Andy Detwiler, YouTuber.
He had a popular channel, “Harmless Farmer“. What distinguished him from other farming YouTubers was that Mr. Detwiler had lost both arms in a farming accident when he was two years old, and did everything with his feet and other body parts.
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Angela Lansbury. THR. Appreciation. Variety.
Everybody has something to say about this, and I don’t have anything profound to add.
Austin Stoker, actor. Other credits include “Riding with Death” (“Dimwitted, meaty guy foils criminals by turning invisible.”), “Airwolf”, “Lou Grant”, “Chopper One”, “McCloud”, and “Airport 1975”.
Lawrence sent over an obit from Publisher’s Weekly for Jill Pinkwater, author, illustrator, and spouse of Daniel Pinkwater.
Eileen Ryan. Credits include “Eight Legged Freaks”, “The Twilight Zone”, “Cannon”, and “Marcus Welby, M.D.”.
NYT obit for Nikki Finke, just for the record.
Anton Fier, noted drummer.
His career rose to new heights in the mid-1980s: He toured with the jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock following Mr. Hancock’s 1984 pop-funk crossover hit “Rockit,” and played on Laurie Anderson’s acclaimed 1984 album, “Mister Heartbreak.”
By that point his musical ambitions could not be contained behind the drum kit, so Mr. Fier formed the Golden Palominos, an ever-evolving indie-rock supergroup that attracted a parade of guest stars, including Michael Stipe, John Lydon and Richard Thompson, through the rest of the 1980s and into the ’90s.
Peter Robinson, crime writer. (“…DCI Alan Banks, hero of a series of Yorkshire-set novels that spanned 35 years and sold more than 10 million copies.”)
Douglas Kirkland, celebrity photographer.
(Hattip on the previous two to Lawrence.)
Nikki Finke, founder of Deadline.com.
At L.A. Weekly, Finke headed its Deadline Hollywood Daily column from 2002-09. In 2006, she launched Deadline Hollywood Daily, an around-the-clock online version, and became a key source of news surrounding the 2007 WGA strike.
That year, The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter wrote that Finke’s blog had “become a critical forum for Hollywood news and gossip, known for analyzing (in sometimes insulting terms) the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of moguls,” with her reporting on the strike ultimately solidifying “her position as a Hollywood power broker.”
She went on to sell the site to Penske Media for $100 million in 2009.
Speaking to her legacy and that of Deadline‘s in a 10-year anniversary post for the publication, she wrote that the concept behind her original blog — using a URL purchased for “14 bucks and change” — was to get breaking news out faster than she could with her column.
“I didn’t set out to be a disruptor,” she wrote. “Or an internet journalist who created something out of nothing that put the Hollywood trades back on their heels, and today, under Penske Media ownership, is a website worth $100+ million. Or a woman with brass balls, attitude and ruthless hustle who told hard truths about the moguls and who accurately reported scoops first.”
Charles Fuller, playwright. He won a Pulitzer in 1982 for “A Soldier’s Play” (which was later adapted for film as “A Soldier’s Story”).
Günter Lamprecht, German actor.
IMDB. For the record, he was in “Das Boot”.
Kitten Natividad, Russ Meyer star. (Alt link.)
Mr. Meyer also fell for Ms. Natividad, who was married at the time, and they began a relationship that lasted for the rest of the 1970s. And he made her the star of his next movie, which would be his final feature film: “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens” (1979).
The movie is often described as Mr. Meyer’s riff on “Our Town” — for instance, it employed an onscreen narrator named “The Man From Small Town U.S.A.” Ms. Natividad plays a woman whose husband’s preoccupation with anal sex leaves her sexually frustrated.
Critics didn’t have much good to say about the movie, which Mr. Meyer wrote with Mr. Ebert.
Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune, Mr. Ebert’s television partner on the film review show then known as “Sneak Previews,” wrote that Mr. Meyer’s “Vixen,” released in 1968, had been “an enjoyable nudie film because it featured the first joyfully aggressive woman we’d seen in a skin flick.” But he added, “Meyer hasn’t grown up in 10 years; if anything, he’s deteriorated.”
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In 1973 she won the Miss Nude Universe title in San Bernardino, Calif.
She was dancing at the Classic Cat, a club in Hollywood, when a fellow dancer, Shari Eubank, who had starred in the 1975 Meyer film “Supervixens,” suggested she introduce herself to the director. She is said to have done so by poking him in the back with her bare breasts.
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IMDB, probably not safe for work. (In case you were wondering: “Bouncy Topless Woman on Plane (uncredited)”. Also “Airplane II” as “Woman in ‘Moral Majority’ Shirt (uncredited)”.)
Laurence Silberman, noted judge and legal scholar. Lawrence sent over a nice obit from the Volokh Conspiracy.
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Survivors include a younger sister, the country singer Crystal Gayle; her daughters Patsy Lynn Russell, Peggy Lynn, Clara (Cissie) Marie Lynn; and her son Ernest; as well as 17 grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and a number of great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Betty Sue Lynn, and another son, Jack, died before her.
She also leaves legions of admirers, women as well as men, who draw strength and encouragement from her irrepressible, down-to-earth music and spirit.
“I’m proud I’ve got my own ideas, but I ain’t no better than nobody else,” she was quoted as saying in “Finding Her Voice” (1993), Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann’s comprehensive history of women in country music. “I’ve often wondered why I became so popular, and maybe that’s the reason. I think I reach people because I’m with ’em, not apart from ’em.”
Joan Hotchkis. A lot of theater work, and a fair number of TV credits. “The F.B.I.”, “My World and Welcome to It” (somebody needs to release that on home video), “Medical Center”, “Marcus Welby, M.D.”…
…and “Mannix”. (“To Draw the Lightning”, season 5, episode 22. “With Intent to Kill”, season 4, episode 17.)
Sacheen Littlefeather. Alt link. THR.
Ms. Littlefeather was most famous as Marlon Brando’s stand-in at the 1973 Academy Awards. She read part of his prepared speech refusing the award. (The speech was eight pages long, but “but telecast producer Howard Koch informed her she had no more than 60 seconds”.
Robert Brown. Other credits include an episode of a minor 1960s SF TV series, “Primus”, “Run for Your Life”, “Perry Mason”…
…and “Mannix” (“The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress”, season 7, episode 1.)
Joe Bussard. No, you’ve probably never heard of him (unless you read the same books I do): he was an “obsessive collector” of 78 RPM records.
From his home near the Blue Ridge Mountains, Mr. Bussard (pronounced boo-SARD) drove the country roads of the South seeking 78s that had been languishing in people’s homes. He was selective about what he brought back to his basement. He loved jazz but detested any jazz recorded after the early 1930s. He loved country music but decreed that nothing good came after 1955. Nashville? He called it “Trashville.” Rock ’n’ roll? A cancer.
“How can you listen to Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw when you’ve listened to Jelly Roll Morton?” he said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2001. “It’s like coming out of a mansion and living in a chicken coop.”
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Mr. Bussard was one of the “characters” (so to speak) profiled in Amanda Petrusich’s Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records (affiliate link), a book that I both liked and found depressing.
Lawrence emailed an obit for Drew Ford, of It’s Alive Comics.
Edited to add: I forgot I wanted to include this one. Antonio Inoki.
He was also a professional wrestler.
Perhaps most famously, he fought Muhammad Ali in a MMA match in 1976.
The result of the fight, a draw, has long been debated by the press and fans.
Gavin Escobar, former tight end for the Dallas Cowboys. He was 31, and had been working for the Long Beach Fire Department. According to reports, he and Chelsea Walsh died in an apparent rock climbing accident “in San Bernardino National Forest near Tahquitz Rock”.
Bill Plante, CBS news guy. I sort of vaguely remember him, but my family and I were never big CBS news people.
Coolio (Artis Leon Ivey Jr.). THR. Tributes.
David Foreman, founder of “Earth First!”.
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The stress of the legal proceedings nevertheless created fissures in the organization, as did the arrival of a new, younger cohort of activists who wanted to inject social justice issues into Earth First!’s environmentalism. Mr. Foreman, who called himself “a redneck for the environment,” had never shown much interest in left-wing politics, and in 1990 he and his wife, Nancy Morton, publicly split with Earth First!
The group, they wrote in a letter to its members, had become dominated by an “overtly counterculture/anti-establishment style.”
“We feel,” they added, “like we should be sitting at the bar of a seedy honky-tonk, drinking Lone Star, thumbing quarters in the country western jukebox, and writing this letter on a bar napkin.”
Robert Cormier, actor. He was 33: according to reports, he died from “injuries suffered in a fall”.
Venetia Stevenson. Other credits include “77 Sunset Strip”, “The Third Man” (the TV series), and “The Sergeant Was a Lady”.
Ray Edenton, noted Nashville studio musician.
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Dale McRaven. He co-created “Mork & Mindy” (with Garry Marshall) and created “Perfect Strangers”.
Estrin had a successful career in TV, starting with credits on Charmed, Dawson’s Creek and Tru Calling, before rising through the ranks to serve as co-executive producer of Fox’s Prison Break.
Estrin was showrunner and executive producer of two ABC paranormal thrillers, The River and The Whispers, as well as co-creator and executive producer of ABC’s Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.
He was only 51.
In 1960, Gardner, who had recently appeared Off Broadway in the Jerry Herman musical review Nightcap, was cast in what would be her signature role: Luisa, or “The Girl,” in the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical The Fantasticks. Based loosely on Edmond Rostand’s 1894 play The Romancers, the musical told the allegorical story of two fathers who trick their children – The Girl, Luisa, and The Boy, Matt – into falling in love by pretending to oppose the union.
The production, at a tiny Off Broadway venue in Greenwich Village called the Sullivan Street Playhouse, became a huge success, spawning a hit song (“Try To Remember”), running 42 years and boosting the careers of Gardner and other cast members (including Kenneth Nelson, who went on to star in The Boys in the Band, and, most notably, Jerry Orbach, the Law & Order star who enjoyed a long career on stage, film and television).
She did a considerable amount of theater work, both on and off Broadway. She also did some TV, including three of the shows in the “Law and Order” franchise.
Jim Florio. former governor of New Jersey, “who then pushed through a record increase shortly after taking office, incurring public wrath that led to his defeat in his bid for a second term“.
Nancy Hiller, woodworker. (Alt link.)
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There was nothing fancy about her work. She resisted the label “artist,” though people tried to pin it on her. And she deliberately charged less than her peers, not to undercut them, but to make her work affordable to middle-class clients who appreciated good design and hard work.
“She didn’t want to do work that was only accessible to a few people,” Megan Fitzpatrick, a woodworker and editor, said in an interview. “She wanted work that was accessible to everybody.”
Just Jaeckin, director. His most famous film was probably the 1974 soft-core porn film “Emmanuelle”. Other credits include “The Story of O”, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, and “The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak”.
This is shaping up to be another one of those busy weekends: Mike the Musicologist is in town and we’re going to a fun show.
However, I have a few minutes, and I didn’t want to let Louise Fletcher get past me. THR.
Other credits include “Perry Mason” (the original, twice), “Maverick”, “The Untouchables”, and several appearances on one of the spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series.
Edited to add: slipping another one in. John Hartman, drummer for the Doobie Brothers. I apologize that I don’t have more time to go into detail: I might try to do a musical interlude on Monday.