Literotica Cemetary

[sweet soft kiss]

Mazol Tov Mr. Cope

Cope, Steelers Announcer, `Terrible Towel' Creator, Dies at 79

By Aaron Kuriloff

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Myron Cope, the former Pittsburgh Steelers announcer who supported the team by waving his ``Terrible Towel,'' has died. He was 79.

Cope died this morning at a nursing home in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, the Associated Press reported, citing former Steelers executive Joe Gordon. Cope died of respiratory failure, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said.

Cope spent a record 35 years as color analyst for the National Football League team, earning a place in the Radio Hall of Fame in 2005 and a Pete Rozelle Award for exceptional contributions to professional football in radio and television.

He pioneered the ``Terrible Towel'' in 1975 when he urged Steelers fans to stir up excitement during the playoffs by waving gold dish rags. The towel became a Steelers team symbol, along with Cope's distinctive falsetto voice, team owner Dan Rooney said, in a statement.

``His creation of the Terrible Towel has developed into a worldwide symbol that is synonymous with Steelers football,'' Rooney said.

Myron Sidney Kopelman was born in Pittsburgh on Jan. 23, 1929. He began his career as a sports reporter at the Daily Times in Erie, Pennsylvania, and wrote for magazines including Sports Illustrated and the Saturday Evening Post. He joined the Steelers in 1970 and covered the team through five Super Bowl championships.

Cope punctuated his commentary with idiosyncratic phrases. A good play earned a Yiddish ``Yoi.'' He titled his 2002 autobiography, one of his six books, ``Double Yoi.''

`Immaculate Reception'

The Steelers said it also was on Cope's radio show that the phrase ``Immaculate Reception'' became a household term to describe the game-winning play in the Steelers' 1972 AFC Divisional playoff victory against the Oakland Raiders, in which Franco Harris clutched a deflected pass inches off the turf and ran for a touchdown.

In 1996, Cope contributed his ownership of ``Terrible Towel'' trademarks to Allegheny Valley School, an institution for the profoundly mentally and physically disabled.

Cope is survived by two children, Daniel and Elizabeth, according to the team's web site. His wife Mildred Lindberg Cope and another daughter, Mary Ann, are deceased. There was no immediate word on funeral services.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aaron Kuriloff in New York at akuriloff@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: February 27, 2008 11:48 EST

 

[phrodeau]

Pulling the hearse around to pick up some of the freshly fallen:

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44456000/jpg/_44456124_buckley_ap203b.jpg

Thursday, 28 February 2008, 01:07 GMT
Conservative William Buckley dies
By Vincent Dowd
BBC News, Washington

One of America's most prolific authors and leading conservatives, William F Buckley Jr., has died at the age of 82.

An editor, columnist and TV host, he also wrote more than 50 books and was for many years a substantial influence on conservative thought.

Mr Buckley was found dead in the study of his home in Stamford, Connecticut, "with his boots on", his son said.

The cause of his death is unknown, but an assistant to Mr Buckley said that he had been suffering from emphysema.

Even those who disliked his politics acknowledged that William Buckley was dedicated to the craft of writing.

While becoming a serious and influential political thinker, he seemed at times to cultivate the manner of an old-fashioned dandy.

Born in New York to a wealthy family - Catholic and conservative - he attended exclusive schools in America and England.

As a young man he worked briefly for the CIA but he really started to count in US public life when in 1955 he founded National Review magazine.

The magazine did much to give shape to conservative thought in America.

National Review became an influence on Reaganite politics and contributed to the rise of the US neo-conservative movement.

William Buckley was opposed to what he saw as a general trend towards liberalism, yet most liberals found it hard to dislike him personally - he too clearly relished fun and mischief.

From 1966 and for more than three decades he presented the talk show Firing Line on public television.

In his 50s he became a novelist, writing mainly spy stories.

Marking his death, President George W Bush said William F Buckley had influenced a lot of people, including him.
________________________________________________________________

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/02/27/buddymiles.jpg
Buddy Miles, Hendrix drummer, dies at 60
Buddy Miles, the man who reportedly brought soul to Jimi Hendrix's sound has died, a website is reporting. He was 60.

Glide Magazine details his career.

Miles was born Sept. 5, 1947, in Omaha, Neb., and was introduced to music at a young age by his father, who played in a band called the Bebops. Miles also played with Wilson Pickett, the Delfonics and the Ink Spots.

Miles met Hendrix in the early 1960s but didn't begin collaborating with him until 1969, when Hendrix produced an album by the Buddy Miles Express.

Miles, often decked out in sequined clothes and an enormous Afro, went on to drum on Hendrix's landmark "Electric Ladyland" album before officially joining Band of Gypsys with bassist Billy Cox a few months later.

The group's lone self-titled album chronicled a New Year's Eve 1969/1970 concert at New York's Fillmore East, and is regarded by many as one of the best live albums of the era.

One more credit - Miles was the lead voice of the California Raisins.

--Veronique de Turenne

photo credit: Mercury Records

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Mike Smith, Lead Singer of Dave Clark 5, Is Dead

Mike Smith, the lead singer of The Dave Clark Five, died Thursday outside London, less than two weeks before the band is to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was 64.

The cause was pneumonia, a complication of a spinal cord injury he sustained in 2003 that had left him paralyzed below the ribs, according to Margo Lewis, his agent in New York.

The Dave Clark Five, part of the so-called British Invasion of the early 1960s, recorded a string of hits including “Glad All Over,” “Catch Us If You Can” and “Over and Over.” The band made 12 appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show by 1966. Mr. Smith also played keyboards and helped write songs for the band, which was founded by its drummer, Dave Clark.

In 2006, he told the British newspaper The Daily Mail that he had injured his spinal cord when he fell while climbing over a locked seven-foot-high garden gate behind his home in the Costa del Sol region of Spain.

Mr. Smith had been in a hospital outside London since shortly after the accident and was released in December. He had been living near the hospital when he was admitted again on Wednesday, Ms. Lewis said.

After his accident, Mr. Smith drew support from, among others, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits, who helped to defray medical costs through donations and fund-raisers.

In 2005, Paul Shaffer, the “Late Show With David Letterman” bandleader, helped to organize a benefit concert in New York featuring many of Mr. Smith’s fellow British Invasion stars, including The Zombies and Peter & Gordon. A DVD of the concert is to be released in March.

Michael George Smith was born in 1943 in Edmonton, England. He is survived by his wife, Arlene, who is known as Charlie.

After the Dave Clark Five disbanded in 1970, Mr. Smith performed for a time in a new band with Mr. Clark but worked mainly as a producer and songwriter. He began performing again in the 1990s and had formed a new band, “Mike Smith’s Rock Engine,” when he was injured.

Before his death, preparations were under way to transport Mr. Smith to New York so that he could attend the Hall of Fame induction ceremony on March 10, Ms. Lewis said. Besides Mr. Smith and Mr. Clark, the band included Lenny Davidson on lead guitar, Rick Huxley on bass guitar and Denny Payton on saxophone, harmonica and guitar.

 

[KindaKinky]

http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2008/03/02/jam_healy256.jpg

Despite long battle with cancer, Jeff Healey's death still shocking

by Michelle Mcquigge, THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - Acclaimed jazz and rock guitarist Jeff Healey was remembered Sunday as a musician of rare ability who had a wicked sense of humour and a generous nature as fans and bandmates mourned his death at age 41, following a battle with cancer.

Bandmates of Canadian rock and jazz legend Jeff Healey were among those shocked by the news of his death Sunday.

Healey died Sunday evening in a Toronto hospital surrounded by family and a bandmate, Colin Bray.

Bray, the bass player with Jeff Healey's jazz Wizards and the frontman's long-time friend, said he and many others expected the guitarist to rally from this latest illness.

"I don't think any of us thought this was going to happen," Bray said in a telephone interview. "We just thought he was going to bounce back as he always does."

Healey had battled with cancer since the age of one when a rare form of retinal cancer known as Retinoblastoma claimed his eyesight.

Bray said Healey had been hospitalized for a week and that his advanced lung cancer made his final hours difficult.

Healey had undergone numerous operations in recent years to remove tumours from his lungs and leg.

Bray and fellow bandmate Gary Scriven remembered their frontman as not only a world-class musician but an incredibly strong person with the capacity to motivate those he worked with.

Scriven called Healey inspirational and praised the boundless enthusiasm that allowed him to continue performing live only four weeks before his death.

"He drew his strength from somewhere, I don't know where, but it spread among the band and flowed into the audience," Scriven said.

Healey rose to stardom as the leader of the Jeff Healey Band, a rock-oriented trio that garnered a Juno award, international acclaim and platinum record sales with the 1988 album "See the Light."

But Bray and Scriven said Healey's true love was jazz, the genre that dominated his last three albums with the Jazz Wizards.

Healey's guitar prowess was characterized by a unique playing-style that saw him lay the instrument across his lap.

It led him to share stages with such rock luminaries as George Harrison, Stevie Ray Vaughan and B.B. King, but Bray said jazz allowed him to exercise his other instrumental talents such as trumpet and drums.

Healey's love of jazz also led him to host radio shows on the CBC and a local Toronto station where he spun long-forgotten numbers from his personal collection of over 30,000 vinyl records.

But Bray said his "best friend" saw himself first and foremost as an entertainer and said Healey seemed to derive therapeutic benefits from playing live shows.

Recalling Healey's weakened condition at his final performance on Feb. 2 in Sarnia, Ont., Bray said Healey seemed to draw strength as the set progressed.

"At the end of it, I can't believe how much better he looked. It was like blood to him."

Healey's death came weeks before the release of his first rock album in eight years.

"Mess of Blues" is slated for a North American release on April 22.

Healey is backed on the album by the resident band at Jeff Healey's Roadhouse, the blues club he founded and named after a 1989 Patrick Swayze movie in which he appeared.

The album features two live tracks recorded in the last few months of his life.

The Grammy-nominated musician is survived by his wife Christie and two children; daughter Rachel, 13 and son Derek, 3.

Funeral and memorial arrangements have not yet been announced.

 

[Chainzz]

'American Hot Rod' maverick Boyd Coddington dies at age 63

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f197/Chainzzz/BoydCoddington.jpg

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Dungeons & Dragons Game Creator Dies

Gygax Developed Role-Playing Game In 1974

MILWAUKEE -- The man who co-created the game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon is dead.

Gary Gygax died Tuedsay at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis., about 55 miles southwest of Milwaukee.

He was 69.

His wife, Gail Gygax, said he had been suffering from health problems for several years, including an abdominal aneurysm.

Gygax and co-creator Dave Arneson developed the role-playing game in 1974 and it went on to become one of the best-selling games ever.

Dungeons & Dragons is considered the grandfather of fantasy role-playing games and has influenced video games, books, movies and inspired legions of adoring fans.

Gygax' wife said that he always enjoyed hearing from the game's devoted fans about how the game influenced their lives.

 

[phrodeau]

http://kensforce.com/05creaturebl3.jpg

Ben Chapman; became part of Hollywood lore in 'Lagoon'
By Dennis McLellan
Los Angeles Times / February 29, 2008
LOS ANGELES - As an actor, Ben Chapman never landed a star-making role. Far from it. He had small parts in only a few films, including an uncredited bit part in "Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki."

But Mr. Chapman nevertheless achieved a degree of movie immortality - and he did it without uttering a word of dialogue or even showing his face.

The 6-foot-5 former Tahitian entertainer and former Marine war hero played the title character in "Creature from the Black Lagoon," the classic 1954 3-D monster movie that developed an enduring cult following.

Mr. Chapman, a retired Honolulu real estate salesman, died Feb. 21 of congestive heart failure at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, said his longtime companion, Merrilee Kazarian. He was 79.

For Mr. Chapman, playing the so-called Gill Man in "Creature from the Black Lagoon" was the role of a lifetime.

"In the big picture, he achieved a small amount of success as an actor, but for baby-boomer 'monster kids,' he was the bomb," Tom Weaver, author of the 1992 book "Creature from the Black Lagoon," said in an interview.

Mr. Chapman, who was briefly a contract player at Universal in the early '50s, always said landing the Creature role was "a matter of being in the right place at the right time."

He was on the studio lot one day, when he was called into a casting director's office.

"They were looking for an imposing creature, and at 6-feet-5, I filled the bill," he told the Palm Beach Post in 2003.

In the film, which stars Richard Carlson and Julie Adams, a scientific expedition venturing along the Amazon River in search of fossils of a legendary prehistoric man-fish unexpectedly encounters a live specimen, who terrorizes them but falls for the expedition's only female (played by Adams).

"The creature suit was a one-piece outfit that zipped down the back with dorsal fins, hands that were gloves, feet that were like boots," Mr. Chapman told the Honolulu Observer several years ago.

"They had me lay on a table, take a complete plaster of Paris mold of my body, then design this costume. I couldn't lose or gain weight, or it wouldn't fit right. The whole experience was like climbing into a large body stocking with creases."

Mr. Chapman told Weaver that he got so hot on the sound stage wearing the costume, which included a large helmetlike head, that someone had to stand by with a water hose to cool him off.

When they were shooting on the back lot, Mr. Chapman said, "I would just stay in the lake to keep cool."

The movie proved to be so successful that Universal made two sequels - "Revenge of the Creature" (1955) and "The Creature Walks Among Us" (1956).

Mr. Chapman, however, did not return to the Creature role in either film.

Mr. Chapman was born in Oakland, Calif., while his Tahitian parents temporarily were living in the United States. After growing up in Tahiti, he returned to California in 1940 and went to school in San Francisco.

A cousin of actor Jon Hall, Mr. Chapman was working as a Tahitian dancer in nightclubs when he was hired to play a bit part in the 1950 MGM musical romance "Pagan Love Song."

Mr. Chapman served in the Marines in the Korean War and received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

ABBA Drummer Found Dead in Garden

Reuters

MADRID, Spain (March 17) - A former drummer for the Swedish pop band ABBA was found dead with cuts to his neck in the garden of his house on the Spanish island of Mallorca. Police said Monday an autopsy showed it was an accident.

A neighbor found the body of 62-year-old Ola Brunkert on Sunday evening at his house in a coastal area outside the eastern town of Arta, a Civil Guard spokesman told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

He said an autopsy was carried out and confirmed initial investigations. "It was an accident," he said.

The spokesman said Brunkert hit his head against a glass door in his dining room, shattering the glass and cutting himself in the neck. He managed to wrap a towel around his neck and left the house to seek help, but collapsed in the garden.

Brunkert lived in the coastal apartment complex of Betlem in the municipality of Arta, in the eastern part of Mallorca.

Brunkert had lived in Arta for around 20 years. His wife, Inger. died less than a year ago, an Arta municipal official told the AP. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss the case.

ABBA band member Benny Anderson told Swedish daily Expressen he was sad to hear of the drummer's death. "It is tragic," he said.

Band member Bjorn Ulvaeus added that Brunkert had been "one of the best."

"I remember him as a good friend when we worked together in the mid-1970s. He was a very creative musician who contributed a lot when we toured together and worked in the studio," Ulvaeus told Expressen.

According to ABBA's official Web site, Brunkert and bass player Rutger Gunnarsson were the only musicians to appear on all ABBA albums.

Brunkert first played with ABBA on the group's first single, "People Need Love," and toured with the band in 1977, 1979 and 1980.

He had been a jazz drummer and a member of the blues band Slim's Blues Gang, before joining pop group Science Poption in the mid-1960s.

ABBA, with the four regular members Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Ulvaeus and Andersson, was one of the world's most successful bands, with album sales of more than 370 million. The group has not performed together since 1982, but continues to sell nearly 3 million records a year.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (March 18) - Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.

He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.

From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year. He published his best-selling "3001The Final Odyssey" when he was 79.

Some of his best-known books are "Childhood's End," 1953; "The City and The Stars," 1956, "The Nine Billion Names of God," 1967; "Rendezvous with Rama," 1973; "Imperial Earth," 1975; and "The Songs of Distant Earth," 1986.

When Clarke and Kubrick got together to develop a movie about space, they used as basic ideas several of Clarke's shorter pieces, including "The Sentinel," written in 1948, and "Encounter in the Dawn." As work progressed on the screenplay, Clarke also wrote a novel of the story. He followed it up with "2010," ''2061," and "3001: The Final Odyssey."

In 1989, two decades after the Apollo 11 moon landings, Clarke wrote: "2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined."

Clarke won the Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979; the Hugo Award of the World Science Fiction Convention in 1974 and 1980, and in 1986 became Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was awarded the CBE in 1989.

Born in Minehead, western England, on Dec. 16, 1917, the son of a farmer, Arthur Charles Clark became addicted to science-fiction after buying his first copies of the pulp magazine "Amazing Stories" at Woolworth's. He devoured English writers H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon and began writing for his school magazine in his teens.

Clarke went to work as a clerk in Her Majesty's Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel.

It was not until after the World War II that Clarke received a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics from King's College in London.

In the wartime Royal Air Force, he was put in charge of a new radar blind-landing system.

But it was an RAF memo he wrote in 1945 about the future of communications that led him to fame. It was about the possibility of using satellites to revolutionize communications — an idea whose time had decidedly not come.

Clarke later sent it to a publication called Wireless World, which almost rejected it as too far-fetched.

Clarke married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children.

Disabled by post-polio syndrome, the lingering effects of a disease that had paralyzed him for two months in 1959, Clarke rarely left his home in the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka.

He moved there in 1956, lured by his interest in marine diving which, he said, was as close as he could get to the weightless feeling of space.

"I'm perfectly operational underwater," he once said.

Clarke was linked by his computer with friends and fans around the world, spending each morning answering e-mails and browsing the Internet.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Clarke said he did not regret having never followed his novels into space, adding that he had arranged to have DNA from strands of his hair sent into orbit.

"One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time," he said. "Move over, Stephen King."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Anthony Minghella, 54; director won Oscar for 'English Patient'

March 19, 2008
Anthony Minghella, the Academy Award-winning director of "The English Patient" whose other acclaimed films include "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold Mountain," died Tuesday in London. He was 54.

Minghella died in a London hospital from complications of surgery for tonsil cancer a week earlier, Leslee Dart, his spokeswoman, told The Times.

He had not been ill before the surgery, she said.

The London-based writer-director's death came as a shock to friends and colleagues, who remembered him as a gentle, caring and intelligent man and an inspiring leader on a film set.

"The grace, joy and tenderness he brought to his films were symbolic of his life and the many people he touched," Harvey Weinstein, an executive producer of "The English Patient" and "Cold Mountain," said in a statement.

Producer-director Sydney Pollack, Minghella's partner in the production company Mirage Enterprises, described him in a statement as a "realistic romanticist" and "a sunny soul who exuded a gentleness that should never have been mistaken for lack of tenacity and resolve."

Minghella was a critically acclaimed playwright and a successful TV writer in England when he wrote and directed his first film, "Truly, Madly, Deeply," a 1991 British romance starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman that Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers called "the thinking man's 'Ghost.' "

That was followed by "Mr. Wonderful," a 1993 comedy romance starring Matt Dillon and Annabella Sciorra.

Then came "The English Patient," the World War II romantic epic that, as a London Independent writer once observed, "opened every door in Hollywood to Minghella."

The 1996 film dominated the Academy Awards for that year, winning in nine of the 12 categories it was nominated in, including director, picture and supporting actress for Juliette Binoche.

"Anthony possessed a sensitivity and alertness to the actor's process that very few directors have," Ralph Fiennes, who co-starred in the movie, said in a statement. "He directed most of 'The English Patient' with an ankle in plaster, never losing his gentle humor and precision. He delighted in the contribution of everyone -- he was a true collaborator."

Minghella received Oscar nominations for two screenplays: "The English Patient" (adapted from the Michael Ondaatje novel) and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel), a 1999 drama starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law.

As a director, Minghella made an unusual professional departure in recent years: opera, a longtime passion.

At the invitation of the head of the English National Opera, who thought Minghella's talents as a writer, director and musician were well-suited for opera, he staged a successful production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" in 2005 and directed it again a year later as the season opener of New York's Metropolitan Opera.

Minghella recently wrote and directed "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel about a Botswanan private eye. It is to be shown Sunday on the BBC and later on HBO.

The son of parents of Italian descent who owned an ice cream factory, Minghella was born Jan. 6, 1954, in Ryde on England's Isle of Wight. As a child, he acted in school plays.

He majored in drama at the University of Hull in England in the 1970s. After graduating, he stayed on as a drama lecturer for several years before quitting in 1981 and spending the next decade writing for radio, TV and the theater. For British TV, he wrote for "Grange Hill," "The Storyteller" and the miniseries "Inspector Morse."

In 1984, the London Theatre Critics named him the most promising playwright of the year for three plays: "A Little Like Drowning," "Love Bites" and "Two Planks and a Passion."

Two years later, the London Theatre Critics selected his "Made in Bangkok," which marked his West End debut, as best play of the year.

"He was a brilliant writer and a lovely guy," British director Danny Boyle, who met Minghella when they were working on "Inspector Morse" and directed "Two Planks and a Passion," told The Times.

Like screenwriters Ronald Harwood ("The Pianist") and Richard Curtis ("Love Actually"), Boyle said, Minghella was able to write emotional, moving stories that never felt calculated and cloying. "That was what set him apart," he said.

Minghella is survived by his wife, choreographer Carolyn Choa; his son Max, an actor; his daughter Hannah, who was recently named president of production at Sony Pictures Animation; his parents, Gloria and Eddie; his brother Dominic; and his sisters Gioia, Lauretta and Edana.

 

[blueyz22]

http://www.fiftiesweb.com/tv/hogans-heroes-3.jpg http://www.fiftiesweb.com/tv/hogans-heroes-3.jpg

Ivan Dixon, 76, of Hogan's Heroes:

Charlotte, NC--Ivan Dixon, an actor, director and producer best known for his role as radio expert Kinch in the 1960's television series "Hogan's Heroes," has died.

Dixon passed away Sunday at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte after a hemorrhage and complications from kidney failure, said his daughter Doris Nomathande Dixon. Dixon began his career on Broadway in plays including "The Cave Dwellers" and "A Raisin in the Sun". On film, he appeared in "Something of Value," "A Raisin in the Sun" and the cult favorite "Car Wash."

 

[phrodeau]

Author Jon Hassler Dies
By JEFF BAENEN – 4 hours ago

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Author Jon Hassler, who chronicled the foibles of small-town life in "Staggerford," "Grand Opening" and other novels after starting his career late in life, has died. He was 74.

Hassler, who suffered from a longtime neurological disorder, died early Thursday at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, said family friend Nick Hayes. Hassler had been in home hospice care since the holidays and entered the hospital on Monday, Hayes said.

Despite his deteriorating health, Hassler continued work on a book, "Jay O'Malley," until his death, Hayes said.

In a 1995 interview, Hassler told The Associated Press that he liked writing about misfits. "You can't write a novel about somebody who's perfectly happy," he said.

Hassler was born in Minneapolis in March 30, 1933, and grew up in the small north-central Minnesota town of Staples, where his father owned a grocery store. He graduated from St. John's University in Collegeville in 1955 before receiving a master's from the University of North Dakota. He spent years teaching before launching his writing career at 37.

He didn't publish his first novel, "Staggerford," a semi-autobiographical story about a high school teacher in a small town, until seven years later. Hassler's other works include "Simon's Night," 1979; "The Love Hunter," 1981; "A Green Journey," 1986; "Grand Opening," 1987; "North of Hope," 1990; and "Dear James," 1993.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

''Man For All Seasons'' actor Paul Scofield dies at 86

AP
Posted: 2008-03-20 11:18:21
LONDON (AP) - Paul Scofield, a commanding stage and screen actor indelibly stamped on filmgoers' minds as the doomed philosopher-statesman Sir Thomas More in "A Man For All Seasons," has died at the age of 86.

Agent Rosalind Chatto said Thursday that Scofield died in a hospital near his home in southern England. He had been suffering from leukemia and died Wednesday.

Scofield won an Academy Award, and international fame, for the 1966 film "A Man For All Seasons," in which he played the Tudor statesman and author of "Utopia" executed for treason in 1535 after clashing with King Henry VIII.

He followed this breakthrough with relatively few film roles. Scofield was a stage actor by inclination and by his gifts - a dramatic, craggy face and an unforgettable voice that was likened to a Rolls Royce starting up or the sound rumbling out of low organ pipes in an antique crypt.

"He had a charisma, a hypnotism, a kind of spell that he cast on an audience, which was an extraordinary thing to negotiate as a young actor," said Simon Callow, who performed alongside Scofield in the play "Amadeus" in 1979. "He was an absolutely towering actor."

Judi Dench, who appeared with Scofield in Kenneth Branagh's film of "Henry V" in 1989, remembered him as "a great friend and a great man."

Even Scofield's greatest screen role was a followup to a play - the London stage production of Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons," in which he starred for nine months. Scofield then turned in a performance in the 1961 New York production that won him extraordinary reviews and a Tony Award.

"With a kind of weary magnificence, Scofield sinks himself into the part, studiously underplays it, and somehow displays the inner mind of a man destined for sainthood," Time magazine said.

Scofield's infrequent films included Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" in 1974; "Henry V," in which he played the king of France; "Quiz Show," Robert Redford's film about a 1950s TV scandal in which Scofield played poet Mark Van Doren; and the 1996 adaptation of Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible."

Scofield was an unusual star - a family man who lived almost his whole life within a few miles (kilometers) of his birthplace in southern England and hurried home after work to his wife and children. He did not seek the spotlight, gave interviews sparingly, and at times seemed to need coaxing to venture out even onto the stage he loved.

But, he insisted in The Sunday Times in 1992, "My reclusiveness is a myth. ... I suppose I'm not wildly gregarious. Yes, I've turned down quite a lot of parts. At my age you need to weed things out, but the idea that I can't be bothered anymore with acting - that's quite absurd. Acting is all I can do. An actor: That's what I am."

Scofield reportedly had been offered a knighthood, but declined.

"It is just not an aspect of life that I would want," he once said. "If you want a title, what's wrong with Mr.?"

In 2001, however, he was named a Companion of Honor, one of the country's top honors and limited to 65 living people.

David Paul Scofield was born Jan. 21, 1922, son of the village schoolmaster in Hurstpierpoint, 8 miles (13 kilometers) from the south coast of England. When he married actress Joy Parker in 1943, they settled only 10 miles (16 kilometers) north, in the village of Balcombe.

Scofield trained at the Croydon Repertory Theater School and London's Mask Theater School before World War II. Barred from service for medical reasons, he toured in plays, entertaining troops and acting in repertory in factory towns around the country.

All through the 1940s, he worked repertory and in London and Stratford in plays ranging from Shakespeare and Shaw to Steinbeck and Chekhov.

In his 20s and 30s, he worked with director Peter Brook, touring as Hamlet in 1955. The collaboration included the stage adaptation of Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory" in 1956, which Gielgud regarded as Scofield's greatest performance.

Scofield's huge success with "A Man for All Seasons" was followed in 1979 by another great historical stage role, as the thwarted composer Salieri opposite Callow's Mozart in Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus."

His later stage appearances included "Heartbreak House" in 1992 and the 1996 National Theatre production of Ibsen's "John Gabriel Borkman."

He is survived by his wife and children.

 

[Denae]

March 19, 2008
Anthony Minghella, the Academy Award-winning director of "The English Patient" whose other acclaimed films include "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold Mountain," died Tuesday in London. He was 54.

Minghella died in a London hospital from complications of surgery for tonsil cancer a week earlier, Leslee Dart, his spokeswoman, told The Times.

He had not been ill before the surgery, she said.

The London-based writer-director's death came as a shock to friends and colleagues, who remembered him as a gentle, caring and intelligent man and an inspiring leader on a film set.

"The grace, joy and tenderness he brought to his films were symbolic of his life and the many people he touched," Harvey Weinstein, an executive producer of "The English Patient" and "Cold Mountain," said in a statement.

Producer-director Sydney Pollack, Minghella's partner in the production company Mirage Enterprises, described him in a statement as a "realistic romanticist" and "a sunny soul who exuded a gentleness that should never have been mistaken for lack of tenacity and resolve."

Minghella was a critically acclaimed playwright and a successful TV writer in England when he wrote and directed his first film, "Truly, Madly, Deeply," a 1991 British romance starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman that Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers called "the thinking man's 'Ghost.' "

That was followed by "Mr. Wonderful," a 1993 comedy romance starring Matt Dillon and Annabella Sciorra.

Then came "The English Patient," the World War II romantic epic that, as a London Independent writer once observed, "opened every door in Hollywood to Minghella."

The 1996 film dominated the Academy Awards for that year, winning in nine of the 12 categories it was nominated in, including director, picture and supporting actress for Juliette Binoche.

"Anthony possessed a sensitivity and alertness to the actor's process that very few directors have," Ralph Fiennes, who co-starred in the movie, said in a statement. "He directed most of 'The English Patient' with an ankle in plaster, never losing his gentle humor and precision. He delighted in the contribution of everyone -- he was a true collaborator."

Minghella received Oscar nominations for two screenplays: "The English Patient" (adapted from the Michael Ondaatje novel) and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel), a 1999 drama starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law.

As a director, Minghella made an unusual professional departure in recent years: opera, a longtime passion.

At the invitation of the head of the English National Opera, who thought Minghella's talents as a writer, director and musician were well-suited for opera, he staged a successful production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" in 2005 and directed it again a year later as the season opener of New York's Metropolitan Opera.

Minghella recently wrote and directed "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel about a Botswanan private eye. It is to be shown Sunday on the BBC and later on HBO.

The son of parents of Italian descent who owned an ice cream factory, Minghella was born Jan. 6, 1954, in Ryde on England's Isle of Wight. As a child, he acted in school plays.

He majored in drama at the University of Hull in England in the 1970s. After graduating, he stayed on as a drama lecturer for several years before quitting in 1981 and spending the next decade writing for radio, TV and the theater. For British TV, he wrote for "Grange Hill," "The Storyteller" and the miniseries "Inspector Morse."

In 1984, the London Theatre Critics named him the most promising playwright of the year for three plays: "A Little Like Drowning," "Love Bites" and "Two Planks and a Passion."

Two years later, the London Theatre Critics selected his "Made in Bangkok," which marked his West End debut, as best play of the year.

"He was a brilliant writer and a lovely guy," British director Danny Boyle, who met Minghella when they were working on "Inspector Morse" and directed "Two Planks and a Passion," told The Times.

Like screenwriters Ronald Harwood ("The Pianist") and Richard Curtis ("Love Actually"), Boyle said, Minghella was able to write emotional, moving stories that never felt calculated and cloying. "That was what set him apart," he said.

Minghella is survived by his wife, choreographer Carolyn Choa; his son Max, an actor; his daughter Hannah, who was recently named president of production at Sony Pictures Animation; his parents, Gloria and Eddie; his brother Dominic; and his sisters Gioia, Lauretta and Edana.

His films were beautiful to the eye. So sad that we will see no more.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

''Easy Rider'' producer Bill Hayward

LOS ANGELES (AP) - "Easy Rider" associate producer Bill Hayward, part of a Hollywood family whose talent and beauty was often overshadowed by its demons, has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said Thursday. He was 66.

Hayward shot himself in the heart with a handgun in Castaic, California on March 9, county coroner's spokesman Craig Harvey said. The suicide occurred in a trailer where Hayward was living.

Hayward has already been cremated and a memorial service was planned for April, said his friend Toby Rafelson.

"He was a wonderful man and this is a great tragedy for our family," "Easy Rider" director and star Dennis Hopper said in a statement. Hopper was married and had a daughter with Hayward's sister Brooke in the 1960s.

Hayward was born March 27, 1941, the son of theatrical agent Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan, whose family is as famous for its tragedy and torment as its moviemaking.

Sullavan, who starred in the film "The Shop Around the Corner" and also had been married to Henry Fonda and director William Wyler, died of a drug overdose. Her daughter Bridget died of an overdose just eight months later.

Bill Hayward and his sister Brooke, a model and later an actress, both were sent to ritzy boarding schools and to equally pricey mental institutions in their teen years.

The family's troubles were chronicled in Brooke Hayward's best-selling 1977 memoir "Haywire," which became a 1980 TV movie that Bill Hayward produced.

The book discusses Bill and Brooke Hayward's belief that their mother and sister may have killed themselves, and Bill Hayward shared his thoughts on suicide.

"It would be more of a challenge not to do it," he said. "Since it seems to run in the family. It's like trying to beat the system. There must be something inherently weird. The family drops like flies."

Hayward collaborated with Peter Fonda and Hopper on "Easy Rider," the groundbreaking countercultural 1969 biker pic, and worked largely as an entertainment lawyer after that, with only occasional producing credits.

He was at one point married to the British-born actress Fiona Lewis.

"Easy Rider" led to a lifelong love of motorcycles for Hayward, who liked to ride his Harley Davidson around Hollywood in the 1970s. He had a serious motorcycle accident about five years ago that left him severely injured and mentally diminished.

In addition to sister Brooke, Bill Hayward is survived by a son, Leland Hayward of Los Angeles, and a daughter, Bridget Hayward of Washington, D.C.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Mambo pioneer Israel 'Cachao' Lopez dies

Reuters
Posted: 2008-03-23 14:35:39

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - Cuban-born bassist, band leader and mambo pioneer Israel "Cachao" Lopez died Saturday in Miami, media reports said. He was 89.

Lopez, who immigrated to the United States from Cuba in 1962, is credited with introducing the mambo musical genre to generations of adoring fans. He died Saturday after complications from kidney failure, the Miami Herald reported in its online edition.

Known for years by a singular name, Cachao, Lopez was a Grammy Award-winning artist whose work was chronicled in a 1993 documentary by Cuban-American actor Andy Garcia.

Lopez, a classically trained bassist, continued to perform until the final months of his life. He had lived in south Florida for the past three decades and died at Coral Gables Hospital near Miami.

Born in Havana to a musical family in 1918, Lopez took to music early and in his teens had already become an accomplished classical bassist.

His contribution to modern music began in the 1930s. Like many other jazz musicians of his day, Lopez and his brother, Orestes Lopez, improvised with traditional music. He experimented with Afro-Cuban music and developed a new sound that became the mambo.

Though originally rejected, the musical genre took flight in the 1950s and became a jazz staple through much of the next few decades. After a period of obscurity, Lopez regained international attention in the 1990s thanks in part to Garcia's work.

Lopez received a Grammy Award in 2004 for his album "Agora Si!" He also received accolades in 2006, including concerts at the Lincoln Center in New York.

Earlier this month, Lopez traveled to the Dominican Republic to receive a lifetime achievement award, the Herald reported.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Popeyes Chicken Founder Dies at 64

NEW ORLEANS (March 24) - Al Copeland, who became rich selling spicy fried chicken and notorious for his flamboyant lifestyle, died Sunday at a clinic near Munich, Germany. He was 64.

The founder of the Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken chain had been diagnosed shortly before Thanksgiving with a malignant salivary gland tumor. His death was announced by his spokeswoman, Kit Wohl.

After growing up in New Orleans, Copeland sold his car at age 18 for enough money to open his own one-man doughnut shop. He went on to spend 10 modestly successful years in the doughnut business.

The opening of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in New Orleans in 1966, however, caught Copeland's eye. Inspired by KFC's success, Copeland in 1971used his doughnut profits to open a restaurant, Chicken on the Run. ("So fast you get your chicken before you get your change.")

After six months, Chicken on the Run was still losing money. In a last-ditch effort, Copeland chose a spicier Louisiana Cajun-style recipe and reopened the restaurant under the name Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken, after Popeye Doyle, Gene Hackman's character in the film "The French Connection." The chain that grew from the one restaurant became Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken.

In its third week of operation, Copeland's revived chicken restaurant broke the profit barrier.

Franchising began in 1976, growing the chain to more than 800 stores in the United States and several foreign countries by 1989.

In 1983, he founded Copeland's of New Orleans, a causal-dining, Cajun-style restaurant. In the next two decades the chain expanded as far as Maryland and west into Texas. He also started Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro, Fire and Ice restaurants, and Al's Diversified Food & Seasonings - a line of specialty foods and spices for large national restaurant chains.

In March 1989, Popeyes - then the third-largest chicken chain - purchased Church's Chicken, the second largest behind KFC. The two chains, operated separately, gave Copeland more than 2,000 locations.

The Church's purchase was heavily financed, however, and escalating debt forced Copeland's company to file for bankruptcy in 1991. Although Copeland lost both Church's and Popeyes in the bankruptcy, he retained the rights to some Popeyes products, which he manufactured through his Diversified Foods & Seasonings plants, along with a few Popeyes stores.

Copeland frequently made headlines away from his business empire.

His hobbies included racing 50-foot powerboats, touring New Orleans in Rolls Royces and Lamborghinis, and outfitting his Lake Pontchartrain home with lavish Christmas decorations, including half a million lights and a three-story-tall snowman. The display drew a lawsuit in 1983 from neighbors who said the resulting traffic held them hostage in their own homes.

Copeland and his third wife, Luan Hunter, were married at the New Orleans Museum of Art on Valentine's Day 1991. As they left the ceremony rose petals were tossed from a helicopter and fireworks exploded over the building.

The original presiding judge at their divorce, Ronald Bodenheimer, pleaded guilty to promising a custody deal favorable to Copeland in return for a possible seafood contract and other benefits. Two Copeland associates and Bodenheimer went to federal prison for participating in the conspiracy.

Copeland was never personally accused of participating in the scheme.

Copeland's survivors include five sons, four daughters, a brother and 13 grandchildren.

 

[Little Lady69]

impressed with jennys knowledge

"waving to her'

 

[JennyOmanHill]

impressed with jennys knowledge

"waving to her'

"Waving back to Little Lady"

Celebrity trivia is a hobby for me! (Guess it could be worse!)

 

[JennyOmanHill]

'Kiss of Death' star Richard Widmark passes away at 93

USA TODAY
Posted: 2008-03-27 07:11:56

Richard Widmark had to have known that though he played far more regular guys and heroes than hoods on the screen, any obituary of the actor would bring up the wheelchair and those bumpy wooden steps from his first film.

Widmark, who died Monday at 93 in Roxbury, Conn., made one of the most striking debuts in movie history with 1947's Kiss of Death, source of his only Oscar nomination. As smiling lowlife creep Tommy Udo, he laughed like a hyena and pushed a bound elderly woman and her wheelchair down a narrow flight of stairs to her death.

Proving that you just can't beat Santa Claus, Widmark lost the 1947 supporting Oscar to Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street. But his career was unambiguously launched, placing him among the select few who rose to major stardom despite an early tenure typecast as heels. Immediately after Death came more unsavory roles in The Street with No Name, Road House and Yellow Sky, a Western.

By 1949's Down to the Seain Ships, Widmark had taken his first step at playing decent human beings - perhaps a more fitting step for a solid Midwesterner who had taught acting at Lake Forest College in Illinois and made his 1943 Broadway debut in the comedy Kiss and Tell (later a screen vehicle for the teenage Shirley Temple).

Though two of Widmark's most enduring films - 1950's Night and the City and 1953's Pickup on South Street- also cast him in shady roles as, respectively, a wrestling promoter and subway pickpocket, they were somewhat more sympathetic. But by then, the actor was becoming just as familiar in heroic parts: U.S. Public Health Service Officer (Panic in the Streets); Naval Frogman (The Frogmen); battler of forest fires (Red Skies of Montana); an array of cowboys and army personnel and later even as Jim Bowie opposite John Wayne's Davy Crockett in the Wayne-directed version of The Alamo.

Regularly employed until the early '90s, Widmark's career began to wane in the 1960s following appearances in two high-profile Westerns: How the West Was Won and Cheyenne Autumn.

But Widmark had one great screen achievement left as the beleaguered New York cop in 1968's Madigan. Spun off into a short-lived variation on NBC, the TV Madigan was Widmark's only series, though he earned an Emmy nomination for playing the U.S. president in 1971's Vanished.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Oscar-winning screenwriter of 'Judgment at Nuremberg,' Abby Mann, dies at 80

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Abby Mann, writer of socially conscious scripts for movies and television and winner of the 1961 Academy Award for adapted screenplay for "Judgment at Nuremberg," has died at 80.

Writers Guild of America spokesman Gregg Mitchell said Mann died Tuesday. The cause of death was not given.

Mann also won multiple Emmys, including one in 1973 for "The Marcus-Nelson Murders," which created a maverick New York police detective named Theo Kojak. The film, starring Telly Savalas, was spun off into the long-running TV series "Kojak."

In a career spanning more than 50 years as a writer, director and producer, Mann returned repeatedly to morally conscious themes, doing films for television on such subjects as Martin Luther King Jr., human rights advocate Simon Weisenthal and the Teamsters.

Mann was a struggling television writer in the 1950s when he became fixated on the postwar Nuremberg trials that brought to justice the top surviving leaders of the Nazi regime. His "Judgment at Nuremberg" had become a successful drama on television, and against all advice, he was determined to convert it into his first movie script.

"A lot of people didn't want it done," he commented in a 1994 interview. "People wanted to sweep the issue under the rug."

Mann persisted, and producer-director Stanley Kramer made the film with a cast that included Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift and Maximilian Schell. "Judgment at Nuremberg" was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won Oscars for Schell and Mann. (Widmark, who played a U.S. prosecutor, died Monday at 93.)

"I believe that a writer worth his salt at all has an obligation not only to entertain but to comment on the world in which he lives, not only to comment, but maybe have a shot at reshaping the world," Mann said when he accepted his Oscar.

His other movies included "A Child Is Waiting" (starring Lancaster and Garland) about retarded children; "Ship of Fools" (with Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer and Lee Marvin) involving human interplay on an ocean liner; and "Report to the Commissioner" (featuring Michael Moriarty) about police corruption.

Finding film studios increasingly unwilling to tackle controversial subjects, Mann returned to television.

After creating "Kojak," which aired until 1978, he wrote and directed the Emmy-nominated miniseries "King," a biography of Martin Luther King Jr.

Other made-for-TV movies: "Skag" (1980), which became a short-run series for Karl Malden; "Murderers Among Us: The Simon Weisenthal Story" {1989); "Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story" (1992); "Sinatra" (1992); and "Indictment: The McMartin Trial" (1995), which won him another Emmy.

One of his last works was 2002's "Whitewash: The Clarence Brandley Story," based on the true-life story of a man wrongly convicted of murder because of racism.

In 2001, his script of "Judgment at Nuremberg" was produced in New York by the National Actors Theater.

Mann was born Abraham Goodman in Philadelphia on Dec. 1, 1927, the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant. He grew up in a tough factory neighborhood where he said he always felt like an outsider.

He began writing plays at Temple University and New York University.

After three years in the Army, he began writing scripts for television's Golden Age when high-quality TV dramas were in demand. His credits included "Lux Video Theatre," "Playhouse 90" and "Studio One," among many others.

Survivors include Mann's wife and son.

 

[MakersandIce]

Dith Pran

‘Killing Fields’ survivor Dith Pran dies
Photographer succumbs to pancreatic cancer at 65

NEW YORK - Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, his former colleague said.

Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago.

Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for Schanberg in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when the Vietnam War reached its chaotic end in April 1975 and both countries were taken over by Communist forces.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23867336

 

[JennyOmanHill]

R&B Singer Sean Levert Dies

AP
Posted: 2008-03-31 13:26:24

CLEVELAND (March 31) - Singer Sean Levert, a third of the 1980s R&B trio LeVert and son of lead O'Jays singer Eddie Levert, has died after falling ill while serving a jail term. He was 39.

Sean Levert, who sang 'Casanova' and was a legacy in the legendary Levert family, died after he collapsed at a Cleveland jail. No cause has been given for his death.

Levert was sent to the Cuyahoga County jail last week for failing to pay child support. He died at Lutheran Hospital in Cleveland late Sunday, less than an hour after he was taken there from the jail, said coroner Frank Miller. An autopsy was planned, he said.

His brother Gerald Levert, who had success as a solo artist after leaving their trio died in 2006 at age 40 of an accidental mix of prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

The brothers had formed LeVert in the 1980s with childhood friend Marc Gordon. Their hits included and "Baby I'm Ready," "(Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop) Goes My Mind" and "Casanova."

"Casanova" was nominated for a Grammy in 1988 for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocal. It was also nominated for best R&B song.

At Gerald Levert's funeral service in November 2006, Sean Levert and his father performed "Dance With My Father" and personalized the words for Gerald. The elder Levert's group, the O'Jays, was known for such smash hits as "Back Stabbers" and "Love Train."

Sean Levert found a new third partner last year and was trying to revive LeVert.

Warden Kevin McDonough said Levert had been sick and guards were watching him at the jail's regular cellblock because he had been acting strangely. He declined to be more specific about Levert's medical condition.

Levert suffered from high blood pressure and had been hallucinating in jail, Caesar said. Toxicology reports could take four to six weeks, he said.

Sean Levert had pleaded guilty last week to six counts of nonsupport involving children ages 11, 15 and 17.

 

[blueyz22]

Source: New York Daily News
April 2, 2008

Big Bertha, the crowd-pleasing sand tiger shark who survived an astonishing four decades at the New York Aquarium, has died.

The 43-year-old predator was euthanized Saturday night at the Coney Island, Brooklyn, facility after she failed to bounce back from a recent illness, officials said.

"She was off her game. She slowed down. She wasn't quite right," said Hans Walters, the animal department supervisor at the Aquarium. "She rallied for a while ... but by the end of this week, we were raising a red flag."

Seven feet long and 270 pounds, Bertha was one of six sand tigers in the popular shark tank - but the only one with a name.

"We for the most part don't name them because they don't come when you call them, but Bertha did get a name because she was the biggest and the oldest," Walters said.

She was dropped off at the Aquarium in 1965 by a local fisherman and may have lived longer than any shark of her species in captivity.

The cause of death is unknown, and Aquarium officials are awaiting analysis of tissue samples to determine if she suffered from a disease or just old age.

They also collected some of her vertebrae in hopes of pinpointing her age, Walters said.

With a mouth full of three-pronged teeth, sand tiger sharks have an intimidating look, but they mostly feed on small fish and are considered docile.

"She was pretty mellow," Walters said of Bertha, who never bore offspring. "She was mellow even for a sand tiger."

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local...new_york_aquarium_mourns_bertha_the_tige.html

 

[blueyz22]

Burlesque legend Sherry Britton dies
BY OWEN MORITZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, April 2nd 2008, 7:03 PM


Sherry Britton
Sherry Britton, a brainy, sexy stripper who was the queen of Broadway burlesque in her 20s, was barred from the World's Fair in her 40s and graduated from college in her 60s, has died.

"She had an IQ of 165, lived on Gramercy Park and aged gracefully," said a cousin, Karen Britton.

Britton, dubbed Great Britton and once made an honorary brigadier general by President Roosevelt for her work entertaining World War II troops, died Tuesday in Beth Israel Hospital of natural causes. She was 89.

The irrepressible Britton was singled out in a recent HBO documentary as "among the most stunning of yesterday's burlesque stars...."She had 'jet black hair and an hourglass figure to die for.' "

The documentary said Britton "had her share of rich admirers" and lived in Manhattan with her poodle, Miss Rich Bitch.

In a succession of foster homes after her parents divorced when she was 2 1/2, the precocious and photogenic Britton became a stripper in early teens.

Some newspaper stories claim she graduated from Tilden High School in Brooklyn at 13, but she told interviewers that was just some press agent hyperbole.

She did, however, enroll in Fordham University Law School late in life and graduate pre-law magna cum laude at age 63.

In her prime, she starred in Minksy's Gaiety Theater on Broadway and became a national celebrity.

She was quotable and controversial.

"I strip but I don't tease," she once said.

As late as 1958 she was making headlines in Washington by performing at a club two blocks from the Eisenhower White House.

"One of the world's 10 best undressed women currently is performing one of the oldest arts of the American theater," Daily News
Washington columnist Gwen Gibson wrote. "That would be Miss Sherry (Fabulous Body) Britton."

Robert Moses barred her from the 1964 World's Fair because she was too risque. She later became a cabaret singer and performed in
dozens of theater productions.

She marked her 75th birthday by performing at Broadway's Marriott Marquee hotel, which sits on the site of the old Minsky's.

Britton was divorced from her first husband; her second marriage was annulled.

She is survived by a sister and several cousins. A private service will be held Thursday at Riverside Memorial Chapel in Manhattan.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/04/02/2008-04-02_burlesque_legend_sherry_britton_dies.html