Grammy-winning songwriter Joseph Brooks died today in his Manhattan apartment in what police are calling an apparent suicide, according to The Associated Press.
Brooks, 73, was found with a plastic dry-cleaning bag around his head and a towel wrapped around his neck, police told the AP.
An autopsy will determine the cause of death.
Brooks, best known for writing the Grammy and Academy Award-winning ballad "You Light Up My Life," was indicted last year on more than 80 sex-related charges.
He was awaiting trial on charges that he sexually assaulted several young after luring them into his apartment for supposed acting auditions.
In December 2010, Brooks' son Nicholas Brooks, 24, was arrested in death of fashion designer Sylvie Cachay, who was found dead in a hotel bathtub at SoHo House in New York.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/joseph-brooks-light-life-songwriter-dies-apparent-suicide/story?id=13660072
Paul Splittorff, who spent his entire 15- year major league career with the Kansas City Royals, died Wednesday due to complications from melanoma. He was 64.
The Royals said in a statement that Splittorff died at his home in the Kansas City suburb of Blue Springs, Missouri. It was just over a week ago that Splittorff's condition was revealed.
A native of Evansville, Indiana, Splittorff pitched for the Royals from 1970-84, and remains the club's all-time leader in wins, losses, games started and innings pitched.
During his tenure, the left-handed hurler helped the Royals rise from an expansion franchise to an elite club in the American League. Kansas City won four division titles (1976-78, 1980) and made the playoffs on five occasions, during Splittorff's career, reaching the World Series in 1980.
Splittorff retired in June 1984 when the club brought along prospects that included Bret Saberhagen and Mark Gubicza. The team went on to reach the playoffs that year and captured their lone World Series title the following season.
In 429 games, including 392 starts, Splittorff completed his career with a 166-143 mark and a 3.81 earned run average in 2,554 2/3 innings. The Royals inducted him into their Hall of Fame in 1987.
Immediately following his playing career, Splittorff became part of the team's broadcasting crew, but his duties had been cut back since the start of the 2010 season because of illness.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/25/2234081/former-royals-pitcher-splittorff.html#ixzz1NNJjI2iJ
Phyllis Avery, who played the wife of Ray Milland in 75 episodes of the 1953-55 CBS comedy Meet Mr. McNulty, died May 19 of heart failure at her home in Los Angeles. She was 88.
In McNutley (later called The Ray Milland Show), Milland played a professor at a college for girls, with Avery as his wife, Peggy.
During her 50-year career, the petite blonde also co-starred in the 1960-62 CBS soap opera The Clear Horizon and on such shows as Peter Gunn, Have Gun -- Will Travel, The Rifleman, The Millionaire, Rawhide and Perry Mason.
In the mid-'60s, Avery went on to a career selling real estate in West Los Angeles but continued on TV with stints on All in the Family, Maude, Charlie's Angels and Baretta. In the 1990s, she appeared on the series Coach and in the 1993 film Made in America.
Born in New York to screenwriter Stephen Morehouse Avery (1948's Every Girl Should Be Married, starring Cary Grant) and Evelyn Martine, Avery made her Broadway debut in the 1937 production of Orchids Preferred. After graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she played one of the featured ingenues in the 1940 stage hit Charley's Aunt with Jose Ferrer.
In the morale-boosting World War II-era production of Winged Victory, Avery appeared opposite actor Don Taylor (the husband of Elizabeth Taylor in the two Father of the Bride movies), to whom she was married a year later. They divorced in 1955.
Avery made her movie debut in Queen for a Day (1951) and also appeared in the films Ruby Gentry (1952) and The Best Things in Life Are Free (1956).
Survivors include daughters Avery and Anne and granddaughter Martine.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/prolific-tv-actress-phyllis-avery-191168
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Ross Hagen: 1938 - 2011. Famed cult actor and director Ross Hagen has died of cancer at the age of 72. Some of Hagen's best known film roles include THE MINI-SKIRT MOB, ANGELS WILD WOMEN, WONDER WOMEN and THE HELL CATS. He later directed THE GLOVE, REEL HORROR and TIME WARS. Hagen is probably best know as the voice of Landon Ricketts in the successful video game, RED DEAD REDEMPTION.
John Carter, a veteran A&R exec, producer, manager and songwriter, died of cancer on May 10 in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 65. Carter was known in the industry by his surname alone.
East St.-Louis born Carter's career was kickstarted in 1967, when he co-wrote Strawberry Alarm Clock's pop-psychedelic hit "Incense and Peppermints" (and renamed the band by plucking words from the singles chart).
Following work as a promotion man at Atlantic Records in San Francisco, Carter moved to Capitol Records in Hollywood, where he did his most commercially successful work. He produced hits by Bob Seger, Steve Miller, Bob Welch, the Motels and Sammy Hagar (whom he later managed).
In 1983, he served as A&R exec on Tina Turner's Capitol album "Private Dancer," which went on to revitalize the singer's career, collect several Grammys and sell an estimated 20 million copies.
Carter later worked at A&M, Atlantic, Chrysalis and Island Records, nurturing the careers of acts as diverse as Tonio K., David + David, Tori Amos, Melissa Etheridge, Paula Cole and the Eels.
He is survived by his wife, Christy, and a daughter.
Snooky Young, 1919-2011
The Arts Journal ~
By Doug Ramsey
Reports emerged late last night that Snooky Young died on May 5 at the age of 92.
Young was that rare combination, a great lead trumpeter who was also a soloist of exceptional imagination, taste and humor.
He began as a professional musician when he was a teenager in Dayton, Ohio. At 20, he joined the Jimmie Lunceford band and in the course of his career played key roles in virtually every big jazz band of importance except Duke
Ellington's. He was with Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnet, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland and the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut.
A wizard of high notes and the plunger mute, Young was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2008. His widest exposure came during 20 years in the brass section of Doc Severinsen's Tonight Show band. Loved
by his fellow musicians, viewers and Tonight's host Johnny Carson, Young was occasionally featured on the program.
In this clip, he sings and plays one of the Lunceford band's signature tunes from the days when jazz often led the hit parade.
Young was the consummate sideman but he had a moment of glory as co-leader with the stalwart alto saxophonist Marshall Royal on a 1989 album called Snooky & Marshall's Album. It had the remarkable rhythm section of Ross Tompkins, Freddie Green, Ray Brown and Louie Bellson-and Young at the top of his game.
John Carter, a veteran A&R exec, producer, manager and songwriter, died of cancer on May 10 in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 65. Carter was known in the industry by his surname alone.
East St.-Louis born Carter's career was kickstarted in 1967, when he co-wrote Strawberry Alarm Clock's pop-psychedelic hit "Incense and Peppermints" (and renamed the band by plucking words from the singles chart).
Following work as a promotion man at Atlantic Records in San Francisco, Carter moved to Capitol Records in Hollywood, where he did his most commercially successful work. He produced hits by Bob Seger, Steve Miller, Bob Welch, the Motels and Sammy Hagar (whom he later managed).
In 1983, he served as A&R exec on Tina Turner's Capitol album "Private Dancer," which went on to revitalize the singer's career, collect several Grammys and sell an estimated 20 million copies.
Carter later worked at A&M, Atlantic, Chrysalis and Island Records, nurturing the careers of acts as diverse as Tonio K., David + David, Tori Amos, Melissa Etheridge, Paula Cole and the Eels.
He is survived by his wife, Christy, and a daughter.
Snooky Young, 1919-2011
The Arts Journal ~
By Doug Ramsey
Reports emerged late last night that Snooky Young died on May 5 at the age of 92.
Young was that rare combination, a great lead trumpeter who was also a soloist of exceptional imagination, taste and humor.
He began as a professional musician when he was a teenager in Dayton, Ohio. At 20, he joined the Jimmie Lunceford band and in the course of his career played key roles in virtually every big jazz band of importance except Duke
Ellington's. He was with Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnet, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland and the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut.
A wizard of high notes and the plunger mute, Young was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2008. His widest exposure came during 20 years in the brass section of Doc Severinsen's Tonight Show band. Loved
by his fellow musicians, viewers and Tonight's host Johnny Carson, Young was occasionally featured on the program.
In this clip, he sings and plays one of the Lunceford band's signature tunes from the days when jazz often led the hit parade.
Young was the consummate sideman but he had a moment of glory as co-leader with the stalwart alto saxophonist Marshall Royal on a 1989 album called Snooky & Marshall's Album. It had the remarkable rhythm section of Ross Tompkins, Freddie Green, Ray Brown and Louie Bellson-and Young at the top of his game.
Dolores Fuller dies at 88
Actress dated director Ed Wood
Years after starring in her boyfriend's low-budget films 'Glen or Glenda' and 'Jail Bait,' Fuller became something of a cult icon. She also co-wrote several Elvis Presley movie songs, and founded a record company.
By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times
Dolores Fuller, the onetime actress-girlfriend of cross-dressing schlock movie director Ed Wood who co-starred with Wood in his low-budget 1950s cult classic "Glen or Glenda," has died. She was 88.
Fuller, whose show business career included writing the lyrics to a dozen Elvis Presley movie songs, died Monday at her home in Las Vegas after a long illness, said her stepdaughter, Susan Chamberlin.
As the former girlfriend and two-time leading lady for the legendary filmmaker who came to be known as the world's worst movie director, Fuller became something of a cult figure herself in her later years.
"Ed always said he'd make me a star," Fuller told the Kansas City Star in 1994. "I just didn't realize it would take 42 years."
At the time, Fuller was caught up in the flurry of publicity surrounding the release of director Tim Burton's biopic "Ed Wood," starring Johnny Depp as the eccentric D-movie director and Sarah Jessica Parker as Fuller.
"Not in my wildest nightmares did I ever think I'd see the day when Eddie's movies would be popular," said Fuller, who was in Kansas City to appear at an Ed Wood Film Festival.
She was a bit movie player, a model on TV's "Queen for a Day" and Dinah Shore's stand-in on the star's musical TV show when she responded to a casting call and met Wood in late 1952.
"When I got to the casting call and first laid eyes on the young Edward, I just thought he was extremely handsome, and his personality was bubbly and fun," Fuller recalled in a 1994 interview with Tom Weaver for Fangoria magazine.
"Then when I found out he was also a director and writer as well as a producer and actor, I was very impressed. … I knew immediately that he liked me, too."
The divorced Fuller soon moved in with Wood, who cast her in "Glen or Glenda," the 1953 film in which she played the fiancee of Wood's secret cross-dresser who has a passion for angora sweaters.
Fuller said in the Fangoria interview that she "didn't know Eddie was a transvestite when we first got together — even the first year, I didn't know."
Her first clue, she said, "was when he was writing one evening and we were having a glass of wine together, and he said he'd like to borrow my white angora sweater.
"I said, 'Why do you want to borrow it?' and he said, 'Well, it helps me write, I feel so much more comfortable. I hate men's hard clothes, I like soft, cuddly things. It makes my creative juices flow!' Well, we were all alone and I saw no harm in it. … That was my first inkling that maybe he had a fetish. But I didn't realize it went any further."
Fuller said she didn't see the section of the "Glen or Glenda" script where Wood's character dresses up like a woman.
"I was really kind of shocked when I saw the part with him with a wig on, and dressed totally like a woman, 'cause I wasn't allowed on the set during those scenes," she said. When she did see the final film, she said, "I wanted to crawl under the seat!"
Fuller, who described herself as the "breadwinner" while she and Wood lived together, went on to star in his 1954 crime thriller "Jail Bait." She also had a small part in his 1955 horror film "Bride of the Monster."
Wood had written that movie for her to play the female lead, but then gave it to another actress. That, combined with his drinking, led Fuller to split up with him in 1955, according to the Fangoria article.
She moved to New York, where she studied with Stella Adler at the Actors Studio. "I decided I needed lessons after seeing Ed's films," she told the Kansas City Star.
A friendship with producer Hal Wallis led to her co-write (with composer Ben Weisman) "Rock-a-Hula Baby" for Presley's 1961 movie "Blue Hawaii."
She went on to co-write other songs for Presley movies such as "Kid Galahad," "It Happened at the World's Fair," "Fun in Acapulco" and "Spinout" — as well as co-writing "Someone to Tell it To," which was recorded by Nat King Cole, and "Losers Weepers," which was recorded by Peggy Lee.
Fuller also founded a record company, launched Johnny Rivers' recording career and served as a talent manager.
She was born March 10, 1923, in South Bend, Ind., and moved to California when she was 10. Her family was staying in a motel in El Monte when she had her first brush with Hollywood, as a background extra in Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," which was shooting at the motel.
Fuller, who began modeling at 16, chronicled her life in her 2009 autobiography, "A Fuller Life: Hollywood, Ed Wood and Me."
She is survived by her husband, film historian Philip Chamberlin; her son, Don; three grandchildren and numerous stepchildren and stepgrandchildren.
Sada Thompson, a Tony- and Emmy-winning actress known for her portrayals of archetypal mothers, from the loving family caretaker and the world-weary, had-it-with-the-kids older woman to the brutalizing harridan and mythical adulteress and murderess, died Wednesday in Danbury, Conn. She was 83.
The cause was lung disease, said her daughter, Liza Sguaglia.
Ms. Thompson had an unusual stage career in that she became a star in New York but was not often on Broadway. She made her name in the 1950s as Off Broadway came to prominence, in plays like “The Misanthrope” and Chekhov’s “Ivanov,” and throughout her career she performed in regional theater productions.
But when she was on Broadway, she made an impression. She won a Tony in 1972 for playing four separate parts — three daughters and their aged mother — in the four vignettes that constitute George Furth’s “Twigs,” directed by Michael Bennett. Her tour de force performance was widely praised, but Ms. Thompson returned to Broadway only twice more, in short-lived shows.
By then she had established herself as “one of the American theater’s finest actresses,” as Walter Kerr described her in The New York Times. She had distinguished herself on Broadway in Edward Albee’s sardonic “American Dream,” in which she played Mommy, the cartoonishly overwhelming wife of a spineless husband, and in Samuel Beckett’s bitterly comic “Happy Days.” Here she played Winnie, a woman facing inevitable doom — she spends the first act buried up to her waist and the second act up to her neck — with determined good cheer.
“Yet beneath these bright superficials,” Clive Barnes wrote in The Times, “Miss Thompson was able to suggest something a good deal deeper, every so often permitting the enamel to crack, the brightness to darken, and letting us glimpse the piteous fears of mortality in Winnie’s heart.”
Away from Broadway, her repertory expanded and her reputation grew. In 1970, in what was probably her star-making performance, she opened Off Broadway in “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,” Paul Zindel’s melodrama about a slatternly, self-deluding and tormenting mother of two troubled daughters and the elderly boarder she cares for to pay the rent.
In the summer of 1971 she appeared at the American Shakespeare Festival Theater in Stratford. Conn., as Christine Mannon, the Civil War-era equivalent of the vengeful Clytemnestra, in “Mourning Becomes Electra” by Eugene O’Neill.
After “Twigs,” Ms. Thompson spent much of her time working in movies and especially on television. She played the country worrywart mother, Mrs. Webb, in the 1977 television film of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” with Hal Holbrook as the stage manager.
Most notably, from 1976 to 1980 she starred as Kate Lawrence, the matriarch of an upper-middle-class family in Pasadena, Calif., in a landmark show, created by Jay Presson Allen, who had adapted “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” for the stage, and produced by Mike Nichols. Its title — “Family” — announced its intention: to be a simple presentation of the fundamental unit of American life. It largely succeeded, melding ordinary daily conflicts with the heightened drama necessary for television entertainment.
“Family” dealt straightforwardly with issues like the marital problems of the Lawrences’ eldest daughter (played at the time by Meredith Baxter Birney); the discovery by the teenage son (Gary Frank) that his long-time best friend was gay; and the distress of the youngest daughter (Kristy McNichol) on overhearing her mother saying that she sometimes wished she hadn’t had her.
“ ‘Family’ represents an extremely difficult television project in that it is trying to salvage the familiar stuff of soap opera for the less superficial probings of the contemporary drama,” John J. O’Connor wrote in The Times during its first season, adding that Ms. Thompson and James Broderick, who played her husband, “achieved a remarkable combination of low-keyed intensity and powerful impact.”
Ms. Thompson was nominated for an Emmy four times in the show’s five seasons, winning in 1978.
Sada Carolyn Thompson was born in Des Moines on Sept. 27, 1927. When she was a girl, her family moved to Fanwood, N.J., where her father, Hugh, became an editor of Turkey World and other farm journals. Sada discovered the power of storytelling when her mother, Corlyss, took her to the movie “The Man Who Played God,” and she was turned toward acting when her parents took her to the Cole Porter musical “Red, Hot and Blue.”
“That was it,” Ms. Thompson recalled in 1971. “To me it was total enchantment. I had to be part of it.”
She graduated with a drama degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University), and she and some fellow students started a summer stock company in Mashpee, Mass. Eventually she and Donald Stewart, whom she met at school and married, moved to New York, where her first professional credit was in 1953, in the original reading of “Under Milkwood,” Dylan Thomas’s poetic rendering of life in a Welsh town, directed by Thomas himself.
“His idea of rehearsals was to hear one reading and say, ‘Perfect, let’s go out for a beer,’ but he was a kind, courteous gentleman,” she once said.
Ms. Thompson lived in Southbury, Conn. In addition to her daughter, of Burbank, Calif., her survivors include her husband, a former executive for Pan American Airlines, and a brother, David, of Gloversville, N.Y.
Her career was peppered with performances in classic works in far-flung theaters. She starred with Elizabeth Taylor in Lillian Hellman’s “Little Foxes” in London, toured Scandinavia with the Scandinavian Theater Company in Wilder’s “Skin of Our Teeth” and played Lady Macbeth at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego.
“I’d miss not being able to tell a story every night,” she once said, describing why she was loath to give up the stage or the screen. “That really thrills me, that is the greatest! Thousands of years ago, when some caveman told his family about the fight he had that day with a dinosaur, and, in the telling, became the dinosaur, and became himself in the fight — well, there’s your first actor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/arts/sada-thompson-actress-known-for-maternal-roles-dies-at-83.html
"Lawrence Welk Show" star dies at 87
By RITA SHERROW World Television Editor
Published: 5/11/2011 1:31 PM
Last Modified: 5/11/2011 1:31 PM
Norma Zimmer, internationally known as the Champagne Lady on “The Lawrence Welk Show,” died Tuesday at her home in Brea, Calif. She was 87.
Zimmer, a 5-foot-2-inch blonde, was a featured soloist on the weekly “The Lawrence Welk Show” on commercial TV from 1960 to 1982. The series moved to Public Television in 1987 and continues to air on 276 PBS stations, including at 7 p.m. Saturdays and 5 p.m. Sundays on KOED, channel 11 in Tulsa.
The performer started in The Girl Friends Quartet, which sang with stars including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Nat King Cole and more. Her group sang on Crosby’s “White Christmas” album and she appeared alongside the actor in the 1950 film “Mr. Music.” She was also the voice of White Rose in the 1951 animated Disney film “Alice in Wonderland.”
According to press information, she often toured with her friend the Rev. Billy Graham on his evangelistic tours and was a guest soloist at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif.
She was born July 13, 1923 in Larson, Idaho and was reared in Seattle. She wed builder/property developer Randy Zimmer in 1944 and they were married 64 years until his death in 2008. They have two sons and three grandchildren.
“The Lawrence Welk Show” holds the record as the “longest-running, musical-variety weekly series on national television.” It premiered on KTLA in Los Angeles in 1950, then moved to ABC where it aired from 1955 to 1971.
In 1971, Lawrence Welk took it into syndication until 1982 when he retired. In 1987, the show was picked up by the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority. It celebrates its 25th year on public TV starting in September.
Funeral arrangements for Zimmer are pending, according to Susie Dowdy, national publicist for “The Lawrence Welk Show.”
BY Filip Bondy
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
The prolific, playful hand that brought to life cartoon characters Basement Bertha, Yuchie and General Von Steingrabber has been stilled.
Bill Gallo, sports cartoonist at the Daily News for more than half a century and whose career at the paper spanned 70 years, died of complications from pneumonia at 88 in White Plains Hospital late Tuesday night. His passing marks the close of what seemed always to be an endless supply of ink and fun in the pages of The News. Inside our building, Gallo would walk around the big newsroom talking sports, bouncing ideas off coworkers or showing off his latest, comical work to everyone's delight.
"My father is a lasting legend to New York, and to New York sports," said Gallo's son Greg. "He will be forever thought of as a great cartoonist for the Daily News, but he will also be remembered as the gentleman he was to all the people he came across, everybody in the streets of the city. People loved him because he was a special human being."
In recent months, while he fought off emphysema and a series of medical setbacks, Gallo continued to draw his cartoons and write columns from hospital beds and his home, surrounded by trays of colored pencils and erasers, dark pens and paint brushes sticking out of a Dixie cup. He would send his creations by overnight mail or ask a coworker to bring them to the office, checking in often by phone with editors.
"I'm just as enthusiastic about work today as I've ever been," Gallo said shortly before his death. "If I wasn't sick I'd be putting out some great stuff."
Former Toei topper dies
Shigeru Okada oversaw production in studio's heyday
By Mark Schilling
Variety
TOKYO -- Former Toei topper Shigeru Okada, who oversaw production of the studio's iconic samurai and yakuza pics through its 1950s and 1960s heyday, died on Monday of pneumonia in Tokyo at age 87.
Born in Hiroshima in 1924, Okada joined the predecessor to Toei soon after graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1947.
After Toei launched in 1951, Okada took charge of production at the company's Kyoto and Tokyo studios, with a keen eye for the B.O. main chance at a time when demand for local pics was still strong. Toei started churning out samurai swashbuckler and other action fare at a ferocious pace, with production hitting more than 100 pics annually. Soon Toei was atop the B.O. heap and Okada's corporate star was rising.
When television started luring away auds in the early 1960s, Okada and his team responded with a new line of so-called "ninkyo" (code of honor) gang pics starring Koji Tsuruta, Ken Takakura and other top male talent. Mostly set from the end of the feudal era to the dark prewar days, the pics featured loner outlaw heroes upholding traditional gang values such as loyalty and self-sacrifice against unscrupulous gangster enemies.
Though pure fantasy, the pics drew millions of male fans who enjoyed their retro swagger and style. And when the ninkyo boom began to fade at the end of the decade, Okada and uber-producer Koji Shindo deftly switched direction to gang pics that more accurately reflected ruthless contemporary realities. The culmination was the five-part "Battles Without Honor and Humanity" (1973-1974) series that, under helmer Kinji Fukasaku, depicted a violent gang war in Hiroshima with a documentary-like intensity, while luring back younger fans who had abandoned the genre as old-fashioned and formulaic. But a second four-part series (1974-1979) did not scale the same B.O. heights, a symptom of an industry-wide malaise that even Okada could not cure.
Okada served as Toei prexy from 1971 to 1993, then segued to the post of chairman and, in 2006, honorary chairman. As a manager, he was a relentless cost cutter, who viewed pics strictly as products and shifted strategy quickly to meet aud needs. Under Okada, Toei was an early entrant into the toon, TV and soft porn businesses, reaping profits while its more conservative rivals hesitated.
In his later years, Okada became a biz godfather, promoting Japanese pics as head of the industry org Motion Picture Producers Assn. of Japan. He often lent his salty, distinctive presence to industry gatherings, firing off quips to general laughter and applause, though his barbs could also sting. Asked to comment on Hiroyuki Sanada's title perf in "The Twilight Samurai" (2002), Yoji Yamada's Oscar-nommed period drama for rival Shochiku, Okada said "He's a lot better now than when he worked for us."
Okada's son Yusuke is now Toei prexy.
The cause was lung disease, said her daughter, Liza Sguaglia.
Ms. Thompson had an unusual stage career in that she became a star in New York but was not often on Broadway. She made her name in the 1950s as Off Broadway came to prominence, in plays like “The Misanthrope” and Chekhov’s “Ivanov,” and throughout her career she performed in regional theater productions.
But when she was on Broadway, she made an impression. She won a Tony in 1972 for playing four separate parts — three daughters and their aged mother — in the four vignettes that constitute George Furth’s “Twigs,” directed by Michael Bennett. Her tour de force performance was widely praised, but Ms. Thompson returned to Broadway only twice more, in short-lived shows.
By then she had established herself as “one of the American theater’s finest actresses,” as Walter Kerr described her in The New York Times. She had distinguished herself on Broadway in Edward Albee’s sardonic “American Dream,” in which she played Mommy, the cartoonishly overwhelming wife of a spineless husband, and in Samuel Beckett’s bitterly comic “Happy Days.” Here she played Winnie, a woman facing inevitable doom — she spends the first act buried up to her waist and the second act up to her neck — with determined good cheer.
“Yet beneath these bright superficials,” Clive Barnes wrote in The Times, “Miss Thompson was able to suggest something a good deal deeper, every so often permitting the enamel to crack, the brightness to darken, and letting us glimpse the piteous fears of mortality in Winnie’s heart.”
Away from Broadway, her repertory expanded and her reputation grew. In 1970, in what was probably her star-making performance, she opened Off Broadway in “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,” Paul Zindel’s melodrama about a slatternly, self-deluding and tormenting mother of two troubled daughters and the elderly boarder she cares for to pay the rent.
In the summer of 1971 she appeared at the American Shakespeare Festival Theater in Stratford. Conn., as Christine Mannon, the Civil War-era equivalent of the vengeful Clytemnestra, in “Mourning Becomes Electra” by Eugene O’Neill.
After “Twigs,” Ms. Thompson spent much of her time working in movies and especially on television. She played the country worrywart mother, Mrs. Webb, in the 1977 television film of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” with Hal Holbrook as the stage manager.
Most notably, from 1976 to 1980 she starred as Kate Lawrence, the matriarch of an upper-middle-class family in Pasadena, Calif., in a landmark show, created by Jay Presson Allen, who had adapted “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” for the stage, and produced by Mike Nichols. Its title — “Family” — announced its intention: to be a simple presentation of the fundamental unit of American life. It largely succeeded, melding ordinary daily conflicts with the heightened drama necessary for television entertainment.
“Family” dealt straightforwardly with issues like the marital problems of the Lawrences’ eldest daughter (played at the time by Meredith Baxter Birney); the discovery by the teenage son (Gary Frank) that his long-time best friend was gay; and the distress of the youngest daughter (Kristy McNichol) on overhearing her mother saying that she sometimes wished she hadn’t had her.
“ ‘Family’ represents an extremely difficult television project in that it is trying to salvage the familiar stuff of soap opera for the less superficial probings of the contemporary drama,” John J. O’Connor wrote in The Times during its first season, adding that Ms. Thompson and James Broderick, who played her husband, “achieved a remarkable combination of low-keyed intensity and powerful impact.”
Ms. Thompson was nominated for an Emmy four times in the show’s five seasons, winning in 1978.
Sada Carolyn Thompson was born in Des Moines on Sept. 27, 1927. When she was a girl, her family moved to Fanwood, N.J., where her father, Hugh, became an editor of Turkey World and other farm journals. Sada discovered the power of storytelling when her mother, Corlyss, took her to the movie “The Man Who Played God,” and she was turned toward acting when her parents took her to the Cole Porter musical “Red, Hot and Blue.”
“That was it,” Ms. Thompson recalled in 1971. “To me it was total enchantment. I had to be part of it.”
She graduated with a drama degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University), and she and some fellow students started a summer stock company in Mashpee, Mass. Eventually she and Donald Stewart, whom she met at school and married, moved to New York, where her first professional credit was in 1953, in the original reading of “Under Milkwood,” Dylan Thomas’s poetic rendering of life in a Welsh town, directed by Thomas himself.
“His idea of rehearsals was to hear one reading and say, ‘Perfect, let’s go out for a beer,’ but he was a kind, courteous gentleman,” she once said.
Ms. Thompson lived in Southbury, Conn. In addition to her daughter, of Burbank, Calif., her survivors include her husband, a former executive for Pan American Airlines, and a brother, David, of Gloversville, N.Y.
Her career was peppered with performances in classic works in far-flung theaters. She starred with Elizabeth Taylor in Lillian Hellman’s “Little Foxes” in London, toured Scandinavia with the Scandinavian Theater Company in Wilder’s “Skin of Our Teeth” and played Lady Macbeth at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego.
“I’d miss not being able to tell a story every night,” she once said, describing why she was loath to give up the stage or the screen. “That really thrills me, that is the greatest! Thousands of years ago, when some caveman told his family about the fight he had that day with a dinosaur, and, in the telling, became the dinosaur, and became himself in the fight — well, there’s your first actor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/arts/sada-thompson-actress-known-for-maternal-roles-dies-at-83.html
"Lawrence Welk Show" star dies at 87
By RITA SHERROW World Television Editor
Published: 5/11/2011 1:31 PM
Last Modified: 5/11/2011 1:31 PM
Norma Zimmer, internationally known as the Champagne Lady on “The Lawrence Welk Show,” died Tuesday at her home in Brea, Calif. She was 87.
Zimmer, a 5-foot-2-inch blonde, was a featured soloist on the weekly “The Lawrence Welk Show” on commercial TV from 1960 to 1982. The series moved to Public Television in 1987 and continues to air on 276 PBS stations, including at 7 p.m. Saturdays and 5 p.m. Sundays on KOED, channel 11 in Tulsa.
The performer started in The Girl Friends Quartet, which sang with stars including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Nat King Cole and more. Her group sang on Crosby’s “White Christmas” album and she appeared alongside the actor in the 1950 film “Mr. Music.” She was also the voice of White Rose in the 1951 animated Disney film “Alice in Wonderland.”
According to press information, she often toured with her friend the Rev. Billy Graham on his evangelistic tours and was a guest soloist at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif.
She was born July 13, 1923 in Larson, Idaho and was reared in Seattle. She wed builder/property developer Randy Zimmer in 1944 and they were married 64 years until his death in 2008. They have two sons and three grandchildren.
“The Lawrence Welk Show” holds the record as the “longest-running, musical-variety weekly series on national television.” It premiered on KTLA in Los Angeles in 1950, then moved to ABC where it aired from 1955 to 1971.
In 1971, Lawrence Welk took it into syndication until 1982 when he retired. In 1987, the show was picked up by the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority. It celebrates its 25th year on public TV starting in September.
Funeral arrangements for Zimmer are pending, according to Susie Dowdy, national publicist for “The Lawrence Welk Show.”
BY Filip Bondy
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
The prolific, playful hand that brought to life cartoon characters Basement Bertha, Yuchie and General Von Steingrabber has been stilled.
Bill Gallo, sports cartoonist at the Daily News for more than half a century and whose career at the paper spanned 70 years, died of complications from pneumonia at 88 in White Plains Hospital late Tuesday night. His passing marks the close of what seemed always to be an endless supply of ink and fun in the pages of The News. Inside our building, Gallo would walk around the big newsroom talking sports, bouncing ideas off coworkers or showing off his latest, comical work to everyone's delight.
"My father is a lasting legend to New York, and to New York sports," said Gallo's son Greg. "He will be forever thought of as a great cartoonist for the Daily News, but he will also be remembered as the gentleman he was to all the people he came across, everybody in the streets of the city. People loved him because he was a special human being."
In recent months, while he fought off emphysema and a series of medical setbacks, Gallo continued to draw his cartoons and write columns from hospital beds and his home, surrounded by trays of colored pencils and erasers, dark pens and paint brushes sticking out of a Dixie cup. He would send his creations by overnight mail or ask a coworker to bring them to the office, checking in often by phone with editors.
"I'm just as enthusiastic about work today as I've ever been," Gallo said shortly before his death. "If I wasn't sick I'd be putting out some great stuff."
Former Toei topper dies
Shigeru Okada oversaw production in studio's heyday
By Mark Schilling
Variety
TOKYO -- Former Toei topper Shigeru Okada, who oversaw production of the studio's iconic samurai and yakuza pics through its 1950s and 1960s heyday, died on Monday of pneumonia in Tokyo at age 87.
Born in Hiroshima in 1924, Okada joined the predecessor to Toei soon after graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1947.
After Toei launched in 1951, Okada took charge of production at the company's Kyoto and Tokyo studios, with a keen eye for the B.O. main chance at a time when demand for local pics was still strong. Toei started churning out samurai swashbuckler and other action fare at a ferocious pace, with production hitting more than 100 pics annually. Soon Toei was atop the B.O. heap and Okada's corporate star was rising.
When television started luring away auds in the early 1960s, Okada and his team responded with a new line of so-called "ninkyo" (code of honor) gang pics starring Koji Tsuruta, Ken Takakura and other top male talent. Mostly set from the end of the feudal era to the dark prewar days, the pics featured loner outlaw heroes upholding traditional gang values such as loyalty and self-sacrifice against unscrupulous gangster enemies.
Though pure fantasy, the pics drew millions of male fans who enjoyed their retro swagger and style. And when the ninkyo boom began to fade at the end of the decade, Okada and uber-producer Koji Shindo deftly switched direction to gang pics that more accurately reflected ruthless contemporary realities. The culmination was the five-part "Battles Without Honor and Humanity" (1973-1974) series that, under helmer Kinji Fukasaku, depicted a violent gang war in Hiroshima with a documentary-like intensity, while luring back younger fans who had abandoned the genre as old-fashioned and formulaic. But a second four-part series (1974-1979) did not scale the same B.O. heights, a symptom of an industry-wide malaise that even Okada could not cure.
Okada served as Toei prexy from 1971 to 1993, then segued to the post of chairman and, in 2006, honorary chairman. As a manager, he was a relentless cost cutter, who viewed pics strictly as products and shifted strategy quickly to meet aud needs. Under Okada, Toei was an early entrant into the toon, TV and soft porn businesses, reaping profits while its more conservative rivals hesitated.
In his later years, Okada became a biz godfather, promoting Japanese pics as head of the industry org Motion Picture Producers Assn. of Japan. He often lent his salty, distinctive presence to industry gatherings, firing off quips to general laughter and applause, though his barbs could also sting. Asked to comment on Hiroyuki Sanada's title perf in "The Twilight Samurai" (2002), Yoji Yamada's Oscar-nommed period drama for rival Shochiku, Okada said "He's a lot better now than when he worked for us."
Okada's son Yusuke is now Toei prexy.
Jim Dickson, a key architect of the '60s folk-rock sound and the original manager of the Byrds, died of unknown causes April 19 in Costa Mesa, Calif. He was 80.
Born in Los Angeles, Dickson worked as a record producer in the early '60s, cutting proto-folk-rock sides by singer-songwriter Hamilton Camp, progressive bluegrass units the Dillards and the Hillmen (which included future Byrds member Chris Hillman) and singer-songwriter David Crosby.
He took up management of Hillman and Crosby's fledgling new band, which was styling itself as an L.A. equivalent of the Beatles. Employing free studio time cadged by Dickson, then a staff producer at World Pacific Studios, the group cut early tracks as the Beefeaters and the Jet Set.
In 1964, Dickson received an acetate of the unreleased Bob Dylan song "Mr. Tambourine Man" from the singer-songwriter's publisher. His charges, a quintet now known as the Byrds, recorded it for Columbia Records (employing backup studio musicians), and it became the band's breakthrough No. 1 single.
Dickson and management partner Eddie Tickner handled the Byrds, who became the preeminent folk-rock band of the era, through a bitter split in June 1967. The pair subsequently worked with the Flying Burrito Brothers, a country-rock unit including Hillman, Byrds drummer Michael Clarke and latter-day Byrds member Gram Parsons.
Dickson produced the group's A&M albums "Burrito Deluxe," "The Flying Burrito Brothers" and the live "Last of the Red Hot Burritos," and is credited with helming some of Parsons' post-Burritos solo recordings.
In 1972, Dickson helped ex-Byrd Gene Clark re-record and remix his 1967 album "Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers."
Dickson later moved to Hawaii, where he became a competitive sailor.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118036322?refCatId=16
Marian Mercer, Actress With Zany Streak, Is Dead at 75
Marian Mercer, a willowy actress with a comedic flair who won a
Tony Award in 1969 for her performance in the hit musical “Promises,
Promises,” died on April 27 in Newbury Park, Calif. She was 75 and
lived in Agoura Hills, Calif.
The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her husband,
Patrick Hogan, said.
Ms. Mercer, a 5-foot-9 blonde with green eyes and, when necessary,
a sultry voice, won the Tony for best featured actress in a musical
for her portrayal of Marge MacDougall, a pickup girl at Clancy’s
Lounge.
“She’s giving one of the most delicious performances on Broadway,
a B-girl who would rather die than have you think she’s cheap, as she
deftly maneuvers herself into Jerry Orbach’s apartment, looking
forward to bed,” The New York Times said.
But Ms. Mercer could handle more weighty characters. Among dozens
of roles in repertory theaters around the country, she was Olivia in
“Twelfth Night,” Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Blanche in
“A Streetcar Named Desire.”
In the 1978 Broadway production of “Stop the World — I Want to Get
Off ,” Ms. Mercer starred with Sammy Davis Jr., playing the four
different women in his life with a mix of song, comedy and even mime.
Ms. Mercer’s zany streak led to frequent television appearances
with the likes of Johnny Carson, Jonathan Winters and Dom DeLuise. She
was seen on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “St. Elsewhere,” “Archie
Bunker’s Place” and “The Golden Girls,” among many other shows. And on
ABC from 1980 through 1982 (and later in syndication) she played the
humorless hostess, Nancy Beebe, on “It’s a Living,” a sitcom that
followed the lives of waitresses working in an expensive restaurant
atop a hotel in Los Angeles.
Marian Ethel Mercer was born in Akron, Ohio, on Nov. 26, 1935, one
of five children of Samuel and Nellie Mercer.
Besides her husband of 31 years, she is survived by her sister,
Marjorie Keith, and a daughter, Deidre Whitaker. Her first marriage,
to Martin Cassidy, an actor she met soon after coming to New York in
1957, ended in divorce.
She was 8 when she began singing lessons, a passion she pursued at
the University of Michigan. There she also began acting, taking roles
in summer stock theater. She moved to New York in 1957 and, after
stints as a model, a hostess at Schrafft’s restaurant and a file
clerk, was cast in the choruses of “Greenwillow” and “Fiorello!”
Her big break came in 1961 when she took over the title role in
Rick Besoyan‘s Off Broadway hit “Little Mary Sunshine,” a spoof of old-
fashioned operettas and musicals.
By Lenny Roberts
The acclaimed actress best known for her role in a 1956 low-budget classic, “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” died at the Ojai Valley Community Hospital’s Continuing Care Center May 5 at 5:30 p.m., according to her son, Mark Bautzer. She had suffered from heart disease in recent years, and was transferred from the hospital’s intensive care unit earlier in the day. Bautzer said she was not expected to survive, and “she stepped off the bus very peacefully” 33 days shy of her 80th birthday.
Wynter, a longtime Upper Ojai resident, was born Dagmar Winter in Germany in 1931. Her ashes will be buried at her other home in her beloved Ireland, according to Bautzer.
http://ovnblog.com/?p=4343
James "Deacon" Anderson
Anonymous CNHI The Port Arthur News Mon May 02, 2011, 04:02 PM CDT
Singer, Song Writer, Steel Guitarist
James "Deacon" Anderson passed away April 30th 2011 in Montgomery, TX he was 86.
He raised his family in Groves Texas, three daughters Sheena and Judy Anderson of Montgomery Texas and Sherry Zumo of Groves Texas and one son James Dee Anderson Jr. of Montgomery Texas. He had a recording studio in Port Neches. He wrote the hit song Ragg-Mopp and other country swing tunes such as "Red Hot Flame", and "I Hate To See You Cry", he was inducted into the steel guitar hall of fame in 2003 and numerous other country swing halls of fame including our own music hall of fame in Vidor and the Port Arthur Hall of Fame. He was a sergeant in the Army during World War II which is when he wrote Ragg-Mopp and he has played music with many fellow musicians such as Cotton Thompson, Johnnie Lee Wills band,J.L. Jenkins, Darrell Jones, Richard Prine, Mutt Collins,and Mancel Tierney .He was an endowed member of the Masonic Lodge in Port Arthur. He is survived by his four children, five grand daughters and fifteen great- grandchildren also one brother Tom Anderson of Cold Springs Texas and one sister Viola Wakefield of California.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 58 years Rita Vivian (Hinds) Anderson.
Funeral services will be at 10:00 a.m., Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at Levingston Funeral Home in Groves, Texas.
Oklahoma City musician Gary ‘Speedy’ West dies
A memorial concert is planned at the UCO Jazz Lab for May 22 for the well-known local guitarist.
BY GENE TRIPLETT Oklahoman Published: May 5, 2011
Well-known Oklahoma City guitarist Gary “Speedy” West Jr. died Wednesday after a battle with lung cancer. He was 58.
Born in Hollywood, Calif., West played and taught guitar in Oklahoma for 30 years. He was lead guitarist of Maya, a popular Oklahoma City rock band in the 1970s and ’80s, and had played with the Clique, the house band at Friends Restaurant and Club at Memorial Road and Portland for the last several years.
“He was a wonderful guy, he was a lot of fun,” former Maya bass guitarist and vocalist Jerry Wilson said Wednesday. “Of course he was a wonderful player and entertainer. It’s a sad day.”
Brent Saulsbury, former Clique bass guitarist, called West a “true friend.”
“He helped me out so much,” Saulsbury said. “He got me that gig at Friends. He was always positive. Anything new I wanted to try, he’d always back me up if there was a new song I wanted to sing or something. He was real positive about it, real complimentary. He gave me a real positive attitude and basically made me feel like trying to do new things musically.”
Many local musicians had held a series of benefit shows to help raise money to pay medical bills for West, who, like many professional musicians, did not have health insurance.
A memorial concert featuring many veteran Oklahoma City players is planned for May 22 at the University of Central Oklahoma Jazz Lab in Edmond.
Survivors include his wife, Kristen; a son, Andrew; his mother, Opal Dunham, his stepmother, Mary West, and two sisters, Tauni Oakley and Deanna Snyder. He was preceded in death by his father, Wesley Webb “Speedy” West, noted steel guitarist who recorded with Loretta Lynn, Tennessee Ernie Ford and many others.
Services are pending with Buchanan Funeral Service.
Read more: http://newsok.com/oklahoma-city-musician-gary-speedy-west-dies/article/3564848#ixzz1LVV9lBLM
THE BEATLES' 'PENNY LANE' TRUMPETER DEAD AT 85
5/5/2011
Legendary Beatles session man classical trumpeter David Mason, best
known for his work on the Beatles' 1967 works has died at the age of
85, according to Brassmusician.com. Mason, who spent the past three
decades as a trumpeter professor for the Royal College of Music, is
immortalized for his piccolo trumpet solo on the group's "Penny Lane"
single, for which he was paid a one-time standard session fee of about
$47. Paul McCartney personally requested Mason record the part after
watching him play the instrument during a TV performance of Bach's 2nd
Brandenburg Concerto with the English Chamber Orchestra.
Mason recalled the session in Mark Lewisohn's groundbreaking 1988
book, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, saying, "We spent three
hours working it out. Paul sang the parts he wanted, George Martin
wrote them out, I tried them. But the actual recording was done quite
quickly. They were jolly high notes, but with the tapes rolling we did
two takes as overdubs on top of the existing song. I've spent a
lifetime playing with top orchestras yet I'm most famous for playing
on 'Penny Lane!'"
* In addition to "Penny Lane," Mason also took part in sessions
for "A Day In The Life," "Magical Mystery Tour," "It's All Too Much,"
and "All You Need Is Love."
Born in Los Angeles, Dickson worked as a record producer in the early '60s, cutting proto-folk-rock sides by singer-songwriter Hamilton Camp, progressive bluegrass units the Dillards and the Hillmen (which included future Byrds member Chris Hillman) and singer-songwriter David Crosby.
He took up management of Hillman and Crosby's fledgling new band, which was styling itself as an L.A. equivalent of the Beatles. Employing free studio time cadged by Dickson, then a staff producer at World Pacific Studios, the group cut early tracks as the Beefeaters and the Jet Set.
In 1964, Dickson received an acetate of the unreleased Bob Dylan song "Mr. Tambourine Man" from the singer-songwriter's publisher. His charges, a quintet now known as the Byrds, recorded it for Columbia Records (employing backup studio musicians), and it became the band's breakthrough No. 1 single.
Dickson and management partner Eddie Tickner handled the Byrds, who became the preeminent folk-rock band of the era, through a bitter split in June 1967. The pair subsequently worked with the Flying Burrito Brothers, a country-rock unit including Hillman, Byrds drummer Michael Clarke and latter-day Byrds member Gram Parsons.
Dickson produced the group's A&M albums "Burrito Deluxe," "The Flying Burrito Brothers" and the live "Last of the Red Hot Burritos," and is credited with helming some of Parsons' post-Burritos solo recordings.
In 1972, Dickson helped ex-Byrd Gene Clark re-record and remix his 1967 album "Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers."
Dickson later moved to Hawaii, where he became a competitive sailor.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118036322?refCatId=16
Marian Mercer, Actress With Zany Streak, Is Dead at 75
Marian Mercer, a willowy actress with a comedic flair who won a
Tony Award in 1969 for her performance in the hit musical “Promises,
Promises,” died on April 27 in Newbury Park, Calif. She was 75 and
lived in Agoura Hills, Calif.
The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her husband,
Patrick Hogan, said.
Ms. Mercer, a 5-foot-9 blonde with green eyes and, when necessary,
a sultry voice, won the Tony for best featured actress in a musical
for her portrayal of Marge MacDougall, a pickup girl at Clancy’s
Lounge.
“She’s giving one of the most delicious performances on Broadway,
a B-girl who would rather die than have you think she’s cheap, as she
deftly maneuvers herself into Jerry Orbach’s apartment, looking
forward to bed,” The New York Times said.
But Ms. Mercer could handle more weighty characters. Among dozens
of roles in repertory theaters around the country, she was Olivia in
“Twelfth Night,” Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Blanche in
“A Streetcar Named Desire.”
In the 1978 Broadway production of “Stop the World — I Want to Get
Off ,” Ms. Mercer starred with Sammy Davis Jr., playing the four
different women in his life with a mix of song, comedy and even mime.
Ms. Mercer’s zany streak led to frequent television appearances
with the likes of Johnny Carson, Jonathan Winters and Dom DeLuise. She
was seen on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “St. Elsewhere,” “Archie
Bunker’s Place” and “The Golden Girls,” among many other shows. And on
ABC from 1980 through 1982 (and later in syndication) she played the
humorless hostess, Nancy Beebe, on “It’s a Living,” a sitcom that
followed the lives of waitresses working in an expensive restaurant
atop a hotel in Los Angeles.
Marian Ethel Mercer was born in Akron, Ohio, on Nov. 26, 1935, one
of five children of Samuel and Nellie Mercer.
Besides her husband of 31 years, she is survived by her sister,
Marjorie Keith, and a daughter, Deidre Whitaker. Her first marriage,
to Martin Cassidy, an actor she met soon after coming to New York in
1957, ended in divorce.
She was 8 when she began singing lessons, a passion she pursued at
the University of Michigan. There she also began acting, taking roles
in summer stock theater. She moved to New York in 1957 and, after
stints as a model, a hostess at Schrafft’s restaurant and a file
clerk, was cast in the choruses of “Greenwillow” and “Fiorello!”
Her big break came in 1961 when she took over the title role in
Rick Besoyan‘s Off Broadway hit “Little Mary Sunshine,” a spoof of old-
fashioned operettas and musicals.
By Lenny Roberts
The acclaimed actress best known for her role in a 1956 low-budget classic, “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” died at the Ojai Valley Community Hospital’s Continuing Care Center May 5 at 5:30 p.m., according to her son, Mark Bautzer. She had suffered from heart disease in recent years, and was transferred from the hospital’s intensive care unit earlier in the day. Bautzer said she was not expected to survive, and “she stepped off the bus very peacefully” 33 days shy of her 80th birthday.
Wynter, a longtime Upper Ojai resident, was born Dagmar Winter in Germany in 1931. Her ashes will be buried at her other home in her beloved Ireland, according to Bautzer.
http://ovnblog.com/?p=4343
James "Deacon" Anderson
Anonymous CNHI The Port Arthur News Mon May 02, 2011, 04:02 PM CDT
Singer, Song Writer, Steel Guitarist
James "Deacon" Anderson passed away April 30th 2011 in Montgomery, TX he was 86.
He raised his family in Groves Texas, three daughters Sheena and Judy Anderson of Montgomery Texas and Sherry Zumo of Groves Texas and one son James Dee Anderson Jr. of Montgomery Texas. He had a recording studio in Port Neches. He wrote the hit song Ragg-Mopp and other country swing tunes such as "Red Hot Flame", and "I Hate To See You Cry", he was inducted into the steel guitar hall of fame in 2003 and numerous other country swing halls of fame including our own music hall of fame in Vidor and the Port Arthur Hall of Fame. He was a sergeant in the Army during World War II which is when he wrote Ragg-Mopp and he has played music with many fellow musicians such as Cotton Thompson, Johnnie Lee Wills band,J.L. Jenkins, Darrell Jones, Richard Prine, Mutt Collins,and Mancel Tierney .He was an endowed member of the Masonic Lodge in Port Arthur. He is survived by his four children, five grand daughters and fifteen great- grandchildren also one brother Tom Anderson of Cold Springs Texas and one sister Viola Wakefield of California.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 58 years Rita Vivian (Hinds) Anderson.
Funeral services will be at 10:00 a.m., Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at Levingston Funeral Home in Groves, Texas.
Oklahoma City musician Gary ‘Speedy’ West dies
A memorial concert is planned at the UCO Jazz Lab for May 22 for the well-known local guitarist.
BY GENE TRIPLETT Oklahoman Published: May 5, 2011
Well-known Oklahoma City guitarist Gary “Speedy” West Jr. died Wednesday after a battle with lung cancer. He was 58.
Born in Hollywood, Calif., West played and taught guitar in Oklahoma for 30 years. He was lead guitarist of Maya, a popular Oklahoma City rock band in the 1970s and ’80s, and had played with the Clique, the house band at Friends Restaurant and Club at Memorial Road and Portland for the last several years.
“He was a wonderful guy, he was a lot of fun,” former Maya bass guitarist and vocalist Jerry Wilson said Wednesday. “Of course he was a wonderful player and entertainer. It’s a sad day.”
Brent Saulsbury, former Clique bass guitarist, called West a “true friend.”
“He helped me out so much,” Saulsbury said. “He got me that gig at Friends. He was always positive. Anything new I wanted to try, he’d always back me up if there was a new song I wanted to sing or something. He was real positive about it, real complimentary. He gave me a real positive attitude and basically made me feel like trying to do new things musically.”
Many local musicians had held a series of benefit shows to help raise money to pay medical bills for West, who, like many professional musicians, did not have health insurance.
A memorial concert featuring many veteran Oklahoma City players is planned for May 22 at the University of Central Oklahoma Jazz Lab in Edmond.
Survivors include his wife, Kristen; a son, Andrew; his mother, Opal Dunham, his stepmother, Mary West, and two sisters, Tauni Oakley and Deanna Snyder. He was preceded in death by his father, Wesley Webb “Speedy” West, noted steel guitarist who recorded with Loretta Lynn, Tennessee Ernie Ford and many others.
Services are pending with Buchanan Funeral Service.
Read more: http://newsok.com/oklahoma-city-musician-gary-speedy-west-dies/article/3564848#ixzz1LVV9lBLM
THE BEATLES' 'PENNY LANE' TRUMPETER DEAD AT 85
5/5/2011
Legendary Beatles session man classical trumpeter David Mason, best
known for his work on the Beatles' 1967 works has died at the age of
85, according to Brassmusician.com. Mason, who spent the past three
decades as a trumpeter professor for the Royal College of Music, is
immortalized for his piccolo trumpet solo on the group's "Penny Lane"
single, for which he was paid a one-time standard session fee of about
$47. Paul McCartney personally requested Mason record the part after
watching him play the instrument during a TV performance of Bach's 2nd
Brandenburg Concerto with the English Chamber Orchestra.
Mason recalled the session in Mark Lewisohn's groundbreaking 1988
book, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, saying, "We spent three
hours working it out. Paul sang the parts he wanted, George Martin
wrote them out, I tried them. But the actual recording was done quite
quickly. They were jolly high notes, but with the tapes rolling we did
two takes as overdubs on top of the existing song. I've spent a
lifetime playing with top orchestras yet I'm most famous for playing
on 'Penny Lane!'"
* In addition to "Penny Lane," Mason also took part in sessions
for "A Day In The Life," "Magical Mystery Tour," "It's All Too Much,"
and "All You Need Is Love."
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
4/27/11 - Yvette Vickers, an early Playboy playmate whose credits as a B-movie actress included such cult films as “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” was found dead last week at her Benedict Canyon home. Her body appears to have gone undiscovered for months, police said.
Vickers, 82, had not been seen for a long time. A neighbor discovered her body in an upstairs room of her Westwanda Drive home on April 27. Its mummified state suggests she could have been dead for close to a year, police said. Source: LA Times
Vickers, 82, had not been seen for a long time. A neighbor discovered her body in an upstairs room of her Westwanda Drive home on April 27. Its mummified state suggests she could have been dead for close to a year, police said. Source: LA Times
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