Bob Dole, for the record. WP. Battleswarm.
I don’t have much to add to any of these, but I am glad he’s getting credit for his honorable service during WWII.
That’s Stonewall Jackson, the Grand Ole Opry singer, not the Confederate general.
Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category
Obit watch: December 5, 2021.
Sunday, December 5th, 2021Obit watch: December 3, 2021.
Friday, December 3rd, 2021Alvin Lucier, “experimental composer”.
In “I Am Sitting in a Room,” Mr. Lucier began by quietly reading a short statement describing what he is doing. “I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now,” the text begins. “I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.”
The room’s acoustics, as well as audio distortions that occur when a tape is rerecorded over and over, yields a gradually changing sound in which, after 10 minutes, the spoken text is buried in reverberation and overtones, and unintelligible. During the final section, high-pitched overtones coalesce into eerie, slow-moving melodies.
I used to have a CD of “I Am Sitting in a Room”, back when I was in my “difficult listening” phase. It was not something I spent a lot of time listening to, though I was happy to have it.
(See also.)
Eddie Mekka. Most famous as Carmine Ragusa on “Laverne & Shirley”. Other credits include guest shots on “The Love Boat”, “Fantasy Island”, and one of the “Rockford Files” TV movies.
Obit watch: December 1, 2021.
Wednesday, December 1st, 2021This is a couple of days old, but I was waiting for an obit from a reliable source: Jim Warren, one of the early figures in personal computing.
In the 1970s, Mr. Warren was a leading figure in the community that sprung up in the San Francisco Bay Area around the emerging personal computer industry.
He was a regular at monthly meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of hobbyist who gathered to share ideas, design tips and gossip. He was the editor of Dr. Dobb’s Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia, an irreverent yet influential publication in that nascent field.
…
Computer conferences, where these fledgling companies showed off their wares, were just beginning to emerge when, in 1977, Mr. Warren staged the West Coast Computer Faire (the spelling a playful nod to the medieval spectacles of Elizabethan England). He calculated that the event, a two-day affair at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium, might break even if it could attract 60 exhibitors and perhaps 7,000 people.
But to his surprise nearly 13,000 people showed up, and the lines of people waiting to get in circled the building.
…
His interest in the social and political impact of computer technology continued later in his life. In 1991, Mr. Warren founded and chaired the first Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference, an annual academic gathering.
In 1993, he worked on a California law — a model for other states — that required most computerized public records to be freely available. He conferred with legislators, rallied public support and even drafted some of the law’s language.
Mark Roth, pro bowler. Noted here because:
Adolfo, Nancy Reagan’s designer.
Obit watch: November 30, 2021.
Tuesday, November 30th, 2021Arlene Dahl, actress, “author, beauty expert, astrologist, and fashion and cosmetics entrepreneur”.
47 credits in IMDB, but I wanted to call this out because of her resume, and because that’s a nice photo at the top of the NYT obit.
Tommy Lane, actor and stuntman. Acting credits include the original “Shaft” “Live and Let Die”, and “Cotton Comes to Harlem”.
David Gulpilil, Australian actor. (“Crocodile Dundee”, “Walkabout”, “The Right Stuff”, among other credits.)
Obit watch: November 29, 2021.
Monday, November 29th, 2021He was a Hall of Fame player, first with the Kansas City Chiefs (in both the AFL and NFL) then with the Houston Oilers (1974-1980) and finally with Detroit.
Obit watch: November 27, 2021.
Saturday, November 27th, 2021Stephen Sondheim. THR (I love the Meryl Streep “don’t f–k it up” story). Variety.
I am not the person who should be writing this. I am hoping that the person who should be writing this will send me something I can use here.
But what little I know about musical theater, I know because Mike the Musicologist introduced me to it…by playing me lots of Sondheim’s work.
NYT interview conducted last Sunday. It sounds like he was in full possession of his facilities until the end, and didn’t have any more complaints than the average 91 year old would.
MtM sent me this last night. I confess, I haven’t watched all of it yet (it is over two hours). But: this is the complete original production of “Pacific Overtures“, recorded on June 9, 1976 for broadcast in Japan.
“Pacific is, I think, the least appreciated of Sondheim’s shows, and is probably his most brilliant one.”
I often say, when people die, that the world is a smaller, colder, lesser place. I mean that: there are people whose contributions are so great or important or enlightening or just so much damn fun that, when they die, they leave a hole in the world. Richard Feynman. Ricky Jay. Stephen Sondheim.
Obit watch: November 26, 2021.
Friday, November 26th, 2021He was an American writer. His first book, The Rabbi, was on the NYT bestseller list for 26 weeks in the 1960s. His other books didn’t do as well, in the United States…
…but he was a huge bestseller overseas.
Mr. Gordon’s “The Physician” (1986) — the first book in a dynastic trilogy that began in 11th-century Persia, continued during the American Civil War with “Shaman” (1992) and ended with a modern woman doctor dealing with the morality of abortion in “Matters of Choice” (1996) — had an initial print run of only 10,000 copies in the United States.
But it eventually sold some 10 million copies, including more than six million in Germany, where, in the 1990s, six of Mr. Gordon’s novels were on best-seller lists simultaneously.
In 2013, “The Physician” was adapted into a German film, in English, starring Tom Payne, Stellan Skarsgard and Ben Kingsley. An award-winning musical based on the book is about to tour Spain.
…
“While Gordon has been published in 38 countries, Spain and Germany, where he is most popular, are two countries that grapple with a history of anti-Semitism,” Andrew Silverstein wrote in The Forward this year. “While not all of Gordon’s eight books have Jewish themes, most do, and his Jewishness is well known, which may play a role in his popularity in these two countries.”
Mr. Gordon won Spain’s Silver Basque Prize twice for best-selling book, in 1992 and 1995. His novels were also popular in Italy and Brazil.
I read the Kindle sample of The Death Committee before I went to bed last night, and…it was interesting enough that I’m tempted to purchase the book.
Obit watch: November 24, 2021.
Wednesday, November 24th, 2021Ian Fishback. He was 42.
I wanted to note this because the circumstances seem particularly sad to me:
I’m reminded of a story I read several years ago about a young Green Beret who had a distinguished service record. Until he started going downhill: showing up late, not showing up at all, other issues which ultimately led to him being dishonorably discharged from the Army. He kept going downhill, was eventually institutionalized, and finally died. After his death, it was determined that he had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (possibly picked up from eating sheep brains and eyeballs in the field with indigenous personnel). His family petitioned to have his discharge upgraded to honorable, and I believe they were eventually successful.
Peter Buck, co-founder of Subway.
Margo Guryan. I’d never heard of her, but this is another one of those stories with a hook. She was a talented musician and songwriter who, in 1968, released an album called “Take a Picture”. The album tanked, in large part because she wouldn’t tour…
Yet somehow decades later, with the digital age facilitating both word of mouth and the sharing of music, adventurous listeners discovered it — first in Japan, then in Europe, and finally in the United States, where in 2000 Franklin Castle Recordings rereleased it, followed the next year by “25 Demos,” a collection of other recordings of hers. Ms. Guryan, who by then was in her 60s and had settled into an anonymous career teaching music, had an unexpected burst of something resembling fame.
“It’s still amazing to me to have something resurface after 30 years,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 2002. “People say I’ve been rediscovered. It’s not true — I’ve been discovered.”
Obit watch: November 23, 2021.
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021Lou Cutell, actor. Other than “Seinfeld” and “Gray’s Anatomy”, he did a few cop shows, including “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “T.J. Hooker”, “Barney Miller”, and the really obscure 1989 “Dragnet”. He also appeared on “Alice” and “The Bob Newhart Show”.
Malikah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter. She was only 56.
Bill Virdon, noted player and manager.
He also managed the Yankees for a time, until he was fired by Steinbrenner (“…though he was not supposed to be involved with running the team”, being under suspension at the time) in favor of…Billy Martin.
Obit watch: November 22, 2021.
Monday, November 22nd, 2021Bob Bondurant, legendary racer and founder of The Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving.
Mr. Bondurant began attracting attention in the racing world in 1959, when he won 18 of the 20 races he entered behind the wheel of a Corvette.
“I am an original California hot rodder turned white hot when I started winning everything in my Corvettes,” he was quoted as saying by the National Corvette Museum, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2016.
He continued to win races regularly in Corvettes in the 1960s, but he also began to race successfully in other sports cars and open-wheeled Formula 1 machines, including for the elite Ferrari team from 1965 to 1966.
“He was top of the line,” said Peter Brock, who designed the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe that Mr. Bondurant raced with Dan Gurney to first place in the GT, or Grand Touring, class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race in 1964.
…
Even before opening the school, Mr. Bondurant had some well-known students. He had coached James Garner and Yves Montand in driving Formula 1 cars for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film, “Grand Prix.” Mr. Bondurant, who was a stunt man and technical adviser to the film, wore 16-millimeter cameras on the sides of his helmet to record racing action on the track while moving at 150 miles per hour.
Soon after Mr. Bondurant opened the school, Mr. Newman and Robert Wagner signed up as students. They had been cast as racecar drivers in the film “Winning” (1969), in which Mr. Newman’s character dreams of winning the Indianapolis 500.
“Paul has a knack of knowing how to learn,” Mr. Bondurant told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1988. “He’s like most actors — they know how to listen. He would move at his own pace, and wouldn’t go too quick. He took it step by step, and it came naturally to him.”
One of my lifetime ambitions has been to attend the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving, though apparently it went bankrupt in 2018 and is now known as the Radford Racing School.
Robert Bly, the Iron John guy. Anyone else remember when Iron John was a thing? I do, though I never actually read it: I just remember a time when people talked about books, instead of what the Kardasians were doing yesterday.
Carolyn Watjen, aka “Caroline Todd“. You wouldn’t know her under that name: she and her son, David Watjen, write (wrote?) mystery novels under the pseudonym “Charles Todd”. I haven’t read any of them yet, but the Ian Rutledge novels sound interesting.
Jay Last. He was an early semi-conductor pioneer: specifically, he was one of the “traitorous eight” who left William Shockley and founded Fairchild Semiconductor. His death leaves Gordon Moore (yes, that Moore) as the last surviving member of the group.
Lawrence sent over an obit for Mick Rock, photographer of musicians.
Peter Aykroyd, Dan’s brother and “Saturday Night Live” cast member.
Art LaFleur, actor. Other than “The Sandlot”, his credits include episodes of “The John Larroquette Show”, two different remakes of television series that should never have been remade and which failed miserably (not due to Mr. LaFleur, they were just bad ideas), “Matlock”, “Field of Dreams”, and “Wizards and Warriors”.
Obit watch: November 19, 2021.
Friday, November 19th, 2021Wilbur Smith, author. He was another one of those guys whose books I often see in racks at the grocery store, which is a pretty good sign.
“I wrote about hunting and gold mining and carousing and women,” Mr. Smith said.
…
…
Mr. Smith had his detractors, who saw some of his writing as glorifying colonialism and furthering racial and gender stereotypes. And he was not always a favorite of critics.
He maintained, as he told the Australian publication The Age, that he paid little attention. “The snootiness of critics is so silly,” he said. “They’re judging Great Danes against Pekingese. I’m not writing that literature — I’ve never set out to write it. I’m writing stories.”
Lawrence sent over Ann Althouse’s obit for Justus Rosenberg yesterday. I can’t really do the man the justice she did, so I’ll just point you over there.
Obit watch: November 18, 2021.
Thursday, November 18th, 2021…
Philip Margo and some of the others in the group didn’t have a lot of confidence in the resulting recording.
“We were embarrassed by it and tried to convince Hugo and Luigi not to release it,” he said in an interview quoted in “The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits” by Fred Bronson. “They said it would be a big record and it was going out.”
They were right. It hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart in December 1961, remained there for three weeks and became a cultural touchstone. A whole new generation was introduced to it in 1994 when a version turned up in the Disney movie “The Lion King.”
“Now that it’s current, we’re current,” Mr. Margo said at the time. “I am thrilled.”
Mr. Frishberg, who also played piano and sang, was an anomaly, if not an anachronism, in American popular music: an accomplished, unregenerate jazz pianist who managed to outrun the eras of rock, soul, disco, punk and hip-hop by writing hyper-literate songs that harked back to Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer, by way of Stephen Sondheim.
His songwriting wit was for grown-ups, yet he reached his widest audience with sharpshooting ditties for kids as a regular musical contributor to ABC-TV’s long-running Saturday morning animated show “Schoolhouse Rock!”
Among his credits: “I’m Just a Bill”.
Lawrence sent over an obit from Slam Wrestling for Joe Cornelius. In addition to his wrestling work, he helped with fight coordinating on “The Avengers” and also made some uncredited movie appearances. Perhaps his best known work was as the titular character in “Trog”.
Heath Freeman. He had some roles on “Bones” and “NCIS”. According to THR, he was only 41.
Obit watch: November 17, 2021.
Wednesday, November 17th, 2021Still playing catch up on obits. Please to excuse the shortness here.
Terence Wilson, of UB40.
Graeme Edge, of the Moody Blues.
Clifford Rose, noted actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also did some movie and TV work, including “Doctor Who”.
Geir Vegar Hoel, Norwegian actor. Lawrence and I knew him from “Dead Snow“, a fun little horror movie about Nazi zombies.
Obit watch: November 14, 2021.
Sunday, November 14th, 2021Another quick obit roundup while I’m still on the road.
Sam Huff, linebacker for the New York Football Giants.
Playing for the Giants in their glory years of the late 1950s and early ’60s, Huff came out of the West Virginia coal country to anchor a defense that gained the kind of renown that had previously been reserved for strong-armed quarterbacks and elusive runners.
He played in six N.F.L. championship games in his eight seasons with the Giants. He was named to the all-league team three times and played in five Pro Bowls.
Huff was remembered for his head-on duels with two of the game’s greatest fullbacks — the Cleveland Browns’ Jim Brown and the Green Bay Packers’ Jim Taylor — but he also had 30 career interceptions. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982.
Jonathan Reynolds. He was a playwright and wrote a food column for the NYT. I wanted to note his passing because he was also a screenwriter. His first script was “Micki + Maude”, a Blake Edwards/Dudley Moore movie that I was unfamiliar with, but which was apparently well received. But…
He also did “Switching Channels”, “My Stepmother Is An Alien”, and “The Distinguished Gentleman”.
Gavan O’Herlihy. He had a fair number of credits, including “Willow” and “Lonesome Dove”, but seems to be most famous for playing “Chuck Cunningham” in nine episodes of “Happy Days”.
Obit watch: November 12, 2021.
Friday, November 12th, 2021Still on the road, but taking a few minutes to round up some obits from the past few days. Sorry if this seems compressed.
John Artis, historical and legal footnote. He was the other guy convicted with Hurricane Carter.
Jerry Douglas. He was most famous for “The Young and The Restless”, but he had a pretty extensive career. “Barnaby Jones”, “Rockford Files”, “Richie Brockleman, Private Eye”, “The Dead Don’t Die”…
…and he was a “Mannix” three-timer. Sadly, IMDB has messed up the site to where I can’t easily get a list of his episodes.