DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

[MrBern]

Edna Parker dies at 115 as world's oldest person

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/6135964.html

Although she never drank alcohol or tried tobacco and led an active life, Parker didn't offer tips for living a long life. Her only advice to those who gathered to celebrate when she became the oldest person was "more education."

 

[Feraud]

r.i.p. Odetta.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081203/ap_en_mu/obit_odetta

American folk music legend Odetta dies at 77

NEW YORK – Odetta, the folk singer with the powerful voice who moved audiences and influenced fellow musicians for a half-century, has died. She was 77.

Odetta died Tuesday of heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital, said her manager of 12 years, Doug Yeager. She was admitted to the hospital with kidney failure about three weeks ago, he said.

In spite of failing health that caused her to use a wheelchair, Odetta performed 60 concerts in the last two years, singing for 90 minutes at a time. Her singing ability never diminished, Yeager said.

"The power would just come out of her like people wouldn't believe," he said.

With her booming, classically trained voice and spare guitar, Odetta gave life to the songs by workingmen and slaves, farmers and miners, housewives and washerwomen, blacks and whites.

First coming to prominence in the 1950s, she influenced Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other singers who had roots in the folk music boom.

An Odetta record on the turntable, listeners could close their eyes and imagine themselves hearing the sounds of spirituals and blues as they rang out from a weathered back porch or around a long-vanished campfire a century before.

"What distinguished her from the start was the meticulous care with which she tried to re-create the feeling of her folk songs; to understand the emotions of a convict in a convict ditty, she once tried breaking up rocks with a sledge hammer," Time magazine wrote in 1960.

"She is a keening Irishwoman in `Foggy Dew,' a chain-gang convict in `Take This Hammer,' a deserted lover in `Lass from the Low Country,'" Time wrote.

Odetta called on her fellow blacks to "take pride in the history of the American Negro" and was active in the civil rights movement. When she sang at the March on Washington in August 1963, "Odetta's great, full-throated voice carried almost to Capitol Hill," The New York Times wrote.

She was nominated for a 1963 Grammy awards for best folk recording for "Odetta Sings Folk Songs." Two more Grammy nominations came in recent years, for her 1999 "Blues Everywhere I Go" and her 2005 album "Gonna Let It Shine."

In 1999, she was honored with a National Medal of the Arts. Then-President Bill Clinton said her career showed "us all that songs have the power to change the heart and change the world."

"I'm not a real folksinger," she told The Washington Post in 1983. "I don't mind people calling me that, but I'm a musical historian. I'm a city kid who has admired an area and who got into it. I've been fortunate. With folk music, I can do my teaching and preaching, my propagandizing."

Among her notable early works were her 1956 album "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues," which included such songs as "Muleskinner Blues" and "Jack O' Diamonds"; and her 1957 "At the Gate of Horn," which featured the popular spiritual "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."

Her 1965 album "Odetta Sings Dylan" included such standards as "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Masters of War" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

In a 1978 Playboy interview, Dylan said, "the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta." He said he found "just something vital and personal" when he heard an early album of hers in a record store as a teenager. "Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar," he said.

Belafonte also cited her as a key influence on his hugely successful recording career, and she was a guest singer on his 1960 album, "Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall."

She continued to record in recent years; her 2001 album "Looking for a Home (Thanks to Leadbelly)" paid tribute to the great blues singer to whom she was sometimes compared.

Odetta's last big concert was on Oct. 4 at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where she performed in front of tens of thousands at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, Yeager said. She also performed Oct. 25-26 in Toronto.

Odetta hoped to sing at the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, though she had not been officially invited, Yeager said.

Born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Ala., in 1930, she moved with her family to Los Angeles at age 6. Her father had died when she was young and she took her stepfather's last name, Felious. Hearing her in glee club, a junior high teacher made sure she got music lessons, but Odetta became interested in folk music in her late teens and turned away from classical studies.

She got much of her early experience at the Turnabout Theatre in Los Angeles, where she sang and played occasional stage roles in the early 1950s.

"What power of characterization and projection of mood are hers, even though plainly clad and sitting or standing in half light!" a Los Angeles Times critic wrote in 1955.

Over the years, she picked up occasional acting roles in TV and film. None other than famed Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper reported in 1961 that she "comes through beautifully" in the film "Sanctuary."

In the Washington Post interview, Odetta theorized that humans developed music and dance because of fear, "fear of God, fear that the sun would not come back, many things. I think it developed as a way of worship or to appease something. ... The world hasn't improved, and so there's always something to sing about."

Odetta is survived by a daughter, Michelle Esrick of New York City, and a son, Boots Jaffre, of Fort Collins, Colo. She was divorced about 40 years ago and never remarried, her manager said.

A memorial service was planned for next month, Yeager said.

 

[RondoHatton]

Silent film star Anita Page died yesterday at the age of 98.

She is so beautiful - those eyes, that mouth... TCM ran several of her motion pictures yesterday - especially liked "The Broadway Melody" and "Our Modern Maidens". Godspeed, little one.

By the way, was she "double jointed"? Her arms sometimes seemed to hyperextend at the elbow, a trait I have seen in only a few women, something that is strangely alluring to me...

 

[Lady Day]

r.i.p. Odetta.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081203/ap_en_mu/obit_odetta

I just saw this!
:cry: :cry:

LD

 

[Brian Sheridan]

Neil Hefti

From wikipedia:

Neal Hefti (October 29, 1922 – October 11, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, tune writer, and arranger.

He began arranging professionally in his teens, when he wrote charts for Nat Towles. He became a prominent composer and arranger while playing trumpet for Woody Herman; while working for Herman he provided new arrangements for "Woodchopper's Ball" and "Blowin' Up a Storm," and composed "The Good Earth" and "Wild Root." After leaving Herman's band in 1946, Hefti concentrated on arranging and composing, although he occasionally led his own bands. He is especially known for his charts for Count Basie such as "Li'l Darlin'" and "Cute".

 

[Sefton]

Forest J. Ackerman dies

Forry has gone. A true original and a gentleman. The sad emoticon just isn't enough to convey the lose of one of your childhood heroes. He will be missed...


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081205/ap_en_ot/obit_ackerman

 

[CherryRed]

Beverly Garland

Loved her in Scarecrow and Mrs. King.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081207/ap_en_tv/obit_beverly_garland

 

[mike]

Forry has gone. A true original and a gentleman. The sad emoticon just isn't enough to convey the lose of one of your childhood heroes. He will be missed...


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081205/ap_en_ot/obit_ackerman

From what I heard, Forry passed away peacefully and painlessly. He maintained his personality and sense of humor to the very end. One of his biggest fears was Alzheimers, which he was lucky to have never suffered from. He remained the full of hopes and dreams without a bad bone in his body, literally to his dying day. The man will continue to inspire until our planet grows cold, desolate and overrun with enormous lobsters.

That being said, I really can't believe we live in a world that doesn't have Forry sharing it. The idea of their not being an open house of the Ackermansion with his warm greeting smile welcoming you in, is something I just can't wrap my head around today.

 

[Viper Man]

With a name like Felt, I'd say he was born to wear a fedora.

The movie was better.

 

[Joie DeVive]

Another sad day for Trek fans

Majel Barrett Roddenberry passed away peacefully yesterday at 76 from leukemia. She was known to Star Trek fans as Nurse Chapel, and the voice of the computer.

Here's a few links:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081218/ap_en_ce/obit_roddenberry
http://www.roddenberry.com/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28300175/

 

[Indyfan]

From wikipedia:

Neal Hefti (October 29, 1922 – October 11, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, tune writer, and arranger.

He began arranging professionally in his teens, when he wrote charts for Nat Towles. He became a prominent composer and arranger while playing trumpet for Woody Herman; while working for Herman he provided new arrangements for "Woodchopper's Ball" and "Blowin' Up a Storm," and composed "The Good Earth" and "Wild Root." After leaving Herman's band in 1946, Hefti concentrated on arranging and composing, although he occasionally led his own bands. He is especially known for his charts for Count Basie such as "Li'l Darlin'" and "Cute".

He also did the music for Batman (1966)

 

[Hondo]

Character actor Pat Hingle dies at 84

Younger set remembers him in Tim Burton's Batman, but many of us "old timers" remember him from all those westerns, Clint Eastwood's "Hang'em High" and other movies and TV shows. A good man R.I.P. Pat!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/05/obit.hingle/index.html

 

[just_me]

I always liked him. A bit of trivia was his limp was caused by a fall down an elevator shaft.

RIP.

 

[HatMagnet]

Sorry to hear this. I always enjoyed his characters.

 

[warbird]

RIP Donald Westlake. I didn't see this already mentioned sorry if it was.

http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2009/01/donald-e-westlake-1933-2008.html

If you read Crime/ Noir, you have to read Westlake.

 

[MrBern]

hawaiian shirt inventor

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Inventor_of_the_Hawaiian_shirt_dies&in_article_id=459255

The first serious Textile Manufacturer of Hawaiian shirts

 

[John in Covina]

Pat Hingle was one of those actors that could be counted on to make a great portrayal of a charactor where ever he was used. He is as familiar as the the family furniture. A mainstay in TV and film, one of those actors that you recognize from a thousand titles.

 

[Feraud]

Robert Mulligan

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3id78469d8113685396c480c94efc1905a

'Mockingbird' helmer helped actors find Oscar-winning form
By Duane Byrge

Dec 21, 2008, 07:55 PM ET
Robert Mulligan, who directed "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Summer of '42," among other films, died Friday of heart disease at his Connecticut home. He was 83.

Mulligan received a best director Oscar nomination in 1963 for "Mockingbird."

The brother of actor Richard Mulligan, he also directed "The Great Impostor," "Love With the Proper Stranger," "Baby, the Rain Must Fall," "Inside Daisy Clover," "Up the Down Staircase" and "The Other." He also narrated "Summer of '42."

Known for his diffident nature and sensitivity toward players, Mulligan directed five different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Natalie Wood, Ruth Gordon and Ellen Burstyn, with Peck winning the best actor Oscar for "Mockingbird."

He also elicited consistently fine performances from a range of his players, including Anthony Perkins in "Fear Strikes Out," Jennifer O'Neill in "Summer of '42," Robert Redford in "Inside Daisy Clover" and Richard Gere in "Bloodbrothers."

Mulligan earned his stripes in live TV in New York in the early 1950s and helmed such productions as "Studio One," "Playhouse 90," "The Alco Hour," "The Philco Television Playhouse" and "The DuPont Show of the Month" before becoming a movie director in 1957 with "Fear Strikes Out," the story of baseball pitcher Jimmy Piersall.

In 1982, Mulligan directed "Kiss Me Goodbye," a reworking of the Brazilian film "Donna Flor and Her Two Husbands." His more recent films include "Clara's Heart" (1988), starring Whoopi Goldberg, and "The Man in the Moon" (1991).

Self-effacing with a nonflamboyant filmic style, Mulligan didn't receive the acclaim of such ex-TV contemporaries as Sidney Lumet, Arthur Penn and John Frankenheimer. His films were more popular with audiences than with critics.

While some debated whether he had a discernible personal vision in his films, Mulligan was known for his casting and direction of children, including "Staircase," where he personally interviewed more than 500 New York high school students.

Sensing a kindred spirit, Francois Truffaut was a vocal champion, particularly cognizant of what he perceived as undue criticism of Mulligan's work for lacking a particular "style." Mulligan himself was dismissive of critics/cineaste talk: "I don't know anything about 'the Mulligan style,' " he told the Village Voice in 1978. "If you can find it, well, that's your job."

Mulligan was known for working side-by-side with screenwriters in shaping a cinematic story. "The attention which has been paid to directors is flattering but overrated," he noted in the same Voice interview. Mulligan had an eight-year collaboration with Alan J. Pakula, who served as a producer on all of Mulligan's early films, beginning with "Fear Strikes Out" through "The Stalking Moon" in 1969.

Mulligan was born Aug. 23, 1925, in New York. He worked for six months at the New York Times on the copy desk before entering Fordham University, where he majored in journalism and literature. He became one of the first students to enroll in the school's radio department.

After college, he started his show business career as a messenger boy at CBS. He soon moved up to production assistant and then won an opportunity to direct on the "Suspense" series. He excelled in the fast-paced milieu of live TV, helming such projects as "The Moon and Sixpence," "Billy Budd" and "The Bridge of San Luis Rey."

He directed stage plays as well, including "Comes a Day" on Broadway.

 

[MrNewportCustom]

RIP Donald Westlake. I didn't see this already mentioned sorry if it was.

http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2009/01/donald-e-westlake-1933-2008.html

If you read Crime/ Noir, you have to read Westlake.

I'm still looking for one of his books in the Dortmunder series. Funny, funny writing. I've also read one of his many Parker (one name only) books that he wrote as Richard Stark: Talk about hard-hitting crime!

If you're intersted, Donald E. Westlake.

He will be missed.

Another favorite of mine, Richard S. Prather, passed away in February of 2007. He wrote another series of books I love, the Shell Scott series.


Lee

 

[MrBern]

starsky & hutch actor

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/arts/television/04hamilton.html

Bernie Hamilton...