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.
For the record: NYT obits for Valerie Perrine and Brian Doherty.
Burning in Hell watch: Kermit Gosnell. I have my own opinions about abortion, which I’m not going to impose on anyone here. But the Gosnell case, as I recall, made even people who were pro-abortion sit up and say, “Hey, wait a minute, this is going too far.”
Valerie Perrine, actress. Other credits include “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Walker, Texas Ranger”, and “W.C. Fields and Me”.
For the historical record: Robert S. Mueller III. WP.
Chuck Norris. THR. “The World Bows: Remembering Chuck Norris 1940-2026” from Black Belt.
Other credits include the bad “Hawaii Five-0”, “Sons of Thunder”, and “Firewalker“.
Ed Bernard, actor. Other credits include “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Shaft” (the movie), “Cool Million”…
…and “Mannix”. (“A Question of Murder”, season 7, episode 22. He was “Bull Evans”.)
Jane Lapotaire, British actress.
For the historical record: NYT obit for Alvin Greene. (Previously on WCD.)
Len Deighton, one of the great British spy writers. NYT (share link). He was 97.
He wrote “The IPCRESS File” to amuse himself during a vacation. The story of a secret agent confronted with duplicity and bureaucracy from his own side while investigating a Soviet kidnap ring, it was published in 1962 and went on to sell millions of copies.
The novel was adapted into a 1965 film, with Caine in a star-making performance as Deighton’s protagonist, a sardonic working-class sophisticate with a love of gourmet food. The character is unnamed in the book, though Caine’s character was given the name Harry Palmer.
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Judy Pace, actress. Other credits include “Cotton Comes to Harlem”, “O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, “Shaft” (the TV series), and “The Thomas Crown Affair” (the original).
Matt Clark, actor. Other credits include “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”, “The Laughing Policeman”, and “T.H.E. Cat”.
John Bengtson. No, you probably haven’t heard of him, unless you have a lot in common with the Saturday Night Movie Group.
For more than 30 years, he captured images of them from silent films and then matched them with archival photos, aerial maps and postcards to pinpoint where Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd performed their slapstick shenanigans.
In identifying hundreds of locations in Hollywood, San Francisco and New York that those geniuses of silent comedy used in movies like “The Kid” (1921), “Cops” (1922) and “Safety Last!” (1923), Mr. Bengtson inadvertently uncovered a visual record of vanished cityscapes.
“When you watch a silent movie,” he said, “you’re not only being entertained by the story, but you’re experiencing time travel.”
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His most remarkable revelation centered on a T-shaped alley in Hollywood, between Cahuenga Boulevard and Cosmo Street. Triangulating frame-by-frame stills with his go-to research materials, Mr. Bengtson discovered that the alley had been used in more than a dozen films in the early 1920s, including Keaton’s “Cops,” Chaplin’s “The Kid” and Lloyd’s “Safety Last!”
The location’s ubiquity made sense to Mr. Bengtson. At the time, Hollywood was mostly a neighborhood of open fields and vacant lots. Because the alley was close to the filmmakers’ studios, they could go there for quick urban shots instead of lugging their equipment to downtown Los Angeles.
“I can absolutely guarantee you that there is no place anywhere that has three of the biggest stars and three of their most important movies in one spot,” Mr. Bengtson told Atlas Obscura, a travel website, in 2021, the year a commemorative plaque he advocated for was placed at the alley. “This is absolutely two or three strata above anything else I’ve ever found.”
He did three books: Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton, Silent Visions: Discovering Early Hollywood and New York Through the Films of Harold Lloyd, and Silent Traces: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Charlie Chaplin.
I burned a share link on this because I’d like for folks to look at the header of the NYT obit, which partially reproduces an extra on the Criterion Collection disc, showing how they did the clock stunt in Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last!”. Mr. Bengtson sounds like a really cool guy who it would have been a pleasure to know. ALS got him at 68.
Country Joe McDonald, of Country Joe McDonald and the Fish.
The YouTube link doesn’t seem to work in the archived version, so here it is, for the hysterical record:
It has been a bad time for screenwriters.
Alan Trustman. Other credits include “They Call Me Mister Tibbs!”, “Hit!”, and “Lady Ice”. The NYT obit makes it sound like his career pretty much came to a screeching halt after he and Steve McQueen got into it while writing “Le Mans”.
Jeremy Larner. I wasn’t originally going to note this, but his arc is mildly interesting.
He has a total of four credits in IMDB. Two of those are as “Self”. The other one is for “Drive, He Said”, which he wrote (and which was based on his novel) and which you can find in the “America Lost and Found: The BBS Story” box set from Criterion.
I intended to note this the other day, but it got past me: Bruce Froemming, major leage umpire.
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Umpires are known for their accuracy — or lack thereof — in calling balls, strikes and outs, as well as for their on-field disputes and occasional ejections. Froemming gave the heave-ho to players, managers and coaches 125 times from 1971 to 2007, far fewer than Klem’s record of close to 300 ejections. Three managers were each thrown out by Froemming three times: Davey Johnson of the Mets, Bobby Cox of the Atlanta Braves and Joe Torre, once with the St. Louis Cardinals and twice when he skippered the Mets.
Froemming booted out his last man, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, in the waning days of his last season, in 2007, for arguing a check swing call.
He also booted Billy Martin (though, as far as I can tell, there was no fistfight involved).
In 1976, Froemming ejected the fiery Yankees manager Billy Martin in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the World Series for tossing a ball at Bill Deegan, the home plate umpire, from the dugout. Martin, claiming that Deegan had tossed three balls out of play in his direction, rushed onto the field to argue his ejection.
“It’s a touchy situation,” Froemming said afterward, “and to have Martin start something at this point is something we can’t tolerate.”
Jennifer Runyon, actress. Other credits include “Carnosaur”, “The Falcon and the Snowman”, and “The Master”.
Lawrence sent over a NotTheBee obit for Alvin Greene, “the most bizarre Senate candidate in United States history”.
Lauren Chapin, actress. Other credits include “School Bus Diaries”, “The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza”, and “Scout’s Honor”.
Sondra Lee, actress. Noted:
Robert Carradine. Other credits include “Jackson County Jail” (Lawrence, I have this, if you want me to bring it over Saturday), “Django Unchained”, and “Timecop: The Berlin Decision”.
The short film “They’re Made Out Of Meat” is available on the ‘Tube. According to the notes, this was the maker’s final project at the New York Film Academy.
(Previously on “They’re Made Out Of Meat”, the Terry Bisson story.)
Also available on the ‘Tube: “Tomorrow”, starring Robert Duvall.
I feel like I have written about this movie before. I watched it for my literature and film class at St. Ed’s, and I very much like it. I saw “Slingblade” first, but Duvall’s performance in this reminds me a lot of that movie. I commend it to your attention, especially with it being available online. (When I saw it, I had to trek down to Waterloo Video and rent a DVD.)
Tom Noonan, who I think was an underappreciated actor.
Other credits include the short film “They’re Made Out of Meat” (wait, what?), “12 Monkeys” (the series), “Roadside Picnic” (the series, wait, what?), “Heaven’s Gate”, and “F/X”.
David Hays, theater designer. He also co-founded the National Theater of the Deaf. I wanted to call this one out because there’s a pretty good “Mannix” episode (“The Silent Cry“, season 2, episode 1) that features actors from the NTD, and (as I recall) was filmed with their cooperation and support.
I’ve been holding this one for a few days, looking for a place for it: Bob Croft, pioneering free diver.
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Once he passed 200 feet, he continued to 212.7 feet — the deepest point of his descent — where he activated the sled’s hand brake and fastened an alligator clip to the rope. He then climbed the rope, hand-over-hand, to the surface.
In all, he had spent 2 minutes 6 seconds underwater.
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Mr. Croft, a brawny 5-foot-8, raised his record to 217.5 feet in late 1967 and then to a remarkable 240 feet in August 1968, breaking a record of 231 feet that had been set by Mr. Mayol that January.
Mr. Croft retired from free diving after the 240-foot dive, still believing he could have gone deeper. He left his goal of 250 feet to others. It has long since been exceeded: In 2023, Alexey Molchanov of Russia set the current record of nearly 512 feet.