Cathleen
Summer breeze...
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Literotica Cemetary
- Thread starter KindaKinky
- Start date
JennyOmanHill
trying hard to be mindful
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'Bewitched's' Louise Tate Dies at 80
http://www.harpiesbizarre.com/tatesshocked.jpg
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Kasey Rogers, an actress who was a regular on television shows like "Bewitched" but was best known for an appearance in Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train," has died. She was 80.
Rogers died July 6 at USC University Hospital from a stroke, said her companion, Mark Wood.
Using the name Laura Elliott, Rogers played Farley Granger's estranged wife, Miriam, who is strangled by the psychotic character in "Strangers on a Train."
Born Imogene Rogers on Dec. 15, 1925, in Morehouse, Mo., Rogers moved with her family to Burbank as a child. She earned the nickname Casey, a reference to "Casey at the bat," because of her hitting prowess in grade-school baseball. Later she changed the C to a K.
Rogers played leads in junior high school and high school plays. She was spotted by a talent agent, leading to a screen test and contract at Paramount during the late 1940s and early '50s.
Among her films are "Special Agent,""Denver and Rio Grande,""Silver City" and "Two Lost Worlds."
On television, she appeared in numerous series, including "Wanted: Dead or Alive,""Bat Masterson,""Cheyenne,""Maverick,""Perry Mason,""77 Sunset Strip,""Adam-12" and "Bewitched."
Twice married and divorced, Rogers is survived by her brother, four children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
http://www.harpiesbizarre.com/tatesshocked.jpg
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Kasey Rogers, an actress who was a regular on television shows like "Bewitched" but was best known for an appearance in Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train," has died. She was 80.
Rogers died July 6 at USC University Hospital from a stroke, said her companion, Mark Wood.
Using the name Laura Elliott, Rogers played Farley Granger's estranged wife, Miriam, who is strangled by the psychotic character in "Strangers on a Train."
Born Imogene Rogers on Dec. 15, 1925, in Morehouse, Mo., Rogers moved with her family to Burbank as a child. She earned the nickname Casey, a reference to "Casey at the bat," because of her hitting prowess in grade-school baseball. Later she changed the C to a K.
Rogers played leads in junior high school and high school plays. She was spotted by a talent agent, leading to a screen test and contract at Paramount during the late 1940s and early '50s.
Among her films are "Special Agent,""Denver and Rio Grande,""Silver City" and "Two Lost Worlds."
On television, she appeared in numerous series, including "Wanted: Dead or Alive,""Bat Masterson,""Cheyenne,""Maverick,""Perry Mason,""77 Sunset Strip,""Adam-12" and "Bewitched."
Twice married and divorced, Rogers is survived by her brother, four children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
linuxgeek
Rogue Scholar
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Mickey Spillane
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/07/17/spillane.ap/index.html
Mystery writer Mickey Spillane dies
Monday, July 17, 2006; Posted: 6:23 p.m. EDT (22:23 GMT)
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/07/17/spillane.ap/story.spillane.ap.jpg
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (AP) -- Mickey Spillane, the macho mystery writer who wowed millions of readers with the shoot-'em-up sex and violence of gumshoe Mike Hammer, died Monday. He was 88.
Spillane's death was confirmed by Brad Stephens of Goldfinch Funeral Home in his hometown of Murrells Inlet. Details about his death were not immediately available.
After starting out in comic books Spillane wrote his first Mike Hammer novel, "I, the Jury," in 1946. Twelve more followed, with sales topping 100 million. Notable titles included "The Killing Man," "The Girl Hunters" and "One Lonely Night."
Many of these books were made into movies, including the classic film noir "Kiss Me, Deadly" and "The Girl Hunters," in which Spillane himself starred. Hammer stories were also featured on television in the series "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer" and in made-for-TV movies. In the 1980s, Spillane appeared in a string of Miller Lite beer commercials.
Besides the Hammer novels, Spillane wrote a dozen other books, including some award-winning volumes for young people.
Nonetheless, by the end of the 20th century, many of his novels were out of print or hard to find. In 2001, the New American Library began reissuing them.
As a stylist Spillane was no innovator; the prose was hard-boiled boilerplate. In a typical scene, from "The Big Kill," Hammer slugs out a little punk with "pig eyes."
"I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone," Spillane wrote. "I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel ... and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling."
Velda was a looker and burning for love
Mainstream critics had little use for Spillane, but he got his due in the mystery world, receiving lifetime achievement awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Private Eye Writers of America.
Spillane, a bearish man who wrote on an old manual Smith Corona, always claimed he didn't care about reviews. He considered himself a "writer" as opposed to an "author," defining a writer as someone whose books sell.
"This is an income-generating job," he told The Associated Press during a 2001 interview. "Fame was never anything to me unless it afforded me a good livelihood."
Spillane was born Frank Morrison Spillane on March 9, 1918, in the New York borough of Brooklyn. He grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and attended Fort Hayes State College in Kansas where he was a standout swimmer before beginning his career writing for magazines.
He had always liked police stories -- an uncle was a cop -- and in his pre-Hammer days he created a comic book detective named Mike Danger. At the time, the early 1940s, he was scribing for Batman, SubMariner and other comics.
"I wanted to get away from the flying heroes and I had the prototype cop," Spillane said.
Danger never saw print. World War II broke out and Spillane enlisted. When he came home, he needed $1,000 to buy some land and thought novels the best way to go. Within three weeks, he had completed "I, the Jury" and sent it to Dutton. The editors there doubted the writing, but not the market for it; a literary franchise began. His books helped reveal the power of the paperback market and became so popular they were parodied in movies, including the Fred Astaire musical "The Band Wagon."
He was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in good and evil. He was also a rare political conservative in the book world. Communists were villains in his work and liberals took some hits as well. He was not above using crude racial and sexual stereotypes.
Viewed by some as a precursor to Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, Spillane's Hammer was a loner contemptuous of the "tedious process" of the jury system, choosing instead to enforce the law on his own murderous terms. His novels were attacked for their violence and vigilantism-- one critic said "I, the Jury" belonged in "Gestapo training school" -- but some defended them as the most shameless kind of pleasure.
"Spillane is like eating takeout fried chicken: so much fun to consume, but you can feel those lowlife grease-induced zits rising before you've finished the first drumstick," Sally Eckhoff wrote in the liberal weekly The Village Voice.
Became a Jehovah's Witness in 1951
The Hammer novels had a couple of recurring characters: Pat, the honest, but slow-moving cop, and Velda, Mike's faithful secretary. Like so many women in Hammer's life, Velda was a looker, and burning for love.
"Velda was watching me with the tip of her tongue clenched between her teeth," Spillane wrote in "Vengeance is Mine!", an early Hammer novel.
"There wasn't any kitten-softness about her now. She was big and she was lovely, with the kind of curves that made you want to turn around and have another look. The lush fullness of her lips had tightened into the faintest kind of snarl and her eyes were the carnivorous eyes you could expect to see in the jungle watching you from behind a clump of bushes."
While the Hammer books were set in New York, Spillane was a longtime resident of Murrells Inlet, a coastal community near Myrtle Beach.
He moved to South Carolina in 1954 when the area, now jammed with motels and tourist attractions, was still predominantly tobacco and corn fields.
Spillane said he fell in love with the long stretches of deserted beaches when he first saw the area from an airplane.
The writer, who became a Jehovah's Witness in 1951 and helped build the group's Kingdom Hall in Murrells Inlet, spent his time boating and fishing when he wasn't writing. In the 1950s, he also worked as a circus performer, allowing himself to be shot out of a cannon and appearing in the circus film "Ring of Fear."
The home where he lived for 35 years was destroyed by the 135 mph winds of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Married three times, Spillane was the father of four children.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/07/17/spillane.ap/index.html
Mystery writer Mickey Spillane dies
Monday, July 17, 2006; Posted: 6:23 p.m. EDT (22:23 GMT)
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/07/17/spillane.ap/story.spillane.ap.jpg
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (AP) -- Mickey Spillane, the macho mystery writer who wowed millions of readers with the shoot-'em-up sex and violence of gumshoe Mike Hammer, died Monday. He was 88.
Spillane's death was confirmed by Brad Stephens of Goldfinch Funeral Home in his hometown of Murrells Inlet. Details about his death were not immediately available.
After starting out in comic books Spillane wrote his first Mike Hammer novel, "I, the Jury," in 1946. Twelve more followed, with sales topping 100 million. Notable titles included "The Killing Man," "The Girl Hunters" and "One Lonely Night."
Many of these books were made into movies, including the classic film noir "Kiss Me, Deadly" and "The Girl Hunters," in which Spillane himself starred. Hammer stories were also featured on television in the series "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer" and in made-for-TV movies. In the 1980s, Spillane appeared in a string of Miller Lite beer commercials.
Besides the Hammer novels, Spillane wrote a dozen other books, including some award-winning volumes for young people.
Nonetheless, by the end of the 20th century, many of his novels were out of print or hard to find. In 2001, the New American Library began reissuing them.
As a stylist Spillane was no innovator; the prose was hard-boiled boilerplate. In a typical scene, from "The Big Kill," Hammer slugs out a little punk with "pig eyes."
"I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone," Spillane wrote. "I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel ... and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling."
Velda was a looker and burning for love
Mainstream critics had little use for Spillane, but he got his due in the mystery world, receiving lifetime achievement awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Private Eye Writers of America.
Spillane, a bearish man who wrote on an old manual Smith Corona, always claimed he didn't care about reviews. He considered himself a "writer" as opposed to an "author," defining a writer as someone whose books sell.
"This is an income-generating job," he told The Associated Press during a 2001 interview. "Fame was never anything to me unless it afforded me a good livelihood."
Spillane was born Frank Morrison Spillane on March 9, 1918, in the New York borough of Brooklyn. He grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and attended Fort Hayes State College in Kansas where he was a standout swimmer before beginning his career writing for magazines.
He had always liked police stories -- an uncle was a cop -- and in his pre-Hammer days he created a comic book detective named Mike Danger. At the time, the early 1940s, he was scribing for Batman, SubMariner and other comics.
"I wanted to get away from the flying heroes and I had the prototype cop," Spillane said.
Danger never saw print. World War II broke out and Spillane enlisted. When he came home, he needed $1,000 to buy some land and thought novels the best way to go. Within three weeks, he had completed "I, the Jury" and sent it to Dutton. The editors there doubted the writing, but not the market for it; a literary franchise began. His books helped reveal the power of the paperback market and became so popular they were parodied in movies, including the Fred Astaire musical "The Band Wagon."
He was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in good and evil. He was also a rare political conservative in the book world. Communists were villains in his work and liberals took some hits as well. He was not above using crude racial and sexual stereotypes.
Viewed by some as a precursor to Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, Spillane's Hammer was a loner contemptuous of the "tedious process" of the jury system, choosing instead to enforce the law on his own murderous terms. His novels were attacked for their violence and vigilantism-- one critic said "I, the Jury" belonged in "Gestapo training school" -- but some defended them as the most shameless kind of pleasure.
"Spillane is like eating takeout fried chicken: so much fun to consume, but you can feel those lowlife grease-induced zits rising before you've finished the first drumstick," Sally Eckhoff wrote in the liberal weekly The Village Voice.
Became a Jehovah's Witness in 1951
The Hammer novels had a couple of recurring characters: Pat, the honest, but slow-moving cop, and Velda, Mike's faithful secretary. Like so many women in Hammer's life, Velda was a looker, and burning for love.
"Velda was watching me with the tip of her tongue clenched between her teeth," Spillane wrote in "Vengeance is Mine!", an early Hammer novel.
"There wasn't any kitten-softness about her now. She was big and she was lovely, with the kind of curves that made you want to turn around and have another look. The lush fullness of her lips had tightened into the faintest kind of snarl and her eyes were the carnivorous eyes you could expect to see in the jungle watching you from behind a clump of bushes."
While the Hammer books were set in New York, Spillane was a longtime resident of Murrells Inlet, a coastal community near Myrtle Beach.
He moved to South Carolina in 1954 when the area, now jammed with motels and tourist attractions, was still predominantly tobacco and corn fields.
Spillane said he fell in love with the long stretches of deserted beaches when he first saw the area from an airplane.
The writer, who became a Jehovah's Witness in 1951 and helped build the group's Kingdom Hall in Murrells Inlet, spent his time boating and fishing when he wasn't writing. In the 1950s, he also worked as a circus performer, allowing himself to be shot out of a cannon and appearing in the circus film "Ring of Fear."
The home where he lived for 35 years was destroyed by the 135 mph winds of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Married three times, Spillane was the father of four children.
JennyOmanHill
trying hard to be mindful
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2001
- Posts
- 11,151
Carrie Nye, Mainstay at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Dies at 69
Carrie Nye, a seductive Mississippi-born actress who found an artistic home at Massachusetts' Williamstown Theatre Festival, died July 12 at her home in Manhattan. The cause was lung cancer, according to the New York Times. She was 69.
Though a critics darling and considered an actor's actor by her colleagues, she collected only a half-dozen Broadway credits. She was nominated for a Tony Award for one of those (Half a Sixpence in 1965) and a Drama Desk nomination for another (the 1980 revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner). Her more common artistic base was the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where—appropriately given her upbringing—her first appearance was as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1958. She was 21 at the time.
Ms. Nye was known for her wit, and eccentric Southern manners. Slim, sloe-eyed and blonde, she was often compared to Tallulah Bankhead. She had occasion to play the outrageous actress on television in "The Scarlett O'Hara War," and Kaufman and Hart based her character in The Man Who Came to Dinner on Bankhead.
Carrie Nye was born on Oct. 14, 1936, in Greenwood, MS. Her father was a bank president and her mother was a housewife. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, MO, and went on to the Yale School of Drama. She went directly to Williamstown after graduating.
In 1964, she married her fellow Yalie, future talk show host Dick Cavett. Cavett survives her. Together they bought Tick Hall, a historic home Stanford White built in Montauk. It burned to the ground in 1997. Ms. Nye lost family possessions and photographs going back five Mississippi generations. The couple hired architects to create an exact replica of the famed house. "It was impervious to time, to change," Ms. Nye said. "It was a remarkable piece of architecture, like living with a great painting. It improved you. I had to have it back." The enterprise was the subject of the documentary "From the Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall."
Carrie Nye, a seductive Mississippi-born actress who found an artistic home at Massachusetts' Williamstown Theatre Festival, died July 12 at her home in Manhattan. The cause was lung cancer, according to the New York Times. She was 69.
Though a critics darling and considered an actor's actor by her colleagues, she collected only a half-dozen Broadway credits. She was nominated for a Tony Award for one of those (Half a Sixpence in 1965) and a Drama Desk nomination for another (the 1980 revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner). Her more common artistic base was the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where—appropriately given her upbringing—her first appearance was as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1958. She was 21 at the time.
Ms. Nye was known for her wit, and eccentric Southern manners. Slim, sloe-eyed and blonde, she was often compared to Tallulah Bankhead. She had occasion to play the outrageous actress on television in "The Scarlett O'Hara War," and Kaufman and Hart based her character in The Man Who Came to Dinner on Bankhead.
Carrie Nye was born on Oct. 14, 1936, in Greenwood, MS. Her father was a bank president and her mother was a housewife. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, MO, and went on to the Yale School of Drama. She went directly to Williamstown after graduating.
In 1964, she married her fellow Yalie, future talk show host Dick Cavett. Cavett survives her. Together they bought Tick Hall, a historic home Stanford White built in Montauk. It burned to the ground in 1997. Ms. Nye lost family possessions and photographs going back five Mississippi generations. The couple hired architects to create an exact replica of the famed house. "It was impervious to time, to change," Ms. Nye said. "It was a remarkable piece of architecture, like living with a great painting. It improved you. I had to have it back." The enterprise was the subject of the documentary "From the Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall."
JennyOmanHill
trying hard to be mindful
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- Nov 12, 2001
- Posts
- 11,151
Robert Brooks, 69; Head of Hooters Restaurants
July 19, 2006
http://www.budsports.com/bud/images/articles/hooters.gif
Robert Brooks had a simple explanation for the success of his Hooters chain, known as much for the tight T-shirts of its waitresses as for its chicken wings.
"Good food, cold beer and pretty girls never go out of style," he told Fortune magazine in 2003.
Brooks, the 69-year-old chairman of the restaurant chain, was found dead Sunday at his home in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Coroner Robert Edge said an autopsy found that Brooks had died of natural causes, but he would not be more specific.
Brooks had diabetes for 30 years and suffered a stroke in the mid-1980s.
Since opening its first restaurant in Clearwater, Fla., in 1983, Hooters of America Inc. has expanded into 46 states and 20 countries. Hooters has about 61 million visitors a year.
His fortune was estimated at $500 million in 2003, but Brooks liked to say that "If you can count it, you must not be worth too much."
Born Feb. 6, 1937, on a tobacco farm without electricity or running water near Loris, S.C., Robert Howell Brooks graduated from Clemson University with a degree in dairy science. He broke into the food industry with a milkshake formula that was used by restaurant chain Burger King.
In 1966, he founded Eastern Foods Inc., which initially sold nondairy creamer to airlines and now makes dressings and sauces as Naturally Fresh Foods. He continued as chairman of the company, which has more than $100 million in annual sales.
In 1984, he and a group of Atlanta investors bought expansion and franchise rights for the Hooters chain. He eventually bought majority control and became chairman.
Brooks tried to parlay the restaurant chain's success into an airline in 2003. At its peak, Hooters Air flew to 15 destinations, but the company racked up debt and stopped commercial flights earlier this year. The firm now flies charters.
In addition to the airline, Brooks had in the last few years focused on other projects for the chain, including a hotel and casino in Las Vegas owned by franchisees who licensed the Hooters name.
Brooks shared his wealth with a school near his hometown, giving $2 million to Coastal Carolina University for its first football stadium, which was named for Brooks in 2003.
He also contributed to the Episcopal church he attended with his wife, Tami. When asked once if his minister approved of the clingy attire and the buxom waitresses the restaurant chain is known for, Brooks said, "He eats here! In fact, every minister I've ever had ate at Hooters."
Brooks' survivors include his wife, two children and two stepchildren. His first marriage ended in divorce after the 1993 death of his son Mark, who died in a plane crash that also killed NASCAR driver Alan Kulwicki.
July 19, 2006
http://www.budsports.com/bud/images/articles/hooters.gif
Robert Brooks had a simple explanation for the success of his Hooters chain, known as much for the tight T-shirts of its waitresses as for its chicken wings.
"Good food, cold beer and pretty girls never go out of style," he told Fortune magazine in 2003.
Brooks, the 69-year-old chairman of the restaurant chain, was found dead Sunday at his home in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Coroner Robert Edge said an autopsy found that Brooks had died of natural causes, but he would not be more specific.
Brooks had diabetes for 30 years and suffered a stroke in the mid-1980s.
Since opening its first restaurant in Clearwater, Fla., in 1983, Hooters of America Inc. has expanded into 46 states and 20 countries. Hooters has about 61 million visitors a year.
His fortune was estimated at $500 million in 2003, but Brooks liked to say that "If you can count it, you must not be worth too much."
Born Feb. 6, 1937, on a tobacco farm without electricity or running water near Loris, S.C., Robert Howell Brooks graduated from Clemson University with a degree in dairy science. He broke into the food industry with a milkshake formula that was used by restaurant chain Burger King.
In 1966, he founded Eastern Foods Inc., which initially sold nondairy creamer to airlines and now makes dressings and sauces as Naturally Fresh Foods. He continued as chairman of the company, which has more than $100 million in annual sales.
In 1984, he and a group of Atlanta investors bought expansion and franchise rights for the Hooters chain. He eventually bought majority control and became chairman.
Brooks tried to parlay the restaurant chain's success into an airline in 2003. At its peak, Hooters Air flew to 15 destinations, but the company racked up debt and stopped commercial flights earlier this year. The firm now flies charters.
In addition to the airline, Brooks had in the last few years focused on other projects for the chain, including a hotel and casino in Las Vegas owned by franchisees who licensed the Hooters name.
Brooks shared his wealth with a school near his hometown, giving $2 million to Coastal Carolina University for its first football stadium, which was named for Brooks in 2003.
He also contributed to the Episcopal church he attended with his wife, Tami. When asked once if his minister approved of the clingy attire and the buxom waitresses the restaurant chain is known for, Brooks said, "He eats here! In fact, every minister I've ever had ate at Hooters."
Brooks' survivors include his wife, two children and two stepchildren. His first marriage ended in divorce after the 1993 death of his son Mark, who died in a plane crash that also killed NASCAR driver Alan Kulwicki.
linuxgeek
Rogue Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2004
- Posts
- 32,719
Jack Warden
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/22/obit.warden.ap/index.html
Veteran actor Jack Warden dead at 85
Saturday, July 22, 2006; Posted: 1:27 a.m. EDT
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/22/obit.warden.ap/story.vert.warden.file.ap.jpg
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Jack Warden, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated actor who played gruff cops, coaches and soldiers in a career that spanned five decades, has died. He was 85.
Warden, who lived in Manhattan, died Wednesday at a hospital in New York, Sidney Pazoff, his longtime business manager, said in Los Angeles Friday.
"Everything gave out. Old age," Pazoff said. "He really had turned downhill in the past month; heart and then kidney and then all kinds of stuff."
Warden was nominated twice for supporting-actor Oscars in two Warren Beatty movies. He was nominated for his role as a businessman in 1975's "Shampoo" and as the good-hearted football trainer in 1978's "Heaven Can Wait."
He won a supporting actor Emmy for his role as Chicago Bears coach George Halas in the 1971 made-for-TV movie "Brian's Song" and was twice nominated in the 1980s as leading actor in a comedy for his show "Crazy Like a Fox."
Warden, with his white hair, weathered face and gravelly voice, was in demand for character parts for decades.
In real life, the former boxer, deckhand and paratrooper was anything but a tough guy.
"Very gentle. Very dapper," Pazoff said. "Most of them (actors) are pretty true to the characters that they play. He was one who was not."
Warden was born John H. Lebzelter in 1920 in Newark, New Jersey. He was still in high school during the Depression when he tried his hand at professional boxing under his mother's maiden name of Costello.
He had 13 welterweight bouts in the Louisville area before joining the Navy, where he was sent to China and patrolled the Yangtze River.
He also had jobs as a nightclub bouncer, a lifeguard and a deckhand on an East River tugboat.
In 1941, he joined the Merchant Marine. He served in the engine room as his ship made convoy runs to Europe.
"The constant bombings were nerve-racking below decks," he recalled.
He quit in 1942 and enlisted in the Army. He was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division but shortly before D-Day broke his leg during a nighttime practice jump in Britain.
"They sent me back to the States," he recalled in a 1988 Associated Press interview. "I was in a hospital for nearly a year."
A fellow soldier who had been an actor gave him a play to read and he was hooked. He recovered enough to take part in the Battle of the Bulge and, after the war, went to New York to pursue an acting career.
He attended acting classes and did Tennessee Williams plays in repertory companies and moved on to appear in live TV shows such as the famed "Studio One."
During the 1950s his career flourished. Besides TV work, he appeared on Broadway in shows such as Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy" and Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge."
He had small roles in 1953's Oscar-winning "From Here to Eternity" and the submarine thriller "Run Silent, Run Deep," but his breakthrough role was Juror No. 7, a salesman who wants a quick decision in a murder case, in 1957's "Twelve Angry Men."
Over the years he had a number of recurring or starring TV roles. He was a major in "The Wackiest Ship in the Army"; the coach on "Mr. Peepers"; a coach again on the small-screen version of "The Bad News Bears"; detectives in "Asphalt Jungle," "N.Y.P.D." and "Jigsaw John"; and a private investigator in "Crazy Like a Fox."
His numerous big-screen roles included a news editor in 1976's "All the President's Men," Paul Newman's law partner in 1982's "The Verdict' and the president in the 1979 Peter Sellers movie "Being There."
His later roles came in Woody Allen's 1994 "Bullets Over Broadway"; Beatty's 1998 political satire "Bulworth" and the 2000 football movie "The Replacements."
Pazoff said Warden is survived by his longtime girlfriend, Marucha Hinds; estranged wife, Vanda; a son, Christopher; and two grandchildren.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/22/obit.warden.ap/index.html
Veteran actor Jack Warden dead at 85
Saturday, July 22, 2006; Posted: 1:27 a.m. EDT
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/22/obit.warden.ap/story.vert.warden.file.ap.jpg
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Jack Warden, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated actor who played gruff cops, coaches and soldiers in a career that spanned five decades, has died. He was 85.
Warden, who lived in Manhattan, died Wednesday at a hospital in New York, Sidney Pazoff, his longtime business manager, said in Los Angeles Friday.
"Everything gave out. Old age," Pazoff said. "He really had turned downhill in the past month; heart and then kidney and then all kinds of stuff."
Warden was nominated twice for supporting-actor Oscars in two Warren Beatty movies. He was nominated for his role as a businessman in 1975's "Shampoo" and as the good-hearted football trainer in 1978's "Heaven Can Wait."
He won a supporting actor Emmy for his role as Chicago Bears coach George Halas in the 1971 made-for-TV movie "Brian's Song" and was twice nominated in the 1980s as leading actor in a comedy for his show "Crazy Like a Fox."
Warden, with his white hair, weathered face and gravelly voice, was in demand for character parts for decades.
In real life, the former boxer, deckhand and paratrooper was anything but a tough guy.
"Very gentle. Very dapper," Pazoff said. "Most of them (actors) are pretty true to the characters that they play. He was one who was not."
Warden was born John H. Lebzelter in 1920 in Newark, New Jersey. He was still in high school during the Depression when he tried his hand at professional boxing under his mother's maiden name of Costello.
He had 13 welterweight bouts in the Louisville area before joining the Navy, where he was sent to China and patrolled the Yangtze River.
He also had jobs as a nightclub bouncer, a lifeguard and a deckhand on an East River tugboat.
In 1941, he joined the Merchant Marine. He served in the engine room as his ship made convoy runs to Europe.
"The constant bombings were nerve-racking below decks," he recalled.
He quit in 1942 and enlisted in the Army. He was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division but shortly before D-Day broke his leg during a nighttime practice jump in Britain.
"They sent me back to the States," he recalled in a 1988 Associated Press interview. "I was in a hospital for nearly a year."
A fellow soldier who had been an actor gave him a play to read and he was hooked. He recovered enough to take part in the Battle of the Bulge and, after the war, went to New York to pursue an acting career.
He attended acting classes and did Tennessee Williams plays in repertory companies and moved on to appear in live TV shows such as the famed "Studio One."
During the 1950s his career flourished. Besides TV work, he appeared on Broadway in shows such as Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy" and Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge."
He had small roles in 1953's Oscar-winning "From Here to Eternity" and the submarine thriller "Run Silent, Run Deep," but his breakthrough role was Juror No. 7, a salesman who wants a quick decision in a murder case, in 1957's "Twelve Angry Men."
Over the years he had a number of recurring or starring TV roles. He was a major in "The Wackiest Ship in the Army"; the coach on "Mr. Peepers"; a coach again on the small-screen version of "The Bad News Bears"; detectives in "Asphalt Jungle," "N.Y.P.D." and "Jigsaw John"; and a private investigator in "Crazy Like a Fox."
His numerous big-screen roles included a news editor in 1976's "All the President's Men," Paul Newman's law partner in 1982's "The Verdict' and the president in the 1979 Peter Sellers movie "Being There."
His later roles came in Woody Allen's 1994 "Bullets Over Broadway"; Beatty's 1998 political satire "Bulworth" and the 2000 football movie "The Replacements."
Pazoff said Warden is survived by his longtime girlfriend, Marucha Hinds; estranged wife, Vanda; a son, Christopher; and two grandchildren.
linuxgeek
Rogue Scholar
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Carl Brashear
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/25/brashear.obit.ap/index.html
Inspiration for 'Men of Honor' dies
Tuesday, July 25, 2006; Posted: 9:20 p.m. EDT (01:20 GMT)
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/US/07/25/brashear.obit.ap/story.brashear.gif
RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Carl M. Brashear, the first black U.S. Navy diver who was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the 2000 film "Men of Honor," died Tuesday. He was 75.
Brashear died at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth of respiratory and heart failure, the medical center said.
Brashear retired from the Navy in 1979 after more than 30 years of service. He was the first Navy diver to be restored to full active duty as an amputee, the result of a leg injury he sustained during a salvage operation.
"The African-American community lost a great leader today in Carl Brashear," Gooding said of the man he played alongside Robert DeNiro, who was Brashear's roughneck training officer in "Men of Honor." "His impact to us as a people and all races will be felt for many decades to come."
In 1966 Brashear was assigned to recover a hydrogen bomb that dropped into waters off of Spain when two U.S. Air Force planes collided.
During the mission Brashear was struck below his left knee by a pipe that the crew was using to hoist the bomb out of the water. Brashear was airlifted to a naval hospital where the bottom of his left leg was amputated to avoid gangrene. It later was replaced with a prosthetic leg.
The Navy was ready to retire Brashear from active duty, but he soon began a grueling training program that included diving, running and calisthenics.
"Sometimes I would come back from a run, and my artificial leg would have a puddle of blood from my stump. I wouldn't go to sick bay because they would have taken me out of the program," Brashear said in 2002 when he was inducted into the Gallery of Great Black Kentuckians. "Instead, I'd go hide somewhere and soak my leg in a bucket of hot water with salt in it -- that's an old remedy I learned growing up."
Brashear faced an uphill battle when he joined the Navy in 1948 at the age of 17, not long after the U.S. military desegregated.
"I went to the Army office, and they weren't too friendly," Brashear said in 2002. "But the Navy recruiter was a lot nicer. Looking back, I was placed in my calling."
Brashear, the son of poor sharecroppers in Sonora, Kentucky, quickly decided after boot camp that he wanted to become a deep-sea diver.
"Growing up on a farm in Kentucky, I always dreamed of doing something challenging," he said. "When I saw the divers for the first time, I knew it was just what I wanted."
In 1954 he was accepted and graduated from the diving program, despite daily battles with discrimination, including having hate notes left on his bunk.
He went on to train for advanced diving programs before his 1966 incident.
"He kept to himself personally, but his military life was an open book," said Junetta Brashear, his first wife, who lives in Portsmouth, Virginia, near Brashear's home in Virginia Beach.
She said Brashear's health started to deteriorate about three years ago, but that he had experienced problems ever since the amputation.
Brashear married childhood friend Junetta Wilcox in 1952 and had four children -- Shazanta, DaWayne, Phillip and Patrick -- before their divorce in 1978. He later married Hattie R. Elam and Jeanette A. Brundage.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/25/brashear.obit.ap/index.html
Inspiration for 'Men of Honor' dies
Tuesday, July 25, 2006; Posted: 9:20 p.m. EDT (01:20 GMT)
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/US/07/25/brashear.obit.ap/story.brashear.gif
RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Carl M. Brashear, the first black U.S. Navy diver who was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the 2000 film "Men of Honor," died Tuesday. He was 75.
Brashear died at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth of respiratory and heart failure, the medical center said.
Brashear retired from the Navy in 1979 after more than 30 years of service. He was the first Navy diver to be restored to full active duty as an amputee, the result of a leg injury he sustained during a salvage operation.
"The African-American community lost a great leader today in Carl Brashear," Gooding said of the man he played alongside Robert DeNiro, who was Brashear's roughneck training officer in "Men of Honor." "His impact to us as a people and all races will be felt for many decades to come."
In 1966 Brashear was assigned to recover a hydrogen bomb that dropped into waters off of Spain when two U.S. Air Force planes collided.
During the mission Brashear was struck below his left knee by a pipe that the crew was using to hoist the bomb out of the water. Brashear was airlifted to a naval hospital where the bottom of his left leg was amputated to avoid gangrene. It later was replaced with a prosthetic leg.
The Navy was ready to retire Brashear from active duty, but he soon began a grueling training program that included diving, running and calisthenics.
"Sometimes I would come back from a run, and my artificial leg would have a puddle of blood from my stump. I wouldn't go to sick bay because they would have taken me out of the program," Brashear said in 2002 when he was inducted into the Gallery of Great Black Kentuckians. "Instead, I'd go hide somewhere and soak my leg in a bucket of hot water with salt in it -- that's an old remedy I learned growing up."
Brashear faced an uphill battle when he joined the Navy in 1948 at the age of 17, not long after the U.S. military desegregated.
"I went to the Army office, and they weren't too friendly," Brashear said in 2002. "But the Navy recruiter was a lot nicer. Looking back, I was placed in my calling."
Brashear, the son of poor sharecroppers in Sonora, Kentucky, quickly decided after boot camp that he wanted to become a deep-sea diver.
"Growing up on a farm in Kentucky, I always dreamed of doing something challenging," he said. "When I saw the divers for the first time, I knew it was just what I wanted."
In 1954 he was accepted and graduated from the diving program, despite daily battles with discrimination, including having hate notes left on his bunk.
He went on to train for advanced diving programs before his 1966 incident.
"He kept to himself personally, but his military life was an open book," said Junetta Brashear, his first wife, who lives in Portsmouth, Virginia, near Brashear's home in Virginia Beach.
She said Brashear's health started to deteriorate about three years ago, but that he had experienced problems ever since the amputation.
Brashear married childhood friend Junetta Wilcox in 1952 and had four children -- Shazanta, DaWayne, Phillip and Patrick -- before their divorce in 1978. He later married Hattie R. Elam and Jeanette A. Brundage.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
MakersandIce
Stats Keeper
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2005
- Posts
- 9,283
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9453/jmhemphillbylmcgaughranhe5.jpg
Blues legend Hemphill dies at 72
MEMPHIS, July 25 (UPI) -- Mississippi native Jessie Mae Hemphill, founder of country blues, has died in Memphis at the age of 72 from complications related to an infection.
Known as a strong woman who donated much of her life to creating her own unique style of blues and helping those in need in her neighborhood, Hemphill died on Saturday at the Memphis Regional Medical Center, the Memphis Commercial-Appeal reported.
"She was an extraordinary lady and creative as a composer and a stylist deeply rooted in tradition going back to her aunts and grandfather and great-grandfather," said University of Memphis blues scholar David Evans.
Hemphill, the granddaughter of famous fife master Sid Hemphill, began her career by playing over 20 years in Memphis on Beale Street before releasing three professional albums and winning three W.C. Handy Awards for her efforts.
Slowed by a crippling
Blues legend Hemphill dies at 72
MEMPHIS, July 25 (UPI) -- Mississippi native Jessie Mae Hemphill, founder of country blues, has died in Memphis at the age of 72 from complications related to an infection.
Known as a strong woman who donated much of her life to creating her own unique style of blues and helping those in need in her neighborhood, Hemphill died on Saturday at the Memphis Regional Medical Center, the Memphis Commercial-Appeal reported.
"She was an extraordinary lady and creative as a composer and a stylist deeply rooted in tradition going back to her aunts and grandfather and great-grandfather," said University of Memphis blues scholar David Evans.
Hemphill, the granddaughter of famous fife master Sid Hemphill, began her career by playing over 20 years in Memphis on Beale Street before releasing three professional albums and winning three W.C. Handy Awards for her efforts.
Slowed by a crippling
JennyOmanHill
trying hard to be mindful
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2001
- Posts
- 11,151
Mako, Japanese-American Acting Icon, Dead at 72
http://www.playbill.com/images/photos/40th-Mishima200.jpg
Mako, the Japanese actor who was Tony Award nominated for playing the Reciter in the original Broadway production of "Pacific Overtures", died July 21 at his home in Somis, in Ventura County, California, according to friends and colleagues.
He was known by his first name only, and used his mother's surname Iwamatsu. In addition to his 1976 Best Actor (Musical) Tony nomination, the native of Kobe, Japan, was also Academy Award nominated for "The Sand Pebbles."
He also starred in the title role in the 1992 Broadway play "Shimada".
The cause of death, according to wire reports, was esophageal cancer. Mako was 72 and is survived by his wife, Suzie, two daughters, Mimosa and Sala, and a sister Momo Yashima. Per his wishes, there will be no funeral or memorial service.
Mako moved to the United States to join his parents, who had emigrated there earlier, when he was 15. After his service in the U.S. military, he embarked upon a career in film and theatre, and studied at the Pasadena Community Playhouse in California.
Mako founded the Asian-American theatre company East West Players, in Los Angeles. Over the years, he directed, designed and acted in East West productions. Mako directed several plays at EWP in the past several years, and was to have made his stage return as an actor in Motty-chon by Perry Miyake on the occasion of EWP's 40th Anniversary in May 2006. The production was cancelled in the third week of rehearsal as Mako had to start treatment immediately for his health condition.
As a teacher and acting icon, he was an inspiration to Asian-American actors.
Mako's last public appearance for East West Players was on the occasion of its 40th Anniversary Gala on April 10, 2006 where he presented the Rae Creevey Award to Emily Kuroda and Alberto Isaac.
Mako's film credits include "Memoirs of a Geisha," "Conan the Barbarian," "Seven Years in Tibet," "Pearl Harbor," "The Green Hornet," "Rising Sun," "The Ugly Dachshund" and more.
In "The Sand Pebbles," for which he was Oscar nominated in the category of Best Supporting Actor, he played a submissive engineer, Po-Han. It was his first film (the Disney picture, "The Ugly Dachshund" was released the same year, 1966). Mako was also featured as a guest on many television shows, including "F Troop," "Hawaii Five-0," "Kung Fu" and "The West Wing."
His sonorous performance in Pacific Overtures was captured on the original cast recording.
http://www.playbill.com/images/photos/40th-Mishima200.jpg
Mako, the Japanese actor who was Tony Award nominated for playing the Reciter in the original Broadway production of "Pacific Overtures", died July 21 at his home in Somis, in Ventura County, California, according to friends and colleagues.
He was known by his first name only, and used his mother's surname Iwamatsu. In addition to his 1976 Best Actor (Musical) Tony nomination, the native of Kobe, Japan, was also Academy Award nominated for "The Sand Pebbles."
He also starred in the title role in the 1992 Broadway play "Shimada".
The cause of death, according to wire reports, was esophageal cancer. Mako was 72 and is survived by his wife, Suzie, two daughters, Mimosa and Sala, and a sister Momo Yashima. Per his wishes, there will be no funeral or memorial service.
Mako moved to the United States to join his parents, who had emigrated there earlier, when he was 15. After his service in the U.S. military, he embarked upon a career in film and theatre, and studied at the Pasadena Community Playhouse in California.
Mako founded the Asian-American theatre company East West Players, in Los Angeles. Over the years, he directed, designed and acted in East West productions. Mako directed several plays at EWP in the past several years, and was to have made his stage return as an actor in Motty-chon by Perry Miyake on the occasion of EWP's 40th Anniversary in May 2006. The production was cancelled in the third week of rehearsal as Mako had to start treatment immediately for his health condition.
As a teacher and acting icon, he was an inspiration to Asian-American actors.
Mako's last public appearance for East West Players was on the occasion of its 40th Anniversary Gala on April 10, 2006 where he presented the Rae Creevey Award to Emily Kuroda and Alberto Isaac.
Mako's film credits include "Memoirs of a Geisha," "Conan the Barbarian," "Seven Years in Tibet," "Pearl Harbor," "The Green Hornet," "Rising Sun," "The Ugly Dachshund" and more.
In "The Sand Pebbles," for which he was Oscar nominated in the category of Best Supporting Actor, he played a submissive engineer, Po-Han. It was his first film (the Disney picture, "The Ugly Dachshund" was released the same year, 1966). Mako was also featured as a guest on many television shows, including "F Troop," "Hawaii Five-0," "Kung Fu" and "The West Wing."
His sonorous performance in Pacific Overtures was captured on the original cast recording.
JennyOmanHill
trying hard to be mindful
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2001
- Posts
- 11,151
4-time Iditarod Champion Susan Butcher Dies
http://www.bloodbankofalaska.org/news/donaldson_drive02.jpg
Aug 5, 10:30 PM (ET)
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher died Saturday in a Seattle hospital of complications from a recent bone marrow transplant, Sen. Ted Stevens' office said. She was 51.
Butcher dominated the 1,100-mile sled dog race in the late 1980s.
In 1986, she became the second woman to win the grueling race from Anchorage to Nome. She added victories in 1987, 1988 and 1990 and finished in the top four through 1993.
In 1979, Butcher helped drive the first sled-dog team to the 20,320-foot summit of Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America.
Butcher ran her last Iditarod in 1994 when she decided to have children. She has two daughters, Tekla and Chisana, with her husband, attorney and musher David Monson.
Three years ago, when she was considering a comeback, doctors found Butcher had polycythemia vera, a rare disease that causes the bone marrow to produce excess blood.
http://www.bloodbankofalaska.org/news/donaldson_drive02.jpg
Aug 5, 10:30 PM (ET)
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher died Saturday in a Seattle hospital of complications from a recent bone marrow transplant, Sen. Ted Stevens' office said. She was 51.
Butcher dominated the 1,100-mile sled dog race in the late 1980s.
In 1986, she became the second woman to win the grueling race from Anchorage to Nome. She added victories in 1987, 1988 and 1990 and finished in the top four through 1993.
In 1979, Butcher helped drive the first sled-dog team to the 20,320-foot summit of Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America.
Butcher ran her last Iditarod in 1994 when she decided to have children. She has two daughters, Tekla and Chisana, with her husband, attorney and musher David Monson.
Three years ago, when she was considering a comeback, doctors found Butcher had polycythemia vera, a rare disease that causes the bone marrow to produce excess blood.
linuxgeek
Rogue Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2004
- Posts
- 32,719
James A. Van Allen
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/science/space/10vanallen.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
James A. Van Allen, Discoverer of Earth-Circling Radiation Belts, Is Dead at 91
August 10, 2006
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/10/us/10vanallen1.190.gif
James A. Van Allen, the physicist who made the first major scientific discovery of the early space age, the Earth-circling radiation belts that bear his name, and sent spacecraft instruments to observe the outer reaches of the solar system, died yesterday in Iowa City. He was 91.
The cause was heart failure, family members said. Dr. Van Allen was a longtime professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa, and, with the discovery of the Van Allen belts of intense radiation surrounding Earth, he became a leading figure in the new field of magnetospheric physics, which grew in importance as spacecraft began exploring the planets.
A legendary lecturer and an inspiration to several generations of budding physicists and astronomers, Dr. Van Allen continued to show up at his office-laboratory until a month or so before he died.
Rapid Rise to Acclaim
James Van Allen, an unassuming but resolute investigator of cosmic rays and other space phenomena, literally rocketed to international acclaim with the launching of Explorer 1, the first successful space satellite of the United States.
It was on Jan. 31, 1958, in the early days of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union and almost four months after the Russians stunned Americans with Sputnik 1. The American Explorer 1 may not have been first in space, but a Geiger counter developed by Dr. Van Allen sent back data of what would become known as the Van Allen radiation belts.
The radiation detector recorded two belts of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. One belt is 400 to 4,000 miles above the surface, and the other is 9,000 to 15,000 miles above the Equator, curving toward the magnetic poles. Further evidence for the encircling radiation was detected with Dr. Van Allen’s instruments carried aloft aboard Explorer 2 and Explorer 3.
In the celebration of the Explorer 1 success, Dr. Van Allen posed for what became an iconic picture of the early days of spaceflight. He is standing with Wernher von Braun, whose team built the rocket, and William H. Pickering, who directed the spacecraft development, all smiling broadly and holding a model of the spacecraft high over their heads. He was the last of the three to die.
For several decades afterward, Dr. Van Allen was a staunch advocate of planetary exploration with robotic spacecraft and a critic of big-budget programs for human space flight. Describing himself as “a member of the loyal opposition,” he argued that space science could be done better and less expensively when left to remote-controlled vehicles.
Even before the radiation-belt discovery, Dr. Van Allen was heavily involved in early American rocket research. When, on April 16, 1945, a V-2 rocket captured from the Germans was first sent aloft from the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, it carried Geiger counters provided by Dr. Van Allen. His goal was to record radiation from space before it was altered by passage through the atmosphere. Such “cosmic rays” had been his lifelong interest, and it had earlier been discovered that they were more intense in outer space.
It has been said that scientists fall into three categories, thinkers, organizers and doers. Dr. Van Allen was a doer.
He was born on Sept. 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. A physics professor at Iowa Wesleyan College, near his hometown, recognized the 18-year-old student’s skill at tinkering. The professor put him to work, at 35 cents an hour, preparing seismic and magnetic equipment for an expedition to Antarctica.
It was to be led by Adm. Richard E. Byrd with the physics professor, Dr. Thomas Poulter, as second in command. Mr. Van Allen wanted to go, but his family thought him too young. He graduated summa cum laude and went to the State University in Iowa City for his graduate work, receiving a doctorate in 1939.
He worked as a research fellow at the Carnegie Institution of Washington until 1942. He then joined the Navy and worked at the Bureau of Ordnance on the proximity fuse, which was, for the first time, effective against dive bombers. Its strictly kept secret was a tiny radar in the projectile’s nose that detonated when it flew past a target. He also served as an assistant staff gunnery officer in the Pacific, winning four combat stars.
At the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, from 1946 through 1950, he supervised high-altitude research, promoting development of the Aerobee rocket, which while much smaller and cheaper than the V-2, could lift a small payload almost as high.
In 1951, he joined the University of Iowa as a professor and head of the department of physics and astronomy. He and his graduate students developed the “rockoon,” a rocket lifted by balloon 10 to 15 miles high, where air pressure was low, then fired to soar as high as 85 miles. From icebreakers he supervised rocket shots near both the north and south geomagnetic poles in the belief that Earth’s magnetic field there was channeling cosmic ray particles down into the atmosphere, causing the aurora. Such radiation was confirmed by the rockoons.
After the successful launching of the Soviet Sputnik and a succession of humiliating failures by the United States Navy’s Vanguard launcher, Dr. Van Allen was hastily told to refigure the radiation detectors he had designed for Vanguard to fly on the Army’s Explorer 1.
When it was launched, it detected radiation close to the anticipated intensity as it flew over recording stations in the United States. Because it carried no tape recorder, its observations were monitored only as it flew over ground observatories, but when readings began coming in from South America, where high counting rates had been expected, the Geiger counters became strangely silent.
“Our explanations — both wrong as it turns out,” Dr. Van Allen said later, “were either that our instruments were faulty or that cosmic rays do not strike the upper atmosphere over the tropics.”
The puzzle was resolved when his group realized that when radiation is extremely intense, such a detector is swamped and becomes silent. Explorer 3 carried a tape recorder, and the vast extent of the radiation belt was detected. Evidence then accumulated for two belts, a more intense inner one and a diffuse outer one. The Pioneer probe to the Moon launched on Oct. 11, 1958, documented the outer part of the belts.
The same year Dr. Van Allen took part in Project Argus, the firing of three atomic bombs 300 miles aloft over the South Atlantic to see if, like the radiation belts, their radioactive particles became trapped by Earth’s magnetism. The artificial belts were detected worldwide, producing auroras in both polar regions.
He also promoted international cooperation in science. On April 5, 1950, one of the most ambitious scientific efforts of all time, the International Geophysical Year, was born in his living room in Silver Spring, Md.
The guest of honor was Sydney Chapman, a professor of natural philosophy at Oxford and an authority on the link between solar eruptions and magnetic storms on Earth. The assembled scientists agreed that it was time for a global effort to understand the earth and its environment. Dr. Chapman became chairman of the committee that organized the 67-nation research program, which was carried out in 1957-58.
Also in 1958, the year that Sputnik undermined the American ego, Dr. Van Allen was chairman of a group of the country’s leading space scientists who recommended a manned landing on the Moon by 1968. The group included von Braun, technical director of the Army’s Ballistic Missile Agency, and directors of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
They proposed spending $10 billion over the next decade to “establish United States leadership in space research by 1960.” They recommended prompt creation of an independent national space establishment. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was, in fact, established that year.
Later, however, Dr. Van Allen had a change of mind. The Apollo lunar landing project, despite its vast cost, proved meager in revolutionary discoveries. None were comparable to those made by unmanned spacecraft, like the Van Allen belts, but the unmanned programs received lower priority and financing.
Dr. Van Allen said Apollo was of primary value as a television spectacular, rather than for its scientific achievements.
Although he retired from active teaching in 1985, he continued monitoring data being sent to Earth from far out in the solar system. His instruments on Pioneer 10 conducted in 1973 the first survey of Jupiter’s radiation belts. Pioneer 11 followed with observations of Saturn’s belts. He was also a member of the scientific team for the Galileo mission orbiting Jupiter.
In 1994, Dr. Van Allen received the Kuiper Prize from the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society “in recognition of his many contributions to the field of planetary science, both through his investigations of planetary magnetospheres and through his advocacy of planetary exploration.”
He was president of the American Geophysical Union from 1982 to 1984, and he received the group’s William Bowie Medal in 1977. In 1987, he received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan, and in 1989 the king of Sweden presented him with the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Van Allen is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Abigail Fithian Halsey Van Allen; five children, Cynthia Van Allen Schaffner of New York; Margot Van Allen Cairns of Vancouver, British Columbia; Sarah Van Allen Trimble of Washington; Thomas Van Allen of Aspen, Colo.; and Peter Van Allen of Philadelphia; and seven grandchildren.
In the early space age, Dr. Van Allen was often asked the value of space exploration. He sometimes replied with a impish smile, “I make a good living at it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/science/space/10vanallen.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
James A. Van Allen, Discoverer of Earth-Circling Radiation Belts, Is Dead at 91
August 10, 2006
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/10/us/10vanallen1.190.gif
James A. Van Allen, the physicist who made the first major scientific discovery of the early space age, the Earth-circling radiation belts that bear his name, and sent spacecraft instruments to observe the outer reaches of the solar system, died yesterday in Iowa City. He was 91.
The cause was heart failure, family members said. Dr. Van Allen was a longtime professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa, and, with the discovery of the Van Allen belts of intense radiation surrounding Earth, he became a leading figure in the new field of magnetospheric physics, which grew in importance as spacecraft began exploring the planets.
A legendary lecturer and an inspiration to several generations of budding physicists and astronomers, Dr. Van Allen continued to show up at his office-laboratory until a month or so before he died.
Rapid Rise to Acclaim
James Van Allen, an unassuming but resolute investigator of cosmic rays and other space phenomena, literally rocketed to international acclaim with the launching of Explorer 1, the first successful space satellite of the United States.
It was on Jan. 31, 1958, in the early days of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union and almost four months after the Russians stunned Americans with Sputnik 1. The American Explorer 1 may not have been first in space, but a Geiger counter developed by Dr. Van Allen sent back data of what would become known as the Van Allen radiation belts.
The radiation detector recorded two belts of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. One belt is 400 to 4,000 miles above the surface, and the other is 9,000 to 15,000 miles above the Equator, curving toward the magnetic poles. Further evidence for the encircling radiation was detected with Dr. Van Allen’s instruments carried aloft aboard Explorer 2 and Explorer 3.
In the celebration of the Explorer 1 success, Dr. Van Allen posed for what became an iconic picture of the early days of spaceflight. He is standing with Wernher von Braun, whose team built the rocket, and William H. Pickering, who directed the spacecraft development, all smiling broadly and holding a model of the spacecraft high over their heads. He was the last of the three to die.
For several decades afterward, Dr. Van Allen was a staunch advocate of planetary exploration with robotic spacecraft and a critic of big-budget programs for human space flight. Describing himself as “a member of the loyal opposition,” he argued that space science could be done better and less expensively when left to remote-controlled vehicles.
Even before the radiation-belt discovery, Dr. Van Allen was heavily involved in early American rocket research. When, on April 16, 1945, a V-2 rocket captured from the Germans was first sent aloft from the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, it carried Geiger counters provided by Dr. Van Allen. His goal was to record radiation from space before it was altered by passage through the atmosphere. Such “cosmic rays” had been his lifelong interest, and it had earlier been discovered that they were more intense in outer space.
It has been said that scientists fall into three categories, thinkers, organizers and doers. Dr. Van Allen was a doer.
He was born on Sept. 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. A physics professor at Iowa Wesleyan College, near his hometown, recognized the 18-year-old student’s skill at tinkering. The professor put him to work, at 35 cents an hour, preparing seismic and magnetic equipment for an expedition to Antarctica.
It was to be led by Adm. Richard E. Byrd with the physics professor, Dr. Thomas Poulter, as second in command. Mr. Van Allen wanted to go, but his family thought him too young. He graduated summa cum laude and went to the State University in Iowa City for his graduate work, receiving a doctorate in 1939.
He worked as a research fellow at the Carnegie Institution of Washington until 1942. He then joined the Navy and worked at the Bureau of Ordnance on the proximity fuse, which was, for the first time, effective against dive bombers. Its strictly kept secret was a tiny radar in the projectile’s nose that detonated when it flew past a target. He also served as an assistant staff gunnery officer in the Pacific, winning four combat stars.
At the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, from 1946 through 1950, he supervised high-altitude research, promoting development of the Aerobee rocket, which while much smaller and cheaper than the V-2, could lift a small payload almost as high.
In 1951, he joined the University of Iowa as a professor and head of the department of physics and astronomy. He and his graduate students developed the “rockoon,” a rocket lifted by balloon 10 to 15 miles high, where air pressure was low, then fired to soar as high as 85 miles. From icebreakers he supervised rocket shots near both the north and south geomagnetic poles in the belief that Earth’s magnetic field there was channeling cosmic ray particles down into the atmosphere, causing the aurora. Such radiation was confirmed by the rockoons.
After the successful launching of the Soviet Sputnik and a succession of humiliating failures by the United States Navy’s Vanguard launcher, Dr. Van Allen was hastily told to refigure the radiation detectors he had designed for Vanguard to fly on the Army’s Explorer 1.
When it was launched, it detected radiation close to the anticipated intensity as it flew over recording stations in the United States. Because it carried no tape recorder, its observations were monitored only as it flew over ground observatories, but when readings began coming in from South America, where high counting rates had been expected, the Geiger counters became strangely silent.
“Our explanations — both wrong as it turns out,” Dr. Van Allen said later, “were either that our instruments were faulty or that cosmic rays do not strike the upper atmosphere over the tropics.”
The puzzle was resolved when his group realized that when radiation is extremely intense, such a detector is swamped and becomes silent. Explorer 3 carried a tape recorder, and the vast extent of the radiation belt was detected. Evidence then accumulated for two belts, a more intense inner one and a diffuse outer one. The Pioneer probe to the Moon launched on Oct. 11, 1958, documented the outer part of the belts.
The same year Dr. Van Allen took part in Project Argus, the firing of three atomic bombs 300 miles aloft over the South Atlantic to see if, like the radiation belts, their radioactive particles became trapped by Earth’s magnetism. The artificial belts were detected worldwide, producing auroras in both polar regions.
He also promoted international cooperation in science. On April 5, 1950, one of the most ambitious scientific efforts of all time, the International Geophysical Year, was born in his living room in Silver Spring, Md.
The guest of honor was Sydney Chapman, a professor of natural philosophy at Oxford and an authority on the link between solar eruptions and magnetic storms on Earth. The assembled scientists agreed that it was time for a global effort to understand the earth and its environment. Dr. Chapman became chairman of the committee that organized the 67-nation research program, which was carried out in 1957-58.
Also in 1958, the year that Sputnik undermined the American ego, Dr. Van Allen was chairman of a group of the country’s leading space scientists who recommended a manned landing on the Moon by 1968. The group included von Braun, technical director of the Army’s Ballistic Missile Agency, and directors of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
They proposed spending $10 billion over the next decade to “establish United States leadership in space research by 1960.” They recommended prompt creation of an independent national space establishment. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was, in fact, established that year.
Later, however, Dr. Van Allen had a change of mind. The Apollo lunar landing project, despite its vast cost, proved meager in revolutionary discoveries. None were comparable to those made by unmanned spacecraft, like the Van Allen belts, but the unmanned programs received lower priority and financing.
Dr. Van Allen said Apollo was of primary value as a television spectacular, rather than for its scientific achievements.
Although he retired from active teaching in 1985, he continued monitoring data being sent to Earth from far out in the solar system. His instruments on Pioneer 10 conducted in 1973 the first survey of Jupiter’s radiation belts. Pioneer 11 followed with observations of Saturn’s belts. He was also a member of the scientific team for the Galileo mission orbiting Jupiter.
In 1994, Dr. Van Allen received the Kuiper Prize from the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society “in recognition of his many contributions to the field of planetary science, both through his investigations of planetary magnetospheres and through his advocacy of planetary exploration.”
He was president of the American Geophysical Union from 1982 to 1984, and he received the group’s William Bowie Medal in 1977. In 1987, he received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan, and in 1989 the king of Sweden presented him with the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Van Allen is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Abigail Fithian Halsey Van Allen; five children, Cynthia Van Allen Schaffner of New York; Margot Van Allen Cairns of Vancouver, British Columbia; Sarah Van Allen Trimble of Washington; Thomas Van Allen of Aspen, Colo.; and Peter Van Allen of Philadelphia; and seven grandchildren.
In the early space age, Dr. Van Allen was often asked the value of space exploration. He sometimes replied with a impish smile, “I make a good living at it.”
JennyOmanHill
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Mike Douglas, Former TV Show Host, Dies
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/T/htmlT/talkshows/talkshowsIMAGE/talkshows2.jpg
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Aug. 11) - Mike Douglas, whose affable personality and singing talent earned him 21 years as a television talk show host, died Friday on his 81st birthday.
He died at 5:30 a.m. in a Palm Beach Gardens hospital, said his wife, Genevieve Douglas. She wasn't sure of the cause, but said he had been admitted Thursday.
Douglas became dehydrated on the golf course a few weeks ago and had been treated on and off since. "He was coming along fine, we thought. It was really a shock," she said. "We never anticipated this to happen."
Douglas' afternoon show aired from 1961 to 1982. It featured his ballad and big-band singing style, other musicians, comedians, sports figures and political personalities, including seven former, sitting or future presidents.
"People still believe `The Mike Douglas Show' was a talk show, and I never correct them, but I don't think so," Douglas said in his 1999 memoir, "I'll Be Right Back: Memories of TV's Greatest Talk Show."
"It was really a music show, with a whole lot of talk and laughter in between numbers."
Douglas did about 6,000 shows, most 90 minutes long, and estimated that at its peak the syndicated show was seen in about 230 cities.
One big key to his great success was he had his ego in check," Kelly said. "He always let the guest have the limelight. He was a fine performer. He could sing, he could do comedy, he did it all, but he always gave the guest the spotlight."
Douglas was among the "early settlers" in daytime talk shows, said Robert Thompson, a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
"Mike Douglas was an old-fashioned traditionalist, holding down the fort while the culture was changing," Thompson said. "He was always the very friendly talk show host, nice to everybody. He would lean toward his guest as if he really cared. He owned that territory."
Hosts Phil Donahue, Dinah Shore and Merv Griffin also found success about the same time. Douglas said in his book that people often confused him with Griffin, another singer of Irish heritage.
Tim Brooks, television historian and executive vice president of research for Lifetime Television Network, said Douglas was "an outgrowth on the 1950s mentality of politeness."
"Even when America was getting kind of angry in the 1960s and 1970s, his show was sort of an oasis of politeness," Brooks said. "It got you away from some of the turmoil in life."
"He was a genuine nice guy," longtime friend Larry King said Friday on CNN. "It was easy to be around him. He had a relaxed measure about him, and he also had an incredible ability to get great guests."
In his memoir, Douglas fondly recalled when Tiger Woods, who as a toddler was already drawing attention, appeared on the same 1978 show as Bob Hope, an avid golfer. "I don't know what kind of drugs they've got this kid on," Hope quipped, "but I want some."
Douglas was genial most of the time, but confided in his memoir that his composure was sorely tested one week in 1972 when former Beatle John Lennon and wife, Yoko Ono, were his unlikely guest hosts. One of the guest celebrities they selected was well-known anti-war activist Jerry Rubin.
"He just got on my nerves. It sounded like this guy hated the president, the Congress, everyone in business, the military, all police and just about everything America stands for," Douglas said.
He recalled becoming confrontational with Rubin. But Lennon "picked up the mantle of Kind and Gentle Host, and he did it quite well, reinterpreting Jerry's comments to take some of the sting out and adding a little humor to keep things cool," Douglas said.
Pianist Roger Williams, who was a frequent guest on the show during its entire run, credited Douglas with helping make his recording of "Born Free" a hit after he debuted it on the show.
"Mike was just a wonderful guy," Williams said Friday from his home in Los Angeles. "He was very low key and that's what I liked about him. Every time I was on his show, he wasn't pushing for all the latest gossip, we just talked, and that's what I liked."
Born Michael Delaney Dowd in Chicago on Aug. 11, 1925, Douglas began his career as a teenage singer and entertainer for supper clubs and radio programs.
He was the staff singer at radio station WKY in Oklahoma City before joining the Navy during World War II and serving on a munitions ship.
Returning home, he became a featured performer on the radio and eventual television program, "Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge." Kyser gave him his stage name.
Douglas had some hits with Kyser in the 1940s, including "Old Lamplighter" and "Ole Buttermilk Sky." He made the pop charts one more time in 1966 with the sentimental "The Men in My Little Girl's Life."
As the rock 'n' roll era began to emerge in the late 1950s, his style became less marketable, so he started looking for a way to energize his career.
He briefly hosted "Hi, Ladies!", a daytime television program on WGN in Chicago. In 1961, Woody Fraser, a Westinghouse Group W program director who had known Douglas in Chicago, recruited him to a Group W station in Cleveland (then KYW) to host a talk and entertainment program.
The show syndicated starting in 1963 but had a limited budget, and Cleveland was not a frequent destination for well-known potential guests. The show moved to Philadelphia in 1965 and to Los Angeles in 1978.
Three years later, Group W replaced Douglas with a younger singer, John Davidson. "The Mike Douglas Show" continued in syndication under Douglas' control until he retired in 1982 to North Palm Beach, Fla. Douglas appeared as a guest on several talk shows but spent much of his leisure time on the golf course.
He was diagnosed with prostate cancer on 1990, but surgery was successful.
Besides his wife, survivors include daughters Kelly and twins Michele and Christine and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/T/htmlT/talkshows/talkshowsIMAGE/talkshows2.jpg
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Aug. 11) - Mike Douglas, whose affable personality and singing talent earned him 21 years as a television talk show host, died Friday on his 81st birthday.
He died at 5:30 a.m. in a Palm Beach Gardens hospital, said his wife, Genevieve Douglas. She wasn't sure of the cause, but said he had been admitted Thursday.
Douglas became dehydrated on the golf course a few weeks ago and had been treated on and off since. "He was coming along fine, we thought. It was really a shock," she said. "We never anticipated this to happen."
Douglas' afternoon show aired from 1961 to 1982. It featured his ballad and big-band singing style, other musicians, comedians, sports figures and political personalities, including seven former, sitting or future presidents.
"People still believe `The Mike Douglas Show' was a talk show, and I never correct them, but I don't think so," Douglas said in his 1999 memoir, "I'll Be Right Back: Memories of TV's Greatest Talk Show."
"It was really a music show, with a whole lot of talk and laughter in between numbers."
Douglas did about 6,000 shows, most 90 minutes long, and estimated that at its peak the syndicated show was seen in about 230 cities.
One big key to his great success was he had his ego in check," Kelly said. "He always let the guest have the limelight. He was a fine performer. He could sing, he could do comedy, he did it all, but he always gave the guest the spotlight."
Douglas was among the "early settlers" in daytime talk shows, said Robert Thompson, a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
"Mike Douglas was an old-fashioned traditionalist, holding down the fort while the culture was changing," Thompson said. "He was always the very friendly talk show host, nice to everybody. He would lean toward his guest as if he really cared. He owned that territory."
Hosts Phil Donahue, Dinah Shore and Merv Griffin also found success about the same time. Douglas said in his book that people often confused him with Griffin, another singer of Irish heritage.
Tim Brooks, television historian and executive vice president of research for Lifetime Television Network, said Douglas was "an outgrowth on the 1950s mentality of politeness."
"Even when America was getting kind of angry in the 1960s and 1970s, his show was sort of an oasis of politeness," Brooks said. "It got you away from some of the turmoil in life."
"He was a genuine nice guy," longtime friend Larry King said Friday on CNN. "It was easy to be around him. He had a relaxed measure about him, and he also had an incredible ability to get great guests."
In his memoir, Douglas fondly recalled when Tiger Woods, who as a toddler was already drawing attention, appeared on the same 1978 show as Bob Hope, an avid golfer. "I don't know what kind of drugs they've got this kid on," Hope quipped, "but I want some."
Douglas was genial most of the time, but confided in his memoir that his composure was sorely tested one week in 1972 when former Beatle John Lennon and wife, Yoko Ono, were his unlikely guest hosts. One of the guest celebrities they selected was well-known anti-war activist Jerry Rubin.
"He just got on my nerves. It sounded like this guy hated the president, the Congress, everyone in business, the military, all police and just about everything America stands for," Douglas said.
He recalled becoming confrontational with Rubin. But Lennon "picked up the mantle of Kind and Gentle Host, and he did it quite well, reinterpreting Jerry's comments to take some of the sting out and adding a little humor to keep things cool," Douglas said.
Pianist Roger Williams, who was a frequent guest on the show during its entire run, credited Douglas with helping make his recording of "Born Free" a hit after he debuted it on the show.
"Mike was just a wonderful guy," Williams said Friday from his home in Los Angeles. "He was very low key and that's what I liked about him. Every time I was on his show, he wasn't pushing for all the latest gossip, we just talked, and that's what I liked."
Born Michael Delaney Dowd in Chicago on Aug. 11, 1925, Douglas began his career as a teenage singer and entertainer for supper clubs and radio programs.
He was the staff singer at radio station WKY in Oklahoma City before joining the Navy during World War II and serving on a munitions ship.
Returning home, he became a featured performer on the radio and eventual television program, "Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge." Kyser gave him his stage name.
Douglas had some hits with Kyser in the 1940s, including "Old Lamplighter" and "Ole Buttermilk Sky." He made the pop charts one more time in 1966 with the sentimental "The Men in My Little Girl's Life."
As the rock 'n' roll era began to emerge in the late 1950s, his style became less marketable, so he started looking for a way to energize his career.
He briefly hosted "Hi, Ladies!", a daytime television program on WGN in Chicago. In 1961, Woody Fraser, a Westinghouse Group W program director who had known Douglas in Chicago, recruited him to a Group W station in Cleveland (then KYW) to host a talk and entertainment program.
The show syndicated starting in 1963 but had a limited budget, and Cleveland was not a frequent destination for well-known potential guests. The show moved to Philadelphia in 1965 and to Los Angeles in 1978.
Three years later, Group W replaced Douglas with a younger singer, John Davidson. "The Mike Douglas Show" continued in syndication under Douglas' control until he retired in 1982 to North Palm Beach, Fla. Douglas appeared as a guest on several talk shows but spent much of his leisure time on the golf course.
He was diagnosed with prostate cancer on 1990, but surgery was successful.
Besides his wife, survivors include daughters Kelly and twins Michele and Christine and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
linuxgeek
Rogue Scholar
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Bruno Kirby
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/15/kirby.obit.ap/index.html
Character actor Bruno Kirby, 57, dies
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/15/kirby.obit.ap/story.kirby.gi.jpg
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bruno Kirby, a veteran character actor who co-starred in "When Harry Met Sally," "City Slickers" and many other films, has died at age 57, his wife said Tuesday.
Kirby died Monday in Los Angeles from complications related to leukemia, according to a statement from his wife, Lynn Sellers. He had recently been diagnosed with the disease.
"We are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support we have received from Bruno's fans and colleagues who have admired and respected his work over the past 30 years," his wife said. "Bruno's spirit will continue to live on not only in his rich body of film and television work but also through the lives of individuals he has touched throughout his life."
Kirby was perhaps best known for his roles opposite Billy Crystal in 1989's "When Harry Met Sally" and 1991's "City Slickers."
Other film credits included "Good Morning, Vietnam," "The Godfather: Part II" and "Donnie Brasco." More recently, he played Phil Rubenstein on the HBO series "Entourage."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/15/kirby.obit.ap/index.html
Character actor Bruno Kirby, 57, dies
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/15/kirby.obit.ap/story.kirby.gi.jpg
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bruno Kirby, a veteran character actor who co-starred in "When Harry Met Sally," "City Slickers" and many other films, has died at age 57, his wife said Tuesday.
Kirby died Monday in Los Angeles from complications related to leukemia, according to a statement from his wife, Lynn Sellers. He had recently been diagnosed with the disease.
"We are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support we have received from Bruno's fans and colleagues who have admired and respected his work over the past 30 years," his wife said. "Bruno's spirit will continue to live on not only in his rich body of film and television work but also through the lives of individuals he has touched throughout his life."
Kirby was perhaps best known for his roles opposite Billy Crystal in 1989's "When Harry Met Sally" and 1991's "City Slickers."
Other film credits included "Good Morning, Vietnam," "The Godfather: Part II" and "Donnie Brasco." More recently, he played Phil Rubenstein on the HBO series "Entourage."
sweet soft kiss
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pipercatt said:
me too... one of my favorite actors out there.
Avery_Chisholm
School Bus Slut!
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sweet soft kiss
Tastefully Round
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phrodeau said:
I think his best part was Marlon Brando's goomba nephew in "The Freshman"
JennyOmanHill
trying hard to be mindful
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Country Singer Johnny Duncan Dies at 67
http://www.honkytonktx.com/texasmusic/images/Duncan.jpg
Aug 16, 1:31 AM (ET)
DALLAS (AP) - Country music singer Johnny Duncan, known for songs like "She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed Anytime" and "It Couldn't Have Been Any Better," has died. He was 67.
Duncan, who had a string of country hits in the 1970s, died Monday of a heart attack at a Fort Worth hospital, said Jim Harrell, owner and funeral director of Harrell Funeral Home in Dublin, which is handling arrangements.
"He knew when he was 12 years old that playing music and singing songs was going to be his life," said his wife, Connie Duncan, 54.
She said that after splitting time between Nashville, Tenn., and their Stephenville farm, they moved back to Texas about 15 years ago to live on the farm not far from the town of Dublin, where Duncan was born on Oct. 5, 1938.
"He grew up here in a small country town and loved music," Harrell said. "His mother played herself and a lot of his cousins played with him."
His cousins became famous as well - Jimmy Seals of Seals & Croft and country singer Dan Seals.
After moving to Nashville, Duncan began writing songs and country singers like Charley Pride and Conway Twitty recorded his music. He eventually signed his first record contract and began his singing career, according to his Web site.
Janie Fricke, who had hits like "Down to My Last Broken Heart" in the 1980s, said her music career started when she got a chance as a studio singer to sing a line in Duncan's song "Jo and the Cowboy."
After that, she was asked back to sing with him in hits like "Stranger" and "Thinkin' of a Rendezvous."
"That's what put my name on the map," Fricke said.
"He was a very sweet guy. We became very close friends," said Fricke, who lives near Dallas. "He touched a lot of hearts and touched a lot of lives during his time."
Duncan's longtime friend Don Miller, 59, of Cresson, said that Duncan, who released a new album in the last couple of years, was looking forward to going out on tour this fall with other artists.
"When you're an entertainer, you can't just sit and do nothing. It's in your blood, and it never leaves. I guess I'll be singing and writing forever," Duncan had said on his Web site.
Duncan has four daughters with his first wife and one son with Connie Duncan.
http://www.honkytonktx.com/texasmusic/images/Duncan.jpg
Aug 16, 1:31 AM (ET)
DALLAS (AP) - Country music singer Johnny Duncan, known for songs like "She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed Anytime" and "It Couldn't Have Been Any Better," has died. He was 67.
Duncan, who had a string of country hits in the 1970s, died Monday of a heart attack at a Fort Worth hospital, said Jim Harrell, owner and funeral director of Harrell Funeral Home in Dublin, which is handling arrangements.
"He knew when he was 12 years old that playing music and singing songs was going to be his life," said his wife, Connie Duncan, 54.
She said that after splitting time between Nashville, Tenn., and their Stephenville farm, they moved back to Texas about 15 years ago to live on the farm not far from the town of Dublin, where Duncan was born on Oct. 5, 1938.
"He grew up here in a small country town and loved music," Harrell said. "His mother played herself and a lot of his cousins played with him."
His cousins became famous as well - Jimmy Seals of Seals & Croft and country singer Dan Seals.
After moving to Nashville, Duncan began writing songs and country singers like Charley Pride and Conway Twitty recorded his music. He eventually signed his first record contract and began his singing career, according to his Web site.
Janie Fricke, who had hits like "Down to My Last Broken Heart" in the 1980s, said her music career started when she got a chance as a studio singer to sing a line in Duncan's song "Jo and the Cowboy."
After that, she was asked back to sing with him in hits like "Stranger" and "Thinkin' of a Rendezvous."
"That's what put my name on the map," Fricke said.
"He was a very sweet guy. We became very close friends," said Fricke, who lives near Dallas. "He touched a lot of hearts and touched a lot of lives during his time."
Duncan's longtime friend Don Miller, 59, of Cresson, said that Duncan, who released a new album in the last couple of years, was looking forward to going out on tour this fall with other artists.
"When you're an entertainer, you can't just sit and do nothing. It's in your blood, and it never leaves. I guess I'll be singing and writing forever," Duncan had said on his Web site.
Duncan has four daughters with his first wife and one son with Connie Duncan.
linuxgeek
Rogue Scholar
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Joe Rosenthal
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationw...tory?page=2&coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of six World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died Sunday. He was 94.
Rosenthal died of natural causes at an assisted living facility in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.
His photo, taken for The Associated Press on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.
The photo was listed in 1999 at No. 68 on a New York University survey of 100 examples of the best journalism of the century.
The photo actually shows the second raising of the flag that day on Mount Suribachi on the Japanese island. The first flag had been deemed too small.
The small island of Iwo Jima was a strategic piece of land 750 miles south of Tokyo, and the United States wanted it to support long-range B-29 bombers and a possible invasion of Japan.
The AP photo quickly became the subject of posters, war-bond drives and a U.S. postage stamp.
Rosenthal left the AP later in 1945 to join the San Francisco Chronicle, where he worked as a photographer for 35 years before retiring.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationw...tory?page=2&coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of six World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died Sunday. He was 94.
Rosenthal died of natural causes at an assisted living facility in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.
His photo, taken for The Associated Press on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.
The photo was listed in 1999 at No. 68 on a New York University survey of 100 examples of the best journalism of the century.
The photo actually shows the second raising of the flag that day on Mount Suribachi on the Japanese island. The first flag had been deemed too small.
The small island of Iwo Jima was a strategic piece of land 750 miles south of Tokyo, and the United States wanted it to support long-range B-29 bombers and a possible invasion of Japan.
The AP photo quickly became the subject of posters, war-bond drives and a U.S. postage stamp.
Rosenthal left the AP later in 1945 to join the San Francisco Chronicle, where he worked as a photographer for 35 years before retiring.
M
miles
Guest
sweet soft kiss said:
My favorite Bruno Kirby role was a young Clemenza in GF2.
sweet soft kiss
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miles said:
Essentially the same character.... The Freshman gets my vote because it's the only movie I know of where you get to see Marlon Brando figure skating and Bert Parks sining to a Komodo Dragon.
JennyOmanHill
trying hard to be mindful
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'Blackboard Jungle' Actor Glenn Ford Dies at 90
http://cdn.news.aol.com/aolnews_photos/00/01/20060830231409990001
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (Aug. 30) - Actor Glenn Ford, who played strong, thoughtful protagonists in films such as "The Blackboard Jungle," "Gilda" and "The Big Heat," died Wednesday, police said. He was 90.
Paramedics called to Ford's home just before 4 p.m. found Ford dead, police Sgt. Terry Nutall said, reading a prepared statement. "They do not suspect foul play," he said.
Ford suffered a series of strokes in the 1990s.
"It comes to mind instantly what a remarkable actor he was," actor Sidney Poitier, who also starred in "The Blackboard Jungle," said Wednesday evening. "He had those magical qualities that are intangible but are quite impactful on the screen. He was a movie star."
Failing health forced Ford to skip a 90th birthday tribute on May 1 at Hollywood's historic Grauman's Egyptian Theatre. But he did send greetings via videotape, adding, "I wish I were up and around, but I'm doing the best that I can.... There's so much I have to be grateful for."
At the event, Shirley Jones, who co-starred with him in the comedy "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," called Ford "one of the cornerstones of our industry, and there aren't many left."
Ford appeared in scores of films during his 53-year Hollywood career. The Film Encyclopedia, a reference book, lists 85 films from 1939 to 1991.
He was cast usually as the handsome tough, but his acting talents ranged from romance to comedy. His more famous credits include "Superman," "Gilda," "The Sheepman," "The Gazebo," "Pocketful of Miracles" and "Don't Go Near the Water."
An avid horseman and former polo player, Ford appeared in a number of Westerns, "3:10 to Yuma," "Cowboy," "The Rounders," "Texas," "The Fastest Gun Alive" and the remake of "Cimarron" among them. His talents included lighter parts, with roles in "The Teahouse of August Moon" and "It Started With a Kiss."
On television, he appeared in "Cade's County," "The Family Holvak," "Once an Eagle" and "When Havoc Struck." He starred in the feature film "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," which later became a TV series featuring Bill Bixby.
A tireless worker, Ford often made several films a year, Ford continued working well into his 70s. In 1992, though, he was hospitalized for more than two months for blood clots and other ailments, and at one point was in critical condition
After getting his start in theater in the 1930s, he got a break when he was signed by Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn.
In 1940, he appeared in five films, including "Blondie Plays Cupid" and "Babies for Sale." After serving with the Marines during World War II, Ford starred in 1946 as a small-time gambler in "Gilda," opposite Rita Hayworth.
The film about frustrated romance and corruption in postwar Argentina became a film noir classic. Hayworth plays Ford's former love, a sometime nightclub singer married to a casino operator, and she sizzles onscreen performing "Put the Blame on Mame."
Ford speaks the memorable voiceover in the opening scene: "To me a dollar was a dollar in any language. It was my first night in the Argentine and I didn't know much about the local citizens. But I knew about American sailors, and I knew I'd better get out of there."
Two years later he made "The Loves of Carmen," also with Hayworth.
"It was one of the greatest mistakes I ever made, embarrassing," Ford said of the latter film. "But it was worth it, just to work with her again."
One of his best-known roles was in the 1955 "The Blackboard Jungle," where he portrayed a young, soft-spoken teacher in a slum school who inspires a class full of juvenile delinquents to care about life.
"We did a film together, and it was for me a great experience because I had always admired his work," recalled Poitier. "When I saw him in films I had always marveled at the subtlety of his work. He was truly gifted."
In "The Big Heat," 1953, a gritty crime story, Ford played a police detective.
"Acting is just being truthful," he once said. "I have to play myself. I'm not an actor who can take on another character, like Laurence Olivier. The worst thing I could do would be to play Shakespeare."
He was born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford on May 1, 1916, in Quebec, the son of a railroad executive. The first name reflected his family's Welsh roots. When Ford joined Columbia, Cohn asked him to change his name to John Gower; Ford refused but switched his first name to Glenn, after his father's birthplace of Glenford.
He moved to Southern California at 8 and promptly fell in love with show business, even sneaking onto a Culver City studio lot at night. He took to the stage at Santa Monica High School. His first professional job was as a searchlight operator in front of a movie house.
He started his career in theater, as an actor with West Coast stage companies and as Tallulah Bankhead's stage manager in New York. In 1939, he made his first Hollywood film opposite Jean Rogers in the romance "Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence."
He married actress-dancer Eleanor Powell in 1943; the two divorced in 1959. They had a son, Peter. A 1965 marriage to actress Kathryn Hays ended quickly. In 1977, he married model Cynthia Hayward, 32 years his junior. They were divorced in 1984.
http://cdn.news.aol.com/aolnews_photos/00/01/20060830231409990001
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (Aug. 30) - Actor Glenn Ford, who played strong, thoughtful protagonists in films such as "The Blackboard Jungle," "Gilda" and "The Big Heat," died Wednesday, police said. He was 90.
Paramedics called to Ford's home just before 4 p.m. found Ford dead, police Sgt. Terry Nutall said, reading a prepared statement. "They do not suspect foul play," he said.
Ford suffered a series of strokes in the 1990s.
"It comes to mind instantly what a remarkable actor he was," actor Sidney Poitier, who also starred in "The Blackboard Jungle," said Wednesday evening. "He had those magical qualities that are intangible but are quite impactful on the screen. He was a movie star."
Failing health forced Ford to skip a 90th birthday tribute on May 1 at Hollywood's historic Grauman's Egyptian Theatre. But he did send greetings via videotape, adding, "I wish I were up and around, but I'm doing the best that I can.... There's so much I have to be grateful for."
At the event, Shirley Jones, who co-starred with him in the comedy "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," called Ford "one of the cornerstones of our industry, and there aren't many left."
Ford appeared in scores of films during his 53-year Hollywood career. The Film Encyclopedia, a reference book, lists 85 films from 1939 to 1991.
He was cast usually as the handsome tough, but his acting talents ranged from romance to comedy. His more famous credits include "Superman," "Gilda," "The Sheepman," "The Gazebo," "Pocketful of Miracles" and "Don't Go Near the Water."
An avid horseman and former polo player, Ford appeared in a number of Westerns, "3:10 to Yuma," "Cowboy," "The Rounders," "Texas," "The Fastest Gun Alive" and the remake of "Cimarron" among them. His talents included lighter parts, with roles in "The Teahouse of August Moon" and "It Started With a Kiss."
On television, he appeared in "Cade's County," "The Family Holvak," "Once an Eagle" and "When Havoc Struck." He starred in the feature film "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," which later became a TV series featuring Bill Bixby.
A tireless worker, Ford often made several films a year, Ford continued working well into his 70s. In 1992, though, he was hospitalized for more than two months for blood clots and other ailments, and at one point was in critical condition
After getting his start in theater in the 1930s, he got a break when he was signed by Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn.
In 1940, he appeared in five films, including "Blondie Plays Cupid" and "Babies for Sale." After serving with the Marines during World War II, Ford starred in 1946 as a small-time gambler in "Gilda," opposite Rita Hayworth.
The film about frustrated romance and corruption in postwar Argentina became a film noir classic. Hayworth plays Ford's former love, a sometime nightclub singer married to a casino operator, and she sizzles onscreen performing "Put the Blame on Mame."
Ford speaks the memorable voiceover in the opening scene: "To me a dollar was a dollar in any language. It was my first night in the Argentine and I didn't know much about the local citizens. But I knew about American sailors, and I knew I'd better get out of there."
Two years later he made "The Loves of Carmen," also with Hayworth.
"It was one of the greatest mistakes I ever made, embarrassing," Ford said of the latter film. "But it was worth it, just to work with her again."
One of his best-known roles was in the 1955 "The Blackboard Jungle," where he portrayed a young, soft-spoken teacher in a slum school who inspires a class full of juvenile delinquents to care about life.
"We did a film together, and it was for me a great experience because I had always admired his work," recalled Poitier. "When I saw him in films I had always marveled at the subtlety of his work. He was truly gifted."
In "The Big Heat," 1953, a gritty crime story, Ford played a police detective.
"Acting is just being truthful," he once said. "I have to play myself. I'm not an actor who can take on another character, like Laurence Olivier. The worst thing I could do would be to play Shakespeare."
He was born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford on May 1, 1916, in Quebec, the son of a railroad executive. The first name reflected his family's Welsh roots. When Ford joined Columbia, Cohn asked him to change his name to John Gower; Ford refused but switched his first name to Glenn, after his father's birthplace of Glenford.
He moved to Southern California at 8 and promptly fell in love with show business, even sneaking onto a Culver City studio lot at night. He took to the stage at Santa Monica High School. His first professional job was as a searchlight operator in front of a movie house.
He started his career in theater, as an actor with West Coast stage companies and as Tallulah Bankhead's stage manager in New York. In 1939, he made his first Hollywood film opposite Jean Rogers in the romance "Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence."
He married actress-dancer Eleanor Powell in 1943; the two divorced in 1959. They had a son, Peter. A 1965 marriage to actress Kathryn Hays ended quickly. In 1977, he married model Cynthia Hayward, 32 years his junior. They were divorced in 1984.
KindaKinky
It's Been A Long Time…
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2003
- Posts
- 5,537
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin killed
BRISBANE, Australia - Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition, Australian media said. He was 44.
Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state when the accident occurred, Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. said Irwin was diving near Low Isles Reef near the resort town of Port Douglas, about 1,260 miles north of the state capital of Brisbane.
Queensland ambulance service spokesman Bob Hamil confirmed that a diver had been killed by a stingray off Lowe Isles Reef but refused to say who the victim was until relatives had been notified.
A rescue helicopter was sent from the nearby city of Cairns, and paramedics from it confirmed the diver's death.
"The probable cause of death is stingray strike to the chest," Hamil said.
Staff at Australia Zoo, Irwin's zoo in southern Queensland, said they had heard the reports but could not comment.
Irwin is famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchcry "Crikey!" in his television program "Crocodile Hunter," which was first broadcast in Australia in 1992 and has aired around the world on the Discovery channel.
He rode his image into a feature film, and developed the Australia Zoo as a tourist attraction.
Irwin had received some negative publicity in recent years. In January 2004, he stunned onlookers at the Australia Zoo reptile park by carrying his 1-year-old son into a crocodile pen during a wildlife show. He tucked the infant under one arm while tossing the 13-foot reptile a piece of meat with the other.
Authorities declined to charge Irwin for violating safety regulations.
Later that year, he was accused of getting too close to penguins, a seal and humpback whales in Antarctica while making a documentary. Irwin denied any wrongdoing, and an Australian Environment Department investigation recommended no action be taken.
Irwin was also seen as a vocal critic of wildlife hunts in Australia. The federal government recently dropped plans to allow crocodile safaris for wealthy tourists in the Northern Territory following his vehement objections.
Irwin told the Australian television program "A Current Affair" that "killing one of our beautiful animals in the name of trophy hunting will have a very negative impact on tourism, which scares the living daylights out of me."
He is survived by his American wife Terri, from Oregon, and their daughter Bindi Sue, 8, and son Bob, who will turn 3 in December.
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20060904/capt.5f7dac8be66f413e92129298d41a23c5.obit_crocodile_hunter_ny110.jpg
BRISBANE, Australia - Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition, Australian media said. He was 44.
Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state when the accident occurred, Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. said Irwin was diving near Low Isles Reef near the resort town of Port Douglas, about 1,260 miles north of the state capital of Brisbane.
Queensland ambulance service spokesman Bob Hamil confirmed that a diver had been killed by a stingray off Lowe Isles Reef but refused to say who the victim was until relatives had been notified.
A rescue helicopter was sent from the nearby city of Cairns, and paramedics from it confirmed the diver's death.
"The probable cause of death is stingray strike to the chest," Hamil said.
Staff at Australia Zoo, Irwin's zoo in southern Queensland, said they had heard the reports but could not comment.
Irwin is famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchcry "Crikey!" in his television program "Crocodile Hunter," which was first broadcast in Australia in 1992 and has aired around the world on the Discovery channel.
He rode his image into a feature film, and developed the Australia Zoo as a tourist attraction.
Irwin had received some negative publicity in recent years. In January 2004, he stunned onlookers at the Australia Zoo reptile park by carrying his 1-year-old son into a crocodile pen during a wildlife show. He tucked the infant under one arm while tossing the 13-foot reptile a piece of meat with the other.
Authorities declined to charge Irwin for violating safety regulations.
Later that year, he was accused of getting too close to penguins, a seal and humpback whales in Antarctica while making a documentary. Irwin denied any wrongdoing, and an Australian Environment Department investigation recommended no action be taken.
Irwin was also seen as a vocal critic of wildlife hunts in Australia. The federal government recently dropped plans to allow crocodile safaris for wealthy tourists in the Northern Territory following his vehement objections.
Irwin told the Australian television program "A Current Affair" that "killing one of our beautiful animals in the name of trophy hunting will have a very negative impact on tourism, which scares the living daylights out of me."
He is survived by his American wife Terri, from Oregon, and their daughter Bindi Sue, 8, and son Bob, who will turn 3 in December.
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20060904/capt.5f7dac8be66f413e92129298d41a23c5.obit_crocodile_hunter_ny110.jpg
Arc da Rat
~~ Yaoi Blade Mistress ~~
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2002
- Posts
- 10,755
OMG ... I never thought I would see this happen ...
Rest in Peace you crazy Ozzie ...
Rest in Peace you crazy Ozzie ...
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