Review: “Liz & Dick” Is Bad, But You Knew That

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Lifetime’s “Liz & Dick” is very bad, just as you knew it would be.

Let’s not pretend it ever had a shot at being decent. The decision to cast Lindsay Lohan as Oscar-winning screen legend Elizabeth Taylor told us right up front that the filmmakers were more interested in trashy publicity than quality. She isn’t good, but no one could be good with this dialogue.

On an online “Saturday Night Live” skit this week, Bobby Moynihan portrayed celebrity chef Guy Fieri responding to a New York Times review of his new Times Square restaurant, saying the paper shouldn’t have had high expectations.

“If you come in expecting Le Cirque, then you’re a le jerk,” he says.

That applies here, too. But “Liz & Dick” isn’t even good as junk food goes. It’s redundant and boring in a way no star could save.

It’s been suggested that the movie could at least be dopey fun, the stuff of drinking games. But that seems a perverse way to watch a movie about two people who, as portrayed here, were messy drunks. The only appropriate drinking game might be one where you take a shot of water every time you scream at the screen, “STOP DRINKING.”

Because the producers invested nearly all their energies in stunt casting, the only point of interest is how Lohan looks and sounds as Taylor. Though she often looks lovely – nice to see after her years of battling drugs and alcohol – Lohan doesn’t look like Taylor, just like someone wearing knockoffs of her clothes and diamonds. She also doesn’t sound like her, or seem to be making any attempt to.

Taylor and Richard Burton (Grant Bowler) meet cute while making “Cleopatra” together and quickly fall into a dull cycle of making out, breaking up, drinking too much, fleeing the paparazzi, and conniving to make movies together. This takes up the middle hour or so of the two-hour movie, and requires that the last 15 minutes be stuffed with an absurd number of events, including (spoiler alert) a cancer scare, a remarriage, and a death.

It’s impossible to feel any emotional connection with the characters, because, as portrayed here, they’re self-centered asses. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is awful, and that many scenes are less than 30 seconds long, which doesn’t allow us into the character’s heads. The scenes are strung together by sub-sitcom transitional music that at least tips us off to the disposability of the entire movie.

Lohan will probably make the case, somewhere down the line, that her flat, vacant line readings were a campy attempt to distance herself from the film’s many bad lines. One of the worst comes when Taylor’s mother notes her tendency to get married a lot.

Mom: “Not that I’m counting, but if I’m not mistaken you’ve just ended, what, you’re fourth marriage?”

Liz: “Who’s counting?”

Well, not her mother, since she just said… never mind.

Bowler is better, handling his lines with the professionalism of a good soaps actor. At one point he gets to call Liz a “harridan” in an amusing Welsh accent. But he has none of Burton’s gravity or grit. He may also be too generically handsome for the role, no surprise in a movie with no pretensions of depth.

Lohan’s costumery is especially silly near the end, when her hair has grey streaks but she still looks far too young to play a woman in her sixties. We’re also told throughout the movie how fat Liz and Dick are getting – usually by Liz and Dick themselves – but we have to pretend to see it, since the actors who play them remain trim.

Perhaps because of her own awful relationship with the press, Lohan seems unwilling to let herself appear vulnerable. It’s become a major impediment to her performances.

Her idol, Marilyn Monroe, continued to study acting well into her stardom, and turned in some very good performances as a result. Lohan might want to imitate Monroe’s interest in her craft, rather than just dressing like her for magazine spreads.

It’s too late for her to do more than dress like Taylor.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Indian Prostitutes’ New Autonomy Imperils AIDS Fight

Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

Sex workers in Mumbai’s long-established red-light district, where brothels are dwindling.

MUMBAI, India — Millions once bought sex in the narrow alleys of Kamathipura, a vast red-light district here. But prostitutes with inexpensive mobile phones are luring customers elsewhere, and that is endangering the astonishing progress India has made against AIDS.

Indeed, the recent closings of hundreds of ancient brothels, while something of an economic victory for prostitutes, may one day cost them, and many others, their lives.

“The place where sex happens turns out to be an important H.I.V. prevention point,” said Saggurti Niranjan, program associate of the Population Council. “And when we don’t know where that is, we can’t help stop the transmission.”

Cellphones, those tiny gateways to modernity, have recently allowed prostitutes to shed the shackles of brothel madams and strike out on their own. But that independence has made prostitutes far harder for government and safe-sex counselors to trace. And without the advice and free condoms those counselors provide, prostitutes and their customers are returning to dangerous ways.

Studies show that prostitutes who rely on cellphones are more susceptible to H.I.V. because they are far less likely than their brothel-based peers to require their clients to wear condoms.

In interviews, prostitutes said they had surrendered some control in the bedroom in exchange for far more control over their incomes.

“Now, I get the full cash in my hand before we start,” said Neelan, a prostitute with four children whose side business in sex work is unknown to her husband and neighbors. (Neelan is a professional name, not her real one.)

“Earlier, if the customer got scared and didn’t go all the way, the madam might not charge the full amount,” she explained. “But if they back out now, I say that I have removed all my clothes and am going to keep the money.”

India has been the world’s most surprising AIDS success story. Though infections did not appear in India until 1986, many predicted the nation would soon become the epidemic’s focal point. In 2002, the C.I.A.’s National Intelligence Council predicted that India would have as many as 25 million AIDS cases by 2010. Instead, India now has about 1.5 million.

An important reason the disease never took extensive hold in India is that most women here have fewer sexual partners than in many other developing countries. Just as important was an intensive effort underwritten by the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to target high-risk groups like prostitutes, gay men and intravenous drug users.

But the Gates Foundation is now largely ending its oversight and support for AIDS prevention in India, just as efforts directed at prostitutes are becoming much more difficult. Experts say it is too early to identify how much H.I.V. infections might rise.

“Nowadays, the mobility of sex workers is huge, and contacting them is very difficult,” said Ashok Alexander, the former director in India of the Gates Foundation. “It’s a totally different challenge, and the strategies will also have to change.”

An example of the strategies that had been working can be found in Delhi’s red-light district on Garstin Bastion Road near the old Delhi railway station, where brothels have thrived since the 16th century. A walk through dark alleys, past blind beggars and up narrow, steep and deeply worn stone staircases brings customers into brightly lighted rooms teeming with scores of women brushing each other’s hair, trying on new dresses, eating snacks, performing the latest Bollywood dances, tending small children and disappearing into tiny bedrooms with nervous men who come out moments later buttoning their trousers.

A 2009 government survey found 2,000 prostitutes at Garstin Bastion (also known as G. B.) Road who served about 8,000 men a day. The government estimated that if it could deliver as many as 320,000 free condoms each month and train dozens of prostitutes to counsel safe-sex practices to their peers, AIDS infections could be significantly reduced. Instead of broadcasting safe-sex messages across the country — an expensive and inefficient strategy commonly employed in much of the world — it encircled Garstin Bastion with a firebreak of posters with messages like “Don’t take a risk, use a condom” and “When a condom is in, risk is out.”

Surprising many international AIDS experts, these and related tactics worked. Studies showed that condom use among clients of prostitutes soared.

“To the credit of the Indian strategists, their focus on these high-risk groups paid off,” said Dr. Peter Piot, the former executive director of U.N.AIDS and now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. A number of other countries, following India’s example, have achieved impressive results over the past decade as well, according to the latest United Nations report, which was released last week.

Sruthi Gottipati contributed reporting in Mumbai and New Delhi.

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Rosenthal: Big Ten getting too big for its own good?

There's a lesson the empire builders at Big Ten Conference headquarters in Park Ridge would do well to heed if they can be convinced to stop peering out to the distant horizon:

Growth through acquisition is fraught with peril.

"In the business world you acquire new companies and you have to deal with different corporate cultures, different priorities and so forth," Robert Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates LLC, an investment firm, said in an interview. "Merging them is often very messy and often fails. Here you're merging two teams into an existing conference and it creates risks. … Even college football teams have different cultures, different ways of thinking about how to win and different standards."

There undoubtedly was a logic behind each acquisition as the old Sears sought to expand and diversify its corporate profile. By the time the Chicago-area company's portfolio grew to include Allstate insurance, Coldwell Banker real estate and Dean Witter Reynolds stock brokerage, it was clear the increase in size was in no way matched by an increase in strength.

Rather than an all-powerful Colossus astride many sectors at once, it was reduced to an unfocused blob, bereft of identity, covering plenty of ground but hardly standing tall. Years after shedding its far-flung holdings, Sears has yet to regain its muscle, mojo or market share.

"It's hard to find a better example of a company that lost its mission and focus in the quest for growth," Arnott said.

"(Growth) may be partly a defensive move. It may be ego driven. In the corporate arena, you certainly see that in spades," he said. "When growth is through acquisition, you have to figure out what the real motivation is. Is it synergy, the most overused word in the finance community, or is it ego?"

Adding the University of Maryland and New Jersey's Rutgers University in 2014 will push the Big Ten to 14 schools and far beyond the Midwestern territory for which it's known. But doing so may not achieve what its backers envision.

Rather than spread the conference's brand, it may merely dilute it. The fit may be corrosive, not cohesive.

There is a school of thought that this is but the latest evidence that the Big Ten is not about athletics, academics or even the Midwest. Instead, it is just a television network, the schools content providers and student-athletes talent.

As it is, the overall TV payout is said to give each of the 12 current Big Ten schools about $21 million per year. They point to the Big Ten's lucrative deals with ESPN and its own eponymous cable network, a partnership with News Corp. They note that public schools Rutgers and Maryland are near enough to New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to drive a better bargain with cable carriers.

To Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, a New Jersey native, the addition is more the result of a paradigm shift that has redrawn the college sports map over the past decade. Some conferences splinter. Others seize new turf. The result: Idaho's Boise State football team is poised to join the Big East Conference next year.

"Institutions that get together for academics or athletics have got to be cognizant that they are competing for students, they are competing for student athletes, they are competing for research dollars," Delany told reporters.

"When you see a Southern conference in the Midwest or you see a Southern conference in the Plains states or whether you see other conferences in the Midwest or Northeast, it impacts your recruitment. ... It impacts everything you do," he said. "At a certain point you get to a tipping point. The paradigm has shifted, and you decide on a strategy to basically position yourself for the next decade or half-century."

Big has always meant more than 10 in the Big Ten, an intercollegiate entity formed by seven Midwestern universities that now boasts 12 with the bookends of Penn State and Nebraska added in 1990 and last year, respectively. Last week's announcement of adding schools 13 and 14 was just a reminder that the conference has only had 10 member schools for 70 of its 116 years and won't again for the foreseeable future.

Rutgers President Robert Barchi said his school looked "forward as much to the collaboration and interaction we're going to have as institutions as we do to what I know will be really outstanding competition on our field of play."

But make no mistake, the Big Ten was born out of sports, specifically football. A seven-school 1896 meeting at Chicago's Palmer House had Northwestern among those still stinging from a scathing Harper's Weekly critique of college sports abuses, the Tribune reported at the time.

A prohibition on allowing scholarship and fellowship students to compete was shot down. But "a move towards the coordination of Faculty committees" in terms of standards and enforcement passed and the precursor to the Big Ten was born.

Along the way, the conference has added member schools and come to recognize that the Big Ten's image has much to say about how those institutions are perceived. Scandals already are no stranger to the Big Ten. But whether you play in a stadium or on Wall Street, the bigger one gets, the bigger target one becomes.

"Whoever's biggest draws scrutiny," said Arnott, co-author of a research paper, "The Winners Curse: Too Big to Succeed." "That means politicians, regulators, the general public generally don't root for the biggest. They look to take them down a notch, so it's harder to succeed as the largest. It's also harder to move the dial and move from success to success as you get really big."

Everyone talks about becoming too big to fail, but there's also too big to scale, companies that are unable to capitalize on the efficiencies of their increased size ostensibly because they are so big that they cannot be managed adequately.

"People talk about economies of scale. There are also vast diseconomies of scale, mostly in bureaucracies," Arnott said. "The more people you have involved, the more people you have who feel they have to have their views reflected in whatever's done. So you wind up with innovation by committee."

That's deadly. That's why companies break up, citing the need to get smaller so they can grow.

"If you break up companies into operating entities that are more nimble," Arnott said, "the opportunities to grow are no longer hamstrung by centralized bureaucracies that have to pursue synergies that don't exist."

Size matters in all fields of play. Sometimes smaller is better.

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

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Larry Hagman, villain of 'Dallas' dead at 81

(Reuters) - Larry Hagman, who created one of American television's most supreme villains in the conniving, amoral oilman J.R. Ewing of "Dallas," died on Friday, according to a co-star. He was 81.

Hagman died at a Dallas hospital of complications from his battle with throat cancer, the Dallas Morning News reported, quoting a statement from his family. He had suffered from liver cancer and cirrhosis of the liver in the 1990s after decades of drinking.

Linda Gray, who played J.R.'s long-suffering wife, Sue Ellen, was with Hagman in Dallas when he died, the actress' spokesman, Jeffrey Lane, said in an email.

"Larry Hagman was my best friend for 35 years," Gray said in a statement. "He was the Pied Piper of life and brought joy to everyone he knew. He was creative, funny, loving and talented, and I will miss him enormously."

Hagman's mother was stage and movie star Mary Martin and he became a star himself in 1965 on "I Dream of Jeannie," a popular television sitcom in which he played Major Anthony Nelson, an astronaut who discovers a beautiful genie in a bottle.

"Dallas," which made its premiere on the CBS network in 1978, made Hagman a superstar. The show quickly became one of the network's top-rated programs, built an international following and inspired a spin-off, imitators and a revival in 2012.

"Dallas" was the night-time soap-opera story of a Texas family, fabulously wealthy from oil and cattle, and its plot brimmed with back-stabbing, double-dealing, family feuds, violence, adultery and other bad behavior.

In the middle of it all stood Hagman's black-hearted J.R. Ewing - grinning wickedly in a broad cowboy hat and boots, plotting how to cheat his business competitors and cheat on his wife. He was the villain TV viewers loved to despise during the show's 356-episode run from 1978 to 1991.

"I really can't remember half of the people I've slept with, stabbed in the back or driven to suicide," Hagman said of his character in Time magazine.

In his autobiography, "Hello Darlin': Tall (and Absolutely True) Tales About My Life," Hagman wrote that J.R. originally was not to be the focus of "Dallas" but that changed when he began ad-libbing on the set to make his character more outrageous and compelling.

'WHO SHOT J.R.?'

To conclude its second season, the "Dallas" producers put together one of U.S. television's most memorable episodes in which Ewing was shot by an unseen assailant. That gave fans months to fret over whether J.R. would survive and who had pulled the trigger. In the show's opening the following season, it was revealed that J.R.'s sister-in-law, Kristin, with whom he had been having an affair, was behind the gun.

Hagman said an international publisher offered him $250,000 to reveal who had shot J.R. and he considered giving the wrong information and taking the money, but in the end, "I decided not to be so like J.R. in real life."

The popularity of "Dallas" made Hagman one of the best-paid actors in television and earned him a fortune that even a Ewing would have coveted. He lost some of it, however, in bad oil investments before turning to real estate.

"I have an apartment in New York, a ranch in Santa Fe, a castle in Ojai outside of L.A., a beach house in Malibu and thinking of buying a place in Santa Monica," Hagman said in a Chicago Tribune interview.

An updated "Dallas" series began in June 2012 on the TNT network with Hagman reprising his J.R. role with original cast members Gray, who played J.R.'s wife, and Patrick Duffy, who was his brother Bobby. The show was to focus on the sons of J.R. and Bobby.

Hagman had a wide eccentric streak. When he first met actress Lauren Bacall, he licked her arm because he had been told she did not like to be touched and he was known for leading parades on the Malibu beach and showing up at a grocery store in a gorilla suit. Above his Malibu home flew a flag with the credo "Vita Celebratio Est (Life Is a Celebration)" and he lived hard for many years.

In 1967, rock musician David Crosby turned him on to LSD, which Hagman said took away his fear of death, and Jack Nicholson introduced him to marijuana because Nicholson thought he was drinking too much.

Hagman had started drinking as a teenager and said he did not stop until the moment in 1992 when his doctor told him he had cirrhosis of the liver and could die within six months. Hagman wrote that for the past 15 years he had been drinking about four bottles of champagne a day, including while on the "Dallas" set.

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Secret message found with carrier pigeon may never be deciphered

British man finds carrier pigeon skeleton in his fireplace with unbreakable secret code (Reuters)

Before military forces had secure cell phones and satellite communications, they used carrier pigeons. The highly trained birds delivered sensitive information from one location to another during  World War II. Often, the birds found the intended recipient. But not always.

A dead pigeon was recently discovered inside a chimney in Surrey, England. There for roughly 70 years, the bird had a curious canister attached to its leg. Inside was a coded message that has stumped the experts.

The code features a series of 27 groups of five letters. According to Reuters, nobody from Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters has been able to decipher it. The message was sent by a Sgt. W. Scott to someone or something identified as “Xo2.”

A spokesperson remarked, “Although it is disappointing that we cannot yet read the message brought back by a brave carrier pigeon, it is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code-makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was indecipherable both then and now.”

The bird was discovered by a homeowner doing renovations earlier this month. In an interview with Reuters, David Martin remarked that bits of birds kept falling from the chimney. Eventually, Margin saw the red canister and speculated that it might contain a secret message. And it seems as if the message will always be secret.

Carrier pigeons played a vital role in wars due to their incredible homing skills. All told, U.K. forces used about 250,000 of the birds during World War II.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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One Direction makes Billboard history, holds off Aguilera, Del Rey

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – British boyband One Direction made Billboard chart history on Wednesday after storming to the top of the 200 album chart with their second album “Take Me Home,” holding off competition from Christina Aguilera, Soundgarden and Lana Del Rey.

“Take Me Home” notched the third-biggest opening week sales of the year with 540,000 units sold according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan, placing it behind only Mumford & Son’s “Babel” and Taylor Swift‘s “Red,” which had the year’s biggest opening with 1.2 million copies sold.

This is also the first time a British band have seen their first two albums debut at the top of the U.S. Billboard 200 chart. Their first album “Up All Night” shot to the top of the chart with 176,000 copies in March this year.

The lead single from “Take Me Home,” “Live While We’re Young” also made Billboard chart history after selling 341,000 copies in its first week, becoming the biggest opening week single sales for a non-U.S. artist.

One Direction were able to trump a new release from pop star and “The Voice” judge Aguilera, who debuted at No. 7 with her fifth studio album “Lotus,” selling 73,000 copies.

She was unable to replicate the success of fellow “Voice” judge Adam Levine, whose band Maroon 5 shot to No. 2 on the album chart in July with “Overexposed,” selling 222,000 copies.

The members of the British-Irish quintet One Direction, aged between 18 and 20, are Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne. They have come a long way since forming on Britain’s “The X Factor,” coming in third place and going on to conquer the U.S. and build a devoted following of fans.

Their success has also piqued the curiosity of interviewer Barbara Walters, who will be speaking to the band for her annual “The 10 Most Fascinating People,” airing on ABC on December 12.

The band will face stiff competition from R&B star Rihanna for the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart next week, as her new album “Unapologetic” is set for a big debut.

Elsewhere on the album chart, seven new debuts entered the top 10 this week.

Taylor Swift‘s “Red” was knocked down to No. 2 by One Direction‘s debut, while the soundtrack for the final “Twilight” film, “Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” debuted at No. 3 with sales of 93,000 after the film hit theaters last week.

The soundtrack features lead single “The Forgotten” by Green Day and songs by Passion Pit, Ellie Goulding, Fiest and a duet between “Twilight” cast member Nikki Reed and husband Paul McDonald, a former “American Idol” finalist.

Canadian R&B star The Weeknd landed at No. 4 this week with his hotly anticipated debut, “Trilogy,” while 1990s grunge rock band Soundgarden rounded out the top five with “King Animal,” their first album in 16 years.

Green Day’s “Dos!,” the second installment of their trilogy of new albums this year, came in at No. 9 on the chart with 69,000 copies, a big drop from their first album “Uno!,” which debuted at No. 2 in October with sales of 139,000 copies. The third installment, “Tre!,” is due out on December 11.

Indie-pop songstress Del Rey rounded out the top ten with her latest studio set “Paradise,” an eight-song record which was also offered as part of a deluxe edition of her debut album “Born To Die,” which notched No. 2 on the chart in February.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Patricia Reaney and Marguerita Choy)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Wealth Matters: Dealing With Doctors Who Accept Only Cash

A FEW weeks ago, my wife and I were at our wits’ end: our 4-month-old daughter wouldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time at night. We had consulted books and seen our pediatrician, but nothing was working. So my wife called a pediatrician who specializes in babies who struggle with sleep problems.

The next day, he drove an hour from Brooklyn to our house. He then spent an hour and a half talking to us and examining our daughter in her nursery. He prescribed some medicine for her and suggested some changes to my wife’s diet. Within two days, our baby was sleeping through the night and we were all feeling better.

The only catch was this pediatrician did not accept insurance. He had taken our credit card information before his visit and given us a form to submit to our insurance company as he left, saying insurance usually paid a portion of his fee, which was $650.

A couple of weeks later, our insurance company said it wouldn’t pay anything. Here’s how the company figured it: First, it said a fair price for our doctor’s fee was $285, about 60 percent less, because that was the going rate for our town. Then, it said the lower fee was not enough to meet our out-of-network deductible.

While we were none too happy with the insurance company, we remained impressed by the doctor: he had made our baby better and was compensated for it, all the while avoiding the hassle of dealing with insurance.

Last year, I wrote about doctors who catered only to the richest of the rich and charged accordingly. But after my experience, I became interested in doctors for the average person who take only cash. What pushes a doctor to go this route, often called concierge medicine? And how hard is it to make a living?

As to why doctors decide to switch to a concierge practice, the answer is almost always frustration.

“About four years ago, one insurance company was driving me crazy saying I had to fax documents to show I had done a visit,” said Stanford Owen, an internal medical doctor in Gulfport, Miss. “At 2 a.m., I woke up and said, ‘This is it.’ ”

Dr. Owen stopped accepting all insurance and now charges his 1,000 patients $38 a month.

“When I decided to abandon insurance, I didn’t want to lose my patient base and make it unaffordable,” he said. “I have everything from waitresses and shrimpers to international businessmen. It’s a concierge model, but it’s also the personal doctor model.”

Dr. Owen, who once had three nurses and 10 examining rooms, said it was now just him and a receptionist. He has become obsessed with keeping overhead low, but he said that, for the first time since the 1990s, his income was going up.

At the other end of the spectrum is David Edelson, who runs a practice called HealthBridge in Great Neck, N.Y. In addition to five doctors, the practice has a full fitness center and provides the services of a personal trainer, nutritionist, acupuncturist, sleep expert and stress-management consultant.

“The current model for primary care is broken,” Dr. Edelson told me. “Either I can go down with the ship, sell my practice to a hospital or take my practice in the wrong direction. Or I can develop a better mousetrap, which is more time dealing with patients and their care.”

Dr. Edelson has reduced his own practice to 300 patients, from more than 3,000. Of those, 250 pay $1,800 a year for concierge services and 50 others receive scholarships. He estimated that from the combination of the membership fee for the extra services and what gets billed to insurance for typical care, he will make $600,000, and more of that will end up in his pocket.

“We’re bringing in the same fees but we’re reducing our overhead,” he said. Fewer patients means fewer medical assistants, receptionists and staff members to deal with insurance.

But of the five doctors in the practice, he is the only one to go fully concierge. Another, William Klein, is testing the model, with 15 percent of his patients in the concierge program. Dr. Klein said he was hedging his bets because he was not sure what the new federal health care law would mean for primary care physicians.

Weren’t some patients getting shortchanged by this hybrid model? He said he saw no difference in care.

“It’s like paying for first class and not coach,” Dr. Klein said. “Everyone is getting to the same destination, but some people have a better seat.”

This approach to medicine is not without risks for the doctors and downsides for patients.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 23, 2012

An earlier version of this column gave an incorrect middle initial for Mr. Harris. It is M., not V.

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Walmart protests draw crowds, shoppers largely unfazed

Dozens of local workers, and hundreds nationally, took advantage of Black Friday crowds and camera crews at major retailers like Walmart to call for wage increases.

But there was little evidence that the chanting disrupted holiday shoppers.

Steven Restivo, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores, said the chain had done its "best Black Friday event ever" despite protests organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union in Chicago and other cities.

At a Walmart in Chicago's Chatham neighborhood on the south side, only one of the store's 500 employees took part in the demonstration, the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said. "Almost all the folks you'll see protesting today are not Walmart associates," Restivo said. "I guess you can't believe everything you read in a union press release."

According to the union, protests took place in Miami and Washington, D.C., with additional events planned at Midwestern and Southern stores.

Walmart has so far avoided a union presence, which has become cumbersome for competitors like Jewel-Osco and Dominick's Finer Foods. Those chains have been closing stores as Walmart has expanded locally.

Separately Friday, dozens of members of the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago and its supporters marched from the Loop to the Magnificent Mile to demand a $15 minimum wage and union contracts for downtown workers. Organized on November 15, the union has about 150 members and has received financial support from Service Employees International Union, Action Now and Stand Up Chicago.

Deborah Sims, marching Friday, said she worked at Macy's for 12 years, eventually making $13 an hour, before losing her job during the recession. She was rehired last holiday season, but at $8.50 an hour, with no benefits.

Sims said she expects retailers to turn to younger, less-experienced workers because "$8.25 an hour is going to look good to them."

Macy's did not respond to a request for comment.

Peter Gill, a spokesman for the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, called the demand for a $15 minimum wage dangerous "because people are out looking for jobs and it's tough in this economy."

He explained that if retailers were forced to nearly double the starting hourly wage, "you're going to have to cut the number of employees."

Reuters contributed to this story.

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Black Friday shopping gets an early start in Chicago

After dinner at a Maggiano's restaurant, the Tannehill/Schroeder clan headed over to Sears at Woodfield Mall in search of a 50-inch flat-screen TV for less than $300.

After 10 minutes of waiting in line, they breezed into the store. That's when Terri Schroeder, of Chicago, began to yell. "Hurry, grab a TV," she said to her sister-in-law, Margie Tannehill, of West Chicago. Both women laughed.

As it turns out, the family of eight waited in the wrong line at the wrong door at Sears. Vouchers for the 50-inch TV and other discounted "door-busters" were given out at another entrance, and they missed their chance to snag the coveted TV.

After making their way through the swarming crowd, they found another TV, and both women grabbed it. They settled on a smaller, less expensive 32-inch flat-screen set that at $250 was on sale but not a door-buster that had throngs of shoppers waiting in line at Sears since Thursday afternoon.

"This is not the one we wanted, but we're keeping it," Schroeder said with a giggle.

She joined throngs of shoppers who cut off Thanksgiving celebrations to turn their attention to preparing for the December holiday season, which typically accounts for up to 40 percent of retailers' sales.

Black Friday historically launched the day after Thanksgiving. But in recent years, stores have opened at 4 a.m., then midnight. Last year, retailers created a stir by opening at 10 p.m. Thursday. This year, Wal-Mart upped the ante when it announced plans to open at 8 p.m.

Taryan Sanders and Maurice Boston, both 25, were among those hanging out at the Wal-Mart in Humboldt Park, waiting for the 8 p.m. round of door-busters.

With a cart already filled with playthings like a Monster High doll, toy puppy and scooter (they'd been at the store since 4 p.m.), the couple stationed themselves near a pallet of Nerf gun sets that would go on sale for $10 each, items they eyed for Sanders' younger brothers.

"Gotta get the door-busters for my daughter and two brothers," Sanders said. "I already ate, and I'm out ready to get my shop on!"

This year, holiday spending is expected to rise 4.1 percent, according to the National Retail Federation. Last year, more than 24 percent of Black Friday shoppers were out before midnight, and nearly 39 percent of shoppers were in the stores before 5 a.m.

A recent survey from the consulting firm Deloitte shows that Chicago-area consumers plan to spend about 10 percent more on gifts this year, shelling out an average of $450. Most also expect the national economy to pick up in 2013 — their most positive outlook since 2009.

Beyond early Thanksgiving openings, retailers have also vied to outdo one another by offering Black Friday-esque discounts — in stores and online — nearly a week early.

"First blood is everything," said Wendy Liebmann, CEO and chief shopper at WSL Strategic Retail, a New York-based consumer behavior research firm. "This is really the first year where we've seen a vast majority of retailers decide that Thanksgiving Day is no longer sacrosanct."

Retailers are pulling out all the stops, from offering gift cards as incentives to shoppers who buy higher-priced items to touting deeper-than-ever discounts on popular items such as televisions and tablets. They'll send coupons to shoppers' phones, and many will promise to match rivals' prices.

"The earlier you can get people to open their wallets, the better," Liebmann said. "The uncertainty of life is such that you don't know what people will spend throughout the (holiday) season. So get 'em when you can."

With Black Friday bleeding into Thursday, the type of shopper prowling for good deals was expected to change, industry watchers said.

Mothers and families typically hit the stores Friday. But this year, retail watchers say men were expected to make a strong showing Thursday night. Big-spending millennials might also be inclined to soak up the partylike atmosphere.

The earlier hours open a window to "appeal to a wider array of customers," said Ben Arnold, director of industry analysis at the Port Washington, N.Y.-based research firm NPD Group.

Some things stay the same, though. As in years past, shoppers are angling to get more bang for their buck. Flat-screen TVs have always been big Black Friday sellers, but this year, they are expected to be larger and cheaper. TVs and laptops, annual best-sellers, are expected to hit a new price low, experts say.

Wal-Mart greeted Thursday night shoppers with deeply discounted TVs, video game consoles and Blu-ray players. At Sears, shoppers were met with on-sale tablet computers, washer and dryer sets, refrigerators and more TVs, among other items.

To prepare for the crowds, retailers have bolstered employee ranks and stepped up training. They have also staggered door-buster deals.

Toys R Us, which opened at 8 p.m. Thursday, distributed tickets to shoppers lined up for door-buster deals such as a 16-gigabyte iPod accompanied by $50 in gift cards, to avoid a "mad rush," CEO Jerry Storch told the Tribune in an interview. "It de-stresses the crowd," he said.

At electronics seller Best Buy, which opened at midnight, store managers have been giving staff crash courses in customer service and product knowledge, said Mitchell Zelasko, sales manager at the retailer's Bucktown location. The chain has hired more than 20,000 employees nationwide for its stores, distribution centers and customer service centers to support the holiday rush.

Locally, Best Buy planned to boost security for the shopping kickoff Friday, keep employees well-fed and in the store by ordering food and bringing in off-duty Chicago police officers to help keep order.

"Things can change very quickly in a mob situation," Zelasko said. "We keep things under control and we keep it fun."

Cheryl V. Jackson is a freelance writer.

crshropshire@tribune.com | Twitter @corilyns

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Ex-’Price is Right’ model gets $8.5M in damages

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The producers of “The Price is Right” owe a former model on the show more than $ 7.7 million in punitive damages for discriminating against her after a pregnancy, a jury determined Wednesday.

The judgment came one day after the panel determined the game show’s producers discriminated against Brandi Cochran. They awarded her nearly $ 777,000 in actual damages.

Cochran, 41, said she was rejected when she tried to return to work in early 2010 after taking maternity leave. The jury agreed and determined that FremantleMedia North America and The Price is Right Productions owed her more than $ 8.5 million in all.

“I’m humbled. I’m shocked,” Cochran said after the jury announced its verdict. “I’m happy that justice was served today not only for women in the entertainment industry, but women in the workplace.”

FremantleMedia said it was standing by its previous statement, which said it expected to be “fully vindicated” after an appeal.

“We believe the verdict in this case was the result of a flawed process in which the court, among other things, refused to allow the jury to hear and consider that 40 percent of our models have been pregnant,” and further “important” evidence, FremantleMedia said.

In their defense, producers said they were satisfied with the five models working on the show at the time Cochran sought to return.

Several other former models have sued the series and its longtime host, Bob Barker, who retired in 2007.

Most of the cases involving “Barker’s Beauties” — the nickname given the gown-wearing women who presented prizes to contestants — ended with out-of-court settlements.

Comedian-actor Drew Carey followed Barker as the show’s host.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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