More Passings

from nitrateville.com Sydney Chaplin--the eldest living child of Charlie--died peacefully at home yesterday at the age of 82.

He appeared in his father's films LIMELIGHT (1952) and A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG (1967). He won a Tony for his work in the original Broadway production of BELLS ARE RINGING. His other well known Broadway credit is the original production of FUNNY GIRL.

Film enthusiasts may recall his appearances at Cinecon in 1998 and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2004 when he talked after screenings of THE CIRCUS to help promote Jeffrey Vance's books.

He wrote the Foreword to WIFE OF THE LIFE OF THE PARTY, his mother's second memoir of her life with Chaplin. He appears in the documentaries UNKNOWN CHAPLIN, CHARLIE CHAPLIN: A TRAMP'S LIFE, and CHARLE: THE LIFE AND ART OF CHARLES CHAPLIN. He is survived by his wife, Margaret, and son Stephan (from his first marriage).

Thu Mar 5, 7:07 am ETROME – Italian director Salvatore Samperi, best known for erotic comedies that challenged the morals of Italy's middle class, has died at age 64, his family said Thursday.

Samperi died Wednesday, said his brother Jadran Samperi, declining to give the cause of the death. The director died in his house on Lake Bracciano, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Rome, according to the ANSA news agency.Samperi's movies offered a social critique of the Italian bourgeoisie, often through the lens of sex.

Critics say his best works explored the forbidden passions and relationships within middle-class families as a way to show what he saw as their decadence and hypocrisy.

In what is considered by many critics his best movie, "Grazie, Zia" ("Thank You, Aunt"), Samperi tells the story of a rich young man who engages in a sexually charged relationship with his aunt. The movie, released in 1968, marked Samperi's directorial debut at age 24.

The movie "translated the anxiety and unrest of the time into an accessible movie," film critic Fabio Ferzetti wrote in Il Messaggero newspaper Thursday.Samperi's biggest success came a few years later, with "Malizia" ("Malice"), which turned Italian actress Laura Antonelli into an erotic icon, thanks to her role as a sexy, socially climbing maid. The 1973 movie was seen as scandalous but was also a commercial hit and became a cultural sensation.

Born in the northeastern Italian city of Padua, Samperi briefly studied literature and philosophy before turning to cinema. His career also included flops, including a sequel to "Malizia," made about 20 years after the original.Samperi had failed to score a success for many years, and recently he had worked primarily for TV.

from:http://thechronicleherald.ca/Sports/1109637.html

One of the Maritimes most-beloved wrestling stars has lost his lengthy battle with cancer.

Yvon Cormier, who wrestled under the pseudonym The Beast, died in hospital in Moncton early Wednesday morning.The Memramcook, N.B., native was 70.

Cormier was the eldest of 13 children, four of whom got into the wrestling business. Jean-Louis (as Rudy Kay), Leo (as Leo Burke) and Bobby (as Bobby Kay) also made a name for themselves in the ring. Jean-Louis passed away last May."The Cormiers put wrestling on the map," said longtime promoter Al Zinck of Halifax.

Standing five-foot-10 and weighing 250 pounds, Yvon Cormier got started in the business in 1961. Two years later, famed American promoter Jim Crockett Sr. gave him the nickname ‘The Beast.’ As The Beast, Cormier plied his trade around the world, wrestling throughout Canada, the United States, Australia and Japan, where he wrestled Giant Baba before 45,000 people. He was also famous for his cage and gladiator-style chain matches.

Zinck said one of his fondest memories was in 1974 when a record crowd at the Halifax Forum attended a tag team match featuring The Beast and Lord Athol Layton against the Faboulous Kangaroos."We had over 9,000 at the Forum," Zinck recalled. "It was The Beast, Lord Athol Layton and the Kangaroos from Australia. What a night. "Yvon went all over the world," Zinck added. "And everywhere he went he drew big crowds: Australia, Japan and down in the U.S."

March 4, 2009, 4:41 pm Horton Foote Has Died
By The New York Times Rod Aydelotte/Associated Press

Horton Foote, who chronicled America’s wistful odyssey through the 20th century in plays and films mostly set in a small town in Texas and left a literary legacy as one of the country’s foremost storytellers, died in Hartford, Conn., on Wednesday. He was 92, said his daughter, Hallie Foote.

In screenplays for such movies as “Tender Mercies,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Trip to Bountiful,” and in plays like “The Young Man From Atlanta” and his nine-play cycle “The Orphans’ Home,” Mr. Foote depicted the way ordinary people shoulder the ordinary burdens of life, finding drama in the resilience by which they carry on in the face of change, economic hardship, disappointment, loss and death. His work earned him a Pulitzer Prize and two Academy Awards.

Here is a portion of his obituary, written by Wilborn Hampton; the complete version will be posted at nytimes.com Wednesday evening. In a body of work for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and two Oscars, Mr. Foote was known as a writer’s writer, an author who never abandoned his vision or altered his simple, homespun style even when Broadway and Hollywood temporarily turned their backs on him.

In screenplays for such movies as “Tender Mercies,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Trip to Bountiful,” and in plays like “The Young Man From Atlanta” and his nine-play cycle “Orphans’ Home,” Mr. Foote depicted the way ordinary people shoulder the ordinary burdens of life, finding drama in the resilience by which they carry on in the face of change, economic hardship, disappointment, loss and death. His work earned him a Pulitzer Prize and two Academy Awards.Frank Rich, who as theater critic of The New York Times was one of Mr. Foote’s champions, called him “one of America’s living literary wonders.” Mr. Rich wrote that his plays contained “a subtlety that suggests a collaboration between Faulkner and Chekhov.”

Mr. Foote, in a 1986 interview in The New York Times Magazine, said: “I believe very deeply in the human spirit and I have a sense of awe about it because I don’t know how people carry on. What makes the difference in people? What is it? I’ve known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them, to kill them, to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don’t ask quarters.”

Mr. Foote spent most of his life writing about such people in a simple, homespun style. In more than 50 plays and films, most of which were set in the fictiional town of Harrison, Texas, he charted their struggle through the century by recording the daily, familial conflicts that filled their lives.

He often seemed to resemble a character from one of his own plays. Always courteous and courtly, he spoke with a slow Texas drawl. He enjoyed good food and wine but would usually opt for barbecue and iced tea or fried chicken with a Dr Pepper when he was home in Texas. He was a jovial man with a wry humor, and his white hair and robust frame gave him the appearance of a Southern senator or one’s favorite uncle, the one who always had a story. Albert Horton Foote Jr., one of three sons of Albert Horton Foote and the former Hallie Brooks, was born March 14, 1916, in Wharton, Texas, a small town about 40 miles southwest of Houston that was once surrounded by cotton fields. His father was a local haberdasher and his mother, who was from an old Southern family, taught piano.

Although he boarded a train for Dallas at the age of 16 to pursue a career as an actor, Mr. Foote never really left home. From his first efforts as a playwright, he returned again and again to set his plays and films amid the pecan groves and Victorian houses with large front porches on the tree-lined streets of Wharton. His inspiration came from the people he knew and the stories he heard growing up there. “I’ve spent my life listening,” Mr. Foote once said.