Michael DeLano, actor. Other credits include “Cover Up“, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “Banacek”.
Archive for the ‘TV’ Category
Obit watch: November 26, 2025.
Wednesday, November 26th, 2025Obit watch: November 24, 2025.
Monday, November 24th, 2025275 credits in IMDB, including “Iron Sky: The Coming Race”, “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot”, and “Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated”.
Lee Tamahori, New Zealand director who went on to a Hollywood career. IMDB.
I never saw any of his Hollywood films. But I did see “Once Were Warriors” in a theater, and it blew me away. I highly recommend that, but be warned: it isn’t a light and happy movie.
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, who was also known as H. Rap Brown.
Before converting to Islam and changing his name in the 1970s, Mr. Al-Amin was one of the most incendiary orators among the Black Power activists who emerged in the late 1960s to challenge the leadership and nonviolent strategy of the civil rights movement.
An admirer of the Cuban revolution, he preached armed resistance and separatism, declaring: “Violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie.”
With his trademark black beret and sunglasses, dexterous mind and imposing 6-foot-5 inch frame — 7 feet, with his Afro — he was a persuasive and charismatic figure to many, adept at rallying Black audiences to his cause while alarming many white listeners.
Elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in May 1967, he made an immediate mark by getting the word “nonviolent” removed from its name, persuading the organization’s leaders to change it to the Student National Coordinating Committee.
He had a long history of “involvement”, so to speak, with law enforcement.
Enmeshed in court proceedings resulting from federal and state charges he faced in five cities, Mr. Al-Amin went into hiding in 1970 and spent 18 months on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted list. He resurfaced in Manhattan on Oct. 16, 1971, in dramatic fashion — wounded in a shootout with the New York City police. The police said he and several accomplices had tried to hold up an uptown Manhattan tavern and exchanged gunfire with officers who were pursuing them.
Mr. Brown, who denied the charges, was convicted on charges of robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He served five years of a five-to-15-year sentence at the Attica state prison in upstate New York.
By the time he was released on parole in 1976, he had converted to the Muslim Sunni sect known as Dar-ul Islam. By his account, he had become a new man with a new name. He moved to Atlanta, where his wife, Karina, had established a law practice, and publicly renounced the revolutionary ambitions of his youth.
He was convicted of shooting two sheriff’s deputies – killing one – in 2000, and died in a federal medical center.
Obit watch: November 12, 2025.
Wednesday, November 12th, 2025Sally Kirkland, actress.
Other credits include “Supertrain”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, “Bronk”, and an uncredited role in “Blazing Saddles”.
Tatsuya Nakadai, Japanese actor.
He did a lot of work with Akira Kurosawa, including the lead role in “Kagemusha”. He was also the lead character in “Ran”, Kurosawa’s version of “King Lear”.
Early in his career, Mr. Nakadai often worked opposite Toshiro Mifune, one of Japan’s best-known acting exports. They could not have been less alike: Mr. Mifune, untrained as an actor but with wild energy, often presented a gruff, overtly physical persona, while Mr. Nakadai took on vastly different characters and delivered subtly intricate performances.
They usually played adversaries. In “Yojimbo” (1961) and “Sanjuro” (1962), both directed by Mr. Kurosawa, and “Samurai Rebellion” (1967), directed by Mr. Kobayashi, the two meet in climatic duels, with Mr. Mifune’s character winning each time with a horizontal slash to the midsection. In “Sanjuro,” the fatal cut released a towering fountain of blood.
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Obit watch: November 10, 2025.
Monday, November 10th, 2025Robert H. Bartlett, big damn hero. He was one of the pioneers of ECMO.
An ECMO machine consists of an external circuit of tubes, a pump that functions as a heart, and a membrane that serves as an artificial lung. The device continuously pumps blood out of the body, adds oxygen, removes carbon dioxide, warms the blood and returns it to the body.
ECMO treatment can continue for days or weeks or longer, allowing the heart and lungs to rest and try to heal from traumas like acute respiratory distress, a blood clot, a heart attack or an injury from a car crash. It can also be used for patients awaiting a heart or lung transplant, and it is increasingly being used in emergencies for people experiencing cardiac arrest.
According to a registry kept by the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization, which Dr. Bartlett founded, more than 260,000 critically ill newborns, children and adults around the world have received the treatment, and roughly 800 medical centers in 66 countries offer the procedure; about 54 percent of patients treated with ECMO survive to leave the hospital, and more than 100,000 lives have been saved.
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In 1975, while he was at the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Bartlett and his surgical team, including Dr. Alan Gazzaniga, successfully used ECMO treatment for the first time on a newborn who was experiencing lung failure and had been left at the hospital by her mother, an undocumented immigrant.
The infant — named Esperanza, or Hope, by the nurses — recovered after spending six days on the machine. Over the years she remained in touch with Dr. Bartlett, joining him at conferences and attending University of Michigan football games with him, one of his favorite activities.
Thanks to ECMO, what had once been a mortality rate of 80 percent in newborns struggling to breathe became a survival rate of 80 percent.
“If Dr. Bartlett wasn’t there that day I was born, I wouldn’t be here today,” Esperanza Pineda, who is now 50, said in an interview.
Betty Harford, actress. Other credits include “T.H.E. Cat”, “The Name of the Game”, and “Mrs. Columbo”.
Paul Tagliabue, former commissioner of the NFL. ESPN.
Obit watch: November 4, 2025.
Tuesday, November 4th, 2025Other credits include “Carnosaur”, “White Lightning”, “Then Came Bronson”, and “The Fugitive”. And the pool of living “Alice” actors gets even smaller.
Former vice president Dick Cheney. WP (archived).
Victor Conte. I’m not sure how many people will remember that name: he was the founder of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), the people who provided “performance enhancing drugs” to various athletes “including baseball stars Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track champion Marion Jones”.
Obit watch: October 28, 2025.
Tuesday, October 28th, 2025Prunella Scales, actress. NYT (share link).
Other credits include “The Boys from Brazil”, “Wolf”, and “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (1978).
Obit watch: October 27, 2025.
Monday, October 27th, 2025For the record (I got behind over the weekend): June Lockhart. THR.
Other credits include “Babylon 5”, “The John Larroquette Show”, “C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud”, three episodes of “Quincy, M.E.”, “Sword of Justice”…and pretty much every other darn thing.
Except she never did a “Mannix”.
Obit watch: October 16, 2025.
Thursday, October 16th, 2025Ed Williams, actor. He was 98.
Other credits include “Carnosaur”, “Hooperman”, and apparently there was a remake of “I Want to Live“?
Obit watch: October 12, 2025.
Sunday, October 12th, 2025Diane Keaton. THR. IMDB.
I think her death has been very well covered everywhere, but fun fact by way of Lawrence: yes, she was a “Mannix” alumna. (“The Color of Murder”, season 4, episode 22. She was “Cindy Conrad”.) She also appeared on “The F.B.I.”.
Obit watch: October 3, 2025.
Friday, October 3rd, 2025Patricia Routledge, noted British actress. She was 96.
…from the beginning she was a stage performer, and an acclaimed one.
Ms. Routledge won a Tony for her 1968 Broadway appearance in the musical “Darling of the Day” (a tie with Leslie Uggams, for “Hallelujah, Baby!”) and its British equivalent, the Laurence Olivier Award, as the Old Lady in a 1988 production of “Candide” at the Old Vic.
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Many of Ms. Routledge’s biggest fans, from “Appearances” and from “Hetty Wainthropp Investigates,” the detective series she starred in afterward (1996-98), may never have even known about her time with the Royal Shakespeare Company or her stage roles on the West End.
She was the temperamental character actress Dotty Otley and a harried housekeeper in the farce “Noises Off” (1982), the imperious Lady Bracknell in “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1999), the title character in “Little Mary Sunshine” (1962), Madame Ranevskaya in “The Cherry Orchard” (1975), Queen Margaret in “Richard III” (1984), the confused Mrs. Malaprop in “The Rivals” (1976), the earthy Nettie Fowler in “Carousel” (1992) and a religious fanatic in “And a Nightingale Sang” (1979).
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Other American stage appearances included the 1980 Shakespeare in the Park production of “The Pirates of Penzance,” with Kevin Kline, as Ruth the pirate maid; and the London comedy “How’s the World Treating You?” (her Broadway debut, in 1966), as a frumpy 1940s mom.None of her Broadway shows had long runs. In 1968, “Love Match” (her second time portraying Queen Victoria) never opened, because of a disappointing Los Angeles run.
Her most notable flop was the Broadway production of Leonard Bernstein’s “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” in which she played a series of American first ladies. It opened on May 4, 1976, and closed on May 8. She looked back on the experience as a composer-lyricist mismatch, telling the London newspaper The Telegraph in 2007, “I think Alan Jay Lerner was frightened of Lenny.”
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IMDB.
She was best known as “Hyacinth Bucket” (pronounced by the character “Bouquet”) on “Keeping Up Appearances”, a show (and a character) beloved by many people in my family.
One of those family members sent me this, which I rather like:
I’ll be turning 95 this coming Monday. In my younger years, I was often filled with worry — worry that I wasn’t quite good enough, that no one would cast me again, that I wouldn’t live up to my mother’s hopes. But these days begin in peace, and end in gratitude.
My life didn’t quite take shape until my forties. I had worked steadily — on provincial stages, in radio plays, in West End productions — but I often felt adrift, as though I was searching for a home within myself that I hadn’t quite found.
At 50, I accepted a television role that many would later associate me with — Hyacinth Bucket, of Keeping Up Appearances. I thought it would be a small part in a little series. I never imagined that it would take me into people’s living rooms and hearts around the world. And truthfully, that role taught me to accept my own quirks. It healed something in me.
At 60, I began learning Italian — not for work, but so I could sing opera in its native language. I also learned how to live alone without feeling lonely. I read poetry aloud each evening, not to perfect my diction, but to quiet my soul.
At 70, I returned to the Shakespearean stage — something I once believed I had aged out of. But this time, I had nothing to prove. I stood on those boards with stillness, and audiences felt that. I was no longer performing. I was simply being.
At 80, I took up watercolor painting. I painted flowers from my garden, old hats from my youth, and faces I remembered from the London Underground. Each painting was a quiet memory made visible.
Now, at 95, I write letters by hand. I’m learning to bake rye bread. I still breathe deeply every morning. I still adore laughter — though I no longer try to make anyone laugh. I love the quiet more than ever.
I’m writing this to tell you something simple:
Growing older is not the closing act. It can be the most exquisite chapter — if you let yourself bloom again.
Let these years ahead be your *treasure years*.
You don’t need to be famous. You don’t need to be flawless.
You only need to show up — fully — for the life that is still yours.
With love and gentleness,
— Patricia Routledge
Obit watch: October 1, 2025.
Wednesday, October 1st, 2025Jane Goodall has passed away. She was 91.
It goes against my usual policy, but here’s a NYT obit from today that seems pretty comprehensive. I’ll try to post an updated version tomorrow if it is justified.
NYT obit for Thomas Perry. Fun fact I didn’t know: he and his wife worked as TV writers and producers. Credits include “Simon and Simon”, “Snoops”, and a spin-off of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.
Viv Prince, drummer for the Pretty Things. I’d never heard of the Pretty Things (pigpen51?) but the paper of record describes them as a “ruder, cruder version of the Rolling Stones”. And the obit is entertaining, especially if you’re a fan of Spinal Tap.
An appreciation published in The Guardian after his death unearthed a 1965 interview with Mr. Prince from Record Mirror, the British music newspaper, in which he was grilled about his antics with the band during a scorched-earth tour of New Zealand that year.
In the interview, Mr. Prince denied lighting fires onstage but did admit to sabotaging a performance by the teen idol Eden Kane by laying carpet onstage while Mr. Kane was performing. “Everyone was digging it,” Mr. Prince said.
And he addressed news accounts that he had released live crayfish in an airport lounge. “The fish were dead when we bought them,” he said. “They always are. How on earth can dead fish run around?”
Obit watch: September 17, 2025.
Wednesday, September 17th, 2025For the historical record, Robert Redford: THR. NYT. LAT. Park Record. IMDB.
NYT obit for Pat Crowley (archived). (Previously.)
John Penton, one of the pioneers of off-road motorcycle riding.
Traveling home from Mexico in late 1958, he rode nonstop from California to Ohio, prompting one of his brothers to challenge him to try to break the transcontinental motorcycle record, riding from New York to Los Angeles.
At 5:59 a.m. on June 8, 1959, Mr. Penton set out from New York City on a 35-horsepower BMW R69S, outfitted with an oversize gas tank and a fender rack to hold rain gear and candy bars. To officially record his progress, he carried Western Union letterhead that he got stamped at tollbooths along the route.
In St. Louis, a cycling group, including two police officers, was expecting him and provided an escort through the city, offering him two ham sandwiches and two cups of milk, according to the podcast We Went Fast.
Mr. Penton intended to stop only to refuel. But by the time he reached Flagstaff, Ariz., he was exhausted and seeing double. So he set two alarm clocks and slept for an hour, then hit the road again.
On June 10, he arrived at the Western Union office in downtown Los Angeles at 8:10 a.m., having traveled 3,051 miles. His official time — 52 hours, 11 minutes, 1 second — broke the previous record by over 25 hours. Mr. Penton’s record stood for nine years.
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In the late 1940s, Mr. Penton began to realize that smaller, more agile off-road motorcycles could outperform heavier, unwieldy roadster models like Harleys, Triumphs and Indians. By the 1960s, he was determined to design a bike that would not have to be modified for off-road use.
In 1967, while in Europe competing in a six-day team endurance event that is considered the Olympics of off-road racing, he paid $6,000 to the Austrian company KTM, a manufacturer of bicycles and mopeds, to build a prototype for a design he called the Penton.
The first Pentons were delivered in 1968; the 125cc model weighed 185 pounds, about half the weight of some bikes that Mr. Penton had ridden. The Penton came with innovations like a folding gearshift lever to prevent the bike from being caught on rocks and in muddy ruts, and an air-filter system that enhanced water resistance to keep the engine running smoothly.
“Our claim to fame,” Jack Penton said, “was that it was ready to perform at the highest level just as you bought it” — no modifications needed.
In 1978, Mr. Penton sold his distributorship to KTM, which rebranded the motorcycle with its company name. By then, more than 25,000 Penton motorcycles had been sold in the United States, according to the American Motorcyclist Association.
Obit watch: September 16, 2025.
Tuesday, September 16th, 2025In keeping with the policy of this blog, I’m going to wait until tomorrow to post the Robert Redford obits. By then, any corrections and additions should be in place and the final versions should be up.
Patricia Crowley, actress. Other credits include “Today’s F.B.I.”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “The Rockford Files”, “Columbo”, and the good “Hawaii Five-O”.
Patrick McGovern. His obit is relevant to my interests:
Bespectacled, bearded and more professorial in appearance than the Indiana Jones character that Harrison Ford played onscreen, Dr. McGovern used modern scientific methods, including multiple forms of spectrometry, to identify biomarkers in the residue in primitive drinking vessels.
“When analyzing something, I work from a minuscule amount of chemical, botanical and archaeological data,” he told National Geographic magazine in 2016. “I look for principal ingredients: Does it have a grain? A fruit? An herb?”
One of his discoveries, found in shards of pottery dating back 9,000 years to a Neolithic village in China, was believed to be the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world — a mix of fermented rice, honey and hawthorn fruit, a red berry.
Another was the world’s oldest grape wine, dating to 6,000-5,800 B.C. in Georgia’s South Caucasus region.
And from 157 bronze vessels left behind in the tomb of King Midas in Turkey, Dr. McGovern identified a beverage made of barley beer, grape wine and honey mead. Given the proximity of the drinkware to the king’s body, the concoction was probably passed around during his funerary feast, as at an Irish wake.
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Dr. McGovern was sometimes asked which came first: bread or beer?
“You need food to exist,” he said. “But if you want to have a good time,” he added, “if you want social lubrication, if you want to up your sexual relations and so produce more children, then alcoholic beverages help.”
Obit watch: September 12, 2025.
Friday, September 12th, 2025Salli Sachse, actress. Other credits include “The Million Eyes of Sumuru” (which we watched in the MST3K Season 13 version), “Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine”, “The Wild Weird World of Dr. Goldfoot”, and…
…her final credit before she retired in 1969 is an episode of “Mannix”. (“The Girl Who Came in with the Tide”, season 2, episode 17.)
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Inevitably, she was a magnet for the breast-obsessed director Russ Meyer, who photographed her for the magazine and was intent on casting her in his 1959 sexploitation comedy, “The Immoral Mr. Teas.”
Because she was signed to a different production company, Ms. Wilkinson was not contractually allowed to appear in the film. Even so, her bare breasts did, visible in a torso-only window shot in an uncredited appearance she made as a favor to the director. Keen-eyed aficionados of her form were not fooled, she later observed: “I guess breasts are like fingerprints; there are no two alike.”
Obit watch: September 11, 2025.
Thursday, September 11th, 2025I feel like everyone is aware of Charlie Kirk. For the historical record, here’s an archived version of the NYT obit.
I don’t mean to give the man short shrift, but I also really have nothing of significance to add.
Polly Holliday. She had a considerable body of work in theater in addition to her TV and movie work. THR. NYPost.
Other credits include “Gremlins”, “Homicide: Life on the Street”, and “All the President’s Men”.
I got to wondering about this yesterday, and then a short time later someone else asked me the same question: is anybody from “Alice” still alive?
Linda Lavin, Vic Tayback, Beth Howland, and Philip McKeon are all dead. But Diane Ladd, who replaced Polly Holiday for (roughly) the season after she left, is still alive. (She was also “Flo” in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”.) Celia Weston, who replaced Diane Ladd, is also still alive.