No joke: Kathy Griffin marries NYC couple

hNo joke: Kathy Griffin marries NYC couple

NEW YORK — She has been a sitcom character, a sometime talk show host and the centerpiece of her own reality show. Now Kathy Griffin has appeared in an unlikely new role — minister.

The often provocative comedian — who raised some Christian groups’ hackles by joking about Jesus while accepting an Emmy Award last September — became ordained through an online church to officiate Saturday at the New York wedding of two fans, Brian Anstey and Elka Shapiro.

“The request came in, and how could I say no?” Griffin, 47, told the Daily News. “I love that this couple just want to have fun. They’re my kind of people.”

Anstey, 31, is a fifth-grade teacher; Shapiro, 29, is a marketing director. Neither is affiliated with a religion, and “the major factor in our relationship is laughter,” Shapiro said.

Griffin flew in from Los Angeles for the wedding at the Queens County Farm Museum. She performed a 10-minute service that ranged from telling raunchy jokes to having the bride recite the reception menu, according to the Daily News.

“It’s so unusual and something we’ll always remember,” Shapiro said.

Viewers of Griffin’s reality show, “My Life on the D-List,” will be able to see the ceremony for themselves in June, when an episode involving the wedding is to air on Bravo.

Griffin said she was ordained online by the Universal Life Church and completed additional paperwork to meet New York State requirements. But she insisted her role in the wedding was a one-night-only performance.

Besides “D-List,” Griffin has appeared as an acerbic columnist on the NBC sitcom “Suddenly Susan” and as a guest host of the ABC talk show “The View.”

Oscar nominee Malvin Wald dies

LOS ANGELES — Malvin Wald, a screenwriter who was nominated for an Academy Award for the 1948 movie “The Naked City,” has died at 90.

Wald died Thursday at Sherman Oaks Hospital from age-related causes, said his son, Alan.

Wald wrote dozens of scripts for motion pictures and TV shows including “Peter Gunn,” “Daktari” and “Perry Mason.”

He wrote the story for “The Naked City,” then co-wrote the screenplay with Albert Maltz, who was one of the “Hollywood 10” of blacklisted writers during the McCarthy era.

“The Naked City” was a groundbreaking, gritty drama, filmed on location in New York, about police investigating a murder. It ended with the now-famous line: “There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”

Wald, a Brooklyn native, researched the story by following real New York homicide detectives.

“No one had done a film where the real hero was a hardworking police detective, like the ones I knew in Brooklyn,” Wald told the Hollywood Reporter last year. “We knew we were making a new genre that became the police procedural.”

In addition to Wald’s nomination, the movie won two Oscars for film editing and cinematography. It also spawned a popular television show of the same name that aired from 1958 to 1963 and inspired countless others.

“What we see all over our TV screens today originated in large part in that movie,” film historian Leonard Maltin told the Los Angeles Times on Friday. “It was a novelty then, deglamorizing Hollywood’s depiction of crime-solving, taking it out of the hands of glamorous or exotic private investigators and following the day-to-day, mundane activities of the police.”

During World War II, Wald was in the Army Air Forces and helped make more than 30 training and recruitment films in Culver City. He also taught screenwriting at the University of Southern California.

In addition to his son, Wald is survived by a daughter, Jenifer Wald Morgan.

Today’s birthdays

Talk show host Ralph Emery is 75. Bluegrass/country singer-musician Norman Blake is 70. Actor Chuck Norris is 68. Playwright David Rabe is 68. Singer Dean Torrence (Jan and Dean) is 68. Actress Katharine Houghton is 63. Rock musician Tom Scholz (Boston) is 61. Producer-director-writer Paul Haggis is 55. Actress Shannon Tweed is 51. Actress Sharon Stone is 50. Rock musician Gail Greenwood is 48. Magician Lance Burton is 48. Actress Jasmine Guy is 46. Rock musician Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam) is 45. Music producer Rick Rubin is 45. Britain’s Prince Edward is 44. Singer Edie Brickell is 42. Actor Stephen Mailer is 42. Actress Paget Brewster is 39. Country singer Daryle Singletary is 37. Rapper-producer Timbaland is 36. Actor Cristian de la Fuente is 34. Singer Robin Thicke is 31. Actress Bree Turner is 31. Olympic gold-medal gymnast Shannon Miller is 31. Country singer Carrie Underwood is 25. Actress Emily Osment is 16.