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Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:53:48 -0400
From: <nytab@pipeline.com>
Subject: (exotica) [obits] Bobby Willis,Maria Ley Piscator,Queenie Ashton
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:
Subject: Esquivel? Heino?
>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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Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 11:49:15 -0400
From: <nytab@pipeline.com>
Subject: (exotica) [obits from the NYTimes]Van Arsdale France
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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