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Obit watch: June 12, 2024.

Wednesday, June 12th, 2024

Still traveling, so these are going to be on the brief side.

Mike “Duke” Venturino, longtime gun writer. I had been reading his articles since Jesus was a lance corporal at least, so this hits a little hard.

I never met him, but he was a swell writer. I don’t have any more information other than the linked article, but I’ll post anything additional I find.

(Hattip to Pigpen51 on this.)

Tony Lo Bianco, actor. Other credits include “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “The Twilight Zone” (the 1985 revival), and “Police Story”.

Jerry West, NBA player, coach, and executive.

Posted in Guns, Movies, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: June 4, 2024.

Tuesday, June 4th, 2024

Janis Page, actress. She was 101. NYT (archived).

Other credits include “The Rockford Files”, “Lanigan’s Rabbi”, “Banacek”…

…and “Mannix”. (“A Way to Dusty Death”, season 7, episode 2. She was “Georgia Durian”.)

Brother Marquis, rapper with 2 Live Crew.

Larry Allen, of the Dallas Cowboys.

Allen was a second-round pick out of Sonoma State in 1994 and quickly became one of the most dominant offensive linemen in the NFL.
He was named to the Pro Bowl 11 times and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013. He played for the Cowboys from 1994 to 2005, winning a Super Bowl in 1995. He spent his final two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers.

He was 52.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 1, 2024 (part 2 of 2).

Saturday, June 1st, 2024

Doug Ingle, lead singer and organ player for Iron Butterfly.

Mr. Ingle was the last surviving member of the classic lineup of Iron Butterfly, the pioneering hard rock act he helped found in 1966. The band released its first three albums within a year, starting with “Heavy” in early 1968, and, after a lineup shuffle, cemented its place in rock lore with its second album, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” released that July.
“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” spent 140 weeks on the Billboard album chart, peaking at No. 4, and was said to have sold some 30 million copies worldwide. A radio version of the title song, whittled to under three minutes, made it to No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.
But it was the full-length album version — taking up the entire second side of the LP in all of its messy glory — that became a signature song of the tie-dye era. With its truncheonlike guitar riff and haunting aura that called to mind a rock ’n’ roll “Dies Irae,” the song is considered a progenitor of heavy metal and encapsulated Mr. Ingle’s ambition at the time:
“I want us to become known as leaders of hard rock music,” Mr. Ingle, then 22, said in a 1968 interview with The Globe and Mail newspaper of Canada. “Trend setters and creators, rather than imitators.”

Obiligatory:

Adding to the legend of the song was that it was essentially an in-studio soundcheck that became the final version.
Don Casale, an engineer at the session, had asked the band to run through the song so he could set the recording levels, but he hit “record” as the band meandered through a sprawling free jam featuring solos by the guitarist Erik Braunn, fills by the bassist Lee Dorman and a two-and-a-half-minute drum solo by Mr. Bushy.
“After 17 minutes and five seconds I ended the tape,” Mr. Casale recalled in a 2020 interview with The Rochester Voice, a New Hampshire newspaper. “I then called down to the band and said, ‘Guys, come on up and listen to this.’ They loved it.”

Obligatory 2:

Darryl Hickman, actor. Other credits include “Network”, “Looker”, and “Sharky’s Machine”.

Burning in Hell watch: Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton. I won’t go into detail about his crimes, out of respect for the sensibilities of my readers: you can click through to the linked article for that if you wish.

He died of natural causes at the age of 74. Two weeks ago, somebody rammed a broken broomstick through his head in prison, so naturally he died.

Posted in Law, Movies, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 28, 2024.

Tuesday, May 28th, 2024

I didn’t want to post an obit watch yesterday because I thought it would distract from Memorial Day. So catching up…

Bill Walton. ESPN. Boston Globe (archived).

Richard “It’s a Small World” Sherman. NYT (archived).

Don Perlin, comic artist. (“Moon Knight”)

Adele Faber, author. I’m not a parent, but I have heard a lot of raves for How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk.

FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Al Ruddy. He produced a couple of movies, and co-created “Hogan’s Heroes” and “Walker, Texas Ranger”.

Not exactly an obit, but Lee Goldberg wrote a nice tribute to Roger Corman.

He was cheap, but he paid us on time, treated us well and was a wonderful, creative collaborator.

Posted in Books, Movies, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 24, 2024.

Friday, May 24th, 2024

Kabosu, the Shiba Inu who became a symbol of Dogecoin.

Hatitp to RoadRich, whose eulogy I will borrow: “Much sad. Very respect. No bite.”

Bob McCreadie. This is kind of a weird one, but actually not that weird by NYT standards. He was a prominent dirt track racer. Dirt track racing is apparently a big deal in parts of the East Coast, but not so much in NYC. The slightly surprising thing to me is that the paper of record treats him and his career with respect:

McCreadie was dirt racing’s perfect Everyman: Scrawny, bespectacled, with a bushy beard, he chain-smoked, cursed vigorously and hauled his racecars with his own pickup truck instead of the fancy trailers that many of his contemporaries used.
In northern New York, where he lived, the news media covered him with roughly the same exuberance with which New York City newspapers covered Babe Ruth in his heyday. The Post-Standard of Syracuse mentioned him more than 1,200 times in his career.
“He looked like a country bumpkin,” Ron Hedger, a longtime writer for Speed Sport Insider, said in a phone interview. “The fans identified with him, and they really loved him. There was always a mob of people waiting in line for an autograph.”

…

He started racing in 1971 and won his first race four years later. He then began dominating the circuit. In 1986, he won the Miller American 200 at the New York State Fairgrounds — the Super Bowl of dirt racing. His best year was 1994, when he won 47 of 93 races.

…

In his best year, McCreadie won somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000 in race prizes. But his aggressive racing style had an occupational hazard: dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of crashes.
“You’re looking at someone who’s run thousands of races,” he told The Post-Standard in 2006. “If you tried to do percentage-wise out of the total — maybe 5 percent.”

This just in: Caleb Carr, author. You’ve probably at least heard of The Alienist:

Mr. Carr had first pitched the book as nonfiction; it wasn’t, but it read that way because of the exhaustive research he did into the period. He rendered the dank horrors of Manhattan’s tenement life, its sadistic gangs and the seedy brothels that were peddling children, as well as the city’s lush hubs of power, like Delmonico’s restaurant. And he peopled his novel with historical figures like Theodore Roosevelt, who was New York’s reforming police commissioner before his years in the White House. Even Jacob Riis had a cameo.

He was also a prominent military historian. And he was horribly abused as a young boy by his father, the Beat author Lucien Carr.

“There’s no question that I have a lifelong fascination with violence,” Caleb Carr told Stephen Dubner of New York magazine in 1994, just before “The Alienist” was published, explaining not just the engine for the book but why he was drawn to military history. “Part of it was a desire to find violence that was, in the first place, directed toward some purposeful end, and second, governed by a definable ethical code. And I think it’s fairly obvious why I would want to do that.”

Morgan Spurlock, of “Super Size Me” fame. NYT (archived) which I prefer:

But the film also came in for subsequent criticism. Some people pointed out that Mr. Spurlock refused to release the daily logs tracking his food intake. Health researchers were unable to replicate his results in controlled studies.
And in 2017, he admitted that he had not been sober for more than a week at a time in 30 years — meaning that, in addition to his “McDonald’s only” diet, he was drinking, a fact that he concealed from his doctors and the audience, and that most likely skewed his results.
The admission came in a statement in which he also revealed multiple incidents of sexual misconduct, including an encounter in college that he described as rape, as well as repeated infidelity and the sexual harassment of an assistant at his production company, Warrior Poets.

Posted in Books, Cars, Geek, Mammals, Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 21, 2024.

Tuesday, May 21st, 2024

I made it home in one piece, but I’m still catching up. Lawrence sent over a handful of obits:

Jim Otto, center for the Oakland Raiders.

Otto was an original Raider. He played for the team during its American Football League days, from 1960 to 1969, and then in the National Football League from 1970-74, following the merger of the two leagues. He started 210 consecutive games, was voted to the A.F.L. all-star team in each of its 10 seasons, and helped the Raiders win seven division championships. In 1980, the first year he was eligible, he was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

…

…Otto offered a list of injuries that seemed more appropriate for a whole battalion in an army than for a single man. There were about 30 concussions, about 25 broken noses, a broken jaw, teeth kicked out, a detached retina, two cauliflower ears from getting kicked in the side of the head, several broken ribs, torn muscles, groin pulls, sprained ankles, a detached and torn diaphragm, two broken kneecaps, 150 facial stitches and arthritis in virtually all his joints. He once experienced amnesia so severe, he said, that he looked at his wife and thought, Who is she?

Gloria Stroock, actress. Other credits include “Death Car on the Freeway”, “Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy”, and “The Day of the Locust”.

Barbra Fuller, actress. IMDB.

Dolores Rosedale, also known as “Roxanne”, from the original “Beat the Clock”. IMDB.

Ivan Boesky, inside trader.

An inspiration for the character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s movie “Wall Street” and its sequel, Mr. Boesky made a fortune betting on stock tips, often passed to him illegally in exchange for suitcases of cash. His guilty plea to insider trading in November 1986 and his $100 million penalty, a record at the time, sent shock waves through Wall Street and set off a cascade of events that marked the end of a decade of frenzied takeover activity and the celebration of conspicuous wealth.
As federal investigators closed in on Mr. Boesky, he agreed to cooperate, providing information that led to the downfall of the investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert and its junk bond king, Michael Milken.

Posted in Law, Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 17, 2024.

Friday, May 17th, 2024

The great Dabney Coleman, who was also a good Texas boy.

IMDB. I’m riding shotgun on the way to dinner right now, so I’ll just note: he was, among all his other credits, a “Mannix” three-timer.

I always liked him.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 13, 2024.

Monday, May 13th, 2024

Mark Damon, actor and producer. Other credits include “Pistol Packin’ Preacher”, “Ivanhoe, the Norman Swordsman”, and an uncredited role in “The Longest Day”, followed a year later by an uncredited role in “The Shortest Day”.

Tributes to Roger Corman.

Celebrity coroner Cyril Wecht.

A nationally known forensic pathologist with a law degrees from the University of Maryland and the University of Pittsburgh and a medical degree from Pitt, Dr. Wecht was one of the more vocal critics of the Warren Commission report that concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald alone was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

…

Months before his death, Dr. Wecht donated his massive cache of records and research to Duquesne in the months before his death.
The collection includes his case files on such high-profile killings as David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, JonBenet Ramsey, the Menendez brothers, Casey Anthony, Scott Peterson, and Chandra Levy.

(Hattip to my brother on this. Archived because the Post-Gazette really doesn’t like adblock.)

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 12, 2024.

Sunday, May 12th, 2024

Roger Corman. Variety. NYT.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. “King of the B’s” and all that crap. But it’s worth noting that he gave a lot of obscure filmmakers – Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, etc. – their starts in movie making. It’s also worth noting that his company took chances on a lot of foreign films that ended up doing well over here.

It’s also worth noting that (from what I hear) he was responsible for the only decent “Fantastic 4” movie.

Corman had certain aesthetic rules and qualitative guidelines, which he delivered with his characteristic insouciance: “In science fiction films, the monster should be always be bigger than the leading lady.” He pioneered such cinematic staples as the girls’ shower scene, usually the second scene in a Corman teen film. He insisted his directors practice proper professionalism: namely, always have the girls lather up their arms and stomachs so as not to obscure the integrity of the breast shots.

…

Ever restless, Corman ventured into weightier territory, producing The Intruder (1962), a hard look at racial prejudice. It was his first “message” film, and he financed it himself when the major distributors balked at the subject. The story centered on a hatemongering racist (William Shatner) who organized violent opposition to court-ordered school desegregation. It used the N-word in a realistic, non-gratuitous manner, but the film was denied the Production Code’s seal and screened in only a few movie houses in the country.
Although it received commendations from such critics as The Hollywood Reporter‘s Arthur Knight and The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, it was to be Corman’s first money-losing film. He vowed never again to make a movie with “so obviously a personal statement.”

I’m hoping Lawrence is going to do his own tribute to Corman later, and he’ll almost certainly talk about “The Intruder”, so I’ll just say: if you haven’t seen it, go watch it. Shatner is amazing.

Susan Backlinie. Other credits include “Two Minute Warning”, “The Fall Guy” (the TV show), and “Quark”.

Mary Wells Lawrence, noted advertising executive.

She splashed jazzy colors on Braniff airliners. She put the “plop plop, fizz fizz” into Alka-Seltzer. She warned Benson & Hedges smokers that long cigarettes might pop balloons or set fire to beards. And from Niagara Falls to Broadway, she reached millions with her “I ♥ NY” campaign.

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 8, 2024.

Wednesday, May 8th, 2024

Wow. Busy.

Susan Buckner, actress. We may have to add “Deadly Blessing” to the movie list. Other credits include “B.J. and the Bear”, “Switch”, and “Police Academy 6: City Under Siege”.

Judy Devlin Hashman, badminton champion.

Before badminton established a world championship or joined the Olympics, the All England Open Badminton Championships was the sport’s pinnacle. Hashman won the women’s singles title in that event for the first time in 1954 at age 18. Then she added her record-setting nine more, the last in 1967.
She also won seven women’s doubles titles, six of them with her sister Susan Devlin, later known as Susan Peard.

Ian Gelder, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Father Brown”, and “Rumpole of the Bailey”.

The paper of record finally ran an obit for Dick Rutan.

Steve Albini. NYT (archived).

Milton Diamond, who the NYT describes as a “sexologist and advocate for intersex babies”.

I probably would have skipped this one for notability, but the obit starts off with an account of the 1973 International Symposium on Gender Identity, at which Dr. Diamond got into a confrontation with Dr. John Money. Dr. Money was an advocate of “genital correction” surgery, while Dr. Diamond advocated leaving them alone.

Dr. Money rushed over to Dr. Diamond, getting in his face, furiously insisting he was right.
Dr. Diamond only replied, “The data is not there.”
At one point, eyewitnesses reported that Dr. Money slugged Dr. Diamond, though Dr. Diamond later said he didn’t remember it.

Turns out Dr. Diamond may have been right, and Dr. Money was (at best) a crank and possibly worse.

Since the 1990s, Money’s work and research has been subject to significant academic and public scrutiny. A 1997 academic study criticized Money’s work in many respects, particularly in regard to the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer. Money allegedly coerced David and his brother Brian to perform sexual rehearsal with each other, which Money then photographed. David Reimer lived a troubled life, ending with his suicide at 38; his brother died of an overdose at age 36.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Planes, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 6, 2024.

Monday, May 6th, 2024

Bernard Hill. NYT. IMDB.

Frank Stella, artist.

Mr. Stella was a dominant figure in postwar American art, a restless, relentless innovator whose explorations of color and form made him an outsize presence, endlessly discussed and constantly on exhibit.
Few American artists of the 20th century arrived with quite his éclat. He was in his early 20s when his large-scale black paintings — precisely delineated black stripes separated by thin lines of blank canvas — took the art world by storm. Austere, self-referential, opaque, they cast a chilling spell.

Jeannie Epper, stuntwoman. 161 stunt credits in IMDB (and another 39 actress credits). Seems like she was working pretty steadily from 1964 all the way to 2021, including “Play Misty For Me”, “Soylent Green”, “Blazing Saddles”, “The Blues Brothers”, and “Road House” (the good one).

Lawrence sent over an obit for Edgar Lansbury. I had seen this elsewhere and didn’t think he was noteworthy enough, but Lawrence pointed out that he produced “Squirm“.

Lawrence also sent over an obit for Dick Rutan, legendary pilot. He’s the guy who, with Jeana Yeager, flew non-stop around the world in nine days, three minutes, and 44 seconds in “Voyager”. Unfortunately, the obit Lawrence sent me came from a blog by way of a blog, and I’d rather have something more substantial to link to: none of the flying news publications I know of have this story yet. I’ll link to a better obit when I find one.

Posted in 1970s, Art, Movies, Obits, Planes, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 12, 2024.

Friday, April 12th, 2024

Robert MacNeil, of “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” fame. NYT (archived).

On the eve of his retirement from the broadcast in October 1995 to concentrate on writing, he was asked why TheMacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour gave “very little coverage” to the O.J. Simpson story.
“We don’t normally cover big murder stories, for one thing … It is inconceivable to me that a generation ago, NBC News and CBS News would night after night have said to their audience, ‘This is the most important thing that happened in the world today,’ by leading with Simpson and coming back to it later in the program,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “What’s interesting to me is how frightened the mainstream media are of the tabloid shows and the new networks.”

He was also in the motorcade when JFK was shot.

Eleanor Coppola. NYT (archived). IMDB.

“I may hold the world’s record for the person who has made the most documentaries about their family directing films,” she said. Her career, she wrote in “Notes on a Life,” a 2008 book, reflected that “I am an observer at heart, who has the impulse to record what I see around me.”

Fritz Peterson, Yankees pitcher and baseball footnote.

The southpaw was traded to Cleveland ahead of the 1974 season, ending his pinstripes tenure after nine seasons, going 109-106 with a 3.10 ERA — and an original Yankee Stadium-record 2.52 ERA in home games.
He last pitched for the Rangers in the 1976 season, accumulating a 133-131 record with a 3.30 ERA and seven seasons of 12-plus wins.

He was also involved in the strangest trade in baseball history.

Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson were friends. They hung out together with their wives. One thing led to another, and this was the 1970s…

On March 4, 1973, the ballplayers held separate press conferences to announce they’d swapped wives, kids and even their dogs — a tale the likes of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck once hoped to turn into a movie.
“Actually, it was a husband trade — Mike for me or me for Mike,” Peterson said. “It’s a love story. It wasn’t anything dirty.”

Fritz Peterson and Susanne, Kekich’s wife, married a year later. As far as I can tell, they stayed married. Mike Kekich and Marilyn, Peterson’s wife, broke up a few months after the press conference.

Fritz Peterson’s Baseball Reference page.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

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