Recent Obituaries, Classic Film Only.

[CBHagman]

Hi, gang. I decided to start a general obituary thread for those of us who take an interest in the stories of the people involved in making classic films, whether writers, producers, composers, actors, or directors. It's more efficient than doing a new thread every time someone from the Hollywood of old leaves us.

Today I begin with Marc Lawrence, age 95, an actor who appeared in many classic movies, including Key Largo and The Ox-Bow Incident.

What I didn't realize was that he was called before HUAC and did name names, having himself joined the Communist Party. Apparently he felt guilty about doing so and also wound up temporarily leaving the U.S. due to a desire to avoid the blacklist anyway.

Here are some links with his story:

http://forums.turnerclassicmovies.com/jive/tcm/thread.jspa?threadID=74122&tstart=-1

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0492908/

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/arts/03lawrence.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1133712315-+Wa/YbrgWGUpZceFTBfPlQ

Here's a little bit on Lawrence, from the Associated Press obit placed in the New York Times:

"Born in New York City in 1910, Mr. Lawrence acted in plays through high school before attending City College of New York. After years of stage performances in Eva Le Gallienne's company, he signed a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1932.

"Over the next 60 years, Mr. Lawrence played bad guys in dozens of films. He 'was perhaps the only character actor of the 1930's and 1940's still being cast in similar gangsterish roles in the 1980's and 1990's,' the movie historian Leonard Maltin wrote.

"Mr. Lawrence also occasionally stepped outside the rogue genre, taking on roles like a mountaineer in 'The Shepherd of the Hills' in 1941 and an old hotel owner in 'From Dusk Till Dawn' in 1996.

"In the 1950's, Mr. Lawrence was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he admitted he had once been a member of the Communist Party. He also reluctantly implicated several co-workers as Communist sympathizers. His movie career in the United States came to a halt.

"Mr. Lawrence then departed for Europe, where he took on diverse roles in dozens of Italian movies in the 60's and also directed crime films and spaghetti westerns."

[WI_DEM]

1. Very good

It's good to have a new feature.

[Carla in Ca]

2. I like the idea, too

I look forward reading it.:)

[CBHagman]

3. Jean Parker, Hepburn's co-star in Little Women, dies.

Jean Parker, who worked with everyone from Katharine Hepburn to Laurel and Hardy, has died. Among the actress's popular films were George Cukor's classic version of Little Women, in which Miss Parker played the gentle Beth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/10/AR2005121000367.html

[CBHagman]

4. Mary Bell, writer, widow of Sir John Mills.

Mary Bell, author of Whistle Down the Wind, which was later turned into a movie featuring her younger daughter, actress Hayley Mills, has died. She suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

She did not long survive her husband of many years, the actor John Mills, who died in April. Survivors include the aforementioned Hayley Mills and another daughter, actress Juliet Mills, and a son, Jonathan Mills.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601835.html

[CBHagman]

5. Argentina Brunetti of It's a Wonderful Life.

The writer and character actress Argentina Brunetti, aged 98, has died. Classic film fans will remember her as Mrs. Martini in the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life. Details of her career can be found at the links below.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400537.html

http://www.argentinabrunetti.com

Frankly, of the adult cast members in It's a Wonderful Life, Charles Lane was the only one I knew of who was still alive, and Mr. Lane is about 100 years old! So many of the well-known cast members are long gone now -- Gloria Grahame, James Stewart, Donna Reed, et al.

Brunetti's obituary was rather inspirational, as it appears that her acting career began over 90 years ago and continued into recent years. The idea that someone who dubbed Jeanette MacDonald's dialogue into Italian was still around to host a blog boggles my mind, to say the least.

Rest in peace, Ms. Brunetti.

[Robeson]

22. That is an amazing story......

...I can only hope to be that productive in life, for that long. Wow, there should be a movie done of her.

[Longhorn]

6. Character Actor Vincent Schiavelli Dies

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared-gen/ap/Movies/Obit_Schiavelli.html

ROME — Vincent Schiavelli, the droopy-eyed character actor who appeared in scores of movies, including "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Ghost," died Monday at his home in Sicily. He was 57.

He died of lung cancer, said Salvatore Glorioso, mayor of Polizzi Generosa, the Sicilian village where Schiavelli resided.

Schiavelli, whose gloomy look made him perfect to play creepy or eccentric characters, made appearances in some 150 film and television productions, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Among the movies: "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Amadeus," "Batman Returns," and "The People vs. Larry Flynt." He was selected in 1997 by Vanity Fair as one of America's best character actors.

<more>

Borderline classic movie actor, maybe?

[CBHagman]

7. He was too young.

Oh, yes, I remember him. He had a small part in Cold Feet, a 1980s heist movie starring Sally Kirkland, Keith Carradine, and Tom Waits (Yes, Tom Waits).

Rest in peace, Vincent Schiavelli.

[Longhorn]

8. Actress Shelley Winters, 85; Blond Bombshell to Oscar Winner

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011401166.html


By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 15, 2006; Page C09

Shelley Winters, 85, a brassy actress and raconteur who appeared in more than 120 films and twice won the Academy Award for supporting performances, died Jan. 14 at a rehabilitation center in Beverly Hills, Calif. She had been hospitalized in October after suffering a heart attack.

Ms. Winters won her Oscars for "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1959), as the sloppy and nervous Mrs. Van Daan, and for "A Patch of Blue" (1965), in which she was one of the true screen vultures, mercilessly abusing her blind daughter (played by Elizabeth Hartman).

Her last Oscar nomination was for "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), the much-lampooned all-star drama about an overturned luxury liner. Despite her girth, she played a former swimming champion who tries to take others to safety.

Acknowledging the film's rich potential for parody, she appeared on "The Flip Wilson Show" in a skit set in a fast-flooding laundromat. She led the cast in a daring escape through a washing-machine hatch.

[Matilda]

9. I didn't realise she was so liberal, especially for her time.

According to her obits, she was the only person to sign Norman Mailer's petition calling for the
reinstatement of the Hollywood 10, and in 1960 she was one of only two white women, the other
being Eleanor Roosevelt, to put her name to a New York Times ad defending Martin Luther King and
his Struggle for Freedom movement.

Very courageous of her.

I have to say, I hated her in A Patch of Blue - and I mean that as the highest compliment.

[lavenderdiva]

10. Tony Franciosa has died at age 77

link: http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2006-01-21T040149Z_01_N20231532_RTRIDST_0_ENTERTAINMENT-FRANCIOSA-COL.XML

Franciosa was married to Shelly Winters briefly from 1957 to 1960. She died last week.

[CBHagman]

11. Famed dancer Fayard Nicholas, age 91, has died.

The surviving brother from the legendary Nicholas Brothers team has left us. Fayard Nicholas was 91 years old.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502213.html

From the article:

"'The things they did were beyond our scope and anyone's scope since,' the late dancer Gregory Hines told The Washington Post in 1991, when the brothers received Kennedy Center Honors."



There is SUCH a dance party going on in heaven today.
O8)

[lavenderdiva]

12. man, I am so sorry to hear this...

I loved watching them dance! They defied gravity and belief! Their moves were amazing. What a great loss to the dance world.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. Yes, back when I was in graduate school, one of my housemates went

to a 7PM showing of Stormy Weather on campus. She came back and absolutely insisted that we go see the 11PM showing, just to catch the Nicholas Brothers' dancing.

We were all duly amazed.

[CBHagman]

14. Peter Ladefoged, linguist, consultant on My Fair Lady.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/29/AR2006012900989.html

"Peter Ladefoged, 80, a pioneering linguist who consulted on the 1964 film 'My Fair Lady,' in which actor Rex Harrison plays a phonetician, died Jan. 24 at a hospital in London after a stroke."

(SNIP)

"The professor's voice is preserved on the soundtrack. When Henry Higgins stomps down the stairs, he knocks a record player that starts playing a recording of Dr. Ladefoged making vowel sounds."

Let's hear it for the academicians!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. Famous linguist in the UK

My phonology professor in graduate school was a Brit and a student of his.

[Matilda]

16. Moira Shearer, dancer/actress

Moira Shearer of "The Red Shoes" fame, has died in England, aged 80.

Her husband, Sir Ludovic Kennedy, didn't specify what caused her death.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/moira-shearer-of-the-red-shoes-fame-dies/2006/02/02/1138836341624.html

She was principally a ballet dancer of course, but who could ever forget her in The Red Shoes? She
was so fragile-looking, and a delightful dancer.

[CBHagman]

17. Thanks for posting that, Matilda.

I meant to post her obituary the other day but had a busier than average day.

Here's The New York Times link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/arts/02shearer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Matilda]

18. Phil Brown: "Uncle Owen Lars" (Luke Skywalker's uncle).

Died on February 9th, in his 90th year.

A link to his website:

http://www.philbrown.com/index.htm


I'll be honest - I'm not a great Star Wars fan and I don't remember him particularly, but I'm sure
many others do.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

19. Richard Bright, 68, an Actor in the 'Godfather' Movie Series, Dies

Richard Bright, a veteran character actor who appeared in all three "Godfather" films and "The Sopranos," died on Saturday in New York. He was 68 and lived in Manhattan.

He was hit by a bus as it rounded the corner of Columbus Avenue and 86th Street at about 6:30 p.m., and was pronounced dead at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center shortly thereafter, the police said.

A versatile actor with a characteristic rasp in his voice, Mr. Bright had a busy career in movies and theater that stretched back to the late 1950's, when he made his film debut in a small part in Robert Wise's "Odds Against Tomorrow." During the 1970's, he appeared in "The Panic in Needle Park" with Al Pacino, Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid," "Marathon Man" with Dustin Hoffman, "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" and "The Getaway."

In the "Godfather" pictures he played Al Neri, one of Michael Corleone's toughs, whose murders came at crucial plot points: in "The Godfather: Part II," he took a fateful ride in a fishing boat with Michael's untrustworthy brother Fredo, played by John Cazale.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/arts/television/20bri...

[lavenderdiva]

20. i read this...

what part did he play in the Sopranos? Do you happen to know?

[Starbucks Anarchist]

21. He played Frank Crisci in a 2002 episode called "The Weight."

That's according to IMDB.

[Cassandra]

256. That's weird.

There is no bus that would normally turn that corner, going in any direction.

[CBHagman]

23. Beloved comic actor Don Knotts, 81.

I hate having to write this, but a trip over to the Lounge revealed that we've lost Don Knotts, who, in addition to his famous work on The Andy Griffith Show, appeared in many films.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/13962329.htm




Filmography, as per The New York Times:

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=38844&mod=films

[Matilda]

25. He was such a funny man,

with that wonderful rubbery face.

Andy Griffith was funny, but it was the balance between him and Don Knotts that made The Andy
Griffith Show as good as it was.

[CBHagman]

24. Character actor Darren McGavin, age 83.

Darren McGavin's website is reporting his death. I have not yet found any newspaper obituaries.

http://www.darrenmcgavin.net/

His credits at IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0569000/

There were some surprises there. Naturally I remember him best as Kolchak on The Night Stalker series, and of course we all loved him as the Old Man in A Christmas Story.

[Matilda]

26. Wow! He did heaps of work.

I probably saw a lot of his early television work because I saw a lot of those shows, but I don't
actually remember them now. I think of him as Mike Hammer. I never watched it much, but he was
so right for that role; it just wasn't particularly my cup of tea.

I noticed that he played a character called Arthur Dales in some episodes of The X-Files, but
although that character was in one of my favourite eps ever, called The Unnatural (I taped it to
keep), the role was played by another actor in that episode.

[Serial Mom]

27. Dennis Weaver, age 81, most famous for McCloud ...

Just reported - died last Friday February 24

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/13974571.htm


some more news and good stories

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2134963#2135032

[CBHagman]

28. Jack Wild, 53, actor, Academy Award nominee

It saddens me to report that Jack Wild, age 53, has lost his battle with cancer. Baby boomers and others will remember him as the young actor who played the Artful Dodger in the Academy Award-winning musical Oliver! Wild was even once featured in a Bing Crosby Christmas special, which I remember vividly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4765996.stm

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0928349/

Bio:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0928349/bio

[CBHagman]

29. Award-winning actress Maureen Stapleton, age 80

The lady won the Tony, the Emmy, and the Oscar, and it appears she had a turbulent life, too.

God rest her soul.


Here's the New York Times obit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/movies/14stapleton.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Matilda]

30. I remember her in Reds, of course,

and also in Plaza Suite - for me, hers is one of the most memorable performances in a very fine film.

I didn't know anything about her until I read her obits, but she certainly had her demons. There is
a funny side to one of her phobias, which was that she would be shot on stage, so when performing
in a stage play she used to walk all over the stage so she wouldn't be an easy target, but it drove
her fellow actors nuts.

[CBHagman]

31. Alida Valli, 84, featured in The Third Man.

Today's Washington Post reports the death of actress Alida Valli (known simply as Valli in some of her credits).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042301137.html

The woman will always embody for me -- SPOILER ALERT -- the ultimate brush-off artist, given how she reacts (or, rather, doesn't) to Joseph Cotten in The Third Man.

[longship]

41. Oh dear! Here she is!

Pic is about the time of "The Third Man"

[CBHagman]

32. Jay Presson Allen, famous for screen adaptations, dies.

Okay, guys, I had NO idea Jay Presson Allen was a woman. :blush:

Among her many accomplishments were the screenplays for both Marnie and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

I'm sorry to report Ms. Allen's left us, but I hope she is having a grand time talking to the Epstein twins and other past notables in screenwriting.

Here's the Guardian's profile:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/0,,1768028,00.html

"Born Jacqueline Presson in a small town in Texas, the daughter of a department store manager, she had 'no education to speak of' although she attended Miss Hockaday's School for Young Ladies. She moved to New York in the early 1940s, where she married 'the first grown man who asked me'. After the marriage ended in divorce, she started to make a living by writing scripts for television as well as having a novel, Spring Riot, published in 1948. In 1955, she changed her name to Jay Presson Allen when she married the theatre and film producer Lewis M Allen.

"Her unproduced first play, The First Wife, was made into the film Wives and Lovers (1963), starring Janet Leigh and Van Johnson. After Jean Brodie, Allen had another success on Broadway with Forty Carats (1968), her bright version of the French boulevard comedy by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, with Julie Harris as the 42-year-old who has an affair with a much younger man.

"In the Brodie line, there were further strong roles for idiosyncratic women in films: Maggie Smith in Travels with My Aunt, based on Graham Greene's comic novel, and Lisa Minnelli (best actress Oscar) as Sally Bowles in Cabaret (both 1972). For the former, Allen and director Bob Fosse wisely jettisoned most of the stage musical, remaining closer to Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye To Berlin stories, and making the male lead (Michael York) blatantly homosexual.

"Uncharacteristically, Allen co-wrote (with director Sidney Lumet) the screenplay for Prince of the City (1981), an almost all-male picture, based on The True Story of a Cop Who Knew Too Much, a non-fiction book by Robert Daley. According to Allen, 'Male characters are easier to write. They're simpler. I think women are generally more psychologically complicated. You have to put a little more effort into writing a woman.'

"Male characters (played by Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve) dominated Lumet's Deathtrap (1982), which Allen adapted from the Ira Levin play, and her last work was Tru (1989), a one-man show with Robert Morse's Tony-award winning performance as Truman Capote."

It always leads back to Truman Capote somehow, doesn't it?

Credits for Ms. Allen:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0696319/

[CBHagman]

33. Director Vincent Sherman, age 99, dies.

How come I didn't know about this guy? Jeez, what a story!

http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=225762>1=7701

"Vincent Sherman, who directed — and romanced — Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth and Joan Crawford during his heyday as a leading Hollywood filmmaker in the 1940s and '50s, has died. He would have been 100 on July 16."

(SNIP)

"Sherman, whose film career was seriously damaged by Hollywood's communist 'red scare,' later became a successful director of such television series as 'The Waltons,' 'Doctors Hospital,' 'Baretta,'
'Trapper John, M.D.' and '77 Sunset Strip.'

"He had begun as an actor, appearing on Broadway and in a handful of movies, among them 1933's 'Counselor at Law,' in which he had a small but memorable role as a young anarchist opposite John Barrymore. He also wrote several screenplays, including 'Crime School,' which starred Bogart and the Dead End Kids.

"Because of his ability to evoke powerful performances from strong-willed female stars — he also directed Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan and Patricia Neal — Sherman became known as a woman's director, a title he hated. He was quick to point out that he also directed Errol Flynn in 'The Adventures of Don Juan,' Paul Newman in 'The Young Philadelphians,' Bogart in 'All Through the Night,' Richard Burton in 'The Ice Palace' and Ronald Reagan in 'The Hasty Heart.'"

On edit: Read the second page of the MSN article. It sounds as though he was the kind of principled guy who wouldn't name names during the blacklist, and he paid for that.

[CBHagman]

34. Actress June Allyson, 88, dies.

By now you've no doubt heard about the death of screen actress June Allyson. Fewer and fewer of those who belong to the classic age of films in the '30s and '40s are still with us!

The New York Times obituary will only be up for so long, but I have also provided her IMDB profile.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/movies/11allyson.html?hp&ex=1152676800&en=c1c96ae17e46cb85&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Great quote:

"Ms. Allyson was always modest about her star power. 'Women identify with me,' she said in a 1986 intervew, 'and while men desire Cyd Charisse, they’d take me home to meet Mom.'"

And I didn't know she was born in the Bronx!

"June Allyson was born Ella Geisman on Oct. 7, 1917, in the Bronx. Her alcoholic father skipped out when she was 6 months old. When she was 8, she was crushed by a falling tree limb while riding a bicycle. After four years in a back brace, she taught herself to dance by watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies."

Screen credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000742/

[lavenderdiva]

35. I LOVED June Allyson in 'Little Women'...

she was the quintessential 'Jo March'. I loved her performance more than Katherine Hepburn's. There are so many movies in her imdb page that are so wonderful, and too numerous to mention. She will be missed...

[Carla in Ca]

36. America's sweetheart

There can only be one, and she was it.

[CBHagman]

37. Red Buttons, Oscar winner for Sayonara, dies at age 87.

Red Buttons (born Aaron Chwatt) has died. He is perhaps best known as a comedian but also played dramatic roles in a number of movies and TV shows.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/13/obit.buttons.ap/index.html

"With his eager manner and rapid-fire wit, Buttons excelled in every phase of show business, from the Borscht Belt of the 1930s to celebrity roasts in the 1990s, in which he was forever the guy who 'never got a dinner.'

"His greatest achievement came with his 'Sayonara' role as Sgt. Joe Kelly, the soldier in the post-World War II occupation forces in Japan whose romance with a Japanese woman (Myoshi Umeki, who also won an Academy Award) ends in tragedy.

"Josh Logan, who directed the James Michener story that starred Marlon Brando, was at first hesitant to cast a well-known comedian in such a somber role.

"'The tests were so extensive that they could just put scenery around them and release the footage as a feature film,' Buttons remarked."

[CBHagman]

38. We've lost veteran character actor Jack Warden.

What a filmography! What a guy!

The obituary from the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-072106warden,1,5410883.story?track=crosspromo&coll=la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=1&cset=true

IMDB filmography:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0912001/

In the course of one career, he played opposite Henry Fonda, Montgomery Clift, Warren Beatty, and Sandra Bullock. How's that for variety?

[Longhorn]

39. Oh, my, I just saw him last night in The Verdict

on FMC. I was thinking as I watched him how many films he's been in and wondering if he's still around! I especially liked him in Heaven Can Wait.

[CBHagman]

40. I had forgotten he was in 12 Angry Men.

And on the way to the movies today, a friend and I were discussing whether Warden had been in The Verdict or not. I guess your post settles that!

He was quite a presence in films, and of course in Heaven Can Wait he won the audience's empathy beautifully. I remember my brother shouting at the screen when -- SPOILER ALERT -- Julie Christie and Warren Beatty walk off together at the end of the movie, forgetting that Warden's character is alone and heartbroken.

[CBHagman]

42. Talk show host Mike Douglas, 81, dies.

In the spirit of expanding our coverage to include the golden ages of TV and radio, I will include Mr. Douglas, who of course showcased a great deal of classic movie talent, including the young Barbara Streisand.

I must confess I didn't know Douglas had some musical hits with Kay Kyser! There are some good stories in the CNN coverage:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/08/11/obit.douglas.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories&ref=google

"Douglas was genial most of the time -- he was nicknamed 'the Cary Grant of the coffee break,' according to Allmusic.com -- but confided in his memoir that his composure was sorely tested one week in 1972 when former Beatle John Lennon and wife, Yoko Ono, were his unlikely guest hosts. One of the guest celebrities they selected was well-known anti-war activist Jerry Rubin.

"'He just got on my nerves. It sounded like this guy hated the president, the Congress, everyone in business, the military, all police and just about everything America stands for,' Douglas said.

"He recalled becoming confrontational with Rubin. But Lennon 'picked up the mantle of Kind and Gentle Host, and he did it quite well, reinterpreting Jerry's comments to take some of the sting out and adding a little humor to keep things cool,' Douglas said.

"Douglas also had a number of hit singles, first with Kay Kyser's big band -- he was a featured performer on the radio and eventual television program, 'Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge' -- and later on his own. "The Men in My Little Girl's Life" hit the top 10 in 1966."

[Longhorn]

43. I remember watching his show.

Thanks for the article excerpts. It sounds like he had an open mind.

[CBHagman]

44. Actor Bruno Kirby, age 57, has died.

It grieves me to report that character actor Bruno Kirby, famous for many supporting roles in popular recent movies, has died.

His work included parts in The Godfather II, City Slickers, Cinderella Liberty, and When Harry Met Sally.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/15/kirby.obit.ap/index.html?section=cnn_showbiz&ref=google

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0456124/

[lavenderdiva]

45. I just saw this and it made me sad...

I always enjoyed Mr. Kirby's performances, especially in 'When Harry Met Sally', as Billy Crystal's best friend. He was a talented character actor, and always came across as genuine. He will be missed...

[CBHagman]

46. I know. He had that rumpled, lived-in manner.

He wore like an old shoe in TV talk show appearances. I remember him recounting his experiences during an earthquake in California, and he was hilariously self-deprecating.

[CBHagman]

47. Joseph Stefano, screenwriter for Psycho, The Outer Limits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/29/AR2006082901421.html

From the above link:

Joseph Stefano, 84, a scriptwriter who influenced Alfred Hitchcock's revolutionary plot twist in "Psycho" and wrote for the science fiction television series "The Outer Limits," died Aug. 25 at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., after a heart attack.

[CBHagman]

48. Oh, no, we've lost actor Glenn Ford, age 90.

I've been dreading this announcement, because he's one of the last survivors of the Hollywood we celebrate on this board. But the time has come:

http://articles.news.aol.com/movies/_a/blackboard-jungle-actor-glenn-ford-dies/20060830224909990008?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Just this morning The Blackboard Jungle was on TCM, and of course Gilda steamed up the screen last week.

I just have time to post the link. God rest his soul.

[Carla in Ca]

49. Fate Is The Hunter

is a good movie. I don't see it played anymore but catch it if you ever see it listed. RIP Glenn Ford.

[Matilda]

50. A good honest actor.

R.I.P.

[CBHagman]

51. Stage, TV, film, and radio actor Frank Middlemass, 87.

Fans of British comedy will recognize Middlemass as the irrepressible octogenarian Rocky Hardcastle of As Time Goes By, while Masterpiece Theatre viewers may recall him as the warm-hearted headmaster Algy Herries on To Serve Them All My Days. He also did memorable work in radio, TV, and theater.

Rock on, Frank.



Obituary from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1869487,00.html

The acting persona of Frank Middlemass, who has died aged 87, epitomised everyone's favourite uncle - avuncular, sometimes a little dotty, but essentially decent. With him around, you had the impression that humanity had not entirely given up on benevolence. It ensured him a place as one of our most popular character actors on radio, stage, television and film for more than half a century, as well as acting companion to some illustrious playing partners. He was Toby Belch to Vivien Leigh's Viola in Twelfth Night for the Old Vic company which toured Australia, New Zealand and South America in 1961; on screen he appeared with Bette Davis in Madame Sin (1972) and alongside Ryan O'Neal in Barry Lyndon (1975), playing Sir Charles Lyndon.


With TV wife Joan Sims in As Time Goes By.

[CBHagman]

52. The great cinematographer Sven Nykvist, age 83.

It saddens me to announce the death of Sven Nykvist, whose body of work has so enriched us over the year. The noted cinematographer worked with both Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen, and will be discussed and studied for decades to come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/movies/21nykvist.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

Mr. Nykvist, who won two Academy Awards for best cinematography with the Bergman films “Cries and Whispers” (1972) and “Fanny and Alexander” (1982) and an Oscar nomination for best cinematography for “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (1988), pioneered the expressive use of naturalistic light in filmmaking.

“I was fortunate to work with Ingmar,” he said in 1995. “One of the things we believed was that a picture shouldn’t look lit. Whenever possible, I lit with one source and avoided creating double shadows, because that pointed to the photography.”

In his films, especially those with Mr. Bergman, light assumed a metaphysical dimension that went beyond mood. It distilled and deepened the feelings of torment and spiritual separation that afflicted Bergman characters. But in scenes of tranquillity filmed outdoors, the light might also evoke glimpses of transcendence. The sumptuous scenes of a Scandinavian Christmas in “Fanny and Alexander” burst with warmth and a magical, childlike joy.

Here's The Washington Post obituary, which will no doubt remain accessible longer than The New York Times article above:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092001126.html

His body of work:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005815/

His Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Nykvist

[CBHagman]

53. Academy Award-winning composer Malcolm Arnold, 84.

The Internet Movie Database lists 100 TV and film composition credits for Sir Malcolm.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002185/

And consider the length and productivity of his career, despite very public problems:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1879936,00.html

The tormented but irrepressible career of Sir Malcolm Arnold, the most recorded British composer of all time and the first to win an Oscar, ended last night with his death at the age of 84.
Arnold, who won an Academy Award for his score for The Bridge on the River Kwai, passed away in hospital in Norfolk after suffering a chest infection.

Hours later, his newest work, a ballet version of The Three Musketeers, premiered at the Alhambra in Bradford, West Yorkshire. A special dedication to Arnold's memory was made before the performance.

Rest in peace, sir.

[CBHagman]

54. Actor Edward Albert, age 55, son of Eddie Albert.

The film and television actor was the godson of Laurence Olivier. Mr. Albert was also an environmentalist. I remember him best, though, as Ron "Dal" Dalrymple in the TV adaptation of Anton Myrer's The Last Convertible.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060927/ap/d8kddfu80.html

Credits, as per the Internet Movie Database:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001902/

[lavenderdiva]

56. oh, man. I did not know this...

I loved Edward Albert in 'Butterflies Are Free'. He was a magnetic actor, and certainly handsome! 55 is very young. I am so sorry to hear this. Thank you CBH, for letting us know. :cry:

[Carla in Ca]

57. I saw this in the LA Times

this morning. They had a great pic of him. What a Smile! He was a wonderful environmentalist and was on the Ca Coastal Commission. He will be missed. R.I.P.

[CBHagman]

55. An obituary from a while back: Actor Barnard Hughes, 90.

I meant to run this some time ago and simply never posted it. I'm rectifying that now.

Barnard Hughes was known for stage, film, and television work. Among his stage credits were A Prelude to a Kiss and Da. His film credits include Midnight Cowboy, The Hospital, Sister Act 2, and Cradle Will Rock. What a guy! What a life!

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article1202856.ece

TV and film credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0400464/

The Playbill obituary:

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/100817.html

His career, which began in 1934 with one line in the Shakespeare Fellowship Repertory Company production of The Taming of the Shrew, spanned seven decades and over 400 roles on Broadway, and in television and films, appearing opposite such varied stars as Richard Burton, Robert Preston, George C. Scott, Alfred Drake, Lillian Gish, Christopher Plummer, Lauren Bacall, Alec Baldwin, Nicol Williamson, Bill Murray, Glenn Close, Kiefer Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, Jon Voight, Vanessa Redgrave, Rosemary Harris, Walter Matthau and Whoopi Goldberg.

Mr. Hughes made his Broadway debut in 1935 in Herself Mrs. Patrick Crowley. Until 1942 he toured the United States performing in stock theatrical shows. In 1945, he resumed his stage career after serving in the Army during World War II. While performing in a veteran's hospital show, he met actress Helen Stenborg, his wife of 56 years, whom he married in 1950.

The couple acted on Broadway together as late as 2000 in Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings. He was 85 at the time. That year, he and Stenborg, who survives him, received a Drama Desk Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1995, he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.

[Matilda]

58. Jane Wyatt dies aged 96.

I saw an old interview with her recently on a History channel program on the McCarthy years, and
I hadn't known until then that she was one of those actors who flew to Washington in support of
the Hollywood Ten.

A seminal part of my early teen years in Father Knows Best, but I believe the first time I ever
saw her was in Lost Horizon.

She seemed like an intelligent and very down-to-earth person.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/22/janewyatt.obit/


R.I.P.

[CBHagman]

59. Yes, another good liberal.

I didn't know that aspect of her life. However, I have extremely fond memories of her pairing with Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon.

Here's the obit that ran in The Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/22/AR2006102200683.html

n 1944, she was a standout in "None but the Lonely Heart," a film directed by the playwright Clifford Odets that also featured Ethel Barrymore as Cary Grant's ailing mother. This was to be her last great screen part, but in 1947, she had secondary roles in two superior films directed by Elia Kazan: the drama "Boomerang!" with Dana Andrews and "Gentleman's Agreement" with Gregory Peck as a journalist who crusades against social anti-Semitism.

(SNIP)

She later said her work dried up in the early 1950s because of her association with a group of politically liberal actors campaigning against the anti-Communist blacklist, including Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. She said that she was never a Communist and that the worst label that anyone applied to her was "prematurely anti-fascist."

[CBHagman]

60. Actress Phyllis Kirk, aged 79, star of House of Wax.

Like our dearly departed Jane Wyatt, she was a Jersey girl AND a liberal. God rest her soul, not that she couldn't rest if she were a conservative. :-)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102101117.html

Her acting career slowed down by the late 1950s and she turned her focus to social causes.

She spoke out against the death sentence of convicted kidnapper and sex offender Caryl Chessman, whom police nicknamed the "Red Light Bandit." Kirk visited Chessman several times in prison until he was executed in 1960.

After the 1965 Watts race riots, she helped fund two preschool programs for poor families in the South Los Angeles neighborhood. She later launched a career in public relations.

[Matilda]

61. I remember her, but I knew nothing of her history.

Thanks for that, CB.

[CBHagman]

62. Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, co-author of Cheaper by the Dozen.

Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, who with her brother Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. co-authored the memoirs Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes, has died at the age of 98. Classic film fans and generations of American kids will remember the books and their movie adaptations, which depicted the adventures of the large Gilbreth clan, a real-life family in Montclair, New Jersey. The Gilbreth parents were efficiency experts and organized the household on time-saving principles.

Fans of the 1950 film version of Cheaper by the Dozen, which starred Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy, will know that more recent movies with the same title don't really have anything to do with the original story.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0136950/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernestine_Gilbreth_Carey

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/books/06carey.html

“Cheaper by the Dozen,” which became a best seller when it was published in 1948, beguiled readers with the autobiographical details of the Gilbreths, a family in the 1920’s dominated by Dad but discreetly monitored by Mother. The book, replicated in numerous editions since its publication, is a testament to the intelligence, energy and eccentricity of the Gilbreth parents, who ran the family’s management consulting firm.

The business focused on the science of motion study and industrial efficiencies. Frank Bunker Gilbreth believed that the factory management principles he espoused to his clients could also be applied to his family of six girls and six boys, produced in 17 years; Lillian Moller Gilbreth, who had a Ph.D. from Brown University (earned around 1915, while she had several children at home), was an industrial psychologist and an engineering expert. Mr. Gilbreth died of a heart attack in 1924 at 55, the day after Mrs. Carey graduated from high school; his wife died in 1972 at 93.

Mrs. Carey’s brother Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. received first billing as a co-author, and the book’s narrative voice is decidedly unified, never betraying who wrote what.

Farewell, Mrs. Carey. To this day I can vividly remember many of the vignettes from the book version of Cheaper by the Dozen. Thank you for making all of us laugh so hard!

[Auggie]

63. Jack Palance, 87

[Matilda]

64. Quite a lengthy obit from BBC Online

Link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6139030.stm

[CBHagman]

65. Actress Marian Marsh, age 93, starred in 1930s films.

The actress Marian Marsh has died. In film she played Trilby to John Barrymore's Svengali and was featured opposite many major (and sometimes creepy) actors of the era, including Boris Karloff, Edward G. Robinson, and Peter Lorre.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/obituaries/11marsh.html

[CBHagman]

66. Director Robert Altman, 81, dies.

It grieves me to report the death of film director Robert Altman. The man was truly one of a kind.


New York Times obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/movies/22altmancnd.html?hp&ex=1164171600&en=def5c91efcff42c3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

I was amazed to find the TV shows Combat and Hawaiian Eye among his directing credits

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000265/

[CBHagman]

67. Legendary lyricist Betty Comden, 89, dies.

Many of the most memorable songs of stage and film came from this lady. She was a gem!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/23/AR2006112301204.html

Betty Comden, whose more than 60-year collaboration with Adolph Green produced the classic New York stage musical "On the Town," as well as "Singin' in the Rain," has died. She was 89.

Comden had been ill for a few months and died Thursday of heart failure at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said her longtime attorney and executor Ronald Konecky.

"She was, in all respects, a very beautiful and legendary person," Konecky said. "She was a dynamic figure in the arts, theater and film."

On Broadway, Comden and Green (the billing was always alphabetical) worked most successfully with composers Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne and Cy Coleman. The duo wrote lyrics and often the books for more than a dozen shows, many of them built around such stars as Rosalind Russell, Judy Holliday, Phil Silvers, Carol Burnett and Lauren Bacall.

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0173679/

[CBHagman]

68. Big band singer Anita O'Day, 87, dies.

This is a sad week for obituaries indeed. We've lost Anita O'Day.

I had heard a bit about her troubled life but apparently didn't know the half of it. See the obituary for more details.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/23/AR2006112300705.html

She was among the hippest female singers of the big-band period, lending rare emotional resonance to the relentlessly up-tempo and brassy big bands of Gene Krupa and Stan Kenton. She gave both orchestras their first million-selling hits, doing a rare interracial duet on "Let Me Off Uptown" with Krupa trumpeter Roy Eldridge and then the novelty number "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine" with Kenton's ensemble.

(SNIP)

In 1956, she was signed by Norman Granz's Verve records, and the nearly 20 albums she put out during the next decade were among her most tantalizing, including "Anita" (with "Honeysuckle Rose"), "Pick Yourself Up," "Anita O'Day Swings Cole Porter," "Make Mine Blues," "All the Sad Young Men" and "Travelin' Light."

She also played with Benny Goodman (who in the early 1940s refused to hire her because she was not disciplined enough to stick to a music chart), Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Joe Williams and Oscar Peterson.

[CBHagman]

69. Actor Philippe Noiret of "Cinema Paradiso" and "Il Postino."

This has been a sad week. After all these other losses, word came of the death of French actor
Philippe Noiret, aged 76.

How well I remember standing on Hertel Avenue in Buffalo, weeping uncontrollably after seeing Cinema Paradiso at the North Park Theater. What a beautiful film. What a beautiful memory.

The Washington Post obituary:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/23/AR2006112301159.html

Noiret was among the most familiar faces in French cinema, making more than 125 movies in a career that spanned more than half a century. Among his first big successes was Louis Malle's 1960 film "Zazie dans le metro" (Zazie in the Metro).

He made his last movie this year, "Trois Amis" (Three Friends) under director Michel Boujenah.

With a face and a bearing that could portray both the middle class man or the elegant aristocrat -- but not a romantic hero -- Noiret conquered his audience with his exceptional skills as an actor.

Above all a French star, Noiret had his share of international acclaim, notably in Guiseppe Tornatore's 1988 "Cinema Paradiso" and in the 1994 hit "Il Postino," (The Postman) in which he played Pablo Neruda, a poet and diplomat who councils (sic) his mailman.


IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0634159/

[CBHagman]

70. Sandy Sturges, widow of filmmaker Preston Sturges.

Mrs. Sturges was 79.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-sturges4dec04,1,4928107.story?coll=la-news-obituaries

Anne Margaret "Sandy" Sturges, who used the unfinished manuscript of an autobiography by her late husband, film auteur Preston Sturges, as the basis for the book "Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges," has died. She was 79.

Sandy Sturges died Tuesday at her home in Manhattan Beach. The cause was cancer, her son Tom Sturges said.

Decades after her husband died of a heart attack in 1959, Sturges edited together excerpts from his letters and diaries and combined them with his incomplete manuscript to create "a charming better-late-than-never autobiography," Kenneth Turan wrote in a review for The Times. "If you want a sense of the man, if you want to hear the beguiling voice … this book succeeds where all the others have come up short," Turan wrote.

Sandy Sturges was in her early 20s and her husband in his 50s when they married in 1951. The ceremony took place on the stage in the Players restaurant, a popular dinner and theater spot in Hollywood that he owned. It was his fourth marriage, her second.

[CBHagman]

71. I'm sad to say that Peter Boyle (Young Frankenstein) is gone.

The actor had of course had numerous credits, including the TV show Everybody Loves Raymond and the much-loved Young Frankenstein.

This guy was terrific. I'm sorry to see him go.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-121306boyle,1,4944114.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=1&cset=true

[CBHagman]

72. Big band vocalist Martha Tilton, aged 91.

The lady sang with Benny Goodman and also dubbed Barbara Stanwyck's singing voice in the classic comedy Ball of Fire. Everyone should see the latter film!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/12/AR2006121201615.html

[Matilda]

73. Carlo Ponti Dies at the age of 94.

Just broken on the ABC here:

"Italian film producer Carlo Ponti, husband of Italian actress Sofia Loren, has died at the age of 94 at a Geneva hospital overnight, the ANSA news agency reports.

He was being treated for a pulmonary complication, family sources told ANSA.

Born in Magenta, northern Italy, Ponti began producing films in the early 1940s, making his name by co-producing Federico Fellini's La Strada with Dino De Laurentis in 1954.

He had more than 140 films to his credit including three dozen with Loren, as well as David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup (1966)."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200701/s1824786.htm


I was surprised at first that he was that old, but on reflection, Sophia
Loren would now be in her seventies, and she was quite a lot younger
than he.

[CBHagman]

74. Film/TV actress Yvonne De Carlo, age 84.

American TV watchers will no doubt remember her as Lily Munster in The Munsters. For those of you who have never seen the show, it was the one of those horror/comedy meldings we saw so much of in the '60s (The Addams Family, Saturday night horror movie fests with a local TV host, etc.). De Carlo was sort of the Marge Simpson of the undead, only with straight hair. She had a great voice and could camp it up with the best of them.



She was also in and The Ten Commandments. The former is an all-out assault on feminism, and the latter has Mr. NRA. Poor Yvonne, or did she know what she was getting into?

Until I read her obituary, I had no idea she'd done Sondheim's Follies on Broadway.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-De-Carlo.html


Her credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001119/

[CBHagman]

75. Catch-up time: Didn't know about Kenneth Griffith.

I had no idea the actor and filmmaker Kenneth Griffith had died. In fact, I had no idea of the filmmaker part. Here's his obituary from the Guardian. It seems Griffith never backed down from a fight, political or otherwise!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1806549,00.html

Here's his amazing list of credits, from IMDB, though I suspect it's incomplete. Note that he worked on the TV show The Prisoner and perpetual DU favorite The Lion in Winter.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0341558/

[CBHagman]

76. More catch-up: Didn't know about Gene Pitney either.

Somehow I missed the obituary for singer, songwriter, and sometime actor Gene Pitney. Those of us of the right age will remember "It Hurts to Be in Love," "A Town without Pity," and other hits. He also wrote a song for "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," but I believe it was never included in the movie. And of course he wrote some unforgettable hits for other singers: "He's a Rebel," "Hello, Mary Lou."

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0685754/

Obituary from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4879230.stm

[CBHagman]

77. Film noir screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides dies at age 98.

The novelist and screenwriter was at one point under contract at Warner Brothers. Among his writing credits is Kiss Me Deadly. He also wrote for various television series.


The obituary from The Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR2007011501262.html

[CBHagman]

78. Swedish actress Maj-Britt Nilsson, 82.

She is remembered for, among other things, her work in Ingmar Bergman's films.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/17/AR2007011702032.html

[CBHagman]

79. Actor Ron Carey.

No, no, no, not the union leader! The character actor, known for, among other things, his role in Barney Miller and work with Mel Brooks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/arts/television/19carey.html

At 5-foot-4 and with traces of an inner-city New Joisey accent, Mr. Carey played a plainclothes cop constantly seeking a promotion by currying favor with his superiors.

“Barney Miller,” which ran from 1976 to 1982, starred Hal Linden as the captain of a New York City police precinct whose officers dealt with the zany characters who came, not always by choice, into the station house. Mr. Carey, as Officer Levitt, would inject unsolicited opinions on how to handle whoever was in the holding cell. Besides playing roles in other less successful sitcoms, Mr. Carey appeared in 15 movies, including “High Anxiety” in 1977 and “History of the World: Part I” in 1981, both with Mel Brooks.



Credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0137030/

[vireo]

80. "I got, I got it ... I ain't got it!"

Thanks for the laughs, Ron.

[CBHagman]

81. Writer/producer Sidney Sheldon, age 89.

I didn't know he wrote the screenplay for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer!

Obituary:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/31/AR2007013100022.html

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0791084/

[CBHagman]

82. Singer Frankie Laine, 93.

I've been missing my entries here.

We have lost Frankie Laine, the Italian-American singer who had numerous hits and of course sang several songs related to classic TV and movies ("Rawhide," and even the theme to Blazing Saddles).

Laine's first wife, who predeceased him, was the actress Nan Grey of Three Smart Girls.

He also sounds like a nice guy.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2007577,00.html

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2248751.ece

http://www.frankielaine.com/family.html

[CBHagman]

83. Singer-actress Barbara McNair, age 72.

Ms. McNair hosted her own variety show on TV, appeared on Broadway, and once co-starred with Sidney Poitier (in They Call Me MISTER Tibbs).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/arts/television/06mcnair.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0573552/

[CBHagman]

84. Pulitzer Pize-winning composer Gian Carlo Menotti.

Remember Amahl and the Night Visitors? Remember the Spoleto Festival? We've lost their creator. Gian Carlo Menotti was 95.

From the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2004975,00.html


From the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3501740.stm

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/02/news/obits.php

From the above:

"The Saint of Bleecker Street," produced on Broadway for the 1954-55 season, carried a theme that preoccupied Menotti: the tension between mysticism and faith on the one hand, and the cynical "real" world on the other. It did not make money, but critics liked it, and it earned Menotti his second Pulitzer.




Credits listed at IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0579781/

[CBHagman]

85. Oh, no! Ian Richardson is gone.

I hate reporting this. The distinguished British actor Ian Richardson, age 72, has died. TV viewers will remember him as the slimey Francis Urquhart (Note those initials) in the series comprised of House of Cards, To Play the King, and The Final Cut.

Obituary from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6346301.stm

[CBHagman]

86. Academy Award-winning lyricist Ray Evans, 92.

Even if you've never heard his name, if you're a fan of American popular vocal standards, classic movies, or vintage American TV, you've heard his music.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021602214.html

Oscar-winning songwriter Ray Evans, whose long collaboration with partner Jay Livingston produced such enduring standards as "Mona Lisa," "Buttons and Bows," "Silver Bells" and "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)," has died. He was 92.

(SNIP)

Evans' musical partnership with Livingston spanned more than six decades, with Livingston providing the melodies and Evans writing the lyrics.

Often called the last of the great songwriters, the duo earned seven Academy Award nominations and won three _ in 1948 for "Buttons and Bows" in the film "Paleface," in 1950 for "Mona Lisa" in the movie "Captain Carey, USA" and in 1956 for "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" from "The Man Who Knew Too Much."

They also produced the classic Christmas carol "Silver Bells," and the theme songs for the television series "Bonanza" and "Mr. Ed."

Rest in peace, Mr. Evans. We'll be listening to and even singing your songs for many, many years to come.

[flamingyouth]

87. 1940s actress Janet Blair dies at 85

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070221/ap_en_ot/obit_blair

[CBHagman]

88. Theater critic Sheridan Morley, son of Robert Morley.

When I saw the name Sheridan in the headline, the first thing I thought of was the character Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner. According to the obituaries, Robert Morley did indeed name his elder son after the character!

Rest in peace, Mr. Morley.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001567.html?nav=hcmodule

Sheridan Morley, 65, the son of actor Robert Morley and a theater critic, broadcaster and author of many show business biographies, died Feb. 16 at his home in London. No cause of death was reported.

Mr. Morley wrote for such publications as the Times of London, Punch, the Spectator and the International Herald Tribune.

He grew up surrounded by film and theater personalities. Actress Gladys Cooper was his grandmother, and Noel Coward was his godfather. He was named Sheridan after the character Sheridan Whiteside in the George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner," in which his father was appearing when his son was born.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/17/nmorley117.xml

[CBHagman]

89. Britcom star John Inman, age 71.

The impish comedy star John Inman has passed away. TV viewers from around the world will remember him as Mr. Humphries from the series Are You Being Served?

A British co-worker and I used to sling around the phrase, "I'm free," in true Mr. Humphries fashion, when we were on the job.

His obituary from the Guardian:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/obituary/0,,2029033,00.html

His credits:

http://imdb.com/name/nm0409132/

[CBHagman]

90. The effervescent Betty Hutton.

One of the few surviving stars of the old Hollywood has just left us. Betty Hutton was 86.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6476871,00.html

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Betty Hutton, the actress and singer who brought a brassy vitality to Hollywood musicals such as ``Annie Get Your Gun,'' died in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 86.

The death was confirmed Monday by a friend of Hutton who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, citing Hutton's wishes that her death be announced at a specified time by the executor of her estate, Carl Bruno. The friend refused to provide further details including the time and cause of death.

``I can neither confirm or deny'' the report, Bruno told The Associated Press from Palm Springs. ``I'll be happy to talk about it tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon.''

Hutton was at the top of the heap when she walked out of her Paramount contract in 1952, reportedly in a dispute over her demand that her then-husband direct her films. She made only one movie after that but had a TV series for a year and worked occasionally on the stage and in nightclubs.

Unlike other actresses who have been called ``blonde bombshells,'' Hutton had a screen personality that had more to do with energy and humor than sex.






With costar Eddie Bracken

[flamingyouth]

91. RIP, Betty

:(

[vireo]

92. Freddie Francis, cinematographer and director

Freddie Francis, a versatile British cinematographer whose talent for creating atmosphere won him two Oscars, died on March 17 in London. He was 89.

He had suffered a stroke in December and never recovered, his family told British newspapers.

Mr. Francis, who received Oscars for Jack Cardiff’s 1960 adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers” and for Edward Zwick’s 1989 Civil War drama “Glory,” was a product of the British studio system. Starting out as a camera assistant in the 1930s, he moved up to camera operator after returning from service in World War II, shooting films for Michael Powell, Carol Reed and John Huston. His first job as director of photography came in 1956 on “A Hill in Korea,” a Korean War picture in which Michael Caine made his debut.

After winning his first Oscar for cinematography, Mr. Francis turned to directing, starting what became a nearly 20-year career in horror. Though he said he had no great liking for the genre, his direction of “Paranoiac” (1963) kept a steady stream of projects coming, including “The Skull” (1965), “The Psychopath” (1966), “Tales From the Crypt” (1972) and “The Ghoul” (1975).
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/arts/26francis.html

[vireo]

93. Herman Stein, composer

Herman Stein, a little-known craftsman who, unseen but very much heard, helped terrify the audiences of a spate of classic horror and science-fiction films, died on March 15 at his home in Los Angeles. Mr. Stein, a former staff composer at the Universal studio in Hollywood, was 91.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said David Schecter, a record producer who runs the Web site Monstrous Movie Music (www.mmmrecordings.com).

A largely self-taught composer, Mr. Stein contributed to the scores of nearly 200 films, including westerns, comedies and dramas. Though he labored in relative obscurity, he became known in particular — if only to an ardent cult following — for his work on dozens of movies featuring little green men, big hairy things and oceans of primordial ooze.

Among his best-known films are “It Came From Outer Space” (1953), “Creature From the Black Lagoon” (1954), “This Island Earth” (1955), “Tarantula” (1955) and “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957).
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/obituaries/24stein.html

<On edit: intended as reply to OP>

[vireo]

94. Vilma Ebsen, Buddy's sister

Actually more a Broadway performer, she has just one film credit.

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., March 25 — Vilma Ebsen, who danced in the film “Broadway Melody of 1936” with her brother Buddy long before he became famous on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” died here on March 12. She was 96.

Her son Robert Dolan announced the death.

She was a dance instructor and co-owner with her sister Helga of the Ebsen School of Dancing in Pacific Palisades, Calif., which operated until the mid-1990s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/arts/26ebsen.html

[vireo]

95. "Cool Hand Luke" director Stuart Rosenberg

Stuart Rosenberg, a prolific director of series television and theatrical films who partnered with Paul Newman on the widely popular prison drama "Cool Hand Luke" and several other movies, has died. He was 79.

Rosenberg died of a heart attack at his home in Beverly Hills on Thursday, according to his son Benjamin.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1927, Rosenberg began directing television episodes in the 1950s, starting with "Decoy," starring Beverly Garland as a New York City policewoman.

He racked up more than 300 TV directing credits for such dramatic series' as "The Untouchables,""Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Twilight Zone," and won an Emmy Award in 1963 for an episode of "The Defenders."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/19/state/n054319D94.DTL

[CBHagman]

96. "Christmas Story" director and his grown son die in collision.

I am truly sorry to have to report that the director of the much-loved A Christmas Story has been killed in a car accident. He and his grown son died when an unlicensed and drunken driver collided head-on with their car. To take someone's life due to DUI is appalling enough, but more two lives, a father and son -- unspeakable.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070404/ap_on_en_mo/obit_clark

In Clark's most famous film, all 9-year-old Ralphie Parker wants for Christmas is an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle.

His mother, teacher and Santa Claus all warn: "You'll shoot your eye out, kid."

A school bully named Scut Farkus, a leg lamp, a freezing flagpole mishap and some four-letter defiance helped the movie become a seasonal fixture with "It's A Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street."

Clark specialized in horror movies and thrillers early in his career, directing such 1970s flicks as "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things," "Murder by Decree," "Breaking Point" and "Black Christmas," which was remade last year.

His breakout success came with 1981's sex farce "Porky's," a coming-of-age romp that he followed two years later with "Porky's II: The Next Day."

In 1983, "A Christmas Story" marked a career high for Clark. Darrin McGavin, Melinda Dillon and Peter Billingsley starred in the adaptation of Jean Shepard's childhood memoir of a boy in the 1940s.

The film was a modest theatrical success, but critics loved it.

A Christmas Story gets considerable airplay at Christmastime in the States, even back-to-back screenings on one of the cable channels. Turner Classic Movies now includes it in their holiday schedule, too.

[CBHagman]

97. Actor Roscoe Lee Browne, age 81.

Oh, no. We've lost Roscoe Lee Browne. A generation of kids are going to remember his tender narration of the film Babe. What a gorgeous voice he had.



His obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/obituaries/12browne.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

By that time he had become a recognizable face — and voice — in film and television, starting with the film “The Connection” (1962), a realistic portrayal of drug addicts. He went on to appear in Hitchcock’s “Topaz” (1969); “The Liberation of L. B. Jones” (1970); and “The Mambo Kings” (1992).

On television, Mr. Browne often played high-brow characters because of his distinctive voice and stately bearing. He twice appeared on “All in the Family,” much to the bigoted Archie Bunker’s dismay, and played a recurring role on “Soap.” In 1986 he won an Emmy Ward for an episode of “The Cosby Show” and continued to appear regularly on television series, including “A Different World” and “Law and Order.”

His voice was also well employed, narrating the movie “Babe” and several documentaries, and participating in spoken-word works with the Boston Pops, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other orchestras.


His numerous credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001975/

[CBHagman]

98. Godspeed, Kitty Carlisle Hart, aged 96.

I'm sorry to report that Kitty Carlisle Hart, aged 96, has left us. She had a long life, and what a life it was! Everything from singing at the Metropolitan Opera to starring opposite the Marx Brothers to being part of Woody Allen's ensemble in Radio Days to being a panelist on game shows!

Thanks for the memories.

List of credits, as per IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0137634/

First obituary I've found:

http://news.aol.com/entertainment/movies/articles/_a/actress-kitty-carlisle-hart-dies-at-96/20070418150509990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Well known for her starring role as Rosa Castaldi in the 1935 movie "A Night at the Opera," her other film credits included: "She Loves Me Not" and "Here Is My Heart," both opposite Bing Crosby; Woody Allen 's "Radio Days"; and "Six Degrees of Separation."

She began her acting career on Broadway in "Champagne Sec," and went on to appear in many other Broadway productions, including the 1984 revival of "On Your Toes."

She made her operatic debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1967 in "Die Fledermaus," and created the role of Lucretia in the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's "Rape of Lucretia."

From 1956 to 1967, she appeared on the CBS prime-time game show "To Tell the Truth" with host Bud Collyer and fellow panelists such as Polly Bergen, Johnny Carson, Bill Cullen and Don Ameche.

[CBHagman]

99. Actor/director Charles Nelson Reilly, 76.

Fans of Broadway musicals will remember his turn as the meek little clerk Cornelius in the original production of Hello, Dolly! Baby boomers will remember his comic villains on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Lidsville. Anyone who watched American talk shows over the past 30 years or so will remember what a character he was.

But there was so much more to Charles Nelson Reilly's career.



http://news.aol.com/entertainment/tv/articles/_a/comic-actor-charles-nelson-reilly-dies/20070528074609990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Long before moving west to become what he somewhat ruefully described as a “game show fixture,” Mr. Reilly was an actor and an acting teacher in New York City. In 1962, he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Bud Frump in the original Broadway production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

But he was proudest of “The Belle of Amherst,” a one-woman play starring Julie Harris based on the life of Emily Dickinson, which he directed on Broadway at the Longacre Theater in 1976, said Timothy Helgeson, who collaborated with him on the show. Two decades later, Mr. Reilly directed Ms. Harris and Charles Durning in a revival of “The Gin Game” at the Lyceum Theater. He was nominated for a Tony for best director in 1997, and Ms. Harris was nominated for best actress.

His IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0717650/

[eleny]

100. Loved him on Laugh In and the game shows

Jo Anne Worley was interviewed about him on CNN. She was just the same with her wonderful smile and signature bright eyes.

[CBHagman]

101. Actor Jean-Claude Brialy, 74, star of the French New Wave

Do people on this forum remember Jean-Claude Brialy, or does Jean-Paul Belmondo have pride of place among French actors of that generation? I remember going to see Claire's Knee and All Boys are Called Patrick at university, thus making my first acquaintance with Brialy's work.



The Guardian obituary:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/0,,2092885,00.html

His IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0108400/

I had forgotten he was in The Monster, with Roberto Benigni.

The Washington Post's obit:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053102324.html

Strikingly versatile, Mr. Brialy became a favorite performer in films by New Wave directors including Chabrol, Rohmer, Godard and Jacques Rivette. His ability to convey a range of sometimes conflicting emotions -- naivete, intelligence, obsession and deviousness -- worked to his advantage with New Wave directors, who preferred unpredictable storytelling techniques.

[vireo]

102. Curtis Harrington, director

Curtis Harrington, director, writer and actor: born Los Angeles 17 September 1928; died Los Angeles 6 May 2007.

Once seen, the eerie black-and-white film Night Tide, directed by Curtis Harrington in 1961, is not easily forgotten. It lingers in the mind, much as Mora, the mermaid character played by Linda Lawson, does in the mind of Johnny Drake, the sailor on leave portrayed by Dennis Hopper in his first lead role. Filmed on a minuscule budget for American International Pictures and based on a short story, "The Call of the Sea", written by the director himself, Night Tide was Harrington's first full-length feature, and seemed a harbinger of things to come.

Harrington never fulfilled this early promise, despite making other notable B-movies like Queen of Blood (1966, again with Hopper) and the Carrie/Exorcist cash-in Ruby (1977, starring Piper Laurie). He also earned a reputation for getting the best out of difficult Hollywood actresses in shlockers - take your pick from Shelley Winters in Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? and What's The Matter With Helen? (both 1971) and Ann Sothern in The Killing Kind (1973). But by the mid-Seventies, he was mostly directing horror films for television - The Cat Creature (1973), Killer Bees (1974), The Dead Don't Die (1975), Devil Dog: the hound of hell (1978) - and episodes of TV series.

Born in Los Angeles in 1928, Harrington grew up in Beaumont, a sleepy, rural Californian town famous for its red-apple plantations, but close enough to Palm Springs and Hollywood for a film-obsessed teenager to indulge his passion for horror, noir and European cinema. Given an 8mm camera in 1943, the precocious 14-year-old set about filming his own version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher (playing both doomed siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher himself). "I have a very macabre turn of mind," Harrington admitted, "and there's no way that can be explained. It's just a leaning I've had since childhood."

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2530741.ece

[vireo]

103. Gordon Scott, Tarzan actor

Gordon Scott, an actor known for his portrayal of jungle superman Tarzan in six films and later roles in westerns and sword-and-sandals gladiator movies, died Monday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore of complications from several heart surgeries. He was 80.

<snip>

An unknown hotel lifeguard in the 1950s, Scott managed to beat out 200 other would-be Tarzans from across the world who had auditioned for the part by climbing trees, jumping into pools and swinging from ersatz vines for six hours.

<snip>

"He was an absolutely wonderful Tarzan, who played the character as an intelligent and nice man who carried himself well, much as my grandfather had originally written it," said Danton Burroughs of Tarzana. "He also gave a wonderful rendition of Tarzan's call which didn't have so much yodel in it."

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-scott3may03,1,1195948.story?coll=la-news-obituaries&ctrack=2&cset=true

[CBHagman]

104. Bernard Gordon, blacklisted screenwriter, 88.

I'm a bit late getting to this one, as I saw his obituary weeks ago. But I thought DUers might find his story interesting.

The Los Angeles Times article following his death:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-gordon12may12,1,4033549.story?coll=la-news-obituaries

Bernard Gordon, one of the younger screenwriters blacklisted during the McCarthy era whose proudest moment late in life was the protest he led against the honorary Oscar awarded director Elia Kazan, has died. He was 88.

Gordon, who wrote for years under a pseudonym but saw many of his film credits restored, died Friday at his home in the Hollywood Hills after a long battle with bone cancer, said his daughter, Ellen Gordon.

When Kazan stepped onstage in 1999 to accept an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, many in the audience withheld their applause. Outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center, hundreds of demonstrators noisily protested, holding signs bearing such messages as "Don't Whitewash the Blacklist," a result of the campaign Gordon helped orchestrate.

When they telecast that Oscar broadcast, the camera turned to actress Amy Madigan, her face like a thundercloud, as the ovation for Kazan went on. She was among those who refused to stand or even applaud, and I believe her husband, Ed Harris, adopted the same approach.

More from the article:

Decades would pass before his achievements were publicly acknowledged as his own by the Writers Guild of America.

As of 2000, 10 screenwriting credits had been restored to Gordon, more than any other writer, said Dave Robb, a journalist who covered Hollywood and became a friend of Gordon.

"The action by the guild comes about 40 years too late to help my Hollywood career," Gordon told the New York Times in 1997 after seven credits had been restored.

Gordon's IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0330024/

[CBHagman]

105. Actress Mala Powers, age 75.

The actress was noted for portraying Roxanne in Cyrano de Bergerac and a rape victim in Ida Lupino's ground-breaking Outrage.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/0,,2112147,00.html

Her IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0694580/

[CBHagman]

106. Don Herbert, 89, TV's "Mr. Wizard."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/13/news/obits.php

Herbert held no advanced degree in science, he used household items in his TV lab, and his assistants were boys and girls. But he became an influential showman-teacher on his half-hour "Watch Mr. Wizard" programs, which ran on the NBC network from 1951 to 1965. Millions of youngsters may have been captivated by Howdy Doody and the Lone Ranger, but many were also conducting science experiments at home, emulating Mr. Wizard.

"Watch Mr. Wizard," which was aimed at youngsters between 8 and 13, received a Peabody Award in 1953 for young people's programming.

More than 100,000 children were enrolled in 5,000 Mr. Wizard Science Clubs by the mid-1950s.

[Longhorn]

107. Charles Lane, 102

July 11 (Bloomberg) -- Charles Lane, a skinny character actor who mostly played cranky roles and made more than 200 Hollywood movies and scores of television shows over six decades, died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 102.

After making his film debut in 1931 as a hotel desk clerk in ``Smart Money,'' starring James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, Lane was typecast as a clerk in five straight films before he got small parts as a shoe salesman, waiter, reporter, process server, henchman, shyster lawyer and prosecutor.

Shortly after his 100th birthday in 2005, when he was cited at a TV awards ceremony, the durable actor deadpanned: ``If anyone's interested, I'm still available.''

TV audiences in the 1960s knew him as railroad boss Homer Bedloe in ``Petticoat Junction.'' He also played in many TV shows starring comedienne Lucille Ball, with whom he acted when both had uncredited parts in the 1934 movie ``Broadway Bill,'' directed by Frank Capra.

He became a favorite of Capra's, who cast Lane in eight more films, including as the Internal Revenue agent in ``You Can't Take It With You,'' which won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1938, and ``It's a Wonderful Life'' in 1946.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ao4tB5Qtot_g&refer=us

[Staph]

108. Charles Lane (1905-2007)

His is the face that you know, even if you don't recognize the name. His first role was in 1931's Smart Money, and the last was as narrator for an eight-minute version of The Night Before Christmas (2006), featuring the art of the great-grandson of Grandma Moses.

He was the author of the play in 42nd Street (1933). He played a lawyer in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). He was a newsman in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). He was the rent collector working for Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). He appeared in the I Love Lucy episode when Little Ricky is born (1953). His acting credits on the Internet Movie Data Base run to 338 different movies and television shows. He was a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He was honored on March 16, 2005, at the TVLand Awards for his long career and his 100th birthday. When he received his award, he said in his still-booming voice, "In case anyone's interested, I'm still available!"


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070711/people_nm/lane_dc_1

ETA -- Apparently great minds think alike. You beat me, Longhorn!

[CBHagman]

109. I was just thinking about him the other week.

I got a DVD of Ball of Fire, in which Mr. Lane had a small supporting role. In fact, he may well have been the last surviving member of the cast, which included Allen Jenkins, S.Z. Sakall, Henry Travers, and of course Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper.

Goodbye, Mr. Lane, and thanks for the memories!

[Auggie]

111. Kind of like losing an old friend, you know?

[TahitiNut]

127. I alway saw him as the Mr. Wilson to all of our inner Dennis the Menaces

He made every film he was in ... better. Curmugeon or voice of uncomfortable honesty, he was superb.

[CBHagman]

110. Actor Kerwin Mathews, 81.

Kerwin Mathews, who starred in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, has died.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/movies/13mathews.html?ex=1185163200&en=1c942751966d2360&ei=5070

Kerwin Mathews, a dark-haired, tall and strikingly handsome swashbuckling movie actor of the 1950s who is best known for his starring role in “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad,” and particularly for that film’s roiling sword fight with a skeleton, died July 5 at his home in San Francisco. He was 81.

The death was confirmed by his partner of 46 years, Tom Nicoll.

In 1957 the renowned stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen cast Mr. Mathews as a flesh-and-blood Sinbad who battles fire-breathing dragons, a Cyclops and a woman who morphs into a snarling serpent. Nearly half a century later, Mr. Nicoll said, Mr. Mathews regularly received letters from people recalling his climactic duel with the skeleton.

[terrya]

115. Oh my...

I fondly remember "The Three Worlds of Gulliver". And how...beautiful he was. Kerwin Matthews was one of the handsomest men ever to grace a movie screen.

Very sad news.

[CBHagman]

112. Ulrich Muehe, star of "The Lives of Others"

It grieves me to report the death of Ulrich Muehe, the East German-born actor featured in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Oscar-winning film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen). Herr Muehe played a Stasi officer in the acclaimed movie, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

New York Times link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/arts/26muhe.html?ref=obituaries

His IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0618057/

And from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6915665.stm

According to Der Spiegel newspaper, his duties included serving as a guard along the Berlin Wall.

A veteran of German theatre, Muehe had roles in more than 30 films.

However, it was his role as conflicted East German secret police agent Gerd Wiesler in The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) for which he will be best remembered.

Muehe said his experience of living under Communist rule had helped him portray the character.

Despite his illness, he flew to Hollywood with director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in April to see the drama win the Oscar for best foreign language film.

Minor goof in the BBC article: The date of the Oscar broadcast has been moved up considerably and now airs in March, if I recall correctly.

[Longhorn]

113. Actually, the Academy Awards were on February 25 this year.

He died too young. :(

[CBHagman]

114. The great Ingmar Bergman dies at age 89.

:cry:

Here's a link to the Swedish paper Aftonbladet, which my co-worker provided to me:

Woody Allen's thoughts on the director:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,1130143,00.html

The Guardian newspaper's tribute:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/07/swedish_film_director_ingmar_b.html

This newspaper recently reprinted what it published when Henrik Ibsen died, just over 100 years ago: "Isolated as he seemed, his mind was yet in more vital touch than that of anyone else in Europe with the mind of this generation." That certainly applies to the great Swedish film director and dramatist Ingmar Bergman, who has died, at the age of 89 - or certainly, and literally, the part about isolation applies. Since the 60s, Bergman lived mostly on the Island of Faro: secluded, like Shakespeare's Prospero, yet without having broken his staff. In his late eighties, he gave us a rewarding, and uncompromisingly emotional and difficult movie for TV, Saraband. His great masterpiece The Seventh Seal - much discussed, much adored, much spoofed - was re-released last week in a new print and it looks as fresh as a daisy, its power if anything increased.

IMDB list for those of you who need to hit the DVD shop or rental place:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000005/

[CBHagman]

116. Michel Serrault, star of "La Cage aux Folles"

The actor was 79.


The Associated Press obituary:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/30/AR2007073001674.html


And from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6922473.stm

French actor Michel Serrault, star of more than 130 films including 1978's La Cage aux Folles, has died aged 79 after a long illness.

His role in the film as gay nightclub owner Albin won him a Cesar award.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: "He was a monument in the world of popular theatre, cinema and TV."

Serrault won a further two prestigious Cesars for playing an accused rapist and murderer in Garde A Vue and as a businessman in Nelly and Mr Arnaud.

[Bjornsdotter]

118. One of my favorite movies

...and if IIRC one of the first French films I ever saw at the theater.

Cheers

[CBHagman]

117. Michelangelo Antonioni, director of "Blow-Up"

Okay, this is starting to scare me. What's going on with world cinema this week?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6923785.stm

Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni, renowned for his 1966 release Blow-Up, has died aged 94.

He gained two Oscar nominations for the iconic release, and was awarded an honorary Academy Award for his life's work in 1995.

He was also nominated for the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d'Or, five times between 1960 and 1982.

(SNIP)

Richard Mowe, a film writer and co-director of the Italian Film Festival UK, said Antonioni made productions "that were out of the conventional modes of expression".

"He invented his own language of cinema - that's what made him very, very inventive," he said. "He didn't owe anything to anybody else. He was a total original."

[Matilda]

119. It's almost heretical, but I didn't care for Antonioni very much.

Of the two major films that he's most often remembered for, I find that both have dated to the point
of being barely watchable.

At the time, "Zabriskie Point" was believed to be making a statement against corporatism, and it
did, but only after what seems like hours of total self-indulgence. I'm sure that it appealed
enormously to cinemas full of pot-heads losing themselves in endless scenes of the desert, but
watching it straight just amounts to nearly two hours of total boredom.

And having watched "Blow-up" twice recently, I see more flaws every time I watch it. It's a poor
script, and badly directed. People say and do things without any real motivation at all, and
there are a couple of times when the action just doesn't match the dialogue. David Hemmings never
could act, and Vanessa Redgrave just sleepwalks through this film. She's a fine actress, but
wasting her time in this, and it looks as if she knows it. For me, it was fun to see the London I
knew, and I can't help wondering if that is it's main appeal today - recalling swinging London.

[CBHagman]

120. Mike Reid of "EastEnders"

He had a lot more credits than that, too. Mr. Reid was only 67, according to the obit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2138013,00.html

His stunt work in the 1960s was lucrative but also helped provide him with a fatalistic attitude to life. He worked on films as various as Spartacus (1960), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), the original, spoof version of Casino Royale and The Dirty Dozen (both 1967) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). His television career began as a soldier in Doctor Who and a secret police officer in The Saint, while on film he played another policeman in Up the Junction (1968). By the mid-1970s he was getting credits for his acting roles.

But the early 1970s Granada series The Comedians was to change his life. Produced by Johnnie Hamp, the show consisted of short slots by experienced club performers such as Frank Carson, Russ Abbot and Bernard Manning (obituary June 19). With his background and experience, Reid was well-qualified for the show; indeed he was one of the boldest of the group and made a virtual catchphrase out of of the machine-gun delivery of "Terr-if -ic!".

In 1975, on children's television, he hosted the energetic gameshow Runaround, and his flair for the ingratiatingly doleful was exercised with his recording of one of his favourite songs, Danny Kaye's hit The Ugly Duckling. It was a success for Reid too. Giving the 1952 tune some novel twists and turns he took it into the British top 10 in 1975 - conclusively establishing himself in the public eye. The following year he was Arthur Mullard's brother, Benny Briggs, in the TV series Yus My Dear and in the ensuing decade appeared in other popular series, including Minder (1982) and Big Deal (1986). He also had his own series, Mates and Music (1984). Then, in 1987 EastEnders gave him another new lease of life, and a chance to forge an identity as a sensitive man successfully hiding behind a car dealer's mannerisms.

[CBHagman]

121. Director/screenwriter Melville Shavelson, 90.

He belonged to classic movies and television.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080902173.html

Mr. Shavelson wrote and directed "Cast a Giant Shadow," "The Five Pennies," "It Started in Naples," "On the Double," "A New Kind of Love" and "The War Between Men and Women."

He also created two Emmy Award-winning television series, "Make Room for Daddy" and "My World and Welcome to It."

Mr. Shavelson, born April 1, 1917, in Brooklyn, N.Y., began crafting jokes while working at his father's general store. In 1937, he graduated from Cornell University, where he was a humor columnist at the campus paper and produced a radio program for the school station.

He wrote two novels and four nonfiction books.

His autobiography, "How to Succeed in Hollywood Without Really Trying, P.S. -- You Can't!" was published on his 90th birthday.


I knew I recognized that name. I even have a DVD of one of the movies he wrote and directed.

His credits at IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0789520/

[CBHagman]

122. MGM executive Frank Rosenfelt, 85.

The obituary at The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/business/09rosenfelt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

He made it clear that a large part of his approach was to make compelling entertainment for theaters, television and video recordings. The hundreds of pictures he oversaw included masterpieces like “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) by the director Stanley Kubrick.

“I don’t own a screwdriver,” he said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1982. “I don’t even know how my television set works. All I know is they need programming and I have the programming. All I care about is that it’s my product and I get paid for it.”

One of his triumphs was acquiring the movie rights to “Doctor Zhivago,” (1965) by the Russian writer Boris Pasternak, from the producer Carlo Ponti, who had owned the rights. Variety reported that Mr. Rosenfelt had investigated whether writers in the Soviet Union had the right to sell their own properties by tracking down a scholar of Russian law. He found that the authors retained property rights. He then had top Russian literary scholars help provide a translation that would satisfy the terms of the agreement.

One of his biggest disappointments was when MGM’s movie “Network” (1976) — which contained the line “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” — lost the Academy Award for best picture to “Rocky,” The Associated Press reported. It said he banned the mention of the winning movie’s name in his home.

More at Variety:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969625.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

[CBHagman]

123. Singer and talk show host Merv Griffin, 82.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/12/AR2007081200453.html?hpid=topnews

From his beginning as a $100-a-week San Francisco radio singer, Griffin moved on as vocalist for Freddy Martin's band, sometime film actor in films and TV game and talk show host, and made Forbes' list of richest Americans several times.

His "The Merv Griffin Show" lasted more than 20 years, and Griffin's said his capacity to listen contributed to his success.

"If the host is sitting there thinking about his next joke, he isn't listening," Griffin reasoned in a recent interview.

[CBHagman]

124. Kieron Moore, actor, journalist, advocate for social justice.

I knew the name but didn't know the life. Kieron Moore, the Irish actor who turned journalist, has died at the age of 82. His obituary in the Guardian has some great anecdotes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2148062,00.html

Two leading film encyclopaedias by Ephraim Katz and David Thomson, describe Kieron Moore respectively as "a husky, stern leading man" and "an Irish actor with a hangdog expression". The latter aspect, if true, possibly reflected the actor's own uncertainty about his calling, perhaps because he had always felt most at ease speaking Irish on stage rather than English on film. He would later recall his misery before attending the Royal Command Performance of Anna Karenina, knowing that he had been stiff and miscast. He regularly spoke well of only one of his films: The Green Scarf (1954), in which, among a cast including Michael Redgrave and Ann Todd, he played a deaf, dumb and blind author accused of murder. And, while his debut film, The Voice Within (1945), meant little to him professionally, it was of great personal significance: on the set, he met the actor Barbara White, to whom he was married for 59 years.

Kieron's escape from cinema - and an opportunity to honour his father's political intensity - came in 1974, when Cafod offered him a six-month sabbatical as an ambassador which stretched to nine years and put him on the other side of the camera. If the documentaries had exposed his writing gene, journalism released it when, in 1983, he joined The Universe, the biggest-selling Catholic newspaper, as associate editor. (Between 1984 and 1986, I worked for him there as reporter, TV critic and feature writer.)

(SNIP)

But, if stubbornness existed in him beyond ordinary human levels, so did kindness. One of his aims at The Universe was to humanise the paper's moral advice column (a sort of "agony nun") beyond the stern reiterations of Vatican law that had been the previous practice. The God he believed in was demanding, but also forgiving.

He encouraged and championed young writers and was later delighted to see former staff turning up in the national papers or the BBC. It gave him great pleasure that Roger Alton, who he had employed to professionalise page designs, became editor of the Observer.


His IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0601476/

[CBHagman]

125. Clive Exton, 77, writer of TV dramas.

You might not know the name, but it's likely most of us have seen some of his work (Poirot, Jeeves & Wooster).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2152805,00.html

His credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0264088/

[CBHagman]

126. Best Supporting Actress Winner Miyoshi Umeki, 78.

The Japanese-born actress is familiar to film fans through her work in Sayonara, for which she won an Oscar, and to stage and movie fans through Flower Drum Song, and of course to TV watchers through her turn as Mrs. Livingston in The Courtship of Eddie's Father.

Note: There's a major plot spoiler for Sayonara in the obituary!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/05/AR2007090501484.html

At the end of World War II, the teenage Ms. Umeki began singing with American G.I. bands at service clubs around Otaru for 90 cents a night. She studied Dinah Shore, Peggy Lee and Doris Day over the radio and herself became a presence on Japanese radio and TV.

Taking the more commercial name of Nancy Umeki, she recorded American pop standards for RCA Japan before arriving in the United States in 1955 and signing with Mercury Records. A recurring engagement on Arthur Godfrey's television show brought her to the attention of Joshua Logan, director of "Sayonara."

(SNIP)

Ms. Umeki completely withdrew from public life after "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" ended its run. She co-owned and operated a business renting editing equipment to film studios and university film programs before moving to Missouri from North Hollywood, Calif., about five years ago. The only time she performed was about four months ago, when she taught her granddaughter a Japanese song.

[TahitiNut]

128. As an adolescent, I fell in love with her at first sight.

Her part in Sayonara did more for Japanese-American relations than any ambassador, imho. RIP, Miyoshi-san.

[CBHagman]

129. Academy Award-winning actress Jane Wyman, 93.

Classic film buffs will remember her as the resilient Belinda, the deaf-mute heroine of Johnny Belinda, the role that brought her the Best Actress Oscar. Prime-time soap fans will remember her as matriarch Angela Channing on Falcon Crest.

Note the interesting quote regarding her relationship with Ronald Reagan!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/10/AR2007091000845.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Reagan became increasingly active in politics as his wife's career climbed. When she divorced him, she testified: "Politics built a barrier between us. I tried to make his interests mine, but finally there was nothing to sustain our marriage."

Wyman continued making prestigious films such as "The Glass Menagerie," Alfred Hitchcock's "Stage Fright," "Here Comes the Groom" (with Bing Crosby). Two tearjerkers, "The Blue Veil" (1951) and "Magnificent Obsession" (1954), brought her Oscar nominations as best actress.

Other film credits include: "So Big," "Lucy Gallant," "All That Heaven Allows," "Miracle in the Rain," "Holiday for Lovers," "Pollyanna" and "Bon Voyage!"

[Longhorn]

130. I read in another article that she was a Republican. Wasn't Reagan

a Democrat first? Maybe that's when they disagreed.

[CBHagman]

131. Character actress Alice Ghostley, age 81.

I'm saddened to report the death of stage, film, and TV actress Alice Ghostley, age 81. It's pretty safe bet most of us (in the U.S., at least) have seen her in something, whether it's a sitcom or a movie. If you've ever seen Classic Arts Showcase, you might have caught footage of her singing "The Boston Beguine."

Obituary:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jOssXAwFOoijv8Obpm04bKY_2Z2A

Ghostley made her Broadway debut in "Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952." She received critical acclaim for singing "The Boston Beguine," which became her signature song.

Miles Kreuger, president of the Los Angeles-based Institute of the American Musical, said part of Ghostley's charm was that she was not glamorous.

"She was rather plain and had a splendid singing voice, and the combination of the well-trained, splendid singing voice and this kind of dowdy homemaker character was so incongruous and so charming," Kreuger said.

In the 1960s, Ghostley received a Tony nomination for various characterizations in the Broadway comedy "The Beauty Part" and eventually won for best featured actress in "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window."

From 1969 to 1972, she played the good witch and ditzy housekeeper Esmeralda on TV's "Bewitched." She played Bernice Clifton on "Designing Women" from 1987 to 1993, for which she earned an Emmy nomination in 1992.

Ghostley's film credits include "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Graduate," "Gator" and "Grease."

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0315933/

[vireo]

132. Paul Lynde co-starred with her in "New Faces"

They were mutual fans and shared a similar comic persona.

[CBHagman]

133. MGM choreographer Alex Romero, 94.

His obituary:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-romero18sep18,0,1353453.story?coll=la-home-obituaries

A gracefully athletic dancer, Romero got his start in movies in the early 1940s. He was a featured dancer in "On the Town," a 1949 film that starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. He also performed in the 1951 film "An American in Paris," which also starred Kelly.

He worked as an assistant choreographer before he went out on his own. His earliest solo credits include "The Affairs of Dobie Gillis," starring Bobby Van and Debbie Reynolds in 1953.

Romero was named staff choreographer for MGM in the late 1940s and held the position for almost 20 years.

"Alex was the last link to the Golden Age of movie musicals," said Larry Billman, author of the encyclopedia "Film Choreographers and Dance Directors" (1997). "Fortunately, before Alex left he moved movie choreography into the next generation."

[CBHagman]

134. Actor Percy Rodrigues, 89.

Like Diahann Carroll, he broke new ground for actors of color when he was cast as a professional in a television series.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2007/09/14/percy_rodrigues_in_vanguard_of_black_actors_in_television/

Percy Rodrigues, whose role as a neurosurgeon on the 1960s television series "Peyton Place" broke ground because he was cast as an authority figure when relatively few black actors were given such parts, has died. He was 89.

(SNIP)

With a booming voice and a commanding presence, Mr. Rodrigues came to Hollywood in the 1960s from Broadway and "respectfully fought for these more dignified roles," his wife said. "He was most proud of that."


IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0735471/

[displacedtexan]

135. Miss Moneypenny has died (Lois Maxwell)

Lois Maxwell, Canadian-born Moneypenny, dies at 80

Played the coy secretary in 14 Bond films
Sep 30, 2007 11:01 AM
THE CANADIAN PRESS

LONDON – Actress Lois Maxwell, who starred as Miss Moneypenny in 14 James Bond movies, has died, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported Sunday. She was 80.

The Canadian-born actress starred alongside Sean Connery in the first James Bond movie, Dr No, in 1962 as the secretary to M, the head of the secret service.

She died Saturday night at Fremantle Hospital near her home in Perth, Australia, the BBC cited a hospital official as saying.

Bond star Roger Moore said she had been suffering from cancer. (More at the link)

Sad.

[CBHagman]

136. Stage, TV, and film actor George Grizzard, 79.

George Grizzard, noted for his work on the Broadway stage, particularly in the plays of Edward Albee, has died.

Some obituaries:

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/11762

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=278129&affid=100055

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/theater/03grizzard.html

Mr. Grizzard’s career began in the 1950s and lasted more than 50 years. He had roles in movies and was a familiar face on television. But it was in the theater that he thrived, particularly in Mr. Albee’s plays. He appeared in the original 1962 Broadway production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Mr. Albee’s seething drama of marital strife. More than 30 years later, he won a Tony Award for his performance in a revival of another Albee drama, “A Delicate Balance.”

(SNIP)

His occasional film roles included a bullying United States senator in “Advise and Consent” (1962), based on the novel by Allen Drury; a kindly doctor in “Happy Birthday, Wanda June” (1971), by Kurt Vonnegut, and a Western oilman in “Comes a Horseman” (1978). In 2000, he and Elaine Stritch played a wealthy couple in Woody Allen’s “Small Time Crooks.”

On television, Mr. Grizzard made regular appearances on series like “Law & Order.” He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance as John Adams in “The Adams Chronicles,” a 13-part historical saga on PBS in 1976, and won an Emmy starring with Henry Fonda in “The Oldest Living Graduate.” That drama, broadcast live on NBC in 1980, was the story of a father-son struggle over property.

Credits at IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0342732/

[CBHagman]

137. God rest the soul of DEBORAH KERR.

I'm sorry to report that the great Deborah Kerr, a Scottish-born actress who graced many classic movies, has died. She was one of the very last of the greats of the American classic film era.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/arts/19kerr.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Throughout her career, Miss Kerr worked at being unpredictable. She was believable as a steadfast nun in Black Narcissus; as the love-hungry wife of an empty-headed army captain stationed at Pearl Harbor in “From Here to Eternity”; as a headmaster’s spouse who sleeps with an 18-year-old student to prove to him that he is a man in “Tea and Sympathy”; as a spunky schoolmarm not afraid to joust and dance with the King of Siam in “The King and I”; as a Salvation Army lass in “Major Barbara”; and even as Portia, the Roman matron married to Brutus, in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”

She could be virginal, ethereal, gossamer and fragile, or earthy, spicy and suggestive, and sometimes she managed to display all her skills at the same time.

Miss Kerr made “From Here to Eternity” even though Harry Cohn, chief of Columbia Pictures in that era, had wanted Joan Crawford in the part and had to be persuaded to accept Miss Kerr. She regarded the role as the high point in her climb to stardom in the United States, and it yielded her second Academy Award nomination.

Her cerdits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000039/

[terrya]

139. I recently rented "Black Narcissus" from Netflix.

And I'm glad I did. It's a fabulous film...directed by Michael Powell. And, as always, Deborah Kerr was simply superb.

This is very sad news. One of my favorite actresses.

:-(

[Matilda]

140. She did a fine body of work, one that any actress could be proud of.

Thank the Lord that Joan Crawford didn't do "From Here to Eternity" - she was way too obvious.

I always thought that however ladylike her character, she was incredibly sexy underneath. And a
nice touch for sophisticated comedy as well as being able to handle heavy drama.

Some of my personal favourites were "The Innocents", "The King and I", "From Here to Eternity",
"Edward My Son", the early "I See A Dark Stranger", and two light pieces with Cary Grant: "Dream
Wife" and "An Affair to Remember" - the last two weren't demanding, but the light touch of both
leads was a joy to watch.

R.I.P. Deborah (fellow Libran).

[CBHagman]

138. Singer Teresa Brewer.

Didn't they use her recording of "The Wheel of Fortune" in L.A. Confidential?

Obituaries:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/arts/18brewer.html

Ms. Brewer recorded nearly 600 songs. Her public recognition was heightened by many television appearances with personalities like Ed Sullivan, Mel Tormé, Perry Como, Arthur Godfrey and Tony Bennett and engagements at leading nightclubs.

John S. Wilson, writing in The New York Times in 1982, characterized Ms. Brewer, a veritable porcelain doll in appearance in her early career, as having an “urgent, high-pitched voice that seems to curl up at the end of a note.”

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jj4yj37U9DWYfLMh8iNpt2MokknA



Credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0108235/#soundtrack

[CBHagman]

141. Bobby Mauch, actor, who co-starred with his twin brother, Billy.

Robert Mauch, an actor who starred opposite his twin brother, William, during their movie acting career, has died. He was 86.

I am embarrassed to report that I missed the news of his twin's death. Billy Mauch died almost exactly a year ago.

Among the boys' popular movies was a screen adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper. Raise your hand if you've seen that one!

An entertaining New York Times obituary, while it's still posted

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/movies/25mauch.html?em&ex=1193457600&en=2b7fe18cf748398f&ei=5087%0A


Here are the boys on the cover of Time magazine:

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19370503,00.html

[lavenderdiva]

142. raising my hand here!

I saw 'The Prince and the Pauper' when I was a young girl, and I really enjoyed it at the time. I can't believe its been that long ago!

[Matilda]

143. Me too.

It pops up regularly here on TCM.

It's quite well done, I think, but I have to confess I knew nothing of
the twins who took the leads. They did a very good job, though.

[CBHagman]

144. Actress Laraine Day, 87.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-day12nov12,0,1499333.story?coll=la-home-obituaries

The actress made more than four dozen films from the late 1930s to 1960, working opposite such luminaries as Ayres, Cary Grant, Robert Mitchum, Lana Turner, John Wayne, Spencer Tracy, Joel McCrea and Kirk Douglas.

In addition to the Kildare series, she demonstrated solid acting ability in such films as Alfred Hitchcock's noir "Foreign Correspondent" and her personal favorites, 1943's "Mr. Lucky" with Grant and the 1946 psychological drama "The Locket" with Mitchum.

[CBHagman]

145. Oscar-winning director Delbert Mann, 87.

:cry:

More sad news. The director Delbert Mann has died. He is perhaps best known for the classic Marty, a postwar romance about an Italian-American butcher (Ernest Borgnine) who meets an unassuming schoolteacher (Betsy Blair) during one awkward night on the town.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-mann13nov13,1,3681845.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

Describing Mann as "the quietest, most wonderful guy," Borgnine said he "was the kind of director that you get home at night and say to yourself, 'Gee, I gave a pretty good performance' without realizing that he was the guy that got it out of you."

Recalling the filming of "Marty," Borgnine said that "we just enjoyed ourselves working, and never made it hard for anybody. It happened so easily and nicely."

Actress Eva Marie Saint, who appeared in numerous live and filmed TV productions directed by Mann, said Monday that he "was just a prince of a guy."

"You never heard a word against Delbert," Saint said. "He was wonderful on the set. He was so patient, and you take your cue from the director, so it was a quiet set.

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0542720/

[CBHagman]

146. TCM has a wonderful retrospective...

The station has started running its year-end "TCM Remembers" spots between programming, and in it are clips and/or stills of various notables who died during 2007 -- directors ranging from Bob Clark to Ingmar Bergman; actresses such as Deborah Kerr, Miyoshi Umeki, and Jane Wyman; composers; at least one film critic; and many more. They've chosen some great images, too.

[CBHagman]

147. The great choreographer Michael Kidd.

Oh, no. I'm sorry to report this one, even if the guy had a long life and a fruitful career. Michael Kidd, choreographer of both Broadway and Hollywood, has died.



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/arts/dance/25kidd.html?hp

His initial effort as a Broadway choreographer was “Finian’s Rainbow,” the Burton Lane-E. Y. Harburg fantasy that mixed social significance with an oversize leprechaun. It brought Mr. Kidd the first of his five Tony Awards.

His next few shows did not fare as well. But he hit the jackpot in 1950, when Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls,” one of the theater’s greatest musicals, opened on Broadway. It brought Mr. Kidd his second Tony, based on his choreography for the numbers “A Bushel and a Peck” and “Take Back Your Mink,” the “Luck Be a Lady” crap game in a sewer, and the Havana nightclub dancing duel and brawl.

Then he was lured to Hollywood. His first film as choreographer was the 1952 adaptation of the Frank Loesser hit Broadway musical “Where’s Charley?” starring Ray Bolger in a repeat of his Broadway role. Mr. Kidd’s first big success in films came with the Fred Astaire musical “The Band Wagon” in 1953. The film, with songs by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, included the now-famous “Girl Hunt Ballet” with Astaire and Cyd Charisse, a spoof on the hard-boiled private eye stories of Mickey Spillane, and the lyrical “Dancing in the Dark,” in which Astaire courts Charisse in Central Park.

Astaire asked that Mr. Kidd be hired to choreograph the film and stage the dances, reportedly because he was nervous about the ballet. Mr. Kidd later said that to make Astaire comfortable, he went to rehearsals and pretended that he was just making up the steps spontaneously.


Internet Movie Database credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0452264/



And if you haven't got a copy of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers handy, watch this YouTube excerpt and see if it doesn't make you want to catch it the next time it's on TCM.

Fortunately the clip is in letter box format, so you get all the dancers (but still make plans to watch it on the big screen or TV). That daredevil dancer in the red shirt is Tommy Rall, and Jacques D'Amboise is the guy in green. Russ Tamblyn is in blue, and Marc Platt's wearing purple.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCdiWxzw0RU

If you've lucky enough to have the two-disc DVD set of SBFSB, you can watch Michael Kidd's commentary on creation of the dance numbers. He's a hoot.

[CBHagman]

148. Jazz great Oscar Peterson.

The Canadian jazz pianist died on Sunday.

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=16484

Peterson showed technical and emotional brilliance across the jazz spectrum, from bop to blues, and his chief piano influences were astonishingly different -- Art Tatum, a master of jaw-droppingly fast swing, as well as Nat King Cole, the legendarily tender balladeer.


IMDB credits, including soundtracks:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0677328/

[CBHagman]

149. Producer Frank Capra Jr., son of legendary director.

Mr. Capra worked with his father on A Pocket Full of Miracles and also directed television shows such as Gunsmoke. In recent years he helped establish North Carolina as a filmmaking location.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/710405,CST-NWS-xcapr23.article

Mr. Capra was one of three children of Frank Capra and Lucille Rayburn Warner Capra, who tried to protect her children from the Hollywood life. Still, he could tell stories about dinners with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, and said he was best friends with Gary Cooper's daughter Maria.

Mr. Capra said his father had no idea he was making a classic when filming ''It's a Wonderful Life,'' which starred Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore.

''I don't think any filmmaker knows that,'' he said. ''He loved the idea of the story. He fell in love with that idea of the story about a man who could see the world the way it would have been had he never been born.''

Mr. Capra said his father described the movie as ''the picture I was born to make,'' and held no resentment that he didn't earn any money from its repetitive showings on television during the Christmas season.


His obituary from Variety:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978076.html?categoryid=25&cs=1

[CBHagman]

150. An overview of cultural figures we lost in 2007.

The Washington Post link has a five-page (!) article, plus an online slide show, concerning the writers, musicians, actors, and other cultural figures who died this year. See the link below:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/31/AR2007123101923.html

You can also check out the TCM Remembers videos at YouTube.

[CBHagman]

151. Screenwriter James Costigan ("Love Among the Ruins").

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/arts/television/05costigan.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin


A three-time Emmy winner, Mr. Costigan was perhaps best known for the television film “Love Among the Ruins.” Directed by George Cukor, it starred Ms. Hepburn and Mr. Olivier as two aging ex-lovers. Mr. Costigan’s original screenplay won an Emmy in 1975.

Mr. Costigan earned another Emmy the next year for the television film “Eleanor and Franklin.” An adaptation of the biography by Joseph P. Lash, it starred Jane Alexander and Edward Herrmann. Mr. Costigan also wrote the screenplay for the sequel, “Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years,” broadcast in 1977.

Mr. Costigan’s first Emmy came in 1959, for his original screenplay “Little Moon of Alban,” an episode of “Hallmark Hall of Fame.” The story of a romance between an Irish nurse and an English soldier, it starred Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer, and also featured Mr. Costigan, who had begun his career as an actor.

If you visit the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., at this time, you'll see an exhibit on Katharine Hepburn. Among the features are video clips from her career, and among the highlights is a scene from Love Among the Ruins, which I think is currently unavailable on DVD.

[CBHagman]

152. Joe Ames, eldest of the singing Ames Brothers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/arts/17ames.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

Mr. Ames and his brothers Ed, Gene and Vic were one of the most popular quartets in the years before the popularity of rock ’n’ roll. They had eight gold records, including international hits like “The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane.”

Born Joseph Urick on May 3, 1921, in Malden, Mass., he was one of nine surviving children of impoverished immigrants from Ukraine.

The four boys began singing at local events as the Urick Brothers, won several Boston-area amateur contests and turned professional while in their 20s. Along the way, they changed their name to the Ames Brothers.

A singer with more than a three-octave range, Joe Ames loved opera and at one point was offered a spot with the Metropolitan Opera’s touring company.

[CBHagman]

153. TV and movie actress Suzanne Pleshette.

The veteran actress had lost her husband, fellow actor and sometime costar Tom Poston, last year.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-pleshette20jan20,0,4334839.story?coll=la-home-center

A stage-trained New York actress who made her movie debut in the 1958 Jerry Lewis comedy "The Geisha Boy," Pleshette appeared in such films as "The Birds," "Nevada Smith," "Youngblood Hawke," "A Rage to Live" and "Fate Is the Hunter."

(SNIP)

Among her screen credits are "40 Pounds of Trouble," "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," "Support Your Local Gunfighter," "The Shaggy D.A.," "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin," "The Ugly Dachshund" and "Blackbeard's Ghost."

Pleshette, however, is best remembered for playing what New York Times critic Frank Rich once described as "the sensible yet woolly wife" on "The Bob Newhart Show," which ran from 1972 to 1978. Her role as Emily earned her two Emmy nominations.

Read the rest of the obit. She sounds like a real character.



That's Ms. Pleshette in the lower right-hand corner.

Her IMDB credits, which range from Hitchcock to Will and Grace.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0687189/

[Matilda]

155. I remember her best from the Newhart shows.

She did a lot of inconsequential film and television, but the Newhart shows were very funny, and
she was good.

[CBHagman]

154. Character actor Allan Melvin.

Perhaps best known for his contributions to cartoon voices (see list from IMDB, below) and his recurring role as Sam the butcher, Alice's (Ann B. Davis) tactless but good-hearted steady boyfriend, on The Brady Bunch, Mr. Melvin also appeared on Broadway in Stalag 17. In addition, he was a regular on The Phil Silvers Show.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/obituaries/general/view.bg?articleid=1067645

The jowly, jovial Melvin spent decades playing a series of sidekicks, second bananas and lovable lugs, including Archie Bunker’s friend Barney Hefner on "All in the Family," and Sgt. Bilko’s right-hand man Cpl. Henshaw on the "Phil Silvers Show."


Credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0578510/

[CBHagman]

156. Actor Barry Morse of "The Fugitive."

Mr. Morse, who had numerous TV, radio, stage, and film credits, was 89 years old.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/arts/05morse.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

The slim, angular-faced Mr. Morse was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and played hundreds of roles on stage and screen in his seven-decade career but never quite escaped his role in “The Fugitive.” As Lt. Philip Gerard, he hounded David Janssen as Richard Kimble, the doctor from the fictional town of Stafford, Ind., who was convicted on flimsy evidence of murdering his wife. For 120 episodes, from 1963 through 1967, Lieutenant Gerard pursued Dr. Kimble, who had escaped — on the lieutenant’s watch — when the train taking him to death row derailed. The innocent doctor’s only hope was finding the real killer, a one-armed man.

(SNIP)

For years after the series ended, Mr. Morse joked that “he was the most hated man in America,” Mr. Wood said of his friend on Monday. “Little old ladies would come up to him in airports and whack at him with their purses, screaming, ‘Why didn’t you leave that man alone?’”


“When Barry went into a restaurant or a hotel,” Mr. Wood continued, “people would say, ‘Oh, you just missed him, lieutenant; he went that-a-way.’” :rofl:

[CBHagman]

157. Swedish actress Eva Dahlbeck ("Smiles of a Summer Night"

The lady had a memorable scene in The Secrets of Women, which I regard as a must-see, even if it's not the first Bergman film that comes to mind when people make their best-of lists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020803841.html

Ms. Dahlbeck might be best remembered for "Smiles of a Summer Night" (1955), which has endeared itself to generations of filmgoers for its delicate comic touches and delirious romanticism.

The film helped launch Bergman's international reputation. Ms. Dahlbeck played a central role as a stage actress of advancing years who manipulates her two pompous lovers, a lawyer (Gunnar Bjornstrand) and a military officer (Jarl Kulle).

(SNIP)

In her Bergman films, Ms. Dahlbeck was cast opposite Bjornstrand several times. She was often the woman of strong intelligence and wise understanding, and Bjornstrand, her immature other half, was well-deserving of a comeuppance.

Besides "Smiles of a Summer Night," they were paired in the marital dramas "Secrets of Women" (1952) and "A Lesson in Love" (1954), as well as "Dreams" (1955), in which she was an introspective fashion editor and he a married man with whom she has an affair.

[CBHagman]

158. Joyce Carlson, Disney artist.

She worked both in the animation and imagineering departments, and was particularly famous for her work on "It's a Small World." I'll never forget seeing THAT at the World's Fair.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978444.html?categoryId=25&cs=1

Carlson was the first woman in the Walt Disney Company to reach both the 50- and 55-year service milestones, and was made a Disney Legend in 2000.

[CBHagman]

159. Stage and screen actor Roy Scheider, 75.

Oh, I hate this. I went into the Lounge and saw the thread indicating that Roy Scheider had died, and then I went to The New York Times website to confirm it. God rest his soul.

For about a month after I saw All That Jazz, I went around saying, "It's showtime, folks!" Only I didn't pop the pills or use the eyedrops (or, for that matter, smoke the cigarettes).



Obituary from The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/movies/11scheider.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I didn't know the following:

Living in Sag Harbor, Mr. Scheider continued to appear in films and lend his voice to documentaries, becoming, Ms. Seimer said, increasingly politically active. With the poet Kathy Engle, he helped to found the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, dedicated to creating an innovative, culturally diverse learning environment for local children. At the time of his death, Mr. Scheider was involved in a project to build a film studio in Florence, Italy, for a series about the history of the Renaissance.

His credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001702/

[CBHagman]

160. Film composer Leonard Rosenman, 83.

New York Time obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/arts/06rosenman.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin


He earned two Oscars for musical adaptation: for “Barry Lyndon” (1975), which drew on music by Handel, Schubert and others; and “Bound for Glory” (1976), based on Woody Guthrie songs.

With the composers Bernard Herrmann and Alex North, Mr. Rosenman was widely credited with bringing film music — long awash in Tchaikovsky-inflected Romanticism — squarely into the 20th century. For “The Cobweb” (1955), Mr. Rosenman wrote what is believed to be the first major Hollywood score to draw heavily on 12-tone techniques. (Most closely associated with the composer Arnold Schoenberg, 12-tone composition is an atonal method that involves using all 12 notes of the musical scale in equal proportion. The result is rarely considered hummable.)

For “Fantastic Voyage” (1966), one of Mr. Rosenman’s most highly regarded scores, he wrote urgent, atonal music that some listeners compared favorably to the work of Alban Berg.

Credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006260/

[terrya]

161. Director Anthony Minghella, 54

Director of "The English Patient" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley", among others.

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/ap/20080318/120585720000.html

[CBHagman]

166. A tribute from actress Juliet Stevenson.

An affectionate and admiring look at working with Anthony Minghella:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article3584993.ece

The obituaries so far have focused on his directing; no one is talking about his writing and in my view he was one of our greatest writers. In Truly, Madly, Deeply he understood that the rhythms of human speech connect to complicated internal loss. The dialogue is extraordinarily rhythmic, coming from the heart, head and the mouth. With beautiful music, it’s the same thing: so many emotions can be elicited in one movement. Ant understood that people write in sentences but rarely speak or think in sentences and so wrote films that are complex maps of how we experience ourselves, relationships and language. It was a great gift.

(SNIP)

On a film set, the machinery and hardware are usually central, but on Truly, Madly, Deeply he made the actors and characters the emotional centre of the set. So if you were supposed to be grief-stricken, the whole crew was tuned to that. If you and Alan Rickman were dancing around, the whole crew would be dancing to bebop. He created this atmosphere and made everyone feel extraordinary. He had an intense curiosity for people and was attuned to, and interested in, their foibles, frailties and idiosyncrasies. Whatever your status on the set he brought you in and invested in you. People would do anything for him. He was very unjudgmental.

[CBHagman]

162. Academy Award-winning director Anthony Minghella, 54.

It grieves me to report the most untimely death of Anthony Minghella, director of The English Patient, Cold Mountain, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Truly, Madly, Deeply. God rest his soul.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Obit-Minghella.html?hp

''The English Patient,'' the 1996 World War II drama, won nine Academy Awards, including best director for Minghella, best picture and best supporting actress for Juliette Binoche.

Based on the celebrated novel by Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje, the movie tells of a burn victim's tortured recollections of his misdeeds in time of war.

Minghella (pronounced min-GELL'-ah) also was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay for the movie and for his screenplay for ''The Talented Mr. Ripley.''

His 2003 ''Cold Mountain,'' based on Charles Frazier's novel of the U.S. Civil War, brought a best supporting actress Oscar for Renee Zellweger.

The 1999 ''The Talented Mr. Ripley,'' starring Matt Damon as a murderous social climber, was based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith. It earned five Oscar nominations.

His IMDB credits.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005237/

I notice that he was filming New York, I Love You, which intrigues me, because I had just finished telling a friend the other night about Paris, je t'aime, last year's feature showcasing short films by various directors. Each brief film featured a different arrondissement of Paris. It's the sort of project that really ought to be duplicated all around the world, and apparently that's what they were doing with New York, I Love You.

[CBHagman]

163. Actor-director-producer Ivan Dixon, 76.

Mr. Dixon was not only famous for playing one of the POWs in TV's Hogan's Heroes but also for his stage and screen work.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_8618645

Dixon began his acting career on Broadway in plays including "The Cave Dwellers" and "A Raisin in the Sun." On film, he appeared in "Something of Value," "A Raisin in the Sun," "A Patch of Blue," "Nothing But a Man" and the cult favorite "Car Wash."

But he was probably best known for the role of U.S. Staff Sgt. James Kinchloe on "Hogan's Heroes," a satire set in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Kinchloe, in charge of electronic communications, could mimic German officers on the radio or phone.

While her father was most proud of work in plays such as "A Raisin in the Sun" and for films such as "Nothing But a Man," he had no mixed feelings about being recognized for the role of Kinchloe, his daughter said.

"It was a pivotal role as well, because there were not as many blacks in TV series at that time," Nomathande Dixon said. "He did
personal issues with that role, but it also launched him into directing."


Credits, as per IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0228853/

[CBHagman]

164. Paul Scofield, Best Actor winner for "A Man for All Seasons."

Okay, folks, I need a happier hobby. Word has come that the British actor Paul Scofield has died of leukemia. Movie lovers will remember him as Mark Van Doren in Quiz Show, the French king in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Henry V, and of course Saint Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

What a lovely voice he had. He sounds like a class act, too, from what I've read of him.

The Guardian obituary:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2266795,00.html

Scofield was appointed a CBE in 1956 after an appearance in Peter Brook's Hamlet, in Moscow.

But he more than once rejected a knighthood, saying he wanted to remain "plain Mister".

"If you want a title, what's wrong with Mr? If you have always been that, then why lose your title? But it's not political. I have a CBE, which I accepted very gratefully."

Although scrupulously polite, he was also known for shunning the press and he disliked parties and film premieres. A private man, he enjoyed walking in the area around his home in Balcombe, West Sussex, and at his holiday home in Scotland.


Credits on IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006890/


With Leo McKern


With Katharine Hepburn

[Matilda]

170. Oh my! I only saw this here today.

Not a mention in Sydney papers, although they're often slow with obits.

A very, very good actor - I guess I'll remember him most for "A Man For
All Seasons" - a beautifully honed performance.

I'm also rather pleased that he refused a knighthood - they're becoming
so cheap these days, that those who refuse are the ones who stand out
from the crowd. (I totally went off Sean Connery when he accepted his
knighthood in spite of trumpeting his support for autonomous rule for
Scotland. Hypocrite).

[CBHagman]

165. Actor Brian Wilde of "Last of the Summer Wine."

Obituary from the Guardian newspaper:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/mar/20/television4

Wilde had minor roles in films such as Carry On Doctor, but it was on the small screen that he became a household name in two of the BBC's best-known sitcoms.

He appeared in more than 100 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine, co-starring with Bill Owen and Peter Sallis, and appeared opposite Ronnie Barker in Porridge.

Last of the Summer Wine producer Alan JW Bell told the BBC: "He was perhaps the best of the Summer Wine 'third men' - he was the most loved of all the characters.

As fond as I am of Peter Sallis (Clegg) and as much as Bill Owen (Compo) eventually grew on me, I have a soft spot for Foggy. I like anyone who tries to maintain dignity in the face of ghastly humiliation.

Foggy stands to attention before Saint Peter.

[terrya]

167. Actor Richard Widmark

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obit_widmark

[CBHagman]

168. Thanks, terrya.

My co-worker just e-mailed me the news. What did we do before the Internet? Oh, yeah, listen to the radio and watch the newsreels...

[CBHagman]

169. A classic example of why you never confuse an actor w/the role.

For all that he played scary, violent types, Widmark was apparently a good egg.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/arts/26cnd-widmark.html?hp

“Movie audiences fasten on to one aspect of the actor, and then they decide what they want you to be,” Mr. Widmark once said. “They think you’re playing yourself. The truth is that the only person who can ever really play himself is a baby.”

In reality, the screen’s most vicious psychopath was a mild-mannered former teacher who had married his college sweetheart, the actress Jean Hazelwood, and who told a reporter 48 years later that he had never been unfaithful and had never even flirted with women because, he said, “I happen to like my wife a lot.”

[Lydia Leftcoast]

171. Director Jules Dassin, 96

American film director Jules Dassin has died in an Athens hospital after a short illness, at the age of 96.

Blacklisted in Hollywood after WWII, he went to Europe where he married the late Greek actress and later culture minister Melina Mercouri.

She starred in Mr Dassin's most famous film, Never on Sunday.

After her death in 1994, Mr Dassin fought to realise her main goal: the return of the Parthenon, or Elgin, marbles from Britain to Greece.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7323746.stm

[CBHagman]

172. The Washington Post ran a good obituary this morning.

It's quite an engaging article and touches on Dassin's upbringing, politics, and difficulty in fitting in both at home and abroad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/31/AR2008033101550.html

Mr. Dassin, who briefly had been a member of the Communist Party in the mid-1930s, went into self-imposed exile in Europe. He returned to acclaim with "Rififi" (1955), a heist-gone-wrong movie for which he won a best director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Director Francois Truffaut, then a film critic, wrote: "Out of the worst crime novel I have ever read, Jules Dassin has made the best film noir I have ever seen."

The film's reputation has grown because of the extended jewel-robbery sequence, done entirely in silence, that inspired similar scenes in films by Brian De Palma, Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh.

It also influenced Dassin's own raffish heist comedy "Topkapi" (1964), set in Istanbul and starring Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov and Mr. Dassin's future wife, Melina Mercouri.

A list of Mr. Dassin's credits.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0202088/

[CBHagman]

173. You've probably heard about Charlton Heston.

Breaking News contains a thread on the death of actor Charlton Heston, age 84.

The first thing that comes to mind, aside from Ben Hur, is his appearance in the Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine, in which he is shown holding up a gun before the National Rifle Association and also sitting down to talk with the filmmaker. I found Heston's stance on guns abhorrent (though he does get credit for his progressive stance on civil rights), but I liked him better for having chosen to appear in the Moore film. The diagnosis of Alzheimer's had already been made, I believe, and Heston was looking frailer, so doing the film appearance was something he could have easily brushed off.

I'd also note that Heston made a version of A Man for All Seasons that adhered more closely to the stage play.

Heston's obituary from the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/la-me-heston6apr06,0,3675317.story


His credits, as per IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000032/


In Ben-Hur


With Richard Boone in The War Lord

[lavenderdiva]

174. I'm glad you made mention of his appearance in Moore's film-

I read of his passing in the Houston Chronicle this morning, and noticed the glaring absence of any mention of that appearance. I found it interesting, that in this article about his life and death, they include much more about his political life (and conversion from Dem to Repub) than is included in the LA Times article-

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5678119.html

[CBHagman]

175. Michael Moore also has a portrait of Heston on his website.

The portrait is up as of today, Monday, April 7th.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

[CBHagman]

176. Disney animator Ollie Johnston, 95.

He was one of the legendary artists of the Disney studios and created an amazing body of work.

http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2008/04/ollie-johnston.html

You may not know Ollie Johnston's name or face, but you've seen his acting — it's been all but imprinted in your DNA since childhood. Johnston, who died Monday at 95, was the last of the "Nine Old Men," the animators responsible for the classic Disney cartoon features made from the 1930s to the 1970s. They invented the model for how animated features should be made, and each of them took on specific characters in the movie and acted the roles through their drawings. Johnston, in particular, was revered among animators for his emotional directness, from the scene of Bambi's mother's death in Bambi to the plight of the kidnapped orphan Penny in The Rescuers.

His IMDB credits:

http://imdb.com/name/nm0426508/

The Frank and Ollie site:

http://www.frankandollie.com/default.html

[CBHagman]

177. Abby Mann, 80, screenwriter for "Judgment at Nuremberg"

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mann28mar28,0,220698.story

During his more than 50-year career as a writer, producer and director, Mann built a strong reputation for his issue-oriented, thought-provoking projects. A multiple Emmy winner, Mann was especially critical of the inner workings of the American criminal justice system. He was known for creating complex characters and was scrupulous in his investigative research.

TV and film credits. Note "Robert Montgomery Presents," DUers!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0542631/

[Omaha Steve]

178. `Scream queen' Hazel Court dies at 82 in California

Marta and I met Hazel back in 04. Wonderful lady.


http://apnews.excite.com/article/20080417/D903J4800.html

Apr 17, 7:15 AM (ET)


In this 1958 file photo, actress Hazel Court is shown. Court, an English beauty who co-starred with the likes of Boris Karloff and Vincent Price in popular horror movies of the 1950s and '60s, has died. Court died, Tuesday, April 15, 2008, at her home near Lake Tahoe from a heart attack, her daughter, Sally Walsh of Los Angeles, said Wednesday. She was 82. (AP Photo/file)

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Hazel Court, an English actress who co-starred with the likes of Boris Karloff and Vincent Price in popular horror movies of the 1950s and '60s, has died. She was 82.

Court died early Tuesday of a heart attack at her home near Lake Tahoe, daughter Sally Walsh said Wednesday.

While she had a substantial acting career both in England and on American TV, Court was perhaps best known for her work in such films as 1963's "The Raven." She co-starred with Price, Karloff and Peter Lorre in director Roger Corman's take on the classic Edgar Allan Poe poem.

Corman directed her in five movies. Like other "scream queens" of the era, Court often relied on her cleavage and her ability to shriek in fear and die horrible deaths for her roles.

"The Premature Burial,""The Masque of the Red Death,""The Curse of Frankenstein" and "Devil Girl from Mars" helped propel her to cult status and brought her fan mail even in her later years.

"She'd probably get over 100 pieces of fan mail a month and she would reply to every single one," her daughter said.

Court had finished an autobiography, "Hazel Court - Horror Queen," which will be published in Britain, Walsh said.

The daughter of a professional cricket player, Court was born Feb. 10, 1926, in the English town of Sutton Coldfield. As a teenager, she was appearing in stage productions when she was spotted and signed by the J. Arthur Rank Organisation, which owned movie studios and theaters.

She got her first movie bit part by the time she was 18 and went on to become a popular actress and pinup girl, her daughter said.

"She was one of the great beauties of all time," Walsh said. "She was a redhead with really green eyes and almost ... the perfect face. She was on the cover of almost every magazine."

Court co-starred with Patrick O'Neal in the 1957 British TV comedy series "Dick and the Duchess." In the late 1950s, she came to the United States to work on the TV show "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."

Besides acting, Court was a commissioned sculptor and painter whose works appeared in public galleries.

Court is survived by daughters Walsh and Courtney Taylor, son Jonathan Taylor and stepdaughters Anne Taylor Fleming and Avery Taylor.

(This version CORRECTS 'apply' to 'reply'.)

[CBHagman]

179. Actress Joy Page ("Casablanca").

Ms. Page was featured in one of my favorite sequences in Casablanca, and if you still haven't seen the movie, I'm not going to ruin it for you. But her scenes with Humphrey Bogart are funny and heart-tugging at the same time.

Obit, with movie spoilers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/movies/26page.html?ref=obituaries

A dark-haired beauty, Ms. Page was 17 and a high school senior when she got the role of Annina Brandel in the 1942 Warner Brothers classic “Casablanca,” starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

It's possible she was the last member of the cast (well, at least with a speaking part) who was still with us.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

183. She was 17 when the movie was filmed??

I did not know that.

[CBHagman]

180. Sydney Pollack, director, actor, producer.

I can't print what I said inside when I read the headline about the death of Sydney Pollack. I am so sorry to see him go.

Obituary at The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/movies/26cnd-pollack.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin




Credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001628/

I'm never going to forget that exchange that Pollack, playing Dustin Hoffman's agent, had with the actor in Tootsie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084805/quotes

Michael Dorsey: Are you saying that nobody in New York will work with me?

George Fields: No, no, that's too limited... nobody in Hollywood wants to work with you either. I can't even set you up for a commercial. You played a tomato for 30 seconds - they went a half a day over schedule because you wouldn't sit down.

Michael Dorsey: Of course. It was illogical.

George Fields: YOU WERE A TOMATO. A tomato doesn't have logic. A tomato can't move.

[Matilda]

182. For me, the film I best remember him for was "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

It left me feeling so desolate and depressed, I've never been able to watch it again. But it was a
brilliant effort all round, from the script through the direction, to the acting (especially Jane
Fonda).

[lavenderdiva]

181. Academy Award winning Director Sydney Pollack, age 73

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/movies/26cnd-pollack.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss




snip:

Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 73.

The cause was cancer, said a representative of the family.

[CBHagman]

184. Robert J. Anderson, young George Bailey of It's a Wonderful...

Bob Anderson, a former child actor, has died. He is best remembered for his role in the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life.

http://cbs2.com/local/George.Bailey.Actor.2.743026.html

Robert J. Anderson grew up in Hollywood to a movie family. His introduction to films began when he was literally snatched from his crib by relatives to appear in a movie scene that called for a baby.

Anderson was 7 when he appeared in the 1940 Shirley Temple film "Young People" and went on to appear in other movies such as 1945's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." But he was best known for his role as the young Bailey in Frank Capra's 1946 holiday favorite.

[CBHagman]

185. Visual effects artist Stan Winston.

Mr. Winston received a degree from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville and later trained at the Disney Studios! Pretty much anyone who watches American movies and TV has seen some of his work...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2008/06/stan-winston-de.html

In a career that spanned four decades, Winston worked extensively in television and motion pictures, producing innovative work that was often honored for its artistic and technical achievement. In the early years of his career, during which he worked primarily in television, Winston earned five Emmy nominations from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, winning for Gargoyles and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

Winston won his first Academy Award nomination in 1981 for Heartbeeps, and received another nine nominations – in both makeup and visual effects categories – over the next 20 years. He won a total of four Oscars for Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the groundbreaking Jurassic Park for which he created full-scale animatronic dinosaurs.

Winston received his star on Hollywood ’s Walk of Fame in 2001.

Credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0935644/

[Matilda]

186. Dancer Cyd Charisse.

Cyd Charisse has died at the age of 86, of a heart attack.

"Actress and dancer Cyd Charisse, the long-legged musical movie star who gained fame for her on-screen pairings with Hollywood dance greats Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, has died at 86.

Charisse, a sinuous, athletic performer once described by Astaire as "beautiful dynamite'', died early today of a heart attack at a Los Angeles-area hospital, according to her agent, Scott Stander.

Publicist Gene Schwam said she had only recently celebrated her 60th wedding anniversary with her second husband, singer Tony Martin, whom she married after a romance with millionaire Howard Hughes."


http://www.smh.com.au/news/people/dancer-cyd-charisse-dies-a-hrefhttpwwwsmhcomauphotogallery200806181213468466572htmlbphotosba/2008/06/18/1213468465146.html


I don't think she was much of an actress, but she was a very good dancer, with a great figure and
fabulous legs.

Edited to add IMDb link:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001998/

[CBHagman]

187. I would be remiss if I didn't...

...post something like this.



May she be dancing on a cloud in the heavens.

[CBHagman]

188. More on Cyd Charisse.

James Wolcott's blog at the Vanity Fair website is always good for some deft skewering of politicians and pundits, but this time out he offers a tribute to Charisse and a few bouquets to the sites that have paid tribute since her passing.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott

Now that the Hollywood musical is as extinct a genre as the naughty operetta, there's no room for a new Cyd Charisse, there hasn't been for forty years. Elegant, unpretentious pleasure with a stiletto kick--that was Charisse's trademark, along with an toothy smile that looked as if it could take big bites out of anything it wanted without its owner losing a lick of ladylike poise. Impeccability like hers borders on the immortal.

[CBHagman]

189. American comedian George Carlin.

Folks, I am @*#&?!! sick about this. I really am. I just heard last week that George Carlin was to receive the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Washington, D.C., this fall, and now he's dead.

I saw Carlin speak at the National Press Club a few years back. Despite his well-deserved reputation for irreverence, Carlin spoke with genuine warmth and respect about the nuns who had educated him in Catholic school and about his mother, who was apparently quite the storyteller and humorist herself.

Why does he deserve to be in this forum? Well, he was fixture on variety and talk shows over the decades, and much of his humor was rooted in the absurdity of American life.

So farewell to you, George Carlin, and I hope you're making St. Peter laugh as I type this. Mention the nuns, George, mention the nuns.

Credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0137506/

CNN's obit:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/06/23/carlin.obit/?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

[lavenderdiva]

190. Actress Dody Goodman aged 93

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/23/obit.dodygoodman.ap/index.html

Dody Goodman, the delightfully daffy comedian known for her television appearances on Jack Paar's late-night talk show and as the mother on the soap-opera parody "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," has died at 93.

Goodman died Sunday at Englewood (New Jersey) Hospital and Medical Center, said Joan Adams, a close family friend. The actress had been ill for some time and had lived in the Actors Fund Home in Englewood since October, Adams said.

Goodman, with her pixyish appearance and Southern-tinged, quavery voice, had an eclectic show-business career. She moved easily from stage to television to movies, where she appeared in such popular films as "Grease" and "Grease 2," playing Blanche, the principal's assistant, and in "Splash."

snip:
The actress performed regularly on stage in the 1940s and early '50s as a chorus member in such musicals as "Something for the Boys," "One Touch of Venus," "Laffing Room Only," "Miss Liberty," "Call Me Madam," "My Darlin' Aida" and "Wonderful Town," in which she originated the role of Violet, the streetwalker.

[lavenderdiva]

191. GWTW Actress Evelyn Keys -- aged 91

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5884235.html

snip:
Evelyn Keyes, who played Scarlett O'Hara's younger sister Suellen in "Gone With the Wind" and counted director John Huston and bandleader Artie Shaw among her famous husbands, has died. She was 91.

The actress died July 4 of uterine cancer at her home in Montecito, near Santa Barbara, producer and close friend Allan Glaser said Friday.

snip:
Keyes' personal life often overshadowed her acting career. Besides her often turbulent marriages to Shaw and directors Huston and Charles Vidor, she lived with the flamboyant producer Mike Todd for three years during his preparation and filming of "Around the World in 80 Days." She played a cameo role in the movie and helped on publicity.

Todd sent her to the premiere in Caracas, then called her abruptly from Paris with this message: "Listen, I have to tell you. I've fallen in love with Elizabeth (Taylor)."

"Oh well, nothing lasts forever," she philosophized in 1977. "The good part was that I invested all my money in 'Around the World in 80 Days,' and that set me up for life."

snip:
Among her notable roles: as Robert Montgomery's lover in "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941), the Ruby Keeler role as Al Jolson's wife in "The Jolson Story" (1946), and as Dick Powell's wife in "Mrs. Mike" (1949).

[Matilda]

192. I have to confess...

Evelyn Keyes was a name that I knew from childhood, and one whose face I
always recognised on film - but I could never connect the two. It was
always "oh, yes, her - who is that actress?" Then I'd look for the name
in the cast list at the end, and it was "of course, Evelyn Keyes".

I know she toured Australia at least once in a stage play, because there
is an ad for a play (a drawing-room comedy, IIRC) on the back of one of
my old ballet programs, but I would have been too young to see it. I
must get out my old program box and look for it, just to satisfy my
curiosity.

IMDb link (at time of posting, has not yet recorded her death):

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0450810/

[CBHagman]

193. Swedish actor Stig Olin, 87, father of actress Lena Olin.

Mr. Olin was known for his work in the films of Ingmar Bergman.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071102978.html

Mr. Olin was often cast as a boyish, brash and arrogant character -- even if, as the Swedish press reported, he was considered warm and humorous off the set.

Bergman experts viewed Mr. Olin as the famed writer-director's screen alter ego, an actor capable of portraying strains of affection and sadism often coursing within the same role.

His credits on IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0645041/

[CBHagman]

194. Fred Crane, actor (Brent Tarleton in Gone with the Wind").

It is believed that Fred Crane, age 90, was the last surviving adult male cast member from Gone with the Wind. He and George Reeves played the Tarleton twins, two of Scarlett O'Hara's many suitors.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/24/AR2008082402376.html

More than a decade after his film debut in "Gone With the Wind," Mr. Crane appeared in "The Gay Amigo" (1949), a Cisco Kid western starring Duncan Reynaldo and Leo Carrillo. He also appeared in a number of TV series, including "77 Sunset Strip," "The Twilight Zone," "Peyton Place" and "Hawaiian Eye."

In 1946, he became a part-time announcer with a classical radio station in Los Angeles and began working full time for the station in the mid-1960s. He retired in 1987.

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0186347/

[CBHagman]

195. Don LaFontaine, THE voice of American movie trailers.

Pretty much any hearing American with access to radio, TV, and theatrically released movies knows the voice of Don LaFontaine. I can't believe he's gone, and at only 68.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2008/09/02/don-lafontaine-obit.html

LaFontaine was known as the "king of the movie trailers," having done the trailer voiceover for films such as Terminator, Fatal Attraction, Cheaper by the Dozen, Batman Returns and his personal favourite, The Elephant Man.

His baritone voice and melodramatic delivery are famously associated with the oft-repeated movie trailer phrase, "In a world…"

Mr. LaFontaine's website:

http://www.donlafontaine.com/DLF2007/Intro.html

[lavenderdiva]

196. I loved him in his recent Geico commercial!

I heard about his passing today, and was surprised, given his young age of 68. His voice and delivery will be missed.

[CBHagman]

197. Veteran animator Bill Melendez, 91.

I knew him, of course, from the much-loved "Peanuts" animated specials, but it turns out he had a very interesting and far-reaching career in animation. It sounds as though he was a nice guy, too.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-melendez4-2008sep04,0,148485.story

Born in Sonora, Mexico, Nov. 15, 1916, Melendez moved with his family to Arizona in 1928, then to Los Angeles, where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute. He was one of the few Latinos working in animation when he began his career at Walt Disney Studios in 1939, contributing to the features "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," "Bambi" and "Dumbo," as well as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck shorts.

Melendez was an active participant in the bitterly fought strike that led to the unionization of the Disney artists in 1941, after which he moved to Schlesinger Cartoons, animating Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and other classic Warner Bros. characters.

In 1948, Melendez joined United Productions of America and was delighted by the company's innovative approach to animation. "The animation we were doing was not limited, but stylized," he recalled in a 1986 interview. "When you analyze Chaplin's shorts, you realize people don't move that way -- he stylized his movements. We were going to do the same thing for animation. We were going to animate the work of Cobean, Steinberg -- all the great cartoonists of the moment -- and move them as the designs dictated."

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006837/

[CBHagman]

198. Comedian Wonderful Smith, age 97.

I must confess I didn't know him, despite the work with Hattie McDaniel and Duke Ellington. But Smith's story is an interesting one...

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-smith15-2008sep15,0,3409100.story

His “Hello, Mr. President?” monologue lampooned the New Deal and World War II preparations -- from which blacks were generally excluded -- and it invariably stopped the show at the Mayan Theatre downtown.

Pretending to talk on the telephone, he would ask an operator to get the president on the line, telling her to "just charge it to the New Deal."

"This is buck private Wonderful Smith of Arkansas. . . . No sir, I'm not related to Governor Al Smith," he would say, referring to the former governor of New York. "There's quite a difference in us. As much difference as night and day."


Tame by today's standards, Smith's comedy was audacious for its time. The routine was controversial partly because it imagined a phone conversation between the president, then Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a black man, "an unthinkable scenario for the day," The Times reported in 1999.

[CBHagman]

199. Cinematographer David Watkin.

Here's one I have been meaning to enter on this thread. What a varied career and an interesting body of work!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3412328.ece

David Watkin was one of British cinema’s top cameramen and greatest characters. He would have liked to have been a musician, but his musical ambitions got no support from his family, which had long connections with the railways. He worked for the newly nationalised British Railways, drifted into film-making as a messenger and camera assistant in its film section and eventually went on to win an Oscar for best cinematography for the luscious African landscape photography in Out of Africa (1985).

The film brought him a slew of prizes, including a British Academy Award, though he accumulated no fewer than eight other Bafta nominations. He worked with such celebrated names as the Beatles, Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. He believed in filming scenes as simply as possible. Asked for a slogan for T-shirts at a film festival in Poland, where he was receiving a lifetime achievement award in 2004, he suggested “One tries not to f**k it up”.

The cinematography on Out of Africa, with its wide panoramas and warm, nostalgic interiors, was not particularly typical of his work. But then his no-nonsense approach proved extremely adaptable in a career that included such classic films as The Knack (1965), Help! (1965), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), The Devils (1971), Chariots of Fire (1981), Yentl (1983), Moonstruck (1987) and Hamlet (1990), along with the acclaimed TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth (1977).

The obit from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/feb/23/obituaries.mainsection

His IMDB credits. How many have you seen?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0914239/

[CBHagman]

200. Critic Manny Farber, age 91.

This is an interesting one...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/arts/design/19farber.html?ref=obituaries

Mr. Farber, a quirky prose stylist with a barbed lance, responded to film viscerally. He despised what he called the “art-infected” films of cinematic greats like Welles and Alfred Hitchcock — “the water-buffaloes of film art,” he once called them — preferring the work of genre directors like Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh and William A. Wellman, who transformed pulp material and genre conventions into “private runways to the truth.”

In a famous essay for Film Culture magazine in 1962, “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art,” he lambasted the portentous, meaning-laden cinema of Welles and his progeny and praised the freewheeling, instinctive work of underrated directors of crime, western and horror films.

“A peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward, eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity,” Mr. Farber wrote.

From Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/aug/25/1?gusrc=rss&feed=artanddesign

[lavenderdiva]

201. Paul Newman dies at 83

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/27/paul.newman.dead/index.html

snip:
(CNN) -- Paul Newman, the legendary actor whose steely blue eyes, good-humored charm and advocacy of worthy causes made him one of the most renowned figures in American arts, has died of cancer at his home in Westport, Connecticut. He was 83.

He died Friday, according to spokeswoman Marni Tomljanovic.

Newman attained stardom in the 1950s and never lost the movie-star aura, appearing in such classic films as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Exodus," "The Hustler," "Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Sting" and "The Verdict."

He finally won an Oscar in 1986 -- on his eighth try -- for "The Color of Money," a sequel to "The Hustler." He later received two more Oscar nominations. Among his other awards was the Motion Picture Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

snip:
He stumped for liberal causes, including Eugene McCarthy's 1968 presidential candidacy, and earned a spot on Richard Nixon's enemies list -- "the highest single honor I've ever received," he said.

[Serial Mom]

202. My first heartthrob!! Sympathy to his family - he will be missed!!

[CBHagman]

203. And a Hungarian American to boot.

It was only in the last few years I learned of Newman's rather surprising ethnic background -- born in the Cleveland area to an immigrant mother. Some sources suggest his ethnicity was German and Hungarian, perhaps also Polish. In any event, an amazing guy and someone who will be missed.

[Serial Mom]

204. He was proud to be on Nixon's "hate list"

I did not know he was Hungarian - my mom was born in Hungary, immigrated here with her parents when she was just under 3!

[Matilda]

205. He was a fine actor and a good man.

Raised millions for charity, and there was never a hint of scandal in
his personal life.

Hollywood and the world are truly the poorer for his passing.

[CBHagman]

206. Writer Oliver Crawford, 91, survivor of the blacklist.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100303320.html

Oliver Crawford, 91, an author who overcame the Red Scare blacklist of the 1950s to become a prolific contributor to television shows, including "Star Trek," "Bonanza" and "Perry Mason," died Sept. 24 at a hospital in Los Angeles of complications from pneumonia.

Mr. Crawford was just starting a writing career in Hollywood when he was contacted in 1953 by the House Un-American Activities Committee, then looking into allegations of communist influence in the entertainment industry.

He was blacklisted after refusing to reveal names of suspected communists, said his daughter, Vicki Crawford. He got back into the business in 1957 after a friend, actor Sam Levene, helped him land a job as a writer for "Playhouse 90."

Writing credits, as per IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0186918/

[CBHagman]

207. Actress Edie Adams.

Interesting woman. For some reason I hadn't known of her marriage to Ernie Kovacs, and I'd forgotten her turn in Billy Wilder's The Apartment.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-adams17-2008oct17,0,1526931.story

The sultry redhead (and sometimes blond) won a Tony in 1957 for her portrayal of Daisy Mae in the musical version of Al Capp's cartoon "Li'l Abner" and was an accomplished film actress. Her credits included "The Apartment" with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray, "Lover Come Back" with Doris Day and Rock Hudson, "The Best Man" with Cliff Robertson, and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," the Stanley Kramer production that featured a who's who of outstanding comedians and comedic actors.

[CBHagman]

208. Ken Ogata, actor.

Television and film actor Ken Ogata has died at age 71.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/movies/16ogata.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

List of credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0644523/

[CBHagman]

209. Comedy writer Irving Brecher, 94.

You may not recognize the name, but oh, how you've heard the lines. This guy wrote screenplays and gags and TV scripts. check out his IMDB credits!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0106505/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/movies/19brecher.html

Within the tribe of Hollywood gag writers, Mr. Brecher (pronounced BRECK-er) was a literary lion, a reflexive offerer of reactive jokes, a relisher of puns, a connoisseur of often topical, arch repartee. He once angered the film producer Daryl Zanuck, telling him the movie he had just made hadn’t been released; it had escaped.

“If I were any drier, I’d be drowning,” he had Groucho Marx saying, stuck in the rain in the 1939 film “At the Circus.” Always a tester of taboos, in the same film he had Groucho tease the guardians of Hollywood’s decency. In one scene, a mischievous vixen played by Eve Arden hides a billfold in her cleavage, and Groucho, wanting it back, says to the camera: “There must be some way of getting that money without getting in trouble with the Hays Office.” Groucho would later say it was the biggest laugh in the film. He and S. J. Perelman, asked to name the world’s quickest wits, listed Mr. Brecher along with George S. Kaufman and Oscar Levant.

[CBHagman]

210. Screenwriter John Michael Hayes ("Rear Window")

Again, you may not know the name, but you definitely know the work! Good stuff.


His IMDB credits:


http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0371088/


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/24/AR2008112402850.html

John Michael Hayes, 89, a screenwriter who added sexy sophistication to Alfred Hitchcock's films "Rear Window" and "To Catch a Thief" and toned down explicit material for movie adaptations of the popular books "Peyton Place" and "Butterfield 8," died of renal failure Nov. 19 at a retirement community in Hanover, N.H.

Mr. Hayes was credited with writing more than 1,500 radio scripts, including comedy and detective shows, before his work for Hitchcock propelled him to the front rank of screenwriters in the 1950s.

They forged a partnership that created some of the director's most engaging films of his greatest professional decade, said film scholar David Sterritt. Mr. Hayes, he said, "successfully mediated between Hitchcock's imagination and the requirements of a polished Hollywood screenplay."

[Staph]

211. William Gibson, author of The Miracle Worker (1962)

William Gibson, 94, a Tony Award-winning playwright best known for "The Miracle Worker," the inspirational story of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, died Nov. 25 at his home in Stockbridge, Mass. The family did not disclose the cause of death.

Mr. Gibson, whose work appeared on Broadway for five decades, was known for the demanding roles he wrote for women. Working frequently with director Arthur Penn, he helped make a star of actress Anne Bancroft in the plays "The Miracle Worker" (1959) and "Two for the Seesaw" (1958).

They also collaborated on "Golda" (1977), a critically panned study of power with Bancroft as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. The author reworked the play into a monologue, which became "Golda's Balcony" (2003), a popular hit starring Tovah Feldshuh and later a film with Valerie Harper.

In addition to winning the Tony for "The Miracle Worker," which has been revived countless times in community theaters, Mr. Gibson was also nominated for a Tony for "Two for the Seesaw" and "Golden Boy" (1964).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/27/AR2008112702032.html

[rdmtimp]

212. Beverly Garland, actress, 82

LA times article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-garland7-2008dec07,0,3405510.story


Beverly Garland, whose long and varied acting career ranged from B-movie cult stardom in the 1950s portraying gutsy characters in movies such as "Not of This Earth" and "It Conquered the World" to playing Fred MacMurray's wife on the sitcom "My Three Sons," has died. She was 82.

Garland, who also was an involved owner of her namesake hotel in North Hollywood, died Friday evening after a lengthy illness at her Hollywood Hills home, said son-in-law Packy Smith.

In a more-than-50-year career that began with her film debut in a supporting role in the 1950 film noir classic "D.O.A.," Garland appeared in about 40 films and scores of television shows.

IMDB listing:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0307500/

[rdmtimp]

213. Nina Foch, 84, actress

LA times story:
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-foch7-2008dec07,0,533502.story

Nina Foch, a veteran actress from Hollywood's film noir era of the 1940s who became a widely respected acting coach and teacher of directors, died Friday at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. She was 84.

The cause was complications of long-term myelodysplasia, a blood disorder, according to her son, Dr. Dirk De Brito.

IMDB listing:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001225/

[CBHagman]

214. Actress/drama teacher Nina Foch.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7770767.stm

Foch, who appeared in Spartacus and An American in Paris and received an Oscar nomination for 1954's Executive Suite, died in Los Angeles last week.

Born in the Netherlands in 1924, the statuesque blonde never achieved star status and became a respected teacher in later life.


And get this:

Foch - whose first husband was James Lipton, host of the US TV show Inside the Actors Studio - taught at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts for 40 years.

Her IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001225/

[CBHagman]

215. Actor Robert Prosky, age 77.

We've lost another of our great character actors. Prosky was a familiar face in film and television, and a perpetual presence on stage. You've probably seen him in something -- Hill Street Blues, perhaps, or The Natural, Dead Man Walking, or Broadcast News.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/09/AR2008120902215.html?hpid=moreheadlines

In his movie debut, Michael Mann's "Thief" (1981), Mr. Prosky played the vicious patriarch of a ring of Chicago diamond thieves. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby found him "exceptionally effective" as "a Middle Western version of the sort of affable international villains that Sydney Greenstreet once played."

(SNIP)

Looking back on his career, Mr. Prosky told The Post: "Survival is of utmost importance for an actor in this society. I remember doing a commercial with Arena actors Terrence Currier and Mark Hammer. We played bugs in tights and leotards, with wings pinned on our backs and a sequined number on our fronts. We were the price of the television set and we did a tap dance. When my eldest son saw it, he said, 'Dad, do we need the money that badly?'

"At the time, I recall, I was performing Willy Loman in the evenings."






His film and TV credits, as per IMDB. I suspect he has even more on the Broadway databases, plus of course many other theater credits.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0698764/

[CBHagman]

216. Actor Van Johnson.

I knew this was probably not far off -- the man was 92, after all -- but it's still startling. TCM aired In the Good Old Summertime just the other day, and it was somehow comforting to know someone in the cast was still with us.



Los Angeles Times obituary:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-johnson13-2008dec13,0,2329512.story


Between 1947 and 1954, he had co-starring and supporting roles in more than two dozen films, including "State of the Union," "In the Good Old Summertime," "Command Decision," "Battleground," "Brigadoon," "The Last Time I Saw Paris" and "The Caine Mutiny."

In 1954, after 12 years at MGM, he became a freelance actor.

Along the way, he had spent weekends at William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon estate, shared gossip with Marlene Dietrich, painted with Henry Fonda, partied with Errol Flynn, gone on walks with Greta Garbo, lunched with the Duchess of Windsor and cruised on Aristotle Onassis' yacht with Winston Churchill.

Look at that list of credits!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004496/



"I'm the luckiest guy in the world," Johnson said in a 1997 interview. "All my dreams came true. I was in a wonderful business, and I met great people all over the world."

[lavenderdiva]

217. he sounds like he led a VERY interesting life!

I wonder if he has an autobiography or biography? Does anyone know? My favorite movie of his is 'In The Good Old Summertime' with Judy Garland. He's wonderful in it!!

[rdmtimp]

218. Sam Bottoms dies at 53; actor appeared in 'Apocalypse Now,' 'Last Picture Show'

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-bottoms18-2008dec18,0,6453698.story

Sam Bottoms, a film and television actor who played the role of California surfer-turned-GI Lance Johnson in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War epic "Apocalypse Now," has died. He was 53.

Bottoms died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles of glioblastoma multiforme, a virulent brain cancer, said his wife, Laura Bickford.

[Cassandra]

257. Just saw that on TCM Remembers...

along with Edward Woodward (that one makes me really sad).

[rdmtimp]

219. Jack Douglas ("Carry On" films), 81

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7789813.stm

Carry On actor Jack Douglas, who was also known for his theatrical work in plays and pantomimes, has died aged 81.

He had been ill in recent years and died on the Isle of Wight, where he lived with his partner, Vivien Howell.

His character, Alf Ippititimus, had the catchphrase "phwaay" and the actor appeared in eight Carry On films, two Christmas specials and a TV series.

[rdmtimp]

220. Robert Mulligan (director) 83

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-082120-robert-mulligan-obit,0,215344.story

Robert Mulligan, who was nominated for an Academy Award for directing the 1962 film "To Kill a Mockingbird," died Saturday at his home in Lyme, Conn. He was 83.

Mulligan had heart disease, his nephew Robert Rosenthal said.

The director began working in live television in New York in the early 1950s and won an Emmy Award for the TV movie "The Moon and Sixpence" in 1960. His first film, "Fear Strikes Out," was released in 1957 and told the story of mentally ill baseball player Jimmy Piersall, played by Anthony Perkins. Mulligan directed 19 more films, including "Summer of '42," "The Other" and "Same Time, Next Year" before capping his career in 1991 with "Man in the Moon," featuring actress Reese Witherspoon in her movie debut.

The highlight of Mulligan's career was "To Kill a Mockingbird," a courtroom drama adapted from Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and centered on Southern attorney Atticus Finch and his children, Scout and Jem. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best picture, and won three: best actor (Gregory Peck), best screenplay (Horton Foote) and art direction (Alexander Golitzen, Henry Bumstead and Oliver Emert). ("Lawrence of Arabia" was named best picture and David Lean best director for that film.)

[CBHagman]

221. Actress Kathy Staff, TV's Nora Batty.

Ms. Staff sounds like an interesting lady with an interesting family. Apparently her daughter was one of the first women ordained in the Church of England!

Her IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0821220/


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/15/last-of-the-summer-wine-kathy-staff-nora-batty-dies

Staff also appeared in Crossroads, Coronation Street, Emmerdale Farm and the Ronnie Barker sitcom Open All Hours. She died after an illness, the BBC reported.

She played Batty from the first episode of Last of the Summer Wine, created by Roy Clarke, in 1973, and went on to appear in 243 episodes. Nora's attempts to fend off amorous advances from scruffy layabout Compo - often with a broom - were a Last of the Summer Wine staple.

Her death means Peter Sallis is one of the only original leading Summer Wine cast members left alive. Sallis, who played Norman Clegg, said: "I'm terribly upset that she's not with us, and I don't know quite for sure whether we are going to do any more but if we do, she is going to be terribly missed."

Somewhere in heaven Ms. Staff is whomping on Bill Owen with a broom.

[Matilda]

222. Actor Edmund Purdom, aged 84.

A slightly backhanded obituary fronm The Guardian, reprinted in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday,
for Edmund Purdom, who died on January 1st.

"THE fate of the actor Edmund Purdom was that his best-known film, The Student Prince, is remembered more for the star who wasn't in it. After the temperamental tenor Mario Lanza was fired from the film, the non-singing unknown Purdom replaced him.

Luckily, Lanza had recorded the songs for the film before shooting began. His voice is heard bellowing incongruously from Purdom's slender frame.

Purdom's reputation as a surrogate is underlined by the fact that his first chance at stardom came when he replaced Marlon Brando in The Egyptian, after Brando wisely cried off, preferring to play Napoleon in Desiree.

As well, Purdom was married to Linda Christian, better known as Tyrone Power's first wife."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/obituaries/handsome-understudys-hollywood-star-burnt-briefly-bright/2009/01/07/1231004100433.html


There wasn't much to dislike about Edmund Purdom - good-looking, nice voice (never noticed that he
couldn't pronounce "r"), but there wasn't much to really grab you either. He was rather wooden,
and although I love the music for "The Student Prince", being cast opposite the extraordinarily
cold and equally wooden Ann Blyth didn't do much for him, or for the audience either. I watch the
film regularly for the music, John Williams, and S.Z. Sakall - the two stars are just passing
through. (I always wished that Nelson Eddy had made the film in the thirties - it was tailor-made
for him).

That said, R.I.P. Edmund Purdom.

[CBHagman]

223. S.Z. Sakall is usually a good reason to watch...

There are only a limited number of Cuddles Sakall fans roaming the Earth at this point, and of course everyone is more likely to recall his co-stars (and they were stellar), but there's nothing more wonderful in classic movies than a cast with a few well-chosen character actors thrown in.

[CBHagman]

224. Director Claude Berri, "Godfather of French Cinema."

Here's an obituary I have been meaning to post. We've lost Claude Berri, quadruple threat (director, producer, writer, actor), perhaps best known for the films Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring.

From the January 13th obit from The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/arts/13berri.html

Claude Berri, who as a director, producer, screenwriter and actor was among the most influential figures in the French film industry over the past 40 years, died Monday in Paris. He was 74 and was described after his death by President Nicolas Sarkozy as “the great ambassador of French cinema” to the world.

(SNIP)

Mr. Berri was, by and large, a filmmaker of mainstream sensibility who favored stories of either quirky charm — many drawn from his own life — or grand sweep. His best known films as a director include “The Two of Us” (1967), which tells a story much like that of his own childhood during the Nazi occupation of France, in which a Jewish boy is schooled in Catholicism and sent off to live with an anti-Semitic old man; and the twin 1986 films “Jean de Florette” and “Manon des Sources” (“Manon of the Springs”), together an extravagant adaptation of a classic French novel set in Provence by Marcel Pagnol, “L’Eau des Collines” (“Water of the Hills”).

But he was probably more influential as a producer, working with directors like Milos Forman (“Valmont”), Roman Polanski (“Tess”) and Philippe de Broca (“L’Africain”).

With his penchant for lush cinematography and scoring and audience-pleasing plot resolution, Mr. Berri was often credited with melding the wry, oblique sensibility of French New Age cinema with the more commercial outlook of Hollywood. Often described as impulsive, imperious and driven, he nonetheless worked successfully with star performers like Yves Montand, Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart and Gérard Depardieu.



Here's the Guardian's profile:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/14/obituary-claude-berri-jean-florette



The record, courtesy of IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001945/

[CBHagman]

225. Actor Patrick McGoohan, 80.

Does he need an introduction? Okay, it depends on when and where you grew up. For me, he's always the utterly cool John Drake of Secret Agent (Danger Man in the U.K.), of course Prisoner Number Six in The Prisoner, and the grieving vetrinarian in The Three Lives of Thomasina.

There's some confusion about his nationality, of course. He was born in the United States to Irish parents and brought up in Ireland and the U.K.

From the Catholic News Service:

Irish actor Patrick McGoohan, best known to television audiences for his title roles in the 1960s' CBS drama series "Secret Agent" and "The Prisoner," died Jan. 13 in Los Angeles. He was 80 years old. Funeral arrangements for the actor were not announced. McGoohan, a Catholic, introduced himself as "Drake. John Drake" in the style of James Bond for the series "Secret Agent." But that's where the comparison ended. While the Bond character was -- and remains -- quite the womanizer, McGoohan said his faith made him resist having his Drake character fall into the same lifestyle as Bond. The series debuted in England under the name "Danger Man." It was picked up for U.S. viewers with a new title, which was buttressed by the theme song, "Secret Agent Man," a version of which became a top pop hit for singer Johnny Rivers.




From the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-patrick-mcgoohan15-2009jan15,0,3951859.story

About The Prisoner:

Once described in The Times as an "espionage tale as crafted by Kafka," "The Prisoner" starred McGoohan as a presumed British agent who, after resigning his top-security job, is abducted in London and taken to a mysterious prison resort called the Village.

Known only as No. 6, he is interrogated by a succession of officials who are known as No. 2. But he refuses all methods of breaking him down to reveal his past or why he resigned, and he repeatedly makes failed attempts to escape.

The seemingly idyllic village contains "seeing eyes" that monitor activities and signs such as "A Still Tongue Makes a Peaceful Life."

McGoohan co-created and executive-produced the series, which ran for only 17 episodes, as well as wrote and directed several episodes.


IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001526/

[Matilda]

228. I'm old enough to recall "The Prisoner".

His cry of "I'm not a number!" became a popular phrase in London at the
time.

This is the second reference I've seen this week to "The Three Lives of
Thomasina", which I've never seen. Looks as if I'll have to try to
track it down.

[CBHagman]

229. Thomasina.

When I was a kid, The Three Lives of Thomasina was featured on The Wonderful World of Disney, and the story just fascinated me. Many years later I learned it was an adaptation of a Paul Gallico work, and even later than that I got a copy of the DVD and watched it again. It was quite a revelation to look at the story through adult eyes and see the themes I'd completely missed when I was a child. Certainly it is Bonnie Scotland by way of Disney, and it has its faults, but it is certainly entertaining and even uplifting.

Disney DVDs tend to come and go from the market, but Thomasina appeared in the U.S. market in the 1990s and ought to be around somewhere in your area.

[Matilda]

230. Paul Gallico is one of my favourite authors!

I still can't read "The Snow Goose" without crying. And I love the
story of Violetta, the sick donkey who was blessed by the Pope.

I must certainly track this one down.

Thanks, CB! :hi:

[CBHagman]

226. John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey.

Mr. Mortimer was a novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and...lawyer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/books/17mortimer.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries

To read Rumpole, or to watch the episodes of the popular television series “Rumpole of the Bailey,” is to enter not only Rumpole’s stuffy flat or crowded legal chambers but also to feel the itch of his yellowing court wig and the flapping of his disheveled, cigar-ash-dusted courtroom gown.

Rumpole spends his days quoting Keats and his nights quaffing claret at Pommeroy’s wine bar, putting off the time that he must return to his wife, Hilda, more commonly known as She Who Must Be Obeyed.

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0607876/

And in case you're wondering, yes, actress Emily Mortimer is his daughter.

[CBHagman]

227. Actor Ricardo Montalban, age 88.

Another guy who probably doesn't need any introduction for most of us.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-montalban15-2009jan15,0,4189863.story

Within the entertainment industry, Montalban was widely respected for his efforts to create opportunities for Latinos, although he and others believed that his activism hurt his career. In 1970, he founded the nonprofit Nosotros Foundation to improve the image and increase employment of Latinos in Hollywood.

"He paved the way for being outspoken about the images and roles that Latinos were playing in movies," said Luis Reyes, co-author of "Hispanics in Hollywood" (2000).

On Wednesday, actor Edward James Olmos called Montalban "one of the true giants of arts and culture."

"He was a stellar artist and a consummate person and performer with a tremendous understanding of culture . . . and the ability to express it in his work," Olmos told The Times.

Montalban was already a star of Mexican movies in the 1940s when MGM cast him as a bullfighter opposite Esther Williams in "Fiesta" and put him under contract. He would go on to appear alongside such movie greats as Clark Gable and Lana Turner.

And like Patrick McGoohan, Montalban got a mention in the Catholic News Service:

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/briefs/cns/20090115.htm

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001544/

[rdmtimp]

231. Playwright/Screenwriter Horton Foote, 92

NEW YORK – Playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote, who movingly portrayed the broken dreams of common people in "The Trip to Bountiful," "Tender Mercies" and his Oscar-winning screen adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird," died Wednesday in Connecticut, Paul Marte, a spokesman for Hartford Stage, said. He was 92.

Foote died in his apartment in Hartford where he was preparing work on "The Orphans' Home Cycle," a collection of nine plays, for next fall at the nonprofit theater, Marte said.

Foote left the cotton fields of his native Wharton, Texas, as a teenager, dreaming of becoming an actor. But realizing his gifts as a storyteller, he embarked on a writing career that spanned more than half a century and earned him two Academy Awards ("To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Tender Mercies") and a 1995 Pulitzer Prize for "The Young Man From Atlanta."

Foote was active in the theater until the end of life. His play, "Dividing the Estate," the comic tale of a Texas family squabbling over an inheritance, was presented on Broadway this season by Lincoln Center Theater.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090304/ap_en_ot/obit_horton_foote

[CBHagman]

232. Actress Betsy Blair, 85, of "Marty"

I knew Betsy Blair had done everything from the Academy Award-winning classic Marty to television's thirtysomething, and I knew she'd been married to Gene Kelly. I'd even read something about her being blacklisted.

What I didn't know about was her European film career and her marriage to Karel Reisz.

The Guardian Obituary is extremely interesting in terms of details.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/16/betsy-blair-obituary

Few film-makers of the left emerged unscathed from the Hollywood witchhunt led by Senator Joe McCarthy. Some died, some were ruined, some headed for Europe. Others named names. Among its victims, the actor Betsy Blair, who has died aged 85, considered herself fortunate.

Despite being blacklisted, she was made less vulnerable by her marriage to fellow socialist Gene Kelly who, by the early 1950s, was virtually untouchable thanks to such succesful movies as On the Town, An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain. Eventually she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in the 1955 film Marty.

Her IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0086198/



With Ernest Borgnine in Marty

[CBHagman]

233. Stage and film actress Natasha Richardson, 45.

Richardson appeared on Broadway in Anna Christie (opposite future husband Liam Neeson) and won a Tony Award for her performance as Sally Bowles in Cabaret.

And of course she was part of the Redgrave acting dynasty.

From The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/us/19richardson.html

In the performance that made her a star in the United States, she played the title role on Broadway in a 1993 revival of “Anna Christie,” Eugene O’Neill’s grueling portrait of a waterfront slattern in confrontation with the abusive men in her life. Embracing the emotional wreckage that showed in her character’s face, she modeled her makeup each night on Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.”

Her performance, nominated for a Tony Award, was vibrantly sensual, and her scenes with her co-star, Mr. Neeson, were acclaimed as sizzling and electric.



BBC obituary with interview video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7949125.stm

The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/19/natasha-richardson-obituary

Her IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001670/




With her husband

[Matilda]

234. Too young to die.

Very sad, and not least because she appeared to have a genuinely happy
marriage, and is leaving young children.

I can't help thinking of Liam Neeson's role in "Love Actually" - life
imitating art.

[Matilda]

235. Maurice Jarre, 84.

"Maurice Jarre, Oscar-winning composer of music for films including "Doctor Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia", died in Los Angeles aged 84.

The death of Jarre, who won a third Oscar for his score for "A Passage to India", was announced to AFP by the manager of his son, electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g0L-EPaRREIvNo4rUtIAGyVYHAUg

His IMDb link:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003574/


The news is just breaking, so there's not yet a great deal of information.

Edited to add some more information from BBC Online:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7971223.stm

[CBHagman]

236. I hadn't even heard that yet.

And so we lose another legendary film composer.

Every so often Classic Arts Showcase (free classic video programming on aired by, in our case, a local college station) runs the concert score of Lawrence of Arabia interspersed with footage from the movie. It's riveting.

[Staph]

237. Dom DeLuise

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dom DeLuise, the portly actor-comedian whose affable nature made him a popular character actor for decades with movie and TV audiences as well as directors and fellow actors, has died. He was 75.

The actor, who loved to cook and eat almost as much as he enjoyed acting, also carved out a formidable second career later in life as a chef of fine cuisine. He authored two cookbooks and would appear often on morning TV shows to whip up his favorite recipes. As an actor, he was incredibly prolific, appearing in scores of movies and TV shows, in Broadway plays and voicing characters for numerous cartoon shows.

Writer-director-actor Mel Brooks particularly admired DeLuise's talent for offbeat comedy and cast him in several of his films, including "The Twelve Chairs," "Blazing Saddles," "Silent Movie," "History of the World Part I" and "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." DeLuise was also the voice of Pizza the Hutt in Brooks' "Star Wars" parody, "Spaceballs." The actor also appeared frequently in films opposite his friend Burt Reynolds. Among them, "The End," "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," 'Smokey and the Bandit II," "The Cannonball Run" and "Cannonball Run II."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwPfAuE5s8kqhzjrv1vgLQovisEAD9806UG80

[Matilda]

238. Karl Malden dies, aged 97.

He is such a regular on reruns of old TV series, as well as on old movies, that I had an image of him as a perpetual
50-something. I was astonished to find out how old he was.

"Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden, known for his distinctive nose and roles opposite Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront, has died. He was 97.

Malden's passing was announced on Wednesday by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), where he served as president from 1989 to 1992.

A statement distributed by the Academy said the actor died at home surrounded by family members. No cause of death was disclosed."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/film/oscarwinner-karl-malden-dies/2009/07/02/1246127612628.html


A very fine actor - R.I.P. Karl.

[CBHagman]

240. I've been meaning to post his obit.

What an amazing body of work! He even worked on TV's The West Wing.

One of the interesting points was the array of real-life figures --including Leon Klinghoffer, General Omar Bradley, and Admiral Elmo Zumwalt -- he played during his lengthy career.

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001500/

[Matilda]

242. I was thinking about his appearance on The West Wing.

He played the priest in the episode about the man condemned to death. It was one of my favourite episodes (and
that's saying something with such a brilliant series), and I thought the final scenes between Martin Sheen and
Karl Malden were absolutely wonderful. It's one of my most vivid memories of Karl Malden.

[Staph]

239. Actor Harve Presnell dies of cancer at 75

NEW YORK (AP) — Harve Presnell, whose booming baritone graced such Broadway musicals as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "Annie," has died at age 75. The actor died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., said Gregg Klein, Presnell's agent.

Although he was best known for his roles in musical theater, Presnell also is remembered as William H. Macy's father-in-law in the Coen brothers' 1996 film "Fargo." Among his other movies were "When the Boys Meet the Girls" (1965), "The Glory Guys" (1965) and "Paint Your Wagon" (1969) as well as the TV series "The Pretender" (1997-2000).

Yet it was in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" (1960) that the rugged, 6-foot-4 Presnell was first noticed by Broadway audiences. In the Meredith Willson musical, he played lucky mining prospector "Leadville" Johnny Brown opposite Tammy Grimes' feisty Molly. Presnell repeated his role in the 1964 film version which starred Debbie Reynolds as the buoyant title character.

For a good part of his career, Presnell portrayed the wealthy, follicle-challenged Daddy Warbucks in various incarnations of "Annie." The actor was first offered the role in a tour of "Annie" and thought the title was a show business abbreviation for "Annie, Get Your Gun," the musical in which he had once played sharpshooter Frank Butler.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h4_Pho7lm0kPj4oU-FJYwBsbFi0gD995T4T80

[CBHagman]

243. Someone who REALLY sang in "Paint Your Wagon."

In fact it would a great shame to forget his contributions both in musical theater/film and in classical music in the 20th century.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/theater/02presnell.html

In the 1950s he sang with the Roger Wagner Chorale and performed on their recordings for Capitol, including the Christmas album “Joy to the World,” “Folk Songs of the New World” and “Folk Songs of the Frontier.”

Mr. Presnell also sang the baritone part in the 1960 recording of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.

After hearing Mr. Presnell sing, Meredith Willson created the part of Johnny Brown as a star-making vehicle for him. When “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” opened in 1960, with Ms. Grimes in the starring role, Mr. Presnell planted his feet and let audiences have it with both barrels as he boomed the songs “Colorado, My Home” and “I’ll Never Say No.” He repeated the role in the highly successful film version, released in 1964, with Debbie Reynolds as Molly.

It is unfortunate that the movie musical, at least as it was once conceived, was gradually declining in those years when Mr. Presnell was a young man. Obviously he might have had a more extensive onscreen career in another era. Still, it's great to think that films like Fargo and Saving Private Ryan brought him before a new generation of fans, some of whom no doubt wouldn't know Carmina Burana from Carmen Miranda. :eyes:

[CBHagman]

241. Mickey Carroll, 89, of "The Wizard of Oz"

Mr. Carroll played one of the Munchkins, but what I found particularly interesting in his obit was A) his understanding of what The Wizard of Oz means in terms of sweet nostalgia and B) his support of FDR and Harry Truman!

http://www.buffalonews.com/obituaries/story/664892.html

His gift of gab and comedic timing helped his popularity. He warmed up crowds for President Franklin Roosevelt while campaigning in New York City and served as a crowd-getter in President Harry S. Truman’s whistle-stop campaign.

(SNIP)

At a special screening of the film in 2005 in Los Angeles, Carroll said talking to longtime fans about the movie brought back their childhoods.

“They have tears,” he said. “I’ll say, ‘May the magic of Oz always be with you.’ And, ‘Follow the yellow brick road!’ And they’re all excited. I bring back their childhood. Ain’t that something?”

[CBHagman]

244. Budd Schulberg, 95, screenwriter of "On the Waterfront."

His IMDB bio:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0775977/bio

His IMDB credits:

Obituary:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0775977/bio


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/05/AR2009080503924.html

During World War II, Mr. Schulberg served under film director John Ford at the Office of Strategic Services' photography unit. He collected photographic evidence to use against war criminals at the postwar Nuremberg trials.

In the late 1940s, Mr. Schulberg began researching what would become the screenplay for "On the Waterfront." He bought film rights to the New York Sun's Pulitzer Prize-winning series on waterfront crime and studied waterfront lingo by socializing with dockworkers and famed labor priest John Corridan.

[lavenderdiva]

245. Army Archerd -- Hollywood Columnist & Oscar interviewer

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/houstonchronicle/obituary.aspx?n=army-archerd&pid=132543011

snip:
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Army Archerd, whose breezy column for the entertainment trade publication Daily Variety kept tabs on various Hollywood doings for more than a half-century, has died. He was 87.

Archerd's wife, Selma, said he died Tuesday at UCLA Medical Center of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lungs strongly tied to asbestos exposure. She said the cancer was the result of his time spent in shipyards while serving in the Navy during World War II. She said he had become very ill over the last two years, especially in the last two weeks.

"He was the love of my life," said Selma.

[CBHagman]

246. Many thanks for posting that.

I'd actually kept his obituary so that I'd remember to post it, but I see you took care of that.

Here's the obituary that ran in The Washington Post. I felt a certain respect for Mr. Archerd when I read a bit more about his life and career.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/09/AR2009090902452.html

But Mr. Archerd always considered himself an old-fashioned newspaperman who relied on shoe leather and four telephone lines to gather his stories. He was meticulous in verifying information -- his editor once said Mr. Archerd knew the phone number of every hospital nurse's station in Los Angeles -- and disliked being called a "gossip columnist."

(SNIP)

The most significant scoop of his career, he said, came July 23, 1985, when he revealed that Hudson was being treated for AIDS, the first time the disease had been linked with a major Hollywood celebrity.

(SNIP)

"It turned out to be the most important Hollywood story of all time, really," Mr. Archerd told the Los Angeles Times in 1993, "because it created a sensitivity . . . an international concern about the most horrible plague that has ever hit the world."

Mr. Archerd usually wrote with a light touch, but on occasion he dipped his pen in acid. In 1999, he protested the presentation of an honorary Oscar to director Elia Kazan, who had named Hollywood colleagues to the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating Communist influence in the 1950s.

[CBHagman]

247. Magician-comic actor Carl Ballantine, 92.

Anyone who was a kid in the '60s or '70s in the United States probably saw Carl Ballantine in something -- possibly as a guest on a sitcom or in the cast of McHale's Navy, or in a variety show of yesteryear.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-carl-ballantine5-2009nov05,0,6542290.story

Indeed, it's as a comically inept magician variously billed as "The Amazing Ballantine," "The Great Ballantine" and "Ballantine: The World's Greatest Magician" that he made his biggest impact as a performer.

In 2007, Steve Martin presented Ballantine with the Lifetime Achievement Fellowship from the Magic Castle in Hollywood.

"Carl Ballantine influenced not only myself but a generation of magicians and comedians," Martin said Wednesday in a statement to The Times. "His was also the most copied act by a host of amateurs and professionals."

His IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0050535/

[CBHagman]

248. Stage, TV, and film actor Edward Woodward, 79.

One of my co-workers, who is on vacation in South America (!), alerted me to the news of Mr. Woodward's death.

Those of us who went out and saw all the critically acclaimed Australian movies in the '70s and '80s will remember Mr. Woodward as the title character in Breaker Morant. During the 1980s he gained an even broader audience in the U.S. by playing an unconventional crime-fighter on The Equalizer.

From The Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/16/AR2009111602636.html?hpid=entnews

Mr. Woodward, a veteran stage actor, appeared in Shakespeare productions opposite Michael Redgrave and showed flair in a musical comedy directed by Noel Coward. He attracted superlatives from the demanding Coward as "one of the nicest and most cooperative actors I have ever met or worked with."

He was in his mid-30s before he achieved popular success as a weary secret agent in the spy series "Callan," which ran on British television from 1967 to 1973. He received starring roles in several exceptional films, including the eerie thriller "The Wicker Man" (1973) as a Calvinistic police officer who investigates the disappearance of a young girl and becomes ensnared in a paganist cult, and "Breaker Morant" (1980) as a scapegoated Australian soldier who is court-martialed by the British during the Boer War.


But Mr. Woodward's career was largely overshadowed by "The Equalizer," which brought him five Emmy Award nominations during its run on CBS from 1985 to 1989. As Robert McCall, he drove a sleek Jaguar, showed an impeccable fashion sense and carried an impressive arsenal, and put himself at the service of clients who have "exhausted all conventional means of law enforcement."

From the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/nov/16/edward-woodward-wicker-man-callum

[Matilda]

249. A very fine actor, and well-respected in the business.

He'll always be "Breaker Morant" to us in Australia; it was an unforgettable performance in a very good film. And he
even looked like the real Breaker.

I saw him on stage here too, in a comedy called "The Male of the Species". We knew him then as the British spy
"Callan", very powerful drama, but in this play he was hilarious and proved that he was equally adept at comedy.
I enjoyed it so much, I went back for a second time.

It's a sad day.

[CBHagman]

250. Lucky you!

It sounds like he had an amazing stage career and was nothing if not versatile!

[CBHagman]

251. Actor Richard Todd, 90.

Apparently he was Ian Fleming's first choice to play James Bond!


http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec/04/secondworldwar-margaretthatcher

As dour and stiff upper-lipped as any of the characters he portrayed in his highly successful film career in the 1940s and 1950s, he was one of the first members of the Parachute Regiment to jump on D-day – a real-life role he later echoed, albeit at a higher rank, in The Longest Day (1962), the reconstruction of the invasion of Normandy 17 years after the event (another actor posed as Todd himself).

(SNIP)

His tear-jerking portrayal of a dying and bitter Scots corporal in his second contract film, The Hasty Heart (1949), made him an instant hot property. Ronald Reagan was in a supporting role, his only appearance in a film made in Britain. The two men stayed in touch and once dined together at 10 Downing Street with a woman they both admired, Margaret Thatcher. Hitchcock used him in Stage Fright (1950), Walt Disney used him in Robin Hood (1952). But Todd was always uneasy in Hollywood. Once, in his enthusiasm for tennis and ignorance of local idiom, he told a startled Ruth Roman that he would love a knock up with her, and on another occasion he arrived for work in a car with a flat battery that his distinguished director King Vidor had to help push-start.

Todd nevertheless appeared as Raleigh, alongside Bette Davis, in The Virgin Queen in 1955, made The Sword and the Rose (1953) for Disney and Saint Joan (1957) for Otto Preminger. He certainly made ABFC more money than his salary by being hired out to other film-makers. But he was happiest while filming in England, although he refused the lead in The Guns of Navarone (1961) and was also unable to accept the role of James Bond – despite being Ian Fleming's first choice – because of other commitments. Sean Connery took the role instead.

[Matilda]

252. Oh, sad!

I saw him on stage in London, my first visit to a London theatre, starring in "An Ideal Husband" with Margaret
Lockwood.

I have to be honest and say I don't really remember much about his performance - it was just so exciting to be in
a West End theatre and to see on stage somebody I'd seen for years on film in Sydney.

I still have the program.

[lavenderdiva]

253. Jennifer Jones dies at age 90

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/12/17/jennifer.jones.obit/index.html

snip:
Jennifer Jones, who won the best actress Oscar for a 1943 film, died Thursday at age 90, according to a family spokesman.

Jones starred in two dozen movies and was nominated for Academy Awards five times in her 35-year film career.

snip:
She changed her name to Jennifer Jones when she moved to Hollywood in the early 1940s for a screen test with legendary producer David O. Selznick.

Her first major movie was "The Song of Bernadette" in 1943. Her portrayal of Bernadette Soubirous, a peasant girl in 19th century France, won her the best actress Oscar.

Jones earned Oscar nominations in each of the next three years -- for Selznick's "Since You Went Away" in 1944, "Love Letters" in 1945 and Selznick's "Duel in the Sun" in 1946.

Jones, who divorced Walker in 1945, married Selznick in 1949. She and Selznick had a daughter together.

A fifth Oscar nomination came in 1955 for her co-starring role with William Holden in "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing."

Jones accepted few acting jobs after her performance in "A Farewell to Arms" in 1957.

My favorite Jennifer Jones performance was in 'Portrait of Jennie' with Joseph Cotten.....

[CBHagman]

254. I didn't know about the multiple tragedies in her life.

Adam Bernstein's Washington Post obituary is worth reading.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121702786.html

On edit: Jennifer Jones in Love Letters with Joseph Cotten:

[Kind of Blue]

255. I loved that movie, too.

She was my all-time favorite actress.

[CBHagman]

258. "TCM Remembers" video for 2009.

For those of you who haven't seen it, here's yet another of those beautifully made TCM Remembers tribute videos to actors, directors, screenwriters, and other professionals who left us in the past year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yzAzp7yMHU&NR=1

[lavenderdiva]

259. this looks great, CBH-

thanks for sharing that link! :hi:

[CBHagman]

260. Filmmaker Eric Rohmer, 89.

I first saw his films when I was a university student and the student union was showing things like Claire's Knee and All Boys Are Called Patrick. But it was Die Marquise von O..., with Bruno Ganz and Edith Clever (pictured below), that really made me a fan.

His obit, from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jan/11/eric-rohmer-obituary?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

His credits, as per IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006445/

[Matilda]

261. Jean Simmons dead at eighty.

"British actress Jean Simmons, an Emmy Award winner whose career included roles in Hamlet and Spartacus, has died in California, the Los Angeles Times reported. She was 80.

The Times said Simmons, who earned two Oscar nominations during a long career that spanned seven decades, died at her home in Santa Monica after losing a battle to lung cancer."

snip

"Although she worked mostly in television in her later years, appearing in the hit 1983 mini-series The Thorn Birds, for which she obtained an Emmy Award, Simmons gained fame in the 1950s and 1960s after starring in several hit films.

Her career took off after she appeared as the doomed Ophelia opposite Laurence Olivier in the legendary actor's 1948 production of Hamlet. Simmons's performance earned her the first of two Academy Award nominations."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/23/2799618.htm


I thought she was extraordinarily beautiful when she was young - she
had wonderful eyes, and a sweetness and vulnerability about her that
was very endearing.

I admired her Ophelia in Olivier's "Hamlet", and I also enjoyed her
performance in "Young Bess". It wasn't a great film (the book it was
taken from wasn't great either), but it was fun, and Jean Simmons and
Deborah Kerr wore their beautiful gowns with panache. I also really
enjoyed her in "So Long At The Fair", which she made with Dirk Bogarde,
one of my favourites, and it's always been a film I'll stay up to
watch (it's usually on very late at night whenever it appears).

I was surprised that she was only married to Stewart Granger for ten
years; I kind of grew up with that pairing and thought it had lasted
twice as long as it did.

Farewell, Miss Simmons - you were a lovely lady.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/23/2799618.htm



Edited to add photo of Jean Simmons in "So Long At The Fair"

[CBHagman]

262. Just heard the news.

You were way ahead of me.

She was indeed a lovely lady, and will be missed.

[lavenderdiva]

263. I just read about this myself

She was such a beautiful woman, and talented actress. I loved her as Estella in 'Great Expectations', Elizabeth in 'Young Bess', and for her role in 'Spartacus'. Safe passage.

[CBHagman]

264. Actor Pernell Roberts, 81.

(Left to right: Roberts, Michael Landon, Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker)

Pernell Roberts, best known as eldest son Adam Cartwright on Bonanza and as the title character in Trapper John, M.D., has died.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/arts/television/26roberts.html

Dark-haired, handsome and athletically built, Mr. Roberts was a rising theater actor — a busy Shakespearean, in fact — who had performed in a number of classic plays Off Broadway and on before he landed, in 1959, on the Ponderosa, the ranch that provided the setting for “Bonanza.”

Adam, the first-born son of Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene), a three-time widower who had had a son with each of his wives, was the book-smart one; Hoss (Dan Blocker) was the comic bruiser; Little Joe (Michael Landon) was the adorable but impetuous youngster with a lot to learn. When Mr. Landon died in 1991, Mr. Roberts was the only Cartwright left. According to a statement provided by Mr. Stone, he referred to himself jokingly as “Pernell the-Last-One Roberts.”

Though “Bonanza” stayed on the air until 1973, Mr. Roberts left after the 1964-65 season. He had battled with the producers over the dearth of nonwhite actors and crew members on the show, and complained that the scripts were unchallenging for both actors and audiences. Actually, his words were harsher than that: “Junk TV,” he called the show, accusing NBC, the network that broadcast it, of “perpetuating banality and contributing to the dehumanization of the industry.”

His IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0731490/

[CBHagman]

265. Producer David Brown, 93.

He was the last great gentleman producer. You’re not going to see his kind again. - Aaron Sorkin on David Brown

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the man who was there at the beginning of Elvis's movie career and went on to produce various award-nominated and -winning films and plays, and along the way married Helen Gurley Brown, she of Sex and the Single Girl and Cosmopolitan magazine.



Here's Mr. Brown's obit from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8494382.stm

And from The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/arts/02brown.html

“He had a great story sense,” said Richard D. Zanuck, his producing partner from 1972 to 1988, “and great connections with publishers and agents.”

Mr. Brown began his professional career as a journalist, contributing to magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s and Collier’s before becoming an editor himself. Before his wife landed there, he was the managing editor of Cosmopolitan. During the 1940s, he was also editor in chief of Liberty magazine.

(SNIP)

Together, Mr. Brown and Mr. Zanuck were the producers or executive producers of more than a dozen other films, including “The Verdict,” a legal drama directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Paul Newman; “Cocoon,” a fantasy directed by Ron Howard about senior citizens who stumble upon evidence of an alien visitation that functions as a fountain of youth; and “Driving Miss Daisy,” the adaptation of Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, set in the South of the 1950s, about an elderly Jewish woman and the black chauffeur who becomes her friend and confidant. Starring Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman and directed by Bruce Beresford, it won four Oscars, including best picture.

(SNIP)

Mr. Brown’s stage credits came late in his career. Among them, on Broadway he produced “Tru,” a one-actor play about Truman Capote starring Robert Morse, and the musicals “Sweet Smell of Success” (2002), based on the Hollywood film about a press agent and a powerful columnist, and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (2005), adapted from a movie with Steve Martin.

His IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0113360/

[Matilda]

266. Kathryn Grayson, 88.

"Kathryn Grayson, a singer and movie star of the 1940s and 1950s best known for MGM musicals such as Kiss Me Kate, has died aged 88.

Grayson died at home in Los Angeles on Wednesday in her sleep, said secretary Sally Sherman. She had worked with Grayson for 31 years.

The actress was among the top movie musical performers of her day, starring opposite Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in 1945's Anchors Away and Ava Gardner and Howard Keel in 1951's Showboat.

"She was a lady of class and quality, with the greatest sense of humour conceivable," Ms Sherman said."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/19/2824927.htm


The last public appearance I recall was when she attended the dedication
of Nelson Eddy Drive at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (what an awful
name!). She was the only well-known celebrity to turn up; she
remembered him from her early days at MGM, and I thought it was a nice
thing for her to do.

[CBHagman]

267. Thanks for posting that.

The news came out last night and I was having trouble getting with several of the websites then posting the obituary.

It was classy to appear at the event honoring Nelson Eddy. But "Hollywood Forever"? I had no idea...

[Matilda]

268. "Hollywood Forever" is a name that conjures images of flashing lights

and lots of razzle dazzle.

It used to be called "Hollywood Memorial Cemetery" - now that had a
touch of class. But somebody, in their wisdom, rang the changes ...

[CBHagman]

269. Actor Ian Carmichael, 89.

I remember him as Lord Peter Wimsey in the TV series, but he had numerous other roles in film and TV and onstage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/feb/06/ian-carmichael-obituary

Playing the archetypal silly ass was the sometimes reluctant business of the stage, film and television actor Ian Carmichael, who has died aged 89. In the public mind he became the best-known postwar example of a characteristic British type - the personally appealing blithering idiot who somehow survives, and sometimes even gets the girl. One of his most characteristic and memorable sorties in this field was his portrayal of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim – the anti-hero James Dixon, who savaged the pretensions of academia, as Amis had himself sometimes clashed with academia when he was a lecturer at Swansea. Appearing in John and Roy Boulting's 1957 film, he was able to suggest an unruly but amiable spirit at the end of its tether, his great horsey teeth exposed in the strained grimace that often greeted disaster.

Carmichael made several more hugely popular comedy films with the Boultings in the second half of the 1950s, including Private's Progress, Brothers In Law and I'm All Right Jack, but always wanted to do more straight roles. The nearest he came to it was his Lord Peter Wimsey in the television series based on Dorothy L Sayers's amateur detective (1972-75), a role he felt very happy in. Laurence Olivier once offered him a part in a Graham Greene play that he had in mind for television, but, like other possible projects, it came to nothing.

[Matilda]

270. One of those actors whose name I never knew,

but always recognised when he appeared in something.

There are so many like him, generally quite content to keep making their living at what they love, even though
they're recognised by few but their peers - "jobbing actors".

[lavenderdiva]

271. Fess Parker, dies at 85

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6920374.html

snip:

Fess Parker, a baby-boomer idol in the 1950s who launched a craze for coonskin caps as television's Davy Crockett, died Thursday of natural causes. He was 85.

Family spokeswoman Sao Anash said Parker, who was also TV's Daniel Boone and later a major California winemaker and developer, died at his Santa Ynez Valley home. His death came on the 84th birthday of his wife of 50 years, Marcella.

Parker was coherent and speaking with family just minutes before his death,

snip:

Parker had made his motion picture debut in "Springfield Rifle" in 1952. His other movies included "No Room for the Groom" (1952), "The Kid From Left Field" (1953), "Them!" (1954), "The Great Locomotive Chase" (1956), "Westward Ho, the Wagons!" (1956), "Old Yeller" (1957) and "The Light in the Forest" (1958).

Several of Parker's films, including "The Great Locomotive Chase" and "Old Yeller," came from the Disney studio.

It was Parker's scene as the pilot who claimed his plane was buzzed by giant flying ants in the horror classic "Them!" that caught the attention of Walt Disney when he was looking for a "Davy Crockett" star. He chose Parker over another "Them!" actor, James Arness — who became a TV superstar in the long-running "Gunsmoke."

snip:

Parker was discovered by actor Adolphe Menjou, who was Oscar-nominated for "The Front Page" in 1931 and who was a guest artist at the University of Texas. Menjou urged him to go to Hollywood and introduced Parker to his agent.

[CBHagman]

272. Jerry Adler, musician, 91.

This gentleman was responsible for virtuoso harmonica playing for various soundtracks, from Shane to Mary Poppins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/arts/music/22adler.html

He was highly sought after as a soloist in films from the 1940s through the 1960s. His credits include the soundtracks for “Shane,” “High Noon,” “The Alamo,” “You Can’t Take It With You,” “Mary Poppins” and “My Fair Lady.”

When stars needed to pick up the instrument for a film role, he showed them how to fake it with conviction, secure in the knowledge that he would be recording the notes offstage. He tutored James Stewart in “Pot o’ Gold” (1941) and Van Johnson in “The Romance of Rosy Ridge” (1947). In the 1953 Kirk Douglas film “The Juggler,” he appeared onscreen taking a solo in a campfire scene.

[CBHagman]

273. Actor Corin Redgrave, 70.

I just saw the headline in the Guardian. Link below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/apr/06/corin-redgrave-dies

Of course he was part of a great British acting dynasty, the extended Redgrave-Richardson family. Son of actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, brother of actors Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, uncle of Joely and Natasha Richardson, father of Jemma Redgrave, Mr. Redgrave had a career on stage, on film, and in television. He played Andie MacDowell's fiance in Four Weddings and a Funeral and the vain, selfish Sir Walter Elliot in the 1995 film adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion and Daniel Craig's DCI in the TV adaptation of The Ice House.

His bio, as per IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0714874/bio

His credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0714874/

[Matilda]

275. Mr Matilda appeared in a play with him in Sydney.

The play was "Conduct Unbecoming", about forty years ago, and Mr Matilda was a newly-graduated actor, playing
some small roles and acting as ASM.

Corin Redgrave used to arrive at the theatre in a chauffeur-drive limo, sitting in the back reading "The Trotskyite"
newspaper. He didn't seem to find it incongruous.

Mr Matilda didn't socialise with him, being a lowly member of the cast, but he thought he was a decent guy.

[CBHagman]

277. What a great story.

Corin Redgrave used to arrive at the theatre in a chauffeur-drive limo, sitting in the back reading "The Trotskyite" newspaper. He didn't seem to find it incongruous.

Thanks for that little portrait and, now, snippet of history.

[CBHagman]

274. Actor Robert Culp, 79.

Best known for his role on the TV series I Spy, Culp had numerous film, TV, and stage acting credits, and was a writer and director as well. See IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0191685/

His New York Times obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/arts/television/25culp.html


Nice retrospective from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/mar/26/robert-culp-obituary

Television stars tend to be more intimate with their audience than film stars, mainly because they are seen close up in people's living rooms week after week. Robert Culp, who has died of a heart attack aged 79, created that kind of intimacy, especially in the series I Spy. In the show, which ran from 1965 to 1968, another kind of intimacy existed between buddy-buddies Culp and his co-star Bill Cosby.

The fact that their two characters were of equal importance and that Cosby's race was never mentioned (although all his girlfriends were African-American) was a breakthrough for US television. They seemed a pretty hip pair in the 1960s – secret agents posing as a professional tennis player, Kelly Robinson (Culp), and his manager, Alexander Scott (Cosby) – trading witty banter as they chased villains and beautiful women around exotic locations. One of the strengths of the show was that the actors were filmed on location without reliance on stock footage, which was rather rare in those days.

(SNIP)

They played two down-and-out private eyes, Al Hickey (Cosby) and Frank Boggs (Culp), who, hired to trace a missing girl, get embroiled with bank robbers and a black power organisation. The two antiheroes spend as much time debating the fundamental questions of their existence as they do trying to solve the case, and at one stage, a gloomy Cosby says: "Nobody came ... nobody cares. It's still not about anything" – lines that could have come from Waiting for Godot.

[Matilda]

276. I used to watch "I Spy" when I lived in London.

It was so different from anything that had gone before; very, very funny and I loved it.

It was my favourite work of both actors.

[CBHagman]

278. Dede Allen, 86, film editor.

Note: Some references give her birth year as 1923, some as 1925.

I'll bet most of us have seen her work, but how many of us knew her name, or the influence she had on the film industry?

From her obit in the LA Times:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/18/local/la-me-dede-allen18-2010apr18

Allen was the first film editor -- male or female -- to receive sole credit on a movie for her work. The honor came with "Bonnie and Clyde," a film in which Allen raised the level of her craft to an art form that was as seriously discussed as cinematography or even directing.

(SNIP)

Allen departed from the standard Hollywood way of cutting -- making smooth transitions starting with wide shots establishing place and characters and going on to medium shots and finally close-ups -- by beginning with close-ups or jump cuts. Although these editing methods had been pioneered by the French new wave and some British directors, Allen is generally credited with being the first to use and shape them in American film.

In Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon," she employed a staccato tempo, sometimes called shock cutting.

"She creates this menacing quality by not cutting where you'd expect it -- she typically would cut sooner than you might expect," Faller said. "You weren't ready for it."

She would also begin the sound from the next scene while the previous scene was still playing, a technique now standard in film editing.

From her entry in Film Reference:

http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-A-Ba/Allen-Dede.html


Between 1961 and 1981, Dede Allen reigned as American cinema's most celebrated editor. This period championed the auteur director and Allen emerged as an auteur editor, working with many of Hollywood's best auteurs (Arthur Penn, Sidney Lumet, Robert Wise, Robert Rossen, Elia Kazan, and George Roy Hill) and developing her own editorial signature.

Her first important feature film (after 16 years in the industry) was Odds against Tomorrow . Urged by Robert Wise to experiment, Allen developed one of her major techniques: the audio shift. Instead of stopping both a shot and its accompanying audio at the same time (the common practice), she would overlap sound from the beginning of the next shot into the end of the previous shot (or vice versa). The overall effect increased the pace of the film—something always happened, visually or aurally, in a staccato-like tempo.

[CBHagman]

279. Acclaimed actress Lynn Redgrave, 67.

It grieves me to report that Lynn Redgrave has died. I had believed she had many, many more years of work ahead of her and in fact had been making plans to see her perform at a special event with the Folger Consort, David Daniels, Derek Jacobi, and Richard Clifford next month.

It has been a very sad year or so for the extended Redgrave-Richardson family, with the deaths of Natasha Richardson and, more recently, Corin Redgrave.

New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/03/arts/AP-US-Obit-Lynn-Redgrave.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries

NEW YORK (AP) -- Lynn Redgrave, an introspective and independent player in her family's acting dynasty who became a 1960s sensation as the unconventional title character of ''Georgy Girl'' and later dramatized her troubled past in such one-woman stage performances as ''Shakespeare for My Father'' and ''Nightingale,'' has died. She was 67.

Her publicist Rick Miramontez, speaking on behalf of her children, said Redgrave died peacefully Sunday night at her home in Connecticut. Children Ben, Pema and Annabel were with her, as were close friends.

Playbill obituary:

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/139219-British-Acting-Legend-Lynn-Redgrave-Dies-at-67

Ms. Redgrave was a 2006 Tony Award nominee for Best Actress in a Play (The Constant Wife), a 1993 Tony Award nominee for Best Actress in a Play (Shakespeare for My Father, which she wrote) and a 1976 Tony Award nominee for Best Actress in a Play (Mrs. Warren's Professsion).

She was also a two-time Academy Award nominee (1999, Best Actress in a Supporting Role for "Gods and Monsters" and 1967 Best Actress in a Leading Role for "Georgy Girl").

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001655/

As I said above, I thought she had many more years ahead of her. God rest her soul, and God comfort her family, friends, and colleagues.

[Matilda]

280. Quite a shock; I didn't know she was ill.

I feel for Vanessa in particular; she's the last one of her generation of that talented family. To lose so many
in such a short time is terrible.

[CBHagman]

281. Lynn was always my favorite.

There was something wonderful about her. Some of it, I suspect, was a lack of vanity, at least when taking roles.

She had some very public problems, notably with being fired from House Calls and in recent years breaking up with her husband, but I always admired her.

[Matilda]

282. She and Corin were always a little overshadowed by Vanessa,

and not always because of Vanessa's work. Her personal life was always very much on view.

I have to admit that I thought that Vanessa was often overrated when she was young, and I think she improved with
age, but Lynn's work was always solid, from "Georgy Girl" onwards.

The last film I saw her in was "The Jane Austen Book Club", where she played a cameo role - I don't know whether
perhaps she was already ill then, because she doesn't seem to have played any major roles from around that time.

[Matilda]

283. Singer Lena Horne dies, aged 92.

"The US singer and actress Lena Horne has died in New York at the age of 92.

Renowned for her beauty and sultry voice, Ms Horne battled racism to become Hollywood's first black sex symbol.

In 1943, she played Selina Rogers in the all-black film musical Stormy Weather, the title song of which was to be a major hit and her signature tune.

Her career spanned more than 60 years. Later she embraced activism and became a voice for civil rights in the US."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8671724.stm


Just breaking on BBC Online; I haven't seen it anywhere else yet.

She was certainly a class act in every way.

[Auggie]

284. First time I saw Stormy Weather I was blown away

The performances are so awesome

[CBHagman]

285. Actor-director Dennis Hopper, 74.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mg7D3kYysfw/SWL0uD-acAI/AAAAAAAALYk/nTki00A7ia4/s400/hopper+dennis.jpg

The actor Dennis Hopper has died. A complicated, often deeply troubled man, he managed to make his mark in several film eras. Certainly he was one of a kind.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/29/AR2010052902009.html?sid=ST2010052903026

Mr. Hopper was a first-time director when he made "Easy Rider." He had started his movie career with promise, opposite James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) and "Giant" (1956). But his reputation for substance-abuse problems and angering veteran directors had caused acting offers from major studios to dry up.

By the mid-1960s, Mr. Hopper was knocking around American International Pictures, a studio specializing in cheaply made films about bikers, drugs and beach parties. He was awakened by a late-night phone call from Fonda, a fellow AIP actor, with the idea for "Easy Rider." It was not easy to persuade movie executives, even at AIP, to finance a movie that showed drug-dealing bikers as heroes.

"I figure you direct it, I produce it, we'll both write it and both star in it, save some money," Fonda told Mr. Hopper, according to Peter Biskind's book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood."

Numerous film credits, including Rebel without a Cause, Giant, Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, and Hoosiers.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000454/

[CBHagman]

286. Rosa Rio, 107, last of the silent film organists.

Who among us had heard of her? And yet she was one of our very last links to the silent era. Rest in peace.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10139/1059136-122.stm

Rosa Rio, the last of the original silent-movie organists, gave her first professional performance in 1912, when she was 10.

William Howard Taft was president.

In August, at the age of 107, she was still at the keyboard in Tampa, providing accompaniment for a screening of Buster Keaton's silent film "One Week." The movie was made in 1920, when Ms. Rio was already a seasoned musician of 18.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/obituaries/longtime-tampa-theatre-organist-rosa-rio-dies-at-107/1094896

TAMPA — The Queen of the Soaps has played her last note.

Rosa Rio, the spirited organist who earned her nickname providing accompaniments for soap operas and radio dramas decades before thrilling Tampa Theatre audiences with her witty turns on the Mighty Wurlitzer, died Thursday (May 13, 2010) at 107.

In a testament to her stamina, Mrs. Rio's death — just weeks before her 108th birthday — took people by surprise.

"The lady triumphed at every turn," said Lew Williams, a fellow organist and longtime friend. "She was more than a musician. She was a life force."

She was also possibly the last of the original generation of theater organists, said John Apple of Michael's Music Service, a company that published some of her work.

[Matilda]

288. How amazing! A link with the past indeed.

As I learned a couple of years ago at the silent film festival in
Sydney, playing for silents is a very specific task. Not everybody
can do it, and those who are really good make a great difference.

[CBHagman]

287. Actress Dixie Carter, 70.

With her husband, Hal Holbrook

I am remiss for not posting this earlier: Actress Dixie Carter has died. Best known in the United States for playing grande dame Julia Sugarbaker in the ensemble comedy Designing Women, she had numerous stage and television credits, including recent appearances on Desperate Housewives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/arts/television/12carter.html

Dixie Virginia Carter was born on May 25, 1939, in McLemoresville, Tenn., a small town roughly halfway between Memphis and Nashville.

(SNIP)

She said that after hearing a broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera at age 4 she immediately decided that she would move to New York to become an opera singer. She made her professional acting debut as Julie Jordan in a 1960 production of “Carousel” in Memphis and moved to New York in 1963.

That same year she played Perdita in a Joseph Papp production of “The Winter’s Tale” in Central Park. She then joined the Music Theater of Lincoln Center, which under the leadership of Richard Rodgers specialized in reviving classic musicals. Yet Ms. Carter never rose above understudy and left in 1966 to join the revues at the Upstairs at the Downstairs nightclub. Lily Tomlin and Madeline Kahn were among the other performers.

She made her Broadway debut in 1974 in a short-lived musical, “Sextet,” for which she was singled out by critics, and she appeared in a 1976 revival of “Pal Joey.” In 1997 she received favorable reviews after replacing Zoe Caldwell as Maria Callas in Terence McNally’s “Master Class.” Her final Broadway appearance was in 2004, as Mrs. Meers in “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

She said that it was her cabaret career, which began in the 1980s, that brought her the greatest creative satisfaction. “To me, there’s no feeling as gorgeous as the feeling of singing,” she told Stephen Holden of The New York Times in 1984. “It’s like flying.”

Film and TV credits, as per IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0141581/

A celebration of the eloquent, witty Southern feminist Dixie Carter played in Designing Women:

http://www.cleveland.com/schultz/index.ssf/2010/04/dixie_carter_like_julia_sugarb.html

Mind you, Ms. Carter's politics were a little more complicated than that. I had understood she was a good deal more conservative than her TV alter ego (In fact she was a registered Republican) but also was good friends with Designing Women creators Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason and, by extension, got to be a supporter of Bill Clinton.

[lavenderdiva]

289. Oscar-winner Patricia Neal dies at age 84

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/7145192.html

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Actress Patricia Neal, who won an Oscar in 1964 for "Hud" and later fought back from crippling strokes, has died at age 84.

Neal had lung cancer and died at her home in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard, Sunday morning, said longtime friend Bud Albers of Knoxville, Tenn.

The Kentucky-born Neal, famous for her husky voice, was already a Tony-winning stage actress when she made her film debut in 1949. Among her movies were "The Fountainhead" and "A Face in the Crowd."

The year after winning the Academy Award, she suffered a series of strokes and had to relearn to walk and talk. But she returned to the screen and earned another Oscar nomination and three Emmy nominations.

Albers said her family let him know of her death. A stroke and brain injury rehabilitation center is named for her in Knoxville.

[CBHagman]

290. Actor Christopher Cazenove.

I can't believe I neglected to mention Christopher Cazenove, who died in April. Many apologies for the oversight.

From the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/apr/08/christopher-cazenove-obituary

Christopher Cazenove, who has died aged 64 after falling ill from septicaemia in February, always dreamed of being a film star, although his father – a brigadier in the Coldstream Guards – wanted him to follow in his footsteps. In the event, when Cazenove fulfilled his acting ambitions, he did so by a military route, making his name as the blue-eyed, clean-cut hero Lieutenant Richard Gaunt in The Regiment (1972-73).

(SNIP)

While at the Pitlochry Festival theatre (1967-69), he played Hamlet. His first London appearance was as Courtenay in The Lionel Touch (alongside Rex Harrison, Lyric Theatre, 1970). In the West End, Cazenove acted John Watherstone in The Winslow Boy (1971) and Richard in Joking Apart (1979), before being cast as James Sinclair in the shortlived Broadway play Goodbye Fidel (1980).

But the actor who once described his favourite place as "in front of a camera" preferred performing on screen. His film debut was as Marc Antony's servant, alongside Charlton Heston, in Julius Caesar (1970).

It was a big surprise to me to learn he was once married to the actress Angharad Rees (Demelza in the Poldark series).

From The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/arts/television/09cazenove.html

Mr. Cazenove was cast frequently as upper-class men of military bearing, traits that dovetailed neatly with his own background. As a young actor, he came to wide notice as Charles Haslemere, the charming, caddish aristocrat in the BBC series “The Duchess of Duke Street.” The series was broadcast in the United States on PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater” from 1978 to 1980.

In 1989, Mr. Cazenove starred opposite Margaret Whitton and Ernie Sabella in the critically praised but short-lived ABC series “A Fine Romance.”

His film credits include “The Proprietor” (1996), directed by Ismail Merchant and starring Jeanne Moreau; “Three Men and a Little Lady” (1990); “Heat and Dust” (1983), directed by James Ivory; and “Eye of the Needle” (1981).

His credits, as per IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0147392/

[Matilda]

291. A face that you always recognised,

although I have to confess I never remembered his name. It was always, "Oh, yes, I know him", but I didn't really.

And Angharad Rees - I loved her in "Poldark", but I've only seen her once or twice since that series ended. I looked her up, and saw that she now designs jewellery and has her own shop.

[Matilda]

292. Actress who peaked at age five.

Here's one I just noticed from the Sydney Morning Herald - Cammie King Conlon, who played Bonnie Blue Butler in "Gone With The Wind".

"Cammie King Conlon jokingly lamented that she was famous for an experience she barely remembered, portraying Scarlett O'Hara's and Rhett Butler's ill-fated young daughter in the film Gone With the Wind.

"Aged four, she was cast as Bonnie Blue Butler for her resemblance to her film-screen parents - Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable - but her memories of making the epic 1939 Civil War saga were vague, more like ''snapshots'', she often said."

(snip)

"Of her part in one of the best films of all time, Conlon liked to say: ''I peaked at age five.'"


http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/actor-peaked-at-age-five-20100909-1533l.html


I have to confess, I never even knew her name, but she does have a claim to a little piece of history.

[Matilda]

293. Tony Curtis, dead at age 85.

This has been covered elsewhere, but I'm not interested in recycling any of the gossip, just to pay tribute to an often undervalued actor.

I was guilty of dismissing him as something of a pretty boy until I saw "Boston Strangler". That was an excellent performance by any standards, and after that I made a point of watching him in whatever came along. He was often cast in fairly lightweight comedies, but I discovered that he was often the linchpin that held them together, whether or not this was the intention of the studio. I was too young to appreciate some of his earlier films such as "The Defiant Ones" (it's been on my Quickflix list for a while now), but I've been catching up slowly via TCM and Quickflix.

I adored him in "Some Like It Hot", but I never cared for him in "Spartacus" - I do think he was hopelessly miscast in that. The accent alone was all wrong, especially as most of his scenes were with Laurence Olivier.

And I liked his paintings too - he visited Australia to paint, some time late 70s or early 80s, to paint, because of our scenery and wonderful light, and that's when I first became aware of his not inconsiderable talent in that area too.

Vale, Tony Curtis - may you find peace.

[CBHagman]

294. I agree with you...

...there is just something about a Bronx accent in ancient Rome, though, to be fair, it's not as though we have sound recordings to allow us to compare.

Getting back to Curtis, I haven't seen many of his dramatic roles, but that's not a bad thing, necessarily, as he made some really classic comedies -- Operation Petticoat, Some Like It Hot. And he looked fetching in drag, too.

[Matilda]

295. You know, I thought he was better than Cary Grant in "Operation Petticoat".

And I love Cary Grant! But he was never convincingly "Navy" to me - he was stuck somewhere between the authoritarian and the cheeky types, and looked uncomfortable. (My father was Navy, so I do have a reference point!). But Tony Curtis was just right as one of the irreverent types, who manage to keep everything ticking over.

I highly recommend "The Boston Strangler" to anyone - although I must have seen it back in the seventies, on TV, I do remember the power of his performance, so if that's one you never caught, maybe you can get it on Netflix.

[CBHagman]

296. Curtis (Bernie Schwartz!) served in the Navy.

In a bit of synchronicity, while looking up the bio of comedian/actor Larry Storch, I found that he and Curtis became friends during World War II.

From one of Curtis's obituaries:

http://www.suite101.com/content/hollywood-icon-actor-tony-curtis-dead-at-85-of-heart-attack-a292057

As a young man he joined the Navy and in the Second World War served on a submarine tender, a small ship that supplies support to submarines. In 1945 his ship, the U.S.S. Proteus, was in Tokyo Bay for the formal surrender of Japan and he watched the proceedings, which were taking place on board the nearby U.S.S. Missouri, with a pair of binoculars.

At the end of the war he began to study acting in New York. Another sailor on his ship, Larry Storch, would go on to an acting career (F Troop) and the two were lifelong friends and appeared in at least one movie together.

Since this thread needs a Tony Curtis picture, here you go:

[Matilda]

297. That probably explains why he understood the ethos of the Navy.

It's a hard thing to explain, but I could never believe that Grant was a seaman -
something about his walk, his carriage, the way he addressed the men, was all wrong.
But Curtis I always believed.

It's rather nice to know that perhaps on this, my instinct was right - my dad,
God rest him, would be proud of me!

[Matilda]

298. A word about Leslie Nielsen.

His passing is covered in other forums, but let's honour him here too. The slightly wooden serious leading man who became a beloved comic actor, creating characters that will never be forgotten.

Frank: Well, when I see five weirdos, dressed in togas, stabbing a man in the middle of the park in full view of a hundred people, I shoot the bastards, that's *my* policy!

Mayor: That was a Shakespeare-In-The-Park production of 'Julius Caesar,' you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!

RIP Leslie Nielsen (and don't call me Shirley!)

[CBHagman]

299. Thanks for posting that.

L.N. had/has quite a following on DU.

[CBHagman]

300. Actress Gloria Stuart, 100.

This is appallingly late, but I wanted to post the obituary of Gloria Stuart, whose career stretched from The Old Dark House through Titanic.

The Guardian's profile:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/28/gloria-stuart-obituary

When Gloria Stuart, who has died aged 100, was nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar for her spirited performance in James Cameron's Titanic (1997), there were few filmgoers who remembered her earlier acting career in the 1930s. Stuart played the 101-year-old Rose (portrayed in the rest of the film by Kate Winslet), who recalls the time when she was 17 onboard the doomed liner. ("I can still smell the fresh paint," she says.)

Sixty-five years earlier, Stuart stood out as a blonde ingenue in James Whale's comedy-thriller The Old Dark House (1932), in which she wore a tight evening gown and was chased by Boris Karloff as a sinister butler. Stuart recalled how Whale told her: "When Karloff chases you through the halls, I want you to be like a flame or a dancer." She was both.

The following year, again under the direction of Whale, Stuart touchingly played Flora Cranley, the fiancee in The Invisible Man. She overcame the difficulties of acting to an empty space, until the moment when she comforts the titular hero (Claude Rains) who reappears as he dies. In the same year, Stuart was once again in an "old dark house" in Secret of the Blue Room. She was very effective as a mysterious woman who forces her three suitors to prove their bravery by spending a night in a castle where three people were murdered 20 years earlier.

By way of contrast, in the Busby Berkeley-choreographed musical Roman Scandals (1933), she was a princess for whom Eddie Cantor plays Cupid. One of the writers on the film was Arthur Sheekman, whom Stuart married the following year. Sheekman was a friend of Groucho Marx, and had previously been a gagman on the Marx Brothers comedies Monkey Business (1931) and Duck Soup (1933). Stuart later claimed to be "one of the very few women that Groucho really liked".

Her credits, from IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001784/

[CBHagman]

301. "TCM Remembers," 2010 edition.

As usual, it's beautifully edited.

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

However, I am mortified to realize I left a great many notables out of my postings.

[CBHagman]

302. Actor Pete Postlethwaite, 64.

It grieves me to report that stage, television, and film actor Pete Postlethwaite, age 64, has died.

Obituary from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/jan/03/pete-postlethwaite-obituary

I apologize for the brevity...

[Matilda]

304. A wonderful British character actor, whose face you always recognised instantly.

I like what he had to say about working at the Everyman Theatre:

"When we were back at The Everyman, everything had to relate to the community, it had to say something about people's lives.

"That never changed for me, that's why I said no to a lot of roles. In works like Brassed Off or In The Name Of The Father, we were trying to say something, we were trying to convey a message."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12107455


Most people would remember him from "In The Name of the Father", but he was also constantly seen in British series and telemovies, often playing rather dubious characters.

He was a marvellous actor, and too young at 64 to leave us.

[CBHagman]

305. That face! That range!

It's saying something that Postlethwaite could make me despise his character in one of the Richard Sharpe series and then turn up as an ordinary decent bloke in something like Brassed Off or In the Name of the Father.



Here's a tribute from writer/director Jim Sheridan:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/pete-postlethwaite-remembered-director-jim-68052

Every day he had the whole crew laughing. He'd have the crew in the bar, and you wouldn't be able to find him. He lived life to the fullest. He liked to drink -- he wasn't a saint -- but he was always really professional. He carried around a big child inside of him. He would say, "I don't love you, it's pure lust," and grab you and shake you.

He was one of our best actors. I think it's his craggy look. He wasn't a matinee idol. Pete's looks were never going to get him roles as the good-looking Hollywood star. So he was a great actor.

When you play hide and seek with kids, they never want to be lost, they always want to be found. That's what In the Name of the Father was for Pete: the moment he was found. The breakthrough performance when he jumped out and said, "I'm here."

[Matilda]

307. You might like to look at the ABC's tribute to him,

which includes a reference to a documentary he made in Australia, dealing with the question of Aboriginal injustice.
I confess I didn't know he'd made that; he was definitely a man of strong convictions.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2011/01/04/3106320.htm

[Lydia Leftcoast]

303. Hideko Takamine, 86, star of classic Japanese films

Ms. Takamine, who often seemed to be gallantly fighting back tears with her famously gentle smile, was widely regarded by Japanese and foreign critics as one of the three great actresses of the classical Japanese cinema. Her two peers were the aristocratic Kinuyo Tanaka, who worked extensively with the director Kenji Mizoguchi (“Sansho the Bailiff”) and died in 1977, and Setsuko Hara, whose portrayals of modern middle-class women were associated with the films of Yasujiro Ozu (“Tokyo Story”).

Ms. Takamine was most notably the muse of Mikio Naruse, who, although not as well known in the west as Mizoguchi and Ozu, is frequently ranked as equally important in Japanese film history. For Naruse, Ms. Takamine often played women from rural or lower-middle-class backgrounds who were forced to make their own way in the world, often saddled with weak or unfaithful men.

Among her best-known work with Naruse was “Floating Clouds” (1955), in which she played a secretary in love with her married boss, sticking with him from a wartime post in Indochina to contemporary Tokyo despite his coldness, and “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs” (1960), in which she played a widow working as a bar hostess in Tokyo’s Ginza district.

A different, less tragic side of Ms. Takamine’s personality emerged in the many movies she made with the popular filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita. In “Carmen Comes Home” (1951), the first Japanese feature to be filmed in color, she was an exotic dancer who returns from Tokyo to her native village, bringing a whiff of modern attitudes with her; in “Twenty-Four Eyes” (1954) she was a female Mr. Chips, a schoolteacher who guides her charges from the rise of militarism in the 1930s through the aftermath of war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/movies/04takamine.html?hpw

[Lydia Leftcoast]

306. Jill Haworth, 65 (played Karen in "Exodus")

A petite, strikingly pretty blonde (she wore a dark wig on Broadway), Ms. Haworth was just 14 when she was signed to appear, along with Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint and Sal Mineo, as a displaced Jew in “Exodus” (1960), Otto Preminger’s grandiose adaptation of the Leon Uris novel about the birth of the state of Israel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/theater/05haworth.html?hpw

[rdmtimp]

308. 'Bullitt' director Peter Yates dies at 81'

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110110/ap_en_ot/eu_britain_obit_yates

LONDON – British filmmaker Peter Yates, who sent Steve McQueen screeching through the streets of San Francisco in a Ford Mustang in "Bullitt," has died at the age of 81.

Yates was nominated for four Academy Awards — two as director and two as producer — for the cycling tale "Breaking Away" and the backstage drama "The Dresser."

A graduate of London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Yates directed stage greats including "Dresser" star Albert Finney and Maggie Smith as well as creating one of the film world's most memorable action sequences — the much-imitated car chase in the 1968 police thriller "Bullitt."

A statement from Yates' agent, Judy Daish, said he died Sunday in London after an illness.

Born in Aldershot, southern England in 1929, Yates trained as an actor, performed in repertory theater and did a stint as a race-car driver before moving into film. He began as an editor and then became an assistant director on films including Tony Richardson's "A Taste of Honey" and J. Lee Thompson's "The Guns of Navarone."

His first film as a director was the frothy 1963 musical "Summer Holiday" starring Cliff Richard — a singer billed, optimistically, as the "British Elvis."

Yates also directed "Robbery," based on the real 1963 heist known as the "Great Train Robbery," which marked him as a talented director of action sequences.

He then went to Hollywood for "Bullitt," and went on to make well-received films including the war thriller "Murphy's War," with Peter O'Toole, and the tense crime drama "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" starring Robert Mitchum.

Nothing if not varied, his 1970s movies included crass comedy "Mother, Jugs and Speed," starring Bill Cosby and Raquel Welch, and the critically derided but commercially successful undersea thriller "The Deep."

"Bullitt" star Jacqueline Bissett had high praise for Yates professionally and personally, saying she valued a long friendship with the filmmaker and his wife.

"Peter Yates was a very civilized and cultured man, which certainly added to his cinematic contribution," the British actress said Monday in a statement. "He was courageous, even intrepid, during the shooting of 'The Deep' and 'Bullitt.'"

In 1979, Yates hit another creative high with "Breaking Away," a deft coming-of-age story about a cycling-mad teenager in small-town Indiana. It was nominated for five Oscars, including best director and best picture — giving Yates two nominations, as he was also a producer on the film.

Yates received two more nominations for "The Dresser," a 1983 adaptation of Ronald Harwood's play about an aging actor and his assistant, which he directed and co-produced.

In recent years Yates had worked mostly in television. His last theatrical feature was 1999's "Curtain Call," which starred Michael Caine and Smith as a pair of theatrical ghosts.

Yates is survived by his wife, Virginia Pope, a son and a daughter.

Monday's statement said a private family funeral would be held.

[CBHagman]

309. "Breaking Away" is one of those movies...

...it's a pleasure to see again and again. Like Diner and American Graffiti, it deals with young men in a particular time and place -- that void between high school graduation and the rest of life -- and you don't have to be a jock or a punk or a townie, or even male, to appreciate the universality of the story.



It's also a chance to see Dennis Quaid, Dennis Christopher, Daniel Stern, and Jackie Earle Haley at the beginning of their careers, but the real scene-stealer is Paul Dooley, playing Christopher's father.

[rdmtimp]

310. Susannah York, actress, 72

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1347558/Susannah-York-dies-aged-72-cancer-battle.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

The British actress Susannah York has died aged 72, it was confirmed tonight.

York, who was best known for her role in the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, passed away yesterday following a long battle with cancer.

Following her death, the actress' son Orlando Wells said: 'She was an absolutely fantastic mother, who was very down to earth.

She loved nothing more than cooking a good Sunday roast and sitting around a fire of a winter's evening. In some sense, she was quite a home girl. Both my sister Sasha and I feel incredibly lucky to have her as a mother.
Film and stage star: York in Holby City in 2003

Film and stage star: York in Holby City in 2003

'She was a woman with grace and stature. She had advanced bone marrow cancer which she had an operation for.

'But, last Thursday, she had a scan and then the descent was fast. In the end, her death was painless and quick.'

As well as starring in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, a role for which she received an Oscar nomination, York was also famed for roles in 1966 movie A Man For All Seasons and Zee And Co in 1972.

York is also well known for her extensive stage career, which included roles in critically-acclaimed plays including The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs and Henry James play Appearances.

In addition, York tried her hand at writing, penning two children's fantasy novels entitled In Search of Unicorns in 1973 and Lark's Castle in 1976.

It was in 1960 that York met and married Michael Wells, with whom she had two children, Orlando and Sasha.

Family was a very important part of York's life, as she explained in an interview in 2008.

She told The Telegraph: ''Seeing the family is a very important part of my weekend. I see a lot of my daughter Sasha and my son Orlando.

'We all live quite close to each other on different sides of Clapham Common in south London. My grandson, Rafferty, is absolutely lovely. He's a year old and there's another child on the way.'

York and Wells divorced in 1976 and she never remarried.

York is survived by her two children, as well as a grandson and a granddaughter.

[CBHagman]

311. Composer John Barry, 77.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/movies/01barry.html?_r=1

Although he won Oscars for his work on “The Lion in Winter” (1968), “Out of Africa” (1985) and “Dances With Wolves” (1990), he was known first and foremost as the resident composer for most of the Bond films.

The musical template he established was as much a part of the films as Bond’s double entendres, Q’s gadgetry and Miss Moneypenny’s flirtatious repartee. The films began with a catchy song performed by a pop star, its themes picked up and reprised throughout the movie, most effectively in the tense transitions when Bond moved from one exotic location to the next or prepared to execute a choice bit of spycraft.

His role in composing the most famous Bond music of all, the theme that has been a signature of the films since “Dr. No” (1962), remains unclear. When he took credit for the theme in an interview with The Sunday Times of London in 1997, the original composer hired for the film, Monty Norman, successfully sued the newspaper for libel, asserting that Mr. Barry had only done the orchestration.

[CBHagman]

312. Broadway, film, and TV actress Betty Garrett, 91.

I suspect we've all seen her in something -- On the Town, Laverne and Shirley -- but how many of us know her story?


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/13/AR2011021300446.html

Garrett was best known as the flirtatious girl in love with the shy Sinatra in "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "On the Town," both in 1949, and later in life she became well-known to TV audiences with recurring roles in the 1970s sitcoms "All in the Family" and "Laverne and Shirley."

Her movie career was brief, largely because of the Red Hunt led by congressmen who forced her husband, actor Larry Parks, to testify about his earlier membership in the Communist Party.

(SNIP)

Garrett had also had a brief dalliance with the party but wasn't called to testify, perhaps, she said, "because I was nine months pregnant with my second son, and they didn't think I would be a good witness."

Garrett's stage career began to click when she sang the show-stopping "South America, Take It Away" in "Call Me Mister" on Broadway in 1946. That brought Hollywood offers, and at 27 she signed a contract with MGM, then the king of musical movies. Her son said aside from her family she considered the work she would do for MGM her life's highest point.

She was still teaching classes in musical comedy the week she died. What a career!

[CBHagman]

313. Actress Annie Girardot, 79.

FRANCE MOURNS THE DEATH OF TOP ACTRESS ANNIE GIRARDOT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022804467.html

Film director Claude Lelouch, who made her his star in six movies, compared Girardot to Edith Piaf, saying she was the stage "equivalent" of the French singing legend. However, Piaf gained worldwide recognition whereas Girardo's talent stayed closer to home.

(SNIP)

Girardot was acclaimed for her comedic performance in 1954 at the Academie Francaise, but made her movie debut the following year with Andre Hunebelle's "Treize a table" (13 at the Table). However, it was not until 1960 that her film career was truly launched with Luchino Visconti's "Rocco and His Brothers" in which she starred with Alain Delon.

During her career, Girardo performed in over 100 films, and won France's coveted Cesar award three times - in 1976 for best actress for her role in Jean-Louis Bertuccelli's "Doctor Francoise Gailland," for best supporting actress for "Les Miserables" in 1995, and for playing a possessive mother of a musician in Michael Haneke's "Le Pianiste" in 200

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Dct3SbIEsjk/SLvSbYnyocI/AAAAAAAAAhY/CUosWSTlWA4/s400/8+girardot.jpg

[CBHagman]

314. Director Charles Jarrott, 83.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/movies/07jarrott.html?src=twrhp

He won a Golden Globe for “Anne of the Thousand Days” (1969), his first theatrical feature, which starred Richard Burton as King Henry VIII and Geneviève Bujold as Anne Boleyn. Two years later he returned with the similarly themed “Mary, Queen of Scots,” with Vanessa Redgrave in the title role and Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth I.

Those two films, produced by the Hollywood veteran Hal Wallis, were nominated for a combined 15 Academy Awards — although “Anne of the Thousand Days” won only one, for costume design, and “Mary, Queen of Scotts” won none.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QjuzUIuGxF4/TF9DRz84DOI/AAAAAAAAAVw/BGoWfEbxaW0/s1600/Anne+of+the+Thousand+Days.jpg

[CBHagman]

315. Composer-songwriter Hugh Martin, 96.

The man who gave us "The Trolley Song" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" has died.

http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=635254

Martin and songwriting partner Ralph Blane co-wrote such catchy tunes as "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "The Trolley Song" and "The Boy Next Door" from the musical "Meet Me in St. Louis."

Martin, who hailed from Birmingham, Ala., also crafted songs for several other film and Broadway musicals, including "Best Foot Forward," "Make a Wish," "High Spirits" and "Hooray for What!"

Here's Judy Garland and the ensemble performing "The Trolley Song" in Meet Me in St. Louis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0odXnKhKBxQ

[CBHagman]

316. Actress Elizabeth Taylor, 79.

A woman who really needs no introduction at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/screen-legend-elizabeth-taylor-dies-at-age-79/2010/09/21/ABPFCYIB_story.html?hpid=z1

Onscreen, she was presented as one of the age’s greatest saints or sinners. Her roles often intertwined with circumstances in her own life to create an enduring image as victim or vamp.

She made more than 60 films and twice won the Oscar for best actress: as a call girl who meets with tragedy in “BUtterfield 8” (1960), based on the John O’Hara novella; and as the braying, slovenly wife of a professor in “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966), adapted from Edward Albee’s play about marital warfare.

(SNIP)

Widespread respect for her acting and humanitarian work came much later in her career with a slew of lifetime achievement awards. Her media exposure, on which she built her star status, might have kept her from being taken seriously in her heyday.

“No actress ever had a more difficult job in getting critics to accept her onscreen as someone other than Elizabeth Taylor,” film historian Jeanine Basinger said. “Her persona ate her alive

[Matilda]

317. Dare I say it - I never thought she had much talent as an actress.

But she was stunningly beautiful, and wore her heart on her sleeve. If she took up a cause, you somehow knew she meant it. It was never about the publicity.

I think she was perhaps also quite a moral person - if she had an affair with somebody, she had to marry him. There were definitely some misalliances - I'd name Conrad Hilton, Eddie Fisher, John Warner and Larry Fortensky. You look at her, and look at them, and can only wonder. Those marraiges shouldn't have happened, but it would seem that Liz couldn't just shack up with somebody without the ring and the licence. On the surface it might appear flighty, but I think it was incredibly moral.

There was Mike Todd, of course - how that would have ended had he lived is anybody's guess. And Richard - how hard she tried to be an actress worthy of him. It led to some misadvised forays into theatre - her voice was never big enough - but it was very endearing that she tried hard, and did her best.

And Montgomery Clift - according to Burton, he was the real love of her life. What might have happened had he not been gay? There seems to be little doubt that he loved her in the same way she loved him - two tragically vulnerable people who had a bond that lasted until his death, and perhaps beyond.

Vale, Elizabeth – a star in a class of your own.

[CBHagman]

318. Interesting take...

I've long seen her as someone who was already all about the fame early on, and somehow survived it all, or at least outlived contemporaries who were the casualties of the system and/or their own dysfunction. I couldn't say I'd ever envy her, but in many ways she was one of the fortunate ones.

[CBHagman]

319. Actor Farley Granger, 85.

Another one who really needs no introduction around here.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/1950s-screen-idol-farley-granger-171994

Farley Granger, who played the likable tennis pro who was thrust into a murder exchange in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train in 1951, died Sunday of natural causes in New York. He was 85.

Two years earlier in 1948, Granger had won acclaim for another Hitchcock murder thriller, Rope, in which he played a young pianist who perpetrates a Leopold Loeb-type murder with a fellow school chum. Under contract to producer Samuel Goldwyn during his relatively short Hollywood career, he typically played a confused or neurotic young man, always facing a series of melodramatic problems. After appearing opposite Danny Kaye in Hans Christian Anderson in 1952, he bought out his Goldwyn contract and traveled to Europe in 1954 where he starred in Luchino Visconti's Senso.

[lavenderdiva]

320. Director Sidney Lumet dies at age 86

snip:
Sidney Lumet, a four-time Oscar nominee, was known for guiding strong performances in films such as '12 Angry Men,' 'Network' and 'Dog Day Afternoon.' Lumet directed more than 40 films in his long career, many of them in his hometown of New York.

Lumet, whose film career spanned more than 50 years, died of lymphoma at his home in New York, said Marc Kusnetz, who is the husband of Lumet's stepdaughter, Leslie Gimbel.

link here: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-sidney-lumet-20110410,0,7115943.story


he was a great director. '12 Angry Men' is one of my favorites.

Safe passage.

[CBHagman]

321. Every time "12 Angry Men" is on...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fepqainiFww/SwSgSzgXOdI/AAAAAAAAQvM/V9mrptA4FXk/s1600/lumet,+sidney.jpg

...I have to watch. It doesn't matter how often I've seen it before.

[CBHagman]

322. Actor Jackie Cooper, 88.

As many DUers have no doubt heard by now, Jackie Cooper has died. He had a lengthy career as an actor, director, and executive. He was also a Navy veteran.

"Six Things to Know About Jackie Cooper," as per the Hollywood Reporter:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/six-things-know-jackie-cooper-185750

His IMDB entry:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0178114/

One of many online obituaries:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jackie-cooper-child-star-superman-185390

Cooper enjoyed a 60-year acting career. Before Shirley Temple won the world’s hearts, he was the most popular and widely recognized child star of the early 1930s and the first kid to shine in “talkies.” His pug nose, crinkly smile and pouty lip endeared him to a nationwide audience, first as Jackie in Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedies. Cooper was so popular, he was known as “America’s Boy.”{/i]

(SNIP)

Like most child stars, Cooper hit a difficult period during adolescence, both professionally and personally. As he entered his teens, other young stars including Roddy McDowall and Freddie Bartholomew took over the tyke roles.

Based on his experiences, Cooper later opposed children growing up as actors. None of his four children went on to perform. The title of his 1981 autobiography, Please Don’t Shoot My Dog, came from Taurog’s threat during the filming of Skippy that he would shoot the boy’s dog because he was not performing adequately.

[Matilda]

323. Shame on the Aussie media - this has completely passed them by.

I first saw Jackie Cooper in reruns of the old Our Gang movies on early television here, and of course I recall him
in the Superman movies.

A long and productive life - God rest him.


Edited to add: I sent an email to the Obituary section of the Sydney Morning Herald, and the editor replied that they are working on an obit, which will be published next week. Slackers.

[CBHagman]

324. I have to admit...

...he was one of those actors whose obituary I thought I had already read (I went through something similar with Sir John Mills, who set some kind of a record amazingly long lives and careers).

Anyway, I'd lost track of Jackie Cooper until TCM did a big Hal Roach festival and I realized that most Our Gang cast member had already died and that Mr. C. was one of the few (or perhaps the only one) surviving.

Like the TV actor Paul Peterson, Cooper was very outspoken about the dark side of being a child star. Fortunately not every young actor has traumatic experiences, and of course quite a few come through an early career well, or even have happy memories, but there are too many for whom an early acting career proves a disaster.

[CBHagman]

325. Actor Edward Hardwicke, 78.

A familiar, even reassuring presence to movie and TV fans. I can't say I knew his stage work, but I certainly thought he was wonderful in Shadowlands (as Warnie, C.S. Lewis's elder brother) and as Watson to Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/18/edward-hardwicke-obituary

His authenticity as an actor was innate, since he was the only child of theatrical royalty, the actors Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Helena Pickard. (The couple divorced when Edward was 16.) Cedric, whose range and fame were much wider and deeper than Edward's, was once told by George Bernard Shaw that he was the playwright's fifth favourite actor – the first four being the Marx Brothers. Edward, who would grow to be almost a physical replica of his father – sturdily built, balding, of average height – made his debut aged seven at the Malvern festival. He went to Hollywood with his parents aged 10 and appeared in Victor Fleming's film A Guy Named Joe (1943) alongside Spencer Tracy. He was educated at Stowe school, Buckinghamshire, trained at Rada in London, and did his national service as a pilot officer in the RAF with Ronnie Corbett, who became a lifelong friend.

Other important friendships were formed early on with Albert Finney, Anthony Hopkins and Peter O'Toole. Hardwicke shared a flat with O'Toole during his first major employment, at the Bristol Old Vic between 1954 and 1957. After seasons in Oxford and Nottingham, and a couple of West End appearances, he joined Olivier's National in 1964, appearing in Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Congreve's Love for Love (beautifully directed by Olivier), Othello with Olivier and Frank Finlay, Ibsen's The Master Builder and as Praed in Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession with Coral Browne.

These were golden years at the Old Vic, Olivier's recruits including Brett, Michael Gambon, Edward Petherbridge, Derek Jacobi and Christopher Timothy, as well as the more established Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely and Finney.

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0362570/

[Matilda]

326. I didn't know he was the son of Sir Cedric.

And I had to check the cast list of Othello to find out who he played - it was Montano.

It was amazing to look at that cast list - there was Michael Gambon listed as "Company". That was the time that I was in London and desperately trying to get tickets, without success. It was a great time for the National.

I saw that he was still working as late as last year, although the list is somewhat smaller in recent years.

[CBHagman]

327. Actor Bill Hunter, 71.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/australian-actor-bill-hunter-dies-at-71/2011/05/23/AFGiK49G_story.html

Bill Hunter, the archetypal working class Australian of a multitude of movies including the quirky trio “Muriel’s Wedding,” “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and “Strictly Ballroom,” died of cancer May 21 at a hospice in Melbourne. He was 71.

Mr. Hunter’s weather-worn face has become almost omnipresent on Australian screens since he first appeared as an extra in 1957 in “The Shiralee,” a British-made movie set in Australia.

His real break into the industry came as a stunt man when Hollywood made “On the Beach” in his hometown of Melbourne in 1959 — a movie about survivors of a nuclear war that starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire.

“He watched Gregory Peck do 27 takes and thought: ‘A mug could do that,’ ” Mr. Hunter’s former wife Rhoda Roberts told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper last week.

Credits, as per IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0402730/

[Matilda]

328. He was also well-known in the industry

for being an alcoholic. Not one to be bothered by it, nor to try various forms of drying out or rehabilitation.

"I'm an alcoholic, mate". Simple statement of fact.

Mr Matilda has his Bill Hunter story - he was cast in the ABC television series 1915, and his scenes were to be shot in the NSW Southern Highlands. He was booked to be taken down in the same car as Bill Hunter, and they'd hardly started off before Bill started handing out the cans of beer. Two hours later, a cheerful Hunter and two totally inebriated cast members arrived at their destination. Hunter seemed none the worse for wear, but the other two were totally useless for the rest of the day.

[CBHagman]

329. I ought to have known there were Six Degrees of Separation...

....at work here.

:wow:

As for the story, I'm speechless!

[Matilda]

330. Mr M said it was more like three hours.

But Bill Hunter was dispensing advice along with the beer, and it was like three hours of free masterclass. But
they had to match him beer for beer...

[CBHagman]

331. Gunnar Fischer, 100, cinematographer for Ingmar Bergman.

You may not know the name, but you know the work.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020100903.html

Gunnar Fischer remains one of the world's most respected movie craftsmen, helping set the visual tone for filmmakers as varied as Walt Disney and psychologically attuned Danish director Carl Dreyer.

But Fischer's legacy is bound to the dozen or so films he made from 1948 to 1960 with fellow Swede Bergman, who died last July. (Many of their early classics are being screened Feb. 8 to March 4 at the AFI Silver, the first of at least two AFI series on Bergman to honor what would have been his 90th year.)

Fischer translated Bergman's themes of emotional isolation, sexual anguish and fear of death into unforgettable images: cold Scandinavian sunlight sparkling off water in "Summer Interlude" (1951) and "Summer With Monika" (1953); the brittle twilight in the sex farce "Smiles of a Summer Night" (1955); and the finale of "The Seventh Seal," in which a parade of characters dance to their fate with scythe-wielding Death leading the way.

Fischer said he brought to Bergman a "fantasy-like style. It wasn't about making the scenes realistic but more theatric, like a saga."

[CBHagman]

332. Playwright, screenwriter, director Arthur Laurents, 93.

I'm posting this late:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/arts/arthur-laurents-playwright-and-director-dies-at-93.html

Arthur Laurents, the playwright, screenwriter and director who wrote and ultimately transformed two of Broadway’s landmark shows, “Gypsy” and “West Side Story,” and created one of Hollywood’s most well-known romances, “The Way We Were,” died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.

(SNIP)

Mr. Laurents once described writers as “the chosen people” and said he was happiest when sitting alone and putting his “daydreams and fantasies down on paper.”

He did so in various genres. His film credits include Hitchcock’s “Rope”; “Anastasia,” with Ingrid Bergman; and “The Turning Point,” with Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine. His screenplay for “The Way We Were,” with Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand, was adapted from his novel by the same name.

But the stage was his first love, and he wrote for it for 65 years, turning out comedies and romances as well as serious dramas that often explored questions of ethics, social pressures and personal integrity. Early on, he once said, he realized that “plays are emotion,” not simply words strung together, and it became his guiding principle.



Left to right, composer Richard Rodgers, Mr. Laurents, composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim

[CBHagman]

333. Actor Peter Falk, 83.

To anyone who ever watched Wings of Desire or The Princess Bride or TV's Columbo, the man needs no introduction.

From The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/arts/television/peter-falk-columbo-actor-dies-at-83.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig

Mr. Falk had a wide-ranging career in comedy and drama, in the movies and onstage, before and during the three-and-a-half decades in which he portrayed the slovenly but canny lead on “Columbo.” He was nominated for two Oscars; appeared in original stage productions of works by Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon and Arthur Miller, worked with the directors Frank Capra, John Cassavetes, Blake Edwards and Mike Nichols, and co-starred with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis and Jason Robards.

But like that of his contemporary Telly Savalas of “Kojak” fame, Mr. Falk’s primetime popularity was founded on a single role.

A lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department, Columbo was a comic variation on the traditional fictional detective. With the keen mind of Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe, he was cast in the mold of neither — not a gentleman scholar, and not a tough guy. He was instead a mass of quirks and peculiarities, a seemingly distracted figure in a rumpled raincoat, perpetually patting his pockets for a light for his signature stogie.

[CBHagman]

334. Stage, television, and film actress Margaret Tyzack, 79.

Known for, among other things, TV's I, Claudius and The Forsyte Saga and the theater's Lettice and Lovage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jun/27/margaret-tyzack-obituary

Tyzack considered herself first and foremost a character actor, asserting that she "never wanted to be a star". Immensely versatile, unassuming, modest and largely unrecognisable offstage, she often boasted that she could go shopping without being spotted, and lived quietly with her mathematician husband, Alan Stephenson, in Blackheath, south-east London. She could play kind, benign, a pillar of the empire (such as Lady Bruton in Marleen Gorris's 1997 film of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway) or in the latter years of her career, a show-stealing, fur-clad battleaxe in His Girl Friday, John Guare's stage adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's The Front Page (National Theatre, 2003).

IMDB credits:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0879239/

[CBHagman]

335. Actress Anna Massey, 73.

First Edward Hardwicke, now Anna Massey. Both were stalwarts of British drama, and both were offspring of famous actors.

And both, it turns out, had a connection to actor Jeremy Brett -- Hardwicke as Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes series, Massey as former wife! Why didn't I know that already?

From the Guardian, and be warned that there are spoilers for some of her movies:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jul/04/anna-massey-dies-aged-73

The daughter of the Hollywood actor Raymond Massey, Anna Massey began her career on stage, picking up a Tony nomination for her turn in The Reluctant Debutante at the age of 18. She made her screen debut in the 1958 crime drama Gideon's Day, directed by her godfather John Ford, and co-starred with Laurence Olivier on the cult 60s thriller Bunny Lake is Missing.

Yet Massey looks set to be best remembered for her roles in two of the most controversial pictures of post-war British cinema. In 1960 she played Helen, the sweet-natured friend of a serial killer in Michael Powell's notorious Peeping Tom. In 1972, she was cast as sacrificial barmaid Babs Milligan in Hitchcock's grubby, London-set thriller Frenzy. Peeping Tom found itself reviled by contemporary critics as "perverted" and "beastly", while Frenzy remains the only Hitchcock film to receive a prohibitive X-certificate in the UK. Today, both films are widely regarded as classics.

In later years Massey acted alongside Christian Bale on The Machinist, Gwyneth Paltrow on Possession and Colin Firth in The Importance of Being Earnest. But her greatest roles arrived via the small screen, where she became a mainstay of the British costume drama. Massey's TV credits include Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Anna Karenina, The Cherry Orchard and Oliver Twist. She won a Bafta for her role as a lonely novelist in the BBC's 1986 adaptation of Hotel du Lac.

Her credits include:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0557281/#Actress

[Matilda]

336. One of those delightful stalwarts of British acting.

I just watched "Mrs Palfreyman at the Claremont" on Quickflix a few weeks ago, and loved her performance as Mrs Arbuthnot - she matched Joan Plowright every step of the way, and that's no mean feat. (I always admired her father's work too.)

As always, Sydney is slow to pick this up - guess she's not enough of a "star" name to warrant a mention, although The Sydney Morning Herald will doubtless do an obit in a few days.

She will be missed from that great brigade of British character actresses.

[CBHagman]

337. I simply lost count of the things I saw her do.

She turned up in film after film, in innumerable television dramas. I have an especially fond memory of her portrayal of Aunt Stanbury in a fairly recent adaptation of He Knew He Was Right.

She will be very much missed.

[rdmtimp]

338. G. D. Spradlin, veteran Character actor

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-g-d-spradlin-20110726,0,3973610.story?track=rss&dlvrit=53008

Gervase Duan "G.D." Spradlin, a character actor best known for playing authority figures in television and films, including "The Godfather: Part II" and "Apocalypse Now," has died. He was 90.

Spradlin died of natural causes at his cattle ranch in San Luis Obispo on Sunday, said his grandson, Justin Demko.

A former oil company lawyer and millionaire independent oil producer who didn't begin acting until he was in his 40s, the tall and lean Oklahoma native played his share of doctors, ministers, judges, military officers and historical figures during his more than 30-year acting career.

He portrayed President Johnson in the 1985 TV mini-series "Robert Kennedy & His Times" and President Jackson in the 1986 TV movie "Houston: The Legend of Texas."

He also played an admiral in the 1988 TV mini-series "War and Remembrance" and was a pro football coach in the 1979 film "North Dallas Forty" and a college basketball coach in the 1977 film "One on One."

His breakthrough movie role as a character actor was as corrupt Nevada Sen. Pat Geary in director Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather: Part II" in 1974.

Five years later, Spradlin was the Army general who sent Martin Sheen's Capt. Willard up river to find and kill Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz in Coppola's Vietnam war movie "Apocalypse Now."

Spradlin, whose other film credits include "The War of the Roses" and "Ed Wood," retired from acting after playing Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in the 1999 comedy "Dick."

"He brought a lot of what he had done in his life to what he did on the screen," said Demko, adding that his grandfather had a lifelong love of language and could recite passages from Shakespeare and poetry until the end.

The son of two schoolteachers, Spradlin was born Aug. 31, 1920, in Pauls Valley, Okla. He received a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Oklahoma before serving in the Army Air Forces in China during World War II.

After earning a law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1948, he became an attorney for Phillips Petroleum Co. and then became head of Phillips' legal department in Caracas, Venezuela.

After returning to Oklahoma in 1951, Spradlin became an independent oil producer. He was so successful that he retired in 1960 and spent time cruising the Bahamas on a yacht with his family.

"Being rich changes surprisingly little," Spradlin told The Times in 1967. "You'll still have to have an absorbing interest in life, something to do to make you feel alive."

For Spradlin, that was acting.

In late 1963 his daughter Wendy, a member of the children's classes at the Mummers Theater in Oklahoma City, wanted to audition for a role in a production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

To give her moral support, Spradlin accompanied her to the theater and wound up auditioning for — and landing — a role in the play, the first of three local productions he appeared in.

Spradlin, who earned a master's degree in Latin American studies from the University of Miami in 1965 and was a doctoral candidate in the same field, had directed John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign in Oklahoma and had an unsuccessful run for mayor of Oklahoma City in 1965.

A year later, he moved his family to Los Angeles.

He was so new to show business, he told The Times in 1980, that when a secretary at the William Morris Agency asked him if he had any film, "I told her no, but that there was a drugstore around the corner and I could run over and buy some. I thought you must have to bring your own film to have a screen test."

Spradlin's first wife, Nell, with whom he had two daughters, Tamara Kelly and Wendy Spradlin, died in 2000.

In 2002, he married Frances Hendrickson, who survives him, as do his two daughters and five grandchildren.

[CBHagman]

339. Actress Sybil Jason, 83.

Particularly noted for her work in the 1930s, Sybil Jason was a friend and sometime costar of Shirley Temple.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/movies/sybil-jason-cherubic-child-actress-dies-at-83.html

Ms. Jason, a brunette pixie from South Africa who was five months older than Ms. Temple, starred in a string of Warner films that emulated the sensibility of her rival’s. She cried at a variety of provocations in “Little Big Shot” (1935), sang with Al Jolson in “The Singing Kid” (1936) and starred alongside Pat O’Brien and Humphrey Bogart in “The Great O’Malley” (1937). But Ms. Jason never drew crowds like Ms. Temple, and Warner Brothers let her contract expire.

Fox then signed her, and she appeared with Ms. Temple in “The Little Princess” (1939) and “The Blue Bird” (1940). Ms. Jason later maintained that Ms. Temple’s mother, Gertrude, had insisted that the studio cut her most dramatic scenes in “Blue Bird” so that she would not outshine her daughter.

Nevertheless, Ms. Jason and Ms. Temple, who became Shirley Temple Black, remained friends until Ms. Jason’s death, her daughter said.

[CBHagman]

340. Director Raul Ruiz, 70.

I just saw The Mysteries of Lisbon today and in the course of looking up articles about it online, I found out that the director had recently died.

Trailer to the movie available at this website:

http://www.movieline.com/2011/08/mysteries-of-lisbon-filmmaker-raoul-ruiz-passes-away-at-70.php

With his latest film, the well-received four and a half-hour opus The Mysteries of Lisbon, still in theaters stateside, Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz has passed away in Paris following a lung infection. The director, who had made over 100 films in his nearly five-decade career, was 70.

The Chilean-born filmmaker began making films in the 1960s and moved to France after Pinochet assumed power in 1973. His films earned him numerous European awards; four of them (That Day, Marcel Proust’s Time Regained, Three Lives and Only One Death, and L’oeil qui ment) were nominated for the Cannes Palme d’Or.

[Matilda]

341. Actress Diane Cilento dies

Actress and Queensland arts identity Diane Cilento has died after a long illness at the age of 79.

Born in Mooloolaba to an esteemed medical family, she decided to become an actress at a young age and graduated from London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

She went on to win international acclaim as an actress during the 1950s and 1960s.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-07/diane-cilento-dies/3340782


She never attained the top echelons of international fame - I remember her most from her connection to her family, especially her scientist father, Sir Raphael Cilento; her marriage to Sean Connery; and during the past couple of decades for her theatre, Karnak Playhouse, which she established and ran in Mossman, Queensland.

The best film I ever saw her in was "Tom Jones", in which she played Molly Seagrim, who turned out to be Tom's mother - their eating scene was a masterpiece of sexual comedy.

Edit: Correction: Molly wasn't Tom's mother; Molly was a local girl with a wandering eye.

[CBHagman]

342. Actor Karl Slover, 93, of "The Wizard of Oz."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15755349

Actor Karl Slover, who was best known for playing a Munchkin in the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz, has died aged 93.

The star, who passed away on Tuesday with heart problems, was one of the last surviving cast members.

Slover, who was one of the smallest male Munchkins in the movie, played the lead trumpeter, a townsman and soldier in the Oscar-winning film.

(SNIP)

In the 1980s the movie found a new generation of fans, and the group of surviving Munchkin actors began making appearances.

"Of the 124 little people, he's one of the handful who got to enjoy this latter-day fame, to have people know who he was and be able to pick him out of the crowd in the movie," said Mr Fricke.

[CBHagman]

343. Actor Harry Morgan, 96.

With Henry Fonda in The Ox-Bow Incident

We've all seen him in something -- TV's Dragnet or M*A*S*H, or The Ox-Bow Incident, High Noon, or Inherit the Wind. If he hadn't existed, we'd have probably had to invent him.

From The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/arts/television/harry-morgan-mash-and-dragnet-actor-dies-at-96.html?_r=1


Signing a contract with 20th Century Fox, he originally used the screen name Henry Morgan, but changed Henry to Harry in the 1950s to avoid confusion with the radio and television humorist Henry Morgan.

Mr. Morgan attracted attention almost immediately. In “The Ox-Bow Incident” (1943), which starred Henry Fonda, he was praised for his portrayal of a drifter caught up in a lynching in a Western town. Reviewing “A Bell for Adano” (1945), based on John Hersey’s novel about the Army in a liberated Italian town, Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Morgan was “crude and amusing as the captain of M.P.’s.”

He went on to appear in “All My Sons” (1948), based on the Arthur Miller play, with Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster; “The Big Clock” (1948), in which he played a silent, menacing bodyguard to Charles Laughton; “Yellow Sky” (1949), with Gregory Peck and Anne Baxter; and the critically praised western “High Noon” (1952), with Gary Cooper. Among his other notable films were “The Teahouse of the August Moon” (1956), with Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, and “Inherit the Wind” (1960), with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, in which he played a small-town Tennessee judge hearing arguments about evolution in the fictionalized version of the Scopes “monkey trial.” In “How the West Was Won” (1962), he played Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

After a personable performance as Glenn Miller’s pianist, Chummy MacGregor, in “The Glenn Miller Story” (1954), starring James Stewart, he often played softer characters as well as his trademark hard-bitten tough guys. There were eventually a number of comedies on his résumé, among them “John Goldfarb, Please Come Home” (1965), with Shirley MacLaine and Peter Ustinov; “The Flim-Flam Man” (1967), with George C. Scott; “Support Your Local Sheriff!” (1969), with James Garner and Walter Brennan; and “The Apple Dumpling Gang” (1975), a Disney movie with Tim Conway and Don Knotts.



On M*A*S*H

[CBHagman]

344. Casting Director Marion Dougherty, 88.

From The New York Times:

Marion Dougherty, Hollywood Star-Maker, Dies at 88

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/movies/marion-dougherty-hollywood-star-maker-dies-at-88.html?ref=obituaries

Ms. Dougherty, who got her start in the early days of live television in New York, was casting director for more than 100 movies, at Paramount Pictures and as vice president of casting at Warner Brothers from 1979 until 1999. Her credits include “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), “The Sting” (1973), “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” (1976), “The Killing Fields” (1984), “Full Metal Jacket” (1987), “Gorillas in the Mist” (1988) and “Batman” (1989).

Drawing on her experience in New York, Ms. Dougherty had a strong hand in reshaping the way Hollywood casts films as it moved away from the old studio system and its “cattle calls” in the 1960s. When she arrived in Hollywood she brought her index-card file filled with the names of promising actors she had spotted Off Broadway, in regional theaters and in summer stock.

As casting director for NBC’s “Kraft Television Theater” from 1950 to 1958, she had found roles — some consisting of only one line — for the likes of James Dean, Paul Newman and Mr. Beatty. From 1954 to 1968 she was also casting director for the popular television series “Naked City” and “Route 66.”

(SNIP)

Ms. Dougherty, whom Clint Eastwood once called “the dean of casting directors,” fostered a constellation of future marquee names, among them Bette Midler in “Hawaii” (1966); Mr. Pacino, whom she had spotted Off Broadway, and Raul Julia in “The Panic in Needle Park” (1971); Christopher Walken in “The Anderson Tapes” (1971); Brooke Shields in “Pretty Baby” (1978); and Diane Lane in “A Little Romance” (1979). She cast Glenn Close, in her first film, and Robin Williams, in his first dramatic role, in “The World According to Garp” (1982).

[CBHagman]

345. Actor Alan Sues, 85, of TV's "Laugh-In."

I have fond memories of seeing Alan Sues on TV back in the day, but had no idea he'd been on Broadway, or that he was a World War II veteran! For some reason I thought he was a lot younger than his 40s when Laugh-In was running.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/03/local/la-me-alan-sues-20111203

"Alan was a free spirit, an outrageous human being who was a love child," George Schlatter, the show's executive producer, told The Times on Friday. "He'd say things like 'a frown is just a smile upside down,' and he'd scold me if I ever got firm with the cast.

"He was a delight; he was an upper. He walked on the stage and everybody just felt happy."

(SNIP)

Michaud said Sues was gay but not publicly because he feared it would ruin his career.

"He had a ton of gay fans," said Michaud. "They all said he was one of the very few gay sort of characters that they saw on television at that time. They identified with him, and they were thankful. As he got older, it meant more to him and he was appreciative of that."