Literotica Cemetary

[Tati]

Country Singer Freddy Fender Dies at 69

HOUSTON (Oct. 14) - Freddy Fender, the "Bebop Kid" of the Texas-Mexico border who later turned his twangy tenor into the smash country ballad "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," died Saturday. He was 69.

Fender, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 2006, died at noon at his Corpus Christi home with his family at his bedside, said Ron Rogers, a family spokesman.

Over the years, he grappled with drug and alcohol abuse, was treated for diabetes and underwent a kidney transplant.

Fender hit it big in 1975 after some regional success, years of struggling - and a stint in prison - when "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" climbed to No. 1 on the pop and country charts.

"Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" rose to No. 1 on the country chart and top 10 on the pop chart that same year, while "Secret Love" and "You'll Lose a Good Thing" also hit No. 1 in the country charts.

Born Baldemar Huerta, Fender was proud of his Mexican-American heritage and frequently sung verses or whole songs in Spanish. "Teardrop" had a verse in Spanish.

"Whenever I run into prejudice," he told The Washington Post in 1977, "I smile and feel sorry for them, and I say to myself, `There's one more argument for birth control."'

"The Old Man upstairs rolled a seven on me," he told The Associated Press in 1975. "I hope he keeps it up."

More recently, he played with Doug Sahm, Flaco Jimenez and others in two Tex-Mex all-star combos, the Texas Tornados and Los Super Seven.

He won a Grammy of Best Latin Pop Album in 2002 for "La Musica de Baldemar Huerta." He also shared in two Grammys: with the Texas Tornados, which won in 1990 for best Mexican-American performance for "Soy de San Luis," and with Los Super Seven in the same category in 1998 for "Los Super Seven."

Among his other achievements, Fender appeared in the 1987 motion picture "The Milagro Beanfield War," directed by Robert Redford.

In February 1999, Fender was awarded a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame after then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush wrote to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce endorsing him.

He said in a 2004 interview with The Associated Press that one thing would make his musical career complete - induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

"Hopefully I'll be the first Mexican-American going into Hillbilly Heaven," he said.

Fender was born in 1937 in San Benito, the South Texas border town credited for spawning the Mexican-polka sound of conjunto. The son of migrant workers who did his own share of picking crops, he also was exposed to the blues sung by blacks alongside the Mexicans in the fields.

Always a performer, he sang on the radio as a boy and won contests for his singing - one prize included a tub full of about $10 worth of food.

But his career really began in the late '50s, when he returned from serving in the Marines and recorded Spanish-language versions of Elvis Presley 's "Don't Be Cruel" and Harry Belafonte's "Jamaica Farewell." The recordings were hits in Mexico and South America.

He signed with Imperial Records in 1959, renaming himself "Fender" after the brand of his electric guitar, "Freddy" because it sounded good with Fender.

Fender initially recorded "Wasted Days" in 1960. But his career was put on hold shortly after that when he and his bass player ended up spending almost three years in prison in Angola, La., for marijuana possession.

After prison came a few years in New Orleans and a then an everyday life taking college classes, working as a mechanic and playing an occasional local gig. He once said he sang in bars so dingy he performed with his eyes shut "dreaming I was on `The Ed Sullivan Show."'

"I felt there's no great American dream for this ex-Chicano migrant farm worker," he told the AP. "I'd picked too many crops and too many strings."

But his second break came when he was persuaded to record "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" on an independent label in 1974 and it was picked up by a major label. With its success, he won the Academy of Country Music's best new artist award in 1975. He re-released "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" and it climbed to the top of the charts as well.

Cristina Balli, spokeswoman for the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center in San Benito, said Fender illustrated the diversity of Mexican-American and Latino musicians.

"We have our feet in different worlds and different cultures," she said. "We have our roots music ... but then we branch out to other things, pick up different styles. I think he was the precursor to Los Lonely Boys ."

Fender's later years were marred by health problems resulting in a kidney transplant from his daughter, Marla Huerta Garcia, in January 2002 and a liver transplant in 2004. Fender was to have lung surgery in early 2006 until surgeons found tumors.

"I feel very comfortable in my life," Fender told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in August. "I'm one year away from 70 and I've had a good run. I really believe I'm OK. In my mind and in my heart, I feel OK. I cannot complain that I haven't lived long enough, but I'd like to live longer."

Rogers said Fender will be brought back to San Benito for a funeral and memorial services. Details on the arrangements were pending.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Phillies Great Johnny Callison Dies At 67

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PHILADELPHIA --

Johnny Callison, a three-time All-Star outfielder with the Philadelphia Phillies, has died at age 67, according to a team spokesman.

Callison died October 12th at Abington Hospital following an illness, Phillies spokesman Larry Shenk said. He had lived in Glenside.

Callison was part of the Phillies team in 1964 that lost a 6 1/2-game lead with only 12 games remaining in the regular season by losing 10 straight.

Born in Oklahoma on March 12, 1939, Callison began his major league career with the Chicago White Sox in 1958. He established himself as one of the top players in the National League after being traded to Philadelphia two years later.

He became a fan favorite during his 10 seasons with the Phillies and finished second in MVP voting behind St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Ken Boyer in 1964.

Callison also played two seasons with the Chicago Cubs and two more with the New York Yankees before retiring following the 1973 season.

Callison hit .264 with 226 homers and 840 RBIs in 1,886 games over 16 seasons. He was named MVP of the 1964 All-Star game after hitting a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning off Red Sox reliever Dick Radatz to give the National League a 7-4 win at Shea Stadium.

Later that year, Callison was part of the Phillies team that infamously wasted a 61/2-game lead with only 12 games remaining in the regular season by losing 10 straight.

A left-handed hitter, Callison batted .274 with 31 homers and 104 RBIs in 1964. He hit .262 with 31 homers and 102 RBIs the following year.

Callison was named to the NL All-Star team in 1962, 1964 and 1965.

Former Phillies broadcaster Bill Campbell said Callison was more than just a good player.

"He was a productive player, not only with the bat, but defensively. He had a good, accurate, strong throwing arm. He never threw to the wrong base. He always made the right play," Campbell said. "Plus, the fact that he was a very good, understated, nice guy."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

AIDS Activist Jeff Getty Dead at 49

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JOSHUA TREE, Calif. -- Jeff Getty, a prominent AIDS activist who in 1995 received the first bone-marrow transplant from a baboon to treat the disease, has died. He was 49.

Getty died October 16th of heart failure, following treatment for cancer and a long struggle with AIDS, at the Hi-Desert Medical Center in Joshua Tree, said Ken Klueh, his partner of 26 years.

Before antiviral drug combinations were used successfully by AIDS patients, Getty grabbed national attention in December 1995 for becoming the first person ever to receive a bone marrow cell transfusion from one species to another. His transplant at San Francisco General Hospital used cells taken from a baboon, with the hope that the primate's natural AIDS resistance would take root in his own system.

The procedure, ultimately unsuccessful, sparked furious debate over the moral and medical implications of cross-species transplants.

"That trial reflects the level of desperation at the time," said Dr. Steven Deeks, the University of California, San Francisco, professor who was the experiment's lead investigator. "Jeff was just hanging on to his life. He inspired us that a risky and aggressive intervention was worth trying."

While the baboon bone marrow cells quickly disappeared from his system, Getty's health seemed to dramatically improve. He went on help pave the way for the drug cocktail HAART -- or highly active antiretroviral therapy -- that routinely keeps many HIV and AIDS patients alive today.

"He is emblematic of a whole group of men who survived AIDS in the early 1980s and 1990s, and made it into the HAART era, but had developed so much resistance to the drugs that they never got their virus fully under control," Deeks said.

Since being diagnosed with AIDS in the days when the disease still was known as "the gay cancer," Getty was a fierce activist, volunteering to test experimental drugs, getting thrown in jail for protesting against pharmaceutical companies and even throwing a coffin on a hospital lawn to demand organ transplants for patients.

"He was the bravest of the brave. He was committed to getting results, even where it was clear that it wouldn't help him," said state Sen. Carole Migden, who worked with Getty when she was an Assembly member.

A former University of California policy analyst, Getty had a keen intellect that helped him navigate the science and politics of the disease, but he also could be difficult and demanding, colleagues said.

"He wasn't easy to work with," said Michael Lauro, an organizer who teamed with Getty in the advocacy groups Act Up Golden Gate and Survive AIDS. "That's how people with great vision, great hearts, and great drive are like. He could get things done."

Getty is survived by Klueh, his father and two sisters.

 

[phrodeau]

http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/news/pressrelease.aspx?id=1296
Opera News - The Met Opera Guild

Beloved Musical Satirist Anna Russell has Died at Age 94
October 20, 2006
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London, Ontario, December 27, 1911 — Bateman’s Bay, NSW, Australia, October 18, 2006

Anna Russell, who abandoned early dreams of an opera singing career to become the most celebrated musical satirist of her era, died last Wednesday in Australia, where she had been living in retirement. The cause was esophageal cancer.

Born Ann Claudia Russell-Brown in London, Ontario, the entertainer was the only child of a British Army colonel and his Canadian wife. In early childhood, she moved with her parents to England, where she was raised and educated and where she later studied for a career as a professional singer at the Royal College of Music. Throughout most of her life, Russell was always blunt about what she regarded as her early lack of success as a classical artist; her explanations for her failure ranged from an accident with a hockey stick at age sixteen (an incident that she said broke all the bones in her face and “ruined her acoustic”) to a disastrous early appearance as Santuzza (she was fired after she knocked over the scenery during a performance) to the blunt judgment of a stage director who prophetically told the young singer, “You always look funny to me.”

Russell returned to Canada in 1939, and appeared on radio soap operas and variety programs there in the early 1940s. Her singular career as a satirist began in Toronto, where she gave her first solo concert in 1942. She made her U.S. debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in October 1947; the impression she made was positive enough to warrant an engagement at another prestigious Manhattan venue, Town Hall, just four months later. By the early 1950s, her recitals were attracting sell-out crowds throughout the United States and Canada; in 1953, she headlined on Broadway in Anna Russell’s Little Show and appeared as a guest on CBS-TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show.

It was an era in which concert turns by smart female monologists were especially popular, among them American Ruth Draper and London-born Joyce Grenfell. But unlike Draper and Grenfell, who specialized in deft character sketches, Russell always appeared as herself, her comedy rooted in her own slightly starchy upper-middle-class persona. She was an expert clown — recordings of her live performances bear witness to Russell’s ability to marshal the attention of an audience — but what sharpened the edge of her wit was her insider’s knowledge of classical music and the attendant pretensions of some of its practitioners.

Russell’s programs usually carried the motto, “Miss Russell writes, composes, arranges and performs her own material.” Her most famous routine was probably “The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis),” a thirty-minute skewering during which appropriately chosen musical examples from Wagner’s masterwork were accompanied by Russell’s delivery of salient plot points in tones of crisp, scrupulously polite disbelief; her tart response to the helpless laughter of her audience was, “I’m not making this up, you know,” a phrase that later became the title of her autobiography. Russell’s other popular turns included “How To Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera”— a primer almost as beloved by Savoyards as the G&S canon itself — as well as “Wind Instruments I Have Known” and parodies of lieder (“Schlumpf”), French art song (“Je ne veux pas faire l’amour”) and English folksong (“I Wish I Were a Dicky-Bird”).

Russell kept up a full schedule of performances on tour until well into the 1960s, after which her appearances became gradually less frequent (but no less welcome) until she finally retired in the mid-1980s. By then her fans had most of her material memorized, thanks to her best-selling LPs, among them Anna Russell Sings?, Anna Russell Sings! Again? and Anna Russell in Darkest Africa. Most of her recordings from her prime have been reissued on CD; DVDs of some CBC-TV appearances and a 1984 concert, taped in Baltimore, have been released by VAI.

Russell’s career also featured some appearances in opera. Among these were her 1954 New York City Opera debut as the Witch in Hansel and Gretel; her dubbing of the Witch’s vocals in a 1954 “electronic puppet” film version of Humperdinck’s opera; Garbata in a 1965 New York concert performance of Dittersdorf’s comedy Arcifanfano; and the Duchess of Crakentorp in Canadian Opera Company’s 1977 Daughter of the Regiment. Russell lived in Canada after her retirement until just over two years ago, when she relocated to Australia to live with her adopted daughter, Deirdre Prussak.

F. PAUL DRISCOLL

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Nelson de la Rosa

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Nelson de la Rosa, 38, fixture in Sox clubhouse during 2004

The unforgettable 2004 Boston Red Sox had a clubhouse defined by its eccentricities: shaggy hair, unkempt beards, a bloody sock. Amidst the "cowboy up" slogan and pre game sips of Jack Daniels, however, there was one quirk that championship season that stood out -- even at 2 feet, 4 inches.

The presence of Nelson de la Rosa , Pedro Martinez's pint-sized countryman from the Dominican Republic, became an accepted element of a fall that seemed to have no end of surprises.

Mr. de la Rosa died at 4:15 a.m. Sunday at Rhode Island Hospital, according to hospital spokesman Andrea Barbosa . His agent, Andres Duran , told the Associated Press that he died from unknown causes. He was 38.

"There were plenty of nuances to that 2004 team beyond the baseball," said Charles Steinberg , a Red Sox spokesman. "I think that he was one of the tiles in the mosaic, this friend of Pedro's, albeit diminutive in stature, who brought some tension relief and comic relief."

"It brings a smile to our face when we think of Nelson," Steinberg said. "It saddens us to hear the news because you have to remember, he was more than an amusing entertainer. He was a human being with a soul."

Martinez first carried Mr. de la Rosa into the Sox clubhouse in late September 2004. As the team's winning stretched into October, it became common to see Martinez triumphantly hoisting Mr. de la Rosa over his head.

"Nelson was a good friend and a loyal Red Sox supporter," Martinez said in a written statement released by the New York Mets through his agent, Fernando Cuza . "I am saddened by his loss at such a young age. My heart goes out to Nelson's entire family."

Mr. de la Rosa became sick Friday in Miami, where he had been working in a circus. On Saturday, he traveled to New York, then to Providence, where two of his brothers live, his agent told AP.

Born and raised in a small village near San Miguel, in Santo Domingo Province, the charismatic Mr. de la Rosa, who stood between 28 and 29 inches tall, became internationally known when he appeared alongside Marlon Brando in the 1996 film "The Island of Dr. Moreau."

After Martinez signed with the Mets during the 2004 off-season, Mr. de la Rosa was still on occasion spotted near Fenway Park. In spring 2005, he appeared at the Baseball Tavern on Boylston Street, where he posed for photos with fans. To get in the pictures, Mr. de la Rosa stood on a pool table.

Mr. de la Rosa's body will be sent back to the Dominican Republic after an autopsy , his agent said. He leaves his wife, a 9-year-old son, his mother, and five siblings.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Phyllis Kirk, 1950s movie, TV actress

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Posted October 24 2006

LOS ANGELES · Phyllis Kirk, an actress who played the damsel in distress stalked by Vincent Price in the 1950s horror classic House of Wax and starred in The Thin Man on television, died Thursday of complications from an aneurysm. She was 79.

When first asked to appear in House of Wax, she resisted because she "was not interested in becoming the Fay Wray of her time," Ms. Kirk later said, referring to the screaming co-star of King Kong (1933).

She also did not want to act in a movie that relied on 3-D, a gimmick that required movie patrons to wear colored glasses. Warner Bros. insisted she take the part or be suspended from her contract.

"I went on to have a lot of fun making House of Wax. It was just fun; Vincent Price was a divine man and was a divine actor," Ms. Kirk said in a 2004 interview with the Astounding B Monster, a Web site for fans of B movies and cult films.

The movie tested her endurance because she continually had to be filmed running from Price, playing a mentally warped sculptor whose victims are turned into wax figures. It also tested her patience; she "loathed" being a model for a wax statue.

"That is no fun! They pour this stuff all over you to make a mold, and then some genius reforms the whole thing into wax," Ms. Kirk told the Web site.

During the rest of the 1950s, she often appeared in television anthologies before being cast opposite Peter Lawford in The Thin Man, which aired on NBC from 1957 to 1959.

The pair played sophisticated married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles in the series based on the Dashiell Hammett book and MGM movies that had starred William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Known for being outspoken, Ms. Kirk worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to campaign against capital punishment in the late 1950s. Before the state assembly, she spoke against the death sentence of Caryl Chessman -- who was convicted on robbery, kidnapping and rape charges -- and visited him in prison several times before he was executed in 1960.

"It made headlines but it hurt her career too," said Dale Olson, her former publicist.

After the Watts riots in 1965, she helped establish and fund two preschool programs in the area.

After appearing in several New York plays, she made her movie debut in Our Very Own (1950) with Farley Granger and Ann Blyth. She went on to appear in more than a dozen other films. As her acting career waned in the 1960s, Ms. Kirk took stage roles and appeared as a celebrity contestant on game shows.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

'Father Knows Best' star Jane Wyatt dies

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LOS ANGELES - Actress Jane Wyatt died October 20th in her sleep of natural causes at her Bel-Air home, according to publicist Meg McDonald. She was 96.

To the millions watching the 1950s TV show "Father Knows Best," Wyatt was the wholesome stay-at-home mom who, the series' title notwithstanding, could be counted on every week to solve crises on the homefront.

"Each script always solved a little problem that was universal," she told The Associated Press in 1989. "It appealed to everyone. I think the world is hankering for a family. People may want to be free, but they still want a nuclear family."

Wyatt had a successful film career in the 1930s and '40s, notably as Ronald Colman's lover in 1937's "Lost Horizon." She worked throughout the 1970s and 80s, appearing on TV shows including "St. Elsewhere."

But it was her years as Robert Young's TV wife, Margaret Anderson, on "Father Knows Best" that brought the actress her lasting fame. She gamely delivered lines like "Eat your dinner, dear," or "How did you do in school today?"

She appeared in 207 half-hour episodes from 1954 to 1960 and won three Emmys as best actress in a dramatic series in the years 1958 to 1960. The show began as a radio sitcom in 1949; it moved to television in 1954.

In later years critics claimed that shows like "Father Knows Best" and "Ozzie and Harriet" presented a glossy, unreal view of the American family.

In defense, Wyatt commented in 1966: "We tried to preserve the tradition that every show had something to say. The children were complicated personally, not just kids. We weren't just five Pollyannas."

It was a tribute to the popularity of the show that after its run ended, it continued in reruns on CBS and ABC for three years in prime-time, a TV rarity. The show came to an end because Young, who had also played the father in the radio version, had enough. Wyatt remarked in 1965 that she was tired, too.

"The first year was pure joy," she said. "The second year was when the problems set in. We licked them, and the third year was smooth going. Fatigue began to set in during the fourth year. We got through the fifth year because we all thought it would be the last. The sixth? Pure hell."

The role wasn't the only time in her 60 years in films and TV that Wyatt was cast as the warm, compassionate wife and mother. She even played Mr. Spock's mom in the original "Star Trek" series and the feature "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home."

"In real life my grandmother embodied the persona of Margaret Anderson," said grandson Nicholas Ward. "She was loving and giving and always gave her time to other people."

"Ninety-six and a few months old is a wonderful life," her son, Christopher Ward, said Sunday.

She got her start in films in the mid-'30s, appearing in "One More River," "Great Expectations," "We're Only Human" and "The Luckiest Girl in the World." When Frank Capra chose her to play the Shangri-la beauty in "Lost Horizon," her reputation was made. Moviegoers were entranced by the scene — chaste by today's standards — in which Colman sees her swimming nude in a mountain lake.

Wyatt enjoyed career longevity with her reliable portrayals of genteel, understanding women. Among the notable films:

"Buckskin Frontier" (with Richard Dix), "None But the Lonely Heart" (Cary Grant), "Boomerang" (Dana Andrews), "Gentleman's Agreement" (Gregory Peck), "Pitfall" (Dick Powell), "No Minor Vices" (Dana Andrews), "Canadian Pacific" (Randolph Scott), "My Blue Heaven" (Betty Grable, Dan Dailey) and "Criminal Lawyer" (Pat O'Brien).

"Father Knows Best" enjoyed such lasting popularity in reruns and people's memories that the cast returned years later for two reunion movies. She also remained active on other projects and in charity work.

Wyatt was born in Campgaw, N.J., into a wealthy family in 1910, according to McDonald, her publicist. She was schooled at the fashionable Miss Chapin's school and Barnard College.

She left college after two years to apprentice at the Berkshire Playhouse in Stockbridge, Mass., alternating between Berkshire and Broadway and appearing with Charles Laughton, Louis Calhern, Lillian Gish and Osgood Perkins.

In 1935 she married Edgar Ward in Santa Fe, N.M., whom she met while in college. They had two sons, Christopher and Michael.

Her sons said their mother had had health problems since a stroke at 85, but that her mind was sharp until her death. "She continued to go to the theater, loved movies and spent time in her garden. She enjoyed her latter years," said Nicholas Ward.

A funeral Mass was scheduled for Friday, followed by a private burial.

Wyatt also is survived by three grandchildren Nicholas, Andrew and Laura; and five great grandchildren.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Former Major League Pitcher Joe Niekro Dead at 61

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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -Former major league pitcher Joe Niekro, Houston's career victory leader, died Friday, Astros president Tal Smith said. He was 61.

The two-time 20-game winner suffered a brain aneurysm Thursday and was taken to South Florida Baptist Hospital in nearby Plant City, where he lived. He later was transferred to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died.

"It came as a real shock to us," Smith said. "He was a great guy. He had a real spark and a great sense of humor."

Smith said Niekro did not have an active role with the Astros but kept in contact with many of his former Houston teammates.

Niekro, father of San Francisco Giants first baseman Lance Niekro, won 221 games in his career but never became as well known as his Hall of Fame brother, Phil.

Like his older brother, who won 318 games, Joe Niekro found success after developing the knuckleball and pitched into his 40s. They had a combined 539 major league victories, a record for brothers.

Smith said he was told of Niekro's death by Enos Cabell, one of the Niekro's Astros teammates.

"Enos said he just visited with him a few weeks ago in Cooperstown," Smith said. "Enos said he seemed healthy and full of life. This just came as a sudden shock."

Niekro won a franchise-best 144 games in 11 seasons with the Astros from 1975 to 1985, when he was traded to the New York Yankees. He was an All-Star in 1979, when he went 21-11 with a 3.00 ERA and followed up with a 20-12 record in 1980.

He beat the Dodgers in a one-game playoff that clinched Houston's first postseason berth in 1980. Seven years later, in his 21st season, he finally appeared in the World Series with the Minnesota Twins.

Niekro was born on Nov. 7, 1944 in Martins Ferry, Ohio. A third-round draft pick of the Cubs in 1966, he broke into the majors in 1967 and appeared in 702 games, including 500 starts, in 22 years with the Cubs, Padres, Tigers, Braves, Astros, Yankees and Twins.

Niekro, who once was suspended for getting caught on the mound with a nail file in his back pocket, pitched his final game in April 1988 - at age 43. He finished 221-204 with a 3.59 ERA, including 144-116 with a 3.22 ERA for the Astros.

Smith said the team was waiting on funeral arrangements before deciding how to honor Niekro.

"He played a very prominent role in our first trip to the playoffs (in 1980)," Smith said. "He was very popular with our fans, and he was truly one of our all-time greats."

 

[sweet soft kiss]

Marlin McKeever

A hospital spokeswoman declined to give the cause of death, but McKeever had fallen and hit his head in his Long Beach home earlier this week and was found by his wife, Judy. McKeever initially indicated he was all right but was later unresponsive, and paramedics were called. McKeever slipped into a coma, and later a blood clot was removed from his brain.

A two-time All-American who played offensive and defensive end as well as fullback and punter for USC from 1958-60, McKeever was selected in the first round of the 1961 NFL draft by the Rams. He fashioned a 13-year pro career as a tight end and linebacker with the Rams, Minnesota Vikings, Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles.

McKeever and his twin brother, Mike, had been standouts at Mt. Carmel High in Los Angeles who were featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. But Mike's career as an All-American left guard at USC was curtailed by a head injury suffered against Stanford his senior year that resulted in two blood clots in his brain.

Despite being drafted by the Rams in the 13th round, Mike never played pro football and died at age 27 in 1967 after spending 22 months in a coma after an automobile accident.

"I've learned to live with the death of Mike, but I've never gotten over it," McKeever told the Long Beach Press-Telegram in 2003. "There's not a day that passes that I don't think of him. He was part of me. He will always be part of me."

Marlin McKeever also was involved in a serious automobile accident in 1966 with Rams teammate Roman Gabriel in which McKeever's right ring finger was severed.

McKeever was in charge of the Trojan Football Alumni Club and had been one of a handful of former Trojan greats issued a sideline credential for the 2006 Rose Bowl against Texas.

USC's leading receiver in 1959 and 1960, he caught a 21-yard touchdown pass during an eventual 17-6 upset victory over No. 11 UCLA in 1960, earning him honors as the Trojans' player of the game. Legendary USC Coach John McKay, then in his first year with the Trojans, would later say that the victory saved his job.

Both McKeevers also competed in the discus throw and shot put for the USC track team.

They also had brief acting careers, appearing together in "The Three Stooges Meet Hercules" (1962) and as football players in the 1961 Disney film "The Absent-Minded Professor."

USC Coach Pete Carroll said McKeever and Marv Goux, the former Trojan football player and coach who died in 2002, had provided insight into the rich history of the Trojans football program after Carroll was hired before the 2001 season.

"He was a great friend," Carroll said of McKeever, who in 1993 had asked the school to consider him for the athletic director post that went to Mike Garrett. "He was obviously a big factor just being around, just introducing me to the program and the people and what the Trojan family is all about."

McKeever, who was born Jan. 1, 1940, in Cheyenne, Wyo., was an honors finance student at USC and had worked as a stockbroker and insurance executive after his football career ended. In 1974, he lost his election bid as a Republican candidate in the 72nd Assembly District, which at the time encompassed all of Santa Ana and most of Garden Grove.

McKeever also served as director of player relations for the short-lived World Football League in 1974 and was vice president for player administration for the Southern California Sun of the WFL.

 

[sweet soft kiss]

Former Heavyweight Champion Found Deac

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Former heavyweight champion Trevor Berbick was found dead in a church courtyard Saturday with chop wounds to his head in a suspected homicide.

Police have arrested a man and were interrogating him at the Port Antonio police station in Portland, Constable Sheldon Francis said.

Berbick's body was discovered about 6:30 a.m. in his hometown parish of Portland, constable Beverly Howell said. The former fighter, believed to be 52, was pronounced dead by a doctor in the church courtyard.

Police did not have a motive and there was no word yet on what kind of weapon was used or how many people were involved in Berbick's death.

Berbick, beset by legal problems following his retirement from the ring, lost his heavyweight title to Mike Tyson and was the last boxer to fight Muhammad Ali.

After beating Ali in 1981 in a unanimous decision in the Bahamas, Berbick went on to win the WBC heavyweight title four years later in a decision over Pinklon Thomas. Berbick's reign was short, however, as a 20-year-old Tyson knocked Berbick out in the second round on Nov. 22, 1986, to become the youngest heavyweight champion.

In his loss to Tyson in Las Vegas, Berbick was knocked down twice in the second round. After trying to get up from the second knockdown he fell another two times.

Berbick fought from 1976 to 2000, finishing with a 50-11-1 record, including 33 knockouts. He also fought for Jamaica at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. He was a strong puncher who moved well and had the potential to be a lasting force in the heavyweight division before the emergence of Tyson.

In spanning the Ali and Tyson eras, Berbick beat such fighters as Iran Barkley, Greg Page and John Tate. Among his losses were those to Buster Douglas, Renaldo Snipes and Larry Holmes.

Berbick's career soured following the loss to Tyson and he began to run into legal trouble.

“We have our challenges in life but Trevor seemed to handle his challenges very badly,” said C. Lloyd Allen, former president of the Jamaica Boxing Board and a close friend. “Once he lost to Tyson he just went down a slippery slope.”

In 1991, Berbick was convicted of misdemeanor assault for attacking his former business manager, who testified the boxer put a gun to her head and accused her of stealing money from him.

The following year, he was convicted in Florida of raping a family baby sitter and was sentenced to four years in prison. He also was convicted in 1992 of second-degree grand theft for forging his ex-wife's signature to get a mortgage on a home.

After serving 15 months in prison, Berbick was deported from the United States. He went to Canada, where he lived for a time following the 1976 Olympics. He eventually moved back to the U.S., but was deported a second time.

He had been living in Norwich district, a remote, farming community, in Portland parish, since 2002. Recently, he had been coaching boxing at clinics in Trinidad.

He also hoped to open a gym in Portland and to become a boxing promoter – dreams that Allen said he felt were unrealistic because the sport was no longer popular in the island.

“He was a decent human being despite the hiccups in his life. He was a magnaminous person, always concerned about young boxers,” said Allen, who first met Berbick in 1974, before he got into boxing, and last saw him two months ago in Kingston.

Though Berbick was believed to be 52, according to boxing records, other reports said he was as old as 56 or as young as 49.

“Legally, I'm a spirit,” he once said. “I have no age.”

 

[JennyOmanHill]

William Styron, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist, Dies at 81

http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/2000/16/images/Styron,%20William.jpg

Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- William Styron, whose novel ``The Confessions of Nat Turner'' won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, died in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, aged 81.

Styron died yesterday of pneumonia following years of illness, the New York Times said, citing his youngest daughter, Alexandra, 40.

Author Kurt Vonnegut, a longtime friend of Styron's, told the Associated Press, ``He was dramatic, he was fun. He was strong and proud and he was awfully good with the language. I hated to see him end this way.''

Styron's last novel, ``Sophie's Choice,'' was published in 1979. The story of a Holocaust survivor's mental struggles was a best-seller and became a movie for which lead actress Meryl Streep won an Academy Award.

Since then, Styron became known for his 1990 memoir of depression, ``Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.'' A review in the American Journal of Psychiatry suggested making the book required reading for new psychiatrists.

In 2004, he joined CBS reporter Mike Wallace and newspaper columnist Art Buchwald to discuss their battles with depression at a treatment center in Atlanta. They called the event, ``An Evening with `the Blues Brothers.'''

From the time his first novel, ``Lie Down in Darkness,'' was published in 1951, Styron was widely read and was often cited as a leading writer of his generation.

In 1967, he completed ``The Confessions of Nat Turner,'' a tale of the slave revolt Turner led in 1831 in Virginia, near his childhood home. The book was praised in The New Yorker and won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1968. At the same time, African- American critics penned a book taking exception to the work's language and history.

Styron's other books included ``The Long March,'' a memoir of his service in the Marines during World War II, and ``Set This House on Fire.''

Along with his writing, Styron was an activist who donated to the political campaigns of his friend Senator Hillary Clinton. He took part in the successful 1994 campaign to prevent construction of a Walt Disney Co. theme park near the Civil War battlefield at Manassas, Virginia.

William Styron is survived by his wife, Rose; four children, Alexandra, Susanna, Paola and Thomas; and eight grandchildren, the Times reported.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Hall of Fame Coach Red Auerbach Dies

His genius was building a basketball dynasty in Boston, his gift was straight talk, his signature was the pungent cigar he lit up and savored after every victory.

Red Auerbach, the Hall of Famer who guided the Celtics to 16 championships - first as a coach and later as general manager - died. He was 89.

Auerbach died of a heart attack near his home in Washington, according to an NBA official, who didn't want to be identified. His last public appearance was when he received the Navy's Lone Sailor Award during a ceremony in the nation's capital.

Auerbach's death was announced by the Celtics, who still employed him as team president. Next season will be dedicated to him, they said.

"He was relentless and produced the greatest basketball dynasty so far that this country has ever seen and certainly that the NBA has ever seen," said Bob Cousy, the point guard for many of Auerbach's championship teams, who referred to his coach by his given name. "This is a personal loss for me. Arnold and I have been together since 1950. I was fortunate that I was able to attend a function with him Wednesday night. ... I am so glad now that I took the time to be there and spend a few more moments with him."

Tom Heinsohn, who played under Auerbach and then coached the Celtics when he was their general manager, remembered his personal side.

"He was exceptional at listening and motivating people to put out their very best," Heinsohn said. "In my playing days he once gave me a loaded cigar and six months later I gave him one. That was our relationship. We had a tremendous amount of fun and the game of basketball will never see anyone else like him."

Auerbach's 938 victories made him the winningest coach in NBA history until Lenny Wilkens overtook him during the 1994-95 season.

"Beyond his incomparable achievements, Red had come to be our basketball soul and our basketball conscience," NBA commissioner David Stern said, "the void left by his death will never be filled."

Auerbach's nine titles as a coach came in the 1950s and 1960s - including eight straight from 1959 through 1966 - and then through shrewd deals and foresight he became the architect of Celtics teams that won seven more championships in the 1970s and 1980s.

Phil Jackson matched those record nine championships when the Los Angeles Lakers won the title in 2001-02.

"Red was a true champion and one whose legacy transcends the Celtics and basketball," Sen. Ted Kennedy said. "He was the gold standard in coaching and in civic leadership, and he set an example that continues today. We all knew and loved Red in the Kennedy family."

Auerbach was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1969. The jersey No. 2 was retired by the Celtics in his honor during the 1984-85 season.

"He was a unique personality, a combination of toughness and great, great caring about people," said author John Feinstein, who last year collaborated on a book with Auerbach on the coach's reflections of seven decades in basketball. "He cared about people much more than it showed in his public face, and that's why people cared about him."

With the Celtics, he made deals that brought Bill Russell, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale to Boston. He drafted Larry Bird a year early when the Indiana State star was a junior to make sure Bird would come to Boston.

"Red Auerbach was one of the most influential people in my life," Bird said. "Not only was he an inspiration to me throughout my career, he became a close friend as well. There could only be one Red Auerbach and I'll always be grateful for having the opportunity to experience his genius and his dedication to winning through teamwork."

Auerbach coached championship teams that featured players such as Russell, Cousy, Heinsohn, Bill Sharman, K.C. Jones and Sam Jones, all inducted into the Hall of Fame.

After stepping down as general manager in 1984, Auerbach served as president of the Celtics and occasionally attended team practices into the mid-1990s, although his role in the draft and personnel decisions had diminished.

"Red was a guy who always introduced new things," Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca told The Associated Press in an interview this month. "He had some of the first black players in the league and some people didn't like that, but you've got to do what's right for the fans."

When Rick Pitino took the president's title when he became coach in 1997, Auerbach became vice chairman of the board. After Pitino resigned in 2001, Auerbach regained the title of president and remained vice chairman. When the team was sold in 2002 to a group headed by Wyc Grousbeck, Auerbach stayed on as president.

Through all those changes and titles, Auerbach didn't lose his direct manner of speaking, such as when he discussed the parquet floor of the Boston Garden shortly before the Celtics' longtime home closed in September 1995.

"The whole thing was a myth," Auerbach said. "People thought not only that there were dead spots, but that we knew where every one was and we could play accordingly.

"Now, did you ever watch a ballplayer go up and down the court at that speed and pick out a dead spot?" he asked. "If our players worried about that, thinking that's going to help them win, they're out of their cotton-picking mind. But if the other team thought that: Hey, good for us."

As Celtics president, Auerbach shuttled between Boston and his home in the nation's capital, where he led an active lifestyle that included playing racquetball and tennis into his mid-70s.

Auerbach underwent two procedures in May 1993 to clear blocked arteries. He had been bothered by chest discomfort at various times beginning in 1986.

Auerbach was also hospitalized a year ago, but he was soon active again and attended the Celtics' home opener. Asked that night what his thoughts were, he replied in his usual blunt manner: "What goes through your mind is, 'When the hell are we going to win another one? I mean, it's as simple as that."

Auerbach had planned to be at the Celtics' opener this season, in Boston next Wednesday against the New Orleans Hornets.

In his 16 seasons as the Celtics' coach, Auerbach berated referees and paced the sideline with a rolled-up program in his clenched fist. The cigar came out when he was sure of another Celtic triumph.

He had a 938-479 regular-season coaching record and a 99-69 playoff mark.

Auerbach had a reputation as a keen judge of talent, seemingly always getting the best of trades with fellow coaches and general managers.

In 1956, he traded Ed Macauley and Cliff Hagan to St. Louis for the Hawks' first-round pick and ended up with Russell - probably the greatest defensive center of all time and the heart of 11 championship teams.

In 1978, he drafted Bird in the first round even though he would have to wait a year before Bird could become a professional.

Before the 1980 draft, the Celtics traded the No. 1 overall selection to Golden State for Parish and the No. 3 pick. The Warriors took Joe Barry Carroll. The Celtics chose McHale.

In 1981, Boston chose Brigham Young guard Danny Ainge in the second round. Ainge was playing baseball in the Toronto Blue Jays organization at the time, but was freed after a court battle to play for the Celtics.

In June 1983, another one-sided deal brought guard Dennis Johnson from Phoenix for seldom-used backup center Rick Robey.

Born Arnold Auerbach in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Sept. 20, 1917, he attended Seth Low Junior College in New York and George Washington University. His playing career was undistinguished. In three seasons at George Washington he scored 334 points in 56 games. He would often attend games at GW's Smith Center, where the court is named in his honor.

As a coach, he was an instant success, posting the best record of his career in his first season. He led the Washington Capitols to a 49-11 mark in 1946-47, the NBA's debut season, and took them to the playoff semifinals.

The Capitols had winning records the next two seasons under Auerbach, who moved on to the Tri-Cities Blackhawks for one season in 1949-50. They had a 28-29 mark, Auerbach's only losing record in 20 years as an NBA coach.

In the NBA's first four seasons, the Celtics never had a winning record. But Auerbach changed that dramatically when he succeeded Alvin "Doggy" Julian as Boston's coach for the 1950-51 campaign.

They went 39-30 that year, and the Celtics never had a losing record in his 16 seasons on the bench. Boston's lowest winning percentage was .611 in his last 10 seasons.

His last game as coach was on April 28, 1966, when Boston edged the Lakers 95-93 in Game 7 of the finals to win the NBA title. He was just 48 years old, but ready to move on.

On Feb. 13 of that season, Auerbach was honored at halftime of a loss to Los Angeles at Boston Garden.

"They say that losing comes easier as you grow older," he said after the game. "But losing keeps getting harder for me. I just can't take it like I used to. It's time for me to step out."

Russell became player-coach the next season, while Auerbach concentrated on his job as general manager. Russell was the first of five Boston coaches who had played for Auerbach.

Auerbach is survived by his two daughters, Nancy Auerbach Collins and Randy Auerbach; his granddaughter, Julie Auerbach Flieger, and three great-grandchildren.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Veteran '60 Minutes' journalist Ed Bradley dies

http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20061109/160_ed_bradley2_061109.jpg

Ed Bradley, a veteran CBS News broadcast journalist and "60 Minutes" correspondent for the past quarter century, has died of leukemia.

Bradley, 65, died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, a network spokesperson has said.

Bradley has received numerous awards for journalistic excellence during his career.

He has received 19 Emmys, most recently for a story that covered the reopening of the 50-year-old murder case of Emmett Till.

The most recent honour Bradley received was the Lifetime Achievement award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

He has also received a Peabody award for a report on Africans dying of AIDS, and the prestigious Paul White Award for contributing to electronic journalism.

The 2005-06 season of the show marked Bradley's 25th year with "60 Minutes." He joined the show in 1981.

Larry King, of Larry King Live, told CNN he was stunned by the news that Bradley had died.

"I was really shocked," he said. "I was with Ed a couple of months ago and he wasn't looking good. He told me he had pretty much licked it and recovered, but if you saw him you had grave doubts. He looked like someone close to buying it and it felt terrible to be around him because he was such a vibrant guy. Ed Bradley sums up in a couple of words: He was a good guy. He was just a good guy."

Bradley once told an interviewed he grew up in a rough Philadelphia neighbourhood, where his parents worked 20-hour days at two jobs each.

"I was told `You can be anything you want, kid,'" he told the interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."

 

[linuxgeek]

Jack Palance

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15657511/

Jack Palance dies at 87
Oscar-winner died of natural causes in his California home

LOS ANGELES - Jack Palance, the craggy-faced menace in “Shane,” “Sudden Fear” and other films who turned successfully to comedy in his 70s with his Oscar-winning self-parody in “City Slickers,” died Friday.

Palance died of natural causes at his home in Montecito, Calif., surrounded by family, said spokesman Dick Guttman. He was 87.

When Palance accepted his Oscar for best supporting actor he delighted viewers of the 1992 Academy Awards by dropping to the stage and performing one-armed push-ups to demonstrate his physical prowess.

“That’s nothing, really,” he said slyly. “As far as two-handed push-ups, you can do that all night, and it doesn’t make a difference whether she’s there or not.”

That year’s Oscar host, Billy Crystal, turned the moment into a running joke, making increasingly outlandish remarks about Palance’s accomplishments throughout the show.

It was a magic moment that epitomized the actor’s 40 years in films. Always the iconoclast, Palance had scorned most of his movie roles.

“Most of the stuff I do is garbage,” he once told a reporter, adding that most of the directors he worked with were incompetent, too.

“Most of them shouldn’t even be directing traffic,” he said.

Movie audiences, though, were electrified by the actor’s chiseled face, hulking presence and the calm, low voice that made his screen presence all the more intimidating.

Tough guy from early on

His film debut came in 1950, playing a murderer named Blackie in “Panic in the Streets.”

After a war picture, “Halls of Montezuma,” he portrayed the ardent lover who stalks the terrified Joan Crawford in 1952’s “Sudden Fear.” The role earned him his first Academy Award nomination for supporting actor.

The following year brought his second nomination when he portrayed Jack Wilson, the swaggering gunslinger who bullies peace-loving Alan Ladd into a barroom duel in the Western classic “Shane.”

That role cemented Palance’s reputation as Hollywood’s favorite menace, and he went on to appear in such films as “Arrowhead” (as a renegade Apache), “Man in the Attic” (as Jack the Ripper), “Sign of the Pagan” (as Attila the Hun) and “The Silver Chalice” (as a fictional challenger to Jesus).

Other prominent films included “Kiss of Fire,” “The Big Knife,” “I Died a Thousand Deaths,” “Attack!” “The Lonely Man” and “House of Numbers.”

Weary of being typecast, Palance moved with his wife and three young children to Lausanne, Switzerland, at the height of his career.

He spent six years abroad but returned home complaining that his European film roles were “the same kind of roles I left Hollywood because of.”

His career failed to regain momentum upon his return, and his later films included “The Professionals,” “The Desperadoes,” “Monte Walsh,” “Chato’s Land” and “Oklahoma Crude.”

When he appeared as Fidel Castro in 1969’s “Che!” about Latin American revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, he told a reporter: “At this stage of my career, I don’t formulate reasons why I take roles — the price was right.”

He also appeared frequently on television in the 1960s and ‘70s, winning an Emmy in 1965 for his portrayal of an end-of-the-line boxer in “Requiem for a Heavyweight.”

He and his daughter Holly Palance hosted the oddity show “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” and he starred in the short-lived series “The Greatest Show on Earth” and “Bronk.”

Forty-one years after his auspicious film debut, Palance played against type, to a degree. His “City Slickers” character, Curly, was still a menacing figure to dude ranch visitors Crystal, Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby, but with a comic twist. And Palance delivered his one-liners with surgeon-like precision.

Career journey had many twists

Through most of his career, Palance maintained his distance from the Hollywood scene. In the late 1960s he bought a sprawling cattle and horse ranch north of Los Angeles. He also owned a bean farm near his home town of Lattimer, Pa.

Although most of his film portrayals were as primitives, Palance was well-spoken and college-educated. His favorite pastimes away from the movie world were painting and writing poetry and fiction.

A strapping 6-feet-4 and 210 pounds, Palance excelled at sports and won a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina. He left after two years, disgusted by commercialization of the sport.

He decided to use his size and strength as a prizefighter, but after two hapless years that resulted in little more than a broken nose that would serve him well as a screen villain, he joined the Army Air Corps in 1942.

A year later he was discharged after his B-24 lost power on takeoff and he was knocked unconscious.

The GI Bill of Rights provided Palance’s tuition at Stanford University, where he studied journalism. But the drama club lured him, and he appeared in 10 comedies. Just before graduation he left school to try acting professionally in New York.

“I had always wanted to express myself through words,” he said in a 1957 interview. “But I always thought I was too big to be an actor. I could see myself knocking over tables. I thought acting was for little ... guys.”

Humble beginnings

He made his Broadway debut in a comedy, “The Big Two,” in which he had but one line, spoken in Russian, a language his parents spoke at home.

The play lasted only a few weeks, and he supported himself as a short-order cook, waiter, lifeguard and hot dog seller between other small roles in the theater.

His career breakthrough came when he was chosen as Anthony Quinn’s understudy in the road company of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” then replaced Marlon Brando in the Stanley Kowalski role on Broadway. The show’s director, Elia Kazan, chose him in 1950 to for “Panic in the Streets.”

Born Walter Jack Palahnuik in Pennsylvania coal country on Feb. 18, 1919, Palance was the third of five children of Ukrainian immigrants. His father worked the mines for 39 years until he died of black lung disease in 1955.

In interviews, Palance recalled bitterly that his family had to buy groceries at the company store, though prices were cheaper elsewhere.

Yet, he told a Saturday Evening Post writer, he had “a good childhood, like most kids think they have.”

“It was fine to play there in the third-growth birch and aspen, along the sides of slag piles,” he said.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Oscar-Nominated Writer Schrader Dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Leonard Schrader, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and co-wrote the critically praised "Mishima," has died. He was 62.

Schrader, who lived in Los Angeles, died last week of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his brother, "Taxi Driver" screenwriter Paul Schrader, said Saturday.

Schrader had a number of ailments, including cancer, his brother said.

He was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., to a family of Dutch Calvinists who forbade the brothers to see any movies.

"That was a church edict," Paul Schrader said. "What they called worldly amusements were prohibited."

Schrader didn't see his first film until he was in college in the 1960s.

Schrader attended the local Calvin College and received a master's degree at the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, where according to his Web site he studied with Kurt Vonnegut and Jorge Luis Borges.

In 1969 and the early 1970s, Schrader lived in Japan, where he taught American literature.

His first film was "The Yakuza," co-written in the 1970s with his brother and starring Robert Mitchum. Sydney Pollack directed.

Other films included 1985's "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters," based on the life of the Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, whom Schrader had met before his ritual suicide in 1970. Schrader co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Chieko, and his brother. Paul Schrader directed the movie, while George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola were executive producers.

Schrader's adaptation of a book by Argentinian novelist Manuel Puig became "Kiss of the Spider Woman." It earned him a 1985 Oscar nomination and won William Hurt the award for best actor.

Survivors include his wife and brother.

 

[Tati]

R&B Crooner Gerald Levert Dies at 40

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP
NEW YORK (Nov. 10) - Gerald Levert , the fiery singer of passionate R&B love songs and the son of O'Jays singer Eddie Levert, died on Friday. He was 40.

His label, Atlantic Records, confirmed that Levert died at his home in Cleveland, Ohio.

"All of us at Atlantic are shocked and deeply saddened by his untimely death. He was one of the greatest voices of our time, who sang with unmatched soulfulness and power, as well as a tremendously gifted composer and an accomplished producer," the statement read.

Dan Bomeli, public relations manager at University Hospitals Geauga Medical Center in suburban Cleveland, said Levert had been brought to the hospital. Bomeli said Levert had died but he had no further details.

Over his two-decade music career, Levert sold millions of albums and had numerous R&B hits.

Levert first gained fame in 1986 as a member of the R&B trio LeVert, which also included his brother, Sean, and childhood friend Marc Gordon. They quickly racked up hits like "(Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop) Goes My Mind," "Casanova," and "Baby I'm Ready."

But Gerald Levert 's voice - powerful and soulful, almost a carbon copy of his father's - was always the focal point, and in 1991, he made his solo debut with the album "Private Line," which included a hit duet with his dad, "Baby Hold on to Me." His father also recorded the successful album "Father & Son."

Levert was known for his sensual, romantic songs, but unlike a Luther Vandross , whose voice and songs were more genteel, Levert's music was explosive and raw - his 2002 album was titled "The G Spot."

Though Levert was successful as a solo singer, in 1997 he got into group mode again - joining with R&B singers Johnny Gill and Keith Sweat for the supergroup of LSG. The self-titled album sold more than two million copies, and their hits included the sensual "My Body." Levert also worked with other artists as a songwriter and producer.

His most recent album was 2005's "Voices."

Levert had four children.

 

[linuxgeek]

Milton Friedman

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,20775682-664,00.html

MILTON Friedman, the Nobel laureate economist who shaped the philosophies of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and successive Federal Reserve chairmen, has died of heart failure. He was 94.
Friedman's view that inflation results from too much money chasing too few goods inspired a generation of central bankers, beginning with Paul Volcker, who was Fed chairman from 1979 until 1987. Volcker's successors Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke also credit Friedman's work as a blueprint for policy making.

"Among economic scholars, Milton Friedman had no peer," Bernanke said in a statement yesterday.

"The direct and indirect influences of his thinking on contemporary monetary economics would be difficult to overstate."

Friedman wrote, co-wrote or edited at least 32 books, including A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 with Anna Schwartz in 1963, and argued that the goal of monetary policy should be long-term, stable growth in the supply of money. He championed individual initiative and deregulation, and influenced decisions from severing the US dollar's peg to gold in the early 1970s to ending the military draft.

"In the 20th century, the only economist to match Milton for policy influence was John Maynard Keynes," said Robert Barro, professor of economics at Harvard University.

In his later years, Friedman advocated that the Fed adopt an inflation target, a numeric price goal which the central bank should pledge to hit over a specified period of time.

He supported George W. Bush's failed effort to overhaul Social Security, counselled California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and predicted that European monetary union would ultimately fail.

With his trademark pronouncement that inflation was "always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon", Friedman was among the Fed's most vocal critics as inflation accelerated through the 1960s and 1970s.

He said the central bank failed to control the supply of money, should relinquish its autonomy and be forced to focus on keeping money supply growth steady at about 3 per cent.

The Fed kept its independence. Friedman's arguments were acknowledged when Volcker launched an attack on inflation in 1979 by targeting money supply and pushing up interest rates to crush inflation.

Brooklyn-born Friedman travelled the world promoting balanced budgets and limited state spending. He joined Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board in the early 1980s, helping guide the president's views on government largesse and tax cuts.

He served as an adviser Margaret Thatcher during her 1979-90 tenure as British Prime minister, and pushed for a free-market economy, low taxation, and the sale of state-owned industries.

Bush also credited Friedman's ideas with bringing inflation under control in Chile, and the adoption of a flat tax in Russia.

In a May 2002 speech at the White House to honour Friedman on his 90th birthday, Bush said: "He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision: the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions. All of us owe a tremendous debt to this man's towering intellect and his devotion to liberty."

Friedman is survived by his wife Rose, two children, Janet and David; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Ruth Brown, Tony-Winner for Black and Blue, Is Dead at 78

http://www.jacneed.com/PhotoFile/Ruth_Brown.jpg

Ruth Brown, the influential and enduring rhythm and blues singer whose career was revitalized in part by her Tony Award-winning performance in the hit Broadway revue "Black and Blue", died on Nov. 17 of complications following a heart attack and a stroke that she suffered after surgery, according to the New York Times. She was 78.

Ms. Brown, whose long career began in the late ‘40s, died in Las Vegas, where, after a fallow period during which she struggled for work, she began a comeback in the mid-'70s. A stage career began when, in 1975, she played gospel singer Mahalia Jackson in a musical about the civil rights movement called "Selma". Soon after, she took on singing gigs in Las Vegas, and, in 1982, accepted a role in the 1982 Allen Toussaint Off-Broadway musical "Stagger Lee".

Three years later, she appeared in "Black and Blue" at the Theatre Musical de Paris in Paris. When it transferred to Broadway, Ms. Brown went with it. New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote, "Ruth Brown, the rhythm-and-blues chanteuse, applies sarcastic varnish and two-a-day burlesque timing to the ribald Andy Razaf lyrics of 'If I Can't Sell It, I'll Keep Sittin' on It.'"

The show ran for 829 performances and Ms. Brown—along with co-stars Linda Hopkins, Bunny Briggs, Savion Glover— won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

She made one more Broadway appearance, in the short-lived 1983 musical "Amen Corner". She continued to appear on the stage sporadically, starring in "Triplets, The Diva Musical" at New Jersey's TheatreFest, a 1998 blues revue in which she appeared with Carol Woods and Angela Robinson.

Following the success of "Black and Blue", Ms. Brown resumed her recording career, putting out "Blues and Broadway," a 1989 album which won a Grammy Award for best jazz vocal performance, female. She was also a radio host on the public radio shows "Harlem Hit Parade" and "BluesStage." The singer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Ms. Brown was also the original Motormouth Mabel in the John Waters film "Hairspray," which later inspired the hit Broadway musical.

She was born Ruth Weston in Portsmouth, VA, on Jan. 12, 1928. Like many of the soul singers of the rock 'n' roll era, she learned to sing in church, at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where her father directed the choir. She ran away from home at 17 with trumpeter Jimmy Brown, and took his name when they married. (The musician, it turned out, was already married, but Ruth Brown kept her new name anyway.) She later sang with bandleader Lucky Millinder. Her big break came, when, while singing at the Crystal Caverns in Washington D.C., disc jockey Willis Conover recommended her to Atlantic Records.

Ms. Brown became Atlantic's star act and was the best-selling black female performer of the early 1950s. During this time, she picked up many nicknames, including "The girl with a tear in her voice" and "Miss Rhythm," and Atlantic became known as "The House That Ruth Built." Among her hits during this period were "So Long," "Teardrops From My Eyes," "I'll Wait for You," "I Know," "5-10-15 Hours," "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean" and "Don't Deceive Me." She had 16 top 10 blues records including five number ones.

By the 1960s, however, the hits came to an end and she was all but forgotten, living on Long Island and working as a teacher's aide.

"Music is the greatest healer in the world," she told USA Today in 1997. "Sometimes, I'm very tired when I go on stage. But … all in all, I'm fine. Every day I wake up and if my name is not in the obituary column, I go to work."

Ruth Brown is survived by her sons Ronald Jackson and Earl Swanson of Las Vegas, and four siblings: Delia Weston of Las Vegas, Leonard Weston of Long Island and Alvin and Benjamin Weston of Portsmouth.

 

[linuxgeek]

Director Robert Altman

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15831581/

Director Robert Altman dies
Legendary filmmaker was at helm of 'M*A*S*H,' 'Nashville,' 'Gosford Park'

LOS ANGELES - Robert Altman’s production company said the director died at a Los Angeles hospital.

 

[montrealgirl]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15831581/

Director Robert Altman dies
Legendary filmmaker was at helm of 'M*A*S*H,' 'Nashville,' 'Gosford Park'

LOS ANGELES - Robert Altman’s production company said the director died at a Los Angeles hospital.

The Player is one of my favourite movies. What a wonderful director he was.

 

[hogjack]

Director Robert Altman dies 'Gosfor...ond time with headphones. It was worth it.

 

[linuxgeek]

Anita O'Day

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/11/23/obit.oday.ap/index.html

Hard-living jazz legend Anita O'Day dies at 87
November 24, 2006

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Anita O'Day, whose sassy renditions of "Honeysuckle Rose," "Sweet Georgia Brown" and other song standards that made her one of the most respected jazz vocalists of the 1940s and '50s, has died. She was 87.

O'Day died in her sleep early Thursday morning at a convalescent hospital in Los Angeles, California, where she was recovering from a bout with pneumonia, said her manager, Robbie Cavolina.

"On Tuesday night, she said to me, 'Get me out of here,'" Cavolina said. "But it didn't happen."

Once known as the "Jezebel of Jazz" for her reckless, drug-induced lifestyle, O'Day lived to sing -- and she did so from her teen years until this year when she released "Indestructible!"

"All I ever wanted to do is perform," she said in a June 1999 interview with The Associated Press. "When I'm singing, I'm happy. I'm doing what I can do and this is my contribution to life."

Cavolina recently completed a feature film about O'Day and accompanied her to shows and on tours.

"She got to see how many people really loved her at the shows we did, in New York, in London," Cavolina said. "She had come back after all of this time. She really lived a very full and exciting life."

O'Day was born in Chicago, Illinois. She left home at age 12 and often bragged about being "self-made" and never having a singing lesson.

She began her career in her teens and later recorded hits with Stan Kenton and Gene Krupa. Her highly stylized performance of songs like "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine," "Let Me Off Uptown," "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" made her famous the world over.

In her prime, O'Day was described as a scat singer and a natural improviser whose unique interpretations energized the most familiar songs. She inspired many singers, including June Christy and Chris Connor.

Her fame came at a price.

She suffered from a 16-year heroin addiction and an even longer alcohol problem. Wild, drug-related behavior and occasional stints in jail on drug charges earned her the nickname "Jezebel of Jazz," a term she hated.

"I tried everything," she once said. "Curiosity will make you go your own way."

She overdosed many times and on one occasion in the late 1940s, it was almost fatal.

The experience shocked her into giving up drugs, but she continued to drink.

Her 1981 memoir "High Times Hard Times" tells of her long struggle with drug addiction and her romance with drummer John Poole.

In late 1996, O'Day fell down the stairs of her Hemet, California, home after a drinking binge. She was admitted to a hospital with a broken arm but ended up with severe food poisoning and pneumonia.

She survived the ordeal but her recovery -- both physical and emotional -- was painful. She left the hospital in a wheelchair and didn't walk for nearly a year. Her right hand was paralyzed but worst of all, she said, she had lost her singing voice.

Although she blamed the complications on poor hospital care, the near-death experience convinced O'Day to give up alcohol.

It took nearly a year to get her voice back and start singing again. But once she did, she was right back on stage.

She received a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1997.

For the last years of her life, O'Day performed at various Los Angeles night spots.

O'Day had no children and no immediate family, Cavolina said.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Pat Dobson

DOBSON DEAD AT 64
WON 19 FOR YANKEES IN '74

SAN FRANCISCO - Pat Dobson, one of four pitchers to win 20 games for the Orioles in 1971, has died. He was 64.

Dobson died suddenly Wednesday, November 22nd, in the San Diego area, the San Francisco Giants said yesterday. He was a special assistant to Giants GM Brian Sabean this year, his ninth with the club.

The team didn't immediately release details about the cause of death. But Dobson's wife, Kathe, reportedly said he died one day after being diagnosed with leukemia.

Dobson went 20-8 with a 2.90 ERA for the AL champion Orioles in 1971, rounding out a famous rotation that also included Hall of Famer Jim Palmer (20-9), Dave McNally (21-5) and Mike Cuellar (20-9). The 1920 White Sox are the only other team in major league history to have four 20-game winners.

"He's one of four that everybody will remember," former Orioles manager Earl Weaver said. "He had a great year for us."

The next season, Dobson made the AL All-Star team with Baltimore. Though he finished that year 16-18, he had a solid 2.65 ERA.

"He had a great curveball," said Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, Dobson's teammate with the Orioles. "He was a real gamer, a real competitor. He didn't give in to anybody."

Dobson went 122-129 with a 3.54 ERA in 11 major league seasons and won a World Series ring with the 1968 Tigers. He was 19-15 with a 3.07 ERA for the 1974 Yankees. The right-hander also pitched for San Diego, Atlanta and Cleveland.

Dobson started Game 4 of the 1971 World Series against the Pirates and got a no-decision, allowing three runs and 10 hits in 51/3 innings. The Pirates beat Baltimore in seven games.

"He was a free spirit, and I enjoyed having him," Weaver said. "He was a pleasure to have on the team. He caused a lot of laughs, and he kept his teammates laughing."

Weaver, inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996, recalled that Dobson had a terrific curveball even when he was struggling with Detroit mostly as a reliever - but he rarely threw it for a strike.

So when the Orioles acquired him, Weaver spoke with pitching coach George Bamberger about getting Dobson to cut down on the curve so he could control it better.

"When he started throwing that curveball for a strike, it was all over," Weaver said. "He could throw the curveball at any time in the count."

After his playing career ended, Dobson spent eight seasons as a big league pitching coach for Milwaukee (1982-84), San Diego (1988-90), Kansas City (1991) and Baltimore (1996).

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Legendary Songwriter Betty Comden Dead at 89

23 Nov 2006

Betty Comden, the award-winning lyricist and librettist who — with writing partner Adolph Green — created such iconic New York musicals as Bells Are Ringing, Wonderful Town and On the Town, died Nov. 23 at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was 89.

The New York Times reports that the cause of Ms. Comden’s death was heart failure.

Born Elizabeth Cohen in Brooklyn, Ms. Comden teamed up with the late Green early in her career for a partnership that would last six decades. She and Green first hit the town in a sketch-comedy group called The Revuers, which also featured the late Judy Holliday. (It was for Holliday that the duo created the 1956 musical Bells Are Ringing; Holliday won a Tony Award for her performance and later repeated her role as Ella Peterson in the screen version of the classic musical.) They would go on to write several musicals that were love letters to her native city.

The Comden and Green outlook on life was easily identifiable: more sentimental than cynical; whimsical bordering on daffy; and making full use of the many cultural and tempermental contrasts within New York's citizenry. Their books were directly descended from the loopy, madcap plotlines of 1920s and 1930 Broadway musicals, while displaying more craftsmanship and disclipline.

Much of the nuts-and-bolts work was done by Ms. Comden. Librettist Peter Stone, speaking about how Comden and Green worked together, once told Playbill, "Adolph Green might have been the only writer in all of history who never wrote. Betty's the one who jotted everything down, Adolph jotted absolutely nothing down. I never saw him use a pen or pencil, let alone a typewriter. It would have been useless for him to even try to type because he was not on direct speaking terms with any sort of mechanical object. . . . The form and structure came from Betty, so did style and sensibility. Then what, you might ask, did Adolph do? The answer is: the madness. The sheer, outlandish, surreal, weird, goofy, uniquely Adolphian madness."

Critic Harold Clurman once wrote of the two: They "are frequently crude and gauche. Yet once in a while they can burst into a crazy improvisation which replaces judgment with the bubbling enthusiasm of kids who are wholly delighted to discover that not only the emperor but the entire court is naked. Betty Comden and Adolph Green just can't get over the exhilaration of not being grown up."

Comden and Green also enjoyed success as screenwriters. Although they only wrote ten films, their scripts include "Singin' in the Rain" as well as the Oscar-nominated "The Band Wagon" and "It's Always Fair Weather." Other titles included "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," "Auntie Mame," "Good News," "What a Way to Go!" and "The Barkleys of Broadway."

In "The Band Wagon," which concerned the creation of a Broadway-bound show, they created a version of themselves in bookwriters Lester and Lily Martin (played by Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray). In the movie, the characters were endlessly ebullient, bickered and made up on a regular basis, and wrote new plots and songs overnight. The characters were also married, and those Ms. Comden and Mr. Green never were, they were so inseparable in the public imagination, many thought they were a couple. (Mr. Green was long married to actress Phyllis Newman. Ms. Comden was married to businessman Steven Kyle, who died in 1979.)

Comden and Green also worked closely with their friend Leonard Bernstein, who had often accompanied them during their Revuers days. With Bernstein they created two of their best-known works, On the Town — a tale of three sailors on leave in Manhattan that boasted such tunes as “New York, New York,” “Lucky to Be Me” and “Lonely Town” — and Wonderful Town — the story of two sisters from Ohio who find themselves over their heads in Greenwich Village. That musical gave the world such songs as “Ohio,” “A Little Bit in Love,” “A Quiet Girl” and “It’s Love.”

It was Bernstein who gave the duo their big break. The composer called on his friends when he began working on a musical version of Jerome Robbins' ballet Fancy Free. The show needed a libettist-lyricist. The couple got the job and On the Town proved to be a hit when it opened in 1944 and a springboard for their career. It also contained what may be the lyricists' most famous song: "New York, New York." To this day, few songs are as closely associated with life in Gotham.

The other musicals for which the writing team — who also performed an acclaimed specialty act throughout the years entitled A Party With Betty Comden and Adolph Green — penned book and/or lyrics include Bells Are Ringing; On the Twentieth Century; Hallelujah, Baby!; Applause; Peter Pan; A Doll's Life; Do Re Mi and The Will Rogers Follies.

In 1991 Comden and Green were both awarded the Kennedy Center Honors. The duo also racked up numerous Tony Awards: 1953 (Wonderful Town wins Best Musical Tony), 1968 (Hallelujah, Baby! wins Tonys for Best Musical and Best Composer and Lyricist), 1970 (Applause wins Tony for Best Musical), 1978 (On the Twentieth Century wins Tonys for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical) and 1991 (The Will Rogers Follies wins Tony for Best Original Score).

Among the plethora of songs that came from the pens of Comden and Green are "Make Someone Happy," "Just in Time," "The Party's Over," "Long Before I Knew You," "Never Never Land," "Comes Once in a Lifetime," "I'm Just Taking My Time," "My Own Morning," "Never Met a Man I Didn't Like" and "Look Around.”

Betty Comden was born Elizabeth Cohen on May 3, 1917, in Brooklyn, to Leo Cohen, a lawyer, and his wife Rebecca, a teacher. She attended Erasmus Hall High School and later studied drama at New York University. She had dreams of an acting career and changed her name from Cohen to Comden and, according to the New York Times, has nose surgery. She had some early acting jobs with the Washington Square Players.

Haun also interviewed both Comden and Green in 1998, as the revival of On the Town was set to hit the New York stage. Both were overjoyed by the show's reemergence. Said Ms. Comden, "Just say that we’re thrilled to see it again and that we’re working on a new show. We go on, that’s all. That’s the best thing to say."

Ms. Comden had two children: a son Alan, who died in 1990, and a daughter Susanna Kyle, who survives her.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

William Diehl, 81

William Diehl, the bestselling author known best for "Sharky's Machine" and "Primal Fear" — fast-paced thrillers that became hit movies — died at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. He was 81.

The cause was an aortic aneurysm, said a longtime friend, Don Smith.

Diehl was a former journalist and photographer who became a novelist late in life after a dispirited awakening at his 50th birthday party. Over the next three decades he wrote nine novels that appealed to popular tastes with plotlines fueled by murder, greed, romance and other forms of mayhem.

For instance, in "27" (1990, later reissued as "The Hunt"), a woman is brutally murdered by Hitler's henchmen; in "Primal Fear" (1993), an archbishop is butchered by an angelic-looking Appalachian youth; in "Show of Evil" (1995), a young woman is found dead with a mysterious code printed in blood on the back of her head.

He was believed to have been nearly finished with his 10th novel when he was hospitalized last week. It is titled "Seven Ways to Die."

Diehl, a native of Jamaica, N.Y., often cited his experiences during World War II as a strong influence on his fiction. He lied about his age to join the Army Air Corps at 17 and served as a ball turret gunner on a B-24 during World War II. His conduct in that perilous job earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart and Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters.

Even without World War II, Diehl's life was more eventful than most.

According to family lore, Mae West was once his baby-sitter, before she became a Hollywood sex symbol.

On a school field trip in 1937, he witnessed the explosion of the Hindenburg, then the world's largest aircraft.

After the war, he graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in creative writing and history and in 1949 moved to Atlanta, where he joined the staff of the Atlanta Constitution. He got the job after staking out the newspaper lobby and waiting for editor Ralph McGill to walk by.

He remained at the paper as a reporter and columnist until 1955, then freelanced for several years. In 1960 he became the first managing editor of Atlanta magazine. He taught himself how to take photographs for his stories and later worked as a freelance photographer.

He met Martin Luther King Jr. in the mid-1960s as a photographer for the United States Information Agency and was swept up in the civil rights movement. He was attacked one night in 1967 while accompanying King on a tour of Mississippi by two assailants, who slashed his throat with a straight razor.

The turning point of his life came in a moment characterized more by bathos than pathos, however.

He had no permanent job and was on his second marriage in 1974 when he turned 50. Someone had given him a party with an ice-cream cake shaped like a typewriter, an allusion to Diehl's long-held dream of becoming a novelist.

The cake, too pretty to eat, melted into a gooey mess, which struck Diehl as a metaphor for his life.

"I'd been working for 30 years and what did I have to show for it?" he recalled thinking when he beheld the cake.

The next day, he sold all his cameras, borrowed $5,000 from his best friend, and resolved to launch his best and final career.

While on jury duty some time later, he hatched the plot of "Sharky's Machine" (1978), which races around the globe from Italy to Hong Kong to Atlanta, where a detective stumbles into a complex web of extortion, sex and murder. Critics raved. It was turned into a successful 1981 movie directed by Burt Reynolds, who also starred as Sgt. Tom Sharky. Diehl had a cameo role as a pimp.

"Primal Fear," which followed the same trajectory from bestseller lists to big screen, introduced Martin Vail, a high-profile defense lawyer who takes on a seemingly hopeless case. Diehl drew on memories of his throat slashing to add grit and horror to a passage in "Primal Fear."

The movie based on "Primal Fear" was released in 1996 and starred Richard Gere as the lawyer and Edward Norton as the improbable killer.

His last novel was "Eureka," published in 2002. Somewhat of a departure from his earlier works, it is a historical thriller that covers the first four decades of the 1900s. Publishers Weekly called it "his best novel ever."

Diehl nearly died while writing "Eureka." He was in severe pain for two years, the lingering result of having suffered frostbite while flying a mission during World War II. He wound up having six toes amputated in 2001, but the pain subsided and he was able to complete the novel.

He concocted the violent scenarios in most of his books in the placid environs of Georgia's St. Simons Island, where he lived for 20 years with his third wife, Virginia Gunn, a former Atlanta television reporter. Disenchantment with his medical care was one of the main reasons they moved to a six-acre farm in Woodstock, about 45 minutes north of Atlanta, five years ago.

In addition to Gunn, Diehl is survived by five children and eight grandchildren.