Gone With or Without fanfare

[jdb1]

Yeah, Klonny. Devastated is exactly how I feel. Roberts, along with Richard Boone, were the two TV stars of my youth who clued me into the cool and sexy vibe that actors can exude. I just loved Roberts' imperturbable urbanity on Bonanza. The show was never quite the same in terms of group dynamics after he left it.

[Ollie]

I too noticed his departure from BONANZA and, while the show had a limited appeal to me at that young age, it lost just about all of it soon thereafter. I never quite equated its demotion purely to "Adam's" departure, but I think missing his great range of expressions was indeed critical for me. He could be stern and big brotherly, angry and fierce and genuinely looking like he could slug it out with bad guys. He was handsome enough to be a leading man to any pretty woman. Michael Landon was just a teen heart-throb. Ugh. "Cute" as my sister would say. Oh lordy - what a cross to bear! "Cute". Gag. Lorne Greene kept his exasperated faces, and his angry ones, or his dull plain fatherly ones, but the show really lacked the 360-degree range of expressions that Pernell brought to "Adam".

Alas it and most other westerns fell from my attention span about the same time. The color-TV revealed too many indoor sets, I've always thought, the huge "fakeyness" of TV production. I was sure the Lone Ranger never had to suffer such indignities! Even Paladin walked down REAL streets. Real looking, at least.

I'm just glad no one asked me how they get that camera out on the wing of Sky King's plane, and muffled the engines so much that we could look inside a flying plane AND hear their conversations perfectly. Me, with a red-towel specifically purchased to clothespin to my t-shirt shoulders. "Easy! They had Superman flying outside the plane, holding the camera!" Sure. Why not? When I see some of those Western Set backdrops, I think that childish guess is AS REAL as those TV producers were trying to con onto us.

[srowley75]

Sad news to wake up to this morning - some not know this lady, but she was one of my favorite modern-day character performers.

Actress Zelda Rubinstein, star of the horror film “Poltergeist” died at the age of 76 Wednesday, her agent tells Fox411.com.

According to Eric Stevens, Rubinstein died shortly before 2 a.m. in Los Angeles. The petite actress, who stood just 4 feet, 3 inches, had been suffering from various health problems following a heart attack last year.

Rubinstein is best known for playing psychic medium Tangina in the 1982 Steven Spielberg blockbuster “Poltergeist” and became something of a cult figure for her soft-spoken voice.

The actress was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 and worked as a lab technician for years before becoming a famous star in her 40s. After her breakout turn in “Poltergeist,” she appeared in other successful films including “Teen Witch,” “Sixteen Candles” and “Cages.”

According to Stevens, Rubinstein died at the Barlow Respiratory Hospital after spending months under professional care. Last month, Rubinstein was reportedly taken off of life support after two of her major organs failed.

She stole the show in Poltergeist. I'd have listed her for Oscar consideration that year.

[klondike]

JD Salinger is dead @ 91.
Unlike the eternal Holden, he will no longer need to worry about "all those stupid conversations!"

[mrsl]

.
I liked that little woman. She reminded me of the Pillsbury doughboy.
.

[Lzcutter]

Here' the obit for J. D. Salinger:

After "The Catcher in the Rye" exploded onto the literary scene in 1951, author J.D. Salinger had what every writer yearns for -- money, fame and critical acclaim. "Catcher" became a touchstone for the teenage culture just emerging in post-World War II America, and has remained one for every generation of youths since.

But instead of basking in celebrity, Salinger walked away and slammed the door.After one brilliant novel, a novella and a couple of dozen short stories, he turned his back on the cult hunger for his writing and after 1965 refused to publish further. He guarded his privacy so fiercely that he sued to keep his words out of print.

Whether a cover-up for writer's block or the ultimate expression of the alienation that defined his most famous protagonist, Holden Caulfield, Salinger's stubborn silence only enlarged the cult. He remained an enigma to his death.

Salinger, 91, died of natural causes Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., according to a statement from his longtime literary agency, Harold Ober Associates, which made the announcement on behalf of Salinger's family.

"Despite having broken his hip in May, his health had been excellent until a rather sudden decline after the new year," the statement said.

Citing the author's "lifelong, uncompromising desire to protect and defend his privacy," the statement said there would be no service and requested "that people's respect for him, his work and his privacy be extended" to his family.

Asked if any new Salinger writing will be published, his agent, Phyllis Westberg, declined to comment.

Perhaps no other writer of so few known works generated as much popular and critical interest as Salinger, whose oeuvre includes "Franny and Zooey" (1961) and the collections "Nine Stories" (1953) and "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; and Seymour: An Introduction" (1963). The New Yorker published his last short story -- "Hapworth 16, 1924" -- in 1965.

His silence provoked a range of reactions from literary critics, some characterizing it as a form of cowardice and others as a cunning strategy that, despite its outward intentions, helped preserve his mythical status in American culture. Still others interpreted his withdrawal as the deliberate spiritual stance of a man immersed in Eastern religions, particularly Zen Buddhism and Hindu Vedantic philosophy.

It's very lenghty, so the rest of the obit can be read here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/ ... full.story

[klondike]

A minor point, but one I find annoying: all the obit materials I've perused keep insisting on referencing his home in Cornish, NH (35 minutes upriver from my house) as being his one cherished hideaway since he "went to ground" after he first sought to dodge media attention.
The factual truth is that Salinger had burrowed into several different seclusional residences before hunkering down into the backwoods of Cornish, including cabins & farmsteads in Manchester, Vermont & Bennington, NH.

[silentscreen]

I'm ashamed to admit that I've heard about "Catcher in the Rye" all my life and have failed to read it.

I heard that he loved writing, but hated publishing. Maybe they'll find some unpublished manuscripts.

[Dewey1960]

silentscreen sez: "I'm ashamed to admit that I've heard about "Catcher in the Rye" all my life and have failed to read it."
No need to feel ashamed; now would be a perfect time to catch up with the beautiful prose of J. D. Salinger. His one novel and three collections of shorter works are, for many (including myself), four absolutely perfect books.
It's been rumored for decades that Salinger had accumulated a considerable amount of writing that he only wanted published after his death. I guess that remains to be seen.

[Lzcutter]

I got in so much trouble when I was in junior high school over Catcher in the Rye. The class reading assignment was something I had already read and so I was quietly reading Catcher without permission.

The gig was up when I broke out in gales of laughter over a passage in the book.

[klondike]

Well, if Salinger truly loved writing, he should have had quite a lot of stuff backlogged after 44.5 years!

[MichiganJ]

I got in so much trouble when I was in junior high school over Catcher in the Rye. The class reading assignment was something I had already read and so I was quietly reading Catcher without permission.

The gig was up when I broke out in gales of laughter over a passage in the book.

I had a similar experience, surreptitiously reading Catcher. Earned me my only visit to the Vice Principal's office. He asked me to cover the book.

While I don't have any children, if I'd had daughters, they'd likely me named Phoebe and/or Zooey.

[ChiO]

Ditto here. Both Catcher in the Rye and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf were banned at my high school. However (being the smallest H.S. in Indiana), the county, once every two weeks, provided a small bus full of books from the public library -- and those were two that I checked out. That was one of my earliest experiences in pleading a case to the administration: Hey, you authorized the bus showing up and let us check out the books. I was less successful in arguing the merits of Candy with my mother.

[Mr. Arkadin]

Reading Catcher in the Rye at the tender age of 14, ruined any positive experience of Random Harvest (1942) I might have had.

[charliechaplinfan]

I started reading Catcher in the Rye just before giving birth to my daughter, I was enjoying it but never did finish it, nobody had told me that after a baby's arrival there would be no chance to read a book for at least a year.