Gone With or Without fanfare

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Moira,
Thank you for posting this information.

I am so sorry to hear about his passing. He was one of the symbols of the 50's...

[mrsl]

.
I always preferred Dave over Ricky believe it or not. I liked Ricky, but thought Dave was more handsome. I thought Mark Harmon and his wife had taken in Ricky's kids to raise after a lot of courtroom drama.
.

[moira finnie]

Anne, I believe that the Harmons and the Nelsons were all deeply concerned about all the children of Rick Nelson and his former wife, Kristin Harmon, who was not able to care for them alone, since she had some psychological and behavioral issues.

In an interesting passing note on the impact of responsibility felt by David Nelson to carry his family banner, in a 1971 Esquire article on the family, the older brother stressed that "[The off-screen Nelson family] was real and [the television] one wasn't," he said. "For your sanity, you had to keep that clear. Rick and I had to distinguish between our father, and the director telling us what to do. If we got the lines crossed, that's where the arguments started, and I would end up putting my fist through a wall behind the set, because I was that angry."

Noting that a "lot of families are trying to make a transition, in morals and values, from the Fifties to the Seventies," he said that in "our family, there was no generation gap, and I think it's too bad. Because I was a little old man at thirteen. I was polite, tried never to offend anyone, and I felt this great responsibility, because I wasn't just me—I was a quarter of a thing. Whatever I did, I felt the burden of three other people and all the crew who worked on the show. I wasn't a truck driver's son who could go out and bust people if he got mad."

[moira finnie]

Word comes this morning of the death of actor Paul Picerni (1922-2011), whose Agent Lee Hobson was one of the most enduring presences in The Untouchables (1959-1963). Picerni was a last link to the end of the studio era, having appeared in such films as House of Wax (1953), The Desert Song (1953), The Brothers Rico (1957), Marjorie Morningstar (1958), The Scalphunters (1968) and Airport (1970) and many more. The father of eight, and grandfather of ten, Mr. Picerni has been married to Marie Mason (née Marie Mussamecci) since 1947.

Boy, I had such a crush on him when I was a kid! He was always showing up in movies and tv shows as a hardworking Italian lad with brains and talent. The audience was always supposed to be savoring the sight of a Robert Stack or a Paul Newman--but my sisters and I always had our eye on Paul Picerni and his beautiful smile, gentle manner and fine speaking voice. Then I read his autobiography, Steps to Stardom a few years ago and discovered that in many ways he really was that striving person he played--except that he also had a great sense of humor. My condolences to this lovely man's large family and friends. Paul and his beautiful family can be seen in 1962 in the newspaper cutting below, (I apologize for the watermark). Please click on the photo to see the large version of the image.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

My condolences also to his family. He was such a go-getter.

And I especially loved his performance in The Young Philadelphians. Even though he and Anthony Judson Lawrence were
competitors on screen, he never let his character slip into less than professional treatment of his esteemed colleague.

I never knew about his autobiography. I need to hunt that one down because he was memorable and enjoyable in everything I can
ever remember him appearing in, and it sounds like a must read for me.

Thanks again for keeping us well informed, Moira. You are an SSO treasure!

[Vecchiolarry]

Hi,

What a sorry surprise to hear of Mr. Picerni's passing....
I had just watched him last week in the Jane Wyman film, "Miracle in the Rain", where he played a sympathetic priest....

His special smile did light up the screen in many a film...

R.I.P. Mr. Picerni

Larry

[mongoII]

Sorry to hear about the death of Paul Picerni. He was a reliable actor that was fun to watch ala Steve Cochran. May he rest in peace.

[klondike]

Don't know how we all missed this one; she passed on the 11th - and all us Vermonters are indebted to her for our unofficial (but favorite) state song!

Big band singer Margaret Whiting dies in NJ at 86

As a songwriter's daughter and a singer who sold millions of records herself in the 1940s and '50s, Margaret Whiting knew what separated a good singer from a great one.
"Being a great actress, being very dramatic," she said in a 2001 interview. "Some people sing beautiful songs, but they don't put all the meaning into them, and that's the important thing. To read a lyric, to make the words come alive, that's the secret."

Whiting, a sweet-voiced performer known for sentimental ballads such as "Moonlight in Vermont" and "It Might as Well Be Spring," died Monday at the Lillian Booth Actors' Home in Englewood, N.J., home administrator Jordan Strohl said. She was 86. She had lived in New York City for many years before moving to the home in March.

As the daughter of Richard Whiting, a prolific composer of such hits as "My Ideal," "Sleepy Time Gal" and "Beyond the Blue Horizon," Whiting grew up with the music business. She began singing at a young age, and her career almost seemed predetermined.

Born in Detroit on July 22, 1924, Whiting moved with her family to Los Angeles after musicals became the rage and her father headed west to write for them. He turned out songs for Maurice Chevalier and Bing Crosby while at Paramount and composed "Hooray for Hollywood" and "Too Marvelous for Words" for Warner Bros.

And on at least one occasion, his daughter provided him with unexpected inspiration.

In 2000, Whiting recalled how she came home from school one day with an all-day lollipop while her father was trying to write a song for a Shirley Temple movie. At first he was annoyed by the sticky kisses, but then inspiration struck.

He called lyricist Sidney Clare and said, "How about 'The Good Ship Lollipop' for Shirley?"

The Whiting family's home in the posh Bel-Air community in Los Angeles was often a gathering place for such songwriters as George and Ira Gershwin, Frank Loesser, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. And as Whiting grew, her father's friends took note of her talents as a singer and encouraged her to perfect her craft.

Among them was Mercer, her father's lyricist and close friend, who inspired the young Whiting to take years of vocal training when he told her following an early audition, "Grow up and learn to sing." And when Mercer became a founding partner in Capitol Records in 1942, the 18-year-old Whiting was the first singer he put under contract.

Fifty-five years later, Whiting and her fourth husband, Jack Wrangler, honored Mercer with a musical tribute called "Dream," which ran for 133 performances on Broadway.

It was Mercer who had coached the teenage Whiting through her first recording, of her father's "My Ideal," and although Chevalier and Frank Sinatra had already recorded the tune, her version sold well.

She followed it with a remarkable procession of million sellers: "That Old Black Magic," "It Might as Well Be Spring," "Come Rain or Come Shine" and her biggest seller and signature song, "Moonlight in Vermont."

Like most recording stars of the 1940s and early '50s, her career was eclipsed by the rock 'n' roll revolution, although she continued to find work in such Broadway productions as "Pal Joey," "Gypsy" and "Call Me Madam."

She also toured regularly with the big bands of Freddy Martin, Frankie Carle and Bob Crosby and sang in cabarets, in auditoriums and with the St. Louis Symphony. With Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connell and Rose Marie, she crossed the country in a revue called "4 Girls 4."

In all, she recorded more than 500 songs during her career and was one of the first mainstream artists to delve into Nashville, Tenn., combining with country star Jimmy Wakely on the hit "Slippin' Around." She also recorded rock, novelty and sacred songs and continued touring as late as the 1990s.

But in later years, it was Whiting's romance with Wrangler, an openly gay actor 22 years her junior, that turned heads. The two met in the 1970s, then lived together for many years and married in 1994.

When asked about their relationship, Wrangler told the Chicago Tribune they "see things the same way, comically, professionally and romantically." After meeting Whiting, Wrangler turned his attention to theater and cabaret, crafting her cabaret acts and several shows. Their marriage lasted until his death in 2009.

[Lzcutter]

British actress Susannah York has passed away.

From the British Guardian:

Susannah York, the British actress whose gamine looks and demure persona made her an icon of the swinging 60s, has died at the age of 72. She passed away yesterday following a long battle with bone marrow cancer.

York won acclaim for her roles in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? – the 1969 film role for which she was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe – as well as A Man For All Seasons in 1966 and as the feisty section officer who took on Kenneth More in the stirring second world war epic Battle of Britain in 1969.

She also had an extensive and critically acclaimed stage career, which included roles in The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs and Henry James's play Appearances, and continued to act late into her life. She was also a children's author, penning two fantasy novels.

Her son, actor Orlando Wells, yesterday described her as "an absolutely fantastic mother, who was very down to earth".

"She loved nothing more than cooking a good Sunday roast and sitting around a fire of a winter's evening. In some senses, she was quite a home girl. Both Sasha [his sister] and I feel incredibly lucky to have her as a mother," he said.

Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard also played tribute to York, recalling his first meeting at the dawn of the 1960s with a woman who was to win a legion of male admirers.

"I remember back in 1961, when I was a young journalist, I interviewed her for a magazine for her film The Greengage Summer, and I still remember how completely charmed I was.

"She was so pleasant to me – she even let me interview her at home as long as I promised not to write that, because journalists weren't normally allowed to go to her home. I still think of her with great affection."

Born Susannah Yolande Fletcher in London in January 1939, her father was a merchant banker and her mother the daughter of a diplomat. Her parents divorced when she was five and after her mother remarried a Scottish businessman the family moved to Scotland.

After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she won the Ronson award for most promising student, York began her film career in 1960 when she appeared in Tunes of Glory, co-starring with Alec Guinness and John Mills. In the same year she met and married Michael Wells, with whom she had two children, before they divorced in 1976.

The 1960s proved to be a golden period for her, during which she was to become one of the decade's most memorable faces. A string of successes culminated in her best-known role, starring with Jane Fonda in the Sydney Pollack-directed They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, for which she won a Bafta and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.

Critics also praised her performance as Childie, the young lesbian in Robert Aldrich's film adaptation of Frank Marcus's hit play The Killing of Sister George (1968), a role that was said to have demonstrated her versatility.

Acclaim for her work continued into the 1970s, when she went on to appear with Glenda Jackson in The Maids (1975), and in Zee and Co (1972).

Her stage career underwent a particular rejuvenation in the 1990s when she played Gertrude and Mistress Ford in the RSC's productions of Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Outside of the world of drama, York was also politically active and supported causes ranging from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to the campaign to free Mordechai Vanunu, who was imprisoned after blowing the whistle on Israel's nuclear arms programme.

York showed the rebellious streak that was a feature of her life when, performing The Loves of Shakespeare's Women in Tel Aviv in 2007, she dedicated the performance to Vanunu.

However, she spoke of the utmost importance of family to her life in a 2008 interview. "Seeing the family is a very important part of my weekend. I see a lot of my daughter Sasha and my son Orlando," she said.

"We all live quite close to each other on different sides of Clapham Common in south London. My grandson, Rafferty, is absolutely lovely. He's a year old and there's another child on the way."

She is survived by her two children, as well as a grandson and a granddaughter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan ... tle-cancer

[Lzcutter]

Fitness guru Jack LaLanne has passed away. Morro Bay is one of the places that MrCutter and I like to visit and we had the pleasure of seeing Jack and his wife on Sunday mornings at Dorn's (the best restaurant in Morro Bay) for breakfast. He would work the room where the regulars knew him well and after the our first couple of encounters, on our visits he would stop by our table to say hello.

Rest in peace, Jack. You were quite the character and Dorn's on Sundays won't be the same without you.

From CNN:

American fitness guru Jack LaLanne died Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay, California, according to his long-time agent, Rick Hersh. He was 96.

The cause, said Hersh, was respiratory failure due to pneumonia. LaLanne had been ill for the past week. His wife, Elaine, was at his side, along with his family and friends, Hersh said. No funeral arrangements were announced, but his agent said plans were being made.

LaLanne spent decades talking about the healthful benefits of exercise and fitness. He opened his own health spa in California in 1936, years before the fitness craze swept the United States. LaLanne even designed the world's first leg-extension machine, along with several other pieces of fitness equipment now standard in the fitness industry.

He was born in San Francisco on September 26, 1914. A self-confessed sugar- and junk-food addict as a child, he went on to study bodybuilding and weight-lifting by the time he was in his late teens.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, LaLanne performed multiple feats of strength and endurance. His first such stunt was an underwater swim the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, loaded with 140 pounds of equipment, in 1954. He went on to stage many attention-getting events, including completing over a thousand pushups in a little over 20 minutes, and towing 65 boats filled with thousands of pounds of wood pulp in Japan.

LaLanne had his own workout program, "The Jack LaLanne Show." First broadcast nationally in 1959, the show went on to run for three decades.

In his later years, he was easily recognized because of late-night infomercials on on the benefits of juicing.

He also made many appearances on CNN's "Larry King Live" and was a friend of the talk show host. "There was no one like Jack LaLanne," King said Sunday night. "He would go on forever ... a true guru. I guess Charles Atlas from the old comic books would be the predecessor for Jack LaLanne."

But it wasn't simply LaLanne's physical prowess that impressed King. "Elderly people were encouraged by him because he just kept on going," King said, adding that modern fitness celebrities owe a debt of gratitude to the original impresario of exercise.

LaLanne's wife of 51 years released a statement on her husband's passing: "I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for," Elaine said.

[klondike]

Wasn't Jack active in the product-infomercial field in the last decade?

[JackFavell]

MY gosh!I was just watching him Saturday on his infomercial, I happened to flip past and stopped.... thinking that it was amazing he was still going strong, god love him, going to outlive us all. I'm glad I was sending out good thoughts in his direction. What a dear man.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Lynn, what a great story about such an energetic, optimistic man.

He inspired many to rise from the couch and conquer personal health issues. For decades. What enthusiasm...

My condolences to his family.

[moira finnie]

No More Frank Nitti!

Bruce Gordon: characterized below as the man who played the white whale to the Captain Ahab of Elliot Ness (Robert Stack)

From the New York Times

Bruce Gordon, TV Mobster, Dies at 94
By MARGALIT FOX

Bruce Gordon, a granite-faced, gravel-voiced character actor famous for playing heavies, most memorably the mob boss Frank Nitti on the classic television series “The Untouchables,” died on Thursday. He was 94 and lived in Santa Fe, N.M.

The death, after a long illness, was announced on the Web site of Santa Fe Funeral Options, a local funeral home. Information on survivors, or on where Mr. Gordon died, was not made available.

With his broad, strong, slightly asymmetrical features, Mr. Gordon looked as though he had been carved from stone — with a few judicious slips of the chisel. His face and his voice preordained him for a life of playing tough guys on television, film and in an extensive stage career.

As the white whale of Eliot Ness, the federal agent played by Robert Stack, Mr. Gordon was a recurring fixture of “The Untouchables,” broadcast on ABC from 1959 to 1963. (His death follows that, on Jan. 12, of Paul Picerni, who played Ness’s right-hand man, Agent Lee Hobson.)

Nitti was the front man for Chicago’s organized-crime syndicate in the 1930s, while its leader, Al Capone, was in jail for tax evasion. In real life, according to published accounts, Nitti appeared to have been little more than a figurehead, with the real power concentrated among Capone’s other lieutenants.

As played by Mr. Gordon, Nitti was memorably in control, presiding over an illicit network of late-Prohibition-era breweries, drug running, gambling and much else. He was filled with menace: pinstriped, perennially scowling and looming so large he seemed to crowd the borders of the screen.

Yet because of Mr. Gordon’s essential warmth as an actor, his Nitti had tremendous rough-hewn charm. Even the character’s oft-repeated threat — “You’re dead!” — uttered with a finger stabbing toward the intended victim, had, in his delivery, a comic monosyllabic eloquence.

Bruce Gordon was born in Fitchburg, Mass., on Feb. 1, 1916. He made his Broadway debut in 1937, playing several small roles (including that of a young street tough) in “The Fireman’s Flame,” a musical melodrama about Old New York’s rival volunteer fire companies.

From the late 1940s until his retirement in the mid-’80s, Mr. Gordon was a ubiquitous presence on television, making guest appearances on “I Spy,” “Have Gun — Will Travel,” “Gunsmoke,” “Perry Mason,” “Bonanza” and “Police Woman,” among many other shows.

In the late ’50s he was the host of “Behind Closed Doors,” an espionage docudrama on NBC, and in the mid-’60s had a recurring role on “Peyton Place” as the vengeful alcoholic Gus Chernak.

He made a handful of feature films, among them “Love Happy” (1949), the Marx Brothers’ last movie; “The Buccaneer” (1958), starring Yul Brynner; and “Tower of London” (1962), starring Vincent Price.

Mr. Gordon appeared on Broadway many times. He was in the original cast of the hit comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace,” which opened in 1941 and starred Boris Karloff. Uncharacteristically, given his later résumé, Mr. Gordon played a policeman.

His other Broadway credits include Aegeus, King of Athens, in “Medea” (1949), starring Judith Anderson; Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, in “Richard II” (1951); two small roles in the original American production of “The Lark” (1955 ), by Jean Anouilh, starring Julie Harris; and a featured part in “Nowhere to Go But Up,” a short-lived 1962 musical about Prohibition-era federal agents in which Mr. Gordon played a mobster.

No matter what roles he took, Frank Nitti dogged Mr. Gordon amicably for years. One of the more unusual instances was a commercial for the Bell Telephone System, broadcast on television in the late 1960s. In it, Mr. Gordon played Big Sully, a Runyonesque tough who touts special weekend rates.

“It is a well-known fact that very little scratch is needed to make a long-distance call all day Saturday and Sunday,” Mr. Gordon growled. “Is a buck too much for a doll like her in New York” — and here he indicates the actress Louise Lasser — “to pay to speak with her mother in California?”

At commercial’s end, Ms. Lasser gets through to her mother, prompting Mr. Gordon to dissolve in sentimental tears.

[moira finnie]

File this one under There's Laughter in Paradise:

From the Los Angeles Times:

Charlie Callas dies at 83; zany, character-oriented comedian

By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times
January 29, 2011


Charlie Callas, the veteran comedian who punctuated his zany, character-oriented comedy routines with a bizarre array of facial expressions and sound effects, has died. He was 83.

Callas, a resident of Las Vegas, died Thursday evening of natural causes in a hospice, said his son Mark.

A former drummer for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and other big bands who switched to comedy in the mid-1960s, Callas once described himself as being "like a little kid running loose in the living room."

A 1982 article in The Times said Callas "will strut, stroll, fall down or drape himself over anything handy to get laughs during his routines."

"Somebody once told me, 'You look like a cartoon that somebody just drew,' " Callas recalled in a 1991 interview with New York's Newsday. "And that's what I am, a cartoon come to wreak havoc, like a wild kid. I'm silly."

The whippet-thin Callas, whose visually oriented brand of humor included celebrity impressions, was a regular guest on TV variety and talk shows in the 1960s and '70s, including "The Merv Griffin Show," Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" and the "Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts."

Comedian Jack Carter, who appeared on a couple of the Martin "Roasts" with Callas, recalled Friday that "he always came as a character. He dressed as a fireman or a maid or stuff like that. Dean liked him to do costume stuff."

Added Carter: "He did great sounds and noises, like water spouting. And he did great double talk. He was really a character comedian more than anything. But he was a cute guy, totally without malice, and he was fun to be around. He was always working, always trying things."

Callas often toured with Frank Sinatra, including a nine-day appearance at the Universal Amphitheatre in 1982. Asked by a Times reporter how he felt working with Sinatra, Callas quipped: "Who? Is that the guy who goes on after me?"

On television, Callas played Malcolm Argos, a reformed small-time thief and con man who helped with cases on "Switch," the 1975-78 detective drama starring Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert.

He also was a regular on the short-lived 1972 comedy-variety show "ABC Comedy Hour" and made occasional guest appearances on TV series such as "The Munsters," "The Monkees," "The Love Boat" and "L.A. Law."

Callas, who provided the voice of Elliott in the 1977 movie "Pete's Dragon," appeared in a number of films, including Jerry Lewis' "The Big Mouth" and Mel Brooks' "Silent Movie," "High Anxiety" and "History of the World: Part I."

"Charlie Callas was a cast of thousands all by himself," Brooks said in a statement to The Times. "He could do a thousand faces, a thousand voices and a thousand sound effects. In 'High Anxiety,' he played a cocker spaniel. He cost me a lot of money — it was almost impossible to finish a scene without the whole crew collapsing in laughter.

"The world of comedy will miss him very much."

Born in Brooklyn on Dec. 20, 1927, Callas served in the Army during World War II before playing drums in bands with Dorsey, Claude Thornhill and Buddy Rich.

"I was always clowning around when I was a musician and driving the guys on the band bus crazy," he told The Times in 1982. "They said I played 'funny drums' and should become a comedian."

He semi-retired about eight years ago, his son said.

Callas' wife, Eve, died last year. In addition to his son Mark, he is survived by another son, Larry; and two grandsons.

[email protected]

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times