newsmakers

newsmakers

Mercer Co. native to take Mila Kunis to ball

LOS ANGELES

Thanks to the power of the Internet, a Marine’s YouTube request to go on a date with Mila Kunis got through to the actress, who said yes.

In a recent Fox News interview, the 27-year-old “Black Swan” star was asked whether she knew about Sgt. Scott Moore’s video asking her to accompany him to the Marine Corps Ball in Greenville, N.C., in November. The annual event marks the founding of the Marines in 1775.

“Hey Mila. It’s Sergeant Moore, but you can call me Scott,” he said from a base in Afghanistan. “I just wanted to take a moment out of my day to invite you to the Marine Corps Ball on November 18th in Greenville, North Carolina, with yours truly. So take a second, think about it, and get back to me.”

Kunis reacted with surprise and asked for details about the event during the Fox News interview. After her “Friends With Benefits” co-star, Justin Timberlake, goaded her to fulfill her patriotic duties, Kunis said she would go.

“We’re going to make this happen, sir,” she said, looking into the camera. “I’m with you.”

Moore is a native of Mercer County, Pa., and his parents still reside in Grove City.

‘Gilligan,’ ‘Brady’ creator dies at age 94

LOS ANGELES

Sherwood Schwartz, writer-creator of two of the best-remembered TV series of the 1960s and 1970s, “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” has died at age 94.

Great-niece Robin Randall said Schwartz died at 4 a.m. Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was being treated for an intestinal infection and underwent several surgeries. His wife, Mildred, and children had been at his side.

Sherwood Schwartz and his brother, Al, started as a writing team in TV’s famed 1950s “golden age,” said Douglas Schwartz, the late Al Schwartz’s son.

Schwartz had given up a career in medical science to write jokes for Bob Hope’s radio show. He went on to write for other radio and TV shows, including “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.”

He dreamed up “Gilligan’s Island” in 1964. It lasted on CBS from 1964 to 1967, and it was revived in later seasons with three high-rated TV movies.

TV writers usually looked upon “The Brady Bunch” as a sugarcoated view of American family life. The series lasted from 1969 to 1974, but it had an amazing afterlife. It was followed by three one-season spinoffs: “The Brady Bunch Hour” (1977), “The Brady Brides” (1981) and “The Bradys” (1990). “The Brady Bunch Movie,” with Shelley Long and Gary Cole as the parents, was a surprise box-office hit in 1995.

It was followed the next year by a less successful “A Very Brady Sequel.”

Associated Press