Free Republic

Charlotte Rae, who endeared herself to a generation of TV fans as the affable Mrs. Garrett on the long-running NBC sitcom The Facts of Life, died Sunday at her home in Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll announced. She was 92. Rae, who earlier earned two Tony nominations and played Woody Allen's mother in Bananas (1971) and a long-suffering wife on the classic sitcom Car 54, Where Are You?, revealed in April 2017 that she had been diagnosed with bone cancer, seven years after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. "Now, at the age of 91, I have to make up my mind,"...

Sony Pictures Television, which owns distribution rights to the sitcom, is in early talks to reboot the Diff'rent Strokes spinoff that originally aired on NBC for nine seasons and more than 200 episodes. A network is not yet attached and a search for a writer is underway. Sources say Leonardo DiCaprio and Jessica Biel are in early talks to exec the reboot via their respective Appian Way and Ocean Films production companies. Sony TV declined comment. The series, which starred Charlotte Rae, Lisa Whelchel, Kim Fields, Mandy Cohn and Nancy McKeon, is one of the longest-running comedies of the '80s...

George Clooney may get his ultimate revenge against Bill O'Reilly if he is willing to be cast way against type. The author of "The Man Who Would Not Shut Up: The Rise of Bill O'Reilly," out today from St. Martin's Press, wants the activist actor to play the conservative Fox TV host, who's jousted with Clooney more than once, in a movie version. TV critic Marvin Kitman spent five years researching the book, interviewing O'Reilly 29 times. He says Clooney, who directed "Good Night, and Good Luck," about the great journalist Edward R. Murrow, could do it. "That's why they...