Marla Gibbs

Actress Marla Gibbs, currently starring in NBC's comedy series "227," will receive the Frances E. Williams Award on May 4, at the Variety Arts Center, 940 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles. The ceremony is being presented by Black Women in Theatre West, a support group for black women in entertainment. Gibbs is being awarded for her contribution to the arts and community as both an actress and businesswoman. The ceremony will be open to the public. Information: (213) 462-6565.

Mayor Tom Bradley presented awards in behalf of the Los Angeles NAACP's Youth and College Division to six people Saturday in recognition of their commitment to supporting youth activities in the city. The awards ceremony at the Christ Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Jr.

Five high school jazz orchestras from the Los Angeles Unified School District will be featured in a half-hour television show Thursday at 8 p.m. on KLCS Channel 58. "Top Five Jazz Bands 1988," emceed by actress Marla Gibbs, was produced by Ralph Jungheim under the auspices of Performing Tree, an arts education organization.

Alaina Reed Hall, a singer and actress who played Olivia Robinson on "Sesame Street" for a dozen years beginning in the mid-1970s and later played Rose Holloway on the situation comedy "227," has died. She was 63. Reed Hall, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, died Thursday at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, said her husband, Tamim Amini. One of the original cast members of the 1974 off-Broadway production of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road," Reed Hall joined "Sesame Street" in 1976 and played Olivia -- a professional photographer and sister to the character Gordon -- until 1988.

Thank you for Mathews' dispassionate article concerning racism in Hollywood. As one who attended the workshop on "Blacks in the Entertainment Industry" at the NAACP convention, I was stunned by the charges of anti-Semitism hurled at panelists Legrand H. Clegg II and Marla Gibbs. Both speakers devoted the bulk of their presentations to urging African-Americans in the film industry to become more self-sufficient and responsible to the needs of the black community. The remarks made by both panelists about Jewish people were altogether moderate in tone and appropriate in the context of discussing the entertainment industry.