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Pat Dowell

  • Lewis, whose comedic duo with Dean Martin launched him to the peak of showbiz, starred and directed in dozens of films. He was perhaps just as famous for his charity work fighting muscular dystrophy.
  • The legendary experimental filmmaker's work is the subject of a career-spanning retrospective at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. VanDerBeek merged collage-style filmmaking with new technology throughout his career.
  • No One Knows About Persian Cats tells the story of Iranian musicians trying to put together a band in a country where heavy metal, rock and hip-hop are illegal. The film won two prizes at last year's Cannes International Film Festival, and opens in this week in the U.S.
  • The Boston-based composer is remembered, 100 years after his birth, for a string of three-minute pops-concert classics such as "Sleigh Ride," "The Typewriter" and "The Syncopated Clock."
  • The Return of the King, the last film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, leads the Academy Awards race with 11 nominations, including best picture and best director. Master and Commander gets 10 Oscar nods. With her film Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola becomes the first American woman to be nominated for best director. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards and reporter Pat Dowell.
  • Bob Hope, master of the one-liner and world-famous comedian, dies of pneumonia at 100. A star in vaudeville, radio, television and film, Hope helped define the monologue. He was best known for entertaining U.S. troops at bases around the world. Pat Dowell has a remembrance.
  • Screen legend Katharine Hepburn, who starred in more than 50 films and projected the ideals of independence and intelligence to generations of women, dies at 96. Hepburn won a record four best actress Oscars in her 60-year career, for her roles in Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond. Hear Pat Dowell.
  • Gregory Peck, one of the enduring stars of Hollywood's golden age, dies at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87. More often than not, Peck played the hero. He won an Oscar for his 1963 role as the quietly courageous defense lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. Pat Dowell offers a remembrance. (Please note this correction: "Listeners to the first feed of our program last Thursday may have heard an error in our obituary for Gregory Peck. Pat Dowell placed the story of To Kill a Mockingbird in Mississippi. That led Chuck Bearman, chief of staff in the office of Mississippi's secretary of state, to write. As he pointed out -- It was not set in Mississippi, but in Alabama.")