Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

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Obit watch: December 9, 2022.

Friday, December 9th, 2022

Squadron Leader George Leonard “Johnny” Johnson, MBE, DFM (RAF – ret.) has passed away at the age of 101.

He was the last surviving participant in the May 17, 1943 “Dambusters” raid by 617 Squadron.

This is a great story:

The crew of Sergeant Johnson’s plane — flown by the lone American on the raid, Flight Lt. Joe McCarthy, a native of Long Island who had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force — had an even tougher task
Its target, the Sorpe Dam, was an embankment lined with soil and rocks that was expected to absorb much of a bomb’s explosive power, in contrast to the two more vulnerable masonry dams.

…

Lieutenant McCarthy had to clear the steeple of a church, then dip to a level of 30 feet and fly parallel and extraordinarily close to the wall for his plane’s bomb to make a significant impact when it exploded underwater. He made repeated runs along the dam before Sergeant Johnson was satisfied that he could drop his bomb at the center point, where it could do the most damage.
“I found out very quickly how to be the most unpopular member of the crew,” Mr. Johnson recalled in a 2013 interview with the University of Huddersfield in England, explaining that his patience had increased the chances of his plane being spotted by the Germans.
At one point, he said, his rear gunner pleaded, “Will somebody just get that bomb out of here?”
“After nine dummy runs, we were satisfied we were on the right track,” Mr. Johnson wrote in his memoir. “I pushed the button and called, ‘Bomb gone!’ From the rear of the plane was heard ‘Thank Christ for that!’ The explosion threw up a fountain of water up to about 1,000 feet.”

Two Lancasters hit the Sorpe: the dam was damaged, but not breached.

The squadron leader, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who would be killed in action later in the war, received the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for valor. Sergeant Johnson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal.

…

His death, announced by his family on Facebook, came five years after Queen Elizabeth II conveyed the title Member of the Order of the British Empire on Mr. Johnson in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
The honor was bestowed after thousands had signed a petition asking that Mr. Johnson, a bomb-aimer during the war (the equivalent of an American bombardier), be accorded recognition in his final years as a collective tribute to the Dambusters.

…

For all the harrowing missions he took part in, Mr. Johnson said, he felt confident that he would survive.
“I didn’t feel afraid,” he told James Holland for his book “Dam Busters” (2012), in recalling his combat service between 1942 and 1944. “I was sure I was going to come back every time.”

Posted in History, Obits, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 8, 2022.

Thursday, December 8th, 2022

Lawrence sent over an obit for Al Strobel, the one-armed man from “Twin Peaks”.

Representative Jim Kolbe (R-Arizona).

Sal Durante, historical footnote. He caught the ball from Roger Maris’s 61st home run.

Mills Lane. He was the ref in the Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield 1997 fight (that was the ear biting one) and later went on to have a syndicated court show.

“Stomp”. 29 years off-Broadway.

“KPOP”. the musical. 17 regular performances on Broadway and 44 previews.

Since it began previews in October, the new musical has often made less than $200,000 a week, ranking among the lowest-grossing in weekly industry tallies. Capacity has remained fairly healthy but alongside a low average weekly ticket price. The quick closing means KPOP will not be able to benefit from the traditional boost in ticket sales that comes around the holidays and for which many shows hold out for.

I had forgotten about the associated drama: the NYT pretty much panned the show, the producers accused the NYT of racism, and the NYT basically responded with the bedbug letter.

“Wonder Woman 3”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics, Sports, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 6, 2022.

Tuesday, December 6th, 2022

Kirstie Alley. THR. Tributes.

Other credits include the second movie based on a minor SF TV series from the 1960s, the 1995 “Village of the Damned”, and “The Love Boat”.

(Thank you to pigpen51 for tipping me off to this last night.)

Lawrence sent over an obit for Meg Wynn Owen, who passed away in June (but her death was only announced recently).

She appears to have been best known for “Upstairs Downstairs”. Other credits include “The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission”, “Gosford Park”, and “The Duellists”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 5, 2022.

Monday, December 5th, 2022

Cliff Emmich.

Other credits include “Invasion of the Bee Girls”, “The Incredible Hulk”, “Salvage 1”, and “Halloween II”.

In honor of Mr. Emmich, the Saturday Movie Group watched “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”, which I had never seen before. I like it, but it is kind of an odd film: sort of a weird blend of a road movie and a heist movie, with lots and lots of landscape. (No surprise there: this was the first movie directed by Michael Cimino. Arguably, one of the problems with “Heaven’s Gate” was Cimino’s obsession with landscapes, at the expense of plot, length, and coming in under budget.)

Notes:

  • Per Wikipedia, Clint Eastwood was available for this movie (which Cimino wrote specifically for him) because he turned down the lead in “Charlie Varrick”. I liked “Charlie Varrick”, but supposedly Eastwood didn’t find anything likeable in any of the characters. So the role went to Walter Matthau, who I think acquitted himself well. But he found the movie incomprehensible.
  • This is the second week in a row we’ve watched a movie with George Kennedy in a key role. (Last week, it was “Airport ’75”.)
  • I think Lawrence and I were both a little surprised by the vault scene. Both of us were wondering, “Are they going to put on ears?” And then, yes, the Eastwood and Kennedy characters put on both ear and eye protection before the real star of the movie comes into play.

IMFDB entry.

Back in the day (before GCA 1968) you could purchase 20mm surplus anti-tank guns and shells. Today, Anzio Ironworks will sell you a single-shot 20mm for a mere $9,800, and a mag-fed one for $11,900. Add $3,200 for a suppressor.

And as a fun historical note, suitable for use in schools: here’s an article from American Rifleman about the real life heist that may have inspired “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”.

Bob McGrath, longtime “Sesame Street” guy.

Aline Kominsky-Crumb, underground comic artist.

Posted in Guns, History, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: December 2, 2022.

Friday, December 2nd, 2022

Frederick Swann, organist.

Mr. Swann was well known in New York as organist and music director at Riverside Church in Manhattan, where he began playing in the 1950s.
In 1982 he reached a much wider audience when he moved to the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., home base of the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, the television evangelist. There he appeared each week on “Hour of Power,” one of the most widely watched religious programs in the country, with a viewership in the millions.
Before retiring in 2001, he also served for three years as organist at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, which has one of the largest pipe organs in the world. He also played thousands of recitals all over the United States and beyond.

…

“Fred was a genius at controlling and maximizing the potential of very large pipe organs,” the organist John Walker, who succeeded Mr. Swann as music director at Riverside, said in a phone interview. “Every organ is absolutely unique. They are custom-made works of art, and Fred was so uniquely skilled at uncovering the timbres in each instrument that he was regularly invited to give inaugural recitals” — that is, the first public performance on a new or rebuilt organ.
He filled that role in 2004 for the formidable organ at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, a 6,134-pipe instrument designed by Frank Gehry. His program that night included pieces by Bach, Mendelssohn and Josef Rheinberger.
“In all three,” Mark Swed wrote in a review in The Los Angeles Times, “the stirring deep pedal tones produced a sonic weight that seemed to anchor the entire building, while the upper diapason notes were clear and warm. The delicate echo effects in the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s sonata spoke magically, as if coming from the garden outdoors.”

…

Mr. Walker said that Mr. Swann held four centuries’ worth of music in his head and generally played from memory. He played recitals of all kinds, sometimes as the featured attraction and sometimes accompanying a vocalist, and released numerous albums. Mr. Walker said his playing for religious services was particularly poignant.
“In playing a hymn,” he said, “he would be able to express the meaning of an individual word in such a poignant way that I would just immediately tear up.”

Brad William Henke, former NFL player and actor.

He played prison guard Desi Piscatella on Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black over seasons four and five. Henke was among the series’ co-stars to be awarded with the Screen Actors Guild Award for best cast in a comedy in 2016.

Wait, wait: “Orange Is the New Black” was a comedy? By the way, he was also “Coover Bennett” in season 2 of “Justified” (working opposite Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale).

Frank Vallelonga Jr. Other credits include “The Sopranos” and “The Birthday Cake”.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: November 29, 2022.

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022

Clarence Gilyard.

Other credits include “CHiPs”, “Top Gun”, and “L.A. Takedown“.

Freddie Roman, one of the old time Borscht Belt comedians.

Rep. Donald McEachin (D – Virginia).

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

Obit watch: November 23, 2022.

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2022

John Y. Brown Jr., former governor of Kentucky and fried chicken tycoon.

In 1964, Brown purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from Harland Sanders for $2 million. He became president of KFC in January 1965 and sold it to Heublein Corp. in a $275 million stock swap in 1971. Brown received nearly $21 million in Heublein stock for his KFC shares.

(Diversion: this is an older piece from Damn Interesting about Harland Sanders that I rather enjoyed. It does discuss the Brown sale and the Heublein buyout.)

In 1969, Brown purchased controlling interest in the Kentucky Colonels, a Louisville franchise in the American Basketball Association. After the ABA folded, Brown paid a reported $1 million for half interest in the Buffalo Braves of the National Basketball Association. He wanted to move the Braves to Louisville but was blocked in court. Brown and a partner then swapped the Braves for the Boston Celtics, in the first trade of professional sports teams.
The Braves later moved to San Diego, and Brown later sold his share of the Celtics.

As some people may recall, he was married to Phyllis George.

For Christmas one year in the not-to-distant past, Lawrence gave me a copy of The Bluegrass Conspiracy, about Drew Thornton and his drug ring. (Cocaine bear!) John Y. Brown is mentioned quite a bit in that book: while he was never convicted of any crime, he certainly had close and questionable ties to people who were.

Mickey Kuhn. He was a child actor: his most famous role was probably “Beau Wilkes” in “Gone With the Wind”. He was also the last surviving cast member from that movie.

His last acting credit was in 1957.

Wilko Johnson, guitarist with Dr. Feelgood and acted in “Game of Thrones”.

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 21, 2022.

Monday, November 21st, 2022

I don’t have a good link for this, but noted SF writer Greg Bear passed away over the weekend. Lawrence has written a very nice obituary for him, which I encourage you to go read.

Jason David Frank, “the original green ranger on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers”. He was 49.

Nicki Aycox, actress. She was 47. Other credits include “CSI: Original Recipe”, “Law & Order”, and “Cold Case”.

This doesn’t quite qualify as an obit, and I would suggest taking this with more than a grain of salt: Bruce Lee may have died from excessive water consumption. As opposed to a reaction from a prescription painkiller, being poisoned by gangsters, or heat stroke.

Posted in Books, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 18, 2022.

Friday, November 18th, 2022

Ned Rorem, Pulitzer Prize winning classical composer.

The prize was awarded for “Air Music,” a suite commissioned for the American bicentennial by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Though he wrote many other orchestral works as well — including his Symphony No. 3, which was given its premiere by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein in 1959 — Mr. Rorem’s enduring appeal rested more on his vocal pieces.
Robert Shaw, who was America’s foremost conductor of choral music, called him the greatest art-song composer of his time. And it was a remarkably long time.
Mr. Rorem was 74 when his masterwork “Evidence of Things Not Seen” was first performed, in 1998. An evening-long song cycle for four singers and piano, incorporating 36 poems by 24 authors, it was praised by the New York magazine critic Peter G. Davis as “one of the musically richest, most exquisitely fashioned, most voice-friendly collections of songs” by any American composer.
Mr. Rorem had no use for avant-garde theories or their proponents — modern masters like Pierre Boulez and Elliott Carter included. In turn, some critics found him short of original ideas and dynamism, a miniaturist unable to sustain longer pieces. Reviewing “Miss Julie,” the Rorem opera based on Strindberg’s drama, when it was presented by New York City Opera in 1965, Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times wrote, “His melodic ideas are utterly bland, lacking in profile or distinction.”

Marcus Sedgwick, author. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

For the record: NYT obit for Robert Clary.

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

Obit watch: November 17, 2022.

Thursday, November 17th, 2022

Robert Clary, who played “Corporal LeBeau” on “Hogan’s Heroes”. He was “the last surviving member of the show’s original principal cast”. (Kenneth Washington, who joined the show in the final season, is still alive.)

Other credits include “Days of Our Lives” and “The Bold and the Beautiful”.

Noted:

Born Robert Max Widerman in Paris on March 1, 1926, Clary was the youngest of 14 children in a strict Orthodox Jewish family. At age 12, he began singing and performing; one day when he was 16, he and his family were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz.
“My mother said the most remarkable thing,” Clary told The Hollywood Reporter’s Peter Flax in late 2015. “She said, ‘Behave.’ She probably knew me as a brat. She said, ‘Behave. Do what they tell you to do.’”
Clary’s parents were murdered in the gas chamber that day.
At Buchenwald, Clary sang with an accordionist every other Sunday to an audience of SS soldiers. “Singing, entertaining and being in kind of good health at my age, that’s why I survived,” he told Flax.
Clary was incarcerated for 31 months (he worked in a factory making 4,000 wooden shoe heels each day) and tattooed with the identification “A-5714” on his left forearm. He was the only one of his captured family to make it out alive.

…

Did Clary have any reservations about doing a comedy series dealing with Nazis and concentration camps?
“I had to explain that [Hogan’s Heroes] was about prisoners of war in a stalag, not a concentration camp, and although I did not want to diminish what soldiers went through during their internments, it was like night and day from what people endured in concentration camps,” he wrote in his inspirational 2001 memoir, From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes.

…

He sang on several jazz albums that featured the work of songwriters like Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer. (Also a part of his discography: Hogan’s Heroes Sing the Best of WWII, recorded with his castmates Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis and Ivan Dixon.)

I can’t find the album anywhere, but the memoir is available from Amazon.

Edited to add: Thanks to Joe D. for his comment, which I greatly appreciate. Also, while I still can’t find the “Hogan’s Heroes” album, Mike the Musicologist pointed out that Robert Clary’s “Meet Robert Clary” (1955) and “Hooray for Love” (1956) are available on Apple Music and Amazon Music.

Posted in Books, Music, Nazis, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: November 14, 2022.

Monday, November 14th, 2022

Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Folsom (USMC – ret.) has passed away at 102.

In the vast undertaking to capture and hold Guadalcanal in the late summer and fall of 1942, Lieutenant Folsom was a 22-year-old aviator who had never flown at high altitude and had fired the wing guns of his Grumman F4F Wildcat only once, in a training exercise in California.
But he loved flying and, sent into the thick of air combat over Guadalcanal in the first major Allied land offensive since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he had two essential qualities for survival: guts and luck. His 40-pilot squadron battled Japanese Zeros that escorted the Imperial Navy’s cigar-shaped “Betty bombers,” the twin-engine Mitsubishi G4M attack planes that were his squadron’s prime targets.
During Lieutenant Folsom’s three months on the island, nearly half of his squadron’s pilots were killed or wounded. In dogfights, the faster, more maneuverable Zeros often riddled his plane with bullets. He was wounded twice by shrapnel and once by a bullet that gashed his leg. When he ran out of ammunition, he escaped by flying into clouds and circling back to his tiny airstrip, Henderson Field.

…

Flying at 20,000 feet with Wildcats on his wing, he spotted a group of Mitsubishi bombers far below, skimming the ocean surface for a torpedo attack on a flotilla of American ships in the channel between Guadalcanal and Savo Island.
“Over went our noses and down we went, vertically, in a screaming dive,” Mr. Folsom recalled. “The surface vessels were throwing up a tremendous barrage of ack-ack fire.” He leveled off just over the water, pulled in behind an enemy bomber and fired bursts from his six 50-caliber wing guns. The bomber’s tail gunner shot back. “The guns in that baby winked at me but never made a hit,” he said.
“Some of my slugs must have hit the pilot, for not 50 yards in front of me, and from about 10 feet off the surface, he skimmed in. There was a sudden lurch, followed by a cloud of spray and I was over him, headed for the next one. I followed the same tactics again, but this fellow didn’t fall such easy prey. As I came up astern, he began to skid from side to side.”
One of the bomber’s twin engines smoked, but it kept going. “Closing in again, I peppered him with the last of my ammo,” Mr. Folsom said. “This time I was rewarded by seeing him hit the water for keeps, right wing first. The plane catapulted into the sea.” He later learned that 24 Mitsubishi bombers and six Zeros had been shot down that day. The Americans had lost six planes and two pilots.

…

Lieutenant Folsom, who was awarded the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross, went on to a distinguished military career, commanding night fighter squadrons in battles over Okinawa and in the Korean War. He was a high-altitude test pilot, served in the Office of Naval Operations in Washington and for two years was the assistant Naval attaché at the American Embassy in Norway.

I haven’t had a chance to listen to all of this yet, but here’s an oral history interview from the Library of Congress.

Kevin O’Neill, comic artist. (“The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, “Marshal Law”.)

In a statement to The Times after Mr. O’Neill’s death, Mr. Moore said: “Nobody drew like Kevin O’Neill. When I was putting together my formative ideas for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in the lead-out groove of the last century, I quickly realized that nobody save Kevin was qualified to present such a dizzying range of characters, periods, situations and styles with the vitality and ingenuity that the narrative — a ridiculous mash-up of all human fiction since classical antiquity — seemed to demand.
Their collaboration on this series, Mr. Moore said, began what was perhaps the longest, happiest and most productive partnership of both men’s careers.

John Aniston, actor. Other credits include “Airwolf”, “Mission: Impossible”, and a two-part episode of one of the spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

David Davis, TV guy. (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, “Taxi”, “The Bob Newhart Show”)

Two years later, when Mr. Davis was working on “Rhoda,” which turned Mary’s wisecracking sidekick, played by Ms. Harper, into a leading lady, he cast Ms. [Julie] Kavner as her self-deprecating sister. (She and Mr. Davis had met before, when Ms. Kavner read for a part on an episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” although another actress was cast.) A year later they were a couple.
“He gave me my career, my heart and my life,” Ms. Kavner said, noting that that was her first paying part. She went on to be the voice of Marge, the kindly matriarch with the blue bouffant, on “The Simpsons” and, among other movie roles, the star of “This Is My Life,” Nora Ephron’s 1992 film adaptation of a Meg Wolitzer novel about a stand-up comedian and her family.

…

Mr. Davis left television in 1979, after the first season of “Taxi” ended. He was 43. He wanted to spend more time with Ms. Kavner — “I got lucky and kept working,” she said, and they traveled to wherever a job took her — and was determined to make a life outside a studio lot.
“He left for the love of his life,” Mr. DeVito said, “but it was OK because we were already on our way.”

Posted in 1970s, History, Obits, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 9, 2022.

Wednesday, November 9th, 2022

Leslie Phillips. THR.

Other credits include “The Longest Day”, “Love on a Branch Line”, and “The Last Detective” TV series.

Susan Tolsky. “Pretty Maids All in a Row” is on my Amazon list: I need to pull the trigger on that and talk the Saturday Movie Group into it. Other credits include “Barney Miller”, “Quincy M.E.”, “Darkwing Duck”, and “Crazy Like a Fox”.

Jeff Cook, co-founder of Alabama.

Dan McCafferty, lead singer for Nazareth.

I wasn’t a big enough fan of either Alabama or Nazareth to be able to comment intelligently on either of these deaths. But my readers are welcome to comment if they’d like.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: November 4, 2022.

Friday, November 4th, 2022

Andrew Prine, actor.

Interesting set of credits. Quite a few Westerns, and quite a few cop/law shows: “The F.B.I.”, “Banacek”, “Quincy M.E.”, the good “Hawaii Five-O”.

Also: “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” and “Barbary Coast”.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: November 3, 2022.

Thursday, November 3rd, 2022

George Booth, New Yorker cartoonist.

But the hands-down readers’ favorite was Mr. Booth’s mad-as-a-hatter bull terrier, who whirled in circles until dizzy, scratched himself a lot and posed glowering on a lawn beside a sign warning: “Beware! Skittish Dog.” He adorned New Yorker T-shirts and became the magazine’s unofficial mascot, nearly as notable as the top-hat-wearing Eustace Tilley, who appears on the cover once a year. As Lee Lorenz, The New Yorker’s art editor, once put it, “If you can’t recognize a Booth cartoon, you need the magazine in Braille.”

…

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, The New Yorker said it would not run cartoons that week. But Mr. Booth submitted one anyway, showing Mrs. Ritterhouse, a recurring character modeled after his mother, with head down and hands folded in prayer. Her cat covered its face with its paws. It was the only cartoon The New Yorker ran that week.

(Hattip: Lawrence.)

Erica Hoy, Australian actress. IMDB. She was 26, and died in a car crash.

Ray Guy, punter. He was a first round draft choice for the Raiders in 1973:

It was the first time a punter had ever been picked in the first round, and it’s only happened one other time since — Steve Little, in 1978 by the Cardinals, and he was also a kicker.
Guy played with the Raiders, who moved to Los Angeles in 1982, through the end of his career in 1986. He made the Pro Bowl seven times and was a first-team All-Pro in six different seasons. He played a role in three Super Bowl championships.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: October 26, 2022.

Wednesday, October 26th, 2022

Michael Kopsa, actor.

Other credits include “Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Blood Trail”, “The Dead Zone”, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show”, and lots of voice work, especially on “Mobile Suit Gundam” related properties.

Jules Bass, the “Bass” in “Rankin/Bass Productions”, the folks who brought you such timeless classics as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “Frosty the Snowman”, and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”.

Bass also directed and produced Mad Monster Party, a 1967 feature starring Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller.

“Mad Monster Party?” on IMDB. Oddly, it seems to be available on blu-ray (affiliate link).

Lawrence emailed an obit for Ashton B. Carter, defense secretary under Obama.

Posted in History, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

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