Other credits include “Night Gallery”, “Emergency”, “Medical Center” (“Ruth Buzzi and Don RIckles portray two comically depressive characters who fall in love at Medical Center.”), and, of course…
I missed this, but: Ted Kotcheff passed away on April 10th. NYT (archived).
He refused to direct the first, “Rambo: First Blood Part II” (1985), because of the violence that the character unleashes.
“I read the script, and I said, ‘In the first film he doesn’t kill anybody,’” he told Filmmaker magazine in 2016. “In this film he kills 74 people.’”
Other credits include “Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?”, “Fun with Dick and Jane” (the 1977 one), and “North Dallas Forty”.
Odile de Vasselot passed away on April 21st. She was 103.
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Bobby Torre, maître d’ at J.G. Melon. This is one of those “questionable notability” ones – a NYC bar guy? – but it is also the kind of obit the paper of record does well, and is kind of fun.
When he was on the job at Melon’s, leaning by the entry on a bar stool a little too tall for him, glasses pushed up on his head and a pencil behind his ear, Mr. Torre would chat you up while you waited for a table and your burger with cottage fries.
Something would remind him of a saloon regular nicknamed Ronda Lasagna. That produced tales of a place he called “the Yankee Stadium of belly dancers.” From there, his mind would travel to a gay bar known as “the Wrinkle Room,” where “every guy with a trick said it was their nephew,” as he recalled. (Mr. Torre had run a mob-connected gay bar himself at one point.)
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In his heyday there, he could charm rowdy patrons into a bear hug. But he was also capable of pinning a purse snatcher against the bathroom door until officers from the 19th Precinct arrived.
His fervor extended to his Roman Catholic faith. Mr. O’Neill sometimes had to ask Mr. Torre to stop blessing everyone at the bar. But without his religiosity, it is hard to imagine Mr. Torre performing his acts of kindness so cherished by customers.
He covered checks. He made hundreds of annual birthday calls. Melon’s is near several hospitals, and he would spend hours sitting with the ill, relatives of the ill and new mourners. That patient sympathy, offered alongside free cheeseburgers and fries, became part of stories told and retold by families who visited Melon’s during a crisis.
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Mr. Torre also claimed to be an expert in martial arts. Michael Burrell, a former Melon’s bartender, recalled ribbing him: “Yeah, Bob, you’re a black belt.”
In fact, Mr. Valenti confirmed, his uncle studied not only jiu-jitsu, but also judo, Wing Chun kung fu and hapkido.
There may be few things of which we can be absolutely certain, but one must be:
if you’re at a party and no less than Elton John has just arrived, and he makes a beeline for you, and begs you to swat him with your purse, because THAT is on his bucket list… you can be assured that you indeed have “made it” in life.
It seems like Mr. Torre had many of the qualities that makes a man remain in many people’s thoughts for a lifetime. We could do much worse than to emulate some of the better things that he did. RIP Mr. Torre, may your family be comforted.