12 • May 15-16, 2020 ENTERTAINMENT Peacock on the prowl falls for officer’s decoy, not love BOSTON (AP) — A Boston police officer used an electronic mating call Monday to help capture a peacock that had escaped from a nearby zoo. An officer lured the curious peacock that had escaped from Franklin Park Zoo into a fenced-in yard while playing a mating call on his cell phone, The Boston Globe reported. The officers on patrol in the Roxbury area were approached by a concerned citizen, who reported that the bird, named Snowbank, had escaped from the zoo, Boston police said in a statement. “Additional officers arrived at the scene and were met by an extremely large, slightly intimidating, and quite beautiful, male peacock,” police said. One of the officers began to look up a peacock mating call on his cellphone. When he played it, the 6-year-old bird was lured into the secure area and remained there until Boston Animal Control and zoo officials arrived. Snowbank was then returned to the zoo and is reported to be doing well, according to zoo officials. Normally, peacocks at the zoo are free-roaming but officials believe its possible that Snowbank was on a mission when he made his escape. “It is currently mating season, and it’s possible he ventured out looking for love, in search of a peahen,” a female peacock, zoo officials said. • STILLER Continued from page 11 Costanza, father to Jason Alexander’s neurotic George. “My manager had retired,” he said. “I was close to 70 years old, and had nowhere to go.” He was initially told to play the role as a milquetoast husband with an overbearing wife, Estelle, played by Estelle Harris. But the character wasn’t working — until Stiller suggested his reincarnation as an overthe-top crank who matched his wife scream for scream. It jump-started the septuagenarian’s career, landing him a spot playing Vince Lombardi in a Nike commercial and the role of another over-the-top dad on the long-running sitcom “King of Queens.” A Boston police officer used an electronic mating call Monday to help capture the peacock that had escaped from a nearby zoo. (Boston Police Department via AP) While he was known as a nutjob father on the small screen, Stiller and wife Meara raised two children in their longtime home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side: daughter Amy, who became an actress, and son Ben, who would become perhaps the most famous Stiller as a writer, director and actor. He and Ben performed together in “Shoeshine,” which was nominated for a 1988 Academy Award in the short subject category. Stiller was considerably quieter and reflective in person than in character — although just as funny. The son of a bus driver and a housewife, Stiller grew up in Depression-era Brooklyn. His inspiration to enter show business came at age 8, when his father took him to see the Marx Brothers in the comedy classic “A Night at the Opera.” Years later, Stiller met Groucho Marx and thanked him. Stiller earned a drama degree at Syracuse University after serving in World War II, and then headed to New York City bransonglobe.com to launch his career. There was a brief involvement in Shakespearean theater, including a $55 a week job with Jack Klugman in “Coriolanus.” But his life and career took off after he met Meara in spring 1953. They were married that fall. The seemingly mismatched pair — he a short, stocky Jewish guy from Brooklyn, she a tall, Irish Catholic from the Long Island suburbs — shared an immediate onstage chemistry, too. They were soon appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and working nightclubs nationwide. The pair also wrote and performed radio commercials, most memorably a series of bits for a little-known wine called Blue Nun. The duo’s ads boosted sales by 500%. Ben Stiller recalled trips with his sister to California when his parents would head west to do television appearances. The couple went on to appear as a team in dozens of film, stage and television productions. One of them was “After-Play,” a 1995 off-Broadway show written by Meara. Actor Michael McKean honored Stiller on Twitter as “a great comic actor and a splendid man. He and his wife, Anne, were royalty but they would’ve laughed in your face if you said so. And then hugged the hell out of you.” Jerry Seinfeld also shared a tribute, posting a photo of himself holding “The Last Two People in the World,” a 1967 comedy album from Stiller and Meara. Seth Rogen tweeted: “He made me laugh till I cried on many occasions.” Stiller joined “Seinfeld” in 1993, and moved on to “King of Queens” when the other Jerry & company went off the air in 1998. He also appeared in Ben Stiller’s spoof on modeling, “Zoolander,” released in 2001.
13 Publizr Branson Globe: Entertainment/History Home