Archive for the ‘Theatre’ Category

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Obit watch: August 16, 2024.

Friday, August 16th, 2024

Peter Marshall. NYT (archived).

Marshall wasn’t really interested until he learned that if he didn’t take the job, it would go to comedian Dan Rowan. “I’ve only disliked two people in my life; Dan Rowan was one of them,” he said in a 2010 interview with the Archive of American Television.

…

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?

His first hit was “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em),” which got to No. 15 on the Hot 100 in May 1981.

…

The Greg Kihn Band released the danceable “Jeopardy” in January 1983, and only Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” kept from nabbing the No. 1 spot.

(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.

In 2002, Mr. Russell and Mr. Kendall hired three new musicians and began playing in small clubs as Jack Russell’s Great White. In February 2003, while the band was performing at the Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., its pyrotechnics ignited a deadly fire that killed 100 people, including Great White’s guitarist, Ty Longley, and left 230 injured. It was one of the worst nightclub fires in U.S. history.

Posted in Music, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

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: April 17, 2024.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2024

Man, it has been a rough few days for baseball.

Whitey Herzog.

Signed by the Yankees in 1949, he never made it out of their minor league system, though he picked up a lifetime of baseball knowledge from Manager Casey Stengel at spring training camps. He played the outfield for four American League teams over eight seasons with only modest success.
But Herzog found his niche as a manager with what came to be called Whiteyball, molding teams with speed, defense and pitching to take advantage of ballparks with fast artificial turf and spacious outfields, first at Royals Stadium in Kansas City and then at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Herzog managed the Kansas City Royals to three consecutive American League division championships in the 1970s, then took the Cardinals to the 1982 World Series title with a team he had built while general manager as well. And he managed the Cardinals to pennants in 1985 and 1987.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 2009.

He was 92, and the second oldest member of the Hall of Fame (behind Willie Mays). Baseball Reference.

As Bruce Sutter, the Cardinal reliever and also a Hall of Famer, once told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “How many managers can you blow a game for and go out fishing with him the next morning?

Carl Erskine, pitcher.

Erskine was the last survivor of the 13 Dodger players of his time who were profiled by Roger Kahn in his 1972 book, “The Boys of Summer,” telling of their exploits on the field and the lives they led when their baseball years had ended.
Although struggling with a sore pitching shoulder throughout his career, Erskine, an unimposing presence on the mound at 5 feet 10 inches and 165 pounds, employed a superb overhand curveball to help the Dodgers capture five pennants (the first in 1949 and the rest in the 1950s) and the 1955 World Series championship, the only one in their history before they moved to Los Angeles in 1958.
His 14 strikeouts in Game 3 of the 1953 World Series against the Yankees, a complete-game 3-2 victory, has been eclipsed only by the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax, who had 15 strikeouts against the Yankees in 1963, and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, who struck out 17 Detroit Tigers in 1968.
In the 1952 World Series, also against the Yankees, Erskine pitched an 11-inning complete game, retiring the last 19 batters in the Dodgers’ 6-5 victory.
He pitched no-hitters against the Chicago Cubs in 1952 and the New York Giants in 1956, both at Ebbets Field. His best season was 1953, when he was 20-6 and led the National League in winning percentage at .769.

Baseball Reference.

Ken Holtzman, the “winningest Jewish pitcher in Major League Baseball”. He played for the Cubs and the Oakland A’s.

Holtzman won 174 games, the most for a Jewish pitcher in Major League Baseball — nine more than the Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, who is considered one of the best pitchers ever and who had a shorter career.
In addition to his win total, Holtzman, who at 6 feet 2 inches and 175 pounds cut a lanky figure, had a career earned run average of 3.49 and was chosen for the 1972 and 1973 All-Star teams.
Holtzman, at 23, threw his first no-hitter on Aug. 19, 1969, a 3-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves — a performance distinguished by the fact that he didn’t strike out any Braves. It was the first time since 1923 that a no-hitter had been pitched without a strikeout.
“I didn’t have my good curve, and I must have thrown 90 percent fastballs,” Holtzman told The Atlanta Constitution afterward. “When I saw my curve wasn’t breaking early in the game, I thought it might be a long day.”
His second no-hitter came on June 3, 1971, against the Cincinnati Reds at their ballpark, Riverfront Stadium, where he struck out six and walked four.

…

Holtzman left the Cubs in 1971 with a 74-69 record. He fared substantially better with the A’s, a 1970s dynasty whose players included Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers. In Oakland’s World Series championship years, from 1972 to 1974, Holtzman had a 59-41 regular season record. In World Series games, he was 4-1.

Baseball Reference.

Bob Graham, former Florida governor and US Senator.

Ron Thompson, actor. He did a lot of theater work, and some movies and TV. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, “Baretta”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Death Has No Face”, season 8, episode 6.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Obits, Politics, Sports, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 4, 2024.

Thursday, April 4th, 2024

Apologies for being silent yesterday. I have not been feeling well pretty much all week. While I’ve been to our local Quack In the Box and gotten prescriptions, and while they seem to be helping with some things, they’re not helping as much as I would like with others. Then again, I haven’t taken the full course of antibiotics yet.

Joe Flaherty, SCTV guy. While the obit is silent on his cause of death, I do not believe he blowed up real good.

NYT (archived).

John Barth, writer. I’ve seen Giles Goat-Boy cited as a cyberpunk precursor, but have never actually read it.

Christopher Durang, playwright. I’d actually heard of him, but I’ve never seen a performance of “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You”. I think I’d kind of like to, if only to push myself outside of my comfort zone.

Posted in Books, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 31, 2024.

Wednesday, January 31st, 2024

Chita Rivera. NYT.

Jean Carnahan, former Senator from Missouri. As some may recall, she succeeded to the seat after her husband, Mel, died in a plane crash while campaigning.

Posted in Obits, Politics, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 5, 2024.

Friday, January 5th, 2024

Glynis Johns. IMDB.

Wow:

A year later [1963 – DB], she starred in her own short-lived CBS sitcom, Glynis, in which she played a mystery writer and amateur sleuth, and later, she was Lady Penelope Peasoup opposite Rudy Vallee as Lord Marmaduke Ffogg on the last season of ABC’s Batman.

Yes, she did do a guest spot on “Murder She Wrote“.

Wow^2: she was “Sister Anne” in “Nukie“.

Stephen Sondheim wrote “Send in the Clowns”, in “A Little Night Music”, with shorter phrasing to accommodate her. Although her voice, alternately described as smoky or silvery or wistful, was lovely, she was unable to sustain notes for long.

Be that as it may, I find her performance of that song incredibly haunting.

Maj. Mike Sadler has passed away at 103.

Mr. Sadler was one of the first recruits and the last surviving member of the S.A.S. from the year of its founding, 1941. Like a navigator at sea, he used stars, sun and instruments to cross expanses of the Libyan Desert, a wasteland almost the size of India, whose shifting, windblown dunes can be as changing and featureless as an ocean.
Compared with the commandos he guided on truck and jeep convoys — volunteer daredevils who crept onto Nazi airfields; attached time bombs to Messerschmitt fighters, Stuka dive bombers, fuel dumps and pilot quarters; then sped away as explosions roared behind — Mr. Sadler was no hero in the usual sense. Comrades said he might not have fired a single shot at the enemy in North Africa.
But he got his men to the targets — and out again. Without him, they said, the commandos could not have crossed hundreds of miles of desert, found enemy bases on the Mediterranean Coast, destroyed more than 325 aircraft, blown up ammunition and supply dumps, killed hundreds of German and Italian soldiers and pilots, or found their way back to hidden bases.

…

Mr. Sadler was intrigued by desert navigation. “What amazed me,” he told Mr. Rayment, “was that even with the vast, featureless expanses of the desert, a good navigator could pinpoint his exact location by using a theodolite, an air almanac and air navigational tables, and having a good knowledge of the stars.”
He spent weeks studying navigation techniques, including use of a theodolite — a telescopic device, with two perpendicular axes, used mainly by surveyors, for measuring angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. It was not unlike the sextant used by mariners to fix positions at sea.

…

In one of the epic stories of the North Africa campaign, Mr. Sadler and two sergeants escaped from the Germans and, with only a goatskin carrying brackish water, crossed 110 miles of desert on foot in five days. Hostile Bedouins stoned them, bloodying their heads, and stole their warm clothing, leaving them to shiver through freezing nights.
Starving except for a few dates, they were exposed to windblown sands that scraped them like sandpaper, a relentless sun that burned and blistered their faces, and swarms of flies that enveloped and tormented them. On the hot sands, their feet were masses of blisters after a few days. When they finally reached Free French lines, they looked like half-dead castaways in rags.
“We had long hair and beards and were looking very bedraggled,” Mr. Sadler recalled. “Our feet were in tatters — I don’t think we looked very much like soldiers.”

…

After his North Africa adventures as a desert navigator, Mr. Sadler returned to England and in 1944 parachuted into France after the Allied invasion of Normandy. He participated in sabotage operations against German occupation forces and won the Military Cross for bravery in action behind enemy lines.

Anthony Dias Blue, noted wine guy.

Mr. Blue was no populist. But he believed that good wine needn’t be expensive or difficult to appreciate; all that people needed, he said, was a guide, like him, to show them what was worth buying.

Posted in Heroism, History, Mixology, Movies, Nazis, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 8, 2023.

Friday, December 8th, 2023

Ellen Holly, actress. Other credits include “Spenser: For Hire”, “Dr. Kildare”, and “The Defenders”.

David McKnight, actor. Other credits include the “War of the Worlds” TV series, “Rin Tin Tin: K-9 Cop”, “Cutter to Houston”, and “The Incredible Hulk” TV series.

Posted in Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 30, 2023, part 2.

Thursday, November 30th, 2023

Shane MacGowan. Pitchfork. NYT. THR.

I’ve never been a Pogues fanatic. I pretty much missed them when they were an operational band, and the first thing I ever heard from them was “Fairytale Of New York”. I think we can play that now. After all, it is the Christmas season.

Later on, I picked up some more Pogues by way of “The Wire”. Unfortunately, I can’t find a clip of a drunk McNulty (not the valued commenter here, the other one) repeatedly ramming his car into a bridge abutment while playing “Transmetropolitan”…

And Shane MacGowan was Irish, but I think I’d be willing to grant him honorary US citizenship just for this song, which should probably be the national anthem. (Well, either that, or “You Never Even Called Me By My Name”.)

Frances Sternhagen, actress. THR. Other credits include “Law and Order”, “Up the Down Staircase”, and “Communion”.

Posted in Christmas, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 17, 2023.

Tuesday, October 17th, 2023

Lara Parker, actress.

Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “Sword of Justice”, “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, and “The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo”.

Joanna Merlin, actress. Other credits include “All That Jazz”, “The Killing Fields”, and “City of Angels”.

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

Obit watch: September 28, 2023.

Thursday, September 28th, 2023

Sir Michael Gambon, British actor. The NYT is still in “A complete obituary will appear shortly.” mode.

Among the first group of actors recruited by Olivier for the National Theatre Company in the early 1960s, Gambon, a Dublin native, was nominated 13 times for an Olivier Award, winning in 1986 and ’90 for Alan Ayckbourn’s A Chorus of Disapproval and Man of the Moment, respectively, and in 1988 for Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge.

172 acting credits in IMDB.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: September 21, 2023.

Thursday, September 21st, 2023

Rose Gregorio, actress. Other credits include “Harry O”, “The Rockford Files”, and “The Rookies”.

Pete Kozachik, VFX guy. (Hattip: Lawrence.) He did a lot of work with Tim Burton: “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, “James and the Giant Peach”, “Corpse Bride”.

Kozachik also did commercials featuring the Pillsbury Doughboy, Scrubbing Bubbles, Mr. Clean and other characters; was an advanced scuba diver and underwater photographer; and built his own airplane engine.

Posted in Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 18, 2023.

Monday, September 18th, 2023

Billy Miller, actor. Other credits include “Justified”, “American Sniper”, and “The Rookie”.

Michael McGrath.

He played three different parts in “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” the hit 2005 musical based on “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” including Patsy, the servant who banged coconuts together to imitate the sound of a galloping horse. His performance earned him a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a musical.
His Broadway run continued with “Is He Dead?” (2007), “Memphis” (2009) and “Born Yesterday” (2011). Then, in 2012, came his Tony-winning turn in “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” a musical that showcased the songs of George and Ira Gershwin. Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara got most of the attention in the lead roles, but it was Mr. McGrath (as a bootlegger) and Judy Kaye (as a temperance leader) who earned the show’s two Tonys, for best actor and actress in a featured role in a musical.

Edited to add 9/19: Well, since Lawrence mentioned it…and, honestly, this is a great scene.

Posted in Obits, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

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