NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

Report: Valerie Harper has brain cancer

NEW YORK

Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda Morgenstern on television’s “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and its spinoff, “Rhoda,” has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

People magazine said on its website Wednesday that the 73-year-old actress received the news Jan. 15. Tests revealed she has leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition that occurs when cancer cells spread into the fluid-filled membrane surrounding the brain. The report says Harper’s doctors have said she has as little as three months to live.

“I don’t think of dying,” Harper told People in a cover interview. “I think of being here now.”

Harper’s character, Rhoda, was one of TV’s most-beloved characters in the 1970s, and the tart-tongued, self-deprecating Rhoda made Harper a star. She won three consecutive Emmys (1971-73) as supporting actress on “Mary” plus another for outstanding lead actress for “Rhoda,” which ran from 1974 to 1978.

Record 4.6M comics for free book day

PHILADELPHIA

Organizers say the number of orders by shops that will give out free comics for the annual Free Comic Book Day event has topped more than 4.6 million this year, a record.

Diamond Distributors said Wednesday that orders have come from nearly 2,000 retailers across the country for the May 4 event, which is hosted by independent comic-book shops and specialty stores in 46 countries.

The order figure is up 31.4 percent from 2012 when orders tallied 3.5 million, and up from 2011 when 2.7 million orders were received.

Fifty-three titles from publishers big and small — Marvel, Dark Horse, Image, DC and 2000AD — will be given away free.

Vindicator wire reports