Quick Takes: Jazz fans lose Charlie O’s

In another blow for L.A. music fans, the Van Nuys jazz club Charlie O’s abruptly closed this week after 11 years of shows by a roster of veteran local players and touring musicians.

A brief statement on the club’s website attributed the decision “to the state of the economy.” The final presentation was Wednesday night.

The announcement leaves another empty space in an already sparse landscape for clubs in L.A. where fans can catch live jazz on a weekly basis, which include Hollywood’s Catalina Bar & Grill, Little Tokyo’s Blue Whale, Vitello’s and the Baked Potato in Studio City. The Jazz Bakery, which has been staging “Movable Feasts” around town since losing its lease in 2009, announced ambitious plans for its new physical location earlier this year, but opening day remains a long way off.

Charlie O’s original owner, Charlie Ottaviano, died in 2008. The club had been operated since then by his widow, Jo-Ann.

— Chris Barton

Greek police recover Rubens

Greek police recovered a 17th century painting by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens stolen from a museum in Belgium a decade ago, authorities said Thursday.

Two people, both Greeks, were arrested in the operation, officials said. Neither the police nor the Culture Ministry would give further information on the raid, the painting or which Belgian museum it was stolen from, saying investigations were still ongoing.

The artwork, dating from 1618 and stolen in 2001, was “a particularly important painting,” the ministry said.

One work that was stolen in 2001 in Belgium was an oil sketch attributed to Rubens and snatched from the Fine Arts Museum in Ghent by three masked robbers. The thieves ripped “The Hunt for the Caledonian Wild Boar” from the wall, along with the more famous “Flagellation of Christ,” but they dropped the latter during their escape.

— Associated Press

History’s faces given to museum

A collection of rarely seen portraits of Jewish prisoners forced to work for the Nazis in a money-forging scheme is being donated to Israel’s Holocaust museum.

Heirs of the artist who created the 43 portraits formally handed the works to Yad Vashem at a ceremony Thursday in New York City. The prisoners’ experience was fictionalized in the Oscar-winning film “The Counterfeiters.”

The portraits are by Felix Cytrin, a Jewish engraver forced by the Nazis to help produce fake British pounds in a plot to destroy England’s economy. The portraits were created while Cytrin was imprisoned at a German concentration camp. They have been in his family’s hands for decades.

— Associated Press

Cher speaks out to support Chaz

Cher has slammed the “stupid bigots” who have attacked the casting of her transgender son Chaz on “Dancing With the Stars” and called on her fans to flood social media websites with messages of support.

The singer and actress took to her Twitter account to defend Chaz Bono, who underwent a female-to-male sex change last year, saying it took courage for him to agree to be one of the celebrity contestants on the ballroom dancing show.

Chaz Bono, 42, has been the target of jokes and hate messages on social media since ABC announced Monday that he would be taking part in “Dancing With the Stars” starting on Sept. 19.

He will be partnered on “Dancing With the Stars” with professional dancer Lacey Schwimmer, who said the negative reaction is “not cool.”

“It’s disappointing,” Schwimmer told celebrity news website TheInsider.com. “We’re all taught not to bully or harass and treat everyone as equals yet all these people are doing exactly the opposite.”

— Reuters

AMC’s ‘Stash’ and ‘Security’

AMC has greenlighted two unscripted series and will give the returning zombie drama “The Walking Dead” a supersized premiere, the network said Thursday.

“The Walking Dead” will kick off its 13-episode second season with a 90-minute episode Oct. 16.

The network also announced two new shows: “Secret Stash,” a reality series with Kevin Smith (“Clerks”) as one of its executive producers, which looks at fanboy culture in the setting of Smith’s New Jersey comic shop, Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash; and “JJK Security,” an “unscripted workplace dramedy” about the employees of a family-owned private security firm in rural Georgia.

Both will air in 2012.

— Yvonne Villarreal

Finally

Renewed: “The Big C,” Showtime’s comedy starring Emmy nominee Laura Linney as a woman shaking up her life after learning she has terminal cancer, has been renewed for a third season. It will return with 10 new episodes in 2012.