Gone With or Without fanfare

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Charlie Callas was so much fun. There is laughter in heaven tonight...

[movieman1957]

My favorite film composer, John Barry, has died at age 77.

LONDON -- Legendary James Bond composer John Barry died in New York on Sunday at the age of 77 after a heart attack, his family said in an announcement.
Barry, originally from Yorkshire, England, penned some of the most iconic movie soundtracks of the last forty years, among them Midnight Cowboy, Dances With Wolves, Out of Africa and Born Free, for which he won Oscars.
But he will be most remembered for his long relationship with the Bond franchise, where he was responsible for the soundtrack to 11 Bond movies including Goldfinger, From Russia With love and You Only Live Twice.
He was one of the most respected film musicians in the world, winning a total of five Oscars and being awarded a BAFTA fellowship in 2005. He was also awarded an Order of the British Empire honor by the Queen in 1999 for his services to British music.
Barry grew up in the North of England, where his father was a cinema owner and his mother a classically trained pianist. His early career involved launching the John Barry Seven and later working for EMI.
A statement released by his family said: "It is with great sadness that the family of composer John Barry announce his passing on the 30th of January 2011 in New York."
His longtime friend and Bond collaborator David Arnold also posted a message on Twitter to Barry fans.
"I am profoundly saddened by the news but profoundly thankful for everything he did for music and for me personally."

[feaito]

One of the great composers has gone. Rest in Peace Mr. Barry. He's also one of my favorites....All the James Bond themes, Born Free, The Knack, Midnight Cowboy...I'm especially fond of his '60s music...

[moira finnie]

[youtube][/youtube]
Barry wrote wonderful music for less than perfect films many times, didn't he?

[movieman1957]

I sat through "The Specialist" just to hear Barry's music.

[Dewey1960]

Barry was one of the greatest, that's for sure! His score for the sensational
1960 UK juvenile delinquent melodrama BEAT GIRL, is one of my favorites!
[youtube][/youtube]

[Lzcutter]

I love a great deal of his music, most of which has been mentioned here. I would like to add his score to Chaplin is one of my faves.

[moira finnie]

I love a great deal of his music, most of which has been mentioned here. I would like to add his score to Chaplin is one of my faves.

[youtube][/youtube]

[Sue Sue Applegate]

I enjoyed his scores for their innovation and lushness...I suppose Out of Africa is at the top of the list, but I also enjoyed the Bond scores he was responsible for.

Peace and love to his family...

[Mr. Arkadin]

Tura Satana has passed.

[ChiO]

What a wonderful woman -- and Chicagoan -- Tura Satana was.

I met her briefly at a screening of FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (I cut a Fritz Lang class I was taking in order to be there -- I have my priorities straight). While others were buying posters of that epic to have her autograph, I handed her my copy of THE DOLL SQUAD. Her face lit up and she started talking to me about the director, Ted V. Mikels. Clearly a woman full of joy.

http://www.turasatana.com/home.html

[moira finnie]

From The New York Times, news that an erotic icon from a very different era has died. I hope she found some kind of peace:

February 3, 2011
Maria Schneider, Actress in ‘Last Tango,’ Dies at 58
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Maria Schneider, the French actress whose sex scenes with Marlon Brando in “Last Tango in Paris” set a new standard for explicitness on screen, died on Thursday in Paris. She was 58.

A spokesman for her agency, Act 1, said she had died after a long illness but provided no other details.

The baby-faced, voluptuous Ms. Schneider was only 19 when the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci chose her for the role of the free-spirited, mysterious Jeanne in “Last Tango.” She seemed, he said in explaining the choice, “like a Lolita, but more perverse.” The part was originally intended for Dominique Sanda, who dropped out after becoming pregnant.

In the film, Jeanne enters into a brief but torrid affair with a recently widowed American businessman, played by Brando. Their erotically charged relationship, played out in an empty apartment near the Bir-Hakeim Bridge in Paris, shocked audiences on the film’s release in 1972, especially a scene in which Brando pins Ms. Schneider to the floor and, taking a stick of butter, seems to perform anal intercourse. The Motion Picture Association of America gave the film an X rating.

“Last Tango” fixed Ms. Schneider in the public mind as a symbol of the sexual revolution. She spent years trying to move beyond the role, for which she was paid $4,000, and the notoriety that came with it.

“I felt very sad because I was treated like a sex symbol,” she told The Daily Mail of London in 2007. “I wanted to be recognized as an actress, and the whole scandal and aftermath of the film turned me a little crazy and I had a breakdown. Now, though, I can look at the film and like my work in it.”

The famous scene, she said, was not in the script and made it into the film only at Brando’s insistence. “I felt humiliated, and to be honest I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci,” she said. “After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take.”

Ms. Schneider later appeared opposite Jack Nicholson in “The Passenger” (1975), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, playing an architecture student known simply as the Girl.

Although she went on to work with important directors like René Clément in “The Baby Sitter” (1975) and Jacques Rivette in “Merry-Go-Round” (1981), her film career declined after the mid- 1970s, in part because of a turbulent personal life that included drug abuse, at least one suicide attempt and messy affairs with both men and women.

She walked off the set of “The Baby Sitter” (also known as “Scar Tissue”) in Rome and checked herself into a mental hospital to be with her girlfriend at the time. In 1977 she was cast as Conchita in Luis Buñuel’s “That Obscure Object of Desire” but left the film after arguing with Buñuel. Her part was assigned to two actresses, Ángela Molina and Carole Bouquet.

Maria Schneider was born on March 27, 1952, in Paris, the illegitimate daughter of Marie-Christine Schneider, a Romanian-born model, and the prominent actor Daniel Gélin. She did not meet her father, who refused to acknowledge her, until she was in her teens. She was reared by her mother in a town near the German border and left home at 15 for Paris, where she scratched out a living as a film extra and a model.

Brigitte Bardot, who had worked with Mr. Gélin on several films, was appalled at the girl’s situation and intervened, giving her a room in her house and helping find her an agent with William Morris. Ms. Schneider played small parts in “The Christmas Tree,” with William Holden and Virna Lisi, and “The Love Mates,” with Alain Delon, before being cast in “Last Tango.”

Her more recent films included Cyril Collard’s “Savage Nights” (1992), Franco Zeffirelli’s “Jane Eyre” (1996), Bertrand Blier’s “Actors” (2000) and Josiane Balasko’s “Cliente” (2008).

“I was too young to know better,” she said of “Last Tango” in her Daily Mail interview. “Marlon later said that he felt manipulated, and he was Marlon Brando, so you can imagine how I felt. People thought I was like the girl in the movie, but that wasn’t me.”

[Lzcutter]

The wonderful Betty Garrett has passed away. There will likely be longer obits in the morning.



Here she is at the TCM Film Festival for a poolside screening of Neptune's Daughter with Esther Williams and the Aqualillies.

Legendary actress Betty Garrett died Saturday morning of natural causes at UCLA Medical Center following a brief illness, according to L.A. Weekly.. She was 91.

Garrett appeared in numerous Broadway shows, including Something for the Boys, Call Me Mister, Bells Are Ringing, Meet Me In St. Louis and the Roundabout Theater Company's production of Follies.

She was a founding member of the 49-year-old Theatre West and appeared in many of their productions, including "Nunsense, Waiting in the Wings, and a revue, Betty Garrett, Closet Songwriter. She also appeared in many benefits for S.T.A.G.E. Garrett received the Career Achievement Awards from the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle and the Ovation Awards, among other honors.

Her many film and television credits include Words and Music, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Neptune's Daughter, On The Town, My Sister Eileen, All in the Family, Laverne and Shirley, and Becker.

She is survived by her sons,actor Andrew Parks and composer Garrett Parks, and a granddaughter, Madison Claire Parks.

[feaito]

How sad, she was a talented actress, lively and attractive; one of the most likable MGM personalities. I saw here recently on two MGM films: "Neptune's Daughter" and "Words and Music".