Literotica Cemetary

[JohnnySavage]

Chuck Brown - 75

Chuck Brown dies: The ‘Godfather of Go-Go’ was 75


Chuck Brown, the gravelly voiced bandleader who capitalized on funk’s percussive pulse to create go-go, the genre of music that has soundtracked life in black Washington for more than three decades, died May 16 at the Johns Hopkins University hospital in Baltimore. He was 75.

The death was confirmed by his manager Tom Goldfogle. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Mr. Brown had been hospitalized for pneumonia.

The Washington Post’s Chris Richards remembers Chuck Brown. Richards highlights the 75-year-old musician’s devotion to D.C., early years in prison where he is said to have learned music, and how Brown created the go-go sound.

Known as the “Godfather of Go-Go,” the performer, singer, guitarist and songwriter developed his commanding brand of funk in the mid-1970s to compete with the dominance of disco.

Like a DJ blending records, Mr. Brown used nonstop percussion to stitch songs together and keep the crowd on the dance floor, resulting in marathon performances that went deep into the night. Mr. Brown said the style got its name because “the music just goes and goes.”

In addition to being go-go’s principal architect, Mr. Brown remained the genre’s most charismatic figure. On stage, his spirited call-and-response routines became a hallmark of the music, reinforcing a sense of community that allowed the scene to thrive. As go-go became a point of pride for black Washingtonians, Mr. Brown became one of the city’s most recognizable figures.

“No single type of music has been more identified with Washington than go-go, and no one has loomed so large within it as Chuck Brown,” former Washington Post pop music critic Richard Harrington wrote in 2001.

Mr. Brown’s creation, however, failed to have the same impact outside of the Beltway. The birth of go-go doubled as the high watermark of Mr. Brown’s national career. With his group the Soul Searchers, his signature hit “Bustin’ Loose” not only minted the go-go sound, it spent four weeks atop the R&B singles chart in 1978.

“Bustin’ Loose” was “the one record I had so much confidence in,” Mr. Brown told The Post in 2001. “I messed with it for two years, wrote a hundred lines of lyrics and only ended up using two lines. . . . It was the only time in my career that I felt like it’s going to be a hit.”

It was Mr. Brown’s biggest single, but throughout the 1980s “We Need Some Money,” “Go-Go Swing” and “Run Joe” became local anthems, reinforced by radio support and the grueling performance schedule that put Mr. Brown on area stages six nights a week.

While rap music exploded across the country, go-go dominated young black Washington, with groups including Trouble Funk, Rare Essence and Experience Unlimited following in Mr. Brown’s footsteps.

Mr. Brown performed less frequently in his final years but still took the stage regularly. He would often comment on his golden years in rhyme.

“I’m not retired because I’m not tired. I’m still getting hired and I’m still inspired,” he said in 2006. “As long as I can walk up on that stage, I want to make people happy. I want to make people dance.”

Charles Louis Brown was born in Gaston, N.C., on Aug. 22, 1936. He never knew his father, Albert Louis Moody, a Marine. He took the surname of his mother, Lyla Louise Brown, a housekeeper who raised her several children in poverty.

 

[koalabear]

Coroner: 'Swamp People' star Guist died of 'natural causes'

After performing a preliminary autopsy, Louisiana coroner John Fraiche has determined that Swamp People star Mitchell Guist died of natural causes, reports AP. Final results will not be available for another four or five weeks.

Guist, 47, died after collapsing Monday while working on a houseboat he was building on Belle River, about 75 miles from New Orleans.

"He'd been building on a houseboat. He had just put it in the water this morning and was pushing it. That's when he went down," Guist's brother, Glenn, who co-stars on the show, told the Baton Rouge Advocate. "I still can't believe it," said Guist. "He was considered the baby of the family. I just can't believe it. He was as healthy as a horse."

The History Channel program, which airs at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, highlights Cajun culture and cooking and wildlife and fisheries in Louisiana, especially in the Atchafalaya Basin.

According to the 911 tape released later Monday, witnesses asked for ambulances or a helicopter as they tried to revive Guist.

"You say he's in cardiac arrest?" the dispatcher said on the call. "You're doing CPR?'

"Yes sir, we're blowing and pumping the guy's chest right now," the caller said. "It looks like he may have had a heart attack."

http://content.usatoday.com/communi...r-guist-died-of-natural-causes/1#.T7UkW7_wNIs

 

[CaptainKirk]

The 'Queen of Disco', Donna Summer

NEW YORK – Disco queen Donna Summer, whose pulsing anthems such as Last Dance, Love to Love You Baby and Bad Girl became the soundtrack for a glittery age of sex, drugs, dance and flashy clothes, has died. She was 63.

Her family released a statement, saying Summer died Thursday morning and that they "are at peace celebrating her extraordinary life and her continued legacy."

"Words truly can't express how much we appreciate your prayers and love for our family at this sensitive time," the statement read. She had been living in Englewood, Fla., with her husband, Bruce Sudano.

Summer came to prominence just as disco was burgeoning, and came to define the era with a string of No. 1 hits and her beauty-queen looks.

Disco became as much defined by her sultry, sexual vocals — her bedroom moans and sighs — as the relentless, pulsing rhythms of the music itself.

Love to Love You Baby, with its erotic moans, was her first hit and one of the most scandalous songs of the polyester-and-platform-heel era.

Unlike some other stars of disco who faded as the music became less popular, Summer was able to grow beyond it and later segued to a pop-rock sound. She had one of her biggest hits in the 1980s with She Works Hard For The Money, which became another anthem, this time for women's rights.

Soon after, Summer became a born-again Christian and faced controversy when she was accused of making anti-gay comments in relation to the AIDS epidemic. Summer denied making the comments, but was the target of a boycott.
Still, even as disco went out of fashion she remained a fixture in dance clubs, endlessly sampled and remixed into contemporary dance hits.

Summer was born LaDonna Adrian Gaines in 1948 in Boston. She was raised on gospel music and became the soloist in her church choir by age 10.
Love to Love You Baby was her U.S. chart debut and the first of 19 No. 1 dance hits from 1975 to 2008 — second only to Madonna.

During the disco era she burned up the charts: She was the only artist to have three consecutive double-LPs hit No. 1, Live and More, Bad Girls and On the Radio. She was also the first female artist with four No. 1 singles in a 13-month period, according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where she was a nominee this year.

She was never comfortable with the Disco Queen label. Musically, she began to change in 1979 with Hot Stuff, which had a tough, rock 'n' roll beat. Her diverse sound helped her earn Grammy Awards in the dance, rock, R&B and inspirational categories.

Dionne Warwick said in a statement that she was sad to lose a great performer and "dear friend."

"My heart goes out to her husband and her children," Warwick said. "Prayers will be said to keep them strong."

Summer released her last album, Crayons, in 2008. It was her first full studio album in 17 years. She also performed on American Idol that year with its top female contestants.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Mary Kennedy died of asphyxiation due to hanging, examiner says

Bedford, N.Y. — Mary Richardson Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., died of asphyxiation due to hanging, the Westchester County medical examiner in upstate New York said Thursday.

The body of the 52-year-old mother of four was found at family property in suburban New York City on Wednesday, adding to the list of Kennedy family tragedies.

Kennedy's life had both highlights and troubled moments, and they played out publicly because of the famous political family she married into in 1994.

She was an architect who struggled with drug and alcohol abuse.

The former Mary Richardson married Robert Kennedy Jr., a prominent environmental lawyer and the son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, in 1994 aboard a boat in the scenic Hudson River Valley. The couple had four children, the youngest born in July 2001. Robert Kennedy Jr. also has two children from a previous marriage.

She was an architect and designer and had overseen the renovation of the couple's home into an environmentally advanced showpiece.

In a statement issued by Robert Kennedy Jr.'s chief of staff, the family said Mary Kennedy "inspired our family with her kindness, her love, her gentle soul and generous spirit.

Mary Richardson had known the Kennedys for years, through her friendship with Robert Kennedy Jr.'s sister, Kerry Kennedy, whom she met at boarding school when they were teenagers. She had been Kerry Kennedy's maid of honor at her wedding in 1990 to now-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The couple later divorced.

But recent years had seen darker moments.

She had two high-profile arrests around the time her husband filed for divorce in 2010.

Kennedy was first arrested May 15 of that year on a charge of driving while intoxicated after a police officer reported seeing her drive her car over a curb near the family's Bedford home. Her only passenger was a dog, and police said she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.11 percent; the legal limit is 0.08 percent. Her license was suspended.

She was charged later that year with driving under the influence of drugs, but that charge was dismissed in July 2011 when a judge said the evidence showed she didn't know the medications she had taken would impair her ability to drive.

There were indications her troubles started earlier. In 2007, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drove his wife to a hospital for treatment, but she resisted and ran from the car, according to the Journal News, which cited Mount Kisco police records.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Bob Boozer Dead At 75

Omaha native Bob Boozer, who graduated from Tech High School and went on to win an Olympic gold medal and play pro basketball for 11 years before returning home to a successful business career died Saturday night at the age of 75.

Ella Boozer said her husband died of a brain aneurysm after becoming ill Friday night.

Born April 26, 1937, Boozer attended Kansas State University and played for the 1960 undefeated Olympic team that won gold in Rome. Boozer was a two-time first-team All-American at Kansas State in 1958-59 and the number one draft choice of the NBA's Cincinnati Royals.

He played for the Royals, New York Knickerbockers, Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls, Seattle Supersonics and Milwaukee Bucks, helping them win the 1971 championship before retiring with a 14.8 points per game average and 8.1 rebounds a game.

He returned to Omaha after his playing days and worked as an executive for the Northwestern Bell telephone company.

Bob Boozer Drive was named in his honor. He was inducted into the Omaha Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Robin Gibb, member of the Bee Gees, dies after battle with cancer

(CNN) -- Robin Gibb, one of three brothers who made up the disco group the Bee Gees behind "Saturday Night Fever" and other hits from the 1970s, died on Sunday, according to a statement on his website.

He was 62.

Gibb "passed away today following his long battle with cancer and intestinal surgery," said the statement, which was attributed to his family. He died in England at 10:47 a.m. (5:47 a.m. ET), according to a post on his official Twitter feed.

Diagnosed with colon and liver cancer, Gibbs had been in a coma as he battled pneumonia earlier this spring, representative Doug Wright said.

Doctors believe that Gibb had a secondary tumor, Wright said April 14, confirming a news account in the U.K. newspaper The Sun. Gibb had emergency surgery in 2010 for a blocked bowel and then had more surgery for a twisted bowel, Wright confirmed.

The only surviving member of the three Bee Gees is brother Barry, 65.

Robin's twin brother, Maurice, died in 2003 from a twisted bowel.

And younger brother Andy Gibb died at age 30 from a heart infection.

The Brothers Gibb -- calling themselves the Bee Gees -- soared to renown after the 1977 film "Saturday Night Fever" starring John Travolta was built around the group's falsetto voices and disco songs.

In the latter part of the 1970s, the British-born Bee Gees "dominated dance floors and airwaves. With their matching white suits, soaring high harmonies and polished, radio-friendly records, they remain one of the essential touchstones to that ultra-commercial era," the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame says on its website.

"Saturday Night Fever" and the group's 1979 album "Spirits Having Flown" yielded six No. 1 hits, "making the Bee Gees the only group in pop history to write, produce and record that many consecutive chart-topping singles," according to the Hall of Fame.
While often more in the background, Robin Gibb was the lead singer on several of the Bee Gees' top tunes including "I Started a Joke" and "I've Gotta Get a Message to You." He also recorded several solo albums during his career.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, the Bee Gees sold more than 200 million albums, and their soundtrack album to "Saturday Night Fever" was the top-selling album until Michael Jackson's "Thriller" claimed that distinction in the 1980s.

Robin Gibb was born in 1949 on Isle of Man off the British coast, and the Gibb boys grew up in Manchester. They later moved to Redcliffe, Australia, where their group performed on television as the B.G.'s -- a moniker they later altered to the Bee Gees. Their father, Hughie, was a drummer and big-band leader.

The family returned to England in the 1960s.

In a 2008 interview with Music Week, Robin Gibb shared one of his all-important rules for songwriting: "always keep a tape running," in order to capture a moment of brilliance and inspiration.

"You never know in a three-hour writing session when you are going to come up with something and then if you'll remember it completely," he said. "All the ideas, everything, will be on tape and then you can always refer back at any time.

Gibb is survived by his wife, Dwina; his daughter, Melissa, and sons Spencer and Robin-John.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Janet Carroll, Film and Sitcom Actress, Dies at 71

Janet Carroll, a veteran film, TV and stage actress who played Tom Cruise’s mother on vacation in 1983’s Risky Business, died Tuesday in New York after a long illness. She was 71.

During a career that spanned three decades, the Chicago native also had recurring roles in two long-running sitcoms: as the owner of the store in which shoe salesman Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) works in Fox’s Married … With Children and as the wife of stuffy anchorman Jim Dial (Charles Kimbrough) on CBS’ Murphy Brown.

Carroll also worked regularly on TV’s The Bronx Zoo opposite Ed Asner and The Bonnie Hunt Show and had stints with Brothers & Sisters, Mary, Designing Women, Matlock, Third Rock From the Sun, Law & Order: SVU and Scrubs.

Carroll’s film resume includes The Killing Time (1987), Memories of Me (1988), Family Business (1989), Talent for the Game (1991), Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995), Forces of Nature (1999), Enough (2002) and the soon-to-be-released College Debts.

On stage, Carroll acted in Lady Windermere’s Fan with Lynn Redgrave and John Lithgow; in A Couple of White Chicks, co-starring Cloris Leachman; and in Electra, for which she received the Los Angeles Drama-Logue Critics’ Award. She made her Broadway debut in 2005 starring alongside Sutton Foster and Maureen McGovern in the original musical Little Women.

Carroll appeared in eight major musicals every summer for five years at the Kansas City Starlight Theatre, where she began her stage career out of high school. She also served for eight years as the artistic director of The Jazz Series at Simi Valley (Calf.) Cultural Center and performed on tour with the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band. She recorded a few albums, including 2011’s Lady Be Good.

Carroll co-founded the Victory Ball in Westport, Conn., which annually benefits ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) research, and served on the executive board of directors as vp development for Ginny Mancini’s Society of Singers.

Survivors include her son George and daughter-in-law Lauren.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Doc Watson, folk guitar master, dead at 89

(AP) WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Doc Watson, the Grammy-award winning folk musician whose lightning-fast style of flatpicking influenced guitarists around the world for more than a half-century, died Tuesday at a hospital in Winston-Salem, according to a hospital spokeswoman and his manager. He was 89.

Watson, who was blind from age 1, recently had abdominal surgery that resulted in his hospitalization.

Arthel "Doc" Watson's mastery of flatpicking helped make the case for the guitar as a lead instrument in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was often considered a backup for the mandolin, fiddle or banjo. His fast playing could intimidate other musicians, even his own grandson, who performed with him.

Richard Watson said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press that his grandfather's playing had a humbling effect on other musicians. The ever-humble Doc Watson found it hard to believe.

"Everybody that's picked with you says you intimidate them, and that includes some of the best," Richard Watson told him.

Doc Watson was born March 3, 1923 in what is now Deep Gap, N.C., in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He lost his eyesight by the age of 1 when he developed an eye infection that was worsened by a congenital vascular disorder, according to a website for Merlefest, the annual musical gathering named for his late son Merle.

He came from a musical family — his father was active in the church choir and played banjo and his mother sang secular and religious songs, according to a statement from Folklore Productions, his management company since 1964.

Doc Watson's father gave him a harmonica as a young child, and by 5 he was playing the banjo, according to the Merlefest website. He learned a few guitar chords while attending the North Carolina Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, and his father helped him buy a Stella guitar for $12.

"My real interest in music was the old 78 records and the sound of the music," Doc Watson is quoted as saying on the website. "I loved it and began to realize that one of the main sounds on those old records I loved was the guitar."

Doc Watson got his musical start in 1953, playing electric lead guitar in a country-and-western swing band. His road to fame began in 1960 when Ralph Rinzler, a musician who also managed Bill Monroe, discovered Watson in North Carolina. That led Watson to the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and his first recording contract a year later. He went on to record 60 albums.

According to the Encyclopedia of Country Music, Watson took his nickname at age 19 when someone couldn't pronounce his name and a girl in the audience shouted "Call him Doc!"

Seven of his albums won Grammy awards; his eighth Grammy was a lifetime achievement award in 2004. He also received the National Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1997.

"There may not be a serious, committed baby boomer alive who didn't at some point in his or her youth try to spend a few minutes at least trying to learn to pick a guitar like Doc Watson," Clinton said at the time.

Folklore described Watson as "a powerful singer and a tremendously influential picker who virtually invented the art of playing mountain fiddle tunes on the flattop guitar."

Doc Watson's son Merle began recording and touring with him in 1964. But Merle Watson died at age 36 in a 1985 tractor accident, sending his father into deep grief and making him consider retirement. Instead, he kept playing and started Merlefest, an annual musical event in Wilkesboro, N.C., that raises money for a community college there and celebrates "traditional plus" music.

"When Merle and I started out we called our music `traditional plus,' meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play," Doc Watson is quoted as saying on the festival's website. "Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is `traditional plus."'

Doc Watson has said that when Merle died, he lost the best friend he would ever have.

He also relied on his wife, Rosa Lee, whom he married in 1947.

"She saw what little good there was in me, and there was little," Watson told the AP in 2000. "I'm awful glad she cared about me, and I'm awful glad she married me."

In a PBS NewsHour interview before a January appearance in Arlington, Va., Watson recalled his father teaching him how to play harmonica to a tune his parents had sung in church, as well as his first bus trip to New York City. Telling the stories in a folksy manner, he broke into a quiet laugh at various points. He said he still enjoyed touring.

"I love music and love a good audience and still have to make a living," Watson said. "Why would I quit?"

Musician Sam Bush, who has performed at every Merlefest, began touring with Doc and Merle Watson in 1974, occasionally substituting for Merle when he couldn't travel.

"I would sit next to Doc, and I would be influenced by his incredible timing and taste," Bush said after Watson's recent surgery. "He seems to always know what notes to play. They're always the perfect notes. He helped me learn the space between the notes (are) as valuable as the ones you play."

Bush said he was also intimidated when he began playing with the man he calls "the godfather of all flatpickers."

"But Doc puts you at ease about that kind of stuff," Bush said. "I never met a more generous kind of musician. He is more about the musical communication than showing off with hot licks."

His blindness didn't hold him back musically or at home.

Joe Newberry, a musician and spokesman for the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, remembered once when his wife called the Watson home. Rosa Lee Watson said her husband was on the roof, replacing shingles. His daughter Nancy Watson said her father built the family's utility shed.

Guitarist Pete Huttlinger of Nashville, Tenn., said Doc Watson made every song his own, regardless of its age. `He's one of those lucky guys," said Huttlinger, who studied Watson's methods when he first picked up a guitar. "When he plays something, he puts his stamp on it — it's Doc Watson."

He changed folk music forever by adapting fiddle tunes to guitar at amazing tempos, Huttlinger said. "And people all over the place were trying to figure out how to do this," he said. "But Doc, he set the bar for everyone. He said, `This is how it goes.' And people have been trying for years to match that.

"He took it (the guitar) out of the background and brought it upfront as a melody instrument. We're no longer at the back of the class. He gave the front to us."

Wayne Martin, executive director of the North Carolina Arts Council, said recently that Watson took southern Appalachian forms of music such as balladry, old-time string music and bluegrass, and made them accessible.

"He takes old music and puts his own creativity on it," Martin said. "It retained its core, yet it felt relevant to people today."

Said Bush: "I don't think anyone personifies what we call Americana more than Doc Watson."

In 2011, a life-size statue of Watson was dedicated in Boone, N.C., at the spot where Watson had played decades earlier for tips to support his family, according to the Folklore statement. At Watson's request the inscription read, "Just One of the People."

 

[JennyOHill2]

Orlando Woolridge dead at 52

Former Notre Dame and Chicago Bulls star Orlando Woolridge has died at age 52, officials in Louisiana told the Shreveport Times.

Desoto Parish Chief Deputy Coroner Billy Locke told the newspaper that Woolridge had been under hospice care for a chronic heart condition at his parents' home in Mansfield, La.

Woolridge was part of Notre Dame's Final Four team in 1978 as a freshman. As a senior, he hit a last-second jumper to end Ralph Sampson and No. 1 Virginia's 28-game winning streak.

Woolridge, a 6-foot-9 forward, had a 13-year NBA career after being taken with the sixth overall pick by the Bulls in 1981. He played five seasons in Chicago, averaging 22.9 points per game in 1984-85, Michael Jordan's first in the league.

He signed with the New Jersey Nets as a free agent after the 1985-86 season and was suspended in 1987 for violating the league's substance-abuse policy. He went on to play for the Lakers, Nuggets, Pistons, Bucks and Sixers and finished with career averages of 16 points and 4.3 rebounds per game.

After playing overseas, Woolridge was a coach for the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks and recently coached Arizona in the ABA.

In 2010, Woolridge was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

Woolridge was arrested in February for stealing aluminum tubing at a drill site in Desoto Parish. The material was sold for scrap.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Dick Beals, Voice of Speedy Alka-Seltzer, Gumby Is Dead

Dick Beals, the man who provided the voice for the commercial character Speedy Alka-Seltzer and originated the voice of Gumby and the first Davey from the TV series “Davey and Goliath,” died Tuesday in Vista, Calif., the Los Angeles Times reported. He was 85.

Beals began his voice-over career in the 1940s with such radio shows as “The Lone Ranger,” “The Green Hornet” and “Dragnet.” His Speedy Alka-Seltzer character was featured in more than 200 TV and radio commercials that aired from 1954 to 1964. His stop-motion animation voice-over roles included the original Gumby from “The Gumby Show” in the 1950s and the voice of the first Davey from the 1960s TV series, “Davey and Goliath.”

Because of a glandular condition, Beals stood just four-feet, six inches tall, weighed less than 70 pounds, and had a voice that never changed from grade school.

The Los Angeles Times reported back in 1992 that Beals’ voice was featured in more than 3,000 commercials.

Ron Simon, curator of TV and Radio at the Paley Center for Media in L.A., says Beals was one of the great voice actors of all time. Simon tells the Times, “He was one of those anonymous people who pioneered what animation would become today.”

Beals had no immediate survivors.

 

[Lorilei]

http://news.yahoo.com/family-feud-tv-host-richard-dawson-died-142027262.html

..

'Family Feud' TV host Richard Dawson has died
Associated Press – 19 mins ago...
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom "Hogan's Heroes" and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show "Family Feud" has died. He was 79.

Dawson, also known to TV fans as the Cockney POW Cpl. Peter Newkirk on "Hogan's Heroes," died Saturday night from complications related to esophageal cancer at Ronald Reagan Memorial hospital, his son Gary said.

The game show, which initially ran from 1976 to 1985, pitted families who tried to guess the most popular answers to poll questions such as "What do people give up when they go on a diet?"

Dawson won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 as best game show host. Tom Shales of The Washington Post called him "the fastest, brightest and most beguilingly caustic interlocutor since the late great Groucho bantered and parried on 'You Be Your Life.'" The show was so popular it was released as both daytime and syndicated evening versions.

He was known for kissing each woman contestant, and at the time the show bowed out in 1985, executive producer Howard Felsher estimated that Dawson had kissed "somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000."

"I kissed them for luck and love, that's all," Dawson said at the time.

He reprised his game show character in a much darker mood in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film "The Running Man," playing the host of a deadly TV show set in a totalitarian future, where convicts try to escape as their executioners stalk them. "Saturday Night Live" mocked him in the 1970s, with Bill Murray portraying him as leering and nasty, even slapping one contestant (John Belushi) for getting too fresh.

The British-born actor already had gained fame as the fast-talking Newkirk in "Hogan's Heroes," the CBS comedy about prisoners in a Nazi POW camp who hoodwink their captors and run the place themselves.

Despite its unlikely premise, the show made the ratings top 10 in its first season, 1965-66, and ran until 1971.

Both "Hogan's Heroes" and "Family Feud" have had a second life in recent years, the former on DVD reissues and the latter on GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network.

On Dawson's last "Family Feud" in 1985, the studio audience honored him with a standing ovation, and he responded: "Please sit down. I have to do at least 30 minutes of fun and laughter and you make me want to cry."

"I've had the most incredible luck in my career," he told viewers.

"I never dreamed I would have a job in which so many people could touch me and I could touch them," he said. That triggered an unexpected laugh.

Producers brought out "The New Family Feud," starring comedian Ray Combs, in 1988. Six years later, Dawson replaced Combs at the helm, but that lasted only one season.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Dawson was born Colin Lionel Emm in 1932 in Gosport, England. His first wife was actress Diana Dors, the blond bombshell who was Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe.
..

 

[JennyOHill2]

Kathryn Joosten, Neighbor on ‘Desperate Housewives,’ Dies at 72

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kathryn Joosten, the Emmy-winning character actress best known as the crotchety but lovable Karen McCluskey on “Desperate Housewives” and the president’s secretary on “The West Wing,” died on Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 72.

Ms. Joosten’s death was confirmed by her family. She had suffered from lung cancer for 11 years.

Ms. Joosten won two Emmy awards for her portrayal of Mrs. McCluskey, who kept a close eye on her Wisteria Lane neighbors on “Desperate Housewives.” The hit show ended its eight-year run on ABC last month with a series finale in which Ms. Joosten’s character died. Her character’s own battle with cancer was a story line in the show.

She became a familiar face to fans of “The West Wing” on NBC when she appeared as Dolores Landingham, President Jed Bartlet’s trusted secretary.

In real life Ms. Joosten was a psychiatric nurse and single mother in suburban Chicago when she began her acting career at 42. She wrote on her Web site that she pursued her childhood dream of acting after getting involved with her hometown theater in Lake Forest, Ill.

She said she received her first break when she was hired to be a street performer at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. She worked odd jobs to make ends meet and moved to Hollywood in 1995. She said she landed her first small role within months on the comedy “Family Matters.”

Ms. Joosten is survived by her sons, Jonathan and Timothy.

Over the years she found steady work appearing in popular shows like “Dharma & Greg,” “Ally McBeal” and “Scrubs.”

“Some people in Hollywood think of me as a model for dramatic midlife transitions: suburban housewife to Emmy-winning actress,” she wrote on her Web site. “But I never plotted a master plan for following my dreams.”

 

[JennyOHill2]

Vladimir Krutov dies at age 52

MOSCOW -- Vladimir Krutov, one of the Soviet Union's all-time great ice hockey players and part of the national team's formidable KLM Line, has died. He was 52.

The Russian Hockey Federation said Krutov died Wednesday. It did not give a cause of death, but the ITAR-Tass news agency said he had been taken to a hospital several days earlier for stomach bleeding.

"Volodya was such a dependable and steadfast man that I would have gone anywhere with him -- to war, to espionage, into peril. There are fewer and fewer guys like him in every generation of hockey players," federation president and former Soviet goaltender Vladislav Tretyak told the Sport-Express newspaper.

Born in Moscow, Krutov gathered attention for his play with local factory team Meteor and was invited to the hockey school of the CSKA Moscow club. He played with the team between 1978 and 1989.

Krutov and CSKA teammates Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov formed one of the most potent scoring lines that hockey has ever seen, and led the Soviet team to gold in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics.

He was also part of the team that lost to the United States at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics and won five world championship titles in the 1980s.

Along with defensemen Vyacheslav Fetisov and Alexei Kasatonov, they became known as the "Green Unit" for the color of their practice jerseys.

He was one of the first Soviet players to play in the NHL, but spent only one undistinguished season with the Vancouver Canucks. He later played for Zurich and Swedish lower-league clubs Ostersund and Brunflo, and coached CSKA for one season in 2001-02.

After that, he was director at a state sports school. In 2010, he was inducted into the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Ray Bradbury

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Ray Bradbury, the science fiction-fantasy master who transformed his childhood dreams and Cold War fears into telepathic Martians, lovesick sea monsters, and, in uncanny detail, the high-tech, book-burning future of Fahrenheit 451, has died. He was 91.

He died Tuesday night, his daughter said Wednesday. Alexandra Bradbury did not have additional details.

Although slowed in recent years by a stroke that meant he had to use a wheelchair, Bradbury remained active into his 90s, turning out new novels, plays, screenplays and a volume of poetry. He wrote every day in the basement office of his Cheviot Hills home and appeared from time to time at bookstores, public library fundraisers and other literary events around Los Angeles.

His writings ranged from horror and mystery to humor and sympathetic stories about the Irish, blacks and Mexican-Americans. Bradbury also scripted John Huston's 1956 film version of Moby Dick and wrote for The Twilight Zone and other television programs, including The Ray Bradbury Theater, for which he adapted dozens of his works.

"What I have always been is a hybrid author," Bradbury said in 2009. "I am completely in love with movies, and I am completely in love with theater, and I am completely in love with libraries."

Bradbury broke through in 1950 with The Martian Chronicles, a series of intertwined stories that satirized capitalism, racism and superpower tensions as it portrayed Earth colonizers destroying an idyllic Martian civilization.

The Martian Chronicles prophesized the banning of books, especially works of fantasy, a theme Bradbury would take on fully in the 1953 release, Fahrenheit 451. Inspired by the Cold War, the rise of television and the author's passion for libraries, it was an apocalyptic narrative of nuclear war abroad and empty pleasure at home, with firefighters assigned to burn books instead of putting blazes out (451 degrees Fahrenheit, Bradbury had been told, was the temperature at which texts went up in flames).

It was Bradbury's only true science-fiction work, according to the author, who said all his other works should have been classified as fantasy. "It was a book based on real facts and also on my hatred for people who burn books," he told The Associated Press in 2002.

Although involved in many futuristic projects, including the New York World's Fair of 1964 and the Spaceship Earth display at Walt Disney World in Florida, Bradbury was deeply attached to the past. He refused to drive a car or fly, telling the AP that witnessing a fatal traffic accident as a child left behind a permanent fear of automobiles. In his younger years, he got around by bicycle or roller-skates.

Bradbury's literary style was honed in pulp magazines and influenced by Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, and he became the rare science fiction writer treated seriously by the literary world. In 2007, he received a special Pulitzer Prize citation "for his distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy." Seven years earlier, he received an honorary National Book Award medal for lifetime achievement, an honor given to Philip Roth and Arthur Miller among others.

Other honors included an Academy Award nomination for an animated film, Icarus Montgolfier Wright, and an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. His fame even extended to the moon, where Apollo astronauts named a crater "Dandelion Crater," in honor of Dandelion Wine, his beloved coming-of-age novel, and an asteroid was named 9766 Bradbury.

Born Ray Douglas Bradbury on Aug. 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Ill., the author once described himself as "that special freak, the man with the child inside who remembers all." He claimed to have total recall of his life, dating even to his final weeks in his mother's womb.

His father, Leonard, a power company lineman, was a descendant of Mary Bradbury, who was tried for witchcraft at Salem, Mass. The author's mother, Esther, read him the Wizard of Oz. His Aunt Neva introduced him to Edgar Allan Poe and gave him a love of autumn, with its pumpkin picking and Halloween costumes.

"If I could have chosen my birthday, Halloween would be it," he said over the years.
Nightmares that plagued him as a boy also stocked his imagination, as did his youthful delight with the Buck Rogers and Tarzan comic strips, early horror films, Tom Swift adventure books and the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

"The great thing about my life is that everything I've done is a result of what I was when I was 12 or 13," he said in 1982.

Bradbury's family moved to Los Angeles in 1934. He became a movie buff and a voracious reader. "I never went to college, so I went to the library," he explained.
He tried to write at least 1,000 words a day, and sold his first story in 1941. He submitted work to pulp magazines until he was finally accepted by such upscale publications as The New Yorker. Bradbury's first book, a short story collection called Dark Carnival, was published in 1947.

He was so poor during those years that he didn't have an office or even a telephone. "When the phone rang in the gas station right across the alley from our house, I'd run to answer it," he said.

He wrote Fahrenheit 451 at the UCLA library, on typewriters that rented for 10 cents a half hour. He said he carried a sack full of dimes to the library and completed the book in nine days, at a cost of $9.80.

Few writers could match the inventiveness of his plots: A boy outwits a vampire by stuffing him with silver coins; a dinosaur mistakes a fog horn for a mating call (filmed as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms); Ernest Hemingway is flown back to life on a time machine. In The Illustrated Man, one of his most famous stories, a man's tattoo foretells a horrifying deed — he will murder his wife.

Until near the end of his life, Bradbury resisted one of the innovations he helped anticipate: electronic books, likening them to burnt metal and urging readers to stick to the old-fashioned pleasures of ink and paper. But in late 2011, as the rights to Fahrenheit 451 were up for renewal, he gave in and allowed his most famous novel to come out in digital form. In return, he received a great deal of money and a special promise from Simon & Schuster: The publisher agreed to make the e-book available to libraries, the only Simon & Schuster e-book at the time that library patrons were allowed to download.

Bradbury is survived by his four daughters. Marguerite Bradbury, his wife of 56 years, died in 2003.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Ex-Fleetwood Mac member Bob Welch dead

(Reuters) - Bob Welch, an early member of rock band Fleetwood Mac who enjoyed a successful solo career with hits such as "Ebony Eyes," died on Thursday of an apparent suicide at home in Nashville. He was 66.

Police said Welch's body was found by his wife Wendy with a single gunshot wound to the chest, and he had left a suicide note. Welch suffered from health problems, but police did not disclose what those issues were.

Mick Fleetwood, one of the founding members of Fleetwood Mac and Welch's manager during his solo career, had remained in close contact with his former band mate over the years and told Reuters that Welch's suicide was "incredibly out of character."

"He was a very, very profoundly intelligent human being and always in good humor, which is why this is so unbelievably shocking," he said.

"He was a huge part of our history which sometimes gets forgotten ... mostly his legacy would be his songwriting abilities that he brought to Fleetwood Mac, which will survive all of us," Fleetwood said.

"If you look into our musical history, you'll see a huge period that was completely ensconced in Bob's work."

Welch is the second member of Fleetwood Mac to die this year. In January, another former guitarist for the band, Bob Weston, died in London from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage, at the age of 64.

Welch was born on August 31, 1945 in Los Angeles to movie producer father Robert L. Welch and actress mother Templeton Fox. He moved to Paris to study French at the Sorbonne, then returned to Los Angeles in the early 1970s.

He was invited to join Fleetwood Mac after the departure of founding members Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer. He played guitar and was a vocalist with the band from 1971 to 1974, working on five of their early albums including 1971's "Future Games," 1972's "Bare Trees" and 1973's "Mystery to Me."

It was after Welch's departure from the band in 1975 that Fleetwood Mac went on to find its largest measure of fame on albums such as 1977's "Rumours" with the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to the band's lineup.

Nicks released a statement, calling Welch's death "devastating."

"He was an amazing guitar player - he was funny, sweet - and he was smart - I'm so very sorry for his family and for the family of Fleetwood Mac - so, so sad," Nicks said.

Welch fell out with his former band mates after suing the group in 1994 for unpaid royalties, which led to his exclusion from the group's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1998.

The singer and guitarist formed a hard rock group called Paris in 1975, releasing two albums, "Paris" and "Hunt Sales," before disbanding the group a few years later and embarking on a solo career.

His debut solo record, the pop-driven "French Kiss" in 1977, went platinum and produced the hits "Sentimental Lady," "Ebony Eyes" and "Hot Love, Cold World." Welch followed up with 1979's "Three Hearts," and four more albums throughout the early 1980s, none of which emulated the same success as "French Kiss."

He moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1987 and formed a short-lived group called Avenue M, before moving to Nashville in the late 1990s, working on a songwriting career and releasing a tribute to bebop music, "Bob Welch Looks At Bop," in 1999.

His most recent albums, 2003's "His Fleetwood Mac Years and Beyond" and 2006's "His Fleetwood Mac Years and Beyond 2," had previously unreleased material as well as new compositions.

 

[JennyOHill2]

'Green Acres' actor Frank Cady dies at 96

Frank Cady, 96, a character actor who played Hooterville general-store proprietor Sam Drucker on the TV sitcoms “Green Acres” and “Petticoat Junction,” died Friday at his home in Wilsonville, Ore., said his daughter, Catherine Turk. No specific cause was given.

Like Mr. Haney, Eb Dawson, Hank Kimball and Arnold the Pig, Cady’s Sam Drucker was a supporting cast member on “Green Acres” to lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas and his socialite wife, Lisa, played by Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor, who had ditched the high life in New York City for the charms of a farm in Hooterville.

Cady played Drucker for the entire run of “Green Acres” on CBS, from 1965 to 1971, when it was canceled. The show continued to air for years in syndication. He also portrayed Drucker on “Petticoat Junction” and “The Beverly Hillbillies,” programs that shared some secondary characters. He reprised the role for the 1990 TV movie “Return to Green Acres.”

Cady had a recurring role as Doc Williams on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” and had guest roles in TV series beginning in the early 1950s. He also had small parts in films, most notably Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” and appeared in Southern California stage productions.

He was born Sept. 8, 1915, in the Lassen County town of Susanville and studied drama at Stanford University. After serving in the military during World War II, he worked as a radio broadcaster before landing acting jobs.

Cady and his wife, Shirley, moved to Oregon in the 1990s. She died in 2008.

Reflecting on his TV career, Cady told the Portland Oregonian in 1995, “You get typecast. I’m remembered for those shows and not for some pretty good acting jobs I did other times. I suppose I ought to be grateful for that. Because otherwise I wouldn’t be remembered at all. I’ve got to be one of the luckiest guys in the world.”

 

[JennyOHill2]

‘Goodfellas’ Mobster Henry Hill Dead At 69

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Former mobster and FBI informant Henry Hill, whose life in organized crime was immortalized in the film “Goodfellas,” has died at a Los Angeles hospital, according to a report Wednesday. He was 69.

The Brooklyn, N.Y.-born mobster died Tuesday after suffering complications from a heart attack just one day after his 69th birthday.

Actor Ray Liotta portrayed Hill in the 1990 Martin Scorcese-directed film “Goodfellas,” which chronicled Hill’s life in the Mafia. The film was based on the book “Wiseguy” by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay for “Goodfellas.”

A participant in the $5 million, 1978 Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Hill became an FBI informant after being arrested for selling drugs. His testimony landed numerous Lucchese crime family figures in prison.

He entered the federal witness protection program but was later expelled from it because of criminal activity.

“When he went into witness protection, he was horrified that he had to become, you know, a rat,” said girlfriend Lisa Caserta. “It was scary for him…that was like the last thing he wanted to do.”

Hill said he never killed anyone, although he did shoot at people without bothering to find out if they had been harmed.

“I did a lot of bad things back then. I shot at people, I busted a lot of heads, and I buried a lot of bodies,” Hill said in a 2010 interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph. “You can try to justify it by saying they deserved it, that they had it coming, but some just got whacked for absolutely no reason at all.”

A frequent call-in guest on Howard Stern’s radio program, Hill served six months in jail in 2005 after being charged in Nebraska with methamphetamine possession, according to the New York Daily News.

Using aliases such as Martin Lewis and Peter Haines, Hill was moved 10 times during his time in the witness protection program, he told the Telegraph.

In the Telegraph interview, he marveled that he had made it to age 67 and had not been “whacked” himself.

“I never thought I’d reach this wonderful age,” he said. “I’m just grateful for being alive.”

Hill was the father of two children, according to TMZ.com.

 

[JennyOHill2]

'Gone With the Wind' actress Ann Rutherford dies

Actress Ann Rutherford, who played Carreen O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind" and Mickey Rooney's girlfriend Polly in the series of Andy Hardy movies, has died, the Los Angeles Times reports. The Times says she was 94, other sources say she was 91.

Her role as Scarlett's youngest sister, the godly, optimistic Carreen (Caroline Irene), was a small one, but the movie became a classic and Rutherford one of the longest surviving cast members. She regularly attended festivals celebrating the film, the Times reports, once saying, "That 'nothing part' turned my golden years into platinum."

Before "Gone With the Wind," she appeared in westerns and as Polly Benedict in the popular Andy Hardy film series, which ran from 1937 to 1958.

Television viewers may remember her as the mother of Emily (Suzanne Pleshette) on "The Bob Newhart Show."

Her first husband, David May II, was from the May Company department store family; her second, William Dozier, produced the Adam West 1960s "Batman" series.

She is survived by a daughter and two grandsons.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Rodney King, whose beating led to LA riots, dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — His beating stunned the nation, left Los Angeles smoldering and helped reshape race relations and police tactics. And in a quavering voice on national television, Rodney King pleaded for peace while the city burned.

But peace never quite came for King — not after the fires died down, after two of the officers who broke his skull multiple times were punished, after Los Angeles and its flawed police department moved forward. His life, which ended Sunday at age 47 after he was pulled from the bottom of his swimming pool, was a continual struggle even as the city he helped change moved on.

The images — preserved on an infamous grainy video — of the black driver curled up on the ground while four white officers clubbed him more than 50 times with batons — became a national symbol of police brutality in 1991. More than a year later, when the officers' acquittals touched off one of the most destructive race riots in history, his scarred face and softspoken question — "Can we all get along?" — spurred the nation to confront its difficult racial history.

But while Los Angeles race relations and the city's police department made strides forward, King kept coming before police and courts, struggling with alcohol addiction and arrests, periodically re-appearing publicly for a stint on "Celebrity Rehab" or a celebrity boxing match. He spent the last months of his life promoting a memoir he titled "The Riot Within: From Rebellion to Redemption."

King was declared dead at a hospital after his fiancée called 911 at 5:25 a.m. to say she found him submerged in the pool at his home in Rialto, about an hour's drive from Los Angeles. Officers found King in the deep end of the pool, pulled him out and tried unsuccessfully to revive him with CPR.

An autopsy was expected to determine the cause of death within two days; police found no alcohol or drug paraphernalia near the pool and said foul play wasn't suspected.

King's next-door neighbor, Sandra Gardea, said that around 3 a.m., she heard music and someone "really crying, like really deep emotions. ... Like tired or sad, you know?"
"I then heard someone say, 'OK, Please stop. Go inside the house.' ... We heard quiet for a few minutes Then after that we heard a splash in the back."

King's death was a grim ending to a saga that began 21 years earlier when he fled from police after he was stopped for speeding. The 25-year-old, on parole from a robbery conviction had been drinking, which he later said led him to try to evade police. He was finally stopped by four Los Angeles police officers who struck him more than 50 times with their batons, kicked him and shot him with stun guns. He was left with 11 skull fractures, a broken eye socket and facial nerve damage.

A man who had quietly stepped outside his home to observe the commotion videotaped most of it and turned a copy over to a TV station. It was played over and over for the following year, inflaming racial tensions across the country.

It seemed that the videotape would be the key evidence to a guilty verdict against the officers, whose felony assault trial was moved to the predominantly white suburb of Simi Valley, Calif. Instead, on April 29, 1992, a jury with no black members acquitted three of the officers on state charges in the beating; a mistrial was declared for a fourth.
Violence erupted immediately, starting in Los Angeles. They lasted for three days, killing 55 people, injuring more than 2,000 and setting swaths of Los Angeles aflame, causing $1 billion in damage. Police, seemingly caught off-guard, were quickly outnumbered by rioters and retreated. As the uprising spread to the city's Koreatown area, shop owners armed themselves and engaged in running gun battles with looters.

King — who said in his memoir that FBI agents had urged him to keep a low profile if the officers were acquitted, expecting violence — appeared at a news conference on the third day, asking for an end to the uprising. "Can we all get along?" he asked — a question the city and nation have struggled to answer ever since.

Although the four officers who beat King — Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno, Timothy Wind and Laurence Powell — were acquitted of state charges, Koon and Powell were convicted of federal civil rights charges and were sentenced to more than two years in prison. King received a $3.8 million civil judgment; one of the jurors in the case, Cynthia Kelley, is his fiancée.

But he quickly lost the money as he invested in a record label and other failed ventures. He was arrested multiple times for drunken driving — including last summer in Riverside, Calif.

Despite his troubles, King remained upbeat as he confronted the 20 year anniversary of the LA riots and considered his legacy.

"America's been good to me after I paid the price and stayed alive through it all," he told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this year. "This part of my life is the easy part now."

He had three daughters and was engaged to Kelley.

He returned to the spotlight earlier this year as historians and news outlets explored the impact of the riots on its 20th anniversary, including the reforms made by the Los Angeles Police Department.

"Through all that he had gone through with his beating and his personal demons he was never one to not call for reconciliation and for people to overcome and forgive," Rev. Al Sharpton said Sunday. "History will record that it was Rodney King's beating and his actions that made America deal with the excessive misconduct of law enforcement."
Attorney Harland Braun, who represented one of the police officers, Briseno, in his federal trial, said King's case never would have gained the prominence it did without the videotape of his beating.

"If there hadn't been a video there would have never been a case," Braun said. "In those days, you might have claimed excessive force but there would have been no way to prove it."

The video also sparked an examination of Los Angeles police tactics under then-Police Chief Daryl Gates.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Victor Spinetti, Favorite in Beatles Films, Dies at 82

Victor Spinetti, who was an established British film star in 1963 when he agreed to make a movie with a pop group called the Beatles and who became famous ever after as the only person besides the four Beatles to appear in all of their movies — “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!” and “Magical Mystery Tour” — died on Tuesday in London. He was 82.

The cause was cancer, said a spokesman for his longtime theatrical agent, Barry Burnett.

Mr. Spinetti appeared in scores of plays and about 30 other movies, acting alongside stars like Laurence Olivier, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Peter Sellers. He won a Tony Award in 1965. But in the record of 20th-century stage and film history, his modest place in the Beatles’ movie canon pretty much defined him.

The good-natured Mr. Spinetti embraced his role as an eyewitness to Beatles history, appearing at fan conventions around the world in later years to tell stories about making the films and about his friendship with John Lennon.

His most often-told tale was about how the Beatles had drafted him for their first film project. They were popular in Britain but still months away from their first trip to the United States and their debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Mr. Spinetti, a British television veteran by then and fresh from a starring role in a hit British movie, “The Wild Affair,” was appearing in the London musical satire “Oh What a Lovely War” when Mr. Lennon and George Harrison visited him one night backstage.

“Victor, you’ve got to be in our film,” Mr. Harrison said, by Mr. Spinetti’s account. “You’ve got to be in all our films.”

“Why?” Mr. Spinetti replied.

“Because if you’re not in them, me mum won’t come and see them,” Mr. Harrison replied. “She fancies you.”

Vittorio Georgio Andrea Spinetti was born in Wales on Sept. 2, 1929, one of six children of a Welsh mother and an Italian immigrant father. He told interviewers that his father had originally planned to immigrate to the United States but had gotten waylaid in Wales by work opportunities. His father eventually opened a small restaurant there.

After studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Mr. Spinetti made his West End debut in 1958, playing four different roles in the musical satire “Expresso Bongo.” He later joined the Theater Workshop, which produced “Oh What a Lovely War” over the objections of British authorities, who considered its portrayal of World War I carnage insufficiently heroic.

Mr. Spinetti met his lifelong partner, Graham Curnow, when they were both students at the Royal Welsh College. Mr. Curnow died in 1997.

Whether because of his long-limbed physical comedy style, his command of the idiom of irony or George Harrison’s mother’s fancy, Mr. Spinetti was invited by the Beatles to be in all their movies. He was the flummoxed television director in “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964), the mad surgeon-scientist Dr. Foot in “Help!” (1965) and a surreally fast-talking Army drill instructor in “Magical Mystery Tour” (1967).

Mr. Spinetti said he once asked Mr. Harrison why he was cast in all three.

“You’ve got a lovely karma, Vic,” Mr. Harrison replied.

“A Hard Day’s Night” had just opened in movie theaters in New York in 1964 when “Oh What a Lovely War” had its Broadway premiere. Mr. Spinetti’s role — for which he won a Tony — called for him to appear onstage to open the play. And as he did, he later recalled, screaming erupted from a claque of Beatles fans in the balcony.

“He touched George!” one cried.

Mr. Spinetti said he improvised a solution: he promised the fans that if they behaved, they could sit in the front rows after the show, “and we’ll do a 10-minute semester on the Beatles, O.K.?”

The solution worked. But it became a nightly event. Beatles fans attended “Oh What a Lovely War” for months afterward, he said — not to see a serious play about the folly of war, but to find out what George, Ringo, John and Paul were really like.

 

[Bacigalupo]

Richard Lynch

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/movies/richard-lynch-who-played-bad-guys-dies-at-76.html

http://www.avclub.com/articles/rip-richard-lynch,81613/

Character actor and venerable genre movie fixture Richard Lynch was found dead at his home yesterday, news broken on Facebook this morning by Rob Zombie, who cast Lynch in his 2007 remake of Halloween and his forthcoming The Lords Of Salem. “Richard was great to work with and really gave it his all,” Zombie wrote. “I will never forget the way he scared the crap out of the kid actors in Halloween.” (Accounts of Lynch’s exact age are all over the map, but he was probably in his mid-70s.)

 

[JennyOHill2]

Sports world artist LeRoy Neiman dies in NY at 91

NEW YORK—Painter and sketch artist LeRoy Neiman, best known for evoking the kinetic energy of the world's biggest sporting and leisure events with bright quick strokes, died Wednesday at age 91.

Neiman was the official painter of five Olympiads and was a contributing artist at Playboy magazine for many years. His longtime publicist, Gail Parenteau, confirmed his death at a Manhattan hospital on Wednesday but didn't disclose the cause.

Neiman was a media-savvy artist who knew how to enthrall audiences with his instant renditions of what he observed. In 1972, he sketched the world chess tournament between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a live television audience. He also produced live drawings of the Olympics for TV and was the official computer artist of the Super Bowl for CBS.

Neiman's "reportage of history and the passing scene ... revived an almost lost and time-honored art form," according to a 1972 exhibit catalog of his Olympics sketches at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

"It's been fun. I've had a lucky life," Neiman said in a June 2008 interview with The Associated Press. "I've zeroed in on what you would call action and excellence. ... Everybody who does anything to try to succeed has to give the best of themselves, and art has made me pull the best out of myself."

Neiman's paintings, many executed in household enamel paints that allowed him his fast-moving strokes, are an explosion in reds, blues, pinks, greens and yellows of pure kinetic energy.

He has been described as an American impressionist, but the St. Paul, Minn., native preferred to think of himself simply as an American artist.

Neiman was fascinated with large game animals and said he twice traveled to Kenya to paint lions and elephants "in the bush" in his trademark vibrant palette.

But it was the essence of a basketball or football game, swim meet or cycling event that captured his imagination most.

With his sketchbook and pencil, trademark handlebar mustache and slicked back hair, Neiman was instantly recognizable.

At a New York Jets game at Shea Stadium in 1975, fans yelled, "Put LeRoy in," when the play wasn't going their way.

Neiman's decades-long association with Playboy began in 1953 following a chance meeting with Hugh Hefner. It was the start of what he called "the good life" and inspiration for much of his future work.

Neiman was a World War II veteran who participated in the invasion of Normandy and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He was a self-described workaholic who seldom took vacations and had no hobbies. He worked daily in his home studio at the Hotel des Artistes near Central Park, which he shared with his wife.

Neiman also was a portraitist who captured some of the world's most iconic figures, Frank Sinatra and Babe Ruth among them, in a style that conveyed their public image.
"I am less concerned with how people look when they wake," he said. "A person's public presence reflects his own efforts at image development."

One face he recorded over and over again was that of Muhammad Ali. Those paintings and sketches, representing 15 years of the prizefighter's professional life, permanently reside at the LeRoy Neiman Gallery at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Ky.

Neiman earned numerous accolades. He was inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame and the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Other awards included a 2002 Friars Club Tribute and a 2004 Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

His works are in the permanent collections of many private and public museums. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., was selected by Neiman to house his archives.

"I just love what I do," Neiman told the AP. "I love the passion you go through while you're creating" and the public's "very thoughtful and careful studied and emotional reaction of what you're doing."

He added: "It's a wonderful feeling."

Neiman is survived by his wife of 55 years, Janet Byrne Neiman.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Composer, lyricist Richard Adler dies at 90 in NY

NEW YORK (AP) — Composer and lyricist Richard Adler, who won Tony Awards for co-writing snappy and infectious, songs for such hit Broadway musicals as "The Pajama Game" and "Damn Yankees" and who staged and produced President John F. Kennedy's birthday celebration featuring a breathy Marilyn Monroe, has died. He was 90.

Adler died Thursday at his home in Southampton, N.Y., his widow, Susan A. Ivory, said.
Some of Adler's biggest songs are "You Gotta Have Heart," ''Hey, There," ''Hernando's Hideaway," ''Whatever Lola Wants," ''Steam Heat," ''Rags to Riches," and "Everybody Loves a Lover."

Adler staged and produced several shows for U.S. presidents, including the unforgettable 1962 extravaganza for Kennedy at Madison Square Garden where Monroe sang "Happy Birthday."

He and Jerry Ross wrote the music and lyrics to "The Pajama Game," a light comedy about labor-management relations at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory, which won the best musical Tony in 1955.

Adler teamed up with Ross again for "Damn Yankees," in which a rabid baseball fan sells his soul to the devil in exchange for a chance to lead his favorite team to American League pennant glory. It won the best musical Tony crown the next year.

The fruitful Ross-Adler union ended when Ross died of a lung ailment in 1955 at age 29. Adler went on to earn a Tony nomination for writing the lyrics and music for 1961's "Kwamina."

Adler was born in New York City in 1921 and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1943. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II.
He composed several symphonic works, including "Wilderness Suite," which was commissioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and "The Lady Remembers," to celebrate the Statue of Liberty's centennial. He also composed two ballets for the Chicago City Ballet: "Eight by Adler" in 1984 and "Chicago."

Adler also produced works on Broadway, including the play "The Sin of Pat Muldoon" and the musical "Rex." He is a member of the Songwriter's Hall of Fame.

Adler is survived by his wife; his children, Andrew Adler, Katherine Adler and Charles Shipman; and three grandchildren, Damien and Scarlett Adler and Lola Jane Shipman.

 

[Bacigalupo]

R.I.P. Caroline John, Doctor Who's Liz Shaw

http://www.avclub.com/articles/rip-caroline-john-doctor-whos-liz-shaw,81670/


British actress Caroline John, best known for playing scientist Liz Shaw during Doctor Who’s seventh season in 1970, died June 5 at age 71. Her death was reported by the BBC, after her funeral was held yesterday. The cause of death was not made public.

 

[JennyOHill2]

Nora Ephron dead at 71

Nora Ephron, the journalist-turned-successful Hollywood screenwriter/director, is dead, the Associated Press confirms. She was 71. The Washington Post was the first to report Ephron's death following some confusion this afternoon about the status of her health.

She died of complications from the blood disorder myelodysplasia, according to the Post.

Born in New York and raised in Beverly Hills, Ephron was the eldest daughter of two Hollywood screenwriters; two of her sisters also are screenwriters, and a third is journalist and author.

Ephron is best known for her romantic comedies, such as When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, but also as the ex-wife of Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, her second husband and father of her two sons. His cheating during their marriage inspired her 1983 laughing-through-tears novel Heartburn and the 1986 movie of the same name starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.

She also claimed to have long known - and would tell anyone who would ask - the identity of Deep Throat, the mystery source who spilled the Watergate story to Bernstein and his Washington Post reporting partner, Bob Woodward, although the name of the source did not come out until decades later (it was FBI Associate Director Mark Felt).

Ephron started out as a newspaper reporter and "New Journalism" magazine writer acclaimed for her satiric and witty essays in the 1960s and 1970s.

She had a special knack for titles: Her 1972 essay, A Few Words About Breasts, which helped establish her as a first-rate writer, is echoed in her 2006 book, I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts About Being a Woman.

More recently, her movie career flourished; Julie & Julia, also starring Streep, got rave reviews in 2009. She also received three Oscar nominations for screenwriting, for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle.

She is survived by her sons and her third husband, screenwriter and novelist Nicholas Pileggi.