TV commercial casting director Merrill Jonas died Thursday at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, Calif. after a long illness. She was 96.
Starting out as an actress, Jonas rose to head of the casting department at Ogilvy and Mather in New York, where she led a six-person team that cast more than 100 commercials. The celebrity talent included Patricia Neal, Karl Malden, Anna-Maria Alberghetti, Arthur Ashe, Sonny & Cher and Ravi Shankar.
While working as director of the commercial department at talent agency CMA in New York, she cast talent including Jackie Gleason, Rod Serling, Florence Henderson and Mel Brooks.
Her agency Celebrity Casting Associates made deals for NBC’s Frank Blair, Phyllis Newman, Peter Duchin, Pete Rose and Dan Pastorini.
As an actress and on-camera spokeswoman, Jonas appeared in commercials during the 1950s and 1960s for products including Anacin, M&Ms, Tide, Lipton Tea and many others.
She also appeared...
Starting out as an actress, Jonas rose to head of the casting department at Ogilvy and Mather in New York, where she led a six-person team that cast more than 100 commercials. The celebrity talent included Patricia Neal, Karl Malden, Anna-Maria Alberghetti, Arthur Ashe, Sonny & Cher and Ravi Shankar.
While working as director of the commercial department at talent agency CMA in New York, she cast talent including Jackie Gleason, Rod Serling, Florence Henderson and Mel Brooks.
Her agency Celebrity Casting Associates made deals for NBC’s Frank Blair, Phyllis Newman, Peter Duchin, Pete Rose and Dan Pastorini.
As an actress and on-camera spokeswoman, Jonas appeared in commercials during the 1950s and 1960s for products including Anacin, M&Ms, Tide, Lipton Tea and many others.
She also appeared...
- 3/6/2021
- by Pat Saperstein
- Variety Film + TV
On November 1, 2018, The New York Landmarks Conservancy will host its 25th Living Landmarks Celebration at The Plaza. In addition to Chita Rivera, this year's honorees are Stephen S. Lash, Lynden B. Miller, Liz amp Jeffrey Peek, Thomas Sculco MD, Ruth Lande Shuman, Michael I. Sovern and Peter Stangl. The host for the evening is Living Landmark David Patrick Columbia, and music will be provided by Living Landmark Peter Duchin and his Orchestra. Living Landmarks Arie L. Kopelman and Leonard Lauder are Honorary Co-Chairs for the evening. More than 500 guests are expected to attend this 25th annual tribute.
- 9/28/2018
- by TV News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
What a Way to Go!
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1964 / Color B&W / 2:35 enhanced widescreen 1:37 flat Academy / 111 min. / Street Date February 7, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly, Robert Cummings, Dick Van Dyke, Reginald Gardiner, Margaret Dumont, Fifi D’Orsay, Maurice Marsac, Lenny Kent, Marjorie Bennett, Army Archerd, Barbara Bouchet, Tom Conway, Peter Duchin, Douglass Dumbrille, Pamelyn Ferdin, Teri Garr, Queenie Leonard.
Cinematography: Leon Shamroy
Film Editor: Marjorie Fowler
Original Music: Nelson Riddle
Written by: Betty Comden, Adolph Green story by Gwen Davis
Produced by: Arthur P. Jacobs
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson
Want to know what the producer of Planet of the Apes was up to, before that milestone movie? Arthur P. Jacobs was an agent for big stars before he became a producer, which positioned him well for his first show for 20th Fox, What a Way to Go!
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1964 / Color B&W / 2:35 enhanced widescreen 1:37 flat Academy / 111 min. / Street Date February 7, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly, Robert Cummings, Dick Van Dyke, Reginald Gardiner, Margaret Dumont, Fifi D’Orsay, Maurice Marsac, Lenny Kent, Marjorie Bennett, Army Archerd, Barbara Bouchet, Tom Conway, Peter Duchin, Douglass Dumbrille, Pamelyn Ferdin, Teri Garr, Queenie Leonard.
Cinematography: Leon Shamroy
Film Editor: Marjorie Fowler
Original Music: Nelson Riddle
Written by: Betty Comden, Adolph Green story by Gwen Davis
Produced by: Arthur P. Jacobs
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson
Want to know what the producer of Planet of the Apes was up to, before that milestone movie? Arthur P. Jacobs was an agent for big stars before he became a producer, which positioned him well for his first show for 20th Fox, What a Way to Go!
- 1/31/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Oct. 16, 2012
Price: DVD $49.98, Blu-ray $49.99
Studio: Lionsgate
Jon Hamm is a little less mad when he's with wife Jessica Pare in the fifth season of Mad Men.
Don Draper and his gang of business colleagues, friends, foes and new wife (!) who whirl around the Madison Avenue advertising world of the 1960s get digitized in the TV show drama Mad Men: Season Five.
From AMC and creator Matthew Weiner (executive producer and writer of The Sopranos), the critically acclaimed television series has won a zillion awards over the course of its run. Most recently, Season Five was nominated for a colossal 17 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor (Jon Hamm, Friends With Kids) and Lead Actress (Elisabeth Moss, Get Him to the Greek) in a Drama Series.
The Mad Men: Season Five Blu-ray and DVD sets contain all 13 episodes of the season, which...
Price: DVD $49.98, Blu-ray $49.99
Studio: Lionsgate
Jon Hamm is a little less mad when he's with wife Jessica Pare in the fifth season of Mad Men.
Don Draper and his gang of business colleagues, friends, foes and new wife (!) who whirl around the Madison Avenue advertising world of the 1960s get digitized in the TV show drama Mad Men: Season Five.
From AMC and creator Matthew Weiner (executive producer and writer of The Sopranos), the critically acclaimed television series has won a zillion awards over the course of its run. Most recently, Season Five was nominated for a colossal 17 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor (Jon Hamm, Friends With Kids) and Lead Actress (Elisabeth Moss, Get Him to the Greek) in a Drama Series.
The Mad Men: Season Five Blu-ray and DVD sets contain all 13 episodes of the season, which...
- 7/31/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Dominick Dunne. From PatrickMcMullan.com.Dominick Dunne’s son Griffin told a great story at his father’s funeral, in New York City, yesterday. Griffin said he’d been asked at Frank E. Campbell funeral home if he’d like to hire security to keep away the “professional mourners,” strangers who crash the wakes of celebrities. He said he immediately wished he’d been able to tell his father there was a name for this pastime—as Dominick himself had been known to drop in on the funeral home when he and his young family had lived nearby, long before he became a journalist, to see what famous mobster or socialite was lying inside. The crowd—almost 800 people packed inside the Church of Saint Vincent Ferrer, on Lexington and 66th Street—roared with laughter. If Dominick was a professional mourner, he was also a professional partygoer, stage manager, and social observer,...
- 9/11/2009
- Vanity Fair
Walter Noel made a lot of enemies when his Fairfield Greenwich hedge fund funneled $7 billion into the Bernie Madoff sinkhole. So now, he and most of his large family have been removed from the Quest 400, the magazine's annual list of high society. Noel's daughter, Marisa, who's married to Matt Brown, is the only Noel who made the list, which actually has about 1,200 names. "You can't punish the child for the sins of the father," explained a Quest insider. Steve Rattner, the investment banker who was President Obama's "car czar" until his name...
- 8/26/2009
- NYPost.com
'We Are seen around New York, El Morocco and The Stork, and the other stay-up-late cafes / I am on the town with you these days / that's the way it stands . . . some cocktails, some orchids, a show or two, a line in a column that links me with you!"
(Oh, what I wouldn't give if only El Morocco and The Stork still existed to stay up late in!) The quoted lyrics, from the song "All in Fun," are by Oscar Hammerstein.
So, Seen around New York is the recently- written-about Peter Duchin, bandleader extraordinaire, who has separated from his wife,...
(Oh, what I wouldn't give if only El Morocco and The Stork still existed to stay up late in!) The quoted lyrics, from the song "All in Fun," are by Oscar Hammerstein.
So, Seen around New York is the recently- written-about Peter Duchin, bandleader extraordinaire, who has separated from his wife,...
- 9/21/2008
- by By LIZ SMITH
- NYPost.com
'We All have the same dreams," wrote the perspicacious Joan Didion.
Not Long ago Brooke Hayward and Peter Duchin were described as "a perfect blend of Broadway, Hollywood and New York society . . . possessing those three glamorous worlds."
Destiny's tots, as Noel Coward would have called them, both inherited fame and individual talent. They have been wed for 23 years, cohabiting together for 27. She was born the daughter of film star Margaret Sullavan and famous agent-producer Leland Hayward, and she is...
Not Long ago Brooke Hayward and Peter Duchin were described as "a perfect blend of Broadway, Hollywood and New York society . . . possessing those three glamorous worlds."
Destiny's tots, as Noel Coward would have called them, both inherited fame and individual talent. They have been wed for 23 years, cohabiting together for 27. She was born the daughter of film star Margaret Sullavan and famous agent-producer Leland Hayward, and she is...
- 9/7/2008
- by By LIZ SMITH
- NYPost.com
Menemsha Films
NEW YORK -- Kristi Jacobson's documentary about the legendary saloonkeeper Toots Shor makes one immediately want to enter a time machine.
Toots affectionately and vividly recalls a bygone New York era, one in which life was simpler (if not more innocent, as one interview subject points out) and celebrities and ordinary folk could be in close proximity without hulking bodyguards getting in the way. The director is, in fact, Shor's granddaughter, but her portrait, while obviously loving, doesn't shy away from dealing with the darker aspects of her subject's life, from his ties to the mob to the self-destructiveness and stubbornness that ultimately reduced him to impoverishment before his death in 1977.
But Toots is by no means downbeat. Documenting her grandfather's rise from Prohibition-era bouncer to the owner of one of New York's most-famed watering holes in the 1950s and '60s, the filmmaker presents an evocative portrait of a vanished era.
As the film well depicts, Shor's eponymous restaurant on Manhattan's West 51st Street was a meeting place for the rich and famous, where a wide-ranging collection of celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Gifford, mob boss Frank Costello and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, among many others, all held court. It also was an unofficial clubhouse for the newspaper journalists of the time (especially sportswriters and gossip columnists), who found plenty of fodder for their columns on the premises.
Employing an oral history recorded by Shor two years before his death, interviews with such former habitues as Walter Cronkite, Nick Pileggi, Peter Duchin, Gay Talese and copious amounts of fascinating archival footage and photographs, Toots is a glorious exercise in nostalgia.
NEW YORK -- Kristi Jacobson's documentary about the legendary saloonkeeper Toots Shor makes one immediately want to enter a time machine.
Toots affectionately and vividly recalls a bygone New York era, one in which life was simpler (if not more innocent, as one interview subject points out) and celebrities and ordinary folk could be in close proximity without hulking bodyguards getting in the way. The director is, in fact, Shor's granddaughter, but her portrait, while obviously loving, doesn't shy away from dealing with the darker aspects of her subject's life, from his ties to the mob to the self-destructiveness and stubbornness that ultimately reduced him to impoverishment before his death in 1977.
But Toots is by no means downbeat. Documenting her grandfather's rise from Prohibition-era bouncer to the owner of one of New York's most-famed watering holes in the 1950s and '60s, the filmmaker presents an evocative portrait of a vanished era.
As the film well depicts, Shor's eponymous restaurant on Manhattan's West 51st Street was a meeting place for the rich and famous, where a wide-ranging collection of celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Gifford, mob boss Frank Costello and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, among many others, all held court. It also was an unofficial clubhouse for the newspaper journalists of the time (especially sportswriters and gossip columnists), who found plenty of fodder for their columns on the premises.
Employing an oral history recorded by Shor two years before his death, interviews with such former habitues as Walter Cronkite, Nick Pileggi, Peter Duchin, Gay Talese and copious amounts of fascinating archival footage and photographs, Toots is a glorious exercise in nostalgia.
- 10/9/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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