The Dead Thread

Horsing Around
(read at own risk)

When a Man Dies in a Sex Act with a Horse -- What's a Reporter to Do?

I'm trying to picture this! How does he get the horse in the mood?

On 2005-07-29 13:45, cyntiki wrote:
I'm trying to picture this! How does he get the horse in the mood?

he says "hay, baby"

Wiiiiillllllberrrr.

The Incomperable Hildegarde, dead at 99

Hildegarde, whose career as an international cabaret chanteuse spanned almost seven decades and who was credited with starting the single-name vogue among entertainers, died on Friday at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. She was 99.

Her death was confirmed yesterday by her longtime friend and manager, Don Dellair.

A regal figure in couturier gowns, jeweled glasses, glittering earrings and, in her later years, a curly platinum wig, Hildegarde influenced a number of other performers. She accompanied herself on the piano, always in her trademark long white gloves, and, fluttering a lace handkerchief, chatted between numbers, often poking fun at herself.

"Hildegarde was perhaps the most famous supper-club entertainer who ever lived," Liberace once said. "I used to absorb all the things she was doing, all the showmanship she created. It was marvelous to watch her, wearing elegant gowns, surrounded with roses and playing with white gloves on. They used to literally roll out the red carpet for her."

Although Liberace said he was careful not to imitate her, he did take a single stage name and used "I'll Be Seeing You," one of her best-known numbers, as his own theme song.

Usually billed as the Incomparable Hildegarde, an orchid bestowed on her by Walter Winchell, she was at the peak of her popularity in the 1930's and 40's, when she was booked in plush hotel cabaret rooms and supper clubs at least 45 weeks a year. At one engagement in 1946, she was paid $17,500 a week and 50 percent of the gross over $80,000. She was on the cover of Life magazine in 1939, had a top 10 radio show and traveled with her own orchestra and several dozen pieces of luggage.

Her recordings of such songs as "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup," "The Last Time I Saw Paris" and "Lili Marlene" became worldwide hits. Revlon introduced a Hildegarde shade of lipstick and nail polish, a nursery named a rose for her, and a linen company, picking up on the way she signed her autograph, introduced a "Bless You" handkerchief.

Hildegarde's admirers ranged from enlisted men and officers during World War II to King Gustaf of Sweden and the Duke of Windsor. In 1961 she was the guest of honor at a gala at which Eleanor Roosevelt presented her with an award naming her First Lady of the Supper Clubs.

From the 1950's through the 70's, in addition to her cabaret appearances and record albums, she appeared in a number of television specials and toured with the national company of the Stephen Sondheim musical "Follies." Her autobiography, "Over 50 ... So What!" was published by Doubleday in 1961. In 1980, she was in a revival of the 1927 musical "The Five O'Clock Girl" at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn., and took part in a tour of "The Big Broadcast of 1944," which recreated radio programs of that year. She also did a number of lecture tours at universities and auditoriums, singing, playing, chatting and answering questions.

Born Hildegarde Loretta Sell in Adell, Wis., to German immigrant parents, she began her career in Milwaukee at the age of 16 when, as a music student at Marquette University, she played the piano in a silent movie house. In 1928 she joined a vaudeville troupe, toured for two seasons and then spent a year as an accompanist to various performers. She arrived in New York by way of Camden, N.J., where she struck up a friendship with Anna Sosenko, her landlady's daughter and a budding songwriter, who became the architect of her career.

"Anna was determined to be a songwriter," Hildegarde recalled. "She made me go with her to New York to sing her work to publishers." For a time, Hildegarde took a job as a song plugger for Irving Berlin. She emerged as the one-name Hildegarde after an audition with Gus Edwards, the impresario, who suggested she lose her surname. Ms. Sosenko became her business manager and the two traveled, lived and collected art together for 23 years.

Ms. Sosenko wrote "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup," which became Hildegarde's signature song, and was the singer's partner until 1955, when the relationship dissolved. The friendship resumed two decades later.

Although most of her career was in the United States, Hildegarde was engaged to appear at the Café de Paris in London when she was in her early 20's. She was not a great success, but the experience led her and Ms. Sosenko to take off for Paris to learn the art of cabaret.

They remained there for three years. Ms. Sosenko helped her perfect her technique, and she acquired an international flavor by learning to sing in French, Russian, Italian and Swedish. She also developed the precise diction that made every word clear and reduced her slight German accent.

Her name became synonymous with the best clubs on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1934, she sang at the Ritz Hotel in London during the Duke of Kent's wedding festivities. The next year she was back for King George V's jubilee, and she returned in 1937 for King George VI's coronation. She also appeared in several British movies and stage revues.

During the zenith of her career in the 40's, Hildegarde's name appeared on best-dressed lists, and people were stunned when she said she spent $10,000 a year on clothes. By the 60's, the sum had risen to $30,000.

"I rarely look back, " she said as she approached 90. "That's part of the secret of staying young."

She leaves no immediate survivors, her manager, Mr. Dellair, said.

During a 1993 performance at Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel, Hildegarde said: "Wrinkle, wrinkle, leave me alone. Go and sliver Sharon Stone."

"I can't imagine myself not performing," she said in 1995. "I like to be in harness. I'm good, I know I'm good, and I'm ready."

Another cabaret legend, Bobby Short, who died this year at 80, once said, "Hers was the slickest nightclub act of all time."

nice post...thanks!

Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer born 1927, died Aug. 6, 2005.
Here's a link to the CBC article:
CBC News

From the LA Times:

Joe Ranft, 45; Artist for Pixar Animated Films, Voice of Heimlich in
'A Bug's Life'

By Charles Solomon - Special to The Los Angeles Times

August 18, 2005

Joe Ranft, one of the key creators of Pixar's hit animated features
and the voice of Heimlich the Bavarian caterpillar in "A Bug's Life"
(1998), was killed in an automobile accident Tuesday afternoon. He was
45.

A spokeswoman for the Mendocino County sheriff-coroner's office
confirmed that Ranft was killed when the car in which he was a
passenger veered off the road while traveling north on Highway 1,
plunging 130 feet over the side of the road and into the ocean.

Also killed was the driver, Elegba Earl, 32, of Los Angeles. Another
passenger, Eric Frierson, 39, also of Los Angeles, was hospitalized
with moderate injuries at Mendocino Coast District Hospital in Fort
Bragg, according to the sheriff-coroner's office.

Ranft was widely respected as one of the top story artists in the
animation industry. He was one of seven writers nominated for an
Academy Award for best original screenplay for 1995's "Toy Story."

But Ranft spent most of his time drawing storyboards for animated
films.

"I don't know if people really understand what I do," he said in a
1998 interview with The Times. "When I say that I do story for
animation, they say, 'Oh, you're a writer!' If I tell them I'm kind of
a writer, but I draw, they get this puzzled look. But when I say, `I'm
the voice of Heimlich,' the lightbulb goes on and they say, 'Oh,
great!' "

Telling stories in one form or another was Ranft's lifelong passion.
Born in Pasadena, he grew up in Whittier, where his early interests
included movies, drawing, performing in school plays and doing
sleight-of-hand magic.

"I liked evoking a response from an audience through the illusion of
magic," he said. "Animation is the ultimate illusion, the illusion of
life: These characters don't really exist; we create the illusion of a
character."

Ranft entered the character animation program at California Institute
of the Arts in the fall of 1978. As a student, he was inspired by Bill
Peet's storyboards from the 1946 Disney feature "Song of the South."

"His pastel drawings were so alive, they just knocked me over. Even
though they were just still drawings, they screamed to be animated,"
Ranft recalled. "I knew that's what I wanted to try to accomplish."

Ranft left CalArts for the Walt Disney Studio in 1980, where he
quickly established a reputation as an exceptional story artist.

"Joe was the undisputed storyboard master at Pixar: His boards were
just inspiring," said "Monsters, Inc." director Pete Docter. "On 'Toy
Story,' his boards for the 'army man' sequence, which went into film
pretty much unchanged, became the model we aspired to on the film."

Docter added: "On 'Monsters,' he was a great mentor: constructive and
supportive and always a pleasure to be around. Joe was really a major
part of Pixar's soul. He was one of the key players who made all the
films what they are."

At Disney, Ranft worked on "Oliver & Company" (1988), "Who Framed
Roger Rabbit" (1988), "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "The Lion King"
(1994) and "Fantasia/2000." He oversaw the story on "The Rescuers Down
Under" (1990) and was co-writer and supervising animator on "The Brave
Little Toaster" (1987).

More recently, he served as executive producer on "Tim Burton's Corpse
Bride," due this fall.

While at Disney, Ranft became friends with John Lasseter, who later
became a top executive at Pixar Animation Studios.

Their paths had diverged when Lasseter went to Pixar to direct a
series of innovative computer-animated shorts while Ranft did story
work at Skellington Productions on Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before
Christmas" (1993) and "James and the Giant Peach" (1996), which were
distributed by Disney. But the two stayed in touch.

"John and I had a pact that when he directed his first feature, I was
going to work on it," Ranft told The Times.

Ranft moved to Pixar to serve as story supervisor on Lasseter's "Toy
Story," the first computer-animated feature. His understanding of
story structure and his talent for creating emotionally complex
characters that audiences cared about won him a place in the core
group of artists at Pixar, colleagues said.

In addition to working on the story of "A Bug's Life," Ranft got the
role as Heimlich's voice after Lasseter noticed that his wife, Nancy,
laughed harder at Ranft's temporary dialogue during production than
she did at the actor hired to voice the caterpillar.

Ranft served as story supervisor on "Toy Story 2" (1999) and provided
the voice for Wheezy the Penguin, the asthmatic character who makes
Woody realize he could end up forgotten on a shelf. Ranft was credited
with additional story material for "Monsters, Inc." (2001) and oversaw
the story on Lasseter's "Cars," which is slated for release next year.

"Joe had a great passion for telling stories, and he told them better
than anyone," Lasseter said Wednesday. "He was funny, poignant,
original, and he had an infallible sense for how to structure a
story."

Unlike many story artists, Ranft never expressed an interest in
directing.

"I've had people say, 'Oh, you're just going to keep story-boarding,'
" he said with a characteristic laugh, "My answer is, 'Yes, it's what
I've always wanted to do, and I want to get better at it.' "

A longtime resident of Marin County, Ranft is survived by his wife,
Sue, and their children, Jordan and Sophia. A memorial service will be
held Sunday at 2 p.m. at Mill Valley Community Center, 180 Camino
Alto, Mill Valley.

Esther Wong- Owner of Madam Wong's clubs in Los Angeles and Santa Monica

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050817/ap_on_en_mu/obit_esther_wong_2

Robert Moog, synthesizer innovator and theremin fan has passed away at age 71 in Ashville, NC.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050822/ap_on_en_mu/obit_moog

bloop bloop wah wah zip!

On 2005-08-22 10:03, mrsmiley wrote:
Robert Moog, synthesizer innovator and theremin fan has passed away at age 71 in Ashville, NC.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050822/ap_on_en_mu/obit_moog

bloop bloop wah wah zip!

I like this part "Keyboardist Walter (later Wendy) Carlos demonstrated the range of Moog's synthesizer by recording the hit album "Switched-On Bach" in 1968 using only the new instrument instead of an orchestra." No "Walter" didn't get a sex change operation. Wendy was born Wendy but recorded as "Walter" because she didn't think a woman musician would be taken seriously!

On 2005-08-22 10:05, mrsmiley wrote:

On 2005-08-22 10:03, mrsmiley wrote:
Robert Moog, synthesizer innovator and theremin fan has passed away at age 71 in Ashville, NC.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050822/ap_on_en_mu/obit_moog

bloop bloop wah wah zip!

I like this part "Keyboardist Walter (later Wendy) Carlos demonstrated the range of Moog's synthesizer by recording the hit album "Switched-On Bach" in 1968 using only the new instrument instead of an orchestra." No "Walter" didn't get a sex change operation. Wendy was born Wendy but recorded as "Walter" because she didn't think a woman musician would be taken seriously!

Not true. Walter/Wendy Carlos' sex-change operation was widely publicized and was one of the very first. I was a fan then, and now. Circa 1967. See:

http://www.who2.com/wendycarlos.html

robert moog, a real genius, enlightened & great mentor... supported many small electronic music labs over the years...

... definitely made the world a much better place...

... and a hell of a lot more fun!!!

... both the mini moog and the moog rogue will be cycling in the shop for the rest of the evening... the prodigy, while silenced for years, shall partake in the memorial, for better or for worse... (gotta get it repaired, asap)...

... the neighbors can suffer or enjoy till early am...

Bob Denver, whose portrayal of goofy first mate Gilligan on the 1960s television show "Gilligan's Island," made him an iconic figure to generations of TV viewers, has died, his agent confirmed Tuesday. He was 70.

Denver, who underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery earlier this year, died at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina, according to agent Mike Eisenstadt. Denver's death was first reported by "Entertainment Tonight."

Goodbye little buddy...

Fred Joerger. One of Disneyland's original model makers.

http://www.disneytoday.com/2005/08/29/remembering_fred_joerger_1913_2005.php

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=6977&forum=1&vpost=85409&hilite=fred joerger

[ Edited by: King Bushwich the 33rd 2005-09-06 14:23 ]

On 2005-09-06 12:10, freddiefreelance wrote:
Bob Denver, whose portrayal of goofy first mate Gilligan on the 1960s television show "Gilligan's Island," made him an iconic figure to generations of TV viewers, has died, his agent confirmed Tuesday. He was 70.

Denver, who underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery earlier this year, died at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina, according to agent Mike Eisenstadt. Denver's death was first reported by "Entertainment Tonight."

Texas rhythm and blues legend Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown died today at 81. He has been battling lung cancer for a year and recently lost his home in Slidell, LA, to hurricane Katrina.

I saw him play in San Diego in the early 80s, and he was great despite a lame pickup band backing him up. You know the kind of band with a hot shot guitar player who tries to upstage the star of the show.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050911/ap_en_mu/obit_gatemouth_brown_9

... people only die when you forget them...

Tobias Schneebaum, Chronicler and Dining Partner of Cannibals, Dies
*By MARGALIT FOX
Published: September 25, 2005
*

Tobias Schneebaum, a New York writer, artist and explorer who in the 1950's lived among cannibals in the remote Amazon jungle and, by his own account, sampled their traditional cuisine, died on Tuesday in Great Neck, N.Y. He was in his mid-80's and a longtime resident of Greenwich Village.

The cause was complications of Parkinson's disease, his nephew Jeff Schneebaum said. The elder Mr. Schneebaum, who had several nieces and nephews, leaves no immediate survivors.

In 2000, Mr. Schneebaum was the subject of a well-received documentary film, "Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale," which follows his return to the Amazon, and to Indonesian New Guinea, where he also lived.

Mr. Schneebaum came to prominence in 1969 with the publication of his memoir, also titled "Keep the River on Your Right" (Grove Press). The book, which became a cult classic, described how a mild-mannered gay New York artist wound up living, and ardently loving, for several months among the Arakmbut, an indigenous cannibalistic people in the rainforest of Peru.

Publishers Weekly called the memoir "authentic, deeply moving, sensuously written and incredibly haunting." Other critics dismissed it as romantic, solipsistic and undoubtedly exaggerated.

In either case, Mr. Schneebaum's work raises tantalizing questions about the role of the anthropologist, the responsibilities of the memoirist, and cultural attitudes toward sexuality and taboo. It also offers a look at the persistence of an 18th-century idea - the Western fantasy of the noble savage - well into the 20th century.

In 1955, Mr. Schneebaum, then a painter, won a Fulbright fellowship to study art in Peru. There, he vanished into the jungle and was presumed dead. Seven months later, he emerged, naked and covered in body paint. The experience had transformed him, he would later say, but in a way he could scarcely have imagined.

Theodore Schneebaum was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, most likely on March 25, 1922 (some sources say 1921), and reared in Brooklyn. Visiting Coney Island as a boy, he was captivated by the Wild Man of Borneo, a sideshow attraction famed for its brute exoticism.

Mr. Schneebaum, who disliked the name Theodore and eventually changed it to Tobias, attended the City College of New York. In 1977, he received a master's in cultural anthropology from Goddard College in Vermont.

As a young man, Mr. Schneebaum was part of New York's flourishing bohemian scene. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art with the renowned Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo and was gaining recognition for his abstract paintings, shown in New York galleries.

But as a gay man and a Jew in 1950's America, Mr. Schneebaum felt, he often wrote afterward, that there was nowhere he truly belonged. Craving community, he began to travel, and lived for several years in an artists' colony in Mexico.

In 1955, Mr. Schneebaum accepted the fellowship to Peru, hitchhiking there from New York. At a Roman Catholic mission on the edge of the rain forest, he heard about the Arakmbut. (The tribe, whose name is also spelled Harakumbut, was previously known as the Amarakaire. In his memoir, Mr. Schneebaum calls it by a pseudonym, the Akaramas.)

The Arakmbut, whose home was several days' journey into the jungle, hunted with bows, arrows and stone axes. No outsider, it was said, had ever returned from a trip there.

Mr. Schneebaum was not inclined to boldness. In New York, he had once called a neighbor to dispatch a mouse from his apartment. (The neighbor, Norman Mailer, bravely obliged.) But when he heard about the Arakmbut, he set out on foot, alone, without a compass.

"I knew that out there in the forest were other peoples more primitive, other jungles wilder, other worlds that existed that needed my eyes to look at them," he wrote in "Keep the River on Your Right." "My first thought was: I'm going; the second thought: I'll stay there."

To his relief, the Arakmbut welcomed him congenially. To his delight, homosexuality was not stigmatized there: Arakmbut men routinely had lovers of both sexes. Mr. Schneebaum spent the next several months living with the tribe in a state of unalloyed happiness.

One day, he accompanied a group of Arakmbut men on what he thought was an ordinary hunting trip. The walked until they reached another village. As Mr. Schneebaum watched, his friends massacred all the men there. In the ensuing victory celebration, parts of the victims were roasted and eaten. Offered a bit of flesh, Mr. Schneebaum partook; later that evening, he wrote, he ate part of a heart. It was an experience, he later said, that would haunt him for years. He left the Arakmbut shortly afterward.

"Keep the River on Your Right" caused a sensation when it was published. Anthropologists were aghast: ethnographers were not supposed to sleep with their subjects, much less eat them. Interviewers were titillated. ("How did it taste?" a fellow guest asked Mr. Schneebaum on "The Mike Douglas Show." "A little bit like pork," he replied.)

Some critics doubted Mr. Schneebaum's story, though he maintained it till the end of his life. From the documentary film, it is clear that he did live among the Arakmbut. The filmmakers travel with Mr. Schneebaum to Peru and to New Guinea, where he lived for years with the Asmat, a tribe of headhunters and occasional cannibals.

In both places, tribal elders, some of them his former lovers, recognize Mr. Schneebaum and greet him warmly. Neither community is willing to talk about cannibalism. The filmmakers, the brother-and-sister team of David and Laurie Gwen Shapiro, leave the issue deliberately unresolved.

Mr. Schneebaum's other memoirs include "Wild Man" (Viking, 1979) and "Where the Spirits Dwell" (Grove, 1988). His most recent, "Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea" (University of Wisconsin, 2000) moves between the communities he loved: Asmat, now ravaged by globalization, and his friends in Greenwich Village, ravaged by AIDS.

An authority on Asmat art and culture, Mr. Schneebaum was formerly assistant to the curator of the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress in Agats, Irian Jaya, Indonesia. He was also the author of "Embodied Spirits: Ritual Carvings of the Asmat."

Don Adams dead at 82 ~ Get Smart Agent 86.

article

On 2005-09-26 11:52, dogbytes wrote:
Don Adams dead at 82 ~ Get Smart Agent 86.

... loved the #949 stereophonic pistol...

Horror film director Cunha dies in Oceanside at 83

OCEANSIDE, Calif. - Richard E. Cunha, a cinematographer who directed such 1950s cult horror flicks as "She Demons," "Missile to the Moon" and "Frankenstein's Daughter," has died. He was 83.

Cunha died of heart failure Sept. 18 at his home in Oceanside, near San Diego, his son, Rick, said Monday. The filmmaker had undergone triple-bypass heart surgery last December, his son said.

Born in Honolulu, Cunha served as an Army Air Forces cameraman in World War II then formed a production company that did industrial films and commercials.

Cunha worked on the early TV shows "The Adventures of Marshal O'Dell" and "Captain Bob Steele and the Border Patrol" and was a director of photography on "Death Valley Days" and "Branded."

He directed a handful of low-budget films, the four best known coming in the late 1950s: "Giant From the Unknown, "She Demons," "Missile to the Moon" and "Frankenstein's Daughter." The movies were shot on budgets of $65,000 or less on tight six-day schedules.

With "X number of dollars" to spend, "you don't run over on these low-budget films - you shoot the opening scenes and the end scenes, and then fill in the picture in between," Cunha said in a 1984 interview with Fangoria magazine.

Cunha's movies "were not popular with the critics, but down on the level of 'monster kids' - as we sci-fi/horror nuts call ourselves - these movies have always been big favorites," fantasy and science fiction movie expert Tom Weaver told the Los Angeles Times.

Later in his career, Cunha worked as a director and cinematographer for Screen Gems' commercial division.

Cunha is survived by his wife of 62 years, Kathryn "Peaches" Cunha; sons Rick, Michael and Anthony; a daughter, Kathryn; a sister, Mae Cunha Ross; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His son Steven died in 1972.

The family plans a memorial service later in Hawaii.

'The Wiz' Actor Nipsey Russell Dies at 80

(10-03) 20:29 PDT New York (AP) --

Nipsey Russell, who played the Tin Man alongside Diana Ross and Michael Jackson in "The Wiz" as part of a decades-long career in stage, television and film, has died. He was 80.

The actor, who had been suffering from cancer, died Sunday afternoon at Lenox Hill Hospital, said his longtime manager Joseph Rapp.

Born in Atlanta, Russell launched his television career as Officer Anderson in the 1961 television series "Car 54, Where are You?" He also appeared in the 1994 film version.

He became a fixture on popular television game and talk shows, where he was welcomed for his poetic delivery that earned him the moniker the "poet laureate of television." He also took his signature four-line poetry on the road for readings and performances.

Russell also appeared in the films "Nemo" in 1984, "Wildcats" in 1986 and "Posse" in 1993.

He settled in New York after graduating from the University of Cincinnati and serving as an Army captain in Europe during World War II, Rapp said.

Russell never married. "He always said, 'I have trouble living with myself, how could I live with anyone else,'" Rapp said. "But he was a wonderful guy, very quiet, never bragged."

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/10/03/entertainment/e202907D17.DTL

RIP Mrs. Steve McGarrett

She was the rock behind ‘Five-O’ star
By Tim Ryan
[email protected]
Marie Lord, described by friends as the classic strong woman behind the successful actor Jack Lord of "Hawaii Five-O," died yesterday at her Kahala home.

Marie Lord and husband Jack, who starred as Steve McGarrett in television's longest running police drama and died in January 1998, lived in the same Kahala condominium since the 1970s. A trustee of her estate declined to provide cause of death.

"She was devoted to Jack; there was never anyone or anything who got in Marie's way to care for Jack," said Jimmy MacArthur, who co-starred as Danno in the series, in a telephone interview from the St. Andrew's gold course in Scotland. "She would be up at 3 a.m. to read through dialogue with Jack and get him ready for a day of work on the set.

"And when she came to the set, Marie was always well-dressed, very pleasant to everyone. Marie was a nice lady."

MacArthur and others for years would take Marie Lord to lunch at the then-Kahala Hilton where she would talk about her deceased husband and the fun times on "Five-O," said MacArthur.

Marie Lord was born Marie L. de Narde in St. Louis to French parents. She studied fashion and art in Paris and later moved to New York to pursue a career as a fashion designer. She met Jack Lord in New York, who was a fine arts major at NYU on a football scholarship. Marie soon left her career to support Jack in becoming an actor.

Lord called Marie "the bride of my youth who abides me still."

Marie Lord would spend hours assisting Jack with administrative tasks that came along with him being a star.

Eddie Sherman, a MidWeek columnist who appeared several times on "Hawaii Five-O," called Marie "the rock behind Jack Lord."

"He didn't do anything without her," Sherman said. "They were like meat and potatoes, the perfect combination. They were totally devoted to one another."

Entertainer Jimmy Borges, who also appeared in several "Five-O" episodes, called Marie Lord "a wonderful, sweet, giving lady" who would regularly thank Borges for his efforts to local charities.

Marie Lord, who was in her 90s, requested that there be no funeral services and that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Jack and Marie Lord fund that benefits local charities. Donations can be sent to the Hawaii Community Foundation, 1164 Bishop St., Suite 800, Honolulu 96813

'SNL' comic Charles Rocket's death ruled a suicide

(10-17) 09:19 PDT Farmington, Conn. (AP) --

Actor and comedian Charles Rocket, who had roles in a variety of movies and TV series and briefly gained notoriety for uttering an obscenity on "Saturday Night Live," committed suicide, the state medical examiner ruled.

Rocket, 56, whose real name was Charles Claverie, was found dead in a field near his home in Canterbury on Oct 7. His throat had been cut, the medical examiner said.

"An investigation determined there was no criminal aspect to this case," State Police Sgt. J. Paul Vance said Monday.

Rocket was a cast member on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" during the 1980-81 season. The profanity incident happened during a spoof of the "Who Shot J.R.?" plot line on "Dallas," which created a nationwide sensation at the time.

"Dallas" star Charlene Tilton was the "SNL" guest host that week. Rocket, who came on stage in a wheelchair, uttered the profanity after he was asked what it was like to have been shot.

The incident sparked complaints from viewers and prompted NBC to issue an apology. Rocket was later dismissed along with other cast members and writers on the show amid weak ratings at the time.

He went on to appear in numerous TV shows, including "Moonlighting" and "Max Headroom," and provided voices for cartoon series. His movie credits included "Earth Girls are Easy,""Dumb and Dumber" and "Dances With Wolves," according to the Internet Movie Database.

Before his time on "Saturday Night Live," Rocket was an anchorman at television stations in Colorado and Rhode Island and played an influential role in the Providence, R.I., arts scene decades ago, friends said.

"I just think he was one of the nicest and funniest people I ever met," said Chip Young, who co-wrote a column on Rocket in a Providence paper. "He had so many friends and influenced so many people."

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/10/17/state/n091940D03.DTL

BILL KING: 1927-2005
Erudite voice of Bay Area sports

Bill King, who described in his distinctive rapid-fire style some of the greatest moments in Bay Area sports history and connected with generations of local sports fans, has died.

King, 78, died in San Leandro Hospital early Tuesday morning of a pulmonary embolism. He underwent surgery on Friday to repair his artificial hip but developed a blood clot.

He was the radio voice of the pro basketball Warriors from their 1962 arrival in the Bay Area through 1983, the pro football Raiders from 1966 through 1992 and the baseball A's from 1981 through this past season. Radio station KNBR, which was King's professional home for a large part of his career, devoted its entire programming Tuesday afternoon to replaying memorable play-by-play calls and interviewing colleagues.

King was almost as renowned for his handlebar mustache and wide-ranging interests as he was for the trademark "Holy Toledo'' exclamation he used to punctuate exciting plays.

"We've lost a unique person, no doubt about that,'' said former broadcaster Lon Simmons, who shared the A's booth with King from 1981 through '95.

King was the audio link to the Warriors during their championship season of 1974-75. His calls of great Raiders moments from their heyday of the 1970s are still often replayed. And he was behind the microphone during the A's run of three straight World Series appearances, 1988-90.

"He was the essence of what a sportscaster should be,'' said Hank Greenwald, who was King's broadcast partner on the Warriors before Greenwald became the voice of the Giants in 1979. "He had the ability to capture what was happening and enable listeners to see it as vividly as if they were in the arena themselves.''

"His name should be on the wall of the (Oakland) Coliseum with (Rollie) Fingers and (Catfish) Hunter and (Dennis) Eckersley and the rest,'' said Ken Korach, King's A's broadcast partner the past 10 years. "He's meant more to the organization than anyone. He touched so many lives -- he was like a member of the family for millions of people.

"I thought he was the greatest sportscaster this country every produced.''

Former Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli, who hired King to announce for the team when it moved to San Francisco from Philadelphia, said, "He had incredible eye-to-brain-to-mouth coordination. He was able to see everything so quickly and tell you about it. He was just phenomenal.''

Even the players appreciated that.

"I cannot believe that there ever was a better radio basketball play-by-play man than Bill King,'' said former Warriors forward Rick Barry, who hosts a talk show on KNBR. "Nobody, nobody had the vocabulary. ... It was like poetry almost. ... You could visualize with Bill. He created television in your mind.''

Former A's President Sandy Alderson said, "He was probably the best I've ever heard at describing a sporting event, ever, on the radio. He was so adept at all three sports. There was so much information packed into his description. And it wasn't about him, it was about the game. He had a tremendous respect for the responsibility he had.''

In an interview with The Chronicle in 2003, King was asked what was the greatest satisfaction he got from his job.

He replied: "There's no greater satisfaction than at a critical moment ... you have the right words, and you see it right, and you call it right, and that's when you walk out of the booth feeling, Wow, it was a great day to be here."

A native of Bloomington, Ill., King began his sportscasting career doing minor-league baseball and high school sports in Pekin, Ill. He went on to call Bradley University (Peoria, Ill.,) basketball before moving to the Bay Area in 1958. His early work included filling in on Giants broadcasts when Simmons was doing 49ers games.

"He was broadcasting the Giants from Candlestick on the final day of 1962 when they beat Houston and clinched the tie for the pennant,'' Simmons said.

King also broadcast Cal football and basketball during that period, as well as some games for the San Francisco Seals of the minor league Western Hockey League.

He made his big splash with the Warriors, becoming famous for keeping up with the action and firing barbs at the referees.

"He used to really get on the refs,'' Mieuli said. "The league couldn't do anything to him, but they fined the team. I would get the bill, but I believed in free speech.''

King's criticism wasn't one-sided.

"He wasn't a homer,'' said former Warriors coach and player Al Attles. "He was very passionate about his job, but he was fair and objective. If you did something wrong, he wasn't afraid to say so.''

He added the Raiders to his job list in 1966.

"Bill was a great friend, a brilliant performer and an exceptional man," Raiders owner Al Davis said in a statement. "I say this with great admiration and love that Bill becomes one of the people that I give the cloak of immortality. Time never stops for the great ones."

"Everybody talks about his great voice and his ability to describe and that was true,'' said Scotty Stirling, King's onetime broadcast partner on the Raiders and later general manager of the Warriors. "But what I remember most is his preparation. He would study everything about an opponent and learned enough football so he could see a team line up and know where the play was going to go.''

Broadcaster John Madden, who was the Raiders coach during much of King's time there, agreed. "He didn't just show up in shorts the day of the game and do the broadcast,'' Madden said. "He would come to training camp, get to know the players and the coaches. He was thorough.''

When the Walter Haas family bought the A's in 1981, one of the first things it did was to hire King and Simmons to create one of the highest-profile broadcast teams in professional sports.

"The one thing I regret is that he passed before he got a chance to get into the baseball Hall of Fame,'' said Simmons, who had that honor, the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasters, in 2004.

For three years, King was the lead announcer for the A's, Raiders and Warriors. "I don't see how anybody could do that, but he did,'' Greenwald said. "And his work didn't suffer. Broadcasting was his passion. What he really needed was to be at a microphone.''

King finally gave up the Warriors following the 1982-83 season and the Raiders nine years later. He stayed with the A's for 25 years. Although he was unable to travel for much of the 2005 season after injuring himself in a fall during spring training, King worked the entire home schedule that concluded last month. His final broadcast was from Seattle on Oct. 2.

His beard and carefully curled-up mustache gave him a unique look in the traditionally clean- shaven world of broadcasting. And his interests included opera, ballet, painting and Russian history and literature.

"He loved the ballet more than he loved sports,'' Stirling said. "He would always make a point to see it when we were in New York or Chicago and certainly at home in San Francisco.''

And King didn't merely dabble. "Everything he did, he really got into it,'' Simmons said. "He taught himself how to paint, and a lot of what he did was pretty good. ... And for me, eating is something you do three times a day because you're hungry. For Bill, dining was an adventure. He loved ethnic foods and wines. He studied that, too.''

Madden said that King was a born traveling companion. "On road trips I would talk with him to get my mind off football, and he could talk about anything,'' Madden said. "He was as well-versed a person as I've ever been around.''

King's wife Nancy Stephens died last year. He is survived by his stepdaughter Kathleen Lowenthal and her husband Barry of Woodacre, stepson John Stephens of Sausalito and grandchildren Julia and John Lowenthal. Memorial services are pending.

The family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the Smuin Ballet, 300 Brannan Street, Suite 407, San Francisco, CA 94107 or the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, P.O. Box 809, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956.
Bill King, 1927-2005

Hometown: Bloomington, Ill.

Local residence: Sausalito

Play-by-play: San Francisco/Golden State Warriors, 1962-83.

Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders, 1966-92.

Oakland A's, 1981-2005.

Also: King began his career on Guam with Armed Forces Radio, and started broadcasting sports in the late '40s in Pekin, Ill., calling minor-league baseball and high school football and basketball. He came to the Bay Area in 1958 and was hired by KSFO to work on Giants broadcasts. He also called Cal football and basketball games, and did color commentary for the San Francisco Seals hockey team.

Source: Oakland Athletics, Chronicle staff
'Holy Toledo': The words of Bill King

Here is Bill King's description of the "Holy Roller" play when Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler fumbled the ball forward, and ultimately Dave Casper grabbed it in the end zone for a game-winning TD at San Diego on Sept. 10, 1978:

"The ball, flipped forward, is loose. A wild scramble. Two seconds on the clock. Casper grabbing the ball. It is ruled a fumble. Casper has recovered in the end zone. The Oakland Raiders have scored on the most zany, unbelievable, absolutely impossible dream of a play. Madden is on the field. He wants to know if it's real. They said yes, get your big butt out of here. He does. There's nothing real in the world anymore. The Raiders have won the football game.''

This is King's call of George Blanda's game-winning field goal for the Raiders against Cleveland on Nov. 8, 1970, during Blanda's stretch of heroics at the age of 43:

"Here it is. Snapped, spotted. It's kicked. That's got a chance. That is ... good. It's good. Holy Toledo, the place has gone wild. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. There are three seconds left in the game. There are three seconds left in the game. Well, if you can hear me, this place has gone wild. The Oakland Raiders 23, the Cleveland Browns 20. George Blanda has just been elected king of the world.''
King was at his best during a game's most dramatic moments.

Here is his call of Scott Hatteberg's pinch-hit homer that gave the A's a 12-11 victory over Kansas City on Sept. 4, 2002. It capped Oakland's American League-record 20-game win streak:

"Now the pitch. Swung on, there's a high drive, hit way back, right-center field. That one is gone, and it's 20 consecutive victories for the Oakland Athletics on an unbelievable night when they lost an 11-0 lead and now they win it.''

Here is his call of Miguel Tejada's game-tying homer at Seattle on Sept. 26, 2002. The A's would win in 10 innings, clinching the AL West title:

"Sasaki ready and pours it in. Tejada swings and lifts it high in the air to right, down toward the corner. Ichiro going back, and that ball is gone. A home run for Miguel Tejada, his 200th hit of the season, and the A's have tied the game against Sasaki. Holy Toledo!''

King's rapid-fire delivery in basketball was unmatched. The following is from the 1975 Western Conference finals, when the Warriors -- with Charles Johnson (CJ) and Rick Barry -- overcame Chicago en route to the NBA title:

"Here's CJ, top of the key. Works the dribble to the left. Backs into the left corner. Causes a switch. Over to Barry. Barry, guarded by Van Lier, the smaller man. Barry, dribbling, to the baseline. 13-footer. He had a good look. Good. 94-90. Barry now is on a runaway tear.''

Courtesy of Bruce Macgowan, Jeff Swisher and KNBR archives (Raiders, Warriors) and Robert Buan (A's).

Chronicle staff writers Steve Kroner and Susan Slusser contributed to this report.

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R.I.P. Porky.

'Little Rascals' actor Gordon Lee dies

Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS - Gordon Lee, the chubby child actor who played Spanky McFarland's little brother Porky in the "Little Rascals" comedies, has died. He was 71.

Lee died Sunday in a Minneapolis nursing home after battling lung and brain cancer, said Janice McClain, his partner of 13 years.

Lee played one of the younger members in the "Our Gang" shorts in the 1930s, appearing in more than 40 of them from 1935 to 1939. The comedies, produced by Hal Roach, became known as "The Little Rascals" when shown on TV in the 1950s.

Among the films Lee appeared in were "Bored of Education," which won the Oscar for best one-reel short subject in 1937; "Our Gang Follies of 1936";"The Awful Tooth"; and "Roamin' Holiday."

In a 1998 interview with the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, the Texas-born Lee said he was 2 years old when his mother sent his picture to studio executives who were seeking an actor to play McFarland's brother.

"We were on the next train to L.A. and I had a contract within a few days," Lee said. "Fat kid got lucky."

"My memories are not about making movies. We played with our toys and the adults played with theirs (the cameras)," he said.

He and Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas teamed up against older boys Spanky and Alfalfa in many of the comedies. The Porky character is credited with originating the catchphrase "otay."

In the interview, Lee recalled a warm friendship with his black costar when they were kids and praised their interracial relationship on screen, saying, "Buckwheat played an absolute equal part in the Gang."

Lee told friends his career ended when a growth spurt made him thinner. "They wanted Porky to be a chunky fellow, so they looked for someone else," McClain said.

He was born Eugene Lee in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1933. His adoptive parents began calling him Gordon after Gordon Douglas, who directed many of the films Lee appeared in. He kept the first name as an adult.

Lee was a schoolteacher, living in Colorado for a time. He moved to Minnesota after he retired to be closer to his only son, Douglas, said a friend, Tracy Tolzmann. In recent years, Lee sold autographed photos of himself as Porky, Tolzmann and McClain said.

"Before that he felt like he was forgotten," McClain said. "It really made him feel good about himself."

Woah, that is so strange. I watched an old Little Rascals episode last night, a very early one that had Porky in it.

It was included in a documentary about pitbulls.("Off the Chain is a horrifying glimpse into the world where the special relationship between man and dog has been perverted.")

"Rule Update: No duplicate profiles anymore"

On 2005-10-26 10:32, Krustiki wrote:
R.I.P
Tiki_Bare
01/01/2005 to 10/13/2005

Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks Dies (1913-2005)

NPR.org, October 25, 2005 ·

Rosa Parks, the woman known as the "mother of the civil rights movement," has died. Parks turned the course of American history by refusing in 1955 to give up her seat on a bus for a white man.

In 1999, when former President Bill Clinton presented Parks with the Congressional Gold Medal, he said her short bus ride went a long way for civil rights.

Born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, she married Raymond Parks in 1932. By the early 1950s, Rosa Parks and her now deceased husband were long-time activists in Montgomery Alabama's chapter of the NAACP.

Parks worked as a seamstress at a local department store, and on her way home from work one day, she engaged in a simple gesture of defiance that galvanized the civil rights movement.

It was nearly 50 years ago, Dec. 1, 1955, when Parks challenged the South's Jim Crow laws -- and Montgomery's segregated bus seating policy -- by refusing to get up and give her seat to a white passenger.

When the police officer boarded the bus, Parks, who was 42, had one question for him: "I said, 'Why do you push us around?' He said, 'I do not know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.' "

Parks' grass roots activism had prepared her for this moment. She had attended a session the summer before at the Highlander Folk Center, the educational center for workers' rights and racial equality in Tennessee. Several years earlier she had been thrown off a bus by the same bus driver.

There were other black women in Montgomery who were arrested in 1955 for violating the segregated busing policy. But this time, the black community fought back in force. The NAACP had been looking for a test case to challenge segregated busing and Parks agreed to let the group take her case.

Parks lost her job and had trouble finding work in Alabama after her public stance. She and her husband moved to Detroit. For many years she worked as an aide to Congressman John Conyers, and she remained a committed activist. In the 1980s, she worked in the anti-apartheid movement and also opened a career counseling center for black youth in Detroit.

She received numerous awards and in 1999, President Clinton presented her with the nation's highest civilian honor, a Congressional Gold Medal. "We must never ever, when this ceremony is over, forget about the power of ordinary people to stand in the fire for the cause of human dignity," Clinton said.

Parks died Monday night in her Detroit home of natural causes. Her attorney said close friends were by her side.

Voice of Jolly Green Giant dies at 80

Associated Press

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. - Elmer "Len" Dresslar Jr., who extolled vegetables to generations of TV watchers as the booming voice of the Jolly Green Giant, has died. He was 80.

Dresslar died Oct. 16 of cancer, according to daughter Teri Bennett.

Dresslar was an entertainer and singer for nearly six decades. But his voice rang through millions of households when he sang the simple refrain, "Ho, Ho, Ho," in an ad jingle for Green Giant foods.

"His was the most consistent and most frequent voice of the Jolly Green Giant over the years, the one consumers are going to recognize," said Tara Johnson, a spokeswoman for General Mills, which owns Green Giant Co.

Dresslar, a Kansas native, moved to Chicago with his wife in the early 1950s to study voice after touring with a production of "South Pacific." By the 1960s, the Navy veteran had carved out a career singing in clubs, on television and in advertising jingles.

He recorded 15 albums with The Singers Unlimited jazz group and appeared on the CBS television show "In Town Tonight" from 1955 to 1960. He and his wife, Dorothy, retired to Palm Springs in 1991.

Ad jingles were the most consistent part of his career, and he landed roles for Rice Krispies cereal, Marlboro cigarettes, Amoco oil and Dinty Moore canned beef stew.

He periodically re-recorded the "Ho, Ho, Ho" for Jolly Green Giant commercials, most recently about 10 years ago.

Bennett said her father auditioned for the Green Giant job without any idea his baritone would become so recognizable.

"He never got tired of it," she said. "If nothing else, it put my sister and I through college."

from the New York Times

Coffins and Buried Remains Set Adrift by Hurricanes Create a Grisly Puzzle

BATON ROUGE, La., Oct. 24 - The living were not the only ones uprooted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The force of the storms literally raised the dead from their resting places in peaceful parish cemeteries, sending nearly a thousand coffins and vaults floating across the Gulf Coast and creating a macabre puzzle for Louisiana coroners and morticians. Storm surges as high as 20 feet transformed two-ton concrete vaults, tombs and coffins into virtual ships that traveled for miles across parish lines, landing in front yards, fields and swamps. One barnacle-encrusted vault found underwater in a marsh is thought to have been a victim of Hurricane Audrey in 1957.

A coffin showed up on the lawn of Dr. Bryan Bertucci, the coroner of St. Bernard Parish. And later, a parish resident informed Dr. Bertucci that he found the remains of his grandmother, still wearing her pink gown, out of her grave in a local cemetery.

"Coffins were torn out of mausoleums like a child's blocks," Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state emergency medical director, said. "There are a lot. It is very disturbing to a lot of families who want their loved one. It is very disturbing."

Many of the coffins lack identification, so the task of learning the identity of the remains and returning them to their cemeteries is falling on the shoulders of medical examiners and coroners around the state, already overburdened with the victims of the most recent storms. An official said 137 disinterred remains, 80 of which were in their coffins, had been taken to the same temporary morgue that the state set up for Hurricane Katrina victims, while parish coroners would handle others.

Some coffins built in the 1960's and later contain burial scrolls with the names of the dead screwed into the exterior. In other cases, workers can trace the coffins using manufacturer's serial numbers and hand-drawn cemetery maps. Some family members have identified relatives through rosaries, scars, pacemakers or X-ray evidence of fractures. If embalming is intact, a visual identification can sometimes be made or DNA matching can be helpful.

"Cemeteries are very important to people in the South," Dr. Cataldie said. "We take care of our dead. In those cemeteries they find their memories and their childhoods. It's important to give them their mommies, daddies and grandparents back."

Federal officials from the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, known as Dmort, are assisting local officials in finding and identifying the remains, using marsh buggies, airboats and helicopters. New coffins are found every day, sometimes in trees.

Exposed skeletal remains have been salvaged from between cracked statues of Jesus and Mary. Like the remnants of classical antiquity, marble figures with broken wings rest on wasted cemetery lawns, lying among toppled headstones, some with inscriptions like "Hunting in Heaven." Empty graves look like spaces between teeth. A mausoleum appears like a desk emptied of its drawers.

"Many are in extremely remote and inaccessible areas," Don Kelly, a spokesman for Dmort, said. "They have been carried way downrange into muck and swamp and forest."

Family members fear that relatives, buried years ago, are now hidden in unknown fields, their bodies and stories lost.

"The first place they came was their cemeteries," said Zeb Johnson, an investigator for the Calcasieu Parish coroner in far southwestern Louisiana and the owner of Johnson Funeral Home in Lake Charles, who receives constant phone calls. "This may go on for years."

A few miles away in the town of Creole, the Sacred Heart Cemetery is full of disturbed graves.

"You just can't imagine that water can be that destructive," said Eloucia S. Richard, 78, a retired teacher who came to the cemetery to check on the grave of her husband, Dalton J. Richard, which was intact.

"I knew everybody," said Ms. Richard, crying when she saw dead friends missing. "I knew where everybody lived."

Two missing from the mausoleum were her students, and she thought that there might be more.

"I know them very well, playing football," she recalled. "Such a horrible thing. I knew these people. Where did they go?"

In St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans, Merrick Cemetery is one of many devastated graveyards. Situated in a historically black section of Violet, it is full of cinderblock tombs built by neighborhood residents, who often painted them on the birthdays of the dead.

Larry M. Aisola, 32, a lawyer, would like to know where his dead grandfather and mother are, as well as his grandmother, buried days before Hurricane Katrina hit.

"They've got to go back," Mr. Aisola said. "The problem is trying to figure out how to put them back together."

WWE is deeply saddened by the news that Eddie Guerrero has passed away. He was found dead Sunday morning in his hotel room in Minneapolis. Eddie is survived by his wife Vickie and daughters Shaul, 14, Sherilyn, 9, and Kaylie Marie, 3.

The cause of death is unknown at this time. An autopsy will be performed in Minneapolis on Monday, and Eddie's body will then be flown to Arizona.

Link Wray R.I.P.

As reported yesterday:

Guitarist Link Wray, considered one of the the pioneers of US Rock n Roll in the 1950's, and a cult figure, passed away at 76 years of age, in Copenhagen, where he had lived the past two decades, according to todays newspaper "Politiken."

Ironic... sad, but ironic

Creator of Stove Top Stuffing Dies

By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press Writer Wed Nov 23, 2:23 PM ET

EVANSVILLE, Ind. - Ruth M. Siems, a home economist who helped create Stove Top stuffing, a Thanksgiving favorite that will be on dinner tables across the country this year, has died at 74.

Siems, who worked for General Foods for more than 30 years, died Nov. 13 in Newburgh, Ind., after suffering a heart attack in her home.

Siems helped develop Stove Top in 1971 while working at General Foods' technical center in White Plains, N.Y. She was listed first among four inventors when the patent was awarded in 1975 for the quick and easy way of making stuffing without actually stuffing a turkey.

Kraft Foods, which now owns the Stove Top brand, sells about 60 million boxes each year around Thanksgiving. The five-minute stuffing comes in several flavors, including turkey, chicken and beef.

As a member of the research and development staff for General Foods, Siems helped find the ideal bread crumb size for making instant stuffing with the same texture as the real thing, said her brother, David Siems.

Siems grew up in Evansville and graduated from Purdue University in 1953 with a home economics degree. She later took a job at a General Foods plant in Indiana, researching flour and angel food cake mixes.

She retired in 1985 and settled in a historic house in Newburgh, near Evansville.

Actor Pat Morita Dies at 73

Nov 25, 12:40 PM (ET)

By TIM MOLLOY

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Actor Pat Morita, whose portrayal of the wise and dry-witted Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid" earned him an Oscar nomination, has died. He was 73.

Morita died Thursday at his home in Las Vegas of natural causes, said his wife of 12 years, Evelyn. She said in a statement that her husband, who first rose to fame with a role on "Happy Days," had "dedicated his entire life to acting and comedy."

In 1984, he appeared in the role that would define his career and spawn countless affectionate imitations. As Kesuke Miyagi, the mentor to Ralph Macchio's "Daniel-san," he taught karate while trying to catch flies with chopsticks and offering such advice as "wax on, wax off" to guide Daniel through chores to improve his skills.

Morita said in a 1986 interview with The Associated Press he was billed as Noriyuki "Pat" Morita in the film because producer Jerry Weintraub wanted him to sound more ethnic. He said he used the billing because it was "the only name my parents gave me."

He lost the 1984 best supporting actor award to Haing S. Ngor, who appeared in "The Killing Fields."

For years, Morita played small and sometimes demeaning roles in such films as "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and TV series such as "The Odd Couple" and "Green Acres." His first breakthrough came with "Happy Days," and he followed with his own brief series, "Mr. T and Tina."

"The Karate Kid," led to three sequels, the last of which, 1994's "The Next Karate Kid," paired him with a young Hilary Swank.

Morita was prolific outside of the "Karate Kid" series as well, appearing in "Honeymoon in Vegas,""Spy Hard,""Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "The Center of the World." He also provided the voice for a character in the Disney movie "Mulan" in 1998.

Born in northern California on June 28, 1932, the son of migrant fruit pickers, Morita spent most of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during World War II.

"One day I was an invalid," he recalled in a 1989 AP interview. "The next day I was public enemy No. 1 being escorted to an internment camp by an FBI agent wearing a piece."

After the war, Morita's family tried to repair their finances by operating a Sacramento restaurant. It was there that Morita first tried his comedy on patrons.

Because prospects for a Japanese-American standup comic seemed poor, Morita found steady work in computers at Aerojet General. But at age 30 he entered show business full time.

"Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did," he commented. "If I tried it in Japan before the war, it would have been considered blasphemy, and I would have ended in leg irons. "

Morita was to be buried at Palm Green Valley Mortuary and Cemetery.

He is survived by his wife and three daughters from a previous marriage.

Soccer Great George Best Dies at 59

• By ROBERT MILLWARD, AP Soccer Writer
  Friday, November 25, 2005

(11-25) 09:32 PST LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --

George Best, one of the most dazzling players in soccer history who also reveled in a hard-drinking, playboy lifestyle, died Friday after decades of alcohol abuse. He was 59.

Best, who starred in the 1960s and 1970s for Manchester United and Northern Ireland, had a liver transplant three years ago and had been hospitalized since Oct. 1 because of a reaction to medication to control his alcoholism.

He appeared close to death last month when doctors discovered internal bleeding. He had been readmitted to intensive care a week ago with a lung infection and was put on life support. His condition deteriorated sharply Thursday.

"After a long and very valiant fight, Mr. George Best died this afternoon in the intensive care unit at Cromwell Hospital," the hospital said in a statement.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said Best was "probably the most naturally gifted footballer of his generation."

England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson added: "His ability was an inspiration to everyone who loves football."

The Premier League said there will be a minute's silence before each game this weekend. Manchester United players will wear black armbands.

Best was told never to drink again after his liver transplant, but he went back to his old ways and was regularly seen at pubs.

"Unfortunately there is no solution to alcohol, you can't make it go away," Best wrote in a recent update to his second autobiography "Blessed.""Drink is the only opponent I've been unable to beat."

Denis Law, a former Manchester United teammate, was at Best's bedside all night.

"From 1964 to 1969, he was the best player in the country," Law said. "It's sad as hell, but I don't think we saw the best of him. I think he went on the blink at a time when he could have got even better."

Best humiliated defenders and frustrated coaches during his wayward career. He scored 180 goals in 465 appearances for Manchester United, helping the team win the 1968 European Cup. He also played in the North American Soccer League, scoring 54 goals in 139 games for the Los Angeles Aztecs, Fort Lauderdale Strikers and San Jose Earthquakes.

"Everyone has their own opinion about football and their favorite players," Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson said. "But in terms of British players, you would find it difficult to think of anyone better."

Best was only 17 when he began baffling defenders with his extraordinary dribbling, thrilling fans with spectacular goals for Manchester United.

Slightly built but with amazing balance and devastating speed, Best would run at defenders and leave them tackling thin air. Sometimes he would embarrass them further by going back to beat them again.

Best made 37 international appearances for Northern Ireland. But the team had few other stars capable of making an impact in the World Cup or European Championship, and Best played in neither competition.

In United's 5-1 win at Benfica's Stadium of Light in Portugal in 1966, he scored twice in the first 12 minutes, and the shaggy-haired star with screaming fans became known as the fifth Beatle. He was voted European Player of the Year after the club's Champions Cup triumph over the same Portuguese club at Wembley in 1968.

"Pele called me the greatest footballer in the world," Best once said. "That is the ultimate salute to my life."

Best retired at 27 in 1972 to concentrate on business ventures, which included nightclubs and clothing boutiques. He came out of retirement three years later, considerably overweight.

Best slimmed down and went to the United States, where he played for the Aztecs of the now-defunct NASL. After agreeing to join Fulham in 1976, he walked out on the second-division English club. FIFA imposed a worldwide ban on Best because he broke his contract. That ruled out a move to Fort Lauderdale, although he later played for the team.

After the ban was lifted, Best had a successful spell with San Jose. He then moved to the Scottish club Hibernian but was fired when he failed to show for two games because of drinking binges.

In 1984, he served two months in jail for drunken driving. In 2004, he was banned from driving for 20 months after another conviction. In 2000, Best collapsed from serious liver damage. He was hospitalized with pneumonia in 2001. Two months later, anti-alcohol pellets were implanted in his stomach.

Best had a reputation as someone who could not be relied on to keep appointments either as a player, TV soccer analyst or after-dinner speaker. His private life was splashed across the British tabloids, and he seemed to enjoy the attention.

"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars," he once said. "The rest I just squandered."

At times, he had a comic's perfect delivery.

"I used to go missing a lot," he said. "Miss Canada, Miss United Kingdom, Miss World."

In 1983, his playing career over, Best was hit over the head with a beer glass in a London pub hours after he appeared in bankruptcy court for failing to pay back taxes. Just before Christmas the following year, Best was jailed for three months for drunken driving, assaulting a policeman and jumping bail.

In 1990, Best appeared wildly drunk on a live TV show, uttering expletives and embarrassing the host. But, with his second wife, Alex Pursey, standing by, he contained his drinking enough to regularly appear on an afternoon soccer program, giving his analysis.

The drinking caught up with him again when he was rushed to a London hospital. Doctors told him even one more glass of wine could kill him. In the hospital for a month, Best promised his wife he wouldn't drink again. It was one more promise he couldn't keep.

In 2004, Alex Best was granted a divorce after nine years of marriage, citing her husband's adultery. Best had a son, Calum, from a four-year marriage to his first wife, Angie.

Best will be buried next to his mother, Ann, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, said his agent, Phil Hughes. No date has been set.

Fan Says He Dumped Ashes on Eagles' Field

A man arrested for running onto the field during the Philadelphia Eagles' game against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday told police he was spreading his late mother's ashes.
Christopher Noteboom, of Tempe, Ariz., ran onto the field holding a plastic bag, leaving a cloud of fine powder behind.
As he reached the 30-yard line, he dropped to his knees, made the sign of the cross and lay down on his stomach. Security personnel reached him moments later and he offered no resistance as he was escorted from the field.
The 33-year-old Noteboom, a native of Doylestown, said his mother died of emphysema in January 2005, shortly before the Eagles' Super Bowl appearance.
"She never cared for any other team except the Eagles," Noteboom told WPVI-TV after he was released from custody Monday. "I know that the last handful of ashes I had are laying on the field, and will never be taken away. She'll always be part of Lincoln Financial Field and of the Eagles."
Noteboom, a bar owner in Arizona, was charged with defiant trespass. He has a hearing scheduled for Dec. 27.
"It's bizarre, but we have a zero tolerance for people who run on the field," Police Inspector William Colarulo said. "We especially have a zero tolerance for people who run onto the field and dump an unknown substance in a stadium full of people."
Eagles spokeswoman Bonnie Grant said the team has declined requests to spread ashes on the field.

Children's book creator Stan Berenstain dies
By Jonathan Stempel
Tue Nov 29, 4:32 PM ET

Stan Berenstain, who with his wife created the popular Berenstain Bears children's book series, has died in Pennsylvania, his published said on Tuesday. He was 82.
Berenstain died on Saturday of complications from cancer, according to publisher HarperCollins Children's Books.
Stan Berenstain and his wife Jan co-wrote and illustrated more than 200 Berenstain Bears titles that helped two generations of children learn to read.
Books have included "The Berenstain Bears and the Trouble with Grownups," "The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food" and "The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners."
The patriarch, Papa Bear, is a carpenter who considers himself an expert in almost everything, "often wrong but never in doubt." Mama Bear is a champion quilt-maker and a fan of honey-cured salmon.
The Bears have three children, Brother Bear, Sister Bear and Honey Bear, the last of whom was introduced in 2000 in "The Berenstain Bears and Baby Makes Five."
Stan Berenstain was born in Philadelphia on September 29, 1923. He was trained in the fine arts at the city's Museum School, now the University of the Arts, where he met his future wife in 1941.
Stan became interested in cartooning during World War II, when he spent more than three years in the U.S. Army, and sold some cartoons to the Saturday Review of Literature.
He married Jan, who was also passionate about cartooning, soon after leaving the military. Before long, they were contributing to magazines such as Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post.
After publishing several books, starting with "The Berenstains' Baby Book," the Berenstains submitted a book to Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, who had become an editor for Random House's Beginner Books.
That 1962 book, "The Big Honey Hunt," introduced the Bear family, "who lived down a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country." Geisel would edit several Bears books.
A show on the U.S. PBS public TV network would follow. The Berenstains have also written an autobiography and created two children's musicals.
Stan Berenstain is survived by his wife, sons Leo and Michael, a sister and four grandchildren. Jan and Michael Berenstain will continue the children's book series, according to HarperCollins. Funeral services are expected to be private.

How sad...my daughter loved the Berenstain Bears when she was a tot.

*Guitar innovator Link Wray dies at 76
Fri Nov 25, 2005

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Musician Link Wray, best-known for his 1958 instrumental single "Rumble," died of unspecified causes November 5 in Copenhagen. He was 76.

In a career that spanned six decades, Wray made his mark with a piercing guitar sound that paved the way for punk and heavy metal. He is credited with inventing the power chord and pioneering distortion by deliberately punching holes in his amplifier.

"Rumble" peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100. His 1959 hit, "Raw-Hide," which he performed with his band, the Wraymen, hit No. 23.

In the late 1970s, Wray became known to a new generation of fans playing alongside rockabilly artist Robert Gordon. His music has appeared in such movies as "Pulp Fiction," "Independence Day" and "Desperado." Wray is said to have inspired Pete Townshend, Bruce Springsteen, "Little" Steven Van Zandt and other well-known artists.

In 2002, Wray was named one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time by Guitar World magazine. He gave his last performance in Los Angeles in July. He is survived by his wife and son.*

I have seen Link Wray play live 3 times, he rocked harder than any other band I'd ever seen... he was a jolt of pure adrenaline! I'm a little late on the news but I'm really sad to hear this news...

Wendie Jo Sperber of 'Bosom Buddies' Dies

Thu Dec 1, 1:36 PM ET

LOS ANGELES - Actress
Wendie Jo Sperber, who starred opposite
Tom Hanks on TV's "Bosom Buddies" and who in his words became "a walking inspiration" after she contracted cancer, has died. She was in her 40s.

Sperber died at home Tuesday after an eight-year battle with breast cancer, publicist Jo-Ann Geffen said Wednesday.

A Los Angeles native, Sperber appeared in dozens of television shows and movies, including all three "Back to the Future" films.

Her publicist first said Sperber was 46, but later said she was 43 based on an Internet resource. The Associated Press in September reported Sperber's age as 47.

Sperber also had roles in
Steven Spielberg's "1941,"
Robert Zemeckis' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and Neal
Israel's "Moving Violations" and "Bachelor Party." Her television credits include "Murphy Brown," "Private Benjamin," "Will & Grace" and "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter."

After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997, the actress became an advocate for cancer care. In 2001, she founded the weSPARK Cancer Support Center, which provides free emotional support, information and social activities for individuals and families affected by cancer.

Sperber helped unveil and promote a breast cancer stamp for the U.S. Postal Service in 1998, Geffen said.

"The memory of Wendie Jo is that of a walking inspiration," Hanks said in a statement. "She met the challenges of her illness with love, cheer, joy and altruism. We are going to miss her as surely as we are all better for knowing her."

Sperber is survived by a son and daughter, her parents, two sisters and a brother.

Herbert L. Strock, 87; Creature Feature Director, Pioneering TV Producer

December 4, 2005

Herbert L. Strock, a pioneer television producer and director who also directed the B-movie creature features "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein," "How to Make a Monster" and "The Crawling Hand," has died. He was 87.

Strock died Wednesday of heart failure at Riverside County Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley after a car accident, his daughter, Leslie Mitchner, said.

Strock launched his television directing career in the late 1940s and worked on countless series, directing the first 10 episodes of "Highway Patrol" and episodes of "Sky King," "Sea Hunt," "Maverick" and "77 Sunset Strip."

But he is best remembered for his drive-in movie fare, which included "Blood of Dracula" and "Gog," shot in 3-D.

"He was just a real old-time type of get-it-down Hollywood moviemaker, who'd just go in knowing what needed to be done and very efficiently handling everything," said Tom Weaver, a horror and science fiction film expert who interviewed Strock for Fangoria magazine. "He always turned the stuff out within schedule and budget, which made him the producer's darling."

Born in Boston, Strock moved with his family to Los Angeles when he was 13. At 17, while still a student at Beverly Hills High School, he became the director of gossip columnist Jimmy Fidler's Hollywood segments for Fox Movietone News, in which Fidler visited with stars.

A 1941 graduate of USC, where he studied journalism and film, Strock served a brief stint in the Army's Ordnance Motion Picture Division before landing a job at MGM as an assistant editor on the 1944 film "Gaslight."

Several years later, he became a television pioneer as the producer and director of 13 episodes of "The Cases of Eddie Drake," a half-hour filmed detective series starring Don Haggerty and Patricia Morison. Although made for CBS, it aired years later on the DuMont network.

"It was the first television show ever put on film," Strock said in an interview with Weaver. "We shot it in 35-millimeter black and white. My budget was $7,500 per half hour, and we shot one a day. This was unheard of in Hollywood. I would shoot four pictures in a batch, all mixed up, in four days."

The story in each episode was set up by having detective Haggerty go to crime psychologist Morison's office to tell her what had happened.

During the filming of the series, Morison recalled Friday, she learned she had gotten the female starring role in Cole Porter's "Kiss Me, Kate" on Broadway.

After telling Strock that she would have to fly to New York to begin rehearsals, she recalled:

"He said, 'Oh, this is so exciting. We'll rearrange our schedule and shoot all your segments in 10 days.' He didn't give any argument. That's what I remember about him: how generous he was."

Strock made his transition to feature film directing when, as associate producer and film editor, he took over as the uncredited director of the 1953 science-fiction thriller "The Magnetic Monster." He also took over as the uncredited director of the 1953 science-fiction horror film "Donovan's Brain," whose cast included Nancy Davis Reagan.

Strock, who owned a post-production facility after he quit directing in 1980, wrote about his career in the 2000 book "Picture Perfect," part of the Scarecrow Filmmakers Series.

In addition to his daughter Leslie, he is survived by his wife of 64 years, Geraldine; daughters Candice Dell Strock and Genoa Dodd; and two grandsons.

A private memorial service will be held.

Stripper Candy Barr is dead:

Candy Barr, 70; 1950s Stripper and Stag Film Star Personified the Joy and Danger of Sex

By Myrna Oliver
Times Staff Writer
Published January 3, 2006

Candy Barr, infamous 1950s stripper and stag film star once romantically linked to mobster Mickey Cohen and associated with Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, has died. She was 70.

Barr died Friday of pneumonia in an Abilene, Texas, hospital. She had lived quietly in her native south Texas for several years.

Born Juanita Dale Slusher in Edna, Texas, on July 6, 1935, Barr forged a life exotic enough in the mid-20th century to inspire a biopic. (One was contemplated but never produced in the late 1980s, with Farrah Fawcett portraying Barr.)

Before the dancer's career was derailed in 1960 by a prison term for marijuana, she was earning $2,000 a week in Los Angeles and Las Vegas clubs.

It was Barr who trained actress Joan Collins for her role as an exotic dancer in the 1960 movie "Seven Thieves," earning her a credit as technical advisor.

"She taught me more about sensuality than I had learned in all my years under contract," Collins wrote in her autobiography, "Past Imperfect." Collins went on to describe Barr as "a down-to-earth girl with an incredibly gorgeous body and an angelic face."

Barr became a landmark in the sexual liberation of Texas men in the 1950s, Gary Cartwright wrote in a 1976 Texas Monthly magazine article, the same year the 41-year-old but still shapely Barr posed nude for Oui men's magazine.

Cartwright wrote that in her early career, Barr had epitomized "the conflict between sex as joy and sex as danger. The body was perfect, but it was the innocence of the face that lured you on."

In 1984, Texas Monthly listed Barr among such luminaries as Lady Bird Johnson as one of history's "perfect Texans."

"Of all the small-town bad girls," the magazine said, Barr "was the baddest."

And Barr earned her place in the exhaustive 2004 volume published by Oxford University, "Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show."

Barr said she began life as "poor white trash." After her mother died when she was 9, she was ignored by her stepmother and sexually abused by a neighbor and a baby-sitter.

She fled to Dallas at the age of 13, married a safecracker at 14 and soon fell into exotic dancing and prostitution. Later claiming that she was drugged and forced to perform, she was featured in a 1951 blue movie "Smart Alec."

She befriended Ruby, owner of Dallas' Carousel Club, who was subsequently convicted of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy. Federal agents questioned Barr after Oswald's killing, but she insisted she knew nothing about Ruby's involvement in any conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination.

In the early 1950s, Barr got a job as cigarette girl at Barney Weinstein's Theater Lounge in downtown Dallas. Impressed with her startling beauty, Weinstein's brother, Abe, gave her her stage name, had her bleach her hair and showcased her as a bump-and-grind burlesque queen in his Colony Club.

Barr developed her trademark costume — 10-gallon hat, pasties, "scanty panties," a pair of six-shooters and cowboy boots — and quickly became a favorite with fraternity boys, Dallas crime figures, businessmen and political leaders, who booked her for stag parties.

Conservative Dallas residents, however, were less impressed and began pressuring police and prosecutors to shut down Barr's act.

In 1957, she was arrested for having less than four-fifths of an ounce of marijuana concealed in her bra. She maintained that she was framed by police and was only holding the drug for a friend.

"We think we can convince a jury that a woman with her reputation, a woman who has done the things she has done, should go to prison," Assistant Dallas County Dist. Atty. Bill Alexander told the Dallas Morning News after Barr's arrest.

"She may be cute," Alexander, who would prosecute Ruby six years later, told the jury in his closing argument, "but under the evidence, she's soiled and dirty."

Barr was convicted and, under tough state laws for what would now be a misdemeanor, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The trial garnered national publicity and only enhanced her fame. The judge even asked to be photographed with her in his chambers.

Awaiting appeal, Barr was hired to perform in Las Vegas' El Rancho Vegas Hotel and Los Angeles' Club Largo on Sunset Boulevard, drawing $2,000 fees.

It was during this period that Barr met and dated Cohen for two months. They publicly said they were engaged, and he crisscrossed the country with her, consulting lawyers in the appeal of her sentence.

But neither the romance nor the appeal could go on forever.

"It's all over," the dapper ex-bookie told The Times in May 1959. "We're just two different kinds of people. No, we didn't have no fight. It was more like what you might call a discussion."

Two years later, Barr revealed Cohen's answer to her drug sentence when she was returned to Los Angeles to testify against him in his trial for income tax invasion, in which he was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Barr testified that although Cohen paid her lawyers $15,000, he also gave her cash and phony identification documents, had her dye her hair and flee to Mexico. She said she got bored and returned to the U.S. shortly before her appeal was denied.

"I always wanted a brick house of my own, and it looks like I am going to have one," Barr told an assembled crowd and news media when she finally walked into Goree Farm for Women in Huntsville, Texas, in December 1959.

Then-Texas Gov. John B. Connally paroled her in 1963 and pardoned her four years later.

During her imprisonment, she took high school courses, worked as a seamstress, sang in the prison choir and played in its band.

Barr also wrote a book of poetry, which she published in 1972, titled "A Gentle Mind … Confused." Its title poem stated:

Hate the world that strikes you down,

A warped lesson quickly learned,

Rebellion, a universal sound,

Nobody cares … No one's concerned.

Fatigued by unyielding strife

Self-pity consoles the abused,

And the bludgeoning of daily life

Leaves a gentle mind … confused."

Barr was arrested a second time for possession of marijuana in a 1969 raid on her home, but charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

She tried briefly to restart her career as a dancer in 1967 at the age of 32, again at Hollywood's Largo club, performing before a backdrop of prison bars.

"Time has been kind to Miss Barr. The onetime fiancee of Mickey Cohen is in good, if slightly gaunt, form and is still an energetic dancer," wrote Times critic Kevin Thomas. "From the audience, she seems a young woman with an aura of sadness and sorrow who is doing the thing she knows best."

Barr largely retired to a reclusive life in Texas, surrounded by her pets.

"Let the world find someone else to talk about," she told Texas Monthly in 2001. "I like being left alone."

Barr married and divorced four husbands. She had a daughter and became a grandmother, but information on survivors was not immediately available.

It's tough to find SFW images of her, but she was a beautiful woman:

[edit] NSFW links:
http://www.imagemakers.mb.ca/pinups/burlesque/candy_barr/candy1.html
http://javasbachelorpad.com/candy.html

Rev. Dr. Frederick J. Freelance, Ph.D., D.F.S

[ Edited by: freddiefreelance 2006-01-05 10:18 ]

I was born too late.

Sabu

Candy Barr is a dead ringer for my mother in law.
So from that you can infer that my wife is damn cute.

:)

--SBiM