Shirley Jean Rickert, a former child actress who was the cute little blond with the spit curls in "Our Gang" comedies in the early 1930s and later became a long-haired burlesque stripper known as Gilda and Her Crowning Glory, has died. She was 82.
Rickert, who in recent decades went by her married name of Measures, died Friday after a long illness in a nursing home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., said her daughter, Melody Kennedy.
Born in Seattle on March 25, 1926, Rickert won a local baby beauty contest when she was 18 months old. Her mother, confident she had a budding star on her hands, eventually moved the family to Hollywood.Rickert was 4 when she went for an interview for a part in an "Our Gang" comedy short at the Hal Roach Studios. She was in five "Our Gang" comedies in 1931, appearing with Jackie Cooper, Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins, Matthew "Stymie" Beard, Allen "Farina" Hoskins, Norman "Chubby" Chaney and other pre-Spanky and Alfalfa gang members.They were all "just kids playing together," Rickert told the Albany Times Union in 1999."We had fun," she said. "The mothers on the other hand, were awful. Stage mothers are just vile women, including my own." Stardom, she said, was her mother's dream, "but it wasn't mine."
She left the "Our Gang" troupe to do the competing Mickey McGuire comedy series starring Mickey Rooney.
Playing Tomboy Taylor, Rickert appeared in five of the McGuire comedies in 1933 and '34.
She also donned a black wig to play a young half-Indian oil heiress in the 1934 John Wayne B-western " 'Neath the Arizona Skies."But stardom eluded her.
She spent the rest of the '30s playing bit parts. And in the '40s and early '50s, she was an uncredited dancer in a number of movie musicals, including the MGM classics "Royal Wedding" and "Singin' in the Rain."
Rickert then became a burlesque dancer. With flowing blond hair down to her waist, she was dubbed Gilda and Her Crowning Glory by her manager. She performed in burlesque theaters and nightclubs across the United States and Canada in the 1950s.
When the old "Our Gang" comedies resurfaced in television syndication in the mid-'50s as "The Little Rascals," Rickert found that her "Our Gang" stint gave her a certain off-stage cachet.
As she later wrote in response to an e-mail from a Detroit fan to her website: "Detroit was one of the towns where I would appear on a kiddie TV show on Saturday morning as Shirley Jean of the Our Gang/Little Rascals and disrobe on stage at night for the little kiddies' parents."
But stripping then was much different than today, she told the Albany Times Union in 2005."I see more flesh in television commercials today than I used to see in burlesque," she said.
After quitting burlesque in 1959, Rickert worked a variety of jobs, including bartender, secretary and sales director for a regional theater in Springfield, Mass.
While living in Connecticut in the mid-'70s, she launched a long career as a traveling industrial hardware saleswoman, for whom her "Our Gang" tenure proved to be an ideal entree for making sales."I walk in, and they say, 'Not another nuts and bolts salesman,' " she told the Associated Press in 1993. "And then I open my sales folder and show them an 8-by-10 of me in 'Our Gang.' I say, 'You grew up with me.' Then they do a 360."But, she said: "That was way back then, and this is now." She was, she said, "very happy with my life the way it is."
In addition to her daughter, the twice-divorced Rickert is survived by two grandsons and two great-grandchildren.
Actress Wendy Richard dies at 68
Former EastEnders actress Wendy Richard has died aged 68, her agent has confirmed. The star, who played Pauline Fowler in the BBC One soap opera, had been suffering from cancer.
Her agent Kevin Francis said: "She was incredibly brave and retained her sense of humour right to the end." Last October, Richard revealed she had an aggressive, terminal form of cancer. Soon after that she married her long-term partner John Burns.
JOURNAL STAR FILE Philip Jose Farmer 1991
PEORIA — Science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer died this morning at his home. He was 91.
The Peoria-based writer had written more than 75 books and was awarded the top honors in his field. That includes the Grand Master Award for Science Fiction in 2001, an award also given to noted authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein.
Farmer had a world-wide following, with fans travelling to Peoria once or twice a year.He was once quoted as saying that, particular in his early career, he had more fans in France, Italy, Germany and Japan than in the United States. Even after he retired from writing, his fans continued to produce “Farmerphile,” a magazine devoted to his life and works.
[
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
2009
James Whitmore, the veteran Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor who brought American icons Will Rogers, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt to life in one-man shows, died today. He was 87.
Whitmore died of lung cancer at his home in Malibu, said his son, Steve. He was diagnosed with the disease a week before Thanksgiving.
"He was surrounded by what he considered to be the most important in his life, which was his family," Steve said. "He was loved and admired for his work as an actor, but he was loved and admired for being a father, a grandfather and a great-grandfather to all those who knew him and loved him."
A stocky World War II Marine Corps veteran who bore a resemblance to actor Spencer Tracy and shared Tracy's down-to-earth quality, Whitmore earned early acclaim as an actor.
In 1948, he won a Tony Award for outstanding performance by a newcomer in the role of an amusingly cynical Army Air Forces sergeant in the Broadway production of "Command Decision."Whitmore's Broadway success brought him to Hollywood, where he received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor in his second movie, the hit 1949 World War II drama "Battleground," in which he played a tobacco-chewing, battle-weary Army sergeant.
Supporting roles and occasional leads in some 50 movies followed over the next 50-plus years, including "The Asphalt Jungle," "Them!," "Kiss Me Kate," "Battle Cry," "Oklahoma!," "Black Like Me," "Planet of the Apes," "Tora! Tora! Tora!," "The Serpent's Egg," "Nuts," "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Majestic."A frequent guest actor on television, Whitmore also starred in three series: the 1960-62 legal drama "The Law and Mr. Jones"; the 1969 detective drama "My Friend Tony"; and the 1972-74 hospital sit-com "Temperatures Rising" (although he left after a year, he later said, "because it was just a series of jokes").
In 2000, Whitmore won an Emmy Award as outstanding guest actor in a drama series for "The Practice," and he received a 2003 Emmy nomination in the same category for "Mister Sterling."An avid flower and vegetable gardener, Whitmore also was known to TV viewers as the longtime commercial pitchman for Miracle-Gro garden products.
As an actor, he once said, the income from doing commercials "gives you the latitude so you don't have to worry about having your kids take care of you."
Whitmore often said he found acting in films and television boring because of the long waits between scenes; his passion was for the theater, and he continued to act on stage throughout his long career.
"I've been very, very lucky," he said in a 2003 interview with the Nashville Tennessean. "The stage is human beings sharing something together -- flesh and blood together -- and the others are mechanical and shadows on the screen."
Although he starred in productions of plays such as "Our Town," "Inherit the Wind" and "Death of a Salesman," Whitmore was best known for his three one-man shows: as Truman in "Give 'em Hell, Harry!," as Roosevelt in "Bully" and as Rogers in "Will Rogers' U.S.A."
The 1975 film of his performance in "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" earned Whitmore a best actor Oscar nomination.
But the one-man-show character he said he "always felt most comfortable with" was Rogers."He was wise with a sense of humor, and that's an unbeatable combination," Whitmore told the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader in 2003.
He was initially resistant to the idea of playing the gum-chewing, lariat-twirling humorist -- his first one-man show -- when adapter-director Paul Shyre brought "Will Rogers' U.S.A." to him in 1969."I didn't think I could conceivably carry an evening by myself. I had difficulty holding the attention of my family," Whitmore recalled in a 1995 interview with The Times.
But any qualms he had disappeared when the show premiered in a small theater in Webster Groves, Mo., in January 1970. "I realized immediately that I was in the presence of an extraordinary man," Whitmore told The Times. "I didn't realize that until I heard the response of other human beings to him."
Whitmore ultimately had about eight hours of Rogers' various comments about the topics of the day memorized, changing the show each time he did it."I tried to use whatever seemed to be of interest to the folks in the audience that day," he told the Tulsa World in 2001. "I took the news from today's newspaper but didn't change what Will Rogers said. It's amazing how little things have changed since Will was about."Whitmore completed 30 years of on-and-off touring as Rogers at Ford's Theatre in Washington in 2000, and his costume is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution.
Born in White Plains, N.Y., on Oct. 1, 1921, Whitmore later moved to Buffalo, N.Y., where he attended public schools until his senior year of high school, when he attended the Choate School in Wallingford, Conn., on a football scholarship.A pre-law major on an athletic scholarship at Yale University, he became a protege of one of the assistant football coaches -- future U.S. President Gerald R. Ford -- but had to quit playing after suffering two knee injuries.
While at Yale, Whitmore helped launch the campus radio station."My scholarships dried up when my knees went," he told the Tennessean in 2003. "I was able to stay in school with a nightly sports show, 'Jim Whitmore Speaks,' with interviews and sports news. I made 40 bucks a week."Yale was all male then, except for the gals in graduate school. I was going with one of them, and she was doing plays. They pressed me into service, and I kind of liked it."With World War II underway, Whitmore joined the Marines during his senior year in 1942 and served in the South Pacific. After his discharge in 1946, he returned to the Pacific with the USO to entertain the troops.Moving to New York City, he used the GI Bill to study acting at the American Theatre Wing.
In 1947, he married his first wife, Nancy Mygatt, with whom he had three children. They were divorced after 24 years. After Whitmore's second marriage in the 1970s, to actress Audra Lindley, he and his first wife were remarried but divorced after two years Whitmore, who was an early student at the Actors Studio in New York in the late '40s, taught an acting workshop after moving to Hollywood. Among his students in the early '50s was young James Dean, whom Whitmore advised to go to New York."I owe a lot to Whitmore," Dean told Seventeen magazine in 1955. "One thing he said helped more than anything. He told me I didn't know the difference between acting as a soft job and acting as a difficult art."
For his part, Whitmore remained modest about his own acting talent.Prior to accepting an award recognizing his long career from the Palm Beach International Film Festival in 2002, he told the Palm Beach Post: "I never thought I was good. I've touched the hem of the garment a few times but never grabbed it full-hand."In addition to his son Steve, Whitmore is survived by his third wife, Noreen; his sons James Jr. and Dan; eight grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren.Services are pending.http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-james-whitmore7-2009feb07,0,1015401.story
It's being reported that Phil Carey, 83, who for many years portrayed the patriarch of the Buchanan family on "One Life to Live" has died. Carey had been fighting lung cancer for several years and had retired from the soap opera, although he made occasional appearances, including one in recent weeks.
A journeyman actor, Carey amassed numerous credits in movies supporting such major stars as John Wayne ("Operation Pacific"), Joan Crawford ("This Woman Is Dangerous"), Doris Day ("Calamity Jane"), Gary Cooper ("Springfield Rifle"), and James Cagney and Jack Lemmon ("Mister Roberts"). He also appeared in numerous television episodes, including a memorable turn as one of Archie Bunker's pals who reveals he's gay in "All in the Family".
Carey moved to working in daytime and was featured in "Bright Promise" before landing the long-running role as Asa Buchanan on "One Life to Live". In one of life's ironic turns, Clint Ritchie, who portrayed his son Clint (and was only 13 years younger), died recently. IMDB for Philip Carey: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0137023(posted at Alt. obits)
Whitmore died of lung cancer at his home in Malibu, said his son, Steve. He was diagnosed with the disease a week before Thanksgiving.
"He was surrounded by what he considered to be the most important in his life, which was his family," Steve said. "He was loved and admired for his work as an actor, but he was loved and admired for being a father, a grandfather and a great-grandfather to all those who knew him and loved him."
A stocky World War II Marine Corps veteran who bore a resemblance to actor Spencer Tracy and shared Tracy's down-to-earth quality, Whitmore earned early acclaim as an actor.
In 1948, he won a Tony Award for outstanding performance by a newcomer in the role of an amusingly cynical Army Air Forces sergeant in the Broadway production of "Command Decision."Whitmore's Broadway success brought him to Hollywood, where he received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor in his second movie, the hit 1949 World War II drama "Battleground," in which he played a tobacco-chewing, battle-weary Army sergeant.
Supporting roles and occasional leads in some 50 movies followed over the next 50-plus years, including "The Asphalt Jungle," "Them!," "Kiss Me Kate," "Battle Cry," "Oklahoma!," "Black Like Me," "Planet of the Apes," "Tora! Tora! Tora!," "The Serpent's Egg," "Nuts," "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Majestic."A frequent guest actor on television, Whitmore also starred in three series: the 1960-62 legal drama "The Law and Mr. Jones"; the 1969 detective drama "My Friend Tony"; and the 1972-74 hospital sit-com "Temperatures Rising" (although he left after a year, he later said, "because it was just a series of jokes").
In 2000, Whitmore won an Emmy Award as outstanding guest actor in a drama series for "The Practice," and he received a 2003 Emmy nomination in the same category for "Mister Sterling."An avid flower and vegetable gardener, Whitmore also was known to TV viewers as the longtime commercial pitchman for Miracle-Gro garden products.
As an actor, he once said, the income from doing commercials "gives you the latitude so you don't have to worry about having your kids take care of you."
Whitmore often said he found acting in films and television boring because of the long waits between scenes; his passion was for the theater, and he continued to act on stage throughout his long career.
"I've been very, very lucky," he said in a 2003 interview with the Nashville Tennessean. "The stage is human beings sharing something together -- flesh and blood together -- and the others are mechanical and shadows on the screen."
Although he starred in productions of plays such as "Our Town," "Inherit the Wind" and "Death of a Salesman," Whitmore was best known for his three one-man shows: as Truman in "Give 'em Hell, Harry!," as Roosevelt in "Bully" and as Rogers in "Will Rogers' U.S.A."
The 1975 film of his performance in "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" earned Whitmore a best actor Oscar nomination.
But the one-man-show character he said he "always felt most comfortable with" was Rogers."He was wise with a sense of humor, and that's an unbeatable combination," Whitmore told the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader in 2003.
He was initially resistant to the idea of playing the gum-chewing, lariat-twirling humorist -- his first one-man show -- when adapter-director Paul Shyre brought "Will Rogers' U.S.A." to him in 1969."I didn't think I could conceivably carry an evening by myself. I had difficulty holding the attention of my family," Whitmore recalled in a 1995 interview with The Times.
But any qualms he had disappeared when the show premiered in a small theater in Webster Groves, Mo., in January 1970. "I realized immediately that I was in the presence of an extraordinary man," Whitmore told The Times. "I didn't realize that until I heard the response of other human beings to him."
Whitmore ultimately had about eight hours of Rogers' various comments about the topics of the day memorized, changing the show each time he did it."I tried to use whatever seemed to be of interest to the folks in the audience that day," he told the Tulsa World in 2001. "I took the news from today's newspaper but didn't change what Will Rogers said. It's amazing how little things have changed since Will was about."Whitmore completed 30 years of on-and-off touring as Rogers at Ford's Theatre in Washington in 2000, and his costume is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution.
Born in White Plains, N.Y., on Oct. 1, 1921, Whitmore later moved to Buffalo, N.Y., where he attended public schools until his senior year of high school, when he attended the Choate School in Wallingford, Conn., on a football scholarship.A pre-law major on an athletic scholarship at Yale University, he became a protege of one of the assistant football coaches -- future U.S. President Gerald R. Ford -- but had to quit playing after suffering two knee injuries.
While at Yale, Whitmore helped launch the campus radio station."My scholarships dried up when my knees went," he told the Tennessean in 2003. "I was able to stay in school with a nightly sports show, 'Jim Whitmore Speaks,' with interviews and sports news. I made 40 bucks a week."Yale was all male then, except for the gals in graduate school. I was going with one of them, and she was doing plays. They pressed me into service, and I kind of liked it."With World War II underway, Whitmore joined the Marines during his senior year in 1942 and served in the South Pacific. After his discharge in 1946, he returned to the Pacific with the USO to entertain the troops.Moving to New York City, he used the GI Bill to study acting at the American Theatre Wing.
In 1947, he married his first wife, Nancy Mygatt, with whom he had three children. They were divorced after 24 years. After Whitmore's second marriage in the 1970s, to actress Audra Lindley, he and his first wife were remarried but divorced after two years Whitmore, who was an early student at the Actors Studio in New York in the late '40s, taught an acting workshop after moving to Hollywood. Among his students in the early '50s was young James Dean, whom Whitmore advised to go to New York."I owe a lot to Whitmore," Dean told Seventeen magazine in 1955. "One thing he said helped more than anything. He told me I didn't know the difference between acting as a soft job and acting as a difficult art."
For his part, Whitmore remained modest about his own acting talent.Prior to accepting an award recognizing his long career from the Palm Beach International Film Festival in 2002, he told the Palm Beach Post: "I never thought I was good. I've touched the hem of the garment a few times but never grabbed it full-hand."In addition to his son Steve, Whitmore is survived by his third wife, Noreen; his sons James Jr. and Dan; eight grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren.Services are pending.http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-james-whitmore7-2009feb07,0,1015401.story
It's being reported that Phil Carey, 83, who for many years portrayed the patriarch of the Buchanan family on "One Life to Live" has died. Carey had been fighting lung cancer for several years and had retired from the soap opera, although he made occasional appearances, including one in recent weeks.
A journeyman actor, Carey amassed numerous credits in movies supporting such major stars as John Wayne ("Operation Pacific"), Joan Crawford ("This Woman Is Dangerous"), Doris Day ("Calamity Jane"), Gary Cooper ("Springfield Rifle"), and James Cagney and Jack Lemmon ("Mister Roberts"). He also appeared in numerous television episodes, including a memorable turn as one of Archie Bunker's pals who reveals he's gay in "All in the Family".
Carey moved to working in daytime and was featured in "Bright Promise" before landing the long-running role as Asa Buchanan on "One Life to Live". In one of life's ironic turns, Clint Ritchie, who portrayed his son Clint (and was only 13 years younger), died recently. IMDB for Philip Carey: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0137023(posted at Alt. obits)
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Music Deaths
Buffalo Springfield Drummer Dewey Martin Passes Away at 68 2/5/09, 1:49 pm ESTRolling Stone
Buffalo Springfield drummer Dewey Martin died January 31st of unknown causes. He was 68.
Born Walter Milton Dwayne Midkiff, Martin cut his teeth in Nashville, playing with Patsy Kline, Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers. He moved to L.A. in the mid-1960s and learned that a fledgling band was looking for a new drummer. The group’s guitarist, Neil Young, was highly impressed by Martin during his audition in 1966. “He was a sensitive drummer,” Young says in his biography Shakey. “You get harder, he hits harder. You pull back, he hits back. He can feel the music — you don’t have to tell him.” After his successful audition, Martin asked the group what their name was. “They went over and pulled out this sign, Buffalo Springfield,” Martin later recalled. “I said, ‘Great man, a steamroller. You got a heavy sound. Let’s go for it.’ ”
During early Buffalo Springfield gigs Martin sang Wilson Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour,” and on their second album he handled lead vocals on “Good Time Boy.” He also sang background vocals on their biggest hit “For What It’s Worth” – in addition to providing the LSD that he claimed inspired Stephen Stills to write the song. The notoriously volatile band folded in 1968 after just three albums, but Martin attempted to solider with new members on as the New Buffalo Springfield.
After a nasty legal battle with his former bandmates he changed the name to New Buffalo – but that group fizzled by the end of 1969. Martin largely fell off the musical map afterward and worked as an auto mechanic, but he resurfaced alongside former Buffalo Springfield bassist Bruce Palmer in the mid-1980s as part of Buffalo Springfield Revisited. Joined by new members, the original rhythm section played Buffalo Springfield classics on the oldies circuit before finally hanging it up in the early 1990s. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
Cramps founder Lux Interior dies at 6008:51 PM PT, Feb 4 2009
Lux Interior, the singer, songwriter and founding member of the pioneering New York City horror-punk band the Cramps, died Tuesday. He was 60.
Interior, whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser, died at Glendale Memorial Hospital of a previously-existing heart condition, according to a statement from his publicist.
With his wife, guitarist "Poison" Ivy Rorschach, Interior formed the Cramps in 1976, pairing lyrics that expressed their love of B-movie camp with ferocious rockabilly and surf-inspired instrumentation.The band became a staple of the late '70s Manhattan punk scene emerging from clubs like Max's Kansas City and CBGB and was one of the first acts to realize the potential of punk rock as theater and spectacle.Often dressed in macabre, gender-bending costumes onstage, Interior evoked a lanky, proto-goth Elvis Presley, and his band quickly became notorious for volatile and decadent live performances.
Buffalo Springfield drummer Dewey Martin died January 31st of unknown causes. He was 68.
Born Walter Milton Dwayne Midkiff, Martin cut his teeth in Nashville, playing with Patsy Kline, Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers. He moved to L.A. in the mid-1960s and learned that a fledgling band was looking for a new drummer. The group’s guitarist, Neil Young, was highly impressed by Martin during his audition in 1966. “He was a sensitive drummer,” Young says in his biography Shakey. “You get harder, he hits harder. You pull back, he hits back. He can feel the music — you don’t have to tell him.” After his successful audition, Martin asked the group what their name was. “They went over and pulled out this sign, Buffalo Springfield,” Martin later recalled. “I said, ‘Great man, a steamroller. You got a heavy sound. Let’s go for it.’ ”
During early Buffalo Springfield gigs Martin sang Wilson Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour,” and on their second album he handled lead vocals on “Good Time Boy.” He also sang background vocals on their biggest hit “For What It’s Worth” – in addition to providing the LSD that he claimed inspired Stephen Stills to write the song. The notoriously volatile band folded in 1968 after just three albums, but Martin attempted to solider with new members on as the New Buffalo Springfield.
After a nasty legal battle with his former bandmates he changed the name to New Buffalo – but that group fizzled by the end of 1969. Martin largely fell off the musical map afterward and worked as an auto mechanic, but he resurfaced alongside former Buffalo Springfield bassist Bruce Palmer in the mid-1980s as part of Buffalo Springfield Revisited. Joined by new members, the original rhythm section played Buffalo Springfield classics on the oldies circuit before finally hanging it up in the early 1990s. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
Cramps founder Lux Interior dies at 6008:51 PM PT, Feb 4 2009
Lux Interior, the singer, songwriter and founding member of the pioneering New York City horror-punk band the Cramps, died Tuesday. He was 60.
Interior, whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser, died at Glendale Memorial Hospital of a previously-existing heart condition, according to a statement from his publicist.
With his wife, guitarist "Poison" Ivy Rorschach, Interior formed the Cramps in 1976, pairing lyrics that expressed their love of B-movie camp with ferocious rockabilly and surf-inspired instrumentation.The band became a staple of the late '70s Manhattan punk scene emerging from clubs like Max's Kansas City and CBGB and was one of the first acts to realize the potential of punk rock as theater and spectacle.Often dressed in macabre, gender-bending costumes onstage, Interior evoked a lanky, proto-goth Elvis Presley, and his band quickly became notorious for volatile and decadent live performances.
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