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DEATHS IN SHOW BUSINESS AND THE ARTS IN 2008
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ISAAC HAYES, the composer of the Oscar-winning "Theme From SHAFT"; YMA SUMAC, the Peruvian singer whose vocal range was spectacular; Bottom left, Beverly Garland in "It Conquered the World"; bottom right, Bessie Love, left, with Anita Page, who died Sept. 6 at age 98, in the Oscar-winning musical "The Broadway Melody of 1929." |
of some major talents
of TheColumnists.com
Each year I look over the list of celebrities who died during the past 12 months and I'm always amazed to learn that one of my favorites has left us--and I didn't even hear about it at the time.
This year, for example, I must have been so caught up in the tragic news that the remarkable EARTHA KITT had died on Christmas Day that I never saw any stories telling me that ANN SAVAGE had also died that day. Then again, maybe there weren't any stories about it in any of the newspapers I can get my hands on these days.
In fact, maybe you're wondering who the heck Ann Savage was. Well, she was one of the great "B" movie stars of the 1940s. If you're a fan of films noir, you can't have failed to see "Detour," the trim and cynical little thriller director Edgar Ulmer made in 1945 for a "poverty row" studio. It's now an immortal film with legions of diehard fans who remember what happened to nasty Ann Savage when Tom Neal started yanking on the cord to that telephone she had carried into the bedroom, locking the door behind her.
How I finally ran into Ann Savage, many long years after she had retired from the movies, is my little story about her, which you'll find lower down on this page.
The Passing Parade is really my annual attempt to pay tribute to the Ann Savages of show business, the ones who so often are overlooked by modern obit writers when they finally take permanent leave of us all. And I also try to offer a few last words about some of the more famous talents who left during the past year, but not when I was able to have my say about them.
You'll notice that some of your favorites who died in 2008 may not be covered in this tribute column. That may be because I've written a fuller piece about them earlier in the year--or one of my fellow columnists handled that assignment. We've tried to pull all those tributes together and identify them on today's index page, so you can click on them now and read them if you missed them earlier.
But then some of the people who are missing from this column may be ones with whom I had no special associaton, either in person or as a long-time admirer. A couple of examples would be HARVEY KORMAN and GEORGE CARLIN, comic performers I had met, but never had any special feeling for, despite their good work. Another example would be HEATH LEDGER, an actor whose work I admired. I jsut felt an awful lot has been written about him already and, since we never met, I really had nothing worthwhile to contribute.
Here then are the people I'll really miss in 2009 and the reasons why I think they deserve a special salute today:
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Died Oct. 15, 2008 at age 81  |
My first memories of Edie Adams were
her Marilyn Monroe parody ads on TV for Tiparillo cigars. She
was beautiful, she was sexy, she was seriously funny--and she
was married to my comic idol, Ernie Kovacs--the weird character
who made TV worth watching in the early 1950s. Years later, I met her long after Ernie had died, when she was trying to round up all the surviving footage of Kovacs' live TV comedy shows to preserve his legacy. She was very nice and very sad. Much later than that I ran into her frequently at parties thrown by her agent to get press exposure for his off mainline clients like Edie, who wasn't doing much then. She was a real trouper and I'm glad I got to know the real, loveable woman behind the funny girl everybody thought they knew. |
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Died May 8, 2008, at 75.  |
EDDY ARNOLD was the country singer who seemed to invent the practice of "crossing over" to the pop charts. He did it so often that I think he permanently got the smell of cow flop off his boots. You have to go way back in his long, long career to find Eddy Arnold dressed like a rhinestone cowboy. He was a suit and tie man. He was my Grandpa Edgar's favorite singer and I enjoyed his mellow voice myself. His "Cattle Call" is one of the all-time great recordings. And my favorite of his songs had a great opening chorus: "When I was very young my mother often said I was a bashful boy, my face was always red. I was afraid of girls, but now you see--There's Been A Change In Me!" Hey, that could be my theme song. |
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Died March 19, 2008, at age 90  |
I think I read my first Arthur C. Clarke
novel--"The Sands of Mars" --when I was about 12. I
have been reading and re-reading his amazing visions of future
times ever since and enjoying them more. His impact on the movie
world was, of course, fabulous because of his story "The
Sentinel," which he elaborated upon for Stanley Kubrick,
creating "2001--A Space Odyssey," one of the greatest
movie experiences of all time. He also worked on the "2010"
sequel and adapted his "Rendevoux with Rama" for a
film that has yet to be made. When it's ready, I'll be ready,
even if I'm 95 and on I.V. feeding tubes. Oh, yes, he also invented the whole concept of stationary satellite communications, proving sci-fi writers do know what they're talking about some of the time. |
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Died April 15, 2008 at age 82  |
HAZEL COURT started out with a yen for comedy but somehow wound up being an icon of British horror movies. Maybe if she hadn't taken those early roles as the "Devil Girl From Mars" (1954) or those female leads in "Ghost Ship" (1952) and "Dr. Blood's Coffin" (1961), she might have made it in comedy, which she showed a flair for in the CBS sitcom "Dick and the Duchess" (1967-68). But she was celebrated in "The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957) and so on. She met American actor Don Taylor while doing an "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode, married him and retired to a life of horror movie conventions. |
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Died June 2, 2008 at age 79  |
I believe Bo Diddley deserved acclaim just for his unique stunt of naming himself after one of his hit records--"Bo Diddley," a term which nobody ever adequately defined for me. Anyway, Bo was one of the most influential musicians in the merging of the blues into the new rock and roll sound. His rumba-like, rollin' diddley beat is everywhere and isn't that great? |
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Died Dec. 5, 2008, at age 82  |
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There were lots of reasons for me to
become a BEVERLY GARLAND fan when I was a 1950s teenager. First,
she was very pretty. Second, she made lots of weird horror and
sci-fi movies, then my favorite form of entertainment. And, finally,
she was from my home town--Santa Cruz, California. Well, scratch that last one. When I finally met Garland in the 1980s, she explained she was just born in Santa Cruz, but grew up in Glendale and hardly knew anything about my home town. But Garland was always great looking and she was in all those early cheapie sci-fi films, like "It Conquered the World," "Attack of the Crab Monsters" (with former husband, Richard Garland), "The Alligator People" and so on. You probably remember her best as a TV Mom. She was the "Mom" to Fred MacMurray's kids in the final seasons of "My Three Sons." She was Kate Jackson's Mom in "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" and Lois Lane's Mom in "Lois and Kent: The New Adventures of Superman." Her most important role though was as the star of the syndicated 1950s TV crime show "Decoy," in which she played Casey Jones, TV's first female police detective. Smart in business, Garland ran the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in North Hollywood, site of many a movie nostalgia convention. |
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Died July 22, 2008 at age 84  |
The little old lady of "The Golden
Girls," so quick with the starchy remarks, was, of course,
not the oldest of the four stars and actually "played old"
through most of the years the NBC hit was on the air. She wasn't
really like her character, Sophia Petrillo, who supposedly had
suffered a stroke that destroyed the "tact" cells in
her brain. Dare I say Estelle really was kind of sweet? Unfortunately, she suffered from Alzheimer's Disease not too long after the show ended its phenomenal run and gradually slipped away. |
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Died Feb. 12, 2008 at age 68.  |
That photo to the left tells most of the story about David Groh. He will always be remembered as "Joe," who married Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper) in a special one-hour episode of CBS' "Rhoda" on Oct. 28, 1974. He was written out of the show a few years later when ratings had slumped and CBS brass decided fans didn't like the married edition of their old favorite gal from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." |
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Died Aug. 10, 2008, at age 65.  |
ISAAC HAYES was one of the major creative
forces behind STAX records, which in the 1960s was a major influence
in the development of Southern Soul music. A composer, performer
and screen actor in that giant wave of Blaxploitation films of
the late 1960s and early 1970s, he left his mark for certain.
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Died July 4, 2008 at age 81  |
Discovered by Cecil B. DeMille when she was 19, she began her career in his first version of "The Buccaneer" in 1938 and languished for years as a second tier leading lady, toplining "B" movies like "The Face Behind the Mask" (opposite Peter Lorre), but playing second fiddle in most of the biggies, like "Gone With the Wind," in which she played Scarlett's sister. She was at her best in the early 1950s when she'd fallen out of leading lady status. Multi-married, she lasted quite awhile as the eighth wife of bandleader Artie Shaw. |
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Died Dec. 25, 2008, at age 81  |
EARTHA KITT was the most electrifying performer in "New Faces of 1952" on Broadway, singing "Monotonous," one of her many sexy, naughty numbers in a long career as a musical sex kitten. In the 1954 movie version, she added the now classic Christmas tune "Santa Baby," shorting out several holiday light displays. I first heard of her through her hit records, including "C'est Si Bon" and "I Want To Be Evil." At a time when few black women were given starring roles in movies, she had her chance opposite Sidney Poitier in "Mark of the Hawk," Nat "King" Cole in "St Louis Blues" and Sammy Davis, Jr. in "Anna Lucasta." But she wasn't cut out to be a movie siren. Big deal. She remained one of the great cabaret and concert performers all her fabulous life. I never met her, but my wife interviewed her--and loved her! |
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Died Nov. 10, 2008 at age 76  |
I knew nothing about the Chosa people of Africa before I put on my first Miriam Makeba album in the late 1950s and heard her sing in that marvelous voice with the "clicking" sound her tribe made in their native language. She was a grand talent who got a glimmer of fame in America in that era of revolutionary change--and devoted the rest of her life using that fame to help others. She was a superior woman and there won't be many like her to come. |
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died March 25, 2008 at age 80  |
On one of my very first assignments as a TV critic, I went to a screening of a two-part TV movie called "The Marcus-Nelson Murders" and interviewed its creator, writer Abby Mann. There was an interesting new character called Kojak introduced in that movie and the man who played the part, Telly Savalas, went on to star in the famous series based on Mann's original work. I talked with Mann several times over the years, once for the littlel-remembered TV series called "Skag," which starred Karl Malden. He was a brilliant and issue-oriented man who won an Oscar for adapting his TV play to the movie screen: "Judgment at Nuremberg." |
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Died March 18, 2008 at age 54  |
I
first became aware of Anthony Minghella when I discovered he
was the man who had written several of my favorite episodes of
"Inspector Morse," the brilliant and popular British
detective series. Minghella became a movie director shortly after he finished with "Morse" and did three of my favorite movies of recent years--"The English Patient," for which he earned an Oscar, "The Talented Mr. Ripley"and "Cold Mountain." He died tragically young from complications of surgery for cancer of the tonsils. He had already completed filming the pilot for HBO's upcoming TV series version of Alexander McCall Smith's novel "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," which will premiere this spring. |
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Died Feb. 2, 2008 at age 89  |
Best known to American TV fans as Lt. Philip Gerard, the dogged police detective who tracked down Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen) on ABC's "The Fugitive" from 1963-67. Morse was an acclaimed actdor who could do most anything on stage, screen or radio. Born in England in 1918, Morse moved to Canada in 1951 and became a Canadian citizen in 1953. Before that, he'd made a name for himself in English theatre and on radio in the detective serial "Send For Paul Temple Again." He started acting at an early age, winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he became a protege of George Bernard Shaw. He appeared in scores of American TV shows and miniseries, including "The Winds of War." But he'll always be Lt. Gerard to millions. |
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Died Sept. 6, 2008, at age 98  |
ANITA PAGE lived most of her long life
in reasonable obscurity because she retired from the movies at
age 26 after making 32 films at MGM in the late 1920s and early
1930s. But she left a legacy of happy musicals and comedies, including the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1929, "The Broadway Melody," in which she played one of two sisters trying to make it big on The Great White Way. She left Hollywood for marriage to Married to Rear Admiral Herschel A. House and spent most of her adult life as a wife and mother with no regrets. |
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Died Jan. 19, 2008 at age 70  |
Here's my confession: I was always in love with Suzanne Pleshette. I think it was that low register-sexy voice, but look at that face. Always beautiful! She was a starlet at Warners in the late 1950s and I saw her in lots of movies where she seemed to tower over everybody else. People love her most from "The Bob Newhart Show," but I loved her most from that one night surprise cameo in the follow-up series "Newhart," where Bob woke up in bed with her in the final episode and realized he was still in "The Bob Newhart Show" and the whole innkeeper business from "Newhart" had just been a dream. If that had happened to me, I'd be wanting to forget all about TV shows and just be thankful she was in bed with me. In real life, Suzanne was crusty and a bit foul-mouthed. In other words, what was not to like? |
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Died May 26, 2008, at age 73  |
Though his greatest achievements were as the director of first rate films like "Out of Africa" (1985), for which he won the directing Oscar, "The Way We Were" and "The Yakuza," Pollack started out as an actor and continued acting, in supporting roles, until the very end. (He was doing those hilarious public service spots about shutting off your cellphones in movie theaters in his last few years.) His most entertaining movie role probably was as Dustin Hoffman's agent in "Tootsie" (1982), which he also directed. |
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Died Dec. 25, 2008, at age 87.  |
Okay, I'll admit I just love rooting
for any "B" player with a name like Ann Savage. But
the woman was really quite good. If you've never seen her in
"Detour," don't let that stay neglected any longer.
She was the perfect movie "noir" bad girl.
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Died Feb. 10, 2008 at age 75  |
I didn't really know anything about Roy Scheider
until he played Gene Hackman's sidekick in "The French Connection"
in 1971. (Somehow I missed his film debut in "Curse of the
Living Corpse" in 1964!) He really came into his own as
the hapless, but heroic police chief of Amity in "Jaws"
(1975), which made him a box office name at last. He proved his
acting chops forever in "All That Jazz" (1979), playing
a high-energy Broadway phenomenon based on Bob Fosse. I got to know Scheider when he had come to TV to star in Steven Spielberg's "SeaQuest DSV" as the commander of a futuristic super-submarine. He was a likeable guy who still seemed somewhat surprised that a guy with an ex-fighter style broken nose could become a movie star. |
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Died March 19, 2008 at age 86  |
I saw Paul Scofield make his film debut in a dull 1955 film called "That Lady" and never noticed him. Though he gave many very good performances on film, Scofield really was a great stage actor, much lionized in England. The world finally discovered him when he brought his Tony-winning stage performance as Sir Thomas More to the screen in Fred Zinnemann's film version of "A Man For All Seasons," winning the Best Actor Oscar in the film judged best of 1966. His next best film performance probably was his offbeat work as Mark Van Doren, the father of contestant Charles Van Doren in Robert Redford's "Quiz Show," the fact-based 1994 film about the 1950s TV game show scandals. |
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Died July 16, 2008 at age 90  |
Jo Stafford was in my ears all through my junior high and high school years with her long series of hit records, including "You Belong To Me," "Jambalaya" and "Shrimp Boats." I didn't even know I'd been watching her for years before that as a member of The Pied Pipers singing group, which was in a slew of 1940s movie musicals. She was one of those legendary 1940s Big Band vocalists who found all kinds of ways to stay famous. Married to Columbia records orchestra leader Paul Weston, she even cut a series of comic records with him in the 1960s, clever sendups of pop music. |
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Died Nov. 1, 2008 at age 86.  |
This amazing Peruvian soprano with
the legendary five octave vocal range began as a radio star in
her native land in 1942, the same year she married composer-performer
Moises Vivanco, who propelled her to stardom. They came to New
York in 1946 and by the early 1950s had established her as a
major concert artist, often sold as "an Inca princess"
or some such claptrap. She appeared in "Secret of the Incas"
(1954) with Charlton Heston and "Omar Khayam" (1957)
with Cornel Wilde. I still have my 45 RPM recording of "Birds" and "Njala's Lament" with the vividly illustrated jacket. A little bit of it still goes a long way. |
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Died April 14, 2008 at age 93  |
JUNE TRAVIS was a beautiful starlet at Warners in the 1930s and early 1940s, working opposite most of the studio's top stars. She was Ronald Reagan's first leading lady in "Love Is On the Air" (1937) and reputedly had a love affair with him. Here she's shown with James Cagney in "Ceiling Zero" (1936). She made a bit of history playing Della Street opposite Ricardo Cortez' Perry Mason in "The Case of the Black Cat" (1936). Her most acclaimed performance was in support of Bette Davis in "The Star" (1952). After the movies lost interest, Travis became a much-in-demand stage performer. |
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(MAILA NURMI) Died Jan. 10, 2008 at age 85  |
Okay, I'm sure this is no time to be funny, but didn't most of us think Vampira was dead before she became famous? The exotic Nurmi began as a Los Angeles local TV icon who dressed up as a slinky lady vampire to host creaky old horror movies--and became a sensation. She graced many a Grade Z movie, including Ed Wood's notorious "Plan 9 From Outer Space" (1959) and was portrayed in Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" in 1994. |
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