MD News Desk: Thank You for Being a Friend

Keep up to date with all the latest from the entertainment world with the MD News Desk:

Women We Love:
- Broadway remembers Beatrice Arthur.
- Meryl Streep on why Hollywood’s men don’t trust women.
- Get well soon, Mrs. McCluskey!: Desperate Housewives' Emmy winning Kathryn Joosten is battling lung cancer.
- Patti LuPone to strap on Annie Oakley's six-shooters for Annie Get Your Gun.
- This Sunday's episode of Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva features a virtual smorgasbord of gay icons: Delta Burke, Rosie O'Donnell and Liza Minnelli.

Awards Watch:
- Betty White to receive Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.
- Will the Producers Guild of America follow Oscar's lead with 10 Best Picture nominees?
- GLAAD announced the nominees for their inaugural Media Awards for advertising.


Glee:
- Chris Colfer (a.k.a. Kurt) on his audition for series creator Ryan Murphy: "I was thinking, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t sing and dance in front of this man. I idolize him so much’. So I immediately peed a little ... "
- Jane Lynch shares Glee spoilers!
- Photo Call: On the set of our favorite musical comedy.

RIP:
- Paul Burke, who played Lyon Burke in Valley of the Dolls and Neal McVane on Dynasty, passed away Sunday at age 83.
- Crystal Lee Sutton, the woman who inspired Norma Rae, died last Friday. She was 68.

GLBT Entertainment:
- The Weinstein Company picked up Tom Ford's festival fave A Single Man ... and no, not at the expense of Rob Marshall's Nine.
- Let the Right One In director Tomas Alfredson is in and Charlize Theron is out of the Nicole Kidman true-life sex-change drama The Danish Girl.
- The Advocate chats with Victor Webster on playing gay on Melrose Place.
- Matt Damon will play Scott Thorson to Michael Douglas' Liberace in the planned Steven Soderbergh biopic.

Coming Soon:
- Watch This: music video for the new "Fame" from the new Fame.
- Harrison Ford talks Indy V.
- You sunk my Battleship!: Peter Berg to direct actioner based on the classic board game.
- Inglourious Basterd Christoph Waltz will play the bad guy in Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet.
- Brokeback Mountain reunion: Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway will co-star in Ed Zwick's Love and Other Drugs.
- I love it when a cast comes together: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, martial arts champ Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and District 9's Sharlto Copley are the new A-Team. Patrick Wilson and Jessica Biel will also star.
- Despite Robert Redford's Lincoln project The Conspirator, Steven Spielberg plans to continue on his own Honest Abe pic ... as well as that Harvey remake, which may star Robert Downey Jr. in the James Stewart role (I guess Tom Hanks was unavailable).
- Disney's D23 Expo wrap-up: Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, The Lone Ranger (starring Johnny Depp as Tonto) The Princess and the Frog, Tron Legacy (starring Michael Sheen) and ... Pixar sequels to The Incredibles and Monsters, Inc.? Meanwhile, Mouse House honchos Dick Cook and John Lasseter discuss such future projects as Burton's feature-length version of his Frankenweenie short, Nicolas Cage in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Guillermo del Toro's Trollhunters and Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol and Yellow Submarine remakes. Plus: Toy Story 3 will feature the voices of Whoopi Goldbert, Bonnie Hunt and Michael Keaton (as a Ken doll), and the next Muppet movie will be titled ... The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made?


Out in Film:
- Cover Boy: Neil Patrick Harris does New York Magazine.
- Ed Harris, Emma Roberts and Amy Madigan cast in Dustin Lance Black's first post-Milk directorial effort, What's Wrong With Virginia?.
- Elton John gets a West Hollywood tribute.
- Alan Cumming will bring his one-man cabaret show, I Bought a Blue Car Today, to Los Angeles.
- Comic Liz Feldman talks about her role on The Jay Leno Show.
- Matthew Bourne's award winning Swan Lake to return to its original London home.
- The Archive of American Television interviews Star Trek icon George Takei.
- One Life to Live hunk Nicholas Rodriguez drops by Brandon's Buzz Radio.
- Sandra Bernhard to play NYC's Joe's Pub in December.
- Alan Ball discusses True Blood seasons past and future. Also: Denis O’Hare has been cast as the Vampire King of Mississippi.
- Dan Savage says his proposed HBO series "may end up at a dildo factory every once in awhile".

From Screen to Stage:
- First Look: John Stamos and Gina Gershon in the new Bye Bye Birdie.
- The planned Broadway transfer of the hit London revival of La Cage aux Folles gets a home and an opening date.
- Rosemary Harris, Ana Gasteyer, John Glover and Tony Roberts are all a part of Broadway's new Royal Family.
- The classic Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymour romantic fantasy Somewhere in Time to get the stage musical treatment.
- The West End's Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story on Stage to pay tribute to Patrick Swayze.

Ride the Movies:
- More from Disney's D23 Expo: A new Star Tours, a refurbished Magic Kingdom Fantasyland and more.
- The Wizarding World of Harry Potter will open at Universal Orlando in spring 2010.


Potent Quotables:
- True Blood's Mehcad Brooks on nudity: "I don’t have any problem taking my clothes off. I don’t even like clothing ... if I had my way, I’d just walk around the street … with just a pair of socks on."