DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

[MisterCairo]

Actor Jack Bannon, probably best known for his role on Lou Grant, has died, aged 77.

His wife was Ellen Travolta Bannon, John Travolta's sister.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/jack-bannon-dead-1.4377042

 

[Worf]

Having read several obits on Fats these past few days, something just pinged in: could he have been the only music star from the '50s that wasn't cheated out of all his royalties, didn't go bankrupt, wasn't embroiled in lawsuits with his producer / record company / manager for decades?

The articles all reference his success in the '50s, his mansion, his charity work after Katrina, but none of the usual ugly bankruptcy / royalty suits / etc., that seemed de rigueur for '50s recording stars.

If he avoided all that and truly kept his money, he was either really, really smart or really, really lucky and since I don't believe in multi-decade luck, I'll go with really, really smart.

Yes to all of the above. What I liked about "Fats" most was that he was a MUSICIAN! He was scalding hot on the 88's, not even Huey "Piano" Long or Professer "Longhair" had anything on him. He could flat out burn that piano to the ground when he wanted. Like Nat "King" Cole though, once he started to sing his playing took a back seat. The only one who surpassed him in record sales in the 50's was Elvis but unlike Elvis he could write. What a mighty, mighty man!

Worf

 

[LizzieMaine]

The creator of one of the most iconic images of the 1960s has died at the age of 95. Robert Blakeley was a minor bureaucrat in the Army Corps of Engineers in 1961 when he was assigned to develop signage for a civil emergency preparedness program then in the process of implementation. After experimenting, Blakeley came up with a simple graphic image that would become as emblematic of the 1960s as astronauts, powdered beverages, and mop tops.

The Corps contracted for the production of 1.4 million of Blakeley's signs, and posted them on public buildings specially equipped with basement emergency facilities, none of which, fortunately, were ever used for their intended purpose. The program was finally discontinued in the 1980s, but thousands of the signs remain as rusting tributes to their creator and the times in which he lived.

The question often asked was "is the Fallout Shelter symbol three triangles on a black background or a black circle with three black triangle points on a yellow background?" Blakeley definitively answered this question -- it was intended as three triangles on a black background -- but the debate continues to rage among people with nothing better to keep them awake nights.

 

[MisterCairo]

This is awful to hear. Toronto Blue Jay great Roy "Doc" Halladay died in a plane crash. He was only 40 years old.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/mlb/roy-halladay-killed-plane-crash-1.4391632

Cy Young winner in 2003 with the Jays and 2010 with the Phillies.

Dammit.

 

[Kirk H.]

Actor John Hillerman from Magnum PI, Chinatown, and many more has passed away of natural causes at the age of 84.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Actor John Hillerman from Magnum PI, Chinatown, and many more has passed away of natural causes at the age of 84.

Jonathan Quayle Higgins III was one of my all time favorite characters. The older I get, the more I act like him. RIP Mr. Hillerman.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Actor John Hillerman from Magnum PI, Chinatown, and many more has passed away of natural causes at the age of 84.

One of my favorite characters in Blazing Saddles:

"Can't you see that's the last act of a desperate man?"

"I don't care if it's the first act of Henry V..."

RIP.

 

[Zombie_61]

Jonathan Quayle Higgins III was one of my all time favorite characters. The older I get, the more I act like him. RIP Mr. Hillerman.

Included in one of the online articles about his passing was a comment from one his nephews, Chris Tritico, who said the role of Higgins was Mr. Hillerman's favorite. “The reason he didn’t take another big role is he refused to take a sitcom after ‘Magnum’,” he said. “He wanted to continue doing the serious work that he felt ‘Magnum’ was.” Another article stated he had a sizeable fan base in England and that he felt terrible when he would respond to their fan mail and had to let them down, informing them, "I hate to disappoint you, but I'm a hick from Texas."

 

[HadleyH1]

Liz Smith, Longtime Queen of Tabloid Gossip Columns, Dies at 94


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/arts/liz-smith-dead.html

 

[LizzieMaine]

If you lived in New England any time over the last fifty years you knew Gerald "Jerry Ellis" Elovitz, founder and chief commercial spokesman of "Building #19," the region's most beloved and lamented chain of liquidated/damaged merchandise outlets, who died over the weekend at the age of 90. Jerry's ads were omnipresent in the New England media of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and into the 10s, with their deliberately crude graphics and Jerry's own rasping voice barking out the bargains to be found within his shabby, rough-looking stores. If you ever wanted to buy a giant pyramid of smoke-stained five-gallon jars of Miracle Whip at 90 percent off, Jerry had a deal for you.

Remember, "Friends don't let friends pay retail."

 

[Fading Fast]

If you lived in New England any time over the last fifty years you knew Gerald "Jerry Ellis" Elovitz, founder and chief commercial spokesman of "Building #19," the region's most beloved and lamented chain of liquidated/damaged merchandise outlets, who died over the weekend at the age of 90. Jerry's ads were omnipresent in the New England media of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and into the 10s, with their deliberately crude graphics and Jerry's own rasping voice barking out the bargains to be found within his shabby, rough-looking stores. If you ever wanted to buy a giant pyramid of smoke-stained five-gallon jars of Miracle Whip at 90 percent off, Jerry had a deal for you.

Remember, "Friends don't let friends pay retail."

Having lived in Boston for several years in the late '90s / early '00s, I vaguely remember those ads. While I knew nothing about him, from those ads and your comments, I was able to guess more than half his life story / background before I read his obit (which I just did). He was a type of man of his generation that built that type of business.

On a smaller scale (but still quite successful), my father had a friend who built a huge business out of selling carpet "remnants" and damaged carpet (he was always honest about that fact) from a dumpy looking warehouse. Even when he became very successful and rich and had several regular "floor covering" stores, he still loved to be in the remnant warehouse selling to the public. The guy was a multimillionaire in his 80s who would spend his Saturdays in a rundown warehouse selling water-or-fire-damaged pieces of carpet to a down-on-their-luck clientele.

My dad would visit him and I'd tag along. He'd be there, looking no different from his customers (beat up clothes / disheveled) and would spend an hour selling one $50 piece of carpet. And to speed complete an interesting if too typical story, the next generation ran the business down and the following one destroyed it.

But the founder was a type just like Jerry Ellis. Something in the water that generation drank produced many of that type of man.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The last surviving man to have played major league baseball in the 1930s has died at the age of 99. Bobby Doerr rose from the Pacific Coast League to break in with the Boston Red Sox in 1937 at the age of nineteen -- and remained the team's regular second baseman for fourteen seasons. Doerr was known for his quick, agile glove and his sharp batting eye, factors which made him a perennial All Star over the course of his career. He missed the 1945 season due to military service, which he spent playing Army ball in California, but returned to the Sox in 1946 as a key component in a powerful team that romped to an easy victory in the American League pennant race, only to fall to the Cardinals in the World Series. It was to be Doerr's only Series appearance. He played much of his career suffering from debilitating back pain, which finally forced him to retirement after the 1951 season, but he would return to the Red Sox in 1967 as their first base and hitting coach, a position he would hold for three seasons. He later coached several years for the Toronto Blue Jays before retiring again to his home in Oregon.

Doerr was noted also for his close personal friendship with teammates Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, and Johnny Pesky -- and he was the last survivor of that quartet. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1986, and his uniform number 1 was retired by the Red Sox in 1988. A statue of Doerr, Williams, DiMaggio and Pesky stands today at the corner of Van Ness and Ipswich Streets in Boston, just outside Gate B at Fenway Park.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Doerr was also the oldest living baseball Hall of Famer (as well as the oldest to ever live). That now makes Red Schoendienst the oldest living at age 94.

RIP Bobby.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Dr. Fernando "Ferdie" Pacheco, known as "The Fight Doctor", died yesterday at the age of 89. Pacheco was known as the longtime physician and cornerman for Muhammad Ali, from 1960-1977, and also a ubiquitous boxing commentator and writer. In addition to his fame as a boxing personality, he was also a prolific writer, writing everything from cookbooks to screenplays, and an award-winning painter.

 

[MisterCairo]

Malcolm Young, co-founder and rhythm guitarist/songwriter for AC/DC, has died aged 64. He had been suffering from dementia for a few years.

Truly sad.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/malcolm-young-acdc-dead-1.4408815

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ I grew up in a modest NJ neighborhood in the '70s and went to the Rutgers in the early '80s. I'll just admit it, the term white trash was thrown around by many as a self-description of these venues - so it is with painful honesty that I admit to blasting AC/DC out of more than one pair of speakers in my life. There was a powerful rock sound to the group.

RIP Malcolm Young

 

[HadleyH1]

RIP Malcolm Young.

 

[MisterCairo]

Man, this is sad. One of my first childhood tv crushes, Ann Wedgeworth, has died, aged 83.

She was on Three's Company for a time, an older woman with the hots for Jack who was not interested. Man, she worked for me, and I was 13 or so.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/ann-wedgeworth-threes-company-actress-dies-1.4409345

 

[MisterCairo]

Country singer, actor and businessman Mel Tillis has died, aged 85:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/mel-tillis-dead-1.4409467

 

[Zombie_61]

Man, this is sad. One of my first childhood tv crushes, Ann Wedgeworth, has died, aged 83. She was on Three's Company for a time, an older woman with the hots for Jack who was not interested. Man, she worked for me, and I was 13 or so.

I was 18 when she joined the cast of Three's Company. I wouldn't say I had a crush on her, but I always thought she was attractive and that Jack (John Ritter) was an idiot for rejecting her advances.

Country singer, actor and businessman Mel Tillis has died, aged 85.

In one of the articles I read about his passing, they included this anecdote about his stutter: "'One of the reasons I worked it into my show is that it's my trademark,' he once told The Associated Press. He said that when he was in the Air Force as a flight leader, he marched airmen right into a wall. 'I couldn't get out the word 'halt.'"