DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

[Fading Fast]

Hall of Fame sports broadcaster Dick Enberg was found dead in his home last night at the age of 82, victim of a presumed heart attack.

Enberg was the best baseball broadcaster on the West Coast not named Vin Scully for nearly fifty years, first with the California Angels and subsequently with the San Diego Padres, from whom he retired after the 2016 season. He was known for a bright, upbeat style even when broadcasting teams which disappointed him with their shabby play, and earned a spot in the broadcaster's section of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015. He was a very versatile broadcaster, and aside from his baseball work was a prominent figure in college sports broadcasting, especially NCAA basketball, and also called pro football, golf and tennis for various broadcast and cablenetworks. Like his friendly freeway rival Scully, Enberg also dipped into the world of TV game show hosting during the 1970s as the impresario of the popular "Sports Challenge."

Here's Dick Enberg's first Major League opening day, 1969. All broadcasters should be this good.

Also remember him doing a lot of Olympic coverage in the (from memory) '70s and '80s. In a way, that is tougher on an announcer as it's a lot more on-the-fly reporting about sports that many are less knowledgable about so you need to educate and inform. Again, from old memories, but he was one of those pros who did that very well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of the greatest literary hoaxers of the 20th Century died this week at the age of 87. Clifford Irving pulled off one of the most hilarious con games of all time when in 1972 he sold McGraw Hill Publishing and Time-Life an "Autobiography of Howard Hughes" on which he claimed to have collaborated with the reclusive, psychotic billionaire. Irving, the son of 1930s cartoonist Jay Irving, was a man of exceedingly nimble fingers, and could, on demand, produce page after page of flawless Hughes handwriting, and his work was fully authenticated by a platoon of forensic experts. It wasn't until Hughes himself surfaced in a memorable telephone press conference to denounce the fraud that the game was finally up. In the meantime, Irving rode high on the hog as one of the great evanescent celebrities of the early 1970s, and though he served prison time for his crimes, to the end of his life he seemed to view the whole affair as an extended bit of raffish comedy.

McGraw Hill and Time Life were a good bet less amused. Although they recovered most of the money they paid to Irving, the blow to their credibility was not so easily dismissed. Life magazine, especially, became a laughing stock after breathlessly promoting its serialization of the book, and the ignominy resulting from the affair was a major factor in the descision to fold the magazine at the end of 1972. And in one of the most amusing twists of all, McGraw Hill had barely recovered its composure when they realized that the new tenant they'd signed to a long term lease for a very conspicuous ground-floor space in the McGraw Hill Building was none other than the Irving Trust Company.

 

[Fading Fast]

One of the greatest literary hoaxers of the 20th Century died this week at the age of 87. Clifford Irving pulled off one of the most hilarious con games of all time when in 1972 he sold McGraw Hill Publishing and Time-Life an "Autobiography of Howard Hughes" on which he claimed to have collaborated with the reclusive, psychotic billionaire. Irving, the son of 1930s cartoonist Jay Irving, was a man of exceedingly nimble fingers, and could, on demand, produce page after page of flawless Hughes handwriting, and his work was fully authenticated by a platoon of forensic experts. It wasn't until Hughes himself surfaced in a memorable telephone press conference to denounce the fraud that the game was finally up. In the meantime, Irving rode high on the hog as one of the great evanescent celebrities of the early 1970s, and though he served prison time for his crimes, to the end of his life he seemed to view the whole affair as an extended bit of raffish comedy.

McGraw Hill and Time Life were a good bet less amused. Although they recovered most of the money they paid to Irving, the blow to their credibility was not so easily dismissed. Life magazine, especially, became a laughing stock after breathlessly promoting its serialization of the book, and the ignominy resulting from the affair was a major factor in the descision to fold the magazine at the end of 1972. And in one of the most amusing twists of all, McGraw Hill had barely recovered its composure when they realized that the new tenant they'd signed to a long term lease for a very conspicuous ground-floor space in the McGraw Hill Building was none other than the Irving Trust Company.

Once again, real life trumps anything in fiction. If a novelist had written that last bit about Irving Trust into the story - we'd of all groaned about how "false" it rang / how "forced" it felt.

Small Irving Trust connect. The brokerage firm I worked for in the '80s did business with Irving Trust - then based in its incredible Art Deco 1 Wall Street headquarters (see pics below). I loved going for meeting over there just to be in the building and its cathedral like lobby (giving fodder to the "religion of money is the religion of America" trope, see Woolworth Building lobby, etc.). Irving Trust was bought out by Bank of New York in the late '80s (friends lost jobs) and, I think, is now BNY Mellon.

Before those mergers, when I knew it as Irving Trust, it was a bank in the old-meaning of the word on Wall Street - your word is your bond, reputation counts, relationships last, etc. But by the early '90s, it was just another monolithic bank with policies and procedures replacing personal integrity and individual relationships. And in about ten years from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s, all of Wall Street transformed the same way. Banks, brokerage firms and private partnerships gave way to large institutions / corporations - I'm glad I was there to see the very tail end of the old world, a world that Irving Trust was part of.

 

[vitanola]

Baby Rose Marie, "The Child Wonder", passed into eternity this afternoon, at her home in Van Nuys, .CA.

 

[2jakes]

I remember her from the 'Dick Van Dyke Show'.
RIP Rose Marie
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/...467049363.html?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_LABrand

 

[seres]

I couldn't quite place the name, until the Dick Van Dyke show was mentioned. Yes, as her obit mentioned, "Heaven just got a whole lot funnier".

RIP, Rose Marie

 

[MikeBravo]

He was one of my favourite characters growing up, some of the first "grown up" shows I watched:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/obit-robert-guillaume-1.4369844

At least Tim Conway is still with us.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Before her TV career, Rose Marie had a very long and successful career in radio, movies, and nightclubs. She was, in fact, the last surviving radio star of the 1920s -- signing with NBC in 1929 as "Baby Rose Marie, The Child Wonder" after several years of local success on stations in and around the New York City area. She was not a cutesy Shirely Temple type of child star -- she sang adult songs in a disturbingly growly adult voice, with a very well developed sense of rhythm and timing. She signed her NBC deal around the same time she visited the Vitaphone studio in Brooklyn and made the film short posted by Vitanola.

She continued to perform as "Baby Rose Marie" on the air, on records, and in pictures into the mid-1930s, and resurfaced on NBC again in 1938 as teenage "Rose Marie," singing in an even more mature jazz-oriented style. In the 1940s, she found her way to Las Vegas, where she enjoyed considerable success under the patronage of the gangsters who ran the city, especially Bugsy Siegel, who considered her a personal favorite.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Hall of Fame sports broadcaster Dick Enberg was found dead in his home last night at the age of 82, victim of a presumed heart attack.

Enberg was the best baseball broadcaster on the West Coast not named Vin Scully for nearly fifty years, first with the California Angels and subsequently with the San Diego Padres, from whom he retired after the 2016 season. He was known for a bright, upbeat style even when broadcasting teams which disappointed him with their shabby play, and earned a spot in the broadcaster's section of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015. He was a very versatile broadcaster, and aside from his baseball work was a prominent figure in college sports broadcasting, especially NCAA basketball...

A note on Ensberg and college basketball...Ensberg called the famous "Game of the Century", the 1968 matchup between the University of Houston and UCLA, at the Houston Astrodome. It was the first national television broadcast of a regular season college basketball game, and it was a pivotal moment in college sports, proving that college basketball could attract a national television audience. March Madness ensued in the following years, in part thanks to Ensberg's work.

 

[vitanola]

I was first introduced to her when I was seven, when I came across a copy of "Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are", on Brunswick. I have since always loved her stuff. A great voice has been stilled.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's a tremendous record. Try and convince yourself this voice and technique are coming out of a ten year old child.

 

[vitanola]

I could well claim Baby Rose Marie as one of my vocal coaches. When I was eight, one of my teachers noted that I had a good sense of pitch, excellent projection, and an "interesting" vocal style. How could it be otherwise, for I learned to sing by imitating records made by the likes of Irving Kaufman, Scrappy Lambert, Billy Murray, Ed Smalley, and, of course, Baby Rose Marie (we'll leave the Galli-Curci records out of this discussion, though I must admit that at one point before my voice changed I was told that I could do a pretty good "Bell Song", inapproprite as that might be.)

This teacher suggested that the Rose Marie records were good models, and so I made my solo debut at a school assembly at the age of eight, singing "Come out, come Out" and "My Bluebird is Singing the Blues". I still remember Mrs. Dodridge (Northeastern Ohio Normal School, '34) as one of the best accompnists with whom I have sung.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

One of the greatest literary hoaxers of the 20th Century died this week at the age of 87. Clifford Irving pulled off one of the most hilarious con games of all time when in 1972 he sold McGraw Hill Publishing and Time-Life an "Autobiography of Howard Hughes" on which he claimed to have collaborated with the reclusive, psychotic billionaire. Irving, the son of 1930s cartoonist Jay Irving, was a man of exceedingly nimble fingers, and could, on demand, produce page after page of flawless Hughes handwriting, and his work was fully authenticated by a platoon of forensic experts. It wasn't until Hughes himself surfaced in a memorable telephone press conference to denounce the fraud that the game was finally up. In the meantime, Irving rode high on the hog as one of the great evanescent celebrities of the early 1970s, and though he served prison time for his crimes, to the end of his life he seemed to view the whole affair as an extended bit of raffish comedy.

McGraw Hill and Time Life were a good bet less amused. Although they recovered most of the money they paid to Irving, the blow to their credibility was not so easily dismissed. Life magazine, especially, became a laughing stock after breathlessly promoting its serialization of the book, and the ignominy resulting from the affair was a major factor in the descision to fold the magazine at the end of 1972. And in one of the most amusing twists of all, McGraw Hill had barely recovered its composure when they realized that the new tenant they'd signed to a long term lease for a very conspicuous ground-floor space in the McGraw Hill Building was none other than the Irving Trust Company.

You'd think publishers would have learned something from that, but barely a decade later they fell for the Hitler Diaries, the work of a small-time German thief, that not only tarnished Stern Magazine but pretty well wrecked the reputation of distinguished historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who pronounced them authentic.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think in both cases it was a prime demonstration of how The Boys From Marketing have thoroughly corrupted both journalism and academia. When huge amounts of money are at stake, reality becomes surprisingly malleable.

Somewhere in the hereafter, Clifford Irving and Konrad Kujau are having a drink and a good laugh together.

 

[Zombie_61]

Before her TV career, Rose Marie had a very long and successful career in radio, movies, and nightclubs. She was, in fact, the last surviving radio star of the 1920s -- signing with NBC in 1929 as "Baby Rose Marie, The Child Wonder" after several years of local success on stations in and around the New York City area. She was not a cutesy Shirely Temple type of child star -- she sang adult songs in a disturbingly growly adult voice, with a very well developed sense of rhythm and timing. She signed her NBC deal around the same time she visited the Vitaphone studio in Brooklyn and made the film short posted by Vitanola. *snip* She continued to perform as "Baby Rose Marie" on the air, on records, and in pictures into the mid-1930s, and resurfaced on NBC again in 1938 as teenage "Rose Marie," singing in an even more mature jazz-oriented style. In the 1940s, she found her way to Las Vegas, where she enjoyed considerable success under the patronage of the gangsters who ran the city, especially Bugsy Siegel, who considered her a personal favorite.

In one article I read about her passing, they mentioned her claims that her father worked for Al Capone as an arsonist/strong-arm. She, being so young at the time, had no idea what sort of "business" they were in, and simply referred to Mr. Capone as "Uncle Al". It was when she grew older and began working with/for Mr. Siegel that she understood what it was all about. The article also mentioned that her "adult" voice led to a rather prevalent rumor that she was actually a 45-year-old midget, so she performed in a year-long cross-country tour so people could see for themselves that she was indeed still a child.

I really only knew of her through her work on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hollywood Squares, and a handful of appearances in movies and on TV, but her life sounds like an interesting story and I'd be interested in reading her autobiography.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I remember my grandmother calling her, "Baby Rose Marie." As I only knew her as Sally Rogers on the Dick Van Dyke show, the "baby" part seemed odd. Later I found out. What a talent- and what a loss for us all.

 

[AmateisGal]

Sue Grafton, mystery writer of the alphabet series mysteries. I never read any of them, but she had a loyal fan base. The last letter she wrote was "y" so her daughter said, 'As far as we are concerned, the alphabet ends with "y."

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I didn't know Sue Grafton had died. I met her at a mystery convention in Pasadena in the early '90s and have seen her at many others in the years since. What a loss.

 

[seres]

Sue Grafton... We really enjoyed her books. Yes, the alphabet now ends at Y. RIP, Sue

 

[Just Jim]

One of the greatest literary hoaxers of the 20th Century died this week at the age of 87. Clifford Irving pulled off one of the most hilarious con games of all time when in 1972 he sold McGraw Hill Publishing and Time-Life an "Autobiography of Howard Hughes" on which he claimed to have collaborated with the reclusive, psychotic billionaire.

I have vague memories of this as it happened. I remember more the reaction of people when it turned out to be a hoax. People argued about it, that it couldn't be a fake and Hughes must have just bought everyone off.

The reaction had just about died down when the Hitler Diaries were "found". I thought they were fakes from the beginning, the story just seemed too "pat". Later, after the diaries were shown to be a hoax, I got to spend some time in East Germany and realized that if Hitler had kept diaries, they could show up just the way these were claimed to have been found.