Anthony Edwards: It's Not Over Yet or The Last Hour

Exterior Street, New York City.

A familiar looking guy walking two dogs is stopped.

"Hey Goose, you're back on TV!"
"Anthony, sorry about your new show"
"You were Doctor Green, right?!
I started watching Zero Hour and then I couldn't find it."

I live in New York City and since March I have held variations of the above conversations. As sometimes happens our show was pulled from the schedule after airing three episodes and now I get to tell these folks they can watch the remaining ten episodes of Zero Hour starting Saturday at 8/7 central on ABC.

In Zero Hour I play Hank Galliston a publisher of Modern Skeptic Magazine. Hank's wife is abducted from her antique clock shop and in the quest to save her Hank and his magazine team get pulled into a mystery stretching around the world and back centuries.

It was three months ago when the network decided to pull Zero Hour off the air. I didn't take it personally, I know its business. I was just sad for all the great actors, talented technicians and artists who but their hearts and time into telling this story. We did the work to the best of our abilities. That does not happen on every job. All we set out to do was tell this crazy story and we did it. Everything that ends up on your TV has to be built, found, cast, organized, transported, photographed, recorded, edited and scored. In eight days a big circus moves 40 foot trailers full of lights and equipment, wardrobe, hair and make-up, dressing rooms and creates a base camp many times while prepping for the next episode to start the day after you finish the last. Some days you film four pages of script, others you push for eight.

We started shooting in the heat of August in New York City trying to act cold in fake snow -- to being so cold in December that my co-star Carmen Ejogo and I could barely speak our words. One thing that I do share with the character I play on Zero Hour is that I am not a religious person, but I am not adverse to magic or wishful thinking. The real reason I am happy is that a small miracle has happened and all the great work that my friends did on this show will not be buried. For the next eight Saturdays our little (it's not little) show will get to be seen. What people may not realize is that for all of us who worked on the show we are as eager to see it as anyone. Every scene has an experience both in front of and behind the camera that means something to all of us who made it. I remember it being thrilling to work hard on the big, great sequences that will be spectacular to watch when the special effects are added and the ease of doing simple two-person scenes that make the story sing.

When you are part of the circus, whether you are in the big top or playing a one ring venue in a small town, you just want to show off your act. The business of television may tell us to pack up our tent and move on, but for the next eight weeks we will get to strut and fret our hour upon the stage.

That is all we ever wanted.

View the original article at Huffington Post / Celebrity

Wonder makes musical tribute to Motown's Edwards (AP)

DETROIT – Berry Gordy Jr. brought Motown Records to life, but his sister Esther Gordy Edwards preserved its legacy.

Gordy on Wednesday joined Motown legends Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson, as well as hundreds of others, to celebrate both the life and legacy of Edwards, who died last week at 91. Gordy clasped hands with Robinson as they entered the church, and the Motown founder held onto Wonder as they exited.

The more than three-hour funeral service at Detroit's Bethel AME Church featured spoken and sung tributes for Edwards, who held many executive roles with the musical empire that her brother founded in 1959. She was the guiding force behind preserving Motown's original headquarters and record studio and turning them into a museum.

Wonder spoke before performing a stirring, soulful rendition of one of Edwards' favorite hymns, "His Eye is on the Sparrow," and "Sweetest Somebody I Know," an original he said is "so much about her" and which also included some of his hit, "Isn't She Lovely."

Wonder said he was "giving all the praise to God for what she did in my life and the many lives she touched."

"I think if we all had a mother or sister or aunt or cousin or sister or niece that celebrated and cheered our family as much as she did hers, we'd have a world of unity," he said. "I am just thanking God that in my lifetime I knew her."

Edwards' responsibilities at Motown included managing and guiding the artists' careers and exposing the famed "Motown sound" to international audiences as director of international operations.

Still, her lasting contribution to the company came after Motown and most of her family left Detroit for California in the early 1970s. She amassed what would become valuable memorabilia and set to work on preserving the old headquarters — a large stately former house on West Grand Boulevard that included the label's famed Studio A. The museum opened in 1985.

Robinson said Edwards was the only one in the company's early days who knew Motown was "going to make history," so she took pictures and saved "every little scrap of paper, every tape."

"Fortunately, there was Esther, who had our backs," said Robinson, who introduced himself to the audience as "Smokey Gordy Robinson."

"Now we have a pictorial and an itemized history of our legacy, right there on West Grand Boulevard," he said.

Robinson said Edwards wouldn't tolerate misbehavior, particularly from those closest to her.

"I'm a dude who grew up in the `hood, right here in Detroit," Robinson said. "When I was gettin' down wrong, she would chastise me. You chastise the ones you love. If you let `em get away with stuff, then you don't really love `em."

Gordy said his "big sister" was the "glue" for both the Gordy and Motown families.

"And, like glue, everything worth anything stuck to Esther," Gordy said. "When I was leaving Detroit, I was going around throwing away stuff. Esther was right behind me, picking it up. Little did anyone know that one day that stuff I was throwing away would become a world-class museum."

Edwards was born in 1920 in Oconee, Ga., and moved to Detroit as a toddler. She was the eldest daughter in a family of eight children.

She first married Robert Bullock, with whom she had a son, Robert Berry Bullock. She later married state Rep. George Edwards and became a step-mother to his son, Harry.

The crowd was full of "Motown soldiers," as Robinson called them, including the Abdul "Duke" Fakir, the lone surviving original member of the Four Tops, Motown songwriters Eddie and Brian Holland, and Claudette Rogers Robinson, member of the Miracles and Robinson's ex-wife.

Claudette Robinson told The Associated Press after the service that Edwards was "a personal ally" and a "mother figure" going back to the Miracles' first days at the nascent company — two years before any other artist.

"She showed such concern, such compassion for the females," Robinson said. "She wanted to make sure we strived for excellence and we were just being the best we could be."

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David "Honeyboy" Edwards, blues man, dies at 96 (Reuters)

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Grammy-winning Delta bluesman David "Honeyboy" Edwards, whose emotional singing and eccentric timing thrilled audiences from his native Mississippi to Europe, has died at age 96, his manager said on Tuesday.

Edwards died on Monday from congestive heart failure, said manager Michael Frank, who also played harmonica in Edwards' trio.

"Honeyboy was the quintessential Delta bluesman," Frank said.

Edwards was among the last musicians to know and play with legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, who died in 1938, and his career was intertwined with the likes of Charlie Patton, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Walter, Little Walter and Muddy Waters.

Edwards, who was born in 1915 in Shaw, Mississippi, earned a 2008 Grammy Award for best traditional blues album for "Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live In Dallas." He was awarded a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2010.

Edwards usually performed on acoustic guitar, sitting in a chair on stage, although he was in constant movement.

"He was a very emotional and physical player and singer," Frank said. "He used his body in his stage performance for effect.

"He had an eccentric style, with unusual timing. He would make changes unpredictably. That was the Honeyboy test. (Musicians who sat in) found out very quickly you can't just count. He would do some funny turnaround, or funny lick, then look over and just laugh, knowing he was messing with us," Frank said.

Edwards, who fell ill in April, last toured Europe in 2009, performing 10 shows back to back in England, Frank said. On tour, he played in small clubs, theaters, and music festivals.

In 1942, archivist Alan Lomax recorded Edwards in Clarksdale, Mississippi, for the Library of Congress, according to his website. Edwards did not record again commercially until 1951, when he made "Who May Your Regular Be" for Arc Records.

Although known more for rearranging other blues artists' tunes, Edwards wrote several songs including "Long Tall Woman Blues," "Gamblin' Man" and "Just Like Jesse James."

(Reporting by Andrew Stern; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Motown figure Esther Gordy Edwards dies at age 91 (AP)

DETROIT – Esther Gordy Edwards, who helped build Motown Records alongside her brother Berry Gordy Jr. and led efforts to turn its original Detroit headquarters into a museum, has died. She was 91.

Edwards died Wednesday surrounded by family and friends in Detroit, the Motown Historical Museum said in a statement.

Edwards was a Motown executive for nearly three decades, holding numerous leadership positions within the music company whose artists included Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations and The Four Tops. Motown Records, which Berry Gordy started with a family loan in 1959, churned out scores of global hits from the building it dubbed "Hitsville, U.S.A." in Detroit. The company moved to Los Angeles in 1972.

Edwards served as senior vice president, corporate secretary and director of Motown International Operations, where she was charged with exposing the famed "Motown sound" to international audiences.

Wonder has praised Edwards for being like a mother to him when he joined the label as a child. She is credited with helping Wonder enroll in the Michigan School for the Blind, as well as managing and guiding the careers of Robinson, Gaye, Diana Ross and others.

"She believed in me — when I was 14 years old and many other people didn't or could only see what they could at the time, she championed me being in Motown," Wonder said in a statement. "I shared with her many of my songs first before anyone else."

When Motown and most of her family moved to California, Edwards stayed behind. She amassed what would become Motown memorabilia and set to work on preserving the old headquarters, including the label's famed Studio A. The large stately former house on West Grand Boulevard opened as a museum in 1985.

"I always thought I was the visionary in the family but I missed the biggest thing of all when Esther turned the so-called trash left behind after I sold the company in 1988 into a phenomenal world-class monument at the spot where Hitsville started — the Motown museum," Berry Gordy said in a statement Thursday.

"She nurtured it and held it together, all through the years, to protect the Motown legacy for generations to come — which is only one of the reasons people all over the world will remember and celebrate Esther Gordy Edwards," he said.

Gordy also said Edwards gave him "the hardest time" when he sought to get the family loan to start what would become Motown Records. She became, he said, "one of my biggest assets at Motown."

According to an official biography released by the museum, Edwards was born in 1920 in Oconee, Ga., and moved to Detroit as a toddler. She was the eldest daughter in a family of eight children.

She first married Robert Bullock, with whom she had a son, Robert Berry Bullock. She later married state Rep. George Edwards and became a step-mother to his son, Harry.

One of her sisters, Anna Gordy Gaye, was Marvin Gaye's first wife.

In a statement, Robinson said Edwards was "one of the most important people to come into my life both personally and professionally." He said it's because of Edwards' "wisdom and foresight" that the museum exists, allowing "people now and for generations to come to have a firsthand look at our legacy."

"Thank you, Esther, and I know you are in the hands of God," he said.

A public viewing is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the James H. Cole Northwest Chapel in Detroit.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Bethel AME Church in Detroit.

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