Bill DuBay, best known for his editing of Warren Publishing comics such
as Vampirella, Eerie, and Creepy, died on 15 April in Portland, OR.
He'd been suffering from colon cancer. After a short fan career, DuBay
turned pro in 1966 with a story for Charlton Comics. He began editing
at Warren in 1972 and remained there until the company folded in 1983.
He then went to work for Marvel Productions, the animation studio where
Stan Lee was senior writer and studio art director. DuBay later went
to Fox and helped develop the Fox Kids animation block.

DuBay is survived by his mother, three sons, two daughters, three
grandchildren, and his second wife, Venessa Hart, whom he married two
months ago.

Screenwriter of Classic Italian Comedies Dies
Italian screenwriter Scarpelli, father of Italian-style comedies, is dead at 90.

The Oscar-nominated screenwriter Furio Scarpelli, who co-wrote "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and other classics of Italian cinema, has died, his family said Wednesday. He was 90.

Scarpelli died in his house in Rome shortly after midnight, his son, Matteo Scarpelli, told The Associated Press. He had long suffered heart problems.

During a decades-long, prolific partnership with Age, Scarpelli co-wrote some of Italy's finest postwar movies, including "Big Deal on Madonna Street."

Their sense of humor and an unforgiving display of the vices of Italian people became the pair's trademark, and made for memorable roles and lines for actors such as Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Gassman.

Age, whose real name was Agenore Incrocci, died in 2005.

The pair's "Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo" ("The Good, the Bad and the Ugly") is a spaghetti-western classic directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood.

Age and Scarpelli received two Oscar nominations for best screenwriting in the 1960s. Scarpelli also received another nomination for "Il Postino" ("The Postman") in 1996.


BAINBRIDGE ISLAND —

Dorothy Provine, part Hollywood blond bombshell and part girl next door, has died.

The Bainbridge Island resident and former film and television actress succumbed to emphysema on Sunday morning at Hospice of Kitsap County in Bremerton, according to her husband, veteran director Robert Day.

She was 75, according to her husband.

“Beautiful,” was how a broken-hearted Day responded when asked to describe his wife, best-known for her role in the 1963 blockbuster “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.”

Day said he married Provine in Las Vegas 43 years ago, and soon after she left acting. They had one son.

“I mean, we both loved each other so much,” Day said.

The couple came to Bainbridge Island about 20 years ago, and both, especially Dorothy, kept very much to themselves.

“She was very reserved. We really didn’t socialize very much,” Day said.

But they enjoyed their private world.

The couple used to go for drives on the island, and she loved watching movies, but even more, enjoying a good book.

“That was her main joy,” Day said.

The couple lived on Finch Road, and their son lived on the same property.

Provine was at Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton last week.

“She was clearly suffering,” said her attending physician, Dr. Rana Tan.

Tan is also the director of “Cabaret” at Bremerton Community Theatre. On Thursday, nine cast members appeared at the hospital, and with a piano moved from the lobby to Provine’s second-floor room, they sang song after song from the popular musical. Provine, still stunning, slim and blond hair in a ponytail, smiled widely and wiggled her toes in delight as she sat up in bed and listened.

“We probably sang about six, six or seven songs,” Tan tallied. “She was absolutely beside herself.”

But the “Cabaret” cast members, perhaps unknowingly, were singing the final swan song for a famous actress.

“I think it was a greater experience for us,” Tan said.

A little more than two days later, Provine was dead.

Provine was born Jan. 20, 1935, in Deadwood, S.D. and attended the University of Washington. She was at home both on the big screen and on the one in living rooms.

Her flawless face with wide smile and blond bouffant were common on TV during the 1950s and 1960s. But it was her role as Pinky Pinkham, the not-to-be-forgotten flapper in “The Roaring ‘20s” that captured the imagination of many.

Some of her movies included “The Bonnie Parker Story” (1958), a role she got just three days after arriving in Hollywood, according to the Internet Movie Database at imdb.com. Movies that followed included “Riot in Juvenile Prison” (1959); “Live Fast, Die Young” (1958) and “The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock “(1959). Her last movies before her early departure from acting included “Good Neighbor Sam” (1964); and “Never a Dull Moment” (1968).

Michael Raso of RetroSeduction Cinema has contacted me with the sad news that writer-director Joseph W. Sarno passed away this evening at his home in Manhattan after a short illness. He was 89.

Obituary: Morris Pert

29 April 2010
Composer/percussionist who worked with Yamash'ta and explored power of myth
Born: 9 September, 1947, in Arbroath.

Died: 27 April, 2010, in Balchrick, aged 63.

MORRIS Pert was born in Arbroath, Angus, in 1947. He graduated with a BMus from Edinburgh University in 1969, and, with an Andrew Fraser scholarship, went on to study composition and percussion at the Royal Academy in London, where he was a pupil of Alan Bush.

He was also an associate of Trinity College London in piano teaching. While at the academy, he won several composition prizes including the 1970 Royal Philharmonic Award for his first orchestral work Xumbu-Ata. A two-year period working with the famous Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamash'ta followed, with performances, recordings and musical collaborations in several European music festivals and in Yamash'ta's own Red Buddha Theatre.

This led Pert to form his own experimental music group, Suntreader, which performed and recorded much of his own and his colleagues' music.

In the 1970s, Pert was one of the most prominent composers of his generation, receiving regular BBC commissions for large-scale orchestral works, including his first and second symphonies. At the same time, he was one of the foremost percussionists in the world of popular rock music.

His serious works draw their inspiration from an eclectic range of sources, but especially from ancient mythology, astronomy and oriental culture.

He wrote three symphonies. The first, The Rising of the Moon, premiered in Tokyo under Hiroyuko Iwaki in 1981; the second, The Beltane Rites, was commissioned and performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and the third, The Ancient Kindred, was premiered by the Munich Opera Orchestra under Eberhard Schoener on German television in 1980.

Ancient Rites for choir and strings was commissioned and performed in Glasgow by the John Currie Singers. Pert's music has been broadcast on several occasions on BBC Radio 3 and abroad.

Works recorded on the Chantry Record Label include Chromosphere for five players and tape, Luminos for basset horn and piano, Eoastrion for E flat clarinet and tape, The Ultimate Decay for tape and a BBC commission, The Book of Love for percussion and tape. He wrote incidental music for Frank Dunlop's Young Vic production of Macbeth and the Oxford Playhouse production of The Tempest.

Pert worked for 18 years as a session musician in the major London recording studios, having recorded with (among many others) Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, John Williams, Kate Bush, Mike Oldfield, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins and the jazz-rock band Brand X.

He also did arrangements for the Classic Rock series of records by the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1977, Pert was voted No 4 jazz and rock percussionist in the world by America's Billboard magazine. He received five gold albums, an American award for a hit song and a nomination by the National Academy of Recording Arts in Washington for his performances on record.

Among his works are an electronic ballet score, Continuum, for the London Contemporary Dance Theatre at Sadlers Wells; Voyage in Space, 20 short piano pieces; The Ancient Pattern for chamber ensemble, a McEwen commission from Glasgow University and, more recently, incidental music for Eden Court Theatre's production of Peter Pan in Inverness and Aurora – a work for taped electronics.

Pert spent his last years living and working in his own small studio in Balchrick, Sutherland concentrating on composition and electronic recording techniques.

Much of his music was inspired by the symbolism and the mystery surrounding the Picts and by his interest in the philosophical implications of the sciences of astronomy, cosmology and astrophysics.

He recently completed Chromosphere, his fifth CD for release.