Obit watch: June 11, 2021.

June 11th, 2021

Gottfried Böhm, Pritzker Prize-winning Brutalist architect. He was 101.

Arguably the defining work of Mr. Böhm’s career was the Roman Catholic Pilgrimage Church at Neviges, known in German as the Wallfahrtsdom or the Mariendom, close to the city of Wuppertal in northwest Germany.
Completed in 1968, it is a monumental Brutalist Gesamtkunstwerk or total of work of art, whose jagged concrete roof has been likened to a tent, a crystal and an iceberg. Set at the top of a hill, the church rises imposingly above the picturesque houses of medieval Neviges.
Mr. Böhm lavished as much attention on the church’s forum-like interior as he did on its folding roof and sculptural facade, with their rough concrete textures and sharp angles. He designed the stained-glass windows, lamps and door handles and even the chairs. With room for 8,000 worshipers, it is the second largest church north of the Alps.

Posted in Art, Obits | 1 Comment »

Art, damn it, art! watch (#59 in a series)

June 10th, 2021

I don’t want to draw too much on the NY Post. But Mike the Musicologist sent this to me with a challenge:

An Italian artist sold an invisible sculpture for over $18,000 and had to give the buyer a certificate of authenticity to prove it’s real, the Daily Mail reported.

“The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that ‘nothing’ has a weight,” the Sardinian-born artist explained, according to Hypebeast. “Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.”

…

This isn’t the first piece of Garau’s that is unrecognizable to the human eye. In February, the artist exhibited “Buddha In Contemplation,” another invisible sculpture at the Piazza della Scala in Milan. And just this week, Garau installed his most recent statue, “Afrodite Piange,” facing the New York Stock Exchange.

Edited to add: I was unaware of this previously, but it popped up on Hacker News after I posted. I know, he only has 501 views as I write, but it seems like a good commentary. Or at least I found it mildly amusing.

Warning! Mime! Achtung! Mime! Avvertimento! Mimo! Avertissement! Mime!

Warning! Mime! Achtung! Mime! Avvertimento! Mimo! Avertissement! Mime!

Posted in Art | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 10, 2021.

June 10th, 2021

Claudia Barrett. She did some Westerns and detective shows (including an appearance on “77 Sunset Strip”, making her the second person from that series to get an obit this week), but was out of acting by 1964.

She may be most famous as the female lead in “Robot Monster“.

Ernie Lively. He knocked around quite a bit (his first credit was 1975, and his last was 2020). He appeared multiple times on “The West Wing”, “Murder She Wrote” and “The Dukes of Hazzard”. However, he seems to be most famous as the father of “Bridget” in the two “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” movies. (“Bridget” was played by his daughter, Blake Lively.)

Robert Hollander.

Professor Hollander joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1962 and taught beloved classes on Dante for 42 years. For medievalist scholarship, the three-volume translation he produced with Ms. Hollander found a wide degree of public interest, including two admiring reviews in The New Yorker.
In one, in 2007, the New Yorker critic Joan Acocella called all three volumes of their translation “the best on the market.” (The Hollanders produced “Inferno” in 2000, “Purgatorio” in 2003 and the last volume of the epic allegorical work, “Paradiso,” in 2007.)

…

The couple brought complementary strengths to the project. Ms. Hollander, the author of five books of poetry, attended to the music of the language. Professor Hollander ensured the translation’s accuracy and wrote introductions to each volume, along with notes to the text.
Ms. Acocella estimated that the notes amounted to 30 times the length of “The Divine Comedy” itself. That was Professor Hollander’s style. He interpreted moralistically and theologically passages usually appreciated for their beauty. His erudition wore down fellow scholars. He reported that A.B. Giamatti, the Renaissance expert and former president of Yale University, once asked him, “Are you going to try to ruin this scene for me too, Hollander?”

One of the reasons I wanted to post this here (other than, he sounds like a really nifty guy: you should read the whole obit, especially the part about his stroke) is that I wanted to ask the huddled, wretched masses: does anybody have any experience with Dante translations, and can you recommend a good one?

Other than the Hollander one, Thomas Harris (yes, that Thomas Harris) likes the Robert Pinsky translation. Anthony Esolen (a writer I greatly admire) has also done a transalation

I could just read Rod Dreher’s book and see if he recommends one: I do want to read How Dante Can Save Your Life (and that’s actually what started me on this quest), but I’m having trouble finding a decent copy at a decent price.

(All links are Amazon affiliate links, for the record.)

Speaking of Rod Dreher, this is a beautifully written post about the death of a friend. Followup.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Movies, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

I’m sorry. I have to do this.

June 10th, 2021

Washington Square Park looked more like Madison Square Garden recently, as unsanctioned boxers duked it out in underground fights against the backdrop of the space’s famous arch, wild videos show.

…

The park pugilists touch gloves before each fight and square off under the watchful eye of a referee, but appear to wear little in the way of protective gear and are ringed only by the dozens of hollering spectators, who at points have to back away from the fray, the videos show.

Posted in Bagatelle, Clippings | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 9, 2021 (supplemental).

June 9th, 2021

Lawrence tipped me off to this: Chip McCormick, who I think can fairly be described as the father of the modern 1911.

Shooting Illustrated has a good article:

Before CMC (Chip McCormick Custom), there was no such thing as the now ubiquitous drop-in AR-15 trigger. Gunsmiths would put together a trigger with parts, often from a kit. McCormick created a single-unit trigger that installs in minutes; literally a “drop in.” Of course easy installation was not good enough for McCormick, he made it crisp, clean, with no creep….Match grade. Now dozens of imitators crowd the market, the market created by Chip McCormick.
Before Kimber, the 1911 had to be fitted from oversize parts. If you saw one in the gun store, it was usually a basic government model that the owner would have to customize. McCormick conceived of the “spec” 1911 with all parts being within specific tolerances so the gun could be assembled, instead of fitted. McCormick approached several companies, but they turned him away. Kimber’s Leslie Edelman saw the potential and quickly struck a deal for Chip to create a production gun. Unlike anything else on the market, it was fully accessorized with beavertail grip safety, extended slide release and ambidextrous thumb safeties. Not only was the Kimber handgun line born, but so was a new way of building the 1911. Now the production 1911 is the industry standard, as are fully accessorized guns.

…

While it is inarguable that McCormick left an indelible mark on the world of guns, let us also remember the manner in which he conducted himself. When he was rolling out the RPM magazine at SHOT Show, I worked in his booth and had the opportunity to observe him. Whether it was an industry titan, a fan of his products, or a competitor from his shooting days, they were all greeted like royalty. His warmth and welcoming nature was beautiful to watch.

…

The legacy that Chip McCormick leaves behind is truly enormous. It is hard to imagine anyone who has accomplished as much as he did. All of this done with honor, honesty and class.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. McCormick (though I swear by his 1911 magazines) but great and good friend of the blog (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl shot with him, and has a post up on Facebook:

During the 1990s, Austin was a hotbed of firearms development. If you follow the roots of the tree starting with CMC and STI, they lead to many other companies like Dawson Precision, LaRue, KR Training, ART Enterprises, Competition DVD, NTaylor, and the Ben Stoeger Pro Shop, just to name a few.

Posted in 1911, Guns, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 9, 2021.

June 9th, 2021

Erin O’Brien, actress. She appeared on several Western series, and in the pilot of “77 Sunset Strip” (among other credits).

NYT obit for Jim Fassel, which did not go up until late in the day yesterday.

Posted in Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 8, 2021.

June 8th, 2021

Jim Fassel, former coach of the New York Football Giants. ESPN.

Fassel’s Giants lost to the Baltimore Ravens 34-7 in Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, after going 12-4 and winning the NFC East that season. Fassel was 58-53-1 overall with the Giants.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 7, 2021.

June 7th, 2021

Clarence Williams III. THR.

Although “The Mod Squad” made Mr. Williams a symbol of the Vietnam War generation, he actually served in the military just before that era. He was a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division in the late 1950s.

…

He began his acting career on Broadway, where his grandfather had appeared as early as 1908. The young Mr. Williams appeared in three plays, including “Slow Dance on the Killing Ground” (1964), for which he received a Tony Award nomination and a Theater World Award.

…

After the show ended, Mr. Williams dropped out of sight for a while, expressing disappointment in the kinds of roles available to Black men. He returned to Broadway, appearing as an African head of state, with Maggie Smith, in a Tom Stoppard drama, “Night and Day” (1979).
Beginning in the 1980s, he had a busy film career. He played Prince’s abusive father in “Purple Rain” (1984) and Wesley Snipes’s heroin-addicted father in “Sugar Hill” (1993). He was a crazed blackmailer in John Frankenheimer’s “52 Pick-Up” (1986) and a wild-eyed storytelling mortician in “Tales From the Hood” (1995). He had small roles in the blaxploitation parody “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” (1988) and in Norman Mailer’s “Tough Guys Don’t Dance” (1987).
Television brought Mr. Williams new opportunities too. He was a leader of the Attica prison riots in HBO’s “Against the Wall” (1994); a segregationist governor’s manservant in the mini-series “George Wallace” (1997); Muhammad Ali’s father in “Ali: An American Hero” (2000); and a retired C.I.A. operative in 10 “Mystery Woman” movies (2003-07). He did guest appearances on close to 40 series, from “Hill Street Blues” to “Empire.”

Posted in 1970s, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Being evil.

June 7th, 2021

I came up with a horrible, awful, bad idea the other night and feel like I have to share it here.

Lawrence and I were watching “The In-Laws“, and it occurred to me that it was about time for a remake (because Hollywood is out of ideas). And then it came to me…

…why not do a gender-swapped remake?

After all, who says women can’t be dentists? Or CIA agents?

I figure Melissa McCarthy has to be one of the leads, but I’m not sure if she’s best for the Peter Falk or the Alan Arkin role. And I’m not sure who would work for the husbands, or for General Garcia.

Posted in Bagatelle, Movies | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: June 4, 2021.

June 4th, 2021

F. Lee Bailey.

What a career:

Mr. Bailey flew warplanes, sailed yachts, dropped out of Harvard, wrote books, touted himself on television, was profiled in countless newspapers, ran a detective agency, married four times, carried a gun, took on seemingly hopeless cases and courted trouble, once going to jail for six weeks and finally being disbarred.

And props to him for honorable service in the military:

Francis Lee Bailey was born on June 10, 1933, in Waltham, Mass., the oldest of three children of an advertising salesman, whose name he was given, and a nursery-school teacher, Grace Bailey Mitchell. He graduated in 1950 from Kimball Union Academy, in Meriden, N.H., and enrolled in Harvard but dropped out after two years to join the Navy. He transferred to the Marines and became a fighter pilot and an officer representing servicemen in courts-martial, although he had no legal training.

The NYT obit hits all the high points of his legal career: Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Boston Strangler, Patty Hearst, Capt. Ernest L. Medina, O.J….

In 1977, Mr. Bailey, a master of turning simplicity into complexity, successfully defended a racehorse veterinarian, Mark J. Gerard, from two felony charges in a notorious racetrack fraud at Belmont Park. The defendant was accused of switching two look-alike horses — a top 3-year-old, Cinzano, for a long shot, Lebon, that the New York Times sports columnist Red Smith said “couldn’t beat a fat man from Gimbels to Macy’s.”
The switch produced 57-to-1 odds, and Mr. Gerard won $80,000. But the strands of the case proved too hard for prosecutors to untangle in Nassau County Court on Long Island, and Dr. Gerard, who had tended Secretariat and Kelso, got off with a misdemeanor and a few months in jail. “The record,” an appeals court said, “reveals a factual scenario that might have been authored jointly by an Alfred Hitchcock and a Damon Runyon.”

I have a vague memory of seeing F. Lee Bailey’s “Lie Detector” when I was younger. And this is a good story:

Bailey was featured in an RKO television special in which he conducted a mock trial, examining various expert witnesses on the subject of the “Paul is dead” rumor referring to Beatle Paul McCartney. One of the experts was Fred LaBour, whose article in The Michigan Daily had been instrumental in the spread of the urban legend. LaBour told Bailey during a pre-show meeting he had made up the whole thing. Bailey responded, “Well, we have an hour of television to do. You’re going to have to go along with this.” The program aired locally in New York City on November 30, 1969, and was never re-aired.

Lawrence also mentioned that he voiced himself in an episode of the animated “Spider-Man” series.

Posted in Horses, Law, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

The stupid, it burns…

June 3rd, 2021

Florida Man, Florida Man…

Police say a 10-year-old boy approached his father with an unusual request: Could he take him to do a drive-by shooting in Opa-locka with a paint gun? The father, 26-year-old Michael Williams, agreed, detectives say.

Cutting to the chase, the homeowner returned fire. With a real gun. The 10-year-old was injured, and the dad is charged with “child neglect with great bodily harm”.

If the boy is 10, that would make the dad 16 when he had the child. Which may indicate something…

Bonus:

The boy suffered a further injury after losing his balance and getting run over by the van, according to the police report.

Florida Man, Florida Man…

A judge has rejected the “stand your ground” defense of a Florida man who said he beat an iguana to death only after it attacked him, biting him on the arm.

…

Prosecutors say Patterson “savagely beat, tormented, tortured, and killed” the 3-foot (1-meter) iguana in a half-hour attack caught on surveillance video. Prosecutor Alexandra Dorman said that “at no time was the iguana posing any real threat” to Patterson last September and he “was not justified in his actions when he kicked this defenseless animal at least 17 times causing its death.”
Animal control officials said Patterson tormented the animal, which is why it bit him on the arm, causing a wound that required 22 staples to close. Under state law, people are allowed to kill iguanas, an invasive species, in a quick and humane manner. A necropsy, though, showed the iguana had a lacerated liver, broken pelvis and internal bleeding, which were “painful and terrifying” injuries, prosecutors contend.
But Patterson’s public defender, Frank Vasconcelos, wrote that the iguana was the aggressor when it “leaned forward with its mouth wide open and showing its sharp teeth, in a threatening manner” and attacked Patterson. Bleeding from his bite, Patterson “kicked the iguana as far as he could,” Vasconcelos said.

Florida Woman, Florida Woman…

A woman who was missing for three weeks and then rescued from a Florida storm drain found herself in another underground tunnel system in Texas over the weekend, according to media reports.

Paraphrasing someone: “To fall into one storm drain may be regarded as misfortune, to fall into a second storm drain looks like carelessness.”

Houston Woman, Houston Woman…

A Texas mother has been charged after police say she accidentally shot her 5-year-old son while firing multiple times at a dog running loose in a Houston neighborhood over the weekend.

The boy was hit by a ricochet. His injuries are “not expected to be life-threatening”.

Posted in Guns, Law, Lizards, Reptiles, Stupid | 1 Comment »

Things I did not know. (#8 in a series)

June 2nd, 2021

There is a caliber called – I kid you not – “22 Wampus Kitty”.

No, there isn’t a Wikipedia entry for it, which makes it an ideal hipster caliber for varmint hunting. (“I shoot gophers with a rifle chambered in 22 Wampus Kitty. It’s a pretty obscure caliber. You’ve probably never heard of it.”)

I found out about this because MidwayUSA actually lists reloading dies for it.

I’m slightly tempted to get something chambered in 22 Wampus Kitty, but: not only would I have to reload it, the process of reloading is complicated.

22 Wampus kitty cases are formed by necking down a 243 Winchester case (which everyone makes) to take 22 calibre projectiles (front picture), and then blow out to “Ackley” body taper and shoulder angle (rear picture).

I’ll stick with .221 Remington Fireball for my hipster cartridge needs, thank you very much.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

That’s your problem, right there…

June 2nd, 2021

A retired F.B.I. agent in Texas has been indicted on fraud charges and accused of conning a woman out of $800,000 by convincing her that she was on “secret probation” for drug crimes and needed to pay him and an accomplice for their work to “mentor” and “supervise” her, federal prosecutors said on Friday.

I’m sure he would have gotten away with it, too, if only he had told her she was on “double secret probation“.

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 2, 2021.

June 2nd, 2021

Arlene Golonka. She did a fair amount of Broadway work, and a lot of TV. She was “Millie Swanson” on “Mayberry R.F.D.”, and did a lot of guest spots on other shows.

Noted:

Golonka played several characters on a 1965 comedy album, You Don’t Have to Be Jewish, which soared to No. 9 on the Billboard charts. When she couldn’t do the follow-up record, she recommended [Valerie] Harper for the job.

Also:

She portrayed another prostitute opposite Clint Eastwood in Hang ‘Em High (1968) and was the wife of a CIA agent (Peter Falk) in The In-Laws (1979).

Robert Hogan. Man, he was in every damn thing: as the headline notes, his career stretched from “Peyton Place” to “The Wire”, with stops along the way at the various “Law and Order” franchises, “Quincy, M.E.”, “Alice”, “Barnaby Jones”, “The Rockford Files”, “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”, the good “Hawaii Five-O” and many other series…

…yes, including “Mannix”. (“The Crime That Wasn’t”, season 4, episode 18)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Obits, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: June 1, 2021.

June 1st, 2021

Buddy Van Horn. He has 109 credits in IMDB for stunt work: many of those were as Clint Eastwood’s stunt double or as a stunt coordinator on Eastwood movies.

He also directed three Eastwood movies: “Any Which Way You Can”, “Pink Cadillac”, and “The Dead Pool”.

Romy Walthall. She was in “Face/Off”, the 1989 “The House Of Usher”, and “The Howling IV: The Original Nightmare”, and a fair number of 1980s and 1990s TV series.

By way of Lawrence: Foster Friess, “successful investor, Republican donor and onetime Wyoming governor candidate”.

Thomas Sullivan. He was a Federal prosecutor in Chicago, and Diogenes would likely have been glad to meet him.

As federal prosecutor, Mr. Sullivan embarked on an audacious plan to root out bribery and case-fixing in the Cook County Circuit Court system. It included installing listening devices in judges’ chambers and creating fabricated cases that would be tried before judges who were under investigation. The sting came to be known as Operation Greylord.
“If we used real cases,” he said in an interview on his law firm’s website in 2014, and the prosecutor or judge “takes a bribe and a guy is released from a minor crime and then goes out and commits a really horrible crime, I’m going to get blamed for it. So you can’t use real cases; you have to use fake cases.”
As part of the sting, F.B.I. agents who were lawyers established legal practices to gain access to judges.

…

“He said, ‘See that box on the left?’” Mr. Webb recalled Mr. Sullivan telling him on his first day in office. “‘That is an undercover project investigating the circuit court of Cook County. The box on the right is about an investigation of John Cardinal Cody, who’s under investigation for stealing from the church. Because your wife is Catholic, she will probably want a divorce — so you will not only be unemployed, you will be divorced.’”

(John Cardinal Cody from Wikipedia.)

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Continuing adventures in hoplobibliophilia.

May 31st, 2021

I’ve actually bought a fair number of used gun books over the past few months. I didn’t bother writing about them here because they were pretty much all semi-crappy copies of books that I bought for reading purposes, not really worthy of a blog entry.

This is something I ran across today at Half-Price Books that I found interesting for more than one reason.

Elephant Hunting in East Equatorial Africa by Arthur H. Neumann. This is a reprint of the original 1898 edition, and volume 3 in the “Library of African Adventure” series from St. Martin’s Press. It has a little wear to the top and bottom of the dust jacket, but not too bad, and was purchased for about half of what “good” copies are going for on Amazon.

The other reason I found this interesting: you know who edited the “Library of African Adventure” series?

No, not that guy: he had his own series. The “Library of African Adventure” was edited by…noted SF writer Mike Resnick. Which is no great shock, as Resnick wrote extensively about Africa: it was simply an unexpected find.

Now I want to find the other volumes, especially since I’ve completed my Capstick set.

There is also something called “Resnick’s Library of African Adventure” that comes up when you search Amazon. I’m not 100% sure it is the same series – I suspect it is, but the bibliographical information on Amazon is scant, and the covers seem…less subdued.

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia | Comments Closed

Historical note, suitable for use in schools.

May 31st, 2021

You know who was a Marine?

If you’re one of my readers who was a Marine, the answer is probably “Yes”. I figure the list of famous Marines is drilled into folks at boot camp.

But for everyone else: Don Adams.

I kid you not. Before he was “Maxwell Smart”, he served in the Marines during WWII. He fought (and was wounded) in the battle of Guadalcanal. He also came down with “blackwater fever”, and was medically evacuated to New Zealand, where he was hospitalized for over a year. After that, he served as a drill instructor until 1945.

As a side note, I went down a rabbit hole about “blackwater fever” a few months ago when I was reading White Hunters: The Golden Age of African Safaris (affiliate link). It also comes up in “The Bridge on the River Kwai“, which I did finally watch Saturday.

Blackwater fever is a complication of malaria. From what I’ve picked up, red blood cells burst and release hemoglobin, which enters the kidneys and can cause them to fail. I’ve seen suggestions that quinine either caused it, or was a contributing factor: now that we have other anti-malarial drugs, the incidence of blackwater fever has decreased.

A lot of those old-time African hunters came down with blackwater fever at one time or another: the folk remedy (which seems to have worked for many of them) was…massive consumption of champagne. I would think that would overload the kidneys and make things worse, but enough of those guys seem to have survived (the mortality rate is claimed to be 90%) that maybe there was something to it…?

Posted in Heroism, History, TV | 1 Comment »

Father Joseph Timothy O’Callahan.

May 31st, 2021

Father O’Callahan was a good Boston boy. Shortly after he graduated from high school in 1922, he signed up with the Jesuits.

He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1934. Along the way, he picked up a BA and a MA from St. Andrew’s College, “specializing in mathematics and physics”. He was a professor of math, physics, and philosophy at Boston College for 10 years (1927-1937), then he went over to Weston Jesuit School of Theology for a year. From 1938 to 1940 he served as the director of the math department at the College of the Holy Cross.

When World War II began, O’Callahan was 36 and nearsighted, with a bad case of claustrophobia and high blood pressure—an unlikely candidate for military service, much less for heroic valor.

He enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve Chaplain Corps in August of 1940 as a lieutenant junior grade. But I gather he was pretty good at his job: by July of 1945 he had reached the rank of commander. He participated in Operation Torch and Operation Leader.

On March 2, 1945, Commander O’Callahan reported to the aircraft carrier USS Franklin.

On March 19, 1945, the Franklin was hit by two bombs from a Japanese aircraft. The bombs started a massive fire on the carrier deck.

A valiant and forceful leader, calmly braving the perilous barriers of flame and twisted metal to aid his men and his ship, Lt. Comdr. O’Callahan groped his way through smoke-filled corridors to the open flight deck and into the midst of violently exploding bombs, shells, rockets, and other armament. With the ship rocked by incessant explosions, with debris and fragments raining down and fires raging in ever-increasing fury, he ministered to the wounded and dying, comforting and encouraging men of all faiths; he organized and led firefighting crews into the blazing inferno on the flight deck; he directed the jettisoning of live ammunition and the flooding of the magazine; he manned a hose to cool hot, armed bombs rolling dangerously on the listing deck, continuing his efforts, despite searing, suffocating smoke which forced men to fall back gasping and imperiled others who replaced them. Serving with courage, fortitude, and deep spiritual strength, Lt. Comdr. O’Callahan inspired the gallant officers and men of the Franklin to fight heroically and with profound faith in the face of almost certain death and to return their stricken ship to port.

While leading the men through this inferno, he gave the Sacrament of Last Rites to the men dying around him, all while battling his claustrophobia.

Official Navy casualty figures for the 19 March 1945 fire totaled 724 killed and 265 wounded. Nevertheless, casualty numbers have been updated as new records are discovered. A recent count by Franklin historian and researcher Joseph A. Springer brings total 19 March 1945 casualty figures to 807 killed and more than 487 wounded. Franklin had suffered the most severe damage and highest casualties experienced by any U.S. fleet carrier that survived World War II.

There is a short documentary, “The Saga of the Franklin“, that you can find on the Internet Archive.

Commander O’Callahan was offered the Navy Cross, but refused it. There is speculation that his refusal had to do with “his heroic actions on USS Franklin highlighted perceived lapses in leadership by the ship’s commanding officer, Captain Leslie E. Gehres, which reflected poorly on the Navy”. Wikipedia claims there was a controversy at the time, Harry Truman stepped in…

…and Commander O’Callahan was awarded the Medal of Honor on January 23, 1946. (Another officer, Lieutenant junior grade Donald Arthur Gary, also received the Medal of Honor for his actions: “Lieutenant Gary discovered 300 men trapped in a blackened mess compartment and, finding an exit, returned repeatedly to lead groups to safety. Gary later organized and led firefighting parties to battle the inferno on the hangar deck and entered number three fireroom to raise steam in one boiler, braving extreme hazards in so doing.“)

Father O’Callahan retired from the Navy in 1948 and headed the math department at The College of the Holy Cross. He also wrote a book, I Was Chaplain on the Franklin (affiliate link).

He died in 1964 at the age of 58, and is buried in the Jesuit cemetery at The College of the Holy Cross. The destroyer USS O’Callahan was named after him.

One of Father O’Callahan’s students at Holy Cross before the war was John V. Power, who also received the Medal of Honor (posthumously).

A few months later, when awards were presented on the battered flight deck of the USS Franklin, O’Callahan’s mother came aboard the ship, and The New England Historical Society reports this telling conversation:

The ship’s captain, Les Gehres, went over to his mother and said, “I’m not a religious man. But I watched your son that day and I thought if faith can do this for man, there must be something to it. Your son is the bravest man I have ever seen.”

(Previously. Previously.)

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Planes, Ships | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 30, 2021.

May 30th, 2021

Gavin MacLeod. THR. Variety.

As he told the story, one night he was driving, while drunk, on Mulholland Drive in the hills above Los Angeles when he impulsively decided to kill himself by driving off the road. But he stopped himself, jamming on the brakes at the last moment. Shaken, he recalled, he made his way to the nearby house of a friend, the actor Robert Blake, who persuaded him to see a psychiatrist.

…

After his divorce, Mr. MacLeod married Patti Kendig, a dancer, in 1974. They also divorced, in early 1982, but remarried in 1985, by which time they had both become born-again Christians. Mr. MacLeod documented their story, as well as his decades-long struggle with alcoholism, in a 1987 book, “Back on Course: The Remarkable Story of a Divorce That Ended in Remarriage.”

B.J. Thomas.

Mr. Thomas placed 15 singles in the pop Top 40 from 1966 to 1977. “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” a monument to heartache sung in a bruised, melodic baritone, reached No. 1 on both the country and pop charts in 1975. “Hooked on a Feeling,” an exultant expression of newfound love from 1968, also reached the pop Top 10. (Augmented by an atavistic chant of “Ooga-chaka-ooga-ooga,” the song became a No. 1 pop hit as recorded by the Swedish rock band Blue Swede in 1974.)

Faye Schulman.

The Germans enlisted her to take commemorative photographs of them and, in some cases, their newly acquired mistresses. (“It better be good, or else you’ll be kaput,” she recalled a Gestapo commander warning her before, trembling, she asked him to smile.) They thus spared her from the firing squad because of their vanity and their obsession with bureaucratic record-keeping — two weaknesses that she would ultimately wield against them.
At one point the Germans witlessly gave her film to develop that contained pictures they had taken of the three trenches into which they, their Lithuanian collaborators and the local Polish police had machine-gunned Lenin’s remaining Jews, including her parents, sisters and younger brother.
She kept a copy of the photos as evidence of the atrocity, then later joined a band of Russian guerrilla Resistance fighters. As one of the only known Jewish partisan photographers, Mrs. Schulman, thanks to her own graphic record-keeping, debunked the common narrative that most Eastern European Jews had gone quietly to their deaths.
“I want people to know that there was resistance,” she was quoted as saying by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. “Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.”

Rusty Warren.

In the wholesome era of “Our Miss Brooks” and “Father Knows Best” on television, Ms. Warren, who died at 91 on Tuesday in Orange County, Calif., developed a scandalous comedy routine that was full of barely veiled innuendo about sex, outrageous references to breasts and more, much of it delivered in a husky shout.
With that new risqué routine, she began packing larger clubs all over the country. The release in 1960 of her second comedy album, the brazenly titled “Knockers Up!,” only increased her fame.
It was a booming time for live comedy and comedy records — “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” Mr. Newhart’s Grammy-winning breakthrough, was released the same year — and Ms. Warren emerged as a star in an out-of-the-mainstream sort of way.

…

She released more than a dozen albums, including “Rusty Warren Bounces Back” (1961), “Banned in Boston” (1963), “Bottoms Up” (1968) and “Sexplosion” (1977), selling hundreds of thousands of copies (“Knockers Up!” was a longtime resident of the Billboard 200 chart) even though for much of her career some retailers wouldn’t display them prominently and television producers wouldn’t give her the bookings that more mainstream comics got.

If it hasn’t already been written, somebody could get a good book out of the history of comedy records roughly mid-century (I’m guessing 1950-1975, maybe slightly later). Especially if they went into the history of “blue” or “party” records: not just Ms. Warren, but Redd Foxx, Moms Mabley, Rudy Ray Moore, and lots of other now mostly forgotten folks.

Lawrence sent over two: Shane Briant, British actor. (“Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell”, “Cassandra”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”)

Paul Robert Soles.

Best known today for portraying Hermey the Elf in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Peter Parker and his crime-fighting alter ego in the 1967 cartoon Spider-Man he worked extensively in every medium, his favourites being radio drama and live theatre.

…

Among his many memorable dramatic performances three stand out: the lead in the Canadian premiere in 1987 of ‘I’m Not Rappaport’; the first Jewish Canadian to play Shylock in the 2001 production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ at the Stratford Festival and the Dora-nominated role in the 2005 two-hander ‘Trying’.

…

Beyond work and family he had three life-long passions: sports cars, music and flying. A racing nut he drove the winning foreign entry in the American International Rally (1959) speaking only German and passing himself off as a factory driver from Mercedes in a zero-mileage model W120. A bigtime jazz fan, particularly of the big-bands, he was a fixture at clubs on both sides of the border and he forged friendships with a number of performers. An aviation enthusiast and pilot he owned two RCAF primary trainers, first a Fleet 16-B Finch open cockpit biplane acquired to barnstorm across the continent as part of The Great Belvedere Air Dash of 1973 and later a DeHavilland DHC-1 Chipmunk. He was a performing member of the Great War Flying Museum (Brampton), an air show participant for 20 years and a perennial volunteer for the Canadian International Air Show.

Posted in 1970s, History, Music, Nazis, Obits, Planes, Theatre, TV | 2 Comments »

Cahiers du Cinéma: on war movies.

May 28th, 2021

The Art of Manliness posted a list of “The 10 Best War Movies of All-Time”.

Aesop over at the Raconteur Report posted a response.

Borepatch posted a response to Aesop’s response.

My turn. Readers should be aware up front that I have never served with any branch of any military anywhere in the world: my opinions about war movies basically come down to “Did I enjoy it? Did I think it was a good story, well told?” Not necessarily “Were they using a period correct AR platform? Were the missile launch scenes accurate?”

If you think I’m ignorant and want to skip to the next entry, go right ahead. Something else will be coming along soon.

With my lack of qualifications out of the way, my takes on the list. The Art of Manliness first:

  • “Saving Private Ryan”: I’ll get this out of the way up front. Never seen it. I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing it, but I feel like it was one of those movies that was so overhyped at the time, it triggered my rejection gland. (See also: “E.T.”)
  • “The Great Escape”: Also have not seen it. Do have the DVD, it is on our list, and I do want to watch it soon.
  • “Das Boot”. Saw the director’s cut in a theater with Lawrence, loved it.
  • “Glory”: Never seen it. Unlike Lawrence, I am not a big Civil War buff, so this movie has little appeal for me.
  • “Apocalypse Now”: I liked it, but I need to watch it again. Is it a good war movie? I don’t know: Aesop and others don’t seem to think so. Is it a good movie? I thought so.
  • “The Thin Red Line”: Have not seen it. Primarily because I have some friends who went to see it in a theater and walked out.
  • “Patton”: one of my favorite movies of all time.
  • “1917”: Didn’t get around to seeing it in theaters, would not mind seeing it. But putting a movie from 2019 on the best list? Really? Could we get some historical distance here? Perhaps a five or ten year gap before we start calling movies “best”? (Also, I have seen “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “They Shall Not Grow Old”, both of which are excellent films. Frankly, I am shocked that neither Borepatch or Aesop mentioned the latter.)
  • “The Longest Day”: saw large parts of it on TV when I was younger, would not mind seeing the whole thing again. But it strikes me as one of those relics of the old Hollywood system where everybody is in it, and it may be just a little overstuffed.
  • “The Bridge on the River Kwai”: haven’t seen it, believe it or not. Very much want to, and it is on the list.

Aesop’s list:

  • “Zulu”: Heck to the yes!
  • “The Great Escape”: See above.
  • “Patton”: See above.
  • “Lawrence of Arabia”: also heck to the yes!
  • “Blackhawk Down”: Saw that in a theater with Lawrence as well. Am a huge fan of the book. Another damn fine movie.
  • “Hamburger Hill”: have not seen it, would be interested in seeing it.
  • “Das Boot”: see above.
  • “Gettysburg”: have not seen it, see my comments above on “Glory”.
  • “Braveheart”: have not seen it. I believe it is on our list as an Oscar winner.
  • “A Bridge Too Far”: watched it recently with Lawrence and the gang. It’s…okay. But to my taste, it was way too long.

Borepatch:

  • “Glory”: see above.
  • “Stripes”: it has been a long damn time since I’ve seen that, and I need to watch it again. I do agree with Borepatch’s comments that comedy doesn’t get any respect.
  • “Band of Brothers”: haven’t seen anything but clips on YouTube, but those make me want to watch the series. Once Lawrence and I get some of our other TV series out of the way, that may be next on the list.
  • “Hogan’s Heroes”: also been a long damn time since I’ve seen an episode of that, even though it is on MeTV.

Things that I’m surprised are missing from all three lists:

  • “12 O’Clock High”. The movie, though what I have seen of the TV series is also good. But I think “12 O’Clock High”, like “Patton”, would go on my top ten list.
  • “The Hunt For Red October”: yes, I think this qualifies as a war film.
  • “They Shall Not Grow Old”: see above.
  • “All Quiet on the Western Front”: see above.
  • “300”: I’m more just surprised that nobody mentioned it, rather than being willing to argue that it’s actually great. (I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure I would call it “great”.) I’d be happy to have a discussion with Aesop and Borepatch about this one.
  • “Paths of Glory”: you didn’t like “Full Metal Jacket”? How about this one? (I think “FMJ” is about half of a good movie.)
  • “Kelly’s Heroes”: I think I didn’t see “Great Escape” because this one was the one that was all over late-night TV when I was growing up. I have fond memories of it, but need to re-watch it.
  • “The Wind and the Lion”: I think it counts.
  • “Run Slient, Run Deep”
  • “The Alamo”: the good one, with John Wayne.
  • “Mister Roberts”: speaking of comedy not getting any respect…also, I think there’s a good leadership lesson in this one. (Don’t be like James Cagney.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Leadership, Movies | 3 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 422

May 27th, 2021

This is the last entry in the series.

I feel we’ve reached the point where we are, more or less, out of jail: restrictions are being relaxed, I am fully vaccinated, and I’m seeing many businesses doing away with mask requirements.

I originally started this as a diversion while we were all on home confinement. If you were locked in, what did you have that was better to do than watch weird old videos that popped up in my YouTube recommendations? Now, it seems like this…feature? recurring trope?…has gone beyond what originally motivated it. This seems like a good time to wrap it up.

Mostly. I’m holding a couple of things in reserve for days in the future. And if we’re hit by a new variant and have to lock ourselves in again, I reserve the right to restart this.

I have something special I want to post, as the final entry, and also as a tribute.

Gardner Dozois passed away three years ago today. To the best of my knowledge, the NYT still has not published an obituary for him.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Guns, History, Safety, TV | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: May 27, 2021.

May 27th, 2021

Eric Carle, children’s book author. He was perhaps most famous for “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.

Noted:

But, as Mr. Carle told The New York Times in 2007, disaster struck when his father was drafted into the German army and soon became a prisoner of war in Russia. Eric, who was then 15, managed to avoid the draft but was conscripted by the Nazi government to dig trenches on the Siegfried line, a 400-mile defensive line in western Germany.
“In Stuttgart, our hometown, our house was the only one standing,” Mr. Carle told The Guardian in 2009. “When I say standing, I mean the roof and windows are gone, and the doors. And … well, there you are.”

Kevin Clark. He was the drummer in “School of Rock”. According to reports, he was hit and killed while riding his bicycle home.

Samuel Wright. He voiced “Sebastian” in “The Little Mermaid”, and also did a lot of Broadway work. He also played “Mufasa” in the original cast of “The Lion King” on Broadway.

Posted in Books, Movies, Music, Nazis, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 421

May 26th, 2021

The penultimate entry seems like a good time for some randomness.

Let’s start with a final entry from the AT&T Archives: “Telezonia”.

It’s also plainly one of the most psychedelic in the AT&T catalog. How to grab kid’s attentions in the middle of the 1970s? If you thought you could learn about dialing and using the phone book from talking foam letters, numbers, and a guy in a skirt, you came to the right place. It starts off like a typical short film cautionary tale, but once they take a trip inside the telephone, things go terribly weird. This film is a cult classic.

Lawrence, this is for you:

Robert Towers, who plays the halfway-creepy guide “Telly”, has had an illustrious — if bizarre — career, including being inside the Snorky costume on the Banana Splits, as one of the Benjamin Buttons in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the singing voice of Snoopy in the TV version of You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. Though for much of his career he did voices for animation, in the 2000s, he has done more acting in television comedies.

The weird starts about two minutes in.

Bonus #1: As long as we’re talking about “psychedelic”: “Narcotics: Pit of Despair”.

This 1967 color film dramatizes the dangers of casual drug use by telling the story of a young student who tries marijuana at a party and later becomes addicted to heroin.

Bonus #2: Couldn’t get away without one more bit of random gun crankery. This is part of an episode of “Wild West Tech” (an old History Channel show) talking about holsters.

Posted in Guns, History, Holsters | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 26, 2021.

May 26th, 2021

Somewhat breaking news: John Warner, former Senator from Virginia and Elizabeth Taylor’s sixth husband.

Though a popular figure in his state, Mr. Warner was often at odds with Virginia conservatives. He became the Republican nominee in his first campaign only after the man who had defeated him at a state party convention was killed in a plane crash.
He angered the National Rifle Association with his backing of an assault weapons ban. He infuriated some state Republicans in 1994 when he refused to support Oliver L. North, the former White House aide at the center of the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration, in Mr. North’s bid for the Senate. And he opposed Reagan’s ultimately unsuccessful Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork.

Edited to add: My mother and stepfather lived in Virginia during part of the time John Warner was a senator. My mother is kind of upset at the press coverage: she feels it focuses too much on Sen. Warner being Number Six in the long line of Liz’s husbands, and not enough on his accomplishments as a Senator. One of the things she mentioned to me: there was a time when they were having trouble getting money out of SSI for my stepfather. She called Senator Warner’s office and spoke to one of his people, who said, “Oh, I know somebody over there. Let me make some calls.”

They had their check two days later.

Roger Hawkins, noted drummer.

An innately soulful musician, Mr. Hawkins initially distinguished himself in the mid-’60s as a member of the house band at the producer Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. (The initials stand for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises.) His colleagues were the keyboardist Barry Beckett, the guitarist Jimmy Johnson and Mr. Hood, who played bass. Mr. Hood is the last surviving member of that rhythm section.
Mr. Hawkins’s less-is-more approach to drumming at FAME — often little more than a cymbal and a snare — can be heard on Percy Sledge’s gospel-steeped “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a No. 1 pop single in 1966. He was also a driving force behind Aretha Franklin’s imperious “Respect,” a No. 1 pop hit the next year, as well as her Top 10 singles “Chain of Fools” (1967) and “Think” (1968).

…

In 1969 Mr. Hawkins and the other members of the FAME rhythm section parted ways with Mr. Hall over a financial dispute. They soon opened their own studio, Muscle Shoals Sound, in a former coffin warehouse in nearby Sheffield.
Renaming themselves the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, the four men appeared on many other hits over the next decade, including the Staple Singers’ chart-topping pop-gospel single “I’ll Take You There,” a 1972 recording galvanized by Mr. Hawkins’s skittering Caribbean-style drum figure. They also appeared, along with the gospel quartet the Dixie Hummingbirds, on Paul Simon’s “Loves Me Like a Rock,” a Top 10 single in 1973.
Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Hood worked briefly with the British rock band Traffic as well; they are on the band’s 1973 album, “Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory.”
Mr. Hawkins and his colleagues became known as the Swampers after the producer Denny Cordell heard the pianist Leon Russell commend them for their “funky, soulful Southern swamp sound.” The Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd mentioned them, by that name, in their 1974 pop hit “Sweet Home Alabama.”

Posted in Guns, Music, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 420

May 25th, 2021

I’m moving Travel Thursday to Tuesday this week, for reasons. I have something else coming up for Thursday.

Today: “New Horizons: Argentina” from our friends at Pan Am. We’ve done South America in general previously, but we haven’t focused specifically on Argentina.

This apparently dates to 1965, so I can’t really make any “Evita” jokes here, alas.

Bonus #1: But I can put up something relevant to Lawrence’s interests, and maybe Andrew’s as well: “MOUTH-WATERING STEAK at an Argentine Steakhouse in Mar del Plata, Argentina”.

This restaurant is called “El Palacio del Bife”, which literally translates to “The Palace of Beef” and they sure know how to prepare a delicious steak.

Bonus #2: We’ve been to South America. Why not Central America on our way back?

Also by way of Pan Am, circa 1968: “Fiesta! A Central American Holiday”.

Posted in Beef, Food, History, Travel | Comments Closed

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