Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: December 30, 2024.

Monday, December 30th, 2024

I have been running around with Mike the Musicologist, and will be continuing to do so through the first of the year. So I’m a little behind in obits, but I’m trying to catch up.

Warren Upton. He was 105.

Mr. Upton was the oldest living Pearl Harbor survivor, and the last remaining survivor of the Utah.

Mr. Upton was serving as a radioman aboard the U.S.S. Utah on Dec. 7, 1941. He was below deck, reaching for his shaving kit, when the Utah was struck in quick succession by two torpedoes at about 8 a.m.
“It was quite an inferno,” Mr. Upton, a resident of San Jose, Calif., told the San Francisco TV station KTVU in 2021. “I went over the side then,” he added, “and slid down the side of the ship as she rolled over.”
The ship began capsizing within minutes. Mr. Upton and others left the ship and swam to Ford Island, adjacent to the row of battleships in Pearl Harbor. Along the way, he helped another shipmate who couldn’t swim.

The NYT quotes the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors as stating there are 15 remaining survivors.

Former president Jimmy Carter, for the historical record: NYT. WP. I don’t have a lot to say about this, and it has been thoroughly covered elsewhere. But: I am excited that we’re going to get a new stamp.

Linda Lavin. I don’t know how many people realize she had a considerable Broadway career in addition to “Alice”. Other credits include “Harry O”, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, and “The Muppets Take Manhattan”.

Olivia Hussey. Other credits include voice work in “Pinky and the Brain”, “Death on the Nile”, and “Black Christmas”.

Posted in 1970s, Heroism, History, Movies, Obits, Politics, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 27, 2024.

Friday, December 27th, 2024

Geoffrey Deuel, actor.

Other credits include “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders”, “The F.B.I.”, “Mission: Impossible”, “The Magician”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Eagles Sometimes Can’t Fly”, season 3, episode 1. “Chance Meeting”, season 8, episode 15.)

(Lawrence, I’m about halfway tempted to add “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders” to the list. It is available on DVD at a reasonable price, and it seems like a lot of big names from the time are in it. My only issue, other than convincing folks to watch it, is that Ed Mireles says it isn’t completely accurate. We might want to accompany that with the “FBI Files” episode, which I think is more historically accurate.)

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

Obit watch: December 24, 2024.

Tuesday, December 24th, 2024

Col. Perry Dahl (USAF – ret.). He was 101.

Col. Dahl shot down nine planes during the Pacific campaign in WWII.

Colonel Dahl was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and needed extra seat cushions to reach the pedals of his plane. But his exploits brought him the Congressional Gold Medal, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Legion of Merit.

…

He scored his first aerial victory in November 1943 when he shot down a Zero fighter plane while escorting bombers on a strike against a Japanese airfield.
In April 1944 he downed his fifth plane, achieving the minimum required to become an ace, and was promoted to the rank of captain.
In November, during the Philippines campaign, he notched his seventh “kill” while escorting American B-25 bombers that were attacking Japanese shipping. Moments later, Japanese fire forced him to bail out of his plane, which he ditched in Ormoc Bay. But his co-pilot was unable to bail out and perished. Captain Dahl was initially captured by a Japanese Army patrol before being rescued by Philippine resistance forces, who hid him.
He later shot down another Japanese plane. His ninth and final aerial victory came on March 28, 1945, while he was escorting bombers attacking a Japanese naval convoy off the coast of French Indochina, earning him the Silver Star.
He lost four of his P-38s to Japanese fire and midair collisions.
“One more destroyed P-38 and you’ll be a Japanese ace,” the 475th Squadron commander Charles MacDonald once remarked, according to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
Colonel Dahl had flown 158 combat missions by the time the war ended.

He also served honorably during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts before his retirement in 1978.

Art Evans, actor. Other credits include the original “Fun with Dick and Jane”, the original “Death Wish”, and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again”.

Lawrence sent me an obit a few days ago for writer Barry Malzberg. I couldn’t do anything with it, because it was on Facebook and wouldn’t even come up for me unless I signed in with my (non-existent) Facebook account. None of the usual sources has published an obit yet, but Michael Swanwick put up a tribute at his blog.

Sophie Hediger, Swiss snowboarder and member of their Olympic team. She was 26, and was killed in an avalanche.

Burt, the crocodile from “Crocodile Dundee”.

The 1986 movie stars Paul Hogan as the rugged crocodile hunter Mick Dundee. In the movie, American Sue Charlton, played by actress Linda Kozlowski, goes to fill her canteen in a watering hole when she is attacked by a crocodile before being saved by Dundee.
Burt is briefly shown lunging out of the water.
But the creature shown in more detail as Dundee saves the day is apparently something else. The Internet Movie Database says the movie goofed by depicting an American alligator, which has a blunter snout.

Update to my Party City obit: while Part City as a chain is shutting down, there are at least two stores in Austin that are independent franchises, and those stores are planning to stay open.

They will still be party supplies stores, but exact logistics are unknown. The stores opened before the Party City company formed.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Heroism, Movies, Obits, Planes, Reptiles, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 23, 2024.

Monday, December 23rd, 2024

I hope all of my readers are having a Festive Festivus.

Rickey Henderson, for the historical record, as I think this was well covered over the weekend. NYT. ESPN. Baseball Reference.

Michael Brewer, of Brewer & Shipley (“One Toke Over the Line”).

Miguel Angel Aguilar, fitness influencer.

Aguilar was hospitalized in a critical condition on Sept. 13 after he got caught up in an attempted robbery in Los Angeles, KTLA reported.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Aguilar and his wife, celebrity hair stylist Priscilla Valles, were confronted by four armed men in the driveway of their Bel-Air home on Sept. 13.
The armed intruders ultimately struck Aguilar multiple times, including once in the face, before fleeing, TMZ reports. LAPD officers were called at around 4:30 p.m. that day.

He had been hospitalized since, and passed away on Saturday.

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 20, 2024. (Supplemental)

Friday, December 20th, 2024

Turn out the lights, Party City is over.

Barry Litwin, the company’s chief executive officer, told corporate employees on Friday that Party City is “winding down” operations immediately and that today will be their last day of employment.

…

The development team was recalled from its yearly trip with vendors and told to go home immediately two weeks ago, according to a former corporate office employee who spoke to CNN.
The team was informed that the company believed the trip posed a safety risk since Party City stopped paying its suppliers.
All Party City corporate employees were sent home on Dec. 10 and security locked the front entrance of company headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, NJ.

…

Party City, which is known for selling balloons and other party supplies, first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January last year, with $150 million in debtor-in-possession financing to support its operations and reported $1 billion to $10 billion of estimated assets and liabilities.
In September, the retailer reached a plan to exit bankruptcy, which saw a cancellation of about $1 billion in company debt and turned all its equity value over to the retailer’s lenders.

So what the heck happened with that plan? It isn’t clear from the article. Though “The company had considered filing for bankruptcy a second time earlier this month…”

Posted in Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 20, 2024.

Friday, December 20th, 2024

Joanne Pierce Misko, historical footnote. And I say that in the kindest possible way.

She spent 10 years as a nun with the Sisters of Mercy, but she decided she wanted to marry and have kids. She was looking for something to do other than teaching.

One day an F.B.I. agent came to her school in Olean to talk about jobs in the bureau. She had already been thinking about leaving her order, and the idea of a career in the F.B.I. intrigued her.

She signed on as a researcher in 1970. Research or clerical work were the only options available to women at that time. But when Hoover died in 1972, L. Patrick Gray III allowed women to sign up as agents.

With her supervisor’s encouragement, Mrs. Misko applied, and within a few months she was being sworn in with 44 others at the F.B.I. headquarters in Washington. She and another woman, Susan Roley Malone, a former Marine, then traveled with the others to the new F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Va., for 14 weeks of training.

They were the first two female FBI agents.

“I can remember very vividly the first case I had,” she told the Buffalo TV station WGRZ in 2022. “We went out to get the guy, and he found out that we were looking for him and he called back into the office; he was incensed that a woman was being sent out to get him, you know, that he wasn’t worthy of a guy. He had to have a woman go after him.”
Often, she found her gender could be an advantage, as suspects often let their guard down around her.
“Most people back then didn’t even realize the F.B.I. had female agents,” Mrs. Misko said on the Madame Policy podcast in 2022. “Many times a subject would simply open the door when I knocked, not expecting me to say, ‘F.B.I.’”

“Celebrating Women Special Agents: Joanne Pierce Misko” on the FBI website. One thing not mentioned there, but in the NYT obit:

She retired in 1994 and went to work for a bank. That same year, she filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, saying she had been held back from promotion because of her gender. She settled the suit in 1996 for an undisclosed sum.

By the way, she did marry a fellow FBI agent, but the NYT does not mention children.

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 16, 2024.

Monday, December 16th, 2024

Robert Fernandez. He was 100.

Mr. Fernandez joined the Navy at 17 and was stationed on the U.S.S. Curtiss. He was a mess cook and ammunition loader.

In a video biography filmed in 2016, Mr. Fernandez, who was known as Uncle Bob to his friends, said he had joined the Navy to see the world.
“I just thought I was going to go dancing all the time, have a good time,” he said, adding: “What did I do? I got caught in a war.”

…

In his recollection of the attack, Mr. Fernandez said in the video that he had awakened that morning feeling excited to go dancing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel with his friends that night.

That morning was December 7, 1941. The Curtiss had just returned to Pearl Harbor after a Pacific cruise.

The U.S.S. Curtis was bombed multiple times, and a Japanese fighter plane crashed into it near the bridge that housed the command center. Dozens on the ship were injured, and 21 people were killed, records show. The ship was repaired about a month later and rejoined the war effort…
“I never did get to go there,” Mr. Fernandez said. Instead, while serving on the mess deck — where sailors and Marines eat and cook — Mr. Fernandez began hearing explosions and gunfire. He recalled manning his battle station a few decks below with other sailors, passing ammunition to top-deck sailors who were firing whatever weapon they could get their hands on.
On how he survived the bombing, Mr. Fernandez said, “You just do what you’re told to do and do the best you can.”

Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors states that there are 16 remaining survivors.

Jill Jacobson, actress. Credits other than a couple of spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s include “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Sledge Hammer!”, and “Castle”.

Rodney Jenkins, show jumper.

In a professional career that began in the 1960s, Jenkins won more than 70 Grand Prix events, a record when he retired in 1989. His victories included three at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden and five American Gold Cup titles. He rode with 10 victorious U.S. teams in the Nations Cup, an international competition. He was a member of the National Show Hunter and Show Jumping Halls of Fame.
“What made Rodney truly exceptional was his humility and his unwavering belief in the horses he rode,” Britt McCormick, president of the United States Hunter Jumper Association, said in a statement. “He often credited his success to their brilliance, saying, ‘The horse makes the rider — I don’t care how good you are.’”
Known as the Red Rider for his wavy red hair, Jenkins excelled at the hunter and jumping rings. In the hunter rings — inspired by the sport of fox hunting — horses are judged on their style, look and manner as they move at a deliberate pace and jump over fences.
In the other rings, jumpers are scored on their ability to clear taller fences as quickly as possible without knocking down rails; if they do, faults are added to the total score.

…

“He’s a horseman,” Steven Levy wrote in a profile of Jenkins in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1977. “A rider might get over a fence, but a horseman will make the horse jump, as if it’s a birthright to leap like a cheetah and land on the run. A horseman does it because the animals and he are on the same wavelength.”

Posted in Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 11, 2024.

Wednesday, December 11th, 2024

The Amazing Kreskin.

Actual direct quote from my mother when I told her this: “I wonder if he saw that coming.”

NYT (share link).

Mr. Kreskin’s feats included divining details of the personal lives of strangers and guessing at playing cards chosen randomly from a deck. And he had a classic trick at live shows: entrusting audience members to hide his paycheck in an auditorium, and then relying on his instincts to find it — or else going without payment for a night.

…

His star rose in the 1970s when he was a regular guest on the talk show circuit, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Mike Douglas Show and Late Night with David Letterman. With other famous guests, he played psychological tricks that looked like magic: asking people to put their fingers on objects that would seem to move, for example, or guessing what card had been pulled from a deck.

…

Mr. Kreskin often said that he was not psychic and did not possess any supernatural powers but was able to read certain cues, like body language, and use the power of suggestion to guide people’s actions.

Michael Cole, actor. NYT (archived). He was the last surviving member of the “Mod Squad” trio (preceded in death by Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III). Other credits include “Run For Your Life”, “Get Christie Love!”, and “It” (the 1990 TV mini-series).

Rocky Colavito, one of the great Cleveland Indians. ESPN. Cleveland.com. Baseball Reference.

Colavito hit 374 home runs in 14 years in the major leagues, eight of those seasons in two separate stints with Cleveland. He finished his career with a return to his birthplace, the Bronx, playing for the Yankees. A six-time All-Star, he was just the third player in the major leagues to hit four home runs in one game in consecutive at-bats, and he had one of the game’s strongest arms.

…

When rumors arose that Colavito would be traded in 1958 by Cleveland’s newly arrived general manager, Frank Lane, who had been consumed with making deals in his previous stops, fans chanted, “Don’t knock the Rock!”
Colavito hit 41 home runs in 1958 and 42 in 1959, tying with Harmon Killebrew for the American League lead, while driving in more than 100 runs each of those seasons. Lane told The Saturday Evening Post in July 1959 that Colavito would “easily be the greatest gate attraction in the American League” when Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams wound down their careers.
But Lane thwarted Colavito’s quest for significant salary raises, and, two days before the opening of the 1960 season, he outraged Cleveland’s fans by trading Colavito to the Detroit Tigers for outfielder Harvey Kuenn. Kuenn, the league’s batting champion in 1959, was three years older than Colavito and had hit only nine home runs that season.
Gabe Paul, the Cincinnati Reds’ general manager at the time and a future Cleveland general manager, was quoted as saying, “The Indians traded a slow guy with power for a slow guy with no power.”
Colavito went on to hit at least 35 home runs in three of his four seasons as a Tiger. Kuenn played only one season for Cleveland before he was traded to the San Francisco Giants.
“I loved Cleveland and the Indians,” Colavito told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 2010. “I never wanted to leave.”
And he insisted that he had never put a curse on the team. As he put it, “Frank Lane did.” Either way, Cleveland still hasn’t won a World Series since 1948.

Mark Withers, actor. Other credits include “Hill Street Blues”, “Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story”, and “The Wizard”.

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

Obit watch: December 6, 2024.

Friday, December 6th, 2024

I’m going to put a jump here, because both of these obits have a macabre element to them. I’d prefer not to disturb anyone’s sensibilities (and I’m leaving some details out), but I do think they are significant enough to note.

(more…)

Posted in History, Obits | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: December 2, 2024.

Monday, December 2nd, 2024

Hal Lindsey, of The Late Great Planet Earth fame. He was 95.

Mr. Lindsey took the book world by storm with “The Late Great Planet Earth,” released in 1970 by Zondervan, a small religious publisher in Grand Rapids, Mich. Written with C.C. Carlson (some Lindsey followers said it was ghostwritten by her), the book is a breezy blend of history and apocalyptic predictions based on biblical interpretations and actual events of the time.
An editor at Bantam Books thought the book, Mr. Lindsey’s first, had sales potential, so she acquired the mass-market paperback rights. “The Late Great Planet Earth” became the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s. By some estimates, it sold about 35 million copies by 1999, and was translated into about 50 languages.

…

The Middle East, and Israel in particular, were central to Mr. Lindsey’s predictions. “The Late Great Planet Earth” was published just three years after Israel’s triumph in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Mr. Lindsey was on safe ground in predicting that Israel’s victory would not bring peace, but he envisioned events far worse than the violence and tensions that plague the region.
The book forecast a war that would end all wars, with a huge Russian army invading Israel by land and sea. The Russians were in turn expected to battle a horde of soldiers, led by the Chinese. Naturally, a conflict of this magnitude could not be contained.
World leaders would send armies to the Middle East to fight under the command of a Rome-based Antichrist against “the kings of the east.”
“Western Europe, the United States, Canada, South America and Australia will undoubtedly be represented,” Mr. Lindsey predicted, and the conflict would not be confined to the Middle East. Hundreds of millions of people would perish in the ashes of New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and other metropolises. Then, finally, the return of Jesus Christ would bring everlasting joy to the faithful and eternal dismay to those who refused to be saved, Mr. Lindsey wrote.
Melani McAlister, a professor of American studies at George Washington University who followed Mr. Lindsey’s career, said in an interview that she found Mr. Lindsey’s tone “weirdly gleeful” considering its central notion, “that there are going to be rivers of blood everywhere.”

“Dear boss: I was late for work this morning because rivers of blood were blocking my driveway.”

We had the book, but I never saw the movie. In double checking the dates on IMDB, I find that Norman Borlaug appears in it as himself. You know what that means, right?

Actually, the Oracle of Bacon claims “Norman Borlaug cannot be linked to Kevin Bacon using only feature films.” I think this is wrong, assuming you count “Earth” as a feature film. (I do.) “Orson Welles has a Bacon number of 2” and, since Welles was in “Earth” with Norman Borlaug, that would make his Bacon number 3, at the most. Right?

Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen collaborator.

Peter Westbrook, Olympic fencer.

A saber fencer with a graceful and agile style in an event reliant on ballistic thrusting and slashing maneuvers, Westbrook won 13 United States championships and qualified for every U.S. Olympic team from 1976 through 1996.
His Olympic medal, a bronze one, came in the individual saber competition at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. He also served as flag-bearer for the American team at the closing ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and was inducted into the national fencing Hall of Fame in 1996.

NYT obit for Earl Holliman (archived).

Posted in 1970s, Books, Knives, Movies, Obits, Religion, Swords, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: November 28, 2024.

Thursday, November 28th, 2024

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Yes, I know it’s weird to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving in an obit watch, but it is a weird Thanksgiving. I’m actually rooting for Detroit to win this year. (And the odds look good: they’re playing da Bears.)

Rev. Robert W. Dixon Sr. (United States Army – ret.) passed away on November 15th. He was 103 years old, and was the last surviving “Buffalo Soldier”.

Created after the Civil War, the Army’s all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments were nicknamed “Buffalo Soldiers” by Native Americans who encountered them in the nation’s Western expansion in the post-Civil War 19th century. The name may have been a reference to the soldiers’ curly black hair or to the fierceness that buffalo show in fighting. In either case, the soldiers embraced the name.
The troops could serve only west of the Mississippi River because most white Southerners would not tolerate armed Black soldiers in their communities. They fought in the Indian Wars and protected settlers moving West. During the Spanish-American War, the experienced horsemen of the 10th Cavalry led the way for Col. Theodore Roosevelt’s novice Roughriders in fighting in Cuba.
In the 20th century, official racism by the Army diminished the role that Buffalo Soldier regiments played in major engagements during both world wars, although some troops saw action in World War II during the invasion of Italy and in the Pacific theater.

…

Mr. Dixon, who grew up in New York City, enlisted in the Army in 1941 and remained at West Point through the war.
His wife, whom he married in 1977, said she did not know where he learned to ride or what he did at West Point; he was a disciplined, modest man and a Baptist pastor, who never spoke of his wartime service, preferring to focus on the future.

…

The Buffalo Soldiers unit at West Point was disbanded in 1946, when the Army became fully mechanized. Two years later, President Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the military. In 2005, Mark Mathews, who was then the oldest living Buffalo Soldier, died at 111 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

…

Mr. Dixon returned to West Point at 101 to visit a monument to Buffalo Soldiers erected in 2021 on the open grasslands where they had trained future officers; the area is now named Buffalo Soldier Field.
At a celebration of Mr. Dixon’s life this week, Aundrea Matthews, the granddaughter of a Buffalo Soldier who serves as president of the Buffalo Soldiers Association of West Point, recalled that Mr. Dixon declined the help offered by cadets during his visit.
“When the soldiers went to grab Rev. Dixon to bring him up, he shook them off,” she said. “At 101, he walked by himself, and he saluted the Buffalo Soldier monument.”

For the historical record, archived NYT obits for Jim Abrahams and Helen Gallagher, which were posted after I put up yesterday’s obit watch.

Edited to add: 11-1! Go Lions!

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 27, 2024.

Wednesday, November 27th, 2024

Jim Abrahams, of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker (ZAZ), the people who brought you “Airplane!”, “Police Squad!” (In color), and “Top Secret!”

I know I’ve mentioned this, but: I enthusiastically endorse Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! by ZAZ, and think it would make a great Christmas present for someone in your family.

Earl Holliman. He had an interesting lineup of other credits, including “Forbidden Planet”, “The F.B.I.”, and “The Sons of Katie Elder”.

Helen Gallagher, actress. Other credits include “The Cosby Mysteries”, “Law and Order”, and “Roseland”.

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

Obit watch: November 25, 2024.

Monday, November 25th, 2024

Two members of the Civil Air Patrol were killed in a crash in Colorado over the weekend. Susan Wolber was the pilot and Jay Rhoten was serving as an aerial photographer. They were on a routine training mission when the plane crashed near Storm Mountain in Larimer County, Colorado. A third member of the crew, co-pilot Randall Settergren, survived the crash but was seriously injured.

I’m putting this up to give FotB RoadRich a chance to comment if he wishes. From private discussions with him, I know he was a friend of the pilot, but I’m going to leave it up to him how much more he wants to say.

Barbara Taylor Bradford, author. Her books were huge.

Beginning with the runaway success of her 1979 debut novel, “A Woman of Substance,” Ms. Bradford’s 40 works of fiction sold more than 90 million copies in 40 languages and were all best sellers on both sides of the Atlantic, according to publishers’ reports.
Ten of her books were adapted for television films and mini-series, and the author, a self-described workaholic whose life mirrored the rags-to-riches stories of many of her heroines, achieved global celebrity and amassed a $300 million fortune.

Charles Dumont has passed away at 95. He was a French songwriter, and you might recognize his name: he wrote (with Michel Vaucaire) “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”.

At 44, Piaf was racked by pain after a car accident and expressed little apparent interest in returning to the stage — certainly not with a song by Mr. Dumont, whom she had previously dismissed as “a mechanical songwriter of no great talent,” he recalled in a 2010 interview with The Independent.
That day, Piaf’s secretary had already informed them that the meeting was canceled when the singer piped up in a weary voice from her bedroom and agreed to see them. It took an hour for the frail figure to emerge, Mr. Dumont said, and when she did, she told them. “I’ll hear only one song — just one.” Mr. Dumont raced to the piano and began belting out “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” which he and Mr. Vaucaire had written with Piaf in mind.
“When I finished,” he said in 2010, “she asked, rather rudely, ‘Did you really write that song? You?’ Then she made me play it over and over again, maybe five or six times. She said that it was magnificent, wonderful. That it was made for her. That it was her. That it would be her resurrection.”

Noted:

Piaf dedicated her recording of the song to the Foreign Legion. At the time of the recording, France was engaged in a military conflict, the Algerian War (1954–1962), and the 1st REP (1st Foreign Parachute Regiment)—which backed the failed 1961 putsch against president Charles de Gaulle and the civilian leadership of Algeria—adopted the song when their resistance was broken. The leadership of the Regiment was arrested and tried but the non-commissioned officers, corporals and Legionnaires were assigned to other Foreign Legion formations. They left the barracks singing the song, which has now become part of the Foreign Legion heritage and is sung when they are on parade.

Chuck Woolery. NYT (archived).

After the Kentucky native performed “Delta Dawn” on The Merv Griffin Show, Griffin offered him a chance to audition as the host of a new game show he had just developed called Shopper’s Bazaar. Woolery beat out former 77 Sunset Strip star Edd “Kookie” Byrnes for the job, and the renamed Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC on Jan. 6, 1975.
With the show pulling in a 44 share in 1981, Woolery requested a raise from $65,000 a year to about $500,000, what other top game show hosts were making at the time, he recalled in 2007. Griffin offered him $400,000 and NBC said it would pony up the rest, but that somehow infuriated Griffin, who threatened to take Wheel of Fortune to CBS, according to Woolery.
Not wanting to lose the game show, NBC withdrew the offer, and Griffin proceeded to fire Woolery and hire Pat Sajak. Also let go: original letter-turner Susan Stafford, who was replaced by Vanna White.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Music, Obits, Planes, TV | 6 Comments »

This is an obit about Alice, and about the restaurant…

Saturday, November 23rd, 2024

Alice Brock, restaurant owner.

Most people would know her best as the “Alice” of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”.

She closed the Back Room in 1967 and sold the church in 1971; Mr. Guthrie bought it in 1991 to house his archives and a community action center. By then she had moved to Provincetown, where she tried to put her fame behind her in favor of the tight-knit community she found on the Cape, which she considered her “chosen family.”

Also among the dead: Peter Sinfield, King Crimson guy.

Mr. Sinfield, who once referred to himself as the band’s “pet hippie,” linked up with Mr. Fripp in 1968 after living an itinerant life in Spain and Morocco. He was the lyricist on the first four King Crimson albums, starting with “In the Court of the Crimson King” in 1969, which is widely regarded as the first album in the genre that came to be known as prog rock.
But his role was varied. He also helped produce King Crimson’s albums and worked as a roadie, lighting operator and sound engineer and, as art director, oversaw the band’s album covers. He even came up with the name of the band, plucked from his lyrics for the song “The Court of the Crimson King.”

Spencer Lawton Jr. He was a DA for 28 years.

Mr. Lawton served as district attorney for Chatham County, Ga., from 1981 to 2009, a tenure in which he combined a tough-on-crime message with a pioneering program to provide help to victims and witnesses.
After recognizing that the criminal justice system, which pits the government against the defendant, often left victims and witnesses as an afterthought, he created an office to give them counseling and resources as they navigated a labyrinth that they usually had not chosen to enter.His Victim-Witness Assistance Program swiftly became a model in other jurisdictions, first around Georgia and eventually nationwide.

He may be better known as the lead prosecutor in the murder case against James Arthur Williams for the killing of Danny Hansford, or the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil murder case.

Mr. Berendt, who spent several years in the 1980s living in Savannah and peppered his gossipy story with denizens of the city’s quirky demimonde, clearly believed Mr. Williams, and he went to great lengths to depict Mr. Lawton as dimwitted and opportunistic, yet also “eloquent and venomous.”
He strongly implied that Mr. Lawton chose a charge of first-degree murder, instead of manslaughter, at the behest of Lee Adler, who had an ongoing feud with Mr. Williams, a neighbor, according to the book, and who was one of Mr. Lawton’s major campaign donors.
Mr. Lawton declined to speak with Mr. Berendt during the trials, saying it would be unprofessional.
Nor did he speak out after the book appeared, though he let friends and colleagues know he was frustrated — especially after its success sent a flood of tourists to Savannah and led to a film version that leaned into Mr. Berendt’s depiction of Mr. Lawton as a bumbling hack (though it did use a pseudonym for him, Finley Largent).

…

Mr. Lawton built his campaign on promises to resolve an enormous backlog of cases the Ryans had accumulated and to fix an antiquated local criminal-justice system that he claimed was failing the public. He won handily, and over the next 28 years won acclaim for making the system more responsive and humane.
It was, he always insisted, his real legacy, regardless of what millions of readers and tourists might think. In an obituary prepared by his family, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” or Mr. Lawton’s role in it, does not get a single mention.

I haven’t read Midnight and I don’t plan to. My understanding is that Berendt is a hack, and a lot of Midnight is fabricated. That bothers me, and I owe you guys a longer more thoughtful essay on the subject of fabrication in true crime books, and why Midnight bothers me when In Cold Blood doesn’t. I think the best answer I have right now is that In Cold Blood seems less egregious to me than Midnight.

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Obit watch: November 21, 2024.

Thursday, November 21st, 2024

A lot of obits from the NYT today for people of questionable notability, but I have a reason for posting each of these.

Diane Coleman, disability rights activist and opponent of assisted suicide/”right to die” laws.

Gifted with a dark sense of humor, in 1996 she founded a group called Not Dead Yet, a reference to a memorable scene in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in which a man tries to pass off an infirm — but very much alive — relative to a man collecting dead bodies.
“To put it bluntly, she was blunt,” Jim Weisman, a disability rights lawyer, said in an interview.

Vic Flick, British session musician.

The Bond films produced signature catchphrases (“shaken, not stirred,” “Bond, James Bond”) that have been endlessly recited and parodied since “Dr. No,” the first in the series, was released in Britain in 1962. But it was the sound of Mr. Flick’s guitar in the opening credits that helped make the spy thrillers instantly recognizable.
During the title credits of “Dr. No,” when moviegoers were introduced to or reacquainted with the works of the author Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond books, Mr. Flick’s thrumming guitar sounded out through a brass-and-string orchestra.

Bill Moyes, one of the pioneers of hang gliding.

One winter day in 1968, Mr. Moyes became a man with wings. He took a ski lift to the top of Mount Crackenback, in the Australian Alps, harnessed himself to a device that looked like a giant kite and skied off a cliff.

…

Mr. Moyes flew at 1,000 feet for almost two miles, setting the world record for the longest unassisted flight, according to newspaper accounts. The triumph marked the beginnings of hang gliding, a sport Mr. Moyes popularized by flying into the Grand Canyon, soaring off Mount Kilimanjaro and being towed behind an airplane at 8,600 feet.

…

He nearly killed himself several times.
In 1972, at a show in Jamestown, N.D., he fell 300 feet after the towing rope snapped. He sustained multiple fractures and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he spent several weeks recuperating.

…

On another occasion, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to launch from a speeding motorcycle that he was also driving. He did not break any bones. He also did not try that again.

Reg Murphy, newspaper guy. Beyond my well-known affection for crusty old newspaper people, Mr. Murphy was the centerpiece of a bizarre crime story I’d never heard of before.

Mr. Murphy was the editorial page editor of The Atlanta Constitution on Feb. 19, 1974, when a man later identified as William A.H. Williams, a drywall subcontractor, called Mr. Murphy’s office to ask his advice about how best to donate 300,000 gallons of heating oil to a worthy cause.
He called again the next day at dusk and arranged to meet Mr. Murphy at his home; the two of them would then drive to Mr. Williams’s lawyer’s office to sign some papers.
“I really had no choice but to go with him,” Mr. Murphy wrote in a lengthy account in The New York Times shortly after the incident, “for newspapermen have to lead open lives and be available to anonymous or strange people.”
So strange was Mr. Williams that he immediately displayed a .38-caliber gun in his left hand and announced, “Mr. Murphy, you’ve been kidnapped.” He identified himself as a colonel in the American Revolutionary Army and ranted against the “lying, leftist, liberal news media” and “Jews in the government.”

…

Mr. Murphy was held in a motel room, wedged tightly between a wall and a bed, and ordered to record an audiotape demanding $700,000 in ransom. The money was delivered in marked bills in two suitcases dropped off on a rural road.

That’s $700,000 in 1974 money. According to my preferred inflation calculator, that’s $4,482,044.62 in 2024 money.

After 49 hours of captivity, Mr. Murphy was released in the parking lot of a Ramada Inn. Mr. Williams, whom Mr. Murphy identified from photos of suspects, was arrested six hours later.
He was convicted on federal extortion charges and sentenced to 40 years in prison, of which he served nine. His wife received a three-year suspended sentence for failing to report his crimes. The ransom was recovered.
In 2019, Mr. Williams, stricken with Stage 4 melanoma, called the newspaper to apologize. He said he had been high on amphetamines when the kidnapping took place.

…

In 1975, Mr. Murphy left Atlanta to become editor and publisher of The San Francisco Examiner, owned by Randolph Hearst, whose daughter was on trial at the time for participating in a bank robbery linked to the radical group that had abducted her. After she was convicted, Mr. Hearst appeared in The Examiner’s office and dropped the key to a new Porsche on his desk in appreciation of the newspaper’s coverage.
“It takes integrity of a different kind for a father to come in and say, ‘You did a good job covering the trial of my daughter,’” Mr. Murphy said in an interview published this year in The Mercerian, the magazine of Mercer University in Macon, Ga., his alma mater.

Posted in Law, Media, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

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