Gone With or Without fanfare

[JackFavell]

I wish I had it, I'm awful at comedy, except the unintentional kind.

[moira finnie]

I wish I had it, I'm awful at comedy, except the unintentional kind.

Well, we'd never know how "awful" your comedic timing was around here!

[JackFavell]

[RedRiver]

Timing is

[RedRiver]

everything.

[moira finnie]

Timing is

everything.

A perfect comment for our In Memoriam thread!

[Lzcutter]

Character actor Pat Renella has passed away.

Pat Renella, a suave character actor who played the mobster shot and killed by Steve McQueen in the waning moments of the 1968 classic crime thriller Bullitt, has died. He was 83.

Hollywood Reporter has the obit:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/p ... ies-396166

[moira finnie]

Marco Place found this fascinating story and reported it on Facebook, so I thought it might interest people here too. This was originally published back on the 19th of June, 2012 in The Telegraph (the American media seems to have been asleep at the switch this time). Mr. Clark probably could have lived off all the stories he might have told about his former employers, but instead he chose to have a much more interesting life, post-Hollywood.

I wonder if there has ever been any nonfiction book gathering the experiences of Hollywood's servants in the studio era into a book?

BTW, It sounds as though Greenwood, OK suffered the same fate as the better known Rosewood, FL--except that Mr. Clark saw this happen in 1921, two years before that other African-American town was obliterated in 1923 out of ignorance, jealousy and hate (unfortunately, the '20s saw a lot of this on various levels, thanks in part to the revival of the KKK after "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) made it look "romantic" to so many, accelerating its enormous growth then).

Joan Crawford's Butler, Otis Clark aged 109, Dies


Above: Otis Clark when he was 103.

Otis Clark, who has died aged 109, survived Tulsa’s race riots to become butler to Joan Crawford; in later life became the world’s oldest travelling evangelist.

Otis Grandville Clark was born on a homestead near Guthrie, Oklahoma, on February 13 1903, four years before Oklahoma became a state, and grew up in the Greenwood neighbourhood of Tulsa. His father was a former slave who had moved to Oklahoma after emancipation, though Otis was brought up by his mother and stepfather . By the early 20th century Tulsa was an oil boom town, and Greenwood, known as “Black Wall Street”, was home to one of America’s most prosperous African-American communities. “We had hotels, restaurants, pool halls, skating rinks,” Clark recalled. “Everything they had downtown, we had here.”

But the prosperity of Tulsa’s black community was resented by many whites, and racial tensions were exacerbated by the revival of the Ku Klux Klan after 1915. Then, on May 31 1921, the 18-year-old Clark was warned by a neighbour that a “ruckus” was on its way. By all accounts, the trouble began after a black shoeshine boy stepped on the foot of a white woman as he entered a lift, causing her to scream. The boy was arrested on suspicion of assault (rumours spread that the woman had been raped), and tempers flared when blacks and whites gathered at the jail amid rumours that the boy was to be lynched.

In the next few hours as many as 10,000 whites, including police and National Guard troops, poured into Greenwood, where they embarked on an orgy of killing, looting and burning. Survivors told of white rioters kicking down the doors of homes and businesses, torching the buildings and firing guns wildly at their fleeing occupants.

After 16 hours of mayhem the black section of town had been reduced to ashes, and many of its former residents — some estimates put the toll as high as 300 — were dead. Thousands were left destitute.
Clark stayed in Tulsa only to search for his stepfather and his bulldog, Bob, who had disappeared during the riot. “We never did see them no more,” he recalled. Survivors spoke later of seeing bodies dumped into the Arkansas river, into mining pits and into mass graves which were subsequently covered by housing and commercial developments.

Afterwards Clark fled Tulsa to look for his real father, who worked on the railways, and eventually found him in Los Angeles. There Clark found work as an extra in the Hollywood studios. He also found work in domestic service for actors including Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin. In particular he became a great friend of the black character actor Stepin Fetchit, and worked as a butler for Joan Crawford, living in her Hollywood mansion with his first wife, who worked as a cook.

But he never had much time for what he called the “show folks”. “ They’d tell other folks how to act and they didn’t act that way themselves,” he recalled.
It was while he was in jail for bootlegging that he found God: “I made up my mind to join the Salvation Army,” he recalled. After his release he became involved with the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles — the birthplace of Pentecostalism. He was ordained and embarked on a life as a preacher, eventually becoming a bishop with Life Enrichment Ministries, an association of 250 non-denominational congregations which he co-founded with his “spiritual daughter”, Gwynneth Williams.

Clark, who took the first of two “mission trips” to Africa at the age of 103, and embarked on a mission to the West Indies at the age of 107, remained in excellent health until earlier this year. He liked to boast that he needed no medications and had kept all his teeth bar one (“the dentist tricked me out of it” ). His longevity he attributed to “holding on to the Big Boss upstairs”.
He was four times married and outlived all his wives; a daughter also predeceased him.

[MissGoddess]

Fascinating life. On a side note, it always amazes me how people who had really tough lives, with many hardships and certainly didn't observe any special care with their health like they preach you must do today---often live into healthy old age. And most of them have some kind of belief in God. Good for him! He outlived all his tormentors and that's some satisfaction.

[JackFavell]

That's a stunning story. God bless him, I'm glad he lived a long and happy life. I can't even imagine living through a pogrom like that, there's an entire book in just that one section of his life.

[charliechaplinfan]

God bless him. I'm amazed at the picture of him aged 103, I've seen older looking 70 year olds, in fact he looks better than I do on a bad day. 109, what an age and what a life.

[Lzcutter]

For many of us of a certain age, this one may hurt:

[youtube][/youtube]

Ravi Shankar died this afternoon in San Diego after being admitted to Scripps Memorial Hospital last week complaining of breathing difficulties. The legendary musician and his musician daughter Anoushka were both nominated last week for 2013 Grammy awards in the world music category. Recording star Norah Jones is also the daughter of Ravi Shankar.

For more: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2012/ ... maestr.php

And if you were a fan of Barney Miller and Night Court, this will probably be of interest:

Reinold Weege was a writer on Barney Miller and went to create Night Court:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/arts/ ... .html?_r=0

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Lynn, thank you for these notices. It is indeed sad to hear about Ravi Shankar, and Reinold Weege.

Shankar's daughters are wonderful testaments to his talent and lovely legacies to the world.

[JackFavell]

Oh no, I am very sad about Reinold Weege, both of those shows had a quirky sense of humor that I loved.

I can't help but think that Ravi Shankar is making even more beautiful music in the afterlife.

[Western Guy]

My God, yes! I have memories of summers spent at my aunt's house where I'd sit for hours in the basement with a glass of lemonade watching my cousin paint his abstract art while Ravi Shankar records played on the hi-fi. Knew nothing about relaxation techniques or experiencing higher levels of consciousness as an adolescent but, regardless, felt myself being swept away by this Master's music. Today my wife and I enter our Zen to the accompanimsent of Ravi and his magical sitar.

God bless you, Ravi.