LOGAN, Utah (AP) Eva Israelsen, who lived long enough to have 271 great-grandchildren, died Thursday, five days before her 105th birthday.
Mrs. Israelsen appeared in Life magazine in October 1993 in an article noting the birth of her 200th and 201st great-grandchildren. Since then, her progeny has grown to 271 great-grandchildren and 40 great-great-grandchildren. She had 11 original children, and they had 67 kids.
She was born Eva May Butler on Oct. 5, 1894, at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake County. She met Victor E. Israelsen while attending Utah Agricultural College, now Utah State University, in the 1920s and later married him.
They spent their lives on a dairy farm. Mrs. Israelsen remained active well past her 100th birthday, walking at least a mile a day.
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Subject: (exotica) [obits]Charles A. Federer Jr.,Sal Salvador,Akio Morita
Date: 04 Oct 1999 09:25:31 -0400
Charles A. Federer Jr.
MYSTIC, Conn. (AP) Charles A. Federer Jr., the editor in chief of Sky and Telescope magazine, died Tuesday. He was 90.
Federer started the magazine for amateur astronomers in 1941 and retired in 1974. The magazine now has a circulation of about 125,000.
Federer taught himself astronomy as a child growing up in Redding. He earned a physics degree from the City College of New York in the 1930s and founded his own magazine by combining two money-losing journals, The Sky and The Telescope.
STAMFORD, Conn. (AP)Sal Salvador, a guitarist who performed with some top jazz musicians, died of cancer on Sept. 22. He was 73.
Born as Silvio Smiraglia, Salvador taught himself how to play guitar and became known as a be-bop improviser.
He performed with Stan Kenton, Bill Evans, Phil Woods and other jazz greats.
From 1970 until recently, Salvador taught jazz at the University of Bridgeport and Western Connecticut State University. He also gave private lessons in New York City.
TOKYO (AP) Akio Morita, the entrepreneur, engineer and savvy salesman who helped give new meaning to the words "Made in Japan," died Sunday of pneumonia, Sony Corp. said. He was 78.
Morita co-founded Sony in a bombed-out department store after World War II. He was the last of a generation of Japanese industrialists that included carmaker Soichiro Honda and electronics rival Konosuke Matsushita.
Under Morita's guidance, Sony was instrumental in changing Japan's image from a maker of slipshod products to a world leader in high-quality automobiles and electronics. In the process, his company became a multibillion dollar conglomerate.
Born in the central Japanese city of Nagoya on Jan. 26, 1921, Morita retired as Sony's chairman in 1994. A year earlier he had suffered a stroke that left him weakened and in a wheelchair.
The tanned, snowy-haired Morita, who took up water-skiing in his 60s, also pioneered new behavior for corporate Japan. He pushed his engineers to take risks with new products and criticized lavishly paid American executives.
He caused a stir in 1989 by co-authoring "The Japan That Can Say 'No'" with current Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, then refusing to authorize an English translation. In it, Morita criticized U.S. corporate culture as overindulgent.
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Subject: (exotica) [obits] Dick Patterson,Chili Bouchier
Date: 04 Oct 1999 10:24:20 -0400
10/1/99 L.A. Times --
* Dick Patterson; Actor, Stand-Up Comedian
Dick Patterson, 70, comedian and song and dance man of Broadway musicals, film and television. After making his Broadway debut in David Merrick's "Vintage '60," Patterson appeared in "The Billy Barnes
People," the national touring company of "Bye Bye Birdie" and opposite
Carol Burnett in "Fade Out, Fade In." His most recent musical was
"Smile," a spoof of beauty pageants, in which one reviewer said
Patterson was "hilarious as the coy emcee" and another praised his
portrayal of "the fiendishly smarmy third-rate television personalty who serves as pageant emcee." On the silver screen, Patterson appeared in "Grease" and "Grease II," and Disney's "Strongest Man in the World." On television, the actor was a frequent guest on "The Carol Burnett Show" and had occasional roles on such popular series as "Here's Lucy," "Happy Days" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Patterson, who was a nightclub stand-up comedian, wrote material for the Las Vegas acts of Debbie Reynolds and Rich Little and a song, "Santa's Marching Song." Born in Clear Lake, Iowa, Patterson moved to California in his teens and worked his way through UCLA. On Sept. 20 in Los Angeles.
Longtime British actress Chili Bouchier, who became known as BritainÆs answer to Clara Bow in the 1920s and was billed as ôBritainÆs It Girl,ö died Sept. 9 of natural causes in England just three days short of her 90th birthday.
Born Dorothy Irene Boucher in London, she made her screen debut at
age 17 as a bathing beauty in the 1927 silent film ôShooting Stars.ö
Bouchier was so popular two years later that her marriage to revue star Harry Milton turned into a mob scene.
She made a smooth transition to talkies, with pics including ôCall of the Seaö (1930), ôThe Kissing Cup Raceö (1931), ôCarnivalö (1931),
PARIS ûû Bernard Buffet, one of France's major contemporary painters,killed himself Monday at his home in southern France, police said. He was 71.
Buffet was found dead by his wife with a plastic bag over his head, police sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Gallery owner Maurice Garnier, who had worked with Buffet for 51 years, said the artist was suffering from Parkinson's disease and had been unable to work for some time.
Buffet, a millionaire who basked in fame since he was 20, was an outspoken advocate of figurative painting at a time when abstraction was the rage. He remained faithful to the distinctive, black vertical brushstroke he used to recreate emaciated faces, imperial Russian palaces and sad-faced clowns.
Buffet was roundly ignored by the French art establishment. The Georges Pompidou Center, France's most prestigious collection of modern and contemporary art, never purchased any of his work.
Still, Buffet was a superstar abroad, His work was the subject of two separate museums in Japan, one featuring more than 600 of his works.
Tony Miller
LOS ANGELES (AP) û Tony Miller, an actor and writer who began his career on Broadway and appeared in films including "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "Return to Peyton Place," died Sept 12 from complications of cancer and Parkinson's disease. He was 72.
Miller's stage debut came at age 14 in "Life with Father." After serving in World War II he returned to the theater, replacing Marlon Brando in "I Remember Mama," and appeared on live television programs including "Playhouse 90."
Later TV work included guest appearances on series including "Three's Company," "Dallas" and "General Hospital."
Miller's writing career stretched from radio ("Superman," "Henry Aldrich") to television ("Silent Majority" for CBS) to novels ("Starting Now" and "Night Calls").
In 1962, Miller and his then-wife, Patricia George, founded the Film Industry Workshops as a training center for actors and directors. The pair, who divorced, co-wrote "The Craft," a book on acting and directing.
Emil Schumacher
BERLIN (AP) û Emil Schumacher, one of postwar Germany's leading abstract expressionist artists, died Monday. He was 87.
Schumacher began drawing and sketching his surroundings and family members in his youth. In 1939 he became a technical draftsman at a nearby battery-works.
He resumed painting after World War II and in 1947, along with Gustav Deppe, Thomas Grochowiak, Ernst Hermanns, Heinrich Siepmann and Hans Werdehausen, he founded the group "The Young West."
In the early 1950s he broke with tradition and adopted a completely abstract style that became known as "informal art," where the workmanship and application of paint and other materials becomes the image.
His paintings hang in museums around the world, including the Guggenheim in New York and the Tate Gallery in London.
Doreen Valiente
LONDON (AP) û Doreen Valiente, self-styled witch and a central figure in the revival of paganism in Britain, died Sept. 1. She was 77.
Mrs. Valiente was the author of several books, including "The Rebirth of Witchcraft." Her verse and prose, such as "The Charge of the Goddess," is recited by pagans all over the world.
Born in London and brought up as a Christian, Mrs. Valiente claimed to have experienced psychic episodes in her youth and was a practicing clairvoyant in her teens.
In 1952, a year after Britain repealed its Witchcraft Act, Mrs. Valiente was introduced to Gerald Gardner, who ran a coven practicing what he called traditional witchcraft û a religion whose devotees worshipped the god and goddess of fertility. She was initiated as a witch in 1953 and became the coven's high priestess.
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Subject: (exotica) [obits] Cheese Blotto, Art Farmer
Date: 06 Oct 1999 09:48:39 -0400
From the Saratoga Daily Gazetteá
á http://allmusic.com/cg/x.dll?UID=9:37:46|AM&p=amg&sql=B12398
Keith Stephenson, 43, played bass guitar with band `Blotto'á
SARATOGA SPRINGS - Authorities ruled Monday that a well-knownáá
area musician whose body was found in his truck early Sunday in theá
Saratoga Spa State Park died of natural causes.á
The body of Keith Stephenson, 43, bass player for the group "Blotto"áá in the 1980s, was found lying on the floor of a truck in the Hathorná Spring parking area in the park at 3:20 a.m. Sunday.á
While with the band, he performed under the name of "Cheeseá
Blotto." The band played in Saratoga and Albany clubs and touredá
in this country and in England.á
Lt. Edward Moore of the city police department said a park nightáá
watchman noticed the truck and tried to awaken the man without success.á
"We have ruled out foul play, he died of natural causes," Moore said oná Monday.á
An autopsy on Stephenson's body was performed at Saratoga Hospitalá and his death was caused by cardio myopathy [a disease of the heartá muscles] brought on by a diseased liver, said Saratoga County Coronerá Thomas A. Salvadore.á
Salvadore said Stephenson's body had slid down onto the floor ofá
the pickup truck and he couldn't be seen through the vehicle's windowá unless a person got very close to the truck. He was dressed casuallyá in a T-shirt and shorts, the coroner said.á
Stephenson, of Middleline Road, was born in Ballston Spa, and was aá 1974 graduate of Ballston Spa High School. He attended Berklee Schoolá of Music in Boston.á
He was the former owner and operator of the former Edible Express iná Saratoga Springs.á
Stephenson earned his pilot's license through Flight International Schoolá in Vero Beach, Fla., and owned his own airplane.á
He was a member of Simpson United Methodist Church, Rock City Falls.á
Stephenson was a member of the National Rifle Association.á
---------------
áArt Farmer, 71, Be-Bop Master of the Trumpet and Fluegelhorn
áááááááááááááá Art Farmer, one of the more important second-generation be-bopá musicians, an improviser who could say a great deal in a few notes on the trumpet and fluegelhorn and later on his own hybrid instrument, theá "flumpet," died on Monday in Manhattan.áá
ááááááááá He was 71 and lived in Manhattan and Vienna.áá
ááááááááá The cause was cardiac arrest, said his manager and companion, Lynneá Mueller.áá
ááááááááá Farmer was considered a master of ballad playing.áá
ááááááááá His tone was soft and even and sure, with no vibrato and with cannyá silences built into his improvisations.áá
ááááááááá He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and when he was 4 his familyá moved to Phoenix. He studied piano and violin in grade school there. Asá a teen-ager he joined a dance band playing big-band arrangements, andá he often invited members of whatever swing band happened to pass through town to come to his house and jam with him and his twin brother,á Addison, the bassist, who died in 1963.áá
ááááááááá In 1945, when they were 16, the Farmer brothers moved to Los Angeles, having promised their mother that they would finish school. Itá was a time when great musicians were coming out of the city's integratedá high schools; at Jefferson High Farmer studied with the well known musicá teacher Samuel Browne, who also taught Frank Morgan, Hamptoná Hawes and Don Cherry, among many others.áá
ááááááááá Farmer worked in Los Angeles with Horace Henderson, Johnny Otis and others, leaving school to join Otis's group on tour.áá
ááááááááá He recorded a be-bop classic, "Farmer's Market," with Wardell Gray's band.áá
ááááááááá In 1952 Farmer went on tour with Lionel Hampton, and in 1953 he settled in New York, joining bands led by Gigi Gryce and Horace Silver.á In 1958 he was hired by the saxophonist Gerry Mulligan for one of hisá bracing new pianoless groups.áá
ááááááááá At the end of the 50's Farmer formed the Jazztet, a sextet, with the saxophonist Benny Golson. Together they wrote a deep repertory of harmonically sophisticated, tightly arranged music, and the group definedá the state of the art for mainstream jazz until the music's prevailing winds began to grow wilder.áá
ááááááááá The group broke up in 1962, and Farmer started another jointly edá group, with the guitarist Jim Hall. The Jazztet reunited in 1982 and playedá through most of the 80's.áá
ááááááááá In the early 60's he often used the fluegelhorn, which has a warmer, creamier sound, suiting his lyricism and terseness.áá
ááááááááá Then in the early 90's he designed a mixture of the two instruments, theá flumpet, which combined projection with warmth.áá
ááááááááá When work grew sparse in New York, he moved to Vienna in 1968 toá join a radio jazz orchestra.áá
ááááááááá He ended up staying and starting a family but traveled constantly, playing with local pickup rhythm sections around the world. For the last few years, he had a residence in Manhattan and was dividing his time equallyá between Vienna and New York.áá
ááááááááá Farmer's discography as a leader is large and as a sideman larger, encompassing work on the Blue Note, Contemporary, Soul Note, Enjaá and Arabesque labels, among others. His most recent album, from 1997,á was "Silk Road" (Arabesque).áá
ááááááááá Besides Ms. Mueller, Farmer is survived by his sister, Mauvolene Thomas, of Tucson, and his son, Georg, of Vienna.áá
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It's great that Paul Williams has decided to finally release this, after
>BarNone dropped out of the Esquivel reissue business a couple of >years ago.
BarNone says they were more or less forced out by RCA who didn't realize there was money to be made with these things. Of course there wasn't as much as they'd hoped....
LT
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After 9,000 Years, Oldest Playable Flute Is Heard Again
Audio: The Little Cabbage
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Chinese archeologists have unearthed what is believed to be the oldest known playable musical instrument, a seven-holed flute fashioned 9,000 years ago from the hollow wing bone of a large bird.
[full article, photos and audio clip at above URL]
-Lou
lousmith@pipeline.com
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LISBON, Oct 6 (AFP) - Portuguese singer Amalia Rodrigues, the
"diva of fado", died on Wednesday in Lisbon at the age of 79, her
recording company Valentim de Carvalho announced.
Rodrigues' personal secretary said she died at her home after a
long illness.
In a career that spanned more than half a century, Rodrigues
became to Portugal what Edith Piaf was to France, or Oum Kalsoum to
the Arab world: an international icon and a roving ambassador for
the popular culture of her country.
Portugal was cast into mourning at the announcement of her
death, and national radio broadcast innumerable tributes and
testimonies by friends and colleagues.
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres ordered three days of
national mourning.
Rodrigues' supreme gift was for fado, the traditional Portuguese
bar-room singing style centred on Lisbon and Coimbra and based on
"saudade", or sadness for an irrecoverable past, a plangent blend of
nostalgia, sadness, love and death.
Several years ago Rodrigues, who underwent heart surgery in the
United States, virtually stopped performing because of her poor
health.
She made an exceptional appearance last year, singing for the
last time in public before thousands at the opening of Expo 1998 in
Lisbon.
Rodrigues was born in 1920, though her exact date of birth was
not known. The grandmother who raised her to the age of 14 knew only
that she was born "during the cherry season."
After selling fruit in the streets and working as a seamstress
to help support her nine brothers and sisters -- she remained proud
all her life of her modest origins -- Rodrigues began her
professional career as a tango dancer.
She then gained notice for singing the tangos of Carlos Gardel
at parties and festivities in the working class districts of Lisbon,
and signed her first singing contract in 1940.
Her early career brought friction with her family, dismayed to
see her singing songs of disrepute, as tango and fado were then
considered.
Rodrigues' international career blossomed after World War II,
and she performed regularly in Brazil, Spain, France and Britain as
well as in her home country.
Her reputation spread as far afield as Japan, the Soviet Union
and the United States during her heyday in the 1950s and 1960s.
She recorded more than 170 albums that were released in 30
countries, and appeared in numerous films, notably "Les amants du
Tage" (Lovers of the Tagus), by the French director Henri Verneuil.
After the overthrow of Portugal's fascist regime in 1974 she was
widely reproached for her closeness to dictator Antonio Salazar, a
criticism that she shrugged off as something imposed by
circumstances.
Fatalistic by nature, she attributed her success to chance. "I
never dreamed of having a career, I was never ambitious," she wrote
in her memoirs.
Despite being voted one of the world's 10 most outstanding
voices during the 1950s, she constantly professed astonishment at
her celebrity.
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Leonard S. Shoen, who revolutionized the
do-it-yourself moving industry by founding U-Haul International
Inc., apparently committed suicide by driving his car into a power
pole. He was 83.
The Clark County coroner's office ruled Tuesday that Schoen died from blunt force trauma and that his death was a suicide.
``There is no reason for the accident,'' Metro Police Detective Rick Hart said. ``Nobody else was around. ``They determined that it looked like suicide.''
On Monday's Shoen's car left the road for no apparent reason and struck a wooden power pole, police said. Hart said the accident is
still under investigation.
Shoen founded U-Haul in 1945 and built it into the most
recognized self-moving company in the nation with its signature
orange and white trucks.
In 1986, Shoen's sons -- Joe and Mark -- forced their father into retirement and pushed for control of the parent company, Reno-based Amerco Inc.
The move triggered a bitter family feud that ended in a $1.5
billion jury award the company had to pay Leonard Shoen and other
``outsiders.'' A judge later reduced the award to $461 million, and
the company then sought bankruptcy protection from the debt.
Since the shakeup at U-Haul, Shoen lived in Las Vegas, where he owned the World Trade Center hotel since 1996. He withdrew his
application with the Nevada Gaming Commission for a gaming license
in May.
At the age of 29, after serving in the Navy during World War II, Shoen came up with the idea to provide do-it-yourself one-way
moving trailers on a nationwide basis.
With an initial investment of $5,000, he and his then-wife Anna Mary Carty started the company at the Carty Ranch in Ridgefield,
Wash., where they built the first U-Haul trailers in a milk house
in 1945. The company is now based in Phoenix.
His concept for U-Haul was developed out of a need to provide
inexpensive means of moving a post-World War II American population
that had become migratory, especially to the Western United States,
according to the company's Web site.
The original U-Haul trailers were painted bright orange and
rented for $2 a day. By 1949 it was possible to rent U-Haul
trailers one way from city to city throughout most of the United
States.
Today the company has 14,000 independent dealers and 1,100
company-owned moving centers. It is the leading company in the
truck and trailer rental industry and the second-largest
self-storage facility operator. U-Haul also is the world's largest
installer of permanent hitches.
-----------------------
It is being reported on the Pro Wrestling news sites that Robert Marella, better known as Gorilla Monsoon, has passed away at age 62. Marella died of complications from a Heart Attack suffered in September, according to the news reports. Last week, he had requested that he be removed from kidney dyalisis.
He was a long time Wrestling legend in the WWF both as a wrestler, and later as an announcer during the promotions meteoric rise in the 1980s.
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. ûû A.L. "Doodle" Owens, who wrote dozens of country music hits for stars like Charley Pride, George Jones and Moe Bandy, died Monday from a heart attack. He was 68.
Owens' hits include "Wine Colored Roses" for Jones, "Johnny One Time" for Brenda Lee and "Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul" for Stoney Edwards. Owens got the nickname "Doodle" as a child because he crawled backwards.
Owens, a native of Waco, Texas, moved to Nashville in 1965, after being encouraged by singer Ray Price. With Frazier, he co-wrote two No. 1 hits for Pride in 1969, "(I'm So) Afraid of Losing You Again" and "All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)."
Amalia Rodrigues
LISBON, Portugal (AP) û Amalia Rodrigues, the Portuguese singer whose passionate performances of the country's brooding 'fado' music took her from Lisbon taverns to worldwide fame, died Wednesday at her home. She was 79.
Rodrigues' personal secretary, Leonel Henriques, told the news agency Lusa that she was found dead in her bed, adding she had felt unwell in previous days. The singer had suffered two heart attacks, in 1979 and 1980, and increasing health problems caused her to retreat from public life in recent years.
Prime Minister Antonio Guterres announced three days of national mourning.
Amalia da Piedade Rebordao Rodrigues, known popularly as Amalia, became known at home as the "Ambassador of Fado" for taking Portugal's sad and haunting traditional music out of Lisbon taverns and placing it on a world stage.
Her interpretations of 'fado' û which means "fate" or "destiny" û gave the world a glimpse into the depths of the Portuguese character.
"Fado" lyrics are sentimental and melancholic, centering on longing, sadness and fatalism, while the guitar accompaniment combines the influences of Arab, African and Portuguese cultures.
Robert Monsoon
WILLINGBORO, N.J. (AP) -- Robert ``Gorilla Monsoon'' Marella, a true giant of professional wrestling who body-slammed Muhammad Ali
and debated Jesse Ventura, has died of a heart ailment.
The 62-year-old former teacher, died Wednesday.
The 6-foot-6, 400-pound Marella turned to the pro wrestling game in 1960 when a promoter offered him $500 per week to don the
tights.
As Gorilla Monsoon, Marella soon shared world tag-team titles
with Walter ``Killer'' Kowalski and ``Cowboy'' Bill Watts. Playing a villain's role at the time, Marella gained notoriety for his feud with longtime champ Bruno Sammartino.
Marella's career in the ring lasted until the early 1980s, when he became one of the World Wrestling Federation's top ringside
television announcers. He co-hosted WWF telecasts at a time when the high-flying entertainment genre was booming in popularity.
Marella frequently shared the microphone with former wrestler
Jesse ``The Body'' Ventura, with whom he often argued over the importance of fair play in the ring. Ventura now is governor of Minnesota.
The younger generation of wrestlers was honored to have the rotund Marella analyze their moves and holds, said fellow pro wrestler King Kong Bundy.
``He was somebody who knew the business,'' Bundy said. ``A great guy, a real class act all the way.''
Marella also wrote a weekly pro wrestling column for the now-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin.
A son, Joey Marella, became a WWF referee in the 1980s. He died in an auto accident in Burlington in 1994. Thereafter, Robert Marella appeared on television less frequently.
``When his son got killed in a car accident, I think that took a lot out of him,'' King Kong Bundy said.
Marella did serve as interim president of the WWF in 1997 -- at a time when the industry admitted openly that the outcomes of its
matches are scripted.
Heart problems forced Marella to scale back his work with the
WWF. He also suffered from diabetes in recent years.
http://www.cataclysmal.com/big3/news/2261.html
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From galaxies beyond our own, strange beings come to mingle under the archway for a rare look at items taken (more likely stolen) from the planet Earth. The tall, gray character with a friendless stare holds in his hand an authentic aboriginal star map. At his feet is a model of the Earth, along with the first microscope of that world. The stuffed bird is entitled "Dodo Mounted on Wood." Nearby, a green-skinned alien mischievously eyes a parrot boy, causing the youngster to hug his mother's leg. The parrot woman studies an oddity called a "bird cage." The cage-thing sits atop Marconi's first radio...No, she hasn't yet noticed the bird bath (a bargain for only 50 Gruens). The parrot man gazes toward a touring car in the distance; closer to him is a fifteenth century cannon and an early telescope, one purportedly first owned by a human named Galileo. Twin sisters from Sirius glide along in unison to orbit the unusual artifacts, while a blond alien watches from behind sunglasses.!
!
Sitting on a velvet Louis XIVth chair is a piggish-looking, "poorly dressed" creature who appears to be openly annoyed at our presence. The foreground is littered with more earthly treasures...We see the elongated skull of an earthling and, tooled in clay, an ancient accountant's record of someone's financial history; an Assyrian stone carving; an eighteenth century porcelain doll; Thomas Edison's first phonograph; a painting by Renoir (supposedly genuine); a golden Egyptian cartouche fragment; a Grecian ornament stone (slightly chipped); and an eary radio from the Art Deco period. Contrasting the Polynesian clay figure and the wooden Byzantine statue, there stands a tiny toy mouse. With arms raised, he welcomes the arrivial of incoming cargo ships.
-Lou
lousmith@pipeline.com
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>after the making of this film, his last one, "Tabu". The word however >became a
>synonym for "forbidden, sacred" from then on."...
The film wasn't the cause of this. "Taboo/tabu" was first used in English in the late 18th century (1777) and had become fairly common--at least among naturalists and historians, which at that time of course included a good bit of the literate public--during the 19th century. And check Anger's "Hollywood Babylon" for a lurid story about Murnau's death which may or may not be true.
LT
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> While we are on this word-root trip...what about
TAMBOO! and the similarly-titled rekkid TAMBU'? Does
>those mean either the same thing, or anything period?
"Tambu" can be a variant for "taboo" (depending upon which islands you're from) but generally not in English. It more commonly is a West Indian word for a type of small drum in which case it would have a completely different derivation.
LT
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Subject: (exotica) [obits]Zeze Macedo,Manfredo Fest,Lee Richardson,Morris West,Milt Jackson
Date: 12 Oct 1999 15:05:45 -0400
Zeze Macedo
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) û Zeze Macedo, whose rail-thin frame and squeaky voice made her one of Brazil's most beloved comic actresses, died Friday of a stroke. She was 83.
Macedo was discovered in the 1950s reading poetry for a radio station. It was the golden era of Brazilian cinema, and Macedo made 108 films with top-line comedians such as Oscarito, the Brazilian Groucho Marx.
She later moved to television, where she had success playing aging ingenues and credulous wives.
Manfredo Fest
PALM HARBOR, Fla. (AP) û Manfredo Fest, a jazz pianist and a pioneer of the Brazilian bossa nova movement that swept the world in the 1960s, died Friday while awaiting a liver transplant. He was 63.
Fest, a native of Brazil, had lived in the Tampa Bay area since 1987.
Critics credit Fest and other musicians such as Joao Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfa with helping revolutionize Brazilian and international pop music by refining bossa nova from samba in the early 1960s.
He arrived in this country in 1967 and set about developing a blend of Brazilian and American jazz.
"It's important to have a trademark," Fest said in 1997. "If I came to the United States to play American jazz, I'd be only one more in the crowd."
Legally blind since birth, he worked for two years as arranger and keyboard player for Sergio Mendes' Brazil 66. He also played with Lee Ritenour and Floria Purim.
Lee Richardson
NEW YORK (AP) û Lee Richardson, an American actor in stage, film and television work noted for his English accent, died Oct. 2 of cardiac arrest after complications from a perforated ulcer. He was 73.
Richardson was a fixture on the New York stage and in regional repertory roles for more than 40 years. He was born in Chicago but performed in so many roles with an English accent that he was widely assumed to be British.
Richardson read the works of Shakespeare and Noel Coward as a soldier in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He moved to the Goodman Theater School in Chicago after the war.
By 1954, he was appearing regularly on the television drama anthologies "Playhouse 90" and "Studio One." He performed with George C. Scott in Central Park in the 1962 production of "The Merchant of Venice."
He later became a founding member of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, working with Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn and Rita Gam, among others.
Richardson was nominated for a Tony Award in 1973 for his performance in "Vivat! Vivat Regina!" and appeared in John Huston's "Prizzi's Honor."
Morris West
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) û Morris West, a best-selling Australian thriller writer, died Saturday of heart failure while working on his latest novel, his son said. He was 83.
The creator of novels including "The Devil's Advocate," "Children of the Sun" and "Shoes of a Fisherman" died while working "The Last Confession."
Born in Melbourne, West wrote 27 novels, as well as screenplays, radio dramas and plays. His works, which have been translated into 27 languages, have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide.
Robert Waite
GLASTONBURY, Conn. (AP) û Robert Waite, a Williams College historian who brought the psychoanalytic approach to books about Hitler, died Oct. 4. He was 80.
Waite was one of the first proponents of analyzing events in Hitler's early life in Freudian terms to explain his behavior later in life. His most influential book was "The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler" (1977).
Waite was criticized for undervaluing external influences such as European history, Christian anti-Semitism and ideology in explaining Hitler.
Some of the evidence presented and analyzed by Waite, including claims about Hitler's sexual preferences and an autopsy report that Hitler had only one testicle, were suspect, critics have said.
Milt Jackson
NEW YORK (AP) û Milt Jackson, a jazz vibraphonist who made the instrument sing like the human voice as a longtime member of the Modern Jazz Quartet, died Saturday of liver cancer. He was 76.
Jackson was considered one of the best improvisers in jazz and an outstanding blues player.
Jackson originally was a singer in a Detroit gospel quartet. In the 1940s, he created a new sound by slowing the motor on his Deagan Vibraharp's oscillator to a third of the speed of Lionel Hampton's. The result was a warm, smoky sound with a vibrato approximating his own singing.
Jackson's style came from Charlie Parker, whose rhythmic traits he adopted. He was one of the first bona fide be-bop vibraphone musicians, and he became a jewel in Dizzy Gillespie's band. He recorded be-bop classics with the band, such as "A Night in Tunisia," "Anthropology" and "Two Bass Hit."
In 1951, Jackson teamed with Thelonius Monk, recording "Criss Cross" and "Straight, No Chaser," among others.
When a pianist in Gillespie's band, John Lewis, decided to form a new group, one going beyond soloists with a rhythm section, Jackson signed on. In 1952, the Modern Jazz Quartet was born.
Bruce Ritter
NEW YORK (AP) û The Rev. Bruce Ritter, who founded the Covenant House shelters for homeless teen-agers but was forced to resign after several young men accused him of seducing them, died Thursday. He was 72.
The Roman Catholic priest had suffered from Hodgkin's disease, cancer of the lymph nodes.
Ritter had denied the accusations of sexual misconduct and was never formally charged. He resigned from Covenant House in 1990; in August 1991, Ritter left the Franciscan order.
At its peak, Covenant House was the largest private child care agency in the country. It sheltered 2,000 homeless teen-agers a night and took in $92 million a year.
It operated shelters in six U.S. cities and in Toronto, Canada, four orphanages in Central America. Ritter was visited by Mother Teresa; President Reagan hailed him as a hero in his 1984 State of the Union address.
Covenant House started in 1969, when Ritter was living in a shabby apartment in the East Village of Manhattan, an area teeming with flower children and drug addicts.
Six homeless teen-agers asked if they could stay in his living room during a snowstorm. "I didn't have the guts to throw them out so I kept them," he once said.
By 1972, hundreds of youngsters were seeking shelter in Ritter's informal group homes. He obtained a license to run a child care agency and opened a crisis shelter in Times Square.
The scandal that led to his downfall broke in December 1989, when a former prostitute said he had had an affair with Ritter. Ritter denied it, but several other young men came forward with similar stories, saying he seduced them after they sought his help.
Questionable financial transactions surfaced. In February 1990, the Franciscans ordered Ritter to take a leave of absence. Later that month, he resigned from Covenant House.
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George Forrest, Songwriter for Broadway, Films and Clubs, Dies at 84
By ROBERT HANLEY,NYTimes
George Forrest, the songwriter who collaborated with Robert Wright on the words and music for the songs "Stranger in Paradise" and "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," died on Sunday in Miami, where he lived. He was 84.
Wright, who was Forrest's writing partner for the last 72 years,
survives him. The music for "Stranger in Paradise" and "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," were part of the score of the 1953 hit Broadway musical "Kismet," which was based on music by Borodin. The two men's other musicals included the 1944 musical "The Song of Norway." They wrote the words and music for the song hit "It's a Blue World" (1940) and the lyrics for "Donkey Serenade" (1937).
Among the other Broadway musicals that the team collaborated on were
"Gypsy Lady" (1946), "Magdalena" (1948), "Kean" (1961), "Anya" (1965) and "Grand Hotel" (1989).
At the time of Forrest's death, he and Wright were working on
another musical, "Betting on Bertie," a project they had begun years ago with P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, who wrote the book for the show.
Robert Lantz, Forrest's agent, said yesterday that the body of work
that Forrest and Wright created "ranges from cabaret work and nightclub work to movies in the early days of Hollywood and to musicals for which they adapted musical works by Borodin, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Villa-Lobos and others, and for which they also wrote lyrics."
Forrest, whose name was originally George Forrest Chichester Jr.,
was born in Brooklyn. In the early 1920's he and his family moved to the Miami area.
Although his formal musical training was minimal, he mastered the
piano before he entered kindergarten.
Wright, an accomplished pianist who met him in the late 1920's, said
in a 1974 interview: "He always was marvelous. He was a natural. He could play by ear."
By the time Forrest was 13 he was already playing piano and
accompanying singers in Miami night spots and singing second tenor in the glee club at Miami High School. Wright, a year older and the conductor of his own radio show and Sunday concerts, was the glee club's pianist.
In 1934, before either of the two was 20, they left on an
eighth-month tour, playing cabarets from New York westward until they reached Hollywood for a tryout with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Their audition with the best dozen of their 80 songs from the tour
won them a seven-year contract. Their first major task at MGM was to create, in 1937, a new score for the MacDonald-Eddy movie "Maytime" after the studio had discarded almost all the songs that had been prepared.
Forrest and Wright produced some new lyrics and a new score that was
a blend of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, Verdi and French folk songs. Their work won them immediate esteem.
By the time they wrote the songs for "Grand Hotel," the pair had
written "lyrics and music of more than 2,000 compositions for 16 produced stage musicals, 18 stage reviews, 58 motion pictures and numerous cabaret acts," the show's Playbill said.
By then they had won Tony Awards for "Kismet" and had been nominated
for three Academy Awards for the songs "Always and Always," "It's a Blue World" and "Pennies for Peppino." In 1995 they received the Ascap/Richard Rodgers Award for their contribution to the American Musical Theater.
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From: "n.e.u. / Moritz R" <exotica@munich.netsurf.de>
Subject: Re: SV: (exotica) Classics
Date: 13 Oct 1999 10:36:23 +0200
Sandberg Magnus wrote:
> I just played Milt Raskin's Exotic percussion, now Robert Maxwell's Shangri La is on. In fact I just came back from a near Shangri La experience while drawing and I just want to scream: Love conquers all!
What's a "Shangri-La-experience"?
Mo
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>music? It's the only film music credit the IMBD lists for Bebe Barron.
>
The Barrons did music for a few obscure avant-garde films, all shorts I think. About 3-4 were done before "Forbidden Planet" (and yes there's a soundtrack CD available) and some afterwards. One of the later ones was a documentary about Kirlian photography or some such unfortunately topic.
LT
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Subject: (exotica) [obits] David A. Huffman,J. Franklin Hyde,Jules Glazer
Date: 14 Oct 1999 09:38:16 -0400
The Associated Press
Thursday, Oct. 14, 1999; 12:14 a.m. EDT
David A. Huffman
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) û David A. Huffman, who turned his college term paper into a computer coding procedure still in use four decades later, died of cancer Thursday. He was 74.
Huffman developed the Huffman Coding Procedure, a mathematical technique still vital to data storage and transmission. The procedure assigns strings of 0's and 1's to each character in a file.
The codes are used to manage files in large computer systems; compress text, image and audio files; and compress data for transmission by fax machines, modems and high-definition television broadcast.
Huffman created the system while a graduate student in the 1950s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
J. Franklin Hyde
CORNING, N.Y. (AP) û J. Franklin Hyde, an organic chemist whose glass-making method made the fiber-optics revolution possible, died Monday. He was 96.
Hyde's pioneering work with ultra-pure glass at Corning Glass Works in 1934 was used in radar during World War II. It didn't gain wide use until the 1960s when it led to durable spaceship windows, galaxy-gazing telescopes, precision lenses to build computer chips and signal-carrying optical fibers.
Optical fiber is now Corning Inc.'s biggest business.
"I'm surprised at some of the things it has gone into, but I'm not surprised at the versatility of such a beautiful and useful material," Hyde said in an interview with The Associated Press last November.
Jules Glazer
LOS ANGELES (AP) û Jules Glazer, an accountant who handled finances for entertainers such as Abbott and Costello and for leading Democratic political candidates over a 40-year career, died of cancer Oct. 7 in Palm Desert. He was 77.
Glazer handled tax returns and other finances in Hollywood for motion picture personalities, including comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.
Glazer quickly segued to political accounting and developed a reputation for integrity.
A staunch Democrat, he eventually served as national treasurer for the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He also handled regional finances for John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy during their presidential campaigns.
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Subject: (exotica) [obits]Richard B. Shull,Sam Cohen
Date: 15 Oct 1999 09:49:02 -0400
Richard B. Shull
NEW YORK (AP) û Richard B. Shull, veteran character actor who was appearing in the Broadway comedy "Epic Proportions," died Thursday of a heart attack. He was 70.
Shull, whose craggy, hangdog face and impeccable comic timing, made him a favorite of theater directors, portrayed D.W. Dewitt in the play, which spoofs the making of an extravagant biblical movie in 1930s. He played both performances Wednesday, said Pete Sanders, a spokesman for the show.
Among Shull's Broadway musical credits were "Victor/Victoria," "Minnie's Boys," "Oh, Brother!", "Ain't Broadway Grand" and "Goodtime Charlie," for which he received a Tony nomination.
Shull also appeared in such notable off-Broadway productions as Christopher Durang's "The Marriage of Bette and Boo" and the Roundabout Theater Company's "A Flea in Her Ear," starring Bill Irwin.
His films included "Private Parts," "Housesitter" and "Splash." He had continuing roles on Diana Rigg's television series "Diana" and on "Holmes & Yo-Yo."
The Associated Press
Friday, Oct. 15, 1999; 5:21 a.m. EDT
NEW YORK ûû Sam Cohen, known to New Yorkers as a master lox slicer who held the No. 1 slot at the gourmet grocery Zabar's, died Oct. 9 of lymphoma.
Believed to be 86, Cohen's true age was unknown because he was orphaned as a young child. He also survived conditions while consigned to a concentration camp under Adolf Hitler's regime.
His penchant for flirting and friendship, the ability to speak Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Spanish and English, and a willingness to explain the basics as well as the finer points of enjoying lox û all made Cohen a personality favorite in the Upper West Side neighborhood where he worked.
Cohen was born in Poland, and worked as a book dealer, the secretary of a small bank and a dealer in animal feed before World War II. He came to U.S. shores in 1952, tried out television repair and then settled into Zabar's, where he weighed salmon, sturgeon, gefilte fish, and pickled lox with a smile.
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All this talk of Up With People lately! Well, this week's show of "friendly persuasion" has Up With People doing "A New Dimension". Quite groovy. yea yea yeaaahhhhhh!
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) û Van Arsdale France, the sunny optimist who created the training program that taught Disneyland employees how to sell happiness with a smile, died Thursday of pneumonia at 87.
Walt Disney told France to come up with lessons that would help employees avoid a carnival image. The result was France's employee training manual, which became legendary in the retail industry because of its instructions to treat customers as guests who were buying the product of happiness.
France was so cheerful, fellow employees at the self-described Happiest Place on Earth called him Disneyland's Jiminy Cricket. France went into semi-retirement in the 1980s. He continued to work as a consultant until his death.
Josef Locke
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) û Singer Josef Locke, whose romantic tenor voice and colorful life inspired the 1992 film "Hear My Song," died Friday after a long illness. He was 82.
He was born Joseph McLaughlin in the Creggan district of Londonderry, Northern Ireland, son of a cattle dealer.
After serving with the British army in North Africa in World War II, he made a flourishing career as a singer in Britain in the 1940s and '50s.
A stocky man with a plump face, he was not an obvious candidate for matinee idol. But he had great charm and a voice that could melt a heart of stone with such songs as "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen," "Tobermory Bay" and "Hear My Song."
Locke fled to the Irish Republic in 1958 just ahead of British authorities threatening prosecution for tax evasion.
After he fled, rumors started that he was still in England, performing under the name of "Mr X." Police eventually arrested "Mr. X" for tax evasion, slapped him in jail û and then discovered he was not Locke at all, but an impersonator.
The admired film "Hear My Song," in which actor Ned Beatty played Locke, was based on the "Mr. X" confusion and introduced the tenor to a new generation.
Jim Zolman
DULCE, N.M. (AP) û Jim Zolman, rodeo professional, died of complications following knee surgery on Monday. He was 45.
The lanky, 6-foot-4 cowboy had wrestled steers from New York's Madison Square Garden to San Francisco's Cow Palace and had competed on the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association circuit for 27 years.
When he wasn't wrestling steers, Zolman was counseling people with substance abuse problems on the Jicarilla Apache reservation, which is headquartered in Dulce, just south of the Colorado state line.
Irving Siders
NEW YORK (AP) û Irving Siders, a producer who took Broadway shows on the road across the nation, died Wednesday at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan. He was 81.
For 20 years, Siders organized national tours of Broadway productions, from serious drama like Athol Fugard's "Master Harold ... and the Boys," to rollicking musicals like "Ain't Misbehavin'." In 1987 he brought a tour back to New York, staging a revival of Michael Bennett's "Dreamgirls," which received a Tony nomination for best revival.
Over the course of his career, Siders worked with many of the major stars and star makers of the American theater.
At 16, Siders first took to the road when he left Boston to work as a band boy for pianist Fats Waller. Working the city-a-day job introduced him to the gritty and seductive world of jazz, clubs and show people.
After World War II, Siders developed a career as a talent manager and booking agent for performers including Ella Fitzgerald and the Count Basie Band. He later joined the jazz label Verve as a manager, and worked briefly as entertainment director for Playboy Clubs.
NEW YORK (AP) û Jean Shepherd, the prolific radio raconteur whose easy storytelling style earned comparisons to fellow Midwesterner Mark Twain, died Saturday. He was 78.
Shepherd, once described by media critic Marshall McLuhan as "the first radio novelist," died in a hospital near his home in Sanibel Island, Fla.
Shepherd spent 21 years on WOR-AM in New York City, attracting a large, loyal following along the Eastern seaboard. He worked without a script, conjuring tales based on his Indiana upbringing, creating characters like his alter-ego, Ralph Parker, and his neighbors, the Bumpuses.
In a move that likely inspired the climactic scene in the movie "Network," Shepherd would tell his listeners to crank up the volume on their radios and scream along with him. "Drop the tools, we've got you covered!" was one of Shepherd's favorite shout-along phrases.
Shepherd, while best known for his radio work, excelled as a multimedia performer. His films included the 1983 classic "A Christmas Story," a sardonic look at the holiday that he wrote and narrated. He had hoped to call it "Satan's Revenge."
His writing appeared in a vast assortment of publications, from The New York Times to National Lampoon. He wrote several books, including 1966's "In God We Trust" and the 1971 story collection, "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters."
Shepherd did a pair of syndicated PBS TV programs, "Jean Shepherd's America" and "Shepherd's Pie," and often sold out Carnegie Hall for his live shows.
Glen Payne
FRANKLIN, Tenn. (AP) û Gospel singer Glen Payne, the lead vocalist of the Cathedrals, died Friday. He was 72.
Payne was diagnosed with liver cancer six weeks ago.
"He passed away peacefully without any pain, with his family near him. He spent yesterday singing 'Victory in Jesus,'" Debbie Bennett, a producer and family friend said in a note to fans posted on the group's Web site.
During Payne's nearly 60 years in gospel music, his group won numerous awards and was nominated for 11 Grammys.
His work was honored by inductions into the Gospel Music Association's Hall of Fame, the Texas Music Hall of Fame, the Southern Gospel Music Association's Hall of Fame and the Radio Music Hall of Fame.
From 1951 to 1957, Payne sang in the Stamps-Ozark Quartet before leaving to join the Weatherfords.
In 1963, Payne formed a trio to perform at evangelist Rex Humbard's Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron, Ohio. George Younce joined the trio and it changed its name to the Cathedral Quartet.
Payne and Younce became constants in the group that would feature 17 other members over the next 35 years on its way to becoming one of the preeminent southern gospel groups.
The Associated Press
Sunday, Oct. 17, 1999; 8:12 p.m. EDT
ROME ûû Artist Leo Lionni, who devoted his versatile talents to everything from philosophical children's books to high-profile ad campaigns, died Oct. 11. He was 89.
Lionni was born in the Netherlands on May 5, 1910, and immigrated to the United States 10 years later, showing an early enthusiasm for drawing.
In 1925, he moved to Genoa, Italy, where his abstract paintings won him an invitation to exhibit with the then-cutting-edge Futurists. He worked on his first graphic design projects in Milan.
Mussolini's Fascist racial laws turned Lionni away from Italy and toward the United States in 1933, when he wove his artistic and business talents into a successful career in advertising.
As art director of N.W. Ayer in Philadelphia, Lionni designed ad campaigns for clients including Ford and General Electric, employing respected contemporary artists such as Fernand Leger and Willem De Kooning as illustrators.
In the 1950s, he became art director for Fortune magazine and edited catalogs for New York's Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum.
In 1959, Lionni published his first children's book, "Little Blue and Little Yellow." The idea û the book's protagonists are a blue dot and a yellow dot whose adventures blend them together into Little Green û sprung from a story he once improvised for his grandchildren.
Lionni went on to write and illustrate another 30 children's books, which have been published in 11 languages.
BULLHEAD CITY, Ariz. (AP) û Ella Mae Morse, whose classic 1942 recording "Cow Cow Boogie" became Capitol Records' first million-selling single, died Saturday. She was 75.
She had been suffering respiratory problems following a long illness, according to her publicist.
The Texas-born Morse combined boogie woogie, blues, jazz, swing and country influences in the 1940s and 50s, helping to create a pioneering "pop" sound that would later grown into rock 'n' roll. Elvis Presley even praised her for teaching him how to sing.
Describe as a black-trained, white "hepchick," her songs earned her 10 gold records. One song was the "The House of Blue Lights," which is regarded as one of the most influential songs in the evolution of rock 'n' roll, said Alan Eichler, her publicist.
Morse stopped recording in 1957, but continued performing until 1987.
October 18, 1999
Lee Lozano, 68, Conceptual Artist Who Boycotted Women for Years
Star Wars fans take heed: If you don't want to know which beloved series stalwart dies in the new, George Lucas-approved novel, don't read any further.
Yes, while facing yet another terror from the Dark Side in Vector Prime, R.A. Salvatore's just-released first installment of The New Jedi Order series, one of the original band of Star Wars heroes runs out of luck.
And unfortunately, it's not Jar Jar.
The un-Forceful one is everybody's favorite Wookiee, Chewbacca.
About two-thirds of the way through Vector Prime, the ferocious but cuddly crusader bites it, sacrificing his big hairy self to save his pals, especially Han Solo.
Evidently, publisher Del Rey and Lucasfilm wanted to "crank up the heat" with this new book, which is set after Return of the Jedi and some 25 years after the first Star Wars (aka Episode IV: A New Hope).
"It seemed that after all the characters had been through, there was
nothing left to scare anyone or get [readers] worried. You knew they were going to be fine," Del Rey editorial director Shelly Shapiro tells USA Today.
Lucasfilm's Howard Roffman adds that the demise of a main character would be "a clear signal of the gravity of the situation."
-----------
Mark Hanna (1959-1999) who piloted the L39 Plane during the pre-credit sequence for the James Bond film 'Tomorrow Never Dies', was killed in a aircraft crash on the 26th September.
The accident took place at Sabadell near Barcelona where the aircraft
was due to participate in a large flying display. It occurred on approach to landing and there was a major fire.
Mark was flying an Hispano Buchon, a Spanish-built version of the Second World War German Messerschmitt Bf109 fighter. The aircraft had appeared at air shows throughout the UK and Europe.
Major films in which he acted as both aerial advisor and chief pilot
included Empire of the Sun, Air America, Tomorrow Never Dies, Memphis
Belle, Piece of Cake and Saving Private Ryan.
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Subject: (exotica) [obits] Hamilton H. "Terry" Gilkyson III,Irene Heskes,Christine Mason,Jim Moran,Pierre Moulin,
Date: 19 Oct 1999 10:13:15 -0400
Hamilton H. Gilkyson III
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) û Singer-songwriter Hamilton H. "Terry" Gilkyson III, who wrote an eclectic range of music spanning folk to calypso to Disney animation, died Friday. He was 83.
Gilkyson's 1968 song, "The Bare Necessities," for Disney's "Jungle Book," was nominated for an Academy Award.
During the 1960s, he wrote a song a week for "The Wonderful World of Disney" television show and later wrote theme songs for Disney movies including "The Swiss Family Robinson," "Thomasina" and "The Aristocats."
Gilkyson songs were recorded by Johnny Cash, Tony Bennett, The Kingston Trio, Mitch Miller, Spike Jones, Marlene Dietrich, Doris Day, Harry Connick Jr. and Louis Armstrong.
He also co-wrote with his group, Terry Gilkyson and the Easy Riders, such classics as "Everybody Loves Saturday Night," "Marianne," "The Sea is Green" and "Memories are Made of This," the hit recorded by Dean Martin. "Greenfield," recorded by The Brothers Four, was a Top 10 hit in 1960.
Born in Mont Clare, Pa., Gilkyson served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and broadcast for Armed Forces Radio as a folk singer.
After the war, Gilkyson moved to Los Angeles to pursue a songwriting career. His first hit was the 1950 "Cry of the Wild Goose," recorded by Frankie Laine.
NEW YORK (AP) û Irene Heskes, a historian and author who specialized in Jewish music died Thursday of aplastic anemia. She was 76.
Ms. Heskes worked as a researcher, writer and lecturer for the Theodor Herzl Institute of the Jewish Agency from 1964 to 1976. She also was the director of the National Jewish Music Council from 1968 to 1980 and was a consultant to the American Jewish Historical Society and to libraries and academic institutions.
In 1980, she founded the American Yiddish Theater Music Restoration and Revival Project, which assembled, catalogued and microfilmed a comprehensive collection of Yiddish theater music. The collection is now available for study at the Library of Congress.
Christine Mason
BALTIMORE (AP) û Christine Mason, a hairstylist whose behemoth beehives and other outrageous coiffeurs were comic highlights in five of Baltimore director John Waters' most popular films, died Sunday of cervical cancer. She was 49.
Her best-known works were those she created as hairstylist and wigmaker for a series of Waters' films, including "Female Trouble," "Desperate Living," "Polyester," "Cry Baby" and "Hairspray."
Among the performers for whom Mason created hairstyles were the late Divine, a female impersonator who starred in Waters' early films, Ricki Lake, Deborah Harry and Patricia Hearst.
Jim Moran
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) û Jim Moran, known for outrageous publicity stunts in the 1940s and '50s to promote products, Hollywood films û and himself û died Monday, He was 91.
Sell an icebox to an Eskimo? Moran traveled to Alaska and did just that, at the behest of a refrigerator company.
Change horses in midstream? Moran performed the feat during the 1944 presidential election, in the Truckee River at Reno, Nev. To bring attention to a property for sale, Moran spent 10 days finding a needle in a haystack.
"He was maybe the last of the great, flamboyant press agents," said Bob Thomas, who has covered Hollywood for the past 55 years for The Associated Press. "He loved publicity himself, as well as making it."
Before entering the publicity business, Moran had been an airline executive in Washington, D.C., and operated a studio where congressmen recorded speeches for their local radio stations.
NEW YORK (AP) û Pierre Moulin, who with his business partner, Pierre LeVec, created the Pierre Deux fabric shops and the mix of colorful cotton, glazed tile and antique armoires known as the Pierre Deux look, died Sunday of prostate cancer. He was 73.
Moulin's father owned a rug factory and his grandmother was friends with designer Coco Chanel.
In 1949, he met LeVec. Later, when LeVec worked in Washington, Moulin set up a farm in Winchester, Va., where he raised 25,000 broiling chickens û and won prizes for doing so.
In 1970, Moulin had some pillows made from decorated French peasant fabrics and scattered them around their upholstered furniture. The partners began importing the fabric and customers came in droves. Before long, there were 22 Pierre Deux shops around the world.
The men retired in 1989, selling all but one of the shops. LeVec died a year and a half ago.
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Subject: (exotica) [obits] Dallas Bower,Stanley L. Dritz,Thomas Durden
Date: 21 Oct 1999 09:55:55 -0400
The Associated Press
Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999; 5:15 a.m. EDT
LONDON ûû Dallas Bower, a pioneer television producer who also worked in early radio and cinema, died Monday. He was 92.
Bower began sound recording in radio when broadcasting was a novelty. He moved to cinema and then to television, where he became the first producer of drama and opera for the British Broadcasting Corp.
He also directed feature films and documentaries, and was associate producer of Laurence Olivier's 1944 film "Henry V."
One of Bower's first jobs was to record the soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock's 1929 film "Blackmail" for British International Pictures. That year he also recorded the first all-talking British film, "Under the Greenwood Tree."
Bower was appointed to the BBC Television Service in 1936. During World War II, he made propaganda films as an executive producer in the government's Ministry of Information.
Stanley L. Dritz
NEW YORK (AP) û Stanley L. Dritz, who popularized the zipper and other sewing products as part of his family's business, died Saturday in White Plains, N.Y. He was 88.
As president of John Dritz & Sons, Dritz raised the consumer appeal of a hookless fastener he had first seen in England. He made the fastener, commonly known as the zipper, out of plastic and rustproof metals.
It was one of the hundreds of sewing aids found in his company's catalog, which also included the seam ripper and the electric scissors.
Dritz was born in New York City and joined his father's business after graduating from college. He was president in the 1950s and 1960s, and the company was sold upon his retirement.
Thomas Durden
BAY CITY, Mich. (AP) -- Thomas Durden, who wrote the lyrics to one of Elvis Presley's early big hits, ``Heartbreak Hotel,'' has died at age 79.
``He wrote a lot of good music that is out there. It's just that `Heartbreak Hotel' is the famous one,'' said his stepson, John
White.
Durden, who died Sunday at his home in Houghton Lake, met Presley as a result of the song. Presley called him ``sir'' and sent Durden Christmas cards to show his appreciation, White said.
Durden co-wrote ``Heartbreak Hotel'' with Mae Boren Axton of Nashville, Tenn., who died in 1997. For reasons never explained, Presley also was given writing credit even though it was the work of Durden and Axton.
Durden was born in Georgia and grew up in Florida, where his older brother had a musical influence on him. Durden had a good voice and a special talent for playing the steel guitar, which he refined throughout his life, White said.
In 1956, Durden was single and performing with a band in Jacksonville, Fla., when he came across a newspaper account of a man who had committed suicide, White said.
The man left a note that said, ``I walk a lonely street,''and Durden used it as the basis for ``Heartbreak Hotel,'' which begins:
``Since my baby left me
``I found a new place to dwell
``down at the end of lonely street at
``Heartbreak Hotel.''
Durden continued to write and perform music, playing with Nashville legends like Johnny Cash and touring with Tex Ritter, White said.
He moved north to the Houghton Lake area and lived there for about 40 years. He performed with bands in northern Michigan, and their sets always included his hit song, White said.
In a 1982 interview, Durden spoke of the impact ``Heartbreak Hotel'' had on his life.
``I wish I had 12 more songs just like it,'' Durden said. ``It
has paid the rent for more than 20 years, but you can't get rich writing songs unless you have a lot of big ones.''
(SALT LAKE CITY) --
The world's oldest living zoo gorilla has died in the Salt Lake City zoo at the age of 50,leaving behind a cat named N'Jina. The entire city is mourning the death of Gorgeous, who was captured as an infant and spent most of her half-century at the Hogle Zoo. Gorgeous seemed to be doing fine after losing her teeth to a gum infection this month. She found dead in her cage over the weekend, apparently from old age. Although she was blind in one eye, Gorgeous lived a good 15-years longer than most zoo gorillas. To keep her company as she got older, her keepers gave her the kitten as a companion. For the past six years, Gorgeous and N'Jina have been inseparable.
BANGKOK, Oct 15 (AFP) - Thailand's top snake charmer was killed by one of his cobras after it turned on him during a show, reports here said Friday.
The three meter (10 foot) cobra sunk its teeth into 59-year-old Lod Pramuang's right leg, as he performed a boxing routine with the snake, the Bangkok Post reported.
Lod swallowed a dose of herbal medicine after finishing his snake charming show in the northeastern province of Khon Kaen, but his condition deteriorated and he died later in hospital.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A man building shelves in his apartment to store cages for his 12 pet pythons died when he fell off a ladder and
onto a drill, police said Monday.
The drill bit penetrated the right side of 36-year-old Thomas Giacometti's head Sunday night, police spokeswoman Theresa Farello said.
Giacometti's brother, who shared the basement apartment, discovered the body and called police.
------------------
Anatomy of a Genius
The Man With the Golden Arm, Psycho, Vertigo, Anatomy of a Murder, and
on and on and on. Great movies with great graphics by Saul Bass. This
is a media-rich homage page and labor of love. And I really want
those fonts used on the site!
World Wide Web: http://www.Saulbass.co.uk/
--------------------
StonerSound
StonerSound is an interesting automatic music app that is free. Authored by Andrew Plotkin, it is perfect for low level ambiance of a psychotronic nature. This is critical when you can't bear the conversation coming from the nearest cubicle any longer. You will need a Mac with System 7 or later and the QuickTime musical architecture. The perfect soundtrack for when you roll your eyes back and start whimpering, "I hear those voices again." World Wide Web:
Here's a helpful series of applications that let you surf the Web at work and not get caught. There's an instant spreadsheet which can be loaded on a dime, sound files to fool your coworkers that can make it sound like you're hard at work - typing, talking on the phone ... whipping .... yes, whipping, even whipping and typing! There are also tutorials for useful boss-deceiving techniques.
Don's Boss Page -- http://donsbosspage.com/
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Every field of human endeavor throws up a handful of wild-eyed misfits, eccentrics, and occasional mad geniuses. For every Thomas Edison there's a Nikolai Tesla, for every Stan Lee, a Jack Chick. In some cases these outsiders are later recognized as brilliant innovators who created new paradigms far ahead of their times. In other cases, these figures fade into semi-obscurity, only to be remembered as curiosities and crackpots.
Music, too, has generated its share of eccentrics -- perhaps more than any other art form in this century. This list spotlights some of our obscure, overlooked musical treasures: artists (and we use the term loosely here)whose willful weirdness and determination to follow their own strange muses have led them into uncharted musical territory.
Also, it should be noted that, in the interests of space, some of our own favorites were left out -- apologies to fans of Tiny Tim, Shobee Taylor, Jandek, the Shaggs, and anyone else whose inspired lunacy didn't make the cut.
Note: This list has been compiled with much love and respect to Irwin Chusid. Without his efforts much of this music would have been forgotten.
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Subject: (exotica) [obits] Bobby Willis,Maria Ley Piscator,Queenie Ashton
Date: 25 Oct 1999 09:53:48 -0400
Bobby Willis
LONDON (AP) û Bobby Willis, husband and manager of pop star Cilla Black, died Saturday at age 57.
Willis, who had been diagnosed with cancer of the lungs and liver in July, died at a hospital where he was being treated for pneumonia.
Willis met Miss Black when she was a 15-year-old waitress in Liverpool who occasionally sang with rock groups. She was signed by Beatles manager Brian Epstein in 1963, and her hits included "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and "You're My World."
Willis became her manager after Epstein's suicide in 1967, and they married two years later. As her singing career faded, she and Willis turned their efforts to television, where she became a high-paid fixture as hostess of "Blind Date." In addition to his wife, Willis is survived by sons Robert, 28, Benjamin, 24, and Jack, 17.
Maria Ley Piscator
NEW YORK (AP) û Maria Ley Piscator, a theater arts teacher and director who co-founded a drama workshop attended by Marlon Brando and Harry Belafonte, died Oct. 14. She was 101.
Mrs. Piscator began her theatrical career as a dancer in Berlin and Paris. She later turned to choreography and helped stage several productions with Max Reinhardt, including "A Midsummer Night's Eve."
She met theatrical director Erwin Piscator, who became her third husband, in 1936 while studying literature at the Sorbonne. They moved to the United States and founded the Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. Their students included Belafonte, Brando and Tony Randall.
Mrs. Piscator directed theatrical productions off-Broadway and in Europe. She was the director and founder of small theater programs in New York for the elderly, children and others.
She wrote "The Piscator Experiment: The Political Theater," which was published in 1967. Her autobiography, "Mirror People," was published in 1989.
Queenie Ashton one of Australia's most popular and enduring stars has passed away in Sydney aged 95. Best known for her role as Granny Bishop in Australia's longest running radio serials, Blue Hills, Ms Ashton also had a glittering career on stage and screen. Born in London as Edith Murial Ashton in 1903, she travelled to Australia in 1927 to take up the starring role in the musical Sunny. She went on to star in a succession of musicals. Ms Ashton played the part of Granny Bishop from 1949 until the serial's end in 1976 after 5,795 episodes. she never tired of playing this role and delivered the last line of the final episode, "People never really die until no-one wants to remember them any more. Goodbye and God bless." Queenie died at the Yallambi Nursing Home, Carlingford on Thursday. She is survived
by two children, Tony and Janet.
And in newsgroup alt.obituaries comes this question:
On 25 Oct 1999 00:08:41 GMT, in alt.obituaries desscribe1@aol.com (DESSCRIBE1) wrote:
>Does anybody have any info on the living and/or health status of either of these two singularly-named kitschy cult musicians?
>Erich
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Subject: (exotica) [obits from the NYTimes]Van Arsdale France
Date: 25 Oct 1999 11:49:15 -0400
October 25, 1999
Van Arsdale France, Who Shaped Training for Disney Workers, Dies at 87
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Van Arsdale France, the man who wrote the manual for teaching Disneyland employees precisely how to smile, died on Oct. 13 in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 87.
France brought a background in industrial relations to Disneyland, which opened in 1955 in Anaheim, Calif. He spent more than a quarter-century developing training programs for what came to be called Disney University. After retiring in 1978, he was a consultant to Disney until his death.
"He was able to put into effect the way Walt wanted the staff to relate to guests," said Jack Linquist, who worked for the Disney Co company for 38 years, the last five as president of Disneyland. He called France "a real Jiminy Cricket," who acted as the conscience of Disneyland when he saw cost-cutters as threatening the integrity of Walt Disney's vision.
The Disney vision involved a formula in which all staff members, not just the people who portrayed Snow White and Mickey Mouse, were told to think of themselves as characters playing to an audience.
France's basic idea was something he called "the looking-glass self," meaning that if staff members smiled, customers would smile, too. No honorifics were permitted in Disneyland. "The only Mister here is Mr. Toad," France's manual commanded.
The vision was broadly egalitarian. As the manual said: "Every guest receives the VIP treatment. We roll out the red carpet for the Jones family from Joliet just as we would (with a few embellishments) for the Eisenhowers from Palm Springs."
But the cast members were expected to know their roles and stay in character. Women were to wear scant makeup and men were to be clean-shaven.
Some saw such commandments as rather harsh social control, and some were even more critical.
In his 1968 book, "The Disney Version," Richard Schickel wrote that Disney University trained people "in the modern American art forms -- pioneered by the airlines -- of the frozen smile and the canned answer delivered with enough spontaneity to seem unprogrammed."
Terrie Richards Alden, a jazz singer who worked at Disney parks on and off from 1986 to 1993, said she found it oppressive. "Everything about you had to be Alice in Wonderland," she said, "even if you were a garbage collector making the minimum wage."
France was born in the Seattle area and moved to San Diego at age 12, said Estelle Webb, his companion of 33 years. He graduated from San Diego State University and worked in labor relations before being asked to set up the Disney employment-training program.
Dick Nunis, who was hired by France at Disneyland's inception and went on to become his boss as head of Disney Attractions, said France always showed a willingness to learn and adapt. In the late 1960s, for example, France enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder to gain exposure to the thinking of the next generation.
Nunis said that whenever France thought Disneyland was beginning to slip a bit after Walt Disney's death in 1966, not following the original policy of putting quality ahead of costs, he would complain, often successfully. (Disney had refused to post signs asking visitors not to step on gardens, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of plants a year.)
In his later years, France wrote articles and pamphlets for older people, including one that advocated bus travel, which he adopted after he stopped driving. It was called "The Bus and I: Diary of a Reformed Autoholic."
Ms. Webb said that France jogged decades before it became popular and that he was an avid body surfer because his small size had made it difficult to control the heavy surfboards of his youth. Until several months ago, France "ralked" daily; ralking is the word he coined for his combination of running and walking.
France was married twice and is survived by two daughters, Cheryl France of Portland, Ore., and Sandy Steen of Albuquerque, N.M.
Ms. Webb said she and France had lived around the corner from each other for 33 years.
"We believed in long engagements," she said.
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HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- Hoyt Axton, a folksy baritone, songwriter and actor who wrote Three Dog Night's No. 1 hit ``Joy to the World'' and songs that were performed by artists from Elvis Presley to Ringo Starr, died Tuesday. He was 61.
Axton died at his ranch in the Bitterroot Valley, surrounded by family and friends. He moved to the area after playing a sheriff in
the movie ``Disorganized Crime,'' filmed there in 1988.
He suffered a heart attack two weeks ago and another during
surgery, said Jan Woods, a longtime friend in Nashville, Tenn. He
had never fully recovered from a 1996 stroke and used a wheelchair
much of the time. Axton also had advanced complications from
diabetes.
Axton's mother, Mae Boren Axton, had her own spot in popular
culture history as the writer of Presley's ``Heartbreak Hotel.''
``When Mae died three years ago, she left me Hoyt,'' Ms. Woods
said. ``He was probably one of the most honest, humorous kids that
never grew up.''
``There was nobody that didn't like Hoyt,'' said Fran Boyd,
executive director of the Los Angeles-based Academy of Country
Music. ``Oh God, was he fun.''
Three Dog Night's recording of his novelty ``Joy to the World'' (``Jeremiah was a bullfrog ...'') was on top of the charts for six straight weeks in 1971, making it the top hit of the year. Axton
pitched the song to group members when he was their opening act in
1969-70. He also wrote ``Never Been to Spain'' for the band, a song
also recorded by Presley.
Axton's own singing hits include ``Boney Fingers'' (``Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get? Boney fingers'') and ``When
the Morning Comes.''
The native of Duncan, Okla., started out singing folk songs in the clubs of San Francisco in 1958 and a song he co-wrote,
``Greenback Dollar,'' was a 1963 hit for the Kingston Trio.
He wrote hits for Starr (``No No Song'') and Steppenwolf (``The Pusher''). Others who performed songs he wrote included Joan Baez, Waylon Jennings, John Denver and Linda Ronstadt.
Steppenwolf's ``The Pusher'' and ``Snowblind Friend'' were rare forays into a more serious theme. ``The Pusher'' was a powerful,
passionate song that condemned drug sellers.
And 1975's ``No No Song'' included the lines ``No no no no, I don't sniff it no more. I'm tired of waking up on the floor.''
But in 1997, police found slightly more than a pound of
marijuana at Axton's home. Deborah Hawkins, whom Axton wed later
that year, said she gave him marijuana because it relieved some of
the pain, anxiety and stress he suffered after his stroke, her
lawyer said.
Axton was given a three-year deferred sentence and fined $15,000 for marijuana possession. Hawkins got a one-year deferred sentence and a $1,000 fine.
A large man, Axton as an actor specialized in playing good ol' boys on TV and in films, including ``Gremlins'' and ``The Black
Stallion.'' He sang the ``Head to the Mountains'' jingle used to
advertise Busch beer in the 1980s.
Survivors include Axton's wife and five children.
------------
as seen on usenet/newgroup alt.obituaries:
On Tue, 26 Oct 1999 05:03:12 +0000, in alt.obituaries arthurvk@xs4all.nl (Arthur van Kruining) wrote:
>DESSCRIBE1 <desscribe1@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Does anybody have any info on the living and/or health status of either of
>> these two singularly-named kitschy cult musicians?
>
>AFAIK Heino is still alive and singing nazi hymns. The schlagersinger
>you should worry about is Rex Gildo. He jumped out of a second-floor
>window last Saturday, and now floats between life and death in a Munich
>hospital. According to a friend, the 60-year-old has-been acted out of
>loneliness...
>
>U groet,
>Arthur.
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HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- Hoyt Axton, a folksy baritone, songwriter and actor who wrote Three Dog Night's No. 1 hit ``Joy to the World'' and songs that were performed by artists from Elvis Presley to Ringo Starr, died Tuesday. He was 61.
Axton died at his ranch in the Bitterroot Valley, surrounded by family and friends. He moved to the area after playing a sheriff in
the movie ``Disorganized Crime,'' filmed there in 1988.
He suffered a heart attack two weeks ago and another during
surgery, said Jan Woods, a longtime friend in Nashville, Tenn. He
had never fully recovered from a 1996 stroke and used a wheelchair
much of the time. Axton also had advanced complications from
diabetes.
Axton's mother, Mae Boren Axton, had her own spot in popular
culture history as the writer of Presley's ``Heartbreak Hotel.''
``When Mae died three years ago, she left me Hoyt,'' Ms. Woods
said. ``He was probably one of the most honest, humorous kids that
never grew up.''
``There was nobody that didn't like Hoyt,'' said Fran Boyd,
executive director of the Los Angeles-based Academy of Country
Music. ``Oh God, was he fun.''
Three Dog Night's recording of his novelty ``Joy to the World'' (``Jeremiah was a bullfrog ...'') was on top of the charts for six straight weeks in 1971, making it the top hit of the year. Axton
pitched the song to group members when he was their opening act in
1969-70. He also wrote ``Never Been to Spain'' for the band, a song
also recorded by Presley.
Axton's own singing hits include ``Boney Fingers'' (``Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get? Boney fingers'') and ``When
the Morning Comes.''
The native of Duncan, Okla., started out singing folk songs in the clubs of San Francisco in 1958 and a song he co-wrote,
``Greenback Dollar,'' was a 1963 hit for the Kingston Trio.
He wrote hits for Starr (``No No Song'') and Steppenwolf (``The Pusher''). Others who performed songs he wrote included Joan Baez, Waylon Jennings, John Denver and Linda Ronstadt.
Steppenwolf's ``The Pusher'' and ``Snowblind Friend'' were rare forays into a more serious theme. ``The Pusher'' was a powerful,
passionate song that condemned drug sellers.
And 1975's ``No No Song'' included the lines ``No no no no, I don't sniff it no more. I'm tired of waking up on the floor.''
But in 1997, police found slightly more than a pound of
marijuana at Axton's home. Deborah Hawkins, whom Axton wed later
that year, said she gave him marijuana because it relieved some of
the pain, anxiety and stress he suffered after his stroke, her
lawyer said.
Axton was given a three-year deferred sentence and fined $15,000 for marijuana possession. Hawkins got a one-year deferred sentence and a $1,000 fine.
A large man, Axton as an actor specialized in playing good ol' boys on TV and in films, including ``Gremlins'' and ``The Black
Stallion.'' He sang the ``Head to the Mountains'' jingle used to
advertise Busch beer in the 1980s.
Survivors include Axton's wife and five children.
------------
as seen on usenet/newgroup alt.obituaries:
On Tue, 26 Oct 1999 05:03:12 +0000, in alt.obituaries arthurvk@xs4all.nl (Arthur van Kruining) wrote:
>DESSCRIBE1 <desscribe1@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Does anybody have any info on the living and/or health status of either of
>> these two singularly-named kitschy cult musicians?
>
>AFAIK Heino is still alive and singing nazi hymns. The schlagersinger
>you should worry about is Rex Gildo. He jumped out of a second-floor
>window last Saturday, and now floats between life and death in a Munich
>hospital. According to a friend, the 60-year-old has-been acted out of
>loneliness...
>
>U groet,
>Arthur.
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Subject: (exotica) [obits] Rex Gildo,Linda F. Pezzano,Abraham Polonsky
Date: 28 Oct 1999 10:14:46 -0400
Rex Gildo
MUNICH, Germany (AP) û Rex Gildo, a German pop singer, died of heart failure Tuesday, three days after attempting suicide by jumping from his third-floor apartment window. He was 60.
Gildo died Tuesday night after three days in an artificially induced coma, the spokeswoman said. She spoke on condition of anonymity.
Authorities said Gildo had been suffering from psychological problems.
Gildo, whose real name was Ludwig Hirtreiter, rode to fame in the 1960s and '70s with hits like "Fiesta Mexicana" and "Speedy Gonzales." He continued to perform in recent years at events like folk festivals.
MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) -
Rex Gildo, once one of the brightest boy stars of German pop music, has died three days after throwing himself from an apartment window, doctors said Wednesday.
Friends said he was despondent about the decline of his show business career as he grew older.
The singer, who turned 60 in July, had been relegated to performing at supermarket openings and office parties. His coffee-colored tan, unnaturally thick black hair and determinedly youthful dress made him a figure of fun for some.
German media, for whom the country's indigenous pop stars are the stuff of exhaustive daily coverage, devoted pages to Gildo's anguish and accounts of heavy drinking.
He died in a Munich hospital on Tuesday night of injuries sustained in Saturday's fall.
``He wore his makeup ever thicker and wiggled his hips like he'd just turned 18,'' pop expert Thommi Herrwerth said. ``Rex Gildo looked like a bad copy of himself.''
Born Alexander Ludwig Hirtreiter, he had his first hit in 1960. One of several Germanized versions of American '60s idols who fused rock with the sing-along traditions of German folk music, his records sold millions of copies into the 1980s.
Best known was the clap-along favorite ``Fiesta Mexicana.''
October 28, 1999
Linda F. Pezzano, Promoter of ┤Trivial Pursuit┤ Game, Dies at 54
By DOUGLAS MARTIN,NYTimes (and a neighbor of mine - Lou)
Linda F. Pezzano, a marketing consultant who helped what was then an obscure Canadian board game, "Trivial Pursuit," achieve sales totaling more than $1 billion, died Tuesday at a hospice in Manhattan. She was 54.
She died of cervical cancer, said her brother David.
Ms. Pezzano's "Trivial Pursuit" campaign changed the way game makers do business. Dorothy Crenshaw, who worked with Ms. Pezzano in marketing games and other products, said the approach was based on drumming up favorable word-of-mouth comments, or "buzz."
For "Trivial Pursuit," she sent 1,800 top buyers who would be attending the 1983 New York Toy Fair a series of teasing messages in the months before the event. She also sent the game to Hollywood stars whose names were mentioned in its trivia questions. When some stars, including Gregory Peck, James Mason, Pat Boone and Larry Hagman, wrote letters of thanks, she used them in her promotions.
She also staged game-playing events at parks, bars, restaurants and ski clubs to stimulate conversation.
One virtue of her campaign was that it was cheap. By giving away a few hundred games at a $12 wholesale cost, a fad was started.
"She knew nobody would play a board game without getting their hands on it," said Chris Byrne, who in 1985 worked with Ms. Pezzano in selling the game Pictionary, a way of playing charades on paper. "She took games to the people," said Byrne, who is now editor of Toy Report, an industry publication.
Byrne said her direct approach to potential players contrasted sharply with what was then the standard -- and expensive -- practice: relying on television, movies and licensing agreements.
"She created the model that everyone now uses," he said. "Today we call it 'viral marketing."'
Giving games away was a major part of the strategy, and she and Byrne would sometimes pass out free Pictionary games to every passenger on a flight they were on. "We estimated that for every complete Pictionary we gave away, we sold between five and 12 more," he said.
Ms. Pezzano was born and raised in Schenectady. She came to Manhattan at 17 to become a folk singer. She attended Elmira College without obtaining an undergraduate degree but later earned a master's degree from Columbia Business School while working full time.
Besides her brother David of Schenectady, she is survived by another brother, Michael of Portland, Ore.
After a short stint with a public relations firm in the early 1980s she founded her own company, which took on "Trivial Pursuit" as one of its first projects. After her company was acquired by Dorf & Stanton in 1986, she moved to Italy, where she advised businesses on international ventures. In 1995, she returned to New York and started a new company, Pezzano Inc.
She continued to work on games, including a new sports trivia game called "Rules of the Game." Among her ideas was to sell it in sporting goods stores rather than toy stores, where board games are traditionally sold.
"You could go to Harvard Business School and learn how to do that," Byrne said, "but to Linda it was always just common sense, and fun."
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -
Screenwriter and director Abraham Polonsky, whose promising career was cut short by the Hollywood blacklist of alleged Communists, has died at age 88, friends said Wednesday.
Polonsky, who waited 21 years between directing films because of the blacklist, was found dead Tuesday at his Beverly Hills home by a housekeeper, the friends said.
Polonsky was a leader earlier this year in protests against Elia Kazan receiving an Oscar for lifetime achievement in filmmaking because Kazan did what Polonsky had steadfastly refused to do -- name names of alleged Communists before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
At the time, Polonsky said, ``If Kazan simply said, 'It was a mistake and I'm sorry I did it,' he would not have to say another word. No one would pay any attention to any of this. It's just that he doesn't acknowledge his role in history and the Academy should not give an award of merit ... to this person.''
Polonsky and Kazan were contemporary filmmakers in the late 1940s when their careers took radically different paths with Polonsky's effectively coming to an end when he refused to testify before the Committee in 1951.
Kazan, who testified, went on to make some of the most celebrated films of the 1950s and 60s, including ``On the Waterfront,'' a film whose hero testifies before a committee investigating union corruption.
By the time Polonsky was blacklisted, he had written the screenplay for one screen classic ``Body and Soul,'' the prize fighting drama starring John Garfield and directed by Robert Rossen, and had directed and written another film widely regarded as a classic of the film
noir genre, ``Force of Evil,'' a blank verse gangster drama also starring Garfield.
Among his other scripting credits in the 1940s were ``Golden Earrings'' and ``I Can Get It For You Wholesale.'' He received an Oscar nominated in 1947 for his script for ``Body and Soul.''
During the period of his blacklisting, Polonsky wrote under assumed names for films and TV and worked as a script doctor before finally writing another script under his own name, ''Madigan'' in 1968 for director Don Siegel.
Then in 1969, he directed ``Tell Them Willie Boy is Here,'' starring Robert Redford, a drama about an Indian hunted down by society, which many critics saw as having parallels with Polonsky's own life.
In January, the New York City-born Polonsky received the Career Achievement Award of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
Reuters/Variety
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they are playing I think every Monday (could be Tuesday, sorry - I also don't live there any more) in a bar called 'Point 101' which is on the ground floor of Centre Point (corner of Charing X road and New Oxford st, by Tottenham Court Road tube).
I went along a few weeks ago, and it was very pleasant, if rather empty.
chrs, Jonny
Get free personalized email at http://email.lycos.com
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Subject: (exotica) [obits]Rafael Alberti,Frank DeVol,Abraham Polonsky,Walter Francis Skees,Wes Berggren
Date: 29 Oct 1999 10:07:45 -0400
The Associated Press
Friday, Oct. 29, 1999; 4:07 a.m. EDT
MADRID, Spain ûû Rafael Alberti, a renowned poet and the last survivor of Spain's Generation of '27 artistic group, died Thursday. He was 96.
The Generation of '27 was a loosely-knit group that included such writers as Federico Garcia Lorca, Juan Ramon Jimenez and Jorge Guillen, artists such as Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali and filmmaker Luis Bunuel.
The group took its name from the year û 1927 û when Alberti and other literary figures met in Seville to pay homage to 17th century Spanish poet Luis de Gongora. Its members became some of the leading protagonists of the Surrealist movement.
Alberti became a member of Spain's Communist Party and was heavily involved in leftist politics in the 1930s. He started the revolutionary magazine Octubre (October) in 1934.
LOS ANGELES (AP) û Frank DeVol, who wrote scores for more than 50 films and won Oscar nominations for "Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte," "Pillow Talk" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," died Wednesday. He was 88.
In addition to his motion picture scores, DeVol wrote theme music for the television shows "My Three Sons" and "The Brady Bunch," among others.
He also took on roles as a character actor, appearing in "Parent Trap," "Fernwood Tonight," "I'm Dickens, He's Fenster" and "Silver Spoons."
He later wrote radio studio arrangements for such stars as Rudy Vallee, Ginny Simms and Jack Carson. He then moved to Capitol Records and did arrangements for Doris Day, Kay Starr, Tony Bennett and Vic Damone, among others.
Abraham Polonsky
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) û Abraham Polonsky, a director and Oscar-nominated screenwriter who worked under pseudonyms and used other writers as fronts after being blacklisted in McCarthy-era Hollywood, was found dead Tuesday after suffering a heart attack. He was 88.
Polonsky was blacklisted for nearly two decades and had only nine films to his credit. He earned an Oscar nomination for writing the 1947 John Garfield boxing film "Body and Soul."
In the early 1950s, Polonsky's career was disrupted after he refused to testify about his Communist Party affiliations or name party members. His refusal prompted 20th Century Fox to fire him.
Though blacklisted, Polonsky never completely abandoned Hollywood. His best known work as an outcast scribe was the 1959 crime melodrama "Odds Against Tomorrow," which he co-wrote under the name John O. Killens. In 1996, the Writers Guild of America restored his real name to the credits.
Walter Francis Skees
CARMEL, Calif. (AP) û Retired Sgt. Maj. Walter Francis Skees, who sang for seven presidents in the White House as the Army's top vocalist, died Saturday of a heart attack. He was 64.
Skees was a soldier from 1955 to 1983. He entertained Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan.
In 1954, at 19, he was drafted into the Army, where he won a contest to select the service's best vocalist, following such notables as Eddie Fisher and Steve Lawrence.
Nixon was a special fan, according to Skees' wife, Patricia. He would often ask the singing soldier to perform on the presidential yacht.
Skees also sang at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall and on television shows hosted by Bob Hope, Steve Allen, Merv Griffin and others.
Skees recorded several albums, including one featuring favorite songs of the president's wives, and another with guitarist Charlie Byrd called "A Little Tenderness."
*Wes Berggren
DALLAS (AP) -- Wes Berggren, a guitarist and pianist for the
psychedelic rock group Tripping Daisy, was found dead in his apartment Wednesday. He was 28.
Investigators are awaiting the results of toxicology teststo determine the cause of death. Police said foul play was not suspected.
Berggren's wife discovered his body in their Dallas apartment.
Tripping Daisy blossomed onto the pop charts in 1995 with ``I
Got a Girl,'' a quirky single that propelled the group's second album, ``I Am an Elastic Firecracker,'' to sales of nearly 300,000.
Sales of the band's third album, ``Jesus Hits Like the Atom
Bomb,'' were sluggish, though. Island Records dropped them in 1998
as part of its merger between Universal and PolyGram Records, The
Dallas Morning News reported today.
Their core fans remained true, and the group, which formed in
the late '80s at the University of North Texas, had been performing at clubs around Dallas and Fort Worth in recent years.
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Hollywood: Despite many Emmy and Oscar nominations, he was best known for 'Brady Bunch' theme.
By ELAINE WOO, Times Staff Writer
Frank DeVol did not invent the microwave oven. He did not climb the world's tallest mountain. Nor did he write a computer program that people cannot live without. He did more. DeVol wrote theme songs, winsome, bouncing, haunting ditties for television and the movies that invaded Americans' psyches and lodged there--like it or not--for years.
Here's the story of a lovely lady
Who was bringing up three very lovely girls . . .
DeVol wrote the music for those lyrics that have burrowed into pop culture history as the theme song for "The Brady Bunch," the kitschy 1970s sitcom enjoying perpetual life in rerun heaven. One of Hollywood's most popular musical arranger-composer-conductors, DeVol died Wednesday at age 88 in a nursing home in Lafayette, Calif.
His compositions include classic TV themes for "My Three Sons" and "Family Affair," as well as songs for such movies as "Pillow Talk," "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?", "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," "The Dirty Dozen" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."
He began to write music for TV and film after a successful career in radio during the big band era, when he also arranged and conducted recording sessions for such stars as Doris Day, Tony Bennett, Jaye P. Morgan and Ella Fitzgerald.
During his seven-decade career, he received five Academy Award and five Emmy nominations. The latter included a nomination for the "Brady Bunch" song, which never failed to elicit the most rousing reaction whenever he mentioned or played his compositions. "People gave him tremendous ovations when they found out what he did," said Bob Weiss, DeVol's former publicist and longtime family friend. "They'd say, 'Oh, you're 'The Brady Bunch,' you're 'My Three Sons.' "
DeVol was born in Moundsville, W.Va., but was raised in Canton, Ohio, where his father was bandleader for the local vaudeville theater. DeVol joined the musicians union when he was 14 and played violin and piano for his father's band. Saving his earnings from $35-a-week appearances at a Chinese restaurant in Cleveland, he bought a saxophone next, learning to play it by watching other musicians.
By the late 1930s, he was playing and arranging for the Horace Heidt orchestra. When guitarist Alvino Rey left that band, DeVol began to arrange for him. By the early 1940s, DeVol was living in California and working the graveyard shift for Lockheed when he received a phone call from KHJ, then a Mutual Network radio station, inviting him to be the bandleader for a musical program. Before long, he was musical director for a host of radio personalities, including Ginny Simms, Rudi Vallee, Jack Smith, Dinah Shore and Jack Carson. That led to DeVol reading parts in comedies and becoming a radio personality himself.
Decades later, he married another figure from the big band era, vocalist Helen O'Connell. That marriage occurred in 1991, after the death of DeVol's first wife, Grayce. O'Connell died in 1993.
DeVol's break into movies and television came in 1954, when a friend got him a job on a low-budget Robert Aldrich film called "World for Ransom." The entire music budget was only $3,500, but DeVol took it because "I never turn anything down," he said. That movie earned him his first Oscar nomination and established him as a Hollywood composer. He wrote music for 16 Aldrich movies alone, including the 1967 box office hit "The Dirty Dozen."
By the early 1960s, DeVol had movie composing down to a science. "I make a chart," he told The Times in 1965. "If I'm scoring a picture and I know I've got to write 85 minutes of music and I've got 15 days to do it, that means I've got to produce five to six minutes of music a day. This way I don't dawdle along."
All together, DeVol wrote music for 47 movies and seven television series. He also acted, making appearances on the Jack Benny television show, the original "Parent Trap" movie and "Fernwood 2-Night," the 1977 sitcom about a talk show on which DeVol played a studio orchestra leader who ran a dental office on the side.
Overshadowing all those accomplishments over a seven-decade career, however, was that 21-line song about a "lovely lady" and "a man named Brady" whose notes DeVol wrote in a day. Although never a ratings hit, "The Brady Bunch" has provided much grist for analysis in the pop culture mill. Its depiction of a family happily solving mundane disputes over who does the dishes or gets to use the phone was so far removed from Vietnam era woes that it generated a camp following. Whenever DeVol, who was popular on the cruise circuit in his later years, spoke of his work to audiences, he found it was always the "Brady Bunch" tune that stirred them most. "When I mention 'Brady Bunch,' " he said a few years ago, "that's when the audience really applauds."
DeVol, a longtime resident of Toluca Lake before moving to San Juan Capistrano and Laguna Hills, is survived by two daughters, Linda Morehouse of Lafayette and Donna Copeland of Denver, and two grandsons.
A memorial service will be held Tuesday at 11 a.m. at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Hollywood Hills. Donations may be sent to the Musicians Relief Fund, 817 N. Vine St., Hollywood CA 90038.
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