Literotica Cemetary

Charles Durning

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LOS ANGELES — Charles Durning, the two-time Oscar nominee who was dubbed the king of the character actors for his skill in playing everything from a Nazi colonel to the pope, died Monday in New York City. He was 89.

Durning's longtime agent and friend Judith Moss told the Associated Press that he died of natural causes at his home in the borough of Manhattan.

"I was born a character actor," Durning told USA TODAY in 1990, when he starred as Big Daddy in a Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. "I was born looking older — and I've been aging since I was a teenager."

"The actor's actor," as Durning was eulogized by Henry Winkler on Twitter after his death, he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials to comic foils to put-upon everymen. But he may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982's The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Many critics marveled that such a heavyset man could be so nimble in the film's show-stopping song-and-dance number, not realizing Durning had been a dance instructor early in his career. Indeed, he had met his first wife, Carol, when both worked at a dance studio.

The year after Best Little Whorehouse, Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks' To Be or Not to Be. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975's Dog Day Afternoon.

Charles Durning is honored with a lifetime achievement award at the 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles in 2008. Chris Pizzello, AP Fullscreen

He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald in the TV film The Kennedys of Massachusetts and a Tony in 1990 for his Hot Tin Roof role.

Durning had begun his career on stage, getting his first big break when theatrical producer Joseph Papp hired him for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

He went on to work regularly, if fairly anonymously, through the 1960s until his breakout role as a small town mayor in the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play That Championship Season in 1972.

He quickly made an impression on movie audiences the following year as the crooked cop stalking con men Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the Oscar-winning comedy The Sting.

Dozens of notable portrayals followed. He was the would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in Tootsie; the infamous seller of frog legs in The Muppet Movie; and Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy. He played Santa Claus in four different movies made for television and was the pope in the TV film I Would Be Called John: Pope John XXIII.

"I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director," Durning told the Associated Press in 2008, when he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Other films included The Front Page, The Hindenburg, Breakheart Pass, North Dallas Forty, Starting Over, Tough Guys, Home for the Holidays,Spy Hard and O Brother Where Art Thou?.

Durning also did well in television as a featured performer as well as a guest star. He appeared in the short-lived series The Cop and the Kid (1975), Eye to Eye (1985) and First Monday (2002) as well as the four-season Evening Shade in the 1990s.

"If I'm not in a part, I drive my wife crazy," he acknowledged during a 1997 interview. "I'll go downstairs to get the mail, and when I come back I'll say, 'Any calls for me?'"

Durning's rugged early life provided ample material on which to base his later portrayals. He was born into an Irish family of 10 children in 1923, in Highland Falls, New York, a town near West Point. His father was unable to work, having lost a leg and been gassed during World War I, so his mother supported the family by washing the uniforms of West Point cadets.

The younger Durning himself would barely survive World War II.

He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.

"They train you to do awful things, then they release you and wonder why you are so bitter and angry," Durning told USA TODAY in 1994, when he narrated the Discovery Channel's Normandy: The Great Crusade. "Scars that you have from wounds heal. Scars that you have mentally never heal."

"There's no nobility with war. It's tear-'em-up destruction that leaves you frustrated, bitter and angry. ... If you really knew what it was like for an hour, you wouldn't want anyone to go through it."

In later years, he refused to discuss the military service for which he was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.

"Too many bad memories," he told an interviewer in 1997. "I don't want you to see me crying."

Tragedy also stalked other members of his family. Durning was 12 when his father died, and five of his sisters lost their lives to smallpox and scarlet fever.

A high school counselor told him he had no talent for art, languages or math and should learn office skills. But after seeing King Kong and some of James Cagney's films, Durning knew what he wanted to do.

Leaving home at 16, he worked in a munitions factory, on a slag heap and in a barbed-wire factory. When he finally found work as a burlesque theater usher in Buffalo, he studied the comedians' routines, and when one of them showed up too drunk to go on one night, he took his place.

He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as heard the audience laughing. He told the AP in 2008 that he had no plans to stop working.

"They're going to carry me out, if I go," he said.

Durning and his first wife had three children before divorcing in 1972. In 1974, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary Ann Amelio.

He is survived by his children, Michele, Douglas and Jeannine. The family plans a private family service and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Two of the best!

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Patti Page, Honey-Voiced ’50s Pop Sensation, Dies at 85

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Patti Page, the apple-cheeked, honey-voiced alto whose sentimental, soothing, sometimes silly hits like “Tennessee Waltz,” “Old Cape Cod” and “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” made her one of the most successful pop singers of the 1950s, died on Tuesday in Encinitas, Calif. She was 85.

Ms. Page won her first and only Grammy in 1999.

Her death was confirmed by Seacrest Village Retirement Communities, where she lived.

Ms. Page had briefly been a singer with Benny Goodman when she emerged at the end of the big band era, just after World War II, into a cultural atmosphere in which pop music was not expected to be challenging. Critics assailed her style as plastic, placid, bland and antiseptic, but those opinions were not shared by millions of record buyers. As Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times in 1997, “For her fans, beauty and comfort were one and the same.”

“Doggie in the Window,” a perky 1952 novelty number written by Bob Merrill and Ingrid Reuterskiöld, featured repeated barking sounds and could claim no more sophisticated a lyric than “I must take a trip to California.” It is often cited as an example of what was wrong with pop music in the early ’50s, a perceived weakness that opened the door for rock ’n’ roll. But if that is true, and if the silky voice of “the singing rage, Miss Patti Page,” as she was introduced during her heyday, was mechanical or sterile, she had significant achievements nonetheless.

“Tennessee Waltz,” from 1951, sold 10 million copies and is largely considered the first true crossover hit; it spending months on the pop, country and rhythm-and-blues charts.

Ms. Page was believed to be the first recording artist to overdub herself, long before technology made that method common. Mitch Miller, a producer for Mercury Records at the time, had her do it first on “Confess,” in 1948, when there were no backup singers because of a strike.

The height of her career predated the Grammy Awards, which were created in 1959, but she finally won her first and only Grammy in 1999 for “Live at Carnegie Hall,” a recording of a 1997 concert celebrating her 50th anniversary as a performer. Her career was also the basis of recent, short-lived Off Broadway musical, “Flipside: The Patty Page Story.” In the early days of television Ms. Page was the host of several short-lived network series, including “Music Hall” (1952), a 15-minute CBS show that followed the evening news two nights a week, and “The Big Record,” which ran one season, 1957-58, on the same network. “The Patti Page Show” was an NBC summer fill-in series in 1956.

Ms. Page defended her demure, unpretentious style as appropriate for its time. “It was right after the war,” she told The Baton Rouge Advocate in 2002, “and people were waiting to just settle down and take a deep breath and relax.”

She was born Clara Ann Fowler on Nov. 8, 1927, in Claremore, Okla., a small town near Tulsa that was also the birthplace of Will Rogers. She was one of 11 children of a railroad laborer.

Having shown talent as an artist, Clara took a job in the art department of the Tulsa radio station KTUL, but an executive there had heard her sing and soon asked her to take over a short country-music show called “Meet Patti Page” (Time magazine called it “a hillbilly affair”), sponsored by Page Milk. She adopted the fictional character’s name and kept it.

The newly named Ms. Page broke away from her radio career to tour with Jimmy Joy’s band and was shortly signed by Mercury Records. She had her first hit record, “With My Eyes Wide Open, I’m Dreaming,” in 1950. Other notable recordings were “Cross Over the Bridge,” “Mockin’ Bird Hill,” “Allegheny Moon” and her last hit, “Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” which she recorded as the theme for the Bette Davis movie of the same name. It was nominated for an Oscar, and Ms. Page sang it on the 1965 Academy Awards telecast.

Ms. Page briefly pursued a movie career in her early ‘30s, playing an evangelical singer alongside Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons in “Elmer Gantry” (1960), David Janssen’s love interest in the comic-strip-inspired “Dondi” (1961) and a suburban wife in the comedy “Boys’ Night Out” (1962), with Kim Novak and James Garner. She made her acting debut in 1957 on an episode of “The United States Steel Hour.”

In later decades her star faded, but she continued to sing professionally throughout her 70s. Early in the 21st century, she was doing an average of 40 to 50 concerts a year. In 2002 and 2003, she released an album of children’s songs, a new “best of” collection and a Christmas album.

Ms. Page married Charles O’Curran, a Hollywood choreographer, in 1956. They divorced in 1972. In 1990 she married Jerry Filiciotto, a retired aerospace engineer, with whom she founded a New Hampshire company marketing maple syrup products. He died in 2009. Survivors include her son, Danny O’Curran; her daughter, Kathleen Ginn; and a number of grandchildren.

Ms. Page’s nice-girl image endured. In 1988, when she was 60, she told The Times: “I’m sure there are a lot of things I should have done differently. But I don’t think I’ve stepped on anyone along the way. If I have, I didn’t mean to.”

Jean S. Harris, dead

New York (CNN) -- Jean S. Harris, the headmistress whose trial for the murder of the "Scarsdale Diet" doctor captured the attention of a nation with its details of sex and infidelity, has died, her son said Friday. She was 89.

Harris died in her sleep Sunday at a retirement community in New Haven, Connecticut, her son James said.

When she was arrested for the March 10, 1980, shooting death of longtime lover Herman Tarnower, the celebrity doctor behind the best-selling book "The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet," the case ignited a national debate about whether she was a woman scorned or a victim of abuse.

Harris claimed she had driven to Tarnower's house to see him one last time and then kill herself, but accidentally shot him four times during a struggle for the gun.
Feminists rallied to her defense, painting the case as that of an aging woman being pushed aside by her lover in favor of a younger woman. The prosecution and her critics said it was a case of jealousy.

More than a hundred journalists reportedly turned out to cover the trial, which lasted 14 weeks.

Harris met Tarnower in 1966, shortly after she divorced her husband. She was 43. Tarnower was 55.

At the time of the killing, she was the headmistress of Madeira School, a private, exclusive all-girls school.

During the trial, it was revealed that Tarnower once asked Harris to marry him and then changed his mind because he could not stop seeing other women. Harris accepted Tarnower's position and stayed with him for nearly 14 years.

It was during their time together that Tarnower, a cardiologist with a practice in the New York City suburb of Scarsdale, wrote a book touting the benefits of a high-protein, low-fat diet. The book became a bestseller and earned Tarnower millions.
During the trial, Harris testified for more than a week about her relationship with Tarnower and the events that led up to the shooting.
On the night of the shooting, she said she drove to his house and found him asleep. Then she saw a woman's nightgown and hair curlers and grew enraged after realizing they belonged to Tarnower's 37-year-old nurse, who he had begun taking to parties and other events in Harris' place.

According to transcripts, Harris said she pulled her gun out to shoot herself in front on him. When he tried to stop her, she testified, the gun went off. Tarnower was shot four times.

The case generated a number of books and two television movies: "The People Vs. Jean Harris" in 1981 and "Mrs. Harris" in 2006.

Harris was convicted by a jury in 1981 of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life. She served nearly 12 years before being granted clemency in 1992 by then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo because of health problems.
At her sentencing, she denied murdering Tarnower, saying she loved him.

Huell Howser

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Ohhhh... My... Gosh...!

It means nothing, except as to how it resonates with everyone who now writes your diversions. Gold is - as gold does. Simper Fi!

"Louie? Are you gettin this?"

Nagisa Oshima R.I.P.

Born- March 31, 1932 in Okayama, Japan
Died- January 15, 2013 (age 80) in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan

In the Realm of the Senses (1976)

“Oshima deserves to be known for more than ‘In the Realm of the Senses,’ but this magnificently uncompromising film
itself deserves to be known for more than sexual controversy. Based on a real-life scandal from 1930s Japan, it is
about passion, submission: a renunciation of the self that co-exists with a vocation for sensuality and self-immolating
pleasure. … [He] was a brilliant satirist, provocateur and poet of the senses whose movies were elegant, angular
weapons against stifling hypocrisy.”

–Samuel Wigley, writing for the British Film Institute

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2013/01/16/nagisa-oshima-director-and-provocateur-dies-at-80/

Oshima edited the film in France to evade Japanese censors but was still put on trial
for obscenity when he returned. He was eventually acquitted.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/16/local/la-me-nagisa-oshima-20130116

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) starring British singer David Bowie

The sensational return of David Bowie to the world's stage is another reminder of a film that
became one of Oshima's most successful, commercially: Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, from
1983, a drama replete with pain, guilt and eroticism, starring Bowie as a British wartime prisoner.
Audiences and critics were and are divided about Bowie's acting talents, but his presence and
charisma are unarguable.
- Peter Bradshaw

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2013/jan/15/nagisa-oshima-provocateur-poet-senses

Nagisa Oshima- A lifetime of film-making

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0651915/

Pauline Phillips, longtime Dear Abby advice columnist, dies at 94

Pauline Phillips, the woman known to the world as “Dear Abby,” died Wednesday (January 16, 2013) at age 94, a rep for Phillips’ daughter Jeanne confirmed to ABC News.

Phillips struggled with Alzheimer’s disease for years. By the mid-1990s, she was already co-writing her column with her daughter Jeanne and as the illness progressed, she passed on the torch completely. The original Dear Abby officially retired in 2002.

TMZ quoted Jeanne Thursday, saying: “I have lost my mother, my mentor and my best friend. My mother leaves very big high heels to fill with a legacy of compassion, commitment and positive social change. I will honor her memory every day by continuing this legacy.”

Before she became known to the world as “Dear Abby,” Phillips was a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom with a modest attitude.
“I don’t pretend to be an authority on journalism or on human relations,” Phillips once said as her career began. “I just happen to be a very happy, a very healthy, a very lucky young woman with a fascinating hobby.”
She found fame in 1956 after reading the advice column that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, and brazenly letting the editors know she could do better.
“They gave her a bunch of letters, thinking that, that they would never see her again — and she immediately took all of the letters to my dad’s nearby office and whipped out answers and had answers back the same day. That knocked them off their feet,” her son Eddie Phillips told “Good Morning America” in 2004.

Using the pseudonym “Abigail Van Buren,” Phillips went from housewife to America’s counselor in a career that spanned more than four decades. She counted celebrities, presidents, royalty and even a pope among her millions of fans. Her column was syndicated in more than 1,200 newspapers, and read by 95 million people a day.

Her twin sister Eppie Lederer became advice columnist Ann Landers. She died in 2002 at age 83.

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Ed Koch, mayor who became a symbol of NYC, dies

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NEW YORK (AP) — Ed Koch's favorite moment as mayor of New York City, fittingly, involved yelling.

Suddenly inspired to do something brash about the rare transit strike that crippled the city in 1980, he strode down to the Brooklyn Bridge to encourage commuters who were forced to walk to work instead of jumping aboard subway trains and buses.

"I began to yell, 'Walk over the bridge! Walk over the bridge! We're not going to let these bastards bring us to our knees!' And people began to applaud," the famously combative, acid-tongued politician recalled at a 2012 forum.

His success in rallying New Yorkers in the face of the strike was, he said, his biggest personal achievement as mayor. And it was a display that was quintessentially Koch, who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during a three-term City Hall run in which he embodied New York chutzpah for the rest of the world.

Koch died at 2 a.m. Friday from congestive heart failure, spokesman George Arzt said. He was 88. The funeral will be Monday at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.

Koch was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital on Monday with shortness of breath, and was moved to intensive care on Thursday for closer monitoring of the fluid in his lungs and legs. He had been released two days earlier after being treated for water in his lungs and legs. He had initially been admitted on Jan. 19.
After leaving City Hall in January 1990, Koch battled assorted health problems and heart disease.

The larger-than-life Koch, who breezed through the streets of New York flashing his signature thumbs-up sign, won a national reputation with his feisty style. "How'm I doing?" was his trademark question to constituents, although the answer mattered little to Koch. The mayor always thought he was doing wonderfully.

Former Mayor David Dinkins, who succeeded Koch, called the former mayor "a feisty guy who would tell you what he thinks."

"Ed was a guy to whom I could turn if I wanted a straight answer," he told Fox 5 News Friday.

Bald and bombastic, paunchy and pretentious, the city's 105th mayor was quick with a friendly quip and equally fast with a cutting remark for his political enemies.

"You punch me, I punch back," Koch once memorably observed. "I do not believe it's good for one's self-respect to be a punching bag."

His hospitalization forced him to miss this week's premiere of a new documentary about his career. "Koch" opens in theaters nationwide on Friday.

The mayor dismissed his critics as "wackos," waged verbal war with developer Donald Trump ("piggy") and fellow former mayor Rudolph Giuliani ("nasty man"), lambasted the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and once reduced the head of the City Council to tears.

"I'm not the type to get ulcers," he wrote in "Mayor," his autobiography. "I give them."
When President George W. Bush ran for re-election in 2004, Democrat Koch crossed party lines to support him and spoke at the GOP convention. He also endorsed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's re-election efforts at a time when Bloomberg was a Republican. Koch described himself as "a liberal with sanity."

In a statement Bloomberg said the city "lost an irrepressible icon" and called Koch its "most charismatic cheerleader."

"Through his tough, determined leadership and responsible fiscal stewardship, Ed helped lift the city out of its darkest days and set it on course for an incredible comeback," Bloomberg said.

Under his watch from 1978-89, the city climbed out of its financial crisis thanks to Koch's tough fiscal policies and razor-sharp budget cuts, and subway service improved enormously. But homelessness and AIDS soared through the 1980s, and critics charged that City Hall's responses were too little, too late.

His mark on the city has been set in steel: The Queensboro Bridge — connecting Manhattan to Queens and celebrated in the Simon and Garfunkel tune "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" — was renamed in Koch's honor in 2011.

Koch was a champion of gay rights, taking on the Roman Catholic Church and scores of political leaders.

A lifelong bachelor, Koch offered a typically blunt response to questions about his own sexuality: "My answer to questions on this subject is simply, 'F--- off.' There have to be some private matters left."

Koch was fast-talking, opinionated and sometimes rude, becoming the face and sound of New York to those living outside the city. Koch became a celebrity, appearing on talk shows and playing himself in movies including "The Muppets Take Manhattan" and "The First Wives Club" and hosting "Saturday Night Live."

In 1989's "Batman," the character of Gotham City's mayor, played by Lee Wallace, bore a definite resemblance to Koch.

When Koch took over from accountant Abe Beame in 1978, one thing quickly became apparent — with this mayor, nothing was certain. Reporters covered him around the clock because of "the Koch factor," his ability to say something outrageous any place, any time.

After leaving office, he continued to offer his opinions as a political pundit, movie reviewer, food critic and judge on "The People's Court."

Even in his 80s, Koch still exercised regularly and worked as a lawyer for the firm Bryan Cave.

At his 80th birthday bash, Bloomberg said Koch was "not only a great mayor and a great source of advice and support to other mayors, he happens to be one of the greatest leaders and politicians in the history of our city."

He had been in the hospital twice in 2012, for anemia in September and then for a respiratory infection in December. He returned twice in January 2013 with fluid buildup in his lungs.

Koch was born in the Bronx on Dec. 12, 1924, the second of three children of Polish immigrants Louis and Joyce Koch. During the Depression the family lived in Newark, N.J.
The future mayor worked his way through school, checking hats, working behind a delicatessen counter and selling shoes. He attended City College and served as a combat infantryman in Europe during World War II, earning his sergeant stripes.

He received a law degree from New York University in 1948 and began practicing law in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood, where his political career began as a member of the Village Independent Democrats, a group of liberal reformers. He defeated powerful Democratic leader Carmine DeSapio, whose roots reached back to the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine, in a race for district leader.

His answer to the war on drugs? Send convicted drug dealers to concentration camps in the desert. Decaying buildings? Paint phony windows, complete with cheery flowerpots, on brick facades. Overcrowded city jails? Stick inmates on floating prison barges.

Koch defeated incumbent Beame and future Gov. Mario Cuomo in the Democratic primary to win his first term in City Hall. Like his hero Fiorello LaGuardia, the fiery fusion party mayor who ran the city from 1933 to 1945, he ran on the Republican and Conservative party lines in the 1981 mayoral election.

He breezed to re-election in both 1981 and 1985, winning an unprecedented three-quarters of the votes cast. At the time, he was only the third mayor in city history to be elected to three terms.

While mayor, he wrote three books including the best-seller "Mayor," ''Politics" and "His Eminence and Hizzoner," written with Cardinal John O'Connor. He wrote seven other nonfiction books, four mystery novels and three children's books after leaving office.

The man who bragged that he would always get a better job, but New Yorkers would never get a better mayor, left his City Hall office for the last time on Dec. 31, 1989.
Looking back, Koch said in a 1997 interview: "All I could think of was, "Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, I'm free at last."

He was finished with public office, but he would never be through with the city. At age 83, Koch paid $20,000 for a burial plot at Trinity Church Cemetery, at the time the only graveyard in Manhattan that still had space.

"I don't want to leave Manhattan, even when I'm gone," Koch told The Associated Press. "This is my home. The thought of having to go to New Jersey was so distressing to me."

Koch was survived by his sister, Pat Thaler, and many grandnieces and grandnephews.



Mayor Koch was certainly a character. He also had one of the strongest handshakes I had ever experienced!

Patty Andrews of The Andrews Sisters dead at 94

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LOS ANGELES Patty Andrews, the last surviving member of the singing Andrews Sisters trio whose hits such as the rollicking "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" and the poignant "I Can Dream, Can't I?" captured the home-front spirit of World War II, died. She was 94.

Andrews died of natural causes at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge, said family spokesman Alan Eichler in a statement.

Patty was the Andrews in the middle, the lead singer and chief clown, whose raucous jitterbugging delighted American servicemen abroad and audiences at home.

She could also deliver sentimental ballads like "I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time" with a sincerity that caused hardened soldiers far from home to weep.

From the late 1930s through the 1940s, the Andrews Sisters produced one hit record after another, beginning with "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" in 1937 and continuing with "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar," ''Rum and Coca-Cola" and more. They recorded more than 400 songs and sold over 80 million records, several of them gold (over a million copies).

Other sisters, notably the Boswells, had become famous as singing acts, but mostly they huddled before a microphone in close harmony. The Andrews Sisters -- LaVerne, Maxene and Patty -- added a new dimension. During breaks in their singing, they cavorted about the stage in rhythm to the music.

Their voices combined with perfect synergy. As Patty remarked in 1971: "There were just three girls in the family. LaVerne had a very low voice. Maxene's was kind of high, and I was between. It was like God had given us voices to fit our parts."

The Andrews' rise coincided with the advent of swing music, and their style fit perfectly into the new craze. They aimed at reproducing the sound of three harmonizing trumpets.

"I was listening to Benny Goodman and to all the bands," Patty once remarked. "I was into the feel, so that would go into my own musical ability. I was into swing. I loved the brass section."

Unlike other singing acts, the sisters recorded with popular bands of the '40s, fitting neatly into the styles of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Bob Crosby, Woody Herman, Guy Lombardo, Desi Arnaz and Russ Morgan. They sang dozens of songs on records with Bing Crosby, including the million-seller "Don't Fence Me In." They also recorded with Dick Haymes, Carmen Miranda, Danny Kaye, Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante and Red Foley.

The Andrews' popularity led to a contract with Universal Pictures, where they made a dozen low-budget musical comedies between 1940 and 1944. In 1947, they appeared in "The Road to Rio" with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.

The trio continued until LaVerne's death in 1967. By that time the close harmony had turned to discord, and the sisters had been openly feuding.

Bette Midler's 1973 cover of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" revived interest in the trio. The two survivors joined in 1974 for a Broadway show, "Over Here!" It ran for more than a year, but disputes with the producers led to the cancellation of the national tour of the show, and the sisters did not perform together again.

Patty continued on her own, finding success in Las Vegas and on TV variety shows. Her sister also toured solo until her death in 1995.

Her father, Peter Andrews, was a Greek immigrant who anglicized his name of Andreus when he arrived in America; his wife, Olga, was a Norwegian with a love of music. LaVerne was born in 1911, Maxine (later Maxene) in 1916, Patricia (later Patty, sometimes Patti) in 1918, though some sources say 1920.

Listening to the Boswell Sisters on radio, LaVerne played the piano and taught her sisters to sing in harmony; neither Maxene nor Patty ever learned to read music. All three studied singers at the vaudeville house near their father's restaurant. As their skills developed, they moved from amateur shows to vaudeville and singing with bands.

After Peter Andrews moved the family to New York in 1937, his wife, Olga, sought singing dates for the girls. They were often turned down with comments such as: "They sing too loud and they move too much." Olga persisted, and the sisters sang on radio with a hotel band at $15 a week. The broadcasts landed them a contract with Decca Records.

They recorded a few songs, and then came "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen," an old Yiddish song for which Sammy Cahn and Saul Kaplan wrote English lyrics. (The title means, "To Me You Are Beautiful.") It was a smash hit, and the Andrews Sisters were launched into the bigtime.

Their only disappointment was the movies. Universal was a penny-pinching studio that ground out product to fit the lower half of a double feature. The sisters were seldom involved in the plots, being used for musical interludes in film with titles such as "Private Buckaroo," "Swingtime Johnny" and "Moonlight and Cactus."

Their only hit was "Buck Privates," which made stars of Abbott and Costello and included the trio's blockbuster "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B."

In 1947, Patty married Martin Melcher, an agent who represented the sisters as well as Doris Day, then at the beginning of her film career. Patty divorced Melcher in 1949 and soon he became Day's husband, manager and producer.

Patty married Walter Weschler, pianist for the sisters, in 1952. He became their manager and demanded more pay for himself and for Patty. The two other sisters rebelled, and their differences with Patty became public. Lawsuits were filed between the two camps.

"We had been together nearly all our lives," Patty explained in 1971. "Then in one year our dream world ended. Our mother died and then our father. All three of us were upset, and we were at each other's throats all the time."

‘Storage Wars’ Star Mark Balelo Kills Himself After Drug Arrest

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Mark Balelo, one of the stars of A&E’s Storage Wars took his own life on Feb. 11 by way of carbon monoxide poisoning, TMZ reports. The reality star had previously been arrested on Feb. 9 for a drug-related offense.

Multiple sources tell the website that Mark was found dead in his car, which had been parked and left running in the garage at his auction house in Simi Valley, CA.

Upon release from his arrest on the 9th, sources say he was distraught and had asked his fiancée to come over in fear that he might hurt himself. The couple reportedly met at his office on Sunday, Feb. 10, where they talked for a few hours before Mark took a four hour nap. When he woke up, he was said to have seemed better.

His fiancée left him at his office that evening. One of Mark’s employees found his body the following morning, Feb. 11. Law enforcement sources tell TMZ that an autopsy will be conducted on Feb. 12.

Mark had appeared on a number of Storage Wars episodes over the past few seasons. He made his first appearance during the show’s second season, appearing in four episodes that year. He also appeared once during the third season. He was known for bringing large sums of money to auctions, often as much as $50,000 at a time. Beyond his liquidation, distribution, and wholesale company, Mark also owned a gaming store, The Game Exchange, from 2009 until 2012.

the buss stops here

jerry buss, the once flamboyant owner of the la lakers nba team dies at age 80

JennyOHill2 said:

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Mark Balelo, one of the stars of A&E’s Storage Wars took his own life on Feb. 11 by way of carbon monoxide poisoning, TMZ reports. The reality star had previously been arrested on Feb. 9 for a drug-related offense.

Multiple sources tell the website that Mark was found dead in his car, which had been parked and left running in the garage at his auction house in Simi Valley, CA.

Upon release from his arrest on the 9th, sources say he was distraught and had asked his fiancée to come over in fear that he might hurt himself. The couple reportedly met at his office on Sunday, Feb. 10, where they talked for a few hours before Mark took a four hour nap. When he woke up, he was said to have seemed better.

His fiancée left him at his office that evening. One of Mark’s employees found his body the following morning, Feb. 11. Law enforcement sources tell TMZ that an autopsy will be conducted on Feb. 12.

Mark had appeared on a number of Storage Wars episodes over the past few seasons. He made his first appearance during the show’s second season, appearing in four episodes that year. He also appeared once during the third season. He was known for bringing large sums of money to auctions, often as much as $50,000 at a time. Beyond his liquidation, distribution, and wholesale company, Mark also owned a gaming store, The Game Exchange, from 2009 until 2012.

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He wasnt really on the show, THAT much, he wasn't one of the stars....

Bonnie Franklin,'One Day At A Time' star, dies at 69

The New York Times

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Bonnie Franklin, left, with Valerie Bertinellie 1979.
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: March 1, 2013

Bonnie Franklin, whose portrayal of a pert but determined Ann Romano on the television show “One Day at a Time” in the 1970s and ’80s spun laughter out of the tribulations of a divorced woman juggling parenting, career, love life and feminist convictions, died on Friday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 69.

The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, family members said. They had announced the diagnosis in September.

Ms. Franklin also acted on the stage and in movies and for years sang and danced in a nightclub act. But she was most widely known in the role of Ann Romano, one of the first independent women to be portrayed on TV wrestling with issues like sexual harassment, rape and menopause. Ms. Franklin — green-eyed, red-haired, button-nosed and 5-foot-3 — brought a buoyant comic touch to the part.

Some saw the show as helping feminism enter the mainstream.

“I know it’s just a television show, and I don’t think that I am changing the way the world is structured,” Ms. Franklin told The Washington Post in 1980, but she allowed that “sometimes we strike chords that do make people think a bit.”

“One Day at a Time” ran from December 1975 to May 1984, and its ratings ranked in the top 20 in eight of those seasons and in the top 10 in four. Ms. Franklin was nominated for an Emmy Award and twice for a Golden Globe.

The show’s topicality fell squarely in the tradition of its developer, Norman Lear, who had gained renown for introducing political and social commentary to situation comedy with “All in the Family” and other shows. Its co-creator was Whitney Blake, a former sitcom star who, as a single mother, had reared the future actress Meredith Baxter.

Like Archie and Edith Bunker in “All in the Family,” Ann and her daughters, Julie and Barbara Cooper (Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli), used comedy in the service of grappling with serious and thorny real-world matters.

As a divorced mother who had reverted to her maiden name and relocated to Indianapolis, Ann fought her deadbeat ex-husband for child support, for example. Or she dealt with a daughter deciding whether to remain a virgin.

Some story lines continued for up to four weeks, as when Julie, to Ann’s consternation, dated a man more than twice her age. In one plot twist Ann’s fiancé is killed by a drunken driver. Later she marries her son-in-law’s divorced father.

Comic relief came from the frequent visits of the building superintendent, Dwayne Schneider (Pat Harrington). But Ms. Franklin was said to have pushed the producers toward greater realism, urging them to take on issues like teenage pregnancy and avoid letting the show lapse into comic shtick.

In her 2009 memoir, “High on Arrival,” Ms. Phillips, who had come to the show after gaining notice in the 1973 George Lucas film “American Graffiti,” said that Ms. Franklin did not want “One Day at a Time” to be “sitcom fluff.”

“She wanted it to deal honestly with the struggles and truths of raising two teenagers as a single mother," Ms. Phillips wrote.

By the time the show ended in 1984, Ann’s daughters had grown and married; Ann herself had remarried and become a grandmother.

In interviews. Ms. Franklin said she had refused to do anything that might diminish her character’s integrity. In particular, she said, it was important for Ann not to rely on a man to make decisions. But each year she found herself fighting the same fights.

“And I’m not working with insensitive men,” she told The Boston Globe in 1981. “But the men who produce and write the show still don’t believe me when I present them with the women’s point of view.

“After seven years,” she continued, “I just want to say, ‘C’mon guys, I’m an intelligent person, why don’t you just trust me?’ I’m so tired of fighting. But you can’t give up.”

Bonnie Gail Franklin was born in Santa Monica, Calif., on Jan. 6, 1944, one of five children. Her father was an investment banker while her mother pushed her children toward the performing arts. The family later moved to Beverly Hills, where Ms. Franklin graduated from Beverly Hills High School.

An excellent tap dancer by 9, she performed on “The Colgate Comedy Hour” in 1953. The next year, she played Susan Cratchit on “A Christmas Carol” on the CBS variety show “Shower of Stars.” In 1956 she had uncredited roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Wrong Man” and the comedy “The Kettles in the Ozarks.” She turned down an offer to be a Mouseketeer on Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club” television show.

After attending Smith College in Massachusetts, Ms. Franklin transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she graduated with a major in English in 1966. Her marriage to Ronald Sossi, a playwright, ended in divorce in 1970.

She had her breakthrough as a performer the same year, when she was nominated for a Tony for her 10-minute song-and-dance performance on Broadway as a chorus gypsy in “Applause,” which starred Lauren Bacall.

Ms. Franklin also acted in episodes of other television shows as well as in regional theater and movies, mainly ones made for television, notably playing Margaret Sanger, the women’s rights and birth-control advocate, in “Portrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger,” a 1980 movie on CBS. On the Sanger set, she met the movie’s executive producer, Marvin Minoff. They were married for 29 years before his death in 2009.

Ms. Franklin is survived by her mother, Claire Franklin, and her stepchildren Jed and Julie Minoff.

Twenty-four years after her Sanger portrayal, Ms. Franklin spoke to hundreds of thousands of women at an abortion rights march in Washington.

Charles Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the United States, dies at 96.

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C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general, dies at 96
By David Brown,February 25, 2013

C. Everett Koop, the former surgeon general of the United States who started the government’s public discussion of AIDS during the Reagan administration, died Feb. 25 at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 96.

A spokeswoman for the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth confirmed his death but did not disclose the cause.

Dr. Koop was the most recognized surgeon general of the 20th century. He almost always appeared in the epauleted and ribboned blue or white uniform denoting his leadership of the commissioned corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. With his mustacheless beard, deep voice and grim expression, he looked like a Civil War admiral or, as some cartoonists suggested, a refugee from a Gilbert and Sullivan musical.

The theatrical appearance, however, masked a fierce self-confidence, an unyielding commitment to professional excellence and a willingness to challenge the expectations of his patrons.

A 64-year-old retired pediatric surgeon at the time Ronald Reagan nominated him in 1981, Dr. Koop had no formal public-health training. His chief credential was that he was a socially conservative, Christian physician who had written a popular treatise against abortion. His confirmation took eight months. Few people expected him to talk about homosexuality, anal intercourse, condoms and intravenous drug use when almost nobody else in the Reagan administration would even utter the word “AIDS.”

Dr. Koop, however, believed information was the most useful weapon against HIV at a time when there was little treatment for the infection and widespread fear that it might soon threaten the general population. In May 1988, he mailed a seven-page brochure, “Understanding AIDS,” to all 107 million households in the country.

“He was a guy who surprised everybody,” said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was Dr. Koop’s chief tutor in AIDS matters and became a close friend. “People expected one thing, and they not only got another thing, they got someone who was amazingly effective.”

“You couldn’t go anywhere where he wasn’t recognized. Even the tollbooth guy on the [Boston] Callahan Tunnel — everybody recognized that beard,” said former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler, who worked closely with Dr. Koop on the campaign against tobacco, among other issues. “He really was America’s doctor.”

Kessler recalled Dr. Koop’s refreshing lack of ideology, which sometimes perplexed those inside the Beltway.

“He knew very little about Washington when he arrived, and he developed political instincts that were very attuned to what the country expected,” Kessler said. “It’s really proof that you can’t really label anyone.”

Among AIDS activists Dr. Koop became an unlikely hero, although some came to think that his sexually explicit talk tended to further stigmatize gay men.

“Most of us thought that a huge part of how the crisis grew exponentially was that those in power chose to ignore it for as long as they could,” recalled Peter Staley, a founding member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. “He was the only person in that administration who spoke the truth when it came to AIDS.”

Dr. Koop was also a tireless campaigner against tobacco. As surgeon general, he released a report in 1982 that attributed 30 percent of all cancer deaths to smoking. He wrote that nicotine was as addictive as heroin, warned against the hazards of secondhand smoke and updated the warning labels on cigarette packs.

Michael C. Fiore, founder of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, once said Dr. Koop’s reports on smoking “totally changed the landscape” of tobacco control.

He was among the last survivors of a small generation of American doctors forced by World War II into highly responsible roles at very young ages. After the war, many became academic physicians and researchers who helped fuel the explosion of medical therapeutics in the second half of the 20th century. In Dr. Koop’s case, the new frontier was pediatric surgery, a specialty that barely existed when he entered it. He became one of the half-dozen leading practitioners in the world.

Charles Everett Koop, an only child, was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 14, 1916. His father, who did not finish high school, was an officer at a bank. His mother occasionally assisted in at-home surgical operations in the neighborhood by administering anesthesia — a task the surgeon often farmed out to a responsible bystander. His paternal grandparents lived with his family, and his maternal grandparents and many cousins lived nearby.

Dr. Koop claimed he first expressed a desire to become a surgeon when he was 6 years old.

He was quite a fellow. A reminder that every group, even conservatives and christians, has good people among them.

Writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala dies at 85

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22015002

Writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, whose scripts for Howards End and A Room With A View earned her two Oscars, has died.

The 85-year-old made more than 20 films with producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory over 40 years.

She also won the Booker Prize for her 1975 novel Heat and Dust, meaning she was the only person to have won an Oscar and the Booker.

Born in Germany, she fled the Nazis as a schoolgirl and spent much of her life in India. She died at home in New York.

She had been suffering from a pulmonary disorder and is survived by husband Cyrus and daughters Renana, Ava and Firoza-Bibi.

Born into a Jewish family, she fled Nazi Germany in 1939 with her parents and brother to begin a new life in Britain.

After meeting her future husband in London, Jhabvala moved with him to his native India in the 1950s, where she was visited by Merchant and Ivory to ask if they could make a film of her 1960 novel The Householder.

She agreed to write the screenplay and it was to mark the beginning of a fruitful partnership.

The trio's films included A Room With a View and Howards End, for which Jhabvala collected the Academy Award in 1987 and 1993 respectively. Both were adapted from novels by EM Forster.

She was nominated for a third Oscar in 1994 for the script for The Remains of the Day.
'Rare gift'

Jhabvala's former publisher Nick Perren paid tribute to the author, telling the BBC: "She gave the impression of being quite withdrawn but she was extraordinarily interested in people.

"She was an accurate commentator on the world around her.

"She had the rare gift of observation that comes from people born into a completely different culture who have had to learn a new language."

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in 1999, Jhabvala said: "Film, for me is in two stages.

"One is when I write the script more or less on my own, that's the nice bit. And then comes for me the unpleasant bit when they all go off, 100 people - actors and camera people and film and sound - and I stay away.

"When they go into the editing room, I come in again and that's the bit I like."

When asked whether it was akin to handing one's baby over, she added: "Film is not like a book, it's not a writer's baby at all.

"So many people have put in their talent by that time that you feel grateful for what they've done, you don't feel possessive about it in any way."

Actress Emma Thompson, who starred in The Remains of the Day and Howards End, said of Jhabvala in 1993: "She's a novelist, so she understands the art of adapting novels better than most anyone else.

"She understands the process, the 'buzz of implication' that surrounds words… Ruth understands it completely."

JustSkye said:

Hector Camacho died today.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/obituar...r-being-shot-in-head-20121124,0,4143557.story

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Indeed a loss to the boxing world, it's still difficult to imagine him not in the game any longer... he definitely made his mark and will long be remembered.

Thanks for posting this, Skye.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/17320958-418/roger-ebert-dies-at-70-after-battle-with-cancer.html

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Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

or a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers.

“No good film is too long,” he once wrote, a sentiment he felt strongly enough about to have engraved on pens. “No bad movie is short enough.”

Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.

He lost part of his lower jaw in 2006, and with it the ability to speak or eat, a calamity that would have driven other men from the public eye. But Ebert refused to hide, instead forging what became a new chapter in his career, an extraordinary chronicle of his devastating illness that won him a new generation of admirers. “No point in denying it,” he wrote, analyzing his medical struggles with characteristic courage, candor and wit, a view that was never tinged with bitterness or self-pity.

Always technically savvy — he was an early investor in Google — Ebert let the Internet be his voice. His rogerebert.com had millions of fans, and he received a special achievement award as the 2010 “Person of the Year” from the Webby Awards, which noted that “his online journal has raised the bar for the level of poignancy, thoughtfulness and critique one can achieve on the Web.” His Twitter feeds had 827,000 followers.

Ebert was both widely popular and professionally respected. He not only won a Pulitzer Prize — the first film critic to do so — but his name was added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005, among the movie stars he wrote about so well for so long. His reviews were syndicated in hundreds of newspapers worldwide.

The same year Ebert won the Pulitzer — 1975 — he also launched a new kind of television program: “Coming Soon to a Theater Near You” with Chicago Tribune movie critic Gene Siskel on WTTW-Channel 11. At first it ran monthly.

The combination worked. The trim, balding Siskel, perfectly balanced the bespectacled, portly Ebert. In 1978, the show, retitled “Sneak Previews,” moved to PBS for national distribution, and the duo was on their way to becoming a fixture in American culture.

“Tall and thin, short and fat. Laurel and Hardy,” Ebert once wrote. “We were parodied on ‘SNL’ and by Bob Hope and Danny Thomas and, the ultimate honor, in the pages of Mad magazine.”

His colleagues admired him as a workhorse. Ebert reviewed as many as 285 movies a year, after he grew ill scheduling his cancer surgeries around the release of important pictures. He eagerly contributed to other sections of the papers — interviews with and obituaries of movie stars, even political columns on issues he cared strongly about on the editorial pages.

In 1997, unsatisfied with spending his critical powers “locked in the present,” he began a running feature revisiting classic movies, and eventually published three books on “The Great Movies” (and two books on movies he hated). A second column, his “Movie Answer Man” allowed readers to learn about intriguing little details of cinema that only a Roger Ebert knew or could ferret out.

That, too, became a book. Ebert wrote more books than any TV personality since Steve Allen — 17 in all. Not only collections of reviews, both good and bad, and critiques of great movies, but humorous film term glossaries and even a novel, Behind the Phantom’s Mask, that was serialized in the Sun-Times. He even wrote a book about rice cookers, The Pot and How to Use It, despite the fact that he could no longer eat. In 2011 his autobiography, Life Itself won rave reviews. “This is the best thing Mr. Ebert has ever written,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times. It is, fittingly enough, being made into a movie, produced by his longtime friend, Martin Scorsese.

Roger Joseph Ebert was born in Urbana on June 18, 1942, the son of Walter and Annabel Ebert. His father was an electrician at the University of Illinois, his mother, a bookkeeper. It was a liberal household -- Ebert remembers his parents praying for the success of Harry Truman in the election of 1948. As a child, he published a mimeographed neighborhood newspaper, and a stamp collectors’ newspaper in elementary school.

In high school, he was, as he later wrote, “demented in [his] zeal for school activities,” joining the swim team, acting in plays, founding the Science Fiction Club, co-hosting Urbana High School’s Saturday morning radio program, co-editing the newspaper, being elected senior class president.

He began his profesional writing career at 15, as a sportswriter covering the high school beat for the News-Gazette in Champaign-Urbana.

Ebert went on to the University of Illinois, where he published a weekly journal of politics and opinion as a freshman and served as editor of the Daily Illini his senior year. He graduated in 1964, and studied in South Africa on a Rotary Scholarship.

While still in Urbana, he began free-lancing for the Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily News.

He was accepted at the University of Chicago, where he planned to earn his doctorate in English (an avid reader, Ebert later used literary authors to help explain films -- for example, quoting e.e. cummings several times in his review of Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking “2001: A Space Odyssey.”)

But Ebert had also written to Herman Kogan, for whom he freelanced at the Daily News, asking for a job, and ended up at the Sun-Times in September of 1966, working part-time. The following April, he was asked to become the newspaper’s film critic when the previous critic, Eleanor Keen, retired.

(The rest of the story is in the link.)

Woodstock singer Havens, 72, dies of heart attack

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NEW YORK (AP) - Richie Havens, who sang and strummed for a sea of people at Woodstock, has died of a heart attack Monday, his family said in a statement. He was 72.

Havens, a folk singer and guitarist, was the first performer at the three-day 1969 Woodstock Festival. He returned to the site during the 40th anniversary in 2009.
"Everything in my life, and so many others, is attached to that train," he said in a 2009 interview with The Associated Press.

Havens was born in Brooklyn. He was known for his crafty guitar work and cover songs, including his well-received impersonation of Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman."

The singer's website said he had kidney surgery years ago and that he never recovered enough to perform concerts like he used to.

Havens performed at Bill Clinton's presidential Inauguration in 1993. He has released more than 25 albums. His last album was 2008's "Nobody Left to Crown."

"I really sing songs that move me," he said in an interview with The Denver Post. "I'm not in show business; I'm in the communications business. That's what it's about for me."

Storm Thorgerson, 69, album cover designer

LONDON — English graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, whose eye-popping album art for Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin encapsulated the spirit of 1970s psychedelia, has died He was 69.

In a statement, Mr. Thorgerson’s family said that his death “was peaceful and he was surrounded by family and friends.” The statement gave few further details but said that the artist, who suffered a stroke in 2003, had been ill for some time.

Even those who not familiar with Mr. Thorgerson’s name will have seen his work gracing vinyl collections and CD racks. He was best known for his surreal Pink Floyd covers, which guitarist David Gilmour said had long been “an inseparable part of our work.”

Some of Mr. Thorgerson’s covers — the disturbing image of a burning man in a business suit featured on Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” or the stark prism on the band’s “Dark Side of the Moon” — have become icons in their own right.

Mr. Thorgerson also made covers for Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Phish, Styx, and Muse. His art tended toward the unsettling or the bizarre.

One particularly weird CD front for The Cranberries’ “Bury The Hatchet” featured a monstrous, disembodied eye staring at a crouching, naked figure in a desert.

Another Pink Floyd album cover — which Mr. Thorgerson said had left the record company “completely berserk” — featured nothing more than a picture of a cow staring out from a field.

Mr. Thorgerson described his work as a kind of fantasy job — in both senses of the word.

“People pay me for my thoughts and my dreams,” Mr. Thorgerson told the BBC in 2010. “I think in that sense I’m very fortunate.”

Mr. Thorgerson is survived by his mother Vanji, his wife Barbie Antonis, and her two children Adam and Georgia, and a son Bill.

M*A*S*H Actor Allan Arbus Dies at 95

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Allan Arbus, best known for his dozen appearances as the sarcastic psychiatrist Maj. Sidney Freedman on the '70s series M*A*S*H, died Friday at his Los Angeles home, his daughter, photographer Amy Arbus, told The New York Times. He was 95.

In addition to numerous roles on TV and in movies, from Matlock and Curb Your Enthusiasm (in 2000) to Cinderella Liberty and Damien: Omen II, the New York City native, during his military service in the army, had been a photographer – as was, notably, his wife, Diane Arbus.

The two met when Allan was an employee in the advertising department of her parents' Fifth Avenue department store, then married in 1941 and formed a professional partnership.

Despite her parents' wealth, however, "she and Allan never received any financial help from her father, and throughout their marriage – particularly in the early years – they were always worried about money," author Patricia Bosworth wrote in her 1984 Diane Arbus: A Biography.

The Arbuses dissolved their business partnership in 1956, when Diane quit. They separated in 1959, and officially divorced a decade later, yet were said to have remained friends. And while Diane, who began her career as a fashion photographer, committed suicide in 1971, at age 48, her iconic photos of those on life's periphery continue to be shown in museums.

She was also portrayed by Nicole Kidman in the heavily fictionalized 2006 movie Fur, in which Ty Burrell (the current Modern Family star) played Allan Arbus.

According to The Times, Allan Arbus married the actress Mariclare Costello in 1976. She survives him, as do Amy and another daughter with Diane Arbus, the writer Doon Arbus, along with another daughter (with Mariclare), Arin Arbus.

Jack Shea Dead: 'Jeffersons' Director And DGA President Dies At 84

Director Jack Shea, the man behind popular sitcoms like "The Jeffersons" and "Silver Spoons," has passed away at the age of 84.

Shea died on Sunday at a Los Angeles care facility, according to the Los Angeles Times. A family spokesperson said his death was due to complications from Alzheimer's disease.

He is best known for his directorial work on "The Jeffersons" and "Silver Spoons," but his credits also include "The Waltons," "Punky Brewster," "The Royal Family," "The Golden Girls," "Growing Pains," "Full House" and "Sister, Sister."

Along with his television work, Shea was president of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) from 1997 to 2002. Shea addressed issues such as runaway production and diversity in hiring during his time in the position, Deadline.com notes.

"He occupied a truly unique position in the history of the modern DGA," DGA president Taylor Hackford said in a statement obtained by The Wrap. "As the West Coast president of the Radio & Television Directors Guild in 1960, he was at the table sitting across from Frank Capra when the two guilds representing television and theatrical directors merged to form the modern Directors Guild of America."

“Beloved by his fellow directors, the DGA membership and the DGA staff, he always had a ready smile and keen interest in everyone he encountered. Jack enjoyed life and shared it with everyone around him; as a leader, his gentle manner and the kindest of hearts will be the things we miss the most.”

Shea is survived by his wife of 59 years, Pat, his three children -- Shawn, Bill and Michael -- and his six grandchildren. He is predeceased by his daughter, Elizabeth. "He loved his family and God and the Directors Guild, though not necessarily in that order," his daughter, Shawn Shea, told the L.A. Times.

John Williamson Dead: 1960s Sexual Pioneer Dies At 80

LOS ANGELES -- John Williamson, a pioneer of the 1960s sexual revolution as co-founder of Topanga Canyon's Sandstone Retreat, where nudity and free love once took place with abandon, has died at age 80.

Williamson died of cancer March 24 at a hospital in Reno, Nev., said his wife, Barbara Williamson. The pair had lived on a Northern Nevada ranch for the past 18 years, taking in abandoned lions, tigers, cougars and other big cats.

They were a young newlywed couple in 1968 when they bought a cluster of rundown buildings on 15 acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean and turned it into the Sandstone Foundation For Community Systems Research.

It offered seminars on human bonding, relationships and sexuality, but its Sandstone Retreat, where as many as 500 people would gather on weekends to frolic in the nude, swap spouses and engage in group sex, quickly made its existence in the bohemian canyon notorious.

"We actually had open sexuality and nudity, but it was optional. Everything was optional," Barbara Williamson told The Associated Press on Thursday. "We provided a wonderful, wonderful environment in a natural setting, and that natural setting just sort of gave people permission."

As the retreat's frontman, Williamson became known as the "messiah of sex" – a title his wife said he always carried proudly.

The couple, together 47 years, exchanged partners themselves and it never put a strain on their relationship, said Williamson, who is writing a memoir of those years. They believed that monogamy wasn't fulfilling people's sexual needs and, as a result, was preventing them from living life to its fullest.

Many celebrities were said to have paid quiet visits to Sandstone over the years, and Williamson joked Thursday that she likely "saw more naked Hollywood stars than any other woman."

Author Gay Talese has said he spent a substantial amount of time there, much of it naked, when he researched his 1981 book, "Thy Neighbor's Wife" on the sexual revolution. Sandstone was also the subject of a 1975 documentary.

It was reading Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged" that John Williamson said prompted him to quit a defense-industry job in electronics and move to California in the early 1960s. The book portrays a society in which people, fed up with government and industry controlling their lives, walk away from their jobs.

But Williamson continued to work in a mainstream job, running an electronics company, until he met his wife when she came by his office one day in 1966 to try to sell him insurance. A few weeks later they were married, and soon after they were planning Sandstone.

Although membership flourished, Barbara Williamson said, the retreat never took in enough money to pay the bills. They sold the property in 1972, and Sandstone closed a couple years later.

After an effort to build a tribal community in Montana foundered, the couple moved to the San Francisco Bay area, then to Nevada. There they began to take in big cats whose owners wanted to get rid of them.

At the time of his death, Williamson was attempting to turn their property into a wild animal sanctuary and educational center.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Sheila Ellington, and a granddaughter.

Ray Harryhausen

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=103886

Special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen dies at 92

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Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animation and special-effects master whose work influenced such directors as Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and George Lucas, has died, according to the Facebook page of the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation.

Harryhausen was 92. The page did not offer a cause of death.

Harryhausen's pioneering work on such movies as "Mighty Joe Young," "Jason and the Argonauts," "One Million Years B.C." and "Clash of the Titans" (1981) was widely praised for its ability to blend stop-motion effects -- models filmed one frame at a time -- and live action.

In "Jason," for example, the hero has a battle with a group of skeletons that emerge from the ground and take on the Greek warriors.

Harryhausen called his format "dynamation," and though it looks somewhat crude by today's computer-generated standards, it still packs a punch -- and other filmmakers remain agog by Harryhausen's abilities.

Several filmmakers paid tribute to him on his 90th birthday, including Jackson, "Wallace & Gromit's" Nick Park and Monty Python's Terry Gilliam. Pixar worked in a reference to Harryhausen in "Monsters, Inc."

Raymond Frederick Harryhausen was born in Los Angeles in 1920. From his childhood he was intrigued by movies and animation, inspired by films such as "The Lost World" (1925) and especially "King Kong" (1933). As a teenager he built dioramas featuring prehistoric creatures and filmed them with a 16-millimeter camera, gently hitting the "run" button to move the film one frame at a time, according to his biography on rayharryhausen.com.

By the time he was in his early 20s he was friends with Forrest Ackerman and Ray Bradbury, two men who shared Harryhausen's fondness for storytelling and animation. Ackerman became a writer, editor and famed memorabilia collector; Bradbury, of course, became one of the most celebrated science-fiction writers.

Other influential colleagues included Willis O'Brien, the "King Kong" animator, who encouraged Harryhausen's pursuits, and George Pal, who produced 1953's "The War of the Worlds" and directed 1960's "The Time Machine."

The science-fiction and fantasy films of Harryhausen's career weren't the star-filled, big-budget productions of today. Indeed, Harryhausen's creations were often the main attraction for films that lacked the polish of major studio releases.

But the dedicated Harryhausen had a well-earned following, and was quick with praise for his successors. He also never lost his fondness for storytelling, and even in today's computer-dominated marketplace, maintained high hopes that the art of combining stop-motion with live action would continue.

"Stop-motion is a medium that welcomes fantasy, hence the number of recent productions," Harryhausen told CNN in 2012. "As yet, though, there seem to be no productions that are utilizing model stop-motion and live actors. But that will, I think, re-emerge. It is only a matter of time."