DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

[HanauMan]

Beetle Bailey was very popular with serving soldiers and Walker's cartoons featured daily in the Stars & Stripes army newspaper. Sgt. Snorkel was a favorite character with my father (also an army sergeant) and his buddies, they could identify with his constant run ins with Lieutenant Fuzz and Private Bailey!

 

[Fading Fast]

..."Beetle" has always been sort of a weird time capsule of the post-WWII pre-Vietnam "brown shoe Army," and some have suggested that in fact Camp Swampy is actually some sort of alternate universe military purgatory where nothing ever happens, nobody ever advances, and nothing is ever accomplished.

Growing up in the late '60s / '70s and "discovering" "Beetle Bailey" at the same time, I "felt" this "alternative universe" or time warp as I knew the cartoon I was reading was unrelated to the war I saw on the TV or experienced through the families with young boys in our neighborhood.

Somewhat similarly to how I knew hitting people over the head with a frying pan was funny in a cartoon but unrelated to something you did in real life, "Beetle" just floated in that "otherworld" of cartoons that I enjoyed but which felt disconnected from reality.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Walker is well known among the cartooning world for a book he wrote in the '70s, "The Lexicon of Comicana," which is sort of a graphic dictionary of all the various cliched bits of visual shorthand used in drawing comic strips. Among other things, he's responsible for naming the beads of sweat which erupt around the head of an anxious character "plewds," the puff of dust/smoke that appears behind a running figure a "briffit," and the windowpane reflection on the shining pate of a baldheaded charcacter a "lucaflect." You don't have to be a cartoonist to appreciate the wit involved.

 

[Worf]

I used to read Beetle Bailey as a kid and watched, briefly, the cartoon on T.V. (yes there was one). When I joined the Army I realized rather quickly that the cartoon was even more of a fantasy than I first thought. First, the racial makeup of the service was completely different, Walker did try to rectify this with the addition of Lt. Flap but that character was of questionable value. More disturbing was the constant depiction of Sarge beating Beetle to a pulp for crimes real and imagined. There's always been a measure of physical abuse in military service throughout time, but Sarge's constant pummeling's wouldn't have been tolerated even in the Army I was in. But it was after all a cartoon, not reality.

Worf

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had forgotten all about those cartoons, but yep, there was a series of them made for television by King Features in the early sixties, and they were run to death on local kiddie shows well into the seventies. The producer for most of them was Al Brodax -- who was also a key figure in the production of the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine," which is about as sixties a career trajectory one could possibly imagine.

There is a thriving subculture of internet comics fans who have devised an elaborate "slash-fic" backstory into the strange love-hate relationship between Beetle and Sarge, which adds a weird and disquieting dimension to all those "beaten to a pulp" scenes. Walker in his later years seems to have been aware of and amused by this reading, and it's hard to believe he didn't deliberately throw these fans a bone once in a while. So to speak.

 

[LizzieMaine]

1970s baseball favorite Oscar Gamble has died at the age of 68. A fine left-handed power hitter over a 17-year career with the Indians, Yankees, White Sox, Cubs, Athletics, Phillies, Padres, and Rangers, Gamble was always an exciting player to watch, but despite his longevity and his accomplishments on the field, he'll always be loved and remembered for something truly magnificent that had nothing to do with his skill as a player.

George Steinbrenner forced Gamble to get a haircut, proving for all time what a joyless old corporate fart he really was.

 

[Fading Fast]

1970s baseball favorite Oscar Gamble has died at the age of 68. A fine left-handed power hitter over a 17-year career with the Indians, Yankees, White Sox, Cubs, Athletics, Phillies, Padres, and Rangers, Gamble was always an exciting player to watch, but despite his longevity and his accomplishments on the field, he'll always be loved and remembered for something truly magnificent that had nothing to do with his skill as a player.

George Steinbrenner forced Gamble to get a haircut, proving for all time what a joyless old corporate fart he really was.

Remember Gamble well, especially from his time with the Yankees and because of, well, that hair and his great last name.

 

[Worf]

Dennis Edwards the last "Temptation" has died.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/...ormer-temptations-lead-singer-dies-at-74.html

Worf

 

[MisterCairo]

Good night, Mr. Crane:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/obit-mahoney-john-frasier-1.4522102

https://i.cbc.ca/1.4522114.15179253...erivatives/original_620/obit-john-mahoney.jpg

 

[Doctor Strange]

John Perry Barlow - Grateful Dead lyricist (he cowrote most of Bob Weir's songs) and a seriously important person in terms of this here Internet thingy we're all on.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-perry-barlow-dead_us_5a7beda5e4b08dfc92fff7c7

https://www.rollingstone.com/cultur...low-grateful-dead-lyricist-dead-at-70-w516487

 

[scotrace]

Good night, Mr. Crane:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/obit-mahoney-john-frasier-1.4522102

https://i.cbc.ca/1.4522114.15179253...erivatives/original_620/obit-john-mahoney.jpg

This one hit me hard. Frasier will always be my favorite sitcom and Mahoney glued the whole thing together in many ways.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Actor John Gavin:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/john-gavin-dead-psycho-imitation-life-actor-990198

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Billy Graham age 99.

 

[Harp]

This one hit me hard. Frasier will always be my favorite sitcom and Mahoney glued the whole thing together in many ways.

He lived in Oak Park and could occasionally be seen on Sunday morning carrying a Chicago Tribune. Always pleasant.

 

[AbbaDatDeHat]

Billy Graham age 99.

Greetings All:
I can only imagine the welcome at the pearly gates for this man....the Crown he will be rewarded with...the incalculable number of souls to reacquaint with...and the sheer joy he waited so very, very long for.
More than a man...a Saint!! Sing angels sing!!
Be well. Bowen

 

[LizzieMaine]

Musical comedy actress Nanette Fabray has died at the age of 97. A major star on the Broadway stage during the early postwar years, Fabray was a singing and dancing child star during the waning days of vaudeville, dabbled in movies as a young adult, but found her real niche on Broadway starting in 1941 with her appearance with Danny Kaye and Eve Arden in Cole Porter's "Let's Face It." She developed rapidly as a performer during the war years, and hit her peak in 1949 when she earned a Tony Award for her performance in the Weill/Lerner hit "Love Life."

Television occupied an increasing amount of her time from then on, in guest bits on most of the New York-based variety extravaganzas. In 1954 she took on her most challenging television job, replacing Imogene Coca as Sid Caesar's comedy partner for the "Caesar's Hour" series -- and more than held her own opposite the tempestuous comic. She also played an unheralded but important role in the development of color television when she -- and her vivid red hair -- starred in a series of experimental telecasts mounted by RCA as proof-of-concept for the compatible-color system ultimately adopted as the industry standard. She returned to movies as well, with the high point of her film career her energetic performance alongside Fred Astaire, Jack Buchanan and Oscar Levant in "The Band Wagon." Boomers probably know her best as a semi-regular on "The Hollywood Squares" in the 1960s and 1970s, where she displayed a quick wit, but she continued to perform on stage into the 2000s.

Offstage, Fabray was a dedicate advocate for the hearing-impaired -- she was born with a hearing disability that went undiagnosed until she grew up, and worked ceaselessly on behalf of programs promoting awareness, testing, and treatement.

 

[Zombie_61]

David Ogden Stiers, arguably best known for playing Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on the television series M*A*S*H, has died of bladder cancer at the age of 75.

 

[KY Gentleman]

David Ogden Stiers, arguably best known for playing Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on the television series M*A*S*H, has died of bladder cancer at the age of 75.

He had big shoes to fill on MASH, following the departure of Major Frank Burns as Major Winchester. The show did not miss a beat when he joined the cast.
RIP Mr. Stiers.

 

[Zombie_61]

He had big shoes to fill on MASH, following the departure of Major Frank Burns as Major Winchester. The show did not miss a beat when he joined the cast.
RIP Mr. Stiers.

When those cast changes occurred back in 1975, I felt the show wasn't quite the same as it had been. I didn't think it was intentional, but merely the result of creating different characters portrayed by different actors with different chemistries than their predecessors. Still, Major Winchester stood out for me because he was a worthy "adversary" for Hawkeye and B.J. rather than simply being the "butt of the joke" that Major Burns was, and I thought Mr. Stiers was brilliant in the role. Winchester could be equally as unlikable as Burns, but in a different way and for very different reasons. My wife and I have been watching a lot of reruns of M*A*S*H lately and, being able to compare the "old" and "new" casts more directly, I'm now of the opinion that the addition of Mr. Stiers, Harry Morgan, and Mike Farrell, actually improved the show.

 

[Frunobulax]

When those cast changes occurred back in 1975, I felt the show wasn't quite the same as it had been. I didn't think it was intentional, but merely the result of creating different characters portrayed by different actors with different chemistries than their predecessors. Still, Major Winchester stood out for me because he was a worthy "adversary" for Hawkeye and B.J. rather than simply being the "butt of the joke" that Major Burns was, and I thought Mr. Stiers was brilliant in the role. Winchester could be equally as unlikable as Burns, but in a different way and for very different reasons. My wife and I have been watching a lot of reruns of M*A*S*H lately and, being able to compare the "old" and "new" casts more directly, I'm now of the opinion that the addition of Mr. Stiers, Harry Morgan, and Mike Farrell, actually improved the show.

One of the interesting things to note, IMHO, is that near the end of Larry Linville's run, they fleshed out Frank's character a bit. I think they gave him a bit more humanity and gave him some pathos. Most notably, during the period when Hot Lips was dragging his heart through the mud as she had found Donald. IT would have been interesting if his character had taken that turn earlier.