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Toll was heavy on major figures who died in 2007
of TheColumnists.com
Generally, we try very hard to write salutes, tributes and appreciations to celebrities we've known as soon as everyone hears about their deaths, but the number of deaths often overwhelms us...and sometimes we don't even know they're gone for weeks, even months.
That's why I personally endeavor to sum up the ones we've missed at the start of the new year, giving one last salute to those who have left us with just our memories of them and the work they've left behind. In my personal tribute, I usually limit the list to just those I've known personally or had some special affinity for during their active years. To be sure, you'll notice some names missing that you would have put on your own list--and for that, I apologize.
The names are listed alphabetically and not in order of their importance to me or to the rest of those who mourn their passing.
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Died: July 30, 2007 Age: 94 |
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Heavily influenced by the Italian neo-realist school of filmmaking that emerged after World War II, MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI first made his mark with films like "Il Grido" in that style, then found his own leisurely and complex style to lead the surge of new Italian cinema in the 1960s with his famous "new wave" trilogy--"L'Avventura" (1960), "La Notte" (1961) and "L'Eclisse" (1962), all character studies about people alienated from modern society. His biggest hit was "Blow-Up" (1966), an English language film made about London's swinging society and which featured full frontal nudity for the first time in a commercial feature film. In 1970, at the pinnacle of his fame, he came to America and made "Zabriskie Point," a film about the student radical movement that few moviegoers understood or liked. It was a commercial disaster and his more admirable later work "The Passenger" (1975) with Jack Nicholson also tanked at the box office, pretty much ending his career as a viable international filmmaker.
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(Herman Brix) |
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BRUCE BENNETT started his movie career under his real name, Herman Brix, because that was a famous name in the 1930s after his performance as a shot putter for the U.S. Olympic Team in the 1932 Summer Games, winning a silver medal. After a few unimportant parts in pictures, he was chosen by Edgar Rice Burroughs to play the author's legendary ape-man Tarzan in the 1935 serial "The New Adventures of Tarzan" and the subsequent 1938 feature version "Tarzan and the Green Goddess." Burroughs produced the movies himself because he was fed up with the "Me Tarzan, You Jane" dumb version of the ape-man played by another 1932 Olympian, swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, in the highly popular MGM series of "Tarzan" movies. If you want to see the authentic, literate Tarzan as he was created, check out the Herman Brix films. Brix realized he needed to learn the craft of acting, even though he already was star-billed, so he changed his name to Bruce Bennett in 1940 and started to learn in smaller, supporting roles and occasional leads in "B" pictures. He played in westerns, horror movies and even Three Stooges short subjects in his quest to learn everything, including comedy. Ultimately, he became a very competent second lead and good villain. Among his most memorable roles: The romantic second lead roles in Boris Karloff's "The Man With Nine Lives" and "Before I Hang," both 1940; one of Humphrey Bogart's stalwart tank crew in "Sahara" (1943); the adventurer who wants to join Bogart's band in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948). He retired from acting after making "Deadhead Miles" (1972) with Alan Arkin, a much-anticipated film that was never released. He became a Los Angeles real estate man and continued to prosper.
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Died: Oct. 17, 2007 Age: 89 |
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JOEY BISHOP was the last surviving member of the Frank Sinatra "rat pack,"
which is another reason why he'll probably always be remembered for his association with that gang of superstars. In truth, though, Bishop was plenty important enough to be remembered on his own. A standup comic and comic actor, he knew the TV medium intimately and was working in television as early as 1948. I'll best remember him for his late night ABC talk show, "The Joey Bishop Show," which I loved and watched faithfully until it perished from low ratings. Bishop was a very good talk show host and he deserves his place in the TV Hall of Fame just for introducing the world to Regis Philbin, who was Bishop's sidekick on the talk show. Who would have believed Regis would someday be more famous than his boss?
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Died: Feb. 19, 2007 Age: 85 |
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That's JANET BLAIR in very good company--from
left, Julie Andrews, Edie Adams, Blair, and Shirley Jones--in
her Hollywood days. A 1940s band singer with the Hal Kemp Orchestra,
she was signed by Columbia pictures in 1942 and, after a few
"B" pictures like "Blondie Goes To College,"
promptly made a big splash in the original screen version of
"My Sister Eileen," playing the title role. But the
studios never really made a major star out of her despite her
great and obvious talent. She often was dwarfed by the superstars
she worked with in pictures--Cary Grant in the delightful "Once
Upon A Time" (the 1944 comedy about a dancing caterpillar),
Rita Hayworth in "Tonight and Every Night" (1945),
Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey in "The Fabulous Dorseys" (1947)
and Red Skelton in "The Fuller Brush Man" (1948). One
of her most unusual roles was the witch in "Burn, Witch,
Burn!" (1962). When her movie career first fizzled, Blair
turned to the theatre where she played Nellie Forbush in the
first road company of "South Pacific" and launched
a successful stage musical career. She worked busily in television
during the 1950s, replacing Nanette Fabray in Sid Caesar's TV
"Caesar's Hour." Her last acting job was in a 1991
episode of TV's "Murder, She Wrote."
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Died: Oct. 17, 2007 Age: 76 |
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Bing Crosby once called pop singer TERESA
BREWER, "The Sophie Tucker of the Girl Scouts." I love
it! That was her, all right. Teresa Brewer was a petite and pretty
girl singer with a big, booming voice like robust Sophie Tucker,
but with that special little "squeak" sound that made
her sound like a little girl. It was a unique voice, especially
good for her many lively "jump" tunes, like "Music,
Music, Music" (Put another nickel in..."), "Ricochet
Romance" and "How To Be Very, Very Popular," but
a voice she also could bring under control for lovely ballads
like my all-time favorite of her 1950s recordings, "Till
I Waltz Again With You." Brewer had an engaging personality
and really should have made it as a movie or TV star, but never
got the right breaks. Her one featured role in the 1953 Paramount
musical "Those Redheads From Seattle," which was filmed
in 3-D, didn't start any fires for her or the other pop music
stars in the picture--Guy Mitchell and The Bell Sisters.
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Age: 81 |
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ROSCOE LEE BROWNE was always one of my favorite African-American actors because of his rich, theatre-trained voice and the care he always took to play characters that almost always reflected dignity and bearing. Though some say his finest hour was in Mark Rydell's 1972 western "The Cowboys," in which he played the chuck wagon cook for John Wayne's trail drive, I hold out for his work in Alfred Hitchcock's "Topaz," in which he plays the Harlem florist DuBois who has to steal secretes and make a hasty escape through the teeming crowds of a New York Street. Browne was a classy individual and it always showed in his screen characters.
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Age: 71 |
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That photo of RON CAREY in the middle,
between the other cast members of TV's "Barney Miller,"
pretty much tells the story of his career. He came up short in
just about everything, usually for maximum laughs. As Officer
Carl Levitt in "Barney Miller," he was the brown-noser
who wanted to be a detective, but always seemed to come up short
in some way. Result: Lots of funny material. And, as I recall,
Levitt finally did get his promotion after all.
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Died: April 4, 2007 Age: 67 |
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BOB CLARK is seldom listed among the great directors of all time, but he had several immensely popular films to his credit, starting with "A Christmas Story" (1983), which is fast becoming one of the all-time most watched holiday movies. He also did the enormous box office hit "Porkys" (1981) and its blockbuster sequel, too, which helped drive the market for raunchy teen movies. My favorite among his works is the original "Black Christmas" (1975), one of the scariest horror movies of its era. Yes, Clark also made "Rhinestone" (1984) with Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton, but I'm willing to forgive him. Originally a jock who went to college on a football scholarship--he turned down offers to turn pro, but did play semi-pro football for the Fort Lauderdale Black Knights--Clark moved to Canada to take advantage of the cheaper prices there and made most of his durable hits as a Canadian. His career had sputtered in recent years. He died tragically when his car was hit head-on by a drunk driver on the Pacific Coast Highway in California, killing both him and his 22-year=old son. The driver, an illegal alien, is now serving a six-year term in prison.
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Died: May 7, 2007 Age: 29 |
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DIEGO "CHICO" CORRALES was one of the most exciting prizefighters I've ever seen in a lifetime of watching prizefights. Tall and stringy--they're often the hardest punchers--he was a knockout artist without parallel, even though he looked as if he could be blown over by a strong wind. He also was the winner of one of the most spectacular fights I ever saw: His first match with Jose Luis Castillo for the World Boxing Council's lightweight title on May 7, 2005. In the 10th round, Castillo floored Corrales and had him groggy, then put him down a second time. Rising on wobbly legs, Corrales had no chance to win unless he knocked out the man who was on the verge of doing just that to him. And then he uncorked a right hand that staggered Castillo, followed by a barrage of punches that knocked Castillo into the ropes where the referee stopped the fight, awarding the title to Corrales. Castillo beat Corrales in a rematch, but because he came in overweight, Corrales retained the title. A third match was cancelled when Castillo again failed to make weight. Corrales was still considered a viable ring superstar when he was killed in an accident while riding his motorcycle near his Las Vegas home.
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Age: 87 |
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LARAINE DAY took a long time to become herself. She started out as La Raine Johnson in Utah, where her father was a leader in the Mormon church. With a taste for acting, she went to California as a youth and joined the Long Beach Players, Because she was both pretty and accomplished, she began to get movie offers, starting in George O'Brien westerns at RKO under the name Larraine Hays. She went through a couple more name changes before finally becoming Laraine Day when MGM signed her in 1939 and put her in the recurring role of Nurse Mary Lamont in the studio's new "Dr. Kildare" series, starting with the third in the series, "Calling Dr. Kildare." In 1940, she landed one of her best parts--leading lady in Alfred Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent," a great movie in which she really shines. She moved up to romantic leads, best of them "Mr. Lucky" (1943) with Cary Grant, but began to slip into character parts in the 1950s in films like "The High and the Mighty" wiht John Wayne. Her family life pulled at her too much for her to want to struggle to keep her career going. She was married three times, the second time to baseball manager Leo Durocher when he was running the New York Giants, and had moved back to her native Utah at the time of her death.
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Died: Jan. 8, 2007 Age: 84 |
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YVONNE DE CARLO was a dancer and showgirl and often played those parts in her first films, usually without screen credit. Sultry and voluptuous, she began to attract lots of attention in small roles and finally graduated to leading parts in westerns like "Salome Where She Danced" (1943), lots of desert adventure pictures, films noir like "Brute Force" (1947) and "Criss Cross" (1949), usually playing the lead female roles until the early 1950s when she began to fall back to character parts like the one pictured above in DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" (1956). However, baby boomers probably will remember her best as Lily Munster in the long-running TV comedy series "The Munsters" and its various TV movie and feature film spinoffs. Her last role was in the 1995 TV movie "The Barefoot Executive."
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Died: Jan. 6, 2007 Age: 77 |
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In boxing history, YVON DURELLE is generally
remembered as a tough club fighter
with a sturdy chin who, as a popular Canadian champion, had his
innings with some major world-class fighters in the 1950s, but
usually came away a loser. For me, Durelle starred in one of
the most exciting fights I ever saw in a lifetime of fight-watching.
It was his challenge for the world light-heavyweight title (175-pounds)
then held by the legendary "old mongoose" Archie Moore.
The fight took place in Montreal in 1958. In the first round,
Durelle dropped Moore three times--enough to give him the championship
if the three-knockdown rule hadn't been waived for this bout--then
dropped him again later after Moore somehow beat the count and
went on with the fight. Durelle literally hammered one of the
greatest boxing champs of all time. But Moore covered up and,
by round 11, finally landed one of his KO punches on Durelle
and that was all she wrote. He was a tough, brave guy who didn't
know the meaning of the word "quit." He died from complications
of a stroke.
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Died: March 12, 2007 Age: 96 |
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VILMA EBSEN, the dance partner of more famous brother Buddy Ebsen, was signed by MGM along with her brother and actually danced with him on screen in the 1930s, but the studio decided they wanted Buddy to go on as a solo dancer and dropped Vilma. She decided not to go on with her own career alone, married and lef show business forever.
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Died: May 15, 2007 Age: 73 |
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JERRY FALWELL was one of the principal agents in bringing about the entry of fundamentalist religion into the political arena, where it's now a major force. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA; He also founded Liberty University and The Moral Majority in 1979. In the course of his pastoral career, he switched his church affiliation to the conservative Southerm Baptist Convention and became perhaps America's most famous evangelical Christian. His most publicized work was mainly with The Moral Majority, an organization that lobbied for conservative political causes. He was avowedly anti-gay--even though his former ghostwriter, Jim White, came out as gay--and once even suggested gays, feminists, abortionists and their ilk probably helped the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on America by muslim terrorists to happen. In recent years, he seemed to mellow somewhat, even becoming a "pal" of the often critical TV talk show host Geraldo Rivera. In poor health in recent years with respiratory and cardiac problems, he was found dead in his office of a heart attack.
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Age: 89 |
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FREDDIE FRANCIS was one of a handful of really great cinematographers who also worked as a movie director frequently. One of England's greatest cinematographers ever, he won two Academy Awards for shooting "Sons and Lovers" (1960) and "Glory" (1989). Among his other great achievements: "Room At the Top," "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," "The Innocents," "The Elephant Man," Martin Scorsese's remake of "Cape Fear" and his last film, David Lynch's "The Straight Story" (1999). As a director, Francis specialized in horror films for the English studios Hammer and Amicus. Among his directorial standouts: "The Evil of Frankenstein" (1964) and "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave" (1968).
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Died: Sept. 21, 2007 Age: 81 |
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ALICE GHOSTLEY had a long and satisfying career as a comic second banana, especially in TV shows like "Designing Women," where she played "Bernice," the eccentric old lady who was friendly with all the girls at the Sugerbakers' design shop; "Bewitched," where she was "Esmeralda," the over-the-hill witch who worked as a housekeeper; "Captain Nice," where she was William Daniels' domineering mom; "Mayberry, RFD," where her "Aunt Alice" character replaced "Aunt Bee"; James Garner's "Nichols," where she was Bertha, the saloon operator, and several other sitcoms and variety shows, including "The Jackie Gleason Show." But I'll always remember Ghostley from "New Faces," the 1954 movie version of the hit Broadway revue "New Faces of 1952," which introduced her and several others to theater audiences. In that film, Ghostley sang the satiric "Boston Beguine"--and knocked me out! I still drag the more than half a century old album out now and then just to hear her sing that crazy song about a homely, lovelorn lady looking for love.
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Died: Oct. 2, 2007 Age: 79 |
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Veteran stage actor GEORGE GRIZZARD first attracted national attention in the film "Advise and Consent" (1962) and then as John Adams in PBS' "The Adams Chronicles." He often played lawyers and was frequently in NBC's "Law and Order" TV series. He won the Tony as Best Actor in Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" in 1996 and was Nick in the original Broadway cast of Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" He died of complications from lung cancer and is survived by his life partner William Tynan.
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Died: August 4, 2007 Age: 78 |
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LEE HAZLEWOOD was a country/pop singer with a rich portfolio as performer, songwriter and record producer, but he'll probably be best remembered for his collaborations with two better known performers--Duane Eddy and Nancy Sinatra. (That's Hazlewood with Sinatra in the photo above.) With rock guitarist Duane Eddy, he co-wrote and produced a long string of pop instrumental hits, including "Rebel Rouser" and "40 Miles of Bad Road." For Nancy Sinatra, he wrote her #1 hit ""These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and a number of other hits. He died from renal cancer.
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Died: April 14, 2007 Age: 76 |
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In the 1960s, my wife and I took a leisurely
vacation in the Hawaiian Islands and, while in Honolulu, dropped
into his club to hear Hawaii's most popular entertainer, DON
HO. We were privileged to hear Don sing "Tiny Bubbles"
for what must have been the kazillionth time. The poor guy could
barely get the words out. He must have been so bored with singing
his only major recording hit that I swear he fell asleep somewhere
in the middle. Another theory is that he was pretending to be
soused because the song is about drinking sparkling wine. Whatever.
The crowd loved him, but it made me bless the fact that I wasn't
a pop singer with only one hit tune that I'd be forced to sing
maybe 50 times a week for the rest of my life.
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Died: March 11, 2007 Age: 86 |
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BETTY HUTTON was one of the most unusual superstars in movie history--a loud, brassy, often obnoxious, scarecely feminine star of musical comedies. Like her sister, Marion Hutton, she was a big band singer, but Betty made some short films with the Vincent Lopez Orchestra that showed she had great appeal on film. She was especially incandescent in her debut film at Paramount, "The Fleet's In" (1942), and soon moved on to bigger things, including Preston Sturges' "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" (1944), "The Stork Club" (1945), in which she sang her biggest hit song, "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief"; "Incendiary Blonde" (1945), in which she played Texas Guinan, and best of all, MGM's "Annie Get Your Gun," in which she replaced an ailing Judy Garland and gave her all-time greatest performance as a singing Annie Oakley. In 1952, Cecil B. DeMille cast her in the leading dramatic role in "The Greatest Show on Earth" (that's her with co-star Charlton Heston in the photo above), the film which won the Best Picture of 1952 Oscar. After filming "Somebody Loves Me" later that year, the temperamental Hutton walked out on her Paramount contract and blew her career. She made only one more film--"Spring Reunion"--a 1957 box office flop and disappeared almost totally. Years later she was "discovered" working as a housekeeper for Catholic clergymen in New England, obscure and forgotten. Rumors of mental breakdowns and other problems persisted and she never made a comeback in films. Hers remains one of the most bizarre careers in Hollywood history.
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Age: 71 |
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In early 1985, during a visit to PBS station KQED in San Francisco to discuss the publication of my book "Mystery! A Celebration," I wound up sitting with actor JOHN INMAN while waiting for my meeting to start. Inman was there to sign autographs and meet with literally hundreds of fans of his imported English TV comedy series "Are You Being Served?" We had at least two things in common then: 1. TV was crucial to both our our careers (I was a TV columnist), and 2. KQED was going to publish my book about the "Mystery!" TV series and had just published the companion book to "Are You Being Served?", which was put together by the same editor. Inman was a very nice guy and told me he was quite astounded that the original series he had made more than a decade earlier was still a big hit in America. In the comedy about the employes at Grace Bros. Department Store in England, which ran from 1972-85, Inman played the hilariously sharp-tongued and swishy Wilburforce Clayborne Humphries, perhaps the most beloved gay character in TV history. Ah, yes, you want to know if Inman was...you know, as gay as Mr. Humphries himself. Well, of course he was! In fact, in December of 2005 Inman and his life partner of 33 years, Ron Lynch, were formally attached in what we would call a "civil agreement," the "sort of" marriage that had finally become legal in England.
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Age: 86 |
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It still amazes movie fans to realize that the distinguished Scottish actress DEBORAH KERR was nominated six times for the Best Actress Oscar, but never won it. Certainly, in her prime, she was regarded as one of the world's best film actresses and appeared in dozens of prestigious pictures, including "Black Narcissus," "From Here To Eternity," "King Solomon's Mines," "Quo Vadis," "Julius Caesar," "The King and I," "An Affair To Remember," "Separate Tables" and "Tea and Sympathy," in the role she originated on Broadway. She received an honorary Oscar in 1994 once it appeared unlikely she'd ever get a role big enough to get her the coveted award she'd come so close to winning in the past. Working mainly in television in her later years, she had one great triumph in the popular miniseries "A Woman of Substance." She was married to screenwriter-novelist Peter Viertel, whose death followed hers by barely a month.
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Died: Dec. 23, 2007 Age: 92 |
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MICHAEL KIDD was one of the great stage and screen choreographers of his era, stretching all the way back to 1939 with the ballet to Aaron Copland's "Billy the Kid." Among his stage triumphs: Leonard Bernstein's "Fancy Free" (1946); his Tony Award-winning "Finian's Rainbow" (1947) and his series of other Tony winners "Guys and Dolls" (1950), "Can-Can" (1953), "Li'l Abner" (1956). His film work was also renowned, including the "Girl Hunt" ballet for Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in "The Band Wagon" (1953), "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" (1954) and the "Guys and Dolls" movie (1955). He danced on screen with Gene Kelly in "It's Always Fair Weather" and delivered a charming dramatic performance as the choreographer in Michael Ritchie's "Smile" (1975). He even directed the movie "Merry Andrew" with Danny Kaye in 1958. He died just before Christmas last year.
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Age: 69 |
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Many of his fans surely were surprised that ROBERT "EVEL" KNIEVEL lived to the ripe old age of 69, considering his scores of serious injuries throughout his lifetime as a motorcycle daredevil. (He broke a total of 40 bones, according to the Guinness Book of Records!) Knowing what we know now, it's hard to believe Knievel once worked as an insurance salesman. His leaps over long lines of vehicles and other related stunts were televised and today represent four of the top 20 events ever televised on ABC's "Wide World of Sports." His most outrageous stunt--and failure--was his Snake River Canyon jump. He leased 300 acres of private land on both sides of the canyon and proposed to make the enormous jump on a "rocket cycle." ABC refused to pay the tariff for the jump, so he staged it as a pay TV event with Bob Arum's Top Rank Productions. The specially designed "rocket cycle" was powered by a steam engine built by aeronautical engineer Robert Truax. On Sept. 8, 1974, he attempted the jump--and was knocked out of the air by prevailing winds, crash-landing just on the start side of the Snake River. (If he'd landed in the water, he'd have drowned.) He suffered only minor injuries. His career diminished from that point on. In the late 1990s, his health took a turn for the worse and he underwent a liver transplant. In 2005, he was diagnosed with an incurable lung disease and was on supplementary oxygen until his death last Nov. 30 in Clearwater, Fla.
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Age: 70 |
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JACK LINKLETTER was the oldest of the five children of radio-TV personality Art Linkletter and mostly followed in his father's footsteps as a TV show host/interviewer, most of them daytime programs. He hosted the prime time "Hootenanny" series in 1963-64 and did similar tasks for many network specials. He took over management of Linkletter Enterprises and was considered an expert in property investment. He was a Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Southern California and was widely known for his charity work.
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Age: 72 |
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CALVIN LOCKHART didn't let his humble beginnings hold him down. Born to a working class family in the Bahamas, he went to New York to become an actor, driving a taxi to earn his keep. He finally won a role in the Broadway play "The Cool World" in 1960, playing a gang leader, but the show closed quickly and he gave up on New York and moved Italy, West Germany and finally England, where he began to get parts in films like "A Dandy in Aspic" and "Salt and Pepper." His first major role in a film was as the black lover of Genevieve Waite in "Joanna" (1968). He followed this with his first starring role as a vice principal of an inner city school in "Halls of Anger" (1970). His most prestigious break came in 1974 when he became an actor in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon Avon. Later, Lockhart returned to the Bahamas and worked with the Freeport Players Guild. He died from complications of a stroke.
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Died: Nov. 11, 2007 Age: 87 |
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DELBERT MANN is usually the name that comes to mind when you think of TV directors who made a big splash in feature films, then quickly retreated back to TV directing. After his military service in World War II as a B-24 bomber pilot, Mann started directing in community theater, then answered the call of lifelong friend Fred Coe, one of the great producers of live TV drama in the 1950s, who begged Mann to try directing for television. Mann turned out to be especially suited to the rapid style of live TV drama and did some memorable work in that medium in its early years, including the live version of "The Petrified Forest," in which Humphrey Bogart recreated his 1936 movie role, and the early plays of Paddy Chayefsky, including "Middle of the Night" with Eva Marie Saint and E.G. Marshall and "Marty" (1953) with Rod Steiger. Actor Burt Lancaster, then starting out as a producer of independent films, needed a tax writeoff and decided to turn "Marty" into a feature film, hiring Mann to direct it. Steiger turned down the chance to reprise his TV role and Mann cast Ernest Borgnine. The film, made for under $350,000, made millions, earned Oscas as Best Picture of 1955, Best Actor for Borgnine and Best Director for Delbert Mann, one of the few who ever won the Academy Award for his first movie.
Mann continued to direct feature films, but didn't have the success nor the creative excitement he'd had in television, so he returned to TV in the late 1960s, finding a comfortable niche making some of the best made-for-TV movies on his generation. I first met Delbert Mann in the 1970s when he brought some of his early TV works to Stanford University to show law students interested in film careers. He was a warm and likeable man, totally happy with his return to the medium where he first found success.
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Age: 81 |
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KERWIN MATHEWS was the man you wanted if you needed somebody handsome and athletic-looking to have a sword fight with a giant or an army of skeletons or...heck, you name it! Signed by Columbia Pictures in the early 1950s, Kerwin began as one of the guys who helped Guy Madison rob a gambling casino in "Five Against the House" (1955) and he seemed destined for a kind of "B"-picture leading man destiny until he was cast in the title role of "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" in 1958 and learned how to battle all the weird giants and monsters that effects master Ray Harryhausen could cook up for him. That led to leading roles in "The Three Worlds of Gulliver" (1960) and "Jack the Giant Killer" (1962). Meanwhile, producers lost interest in seeing him do anything else. Figuring his career was going nowhere once his Columbia contract lapsed, he retired from acting in 1978, moved to San Francisco and became an antiques and furniture dealer. Our own John Stanley persuaded him to play a cameo in his "Nightmare in Blood" feature, but otherwise Mathews stayed away from show business. He had a 46-year relationship with life partner Tom Nicoll, who was with him when he died.
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Age: 86 |
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BOBBY MAUCH wasn't a name bandied about much in the 21st century. He and his identical twin brother Billy, who died in 2006, were child actors--the best known set of twins in the 1930s--from 1936 on. They debuted in "The Prince and the Pauper" with Errol Flynn and acted in a series of "Penrod" movies based on Booth Tarkington's stories. But, as you might suspect, there wasn't an endless supply of movies for twins, so...Bobby retired from acting, occasionally worked as a film editor, but had been living quietly in Santa Rosa, CA, until his death late last year.
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Age: 80 |
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LOIS MAXWELL had a long and busy career in films and television, but will always be remembered as the original "Miss Moneypenny" in 14 James Bond films from "Dr. No," the first with Sean Connery as Agent 007, through "A View To A Kill," the final one with Roger Moore as Bond. Though many moviegoers probably assumed Maxwell was British, she actually was Canadian. Under her real name, Lois Hooker (Gee, wonder why she ever changed that surname?), she ran away from home at 15 to join the Canadian Army during World War II. Though she wanted to be a soldier, she ended up in the entertainment division, doing song and dance numbers with future Canadian superstars Wayne and Shuster. While in England, she joined the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where one of her pals was future James Bond, Roger Moore. At 20, she went to the U.S. and won a Golden Globe as "newcomer of the year" for her performance in the Shirley Temple comedy "That Hagen Girl" (1947). Moving back to Europe in 1950, She worked in Italian films, became an amateur racing driver and married TV executive Peter Marriott. Hard up for money after her husband suffered a heart attack, she pushed for the role of Moneypenny in "Dr. No" and landed the job that would forever identify her with the most successful series of movies in film history.
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Died: Feb. 1, 2007 Age: 95 |
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GIAN CARLO MENOTTI was a contemporary composer of operas from the early 1950s on, winning two Pulitzer prizes for his operas--"The Consul" (1950) and "Saint of Bleecker Street" (1953), but most Americans probably will remember him as the composer of the first opera written for television--"Amahl and the Night Visitors," which was first performed on NBC in 1951 and became a regular Christmas season fixture for years. I met Menotti in Atlanta, GA, in the late 1970s when NBC was tooling up a new production of "Amahl." He was a charming man who, after a couple of decades, still seemed shocked that an American TV network would want to telecast an opera by anyone.
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Age: 65 |
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TAMMY FAYE MESSNER was one of the most outlandish characters to ever become an American TV personality--and that's certainly saying a lot. She first became a celebrity as Tammy Faye Bakker, the wife of televangelist Jim Bakker, who featured her on his "PTL Club" TV show. A singer, she was known for her truly spectacular use of cosmetics, which included eyebrows that were tattooed on her brow, long false eyelashes and raccoon-style mascara, which tended to run when she cried on the air, which was virtually all the time. The daughter of pentecostal preachers, she married preacher Jim Bakker in 1961. Their reign as televangelists lasted from 1976-87 when it suddenly all fell apart because it came out that Jim had paid $287,000 in PTL Club funds as hush money to a woman he'd been having sex with. Jim Bakker eventually went to prison for fraud and conspiracy charges. Tammy Faye stood by him at first, but later divorced him and married Kansas building contractor Roe Messner. She died of colon cancer that had spread to her lungs.
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Died: April 7, 2007 Age: 89 |
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BARRY NELSON was a San Francisco Bay Area
product who studied drama at UC Berkeley and was spotted by talent
scouts who signed him to an MGM contract right out of college.
He made his film debut in "Shadow of the Thin Man"
in 1941, but soon was caught up in World War II, where his show
business background got him into entertainment work, which included
his work in Moss Hart's celebration of American flying men in
the Broadway play "Winged Victory." He seemed to feel
live drama was his destiny, so he pursued a stage career after
the war and was the original male lead in "The Moon is Blue"
on Broadway. While working in theater there, he also starred
in his first TV series, "The Hnnter," which premiered
on CBS in 1952. Not long after that he made history by becoming
the screen's first James Bond, starring in a production of Ian
Fleming's first Bond novel, "Casino Royale," in a 1954
edition of the live drama series "Climax!" I was privileged
to see Nelson on Broadway in the original production of "Cactus
Flower" opposite Lauren Bacall.
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Age: 78 |
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TOMMY NEWSOM earned a special place in my TV Hall of Fame by doing me a special favor one day in the early 1970s when he was a leading musician in "Doc" Severinsen's "Tonight Show" band and the guy who filled in for "Doc" when he was ill or on vacation. I had flown to Burbank to interview "Doc" for a Sunday magazine piece and did the interview between his gigs conducting the band during a live taping of "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." I had a plane to catch not long after the taping, but I couldn't raise a cab anywhere, Newsom saw me standing there and recognized me as the guy who had been interviewing "Doc," so he offered me a ride to the airport. He turned out to be a fascinating, low-key guy and a super-knowledgable musican who seemed content to be second banana to "Doc."
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Age: 71 |
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In his youth, Luciano Pavarotti idolized the operatic-style movie singer Mario Lanza and dreamed of one day being a big singing star like him. Actually, Pavarotti far exceeded Lanza's fame as a singer in his long and fruitful career and, though he never became a movie star, he did indeed star in one movie--"Yes, Giorgio" (1982)--though it was universally panned by critics. Pavarotti seldom had bad reviews in his real profession, though. He was not only the most acclaimed operatic tenor in the world during his reign, but also broke through in a big way with non-opera audiences who turned out in droves to hear him sing with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras as "The Three Tenors." At his peak in the period from 1966-72, Pavarotti sang the great roles for a tenor in a way that most often ended with standing ovations that seemed to go on without end. He was renowned for his ability to sing in the very high range and his "high 'C'" brought cheers from the crowds. He was plagued with severe weight gain throughout his later years and died from pancreatic cancer.
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Age: 85 |
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TOM POSTON first cracked me up in 1956 as one of Steve Allen's immortal "Man on the Street" interview subjects--the one who's so slow-witted he can't even remember his own name. He was even funnier in 1982 when he first appeared as George Utley, the handyman at the inn run by Bob Newhart in "Newhart." That show lasted eight seasons and he was still fresh and funny when it all wrapped up in 1992.
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Age: 75 |
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MALA POWERS had such a long and fruitful career that took her from pretty ingenues to elderly matrons over a span of more than 50 years that I'm surprised hardly anyone remembers her at all. I remember her for several reasons First, she came from my home territory, the San Francisco Bay Area, and, second, she was from a journalism family. (Her father was an executive with United Press.) Her family moved to Los Angeles and when she showed talent in junior theater classes, she won a part in one of the Dead End Kids movies, "Tough As They Come," in 1942 when she was barely 11. She worked as a radio actress until her blossoming beauty attracted the attention of film producers. She made her adult movie debut in 1950 in Mark Robson's drama "Edge of Doom," but later that year was cast by Stanley Kramer in the role for which she'll always be remembered: Roxane to Jose Ferrer's "Cyrano de Bergerac," the film that won Ferrer the Best Actor Oscar and earned Powers a Golden Globe nomination. Her career almost ended tragically the following year when she contracted a blood disease on a USO tour in Korea. She had a severe allergic reaction to medication she was given and much of her bone marrow was destroyed, nearly killing her. But she regained her strength and remained active in films and TV until 2002. Diagnosed with leukemia, she finally died from complications of the disease.
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Died: Age: 79 |
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STUART ROSENBERG took a circuitous route
to becoming a movie director. A teacher first, he began to work
as an editor of TV commercials and from that graduated to directing
TV episodes, specializing in crime and courtroom dramas like
"The Untouchables," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"
and "The Defenders," for which he won an Emmy. His
first feature film was the hard-hitting "Murder, Inc.,"
which he co-directed to considerable acclaim. He then formed
an alliance with actor Paul Newman, directing him in "Cool
Hand Luke," which contains one of Newman's greatest performances.
He continued with Newman in "Pocket Money," "WUSA"
and "The Drowning Pool," then directed Robert Redford
in "Brubaker." His big commercial hit was the original
"The Amityville Horror" in 1979, but he soon cooled
as one of the industry's "hot" directors. His last
really good picture was "The Pope of Greenwich Village"
(1984), an underrated drama with great character performances,
but a commercial flop. His last film was made in 1991: "My
Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys."
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Died: April 30, 2007 Age: 79 |
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GORDON SCOTT was working as a lifeguard at a Las Vegas hotel when a "talent scout" spotted him and started the wheels moving for Scott to become the next movie Tarzan. Scott replaced Lex Barker who had replaced Johnny Weissmuller who had...oh, forget it! Anyway Scott made five Tarzan films starting with "Tarzan's Hidden Jungle" in 1955 and including two of the best--"Tarzan's Greatest Adventure" (1959), which was filmed on location in Africa and featured Sean Connery as one of the bad guys, and "Tarzan the Magnificent" (1960), in which the villain was Jock Mahoney, who replaced Scott as Tarzan in the next film. In real life, Scott married the leading lady of his first Tarzan film, Vera Miles (They later divorced), and went to Italy after losing the Tarzan role to Mahoney, starring in loads of "sword and sandal" pictures and "Hercules"-style muscle movies. Once his career cooled, he spent the next 40 years basically cashing in on his Tarzan fame by going to conventions and signing autographs.
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Died: July 29, 2007 Age: 79 |
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Upon learning of the death of French actor MICHEL SERRAULT, France's new Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy said, "He touched each French person with his talents..." I think it would be fair to say Serrault also touched millions around the world who know him best, despite a career of more than 50 years in films, television and the theatre, as the transvestite star of "La Cage sux Folles" on the stage and screen, including its sequels. Serrault brought such humor and pathos to that cross-dressing character that audiences immediately embraced him as soon as he began to turn on his charm.
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Age: 63 |
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JOEL SIEGEL, the long-running movie critic and "entertainment editor" for ABC News and "Good Morning America" suffered for colon cancer, but stayed on the air, bravely joking about his illness until about two weeks before his death. In his younger days, Siegel was deeply involved in Democratic party politics and once worked as a gag writer for Robert F. Kennedy. He was with Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night Kennedy was assassinated.
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Died: July 2, 2007 Age: 78 |
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BEVERLY SILLS was America's best known opera singer for at least two decades--the 1960s and 1970s--and was especially loved by the public who knew her by her childhood nickname "Bubbles." She earned that nickname, by the way, when she performed, at age four, on the radio program "Rainbow House" and was called "Bubbles" Silverman. Her real name was Belle Miriam Silverman, the daughter of Jewish immigrants to New York. As a child she spoke five languages and was a musical prodigy. She made her movie debut in 1938 in the short film "Uncle Sol Solves It" and was first known by her new stage name, Beverly Sills. The nation began to notice her in 1939 when, at age 10, she won the radio contest "Major Bowe' Amateur Hour" and became a frequent performer on Bowes' radio "Capitol Family Hour." She made her professional stage debut in 1945, touring with a Gilbert and Sullivan company in the U.S. and Canada. Her operatic stage debut followed in 1947 with the role of Frasquita in Bizet's "Carmen" with the Philadelphia Civic Opera Co. She became an international opera star in 1966 after performing the role of Cleopatra in Handel's "Giulio Cesare" with the New York City Opera. By 1971, Time Magazine had put her on the cover as "America's Queen of Opera." Her debut with the Metropolitan Opera Co. finally took place in 1975. After her retirement from singing, Sills moved into administration, running the New York Opera Co. from 1979-89. She chaired Lincoln Center from 1994-2002 and was chair of the Met from 2002-05. She remained active in the opera world until shortly before hr death from lung cancer.
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Age: 39 |
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ANNA NICOLE SMITH was a sad case--a nobody with a rather awesome figure who became the Playboy magazine "Playmate of the Year" in 1993 and parlayed that into a series of sex-oriented activities. She became the center of her first publicity blitzkrieg when she married octogenarian billionaire Texas oilman J. Howard Marshall, who was a mere 63 years older than her, and claimed a big chunk of his $1.6 billion estate when he died. The other heirs sued and the whole thing went to court, finally reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in her favor. Then Smith died of a drug overdose, touching off yet another scandalous tabloid epidemic as various men stepped forth to claim the fatherhood of her newborn baby daughter, hoping to get the millions coming to her someday. It was one of the biggest tabloid yarns of 2007 and, since millions still hang in the balance, may surface again.
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Age: 71 |
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TOM SNYDER always knew what he did best: Talk. He started doing it professionally in his youth as a radio reporter, then moved to TV where he was a news anchor, first in Philadelphia, then in New York and finally in Los Angeles where he co-anchored the main NBC news on local station KNBC from 1970-74. He finally found his real metier in 1973 when he started "Tomorrow with Tom Snyder," a late-late night talk show that followed "The Tonight Show." His talk shows were harder-edged and newsier than the earlier entertainment-oriented shows and my memories of his shows almost always center on Snyder by himself, pontificating directly into the camera. He was known for very high profile interviews--he had the final interview with John Lennon before he was assassinated--and weird stunt situations, like the time Wendy O. Williams, lead singer of The Plasmatics, took a sledgehammer to one of his cameras. When NBC tried to jack up his ratings by altering his format and bringing in gossip queen Rona Barrett as co-host, the show really fell apart and was cancelled. He returned to a similar format to "Tomorrow" in 1995 when he hosted "The Late, Late Show" on CBS, following his friend David Letterman's earlier talk show. He left the show in 1999. In 2005, Snyder was diagnosed with leukemia, which finally claimed his life last July.
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Age: 92 |
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PAUL TIBBETS is a man whose name went down in history because of one mission he flew for the U.S. He was the guy who piloted the plane that dropped the world's first atomic bomb, virtually wiping the Japanese city of Hiroshima off the map. I met him because NBC made a TV movie about that mission and Tibbets agreed to do some press conferences and interviews on its behalf. I'll never forget the story he told me about the burden he learned to carry over the years as the acclaim began to fade and the accusations of guilt took its place. He said he was invited to take part in one of the first meetings of American and Japanese airmen after World War II. The former airmen had assembled at a U.S. airbase in Florida, but Tibbets, who was uncomfortable having the Japanese fliers know he was the man who bombed Hiroshima, hung back and stood away from the men as they greeted each other. He noticed one of the Japanese fliers also had avoided the crowd and, as they jockeyed about to stay out of the limelight, they eventually wound up standing next to each other. Tibbets shyly introduced himself and the Japanese flier immediately recognized the name. Suddenly, he embraced Tibbets and, in halting English, explained he knew how Tibbets felt because he had led the raid on Pearl Harbor and feared the reaction of the American fliers when they found out who he was.
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Age: 76 |
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IKE TURNER will be remembered as the man who discovered, developed and exploited a young woman named Anna Mae Bullock and turned her into the rock icon Tina Turner. A rhythm and blues/rock pioneer himself--Turner's early band, "The Kings of Rhythm," recorded what often is considered the first rock and roll tune, "Rocket 88," in 1951--he was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, along with Tina Turner. Touring as Ike and Tina Turner with their band and the backup singers, The Ikettes, they became one of the hottest acts in contemporary rock. But Tina soon outran Ike in popularity and, fed up with his domestic violence and his philandering ways, left him and went out on her own. (He also was a substance abuser and did time in prison for drug offenses.) Their story was immortalized in the hit 1993 feature film "What's Love Got To Do With It?" with Laurence Fishburne as Ike and Angela Bassey as Tina. In his later years, Ike was sober and better behaved, but history won't remember him that way.
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Died: Aug. 28, 2007 Age: 78 |
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At one point in the 1980s, when I was living in Los Angeles and covering the film and TV industry, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) publish;ed a list of union members it had lost contact with and, in some cases, even had checks for them from former employers. One of the names on the list was MIYOSHI UMEKI, the Oscar-winning actress from "Sayonara" (1957). I never heard whether the little Japanese-born actress ever stepped forward to report her whereabouts, but now I know she retired from acting in 1972 and went to live in a small town in Missouri called Licking in order to be with her son and his family. And that's where she died last August--in a nursing home. Miyoshi originally was a Japanese pop singer who recorded under the name Nancy Umeki. She came to America in the 1950s with a Mercury recording contract and was a regular for one season on "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts." In 1957, she was cast as the tragic love of Red Buttons in "Sayonara" and both won Supporting Actor/Actress Oscars for the film. She was the first Asian ever nominated and first to win an Oscar. The following year, she starred in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Flower Drum Song" on Broadway, then reprised her role in the 1961 movie version. She made only a few other movies, but co-starred with Bill Bixby in the TV version of the movie "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" (1969-72), playing the family housekeeper, "Mrs. Livingston." When that series ended, she faced the problem most Asian actors face in Hollywood: No more parts to play. It's a shame this charming, lovely young woman had no place to go but into retirement--for more than 30 years.
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Age: 86 |
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PETER VIERTEL was a marvelous screenwriter--he worked on Hitchcock's "Saboteur" (1942) and wrote the screenplays for "The African Queen," "Decision Before Dawn," "The Sun Also Rises" and "The Old Man and the Sea"--but his greatest achievement, in my mind, was the novel "White Hunter, Black Heart," his fascinating roman a clef about his experiences while on safari with John Huston, who was directing "The African Queen." This is one of the best novels I've ever read and, even though I praise Clint Eastwood for tackling a movie version of it (with a script by Viertel), the Eastwood film doesn't do justice to Viertel's incredible novel. He was a colorful guy on his own merits. He abandoned his first wife, Virginia, who was the ex-wife of fellow novelist-screenwriter Budd Schulberg, in order to have an affair with a famous model. But his second marriage to actress Deborah Kerr was a lasting one. They were together nearly 50 years and he died, from lymphoma, just 19 days after Kerr died.
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Age: 84 |
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KURT VONNEGUT's imaginative stories became
such an obsession with me in the 1970s that I hounded used book
stores until I had rounded up virtually everything he'd ever
written. If I wasn't ahead of the big wave that made Vonnegut
one of America's best-selling authors by the 1980s, I was at
least even with it. Ironically, I had ignored his stories in
my youth when I devoured almost anything with a science-fiction
aura about it. I guess I thought his stories were too whimsical
or not sci-fi-ey enough to suit me. That, of course, meant I
was missing the point of his work. He was a great satirist and
his early works have a great deal to say about America and the
world in general than many more serious-minded novels were trying
to say during the same period. Ironically, Vonnegut was "discovered"
by the book-buying public when his "Slaughterhouse Five"
was published. Ironic because his talents were really in serious
decline after that novel, but its popularity--it also became
a movie--caused all his older and better books to be re-published,
allowing them to be snatched up by the college kids of the 1970s
and the idolatry to begin. I still think "God Bless You,
Mr. Rosewater," "Mother Night," "The Sirens
of Titan" and several others are classics. I'd skip most
everything after Vonnegut became famous. And, by the way, I finally
met Vonnegut in the 1980s when a TV series was being developed
with him. He seemed old, tired and not real exciting. Yes, it
was a letdown, but authors survive by their writing--and those
early books haven't been diminished in any way, so my memory
of him is a rosy one.
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Age: 80 |
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If there had never been a PORTER WAGONER, we'd never have had all that fun with Dolly Parton for the last couple of decades. Wagoner was a seasoned country music performer with a small following for his syndicated TV show when he brought young Dolly Parton on to work with him and, ultimately, to eclipse him as the one everybody tuned in to watch. He was always gracious about the way her career soared and his pretty much fizzled after she left his show to go out on her own--and Dolly always paid him great respect. Wagoner always was an enjoyable example of the 1950s "rhinestone cowboy," but he'll be remembered most for the amazing young lady he turned loose upon the world so long ago.
©2008 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Jan. 14, 2008.
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