Archive for November 9th, 2020

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 224

Monday, November 9th, 2020

I’m thinking there’s a theme I want to work with this week.

From the “Dark Docs” channel, “Alive and Free – Or Dead”, a short documentary about Dieter Dengler.

He was one of two survivors, the other being Phisit Intharathat, out of seven prisoners of war (POWs) who escaped from a Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos. He was rescued after 23 days on the run following six months of torture and imprisonment and was the first captured U.S. airman to escape enemy captivity during the Vietnam war.

Lawrence and I have a fair amount of Herzog on our giant movie list, including “Little Dieter Needs To Fly”. I did not know this until today, but there’s a huge Herzog blu-ray box set (affiliate link) from Shout Factory that tempts me greatly.

Bonus: from the “Wings Over Vietnam” series, “The Jolly Greens”, about the guys who rescued pilots who were downed over Vietnam.

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Obit watch: November 9, 2020.

Monday, November 9th, 2020

A few obits from over the weekend. I’ll start by just quoting the lead from this NYT one:

Norm Crosby, the comedian known as the master of malaprop because he spoke from his diagram and related many funny antidotes, often to a standing ovulation, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 93.

More:

He was trying to develop new material when a club owner made an offhand comment about one of the club’s cabaret dancers. The owner, who had given the young woman a ride, “came into my dressing room and he said to me, ‘Find out if the girl is staying over or if she communicates,’” Mr. Crosby recalled. “I said, ‘My God, a lot of people talk like that. Maybe that would be fun.’ So I started the play on words.”
He tried it in Massachusetts, he added, “and the places I worked, unfortunately, people didn’t get the difference.”
Because of the particulars of his Latin Quarter booking, Mr. Crosby’s routine was not an immediate breakthrough with Times Square audiences either. He started out performing 12-minute filler sets between stage acts during his weeklong engagement, and his jokes were largely ignored. “I was on for five minutes before anybody knew I was out there,” he said.
At the end of the week, a dejected Mr. Crosby packed his bags and went to pick up his check from the manager, who apologized for the difficult assignment and promised him a better slot in the show. Once audiences had a chance to get the joke, he was a hit. He stayed at the Latin Quarter for 18 weeks, after which the prestigious William Morris Agency began representing him.

…

Speaking of Senator Goldwater, he said, “When President Johnson declared war on puberty, it was Senator Goldwater who said, and I quote, ‘Wherever there is unemployment, you’ll find men out of work.’”
He was a pitchman in the late 1970s and early 1980s for Anheuser-Busch’s Natural Light beer, appearing in commercials with Mickey Mantle, Henny Youngman and Joe Frazier.
In one commercial, he declared, “I always keep Natural on hand while I watch these athletes perspiring to achieve victory, cause these sporting computations make me so dehybernated.”

Robert Sam Anson, noted magazine writer and author.

Marguerite Littman.

By all accounts hypnotically charming, Ms. Littman, who landed in Los Angeles at midcentury, counted among her closest friends the writer Christopher Isherwood and his partner, the artist Don Bachardy, as well as Gore Vidal, David Hockney and, famously, Truman Capote, who is said to have distilled that charm into his most famous character, Holly Golightly of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

…

An oft-told story about Ms. Littman goes like this: Mr. Capote and Ms. Littman were sitting at the pool at Cipriani’s in Venice in the late 1970s when Ms. Littman pointed out an extremely thin woman. “That is anorexia nervosa,” she declared. And Mr. Capote replied, “Oh Marguerite, you know everybody.”

Finally, Eddie Johnson. My feelings about the NBA are well known, but this is a depressing story.

Johnson, who was nicknamed Fast Eddie for his explosive first step, was drafted out of Auburn University in 1977 by the Atlanta Hawks. He soon became one of the team’s top players and started the 1980 and 1981 All-Star Games.
“He was built like a linebacker and was as fast as they come with the ball in his hands, putting it on the floor, attacking someone off the dribble,” Mike Fratello, who coached the Hawks during some of Johnson’s nine seasons with the team, said in a phone interview. “And he could defend because of his strength and his ability to move his feet.”

But he also got into cocaine.

Johnson began to use cocaine in college and continued using it during his N.B.A. career. During his professional playing days, he was charged with cocaine possession, writing bad checks and car theft; he was hospitalized at least twice for treatment of manic-depressive disorder; and he successfully fled two men shooting at him in a motel parking lot after what the police said was a drug deal gone wrong.
In 1981, Johnson discussed his cocaine use in an interview with Sports Illustrated. “I partied a little extensively, but I wasn’t abusing it,” he said. “The whole idea of me abusing drugs is outlandish.”

He was traded to Cleveland, went to Seattle briefly, and was banned by the NBA in 1987.

When there were no games left to play, Johnson’s life unraveled. By his own count, he was arrested at least 100 times. Between 1987 and 2001, he was convicted, among other crimes, of burglary, battery, drug sale and possession, violently resisting arrest and grand theft.
He committed his most serious crime in 2006. Prosecutors said he had entered the unlocked front door of an apartment in Ocala where an 8-year-old girl and her three brothers were alone watching television; a babysitter had stepped outside.
The girl testified at Johnson’s trial in 2008 that he had followed her to her bedroom, locked the door and pushed a dresser in front of it before sexually assaulting her. He was convicted of sexual battery and molestation. He received a mandatory life sentence.

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