Now that is a true Great Man of history.
E. O. Wilson (1929-2021), biologist and writer.
Edward O Wilson, a US naturalist known to some as the “modern-day Darwin”, died on Sunday at the age of 92 in Massachusetts, his foundation said in a statement.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/...arwin-dies
From Wikipedia:
Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021), usually cited as E. O. Wilson, was an American biologist, naturalist, and writer. Wilson was an influential biologist who on numerous occasions had been given the nicknames "The New Darwin", "Darwin's natural heir" or "The Darwin of the 21st century". His biological specialty was myrmecology, the study of ants, on which he was called the world's leading expert.
Wilson has been called "the father of sociobiology" and "the father of biodiversity" for his environmental advocacy, and his secular-humanist and deist ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters. Among his greatest contributions to ecological theory is the theory of island biogeography, which he developed in collaboration with the mathematical ecologist Robert MacArthur. This theory served as the foundation of the field of conservation area design, as well as the unified neutral theory of biodiversity of Stephen P. Hubbell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson
Harry Mason Reid (/riːd/; December 2, 1939 – December 28, 2021)[1] was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator from Nevada from 1987 to 2017. He led the Senate Democratic Caucus from 2005 to 2017 and was the Senate Majority Leader from 2007 to 2015.
Reid began his public career as the city attorney for Henderson, Nevada, before being elected to the Nevada Assembly in 1968. Reid's former boxing coach, Mike O'Callaghan, chose Reid as his running mate in the 1970 Nevada gubernatorial election, and Reid served as Lieutenant Governor of Nevada from 1971 to 1975. After being defeated in races for the United States Senate and mayor of Las Vegas, Reid served as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission from 1977 to 1981. From 1983 to 1987, Reid represented Nevada's 1st district in the United States House of Representatives.
Reid was elected to the United States Senate in 1986 and served in the Senate from 1987 to 2017. He served as the Senate Democratic Whip from 1999 to 2005 before succeeding Tom Daschle as Senate Minority Leader. The Democrats won control of the Senate after the 2006 United States Senate elections, and Reid became the Senate Majority Leader in 2007. He held that position for the final two years of George W. Bush's presidency and for the first six years of Barack Obama's presidency. As Majority Leader, Reid helped pass major legislation of the Obama administration, such as the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Act, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In 2013, under Reid's leadership, the Senate Democratic majority controversially invoked the "nuclear option" to eliminate the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster for presidential nominations, other than nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court.[2] Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 United States Senate elections, and Reid served as Senate Minority Leader from 2015 until his retirement in 2017.
Reid was succeeded as the Senate Democratic leader by Chuck Schumer, whose leadership bid had been endorsed by Reid. Along with Alben W. Barkley and Mike Mansfield, Reid was one of only three senators to have served at least eight years as majority leader.
More at Wikipedia.
John Earl Madden (April 10, 1936 – December 28, 2021) was an American football coach and sportscaster. Madden was the head coach of the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League (NFL) for ten seasons (1969–1978), and helmed them to a championship victory in Super Bowl XI (1977). After retiring from coaching, he served as a color commentator for NFL telecasts until 2009.
In 2006, Madden was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in recognition of his coaching career. He is also widely known for the long-running Madden NFL video game series, which he lent his namesake to, endorsed, and fronted from 1988. Madden worked as a color analyst for all four major networks: CBS (1979–1993), Fox (1994–2001), ABC (2002–2005), and NBC (2006–2008). Madden retired from broadcasting after the 2008 NFL season. He also wrote several books and served as a commercial pitchman for various products and retailers.
More at Wikipedia.
No hoax this time. Sad.
https://people.com/tv/betty-white-the-go...ead-at-99/
Betty White, TV's perennial Golden Girl, has died. She was 99.
"Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever," her agent and close friend Jeff Witjas told PEOPLE in a statement on Friday. "I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don't think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again."
White was gearing up to celebrate her 100th birthday on Jan. 17. Ahead of her centennial year, in January, White opened up to PEOPLE about how she was feeling about turning 100 years old.
"I'm so lucky to be in such good health and feel so good at this age," said the veteran actress. "It's amazing."
According to White, being "born a cockeyed optimist" was the key to her upbeat nature. "I got it from my mom, and that never changed," she said. "I always find the positive."
Of course, the iconic actress also cracked a joke about the secret to her long life, telling PEOPLE: "I try to avoid anything green. I think it's working."
"We are deeply saddened by the news of Betty White's passing," said PEOPLE editor-in-chief Dan Wakeford. "We are honored that she recently chose to work with PEOPLE to celebrate her extraordinary life and career."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_White
Gábor Kállai (21 February 1959 – 31 December 2021[1]) was a Hungarian chess Grandmaster. His Elo rating in October 2008 was 2462, but had been ranked as high as 2555 (in 2001).
In team championships he has won several gold medals; in Hungary with MTK-VM and with Miskolci SSC, in Switzerland with the team of Bern, and in France with the team of Strasbourg.
He has written nine books, published in multiple languages. Basic Chess Openings is his most popular work, published in Hungarian, English and French. Since 2005 he has written a chess column in the Hungarian daily newspaper Népszabadság and from 2006 has presented a TV-program on Hungarian SPORT1 TV (SAKKK!). In 2014, he was named chair of MTK's chess section.
As a chess trainer, he worked between 1983–1986 as a second of GM Zoltán Ribli, between 1980–1994 as one of the coaches of Zsuzsa Polgár and in 2005, was appointed a FIDE Senior Trainer[2] (the highest trainer licence of FIDE). From 2012 to 2013 he coached Kayden Troff and between 2012 and 2015 Jeffery Xiong.[3] In 2015, he was appointed a master instructor at the Hungarian Physical Education University.[4]
From 2001 to 2005 he was the Professional Director of the Hungarian Chess Federation (HCF). He coached the Hungarian Men's Team for the 2002 Bled Chess Olympiad, guiding the team to the silver medal position. From 2005 to 2010 he was the Public Relations Director of the HCF. In 2006, he was a founding member of the Hungarian Association of Talent Support Organizations. Since 2014, he was member of the board of directors at Bay Area Chess.[5]
[/url]
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A1bor_K%C3%A1llai]More at Wikipedia.
(01-04-2022, 02:29 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]you mean from 2022....
Yes. Correcting edit made.
Last Parent Of Child Killed In Baptist Street Church Bombing Dies
On Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb planted in a Birmingham church by the Ku Klux Klan killed four young Black girls.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The last living parent of any of the four Black girls killed in the 1963 Alabama church bombing died Sunday. She was 93.
Maxine McNair’s family announced her death in a press release. A cause of death was not given.
McNair’s daughter, 11-year-old Denise McNair, was the youngest girl killed in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, the deadliest single attack of the civil rights movement. Also killed were three 14-year-olds: Addie Mae Collins, Carole Rosamond Robertson and Cynthia Dionne Wesley.
Three members of the Ku Klux Klan were eventually convicted in the case, the first in 1977 and two more in the early 2000s.
Maxine McNair worked as a teacher for 33 years in the Birmingham public school system. Her daughter, Lisa McNair, said she changed many lives through education and left a lasting legacy through the students she touched.
“Mrs. McNair was an amazing wife and mother and as a teacher of 33 years in the Birmingham public school system imparted knowledge in the lives of hundreds. We are going to miss her laughter and her humor. The family would appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers,” the family’s statement said.
In 2013, Maxine McNair attended the Oval Office ceremony in which President Barack Obama awarded the four girls the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the country’s highest civilian honors.
Funeral arrangements for a celebration of Maxine McNair’s life are pending.
Denise McNair was one of five girls who had gathered in a downstairs bathroom at the 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963, when a timed bomb planted by KKK members went off outside under a set of stairs.
The fifth girl and sister of Addie Mae Collins, Sarah Collins Rudolph, was blinded in one eye by the blast. She later provided testimony that helped lead to the convictions of the men accused of planting the bomb.
The church bombing came during the height of the fight for Civil Rights in America, and as Birmingham’s public schools were being desegregated. The four girls became emblems of the racist hatred that emanated from much of the opposition to equal rights.
Just imagine how it must have been to be notified through police that you had obvious cause to distrust that your daughter was killed in act that most hideously assaults one of the few institutions (your church) that you can trust (your church) in the service of an ungodly cause (KKK support of segregation through outright terrorism). Let's of course remember that the clique was one of several KKK fascist cults, the United Klans of America, arguably the worst of them all, one disbanded only in the aftermath of the lynching murder of Michael Donald about twenty years later.
Ross Dean Browner (March 22, 1954 – January 4, 2022) was an American football defensive end who played ten seasons in the NFL, mainly for the Cincinnati Bengals. Browner was named to the Bengals' 40th Anniversary Team in 2007.
- Browner was born on March 22, 1954, in Warren, Ohio, where he also grew up. As a child he was primarily interested in swimming and diving, before concentrating on football. He attended Warren Western Reserve High School and during his senior year he was named first-team AAA (big school) all-state defensive end.[1]
Ross Browner was one of the most decorated defensive players in the history of college football. At the University of Notre Dame he was a four-year starter at defensive end in 1973 and 1975–77.[2] He was a unanimous All-America his junior and senior seasons of 1976 and 1977. In 1976, he won the Outland trophy as the nation's best interior or defensive lineman also in 1976 United Press International named him Lineman of the Year. He won the Lombardi Trophy as the nation's best lineman and the Maxwell Award as the nation's best player and again won the UPI Lineman of the Year Award, the only player ever to win it twice. In the decade of the 1970s, Browner was the only lineman who won the Maxwell. In 1977, he also placed fifth in voting for the Heisman Trophy. During his senior year in college, he was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the subheading of "Notre Dame's Peerless Ross Browner."
Notre Dame had a 39–7 record in his time that covered 11–0 in 1973, 8–3 in 1975, 9–3 in 1976, and 11–1 in 1977. Notre Dame won National Championships in 1973 and 1977. His career statistics record 340 tackles, a school record; ten deflected passes, two blocked kicks. He also scored a touchdown and two safeties. Browner was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999.[3]
He was the first-round draft pick in the 1978 NFL Draft for the Cincinnati Bengals. Voted the team's Most Valuable Player in 1978, he played nine seasons for the Bengals. He set the Super Bowl record for tackles by a defensive lineman in Super Bowl XVI. In 1985, he jumped to the Houston Gamblers of the USFL, but returned the same season to the Bengals. Browner played one season (1987) with the Green Bay Packers before retiring.
After retiring, Browner lived for several years in Mason, Ohio and worked in sports entertainment, the cleaning industry, insurance, mortgages, and business development. He latterly worked in real estate and lived in Nashville, Tennessee.
Browner was the father of former Pittsburgh Steelers offensive tackle Max Starks and former University of Arizona player Rylan Browner. Ross' brothers are former NFL players Jimmie Browner, Keith Browner and Joey Browner.[4] His nephew, Keith Browner, Jr., played for the Houston Texans.
He died from complications of COVID-19 on January 4, 2022, at the age of 67.[5]
Peter Bogdanovich ComSE (Serbian: Петар Богдановић, romanized: Petar Bogdanović; July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian.
One of the "New Hollywood" directors, Bogdanovich started as a film journalist until he got hired to work on Roger Corman's The Wild Angels (1966). After that film's success, he directed his own film Targets (1968), a critical success. He later gained wider popularity for his critically acclaimed drama The Last Picture Show (1971), which earned eight Oscar nominations including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Following The Last Picture Show success, he directed the screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972), which was a major box office success,[2][3] and another critical and commercial success, Paper Moon (1973), which earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Director nomination. His following three films were all critical and commercial failures; including Daisy Miller (1974). He took a three-year hiatus before making a comeback with cult films Saint Jack (1979) and They All Laughed (1981). After his girlfriend Dorothy Stratten's murder, he took another four-year hiatus from filmmaking and wrote a memoir on her death titled The Killing of the Unicorn before making a comeback with Mask (1985), a critical and commercial success. He later went on to direct films such as Noises Off (1992), The Thing Called Love (1993), The Cat's Meow (2001), and She's Funny That Way (2014). As an actor, he is known for his roles in HBO series The Sopranos and Orson Welles's last movie The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which he also helped to finish.[4] He received a Grammy Award for Best Music Film for directing the Tom Petty documentary Runnin' Down a Dream (2007).
An accomplished film historian, he directed documentaries such as Directed by John Ford (1971) and The Great Buster: A Celebration (2018), and published over ten books, some of which include in-depth interviews with friends Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock. Bogdanovich's works have been cited as important influences by many major filmmakers.
More at Wikipedia.
Sidney L. Poitier KBE (/ˈpwɑːtieɪ/; February 20, 1927 – January 6, 2022)[1] was a Bahamian-American actor, film director, activist, and ambassador. In 1964, he was the first black person and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.[2] He received two Academy Award nominations, ten Golden Globes nominations, two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations, six BAFTA nominations, eight Laurel nominations, and one Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) nomination. From 1997 to 2007, he was the Bahamian Ambassador to Japan.[3]
Poitier's entire family lived in the Bahamas, then still a British colony, but he was born unexpectedly in Miami while they were visiting for the weekend, which automatically granted him U.S. citizenship. He grew up in the Bahamas, but moved to Miami at age 15, and to New York City when he was 16. He joined the American Negro Theater, landing his breakthrough film role as a high school student in the film Blackboard Jungle (1955). In 1958, Poitier starred with Tony Curtis as chained-together escaped convicts in The Defiant Ones, which received nine Academy Award nominations. Both actors received a nomination for Best Actor, with Poitier's being the first for a Black actor, as well as a nomination for a BAFTA, which Poitier won. In 1964, he won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor[4][a] for Lilies of the Field (1963), playing a handyman helping a group of German-speaking nuns build a chapel.[5]
Poitier also received acclaim for Porgy and Bess (1959), A Raisin in the Sun (1961), and A Patch of Blue (1965). He continued to break ground in three successful 1967 films which dealt with issues of race and race relations: To Sir, with Love; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. He received Golden Globe and British Academy Film Award nominations for his performance in the last film and in a poll the next year was voted the US's top box-office star.[6] Beginning in the 1970s, Poitier also directed various comedy films, including Stir Crazy (1980), starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, among other films. After nearly a decade away from acting, he returned to television and film starring in Shoot to Kill (1988) and Sneakers (1992).
Poitier was granted a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974.[7][8] In 1995, he received the Kennedy Center Honor. In 2009, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.[9] In 2016, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for outstanding lifetime achievement in film.[8] In 1999, he ranked 22nd among the male actors on the "100 Years...100 Stars" list by the American Film Institute. He won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.[10] In 1982, he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award and in 2000, he received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.[11][12] In 2002, he was given an Academy Honorary Award, in recognition of his "remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being".[13]
More at Wikipedia.
Carol Lani Guinier (/ˈlɑːni ɡwɪˈnɪər/; April 19, 1950 – January 7, 2022) was an American educator, legal scholar, and civil rights theorist. She was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship there.[1] Before coming to Harvard in 1998, Guinier taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years. Her scholarship covered the professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in the political process, college admissions, and affirmative action. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated Guinier to be United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, but withdrew the nomination in the face of right-wing backlash in what is now understood as a major conservative victory.
Guinier was President Bill Clinton's nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in April 1993.[13][14] Conservative journalists and Republican senators mounted a campaign against Guinier's nomination. Guinier was dubbed a "quota queen," a phrase first used in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Clint Bolick, a Reagan-era U.S. Justice Department official.[15] The term was perceived by some to be racially loaded, combining the "welfare queen" stereotype with "quota," a buzzword used to challenge affirmative action.[16][17] In fact, Guinier opposed racial quotas, as she attempted to make clear, responding to the misrepresentation of her views by invoking her father's experience at Harvard: "He was a victim of a racial quota, a quota of one. I have never been in favor of quotas. I could not be, knowing my father's experience."[18] As one reviewer of her work wrote: "The remedies Guinier advocates for diluted minority voting rights do not include laws that guarantee election outcomes for disadvantaged groups."[19]
Some journalists also alleged that Guinier's writings indicated that she supported the shaping of electoral districts to ensure a black majority, a process known as "race-conscious districting." Political science and law professor Carol M. Swain argued that Guinier was in favor of "segregating black voters in black-majority districts."[20][21] Guinier was portrayed as a racial polarizer who believed—in the words of George Will—that "only blacks can properly represent blacks."[22]
In the face of the negative media attention, many Democratic senators, including David Pryor of Arkansas, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois (the only African American serving in the Senate at that time)[23] informed Clinton that Guinier's interviews with senators were going poorly and urged him to withdraw Guinier's nomination.[24]
Clinton withdrew Guinier's nomination on June 4, 1993. He stated that Guinier's writings "clearly lend themselves to interpretations that do not represent the views I expressed on civil rights during the [presidential] campaign."[25] Guinier, for her part, acknowledged that her writings were often "unclear and subject to vastly different interpretations," but believed that the political attacks had distorted and caricatured her academic philosophies.[25] William T. Coleman Jr., who had served as Secretary of Transportation under President Gerald Ford, wrote that the withdrawal was "a grave [loss], both for President Clinton and the country. The President's yanking of the nomination, caving in to shrill, unsubstantiated attacks, was not only unfair, but some would say political cowardice."[26]
More at Wikipedia.
Seems like at certain times, deaths of important, iconic people happen close together. I don't know why. I don't have a good astrological explanation, and I don't think there's a generations theory explanation. This time, so far, we had two great "blacks" at each end pass on with a great White between them, a great biologist, the best football man, and an important Democratic senate leader, and a few other notables. Not long before also, an important doleful senate leader too.
It's a lonelier world. Most famous people that mean anything (to me, at least) have passed away and very few replacements are coming along. I watched a decades-binge on the Mary Tyler Moore show with Betty White yesterday, and it struck me that the stars on that great show from not so long ago are now all gone, and most very recently. People come and go so quickly here. And where do they go?
The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Golden Girls -- both were great television. Mary Tyler Moore, Valerie harper, Ed Asner, Gavin McLeod... all gone, and relatively recently before Betty White . With the Golden Girls one had also Bea Arthur, Rue McLanahan, and Estelle Getty. And let;s not forget the superb Dick Van Dyke Show. I got to see Dick Van Dyke dance up a storm in Mary Poppins Returns, so maybe he is immortal. Well... he remains.
I'm not saying that there was some Golden Age of Television that we have lost. It's still there, and mercifully the studios produce boxes of the TV shows. The legacy remains.
... As for Sidney Poitier, I see him as the first black male to compel white people to see dignity in black men, at least when it is so blatant. Poitier couldn't sing and dance, so that took away one pair of stereotypes. He chose his roles well. On the previous page was Desmond Tutu, eminently capable of putting the lie to the idea that blacks were 'lessers' in South Africa under Apartheid. In that he was a troublemaker that the racist authorities could pin nothing upon. He too exuded dignity under a political order that offered none to blacks.
Early TV-era star
Dwayne Hickman:
Dwayne Bernard Hickman[1] (May 18, 1934 – January 9, 2022) was an American actor and television executive, producer and director, who worked as an executive at CBS and has also briefly recorded as a vocalist. Hickman portrayed Chuck MacDonald, Bob Collins' girl-crazy teenaged nephew, in the 1950s The Bob Cummings Show and the title character in the 1960s sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. He was the younger brother of actor Darryl Hickman, with whom he has appeared on screen. In retirement, he devoted his time to painting.[2]
Hickman's first screen appearances were as an extra in The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Men of Boys Town (1941), in which his brother Darryl was featured. Other early screen appearances were in the 1942 Our Gang comedy Melodies Old and New, Captain Eddie (1945), The Hoodlum Saint (1946), and Faithful in My Fashion (1946).
In 1946, Hickman played young Chase in the movie The Secret Heart which starred Claudette Colbert, Walter Pidgeon, Lionel Barrymore, and June Allyson.
Hickman played different small roles in some of Columbia Pictures' eight-film "Rusty" series, about a boy and his valiant German Shepherd: The Return of Rusty (1946), For the Love of Rusty (1947), The Son of Rusty (1947), My Dog Rusty (1948), Rusty Leads the Way (1948), Rusty's Birthday (1949), and Rusty Saves a Life (1949).[7][8] Heaven Only Knows (1947), in which he appeared, starred Bob Cummings, who would play a major role in Hickman's career. Hickman also appeared in Her Husband's Affairs (1948), The Boy with Green Hair (1948), The Sun Comes Up (1949), Mighty Joe Young (1949), and The Happy Years (1950), which starred Darryl. As a teen, Dwayne and Darryl guest-starred in a 1950 episode of The Lone Ranger titled "Two Gold Lockets."[9]
Hickman focused on his studies for a few more years, then returned to acting with appearances in Public Defender, The Loretta Young Show, Lux Video Theatre, and Waterfront. In 1955, Dwayne appeared in another Lone Ranger episode, titled "Sunstroke Mesa".
The Bob Cummings Show
Hickman gained wide notice as Chuck on The Bob Cummings Show from 1955 to 1959. At the time, he was studying at Loyola. Hickman was one of the early stars to have a breakout character in the series.
Hickman considered Cummings a childhood television hero and has said that Cummings taught him everything he knows about acting. He worked with and was friends with Cummings throughout five seasons.[9]
While still on the Bob Cummings Show, Hickman guest-starred on other shows, such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Men of Annapolis (alongside his brother). He also had a sizable film role in Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958).
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
![[Image: 220px-Dobie_gillis_1960.JPG]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Dobie_gillis_1960.JPG/220px-Dobie_gillis_1960.JPG)
In 1958, Hickman was cast as the lead of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which aired from 1959 to 1963. At the show's debut, the Dobie character was a teenager in high school, and Hickman was then 25 years old.
He played Dobie for four years (with fellow former Loyola student Bob Denver as his sidekick Maynard G. Krebs).
During the series' run, Hickman did the voice for Aladdin in 1001 Arabian Nights (1959). On June 23, 1960, Hickman appeared on The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Robert Lane Saget (May 17, 1956 – January 9, 2022) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and television host. His acting roles included Danny Tanner on the ABC sitcom Full House (1987–1995), its Netflix sequel Fuller House (2016–2020), and the voice of narrator Ted Mosby on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother (2005–2014). From 1989 to 1997, he was the original host of America's Funniest Home Videos.
Saget was also known for his adult-oriented stand-up comedy,[1] and his 2014 album That's What I'm Talkin' About was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.
![[Image: 220px-Bob_Saget%2C_Behind_The_Velvet_Rope_TV_.05.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Bob_Saget%2C_Behind_The_Velvet_Rope_TV_.05.jpg/220px-Bob_Saget%2C_Behind_The_Velvet_Rope_TV_.05.jpg)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Saget
Dallas Frazier, age 82. One of the last of a classic breed of Nashville songwriters that included the likes of Jack Clement, Harlan Howard and John D. Loudermilk, he had a plethora of mostly country hits. Yet his first claim to fame was the smash pop hit “Alley Oop” by the Hollywood Argyles. His family moved from Oklahoma to Bakersfield CA when he was a child and chronicled this in the song “California Cotton Fields” which was not only recorded by Merle Haggard but was also a moderate hit for Frazier himself. Among his other classics were “There Goes My Everything “, a hit for Jack Greene, and “All I Have to Offer You is Me”, which was a hit for Charley’s Pride. But perhaps his crowning achievement was “Elvira”, taken into the stratosphere by the Oak Ridge Boys. In 1981 the song was not only a #1 country hit but also reached #5 pop.
Both George Jones and Connie Smith recorded entire albums of Mr. Frazier’s songs. And while he retired in 1988 and became an ordained minister, he did continue to be a mentor to younger songwriters. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1976 and has had songs recorded by many major country stars. In addition to those already mentioned the likes of Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, Rodney Crowell and others have recorded his songs.
![[Image: 220px-Dobie_gillis_1960.JPG]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dobie_gillis_1960.JPG)