• Heading into a season that will include a gala prime-time celebration of its 40th year on the air, NBC's Saturday Night Live announced Wednesday that it will have its season premiere Sept. 27. The host of the first show will be Chris Pratt, the young comedy actor from NBC's Parks and Recreation series who also starred in one of the summer's biggest box-office movies, Guardians of the Galaxy. He will be joined on the premiere by singer Ariana Grande, whose album My Everything tops the Billboard charts. The second edition of SNL this season will bring back one alumna from the long-running series. Sarah Silverman, who appeared (briefly) on SNL during the 1993-94 season, will be the host Oct. 4, accompanied by musical guest Maroon 5, which features another NBC star, Adam Levine. The band will be making its fifth appearance on the series. Other changes are yet to be announced for SNL, including a decision about a replacement for Don Pardo, the show's announcer for all but one of its previous seasons. Pardo died last month. NBC will celebrate the 40th anniversary of SNL with a three-hour special scheduled for Feb. 15.
• Young Frankenstein is pushing 40 but is by no means over the hill. The film's writer-director Mel Brooks and actresses Cloris Leachman and Teri Garr gathered at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Tuesday night for a 40th anniversary screening of the comedy classic. As they posed for photos, Brooks and Leachman flanked Garr, who was in a wheelchair. Garr has long battled multiple sclerosis and also suffered a brain aneurysm in 2006. And while she didn't do arrivals-line interviews, Garr looked and sounded robust as she effortlessly traded barbs with Leachman and Brooks during the pre-screening panel discussion. As spirited as the event was, it also seemed a tad bittersweet for the 88-year-old Brooks, who was quick to mention cast members not in attendance. "Well, you know, a lot of them have gone," he said in an interview before the screening. "Marty [Feldman], Madeline [Kahn], Peter Boyle" are gone. "It's rather touching," Brooks continued, adding that the film's co-writer and star, Gene Wilder, "was back East and it was difficult for him to get here." Wilder and actor Gene Hackman, who makes a cameo appearance in the movie, each sent notes read to the sellout crowd of 1,000 audience members cramming into the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
A Section on 09/12/2014