Nancy Barbato Sinatra, Frank Sinatra’s first wife and mother of Nancy, Frank Jr., and Christina.
This is a fascinating and kind of sad obituary. They were married from 1939 until 1951, when Frank finally left her (after years of philandering) to chase Ava Gardner. In spite of that, they remained extremely close after the divorce until Frank’s death.
Pat Swindall, former congressman convicted of perjury, and who ended up losing his seat to Ben “Cooter” Jones.
Alan Johnson, choreographer. He did a lot of work for Mel Brooks, including choreographing numbers in “Blazing Saddles”, “Young Frankenstein”, and “Springtime for Hitler” in “The Producers”. (I would embed that here, but it’s already in the NYT obit.)
A large handful of interesting obits showed up over the weekend. I decided I’d save them and do a round-up today.
Officer Norberto Ramon of the Houston Police Department passed away on Friday. He had been undergoing treatment for colon cancer, but was told it had spread and was incurable. He intended to seek medical treatment in Oklahoma, but, as it turned out, this was right before Harvey hit Houston…
Joseph Campanella, noted actor. He was in everything: most notably, he was Joe Mannix’s boss at Intertect during the first season of “Mannix”. He was also one of the lawyers in “The Lawyers” portion of “The Bold Ones”, appeared several times on “Mama’s Family”, and…well, if you’ve heard of it, he was on it at some point.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
–C.S. Lewis
1. Why does Dick’s still have modern sporting rifles in stock, five years after they announced they were going to stop selling them?
(That actually has an answer: Dick’s apparently fudged the truth, and has been selling modern sporting rifles at their “specialty Field and Stream stores”.)
2. If I were a Dick’s stockholder, I would be seriously peeved at the management for destroying inventory of a perfectly legal product to make a political point.
3. If I were a Dick’s stockholder, I’d also be seeking a sweeping change of management right about now.
I’m not as excited about this year’s list as I have been in the past, though there are a couple of highlights other than “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”. I do love me some Groucho Marx. “New Sounds in Electronic Music” is a welcome surprise. And I’m happy to see K-Log get a nod, though I would have put “Danger Zone” in before “Footloose”.
Seriously, for the past few days, I’ve had crud oozing out of my eyes and nose continuously. Up until today, I could just barely stand to look at a computer monitor.
But that’s a digression. Remember the Fyre Festival? Wasn’t that a hoot?
He told the judge, Naomi Reice Buchwald, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, that he had begun organizing the festival with good intentions but had “greatly underestimated the resources” it would take.
But that’s not fraud. Poor judgment, maybe, but not outright fraud.
Marty Allen is dead at the age of 95. He was most famous as half of the comedy team Allen and Rossi, who were big in the post Martin/Lewis era. (Steve Rossi apparently died in 2014: I don’t seem to have noted his passing here.)
Mostly so I have a place to ride my pony. No, that’s not a euphemism. Actually, the whole reason I posted this is so I could embed a song I used to sing on my way out of Four Letter Computer Corporation on Friday afternoon. (Have I mentioned this previously?)
I love that line, “Kemosabi, kiss my ass, I’ve bought a boat, I’m going out to sea.”
I haven’t found a good mainstream source for this yet, but John Perry Barlow, former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, passed away yesterday.