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For folks who loves both baseball and movies, it's incredibly sad that Hollywood's takes on our national pastime continually whiff with a frequency that makes Adam Dunn look like Joe Dimaggio. But 40 years ago today, a film was released that got everything beautifully, hilariously and even painfully right: The Bad News Bears. A tartly-scripted comic saga about a no-hope Little League team from L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, the film — directed by Michael Ritchie from an original screenplay written by Bill Lancaster — shocked and amused audiences with its unbridled...

Ever since Bing Crosby starred in the 1930 film "King of Jazz," countless musicians have tried, with varying degrees of success, to parlay their musical ability into a side career in film.

The following list -- dug up in honor of this Sunday's Video Music Awards on MTV -- is proof that not all musicians are created equal when it comes to their acting abilities.

For every Mariah Carey in "Precious," you can find a Mariah Carey in "Glitter," but these 40 artists have shown that they can, at least some of the time, create memorable roles and transcend their musical careers. Sometimes, they even win Oscars.

40. Madonna

During the nascent years of MTV, no female artist had more influence visually than the Material Girl, whose mix of eye-popping fantasy and gritty urban realism videos continue to influence a generation of vocalists. Despite a Best Actress Golden Globe for 1996's "Evita," the...

Barbara Billingsley, one of TV's "ideal" 1950s moms who portrayed the Beaver's mother on "Leave it to Beaver," died in Santa Monica, Calif. on Saturday. She was 94 and had suffered from a rheumatoid disease, according to a family spokesperson.

Beloved by a generation of Baby Boomers, who recall her as the even-keeled June Cleaver, Billingsley was the quintessential '50s mom. Along with such other primetime "moms" as Harriet Nelson and Donna Reed, she projected the era's ideal of suburban womanhood.

"Leave it to Beaver" ran from 1957-63. When the series ended, Billingsley retreated from show business, raising her two boys. She spoofed her good-mother image in "Airplane!" (1980) playing the Jive Lady. She reprised her June Cleaver role in the 1983 TV movie, "Still the Beaver." In 1997, she played Aunt Martha on yet another "Leave it to Beaver" production.

On "Leave It To Beaver," Billingsley starred along with Jerry Mathers, Tony Dow and Hugh Beaumont.

Actress Janet Leigh, whose ill-fated shower in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho became one of the most frightening moments in cinema, died Sunday at her home in Beverly Hills; she was 77. According to a spokeswoman for Leigh's daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Leigh "died peacefully" at her home on Sunday afternoon, and had been battling vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels, for the past year. A California native, Leigh (birth name Jeannette Helen Morrison) was reportedly discovered by actress Norma Shearer, who saw a photo of a young girl on the desk of Leigh's father and asked if she could borrow it. A screen test for MGM followed, and Leigh was cast in 1947's The Romance of Rosy Ridge. A number of ingénue rolls followed, most notably Little Women, Angels in the Outfield, and The Naked Spur. In 1951, Leigh married the equally photogenic Tony Curtis, and their romance and marriage was press fodder for years, even as they appeared in less-than-memorable films together, including Houdini, The Perfect Furlough, and The Vikings; the two divorced in 1962 after having two daughters, Kelly and Jamie Lee. Leigh's roles improved with her age, and she graduated from maidens in costume dramas to more contemporary heroines, and throughout the 50s she starred in My Sister Eileen, Pete Kelly's Blues, and Jet Pilot, among other films.

Leigh had one of her most memorable roles as Charlton Heston's abducted wife in Orson Welles' 1958 noir classic Touch of Evil, but just two years later she made film history by playing the doomed heroine Marion Crane in Psycho. Her brief but memorable turn in the Hitchcock film, punctuated by the classic shower scene in which the actress was slashed to death by Anthony Perkins, earned Leigh a Golden Globe and her only Academy Award nomination. Though she also appeared opposite Frank Sinatra in the now-classic The Manchurian Candidate, Leigh's Psycho turn overshadowed the rest of her career, a fact that she happily embraced, writing a book about the film's making, Psycho: Behind the Scenes in the Classic Thriller, in 1995. Leigh worked sporadically through the 70s, and appeared with daughter Jamie Lee in 1980's The Fog, but went into semi-retirement in the 80s and 90s; she appeared again with her daughter in the 1998 sequel Halloween: H20. Leigh is survived by her fourth husband, Robert Brandt, and daughters Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis. --Prepared by IMDb staff...