Harvey Pekar, 'American Splendor' Writer,
Dead At 70
Comic book cult hero was the
subject of 2003 Oscar-nominated biopic.
Famed comic book author Harvey Pekar has died at the age of
70, The
Associated Press reports. He was found dead in his Cleveland Heights,
Ohio, home early Monday (July 12).
Pekar had been suffering from prostate cancer, asthma, high
blood pressure and depression, according to Cleveland Heights Police Capt.
Michael Cannon. He had gone to bed about 4:30 p.m. on Sunday and was discovered
between a bed and dresser. His wife, Joyce Brabner, called officers at around 1
a.m.
The irascible comic
writer, long a beloved cult figure, reached a whole new audience in 2003, when
Paul Giamatti played him in the Oscar-nominated biopic, "American
Splendor." Pekar also appeared as himself in the film, which was both a
postmodern exploration of Pekar's life and a dramatization of his
autobiographical comics, also called "American
Splendor."
Different generations of comic book and comic strip fans
knew him for different achievements. He was a stalwart of the days of EC Comics.
He illustrated Secret Agent Corrigan in the
newspapers, adapted The Empire Strikes Back for comic books, and drew a
long run on the Star Wars newspaper strip. Modern readers knew him as an
inker of some of the most popular titles.
Al Williamson passed away on Saturday, June 12, 2010, at
the age of 79. The following statement was released by his family:
Al Williamson, who for over fifty years drew for both comic
books and comic strips, died June 12, 2010, at age 79. In recent years he
suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. He is survived by his wife of
thirty-two years, Cori, his daughter Valerie and his son Victor.
Williamson was born in New York City in 1931, but spent his
first thirteen years primarily in Bogotá, Colombia. In 1941, his mother
took him to see the science fantasy movie serial Flash Gordon Conquers the
Universe, an experience which, combined with his love for comics
storytelling, set his career course at an early age.
By DENA POTTER, Associated Press Writer Dena
Potter, Associated Press Writer – Mon Jun 14,
6:11 am ET
RICHMOND, Va. – Jimmy Dean,
a country music legend for his smash hit about a workingman hero, "Big
Bad John," and an entrepreneur known for his sausage brand, died on
Sunday. He was 81.
His wife, Donna Meade Dean, said her husband died at their
Henrico County, Va., home.
She told The Associated Press that he had some health
problems but was still functioning well, so his death came as a shock. She
said he was eating in front of the television. She left the room for a time
and came back and he was unresponsive. She said he was pronounced dead at 7:54
p.m.
"He was amazing," she said. "He had a lot of
talents."
Born in 1928, Dean was raised in poverty in Plainview,
Texas, and dropped out of high school after the ninth grade. He went on to a
successful entertainment career in the 1950s and '60s that included the
nationally televised "The
Jimmy Dean Show."
Golden Girl Rue McClanahan has died at the
age of 76.
"She passed away at 1 a.m. this morning," her manager, Barbara
Lawrence, tells PEOPLE. "She had a massive stroke."
McClanahan, who played man-happy Blanche Devereaux on the still-popular '80s
sitcom Golden Girls, had suffered a minor stroke earlier this year
while recovering from bypass surgery. Lawrence adds that at the time of her
death Thursday, McClanahan "had her family with her. She went in
peace."
Dennis Hopper, whose
unmistakable presence graced the silver screen for five decades in classics like
'Easy Rider' and 'Apocalypse Now,' died on Saturday after a grueling battle with
prostate cancer, a friend of the actor told Reuters. The actor was surrounded by
family and friends when he died at his home in Venice, California shortly after
8 AM, according to the friend, Alex Hitz. Hopper was 74.
The actor spent most of 2010 embroiled in a divorce from his fifth wife of 14
years, Victoria Duffy-Hopper. A family friend told The
Huffington Post in January that Hopper was "delirious and having
difficulty speaking." It was more recently reported that Hopper weighed
just barely 100 pounds and was too frail to attend chemotherapy treatments or
divorce proceedings.
LOS ANGELES — Art Linkletter, who encouraged both kids and
grown-ups to say the "darndest things" during his decades as a genial
but gently mischievous television personality, has died at age 97.
The host of "People Are Funny" and "House
Party" of the 1950s and '60s died Wednesday at his home in the Bel-Air
section of Los Angeles.
"He lived a long, full, pure life, and the Lord had need
for him," said his son-in-law, Art Hershey, the husband of Sharon
Linkletter.
Linkletter had been ill "in the last few weeks time, but
bear in mind he was 97 years old. He wasn't eating well, and the aging process
took him," Hershey said.
Linkletter hadn't been diagnosed with any life-threatening
disease, he said.
Linkletter was known on TV for his funny interviews with
children and ordinary folks. He also collected their comments in a number of
best-selling books.
"Because of Art Linkletter, adults found themselves
enjoying children," said Bill Cosby, whose style interviewing kids on his
own show in the late '90s was often compared to Linkletter's.
"An amazing fellow, a terrific broadcast talent, a
brilliant businessman. An all-around good guy," CNN's Larry King added
about his longtime friend and frequent guest.
Asked what made Linkletter so appealing to audiences, King
said, "He had an unusual voice, a twang to his voice that was immediately
recognizable. And he looked like your favorite uncle."
"Art Linkletter's House Party," one of television's
longest-running variety shows, debuted on radio in 1944 and was seen on CBS-TV
from 1952 to 1969.
Gary Coleman, who by age 11 had skyrocketed
to become TV's brightest star but as an adult could never quite land on solid
footing, has died after suffering a brain hemorrhage. He was 42.
Coleman died at 12:05 p.m. at the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo,
Utah, where he had been in a coma.
"He was removed from life support; soon thereafter, he passed quickly and
peacefully," his manager John Alcantar says. "By Gary’s bedside were
his wife and other close family members."
Sad news reaches THN that the man who replaced
Ozzy Osbourne as fronman of Black Sabbath in 1979 has died at the age of 67.
This man apparently came up with the devil horn hand gesture
now widely associated with metal. He also a singer in Rainbow and Dio. His wife
Wendy posted the following on his website:
“Today my heart is broken. Many, many friends and family
were able to say their private goodbyes before he peacefully passed away.
Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all. We so appreciate the love and
support that you have all given us … Please know he loved you all and his
music will live on forever.”
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Frank Frazetta, 82, the celebrated comic artist and
illustrator whose ax-wielding muscular warriors, scantily clad heroines and
ferocious beasts of prey graced numerous science fiction and fantasy novels,
died May 10 at a hospital in Fort Myers, Fla., after a stroke.
Mr. Frazetta, who started as a pencil-and-ink comic book
artist, painted movie posters and rock album covers, but he was perhaps best
known for the cover illustrations to the paperback reissues of Robert E.
Howard's Conan the Barbarian series and Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan and
Pellucidar series.
Mr. Frazetta's drawings were credited with renewing the
popularity of the character, a mainstay of the 1930s pulp magazine Weird
Tales. He helped define the illustration style for the fantasy sub-genre
known as "sword and sorcery."
NEW YORK – Lena
Horne, the enchanting jazz singer and actress who reviled the bigotry
that allowed her to entertain white audiences but not socialize with them,
slowing her rise to Broadway superstardom, has died. She was 92.
Horne died Sunday at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, according
to hospital spokeswoman Gloria Chin. Chin would not release any other details.
Horne, whose striking beauty and magnetic sex appeal often
overshadowed her sultry voice, was remarkably candid about the underlying reason
for her success.
"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white
people could accept," she once said. "I was their daydream. I had the
worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I
contributed. It was because of the way I looked."
LOS ANGELES – "Designing
Women" star Dixie
Carter, whose Southern charm and natural beauty won her a host of
television roles, has died at age 70.
Carter died Saturday
morning, according to publicist Steve Rohr, who represents Carter and her
husband, actor Hal Holbrook.
He declined to disclose the cause of death or where she died. Carter lived with
Holbrook in the Los Angeles area.
"This has been a terrible blow to our family,"
Holbrook said in a written statement. "We would appreciate everyone
understanding that this is a private family tragedy."
A native of Tennessee, Carter was most famous for playing
wisecracking Southerner Julia Sugarbaker for seven years on "Designing
Women," the CBS sitcom that ran from 1986 to 1993. The series was the peak
of a career in which she often played wealthy and self-important but independent
Southern women.
Sex Pistols' former
manager McLaren has died at 64
The former manager of the Sex Pistols and one of the seminal
figures of the punk rock era, Malcolm McLaren, died Thursday, his son said. He
was 64.
Joe Corre said his father died of an aggressive form of cancer
in Switzerland, declining to give the exact location because he said he wanted
to avoid a media scrum.
"He was the original punk rocker and revolutionized the
world," Corre told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
"He's somebody I'm incredibly proud of. He's a real beacon of a man for
people to look up to."
The multitalented McLaren rose to fame as the colorful manager
of The Sex Pistols, but the art college dropout is also known for the infamous
clothes shop he opened on London's King's Road with his then-girlfriend Vivienne
Westwood in 1971.
Actor Died April 1 From Complications Of Pneumonia; Previously Battled
Cancer
LOS ANGELES CBS -- A publicist says John Forsythe, who played
the scheming oil tycoon in Dynasty, has died. Forsythe was also the voice
of "Charlie" in the TV series "Charlie's Angels." He was at
92.
Forsythe made his fortune as TV's affable "Bachelor Father" and the
scheming oil tycoon in "Dynasty."
Publicist Harlan Boll said friday that Forsythe died late Thursday from
complications of pneumonia, following a yearlong battle with cancer in Santa
Ynez.
Despite his distinguished work in theater and films, Forsythe's greatest fame
arose from his role of Blake Carrington in the 1981-89 primetime soap opera
"Dynasty."
John Forsythe (born John
Lincoln Freund; January 29, 1918 - April 1, 2010) was an Americanstage,
television and film actor.
Forsythe starred in three television series, spanning three decades, as single
playboy father Bentley Gregg in the 1950s sitcomBachelor
Father (1957–1962); as the unseen millionaire Charles Townsend on the
1970s crimedramaCharlie's
Angels (1976–1981), and as ruthless and beloved patriarch Blake
Carrington on the 1980s soap
operaDynasty
(1981–1989). He hosted World of Survival during the 1970s. Forsythe
currently appears each year to read children's fiction during the annual
Christmas program near his home at the rural resort community of Solvang,
California, north of Los Angeles.
The actress and writer June Havoc, 97, whose childhood in
vaudeville as Baby June was immortalized in the musical Gypsy, died of
natural causes Sunday at her home in Stamford, Conn.
Ms. Havoc, the younger sister of the famed stripper Gypsy
Rose Lee, never reached the fame of her sister, but she had a varied,
successful theater career that stretched from 1918 throughout much of the
century.
With music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and
book by Arthur Laurents, Gypsy is considered one of the best musicals.
The original 1959 production starred Ethel Merman, who played the ferociously
pushy stage mother Mama Rose.
Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Robert Culp, the
actor who rose to fame as secret agent Kelly Robinson on the groundbreaking
1960s TV series "I Spy" and later played Ray Romano's
father-in-law on "Everybody Loves Raymond," has died. He was 79.
Culp died after falling on a sidewalk near a Los Angeles
park, said his publicist, Dick Delson. Delson had no further details.
The versatile Culp not only acted in "I Spy,"
which aired on NBC from 1965 to 1968, he also wrote several episodes. The
series, which also starred Bill Cosby as Robinson's partner (and, as their
covers, trainer to Culp's globe-trotting tennis player), was the first to
feature an African-American in a lead role; Cosby won three Emmys for his
work.
"I never had so much fun in my life, never, before or
since," he said of "I Spy" in a 2007 interview with the
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Archive of American Television.
Scoop is
saddened to note the passing of Dick Giordano, who was noted both as an artist
and as an editor in the comic book field. He was 77 and apparently succumbed to
complications from the treatment of leukemia, which he had battled for some
time.
“It's difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a comic-book
industry not graced and fostered by Dick Giordano,” wrote Michael Cavna on The
Washington Post’s comic blog. “Giordano touched the field, the
business and the craft in so many ways, so profoundly, that tracking his
influence can quickly become Six Degrees of Dick Giordano. Whether at the
drafting table or the editor's desk, he brought a keen eye to the development
and betterment of many a superhero -- be it Charlton Comics or DC Comics or a
Marvel gig.”
Giordano started his career with Charlton, eventually becoming
the company’s Editor-in-Chief in the mid 1960s. He moved to DC, then left to
launch Continuity Associates with Neal Adams. He returned to DC as an editor in
1980, and became Executive Editor in 1983. He stayed in the position until 1993,
when he returned to the freelance world. He also co-founded the short-lived
Future Comics.
Joe Sarno, the Chicago comic book retailer and founder of the
Chicago Comicon, passed away on Thursday, March 18, 2010, following a long
illness.
“In 1971 Mr. Sarno's basement became one of the nation's
first dedicated comic book stores,” reported the Chicago
Breaking News Center website. About a year after his basement location
debuted, he launched a more formal retail presence, The Nostalgia Shop.
Many Chicago area collectors got to know him after The
Nostalgia Shop morphed into ComicKingdom, which had multiple locations and
survived until March, 2003, when Sarno moved his operations to the Internet due
to failing health
An even wider audience got to know him through his convention,
the Chicago Comicon, which he eventually sold to Wizard.
“In the mid-70s I would drive down to his store in the city to
buy my comics. I urged him to open a store in the northwest suburbs
because there were a lot of guys like me. He said, ‘Why don't you do it,
Gary?’ And that was the impetus to open the first Moondog's store
in 1978,” said Sarno’s longtime colleague Gary Colabuono.
Actor Fess Parker, famous for playing
American pioneer Davy Crockett in Walt Disney's classic 1950s TV series, has
died in California at the age of 85.
The Texas-born actor launched a craze for coonskin caps and
buckskin shirts with his sturdy turn as the US icon.
Parker went on to play Daniel Boone, another real-life
frontiersman, in a 1960s TV show before retiring.
Actor Peter
Graves, whose career spanned a star-making role in the 1960s TV series
"Mission Impossible" to a late career reboot in the 1980s as Captain
Clarence Oveur in the two slapstick "Airplane!" movies, died at age 83
on Sunday.
According to CNN,
Graves collapsed in the driveway of his Los Angeles home on Sunday and was found
by his daughter, who attempted to perform CPR unsuccessfully. A spokesperson for
the actor said he was in good health and died of natural causes.
Born Peter Aurness on March 26, 1925, Graves had a long and
storied career in Hollywood that spanned more than 70 movies and a number of TV
series, beginning in 1942 with an uncredited debut in the war film "Winning
Your Wings." He moved out to Hollywood to join his older brother, actor
James Arness, best known as the star of the long-running TV Western "Gunsmoke."
Peter changed his last name his name to avoid confusion with his sibling.
Actor Corey Haim, 38, is dead after an apparent
drug overdose. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Coroner confirmed that
Haim, who battled substance addiction for several years, was found unresponsive
in an Oakwood apartment and pronounced dead at Providence St. Joseph’s Medical
Center at 2:15 a.m. this morning. His mother, according
to FOX station KTLA, was in the apartment at the time.
Doug Fieger, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist
of the band the Knack, whose enduring 1979 hit “My Sharona” has become an
emblem of the new wave era in rock and a prime example of the brevity of pop
fame, died on Sunday at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 57.
Pernell Roberts, the ruggedly handsome actor who shocked
Hollywood by leaving TV’s “Bonanza” at the height of its popularity, then
found fame again years later on “Trapper John, M.D.,” has died. He was 81.
Roberts, the last surviving member of the classic Western’s
cast, died of cancer Sunday at his Malibu home, his wife Eleanor Criswell told
the Los Angeles Times.
On December 29, 2009, it was reported that, after
a month-long stay at Cedars-Sinai
Medical Center, her close companion and her family made the decision to take
Rubinstein off life
support due to both kidney and lung failure.[8]
On January 2, 2010, friends reported she was not near death, and was well on her
way to recovery.[9]
On January 27, 2010, Rubinstein died at Barlow
Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles.[1]
Jerome David "J. D." Salinger
(IPA: [ˈsælɪndʒər],
SAL-in-jər;
January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) was an American author, best known for his
1951 novelThe
Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive
nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview
in 1980.
Raised in Manhattan,
Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published
several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World
War II. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A
Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The
New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his subsequent work.
In 1951 Salinger released his novel The Catcher in the Rye, an immediate
popular success. His depiction of adolescent
alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonistHolden
Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers.[2]
The novel remains widely read and controversial,[3]
selling around 250,000 copies a year.
Erich
Segal, a Yale
classics professor turned popular writer whose first novel, “Love Story,”
became a staggering commercial success if not quite a critical one when it
appeared in 1970, died on Sunday at his home in London. He was 72.
The cause was a heart attack, his daughter
Francesca said on Tuesday. Mr. Segal had been ill with Parkinson’s disease for
25 years.
Arnold Stang, actor famed for playing nerdy roles, dies at 91
NEWTON, Mass. — Arnold
Stang, Hollywood's favorite nerd, has died.
His son says the radio, theater,
film and television actor famous for his geeky roles and demeanor, died of
pneumonia Sunday at Newton-Wellesley
Hospital in Massachusetts.
He was 91.
The New
York City native started his career on the radio as a teenager.
He played alongside Milton
Berle in the 1950s, starred as Frank
Sinatra's sidekick in the 1955 movie "The Man with the Golden
Arm," and was a member of the ensemble comedic cast of "It's a Mad,
Mad, Mad, Mad World" in 1963.
Actress Connie
Hines, who played Wilbur's wife on the popular 1960s television show
"Mister Ed" has died. She was 79, AP
reported.
Her "Mister Ed" co-star Alan Young told the Los Angeles Times that
Hines died Friday at her Beverly Hills home from complications of heart
problems.
Hines was best known for portraying Carol Post on the show that featured a
talking horse. She wrote a book in 2007 entitled "Mister Ed and Me and
More."
Dan O’Bannon, whose screenplays for “Alien,”“Total
Recall,” “The Return of the Living Dead” and other films made him a
cult hero among science fiction aficionados, died on Thursday in Santa Monica,
Calif. He was 63.
The Writers
Guild of America confirmed his death. The cause was Crohn’s disease, a
chronic gastrointestinal disorder that Mr. O’Bannon endured for 30 years, his
wife, Diane, told The Los Angeles Times.
Mr. O’Bannon had an early start as a screenwriter when he
and the director John
Carpenter, students at the time at the University
of Southern California film school, wrote the low-budget film “Dark
Star,” which was released as a feature in 1974.
Roy Edward Disney, KCSG
(January 10, 1930 – December 16, 2009)[1]
was a longtime senior executive for The
Walt Disney Company, which his father Roy
Oliver Disney and his uncle Walt
Disney founded. At the time of death he was a shareholder (over 16 million
shares or about 1%),[2]
and served as a consultant for the company and Director Emeritus for the Board
of Directors. He is perhaps best known for organizing the ousting of two top
Disney executives: first, Ron
Miller in 1984, and then Michael
Eisner in 2005.
As the last member of the Disney
family to be actively involved in the company, Roy Disney was often compared
to his uncle and father. In 2006, Forbes
magazine estimated his personal fortune at about USD$1.2
billion.[3]
Gene Barry, who died at age 90 on Wednesday, had
a great voice: Deep and growly, but with a nice lilt to it when he wanted to put
a playful spin on a tough-guy line. It was a voice he used to charm audiences
first in the TV Western that made him a star, Bat Masterson (1958-61),
then as Amos Burke, a rich guy who joined the L.A. police force in Burke’s
Law (1963-66) and sped to crime scenes in a Rolls Royce. My mom had a crush
on him when he starred in as a magazine tycoon in The Name of the Game
(1968-71). His biggest movie role by far was in 1953’s George Pal version of War
of the Worlds. And Barry carved out a career as a Broadway leading-man,
winning particular praise for his turn as Georges in La Cage Aux Folles,
and worked up a solid nightclub act in which his voice was used to sing rumbling
versions of pop standards.
Scoop is saddened to report that noted fan, promoter,
publisher, advisor, bookstore owner and friend to fandom Ken Krueger has passed
away. Born October 7, 1926, Krueger was a member of First Fandom, the
group of attendees of the very first science-fiction convention in New York in
1939. He is perhaps best known as the co-founder of what is now Comic-Con
International: San Diego.
“A book store owner and small press publisher he was
instrumental in the founding of the San Diego Comic-Con along with Shel Dorf,
Richard Alf and a group of young local fans including Scott Shaw!, Bill Lund,
Mike Towry, Barry Alfonso and Bob Sourke,” said writer-artist Jim Valentino of
Image Comics.
“He served as the con's first chairman, later treasurer and
resident grown-up,” he said.
During his career he owned many bookstores, several publishing
houses and worked in distribution for Pacific Comics and CapitolCity .
San
Diego's Comic-Con Creator Shel Dorf Dead at 76
With the San Diego Comic-Con now running like
clockwork as one of the biggest gatherings for comics, movies, and any other
vaguely nerdy pop-culture ephemera in the world, it's hard to believe that it's
largely the work of one man. Shel Dorf, a comic book collector
who moved from Detroit to San Diego, put together the first con back in 1970,
which was attended by 300 people. The most recent SDCC, this past August, was
attended by 125,000 people, with next year only promising more. It's sad that
having passed away earlier today [Friday, Nov. 6], Dorf will no longer be able
to attend.
JOHN Hart, who played the Lone Ranger in 52 episodes of the
long-running 1950s television series featuring a masked cowboy, has died of
dementia at his home in Baja California. He was 91.
A Los Angeles native who launched his Hollywood career with a
minor part in Cecil B. DeMille's 1938 film The Buccaneer, Hart played
small roles in a string of films before being drafted into the US Army in 1941.
Soupy Sales, the comedy icon who made the made
pie-in-the-face gag a pop-culture phenomenon, died Thursday, October 22,
2009 at the age of 83.
To see Soupy Sales tell a true and funny story as to how his live, on-air humor
about "green pieces of paper" got him into trouble and thrown off the
air in 1963, watch the video below.
Legendary pro wrestling manager Captain Lou Albano
died this morning, MTV.com is reporting.
Albano, who was sent home from the hospital earlier this
week and place under hospice care, was 76 years old.
Albano is best known to non-wrestling fans as the father
in Cyndi Lauper's "Girls
Just Want to Have Fun" video. That helped kick off the Rock 'n
Wrestling connection that launched the then-WWF to national prominence in
the 1980s.
What is your favorite Lou Albano memory? Leave a comment
and let us know.
Lucy Vodden (née O’Donnell), who was the
inspiration for the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” has
died, following a long battle with the autoimmune disease lupus. The British
housewife — whose passing was announced by the St Thomas’ Lupus Trust
charity — was 46.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Crystal Lee Sutton, 68, a textile worker who rebelled
against the low pay and poor conditions in a Southern mill to urge its workers
to unionize and whose life inspired the film "Norma Rae," died of
brain cancer Sept. 11 at a hospice in Burlington, N.C.
Ms. Sutton, a 33-year-old mother of three who earned $2.65
per hour folding towels at the J.P. Stevens textile plant, was fired in 1973
for her pro-union activity. Before the police hauled her off the factory
floor, the 16-year veteran of the job wrote "UNION" on a piece of
cardboard, climbed on to a table and slowly rotated so her fellow workers
could see her protest.
Her colleagues responded by shutting down their machines,
in defiance of management orders.
Mary Allin Travers (November 9, 1936 –
September 16, 2009) was an American singer-songwriter
and member of the folk
group Peter,
Paul and Mary, along with Peter
Yarrow and Noel
"Paul" Stookey. Peter, Paul and Mary was one of the most
successful folk-singing groups of the 1960s.[3]
Almost unique among the folk musicians who emerged from the Greenwich Village
scene in the early 1960s, Travers actually came from the neighborhood.[3]
Henry Gibson, who died on Monday from cancer at
the age of 73, was a fine comedic actor and living pun. (Born James Bateman, his
stage name was a tip of the hat to playwright Henrik Ibsen.) Gibson initially
became famous in the late ’60s with his turns on the satirical comedy show Rowan
& Martin’s Laugh-In and, more recently, portrayed an idiosyncratic
judge on Boston Legal. His film credits included The Incredible
Shrinking Woman, Wedding Crashers, and the Blues Brothers,
in which he memorably essayed a Nazi. He was also a favorite actor of the
director Joe Dante who cast him in Innerspace, the ‘burbs,
and Gremlins 2.
Ellie Greenwich dies at 68; co-wrote 'Da Doo Ron Ron,' 'Chapel of Love' and
other '60s hits
By
Randy Lewis
Ellie Greenwich, the New York songwriter behind a
string of 1960s hits that gave effervescent voice to unbridled teen romance
including "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Chapel of Love" and "Be My
Baby," many of them in collaboration with producer Phil Spector, died
Wednesday of a heart attack, according to her niece, Jessica Weiner. She was 68.
She was being treated for pneumonia and "some other heart issues" at
St. Luke's- Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York when she suffered the heart
attack, Weiner said.
(CNN) -- Television
pioneer and longtime CBS executive Don Hewitt, the creator of "60
Minutes," has died, the network said Wednesday. He was 86.
Hewitt, who had been battling pancreatic cancer, died at his
home in Bridgehampton, New York, surrounded by his family, CBS said.
The winner of eight Emmy and two Peabody awards, Hewitt began
working for CBS News as an associate director in 1948. He was executive producer
of "60 Minutes" when it premiered on CBS on September 24, 1968. Hewitt
stepped down in June 2004, but the program remains on the air and is the
number-one news program, according to CBS News' Web site.
Guitarist and inventor Les Paul — who invented the device
that made the electric guitar possible — died Aug. 13 at the age of 94.
Paul's contributions to rock 'n' roll went well beyond one
gadget. He designed guitars — vintage models were selling for thousands of
dollars even before news of his death came — and made the first multi-track
recorder. He introduced innovations that established the recording studio itself
as a legitimate musical instrument. And in doing so, he shaped much of the
genre's sound.
Born in Pocahontas,
Arkansas,
the son of a sharecropper,
Riley learned to play guitar from black farm workers. After 4 years in the Army,
Riley first recorded in Memphis,
Tennessee in 1955 before being lured to Sun
Studios by Sam
Phillips. He recorded "Trouble Bound" for Jack Clement and Slim
Wallace. Sam Phillips obtained the rights and he released "Trouble
Bound" b/w "Rock With Me Baby" on September 1, 1956 (Sun 245).
His first hit was "Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll" b/w "I Want You
Baby" released February 23, 1957 (Sun 260) after which he recorded
"Red Hot" b/w "Pearly Lee" released September 30, 1957 (Sun
277) both with backing piano by Jerry
Lee Lewis.
"Red Hot" was showing a lot of promise as a big hit
record, but Sam Phillips pulled the promotion and switched it to "Great
Balls Of Fire" by Jerry Lee Lewis. The record was pulled without a lot of
sales. He had other Sun recordings and they, likewise, did not have a lot of
sales as his promotion had stopped.
Considered good looking and with wild stage moves, Riley had a
brief solo career with his backing band "The Little Green Men". Riley
and his Little Green Men were the main Sun studio band. They were Riley, Roland
Janes, J.M. Van Eaton, Marvin Pepper, and Jimmy Wilson, later joined by Martin
Willis.
In 1960, he left Sun, and started Rita Record label with
Roland Janes. They produced the national hit record "Mountain Of Love"
by Harold Dorman. He later started two other labels Nita and Mojo.
John Hughes, the screenwriter, producer and director whose films captured the
teenage zeitgeist of the 1980s, died suddenly of a heart attack today in New
York City. He was 59.
Hughes, best known for 1980s movies such as "Sixteen Candles,"
"The Breakfast Club," "Pretty in Pink" and "Ferris
Bueller's Day Off," was taking a morning walk in Manhattan where he was
visiting family, according to a statement from his representatives.
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Brenda Joyce, who played Jane
with two movie Tarzans, died here on July 4. She was 92.
A family friend, David Ragan, said she died of pneumonia at a
nursing home after suffering from dementia for a decade.
Ms. Joyce, who was born Betty Leabo, appeared in about two
dozen movies, but was best known for succeeding Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane in
the “Tarzan” pictures. She appeared in five “Tarzan” movies in the
1940s, beginning with “Tarzan and the Amazons” opposite Johnny
Weissmuller in 1945. Her final “Tarzan” film was “Tarzan’s Magic
Fountain,” with Lex Barker, in 1949, which was also the last year she acted in
movies.
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr.
(November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009)[2][3][4]
was an Americanbroadcast
journalist, best known as anchorman
for the CBS
Evening News for 19 years (1962–81). During the heyday of CBS
News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited in viewer opinion
polls as "the most trusted man in America" because of his
professional experience and kindly demeanor.[5][6]
Cronkite died on July 17, 2009 at the age of 92 from cerebrovascular
disease,[7]
described by his son as complications from dementia.[8]
Cronkite was born in Saint
Joseph, Missouri, the son of Helen Lena (née
Fritsche) and Dr. Walter Leland Cronkite, a dentist.[9][10]
He had remote Dutch ancestry on his father's side, the family surname originally
being Krankheyt.[11]
He dropped out of college in his junior year in
1935 after starting a series of newspaper reporting jobs covering news and
sports.[3]
He entered broadcasting as a radio announcer for WKY
in Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma.
In 1936, he met his future wife Mary Elizabeth Maxwell (known by her nickname
"Betsy") while working as the sports announcer for KCMO
(AM) in Kansas
City, Missouri.[9][3]
His broadcast name was "Walter Wilcox".[13]
He would explain later that radio stations at the time did not want people to
use their real names for fear of taking their listeners with them if they left.
In Kansas City, he joined the United
Press in 1937.[3]
He became one of the top American reporters in World
War II, covering battles in North
Africa and Europe.[9]
He was one of eight journalists selected by the U.S. Army Air Forces to fly
bombing raids over Germany in a B-17
Flying Fortress.[14]
He also landed in a glider with the 101st
Airborne in Operation
Market-Garden and covered the Battle
of the Bulge. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg
trials, and served as the United Press main reporter in Moscow
for two years.
In 1950, Cronkite joined CBS
News in its young and growing television division, recruited by Edward
R. Murrow, who had previously tried to hire Cronkite from UP during the war.
Cronkite began working at WTOP-TV, the CBS
affiliate in Washington,
D.C.. He originally served as anchor of the network's 15 minute late Sunday
evening newscast Up To the Minute, which followed What's
My Line? at 11:00pm ET from 1951 through 1962.
On July 7, 1952, the term "anchor"
was coined to describe Cronkite's role at both the Democratic
and Republican
National Conventions, which marked the first nationally-televised convention
coverage.[15]
Cronkite anchored the network's coverage of the 1952
presidential election as well as later conventions. In 1964 he was
temporarily replaced by the team of Robert
Trout and Roger
Mudd; this proved to be a mistake, and Cronkite was returned to the anchor
chair for future political conventions.
From 1953 to 1957, Cronkite hosted the CBS program You
Are There, which reenacted historical events, using the format of a news
report. His famous last line for these programs was: "What sort of day was
it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our
times... and you were there." In 1971, the show was revived and redesigned
to attract an audience of teenagers and young adults on Saturday mornings. He
also hosted The
Twentieth Century, a documentary series about important historical
events of the century which was made up almost exclusively of newsreel
footage and interviews. It became a long-running hit. Cronkite also hosted It's
News to Me, a game show based on news events.
Robert Strange McNamara
(June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American
business executive and the eighth Secretary
of Defense. McNamara served as Defense Secretary for PresidentsJohn
F. Kennedy and Lyndon
B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968. Following that he served as President of the World
Bank from 1968 until 1981. McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems
analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today
as policy
analysis.[4]
LOS ANGELES—Gale Storm,
whose wholesome appearance and perky personality made her one of early
television's biggest stars on "My Little Margie" and "The Gale
Storm Show," has died at age 87.
Storm, who had been in failing health in recent years, died
Saturday at a convalescent hospital in Danville, said her son, Peter Bonnell.
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June
25, 2009) was an American recording
artist, entertainer,
philanthropist
and businessman.
The seventh child of the Jackson
family, he made his debut onto the professional music scene at the age of 11
as a member of The
Jackson 5 in 1969, then began a solo career in 1971 while still a member of
the group. Referred to as the "King
of Pop"[2]
in subsequent years, his 1982 album Thriller
remains the world's best-selling record of all time[3]
and four of his other solo studio
albums are among the world's best-selling records: Off
the Wall (1979), Bad
(1987), Dangerous
(1991) and HIStory
(1995).
In the early 1980s, he became a dominant figure in popular
music and the first African
American entertainer to amass a strong crossover
following on MTV. The
popularity of his music
videos airing on MTV, such as "Beat
It", "Billie
Jean" and "Thriller"—widely
credited with transforming the music video from a promotional tool into an art
form—helped bring the relatively new channel to fame. Videos such as "Black
or White" and "Scream"
made Jackson an enduring staple on MTV in the 1990s. With stage performances and
music videos, Jackson popularized a number of physically complicated dance
techniques, such as the robot
and the moonwalk.
His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced many hip
hop, pop
and contemporary
R&B artists.
On June 4, 2009, Carradine was found dead in his room at the
Swissotel Nai Lert Park Hotel on Wireless Road, near Sukhumvit,
in central Bangkok,
Thailand.[2][3]
A police official said Carradine was found hanging by a rope in the room's
closet,[13][14]
and the Bangkok
Post reported that his body was found curled up in the wardrobe with a shoelace
tied around his genitals and neck.[15]
KhunyingPornthip
Rojanasunand, a Thaiforensicpathologist
and Director of Central Institute of Forensic Science, stated the incident met
four of the criteria for accidental death involving autoerotic
asphyxiation. Police Lieutenant General Worapong Chewprecha, Commander of
the Metropolitan Police, remarked that the closed
circuit television installed within the hotel supported the theory that no
other persons were involved with the death.[16][17][18][19]
Carradine's representative and family members told the press that they believed
the death to be accidental and not a suicide.[20]
Carradine was in Bangkok to shoot his latest movie, Stretch,
but the film crew were aware of his absence when they went to dine out at a
restaurant on June 3.[2]
Cinema
Retro reader Rory Monteith has provided the following exclusive statement
which he obtained from Mr. Abrahams' daughter-in-law:
"Mort Abrahams, the retired TV and movie producer, who produced the
original "Planet of the Apes," (and, I think, two of the others)
passed
away in his Studio City home on May 28, 2009. I know this because I am
his daughter-in-law, and his widow just telephoned me. He died early
this morning, with his daughter and his wife at his bedside. He had
been ill for some time, and his death was not unexpected.
As well--and more importantly, from my point of view--as being an
accomplished producer and later a mentor to younger talent when he was
at the American Film Institute, Mort was a warm, gentle, loving man. He
was patient and giving with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
He would play countless card games with them, sometimes putting on
funny accents. He had an endless supply of amazing anecdotes about life
in the business. His wife, his daughter, and his son (my late husband)
had all heard these stories, but my daughter and I were always
enthralled. Above all, he had a sweetness to him, a vulnerability, that
was to me his defining trait. I shall miss him so much!
Mr. Abrahams' body is to be cremated, and there will be no public
memorial service, as per his wishes. He is survived by his wife and
daughter, son- and daughter-in-law, two grandchildren, and two
great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his son just over a
year ago." <<
Dom
DeLuise
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN)
-- Dom DeLuise, who spiced up such movies as "Blazing Saddles,"
"Silent Movie" and "The Cannonball Run" with his manic
delivery and roly-poly persona, has died, his son's publicist said.
Publicist Jay Schwartz did not disclose the cause of death,
but DeLuise, 75, had been battling cancer for more than a year.
DeLuise was surrounded by family when he died in a Santa
Monica, California, hospital Monday night, son Michael DeLuise told CNN
affiliate KTLA.
Both of Arthur's surviving Golden Girls co-stars
commented on Bea's death. Rue McClanahan saying, "I suppose perhaps the
thing she did the best and the most of was make people laugh". [17]
Betty White also commented saying, "I knew it would hurt. I just didn't
know it would hurt this much". [18]
On April 28, 2009, the marquees
of New York City's Broadway theater district were dimmed in her memory for one
minute at 8:00 P.M.[19][20]
Marilyn Chambers, the pretty Ivory Snow girl who helped bring
hard-core adult films into the mainstream consciousness when she starred in the
explicit 1972 movie "Behind the Green Door," has died at 56.
The cause of death was not immediately known. A family friend,
Peggy McGinn, said Chambers' 17-year-old daughter found the actress' body Sunday
night at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Canyon Country. Chambers was
pronounced dead at the scene, the county coroner's office said Monday.
Newsday reports the death last
week of veteran artist Frank
Springer at age 79.
Springer was a gregarious and practical man who labored for
hours a day in his backyard studio, said his son, Jon Springer of Brooklyn.
“He’d be out there basically all day long, morning until dinnertime.”
The
artist who defined Vampirella’s look for at least two generations of comic
book fans has passed away. The death of Jose “Pepe” Gonzalez at age 70 was
announced by Harris Comics.
Gonzalez
is best known for his work on Vampirella when it was published in magazine form
by Warren, beginning with Vampirella #12 (1971). “His work was
thrilling, sensuous and beautiful. He brought the character to life, elevated
her to an icon and, most deservedly, won over a legion of fans who have never
forgotten him. To this day, many would say his was the definitive rendition of
the character,” Harris said in their press release.
'Lost in Space' actor Bob May dies at 69 in Calif.
LOS ANGELES – Bob May, who donned The Robot's suit in the
hit 1960s television show "Lost
in Space," has died. He was 69.
May died Sunday of congestive heart failure at a hospital in
Lancaster, said his daughter, Deborah May.
He was a veteran actor and stuntman who had appeared in
movies, TV shows and on the vaudeville stage when he was tapped by "Lost in
Space" creator Irwin Allen
to play the Robinson family's loyal metal sidekick in the series that debuted in
1965.
"He always said he got the job because he fit in the robot
suit," said June
Lockhart, who played family matriarch Maureen Robinson. "It was one
of those wonderful Hollywood
stories. He just happened to be on the studio lot when someone saw him
and sent him to see Irwin Allen about the part. Allen said, 'If you can fit in
the suit, you've got the job.'"
Although May didn't provide the robot's distinctive voice
(that was done by announcer Dick
Tufeld), he developed a following of fans who sought him out at
memorabilia shows.
Ricardo Montalban, one of Hollywood's first Latino leading
men, who had a long career as a television and movie actor but whose lingering
fame perhaps owes most to a less august role as the debonair concierge of
"Fantasy Island," died Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 88.
His death was announced by Eric Garcetti, president of the
Los Angeles City Council, who represents the Hollywood district where
Montalban lived and where a theater is named for him, The Associated Press
reported. He did not give a cause.
Patrick McGoohan passed away in Los Angeles today. He was 80.
McGoohan is (arguably) best knows as Number Six in THE
PRISONER, for which he was a producer, writer, and director. Some theorize THE
PRISONER may have been a loose continuation of DANGER MAN, an early 60s TV
series featuring McGoohan as an operative named John Drake (more on the series'
connections HERE).
But his accomplishments spanned a far greater range of
projects - including ICE STATION ZEBRA, ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ, David Cronenberg's
SCANNERS, Mel Gibson's BRAVEHEART, and THE PHANTOM (father to Billy Zane's
character). In 1976 he co-starred with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor in Arthur
Hiller's SILVER STREAK.
Edward D. Cartier, sci-fi, and pulp fiction illustrator for
the legendary The Shadow series died on Christmas Day, December 25, 2008
at his home in Ramsey, New Jersey. Reported by his son Dean Cartier, he suffered
from Parkinson’s disease. He was 94 years-old.
His artwork appeared in literature by authors like Robert A.
Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, but he’s most well known for illustrating The
Shadow in the 1930s and ‘40s. The Shadow novels were written by
Walter B. Gibson, appearing in pulp magazines, they chronicled the adventures of
the mysterious black clad crime fighter.
Van Johnson (August 25, 1916 –
December 12, 2008) (born Charles Van Johnson) was an American film and
television actor and dancer who was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
studios during World
War II.
Johnson was the embodiment of the "boy next door,"
playing "the red-haired, freckle-faced soldier, sailor or B-25 bomber pilot
who used to live down the street" in MGM movies during the war years. At
the time of his death in December 2008, he was one of the last surviving matinee
idols of Hollywood's "golden age." [1]
Majel B. Roddenberry, wife of 'Star Trek' creator, dies
Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of
"Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and an actress whose longtime
association with the "Star Trek" franchise included playing Nurse
Christine Chapel in the original series, died early Thursday morning. She was
76.
Roddenberry died at her home in Bel-Air after a battle with leukemia, said
family spokesman Sean Rossall.
Bettie Page, the bombshell pin-up queen who both titillated
and outraged Americans during her legendary career as a model and actress in the
1950s, has died at the age of 85.
Page never regained consciousness after suffering a heart
attack last week in Los Angeles, said her agent, Mark Roesler. Before the heart
attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.
“She captured the imagination of a generation of men and
women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality,” Mr Roesler said. “She
is the embodiment of beauty.”
Forrest J Ackerman magazine editor, literary agent, actor, and
Ray Bradbury’s discoverer, passed away Thursday, December 4, 2008 of heart
failure in his Los Angeles home, Kevin Burns, Prometheus Entertainment head and
trustee of Ackerman’s estate said. He was 92 years-old.
Entrenched in the sci-fi genre, Ackerman is credited with
coining the term “science fiction”. He is a legend through sci-fi circles as
the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland.
“He became the Pied Piper, the spiritual leader, of everything science
fiction, fantasy, and horror,” Burns said last Friday.
Ackerman was the owner of a huge, private collection of
science fiction movie and literary memorabilia that filled his mansion. The
collection once included over 50,000 books, thousands of sci-fi magazines, and
incredible pieces like Bela Lugosi’s cape from 1931’s Dracula. On
Saturdays, he opened his home to anyone wanting to view the treasures within. He
told the Associated Press, “My wife used to say, ‘How can you let strangers
into our home?’ But what’s the point of having a collection like this if you
can’t let people enjoy it?”
Odetta, the famed American
folk singer whose powerful songs became anthems for the U.S. civil rights
movement, has died at 77.
Her manager, Douglas Yeager, said Odetta died of heart disease in a New York
hospital on Tuesday. Yeager noted she had hoped to sing during the inauguration
of President-elect Barack Obama on January 20, when he is to become the first
African-American
president of the United States.
Odetta sang during the 1963 march on Washington, which was led by civil rights
leader Martin Luther King, Jr. On that day, she performed a song from the
slavery era called "O Freedom."
Narz was awarded the Distinguished
Flying Cross for missions in the China-Burma area as a fighter pilot during World
War II. He went to broadcasting school in Los Angeles after the war and was
later hired as an announcer the Los Angeles radio station KXO
and did radio commercials for local businesses.[1]
In the initial (1951) episode of Adventures
of Superman, he narrated at key points in the backstory of the title
character. At the conclusion of the opening episode of Superman, Narz's
voiceover asked viewers to "Join us every week for the adventures of
Superman!" Narz was paid $150 for the voice work and received annual
royalty payments of $1.98.[1]
He also made appearances in local Los Angeles television and served as the
announcer on one of TV's first nationally-broadcast children's shows, Space
Patrol.
EC historian and art expert Roger Hill
contributed this story.
On August 6, 2008, it was reported that
veteran Golden Age artist Jack Kamen passed away in Florida at the age of 88.
Jack was one of the more prolific artists who started out doing backgrounds in
the Harry Chesler Comic Shop around 1940 and wound up a steady contributor to
Bill Gaines' EC (Entertaining Comics) group during the 1950s, where he produced
over 160 stories and 11 covers. While Kamen never reached the level of
popularity as Wally Wood or Graham Ingels, his consistant contributions to EC
were part of the "EC experience" that continues to make their
publishing output some of the most reprinted comics in the market today.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York
on May 29, 1920 and during his earliest childhood years decided he wanted to
become a fine artist or illustrator. During the late 1930s he took lessons at
the National Academy and the Art Student's League and shortly afterwards broke
into the business doing pulp illustrations for Standard Publications. From there
he graduated to the Harry Chesler Shop where he began as a background artist
working on Bulletman and Spy Smasher, and other stories being
supplied to Fawcett Publications. By 1941 Jack was working for the Jerry Iger
Shop where he met a very young Al Feldstein then breaking into the business.
Most of Kamen's work for Iger fed into the Fiction House line of titles, turning
out popular features such as "Rip Carson" and "Kayo Kirby,"
among others. He also freelanced a few things to Timely/Marvel Comics before
being drafted into the Army during World War II. While in the service, Jack
illustrated and helped put together training manuals and visual aids for G.I.s
headed overseas, then later on, after being re-assigned to the Signal Corps, saw
action in New Guinea and the Philippines.
From the Associated Press
3:08 PM PDT, July 3, 2008
Larry Harmon, who turned the character Bozo the Clown into a
show business staple that delighted children for more than a half-century,
died today of congestive heart failure. He was 83.
His publicist, Jerry Digney, told The Associated Press he died at his home.
George
Carlin, whose astringent stand-up comedy made
him an heir of Lenny
Bruce, who gave voice to an indignant counterculture and assaulted the
barricades of censorship on behalf of a generation of comics that followed him,
died on Sunday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 71 and lived in Venice, Calif.
The cause was heart failure, said his
publicist, Jeff Abraham. Mr. Carlin, who performed earlier this month at the
Orleans hotel in Las Vegas, had a history of heart problems.
Born Dolores Goodman in Columbus,
Ohio, Goodman was notoriously secretive about her age, successfully shaving
off 15 years (giving a birthyear of 1929) for many years before the discrepancy
was publicly debunked.
Goodman gained a measure of newspaper column space for her
dancing solos in such Broadway musicals as High
Button Shoes (1947), and Wonderful
Town (1953). In 1955, she stopped the show in Off
Broadway'sShoestring Revue with the novelty song "Someone's
Been Sending Me Flowers." She returned to Broadway in 1974 to appear in Lorelei
with Carol
Channing.
Adopting the guise of a fey airhead, Goodman was good for a
few off-the-wall quotes whenever she submitted to an interview. She came to the
attention of nighttime talkshow host Jack
Paar who, after becoming enchanted with her ditzy persona and seemingly
spontaneous malaprops,
invited the lady to become a semi-regular on The
Tonight Show.
He made his living with robots, dinosaurs, and
aliens. Groundbreaking, Oscar winning special effects creator Stan Winston
passed away Sunday, June 15, 2008, after a seven year fight against multiple
myeloma. He was 62 years old.
Bo Diddley, one of the founding fathers of rock 'n' roll, died of heart failure
yesterday at his home in Archer, Fla., according to his publicist. He was 79.
Mr. Diddley, whose signature bomp ba-bomp bomp bomp bomp beat influenced
musicians from Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones to Bruce Springsteen and U2,
had suffered a heart attack last August, three months after being felled by a
stroke during a performance in Iowa. He had returned to Florida, his home of 20
years, to rehabilitate.
The comic industry is mourning the loss of a truly talented
creator. Will Elder, whose work was influential to the beginning of MAD
magazine, passed away last Thursday morning, May 15, 2008. He was 86 years old.
Elder was born Wolf William Eisenberg in the Bronx, New York.
During World War II, he served as part of the map-making team that helped to
plan and carry out the invasion of Normandy. Upon his return from the war, he
changed his name to Will Elder, which is how he is known to legions of comics
fans.
Mad ad parody by Elder
In 1952, Elder was hired by Harvey Kurtzman to provide content
for the first issues of the newly-launched MAD magazine. Elder worked
with comic legends such as Wally Wood, John Severin, and Jack Davis.
"Willie Elder was one of the funniest artists ever to
work for MAD. He created visual feasts with dozens of background gags
layered into every MAD story he illustrated," says John Ficarra,
editor of MAD magazine, "He called these gags 'chicken fat.'
Willie's 'anything goes' art style set the tone for the entire magazine and
created a look that endures to this day."
Monday, April 14, 2008, beloved Disney artist Ollie Johnston passed away at
age 95 in Sequim, Washington. Johnston was an artist among the original “Nine
Old Men” Disney animators; he is the final one to pass away.
Johnston was born in Palo Alto, California and attended Stanford University,
where he worked on the campus magazine Stanford Chaparral with future
fellow Disney animator Frank Thomas. He married fellow Disney employee, artist
Marie Worthey in 1943.
Richard Widmark, who created a villain in his first movie role who was so
repellent and frightening that the actor became a star overnight, died Monday
at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 93.
His death was announced Wednesday morning by his wife, Susan
Blanchard. She said that Mr. Widmark had fractured a vertebra in recent months
and that his conditioned had worsened.
As Tommy Udo, a giggling, psychopathic killer in the 1947 gangster film
“Kiss of Death,” Mr. Widmark tied up an old woman in a wheelchair (played by
Mildred Dunnock) with a cord ripped from a lamp and shoved her down a flight of
stairs to her death.
“The sadism of that character, the fearful laugh, the skull showing through
drawn skin, and the surely conscious evocation of a concentration-camp
degenerate established Widmark as the most frightening person on the screen,”
the critic David
Thomson wrote in “The Biographical Dictionary of Film.”
The performance won Mr. Widmark his sole Academy Award nomination, for best
supporting actor.
Tommy Udo made the 32-year-old Mr. Widmark, who had been an established radio
actor, an instant movie star, and he spent the next seven years playing a
variety of flawed heroes and relentlessly anti-social mobsters in 20th Century
Fox’s juiciest melodramas.
His mobsters were drenched in evil. Even his heroes, including the doctor who
fights bubonic plague in Elia
Kazan’s “Panic in the Streets” (1950), the daredevil pilot flying into
the eye of a storm in “Slattery’s Hurricane” (1949) and the pickpocket who
refuses to be a traitor in Samuel
Fuller’s “Pickup on South Street” (1953) were nerve-strained and
feral.
Illustrator Dave Stevens, best known for his "good girl" art and The
Rocketeer, died yesterday following a long, wrenching battle with Leukemia.
Dave was born July 29, 1955 in Lynwood, California. He was raised in Portland,
Oregon, then his family relocated to San Diego, where he attended San Diego City
College and became involved in the early days of the San Diego Comic Book
Convention, now known as the Comic-Con International. His skills as an artist
were instantly evident to all, and he was encouraged by darn near every
professional artist who attended the early cons, but especially by Jack Kirby
and Russ Manning. In 1975, when Manning began editing a line of Tarzan
comic books to be published in Europe, Dave got his first professional
assignment, working on those comics and also assisting Russ with the Tarzan
newspaper strip. Soon after, he worked on a few projects for Marvel (including
the Star Wars comic book) and a number of underground comics. Later, he
also worked with Russ on the Star Wars newspaper strip.
In 1977, Dave went to work for Hanna-Barbera where he drew storyboards and
layouts, many of them for the Super Friends and Godzilla cartoon
shows and bonded with veteran artist Doug Wildey, who produced the latter.
Wildey and Stevens became close friends and in 1982, when Dave created his
popular character, The Rocketeer, he modelled the character's sidekick, Peevy,
on photos of Doug. Dave himself was Cliff Secord, who donned the mask of The
Rocketeer, and other friends appeared in other guises.
ANAHEIM, Calif. (Nov. 20) - The actress who played Col. Klink's sexy blond
secretary Hilda on "Hogan's Heroes" and married the show's star,
Bob Crane, has died. She was 72.
Patricia Crane died on Oct. 14, a spokeswoman for the Orange County
coroner's office confirmed Monday. On stage, Crane was known as Sigrid
Valdis.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rhythm and blues singer Bill Pinkney, the last surviving
member of the original lineup of The Drifters, was found dead in his hotel room
hours before he was due to perform in a July 4 celebration.
Police spokesman Jimmie Flynt said 81-year-old Pinkney was found dead on
Wednesday evening at the Hilton Daytona Beach Oceanfront Resort in Florida.
There was no evidence of foul play, he said.
Pinkney was scheduled to perform with The Original Drifters that night for
U.S. Independence Day festivities.
Don Herbert, who explained the wonderful world of science to
millions of young baby boomers on television in the 1950s and '60s as "Mr.
Wizard" and did the same for another generation of youngsters on the
Nickelodeon cable TV channel in the 1980s, died Tuesday. He was 89.
Herbert died at his home in Bell Canyon after a long battle with multiple
myeloma, said Tom Nikosey, Herbert's son-in-law.
A low-key, avuncular presence who wore a tie and white dress shirt with the
sleeves rolled up, Herbert launched his weekly half-hour science show for
children on NBC in 1951.
Broadcast live from Chicago on Saturdays the first few years and then from New
York City, "Watch Mr. Wizard" ran for 14 years.
Herbert used basic experiments to teach scientific principles to his TV audience
via an in-studio guest boy or girl who assisted in the experiments.
Tom Poston, an Emmy-winning comic actor whose television characters ranged
from the slow-witted Everyman on "The Steve Allen Show" to a
cantankerous closet-dwelling clown on the recent sitcom "Committed,"
died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 85.
Left, Tom Poston as a panelist on “To Tell the
Truth,” around 1961, and as the incompetent handyman George Utley on
“Newhart,” in 1985.
Mr. Poston died after a short illness, his wife, the actress Suzanne
Pleshette, said.
A long-faced, buggy-eyed second banana, Mr. Poston was for a half-century a
Paganini of the bewildered, the benighted and the befuddled. His best-known
television roles include George Utley, the sublimely incompetent handyman on
"Newhart"; Mr. Bickley, the troublesome neighbor on "Mork &
Mindy"; and Cliff Murdock, Mr. Newhart's doltish college chum on the
original "Bob Newhart Show."
Mr. Poston appeared on Broadway and in films, among them "Christmas
With the Kranks" (2004); "The Princess Diaries 2" (2004); and
"Cold Turkey" (1971). He was also, variously, a pilot, an amateur
boxer, a tumbler with the Flying Zebleys, an aspiring chemist and a panelist
on the game show "To Tell the Truth."
It seemed Mr. Poston would do anything for a part. For his first Broadway
appearance -- a tiny role in a 1946 production of "Cyrano de Bergerac,"
the audition consisted of falling off a parapet onto his head, as the
character did. Mr. Poston and his head withstood the test admirably.
Six decades later, Mr. Poston tried out for "Committed,"
broadcast on NBC in 2005. His character, a surly, dying clown known simply as
Clown, lives out his days in the closet of one of the show's main characters.
(Clown came with the apartment.)
The audition required aspirants to pull down their pants, as called for in
the script. Most actors did so only in pantomime. Mr. Poston complied in full,
with electrifying results.
"He dropped his trousers and had on these gold lamé boxer
shorts," Eileen Heisler, an executive producer of the show, told The
Associated Press in 2005.
Whether Mr. Poston had been tipped off about what the audition would entail
is unrecorded.
Thomas Gordon Poston was born in Columbus, Ohio. As a boy, he wanted to be
a prize fighter, and as a young man he boxed in several hundred amateur
fights. He also learned tumbling, performing with the Zebleys as a child. In
the late 1930s, he enrolled at Bethany College in West Virginia, where he
studied chemistry.
His studies were interrupted by World War II, in which he served as a pilot
with the Army Air Corps in Europe. After the war he moved to New York and
trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Mr. Poston's Broadway appearances include "Will Success Spoil Rock
Hunter" (1955); "Mary, Mary" (1961); and the 1972 revival of
"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." In 1959, starring
on Broadway in "Golden Fleecing," Mr. Poston met Ms. Pleshette. The
two began a romance, though they later married others.
In early television Mr. Poston was the host of "Entertainment"
(1955), a 2 1/2-hour, five-day-a-week live variety show on ABC.
"I once timed it and I ad-libbed 35, 36 minutes a day," he told
The Associated Press in 2005. "You can imagine how clever that was. It
was filled with, 'Wasn't that wonderful!' 'Yes, that was wonderful!' 'Isn't
that wonderful!' "
But Mr. Poston's ability to think on his feet earned him a regular role on
Mr. Allen's show. There, in the company of Don Knotts and Louis Nye, he played
a roster of supporting characters, chief among them Everyman, who is rendered
dazed and speechless whenever he is asked a question in the show's "Man
on the Street" segments. (A typical question: "What's your
name?")
For his work on the Allen show, Mr. Poston won an Emmy in 1959.
Mr. Poston was married four times, to three women. His first marriage, to
Jean Sullivan, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Kay Hudson. He and Ms.
Hudson later remarried; the marriage lasted until her death in 1998. He
married Ms. Pleshette in 2001.
Besides Ms. Pleshette, Mr. Poston is survived by a daughter from his first
marriage, Francesca Poston of Nashville; two children from his marriage to Ms.
Hudson, a son, Jason Poston of Los Angeles, and a daughter, Hudson Poston of
Portland, Ore.; and a sister, Rosalie Cassou, of Fredericksburg, Va.
Before she married Mr. Poston, Ms. Pleshette laid down one ironclad
condition: she wanted "a big rock," she said in a telephone
interview yesterday.
So Mr. Poston gave her exactly that. A piece of unpolished granite the size
of a large marble, it was culled from the gravel in his driveway. He had it
put in a platinum setting.
The rock worked like a charm, Ms. Pleshette said. She added: "Of
course, he later was taught the pleasures of diamonds."
Herman Brix, 100; Olympian became actor known as Bruce Bennett
By Dennis McLellan, Times Staff Writer
February 28, 2007
Herman Brix, who parlayed a silver medal for the shot put in the 1928 Olympics
into a Hollywood career that included playing Tarzan in a 1935 movie, has
died. He was 100.
Brix, who later adopted the stage name Bruce Bennett and appeared as Joan
Crawford's husband in "Mildred Pierce" and as an ill-fated gold
prospector in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," died of
complications from a broken hip Saturday at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center,
his son Christopher said Tuesday.
FOR THE RECORD:
Brix obituary: A photo caption with the Herman Brix obituary in Wednesday's
California section said an injury kept Brix, who later took the stage name
Bruce Bennett, from becoming the first Tarzan. The shoulder injury kept Brix
from getting the role in MGM's 1932 hit "Tarzan the Ape Man," but
the first Tarzan movie was made in 1918. The obituary also misspelled the
surname of actor Johnny Weissmuller as Weismuller. —
A former University of Washington football and track and field star who played
in the 1926 Rose Bowl, Brix moved to Los Angeles in 1929 after being invited
to compete for the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
He became friends with actor Douglas Fairbanks, who arranged a screen test for
the handsome young athlete at Paramount. But while playing a small role as a
running back in the 1931Paramount college football movie
"Touchdown," Brix broke a shoulder.
The injury caused the world record-setting shot-putter to fail to qualify for
the 1932 Olympic trials. It also ended his chance to play Tarzan at MGM, where
he is said to have been the studio's leading candidate for the role.
Instead, the star-making role in MGM's 1932 hit "Tarzan the Ape Man"
went to Olympic swimmer Johnny Weismuller, who went on to appear in a string
of Tarzan movies.
But two years later, Brix got his chance to play the jungle hero in "The
New Adventures of Tarzan," which was produced by an independent film
company whose principals included Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs.
In fact, Brix was picked by Burroughs to star in the 1935 movie.
"Herman Brix brought a presence to the screen that many people feel
personifies the Tarzan of the books," Danton Burroughs, Edgar Rice
Burroughs' grandson, wrote in the foreword to "Please Don't Call Me
Tarzan: The Life Story of Herman Brix/Bruce Bennett," a 2001 book by Mike
Chapman.
Brix, Burroughs wrote, "was lean and muscular, articulate and dignified.
He moved with the superb athletic grace that my grandfather envisioned … and
played the role to perfection."
The high-profile role, however, proved to be a detriment to his acting career.
A test at Warner Bros. after the film came out was canceled after the casting
director saw a photo of Brix as Tarzan in Life magazine.
"He said they couldn't use me," Brix told Chapman. "I asked
why, and he said the audience would see me as Tarzan and wouldn't accept me as
an actor."
Over the next several years, however, Brix appeared in more than a dozen
films, including the serials "The Shadow of Chinatown," "The
Fighting Devil Dogs," "Hawk of the Wilderness" and "The
Lone Ranger."
But after making yet another serial, "Daredevils of the Red Circle"
in 1939, he realized he had to do something to break being typecast in action
roles.
"I realized the name Herman Brix was associated with Tarzan, so I made up
a list of seven or eight names and asked people which they liked best,"
he told Chapman. "Bruce Bennett was the name I came up with."
As Bruce Bennett, he began carving out a new career as an actor, initially
under contract at Columbia Pictures and then at Warner Bros. Among his many
credits during this period were "The Officer and the Lady,"
"Atlantic Convoy," "Sahara" and "Dark Passage."
One of his most memorable film credits was "The Treasure of the Sierra
Madre," the 1948 movie starring Humphrey Bogart, with Walter Huston and
Tim Holt as fellow gold prospectors in Mexico.
Patricia Soteras passed away Thursday, Oct. 26, 2006, of a
heart attack.
Patsy Parsons (her maiden name) was in the first season of Rocky
Jones and played Suzerain Clealanta of the planet Ophiucius, an adversary of
Earth and The United Worlds. She Starred in," Beyond The Curtain Of Space,
The Pirates Of Prah, Bobby's Comet, Rocky's Odyssey, and Crash Of Moons".
You could tell that there was a subplot of sexual tension between her and Rocky.
You get the idea that if she could not have him, no one would! Patsy was an
accomplished Actress!! She had a very strong stage presence as told to Ann
Robinson by Sally Mansfield. Ann and Patsy never got to meet each other, due to
Patsy leaving acting to start her Family. I'm not sure how many children she
had, but I do know of a Son and Daughter, any more I'm not sure. She was a scene
stealer! As I said, a tremendous presence!! Too bad she left the
business after the R.J Series! Crash Of Moons was a good ending for
her stint, but, it left you wanting much more! In the second season, Rocky
and others talk about New Ophiucius, but nothing of the characters of
Cleolanta or others. I have to beleive that if there were more years for
the Series to develop, Patsy may have been persuaded to come back as Cleolanta
again. Sally said that Patsy did enjoy the work she did on R.J.
and was sad about leaving the Series.
In a message dated 5/17/2006 6:51:49 AM Pacific Standard Time,
Merlinest writes:
We gathered at the grave site, a trim green
lawn shaded by a large tree, at 3:00 pm...about 20 close friends and relatives,
of which 14 were considered the actual invited. The elegant heavy wooden coffin
was already in place over the open grave, blanketed with flowers. More flowers
were hung on stands and in baskets to one side. His mother and father's graves
were next to his. A white church with a clock on its steeple loomed in the
background.
The afternoon blazed with sunlight, and some folk sat on a
row of chairs while the others stood behind them as a minister read his
long bio of Frankie's career and life doings. When he had done with his summary
and prayers, the guests were invited to speak any words they wished to say, and
a few did. Mostly relating amusing happenings they experienced with Frankie.
Few knew he'd already had another. His original space cadet
uniform had been left at the mortuary for them to dress him in it... and when
the few family members had a short viewing period just before the burial time,
it was discovered that the upper part of the uniform had been put on backwards,
so that he was zippered up the front, and the insignia of the Space Cadets was
on his back. Of course, that mistake was hastily remedied before the coffin was
brought to the site. I had to chuckle, knowing that Frank would have found it as
funny as I did.
Julie, his step-daughter, stood to read the words to the
Space Academy oath and the Space Cadet song... it was quite moving, for it
personified all that Frankie believed and portrayed in his favorite role.
She had everyone wish Frankie Spaceman's Luck together, and then the coffin lid
was opened for the guests to place his old golf balls and photographs of his
family and friends and the folded American flag once displayed at his father's
funeral. I sprinkled Frankie with a handful of tiny gold metallic stars and
wished him farewell under my breath... and as the folk left the coffin, I took a
few pictures before the lid was reclosed.
The invited 14 departed for the Bistro Restaurant, one of
Frankie's favorites, and had a fine dinner and drinks and more talk about the
man they had lost. It wasn't the same without him there... I had no sense of him
being with us at all. I think he stayed behind to be with his Mom and Dad.
Jan Merlin
Frankie Thomas, Jr., died this evening at the Sherman
Oaks Hospital of respiratory failure while recovering from a stroke.
On Dress Parade
(1939) .... Cadet Lt. 'Murph' Murphy
... aka Dead End Kids at Military School (USA: changed title)
... aka The 'Dead End' Kids 'On Dress Parade' (USA: complete title)
We received the following email from Tom
Crawford, passed on to us by Mike Elmo:
Hello, everyone.
Shortly after Frank Thomas' death (I still haven't seen an obituary for him
in a newspaper) comes news of the passing of another of our childhood
icons. This is from today's WASHINGTON TIMES, page B2:
"NEW YORK (AP) -- Lew Anderson, who captivated baby boomers as the
final Clarabell the Clown on TV's 'Howdy Doody Show' died May 14 in
Hawthorne, N.Y. He was 84.
"Long mute as Clarabell, Mr. Anderson broke the clown's silence in the
show's final episode in 1960. With trembling lips and a visible tear
in his eye, he spoke the show's final two words: 'Good-bye, kids.'
"Though Mr. Anderson was not the only man to play 'Buffalo Bob' Smith's
mute sidekick, he was the best, Mr. Smith said in his memoir.
"With the Peanut Gallery looking on, Mr. Anderson used bicycle horns to
give yes and no answers. For more expressive moments, he wielded a
bottle of seltzer.
"The show, which went on the air in 1947, when televisions were still a
novelty, was the first network weekday children's show. Mr. Anderson
joined 'Doodyville,' a circus town peopled with puppets and human actors and
watched by a Peanut Gallery of children, in the mid-1950s.
"Though his fame as Clarabell followed him throughout his life, Mr.
Anderson was also a success as a musician and band leader. In recent
years, his All-American Big Band appeared on Friday nights at New York's
Birdland jazz club.
"Mr. Anderson was born in 1922 in Kirkman, Iowa. He started a
band while serving in the Navy during World War II and later toured the
Midwest with bands before landing in New York.
"It was when he joined the Honey Dreamers, a singing group that
appeared on radio and early television shows, that he met Mr. Smith and
became a clown.
"'Clarabell just fell into his lap,' said his stepdaughter, Lorie
George.
"Mr. Anderson followed Bobby Nicholson, who later played Doodyville's
J. Cornelius Cobb, into the role. The first to play the mute clown was
Bob Keeshan, who later became TV's 'Captain Kangaroo.'
"Mr. Anderson, who lived in South Salem, is survived by his wife,
Peggy; two sons; a stepdaughter; and five grandchildren."
Ed Kemmer wanted his ashes scattered from a plane, so a few weeks ago,
his younger son Todd set out to do this with a friend who's a pilot.
Todd loved planes as a kid, but as he grew older, he didn't care for
them much and after takeoff, he felt scared - especially since this was
a small plane. Then, he says, for some reason, a sense of calm came over
him and he wasn't scared at all. In fact, at one point, much to his
surprise, he felt a strange kind of confidence, took the controls, and
actually flew the plane.
I believe that Ed was happiest when he was flying. Thinking back, I
remember that one of his favorite stories was about how he was the first
cadet in his class to solo during his Air Corps flight training in San
Antonio.
His ashes were scattered over Fire Island in Long Island Sound.
I heard Lion’s Gate is taking another look at a feature film using
Captain
Marvel (the real one).
(11-1-05)
----------------------------
Lone Ranger cartoonist Tom Gill dies at 92
Gill art work supplied by Dr. Warren Chaney
Reuters News Service
Oct. 19, 2005, 1:34PM
NEW YORK -- Tom Gill, who drew The Lone Ranger comic books, died on
Monday of heart failure at his home in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., his wife said on
Tuesday. He was 92.
Between 1950 and 1970, Gill drew the masked rider of the Old West, the Lone
Ranger, and his Indian sidekick Tonto for The Lone Ranger comic books.
He also drew the Hi-Yo Silver and Bonanza comic books.
He taught cartooning and children's book illustration in New York area
colleges, including the School of Visual Arts, where he served as department
chair in 1948 and alumni director in 1969.
Gill grew up in Brooklyn and went to work for the New York Daily News, where
he was credited with drawing the first map of the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor. Later he worked for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times.
He is survived by his wife, Patricia, daughter Nancy Zaglaluer, son Tom, four
grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
MIKE AND KIM ELMO AT SWAPSALE'S SECRET MOUNTAIN TOP RETREAT
Mike and Kim Elmo, Bruce David (Swapsale) and wife Wendy
SolarGuard member and the man behind the terrific Space
Patrol/Tom Corbett/Rocky Jones jackets, shirts and caps (Sci-Fi Apparel)
came to visit us with his wonderful wife Kim last Saturday evening. They
are a great couple, fun to hang out with. When we weren't talking about
the old TV shows we worked on solving questions about quantum physics and
the nature of space/time. I'll tell you this, it was no easy task keeping
up with Mike on those matters. Of course he cheats: he remembers
absolutely everything he has ever read or heard. No fair, Mike. -- Bruce
David/Oct. 22, 2005
------------------------------------------
DAN THOMPSON'S REPORT FROM THE ATLANTA DRAGON CON
History: The character is "the
Sandman", who is a DC character from the Golden Age of comics.
He appeared about the same time as Batman (1939) and was one of the original
members of the Justice Society of America. He faded away by the late '40s
but was brought MORE
George Wallace, famous for playing Commando
Cody in the 1952 movie serial Radar Men From The Moon, died Friday, July 22 at
Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles following injuries from a fall while
in Pisa, Itally. He had parts in 80 films including Submarine Command,
Lifeguard, Nurse Betty, and Minority Report. His TV guest appearances
included Hopalong Cassidy, Four Star Playhouse, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
Joan of Arcadia. Tristram Coffin played Wallaces part in King Of The
Rocketmen (1949) and Judd Holdren -- who later played Commando Cody on TV --
played the part in Zombies Of The Stratosphere. Aline Towne played
Commando Cody's assistant in both Radar Men From The Moon and the TV
show.
Thought you might want to add these photos to the
story of Steve Robinson and his orbiting lunch box! This is what I was
referring to in my comment about seeing it on Fox news. Cool, eh?
This is by far the best shot of lunchbox I have seen. If you have
one or more the value has increased. Spaceman's Luck. Frankie.
-----------------
Forwarded Message:
Hi gang,
I tried to post this today, but my FTP program is still on the fritz. I
found the picture of the lunch box in the Washington Times Tuesday. I'm
looking for the source now. Nice picture of the lunch box. Till later
Spaceman's Luck
Ed
Chuck Lassen wrote:
> On Fox News, I just saw a brief footage of the astronauts working in the
> shuttle, and there it was! Steve Robinson's "Tom Corbett Space
Cadet"
> lunch box, slowly floating along in the background! He said he was
> going to take it into space, and he sure did!
John Fiedlers death at 80 is a shock to me, for we
were both students at New York's famed Neighborhood Playhhouse School of the
Theater after the war in1946, learning to become actors.He remained unchanged throughout all the years
afterwards, retaining his sweet aura and sincerity... I was delighted when I got him hired as the little mental
giant, Alfie Higgins, for the Tom Corbett Space Cadet series to appear from time
to time as a regular cadet. He was beloved by the fans of the show, his high,
piping voice and serious demeanor as Alfie were unmistakable, and instantly
recognizable when he was providing the voice for Disney's "Piglet" in
the Winnie the Pooh cartoons. In these past years, Frankie Thomas and I had
often tried to get him to do one of our radio show recreations or even just show
up at a festival, but Johnny preferred to decline. He wouldn't reply to any
message we sent him. I guess he was too ill... and simply didn't want us to know
about it.
While he was out here doing films, I failed to see him
socially, but did get to work with him once in GUNS OF DIABLO, in which he
played one of his many fine character roles. His absence is everyone's loss. I
wrote his part into the radio recreation we'll be doing at the
Williamsburg Festival next March... and hoped to coax him into attending... but
he didn't respond, and Ben Cooper has accepted to play it instead.
We'll be thinking of him in March... and Ben will attempt to
bring him to life again. But no one could be the same Alfie Higgins that Johhny
created.>>
Jan (Roger Manning) Merlin, Bruce (Swapsale) David
and Frankie (Tom Corbett) Thomas
It was a giddy moment for me; there I was
standing between two of my favorite members of the Polaris crew getting my
picture taken. It was at Jan's house in Burbank, California (you should
see his collection of African art) and I was there to get Jan and Frank to sign
some more copies of the Tom Corbett Collectors Edition
videos we offer on this site. While there we decided that's it's time to
put the autographed Collectors Edition on DVD so keep an eye out for that in the
near future. It's at the duplicators right now.
You'll notice, by the way, that both these guys
look better than me (and, I confess, I airbrushed my face a bit). Frank,
who, to this day, has his Tom Corbett uniform, can still fit in it. I
can't even fit into the clothes I bought last year.
-- Bruce David/Swapsale (6-05-05)
---------------------------------
Here is astronaut Stephen K. Robinson, a member of the crew of
the STS-114(return to flight of the space shuttle)In Stephens hand
is the Tom Corbett Space Cadet lunch box, the lucky charm of the
astronauts. They will not fly without it. This is of interest since
the two stars of the highly successful TV and radio series of the
1950's are local residents. Frankie Thomas played Tom while Jan
Merlin was Roger Manning. They sent pictures of the old show and
Will Eisner, a titan of the comics world who
in the 1940s brought to life characters such as The Spirit and Sheena, the
Jungle Girl, and three decades later shifted into far more realistic and gritty
terrain by pioneering the graphic novel, has died. He was 87.
Eisner died Monday at Florida Medical Center in Lauderdale Lakes, Fla., after
suffering complications related to a quadruple heart bypass he underwent last
month, according to Denis Kitchen, Eisner's publisher for three decades and his
agent in recent years.
The artist's body of work, which began in earnest in the 1930s with the
swashbuckling "Hawks of the Sea," will be capped by the May release of
"Plot," a graphic novel that is his personal take on the history of
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a weapon against Jews. The book will be
published by W.W. Norton & Co.
Eisner's work was marked by sophistication; his Spirit newspaper strips are
still hailed as a melding of German Expressionist imagery and the sly worldview
of Hollywood's screwball comedies. He was constantly experimenting in the use of
panels, lettering and even format. The Spirit was published in newspapers from
1940 to 1952 in a self-contained, four-color insert.
In similar fashion, Eisner would test the boundaries of comic books in 1978 with
"Contract With God," a collection of illustrated stories about real
people that he called "a graphic novel," marking a new area of
ambition in comics.
Eisner devoted his recent decades to graphic novels about poverty, aging and
despair in such titles as "The Tenement" and "The Invisible
People." Since "Contract With God" came out, he had published
about a book a year.
"My stories are all centered around the human being, the business of
survival, of struggling against the forces of life itself," Eisner said in
one interview. "We're dealing with impossible and unbeatable forces, not a
single monster. My interest is not the superhero, but the little man who
struggles to survive in the city."
Author Michael Chabon, who fictionalized Eisner in his Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," said Eisner
was really the only one at the time to see comics for what they were: a medium
in which an artist could find new ways of telling stories.
"There's no question, he [was] one of the most important figures in comic
books," Chabon said.
Since 1988, the comics industry's top award has been called "the Eisner."
Eisner's textbooks, "Comics and Sequential Art" and "Graphic
Storytelling," are required reading in the comics field and dovetail with
his teachings at the New York School of Visual Art in New York City.
Art Spiegelman, who won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for "Maus," a graphic
novel about the Holocaust, once called Eisner a "genius cartoonist who
changed the vocabulary of comics." Cartoonist Jules Feiffer declared Eisner
a national treasure.
This year, several museum exhibitions about Eisner have been planned, and two
books concerning him are scheduled to be published: "Eisner/Miller," a
dialogue between Eisner and comics artist Frank Miller, and "Will
Eisner: A Spirited Life," a biography by Bob Andelman.
Eisner was born March 6, 1917, in Brooklyn. His father, an emigre from Vienna,
painted stage sets and encouraged his son's artistic aspirations. Eisner
attended De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx (along with friend Bob Kane,
who would create Batman), and his first work was published in the school
newspaper.
In what became industry legend, Eisner started a comics production company with
friend Jerry Iger in 1937. Their $15 investment bought three months' rent on
East 41st Street for their firm, Eisner & Iger.
"Like brokers who forecast a sudden demand for pork bellies, we believed
that pulp publishers, who were repackaging newspaper comic strips into
magazine-size formats, were going to run out of them at any minute," Eisner
recalled in the New York Times Book Review in 1990. That prediction would be a
solid one.
The national demand for comics, which would be spurred by the 1938 advent of
Superman, exploded. Eisner was writing and drawing under five names "in
what would soon become a kind of artistic ghetto in which people with authentic,
if offbeat, talents had to suffer the disdain of the mainstream," he once
wrote. His 1986 graphic novel, "The Dreamer," is a roman a clef about
those early years.
Recruiting a number of young peers, including Kane, Jack Kirby and Lou Fine, the
Eisner & Iger studio became a factory, and its output included Sheena,
Blackhawk and Dollman. The shop did have one historic misstep -- Eisner declined
a crude character sketch presented by a pair of youngsters, Jerry Siegel and Joe
Shuster, who took their Superman pitch elsewhere.
The Eisner/Iger partnership ended in 1939 when a newspaper syndicate hired
Eisner to create a 16-page newspaper supplement featuring what would become his
best-known character, The Spirit. Unlike other heroes, The Spirit wore a suit
and, like a pen-and-ink Cary Grant, was by turns dashing, funny and feckless. He
roamed back alleys instead of a gleaming Metropolis,
When presenting a lifetime achievement award to Eisner in 2002 at the National
Foundation for Jewish Culture, Spiegelman said: "What made Superman popular
was its fantasy. What made The Spirit popular was its smell of reality, its
sophisticated style, its ambience and its stories."
In 1942, a draft notice forced Eisner to abandon The Spirit. In the Army, he
made strips and posters, among them the cautionary pratfalls of Joe Dope. His
studio hands, among them Feiffer and Fine, took over The Spirit.
After the war, Eisner founded American Visuals Corp., which produced art for
such clients as RCA Records, the Baltimore Colts and New York Telephone. In
1952, he retired The Spirit and dedicated his labor to advertising and marketing
instead of storytelling.
His interest in comics was reignited in the 1970s when he saw the underground
works of artists such as Robert Crumb. Eisner went back to the drawing board and
created his first graphic novel.
He is survived by his wife, Ann, and his son, John. Services were pending
Tuesday.
Thanks to Beth Flood, Lyn Osborne's sister, for the following
two Space Patrol pix. The first one is the picture as it was photographed,
the second one is the painting made from the pic. Here's what Beth says
about it:
You may not know the history of
the painting, which was done about 1953. The name, "Valentine",
appears in the lower right hand corner, and we've always supposed that it was
the artist's name. It was painted from a black & white photo, and he
used a different background and made some other minor changes when he did the
painting. We found it in Lyn's apartment, after he died, and Mom
took it back with her, when we returned home to Michigan after the funeral.
She brought it to California when we all moved here in 1959. It was given
to me when Mom died, and it has been hanging on my living room wall for the
past 29 years. I will send you a snapshot of the painting and a copy of
the original black & white photo that the artist painted it from. Of
all the SP pictures I have, that one is my favorite.
We regret to announce the passing of
Tom Mason, the Crimson Collector, a true fan of 50s nostalgia and an overall
nice guy. Tom worked in the television industry for over 36 years at the very
ABC studios lot where the SPACE PATROL series was originally filmed. He
got to meet and work with many of the original crew-members of the
show. His website has been a powerful source of nostalgia information and
historical perspective. He will be missed by his many friends and fans.
KENNETH TOBEY, 85, STAR OF 50'S TV SHOW
WHIRLYBIRDS
Kenneth Tobey, star of movies and television,
died after a lengthy illness at Rancho Mirage hospital this past Sunday
December 29, 2002. Tobey, who starred in such movies as The Thing, 12
O'Clock High, Gunfight at OK Corral, Billy Jack, MacArthur and Airplane, began
his career with a bit part in the 1948 Hopalong Cassidy film, Dangerous
Venture. In the 50's he made a move into TV as a regular on the Walt
Disney Davy Crockett show, then captured the lead in Whirlybirds with Craig Hill
playing his sidekick. Tobey is survived by his daughter, a stepson and
daughter, two grandchildren and his brother. 1/4/03
The above poster is just one of the extremely cool electronic
files sent to us here at Swapsale as a Christmas gift. Dr. Chaney, who has
been instrumental in researching and saving film and TV history (he's the
guy who found and restored the original Lone Ranger serials), has for the past
few years been busily restoring old Space Patrol premiums (many of those seen
above), including everyone of the Space Patrol collector's cards originally
obtained in Ralston cereals. (He has also created a few very cool new cards of
his own design.) Our very special thanks to Warren! -- Bruce David/Swapsale
12/28/02
Art by Warren Chaney, based on a photo by Jean-Noel Bassior
THE FOLLOWING SAD EMAIL CAME FROM JEAN-NOEL BASSIOR ON FRIDAY,
AUGUST 16TH 2002.
I’m sad to report that Norm Jolley passed away on Tuesday,
August 13th. He was 86. He gave us the Space Patrol TV shows and
was head writer for Wagon Train, The FBI, Ironside, Barnaby Jones, and
did multiple scripts for Highway Patrol, The Virginian, Laramie and many
others.
Norm was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a couple of weeks ago. His wife,
Lois, rushed him to Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he underwent a
five-hour operation. He came through it fine. I spoke with him afterwards and he
promised me he’d “come back,” as he put it. He promised that to Lois, too.
He was recovering well and the doctor told him he could leave the hospital in a
few days. On Tuesday morning, he left early. They’re still not sure why he
suddenly died.
For me, this is a great personal loss. The best praise I ever got from anyone
was when he called me “a damn good writer.” I used to tell him he’d
saved my life as a child because, coming from an abusive home, I’d see Cadet
Happy survive some pretty rough stuff each week, just like I did. But afterwards
he could joke about it, so it showed me that you could go through bad stuff and
come out OK. That made Norm’s eyes tear up. He said one day that he always
thought he’d be remembered for his work on Wagon Train, and he was so
surprised that, instead, it turned out to be Space Patrol.
jnb
Bruce,
It has been a long time since we have been in touch, but I wanted to pass along
some sad news to you. Norman died at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale last
Tuesday. He and Lois had been in San Diego when he got ill and she drove
him to Scottsdale, AZ to the Mayo Clinic. My brother lives in Scottsdale
and was able to be with them there. They discovered Norm had pancreatic
cancer so they operated and removed the tumor. They were very optimistic
that they had gotten all of the cancer and he was recovering very nicely.
A week after the surgery his heart gave out and we lost him. I called him
at the hospital the night before he died and he was in good spirits and looking forward to being with all our family at a
reunion in Minnesota the end of this month. I will miss him terribly, but he had a long life and a good one.
I know that you had the opportunity to meet him and spend a little time
together, so I was sure you would want to know. The family has enjoyed the
Space Patrol tapes that you sent me and I am especially happy now that I have
them to keep. I will always be grateful to you for that. Norm and I
watched them together and he was so pleased that I had them.
Lois and Norm's grandson is going to drive the motor home back to Palm Springs.
Lois will then come to Minnesota to join us for the reunion and then she will go
back to California.
