John Lasell, actor. Other credits include “The F.B.I.”, “Perry Mason”, “The New Perry Mason”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Broken Mirror“, season 6, episode 4.)
Archive for the ‘TV’ Category
Obit watch: October 15, 2024.
Tuesday, October 15th, 2024Obit watch: October 3, 2024.
Thursday, October 3rd, 2024Jay J. Armes passed away on September 19th. He was 92.
I had been thinking about him recently, wondering if he was still around and enjoying a comfortable retirement, or if he was still working.
I’m not sure how many people remember him, but he was a pretty famous private investigator in El Paso.
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In May 1946, Julian and an older friend were horsing around one afternoon with a teenager who had a pair of railroad blasting caps. Julian was holding them when they blew up, shooting him into the air, mangling his hands and nearly killing him.
A few months later he was fitted with prosthetic hooks.
He tried acting for a bit, but went into PI work.
Mr. Armes (pronounced arms) catapulted to investigatory stardom in 1972 after Marlon Brando hired him to find his 13-year-old son, Christian, who had been abducted in Mexico. Working with Mexican federal agents, Mr. Armes said he found the boy in a cave with a gang of hippies.
He told other daring tales of triumph: flying on a glider into Cuba to recover $2 million for a client; helping another client escape from a Mexican prison by sending him a helicopter, which he said inspired the 1975 Charles Bronson movie “Breakout.”
He was a self-promoter. Perhaps a bit too much of one.
The Cartwright article is linked from the obit, but Texas Monthly is kind of skirty about reading without a subscription. Here’s an archived version. Brutally summarizing (you should really read the whole thing), Mr. Cartwright found a lot of inconsistencies between what Mr. Armes claimed and what could be documented.
Mr. Armes’s son said in an interview last week that Mr. Cartwright’s article was a “hatchet job” and that it was retaliation for his father’s unsuccessful campaign for sheriff of El Paso County against a friend of the writer. Mr. Cartwright died in 2017.
In 2016, the public radio program “Snap Judgment” revisited the Texas Monthly article and the puzzle of Mr. Armes.
The private eye couldn’t tolerate even hearing Mr. Cartwright’s name.
“He’s got a wilted hand, and I guess he had an inferiority complex,” Mr. Armes told “Snap Judgment.” “He saw Jay Armes had accomplished all this. So, he had to write a cutthroat story. Don’t tell me about anything about this corrupt Gary Cartwright. Don’t even mention his name to me.”
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“Hookman”, season 6, episode 1. He was a violent criminal who was out for revenge against the four cops that caused him to lose his hands…one of whom was Steve McGarret. I admit, I haven’t seen every episode of the good “Hawaii Five-O”, but I have seen this one, and I would agree it is one of the best of those I’ve seen. Mike Quigley seems to agree with me.
(It was remade for the bad “5-0” (season 3, episode 15), but without Mr. Armes.)
He had some notable successes and seemed to earn enough money to support his lifestyle. In 1991, he was credited by authorities with tracking down the body of Lynda Singshinsuk, a Northwestern University student who had gone missing. Mr. Armes also persuaded the suspect, Donald Weber, to confess to killing her.
“Without Mr. Armes’s assistance, there is a significant possibility that Mr. Weber would not be brought to justice,” a prosecutor told The Chicago Tribune.
I found two action figures on eBay. One is $61.19 and it doesn’t look complete. The other one is $149.99. I can’t tell how complete it is, but it does have the “briefcase” with the various “hands”.
In other news, Masamitsu Yoshioka has passed away. He was 106.
He was “the last known survivor among some 770 crew members who manned the Japanese airborne armada that attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941”.
He explained last year in an interview with Jason Morgan, an associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, for the English-language website Japan Forward, “I’m ashamed that I’m the only one who survived and lived such a long life.”
Asked in that interview if ever thought of visiting Pearl Harbor, he at first replied, “I wouldn’t know what to say.” He then added: “If I could go, I would like to, I would like to visit the graves of the men who died. I would like to pay them my deepest respect.”
This made me snort:
“…the liberation of Asia from white colonialism”.
Bob Yerkes, stuntman. IMDB.
His backyard was equipped with rigs for high falls, mats to practice flips and a springboard powered by compressed air that launched people end-over-end. He is said to have invented the airbag for stunt use.
“There will never be another backyard like Bob’s where you could train for free or even live for free if you needed a place to stay,” Williams wrote.
Obit watch: October 2, 2024.
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024John Amos. NYT (archived). Other credits include “The Rockford Files: Shoot-Out at the Golden Pagoda”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “Hunter”.
Frank Fritz, of “American Pickers”.
Burning in Hell watch: Song Binbin, commie.
A daughter of a prominent general in the People’s Liberation Army, Ms. Song was enrolled at Beijing Normal University Girls High School when she and classmates responded to Mao’s call for young people to turn against intellectuals, educators and others who supposedly held bourgeois values.
On Aug. 5, 1966, students attacked Bian Zhongyun, a 50-year-old mother of four who headed the school. She was kicked and beaten with sticks spiked with nails. After passing out, she was thrown onto a garbage cart and left to die.
Her death has been widely described as the first killing of a teacher during the Cultural Revolution, a violent spasm establishing Mao’s cult of personality, with masses waving his Little Red Book of his writings.
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Two weeks after Ms. Bian’s death, more than one million young Red Guards thronged Tiananmen Square, where Ms. Song had been selected to pin a red armband around Mao’s left sleeve as they stood atop the towering Gate of Heavenly Peace. A photograph of the moment appeared across the country. Praised by Mao, Ms. Song, at 19, became a kind of celebrity in China.
But the whirlwind of the Cultural Revolution soon turned on Ms. Song’s family. Her father, Song Renqiong, was purged from the Communist Party in 1968, and Ms. Song and her mother were put under house arrest. The Cultural Revolution ended only when Mao died in 1976.
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On Jan. 12, 2014, Ms. Song visited her old school and expressed remorse, bowing before a statue of Ms. Bian and delivering a 1,500-word speech. “I am responsible for the unfortunate death of Principal Bian,” she said, according to The Beijing News. (Ms. Bian’s title was officially deputy principal, but she was referred to as the principal because she was serving in that role at the time in an acting capacity.)
In 2004, Wang Youqin, a schoolmate of Ms. Song’s who later became a historian at the University of Chicago, published “Victims of the Cultural Revolution,” a book that included a description of the death of Ms. Bian and of Ms. Song’s role in the turmoil at the girls’ high school.
After Ms. Bian’s death, Ms. Wang wrote, “Every school in China became a torture chamber, prison or even execution ground, and many teachers were persecuted to death.”
Ms. Song denied that she had participated directly in the beating; she said, in fact, that she had tried to stop others who did. But she acknowledged that she and a fellow student were Red Guard leaders and that they were among the first to post so-called big-character posters — publicly displayed signs handwritten in a large format — denouncing teachers.
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Some commenters stressed that Ms. Song should bear a greater burden because of her prominence among the Red Guards. “It’s meaningless to say you witnessed a murder and then say you don’t know who the killers were,” said Cui Weiping, a retired professor of literature who writes about China’s past, as quoted by The New York Times in 2014.
One person who was unsatisfied was Ms. Bian’s widower, Wang Jingyao. He had taken photos of his wife’s battered body after her death as well as of the posters that her tormentors had hung in their apartment after breaking in. One sign threatened to “hack you to pieces,” another to “hold up your pigs’ ears.”
“She is a bad person, because of what she did,” Mr. Wang told The Times in 2014, when he was 93. “She and the others were supported by Mao Zedong. Mao was the source of all evil. He did so much that was bad.”
Obit watch: September 30, 2024.
Monday, September 30th, 2024He was a good Texas boy who did some acting in addition to his music career. There’s plenty of press coverage around this, but a few credits that aren’t covered in the articles: “Lone Star”, “Millennium”, “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia”, “Heaven’s Gate”, and let us not forget…
(I know both Lawrence and I have said this before, but “Passion & Poetry: Sam’s Trucker Movie”, which is on the blu-ray edition of “Convoy”, has a lot of Kristofferson in it. And I think it is almost more interesting than the movie itself.)
Dikembe Mutombo, Hall of Fame NBA player. ESPN.
I kind of disliked that commercial because I felt it made him look like a jerk (yes, I know it was playing off his signature move). But:
Mutombo often joked about how much in fines his showmanship had cost him under the league’s no-taunting rule. But four years into retirement he received ample payback, starring in an acclaimed Geico commercial created for the 2013 Super Bowl. In that 30-second spot, in full uniform, he wagged his famous finger at people in various everyday activities.
He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the commercial had reestablished recognition “for me and for my foundation. I thank God for it.”
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Mutombo’s mother, Biamba Marie, died at home in 1998 after having a stroke; he had been unable to get hospital care for her due to a government-enforced curfew. That year, he invited business and political insiders to a dinner in Washington to announce a fund-raising campaign for a hospital in Kinshasa to provide treatment for the poor. Over the next several years, he struggled to raise money, even from people within the N.B.A., two notable exceptions being Ewing and Mourning.
“I thought it would be easy, that I would call up all the rich people I knew from being a basketball player and the whole thing would take nine months,” he told The New York Times weeks before the 300-bed hospital, named for his mother, opened in September 2006, on land donated by the government. He said that he had to pay squatters to vacate the property and that he had donated roughly $15 million to the project.
“This is going to be the proudest day of my life,” he said during the ceremonial opening.
John Ashton, actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Police Squad!” (In color), and “Columbo”.
Obit watch: September 27, 2024.
Friday, September 27th, 2024Dame Maggie Smith. THR. Tributes. Other credits include “Richard III” (1995), “Murder By Death”, “Death on the Nile” (1978), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, and voice work in “Sherlock Gnomes” and “Gnomeo & Juliet”.
Barbara Leigh-Hunt, actress. Other credits include “Oh Heavenly Dog”, “The Plague Dogs”, and “Longitude”.
Muriel Furrer, Swiss cyclist. She was 18. Her death was a result of head injuries she sustained in a crash yesterday during the UCI World Championships.
Frank Coppa died in October of 2023, but his death was not announced until recently.
In 2002, he was serving time for securities fraud when he was indicted on racketeering and extortion charges. Facing an even longer prison sentence, he notified the F.B.I. that he wanted to cooperate with the government.
It was the first time a Bonanno member had flipped, violating the mafia’s solemn oath of loyalty, Omertà.
Mr. Coppa’s decision to cooperate with federal prosecutors, knowingly putting his life at risk, led at least 10 other members to do the same and ultimately helped the government convict Joseph Massino, the Bonanno boss, of seven murder charges and immobilize his mafia family.
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Mr. Coppa also detailed his role in the death of Dominick Napolitano, a Bonanno member, known as Sony Black, who was executed in 1981 for unwittingly connecting the family with an undercover F. B.I agent, Joseph D. Pistone, who used the alias Donnie Brasco. Mr. Pistone later wrote a book about that experience and was played by Johnny Depp in “Donnie Brasco,” a 1997 film adaptation.
The night of Mr. Napolitano’s murder, Mr. Coppa testified, he had bought fried chicken for the hit men as they prepared for the execution, at a Bonanno member’s house in Queens.
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Among law enforcement officials, Mr. Coppa was known as a clever wise guy. He made millions of dollars for himself and the Bonanno family in pump-and-dump schemes, boosting the value of penny stocks to quickly turn a profit. He also shook down underworld figures outside the Bonanno family who were engaging in securities fraud.
“He was one of the smartest mob guys you’re ever going to meet,” a former F.B.I. agent involved in the case said in an interview on the condition of anonymity so that he could speak about the investigation. “He understood how to engineer these financial frauds. He was at a completely different level when it came to most of these guys.”
Random notes: September 18, 2024.
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024Lawrence sent over two stories that I don’t think justify a blog post individually, but together might make a good one.
Story #1, which is actually getting a surprising (to me) amount of press coverage: Adrian Wojnarowski is leaving ESPN to become the GM of the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team.
The New York Post says he could be walking away from up to $20 million dollars. I probably wouldn’t have noted this, since it isn’t a firing, but Lawrence tells me this is a big freaking deal for basketball fans: Mr Wojnarowski has a reputation for breaking NBA news on Twitter.
I saw in another story (which, of course, I can’t find now) that Mr Wojnarowski had talked for years about his fantasy of throwing his cell phone into the ocean when he retired, as he was pretty much tied to it 24/7/365. “Kemosabe kiss my ass, I bought a boat, I’m going out to sea” indeed.
Story #2: Erma Wilson had her lawsuit against Midland County and former prosecutor Ralph Petty dismissed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in a “plurality decision”, which apparently means that it doesn’t set a binding precedent. The decision was on somewhat narrow technical grounds: the Court of Appeals felt she hadn’t exhausted her remedies in state court yet.
Why was she suing?
…Wilson had been convicted in Midland County 23 years ago on felony possession of cocaine charges and given an eight-year probation sentence.
Long ago, Wilson had appealed her conviction to the state’s 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and lost.
Okay, so? Turns out that prosecutor Petty was moonlighting. He was a prosecutor by day…and a law clerk for “several district judges” at the same time.
And I’m going to pause here to insert a quote from one of the greatest philosophers currently walking the earth, Judge Don Willet.
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Judge Willet disagrees. Strongly.
Willet, on the other hand, led a fiery dissent in which he stated that he would have let Wilson’s lawsuit proceed, noting, “A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process.”
“The Constitution’s fair-trial requirement is Con Law 101 — a bedrock due-process guarantee. In fact, the Framers cared so much about the sanctity of the criminal jury trial that our Constitution specifically mentions it twice — not only in the Sixth Amendment, but also in Article III,” he wrote.
“And to underscore they really meant it — that criminal-justice fairness is sacrosanct — the Founding generation doubled down, enshrining a host of procedural non-negotiables in multiple provisions of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, more words are devoted to We the People’s fair-trial right than to any other constitutional guarantee. Safe to say, the Framers were fixated on the adjudication of criminal charges — both the power to bring them and the process for resolving them — and spilled a lot of ink to ensure that the Constitution’s inviolable fair-trial guarantee is no empty promise.”
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Just in case you were wondering, Mr. Petty has been disbarred, and according to “The Texan”, has been ordered not to use his name “in any manner in conjunction with the words ‘Attorney at Law,’ ‘Counselor at Law,’ or ‘Lawyer.'” He was also fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage. No, wait: “He also had to notify any of his clients in writing of his disbarment, give them back their money and documents, and notify all judges with whom he may have business pending.“
Obit watch: September 10, 2024.
Tuesday, September 10th, 2024James Earl Jones. NYT (gift link). THR. Variety.
I didn’t realize he was an EGOT (but the Oscar was honorary, not competitive).
The IMDB trivia asserts he was a NRA member, which is interesting. It also asserts that he was considered for the lead role in one of the spin-offs of a minor 1960s SF TV series, but they cast Avery “Hawk” Brooks instead.
Other credits include three episodes of “Homicide: Life on the Street”, something called “Excessive Force” that sounds fun, “The Last Remake of Beau Geste”, “Exorcist II: The Heretic”, and, of course, “The Star Wars Holiday Special”.
As a not-quite-an-obit but belongs here anyway note, the NYT obit is credited to Robert D. McFadden. Mr. McFadden retired from the Times on September 1st, and the paper of record ran a very nice tribute to him. I’ll say something nice about the NYT for once: I agree, Mr. McFadden was a pretty swell obit writer. I think he belongs in the same class as the legendary Robert McG. Thomas Jr..
He retired with more than 250 advance obituaries still in the pipeline, each awaiting its day.
Also among the dead: Ed Kranepool, one of the original Mets.
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After the ’69 Series, Kranepool and several teammates, including Tom Seaver and Cleon Jones, put together a musical act that performed in Las Vegas, singing, among other songs, “The Impossible Dream.” After the group’s debut on the Circus Maximus stage at Caesars Palace, Kranepool conceded that the singing Mets were nervous.
“It’s not like Shea Stadium, where we know what we’re doing,” he told The Times. “But we had enough Scotch.”
Obit watch: September 3, 2024.
Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024James Darren, actor and musician.
Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “S.W.A.T.” (the original), “Black Sheep Squadron” (aka “Baa Baa Black Sheep”), and “Renegade”.
Simon Verity, stone carver.
Mr. Verity was chosen to direct the St. John the Divine project in 1988. That venture placed him on a scaffold on Amsterdam Avenue for parts of nine years, leading a team that, using hammers, mallets and chisels, carved 31 biblical figures, including Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Abraham and Sarah, from limestone blocks in the niches that frame the great brass doors at the Portal of Paradise.
One carving, a reimagining of the burning of Jerusalem, depicts the destruction of the World Trade Center and other city landmarks under a nuclear mushroom. (It was created more than a decade before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.) The carving illustrates signs of a rebirth, building on the city’s ashes.
The Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, dean of the cathedral, said in a statement that many tourists visited the cathedral just to see the portal.
“Mr. Verity took the long-dead worthies of the Hebrew and Christian traditions and made them things of wonder for people in our own day,” he added. “Beyond this present age, his work will endure into a future beyond us.”
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One of his original grottoes was at Leeds Castle, in Kent, England, which visitors entered through a suite of rooms. Nearly all the rooms were encrusted, from ceiling to floor, with colorful mosaics made from minerals, shells and animal bones, and some of the walls were covered with elaborate limestone sculptures.
In addition, he carved statues of four whales and a fountain for King Charles III when Charles was the Prince of Wales; a teacup made of broken crockery for Elton John’s garden; a seated king in the front of Wells Cathedral, whose restoration he also worked on; and “The Agony in the Garden,” which depicts Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before his betrayal.
Mr. Verity created fountains and a sundial at the American Academy in Rome and headstones for the writer Nancy Mitford; George Wein, the Newport Jazz Festival impresario, and his wife, Joyce (for which he sculpted a jazz band); and the British poet laureate John Betjeman.
Obit watch: August 28, 2024.
Wednesday, August 28th, 2024Things have been kind of slow on the obit front. I don’t know if it just too hot for people to die, or what’s going on, but it just doesn’t seem like there’s been a lot to report.
I have had this one in my pocket for a few days now. I’m wondering if it will ring a bell with any of my readers: Mitzi McCall.
Ms. McCall was a pretty successful entertainer. She had a comedy act with her husband, Charlie Brill.
They got a big break on the night of February 9, 1964. They were booked to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show”. The lists of acts that night included:
Oh, yeah, there was one other act booked that night: a group of obscure British musicians that called themselves the Beatles.
In their sketch, Mr. Brill played a producer casting a young actress for a new movie. Ms. McCall played his secretary and three other roles: a nervous former Miss Palm Springs, a pushy stage mother and a Method actor. The sketch fell with a thud, except for some chuckles when Ms. McCall tossed in an ad lib as the stage mother.
“My little girl was waiting outside, you know,” she said. “She used to be one of the Beatles.”
“Oh, what happened?” Mr. Brill asked.
“Somebody stepped on her.”
They bombed. Their agent didn’t call them for six months. But they recovered:
Ms. McCall was 93. Her husband, Mr. Brill, survives her.
She was also the dry cleaner’s wife in that “Seinfeld” episode. Other credits include “Twilight Zone” (both the original and the 1986 revival), “The Jim Backus Show”, “The Dennis O’Keefe Show”, the 1990 “Dragnet”, and “Madman of the People”.
Obit watch: August 19, 2024.
Monday, August 19th, 2024Obit watch: August 18, 2024.
Sunday, August 18th, 2024Alain Delon, noted French actor. NYT (gift link).
Other credits include “Someone Is Bleeding” (aka “Icy Breasts”, based on a Richard Matheson novel), “The Assassination of Trotsky” (apparently, he was the assassin to Richard Burton’s (!) Trotsky), and…
…he didn’t have much of a US career, but he did play “Joe Patroni”‘s co-pilot and procurer in “The Concorde…Airport ’79“.
John Aprea, actor. Other credits include a movie that does not exist and is clearly a copyright trap by IMDB, “Renegade”, “Lt. Vince Novelli” on “Matt Houston”, “Mrs. Columbo” (but not “Columbo”), “The F.B.I.”, “The Seven-Ups”…
…and yes, he did do a “Mannix” (“Murder Revisited”, season 3, episode 23. IMDB lists him as “Thug (uncredited)”.)
Obit watch: August 16, 2024.
Friday, August 16th, 2024Peter Marshall. NYT (archived).
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Also, producer Abe Burrows wanted Marshall to star opposite Mary Tyler Moore in a production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s aiming for Broadway. Marshall assured him that The Hollywood Squares would last just 13 weeks and he would be available after that. But when the show was renewed for another 13 weeks, Burrows informed him that he was going with Richard Chamberlain.
“Well, I ran 16 years [on Hollywood Squares] and Breakfast at Tiffany’s closed in Boston,” Marshall said. “You never know.”
Greg Kihn. NYT (archived). Is it fair to call him a 2.5 hit wonder?
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(I would also give him half-credit for “I Lost On Jeopardy”, thought I don’t know how many people would think that was a hit.)
Jack Russell, lead singer and co-founder of Great White.