of his generation — lavishly gifted as a composer, performer and entertainer in a multiplicity of styles and genres," Butler said in a statement.

Bennett was born in 1936 and raised in Budleigh Salterton, Devon. His mother had studied music composition and his father was a writer of children's books.

In 1953 he began studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, part of a golden generation of British composers that includes Peter Maxwell Davies, Thea Musgrave, Cornelius Cardew and Harrison Birtwistle.

Bennett studied personally with Pierre Boulez in Paris from 1957-58 and visited the Darmstadt summer school, learning the 12-tone serial composition then considered the cutting edge in classical music.

His early classical works were performed when he was still a student. He wrote his Dream Sequence for cello and piano for Julian Lloyd Webber and John Lenehan and his Symphony No. 2 for the New York Philharmonic.

He also wrote operas such as The Mines of Sulpher and choral works, including The Garden, a Serenade to Glimmerglass, commissioned for the Glimmerglass Opera in 2006.

Bennett was knighted in 1998 for services to music.

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Natalie Portman tops Forbes list of most bankable stars

Natalie Portman has topped a Forbes.com list of stars who give the best bang for the buck in box-office returns.

Long a popular actress, Portman got a boost in the standings by her turn in Oscar-winner Black Swan, an indie film made for $13 million US which grossed $329 million at the box office.

Forbes bases its most-bankable ranking on the last three films starring each actor, comparing the cost of the film and the salary paid to the star with its box office results.

Portman's success is unusual because her other films include Your Highness, which flopped, and No Strings Attached, a rom-com that did surprisingly well.

Most of the top 10 actors on the list had roles in blockbuster franchises.

Second-place actor Kristen Stewart is star of the Twilight franchise and Snow White and the Huntsman and returned an average of $40.60 for every dollar she earned.

She ran a close second to Portman, with the last two Twilight films among her last three films. Snow White also drew a big audience, in part because of interest over her scandalous affair with director Rupert Sanders.

Fellow Twilight star Robert Pattinson is also on the list, along with another Twilight face, Taylor Lautner. Pattinson's turn in Like Water for Elephants brings him onto the list lower than Stewart, and Lautner had a bit of a failure with Abduction.

Other high-ranking stars include Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe, and Shia LeBeouf, who says he is now finished with the Transformers movies, but counts Dark of the Moon among his last three films.

This list is a counterpoint to Forbes's Most Overpaid Actors list for 2012, which was released earlier this month with Eddie Murphy topping the list.

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You're an app now, Charlie Brown

A small Vancouver company has created an iPad app based on A Charlie Brown Christmas that attempts to capture the magic of the 1965 TV Christmas classic.

Company founder Calvin Wong always loved the TV special and wanted to create a version children could interact with that stayed true to the original.

"You don't want to mess up a masterpiece," he said.

His company, Loud Crow Interactive, made its first foray into children's apps with one that introduced kids to the Peter Rabbit stories of Beatrix Potter.

Then, the company that owns the rights to Charles Schulz' Peanuts comic strip came calling.

Curt Petrovich reports on what was involved in creating an interactive animation with the Peanuts characters, and getting the rights to use children's voices recorded more than 40 years ago.

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Rescue Me singer Fontella Bass dies at 72

Fontella Bass performs at New York's Apollo Theatre in 2010. The St. Louis-born soul singer died Wednesday in St. Louis. (Louis Lanzano/Associated Press)

Fontella Bass, a St. Louis-born soul singer who hit the top of the R&B charts with Rescue Me in 1965, has died. She was 72.

Bass died Wednesday night at a St. Louis hospice of complications from a heart attack suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, said. Bass had also suffered a series of strokes over the past seven years.

"She was an outgoing person," Mitchell said of her mother. "She had a very big personality. Any room she entered she just lit the room up, whether she was on stage or just going out to eat."

Bass was born into a family with deep musical roots. Her mother was gospel singer Martha Bass, one of the Clara Ward Singers. Her younger brother, David Peaston, had a string of R&B hits in the 1980s and 1990s. Peaston died in February at age 54.

Bass began performing at a young age, singing in her church's choir at age six. She was surrounded by music, often travelling on national tours with her mother and her gospel group.

Her interest turned from gospel to R&B when she was a teenager and she began her professional career at the Showboat Club in north St. Louis at age 17. She eventually auditioned for Chess Records and landed a recording contract, first as a duet artist.

Her duet with Bobby McClure, Don't Mess Up a Good Thing, reached No. 5 on the R&B charts and No. 33 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1965.

She co-wrote and later that year recorded Rescue Me, reaching No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 4 on the Billboard pop singles chart. Bass's powerful voice bore a striking resemblance to that of Aretha Franklin, who is often misidentified as the singer of that chart-topping hit.

Bass had a few other modest hits, but says she developed a reputation as a troublemaker because she demanded more artistic control, and more money for her songs.

She haggled over royalty rights to Rescue Me for years before reaching a settlement in the late 1980s, Mitchell said. She sued American Express over the use of the song in a commercial, settling for an undisclosed amount in 1993.

Rescue Me has been covered by many top artists, including Linda Ronstadt, Cher, Melissa Manchester and Pat Benatar. Franklin eventually sang a form of it too — as Deliver Me in a Pizza Hut TV ad in 1991.

Bass lived briefly in Europe before returning to St. Louis in the early 1970s, where she and husband, jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie, raised their family. She recorded occasionally, including a 1995 gospel album, No Ways Tired, that earned a Grammy nomination.

Bass was inducted into the St. Louis Hall of Fame in 2000.

She is survived by four children. Bowie died in 1999.

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Jack Klugman, Oscar from The Odd Couple, dies at 90

Jack Klugman, the prolific, craggy-faced character actor and regular guy who was loved by millions as the messy one in TV's The Odd Couple and the crime-fighting coroner in Quincy, M.E., died Monday, a son said. He was 90.

Klugman, who lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s and trained himself to speak again, died with his wife at his side.

"He had a great life and he enjoyed every moment of it and he would encourage others to do the same," son Adam Klugman said.

Adam Klugman said he was spending Christmas with his brother, David, and their families. Their father had been convalescing for some time but had apparently died suddenly and they were not sure of the exact cause.

"His sons loved him very much," David Klugman said. "We'll carry on in his spirit."

Actor Jack Klugman arrives at the Tony Awards in 2008. Klugman split his time between TV, movies and the New York stage. (Peter Kramer/Associated Press)

Never anyone's idea of a matinee idol, Klugman remained a popular star for decades simply by playing the type of man you could imagine running into at a bar or riding on a subway with — gruff, but down to earth, his tie stained and a little loose, a racing form under his arm, a cigar in hand during the days when smoking was permitted.

He was an actor ideal for The Odd Couple, which ran from 1970 to 1975 and was based on Neil Simon's play about mismatched roommates, divorced New Yorkers who end up living together. The show teamed Klugman — the sloppy sports writer Oscar Madison — and Tony Randall — the fussy photographer Felix Unger — in the roles played by Walter Matthau and Art Carney on Broadway and Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1968 film. Klugman had already had a taste of the show when he replaced Matthau on Broadway and he learned to roll with the quick-thinking Randall, with whom he had worked in 1955 on the CBS series Appointment with Adventure.

"There's nobody better to improvise with than Tony," Klugman said. "A script might say, 'Oscar teaches Felix football.' There would be four blank pages. He would provoke me into reacting to what he did. Mine was the easy part."

They were battlers on screen, and the best of friends in real life. When Randall died in 2004 at age 84, Klugman told CNN: "A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize."

Quincy 'two heroes in one'

In Quincy, M.E., which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.

"We had some wonderful writers," he said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. "Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero.

"Everybody said, 'Quincy'll never be a hit.' I said, 'You guys are wrong. He's two heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.' A coroner has power. He can tell the police commissioner to investigate a murder. I saw the opportunity to do what I'd gotten into the theater to do — give a message.

"They were going to do cops and robbers with 'Quincy.' I said, 'You promised me I could do causes.' They said, 'Nobody wants to see that.' I said, 'Look at the success of 60 Minutes." They want to see it if you present it as entertainment." '

For his 1987 role as 81-year-old Nat in the Broadway production of I'm Not Rappaport, Klugman wore leg weights to learn to shuffle like an elderly man. He said he would wear them for an hour before each performance, "to remember to keep that shuffle."

"The guy is so vital emotionally, but physically he can't be," Klugman said.

"We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80."

Film credits include 12 Angry Men, Days of Wine and Roses

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in Philadelphia and began his acting career in college drama (Carnegie Institute of Technology). After serving in the Army during the Second World War, he went on to summer stock and off-Broadway, rooming with fellow actor Charles Bronson as both looked for paying jobs. He made his Broadway debut in 1952 in a revival of Golden Boy. His film credits included Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men and Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses and an early television highlight was appearing with Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda in a production of The Petrified Forest. His performance in the classic 1959 musical Gypsy brought him a Tony nomination for best featured (supporting) actor in a musical.

He also appeared in several episodes of The Twilight Zone, including a memorable 1963 one in which he played a negligent father whose son is seriously wounded in Vietnam. His other TV shows included The Defenders and the soap opera The Greatest Gift.

In a 1987 interview in the New York Daily News, he said, "once I did three hourlong shows in 2½ weeks. Think we'd do that now? Huh! But then it was great. I did summer stock, played the classics. Me!"

Throat cancer took away his raspy voice for several years in the 1980s. When he was back on the stage for a 1993 revival of Three Men on a Horse, The Associated Press review said, "His voice may be a little scratchy but his timing is as impeccable as ever."

"The only really stupid thing I ever did in my life was to start smoking," he said in 1996. Seeing people smoking in television and films, he added, "disgusts me, it makes me so angry — kids are watching."

In his later years, he guest-starred on TV series including Third Watch and Crossing Jordan and appeared in a 2010 theatrical film, Camera Obscura.

Loved horse racing

Klugman's hobby was horse racing and he eventually took up raising them, too.

"I always loved to gamble," he said. "I never got close to a horse. Fate dealt me a terrible blow when it gave me a good horse the first time out. I thought how easy this is.

"Now I love being around them."

Klugman's wife, actress-comedian Brett Somers, played his ex-wife, Blanche, in the Odd Couple series. The couple, who married in 1953 and had two sons, Adam and David, had been estranged for years at the time of her death in 2007.

In February 2008, at age 85, Klugman married longtime girlfriend Peggy Crosby.

In 1997, Klugman was sued by an ex-girlfriend, Barbara Neugass, who claimed he had promised to support her for the rest of her life. But a jury rejected her claim.

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Charles Durning, king of character actors, dies at 89

Charles Durning grew up in poverty, lost five of his nine siblings to disease, barely lived through D-Day and was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge.

His hard life and wartime trauma provided the basis for a prolific 50-year career as a consummate Oscar-nominated character actor, playing everyone from a Nazi colonel, to the Pope to Dustin Hoffman's would-be suitor in Tootsie.

Durning, who died Monday at age 89 in New York, got his start as an usher at a burlesque theatre in Buffalo, N.Y. When one of the comedians showed up too drunk to go on, Durning took his place. He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as heard the audience laughing.

He told The Associated Press in 2008 that he had no plans to stop working. "They're going to carry me out, if I go," he said.

Durning's longtime agent and friend, Judith Moss, told the AP that Durning died of natural causes in his home in the borough of Manhattan.

Although he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials, to comic foils to put-upon everymen, Durning may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982's The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Many critics marvelled that such a heavyset man could be so nimble in the film's show-stopping song-and-dance number, not realizing Durning had been a dance instructor early in his career. Indeed, he had met his first wife, Carol, when both worked at a dance studio.

The year after Best Little Whorehouse, Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks's To Be or Not to Be. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975's Dog Day Afternoon.

He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald in the TV film The Kennedys of Massachusetts and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in the Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Career started on stage

Durning had begun his career on stage, getting his first big break when theatrical producer Joseph Papp hired him for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

He went on to work regularly, if fairly anonymously, through the 1960s until his breakout role as a small town mayor in the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play That Championship Season in 1972.

He quickly made an impression on movie audiences the following year as the crooked cop stalking con men Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the Oscar-winning comedy The Sting.

Dozens of notable portrayals followed. He was:

• The would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in Tootsie.
• The infamous seller of frog legs in The Muppet Movie.
• Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy.
• He played Santa Claus in four different movies made for television.
• He played the Pope in the TV film I Would be Called John: Pope John XXIII.

"I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director," Durning told The Associated Press in 2008, when he was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Actors Charles Durning, left, Eliott Gould, middle, and then Screen Actors Guild president Ed Asner are shown in March 1984 before the filming of the 50th Anniversary Special celebrating the guild in Santa Monica, Calif. (Heung Shing Liu/Associated Press)

Other films included The Front Page, The Hindenburg, Breakheart Pass, North Dallas Forty, Starting Over, Tough Guys, Home for the Holidays, Spy Hard and O Brother Where Art Thou?

Durning also did well in television as a featured performer as well as a guest star. He appeared in the short-lived series The Cop and the Kid (1975), Eye to Eye (1985) and First Monday (2002) as well as the four-season Evening Shade in the 1990s.

"If I'm not in a part, I drive my wife crazy," he acknowledged during a 1997 interview. "I'll go downstairs to get the mail, and when I come back I'll say, `Any calls for me?"'

Durning's rugged early life provided ample material on which to base his later portrayals. He was born into an Irish family of 10 children in 1923, in Highland Falls, N.Y., a town near West Point. His father was unable to work, having lost a leg and been gassed during World War I, so his mother supported the family by washing the uniforms of West Point cadets.

The younger Durning himself would barely survive World War II.

He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.

Military left 'too many bad memories,' Durning says

In later years, he refused to discuss the military service for which he was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.

"Too many bad memories," he told an interviewer in 1997. "I don't want you to see me crying."

Tragedy also stalked other members of his family. Durning was 12 when his father died, and five of his sisters lost their lives to smallpox and scarlet fever.

A high school counsellor told him he had no talent for art, languages or math and should learn office skills. But after seeing King Kong and some of James Cagney's films, Durning knew what he wanted to do.

Leaving home at 16, he worked in a munitions factory, on a slag heap and in a barbed-wire factory.

Durning and his first wife had three children before divorcing in 1972. In 1974, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary Ann Amelio.

He is survived by his children, Michele, Douglas and Jeannine. The family planned to have a private family service and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

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Hollywood studios rake in record $10.8B for 2012

Ticket sales at U.S. theatres are up for the first time in three years as Hollywood studios took in a record $10.8 billion US domestically in 2012.

The industry rebounded this year, with ticket sales projected to rise 5.6 per cent to 1.36 billion by Dec. 31, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com.

That's still well below the modern peak of 1.6 billion tickets sold in 2002, but in an age of cozy home theatre setups and endless entertainment gadgets, studio executives consider it a triumph.

"It is a victory, ultimately," said Don Harris, head of distribution at Paramount Pictures. "If we deliver the product as an industry that people want, they will want to get out there. Even though you can sit at home and watch something on your large screen in [high-definition], people want to get out."

U.S. domestic revenue should finish up nearly 6 per cent from 2011's $10.2 billion and top Hollywood's previous high of $10.6 billion set in 2009.

Superheroes flicks boost sales

The year was led by a pair of superhero sagas, Disney's The Avengers with $623 million domestically and $1.5 billion worldwide and the Warner Bros. Batman finale The Dark Knight Rises with $448 million domestically and $1.1 billion worldwide.

Sony's James Bond adventure Skyfall is closing in on the $1 billion mark globally, and the list of action and family film blockbusters includes The Hunger Games, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part Two, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, The Amazing Spider-Man and Brave.

While domestic revenues inch upward most years largely because of inflation, the real growth areas have been overseas.

International business generally used to account for less than half of a studio film's overall receipts. Now, films often do two or even three times as much business overseas as they do domestically. Some movies that were duds with U.S. audiences, such as Battleship and John Carter, can wind up being $200 million hits overseas.

Before television, movies had ticket sales estimated as high as 4 billion a year in the U.S. in the 1930s and '40s. But movie-going eroded steadily through the 1970s as people stayed home with their small screens. The rise of videotape in the 1980s further cut into business, followed by DVDs in the '90s and big, cheap flat-screen televisions in recent years. Today's video games, mobile phones and other portable devices also offer easy options.

'The adult population just is not going to sit home seven days a week, even though they have technology in their home that's certainly an improvement over what it was 10 years ago'—Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.

It's all been a continual drain on cinema business, and cynics repeatedly predict the eventual demise of movie theatres. Yet Hollywood fights back with new technology of its own, from digital 3D to booming surround sound to the clarity of images projected at high frame rates, which is being tested now with The Lord of the Rings prelude The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, shown in select theatres at 48 frames a second, double the standard speed.

"People want to escape. That's the nature of society," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros. "The adult population just is not going to sit home seven days a week, even though they have technology in their home that's certainly an improvement over what it was 10 years ago."

Even real life violence didn't turn audiences away. Some moviegoers thought twice after a gunman killed 12 people and injured 58 at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado, but if there was any lull in attendance, it was slight and temporary.

Hollywood executives are already hyping their 2013 lineup, which includes the latest Iron Man, Star Trek, Hunger Games and Thor installments, the Superman tale Man of Steel and the second chapter in The Hobbit trilogy.

"I've been saying we're going to hit that $11 billion level for about three years now," said Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. "Next year, I think, is the year we actually do it."

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Gerry Anderson, British creator of Thunderbirds, dies at 83

Gerry Anderson, puppetry pioneer and British creator of the sci-fi hit Thunderbirds TV show, has died. He was 83.

Anderson's son Jamie said his father died peacefully in his sleep on Wednesday at a nursing home in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, U.K., after being diagnosed with mixed dementia two years ago.

His condition had worsened dramatically over the past six months, his son said.

Anderson's television career launched in the 1950s. Once Thunderbirds aired in the 1960s, "Thunderbirds are go!" became a catchphrase for generations. It also introduced the use of "supermarionation" — a puppetry technique using thin wires to control marionettes — and made sci-fi mainstream, according to Jamie Anderson.

'Lots of animation and films that have been made in the past 20 or 30 years have been inspired by the work that he did'—Jamie Anderson

"He forever changed the direction of sci-fi entertainment," Jamie said. "Lots of animation and films that have been made in the past 20 or 30 years have been inspired by the work that he did."

He said the TV show was perhaps his father's proudest achievement — along with the cross-generational appeal of his body of work, which also included TV shows Stingray and Space: 1999, among others.

"Most people know some aspect of one of his shows which is not something that many TV producers can say," Jamie said. He noted that his father first broke ground with puppets in Thunderbirds, but was trying new techniques, like advanced computer-generated imagery, during his later years with projects such as 2005's New Captain Scarlet, the re-imagining of his 1967 TV animation.

Anderson also worked as a consultant on a Hollywood remake of his 1969 series UFO.

"He was very much a perfectionist and was never happy with any of the end products although he may have been happy with the responses," Jamie said, describing how his father would involve himself in every aspect of production.

Gerry Anderson poses with the original Parker and Lady Penelope puppets from his hit 1960s television series Thunderbirds. (Kieran Doherty/Reuters, file)

"He wasn't just someone who sat in a chair barking orders, he managed to bring together great teams of great people and between them with a like mindset produced some real gems."

In recent years, Anderson and his son had become active supporters of Britain's Alzheimer's Society.

Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of society, said Anderson tirelessly attended events to raise awareness and raise money for a cure.

"He was determined, despite his own recent diagnosis, to spend the last year of his life speaking out for others living with dementia to ensure their voices were heard and their lives improved," Hughes said.

Anderson is survived by his wife, Mary, and four children.

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Hillsborough charity single takes U.K. Christmas No. 1 spot

A charity single honouring the victims of one of Britain's worst-ever sporting disasters has become the U.K.'s Christmas No. 1 on the pop music chart.

According to the Official Charts Company, the cover track He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother by the ensemble The Justice Collective captured the top spot on the pop music chart for the week of Christmas.

An annual tradition closely followed by British music fans, the Christmas No. 1 is based on sales and legal downloads during week of Christmas. He Ain't Heavy sold 269,000 copies to beat out Impossible, the debut single of James Arthur, the latest winner of the music talent show The X-Factor.

Paul McCartney, former Spice Girl Mel C., Robbie Williams and Mick Jones of The Clash are among the famous figures who formed The Justice Collective to perform the cover, which is a benefit track to raise money for the families of those who died in 1989 Hillsborough disaster.

The tragedy saw 96 soccer fans crushed to death at a stadium in Sheffield, in northern England. At the time, police characterized the victims as rowdy, drunken fans and blamed them for the crush. An inquest issued verdicts of "accidental death."

However, for years the families of those killed have campaigned to overturn the official accounts and restore the smeared reputations of their deceased relatives.

On Dec. 19, Britain's High Court quashed the original verdicts and ordered a new investigation. The government has also set up a new inquiry into the tragedy.

Winning singers of The X-Factor, Simon Cowell's TV music competition, have dominated the Christmas No. 1 slot in the past decade.

The exceptions have included an amateur choir of military wives, who took the No. 1 spot in 2011 for Wherever You Are (an original song inspired by poems they exchanged with their husbands stationed in Afghanistan), and U.S. band Rage Against the Machine, whose track Killing in the Name was pushed to the top of 2009's holiday chart through a grassroots online campaign.

With files from The Associated Press

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5 key developments in books in 2012

Millions of readers pushed the Fifty Shades trilogy into bestseller status. (Random House/Associated Press)

2012 was a strange year in publishing, with an erotic trilogy dominating the bestseller lists as other hit authors flailed. The publishing industry is finding its way through readers' newly developed taste for e-books, but this digital transition may have sparked a publishing upheaval that will continue well into the new year. CBC News outlines five key developments of 2012.

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The "Mommy-porn" sensation

Who would have thought a book about a sexually inexperienced young woman and a man with a taste for sadism and bondage would pull millions of readers out of the woodwork? But that's exactly what Fifty Shades, the erotic trilogy from British writer E.L. James has done, selling more than 35 million copies to date. The series was, in part, linked to the rise of e-books — with myriad mild-mannered mommies able to surreptitiously read the series on the subway or with half an eye on the playground, no one the wiser about what they were reading.

British writer E.L. James dominated the bestseller list with her Fifty Shades trilogy, which was inspired by Twilight. (Associated Press)

Many of these Fifty Shades readers were people who had apparently skipped right over The Story of O or even Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty trilogy over the course of their reading career. Instead, they opted for a series openly modeled on The Twilight Saga, with its similarly helpless heroine and a repugnant, but handsome hero obsessed with control from the start. Ultimately, Fifty Shades has been so successful that Random House gave all of its staff $5,000 bonuses this Christmas.

Fifty Shades has also kicked open the door for scores of erotic fiction writers, among them Sylvia Day, Indigo Bloome, Vina Jackson and Justine Elyot. Cosmopolitan magazine and romance publisher Harlequin are even starting a new erotic e-book venture, with plans to release two e-books a month. Expect more publishers — and writers — to cash in on the trend in the coming year.

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The sleeper hit: Secret Daughter

Shilpi Somaya Gowda, who was born and raised in Toronto but currently lives in Texas, first published her mother-daughter tale Secret Daughter in 2010. A readable, sometimes poignant debut novel, it features the parallel stories of an Indian woman who gives up her female child and an infertile couple in America hungry for a child. Secret Daughter hit a milestone in 2012, selling 500,000 copies in Canada in November.

Shilpi Somaya Gowda is a canny user of social media. (Shilpigowda.com)

Though HarperCollins initially issued Secret Daughter in Canada as a trade paperback — meaning it sold for a lower price than a hardcover — the publisher did very little promotion for the book by an unknown writer. The trade paperback version emphasized Gowda's Canadian roots, but it wasn't until an astute Costco buyer agreed to carry the novel that it seemed to catch on with Canadian readers. Its story reflects the immigrant experience, reflecting on issues of family loyalty, generational change and being torn between different cultures. Secret Daughter experienced the kind of word-of-mouth popularity that turns books into sleeper hits and became Canada's top-selling book of 2010.

HarperCollins took notice and finally put resources into promotion. Gowda manages her own social media persona, spending 10 hours a week taking part in book clubs via Skype and personally answering Facebook messages. The novel became a New York Times bestseller last year as well as a top seller in Norway, Israel, Poland, Germany and Malaysia, with rights sold in 22 countries.

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The disappointment: The Casual Vacancy

J.K. Rowling 's record-smashing Harry Potter series was a godsend to its publishers worldwide, including Bloomsbury in the U.K., Scholastic in the U.S. and Raincoast Books in Canada. But with her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, the British writer changed publishers, part of the signal she was preparing something completely different. The book was kept under careful wraps to avoid leaks — since, naturally, it had received a great deal of advanced press. And then, Rowling did exactly as promised and delivered something completely different.

J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy received mixed reviews and surprised Harry Potter fans with its grim outlook. (Associated Press)

Anyone picking up The Casual Vacancy hoping for the quirky antics and magic of Harry Potter was sadly disappointed. The British press howled at the book's profanity. "J.K. Rowling and the Goblet of Filth" screamed the Daily Mirror. Critics and readers were divided on its literary merits. The novel, about the competition for a vacancy on a village council (one preparing to debate what to do about the local low-income housing estate), treads into serious territory. Some critics found it plodding, with no clever literary tricks to leaven the reading.

True to Rowling's Harry Potter legacy, The Casual Vacancy is long, with dozens of characters broadly drawn. And like her teen wizard series, her new novel has a definite moral centre. The story explores the impossible life of one teen living in the housing estate and attempting to raise her baby brother while keeping her mother off drugs — grim stuff for both Potter readers and publishers. Though the book sold a million copies in its first three weeks — a good result — the sales are nowhere close to those of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.. The final instalment of her wizard world series sold 12 million in its first week of release and 44 million in its first year. Still, The Casual Vacancy is being adapted into a BBC television drama for release in 2014.

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Seismic shifts in publishing

This fall, Vancouver-based publisher Douglas & McIntyre, which also owns Greystone Books, filed for bankruptcy protection in October. The publisher of such noted titles as Carmen Aguirre's Something Fierce and Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony is seeking an investor or buyer. Meanwhile, German media company Bertelsmann announced it would merge its Random House subsidiary with Britain's Penguin, creating the world's largest trade publishing house.

Readers have embraced e-readers and publishers are racing to keep up. (Associated Press)

These moves follow a 2011 that saw Key Porter Books and H.B. Fenn disappear from the Canadian publishing scene. This wave of bankruptcies and mergers has book-lovers worried about the long-term health of Canadian publishing and who else might be facing a perilous situation. Still, there is a strong contingent of small presses publishing Canadian fiction and non-fiction.

The distribution of books, concentrated in a few hands, is still a problem. The pricing of e-books remains a huge question mark. While publishers race to embrace the digital format, it may change the entire book publishing model, perhaps compressing the time to market as well as the way titles are marketed to consumers. This year's changes mark a seismic shift that's only just beginning.

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The unknown quantity

However, it's not all doom and gloom. One of the great unknowns in the changing publishing landscape is the impact of promising new forums like Wattpad and Byliner, which publish online only. How will they affect how authors write and how we read?

Wattpad, a Canadian site backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists, aims to be the YouTube of storytelling. It holds out the hope of serialized fiction, as with Margaret Atwood's zombie tale, and also offers stories in fantasy, mystery, teen and other literary genres. It even has its own awards. The reader pays nothing — but then, the writer isn't paid either.

Margaret Atwood, left, is writing a Wattpad zombie novel with British author Naomi Alderman. With the pair passes the writing baton between chapters. (Rolex Mentor and Protégé Program)

Byliner, a social network that carries original short stories as well as long-form journalism, has a tighter control of what it accepts and publishes. Organizers curate the best stories from publications such as the Atlantic, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker while also accepting stories from selected writers. Hazlitt is following a similar approach in Canada. Like Wattpad, these services play best on all those Kindle, iPad and Kobo reader have snapped up in the past year, as well as those who read on their computers or mobile devices.

Yet another unknown quantity is how quickly readers might adapt to these new sources and how to charge for this new content. But that's a story for another year — most likely 2013.

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Jack Klugman, Oscar from The Odd Couple, dies at 90

Jack Klugman, the prolific, craggy-faced character actor and regular guy who was loved by millions as the messy one in TV's The Odd Couple and the crime-fighting coroner in Quincy, M.E., died Monday, a son said. He was 90.

Klugman, who lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s and trained himself to speak again, died with his wife at his side.

"He had a great life and he enjoyed every moment of it and he would encourage others to do the same," son Adam Klugman said.

Adam Klugman said he was spending Christmas with his brother, David, and their families. Their father had been convalescing for some time but had apparently died suddenly and they were not sure of the exact cause.

"His sons loved him very much," David Klugman said. "We'll carry on in his spirit."

Actor Jack Klugman arrives at the Tony Awards in 2008. Klugman split his time between TV, movies and the New York stage. (Peter Kramer/Associated Press)

Never anyone's idea of a matinee idol, Klugman remained a popular star for decades simply by playing the type of man you could imagine running into at a bar or riding on a subway with — gruff, but down to earth, his tie stained and a little loose, a racing form under his arm, a cigar in hand during the days when smoking was permitted.

He was an actor ideal for The Odd Couple, which ran from 1970 to 1975 and was based on Neil Simon's play about mismatched roommates, divorced New Yorkers who end up living together. The show teamed Klugman — the sloppy sports writer Oscar Madison — and Tony Randall — the fussy photographer Felix Unger — in the roles played by Walter Matthau and Art Carney on Broadway and Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1968 film. Klugman had already had a taste of the show when he replaced Matthau on Broadway and he learned to roll with the quick-thinking Randall, with whom he had worked in 1955 on the CBS series Appointment with Adventure.

"There's nobody better to improvise with than Tony," Klugman said. "A script might say, 'Oscar teaches Felix football.' There would be four blank pages. He would provoke me into reacting to what he did. Mine was the easy part."

They were battlers on screen, and the best of friends in real life. When Randall died in 2004 at age 84, Klugman told CNN: "A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize."

Quincy 'two heroes in one'

In Quincy, M.E., which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.

"We had some wonderful writers," he said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. "Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero.

"Everybody said, 'Quincy'll never be a hit.' I said, 'You guys are wrong. He's two heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.' A coroner has power. He can tell the police commissioner to investigate a murder. I saw the opportunity to do what I'd gotten into the theater to do — give a message.

"They were going to do cops and robbers with 'Quincy.' I said, 'You promised me I could do causes.' They said, 'Nobody wants to see that.' I said, 'Look at the success of 60 Minutes." They want to see it if you present it as entertainment." '

For his 1987 role as 81-year-old Nat in the Broadway production of I'm Not Rappaport, Klugman wore leg weights to learn to shuffle like an elderly man. He said he would wear them for an hour before each performance, "to remember to keep that shuffle."

"The guy is so vital emotionally, but physically he can't be," Klugman said.

"We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80."

Film credits include 12 Angry Men, Days of Wine and Roses

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in Philadelphia and began his acting career in college drama (Carnegie Institute of Technology). After serving in the Army during the Second World War, he went on to summer stock and off-Broadway, rooming with fellow actor Charles Bronson as both looked for paying jobs. He made his Broadway debut in 1952 in a revival of Golden Boy. His film credits included Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men and Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses and an early television highlight was appearing with Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda in a production of The Petrified Forest. His performance in the classic 1959 musical Gypsy brought him a Tony nomination for best featured (supporting) actor in a musical.

He also appeared in several episodes of The Twilight Zone, including a memorable 1963 one in which he played a negligent father whose son is seriously wounded in Vietnam. His other TV shows included The Defenders and the soap opera The Greatest Gift.

In a 1987 interview in the New York Daily News, he said, "once I did three hourlong shows in 2½ weeks. Think we'd do that now? Huh! But then it was great. I did summer stock, played the classics. Me!"

Throat cancer took away his raspy voice for several years in the 1980s. When he was back on the stage for a 1993 revival of Three Men on a Horse, The Associated Press review said, "His voice may be a little scratchy but his timing is as impeccable as ever."

"The only really stupid thing I ever did in my life was to start smoking," he said in 1996. Seeing people smoking in television and films, he added, "disgusts me, it makes me so angry — kids are watching."

In his later years, he guest-starred on TV series including Third Watch and Crossing Jordan and appeared in a 2010 theatrical film, Camera Obscura.

Loved horse racing

Klugman's hobby was horse racing and he eventually took up raising them, too.

"I always loved to gamble," he said. "I never got close to a horse. Fate dealt me a terrible blow when it gave me a good horse the first time out. I thought how easy this is.

"Now I love being around them."

Klugman's wife, actress-comedian Brett Somers, played his ex-wife, Blanche, in the Odd Couple series. The couple, who married in 1953 and had two sons, Adam and David, had been estranged for years at the time of her death in 2007.

In February 2008, at age 85, Klugman married longtime girlfriend Peggy Crosby.

In 1997, Klugman was sued by an ex-girlfriend, Barbara Neugass, who claimed he had promised to support her for the rest of her life. But a jury rejected her claim.

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Charles Durning, king of character actors, dies at 89

Charles Durning grew up in poverty, lost five of his nine siblings to disease, barely lived through D-Day and was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge.

His hard life and wartime trauma provided the basis for a prolific 50-year career as a consummate Oscar-nominated character actor, playing everyone from a Nazi colonel, to the Pope to Dustin Hoffman's would-be suitor in Tootsie.

Durning, who died Monday at age 89 in New York, got his start as an usher at a burlesque theatre in Buffalo, N.Y. When one of the comedians showed up too drunk to go on, Durning took his place. He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as heard the audience laughing.

He told The Associated Press in 2008 that he had no plans to stop working. "They're going to carry me out, if I go," he said.

Durning's longtime agent and friend, Judith Moss, told the AP that Durning died of natural causes in his home in the borough of Manhattan.

Although he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials, to comic foils to put-upon everymen, Durning may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982's The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Many critics marvelled that such a heavyset man could be so nimble in the film's show-stopping song-and-dance number, not realizing Durning had been a dance instructor early in his career. Indeed, he had met his first wife, Carol, when both worked at a dance studio.

The year after Best Little Whorehouse, Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks's To Be or Not to Be. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975's Dog Day Afternoon.

He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald in the TV film The Kennedys of Massachusetts and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in the Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Career started on stage

Durning had begun his career on stage, getting his first big break when theatrical producer Joseph Papp hired him for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

He went on to work regularly, if fairly anonymously, through the 1960s until his breakout role as a small town mayor in the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play That Championship Season in 1972.

He quickly made an impression on movie audiences the following year as the crooked cop stalking con men Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the Oscar-winning comedy The Sting.

Dozens of notable portrayals followed. He was:

• The would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in Tootsie.
• The infamous seller of frog legs in The Muppet Movie.
• Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy.
• He played Santa Claus in four different movies made for television.
• He played the Pope in the TV film I Would be Called John: Pope John XXIII.

"I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director," Durning told The Associated Press in 2008, when he was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Actors Charles Durning, left, Eliott Gould, middle, and then Screen Actors Guild president Ed Asner are shown in March 1984 before the filming of the 50th Anniversary Special celebrating the guild in Santa Monica, Calif. (Heung Shing Liu/Associated Press)

Other films included The Front Page, The Hindenburg, Breakheart Pass, North Dallas Forty, Starting Over, Tough Guys, Home for the Holidays, Spy Hard and O Brother Where Art Thou?

Durning also did well in television as a featured performer as well as a guest star. He appeared in the short-lived series The Cop and the Kid (1975), Eye to Eye (1985) and First Monday (2002) as well as the four-season Evening Shade in the 1990s.

"If I'm not in a part, I drive my wife crazy," he acknowledged during a 1997 interview. "I'll go downstairs to get the mail, and when I come back I'll say, `Any calls for me?"'

Durning's rugged early life provided ample material on which to base his later portrayals. He was born into an Irish family of 10 children in 1923, in Highland Falls, N.Y., a town near West Point. His father was unable to work, having lost a leg and been gassed during World War I, so his mother supported the family by washing the uniforms of West Point cadets.

The younger Durning himself would barely survive World War II.

He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.

Military left 'too many bad memories,' Durning says

In later years, he refused to discuss the military service for which he was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.

"Too many bad memories," he told an interviewer in 1997. "I don't want you to see me crying."

Tragedy also stalked other members of his family. Durning was 12 when his father died, and five of his sisters lost their lives to smallpox and scarlet fever.

A high school counsellor told him he had no talent for art, languages or math and should learn office skills. But after seeing King Kong and some of James Cagney's films, Durning knew what he wanted to do.

Leaving home at 16, he worked in a munitions factory, on a slag heap and in a barbed-wire factory.

Durning and his first wife had three children before divorcing in 1972. In 1974, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary Ann Amelio.

He is survived by his children, Michele, Douglas and Jeannine. The family planned to have a private family service and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

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Hillsborough charity single takes U.K. Christmas No. 1 spot

A charity single honouring the victims of one of Britain's worst-ever sporting disasters has become the U.K.'s Christmas No. 1 on the pop music chart.

According to the Official Charts Company, the cover track He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother by the ensemble The Justice Collective captured the top spot on the pop music chart for the week of Christmas.

An annual tradition closely followed by British music fans, the Christmas No. 1 is based on sales and legal downloads during week of Christmas. He Ain't Heavy sold 269,000 copies to beat out Impossible, the debut single of James Arthur, the latest winner of the music talent show The X-Factor.

Paul McCartney, former Spice Girl Mel C., Robbie Williams and Mick Jones of The Clash are among the famous figures who formed The Justice Collective to perform the cover, which is a benefit track to raise money for the families of those who died in 1989 Hillsborough disaster.

The tragedy saw 96 soccer fans crushed to death at a stadium in Sheffield, in northern England. At the time, police characterized the victims as rowdy, drunken fans and blamed them for the crush. An inquest issued verdicts of "accidental death."

However, for years the families of those killed have campaigned to overturn the official accounts and restore the smeared reputations of their deceased relatives.

On Dec. 19, Britain's High Court quashed the original verdicts and ordered a new investigation. The government has also set up a new inquiry into the tragedy.

Winning singers of The X-Factor, Simon Cowell's TV music competition, have dominated the Christmas No. 1 slot in the past decade.

The exceptions have included an amateur choir of military wives, who took the No. 1 spot in 2011 for Wherever You Are (an original song inspired by poems they exchanged with their husbands stationed in Afghanistan), and U.S. band Rage Against the Machine, whose track Killing in the Name was pushed to the top of 2009's holiday chart through a grassroots online campaign.

With files from The Associated Press

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5 key developments in books in 2012

Millions of readers pushed the Fifty Shades trilogy into bestseller status. (Random House/Associated Press)

2012 was a strange year in publishing, with an erotic trilogy dominating the bestseller lists as other hit authors flailed. The publishing industry is finding its way through readers' newly developed taste for e-books, but this digital transition may have sparked a publishing upheaval that will continue well into the new year. CBC News outlines five key developments of 2012.

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The "Mommy-porn" sensation

Who would have thought a book about a sexually inexperienced young woman and a man with a taste for sadism and bondage would pull millions of readers out of the woodwork? But that's exactly what Fifty Shades, the erotic trilogy from British writer E.L. James has done, selling more than 35 million copies to date. The series was, in part, linked to the rise of e-books — with myriad mild-mannered mommies able to surreptitiously read the series on the subway or with half an eye on the playground, no one the wiser about what they were reading.

British writer E.L. James dominated the bestseller list with her Fifty Shades trilogy, which was inspired by Twilight. (Associated Press)

Many of these Fifty Shades readers were people who had apparently skipped right over The Story of O or even Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty trilogy over the course of their reading career. Instead, they opted for a series openly modeled on The Twilight Saga, with its similarly helpless heroine and a repugnant, but handsome hero obsessed with control from the start. Ultimately, Fifty Shades has been so successful that Random House gave all of its staff $5,000 bonuses this Christmas.

Fifty Shades has also kicked open the door for scores of erotic fiction writers, among them Sylvia Day, Indigo Bloome, Vina Jackson and Justine Elyot. Cosmopolitan magazine and romance publisher Harlequin are even starting a new erotic e-book venture, with plans to release two e-books a month. Expect more publishers — and writers — to cash in on the trend in the coming year.

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The sleeper hit: Secret Daughter

Shilpi Somaya Gowda, who was born and raised in Toronto but currently lives in Texas, first published her mother-daughter tale Secret Daughter in 2010. A readable, sometimes poignant debut novel, it features the parallel stories of an Indian woman who gives up her female child and an infertile couple in America hungry for a child. Secret Daughter hit a milestone in 2012, selling 500,000 copies in Canada in November.

Shilpi Somaya Gowda is a canny user of social media. (Shilpigowda.com)

Though HarperCollins initially issued Secret Daughter in Canada as a trade paperback — meaning it sold for a lower price than a hardcover — the publisher did very little promotion for the book by an unknown writer. The trade paperback version emphasized Gowda's Canadian roots, but it wasn't until an astute Costco buyer agreed to carry the novel that it seemed to catch on with Canadian readers. Its story reflects the immigrant experience, reflecting on issues of family loyalty, generational change and being torn between different cultures. Secret Daughter experienced the kind of word-of-mouth popularity that turns books into sleeper hits and became Canada's top-selling book of 2010.

HarperCollins took notice and finally put resources into promotion. Gowda manages her own social media persona, spending 10 hours a week taking part in book clubs via Skype and personally answering Facebook messages. The novel became a New York Times bestseller last year as well as a top seller in Norway, Israel, Poland, Germany and Malaysia, with rights sold in 22 countries.

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The disappointment: The Casual Vacancy

J.K. Rowling 's record-smashing Harry Potter series was a godsend to its publishers worldwide, including Bloomsbury in the U.K., Scholastic in the U.S. and Raincoast Books in Canada. But with her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, the British writer changed publishers, part of the signal she was preparing something completely different. The book was kept under careful wraps to avoid leaks — since, naturally, it had received a great deal of advanced press. And then, Rowling did exactly as promised and delivered something completely different.

J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy received mixed reviews and surprised Harry Potter fans with its grim outlook. (Associated Press)

Anyone picking up The Casual Vacancy hoping for the quirky antics and magic of Harry Potter was sadly disappointed. The British press howled at the book's profanity. "J.K. Rowling and the Goblet of Filth" screamed the Daily Mirror. Critics and readers were divided on its literary merits. The novel, about the competition for a vacancy on a village council (one preparing to debate what to do about the local low-income housing estate), treads into serious territory. Some critics found it plodding, with no clever literary tricks to leaven the reading.

True to Rowling's Harry Potter legacy, The Casual Vacancy is long, with dozens of characters broadly drawn. And like her teen wizard series, her new novel has a definite moral centre. The story explores the impossible life of one teen living in the housing estate and attempting to raise her baby brother while keeping her mother off drugs — grim stuff for both Potter readers and publishers. Though the book sold a million copies in its first three weeks — a good result — the sales are nowhere close to those of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.. The final instalment of her wizard world series sold 12 million in its first week of release and 44 million in its first year. Still, The Casual Vacancy is being adapted into a BBC television drama for release in 2014.

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Seismic shifts in publishing

This fall, Vancouver-based publisher Douglas & McIntyre, which also owns Greystone Books, filed for bankruptcy protection in October. The publisher of such noted titles as Carmen Aguirre's Something Fierce and Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony is seeking an investor or buyer. Meanwhile, German media company Bertelsmann announced it would merge its Random House subsidiary with Britain's Penguin, creating the world's largest trade publishing house.

Readers have embraced e-readers and publishers are racing to keep up. (Associated Press)

These moves follow a 2011 that saw Key Porter Books and H.B. Fenn disappear from the Canadian publishing scene. This wave of bankruptcies and mergers has book-lovers worried about the long-term health of Canadian publishing and who else might be facing a perilous situation. Still, there is a strong contingent of small presses publishing Canadian fiction and non-fiction.

The distribution of books, concentrated in a few hands, is still a problem. The pricing of e-books remains a huge question mark. While publishers race to embrace the digital format, it may change the entire book publishing model, perhaps compressing the time to market as well as the way titles are marketed to consumers. This year's changes mark a seismic shift that's only just beginning.

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The unknown quantity

However, it's not all doom and gloom. One of the great unknowns in the changing publishing landscape is the impact of promising new forums like Wattpad and Byliner, which publish online only. How will they affect how authors write and how we read?

Wattpad, a Canadian site backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists, aims to be the YouTube of storytelling. It holds out the hope of serialized fiction, as with Margaret Atwood's zombie tale, and also offers stories in fantasy, mystery, teen and other literary genres. It even has its own awards. The reader pays nothing — but then, the writer isn't paid either.

Margaret Atwood, left, is writing a Wattpad zombie novel with British author Naomi Alderman. With the pair passes the writing baton between chapters. (Rolex Mentor and Protégé Program)

Byliner, a social network that carries original short stories as well as long-form journalism, has a tighter control of what it accepts and publishes. Organizers curate the best stories from publications such as the Atlantic, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker while also accepting stories from selected writers. Hazlitt is following a similar approach in Canada. Like Wattpad, these services play best on all those Kindle, iPad and Kobo reader have snapped up in the past year, as well as those who read on their computers or mobile devices.

Yet another unknown quantity is how quickly readers might adapt to these new sources and how to charge for this new content. But that's a story for another year — most likely 2013.

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Jack Klugman, Oscar from The Odd Couple, dies at 90

Jack Klugman, the prolific, craggy-faced character actor and regular guy who was loved by millions as the messy one in TV's The Odd Couple and the crime-fighting coroner in Quincy, M.E., died Monday, a son said. He was 90.

Klugman, who lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s and trained himself to speak again, died with his wife at his side.

"He had a great life and he enjoyed every moment of it and he would encourage others to do the same," son Adam Klugman said.

Adam Klugman said he was spending Christmas with his brother, David, and their families. Their father had been convalescing for some time but had apparently died suddenly and they were not sure of the exact cause.

"His sons loved him very much," David Klugman said. "We'll carry on in his spirit."

Actor Jack Klugman arrives at the Tony Awards in 2008. Klugman split his time between TV, movies and the New York stage. (Peter Kramer/Associated Press)

Never anyone's idea of a matinee idol, Klugman remained a popular star for decades simply by playing the type of man you could imagine running into at a bar or riding on a subway with — gruff, but down to earth, his tie stained and a little loose, a racing form under his arm, a cigar in hand during the days when smoking was permitted.

He was an actor ideal for The Odd Couple, which ran from 1970 to 1975 and was based on Neil Simon's play about mismatched roommates, divorced New Yorkers who end up living together. The show teamed Klugman — the sloppy sports writer Oscar Madison — and Tony Randall — the fussy photographer Felix Unger — in the roles played by Walter Matthau and Art Carney on Broadway and Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1968 film. Klugman had already had a taste of the show when he replaced Matthau on Broadway and he learned to roll with the quick-thinking Randall, with whom he had worked in 1955 on the CBS series Appointment with Adventure.

"There's nobody better to improvise with than Tony," Klugman said. "A script might say, 'Oscar teaches Felix football.' There would be four blank pages. He would provoke me into reacting to what he did. Mine was the easy part."

They were battlers on screen, and the best of friends in real life. When Randall died in 2004 at age 84, Klugman told CNN: "A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize."

Quincy 'two heroes in one'

In Quincy, M.E., which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.

"We had some wonderful writers," he said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. "Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero.

"Everybody said, 'Quincy'll never be a hit.' I said, 'You guys are wrong. He's two heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.' A coroner has power. He can tell the police commissioner to investigate a murder. I saw the opportunity to do what I'd gotten into the theater to do — give a message.

"They were going to do cops and robbers with 'Quincy.' I said, 'You promised me I could do causes.' They said, 'Nobody wants to see that.' I said, 'Look at the success of 60 Minutes." They want to see it if you present it as entertainment." '

For his 1987 role as 81-year-old Nat in the Broadway production of I'm Not Rappaport, Klugman wore leg weights to learn to shuffle like an elderly man. He said he would wear them for an hour before each performance, "to remember to keep that shuffle."

"The guy is so vital emotionally, but physically he can't be," Klugman said.

"We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80."

Film credits include 12 Angry Men, Days of Wine and Roses

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in Philadelphia and began his acting career in college drama (Carnegie Institute of Technology). After serving in the Army during the Second World War, he went on to summer stock and off-Broadway, rooming with fellow actor Charles Bronson as both looked for paying jobs. He made his Broadway debut in 1952 in a revival of Golden Boy. His film credits included Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men and Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses and an early television highlight was appearing with Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda in a production of The Petrified Forest. His performance in the classic 1959 musical Gypsy brought him a Tony nomination for best featured (supporting) actor in a musical.

He also appeared in several episodes of The Twilight Zone, including a memorable 1963 one in which he played a negligent father whose son is seriously wounded in Vietnam. His other TV shows included The Defenders and the soap opera The Greatest Gift.

In a 1987 interview in the New York Daily News, he said, "once I did three hourlong shows in 2½ weeks. Think we'd do that now? Huh! But then it was great. I did summer stock, played the classics. Me!"

Throat cancer took away his raspy voice for several years in the 1980s. When he was back on the stage for a 1993 revival of Three Men on a Horse, The Associated Press review said, "His voice may be a little scratchy but his timing is as impeccable as ever."

"The only really stupid thing I ever did in my life was to start smoking," he said in 1996. Seeing people smoking in television and films, he added, "disgusts me, it makes me so angry — kids are watching."

In his later years, he guest-starred on TV series including Third Watch and Crossing Jordan and appeared in a 2010 theatrical film, Camera Obscura.

Loved horse racing

Klugman's hobby was horse racing and he eventually took up raising them, too.

"I always loved to gamble," he said. "I never got close to a horse. Fate dealt me a terrible blow when it gave me a good horse the first time out. I thought how easy this is.

"Now I love being around them."

Klugman's wife, actress-comedian Brett Somers, played his ex-wife, Blanche, in the Odd Couple series. The couple, who married in 1953 and had two sons, Adam and David, had been estranged for years at the time of her death in 2007.

In February 2008, at age 85, Klugman married longtime girlfriend Peggy Crosby.

In 1997, Klugman was sued by an ex-girlfriend, Barbara Neugass, who claimed he had promised to support her for the rest of her life. But a jury rejected her claim.

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