Tony Awards time
The Tony Awards, for excellence in theater, are being presented Sunday, June 13 (8 p.m. on CBS). Liev Schreiber, 42, is nominated for best leading actor (in a revival of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge”). Schreiber’s co-stars, Scarlett Johansson, 25, and Jessica Hecht, 44, vie for the Tony for best featured actress. Also nominated is Linda Lavin, 72, for best leading actress in a revival of “Collected Stories,” written by Donald Margulies.
In “Stories,” Lavin plays a feisty Jewish writer who gradually forms a mother-daughter bond with her young assistant. The relationship ends on a sour note when the assistant appropriates the writer’s long-ago romance with poet Delmore Schwartz as the basis of her own novel. (Margulies’ new play, “Time Stands Still,” about the Iraq war, is nominated for best original play.)
Nominated for best original score is the musical “Memphis.” It centers on the romance between a white disc jockey and a black singer in 1950s Memphis. David Bryan, 48, keyboardist for Bon Jovi, wrote the show’s music and lyrics. A lifelong member of a New Jersey synagogue, he often sounds the shofar on the High Holy Days.
Marian Seldes, who is still working at 81, will receive a lifetime achievement award. Seldes’ father was Jewish. Mostly a top stage actress, she has appeared in a handful of films (she played a college president in “Mona Lisa Smile” and a Julliard professor in “August Rush”). Her first husband, and the father of her only child, was Jewish. Seldes’ second husband was the late famous writer Garson Kanin, whom she wed in 1990.
Two favorite pastimes
The monthlong World Cup tournament begins in South Africa Friday, June 11. Our national soccer team, ranked 14th in the world, is one of 32 countries in preliminary rounds. The United States plays eighth-ranked England in its first match Saturday, June 12
(2 p.m. on ABC). It plays Slovenia on June 18 (9:30 a.m. on ESPN) and Algeria on June 23 (9:30 a.m. on ESPN).
The U.S. squad includes Jonathan Bornstein, 25, a defender from Torrance, and Benny Feilhaber, 25, a midfielder from Scarsdale, N.Y. Bornstein also plays for Chivas USA, an L.A.-based team of the Major League Soccer pro league.
Florida International University sophomore shortshop Garrett Wittels ended the season with a 56-game hitting streak, leaving him three games shy of breaking the NCAA Division I record for getting a hit in consecutive games (the record is 58, set in 1987 by Robin Ventura, later a major leaguer). Wittels’ streak has been covered in every media sports outlet, including the New York Times and ESPN. Wittels got his last hit in a June 5 game, but FIU suffered a
15-9 loss to Dartmouth and was eliminated from the NCAA tournament. So it’s wait ’til next season for Wittels — and the record.
A reality-show triple
Bethenny Frankel, 39, of “The Real Housewives of New York City” has pulled off a reality show “triple crown,” which might have pleased her late father, Robert Frankel, a trainer of race horses. On March 28 she wed her boyfriend of a year, businessman Jason Hoppy (possibly Jewish); on May 8 she gave birth to their daughter; and on June 10 her new spin-off show “Bethenny Getting Married?” premiered on Bravo (encore showings at 9 p.m. Friday, June 11;
1 p.m. Saturday, June 12 and 4 p.m. Sunday, June 13).
The first show features footage of her nuptials, which one source described as a “traditional Jewish wedding” (although lobster was served). Subsequent episodes will be about her family life with her husband and child.