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Obit watch: June 21, 2021.

Monday, June 21st, 2021

George Stranahan, colorful figure.

His family owned the Champion Spark Plug company, so he had family money. He got a PhD in physics, and spent a lot of time doing physics in the late 1950s.

Staring at a blank page one afternoon in 1959, he made a discovery: You can’t do physics alone. You need someone to talk to. Mr. Stranahan dreamed of creating a physics think tank in the Rockies.

So he did:

The Aspen Center for Physics was born. It proved pivotal in the development of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, for a long time the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, and the formulation of string theory, regarded by many physicists as the most promising candidate for a “theory of everything” that would explain all the universe’s physical phenomena.
Sixty-six Nobel laureates have visited. “I’m convinced all the best physics gets done there,” Tony Leggett, one of those Nobelists, wrote on the center’s website. Another, Brian Schmidt, called the center “the place I have gone to expand my horizons for the entirety of my career.”

He cut back on his involvement in physics in 1972.

…in 1980, he opened a bar near Aspen, the Woody Creek Tavern, where he spent several years mixing drinks while also pitching in for humbler tasks like janitorial work. His daughter Molly Stranahan remembered him as a skilled cooker of soup for customers, including ranchers and cowboys.

He went on to found Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey (which I have heard good things about, but never been able to find) and Flying Dog beer.

As of last year, Flying Dog was the 35th-biggest craft brewing company in the United States, according to the Brewers Association. In 2010, a “beer panel” convened by the New York Times food critics Eric Asimov and Florence Fabricant to rank pale ales declared Flying Dog’s Doggie Style Classic its “consensus favorite.”

He also did some ranching:

In 1990, Mr. Stranahan’s Limousin bull Turbo was declared grand champion at the 1990 National Western Stock Show, a highly regarded trade show. The price for a shot of Turbo’s semen rose to $15,000.
He quit the business not long after. Even with Turbo, Mr. Stranahan estimated that he lost $1 million during 18 years of ranching.

Going back for a minute, if the Woody Creek Tavern rings a bell with you, yes, that was Hunter S. Thompson’s hangout. Mr. Stranahan and Hunter were close friends.

Mr. Thompson either leased or bought the land he lived on from Mr. Stranahan. The details of the arrangement, intended to be easy on Mr. Thompson, appear to have been lost in a haze of friendship and misbehavior. The first time the two men met, Mr. Stranahan told Vanity Fair in 2003, they took mescaline that hit him “like a sledgehammer.”
“We talked a lot, drank a lot and dynamited a lot,” Mr. Stranahan said about their friendship in a 2008 interview with The Denver Post. “If you’re a rancher, you have access to dynamite.”

For the historical record: NYT obit for Frank Bonner.

Posted in 1970s, Explosives, Geek, History, Mixology, Obits, TV | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: June 18, 2021.

Friday, June 18th, 2021

Frank Bonner.

He was, of course, most famous as Herb Tarlek on “WKRP In Cincinnati” (and “The New WKRP in Cincinnati”, which I don’t think I ever saw an episode of).

But he had other credits.

His second credit in IMDB is “Equinox“, an odd film that we watched one Halloween season. I remember us saying, “Hey, is that Herb Tarlek? It sure looks a lot like him. Wait, it is!” (His first credit is “The Equinox: Journey into the Supernatural”, the short film that was expanded into “Equinox”.) And somewhat oddly, he has some pre “WKRP” cop show credits…

…including, believe it or not, “Mannix”. (“Catspaw”, season 5, episode 13. He’s listed in IMDB as “Hypnotized man (uncredited)”.)

Heidi Ferrer, writer for “Dawson’s Creek”. She also wrote “The Hottie & the Nottie”. According to her family, she had been fighting COVID-19 for over a year, and took her own life.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Janet Malcolm, who you may remember from “The Journalist and the Murderer”.

Her essay began with one of the most arresting first sentences in literary nonfiction: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”
Her pronouncement enraged the journalistic firmament. Many writers insisted that this was not how they treated their subjects and accused Ms. Malcolm of tarring everyone with the same broad brush.
But what galled some journalists about the piece the most, The Times reported in 1989, “was her failure, and that of her magazine, to disclose that Miss Malcolm had been accused of the same kind of behavior, in a lawsuit filed against her by the subject of an earlier New Yorker article.”
That earlier article, a 1983 profile of the flamboyant psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson, led to a libel suit against Ms. Malcolm that hung over her during a decade of litigation and clouded her reputation even longer.
The legal allegations were different: The MacDonald suit accused Mr. McGinniss of fraud and breach of contract; the Masson suit accused Ms. Malcolm of libel. But both suits raised serious questions about journalistic ethics — Dr. MacDonald’s about the nature of writers’ obligations to their sources, and Mr. Masson’s about what constitutes quotations and what license, if any, reporters may take with them.
The journalistic community generally judged Ms. Malcolm harshly, mostly for the finding in the Masson case that she had cobbled together 50 or 60 separate conversations with the loquacious Mr. Masson and made them appear as if he had spoken them in a single lunchtime monologue.
“This thing called speech is sloppy, redundant, repetitious, full of uhs and ahs,” Ms. Malcolm testified in her defense in 1993 during the first of two jury trials. “I needed to present it in logical, rational order so he would sound like a logical, rational person.”

…

In the Masson suit, the jury ruled that while two of five disputed quotations that Ms. Malcolm had attributed to Mr. Masson were false and that one of those was defamatory, none were written with reckless disregard of the truth, the standard under which libel damages would have been allowed.

Posted in 1970s, Boats, Mannix, Media, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 14, 2021.

Monday, June 14th, 2021

Ned Beatty. THR. Variety.

Damn. 165 acting credits in IMDB. The man worked. And as far as I’m concerned, he classed up everything he was in.

I apologize, but this is the best Big Man scene I can find on the ‘Tube.

John Gabriel, long time actor on “Ryan’s Hope”. He did a decent amount of other stuff, including several appearances on “77 Sunset Strip”. Interestingly, he was also one of the (uncredited) newsreaders in “Network”.

Lawrence forwarded me an obit for Douglas S. Cramer, TV producer. I wasn’t really planning on noting this, but Lawrence pointed out that his credits do include “Mannix”…

Mudcat Grant, pitcher for the Twins and the Indians.

Grant led the American League in victories, winning percentage and shutouts in 1965 and pitched for 14 major league seasons.
He was remembered as a leading right-hander of his time, but also for his intriguing nickname, his second career singing and dancing at nightspots, and his book profiling outstanding Black pitchers.
Grant, a two-time All-Star, was a mainstay in the starting rotation for the Indians and the Twins for much of his career, then became a reliever, most notably with the Oakland A’s and Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Indians traded Grant to the Twins in June 1964. His best season came the following year, when he went 21-7, turned in a winning percentage of .750 and threw six shutouts. He pitched two complete-game victories against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, losing once, and hit a three-run homer as the Dodgers went on to win the series in seven games.
Cited by Sporting News as the A.L. pitcher of the year, Grant headed a staff that included Jim Kaat, Jim Perry and Camilo Pascual, backed by a lineup featuring Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Bob Allison and shortstop Zoilo Versalles, the league’s most valuable player.

…

As a youth Grant performed in a choir. Following the 1965 World Series, he founded Mudcat and the Kittens, a song and dance group that played at nightclubs and hotels during the off-seasons and that also gained international bookings.
“First his musicians — up to seven of them — begin, playing dance music and jazzier stuff, and then the Kittens, some very sexy girls in spare feline outfits, take over the stage to sing and dance and purr,” Frank Deford wrote in Sports Illustrated in 1968. “Then Mudcat comes on. He sings — everything from show tunes to rock ‘n’ roll — and tells jokes and dances.”
“I made way more money in music than I did in baseball,” Grant once said.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 10, 2021.

Thursday, June 10th, 2021

Claudia Barrett. She did some Westerns and detective shows (including an appearance on “77 Sunset Strip”, making her the second person from that series to get an obit this week), but was out of acting by 1964.

She may be most famous as the female lead in “Robot Monster“.

Ernie Lively. He knocked around quite a bit (his first credit was 1975, and his last was 2020). He appeared multiple times on “The West Wing”, “Murder She Wrote” and “The Dukes of Hazzard”. However, he seems to be most famous as the father of “Bridget” in the two “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” movies. (“Bridget” was played by his daughter, Blake Lively.)

Robert Hollander.

Professor Hollander joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1962 and taught beloved classes on Dante for 42 years. For medievalist scholarship, the three-volume translation he produced with Ms. Hollander found a wide degree of public interest, including two admiring reviews in The New Yorker.
In one, in 2007, the New Yorker critic Joan Acocella called all three volumes of their translation “the best on the market.” (The Hollanders produced “Inferno” in 2000, “Purgatorio” in 2003 and the last volume of the epic allegorical work, “Paradiso,” in 2007.)

…

The couple brought complementary strengths to the project. Ms. Hollander, the author of five books of poetry, attended to the music of the language. Professor Hollander ensured the translation’s accuracy and wrote introductions to each volume, along with notes to the text.
Ms. Acocella estimated that the notes amounted to 30 times the length of “The Divine Comedy” itself. That was Professor Hollander’s style. He interpreted moralistically and theologically passages usually appreciated for their beauty. His erudition wore down fellow scholars. He reported that A.B. Giamatti, the Renaissance expert and former president of Yale University, once asked him, “Are you going to try to ruin this scene for me too, Hollander?”

One of the reasons I wanted to post this here (other than, he sounds like a really nifty guy: you should read the whole obit, especially the part about his stroke) is that I wanted to ask the huddled, wretched masses: does anybody have any experience with Dante translations, and can you recommend a good one?

Other than the Hollander one, Thomas Harris (yes, that Thomas Harris) likes the Robert Pinsky translation. Anthony Esolen (a writer I greatly admire) has also done a transalation

I could just read Rod Dreher’s book and see if he recommends one: I do want to read How Dante Can Save Your Life (and that’s actually what started me on this quest), but I’m having trouble finding a decent copy at a decent price.

(All links are Amazon affiliate links, for the record.)

Speaking of Rod Dreher, this is a beautifully written post about the death of a friend. Followup.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Movies, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: June 7, 2021.

Monday, June 7th, 2021

Clarence Williams III. THR.

Although “The Mod Squad” made Mr. Williams a symbol of the Vietnam War generation, he actually served in the military just before that era. He was a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division in the late 1950s.

…

He began his acting career on Broadway, where his grandfather had appeared as early as 1908. The young Mr. Williams appeared in three plays, including “Slow Dance on the Killing Ground” (1964), for which he received a Tony Award nomination and a Theater World Award.

…

After the show ended, Mr. Williams dropped out of sight for a while, expressing disappointment in the kinds of roles available to Black men. He returned to Broadway, appearing as an African head of state, with Maggie Smith, in a Tom Stoppard drama, “Night and Day” (1979).
Beginning in the 1980s, he had a busy film career. He played Prince’s abusive father in “Purple Rain” (1984) and Wesley Snipes’s heroin-addicted father in “Sugar Hill” (1993). He was a crazed blackmailer in John Frankenheimer’s “52 Pick-Up” (1986) and a wild-eyed storytelling mortician in “Tales From the Hood” (1995). He had small roles in the blaxploitation parody “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” (1988) and in Norman Mailer’s “Tough Guys Don’t Dance” (1987).
Television brought Mr. Williams new opportunities too. He was a leader of the Attica prison riots in HBO’s “Against the Wall” (1994); a segregationist governor’s manservant in the mini-series “George Wallace” (1997); Muhammad Ali’s father in “Ali: An American Hero” (2000); and a retired C.I.A. operative in 10 “Mystery Woman” movies (2003-07). He did guest appearances on close to 40 series, from “Hill Street Blues” to “Empire.”

Posted in 1970s, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 2, 2021.

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2021

Arlene Golonka. She did a fair amount of Broadway work, and a lot of TV. She was “Millie Swanson” on “Mayberry R.F.D.”, and did a lot of guest spots on other shows.

Noted:

Golonka played several characters on a 1965 comedy album, You Don’t Have to Be Jewish, which soared to No. 9 on the Billboard charts. When she couldn’t do the follow-up record, she recommended [Valerie] Harper for the job.

Also:

She portrayed another prostitute opposite Clint Eastwood in Hang ‘Em High (1968) and was the wife of a CIA agent (Peter Falk) in The In-Laws (1979).

Robert Hogan. Man, he was in every damn thing: as the headline notes, his career stretched from “Peyton Place” to “The Wire”, with stops along the way at the various “Law and Order” franchises, “Quincy, M.E.”, “Alice”, “Barnaby Jones”, “The Rockford Files”, “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”, the good “Hawaii Five-O” and many other series…

…yes, including “Mannix”. (“The Crime That Wasn’t”, season 4, episode 18)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Obits, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 30, 2021.

Sunday, May 30th, 2021

Gavin MacLeod. THR. Variety.

As he told the story, one night he was driving, while drunk, on Mulholland Drive in the hills above Los Angeles when he impulsively decided to kill himself by driving off the road. But he stopped himself, jamming on the brakes at the last moment. Shaken, he recalled, he made his way to the nearby house of a friend, the actor Robert Blake, who persuaded him to see a psychiatrist.

…

After his divorce, Mr. MacLeod married Patti Kendig, a dancer, in 1974. They also divorced, in early 1982, but remarried in 1985, by which time they had both become born-again Christians. Mr. MacLeod documented their story, as well as his decades-long struggle with alcoholism, in a 1987 book, “Back on Course: The Remarkable Story of a Divorce That Ended in Remarriage.”

B.J. Thomas.

Mr. Thomas placed 15 singles in the pop Top 40 from 1966 to 1977. “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” a monument to heartache sung in a bruised, melodic baritone, reached No. 1 on both the country and pop charts in 1975. “Hooked on a Feeling,” an exultant expression of newfound love from 1968, also reached the pop Top 10. (Augmented by an atavistic chant of “Ooga-chaka-ooga-ooga,” the song became a No. 1 pop hit as recorded by the Swedish rock band Blue Swede in 1974.)

Faye Schulman.

The Germans enlisted her to take commemorative photographs of them and, in some cases, their newly acquired mistresses. (“It better be good, or else you’ll be kaput,” she recalled a Gestapo commander warning her before, trembling, she asked him to smile.) They thus spared her from the firing squad because of their vanity and their obsession with bureaucratic record-keeping — two weaknesses that she would ultimately wield against them.
At one point the Germans witlessly gave her film to develop that contained pictures they had taken of the three trenches into which they, their Lithuanian collaborators and the local Polish police had machine-gunned Lenin’s remaining Jews, including her parents, sisters and younger brother.
She kept a copy of the photos as evidence of the atrocity, then later joined a band of Russian guerrilla Resistance fighters. As one of the only known Jewish partisan photographers, Mrs. Schulman, thanks to her own graphic record-keeping, debunked the common narrative that most Eastern European Jews had gone quietly to their deaths.
“I want people to know that there was resistance,” she was quoted as saying by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. “Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.”

Rusty Warren.

In the wholesome era of “Our Miss Brooks” and “Father Knows Best” on television, Ms. Warren, who died at 91 on Tuesday in Orange County, Calif., developed a scandalous comedy routine that was full of barely veiled innuendo about sex, outrageous references to breasts and more, much of it delivered in a husky shout.
With that new risqué routine, she began packing larger clubs all over the country. The release in 1960 of her second comedy album, the brazenly titled “Knockers Up!,” only increased her fame.
It was a booming time for live comedy and comedy records — “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” Mr. Newhart’s Grammy-winning breakthrough, was released the same year — and Ms. Warren emerged as a star in an out-of-the-mainstream sort of way.

…

She released more than a dozen albums, including “Rusty Warren Bounces Back” (1961), “Banned in Boston” (1963), “Bottoms Up” (1968) and “Sexplosion” (1977), selling hundreds of thousands of copies (“Knockers Up!” was a longtime resident of the Billboard 200 chart) even though for much of her career some retailers wouldn’t display them prominently and television producers wouldn’t give her the bookings that more mainstream comics got.

If it hasn’t already been written, somebody could get a good book out of the history of comedy records roughly mid-century (I’m guessing 1950-1975, maybe slightly later). Especially if they went into the history of “blue” or “party” records: not just Ms. Warren, but Redd Foxx, Moms Mabley, Rudy Ray Moore, and lots of other now mostly forgotten folks.

Lawrence sent over two: Shane Briant, British actor. (“Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell”, “Cassandra”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”)

Paul Robert Soles.

Best known today for portraying Hermey the Elf in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Peter Parker and his crime-fighting alter ego in the 1967 cartoon Spider-Man he worked extensively in every medium, his favourites being radio drama and live theatre.

…

Among his many memorable dramatic performances three stand out: the lead in the Canadian premiere in 1987 of ‘I’m Not Rappaport’; the first Jewish Canadian to play Shylock in the 2001 production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ at the Stratford Festival and the Dora-nominated role in the 2005 two-hander ‘Trying’.

…

Beyond work and family he had three life-long passions: sports cars, music and flying. A racing nut he drove the winning foreign entry in the American International Rally (1959) speaking only German and passing himself off as a factory driver from Mercedes in a zero-mileage model W120. A bigtime jazz fan, particularly of the big-bands, he was a fixture at clubs on both sides of the border and he forged friendships with a number of performers. An aviation enthusiast and pilot he owned two RCAF primary trainers, first a Fleet 16-B Finch open cockpit biplane acquired to barnstorm across the continent as part of The Great Belvedere Air Dash of 1973 and later a DeHavilland DHC-1 Chipmunk. He was a performing member of the Great War Flying Museum (Brampton), an air show participant for 20 years and a perennial volunteer for the Canadian International Air Show.

Posted in 1970s, History, Music, Nazis, Obits, Planes, Theatre, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 19, 2021.

Wednesday, May 19th, 2021

Charles Grodin. THR. Variety.

Paul Mooney.

After discovering he had a knack for comedy and writing, Moody moved to Hollywood where he would flourish as a writer for such classic TV programs as Sanford and Son and Good Times. Mooney also wrote a number of routines Pryor performed for his iconic albums, including Live on the Sunset Strip and Is It Something I Said. Mooney was also the head writer on the short-lived, cult classic, The Richard Pryor Show. He also had a short stint as a writer on In Living Color.

He also did some acting work (he appeared on “Chappelle’s Show” and as Sam Cooke in “The Buddy Holly Story”) and did stand-up comedy.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 17, 2021.

Monday, May 17th, 2021

Sometimes I want to put up an obit just because the writer clearly had fun writing it.

In Canada, it’s possible to find a man lounging on a chesterfield in his rented bachelor wearing only his gotchies while fortifying his Molson muscle with a jambuster washed down with slugs from a stubby.

That’s the lead from the obit for Katherine Barber, founding editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. She was 61.

Chuck Hicks. He has 197 credits in IMDB as an actor…and 110 as a stunt person. He worked a lot with Clint Eastwood, was in “Cool Hand Luke”, “Dick Tracy”, and played the robot boxer in the “Steel” episode of “The Twilight Zone”…

…and among all of his other movie and TV credits, he appeared seven times on “Mannix”.

Posted in 1970s, Books, History, Mannix, Obits, TV, Wordplay | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 14, 2021.

Friday, May 14th, 2021

Lawrence sent over an obit from one of the Indianapolis TV stations for Edgar Harrell and James W. Smith, both of whom passed away this week. They were 96 years old.

Both men were survivors of the USS Indianapolis sinking.

Harrell was the last surviving Marine. The Facebook page’s tribute to Harrell said, “During his time aboard ship, he helped guard components of the atomic bomb. After the torpedoing, he was a hero amongst his shipmates.”
Smith had served the longest aboard the ship, beginning in December 1943. The Facebook page’s tribute to Smith said, “During weekly zoom calls, James would regale the group with tales of wartime as a young sailor… tales filled with mischief, adventure, fear, heroism, and brotherhood… and of course girls and a few stashed bottles of moonshine that got him into trouble.”

I’ve been meaning to note this one for a couple of days now: Colt Brennan. He was a star quarterback at the University of Hawaii.

In 2006, he set what was then an N.C.A.A. record for touchdown passes — 58 — in a single season, raising the possibility that he would be recruited by the N.F.L. after his junior year.
Instead, he stayed on for his final year. The Rainbow Warriors finished the season 12-0 and made their only football bowl series appearance, in the Sugar Bowl, against Georgia on Jan. 1, 2008. Mr. Brennan was a Heisman Trophy finalist that season.

He was drafted by Washington in 2008 as a backup, was cut two years later, went to the Raiders, and was cut again.

According to his family, he was in a car crash in 2010 and was never the same: “…broke his collarbone and ribs, caused head trauma, and resulted in blood clots that would plague him the rest of his life”. He descended into addiction. Recently, he had spent four months in a rehab center.

Mr. Brennan tried to enroll in a detox facility over the weekend but was turned away because it was full, his father said.

Instead, he met up with some people at a hotel and (according to his family) overdosed on fentanyl. He was 37.

NYT obit for Billie Hayes.

Posted in 1970s, History, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 403

Saturday, May 8th, 2021

There have been a couple of incidents recently involving old guys falling off boats into the water and dying.

I’m not making fun of them: mad props to these guys for being out there. But, as Lawrence put it: “Important safety tip: try not to fall off the boat.”

From the National Safety Council, circa 1972: “Find a Float”.

Bonus #1: in honor of the late Bobby Unser, “Hazards of Mountain Driving”.

Bonus #2: “Blasting Cap Danger” brought to you by the “Institute of Makers of Explosives” circa 1957.

I remember when I was young and reading “Boy’s Life”, every now and then they’d have a public service advertisement depicting various types of blasting caps and warning young Boy Scouts not to mess with them. My question was: why? Was there a real problem with people just leaving blasting caps lying around for kids to find?

Posted in 1970s, Boats, Cars, Explosives, History, Safety | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 5, 2021.

Wednesday, May 5th, 2021

Playing catch up once again:

Bobby Unser.

Unser conquered a fear of heights to capture the Pikes Peak climb a record 13 times, racing against the clock on a gravel road twisting through more than 150 turns with no guardrails overlooking drops of up to 1,000 feet. The previous Pikes Peak record of nine victories had been held by his uncle Louis.

He also won the Indianapolis 500 three times. Yes, three:

Unser bested Mario Andretti by 5.3 seconds in the 1981 race, but the next day officials gave the victory to Andretti after penalizing Unser one lap for illegally passing several cars under a caution. Had they imposed the penalty during the race, Unser might have made up the lap and won anyway, since he had the fastest car that season. An appeals panel reinstated Unser as the winner more than four months later but fined his team part of the winning purse.

Jason Matthews. This is a guy I’d never heard of, but am now intrigued by. He was a former CIA officer who wrote three spy novels (affiliate link) that are highly praised for their realism.

“I wake up every morning and I think, ‘Thank heavens for Vladimir Putin,’ ” Mr. Matthews told The Associated Press in 2017. “He’s a great character, and his national goals are the stuff for spy novels: weaken NATO, dissolve the Atlantic alliance, break up the European Union.”

Johnny Crawford. He was one of the original Mouseketeers, and later played Mark McCain, son of Lucas McCain, on “The Rifleman”.

Billie Hayes. Yes, “Witchiepoo”, but also “Mammy Yokum” in “Li’l Abner” (she replaced Charlotte Rae on Broadway, and played the role in the 1959 film version and the 1971 TV movie version).

Posted in 1970s, Books, Movies, Obits, Sports, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 399

Tuesday, May 4th, 2021

And now for something completely different.

“The Lumberman”, a 1971 film from the good folks at Encyclopedia Brittanica. It was part of a series called “Our Changing Way of Life”.

Bonus #1: When was the last time you thought about rice? For me, it was last night. But I am somewhat food obsessed.

Phil Robertson says “America Doesn’t Know How to Cook Rice Anymore”.

In addition to Romans 12:13, I am also reminded of Luke 24:42, where the risen Jesus appears to the apostles and asks, “Hey, you guys got any food up in here?” ‘Cause you never know when Jesus might show up, and who wants to be placing an order from Domino’s while Jesus is hanging around?

(If it comes to that, though, I have to warn you: the Bible is very clear that just introducing the delivery guy to Jesus is no substitute for a tip. You still need to tip your delivery driver, and I’d suggest 25% under normal circumstances. Do you really want Jesus to think you’re a cheapskate?)

(Also, if it comes to that: Jesus likes the meat lover’s pizza, or whatever your local equivalent is. Acts 10:15: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”)

Walter White Alton Brown discusses his “fast and foolproof” method for rice cooking.

Bonus #2: Okay, the quality on this isn’t great, but it is short. And this is the “Month of Mayberry” according to MeTV. Don Knotts advertising the Dodge Tradesman van.

Posted in 1970s, Food, History, Religion, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 378

Tuesday, April 13th, 2021

I started out doing police training videos, but those have become thin on the ground. So when a new one shows up in my feed it is a cause for celebration.

Especially this one. I believe it is called “Out Numbered” and dates to 1968 according to the notes. Those same notes also point out that it features “Martin Milner of Adam 12 Fame”.

I want to point out that, while a lot of people knew Mr. Milner best from “Adam-12” (and I include myself in that category) he had a much broader and more interesting career beyond one cop show: “Route 66”, “Sweet Smell of Success”, both “Dragnet”s (the 1950s one and the late 1960s-early 1970s one)…

Bonus #1: totally unrelated to police work, but something I found kind of cool. This is a vintage (1969, maybe) promo film by Canadair for their CL-215 water bomber.

Bonus #2: “Testing a $600 survival tool”.

$600? At that price, not only should it include a tent, but it had better be setting up that tent for me automatically. And making me breakfast in the morning and dinner at night.

Posted in 1970s, Cops, History, Law, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 376

Sunday, April 11th, 2021

Science Sunday!

I’ve got another NASA film lined up today, but this isn’t space science.

“Flight to Tomorrow” is a 1967 film about NASA’s supersonic aircraft research, including the SST, hypersonic transports, and noise abatement.

Bonus #1: I thought it might be interesting to post this: “The M2-F2 Crash” from the Dark Footage folks.

Why? Well, some of you may recognize the M2-F2. Some more of you may recognize some of the footage in this documentary. Otherwise, stay to the end, when all will be revealed.

Bonus #2 and #3: The history of the M2-F2 and the NASA lifting bodies led me to this.

“Today, Tomorrow and Titan III”, part one of “Man In Space”. I know I’m sort of fudging here, but I really do view lifting bodies and supersonic/hypersonic transport as being a different category of science than the manned space missions.

Part 2: This also covers Bill Dana and the X-15.

Bonus #4: Just one more, because it is short. The Martin Marietta X-24B lifting body.

Posted in 1970s, Geek, History, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

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