Jean Carnahan, former Senator from Missouri. As some may recall, she succeeded to the seat after her husband, Mel, died in a plane crash while campaigning.
Archive for the ‘Theatre’ Category
Obit watch: January 31, 2024.
Wednesday, January 31st, 2024Obit watch: January 5, 2024.
Friday, January 5th, 2024Wow:
Yes, she did do a guest spot on “Murder She Wrote“.
Wow^2: she was “Sister Anne” in “Nukie“.
Be that as it may, I find her performance of that song incredibly haunting.
Maj. Mike Sadler has passed away at 103.
Mr. Sadler was one of the first recruits and the last surviving member of the S.A.S. from the year of its founding, 1941. Like a navigator at sea, he used stars, sun and instruments to cross expanses of the Libyan Desert, a wasteland almost the size of India, whose shifting, windblown dunes can be as changing and featureless as an ocean.
Compared with the commandos he guided on truck and jeep convoys — volunteer daredevils who crept onto Nazi airfields; attached time bombs to Messerschmitt fighters, Stuka dive bombers, fuel dumps and pilot quarters; then sped away as explosions roared behind — Mr. Sadler was no hero in the usual sense. Comrades said he might not have fired a single shot at the enemy in North Africa.
But he got his men to the targets — and out again. Without him, they said, the commandos could not have crossed hundreds of miles of desert, found enemy bases on the Mediterranean Coast, destroyed more than 325 aircraft, blown up ammunition and supply dumps, killed hundreds of German and Italian soldiers and pilots, or found their way back to hidden bases.
…
Mr. Sadler was intrigued by desert navigation. “What amazed me,” he told Mr. Rayment, “was that even with the vast, featureless expanses of the desert, a good navigator could pinpoint his exact location by using a theodolite, an air almanac and air navigational tables, and having a good knowledge of the stars.”
He spent weeks studying navigation techniques, including use of a theodolite — a telescopic device, with two perpendicular axes, used mainly by surveyors, for measuring angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. It was not unlike the sextant used by mariners to fix positions at sea.
…
In one of the epic stories of the North Africa campaign, Mr. Sadler and two sergeants escaped from the Germans and, with only a goatskin carrying brackish water, crossed 110 miles of desert on foot in five days. Hostile Bedouins stoned them, bloodying their heads, and stole their warm clothing, leaving them to shiver through freezing nights.
Starving except for a few dates, they were exposed to windblown sands that scraped them like sandpaper, a relentless sun that burned and blistered their faces, and swarms of flies that enveloped and tormented them. On the hot sands, their feet were masses of blisters after a few days. When they finally reached Free French lines, they looked like half-dead castaways in rags.
“We had long hair and beards and were looking very bedraggled,” Mr. Sadler recalled. “Our feet were in tatters — I don’t think we looked very much like soldiers.”
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Anthony Dias Blue, noted wine guy.
Obit watch: December 8, 2023.
Friday, December 8th, 2023Ellen Holly, actress. Other credits include “Spenser: For Hire”, “Dr. Kildare”, and “The Defenders”.
David McKnight, actor. Other credits include the “War of the Worlds” TV series, “Rin Tin Tin: K-9 Cop”, “Cutter to Houston”, and “The Incredible Hulk” TV series.
Obit watch: November 30, 2023, part 2.
Thursday, November 30th, 2023Shane MacGowan. Pitchfork. NYT. THR.
I’ve never been a Pogues fanatic. I pretty much missed them when they were an operational band, and the first thing I ever heard from them was “Fairytale Of New York”. I think we can play that now. After all, it is the Christmas season.
Later on, I picked up some more Pogues by way of “The Wire”. Unfortunately, I can’t find a clip of a drunk McNulty (not the valued commenter here, the other one) repeatedly ramming his car into a bridge abutment while playing “Transmetropolitan”…
And Shane MacGowan was Irish, but I think I’d be willing to grant him honorary US citizenship just for this song, which should probably be the national anthem. (Well, either that, or “You Never Even Called Me By My Name”.)
Frances Sternhagen, actress. THR. Other credits include “Law and Order”, “Up the Down Staircase”, and “Communion”.
Obit watch: October 17, 2023.
Tuesday, October 17th, 2023Lara Parker, actress.
Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “Sword of Justice”, “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, and “The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo”.
Joanna Merlin, actress. Other credits include “All That Jazz”, “The Killing Fields”, and “City of Angels”.
Obit watch: September 28, 2023.
Thursday, September 28th, 2023Sir Michael Gambon, British actor. The NYT is still in “A complete obituary will appear shortly.” mode.
Obit watch: September 21, 2023.
Thursday, September 21st, 2023Rose Gregorio, actress. Other credits include “Harry O”, “The Rockford Files”, and “The Rookies”.
Pete Kozachik, VFX guy. (Hattip: Lawrence.) He did a lot of work with Tim Burton: “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, “James and the Giant Peach”, “Corpse Bride”.
Obit watch: September 18, 2023.
Monday, September 18th, 2023Billy Miller, actor. Other credits include “Justified”, “American Sniper”, and “The Rookie”.
He played three different parts in “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” the hit 2005 musical based on “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” including Patsy, the servant who banged coconuts together to imitate the sound of a galloping horse. His performance earned him a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a musical.
His Broadway run continued with “Is He Dead?” (2007), “Memphis” (2009) and “Born Yesterday” (2011). Then, in 2012, came his Tony-winning turn in “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” a musical that showcased the songs of George and Ira Gershwin. Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara got most of the attention in the lead roles, but it was Mr. McGrath (as a bootlegger) and Judy Kaye (as a temperance leader) who earned the show’s two Tonys, for best actor and actress in a featured role in a musical.
Edited to add 9/19: Well, since Lawrence mentioned it…and, honestly, this is a great scene.
Obit watch: August 21, 2023.
Monday, August 21st, 2023Ron Cephas Jones, actor. THR. Other credits include “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, “Law & Order: Organized Crime”, and “NYPD Blue”.
Chris Peluso, theater actor.
Randy Minniear, former running back for the New York Football Giants.
After playing fullback at Purdue, he was selected by the Giants in the 20th round of the 1966 NFL Draft and would first play in 1967, when Earl Morrall was the quarterback.
“They rate him as the greatest backup quarterback of all time,” Minniear told the Thursday Night Tailgate podcast in 2021. “And that’s one of the things they say about me. I was the greatest benchwarmer of all time. I will tell you this, while I was down there on the end of the bench by the water bucket not one was stolen in five years.”
“The Peripheral” and “A League Of Their Own” at Amazon Prime. Both of these shows had been renewed for a second season (though “ALOTO” had only been given a four-episode run) but Amazon is apparently re-evaluating their plans in light of the strike.
I don’t care much about the baseball show. I was slightly interested in “The Peripheral” because Big Bill Gibson. But I haven’t watched any of the episodes, and am kind of thinking maybe I should read the book first.
Obit watch: August 5, 2023.
Saturday, August 5th, 2023Obit watch: July 31, 2023.
Monday, July 31st, 2023As I write this, I am seeing reports from two sources that Paul Reubens, aka “Pee-Wee Herman”, has passed at 70. Here’s THR‘s very short preliminary story: expect an obit watch tomorrow.
Inga Swenson, actress.
Other credits include “Barnaby Jones”, “The Rookies”, “Earth II”, and “Vega$”.
Magnus White, cyclist.
He was 17, and died after being struck by a car on a training ride.
Devyn Reiley and Zach Colliemoreno were killed over the weekend in a plane crash at Oshkosh’s AirVenture 2023. Ms. Reiley was 30, Mr. Colliemoreno was 20. She was co-founder of the Texas Warbird Museum, and the daughter of former NFL player Bruce Collie.
Two other people, Mark Peterson and Thomas Volz, were killed in a second accident at AirVenture: their passing is also noted in the AVWeb article above.
Obit watch: July 28, 2023.
Friday, July 28th, 2023Randy Meisner, formerly of the Eagles. (The NYT obit is still labeled as “A full obituary will appear shortly.”) THR.
Edited to add 7/29: full NYT obit (archived).
He left the band around the time “Hotel California” was released. Mr. Meisner also played with Poco, and later played “with the likes of Joe Walsh, Dan Fogelberg, Richard Marx, Bob Welch and James Taylor.”
“I was always kind of shy,” he said in a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone, noting that his bandmates had wanted him to stand center stage to sing “Take It to the Limit,” but that he preferred to be “out of the spotlight.” Then, one night in Knoxville, he said, he caught the flu. “We did two or three encores, and Glenn wanted another one,” he said, referring to his bandmate, the singer-songwriter who died in 2016.
“I told them I couldn’t do it, and we got into a spat,” Mr. Meisner told the magazine. “That was the end.”
Bo Goldman, screenwriter.
IMDB.
Jerome Coopersmith, theater and television writer.
“Retire In Sunny Hawaii…Forever” from “The Hawaii Five-O Home Page”. My memory is that this was a pretty solid episode, and I’m glad Mike Quigley agrees.
IMDB.
Lelia Goldoni, actress. Other credits include “Theatre of Death”, “The Lloyd Bridges Show”, and “Johnny Staccato”.