The Tilley Watch Online, May 18-22, 2026
An end of the week listing of New Yorker artists whose work has appeared on newyorker.com features
Daily Cartoon: (the duo of) Joe Dator and Kevin Maher, Sam Hurt, Adam Douglas Thompson, Matt Reuter, J.A.K.. See them here.
Barry Blitt’s Kvetchbook: “From Heel To Calf”
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Ellie Black Guests On The Latest Cartoon Caption Contest Podcast
Ellie Black, who began contributing to The New Yorker in Februar
Ellie Black Guests On The Latest Cartoon Caption Contest Podcast
Ellie Black, who began contributing to The New Yorker in February of 2019 (February 11th, to be exact), joins the CCCP crew this week (it’s episode #251, for those keeping track). Listen here.
Photo, top l-r: co-hosts Nicole Chrolavicius and Paul Nesja. Bottom row: Ellie Black.
Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
Poster freecard by Max Racks. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro in Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuarón, 1998). Caption: Let Desire Be Your Destiny.
American actress and businesswoman Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) is the daughter of filmmaker Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner. During the 1990s the 1990s and early 2000s, she was a leading lady in period films like Emma (1996) and Shakespeare in Love
Poster freecard by Max Racks. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro in Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuarón, 1998). Caption: Let Desire Be Your Destiny.
American actress and businesswoman Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) is the daughter of filmmaker Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner. During the 1990s the 1990s and early 2000s, she was a leading lady in period films like Emma (1996) and Shakespeare in Love (1998). Later, she acted in blockbusters and franchises in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from Iron Man (2008) to Avengers: Endgame (2019). On television, she had a recurring guest role in Glee (2010–2011). Paltrow won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Gwyneth Katherine Paltrow was born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were director and television producer Bruce Paltrow and Tony Award-winning actress Blythe Danner. Her brother Jake Paltrow also works in the film industry. She is the niece of actress Katherine Moennig. Gwyneth grew up in Santa Monica, where she attended the Crossroads School. When she was eleven, the family moved to Massachusetts, where her father began working in summer stock productions in the Berkshires. At 15, she spent a year in Spain and speaks fairly good Spanish. She graduated from the all-girls Spence School in New York City and attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she studied art history. She dropped out of university to pursue acting. Earlier, she had demonstrated her talent by appearing in plays alongside her mother. She made her television debut in the drama High (1989), directed by her father. In 1990, Paltrow made her professional stage debut. She played her first film role in the musical Shout (Jeffrey Hornaday, 1991) alongside John Travolta. In the same year, she played the young Wendy in the fantasy film Hook (1991), directed by her godfather Steven Spielberg. She had minor roles in the thrillers Flesh and Bone (Sterve Kloves, 1993) and Malice (Harold Becker, 1993), alongside Nicole Kidman. Paltrow gained wider recognition with a supporting role in the thriller Se7en (David Fincher, 1995). She played a small but significant role as Brad Pitt’s wife. The two also began a relationship in real life, which received a great deal of media attention. The film was an international box-office hit. In the following year, she played Emma Woodhouse in Emma (Douglas McGrath, 1996), based on the novel by Jane Austen. For her role, she received positive reviews. Roger Ebert: "In its high spirits and wicked good humor, Emma is a delightful film–second only to Persuasion among the modern Austen movies, and funnier, if not so insightful. Gwyneth Paltrow sparkles in the title role as young Miss Woodhouse, who wants to play God in her own little patch of England. You can see her eyes working the room, speculating on whose lives she can improve." In 1998, she starred in five different films. Paltrow achieved her international breakthrough with the lead role of Viola De Lesseps in the romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, 1998). She played the fictional girlfriend of William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes). Shakespeare in Love won seven Oscars, including Best Actress for Paltrow. The film was a hit with both critics and cinema audiences, and she also received a Golden Globe for her performance. The British film Sliding Doors (Peter Howitt, 1998) was also successful, both with critics and the public. That year, she was the first woman to speak out about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct. In 1999, she starred alongside Jude Law, Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett in the psychological thriller The Talented Mr Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith
Gwyneth Paltrow co-starred with her then-boyfriend Ben Affleck in the romantic film Bounce (Don Roos, 2000), which disappointed because of its predictable, formulaic plot. That year, she also starred in Duets (2000), directed by her father, Bruce Paltrow. In this karaoke comedy-drama, she did her own singing. She played the tragic poet Sylvia Plath in Sylvia (Christine Jeffs, 2003), in which she starred alongside her mother, Blythe Danner, for the first time. Roger Ebert: "The film stars Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia and Daniel Craig as Ted. They are well cast, not merely because they look something like the originals but because they sound like workers who live with words and value them; there’s a scene where they hurl quotations at each other, and it sounds like they know what they’re doing. Paltrow’s great feat is to underplay her character’s death wish. There was madness in Sylvia Plath, but of a sad, interior sort, and one of the film’s accomplishments is to show subtly how it was so difficult for Hughes to live with her. The movie doesn’t pump up the volume." Paltrow opted for more comedic roles. She was Margot Tenenbaum in the ensemble film The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001) and starred in the comedy Shallow Hal (Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly, 2001) alongside Jack Black. For her role, she had to wear a 200-pound latex 'fat' suit at times. Paltrow said that this experience made her saddened by the injustice faced by overweight people in society. She played the lead role in the unsuccessful comedy View from the Top (Bruno Barreto, 2003), for which she received a fee of US$10 million. Then she appeared alongside Jude Law in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Kerry Conran, 2004). In 2006, Paltrow received another Golden Globe nomination for her remarkable performance in the drama The Proof (John Madden, 2005) as the loyal daughter of a brilliant but mad mathematician (Anthony Hopkins). In 2007, she played the lead role in The Good Night, directed by her brother Jake. In 2008, US Forbes Magazine listed her among Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses. Between June 2007 and June 2008, she earned $25 million, placing her in fourth place alongside Reese Witherspoon, behind Cameron Diaz, Keira Knightley and Jennifer Aniston. In 2008, Paltrow launched the website Goop, based on a newsletter featuring her personal lifestyle tips and an associated online shop selling related products. The fact that Paltrow advised her followers not to rely on information from doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, but to ‘do their own research’, drew criticism. Paltrow appeared as Pepper Potts in the action film Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008) alongside Robert Downey Jr. The film grossed over $500 million worldwide, and she reprised her role in the sequel, Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010). In 2010, she was honoured with a star (no. 2427) on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. By 2019, Paltrow had played the role of Pepper Potts in five further productions from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In addition, she appeared in other feature films and played Holly Holliday in the television series Glee (2010, 2011 and 2014). In 2011, she won an Emmy for her appearance in Glee. In March 2011, Paltrow reached number 1 in the Australian charts with the song ‘Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!)’ – a cover version of the song of the same name by Gary Glitter (1973). She scaled back her acting work in 2017 to focus on her lifestyle company, Goop, and other ventures. Following relationships with Brad Pitt (engaged from 1995 to 1997) and Ben Affleck (in a relationship from 1998 to 2000), Paltrow married Chris Martin, the lead singer of the British band Coldplay, in 2003. Their daughter, Apple Martin, was born in 2004, and their son, Moses Martin, was born in 2006. Paltrow and Martin divorced in 2016. In 2018, Gwyneth Paltrow married TV producer Brad Falchuk. They had met on the set of Glee. She is a board member of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organisation dedicated to alleviating poverty in New York City. Recently, Paltrow appeared opposite Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, 2025). She played Kay Stone, a wealthy, retired actress and socialite who has a sexual relationship with Marty. The film received critical acclaim and was a box-office success, grossing $192 million worldwide.
Sources: Roger Ebert, Wikipedia (German, Dutch and English) and IMDb.
Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
Spanish postcard by CyA, no. 81. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. John Ericson in Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955). The Spanish film title was Conspiración de silencio.
German-American film and television actor John Ericson (1926-2020) started in the 1950s as a young hunk with wavy-haired good looks and an athletic build. He made a series of popular films for MGM, including Teresa (19, 51) and The Student Prince (1954). Later, Ericson worked mo
Spanish postcard by CyA, no. 81. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. John Ericson in Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955). The Spanish film title was Conspiración de silencio.
German-American film and television actor John Ericson (1926-2020) started in the 1950s as a young hunk with wavy-haired good looks and an athletic build. He made a series of popular films for MGM, including Teresa (19, 51) and The Student Prince (1954). Later, Ericson worked mostly for television, most memorably as the partner of Anne Francis in Honey West (1965-1966).
John Ericson was born Joachim Alexander Ottokar Meibes in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1926. He was the son of Carl F. Meibes, a German chemist and Ellen Wilson, a Swedish actress and opera singer. Escaping from the Nazi regime, his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was three. At first, living in Detroit, they eventually settled in New York, where his dad (according to a 1955 newspaper article) found lucrative employment as president of a food extract company. After graduating from Newton High School, John enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, financially supporting his studies by working at a Walgreens drug store. Most sources, including Wikipedia, incorrectly cite his acting debut as being in 'Stalag 17' on Broadway, but Ericson himself stated (in a 1989 interview with Skip E. Lowe) that his career kick-started with the romantic wartime drama Teresa (Fred Zinnemann, 1951), filmed in Italy by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Afterwards, he made the decision not to sign a studio contract for fear of being typecast as 'boy-next-door' types. On the strength of his performance in Teresa, producer/director José Ferrer offered Ericson not only what amounted to being the nominal lead in 'Stalag 17' (1951), but the opportunity to play an initially unsympathetic part as the slick, cynical gambler J. J. Sefton. The coveted film role was eventually assigned to William Holden, who won an Academy Award. Between 1954 and 1955, Ericson was under contract at MGM and made four films for the studio: Rhapsody (Charles Vidor, 1954) opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Vittorio Gassman, Green Fire (Andrew Marton, 1954), co-starring Stewart Granger and Grace Kelly, who had been in his class at the Academy. and the seminal Spencer Tracy Western Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955) as a nervy hotel clerk.
During the next three decades, John Ericson worked as a freelance actor. His wavy-haired good looks and athletic build were not lost on the industry. He co-starred with Barbara Stanwyck in Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller, 1957). His career continued mostly on television. He co-starred with Anne Francis in Honey West (1965), a short-lived series apparently modelled on the British series The Avengers (1961). It featured a crime-solving, judo-savvy lady detective (even wearing Diana Rigg-style jumpsuits) and her right-hand man. The show only lasted for 30 episodes, but has since gained a minor cult following. Ericson's frequent TV guest appearances included Rawhide (1959), Bonanza (1959), Burke's Law (1963), The FBI (1965) and The Invaders (1967). For the big screen, he went to Italy and Spain. There he starred in the Peplum Io Semiramide / Slave Queen of Babylon (Primo Zeglio, 1963) about Semiramis, a queen of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Yvonne Furneaux). He also starred in the James Bond pastiche Agente S 03: Operazione Atlantide / Operation Atlantis (Domenico Paolella, 1965) and Spaghetti Westerns. In the U.S., he had leads in thrillers such as The Money Jungle (Francis D. Lyon, 1967) with Lola Albright, Westerns like Day of the Badman (Harry Keller, 1958) with Fred MacMurray, and Science Fiction B-graders like The Destructors (Francis D. Lyon, 1968) starring Richard Egan, and The Bamboo Saucer (Frank Telford, 1968), which was Dan Duryea's last film. Ericson also starred as the titular 1930s Depression-era gangster in Pretty Boy Floyd (Herbert J. Leder, 1960). He appeared in the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Robert Stevenson, 1971) and posed for the nude centrefold in Playgirl magazine's January 1974 issue. On the stage, he played King Arthur to Kathryn Grayson's Guinevere in a 1967 production of the musical 'Camelot'. A reviewer commented that what Ericson lacked in the vocal department, he more than made up for by a 'masterful performance'. His dramatic theatrical credits included 'Richard III', 'Mr. Roberts' and 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. In his spare time, John Ericson took up painting landscapes and still lifes. He was also a sculptor and a keen amateur photographer. Until he died of pneumonia in 2020, he resided in New Mexico with his second wife, Karen Huston, whom he married in 1974. With his first wife, Milly Ericson Courye, he had two children, Brett and Nicole. John Ericson was 93.
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An end of the week listing of New Yorker artists whose work has appeared on newyorker.com features
