Los Angeles Morgue Files

Artist Wallace Berman Killed by Drunk Driver in Topanga Canyon 1976

2012-02-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

Wallace Berman (February 18, 1926 – February 18, 1976) was an American visual/assemblage artist.

Wallace Berman was born in Staten Island, New York and moved with his family to Los Angeles, California in 1930. He was expelled from high school for gambling, and became involved in the world of jazz. He enrolled in and attended the Jepson Art School and Chouinard but did not complete studies there. Instead of pursuing a formal art 'career' he worked in a factory finishing antique furniture. This work gave him the opportunity to salvage reject materials and scraps which he used to make sculptures. He began a mail art publication called SEMINA The format was a letterpress text printed on an assemblage of colored paper, photos, and essentially found material. Contributors included John Altoon, Antonin Artaud, Charles Brittin, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Jean Cocteau, Allen Ginsberg, Marion Grogan, Walter Hopps, Larry Jordan, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Stuart Perkoff, and John Weiners.

He exhibited pieces in the Ferus Gallery in 1957, became part of the beat communities in Los Angeles and in San Francisco, and started the Semina Art Gallery in Larkspur, CA in 1960. He made his first and only film, Aleph, from 1956-1966. Berman did not give the film a title, referring to it just as 'my film' or 'my movie' and never showed it to large audiences, preferring to screen it on his studio wall on a one-to-one basis. The title Aleph was given to the work by Berman's son, Tosh, after the artist's death.

He used verifax collages in his work, allowing for creation of serial and multiple images. From artist Ed Ruscha: "There were a lot of artists then that were doing serial imagery in that way, including Llyn Foulkes and Andy Warhol himself, of course, who really popularized it. I had done some things like that. It came about at a time where it had completely reached its time. It was inevitable, It's like a genealogy. I think it was about Wally- and even Andy of course, who came out of the commercial world - seeing not paintings in museums but more popular imagery." This development in the art world seems directly related to the growth of mass production, consumption, and mass disposal that the US embraced in the 1950s.

His likeness was included in the second row of the Beatles' 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.

He was killed after being struck by a drunk driver on the eve of his fiftieth birthday in Topanga Canyon in February 18, 1976.

After his death, Berman became the subject of myriad books and exhibitions exploring his work and Semina Culture. In 2008, he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition All is Personal: The Art of Wallace Bermanat the Camden Art Center in London. In 2009, there was a solo exhibition of his work at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York.

Selected bibliography

Verifax Collages Monographic catalogue French/English Text by Sophie Dannenmüller (Published by frank elbaz gallery, FRANCE ©2009)

Photographs by Wallace Berman Text by Kristine McKenna (Published by Rose Gallery, USA ©2007)

Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle by Kristine McKenna (Author), Michael Duncan (Author) (Published by Distributed Art Publishers, USA)

Different Drummers: Wallace Berman, Clyde Connell, Bruce Conner by Frank Gettings (Published for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden by the Smithsonian Institution Press, USA ©1988)

She: Images of Women by Wallace Berman and Richard Prince by Kristine McKenna (Editor), Wallace Berman (Illustrator), Richard Prince (Illustrator), Bruce Conner (Photographer)

Greystone "Doheny" Mansion Murder- Suicide 1929

2012-02-16T15:30:00.000-08:00

Greystone Mansion, also known as the Doheny Mansion, is a Tudor-style mansion on a landscaped estate with distinctive formal English gardens, located in Beverly Hills, California, United States. The architect Gordon Kaufmann designed the residence and ancillary structures, with construction completed in 1928. The estate was a gift from oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny to his son, Edward "Ned" Doheny, Jr., and his family.

Description

The 55-room, Tudor-style former residence, 46,000 sq ft (4,300 m2), sits on 16 acres (65,000 m2) of land. At the time it was built, it cost over $3 million and was the most expensive home built in California up to that point.

History

On February 16, 1929, four months after Ned Doheny, his wife Lucy and their five children moved into Greystone, Ned died in his bedroom in a murder-suicide with his secretary, Hugh Plunket. The official story indicated Plunket murdered Ned either because of a "nervous disorder" or inflamed with anger over not receiving a raise. Others point out that Ned's gun was the murder weapon and that Ned was not buried in a Catholic cemetery with the rest of his family, indicating that he had committed suicide. Both men were involved in the trial of Ned's father in the Teapot Dome scandal.

Ned’s widow Lucy remarried and lived in the house until 1955, at which time she sold the mansion and its grounds to Chicago industrialist Henry Crown, who rented the estate to movie studios. In 1963, Crown planned to subdivide the property and demolish the mansion. Beverly Hills stopped the demolition by purchasing the mansion in 1965. The estate became a city park on September 16, 1971, and on April 23, 1976 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The city leased the mansion to the American Film Institute, from 1965 to 1982, for $1 per year, hoping to get repair and upkeep work from the institute.

The house and grounds are often used in film and television. The house's descending staircase is one of the most famous sets in Hollywood.

Since 2002 The City of Beverly Hills has maintained a Web page for the Greystone Mansion park.

Besides the city's restoration efforts itself, many local volunteers have been contributing to the fund raising and restoration to the park, most notably the friends of Greystone that organize various showcase and garden events yearly.

Both Upton Sinclair's book OIL (1927) and the recent film THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007) are loosely based on Edward L. Doheny. The final sequence in the film was filmed at Greystone Mansion aka the Doheny Mansion.

Celebrity Grave: "MASH" Actor McLean Stevenson 1996

2012-02-15T17:00:00.000-08:00

Edgar McLean Stevenson, Jr. (November 14, 1927 – February 15, 1996), better known as McLean Stevenson, was an American actor most recognized for his role as Lt. Colonel Henry Blake on the TV series M*A*S*H. He was also recognized for his role as Michael Nicholson on The Doris Day Show.

Death

Stevenson was recovering from bladder cancer surgery in a Los Angeles hospital on February 15, 1996, when he went into cardiac arrest and died. M*A*S*H writer Larry Gelbart later said that Stevenson had left too soon twice in one lifetime. Roger Bowen, who had played Henry Blake in the film version of MASH, also died of cardiac arrest the day after Stevenson’s death.

Stevenson is interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. He was survived by his wife Ginny, daughter Lindsey and son Jeff MacGregor (from a previous marriage).

Celebrity Grave: Musician Nat King Cole 1965

2012-02-15T15:00:00.001-08:00

Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres. He was one of the first black Americans to host a television variety show, and has maintained worldwide popularity since his death.

Cole was a heavy smoker of Kool menthol cigarettes, believing that smoking up to three packs a day gave his voice the rich sound it had (Cole would smoke several cigarettes in rapid succession before a recording for this very purpose). The many years of smoking caught up with him, resulting in his death from lung cancer on February 15, 1965, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. Cole was 45.

Cole's funeral was held at St. James Episcopal Church on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. His remains were interred inside Freedom Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. His last album, L-O-V-E, was recorded in early December 1964—just a few days before he entered the hospital for cancer treatment—and was released just prior to his death. It peaked at #4 on the Billboard Albums chart in the spring of 1965. A "Best Of" album went gold in 1968. His 1957 recording of "When I Fall In Love" reached #4 in the UK charts in 1987.

Celebrity Grave: Actor & Activist Andrew Koenig 2010 "Boner" Stabone

2012-02-14T15:30:00.000-08:00

Joshua Andrew Koenig ( August 17, 1968 – approx. February 14, 2010)[1] also known as Josh Andrew Koenig or Andrew Koenig, was an American character actor, film director, editor, writer, and human rights activist. He was the son of actor Walter Koenig and actress Judy Koenig (née Levitt).[2]

Career

From 1985 to 1989, Koenig played a recurring role as Richard "Boner" Stabone, best friend to Kirk Cameron's character Mike Seaver in the first four seasons of the ABC sitcom Growing Pains.[3] During the same period, he guest starred on episodes of the sitcoms My Sister Sam and My Two Dads as well as the drama 21 Jump Street. In the early 1990s he provided a voice for the animated series G.I. Joe as Ambush and Night Creeper Leader,[4] and had a minor role as Tumak in the 1993 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Sanctuary".[5]

Koenig played the role of The Joker in the critically successful 2003 fan film Batman: Dead End.[6] Directed by commercial director Sandy Collora, the short received its first screening at the San Diego Comic-Con International.[7][8] Director Kevin Smith called it "possibly the truest, best Batman movie ever made".[9]

Onstage, he starred as the M.C. in the 2007 interactive theater play The Boomerang Kid[10] and performed with the improv group Charles Whitman Reilly and Friends.

Though he continued his performing career in the 2006 independent film The Theory of Everything (2006), Koenig worked increasingly behind the scenes. He wrote, produced and/or directed the shorts Good Boy (2003) and Woman in a Green Dress and Instinct vs. Reason (2004). Most recently he was working as an editor on a number of films and had been a video producer for the podcast Never Not Funny (2006–2010). His final role was in the film DaZe: Vol. Too – NonSeNse, in post-production at the time of his death, with Koenig portraying the role of Vice Chancellor.[6]

Venice Apartment

(Photographer Unknown)

Personal life

Andrew Koenig was the son of actor Walter Koenig and Judy Levitt.[11] Andrew's sister Danielle Koenig is a stand-up comedian and writes for the program The Fashion Police. She is also married to a stand-up comedian, Jimmy Pardo.

Andrew Koenig's Parents

Writer Harlan Ellison spoke of the young Andrew – by his given first name of Josh – as being the inspiration for his story Jeffty Is Five.

“...I had been awed and delighted by Josh Koenig, and I instantly thought of just such a child who was arrested in time at the age of five. Jeffty, in no small measure, is Josh: the sweetness of Josh, the intelligence of Josh, the questioning nature of Josh.[12]”

The story went on to win the 1977 Nebula Award and the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

He was a vegan.[13]

Human rights activism

Koenig traveled to Burma in July 2007 and visited Burmese refugee camps in Thailand with his father as part of the U.S. Campaign for Burma. The following January, he protested the Communist Party of China's political and financial support of the military dictatorship in Burma during the 119th Tournament of Roses Parade, entering the parade and standing in front of a Chinese float promoting the 2008 Beijing Olympics after a pre-parade human rights march agreed to by parade officials was allegedly stifled by them. Koenig, who carried a sign reading "China: Free Burma" in both English and Chinese, was arrested and briefly held for his act of civil disobedience. Koenig's defense attorney was Bill Paparian, a fellow protester and former mayor of Pasadena, California, where the parade is held.[14]

"China sits on the UN Security Council and they have refused to condemn Burma. China purchases gas from Burma and sells them weapons that the military uses on the Burmese people. So they are really quite complicit, and that was the whole point of protesting the China float," Koenig explained.[14] Koenig also noted the Chinese government's implicit support of genocidal forces in Sudan, sweatshops and tainted export products, saying of the float, "China is putting on a good face because of the Olympics, but [it’s time to] send a message to the Chinese government that they have to not just change their face, but change the way they do things.”[15] The Pasadena Weekly quoted Koenig as stating, "Their free speech rights have been totally censored. As a country with a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, we need to continue to support and enforce ours, and [use it to] recognize the rights of human beings all over the world."[14]

Death

In February 2010, Koenig was reported missing by friends and family.[16] He was last seen near a bakery in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on February 14, and missed a scheduled flight back to the US on February 16.[17] According to his parents, Koenig left evidence that he was depressed prior to his disappearance.[18] On February 25, 2010, CNN reported that his body was found by friends searching for him in Stanley Park in downtown Vancouver.[19] Police later confirmed Koenig's body was found earlier in the day, and Koenig's father told reporters at an evening press conference that his son "took his own life".[20] The 41-year-old was found hanging from a tree of a "densely wooded area...unseen from the path" of Vancouver's Stanley Park, on February 25, 2010.

References

1.^ Fleeman, Mike (February 26, 2010). "Confirmed: Andrew Koenig's Body Found". People. Retrieved February 26, 2010.
2.^ Lindell, Rebecca. "Body of missing actor Andrew Koenig found in Vancouver's Stanley Park". The Vancouver Sun.
3.^ "TV Ratings and 1980's". ClassicTVHits.com.
4.^ "Andrew Koenig’s Body Found in Stanley Park". Daily Contributor.
5.^ Tumak in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine at the Internet Movie Database
6.^ "'Growing Pains' Actor Andrew Koenig Found Dead". Fox News. February 25, 2010.
7.^ "Batman vs Alien vs Predator?". JoBlo.com. January 2, 2004.
8.^ "Collora Studios". Collora Studios.
9.^ "Batman: Dead End". JoBlo.com. January 2, 2004.
10.^ Hanselman, Scott. "The Boomerang Kid – You'll Keep Coming Back". Lasplash.com.
11.^ "Andrew Koenig – Missing. You Can Help!". Dreadcentral.com. February 22, 2010.
12.^ Ellison, Harlan (1980). Shatterday. Houghton Mifflin. p. 10. ISBN 9780395285879.
13.^ "Andrew Koenig's brother-in-law cancels Chicago comedy shows". Chicago Tribune. February 26, 2010.
14.^ "Ready for a fight". Pasadena Weekly.
15.^ "Cops pop 'Boner'". Pasadena Weekly.
16.^ "Andrew Koening missing". Walterkoenigsite.com.
17.^ Phipps, Keith (February 21, 2010). "Actor Andrew Koenig missing in Vancouver". The A.V. Club.
18.^ "Andrew Koenig found". February 26, 2010.
19.^ "Missing actor's body found in Vancouver park, source says". Turner Broadcasting System. February 25, 2010.
20.^ "Andrew Koenig's Body Found In Vancouver Park; Father Says Actor Committed Suicide". Fox40.com. 2010.

"Rebel" Actor Sal Mineo Heart Stabbed in a West Hollywood Alley 1976

2012-02-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

Salvatore Mineo, Jr. (January 10, 1939 – February 12, 1976), better known as Sal Mineo, was an American film and theatre actor, best known for his performance opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause.[2]

Early career

Mineo, born in The Bronx, the son of Sicilian coffin makers, was enrolled by his mother in dancing and acting school at an early age.[3] He had his first stage appearance in The Rose Tattoo (1951),[2] a play by Tennessee Williams. He also played the young prince opposite Yul Brynner in the stage musical The King and I. Brynner took the opportunity to help a young Mineo better himself as an actor.[1]

After film and television appearances, his breakthrough was Rebel Without A Cause,[2] in which he played John "Plato" Crawford, the sensitive teenager smitten with Jim Stark (played by James Dean). His performance resulted in an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, and his popularity quickly developed.[1] Mineo's biographer, Paul Jeffers, recounted that Mineo received thousands of fan letters from young female admirers, was mobbed by them at public appearances and further wrote, "He dated the most beautiful women in Hollywood and New York."[4]

Mineo played a Mexican boy in Giant (1956), but many of his subsequent roles were variations of his role in Rebel Without a Cause, and he was typecast as a troubled teen.[5] In the Disney adventure Tonka, for instance, Mineo starred as a young Sioux named White Bull who traps and domesticates a clear-eyed, spirited wild horse named "Tonka" who becomes the famous horse Comanche.

In his book, Multiculturalism And The Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment (2006), Douglas Brode states that the very casting of Mineo as White Bull again "ensured a homosexual subtext." By the late 1950s the actor was a major celebrity, sometimes referred to as the "Switchblade Kid" - a nickname he earned from his role as a criminal in the movie Crime in the Streets.[1]

In 1957, Mineo made a brief foray into music by recording a handful of songs and an album. Two of his singles reached the Top 40 pop charts.[6] The more popular of the two, "Start Movin' (In My Direction)," reached #9 on Billboard's Pop chart. He starred as drummer Gene Krupa in the movie The Gene Krupa Story, co-starring Susan Kohner, James Darren, and Susan Oliver, and directed by Don Weis.

Meanwhile, Mineo made an effort to break his typecasting. His acting ability and exotic good looks earned him not only roles as a Native American boy in Tonka, but also as a Jewish emigrant in Otto Preminger's Exodus, for which he won a Golden Globe Award and received another Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor.

Attempted resurgence

By the early 1960s, he was becoming too old to play the type of role that had made him famous and was not considered appropriate for leading roles. He auditioned for David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia but was not hired.[3] Mineo was baffled by his sudden loss of popularity, later saying "One minute it seemed I had more movie offers than I could handle, the next, no one wanted me."

His role as a stalker in Who Killed Teddy Bear?, co-starring Juliet Prowse, did not seem to help. Although his performance was praised by critics, he found himself typecast anew, now as a deranged criminal. (He never entirely escaped this; one of his last roles was a guest spot on the 1975 TV series S.W.A.T. playing a Charles Manson-like cult leader.)

He returned to the stage to produce the 1971 gay-themed Fortune and Men's Eyes (starring Don Johnson). The play garnered positive reviews in Los Angeles, but, was panned during its New York run, and its expanded prison rape scene was criticized as excessive and gratuitous.

A small role in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) as chimpanzee Dr. Milo would be Mineo's last movie appearance. In 1973, Mineo appeared as Gamal Zaki, assistant to the president of a Middle Eastern country, who faces an assassination threat in the episode "Prey" of ABC crime drama, Columbo, starring with Peter Falk.

Death

By 1976 Mineo's career had begun to turn around.[7] Playing the role of a gay burglar in a San Francisco run of the stage comedy P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, he received substantial publicity from many positive reviews and moved on to Los Angeles with the play. Arriving home after a rehearsal at the Westwood Playhouse (now the Geffen, above) on February 12, 1976, Mineo was stabbed to death in the alley behind his West Hollywood apartment building (below). He was 37 years old. Mineo was stabbed just once, not repeatedly as first reported, but the blade struck his heart, leading to immediate and massive internal bleeding.[8] Mineo was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.[9]

According to Warren Johansson and William A. Percy's Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, he was murdered under circumstances that suggested "a homosexual motive." Despite a high-profile romance with actress Jill Haworth, Mineo identified himself as bisexual in a 1972 interview,[3] published after his death, but his biography notes that he dated men exclusively in the last years of his life.

Arrest in Mineo's killing

A pizza deliveryman, Lionel Ray Williams, was sentenced to 57 years in prison for killing Mineo and committing 10 robberies in the same vicinity.[10] Although there was considerable confusion relating to what witnesses had seen in the darkness the night Mineo was murdered, it was later revealed that prison guards reportedly overheard Williams admitting to the crime.[7] Williams claimed he had no idea who Mineo was. Williams was paroled in the early 1990s, but was soon jailed again for criminal activity.[3] Many of Mineo's friends believed that Williams was not the murderer, especially since a blond white man was seen running from the incident.

Footnotes

1.^ Bell, Rachael, The Switchblade Kid: The Life and Death of Sal Mineo,
2.^ Holliday, Peter J., Mineo, Sal (1939-1976),
3.^ Noe, Denise, The Murder of Sal Mineo
4.^ Jeffers, Paul (2000). Sal Mineo: His Life, Murder, and Mystery. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers. ISBN 0786707771.
5.^ Smith, Laura C., Untimely End for a 'Rebel'
6.^ salmineo.com. "Sal Mineo Mini biography"
7.^ Ellis, Chris; Julie Ellis (2005). The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murder. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers. pp. 419–422. ISBN 0786715685.
8.^ Rachael Bell (2008). "The Switchblade Kid: The Life and Death of Sal Mineo". TruTV. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
9.^ Sal Mineo at Find a Grave
10.^ Los Angeles Times, Actor Sal Mineo Is Stabbed to Death
11.^ Mann, Ted, The New Adam
12.^ Vogel, Carol. "Exposure for a Nude"
13.^ Stevenson, Harold. "The New Adam Article"

Norma Jeane's Foster Sister Bebe Eleanor Goddard 2000

2012-02-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

Eleanor "Bebe" Goddard (December 17, 1926 - February 11, 2000) was Marilyn Monroe's foster sister. Her ashes have been scattered in the Garden of Roses at Westwood Village Memorial Park just across the lawn from Marilyn's crypt.

Celebrity Grave: "True Grit" Director Henry Hathaway 1985

2012-02-11T15:00:00.002-08:00

Henry Hathaway (March 13, 1898 – February 11, 1985) was an American film director and producer. He is best known as a director of Westerns, especially starring John Wayne, including Wayne's Oscar winning performance in True Grit. Hathaway also directed 1966's Nevada Smith, another Western starring Steve McQueen that was based on the Harold Robbins novel The Carpetbaggers. In addition, Hathaway was one of three directors on the epic Cinerama Western, How the West Was Won (1962), directing the bulk of the film, including the river, prairie, and train robbery sequences. He made his 65th and final film in 1974.

Hathaway died from a heart attack in 1985 in Hollywood and was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Although often overlooked as a director, his body of work earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1638 Vine Street.

"Rebel" Actor Nick Adams Found Dead in Coldwater Canyon Home 1968

2012-02-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

Nick Adams (July 10, 1931 – February 7, 1968) was an American film and television actor. He has been noted for his supporting roles in successful Hollywood films during the 1950s and 1960s, including Rebel Without A Cause (1955). along with his starring role in the ABC television series The Rebel (1959). Decades after Adams' death from a prescription drug overdose at the age of 36, his widely publicized friendships with James Dean and Elvis Presley would stir speculation about both his private life and the circumstances of his death. In an Allmovie synopsis for Adams' last film, reviewer Dan Pavlides wrote, "Plagued by personal excesses, he will be remembered just as much for what he could have done in cinema as what he left behind."

Death

On the night of February 7, 1968 his lawyer and friend, ex-LAPD officer Erwin Roeder, drove to the actor's house at 2126 El Roble Lane in Beverly Hills to check on him after a missed dinner appointment. Seeing a light on and his car in the garage, Roeder broke through a window and discovered Adams in his upstairs bedroom, slumped dead against a wall.

During the autopsy Dr. Thomas Noguchi found enough paraldehyde, sedatives and other drugs in the body "to cause instant unconsciousness." The death certificate lists "paraldehyde and promazine intoxication" as the immediate cause of death along with the notation accident; suicide; undetermined. During the 1960s drug interaction warnings were not so prominent as they later would be and the American Medical Association has subsequently warned these two types of drugs should never be taken together.

The death of Nick Adams has been cited in articles and books about Hollywood's unsolved mysteries along with speculation by a few of Adams' acquaintances he was murdered (but apparently with no motive ever offered) and claims no trace of paraldehyde (a liquid sedative often given to alcoholics at the time and one of two drugs attributed to his death) was ever found in his home. However, Adams' brother Andrew had become a medical doctor and prescribed the sedative to him. Moreover, a story in The Los Angeles Times reported stoppered bottles with prescription labels were found in the medicine cabinet near the upstairs bedroom where Adams' body was discovered. Through the years Adams' children offered speculation ranging from murder to accidental death, the latter perhaps caused by Raeder while trying to calm the actor's nerves with an unintentionally lethal combination of alcohol and prescription drugs (although the autopsy found no alcohol in Adams' blood). Adams' best friend, actor Robert Conrad, has consistently maintained the death was accidental.

Carol Adams is listed as Adams' spouse on his death certificate, evidence the divorce had not become final when the actor died. She and the children were living only a few blocks from Adams' recently-rented house on Roble Lane.

Nick Adams' remains were buried in Berwick, Pennsylvania. He appeared in over 150 television series episodes and feature films throughout a 20 year career. Half of these were episodes of The Rebel. The back of his gravestone bears a silhouette of Adams in the civil-war era cap from his TV series and reads Nick Adams - the rebel - actor of hollywood screens.

Celebrity Grave: Sinatra Composer Jimmy Van Heusen 1990

2012-02-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

Jimmy Van Heusen (January 26, 1913 - February 7, 1990), was an American composer. He wrote songs mainly for films and television (but also for the theater), and won four Academy Awards for Best Original Song, and an Emmy.

Van Heusen retired in the late 1970s, and died in Rancho Mirage, California in 1990, at the age of 77. He was close friends throughout life with Frank Sinatra. He is buried in the Sinatra family burial plot in Desert Memorial Park, in Cathedral City, California. His grave marker reads Swinging On A Star.

Van Heusen composed over 800 plus songs of which 50 songs became standards. Van Heusen songs are featured in over one hundred eighty films.

Celebrity Grave: Musician & Actor Bobby Troup 1999

2012-02-07T15:00:00.001-08:00

Robert William "Bobby" Troup Jr. (October 18, 1918 - February 7, 1999) was an American actor, jazz pianist and songwriter. He is best known for writing the popular standard "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66", and for his role as Dr. Joe Early, the more calm, yet dedicated doctor of Julie London's and Robert Fuller's characters, in the 1970s US TV series, Emergency!

In February, 1999, Troup died at UCLA Medical Center of a massive heart attack, he was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. His wife, Julie London died the following year, and her cremated remains were placed in the columbarium (Columbarium of Providence) niche, next to his. Incidentally, their former TV producer boss (and London's former husband) Jack Webb (who died in 1982) is buried in the same cemetery.

Celebrity Grave: Comic Book Artist Jack Kirby 1994

2012-02-06T17:30:00.000-08:00

Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994), born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor. Growing up poor in New York City, Kurtzberg entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s. He drew various comic strips under different pen names, ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1941, Kirby and writer Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby would create a number of comics for various publishers, often teaming with Simon.

After serving in World War II, Kirby returned to comics and worked in a variety of genres. He contributed to a number of publishers, including Archie Comics and DC Comics, but ultimately found himself at Timely's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, later to be known as Marvel Comics. In the 1960s, Kirby co-created many of Marvel Comics' major characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Hulk, along with writer-editor Stan Lee. Despite the high sales and critical acclaim of the Lee-Kirby titles, Kirby felt treated unfairly, and left the company in 1970 for rival DC Comics.

While working for DC, Kirby created his Fourth World saga, which spanned several comics titles. While these and other titles proved commercially unsuccessful and were canceled, several of their characters and the Fourth World mythos have continued as a significant part of the DC Comics universe. Kirby returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then ventured into television animation and independent comics. In his later years, Kirby received great recognition for his career accomplishments, and is regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium.

In 1987, Kirby, along with Carl Barks and Will Eisner, was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

On February 6, 1994, Kirby died at age 76 of heart failure in his Thousand Oaks, California home. He is buried at the Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park, Westlake Village, California.

Celebrity Grave: TV Western Actor Guy Madison 1996

2012-02-06T17:00:00.000-08:00

Guy Madison (January 19, 1922 – February 6, 1996) was an American film and television actor.

Early life

Born Robert Ozell Moseley in Bakersfield, California, Madison attended Bakersfield College, a junior college, for two years and then worked briefly as a telephone lineman before joining the United States Navy in 1942.

Career

In 1944, while visiting Hollywood on leave from the US Coast Guard, Madison's boyish good looks and physique caught the eye of Henry Willson, the head of talent at David O. Selznick's newly formed Vanguard Pictures. Willson was widely known for his stable of good-looking, marginally talented actors with unusual names he bestowed upon them, and he immediately cast the rechristened Madison in a bit part in Selznick's Since You Went Away. Following the film's release in 1944, the studio received thousands of letters from fans wanting to know more about him.

Madison was signed by RKO Pictures in 1946 and began appearing in romantic comedies and dramas, but his wooden acting style hurt his chances of advancing in films. In 1951, television came to the rescue of his faltering career when he was cast in The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, which ran for six years. Following his television series, he appeared in several more films before leaving for Europe, where he found greater success in spaghetti westerns.

Personal life and death

Madison was married to actresses Gail Russell (1949–1954) and Sheila Connolly (1954–1964). Both marriages ended in divorce. He had three daughters, Bridget Catherine (born April 26, 1955), Erin Patricia (born July 21, 1956), and Dolly Ann (born September 10, 1957).

Madison died from emphysema at the age of 74 and was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cathedral City, California. For his contribution to the television industry, Guy Madison has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6331 Hollywood Boulevard.

Celebrity Grave: "Beach Boy" Musician Carl Wilson 1998

2012-02-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

Carl Dean Wilson (December 21, 1946 – February 6, 1998) was an American rock and roll singer and guitarist, best known as a founding member, lead guitarist and sometime lead vocalist of The Beach Boys. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. He was the younger brother of fellow Beach Boys Brian Wilson and Dennis Wilson.

Wilson was diagnosed with brain and lung cancer in early 1997. Despite his illness and chemotherapy treatments, Carl continued to perform after diagnosis. Carl played through the Beach Boys' entire summer tour which ended in the fall of 1997. He sat down most of the time and needed oxygen after every song, but he still had his unique voice. The only time he stood during concerts was when he sang "God Only Knows" to his fans.

Carl Wilson lost his battle with cancer on February 6, 1998, just two months after the death of his mother, Audree Wilson. He was survived by his brother Brian, wife Gina (daughter of Dean Martin), and two sons by his first marriage, Justyn and Jonah.

A handful of recordings of Wilson have been released, notably the album Like a Brother, by a "supergroup" Wilson formed with Gerry Beckley of America and Robert Lamm of Chicago. He also appeared posthumously on his brother Brian's album Gettin' in Over My Head (which used his vocal from the unreleased Beach Boys song "Soul Searchin'" put to a new backing track), and bandmate Alan Jardine's 2010 release A Postcard From California (on the simiarly reconstructed track "Don't Fight The Sea"). He also appears on the many Beach Boys archival releases that have come out since his death.

Carl Wilson is buried at Westwood Village Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Celebirty Grave: Character Actor Roscoe L. Karns 1970

2012-02-06T15:00:00.001-08:00

Roscoe Karns (September 7, 1891 – February 6, 1970) was an American actor. He appeared in nearly 150 films between 1915 and 1964.

He played the title role in the popular DuMont Television Network series Rocky King, Inside Detective from 1950 to 1954. His son, character actor Todd Karns, also appeared in the series.

He was born in San Bernardino, California and died in Los Angeles, California. He is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Celebrity Grave: Actress Dolores Moran 1982

2012-02-05T17:00:00.000-08:00

Dolores Moran (January 27, 1924 – February 5, 1982) was an American film actress and model.

Moran's brief career as a film actress began in 1942 with some uncredited roles in such films as Yankee Doodle Dandy. By 1943 she had become a popular pin-up girl and appeared on the cover of such magazines as Yank. She was given supporting roles in films such as Old Acquaintance (1943) with Bette Davis and Warner Bros. attempted to increase interest in her, promoting her along with Lauren Bacall as a new screen personality when they co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not (1944). The film made a star of Bacall, but Moran languished and her subsequent films did little to further her career, this probably had something to do with Howard Hawk's decision to marginalise Moran in order to boost the screen presence of Bacall, excising some of Moran's scenes.

The Horn Blows at Midnight gave her a leading role with Jack Benny and Alexis Smith but her film appearances after this were sporadic, and she suffered ill health that reduced her ability to work. Her film career ended in 1954 with a featured role in the John Payne and Lizabeth Scott western film Silver Lode.

She was married to the film producer Benedict E. Bogeaus in Salome, Arizona in 1946. Their son, Brett Benedict, born 30 August 1948 in Hollywood, later became a successful businessman. They divorced in 1962, he died of a heart attack in 1968. Moran had an affair with director Howard Hawks while filming To Have and Have Not, which Hawks undertook mainly as revenge for his rejection by Bacall in favour of Bogart.

In 1982 Dolores Moran died of cancer. She was survived by her son, sister, and mother. She is buried at Westwood Village Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Celebrity Grave: "Virginian" Actor Doug McClure 1995

2012-02-05T15:00:00.001-08:00

Douglas Osborne "Doug" McClure (May 11, 1935 – February 5, 1995) was an American actor whose career in film and television extended from the 1950s to the 1990s. Born in Glendale, California, to Donald Reed McClure and the former Clara Clapp, he is best known for his appearances as Trampas in the NBC western series The Virginian.

Career

McClure's The Virginian co-stars were James Drury, Roberta Shore, Lee J. Cobb, Randy Boone, Gary Clarke, and Tim Matheson in the later seasons. Before The Virginian, McClure costarred in two other series: (1) as Frank "Flip" Flippen on NBC's western, Overland Trail (1960), with co-star William Bendix, and (2) as Jed Sills on the CBS detective series Checkmate (1960–1962) opposite Anthony George as Don Corey and Sebastian Cabot as Dr. Carl Hyatt. In 1958 and 1959, McClure appeared in three episodes of the syndicated western series 26 Men, stories of the Arizona Rangers. He appeared as Adam Davis in 1959 in the episode "The Court Martial of Trooper Davis" of the syndicated series Mackenzie's Raiders starring Richard Carlson. He was in the third episode of The Twilight Zone, "Mr. Denton on Doomsday."

He starred in science fiction films such as At the Earth's Core, The Land That Time Forgot and The People That Time Forgot, all three based on the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. In 1967, he played the Errol Flynn role in a re-make of Against All Flags titled The King's Pirate. He played the lead in two World War II adventures, The Longest Hundred Miles and The Birdmen, set in the Philippines and at Colditz Castle respectively.

He co-starred on the sitcom Out of This World later in his career.

In the 1970s and 80s McClure appeared in commercials for Hamms Beer.[1]

On February 5, 1995, McClure died from lung cancer in Sherman Oaks, California. He was 59 and is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery. In addition to his fifth wife, he was survived by three daughters, including Valerie and Tane McClure (below), who is an actress.

McClure has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Television at 7065 Hollywood Blvd. That star was unveiled in what proved to be his final public appearance in 1994.

The character of Troy McClure on The Simpsons was designed after him along with Troy Donahue. Mike Reiss, executive producer of The Simpsons, said that Doug McClure's daughter informed him that Doug was a big fan of The Simpsons. She said that while watching an episode Doug saw the character Troy McClure on the show and said, "Are they making fun of me?" Doug said he thought the parody was funny and his kids would call him Troy McClure behind his back as a joke.[2]

Filmography

The Enemy Below (1957)
Gidget (1959)
The Unforgiven (1960)
Because They're Young (1960)
The Lively Set! (1964)
Shenandoah (1965)
Beau Geste (1966)
The King's Pirate (1967)
Nobody's Perfect (1968)
Backtrack (1969)
Terror in the Sky (1971)
Playmates (1972)
The Judge and Jake Wyler (1972)
"Die blutigen Geier von Alaska" (Germany, 1973)
The Land That Time Forgot (1975)
At the Earth's Core (1976)
The People That Time Forgot (1977)
Warlords of Atlantis (1978)
Wild and Wooly (1978)
The Rebels - Pt. 2 of the Kent Family Chronicles (1979)
Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
Firebird 2015 A.D. (1981)
The House Where Evil Dwells (1982)
Cannonball Run II (1984)
52 Pick-Up (1986)
Omega Syndrome (1986)
Prime Suspect (1988)
Tapeheads (1988)
Dark Before Dawn (1988)
Battling for Baby (1992)
Dead Man's Revenge (1993)
Maverick (1994)
Riders in the Storm (1995)

Television

Twilight Zone "Mr Denton on Doomsday" (1959)
Coronado 9 - Jimmy Hoke in "The Widow of Kill Cove" (1960)
Johnny Midnight - Rice in "Mother's Boy" (1960)
Overland Trail - Frank Flippin (1960)
Checkmate - Jed Stills (1960–1962)
The Virginian - Trampas (1962–1971)
The Longest Hundred Miles (1967)
The Birdmen (1971)
Barbary Coast - Cash Conover (1975)
Satan's Triangle - Lt. J. Haig (1975)
Search - C. R. Grover (1972–1973)
Roots - Jimmy Brent (1977)
Out of This World - Mayor Kyle Applegate (1987–1991)
In The Heat Of The Night:Time's Long Shadow (1994)
The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1994)

References

1.^ Doug McClure Played Trampas and commercial Dick Kleiner syndicated column, Ocala Star-Banner, Oct 29, 1982.
2.^ The Simpsons Season 2 DVD, Episode: Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment

Celebrity Grave: Entertainer Liberace 1987

2012-02-04T16:00:00.000-08:00

Wladziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987), better known by only his last name Liberace, was a famous American entertainer and pianist. During the 1950s–1970s he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world.

Liberace's final stage performance was at New Yorks' Radio City Music Hall on November 2, 1986;[ the 18th show in 21 days, the series grossing $2.5 million. His final television appearance was on Christmas Day that same year on The Oprah Winfrey Show TV talk show, which was recorded a month earlier. He died at the age of 67 on February 4, 1987 at his winter home in Palm Springs, California, from cardiac arrest due to congestive heart failure brought on by subacute encephalopathy, said by Hank Greenspun of the Las Vegas Sun to be complications from AIDS. Liberace's obvious weight loss in the months before his death was attributed to a "watermelon diet" by his longtime manager Seymour Heller. He had been in ill health since 1985 with emphysema from his daily smoking off-stage, as well as heart and liver troubles; and author Darden Asbury Pyron wrote that Liberace had been "HIV-positive and symptomatic" from 1985. Liberace's body is entombed in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.

"Carpenters" Karen Carpenter Dies at Downey Family Home 1983

2012-02-04T14:30:00.000-08:00

Karen Anne Carpenter (March 2, 1950 – February 4, 1983) was an American singer and drummer. She and her brother, Richard, formed the 1970s duo The Carpenters. She was a drummer of exceptional skill, but she is best remembered for her vocal performances. She suffered from anorexia nervosa, a little known disease at the time, and died at the age of 32 from heart failure, later attributed to complications related to her illness.

Final months

The song "Now," recorded in April 1982, was the last song Karen Carpenter recorded. She recorded it after a two-week intermission in her therapy with psychotherapist Steven Levenkron in New York City for her anorexia. The sight of Karen upon her return to California in April shook Richard and his parents, since she had lost a considerable amount of weight since beginning her therapy with Levenkron. In September 1982, Karen's treatment -- which had never convinced her family as being an effective method -- took a sinister turn of events when Karen called her psychotherapist to tell him she felt dizzy and that her heart was beating irregularly. Karen was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and hooked up to an intravenous drip, which would be the cause of her much debated 30 pound weight gain in eight weeks. Richard recalled visiting her in the hospital, saying "Karen, this is crap. Don't you understand? This is crap! You're going about this all the wrong way, this guy isn't getting anything accomplished, because you're in a hospital now!"

Karen returned to California in November 1982, determined to reinvigorate her career, finalize her divorce and begin a new album with Richard. She had gained 30 pounds over a two-month stay in New York, and the sudden weight gain (much of which was the result of intravenous feeding) further strained her heart, which was already weak from years of crash dieting. During her illness, Karen also took thyroid replacement medication (in order to speed up her metabolism) and laxatives. On December 17, 1982, Karen made her final public appearance in the "multi-purpose" room of the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, California singing for her godchildren and their classmates who attended the school. She sang Christmas carols for friends. Shortly after the new year, Richard tried to get through to Karen that she was still sick, saying many years later "Karen had marvelous, big brown eyes. And there was just no life in them." Speaking of a meeting with his sister and Werner Wolfen, the Carpenters' financial advisor, two weeks prior to her death, Richard said:

"Karen was hot as hell at me for even questioning how she looked. And I told her 'the only reason I'm bringing all of this up, and talking to people...is because I'm concerned and because I love you.' And am I glad I said that because within weeks, that was that. She was dead."

Death

On February 4, 1983, less than a month before her 33rd birthday, Karen suffered heart failure at her parents' home in Downey, California. She was taken to Downey Community Hospital, where she was pronounced dead twenty minutes later. The Los Angeles coroner gave the cause of death as "heartbeat irregularities brought on by chemical imbalances associated with anorexia nervosa." Under the anatomical summary, the first item was heart failure, with anorexia as second. The third finding was cachexia, which is extremely low weight and weakness and general body decline associated with chronic disease. Her divorce was scheduled to have been finalized that day. The autopsy stated that Carpenter's death was the result of emetine cardiotoxicity due to anorexia nervosa, revealing that Carpenter had poisoned herself with ipecac syrup, an emetic often used to induce vomiting in cases of overdosing or poisoning. Carpenter's use of ipecac syrup was later disputed by Agnes and Richard, who both stated that they never found empty vials of ipecac in her apartment and have denied that there was any concrete evidence that Karen had been vomiting. Richard also expressed that he believes Karen was not willing to ingest ipecac syrup because of the potential damage it presented to her vocal cords and that she relied on laxatives alone to maintain her low body weight.

Her funeral service took place on February 8, 1983, at the Downey United Methodist Church. Dressed in a rose colored suit, Carpenter lay in an open white casket. Over 1,000 mourners passed through to say goodbye, among them her friends Dorothy Hamill, Olivia Newton-John, Petula Clark, and Dionne Warwick. Carpenter's estranged husband Tom attended her funeral, where he took off his wedding ring and threw it into the casket. She was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California. In 2003, Richard Carpenter had Karen re-interred, along with their parents, in a Carpenter family mausoleum at the Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village, California, which is closer to his Southern California home.

After death

Carpenter's death brought lasting media attention to anorexia nervosa and also to bulimia. In the years after Carpenter's death, there were a number of celebrities who decided to go public about their eating disorders, among them actress Tracey Gold, the Olsen Twins, and Diana, Princess of Wales. Medical centers and hospitals began receiving increased contacts from people with these disorders. The general public had little knowledge of anorexia nervosa and bulimia prior to Carpenter's death, making the condition difficult to identify and treat. Her family started the "Karen A. Carpenter Memorial Foundation," which raised money for research on anorexia nervosa and eating disorders. Today the name of the organization has been changed to the "Carpenter Family Foundation." In addition to eating disorders, the foundation now funds the arts, entertainment and education.

Celebrity Grave: Actor and Director John Cassavetes 1989

2012-02-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

John Nicholas Cassavetes (December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He appeared in many Hollywood films. He is most notable as a pioneer of American independent film. His films are noted for their use of improvisation and a realistic cinéma vérité style.

Death and legacy

An alcoholic, Cassavetes died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1989 at the age of 59. He was survived by Rowlands and three children (Nick, Alexandra and Zoe).

At the time of his death, Cassavetes had amassed a collection of more than forty unproduced screenplays, as well as a novel of Husbands.

Cassavetes is the subject of several books about the actor/filmmakers life. Cassavetes on Cassavetes is a collection of interviews collected or conducted by Boston University film scholar Ray Carney, in which the late filmmaker recalls his experiences, influences and outlook in the film industry. In the Oscar 2005 edition of Vanity Fair magazine, one article features a tribute to Cassavetes by three members of his stock company: Rowlands, and actors Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk.

Many of John Cassavetes' films are now owned by Faces Distribution, a company overseen by Gena Rowlands and Julian Schlossberg, with Castle Hill Productions distributing.

In September 2004, The Criterion Collection produced a Region 1 DVD box set of his five independent films: Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night. Also featured in the set is a documentary about the life and works of Cassavetes called A Constant Forge, a booklet featuring critical assessments of the director's work, and tributes by old friends. In 2005, a box set of the same five films was released in Region 2 by Optimum Releasing. The Optimum DVD of Shadows has a voice-over commentary by Seymour Cassel. Mistakes about the first and second versions of the film are documented on Ray Carney's web site.

Cassavetes' son, Nick Cassavetes, followed in his father's footsteps as an actor and director. In 1997, Nick Cassavetes made the film She's So Lovely from the She's Delovely screenplay his father had written. The film starred Sean Penn, as John Cassavetes had originally wanted. Alexandra Cassavetes directed the documentary, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession in 2004 and, in 2006, served as 2nd Unit Director on her brother Nick's film Alpha Dog. John Cassavetes' younger daughter, Zoe Cassavetes, wrote and directed the 2007 film, Broken English, featuring Rowlands and Parker Posey.

John Cassavetes is buried at Westwood Village Cemetery in Los Angeles. Gena Rowlands mother, Lady Rowlands, is buried next to him.

"Green Acres" actress Eva Gabor lies next to her.

Celebrity Grave: "Honeymooners" Actress Audrey Meadows 1996

2012-02-03T16:00:00.000-08:00

Audrey Meadows (February 8, 1926-February 3, 1996) was an American actress best known for her role as the deadpan housewife Alice Kramden on the 1950s American television comedy The Honeymooners.

In Spring 1995, Audrey Meadows was diagnosed with lung cancer and given roughly a year to live; she declined pro-active treatment. She had apparently been estranged from her sister and her sister's family and had not talked with them for about a year. Jayne Meadows-Allen was unaware of Audrey's illness and first learned her sister was near death when she was on a Hollywood sound stage appearing on an episode of a sitcom, High Society. Ms. Meadows died on February 3, 1996, at Cedars Sinai Hospital-Los Angeles after slipping into a coma late Monday. She was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City next to her husband Robert Six.

The Day the Music Died 1959

2012-02-03T15:30:00.000-08:00

On February 3, 1959, a small-plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, killed three American rock and roll pioneers: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, as well as the pilot, Roger Peterson.[1] The day was later called The Day the Music Died by Don McLean, in his song "American Pie". The plane crash has been called the first and greatest tragedy rock and roll has ever suffered.[2][3]

Events leading to the crash

"The Winter Dance Party" was a tour that was set to cover twenty-four Midwestern cities in three weeks. A logistical problem with the tour was the amount of travel, as the distance between venues was not a consideration when scheduling each performance. Adding to the disarray, the tour bus used to carry the musicians was not equipped for the weather; its heating system broke shortly after the tour began.

The condition of the bus and the grueling pace of the tour are evidenced by the fact that Holly's drummer, Carl Bunch, had been hospitalized in Ironwood, Michigan, due to a severe case of frostbitten feet that developed when the bus broke down enroute to Appleton, Wisconsin[4][5] during the overnight trip following the January 31, 1959, show in Duluth, Minnesota.[6] As Holly's group had been the backing band for all of the acts, Holly, Valens and Dion DiMucci (of Dion and the Belmonts) took turns playing drums for each other at the Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Clear Lake, Iowa, shows.[4]

The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, was never intended to be a stop on the tour, but promoters, hoping to fill an open date, called Surf Ballroom manager Carroll Anderson and offered him the show. He accepted and the show was set for Monday, February 2.

By the time Buddy Holly arrived at the Surf Ballroom that Monday evening, he was frustrated with the tour bus. According to VH-1's Behind the Music episode, "The Day the Music Died", Holly was also upset that the laundromat in Clear Lake was closed that day, and he would need time before the next performance to finally clean some undershirts, socks, and underwear. Holly told his remaining band mates, Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup, that they should try to charter a plane to save time and to avoid the cold bus ride of 380 miles (610 km) to the tour's next stop – Moorhead, Minnesota.

Flight arrangements were made with Roger Peterson, a 21-year-old local pilot who worked for Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa. A fee of $36 per passenger was charged for the single-engined 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza 35 (V-tail),[7] registration N3794N (later reassigned). The Bonanza could seat three in addition to the pilot.

Richardson had developed a case of flu during the tour and asked Waylon Jennings for his seat on the plane. When Holly learned that Jennings wasn't going to fly, he said in jest, "Well, I hope your ol' bus freezes up" and Jennings responded, also in jest, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes". This exchange of words would haunt Jennings for the rest of his life.[8][9]

Ritchie Valens had never flown in a small plane before, and, in spite of his own fear of flying, asked Tommy Allsup for his seat on the plane. Tommy said "I'll flip ya for the remaining seat". Contrary to what is seen in La Bamba, the coin toss did not happen at the airport shortly before takeoff, nor did Buddy Holly toss it. Bob Hale, a DJ with KRIB-AM, was working the concert that night and flipped the coin in the ballroom's sidestage room shortly before the musicians departed for the airport. Valens won the coin toss, and with it a seat on the flight.[8]

Dion had been approached to join the flight, although it is unclear exactly when he was asked. Dion decided that, since the $36 cost of the flight was the same as the monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment, he couldn't justify the indulgence.[10]

Crash

The plane departed from the ramp and taxied to then-Runway 17 at around 12:55 AM Central Time on Tuesday, February 3. Contrary to popular belief, there was no blizzard at the time but a very light snowfall with winds out of the south at 20 knots, gusting to 30 knots and a cloud ceiling of 3,000 feet above sea level. Since Mason City Municipal Airport was at 1,200 feet, this left 1,800-foot of airspace between the ground and cloud cover. It is unknown whether or not Peterson intended to file a Special-rules VFR flight plan in spite of the obvious weather.

Hubert Dwyer, owner of the plane and the flight service company, watched from a platform outside the tower and "saw the tail light of the aircraft gradually descend until out of sight",[11] just after 1:00 AM. Peterson had earlier told Dwyer he would file a flight plan with Air Traffic Control by radio after takeoff. When Peterson did not call the tower personnel with his flight plan, Dwyer requested that they continue to attempt to establish radio contact, but all attempts were unsuccessful.[12] By 3:30 AM, when Hector Airport in Fargo, North Dakota, had not heard from Peterson, Dwyer contacted authorities and reported the aircraft missing.

Around 9:15 AM, Dwyer took off in his own Cessna 180 to fly Peterson's intended route. Within minutes he spotted the wreckage less than 6 miles (9.7 km) northwest of the airport, (43°13′13″N 93°22′53″WCoordinates: 43°13′13″N 93°22′53″W) in a cornfield then belonging to Albert Juhl. The Bonanza was at a slight downward angle and banked heavily to the right when it struck the ground at around 170 miles per hour (270 km/h). The plane tumbled and skidded another 570 feet (170 m) across the frozen landscape before the crumpled wreckage came to rest against a wire fence at the edge of Juhl's property. The bodies of Holly and Valens lay near the plane, Richardson was thrown over the fence and into the cornfield of Juhl's neighbor Oscar Moffett, and Peterson's body remained entangled inside the plane's wreckage.[12] With the other participants on "The Winter Dance Party" enroute to Moorhead, it fell to Surf Ballroom manager Carroll Anderson, who drove the musicians to the airport and witnessed the plane's takeoff, to make positive identifications of the musicians. All four had died instantly from "gross trauma" to the brain, the county coroner Ralph Smiley declared.
Investigators concluded that the crash was due to a combination of poor weather conditions and pilot error, resulting in spatial disorientation. Peterson, working on his instrument rating at the time, was still taking flight instrumentation tests and was not yet certificated for flight into weather that would have required operation of the aircraft solely by reference to his instruments rather than by means of his own vision. The final Civil Aeronautics Board report noted that Peterson had taken his instrument training on airplanes equipped with an artificial horizon attitude indicator and not the far-less-common Sperry Attitude Gyro the Bonanza was equipped with (it was further discovered that Peterson had failed his instrument checkride shortly before the incident). Critically, the two instruments display aircraft pitch attitude but depict such information in a visual manner opposite of one another; therefore, the board considered that this could have caused Peterson to think he was ascending when he was, in fact, descending. They also concluded that Peterson was not given adequate warnings about the weather conditions of his route, which, given his known limitations, might have caused him to postpone the flight out of prudence.[12]

2007 investigation

In 2007, Richardson's son had his father's body exhumed and an autopsy performed to verify the original finding. In part this was done because of the long known discovery of Holly's .22 caliber pistol by Juhl in the cornfield two months after the wreck, giving rise to the question of whether or not an accidental firearm discharge had caused the crash, and whether or not Richardson was not hurt as badly and able to try to crawl for help, because his body was found farther from the crash site. William M. Bass undertook the procedure and confirmed Smiley's original report. The body of Richardson was well-preserved, but showed "massive fractures", showing that he, too, had died on impact.[13][14]

Memorial

In 1988, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the 1950s era, erected a stainless steel monument depicting a steel guitar and a set of three records bearing the names of each of the three performers. The monument is located on private farmland, about one quarter of a mile west of the intersection of 315th Street and Gull Avenue, five miles (8 km) north of Clear Lake. A large plasma-cut-steel set of Wayfarer-style glasses, similar to those which Holly was known for wearing, sits at the access point to the crash site. Paquette also created a similar stainless steel monument to the three musicians located outside the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens played on the night of February 1, 1959. This second memorial was unveiled on July 17, 2003.[15] In February 2009, a new memorial made by Paquette for pilot Roger Peterson was unveiled at the crash site.[16] A road originating near The Surf Ballroom and extending north past the west of the crash site is now known as Buddy Holly Place.[17]

Notes

1.^ Check-Six.com - Celebrity Crashes
2.^ "1959: Buddy Holly killed in air crash". On This Day (London: BBC). February 3, 1959. Retrieved 2008-11-02.
3.^ Thimou, Theodore (December 28, 2006). "Preview: The Twice-Famous Don McLean Plays Rams Head". Bay Weekly. Archived from the original on 2008-06-13. Retrieved 2008-09-11.
4.^ "Connection to Buddy Holly Death". WeGoNews.com. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
5.^ "TOMMY ALLSUP ...Gotta Keep Moving On". MyBestYears.com. 2008. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
6.^ "CARL BUNCH ...The Last Tour and Beyond". MyBestYears.com. 2009. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
7.^ "Aircraft Accident Report - File No. 2-0001". Civil Aeronautics Board, Page 3, "The Aircraft" section. September 15, 1959.
8.^ VH1's Behind the Music "The Day the Music Died" interview with Waylon Jennings
9.^ "Waylon’s Buddy: Jennings Never Forgot His Mentor". CMT.
10.^ DiMucci, Dion: "The Wanderer", page 89. Beech Tree Books, 1988
11.^ www.fiftiesweb.com/cab.htm
12.^ Civil Aeronautics Board (September 23, 1959). "Aircraft Accident Report". NTSB. Retrieved 2009-02-04.
13.^ Bill Griggs. "Big Bopper Exhumation". Retrieved January 30, 2009.
14.^ "Autopsy of 'Big Bopper' to Address Rumors About 1959 Plane Crash". Washington Post. January 18, 2007.
15.^ Jennifer Jordan (2007-04-11). "The Day the Music Died". Articles Tree. Retrieved 2009-01-30. 16.^ Jordan, Jennifer (2009-02-02). "Memorial to Buddy Holly pilot dedicated at crash site". Des Moines Register. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
17.^ "Clear Lake, Iowa – Buddy Holly Crash Site". RoadsideAmerica.com. Retrieved 25 June 2011.

References

"Buddy Holly's Coroner's Report". February 4, 1959.
"Coroner's investigation - Air crash, Feb. 3, 1959 - SW1/4 Section 18, Lincoln Twp. - Cerro Gordo County, Iowa".
"The Day the Music Died - February 3, 1959".

Further reading

Larry Lehmer (2004). The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens (illustrated ed.). Music Sales Group. ISBN 0825672872.
Scott Schinder, Martin Huxley, Quinton Skinner (2000). The Day the Music Died (illustrated ed.). Pocket Books. ISBN 0671039628.
Staton Rabin (2009). Oh Boy! The Life and Music of Rock 'n' Roll Pioneer Buddy Holly (illustrated ed.). Van Winkle Publishing (Kindle). ASIN B001OQBLLG.

Celebrity Grave: Musician Ritchie Valens 1959 "La Bamba"

2012-02-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

Ritchie Valens (born Richard Steven Valenzuela; May 13, 1941 – February 3, 1959) was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist.

A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens' recording career lasted only eight months.[1] During this time, however, he scored several hits, most notably "La Bamba," which was originally a Mexican folk song that Valens transformed with a rock rhythm and beat that became a hit in 1958,[2][3] making Valens a pioneer of the Spanish-speaking rock and roll movement.

On February 3, 1959, on what has become known as The Day the Music Died, Valens was killed in a small-plane crash in Iowa, a tragedy that also claimed the lives of fellow musicians Buddy Holly and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. Valens was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

Early life

Ritchie Valens was born in Pacoima, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, on May 13, 1941.[4] His parents were Joseph Steven Valenzuela and Concepcion Reyes. Brought up hearing traditional Mexican mariachi music, as well as flamenco guitar, RandB and jump blues, he expressed an interest in making music of his own by the age of 5. He was encouraged by his father to take up guitar and trumpet, and later taught himself the drums. One day, a neighbor came across Ritchie trying to play a guitar that had only two strings. He re-strung the instrument, and taught Ritchie the fingerings of some chords. While Ritchie was left-handed, he was so eager to learn the guitar that he mastered the traditionally right-handed version of the instrument. By the time he was attending Pacoima Junior High School, his proficiency on the guitar was such that he brought the instrument to school and would sing and play songs to his friends on the bleachers.

When he was sixteen years old, he was invited to join a local band named The Silhouettes as a guitarist. Later, the main vocalist left the group and Ritchie assumed this position as well. In addition to the performances with The Silhouettes, he would play solo at parties and other social events.

Career

Valens was an accomplished singer and guitarist. At his appearances, he often improvised new lyrics and added new riffs to popular songs while he was playing. This is an aspect of his music that is not heard in his commercial studio recordings.

In May 1958, Bob Keane, the owner and President of Del-Fi Records, a small Hollywood record label, was given a tip by San Fernando High student Doug Macchia about a young performer from Pacoima by the name of Richard Valenzuela (Little Richard of the Valley). Keane, swayed by the Little Richard connection, went to see Valenzuela play a Saturday morning matinée at a movie theater in San Fernando. Impressed by the performance, he invited Ritchie to audition at his home in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, where he had a small recording studio in his basement. The recording equipment comprised an early portable tape recorder—a two-track Ampex 6012—and a pair of Neumann U-47 condenser microphones.

After this first 'audition', Keane decided to sign Ritchie to Del-Fi, and a contract was prepared and signed on May 27, 1958. It was at this point that he took the name Ritchie, because, as Keane said, "There were a bunch of 'Richies' around at that time, and I wanted it to be different." Similarly, it was Keane who decided to shorten his surname to Valens from Valenzuela, in order to broaden his appeal.

Several songs that would later be re-recorded at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood were first demoed in Keane's studio. The demos were mostly just Ritchie singing and playing guitar. Some of them featured drums. These original demos can be heard on the Del-Fi album Ritchie Valens — The Lost Tapes. As well as the aforementioned demos, two of the tracks laid down in Keane's studio were taken to Gold Star and had additional instruments dubbed over to create full-band recordings. "Donna" was one track (although there are two other preliminary versions of the song, both available on The Lost Tapes), and the other was an instrumental entitled "Ritchie's Blues".

After several songwriting and demo recording sessions with Keane in his basement studio, Keane decided that Ritchie was ready to enter the studio with a full band backing him. Amongst the musicians were Rene Hall and Earl Palmer. The first songs recorded at Gold Star, at a single studio session one afternoon in July 1958, were "Come On, Let's Go", an original (credited to Valens/Kuhn, Keane's real name), and "Framed", a Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller tune. Pressed and released within days of the recording session taking place, the record was a success. Valens' next record, a double A-side which was the final record to be released in his lifetime, had the songs "Donna" (written about a real girlfriend), coupled with "La Bamba".

At this point, in the autumn of 1958, Valens quit high school to concentrate on his career. Keane booked appearances at venues all across the United States and performances on television programs. Valens, however, had a fear of flying brought on by a freak accident at his Pacoima Junior High School when two airplanes collided over the playground, killing or injuring several of his friends.[5] Valens was not at school that day as he was attending his grandfather's funeral. He eventually succeeded in overcoming his fear enough to travel by airplane. One of his first stops was Philadelphia to appear on Dick Clark's American Bandstand television show on October 6, where he sang "Come On, Let's Go." In November, Ritchie traveled to Hawaii and performed alongside Buddy Holly and Paul Anka. Valens found himself a last-minute addition on the bill of legendary disc jockey Alan Freed's Christmas Jubilee in New York City, singing with some of those who had greatly influenced his music, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, The Everly Brothers, Duane Eddy, Eddie Cochran and Jackie Wilson. December 27 saw a return to American Bandstand, this time for a performance of "Donna."

Upon his return to Los Angeles, Valens filmed an appearance in Alan Freed's movie Go Johnny Go!. In the film, he appears in a diner, miming his song "Ooh! My Head", using a Gretsch 6120 guitar, the same model Eddie Cochran owned. Still, it is not Eddie´s guitar. In between the live appearances, Ritchie returned to Gold Star several times, recording the tracks that would comprise his two albums.

In early 1959, Valens was traveling the Midwest on a multi-act rock and roll tour dubbed "The Winter Dance Party." Accompanying him were Buddy Holly with a new back-up band, Tommy Allsup on guitar, Waylon Jennings on bass, and Carl Bunch on drums; Dion and the Belmonts; J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson; and Frankie Sardo. None of the other performers had backing bands, so Buddy's backup band filled in for all the shows.

Conditions for the performers on the tour buses were abysmal, and the bitterly cold Midwest weather took its toll on the party; Carl Bunch had to be hospitalized with severely frostbitten feet, and several others (including Valens and The Big Bopper) caught colds. The show was split into two acts, with Ritchie closing the first act. After Bunch was hospitalized, a member of the Belmonts who had some drum experience (Carlo Mastrangelo) took over the drumming duties. When Dion and the Belmonts were performing, the drum seat was taken by either Valens or Buddy Holly. There is a surviving color photograph of Ritchie at the drum kit.

Death

After the February 2, 1959, performance in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly, Richardson, and Valens flew out of the Mason City airport in a small plane that Holly had chartered. Valens was on the plane because he had won a coin toss. The plane, a three-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza, departed for Fargo, North Dakota, and crashed shortly after takeoff in a snow storm. The crash killed all three passengers and the pilot; at 17, Valens was the youngest to die on the flight. The event inspired singer Don McLean's popular 1971 ballad "American Pie", and immortalized February 3, 1959 as "The Day the Music Died".

Legacy

Valens was a pioneer of Chicano rock, Latin rock and was an inspiration to many musicians of Latino heritage. He influenced the likes of Los Lobos, Los Lonely Boys and Carlos Santana among countless others at a time when there were very few Latinos in American rock and pop music. He is considered the first Latino ever to successfully cross over into rock mainstream.

"La Bamba" would prove to be his most influential recording; not only by becoming a pop chart hit sung entirely in Spanish but also because of its successful blending of traditional Latin American music with rock. He was a pioneer and was an inspiration for many after his death. Valens was the first to capitalize on this formula which would later be adopted by such varied artists as Selena, Caifanes, Café Tacuba, Circo, El Gran Silencio, Aterciopelados, Gustavo Santaolalla and many others in the Latin Alternative scene. Ironically, the Valenzuela family spoke only English at home, and Ritchie knew very little Spanish. Ritchie learned the lyrics phonetically in order to record "La Bamba" in Spanish.

"Come On, Let's Go" has been covered by Los Lobos, The Ramones and "The Paley Brothers;" (jointly, The Ramones on guitar, bass, and drums and The Paley Brothers on vocals), Tommy Steele, The Huntingtons and The McCoys; and in Australia by Johnny Rebb and his Rebels on Leedon/Canetoad Records.

"Donna" has been covered by artists as diverse as MxPx, Cliff Richard, The Youngbloods, Clem Snide, Cappadonna, and The Misfits among many others.

Robert Quine has cited Valens' guitar playing as an early influence on his style.

Ritchie inspired the likes of Chan Romero, Carlos Santana, Chris Montez, Los Lobos, and Los Lonely Boys.

Donna Ludwig, Valens's girlfriend, is today still recognized as "Ritchie's Donna." Her personalized license plate reads RIPRV.

Ritchie's nephew, Ernie Valens, has toured worldwide playing his uncle's songs, including a new version of the "Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly impersonator John Mueller. This tour has taken place at many of the original 1959 venues in the Midwest.

Valens is interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, Los Angeles, California. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6733 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood, California. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001 and his pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Valens' mother Connie, who died in 1987, is buried alongside him.[6]

Valens has been the subject of several biopic films. He was depicted in the 1987 biopic film La Bamba, which was about his life. Primarily set in 1957-1959, it depicted Valens from age 16 to 17. It introduced Lou Diamond Phillips as Valens and co-starred Esai Morales as his older half-brother, Bob Morales. Los Lobos performed most of the music in the film.

Valens was portrayed by Gilbert Melgar in the final scene of The Buddy Holly Story and Valens will also be depicted in the upcoming film The Day the Music Died. Valens will be portrayed by Joseph Thornhill in the 2011 film Lives and Deaths of the Poets.

The novelization of the film Grease by Ron De Christiforo is set around the time of Ritchie Valens' death. In one of the earlier chapters, the gang sit around in the character of Sonny's basement, upset at the death of some of their favorite stars in the plane crash.

The songs "Come on Let's Go" and "Donna" can be heard through the radio in Mafia II.

Tributes

In 1988, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the '50s era, erected a stainless steel monument depicting a steel guitar and a set of three records bearing the names of each of the three performers. It is located on private farmland, about one quarter mile west of the intersection of 315th Street and Gull Avenue, approximately eight miles north of Clear Lake. He also created a similar stainless steel monument to the three musicians near the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin. That memorial was unveiled on July 17, 2003.[7]

A park in Pacoima was renamed in Ritchie Valens' honor.[8]

"Boogie With Stu" from Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album was inspired by Valens' song "Oooh, My Head." It did not credit Ritchie Valens or Bob Keane. Eventually, a lawsuit was filed by Bob Keane and half of the award went to Valens' mother, although she was not part of the suit.[9]

Original albums

Ritchie Valens (1959) -- Del-Fi DFLP-1201 (US #23)
Ritchie (1959) -- Del-Fi DFLP-1206
In Concert at Pacoima Jr. High (1960) -- Del-Fi DFLP-1214
Side 1 features the concert with opening narrative by Bob Keane, side 2 features five unfinished tracks as described by Keane. "Come On, Let's Go" on side 1 is a demo version with the concert noise dubbed in.

Compilation albums

Ritchie Valens Memorial Album (1963) -- Del-Fi DLFP-1225
Originally released with black cover, reissued later the same year with different cover (in white) and retitled His Greatest Hits
Ritchie Valens...His Greatest Hits Volume 2 (1964) -- Del-Fi DFLP-1247
History of Ritchie Valens (1981) --Rhino RNBC-2798
The Ritchie Valens Story (1987) -- Rhino/Del-Fi RNLP-2798 Box set replicating the three original albums plus booklet
The Best of Ritchie Valens (1987) -- Rhino 70178 (US #100)
The Ritchie Valens Story (1993) -- Rhino/Del-Fi 71414
Featuring hits, outtakes, rare photos, and a 20 minute narrative of Ritchie by manager Bob KeaneRockin' all night The very best of Ritchie Valens (1995) -- Del-Fi DFCD9001
Come On, Let's Go! (1998) -- Del-Fi DFBX-2359
Deluxe 3-CD, 62 track set featuring all tracks from the three original albums plus rare demos and outtakes. 62 page booklet features biography and rare photos. Package also comes with poster, picture cards, and Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame campaign cards

Singles

"Come On, Let's Go" (US #42)/"Framed" —Del-Fi 4106 (1958)
"Donna" (US #2)/"La Bamba" (US #22) -- Del-Fi 4110 (1958)
"Fast Freight"/"Big Baby Blues" —Del-Fi 4111 (1959)
Original pressings shown as "Arvee Allens", later pressings shown as "Ritchie Valens"
"That's My Little Suzie" (US #55)/"In A Turkish Town" —Del-Fi 4114 (1959)
"Little Girl" (US #92)/"We Belong Together" —Del-Fi 4117 (1959)
"Stay Beside Me"/"Big Baby Blues" —Del-Fi 4128 (1959)
"The Paddiwack Song"/"Cry, Cry, Cry" —Del-Fi 4133 (1960)
The above three singles were issued on gold Valens Memorial Series labels "La Bamba '87"/"La Bamba" (original version) -- Del-Fi 1287 (1987)
"Come On, Let's Go"/"La Bamba" —Del-Fi 51341 (1998)

References

1.^ "Ritchie Valens - the Pioneer of Rock and Roll". EF News International. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
2.^ HOME - The Daily Breeze
3.^ MIPUNTO.COM | TEMAS | Rock en Venezuela
4.^ Beverly Mendheim (1987) Ritchie Valens: the first Latino rocker p.156.
5.^ The Pacoima Plane Crash
6.^ Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records and Online Memorials
7.^ The Day the Music Died - Music Articles
8.^ Ritchie Valens Park
9.^ Lehmer, Larry. The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens (2004): 166

Celebrity Grave: Character Actor Jay Flippen 1971

2012-02-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

Jay C. Flippen (born March 6, 1899, Little Rock, Arkansas – February 3, 1971, Los Angeles, California) is an American gruff-faced actor who often played police officers or weary criminals in many movies of the 1940s/'50s.

Flippen was already an established vaudeville singer and stage actor, after being discovered by famed African-American comedian Bert Williams in the 1920s, before shifting his focus to films. At one time he was a radio announcer for New York Yankees games and was one of the first game show announcers. (Between 1924 and 1929, Flippen recorded over 30 songs for Columbia, Perfect and Brunswick). He called himself "The Ham What Am," and performed occasionally in blackface. He worked quite a few times with director Anthony Mann, also with Nicholas Ray and Stanley Kubrick.

His films include They Live by Night (1948), Winchester '73 with James Stewart (1950), Flying Leathernecks with John Wayne (1951), Bend of the River again with Stewart (1952), The Wild One with Marlon Brando (1953), Thunder Bay again with Stewart (1953), Oklahoma! (1955) (his only singing role), The Far Country again with James Stewart and with Walter Brennan (1955), Strategic Air Command again with Stewart (1955), The Killing (1956), Night Passage again with Stewart and with Audie Murphy (1957), Jet Pilot again with John Wayne (1957), Firecreek again with James Stewart and with Henry Fonda (1968), and Hellfighters (1968) again with John Wayne. He had a cameo role in 1962's How The West Was Won.

Flippen also appeared on television, most notably as Chief Petty Officer Homer Nelson on the 1962–1963 sitcom Ensign O'Toole, starring Dean Jones. He also guest starred on The Dick Van Dyke Show in its first season, playing the role of Rob Petrie's early mentor Happy Spangler. In 1964, he appeared in a episode of CBS's Gunsmoke with James Arness. He played the role of Owney. In 1963, he guest starred on Bonanza. He appeared 4 times on The Virginian in the 1960s; in 1966, he appeared on the ABC comedy western The Rounders. In 1967, he and Tom Tryon appeared in the episode "Charade of Justice" of the NBC western series The Road West.

Later in life, Flippen continued acting even though he used a wheelchair after an amputation. He was married for twenty-five years to screenwriter Ruth Brooks Flippen.

Jay Flippen died, aged 72, from an aneurysm caused by a swollen artery while in surgery. He is buried in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Actress Lana Jean Clarkson Murdered in Alhambra 2003

2012-02-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

Lana Jean Clarkson (April 5, 1962 – February 3, 2003) was an American actress and fashion model. Clarkson was a native of Los Angeles County. On April 13, 2009, songwriter and producer Phil Spector was convicted of second degree murder in relation to her death.

Early life

Born in Long Beach, California to Donna and James M. Clarkson, Lana Clarkson was raised in the hills of Napa Valley, California. She had a brother, Jesse J. Clarkson, and a sister Fawn. While living in Northern California, she attended Cloverdale High School and also Pacific Union College Preparatory School. During the Christmas season of 1978 and after her father's death, Clarkson's family moved back to Southern California and settled down in the Los Angeles region of San Fernando Valley. Right after Clarksons's family moved back to Los Angeles County, Lana pursued a career in entertainment industry as a performer and fashion model.

In the early 1980s, Clarkson landed bit parts in film and television. In 1982, she made her screen debut as a supporting character in director Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, as the wife of science teacher Mr. Vargas (Vincent Schiavelli). The film was her first speaking role.

Career

Clarkson's best known films may be her work with Roger Corman, appearing first in his fantasy film Deathstalker, as a female warrior/love interest to the title character played by Richard Hill. Corman oriented his films towards young male viewers, using a mix of action and female nudity. Clarkson's work in Deathstalker led to her being offered the title role in Corman's next film, Barbarian Queen, a role Corman referred to as "the original Xena" because of the parallel in featuring a strong female leading character in an action-oriented sword-swinging role. The film gained cult status, in part due to an infamous scene where Clarkson is bound topless to a torture rack, interrogated, and raped by an evil king.

In 1987, Clarkson appeared in the John Landis spoof Amazon Women on the Moon. Following that, Clarkson starred in Roger Corman's Barbarian Queen sequel, Barbarian Queen II: The Empress Strikes Back, though the plots and characters bore no resemblance to the other film. Filmed in Mexico, the movie featured mud-wrestling Amazon women, magic sceptres, and (like its predecessor) a lengthy scene where Clarkson is tortured topless on a stretching rack by an evil king. Clarkson received star billing in the film which went directly to video. Although sales of the video were low, Corman did manage to turn a profit.

In 1990, she starred as a supporting character in the period horror film Haunting of Morella as the evil attendant to a young woman played by model/actress Nicole Eggert. In the film, Clarkson played a dominating lesbian character who tries to resurrect the spirit of a witch burned at the stake during the Salem witch trials.

Clarkson's work in the B movie sci-fi genre inspired a cult following, making her a favorite at comic book conventions, where she made some promotional appearances signing autographs for her fans.

She appeared in numerous other B movies as well as a range of television spots and appearing in commercials for Mercedes-Benz, Kmart, Nike, Mattel, and Anheuser-Busch. Her television appearances include parts on Night Court, Silk Stalkings, Riptide, Three's Company, Knight Rider and Wings, and a guest appearance as a villain on the television adaptation of Roger Corman's film Black Scorpion in what would be her final role.

During her career, Clarkson traveled around the United States and Europe while working on high fashion photo shoots. Other projects took her to Japan, Greece, Argentina, Italy, Switzerland, France, Jamaica and Mexico.

In 1980's she volunteered weekly at the AIDS charity Project Angel Food which delivers food for those in Los Angeles disabled by HIV or AIDS, at a time when the disease was greatly feared by the general public.

As she approached her thirties, Clarkson's career began to stall. No longer able to earn a living as an actress, Clarkson sought alternate routes of income, including operating her own website on which she sold autographed DVDs of her films and communicated directly with her fans on her own message board. Although she made a living by playing busty, lusty women, Lana's fondest desire was to be cast as a comic actress.

In 2001, while living on the canals in Venice, California (above) for the last several years, Clarkson developed, wrote, produced, and directed a showcase reel entitled Lana Unleashed. To make ends meet, she took a side part-time job in early January 2003 at the House of Blues (below), in West Hollywood, California.

Death

On February 2, 2003, Lana Clarkson met music producer Phil Spector at the West Hollywood House of Blues, while working as a hostess at VIP Foundation room. After her shift ended, Lana was invited by Spector to go home with him for a drink. Soon after midnight they left House of Blues and headed in his limo to his home in Alhambra, California (below).

On February 3, 2003, Clarkson was shot to death in the mansion of music producer Phil Spector. In the early hours of that morning, she met Spector while working at the House of Blues. Both left the House of Blues later in Spector's limo and drove to his mansion. Spector and Clarkson went inside while his driver waited outside in the car. About an hour later, the driver heard a gunshot before Spector exited his house through the back door with a gun. He was quoted as saying, according to affidavits, "I think I just shot her."

Spector stated that Clarkson's death was an "accidental suicide" and that she "kissed the gun."

Spector was tried for the murder of Clarkson four years later in 2007. On September 26, 2007, the case was declared a mistrial because the jury was hung 10 to 2 for conviction. He was retried for second degree murder on October 20, 2008. On April 13, 2009, the jury found Spector guilty of murdering Clarkson. Spector was formally sentenced on May 29, 2009, to 19 years to life in the California State Prison System and will be 88 years old before becoming eligible for parole.

Clarkson's private funeral service was held on February 19, 2003 in Los Angeles, California. Her remains had been cremated and interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, in the Columbarium Rotunda attached to the Chapel in Hollywood. On February 23, 2003, her family and friends attended a memorial in her honor which was held at Henry Fonda Music Box Theatre (below) in Hollywood, California.

Celebrity Grave: Comic & Filmmaker Buster Keaton 1966

2012-02-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

Buster Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American comic actor and filmmaker. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face."

Keaton was recognized as the seventh-greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton the 21st-greatest male actor of all time. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, [when] he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies." Orson Welles stated that Keaton's The General is the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made. A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight and Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the magazine's survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.

Keaton died of lung cancer on February 1, 1966, in Woodland Hills, California. Despite being diagnosed with the terminal illness in January 1966, he was never told that he was terminally ill, and thought that he had bronchitis. Confined to a hospital during his final days for treatment, Keaton was restless and paced the room endlessly. In a British television documentary on his career, his widow Eleanor told producers of Thames Television that Keaton was up out of bed and moving around, and even played cards with friends who came to visit at their house the day before he died. Eleanor Keaton died in 1998, from emphysema and lung cancer, aged 80.

Buster Keaton is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Hollywood Hills.

Celebrity Grave: "Poltergeist" Actress Heather O'Rourke 1988

2012-02-01T15:00:00.001-08:00

Heather O'Rourke (December 27, 1975 – February 1, 1988) was an American child actress who played Carol Anne Freeling in the Poltergeist film trilogy and made several television guest appearances.

O'Rourke became ill in early 1987 and was misdiagnosed by Kaiser Permanente Hospital as having Crohn's disease. She was prescribed medicine to treat the Crohn's, which allegedly "puffed up [her] cheeks." On January 31, 1988, O'Rourke suddenly became ill again, vomiting and unable to keep anything down. The next morning she collapsed while preparing to leave for the hospital and her stepfather called paramedics. O'Rourke suffered a cardiac arrest en route to the hospital, and after resuscitation was airlifted by helicopter to Children's Hospital and Health Center in San Diego, where she died later that afternoon.

Speaking to reporters, O'Rourke's manager David Wardlow initially announced that it was believed O'Rourke died of influenza. However, hospital spokesman Vincent Bond announced that O'Rourke died during surgery to repair an acute bowel obstruction (caused by congenital stenosis of the intestine) complicated by septic shock; this report was corroborated by the San Diego County coroner's office on February 3, two days after her death. Later reports changed the specific cause of death to cardiac arrest caused by septic shock brought on by the intestinal stenosis.

O'Rourke was interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery on February 5, 1988. Mourners included Henry Winkler, Linda Purl, and Rick Schroder.

Director William Desmond Taylor Found Dead in Alvarado Court Apts 1922

2012-02-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

William Desmond Taylor (April 26, 1872 – February 1, 1922) was an Irish-born American actor, successful film director of silent movies and a popular figure in the growing Hollywood film colony of the 1910s and early 1920s. His murder on February 1, 1922, along with other Hollywood scandals such as the Roscoe Arbuckle trial, led to a frenzy of sensationalistic and often fabricated newspaper reports. In the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, the name Norma Desmond is a reference to both Taylor's middle name and one of his actress friends, Mabel Normand. Taylor's murder remains officially unsolved.

Murder

At 7:30 a.m. on the morning of February 2, 1922, the body of William Desmond Taylor was found inside his bungalow at the Alvarado Court Apartments, 404-B South Alvarado Street, in the Westlake Park area of downtown Los Angeles, California, which was then known as a trendy and affluent neighbourhood.

The Alvarado Court Apartments stood on the southeast corner of Alvardo and Maryland Streets in the then fashionable Westlake District. The property is now a Ross clothing store parking lot.

A crowd gathered inside and someone identifying himself as a doctor stepped forward, made a cursory examination of the body, declared the victim had died of a stomach hemorrhage and was never seen again, perhaps owing to his own embarrassment, because when doubts later arose, the body was rolled over and it was discovered the 49-year-old film director had been shot in the back.

In Taylor's pockets were a wallet holding $78, a silver cigarette case, a Waltham pocket watch and an ivory toothpick. A two carat (400 mg) diamond ring was on his finger. A large but undetermined sum of cash which Taylor had shown to his accountant the day before was missing and apparently never accounted for. After some investigation, the time of Taylor's death was set at 7:50 in the evening of February 1, 1922. Whilst being interviewed by the police five days after the director's body was found, Mary Minter said that following the murder a friend, director and actor Marshall Neilan, told her Taylor had made several highly "delusional" statements about some of his social acquaintances (including her) during the weeks before his death. She also said Neilan thought Taylor had recently become "insane."

More than a dozen individuals were eventually named as suspects by both the press and the police. Newspaper reports at the time were both overwhelmingly sensationalized and speculative, even fabricated, and the murder was used as the basis for much subsequent "true crime" fiction. Many inaccuracies were carried forward by later writers who used articles from the popular press as their sources.

William Desmond Taylor is buried under his birth name "William Cunningham Deane-Tanner" in the Cathedral Mausoleum at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollwood, California.

Roman Polanski Skips Bail & Flees to London 1978

2012-02-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

Roman Polański (Born August 18, 1933 as Rajmund Roman Thierry Polanski) is a Polish-French film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in countries such as Poland, Britain, America and France, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers." His films cross national and political boundaries, and expose many of the "dark psychological desires" that are common among all people.

Roman Polanski sexual abuse case

On March 11, 1977, Polanski, then 43 years old, was arrested for the sexual assault of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer during a photo shoot for French Vogue magazine. Soon after he was indicted on six counts of criminal behavior, including rape. At his arraignment Polanski pled not guilty to all charges.

Geimer's attorney next arranged a plea bargain, which Polanski accepted, where five of the six charges would be dismissed. As a result, Polanski pled guilty to the charge of "Unlawful Sexual Intercourse," with a minor, "a different crime than rape," states prosecuting attorney Roger Gunson. Polanski was then ordered to undergo 90-days of psychiatric evaluation at Chino State Prison.

On release from prison, Polanski expected that at final sentencing he would be put on probation. However, the judge had apparently changed his mind in the interim and now "suggested" to Polanski's attorney, Douglas Dalton, that more jail time and possible deportation were in order. Polanski was also told by his attorney that despite the fact that the prosecuting attorneys recommended probation, "the judge could no longer be trusted . . ." and his representations were "worthless."

Upon learning of the judge's plans Polanski fled to France on February 1, 1978, just hours before sentencing by the judge. As a French citizen, he has been protected from extradition and has lived mostly in France since then.

On September 26, 2009, Polanski was arrested while in Switzerland at the request of U.S. authorities. He was kept under house arrest at his home in Gstaad while awaiting decision of appeals fighting extradition to the U.S. On July 12, 2010, however, the Swiss rejected the U.S. request and instead declared him a "free man" and released him from custody, although all six of the original charges still remain pending in the U.S.

Celebrity Grave: Actress & Screenwriter Barbara La Marr 1926

2012-01-30T17:00:00.000-08:00

Barbara La Marr (July 28, 1896 – January 30, 1926) was an American stage and film actress, cabaret artist and screenwriter.

Early life

She was born Reatha Dale Watson to William Wallace and Rosana "Rose" Watson in Yakima, Washington. Her father was an editor for a newspaper, and her mother had a son, Henry, born in 1878, and a daughter, Violet, born in February 1881, from a previous marriage. The couple wed some time during 1884, and they had William Watson, Jr., born in June 1886 in Washington. He would later, in the 1920s, become a vaudeville comedian under the stage name of "Billy Devore." The Watsons lived in various locations during La Marr's formative years. By 1900, she was living with her parents in Portland, Oregon, with her brother William, her half-sister Violet Ross, and Violet's husband Arvel Ross. As a child, La Marr also performed in a few stage productions in Tacoma, Washington.

By 1910, La Marr was living in Fresno, California, with her parents. Some time after 1911, the family moved to Los Angeles, and later settled at 220 San Jose Street in Burbank, California. In January 1913, La Marr's half-sister, now going by the name of Violet Ake, took her then 16-year-old sister on a three-day automobile excursion with a man named C.C. Boxley. They drove up to Santa Barbara, but after a few days La Marr felt that they were not going to let her return home. Ake and Boxley finally let La Marr return to Los Angeles after they realized that there were warrants issued for their arrests accusing them of kidnapping. This episode was published in several newspapers, and La Marr even testified against her sister, but the case was eventually dropped.

La Marr's name appeared frequently in newspaper headlines during the next few years. In November 1913, she came back from Arizona and announced that she was the newly-widowed wife of a rancher named Jack Lytell, and that they were supposedly married in Mexico. As legend goes, Lytell became enamored of La Marr as he saw her one day riding in an automobile while he was out on horseback. He rode up to her car and swept her on his horse and rode off with her. They were married the next day. She also stated that she loathed the name Reatha and preferred to be called by the childhood nickname "Beth."

Career

After marrying and moving with her husband to New York City, La Marr found employment writing screenplays and her association with filmmakers led to her returning to Los Angeles and making her film debut in 1920. Over the next few years she acted frequently in films, and was widely publicised as "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World." With this, she rapidly shot to stardom.

La Marr made the successful leap from writer to actress in Douglas Fairbanks' The Nut (1921), appeared in over 30 films, wrote seven successful screenplays for United Artists and Fox studios, and danced in musical comedies on Broadway. She is also said to have filmed dancing shorts in New York City, Chicago, and in Los Angeles, with such diverse partners as Rudolph Valentino and Clifton Webb.

Among La Marr's films are The Prisoner of Zenda and Trifling Women, both 1922 releases directed by Rex Ingram.

Personal life

La Marr married for the first time at the age of 17, and was ultimately married five times. At the time of her death she was married to the actor Jack Dougherty. Some years after her death, it was revealed that she had mothered a son by a man whose name has never been released. The child, Marvin Carville La Marr, was adopted after her death by the actress ZaSu Pitts and her husband, film executive Tom Gallery. The child was renamed Don Gallery and grew up to become an actor and a sometime boyfriend of Elizabeth Taylor; he now lives in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

She was known as "The Girl Who Is Too Beautiful," after a Hearst newspaper feature writer, Adela Rogers St. Johns, saw a judge sending her home during the police beat in Los Angeles because she was too beautiful and young to be on her own.

La Marr said that she had been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Watson of Yakima, Washington. Depending on her mood, La Marr claimed to be of different exotic ancestries. Some film historians, however, believe that this was a tall tale to glamorize herself, when, in fact, she was the biological child of the Watsons.

Her former dance partner, Robert Hobday (stage name Robert Carville), was named as her alleged lover by her former third husband Phil Ainsworth in his divorce suit. Hobday's sister, Virginia, had been La Marr's manager and friend, who later went on to marry Jules Roth, manager of the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, and La Marr's former lover.

Later years and death

Although her film career flourished, she also embraced the fast-paced Hollywood nightlife, remarking in an interview that she slept no more than two hours a night.

During this time she became addicted to heroin. She died suddenly from tuberculosis and nephritis in Altadena, California and was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

La Marr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1621 Vine Street.

Filmography

1920 Harriet and the Piper Tam O'Shanter Girl Credited as Barbara Deely
Alternative title: Paying the Piper
Flame of Youth Story
The Mother of His Children - Story
Credited as Barbara La Marr Deely
Rose of Nome - Story
Credited as Barbara La Marr Deely
The Little Grey Mouse - Story
The Land of Jazz - Story
Credited as Barbara La Marr Deely
1921 The Nut Claudine Dupree
Desperate Trails Lady Lou
The Three Musketeers Milady de Winter
Cinderella of the Hills Kate Gradley Credited as Barbara La Marr Deely
1922 Arabian Love Themar
Domestic Relations Mrs. Martin
The Prisoner of Zenda Antoinette de Mauban
Trifling Women Jacqueline de Séverac/Zareda
Quincy Adams Sawyer Lindy Putnam
1923 The Hero Hester Lane
The Brass Bottle The Queen
Poor Men's Wives Laura Bedford/Laura Maberne
Souls for Sale Leva Lemaire
Strangers of the Night Anna Valeska Alternative title: Ambrose Applejohn's Adventure
St. Elmo Agnes Hunt
The Eternal Struggle Camille Lenoir Alternative title: Masters of Women
The Eternal City Donna Roma
1924 Thy Name Is Woman Guerita
The Shooting of Dan McGrew Lady Known as Lou
The White Moth Mona Reid/The White Moth Writer, uncredited
Hello, 'Frisco
Sandra Sandra Waring
My Husband's Wives - Story
1925 The Heart of a Siren Isabella Echevaria Alternative title: The Heart of a Temptress
The White Monkey Fleur Forsyte
1926 The Girl from Montmartre Emilia Faneaux

Popular culture

In the 1930s, Louis B. Mayer named the actress Hedy Lamarr after Barbara La Marr, who had been one of his favorite actresses.

La Marr is referred to in the Flanagan and Allen song "Underneath the Arches" during the break when Ches Allen reads out the headlines from a 1926 newspaper.

References

1900 United States Federal Census, Portland Ward 7, Multnomah County, Oregon, June 1, 1900, Enumeration District 66, Sheet 1B.
1910 United States Federal Census, Fresno, Township 3, California, April 22, 1910.
The Duluth News Tribune, "Stolen Twice, Is Now Widow", November 17, 1913.
Oakland Tribune, "Two Are Accused Of Kidnapping Girl", January 5, 1913, Page 39.
Los Angeles Times, "Serious Charge Against Couple. Child Stealing Complaint Issued", January 5, 1913, p. 11.
Los Angeles Times, "Alleged Child Stealers Surrender Themselves.", January 7, 1913, p. 3.
Los Angeles Times, "Girl Missing: Warrants Out. Absent Maid's Father Takes Drastic Action.", January 3, 1913, p. 13.

Celebrity Grave: Writer Sidney Sheldon 2007

2012-01-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

Sidney Sheldon (February 11, 1917 – January 30, 2007) was an American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70) and Hart to Hart (1979–84), but it was not until after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game (1982), The Other Side of Midnight (1973) and Rage of Angels (1980) that he became most famous.

Life and career

Sheldon was born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago, Illinois, to parents of Russian Jewish ancestry, Ascher "Otto" Schechtel (1894-1967), manager of a jewelry store, and Natalie Marcus. At 10, he made his first sale, $5 for a poem.[1] During the Depression, he worked at a variety of jobs, attended Northwestern University and contributed short plays to drama groups.[1]

In 1937 he moved to Hollywood, California, where he reviewed scripts and collaborated on a number of B movies.[2] Sheldon enlisted in the military during World War II as a pilot in the War Training Service, a branch of the Army Air Corps,[2] However, his unit was disbanded before Sheldon could see any action. He then returned to civilian life and moved to New York where he began writing musicals for the Broadway stage while continuing to write screenplays for both MGM Studios and Paramount Pictures. He earned a reputation as a prolific writer; for example, at one time he had three musicals on Broadway: a rewritten The Merry Widow, Jackpot, and Dream with Music.[1] His success on Broadway brought him back to Hollywood where his first assignment was The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay of 1947.

When television became the new hot medium, he decided to try his hand in it. "I suppose I needed money," he remembered. "I met Patty Duke one day at lunch. So I produced The Patty Duke Show, and I did something nobody else in TV ever did. For seven years, I wrote almost every single episode of the series."[1] He also wrote for the series Hart to Hart and Nancy. Most famously he wrote the series I Dream of Jeannie, which he also created and produced, which lasted for five seasons from 1965–1970. It was "During the last year of I Dream of Jeannie, I decided to try a novel," he said in 1982. "Each morning from 9 until noon, I had a secretary at the studio take all calls. I mean every single call. I wrote each morning - or rather, dictated - and then I faced the TV business."[1]

In 1969, Sheldon wrote his first novel, The Naked Face, which earned him a nomination for the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America in the category of Best First Novel.

His next novel, The Other Side of Midnight, went to #1 on The New York Times bestseller list as did several ensuing novels, a number of which were also made into motion pictures or TV miniseries.

His novels often featured determined women who persevere in a tough world run by hostile men.[1] The novels contained a lot of suspense and devices to keep the reader turning the page:[1]
"I try to write my books so the reader can't put them down," he explained in a 1982 interview. "I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It's the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter."

Most of his readers were women.[1] Asked why this was the case he said: "I like to write about women who are talented and capable, but most important, retain their femininity. Women have tremendous power - their femininity, because men can't do without it."[1] Books were Sheldon's favorite medium. "I love writing books," he commented. "Movies are a collaborative medium, and everyone is second-guessing you. When you do a novel you're on your own. It's a freedom that doesn't exist in any other medium."[1]

Sheldon created, produced and wrote I Dream of Jeannie in his co-production capacity with Screen Gems. He wrote all but two dozen scripts in five years, sometimes using three pseudonyms {"Mark Rowane", "Allan Devon", "Christopher Golato"}, while simultaneously writing scripts for "The Patty Duke Show". He also used the same pseudonyms in writing all seventeen episodes of Nancy. Sheldon did this because, as he later admitted, he felt his name was appearing too often in the credits as creator, producer, copyright owner and writer of his TV series.

Sheldon was married for 30 years to Jorja Curtright Sheldon, a stage and film actress who later became an accomplished and well known interior designer. She died of a heart attack in 1985. He then remarried Alexandra Kostoff, a former child actress and advertising executive of Macedonian origin,[3] in Las Vegas in 1989. His daughter, Mary Sheldon, became a novelist in her own right.

He struggled with bipolar disorder for years; he contemplated suicide at 17 (talked out of it by his father, who discovered him), as detailed in his autobiography published in 2005, The Other Side of Me.

Sheldon died from complications arising from pneumonia at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California.[2][4]

He was cremated. His ashes were interred in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Awards

Sheldon won an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (1947) for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, a Tony Award (1959) for his musical Redhead, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on I Dream of Jeannie, an NBC sitcom.

Bibliography

Novels

The Naked Face (1970)
The Other Side of Midnight (1973)
A Stranger in the Mirror (1976)
Bloodline (1977)
Rage of Angels (1980)
Master of the Game (1982)
If Tomorrow Comes (1985)
Windmills of the Gods (1987)
The Sands of Time (1988)
Memories of Midnight (1990)
The Doomsday Conspiracy (1991)
The Stars Shine Down (1992)
Nothing Lasts Forever (1994)
Morning, Noon and Night (1995)
The Best Laid Plans (1997)
Tell Me Your Dreams (1998)
The Sky Is Falling (2001)
Are You Afraid of the Dark? (2004)

Autobiography

The Other Side of Me (2005)

Broadway Plays

The Merry Widow
Alice in Arms
Redhead
Roman Candle
Gomes(London)

Films

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
Three Guys Named Mike
Annie Get Your Gun
Dream Wife
You're Never Too Young
Anything Goes
Billy Rose's Jumbo
Bloodline

Television

I Dream of Jeannie
If Tomorrow Comes
The Patty Duke Show
Hart to Hart

References

1.^ "Author Sidney Sheldon dies at 89", Associated Press, 30 January 2007. Archive copy.
2.^ Sidney Sheldon's biography
3.^ Sidney Sheldon
4.^ "Sidney Sheldon, Author of Steamy Novels, Dies at 89", The New York Times, 31 January 2007.

Celebrity Grave: Actor Alan Ladd 1964 "The Blue Dahlia"

2012-01-29T18:00:00.000-08:00

Alan Walbridge Ladd (September 3, 1913 – January 29, 1964) was an American film actor.[1]

Early life

Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was the only child of Ina Raleigh Ladd and Alan Ladd, Sr. He was of English ancestry. His father died when he was four, and his mother relocated to Oklahoma City where she married Jim Beavers, a housepainter. The family then moved again to North Hollywood, California where Ladd became a high-school swimming and diving champion and participated in high school dramatics at North Hollywood High School, graduating on February 1, 1934. He opened his own hamburger and malt shop, which he called Tiny's Patio. He worked briefly as a studio carpenter (as did his stepfather) and for a short time was part of the Universal Pictures studio school for actors. But Universal decided he was too blond and too short and dropped him.[2] Intent on acting, he found work in radio.

Career

Ladd began by appearing in dozens of films in small roles, including Citizen Kane in which he played one of the "faceless" reporters who are always shown in silhouette. He first gained some recognition with a featured role in the wartime thriller Joan of Paris, 1942.[3] For his next role, his manager, Sue Carol, found a vehicle which made Ladd's career, Graham Greene's This Gun for Hire in which he played "Raven," a hitman with a conscience. "Once Ladd had acquired an unsmiling hardness, he was transformed from an extra to a phenomenon. Ladd's calm slender ferocity make it clear that he was the first American actor to show the killer as a cold angel." - David Thomson (A Biographical Dictionary of Film, 1975) [4] Both the film and Ladd's performance played an important role in the development of the "gangster" genre: "That the old fashioned motion picture gangster with his ugly face, gaudy cars, and flashy clothes was replaced by a smoother, better looking, and better dressed bad man was largely the work of Mr. Ladd." - New York Times obituary (January 30, 1964).[4] Ladd was teamed with actress Veronica Lake in this film, and despite the fact that it was Robert Preston who played the romantic lead, the Ladd-Lake pairing captured the public's imagination, and would continue in another three films. (They appeared in a total of seven films together, but three were only guest shots in all-star musical revues.)

Ladd went on to star in many Paramount Pictures' films,[5] with a brief timeout for military service in the United States Army Air Force's First Motion Picture Unit. He appeared in Dashiell Hammett's story The Glass Key, his second pairing with Lake, and Lucky Jordan, with Helen Walker. His cool, unsmiling persona proved popular with wartime audiences, and he was quickly established as one of the top box office stars of the decade.[6]

In 1946, he starred in a trio of silver screen classics: the big screen adaptation of Richard Henry Dana's maritime classic, Two Years Before the Mast (for which he also received critical acclaim), the Raymond Chandler original mystery The Blue Dahlia (his third pairing with Lake), and the World War II espionage thriller, O.S.S.

He formed his own production companies for film and radio and then starred in his own syndicated series Box 13, which ran from 1948-49. Ladd and Robert Preston starred in the 1948 western film, Whispering Smith, which in 1961 would become a short-lived NBC television series, starring Audie Murphy.

In 1949's version of The Great Gatsby, Ladd had the featured role of Jay Gatsby.

Ladd played the title role in the 1953 western Shane. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It was listed at No. 45 on the American Film Institute's 2007 ranking of "100 Years ... 100 Movies."

Ladd made the Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll three times: in 1947, 1953 and 1954.[2]

When former agent Albert R. Broccoli formed Warwick Films with his partner Irving Allen, they heard Ladd was unhappy with Paramount and was leaving the studio. With his wife and agent Sue Carol, they negotiated for Ladd to appear in the first three of their films made in England and released through Columbia Pictures The Red Beret/Paratrooper (1953), Hell Below Zero (based on Hammond Innes's book The White South) (1954) and The Black Knight with each co-written by Ladd's regular screenwriter Richard Maibaum. (1954)[7] In 1954 Ladd formed a new production company, Jaguar Productions, originally releasing his films through Warner Bros. and then with All the Young Men through Columbia.

In November 1962, he was found lying unconscious in a pool of blood with a bullet wound near his heart, an unsuccessful suicide attempt.[2] In 1963 Ladd filmed a supporting role in The Carpetbaggers. He would not live to see its release. On January 29, 1964 he was found dead in Palm Springs, California, of an acute overdose of "alcohol and three other drugs," at the age of 50; his death was ruled accidental.[8] He was entombed in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Not until June 28, 1964 did Carpetbaggers producer Joseph E. Levine hold an elaborate premiere screening in New York City with an afterparty staged by his wife at The Four Seasons Restaurant.[9]

Alan Ladd has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1601 Vine Street.[10] His handprint appears in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood.

Personal life

He had married a high-school acquaintance, Midge Harrold. Their only child, a son named Alan Ladd, Jr., was born in 1937. Ladd's stepfather died suddenly. Then his mother, who suffered from depression, committed suicide by poison.

In 1942, Ladd married his agent/manager, former movie actress Sue Carol.

Ladd owned properties in Beverly Hills and, in Palm Springs, Alan Ladd Hardware. His son by his first wife Midge Harrold, Alan Ladd, Jr., is a motion picture executive and producer and founder of The Ladd Company. His daughter actress Alana, who co-starred with her father in Guns of the Timberland and Duel of Champions, is married to the veteran talk radio broadcaster Michael Jackson. Another son, actor David Ladd, who co-starred with Ladd as a child in The Proud Rebel, married Charlie's Angels star Cheryl Ladd, 1973-1980. Actress Jordan Ladd is his granddaughter.[11]

Reports of his height vary from 5'5" to 5'9" (from his military records) (1.65 to 1.75 m), with 5'6" (1.68 m) being the most generally accepted today.[2][12]

References

1.^ Obituary Variety, February 5, 1964, page 63.
2.^ Linet, Beverly. Ladd: The Life, the Legend, the Legacy of Alan Ladd. New York: Arbor House, 1979. ISBN 0-87795-203-5
3.^ Alan Ladd 8/12
4.^ Alan Ladd
5.^ City of nets: a portrait of Hollywood in the 1940's By Otto Friedrich
6.^ Alan Ladd - Biography - MSN Movies
7.^ Broccoli, Albert R. and Zec, Donald When the Snow Melts: The Autobiography of Cubby Broccoli Trans-Atlantic Publications 1999
8.^ Alan Ladd Death Ruled Accidental UPI. The Bulletin of Bend and Central Oregon Feb 5, 1964.
9.^ Kilgallen, Dorothy (June 30, 1964). "Voice of Broadway". New York Journal American. p. 25. 10.^ Alan Ladd, Awards 11.^ MSN - Movies: Jordan Ladd 12.^ Shipman, David. The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years. New York: Hill and Wang, 1979. ISBN 0-8090-5170-2

Celebrity Grave: Comedian, Actor & Suicide Freddie Prinze 1977

2012-01-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

Freddie Prinze (June 22, 1954 – January 29, 1977) was an American actor and stand-up comedian. He was best known as the star of Chico and the Man. He was the father of actor Freddie Prinze, Jr.

Early life

Prinze was born Frederick Karl Pruetzel at St. Clair's Hospital in New York City, the son of Maria Graniela Pruetzel and Edward Karl Pruetzel. His mother was Puerto Rican, and his father, a Hungarian of Lutheran and Jewish backgrounds, immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1934. He identified himself as Puerto Rican, and for comedic purposes called himself a "Hungarican."[1][2][3][4]

Prinze was raised in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood in Washington Heights, New York City.[5] He began his education at a private Lutheran school, in a religious compromise by his parents (his mother took him to Catholic mass on Sundays). When Prinze was a small child, his mother enrolled him in ballet classes to deal with his weight problem. Without telling his parents, Prinze successfully auditioned for the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts, where he was introduced to drama and continued ballet—and where he discovered his gift for comedy while entertaining crowds in the boys restroom. He was also a small time hustler and drug dealer in his neighborhood of 157th Street and Broadway. He dropped out of school in his senior year to become a stand-up comedian.

Career

Prinze worked at several comedy clubs in New York City, including The Improv and Catch a Rising Star where he introduced himself to audiences as a "Hungarican" (part Hungarian, part Puerto Rican). For the sake of his budding comedic career, he changed his surname to "Prinze," which he chose because, according to his friend David Brenner, he originally wanted to be known as the King of comedy, but Alan King already had that last name, so he would be the Prince of comedy instead.

During 1973, he made his first television appearance on one of the last episodes of The Jack Paar Show. In December 1973, his biggest break came with an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Prinze was the first young comedian to be asked to have a sit-down chat with Carson on his first appearance. (Prinze appeared on and guest hosted The Tonight Show on several other occasions). He also appeared on the Midnight Special show to perform his comic routine. From 1974 to 1977, Prinze starred as Francisco "Chico" Rodriguez in the NBC TV series Chico and the Man with Jack Albertson. The show was an instant hit.

Prinze made several appearances on the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts, most notably at the roasts for Sammy Davis Jr. and Muhammad Ali. In 1975, he released a comedy album that was taped live at Mr. Kelly's in Chicago titled Looking Good—his catch phrase from Chico and the Man. In 1976, he starred in a made-for-TV movie, The Million Dollar Rip-Off.

Prinze had a little-known talent for singing, examples of which could be heard in the background of the title song of the Tony Orlando and Dawn album To Be With You, in his appearances on their variety show, and on rare occasions on his own sitcom.

About four months prior to his death, Prinze had signed a multi-year deal with NBC worth $6 million over five years. In the months before he died, he had a strong fixation on how John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He also developed an obsession with the film Taxi Driver, viewing it repeatedly.

Upon becoming wealthy, Prinze took martial arts lessons from Robert Wall, a student of Bruce Lee who appeared in Enter the Dragon and Return of the Dragon. Soon after, Wall became godfather to Prinze's newborn son Freddie Prinze, Jr.

Personal life

Prinze married Katherine Cochran in October 1975, with whom he had one son, future actor Freddie Prinze, Jr. In 1976, after his arrest for driving under the influence of quaaludes, his wife filed for divorce on the grounds that his escalating drug dependence was endangering her and their son.

Death

During the early morning hours of January 28, 1977, after receiving a restraining order from his ex-wife the previous evening, Prinze, who occasionally told friends that "life isn't worth living," made a series of farewell phone calls to family, friends and management from his hotel room at the Beverly Comstock Hotel (above, renamed Beverly Hills Plaza Hotel). His business manager, Marvin "Dusty" Snyder, was alarmed after receiving one of the calls and rushed over to Prinze's room. When Snyder arrived, Prinze continued his rueful phone calls, telling his mother "Mom, I love you very much, but I can't go on. I need to find peace." Snyder called Prinze's psychologist from the next room about what was happening, but the psychologist insisted that Prinze was in no actual danger. Snyder returned to Prinze, who supposedly called his ex-wife and said "I love you, Kathy. I love the baby, but I need to find peace. I can't go on."

After the call, Prinze pulled out a gun from the sofa. Snyder tried to intervene, but Prinze shot himself in the head,[6] and was rushed to the UCLA Medical Center to be placed on life support following emergency surgery. Prinze's family removed him from life support, and he died at 1:00 pm on January 29. He was 22 years of age.

In 1977, the death was ruled a suicide. In a civil case brought years later, a jury found that his death was accidental.[7] Prinze had a history of playing with guns, faking suicide attempts to frighten his friends for his amusement.[8] He had left a note stating that the decision to take his life was his alone, but because he pulled the trigger in the presence of a witness —it gave enough weight to the argument that he really was not planning to take his own life that night.[9]

Freddie Prinze is entombed at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Hollywood Hills in the Court of Remembrance, Sanctuary of Light.

Prinze's mother wrote a book about her son, The Freddie Prinze Story, which was published in 1978. In September 1979, the TV movie Can You Hear the Laughter? The Story of Freddie Prinze premiered.

Freddie Prinze was a focal point of one of the storylines in the movie Fame set in Prinze's alma mater Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts. The character of Ralph Garcy (stage name for Raul Garcia) played by Barry Miller speaks often of growing up with Prinze and seeing him as the local neighborhood hero. Prinze's death affects him profoundly, and Garcy credits the event with inspiring his own career. He says he is doing it "for Freddie." Later, Garcy's stand-up career shows similar promise, followed by depression, drugs, and ultimately near self-destruction. The character of Doris Finsecker (Maureen Teefy) in one scene screams at Garcy, saying he is not Freddie, and he does not have to do (self-destructive behaviors) just because Freddie did them.

Prinze also received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame a few decades after his death. In 2001, TV Land began showing reruns of Chico and the Man.

References

1.^ Nordheimer, Jon (1977-01-29). "Freddie Prinze". The New York Times.
2.^ Maeder, Jay (1999-06-09). "FREDDIE PRINZE EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD". New York Daily News.
3.^ "Freddie Prinze". The Fresno Bee Republican. 1975-07-25.
4.^ Lester, David (1993). Understanding Suicide: A Case Study Approach. Michigan: Nova Science Publishers. pp. 103. ISBN 1560721499.
5.^ Nordheimer, Jon. "Freddie Prinze Wounded in Head; Police Say TV Star Shot Himself; PRINZE, THE TV STAR, IS WOUNDED IN HEAD", The New York Times, January 29, 1977. Accessed June 11, 2008.
6.^ "Freddie Prinze: Too Much, Too Soon". Time Magazine. February 7, 1977.
7.^ The Show Must Go on: How the Deaths of Lead Actors Have Affected Television By Douglas Snauffer, Joel Thurm. Mcfarland press. p. 74.
8.^ http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,295817,00.html
9.^ http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=prinzefredd

Celebrity Grave: Entertainer Jimmy Durante 1980

2012-01-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

James Francis "Jimmy" Durante (February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. His jokes about his nose included referring to it as a "Schnozzola," and the word became his nickname.

Durante suffered a stroke in 1972, and used a wheelchair during the last years of his life. He died of pneumonia in Santa Monica, California, on January 29, 1980 and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City.

Celebrity Grave: Actor Harold "Hal" Smith 1994 "Otis Campbell"

2012-01-28T15:00:00.000-08:00

Harold John "Hal" Smith (August 24, 1916 – January 28, 1994) was an American character actor and voice-over artist. Smith is best known as Otis Campbell, the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show and was the voice of many characters in animated cartoon shorts. He is also known to radio listeners as John Avery Whittaker on Adventures in Odyssey.

Early life

He was born in Petoskey, Michigan. Smith spent a significant part of his early years living in Massena, New York and graduated from the Massena High School class of 1936. His mother was a seamstress, and his father worked at the local Aluminum Company Of America. He later worked as a disc jockey and voice talent for WIBX Radio in Utica, New York from 1936-1943. After serving in the Special Services of World War II, he traveled to Hollywood and appeared in many television shows such as I Married Joan, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and The Red Skelton Show.[1]

Career

Screen actor

His most famous on screen character was Otis Campbell, the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show during most of the series run from 1960 to 1968. He would often comically let himself into his regular jail cell using the key which was stored within reach of the two comfortable jail rooms. Hal Smith was the opposite of his character. According to longtime friends Andy Griffith and Don Knotts, he did not drink in real life. Otis Campbell stopped appearing in the show towards the end of the series due to concerns by the show's sponsors over the portrayal of excessive drinking. Smith appeared as Calver Weems in the Don Knotts comedy, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken in 1966, playing essentially the same town drunk character as Otis Campbell.

Hal Smith did play Otis Campbell one more time in the 1986 TV movie Return to Mayberry. In the TV movie, Otis is the town's ice cream truck driver and is reported to have been "sober for years." Smith later used his Otis Campbell character in commercial spots for the Mothers Against Drunk Driving organization and appeared as Otis in Alan Jackson's "Don't Rock the Juke Box" music video.

He also had a morning children's show at television station KTLA called The Pancake Man, sponsored by The International House of Pancakes during the late 1960s. He reprised the Pancake Man role as "Kartoon King" in an episode of The Brady Bunch in 1971 called "The Winner."

Voice actor

Smith did much work in Hanna-Barbera cartoons in the 1970s, and in the early 1960s, he voiced Taurus, the Scots-accented mechanic of the spaceship Starduster for the series Space Angel. According to the book: Space Patrol, missions of daring in the name of early television "It's rumored that Gene Roddenberry was a huge fan of the show and patterned Star Trek's engineer, 'Mr Scott,' after McCloud's Scottish sidekick, 'Taurus.'" He is also mentioned in the ending credits of Hong Kong Phooey. In 1977, he was the voice of Grandpa Josiah in the cartoon TV special, Halloween Is Grinch Night. He was very active with voices in 1980s. He was Sludge in the Smurfs television series and Goofy in Mickey's Christmas Carol. For Disney's DuckTales and Super Ducktales he was the voice of Scrooge McDuck's rival Flintheart Glomgold and absent-minded scientist Gyro Gearloose.

Smith also voiced the Disney cartoon character Goofy after Pinto Colvig died and also provided the voice of Owl and Winnie-the-Pooh in many of the Winnie the Pooh shorts and feature films. In the 1960s, he was one of the most sought after voice actors in Hollywood. He provided the voices for many characters in Davey and Goliath. From 1960 to 1961, he was the voice of Elmer Fudd after Arthur Q. Bryan died. In 1963 he voiced Dr. Todd Goodheart, Belly Laguna and Dr. Von Upp in the Funny Company cartoon series. From 1964 to 1966, he was the voice of Yappee in the Hanna Barbera cartoon shorts Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey. He was also the voice of Cosmo Creeps and Mr. Bluestone the Great/Phantom, in Scooby Doo, Where are You?

In 1983, he reprised his role as Owl and voiced Winnie The Pooh in the Disney Channel's Welcome to Pooh Corner television series to replace longtime actor Sterling Holloway. In 1988's, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh TV series, Jim Cummings took over as Pooh with Tigger (same voice actor as The Tasmanian Devil on Looney Tunes) while Smith again played Owl. The two voice actors sometimes rotated the voice of Winnie the Pooh. In 1991, Smith provided the voice of Philippe the horse in the 1991 Disney film Beauty and the Beast.

Starting in 1987 he was the voice of the main character John Avery Whittaker on the Focus on the Family radio drama Adventures in Odyssey. He was responsible for much of the cast joining the show after he signed on, and he continued recording episodes until a few weeks before his death, even while his health deteriorated. Additionally, he voiced dozens of other characters during the over 250 episodes he participated in.

Smith was also very active working in television commercials as various characters. He provided on screen promoting for 3 Musketeers, United Van Lines, Hickory Farms, Toyota, Green Giant, General Mills, Mattel, Pizza Hut, Chicken of the Sea tuna, Ivory soap, Doctor Ross dog food, Pioneer Chicken, Bell Telephone Company, and hundreds of other companies.

Personal life

Smith was a long-time active member of Westwood Hills Congregational Church in Los Angeles. He is entombed at Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California.

References

1.^ Michaud, John D. III, ed (2004) [2004]. More than Otis: No Bull! A Salute to Hollywood Actor Hal J. Smith (1st edition ed.). Massena, New York: Stubbs Printing.

Michael Jackson's Shrine Auditorium Fire Accident 1984

2012-01-27T15:00:00.000-08:00

On January 27, 1984, Michael Jackson and other members of the Jacksons filmed a Pepsi Cola commercial, overseen by executive Phil Dusenberry, from ad agency BBDO and Pepsi's Worldwide Creative Director, Alan Pottasch at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. In front of a full house of fans during a simulated concert, pyrotechnics accidentally set Jackson's hair on fire. He suffered second-degree burns to his scalp. Jackson underwent treatment to hide the scars on his scalp, and he also had his third rhinoplasty shortly thereafter. Jackson never recovered from this injury.

Shrine Auditorium

Pepsi settled out of court, and Jackson donated his $1.5 million settlement to the Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, California, which now has a "Michael Jackson Burn Center" in honor of his donation. Dusenberry later recounted the episode in his memoir, Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall of Fame Career in Advertising.

Celebrity Grave: Dancer & Entertainer Adele Astaire 1981

2012-01-25T17:00:00.000-08:00

Lady Charles Cavendish (September 10, 1896 – January 25, 1981),[1] better known as Adele Astaire, was an American dancer and entertainer. She was Fred Astaire's elder sister. Her birthdate was often given as 1897 or 1898, but the 1900 U.S. census showed her birth year as 1896.

Life and career

Adele was born Adele Marie Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Johanna "Ann" (née Geilus), an American-born Lutheran of German descent, and Frederic "Fritz" Emanuel Austerlitz (September, 1868–1924), an Austrian Roman Catholic brewer of Jewish descent from Vienna. Adele became an Episcopalian, like her younger brother.

In 1905 Adele Astaire had a successful vaudeville act with her younger brother, Fred Astaire. They developed it into a celebrated adult career on Broadway and on the London stage. Adele was the bigger star of the two during their time performing together, and she was a special favorite of Great Britain's royalty.

On May 9, 1932, after a successful stint with Fred in the revue The Band Wagon (1931) on Broadway, Adele Astaire retired from the stage to marry Lord Charles Arthur Francis Cavendish (August 29, 1905–March 23, 1944), the second son of the 9th Duke of Devonshire,[2] and moved to Ireland, where they lived at Lismore Castle. She had three children, a daughter in 1933 and twin sons in 1935, each of whom died soon after birth. By this marriage she was properly styled Lady Charles Cavendish and would have been called Lady Charles in social circumstances.

On April 20, 1947, Adele Cavendish married her second husband, Col. Kingman Douglass, an American investment banker and Air Force officer who was an assistant director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He died in 1971.

After Fred Astaire's success in Hollywood, Adele gave serious consideration in 1935 to making a musical film there. She visited Hollywood and appeared in January 1936 on the Music Variety Show, but she admitted to feeling intimidated by her brother's reputation. During their partnership, Fred, whose perfectionism earned him the nickname "Moaning Minnie" from her, had always been the dominant creative force.

In 1937 Adele began filming in England with Jack Buchanan and Maurice Chevalier but withdrew after two days. She later recalled: "Oh boy, if my brother Fred sees this--I'm gone". There is no known film record of Adele performing (aside from a clip lasting a few seconds), but she made eight recordings, all duets with Fred.

Unlike her brother, Adele was extremely gregarious[3] and took great delight in shocking friends and strangers alike.[4]

Adele Astaire died of a stroke in Tucson, Arizona, aged 84. Built in 1905, the Gottlieb Storz Mansion in Omaha includes the "Adele and Fred Astaire Ballroom" on the top floor, which is the only memorial to their Omaha roots.[5]

At the suggestion of Roddy McDowall, Astaire donated her papers and memorabilia—amounting to several trunks of material—to the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.[6]

Adele Astaire is buried at Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth in Los Angeles County.

Notes

1.^ "NNDB: Adele Astaire". Notable Names Database.
2.^ her brother-in-law Edward Cavendish died in unusual circumstances.
3.^ Mercedes de Acosta claimed to have a brief lesbian relationship with Adele, but, if true, it is believed that it was more of a bisexual 'fling' than her orientation, as no other reports of such relationships have ever surfaced.
4.^ According to the memoirs of Richard McKenzie (husband of Fred's daughter, Ava), Adele, aka Dellie, was playing Scrabble with her brother when he noticed that she had started a word with the letters C-U-N. He protested at what appeared to be an emerging vulgarity, though Adele later told Ava, "I could have been spelling anything! Like cunnilingus".
5.^ Wishart, D.J. (2004) Encyclopedia of the Great Plains University of Nebraska Pres. p 259.
6.^ Satchell, Tim (1987). Astaire - The biography. London: Hutchinson. pp. 226. ISBN 0-09-173736-2.

References

R. McKenzie: Turn Left at the Black Cow, Roberts Reinhardt Publishers 1997 (ISBN 1-57098-205-8)
John Mueller: Astaire Dancing - The Musical Films of Fred Astaire, Knopf 1985, (ISBN 0-394-51654-0)
The Astaire Family Papers, The Howard Gotleib Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts.

Charles Manson Found Guilty 1971

2012-01-25T15:00:00.000-08:00

Charles Milles Manson (born November 12, 1934) is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction. He was convicted of the murders through the joint-responsibility rule, which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes his fellow conspirators commit in furtherance of the conspiracy's object.

Conviction and penalty phase

On January 25, 1971, guilty verdicts were returned against the four defendants on each of the twenty-seven separate counts against them. Not far into the trial's penalty phase, the jurors saw, at last, the defense that Manson — in the prosecution's view — had planned to present. Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten testified the murders had been conceived as "copycat" versions of the Hinman murder, for which Atkins now took credit. The killings, they said, were intended to draw suspicion away from Bobby Beausoleil, by resembling the crime for which he had been jailed. This plan had supposedly been the work of, and carried out under the guidance of, not Manson, but someone allegedly in love with Beausoleil—Linda Kasabian. Among the narrative's weak points was the inability of Atkins to explain why, as she was maintaining, she had written "political piggy" at the Hinman house in the first place.

Midway through the penalty phase, Manson shaved his head and trimmed his beard to a fork; he told the press, "I am the Devil, and the Devil always has a bald head." In what the prosecution regarded as belated recognition on their part that imitation of Manson only proved his domination, the female defendants refrained from shaving their heads until the jurors retired to weigh the state's request for the death penalty.

The effort to exonerate Manson via the "copycat" scenario failed. On March 29, 1971, the jury returned verdicts of death against all four defendants on all counts. On April 19, 1971, Judge Older sentenced the four to death.

On the day the verdicts recommending the death penalty were returned, news came that the badly decomposed body of Ronald Hughes had been found wedged between two boulders in Ventura County. It was rumored, although never proven, that Hughes was murdered by the Family, possibly because he had stood up to Manson and refused to allow Van Houten to take the stand and absolve Manson of the crimes. Though he might have perished in flooding, Family member Sandra Good stated that Hughes was "the first of the retaliation murders."

Manson's death sentence was automatically commuted to life imprisonment when a 1972 decision by the Supreme Court of California temporarily eliminated the state's death penalty. California's eventual reestablishment of capital punishment did not affect Manson, who is currently incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison.

Celebrity Grave: Actor Chris Penn 2006 "Reservoir Dogs"

2012-01-24T17:00:00.000-08:00

Christopher Shannon "Chris" Penn (October 10, 1965 – January 24, 2006) was an American film and television actor known for his roles in such films as The Wild Life, Reservoir Dogs, Footloose, True Romance, All the Right Moves, Mulholland Falls, and Pale Rider.

Biography

Personal life

Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Leo Penn, an actor and director, and Eileen Ryan (née Annucci), an actress. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Russia,[1] and his mother was a Roman Catholic of Italian and Irish descent.[2] According to Penn's mother, Leo Penn may have had distant Spanish ancestry, as the family's surname was originally "Piñón".[2] He had two older brothers, actor Sean Penn, and musician Michael Penn.

Penn never married, but from 1993 to 1999 he dated and lived with Filipino-American model Steffiana de la Cruz.

Career

Penn started acting at the age of 12 at the Loft Studio and made his film debut in 1979’s Charlie and the Talking Buzzard starring Christopher Hanks. In 1983, he was featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s youth drama Rumble Fish and appeared in the high school football drama All the Right Moves as a soon-to-be high school father and the best friend of Tom Cruise's character. He also appeared in the hit dance movie Footloose in 1984; played a villain in the Clint Eastwood western Pale Rider (1985); and co-starred with his brother, Sean Penn, and mother Eileen Ryan in At Close Range (1986).

Penn was typically cast as a tough character, featured as a villain or a working-class lug, or in a comic role. Two of his more memorable performances came in Reservoir Dogs as Nice Guy Eddie and True Romance as Nicky Dimes (both characters in scripts written by Quentin Tarantino). In 1996 he won the award for Best Supporting Actor at the Venice Film Festival for The Funeral. He appeared as the cocky fighter Travis Brickley in the film Best of the Best and its sequel.

In Robert Altman's ensemble film Short Cuts, Penn played a troubled swimming pool cleaner who is disturbed by his wife’s profession (a telephone sex worker who takes calls from clients at home) to which Penn’s character is obliged to listen. He also appeared as the couch-potato, drug-dealing, high school janitor in Murder by Numbers alongside Sandra Bullock.

Penn was meant to appear in American Pie 2 as Stifler's father, but the scenes featuring him were eventually cut as there was not sufficient time to include him in the film's plot. However, they did appear on the deleted scene reel from the movie's DVD.

Penn was featured in an episode of the television crime drama Law and Order: Criminal Intent (Death Roe) during the 2004–2005 season. He was also featured on the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as the voice of Officer Eddie Pulaski. Penn played himself on a 2005 episode of the HBO series Entourage.

He appeared in The Darwin Awards, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival one day before his death.

Penn also appeared on Jay-Z's "Can I Get A..." music video as the bartender mixing drinks and dancing.

Death

Penn was found dead in his Santa Monica condominium on January 24, 2006, at the age of 40. Although Penn had used multiple drugs in the past, an autopsy performed by a Los Angeles County medical examiner revealed the primary cause of death was "nonspecific cardiomyopathy" (heart disease), with the prescription drug promethazine with codeine and an enlarged heart being possible contributing circumstances. Sean Penn has said publicly in a TV interview on Larry King Live that his brother probably died because of his weight.[3]

There is conflicting information about Chris Penn's age at the time of death, with some obituaries giving 1962 as his year of birth.[4] His mother indicated that his date of birth was October 10, 1965, in the book about one of his brothers, Sean Penn: His Life and Times by Richard T. Kelly (2004).

Penn is interred next to his father Leo in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Filmography

Charlie and the Talking Buzzard (1979)
All The Right Moves (1983)
Rumble Fish (1983)
The Wild Life (1984)
Footloose (1984)
Pale Rider (1985)
At Close Range (1986)
Made in USA (1987)
Return from the River Kwai (1989)
Best of the Best (1989)
Mobsters (1991)
Future Kick (1991)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Leather Jackets (1992)
Best of the Best 2 (1993)
The Pickle (1993)
Beethoven’s 2nd (1993)
Josh and S.A.M. (1993)
The Music of Chance (1993)
True Romance (1993)
Short Cuts (1993)
Imaginary Crimes (1994)
Fist of the North Star (1995)
Sacred Cargo (1995)
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)
Under the Hula Moon (1995)
Dead Mans Walk (1996
Mulholland Falls (1996)
The Funeral (1996)
The Boys Club (1997)
Papertrail (1997) (a.k.a. Trail of a Serial Killer)
Deceiver (1997)
One Tough Cop (1998)
Rush Hour (1998)
Family Attraction (1998)
Cement (1999)
The Florentine (1999)
Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) (2000)
American Pie 2 (2001) {as Stifler's Dad in a deleted storyline}
Corky Romano (2001)
Murder by Numbers (2002)
Redemption (2002)
Stealing Harvard (2002)
Masked and Anonymous (2003)
Shelter Island (2003)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (voice of Eddie Pulaski) (2004)
Starsky and Hutch (2004)
After the Sunset (2004)
Pauly Shore is Dead (2004)
The Darwin Awards (2006)
King of Sorrow (2006)
Holly (2006)
Aftermath (2010)

References

1.^ Jews Flop in Big Oscar Award Wins. Jewish Journal.com. March 5, 2004.
2.^ Kelly, Richard T. Sean Penn: His Life and Times. Canongate U.S. 2004. 3.^ "Sean Penn: Chris's Weight Killed Him". People.com.
4.^ "Reservoir Dogs' Penn found dead". BBC News. 25 January 2006.

Celebrity Grave: Actor Larry Fine 1975 "The Three Stooges"

2012-01-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

Louis Feinberg (October 5, 1902 – January 24, 1975), known professionally as Larry Fine, was an American comedian and actor, who is best known as a member of the comedy act The Three Stooges.

Early life

Fine was born to a Jewish family as Louis Feinberg[1] in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the corner of 3rd and South Streets. The building there is now a restaurant which is called Jon's Bar and Grill - "the birth place of Larry Fine," but is not actually the building in which he was born. His father, Joseph Feinberg (who was Russian-Jewish), and mother, Fanny Lieberman, owned a watch repair and jewelry shop. When Larry was a child he burned his arm with some acid that his father used to test whether or not gold was real. Mistaking it for a cool drink Larry had the bottle to his lips when his father noticed and slapped it from his hand, splashing his forearm with acid. Later Larry received violin training to help strengthen his damaged muscles and this skill would be observed in many of the Stooges' films. He became quite proficient on the instrument, and his parents wanted to send him to a European music conservatory, but the outbreak of World War I prevented him from going. In scenes where all three are playing fiddles, only Larry is actually playing his instrument; the others are pantomiming. To further strengthen his arm, Larry took up boxing as a teenager. He fought and won one professional bout. His career as a pugilist was stopped by his father, who was opposed to Larry's fighting in public.[1]

Acting career

As Larry Fine, he first performed as a violinist in vaudeville at an early age. In 1925, he met Moe Howard and Ted Healy. Howard and his brother Shemp had been working as audience stooges for Healy. Shemp left soon after to attempt a solo career and was in turn replaced by another brother, Curly. Larry's trademark bushy hair came out, according to rumor, from his first meeting with Healy, in which he had just wet his hair in a basin, and as they talked, it dried oddly. Healy told him to keep the zany hairstyle and, according to a 1973 TV interview on the Mike Douglas show with Moe:

“ ...So Healy said 'Would you like to be one of the stooges and make three instead of two?' And Larry said 'Yes, I would love that.' Healy said 'I'll give you ninety bucks a week.' 'Fine.' He also said, 'I'll give you an extra ten dollars a week if you throw that fiddle away. ”

Beginning in 1933, The Three Stooges made 206 short films, and several features, with their most prolific period featuring the characters of Larry, Moe and Curly. Their career with Healy was marked by disputes over pay, film contracts, and Healy's drinking and abuse. They left Healy for good in 1934.

In many of the Stooge shorts, Fine did more reacting than acting, staying in the background and providing the voice of reason between the extreme characterizations of Moe and Curly. He was known for his very curly hair, this gave him the name "Porcupine," which Moe calls him on occasion. He was a surrealistic foil and the middle-ground between Moe's gruff "bossiness" and Curly and Shemp's (and later Joe's) childish personas. (In the short Three Loan Wolves, Larry was pressed into service to replace an ailing Curly, who was unable to perform as the lead stooge.) After Curly left the act, Larry shared screen time equally with his two partners.

But in the earliest Stooge two-reelers (and occasionally the later ones) Larry indulges in utterly nutty behavior. He would liven up a scene by improvising some random remark or ridiculous action. In the hospital spoof Men in Black, Larry wields a scalpel and chortles, "Let's plug him... and see if he's ripe!" In Disorder in the Court, a tense courtroom scene is interrupted by Larry breaking into a wild Tarzan yell. Of course, after each of his outbursts, Moe would gruffly discipline him. According to his brother, Larry had developed a callus on one side of his face from being slapped innumerable times by Moe over the years.

Larry's on-screen goofiness was an extension of his own relaxed personality. Director Charles Lamont recalled, "Larry was a nut. He was the kind of guy who always said anything. He was a yapper." Writer-director Edward Bernds remembered that Larry's suggestions for the scripts were often "flaky," but would occasionally contain a good comic idea.

Offstage, Larry was a social butterfly. He liked a good time and surrounded himself with friends. Larry and his wife, Mabel, loved having parties and every Christmas threw lavish midnight suppers. Larry was what some friends have called a "yes man," since he was always so agreeable, no matter what the circumstances.

Larry's devil-may-care personality carried over to the world of finance. He was a terrible businessman and spent his money as soon as he earned it. He had a serious gambling addiction, and would gamble away all of the money he had on him either at the horserace track or at high-stakes gin rummy card games. In an interview, Fine even admitted that he often gave money to actors and friends who needed help and never asked to be reimbursed. Joe Besser and director Edward Bernds remember that because of his constant and free spending and gambling, Larry was almost forced into bankruptcy when Columbia terminated the Three Stooges comedies in December 1957.

Because of his profligate ways and his wife's dislike for housekeeping, Larry and his family lived in hotels — first in the President Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where his daughter Phyllis was raised, then the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. Not until the late 1940s did Larry buy a home in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, California.

The Stooges became a big hit in 1959 on television, when Columbia Pictures released a batch of the trio's films. The popularity brought the Stooges to a new audience and revitalized their careers.

On May 30, 1967, Fine's wife, Mabel, died of a sudden heart attack. According to the DVD supplemental material for the Midway Pictures documentary You Must Be This Tall: The Story of Rocky Point Park, Fine was on the road and about to take the stage for a live show at Rocky Point Amusement Park in Warwick, Rhode Island when he heard news of Mabel's passing. Fine immediately flew home to California, leaving his fellow two stooges to improvise their remaining shows at the park.

Mabel's death came nearly six years after the death of their only son, John, in a car accident on November 17, 1961. The couple's daughter, Phyllis, died of cancer at the age of 60 in 1988. John's wife, Christy (Kraus), died on October 26, 2007 after a lengthy illness.

Final acting years and death

Returning to work, Fine and the Stooges were working on a new TV series entitled Kook's Tour in January, 1970, when Larry suffered a debilitating stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body. He eventually moved to the Motion Picture House, an industry retirement community in Woodland Hills, where he spent his remaining years. In spite of his paralyzed condition, he did what he could to entertain the other patients, and was visited regularly by his friend Moe Howard.[2]

Fine used a wheelchair during the last five years of his life. Like Curly Howard, Fine suffered several additional strokes before his death on January 24, 1975.[3] He was entombed in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in the Freedom Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Liberation.[4]

Fine is sometimes erroneously listed as the father of sportscaster Warner Wolf, who is in fact the son of Jack Wolf, one of several other "stooges" who played in Ted Healy's vaudeville act at one time or another. He is, however, the father-in-law of actor and Los Angeles television personality Don Lamond, best known for hosting Stooges shorts on KTTV for many years.[5]

Posthumous fame

Jon's Bar and Grille in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, located at the birthplace of Larry.[6]The Three Stooges have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for their contributions to Motion Pictures, at 1560 Vine Street in Hollywood, dedicated on August 30, 1983, with ex-stooge Joe Besser in attendance.

In the 2000 TV movie, Larry Fine was played by Evan Handler.

In a 2004 New Yorker feature on the Farrelly Brothers's attempt to write a script for a new Three Stooges movie, Peter Farrelly offered his theory of Stooge appreciation: “Growing up, first you watched Curly, then Moe, and then your eyes got to Larry. He’s the reactor, the most vulnerable. Five to fourteen, Curly; fourteen to twenty-one, Moe. Anyone out of college, if you’re not looking at Larry, you don’t have a good brain.”

A large mural of Larry Fine appears on a wall at the busy intersection of 3rd and South Streets, near his birthplace in Philadelphia. The effort to create a mural on that site began when a local weekly newspaper suggested that the city should somehow honor Fine. Dedicated on October 26, 1999, with Fine's sister in attendance, that mural showed Larry with a peculiar look on his face. In May 2006, a similar mural showing Larry with a more animated expression and playing a violin was painted over the original mural. This mural stands over Jon's Bar and Grill and a sign reads "Birthplace of Larry Fine."

On October 15, 2009, the Associated Alumni of Central High School in Philadelphia inducted Larry Fine in the illustrious school's Hall of Fame, even though he never graduated. A member of the Central Alumni Hall of Fame Committee stated: "Many people are not even aware that Mr. Fine was a Philadelphian and that is a part of what we’re trying to do."

References

1.^ AandE television show Biography
2.^ Brady, Pat (October 28, 1973). "Recovering From Stroke: It's Easy Life for the Stooge". Los Angeles Times, Valley Edition, Part XI, p. 6.
3.^ Townsend, Dorothy (January 24, 1975). "Larry Fine of 3 Stooges Dies After Stroke at 73". Los Angeles Times, Part I, p. 3.
4.^ "Larry Fine". Find a Grave.
6.^ "Jon's Bar and Grille". Official website. Jon's Bar and Grille.

Further reading

[My Brother] Larry, the Stooge in the Middle; by Morris Feinberg (ghostwritten by Bob Davis) (Last Gasp, 2001).

One Fine Stooge: A Frizzy Life in Pictures; by Steve Cox and Jim Terry, (Cumberland House Publishing, 2006).

Celebrity Grave: Olympic Volleyball Medalist Flo Hyman 1986

2012-01-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

Flora ("Flo") Jean Hyman (July 31, 1954 in Inglewood, California – January 24, 1986 in Japan) was an American volleyball player and Olympic silver medalist. She died during a volleyball match in Japan, as a result of Marfan syndrome.

Hyman was the second of eight children. She was always the tallest in her grade, and as a child, Hyman was self-conscious about her rapid growth and height, but her mother taught her to be proud of it. Hyman's parents were tall. Her father was 6'1" (1.85 m) tall and her mother 5'11" (1.80 m), but Flo was to outgrow both of them. She stood six feet tall (1.83m) on her 12th birthday and her final adult height, which she reached by her 17th birthday, was just over 6' 5" (1.96 m).

Education

Hyman graduated from Morningside High School in Inglewood, California and then attended El Camino College for one year before transferring to the University of Houston as that school's first female scholarship athlete. She did not complete her final year, focusing her attention on her volleyball career. Hyman said she would graduate once her volleyball career was over and that "You can go to school when you're 60. You're only young once, and you can only do this once."

Contribution to volleyball

"I had to learn to be honest with myself. I had to recognize my pain threshold. When I hit the floor, I have to realize it's not as if I broke a bone. Pushing yourself over the barrier is a habit. I know I can do it and try something else crazy. If you want to win the war, you've got to pay the price."

By 1974, Hyman was a member of the US volleyball team, but the team did not play in the 1980 Olympic Games due to the boycott of the Moscow games. Hyman played in the 1981 World Cup and the 1982 World Championship, when the USA won the bronze medal. A speciality of Hyman was the "Flying Clutchman," a fast, hard-impacting volleyball spike that travels at 110 mph (180 km/h). It was perfected under Dr. Gideon Ariel, a former 1960 and 1964 Olympic shot putter in Coto de Caza, California. At the 1984 Olympics, Hyman, by now both the tallest and oldest member of the team, led the USA to the silver medal, beaten by China in the final. The United States had defeated them earlier in the tournament.

Death

After the Olympics, Hyman moved to Japan, where she played for the Daiei team. In the summer of 1986, she intended to return to the United States permanently, but never got the chance to do so. On January 24, 1986, Hyman collapsed while sitting on the sidelines after being substituted out in a game against Hitachi. She told her team to keep fighting, then moments later slid to the floor and died.

At first, the cause of her death was stated to be a heart attack, but an autopsy carried out in Culver City, California, six days after her death, at the request of her family, discovered that she had a very healthy heart. Instead, Flo Hyman's death was due to an aortic dissection resulting from previously undiagnosed Marfan syndrome, a relatively common genetic disorder that affects more than 1 in 5,000 people.[1] Apart from her height, near-sightedness, very long arms and large hands, she showed few other physical symptoms. Hyman's sneaker size was a USA size 12, (Size 11 UK). There was a three week old blood clot around the tear, indicating that an earlier rip in the same spot had already begun to heal when the fatal second rupture occurred in her aorta.[2]

Doctors later discovered Hyman's brother had Marfan's Syndrome as well, and he underwent open heart surgery afterwards. Experts believed Hyman was lucky to have survived as long as she did, playing a physically explosive sport such as volleyball. She is interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood California.

Achievements

Three times All American
World Cup Competition, top six players of 1981
Best Hitter, World Cup Competition 1981
Bronze medal in the 1982 World Championship Peru
Silver medal in the 1984 US Olympics
Sports Illustrated November 29, 1999 #69 on greatest woman athletes of the century
The Flo Hyman Memorial Award is named in her honor.

In 1985, Flo Hyman appeared in a film entitled Order of the Black Eagle, in which she portrayed a knife-wielding mercenary named Spike.[3]

The National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD), is celebrated in all 50 states with a variety of activities, to remember and honor Flo Hyman. It was created and is supported by Girls Incorporated, Girls Scouts of the USA, the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport, the Women's Sports Foundation and the YWCA of the U.S.A.[4]

References

1.^ http://www.marfan.org/marfan/2280/About-Marfan-Syndrome|National Marfan Foundation
2.^ http://www.volleyhall.org/hyman.html
3.^ Flo Hyman at the Internet Movie Database
4.^ http://www.aahperd.org/nagws/programs/ngwsd/History.cfm

Celebrity Grave: Architect Paul Revere Williams 1980

2012-01-23T15:00:00.000-08:00

Paul Revere Williams, FAIA (February 18, 1894 – January 23, 1980) was a Los Angeles-based, American architect. He practiced largely in Southern California and designed the homes of numerous stars including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz, Lon Chaney, and Charles Correll. He also designed many public and private buildings.[1][2]

Childhood and academic career

Orphaned at the age of four, Williams was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier, subsequently working as a landscape architect. He went on to attend the University of Southern California, School of Engineering designing several residential buildings while still a student there. Williams became a certified architect in 1921, and the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi.

He married Della Mae Givens on June 27, 1917, at the First AME Church in Los Angeles. They had three children: Paul Revere Williams, Jr. (born and died June 30, 1925, buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles); Marilyn Frances Williams (born December 25, 1926); and Norma Lucille Williams (born September 18, 1928).

Career

Williams won an architectural competition at age 25 and three years later opened his own office. Known as an outstanding draftsman, he perfected the skill of rendering drawings "upside down." This skill was developed so that his clients (who may have been uncomfortable sitting next to a black architect) could see the drawings rendered right side up across the table from him. Struggling to gain attention, he served on the first Los Angeles City Planning Commission in 1920. From 1921 through 1924 Williams worked for Los Angeles architect John C. Austin, eventually becoming chief draftsman, before establishing his own office. Williams became the first African-American member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1923.[1] In 1939, he won the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Los Angeles (now headquarters of the Paradigm Talent Agency).

A. Quincy Jones (1913–79) was an architect, who is claimed to have hired Williams and later collaborated with him on projects in Palm Springs, including the Palm Springs Tennis Club (1947) and the Town and Country (1948) and Romanoff's on the Rocks (1948) restaurants.[3]

During World War II, Williams worked for the Navy Department as an architect. Following the war he published his first book, The Small Home of Tomorrow (1945), with a successor volume New Homes for Today the following year. In 1957 became the first African-American to be voted an AIA Fellow.[1]

In 1951, he won the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Man of the Year award and in 1953 Williams received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his outstanding contributions as an architect and member of the African-American community. Williams also received honorary doctorates from Howard University (doctor of architecture), Lincoln University of Missouri (doctor of science), and the Tuskegee Institute (doctor of fine arts). In 2004, USC honored him by listing him among its distinguished alumni, in the television commercial for the school shown during its football games.

Williams was posthumously honored in 2008 with the Donald J. Trump Award for his significant impact on the evolution, development and perpetuation of real estate throughout Greater Los Angeles. The award was accepted by his granddaughter, Karen Hudson. Donald Trump presented the award to Hudson via video presentation.

Williams famously remarked upon the bitter irony of the fact that most of the homes he designed, and whose construction he oversaw, were on parcels whose deeds included segregation covenants barring blacks from purchasing them.

Works

Lon Chaney High Sierra House designed by Williams - Inyo National ForestWilliams designed more than 2,000 private homes, most of which were in the Hollywood Hills and the Mid-Wilshire portion of Los Angeles (including his own home in the Mid-City, Los Angeles, California, district). He also designed at least one home in the San Rafael district.

His most famous homes were for Hollywood celebrities, and he was well regarded for his mastery of various architectural styles. Modern interpretations of Tudor-revival, French Chateau, Regency, and Mediterranean architecture were all within his vernacular. One notable home, which he designed for Jay Paley in Holmby Hills,[4] and the current residence of Barron Hilton, was used as the 'Colby mansion' in exterior scenes for "The Colbys" television series. Williams' client list included Frank Sinatra (the notorious pushbutton house), Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lon Chaney, Sr., Lucille Ball, Julie London, Tyrone Power (two houses), Barbara Stanwyck, Bert Lahr, Charles Cottrell, Will Hays, Zasu Pitts, and Danny Thomas. In contrast to these splendid mansions, Williams co-designed with Hilyard Robinson the first federally funded public housing projects of the post-war period (Langton Terrace, Washington, D.C.) and later the Pueblo del Rio project in southeast Los Angeles.

Noted public buildings that Williams designed or contributed to (in Los Angeles, unless otherwise noted) include:

The Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport during daylight.Hollywood YMCA
First Church of Christ, Scientist (Reno, Nevada)
Los Angeles County Courthouse
Los Angeles County Hall of Administration
United Nations Building, Paris, France
Roberts House Ranch, Malibu, CA (The remains of the burned down structures can be visited on the Sostice Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.)
Saks Fifth Avenue Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills California
Arrowhead Springs Hotel and Spa, San Bernardino, California
Shrine Auditorium (Williams helped prepare construction drawings as a young architect.)
Jet-Age Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) (In the 1960s as part of the Pereira and Luckman firm and with consulting engineers, Williams helped design this futuristic landmark.)
The concrete paraboloid La Concha Motel in Las Vegas (disassembled and moved to the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada for use as the museum lobby 2006).
Carver Park Homes Nevada [5]
The La Concha Motel, Nevada [5]

Williams retired his practice in 1973. He died at age 85. He is interred in Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood.

Quotes

"If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated."

"Planning is thinking beforehand how something is to be made or done, and mixing imagination with the product – which in a broad sense makes all of us planners. The only difference is that some people get a license to get paid for thinking and the rest of us just contribute our good thoughts to our fellow man."

Bibliography

Paul R. Williams Paul R. Williams: A Collection of House Plans Hennessey & Ingalls, 2006 ISBN 0940512440, 9780940512443

Karen E. Hudson, Paul R. Williams Paul R. Williams, Architect: A Legacy of Style Rizzoli, 1993 Original from the University of Michigan Digitized Nov 12, 2007 240 pages

Our Stories [videorecording]: the African American experience in northern Nevada. [Reno, NV]: Our Story, Inc.; SNCAT, c2008. Produced under a grant from the History Channel and a collaboration of Our Story, Inc. and Sierra Nevada Community Access Television (SNCAT); recorded at SNCAT. 3 videodiscs

Notes

1.^ Hudson, Karen E., Paul R. Williams Architect: A Legacy of Style, Rixxoli International Publications, Inc., New York, New York, 1993
2.^ Hudson, Karen E., The Will and the Way: Paul R. Williams, Architect, Rixxoli International Publications, Inc., NY 1994
3.^ Barbara Thornburg The man behind the look February 14, 2009 LA Times
4.^ Jay Paley Residence, 2010
5.^ Las Vegas Review Journal " Name the black architect who designed Carver Park's homes. Answer: Paul Williams who, White says, also designed the La Concha motel, homes in Berkeley Square -- a black housing area -- and other Las Vegas properties." Test your knowledge of black history in Southern Nevada Feb. 15, 2009 Las Vegas Review Journal

References

Hudson, Karen E. Paul R. Williams, Architect: A Legacy of Style. New York: Rizzoli, 1993.(the author is Williams' granddaughter and curator of his estate)

Hudson, Karen E., The Will and the Way: Paul R. Williams, Architect, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., NY 1994

Yenser, Thomas (editor), Who's Who in Colored America: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Persons of African Descent in America, Who's Who in Colored America, Brooklyn, New York, 1930-1931-1932 (Third Edition)

Sennot, Stephen (author), Samudio, Jeffrey B. (contributing editor), "Encyclopedia of 20th Century Architecture: Paul Revere Williams," Routledge, Taylor and Francis Publishhers, January, 2004, 1,500 word biography of life and professional work

Further reading

The Will and the Way: Paul R. Williams, Architect By Karen E. Hudson, Paul R. Williams Edition: illustrated Published by Rizzoli, 1994 ISBN 0847817806, 9780847817801 64 pages

Celebrity Grave: Character Actor Walter Perry 1954

2012-01-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

Walter Perry (September 14, 1868, San Francisco, California - January 22, 1954, Los Angeles, California) was a silent screen character actor who continued to work in talkies. He appeared in "Until They Get Me" (1917), "The Red-Haired Cupid" (1918), "Prisoners of the Pines" (1918), "A Fugitive From Matrimony (1919), "Second Hand Rose" (1922), "The Shriek of Araby (1923), "White Fang" (1925), "The Unholy Three" (1925), "The Johnstown Flood" (1926), and "The Two Gun Man" (1931). His last appearance as a migrant in "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) went uncredited. He is buried in the Elks section of Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica.

The Musically Reclined at Westwood Cemetery

2012-01-21T17:00:00.001-08:00

Peggy Lee, Ray Coniff, Carl Dean Wilson, Minnie Riperton Rudolph, Mel Torme, Sammy Cahn, Merv Griffin, Oscar Levant, and Dean Martin.

Celebrity Grave: Singer & Actress Peggy Lee 2002

2012-01-21T17:00:00.000-08:00

Peggy Lee (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002) was an award-winning American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer and actress.

Early life

Lee had Norwegian and Swedish ancestry. Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh of eight children of Marvin Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad. Her mother died when she was four years old.[1] Lee sang professionally with KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She later had her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her a "salary" in food. Both during and after her high school years Lee sang for paltry sums on local radio stations. Radio personality Ken Kennedy (actual name: Ken Sydness) of WDAY in Fargo (the most widely listened to station in North Dakota) changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee. Lee left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17.

She returned to North Dakota for a tonsillectomy and eventually made her way to Chicago for a gig at The Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel West, where she drew the attention of Benny Goodman, the jazz clarinetist and band leader. According to Lee, "Benny's then-fiancé, Lady Alice Duckworth, came into The Buttery, and she was very impressed. So the next evening she brought Benny in, because they were looking for replacement for Helen Forrest. And although I didn't know, I was it. He was looking at me strangely, I thought, but it was just his preoccupied way of looking. I thought that he didn't like me at first, but it just was that he was preoccupied with what he was hearing." She joined his band in 1941 and stayed for two years.

Recording career

In early 1942, Lee had her first #1 hit, "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place," followed by 1943's "Why Don't You Do Right?" (originally sung by Lil Green), which sold over a million copies and made her famous. She sang with Goodman in two 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl.

In March 1943, Lee married Dave Barbour, the guitarist in Goodman's band. Peggy said, "David joined Benny's band and there was a ruling that no one should fraternize with the girl singer. But I fell in love with David the first time I heard him play, and so I married him. Benny then fired David, so I quit, too. Benny and I made up, although David didn't play with him anymore. Benny stuck to his rule. I think that's not too bad a rule, but you can't help falling in love with somebody."
When Lee and Barbour left the band, the idea was that he would work in the studios and she would keep house and raise their daughter, Nicki. But she drifted back towards songwriting and occasional recording sessions for the fledgling Capitol Records in 1947, for whom she produced a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music by Lee and Barbour, including "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "It's a Good Day" (1948). With the release of the smash-hit #1-selling record of 1947, "Mañana," her "retirement" was over.

In 1948, she joined Perry Como and Jo Stafford as one of the rotating hosts of the NBC Radio musical program Chesterfield Supper Club. She was also a regular on NBC's Jimmy Durante Show during the 1938-48 season.

She left Capitol for a few years in the early 1940s, but returned in 1943. She is most famous for her cover version of the Little Willie John hit "Fever", to which she added her own, uncopyrighted lyrics ("Romeo loved Juliet," "Captain Smith and Pocahontas") and her rendition of Leiber and Stoller's "Is That All There Is?" Her relationship with the Capitol label spanned almost three decades, aside from her brief but artistically rich detour (1952-1956) at Decca Records, where she recorded one of her most acclaimed albums Black Coffee (1956). While recording for Decca, Lee had hit singles with the songs "Lover" and "Mr. Wonderful."

She first came to prominence in the 1940s with her #1 hits Somebody Is Taking Your Place and Mañana, having a string of successful albums and top 10 hits in three consecutive decades. However, Peggy Lee is today internationally recognized for her signature song "Fever." Lee was also an accomplished actress, starring in the hit movies The Jazz Singer, Disney's Lady and the Tramp and Pete Kelly's Blues, for which she received the Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Peggy Lee is also widely regarded as one of the most influential jazz vocalists of all time, being cited as a mentor to diverse artists such as; Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Madonna and Dusty Springfield.

In her 60-year-long career, Peggy was the recipient of three Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, an Academy Award nomination, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Award; the Presidents Award, the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Living Legacy Award, from the Women's International Center. In 1999 Peggy Lee was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.[2]

Songwriting

She was also known as a songwriter with such hits as the songs from the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp, for which she also supplied the singing and speaking voices of four characters.[3] Her many songwriting collaborators, in addition to Barbour, included Laurindo Almeida, Harold Arlen, Sonny Burke, Cy Coleman, Gene DiNovi, Duke Ellington, Dave Grusin, Dick Hazard, Quincy Jones, Francis Lai, Jack Marshall, Johnny Mandel, Marian McPartland, Willard Robison, Lalo Schifrin, Hubie Wheeler, guitarist Johnny Pisano and Victor Young.

She wrote the lyrics for "I Don't Know Enough About You," "It's A Good Day," composed by Dave Barbour, "I'm Gonna Go Fishin,'" composed with Duke Ellington, "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter," the no.1 hit "Manana (Is Soon Enough For Me)," "Bless You (For The Good That's In You)" with Mel Torme, "What More Can a Woman Do?," "Don't Be Mean to Baby," "New York City Ghost" with Victor Young, "You Was Right, Baby," "Just an Old Love of Mine," "Everything's Movin' Too Fast," "The Shining Sea," "He's A Tramp," "The Siamese Cat Song," "There Will Be Another Spring," "Johnny Guitar" with Victor Young, "Sans Souci" with Sonny Burke, "So What's New?," "Don't Smoke in Bed," "I Love Being Here With You," "Happy With the Blues" with Harold Arlen, "Where Can I Go Without You?," "Things Are Swingin,'" "Then Was Then" with Cy Coleman, and many others. The first song that Peggy Lee composed was "Little Fool," published in 1941. "What More Can a Woman Do?" was recorded by Sarah Vaughan with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. "Manana (Is Soon Enough For Me)" was no.1 for 9 weeks on the Billboard singles chart in 1948, from the week of March 13 to May 8. She also added some lyrics ("Romeo loved Juliet," "Captain Smith and Pocahontas") to her signature song, "Fever."

During a time when youths began turning to rock'n'roll, she was one of the mainstays of Capitol recordings. She was the first of the "old guard" to recognize this new genre, as is evident in her recordings of the Beatles, Randy Newman, Carole King, James Taylor and other up-and-coming songwriters. From 1957 until her final disc for the company in 1972, she routinely produced a steady stream of two or three albums per year which usually included standards (often arranged in a style quite different from the original), her own compositions, and material from young artists.

Acting career

Lee also acted in several films. In 1952, she played opposite Danny Thomas in a remake of the early Al Jolson film, The Jazz Singer. In 1955, she played a despondent, alcoholic blues singer in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), for which she was nominated for an Oscar. In 1955, she did the speaking and singing voices for multiple characters in Disney's Lady and the Tramp movie. Specifically, she played the human Darling (in the very beginning), the dog Peg, and the two Siamese cats Si and Am.[3] In 1957, Lee guest starred on the short-lived ABC variety program, The Guy Mitchell Show.

In the early 1990s, she retained famed entertainment attorney Neil Papiano, who, on her behalf, successfully sued Disney for royalties on Lady and the Tramp. Lee's lawsuit claimed that she was due royalties for video tapes, a technology that did not exist when she agreed to write and perform for Disney.

Never afraid to fight for what she believed in, Lee passionately insisted that musicians be equitably compensated for their work. Although she realized litigation had taken a toll on her health, Lee often quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson on the topic: "God's will will not be made manifest by cowards."

She also successfully sued MCA/Decca with the assistance of noted entertainment attorney, Cy Godfrey.

Personal life

Lee was married four times; each marriage ended in divorce:

1) Musician Dave Barbour (1943-1951); daughter Nicki Lee Foster (born 1943)
2) Actor Brad Dexter (1953)
3) Actor Dewey Martin (1956-1958)
4) Actor Jack Del Rio (1964-1965)

Retirement and death

She continued to perform into the 1990s, sometimes in a wheelchair, and still mesmerized audiences and critics alike.[4][5] After years of poor health, Lee died of complications from diabetes and a heart attack at the age of 81. She is survived by Nicki Lee Foster, her daughter with Barbour. She is interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles' Westwood neighborhood. On her marker in a garden setting is inscribed, "Music is my life's breath."

Legacy

Academy Awards memoriam omission

She was not featured in Memoriam Tribute during the Academy Awards ceremony. When her family requested she be featured in the following year's ceremony, the Academy stated they did not honor requests and Lee was omitted because her contribution to film and her legacy were not deemed significant enough. The Lee family pointed out that, although she had been omitted, R&B singer/actress Aaliyah, who died a few months earlier, was included though having been in only one moderately successful film, Romeo Must Die (Queen of the Damned had yet to be released). The Academy provided no comment on the oversight.

Awards

Lee was nominated for 12 Grammy Awards, winning Best Contemporary Vocal Performance for her 1969 hit "Is That All There Is?" In 1995 she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Lee is a recipient of the state of North Dakota's Roughrider Award; the Pied Piper Award from The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP); the Presidents Award, from the Songwriters Guild of America; the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement, from the Society of Singers; and the Living Legacy Award, from the Women's International Center. In 1999 she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Carnegie Hall tribute

In 2003, "There'll Be Another Spring: A Tribute to Miss Peggy Lee" was held at Carnegie Hall. Produced by recording artist Richard Barone, the sold-out event included performances by Cy Coleman, Debbie Harry, Nancy Sinatra, Rita Moreno, Marian McPartland, Chris Connor, Petula Clark and many others. In 2004, Barone brought the event to the Hollywood Bowl and Chicago's Ravinia Festival, with expanded casts including Maureen McGovern and Bea Arthur. The Carnegie Hall concert was broadcast as on NPR's "Jazz Set."

Bibliography

Autobiography

Peggy Lee, Miss Peggy Lee: An Autobiography, 2002, Bloomsbury (UK), ISBN 0-7475-5907-4

Biography

Peter Richmond, Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee, 2006, Henry Holt and Company, ISBN 0-8050-7383-3
Robert Strom, Miss Peggy Lee: A Career Chronicle, 2005, McFarland Publishing, ISBN 0-7864-1936-9

Album liner notes

Will Friedwald, Album liner notes The Best of Peggy Lee, The Capitol Years

Discography

Capitol Records

1948 Rendezvous with Peggy Lee (set of 78s: 6 songs)
1952 Rendezvous with Peggy Lee (10-inch LP: 8 songs; 12-inch LP: 12 songs)

Decca Records

1953 Black Coffee (10-inch version)
1954 Songs in an Intimate Style
1954 Selections from Irving Berlin's 'White Christmas' (w/ Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye)
1955 Songs from Pete Kelly's Blues' (w/ Ella Fitzgerald)
1956 Black Coffee (12-inch version)
1957 Dream Street
1957 Songs from Walt Disney's "Lady and the Tramp"
1958 Sea Shells (recorded 1955)
1959 Miss Wonderful (recorded 1956)

Capitol Records

1957 The Man I Love
1959 Jump for Joy
1959 Things Are Swingin'
1959 I Like Men!
1959 Beauty and the Beat!
1960 Latin ala Lee!
1960 All Aglow Again!
1960 Pretty Eyes
1960 Christmas Carousel
1960 Olé ala Lee
1961 Basin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee
1961 If You Go
1962 Blues Cross Country
1962 Bewitching-Lee
1962 Sugar 'N' Spice
1963 Mink Jazz
1963 I'm a Woman
1964 In Love Again!
1964 In the Name of Love
1965 Pass Me By
1965 Then Was Then - Now Is Now!
1966 Guitars A là Lee
1966 Big $pender
1967 Extra Special!
1967 Somethin' Groovy!
1968 2 Shows Nightly
1969 A Natural Woman
1969 Is That All There Is?
1970 Bridge Over Troubled Water
1970 Make It With You
1971 Where Did They Go
1972 Norma Deloris Egstrom from Jamestown, North Dakota

Post-Capitol albums

1974 Let's Love
1975 Mirrors
1977 Live in London
1977 Peggy
1979 Close Enough for Love
1988 Miss Peggy Lee Sings the Blues
1990 The Peggy Lee Songbook: There'll Be Another Spring
1993 Love Held Lightly: Rare Songs by Harold Arlen (rec. 1988)
1993 Moments Like This

Chart singles

1941 "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good" 25 —
"Winter Weather" (w/ Art Lund) 24 —
"Blues in the Night" 20 —
"Somebody Else is Taking My Place" 1 —
"My Little Cousin" 14 —
"We'll Meet Again" 16 —
"Full Moon" 22 —
"The Way You Look Tonight" 21 —
1943 "Why Don't You Do Right" 4 —
1945 "Waitin' for the Train to Come in" 4 —
1946 "I'm Glad I Waited for You" 24 —
"I Don't Know Enough About You" 7 —
"Linger in My Arms a Little Longer, Baby" 16 —
"It's All Over Now" 10 —
1947 "It's a Good Day" 16 —
"Everything's Moving too Fast" 21 —
"Chi-baba, Chi-baba (My Bambino, Go to Sleep)" 10 —
"Golden Earrings" 2 —
1948 "Manana" 1 —
"All Dressed up with a Broken Heart" 21 —
"For Every Man, There's a Woman" 25 —
"Laroo, Laroo, Lili Bolero" 13 —
"Talking to Myself About You" 23 —
"Don't Smoke in Bed" 22 —
"Caramba! It's the Samba" 13 —
"Baby, Don't Be Mad at Me" 21 —
"Somebody Else is Taking My Place" (re-issue) 30 —
"Bubble Loo, Bubble Loo" 23 —
1949 "Blum Blum, I Wonder Who I Am" 27 —
"Similau (See-Me-Lo)" 17 —
"Bali Ha'i" 13 —
"Riders in the Sky (A Cowboy Legend)" 2 —
1950 "The Old Master Painter" (w/ Mel Torme) 9 —
"Show Me the Way to Get out of This World" 28 —
1951 "(When I Dance with You) I Get Ideas" 14 —
1952 "Be Anything (But Be Mine)" 21 —
"Lover" 3 —
"Watermelon Weather" (w/ Bing Crosby) 28 —
"Just One of Those Things" 14 —
"River, River" 23 —
1953 "Who's Gonna Pay the Check" 22 —
"Baubles, Bangles, and Beads" 30 —
1954 "Where can I go Without You" 28 —
"Let Me Go, Lover" 26 —
1956 "Mr. Wonderful" 14 —
"Joey, Joey, Joey" 76 —
1958 "Fever" 8 —
"Light of Love" 63 —
"Sweetheart" 98 —
1959 "Alright, Okay, You Win" 68 —
"My Man" 81 —
"Hallelujah, I Love Him So" 77 —
1963 "I'm a Woman" 54 —
1965 "Pass Me By" 93 20
"Free Spirits" — 29
1966 "Big Spender" — 9
"That Man" — 31
"You've Got Possibilities" — 36
"So, What's New" — 20
"Walking Happy" — 14
1967 "I Feel it" — 8
1969 "Spinning Wheel" — 24
"Is That All There is" 11 1
"Whistle for Happiness" — 13
1970 "Love Story" 105 26
"You'll Remember Me" — 16
"One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round" — 21
1972 "Love Song" — 34
1974 "Let's Love" — 22

Filmography

The Powers Girl (1943)
Stage Door Canteen (1943)
Banquet of Melody (1946) (short subject)
Jasper in a Jam (1946) (short subject) (voice)
Midnight Serenade (1947) (short subject)
Peggy Lee and the Dave Barbour Quartet (1950) (short subject)
Mr. Music (1950)
The Jazz Singer (1952)
Lady and the Tramp (1955) (voice)
Pete Kelly's Blues (1955)
Celebrity Art (1973) (short subject)
Mystery guest on What's My Line? (02/28/1960)

References

1.^ Peggy Lee official site: Current Biography
2.^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazz/profiles/peggy_lee.shtml
3.^ "Lady and the Tramp - 50th Anniversary Edition". PeggyLee.com. 28 Feb 2006.
4.^ http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/07/news/sounds-around-town-615692.html
5.^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0498007/bio
6.^ Peggy Lee chart hits - Peggy Lee.com

IS THAT ALL THERE IS?

Peggy Lee

SPOKEN:
I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire.
I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me up
in his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement.
I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames.
And when it was all over I said to myself, "Is that all there is to a fire"
SUNG:
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
SPOKEN:
And when I was 12 years old, my father took me to a circus, the greatest show on earth.
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears.
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads.
And so I sat there watching the marvelous spectacle.
I had the feeling that something was missing.
I don't know what, but when it was over,
I said to myself, "is that all there is to a circus?
SUNG:
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
SPOKEN:
Then I fell in love, head over heels in love, with the most wonderful boy in the world.
We would take long walks by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each other's eyes.
We were so very much in love.
Then one day he went away and I thought I'd die, but I didn't,
and when I didn't I said to myself, "is that all there is to love?"
SUNG:
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
SPOKEN:
I know what you must be saying to yourselves,
if that's the way she feels about it why doesn't she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me. I'm in no hurry for that final disappointment,
for I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you,
when that final moment comes and I'm breathing my lst breath, I'll be saying to myself
SUNG:
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

Celebrity Grave: Musician Charles Mose Brown 1999 "Merry Christmas Baby"

2012-01-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

Charles Mose Brown (September 13, 1922 – January 21, 1999), born in Texas City, Texas was an American blues singer and pianist whose soft-toned, slow-paced blues-club style influenced the development of blues performance during the 1940s and 1950s. He had several hit recordings, including "Driftin' Blues" and "Merry Christmas Baby."[1]

In the late 1940s a rising demand for blues was driven by an increasing white teenage audience in the South which quickly spread north and west. Blues shouters got the attention, but also greatly influential was what writer Charles Keil dubbs "the postwar Texas clean-up movement in blues" led by stylists such as T-Bone Walker, Amos Milburn and Charles Brown. Their singing was lighter, more relaxed and they worked with bands and combos that had saxophone sections and used arrangements.[2]

Career

As a child Brown demonstrated his love of music and took classical piano lessons. Early on, Brown moved out to Los Angeles, where the great influx of blacks created an integrated nightclub scene in which black performers tended to minimize the rougher blues elements of their style. The blues club style of a light rhythm bass and right-hand tinkling of the piano and smooth vocals became popular, epitomized by the jazz piano of Nat King Cole. When Cole left Los Angeles, California to perform nationally, his place was taken by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers, featuring Charles Brown's gentle piano and vocals.[3]

Brown signed with Aladdin Records and his 1945 recording on that record label of the bestseller, "Driftin' Blues," with a small combo was a typical club blues song. The single was on the U.S. Billboard RandB chart for six months, putting Brown at the forefront of a musical evolution that changed American musical performance.[4] His style dominated the influential Southern California club scene on Central Avenue during that period and he influenced such performers as Floyd Dixon, Cecil Gant, Ivory Joe Hunter, Percy Mayfield, Johnny Ace and Ray Charles.[3]

"Driftin' Blues" was the first of several hits. Brown subsequently released "Get Yourself Another Fool," "Black Night," "Hard Times" and "Trouble Blues," all major hits in the early 1950s on such labels as Modern Records as well as Aladdin.[1] He was unable to compete with the burgeoning rock and roll sound, though he maintained a small and devoted audience.

Brown's approach was too mellow to survive the transition to rock's harsher rhythms, and he faded from the national limelight. His "Please Come Home for Christmas," a hit in 1960 on the King Records remained seasonally popular.[1] "Please Come Home for Christmas" sold over one million copies by 1968, and was awarded a gold disc in that year.[5] During the 1960s Brown recorded a couple of albums for Mainstream Records.

In the 1980s he made a series of appearances at New York's club, Tramps. As a result of these appearances he signed a new recording contract with Blue Side Records and recorded One More for the Road in three days. Blue Side Records closed soon after but distribution was picked up by Alligator Records. Soon after the success of One More for the Road, Bonnie Raitt helped usher in a Charles Brown comeback tour.[6]

He began a recording and performing career again, under the musical direction of guitarist Danny Caron, to greater success than he had achieved since the 1950s.[1] Several records received Grammy Award nominations.

He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,[7] and received both the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship[8] and the W. C. Handy Award.[9]

Brown died of congestive heart failure in 1999 in Oakland, California,[10] and was interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California.[6]

Discography

Original albums

1961 Charles Brown Sings Christmas Songs (King)
1964 Boss of the Blues (Mainstream)
1965 Ballads My Way (Mainstream)
1969 Legend! (Off-Beat)
1971 Blues N' Brown (Modern/Kent)
1978 Music Maestro, Please (Big Town Records)
1986 One More for the Road (Blue Side; later reissued by Alligator Records)
1990 All My Life (Bullseye Blues)
1992 Someone To Love (Bullseye Blues)
1994 Just A Luck So and So (Bullseye Blues)
1994 Charles Brown's Cool Christmas Blues (Bullseye Blues)
1994 These Blues (Verve/Gitanes)
1996 Honey Dripper (Verve/Gitanes)
1998 So Goes Love (Verve)
1999 In A Grand Style (Bullseye Blues)

Compilations and others

1995 Snuff Dippin' Mama (w/Johnny Moore's 3 Blazers) (Nigh Train International)
1995 Walkin' in Circles (w/Johnny Moore's 3 Blazers) (Nigh Train International)
1996 Johns - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Varese Sarabande VDS-5778)
1998 1944-1945 (Classics)
1999 Blue Over You - The Ace Recordings (Westside)
2004 Alone at the Piano (Savoy Jazz)

Contributions

2010 Everyday Living, Hawkeye Herman (Blue Skunk Music)

References

1.^ Russell, Tony (1997). The Blues - From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray. Dubai: Carlton Books Limited. pp. 70–71. ISBN 1-85868-255-X.
2.^ Keil, Charles (1966, 1991). Urban Blues. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. pp. 255 + ix + 8pp of plates. ISBN 0226429601.
3.^ Gillett, Charlie (1996). The Rise of Rock and Roll ((2nd Ed.) ed.). New York, N.Y.: Da Capo Press. pp. 143–147, 316–317. ISBN 0-306-80683-5.
4.^ "Charles Brown."
5.^ Murrells, Joseph (1978). The Book of Golden Discs (2nd ed.). London: Barrie and Jenkins Ltd. p. 83. ISBN 0-214-20512-6.
6.^ "West coast artists - Charles Brown."
7.^ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee List
8.^ Lifetime Honors: National Heritage Fellowships
9.^ Blues Foundation: Past Music Awards
10.^ Thedeadrockstarsclub.com - accessed December 2009

Celebrity Grave: Actress Ann Sheridan 1967 "The Oomph Girl"

2012-01-21T15:00:00.000-08:00

Ann Sheridan (February 21, 1915 – January 21, 1967) was an American film actress.

Life and career

Born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas on February 21, 1915, she was a college student when her sister sent a photograph of her to Paramount Pictures. She subsequently entered and won a beauty contest, with part of her prize being a bit part in a Paramount film. She abandoned college to pursue a career in Hollywood.

She made her film debut in 1934, aged 19, in the film Search for Beauty, and played uncredited bit parts in Paramount films for the next two years. Paramount made little effort to develop Sheridan's talent, so she left, signing a contract with Warner Bros. in 1936, and changing her name to "Ann Sheridan."

Sheridan's career prospects began to improve. The red-haired beauty would soon become Warner's top sex symbol. She received as many as 250 marriage proposals from fans in a single week.[1] Tagged "The Oomph Girl," Sheridan was a popular pin-up girl in the early 1940s.

She was the heroine of a novel, Ann Sheridan and the Sign of the Sphinx, written by Kathryn Heisenfelt, published by Whitman Publishing Company in 1943. While the heroine of the story was identified as a famous actress, the stories were entirely fictitious. The story was probably written for a young teenage audience and is reminiscent of the adventures of Nancy Drew. It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions," 16 books published between 1941-1947 that always featured a film actress as heroine.[2]

She received substantial roles and positive reaction from critics and moviegoers in such films as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), opposite James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, Dodge City (1939) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, Torrid Zone with Cagney and They Drive by Night with George Raft and Bogart (both 1940), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) with Bette Davis, and Kings Row (1942), where she received top billing playing opposite Ronald Reagan, Robert Cummings, and Betty Field. Known for having a fine singing voice, Ann also appeared in such musicals as Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) and It All Came True (1940). She was also memorable in two of her biggest hits, Nora Prentiss and The Unfaithful, both in 1947.

Despite these successes, her career began to decline. Her role in I Was a Male War Bride (1949), directed by Howard Hawks and costarring Cary Grant, gave her another success, but by the 1950s, she was struggling to find work and her film roles were sporadic. She appeared in the television soap opera Another World during the mid-1960s.

In 1966, Sheridan began starring in a new TV series, a Western-themed comedy called Pistols 'n' Petticoats. But she became ill during the filming, and died of esophageal and liver cancer in Los Angeles, California. She had been a chain cigarette smoker for years, and Cagney remarked in his autobiography that when the cancer struck, "she didn't have a chance." She was cremated and her ashes were stored at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles until they were permanently interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2005.[3]

Pistols 'n' Petticoats was officially canceled before her death, though some episodes aired afterward. Her lines were dubbed in at least one of these (presumably because the cancer had affected her voice), and she did not appear in a few of the final episodes.

Sheridan married three times, including a marriage lasting one year to fellow Warner Brothers actor George Brent.

For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Ann Sheridan has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame at 7024 Hollywood Boulevard.

Filmography

Search for Beauty (1934)
Bolero (1934)
Come on Marines (1934)
Murder at the Vanities (1934)
Shoot the Works (1934)
Kiss and Make Up (1934)
The Notorious Sophie Lang (1934)
Ladies Should Listen (1934)
You Belong to Me (1934)
Wagon Wheels (1934)
The Lemon Drop Kid (1934)
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934)
Ready for Love (1934)
Star Night at the Coconut Grove (1934) (short subject)
Behold My Wife (1934)
Limehouse Blues (1934)
Enter Madame (1935)
One Hour Late (1935)
Home on the Range (1935)
Rumba (1935)
Car 99 (1935)
Rocky Mountain Mystery (1935)
Mississippi (1935)
The Red Blood of Courage (1935)
The Glass Key (1935)
The Crusades (1935)
Hollywood Extra Girl (1935) (short subject)
Fighting Youth (1935)
Sing Me a Love Song (1937) (scenes deleted)
Black Legion (1937)
The Great O'Malley (1937)
San Quentin (1937)
Wine, Women, and Horses (1937)
The Footloose Heiress (1937)
Alcatraz Island (1937)
She Loved a Fireman (1937)
The Patient in Room 13 (1938)
Out Where the Stars Begin (1938) (short subject)
Mystery House (1938)
Little Miss Thoroughbred (1938)
Cowboy from Brooklyn (1938)
Letter of Introduction (1938)
Broadway Musketeers (1938)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
They Made Me a Criminal (1939)
Dodge City (1939)
Naughty But Nice (1939)
Winter Carnival (1939)
Indianapolis Speedway (1939)
The Angels Wash Their Faces (1939)
Castle on the Hudson (1940)
It All Came True (1940)
Torrid Zone (1940)
They Drive by Night (1940)
City for Conquest (1940)
Honeymoon for Three (1941)
Navy Blues (1941)
The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
Kings Row (1942)
Juke Girl (1942)
Wings for the Eagle (1942)
George Washington Slept Here (1942)
Edge of Darkness (1943)
Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)
Shine On, Harvest Moon (1944)
The Doughgirls (1944)
One More Tomorrow (1946)
Nora Prentiss (1947)
The Unfaithful (1947)
Silver River (1948)
Good Sam (1948)
I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
Stella (1950)
Woman on the Run (1950) (also co-producer)
Steel Town (1952)
Just Across the Street (1952)
Take Me to Town (1953)
Appointment in Honduras (1953)
Come Next Spring (1956)
The Opposite Sex (1956)
Woman and the Hunter (1957)
The Far Out West (1967)

References

1.^ "Everybody Wants to Marry Annie," AP, May 25, 1941. Accessed June 2, 2009.[1]
2.^ Whitman Authorized Editions for Girls
3.^ http://classicfilm.about.com/od/classicfilmactresses/a/annshrdan20705.htm

Recent Visit to Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer's Grave - Hollywood Forever Cemetery

2012-01-21T14:30:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, January 11, 2012, I spent the afternoon searching for some obscure graves at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. But Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer's grave is not one of them. His grave is easy to find. It's near the curb in the Garden of Memory (formerly Section 6), grave 6, lot 26.

I was pleasantly surprised to see holiday flowers on the graves of him and his family, so I decided to take some new photos. I wonder who left the flowers? Could it be one of the other L.A. Gravers who frequent the cemetery? Does he have any living relatives or friends? How very nice!