What Are “Jupiter 8,” “6000 SUX,” and “The Freeze,” and What Do They Have in Common?

 

[They are all vehicles in movies and television created by Gene Winfield (1927-2025), legendary customizer of cars for film and TV as well as private clients.  He also built cars for himself for fun and profit, showed them at car shows, and raced them as well.  “Windy” Winfield died at 97 on 4 March, possibly the most celebrated auto customizer in the rodder-sphere.

[On 3 June 2020, I blogged that “The Bond Car Is Back!“ about the modified Aston Martin DB5 that Sean Connery drove as James Bond in Goldfinger (1964).  Gene Winfield had nothing to do with that custom job, but this post is in the same line as “The Bond Car Is Back!”—iconic, souped-up movie and TV cars.  (Just think of them as car characters.)] 

“GENE WINFIELD, WHOSE CARS STARRED
IN FILM AND ON TV, DIES AT 97”
by Richard Sandomir 

[Gene Winfield’s obituary ran in the New York Times on 22 March 2025 in Section B (“Business/Sports”).  It was published online on 16 March.]

He was know[n] for modifying cars with innovative metal work and paint jobs, and for building vehicles like the Galileo shuttle for the original “Star Trek” series.

Gene Winfield, a hot rodder and prominent car customizer who built fanciful vehicles for “Star Trek” [NBC; 1966-69], “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” [NBC; 1964-68] and other television series and for films like “Blade Runner” [1982] and “Sleeper” [1973], died on March 4 in Atascadero, Calif. He was 97.

His son, Steve, said he died in an assisted living facility from metastatic melanoma. He had also been diagnosed with kidney failure.

Mr. Winfield began to attract national attention in the late 1950s with a two-door 1956 Mercury hard top called the Jade Idol.

According to the custom car website Kustorama, he transformed the Mercury for a customer by adding features like handmade fenders rolled in aluminum in the front end; headlight rings made from 1959 Chrysler Imperial Crown hubcaps; a television set integrated into a new dashboard; and a steering column taken from an Edsel [automobile model produced by the Ford Motor Company from 1958 to 1960, discontinued due to extreme unpopularity].

Automobile magazine [cited below in Gary Medley’s Fuel Curve article] described the Jade Idol as having “a shark[-]like presence that represented a new direction in customs.”

The car got its name from Mr. Winfield’s inventive paint scheme: multiple shades of green and pearl white, with one color artfully blending into the other, using a technique that he developed. It became known as the Winfield Fade.

In a 2014 interview with the racing news website On All Cylinders [see below], Mr. Winfield said that he began his paint experiments with motorcycles, followed by a white Chevy.

“I put purple around the chrome strips,” he said. “When I got done, it was a little bit gaudy to me; it was different, though, and everybody loved it. So as I started to do the next one or two, I made it softer and started blending.”

Another famous custom job was a roadster [a two-seat automobile with an open body, a folding, retractable, or removable top, and often a luggage compartment or rumble seat in the rear], the King T, which he built in the early 1960s with Don Tognotti [ca. 1940-2000]. They painted a Model T Ford lavender and added modifications like a Chevrolet V-8 engine paired with a four-speed automatic transmission; four-wheel disc brakes; and 15-inch chrome wheels with wood inlays. It won an award for “most beautiful roadster” at the 1964 Oakland Roadster Show in California.

Mr. Winfield chopped off the tops of many cars that he customized — including hundred[s] of Mercurys — and put them back a few inches lower to give the cars sleeker looks.

“He would go to a World of Wheels show [series of indoor car shows held in various locations across the country that brings together a diverse collection of vehicles] and, with his crew, cut off the top of a vehicle with a blowtorch and put it back four inches lower; it was quite a spectacle,” said John Buck, producer of the Grand National Roadster Show [Pomona, California] and the Sacramento Autorama, to which Mr. Winfield brought his cars, charming the crowds.

Mr. Winfield’s custom cars, if not his name, became widely known in the 1960s when they were seen on television and in the movies.

He towed the Reactor — a futuristic, low-slung, aluminum two-seater with a gold and green color scheme, front-wheel drive and a hinged roof panel — on a trailer to the 20th Century Fox studio in Hollywood in 1966, hoping to get it a screen role.

“I went up to the gate and conned them into letting me in to show my car to their transportation department,” he told Motorious, a website for car collectors and restorers, in 2017. “From there, the transportation coordinator gave me the names and addresses of all these other studios, and for two days I took the car around and handed out my business card. Two weeks later, ‘Bewitched’ [ABC; 1964-72] called me and said that they wanted the Reactor on their set.” It was the centerpiece of an episode called “Super Car.”

The Reactor was then used on three more series: “Star Trek,” “Mission: Impossible” [CBS; 1966-73] and “Batman” [ABC; 1966-68], on which Catwoman (Eartha Kitt, 1927-2008) used it as the Catmobile.

He did some of his TV work as a division manager for the model-car company AMT, for which he built the Galileo Shuttle for “Star Trek.” Based on a design by Thomas Kellogg [1932-2003], it appeared in a few episodes. He constructed it in two units.

“One would be a complete exterior, full size,” he told the official Star Trek website in 2011. ”Then we built the complete interior. This interior had what we called ‘wild’ walls. What you do is you make the walls in four-foot sections on wheels, so you can put up one wall and they could film the actors sitting on the seats and whatnot.”

Robert Eugene Winfield was born on June 16, 1927, in Springfield, Mo., and grew up with five brothers and sisters, mainly in Modesto, Calif. His father, Frank, was a butcher who ran a wagon from which he and his mother, Virginia (Akins) Winfield, sold hamburgers and hot dogs for a nickel. After his parents divorced, his mother opened her own hamburger restaurant, where Gene started working at 10.

He was 14 when he opened his first shop, to which he brought his first car, a 1929 Ford Model A coupe. To it, he added oxtails [sic; probably ‘foxtails,’ which was a thing in ’40s and ’50s], two antennas and a blue paint job. But his hope of hot-rodding it in the streets was soon dashed when it was wrecked in a crash with a taxicab. He quickly bought two more roadsters.

He served stints in the Navy, from 1944 to 1945, and in the Army, from 1949 to 1951. While stationed in Japan, he learned welding skills from an expert Japanese welder. Back home, his custom work got better, and he began to attract customers. He also began racing in the streets and on dry lakes in the late 1940s; in 1951 he took his custom-built Ford Model T coupe — which he called the Thing — and drove it 135 miles per hour at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. [In 1951, the land speed record was 185.49 mph.]

But what established his reputation were the cars that he customized — like the Maybellene, a modified 1961 Cadillac named for the Chuck Berry hit song and painted in cream and butterscotch tones — and the ones that he made for Hollywood.

[Berry (1926-2017) was a renowned rock ’n’ roll and rhythm and blues guitarist. He released “Maybellene” in 1955 and it charted at number 1 on Billboard’s Rhythm and Blues chart and number 5 on the Popular Records chart.]

For “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” the cheeky spy series [NBC; 1964-68] starring Robert Vaughn [1932-2016] and David McCallum [1933-2023], Mr. Winfield built a gull-wing car, with mock flame throwers in the front end and a Corvair engine. For “Get Smart,” the spy-spoof sitcom [NBC/CBS; 1965-70/Fox; 1995] starring Don Adams [1923-2005] as an inept secret agent, he designed a sports car with gadgets like a retractable cannon.

For “Sleeper,” Woody Allen’s [b. 1935] 1973 science fiction comedy, he created a car with a bubble top over a Volkswagen chassis.

He also built 25 vehicles for the dystopian science-fiction film “Blade Runner” (1982), based on designs by Syd Mead [1933-2019], a few of which were called Spinners. One of them was flown by the police officer played by Edward James Olmos [b. 1947].

One of the cars he built for “Blade Runner turned up in “Back to the Future Part II” [1989][.]

Mr. Winfield’s son said that he preferred customizing cars to creating them for television and films.

“The movie cars were dictated to him, but his custom car customer would say, ‘Gene, here’s my car, do whatever your inspiration says,’” he said. “That’s how he turned out the Jade Idol.”

In addition to his son, from his marriage to Dolores Johnston, which ended in divorce, Mr. Winfield is survived by a daughter, Jana Troutt, from the same marriage; a daughter, Nancy Winfield, from another marriage, to Kathy Horrigan, which also ended in divorce; a son, Jerry Carrico, from another relationship; five grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.

Mr. Winfield said that he met with Ridley Scott [b. 1937], the director of “Blade Runner,” every two or three weeks as he and his crew built the cars for the film.

“The only thing that I was unhappy about in the end results was that Ridley Scott had us do a lot of things that had to be absolutely near perfect as far as surface and shapes and colors,” he said in an interview with Blade Zone, a fan website. “We went through hours, and hours, and hours of colors and all of this sort of thing, and then it was all filmed at night in the rain.”

With a laugh, he added, “You don’t see even half of what we did.”

[Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for the New York Times for more than three decades.  He joined the Times Obituaries desk in 2016 after 25 years covering sports media and sports business for the paper.  He’s worked for Long Island’s Newsday and other publications, and written several books, including his most recent, The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper and the Making of a Classic (Hachette Books, 2017).  

[Sandomir’s journalism background of more than 40 years has helped him become a better storyteller, which is critical to writing obits.  He graduated from Queens College of the State University of New York in 1979 with a B.A. in communications.] 

*  *  *  *
“GENE WINFIELD – IDOL GENIUS OF THE SILVER SCREEN”
by Gary Medley
 

[This interview with Winfield was published on the website Fuel Curve on 4 March 2025. (The interview was conducted and the story originally published in February 2019.)] 

In Southern California, rods and customs enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the film industry. Movie directors are drawn to automobiles as cinematic and graphic devices. At the same time, a host of SoCal customizers have thrived crafting unique vehicles for the silver screen. One such customizer is the legendary Gene Winfield, a metal man without peer. Known as “Windy,” Winfield built not only some of the most recognized 1950s-era customs – the Jade Idol . . ., for instance – he also reigns as one of the most prolific Hollywood car creators.

Gene Winfield, now a vibrant 91, was born in 1927 in Springfield, Missouri. His parents moved the family to Modesto, California, when he was a toddler, where his father, Frank, worked as a butcher before setting up a mobile burger business (who said food carts are new?). Later, after his parents divorced, his mother, Ginny, opened a luncheon restaurant, where by age 10 Winfield worked as a carhop.

[A carhop, for those too young to remember this phenomenon, is a waiter or waitress who brings food to customers in their cars at drive-in restaurants. Carhops, usually teens, have long been associated with hot rods and 1950s pop culture, but they started in the 1920s, when automobiles were beginning to be common. They flourished in the 1940s and ’50s, but declined during the mid-1960s as drive-ins began offering inside seating and drive-through service.

[A hot rod is a vehicle modified to run and/or accelerate faster. A hot rod may be any car, truck, or motorcycle, often old or classic, modified for increased speed and/or performance, or the term may be used to describe modified cars from the original (or traditional) “hot rod” era, after World War II and prior to 1960.

[No definition fits all cars dubbed a “hot rod,” and the term is used for a wide range of vehicles, but most often they’re individually designed and constructed using components from many makes of old or new cars.]

Gene demonstrated a creative streak early on, becoming an expert builder of model airplanes and, more importantly, getting hooked on photography. The focus of his attention? Cars. Particularly any car that had been modified. Not only did Gene see interesting cars through the viewfinder, he saw them in his future, as well.

At 15, Winfield bought his first car, a ’29 Model A coupe. Before long it sported twin antennas flying foxtails. He tweaked the motor in anticipation of street racing and he painted it a deep blue, his first “custom” paint job.

Winfield enlisted in the Navy as World War II was winding down in 1945. Upon his return to Modesto, the 18-year-old began customizing cars in a chicken house behind his mother’s home. A small workspace and dirt floor could not contain Gene’s creativity. He radically transformed his brother’s ’41 Plymouth, slicing three inches off the top and windshield. Word got around about his skill set and soon he was performing all manner of mods [car-enthusiast slang for ‘modifications’], including suspension work and custom touches like shaving emblems.

Racing drew Winfield’s attention as well. He converted a ’27 T roadster into a lakes runner that, with tuning help from Alex Xydias [1922-2024] of So-Cal Speed Shop, topped 120mph. Later he put together a ’27 T coupe – dubbed “The Thing” – that ran 135mph at Bonneville. Winfield even held a NASCAR [National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing] license, piloting jalopies in circle-track competition.

[The Bonneville Salt Flats are a 30,000-acre expanse of hard, white salt crust on the western edge of the Great Salt Lake Basin in Utah. The flats are the site of the Bonneville Speedway, a facility known as a place for setting land speed records.]

In a curious twist, Winfield had a second stint in the military, drafted into joining the Army in 1949. A year later he found himself in Japan as cook. Culinary responsibilities aside, Gene rented [a] small shop in Tokyo to build cars, including sports cars and the odd pre-war Ford. With the help of a Japanese gentleman who was a skilled metal man, Winfield greatly improved his metal working skills, learning hammer welding and shaping. He returned to Modesto in 1951 and opened Winfield’s Custom Shop.

Winfield’s first real “custom” was a ’50 Mercury, which he built to show off his handiwork to potential customers. The plan worked, and his shop hummed along successfully throughout the 1950s.

Along the way, a few milestones took place, most notably the famed “Winfield Fade,” a paint technique whereby one candy paint color would fade into another candy paint color. The most significant example is the epic “Jade Idol,” a super-smooth 1956 Mercury custom. Built for a customer with a . . . robust $15,000 budget, Winfield went wild. Writer Preston Lerner described the Jade Idol for Automobile magazine this way:

“The Jade Idol put Winfield on the national map. Sectioned four inches, with canted quad headlights, rear quarter panels grafted from a ‘57 Chrysler New Yorker, and an elegant scratch-built [constructed entirely from raw materials and components, rather than being built from a kit or modified from an existing model] grille that was repeated at the rear, the Idol had a shark-like presence that represented a new direction in customs.”

The significant press coverage garnered by the Jade Idol made him famous worldwide. In other words, the Gene Winfield legend was born.

In 1962, Winfield’s fame caught the eye of AMT, maker of plastic model car kits. Initially, AMT hired him as a freelance design consultant before he joined full time to manage their new Speed and Custom Division Shop. There he built full-scale promotional vehicles that mirrored and/or inspired the model kits.

The AMT connection proved fruitful in an unforeseen way: It became an audition for Hollywood. Soon studio creative types called on Winfield to build cars for movies and TV. And he was prolific! His film credits include vehicles for such series as “Get Smart,” “Bewitched (the futuristic Reactor),” and “Star Trek.” By 1970, he opened a shop in North Hollywood adjacent to the studios. Eventually his creations graced more than 20 films, including Mission[:] Impossible, Sleeper, and 25 futuristic rides for the sci-fi classic Blade Runner.

In recent years, Gene Winfield was honored as the Detroit Autorama “Builder of the Year” in 2008, and since 2013 has been a regular on the International Show Car Series circuit, chopping tops and shaping sheet metal in a special section . . . called “The Summit Racing Equipment Chop Shop.”

Despite closing in on the century mark, Gene Winfield is as energetic and engaged as ever. Goodguys [presumably, Goodguys Rod & Custom Association, the largest U.S. association catering to street rods, custom cars, and show cars] recently spoke with him from his Mohave, California, shop. His voice was strong and clear, his enthusiasm unchecked. His secret to success? ”I like people and I like to make them happy,” Winfield explained. ”I treat my customers the way I would want to be treated, and I try to build a car as a piece of art. The customer wants to make a statement, a car that will make an onlooker say, ‘Wow, he made that?’”

His secret to his longevity? ”I don’t drink or smoke or use coffee, never have.”

[Gary Medley has been a friend, ally, and contributor to the performance community for decades.  His interest in cars and journalism was pretty much a genetic imperative, as he is the son of Tom Medley, creator of Stroker McGurk, a cartoon character featured in Hot Rod magazine from 1948 to 1955, making brief comebacks in 1964 and 1965.  

[Medley’s own career path has traveled from the halls of Petersen Publishing to PR director for an Indy Car race to pitching tight-fitting Italian-made cycling shorts and countless other forms of high-speed life.  Living between two volcanoes in Hood River, Oregon, Medley will be a regular Fuel Curve contributor when he’s not working to sustain his father’s legacy.] 

*  *  *  *
“AMERICAN DREAM CARS OF THE 1960S AT PEBBLE BEACH”
by Mike Eppinger

[This article appeared in Old Cars Weekly (Boulder, Colorado), now called just Old Cars, on 5 July 2017.]

The Reactor will appear along with nine other one-off creations at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance this August

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Stargazers with dreams too big for a small town often pack their bags and head for one city: Hollywood. Legendary custom car builder Gene Winfield is a man who had very big dreams, but not for himself. His aspiration was to create a futuristic, aluminum-bodied custom automobile.

“I put the car in an open trailer and I towed it straight to Hollywood,” said Winfield of Modesto, California, about his custom coupe, called The Reactor. Appearing at the 2017 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in a special class for one-off American Dream Cars of the 1960s, the Reactor will uphold its celebrity status as both an iconic dream and significant character in some of the world’s most-remembered films and television shows.

[The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is an annual automotive event held on the Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California. It’s widely considered the most prestigious car show in the world and is the top Concours d’Elegance competition worldwide. (French [concours d’élégance]: translates as a “competition of elegance” and refers to an event where prestigious vehicles are displayed and judged.)]

Winfield initially imagined and built The Reactor for Joe Kizis’ 1965 annual Autorama car show in Hartford, Connecticut. After its time spent touring back east, Winfield brought the Reactor back to California, where he entered it in the Grand National Roadster Show. Against tough competition, the Reactor won the coveted Tournament of Fame Award. Winfield soon realized even bigger dreams for his car. So, he packed up the Reactor and took it to Hollywood, where it captured the attention of leading filmmakers.

“I didn’t know anybody,” Winfield recalled, “but I found 20th Century Fox Studios and I went up to the gate and conned them into letting me in to show my car to their transportation department. From there, the transportation coordinator gave me the names and addresses of all these other studios, and for two days, I took the car around and handed out my business card. Two weeks later, Bewitched called me and said that they wanted The Reactor on their set.”

The car was created around a Citroën DS [a front mid-engined, front-wheel drive executive car manufactured and marketed by the French company Citroën from 1955 to 1975] chassis and its unique hydro-pneumatic suspension so that it could move up and down, a feature that was far ahead of its time. “The inspiration I had for the car was to make something different, something wild,” Winfield said. He installed a 180-hp turbocharged engine from a Chevrolet Corvair Corsa, and paired it with the Citroën DS’s drivetrain. The Reactor was born as a two-seater, mid-engine car, with its most recognizable feature being its very low profile. Cleverly, Winfield used the Corvair flat-6 engine as a stylistic tool, because he wanted the Reactor to be as low and close to the ground as possible.

Automobiles ranging from a DiDia [a DiDia 150, a custom-designed, one-of-a-kind car conceived by Andrew Di Dia (1917-2014)] once owned by Bobby Darin [pop singer; 1936-73] to a car powered by gyrodynamics [the study of the behavior and motion of rotating bodies, particularly gyroscopes, and the forces and torques involved in their movement] will also be showcased in the American Dream Cars of the 1960s class.

[Mike Eppinger was Old Cars Weekly’s online editor, but his abilities include building a restored and modified 1969 Camaro.  His energy and creativity are matched only by his lifelong passion for all things automotive.]

*  *  *  *
“INTERVIEW: A FEW MINUTES WITH
HOT RODDING LEGEND GENE WINFIELD”
by Lori Sams 

[The interview was posted on the online magazine OnAllCylinders on 31 January 2014; it was last updated on 4 March 2025.]

During the interview, Gene took [a] break to chat with a fan that stopped by. He was telling us about how one of the Star Trek vehicles is still around and it is now at NASA. He got to go to NASA and they gave him a 7 hour tour of the facilities. He was in awe.

Gene Winfield has been customizing vehicles for longer than most of us have been alive. He has customized vehicles for many TV shows, movies, and commercials. Some of the shows and movies that have featured Winfield’s vehicles include Blade Runner, Robocop, Batman, Get Smart, and Star Trek.

While visiting the Cavalcade of Customs in Cincinnati, we got to hang out with the King of Kustoms. Winfield was showing off his car-chopping skills at the Genuine Hotrod Chop Shop, which is held at several of the Summit Racing Show Car Series indoor shows.

He took a break from fabricating to answer a few questions–questions like: What’s his favorite project of all time? How did his famous blended paint technique come about? What current rodding trends does he like?

 

OnAllCylinders: How many years have you been involved in hot rodding?

Gene Winfield: My first shop was in late ’46.

 

OAC: You’ve raced, you’ve built cars, and you still seem to be going strong. 

Winfield: I just painted a 1968 Mustang with a NASCAR motor that I am going to race at Bonneville. I have a Sprint car [an open-wheel race car designed for running on short tracks] and I drive a midget car [an open-wheel racing cars with a very high power-to-weight ratio that typically uses a four-cylinder engine] that I race in Lima, OH every year.

 

OAC: So you still have a passion for racing?

Winfield: I love it. I love the Sprint cars and midgets on the dirt track when you get them all crossed up. I love it.

OAC: What prompted you to start experimenting with blended paint schemes?

Winfield: I was doing a couple motorcycles and they had small tanks, and I just started blending and playing. I liked it. I liked what I saw and I said, “I can do this.” I decided to do a whole car so in 1957, I did a brand new Chevy with almost zero miles. I blended the car. At first I only blended around the chrome, and it was not a real custom. We knocked off the hood and truck emblems, but that was it. And we lowered it a little bit, too.

It was a white car, and I put purple around the chrome strips. When I got done, it was a little bit gaudy to me. It was different, though, and everybody loved it. So as I started to do the next one or two, I made it softer and started blending. And when I paint a car, I paint it until I like it. It doesn’t matter if it takes me two hours, three days, or two weeks–I paint until I like it. I don’t care if the customer likes it or not, but usually they do.

 

OAC: Most customers probably like it, though, right?

Winfield: There have only been two times, actually, in my life they didn’t like it. One was a lady and it was just too gaudy and too loud for her. The other was the same deal. This customer came to me, and I had painted four cars– brand new cars–in four years. And he brought me the fifth brand new car in the same year. He lived approximately 60 miles from me, so he would bring me a car with 74 or 80 miles on it. He would drive it one night up and down his street and bring it to me the next day. So anyways, he says to me “Gene, paint it wild. Do anything you want–any color, anything you want.”

So I did, and it was too wild.

It was too wild, so he said to change it. I never even pulled it out of the booth. I went ahead and softened it up, but I never got a picture of it. That was a big mistake. Later, for the next 10-15 years, he said he wished he would have left that paint job. It was shades of green and black. It was wild.

 

OAC: The white and the purple–you seem to see that a lot. Did you start that?

Winfield: Yeah. The most radical one I did was years ago, though. I painted it in ’59 and premiered it in 1960, and it was called the Jade Idol. The Jade idol is still around in Dedham, MA. It’s for sale, and the owner wants 400,000 dollars for it. It was a very radical paint job with greens and black and different shades. Then I blended a little bit of soft gold powder just in a few places on the hood and trunk.

In 2009, I built the Jade Idol II. It’s a similar car–the headlights were almost identical–so we called it Jade Idol II. It had some damage and I just repainted it. It was rubbed out yesterday at my shop in California.

OAC: Of all the cars you have done, which is your favorite?

Winfield: The favorite of the old custom cars is the Jade Idol. And then the favorite of the aluminum cars–I built two aluminum cars in the 1960s, one in 1963 and one in 1965–is the Reactor. It was pretty futuristic at the time and is still futuristic today. It was on the Bewitched television show. They wrote an entire episode about this car on Bewitched. It was really cool. It was filmed in 1966 or ’67 [Season 3, Episode 19, “Super Car,” aired 19 January 1967].

 

OAC: You’ve worked on a lot of television shows and movies. Did you meet any cool celebrities?

Winfield: Yes, lots of them. Loren [sic; Lorne] Greene [1915-87] of Bonanza [NBC; 1959-73], and of course all of his co-workers. In fact, I did a car for Michael Landon [1936-91]. I restored a car for him. And I met all the people from Bewitched, of course. I also met The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s Stephanie Powers [b. 1942] and all the different shows.

I didn’t get any of their autographs, and I realized later in life that I should have. And most of them are dead and gone. Now I try to get autographs from anybody that I meet. So it is a lot of fun.

 

OAC: As far as the hot rod scene, what is your favorite trend?

Winfield: I like the rat rods [a custom car with a deliberately worn-down, unfinished appearance, typically lacking paint, showing rust, and made from cheap or cast-off parts]. Some of them are totally junk and some are well engineered. They are doing some unbelievable stuff to lower them. They are going lower than we ever did. And of course they create rust and primer and stuff–which is OK. We ran primer but with the idea of painting, and we eventually did paint our cars. They make ’em rust and they are never going to paint them.

I like all phases of hot rodding. I like the real modern, the far out and wildest hot rod thing you can do, and the mild stuff, too. I like it all.

I have a hot rod that I started building many years ago. Someday I hope to finish it. I started building it with the idea of winning the open roadster show, called the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster–or AMBR cars. But those AMBR cars are like the Detroit Autorama Ridler. Now, all those cars have a million-plus, some of them 2-3 million dollars in them. They work on them for five, six, ten years–or whatever. This roadster–I started it 25-30 years ago, and I still have it. As I was building it, my ideas would start changing. Each year I would get new ideas and each year I would upgrade it and change it. So it’s still not finished, and I haven’t touched it in a few years.

And of course I keep building a car every couple of years for myself. I started to build a ’58 Pontiac. A ’58 Pontiac like a Bonneville is pretty scarce, and a restored Bonneville goes for a lot of money. I finally found one and bought it. I was getting ready to start it and a guy brought me an Econoline pickup that he knew I wanted to build again, like I did for Ford in ’62 or ’63.

 

OAC: Was that the Pacifica?

Winfield: Yes, the Pacifica. So I built the Pacifica for Ford, and it was in the Ford Custom Car Caravan. So I knew it ended up in Detroit. In fact, AMT sold it to Troy Ruttman [1930-97], the Indianapolis driver, and they used it for a parts truck in Dearborn. I ran ads in the paper and everything trying to find it. I got a hold of Troy’s brother, who is now in Florida, and he didn’t know what happened to it.

So this guy brought me this car and gave it to me for my birthday–no engine or transmission but a nice body. I went ahead and jumped on it, and in a year and a half, I built the Pacifica. So I have that at home now, and it’s all finished and runs good and everything.

My Pontiac is still sitting there.

 

OAC:  What do you do in your spare time? You turned your hobby into work. Do you have any other hobbies?

Winfield:  I like to take pictures. I haven’t gone out and taken still shots of scenery or anything in a while. I always have a camera. In fact, I have a Hasselblad camera at home. The Hasselblad camera is a Swiss/German camera.  When I bought it in 1972, I paid 4,000 dollars for it. Now the camera is, I think, worth about 35,000-40,000 dollars.  So it’s a good camera. It’s a 2 ¼ x 2 ¼ image, and you do big slides and you have a projector.

 

OAC: Do you still enjoy teaching and instructing?

Winfield: I love it. I do metalworking constantly all over the place.

 

OAC: Do you have a favorite place you’ve visited?

Winfield:  No, but I like Australia a lot. And Japan, too–been there seven times. I have been to Canada all the way from the West Coast to the East Coast of Nova Scotia. I painted five cars in Canada last year, and I did two workshops in Canada. I also did two workshops [i]n Australia. I painted a car and a motorcycle and did a show all in 18 days.

[The vehicles I named in the headline of this post were seen in TV’s Star Trek (Jupiter 8), the film Robocop (6000 SUX), the television series Mission: Impossible (The Freeze).  Other Winfield creations—some mentioned in the articles above—include the shuttle Galileo II (Star Trek), the Catmobile (Batman—driven by Eartha Kitt as Catwoman), the Super Car (Bewitched), the Spinners (Blade Runner), the Star Car (The Last Star Fighter).

[There were a slew more, and many of Winfield’s creations were used more than once—sometimes with different names.]

Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way, Part 2

 

[Good Night, and Good Luck, written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, adapted from their screenplay for the 2005 film distributed by Warner Bros. and based on the career of renowned newsman Edward R. Murrow, is scheduled to open on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on 3 April (next Thursday).  The play stars Clooney, who played Fred Friendly, a CBS executive, in the movie.  It started previews on 12 March and is scheduled to end its limited engagement on 8 June.  

[The one-act, intermissionless performance runs about 1 hour 40 minutes and the story takes place in 1954, when on 9 March, Murrow attacked Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade on the reporter’s television show, See It Now.

[The production is directed by David Cromer, a 2018 Tony- and 2017 Drama Desk-winner for direction of The Band’s Visit (2017).  The scenic design is by Scott Pask, the costume design by Brenda Abbandandolo, the lighting design by Heather Gilbert, the sound design by Daniel Kluger, and the projection design by David Bengali. 

[In addition to Clooney as Murrow, his first stage role since 1986 and his Broadway début, the cast includes Ilana Glazer as Shirley Wershba, a reporter and producer on See It Now; Glenn Fleshler as Fred Friendly, creator, with Murrow, of See It Now; Clark Gregg as Don Hollenbeck, a CBS newscaster and commentator, and associate of Murrow and Friendly; Mac Brandt as Colonel Anderson, a fictionalized CBS executive who’s pressured by McCarthy to silence Murrow; Will Dagger as Don Hewitt, the first director of See It Now; and Christopher Denham as John Aaron, a member of the production team of See It Now.

[Despite the limited engagement, the word is that there are seats available for the entire run.  Center orchestra tickets are selling for as much as $775; however, there are $49 rush tickets available at the Winter Garden Theatre box office with a valid student ID, limited to two tickets per person (seats may be partial view) and a limited number of $49 tickets are also available through a digital lottery at Ticket Initiatives | Good Night, and Good Luck. 

[A limited number of standing-room tickets will also be made available when a performance is sold out.  These tickets can only be purchased in person at the box office on the day of the performance for $69 each and are limited to two tickets per person.]

“GEORGE CLOONEY SPEAKS ABOUT HIS BROADWAY DEBUT
IN ‘GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK’”
by Dave Carlin 

[This report was aired on CBS News New York (Channel 2 in New York City) on 7 February 2025]

NEW YORK - George Clooney [b. 1961] is getting ready to appear in his first Broadway production. 

In “Good Night, And Good Luck,” Clooney is making his Broadway debut, which is based on his movie. In it, he’ll play legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow [1908-65] in eight shows a week. 

Clooney, one of the biggest stars in the world, co-wrote the show, and spoke about his personal connections to journalism, and about tackling big challenges on Broadway. 

“[W]hat’s a part of it, is you want to hear Murrow, and those words are fun to hear,” Clooney said. 

The play is an adaptation of the critically acclaimed 2005 film Clooney co-wrote, directed and appeared in. It’s about Murrow and CBS news in the 1950s, investigating Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s [1908-57; Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin: 1947-57] much-feared campaign to root out communists in America. Murrow and his team exposed lies. 

“Journalism is always challenged. Power doesn’t like journalism. Never has, and didn’t like it when it was [Thomas] Jefferson [1743-1826; 3rd President of the United States: 1801-09] and [John] Adams [1735-1826; 2nd President of the United States: 1797-1801], and they don’t like it now,” Clooney said. “My father has been, was an anchorman for 40 years. And we really believe in the idea of holding truth to power.

[George Clooney’s father, Nick Clooney (b. 1934), is a former anchorman and television host, who started his broadcast career in 1958. In the early 1970s, he had great success with The Nick Clooney Show, a local morning show with a variety and talk-show format at Cincinnati, Ohio’s WKRC-TV (not to be confused with the fictional WKRP in the 1978-82 TV sitcom).

[Nick Clooney ran as a Democrat in the 2004 election for a seat in the House of Representatives representing Kentucky, his native state, but lost to the Republican candidate. He was also an activist, making a 2006 documentary film with his son in support of the people of the Darfur region of Sudan in its conflict with the government in Khartoum (TV special; A Journey to Darfur).  In 2018, Clooney openly criticized the current owners of WKRC-TV, which he’d left in 1984, for their conservative viewpoints and their dictating certain coverage in the station’s newscasts, according to Cincinnati.com.]

“It’s actually a story about us at our best as Americans, which is holding ourselves accountable, which I think is good,” Clooney added. 

So why do Broadway now?

“Well, it’s scary. But, you know, I haven’t done a play in 40 years, so it’s one of those things where, and I’ve never done the Broadway play, so I’m, of course, you know, petrified to do it. But it’s not such a bad thing being 63 and doing something that you don’t feel both your feet are firmly on the ground. That’s not such a bad thing to do,” Clooney said. 

[Clooney made his stage début and his last appearance in a play in 1986 in a Los Angeles production of a play about Sex Pistols musician Sid Vicious entitled Vicious by Denis Spedaliere, in which he played Champ, a prostitute and dealer.  The production was a revival at The Complex, a theater in Hollywood, of a 1984 première, also in LA. The play traveled to Chicago to play at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company from 4 June to 6 July 1986.]

[Dave Carlin has covered national news stories and events in the past four decades including Superstorm Sandy and its tri-state impacts, Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina, and Iniki on Kauai, Hawaii.  He also covered the Space Shuttle Program; 1989 San Francisco Earthquake; numerous Southern California wildfires; the trial and execution of serial killer Ted Bundy in Florida; the 1994 police shooting death of Tyke, the escaped Cirus Elephant on the streets of Honolulu; 2009’s Miracle on the Hudson; the NYC Mayoral administrations of Michael Bloomberg through Eric Adams; and more.]

*  *  *  *
“GEORGE CLOONEY SHARES THOUGHTS
ON MAKING HIS BROADWAY DEBUT IN ‘GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK’”
by Joelle Garguilo 

[On 7 February 2025, Eyewitness News (WABC; Channel 7 in New York City), broadcast the report below.]

MANHATTAN (WABC) – It was a movie that became a box office sensation and an awards season darling 20 years ago.

[Good Night’s worldwide box office total was $56.6 million, of which $31.5 million was made in the U.S. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay for Clooney and Heslov. Good Night also received nominations for six BAFTA’s, including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, and Supporting Actor (Clooney); four Golden Globes; and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, among many others—including several wins.]

“Good Night and Good Luck” told the story of Edward R[.] Murrow and it was spearheaded by George Clooney.

Now Clooney is reimagining the movie and bringing it and himself to the Broadway stage.

Entertainment Reporter Joelle Garguilo caught up with Clooney to talk about his Broadway debut.

Clooney held an old-school style press conference to announce his cast and chat about the project.

Clooney is starring in the stage adaptation of the 2005 film that he co-wrote and directed as the legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

A role that hits close to home.

“How much of you doing this is almost a love letter to your dad in some way?” Garguilo asked.

“It really it is. My father was an Anchorman for 40 years, and he’s still feisty. You know, . . . he’s gonna come see the play, and I’m sure I’ll get some brutal notes about journalism from my dad. But yeah, I’m very proud of the person that my father has been his whole life and career. He taught me all the things that I believe in, and I’m and it’s, and it’s, I’m proud to represent his craft,” Clooney said.

“What do you remember about like being a kid and going to visit him at work?” Garguilo asked.

“I used to run the teleprompter for him. . . . In the old days, and teleprompters in the old days was a camera on top of paper that was taped end to end, and you would run it underneath the camera with a big light on it, and then whenever they break, do a commercial break, they go[, “C]ut that segment,[”] and you had a giant paper cutter, and you cut it, and then you tape it back together. That’s how literally, that’s how old I am,” Clooney said.

The play follows Murrow’s historic confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy, a story Clooney says still resonates.

“Unfortunately, this is a story that has been relevant for 100 years and continues to be relevant. I think it’s a good time to always remind ourselves of us at our best. And Murrow was us at our best,” Clooney said.

Garguilo asked what making his Broadway debut means to him.

“It’s fear. It’s abject fear. Is what I have, the . . . wave of emotion. Yeah, I’m terrified. But, I mean, that’s not such a bad thing to be, you know, it’s a kind of a good thing in life to constantly be doing stuff that you don’t feel comfortable with and you don’t feel competent. And I love the story,” Clooney said.

“So, is Brad Pitt getting an invite to opening night?” Garguilo asks.

“No, he’s not. In fact, I don’t want him around. Apparently, we’re fighting. I saw some article the other day, we’re fighting. I don’t know, I don’t know what, where Brad is right now, he’s shooting a movie, so [h]e’s almost done, and then we’re gonna, we’re gonna do another film together soon,” Clooney said.

A strictly limited engagement of “Good Night and Good Luck begins previews March 12th and the show officially opens in April at the Winter Garden Theatre.

[Joelle Garguilo is an Emmy Award-winning entertainment reporter for WABC.  A native New Yorker, she began her career in broadcast television 15 years ago at NBC, interviewing hundreds of stars of the screen and stage including Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Timothee Chalamet, Julia Roberts, Tony Bennett, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, among others.

[Throughout her tenure, she held multiple roles across the network.  Most recently, she worked as an on-air entertainment and features reporter for New York Live correspondent for E! News while contributing at the Today Show with Hoda & Jenna.

[Garguilo’s talents have earned her two Emmy Awards, one for the magazine program New York Live: Home for the Holidays and a second for Outstanding Entertainment: Program Features/Segment for New York Live Features/Segments.]

*  *  *  *
“GEORGE CLOONEY MAKES BROADWAY DEBUT,
TELLING THE STORY OF PIONEERING JOURNALIST EDWARD R. MURROW”
by Jon Wertheim  

[John Wertheim presented this report on 60 Minutes, the CBS News magazine program, on 23 March 2025, while the play was still in previews.  (The segment was recorded while Good Night was still in rehearsals.)]

Yes, in film, but even more so in theater, a sense of timing is essential. At age 63, George Clooney makes his Broadway debut this month, starring in an adaptation of the 2005 Oscar-nominated movie, “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Clooney co-wrote both the original screenplay and this play, telling the story of pioneering journalist Edward R. Murrow, who took on strong-arming Sen. Joseph McCarthy, all while withstanding pressure not to make waves at his own news network—this network—CBS. The plot revolves around themes of truth, intimidation, and courage in the face of corporate media. It is set in the 1950s. Clooney always meant for the story to echo today. He just didn’t realize how loudly it would.

Deep February, Winter Garden Theater in the heart of Broadway [Broadway at West 50th Street in Manhattan], the set still under construction — George Clooney arrives in character. 

Ever the everyman, he doesn’t stand on ceremony; he hurdles over it. But now it can be told: Hollywood’s famously cool leading man has the jitters.  

George Clooney: I mean, look at this place. This is proper old Broadway. And it’s exciting to be here, you know? Um –look– let’s not kid ourselves. It’s nerve-wracking and there’s a million reasons why it’s dumb to do. 

George Clooney: Well, it’s dumb to do because you’re coming out and saying, “Well, let’s try to– get an audience to take this ride with you back to 1954. 

The play brings to life the humming CBS newsroom of the 1950s—all typewriters and smoldering cigarettes. Having dyed his hair—upsetting that familiar salt-and-pepper ratio [Clooney is 63; Murrow would have been 45 at the time the play is set]—Clooney plays the protagonist Edward R. Murrow, host of the weekly television news program “See It Now.”

Jon Wertheim: You wrote the script to the film more than 20 years ago. You played Fred Friendly [1915-98]. 

George Clooney: Yeah. 

Jon Wertheim: Murrow’s producer. You didn’t play Murrow. 

George Clooney: No. 

Jon Wertheim: Why did you not want to play him? 

George Clooney: Murrow had a gravitas to him that at 42 years old I didn’t– I wasn’t able to pull off. 

Murrow earned his gravitas during World War II, with eyewitness radio dispatches from London amid the Blitz [the series of air raids launched on cities in Great Britain by the German air force from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941; literal German meaning: ‘lightning’; from Blitzkrieg – ‘lightning war’]. His trademark signoff doubles as the play’s title. [“Good night, and good luck” was Murrow’s signature signoff for his London radio broadcasts; he brought it forward to TV back in the States after the war.]

Clooney wrote the story with his longtime friend and creative partner, Grant Heslov [actor, writer, and filmmaker; b. 1963]. 

Jon Wertheim: How does this partnership work? Who’s at the keyboard? 

George Clooney: Oh, you’re at the keyboard. (laugh) 

Grant Heslov: He doesn’t know how to use a computer. He can barely– 

George Clooney: No, I’m like this. I’m the luddite. 

They met in LA in the early 80s, when both were struggling actors. Now they run a production company together. (Full disclosure: the three of us collaborated on an unrelated sports documentary out later this year.) Clooney and Heslov conceived of the story of “Good Night, and Good Luck” in the early 2000s, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq [Operation Iraqi Freedom began on 19 March 2003]. 

[According to The Hollywood Reporter (Rick Porter, “George Clooney to Produce Ohio State Abuse Scandal Docuseries,” 22 Feb. 2021), “George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smokehouse Pictures will produce a docuseries about a decades-long [sexual] abuse scandal in the athletic department at Ohio State University.”

[“The series, [which is currently in production by HBO with the working title of “Untitled Ohio State Scandal Project,”] is based on an October 2020 Sports Illustrated story by Jon Wertheim, which detailed a long list of allegations against former Ohio State sports doctor Richard Strauss and university officials’ lack of response,” the THR article continued. Clooney, Heslov, and Wertheim are listed among the executive producers, and Wertheim is credited as writer. No release date has been announced.]

George Clooney: You know, I just thought it was a good time to talk about when the press held government to account. 

A show within a show, the play recreates the historic television face-off between Murrow and Joseph McCarthy [9 March 1954 on See It Now], with McCarthy essentially playing himself through archival footage.

At the height of the Red Scare, the Wisconsin senator led a crusade to weed out supposed communist infiltration of the U.S. government. 

Murrow and his team overcame the climate of fear and intimidation to expose and help take down McCarthy with measured, fact-based editorials.

Jon Wertheim: Are you guys using McCarthyism as a parable for today? 

Grant Heslov: Originally it wasn’t for today, today. But it’s– this is a story that stands the test of time. I think it’s a story that you can keep telling over and over. I don’t think it will ever– thematically get old. 

At the table read in a downtown Manhattan studio, Clooney met the cast and wasted no time addressing what he sees as the parallels to today. 

George Clooney: When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed. Has to succeed – as 60 Minutes is here right now on our first day. (laugh)

[The term “fourth estate,” as Clooney is using it above, refers to the press and news media. It’s a relatively common expression but the other “three estates” are rarely invoked. The derivation of the terms is from the historical European concept of the “three estates of the realm”: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners.

[Clooney, however, is suggesting a slightly alternative use of the terms, implying that the press is a sort of “fourth branch” of the government, hence his reference to “the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches” as the other three “estates,” since the U.S. has no nobility or commoners in the European sense, and the clergy in this country have no “temporal” (that is, “governmental”) authority.]

Kidding aside, Clooney made the point: these are chilling times for the news media. 

George Clooney: ABC has just settled a lawsuit with the Trump administration. And CBS News is in the process . . .

[In Michael R. Sisak, “ABC agrees to give $15 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle defamation lawsuit,” 14 Dec. 2024, the Associated Press reported: “ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.” The trial in April and May 2023 concluded that Trump was liable for sexually abusing—but not raping—and defaming Carroll.]

The process he’s talking about: President Trump has lodged a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS, making the unfounded allegation that 60 Minutes engaged in election interference. CBS has since filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit . . . all this as the network’s parent company, Paramount, is trying to close a merger deal, which requires approval from the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission. 

George Clooney: We’re seeing this idea of using government to scare or fine or use corporations – to make– journalists smaller. Governments don’t like– the freedom of the press. They never have. And– that goes for whether you are a conservative or a liberal or whatever side you’re on. They don’t like the press. 

Jon Wertheim: What does this play tell us about the media’s ability or willingness to withstand this kind of pressure

George Clooney: It’s a fight that is for the ages. It will continue. You see it happening at the LA Times. You see it happening at the Washington Post, for god’s sake.

George Clooney: Journalism and telling truth to power has to be waged like war is waged. It doesn’t just happen accidentally. You know, it takes people saying, we’re gonna do these stories and you’re gonna have to come after us. And that’s the way it is.

When we dropped in on rehearsals, the mood was as light as the material was heavy. 

Comedian and producer Ilana Glazer plays CBS news-writer Shirley Wershba [b. 1922].

Jon Wertheim: How is George Clooney doing– leading a troupe of stage actors? 

Ilana Glazer: It’s shaky. It’s shaky, Jon. It’s tough. No, I’m just kidding.

Ilana Glazer: We’re all, like, so focused on this material, and it’s serious, and we’re trying to make it as honest as possible. So George really, like, will– let the– the tension release and break the tension with a joke at the right time. 

One of Broadway’s most in-demand directors, David Cromer, is the man in charge.

Jon Wertheim: Your Murrow character is being portrayed by someone with– considerable star wattage. What challenge does that present to you? 

David Cromer: It doesn’t present a challenge. It helps. 

Jon Wertheim: Why– 

David Cromer: Edward R. Murrow was a star. He was the most-trusted man in America. He had this very serious news show, but he also had this incredibly popular entertainment show, which was on Friday nights. It was called Person to Person . . . 

David Cromer: And he went into Liberace’s house. And he went into all these people’s houses. [Pianist, entertainer, and showman Liberace (1919-87) appeared on Person to Person on 6 January 1956.]

David Cromer: If he were playing Willy Loman [lead character in Arthur Miller’s 1949 play, Death of a Salesman], that would be different, you know what I mean– 

Jon Wertheim: A smaller figure than Murrow– 

David Cromer: If he were playing– a little man. If he were playing a little man. He’s playing a great man. And he’s a great man who’s playing a great man. 

As for the play’s setting, Clooney knows his way around a newsroom. His father Nick Clooney was a longtime journalist and anchorman.

George Clooney: When I was 12 years old, my dad was working at WKRC in Cincinnati. I would run the teleprompter. In those days, a teleprompter was– sheets of paper taped end-to-end with a camera pointed down. And you’d feed them like this, underneath the camera. And my dad would be able to read it on the teleprompter. And then at the commercial they’d say, “Okay, cut three minutes out of that story.” And you had at the end of it a paper cutter– 

Jon Wertheim: Literally cut– 

George Clooney: And you’d just go sh-dunk . . .

Grant Heslov: You really are old. 

George Clooney: I’m old, man. 

Clooney says he’s running for nothing, but he makes no secret of his politics. A lifelong Democrat, he made news last summer, when he wrote a pointed essay calling on Joe Biden not to seek reelection on account of his age [“I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee,” New York Times 11 July 2024, sec. A (news): 19].

Jon Wertheim: Looking back on that, happy you did it? 

George Clooney: Yeah. I’ll make it kind of easy. I was raised to tell the truth. I had seen– the president up close for this fundraiser, and I was surprised. And so I feel as if there was– a lot of profiles in cowardice in my party through all of that. And I was not proud of that. And I also believed I had to tell the truth. 

Truth: an increasingly elusive concept . . . Clooney says that for all the parallels between the play and these convulsive times we live in today, disinformation is one critical distinction . . . .

George Clooney: Here’s where I would tell you where we differ from what Murrow was doing. Although McCarthy would try to pose things that– he’d show up [with] a blank piece of paper and say, “I’ve got a list of names.” Okay, so it was– that was his version of– of fake news. We now are at a place where we’ve found that it’s harder and harder and harder to dis– to discern the truth. Facts are now negotiated. 

Jon Wertheim: You and I can agree or disagree, but if we can’t reach a consensus that this chair is brown . . .

George Clooney: Yeah.

Jon Wertheim: We’re in trouble. 

George Clooney: That’s right. 

By March, rehearsals had moved into the theater. A big production issue on this day: the prop cigarettes. 

George Clooney: The hardest part for me is smoking.

Jon Wertheim: What do you mean? 

George Clooney: Well, he smokes a lot. And we smoke a lot in the play. Everybody smokes in the play, so the place is covered in smoke. And smoking in our family’s a big, you know, problem. We grew up in Kentucky. 

A lotta tobacco farmers. And– almost all of my family members died of– of lung cancer. My father’s– sister, Rosemary [Clooney (1928-2002)], died of it. She was a wonderful singer, died of it. And my dad’s 91 because he didn’t smoke. So smoking has always been– it’s a hard thing to do. 

[Murrow was a chain smoker all his life; he smoked about three packs a day. He was diagnosed with lung cancer and had a lung removed in October 1963.  He died about two years later, on 27 April 1965, two days after his 57th birthday.

[On Broadway, the actors, including Clooney, are using herbal cigarettes on stage to portray the heavy-smoking characters to lessen the health risks associated with real tobacco.]

It’s easy to forget, George Clooney has been an A-lister for 30 years now.

In 2003, he was a bachelor living with a pet pig when 60 Minutes profiled him. 

Jon Wertheim: You were in the Sexiest Man of the Year– phase. [Clooney was named the “Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine in 2006.]

George Clooney: Sure, that was a big time for me. I was very– 

Jon Wertheim: Not– not that you’re not sexy now. 

George Clooney: That’s okay. I’m not hurt, Jon. 

He’s married now. His wife and their two kids left the home they keep in Europe to spend this spring run with him in New York. Clooney is also in a different phase of his life professionally. 

George Clooney: Look, I’m 63 years old. I’m not trying to compete with 25-year-old leading men. That’s not my job. I’m not doing romantic films anymore. 

Opening night set for April 3rd, George Clooney’s turn on Broadway puts him a few feet from his audience.

Jon Wertheim: They can see you, you– you can see them too. 

George Clooney: I’m not looking at them. I’m putting my wife in the very, very, very back.

Jon Wertheim: You– you wish you had done this earlier in your career? 

George Clooney: I don’t know that I could’ve. I wasn’t– I didn’t do the work required to get there. 

Jon Wertheim: But I saw the smile when you came out here . . .

George Clooney: Oh, yeah. It’s cool. 

Jon Wertheim: and– looked out here.

George Clooney: –Anybody who would deny that would just be a liar. I mean, there isn’t a single actor alive that wouldn’t have loved to have, you know, been on Broadway. So that’s– that’s the fun of it. It’s– it’s trickier the older you get. But why not?

[This program was produced by Nathalie Sommer and Kaylee Tully with broadcast associates Elizabeth Germino and Mimi Lamarre. Edited by Sean Kelly.

[L. Jon Wertheim is an accomplished journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent.

[I don't entirely get why George Clooney keeps insisting that he's "old."  He's only 63—advanced middle age!  He’s not even old enough to remember Murrow (who died a little under four years after Clooney was born).  I’m a little over fourteen years Clooney’s senior—I’m legitimately an old man—and Murrow died when I was over 18, so I knew the name and the renown. 

[I vaguely remember seeing Edward R. Murrow on television when I was a boy.  See It Now was on from 1951 to 1958, when I was between 4 and 11.  It was a news show, so I wouldn’t have been watching it for most of its run, but maybe by the time I was 10, I might have watched it when it ran on Sunday evenings at 5, but probably not often.  The McCarthy shows would have been beyond me (though I do remember being aware of the turmoil of those years.  I was only 7 when the 9 March 1954 showdown aired, and 10 when McCarthy died.

[On the other hand, Person to Person ran from 1953 to 1961, when I was between 6 and 14, and I’m pretty sure I watched some of the later shows when Murrow would send cameras into the homes of celebrities.  I sort of remember watching some of the personalities from Hollywood and other fields as they sat in their living rooms as Murrow, back at the studio, interviewed them. 

[Murrow was my dad's first boss at the U.S. Information Agency back in the early 1960s.  (I’ve blogged about that time of my life in “An American Teen in Germany” [9 and 12 March 2013].)

[I’ve told the story of my father taking up President Kennedy’s challenge to “ask what you can do for your country” in his inaugural address in 1961.  JFK appointed Murrow Director of USIA in January 1961 and Dad applied in May.  He went on active duty as a Foreign Service Officer in July ’62.  I have no idea if the two ever actually met, but Murrow was the first director of USIA under whom Dad served.

[Dad went overseas in October 1962 and didn’t return to the States until sometime in September 1963, when his father died.  Murrow resigned in ’64 due to illness and died of lung cancer in '65.  (Dad served until 1968 under two successors to Murrow: Carl Rowan (1925-2000), a well-known journalist, 1964-65, and Leonard Marks (1916-2006), a communications lawyer, 1965-68.)]

Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way, Part 1

 

[Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, written around 1603-04, opened in its latest Broadway revival with Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on 23 March. It started previews on 24 February and is scheduled to close its limited run on 8 June.  The two-act performance runs 2 hours 40 minutes and the production is set “in the near future.”

[The production is directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony-winner for direction of A Raisin in the Sun (2014) and a Drama Desk-winner for Some Like It Hot (2023).  Scenery was designed by Derek McLane, the costumes by Dede Ayite, the lighting by Natasha Katz, and the sound by Justin Ellington.  The fight direction is by Thomas Schall.

[In addition to Washington as Othello and Gyllenhaal as Iago, the cast includes Molly Osborne in her Broadway début as Desdemona, Othello’s wife.  Andrew Burnap is Cassio, Othello’s loyal captain; Julee Cerda is Bianca, Cassio’s lover; Daniel Pearce is Brabantio, Desdemona’s father; and Kimber Elayne Sprawl is Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s maid.

[Despite the limited engagement, the scuttlebutt is that there are seats available for the entire run.  Center orchestra tickets are selling for $921; however, there are $49 student rush tickets available for every performance at the Barrymore Theatre box office with a valid student ID, limited to one ticket per person and a limited number of $49 tickets are also available through a digital lottery at Telecharge Lottery + Rush Tickets.] 

“DENZEL WASHINGTON, JAKE GYLLENHAAL
RETURNING TO BROADWAY IN ‘OTHELLO’”
by Katie Houlis

[This advanced report of the revival aired on CBS News New York (WCBS, Channel 2, New York City) on 6 March 2024.]

NEW YORK – Actors Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal are returning to Broadway in an upcoming revival of William Shakespeare’s [1564-1616] classic play “Othello.”

Washington will star in the title role, with Gyllenhaal portraying Iago. Additional casting has not yet been announced.

The production, directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon, will open in spring 2025.

Washington was last seen on Broadway in the 2018 production of [Eugene O'Neill’s (1888-1953)] “The Iceman Cometh” [1939; 26 April-1 July 2018], for which he received a Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Play. He previously won the Tony for Best Actor in a Play for the 2010 revival of “Fences” [26 April-11 July].

Gyllenhaal was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 2019 for his performance in “Sea Wall/A Life.” 

[This was a mounting on 8 August-29 September 2019 of two solo one-act dramas; Sea Wall was written by Simon Stephens and performed by Tom Sturridge; A Life was written by Nick Payne and performed by Gyllenhaal. Both actors were nominated for 2020 best-actor Tonys.]

Tickets for “Othello” will go on sale at a later date.

“Othello” was last performed on Broadway in 1982, starring James Earl Jones in the title role, Christopher Plummer as Iago and Dianne Wiest as Desdemona.

[Katie Houlis is a digital producer with the CBS New York web team.  She started her career as an intern with the Pittsburgh CW Green Team and the CBS Pittsburgh web team.  She later joined CBS Pittsburgh as a full-time web producer.  Houlis has also written for Tell-Tale TV, an entertainment news website.]

*  *  *  *
“BROADWAY SEEING STARS FOR OPENING NIGHT OF ‘OTHELLO’
STARRING DENZEL WASHINGTON AND JAKE GYLLENHAAL”
by Joelle Garguilo

[This Eyewitness News report was broadcast on WABC (Channel 7, New York City) on 24 March 2025, the evening after opening night.]

NEW YORK (WABC) – Broadway was seeing stars on Sunday night [23 March] for the opening of ‘Othello.’ [There is a post on another production of Othello in “Some Out-Of-Town Plays from the Archive” (22 December 2020), a Washington, D.C., staging with Avery Brooks as the Moor and the late Andre Braugher as Iago.]

Othello is one of William Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, and it has not been on Broadway since 1982. [I have a three-part post as a tribute to James Earl Jones, who played Othello in that 1982 staging, entitled “In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024)” (22, 25, and 28 September 2024).]

The revival, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, is set in the near future. It is getting a fresh take thanks to director, Kenny Leon.

“I think Denzel has given his whole self on the stage eight shows a week. He doesn’t have to do that other than he wants to impact lives – his Othello is going on that spiritual journey. It’s just a real special production,” Leon said.

Molly Osborne plays Desdemona.

“It has been a dream working for this company. I hope audiences come and they see something new and fresh even though it’s a 400-year-old play,” Osborne said.

Jamie Lee Curtis [2023 Oscar-winner as Best Supporting Actress for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022); she and Gyllenhaal have appeared in several films together over the years] was at the opening and said it was thrilling to watch Gyllenhaal’s performance.

“To know someone since they were five and watch them become an artist – to be able to watch Jake tonight to take on one of the most challenging roles is just thrilling,” she said.

It was a historic evening.

“Just appreciative that I get to be a part of history. This is a historic evening. Break legs all over the place – it’s gonna be amazing,” said Rosie Perez.

Othello has already broken records as the highest-grossing play in Broadway history. [The production has amassed $2.8 million from eight previews leading up to the official 23 March première. This surpasses the $2.7 million set by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in December 2023.]

It only runs through the first week in June, so those wanting to go are encouraged to get tickets immediately.

[Joelle Garguilo is an Emmy Award-winning entertainment reporter for WABC.  A native New Yorker, she began her career in broadcast television 15 years ago at NBC, interviewing hundreds of stars on the screen and stage including Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Timothee Chalamet, Julia Roberts, Tony Bennett, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, among others.

[Throughout her tenure, she held multiple roles across the network. Most recently, she worked as an on-air entertainment and features reporter for New York Live, correspondent for E! News while contributing at the Today Show with Hoda & Jenna.

[Garguilo’s talents have earned her two Emmy Awards, one for the magazine program New York Live Home for the Holidays and a second for Outstanding Entertainment: Program Features/Segment for New York Live Features/Segments.]

*  *  *  *
“DENZEL WASHINGTON AND JAKE GYLLENHAAL
POWER “OTHELLO” TO ELECTRIC OPENING NIGHT ON BROADWAY”
by Dave Carlin 

[This report aired on CBS News New York (WCBS, Channel 2, New York City), also on 24 March 2025.]

Sunday [the 23rd] was opening night on Broadway for two of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal are taking on the new production of Shakespeare’s “Othello.”

The red carpet was full of VIPs, including Jennifer Lopez, Samuel L. Jackson, Anna Wintour, Colman Domingo and many more. And entertainers weren’t the only ones in attendance. Former President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, were also seen entering the Barrymore Theatre.

Washington plays the conflicted and murderous title character. His jealousy and violence is carefully orchestrated by his backstabbing confidante Iago, played by Gyllenhaal.

Prior to the show, members of the cast explained how horrors and thrills created by Shakespeare now land with a freshness in a modern setting.

“They’ve treated this like a new play,” said Andrew Burnap, who plays “Cassio.”

“I’m excited to share,” said Kimber Elayne Sprawl, who portrays “Emilia.”

“Even if you know it, seeing it happen right in front of you, the conflict that happens in the play, it’s just so human that it will always need to tell the story,” said Molly Osborne, who plays “Desdemona.”

Othello’s director is Tony Award winner Kenny Leon.

“Denzel is an emperor. He’s an emperor of the American stage, of the world stage. He has met this role head on and Jake has met Denzel head on,” Leon said.

In February, while Othello was in rehearsals, CBS News New York sat down with Washington and Gyllenhaal [this is a video; there’s no transcript that I can find]. Both described their roles as exciting, and for each star a dream come true.

“We are given the freedom to break the rules,” Washington said.

“I spent the past eight months really digging in because I’ve never done Shakespeare,” Gyllenhaal added.

Producer Brian Moreland [winner of the 2023 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play for The Piano Lesson; nominated for four Best Play or Best Revival Tonys] said a sizzling Shakespeare is what they were after and he credits the unbeatable cast and creators.

“It’s that good and they’re that good. Night after night they build that same journey, so that you get to the point that we all know is going to happen, it’s all inevitable, but yet you’re there with them on every single word they have to say,” Moreland said.

To call Othello, which runs through June 8, a financial hit is an understatement as it is expected to earn the title of highest grossing Broadway play ever.

*  *  *  *
“DENZEL WASHINGTON AND JAKE GYLLENHAAL’S
UNDERWHELMING BLOCKBUSTER”
by Adrian Horton

[Adrian Horton’s review of the Broadway revival of Othello was published in the U.S. edition of The Guardian on 24 March 2025.] 

The record-breaking take on the Shakespearean tragedy might already be a smash, but it’s disappointingly muddled

With the smell of doom and regression in the air, perhaps it’s not surprising that the hottest ticket on Broadway this season is for a 400-year-old tragedy. There’s been much ado about the box office for Othello, a new rendition of Shakespeare’s classic given movie-star wattage. The show at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, grossed $2.8m during one week of previews – the most of any non-musical during a single week on Broadway ever, in part because some orchestra tickets are going for a whopping $921.

The sticker shock is not just an Othello problem – tickets for two other celeb-driven plays on Broadway – Glengarry Glen Ross [31 March-28 June 2025 at the Palace Theatre, with Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk], and George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck [see “Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way, Part 2” (30 March 2025)], aren’t averaging much less, and it has already been a lucrative season for celeb-studded Shakespeare as Romeo + Juliet, starring screen-famous Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor, recouped its $7m capitalization before closing last month. But before it even officially opened, Othello became emblematic of Broadway’s trend toward luxury experience and status symbol over popular entertainment, billing Hollywood names in a hyper-competitive, exclusionary market. (Full disclosure: the Guardian, denied tickets for review, paid $400 for a middle orchestra seat.)

Ticket prices, of course, are not the fault of the show itself, nor typically relevant to a review. But the astronomical ask hangs over this minimalist, almost dystopian production, which puts the burden of imagination heavily on the performers and largely fails to reach the level of transcendence demanded by its cost. Directed by the Tony winner Kenny Leon, who guided Washington to a Tony in 2010’s Fences, this austere, underwhelming take on Shakespeare seems to acknowledge that people are not paying for a revival of this particular play, which hasn’t been on Broadway since 1982 and still has rich insights on the masculinity, human fallibility and race more than 400 years after its debut. Instead, it’s for the opportunity to see Gyllenhaal, one of the most versatile and thrilling millennial actors, and especially the widely beloved Washington, rightly hailed in the Playbill as “the most lauded stage and screen actor of his generation”, without the mediation of a screen.

Othello does provide a showcase for these two heavyweight talents to bend iambic pentameter to their will – to convey, with their considerable magnetism, both the plot and the emotional nuances of this tragedy to an audience that probably does not totally understand what they’re saying. And it does not provide much else. Derek McLane’s scenic design keeps the stage bare except for some peeling columns, the props minimal save for occasional accoutrements of a modern military operation (army fatigues, Apple laptops). A lit message at play’s opening sets this medieval drama in “the near future” – still Venice (and later Cyprus), though when Gyllenhaal’s devious Iago first appears to set the stage for the fateful manipulation of the general, one might mistake him for a hustler at a basement club in Bushwick. His eyes near glow in the spotlight, and a preponderance on blue-white floor lighting (design by Natasha Katz) gives the production, particularly its monologues, the feel of a concert at the ruins of the Colosseum.

Star power does the heavy lifting, though not enough to elevate this Othello into the pantheon of Broadway greats. As expected, Washington, at 70, brings the bearing of an elder statesman to the fallible Venetian general, a role he first played at age 22 [at Manhattan’s Fordham University in March 1977, his senior year]. This has the double-sided effect of making the character feel especially tragic – the well-respected veteran general, imbued with glorious authority by one of the most well-respected actors, felled by a shocking streak of insecurity – and ill-fitting; his chemistry with Desdemona (a much younger Molly Osborne, an English actor with an unwieldy American accent) feels more father-daughter than new husband and wife, despite Washington’s best attempts at charming, sexy beguilement. Washington has moments of sublime melody as Othello descends into jealous delusion, the kind of rhapsodic deliveries that feel worth whatever price of admission, but the overall tone of his performance is one of perfunctory hyper-competence.

The show, instead, belongs to Gyllenhaal, an actor of singular intensity who makes a meal out of Iago’s desperate two-facedness. He opens the show with a hypnotic screed against “the Moor” he so loathes – a denigration of blackness (of soul and skin) in Shakespeare’s time titled just enough to resonate more clearly in ours, and never ceases to mesmerize. At turns preening, desperate, boastful, plaintive, easily convincing in his maneuverings of the guileless lieutenant Cassio (Snow White’s Andrew Burnap), as well as gullible townsman Roderigo (Anthony Michael Lopez), Desdemona and Othello, Gyllenhaal’s Iago is the one truly fun performance to watch throughout the show’s nearly three-hour runtime.

The rest is a muddled affair, in details and delivery – Italian polizia but American uniforms, Iago prejudiced against the black-skinned general yet married to Emilia, played by Black actor Kimber Elayne Sprawl. Even Washington seems, at the play’s ignominious and violent end, confused by his character, his grip on reality or his evolution from hero to villain slippery. His Othello is never not compelling; the whole thing, in fact, is consistently competent and spirited, though weighted down by expectation – enough that it should keep the green-eyed monsters who miss out at bay.

[Adrian Horton is an arts writer for Guardian US.

[After my “recovered” report on the Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger’s 1990 production of Othello, I added a personal comment.  It’s appropriate to repeat here, I think, so I’m appending it to this post as well:

When I was trying to make a career as an actor, there were roles I ached to play—a phenomenon among most actors, I believe.  One I got to do was the title character in George Bernard Shaw’s one-act The Man of Destiny: Napoleon as a 26-year-old general.  [I was 31 at the time.]  Most of the others, I never got to.  At the top of that list was Shakespeare’s Iago, arguably one of the greatest villains in theater. 

I wanted to play Iago so badly, I could feel it in my bones.  I came somewhat close: I got to play Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, a kind of Iago-lite in a comedy rather than in a tragedy.  I loved doing that part, largely because Much Ado is my all-time favorite Shakespeare and it was a lovely production—but it wasn’t the brass ring.  Alas!

[I think most actors long to play Hamlet—including some women (though I believe many female actors long to play Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler as their most coveted classic role.  I went for the bad guy.

[This is the first part of a two-part post.  On Sunday, 30 March, I’ll run the second installment, a collection of pieces on another movie star-led Broadway show, Good Night, and Good Luck starring George Clooney as newsman Edward R. Murrow.  Please come back to Rick On Theater in three days to read the second part of “Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way.”]