Will & Grace is an American television sitcom that was originally based upon the relationship between William Truman and Grace Adler. The show is set in New York City. First broadcast on NBC from September 21, 1998 to May 18, 2006 for a total of eight seasons. Will & Grace remains the most successful television series with gay principal characters.

Despite initial criticism for its particular portrayal of homosexual characters, it went on to become a staple of NBC's Must See TV Thursday night lineup, where it was ensconced in the Nielsen Top 20 for half of its network run. The show was the highest-rated sitcom among adults 18–49, between 2001 and 2005. Throughout its eight-year run, Will & Grace earned 16 Emmy Awards and 83 nominations.

Will & Grace was filmed in front of a live studio audience (most episodes and scenes) on Tuesday nights,^[1] at Stage 17 in CBS Studio Center, a space that totals 14,000 sq ft (1,300 m²). Will and Grace's apartment is on display at the Emerson College Library, having been donated by series creator Max Mutchnick.^[2]

A long-running legal battle between both the original executive producers and creators and NBC took place between 2003 and 2007. All seasons of the series have been released on DVD and the show has been broadcast in more than 60 countries.

Premise[link]

Will & Grace takes place in New York City and focuses on Will Truman, a gay lawyer, and his best friend Grace Adler, a Jewish woman who runs her own interior design firm. Also featured are their friends Karen Walker, a rich socialite, and Jack McFarland, a struggling actor/singer/dancer who also has had numerous other brief careers.

Cast[link]

Main characters[link]

• Will Truman (played by Eric McCormack)

A gay lawyer who studied at Columbia University, where he met Grace. They have been best friends ever since. He has a very neurotic side, especially when it comes to cleaning. Several characters have commented that his relationship with Grace is more like that of a romantic couple than of two friends.

• Grace Adler (Debra Messing)

An interior decorator with an apparent obsession with food, who has been Will's best friend since college. Messy and neurotic^{[citation needed]}, she often plays as a counter-balance for Will's more uptight nature.

• Karen Walker (Megan Mullally)

The bisexual wife of the wealthy (but never seen) Stan Walker. She "works" as Grace's assistant making "Grace Adler Designs" more popular among her social contacts. Known for abusing alcohol and pills, she can be insensitive, but is close to Grace and Jack, and occasionally Will.

• Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes)

Will's other best friend. Jack is flamboyant, flighty and superficial. He drifts from man to man and changes occupations often - he's been a struggling actor, an acting teacher, back-up dancer, Banana Republic sales associate, a sales associate at Barney's Department Store, cater-waiter, student nurse, and talk-show host called "Jack Talk". Early on in the show he establishes a close friendship with Karen. Jack made a one man show called "Just Jack", " Jack 2001" and "Jack 2002" to showcase his singing/dancing/acting abilities.

Supporting characters[link]

• Rosario Salazar (Shelley Morrison) – Seasons 3–8, recurring previously

Karen's maid, Rosario was working as a cigarette lady when Karen hired her in 1985. In the first several episodes she is not seen, but known only by name as Karen shouts racially-insensitive orders to her over the phone. She was briefly married to Jack so she would not be deported. Rosario and Karen had a love/hate relationship where sometimes they would yell and argue with each other but when the fight was over it would usually end with a light-hearted exchange between them.

• Harlin Polk (Gary Grubbs) – Season 1

Will's Texan client when Will had his own law firm. Later Harlin fires Will.^[3]

• Elliot (Michael Angarano) – Season 4, recurring afterwards

Jack's biological son from a donation to a sperm bank.

Recurring characters[link]

Will & Grace's relationship[link]

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Early years[link]

During the third season of the show, it is revealed through flashback scenes that Will and Grace first met at Columbia University in 1985, living across the hall from one another in a dorm. They instantly connected and soon began dating. Later, Jack, who was still in high school, crashed a Dorm Party held by Will, after which Jack accuses Will of being in denial about his sexual orientation. Will proposes to Grace to postpone sleeping with her, but finally comes out to her. Grace throws him out of her family's house and they do not speak for a year (Grace having moved off campus), but they accidentally ran into each other again on Thanksgiving 1986, at D'Agostino's supermarket. This meeting spurred a reconciliation and they became best friends.

Roommates[link]

In the pilot episode of the show, Grace was about to get married to her boyfriend Danny. When Will disapproved, she became angry and planned to get married secretly anyway. However on the way to the wedding she realizes that Will was right, and she leaves Danny. Needing an apartment, she moved in with Will in his apartment on the Upper West Side. Will and Grace spend a lot of time with one another as well as with friends Jack McFarland and Karen Walker.

Jack is a flamboyant, gay, struggling stage actor-singer-dancer who, over the course of the show, has a range of jobs including cater waiter, acting teacher, student nurse, retail sales (working for Banana Republic and Barneys), back-up dancer for singers such as Jennifer Lopez and Janet Jackson and TV producer. Karen, an alcoholic multimillionaire, works as Grace's assistant, a job she took to have time away from the home she shares with her husband Stan and his kids, Mason and Olivia. Another character who factored into the early episodes of Will & Grace was Will's client Harlin Polk, played by Gary Grubbs. At first he was given billing in the opening credits with the other four cast members, but interest in his storyline waned, and he was written out of the show early in the second season (Harlin, rather reluctantly, fired Will and hired another lawyer).

The show follows both Will and Grace's attempts to establish romantic relationships without sacrificing their often co-dependent reliance on one another for emotional support. A common joke finds Jack and Karen referring to Will and Grace as married, "non-romantic life partners", or "sexless lovers". At the beginning of the second season Grace moved into her own apartment (across the hall from Will's) in an attempt to put some distance between herself and Will, but then ended up moving back at the beginning of the third season. She moved out again after getting married early in the fifth season, but she moved back in with Will after separating from her husband during Season 6.

Relationships[link]

Grace had several lovers on the show, portrayed by actors such as Woody Harrelson and Edward Burns. Frequently, her lovers feel frustrated by her relationship with Will, jealous of their closeness, personal jokes, and ability to finish each other's sentences. Eventually she married Leo, played by musician and actor Harry Connick, Jr.. Leo was unusual in that Grace's friendship with Will seemed not to bother him, despite Will's initial dislike of him. Leo in fact often looked to Will in order to help him deal with Grace's neurotic behavior. Furthermore, at one point, when Grace was extremely upset about Leo's upcoming six-month absence, she asked if Will could sleep (platonically) with them, and Leo responded with good humor, saying, "I knew this was going to happen one day." They split in the finale of the show's sixth season after Grace discovered that Leo had had an adulterous affair while working with Doctors Without Borders in Cambodia. In the final season, on a flight to London, Grace meets Leo on the plane where they have sex, resulting in Grace becoming pregnant, which she keeps a secret from him, upon finding that he plans to remarry. In the series finale (May 2006), however, Leo tells a heavily pregnant Grace that he loves her and broke off his engagement. They subsequently raise their daughter, Lila, together having gotten remarried.

Will was usually less successful romantically, having the occasional one-episode fling, but never a long-term relationship. This eventually drew some criticism from those who noted that Grace was often shown being affectionate with her dates and boyfriends, while Will rarely was. In the first season, it is mentioned that Will had a seven-year relationship with a man named Michael, but this partnership ended before the series began. During the early seasons Will only had one relationship that could be constituted as 'long-term', with a sports broadcaster, Matthew played by Patrick Dempsey. Their relationship was portrayed in a total of three episodes, before Will ended it over Matthew's refusal to come out, particularly to his homophobic boss. There is a brief moment at the end of season 5 where Will and Jack wake up together naked in the same bed on Karen's Yacht after a night of drinking, at the beginning of season 6 they go through a whole episode of freaking out until Karen reveals to them that the security camera for their room showed that they didn't do anything. Will does not have any more serious long-term love interests until the spring of 2004 when the character of Vince, an Italian American New York City Police Department officer played by Bobby Cannavale, was introduced. Their relationship lasted until the spring of 2005, when Vince lost his job and the two decided to "take a break" resulting in an unofficial but obvious break-up. Will then met James, supposedly by fate, at a movie theater and again in Los Angeles. Just as they started to get close, however, James discovered he was going to be deported. To give Will and James a chance, Grace agreed to marry James to help him avoid deportation. This plan, along with James' relationship with Will, was short-lived when it was revealed he was a major jerk, who seemed completely cruel towards other people. He was played by Rent star Taye Diggs. However in the final season, Will was reunited with Vince, and the two would eventually get married and raise a son together, named Ben.

Jack, whose floundering one-person show and acting career has been established as a hopeless dream, eventually finds work in retail sales and married (and later divorced) Karen's maid and longtime friend Rosario Salazar to help her gain U.S. residency (green card). It was also revealed that he had a teenage biological son named Elliott, played by Michael Angarano. Elliott was conceived through artificial insemination and mothered by Bonnie, a lesbian played by Rosie O'Donnell. Jack unlike the others, does not attempt to stay in long-term relationships, but instead shallowly jumps from boyfriend to boyfriend. Jack's longest relationship is with Stuart Lamarack (Dave Foley), which lasts several months during the sixth season, during which Jack sees him at the movies with another man and assumes that Stuart is cheating on him. Jack finds out later that the other man was actually Stuart's son. Ironically, their relationship ends when Jack cheats on Stuart, who is not seen again. He ends up spending the rest of his life living with Karen, in a purely platonic relationship that ironically is similar to Will and Grace, who they both mocked for living together.

Karen is the only member of the cast to be in a married relationship at the start of the series. Her husband, Stanley Walker, is described as an extremely wealthy and overweight man with some unusual sexual tastes, who gives a lot of business to Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Although Karen often insults Stan and implies she married him for his money, the truth is she was hopelessly devoted and in love with Stan. Jailed during season four for tax fraud, Stan was released in season five, but Karen soon caught him cheating on her with his British mistress Lorraine Finster (played by Minnie Driver), whom he met when she worked in the prison cafeteria. During Stan and Karen's divorce proceedings at the end of season five, Stan dropped dead, and season six saw Karen begin dating again, culminating in her 20-minute-long marriage to Lorraine's father, Lyle (played by John Cleese, who went uncredited). At the end of the seventh season, it was revealed that Stan had faked his death, and, in season eight, he and Karen reconciled after her brief affair with a government agent (played by Alec Baldwin). However, by the end of the show, Karen finds that she had fallen out of love with Stan and leaves him for good, at which point it is revealed that everything he owned was on loan, rendering Karen's huge divorce settlement worthless. However, she gets Jack to be "company" to Beverly Leslie, who was left a huge amount of money from his late wife, Crystal. When Beverly accidentally is swept off the balcony in a strong wind, he leaves Jack all his money, which he uses to support Karen and himself in luxury.

Conflicts[link]

In season five, Will and Grace experience their first big fight since the series began. Will and Grace decided to have a child together via artificial insemination. However, she meets and falls in love with Dr. Leo Markus and becomes unsure about continuing with the plan. Will and Grace argue about if she still wants to have the baby and she eventually decides she is against the idea. Will then accuses Grace of being a flake. Jack and Karen lock them into a ride, and after much arguing, they do make up. In season eight, Grace is pregnant with Leo's baby from their mile-high adventure, but she never has a chance to tell Leo as he is getting married. Will was going to help raise her child until the finale, in which Grace does tell Leo she's pregnant with his baby, and the audience sees Will open the door to the apartment. It is implied that they have words and decide to end their friendship. They go two years without speaking until another scheme of Karen and make friends again. Though reconciling, they are too busy raising their respective children, and find it hard to find time for one another until many years later when their children meet in college and begin a romantic relationship of their own.

Reception[link]

Critical response[link]

The show garnered a fair amount of criticism and negative reviews upon its debut in 1998, most of which compared the show to the recently canceled ABC sitcom Ellen. One such review said, "If Will & Grace can somehow survive a brutal time period opposite football and Ally McBeal, it could grow into a reasonably entertaining little anomaly -- that is, a series about a man and a woman who have no sexual interest in one another. But don't bet on it. If it's doomed relationships viewers want, they'll probably opt for Ally."^[4] As popular as the show came to be, particularly among gay viewers, Will & Grace continually dealt with criticism for having a limited view of the gay community and for reinforcing stereotypes when some felt it should have torn them down.^[5]

The series finale was heavily promoted by NBC, and McCormack, Messing, Mullally and Hayes appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Today Show to bid farewell, on May 10 and May 18, respectively. NBC devoted a two-hour block in its primetime schedule on May 18, 2006, for the Will & Grace send-off. An hour-long series retrospective, "Say Goodnight, Gracie", featuring interviews with the cast, crew, and guest stars, preceded the hour-long series finale. Series creators and executive producers Kohan and Mutchnick, who had not served as writers since the season 4 finale, penned the script for "The Finale." Regarding the finale, Mutchnick stated, "We wrote about what you want to have happen with people you love... All the things that matter in life, they end up having."^[6]

Awards and nominations[link]

Will & Grace had been nominated for 83 and won 16 Emmys. From 2001–2005, Will & Grace was the highest-rated sitcom among adults 18–49. It has also been heralded as responsible for opening the door to a string of gay-themed television programs, such as Queer as Folk, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Boy Meets Boy. Will & Grace has won several GLAAD Media Awards for its advocacy of the gay community. Despite more than two dozen nominations, Will & Grace never won a Golden Globe Award.

In the summer of 2005, Will & Grace was nominated for 15 Emmys, tied with Desperate Housewives as the series receiving the most nominations. This was almost an all time record, the two shows were second behind The Larry Sanders Show, with 16 nominations in 1996. Unlike Housewives, however, Will & Grace received many of its nominations during the 2004–2005 season for its guest actors and actresses. From these nominations, the series won two awards for the season. One of the two awards was for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series, won by Bobby Cannavale for his role as Vince, Will's boyfriend. For almost every season, Will & Grace was the most nominated Comedy Series at the Emmys.

In the summer of 2006, Will & Grace was nominated for 10 Emmys for its final season, including a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress for Debra Messing, Outstanding Supporting Actor for Sean Hayes, and Outstanding Supporting Actress for Megan Mullally. Mullally won the award for her category (her second win out of seven nominations), and Leslie Jordan won the award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his recurring role as Beverley Leslie. For the second-time, the show wasn't nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series (the first in 1999 for season 1) after 6 consecutive years of nominations.

Will & Grace is one of only three sitcoms in which all actors playing the main characters (McCormack, Messing, Hayes, and Mullally) have each won at least one acting Emmy. The other two sitcoms to have achieved the same feat are All in the Family and The Golden Girls.

With three each, both Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally held the record of winning the most Screen Actors Guild Awards for the categories Best Performance by an Actor in a Comedy Series and Best Performance by an Actress in a Comedy Series, respectively, for their roles in Will & Grace; however, Tina Fey went on to tie with Mullally and Alec Baldwin went on to surpass Hayes, both for their roles on the series 30 Rock.

Ratings[link]

The show debuted on Mondays beginning on September 21, 1998 and steadily gained in popularity, culminating when it moved to Thursday night as part of NBC's Must See TV line-up. The show ultimately became a highly rated television show in the United States, earning a top-twenty rating during four of its eight seasons, including one season at # 9. However, when the show lost Friends as its lead-in after the 2003–04 season, Will & Grace began shedding viewers and slipped out of the top 20 during its last two seasons.

"The Finale" drew over 18 million viewers,^[7][8] ranking # 8 for the week, easily making it the most watched episode of the final two seasons. While the series finale is considered a ratings success, it is far from being the most watched episode of Will & Grace—that accolade remains with the season four episode "A Chorus Lie", which aired on February 7, 2002 and ranked #8 for the week. When the show was at the height of its popularity (seasons 3–5), ranking in the Top 10 was a common occurrence, but the finale's Top 10 rank was the only such rank for season 8 and the first such rank since the season 7 premiere "FYI: I Hurt, Too".

Average seasonal ratings[link]

Cultural impact[link]

The series was the first prime-time television series on U.S. terrestrial television to star openly-homosexual lead characters, signalling the highest-profile presence of LGBT characters on U.S. broadcast television since Ellen's eponymous lead character's coming-out in the 1997 "Puppy Episode". On May 2012, during a Meet the Press interview with host David Gregory, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden cited the series as an influence in American thinking regarding LGBT rights, saying that "I think 'Will and Grace' did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody has ever done. People fear that which is different. Now they're beginning to understand."^[10] In the same interview, Biden stated that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage, a statement which was followed on May 9 by President Barack Obama speaking in favor of it.^[11] The day after Obama's statement, series co-creator Mutchnick later told CBS This Morning that Biden had spoken similar words at a private function which Mutchnick and his husband had attended two weeks prior to Biden's statement, although a White House official was cited by CBS This Morning's Bill Plante as asserting that the Meet the Press interview was not a "trial balloon" for the statement.^[12] Both Mutchnick and Kohan praised Biden's statement, but were critical of Obama's stance on marriage during the time between Biden's and Obama's statements.^[13]

Spin-offs[link]

[edit] Karen: The Musical

It has been announced that Megan Mullally will be starring in a new Broadway musical entitled Karen: The Musical. This musical will have Mullally reprising her role of Karen Walker. She stated in an interview that the show may also involve recurring guest star Leslie Jordan in his role as Beverley Leslie.^[14]

[edit] Jack & Karen

There had been talk in 2008 that a spin-off was being developed by NBC entitled Jack & Karen, featuring Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally reprising their roles. Hayes initially showed interest in the spin-off but was ultimately put off by the short-lived Friends spin-off, Joey. Furthermore, Mullally's new work schedule in the form of her talk show, which was canceled several months later, did not allow her to pursue the spin-off at the time.^[15]

Lawsuit[link]

In December 2003, in the midst of the series' sixth season, executive producers and creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick sued NBC and NBC studios. Alleging that the network sold the rights to the series in an attempt to keep profits within the NBC family, Kohan and Mutchnick felt that they were cheated out of considerable profits by the network's shopping of the show to the highest bidder. Another allegation against the network was that during the first four seasons of the series, the studio licensed the rights for amounts that were insufficient for covering production costs, thus leading to extraordinarily large production deficits.^[16] Three months later, NBC filed a countersuit against Kohan and Mutchnick stating that the co-creators were expected to act as an independent third party in the negotiations between NBC and its subsidiary, NBC Studios.^[17]

With a pending lawsuit and production beginning on other projects, Kohan and Mutchnick were absent on the Will & Grace set for most of its final seasons. They wrote the season 4 episode, "A Buncha White Chicks Sittin' Around Talkin'" and did not return to the writers' seat until the series finale four years later. Three years after NBC's countersuit and one year after the series ended, the legal battle between NBC and Kohan and Mutchnick ended in 2007 when all parties agreed on a settlement, with the series creators being awarded $49 million, of their original $65 million lawsuit.^[18]

DVD distribution[link]

Lionsgate Home Entertainment has released all 8 seasons of Will & Grace on DVD in Region one, two and four. Will and Grace was re released and re-packaged on October 3 2011 on region 2.

International broadcasting[link]

See also[link]

	United States portal
	LGBT portal
	Television portal

• List of television shows with LGBT characters

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Will & Grace

• Will & Grace at the Internet Movie Database
• Will & Grace at TV.com
• Will & Grace at alluc

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (March 2010)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott (born Elliot Charles Adnopoz, August 1, 1931) is an American folk singer and performer.

Life and career[link]

Elliot Charles Adnopoz was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents in 1931. Elliott grew up inspired by the rodeos at Madison Square Garden, and wanted to be a cowboy. Though encouraged to follow his father's example and become a surgeon, Elliott rebelled, running away from home at the age of 15 to join Col. Jim Eskew's Rodeo, the only rodeo east of the Mississippi. They traveled throughout the Mid-Atlantic states and New England. He was only with them for three months before his parents tracked him down and had him sent home, but Elliott was exposed to his first singing cowboy, Brahmer Rogers, a rodeo clown who played guitar and five-string banjo, sang songs, and recited poetry. Back home, Elliott taught himself guitar and started busking for a living. Eventually he got together with Woody Guthrie and stayed with him as an admirer and student.

With banjo player Derroll Adams, he toured the United Kingdom and Europe. By 1960, he had recorded three folk albums for the UK record label Topic Records. In London, he played small clubs and pubs by day and West End cabaret nightclubs at night. When he returned to the States, Elliott found he had become renowned in American folk music circles.

Woody Guthrie had the greatest influence on Elliott. Woody's son, Arlo, said^[where?] that because of Woody's illness and early death, Arlo never really got to know him, but learned his father's songs and performing style from Elliott. Elliott's guitar and his mastery of Guthrie's material had a big impact on Bob Dylan when he lived in Minneapolis.^[2] When he reached New York, Dylan was sometimes referred to as the 'son' of Jack Elliott, because Elliott had a way of introducing Dylan's songs with the words: "Here's a song from my son, Bob Dylan." Dylan rose to prominence as a songwriter; Elliott continued as an interpretative troubadour, bringing old songs to new audiences in his idiosyncratic manner. Elliott also influenced Phil Ochs, and played guitar and sang harmony on Ochs' song "Joe Hill" from the Tape from California album. Elliott also discovered Singer-Songwriter, Guthrie Thomas, in a bar in Northern California in 1974 bringing Thomas to Hollywood where Thomas' music career began.

Elliott appeared in Dylan's "Rolling Thunder Revue" concert tour and played "Longheno de Castro" in Dylan's movie Renaldo and Clara. In the movie, he sings the song "South Coast" by Lillian Bos Ross and Sam Eskin, from whose lyric the character's name is derived.^[3]

"My name is Longheno de Castro

My father was a Spanish grandee'

But I won my wife in a card game

To Hell with those lords o'er the sea"

Elliott plays guitar in a traditional flatpicking style, which he matches with his laconic, humorous storytelling, often accompanying himself on harmonica. His singing has a strained, nasal quality which the young Bob Dylan emulated. His repertoire includes American traditional music from various genres, including country, blues, bluegrass and folk.

Elliott's nickname comes not from his traveling habits, but rather the countless stories he relates before answering the simplest of questions. Folk singer Odetta claimed that it was her mother who gave him the name, remarking, "Oh Jack Elliott, yeah, he can sure ramble on!"

Elliott did ramble to Talkeetna, Alaska, several times in the early 1990s to play at the Latitude 62 Lodge as the guest of his friend Doug Geeting, a local musician.

His authenticity as a folksy, down-to-earth country boy, despite being a doctor's son from Brooklyn, and his disdain for other folk singers, were parodied by the Folksmen (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer) in the satirical documentary A Mighty Wind in the name of their "hit" album Ramblin'. A Mighty Wind also referred to a former member of the New Main Street Singers, Ramblin' Sandy Pitnick, a somewhat geeky-looking white man in a cowboy hat, apparently in parody of Elliott.

Elliott's first recording in many years, South Coast, earned him his first Grammy Award in 1995. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1998.

His long career and strained relationship with his daughter Aiyana were chronicled in her 2000 film documentary, The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack.

At the age of 75, he changed labels and released I Stand Alone on the ANTI- label with an assortment of guest backup players including members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, another curious collection of little-known music delivered with humor and intensity. He said his intention was to title the album 'Not for the Tourists', because it was recorded in response to his daughter's request for songs he loved but never played in concert. When asked why he did not, he told her, "These songs are not for the tourists".

Discography[link]

Studio[link]

• 1955: Woody Guthrie's Blues
• 1957: Jack Elliot Sings
• 1958: Jack Takes the Floor
• 1958: Ramblin' Jack Elliott in London EMI Records 33 SX 1166 recorded 5/7 November 1958
• 1960: Ramblin' Jack Elliott Sings Songs by Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rodgers
• 1960: Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie
• 1961: Songs to Grow On by Woody Guthrie, Sung by Jack Elliott (Folkways Records)
• 1961: Ramblin' Jack Elliott (Prestige/Folklore)
• 1962: Country Style (Prestige/Folklore)
• 1964: Jack Elliott (Vanguard)
• 1968: Young Brigham (Reprise)
• 1970: Bull Durham Sacks & Railroad Tracks (Reprise)
• 1981: Kerouac's Last Dream (Folk Freak/re-release by Conträr Musik, Germany)
• 1995: South Coast (Red House)
• 1998: Friends of Mine (HighTone)
• 1999: The Long Ride (HighTone)
• 2006: I Stand Alone (ANTI-)
• 2009: A Stranger Here (ANTI-)

Live[link]

• 1962: Jack Elliott at the Second Fret

With Derroll Adams[link]

• 1957: The Rambling Boys
• 1963: Roll On Buddy
• 1969: Folkland Songs
• 1969: Riding in Folkland
• 1975: America

Compilations[link]

• 1963: Talking Woody Guthrie (Topic)
• 1964: Muleskinner (Topic)
• 1976: The Essential Ramblin' Jack Elliott (Vanguard)
• 1989: Hard Travelin' (reissue of Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie and Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
• 1989: Talking Dust Bowl: The Best of Ramblin' Jack Elliott
• 1990: Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Spider John Koerner, U. Utah Phillips: Legends of Folk (Red House)
• 1990: Jack Elliott Plus / Jack Elliott
• 1995: Me and Bobby McGee (reissue of Young Brigham and Bull Durham Sacks & Railroad Tracks)
• 1995: Jack Elliott: Ramblin' Jack, The Legendary Topic Masters
• 1999: Ramblin' Jack Elliott: Early Sessions
• 2000: Best of the Vanguard Years
• 2004: The Lost Topic Tapes: Cowes Harbour 1957
• 2004: The Lost Topic Tapes: Isle of Wight 1957
• 2007: Vanguard Visionaries

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ramblin' Jack website
• Ramblin' Jack discussion group
• Illustrated Ramblin' Jack Elliott discography
• The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack at the Internet Movie Database
• Anti- Records page featuring Jack's 2006 "I Stand Alone" CD.
• Ramblin' Jack Elliott Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
• Contraer Musik page featuring Jack's 1993 "Kerouac's Last Dream" CD.

Michael Angarano
Born	Michael Anthony Angarano (1987-12-03) December 3, 1987 (age 24) Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1997– present

Michael Anthony Angarano (born December 3, 1987) is an American actor.

Early life[link]

Angarano was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Doreen and Michael P. Angarano.^[1] He is of Italian descent.^[2] His family owns and operates three successful dance studios; two in New York (Brooklyn and Staten Island) and one in California (Los Angeles) called Reflections in Dance.^[3] His mother is the owner and director of all three. Kristen, his older sister, is the co-director of the LA studio and is the manager of the NY studios.^{[citation needed]} Younger sister Erica teaches at the LA studio, while going to school at San Diego State University.^[4] Angarano graduated from Crespi Carmelite High School in 2005 and currently has an apartment in Sherman Oaks in Los Angeles.^[5]

Career[link]

In 2000, 12-year old Angarano acted in Cover Me: Based on the True Life of an FBI Family. The following year, he landed his first major film role in Little Secrets, opposite Evan Rachel Wood and David Gallagher.

Michael then starred in a 2003 telefilm named Maniac Magee as Jeffery Lionel Magee, a 12-year-old boy who finds his way into Two Mills, Pennsylvania, a place divided by racial prejudice. It premiered on Nickelodeon.

In 2004, he appeared in the movie version of the critically acclaimed novel Speak, which costarred Kristen Stewart. Angarano was the lead role in Sky High and had a major role in Lords of Dogtown, both of which were released in the summer of 2005. Other film roles include parts in The Bondage, Black Irish, Man in the Chair, Snow Angels, The Final Season, One Last Thing and The Forbidden Kingdom, co-starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

On television, Angarano had a recurring role as Elliott, the son of Jack McFarland, on the television series Will & Grace. In 2007, Angarano appeared in four episodes of the hit 24 as Scott Wallace, a teenager taken hostage by a terrorist.

In 2008, Angarano was featured in Vanity Fair as one of Hollywood's "New Wave" young stars.

He filmed Gentlemen Broncos, from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess. The comedy film was released in October 2009. In 2011, Angarano starred in the horror-thriller film Red State as "Travis".

Personal life[link]

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Kristen Stewart stated that she dated Angarano, her co-star from Speak.^[6] As of early 2009 they are no longer together.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Michael Angarano

• Michael Angarano at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Angarano at AllRovi
• UltimateDisney.com Interview – November 2005
• Official site
• Works by or about Michael Angarano in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Kevin Bacon
Bacon at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, on January 23, 2010.
Born	Kevin Norwood Bacon (1958-07-08) July 8, 1958 (age 53) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1978–present
Spouse	Kyra Sedgwick (1988–present; 2 children)
Website
http://www.baconbros.com/

Kevin Norwood Bacon^[1] (born July 8, 1958) is an American film and theater actor whose notable roles include Animal House, Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, JFK, Apollo 13, Hollow Man, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Friday the 13th, Tremors, Death Sentence, Frost/Nixon, and X-Men: First Class.

Bacon has won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, was nominated for an Emmy Award,^[2] and was named by The Guardian as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.^[3]

In 2003, Bacon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.^[2]

Early life[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (December 2011)

Bacon, one of six children, was born and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Ruth Hilda (née Holmes; 1916–1991), taught at an elementary school and was a liberal activist, while his father, Edmund Norwood Bacon (May 2, 1910 – October 14, 2005), was a well-respected architect and a prominent Philadelphian who had been Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission for many years. At 16, in 1975, Bacon won a full scholarship to and attended the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts at Bucknell University, a state-funded five-week arts program where he studied Theatre under Dr. Glory Van Scott, which helped solidify Bacon's passion for the arts.

Acting career[link]

Bacon left home at age 17 to pursue a theater career in New York, where he appeared in a production at the Circle in the Square Theater School. "I wanted life, man, the real thing", he later recalled to Nancy Mills of Cosmopolitan. "The message I got was 'The arts are it. Business is the devil's work. Art and creative expression are next to godliness.' Combine that with an immense ego and you wind up with an actor."^[4]

Bacon's debut in the fraternity comedy Animal House in 1978 did not lead to the fame for which he had hoped,^{[citation needed]} and Bacon returned to waiting tables and auditioning for small roles in theater. He briefly worked on the television soap operas Search for Tomorrow (1979) and The Guiding Light (1980–81) in New York. He refused an offer of a television series based on Animal House to be filmed in California in order to remain close to the New York stage^{[citation needed]} . Some of his early stage work included Getting Out performed at New York's Phoenix Theater, and Flux which he did at Second Stage Theatre during their 1981–1982 season.

In 1982, he won an Obie Award for his role in Forty Deuce, and soon after made his Broadway debut in Slab Boys, with then-unknowns Sean Penn and Val Kilmer. However, it was not until he portrayed Timothy Fenwick that same year in Barry Levinson's Diner – costarring Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Tim Daly and Ellen Barkin – that he made an indelible impression on film critics and moviegoers alike.^{[citation needed]}

Bacon in 2007

Bolstered by the attention garnered by his performance in Diner, Bacon starred in the 1984 box-office smash Footloose. Richard Corliss of TIME likened Footloose to the James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause and the old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musicals, commenting that the film includes "motifs on book burning, mid-life crisis, AWOL parents, fatal car crashes, drug enforcement, and Bible Belt vigilantism."^[5] To prepare for the role, Bacon enrolled at a high school as a transfer student named "Ren McCormick" and studied teenagers before leaving in the middle of the day.^{[citation needed]} Bacon did earn strong reviews for Footloose,^[6] and he appeared on the cover of People magazine soon after its release.

Bacon's critical and box-office success lead to a period of typecasting in roles similar to the two he portrayed in Diner and Footloose. Bacon would have difficulty shaking this on-screen image. For the next several years he chose films that cast him against either type and experienced, by his own estimation, a career slump. In 1988, he starred in John Hughes' comedy She's Having a Baby and the following year he was in another comedy called The Big Picture.

In 1990, Bacon had two successful roles. He played a character who saved his town from under-the-earth "graboid" monsters in the comedy/horror film Tremors – a role that People found him "far too accomplished"^{[citation needed]} to play – and portrayed an earnest medical student experimenting with death in Joel Schumacher's Flatliners.

Bacon's next project was to star opposite Elizabeth Perkins in He Said, She Said. Despite lukewarm reviews and low audience turnout, He Said, She Said was illuminating for Bacon. Required to play a character with sexist attitudes, he admitted that the role was not that large a stretch for him.

By 1991, Bacon began to give up the idea of playing leading men in big-budget films and to remake himself as a character actor. "The only way I was going to be able to work on 'A' projects with really 'A' directors was if I wasn't the guy who was starring", he confided to The New York Times writer Trip Gabriel. "You can't afford to set up a $40 million movie if you don't have your star."^[7]

He performed that year as gay prostitute Willie O'Keefe in Oliver Stone's JFK. He went on to play a prosecuting attorney in the military courtroom drama A Few Good Men. Later that year he returned to the theater to play in Spike Heels, directed by Michael Greif.

Bacon receiving a Merit Award in April 2010

In 1994, Bacon earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role in The River Wild opposite Meryl Streep. He described the film to Chase in Cosmopolitan as a "grueling shoot," in which "every one of us fell out of the boat at one point or another and had to be saved."

His next film, Murder in the First, earned him the Broadcast Film Critic's Association Award in 1995, the same year that he starred in the blockbuster hit Apollo 13.

Bacon reverted to his trademark dark role once again in Sleepers in 1996. This role was in stark contrast to his appearance in the lighthearted romantic comedy, Picture Perfect the following year. Bacon again resurrected his oddball mystique that year as a mentally-challenged houseguest in Digging to China, and as a disc jockey corrupted by payola in Telling Lies in America. As the executive producer of 1998's Wild Things, Bacon reserved a supporting role for himself, and went on to star in Stir of Echoes (directed by David Koepp) in 1999, and in Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man in 2000.

Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard depict a ménage à trois in their film, Where the Truth Lies. Bacon and director Atom Egoyan have condemned the MPAA ratings board decision to give the film their "NC-17" rating over the preferable "R". Bacon decried the decision, commenting: "I don't get it, when I see films (that) are extremely violent, extremely objectionable sometimes in terms of the roles that women play, slide by with an R, no problem, because the people happen to have more of their clothes on."^[8] Bacon was again acclaimed for a dark starring role playing an offending pedophile on parole in the 2004 film The Woodsman; he was nominated best actor receiving the Independent Spirit Award.

Bacon speaking before a premiere of Taking Chance in February 2009

He appeared in the HBO Films production of Taking Chance, a film based on a story of the same name written by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, an American 'Desert Storm' war veteran. The film premiered on HBO on February 21, 2009. Bacon won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie for his role.

On July 15, 2010, it was confirmed that Bacon would appear in Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class.^[9] His character was mutant villain Sebastian Shaw.^[10]

In March 2012, Bacon was featured in a performance of Dustin Lance Black's play, '8' — a staged reenactment of the federal trial that overturned California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage — as Attorney Charles J. Cooper.^[11] The production was held at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre and broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights.^[12][13]

Personal life[link]

Bacon has been married to actress Kyra Sedgwick since September 4, 1988; they met on the set of the PBS version of Lanford Wilson's play Lemon Sky. He has said "The time I was hitting what I considered to be bottom was also the time I met my wife, our kids were born, good things were happening. And I was able to keep supporting myself; that always gave me strength."^[4]

Bacon and Sedgwick have starred together in Pyrates, Murder in the First, The Woodsman, and Loverboy. They have two children, Travis Sedgwick Bacon (born June 23, 1989 in Los Angeles, California) and Sosie Ruth Bacon (born March 15, 1992). The family resides on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Bacon has spoken out for the separation of church and state,^[14][15] and told The Times of London in 2005 that he did not "believe in God."^[16] However, he has also said that he is not anti-religion.^[17]

Bacon and Sedgwick appeared in will.i.am's video "It's a New Day", which was released following Barack Obama's 2008 presidential win.

Bacon and Sedgwick lost an undisclosed amount of money in the Ponzi scheme of infamous fraudulent investor Bernard Madoff.^[18][19]

Bacon and Sedgwick learned in 2011 via their appearance on the PBS TV show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates that he and Sedgwick are 10th cousins, once removed.^[20]

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon[link]

Bacon is the subject of the trivia game titled Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, based on the idea that, due to his prolific screen career covering a diverse range of genres, any Hollywood actor can be linked to another in a handful of steps based on their associations with Bacon. The name of the game derives from the idea of six degrees of separation.

Though he was initially dismayed by the game, the meme stuck, and Bacon eventually embraced it, forming the charitable initiative SixDegrees.org, a social networking site intended to link people and charities to each other.^[21]

The measure of proximity to Bacon has been mathematically formalized as the Bacon Index and can be referenced at websites including Oracle Of Bacon which is in turn based upon Internet Movie Database data.

Music[link]

Kevin formed a band called The Bacon Brothers with his brother, Michael. The duo has released six albums.

Filmography[link]

Films[link]

Television[link]

Directing:

• The Closer (2006) (Episode: Serving the King: Part 2)
• The Closer (2007) (Episode: Blindsided)
• The Closer (2008) (Episode: Sudden Death)
• The Closer (2009) (Episode: Waivers of Extradition)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kevin Bacon

• Kevin Bacon at the Internet Movie Database
• Kevin Bacon at the Internet Broadway Database
• Kevin Bacon at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Kevin Bacon at AllRovi
• Works by or about Kevin Bacon in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Oracle of Bacon

Megan Mullally
Mullally at the San Diego Comic-Con International in July 2011.
Born	(1958-11-12) November 12, 1958 (age 53) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1981–present
Spouse	Michael A. Katcher (m. 1992–1996) «start: (1992)–end+1: (1997)»"Marriage: Michael A. Katcher to Megan Mullally" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Megan_Mullally) Nick Offerman (m. 2003) «start: (2003)»"Marriage: Nick Offerman to Megan Mullally" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Megan_Mullally)
Website
http://www.meganmullally.net

Megan Mullally (born November 12, 1958) is an American actress of both stage and screen as well as a singer.

After working in the theatre in Chicago, Mullally moved to Los Angeles in 1985 and began to appear in supporting roles in film and television productions. She made her Broadway debut in Grease in 1994 and she has since appeared in several Broadway musicals. From 1998 until 2006, she played Karen Walker on the TV sitcom Will & Grace, arguably her best-known role to date. From 2006 until early 2007, Mullally hosted the short lived talk show The Megan Mullally Show. She has since appeared in guest-starring roles in television programs such as Parks and Recreation, Happy Endings, 30 Rock, Up All Night, Boston Legal and a GLAAD Award-winning episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine. In 2010, Mullally starred as Lydia in the second season of Party Down. She currently stars as Chief on Adult Swim's Childrens Hospital, and recurs as Tammy Swanson on NBC's Parks and Recreation and as Dana Hartz on ABC's Happy Endings. She also joined the cast of Breaking In for its second season, which began airing on March 6, 2012.

She received seven consecutive Emmy Award nominations for "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series" for her role on Will & Grace, winning twice in 2000 and 2006. She has also received four Screen Actors Guild Awards for her performance, and was nominated for four Golden Globe awards.

Early life[link]

Mullally was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Martha (née Palmer) and Carter Mullally, Jr., an actor who was a contract player with Paramount Pictures in the 1950s.^[1] Mullally moved to her father's native Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, at the age of six.^[2] She studied ballet from the age of six and performed at the Oklahoma City Ballet during high school, also studying at the School of American Ballet in New York City.

Following her graduation from Casady School, she attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; where she studied English Literature and Art History, and subsequently became active in Chicago theatre.

Career[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2012)

Television[link]

Mullally moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1985.^{[citation needed]} Two weeks later, she was signed by the William Morris Agency.^{[citation needed]} One of her first acting spots was on a McDonald's commercial that also featured John Goodman.^{[citation needed]} She made her series debut in 1986 in The Ellen Burstyn Show. She subsequently guest starred on sitcoms such as Seinfeld, Frasier, Wings, Ned and Stacey, Mad About You, Caroline in the City and Just Shoot Me!. She played a central character in a season-five episode of Murder, She Wrote, "Coal Miner's Slaughter", recalling in 2012, "I hadn't gotten a job for so long, and I was in a complete panic because I didn't know how I was going to pay my rent. So I get a call one day from my agent that I'd gotten offered a guest role, and it paid $5,000. I literally fell down onto my knees and testified and wept. I played some former protégée of Jessica Fletcher. It's one of my favorite things I've ever shot."^[3]

After having tested, she said, for the co-starring role of Elaine Benes on Seinfeld,^[3] Mullally in 1998 landed the role of Karen Walker, Grace Adler's pill-popping, eccentric assistant in the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. She won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in both 2000 and 2006, and was nominated in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. She won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series three times, in 2002, 2003 and 2004, and with cast members Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, and Sean Hayes, she shared the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in 2001. She is the first of only two actresses to win a SAG Award three years in a row. She was nominated each year from 2000 until 2003, for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Series, Miniseries or Television Film.

In 2005, Mullally saw comedian and actor Bill Hader performing with his Second City class in Los Angeles, and shortly thereafter brought Hader to the attention of Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels. Also in 2005, Mullally was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award "in recognition of her innovation in creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television".^[4]

Following Will & Grace, Mullally hosted her own talk show, The Megan Mullally Show from 2006-2007. She has hosted Saturday Night Live, guest-hosted The Late Show With David Letterman, hosted the 2006 TV Land Awards, and been a featured performer twice on the Tony Awards. She has been featured in advertisements for M&M's, Old Navy, and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

Mullally guest-starred on the Season Three premiere of NBC's hit show 30 Rock. Other appearances include Kathy Griffin: My Life on The D-List, Campus Ladies, director/actor David Wain's "Wainy Days," an episode of HBO's "Funny Or Die", and the Funny or Die video "That's What She Said".

Mullally has guest-starred five times as Tammy Swanson on the NBC series Parks and Recreation, in the episodes "Ron and Tammy" "Ron & Tammy: Part Two", "Li'l Sebastian", "Ron and Tammys" and "The Trial of Leslie Knope". Mullally plays the role of the second ex-wife of the character Ron Swanson, played by her real-life husband, Nick Offerman.^[5]

She co-starred in 2010 as Lydia on the Starz ensemble series Party Down.^[6] Mullally appears in season two of the Adult Swim's show Childrens Hospital, in which she co-stars as "Chief". In October 2011, Mullally began playing a recurring role as Dana Hartz (Penny's mother) in the second season of the ABC sitcom Happy Endings. The following months, Fox announced Mullally would join the series Breaking In when the show returned for a second season on March 6, 2012.

Theater[link]

Mullally made her Broadway debut as Marty in the 1994 revival of Grease, and subsequently appeared as Rosemary in the hit 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying opposite Matthew Broderick. In 2007, Mullally starred as Elizabeth in Mel Brooks' original Broadway musical, Young Frankenstein. She can be heard on the cast albums of all three productions.

In 1996, she starred in You Never Know at the Pasadena Playhouse. Mullally appeared in 2000 as Pamela in the multiple award-winning production of Chuck Mee's The Berlin Circle, for which she won both the LA Weekly Theatre Award and the Backstage West Garland Award. Mullally starred as Beverly in the acclaimed production of Adam Bock's The Receptionist at the Odyssey Theatre (notably, the longest sold-out run of a show in that theatre's history), for which she was awarded the 2010 Backstage West Garland Award for Best Performance by an Actress.

Mullally is also a Chicago theater veteran^{[citation needed]} and member of Los Angeles theatre company The Evidence Room.^{[citation needed]}

Music[link]

Mullally is also a member of the band Supreme Music Program.^[7] SMP has released three albums to date, The Sweetheart Break-In, Big as a Berry and Free Again!.^[7][8]

Film[link]

Mullally has appeared in Marc Forster's Sundance competition entry Everything Put Together, Anywhere But Here with Susan Sarandon, About Last Night with Demi Moore and Rob Lowe, Speaking of Sex with James Spader, and Stealing Harvard with Tom Green and Jason Lee. Mullally played a singing teacher in the 2009 film remake of Fame,^[9] and can be heard on the soundtrack recording. Additionally, Mullally sang the song "Long John Blues" (performed on-screen by Kristen Bell) in 2010's Burlesque.

Personal life[link]

Mullally's first marriage, in the mid-1990s, was to talent agent Michael Katcher.^[10] In 2000, Mullally met actor Nick Offerman while doing a play together in Los Angeles. The two married in 2003. Offerman guest-starred on Will & Grace during its fourth season and is currently starring as Ron Swanson on the NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation. Mullally appears in "Ron and Tammy", episode 2.8 of Parks and Recreation, playing Tammy, Ron's conniving ex-wife, she later appears in the episodes "Ron & Tammy: Part Two", "Li'l Sebastian", "Ron & Tammys" and "The Trial of Leslie Knope".

In 1999, Mullally commented in an interview in The Advocate magazine, "I consider myself bisexual, and my philosophy is, everyone innately is."^[11]

Filmography[link]