Yoshiko Tanaka, born Yoshiko Odate April 8, 1956 – April 21, 2011), was a Japanese actress. She was also famous as a member of the disbanded pop group Candies.

Tanaka was born in Adachi, Tokyo, Japan. In her Candies period her nickname was Sue. She also had a role in Godzilla vs. Biollante, portraying Asuka Okouchi. She won the award for best actress at the 14th Hochi Film Award for Black Rain.

She passed away on April 21, 2011 after battling breast cancer.

The veteran comedy writer passed away last weekend in Los Angeles.
Sol Saks, a veteran comedy writer who created the classic ABC sitcom Bewitched, died April 16 in Los Angeles at the age of 100, a publicist announced Tuesday.

Saks wrote just one episode of the Screen Gems sitcom, the pilot episode titled, “I, Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha.”

According to harpiesbizarre.com, Saks drew inspiration for the story about a witch who weds a mortal man from two films: I Married a Witch (1942), starring Fredric March and Veronica Lake, and Bell Book and Candle (1958), with James Stewart and Kim Novak.

Saks, discussing the similarities of the Bewitched storyline with the two movies in a 1999 episode of E! True Hollywood Story, said he didn’t have to worry about being sued because Columbia Pictures owned both of the movies as well as the Screen Gems television division.

Bewitched, which starred Elizabeth Montgomery as the beautiful nose-twitching witch, ran from 1964-72.

Before that sitcom, Saks wrote for such radio comedies as the long-running Duffy’s Tavern and for early television series including My Favorite Husband; Mr. Adams and Eve, which starred Ida Lupino; and I Married Joan with Joan Davis.

The New York native also wrote the screenplay for the film comedy Walk Don’t Run (1966), starring Cary Grant, served for a short time as a CBS executive in comedy development and wrote the 1985 book The Craft of Comedy Writing.

A 2009 interview with Saks can be found at the Television Academy Foundation’s Archive of American Television at www.emmytvlegends.org.

Madelyn Pugh Davis, Writer for ‘I Love Lucy,’ Dies at 90


Madelyn Pugh Davis, who with her writing partners for the classic sitcom “I Love Lucy” concocted zany scenes in which the harebrained Lucy dangles from a hotel balcony, poses as a sculpture or stomps and wrestles in a vat full of grapes, died Wednesday at her home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. She was 90.

Her death was confirmed by her son, Michael Quinn Martin.

Yannetti, Robert P.
May 30, 1953 - April 15, 2011
Robert P. Yannetti, 57 of Los Angeles California died very suddenly Friday April 15th, 2011.
Bob was born in the Bronx, New York, May 30th,1953. He was the youngest of 2 sons born to Albert and Emily Yannetti and is survived by his brother Richard P.Yannetti. Bob graduated from Fox Lane high school in New York in1971 and continued his education at UCLA, earning his MFA in Theater Arts in 1978.
Bob was a cherished Husband and Father survived by his wife of 30 years, Leslie Winston Yannetti and his 2 daughters Allison Yannetti (16) and Joanna Yannetti (13). Bob was First Assistant Director in the Director's Guild of America since 1982. He began directing episodic television in 2002. Bob's career spanned 30 years and included work on such films as Scarface, Witches of Eastwick , The River and many, many more. Television series include LA Law, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, Boston Legal, and most recently, Parenthood. He was beloved by cast and crew alike.
He will be missed every minute of everyday.
The memorial service will be Wednesday April 20th, 2011 at 2PM at Prince of Peace Episcopal Church 5700 Rudnick Avenue, Woodland Hills, CA 91367.


Published in the Los Angeles Times on April 19, 2011


Clever turns of the phrase were not grist for the comedy mill that Ms. Davis, along with Bob Carroll Jr. and the producer Jess Oppenheimer, began running out of a studio back office in 1951. With Ms. Davis clacking away at the typewriter and her partners pacing around her, the basic premise was to come up with ludicrous physical predicaments for the show’s star, Lucille Ball, to get herself into — to the eternal consternation of her husband, played by her real-life husband, the bandleader Desi Arnaz, who was also one of the show’s producers. Lucy would be plopped in a bucket of cement, scampering about a bull ring, coated by ice after being locked in a meat freezer — all of which she escaped with clownish glee.

In one famous scene, Lucy’s oversized bread loaf swells from the oven and backs her across her kitchen. In another, she guzzles a 46-proof health tonic, Vitameatavegamin, in a commercial, and is soon mumbling and stumbling.

Visual comedy is what the team, joined by Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf 1n 1955, considered their playful work. “We weren’t doing joke jokes or funny word jokes as much as we were setting up physical situations for her,” Ms. Davis said in a 1993 interview for the Archive of American Television. Often it was Ms. Davis who first rode a unicycle or tried out other stunts to see if they would work for Ms. Ball.

“On set, these stunts became known as the ‘Black Stuff,’ since Ms. Davis would type these zany feats in all caps on the script so Lucy would know exactly what she was getting herself into,” according to a profile of Ms. Davis by the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio), which honored her in 2006.

“During the formative years of television, when few women were working behind the screen, Madelyn Pugh Davis wrote one of the most popular shows of all time,” the Paley Center said. She “not only made her mark as a writer, but also opened the door for other women to follow in her footsteps.”

Viewers certainly loved Lucy, and still do. For four of its six seasons, “I Love Lucy” was the most popular show on television; it never ranked lower than third in any of those seasons. It received two Emmy Awards for best situation comedy and two nominations for best comedy writing. The show’s 179 episodes — all of which Ms. Davis and Mr. Carroll were involved in writing — remain rerun regulars.

“It’s still hard for me to grasp it when people tell me, ‘I’ve seen every episode dozens of times,’ ” Ms. Davis said in 1993.

Ms. Davis and Mr. Carroll went on to write for all of Ms. Ball’s later television endeavors: “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” (1957-60), a series of specials, and the three series she made after she and Mr. Arnaz divorced: “The Lucy Show” (1962-68), “Here’s Lucy” (1968-74) and the short-lived “Life With Lucy” (1986).

Born in Indianapolis on March 15, 1921, Madelyn Pugh was the youngest of three daughters of Isaac and Louise Hupp Pugh. A three-act play she wrote when she was 10 set her career path. At Shortridge High, she wrote for the school newspaper and, with her classmate Kurt Vonnegut, joined the school’s fiction club. She graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism in 1942.

Her first professional writing job was at the Indianapolis radio station WIRE. She moved to Los Angeles in 1943 and was soon working for CBS. There she met Mr. Carroll, with whom she wrote scripts for “My Favorite Husband,” a radio show about a ditzy wife and her banker husband. It starred Lucille Ball.

By 1951, “My Favorite Husband” had evolved into “I Love Lucy,” chronicling the loony lives of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Their best friends, Ethel and Fred Mertz, were played by Vivian Vance and William Frawley.

Madelyn Pugh married Quinn Martin, one of television’s most successful producers, in 1955; they divorced six years later. Her second husband, Richard Davis, died in 2009. In addition to her son, she is survived by four stepchildren from her second marriage, Brian, Charlotte, Lisa and Ned Davis; nine step-grandchildren; and one step-great-grandson.

Ms. Davis and Mr. Carroll, who died in 2007, wrote together for more than 50 years. Among the other shows they worked on were “The Mothers-in-Law” and “Alice.” They also wrote the story for the 1968 film “Yours, Mine and Ours,” starring Ms. Ball and Henry Fonda. They collaborated on a memoir, “Laughing With Lucy,” in 2005.

In an interview last year for this obituary, Ms. Davis recalled some of the many wacky situations she helped devise for Ms. Ball: standing on stilts, coping with a house overrun by baby chicks, wearing a beard and — a classic — overwhelmed by a warp-speed conveyor belt in a chocolate factory.

“Lucy would do anything we suggested,” Ms. Davis said.

Really?

“The only time she ever said she didn’t want to do something was when she saw an elephant on the set and ran up to her office,” Ms. Davis recalled.

The script called for her to retrieve $500 from under the elephant’s foot.

“Then the phone rang and it was Vivian Vance,” Ms. Davis said. “Vivian said, ‘It’s O.K., I told Lucy that if she didn’t want to do that funny thing, I’ll do it.’ And Lucy said, ‘O.K., I’ll do it.’ So she talked into the elephant’s trunk and got it to lift its foot.”