Brenda Fricker, actress.
Other credits include “A Time to Kill”, “Quatermass” (1979), “The Quatermass Conclusion” (1979), and “Angels in the Outfield”.
I’m a little behind on this, but: Janice McNair, co-founder of the Houston Texans. NFL.com. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Sam Neill. Other credits include “Event Horizon”, “The Hunt for Red October”, and “In Cold Blood” (the 1996 mini-series: he was Alvin Dewey).
I have not seen this anywhere else, but Smith and Wesson posted a nice tribute to the late Dr. Roy Jinks on Linkedin.
A catch-all for several things:
Happy 46th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night! I think I may have used this before, but it has been a minute I believe:
Obit watch: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). NYT. WP (archived). Lawrence.
You know, for a movie that is often called one of the worst movies to win the Academy Award for Best Picture1…”The Greatest Show On Earth” is actually pretty swell. Is it better than “High Noon”? I don’t know that you can make a head-to-head comparison, but I thought “Show” was much more fun. And sometimes that’s what you want out of a movie: fun. (And I say this as a person with conflicted views about circuses.)
While we were watching it, I mentioned that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus had gone out of business in 2017. I went to double-check my dates…and ran into an interesting philosophical question.
While RB&BB closed in 2017, they restarted in 2023 according to Wikipedia. But: the new shows do not have clowns, animals, or a ringmaster.
Which raises the question: if you don’t have animals, clowns, or a ringmaster, are you still Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus? Heck, are you even still a circus at all?
The long version of the Lucille Ball story from IMDB.
We all know that Jimmy Stewart was one of the greats, but he’s brilliant in this. Especially since he spends the entire film in clown makeup, for reasons.
And how many movies can you think of that have a love…pentagon? Brad is in love with Holly, who loves him. But she takes up with The Great Sebastian, who returns her affections (though, honestly, it seems like The Great Sebastian would return the affections of anything female). He also has a past with Angel, who also falls for Brad, but is claimed by the pathologically jealous elephant trainer Klaus. (I wonder if this is patient zero for the evil elephant trainer in fiction. See also.)
John Wilson should go eat a bowl of something disgusting.
Ann Blyth, actress. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “The Name of the Game”, and “The Twilight Zone” (the original).
FotB RoadRich sent over two obits:
Daveigh Chase. Other credits include “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”, “Cold Case”, “S. Darko”, and “Without a Trace”.
Margaret Kerry. Other credits include “Clutch Cargo”, “The Sickle or the Cross”, and “The New 3 Stooges”.
NYT obit for Jane Yolen. (Previously.)
Anne Schedeen, actress. Credits other than one of the worst shows ever to air on television include “Ironside”, “Lanigan’s Rabbi”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man”.
William Smithers, actor. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, “The F.B.I.”, a minor SF TV series from the 1960s…
…and “Mannix”. (“Eight to Five, It’s a Miracle”, season 1, episode 21. He was “Salvatore Pucci”.)
Gene Shalit. THR. I realize that there’s a “don’t speak ill of the dead” factor here, but the THR story reads like a hastily and slightly re-written press release from the family.
I do remember liking the guy when I was a young person watching the “Today” show, and I’m impressed he lived to 100.
James Handy, actor. Other credits include “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy” of the 2000s except it sucked), “Gideon’s Crossing”, and “Walker, Texas Ranger”.
Max Kleven. Man, he had one heck of a career. Stunt work on “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and “Come Back Charleston Blue”, second unit director on “Rollerball” and “Silver Streak”, and acting credits on “The F.B.I.”, a minor SF TV series from the 1960s…
…and he was a “Mannix” five-timer, too.
This just in: Anthony Head. Other credits include “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”, “NYPD Blue”, and “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place”.
This made me laugh. By way of Mike the Musicologist:
This week in 2001, the movie 'Pearl Harbor' was released. To mark the occasion, we decided to share footage of the 1970 epic 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' instead. pic.twitter.com/vgYRJr5tpo
— Military History Now (@MilHistNow) May 27, 2026
Robert Daley, author and deputy commissioner with the NYPD. He was 96.
Daley served as deputy commissioner of the NYPD in 1971 and 1972, a turbulent period marked by police corruption investigations, organised crime violence, major robberies and attacks on officers. He later drew on that experience in ‘Target Blue: An Insider’s View of the N.Y.P.D.’, giving readers a close look at the inner workings, pressures and contradictions of the force.
‘Prince of the City’ became his most enduring work. The book followed Robert Leuci, an NYPD narcotics detective whose cooperation with investigators exposed corruption within the department’s Special Investigation Unit. The story centred not only on criminal conduct, but on loyalty, guilt and the complicated moral code that shaped police life. Critics recognised its force, with contemporary commentary noting the power of Daley’s portrayal of the flawed policeman as a modern literary figure.
Haven’t read the book, but the movie version of it is…pretty okay. I do think it could have been trimmed down some (the movie comes in at 2:47: “The Best Years of Our Lives” comes in at 2:52).
(Archive.is is still broken. Sorry.)
Joe Sedelmaier, commercial director.
Among his works:
And this one:
And this one:
I can’t embed it, but here’s a link to his Southern Airways “Steerage” commercial. For some reason, that commercial reminds me of…every Southwest flight I’ve been on.
Claudine Longet, actress and singer.
I’ve heard this is actually a pretty good movie, but have never seen it.
After she and Williams divorced (amicably), she took up with a skier named Vladimir “Spider” Sabich.
He died on the way to the hospital. She was criminally charged, but local law enforcement completely botched the case. She ended up being convicted of “criminally negligent homicide”.
She was given two years’ probation, fined $250 and sentenced to 30 days in jail (she was able to serve most of her sentence on weekends).
The Sabich family later filed a civil suit against Longet for $1.3 million, but the case was settled out of court. Longet agreed not to speak publicly about Sabich or the murder and to never publish a book about her life and the trial, and her career as a singer and actress was done.
@jack.hutton The Claudine Longet Ski Invitational 1976 SNL A classic. #SNL #classic #1976 —
Edited to add: I know the NYT is watching this space. Because as soon as I put up my own obit for someone, the NYT puts up theirs. Guys, let’s not fight. I’d be willing to entertain a job offer, though I would insist on working remotely.
Betty Broderick passed away last week. She was 78.
Some folks may remember this from the late 1980s. Ms. Broderick’s husband dumped her for a younger woman.
On Nov. 5, 1989, Ms. Broderick entered the home of her ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, a prominent malpractice lawyer in San Diego, and Linda Kolkena Broderick, a former flight attendant who became his legal assistant and, while he was still married to Ms. Broderick, his lover, and shot them in bed with a .38-caliber pistol.
Ms. Broderick, then about to turn 42, immediately turned herself in to the police, and never denied firing the fatal shots at her former husband, 44, and his second wife, 28. But she denied committing murder, claiming in media interviews and in the courtroom to have been a victim of years of psychological abuse.
It was one of those minor sensations at the time.
Ms. Broderick spoke to magazines and newspapers before and after her trials, and twice appeared from prison on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” angrily venting about her husband.
“He went off with the bimbo at 40, driving a red Corvette — haven’t we heard this before?” she told The Los Angeles Times three weeks after the killings.
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At her first trial, mental health specialists called by both the prosecution and the defense testified that Ms. Broderick was narcissistic and histrionic. Melvin G. Goldzband, a psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution, refuted her claims of emotional abuse.
“She wanted not to be rejected,” he said, adding that she would have been angry even if her husband had agreed to an extravagant monthly support settlement.
“People extend battles because it’s the only form of the relationship that they have,” Dr. Goldzband said.
Ms. Broderick was sentenced in 1992 to the maximum possible term: 32 years to life in prison. She was twice denied parole.
Rex Reed, noted (and I kind of want to say “notorious”) movie critic.
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Screenshot
NYT.
Mr. Turner put together a top-notch crew that helped him win the 1977 America’s Cup races off Newport, R.I. But he did so only after coming close to being thrown out of the races once he had been accepted. “During the Cup eliminations,” Time magazine reported, “he flirted with every girl in sight, crawled pubs with his crew, got tossed out of chic clubs and restaurants for boozy behavior and turned Newport’s blue bloods positively purple.”
The Cup organizers forced Mr. Turner to apologize publicly to one elite club, the Spouting Rock Beach Association, for accosting female members. “I wish to apologize profusely because I certainly did have a couple drinks too many that Saturday night,” Mr. Turner wrote to the club president.
But on winning the Cup, he surrounded himself with young, attractive women and was too drunk to finish a victory speech at a nationally televised news conference.
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He wooed [Jane Fonda – DB] — just after her divorce from the liberal activist and California state legislator Tom Hayden — by emphasizing their similarities, including as the children of a suicidal parent (in Ms. Fonda’s case, her mother) and their friendships with icons of the far left, like Mr. Castro. She later wrote in a memoir that she had been dazzled by his charisma, which she likened to “a 3-D stereophonic, Shakespearean-level, sound-and-light show.”
The couple married in 1991 — the third marriage for each — and in subsequent years, Mr. Turner devoted more of his time to environmentalism and global peace, while Ms. Fonda virtually retired from Hollywood to devote herself to Mr. Turner and his new causes.
Their marriage lasted 10 years, with Ms. Fonda saying his insatiable need for other women and her own deepening spirituality, including an embrace of Christianity, were underlying causes.
The shows could feel hallucinogenic, and many older viewers read drug references into them that the Kroffts maintained were not intentional. (Titles like “Pufnstuf” did not make that argument more believable.)
“If we did the drugs that we’ve been accused of doing all these years, we wouldn’t be here answering your questions,” Mr. Krofft said in an interview with The Washington Post in 2009.
Lawrence sent over an obit for noted SF writer Ian Watson. I don’t have much to add to this, as I have not seen this reported elsewhere.
Valerie Lee. She was one of the children who played Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz”. It gets a little confusing, at least for me, but as best as I understand it: they recruited some child actors to play adult Munchkins alongside the actual little people in “Oz”.
John Nolan, actor. Other credits include “The Sweeney”, “The Prisoner”, and “Return of the Saint”.
Dr. Henry C. Lee, forensic scientist. He may have been most famous for testifying at the OJ trial.
Dr. Lee testified for the defense, saying that there was “something wrong” with the way the Los Angeles Police Department had handled the blood that was collected as evidence.
His testimony supported the defense team’s suggestion that the evidence could have been tampered with and that officers might have planted Mr. Simpson’s blood at the crime scene.
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In 2007, the judge in the murder trial of Mr. Spector ruled that Dr. Lee, a consultant for the defense, had removed something from the crime scene and hidden it from the prosecution.
Prosecutors contended that it was a piece of fingernail that would have shown that the actress Lana Clarkson had resisted having a gun placed in her mouth before being shot at Mr. Spector’s California home. The defense claimed that she had shot herself.
The judge did not hold Dr. Lee in contempt, and Dr. Lee denied taking anything from the crime scene. After the first trial ended in a hung jury, Mr. Spector was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009.
In 2023, Connecticut’s attorney general agreed to a $25 million settlement with two men who had spent three decades in jail after being convicted of murder. Those convictions, which were overturned in 2020, had been based in part on testimony by Dr. Lee regarding the supposed presence of blood on a towel. A federal judge ruled that Dr. Lee had fabricated the evidence, saying that there was no corroboration that he had conducted any blood tests on the towel.
Dr. Lee defended himself in a statement, saying, “I have no motive nor reason to fabricate evidence.”
Mary Beth Hurt. Other credits include “Law & Order”, “Law & Order:SVU”, and “Lady in the Water”.
James Tolkan. Other credits include “They Might Be Giants”, “Bone Tomahawk”, “Serpico”, “Prince of the City”, and “The Hat Squad”.
Letizia Mowinckel, historical footnote. She bought clothes for Jacqueline Kennedy.
Among the clothes she bought: the pink Chanel suit.