Nation roundup for July 16

Oscar-winning actress Holm dies

NEW YORK (AP) — Celeste Holm, a versatile, bright-eyed blonde who soared to Broadway fame in “Oklahoma!” and won an Oscar for best supporting actress in “Gentleman’s Agreement” in 1947 but whose last years were filled with financial difficulty and estrangement from her sons, died Sunday, a relative said. She was 95.

Holm had been hospitalized about two weeks ago with dehydration.

She asked her husband on Friday to bring her home and spent her final days with her husband, Frank Basile, and other relatives and close friends by her side, said Amy Phillips, a great-niece of Holm’s.

Holm died around 3:30 a.m. at her longtime apartment on Central Park West, located in the same building where Robert De Niro lives and where a fire broke out last month, Phillips said.

“I think she wanted to be here, in her home, among her things, with people who loved her,” she said.

In a career that spanned more than half a century, Holm played everyone from Ado Annie — the girl who just can’t say no in “Oklahoma!”— to a worldly theatrical agent in the 1991 comedy “I Hate Hamlet” to guest star turns on TV shows such as “Fantasy Island” and “Love Boat II” to Bette Davis’ best friend in “All About Eve.”

Ford recalls 10K 2013 Escapes

DETROIT (AP) — Ford Motor Co. is recalling more than 10,000 redesigned 2013 Escape SUVs to fix carpet padding that could get in the way of braking.

Ford says that wrongly positioned carpet padding could reduce space around the pedals and cause drivers to hit the side of the brake pedal when switching from the accelerator.

The auto maker told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that dealers will remove the carpet padding and replace a console trim panel at no charge.

Ford said the recall covered 8,266 vehicles in the U.S. Ford spokeswoman Marcey Zwiebel said it also affected about 2,000 vehicles in Canada and a couple hundred in Mexico. Zwiebel said Ford had not received any reports of accidents or injuries related to the problem, which she said was discovered “through internal evaluations.”

The vehicles were built between March 8 and June 7 at Ford’s assembly plant in Louisville, Ky. The recall is expected to begin July 23.

Driver flips boat racing 170 mph

DETROIT (AP) — A hydroplane boat racer said Saturday that he is fortunate to have escaped serious injury after flipping his boat on the Detroit River.

Mike Webster was heading into the first turn during a four-lap race when his U-22 boat went airborne. Webster’s boat was heavily damaged, but he was able to climb out of the boat with help from rescue workers and was examined at the infield medical center.

“I’m fine, just disappointed about the boat,” Webster, 32, said. “I’m a little banged up, minor bruises and stuff, but nothing compared to what could have been.”

Webster’s boat, however, was in no fit shape. The race was part of the American Power Boat Association Gold Cup, being held on the Detroit River this weekend.

Steve David, a fellow driver, said Webster’s wreck was a “classic blowover.”

“He just caught too much air and was going faster (160-170 mph) than he had probably ever gone before,” David said.

‘Ice Age’ No. 1 with $46 million

NEW YORK (AP) — With Batman lurking, the prehistoric critters of “Ice Age: Continental Drift” ran off with the box office, earning $46 million in their opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The animated film from 20th Century Fox is the fourth in the “Ice Age” series and the first in 3-D. The North America performance of “Continental Drift” was on par with previous “Ice Age” movies but well below the opening weekend of the second installment, “The Meltdown,” which opened with $68 million in 2006.

There has now been a decade of “Ice Age” films, allowing the characters voiced by Ray Romano, Queen Latifah and John Leguizamo to become increasingly familiar to audiences, particularly international ones. The film had already done robust overseas business ahead of opening in the U.S. This weekend it earned $95 million internationally, bringing its overseas total to $339 million.

“Scrat rules the world,” said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for Fox, referring to the films’ rat-squirrel mascot, whose wordless, futile pursuit of a nut is a mainstay of the movies.

The “Ice Age” franchise has now surpassed $2.2 billion worldwide, and the studio expects “Continental Drift” to equal the global total of the last installment, 2009’s “Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” which took in $886.7 million.

“There’s really not very many animated franchises that have had three sequels,” said Aronson. “The performance of ‘Ice Age’ has been remarkably consistent.”

The weekend was inevitably shadowed by two superheroes, coming a week after the debut of Sony’s Spider-Man reboot, “The Amazing Spider-Man,” and one week before the highly-anticipated Batman sequel, “The Dark Knight Rises.”

In its second week of release, “Spider-Man” earned $35 million, pushing it past $200 million domestically. It earned nearly $67 million overseas over the weekend, bringing its worldwide gross to $521.4 million.

Seth MacFarlane’s R-rated comedy hit, “Ted,” which stars Mark Wahlberg and a talking teddy bear, added $22.1 million in its third week for a total of $159 million for Universal Pictures.

But the weekend belonged to family films, which had three of the top 10 films at the box office.

“Ice Age” is the third animated blockbuster to debut at No. 1 this summer, and the previous mega-cartoons — Pixar Animation’s “Brave” and DreamWorks Animation’s “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” — also padded their totals. In fourth place, “Brave” added $10.7 million to its $195.6 million domestic total, and the 10th place “Madagascar 3” added $3.5 million to its $203.7 million domestic total.

“This shows how incredibly important the family audience is, particularly in the summer when families are looking for entertainment that’s appropriate for the kids and the parents as well,” said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “You’ve got three family films that all performed incredibly well and each weekend topped the box office.”

The weekend business was, as expected, below the corresponding weekend last year, when the final Harry Potter film, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” set what was then a box office record of $169.2 million.

“The Avengers” earlier this year opened bigger than “Deathly Hallows,” but that record could well be tested by Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film come next weekend.

“This is the calm before the storm that is ‘The Dark Knight,’” said Dergarabedian.