Rick Kogan – Page 36 –

Audience members in a packed bar at ZaZa's Tavola Italiana react to singer Tony Ocean, left, as he performs on Jan 5, 2023, in Lake Barrington.

Busy crooning almost every night, singer Tony Ocean may be the hardest working man in old-school showbiz

January 11, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

Dean Martin's real name was Dino Paul Crocetti and he was born in Steubenville, a city in eastern Ohio. Tony Ocean, whose real name is Maurizio Carrara, was born outside...

Carl Kozlowski, who was once named America’s funniest reporter, has a new book ‘Dozed and Confused’

January 10, 2023 at 9:00 a.m.

There have been many — hundreds, thousands — of people who have worked for the Tribune in my long time here. Some remain but the majority have departed ... gone...

"A Game Maker's Life: A Hall of Fame Game Inventor and Executive Tells the Inside Story of the Toy Industry" by Jeffrey Breslow and Cynthia Beebe (published Aug. 30, 2022).

‘A Game Maker’s Life’ explores how Jeffrey Breslow made it into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame

January 5, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

Jeffery Breslow's life and the lives of those he worked with making toys for children were shattered on the morning of July 27, 1976, when another employee named Al Keller...

Jeremy Allen White, left, and and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in a scene from "The Bear."

There’s much to come in 2023 in entertainment and Chicago, in people and politics — and also here’s the correct way to pronounce ‘mayoral’

January 3, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

I have never made a New Year's resolution, but I have spent many fruitful hours during the first days of a new year revisiting the past year. In doing so,...

When Groucho Marx met Dick Cavett, there was magic in the air and on your television sets

January 4, 2023 at 10:21 a.m.

Dick Cavett is 86 years old and appears to be in fine physical and mental shape. His friend and idol Groucho Marx is dead, has been for a long time,...

The legendary Practical Theatre gang — most of it — is back on a comedy stage in Evanston

December 27, 2022 at 11:51 a.m.

The memories rush back when I see their faces. There they stand, Paul Barrosse and Victoria Zielinski, married for more that 30 years, parents of two grown daughters, recently moved...

Angelo Badalamenti, the composer best known for creating otherworldly scores for many David Lynch productions, from "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks" to "Mulholland Drive," died Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022. He was 85.

Remembering those we lost in 2022, from Angela Lansbury and Sergio Mims to the founder of Mustard’s Last Stand

December 18, 2022 at 5:00 a.m.

It has been the annual December tradition for Tribune critics and writers to mark the places and people and things that have departed over the previous year. It's never easy...

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on their way to California, stopping off on the Super Chief train in Chicago in 1964.

Give that man a camera: Remembering Tribune photographer Val Mazzenga, dead at 91

December 8, 2022 at 3:09 p.m.

Anthony Val Mazzenga walked from his family home on the West Side into the Tribune Tower in 1946 as a fresh-faced, personable and ambitious 15-year-old and over the next five...

The author Saul Bellow in 1982. An "American Masters" episode premiering on WTTW-Ch. 11 is titled "The Adventures of Saul Bellow."

The adventures of Nobel Prize-winning writer Saul Bellow come to ‘American Masters’

December 7, 2022 at 5:00 a.m.

Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize-winning writer, was born in suburban Montreal and lived in many places across the globe, cities such as New York and Paris, a summer home in...

The Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine announced in June 2022 that Adrian Matejka joined Poetry as the new editor.

Poetry has a new editor — and now a new issue. It’s time to give a fresh look at this important Chicago magazine.

November 30, 2022 at 10:53 a.m.

The new editor of Poetry magazine, one of the city's most important and influential publications, is Adrian Matejka, a great poet and a good guy. My colleague Darcel Rockett conducted...

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