june 2005 > final credits > last link on the left

Christopher Fry >permalink<

Playwright

When William Wyler was directing "Ben-Hur" in Rome in 1958, he sensed there was trouble with the script. He sent for Gore Vidal, an old hand at doctoring, and Christopher Fry, who had never seen a screenplay in his life. By the time the movie was completed, the script was essentially as Fry re-wrote it, but his role in the film's success remained uncredited. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 30, 2005 at age 97.

Harry Lloyd >permalink<

Veteran of both world wars

Always seen as a gentlemen, Harry always wore a shirt and tie -- even when he was gardening, a hobby he kept up until just a few years ago. An avid newspaper reader, he believed the secret of long life was to keep up with what was happening in the world.

Lloyd had lied about his age to become an aircraft fitter with the elite Royal British Flying Corps during World War I. Twenty years later, in World War II, he served his country again as a sergeant in the Home Guard.

June 29, 2005 at age 105.

Bruce Malmuth >permalink<

Director

While serving in the American army, Malmuth made documentaries. There he met baseball announcer Walter "Red" Barber. After his military career, Malmuth directed coverage of New York Yankee games for WPIX radio in New York before entering the film and television industry. He directed Sylvester Stallone in the 1981 thriller "Nighthawk," and Steven Seagal in the 1990 political action film "Hard to Kill." Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 28, 2005 at age 71. Esophageal cancer.

Guy Thomajan >permalink<

Actor

One of Thomajan's earliest jobs on Broadway was keeping playwright Tennessee Williams supplied with "the right amount of bourbon" during the production of "A Streetcar Named Desire." He was also "The Pink Panther" in the 1964 film that starred David Niven and Peter Sellers. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 28, 2005 at age 87.

Domino Harvey >permalink<

Model, bounty hunter

She was the daughter of Laurence Harvey, star of the original "The Manchurian Candidate." She was a former Ford model. Later in life, she was a bounty hunter. And Domino Harvey's life story is the subject of a movie set to be released late in 2005.

Harvey Born in Belgravia, Domino was the product of a three-year affair between her father and Vogue model Pauline Stone during his second marriage. After his divorce, Laurence married Pauline shortly before his death from stomach cancer in 1973. Pauline then married Peter Morton, owner of the Hard Rock Café chain, and moved to Hollywood while her daughter attended public school in England.

Domino's rebellious nature caused her to be expelled from four schools. Her natural beauty won her a job with the Ford model agency, but she soon tired of life on the catwalk and hopped nightclubs and sold T-shirts in Kensington Market to pass the time. She soon took acting lessons at the Lee Strasberg drama school.

At 19, Domino moved to Hollywood, running a nightclub, working as a ranch hand (where she became familiar with weaponry) and later as a firefighter in San Diego. She also developed a full-blown heroin addiction, and got caught up in the shadowy world of bounty-hunting for the Celes King Bail Bond Agency, tracking down criminals by any means short of murder for skipping bail while awaiting trial. Posing often as a lost English tourist, Harvey would lure her target away before pressing a gun into their gut.

Despite her success rate, her 10% cut usually translated into 300 dollars a week. When money was short, she would move back home. She eventually checked into a Hawaiian rehab clinic in 1997, weighing only 98 pounds. It was then she sold the rights to her life story.

Despite seemingly successful treatment, Domino was arrested for possession of crystal meth in 2003. As a first offender, she avoided trial by entering a treatment program. Domino was then charged in May, 2005 with with conspiracy to distribute drugs, possession, trafficking, racketeering, crossing state lines for unlawful activity and having property used in or obtained through criminal activity. Harvey faced ten years to life if found guilty. Pending trial, she was ordered to wear an electronic bracelet and be subject to drug and alcohol testing. She had yet to enter a plea on the charges.

The film "Domino" stars Keira Knightley under direction from Tony Scott. The real-life subject of the film made her hatred of the film publicly clear, although those close to her said Harvey was delighted with the movie. The film had a budget of 60 million USD. Harvey was paid 300,000 USD for her rights. Her greatest point of contention was that false reports of her open lesbian nature were treated as a source for soft-porn titillation in the film. New Line Cinema did not give Harvey script approval on the film, which is based on a newspaper article about her life. The film's release was delayed to incorporate Harvey's death into the storyline.

In September 2005, the Los Angeles County coroner has concluded that Harvey died from an overdose of Fentanyl, a painkiller more powerful than morphine. The death was ruled accidental.

June 27, 2005 at age 35. Drug overdose.

Ray Holmes >permalink<

World War II fighter pilot

Holmes and ground crew In the early days of World War II's air battle over Britain, Ray Holmes risked his life to save Buckingham Palace from certain destruction. Having run out of amunition, he rammed his plane into a German bomber in midflight. While the event was recreated for the 1969 Guy Hamilton directed film "The Battle of Britain," Holmes' heroic charge on the Nazi bomber was actually caught on film. The event marked a turning point in the war.

To learn more about Holmes' historic feat, visit the Last Link Ray Holmes tribute page.

June 27, 2005 at age 90. Cancer.

Chet Helms >permalink<

Music promoter

If there could just be one person responsible for 1967's "Summer Of Love," it would certainly have to be Chet Helms. Helms He united Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and with Bill Graham, promoted the first shows at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium. His "Human Be-ins" at Golden Gate Park became the backdrop for the Summer of Love at the height of protest against the Vietnam War.

After his father died, Helms moved with his family to Texas, where he was raised by a fundamentalist preacher grandfather. After dropping out of university he was drawn to the Beat scene around the poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in the North Beach area of San Francisco. He made his home in the then unfashionable Haight-Ashbury district, dealing in antiques and marijuana.

On a 1963 trip back to Texas, he heard Janis Joplin sing and persuaded her to hitchhike to the west coast to check out the coffeehouse music scene. Helms' personal appearance once caused him to be detained by police in Laredo during investigations surrounding the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. Joplin failed to achieve success in the Bay area and returned to Texas.

Helms saw a Rolling Stones concert at the Civic Auditorium in 1964 and decided to get involved in rock'n'roll. His home soon became host to jam sessions involving the likes of Big Brother and the Holding Company. Again, he called on Joplin to come west, and she became the band's leader singer. Helms managed the band.

Helms formed a production company called Family Dog, and began organising events for the nascent hippy community. He staged free concerts and 'Be-ins' in area parks. In June, 1966 Helms started a series of psychedelic light-shows held in the Avalon Ballroom, which served as a gathering point for bands like Big Brother, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe & the Fish and the Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Helms and Bill Graham then teamed up to produce three shows at the Fillmore Auditorium. Graham built the Fillmore into one of the most important venues in rock history, while Helms continued producing concerts at the Avalon.

In 1967, Helms told writer Jann Wenner of an idea to create an underground paper to be called Straight Arrow. While Helms discussed such a project, Wenner started his own magazine, Rolling Stone, naming its publishing company Straight Arrow.

Although the Avalon was favoured by the artistic community, Graham's Fillmore was much more successful (despite Joplin stating the Fillmore was "a place where sailors go to get laid"). By November, 1968 San Francisco pulled the sound permits for the Avalon, and Helms moved his operation to an old slot-car raceway near Ocean Beach. The venue ran out of money in less than a year, and Helms left the concert business in 1970, eventually running an art gallery.

Helms tried his hand at producing rock shows in 1979 with Tribal Stomp II at the Monterey County Fairgrounds. It was a financial disaster but holds a footnote in music history as being one of the first places the Clash played in the United States.

In October, 1997, Helms attempted to pull together an event featuring young and old bands for a 30th anniversary celebration of the Summer Of Love, held in Golden Gate Park. The event evolved into a disorganised free concert with headliners like Jefferson Starship, the Sons of Champlin and Country Joe McDonald. A year later, the city demanded $29,407 for police overtime costs. Helms replied, "I don't have $29,000. You can have my jacket."

In addition to running his Atelier Dore art gallery, Helms began experimenting with digital photography, and some his work can be seen at his web site.

News of Helms' passing circulated once before. In 2001, a report of his death produced numerous tributes and resulted in a mock funeral held with Helms rising from his "coffin" when his cell phone rang.

June 25, 2005 at age 62. Stroke.

George Swindell >permalink<

Diving helmet inventor

Swindell became a licensed scuba instructor in 1954. He made a living as a foreman for dive teams involved in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico in the 1960s. Divers of the day often suffered serious and sometimes fatal head injuries from use of ordinary scuba masks. Swindell developed a fiberglass diving helmet that was lightweight and adjustable to fit various head sizes. Versions of his helmet are still in use in such varied places as the sewers of New York City.

Swindell and two fishing partners were thrown overboard when their 20-foot boat capsized in choppy waters near the mouth of the Mississippi River. While the two men managed to cling to the boat, Swindell appeared to have suffered a heart attack. Friends described Swindell as an accomplished swimmer and diver, and found it ironic that something as simple as a life jacket could have saved his life. At the time of his death, Swindell's driving license still listed his birth year as 1928, reflecting the lie he told recruiters allowing him to serve in World War II.

June 25, 2005 at age 73. Drowned.

John Fiedler >permalink<

Actor, voice of Piglet

Fiedler He appeared on Broadway and had over 150 film and television credits, but everyone will remember John Fiedler as Piglet, Winnie The Pooh's best friend. Pooh Corner also recently lost the voices of Tigger (Paul Winchell) and Gopher (Howard Morris).

A mousy looking man with a high pitched voice, Fiedler seemed ageless, capable of playing the young and the old. He worked with some of the greats of Hollywood, and was a familiar face on television screens for nearly five decades.

Fiedler's first of many science fiction TV roles was as Cadet Alfie Higgins on "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet," a 15 minute serial which ran on NBC from 1950 to 1955. He was also the voice of Homer on that network's radio hit "The Aldrich Family" at about the same time. He found success on the New York stage, first appearing in Anton Chekov's "The Sea Gull" with Montgomery Clift in 1954, followed by "A Raisin in the Sun" (with Sidney Poitier) and "The Odd Couple" (with Walter Matthau and Art Carney).

In 1957, Fiedler starred in the courtroom jury drama "12 Angry Men." He played juror number 2, a meek bank clerk not comfortable with self-assertion. It was a role Fiedler himself would be comfortable with throughout his career.

Fiedler reprised his Broadway roles in the movie versions of "A Raisin in the Sun" (and its 1989 TV remake) and "The Odd Couple," and also appeared in "That Touch Of Mink" with Doris Day and Cary Grant, with Peter Sellers in "The World of Henry Orient," with John Wayne in "True Grit," and other movies like "Cannonball Run." He played notable parts on television, including appearances on "The Twilight Zone," "Bewitched," "Star Trek" and "The Bob Newhart Show." Fiedler also played the helpful morgue attendant ('Gordy the Ghoul' Spangler) on "Kolchak: The Night Stalker."

In the 1960s, Walt Disney heard Fiedler's voice and announced that he had found his Piglet. Fiedler joined Winchell and Morris in the Pooh family that starred Sebastian Cabot as the narrator and Sterling Holloway as Winnie, in 1968's "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day." The film won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoons, and endeared Fiedler as Pooh's kind hearted worry-wart to two generations.

Even though Fiedler's natural speaking voice was higher than most men's, he still had to raise it considerably for his characterisation of the little pink pig. He lent his voice to other Disney productions such as 1973's "Robin Hood," 1977's "The Rescuers," 2000's "The Emperor's New Groove" and more than a half dozen other Pooh titles.

From the first Pooh film, Sebastian Cabot died August 22, 1977, Sterling Holloway died November 22, 1992, and Christopher Robin's original voice, Jon Walmsley, went on to play as a guitarist for Richard Marx while making a side-career portraying Jason Walton on "The Waltons."

June 25, 2005 at age 80. Cancer.

Michael Cuneo >permalink<

Modelmaker

By day he was a conservation commission agent and engineering consultant for several New England counties. In his spare time he was an Emmy-winning modelmaker and landscape designer.

Enterprise Modelmaking was Cuneo's childhood passion. He built military figures, ships, and vehicles from kits or other parts he created himself. He graduated from university with a degree in civil engineering and later earned a professional engineer certification from Cambridge University in England. He was also a Trekker.

Cuneo's devotion to the "Star Trek" genre led him to become involved with the original series' first TV spinoff, "Star Trek: The Next Generation." He built most of the landscapes, including Romulus and Bajor, and did work on various ships such as the Klingon Battle Cruiser. He was part of a team that won seven Emmy Awards for the series.

Cueno also made the models and landscapes for some of the "Star Trek" films and other science-fiction productions such as "Dark Shadows" and "RoboCop," and was the special effects consultant for the Canadian series "Lexx."

June 25, 2005 at age 41. Brain tumour.

Edward Smith >permalink<

Stuntman

Smith was working as an extra on the comedy "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" when he saw a white stuntman being made up to be a stunt double for a black actor. In Hollywood terms, what Smith saw was a "paint-down" and he knew it wasn't right. When Smith complained to director Stanley Kramer and asked why a black stuntman wasn't used as a double, Kramer is said to have replied, "Well, find me one."

The 1960s saw African American and other minority actors take more prominent roles in film and television. Smith saw an opportunity and formed the Black Stuntmen's Association with Henry Kingi. Rounding up fellow actors and former athletes, Smith supervised training in a public park South Los Angeles. Soon the sight of practice fights and jumps off of bleachers onto mattress pads attracted the attention of the LAPD, who kept an eye on things from unmarked cars parked across the street.

Equally wary were white stuntmen, who were concerned that they would be losing jobs to African Americans. Smith would often call studios not hiring blacks, posing as the "Negro Press" or the "African American National Press," prior to visiting casting bosses. When Smith learned that Warner Bros. called in a white double for Louis Gossett Jr., he called in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Screen Actors Guild. Warners responded by including black stuntmen in all scenes involving general stunt work, and invited black stuntmen to train with veteran white stuntmen.

So concerned with the new status he had achieved for his fellow stuntmen, Smith kept quiet about the pain from a leg injury he sustained in a helicopter crash during the making of "M*A*S*H" in 1969. Four years later, he was the first African American stunt coordinator on a major production, the 1973 James Bond movie "Live and Let Die." He also appeared in "Dirty Harry," "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," "Blazing Saddles," "Earthquake," "Scarface," "The Nutty Professor" and the TV miniseries "Roots."

The Black Stuntmen's Association was eventually phased out as black stuntmen were finally able to join other stunt organisations.

June 24, 2005 at age 81. Dementia and dehydration.

Imogen Claire >permalink<

Actress and choreographer

Claire's long association with director Ken Russell has left her with a set of movie credentials that could certainly be described as ... unique: "The Music Lovers," "Savage Messiah," "Tommy," "Lisztomania," "Salome's Last Dance" and "The Lair of the White Worm." Along with Jonathan Adams, Claire is the second cast member of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" to die within a month. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 24, 2005.

Jack Kosslyn >permalink<

Actor, drama coach and casting director

Kosslyn's career began in the late 1950s with numerous appearances in B-movies. Kosslyn He graduated to TV work in the 1960s and 1970s with roles on "Ben Casey," "Hawaii Five-O", "Charlie's Angels", "Cagney & Lacey" and "Cheers." He also had a long association Clint Eastwood's Malpaso Productions as a casting director, dialogue coach and actor (appearing in "Play Misty for Me," "Breezy," "Magnum Force," "High Plains Drifter," "Magnum Force" and "The Eiger Sanction"). In the 1980s, Kosslyn helped form OPACT (Organization of Professional Acting Coaches and Teachers), a non-profit group concerned with maintaining ethical standards for acting classes.

Kosslyn was also the son of Bessie Cohen, the last survivor of an infamous fire in a Manhattan garment factory. In 1911, 146 workers were killed when they were trapped on the tenth floor of a building whose doors were locked to prevent stealing by workers or to keep union organisers out. Civil suits brought in 1914 by relatives of 23 victims ended with payments of $75 to each of the families. Cohen helped organise the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in the wake of the fire, and the city of New York established a Bureau of Fire Investigation, which had the power to impose and enforce safety regulations.

June 24, 2005 at age 84. Stroke.

Paul Winchell >permalink<

Actor, inventor, Smurf, voice of Tigger

If Paul Winchell's life was pitched as a Hollywood movie project, it would get passed over for its incredibility. He was regarded as one of the best ventriloquists of all time, a pioneer of television ... and he invented the world's first artificial heart.

For more about this fascinating life, visit the Last Link Paul Winchell tribute page.

June 24, 2005 at age 83.

Peter Casserly >permalink<

Australia's oldest WWI veteran and living male

Like many young men of his generation, Casserly lied about his age to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force in March, 1917. He informed his mother of his decision to join the First World War by dropping a message in a bottle over the side of his troop ship. The bottle washed up on a beach 700 kilometres (400 miles) away where a woman who found it posted it to his mother.

Casserly's company supported British and Australian forces on the Western Front and was involved in battles in Ypres, Armentieres and Amiens. To Australians, the fronts were known as slaughter yards. The trench battles claimed 48,000 of the country's lives - more than in the whole of World War II. After the war Casserly made a decision never to serve in the armed forces again, but both of his sons served in the army in the second world war.

Casserly's marriage to Monica Delgrado was also believed to be Australia's longest at nearly 80 years.

Australia now has only two known surviving World War I veterans: 106-year-old John Ross and former Royal Australian Navy sailor William Allan, 105.

Once asked about the secret to a long life, Casserly replied: "Keep on breathing, I suppose." In his final years he refused to take regular medication and was partial to a cold beer.

June 24, 2005 at age 107.

Ramon L. Posel >permalink<

Art cinema operator

Posel grew up next to the Lyric Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Lyric was one of seven movie houses owned by his father Leo. By the time he was in high school, Posel had been promoted from janitor to usher to projectionist. Despite his exposure to the family business, Posel preferred novels and attending jazz clubs in his spare time.

Posel earned a masters degree in English from Columbia, and a law degree at Harvard. His life then took a Cinema Paradiso-esque turn. While at Harvard, he saw Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief," which won an Honorary Award for Outstanding Foreign Language at the Oscars in 1950 (the Academy introduced the Best Foreign Film category the following year). The De Sica film portrayed the plight of the barely-working class in post-war Italy, and impressed upon Posel the importance of film as an observer of societal conditions.

Ritz After a decade in real estate, Posel opened his first movie theatre, naming it the Leo after his father. He then opened the Ritz Three theatre, and printed on the back of each ticket he sold was the theatre's mandate:

People used to go to the movies as they now watch television - not to see something but to see anything. We're trying to select features for those who want to see something.

It took seven years for the first Ritz to turn a profit. Over the years, Posel expanded his alternative cinema empire, eventually operating 30 screens in the Philadelphia and New Jersey area. The Ritz chain maintains an excellent web site for an operation its size, which features David Poole's reviews of movie soundtracks.

June 23, 2005 at age 77. Pancreatic cancer.

John J. Taylor >permalink<

Accident prone

If it wasn't for bad luck, some people would have no luck.

John Taylor lived through some perilously close calls with death. Raised in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, joining the 492nd Bomb Group which suffered 520 casualties between May and August 1944 during flying missions over Europe. Taylor was flying in a B-24 when it was accidentally shot down by friendly fire, killing seven of the 11 men on the plane. Taylor, although badly burned, pulled himself and three others onto a raft floating in the English Channel. He spent weeks in an Army hospital recovering from his burns and he didn't tell his family about the ordeal until after he attended a 50th anniversary celebration for World War II veterans a decade ago.

Taylor returned from the war, earned a business degree from the University of Chicago, and spent as much time outdoors as possible. He soon broke his back on a ski jump, and broke it again jumping over a tennis net while celebrating a victory. Once, when he was hunting, a goose he shot fell from the sky and hit him in the chest, shaking loose cartilage in his sternum that left him with breathing problems for a year. He also slipped while fly-fishing and had to be pulled to safety out of a Missouri river.

In his later years, Taylor had a small business selling firewood to his friends. A tree fell in the forest and his neighbours heard it. A large tree had fallen on top of him, and despite CPR efforts, he died before paramedics could arrive.

June 23, 2005 at age 85. Crushed.

Richard 'Doc' Brown >permalink<

Roller coaster safety expert

The field of roller coaster safety is not covered at most universities or technical schools. It was a discipline defined by man not afraid to use himself as a ride guinea pig.

Brown had just earned a master's in the new field of biomedical engineering in 1972 when he was called in to investigate cases of broken collarbones suffered by young female riders of the Jumbo Jet ride at the Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio.

Brown helped invent an industry -- the biomechanical testing of theme park rides -- by building a precise model of the coaster in his basement using technology ordinarily used in the aerospace industry. He soon pinpointed the problem: a spot where the track was too steep, causing cars to over-accelerate and slam riders around who were more slightly built.

Brown's fascination with coasters was more than professional. The Cyclone As a kid, he grew up riding the Coney Island Cyclone (left), a wooden shaker that has been in operation since 1927. He has had a hand in designing more than 100 amusement park rides, including attractions at the Disney parks, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Universal Studios and Knott's Berry Farm.

While some safety experts use mannequins wired with sensors to test rides, Brown used his own human analysis by taking the rides himself. When Universal unveiled its Back to the Future flight-simulator ride, the company's executives test-rode the ride and threw up. After just one trip on the prototype, Brown diagnosed the problem which stemmed from the film on the screen being out of sync with the cars.

In 1999, Brown moved to Huntington Beach, California to be closer to Disneyland and Knott's, two of his main clients. He most recently consulted on the Tower of Terror, which opened in 2004 at Disney's California Adventure.

In addition to his coaster work, Brown led the way in monitoring the central nervous system of patients before and after surgery. His doctoral thesis, with instruction on how to monitor the spinal cord during scoliosis surgery on children, placed him on the cutting edge of neurophysiology. Today the practice is commonplace in any operation that involves an instrument touching the spine.

June 23, 2005 at age 64. Head injury from a fall on a driveway.

Carson Parks >permalink<

Singer/songwriter

Although it was a song he both hated and defended, "Somethin' Stupid," Frank Sinatra's duet with daughter Nancy was his first gold single. Parks Carson Parks, brother of musician and film composer Van Dyke Parks, wrote that song as well as "Cab Driver (Drive by Mary's Place)" for the Mills Brothers.

In 1960, Parks performed on the soundtrack of the John Wayne film "The Alamo." Two years later he revived a group he formed after university, the Steeltown Two, this time with his brother Van Dyke. Carson then formed the Greenwood County Singers, soon marrying fellow member Gaile Foote. Parks and Foote released an album together which included "Somethin' Stupid".

Frank Sinatra heard the song and played it to his daughter's producer, Lee Hazlewood. It was Hazlewood who suggested father and daughter Sinatra sing it as a duet. Frank & Nancy The song reached Number 1 in April, 1967 and stayed there for four weeks.

That the song was Frank's first gold single was due to the fact that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which oversees the awarding of gold and plantium records, didn't start issuing the awards until the late 1950s, well after Sinatra's biggest years and after the singer had turned to acting. The first gold record recipient was Perry Como for "Catch A Falling Star" in March, 1958. Sinatra's biggest hits in the 1960s were "It Was a Very Good Year" and "Strangers in the Night" (his previous Number 1 from the fall of 1966). Sinatra had earned 10 gold albums by the time "Somethin' Stupid" was released.

Frank loathed the song and only did the duet upon Nancy's personal request. It was said he never performed it in concert. However, he vigorously defended the song when it came under attack by some who claimed it had something to do with incest.

One story suggests that Parks wrote "Somethin' Stupid" after a bet with another songwriter about whether a song's title could affect its popularity despite the strengths of lyrics and melody. Sinatra was to record another of Parks' compositions, "Open For Business As Usual" but when the session was cancelled, the song went to Jack Jones. "Somethin' Stupid" has been a duet a number of times since the 1960s, most recently in 2001 with Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman.

June 22, 2005 at age 69. Kidney failure.

Duane W. Dively >permalink<

U2 pilot

Long before pop music became the forum of Bono and his band, the acronym U2 was a symbol of the 'cold war,' a period of time between World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall, describing the relationship between America and the Soviet Union. In typical military fashion, the craft was lightly referred to as a 'utility' plane, hence the designation.

The first celebrated pilot associated with the Lockheed-built spy plane was Gary Powers. I Will Follow He was shot down over Russia on May 1, 1960. Up until then, no one in America had never heard of a U2. The high altitude aircraft was developed by the CIA to gather accurate information on Soviet military activities. Capable of flying at 70,000 feet (and equipped with specially built Kodak cameras), the craft was thought to be undetectable by radar and beyond the reach of gunfire. Due to its glider-like design, pilots described it as one of the most difficult planes to land. Powers was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment and 7 years of hard labour, but 21 months after his capture he was exchanged for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fishe. Powers died in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles on August 1, 1977, while working as a radio traffic reporter for KNBC.

Four and one-half decades after the Powers incident, another U2 was shot down. Duane Dively died when his aircraft crashed in Southwest Asia while heading back to his base in the United Arab Emirates after completing a mission in Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom. He had flown U2s for 10 years, and flew AC-130s for five years over Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Dively's family last saw Duane in 2003 at his brother's wedding. They last spoke to him by the phone in April, 2005. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

June 22, 2005 at age 43. Lost in action.

Richard Sperber >permalink<

Sound editor

In the mid-1950s, Sperber began a career that spanned over 35 years in the movie industry as a music, dialogue and sound effects editor. His thirty-year work at 20th Century Fox was recognised with peer awards for his editing on "Fantastic Voyage," "Dr. Doolittle," and "The Omen." His other credits include "High Anxiety," "Damien: Omen II," "The Boys From Brazil," "Norma Rae," "All the Right Moves," "Brubaker" and "Modern Problems."

Death announced Jun. 22, 2005, age 88.

Barbara LeMond >permalink<

Brewster Twin

They were dubbed "the Most Beautiful Twins in America" and appeared in nine films during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Born Naomi and Ruth Stevenson, Barbara and Gloria LeMond performed as the Brewster Twins and appeared with Shirley Temple, Loretta Young, John Barrymore and Buster Keaton. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 21, 2005 at age 87. Congestive heart failure and pneumonia.

Harvey Schaps >permalink<

Manager & accountant

Rock'n'roll and accounting -- two worlds hardly more distant, yet they came together with the work of Harvey Schaps, who worked for Steely Dan, Stevie Nicks, Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 21, 2005 at age 62.

Robert Achs >permalink<

Cinematographer

A filmmaker ("Taxi Cab Confessions," "Mya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision"), bluegrass musician, sailor, inventor, writer and long-distance runner, Achs was also the uncle of actors Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 21, 2005 at age 54. Cancer.

Charles White >permalink<

Character actor

Broadway shows are often 'tried out of town' before their run on the Great White Way. White Perth Amboy, New Jersey was one such town. It was there that Charles White was born, and he caught the acting bug watching the many great Broadway shows that rehearsed in his town.

After graduating from university and serving in World War WII, White studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. He soon joined the Broadway stars he saw in his youth, playing as Sheriff Hartman in "The Front Page."

White's TV credits include "Route 66," "The Defenders," "The Patty Duke Show," "Maude" and "Kojak." He appeared in the movies "The Hot Rock," "Child's Play," "Serpico" and "Airport 1975." His sister, actress Ruth White, won an Emmy as Best Supporting Actress for her work in a 1964 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of "Little Moon of Alban." Ruth died in 1969.

June 20, 2005 at age 87.

Larry Collins >permalink<

Author, Is Paris Burning?

For 43 years, American journalist Larry Collins co-authored books with Dominique Lapierre. They translated each other's work so their books could be released in French and English simultaneously.

Collins and Lapierre In 1964, they wrote Is Paris Burning?, a near-journalistic account of the Nazi occupation of the French capital during World War II. The book was filmed by French director Rene Clement in 1966 with French and American stars, including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer, Kirk Douglas, Leslie Caron, Alain Delon, Orson Welles and Glenn Ford. Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal co-wrote the screenplay, and the film was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. It was nominated for two Oscars, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. 1966 was the last year for separate black-and-white/colour Oscar categories. (Collins, left).

In the 1950s, Collins was a foreign correspondent for United Press International, based in Paris, Rome, Cairo and Beirut. He left the wire agency to work for Newsweek and was the magazine's Paris bureau chief from 1961-1965. In 1962, Collins saw an item in a London newspaper about Hitler's plan to destroy Paris should it fall to the Allies.

It seems Hitler feared the fall of Paris would expose German control of the French northern coast where his V1 and V2 rocket bases were located. He outlined plans for ordered public executions, evacuations of districts, and which areas of the capital would be razed. Collins and Lapierre reconstructed, through vast research of Allied and German archives, the specific period of the third week of August, 1944 when American troops liberated the city. German Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz hesistated in carrying out Hitler's order, and the book and film title came from Hitler's furious question to his generals as to whether his orders for the city's destruction had been carried out.

The authors used a 'documentary' style in writing, often switching the narrative point of view, from the high command decision makers on both sides to everyday Parisians trying to help the Allies. The film and book had wide appeal as it helped established Paris as a symbol of resistance to the occupation of France.

June 20, 2005 at age 75. Cerebral hemorrhage.

Bill LaForge >permalink<

Hockey coach

Bill LaForge LaForge was an Edmonton-born street kid who liked the rough and tumble world of sports. As a fullback, he starred for both Archbishop MacDonald High School and the Edmonton Huskies of the Prairie Junior Football League. In 1974, he seemed set to join the Canadian Football League's Calgary Stampeders but he failed a physical at training camp. He had gotten hurt just before camp while working on a construction site when he was hit in the head with a piece of concrete. A resulting heart ailment ultimately caused his death three decades later.

LaForge made his name coaching the Ontario Hockey League's Oshawa Generals. His aggressive style landed him suspensions for a total of 50 games, including a playoff stretch. In 1981-82, during his first season as a Western Hockey League coach, LaForge led the Regina Pats to a 48-24-0 record, leading the team to the WHL championship final before losing to the Portland Winter Hawks. LaForge then coached in Kamloops for the Junior Oilers, guiding them to the Memorial Cup tournament in 1984.

LaForge was hired as head coach of the Canucks for the 1984-1985 season, but lasted only 20 games with a 4-14-2 record. LaForge succeeded Harry Neale as head coach, who became the Canuck's general manager. Neale fired LaForge after 22 games after a franchise record-tying nine-game losing skid.

League commissioners would wince at his methods to win games. LaForge came from the school of mayhem hockey in which the gloves came off and the penalty minutes soared. While his brand of goon hockey did not work well at the NHL level, his junior coaching produced players like Keith Primeau, Mark Habscheid, Garth Butcher, Brad May, Tony Tanti, Shayne Corson, Doug Bodger and Barry Trotz, who has been head coach of the NHL's Nashville Predators since their inception.

LaForge returned to the junior ranks, coaching the Hamilton Steelhawks, the Niagara Falls and the Guelph Storm of the OHL, and the Nashville Nighthawks of the Central Hockey League. In 1997 he left the bench for health reasons. LaForge was a cousin of present-day Edmonton Oilers president Pat LaForge.

June 19, 2005 at age 53. Heart attack.

Brian J. King >permalink<

Cinematographer, editor

King started out as a cinematographer on the 1960s TV shows "The World of Boating" and "The American Sportsman." He was also a camera operator on Alice Cooper's 1975 concert film "Welcome to My Nightmare." As an editor, he worked on "On Any Sunday," a 1971 documentary covering the world of motorcycle racing featuring then current stars of the sport, including Steve McQueen (who did most of his own stunts in the 1963 film "The Great Escape").

King also edited the 1976 feature "Bugs Bunny Superstar," a film about the history of the "Termite Terrace," a shack of a building on the Warner Brothers studio lot which housed the animation unit. It was there in the 1930's and 1940's that Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny was born. King also worked on prepping "Rin Tin Tin" episodes for syndication, and the restoration of "Beany and Cecil" cartoon shows.

In his other life, as Brian Knight, King was one of the founders of the modern gay adult entertainment industry. In 1974, the Los Angeles Vice Squad raided the offices of his production company, resulting in a successful lawsuit for violation of the company's Fourth Amendment rights. The suit is now case law and was a landmark victory for gay publications in the United States.

June 19, 2005 at age 59. Heart failure.

Cay Forrester >permalink<

Actress and writer

Not a well-known name, Forrester appeared in twenty films in the 1940s and early 1950s, most notably among them the 1950 film noir classic "D.O.A." with Edmund O'Brien, and in a minor role in 1945's "Brenda Starr, Reporter," based on the cartoon strip written by Dale Messick, who died April 5, 2005.

Forrester's other footnote in cinematic history was her screenplay for 1961's "Door to Door Maniac." An obviously medicated Johnny Cash stars as a member of a bank robbery gang who terrorize a small town knocking on doors and killing whoever answered. The film also features Mayberry escapee Ron (Opie) Howard, whose character is almost shot, sparing the eight-year-old actor an early career death scene.

June 18, 2005 at age 83. Pneumonia.

Johnny Reed >permalink<

Bass singer with the Orioles

Reed Johnny Reed was the last remaining member of the R&B pioneer vocal group, the Orioles. He grew up in Baltimore and played stand-up bass with bands that played on the city's Pennsylvania Avenue in the mid 1940s. Pennsylvania Avenue is thought by many as the birthplace of R&B. In 1947, Reed met Sonny Til, who had just won a local amateur contest.

Til formed the Vibranaires, who appeared on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio/TV show. They came in second to blind pianist George Shearing. Reed joined the group after the Godfrey show and sang on "It's Too Soon To Know," the first single after the band re-named themselves the Orioles.

The 1948 song was a huge hit, and soon thousands of young vocal groups sprang up on the street corners of urban America. Other Orioles hits soon followed, including "Tell Me So," "Forgive And Forget," "At Night," and "Crying In The Chapel". The Orioles are now recognised as the fathers of R&B and "doo-wop" harmony. Their songs managed to cross over to the pop charts with what was then known as "race" records. No other black group had done that before.

The original Orioles broke up in 1954. Sonny Til formed a new Orioles group and Reed began singing with Deek Watson's Ink Spots. Recently, Reed moved to New Jersey and sang with Bobby Thomas' Orioles before retiring from singing a few years ago. In 1995, 40 years after the original lineup of the group disbanded, the Orioles were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

June 18, 2005 at age 81.

Madhukar Anant Pathak >permalink<

Dermatologist

Sunscreen With the increased awareness of climate change (formerly known as global warming before the Bush spin doctors re-defined it), the work product of Pathak has found its way into beach bags and weather forecasts the world over.

After leaving his homeland of India in 1956 with $18 and a small suitcase, Pathak had big dreams of making a better life for himself in the United States. After a long practice in dermatology, Pathak became a leader in determining the causes of many skin diseases and disorders. His research contributed to the development of a skin-care product that has been recommended ever since it was discovered that the ozone layer had holes in it: sunscreen.

June 18, 2005 at age 77.

Tatsuo Matsumura >permalink<

Japanese character actor

Matsumuro appeared in nearly 50 films and TV shows during his 40-year-career, including Akira Kurosawa's 1970 film "Dodes'ka-den" and 1993's "Madadayo." Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 18, 2005 at age 90. Heart failure.

Karl Mueller >permalink<

Bassist for Soul Asylum

Mueller In the gap between punk and grunge, there was the Minneapolis sound. Starting out as just another teen garage band, Soul Asylum eventually passed Twin-City peers Husker Du and the Replacements in the race to multiplatinum status.

Soul Asylum began as Loud Fast Rules in 1981, formed by friends Mueller, Dave Pirner and Dan Murphy. In 1983, they adopted their modern moniker and added Grant Young. It took nearly ten years to establish themselves, scoring a Number 5 hit with "Runaway Train" from the 1992 album "Grave Dancers' Union." In January, 1993, the band performed at an MTV-sponsored inaugural ball for Bill Clinton.

Mueller was diagnosed with throat cancer in May, 2004. In October of that year, a legion of Twin-Cities music scene veterans, including Paul Westerberg of the Replacements and Husker Du's Bob Mould, banded together for a "Rock for Karl" benefit concert to help defray Mueller's medical costs.

June 17, 2005 at age 41. Throat cancer.

Keith Morris >permalink<

Rock photographer, diving instructor

Keith Morris made a name for himself in two very diverse fields. Morris In the late-sixties, his captured some of England's rock icons through his camera lens. Two decades later he was known as an innovator in the field of "technical diving," an extreme version of suba diving.

Serving an apprenticeship with fashion photographers such as David Bailey, Morris was introduced into the "underground" of the 1960s by working for Oz magazine. He photographed demonstrations, festivals, and anarchist rock musicians.

Band manager Tony Secunda asked Morris to take pictures of some of his acts, including a hippie/folk band that soon evolved into the pioneers of glam rock, Tyrannosaurus Rex (later just T. Rex), made up of Steve Peregrin Took and Marc Bolan. Bolan It was Morris that took the memorable photograph of a seated Bolan holding a Gibson Flying V guitar in a very phallic manner. Morris also snapped Bolan behind the wheel of car shortly before the star's death in an auto crash. It was Morris who took the only professional photos of cult folk guitarist/songwriter Nick Drake, also a Secunda-managed act. An exhibition of those photographs ran in 2004 at the Redferns Music Picture Gallery in west London.

Among the more well-known artists that Morris documented on film were the likes of Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Costello and even Fred Astaire.

Morris drifted away from the music scene and soon became among the most influential divers in Britain, specialising in diving into violent tidal systems and obtaining Britain's highest qualification as an instructor. Morris pioneered the British use of trimix (oxygen, nitrogen plus an inert gas like helium) breathing systems that allowed drivers to venture deeper. Britain's community of technical divers were mostly taught by Morris.

Morris went missing from a dive in the English Channel, exploring the wreck of HMS Limbourne, a British Hunt-class destroyer sunk during World War II. Keith's son, Lee, died in a diving accident in 1991 while training in an inland lake.

Despite his high-risk sporting pursuits, Morris outlived many of his photographic subjects.

In 1970, Janis Joplin died of an overdose of unusually pure heroin, and Jimi Hendrix died after taking nine vesperax sleeping pills and choking on his own vomit. Nick Drake died in 1974 of an overdose of antidepressants. A coroner concluded that the cause was suicide, although that was disputed by friends and relatives. Marc Bolan died in 1977 while a passenger in a Mini driven by his girlfried that collided with a tree, and T. Rex bandmate Steve Peregrin Took died in 1980 of asphyxiation after inhaling a cocktail cherry, which was preceded by the consumption of powdered morphine and a bag of magic mushrooms. T. Rex bassist Steve Currie was killed in a car crash in Portugal a year later. Led Zeppelin's John Bonham died in 1980, after downing four quadruple vodkas, then failing to wake up. Fred Astaire died in 1987 from pneumonia.

June 17, 2005 at age 66. Presumed drowned.

Ronald Winans >permalink<

Gospel singer

Winans The Winans were considered the first family of contemporary gospel music, and the first foundational gospel group to get secular acclaim.

Ronald Winans was born into a family of ten. Along with brothers Marvin, Carvin and Michael, Ronald was discovered by Grammy-winning gospel singer Andrae Crouch when they were performing as a gospel quartet. Crouch produced their first album in 1981 titled, "Introducing The Winans." Later, their siblings Benjamin and Priscilla would make big names for themselves as the gospel act BeBe and CeCe Winans. Even Ronald's parents recorded as "Mom and Pop Winans."

The Winans gained fame singing religious songs, but their music was tinged with the sounds of contemporary R&B, which annoyed some gospel traditionalists. Their danceable beats and lyrics put the Bible in layman's terms. The group pushed the musical boundaries of gospel, signing with Quincy Jones' Qwest Records and teaming with urban producers Teddy Riley and R. Kelly.

Ronald Winans sang on five Grammy-winning albums with his brothers. He released his final CD, a live recording titled "A Celebration," earlier in 2005. The group was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and Museum in 2001.

June 17, 2005 at age 48. Heart failure.

Susanna Javicoli >permalink<

Italian actress

Javicoli had a memorable supporting role in Dario Argento's macabre "Suspiria." She was also a top voice dubber, providing the Italian voices for American and British films and TV shows. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 17, 2005 at age 50. Kidney disease.

Alex McAvoy >permalink<

Scottish actor

McAvoy was best known for his role as the Teacher in "Pink Floyd's The Wall." McAvoy also appeared in several episodes of the TV police drama "Z Cars." Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 16, 2005 at age 77.

Albert R. Kahn >permalink<

Co-founder, Electro-Voice

E-V In his teens, Kahn and his friends would raid auto junkyard to find parts for their amatuer radio hobby projects. The time was the early 1920s, and the radio industry was just barely getting organised. In order to obtain a radio license the boys needed to pass an exam, but the nearest administration office was over a hundred miles away -- in Chicago. The office allowed the friends to give each other the test and needless to say, they all passed.

Kahn met up with Lou Burroughs, and the pair formed the Radio Engineering Company, installing and repairing radios. They eventually branched out into other audio services, and installed one of the first ever public address systems at a football stadium. Coach Knute Rockne was recovering from illness and needed an easy way to coach four teams on four different fields at Notre Dame University. Rockne like the system so much he dubbed it his 'electro voice.' Kahn and Burroughs liked the name, and re-branded their company as Electro-Voice.

In the 1930s, most microphones built by Neumann, RCA and Western Electric were designed for indoor studio use. The E-V boys saw an opportunity for a more robust design and started to handmake their microphones, initially at the rate of one per week. Their product caught on, and by the late 1930s, E-V microphones were found in most broadcast facilities except for NBC (which was owned by RCA). E-V was about to branch into loudspeaker manufacturing when World War II broke out.

Shotgun When Kahn learned about the difficulties the military was having using microphones on noisy battlefields, his company developed noise-cancelling technology. Anticipating a large order from Uncle Sam, they built 100 units of their T45 model to have on stock. The Army wanted 100,000. B25 bombers were dispatched to the airfield in South Bend, Indiana near the E-V facility on a daily basis to pick the units up. So good was their design, the microphones saw use on the Mercury, Gemini and Skylab space missions.

After the war, E-V branched into accessories for FM radio and television. They invented the stereo magnetic phono cartridge in 1957, and won an Academy Award in 1963 for their shotgun microphone (above), which could record sounds with pin-point accuracy from a distance (it was the first audio product to receive an Oscar).

June 15, 2005 at age 98.

Percy Arrowsmith >permalink<

Longest married man

Just two weeks after he and his wife Florence celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, Percy Arrowsmith died. (at left, the Arrowsmiths)

The couple's anniversary occurred on June 1st, and along with congratulations from Queen Elizabeth II, they marked the occasion at home with coffee and snacks with family and friends.

When asked the usual question for the secret of their success, Flo said she and Percy always shared a kiss and held hands before going to bed, and never went to sleep in the middle of an argument. Percy also joked that he avoided confrontation by always agreeing with his wife.

At the time, Guinness World Records recognised the pair as holding records for the longest marriage for a living couple and the oldest combined age of a married couple. Guinness relies on people to claim world records, and soon after media reports about the Arrowsmiths, a couple in Iowa came forward with a marital claim of 81 years.

Rocchios However, a couple in Rhode Island now claims a marriage of 82 years and Guinness is waiting for their documentation. John Rocchio recalled the first time he saw Emilia Antonelli in Providence in 1922. "She had on a white blouse, a blue skirt -- and legs. Wow! And legs! So I says to myself, 'I need to meet that broad.' "(at left, the Rocchios)

John, who is 101, and Emilia, who is 100, both have reduced vision and hearing, but can still walk and crack a joke with impeccable timing. When asked about their recipe for a long marriage, "Making love" was their immediate response. The two also say they have rarely fought save for disagreements over automobiles. John liked to have a new model every few years while Emilia preferred a building up their savings account.

Update: Guinness Book of World Records has recognised a couple living in Philadelphia as the oldest living married couple. On July 15, 2005, Herbert Brown, 105, and his wife, Magda, 100, had a combined age of 205 years and 293 days, having been married since 1930 (75 years). Other couples have been married longer, and some other individuals are older, but according to Guinness it is the combined ages of the couple that qualifies the Browns for distinction.

Herbert and Magda married in their native Austria in 1930. Herbert survived time in a Nazi concentration camp and was interrogated by the notorious Adolf Eichmann. They fled to England, and came to Philadelphia in 1940. Their daughter, Trudie Solarz, documented their experiences on videotape for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation.

June 15, 2005 at age 105.

Phil Ford >permalink<

Of Ford and Hines

Phil Ford started dancing at the age of 12, and soon appeared on stage at the end of the vaudeville era. Love & marriage Vaudeville was a variety show, complete with songs, dancing, acrobatics, comedy skits and animal acts. It's popularity was slowly eroded by sound films and radio, and most of the performers from that era are now gone.

After serving in World War II, Ford found himself without his usual singing partner at a gig at the Last Chance Saloon in Alaska in 1952. Playing in the same town was a Canadian singer by the name of Mimi Hines. Ford went to see her, the two teamed up on stage and married in 1954. Working their way across Canada and the U.S., Ford & Hines got their big break on the TV sensation of the day, The Jack Paar Show. Their August, 1958 appearance catapaulted the team onto other shows, such as Ed Sullivan's, and they soon headlined shows in Las Vegas.

In 1960, the couple was performing at the El Rancho hotel-casino when thought they had brought the house down. Actually, the hotel was on fire. Running out into the parking lot, they found a woman who had smashed her car into a tree in the thick smoke. Ford & Hines were credited with rescuing the woman, who turned out to be singer Pearl Bailey.

Their Vegas show success brought them to Broadway, and the duo performed in the original production of "Funny Girl." Hines filled in as Fanny Brice after Barbra Streisand left the play in 1965, and Ford had a supporting role in the cast. They appeared together in the movie comedy "Saturday Night Bath in Apple Valley" that same year. Ford & Hines did the first national tour of "I Do, I Do" and "Sugar Babies."

Ford & Hines divorced in 1972 but reunited professionally several times. Ford had a role in the 1982 movie "Fake-Out," and his television credits include "Love, American Style" and "Quincy." The former husband and wife team appeared in a 1998 production of "Hello, Dolly!" and on several other occasions to perform at benefits.

June 15, 205 at age 85. Natural causes.

Suzanne Flon >permalink<

Actress

CAPTION Suzanne Flon's career in show business began serving as the secretary for France's singing legend Edith Piaf. In five decades as a stage and screen actress, she received two César awards, France's Oscar equivalent for cinema, and two Molière awards for performance in the theatre. She won the Venice Film Festival Best Actress award for 1961's "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

Flon worked with some of Hollywood's most revered directors, including Orson Welles (in "Mr Arkadin" and "The Trial"), John Huston (in "Moulin Rouge"), Joseph Losey (in "Monsieur Klein") and John Frankenheimer (in "The Train"). She also worked with Roger Vadim, Joseph Losey, James Ivory and Claude Chabrol. Flon's distinctive voice provided her with narration work for several French documentaries.

French President Jacques Chirac called Flon a "grande dame of stage and screen" who leaves behind "a lesson for us about elegance, fantasy and sensitivity."

June 15, 2005 at age 87. Complications from gastro-enteritis.

Robie Lester >permalink<

Singer, voice actress

When movies made their transition to sound, panic spread throughout the film industry -- and among audiences. Lester It became apparent that many stars of the silent screen simply ... didn't sound so good. The profession of vocal doubling was born.

Vocal doublists were paid for their work and their discretion. Few became known for their achievement. One of the exceptions was Marnie Nixon, who suited her singing style to the actresses she doubled for (singing in "The King and I," "West Side Story," "Gypsy" and "My Fair Lady"). Robie Lester was another artisan of this anonymous craft.

Lester provided the singing voice for Eva Gabor in 1970's "The Aristocats" and 1977's "The Rescuers." Her association with Disney began in the early 1960s, with an uncredited performance of the title theme for "The Three Lives of Thomasina." She recorded for the Disney 7-inch book-and-record-set series "Disneyland Story Reader," performing on more recordings than anyone else. Her AristoCats Storyteller album was nominated for a 1970 Grammy.

Lester was one of Hollywood's most sought-after studio session singers, recording countless commercials (once a talking grape for Kelloggs Raisin Bran) and ghosting spanish vocals for songs such as The Sandpiper's hit single "Guantanamera." Earlier in her career she worked with Henry Mancini and Herb Alpert.

For more about the craft of vocal dubbing, visit I Dub Thee, an extensive article from Classic Images Magazine.

June 14, 2005 at age 75. Cancer.

Donald Buchanan >permalink<

Designer of NASA's rocket crawlers

It is one thing to build rockets. It is another to bring them to the launch pad. The solution was provided by Donald D. Buchanan.

Rolling rolling rolling In the early days of the American space program, the Redstone, Atlas and Titan rockets that launched Mercury and Gemini capsules into space were ferried to launch pads on over-sized tractor-trailer units. Once in place, the rockets were levered into their upright positions for launch. When the Apollo program arrived, the sheer bulk of the Saturn V rocket made that practice impossible. The launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo crafts to the moon had to be assembled upright and delivered to their launch pads the same way.

NASA first considered barges and a rail system to carry the Saturn from the Vertical Assembly Building to its pad. As engineering manager for Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center, Buchanan proposed a crawler concept, a four-track vehicle able to carry as much as 12 million pounds.

In all, NASA built three mobile launchers, each 363 feet tall when loaded with a rocket. The 131 foot-long transports were difficult to describe to people since there weren't any similar vehicles to compare the mobile launcher with. Buchanan likened them to buildings that moved.

Buchanan's crawlers were used for the Apollo fleet and for the launching of the Skylab space station in the late 1970s. These same vehicles have served the Space Shuttle program for over 100 launches. NASA awarded Buchanan its Distinguished Service Medal in 1974. He retired in 1981.

June 13, 2005 at age 82. Cancer.

Daudi Bamuwamye >permalink<

Theme park attraction rider

He met the minimum 44-inch height requirement. His parents read the signs that warn visitors about the intensity of the ride. Daudi's mother noticed his body was rigid and his legs were stretched straight out. She thought he was frightened, so she took his hand. When the ride was over, he had gone limp. Paramedics and a theme park worker tried to revive Daudi but he later died in hospital.

Blastoff! Walt Disney's $100 million Epcot ride, Mission: Space, simulates a rocket launch and a trip to Mars while spinning riders in a giant centrifuge that subjects them to twice the normal force of gravity. The G-forces twist and distort riders' faces.

More than 8.6 million visitors have ridden on Mission: Space since 2003. During an eight-month period, six people over age 55 were hospitalised for chest pain and nausea after riding it, prompting Disney to place motion sickness bags in the ride. Since Florida theme parks were required to report ride problems to the state, Mission: Space has the most hospital visits for a single attraction.

One other death has been reported at Disney World this year. A 77-year-old woman, in poor health from diabetes and several ministrokes, died in February, 2005 after going on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. A coroner's report said her death "was not unexpected."

June 13, 2005 at age 4.

Jonathan Adams >permalink<

Actor

For the first four decades of his life, Adams pursued a zig-zag career in the arts. Avoiding British military duty in World War II, he opted for national service as a nurse, an experience that Jones said made a man out of him. Adams was drawn to the stage, piecing a living moving from play to play, when he was accepted as the narrator in what might have seemed just another gig at the time. The production was called "The Rocky Horror Show."

It started as a six-week run in a humble London theatre in 1973. It eventually became the ultimate cult film by which others are measured. By the time the play was filmed, Adams had become bored of the narrator, and opted to play the weird professor Dr Everett Scott (a Rival Scientist).

Adams' new profile led him to work in radio, and he appeared in television shows such as "Yes, Prime Minister," "Kavanagh QC," "Z Cars," "Star Cops" and "The Bill." Fellow "Rocky Horror" alumni Imogen Claire died June 24, 2005.

June 13, 2005 at age 73.

Lane Smith >permalink<

Actor

Lane Smith, a longtime character actor, will be best remembered for playing two very tricky lawyers. Smith played a small-town district attorney who tried a case against Joe Pesci in 1992's "My Cousin Vinny." Three years earlier, he portrayed Richard M. Nixon in the made for TV movie "The Final Days," which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. The production was based on the book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Smith's credits include over one hundred film and TV roles. To a younger audience, he was Daily Planet editor Perry White in "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman." His portrayal was in the mode defined by Jackie Cooper in the 1978 Christopher Reeves version, and echoed by J.K. Simmons in the Spiderman franchise.

Other notable film roles include appearances in "The Legend of Bagger Vance," "The Mighty Ducks," "Air America," "Places In The Heart," "Prince Of The City," "Honeysuckle Rose," "Blue Collar" and "Network." On TV, Smith was seen in "Kojack," "The Rockford Files," "Dallas," "Hart To Hart," "Hill Street Blues," "The Practice" and "Judging Amy." Smith also appeared in the original stage production of "Glengarry Glen Ross," and played Randle Patrick McMurphy for 650 off-Broadway performances of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

June 13, 2005 at age 69. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Benjamin Chih-Fang Wei >permalink<

Engineer

Mackinac Bridge Wei was studying civil engineering at the University of Illinois when his native country of China was swept by communist revolution. Unable to return home, Wei used his master's degree in bridge engineering and his doctorate in aerospace structural engineering to design bridges, engines and parts for Titan rockets, nuclear submarines and nuclear reactors. He didn't see his parents or his seven brothers and sisters for 32 years.

In New York in the early 1950s, Wei became the construction manager of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which connects Delaware and New Jersey on Interstate 95. He had a key role in building the Mackinac Bridge, linking the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. The Mackinac, with a length of five miles and concrete towers soaring 552 feet above the water, is one of the longest and tallest suspension bridges in the world.

By the 1960s, Wei turned from bridge-building to working on the Wankel rotary engine, later used in the Mazda RX-7 automobile. He helped build rockets and nuclear submarines for General Electric, and later joined what would become the U.S. Department of Energy to help design nuclear reactors.

Early in his years as an engineer, Wei ran a television-repair business on the side, and his photography skills won him awards at art shows for his landscapes and scenic shots. He was finally able to return to China in 1979 to see the family he had left behind. He'd been back to China once or twice a year since helping to locate American companies in the country to set up manufacturing plants.

June 12, 2005 at age 78. Stomach cancer.

Robert McCann >permalink<

Makeup artist

McCann was nominated by the Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild for the Best Contemporary Make-up Award, along with Donald Mowat and Gillian Chandler, for his work on the 2003 film "The Human Stain." McCann was the make-up artist for actress Nicole Kidman on such films as "The Others," "Dogville," "Cold Mountain" and "Eyes Wide Shut" among others. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at Einsiders.

June 12, 2005.

Scott Young >permalink<

Journalist, father of Neil Young

Scott Young Young was born in Cypress River, Manitoba. Moving to Winnipeg, he began working as a sports reporter at the Free Press in 1936 at the age of 18. After that paper refused to give him a raise, he moved to The Canadian Press in Toronto at the age of 23, earning $25 a week.

For CP, Young covered both news and sports, and was the bureau's war correspondent in London from 1942-43. After the war Young worked as an editor at Maclean's magazine. He quit in 1948 to focus on writing short stories, which were published in Collier's, Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal. A U.S. publisher suggested he try his hand at writing youth fiction, and his 1952 book, Scrubs on Skates, was the first in a trilogy based on Young's hockey-playing experiences in Winnipeg.

In 1957, Young joined The Globe and Mail as a sports columnist. For the next 25 years, he covered Grey Cups, World Series, Stanley Cups, the Olympics and appeared on Hockey Night in Canada in the 1950s as an intermission commentator. Young was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as a media honouree in 1988.

Young gave up writing for the papers in 1980, dissatisfied with what he saw as a drop in journalistic ethics. He felt the profession had drifted away from reporting facts and quoting real contacts to scandal hunting via "unattributed sources."

Young wrote 45 books, a mix of novels and non-fiction work. In 1984 he wrote Neil and Me about his relationship with his famous son. Young's book offers a rare look into his son's very private life. And one of Neil's most famous songs, "Old Man," was written about his father. Scott is also credited with providing the story for the 1971 hockey movie "Face Off."

A radio interview with Young, conducted by Peter Gzowksi in 1994, can be heard at the CBC Archives.

June 12, 2005 at age 87.

Krissy Wood >permalink<

Ex-wife, Rolling Stones' Ron Wood

A former model, Krissy married guitarist Ron Wood in 1971. The couple separated after six years, when Wood was uncovered having an affair with his current wife, Jo. As a couple, Ron and Krissy had one son, Jesse, who grew up to be a musician himself.

Krissy's body was found by a neighbour in a friend's London home. She is believed to have overdosed on the prescription anti-depressant Valium hours after telling pals she had split from her long-term boyfriend.

June 11, 2005 at age 57. Suspected overdose.

Lon McCallister >permalink<

Actor

Lon McCallister It was his boyish good looks that got him into the movies, but those same looks kept him from landing serious roles as an adult. McCallister realised his shortcomings as an actor, and signed his first deal simply to take care of his mother, grandmother and dogs while he was in the Army. He also made a vow to retire from acting when he reached 30.

McCallister was usually cast as a likable, small-town hero in movies like "Home in Indiana," "Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!" (which featured a fleeting appearance by Marilyn Monroe) and "The Big Cat." His rare serious roles included playing a pilot in 1944's "Winged Victory," and the 1947 thriller "The Red House" with Edward G. Robinson. His light build allowed him to play a jockey in the 1949 production of "The Story of Seabiscuit."

Retiring from acting after appearing in 1953's "Combat Squad," he plowed his film earnings into property in Malibu, California. He also made travel films with a companion, actor and producer William Eythe. Callister and Eythe were producers of "Lend an Ear," a stage musical revue which launched Carol Channing's career.

June 11, 2005 at age 82. Congestive heart failure.

Robert Clarke >permalink<

Actor

In the world of B-movies, there are few stars and Robert Clarke wasn't one of them. Born in Oklahoma City, he moved to Hollywood in 1942, landing a contract with RKO. In eight years, he had earned small roles in 40 films. The titles speak for themselves: "The Body Snatcher," "Zombies on Broadway," "Captive Women," "The Man from Planet X," "Beyond the Time Barrier," "The Astounding She-Monster," "The Incredible Petrified World" and "The Hideous Sun Demon."

"Sun Demon" has become something of a cult-classic. Clarke played a radioactively contaminated scientist who turns into a lizard-like monster when exposed to the sun. He wrote and produced the film, which was shot over 12 weekends to get two days' use of rental camera equipment for one day's fee. The film's greatest expense was for the $500 rubberized lizard suit.

Clarke became a regular on the King family's musical variety show, which ran on ABC from 1965 to 1969. He got the job not for his musical ability, but through marriage (to Alyce King in 1956). He performed comedy sketches and sentimental readings on the show. The series featured the five King Sisters and about three dozen members of their families.

Clarke also appeared frequently in such series as "Dragnet," "Perry Mason," "Sea Hunt," "Hawaiian Eye," "Simon & Simon" and "Dynasty," playing the minister who married Joan Collins.

June 11, 2005 at age 85.

Ron Randell >permalink<

Actor

Ron Randell Born in Sydney, Australia, Randell was 17 when he began a career in radio. During World War II, he was enlisted to appear in his government's wartime propaganda films. In 1946, he moved into theater playing the lead in "Smithy," about real-life Australian aviation pioneer Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith. Columbia Pictures financed a film version of the play that, while a success in Australia, was a failure in America despite being re-titled "The Pacific Adventure" in a heavily edited version to disguise its Australian origins.

Still, Randall landed a Hollywood movie contract and soon appeared in 1947's "It Had to Be You" with Ginger Rogers. He went on to appear in over fifty films over the next 35 years including "Follow the Boys," "The Longest Day," "King of Kings," "The She-Creature" and "Kiss Me, Kate." His last film was 1983's "Exposed" alongside Nastassja Kinski, Rudolf Nureyev and Harvey Keitel.

Randell made dozens of appearances on television on shows as "Gunsmoke," "Checkmate," "The Outer Limits," "Bewitched," "Mission: Impossible," "Bonanza" and "Mannix." On stage, he appeared on Broadway in such productions as "School For Scandal," "Bent" and "The World of Susie Wong."

June 11, 2005 at age 86. Complications from a stroke.

Gerald Von Rueden >permalink<

Inventor

Von Rueden was stationed at Pearl Harbor during World War II. He noticed that when fighter planes landed on aircraft carrier flight decks, their propellers were often ruined by making contact with the deck as they lurched to a stop. The propellers often had to be discarded, a practice Von Rueden saw as wasteful.

Von Rueden came up with a solution. He presented a wood model of a protector ring to superiors at his daughter's urging (she didn't want anybody to steal her father's idea). After metal samples were made and tested, Von Rueden's device found its way onto fighter planes, improving safety and saving money. He was awarded $250 and earned a special commendation from the Navy.

Von Rueden was born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota during the depression, and he learned at an early age the importance of saving time, effort, and money. The greatest reward for his invention probably came from his home town, where a parade was held in his honour upon his return from service. Von Rueden later operated an auto body shop, acquiring a large and loyal clientele built on a reputation for honesty and avoiding short cuts.

June 10, 2005 at age 81. Pneumonia.

Jon Clarke >permalink<

Session man, original member of Loggins & Messina

Clarke was classically trained and played several instruments, specialising in the oboe and saxophone. In his teens he performed with California Earthquake, who had minor hits with "Bible Salesman" and "Who Is That Man?" He was later involved with a Los Angeles Valley College jazz quartet, which lead to a tour with Don Ellis' jazz orchestra.

Kenny Loggins made a name for himself writing songs recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Jim Messina, a record producer and former member of Buffalo Springfield and Poco, agreed to produce Loggins' first album. The resulting 1971 album was called "Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin' In." The album went gold and stayed in the charts for more than two years. Loggins and Messina were radio fixtures during the Seventies, and Clarke was recruited as part of the five-piece band that backed the duo. His memorable baritone saxophone solo on "Your Momma Don't Dance" was typical of his contribution to the band.

After Loggins and Messina split, Clarke became a studio musician and played with the Academy Awards pit orchestra for 17 years. He performed on hundreds of television and motion picture soundtracks, including the HBO series "Six Feet Under" and the 2002 film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." His work can also be heard on soundtracks for "Fried Green Tomatoes," "Scent of a Woman," "The Green Mile" and "The Road to Perdition." He was a sideman for projects by Mick Fleetwood, David Byrne, Sinead O'Connor, Vikki Carr, and Natalie Cole.

June 10, 2005 at age 54. Kidney cancer.

Lillian Lux >permalink<

Yiddish theatre star

Lillian Lux Lux, with her husband Pesach Burstein, appeared in dozens of musicals, comedies and melodramas in the 1930s and 1940s. A documentary about the family, "The Komediant," details the family's life after the decline of Yiddish theatre. Lux provided narration for the film.

Lux was born Lillian Sylvia Lukashefsky in Brooklyn, New York, and began as an actress with the Yiddish Art Theatre at age 6. In the first decades of the 20th century, there were more than a dozen Yiddish stage theatres in New York City alone. Lux met her future husband at age 16 and joined his troupe on an international tour. In addition to being a popular stage performer, Pesach was signed with Columbia Records to record Yiddish versions of popular songs. In September, 1939 they caught the last ship out of Poland before the Nazis invaded.

Lux's family act, billed at times as "The Four Bursteins," included her husband and their twins, Susan and Michael. The family brought "classical Jewish opera" to far-flung Yiddish-speaking enclaves in South America, South Africa, Europe, and Australia, as well as across America. Their best-known production was "A Khasene in Shtetl" ("A Village Wedding"), which created a furor when they presented it in Yiddish in Israel in 1954 (authorities were at the time trying to discourage use of the derivative dialect). In 1962, the family's standing was endorsed with an Israeli production of "Megilla Lider." Golda Meir once appeared onstage for an ovation, and the work became the longest-running Yiddish show ever staged in Israel. The Bursteins eventually moved to Israel.

By the 1950s, Yiddish theater began to disappear as many American Jews were assimilating; by the 1970s, it was almost completely gone. After her husband died in 1986, Lux appeared in one-woman shows and on radio. In 2002, she received a lifetime achievement award for her work in Yiddish Theatre from Governor Pataki.

June 10, 2005 at age 86. Congestive heart failure.

Mike Beery >permalink<

Firefighter

Mount Rainer Washington State firefighters Mike Beery and Ryan Tillman spent the past six months training to reach the 14,411-foot peak on Mount Rainier. They first tried to summit earlier this spring, but were turned back by foul weather. On June 10, with calm, clear weather, the men were less than 2,500 feet (750 metres) from their goal when Beery apparently slipped and fell about 1,000 feet to his death.

Beery fell down Gibraltar Chute, one of the more popular routes to Ranier's summit. Tillman was performing CPR when two rangers arrived, but Beery could not be saved. A helicopter removed him from the mountain.

Beery was the third climber to die on the northwestern Washington state mountain this year. Two men died last month after being caught in a heavy snowstorm near Camp Muir.

June 10, 2005 at age 29.

Verne Meisner >permalink<

Polka accordianist

Meisner Polka music and accordians. The phrase conjures up images of the Schmenge Brothers. But Verne Meisner kept midwest Americans up on their feet and on the dance floor for nearly six decades, and was considered one of the genre's greats. In the wide and wild world of polka, Meisner was second only to multi-Grammy winner Frankie Yankovic. And it was Yankovic who gave Meisner his first break.

Meisner picked up an accordion at age 8, and started his own band in 1950 at the age of 11. Five years later, he so impressed Yankovic that he briefly travelled with the Yankovic band. In 1958, he formed Verne Meisner and the Polka Boys, which made their recording debut in 1958 with "Memories of Vienna." Meisner was soon playing over 250 gigs a year at state fairs, taverns, dance halls, nightclubs, weddings, cruises, jam sessions and festivals.

Meisner's Slovenian, or Cleveland-style, polka was propelled by the sound of his Milwaukee-made black Baldoni accordion. For 14 years, he played 90 days in a row at a Wisconsin resort but averaged only two or three polkas each night. Whereas some polka musicians would do a country song that still ended up sounding like a polka, Meisner could pull it off and make it sound like a country song or a jazz song.

Polka music is serious business. It's the official state dance of Wisconsin. In the 1840s in Eastern Europe, it was considered a daring dance. Immigrants brought the polka with them to Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Chicago and as far south as Texas and Mexico. It remains a badge of ethnic and class identity, danced in blue-collar taverns and rural social halls. There are now polka parties and polka clubs, polka conventions and polka cruises, polka chat rooms, polka tours and polka museums. Within this culture, Meisner is distinguished as "the most influential Wisconsin purveyor of Cleveland-Style sound."

In 1989, Meisner was inducted into the International Polka Hall of Fame and was commended by the Governor of Wisconsin for his accomplishments. He was featured on a Smithsonian Folkways recording called "Deep Polka: Dance Music from the Midwest." He made 30 singles, 20 CDs/LPs, five videos and wrote more than 60 songs.

June 10, 2005 at age 66. Melanoma cancer.

Julia Palmer-Stoll >permalink<

German actress

The popular actress had stopped her car in the road to save a hedgehog that was in the middle of the street. Palmer-Stoll costarred with Klaus Kinski's son Nikolai in the thriller "The Devil Who Called Himself God." Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 9, 2005 at age 21. Car accident.

Michael R. Farkash >permalink<

Journalist, screenwriter

Farkash was a free-lance journalist who was published in a number of papers and magazines including "The Hollywood Reporter." Farkash wrote and produced the direct-to-video film "Street Vengeance." Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at Einsiders.

June 9, 2005 at age 53.

Stan Wilson >permalink<

Folksinging pioneer

Wilson Noted music critic Ralph J. Gleason once stated that Stan Wilson "helped make the beginnings of the folk music invasion." Wilson was the first entertainer to play the famed San Francisco folk club hungry i when it opened in 1952. He soon was performing six nights a week at the historic North Beach nightspot for more than three years.

Wilson was a 'political activist' long before the era of sit-ins and demonstrations. In the 1940s, he was once suspended on "loyalty" charges from his post office job for having sung at a civil rights meeting.

Two of his compositions, "Jane, Jane, Jane" and "A Rolling Stone," were recorded by the Kingston Trio. Despite having turned down an invitation to join the group, he is credited with influencing the trio's repertoire and style.

Wilson spent the 1960s teaching music on Indian reservations in Arizona. He also taught guitar and played school assemblies in San Francisco and Oakland. Wilson's sister Jerri Lange, a pioneer black broadcast journalist, said his brother loved teaching children songs from around the world. "That was his happiest time, as much as the hungry i."

June 9, 2005 at age 83. Stroke.

Trude Marlen >permalink<

Austrian actress

Marlen was one of the last surviving actresses of the pre-World War II German film industry, and was the widow of actor Wold Albach-Retty, the father of the award-winning and tragically fated actress Romy Schneider. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 9, 2005 at age 93.

Daniel Hamilton >permalink<

DEW Line engineer

Daniel Hamilton's work on radar defence systems in Canada's high arctic helped Americans sleep better at night. His work in the early days of television kept his audience awake.

During World War II, Hamilton was a technical sergeant and battalion communications chief with the U.S. Army's 82nd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, also known as "Hell on Wheels." He participated in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy, and received the Croix de Guerre from the Belgian government -- the only time the medal was given to a non-Belgian soldier.

After the war, Hamilton joined Boston's WBZ-TV as a production engineer. Live television provided ample opportunity for hijinks, and Hamilton once placed a mannequin's leg in a refrigerator that was going to be demonstrated on air. When a model opened the freezer, the leg fell out and the young female presenter nearly passed out from shock.

DEW Line installation Soon thereafter, Hamilton joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory. In his capacity as a communications engineer, he worked with scientists to design a system of 63 radar and communications facilities stretching 3,000 miles across North America's most northern shores. He spent several years working out of Frobisher Bay, an inlet on Baffin Island, working to construct the Distant Early Warning Line. The chain of radar installations across the Arctic Circle was designed to protect the United States and Canada from Soviet air attack.

An avid sports car fan, Hamilton was one of New England's early organisers of the Sports Car Club of America. He won trophies for sports car racing and rallying. He was also one of the earliest members of the Porsche Club of America.

June 8, 2005 at age 87.

Ed Bishop >permalink<

Actor

Michael Billington, Ed Bishop Ed Bishop (right, with Michael Billington) was one of hundreds of American actors who based their careers in England. He was best known for his lead role as Commander Ed Straker in the 1970 Gerry Anderson produced cult-favourite "UFO," about a team set up to defend Earth from an alien race who kidnap and kill humans for use as body parts. Bishop co-starred in the series with Michael Billington, who died June 3, 2005. Episodes of the series were telescoped into a movie called "Invasion: UFO" in 1972.

Bishop's work covered all the bases. In addition to nearly one hundred film and television roles, he also performed on stage and radio, and did extensive voice work in animation and commercials. Despite his craft, he once received angry letters complaining about his implausible American accent, even though he was born in Brooklyn.

Like fellow "UFO" alumni Billington, Bishop was involved with the James Bond series, appearing in 1967's "You Only Live Twice" and 1971's "Diamonds Are Forever." Bishop made his feature film debut with a minor role an ambulance driver in Stanley Kubrick's 1961 "Lolita," and re-appeared in Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi classic "2001: A Space Odyssey" as the Pan-Am shuttle pilot.

June 8, 2005 at age 72. Chest infection after surgery.

Jody Gibson >permalink<

Rockabilly singer

Gibson By day, he was a U.S. Air Force air traffic controller and station chief at Suffolk County AFB, on Long Island, New York. By night, he created the template for a rockabilly sound imitated by dozens of artists.

In 1957, Jody Gibson recorded Jimmy Rodger's "Muleskinner Blues." Gibson's manager at the time, Monty Bruce (for whom Gibson had no kind words for) always thought he had a better idea and released the record as "Good Morning Captain," while changing Gibson's name to 'Joe D.' because he thought 'Jody' wasn't a real name.

Originally a quiet folk tune, Gibson thought "Muleskinner Blues" was the "hokiest and corniest" song he ever heard. Thinking it would never get released, Gibson added whoops and yodels to his version as if to sabotage any potential the recording may have. The song was an instant hit.

Gibson performed the song, in uniform, on NBC's Tonight Show. The record was only released in four northeastern U.S. states, but it sold over 400,000 copies. Manager Bruce figured the song didn't have nationwide appeal and did little to promote the song further. Three years later, the Fendermen had a national Top Ten hit with a note-for-note and yodel-for-yodel remake of Gibson's version. In fact, every version recorded since Gibson's imitated his peculiar rendition of the folk standard. (The owner of the label that released the Fendermen version, Daniel Heilicher, died May 24, 2005).

Later in 1957, Gibson was transferred to England. He managed to secure a session with a certain George Martin, the A&R manager of Parlophone, whose American affiliate was Capitol Records. Martin was anxious to record Gibson, but Monty Bruce's permission was required as per contract. Bruce would not release Gibson.

When the Air Force returned Gibson stateside, he tried to negotiate his own contract directly with Capitol under instruction from Martin. Capitol responded that they never negotiated with artists as they were too irresponsible. It seems word had gotten out about Gibson's differences with Monty Bruce, and the fix was in.

Gibson made a living playing folk bars, and eventually got involved with square rigged sailing ships in competitive racing. It seems Gibson's musical aptitude was put to good use in his position as "chanteyman." Sea chanteys came about during the 18th century to help co-ordinate crew duties - the rhythms and timings of the songs helped make crews more efficient. Gibson once reflected that sea chanteys are done a-cappella (unaccompanied) for a very good reason. "You can't haul on a line or push a capstan bar and still play guitar at the same time."

June 8, 2005 at age [unknown].

David W. Tebet >permalink<

Television talent executive

CAPTION Tebet began his entertainment career in the movies -- as a theatre usher. After studying journalism, he moved from his native Philadelphia to New York to publicise Broadway shows. In the early 1950s, he began handling publicity for Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows," also helping to handle the show's talent.

In 1956, Tebet joined NBC as a programming executive. Three years later he was made vice president for talent relations. Tebet boasted that it was the only position at the company without a job description. What he did was spot and recruit stars for the network and to keep them happy so they would stay.

To perform his job, Tebet passed out perks, stroked egos and made problems go away. Comedian George Burns referred to him as "the vice president in charge of caring," taking charge of everything from arranging for a bed in a private jet for Bob Hope to developing a holiday gift list for 1,500 show business names. Each Christmas, Tebet would send out hundreds of color televisions, paintings, and other valuable gifts. Among those he lured to NBC were Michael Landon, James Garner, Dean Martin and O.J. Simpson. His biggest conquest came in 1962.

When Jack Paar was about to leave "The Tonight Show," Tebet happened to be watching daytime television and caught an episode of "Who Do You Trust?" then ABC's most highly-rated daytime show. Tebet saw something in the game-show's host and lobbied hard to bring him to NBC as Paar's replacement. The host was Johnny Carson.

To win Carson over, he had to negotiate a contract that specified 12 weeks of vacation a year for Carson, and the condition that he be able to bring along his sidekick, Ed McMahon. The rest is history, and Carson soon generated 15% of NBC's profit -- not just the network, but for NBC's parent company, RCA.

When Carson set up his Johnny Carson Productions in 1980 and bought "The Tonight Show," Tebet resigned from NBC and became executive vice president of the new company.

Tebet made quite an impression on all those he worked with. Neil Simon was said to have based "The Odd Couple" on Tebet and his one-time roommate, the songwriter Sammy Cahn. After Tebet convinced Paddy Chayefsky to sign an exclusive deal with NBC, Chayefsky based the character of the friendly television executive Max Schumacher in the 1976 movie "Network" on Tebet.

June 7, 2005 at age 91. Complications from a stroke.

Simon Waronker >permalink<

Founder of the Liberty Record Label

The life of Simon Waronker is one of the greatest 'behind the scenes' stories in record label history. Simon! SII-MON! Never a leading industry figure, his greatest talent was as a catalyst. He founded Liberty Records by putting his furniture up as collateral, recorded some of pop's greatest early hits and was responsible for The Chipmunks.

For more about Liberty's place in modern music history, visit the Last Link Simon Waronker tribute page.

June 7, 2005 at age 90.

Amram Nowak >permalink<

Producer/director

Nowak produced or directed over two hundred films, and was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar for the 1986 film "Isaac In America: A Journey With Isaac Bashevis Singer." Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 6, 2005 at age 77.

Anne Bancroft >permalink<

The movie was "The Graduate." Its poster became an icon. The song was a huge hit ... and the line of dialogue "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. ... aren't you?" and the times it represented will forever be linked to just one actress: Anne Bancroft.

In 1967, director Mike Nichols created the cinematic cultural touchstone of a generation. Passing over the likes of Doris Day and Jeanne Moreau, he chose Bancroft to deliver what would soon become one of the most famous lines in the movies when her character demanded that her daughter's boyfriend get into bed with her. For more about Bancroft's career and her place in sixties culture, visit the Last Link Anne Bancroft tribute page.

June 6, 2005 at age 73. Uterine cancer.

Dana Elcar >permalink<

Actor

Veteran character actor Dana Elcar was best known for portraying think tank director Peter Thornton on 1985-1992 ABC TV series "MacGyver." Four years into the series, Elcar told producers he was going blind. To their credit, instead of writing the character out of the series, they wrote Elcar's struggle with glaucoma and blindness into the character. By the end of the show's run, both had become almost completely blind.

Elcar's introduction to acting came about from an unsuccessful attempt to run away from home, At the age of 13, he and a friend tried to hop a train to Detroit, but Elcar couldn't run fast enough and missed it. He spent the night in an all-night theater that was showing "Citizen Kane" while waiting for his father to wire him money. Elcar watched the movie four or five times in one night, and he later said the experience sparked him to be an actor.

Elcar first appeared in off-Broadway plays, including the first American productions of Harold Pinter's "The Dumb Waiter" and "The Caretaker," Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood" and Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot."

Elcar was a familiar face on television for 50 years, appearing in over one hundred episodes and shows. He had major roles in the Robert Blake series "Baretta" on ABC and the Robert Conrad series "Black Sheep Squadron" on NBC. He last played a blind character in a guest spot on "ER" in 2002.

He appeared in dozens of films, including "The Boston Strangler," "The Learning Tree," "The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid," "The Sting," "W.C. Fields and Me," "2010" and "All of Me."

June 6, 2005 at age 77. Complications from pneumonia.

Manuel Codeso >permalink<

Actor/comedian

Codeso was a member of the long-popular Spanish comic trio Zori, Santos & Codeso. He appeared in nearly 50 films and TV shows during his career. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 6, 2005 at age 79. Stroke.

Patrick Robertson >permalink<

The Brown-Eyed Alligator of blues

Robertson He was not famous. He was not well-known outside the San Francisco blues scene, where he played for over four decades. He worked low-paying day jobs and ended up homeless in the last year of his life. Such was his dedication to the blues.

Patrick Charles Robertson was born in Opelousas, Louisiana, and moved to California with his sharecropper family during World War Two. He got his nickname from his mother who would say, "C'mere, you ol' brown-eyed alligator."

One of Robertson's lifelong ambitions was to record his own album. After a local newspaper drew attention to their town's blues legend, an anonymous benefactor paid to record and produce a CD called "The Brown-Eyed Alligator Wants His Supper."

June 6, 2005 at age 69. Cancer.

Kurt Graunke >permalink<

Composer and conductor

Graunke founded the Graunke Orchestra, which became the Munich Symphony Orchestra. He guided the symphony as conductor until 1989. The Munich Symphony Orchestra has performed the music for over 500 films including "Silence of the Lambs" and Fassbinder's very strange "Querelle." He worked as a conductor on the Walt Disney productions "Peter and the Wolf," "Make Mine Music" and "Grand Canyon." Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 5, 2005 at age 89.

Lothar Warneke >permalink<

German director

Warneke made some of the most important films to come from East Germany in the late 60s through the 1980s. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 5, 2005 at age 68.

Rob Milne >permalink<

Artificial intelligence pioneer

Rob Milne Milne set out for himself a great personal challenge: to reach the peaks of the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. Everest was to be the last. He was just 1200 feet shy of the summit of the world's highest mountain when he collapsed and died of cardiac arrest, which was confirmed by three doctors who were climbing with him. Having no previous health problems, his death was completely unexpected. Milne's family have decided that his body would remain on the mountain.

Born in Libby, Montana, Milne was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The luxury of dual US and UK citizenship allowed him to earn a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh University in Scotland. In 1985 he became the Chief AI Scientist for the Pentagon.

Milne returned to Scotland in 1986 and founded Intelligent Applications Ltd. As one of the first UK companies to market expert systems technology, the company became an industry leader in developing intelligent software applications. The firm was awarded the Queen's Award for Technology. Milne also served as a mentor to a number of small-company entrepreneurs trying to establish their businesses.

Milne was a keen mountaineer, eager to share his enthusiasm for the sport. Once during a job interview, he demonstrated how to climb a vertical brick wall. His prospective boss declined to try despite invitation.

Mount Everest has claimed at least four other lives lives this year. On May 1, 2005 Michael "Big Mike" O'Brien died when he fell into a crevasse. Four days earlier, Sean Egan died, also from cardiac arrest.

June 5, 2005 at age 48. Heart attack.

Susi Nicoletti >permalink<

Austrian actress

Nicoletti was a well-known figure on the Austrian stage and appeared in over 100 films and TV shows during a career that began in the 1930s. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 5, 2005 at age 86.

William J. Thaler >permalink<

Physicist, eased worries of nuclear threat

When the Soviet Union demonstrated its capability of sending objects into Earth orbit with the 1957 launch of their Sputnik satellite, Americans were concerned about missile attacks sprung over the polar icecap. One response to this threat was the development of the DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line, a string of radar installations across Canada's northern reaches. William Thaler came up with a better idea.

Thaler Thaler developed "over-the-horizon" radar, able to detect enemy missile launches up to 5,000 miles away. His electronic system could detect the ionized gases of a missile launch (or an atomic explosion) by bouncing radar waves off the ionosphere, a thick layer of charged particles that surrounds the Earth. The project was known as "Project TeePee," a reference to "Thaler's Project."

Thaler's other major contribution to the U.S. military's peace effort was his study of the effects of high altitude nuclear explosions on radio transmissions and radar operations. While working for the Office of Naval Research, Thaler participated in every nuclear weapons test at Eniwetok Atoll and in Nevada from 1952 to 1960. In 1967, he sought a patent for a device used to communicate sound over a laser beam.

Thaler saw the conquest of space as logical substitute for war, and told an audience at Georgetown University, Washington in 1961 that should success ever be met at conference tables, the stars would be an adversary worthy of man's energies, imagination, and aggressiveness.

June 5, 2005 at age 79. Stroke.

Disley Jones >permalink<

Production designer

Suffering from childhood pneumonia, Jones was instructed to seek outdoor work such as nurseryman, florist, factory or farm hand. He ended up on the stage, designing sets for theatrical productions throughout his native England. He was so good at his craft that the directors of plays he worked on soon began to resent him -- his work received better reviews than the plays.

Jones soon went to work for television and the cinema, designing for "Mikado," "The Italian Job," "Murphy's War," "The Spiral Staircase," "Tower of Evil" and "The House on Garibaldi Street."

June 4, 2005 at age 79. AIDS.

Lorna Thayer >permalink<

Actress

Lorna Thayer Despite spending a forty-year career in front of the cameras in some 80 film and television roles, Thayer will be forever known for a scene that lasted barely 100 seconds. As a waitress asked by Jack Nicholson to hold his chicken in Bob Rafelson's 1970 classic "Five Easy Pieces," Thayer personified a live-by-the-rules/no substitutions stereotype that found a counter-culure resonance. The film got four Oscar nods, including screenplay, winning none.

Born in Boston, Thayer moved to Los Angeles and acted in local theatre. She landed a few bit parts during the 1940s in MGM musicals, and by the early 1950s she began to appear numerous small parts in forgettable films with titles such as "The Lusty Men," "Jennifer," and "The Beast with a Million Eyes." Filmed mostly for the drive-in crowd, the dialogue was simple, plots were straightforward and the leads weren't hard on the eyes. Two of her better works were 1958's "I Want to Live!" about Barbara Graham going to the electric chair, and 1966's "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round."

On TV, she appeared in shows including "General Hospital," "Bonanza," "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "CHIPS." Her last film, 1991's "Frankie and Johnny," was made as a favour to her friend Al Pacino.

The "Five Easy Pieces" scene is frequently referred to as prototypical Nicholson and one of the more memorable scenes of Hollywood dialogue. It has been included in the American Film Institute's selection of the 100 best movie quotes of all time:

Jack Nicholson (Bobby): Now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules.

Lorna Thayer (Waitress): You want me to hold the chicken, huh?

Jack Nicholson (Bobby): I want you to hold it between your knees.

June 4, 2005 at age 86. Alzheimer's disease.

Harold Cardinal >permalink<

Aboriginal leader, teacher and author

Harold Cardinal At the age of 23, Cardinal became the youngest person to be elected president of the Indian Association of Alberta and went on to serve nine terms. He also represented Prairie First Nations during national constitutional conferences. Cardinal was member of Alberta's Sucker Creek reserve, serving as chief in 1982-83.

Cardinal challenged the concept of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau's "Just Society," and the White Paper policy on Indian policy tabled by Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chretien. He responded with two strongly critical statements of the proposed policy: The Unjust Society in 1969 and The Rebirth of Canada's Indians in 1975. He was also equally passionate about improving relations with non-aboriginal Canadians.

At the University of Saskatchewan, Cardinal worked as an assistant professor. It was there he completed his law degree, eventually earning his master's at the Harvard School of Law. In 1999, he received an Honourary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Alberta. Cardinal had an unsuccessful run for the Liberals in the 2000 federal election in the Athabasca riding of northern Alberta. He was called to the bar in November, 2004 and was recently awarded a Ph.D. in law from the University of British Columbia. Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine then jokingly referred to him as 'Doctor, Lawyer, and Indian Chief.' Cardinal also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation.

Cardinal was to have been honoured in Edmonton on June 4 at a special tribute gathering sponsored by the Assembly of First Nations, the Native Women's Association of Canada and Native Counselling Services of Alberta. Despite his passing, the gathering took place as planned, respecting one of Cardinal's own mottos: "Once we start something, we have to complete it." Former Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Joe Clark were in attendance.

June 3, 2005 at age 60.

John Szymkowicz >permalink<

Chemical engineer

The success of the American space program was largely due to its adaptation of technology developed by German forces during World War II. Blastoff! The Nazi's V1 bomber (the 'buzz bomb' - named after its tell-tale sound) was the world's first cruise missile, and their V2 rocket (left) set the template for multi-stage launch vehicles -- a design still used to this day. One of the key figures in harnessing German-developed missile technology was John Szymkowicz.

Szymkowicz was one of seven in his family to serve in World War II. He served with the 308th Bombardment Group in China, and was later an aeronautical engineering adviser to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. While at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, he worked with captured German scientists, debriefing them on missile technology. He evaluated the chemical composition of the fuels used in their rockets, and helped develop safety procedures for subsequent American missile launches.

After retiring from active military duty in 1961, Szymkowicz spent 19 years working in the Flight Standards Division of the Federal Aviation Administration, retiring in 1980 to a life of golf, tennis and woodworking.

June 3, 2005 at age 88. Cardiac arrest.

Leon Askin >permalink<

Actor

Leon Askin Askin's work spanned decades in film, theatre and television on two continents. For most of us, though, he will best known for his cries of "Klink! Klink!" as General Albert Burkhalter on the 1960s television comedy "Hogan's Heroes."

Born in Vienna, Austria, Askin worked as a cabaret artist in the 1930s before fleeing first to France and then to the US to escape Nazi persecution. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Askin appeared in more than 50 films opposite the likes of Doris Day, James Cagney, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Peter Ustinov. His films included Billy Wilder's 1961 "One, Two, Three," and fellow-Austrian director Fritz Lang's 1962 "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse." He even appeared in 1982's "Airplane II: The Sequel," playing a Moscow TV anchorman.

However, it will be for his role as the Nazi general who constantly threatened to send Stalag 13's inept commander, Colonel Wilhelm Klink, to the Russian front because of his stupidity that Askin will be best remembered. During the show's heyday, school children would call out at him, raising their arms in the Hitler salute, often bringing traffic to a standstill.

When CBS TV's "Hogan's Heroes" first aired, it was met with harsh criticism by those disturbed by the portrayals of the Germans as funny and incompetent. Many felt it trivialized the evil of the Nazis and the war. Ironically, many of the show's stars were Jewish. They include John Banner (Austrian born, fled Nazi Germany) who played Sgt. Shultz; Howard Caine (fought Nazis in the U.S. Navy) as Major Hochstetter; Robert Clary (who was in the Buchenwald concentration camp) as Corporal LeBeau; and Werner Klemperer who played Klink.

Unlike many artists who refused to return to Austria after the war, Askin moved back to Vienna in 1994 and back to performing on stage. In 1988, he was decorated with the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and the Arts, and in 2002 he was awared with Vienna's Gold Medal of Honor, one of the City's most distinguished prizes.

For more about this versatile actor, visit Leon Askin's official web site. For the last word, we leave that to General Burkhalter: "Shut up, Klink or you will be court-martialed, shot, and sent to the Russian front."

June 3, 2005 at age 97.

Michael Billington >permalink<

Actor

Michael Billington, Ed Bishop Michael Billington (left, with Ed Bishop) was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, where four thousand holes were once counted--huh? He appeared in numerous Soho and West End theatrical productions, once appearing with Sir Alec Guinness and Anthony Quayle in "Incident At Vichy."

Billington secured several roles on such prominent UK TV shows as "The Prisoner," "Z Cars," "The Professionals" and as Col. Paul Foster on the 1970 Gerry Anderson produced cult-favourite "UFO," about a team set up to defend Earth from an alien race who kidnap and kill humans for use as body parts. Billington co-starred in the series with Ed Bishop, who died June 8, 2005. Episodes of the series were telescoped into a movie called "Invasion: UFO" in 1972.

Billington auditioned for the role of James Bond more times than any other actor. He was producer Albert R. Broccoli's first choice for "Live And Let Die," "Moonraker" and "Octopussy" should contract negotiations with Roger Moore have fallen through. Billington did make one Bond appearance, playing an ill-fated love interest in 1977's "The Spy Who Loved Me."

The balance of Billington's career was filled with roles on U.S. programs such as "The Greatest American Hero," "Hart to Hart," "Fantasy Island," "Magnum, P.I.," and on British series such as "The Onedin Line" and "The Collectors."

June 3, 2005 at age 63.

Terry Doyle >permalink<

Actor

Terry Doyle Doyle grew up in Guelph, Ontario, where he started his acting career in the Guelph Little Theatre, a building he often circled around on his bike as a kid. His early career focused on community theatre, playing in Guelph, Kitchener and Waterloo musical productions.

On screen, Doyle first appeared in the 1975 inspired-by-true-events drama "Recommendation for Mercy." He was often cast as a priest, such as in 1990's "Kaleidoscope" and 1992's "Change Of Heart." His television credits include "The Littlest Hobo," "E.N.G.," "Maniac Mansion," "Night Heat" and "Street Legal."

Never comfortable before the camera, Doyle appeared in many Drayton Entertainment productions since that organisation's first season in 1991. It was during the opening-night Huron Country Playhouse performance of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" that Doyle collapsed on stage. Doyle was playing the part of Maurice, father of Belle the beauty, a key secondary role he had performed in the original Canadian production in Toronto and in London's West End in England.

June 3, 2005 at age 71. Heart attack.

Larry Fallon >permalink<

Musical director and producer

Two-time Grammy-nominated Fallon worked in a number of capacities on such films as "Gimmie Shelter," "The Heartbreak Kid," "Hell Hunters," "Dear Mr. Wonderful" and "Rocco and Raymond." Mr. Fallon produced over 60 albums for such artists as Jimi Hendrix, The Velvet Underground, George Burns, Bob Marley and The Rolling Stones. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 2, 2005 at age 68.

Lucille Haise >permalink<

Mother, astronaut Fred Haise

Fred Haise was one of 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April, 1966. He served as backup lunar module pilot for the Apollo 8 and 11 missions.

Haise was the lunar module pilot for Apollo 13. Their flight was to include the third landing on the moon, but on April 13, 1970, an explosion in the service module cryogenic oxygen system occurred. Haise, along with James A. Lovell (spacecraft commander) and John L. Swigert (command module pilot), worked with Houston ground controllers to convert their lunar module "Aquarius" into a lifeboat. The events were documented in the 1995 Ron Howard film "Apollo 13," based on Lovell's book Lost Moon. Haise was portrayed by Bill Paxton.

Haise later served as backup spacecraft commander for Apollo 16 and was also scheduled as a crewmember for the cancelled Apollo 18 mission. Haise later flew five flights as the Commander of the space shuttle Enterprise in 1977 for the Approach and Landing Test Program. He was in-line to fly in space again as a Shuttle Commander. Lucille Haise died at her home in Biloxi, Mississippi.

June 2, 2005 at age 92.

Melita Norwood >permalink<

The spy who came in from the Co-op

Those living near Melita "Letty" Norwood in Britain would say she was an ordinary person ... except for her habit of buying 32 copies of the communist daily newspaper, the Morning Star, that she placed in the mailboxes of friends and neighbours along with homemade jam. However, when the media came knocking at her door in 1999, the jig was up and at the age of 87, Norwood was revealed for what she really was -- a spy for the Soviet Union.

Spy, jam maker In 1932 at the age of 20, Norwood began working as a clerk and later a secretary for the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in London. Much more interesting was her induction into the Communist Party a year earlier. While her work at the metallurgy facility remained mundance, her career with the Soviets soon made her a full-fledged spy for the NKVD (the KGB's forerunner), complete with the codename 'Hola.'

Her company's involvement with the building of Britain's atomic bomb made Norwood a star back in Russia. She routinely photographed her firm's research documents and passed them on to her Soviet controller. It was said that Stalin knew more about the construction of the British bomb than most UK government ministers. Fifty years after the fact, her role in the Soviet atomic bomb effort remains unclear. She either gave Russia a two-year head start, or simply supplied redundant information. Some place her in the company of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt. In any event, the Soviet Union exploded its first atom bomb in 1949, three years before Britain.

When Norwood's espionage role was uncovered, the British government decided that prosecution would be inappropriate. After all, she was just a feisty old great-grandmother drinking tea from an old Che Guevara mug. Upon her retirement from Non-Ferrous Metals in 1972, the KGB gave her a monthly pension of £20 and awarded her the Order of the Red Banner for services to the Soviet Union. Britain only learned of her work when KGB archivist Vasili Mitrohkin defected to the UK in 1992, carrying with him six trunks of documents. Norwood's only regret was that she had been exposed. "I thought I'd got away with it," she said. After her secret was revealed, her neighbours called her "The spy who came in from the Co-op."

June 2, 2005 at age 93.

Mike Marshall >permalink<

Actor

Marshall was the son of American actor William Marshall and French actress Michele Morgan. He appeared in over 50 films and TV shows. He made his film debut in the sci-fi thriller "The Phantom Planet," which was directed by his father. His credits include the James Bond film "Moonraker." Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 2, 2005 at age 60. Cancer.

Pastor Vega >permalink<

Filmmaker

Vega was an icon of Cuban cinema. Pastor Vega He was the founder of the Cuban Institute of Cinematic Arts and Industry (ICAIC), Cuba's government-sponsored national film institute. In 1979 he founded the New Latin American Film Festival of Havana, which he led for over 15 years.

Vega started his career as an assistant director on several documentaries before directing his own documentary, "The War," in 1961. Mixing work in film and theatre, Vega released his feature-length movie "Retrato de Teresa (Portrait of Teresa)" in 1979. The picture, which Vega also wrote, starred his wife, Cuban actress Daisy Granados, and became one of the most popular movies ever shown in Cuba (half the population of Havana saw it within six weeks of its release). It was shown at festivals world-wide, and brought Vega and Cuban cinema international acclaim. His other films include 1993's "Vidas Paralelas (Parallel Lives)" and 1999's "Las Profecias de Amanda (Prophesies of Amanda)."

June 2, 2005 at age 65. Cancer.

Andy Russell >permalink<

Conservationist, filmmaker, rancher, broadcaster, mountain guide, political agitator, photographer and author

Often referred to as the Last of the Mountain men, Andy Russell lived most of his life in a log cabin on his ranch near Waterton National Park, Alberta. While he wore many hats during his lifetime, he will be best remembered for sharing his appreciation for nature as one of the province's best-known conservationists and storytellers.

For more about Alberta's long time wilderness advocate, visit the Last Link Andy Russell tribute page.

June 1, 2005 at age 89.

Fernando Ghia >permalink<

Film producer

One of the leading lights of the Italian film and television industry, Fernando Ghia will be familiar to western audiences as the producer for the 1986 film "The Mission."

Ghia The film was the winner of the Palme d'Or for best picture at the Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture, but only winning an Oscar for Chris Menges' stunning cinematography.

Ghia's career in the film industry began in the late 1950s. He began as an actor, and while as a William Morris Agency rep, he befriended Albert Finney, who taught him English. Ghia forged a working partnership with his mentor, the legendary Italian producer Franco Cristaldi. As head of production for Cristaldi, Ghia made numerous films, including Federico Fellini's "Amarcord," the 1974 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film. Cristaldi and Ghia also worked on 1961's "Divorce - Italian Style" and 1988's "Cinema Paradiso," another Oscar winner.

Ghia's list of credentials is short but not lacking in tenacity. After spotting a single paragraph in a 1972 Time magazine story about an obscure Jesuit order, he spent nearly fifteen years trying to bring the story of "The Mission" to the screen. Ghia lined up Robert Bolt, a screenwriter whose credits included "Lawrence of Arabia," "A Man for All Seasons" and "Dr. Zhivago." He then made a deal with Paramount for development money, and brought Bolt to South America to tour the ruins of the Jesuit missions, saving for last the breathtaking falls, which are more than 40 feet taller than Niagara Falls. Bolt said, "It's as if God for a day had decided to be a production designer."

Despite Ghia's and Bolt's enthusiasm, Paramount passed on the project, and after a decade, Ghia finally landed a deal with Goldcrest Films and with producer David Puttnam, who brought in Roland Joffe as director. Ennio Morricone's memorable score for the film filled a packed church in Rome at Ghia's funeral -- a fitting tribute.

June 1, 2005 at age 69. Cancer.

Geoffrey Toone >permalink<

Actor

Geoffrey Toone Veteran character actor Toone appeared on stage, film and television for more than seventy years, often playing judges, cardinals, soldiers, diplomats and aristocrats. He was born in Dublin and but was educated in Cambridge. In 1934, he joined John Gielgud's New Theatre in 1934, and is one of that company's last surviving members. After numerous success on British stages, he made his Broadway debut in 1948, playing opposite Cambridge friend Michael Redgrave in "Macbeth."

From 1953 to 1957 Toone lived in Hollywood. He initially went for a brief visit, but stayed because of enduring personal friendships with George Cukor and Rock Hudson. On television, he appeared on shows ranging from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" to "Cheyenne." In film, he played in Carol Reed's 1953 thriller "The Man Between," 1956's "The King And I," and with Laurence Olivier in Tony Richardson's 1960 film "The Entertainer."

Toone returned to Britain, continuing his stage career and taking on roles in such UK TV classics as "Doctor Who," "The Avengers," "New Scotland Yard," "Colditz," "Z Cars" and "Jeeves and Wooster."

June 1, 2005 at age 94.

Josephine Clay Ford >permalink<

Automobile heiress, philanthropist

There's one in every family. It's hard to imagine that a member of the Ford dynasty would ever have engaged in a food fight, but that's exactly what Josephine Ford did as a child. Her favourite trick was to flick pats of butter to the ceiling. Her nature never waivered, and when a grandchild once asked what was in the spaghetti, she pushed his face into the plate.

Oddly, Josephine was the most private of Henry Ford's four grandchildren (and only granddaughter). His biographers described her as being something of a madcap. With her death, the only surviving grandchild of Henry Ford is William Clay Ford Sr., 80, the owner of the Detroit Lions. William stepped down as a director of the company early in 2005 after almost 57 years on the board.

Those who chronicled the Ford family knew little of Josephine. She kept her public profile to a minimum and never held a formal role within Ford Motor Co. Instead, she worked behind the scenes, donating tens of millions of dollars to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, the Henry Ford Health System and the Detroit Institute of Arts. She often donated works of art, such as Vincent Van Gogh's "The Postman," valued at $40 million.

At one time, Josephine was one of Ford Motor Co.'s largest shareholders, having acquired more than 13 million shares of Class B stock, or 18 percent, by the time of her death. In 2001, Time magazine estimated her fortune at $416 million. She used the money to donate to her favourite interests and left the business to her brothers. She once said, "What else is there for a girl who wasn't competitive to do but try to escape all that Ford stuff?"

By some accounts, Josephine had not made much of a success of her own life. She was once a slender woman who lost her beauty to alcohol. Her relationship with the company was largely ceremonial and within Ford management she was regarded as something of a mystery. She owned as many as fifteen dogs at a time.

Josephine's father, and Henry's only son, Edsel, contributed $10,000 toward explorer Richard Byrd's flight to the North Pole. Byrd honoured the gift by naming his aircraft the 'Josephine Ford.' Edsel nearly bankrupted the family business in the 1950s, but the company was rebuilt by Josephine's oldest brother, Henry Ford II, who was chief executive from 1945 until his retirement in 1979.

Ironically, in 1943 Josephine married a man named Ford from a banking family, unrelated to the automobile Fords. Walter Buhl Ford II was a interior and industrial designer who began his career with rival General Motors Corp. He died in 1991.

June 1, 2005 at age 81.

Lucy Richardson >permalink<

Inspiration

Lucy In The Sky Lucy Picture yourself on a boat on a river ...

When John Lennon was asked about the name of the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," he always denied that the title was a barely concealed reference to the psychedelic drug LSD (Lennon would have been much more subtle). He always maintained the lyric came from his son, Julian, who had painted a picture at the age of four that featured a young girl named Lucy who was in the sky with diamonds. Was there really a Lucy?

Lucy Richardson was a few years older than Julian Lennon when he enrolled at a private school in Weybridge, Surrey. She worked in the family's antique and jewellery shop, which was often frequented by the Beatles, and later recalled seeing the young boy. When Julian became homesick and raised a fuss in class, Lucy would be asked to sit with him while he drew pictures. One of those pictures was of Lucy. Later, when John Lennon came into the shop and said, "Hello, Lucy in the sky with diamonds," the family thought it was just John being John.

In 1967, the Beatles released "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with a song named after his greeting and the Richardson family began to wonder. When Lennon announced he had been inspired by his son's picture of a girl called Lucy, the pieces of the puzzle came together.

Richardson grew up to be a successful movie art director, working on "The Princess Bride," "The Saint," "Elizabeth," "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace," "The Golden Bowl" and "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers." She won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Art Direction for a Miniseries or Special for her work on "Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal," and an Art Directors Guild Excellence in Production Design Award for "Chocolat."

Richardson died on the 38th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's release. The original Lucy drawing can be seen on the WhatGoesOn Beatles tribute site.

June 1, 2005 at age 47. Cancer.

Sara Guasch >permalink<

Chilean actress

Guasch gained fame as an actress on Mexican stage and screen. Her film career dates back to the 1940s. Among her many credits is the 1976 film "Survive." The movie dealt with the true-life tragedy of a chartered plane full of soccer players which crashed into the Andes Mountains. Full tribute available at Rusty's Obituaries at EInsiders.

June 1, 2005 at age 86. Heart failure.

final credits - june 2005

Christopher Fry >permalink<

Harry Lloyd >permalink<

Bruce Malmuth >permalink<

Guy Thomajan >permalink<

Domino Harvey >permalink<

Ray Holmes >permalink<

Chet Helms >permalink<

George Swindell >permalink<

John Fiedler >permalink<

Michael Cuneo >permalink<

Edward Smith >permalink<

Imogen Claire >permalink<

Jack Kosslyn >permalink<

Paul Winchell >permalink<

Peter Casserly >permalink<

Ramon L. Posel >permalink<

John J. Taylor >permalink<

Richard 'Doc' Brown >permalink<

Carson Parks >permalink<

Duane W. Dively >permalink<

Richard Sperber >permalink<

Barbara LeMond >permalink<

Harvey Schaps >permalink<

Robert Achs >permalink<

Charles White >permalink<

Larry Collins >permalink<

Bill LaForge >permalink<

Brian J. King >permalink<

Cay Forrester >permalink<

Johnny Reed >permalink<

Madhukar Anant Pathak >permalink<

Tatsuo Matsumura >permalink<

Karl Mueller >permalink<

Keith Morris >permalink<

Ronald Winans >permalink<

Susanna Javicoli >permalink<

Alex McAvoy >permalink<

Albert R. Kahn >permalink<

Percy Arrowsmith >permalink<

Phil Ford >permalink<

Suzanne Flon >permalink<

Robie Lester >permalink<

Donald Buchanan >permalink<

Daudi Bamuwamye >permalink<

Jonathan Adams >permalink<

Lane Smith >permalink<

Benjamin Chih-Fang Wei >permalink<

Robert McCann >permalink<

Scott Young >permalink<

Krissy Wood >permalink<

Lon McCallister >permalink<

Robert Clarke >permalink<

Ron Randell >permalink<

Gerald Von Rueden >permalink<

Jon Clarke >permalink<

Lillian Lux >permalink<

Mike Beery >permalink<

Verne Meisner >permalink<

Julia Palmer-Stoll >permalink<

Michael R. Farkash >permalink<

Stan Wilson >permalink<

Trude Marlen >permalink<

Daniel Hamilton >permalink<

Ed Bishop >permalink<

Jody Gibson >permalink<

David W. Tebet >permalink<

Simon Waronker >permalink<

Amram Nowak >permalink<

Anne Bancroft >permalink<

Dana Elcar >permalink<

Manuel Codeso >permalink<

Patrick Robertson >permalink<

Kurt Graunke >permalink<

Lothar Warneke >permalink<

Rob Milne >permalink<

Susi Nicoletti >permalink<

William J. Thaler >permalink<

Disley Jones >permalink<

Lorna Thayer >permalink<