Brooks to receive AFI lifetime award
It’ll be springtime for Mel Brooks when the American Film Institute presents him with its highest honor, the Life Achievement Award.
The writer and director of comedy classics including “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein” and “History of the World: Part I” will receive the award at a gala tribute next June, AFI announced Friday.
The 86-year-old Brooks is the 41st recipient of the honor, which has gone to Hollywood legends including Orson Welles, Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep and Morgan Freeman. He’s one of only 14 people to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award.
The AFI ceremony will air in late June on TNT and Turner Classic Movies.
GMA weatherman engaged
“Good Morning America” weather anchor Sam Champion is tying the knot.
ABC News says Champion and his boyfriend, Rubem Robierb, are engaged to be married later this year. Champion tweeted on Friday he’s “never been happier” to share a bit of personal news.
ABC says Champion and Robierb met through mutual friends in Miami, where Robierb lives.
Champion joined ABC News in 2006. Before that, he spent 18 years at New York City television station WABC.
Robierb was born in Brazil. He’s a fine-arts photographer who shows his work in Miami, Atlanta, New York and Santa Monica, Calif.
Lady Gaga to get peace prize
Lady Gaga will share a peace prize in memory of John Lennon to honor her work campaigning for equality for gay, lesbian and transgender people.
The American singer has been chosen along with four others – including Russian punk band Pussy Riot and the late writer Christopher Hitchens – to receive the biennial LennonOno Grant For Peace.
Gaga is expected to accept the award and a donation from Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, in Reykjavik, Iceland, on Oct. 9 – the birthday of John Lennon and his son, Sean.
Ono said in a statement Friday that while Gaga is “one of the biggest living artists of our time” she is also an activist whose album “Born This Way” altered “the mental map of the world.”
The birthday bunch
Actress Britt Ekland is 70. Singer Millie Small is 66. Musician Sid McGinnis (TV: “Late Show with David Letterman”) is 63. Rock singer Kevin Cronin (REO Speedwagon) is 61. Rock singer-musician David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) is 58. Actress Elisabeth Shue is 49. Actress Jacqueline Obradors is 46. Actor Jeremy Sisto is 38.