Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: May 3, 2022.

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022

I know this sounds like the setup to a joke, but it isn’t: Ric Parnell has passed away.

Mr. Parnell was perhaps best known as “Mick Shrimpton”, one of Spinal Tap’s many drummers.

Parnell played in multiple bands, including Horse, Atomic Rooster, Nova and Stars. He claimed he declined invitations to play in Journey and Whitesnake, but is credited with playing drums on Toni Basil’s song “Hey Mickey” in 1981.

David Birney.

Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”
Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.

…

Over the rest of his theatrical career, Mr. Birney played a wide variety of roles, including Antonio Salieri, as a replacement, in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” on Broadway; Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.; Hamlet at the PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, Calif.; and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Miniature Theater of Chester, Mass.

He also did a lot of TV work, including a recurring role on the first season of “St. Elsewhere”. Credits other than “Bridget Loves Bernie” include one of the spin-offs of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s, “FBI: The Untold Stories”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, Serpico on the “Serpico” TV series, “McMillan & Wife”, and “The F.B.I.”

Ron Galella, photographer and historical footnote. He was one of the early “paparazzi” – indeed, it seems to me that he was one before the term came into common use.

He was perhaps most famous for relentlessly photographing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Mrs. Onassis waged a running court battle with him throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, testifying in one court hearing that he had made her life “intolerable, almost unlivable, with his constant surveillance.” Mr. Galella in turn claimed the right to earn a living by taking pictures of famous people in public places.
In 1972, a judge ordered him to keep 25 feet away from Mrs. Onassis and 30 feet away from her children. A decade later, facing jail time for violating the order — hundreds of times — Mr. Galella agreed never to take another picture of them. And he never did.

…

Reviewing “Smash His Camera,” a 2010 documentary about Mr. Galella, the critic Roger Ebert articulated the ambivalence many felt toward him, whether or not they knew the name of the photographer behind the memorable pictures he took. “I disapproved of him,” Mr. Ebert said, “and enjoyed his work.”

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

Obit watch: May 2, 2022.

Monday, May 2nd, 2022

It was a busy weekend, so I’m playing catch-up on a lot of stuff here.

For the record: Naomi Judd. THR.

Klaus Schulze, musician.

He played drums on the debut albums of the German bands Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel before starting a prodigiously prolific solo career. In 2000, he released a 50-CD retrospective set of studio and live recordings, “The Ultimate Edition.” But he was far from finished.

Jacques Perrin, French actor. Credits include “Z”, “Cinema Paradiso”, and “The Young Girls of Rochefort”.

Neal Adams, comics guy.

During his Batman run, Adams and writer Dennis O’Neil brought a revolutionary change to the hero and the comics, delivering realism, kineticism and a sense of menace to their storytelling in the wake of the campy Adam West-starring ’60s ABC series and years of the hero being aimed at kiddie readers.
He created new villains for the rogue’s gallery — the Man-Bat and Ra’s al Ghul as well as the latter’s daughter, Talia, who became Batman’s lover. The father and daughter, played by Liam Neeson and Marion Cotillard, were key characters in the trilogy of Batman movies directed by Christopher Nolan.

Joanna Barnes. Beyond “Parent Trap” and “Auntie Mame”, she had a fair number of 70s TV credits, including “The Name of the Game”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, “McCloud” (and, interestingly, “Cool Million”, a short-lived show in the “Mystery Movie” wheel), “Quincy M.E.”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Fear I to Fall“, season 2, episode 12.)

Jossara Jinaro. Credits other than “ER” include “Doctor Who: Alternate Empire” and “The Devil’s Rejects”.

Rachelle Zylberberg, aka “Régine“, disco entrepreneur. At one point, she supposedly owned 23 clubs. (“Some of her clubs, she explained, were franchises owned by local entrepreneurs who paid up to $500,000 and gave her cuts of the action to use her name.”)

Régine made exclusivity an art form. She attracted privileged classes by selling 2,000 club memberships for $600 each, and by requiring tuxedos and evening gowns to get in. She installed a flashing “disco full” sign outside to discourage the hoi polloi and a slide-back peephole at the door to inspect supplicants for admission to the pounding music and gold-plated glamour of her Valhalla.

…

Saluting Bastille Day in New York, the patriots included Gov. Hugh L. Carey, Ethel Kennedy, Margaux Hemingway, Elizabeth Taylor and John Warner (at the time, the chairman of the United States Bicentennial Commission), and Senator George S. McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate.
“If anyone had second thoughts about celebrating an event that theoretically ended the privileged class, in a room some 40 times as crowded as the Bastille dungeon on that fateful day, no one made them audible,” The New York Times reported. “To be fair, it was somewhat difficult to make anything other than isolated words audible.”

Kathy Boudin is burning in Hell. Peter Paige, Edward J. O’Grady, and Waverly L. Brown were unavailable for comment.

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

Obit watch: April 29, 2022.

Friday, April 29th, 2022

Harold Livingston, screenwriter. It doesn’t seem like he was terribly prolific (21 writing credits in IMDB) but there’s some gold.

His biggest credit seems to be the screenplay for the first movie based on a minor SF TV show from the 1960s. Other credits include “Run For Your Life”, nine episodes of “Mission: Impossible”, “The Bold Ones: The Protectors”, “The Name of the Game”, “Banacek”, “Archer” (the 1975 “Archer”), “Barbary Coast”…

…and “Mannix”. (“The Girl from Nowhere“, season 7, episode 19. “A Small Favor for an Old Friend“, season 8, episode 7, one of the “old Army buddy” episodes.)

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

Obit watch: April 28, 2022.

Thursday, April 28th, 2022

NYT obit for Cynthia Albritton.

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, noted Texas novelist who wrote about the Rio Grande Valley.

Kenneth Tsang, Hong Kong actor. Credits include “A Better Tomorrow”, “Die Another Day”, and “The Replacement Killers”.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 25, 2022.

Monday, April 25th, 2022

For the historical record: Orrin Hatch.

Jim Hartz, NBC news guy and former “Today” host.

Sarah Shulze. She was 21 years old and ran track for the University of Wisconsin.

She earned academic all-Big Ten honors in 2020 and 2021 for cross country and in 2021 while running at Wisconsin.

According to her family, her death was a suicide.

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.

Laura Hales. I am not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nor had I heard of Ms. Hales previously. However, I have a lot of respect for people who explore the difficult parts of their religion.

Ms. Hales was a writer and podcaster.

The Haleses maintained a website, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, devoted to examining that contentious aspect of the history of the church and its 19th-century founder. In 2015 they co-wrote a book on the subject, “Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding.” In 2016 Ms. Hales compiled and edited “A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS History and Doctrine,” a book of essays by church scholars whose chapters include “Race, the Priesthood and Temples,” “Joseph Smith’s Practice of Plural Marriage” and “Homosexuality and the Gospel.”
But Ms. Hales found an even bigger audience when, in 2017, she created the podcast “Latter-day Saint Perspectives,” which she recorded, edited and hosted. In 130 episodes, before she closed it out last year, the podcast brought on experts to talk about aspects of church history and doctrine.
Some of the episodes were light, like one on Joseph Smith’s dog. But most took a serious look at topics that might be confusing or troubling to church members. “Homosexuality and the Gospel,” “The L.D.S. Church and the Sugar Industry” and “A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism” were among the episode titles.
The church has long been criticized by outsiders and former members for aspects of its history, doctrine and culture. But Ms. Hales, a lifelong church member, approached the subjects from “a faithful but not necessarily devotional perspective,” as she put it in the podcast’s final episode, last May.

…

Ms. Hales took up many topics in her writing and on her podcast, but she dealt with polygamy so often that in 2015 she wrote an essay for The Millennial Star, a blog maintained by church members, entitled “Why I Write About Polygamy.” In the essay, she mentioned that she and her husband had given a number of presentations on the subject.
“The most unanticipated question I have fielded in these forums is why I feel a need to defend polygamy,” she wrote. “Perhaps it is because I don’t see my work as a defense of polygamy so much as an effort to help more people better understand the history of polygamy.”

She was only 54. Pancreatic cancer got her.

The Lustgarten Foundation.

Posted in Obits, Politics, Religion, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 23, 2022.

Saturday, April 23rd, 2022

Over at his place, Murray Newman has put up a really nice obit for his friend and mentor Gil Schultz. I encourage you to click over and read it.

David Carter, chief of police for the University of Texas Police Department. Before that, he was with APD for 28 years, reaching the rank of chief of staff.

Mikhail Vasenkov, Commie.

When they were arrested, Mr. Vasenkov and his wife, Vicky Pelaez, a journalist, had been living undercover in a Soviet-owned two-story brick and stucco house in suburban Yonkers, N.Y., since immigrating from her native Peru in 1985.
They and eight others, part of a network of so-called illegals, were rounded up in a multiyear F.B.I. investigation, called Operation Ghost Stories, and pleaded guilty to failing to register as agents of a foreign government. They were then deported, flown to Europe on July 9, 2010, and swapped for four Russians who had been imprisoned in Moscow on charges of spying for the United States and Britain.

…

When the spies were rounded up, the F.B.I. said that while “their intent from the start was serious, well-funded by the S.V.R.” — the Soviet intelligence service — “and far-ranging,” they “never got their hands on any classified documents.”
Whether for the benefit of eavesdroppers or because he was getting paid regardless, Mr. Vasenkov was recorded by federal agents telling his wife matter-of-factly that his Soviet handlers “say my information is of no value,” adding, “If they don’t like what I tell them, too bad.”

Cynthia Albritton. She was better known as “Plaster Caster”, and that’s all I’m going to say. Those of you unfamiliar with the whole “plaster caster” thing can click over to the obit for the details.

Posted in Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 22, 2022.

Friday, April 22nd, 2022

Daryle Lamonica, quarterback for the Oakland Raiders.

He started out playing for the Buffalo Bills in the AFL, behind Jack Kemp. But he couldn’t replace Kemp as the starter, and the Bills traded him to Oakland, where he was pretty successful.

He led the 1967 Raiders to a 13-1 regular-season record and the A.F.L. championship, throwing for 30 touchdowns and 3,228 yards. He passed for two touchdowns in the Super Bowl, which the Raiders lost to the Packers, 33-14.
Lamonica was part of an offense that emphasized precise timing between the quarterback and a receiver running his route. It was designed to create open space in the defense’s secondary, making it especially vulnerable to deep passing plays.

…

Lamonica was selected for the Pro Bowl once with the Bills and four times with the Raiders.

…

The Raiders were 12-1-1 in 1969 with Lamonica throwing for 34 touchdowns, including six in the first half of an October game against the Bills. He threw for another six touchdowns when the Raiders trounced the Houston Oilers, 56-7, in a playoff game, while Namath struggled in the Jets’ loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the other first-round matchup.

Worth noting, because that’s just the kind of hairball I am:

A sturdy 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds, Lamonica threw for 25 touchdowns and averaged nearly 250 passing yards per game in 1968. Perhaps his finest moment that season was seen by few: He threw the winning touchdown pass with 42 seconds left in the mid-November Raiders-Jets matchup at the Oakland Coliseum that became infamous as the “Heidi game.”

(Previously.)

Guy Lafleur, of the Montreal Canadiens. I’m not a huge hockey fan, but even I’ve heard of Guy Lafleur.

The winger affectionately known as “The Flower” and “The Blonde Demon” played 14 seasons with Montreal (1971-85) and was a cornerstone of five Stanley Cup-winning teams, including in 1977, when he was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. Lafleur was electric on the ice, becoming the first player in league history to produce six consecutive seasons with 50-plus goals and 100-plus points (1974-80).
During the height of his career in the 1970s, Lafleur was a three-time Art Ross Trophy winner as the NHL’s points leader, a two-time Hart Trophy winner as league MVP and a three-time winner of the Lester B. Pearson Award (now known as the Ted Lindsay) as most outstanding player according to the NHL Players’ Association.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 21, 2022.

Thursday, April 21st, 2022

Robert Morse, actor. THR. Other credits include “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (both the Broadway musical and the film version), “Night Gallery”, “Trapper John, M.D.”, “Wild Palms”, the 1985 “Twilight Zone” revival, and a short called “Why I Live at the P.O.” based on the Eudora Welty story.

Dede Robertson, Pat Robertson’s wife.

CNN+. NYT

Posted in Media, Movies, Obits, Religion, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 20, 2022.

Wednesday, April 20th, 2022

Catherine Spaak, Italian actress. Credits include “Hotel” and “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium”.

Rio Hackford. Other than “Treme” and “Swingers”, credits include motion capture work on “The Mandalorian”, “Jonah Hex”, and “Exit to Eden”.

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 18, 2022.

Monday, April 18th, 2022

Lawrence sent over a nice story about Rachel Schrey, volunteer firefighter…and volunteer Easter Bunny.

Kevin Lippert. I had not heard of him before, but he sounds like a really interesting guy. He founded Princeton Architectural Press, which started out reprinting old books on architecture and grew from there.

Mr. Lippert made his name as a publisher, but he was more than that. He was a classical pianist who first performed at 6 and first composed music at 8. He started at Princeton as a pre-med student, until he was captivated by the history and philosophy of science and switched majors. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he earned his master’s degree from Princeton’s School of Architecture. He was a computer whiz and ran a tech services company, selling hardware and software to design businesses.
On the side, he cooked, biked, hiked, built furniture, gardened and fueled himself with innumerable cups of espresso. He was also a historian and wrote a book, “War Plan Red” (2015), about secret plans by the United States and Canada to invade each other in the 1920s and ’30s.
“He was a genuine polymath,” Mark Lamster, who worked for him at Princeton Architectural Press and is now the architecture critic at The Dallas Morning News, wrote in a tribute after his death.

Paul Siebel. He was one of the old time Village folkies, and got compared to Dylan. Except he had one problem…

…crippling stage fright.

Linda Ronstadt, in her book “Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir” (2013), recalled seeing Mr. Siebel at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village in 1969.
“We saw the last part of his very impressive show made rich with his cowboy falsetto and a song about a poignant, sad girl of a certain reputation named Louise,” Ms. Ronstadt wrote.
She recorded “Louise” and included it on her album “Silk Purse” (1970). It was subsequently covered by Bonnie Raitt, Leo Kottke and at least 20 other artists. Another of Mr. Siebel’s songs, “Spanish Johnny,” was recorded by Emmylou Harris and Waylon Jennings and by Mr. Bromberg.

He did two studio albums, neither of which sold very well (though the first did get some critical praise), and one live album. Then he quit music.

“He was very critical of himself,” Mr. Bromberg said. “After those two albums, he wrote another bunch of songs, but he destroyed them. He said they weren’t as good as the ones on the albums.”

Posted in Books, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 16, 2022.

Saturday, April 16th, 2022

Liz Sheridan. THR.

Other credits include a recurring role on one of the worst TV series ever, “Riptide”, “Kojack”, “Herman’s Head”, and “Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan”.

Posted in Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 15, 2022.

Friday, April 15th, 2022

Jack Newton, noted golfer.

Newton turned professional in 1971 on the European Tour and won his first event, the Dutch Open, the following year. A week later, he won another tournament at Fulford, England and, in 1974, the tour’s match play championship.
The Australian’s playoff loss in the 1975 British Open at Carnoustie came after Watson had a few rather fortuitous shots. A wire fence kept Watson’s ball in bounds on the eighth hole and the American chipped for eagle at the 14th to claim the Claret Jug by a shot over Newton.

Then, on July 24, 1983, he walked into an aircraft propeller.

His right arm was severed, he lost sight in his right eye and also sustained severe injuries to his abdomen. Doctors gave him only a 50-50 chance of surviving, and he spent nearly two months in intensive care and required lengthy rehabilitation from his injuries.
“Things weren’t looking too good for me. I knew that from the priest walking around my (hospital) bed,” Newton said later. He was 33 at the time of the accident.

…

Not to be denied from playing the game he loved, he taught himself to play golf one-handed, swinging the club with his left hand in a right-handed stance. He regularly had scores in the mid-80s for 18 holes. That translates to a handicap of about 12 or 14, one that most able-bodied amateur players would aspire to.

Mike Bossy, of the New York Islanders.

Bossy played the entirety of his 10-year career on Long Island, earning a place as both a franchise great and one of the best goal scorers the sport has ever seen, before retiring with a chronic back injury. He finished his career with 573 goals, scoring over 50 in nine straight seasons, an all-time record. Famously, he scored 50 goals in 50 games during the 1980-81 season, matching Maurice “Rocket” Richard’s record.

Franz Mohr, who the paper of record describes as the “piano tuner to the stars”. He was Steinway’s chief concert technician for 24 years.

For years, he went where the pianists went. When Vladimir Horowitz went to Russia in the 1980s, Mr. Mohr traveled with him, as did Horowitz’s favorite Steinway. Mr. Mohr made house calls at the White House when Van Cliburn played for President Gerald R. Ford in 1975, and again in 1987, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev was in Washington for arms-control talks with President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, wanted Cliburn to play one of the pieces that had made him famous — Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 — but there was no orchestra. Instead, Cliburn played some Chopin and, as an encore, played and sang the Russian melody “Moscow Nights.”
“I was amazed that Van Cliburn, on the spur of the moment, remembered not only the music but all the words,” Mr. Mohr recalled in his memoir, “My Life with the Great Pianists,” written with Edith Schaeffer (1992). “The Russians just melted.”

He was also Glenn Gould’s New York piano tuner.

Mr. Mohr not only worked on the piano at the recording studio, he also rode around New York with Gould. “He loved Lincoln Town cars,” Mr. Mohr wrote in his memoir. “That is all he would drive. He once said to me: ‘Franz, I found out that next year’s model will be two inches shorter. So, you know what I did? I bought two Town Cars this year.”

And (as noted in the obit) he wrote a book, My Life with the Great Pianists (affiliate link).

He also attended to performers’ personal pianos. The pianist Gary Graffman, whose apartment is less than a block from the old location of Steinway’s Manhattan showroom, and Mr. Mohr’s home base, on West 57th Street, recalled that Mr. Mohr would come right over when a problem presented itself.
“If he came because I broke strings, he would replace the strings,” Mr. Graffman said in an interview. But if more extensive work was needed — if Mr. Graffman’s almost constant practicing had worn down the hammers and new hammers had to be installed, for example — “he would take out the insides of the piano and carry it half a block to the Steinway basement. He would work on it and carry it back.” (The unit Mr. Mohr lifted out and took down the street is known as the key and action assembly, a bewildering combination of all 88 keys and the parts that respond to a pianist’s touch, driving the hammers to the strings.)

Mr. Mohr was 94 when he passed.

Posted in Music, Obits, Planes, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 13, 2022.

Wednesday, April 13th, 2022

Your Gilbert Gottfried roundup, as promised: NYT (Note the correction. What did I tell you?). Variety. THR 1. THR 2.

I don’t have a lot I want to say about the late Mr. Gottfried. My close friends know how I felt about his work, and for everyone else: “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in all mankind” and “De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est.”

I will say:

1.

…the actor succumbed to a heart abnormality called recurrent ventricular tachycardia, an arrhythmia caused by myotonic dystrophy Type 2.
Myotonic dystrophy (DM) is a genetic disorder marked by progressive muscle wasting and weakness which predominantly affects the limbs and face but can create increasingly dire complications for respiratory, skeletal and cardiac muscles.
People with DM are at a higher risk of irregular heartbeat, including ventricular tachycardia, an arrhythmia in the lower chambers of the heart (ventricles) that causes the heart to beat faster. A sustained sped-up rhythm can cause a fatal drop in blood pressure.

I’ve never heard of this disorder before, but damn, what a sucky way to go.

2. It surprised me, but Mr. Gottfried’s version of the joke in “The Aristocrats” documentary was, to me, the best of them all. Apparently, I’m not the only person who felt this way.

In other news: Michel Bouquet, French actor.

Mr. Bouquet appeared in more than 100 films, and won a new generation of admirers with his performance in 1991 as the older incarnation of the title character in “Toto the Hero.” His two best actor Césars, the French equivalent of the Oscar, came when he was in his 70s. The first was for his understatedly menacing performance in “How I Killed My Father” (2001), as a feckless parent who sows emotional chaos when he re-enters his sons’ lives.

…

Mr. Bouquet won a second César for his tour de force as François Mitterrand, the ailing French president, in “The Last Mitterrand” (2005).

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Administrative note, for those sent this way by Borepatch.

Tuesday, April 12th, 2022

I’m going to wait until tomorrow to post the Gilbert Gottfried obit roundup.

Generally, I like to wait at least a little bit after the passing is reported before I post an obit watch. The early obits are often just that: early, and incomplete. And sometimes (I’m looking at you, New York Times) they contain errors that are corrected later.

Posted in Admin, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 12, 2022.

Tuesday, April 12th, 2022

Patricia MacLachlan, author. (Sarah, Plain and Tall)

Kathy Lamkin, actress. Other credits include “My Name Is Earl”, “Boston Legal”, and “Bones”.

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

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