Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: August 16, 2022.

Tuesday, August 16th, 2022

Nicholas Evans, author. (The Horse Whisperer)

Michiko Kakutani, writing in The New York Times, called it “a sappy romance novel, gussied up with some sentimental claptrap about the emotional life of animals and lots of Walleresque hooey about men and women.”
“About the only thing missing,” she added, “is a picture of Fabio on the cover.”

In spite of that, it was a huge hit, as you know, Bob. Also, I have to give mad props to the guy for being a survivor: he had melanoma while writing the book. And then, in 2008…

He and his second wife, Charlotte Gordon Cumming, a singer-songwriter, were staying with her brother, Alastair Gordon Cumming, and his wife, Lady Louisa, in the Scottish Highlands. They had picked and enjoyed a meal of wild mushrooms, which turned out to be poisonous. All four became sick, and their kidneys soon failed. Mr. Evans, Ms. Gordon Cumming and her brother required years of dialysis — and new kidneys. Mr. Evans’s daughter Lauren donated one of hers. Ms. Gordon Cumming was offered the kidney of her son’s best friend’s mother, and Mr. Cumming’s came from a patient who had died. Mr. Evans became a patron of a kidney donation charity. Ms. Gordon Cumming made a documentary film about her experience.

…

His reviews grew more positive with every book. Nonetheless, he tended to avoid reading them.

Pete Carril, basketball coach at Princeton. He never won a championship, but his teams played well.

His record at Princeton was 514-261, with 13 Ivy titles, 11 appearances in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s championship tournament, two in the National Invitation Tournament (his team won in 1975) and only one losing season. Fourteen of his Princeton teams led the nation in defense. In 1997, he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.
He emphasized a deliberate off-the-ball offense that kept players passing the ball and setting screens until a shooter was open or someone broke free to the basket in a patented backdoor play. The scores were low, and no matter how much opponents prepared, they were frustrated and often lost their poise.

…

Every year at his first practice session, Carril made the same speech to his players.
“I know about your academic load,” he said. “I know how tough it is to give up the time to play here, but let’s get one thing straight. In my book, there is no such thing as an Ivy League player. When you come out of that locker room and step across that white line, you are basketball players, period.”
But he also told his players:
“Princeton is a special place with some very special professors. It is something special to be taught by one of them. But you are not special just because you happen to go here.”

Posted in Books, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 15, 2022.

Monday, August 15th, 2022

Anne Heche, for the record. THR.

On an administrative note, this has been an unusual situation that I didn’t know how to handle. Various outlets were reporting her death, in the sense that she had been declared brain-dead, which qualifies as legal death under California law. However, those outlets were reporting that she was still on life support while the hospital looked for a compatible recipient for her organs. I made the administrative decision that I would not run an obit watch for her until the NYT ran an obit. Unfortunately, the NYT sometimes takes a day or three or more to run obits: in this case, they didn’t take that long.

I’m still not sure I made the right call in this case. Between Ms. Heche and Tony Dow, it’s been kind of a weird time for the obit watch.

Robyn Griggs, actress. She was a regular on “Another World” and “One Life To Live”, but really didn’t have a lot of credits other than those.

Denise Dowse. Other credits include “Seinfeld”, “Starship Troopers”, the 2003 “Dragnet” series, and “A Stone Cold Christmas”.

Posted in Admin, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 12, 2022.

Friday, August 12th, 2022

Bill Pitman, one of the members of the Wrecking Crew. He was 102.

In a career of nearly 40 years, Mr. Pitman played countless gigs for studios and record labels that dominated the pop charts but rarely credited the performers behind the stars. The Wrecking Crew did almost everything — television and film scores; pop, rock and jazz arrangements; even cartoon soundtracks. Whether recorded in a studio or on location, everything was performed with precision and pizazz.
“These were crack session players who moved effortlessly through many different styles: pop, jazz, rockabilly, but primarily the two-minute-thirty-second world of hit records that America listened to all through the sixties and seventies,” Allegro magazine reminisced in 2011. “If it was a hit and recorded in L.A., the Wrecking Crew cut the tracks.”
Jumping from studio to studio — often playing four or five sessions a day — members of the crew accompanied the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, the Monkees, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Ricky Nelson, Jan and Dean, Johnny Rivers, the Byrds, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, the Everly Brothers, Peggy Lee and scads more — nearly every prominent performer of the era.

There’s an interesting mixture of obit and feature story in the NYT about Mario Fiorentini, who died at 103.

Mr. Fiorentini, whose father was Jewish, was one of the last survivors from the resistance groups who fought the German forces that had taken control of northern and central Italy in 1943. About 2,000 partisans who fought in the war are still alive, said Fabrizio De Sanctis, the president of a local branch of A.N.P.I., “but the pandemic and the heat this summer have been dealing harsh blows,” he added.
On Wednesday evening, two partisans and old friends of Mr. Fiorentini — Gastone Malaguti and Iole Mancini — paid their respects and for several minutes stood silent guard next to his coffin.

According to the NYT, he was the most decorated member of the resistance. He was also a passionate mathematician.

“Remember,” he told Mr. De Sanctis, the local A.N.P.I. official, “the resistance to Nazi fascism is the most beautiful page of our history, but mathematics is more important.”

(Alternative link for those who might want one.)

Kamoya Kimeu. He was a Kenyan fossil hunter who worked closely with the Leakeys.

Most paleontologists go years between uncovering hominid fossils, and the lucky ones might find 10 in a career. Mr. Kamoya, as he was called, who had just six years of primary school education in Kenya, claimed at least 50 over his half-century in the field.
Among them were several groundbreaking specimens, like a 130,000-year-old Homo sapiens skull, which he found in 1968 in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. The discovery pushed back paleontologists’ estimate for the emergence of human beings by some 70,000 years.

Posted in History, Music, Obits, Science | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 11, 2022.

Thursday, August 11th, 2022

Gary C. Schroen, CIA officer.

He was most famous for leading the first team of CIA people – probably the first team of Americans, period – into Afghanistan after 9/11.

Mr. Schroen selected seven men and gathered the weapons, outdoor gear and food they would need. The mission was code-named Jawbreaker. At least one representative from the military was supposed to join them, but the Pentagon pulled out of the mission at the last minute, declaring it too dangerous.
“There was no rescue force,” Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. case officer who worked frequently with Mr. Schroen, said in a phone interview. “If they got in trouble, there were no American troops to come rescue them.”
Before Mr. Schroen left for the mission, Mr. Black took him aside.
“I want to make it clear what your real job is,” Mr. Schroen recalled Mr. Black telling him. “Once the Taliban are broken, your job is to find bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back on dry ice.”

He also wrote a book, First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (affiliate link).

Darryl Hunt, bass player for the Pogues. I apologize for not inserting a musical interlude here, but I couldn’t find one that featured Mr. Hunt. If anybody has one, they are more than welcome to put a link in comments.

Posted in Books, History, Music, Obits | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 10, 2022.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2022

Taiki Yanagida, Japanese jockey. He was trampled during a race a week ago, and had been hospitalized since.

Ryan Fellows. He was on a show called “Street Outlaws”, which airs on Discovery, and seems to involve drag races on closed public roads.

Citing “a source connected with the show,” TMZ says Fellows crashed during the eighth out of nine races scheduled for the night and that Fellows was driving a “gold Nissan 240Z.” It’s unclear whether this is actually the orange “Scooby Doo” Nissan documented extensively on social media and described as a 280Z by Fellows on YouTube or a different Z altogether. The Street Outlaws star reportedly lost control near the finish line causing the car to roll and catch fire. Onlookers apparently attempted to get him out but could not do so in time.

Gene LeBell, noted stuntman. 252 credits in IMDB.

During taping, it was reported that Lee was beating up on the stuntmen, prompting stunt coordinator Bennie Dobbins to bring in LeBell to help set the actor straight by “putting him in a headlock or something.”
In his 2005 autobiography The Godfather of Grappling, LeBell remembered grabbing Lee, who then “started making all those noises that he became famous for … but he didn’t try to counter me, so I think he was more surprised than anything else.”
He then hoisted Lee over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and ran around the set as Lee shouted, “Put me down or I’ll kill you.”

If that rings a bell, yeah, Quentin Tarantino says that Mr. LeBell influenced the Cliff Booth character in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. Apparently in more ways than just the Bruce Lee bit.

Booth also had an accusation of murder hovering over his head, which might have been a veiled reference to LeBell being charged in the murder of private investigator Robert Duke Hall in 1976. LeBell was acquitted of that charge, and his conviction as an accessory to the crime was later overturned.

Here’s a PDF of a vintage NYT article about the Hall murder, if you want to start down that rabbit hole.

Posted in Cars, Horses, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 9, 2022.

Tuesday, August 9th, 2022

I’m thinking about no longer posting obits.

Recently, it seems like as soon as I post one obit watch, two or three or more people die. Clearly, correlation implies causality: my posting obits is making people die, therefore, if I stop posting, people will stop passing away. Right?

Well, it’s a theory, anyway.

David McCullough, historian and author. It is an odd thing: I enjoy history, but I mostly haven’t read any of McCullough’s work, and I don’t know why. (I say “mostly” because we did have some of those Reader’s Digest Condensed Books volumes around the house when I was very young, and one of them had The Johnstown Flood in it. I remember being fascinated, but more for the account of the actual flood itself than the human and engineering factors leading up to it. I should probably grab a copy of the real book somewhere and read it.)

Olivia Newton-John.

In 1970, she was asked to join a crudely manufactured group named Toomorrow, formed by the American producer Don Kirshner in an attempt to repeat his earlier success with the Monkees. Following his grand design, the group starred in a science-fiction film written for them and recorded its soundtrack. Both projects tanked.
“It was terrible, and I was terrible in it,” she later told The New York Times.

The name of the film is also “Toomorrow“, as best as I can tell. There’s a PAL DVD listed on Amazon as “currently unavailable”, but you can get the soundtrack on vinyl.

Lawrence emailed the obit for Lamont Dozier.

In collaboration with the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, Mr. Dozier wrote songs for dozens of musical acts, but the trio worked most often with Martha and the Vandellas (“Heat Wave,” “Jimmy Mack”), the Four Tops (“Bernadette,” “I Can’t Help Myself”) and especially the Supremes (“You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Baby Love”). Between 1963 and 1972, the Holland-Dozier-Holland team was responsible for more than 80 singles that hit the Top 40 of the pop or R&B charts, including 15 songs that reached No. 1. “It was as if we were playing the lottery and winning every time,” Mr. Dozier wrote in his autobiography, “How Sweet It Is” (2019, written with Scott B. Bomar).

…

Sometimes he would have an idea for a song’s feel: He wrote the Four Tops’ “Reach Out I’ll Be There” thinking about Bob Dylan’s phrasing on “Like a Rolling Stone.” Sometimes he concocted an attention-grabbing gimmick, like the staccato guitars at the beginning of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” that evoked a radio news bulletin.
And sometimes Mr. Dozier uttered a real-life sentence that worked in song, as he did one night when he was in a Detroit motel with a girlfriend and a different girlfriend started pounding on the door. He pleaded with the interloper, “Stop, in the name of love” — and then realized the potency of what he had said. The Holland-Dozier-Holland team quickly hammered the sentence into a three-minute single, the Supremes’ “Stop! In the Name of Love.”

Posted in Books, History, Movies, Music, Obits | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: August 8, 2022.

Monday, August 8th, 2022

Clu Gulager, long time character actor. THR.

165 acting credits in IMDB. Man was in everything, from “The Virginian” to “The F.B.I” to “The Last Picture Show” to “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood”, with lots of stops along the way…

…including “Mannix”. (“The Man Who Wasn’t There”, season 6, episode 16.)

Roger E. Mosley. Credits beyond “Magnum, P.I.” include “The Rockford Files”, “McCloud”, “McQ” (which Clu Gulager was also in), “The Mack”, and “The Sixth Sense” (the 1972 TV series).

As Mosley remembered it, his agent told him: ” ‘It’s starring this guy Tom Selleck. Tom Selleck has made about five pilot shows … and none of them has sold. So here’s what you do, Roger: Sign up for the show, go over to Hawaii, they’ll treat you good for the 20 days it will take to shoot the [pilot], you’ll get a lot of money, and then you come home. A show with Tom Selleck always fails, and you’ll be fine.’
“Well, 8 1/2 years later … “
Mosley in real life was a licensed private helicopter pilot (something the producers discovered after he was hired, he said) but not allowed to fly on the series.

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

Obit watch: August 6, 2022.

Saturday, August 6th, 2022

Today’s kind of a run-down of people who aren’t as famous as I usually cover, but whose obits I find interesting in one way or another.

Dee Hock. He’s generally credited with having built the consortium that became Visa into what it is today.

As chief executive, he oversaw the development of the first electronic authorization system and the first interbank electronic clearing and settlement system. Banks would issue the cards, not Visa, and they were mandated to add the magnetic stripe to their cards.

Melissa Bank. The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing was a big deal (I never read it). Her follow-up book seems to have been well regarded, but didn’t do as well, and she was working on a third book when she died at 61.

Mary Ellin Barrett. She was one of Irving Berlin’s daughters, and wrote a book about her father (Irving Berlin: A Daughter’s Memoir).

In it, Ms. Barrett offered a new portrait of her father: droll, self-effacing, with an unspoken perfectionism that would doom him to bitterness in old age but that for four decades of maturity pushed him to dazzling artistic achievements, along with attentiveness to his family.
That has become a definitive insider’s view of Irving Berlin. The Times critic Stephen Holden credited Ms. Barrett with the ability to balance affection for her father with awareness of his flaws, and he called her book a “touching, wise, gracefully written memoir.”

Albert Woodfox, who spent 42 years in solitary at Angola.

Mr. Woodfox was placed in solitary confinement in 1972 after being accused of murdering Brent Miller, a 23-year-old corrections officer. A tangled legal ordeal ensued, including two convictions, both overturned, and three indictments stretching over four decades.
The case struck most commentators as problematic. No forensic evidence linked Mr. Woodfox to the crime, so the authorities’ argument depended on witnesses, who over time were discredited or proved unreliable.

Sid Jacobson, comics writer.

Posted in Books, Law, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 4, 2022.

Thursday, August 4th, 2022

Private First Class Robert E. Simanek (USMC – ret.). Alt link.

Private Simanek received the Medal of Honor for actions during the Korean War. From his Medal of Honor citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with Company F, in action against enemy aggressor forces. While accompanying a patrol en route to occupy a combat outpost forward of friendly lines, Private First Class Simanek exhibited a high degree of courage and a resolute spirit of self-sacrifice in protecting the lives of his fellow marines. With his unit ambushed by an intense concentration of enemy mortar and small-arms fire, and suffering heavy casualties, he was forced to seek cover with the remaining members of the patrol in a nearby trench line. Determined to save his comrades when a hostile grenade was hurled into their midst, he unhesitatingly threw himself on the deadly missile absorbing the shattering violence of the exploding charge in his body and shielding his fellow marines from serious injury or death. Gravely wounded as a result of his heroic action, Private First Class Simanek, by his daring initiative and great personal valor in the face of almost certain death, served to inspire all who observed him and upheld the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

I kind of liked this quote:

“I had been to the outpost before and thought of it as a somewhat vacation because no action had ever been there all the time I’d been on that particular part of the line,” Mr. Simanek recalled in an interview with the government website Department of Defense News in 2020. “So I took an old Reader’s Digest and a can of precious beer in my big back pocket and thought I was really going to have a relaxing situation. It didn’t turn out that way.”

He was 92. His death (according to the NYT) leaves two surviving MoH recipients from the Korean War: Hiroshi Miyamura, who is 96, and Ralph Puckett Jr., who is 95.

Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Indiana) was killed in a car accident yesterday. Two of her aides, district director Zachery Potts and communications director Emma Thomson, were also killed.

Lawrence sent over an obit for British actor John Steiner, who died in a car accident on Sunday. Credits include “Caligula”, “Deported Women of the SS Special Section”, and “The .44 Specialist”.

Richard Tait, co-inventor of “Cranium”. He was 58, and died of COVID complications.

Dallas Edeburn, deputy with the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office in Minnesota. He was found dead in his car after his shift. In March of 2021, he was in a serious accident when his patrol car was hit by a stolen car fleeing from the police. Other officers pulled him from his burning car, and he sustained pretty serious injuries. It isn’t clear if his death is related to the previous incident.

Johnny Famechon, former featherweight champion of the world.

The Australian boxer’s most memorable world title victory was his decision win against Cuban Jose Legra for the WBC title at London’s Albert Hall in 1969. Famechon boxed professionally for more than 20 years and had a record of 56 wins (20 by knockout), five losses and six draws.

Posted in Cops, Law, Movies, Obits, Politics | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: August 3, 2022.

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022

Vin Scully. LAT through archive.is.

For all the Dodgers’ marquee players since World War II, Mr. Scully was the enduring face of the franchise. He was a national sports treasure as well, broadcasting for CBS and NBC. He called baseball’s Game of the Week, All-Star Games, the playoffs and more than two dozen World Series. In 2009, the American Sportscasters Association voted him No. 1 on its list of the “Top 50 Sportscasters of All Time.”

…

In a poll of fans conducted by the Dodgers in 1976, Mr. Scully was voted the most memorable personality from the team’s first two decades in Los Angeles. In 1982, he was elected to the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1995, he received an Emmy Award for lifetime achievement in sports broadcasting.

…

Fans came to trust him when the team struggled and he wasn’t afraid to say so. After television took over, his broadcasts retained a familiar tenor; belonging to a generation before instant replay, he still used his words to paint a picture. Every game included shots of children in the stands. Every at-bat, it seems, prompted a quip.
Talking about an opposing player, Scully once said: “Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day. … Aren’t we all?”

…

Home life was devoted to children and grandchildren and a reading list that included James Michener as well as books about famous court trials.
“I’m certainly not an intellectual,” he said. “I just have a fairly curious mind.”

Mo Ostin, music executive.

The list of artists signed to the constellation of affiliated Warner Bros. labels when they were guided by Mr. Ostin reads like a dream-world music hall of fame. It includes pivotal singers of the 1950s like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr.; innovators of the 1960s and ’70s like Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell and the Grateful Dead; and game-changers of the ’80s and ’90s like Madonna, R.E.M. and Green Day.

“Batgirl”, the movie. I’m seeing estimates that this cost between $90 and $100 million, so it’d have to pull in about $300 million to break even. Does Warner Brothers have no confidence that they can make at least $300 million? Doesn’t any superhero movie these days pull in about $300 million in the first week?

Or is this part of WB’s Machiavellian plan? Announce that they consider the movie to be un-releasable, wait for the Internet clamor to see the movie (insert accusations of sexism and racism), then reverse their decision, release the movie, and hope that public attention gets them to at least break-even? (See “Snyder Cut“.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 1, 2022.

Monday, August 1st, 2022

It never fails. I posted an obit watch yesterday, and as soon as I did, it got hectic.

Samuel Sandoval has passed away at the age of 98. Mr. Sandoval served his country with honor during WWII as one of the Navajo code talkers.

Sandoval was among four remaining code talkers still alive today, from the hundreds who had been recruited during the war. The three others who are living include Peter MacDonald, John Kinsel Sr. and Thomas H. Begay.

Nichelle Nichols. THR. Tributes.

I’m sorry if it seems like I’m giving her death short shrift, but her passing has received an enormous amount of attention, and anything I could add at this point would be superfluous.

Bill Russell.

Russell was the ultimate winner. He led the University of San Francisco to N.C.A.A. tournament championships in 1955 and 1956. He won a gold medal with the United States Olympic basketball team in 1956. He led the Celtics to eight consecutive N.B.A. titles from 1959 to 1966, far eclipsing the Yankees’ five straight World Series victories (1949 to 1953) and the Montreal Canadiens’ five consecutive Stanley Cup championships (1956 to 1960).
He was the N.B.A.’s most valuable player five times and an All-Star 12 times.
A reedy, towering figure at 6 feet 10 inches and 220 pounds, Russell was cagey under the basket, able to anticipate an opponent’s shots and gain position for a rebound. And if the ball caromed off the hoop, his tremendous leaping ability almost guaranteed that he’d grab it. He finished his career as the No. 2 rebounder in N.B.A. history, behind his longtime rival Wilt Chamberlain, who had three inches on him.
Russell pulled down 21,620 rebounds, an astonishing average of 22.5 per game, with a single-game high of 51 against the Syracuse Nationals (the forerunners of the Philadelphia 76ers) in 1960.
He didn’t have much of a shooting touch, but he scored 14,522 points — many on high-percentage, short left-handed hook shots — for an average of 15.1 per game. His blocked shots — the total is unrecorded, because such records were not kept in his era — altered games.

Pat Carroll. THR. Other credits include “She’s the Sheriff”, “Too Close For Comfort”, and “ER”.

John Aielli, longtime local public radio host.

Paul Coker Jr. Interesting guy: he was one of the old-time “Mad Magazine” staff (aka the “Usual Gang Of Idiots”). He was also a production designer for Rankin/Bass.

As either a character designer or production designer, Coker lent his talents to such Christmas and Easter specials as Cricket on the Hearth (1967), Frosty the Snowman (1969), Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (1970), Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971), The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), Rudolph’s Shiny New Year and Frosty’s Winter Wonderland (both 1976), Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey and The Easter Bunny Is Comin’ to Town (both 1977), Jack Frost (1979), Pinocchio’s Christmas (1980), The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold (1981) and Santa, Baby! (2001).

Hattip to Lawrence on this one, and for reminding me to order the Rifftrax of “Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey” for Christmas viewing this year.

Posted in Christmas, History, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 31, 2022.

Sunday, July 31st, 2022

Burt Metcalfe. In addition to his producing credits on “M*A*S*H”, he did some acting. Credits include “The Twilight Zone” (“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”), “Perry Mason”, “The Bridges at Toko-Ri”, “The Outer Limits”, and the “12 O’Clock High” series. Producing credits also include “AfterMASH”.

Stuart Woods, another one of those big-shot thriller authors.

Mr. Woods, who was also a swashbuckling licensed private jet plane pilot and trans-Atlantic sailor with homes in New York, Maine and Florida, tacked into his career as a novelist somewhat haphazardly.

…

He later moved to Ireland, where he began to write his first novel. But he was soon diverted when he became enamored with sailing and began racing. In 1976, in a race from Plymouth, England, to Newport, R.I., that took him 45 days, he finished about in the middle of the field.
He then wrote a nonfiction account of the race, “Blue Water, Green Skipper,” and, after returning to Georgia, sold the American rights to W.W. Norton & Company. It also agreed to publish “Chiefs,” the thriller that Mr. Woods had begun eight years earlier.

He was another one of those guys whose books I saw all the time on the rack at the grocery store, but I’ve never actually read any of them. Chiefs sounds like it might be a good place to start…

Mary Alice, actress. She won a Tony for “Fences”, an Emmy for ““I’ll Fly Away”, and appeared in “The Matrix Revolutions” among other credits.

Posted in Books, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 27, 2022.

Thursday, July 28th, 2022

Tony Dow is really most sincerely dead. NYT again. My thanks to the many people (including Borepatch) who tipped me off to this.

Faye Marlowe. She had a short career: “Hangover Square” seems to be her best known film.

Jered Barclay. He did a fair number of Westerns, “Hawaiian Eye”, “Surfside 6”, “Coronet Blue”, and other credits. He was also in vaudeville and theater, and did a lot of voiceovers.

Bernard Cribbins. Credits other than “Doctor Who” include “Frenzy”, the 1967 “Casino Royale”, “Space: 1999”, and “Coronation Street”. (Edited to add: NYT.)

Lourdes Grobet, photographer. One of her specialties was photographing luchadores, and some of those photos are reproduced in the obit (including one of her dancing with El Santo).

U Phyo Zeya Thaw, Burmese rapper. He was 41.

His execution, and those of three other political prisoners, were announced in the junta-controlled news media on Monday. His mother, Daw Khin Win May, confirmed his death.
The four men were convicted of terrorism charges in trials widely denounced as a sham. The four executions, including that of the veteran democracy activist U Kyaw Min Yu, popularly known as Ko Jimmy, were the first to be carried out in decades in Myanmar.

Posted in Obits, Photography, Theatre, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: July 27, 2022.

Wednesday, July 27th, 2022

James Lovelock, Gaia theory guy. He was 103.

But his global renown rested on three main contributions that he developed during a particularly abundant decade of scientific exploration and curiosity stretching from the late 1950s through the last half of the ’60s.
One was his invention of the Electron Capture Detector, an inexpensive, portable, exquisitely sensitive device used to help measure the spread of toxic man-made compounds in the environment. The device provided the scientific foundations of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” a catalyst of the environmental movement.
The detector also helped provide the basis for regulations in the United States and in other nations that banned harmful chemicals like DDT and PCBs and that sharply reduced the use of hundreds of other compounds as well as the public’s exposure to them.

I’m setting aside, for the moment, the arguments over the legacy of “Silent Spring”. Folks are welcome to discuss that in the comments if they’d like.

Later, his finding that chlorofluorocarbons — the compounds that powered aerosol cans and were used to cool refrigerators and air-conditioners — were present in measurable concentrations in the atmosphere led to the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer. (Chlorofluorocarbons are now banned in most countries under a 1987 international agreement.)
But Dr. Lovelock may be most widely known for his Gaia theory — that Earth functioned, as he put it, as a “living organism” that is able to “regulate its temperature and chemistry at a comfortable steady state.”

Personally, I think Gaia is a bunch of hooey. But the man did science, and deserves props, even if I don’t necessarily agree with everything he said. Also, he was married to the same woman for 47 years, until she passed.

He first met his second wife, Sandy, at the age of 69.

The Choco Taco. I’ve always liked those, but it’s been a while since I’ve had one. Cause of death is given as COVID related supply chain issues. But I’ve seen assertions elsewhere that it was cancelled due to “cultural appropriation”. I’m not sure how serious that claim is…

Posted in Food, Obits, Science | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 26, 2022.

Tuesday, July 26th, 2022

Great and good FOTB RoadRich sent over a couple of obits for Tom Poberezny, former head of the Experimental Aircraft Association. He took over for his dad, Paul Poberezny, in the 1990s and ran EAA until 2010.

One of the most talented aviators of his day, Tom was world aerobatics champion as part of team USA in 1972 and was United States Unlimited aerobatics champion the next year. He went on to become part of the three-plane Red Devils aerobatic airshow act, later known as The Eagles, along with Gene Soucy and the late Charlie Hilliard.

Yoko Shimada. Credits other than “Shogun” include “Kamen Rider”, “Chicago Story”, and “We Are Youth”.

Paul Sorvino. THR.

He was another one of those people whose personal politics I have no idea about: he acted (and sang a little) and did it well. I was always happy to see him in something.

172 acting credits in IMDB.

I’ve said before that my ideal “Law and Order” lineup is Briscoe/Logan/Stone/Kincaid. But one of our local broadcast channels was re-running the early “L&O” episodes late at night a while back, and I recorded some of the ones with Sorvino as “Phil Cerreta”. He gets a lot of attention for playing mob guys, but he was really good in that role too.

There’s one episode in particular (“Heaven”, season 2, episode 10, based on the Happy Land Social Club fire) that stands out for me. Ceretta and Logan are looking at 53 bodies lined up outside the fire:

Det. Mike Logan: I’ve never seen this many. You?
Sgt. Phil Cerreta: Not in civilian life.

This is writing (the episode is one of my favorites) but it is also acting. I can’t find a clip online, but if you watch it, Sorvino’s delivery puts a lot across in four words: this is a man who saw some stuff during the war, and still carries those memories.

Tony Dow. THR.

Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star”, “Diagnosis Murder”, and “The Kentucky Fried Movie”.

Lawrence pointed out to me “Who Killed Maxwell Thorn?”, the final episode of “The Love Boat”, which features Wally, Beaver, June…and Peter Graves, Barbi Benton (hi, pigpen51!), Florence Henderson, Robert Reed, and Ted McGinley, among other stunt casting. I was never a big “Love Boat” fan, though I did watch it (three broadcast networks, people) but (as I told Lawrence) this whole episode is one giant wink at the audience. And (as Lawrence also pointed out) it ties in to the Tommy Westphall Catastrophe.

Edited to add: Well, crud, this is embarrassing, but I did have three sources, and they apparently made the same mistake. Tony Dow is NOT DEAD. Repeat: Tony Dow is NOT DEAD. But he is apparently in hospice care.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Planes, TV | 2 Comments »

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