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R.I.P.
Nov 17, 2013 20:34:17 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Nov 17, 2013 20:34:17 GMT -5
R.I.P. Doris Lessing, 2007 Nobel Prize-winning English free-thinking and often polarizing novelist (The Golden Notebook) of more than 55 works of fiction, opera, nonfiction and poetry, has died peacefully at age 94. She is survived by her daughter Jean and granddaughters Anna and Susannah.
Lessing explored topics ranging from colonial Africa to dystopian Britain, from the mystery of being female to the unknown worlds of science fiction. She remains best known for The Golden Notebook, in which heroine Anna Wulf uses four notebooks to bring together the separate parts of her disintegrating life. Her nonfiction work ranged from Going Home in 1957 about her return to Southern Rhodesia to a book about her pets, Particularly Cats, in 1967. Lessing often presented women — herself included — as vain and territorial. "I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement," she told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. "Whatever type of behavior women are coming up with, it's claimed as a victory for feminism — doesn't matter how bad it is. We don't seem go in very much for self-criticism."
R.I.P. Doris Lessing, definitely one of a kind and an extraordinary talent.
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R.I.P.
Dec 5, 2013 18:36:16 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Dec 5, 2013 18:36:16 GMT -5
R.I.P. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, revered South African anti-apartheid leader who spent 27 years in prison and 1st black president of the Union of South Africa, died at age 95 at his home after a long illness. A state funeral will be held, and South African president Jacob Zuma called for mourners to conduct themselves with "the dignity and respect" that Mandela personified. Though he was in power for only five years (1994-1999), Mandela was a figure of enormous moral influence the world over – a symbol of revolution, resistance and triumph over racial segregation. In 1993 he and Pres. de Klerk were honored with the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in producing the first multiracial elections.
The first member of his family to get a formal education, he went to boarding school and then enrolled in South Africa’s elite Fort Hare University, where his activism unfurled with a student boycott. As a young law scholar, he joined the resurgent African National Congress just a few years before the National Party – controlled by the Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch and French settlers – came to power on a platform of apartheid, in which the government enforced racial segregation and stripped non-whites of economic and political power. In 1961, he launched a military wing called Spear of the Nation and began a campaign of sabotage.
In 1962 he was arrested and in 1965 convicted of treason. At his trial he said, “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” He was sentenced to life in prison and sent to Robben Island, where he slept on the floor of a six-foot-wide cell, did hard labor in a quarry, organized fellow prisoners – and earned a law degree by correspondence. Finally, in 1985, after a ban on the ANC was repealed, a whiter-haired Mandela walked out prison before a jubilant crowd and told a rally in Cape Town that the fight was far from over. Over the next two years, Mandela proved himself a formidable negotiator as he pushed South Africa toward its first multiracial elections amid tension and violence. After leaving politics, he concentrated on his philanthropic foundation and began speaking out on AIDS, which had ravaged his country
]R.I.P. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, iconic South African anti-apartheid leader and politician. There will never be another like him, which is unfortunate for this world of ours.
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R.I.P.
Dec 10, 2013 14:01:17 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Dec 10, 2013 14:01:17 GMT -5
R.I.P. Eleanor Parker, an actress who was nominated three times for an Oscar for Best Actress (Interrupted Melody [1955], Detective Story [1951] and Caged [1950]) but is best remembered today for her supporting role as the baroness in 1965's The Sound of Music died at age 91 from complications due to pneumonia at her home in Palm Springs, Calif.
Like William Holden, Robert Preston, Dustin Hoffman and others, Parker was discovered at the Pasadena Playhouse. She was signed to a contract at Warner Bros., where she played only minor roles, Her breakthrough performance was as an inmate in a brutal prison in the 1950's Caged. The role brought Parker her first Oscar nomination, for best actress. Her second came the following year as Kirk Douglas's frustrated wife in Detective Story. Her career fully blossomed with such follow-up films as Scaramouche with Stewart Granger, Above and Beyond with Robert Taylor, Escape from Fort Bravo with Holden and The Naked Jungle with Charlton Heston. One of her most challenging roles was 1955's Interrupted Melody, portraying opera star Marjorie Lawrence, who continued her career after contracting polio. Faced with having to lip-sync nine arias in three languages, she holed up in a Lake Arrowhead cabin for two weeks and played records eight to 10 hours a day. The result was her third Oscar nomination. After 1988 most of her work was in television starring in various episodes including a 2-0art drama on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. In 1969-70, Parker starred in the television series Bracken's World, for which she was nominated for a 1970 Golden Globe Award as Best TV Actress - Drama.
Her first three marriages ended in divorce: to Navy dentist Fred L. Losse; producer Bert Friedlob, which resulted in three children, Susan, Sharon and Richard; and painter Paul Clemens, with whom she had a son, actor Paul Clemens. Her 4th and lasting 1966 marriage to Shubert Theater manager Raymond Hirsch ended with his death in 2001.
R.I.P. Eleanor Parker, actress known for portraying strong-willed women, and was one herself.
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R.I.P.
Dec 15, 2013 23:28:56 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Dec 15, 2013 23:28:56 GMT -5
R.I.P. Peter O'Toole, , the charismatic actor who achieved instant stardom as Lawrence of Arabia and was nominated eight times for an Academy Award, has died at age 81 after a long illness. He is survived by his son Lorcan and his two daughters Kate and Pat.
O'Toole got his first Oscar nomination for 1962's Lawrence of Arabia, his last for Venus in 2006. With that he set the record for most nominations without ever winning, though he had accepted an honorary Oscar in 2003. O'Toole began his acting career as one of the most exciting young talents on the British stage and with Lawrence of Arabia, he achieved international acclaim. In 1964's Becket, O'Toole played King Henry II to Richard Burton's Thomas Becket, and won another Oscar nomination. Burton shared O'Toole's fondness for drinking, and their offset carousing was notorious. He played Henry II again in 1968 opposite Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter.
The image of the renegade hell-raiser stayed with O'Toole for decades, although he gave up drinking in 1975 He did not give up smoking unfiltered cigarettes. His honorary Oscar came 20 years after his seventh nomination for My Favorite Year. By then it seemed a safe bet that O'Toole's prospects for another nomination were slim. But they were wrong. His 8th and last nomination for Venus, in which he played a lecherous old actor consigned to roles as feeble-minded royals or aged men on their death beds.
R.I.P. Peter O'Toole, actor who lived life to its fullest.
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R.I.P.
Dec 15, 2013 23:32:06 GMT -5
Post by Forever Sunshine on Dec 15, 2013 23:32:06 GMT -5
Awww . . . I just watched him in the Christmas Cottage movie about Thomas Kincaide.
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R.I.P.
Dec 16, 2013 12:39:16 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Dec 16, 2013 12:39:16 GMT -5
R.I..P. Joan Fontaine (née de Haviland), Academy Award-winning patrician blonde actress (Suspicion) and sister of fellow Oscar-winning actress Olivia de Haviland has died in her sleep at age 96 at home in Carmel, Calif. Ms. Fontaine is survived by her sister, Ms. Olivia de Havilland; a daughter, Deborah Dozier Potter of Santa Fe, N.M.; and a grandson.
Fontaine's pale, soft features and frightened stare made her ideal for melodrama and led to three Oscar nominations and one win. She appeared in more than 30 movies, including the title part in Jane Eyre and in films directed by Billy Wilder (The Emperor Waltz), Fritz Lang (Beyond a Reasonable Doubt), George Cukor in The Women and, wised up and dangerous, in Nicholas Ray's Born to be Bad. She starred on Broadway in 1954 in Tea and Sympathy and in 1980 received an Emmy nomination for her cameo on the daytime soap Ryan's Hope.
Fontaine said she left Hollywood because she was asked to play Elvis Presley's mother. "Not that I had anything against Elvis Presley. But that just wasn't my cup of tea," she said. While making New York her home for 25 years, she appeared in about 30 dinner theater plays. She also appeared twice on Broadway, replacing Deborah Kerr in the hit 1953 drama Tea and Sympathy and Julie Harris in the long-running 1968 comedy Forty Carats. . R.I.P. Joan Fontaine who now leaves her sister as one of the last survivors of Hollywood's Golden Age, She once spoke of how she wanted to die. "At age 108," she said, "flying around the stage in Peter Pan, as a result of my sister cutting the wires. Olivia has always said I was first at everything – I got married first, got an Academy Award first, had a child first. If I die, she'll be furious, because again I'll have got there first!" And so she did at age 96.
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R.I.P.
Jan 4, 2014 10:11:50 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Jan 4, 2014 10:11:50 GMT -5
R.I.P. Phil Everly, half of one of the most popular and influential music duos of the 1950s and '60s, the Everly Brothers, died Friday at age 74 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after two weeks in Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Calif. He is survived by his wife (3rd) and 4 children.
The Everly Brothers — Phil (b. 1939) and Don (b. 1937) and survives his younger brother with their smooth-sounding harmony — hit it big in 1957 with "Bye Bye Love." It has been covered by dozens of other prominent artists as wide-ranging as Ray Charles, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Trini Lopez and Simon & Garfunkel. That was quickly followed by two more monster hits, "Wake Up Little Susie" and "All I Have to Do Is Dream." Hits in the 1960s included "Cathy's Clown," "When Will I Be Loved" and "Cryin' in the Rain." Their decade on top remains one of the leading influences on American popular music, and in 1986, they were among the inaugural class inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They also are members of the Country Music Hall of Fame, a nod to their heritage.
Rolling Stone labeled the Everly Brothers "the most important vocal duo in rock," having influenced the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel and many other acts. The Everly Brothers' sound -- with Don's lower register generally ringing in perfect thirds with Phil's higher voice -- was the backbone of dozens of hits - 35 Top 100 songs -- more than any other vocal pair. They added Bo Diddley riffs, teenage anxieties and sharkskin suits but the core of their sound remained country brother harmony. Don Everly said in a 1986 Associated Press interview that the two were successful because "we never followed trends. We did what we liked and followed our instincts. Rock 'n' roll did survive, and we were right about that. Country did survive, and we were right about that. You can mix the two but people said we couldn't." Phil Everly last performed in public in 2011, but his son Jason told The Associated Press on Friday he had been actively writing songs, living part of the year in Burbank and the rest in Nashville.
R.I.P. Phil Everly, pop singer extraordinaire, who was part of the groundbreaking, smooth-sounding, record-setting duo, the Everly Brothers.
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R.I.P.
Jan 28, 2014 10:19:15 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Jan 28, 2014 10:19:15 GMT -5
R.I.P Pete Seeger, iconic banjo-strumming folk singer, song writer ("If I Had a Hammer," "Turn, Turn, Turn," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone,") and activist who performed for migrant workers and presidents, died at age 94 of natural causes in New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He is survived by his son, Daniel; his daughters, Mika and Tinya; a half-sister, Peggy; and six grandchildren, including the musician Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, who performed with him at the Obama inaugural.
Pete Seeger was a longtime supporter of the labor movement, and supported the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. Seeger's skepticism of those in power carried through his career, i.e. was convicted of contempt of Congress after refusing to answer questions at the House Un-American Activities Committee. Even so, he performed for president, including at a concert marking Pres. Obama’s inauguration in 2009. Pres. Bill Clinton hailed him as "an inconvenient artist who dared to sing things as he saw them." Seeger was credited with popularizing what became the anthem for the civil rights movement, "We Shall Overcome," although he said his contribution to the actual song was minimal and in 1996 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "Every kid who ever sat around a campfire singing an old song is indebted in some way to Pete Seeger," fellow folk singer Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody Guthrie, told the AP.
Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change. This a beanpole of a man with a hearty tenor most often played 12-string guitar or five-string banjo, sang topical songs and children’s songs, humorous tunes and earnest anthems, always encouraging listeners to join in. His agenda paralleled the concerns of the American left, singing for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond/
Pete Seeger was a prime mover in the folk revival that transformed popular music in the 1950s. As a member of the Weavers, he sang hits including Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” — which reached No. 1 — and “If I Had a Hammer,” which he wrote with the group’s Lee Hays. Another of Mr. Seeger’s songs, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” became an antiwar standard. And in 1965, the Byrds had a No. 1 hit with a folk-rock version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” Mr. Seeger’s setting of a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes. Mr. Seeger was a mentor to younger folk and topical singers in the ‘50s and ‘60s, among them Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded Sweet Honey in the Rock. Decades later, Bruce Springsteen drew the songs on his 2006 album, “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” from Mr. Seeger’s repertoire of traditional music about a turbulent American experience, He never stopped recording, performing and listening to songs from ordinary people. Through the decades, his songs have become part of America’s folklore. “My job,” he said in 2009, “is to show folks there’s a lot of good music in this world, and if used right it may help to save the planet.”
R.I.P Pete Seeger, America's fok singing conscience, has died at age 94.
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R.I.P.
Feb 2, 2014 13:29:46 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Feb 2, 2014 13:29:46 GMT -5
R.I.P. Maximilian Schell, 1961 Oscar-winning Austrian actor (Judgment at Nuremburg), died at age 83 at a clinic in Innsbruck from a "sudden and serious illness. His survivors include Iva Mihanovic, a German-Croatian operatic soprano, whom he married in August, and a daughter, Nastassja Schell, from his first marriage. His Oscar-winning sister Maria Schell died in 2005.
One of the best known foreign actors in US films, Schell starred on stage and screen on both sides of the Atlantic after growing up in Switzerland, where his Catholic family, including his actress-sister Maria, settled after Germany's 1938 annexation of Austria. He was nominated for two more Oscars for his acting, in 1976 for best actor for The Man in the Glass Booth, a drama inspired by the trial in Israel of the Holocaust criminal Adolf Eichmann, and in 1978 as best supporting actor for Julia, based on a Lillian Hellman story about the underground in Nazi Germany. Schell won the 1993 Golden Globe for best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a series, mini-series or made-for-TV movie for playing Lenin in Stalin.
In the late 1960s, Mr. Schell became a director, and two of his films — The Pedestrian (1973), about a German businessman’s wartime past, and Marlene(1984), a documentary about his “Nuremberg” co-star Marlene Dietrich — received Oscar nominations. A concert pianist in private life, he also went on to direct opera, including Der Rosenkavalier for the Los Angeles Opera in 2005. He made his stage debut in Germany in 1952 and performed three plays on Broadway, beginning with Interlock (1958), starring Rosemary Harris; followed by A Patriot for Me (1969), in which Tommy Lee Jones made his Broadway debut; and ending with a stage version of Judgment (2001). R.I.P. Maximilian Schell, who, sfter decades of stardom, evolved into an international character actor — distinguished, gray-bearded and perhaps a bit world-weary -- but is another star lost.
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R.I.P.
Feb 11, 2014 13:18:57 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Feb 11, 2014 13:18:57 GMT -5
R.I.P. Shirley Temple Black, child movie star and diplomat, died at age 85 at her Woodside, Calif. , home from natural causes. She is survived by her children, Susan, Charlie Jr., and Lori, her granddaughter Teresa and her great-granddaughters Lily and Emma.
A talented and ultra-adorable entertainer, Shirley Temple was America's top box-office draw from 1935 to 1938, a record no other child star has come near. She beat out such grown-ups as Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford. As an actress, she was precocious, bouncy and adorable with a head of curly hair, tap-dancing through songs like "On The Good Ship Lollipop." As Ambassador Shirley Temple Black, she was soft-spoken and earnest in postings in Czechoslovakia and Ghana, out to disprove concerns that her previous career made her a diplomatic lightweight.
As a child actress, she became a national institution, and her raging popularity spawned look-alike dolls, dresses and dozens of other Shirley Temple novelties as she became one of the first stars to enjoy the fruits of the growing marketing mentality. In 1934 she appeared in the film Stand Up and Cheer!, and her song and dance number in "Baby Take a Bow" stole the show. Other movies in that year included Little Miss Marker and Bright Eyes- which featured her signature song "On the Good Ship Lollipop" - and in 1935 she received a special Oscar for her "outstanding contribution to screen entertainment." She made some 40 feature films, including The Little Colonel, Poor Little Rich Girl, Heidi and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, in 10 years, starring with big-name actors like Randolph Scott, Lionel Barrymore and Jimmy Durante. Her child career came to an end at age 12. She tried a few roles as a teenager - including opposite future President Ronald Reagan in That Hagen Girl - but retired from the screen in 1949 at age 21. In 2005, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild.
In the early 1950's, she became interested in politics andin 1972 helped to raise funds for Richard Nixon's re-election campaign. She was later named to the US' delegation to the United Nations - and found that her childhood popularity was an asset in her new career. In 1974, Pres. Ford appointed Black ambassador to Ghana. Two years later, he made her chief of protocol and for the next decade she trained newly appointment ambassadors at the request of the State Department. In 1989, Pre. Bush made Black ambassador to Prague - a sensitive Eastern European post normally reserved for career diplomats. R.I.P. Shirley Temple Black, legendary child movie star and diplomat
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R.I.P.
Mar 10, 2014 10:33:35 GMT -5
Post by Flying Horse on Mar 10, 2014 10:33:35 GMT -5
R.I.P. William Clay Ford, Sr.,the last surviving grandson of the automaker's founder Henry Ford, former executive of the Ford Motor Co. and longtime owner of the Detroit Lions (NFL), died at age 88 of pneumonia at his home in the Detroit suburb Grosse Pointe Shores. He is survived by his son William Clay Ford Jr., the automaker's current executive chairman of which Ford Sr. was the director emeritus. His survivors include his wife of 66 years, Martha Firestone Ford, granddaughter of Harvey Firestone, the founder of the Firestone tire company and a good friend of the first Henry Ford. In addition to his wife and William Jr., Ford is survived by his daughters Martha Ford Morse, Sheila Ford Hamp and Elizabeth Ford Kontulis; 14 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
He joined the automaker's sales and advertising staff after graduating from Yale in 1949 and was named a company vice president in 1953. Ford's notable executive positions included vice president of product design, head of the former Continental Division and member of the Office of the Chief Executive. His board positions included vice chairman, chairman of the Executive Committee and chairman of the Finance Committee. He was a Ford director from 1948 until his retirement in 2005 - more than half the automaker's 110-year history. Forbes magazine has estimated his fortune at $1.35 billion. Ford bought the Lions in 1963 for a reported $4.5 million (now valued at $900 million) and was the team's chairman until his death. In recent years, the club has been managed by his son Bill Jr. The Lions never won a National Football League championship under his ownership; its last NFL crown came in 1957.
R.I.P. William Clay Ford, Sr., longtime executive of the Ford Motor Co. founded by his grandfather and owner of the NFL's Detroit Lions.
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