Latest news with #Queenie
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Elijah Blue Allman ‘Agrees' With Mom Cher: Divorce From Marieangela ‘Queenie' King ‘Is for the Best'
Cher and son Elijah Blue Allman have experienced their share of drama throughout the years, but a source exclusively tells In Touch she's making it perfectly clear that when it comes to his impending, likely messy divorce from estranged wife Marieangela King, she's in his corner 100 percent and ready to throw her weight behind any legal dispute. 'Cher is absolutely thrilled that this divorce is happening,' the insider reveals. 'She's convinced that without Marieangela in his life, Elijah will finally get it back together.' Elijah, 48, the only child of Cher, 78, and her late ex-husband, Gregg Allman, originally filed for divorce from from Marieangela in 2021. After a period of reconciliation, he asked a judge to grant a divorce dismissal for that filing, which the court obliged in February 2024. The reunion wasn't to last, as the 37-year-old singer, known professionally as Queenie, filed for divorce this time against her husband on April 8, 2025, citing irreconcilable differences and seeking $6,000 per month in spousal support. "We had a beautiful 13-year journey, filled with memories I'll always cherish. I know we'll remain friends, and Elijah will always hold a special place in my heart," Marieangela told People of the split. "As we turn the page to this next chapter, we kindly ask for privacy and truly appreciate your understanding." The couple married in 2013 and pretty much the entirety of their nearly 13 years together was fraught with drama. Mom Cher did not approve in the slightest. In fact, the insider notes she's so thrilled to be getting Marieangela out of Elijah's life once and for all she's willing to foot the bill for the separation. 'She's more than happy to pay for his divorce lawyers,' the source says. 'She'll be paying the settlement too, which isn't making her happy, but right now she's just focusing on supporting Elijah and keeping him strong through this break-up.' The 'Believe' singer was incensed after Elijah changed his mind about the divorce and decided to mend fences with his wife two years before. She even filed an ex parte motion that he be placed in a temporary emergency conservatorship due to his alleged mental health and substance abuse issues in late 2023, which was denied. Now that divorce is looking more real than ever, the source says the Goddess of Pop is just glad to have her son back and is working on providing whatever he needs to move past this particularly nasty chapter of his life. 'She's spending a lot of time with him, she's gone into full mother hen mode. They're getting massages and other spa treatments together to fully relax,' the insider explains. 'She has her energy healer working on him, too. He's staying with her and getting fully pampered.' 'She is over the moon to have this chance to bond with him and be his mom again. She is very maternal and shines in a crisis.' 'Elijah actually seems to be on really good behavior,' the source notes. 'He's sad his marriage is ending, but he seems to agree with his mom — that this is for the best. Now he just wants it to be over as quickly as possible.'
Irish Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The slogan ‘Belfast's got the buzz' always rang hollow. Until now
'Belfast Central waiting for a train, seems to me things have come full circle.' This first line of Juliet Turner song Belfast Central means a lot to me. I was living in Belfast nearly 25 years ago when I fell in love with my current husband. We listened to a lot of Juliet Turner back then. We were on the Enterprise, heading to Belfast, when the song came back into my head. Our daughters were not able to come with us for my mother-in-law Queenie's 76th birthday lunch, so we went on our own. I assumed the train would stop at Lanyon Place, the station that used to be called Belfast Central. It has always annoyed me that they changed the name. 'Lanyon Place, waiting for a train' was never going to make a memorable line for a song. But we did not stop there. Instead, the train pulled into an architectural marvel called Belfast Grand Central Station and I was amazed. I haven't been to Belfast in a while. I did not know that the old Great Victoria Street train and bus station had been demolished and replaced by this stunning new station. It's vast and full of natural light. There's a small M&S and a couple of hundred parking spaces for bikes. Expecting the squat, unremarkable Lanyon Place, arriving there was disorienting in the best way. Grand Central Belfast Station opened last October, but this post-Troubles transport hub, designed by McAslan & Partners, had somehow passed me by. Architect Rebecca Jane McConnell has described it is something new for Belfast, a place where the architecture 'finally focuses on enjoying space, rather than securitising it'. READ MORE After thoroughly enjoying the space, we walked into town, past the Grand Opera House and down the back of City Hall. We were too early for the lunch, so we ambled in the sunshine along to George's Market, thinking, for the hundredth time, why can't Dublin have a George's Market? Outside, a man with a harmonica had a sign that read, 'Tell me your birth date and I'll tell you the day'. So we told him our dates and he correctly identified the day of the week of both our birthdays. 'It's an algorithm in my brain,' he said by way of explanation. Knowing full well Gary Gamble and I definitely don't share the same sense of humour, Queenie forces me to watch a video of him telling a joke that includes the word 'fanny' as a punchline We wandered through the market. Pored over the photo albums of dead people and admired necklaces fashioned by a talented silversmith, a kind woman with stories in her eyes. We shopped for vinyl and hot sauce and fudge, as a band played country music and small children ate home-made marshmallows. One of the hot sauces was called Violent Intentions, but I tasted it anyway and then stole some milk from a coffee stand – I can't stand milk but it was an emergency – when my eyes started streaming. 'Belfast's got the buzz', was the tagline for the city when we lived there years ago. It never really rang true, or at least not in the way the tourism officials hoped. It does now though. It was Sunday but the city was buzzing with shoppers and tourists. Down the road from the market, music was blaring from a charity shop called Show Some Love, where all profits go towards hygiene products and underwear for people living in hardship. We bought a dress and a Nirvana sweatshirt for our daughters from a smiley man called Connor. To The Ivy then, overlooking City Hall, where Queenie was in great form. And why not? Her children and grandchildren around her, a sweet potato curry in her bowl and candles on a red velvet cake. For part of her present, the family chipped in to send her off to Blackpool to see a popular comedian called Gary Gamble. Queenie is mad about him. Knowing full well Gary Gamble and I definitely don't share the same sense of humour, she forces me to watch a video where Gamble is telling Fr D'Arcy a joke about three sets of people trying to get into heaven. I won't spoil it for you but in the video it appears as though Fr D'Arcy might actually expire from laughter at the gag which includes the word 'fanny' as a punchline. Queenie and her daughters ask me if I want to join them in Blackpool and are neither surprised nor offended when I say, 'That's a hard no'. Nearly 25 years since I crashed into their lives, they know me so well. And I know Queenie well enough to tell her the top-quality china ramekins she bought in a second-hand shop, decorated with strawberry plants, are not to my taste and that I'll be sending them back up north with her son. No problem. She can always get her money back. She'll try again with some other bargain. More often than not she gets it right. Belfast Grand Central, waiting for a train, seems to me things have come full circle. Heading back home to Connolly. Buying our dinner in the tiny M&S, fresh pasta and a sauce. Something quick to rustle up for our teenagers when we land back in Dublin. Queenie, heading back on the same train to Portadown, insists on buying our supplies and some ginger beer for the journey. She's not one for hugs. I hug her anyway. The train eases south. We're already planning our return.
Sydney Morning Herald
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Hollywood legend who spent her career passing as white
CINEMA Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star Mayhukh Sen W.W. Norton & Company, $29.99 Who was the most beautiful actress ever in film? Merle Oberon of course. This is not an opinion, but a statement of fact. I learned this when I was comparatively young, and it has stayed with me for decades, including the one in which I managed to meet her at Ghalal, her Acapulco home, confirming in 3D the evidence I'd had from her long screen career. However, there were other critical matters in her life, apart from her pristine beauty, most importantly the suppression of the details of her birth in India, the life-long strain of which Mayhuk Sen's biography bears out in a thoroughly researched and persuasively recorded exploration of a complex life. For many years, it was widely believed that Merle was born in Tasmania, whereas the true biological history was very different. She was the daughter of a very young Indian mother, Constance Selby, and Arthur Thompson, her British rapist-father, who was almost totally absent from her life. She was seen as a 'charity case' at school in India, and her poverty-stricken Anglo-Indian background was subject to awful racism and class distinction, as would, of course, have been the case in the UK or the US when she first ventured there. In re-inventing herself as being of Anglo-French origin and working on her skin colour, she opted for a Tasmanian birthplace, presumably because of its vast distance from where she wanted to make a career. Sen offers a moving account of the poverty and pain in which she lived when she first moved to London. As Queenie Thompson, she longed for a movie career, and to London she was accompanied by her grandmother Charlotte, as her housekeeper – her actual mother now excluded from the scene – and after trying some possibilities Queenie had arrived at her professional name as we know it. The early 1930s was not a very inspiring era of British filmmaking, but Merle garnered a few small roles in what were known as 'quota quickies', 'supporting' films, famous for their lack of distinction. A modest turning-point for her was the role of Anne Boleyn in Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Henry VIII, memorably concerned that her hair will 'hold together when my head falls'. It is a small role, but Merle imbued it with a touch of courage and poignancy. After her success opposite Leslie Howard in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), she was invited to Hollywood by studio boss Joseph Schenk, and made her way to stardom in the romantic drama The Dark Angel. In the rest of the decade, despite American racist attitudes, she would come and go between the US and the UK, but undoubtedly, it was her role as Cathy in William Wyler's classic version of Wuthering Heights that made her a world star, even if co-star Laurence Olivier was displeased that she had outdone Vivien Leigh for the role.
The Age
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The Hollywood legend who spent her career passing as white
CINEMA Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star Mayhukh Sen W.W. Norton & Company, $29.99 Who was the most beautiful actress ever in film? Merle Oberon of course. This is not an opinion, but a statement of fact. I learned this when I was comparatively young, and it has stayed with me for decades, including the one in which I managed to meet her at Ghalal, her Acapulco home, confirming in 3D the evidence I'd had from her long screen career. However, there were other critical matters in her life, apart from her pristine beauty, most importantly the suppression of the details of her birth in India, the life-long strain of which Mayhuk Sen's biography bears out in a thoroughly researched and persuasively recorded exploration of a complex life. For many years, it was widely believed that Merle was born in Tasmania, whereas the true biological history was very different. She was the daughter of a very young Indian mother, Constance Selby, and Arthur Thompson, her British rapist-father, who was almost totally absent from her life. She was seen as a 'charity case' at school in India, and her poverty-stricken Anglo-Indian background was subject to awful racism and class distinction, as would, of course, have been the case in the UK or the US when she first ventured there. In re-inventing herself as being of Anglo-French origin and working on her skin colour, she opted for a Tasmanian birthplace, presumably because of its vast distance from where she wanted to make a career. Sen offers a moving account of the poverty and pain in which she lived when she first moved to London. As Queenie Thompson, she longed for a movie career, and to London she was accompanied by her grandmother Charlotte, as her housekeeper – her actual mother now excluded from the scene – and after trying some possibilities Queenie had arrived at her professional name as we know it. The early 1930s was not a very inspiring era of British filmmaking, but Merle garnered a few small roles in what were known as 'quota quickies', 'supporting' films, famous for their lack of distinction. A modest turning-point for her was the role of Anne Boleyn in Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Henry VIII, memorably concerned that her hair will 'hold together when my head falls'. It is a small role, but Merle imbued it with a touch of courage and poignancy. After her success opposite Leslie Howard in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), she was invited to Hollywood by studio boss Joseph Schenk, and made her way to stardom in the romantic drama The Dark Angel. In the rest of the decade, despite American racist attitudes, she would come and go between the US and the UK, but undoubtedly, it was her role as Cathy in William Wyler's classic version of Wuthering Heights that made her a world star, even if co-star Laurence Olivier was displeased that she had outdone Vivien Leigh for the role.
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Full-circle moment': Candice Carty-Williams joins judging panel as 4thWrite prize opens for entries
A short story competition run by the Guardian and the publisher 4th Estate is now open to entries from unpublished writers of colour living in the UK and Ireland. The 4thWrite prize, now in its ninth year, offers its winner £1,000, a publishing workshop at 4th Estate and publication of the winning story on the Guardian website. This year's judging panel features Candice Carty-Williams, who founded the prize while working as a marketing executive at 4th Estate before going on to publish her bestselling novel Queenie. 'Returning to 4th Estate to judge the prize I started nearly a decade ago will most likely be the most meaningful full-circle moment of my career,' she said. 'I cannot wait to see and discuss with my fellow judges how writing and stories have changed in the last nine years to reflect the world we're in now. I am both honoured and excited to get into it.' Joining Carty-Williams on the judging panel is the poet Caleb Femi, associate literary agent Monica MacSwan, athlete Jazmin Sawyers, 4th Estate publishing director Kishani Widyaratna and Guardian books commissioning editor Lucy Knight. 'It's always a joy to dive into work that challenges, moves and surprises you – and I can't wait to discover what this year's prize has in store,' said Femi. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion MacSwan said: 'With the move away from Twitter and zines closing down, prizes are more necessary than ever for new writers of colour to make their voices heard.' The prize 'has launched the careers of some of contemporary fiction's brightest talents', she added. Writers previously recognised through the award include Bolu Babalola, the author of Love in Colour and Honey & Spice, and Guy Gunaratne, who wrote In Our Mad and Furious City and Mister, Mister. The prize 'offers a vital and important platform for emerging writers of colour across the UK and shines brilliant light on the wealth of talent out there', said Widyaratna. The competition is open for story submissions of up to 6,000 words until 8 June. Writers aged 18 and over can submit entries via the 4th Estate website. A longlist will be announced by 10 August and the shortlist by 30 September, with the winner revealed in October at a London ceremony. Last year's prize was won by Yan F Zhang for her story Fleeting Marrow, which is based on the real-life deportation of Chinese seafarers from the UK after the second world war.
