Guitar Legend Les Paul Dies at 94
Thursday, August 13, 2009


New YORK — Les Paul, the guitarist and inventor who changed the course of music with the electric guitar and multitrack recording and had a string of hits, many with wife Mary Ford, died on Thursday. He was 94.

According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side.

As an inventor, Paul helped bring about the rise of rock 'n' roll and multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the "tracks" in the finished recording.

Virginia Davis of Walt Disney’s Alice Comedies passed away this morning (August 15). She was 90 years old and had been in failing health this past year.

In 1923, Davis was picked by Walt Disney in Kansas City to star in his proposed series of live action and animation shorts. Davis followed the Disney Studio to Hollywood to star in over a dozen Alice Comedies. She was Disney’s first movie star.

Later in her career, Davis appeared in Three On a Match (1932), with Joan Blondell, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, as well as The Harvey Girls (1946). Virginia was in the scene with Judy Garland and Ray Bolger where they introduced the Academy-Award winning song “On the Achison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.”

Jim Dickinson, a musician and producer who helped shape the Memphis sound in an influential career that spanned more than four decades, has died. He was 67.

His wife, Mary Lindsay Dickinson, said he died Saturday in a Memphis, Tenn., hospital after three months of battling heart and intestinal bleeding problems. The couple lived in Hernando, Miss.

Dickinson recently had bypass surgery and was undergoing rehabilitation at Methodist University Hospital when he died around 4:30 a.m., his wife said.

Perhaps best known as the father of Luther and Cody Dickinson, two-thirds of the Grammy-winning North Mississippi Allstars, Dickinson recorded and produced with greats like Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Big Star, the Rolling Stones and Sam and Dave.

Actor Shingo Yamashiro dies at 70
Friday 14th August, 09:08 AM JST

TOKYO —
Shingo Yamashiro, an actor and TV emcee, died of pneumonia Wednesday at a nursing home for the elderly in Tokyo, sources close to the home said Friday. He was 70. A native of Kyoto, Yamashiro, whose real name is Yasuji Watanabe, debuted as a movie actor in 1957. He starred in a TV drama called ‘‘Hakuba Doji’’ (White Horse Rider) in 1960 and acted in a series of yakuza gangster films entitled ‘‘Jingi Naki Tatakai’’ (Battle Without Honor and Humanity) in the 1970s.

He later gained popularity as a host of TV variety shows. Yamashiro had received treatment for diabetes after entering the special nursing home for the elderly in Machida, western Tokyo.

John Quade dies at 71; character actor specialized in playing heavies

Quade appeared in several Clint Eastwood films, including 'Every Which Way But Loose' and 'The Outlaw Josey Wales,' and he played Sheriff Biggs in the TV mini-series 'Roots.'
By Dennis McLellan

August 12, 2009 5:53 p.m.


John Quade, a veteran character actor who specialized in playing heavies and appeared in several Clint Eastwood movies, including "Every Which Way But Loose" and its sequel "Any Which Way You Can," has died. He was 71.

Quade died in his sleep of natural causes Sunday at his home in Rosamond, near Lancaster, said his wife, Gwen Saunders. In a more than two-decade career in films and television that began in the late 1960s, Quade played character roles in numerous TV series and in films such as "Papillon," "The Sting" and Eastwood's "High Plains Drifter" and "The Outlaw Josey Wales." He also played Sheriff Biggs in the 1977 TV miniseries "Roots."

"Everybody remembers him for 'Every Which Way But Loose' and 'Any Which Way You Can,' " Quade's wife said Wednesday. "He played Chola, the leader of the motorcycle gang. It was more of a comic relief of the movie; they were a bumbling motorcycle gang."

Although Quade's name might not be familiar to many moviegoers, his face was. In fact, he had a face made for playing heavies.

"He was one of the nicest men you'd ever want to know, but he looked mean and nasty," his wife said. "He looked like he could do murder and mayhem at any moment, but he was a big teddy bear -- the kind that he just loved little kids, but they were always afraid of him.

"His face definitely stands out in a crowd. He had to be careful he didn't overshadow scenes just by the way he looked. The first film he did with Clint Eastwood, Clint hired him for his face and told him afterward that he felt like he got a bonus because John could act."

Born John William Saunders III on April 1, 1938, in Kansas City, Kan., Quade arrived in California in 1964. "He got involved in missile and aerospace for awhile," said his wife. "He built parts that are still on the moon."

One day, she said, "He was sitting in a restaurant with a bunch of guys and this man noticed him and said, 'Have you thought about acting?'

"It had to be his face; it wasn't anything else."

Quade was appearing in a play in Hollywood in 1968 when a casting director saw him and cast him in his first TV show, an episode of "Bonanza."

In addition to his wife of 38 years, he is survived by six children, Heather Clark, John Saunders IV, Steven Saunders, Joseph Saunders, Katherine Adame; and Rebecca Saunders; his mother, Norma; his brothers, Merlin and Robert; his sisters, Joyce Copeland and Norma Jean Anderson; and 10 grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. Friday at Joshua Memorial Park and Mortuary, 808 E. Lancaster Blvd., Lancaster.

By STEVEN JOHNSON and GREG OLIVER -- SLAM! Wrestling


Karl Von Hess, who died this morning at the age of 90, after a long
battle with Alzheimer's disease, made his name heading to the ring in
a full-scale Nazi guise in the uneasy years after World War II.


With American patriotism in full swing, he would enter arenas with a
galling Waffen SS appearance and a "Sieg, Heil!" salute. No wonder Von
Hess, a master of minimalism, was shot at, stabbed, attacked, and
burned en route to becoming a white-hot heel in the late 1950s.

"Karl Von Hess was absolutely wonderful," said Ted Lewin, wrestler-
turned-author and illustrator in The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The
Heels. "He was very special because he didn't do a heck of a lot to
make people angry at him. All he had to do was kind of keep turning
and looking at the audience, and the audience would boo, and then he'd
turn and look at them again."

Johnny Rodz, a member of the WWE Hall of Fame, said Von Hess was his
favorite heel. "He was the meanest. Who the heck comes to the ring and
breaks the steps before you get in the ring? What gives a guy that
reason?" Rodz pondered. "Anybody who sees the steps before you walk
into the ring, and you want to break them before you go into the ring,
who the heck wants to deal with him? He must be the baddest guy in
town!"

Francis Faketty -- he later officially changed his name to Karl Von
Hess -- was born in Michigan in 1919 to Hungarian immigrants, and
raised in a gritty, working class section in south Omaha. His early
life was not easy -- his accent made him prey for bullies at school
and he coped with an abusive father who drank too much and took out
his violence on Von Hess' mother.

A terrific athlete, Faketty trained himself to swim in the swift
currents of the Missouri River. "He was just an incredible human
specimen for somebody who never went to the gym," his son, John Von
Hess reflected in The Heels. "He used to swim across the Missouri
River, steal watermelons, and bring them back with him. You can
imagine what kind of feat that was." He later taught swimming and
worked as a lifeguard -- kids at Morton Park Pool in Omaha called him
Tarzan -- and started boxing and wrestling competitively.


"He was so well built, they used to call him Tarzan. He had an
incredible physique," recalled Mad Dog Vachon, another long-time Omaha
resident.


After serving aboard the USS Montpelier in World War II, where he was
a part of the Underwater Demolition Corps, the forerunner of the Navy
SEALs, Faketty kicked around carnival and athletic training shows and
worked with forgettable gimmicks like Mara Duba, the South American
Assassin, who had a pet lion.


He was in the Pacific Northwest in early 1955, at the same time Kurt
Von Poppenheim was employing a less sinister German gimmick in the
territory. When he went to the Carolinas that fall, he underwent a
makeover to Von Hess, became an immediate sensation as an out-and-out
Nazi, and was a key player in the talent movement between the
Carolinas and Vincent J. McMahon's Washington office on the East
Coast. He spoke forcefully, spewing hate, and even and even muttered a
little German, like any good storm trooper. Doctored publicity psoters
showed him with Martin Bormann and Adolf Hitler.


"Listen," he explained years later. "It was right after the war and I
had tried everything. I played different characters, and then I came
up with this gimmick of Von Hess and I played it right to the hilt."
Despite the fact he could go toe-to-toe with almost anyone, Von Hess
didn't use his grappling skills. He was hardcore -- he kept wire in
his trunks to choke people when he couldn't use the ring microphone to
do it. He threw chairs.


"In the ring, you couldn't imagine Von Hess with any sense of humor at
all, yet he had a very funny sense of humor," Lewin said. "Frank would
live that, he would refuse to sign autographs and things like that, so
he would keep that character out of the ring to a certain degree."


Von Hess' finishing move was known as the hangman or hangman's noose.
Back to back with his opponent, Von Hess would reach up and back,
grabbing his foe under the jaw, and then lean forward. Though his
victim was actually supported by Von Hess' back, it looked like
vicious hold that would really hurt.


He and "Wildman" Jackie Fargo engaged in a series of violent brawls on
TV in 1956 that drew howls of protest to the District of Columbia
Boxing Commission. "I stuck a cigar right in his face," Fargo recalled
with a laugh in The Heels. "I was really upset at him and something
was said and I just said, 'Screw you!' and pushed that cigar in his
face. If I had it to do over after it was done, I wouldn't do it. But
he walked away from it ... He was a very good wrestler, very, very
good. Nice fellow too. He could wrestle and he was pretty tough, too."
So great was the outrage that McMahon calmed matters in The Washington
Post by breaking the protection of the business.


"Von Hess is no Nazi. He uses that silly salute to point up the act
that he is the villain," McMahon acknowledged in a candor rare for the
age. Still, Von Hess set the Baltimore-Washington territory on fire in
1956 and 1957. A three-match series in Washington against frequent foe
Antonino Rocca culminated in an outdoor show at Griffith Stadium in 25
years; McMahon publicly credited Von Hess as Washington's top draw
since the heyday of Jim Londos a quarter-century before. In New York,
the state athletic commission directed him to put tape on his boots to
hide a swastika. "Too much heat," explained Vachon. "It was a
dangerous job. He could get stabbed, or shot, or anything."


In the 1960s, Von Hess cooled off and later said he felt the WWF was
anxious to put him out to pasture; he had a brief stint with a version
of the world title in Cleveland in 1963, but that was quickly dropped.
He worked in several other territories, including Tennessee and
Hawaii, left wrestling in the late 1960s, and operated trailer parks
and other businesses with his wife Lenore, who died in 2005 after 53
years of marriage. In recent years, Alzheimer's disease sapped his
memories, pleasant and unpleasant.