DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

[Doctor Strange]

Robert Boyle, Hollywood production designer and art director with an amazing string of credits, notably some of Hitchcock's most iconic images:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/movies/04boyle.html

 

[skyvue]

Bobby Hebb dies at 72; writer and singer of '66 hit 'Sunny'
The singer-songwriter hit No. 2 on the Billboard pop charts with "Sunny," which was later recorded by Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra and others....

http://bit.ly/d0YLuQ

 

[KilroyCD]

Patricia Neal

From Yahoo News:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Patricia Neal, the willowy, husky-voiced actress who won an Academy Award for 1963's "Hud" and then survived several strokes to continue acting, died on Sunday. She was 84.

Neal had lung cancer and died at her home in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard, said longtime friend Bud Albers of Knoxville.

Neal was already an award-winning Broadway actress when she won her Oscar for her role as a housekeeper to the Texas father (Melvyn Douglas) battling his selfish, amoral son (Paul Newman).

Less than two years after winning the Academy Award, she suffered a series of strokes in 1965 at age 39. Her struggle to regain walking and talking is regarded as epic in the annals of stroke rehabilitation. She returned to the screen to earn another Oscar nomination and three Emmy nominations.

The Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center that concentrates on helping people recover from strokes and spinal cord and brain injuries is named for her in Knoxville, where she grew up.

"She never forgot us after she went to Hollywood," said the 85-year-old Albers, who graduated with Neal from Knoxville High School in 1943.

Whenever she was in town, a bunch of her friends would always get together and have dinner, Albers said. Her family let him know of her death.

"She was so courageous," he said of her battling back from her illnesses and losing her 7-year-old daughter to measles in 1962. "She always fought back. She was very much an inspiration."

In her 1988 autobiography, "As I Am," she wrote, "Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison."

She made a grand return to the screen in 1968, winning an Oscar nomination for her performance in "The Subject Was Roses."

In 1971, she played Olivia Walton in "The Homecoming: A Christmas Story," a made-for-TV film that served as the pilot for the CBS series "The Waltons." It brought her the first of her three Emmy nominations.

"You can't give up," she said in a 1999 Associated Press interview. "You sure want to, sometimes."

In 1953, she married Roald Dahl, the British writer famed for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "James and the Giant Peach" and other tales for children. They had five children. They divorced in 1983 and he died in 1990.

Even before her own illness, her life often was touched by misfortune. Besides her daughter's death, an infant son nearly died in 1960 when his carriage was struck by a taxi.

Neal also suffered a nervous breakdown, and had an ill-fated affair with Gary Cooper, who starred with her in "The Fountainhead."

"I lived this secret life for several years. I was so ashamed," she told The New York Times in 1964.

She and Dahl divorced after she learned he was having an affair with her best friend.

The strokes at first paralyzed her and impaired her speech. After recovering, she limped and had bad vision in one eye.

A 1991 biopic about her travails starred Glenda Jackson as Neal.

Neal was born in a mining camp in Packard, Ky., the daughter of a transportation manager for the South Coal & Coke Co. After leaving Knoxville, she attended Northwestern University and then struck out for Broadway.

After doing well there, she made her screen debut in 1949's "John Loves Mary," that also starred Jack Carson and Ronald Reagan.

Among Neal's children is Tessa Dahl, who followed in her father's footsteps as a writer. Tessa Dahl's daughter is the model and writer Sophie Dahl.

Friends said her sorrows gave her an inner toughness that brought new power to her screen portrayals.

"I don't lie down. ... I'm fightin' all the way," she said in 1999.

 

[MisterCairo]

English drummer and band leader Jack Parnell, orchestrated the Muppet Show's entire run, has died:


http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2010/08/09/parnell-muppets-obit-drummer.html

 

[AtomicEraTom]

What a Shame. I grew up with this music. My folks and I still listen to "Dooley" almost every weekend.

Bass player in The Dillards AKA The Darlin's on The Andy Griffith Show.
http://forums.tvland.com/?page=ThreadView&thread_id=1032

 

[in/y]

Kodachrome film is no more

The last roll of Kodachrome has been exposed by photographer Steve McCurry.

Koodak ran the last batch of the stuff about a year ago.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/08/1764990/theyre-taking-your-kodachrome.html

 

[LizzieMaine]

Bobby Thomson, whose cheap shot off Ralph Branca into the left field seats at the Polo Grounds gave the New York Giants the 1951 National League pennant, has died at the age of 86. Without doubt the most famous single moment in baseball history, even if you happen to be a Dodger fan.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/2010/08/17/2010-08-17_bobby_thomson_and_ralph_brancas_moment__the_shot_heard_round_the_world__will_liv.html

 

[John in Covina]

If you ever watch Ken Burns' "Baseball" series this is well covered with a variey of people speaking about the event and how it affected them.

 

[LocktownDog]

Another depressing loss ...

Billy Millin

 

[dhermann1]

Kowabonga!

Edward George Kean, the writer for the old Howdy Doody Show, who coined the phrase "Kowabonga!" for Chief Thunderthud, recently passed away.
If you're of the particular age to remember early TV, I mean real early TV - 1947 to 1954 - this will mean something to you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Kean
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/a...l=1&adxnnlx=1282752055-qMjE7rgAKNAY1WHs8ogiFw

 

[Feraud]

Hey it's... that guy.

Kevin McCarthy passed away at 96.

September 12, 2010
Kevin McCarthy, Actor, Dies at 96
By ANITA GATES
Kevin McCarthy, the suave, square-jawed actor who earned accolades in stage and screen productions of “Death of a Salesman” but will always be best known as the star of the 1956 science fiction movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” died Saturday at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass. He was 96 and lived in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Lillah McCarthy.

Mr. McCarthy, whose sister was the celebrated author Mary McCarthy, was 35 and a veteran of seven Broadway plays when Elia Kazan cast him as Biff, the shallow, elder son of Willy Loman, in the London stage production of “Death of a Salesman,” Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1949 drama about illusion and the common man. His portrayal of Biff in the 1951 film version earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

Five years and four forgettable films later Mr. McCarthy was cast in a low-budget B movie about a small California town where the residents are gradually replaced by pods from outer space. The pods, resembling giant cucumbers, bubble and foam as they slowly turn into creepy, emotionless duplicates of the townspeople.

Miles Bennell (Mr. McCarthy), a handsome bachelor doctor, and Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), a beautiful local divorcée, spend the movie trying to escape podification (mostly just by staying awake; the transformation takes place while people are sleeping) and warn others.

The movie, selected for the National Film Registry in 1994 and named one of the Top 10 science fiction films of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008, came to be regarded as a metaphor for the paranoia of the era’s Communist witch hunts.

Over the decades Mr. McCarthy came to embrace the cult immortality he achieved with “Body Snatchers,” but he cheerily played hundreds of other roles in feature films and on television (including multiple appearances on series from “Studio One” in the 1950s to “The District” in 2000) and continued his stage career. He toured the United States as Harry S. Truman in the one-man show “Give ’Em Hell, Harry” for two decades.

Kevin McCarthy was born on Feb. 15, 1914, in Seattle, the son of Roy Winfield McCarthy and the former Therese Preston. Both parents died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, and their four children were sent to live with relatives in Minneapolis. After five years of near-Dickensian mistreatment, described in Ms. McCarthy’s memoirs, the youngsters moved in with their maternal grandfather.

After graduating from high school in Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy studied at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, with an eye toward a diplomatic career. He changed his mind, however, and transferred to the University of Minnesota, where he became interested in acting.

After moving to New York he made his Broadway debut in 1938 in “Abe Lincoln in Illinois.” His career was interrupted by World War II, in which he served as a military police officer. After his discharge he became an early member of the Actors Studio, New York’s bastion of Method acting.

Despite his film and television success Mr. McCarthy never abandoned the stage. The 18 Broadway productions in which he appeared included Moss Hart’s “Winged Victory” (in which he was billed as Sgt. Kevin McCarthy), the political drama “Advise and Consent,” Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” and Kurt Vonnegut’s irreverent “Happy Birthday, Wanda June.”

Mr. McCarthy matured quickly into roles as judges, generals, politicians and other men of power — sometimes not very nice ones. On “Flamingo Road,” the soapy 1980s television series, he was a greedy small-town Florida millionaire. On the screen, in “The Best Man” (1964), he was a presidential candidate’s henchman, specializing in dirty tricks, and he played a similarly ignoble political type in “The Distinguished Gentleman” (1992). In “Innerspace” (1987) he was a devious industrial spy, in “Buffalo Bill and the Indians” (1976), a grabby publicist.

And although he did relatively little science fiction after “Body Snatchers,” he did star in the horror comedy “Piranha” (1978) as a mad scientist breeding killer fish. He also made a cameo appearance in the 1978 remake of “Body Snatchers,” playing a man who throws himself at the car driven by Donald Sutherland (the remake’s star), shouting, “Help! They’re coming! Listen to me!” and sounding much like his character in the original film.

He married the actress Augusta Dabney in 1941, and they had three children. They divorced in 1961. (Ms. Dabney died in 2008.) In 1979 he married Kate Crane, a lawyer, and they had two children. Ms. Crane survives him, as do three daughters, Lillah, of Los Angeles; Mary Dabney McCarthy, of Cape Cod; and Tess McCarthy, of New York City; two sons, James Kevin McCarthy of San Diego and Patrick McCarthy of Portland, Ore.; a stepdaughter, Kara Lichtman of Boston; a brother, Preston; and three grandchildren. Mr. McCarthy’s sister died in 1989.

Interviewers rarely asked him about subjects beyond “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” (He loved to tell the story about leaving Ms. Wynter a nostalgic trans-Atlantic telephone message: “Becky, it’s Miles. Wake up!”) But in 1991 he told a critic for The San Diego Union-Tribune about his feeling that purposeful employment was a remedy for many ills. “I try to get as much work as I possibly can,” Mr. McCarthy, then 77, said. “I love to work. I love to be in things.”

From the NYTimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/movies/13mccarthy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

 

[John in Covina]

He did a great job in one of the Twighlight Zone Episodes as a man that was near immortal living from the time of Homer to the present as filmed in the episode.

Body Snatchers was extraordinary. Some of it was fimed near by in Sierra Madre, east of Pasadena.

 

[Foofoogal]

It is funny as I always remember this actor Kevin McCarthy in distinguished roles. Like at fancy dinner parties and such?
------------
Over the decades Mr. McCarthy came to embrace the cult immortality he achieved with “Body Snatchers,” but he cheerily played hundreds of other roles in feature films and on television (including multiple appearances on series from “Studio One” in the 1950s to “The District” in 2000) and continued his stage career. He toured the United States as Harry S. Truman in the one-man show “Give ’Em Hell, Harry” for two decades.
-----------------------------------

RIP Mr. McCarthy.

 

[flat-top]

"Billie Mae Richards, 88, the voice actress who played the title character in the 1964 animated TV classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, died Sept. 10 of stroke in Burlington, Canada, according to Variety. The Toronto actress started her career in theater at a young age and switched to radio and voiceover work upon discovering her knack for imitating the voice of a boy. Richards was in her early 40s when she voiced Rudolph in the stop-motion animated special, which has since become the longest-running Christmas TV special and a holiday tradition for many families. “I’m just so glad that my kids, my grandkids, my great-grandkids, and probably my great-great-grandkids will see Rudolph,” Richards said in a 2005 interview for Filmfax magazine. Richards is survived by four children and 12 grandchildren."

[YOUTUBE]UeCtTMK-Ikc[/YOUTUBE]

 

[dhermann1]

Edwin Newman

The wonderful old NBC newsman Edwin Newman has passed away at age 91. I had assumed he was already long gone. Who didn't love Edwin Newman???
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/15/longtime-nbc-newsman-edwin-newman-has-died/

 

[Tomasso]

RIP Ed

I've got to reread Strictly Speaking

Colleagues said he had “the face of a baseball umpire” and the voice of a “muffled foghorn.” lol

 

[The Good]

Well, today I found out that the person in charge of my community college's film club had passed away due to ovarian cancer... God rest her soul, I didn't know her personally, but if I can recall, during my first semester I had taken the same class, so when I had heard of this, her's was a name that I had recognized.

 

[in/y]

Here's a CBC podcast interview with Billie Mae and a couple of other voice actors from Rudolph from 2007.

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20071224_4224.mp3

 

[HadleyH]

au revoir Claude Chabrol... (1930-2010)

... founding father of the French New Wave.

 

[Prairie Dog]

Eddie Fisher, father of Star Wars icon, Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), whose huge fame as a pop singer was overshadowed by scandals ending his marriages to Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor and Connie Stevens, has died. He was 82.

[Youtube]I8GCfxJ60zU[/Youtube]