News Brief

DANCING WITH THE STARS Update: Lucci scores 24
Susan Lucci and partner Tony Dovolani performed a polished paso doble (earning a score of 24) even though cameras caught them arguing during rehearsal and the ALL MY CHILDREN star crying.

“It wasn’t really a tiff,” said Susan. “I was frustrated with myself because I have this great teacher and there’s so little time and I wasn’t sure I could do it.”

All the competitors loved doing the group dance, which had Team Susan’s cha cha vying against Team Warren’s paso doble. Susan praised her teammates, who got a score of 20, but said their preparation could have been better: “I just wish I’d had more time.” Warren thought his team’s paso, which earned a huge score of 29, was “a blast.” Brooke, one of his team members, said, “It was nice for me to work with the female pros.”

Shinan: To Victor Newman Go No Spoils
Presidents may come and go, but Victor Newman still has his majority.

Canadians have, on TV, been watching that tycoon of tycoons since, well, the Carter administration, and now, Eric Braeden, his alter-ego, has a thing or two he’d like to get off his chest. About the U.S. prez race!

He’s all for Barack Obama, of course, but his heart still belongs to Hillary Clinton. She was “by far the most capable of them all and the best candidate of them all.”

The soap star’s dictum comes in the latest TV Guide Canada, where it is said “there is no bigger soap star than The Young and the Restless’s Eric Braeden,” and where it is further said about his No. 1 drama that “even straight men are obsessed with the show.”

Braeden on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER Monday night
Alan Sepinwall of the New Jersey Star-Ledger writes: "Robin's flashback to her gender-bending Canadian upbringing was both funny and sad. (Though the soap opera music joke -- Robin's dad was played by daytime drama vet Eric Braeden -- fell a little flat.)"

EDITOR'S NOTE: I actually laughed when Braeden was on and they played that soapy background music.

Jamie Lomas and Kym Marsh to wed?
CORRIE's Kym, who plays Rovers barmaid Michelle Connor, and Jamie, HOLLYOAKS' Warren Fox, are keen to settle down together and possibly wed overseas - as Kym has already had a white wedding with her former husband Jack Ryder in 2002. Kym and Jack split up earlier this year.

Jamie said of marrying and having kids with Kym: "Definitely! And we're not getting any younger. We'd maybe go abroad."

Kym added: "We've talked about things like that, and about our future."

J.R. Martinez to star on ALL MY CHILDREN as Brot
“The character’s injury was determined by Mr. Martinez’ personal injuries,” ABC said in a press release. “After many surgeries and recovery, Brot returns to find his fiancee, who has been grieving her loss, not knowing Brot is actually still alive.”

On Thursday, the show will air a special episode featuring other “real life” Iraq war veterans in a series of unscripted support group scenes. Each veteran will share his or her story. The show partners with USA Cares, an organization founded to support post 9/11 veterans and their families, which serves as a resource for story line research and guidance.

Former AMC star Bruening on his new co-star, KITT the car
“He’s a little standoff-ish,” jokes Bruening about his vehicular pal, the KITT 3000. “You have to coax him into opening up and talking.”

PHOTOS: Election Day in Oakdale
It is election day in Oakdale as Luke battles Kevin to become Student Government President.

New Jersey Theatre Presents Hal Holbrook In Mark Twain
Holbrook’s first solo appearance as Mark Twain was at the Lock Haven State Teachers College in PA in 1954. At this time in his career, Holbrook was pounding the pavements in New York searching for work as an actor and the Twain show was his desperate alternative to selling hats or running elevators to keep his family alive. But that same year, fortune struck by way of a job on a daytime radio and television soap opera, THE BRIGHTER DAY. At night Holbrook pursued the Twain character in a Greenwich Village night club while doing the soap daytimes. He developed his original two hours of material in the curve of a baby grand piano and learned timing. Finally, Ed Sullivan saw him at the club and gave his Twain national television exposure.

In 1959, after five years of researching the character and honing his material in front of countless audiences in small towns all over America, he opened at a tiny theater off-Broadway in New York. He was a stunning success, as stunning to Holbrook as anyone else. “Mr. Holbrook’s material is uproarious, his ability to hold an audience by acting is brilliant,” raved the New York Times.

Holbrook quit the soap opera and after a 22-week run in New York with Twain he toured the country again, performed for President Eisenhower, and at the Edinburgh Festival.

Holbrook has never been able to quit Mark Twain and probably never will. He has toured the show in some part of every year since 1954, including a third New York engagement in 1977 and a fourth in 2005, and a world tour in 1986. The year 2008 is the 54th consecutive year for this remarkable one man show.

Studs Terkel: The Passing of An Icon
His son Dan paid tribute to his father. He "led a long, full, eventful, sometimes tempestuous, but very satisfying life." He was the master of oral history. Calvin Trillin called him "America's pre-eminent listener" that was "all the more remarkable when you consider that he (was) a prodigious talker." On jazz to world affairs. His soap-opera days to the state of the nation. Interviews with entertainers, artists, politicians, philosophers and social critics. Figures like Bertrand Russell, John Kenneth Galbraith, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Zero Mostel, and Margaret Mead. Others he knew like Mahalia Jackson, David Dellinger, Nelson Algren, and Eugene Debs. The greats and near-greats but mostly ordinary people.

In 1934, Studs got philosophy and law degrees at the University of Chicago but chose other endeavors. He worked briefly in the civil service in Washington. Then back to Chicago in a WPA Writers Project's radio division. It got him into soap operas, stage performances, and a radio news show.

Walter Cronkite is 92 today
His first long-format program in September 1963 included an interview with President John F. Kennedy in September 1963. Two months later, Cronkite had the sad duty of announcing the president’s assassination. After breaking in to AS THE WORLD TURNS, the news anchor spent hours on the air, solemnly relating the details of the shooting as they were received by his office. Cronkite cried with the American people that day and as such, earned their trust.

PHOTOS: "Day of DAYS" Event
Michael Fairman has a recap and photos from Saturday's event at Universal City Walk. Also check out Part 2

INTERVIEW: Former AMC and ATWT star Cady McClain
McClain was a guest on "Stardish Radio" last night.