Digest

Spector's jury selection starts

By TIMES WIRES
Published March 20, 2007

Jury selection began Monday in the murder trial of legendary music producer Phil Spector, four years after an actor who starred in a cult movie was shot to death in the foyer of his castlelike home. Jurors will be asked to decide if Spector was responsible for the death of Lana Clarkson, 40, who was shot in the face Feb. 3, 2003. Clarkson was working as a host at the Los Angeles House of Blues when she went home with Spector that night. The coroner's office called it a homicide but also noted that Clarkson had gunshot residue on both hands and may have pulled the trigger. In an e-mail to friends reported by the Associated Press, Spector, 66, called the death "an accidental suicide." Opening statements are to begin April 30. The judge has ruled that the trial can be televised.

Chastened model shows up for duty

Supermodel Naomi Campbell, wearing black stilettos and slinging dark work boots over her shoulder, traded the catwalk for community service Monday at a sanitation garage to start a five-day sentence for throwing a cell phone at her maid over a pair of missing jeans. The Associated Press reported that Campbell, 36, who will push a broom or mop, was met by a garage official, who escorted her through the building's dirty steel double doors. She also wore chocolate brown pants, a short fitted coat with a flared bottom, dark sunglasses and a newsboy-type cap over a short hairdo. She didn't acknowledge the horde of assembled media. Campbell will work inside the garage. She was issued protective gloves, a dust mask and a reflective orange vest.

Stuart Rosenberg, director, dies at 79

Stuart Rosenberg, a prolific TV and movie director who partnered with Paul Newman on Cool Hand Luke and several other movies, has died at 79. Rosenberg, who also directed The Amityville Horror, had a heart attack Thursday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., his son, Benjamin, told the Associated Press. Rosenberg's first film was Cool Hand Luke, the 1967 drama starring Newman as an inmate on a chain gang who becomes an unlikely hero and that spawned the famous line: "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Rosenberg also directed Robert Redford in the 1980 prison film Brubaker. Amityville Horror in 1979 was probably his most financially successful film.

[Last modified March 19, 2007, 23:41:05]