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Constance Cummings: Actress in minor Hollywood movies became major London stage star. Constance Cummings: Actress went from Harold Lloyd and Frank Capra to Noël Coward and Eugene O'Neill Actress Constance Cummings, whose career spanned more than six decades on stage, in films, and on television in both the U.S. and the U.K., died ten years ago on Nov. 23. Unlike other Broadway imports such as Ann Harding, Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, and Claudette Colbert, the pretty, elegant Cummings – who could have been turned into a less edgy Constance Bennett had she landed at Rko or Paramount instead of Columbia – never became a Hollywood star. In fact, her most acclaimed work, whether in films or – more frequently – on stage, was almost invariably found in British productions. That's most likely why the name Constance Cummings – despite the DVD availability of several of her best-received performances – is all but forgotten.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone's hit musical is a savage, brilliant satire, and is making millions. So why do musicals thrive in a recession?

This week, the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon opened in London. Even before a single review had appeared, tickets were being resold at up to £350. The show has already earned millions for its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who also gifted the world with South Park. It's enough to make you ask: "Crisis? What crisis?"

There's no mystery about the show's recession-busting success, in the Us and – one feels safe in predicting – here. It's simply a work of genius, so brilliantly conceived and executed that it makes astonishingly savage and sophisticated satire into joyous, hilarious, literally all-singing, all-dancing fun and glamour.

Remarkably, despite the fact that there's barely a moment's respite from robust engagement with issues generally guaranteed to provoke hysterical controversy, The...

'If I read the script and I'm passionate about being a part of the actual project ... then I'll commit to it,' Mc says of his acting career.

By Larry Carroll

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson in "Streets of Blood"

Photo: Anchor Bay Entertainment

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson (as he's billed in Hollywood) has found fame and fortune as the real-life embodiment of everything your typical policeman would be interested in arresting you for. Now, the former drug dealer and street thug is playing a cop for the first time in this month's "Streets of Blood" — and yes, he is fully aware of the irony.

"It's absolutely a huge difference," 50 Cent said of his character Stan Green, a family-oriented cop teamed with Val Kilmer's Andy Devereaux to solve a series of murders in a post-Katrina New Orleans. "But then, it wasn't."

"[Both] are from a more rebellious place, dealing with the harsh realities in a city,...