Jill St. John wanted to share recipes but not Robert Wagner

Posted on August 19, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

Jill St. John, who turns 85 today, has brightened big and small screens in countless TV shows and movies including her big splash as the first American James Bond girl, Tiffany Case, in ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ opposite Sean Connery in 1971.

When I spoke to her on the phone in 1985 for a story for Canadian TV Guide, the Los Angeles-born actress was busier with a cooking segment on ABC-TV’s ‘Good Morning America’. That came about after she was a guest of chef Julia Child’s ‘Celebrity Cooks’ pieces on the show and the network was bombarded with requests to see her again. Continue reading →

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When Steve Martin became my biggest fan

Posted on August 14, 2025 by admin


By Ray Bennett

Carl Reiner greeted me in his hotel room in Toronto and said, ‘Steve Martin is your No. 1 fan.’

Performers become fans of critics, of course, only when we write something they like. Their film ‘All of Me’ is an agreeably silly piece of nonsense in which the soul of a bitter old woman named Edwina, played by Lily Tomlin, intended for a beautiful young woman named Terry, played by Victoria Tennant (pictured with Martin) is transferred instead into the body of a young lawyer played by Martin. Edwina controls the right side of his body and he controls the left so that for him just to walk down the street is like a three-legged race on two feet. I thought his performance was hilarious and wrote that he was the funniest physical comedian since Charlie Chaplin. ‘He loved that,’ Reiner said. Continue reading →

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Giggling over lunch with the great Cleo Laine

Posted on July 25, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – It was lunchtime at the Hotel Pontchartrain  in Detroit and things were getting a bit silly. Cleo Laine, who has died aged 97, was talking about Kurt Weill and the Berliner Ensemble when someone mentioned Monty Python and soon Continue reading →

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Terror in London: From joy to agony in a single day

Posted on July 7, 2025 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – It’s no great surprise in London when your local Underground station is closed. It’s a creaky old system and there’s never enough money, so you shrug and start walking. But on Thursday morning, July 7 2005, Notting Hill Gate station was chained up and the guards were grim. “There’s been an explosion at Liverpool Street,” one said. “They think there might be more.”

There were. Four in all, killing 38.

On Wednesday, Trafalgar Square was giddy with people cheering and champagne corks popping as the news came through that the city had won the 2012 Olympic Games.

On Thursday, all you could hear were the sirens of police cars, ambulances and emergency vehicles. Most of London had gone to work as usual, even though it meant walking most of the way as first the Underground and then the buses stopped running. Continue reading →

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TV broadcaster Bill Moyers regarded the elite as the enemy

Posted on June 26, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett
Veteran TV newsman Bill Moyers,  former New York Newsday publisher and press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson, has died aged 91. As a broadcaster, he often spun off bestselling books from his TV productions and in 1989 he produced a documentary series with accompanying book titled ‘A World of Ideas’. I did a phone interview with him about it for a short-lived national U.S. magazine called Inside Books. I admired Moyers greatly and I was extremely pleased after my story was published when he wrote to say: ‘I don’t know how you managed to get in so much detail so accurately from a phone interview but I am very impressed and grateful.’

Here’s the story:

Bill Moyers talks candidly with Ray Bennett Continue reading →

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Lalo Schifrin on his love of the music for ‘Tango’

Posted on June 26, 2025 by admin


By Ray Bennett

Argentinian composer Lalo Schifrin, who has died aged 93, is known for his concerts, recordings, film scores such as “Bullitt”, “Cool Hand Luke” and “Dirty Harry” and TV shows such as “Mission: Impossible” and “Mannix” but one of his most treasured works was for Carlos Saura’s Oscar-nominated musical “Tango”.

“I feel very proud of being involved in that movie,” Schifrin told me in 1998 just before the film had its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Continue reading →

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The look on Anne Murray’s face was one of sheer terror

Posted on June 20, 2025 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – One of Canada’s most successful singers, Anne Murray, who turns 80 today, became a huge international entertainer but she told me two things had made her nervous – performing in Las Vegas and at the Quebec Winter Carnival.

Murray had plenty of hits after “Snowbird” in 1970 became the first recording by a Canadian artist to go gold in the United States. She became a regular on “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour” and Burt Reynolds, who was a big fan, talked about her often on Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show”. Hits followed throughout the following decades including “He Still Thinks I Care”, Lennon & McCartney’s “You Won’t See Me”, “You Needed Me”, “Shadows in the Moonlight”, and “A Little Good News”.

Murray was a major attraction in Las Vegas and when I saw her perform in the Riviera Hotel’s Flamingo Room in 1983 with a tight seven-piece band behind her, she sang a string of hits and commanded the stage with an easy line of patter.

It didn’t start out that way. Continue reading →

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Frederick Forsyth did more than write great thrillers

Posted on June 9, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – English writer Frederick Forsyth, who died today aged 86, not only wri0te  clever and exciting thrillers such as ‘Day of the Jackal’ (starring Edward Fox, above)  and ‘The Odessa file’, he also was prescient about world affairs.

In the spring of 1989, the Soviet Union was on the brink of dissolution and Zbigniew Brzeziński, then U.S. National Security Advisor, declared that communism was dead. Many believed the Cold War was over. ‘I’m not, I’m afraid, quite that sanguine,’ Forsyth told me back then.

I was talking to him about his latest novel ‘The Negotiator’ in March of that year. Continue reading →

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When US TV censored hip-swinging Tom Jones

Posted on June 7, 2025 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Fans of “The Voice” might not suspect that the venerable Sir Tom Jones, who turns  85  today, was censored on American television when he was younger.

His show “This is Tom Jones” aired on the ABC network for three seasons until 1971 and his electrifying performances made him a huge sex symbol that terrified his network TV bosses. Continue reading →

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Tony Curtis on Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and more

Posted on June 3, 2025 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Nobody loved being a movie star more than Tony Curtis, who was born on this day 100 years ago and who died in 2010, and as he got older he liked nothing more than to talk about it. “Don’t I have great stories?” he said to me. “Don’t you fucking love it?” Continue reading →

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