In Court
The woman who accused Don Johnson of groping her in January at a San Francisco sushi bar filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Nash Bridges star, The Associated Press reports. The unidentified woman’s lawsuit accuses Johnson of sexual battery, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and asks for monetary damages. Prosecutors refused in early May to file criminal charges against Johnson, who has said that there is no merit to the woman’s accusations.
Honored
Next stop, the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The city announced Thursday that it will rename the airport in honor of Armstrong on Aug. 2, two days before the legendary jazz musician would have turned 100, Reuters reports. The Federal Aviation Administration said that this is most likely the first major U.S. airport to be named after a black musician.
In General
Looks like Jay Leno will never be able to go home again. A developer plans to tear down the Tonight Show host’s Massachusetts childhood home to make way for a $2.6 million, five-bedroom house, AP reports. Leno said he would not have sold the 1950s home in Andover had he known developer Todd Wacome’s intentions.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and former South African President Nelson Mandela teamed up Thursday to raise awareness of the Special Olympics. They took a ferry from Cape Town harbor to Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years as a prisoner of a former apartheid regime, to light a Special Olympics torch, AP reports.
Watch out Ann-Margret, here comes Carmen Electra. The former Mrs. Dennis Rodman will become a Las Vegas mainstay after signing a two-year deal to star in her own show at the Aladdin hotel-casino, AP reports. The former Baywatch star will perform 12 shows a week, beginning next year.
The Doctor is in, but only online. The BBC will transmit the first new Doctor Who adventure since 1996 on Friday via the sci-fi’s show’s official Web site at www.bbc.co.uk. Doctor Who last appeared in a TV movie that aired on Fox in the United States. Sylvester McCoy, the seventh actor to portray the Timelord, returns for Death Comes to Time.
If you thought NBC’s Spy TV was merely a reality series, think again. The hidden-camera show “plays much more like a comedy, Variety quotes NBC entertainment president Jeff Zucker as saying. One practical joke included a man who, thinking he is going out to test a new car, begs to be let out of the car as he is taken on a terrifying high-speed drive through city streets.
Kirk Douglas has lent his support to a campaign to save the Indian Hills Theater, which houses the country’s largest Cinerama screen, AP reports. Methodist Health Systems, which bought the recently closed theater, plans to demolish it and build a parking lot in its place. Renovations would be too costly, Methodist Health Systems said. Douglas joins Janet Leigh and film critic Leonard Maltin in trying to save the theater, one of three left in the country that can still show Cinerama films.
