James Lipton
From Philosopedia
James Lipton (19 September 1926 - )
Lipton, the son of Polish-born writer Lawrence Lipton and Betty Weinberg Lipton, was born in Detroit, Michigan.
After graduating from Detroit's Central High School in 1944, he portrayed Dan Reid on Radio WXYZ's The Lone Ranger.
In 1954, he married actress Nina Foch (divorced in 1959), then in 1970 former model Kedakai Lipton.
Lipton, an actor, writer, poet, and composer, is dean of the Actors Studio Drama School in New York. Since 1994, he has been the executive producer, writer, and host of the Bravo cable television series, Inside the Actors Studio.
He wrote for several soap operas, Another World, The Edge of Night, Guiding Light, Return to Peyton Place, and Capitol, as well as acted for over ten years on Guiding Light. He portrayed a shipping clerk turned gang member in Joseph Strick's 1953 film, The Big Break, a crime drama. In 2005 in Bewitched, he played himself in the movie. In 2008, he was Voice in Bolt and Ignore.
A 1968 book, An Exaltation of Larks, is a collection of "terms of venery" (a variety of collective noun), both real and created by Lipton himself. Mirrors, a 1983 novel, described lives of dancers and was produced later as a TV movie. Lipton's 2007 Inside Inside is autobiographical.
Lipton has produced some two dozen specials including twelve Bob Hope Birthday Specials; The Road to China, an NBC entertainment special produced in China; and the first televised presidential inaugural gala (for Jimmy Carter).
According to Celebrity Atheists,
- James Lipton ("Inside the Actor's Studio") was interviewed on Charlie Rose (replayed on 8/19/2004). Lipton always asks a series of questions of his guests, but never takes the questions himself. He and Rose asked each other the questionaire that includes the final question " if heaven exists, what would you like to hear god say when you arrive?"...he answered in french and then english "See Jim, you were wrong, I do exist".
- During a 27-Dec-2002 Larry King interview:
- KING: If heaven exists, what would you like to...
- LIPTON: He [Bernard Pivot] said -- by the way, he said, if God exists, but if I felt for the American market I had to soften it a little.
- KING: If heaven exists, what would you like to hear guards [God] say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
- LIPTON: You see, Jim, you were wrong.
- KING: Same thing!
- LIPTON: I exist. But, Jim, you can come in anyway.
- On the Actors Studio 10th Anniversary Special, Tom Cruise asked James Lipton - "If Heaven exists, What would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
- James Lipton - "You see Jim, you were wrong, I exist, but you may come in anyway"
(Warren Allen Smith, shown the above, classifies Lipton in non-theistic terms, categorizing him as a humanities humanist.
