2nd Woman Recounts Pickup Line by Hoffman

The harassment accusations set off by the Harvey Weinstein scandal continue to reverberate in Hollywood and beyond. A rep for one of the big new targets, Kevin Spacey, announced he was seeking "evaluation and treatment," but Spacey's was far from the only name making headlines. Here's a look at the latest:

• Death threats: Renowned film critic Janet Maslin tells the Daily Beast that she's positive director James Toback is the man who called her home with "a badly disguised voice" in 1978 and threatened to kill her after she'd written an unflattering review about his first film, Fingers. She got about 10 calls in all, at home and at the office, resulting in the one and only time in her career she filed a police report. Literally hundreds of women have accused Toback of sexual misconduct.
• Another for Hoffman: "Wendy, have you ever been intimate with a man over 40?" Producer Wendy Riss Gatsiounis recounts to Variety a pitch meeting with Dustin Hoffman in 1991 when she was a young playwright in her 20s and he a 53-year-old Hollywood star. She declined his request during the meeting to go shopping at a nearby hotel, and his suggestion that his "would be a whole new body to explore." Her play was declined. She's the second woman to come forward about Hoffman.

• British stunner: The fallout has reached the highest ranks of British politics with the resignation of defense chief Michael Fallon, who apologized for repeatedly touching a female reporter's leg during a dinner in 2002, reports Bloomberg. And CNN adds that more allegations against him were expected. What was "acceptable 15, 10 years ago is clearly not acceptable now," he said. The fallout is widening across party lines in Britain as women come forward with stories.
• Old Vic knew? Multiple people who worked at the Old Vic theater in London tell the Guardian that the theater hushed up stories of Spacey groping and otherwise acting inappropriately toward young men. "We were all involved with keeping it quiet," one former Old Vic employee says. (An actor says he had some "nasty encounters" with Spacey at Old Vic.)
• Anita Hill's take: The woman who accused Clarence Thomas of harassment when he was a Supreme Court nominee thinks the Hollywood charges are resonating because people know the "casting couch" reputation and thus find the stories believable, she tells the New Yorker. When the accusations are against a political figure, as hers were, they often get viewed through a partisan political lens. The key now, she says, is to "transfer the believability" from celebs to everyday women.
• Toughen the laws: It's time to strengthen the nation's sexual harassment laws, writes Erwin Chemerinsky at the Sacramento Bee. He offers some suggestions: "Congress can amend or add to federal anti-discrimination law by explicitly authorizing suits against alleged harassers," and confidentiality agreements in settlement of sexual harassment claims should be outlawed.

(More sexual harassment stories.)