Philip Moody dies at 89
Composed for film, Vegas
By Variety Staff

British-born conductor, arranger and song writer Philip Moody died in Palm Springs on Aug. 22 after a brief illness. He was 89.
Born in Southampton, England, he was a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music. He entertained the British armed forces, performed in concert with many of England's top entertainers and appeared on British radio. From there, he began to write for motion pictures. After working on the film "London Town," he was brought to the U.S. by MCA and teamed with touring act the Sherrell Sisters. When the sister act disbanded, he married one sister and formed a successful songwriting partnership with the other.

In the U.S., Moody composed film scores for "Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt" and "Love Me Deadly" and contributed songs and cues to other films including "So This Is Paris," "Carnival Story," "Paris Follies of 1956," "The Second Greatest Sex" and "Footprints on the Moon," a documentary about the Apollo 11 landing that featured Moody's composition "The Laguna Concerto."

In the '70s, Moody's musical-composing piano talents took him to Las Vegas, where he created music and performed at the Desert Inn, Stardust, Sahara, and Flamingo hotels with such stars as Betty Grable, Jimmy Durante, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Mamie Van Doren, Debra Paget, Margaret Whiting, the Ritz Brothers and Mae West, whose nightclub act he and sister-in-law Pony Sherrell co-wrote. He also worked with opera great Helen Traubel.

When the MGM Grand hotel opened in Reno, Moody became the hotel's music director and conducted Donn Arden's stage spectacular "Hello, Hollywood, Hello."

In 1980, he and his wife Grace moved to Palm Springs and opened Moody's Supper Club, a cabaret bistro featuring original Broadway revues.

Moody is survived by a daughter and a brother.

Voice Actor/Narrator Junpei Takiguchi Passes Away
posted on 2011-08-29 09:00 EDT
Voice of Yatterman's head villain Dokurobee, Dragon Ball's Uranai Baba

Voice actor and narrator Junpei Takiguchi passed away Monday, August 29 at 7:33 a.m. due to stomach cancer. He was 80 years old.

Takiguchi's best known voice-acting role was Dokurobee, the head of the Dorombo Gang in the Yatterman franchise from the first anime series to the 2008 remake and even Takashi Miike's live-action film. He was also Uranai Baba and other roles in the Dragon Ball series. From 1992 to July of this year, he narrated the popular railroad travel program Burari Tochû Gesha no Tabi on NTV for a total of 958 episodes.

Services will be held for relatives only at the request of the family.

Source: News 24


(NY Times)- Leonard Harris, an arts and theater critic for New York’s CBS television affiliate who had his own dramatic turn playing a senator in Martin Scorsese’s classic film “Taxi Driver,” died on Sunday in Hartford. He was 81.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, Mary Hilliard, his longtime companion, said. He lived in Manhattan.

Mr. Harris began his career writing obituaries and book reviews for The Hartford Courant in 1955. In 1966 he became a culture critic at WCBS-TV, a position he held until 1974.

Mr. Scorsese cast Mr. Harris as Senator Charles Palantine in “Taxi Driver” (1976) because he knew him through the New York drama scene. When the film’s disturbed antihero, Travis Bickle, meets the senator, he delivers a tirade about flushing the “scum and filth” out of New York. The senator cautiously sympathizes with Travis, perhaps unknowingly leading to his later violent deeds.

Mr. Harris also played the mayor in a 1980 romantic comedy, “Hero at Large,” and wrote three novels. His first, “The Masada Plan,” was called “gripping, fast-moving, expertly engineered” by the novelist Meyer Levin in The New York Times Book Review.

Leonard Jerome Harris was born in the Bronx on Sept. 27, 1929. He graduated from City College and served in the Army at Fort Dix during the Korean War. In 1961 he married Mary Ann Wurth. They divorced in 1973. He also had homes in Stanfordville, N.Y., and West Palm Beach, Fla.