Friday, April 10, 2009

News Round-up: Geary, Towers, FNL, Strasser

Anthony Geary returns home to Utal for Charity
Utah native Anthony Geary is coming home on Saturday for a good cause — to help raise money for the Utah Youth Village.

"I always try to do anything that has to do with children," said Geary, the longtime star of GENERAL HOSPITAL who volunteers for charities benefiting kids, and AIDS and cancer research. "After 30 years in the business, it's always nice to give something back. I do what I can.

"The Youth Village is something that my sister, DeAnn, has been associated with for several years, and … that was good enough for me."

GH's Constance Towers On Helena's Return
Helena makes a grand entrance at GENERAL HOSPITAL's reopening. "The introduction is like having your Hello, Dolly moment: center stage, in a big red dress!" gushes her portrayer, Constance Towers. Viewers can expect trouble, big trouble. "This is her way to let everybody know she's back to do ill deeds," she adds.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is teen drama's MVP
"It's still a soap," says Robert Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse University. "But it's always grounded in this football universe that puts the soap opera stuff into context . . . There is a narrative skeleton, (whereas) a show like 90210 -- about rich, Midwestern kids coming to Beverly Hills and doing rich, Beverly Hills things -- is spineless."

SOD: Strasser chairs Gowns gala again
For the third year in a row, ONE LIFE TO LIVE's Robin Strasser (Dorian) has chaired one of New York's most overdone and underground events, Night of a Thousand Gowns, on March 21.

The latest gala raised more than $275,000, thanks in part to the $3,000 winning bid on a piece of OLTL history: a 1980s oil portrait of Dorian Lord, which Strasser was generous enough to donate. "It was on my set for 15 years! When you would enter Dorian's house, it was at the top of the stairs. It's a little bit of a long story as to why it was taken down," she recalls with a giggle. The painting was given to her when she left the show in 2000 and an unnamed "co-conspirator" stored it for her. "It was given to me by [then-Executive Producer] Jill Farren Phelps as a 'Good-bye, don't let the door hit you on the butt, baby!' " she laughs. When Strasser returned in 2003, thanks to some nudging from Executive Producer Frank Valentini, so did the painting. It stayed up a few more years, and, "Suddenly, one day the painting was off the wall and in my dressing room wrapped in bubble wrap. So, it just seemed like a great idea [to auction it]."

Jake Silbermann recommends EASTBOUND & DOWN
In his first contribution to The Daily Beast, Silbermann writes: "I am really into EASTBOUND & DOWN, the new HBO show about the has-been baseball player. The comedy comes from the fact that he just thinks he's so much higher up in his life than everyone else when he's really not. Danny McBride, who plays the protagonist Kenny Powers, is just hilarious in the role."

Sarah Michelle Gellar pregnant
Former ALL MY CHILDREN star Sarah Michelle Gellar (ex-Kendall) and Freddie Prinze Jr. are expecting their first child together, a source close to the couple confirms exclusively to PEOPLE. "They're very excited," says the source, adding that the actress, 31, is due in the fall.

1 comment:

  1. Freddie and Sarah Michelle are such a cute couple... congrats to them on their new arrival

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