Literotica Cemetary

[JennyOHill2]

Teena Marie

(CNN) -- Teena Marie, a celebrated R&B singer-songwriter, was found dead Sunday at her California home, her manager said.

Born Mary Christine Brockert in Santa Monica, California, the 54-year-old artist famously paired with late funk legend Rick James and was nominated four times for a Grammy Award, according to her official website.

Marie was found dead by her daughter after apparently dying in her sleep, manager Mike Gardner said.

"Teena was a black voice trapped in a white body," said Cathy Hughes, founder of Radio One, a broadcasting company that targets African-American and urban listeners. "I would always tell her that she was one of the greatest vocalists of our time."

Among her songs were "Lovergirl," "Portuguese Love," "Ooo La La La," and "I'm a Sucker for Your Love."

While no cause of death has been released, the singer's publicist Lynn Jeter said that Marie suffered a grand mal seizure -- a neurological event, marked by loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions, according to the Mayo Clinic -- a month ago.

"Luckily, someone was there," Jeter said of that seizure. "The ambulance took her to the hospital, and on the way she had another seizure."

The publicist said that she had a "great" conversation on Saturday with Marie, who told her that she was excited about heading to Atlanta to perform this week -- in what would have been her first performance since the seizure.

Marie sang under various record labels, including Motown, Epic and Cash Money Classics, since bursting on the scene as a 19-year-old, according to her website. Her most recent album, Sapphire, features collaborations with Smokey Robinson, Kurupt and Gerald Albright.

Eddie Levert, founder of the vocal group The O'Jays, praised Marie as both a singer and mother.

"There are a lot of black people who swore by her and believed in her, as far as her music was concerned," he said. "She was a good mom, and to me, that is saying a lot.''

 

[KindaKinky]

(CNN) -- Teena Marie, a celebrated R&B singer-songwriter, was found dead Sunday at her California home, her manager said.

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/26/teena.marie.dead/t1larg.teena.marie.gi.jpg

Born Mary Christine Brockert in Santa Monica, California, the 54-year-old artist famously paired with late funk legend Rick James and was nominated four times for a Grammy Award, according to her official website.

Marie was found dead by her daughter after apparently dying in her sleep, manager Mike Gardner said.

"Teena was a black voice trapped in a white body," said Cathy Hughes, founder of Radio One, a broadcasting company that targets African-American and urban listeners. "I would always tell her that she was one of the greatest vocalists of our time."

Among her songs were "Lovergirl," "Portuguese Love," "Ooo La La La," and "I'm a Sucker for Your Love."

While no cause of death has been released, the singer's publicist Lynn Jeter said that Marie suffered a grand mal seizure -- a neurological event, marked by loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions, according to the Mayo Clinic -- a month ago.

"Luckily, someone was there," Jeter said of that seizure. "The ambulance took her to the hospital, and on the way she had another seizure."

The publicist said that she had a "great" conversation on Saturday with Marie, who told her that she was excited about heading to Atlanta to perform this week -- in what would have been her first performance since the seizure.

Marie sang under various record labels, including Motown, Epic and Cash Money Classics, since bursting on the scene as a 19-year-old, according to her website. Her most recent album, Sapphire, features collaborations with Smokey Robinson, Kurupt and Gerald Albright.

Eddie Levert, founder of the vocal group The O'Jays, praised Marie as both a singer and mother.

"There are a lot of black people who swore by her and believed in her, as far as her music was concerned," he said. "She was a good mom, and to me, that is saying a lot.''

The last time I saw her perform was at the Beacon in NYC on a Mother's Day double bill with The Whispers.

I'll miss you 'Lovergirl'.

 

[Holly Delight]

Isabelle Caro

This one is disturbing. Saw this notice on Yahoo.
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l2nl59wMoJ1qbljveo1_500.png

Couldn't find a pic of her when she was normal. Not sure if I could even pick one out if it were on Google images(?)


GENEVA (AFP) – A former French model who caused a stir with a 2007 ad campaign in which she was photographed nude with anorexia, died last month at the age of 28, the 20 Minutes.ch website reported Wednesday.

Isabelle Caro's boyfriend, Swiss singer Vincent Bigler, confirmed her death, saying she passed away on November 17 after spending about two weeks in hospital with acute respiratory disease although he did not know the cause of death.

Caro hit the spotlight in 2007 when she bared her emaciated frame for pictures by controversial Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani for an anti-anorexia campaign for a clothing company that was released in Milan fashion week.

At the time she weighed just 32 kilogrammes (70.5 pounds) for a height of 1.65 metres (5.4 feet).

Her picture caused a stir, sparking debate in the fashion industry. It was banned by Italy's advertising watchdog while France's authority told French companies not to use it.

"She was hospitalised for 15 days with acute respiratory disease and was recently also very tired, but I do not know the cause of her death," Bigler told the 20 Minutes.ch.

Caro suffered with anorexia from the age of 13 and fell into a coma in 2006 when her weight dropped to 25kg. She fought the eating disorder and announced early 2010 that her weight had risen to 42kg, 20 Minutes said.

Caro said in 2007 she had decided to pose Toscani's "No to Anorexia" campaign to alert young women to the dangers of being too thin.

"I thought this could be a chance to use my suffering to get a message across, and finally put an image on what thinness represents and the danger it leads to -- which is death," she said.

 

[KindaKinky]

Iconic face of Rosie the Riveter poster dies

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CHICAGO (AFP) – A Michigan factory worker used as the unwitting model for the wartime Rosie the Riveter poster whose inspirational "We Can Do It!" message became an icon of the feminist movement has died.

Geraldine Doyle died Sunday, a spokesman for the Hospice House of Mid Michigan told AFP. She was 86.

Doyle didn't realize she had a famous face until she was flipping through a magazine in 1982 and spotted a reproduction of the poster, her daughter told The New York Times.

But while Doyle recognized her face under the red and white polka dot bandana, the strong arm held up in a fist wasn't hers.

"She didn't have big, muscular arms," Mrs. Gregg said. "She was 5-foot-10 and very slender. She was a glamour girl. The arched eyebrows, the beautiful lips, the shape of the face -- that's her."

Doyle was just 17 when she took at job at a metal pressing plant near Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1942.

She quit about two weeks later after learning that another woman had badly injured her hand on the job -- she was worried she'd lose the ability to play the cello, her daughter said.

She was there, however, when a United Press International photographer came to the factory while documenting the contribution of women to the war effort.

A picture of Doyle was later used by J. Howard Miller, a graphic artist at Westinghouse, for the poster which was aimed at deterring strikes and absenteeism.

The poster was not widely seen until the 1980's when it was embraced by the feminist movement as a potent symbol of women's empowerment.

The iconic image now graces a US postage stamp and has been used to sell lunch boxes, aprons, mugs, t-shirts and figurines.

The term "Rosie the Riveter" stems from a 1942 song honoring the women who took over critical factory jobs when men went off to war.

Another Michigan woman, Rose Will Monroe, was the best-known "Rosie" after being featured in a wartime promotional film about female factory workers.

Doyle was quick to correct people who thought she was the original Rosie the Riveter, Gregg told the Lansing State Journal.

"She would say that she was the 'We Can Do It!" girl," Gregg said. "She never wanted to take anything away from the other Rosies."

A funeral service is set for Tuesday. Gregg did not immediate return a request for comment.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Jillian Michelle Smith
December 28, 2010

Smith was a 24 year old Arlington native who graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington with a criminology degree in 2009.

ARLINGTON, Texas

Officer Smith responded to a call of a domestic dispute between a husband and wife. When she arrived, the husband had already left the apartment. Officer Smith was inside the apartment taking a report from the female victim when her husband returned.

As the husband opened fire Officer Smith positioned herself to shield the woman's 11-year-old daughter, saving the girl but receiving fatal gunshot wounds. The man then chased his wife to a bedroom where he murdered her before killing himself.

Officer Smith had served with the Arlington Police Department for 10 months and had finished her field training 15 days prior to her murder.

http://media2.myfoxdfw.com/photo/2010/12/29/smith_20101229102243_320_240.JPG

 

[JennyOHill2]

Stealer's Wheel Singer Gerry Rafferty Dies at 63

Gerry Rafferty, the Scottish singer-songwriter best known for songs like 'Stuck in the Middle With You' and 'Baker Street,' died Tuesday, the Guardian reports. The 63-year-old was hospitalized in November 2010 with liver failure and had been ill ever since.

Born in Paisley in 1947, Rafferty was the third child of a hard-drinking Irish miner who frequently abused his family. After his father died when he was 16, Rafferty left school to work and play music. After the Mavericks, his first band with school friend Joe Egan, fell apart, Rafferty joined the Humblebums, a folk band that featured future comedian and actor Billy Connolly.

The Humblebums went their separate ways after a few albums, Rafferty released a solo album in 1971 and formed Stealer's Wheel with Egan in 1972. The band's eponymous debut featured the hit 'Stuck in the Middle With You,' which sold over a million copies and was later featured in Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs.' The group, which had a top 40 hit with 'Star' in 1974, disbanded in 1975 after diminishing success and legal troubles.

With contract issues finally settled, Rafferty recorded a soft-rock solo album, 'City to City,' in 1978 and hit the big time with the single 'Baker Street.' The song eventually hit No. 2 on the US charts and No. 3 in the UK, with the album selling over 5.5 million copies. Rafferty followed up the albums with the successful 'Night Owl,' and acclaimed but less lucrative LPs like 'Snakes and Ladders' and 'Sleepwalking.'

Sadly, around this time he spiraled into alcoholism, leading his wife of 20 years, Carla, to divorce him in 1990. His drinking troubles continued, with an incident at a posh London hotel making the news in 2008. In 2009, rumors swirled about his health until representatives for him issued a statement saying that he was doing well and working on a new album. That year, he released 'Life Goes On,' which featured six new recordings and remastered tracks from his previous records.

Rafferty is survived by his daughter, Martha, granddaughter, Celia, and brother, Jim.



My favorite Rafferty song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR1yDN3LqWU

 

[JennyOHill2]

Anne Francis

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - As the only female in an otherwise all-male cast in the classic science-fiction film "Forbidden Planet," actress Anne Francis played the alluring daughter of scientist Walter Pidgeon who sets spacemen's hearts ablaze - and unleashed the Monster of the Id as well. This 1956 space-age retelling of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" made Francis and co-star Leslie Nielsen stars. Like Nielsen, Francis recently passed away at the age of 80.

While appearing regularly in movies and television, Francis' most other distinguished acting role was that of "Honey West," which only lasted one season on ABC from 1965 to 1966. Playing a private detective who was sexy, stylish and as good with martial arts as she was with a gun - along with her pet ocelot, Francis made a lasting impression.

"A lot of people speak to me about Honey West," Francis once recalled. "The character made young women think there was more they could reach for. It encouraged a lot of people." She was nominated for an Emmy and won a Golden Globe for the role.

Francis was working as a model by the time she was 5 and appearing on daytime radio serials by age 11. She also had some small roles on Broadway.

She began her movie career at MGM in 1947. In "Blackboard Jungle" (1955), she played the pregnant wife of an idealistic teacher (Glenn Ford). Among her other films were "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955) with Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan, "A Lion Is in the Streets" (1953) with James Cagney, and "Hook, Line and Sinker" (1969) with Jerry Lewis.

Francis appeared in dozens of T.V. series, including "Mission: Impossible," "Gunsmoke," "Charlie's Angels" and "The Golden Girls." Perhaps Francis' most memorable guest appearance on a TV series was in "The After Hours" on Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone." Francis, after a series of misadventures in a department store is reminded in a shock conclusion that she is a mannequin who must return to her post.

Francis was married and divorced twice. Dying from complications due to pancreatic cancer, she is survived by two daughters and a granddaughter.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Pete Postlethwaite

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Pete Postlethwaite, Oscar-nominated actor & 'Usual Suspects' star, dies of cancer at age 64

Celebrated British actor Pete Postlethwaite has died.

The 64-year-old passed away in a hospital in central England on Sunday, longtime friend Andrew Richardson told England's Press Association.

Postlethwaite had been battling cancer, he said.

The award-winning thespian had appeared in movies and television shows for years, but gained international fame as Mr. Kobayashi in 1995's "The Usual Suspects."

He followed the role with praised performances in numerous films, including "Brassed Off," "Romeo + Juliet" and "The Shipping News." He most recently appeared in last year's "Inception," "Clash of the Titans" and "The Town."

Director Steven Spielberg called Postlethwaite "the best actor in the world," and cast him in two of his movies in the 1990s, "The Lost World" and "Amistad."

In 1992, Postlethwaite was nominated for an Oscar for his performance opposite Daniel Day Lewis in "In the Name of the Father." He received the Order of the British Empire in 2004.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Bill Erwin Dies

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Bill Erwin, a character actor whose stage and film work spanned half a century, but who was best known for his Emmy-nominated turn as a grumpy old man on Seinfeld, has died at 96.

Erwin passed away Dec. 29 of age-related causes at his Studio City, Calif., home, not far from the production lot where Seinfeld was filmed, his son told the Los Angeles Times.

Erwin enjoyed a long career in movies, theater and particularly television, taking dozens of roles on shows including Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, The Golden Girls, Growing Pains, Who's the Boss? and My Name Is Earl.

But his role as Sid Fields in the 1993 Seinfeld episode "The Old Man" brought him the most acclaim, along with an Emmy nomination.

Erwin was also fondly remembered for his role as Arthur the bellman in the 1980 fantasy film Somewhere in Time, and frequently returned to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Mich., where the film was set, to celebrate with fans.

Born in Texas in 1914, Erwin studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and performed in stage productions around Los Angeles through the decades. He was also a self-taught cartoonist who saw his work published in The New Yorker, Playboy and Los Angeles magazine.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Tom Cavanagh, Former Sharks Forward, Found Dead at Rhode Island Mall

Tom Cavanagh, a former San Jose Sharks forward, was found dead Thursday morning in a parking garage at a Providence, R.I., mall in an apparent suicide. He was 28.

Police told the Providence Journal Cavanagh's body was found in one area of the garage shortly before noon Thursday, and his car was discovered in another part of the garage later in the day. An autopsy revealed "multiple traumatic injuries due to blunt force impact."

Cavanagh's father Joseph, an attorney, released a statement Friday night that read in part:

"Our son, Tom, was a young man who bravely fought the demons of mental illness for many years. This private struggle far surpassed his public athletic accomplishments. Our family will celebrate and always remember his beautiful but short life."

A Rhode Island native, Cavanagh was an All-State hockey player at Toll Gate High School before moving on to Harvard, where he played from 2001-05.

After college, he played mostly in the AHL for the next five seasons, but did make one appearance for the Sharks in 2007-08 and 17 more the following season. He scored one NHL goal, in what turned out to be his second-to-last game with the Sharks, finding the net March 28, 2009 in a 3-2 win against the Coyotes.

Cavanagh saw limited time for Manchester of the AHL last year but was not playing professionally this season.

"We are shocked and saddened by the news of Tom's passing," Sharks general manager Doug Wilson said in a statement. "Tom was an extraordinary young man and a terrific teammate who spent four seasons with our organization. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family during this difficult time."

 

[JennyOHill2]

TV writer and producer Aron Abrams

KONA, Hawaii ( KTLA) -- Homicide detectives are investigating the death of TV writer and producer Aron Abrams, who was found dead Christmas morning in a luxury hotel on Hawaii's Kona island.

Police on the Big Island say the 50 year old writer/producer from Los Angeles was found at the Fairmont Orchid Hawaii Hotel on the Kohala Coast.

Nominated for a WGA award for "Everybody Hates Chris," Abrams was also a writer and producer on "Grounded for Life" and "3rd Rock From the Sun."

He was a consulting producer of the long-running animated Fox series "King of the Hill."

His first showbiz gig came when he co-wrote a script for Dino De Laurentiis with his brother, Ian Abrams, "Presumed Impotent."

After teaming with his brother on several other projects for De Laurentiis, Abrams began landing sitcom gigs.

Raised in Emerson, N.J.. he attended Oberlin and Connecticut College.

He is survived by his wife, Lynn; two daughters; and niece Rachel Abrams who is a Variety reporter.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Peter Yates

Peter Yates, the director who died on Sunday aged 81, made his name with film's definitive car chase in Bullitt.

The hubcap spinning, tramcar dodging, engine growling, tyre-screeching, high-speed pursuit through the streets of San Francisco was a triumph for Yates and his cinematographer, William Fraker, who made the daring decision to mount cameras on the cars themselves rather than shoot the scene from a distance. "The whole idea was to allow the audience to experience the chase like they were in the cars," said Fraker. Despite spawning a host of imitations, it is still regarded as the original and best car chase sequence in cinema.

It did not just depend on new techniques. Steve McQueen, whom Yates described as "a lot of macho", revelled in the death-defying driving scenes. To capture one segment, Yates joined him in the car. "I was in the back of the Mustang and Steve was going about 120mph," Yates recalled. "We came to the last downhill section and when we got to the top of the hill Steve was still going pretty fast. I tapped him on the shoulder and said: 'We can slow down now, we're almost out of film.' Steve said very calmly: 'We can't. There aren't any brakes.'"

The car duly flew past cast and crew members before McQueen managed to steer it on to an incline to bring it to a halt. "If it was anyone else, we might not have made it," said Yates. "Steve was a great driver."

Yates's path to films was idiosyncratic. The son of a soldier, he was born on July 24 1929 in Aldershot, Hampshire, and educated at Charterhouse. He went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and at 19 began in repertory. His notices as an actor were so execrable, however, that he abandoned the stage for motor cars and from 1949 to 1953 became assistant works manager at HW Motors in Surrey, which had a racing team led by Stirling Moss. The experience contributed richly to Bullitt some 20 years later.

In 1953 Yates entered the film industry as a dubbing assistant on foreign language films. He then edited documentaries before rising to become assistant director on several pictures, including the celebrated war epic The Guns Of Navarone (1961). He also directed television episodes of The Saint and Danger Man before taking charge of his first feature, Summer Holiday (1963), starring Cliff Richard And The Shadows.

His next film was an adaptation of the play One Way Pendulum (1965), a comically absurd tale which he had directed on stage at the Royal Court. It had little commercial success, and it was his third picture, Robbery (1967), an effective retelling of the Great Train Robbery, that set the template for the rest of his career. Its opening scene, a tautly thrilling car chase, won Yates the job on Bullitt.

Though a genial character, Yates was his own man and infuriated McQueen when he refused to collaborate on Le Mans, another car caper that was to be the sequel to Bullitt. Yates explained: "I was afraid that no self-respecting actor would want to work with me if I did two 'machine' films together. Although action films are great fun, films about relationships are really much more satisfying."

He was not always so successful in making such films, however. His best efforts included John And Mary (1969), a gentle sentimental comedy which drew fine performances from Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow; Breaking Away (1979); and The Dresser (1984).

Breaking Away, an affecting study of teenage dreams built around cycle racing in Indiana, attracted four Academy Award nominations and prompted The Daily Telegraph's Patrick Gibbs to write: "For the first time Yates communicates considerable humanity as well as his usual efficiency as a director."

The Dresser (1984) won five further nominations and again steered well clear of car chases – the pyrotechnics confined instead to the acting of Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay. Filmed almost entirely in a dressing room, the piece keeled over under the weight of the performances and the stifling theatricality of the production. A chase scene would have been welcome.

Yates, who spent much of his life in New York, accepted that he was likely to be remembered as a proficient, reliable performer behind the camera. Of his own work, he said: "I put it somewhere below meals for the aged, but a little way above manufacturing toothpaste."

Other films he directed included Murphy's War (1971), an engaging adventure story with Peter O'Toole; The Hot Rock (1972); For Pete's Sake (1974); The Friends of Eddy Coyle (1973); The Deep (1977); Eyewitness (1981); Krull (1983); Eleni (1985); Suspect (1987); The House on Carroll Street (1988); An Innocent Man (1989); Year of the Comet (1992); Roommates (1995); and Curtain Call (1999). Don Quixote (2000), with John Lithgow as the fantasist hero, and A Separate Peace (2004), an unremarkable adaptation of John Knowles's coming-of-age novel, (both filmed for television) brought his career to a close.

Of these, The Deep, about divers hunting treasure off a Caribbean island, was a notable success, though its most enduring contribution to popular culture may be the wet T-shirt contest, for which a craze began after stills were released of actress Jacqueline Bisset thus attired. Bisset claimed to be "extremely upset" by the pictures, but Newsweek promptly declared her "the most beautiful actress of all time". Krull, a turgid sci-fi picture, was another popular, if not critical, hit.

The Friends of Eddy Coyle, an unvarnished adaptation of the George V Higgins novel, was probably his best film, with Robert Mitchum outstanding in the title role.

To the end, however, Yates admitted that "chases continue to fascinate me". His formula was simple: "In the beginning you establish anticipation. The middle should confuse people so you're not sure where everyone is going. The end is where the good guys come out best."

Peter Yates married Virginia Pope in 1960. She survives him with three children.

 

[MNGuy]

http://www.saak.nl/video/tribute%20to%20major%20dick%20winters.jpg

Dick Winters, a decorated Army officer whose World War II service was recounted in the best-selling book and HBO mini-series "Band of Brothers," died Jan. 2. News reports listed his age at 92.

Based on the 1992 book by historian Stephen E. Ambrose, the HBO mini-series came out in 2001 and was produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.

The story follows the tragedies and triumphs of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 2nd Battalion, E Company.

To Mr. Winters, these citizen-soldiers came to be known as the men of Easy Company -- paratroopers who jumped into combat on June 6, 1944 above Normandy, France.

According to Ambrose's account, Easy Company suffered 150 percent casualties throughout the war.

One of the soldiers who served in Easy Company, David Webster, once wrote that among his colleagues the Purple Heart "was not a decoration but a badge of office."

Mr. Winters, who separated from the Army at the rank of major, and his men fought together through D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge and later occupied Adolf Hitler's mountainside retreat, the Eagle's Nest, near Berchtesgaden.

A charismatic officer who led by example, Mr. Winters received the Distinguished Service Cross, the country's second highest decoration for valor, while conducting combat operations on D-Day.

Mr. Winters led a small group of men on a raid of German cannon emplacements near Utah beach on Normandy's coastline.

While taking out the heavily fortified bunker, Mr. Winters and his men killed 15 German soldiers and took 12 more as prisoners, helping to save countless American lives from the withering cannon fire.

Later in the war, one of Mr. Winters's soldiers, Floyd Talbert, wrote a letter to the officer from a hospital in Indiana expressing gratitude for his loyalty and leadership.

"You are loved and will never be forgotten by any soldier that ever served under you," Talbert wrote to Mr. Winters in 1945. "I would follow you into hell."

For Mr. Winters, his soldiers were his Band of Brothers and their experiences together in the war "created a bond between the men of E company that will last forever."

 

[JennyOHill2]

David Nelson, last surviving member of the TV sitcom family, dies at 74

Nelson died at his Century City home of complications from colon cancer, said publicist Dale Olson.

"The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" began on radio in 1944, as a day in the home life of bandleader Ozzie Nelson and his vocalist wife, Harriet Hilliard.

In 1949, the popular show became a true family affair when 12-year-old David and 8-year-old Ricky replaced the child actors who had been portraying them on radio.

"The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" moved to television three years later, debuting on ABC in October 1952.

When the series ended in 1966 after 435 episodes, it had become the longest-running family situation comedy in TV history - as well as serving as the launch pad and showcase for teen idol Rick Nelson's singing career.

In the process of playing fictionalized versions of themselves on television each week for 14 years, David and Rick Nelson literally grew up in front of millions of Americans.

Indeed, after David and Rick were married in the early 60s, their wives - first David's wife, actress June Blair; and then Rick's wife, the former Kris Harmon - became their TV wives.

The blurring of what was real and what was not caused confusion in some viewers' minds.

When David enrolled at the University of Southern California and joined a fraternity after graduating from Hollywood High School in 1954, his TV character started college and joined a fraternity.

But unlike his TV character, who became a lawyer on the show, David did not go into law.

Instead, he launched his career as a director by taking the reins from his director-father for about a dozen episodes of the show in the early '60s. He spent the next several decades directing commercials and occasional TV series and movies.

"The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" has been criticized for presenting an idealized version of American family life that few could live up to.

That included the Nelsons, as David pointed out in a 1971 Esquire article headlined "The Happy, Happy, Happy Nelsons."

"We would keep up the front of this totally problemless, happy-go-lucky group," he said. "There might have been a tremendous battle in our home, but if someone from outside came in, it would be as if the director yelled, 'Roll 'em,' We'd fall right into our stage roles.

"It's an awfully big load to carry, to be everyone's fantasy family."

He was born Oct. 24, 1936, in New York City, when Ozzie and Harriet were in their big-band heyday.

Rick was born in 1940, the year before the Nelsons moved permanently to Hollywood.

After Ozzie and Harriet launched their radio show in 1944, David and Rick would accompany their parents to their live broadcasts.

They had no show business aspirations, but when they heard that their young friend Lindsay Crosby was going to make a guest appearance with his father, Bing, in an episode of the show in December 1948, David and Rick lobbied their parents to let them appear as well.

Ozzie and Harriet finally agreed to let them play David and Ricky in the preview show before a studio audience but not the actual broadcast.

As Harriet told the Los Angeles Times in 1981, "You're not anxious to put your career in the hands of kids."

The boys did not disappoint their parents.

"They just opened their mouths and you never heard such laughs," said Harriet. "Ricky sounded like a pipsqueak."

David and Ricky joined the cast of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" in February 1949. Within six months, Radio Life magazine dubbed them "The Crown Princes of Radio."

From the start, Ricky was given most of the funny lines and, as a result, he received most of the attention.

But there wasn't really any rivalry between himself and his younger brother, Nelson said in a 1987 Associated Press interview.

"We were 3 1/2 years apart," David Nelson said. "So when Rick was funny, I laughed with everyone else. And when he became a popular singer, I rooted for him."

David and Rick made their movie debuts in "Here Come the Nelsons," the 1952 comedy released about eight months before the family debuted on television.

During the '50s and early '60s, David Nelson also had roles in the movies "Peyton Place," "The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker," "The Big Circus," "Day of the Outlaw," "30" and "The Big Show."

For "The Big Circus," he learned to be a catcher in a trapeze act and later appeared professionally as a catcher.

Nelson acted only sporadically after "Ozzie and Harriet" ended; his final acting credit was as the father of Wanda (Traci Lords) in "Cry-Baby," writer-director John Waters' spoof of the '50s.

Ozzie Nelson died of liver cancer in 1975. Rick Nelson died with six others in a plane crash on New Year's Eve 1985. And in 1994, Harriet Nelson died of congestive heart failure.

He is survived by his wife, Yvonne; sons John, Eric, James and Danny; daughter Teri; and seven grandchildren. Nelson's marriage to June Blair ended in divorce in 1975.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Ellen Stewart, Off-Off-Broadway Beacon and Founder of La Mama, Dies at 91

Ellen Stewart, the powerhouse impresario who, as the founder of the downtown Manhattan theatre complex La MaMa, E.T.C. (short for Experimental Theatre Club), was one of the central figures in the creation of the Off-Off-Broadway movement, died Jan. 13 in New York City. She was 91.

Ms. Stewart founded La MaMa in 1961, and remained its director until her death. In its early years, the company nurtured aborning talents such as playwrights Sam Shepard, Tom Eyen, William Hoffman, Lanford Wilson, Adrienne Kennedy, Rochelle Owens, Jeff Weiss, Harvey Fierstein and Jean Claude Van Itallie; directors Robert Wilson, Julie Bovasso, Tom O'Horgan, Richard Foreman, Wilford Leach and Meredith Monk; performance artists like John Kelly and Blue Man Group; and actors Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.

Fierstein said on Jan. 13, "I began my career at Ellen's theatre in 1971. She always treated me like family. And she was always like a mother to me. I am heartbroken by the loss. As anyone with any knowledge of theatre knows, she changed the world." He added, "And not only did she give us the avant garde, she also gave us the muumuu."

The company supported a wide variety of avant garde troupes over the ensuing decades, including The La MaMa Troupe directed by future Hair director Tom O'Horgan; Mabou Mines, directed by Lee Breuer; The Great Jones Repertory, directed by Andrei Serban and Elizabeth Swados; La MaMa Chinatown, directed by Wu Jing-jyi and Ching Yeh of Taiwan — out of which grew The Pan Asian Repertory; and Ping Chong and Company. In more recent years, La MaMa was the home of the plays of Jim Neu and the comic sketches of brother-sister team of Amy and David Sedaris, as well as countless foreign productions hailing from everywhere from Lebanon to Croatia.

The musical Godspell, which moved to Off-Broadway in 1971, began at La MaMa, and Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy was developed there. But for the most part, the heart of the company — unlike the Public Theater, an institution of comparable influence, which sent many shows to Broadway — remained below 14th Street, aligned with the city's scrappy, struggling and striving creative souls.

The African-American Ms. Stewart, a striking figure with a wild mane of blonde hair, sometimes worn in corn rows, was a familiar sight at her East 4th Street complex of stages and offices, often personally introducing each performance, and more than occasionally implored the audience members to donate to the perpetually cash-strapped organization.

The theatre's peculiar name was an expression of Ms. Stewart's role in the institution. And, indeed, she did take on a kind of Earth Mother status in the downtown theatre world, giving hundreds of young artists a chance and an artistic home. She didn't write, didn't act, didn't direct until late in her career, but she spurred on and lent succor to those who did, or wanted to.

Her influence in the New York theatre world was so far-ranging that, in 1993, she was inducted into the Broadway Theatre Hall of Fame, the first Off-Off-Broadway Producer to be so honored. She also was given a Tony Award in 2006 for Excellence in Theater.

Ellen Stewart was born Nov. 7, 1919, in Alexandria, Louisiana. She moved to New York in 1950 and began her career in fashion. (She was once a designer for Saks.) The theatre grew out of her tiny basement boutique at 312 E. 9th Street, mainly because she wanted to provide a stage for the works of her foster brother Frederick Lights. She sold clothes by day, and opened up the space to playwrights at night. She wasn't the first to offer writers a haven to experiment outside the commercial strictures of Broadway and Off-Broadway. Joe Cino invited artists into his Greenwich Village coffee house Caffe Cino in 1959, and Al Carmines founded Judson Poet's Theatre in 1961. But La MaMa was certainly the most long-lived of the building blocks that formed the Off-Off-Broadway movement, primarily due to Ms. Stewart's tenacity. Her achievement was all the more remarkable in that she was both black and a woman when there were few leaders in the theatre who were either

Cafe La MaMa (so called because coffee house licenses were easier to get that those for theatres) had a dirt floor and sat 25 people. Ms. Stewart offered cake, coffee and free admission. The hat was passed. The primarily white residents of the 9th Street building became so alarmed by the variety of men coming in and out of the basement that they called the authorities. They thought Ms. Stewart was running a bordello.

As the theatre was frequently closed over fire code violations during its first year, Ms. Stewart began looking for a new home. She found it on the floor above a florist at 82 Second Avenue. She renamed the company La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (La MaMa E.T.C) and began charging a nominal admission. She abandoned her fashion career and began presenting one new play a week. Whereas early one she had produced many revivals of old plays, she now dedicated herself to new playwrights. Lanford Wilson and Sam Shepard, two veterans of Caffe Cino, were among her first authors.

Running from harassing city officials again (Ms. Stewart was arrested twice), La MaMa relocated again in late 1964. "It was the closing performance of Balls, Paul Foster's play," recalled Ms. Stewart in 1993. "There must have been 35 people who came to see the play. Many of them had never been there before, I told them just to strike the café. Many didn't know what I meant, but they all saw the others picking up chairs and tables. Everybody picked something up and followed me down the street. We took everything, paintings, tables, chairs, coffeepots — everything. Well, they moved me in one hour."

They landed on the second floor of 122 Second Avenue, La MaMa's third home and space. This location saw the premiere of Wilson's Balm in Gilead, directed by Marshall Mason. It was later regarded as one of his best plays. Sometimes, she took on productions that had commenced at Caffe Cino but were not able to extend. La MaMa stayed at this address until 1967, finding an audience mainly through word of mouth, as advertisements and a sign indicating the theatre's presence would have attracted unwanted civic attention.

To a certain extent, La MaMa specialized in the one-act in its early years. Shepard, Wilson and others would stage their longer works later and elsewhere, but they cut their teeth with trenchant short plays with Ms. Stewart. Notable one-acts that premiered at La MaMa in the 1960s included Shepard's Chicago, Dog and Melodrama Play, Wilson's Home Free and This Is Rill Speaking, Leonard Melfi's Birdbath, Line by Israel Horowitz, and H.M. Koutoukas' Medea in the Laundromat. Some of these were packaged as Six From La MaMa and produced commercially by Ted Mann at the Martinique Theatre in 1966. American Hurrah, the most significant play produced by Van Itallie, and a landmark in OOB history, was essentially a collection of three thematically joined one-acts.

By 1967, La MaMa had achieved nonprofit status and in 1969 it won grants from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Doris Duke Foundation. The company moved to a former meatpacking plant on E. 4th Street and stayed there. The top floor served as Ms. Stewart's home. It later expanded operations to 66 E. 4th Street, a space two doors away, referred to as The Annex.

La MaMa productions — and production qualities — were often rough around the edges and had a improvised air. "In its combative anarchy and outrageous iconoclasm," wrote Village Voice theatre editor Ross Wetzsteon, "in its rebellion against traditional definitions of 'talent,' and in its aggressive intimacy with its audience, Off-Off-Broadway made even Off-Broadway seem conventional." Shows experimented with writing styles, performance styles, even the relationship with the theatregoer.

In the years to come, Ms. Stewart opened her theatre to troupes from a wide range of countries, more than 70 nations in total, and, partly as a result, its connection to the New York theatre scene grew less vital, and its cultural influence, as it applied to the advancement of American theatre, lessened. The 1990s, however, saw a new generation of tenant nest in La MaMa theatres, include the Sedaris siblings, who created a series of wildly popular comic pieces includign One Woman Shoe, Target Margin Theatre, playwright Jim Neu and John Kelly.

La MaMa has been honored with over 30 Obie Awards, and dozens of Drama Desk Awards, Bessie Awards and Villager Awards.

In 1985, the MacArthur Foundation gave her "Genius" Award. She used the $300,000 grant to buy a former monastery in Umbria, Italy, and turned it into an international theatre center.

According to the New York Times, she was married at least once and had a son, Larry Hovell, who died in 1998. Her survivors include an adopted son, Duk Hyung Yoo, and eight grandchildren.

 

[phrodeau]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/09/timestopics/whiting_190.jpg

Margaret Whiting, Fresh-Faced Singer of Jazz and Pop Standards, Dies at 86
By DAVID BELCHER
Published: January 11, 2011

Margaret Whiting, a songwriter’s daughter who as a bright-eyed teenage singer captivated wartime America and then went on to a long, acclaimed career recording hit songs and performing in nightclubs and on television, died on Monday in Englewood, N.J. She was 86.

Her daughter and only survivor, Deborah Whiting, said Ms. Whiting died of natural causes at the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home, where she had lived since March, having made her home in Manhattan for many years.

Ms. Whiting may not have been a household name like her contemporaries Rosemary Clooney and Ella Fitzgerald, nor was she a singing movie star like Doris Day, but in her heyday she was widely popular in the worlds of big band, jazz, popular music — even country — for more than 30 years, beginning in the 1940s.

Early on, with her schoolgirl smile and wavy blond hair, Ms. Whiting was a favorite interpreter of jazz and popular standards. Her fresh-faced appearance and clear, sturdy voice, tinged with innocence, made her a darling of U.S.O. tours during World War II and the Korean War.

Beginning in the ’40s, she turned out a string of hit records, became a fixture on radio, appeared on television in the ’50s and later embarked on a successful nightclub career, touring as late as the 1990s and occasionally venturing into musical theater. She was still performing into the 21st century, often at clubs like Arci’s Place in Manhattan, where she had long been a mainstay of the cabaret scene.

In 2009 she found a wide audience again when her original recording of “Time After Time,” a Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn song from 1947, was featured in the film “Julie & Julia,” starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child.

But it was her association with the lyricist Johnny Mercer that most defined Ms. Whiting’s career. Mercer was writing songs for the movies with Ms. Whiting’s father, the popular-song composer Richard A. Whiting, when young Margaret sang for him one night at the family home in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was just 6.

“I came down in my nightgown,” she told The New York Times, “sang two songs and went up to bed.”

It would become a lasting friendship. After Mr. Whiting died of a heart attack in 1938 at the height of his popularity, Mercer became a surrogate father of sorts to 13-year-old Margaret, personally overseeing her budding career and signing her immediately after he helped found Capitol Records in 1942. He once told her, “I have two words for you: grow up.”

When she was 16, the comedian Phil Silvers asked her to fill in for a missing member of his act at the Grace Hayes Lodge in the San Fernando Valley. It helped start her career. At 18 she recorded the Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer song “That Old Black Magic” with the bandleader Freddie Slack. The next year it was “Moonlight in Vermont” with the trumpeter Billy Butterfield and his band, followed in 1945 by “It Might as Well Be Spring,” with Paul Weston, a Rodgers & Hammerstein tune from the musical “State Fair.” That song became a signature for her.

There were more hits, among them “Come Rain or Come Shine,” a Mercer-Arlen song from the musical “St. Louis Woman.”

In 1948 alone Ms. Whiting had three major hits: “A Tree in the Meadow,” “Now Is the Hour” and “Far Away Places.” A duet with Mercer, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (by Frank Loesser), lasted 19 weeks on the Billboard chart in 1949. Her nine duets with the country star Jimmy Wakely, from 1949 to 1951, were sensations, particularly “Slippin’ Around.” She released albums into the late 1950s with Capitol Records, then switched to the Dot and Verve labels, but returned to Capitol and recorded her last big hit, “The Wheel of Hurt,” in 1966.

Ms. Whiting was a regular performer on television in its first decades, appearing on variety shows hosted by George Jessel, Red Skelton, Jonathan Winters and Nat King Cole. Besides “Julie & Julia,” her voice is heard in the films “Bugsy” and “The Cider House Rules.” In another, “Valley of the Dolls,” she was uncredited as the singing voice of Susan Hayward.

In her long nightclub career, Ms. Whiting was a mentor to younger cabaret singers like K. T. Sullivan and Mary Cleere Haran. She played in touring and regional musical theater productions of “Call Me Madam,” “Gypsy,” “Pal Joey” and “Over Here!” And in 1983 she appeared in the Off Broadway musical “Taking My Turn,” in which she delivered the line, “Age doesn’t make you boring; boring makes you boring.”

Margaret Eleanor Whiting was born to Richard Whiting and the former Eleanor Youngblood on July 22, 1924, in Detroit, where her father was moonlighting as a piano player in a hotel. As a girl she moved with her parents and sister to New York, where her father worked on Broadway musicals, then to Los Angeles, where he wrote for movies (supplying Shirley Temple with her trademark song “On the Good Ship Lollipop”). He also met Mercer there and collaborated with him on songs like “Hooray for Hollywood.”

Living with her family in Beverly Hills, Ms. Whiting attended a Roman Catholic private girls’ school and enjoyed a gilded childhood, frolicking at lavish parties with movie stars and music legends, among them Mercer, Arlen and Jerome Kern, whom she called Uncle Jerry.

Her younger sister, Barbara, who died in 2004, also became an entertainer, and together they starred in “Those Whiting Girls,” a 1950s television series about college coeds.

Ms. Whiting had an early love affair with the actor John Garfield, and her first three marriages ended in divorce, to Hubbell Robinson Jr., a television executive; Lou Busch, a musician with whom she had her daughter, Deborah; and Richard Moore, a cinematographer who helped found the company Panavision.

In her later years, Ms. Whiting was known to many as the unlikely wife of Jack Wrangler (originally John Stillman), a star of gay pornographic films in the 1970s who went on to become a cabaret and theater producer.

Ms. Whiting and Mr. Wrangler, 22 years her junior, met in the 1970s, lived together for many years and married in 1994. She wrote about their relationship in an autobiography, “It Might as Well Be Spring,” saying it was based on similar interests and mutual respect, not sex. When they first became involved, he told her, “I’m gay,” to which she replied, “Only around the edges, dear.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/arts/music/12whiting.html

 

[JennyOHill2]

Actress Susannah York dies at age 72

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LONDON — British actress Susannah York, one of the most memorable film faces of the 1960s, has died from cancer at age 72, British media reported late on Saturday.

York was best known for her role opposite Jane Fonda in the 1969 film "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" for which she was nominated for an Oscar.

"She was an absolutely fantastic mother, who was very down to earth," her son, actor Orlando Wells, told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

"She loved nothing more than cooking a good Sunday roast and sitting around a fire of a winter's evening. In some sense, she was quite a home girl."

A quintessential English rose with her blonde hair, blue eyes and fresh-faced complexion, along with Julie Christie and Sarah Miles, she was one of the most recognizable actresses from films in the 1960s, winning a swathe of male admirers.

She achieved international fame in such classic movies as "Tom Jones" and "A Man For All Seasons" and starred opposite the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Peter O'Toole.

Her film roles became less notable during the 1970s, although she appeared in the box office smash "Superman," but she continued to enjoy an extensive stage career.

"She was as happy in a pub theater in Islington as she was in Hollywood," Wells said.

She told Reuters in a 2001 interview that theater was her real love. "This is where I belong," she said.

Away from acting, York wrote children's books and was an ardent anti-nuclear campaigner.

She vigorously worked for the release of Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu who disclosed secrets that revealed the Jewish state was building atomic bombs and was in Israel when he was finally set free in 2004 after 18 years in jail.

"I remember back in 1961 when I was a young journalist, I interviewed her for a magazine for her film Greengage Summer, and I still remember how completely charmed I was," playwright Tom Stoppard told the Telegraph.

 

[drown]

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00027/susannah_york_27505s.jpg

stunning net photo to die
with...




goth ain't got nothing on people gone.

great thread.

 

[eyer]

David Nelson is the last of the prime Ozzie and Harriet family to pass (I believe he too sucumbed to cancer and was 72...)

Dad Ozzie, Mom Harriet, eldest son David, and pop star young Rick were prime time televison star back in the day.

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, wasn't it?

 

[JennyOHill2]

Actor John Dye found dead in San Francisco home

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Actor John Dye, whose career included the role of Andrew, the angel of death, in the long-running television series "Touched by an Angel," was found dead at his San Francisco home, a medical examiner's spokesman said Thursday.

Medical examiner's investigator Charles Cecil said the 47-year-old Dye, a native of Amory, Miss., was found dead Monday.

The cause of death has not been determined, Cecil said, but relatives said Dye suffered apparent heart failure.

WREG-TV in Memphis reported that Dye's father, Jim Dye, said his actor son "was very giving, had a lot of causes that he supported real well, Make a Wish Foundation, AIDS research."

The Cleveland Daily Banner reported Thursday that while living in the community as a youngster, Dye was involved in a children's theater group and in the 1990s helped re-establish it.

As news of Dye's death began to spread Thursday afternoon, his "Touched by an Angel" co-star Valerie Bertinelli posted a message to him on her Twitter account: "Dear, sweet John Dye, rest in peace."

A University of Memphis theater major, Dye's early work included the martial-arts movie "The Best of the Best" and small roles on "Murder, She Wrote" and other television shows. He landed the part of the Angel of Death on "Touched by an Angel" in 1994 and appeared in all nine seasons of the CBS series.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Donna Atwood dies at 85; longtime Ice Capades star

January 21, 2011

LA Times

Ice Capades star Donna Atwood had spent almost half her life on the road when she left professional figure-skating behind at 31
to raise her three young children in a custom-built Beverly Hills home complete with a piano that folded into the wall.

She was so famous that Times headlines from the era used only her first name. "Donna to Retire in 1956 for Home Life,"
said one atop an article that portrayed her as longing to "trade it all in for 'home, sweet home.'

 

[JennyOHill2]

Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, 96, dies at Calif. home

MORRO BAY, Calif. – Jack LaLanne, the fitness guru who inspired television viewers to trim down and pump iron for decades before exercise became a national obsession, died Sunday. He was 96.

LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay on California's central coast, his longtime agent Rick Hersh said.

Lalanne ate healthy and exercised every day of his life up until the end, Hersh said.

"I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for," Elaine LaLanne, Lalanne's wife of 51 years and a frequent partner in his television appearances, said in a written statement.

LaLanne (pronounced lah-LAYN') credited a sudden interest in fitness with transforming his life as a teen, and he worked tirelessly over the next eight decades to transform others' lives, too.

"The only way you can hurt the body is not use it," LaLanne said. "Inactivity is the killer and, remember, it's never too late."

His workout show was a television staple from the 1950s to the '70s. LaLanne and his dog Happy encouraged kids to wake their mothers and drag them in front of the television set. He developed exercises that used no special equipment, just a chair and a towel.

He also founded a chain of fitness studios that bore his name and in recent years touted the value of raw fruit and vegetables as he helped market a machine called Jack LaLanne's Power Juicer.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Dan and Jon, and a daughter, Yvonne.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Comedian Charlie Callas dead in Las Vegas at 83

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LAS VEGAS (AP) - Charlie Callas, a versatile comedian and sidekick whose zany faces and antics made him a regular for more than four decades on television, in films and on casino stages, has died in Las Vegas. He was 83.

A son, Mark Callas, tells The Associated Press that Callas died Thursday in a hospice.

Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy says the death was from natural causes.

Callas toured with Frank Sinatra and Tom Jones, and had a screen part with Jerry Lewis in "The Big Mouth" in 1967.

His facial expressions and rapid-fire comedy also made Callas a favorite on the "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson.

He also worked with Mel Brooks and was the voice of Elliot in Disney's "Pete's Dragon."

 

[JennyOHill2]

Don Kirshner, rock-and-roll impresario

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Don Kirshner, a tireless rock-and-roll publisher, promoter and all-around impresario, died Jan. 17 in Florida at age 76. Kirshner first came to prominence in the 1950s as a songwriting partner and, later, manager of the multi-talented Bobby Darin, a buddy from the Bronx.

Kirshner and a business partner owned a music publishing company in New York that was part of the Brill Building scene of the early 1960s, when a new generation of songwriters holed up in an office building on Broadway, pounding out hits for the new teen audience. (Kirshner's business was not actually in the Brill Building -- 1619 Broadway -- but was across the street and two blocks up Broadway at No. 1650. Still, if it wasn't the actual Brill Building, the vibe was the same.)

With songwriters Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond, Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann and others under contract to Kirshner, his company churned out hundreds of hits from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, including "Where the Boys Are," "Up on the Roof," "On Broadway," "The Loco-Motion" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'."

Kirshner later became the musical mastermind behind the Monkees, a short-lived musical and TV phenomenon of the 1960s that quickly fizzled when the Monkees fired Kirshner and tried to make a go of it on their own, without the talents of Kirshner's songwriters and studio musicians.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Kirshner was the host of a then-revolutionary TV program called "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert," which introduced dozens, if not hundreds of musical and comedy acts to the mainstream television audience. Countless performers, from Billy Joel to the Allman Brothers, Devo, Prince, Natalie Cole and Sly & the Family Stone, got early exposure on Kirshner's show.

Kirshner was something of a stiff host, sort of like a hipster uncle at a patio party, with his big-collared, double-knit outfits and his awkward Bronx delivery.

In one of the show's more memorable segments from 1977, ladies and gentlemen, Don Kirshner presents the seminal American punk band, the Ramones!

 

[JennyOHill2]

1st Peace Corps head Sargent Shriver dies at 95

BETHESDA, Md. – R. Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy in-law whose career included directing the Peace Corps, fighting the War on Poverty and, less successfully, running for office, died. He was 95.

Shriver, who announced in 2003 that he had Alzheimer's disease, had been hospitalized for several days. The family said he died surrounded by those he loved.

His death came less than two years after his wife, Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who died Aug. 11, 2009, at age 88. The Kennedy family suffered a second blow that same month when Sen. Edward Kennedy died.

Speaking outside Suburban Hospital in Maryland, Anthony Kennedy Shriver, said his father was "with my mom now," and called his parents' marriage a great love story.

At Eunice Shriver's memorial service, their daughter Maria Shriver said her father let her mother "rip and he let her roar, and he loved everything about her." He attended in a wheelchair.

The handsome Shriver was often known first as an in-law — brother-in-law of President John F. Kennedy and, late in life, father-in-law of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But his achievements were historic in their own right and changed millions of lives: the Peace Corps' first director and the leader of President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," out of which came such programs as Head Start and Legal Services.

President Barack Obama called Shriver "one of the brightest lights of the greatest generation."

"Over the course of his long and distinguished career, Sarge came to embody the idea of public service," Obama said in a statement.

Within the family, Shriver was sometimes relied upon for the hardest tasks. When Jacqueline Kennedy needed the funeral arranged for her assassinated husband, she asked her brother-in-law.

"He was a man of giant love, energy, enthusiasm, and commitment," the Shriver family said in a statement. "He lived to make the world a more joyful, faithful, and compassionate place. He centered everything on his faith and his family. He worked on stages both large and small but in the end, he will be best known for his love of others. "

In public, Shriver spoke warmly of his famous in-laws, but the private relationship was often tense. As noted in Scott Stossel's "Sarge," an authorized 2004 biography, he was a faithful man amid a clan of womanizers, a sometimes giddy idealist labeled "the house Communist" by the family. His willingness to work for Johnson was seen as betrayal by some family members.

The Kennedys granted him power, but also withheld it. He had considered running for governor of Illinois in 1960, only to be told the family needed his help for John Kennedy's presidential campaign. Hubert Humphrey considered him for running mate in the 1968 election, but resistance from the Kennedys helped persuade Humphrey to change his mind.

When Shriver finally became a candidate, the results were disastrous: He was George McGovern's running mate in the 1972 election, but the Democrats lost in a landslide to President Richard M. Nixon.

Four years later, Shriver's presidential campaign ended quickly, overrun by a then-little-known Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter.

Although known for his Kennedy connections, Shriver, born in 1915, came from a prominent old Maryland family. His father was a stockbroker, but he lost most of his money in the crash of 1929.

Shriver went on a scholarship to Yale, then went on to Yale Law School. He served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II.

Returning home, he became an assistant editor at Newsweek magazine. About this time, too, he met Eunice Kennedy and was immediately taken by her. They married in 1953 in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Her father, Joseph P. Kennedy, hired him to manage the Kennedy-owned Merchandise Mart in Chicago. He was a big success on the job and in Chicago in general — and even was elected head of the school board in 1955.

Shriver had fought for integration in Chicago and helped persuade John F. Kennedy to make a crucial decision in the 1960 campaign despite other staffers' fears of a white backlash: When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in Georgia that fall, Kennedy phoned King's wife and offered support. His gesture was deeply appreciated by King's family and brought the candidate crucial support.

Soon after taking office, Kennedy named Shriver to fulfill a campaign promise to start the Peace Corps. Although it was belittled by some as a "kiddie corps," Shriver quickly built the agency into an international institution.

After Kennedy's assassination, in 1963, Johnson called upon Shriver to run another program which then existed only as a high-minded concept: the War on Poverty.

Shriver's efforts demonstrated both the reach and frustrations of government programs: Head Start remains respected for offering early education for poor children, and Legal Services gave the poor an opportunity for better representation in court.

But other Shriver initiatives suffered from bureaucracy, feuds with local officials and a struggle for funds as Johnson devoted more and more money to the Vietnam War.

In early 1968, with Shriver rumored to be on the verge of quitting, Johnson offered him the ambassadorship to France. He accepted it even though some family members wanted Shriver to support Sen. Robert Kennedy's presidential candidacy instead.

In Paris, Shriver won many French fans, but he left the post for a job in private business not long after Nixon took office in 1969.

He campaigned for congressional Democrats in 1970, and two years later McGovern drafted him to replace Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his running-mate. Eagleton dropped out because of questions about his medical history.

Shriver was good humored that he had been McGovern's seventh pick for the job — after brother-in-law Ted Kennedy, among others. He named his campaign plane "Lucky 7."

In September 1975, Shriver joined an already crowded race for the 1976 Democratic nomination. But he dropped out in March 1976 after poor showings in the early primaries and never again sought office. He instead worked with Special Olympics and other causes.

In 1994, Shriver received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, daughter Maria Shriver gained fame as an NBC newswoman and, since 2003, first lady of California. The Shrivers also had four sons — Robert, Timothy, Mark and Paul Anthony. Mark Shriver was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1995 and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2002. They also had 19 grandchildren.