Literotica Cemetary

[JennyOmanHill]

Joel Siegel, Film and Theatre Critic, Dead at 63

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Joel Siegel, the film and theatre critic known for his enthusiastic, blurb-worthy reviews and his thick brush moustache, died June 29 at the age of 63. The cause was colon cancer. Mr. Siegel was diagnosed with the disease in 1997.

While never considered a deep-thinking critic, Mr. Siegel possessed a wide influence with the public, due to his long-time perch as entertainment critic on "Good Morning, America," a program he joined in 1981. He was also for many years a critic at WABC.

As Mr. Siegel was prone to hyperbole, quotes from his reviews were routinely featured in newspaper ads and on placards outside Broadway theatres.

Joel Siegel was born on July 7, 1943, in the entertainment capital of the U.S., Los Angeles. He graduated cum laude from the University of California at Los Angeles. Though always interested in show business and journlism, his early career was flavored by the tumultuous times during which he grew up. In college he worked to register black voters in Georgia and met Martin Luther King Jr. He also worked as a joke writer for Senator Robert F. Kennedy and was at the Ambassador Hotel the night the senator was assassinated in 1968.

Before establishing himself as a television personality, Mr. Siegel seemed to have tried a bit of everything. While working in advertising for Carson/Roberts Advertising, he invented and named ice cream flavors for Baskin-Robbins. Among them were German Chocolate Cake, Blueberry Cheesecake and Red, White and Blueberry Chilly Burgers. He knew Terry Gilliam in his pre-"Monty Python" days. Together they published a book, "The Cocktail People."

In 1981 Mr. Siegel wrote the book for The First, a musical based on the story of Jackie Robinson. The show had music by Bob Brush and lyrics by Martin Charnin, who also directed. David Alan Grief played Robinson. It played Broadway for only 37 performances, but earned the critic a Tony Award nomination.

Joel Siegel was married three times. The first union, to Karen Oshman, ended in divorce. His second wife, Jane Kessler, died of brain cancer in 1982. He married Ena Swansea in 1996. Together, they had a son, Dylan. When Mr. Siegel discovered the next year that he had cancer, he decided to write a book for his son called "Lessons for Dylan: From Father to Son." It was published in 2003.

He is survived by his son, Dylan, and his wife.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Leo Burmester, Original Thenardier in Les Miz, Dead at 63

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"Master of the House"

Leo Burmester, a rangy, gruff actor known for his Broadway turns in Buried Child and Les Miserables, died June 28 at the age of 63, according to friends and colleagues in the theatre community.

The cause of death was leukemia. He had been in a coma for several days following surgery to relieve pressure on his brain.

Mr. Burmester was the original Thenardier, the comically unscrupulous innkeeper, in the New York premiere of Les Miserables. He and his scheming wife sang the rollicking anthem to treachery "Master of the House," an audience favorite. The couple were responsible for whatever humor could be found in the dark-hued musical. In act two, he alone delivered the grimmer song "Dog Eats Dog." Critic John Simon said he sang the part with "raucous deviltry."

The actor would go on to play other atavistic, amoral, rural characters. He was Bradley, the cantankerous, one-legged brother in the 1996 Gary Sinise-directed revival of Sam Shepard's Buried Child, and was Sid Davis in a 1998 revival of Ah, Wilderness! at Lincoln Center. Of his performance in the Shepard play, Ben Brantley wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. Burmester is as good as ever as the satanic bully who can turn instantly into a sobbing brat."

His other Broadway credits include the short-lived musicals The Civil War (1999), Thou Shalt Not (2001) and Urban Cowboy (2003). He most recently acted in the Off-Broadway revival of The Fantasticks, playing Hucklebee.

Born in Louisville, KY, on Feb. 1, 1944, Mr. Burmester found early work at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, creating roles in Marsha Norman's Getting Out and James McLure's Lone Star. When the two plays were done in New York, they became the actor's Off-Broadway and Broadway debuts, respectively.

On film, Mr. Burmester was a favorite of director John Sayles, who used him in "Passion Fish" and "Lone Star." Martin Scorcese directed him in "The Last Temptation of Christ." He was Holly Hunter's father in "Broadcast News," and had a large role as a decompression expert in James Cameron's underwater epic "The Abyss." He also worked for directors such as Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin, Clint Eastwood, Robert Altman and John Schlesinger.

Mr. Burmester is survived by his wife, Lora Lee Echobelli, and two children, Daniel and Colette.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Bill Pinkney, 81; last original member of the Drifters vocal group

Bill Pinkney, 81, the last survivor of the original members of the musical group the Drifters, died July 4th at a hotel in Daytona Beach, Fla., where he was scheduled to perform for Independence Day festivities.

A Daytona Beach police spokesman said Pinkney was found dead in his hotel room, but the death was not considered suspicious. Family members said he had heart problems.

Born in Dalzell, S.C., in 1925, Pinkney wasn't with the Drifters when they recorded their biggest hits, which included "Under the Boardwalk," "Up on the Roof" and "Save the Last Dance for Me." He left the group in 1958, five years after it was formed, because of an argument over money. His distinctive bass voice can be heard on the Drifters' version of the holiday classic "White Christmas" used in the 1990 movie "Home Alone."

Even though he left the group, Pinkney hung on to the Drifters' name and went on to lead a group that toured as the Original Drifters. He fought for laws allowing performers or bands to claim an affiliation with a classic group like the Drifters or the Coasters only if at least one member recorded with the original group.

The Drifters, including Pinkney, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

Pinkney grew up singing in gospel choirs and picked cotton in South Carolina before entering the Army. He was awarded a Bronze Star and Silver Star after serving in Europe during World War II.

 

[sweet soft kiss]

Lady Bird Johnson dies at 94

5:05 p.m. PT July 11, 2007

AUSTIN, Texas - Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday, a family spokeswoman said. She was 94.

Johnson, who suffered a stroke in 2002 that affected her ability to speak, returned home late last month after a week at Seton Medical Center, where she’d been admitted for a low-grade fever.

She died at her Austin home of natural causes and she was surrounded by family and friends, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Christian.

Even after the stroke, Johnson still managed to make occasional public appearances and get outdoors to enjoy her beloved wildflowers. But she was unable to speak more than a few short phrases, and more recently did not speak at all, Anne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the LBJ Library and Museum, said in 2006. She communicated her thoughts and needs by writing, Wheeler said.

Lyndon Johnson died in 1973, four years after the Johnsons left the White House.

The longest-living first lady in history was Bess Truman, who was 97 when she died in 1982.

Other former first ladies remembered Johnson on Wednesday as deeply devoted to her family and the environment.

“Her beautification programs benefited the entire nation. She translated her love for the land and the environment into a lifetime of achievement,” Betty Ford said.

'A loyal and devoted wife'
Nancy Reagan said that when Lyndon Johnson was called upon to take the oath of office in the face of tragedy after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, “he did so with his courageous wife beside him.” She said Lady Bird Johnson served the nation with honor and dignity.

“I believe above all else that Lady Bird will always be remembered as a loyal and devoted wife, a loving and caring mother and a proud and nurturing grandmother,” Reagan said.

The daughter of a Texas rancher, she spent 34 years in Washington as the wife of a congressional secretary, U.S. representative, senator, vice president and president. The couple had two daughters, Lynda Bird, born in 1944, and Luci Baines, born in 1947. The couple returned to Texas after the presidency, and Lady Bird Johnson lived for more than 30 years in and near Austin.

“I think we all love seeing those we love loved well, and Austin has loved my mother very well. This community has been so caring,” Luci Baines Johnson said in an interview with The Associated Press in December 2001.

“People often ask me about walking in her shadow, following in the footsteps of somebody like Lady Bird Johnson,” she said. “My mother made her own unique imprint on this land.”

Former President George H.W. Bush once recalled that when he was a freshman Republican congressman from Texas in the 1960s, Lady Bird Johnson and the president welcomed him to Washington with kindness, despite their political differences.

He said she exemplified “the grace and the elegance and the decency and sincerity that you would hope for in the White House.”

“Like all Americans, but especially those of us who call Texas home, we loved Lady Bird,” Bush said Wednesday. He called her “a good friend, and a warm and gracious woman” in a statement.

Known for beautification
As first lady, she was perhaps best known as the determined environmentalist who wanted roadside billboards and junkyards replaced with trees and wildflowers. She raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to beautify Washington. The $320 million Highway Beautification Bill, passed in 1965, was known as “The Lady Bird Bill,” and she made speeches and lobbied Congress to win its passage.

“Had it not been for her, I think that the whole subject of the environment might not have been introduced to the public stage in just the way it was and just the time it was. So she figures mightily, I think, in the history of the country if for no other reason than that alone,” Harry Middleton, retired director of the LBJ Library and Museum, once said.

Lady Bird Johnson once turned down a class valedictorian’s medal because of her fear of public speaking, but she joined in every one of her husband’s campaigns. She was soft-spoken but rarely lost her composure, despite heckling and grueling campaign schedules. She once appeared for 47 speeches in four days.

“How Lady Bird can do all the things she does without ever stubbing her toe, I’ll just never know, because I sure stub mine sometimes,” her husband once said.

Lady Bird Johnson said her husband “bullied, shoved, pushed and loved me into being more outgoing, more of an achiever. I gave him comfort, tenderness and some judgment — at least I think I did.”

A natural entrepreneur
She had a cool head for business, turning a modest sum of money into a multimillion-dollar radio corporation in Austin that flourished under family ownership for more than a half-century. With a $17,500 inheritance from her mother, she purchased a small, faltering radio station in 1942 in Austin. The family business later expanded into television and banking.

“She was very hands-on. She literally mopped the floor, and she sold radio time,” daughter Luci Baines Johnson said of her mother’s early days in business.

When Johnson challenged Sen. John F. Kennedy unsuccessfully in 1960 for the Democratic presidential nomination, his wife was his chief supporter, although she confessed privately she would rather be home in Texas.

His nomination as vice president on Kennedy’s ticket drew her deep into a national campaign. She stumped through 11 Southern states, mostly alone, making speeches at whistle stops in her soft drawl. In his 1965 memoir, “Kennedy,” JFK special counsel Theodore Sorensen recalled her “remarkable campaign talents” in the 1960 campaign.

She was with her husband in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, and was at his side as he took the presidential oath of office aboard Air Force One.

In her book “A White House Diary,” she recalled seeing Jacqueline Kennedy with her husband’s blood still on her dress and leg. “Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights — that immaculate woman, exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood,” she wrote.

Suddenly, the unpretentious woman from Texas found herself first lady of the United States, splitting time between the White House and the Johnson family’s 13-room stone and frame house on the LBJ Ranch, near Johnson City west of Austin.

‘How much can they tear us down?’
Her White House years also were filled with the turbulence of the Vietnam War era.

The first lady often would speak her fears and hopes into a tape recorder, and some of the transcripts were included in the 2001 book “Reaching for Glory, Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964-1965,” edited by historian Michael Beschloss.

“How much can they tear us down?” she wondered in 1965 as criticism of the Vietnam War worsened. “And what effect might it have on the way we appear in history?”

She quoted her husband as saying: “I can’t get out. And I can’t finish it with what I have got. And I don’t know what the hell to do.”

Lady Bird Johnson served as honorary chairwoman of the national Head Start program and held a series of luncheons spotlighting women of assorted careers and professions.

Both daughters married while their father was president. Luci married Patrick Nugent, in 1966 at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. That marriage ended in divorce and she wed Canadian banker Ian Turpin in 1984. Daughter Lynda Bird married Charles Robb, later governor and U.S. senator from Virginia, in a White House wedding in 1967.

After she and her husband left Washington, Lady Bird Johnson worked on “A White House Diary,” published in 1970. She also served a six-year term starting in 1971 as a University of Texas regent.

She and her daughters remained active in her wildflower advocacy and with the LBJ Library in Austin after the former president’s death in 1973. Into her 90s, Lady Bird Johnson made occasional public appearances at the library and at civic and political events, always getting a rousing reception.

President Gerald Ford appointed her to the advisory council to the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, and President Jimmy Carter named her to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. Her long list of honors and medals include the country’s highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom, bestowed in 1977 by Ford.

She was born Claudia Alta Taylor on Dec. 22, 1912, in the small East Texas town of Karnack. Her father was Thomas Jefferson Taylor, a wealthy rancher and merchant. Her mother was the former Minnie Lee Patillo of Alabama, who loved books and music.

Caretaker gave her the nickname
Lady Bird Johnson received her nickname in infancy from a caretaker nurse who said she was as “pretty as a lady bird.” It was the name by which the world would come to know her. She disliked it, but said later, “I made my peace with it.”

When Lady Bird was 5, her mother died, and her aunt, Effie Patillo, came to care for her and two older brothers.

She graduated from Marshall High School at age 15 and prepared for college at St. Mary’s Episcopal School for Girls in Dallas. At the University of Texas in Austin she studied journalism and took enough education courses to qualify as a public school teacher. She received a bachelor of arts degree in 1933 and a bachelor of journalism in 1934.

A few weeks later, through a friend in Austin, she met Lyndon Johnson, then secretary to U.S. Rep. Richard Kleberg, a Democrat from Texas. The day after their first date, Lyndon Johnson proposed. They were married within two months, on Nov. 17, 1934, in San Antonio.

Lyndon Johnson caught the eye of U.S. Rep. Sam Rayburn of Texas, who later became House speaker. Rayburn persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 to appoint Johnson director of the National Youth Administration for Texas.

Financial, moral support for husband
When Rep. James Buchanan, D-Texas, died two years later, Johnson ran for the House seat. His wife borrowed $10,000 from her father to finance the campaign, and Johnson won easily.

Johnson lost a 1941 special election for the U.S. Senate, but narrowly won the seat in 1948, after he was declared the victor by just 87 votes in a Democratic primary runoff against former Gov. Coke Stevenson.

In December 1972, the Johnsons gave the LBJ Ranch house and surrounding property to the United States as a National Historic Site, retaining a life estate for themselves. The property is to transfer to the federal park service after her death.

The family’s privately held broadcasting company — later overseen by Luci Baines Johnson — was sold in March 2003 to Emmis Communications of Indianapolis. Lady Bird Johnson had been a director of the radio company in her later years and even attended most board meetings before her 2002 stroke.

On her 70th birthday, in 1982, she and Helen Hayes founded the National Wildflower Research Center near Austin, later renamed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. The research and education center is dedicated to the preservation and use of wildflowers and native plants.

“I’m optimistic that the world of native plants will not only survive, but will thrive for environmental and economic reasons, and for reasons of the heart. Beauty in nature nourishes us and brings joy to the human spirit,” Lady Bird Johnson wrote.

In addition to her two daughters, survivors include seven grandchildren, a step-grandchild, and several great-grandchildren.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


I know I am going to hell for this, but my first thought when I heard this was "Whoo Hoo another one down in my Dead Pool."

 

[coinín]

"Honest Ed" Mirvish dead at 92

TORONTO (CP) - Ed Mirvish was no stranger to strange places, whether it was riding down city streets on the back of an elephant, doling out free frozen turkeys at Christmas or strolling through the classical antique section of his sprawling discount variety store.

An eccentric, canny businessman, master promoter and self-made theatre impresario, the man known to most Toronto residents simply as Honest Ed died Tuesday at the age of 92.

To some, Mirvish was the P.T. Barnum of thrift store owners, a larger-than-life pitchman who understood the economics of big-box retailing long before the world heard of Wal-Mart. To others, he was a generous philanthropist and the father of Canadian musical theatre.

Honest Ed's, his vast retail empire on Bloor Street just west of downtown Toronto, opened in 1948 and quickly earned a reputation for selling everything under the sun - from barbecues and winter socks to a life-sized Elvis bust or a four-metre-tall cuckoo clock.

Many shoppers wore sombre faces Wednesday as they strolled through the store's kitschy, crazy decor. Iris Brummell-Wilkinson, who's been coming to Honest Ed's ever since she came to Canada, said she cried when she heard Mirvish had died.

"He was a very nice man to multicultural people," said Brummell-Wilkinson, adding that she still has some of the original purchases from the first trip she ever made to Honest Ed's in the 1960s.


Shuikwai Chen, one of Mirvish's store employees, said she loved working for him. "He used to come down (from his office) and talk to me all the time."

Mirvish's foray into the theatre business 16 years later seemed equally out of the blue. At the time, he admitted he knew nothing about acting.

All the same, he purchased the stately Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto in 1962, saving it from demolition. Later, he and his son David bought and restored the Old Vic theatre in London, England and built the award-winning Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto in 1993.

His theatres introduced Toronto audiences to blockbusters like "The Lion King," "Mamma Mia" and "Miss Saigon."

In a statement released Wednesday, Toronto Mayor David Miller described Mirvish as a local hero who would be sorely missed.

"The lights may have dimmed on Ed's life, but his spirit and legacy have been indelibly burned into the fabric of Toronto," Miller said.

Mirvish was born July 24, 1914, in Colonial Beach, Va.. He came to Toronto in 1923 where he and his family lived above their downtown Dundas Street grocery. He was 15 when his father died and he dropped out of school to support his family.

Over the years, Mirvish picked up a handful of honorary degrees and awards, including the Order of Canada and the Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

His death was being felt particularly strongly in Canada's theatre community. Mirvish was among the first businessmen to support local, home-grown theatre productions, said actor R.H. Thomson.

"It's (his) generation of theatrical pioneers of all different kinds who took on the problem that the only theatre in Canada was what we shipped in from outside," he said.

Thomson, who worked on a Mirvish production of the Tom Stoppard play "The Real Thing" in the 1980s, said Mirvish "always had his feet on the ground" and never showed any pretension despite his wealth and social status.

"He's what I'd call a quintessentially Canadian mogul . . . because he has deep roots and loyalty to the community, and not just the theatre community, but to the community of ordinary Canadians. That's what makes him peculiar."

Mirvish opened his store in the heart Toronto's immigrant district. His first newspaper ad read: "Our building is a dump! Our service is rotten! . . . But. . ..

! Our prices are the lowest in town!"

He once said he named his store Honest Ed's because "it was so ridiculous. As soon as you claim to be honest, everybody gets suspicious."

By the 1950s, the store, which took up an entire city block and boasted a massive marquee comprised of 23,000 light bulbs, had become so successful that neighbours were complaining about noise and traffic. The neighbourhood is now known as Mirvish Village.

By the time he bought the Royal Alex, Mirvish had become so successful he could afford to spend $500,000 restoring the 1907 theatre to its former glory.

Mirvish added restaurateur to his expanding list of accomplishments when he opened Ed's Warehouse on King, a 180-seat restaurant that only served roast beef.

Mirvish, who was distinguished by his flamboyance and shrewd business acumen, was also well-known for his generosity.

At his annual birthday bash, to which everyone was welcome, there were free hot dogs, rides and cake. And each Christmas, people would line up overnight outside Honest Ed's - often in the freezing cold - for a free turkey and fruit cake. Mirvish has also been praised for efforts to revive tourism in Toronto after the SARS crisis.

Mirvish's family will hold a funeral service at Beth Tzedec Synagogue on Friday at 11 a.m.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Cancer Claims Ferguson, Former Rangers Gm/coach

A FIGHTER TO THE END
Associated Press
July 15, 2007 -- TORONTO - Former NHL player and general manager John Ferguson Sr., died yesterday after a lengthy fight with prostate cancer. He was 68.

Ferguson was one of the toughest players to lace up skates in the NHL and remained a big part of the sport as a GM, coach and scout at the highest level.

Ferguson, the father of current Maple Leafs GM John Ferguson Jr., went from being a tough guy on the ice to a powerful man in the executive chair. He played eight NHL seasons from 1963-71, all with the Montreal Canadiens, and was a Stanley Cup champion five times.

Ferguson was diagnosed with prostate cancer in September 2005, and thought he had beaten the disease, but a recurrence took his life.

"My father battled cancer with the same spirit in which he played the game of hockey," Ferguson Jr., said in a release. "He showed courage, strength, class and tremendous character. He had deep appreciation for the support he'd received from so many people beginning with his initial diagnosis.

"My father's spirit will continue to live on in all of us whose lives he touched."

Ferguson was GM and coach of the Rangers for two tumultuous years until 1978 and GM of the Winnipeg Jets, both in the WHA and NHL, from 1979-88 - briefly serving as coach. He was the manager of Windsor Raceway between hockey jobs before becoming director of player personnel for the Ottawa Senators from 1992-95. Ferguson was a senior scout for the San Jose Sharks from 1995 until his death.

There was not a more determined player.

Ferguson, also a standout on the lacrosse field, would crash creases and drop the gloves when necessary. Along with his 145 goals - an average of 18 a season - and 158 assists, he amassed 1,214 penalty minutes in 500 regular-season games.

He was more than just a bodyguard for Montreal's stars, but because of his reputation as a tough-as-nails combatant - he got into his first fight 12 seconds into his first NHL game - it is often forgotten that in his first season he led NHL rookies in scoring and was runner-up for rookie of the year honors.

Ferguson scored two goals after fighting Ted Green in his first game and was regarded as hockey's unofficial heavyweight champion until he retired.

Ferguson scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal in 1969, capping a season in which he had 29 goals a plus-30 rating.

The 5-foot-11, 190-pound left winger once was dared to fight Canadian heavyweight boxing champion George Chuvalo. He was willing to enter the ring but the Canadiens wouldn't allow it.

In addition to his son, Ferguson is survived by wife, Joan.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Tammy Faye Messner dies at 65

RALEIGH, N.C. - Tammy Faye Messner, who as Tammy Faye Bakker helped her husband, Jim, build a multimillion-dollar evangelism empire and then saw it collapse in disgrace, has died. She was 65.

Messner, who had battled colon cancer since 1996 that more recently spread to her lungs, died at her home Friday, said her booking agent, Joe Spotts. A family service was held Saturday in a private cemetery, where her ashes were interred, he said.

She had frequently spoken about her medical problems, saying she hoped to be an inspiration to others. "Don't let fear rule your life," she said. "Live one day at a time, and never be afraid." But she told well-wishers in a note on her Web site in May that the doctors had stopped trying to treat the cancer.

In an interview with CNN's Larry King two months later, an emaciated Messner — still using her trademark makeup — said, "I believe when I leave this earth, because I love the Lord, I'm going straight to heaven." Asked if she had any regrets, Messner said: "I don't think about it, Larry, because it's a waste of good brain space."

For many, the TV image of then-Mrs. Bakker forgiving husband Jim's infidelities, tears streaking her cheeks with mascara, became a symbol for the wages of greed and hypocrisy in 1980s America.

She divorced her husband of 30 years in 1992 while he was in prison for defrauding millions from followers of their PTL television ministries. The letters stood for "Praise the Lord" or "People that Love."

Her second husband also served time in prison. She married Roe Messner, who had been the chief builder of the Bakkers' Heritage USA Christian theme park near Fort Mill, S.C., in 1993. In 1995, he was convicted of bankruptcy fraud, and he spent about two years in prison.

Through it all, Messner kept plugging her faith and herself. She did concerts, a short-lived secular TV talk show and an inspirational videotape. In 2004, she cooperated in the making of a documentary about her struggle with cancer, called "Tammy Faye: Death Defying."

"I wanted to help people ... maybe show the inside (of the experience) and make it a little less frightening," she said.

That same year, she appeared on the WB reality show "The Surreal Life," co-starring with former rapper Vanilla Ice, ex-porn star Ron Jeremy and others. She told King in 2004 that she didn't know who Jeremy was when they met and they became friends.

Messner was never charged with a crime in connection with the Bakker scandal. She said she counted the costs in other ways.

"I know what it's like to hit rock bottom," she said in promotional material for her 1996 video "You Can Make It."

In the mid-1980s, the Bakkers were on top, ruling over a ministry that claimed 500,000 followers. Their "Jim and Tammy Show," part TV talk show, part evangelism meeting, was seen across the country. Heritage USA boasted a 500-room hotel, shopping mall, convention center, water-amusement park, TV studio and several real-estate developments. PTL employed about 2,000 people.

Then in March 1987, Bakker resigned, admitting he had a tryst with Jessica Hahn, a 32-year-old former church secretary.

Tammy Faye Bakker stuck with her disgraced husband through five stormy years of tabloid headlines as the ministry unraveled.

Prosecutors said the PTL organization sold more than 150,000 "lifetime partnerships" promising lodging at the theme park but did not build enough hotel space with the $158 million in proceeds. At his fraud trial, Jim Bakker was accused of diverting $3.7 million to personal use even though he knew the ministry was financially shaky. Trial testimony showed PTL paid $265,000 to Hahn to cover up the sexual encounter with the minister.

Jim Bakker was convicted in 1989 of 24 fraud and conspiracy counts and sentenced to 45 years. The sentence was later reduced, and he was freed in 1994. He said that his wife's decision to leave him had been "like a meat hook deep in my heart. I couldn't eat for days."

While not charged, his then-wife shared during the 1980s in the public criticism and ridicule over the couple's extravagance, including the reportedly gold-plated bathroom fixtures and an air-conditioned doghouse.

There was even a popular T-shirt satirizing her image. The shirt read, "I ran into Tammy Faye at the shopping mall," with the lettering on top of what look like clots of mascara, traces of lipstick and smudges of peach-toned makeup.

Her autobiography, "I Gotta Be Me," recounts a childhood as Tammy Faye LaValley, one of eight children of a poor family in International Falls, Minn. Her biological father walked out. She was reticent about her age, but a 2000 profile of her in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis said she was born in March 1942.

Raised by her mother and stepfather, she resented how other ladies at their Assembly of God church looked on her mother as a "fallen woman."

But she kept her faith.

"I knew I had a Jesus who was able to cover all this," she wrote.

She recalled trying eye makeup for the first time, then wiping it off for fear it was the devil's work. Then she thought again.

"Why can't I do this?" she asked. "If it makes me look prettier, why can't I do this?"

She married Bakker in 1961, after they met at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. Beginning with a children's puppet act, they created a religious show that brought a fundamentalist Protestant message to millions.

A secular TV talk program, the "Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show" with co-host Jim J. Bullock, lasted just six weeks in early 1996. Shortly after it went off the air, she underwent surgery for colon cancer.

She said afterward that she endured bleeding for a year because she was embarrassed to go to a male doctor. And she wore her makeup even in surgery.

"They didn't make me take it off," she said. "I had wonderful doctors and understanding nurses. I went in fully made up and came out fully made up."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Coolbaugh, 35, dies after being struck by ball

http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2007/0723/mlb_g_coolbaugh_65.jpg

SAN ANTONIO -- Mike Coolbaugh became a coach with the Tulsa Drillers earlier this month not so much for the job itself, but because his little boys loved to see him on the baseball field.

"He had just started," said Coolbaugh's wife, Amanda, who is expecting their third child in October. "We were going to be done with it, but his kids wanted to see him."

Coolbaugh, 35, died Sunday after being struck in the head by a line drive as he stood in the first-base coach's box during a game in Arkansas.

Amanda Coolbaugh, 32, said they planned to wait to find out the baby's sex until the birth. The couple has two sons, Joseph, 5, and Jacob, 3.

"You couldn't have asked for a better father," Amanda Coolbaugh said through tears Monday in San Antonio. "He just paid attention to the boys, put them in clubs and sports ... volunteered time on their teams."

The game between the Double-A Drillers and Arkansas Travelers was suspended in the ninth inning Sunday after Coolbaugh was hit by a foul ball off the bat of Tino Sanchez. He was taken to Baptist Medical Center-North Little Rock, where he was pronounced dead at 9:47 p.m.

Arkansas was awarded a 7-3 victory Monday, the score at the time of the accident. The game was stopped with a runner on first and no outs for Tulsa.

"I feel that it is in the best interest of all the players and staff on both clubs to declare the contest an official and completed game," Texas League president Tom Kayser said. "No one wanted to add to the trauma the two clubs have already endured, which would have undoubtedly occurred if the clubs were to resume their exact positions on the field so soon after the accident that claimed Mike Coolbaugh."

The Drillers, a Colorado Rockies affiliate, said Monday night's game against the Wichita Wranglers in Kansas was postponed.

"Our entire organization grieves at the death of Mike Coolbaugh," Rockies president Keli McGregor said. "We were shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the accident on Sunday evening. Mike was a great husband, father, brother and friend to so many throughout the baseball community."

The Blue Jays held a moment of silence before Monday's game in honor of Coolbaugh, whom the Jays drafted in 1990. The Kansas City Royals also honored Coolbaugh's memory before facing the New York Yankees.

"All of baseball mourns this terrible tragedy," commissioner Bud Selig said.

According to a report on the Drillers' Web site late Sunday, Coolbaugh was knocked unconscious and CPR was administered to him on the field.

Sgt. Terry Kuykendall, spokesman for North Little Rock police, said Coolbaugh stopped breathing as his ambulance arrived at the hospital.

Coolbaugh joined the Drillers on July 3, and Rockies manager Clint Hurdle chatted with him the next day. They talked about balancing the demands of baseball and family.

"He was a good man," an emotional Hurdle said. "We had some common fabric. He had a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, Jacob and Joseph, his wife's six months pregnant, Mandy is. So, we talked about kids. We talked about the relationship, the demands of a father, of a coach. And he was so excited.

"He was a good man. He loved the game and his family."

The former major leaguer who played 44 games for the St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers over two seasons was remembered Monday as a generous man.

"He always said if he won the lotto, he would divide it up between every single person he knew," said Amanda Coolbaugh, who met Mike on the first blind date for both. They had been married for seven years.

Coolbaugh was good with his hands, and built a changing table and crib for one of his sons. He also was taking college courses on nights and weekends to earn a business degree.

Coolbaugh was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 16th round in 1990.

He played third base and bounced around the minors for a decade before reaching the major leagues for the first time in 2001 with the Brewers. He played 39 big league games that season and five for the Cardinals in 2002. He hit two home runs in 82 major league at-bats.

Coolbaugh's older brother, Scott, also played 167 major league games over parts of four seasons with Texas, San Diego and St. Louis in the early 1990s.

"Mike came from a baseball family, and he was a part of the baseball family," commissioner Bud Selig said. "On behalf of all of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest sympathy to his wife Mandy, their children and all of their family and friends."

 

[Tati]

Directing Legend Ingmar Bergman Dies

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (July 30) - Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, an iconoclastic filmmaker widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema, died Monday, local media reported. He was 89 years old.

Bergman died at his home in Faro, Sweden, Swedish news agency TT said, citing his daughter Eva Bergman. A cause of death wasn't immediately available.

Through more than 50 films, Bergman's vision encompassed all the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, the gentle merriment of glowing summer evenings and the bleak magnificence of the island where he spent his last years.

Bergman, who approached difficult subjects such as plague and madness with inventive technique and carefully honed writing, became one of the towering figures of serious filmmaking.

He was "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," Woody Allen said in a 70th birthday tribute in 1988.

The son of a Lutheran clergyman and a housewife, Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala on July 14, 1918, and grew up with a brother and sister in a household of severe discipline that he described in painful detail in the autobiography "The Magic Lantern."

The title comes from his childhood, when his brother got a "magic lantern" - a precursor of the slide-projector - for Christmas. Ingmar was consumed with jealousy, and he managed to acquire the object of his desire by trading it for a hundred tin soldiers.

The apparatus was a spot of joy in an often-cruel young life. Bergman recounted the horror of being locked in a closet and the humiliation of being made to wear a skirt as punishment for wetting his pants.

He broke with his parents at 19 and remained aloof from them, but later in life sought to understand them.

The story of their lives was told in the television film "Sunday's Child," directed by his own son Daniel.

Young Ingmar found his love for drama production early in life. The director said he had coped with the authoritarian environment of his childhood by living in a world of fantasies. When he first saw a movie he was greatly moved.

"Sixty years have passed, nothing has changed, it's still the same fever," he wrote of his passion for film in the 1987 autobiography.

But he said the escape into another world went so far that it took him years to tell reality from fantasy, and Bergman repeatedly described his life as a constant fight against demons, also reflected in his work.

The demons sometimes drove him to great art - as in "Cries and Whispers," the deathbed drama that climaxes when the dying woman cries "I am dead, but I can't leave you." Sometimes they drove him over the top, as in "Hour of the Wolf" where a nightmare-plagued artist meets real-life demons on a lonely island.

Bergman also waged a fight against real-life tormentors: Sweden's powerful tax authorities.

In 1976, during a rehearsal at the Royal Dramatic Theater, police came to take Bergman away for interrogation about tax evasion. The director, who had left all finances to be handled by a lawyer, was questioned for hours while his home was searched. When released, he was forbidden to leave the country.

The case caused an enormous uproar in the media and Bergman had a mental breakdown that sent him to hospital for over a month. He was later absolved of all accusations and in the end only had to pay some extra taxes.

In his autobiography he admitted to guilt in only one aspect: "I signed papers that I didn't read, even less understood."

The experience made him go into voluntary exile in Germany, to the embarrassment of the Swedish authorities. After nine years, he returned to Stockholm, his longtime base.

It was in the Swedish capital that Bergman broke into the world of drama, starting with a menial job at the Royal Opera House after dropping out of college.

In 1942, Bergman was hired by the script department of Swedish Film Industry, the country's main production company, as an assistant script writer.

In 1944 his first original screenplay was filmed by Alf Sjoeberg, the dominant Swedish film director of the time. "Torment" won several awards including the Grand Prize of the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, and soon Bergman was directing an average of two films a year as well as working with stage production.

After the acclaimed "The Seventh Seal," he quickly came up with another success in "Wild Strawberries," in which an elderly professor's car trip to pick up an award is interspersed with dreams.

Other noted films include "Persona," about an actress and her nurse whose identities seem to merge, and "The Autumn Sonata," about a concert pianist and her two daughters, one severely handicapped and the other burdened by her child's drowning.

The date of the funeral has not yet been set, but will be attended by a close group of friends and family, the TT news agency reported.

 

[Faneros]

Bill Walsh's influence on league still felt

Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh, architect of the San Francisco 49ers dynasty and the popular West Coast offense, died today at 75 after a lengthy battle with leukemia.

Walsh was 102-63-1 in 10 seasons with the 49ers, including 10-4 in the postseason. But his impact on pro football went well beyond the 49ers and that prolific offense.
Just a couple of months ago, Walsh was enjoying a sandwich and white wine on the patio behind his home, lunching with two sportswriters he has known for many years.

Walsh's meal was interrupted repeatedly, because his cell phone rang constantly. There were coaches looking for job recommendations, former players, friends, golfing partners or associates from Stanford University, where Walsh worked in recent years.

Even in his twilight years, news of his fight with leukemia no longer a secret, Walsh remained a kingmaker. Nearly 20 years after he coached his final game for the San Francisco 49ers, his influence in the NFL remains strong.

In fact, over the last three decades, including the final quarter of the 20th century, it is quite likely there was not a more significant figure in pro football than Walsh.

His fingerprints are all over today's NFL. Perhaps his West Coast offense has waned in influence in recent years, but at least a version of it can be found in just about every team's playbook, and the organizational structure that he created with the 49ers remains the model for most teams in the league.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Late-night talk show pioneer Tom Snyder dies of leukemia

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Tom Snyder, the late-night talk show host whose free-form program and intimate interviewing style influenced a generation of broadcasters, died in his Tiburon home nearly two years after he announced he had chronic lymphatic leukemia.

Snyder, who was 71, died Sunday from complications from leukemia, associates said. Funeral arrangements are pending and will be private.

Best known for his 1973-82 stint as host of NBC's "The Tomorrow Show," which aired after Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," Snyder showed that the wee hours of weeknight mornings didn't have to ceded to B-grade movies and reruns. There he showed how conversation -- be it goofy, serious, provocative and occasionally edgy -- could be compelling on its own.

With the camera pulled in tight on his face, the screen filled with the cigarette smoke from the host and often his guests, Snyder created a living-room atmosphere that allowed conversation partners such as John Lennon or Howard Stern to relax in ways they didn't on other programs.

"There was a quality about him that was electric -- and yet there was this intimacy on his program," Public Broadcasting System talk show host Charlie Rose told The Chronicle Monday. Rose, whose dimly lit interview program is one of television's last bastions of the same style of intimate, albeit usually more serious, chat, said, "I never tried to copy Tom, because nobody ever could. To have that electricity and that intimacy, that was unique."

Born in Milwaukee, Wis., Snyder began his career as a radio reporter there in the 1960s before anchoring local television news broadcasts in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. In 1973, long before the advent of 24-hour news channels and cable television, Snyder began "Tomorrow," and late night was never the same.

Working live without a script and talking directly into the camera, Snyder created an arresting image for the late-night audience on "The Tomorrow Show." Conversations would veer from Snyder offering his personal opinions to hard-hitting questions, to him displaying photographs from a July Fourth barbecue he attended.

Over the years, he hosted a parade of guests -- including Charles Manson -- that few prime-time programmers would touch. Several of his legendary interviews -- with the makeup-wearing band Kiss and the punk rockers the Plasmatics, who once blew up a car on his show -- live on the video-sharing site YouTube.com. There fans can still see Snyder, wearing a tie tucked under a V-neck sweater, smoking and laughing and jousting with the provocateurs of the era.

"His show was a home for the rock 'n' roll sensibility," said Wally Podrazik, a television historian and author of "Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television." "It was a free-wheeling place where you let your guard down.

"Tom was a personality unto himself. He'd go off on his own personal opinion, then laugh about how ridiculous something was, and then ask his guest a pointed, serious question about that topic -- it's sort of the same thing Jon Stewart does, in a way," Podrazik said.

Television producer and writer "David Milch used to say that coming on Tom's show was like his therapy," said Michael Naidus, a producer on CBS "The Late, Late Show" who worked with Snyder there as a publicist during his mid-1990s late-night talk show and remained in touch since. "You'd see Dennis Miller relax and behave differently on our show than he would any place else."

Over the years, Snyder's mannerisms -- from his chain-smoking, to his staccatoed form of questioning, to his booming guffaw of a laugh, which surfaced frequently at his own jokes -- became part of the cultural conversation, thanks to Dan Aykroyd's spot-on Snyder impersonation on "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-1970s. "Tom got a kick out of it," said his longtime lawyer and agent Ed Hookstratten.

Snyder's NBC show left the air in 1982, and his spot was taken by another late-night ground-breaker, David Letterman. After stints as a newscaster in New York, a nationally syndicated radio program and his own program on CNBC, Snyder returned to network television, thanks to a man who long idolized him: Letterman.

In 1995, after Letterman moved to CBS and was given control to create what would appear in the time slot after his, he invited Snyder to host "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder." It ran for three years on CBS.

"Tom was the very thing that all broadcasters long to be -- compelling," Letterman said Monday in a statement. "Whether he was interviewing politicians, authors, actors or musicians, Tom was always the real reason to watch. I'm honored to have known him as a colleague and as a friend."

"Tom was a true broadcaster, a rare thing," said Peter Lassally, executive producer of Snyder's CBS show, in a statement released by the network. "When he was on the air, he made the camera disappear. It was just you and him, in a room together, having a talk."

Or, as Snyder told his audience in his catch phrase, "Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."

Several years ago, Snyder moved to the Bay Area for his primary residence. "He loved San Francisco," said Naidus. "He said 'it had no bad angles.' "

He is survived by a daughter and his longtime companion, Pamela Burke.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Italian director Antonioni dies

July 31, 2007

Michelangelo Antonioni, the master Italian film director who depicted the emotional alienation of Italy's postwar generation in films such as "L'Avventura" and "La Notte" but achieved his greatest popular success with "Blowup," an enigmatic tale set in "swinging" London of the 1960s, has died. He was 94.

Antonioni, who suffered a debilitating stroke in 1985 that severely limited his ability to speak, died at his home Monday evening, according to Italy's ANSA news agency.

A former film critic and documentarian, Antonioni had a decade of feature filmmaking behind him when he achieved international renown in 1960 with "L'Avventura ("The Adventure"), which many consider his finest film.

It is the first in a loose trilogy of acclaimed films that established the director-screenwriter as one of the world's most enigmatic and innovative moviemakers: one known for taking stylistic, technical and thematic risks.

In "L'Avventura," a young woman (Lea Massari), disappears on a yachting trip to a volcanic Sicilian island, and her lover and best friend (Gabriele Ferzetti and Monica Vitti) are among the group of wealthy friends who join in the search.

But Antonioni defies movie narrative conventions and leaves the woman's disappearance unresolved: It remains a mystery, and she is virtually forgotten after the search is abandoned and her lover and best friend begin a relationship of their own.

Indeed, the movie is not about the search for the missing young woman. It is, as critic Roger Ebert has written, "about the sense in which all of the characters are on the brink of disappearance; their lives are so unreal and their relationships so tenuous they can barely be said to exist."

Or, as critic Pauline Kael wrote of the film, "They are people trying to escape their boredom by reaching out to one another and finding only boredom once again."

Antonioni's three cinematic parables of alienation — "L'Avventura," "La Notte" ("The Night," 1961) and "L'Eclisse" ("The Eclipse" 1962) — marked what film historian Andrew Turner has called the discovery of a "new cinematic language" and are "among the truly extraordinary achievements of postwar cinema."

New Republic film critic Stanley Kaufmann went even further, calling Antonioni's trilogy "among the highest points of film history."

Antonioni's 1964 film "Il Deserto Rosso" ("The Red Desert"), his first in color, had a similar style and addressed similar themes, which he called the "spiritual aridity" and "moral coldness" of Italian society after World War II.

"The Red Desert," also starring Vitti, was notable for Antonioni's use of color: Rooms, streets, trees and even apples were painted and repainted different colors to reflect the neurotic main character's unbalanced emotional state.

"Sometimes," Antonioni once said, "you need to force the reality to give the audience the right mood."

Kevin Thomas, a film reviewer for the Los Angeles Times, has described Antonioni as "one of the most rigorous screen poets in the history of film," a director who "communicates as much as possible through the camera rather than by dialogue."

But the work was not everyone's cup of espresso.

The son of middle-class landowners, Antonioni was born Sept. 29, 1912, in Ferrara, Italy. He demonstrated his creative side at an early age, designing puppets and building sets when he was 10. As a teenager, he turned to oil painting.

Antonioni graduated from the University of Bologna in 1935. But while earning his degree in economics and commerce, he wrote stories and plays, co-founded a student theater company and wrote film reviews for the local newspaper. He also made a failed attempt to film a documentary in a mental institution — the patients panicked when the bright camera lights were turned on.

After moving to Rome in 1939, Antonioni worked for the film journal Cinema and attended the renowned film school Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. By 1942, he had collaborated with director Roberto Rossellini on the script for Rossellini's "The Return of a Pilot."

Although drafted into the Italian army in 1942, Antonioni continued working in films in his spare time and served as an assistant director and co-screenwriter on director Enrico Fulchignoni's "The Two Foscari," among other films.

In 1943, he obtained financing to direct a short documentary about the People of the Po River, "Gente del Po," but the German occupation of Italy interrupted his work on the film and he did not complete editing it until 1947.

After the war, Antonioni resumed working as a film critic and making short documentaries, including a study of Rome street cleaners. He also continued writing screenplays for other directors, including Federico Fellini ("The White Sheik").

His first feature film as a director, "Cronaca di un Amore" ("Story of a Love Affair"), was released in 1950.

Antonioni's breakthrough feature film was "Il Grido" ("The Outcry," 1957), the story of a Po Valley worker (played by American actor Steve Cochran) who is abandoned by his wife. The character's inner despair is reflected by the desolate landscape and empty compositions that became the director's trademark.

During the dubbing of "Il Grido" Antonioni met actress Monica Vitti, with whom he became personally involved. She later co-starred in his landmark trilogy and became known as "the classic Antonioni woman."

"Blowup," Antonioni's 1966 film about an emotionally isolated London fashion photographer (David Hemmings) who discovers that he may have inadvertently captured a murder in a park while shooting surreptitious pictures of a tryst between a young woman (Vanessa Redgrave) and a gray-haired man, was the director's first English-language film.

An imaginary tennis game played by white-faced mimes at the end of the film, which film scholars say symbolizes the difference between illusion and reality and whether or not a murder even occurred, has been described as "one of the defining moments of 1960s cinema."

The film earned Antonioni Oscar nominations for best director and screenplay.

Antonioni was considered an intuitive filmmaker who welcomed spontaneity.

"It's only when I press my eye against the camera and begin to move the actors that I get an exact idea of the scene," he once said. "It's only when I hear dialogue from the actor's mouth itself that I realize whether the lines are correct or not.... Screenplays are on the way to becoming actually sheets of notes for those who, at the camera, will write the film themselves."

Antonioni's penchant for keeping communication to a minimum infuriated some actors.

"He gave me no direction, he rarely spoke to me, and he drove us all beyond the point of exhaustion," Jeanne Moreau complained about working with Antonioni on "La Notte."

Hemmings reportedly had a similar experience on "Blowup," saying, "He never talked to me."

In a 1973 interview with the L.A. Times, Antonioni countered the negatives aspects of his reputation.

"I don't think I'm an ogre," he said. "No, that's not justified. As far as I know only one actress claimed I was--Moreau. Yet I had no problem with her, and I was astonished when she said all those things about me. I usually end the best of friends with my actors. I never have a fight with them."

But, he acknowledged, "I like to provoke the mood I need from them. I don't think they should know too much about what I want to do, otherwise the actor becomes the director. They overact—in good faith, of course, but it's still wrong. Actors have a personal filter. They see life through the eyes of their characters. I am forced to see it in its unity, and therefore I have to control all of them."

"Zabriskie Point," the director's 1970 vision of campus revolutionaries and the current American scene, was a box-office disappointment panned by most critics.

But "The Passenger," his 1975 suspense tale starring Nicholson as a well-known TV reporter on assignment in Africa who, dissatisfied with his life, exchanges identities with a dead Englishman who turns out to be a gunrunner, has been called one of the great films of the 1970s.

The Times' Thomas praised it as "a masterpiece of visual and rigorous artistry that is as tantalizing as it is hypnotic," and the New York Times' Vincent Canby deemed it "Mr. Antonioni's most entertaining film."

But the director's 1982 film "Identification of a Woman," about a film director in search of "the ideal woman" for a movie, generated negative critical reaction and failed to receive U.S. distribution.

"I have lived through so many opinions, so many difficulties in my long career that in some ways I just don't care," Antonioni said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times when "Identification of a Woman" was screened at the New York Film Festival.

But rather than reflect on the ups and downs of his career or the meaning of his work, he was eager to move on to his next film.

"Sometimes there is the temptation to stop working," he said. "But what would I do? I can't keep quiet."

Three years later, he had no choice after suffering the debilitating stroke that paralyzed his right side and severely limited his ability to speak.

The stroke seemed to signal the end of a filmmaking career of the man who once said, "To direct is to live."

"After the stroke, he was so bored, so unhappy," his wife, Enrica, told the New York Times a decade later. "He's a man of enormous energy, and there was nothing for him to do."

The once-divorced Antonioni married Enrica Fico in 1986. A graduate of an art school in Milan, she had met him in Rome in 1971 after asking an artist friend if he knew anyone in Rome who might help her find work. Antonioni offered her a job assisting the wardrobe person on his new film, and their personal relationship began.

After Antonioni's stroke, Enrica is said to have become the inspiration for his rehabilitation. Through the efforts of his wife and several French producers, Antonioni returned to filmmaking with "Beyond the Clouds," a 1995 European-made quartet of love stories based on his 1983 collection of undeveloped film ideas, "Bowling Alley on the Tiber."

When insurance companies refused to guarantee the film because of Antonioni's health problems, the producers hired director Wim Wenders as a standby. Wenders wound up directing the linking episodes in the film featuring a film director narrator played by John Malkovich.

Unable to say much more than a few words, including basta (enough), Antonioni directed the film by having others speak for him and by making faces and gesturing with his one good hand. He also drew simple line drawings to show the actors how to move and where the cameraman should place the camera.

The film had its world premiere at the annual American Film Institute Film Festival in Los Angeles in 1995, the same year Antonioni received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement.

"Most movies celebrate the ways we connect with one another. Films by this master mourn the failures to connect," Nicholson said in his introduction at the Academy Awards ceremony.

Greeted by a standing ovation, Antonioni walked slowly on stage holding the arm of his wife, who spoke for him.

"It's very beautiful to receive this award, and also very beautiful to receive all this love," she said. "Sometimes words are not needed because of this love. Michelangelo always went beyond words, to meet silence, the mystery and power of silence."

Antonioni concluded the speech with a simple word of thanks, "Grazie."

 

[sweet soft kiss]

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Tom Snyder, the late-night talk show host whose free-form program and intimate interviewing style influenced a generation of broadcasters, died in his Tiburon home nearly two years after he announced he had chronic lymphatic leukemia.

Snyder, who was 71, died Sunday from complications from leukemia, associates said. Funeral arrangements are pending and will be private.

Best known for his 1973-82 stint as host of NBC's "The Tomorrow Show," which aired after Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," Snyder showed that the wee hours of weeknight mornings didn't have to ceded to B-grade movies and reruns. There he showed how conversation -- be it goofy, serious, provocative and occasionally edgy -- could be compelling on its own.

With the camera pulled in tight on his face, the screen filled with the cigarette smoke from the host and often his guests, Snyder created a living-room atmosphere that allowed conversation partners such as John Lennon or Howard Stern to relax in ways they didn't on other programs.

"There was a quality about him that was electric -- and yet there was this intimacy on his program," Public Broadcasting System talk show host Charlie Rose told The Chronicle Monday. Rose, whose dimly lit interview program is one of television's last bastions of the same style of intimate, albeit usually more serious, chat, said, "I never tried to copy Tom, because nobody ever could. To have that electricity and that intimacy, that was unique."

Born in Milwaukee, Wis., Snyder began his career as a radio reporter there in the 1960s before anchoring local television news broadcasts in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. In 1973, long before the advent of 24-hour news channels and cable television, Snyder began "Tomorrow," and late night was never the same.

Working live without a script and talking directly into the camera, Snyder created an arresting image for the late-night audience on "The Tomorrow Show." Conversations would veer from Snyder offering his personal opinions to hard-hitting questions, to him displaying photographs from a July Fourth barbecue he attended.

Over the years, he hosted a parade of guests -- including Charles Manson -- that few prime-time programmers would touch. Several of his legendary interviews -- with the makeup-wearing band Kiss and the punk rockers the Plasmatics, who once blew up a car on his show -- live on the video-sharing site YouTube.com. There fans can still see Snyder, wearing a tie tucked under a V-neck sweater, smoking and laughing and jousting with the provocateurs of the era.

"His show was a home for the rock 'n' roll sensibility," said Wally Podrazik, a television historian and author of "Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television." "It was a free-wheeling place where you let your guard down.

"Tom was a personality unto himself. He'd go off on his own personal opinion, then laugh about how ridiculous something was, and then ask his guest a pointed, serious question about that topic -- it's sort of the same thing Jon Stewart does, in a way," Podrazik said.

Television producer and writer "David Milch used to say that coming on Tom's show was like his therapy," said Michael Naidus, a producer on CBS "The Late, Late Show" who worked with Snyder there as a publicist during his mid-1990s late-night talk show and remained in touch since. "You'd see Dennis Miller relax and behave differently on our show than he would any place else."

Over the years, Snyder's mannerisms -- from his chain-smoking, to his staccatoed form of questioning, to his booming guffaw of a laugh, which surfaced frequently at his own jokes -- became part of the cultural conversation, thanks to Dan Aykroyd's spot-on Snyder impersonation on "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-1970s. "Tom got a kick out of it," said his longtime lawyer and agent Ed Hookstratten.

Snyder's NBC show left the air in 1982, and his spot was taken by another late-night ground-breaker, David Letterman. After stints as a newscaster in New York, a nationally syndicated radio program and his own program on CNBC, Snyder returned to network television, thanks to a man who long idolized him: Letterman.

In 1995, after Letterman moved to CBS and was given control to create what would appear in the time slot after his, he invited Snyder to host "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder." It ran for three years on CBS.

"Tom was the very thing that all broadcasters long to be -- compelling," Letterman said Monday in a statement. "Whether he was interviewing politicians, authors, actors or musicians, Tom was always the real reason to watch. I'm honored to have known him as a colleague and as a friend."

"Tom was a true broadcaster, a rare thing," said Peter Lassally, executive producer of Snyder's CBS show, in a statement released by the network. "When he was on the air, he made the camera disappear. It was just you and him, in a room together, having a talk."

Or, as Snyder told his audience in his catch phrase, "Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."

Several years ago, Snyder moved to the Bay Area for his primary residence. "He loved San Francisco," said Naidus. "He said 'it had no bad angles.' "

He is survived by a daughter and his longtime companion, Pamela Burke.

I always loved Synder's stories about Mother Snyder... I hope he's sharing a cocktail with her in eternity.

 

[Tati]

I always loved Synder's stories about Mother Snyder... I hope he's sharing a cocktail with her in eternity.

Tom was great...and he had the BEST laugh.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

EastEnders star Mike Reid dies

LONDON (AFP) - Former EastEnders star and stand-up comedian Mike Reid has died of a suspected heart attack at his home in Spain.

The 67-year-old, best known for his role as Frank Butcher in EastEnders, was considered to be in good health and was in the middle of working on a feature film when he died Sunday.

His agent David Hahn expressed great shock and revealed that Reid had recently undergone a medical examination which had given him a "clean bill of health".

"Mike was a very, very, very funny man," said Hahn. "He would see the funny side of every situation, no matter how black it was.

"Even now I am sure he is laughing ... He always had time for the man on the street. He's going to be sadly missed."

Close friend of the actor and fellow comedian Frank Carson, speaking from Spain after hearing the news, said it was "absolutely devastating".

Born in Hackney, east London, Reid began his career as a stuntman working on films such as "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines" and "Spartacus". He was also a stunt double for Roger Moore in "The Saint".

He started his career as a stand-up comedian in the 1960s and got his first big break on the popular TV show "The Comedians" in 1973. But real success came knocking when he was given the part of EastEnder Frank Butcher, quickly turning it into one of the show's most popular characters.

After taking a lengthy time away from the part due to stress in 2000, Reid returned to the role and made his last appearence as Frank in December 2005.

He also went on to appear in Guy Ritchie's gangster movie "Snatch".

John Yorke, controller of BBC Drama Series, paid tribute to the actor, saying: "Frank Butcher was one of a select group of truly great EastEnders' characters and the skill with which Mike Reid played him made him one of the most popular and well-loved of all.

"Frank could break your heart and make you prostrate with laughter - often at the same time.

"Mike's genius was to capture the heart of that flawed dreamer and make generations of viewers love him."

Fellow entertainer Russ Abbot said Reid was a great story-teller who had a great sense of comic timing.

"There certain comedians who do one-liners but Mike was a story-teller and a great deliverer," he said.

Actress Pam St Clement, who played Reid's Eastenders wife, Pat, said: "I'm sorry to lose such a dear friend and colleague. Mike, as a person and character, seemed indestructible."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Michel Serrault Dies of Cancer at 79

PARIS (AP) -- French actor Michel Serrault, whose hit performance as a transvestite in the film and stage versions of ''La cage aux folles'' (The Birdcage) catapulted him to international stardom, has died. He was 79.

Serrault died Sunday of cancer in his home in the northwestern city of Honfleur, said his priest, the Rev. Alain Maillard de La Morandais.

Serrault appeared in more than 130 films during a career that spanned half a century. After debuting as a comic actor, Serrault became one of France's most versatile stars, playing a serial killer, a grizzled farmer, a crooked banker and accused rapist.

''I'm against those who only want to entertain,'' Serrault said in 2002. ''I am very happy with all the roles I've played, and I take responsibility for them all.''

French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid homage to Serrault's ''impressive filmography,'' calling the actor a ''monument of the world of the theater, the cinema and the television.''

French Culture Minister Christine Albanel called Serrault ''a greatly popular actor, capable of affecting all sorts of audiences'' and a man ''of true generosity.''

Born on Jan. 24, 1928, in Brunoy, south of Paris, Serrault initially set his sights on the priesthood, briefly entering a seminary. He dropped out, he later explained, because of the vow of chastity.

After studying acting in Paris, Serrault began his stage career playing in cabarets.

He made his silver screen debut in 1954 in Jean Loubignac's ''Ah! les belles bacchantes,'' which was released as ''Peek-a-boo'' in the United States. His first big break came in 1972, with a leading role in Pierre Tchernia's ''Le Viager'' (The Life Annuity.)

Speaking Monday on LCI television, Tchernia called Serrault ''perhaps the greatest French actor,'' saying he gave to his profession ''all his talent, all his strength, all his humor, all his affection.''

It was his role as flamboyant gay nightclub owner Albin Mougeotte, also known as Zaza Napoli, in the theater and film versions of the mega-hit ''La cage aux folles'' (The Birdcage) that catapulted him to fame worldwide. His performance in director Edouard Molinaro's 1978 movie won him the first of three Cesar awards -- the French version of the Oscar.

Serrault remained active, featuring in films through his late 70s. Among his final films was Pierre Javaux's 2006 ''Les enfants du pays'' (Hometown Boys), about the role of African soldiers in World War II.

De La Morandais, who performed the actor's last rites, said he told Serrault to '''go make God laugh, he really needs it because his job isn't easy.'''

''That made him crack a smile. It was very much in the spirit of Michel Serrault,'' the priest said.

Serrault is survived by his wife, Juanita, and daughter, Nathalie.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Writer Who Fitted Nancy Sinatra's 'Boots' Dies

Hazelwood, 78, Also Produced 'Something Stupid'

POSTED: 2:49 pm CDT August 6, 2007

LAS VEGAS -- Lee Hazlewood, the singer and songwriter best known for writing and producing "These Boots Were Made For Walkin"' for Nancy Sinatra, has died.

Hazlewood was 78.

The Clark County Coroner said Barton Lee Hazlewood died at his home in Henderson of kidney cancer on Saturday evening.

He is survived by his third wife, Jeane, his son Mark and daughters Debbie and Samantha.

Hazlewood was most famous for his work with the daughter of Frank Sinatra, including writing and producing such hits as "Sugartown" and "Some Velvet Morning."

He also produced "Something Stupid," a duet Nancy Sinatra recorded with her father in 1967.

He also produced Duane Eddy and Gram Parsons, and performed on a number of solo albums and with Nancy Sinatra in three "Nancy and Lee" albums.

Hazlewood was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2005 and released his final album, "Cake or Death" in 2006.

 

[Moi]

James Callahan

James T. "Jimmy" Callahan, an actor best known for playing the cranky grandfather on television's "Charles in Charge," has died. He was 76.

Callahan, who was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in February, died Friday at his Fallbrook home, said his wife, Peggy Cannon-Callahan.

"As an actor, he was just an absolute pleasure. He wanted what was best for the team, and that's very rare," Scott Baio, who starred in "Charles in Charge," told The Times on Tuesday.

On the show, Callahan played Walter Powell, a retired Navy man he referred to as the "blustery old grandfather" in a 2000 People magazine interview. When CBS canceled "Charles in Charge" after one season, Callahan joined the cast for the syndicated version, which ran from 1987 to 1990. The role was a favorite that brought him wide recognition.

"He loved hanging out with us," Baio said, "and he loved, loved, loved working."

The youngest of three children, Callahan was born Oct. 4, 1930, in Grand Rapids, Mich., to William and Elenora Callahan. His father worked in sales.

After serving in the Army in West Germany from 1951 to 1953, Callahan returned home to work at the post office.

He discovered acting while attending school in the Midwest. On the advice of a teacher, he enrolled in the University of Washington to study drama and graduated in the late 1950s.

Between 1959 and 2007, Callahan appeared in more than 120 films and television shows.

He was featured in several episodes of "Dr. Kildare" on NBC in the early 1960s and played a press secretary on "The Governor & J.J.," which aired on CBS from 1969 to 1972. More recently, Callahan had appeared on several episodes of the medical drama "Body & Soul" on the Pax TV network.

One of his favorite film roles was as the band leader in "Lady Sings the Blues" (1972), his wife said. He also portrayed a country-western singer in "Outlaw Blues" (1977) with Peter Fonda. Callahan's final film, a horror movie called "Born," has not been released.

In 1994, at 63, he married for the first time. His wife survives him.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Merv Griffin Dies From Cancer at 82

Merv Griffin, who went from big-band era crooner to fabulously successful TV talk show host before making a fortune as the creator of two of television's most popular game shows and then parlaying that into a billion-dollar hotel empire, died Sunday, Aug. 12, 2007. He was 82.

Merv Griffin never stopped working, not until the very end. When he entered a hospital a month ago, he was working on the first week of production of a new syndicated game show called "Merv Griffin's Crosswords."

"My father was a visionary," his son, Tony Griffin, said in a statement Sunday after the 82-year-old's death from prostate cancer. "He loved business and continued his many projects and holdings even while hospitalized."

From his beginning as a $100-a-week radio singer, Griffin became a sometime film actor, TV talk-show host and creator of a game-show empire that landed him on Forbes' list of the richest Americans.

When "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune," two shows he invented and produced, became the hottest on television, he sold their rights to the Columbia Pictures Television Unit for $250 million, retaining a share of the profits. He continued to receive royalties for the popular "Jeopardy!" theme song, which he wrote.

But Griffin was nowhere near ready to retire. He invested the sale money in treasury bonds, stocks and other investments, then went into real estate and other ventures because "I was never so bored in my life," he said in an interview.

"I said, `I'm not going to sit around and clip coupons for the rest of my life,'" he recalled in 1989. "That's when Barron Hilton said, `Merv, do you want to buy the Beverly Hilton?' I couldn't believe it."

Griffin bought the hotel for $100.2 million and completely refurbished it for $25 million. Then he made a move for control of Resorts International, which operated hotels and casinos from Atlantic City, N.J., to the Caribbean. That touched off a feud with real-estate tycoon Donald Trump. Griffin eventually acquired Resorts for $240 million, netting a reported paper profit of $100 million.

"I love the gamesmanship," he told Life magazine in 1988. "This may sound strange, but it parallels the game shows I've been involved in."

In recent years, Griffin also rated frequent mentions in the sports pages as a successful race horse owner. His colt Stevie Wonderboy, named for entertainer Stevie Wonder, won the $1.5 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile in 2005.

Mervyn Edward Griffin Jr. was born in San Mateo, south of San Francisco, the son of a stockbroker. His aunt Claudia Robinson taught him to play piano at 4, and soon he was staging shows on the back porch of the family home.

"Every Saturday I had a show, recruiting all the kids in the block as either stagehands, actors and audience, or sometimes all three," he wrote in his 1980 autobiography. "I was the producer, always the producer."

After studying at San Mateo Junior College and the University of San Francisco, Griffin quit school to apply for a job as pianist at radio station KFRC in San Francisco. The station needed a vocalist instead. He auditioned and was hired.

Griffin, billed as "the young romantic voice of radio," attracted the interest of RKO studio boss William Dozier, who was visiting San Francisco with his wife, Joan Fontaine.

"As soon as I walked in their hotel room, I could see their faces fall," the singer recalled. He weighed 235 pounds. Shortly afterward, singer Joan Edwards told him: "Your voice is terrific, but the blubber has got to go."

Griffin slimmed down, and he would spend the rest of his life adding and taking off weight.

In 1948, Freddy Martin hired Griffin to join his band at Los Angeles' Coconut Grove at $150 a week. With Griffin singing, the band had a smash hit with "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts," a 1949 novelty song sung in a cockney accent.

The band was playing in Las Vegas when Doris Day and her producer-husband, Marty Melcher, were in the audience. They recommended him to Warner Bros. After a bit part in "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," he had a bigger role with Kathryn Grayson in "So This Is Love." A few more trivial roles followed before he asked to be released from his contract.

In 1954, Griffin went to New York where he appeared in a summer replacement musical show on CBS-TV, a revival of "Finian's Rainbow," and a music show on CBS radio. He followed with a few game-show hosting jobs on TV, notably "Play Your Hunch," which premiered in 1958 and ran through the early 1960s. His glibness led to stints as a substitute for Jack Paar on "Tonight."

When Paar retired in 1962, Griffin was considered a prime candidate to replace him. Johnny Carson was chosen instead. NBC gave Griffin a daytime version of "Tonight," but the show was canceled for being "too sophisticated" for the housewife audience.

In 1965, Westinghouse Broadcasting introduced "The Merv Griffin Show" in syndicated TV, and Griffin had at last found the forum for his talents. He never underestimated the intelligence of his audience, offering figures such as Bertrand Russell, Pablo Casals, and Will and Ariel Durant, as well as movie stars and entertainers.

Meanwhile, Griffin sought new enterprises for his production company. A lifelong crossword puzzle fan, he devised a "Word for Word" game show in 1963. It faded after one season. His wife, Julann, suggested another show.

"Julann's idea was a twist on the usual question-answer format of the quiz shows of the Fifties," he wrote in his autobiography, "Merv." "Her idea was to give the contestants the answer, and they had to come up with the appropriate question."

"Jeopardy," which began in 1964, became a huge moneymaker for Griffin, as did the more conventional "Wheel of Fortune," which started in 1975.

Griffin and Julann Elizabeth Wright were married in 1958, and a son, Anthony, was born the following year. The couple divorced in 1973 because of "irreconcilable differences."

"It was a pivotal time in my career, one of uncertainty and constant doubt," he wrote in the autobiography. "So much attention was being focused on me that my marriage felt the strain."

He never remarried. But for several years, he was frequently seen in the company of Eva Gabor, who died in 1995.

"I'm very upset at the news. He was a very close friend of ours, a good friend of mine and a good friend of Eva's," said Gabor's sister Zsa Zsa Gabor. "He was just a wonderful, wonderful man."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Philanthropist Brooke Astor Dies At 105

NEW YORK -- A woman considered a high society fixture who gave away nearly $200 million to support New York City's great cultural institutions and a host of humbler projects died on Monday.

A family lawyer for Brooke Astor said the civic leader died of pneumonia at her suburban estate at the age of 105.

Astor was mostly interested in putting the fortune that husband Vincent Astor left to use where it would do the most to alleviate human misery.

She gave millions to places like the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Carnegie Hall. She also funded projects like Harlem's Apollo Theater, a church pipe organ and gave furniture for homeless families moving into apartments.

 

[sweet soft kiss]

Phil Rizzuto, Yankees' Hall of Fame shortstop and longtime broadcaster, dies at 89

Holy Cow. RIP

NEW YORK (AP) -- His speed and spunk made him a Hall of Famer.

"Holy cow!" made Phil Rizzuto famous.

Popular as a player and beloved as a broadcaster, the New York Yankees shortstop during their dynasty years of the 1940s and 1950s died Monday night. "The Scooter" was 89.

Rizzuto had pneumonia and died in his sleep at a nursing home in West Orange, N.J., daughter Patricia Rizzuto said Tuesday. He had been in declining health for several years.

"I guess heaven must have needed a shortstop," Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said in a statement. "He epitomized the Yankee spirit -- gritty and hard charging -- and he wore the pinstripes proudly."

Rizzuto was the oldest living Hall of Famer and his Cooperstown plaque noted how he "overcame diminutive size." At 5-foot-6, he played over his head, winning seven World Series titles and an AL MVP award and becoming a five-time All-Star.

"When I first came up to the Yankees, he was like a big -- actually, small -- brother to me," said Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, who frequently visited Rizzuto in his later years.

Rizzuto's No. 10 was retired by baseball's most storied team, and the club will wear his number on its left sleeves for the rest of the season.

The flags at Yankee Stadium were lowered to half-staff before Tuesday night's game against Baltimore and flowers were placed by Rizzuto's plaque at Monument Park.

Public address announcer Bob Sheppard detailed some of Rizzuto's accomplishments before the team observed a pregame moment of silence. His number was painted on the grass in front of each dugout and marquees outside the stadium said "Phil Rizzuto 1917-2007"

"Scooter, we will miss you," Sheppard said as a video tribute aired on the scoreboard.

New York also showed highlights from Rizzuto's playing career and part of his Hall of Fame induction speech before the bottom half of the first inning.

Yet it was after he moved into the broadcast booth that Rizzuto reached a new level celebrity with another generation of Yankees fans.

Rizzuto delighted TV and radio listeners for four decades, his voice dripping with his native Brooklyn. He loved his favorite catch-phrase -- exclaiming "Holy cow!" when Roger Maris hit his 61st home run -- and often shouted "What a huckleberry!"

In an age of broadcasters who spout statistics, Rizzuto was a storyteller. He liked to talk about things such as his fear of lightning, the style of an umpire's shoes or even the prospect of outfielder Dave Winfield as a candidate for president.

"He didn't try to act like an announcer," Hall of Fame teammate Whitey Ford said. "He just said what he thought. It added fun to the game."

Rizzuto liked to acknowledge birthdays and anniversaries, read notes from fans, talk about his favorite place to get a cannoli and send messages to old cronies. Once he noticed old teammate Bobby Brown -- then the American League president -- sitting in a box seat and hollered down, trying to get his attention.

"He would keep getting in trouble with WPIX for announcing birthdays and anniversaries," Patricia Rizzuto recalled.

And if Rizzuto missed a play, he would scribble "ww" in his scorecard box score. That, he said, meant "wasn't watching."

His fans and colleagues never minded. Because with a simple shout of "Hey, White!" to longtime broadcasting partner Bill White, it was time for another tale.

Rizzuto's popularity was such that at a recent auction a Rizzuto cap embedded with a wad of chewing gum sold for more than $8,000. In the New York area, Rizzuto's antics became a staple for TV ads. Nonbaseball fans got to know him, too, when his voice appeared on Meat Loaf's rock hit "Paradise by the Dashboard Light."

"Phil was a unique figure who exemplified the joy of our game to millions of fans," commissioner Bud Selig said.

He liked to share that joy. St. Joseph's School for the Blind in Jersey City, was a favorite cause of Rizzuto's, and his daughter asked that any donations be directed there.

Edward J. Lucas, a former student at the school, met Rizzuto soon after losing his sight at age 12 when a line drive struck him between the eyes. The accident happened on Oct. 3, 1951, when Lucas went outside to play ball after watching Bobby Thomson hit the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" to win the National League pennant for the New York Giants.

"He has been a friend every since," said Lucas, now 68, a baseball radio reporter. "He's been here and helped us out tremendously."

Rizzuto also introduced Lucas to the woman he would eventually marry. The ceremony was last year at home plate at Yankee Stadium.

"He may be short in stature," Lucas said. "but his heart was bigger than all of Yankee Stadium."

Rizzuto was a flashy player who could always be counted on for a perfect bunt, a nice slide or a diving catch in a lineup better known for its cornerstone sluggers. He played 13 seasons alongside the likes of Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle in a career interrupted by Navy service in World War II.

Often overshadowed by Hall of Fame teammates, it made sense that Rizzuto was the first "mystery guest" on the old game show "What's My Line?" in 1950.

A leadoff man with quick feet that earned him his nickname, Rizzuto was a staple on the Yankees teams that won 11 pennants and nine World Series between 1941 and 1956.

"He was a Yankee all the way," Indians Hall of Famer Bob Feller said. "He knew the fundamentals of the game and he got 100 percent out of his ability. He played it hard and he played it fair," he said.

Rizzuto came to the Yankees in 1941 and batted .307 as a rookie. After the war, he returned in 1946 and became the American League MVP in 1950. He batted .324 that season and also went 58 games without an error.

He led all AL shortstops in double plays three times and had a career batting average of .273. He played errorless ball in 21 consecutive World Series games and DiMaggio said the shortstop "held the team together."

Long after his playing career, Rizzuto could often be found talking ball in the Yankees clubhouse. He especially enjoyed his visits with shortstop Derek Jeter.

"Mr. Rizzuto serves as the ultimate reminder that physical stature has little bearing on the size of a person's heart," Jeter said. "Nothing was ever given to Phil, and he used every ounce of his ability to become one of the greatest Yankees to ever wear this uniform."

On Phil Rizzuto Day at Yankee Stadium in 1985, the team gave him a fitting present: a cow wearing a halo.

The cow knocked Rizzuto over and, of course, he shouted, "Holy cow!"

"That thing really hurt," he said. "That big thing stepped right on my shoe and pushed me backwards, like a karate move."

Rizzuto was passed over for the Hall of Fame 15 times by the writers and 11 times by the Veterans Committee. Finally, a persuasive speech by Ted Williams pushed Rizzuto into Cooperstown in 1994.

"If we'd had Rizzuto in Boston, we'd have won all those pennants instead of New York," Williams often said.

"I never thought I deserved to be in the Hall of Fame," Rizzuto once said. "The Hall of Fame is for the big guys, pitchers with 100 mph fastballs and hitters who sock homers and drive in a lot of runs. That's the way it always has been and the way it should be."

The flag at Cooperstown was lowered to half-staff and a laurel was placed around his plaque, as is custom when Hall of Famers die. With Rizzuto's death, executive Lee MacPhail, 89, became the oldest living Hall member.

Rizzuto is survived by his wife, Cora, whom he married in 1943; daughters Cindy Rizzuto, Patricia Rizzuto and Penny Rizzuto Yetto; son Phil Rizzuto Jr.; and two granddaughters.

A private, family funeral is planned. The family is working with the Yankees on a memorial to be held at Yankee Stadium, Patricia Rizzuto said.

AP Sports Writers Hal Bock and Jay Cohen, Associated Press Writer Pat Milton, AP Sports Writer Tom Withers in Cleveland, and Associated Press Writer Jeffrey Gold in Hillside, N.J., contributed to this report.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Hotelier Leona Helmsley Dies at 87

Aug 20, 10:22 AM (ET)

NEW YORK (AP) - Leona Helmsley, the hotelier who went to prison as a tax cheat and was reviled as the "queen of mean," died Monday at age 87.

Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn., said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.

Helmsley and her husband, Harry, ran a $5 billion real estate empire that included managing the Empire State Building. She was tried in 1989 on tax evasion charges in a sensational trial that included testimony from disgruntled employees who said she terrorized both menial and executive help at her homes and hotels.

Her image was sealed when a former housekeeper testified that she heard Helmsley say: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

She denied having said it, but the words followed her the rest of her life.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Former Hall Star Griffin Killed In Fiery Crash

August 22, 2007 -- HOUSTON - Former Seton Hall basketball star Eddie Griffin died last week when his SUV collided with a freight train in a fiery crash, the Harris County medical examiner's office said yesterday.

Investigators used dental records to identify Griffin, 25, who began his tumultuous pro career with the Rockets in 2001. He was waived by the Timberwolves in March.

"The cause of death and manner of death, which also includes toxicology results, is pending," said Beverly Begay, chief investigator for the Harris County Medical Examiner's office.

Griffin, a five-year veteran who was the No. 7 pick in the 2001 NBA draft, had battled alcohol problems since coming out of Seton Hall. He was suspended by the league for five games in January for violating its anti-drug program.

"Basketball was never an issue with him. He needed more life lessons, and unfortunately he was never able to reach his potential," former Timberwolves coach Dwane Casey said.

Casey said he hadn't talked to Griffin in five or six months but he knew that Griffin was spending the summer trying to get back in shape to play in Europe next season.

Houston police said in a report that the driver of the SUV ignored a railroad warning and went through a barrier before striking the moving train about 1:30 a.m. Friday. The driver's body was badly burned and there was no identification.

"I was able this afternoon to get some dental records from the one dentist he had gone to see in Houston, and they were able to use that apparently to positively identify him," said Derek S. Hollingsworth, an attorney who has represented Griffin in criminal cases.

Hollingsworth said he spoke with Griffin's mother, who was devastated by the news.

In his only season at Seton Hall, Griffin averaged 17.8 points and 10.8 rebounds per game.

Griffin had a series of suspensions, court dates and missed practices during his first two years in the NBA with Houston and the Nets. He spent time in the Betty Ford Center for alcohol treatment in 2003-04.

"He had a problem with alcohol, and I think that was a medication for him, and I think that led to a lot of issues," Hollingsworth said.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Former Basketball Coach Van Breda Kolff Dies in Spokane

Aug 23, 1:29 PM (ET)

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - Butch van Breda Kolff, who coached the Los Angeles Lakers to two NBA finals appearances and won 482 games as a college coach, has died after a long illness.

Van Breda Kolff, 84, died Wednesday afternoon at a nursing home in Spokane, his daughter, Kristina van Breda Kolff, said. His son, Jan, also played professionally and coached at Cornell, Vanderbilt, Pepperdine and St. Bonaventure.

Butch van Breda Kolff posted a 482-272 coaching record in 28 college seasons, and was 287-316 in 10 seasons as an NBA and ABA coach. He took six teams to the NCAA tournament at a time when tournament berths were much more scarce, and won seven conference titles.

Willem Hendrik van Breda Kolff was born Oct. 28, 1922, in Montclair, N.J. He attended Princeton University, but his college career was interrupted by duty with the Marines in World War II.

He returned from the war to become captain of Princeton's basketball team in the 1946-47 season. He played professionally for the New York Knicks from 1946-1950.

Van Breda Kolff began his coaching career at Lafayette College from 1951-55, and also coached there from 1984-88. He coached Hofstra from 1955-62, and also from 1988-94. He was coach at Princeton from 1962-67, where one of his players was Bill Bradley. He also coached the University of New Orleans from 1977-79.

In the professional ranks, he coached the Los Angeles Lakers from 1967-69, twice taking them to the finals. He also coached the Detroit Pistons, Phoenix Suns, the Memphis Tams of the ABA, the New Orleans Jazz and the New Orleans Pride of Women's Basketball League.

As coach of the Lakers, he posted records of 52-30 and 55-27 with a team that included Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. They lost to the Boston Celtics both times in the finals. He was fired after Chamberlain took himself out of the seventh game of the 1969 finals with an injury. Replacement Mel Counts played so well that van Breda Kolff declined to put Chamberlain back in, but the Lakers ended up losing the title game.

Van Breda Kolff was married to Florence. The couple had two other daughters, Karen and Kaatje.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Former Olympic Park Guard Jewell Dies

Jewell Had Been Linked To 1996 Atlanta Bombing
POSTED: 2:26 pm CDT August 29, 2007
UPDATED: 2:33 pm CDT August 29, 2007

ATLANTA -- Former security guard Richard Jewell, who was erroneously linked to the 1996 Olympic bombing, has died.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the 44-year-old Jewell was found dead in his west Georgia home.

Meriwether County Coroner Johnny Worley said Jewell died at 9 a.m. Wednesday of natural causes.

Worley said Jewell had been at home sick since the end of February with kidney problems.