Obituaries
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Obituaries
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02-14-2023, 02:42 PM
Let's think of what we lost with Bert Bacharach -- one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Franz Schubert, Stephen Foster, Hugo Wolff, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, the Beatles (collectively)...
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
02-15-2023, 10:11 PM
Career[edit]
1963–1966: Early works and breakthrough[edit] Welch initially intended to move to New York City from Dallas, but moved back to Los Angeles in 1963[17] and started applying for roles with film studios. During this period of time, she met one-time child actor and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager.[21] They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol.[17] To avoid typecasting as a Latina, he convinced her to use her husband's last name.[17] She was cast in small roles in two films, A House Is Not a Home (1964) and the musical Roustabout (1964), an Elvis Presley film. She also landed small roles on the television series Bewitched, McHale's Navy and The Virginian and appeared on the weekly variety series The Hollywood Palace as a billboard girl and presenter. She was one of many actresses who auditioned for the role of Mary Ann Summers on the television series Gilligan's Island. Welch's first featured role was in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (1965). That same year, she won the Deb Star while her photo in a Life magazine layout called "The End of the Great Girl Drought!" created buzz around town.[24] She was noticed by the wife of producer Saul David, who recommended her to 20th Century Fox, where with the help of Curtis she landed a contract.[17] She agreed to seven-year nonexclusive contract, five pictures over the next five years and two floaters.[21] Studio executives talked about changing her name to "Debbie". They thought "Raquel" would be hard to pronounce. She refused their request. She wanted her real name, so she stuck with "Raquel Welch".[25][26] She was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (1966), in which she portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a star.[17] This promotional still of Welch in the deerskin bikini became a bestselling poster and turned her into an instant pin-up girl.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raquel_Welch_in_deer-skin_bikini.jpg]
![[Image: 220px-Raquel_Welch_in_deer-skin_bikini.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b7/Raquel_Welch_in_deer-skin_bikini.jpg/220px-Raquel_Welch_in_deer-skin_bikini.jpg)
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
02-19-2023, 10:54 AM
Star catcher and broadcaster Tim McCarver:
James Timothy McCarver (October 16, 1941 – February 16, 2023) was an American catcher in Major League Baseball (MLB) and television sports commentator who played from 1959 to 1980 for four teams, spending almost all of his career with the St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies. A two-time All-Star, he helped the Cardinals to the 1964 World Series title, batting .478 in the Series including a three-run home run in the tenth inning to win Game 5. In 1966, he became the first catcher since the 19th century to lead the National League (NL) in triples with 13. McCarver was runner-up for the 1967 NL Most Valuable Player Award, behind teammate Orlando Cepeda, after batting .295 and leading NL catchers in assists and fielding percentage. Traded to the Phillies after the 1969 season, he was later re-joined by pitcher and St. Louis teammate Steve Carlton, becoming his regular catcher as the team won three division titles from 1976 to 1978. After increased use as a pinch hitter in his last several seasons, in September 1980 McCarver became the 18th major league player to play in four decades. After his playing career, McCarver became a television color commentator, most notably for Fox Sports after previous stints with the other three broadcast networks. He eventually set a record by calling 23 World Series as well as 20 All-Star Games, earning three Emmy Awards in the process. In 2012, McCarver was named the recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting. He was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2016,[1][2] and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame in 2017. More at Wikipedia.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
02-22-2023, 07:21 AM
Richard Jay Belzer (August 4, 1944 – February 19, 2023) was an American actor, stand-up comedian, and author.[1] He was best known for his role as BPD detective, NYPD detective and sergeant, and DA Investigator John Munch,[2] whom he portrayed as a regular cast member on the NBC police drama series Homicide: Life on the Street[3] and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,[2] as well as in guest appearances on several other series. He portrayed the character for 23 years, from 1993 until retiring in 2016.
Belzer was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on August 4, 1944,[4] to a Jewish family.[5][6] He described his mother as frequently physically abusive, and he declared that his comedy career began when trying to make his mother laugh to distract her from abusing him and his brother. After graduating from Fairfield Warde High School, Belzer worked as a reporter for the Bridgeport Post.[5] Belzer attended Dean College, which was then known as Dean Junior College, in Franklin, Massachusetts, but was expelled.[7] After his first divorce, Belzer relocated to New York City, moved in with singer Shelley Ackerman, and began working as a stand-up comic at Pips, The Improv, and Catch a Rising Star. He participated in the Channel One comedy group that satirized television and became the basis for the cult movie The Groove Tube, in which Belzer played the costar of the ersatz TV show The Dealers. Belzer was the audience warm-up comedian for Saturday Night Live[8] and made three guest appearances on the show between 1975 and 1980. He also opened for musician Warren Zevon during his tour supporting the release of his album Excitable Boy.[9] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Belzer became an occasional film actor. A short skit of a younger Belzer can be found on Sesame Street in a season 9 episode in 1978 when two young men attempt a picnic and boat ride, only to be thwarted by a dog who eats their food. He is noted for minor roles in Fame, Café Flesh, Night Shift, and Scarface. He appeared in the music videos for the Mike + The Mechanics song "Taken In" and for the Pat Benatar song "Le Bel Age", as well as the Kansas video "Can't Cry Anymore". He appeared in A Very Brady Sequel as an LAPD detective.[10] In addition to his film career, Belzer was a featured player on the National Lampoon Radio Hour with co-stars John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, and Harold Ramis, a half-hour comedy program aired on 600 plus U.S. stations from 1973 to 1975.[11] Several of his sketches were released on National Lampoon albums, drawn from the Radio Hour, including several bits in which he portrayed a pithy call-in talk show host named "Dick Ballantine".[citation needed] In the late 1970s, he co-hosted Brink & Belzer on WNBC radio (660 AM) in New York City.[12] He was a frequent guest on The Howard Stern Show. Following the departure of Randi Rhodes from Air America Radio, Belzer guest-hosted the afternoon program on the network.[13] Belzer was a regular guest on the right-wing radio show of Alex Jones and appeared on the episode covering the Boston Marathon bombing, in which he referred to the bombing as a false flag event.[14][time needed] In the 1990s, Belzer appeared frequently on television. He was a regular on The Flash as a news anchor and reporter. In several episodes of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, he played Inspector William Henderson.[10] He followed that with starring roles on the Baltimore-based Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–1999) and the New York City-based Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999–2013), portraying police detective John Munch in both series.[3] Barry Levinson, Executive Producer of Homicide, said Belzer was a "lousy actor" in audition when he read lines from the script for "Gone for Goode", the first episode in the series.[15] Levinson asked Belzer to take time to reread and practice the material, then read it again. At his second reading, Levinson said Belzer was "still terrible", but that the actor eventually found confidence in his performance.[16] In addition, Belzer played Munch in episodes on seven other series and in a sketch on one talk show, making Munch the only fictional character to appear on eleven different television shows played by a single actor.[17] These shows were on six different networks:
Belzer portrayed Det. Munch for 22 consecutive seasons on Homicide (7 seasons) and Law & Order: SVU (15 seasons), which exceeded the previous primetime live-action record of twenty consecutive seasons held by James Arness (who portrayed Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke from 1955 to 1975) and Kelsey Grammer (as Dr. Frasier Crane on Cheers and Frasier from 1984 to 2004). This record has since been passed by Belzer's "SVU" co-star Mariska Hargitay. Belzer appeared in several of Comedy Central's televised broadcasts of Friars Club roasts. On June 9, 2001, Belzer himself was honored by the New York Friars Club and the Toyota Comedy Festival as the honoree of the first-ever roast open to the public. Comedians and friends on the dais included Roastmaster Paul Shaffer; Christopher Walken; Danny Aiello; Barry Levinson; Robert Klein; Bill Maher; SVU costars Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni, Ice-T, and Dann Florek; and Law & Order's Jerry Orbach. At the December 1, 2002, roast of Chevy Chase, Belzer said, "The only time Chevy Chase has a funny bone in his body is when I fuck him in the ass."[21] Belzer voiced the character of Loogie for most of the South Park episode titled "The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000".[22] He and Brian Doyle-Murray were featured in the tenth-season premiere of Sesame Street.[23] Belzer believed there was a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy[24] and wrote five books discussing conspiracy theories:
Belzer's first two marriages were to Gail Susan Ross (1966–1972)[32] and boutique manager Dalia Danoch (1976 – c. 1978),[32] both of which ended in divorce. In 1981, in Los Angeles, he met 31-year-old Harlee McBride, a divorcee with two daughters,[33] Bree Benton and Jessica.[34] McBride, who had been seen in Playboy magazine four years earlier in that year's sex-in-cinema feature, in conjunction with Young Lady Chatterley,[35] was appearing in TV commercials for Ford and acting in free theater when she met Belzer at the suggestion of a friend.[33] The two married in 1985[32] and had a home in Bozouls, France.[31] Belzer survived testicular cancer in 1983.[33] His HBO special and comedy CD Another Lone Nut pokes fun at this medical incident as well as his status as a well-known conspiracy theorist. On March 27, 1985, four days before the first WrestleMania, Belzer repeatedly requested on his cable TV talk show Hot Properties that Hulk Hogan demonstrate a wrestling move. Hogan applied an a front facelock, causing him to pass out.[36] When released, he hit the back of his head on the floor. He was dazed, lacerated and briefly hospitalized after waking up.[37] He sued for $5 million and settled out of court for $400,000 in 1990.[31] He refers to this in his HBO stand-up special Another Lone Nut. It helped him pay for a home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer called the "Chez Hogan" or "Hulk Hogan Estate".[31][38] Belzer's older brother, Leonard Belzer, died by suicide at age 73 on July 30, 2014, by jumping from the roof of the New York City luxury apartment building in which he had resided. Belzer's father had also died by suicide, in 1968.[5] He was a cousin of actor Henry Winkler.[39] Belzer died at his home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer on February 19, 2023, at age 78, from complications of unspecified circulatory and respiratory conditions.[38][40] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Belzer
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
02-22-2023, 07:28 AM
He was mayor of Nagano during the 1998 Winter Olympics:
Tasuku Tsukada (塚田 佐, Tsukada Tasuku) (March 3, 1936 - February 22, 2023)[5][6] is a Japanese politician, and the former mayor of the city of Nagano, the capital of Nagano Prefecture, in central Japan. Tsukada won his first mayoral contest in 1985. He served four full 4-year terms, until November 10, 2001.[7] In 1997, Tsukada served as the Vice President of the Japan Association of City Mayors.[8] Tsukada graduated from Nagano Prefectural Nagano Senior High School (長野県長野高等学校, Nagano ken Nagano kōtō gakkō) (which was called Nagano North High School (長野北高校, Nagano kita kōkō) at the time).[9] He then graduated from the School of Commerce at Waseda University in 1958[10] From 1967, he served on the Nagano City Council, and from 1975 until 1985, he served in the Nagano Prefectural Assembly.[11] He was elected mayor in 1985 in his first candidacy. In addition, he served as chairman of the Nagano City-Hokuriku Shinkansen Liaison Council.[12] Tsukada retired from municipal politics in 2001.[13] Following retirement from politics, Tsukada served as an auditor at Nagano Jidosha Center, and from 2007 an external auditor at Moriya Corporation in Nagano.[14][15] 1998 Winter Olympics Tsukada was mayor during the early preparation and bid process for the 1998 Winter Olympics as well as through the Games.[16] He served as Vice President of the Nagano Olympic Organizing Committee (NAOC) from 1991 when the committee was officially established. [a 1][17] Following the closing ceremonies of the 1994 Winter Olympics, an International Environmental Expedition had departed Lillehammer, Norway. They traveled by dogsled, sailboat and bicycle over two and a half year. On 25 September 1996, 500 days before the games started, they arrived in Nagano where their message was delivered to Mayor Tsukada. Following the 1998 Winter Olympics, Tsukada sent a similar message for the organizers in Salt Lake City. Tsukada organized the first Host City Mayors' Conference to discuss Olympics in the 21st Century. The mayors at the time from Sapporo (1972 Winter Olympics), Calgary (1988 Winter Olympics), Albertville (1992 Winter Olympics), Lillehammer (1994 Winter Olympics) and Salt Lake City (2002 Winter Olympics) attended, along with the mayor of Olympia (home of the Ancient Olympic Games) as observer. Following the Mayors' Conference, a declaration was released which included: Quote:Sapporo, Calgary, and Albertville have contributed to the promotion of the Olympic Movement. During the Lillehammer Games, the “Olympic Aid” campaign was founded in order to help the children of Sarajevo. Schoolchildren in Nagano have had the opportunity to deepen their international perspective through the “One School, One Country” pro- gramme. The “Nagano Olympic Harmony Fund” supports children in underprivileged countries by providing educational materials and sports equipment. We hope that future Olympic Winter Games host cities will take their own specific actions in order to work toward the realization of peace and the support of children throughout the world.[/url] With 200 days to go before the opening of the 1998 Games, a live celebration in [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo]Tokyo, Nagano, and Sydney, Australia, the host of the 2000 Summer Olympics, took place on NAOC's webpage, with Tsukada in Nagano and Frank Sartor, the Lord Mayor of Sydney at the time.[a 2] In December, 1997, Tsukada, along with Japanese Olympic Committee President Hironoshin Furuhashi, and others, headed a delegation to the Hellenic Olympic Committee. At the Temple of Hera, Tsukada and the NAOC received the flame for the start of the 1998 Winter Olympics torch relay. On 6 February 6, 1998 the Olympic flame arrived in Nagano City after a three-route relay across Japan. Kristi Yamaguchi (American sansei and gold medalist in figure skater at the 1992 Winter Olympics), Masae Kasai (gold medalist in volleyball at the 1964 Summer Olympics), and Yuko Emoto (gold medalist in judo at the 1996 Summer Olympics) passed their flames to Eishiro Saito, President of NAOC, and two NAOC Vice Presidents, Goro Yoshimura (the governor of Nagano Prefecture) and Tsukada, who in turn lit the flame of IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. In February, 1998, at the start of the 1998 Winter Olympics, Tsukada described the benefits that that Olympics brought to Nagano: "We have received tangible and intangible assets... We went through various difficulties and hardships as the host city, but it has been worth it".[18] During the early days of promoting Nagano as a possible host for the 1998 Games, Tsukada came to realize that the city of Nagano had limited name recognition. When talking with IOC members in Albertville in 1989, they asked Tsukada whether it snowed in Nagano, confusing Nagano for the city of Nagoya which had lost the bid to Seoul for the 1988 Summer Olympics.[19] It was Mayor Tsukuda passed the Olympic flag to Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini at the closing ceremonies of the 1998 Winter Games[20] Following the 2002 Winter Olympic bid scandal that broke in late 1998, Mayor Tsukada was quoted as saying: Quote:I'm sure you [Salt Lake City] will be able to overcome the scandal and have successful Games, too. The citizens of Salt Lake City will support the Olympic Games just like those in Nagano did... As a host city, the most important thing to do is to host successful Games. We did that. It’s over, and we didn’t have any problems.[21] Following the scandal to hit Salt Lake City, it was learned that NAOC spent approximately $14 million to woe IOC members.[22] Tsukada said: "The burden is too much ... some moderation, some balance" must return to the Olympics.[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasuku_Tsukada
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
02-22-2023, 07:32 AM
Billy Joe "Red" McCombs (October 19, 1927[1] – February 19, 2023) was an American businessman. He was the founder of the Red McCombs Automotive Group in San Antonio, Texas, a co-founder of Clear Channel Communications, a past chairman of Constellis Group, a onetime owner of the San Antonio Spurs, San Antonio Force, Denver Nuggets, the Minnesota Vikings, and the namesake of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. He was on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.
In 2012, the San Antonio Express-News reported McCombs' net worth at $1.4 billion. He was ranked the 913th richest man in the world. Two other San Antonio men at the time, Charles Butt of the H-E-B supermarket chain and Rodney Lewis, a natural gas driller, finished above McCombs on the list.[2] In 2017, Forbes placed the value of McCombs' fortune at $1.6 billion with a ranking of No. 1,290 on a list of the world's billionaires.[3] McCombs was born in rural Spur in Dickens County in West Texas, United States.[4] His nickname "Red" came from his hair color.[5] His father was a mechanic who earned $25 per week but tithed through the First Baptist Church of Spur each week. McCombs recalled having seen his parents "share with those who had less, and the joy of giving never ceased to amaze me."[6] In 1958, McCombs and his fellow salesman, Austin Hemphill, moved to San Antonio to create Hemphill-McCombs Ford, which was the foundation for what ultimately became the Red McCombs Automotive Group. McCombs served as chairman of the trustees at Southwestern University and chairman of the University of Texas's M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. His particular interest in M. D. Anderson was accentuated in 1986, when he visited a dying friend undergoing treatment there. He expressed how he was overcome by the kindness of every employee he met at the hospital. The workers, he found, had been trained to offer compassion and solace to all who come through the doors. He joined the Anderson board and in 2005 donated $30 million to the hospital.[6] The business school at the University of Texas was renamed the Red McCombs School of Business in recognition of his $50 million donation to the institution. The $50 million actually yielded $100 million in matching funds for new faculty positions, fellowships, and scholarships.[6] He was the board chairman of Academi.[7] McCombs was a member of the Alamo Endowment Board, which raises funds for the preservation and management of the Alamo Mission in downtown San Antonio. With the state purchasing three historic buildings in Alamo Plaza, McCombs said in October 2015 that he envisioned an expansion program consistent with the reality of the Alamo story to enhance the overall experience of future visitors to the historic site.[8] In 2017, McCombs filed a $1 million civil suit against seven of his former executives who he alleged took "trade secrets" from McCombs' company to begin a competing firm in Houston, F4 Resources. Defendants in the suit include William "Bill" Forney, Jr., who worked with McCombs for forty-four years, former chief financial officer Ricky Halkin, vice president of operations Larry Wyont, vice president of land Charles Forney, and the vice president of geology, Philip Forney. McCombs had established McCombs Energy in Houston in 1998 by merging his 50 percent interest in his partnership with William Forney with other assets purchased from Forney. McCombs claimed that his former associates, however, lowered the proper payout that he was due from his investments. McCombs said that the former executives shattered personal relationships of some four decades.[3][needs update] McCombs attributed the construction of the HemisFair Arena as the essential development to the success of the Spurs. He contacted Lee Iacocca, then president of the Ford Motor Company, to seek funding for the arena to correspond with the 1968 World's Fair. At first, Iacocca offered only $250,000 for the purchase of an art object, and he scolded McCombs and ridiculed San Antonio as "that little old dusty ass town of yours down there [with] no political or economic significance to the Ford Motor Company."[9] McCombs persisted and asked U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson to contact Henry Ford, II, and in a continued heated exchange even told Iacocca that Ford needed to improve the quality of its 1968 vehicles. McCombs located other investors, and the Dallas Chaparrals came to San Antonio five years later in 1973. McCombs realized the importance of television to sports events and saw the opportunity to bring San Antonio to a national stage. Under the McCombs administration the Spurs[clarify] had their first superstar in George Gervin, called "The Iceman", who was recruited from the Virginia Squires.[9] Two years after taking the Spurs into the NBA, McCombs sold off his stake in the Spurs and bought another former ABA team, the Denver Nuggets. He held onto the team until 1985, when he sold it to Sidney Shlenker.[10] In 1998, McCombs bought the Minnesota Vikings for US$250 million. After an unsuccessful attempt to replace the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, McCombs sold the team to new (and current) owner Zygi Wilf before the 2005 NFL season.[11] McCombs was also actively involved in thoroughbred racing and breeding for many years as a major partner in Walmac Farm, a leading American breeding farm, in Lexington, Kentucky.[12] McCombs was one of the first investors of the Circuit of the Americas. In December 2020 he got his 'own' corner called 'Big Red'.[13] McCombs owned a piece of property surrounded by National Forest near Wolf Creek ski area, a resort in southern Colorado owned by the Pitcher family. McCombs had long wanted to develop a resort community on his property, a plan that has drawn opposition and lawsuits from environmentalists and surrounding communities. McCombs had been unsuccessful in his attempts to convince the court to remove a key roadblock preventing his proposed development.[14] McCombs then attempted to build a 50,000-acre (200 km2) casino resort at Navajo Canyon on Lake Powell. The local Navajo Nation chapters, local government officials, all unanimously rejected the casino proposal and any projects by McCombs.[15] In 2013, McCombs was found by the United States Supreme Court to have engaged in a sham tax avoidance transaction and was therefore liable for a valuation misstatement penalty.[16][17] Additionally, McCombs severely criticized the 2014 University of Texas hire of Charlie Strong as football coach. He described Strong as "great position coach ... not on a par with other candidates."[18] Three days later he apologized and pledged "total support" for Strong.[19] McCombs was a reformed alcoholic, who could "handle his social drinking" until the age of 48, when overcome with convulsions he went into a five-day coma at a medical facility in Houston. McCombs said in a Christmas 2016 interview, "God was good to me and for whatever reason wanted me to live, because I was really dead when I left in 1975 to go to Houston on that medical plane. They told Charline, 'Go ahead and start making arrangements because we are losing him.'"[9] McCombs said that he recovered and never again had a desire for alcohol.[9] The McCombs Foundation has donated more than $118 million to charity. It is operated by his daughters, who work to keep overhead at a minimum. The foundation makes small donations too, such as $1,000 to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which are rarely publicized. McCombs had said that he was a large donor to charitable causes because "it makes me feel so good about doing it."[6] McCombs was married to Charline Hamblin from 1950 until her death on December 12, 2019.[20] McCombs died at his home in San Antonio on February 19, 2023 at the age of 95.[21]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
02-28-2023, 07:25 PM
Robert Eugene Richards (February 20, 1926 – February 26, 2023) was an American athlete, minister, and politician. He made three U.S. Olympic Teams in two events: the 1948, 1952, and 1956 Summer Olympics as a pole vaulter and as a decathlete in 1956.[1] He won gold medals in pole vault in both 1952 and 1956, becoming the only male two-time champion in the event in Olympic history.
While still an active athlete, Richards became an ordained minister. He ran for President of the United States in 1984 on the Populist Party ticket. Richards was the second man to pole vault 15 ft (4.57 m). While a student at the University of Illinois, Richards tied for the national collegiate pole vault title and followed that with 20 national Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) titles, including 17 in the pole vault and three in the decathlon.[2][3][4] The first man to clear 15 feet was Dutch Warmerdam, who set the world record of 4.77 m (15 ft 7+3⁄4 in) in 1942, long before Richards came into his prime. While Richards was the dominant vaulter of his time, he never set a world record. Richards later became involved in promoting physical fitness and continued to vault in his later years. He was the first athlete to appear on the front of Wheaties cereal boxes in 1958 (though not the first depicted on all parts of the packaging), and also was the first Wheaties spokesman, setting up the Wheaties Sports Federation, which encouraged participation in Olympic sports.[5] Richards had four sons who were also pole vaulters: Brandon, held the national high school record at 18'2" for fourteen years from 1985;[6] Tom won the CIF California State Meet in 1988; and Bob Jr. was second in the same meet in 1968[7] and later in 1973 ranked #7 in the United States.[8] Richards is the only male two-time Olympic gold medal winner in the pole vault (1952 and 1956), thus he is also the only man to have successfully defended his Olympic title. He also won a bronze medal in the pole vault at the 1948 summer games. Russian Yelena Isinbayeva is the only other pole vaulter besides Richards to have won three Olympic medals in the pole vault, which she completed in 2012. Richards placed 13th in the decathlon at the 1956 Olympics. Richards was elected to the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983 and the United States National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1975.[9] As he aged, Richards continued participating in track and field in a variety of events, particularly throwing events. He was one of the first regular participants in the origins of what now has become Masters athletics.[10] Richards appeared on the panel game show What's My Line? episode #346 January 20, 1957.[citation needed] Richards was ordained in 1946 as a minister in the Church of the Brethren (which led to his being nicknamed the "Vaulting Vicar" or the "Pole Vaulting Parson").[11] As future tennis player Billie Jean King's church minister, Richards inspired King. One day, when King was 13 or 14, Richards asked her, "What are you going to do with your life?" She said: "Reverend, I'm going to be the best tennis player in the world."[12][13] In 1957 the actor Hal Stalmaster played Richards as a teenager in an episode of the ABC anthology series Cavalcade of America.[14] In the 1984 United States presidential election, Richards ran for President of the United States on the far-right, white nationalist Populist Party ticket.[15][16] He and running mate Maureen Salaman earned 66,324 votes. Richards died on February 26, 2023, a few days after his 97th birthday.[17][18] Richards was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2000 in the area of Sports.[19] Richards is referenced in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary "Survive and Advance", for the impact he had on former N.C. State coach Jim Valvano. Valvano cites hearing Richards speak when he was a teen and the motivational messages he implored. Richards was inducted into the National Fitness Hall of Fame in 2009 and was inducted into the Texas Track and Field Coaches Association Hall of Fame (Class of 2017).[20]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-02-2023, 07:57 PM
Wayne Shorter (August 25, 1933 – March 2, 2023) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.[1] Shorter came to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of, and eventually primary composer for, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the 1960s, he joined Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, and then co-founded the jazz fusion band Weather Report. He recorded over 20 albums as a bandleader.
Many Shorter compositions have become jazz standards, and his music has earned worldwide recognition, critical praise, and commendation. Shorter won 12 Grammy Awards.[2] He was acclaimed for his mastery of the soprano saxophone since switching his focus from the tenor in the late 1960s and beginning an extended reign in 1970 as Down Beat's annual poll-winner on that instrument, winning the critics' poll for 10 consecutive years and the readers' for 18.[3] The New York Times' Ben Ratliff described Shorter in 2008 as "probably jazz's greatest living small-group composer and a contender for greatest living improviser".[4] In 2017, he was awarded the Polar Music Prize.[5] Wayne Shorter was born in Newark, New Jersey,[1] and attended Newark Arts High School,[6][7] from which he graduated in 1952. He loved music, being encouraged by his father to take up the clarinet as a teenager; his older brother Alan played alto saxophone before switching to the trumpet in college. While in high school Wayne also performed with the Nat Phipps Band in Newark. After graduating from New York University with a degree in music education in 1956, Shorter spent two years in the U.S. Army, during which time he played briefly with Horace Silver. After his discharge, he played with Maynard Ferguson. In his youth Shorter had acquired the nickname "Mr. Gone", which later became an album title for Weather Report.[8] His early influences include Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Coleman Hawkins. In 1959, Shorter joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers where he stayed for four years, eventually becoming musical director and composing pieces for the band. Together they toured the US, Japan, and Europe, recording several albums. During this time Shorter "established himself as one of the most gifted of the young saxophonists" and received international acknowledgment.[9] Herbie Hancock said of Shorter's tenure in Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet: "The master writer to me, in that group, was Wayne Shorter. He still is a master. Wayne was one of the few people who brought music to Miles that didn't get changed."[10] Davis said, "Wayne is a real composer. He writes scores, writes the parts for everybody just as he wants them to sound. ... Wayne also brought in a kind of curiosity about working with musical rules. If they didn't work, then he broke them, but with musical sense; he understood that freedom in music was the ability to know the rules in order to bend them to your own satisfaction and taste."[11] Ian Carr, musician and Rough Guide author, states that with Davis, Shorter found his own voice as a player and composer. "Blakey's hard-driving, straight-ahead rhythms had brought out the muscularity in Shorter's tenor playing, but the greater freedom of the Davis rhythm-section allowed him to explore new emotional and technical dimensions."[9] Shorter remained in Davis's band after the breakup of the quintet in 1968, playing on early jazz fusion recordings including In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew (both 1969). His last live dates and studio recordings with Davis were in 1970. Until 1968, he played tenor saxophone exclusively. The final album on which he played tenor in the regular sequence of Davis albums was Filles de Kilimanjaro. In 1969, he played the soprano saxophone on the Davis album In a Silent Way and on his own Super Nova (recorded with then-current Davis sidemen Chick Corea and John McLaughlin). When performing live with Davis, and on recordings from summer 1969 to early spring 1970, he played both soprano and tenor saxophones; by the early 1970s, however, he chiefly played soprano. Simultaneous with his time in the Davis quintet, Shorter recorded several albums for Blue Note Records, featuring almost exclusively his own compositions, with a variety of line-ups, quartets and larger groups, including Blue Note favourites such as trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. His first Blue Note album (of 11 in total recorded from 1964 to 1970) was Night Dreamer, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in 1964 with Lee Morgan (trumpet), McCoy Tyner (piano), Reggie Workman (bass) and Elvin Jones (drums). Two more albums were recorded in 1964, JuJu and Speak No Evil. Of the three Blue Note albums Shorter recorded in 1965, The All Seeing Eye (rec. 1965, rel. 1966) was a workout with a larger group, while Adam's Apple (rec. 1966, rel. 1967) was back to carefully constructed melodies by Shorter leading a quartet. Then a sextet again in the following year for Schizophrenia (rec. 1967, rel. 1969) with Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, trombonist Curtis Fuller, alto saxophonist/flautist James Spaulding and strong rhythms by drummer Joe Chambers. Shorter also recorded occasionally as a sideman (again, mainly for Blue Note) with trumpeter Donald Byrd, McCoy Tyner, trombonist Grachan Moncur III, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, and bandmates Herbie Hancock and drummer Tony Williams. ![[Image: 210px-Wayne-Shorter_in_Amsterdam%2C_1980.jpg]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wayne-Shorter_in_Amsterdam,_1980.jpg) [/url]
Shorter with [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Report]Weather Report in Amsterdam, in 1980 Following the release of Odyssey of Iska in 1970, Shorter formed the fusion group Weather Report with Davis veteran keyboardist Joe Zawinul and bassist Miroslav Vitous. The other original members were percussionist Airto Moreira, and drummer Alphonse Mouzon. After Vitous' departure in 1973, Shorter and Zawinul co-led the group until the band's break-up in late 1985. A variety of musicians would make up Weather Report over the years (most notably the revolutionary bassist Jaco Pastorius) helping the band produce many high quality recordings in diverse styles, with funk, bebop, Latin jazz, ethnic music, and futurism being the most prevalent denominators. Shorter also recorded critically acclaimed albums as a bandleader, notably 1974's Native Dancer, which featured Hancock and Brazilian composer and vocalist Milton Nascimento. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, he toured in the V.S.O.P. quintet. This group was a revival of the 1960s Davis quintet, except that Freddie Hubbard filled the trumpet chair. Shorter appeared with the same former Davis bandmates on the Carlos Santana double LP The Swing of Delight (1980), for which he also composed a number of pieces. From 1977 through 2002, he appeared on 10 Joni Mitchell studio albums, gaining him a wider audience. He played an extended solo on the title track of Steely Dan's 1977 album Aja. After leaving Weather Report in 1986, Shorter continued to record and lead groups in jazz fusion styles, including touring in 1988 with guitarist Carlos Santana, who appeared on This is This! (1986), the last Weather Report disc. There is a concert video recorded at the Lugano Jazz Festival in 1987, with Jim Beard (keyboards), Carl James (bass), Terri Lyne Carrington (drums), and Marilyn Mazur (percussion). In 1989, he contributed to a hit on the rock charts, playing the sax solo on Don Henley's song "The End of the Innocence" and also produced the album Pilar by the Portuguese singer-songwriter Pilar Homem de Melo. He has also maintained an occasional working relationship with Herbie Hancock, including a tribute album recorded shortly after Miles Davis's death with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams and Wallace Roney. He continued to appear on Mitchell's records in the 1990s and can be heard on the soundtrack of the Harrison Ford film The Fugitive (1993). In 1995, Shorter released the album High Life, his first solo recording for seven years. It was also his debut as a leader for Verve Records. Shorter composed all the compositions on the album and co-produced it with the bassist Marcus Miller. High Life received the Grammy Award for best Contemporary Jazz Album in 1997. Shorter worked with Herbie Hancock once again in 1997, on the much acclaimed and heralded album 1+1. The song "Aung San Suu Kyi" (named for the Burmese pro-democracy activist) won both Hancock and Shorter a Grammy Award. In 2009, he was announced as one of the headline acts at the Gnaoua World Music Festival in Essaouira, Morocco. His 2013 live album Without a Net (rec. 2010) is his first with Blue Note Records since Odyssey of Iska (rec. 1970, rel. 1971). In 2000, Shorter formed the first permanent acoustic group under his name, a quartet with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade, playing his own compositions, many of them reworkings of tunes going back to the 1960s. Four albums of live recordings have been released: Footprints Live! (rec. live 2001, rel. 2002); Beyond the Sound Barrier (rec. live 2002–2004, rel. 2005); Without a Net (rec. live 2010, rel. 2013); and Emanon (2018), with the latter, in addition to live material, including Shorter's quartet in a studio session with the 34-piece Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The quartet has received great acclaim from fans and critics, especially for the strength of Shorter's tenor saxophone playing. The biography Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter by journalist Michelle Mercer examines the working life of the musicians as well as Shorter's thoughts and Buddhist beliefs.[12] Beyond the Sound Barrier received the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Album. Shorter's 2003 album Alegría (his first studio album for 10 years, since High Life) received the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Album; it features the quartet with a host of other musicians, including pianist Brad Mehldau, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and former Weather Report percussionist Alex Acuña. Shorter's compositions, some new, some reworked from his Miles Davis period, feature the complex Latin rhythms that he specialised in during his Weather Report days. Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity[edit] In 2015, producer/director Dorsay Alavi began filming a documentary about the life of Wayne Shorter called Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity.[13] A number of high-profile musicians, including Herbie Hancock, Esperanza Spalding, and Terri Lyne Carrington, performed at a donor event to raise funds for the documentary; two of the largest donations came from the Herb Alpert Foundation and Carlos Santana.[14] Mega Nova[edit] In 2016, it was announced that Shorter, Carlos Santana, and Herbie Hancock would begin touring under the name Mega Nova. Also included within the supergroup was bassist Marcus Miller and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana.[15] Their first show together was on August 24, 2016, at the Hollywood Bowl.[16][17] (Iphigenia)[edit] In 2018, Shorter retired from his near 70-year performing career due to health issues. He continued working as a composer, creating a "new operatic work" titled (Iphigenia), with Esperanza Spalding writing the libretto and architect Frank Gehry designing the sets, which premiered on November 12, 2021, at the Cutler Majestic Theatre.[18][19][20] Shorter met Teruko (Irene) Nakagami in 1961. They were later married and had a daughter, Miyako. Some of his compositions are copyrighted as "Miyako Music" and Shorter dedicated the pieces "Miyako" and "Infant Eyes" to his daughter. The couple separated in 1964.[21] Shorter met Ana Maria Patricio in 1966 and they were married in 1970.[21] In 1986, their daughter Iska died of a grand mal seizure at age 14.[22] Ana Maria and the couple's niece, Dalila, were both killed on July 17, 1996, on TWA Flight 800, while travelling to visit Shorter in Italy.[23] Dalila was the daughter of Ana Maria Shorter's sister and her husband, jazz vocalist Jon Lucien.[21] In 1999, Shorter married Carolina Dos Santos, a close friend of Ana Maria. The Shorters practiced Nichiren Buddhism and were longtime members of the Buddhist association Soka Gakkai International.[21] Singer and actress Tina Turner credits Shorter with saving her life. In Turner's 2020 spiritual memoir Happiness Becomes You, she states that Shorter and his wife Ana Maria provided Turner with critical refuge at their home for six months after Turner left her abusive husband, Ike Turner, in 1976.[24] Composer and producer Rick Shorter (1934–2017) was Shorter's cousin.[25] Shorter died in Los Angeles, California on March 2, 2023, at the age of 89.[26] In 1999, Shorter received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the Berklee College of Music.[27] On September 17, 2013, Shorter received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.[28] On December 18, 2014, the Recording Academy announced that Shorter was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of his "prolific contributions to our culture and history".[29] In 2016, Shorter was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of music composition, the only jazz artist to receive the honor that year.[30] In 2017, Shorter was announced as the joint winner of the Polar Music Prize. The award committee stated: "Without the musical explorations of Wayne Shorter, modern music would not have drilled so deep."[5] In 2018, Shorter received the Kennedy Center Honors Award from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for his lifetime of contributions to the arts.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-11-2023, 09:58 PM
Dmytro Kotsiubailo (Ukrainian: Дмитро Іванович Коцюбайло, nickname Da Vinci (Ukrainian: Да Вінчі); 1 November 1995 – 7 March 2023) was a Ukrainian volunteer, soldier, junior lieutenant, a commander of the 1st Mechanized Battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He was a participant in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Kotsiubailo was the youngest battalion commander in the history of the Ukrainian Army. He was allegedly linked with the Right Sector.[1]
In December 2021 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded Kotsiubailo the Hero of Ukraine Ukraine decoration, the country's highest honour.[2] In 2022, he was included in the 30 under 30: Faces of the Future rating by Forbes.[3] Dmytro Kotsiubailo was born on 1 November 1995 in the village of Zadnistrianske, now Burshtyn community, Ivano-Frankivsk Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine. He graduated from Bovshivka Secondary School and Ivano-Frankivsk Art Lyceum. He was an active participant of the Revolution of Dignity. Participant of the Russo-Ukrainian War, in particular, a platoon commander of volunteers (2014) and a company (2015). In 2014, he was wounded in Pisky, Donetsk Oblast, and returned to the front after recovery. On 17 March 2016, he was appointed commander of the 1st Mechanized Battalion "Da Vinci Wolves" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On 7 March 2023, Kotsiubailo was killed in the battles of Bakhmut. This was stated by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his video address: Today, 'Da Vinci', a Hero of Ukraine, a volunteer, a man-symbol, a man of courage, Dmytro Kotsiubailo, was killed in action. A fighter of the 67th separate mechanized brigade, a commander. He died in the battle near Bakhmut, in the battle for Ukraine.[4] Awards[edit]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-11-2023, 10:02 PM
Thomas E. Love (October 1937 – March 7, 2023), was an American billionaire businessman. He was the founder, owner, and executive chairman of Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores.
Thomas E. Love[1] was born in Oklahoma City in October 1937,[2] one of six siblings. He was the son of F. C. Love, a lawyer who was later president of the oil company Kerr-McGee,[3] and Margaret Eugenia Vessels Love.[1] Thomas was the descendant of two Chickasaw families, both named Love, who were forced to participate in the Trail of Tears.[4] He was a descendant of Benjamin Love, who was the official interpreter for the Chickasaw people.[4] At age 13, he left home to be educated as a boarder at St. Gregory's High School in Shawnee, where he was a standout football player.[3][5] Love attended St. John's University in St. Cloud, Minnesota, but left after less than one semester.[5] He then joined the U.S. Marine Corps and over a three-year career, rose to the rank of corporal. After leaving the Marines, he married and decided to try college once more.[5] He dropped out of the University of Oklahoma in 1964.[6] Initially, Love owned restaurants and car washes, until he discovered an opportunity in abandoned gas stations.[3] In January 1964, Love and his wife Judy leased a self-service gas station in Watonga, Oklahoma.[6][3] Love went on to open another 30 gas stations. Then in 1971, he decided to merge self-service gas stations with convenience stores and the business continued to grow.[3] Today, Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores is a national chain with more than 600 locations in 42 states.[7] Tom and Judy Love married on December 26, 1961.[2] They had four children and lived in Oklahoma City. Three of their children work for the company.[6] Frank Love and Greg Love are co-CEOs, and Jenny Love Meyer is the vice president of communications.[7] Judy Love is secretary of Love's Travel Stops and president of Love's Family Foundation. She sits on the boards of Oklahoma City University, SSM Health Care, the St. Anthony Foundation, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Civic Center Music Hall, Allied Arts, Community Foundation, and the University of Central Oklahoma Foundation.[8] Tom Love died in Oklahoma City on March 7, 2023, at age 85.[9][10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Love
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-11-2023, 10:07 PM
Chaim Topol (Hebrew: חיים טופול; September 9, 1935 – March 8, 2023), also spelled Haym Topol,[1] mononymously known as Topol,[2] was an Israeli actor, singer, and illustrator. He is best known for his portrayal of Tevye, the lead role in the stage musical Fiddler on the Roof and the 1971 film adaptation, performing this role more than 3,500 times from 1967 through 2009.[2]
Topol began his acting career during his Israeli army service in the Nahal entertainment troupe and later toured Israel with kibbutz theatre and satirical theatre companies. He was a co-founder of the Haifa Theatre. His breakthrough film role came in 1964 as the title character in Sallah Shabati, by Israeli writer Ephraim Kishon, for which he won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer—Male. Topol went on to appear in more than 30 films in Israel and the United States, including Galileo (1975), Flash Gordon (1980), and For Your Eyes Only (1981). He was described as Israel's only internationally recognized entertainer from the 1960s through the 1980s. He won a Golden Globe for Best Actor and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1971 film portrayal of Tevye, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor for a 1991 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. Topol was a founder of Variety Israel, an organization serving children with special needs, and Jordan River Village, a year-round camp for Arab and Jewish children with life-threatening illnesses, for which he served as chairman of the board. In 2015 he was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement. Biography[edit] Chaim Topol was born in Tel Aviv,[1][3] in what was then Mandatory Palestine (now Israel). His father Jacob Topol was born in Russia and in the early 1930s immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, where he worked as a plasterer;[4] he also served in the Haganah paramilitary organization.[5] His mother Imrela "Rel" (née Goldman) Topol was a seamstress.[6] Topol's parents had been involved in the Betar Zionist youth movement in Warsaw before immigrating.[7] His father had Hasidic roots, with a mother coming from a family of Gerrer Hasidim and a father from Aleksander Hasidim.[8] Topol and his two younger sisters grew up in the South Tel Aviv working-class neighborhood of Florentin.[9] As a young child, although he wanted to become a commercial artist, his elementary school teacher, the writer Yemima Avidar-Tchernovitz, saw a theatrical side to him, and encouraged him to act in school plays and read stories to the class.[2] At age 14 he began working as a printer at the Davar newspaper while pursuing his high school studies at night.[2] He graduated from high school at age 17 and moved to Kibbutz Geva.[2] A year later, he enlisted in the Israeli army and became a member of the Nahal entertainment troupe, singing and acting in traveling shows.[2][10] He rose in rank to troupe commander.[2] Twenty-three days after being discharged from military service on October 2, 1956, and two days after marrying Galia Finkelstein, a fellow Nahal troupe member, Topol was called up for reserve duty in the Sinai Campaign.[2] He performed for soldiers stationed in the desert. After the war, he and his wife settled in Kibbutz Mishmar David, where Topol worked as a garage mechanic.[2] Topol assembled a kibbutz theatre company made up of friends from his Nahal troupe; the group toured four days a week, worked on their respective kibbutzim for two days a week, and had one day off.[2] The theatre company was in existence from early 1957 to the mid-1960s. Topol both sang and acted with the group, doing both "loudly".[2] Topol and his wife Galia Finkelstein had three children: a son and two daughters.[2] The couple resided in Galia's childhood home in Tel Aviv.[11] Topol's hobbies included sketching and sculpting.[2] Illness and death[edit] In June 2022, Topol's son, Omer, revealed that his father was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.[12] On March 8, 2023, Topol's family notified the press that he was near death and "living his final hours", and asked the public to respect the family's privacy.[13][14][15] He died "overnight", at the age of 87.[16][17][18] Prior to his burial at Kvutzat Shiller on March 10, a memorial was held at Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv, March 9. Legacy[edit] Shortly after his death, President Isaac Herzog issued a statement honoring "one of the most prominent Israeli stage artists, a gifted actor who conquered many stages in Israel and overseas, filled the cinema screens with his presence and, above all, deeply entered our hearts". Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated "his wide smile, warm voice, and unique sense of humor made him a folk hero who won the hearts of the people" and former prime minister Yair Lapid remarked "He and his smile will continue to accompany Israeli culture, his rich legacy will forever remain a part of Israel".[19] Singing and acting career[edit] Between 1960 and 1964, Topol performed with the Batzal Yarok ("Green Onion") satirical theatre company, which also toured Israel.[2][20] Other members of the group included Uri Zohar, Nechama Hendel, Zaharira Harifai, Arik Einstein, and Oded Kotler.[21] In 1960, Topol co-founded the Haifa Municipal Theatre with Yosef Milo, serving as assistant to the director and acting in plays by Shakespeare, Ionesco, and Brecht.[2][22] In 1965 he performed in the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv.[22] Quote:Haim Topol, then a young man and of Ashkenazi heritage, plays the old Sephardic manipulator with such consummate skill that even aged immigrants from Morocco and Tunisia were convinced that he was one of them. –Tom Tugend on Topol's portrayal of Sallah Shabati[23]
Topol's first film appearance was in the 1961 film I Like Mike, followed by the 1963 Israeli film El Dorado.[2][21] His breakthrough role came as the lead character in the 1964 film Sallah Shabati.[24] Adapted for the screen by Ephraim Kishon from his original play, the social satire depicts the hardships of a Sephardic immigrant family in the rough conditions of ma'abarot, immigrant absorption camps in Israel in the 1950s, satirizing "just about every pillar of Israeli society: the Ashkenazi establishment, the pedantic bureaucracy, corrupt political parties, rigid kibbutz ideologues and ... the Jewish National Fund's tree-planting program".[23][25] Topol, who was 29 during the filming,[26] was familiar playing the role of the family patriarch, having performed skits from the play with his Nahal entertainment troupe during his army years.[2][21] He contributed his ideas to the part, playing the character as a more universal Mizrahi Jew instead of specifically a Yemenite, Iraqi, or Moroccan Jew, and asking Kishon to change the character's first name from Saadia (a recognizably Yemenite name) to Sallah (a more general Mizrahi name).[2] The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Topol won the 1964 Golden Gate Award for Best Actor at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the 1965 Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer—Male,[2][20][21][27] alongside Harve Presnell and George Segal. Sallah Shabati was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, losing to the Italian-language Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.[2] In 1966, Topol made his English-language film debut as Abou Ibn Kaqden in the Mickey Marcus biopic Cast a Giant Shadow.[11] Tevye the Dairyman[edit] Topol came to greatest prominence in his portrayal of Tevye the Dairyman on stage and screen. He first played the lead role in the Israeli production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof in 1966,[21] replacing Shmuel Rodensky for 10 weeks when Rodensky fell ill.[2] Harold Prince, producer of the original Fiddler on the Roof that opened on Broadway in 1964, had seen Topol in Sallah Shabati and called him to audition for the role of the fifty-something Tevye in a new production scheduled to open at Her Majesty's Theatre in London on February 16, 1967.[28] Not yet fluent in English, Topol memorized the score from listening to the original Broadway cast album and practiced the lyrics with a British native.[28] When Topol arrived at the audition, Prince was surprised that this 30-year-old man had played Shabati, a character in his sixties.[2] Topol explained, "A good actor can play an old man, a sad face, a happy man. Makeup is not an obstacle".[2] Topol also surprised the producers with his familiarity with the staging, since he had already acted in the Israeli production, and was hired.[2][29] He spent six months in London learning his part phonetically with vocal coach Cicely Berry.[29] Jerome Robbins, director and choreographer of the 1964 Broadway show who came over to direct the London production, "re-directed" the character of Tevye for Topol and helped the actor deliver a less caricatured performance.[30][31] Topol's performance received positive reviews.[31] A few months after the opening, Topol was called up for reserve duty in the Six-Day War and returned to Israel. He was assigned to an army entertainment troupe on the Golan Heights.[31] Afterward he returned to the London production, appearing in a total of 430 performances.[32] It was during the London run that he began being known by his last name only, as the English producers were unable to pronounce the voiceless uvular fricative consonant Ḥet at the beginning of his first name, Chaim, instead calling him "Shame".[2] Quote:Chaim Topol breathed life into Tevye. –Norman Jewison, 2011[33]
In casting the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof, director Norman Jewison and his production team sought an actor other than Zero Mostel for the lead role. This decision was a controversial one, as Mostel had made the role famous in the long-running Broadway musical and wanted to star in the film.[34] But Jewison and his team felt Mostel would eclipse the character with his larger-than-life personality.[35][36][37] Jewison flew to London in February 1968 to see Topol perform as Tevye during his last week with the London production, and chose him over Danny Kaye, Herschel Bernardi, Rod Steiger, Danny Thomas, Walter Matthau, Richard Burton, and Frank Sinatra, who had also expressed interest in the part.[2][36][38] Then 36 years old, Topol was made to look 20 years older and 30 pounds (14 kg) heavier with makeup and costuming.[4] As in his role as Shabati, Topol used the technique of "locking his muscles" to convincingly play an older character.[2][39] He later explained: Quote:As a young man, I had to make sure that I didn't break the illusion for the audience. You have to tame yourself. I'm now someone who is supposed to be 50, 60 years old. I cannot jump. I cannot suddenly be young. You produce a certain sound [in your voice] that is not young.[2] For his performance, Topol won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy,[40] the Sant Jordi Award for Best Performance in a Foreign Film,[41] and the 1972 David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actor, sharing the latter with Elizabeth Taylor.[21] He was also nominated for the 1971 Academy Award for Best Actor, losing to Gene Hackman in The French Connection.[11][24] In 1983 Topol reprised the role of Tevye in a revival of Fiddler on the Roof on the West End in London.[32] In 1989, he played the role in a 30-city U.S. touring production.[42] As he was by then the approximate age of the character, he commented, "I didn't have to spend the energy playing the age".[42] In 1990–1991, he again starred as Tevye in a Broadway revival of Fiddler at the Gershwin Theatre.[42][43] In that production Rosalind Harris, who had played eldest daughter Tzeitel in the film, played Tevye's wife Golde opposite Topol. In 1991, he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical,[44] losing to Jonathan Pryce in Miss Saigon. Topol again played Tevye in a 1994 London revival,[32] which became a touring production. In that production, the role of one of his daughters was played by his daughter, Adi Topol Margalith.[2][45] Topol reprised the role of Tevye for a 1997–1998 touring production in Israel, as well as a 1998 show at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne.[46] In September 2005 he returned to Australia for a Fiddler on the Roof revival at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney,[47] followed by an April 2006 production at the Lyric Theatre in Brisbane,[48] and a June 2006 production at Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne.[46] In May 2007, he starred in a production at the Auckland Civic Theatre.[49] In 2009, Topol began a farewell tour of Fiddler on the Roof as Tevye, opening in Wilmington, Delaware.[50] He was forced to withdraw from the tour in Boston owing to a shoulder injury, and was replaced by Theodore Bikel and Harvey Fierstein, both of whom had portrayed Tevye on Broadway.[2] Topol estimated that he performed the role more than 3,500 times.[2][24][11] In 2014, he appeared in Raising the Roof, a 50th-anniversary tribute to Fiddler at New York City's Town Hall produced by National Yiddish Theatre.[51] The evening featured Chita Rivera, Joshua Bell, Sheldon Harnick, Andrea Martin, Jerry Zaks, and more, and was co-directed by Gary John La Rosa and Erik Liberman.[51] Other stage and film roles[edit] In 1976, Topol played the lead role of the baker, Amiable, in the new musical The Baker's Wife, but was fired after eight months by producer David Merrick. In her autobiography, Patti LuPone, his co-star in the production, claimed that Topol had behaved unprofessionally on stage and had a strained relationship with her off-stage. [52][53] The show's composer, Stephen Schwartz, claimed that Topol's behavior greatly disturbed the cast and directors and resulted in the production not reaching Broadway as planned.[54] In 1988, Topol starred in the title role in Ziegfeld at the London Palladium.[22] He returned to the London stage in 2008 in the role of Honoré, played by Maurice Chevalier in the 1958 film Gigi.[2] Topol appeared in more than 30 films in Israel and abroad.[11] Among his notable English-language appearances are the title role in Galileo (1975), Dr. Hans Zarkov in Flash Gordon (1980),[55] and Milos Columbo in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981).[55][56] He was said to be Israel's "only internationally-recognized entertainer" from the 1960s through to the 1980s.[2] In Israel, Topol acted in and produced dozens of films and television series.[21] As a voice artist, he dubbed the voice of Bagheera in the Hebrew-language versions of The Jungle Book and the 2003 sequel as well as Rubeus Hagrid in the first two films of the Harry Potter film series.[11][24] He was also a playwright and screenwriter.[25] Topol was featured on two BBC One programs, the six-part series Topol's Israel (1985) and earlier It's Topol (1968). [20][57] A Hebrew-language documentary of his life, Chaim Topol – Life as a Film, aired on Israel's Channel 1 in 2011, featuring interviews with his longtime actor friends in Israel and abroad.[6] A baritone,[6] Topol recorded several singles and albums, including film soundtracks, children's songs, and Israeli war songs. His albums include Topol With Roger Webb And His Orchestra - Topol '68 (1967), Topol Sings Israeli Freedom Songs (1967), War Songs By Topol (1968), and Topol's Israel (1984). He appeared on the soundtrack album for the film production of Fiddler on the Roof (1971), the London cast album (1967); and the television production of The Going Up Of David Lev (2010).[citation needed] Literary and art career[edit] His autobiography, Topol by Topol, was published in London by Weindenfel and Nicholson (1981). [20][46] He also authored To Life! (1994) and Topol's Treasury of Jewish Humor, Wit and Wisdom (1995).[46] Topol illustrated approximately 25 books in both Hebrew and English.[21] He also produced drawings of Israeli national figures. His sketches of Israeli presidents were reproduced in a 2013 stamp series issued by the Israel Philatelic Federation,[21] as was his self-portrait as Tevye for 2014 commemorative stamp marking the 50th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Fiddler on the Roof.[58] Philanthropy[edit] In 1967, Topol founded Variety Israel, an organization serving children with special needs.[21][59] He was also a co-founder and chairman of the board of Jordan River Village, a year-round camp for Arab and Jewish children with life-threatening illnesses, which opened in 2012.[21][60] It was inspired by Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.[61] Topol was a recipient of Israel's Kinor David award in arts and entertainment in 1964.[62] He received a Best Actor award from the San Sebastián International Film Festival for his performance in the 1972 film Follow Me![21] In 2008, he was named an Outstanding Member of the Israel Festival for his contribution to Israeli culture.[21][63] In 2014, the University of Haifa conferred upon Topol an honorary degree in recognition of his 50 years of activity in Israel's cultural and public life.[21] In 2015, he received the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement.[59][11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Topol
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-11-2023, 10:11 PM
Robert Blake (born Michael James Vijencio Gubitosi; September 18, 1933 – March 9, 2023) was an American actor known for his roles in the 1967 film In Cold Blood and the 1970s U.S. television series Baretta.[1]
Blake began acting as a child, with a lead role in the final years of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Our Gang (Little Rascals) short film series from 1939 to 1944. He also appeared as a child actor in 22 entries of the Red Ryder film franchise. In the Red Ryder series and in many of his adult roles, the Italian-American actor was often cast as an American Indian or Latino character.[2] After a stint in the United States Army, Blake returned to acting in both television and movie roles.[2] Blake continued acting until 1997's Lost Highway. Owing to Blake becoming one of the first child actors to successfully transition to mature roles as an adult, author Michael Newton called his career "one of the longest in Hollywood history."[2] In March 2005, Blake was tried and acquitted of the 2001 murder of his second wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.[3][4] In November 2005, he was found liable in a California civil court for her wrongful death.[5] Early life[edit] Robert Blake was born Michael James Vijencio Gubitosi in Nutley, New Jersey, on September 18, 1933.[6][7][8][9] His parents were Giacomo (James) Gubitosi and his wife, Elizabeth Cafone.[8] In 1930, James worked as a die setter for a can manufacturer. Eventually, Blake's parents began a song-and-dance act.[2] In 1936, their three children began performing, billed as "The Three Little Hillbillies."[2] They moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1938, where the children began working as movie extras.[8] Blake had an unhappy childhood in which he was abused by his alcoholic father. When he entered public school at age 10, he was bullied and had fights with other students, which led to his expulsion. Blake stated that he was physically and sexually abused by both of his parents while growing up and was frequently locked in a closet and forced to eat off the floor as punishment.[2] At age 14, he ran away from home, leading to several more difficult years.[10] His father died by suicide in 1956.[2] Then known as "Mickey Gubitosi", Blake began his acting career as Toto in the MGM movie Bridal Suite (1939), starring Annabella and Robert Young. Blake then began appearing in MGM's Our Gang short subjects (a.k.a. The Little Rascals) under his real name, replacing Eugene "Porky" Lee. He appeared in 40 of the shorts between 1939 and 1944, eventually becoming the series' final lead character. Blake's parents also made appearances in the series as extras. In Our Gang, Blake's character, Mickey, was often called upon to cry, for which he was criticized for being unconvincing. He was also criticized for being obnoxious and whiny.[11] In 1942, he acquired the stage name "Bobby Blake" and his character in the series was renamed "Mickey Blake." In 1944, MGM discontinued Our Gang, releasing the final short in the series, Dancing Romeo. In 1995, Blake was honored by the Young Artist Foundation with its Former Child Star "Lifetime Achievement" Award for his role in Our Gang.[12] In 1942, Blake appeared as "Tooky" Stedman in Andy Hardy's Double Life. In 1944, Blake began playing a Native American boy, "Little Beaver," in the Red Ryder western series at the studios of Republic Pictures (now CBS Radford Studios), appearing in twenty-three of the movies until 1947. He also had roles in one of Laurel and Hardy's later films The Big Noise (1944), and the Warner Bros. movies Humoresque (1946), playing John Garfield's character as a child, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), playing the Mexican boy who sells Humphrey Bogart a winning lottery ticket and gets a glass of water thrown in his face by Bogart in the process. In 1950, at age 17, Blake appeared as Mahmoud in The Black Rose and as Enrico, Naples Bus Boy (uncredited) in Black Hand.[citation needed] Career as an adult[edit] In 1950, Blake was drafted into the United States Army. Upon leaving at the age of 21, he found himself without any job prospects and fell into a deep depression. This led to a two-year addiction to heroin and cocaine. He also sold drugs.[13] Blake entered Jeff Corey's acting class and began working on improving his personal and professional life. He eventually became a seasoned Hollywood actor, playing notable dramatic roles in movies and on television. In 1956, he was billed as Robert Blake for the first time.[citation needed] In 1959, Blake turned down the role of Little Joe Cartwright, a character ultimately portrayed by Michael Landon, in NBC's western television series Bonanza.[citation needed] He did appear that year as Tobe Hackett in the episode "Trade Me Deadly" of the syndicated western series 26 Men, which dramatized true stories of the Arizona Rangers. Blake also appeared twice as "Alfredo" in the syndicated western The Cisco Kid and starred in "The White Hat" episode of Men of Annapolis, another syndicated series. He appeared in three distinctive guest lead roles in the CBS series Have Gun Will Travel, as well as one-time guest roles on John Payne's NBC western The Restless Gun, Nick Adams's ABC western The Rebel, and in season 3, episode 25 of Bat Masterson, the NBC western series The Californians, the short-lived ABC adventure series Straightaway, and the NBC western television series Laramie. Blake performed in numerous motion pictures as an adult, including the starring role in The Purple Gang (1960), a gangster movie, and featured roles in Pork Chop Hill (1959) and, as one of four U.S. soldiers participating in a gang rape in occupied Germany, in Town Without Pity (1961). He appeared in the John F. Kennedy war biopic PT 109 as Charles "Bucky" Harris (1963). He was also in Ensign Pulver (1964), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and other films. Blake garnered further exposure as a member of the ensemble cast of the 1963 acclaimed but short-lived The Richard Boone Show, appearing in fifteen of the NBC series' 25 episodes. In 1967, Blake experienced a career breakout due to his work in the film In Cold Blood.[14][15] Blake played real-life murderer Perry Smith. Richard Brooks received two Oscar nominations for the film: one for his direction, and one for his adaptation of Truman Capote's book.[citation needed]With In Cold Blood, Blake was the first actor to utter the expletive "bullshit" in a mainstream American motion picture.[16] Blake played a Native American fugitive in [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_Them_Willie_Boy_Is_Here]Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), starred in a TV movie adaptation of Of Mice and Men (1981), and played a motorcycle highway patrolman in iconoclastic Electra Glide in Blue (1973). He played a small-town stock car driver with ambitions to join the NASCAR circuit in Corky, which MGM produced in 1972. The film featured real NASCAR drivers, including Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough.[citation needed] Blake may be best known for his Emmy Award-winning role of Tony Baretta in the popular television series Baretta[17] (1975 to 1978), playing a street-wise, plain clothes police detective. The show's trademarks included Baretta's pet cockatoo "Fred" and his signature phrases—notably "That's the name of that tune", and "You can take that to the bank." After Baretta ended, NBC offered to produce several pilot episodes of a proposed series titled Joe Dancer, in which Blake would play the role of a hard-boiled private detective.[18] In addition to starring, Blake also was credited as the executive producer and creator.[18] Three television films aired on NBC in 1981 and 1983, but a television series of "Joe Dancer" never materialized. [18] Blake had starring roles in a couple of films for Paramount Pictures, Coast to Coast (1980) and Second-Hand Hearts (1981). He continued to act through the 1980s and 1990s, mostly in television, in such roles as Jimmy Hoffa in the miniseries Blood Feud (1983) and as John List in the murder drama Judgment Day: The John List Story (1993), which earned him a third Emmy nomination. Blake starred in the 1985 television series Hell Town, playing a priest working in a tough neighborhood, and wrote the screenplay for the pilot as Lyman P. Docker.[19] He also had character parts in the theatrical movies Money Train (1995) and played the Mystery Man in David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997).[citation needed] Marriages and children[edit] Blake and actress Sondra Kerr were married in 1961, and divorced in 1983. It was his first marriage, from which came two children: actor Noah Blake (born 1965) and Delinah Blake (born 1966).[citation needed] In 1999, Blake met Bonny Lee Bakley, formerly of Wharton, New Jersey, who had already been married nine times and reportedly had a history of exploiting older men, especially celebrities, for money.[20] She was dating Christian Brando, the son of Marlon Brando, during her relationship with Blake. Bakley became pregnant and told both Brando and Blake that her baby was theirs. Initially, Bakley named the baby "Christian Shannon Brando" and stated that Brando was the father.[21] Bakley wrote letters describing her dubious motives to Blake.[22] Blake insisted that she take a DNA test to prove the paternity.[21] Blake became Bakley's tenth husband on November 19, 2000, after DNA tests proved that Blake was the biological father of her child, who was renamed Rosie.[citation needed] Blake remained married to Bakley until she was murdered on May 4, 2001. In a March 2016 interview at age 82, Blake indicated he had a new woman in his life, who remained unnamed.[23] In 2017, Blake applied for a marriage license for his fiancée, Pamela Hudak, whom he had known for decades, and who had testified on his behalf at his trial.[24] On December 7, 2018, it was announced that Blake had filed for divorce.[25] Murder of Bonny Lee Bakley[edit] On May 4, 2001, Blake took Bakley out for dinner at Vitello's Italian Restaurant in Studio City, California. Bakley was fatally shot in the head while sitting in Blake's vehicle, which was parked on a side street around the corner from the restaurant. Blake claimed that he had returned to the restaurant to collect a pistol which he had left inside and said that he had not been present when the shooting took place. The pistol Blake left in the restaurant was found and determined by police not to be the murder weapon.[26] Arrest[edit] On April 18, 2002, Blake was arrested and charged with Bakley's murder. His longtime bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, was also arrested and charged with conspiracy in connection with the murder. A key event that gave the Los Angeles Police Department the confidence to arrest Blake came when a retired stuntman, Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton, agreed to testify against him.[27] Hambleton alleged that Blake tried to hire him to kill Bakley. Another retired stuntman and an associate of Hambleton's, Gary McLarty, also came forward with a similar story.[28] According to author Miles Corwin, Hambleton had agreed to testify against Blake only after being told that he would be subject to a grand jury subpoena and a misdemeanor charge.[29][30] On April 22, 2002, Blake was charged with one count of murder with special circumstances, an offense which carried a possible death penalty. He was also charged with two counts of solicitation of murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. Blake entered a plea of not guilty.[citation needed] On March 13, 2003, after almost a year in jail, Blake was granted bail, which was set at $1.5 million. He was then placed under house arrest while awaiting trial. On October 31, in a major reversal for the prosecution, the judge dismissed the conspiracy charges against Blake and Caldwell during a pre-trial hearing.[31] The junior prosecutor who handled the case, Shellie Samuels, was interviewed by CBS reporter Peter Van Sant for the CBS program 48 Hours Investigates. During the interview, broadcast in November 2003, she admitted that the prosecutors had no forensic evidence implicating Blake in the murder and that they could not tie him to the murder weapon.[31] Trial and acquittal[edit] Blake's criminal trial for murder began on December 20, 2004, with opening statements by the prosecution and opening statements by the defense the following day.[31] The prosecution contended that Blake intentionally murdered Bakley to free himself from a loveless marriage, while the defense claimed that Blake was an innocent victim of circumstantial and fabricated evidence. McLarty and Hambleton each testified that Blake had asked them to murder Bakley. On cross-examination, the defense brought up McLarty's mental health problems and Hambleton's criminal history. The lack of gunshot residue on Blake's hands was a key part of the defense's case that Blake was not the shooter. Blake chose not to testify.[32] On March 16, 2005, Blake was found not guilty of murder and not guilty of one of the two counts of solicitation of murder. The other count, for solicitation to commit murder, was dropped after it was revealed that the jury was deadlocked 11–1 in favor of an acquittal. Los Angeles District Attorney Stephen Cooley, commenting on this ruling, called Blake "a miserable human being" and the jurors "incredibly stupid" to fall for the defense's claims.[33][34] Public opinion regarding the verdict was mixed, with some feeling that Blake was guilty, though many felt that there was not enough evidence to convict him.[35] On the night of his acquittal several fans celebrated at Blake's favorite haunt – and the scene of the crime – Vitello's.[36] Civil case[edit] Bakley's three children filed a civil suit against Blake, asserting that he was responsible for their mother's death. During the trial, the girlfriend of Blake's co-defendant Earle Caldwell said she believed Blake and Caldwell were involved in the crime.[37] On November 18, 2005, a jury found Blake liable for the wrongful death of his wife and ordered him to pay $30 million.[38] On February 3, 2006, Blake filed for bankruptcy. Blake's attorney, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, appealed the court's decision on February 28, 2007.[39] On April 26, 2008, an appeals court upheld the civil case verdict, but cut Blake's penalty assessment to $15 million.[40] Aftermath[edit] Blake maintained a low profile after his acquittal and filing for bankruptcy, with debts of $3 million for unpaid legal fees as well as state and federal taxes.[41] On April 9, 2010, the state of California filed a tax lien against Blake for $1,110,878 in unpaid back taxes.[42] On July 16, 2012, Blake was interviewed on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight. When asked about the night of Bakley's murder, Blake became defensive and angry, stating he resented Morgan's questioning and felt he was being interrogated. Morgan responded he was only asking questions that he felt people were eager to have answered.[43] In January 2019, Blake was interviewed by 20/20. Initially, he seemed to decline the interview and instead delegated it to a friend, but then began to participate, discussing the murder and the behavior of the police officers who dealt with him, the culture of Hollywood and its reaction to the event, and his early life and difficulties with his parents.[44][45][46] In September 2019, Blake started a YouTube channel titled "Robert Blake: I ain't dead yet, so stay tuned," on which he discussed his life and career.[47] Later in October the same year, Blake's daughter, Rose Lenore, opened up about her childhood and how the trial affected her. She discussed reuniting with her father, visiting her mother's grave and her own desire to get into acting. Regarding knowing the truth about her mother's murder and whether Blake did it she declined to know the details but is open to knowing the truth "If it's ever an option".[48] In 2021, Blake opened up a website, "Robert Blake's Pushcart", where scripts, memorabilia, and books including his autobiography Tales of a Rascal are available to read and in the case of the latter can be ordered.[49] Quentin Tarantino's novel Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, based on his film of the same name, is dedicated to Blake. Notably, Blake's later life dealing with his wife's murder mirrors Brad Pitt's character Cliff Booth who is also accused of murdering his wife.[50] Blake died from heart disease in Los Angeles, on March 9, 2023, at the age of 89.[51][52][53]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-11-2023, 10:18 PM
Jerrold Samuels (May 3, 1938 – March 10, 2023) was an American singer, songwriter and record producer.[1] Under the pseudonym Napoleon XIV, he achieved one-hit wonder status with the Top 5 hit novelty song "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" in 1966.[1] Samuels occasionally revisited the Napoleon XIV character to record other songs, usually comedy records with an insanity theme.
Under the name Scott David (his son's name), he co-wrote "As If I Didn't Know" with Larry Kusik, a top 10 hit for Adam Wade in 1961. Samuels also wrote "The Shelter of Your Arms", a top 20 hit for Sammy Davis Jr. in 1964. Samuels began his recording career in 1956 when he cut the single "Puppy Love"/"The Chosen Few" for the Vik Records subsidiary of RCA Victor Records.[2] In 1966, Samuels concocted "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" while working at Associated Recording Studios in New York. The public found out his true identity when Cousin Brucie of WABC revealed his name. The record quickly climbed the charts, reaching the Top Ten nationally in just its third week on the Billboard Hot 100. It peaked at No. 3 and sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[3] In the Cash Box Top 100 the record even climbed to No. 1 for one week in its second week on the charts. The success of the single inspired a Warner Bros. album of the same name in 1966 (reissued by Rhino in 1985), most of which continued with the mental illness theme (for example: "Bats In My Belfry" and "Split Level Head" which features different vocal parts in each stereo speaker.[1] A second single of two recordings from that album was relatively unnoticed. His manager was Leonard Stogel. In his later years, Samuels worked as a singer and agent who booked various performers. He worked in the Delaware Valley area. Samuels died on March 10, 2023, at the age of 84.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_XIV No, I am not going to give you a video of that dreadful song, Mental illness isn't funny.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-11-2023, 10:24 PM
Jesús María Rojas Alou (March 24, 1942 – March 10, 2023) was a Dominican professional baseball outfielder. During a 15-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career, he played for the San Francisco Giants (1963–68), the Houston Astros (1969–73; 1978–79), the Oakland Athletics (1973–74), and the New York Mets (1975). He was the youngest of a trio of baseball-playing brothers that included Felipe and Matty.
Career[edit] Alou was considered a better prospect than either of his brothers and received a $4,000 signing bonus from the San Francisco Giants. He made his major league debut with the Giants late in the 1963 season.[1] In his first game, on September 10, all three Alou brothers batted in the same inning (they were retired in order). Five days later, for the first time, the three played in the outfield for the Giants at the same time.[2] In 1964, his first full year in the major leagues, Alou batted .274 with little power, but on July 10, he went 6-for-6 with five singles and a home run. Alou was selected by the Montreal Expos in the 1968 MLB expansion draft and then was traded to the Houston Astros with Donn Clendenon for Rusty Staub.[3] In the 1970 season, Alou hit .306 in 487 at-bats, but with few walks and little power. On July 31, 1973, the Astros traded Alou to the Oakland Athletics for a player to be named later.[4] He served as a bench player for the Athletics on two World Series championship teams. Alou was released by the Athletics towards the end of March 1975, before the start of the 1975 season,[5] and he signed with the New York Mets on April 10.[6] He batted .265 as a pinch hitter for the Mets, and they released Alou before the 1976 season.[7] In 1976, Alou played for Córdoba of the Mexican League. Houston once again signed Alou in 1978. He responded by hitting .324 in part-time action and became a player-coach the following year before retiring. Later career[edit] Alou later served as a scout for the Expos, then moved to the Florida Marlins as the club's director of Dominican operations. He held the same post with the Boston Red Sox from 2002 through 2017, then moved to a part-time role as special assistant and then ambassador to the Red Sox' international scouting and player development department through 2020.[8][9] Alou was awarded the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum Hall of Fame Pioneer Award at a pre-game ceremony at Minute Maid Park, on September 23, 2008.[10] Personal life[edit] Alou married Angela Hanley. They had five children and lived in the Dominican Republic.[11] Alou died on March 10, 2023, at the age of 80.[12]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-11-2023, 10:29 PM
Harry Peter "Bud" Grant Jr. (May 20, 1927 – March 11, 2023) was an American football defensive end and head coach, and a player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Grant is best known for serving as the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons; he was the team's second (1967–83) and fourth (1985) head coach, leading them to four Super Bowl appearances, 11 division titles, one league championship and three National Football Conference championships.
Grant attended the University of Minnesota and was a three-sport athlete, in football, basketball, and baseball. After college he played for the Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA, the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL, and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL. A statue of Grant stands in front of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers' current stadium, IG Field. With the Lakers he won the 1950 NBA Finals. Before coaching the Vikings, he was the head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League (CFL) for ten seasons, winning the Grey Cup four times. Grant is the most successful coach in Vikings history,[1] and the fifth most successful professional football coach overall with a combined 286 wins in the NFL and CFL.[2] Grant was elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1983[3] and to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1994.[4] He was the first coach to guide teams to the Grey Cup and the Super Bowl, the only other being Marv Levy. Early life[edit] Grant was born on May 20, 1927, in Superior, Wisconsin to Harry Peter Sr. and Bernice Grant.[5] His mother called him "Buddy Boy", which later became "Bud".[5] As a child, Grant was diagnosed with poliomyelitis and a doctor suggested he become active in sports[6] to strengthen his weakened leg muscles over time. He started with baseball, adding basketball and football as he got older.[5] Due to a lack of organized school teams, he arranged football games between neighborhoods and contacted kids from other schools to participate.[5] During weekends, he spent time outdoors alone hunting rabbits.[5] In his late teens and college years, he played organized baseball in Minnesota and Wisconsin. In 1940, Grant and two friends were duck hunting on Yellow Lake in northern Wisconsin when the Armistice Day Blizzard occurred. Grant survived by sheltering at a gas station while his friends were at a farmer's house.[7] Playing career[edit] High school and college[edit] Grant played football, basketball, and baseball at Superior High School.[6][8] He graduated from high school in 1945 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy[8] during World War II. He was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois and played on the football team coached by Paul Brown.[8] Using an acceptance letter from the University of Wisconsin–Madison to be discharged from the service, Grant decided to attend the University of Minnesota instead.[8] He was a three-sport, nine-letterman[4] athlete in football, basketball, and baseball for the Minnesota Golden Gophers,[6][8] earning All-Big Ten Conference honors in football twice.[4][8][9] While at the University of Minnesota, Grant was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.[10][11] Professional basketball[edit] After leaving the University of Minnesota, Grant was selected in both the NFL and NBA Draft. He was selected in the first round (14th overall) of the 1950 NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles[12] and fourth round (47th overall) selection of the Minneapolis Lakers in the 1950 NBA draft.[13] He played 35 games during the 1949–50 NBA season[14] and signed with the Lakers for the 1950–51 NBA season. He chose to continue his basketball career with the Lakers because they were local and because he was offered a raise to stay for the season.[5] Grant's close friend Sid Hartman was the Lakers' general manager, which may have influenced his decision to remain with the team.[8] He averaged 2.6 points per game in his two seasons as a reserve with the Lakers and was a member of the 1950 championship team.[15] After the death of Arnie Ferrin in 2022, he became the oldest living NBA Champion.[16] Professional football[edit] After two seasons in the NBA, Grant decided to end his professional basketball career.[5] He contacted the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL[5] and agreed to play for the team during the 1951 NFL season.[8] In his first season with the Eagles, Grant played as a defensive end and led the team in sacks (an unofficial statistic at the time).[5][8] He switched to offense as a wide receiver for his second season with the club and ranked second in the NFL for receiving yardage, with 997 yards on 56 catches, including seven touchdowns.[8][17] Grant's contract expired at the end of the 1952 NFL season and the Eagles refused to pay him what he thought he was worth.[5] The Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL had been interested in Grant while in college.[5] Grant left for Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1953 and became the first professional player to "play out his option" and leave for another team.[5][8] He played for the Blue Bombers until 1956 as an offensive end and was named a Western Conference all-star three times.[9][18] He led the Western Conference in pass receptions for the 1953, 1954, and 1956 seasons and receiving yards for the 1953 and 1956 seasons.[9] He also holds the distinction of having made five interceptions in a playoff game, played on October 28, 1953, which is a record in all of professional football.[3][19] The Blue Bombers played for the Grey Cup in 1953, but lost to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the 41st Grey Cup game.[9] Coaching career[edit] Winnipeg Blue Bombers[edit] Blue Bombers management decided that they needed a new coach prior to the 1957 season.[8] On January 30, 1957, Grant accepted the Blue Bombers head coaching position after impressing management with his ability to make adjustments on offense and defense as a player.[5] Club president J. T. Russell thought that Grant could coach even though nobody else did.[18] Grant remained the head coach of the Blue Bombers until 1966. At age 29 (he was 30 by the time he coached his first game), Grant became the youngest head coach in CFL history.[20] During his ten seasons as head coach in Winnipeg, he led the team to six Grey Cup appearances winning the championship four times in 1958, 1959, 1961, and 1962.[21] He finished his Blue Bombers coaching career with a regular season record of 105 wins, 53 losses, and two ties and an overall record of 122 wins, 66 losses, and 3 ties.[18] Grant was the CFL Coach of the Year in 1965.[21] Grant took on additional responsibilities as a club manager between 1964 and 1966.[18] Max Winter, the Minnesota Vikings founder, contacted Grant in 1961 and asked him to coach the new NFL expansion team.[5] Grant declined the offer and remained in Winnipeg until 1967 when Winter and General Manager Jim Finks were successful in luring Grant to Minnesota.[5] Minnesota Vikings[edit] The [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Vikings]Minnesota Vikings hired Grant as their head coach on March 10, 1967, taking over from their original coach, Norm Van Brocklin.[8] Over his tenure as Vikings head coach, Grant was known for instilling discipline in his teams and displaying a lack of emotion during games.[5] He believed that football is a game of controlled emotion and teams would not follow the coach's lead if he were to panic or lose his poise during the course of a game.[2] He required his team to stand at attention in a straight line during the entire national anthem played before the game and even had national anthem practice.[5] Grant required outdoor practice during the winter to get players used to the cold weather[8] and did not allow heaters on the sidelines during games.[5]. As per the latter practice it goes that Grant posited that with the heaters present on the sidelines the players would gather around the source of the warmth but if the heaters were not present the players would be paying attention to the game.[22] Grant and Finks orchestrated a rare (although unofficial) trade between leagues, which brought Joe Kapp from the BC Lions to the Vikings. In return, the Vikings sent Jim Young, a Canadian-born player, back to his native country. Officially both players were waived from their respective leagues and signed with their new teams as free agents; effectively it was a straight exchange. In his second year, Grant led the team to a divisional championship and his first NFL playoffs appearance.[5] In 1969, he led the team to its first NFL Championship and their first appearance in the Super Bowl. The Vikings lost in Super Bowl IV to the American Football League champion Kansas City Chiefs. Prior to the 1970 season, Minnesota released Joe Kapp. After starting Gary Cuozzo at quarterback in 1970 and 1971, the Vikings re-acquired Fran Tarkenton prior to the 1972 season. During the 1970s, the Vikings appeared in three more Super Bowls (VIII, IX, and XI) under Grant and lost each one,[8] but he was the first coach to lead a team to four Super Bowl appearances. He retired after the 1983 NFL season and was succeeded by Les Steckel, who led the team to a 3–13 record the following season.[8] Steckel was fired as head coach after the 1984 season and Grant returned as coach for the Vikings in 1985.[8] After one season where he returned the club to a 7–9 record, he stepped down again.[8] Grant retired as the eighth most successful coach in NFL history with an overall record of 161 wins, 99 losses, and 5 ties. As of 2021, he also remains the most successful coach in Vikings history.[5] During his tenure with the Vikings, he led the Vikings to four Super Bowl games, 11 division titles, one league championship, and three NFC championships.[5]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-13-2023, 06:51 AM
Traute Lafrenz, Last Survivor Of Anti-Nazi Resistance Group, Dead At 103
Lafrenz was arrested by the Gestapo for handing out pamphlets from the White Rose, a group of young idealists calling for opposition to Adolf Hitler. Mar 10, 2023, 06:51 PM EST [url=https://twitter.com/share?text=Lafrenz%20was%20arrested%20by%20the%20Gestapo%20for%20handing%20out%20pamphlets%20from%20the%20White%20Rose%2C%20a%20group%20of%20young%20idealists%20calling%20for%20opposition%20to%20Adolf%20Hitler.&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffpost.com%2Fentry%2Ftraute-lafrenz-last-white-rose-survivor-dead_n_640b8bf1e4b0653e296bb2dd%3Futm_campaign%3Dshare_twitter%26ncid%3Dengmodushpmg00000004&hashtags=&via=HuffPost] Traute Lafrenz, the last survivor of the White Rose resistance movement against Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and his grip over Germany, has died. The courageous medical student who became an activist survived imprisonment and evaded execution. She was 103. Though the Hamburg-born activist died Monday at her home in Meggett, South Carolina, the White Rose historical foundation announced her death Thursday, according to The Guardian. Her son, Michael Page, confirmed her death to The New York Times on Friday. The White Rose was one of the most renowned anti-Hitler movements in Nazi Germany. Its most distinguished members, leaders Christoph Probst and Hans and Sophie Scholl, were beheaded for treason at the Stadelheim prison in Bavaria in 1943. Lafrenz met Hans Scholl in the summer of 1941, The Guardian reported. When she spotted an anti-war leaflet as a medical student at Munich University the next year, she recognized he was involved by its quotes, which included the words of Lao Tzu, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Aristotle, according to the Times. These pamphlets were distributed across campuses until 1943 in hopes of sparking a revolution. The first said that no one would be able to imagine “the degree of shame” that would befall “every honest German” when the Nazis’ “awful crimes” finally came to light. [img=720x1046]https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/640baf3a2500007100780e4e.jpg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale[/img] Lafrenz was arrested for her participation in the White Rose anti-Nazi movement. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS The second pamphlet condemned the genocide of 300,000 Jews “in the most bestial manner imaginable,” an undeniably “terrible crime against the dignity of mankind, a crime that cannot be compared with any other in the history of mankind,” according to the Times. Postwar estimates put the number of Jews eventually killed in the Holocaust at 6 million. ADVERTISEMENT
Lafrenz not only distributed these pamphlets, of which six are known, but helped the group acquire ink to print them. She was hopeful, like many of her peers, that open rebellion would follow the German Army’s defeats at Stalingrad in 1942 and 1943. It never did. “We will not keep silent,” read the fourth of the group’s six leaflets, according to the Times. “We are your guilty conscience. The White Rose will not let you alone.” The movement fell apart when the Scholls were arrested while distributing flyers on Feb. 18, 1943, after a Munich University janitor, Jakob Schmid, alerted the Gestapo. They were executed four days later, joining about 5,000 other German resisters who were put to death. Lafrenz was arrested in March and spent the rest of the war behind bars, the Times reported. The beheadings, in which Hitler reintroduce the guillotine, didn’t stop until January 1945. Lafrenz survived because the Allies liberated the prison before she was tried. ![[Image: 640bafa42500003200780e50.jpeg?ops=scalef..._noupscale]](https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/640bafa42500003200780e50.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale) German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier kneels at the White Rose Memorial in Bavaria on Feb. 6, 2023. BRITTA PEDERSEN/DPA/PICTURE ALLIANCE/GETTY IMAGES ADVERTISEMENT
Lafrenz immigrated to the United States after completing her medical studies and married an eye doctor named Vernon Page. She had four children, and when the family moved to Chicago, she ran the Esperanza Therapeutic Day School for disadvantaged kids. Lafrenz, whose husband died in 1995, would move one last time — and spent the rest of her life in South Carolina. On her 100th birthday on May 3, 2019, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded Lafrenz the Order of Merit — one of the highest civilian honors. Lafrenz “belonged to the few who, in the face of the crimes of national socialism, had the courage to listen to the voice of her conscience and rebel against the dictatorship and the genocide of the Jews. She is a heroine of freedom and humanity,” he said, according to an account in the Times. Trauate Lafrenz is survived by her sons Michael and Thomas, daughters Renee and Kim, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/traute-la...3e296bb2dd
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
03-25-2023, 09:53 PM
Willis Reed Jr. (June 25, 1942 – March 21, 2023) was an American professional basketball player, coach, and general manager. He spent his entire professional playing career (1964–1974) with the New York Knicks. In 1982, Reed was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.[1] In 1996, he was voted one of the "50 Greatest Players in NBA History".[2] In October 2021, Reed was again honored as one of the league's greatest players of all-time by being named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team.[3]
After retiring as a player, Reed served as assistant and head coach with several teams for nearly a decade, then was promoted to general manager and vice president of basketball operations (1989–1996) for the New Jersey Nets. As senior vice president of basketball operations, he helped to lead them to the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003.[4] Early life and education Reed was born on June 25, 1942, in Hico, Louisiana, a small community in Lincoln Parish.[5] He was the only child of Willis Sr. and Inell Reed.[6] He grew up in Bernice, Louisiana.[5] His parents worked to ensure Reed got an education in the segregated South. Reed showed athletic ability at an early age and played basketball at West Side High School in Lillie, Louisiana.[1] Reed attended Grambling State University, a historically black college. Playing for the Grambling State Tigers men's basketball team, Reed amassed 2,280 career points, averaging 26.6 points per game and 21.3 rebounds per game during his senior year. He led the Tigers to one NAIA title and three Southwestern Athletic Conference championships.[1] Reed also was a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.[7] The New York Knicks selected Reed with the first pick in the second round of the 1964 NBA draft.[6] Reed quickly made a name for himself as a fierce, dominating, and physical force on both ends of the floor as a center. In March 1965, he scored 46 points against the Los Angeles Lakers, the second-highest single-game total ever by the Knicks' rookie. For the 1964–65 season, he ranked seventh in the NBA in scoring (19.5 points per game) and fifth in rebounding (14.7 rebounds per game). He also began his string of All-Star appearances and won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award,[8] while also being named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team.[9] The team continued to struggle for a few years while adding good players through trades and the draft. Dick McGuire was replaced as coach with Red Holzman, midway through the 1967–68 season. The Knicks had a 15–22 record under McGuire; then in the part of the season that Holzman led them they had a 28–17 record. Thus for 1968 New York's record was 43–39, its first winning record since the 1958–59 season.[10] Reed continued to make annual appearances in the NBA All-Star Game. By that time he was playing as a power forward, to make room for Walt Bellamy.[11] Reed averaged 11.6 rebounds in 1965–66 and 14.6 in 1966–67, both top 10 marks in the league. By the latter season, he had adjusted to the nuances of his new position, averaging 20.9 points.[12] In 1968–69, the Knicks traded Bellamy and Howard Komives to the Detroit Pistons for Dave DeBusschere. This allowed the Knicks to move Reed back to center.[11] New York held opponents to a league-low 105.2 points per game. With Reed in the middle and Walt Frazier pressuring the ball, the Knicks were the best defensive club in the league for five of the next six seasons.[11] Reed scored 21.1 points per game in 1968–69 and grabbed a franchise-record 1,191 rebounds, an average of 14.5 rebounds per game.[12] First championship In the 1969–70 season, the Knicks won a franchise-record 60 games and set a then single-season NBA record with an 18-game win streak. In 1970, Reed became the first player in NBA history to be named the NBA All-Star Game MVP, the NBA regular season MVP, and the NBA Finals MVP in the same season. In the same year he was named to the All-NBA First Team and NBA All-Defensive First Team, as well as being named as ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year, and the Sporting News NBA MVP.[11] Reed's most famous performance happened on May 8, 1970, in game seven of the 1970 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers in Madison Square Garden.[13] Due to a severe thigh injury, a torn muscle that had previously kept him out of game six, he was considered unlikely to play in game seven. However Reed surprised the fans by walking onto the court during warmups, prompting widespread applause. Starting the game, he scored the Knicks' first two field goals on his first two shot attempts, his only points of the game. After the game in the winner's locker room, a moved Howard Cosell told Reed on national television, "You exemplify the very best that the human spirit can offer."[14] The Knicks slipped to a 52–30 record in the 1970–71 season, still good enough for first place in the Atlantic Division; in mid-season Reed tied Harry Gallatin's all-time club record by grabbing 33 rebounds against the Cincinnati Royals. Again Reed started in the All-Star Game. For the season he averaged 20.9 points and 13.7 rebounds per game, but the Knicks were eliminated by the Baltimore Bullets in the Eastern Conference Finals. In 1971–72, Reed was bothered by tendonitis in his left knee, limiting his mobility.[15] He missed two weeks early in the season and returned, but shortly thereafter the injured knee prohibited him from playing, and he totaled 11 games for the year. Without Reed, the Knicks still managed to make the NBA Finals, but were defeated in five games by the Los Angeles Lakers.[16] The 1972–73 Knicks finished the season with a 57–25 record and went on to win another NBA title.[17] Reed was less of a contributor than he was two seasons earlier, in 69 regular season games, he averaged only 11.0 points. In the playoffs, the Knicks defeated the Bullets and upset the Boston Celtics, and again faced the Lakers in the NBA Finals. After losing the first game, the Knicks captured four straight, claiming their second NBA championship with a 102–93 victory in game five, as Reed scored 18 points, grabbed 12 rebounds, and recorded 7 assists in the deciding victory.[18] After the win, Reed was named NBA Finals MVP.[19] Reed's career was cut short by injuries, and he retired after the 1973–74 season.[20] For his career Reed averaged 18.7 points and 12.9 rebounds per game, playing 650 games. He played in seven All-Star Games.[21] Reed spent several years coaching before moving into general management. He coached the Knicks in 1977–1978, and left the team 14 games into the following season (49–47 record). He was the head coach at Creighton University from 1981 to 1985 and volunteer assistant coach for St. John's University. Reed also served as an assistant coach for the NBA's Atlanta Hawks and Sacramento Kings.[22] Reed debuted as head coach of the New Jersey Nets on March 1, 1988, one week after the Nets' star forward (and Reed's cousin) Orlando Woolridge was suspended by the league and was to undergo drug rehabilitation.[23] He compiled a 33–77 record with the Nets. In 1989, he was hired as the Nets' general manager and vice president of basketball operations (1989–1996). During that time he drafted Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson, acquired Dražen Petrović, and made the Nets a playoff contender throughout the early 1990s. Reed hired Chuck Daly to coach the Nets for the 1992–93 and 1993–94 seasons. In 1996, Reed moved to the position of senior vice president of basketball operations, with the continued goal of building the Nets into a championship contender. The Nets made the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003. Reed then became the vice president of basketball operations with the New Orleans Hornets in 2004. He retired in 2007.[24]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
04-11-2023, 09:35 AM
Allan Jaffee (born Abraham Jaffee;[3] March 13, 1921 – April 10, 2023) was an American cartoonist. He was notable for his work in the satirical magazine Mad, including his trademark feature, the Mad Fold-in. Jaffee was a regular contributor to the magazine for 65 years and is its longest-running contributor. In a 2010 interview, Jaffee said, "Serious people my age are dead."[4]
With a career running from 1942 until 2020, Jaffee holds the Guinness World Record for having the longest career as a comic artist.[5][6] In the half-century between April 1964 and April 2013, only one issue of Mad was published without containing new material by Jaffee.[7][8] In 2008, Jaffee was honored by the Reuben Awards as the Cartoonist of the Year. New Yorker cartoonist Arnold Roth said, "Al Jaffee is one of the great cartoonists of our time."[9] Describing Jaffee, Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz wrote, "Al can cartoon anything".[10] Early life[edit] Jaffee was born March 13, 1921, in Savannah, Georgia, to Mildred and Morris Jaffee, the oldest of four children, all sons. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Zarasai, Lithuania. His father had a management job at a department store in Savannah. In 1927, Mildred took her four sons, with Morris's consent, back to Zarasai. After a year, Morris took the family back to the United States. After another year, Mildred took the children back to Lithuania. After four more years, Morris took the eldest three sons back to the USA,[11] where they lived in Far Rockaway, Queens.[12] The youngest son returned to U.S. in 1940.[13] Mildred presumably perished after the Nazi invasion.[14][15] Jaffee studied at the High School of Music & Art in New York City in the late 1930s, along with his brother Harry and future Mad personnel Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, John Severin, and Al Feldstein.[16][17][18][19] Jaffee began his career in 1942, working as a comic-book artist for several publications, including Joker Comics, in which he was first published in December 1942,[6] and continuing in other comics published by Timely Comics and Atlas Comics, the 1940s and 1950s precursors, respectively, of Marvel Comics. While working alongside future Mad cartoonist Dave Berg, Jaffee created several humor features for Timely, including "Inferior Man" and "Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal".[19] Jaffee originally considered himself strictly an artist until he was disabused of the notion by editors and art directors who were reviewing his portfolio. "When prospective clients laughed and asked 'Who wrote the gag?' my response was 'I did, sir.' Which was very confusing since I didn't realize any writing had taken place. I mean, writers used typewriters, smoked pipes, wore scarves, right? When enough of them said, 'Oh, then you're a writer too,' I took their word for it. Who was I to argue with prospective employers?"[20] During World War II, he worked as an artist for the military in various capabilities. His work included the original floor plan for the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. During this time, he took advantage of the military's free name change service, first to "Alvin Jaffe" by mistake, then to "Allan Jaffee".[3] While working at the Pentagon, he met Ruth Ahlquist, whom he married in 1945.[citation needed] In 1946, Jaffee returned to civilian life, working for Stan Lee again. For approximately a year and a half in the late 1940s, Jaffee was editing Timely's humor and teenage comics, including the Patsy Walker line.[21] Jaffee recalled in a 2004 interview, Quote:I created Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal from scratch. [editor-in-chief] Stan [Lee] said to me, "Create an animated-type character. Something different, something new." I searched around and thought, "I've never seen anyone do anything about a seal," so I made him the lead character. So I created "Silly Seal". One day, Stan said to me, "Why don't you give him a little friend of some sort?" I had already created Ziggy Pig, who had his own little feature, so it was quite easy to combine them into one series. I said, "How about Ziggy Pig?" Stan said, "Okay!" I should add that, while I created Ziggy Pig, it was Stan who named him.[22]From 1957 to 1963, Jaffee drew the elongated Tall Tales panel for the New York Herald Tribune, which was syndicated to over 100 newspapers. Jaffee credited its middling success with a pantomime format that was easy to sell abroad, but his higher-ups were unsatisfied with the strip's status: "The head of the syndicate, who was a certifiable idiot, said the reason it was not selling [better] is we gotta put words in it. So they made me put words in it. Immediately lost 28 foreign papers."[23] A collection of Jaffee's Tall Tales strips was published in 2008. Jaffee also scripted the short-lived strips Debbie Deere and Jason in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[24] Since 1984, Jaffee has provided illustrations for "The Shpy," a lighthearted Jewish-themed adventure feature in Tzivos Hashem's bimonthly children's publication The Moshiach Times.[25][26] Mad[edit] External video ![[Image: 210px-10.9.10AlJaffeeByLuigiNovi.jpg]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:10.9.10AlJaffeeByLuigiNovi.jpg) ![[Image: 16px-Nuvola_apps_kaboodle.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Nuvola_apps_kaboodle.svg/16px-Nuvola_apps_kaboodle.svg.png){kind=small} MAD Man, Retro Report Voices, 2:59, Retro Report[27]Jaffee first appeared in Mad in 1955, one issue after its transformation from comic book format to magazine.[28] When editor Harvey Kurtzman left in a dispute three issues later, Jaffee went with Kurtzman.[29] Jaffee contributed to Kurtzman's first two post-Mad publishing efforts, Trump and the creator-owned Humbug, though it was less successful than Mad.[29] In 2008, the first full reprint of Humbug was published as a two-volume set by Fantagraphics; the set includes a newly commissioned cover illustration by Jaffee, and a co-interview with Jaffee and Arnold Roth. After Humbug folded in 1958, Jaffee brought his unpublished material to Mad, which bought the work. "Bill Gaines took out every Trump and Humbug," remembered Jaffee, "called me into his office, sat me down on the couch next to him, and went over every issue and said "Which is yours?" And as he came to each one, when he saw my stuff, he OK'd to hire me."[23] ![[Image: 220px-Attachment-mad-fold-this-book-book-al-jaffee.jpg]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Attachment-mad-fold-this-book-book-al-jaffee.jpg) In issue #86 of 1964, Jaffee created his longest-running Mad feature, the Fold-In. In each, a drawing is folded vertically and inward to reveal a new "hidden" picture (as well as a new caption). Originally, Jaffee intended it as a one-shot "cheap" satire of the triple fold-outs that were appearing in glossy magazines such as Playboy, National Geographic, and Life. But Jaffee was asked to do a second installment, and soon the Fold-In became a recurring feature on the inside back cover of the magazine. In 2011, Jaffee reflected, "The thing that I got a kick out of was ... Jeopardy! showed a Fold-In and the contestants all came up with the word they were looking for, which was 'Fold-In.' So I realized, I created an English language word." In 2010, Jaffee described the earliest Fold-Ins: Quote:I thought to myself ... now it's folded in and I've got to have something on the left side here, and something right side here. And the only thing that popped into my head was that Elizabeth Taylor had just dumped Eddie Fisher and was carrying on with Richard Burton. So I had Elizabeth Taylor kissing Richard Burton, and a cop is holding the crowd back – and just for the fun of it I put Eddie Fisher being trampled by the crowd. What a cruel thing to do! And then, when you fold it in, she's moving on from Richard Burton and kissing the next guy in the crowd. It's so simplistic and silly and juvenile! And anyone could have done that! The Fold-In became one of Mad's signature features, and appeared in almost every issue of the magazine from 1964–2020. A single issue in 1977 was published without a Fold-In (though Jaffee supplied the issue's back cover), and a 1980 issue instead featured a unique double-visual gimmick by Jaffee in which the inside back cover and the outside back cover merged to create a third image when held up to the light. The third-ever Fold-In in 1964 featured a unique diagonal folding design, rather than the standard left-right vertical format. The image revealed the four members of The Beatles becoming bald (and thus losing their popularity).[31] In a Mad-like wrinkle, there are two answers to the question "When was Jaffee's last Fold-in?" The final one he designed appeared in the June 2019 issue. But his last Fold-in to be published, a personal farewell to readers, appeared in the August 2020 issue. Jaffee had prepared it six years in advance, to be published after his own death. Instead, it ran after he officially announced his retirement at the age of 99, as the conclusion of an "All Jaffee" tribute issue.[32][5] Cartoonist Johnny Sampson is currently carrying the feature on. The Far Side creator Gary Larson described his experience with the Fold-In: "The dilemma was always this: Very slowly and carefully fold the back cover ... without creasing the page and quickly look at the joke. Jaffee's artistry before the folding was so amazing that I suspect I was not alone in not wanting to deface it in any way."[9] In 1972, Jaffee received a Special Features Reuben Award for his Fold-Ins. Jaffee used a computer only for typographic maneuvers to make certain Fold-In tricks easier to design and he typically took two weeks to sketch and finalize an image.[33] Otherwise, all his work was done by hand. "I'm working on a hard, flat board... I cannot fold it. That's why my planning has to be so correct." In 2008, Jaffee told one newspaper, "I never see the finished painting folded until it's printed in the magazine. I guess I have that kind of visual mind where I can see the two sides without actually putting them together."[34] Contrasting current art techniques and Jaffee's approach, Mad's art director, Sam Viviano, said, "I think part of the brilliance of the Fold-In is lost on the younger generations who are so used to Photoshop and being able to do stuff like that on a computer."[17] Until 2019, Jaffee continued to do the Fold-In for Mad, as well as additional artwork for articles. His last original Fold-In appeared in the June 2019 issue, which was one that had originally been rejected from the June 2013 issue due to sensitivity about gun violence. Since August 2019, Mad has been either reprinting old Fold-Ins or publishing new ones by Johnny Sampson. In December 2019, Al's original work was featured in the magazine for the last time. Mad's oldest regular contributor, Jaffee's work appeared in 500 of the magazine's first 550 issues, a total unmatched by any other writer or artist. He said, "I work for a magazine that's essentially for young people, and to have them keep me going, I feel very lucky ... To use an old cliché, I'm like an old racehorse. When the other horses are running, I want to run too."[17] He retains the record for being longest tenured contributor to the history of Mad magazine.[35] In August 2008, Jaffee was interviewed for an NY1 feature about his career. He said, "It astonishes me that I still am functioning at a fairly decent level. Because there were a lot of dark days, but you have to reinvent yourself. You get knocked down and you pick up yourself and you move on."[1] A four-volume hardcover boxed set, The Mad Fold-In Collection: 1964–2010, was published by Chronicle Books in September 2011, ISBN 978-0811872850. Jaffee announced in June 2020 that he would be retiring. To honor this, Mad published a tribute issue that month.[10] Will Forbis wrote: "This is the core of Jaffee's work: the idea that to be alive is to be constantly beleaguered by annoying idiots, poorly designed products and the unapologetic ferocity of fate. Competence and intelligence are not rewarded in life but punished."[36] In the book Inside Mad, fellow Mad writer Desmond Devlin called Jaffee "the irreplaceable embodiment of Mad Magazine's range: smart but silly, angry but understanding, sophisticated but gross, upbeat but hopeless. ...He's uncommonly interested in figuring out how things work, and exasperated because things NEVER work."[37] Jaffee contributed to hundreds of Mad articles as either a writer or an artist and often both. These included his long-running "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions", which present multiple putdowns for the same unnecessary or clueless inquiry, and several articles on inventions and gadgets, which were presented in an elaborately detailed "blueprint" style. Sergio Aragones said of Jaffee, "He is brilliant at many things, but especially inventions. When he draws a machine for Mad, no matter how silly the idea, it always looks like it works. He thinks that way because he is not only an artist, but a technician as well... He is the guy who can do anything."[16] In a patent file for a self-extinguishing cigarette, the inventor thanked Jaffee for providing the inspiration.[23] Other actual inventions that have since come to pass had appeared earlier in Jaffee articles, such as telephone redial and address books (1961), snowboarding (1965), the computer spell-checker (1967), peelable stamps, multi-blade razors (1979), and graffiti-proof building surfaces (1982).[19] "I could imagine those things," Jaffee told an interviewer. "That was the fun part. But I never had the problem of trying to figure out how to manufacture them."[38][39] During the Vietnam War, Jaffee also created the short-lived gag cartoon Hawks and Doves, in which a military officer named Major Hawks is antagonized by Private Doves, an easygoing soldier who contrives to create surreptitious peace signs in various locations on a military base. In a 1998 issue, all the Hawks & Doves strips were republished, along with an original strip in color on the back of the issue.[40] Some of Jaffee's features were expanded into stand-alone books, including a 1997 collection of Fold-Ins titled Fold This Book! and eight "Snappy Answers" paperbacks. Referring to the latter, Jaffee said, "I was going through a divorce when I started that. I got a lot of my hostility out through Snappy Answers."[16] When designing his Mad Fold-Ins, Jaffee started with the finished "answer" to the Fold-In, and then spread it apart and placed a piece of tracing paper over it in order to fill in the center "throw-away" aspect of the image, which is covered up when the page is folded over, using regular pencil at this stage. Jaffee would then trace the image onto another piece of illustration board using carbon paper. At this stage he used red or green color pencils, which were distinct from the black pencil of the original drawing, in order to discern his progress. Once the image was on the illustration board, he would then finish it by painting it. Because the illustration board was too inflexible to fold, Jaffee did not see the finished Fold-In image until it was published.[41] Jaffee won the National Cartoonists Society Advertising and Illustration Award for 1973, its Special Features Award for 1971 and 1975, and its Humor Comic Book Award for 1979.[42] In 2008, he won the Reuben Awards' Cartoonist of the Year.[43] In 2005, the production company Motion Theory created a video for recording artist Beck's song "Girl" using Jaffee's Mad Fold-Ins as inspiration; Jaffee's name appears briefly in the video, on a television screen.[44] The March 13, 2006, episode of The Colbert Report aired on Jaffee's 85th birthday, and comedian Stephen Colbert saluted the artist with a Fold-In birthday cake. The cake featured the salutary message "Al, you have repeatedly shown artistry & care of great credit to your field." When the center section of the cake was removed, the remainder read, "Al, you are old."[17] AL, | | YOU| HAVE REPEATEDLY SHOWN | A|RTISTRY & CA|RE O|F GREAT CREDIT TO YOUR FIE|LD That was not Jaffee's first interaction with the comedian. In 2010, he recalled: Quote:I got a call from The Daily Show – they asked me if I would contribute a Fold-In to their book, America. I said I'd be happy to do it. When I was done, I called up the producer who'd contacted me, and I said, "I've finished the Fold-In, where shall I send it?" And he said – and this was a great compliment – "Oh, please Mr. Jaffee, could you deliver it in person? The whole crew wants to meet you." And that's where I met Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and all the writers, and they told me it was our work in Mad that inspired them. Not me, particularly, but us, generally... They said, "Without you guys, we wouldn't be here." And I felt really good about that.[45] In October 2011 Jaffee was presented with the Sergio Award at a banquet in his honor from the Comic Art Professional Society.[46] In July 2013, during the San Diego Comic-Con, Jaffee was one of six inductees into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame. Jaffee, who worked for Eisner in his studio for one of his earliest jobs, was not present during the convention, and the award was accepted by Mad Art Director Sam Viviano, who presented it to Jaffee at a later date. The other inductees were Lee Falk, Mort Meskin, Spain Rodriguez, Joe Sinnott, and Trina Robbins.[47][48] In April 2014, Jaffee was elected to the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame.[49] In October 2013, Columbia University announced that Jaffee had donated most of his archives to the college.[50] On March 30, 2016, it was officially declared that Jaffee had "the longest career as a comics artist" at "73 years, 3 months" by Guinness World Records.[51] Guinness noted that he had worked continuously, beginning with Jaffee's contribution to the December 1942 issue of Joker Comics and continuing through the April 2016 issue of Mad Magazine. Mary-Lou Weisman, a friend of Jaffee for more than three decades, wrote a profile of him for Provincetown Arts, which she later expanded into the biography, Al Jaffee's Mad Life, published in 2010 by It Books. In addition to reprints of his past work, Jaffee tells his life story to Weisman in an interview style.[52] Jaffee married Ruth Ahlquist in 1945; they had two children, Richard and Debbie. They divorced in 1967.[53] After the divorce, Gaines provided Jaffee with studio space at the Mad offices.[54] His oldest younger brother Harry Jaffee (1922–1985), who also had artistic talent, had long been coping with various illnesses—for a time he had been committed to Bellevue. Harry had been living with the Jaffees at the time. After the divorce, Jaffee took two apartments in Manhattan, one for him, and one nearby for Harry. Jaffee also hired him from 1970 to 1977 to do his background detail and lettering. Harry quit upon Jaffee's remarriage.[55] In 1977, Jaffee married Joyce Revenson, a widow. They lived in Manhattan, summered in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and wintered in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.[56] Joyce died in January 2020.[26] Jaffee died of organ failure on April 10, 2023, at a Manhattan hospital. He was 102.[57] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jaffee
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
04-11-2023, 09:40 AM
Wilmer Cable Butler (April 7, 1921 – April 5, 2023) was an American cinematographer who was known for his work on The Conversation (1974), Jaws (1975), and three Rocky sequels. Butler also completed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) after Haskell Wexler was fired from the production, and was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
Early life and education[edit] Wilmer Cable Butler[1][2] was born on April 7, 1921, in Cripple Creek, Colorado.[1][3][4] Butler spent the first five years of his life living in a log cabin on a homestead in Colorado, where his parents were farmers. He moved with his parents to Henry County when he was 5 years old and raised in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, a small college town.[4][5] He graduated from Mount Pleasant High School in 1940.[4] Butler graduated with a degree in engineering from the University of Iowa.[6] Butler began his career as an engineer at a radio station in Gary, Indiana. He subsequently moved to Chicago, where he helped design and build the first television stations at the ABC affiliate and later at WGN-TV. When WGN went on the air, Butler operated a live video camera for commercials and for locally produced programs.[5][6] At his tenure with WGN, Butler met William Friedkin.[1] Friedkin asked Butler to be his cinematographer on The People vs. Paul Crump, a documentary that focused on a prisoner who was slated for execution in Illinois. It was a docudrama that resulted in the governor of Illinois commuting the prisoner's death sentence.[6] "I was very successful in television, so I had no reason to go into film," Butler said. "But I knew Bill Friedkin was interested in making a film documentary, and he needed a cinematographer. He asked me to assist him. And I did." As a result, Butler's interest shifted from live television to film documentaries.[4][5] In a 2005 interview, Butler credited Friedkin with giving him his first actual job in the film industry.[6] Cinematography[edit] Butler earned his first narrative credit in Chicago in 1967 for Fearless Frank, a low-budget feature directed by Philip Kaufman.[3][4][5] Two years later, Butler shot The Rain People (1969) for Francis Ford Coppola,[5][7] who was introduced to him by Friedkin.[1] Butler moved to Los Angeles in 1970.[5] "I did some work with director Phil Kaufman on the Universal Studios lot as a writer while I was still trying to get into the Los Angeles camera guild," Butler recalled. "That's when I met Steven Spielberg."[8] Butler would then take charge of cinematography for two of Spielberg's earliest films, Something Evil (1972) and Savage (1973).[8][9] Other films which Butler served as the director of photography include The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976), Grease (1978) and installments two, three, and four of Rocky.[3] Butler was also the cinematographer for Demon Seed (1977),[10] as well as Capricorn One (1978), Stripes (1981), Biloxi Blues (1988), Child's Play (1988), Graffiti Bridge (1990), Flipper (1996), Anaconda (1997) and Deceiver (1997).[5][11] His television credits include The Execution of Private Slovik (1974) and The Thorn Birds (1983).[5] Butler was scheduled to have made his directorial debut in January 1979 with Adrift & Beyond, but it never came to fruition.[1] Butler turned down Coppola's offer to direct the photography for Apocalypse Now (1979). Butler has worked in films during the 2000s, such as Frailty (2002) and Funny Money (2006).[6][12] Bill Paxton, the director of the former film, said, "I was excited when Bill Butler who was the cinematographer on such classic films as Jaws and The Conversation came aboard as my director of photography for Frailty. And I really picked his brain, always asking 'how did you do this shot?' and 'how did you figure that out?'" Bill Butler recounted his initial conversations with Paxton about the script: "I liked the direction he wanted to take, and he inspired me to share his vision. It was a great collaboration."[13] Butler is also notable for being a replacement to Haskell Wexler on two occasions: The Conversation (1974; also directed by Coppola)[14][15] and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).[16][17] Jaws[edit] Butler had heard that Spielberg was preparing to shoot Jaws (1975), mainly on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. "I said, 'I hear you're making a movie about a fish,'" Butler recalled. After they joked for a few minutes, Spielberg asked Butler if he was interested.[8] Butler's crew included Michael Chapman as camera operator. When they arrived on Martha's Vineyard, Butler showed Spielberg how he could brace a handheld Panaflex camera and take the roll out of the boat rocking on the waves with his knees instead of using a 400-lb gimbal. Spielberg embraced the idea. "About 90% of the shots on the boat were handheld," Butler says. "Michael was intrigued by the idea and was very good at it. We did things that we probably wouldn't have tried without the lightweight camera. Michael even climbed the mast and shot from the top straight down. We also put him in a small boat."[8] During the production of Jaws, Butler spent most of his time on the picture in the water with Spielberg. Butler created a special camera platform that worked with the water to accommodate both "below the water line" and "surface" shots quickly. To handle the longer surface shots the film required, Butler reconfigured the standard "water box" casing used to hold a camera in the water. He also is acknowledged for saving footage from a camera that sank into the ocean, having claimed sea water is similar to saline-based developing solutions. "We got on an airplane with the film in a bucket of water, took it to New York and developed it. We didn't lose a foot," said Butler.[18] Butler also created a pontoon camera raft with a waterproof housing that achieved those trademark water level shots that gave a point of view from the shark fin. To stop water drops hitting the lens, Butler used the Panavision Spray Deflector that saw an optical glass spin at high speed to deflect the drops except for the 4th of July beach stampede where the water-lens interface adds to the panic.[9] Butler originally envisioned the look of Jaws to start in bright, summer sunshine and then become more ominous as the shark hunt goes on. The first half remains a riot of vibrant primary colors. In filming Amity, Butler was inspired by the work of painters such as Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth in their view of the United States untainted by urban life.[9] Butler was nominated for an Academy Award (which he shared with Wexler)[19] and a BAFTA Film Award for his work in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). He won Primetime Emmy Awards for Raid on Entebbe (1977) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1984).[1][3][4][20][11] On February 16, 2003, Butler received the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award.[5][6][8] His memorable and influential work on Jaws is one of the many reasons the ASC honored him with the award,[18] and Spielberg wrote a letter to Butler acknowledging his award which indicated the director's mutual respect for Butler and his work behind the camera. "You were the calm before, during and after every storm on the set of Jaws," Spielberg wrote in the letter. "Without your zen-like confidence and wonderful sense of humor, I would have gone the way of the rest of the Jaws crew — totally out of my friggin' mind. Congratulations on this well-deserved career achievement award from your peers. All my best, Steven."[4] Butler also was named KODAK Cinematographer in Residence at the University of Arizona (Department of Media Arts) in 2006.[1][21] On April 28, 2013, the Charleston International Film Festival presented Butler with the festival's inaugural lifetime achievement award.[11][22] Butler resided in Montana.[11] On June 1, 2014, Butler returned to his hometown of Mount Pleasant for a reception honoring his career.[4] Butler had five daughters, three from his first marriage to Alma H. Smith, and two, Genevieve and Chelsea, who are both actresses, from his second marriage to Iris Butler.[1] Butler turned 100 on April 7, 2021,[23] and died in Los Angeles on April 5, 2023, two days before his 102nd birthday.[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Butle...tographer)
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
04-11-2023, 09:48 AM
Benjamin Berell Ferencz (March 11, 1920 – April 7, 2023) was an American lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the chief prosecutor[1] for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen trial, one of the 12 Subsequent Nuremberg trials held by US authorities at Nuremberg, Germany.
Later he became an advocate of international rule of law and for the establishment of an International Criminal Court. From 1985 to 1996, he was an adjunct professor of international law at Pace University. Ferencz was born March 11, 1920[2][3][4] in Somcuta Mare in the historical Transylvania region, into a Jewish family.[5] A few months later the Treaty of Trianon allocated greater Transylvania, including the area of Șomcuta Mare, to Romania from the Kingdom of Hungary. When Ferencz was ten months old, his family emigrated to the United States to avoid the persecution of Hungarian Jews by the Kingdom of Romania after Romania took control of Transylvania, Banat, Crisana, and Maramures.[6] The family settled in New York City, where they lived on the Lower East Side in Manhattan.[7] Ferencz studied crime prevention at the City College of New York, and his criminal law exam result won him a scholarship to Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he studied under Roscoe Pound[8] and also did research for Sheldon Glueck who, at that time, was writing a book on war crimes. Ferencz graduated from Harvard in 1943.[9] After his studies, he joined the US Army. His time as a soldier in the army began with a job as a typist in Camp Davis in North Carolina; at that time, he did not know how to use a typewriter nor how to fire a weapon. His job duties also consisted of cleaning toilets and scrubbing pots and floors. In 1944, he served in the 115th AAA Gun Battalion, an anti-aircraft artillery unit.[7] In 1945, he was transferred to the headquarters of General George S. Patton's Third Army, where he was assigned to a team tasked with setting up a war crimes branch and collecting evidence for such crimes. In that role, he was sent to the concentration camps that had been liberated by the US Army.[7] On Christmas 1945,[8] Ferencz was honorably discharged from the Army with the rank of sergeant. He returned to New York, but was recruited only a few weeks later to participate as a prosecutor (with the simulated rank of Colonel) on the legal team of Telford Taylor in the Subsequent Nuremberg trials.[10] Taylor appointed him chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case—Ferencz's first case.[7] Of the 24 men he indicted,[11] all were convicted; 13 of them received death sentences, of which four were eventually carried out. Apart from East Germany, they were the last executions performed on German soil, and in the Federal Republic.[citation needed] In a 2005 interview for The Washington Post, he revealed some of his activities during his period in Germany by way of showing how different military legal norms were at the time: Quote:Someone who was not there could never really grasp how unreal the situation was ... I once saw DPs [displaced persons] beat an SS man and then strap him to the steel gurney of a crematorium. They slid him in the oven, turned on the heat and took him back out. Beat him again, and put him back in until he was burnt alive. I did nothing to stop it. I suppose I could have brandished my weapon or shot in the air, but I was not inclined to do so. Does that make me an accomplice to murder?[12] You know how I got witness statements? I'd go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone one up against the wall. Then I'd say, "Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot." It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid.[12] Ferencz stayed in Germany after the Nuremberg trials, together with his wife Gertrude,[7] whom he had married in New York[13] on March 31, 1946.[3] Together with Kurt May and others, he participated in the setup of reparation and rehabilitation programs for the victims of persecutions by the Nazis, and also had a part in the negotiations that led to the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany signed on September 10, 1952,[14] and the first German Restitution Law in 1953.[7] In 1956, the family—they had four children by then—returned to the US, where Ferencz entered private law practice[13] as a partner of Telford Taylor.[15] While pursuing claims of Jewish forced laborers against the Flick concern (the subject of the Flick trial), Ferencz observed the "interesting phenomenon of history and psychology that very frequently the criminal comes to see himself as the victim".[16] Experiences just after World War II left a defining impression on Ferencz.[13][5] After 13 years, and under the influence of the events of the Vietnam War, Ferencz left the private law practice and henceforth worked for the institution of an International Criminal Court that would serve as a worldwide highest instance for issues of crimes against humanity and war crimes.[13] He also published several books on this subject. Already in his first book published in 1975, entitled Defining International Aggression: The Search for World Peace, he argued for the establishment of such an international court.[9] From 1985 to 1996, Ferencz also worked as an adjunct professor of international law at Pace University at White Plains, New York.[6] An International Criminal Court was indeed established on July 1, 2002, when the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court came into force. Under the Bush administration, the US signed the treaty, but didn't ratify it. The administration of George W. Bush concluded a large number of bilateral agreements with other states that would exclude US citizens from being brought before the ICC.[17] Ferencz repeatedly argued against this procedure and suggested that the US join the ICC without reservations, as it was a long-established rule of law that "law must apply equally to everyone", also in an international context.[13] In this vein, he suggested in an interview given on August 25, 2006, that not only Saddam Hussein should be tried, but also George W. Bush because the Iraq War had been begun by the US without permission by the UN Security Council.[13] He also suggested that Bush should be tried in the International Criminal Court for "269 war crime charges" related to the Iraq War.[18][19] In 2013, Ferencz stated once more that the "use of armed force to obtain a political goal should be condemned as an international and a national crime".[20] Ferencz wrote in 2018, in a preface to a book on the future of international justice, that "war-making itself is the supreme international crime against humanity and that it should be deterred by punishment universally, wherever and whenever offenders are apprehended".[21] In 2009, Ferencz was awarded the Erasmus Prize, together with Antonio Cassese; the award is given to individuals or institutions that have made notable contributions to European culture, society, or social science.[22] On May 3, 2011, two days after the death of Osama bin Laden was reported, The New York Times published a Ferencz letter which argued that "illegal and unwarranted execution—even of suspected mass murderers—undermines democracy".[23][24] Also that year he presented a closing statement in the trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo in Uganda.[25] On March 16, 2012, in another letter to the editor of The New York Times, Ferencz hailed the International Criminal Court's conviction of Thomas Lubanga as "a milestone in the evolution of international criminal law".[26] In April 2017, the municipality of The Hague announced the naming of the footpath next to the Peace Palace the Benjamin Ferenczpad ("Benjamin Ferencz Path"), calling him "one of the figureheads of international justice". The city's Deputy Mayor Saskia Bruines (International Affairs) traveled to Washington D.C. to symbolically present the street sign to Ferencz.[27] In 2018, Ferencz was the subject of a documentary on his life, Prosecuting Evil, by director Barry Avrich, which was made available on Netflix.[28] In the same year, Ferencz was interviewed for the 2018 Michael Moore documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9.[29] On June 20, 2019, artist and sculptor Yaacov Heller honored Ferencz—presenting him with a bust he created—commemorating his extraordinary life dedicated to genocide prevention.[30] On January 16, 2020, The New York Times printed Ferencz's letter denouncing the assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, unnamed in the letter, as an "immoral action [and] a clear violation of national and international law".[31] He became a centenarian two months later.[32] Six months later on September 7, the documentary Two Heads Are Better Than One: Making of the Ben Ferencz Bust,[33] starring Ferencz and sculptor Yaacov Heller, had a world premiere, produced by Eric Kline Productions and directed by Eric Kline.[34] On June 22, 2021, he became the first recipient of the Pahl Peace Prize[35] in Liechtenstein.[36] In March 2022, an audio clip of Ferencz was played during the eleventh emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly and he later gave an interview to BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[37] He also said that Vladimir Putin should be "behind bars" for his war crimes,[38] and further said that he was "heartbroken" over atrocities in Ukraine.[39] On April 7, 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis awarded Ferencz the Governor's Medal of Freedom[40] at a ceremony held at Florida Atlantic University.[41][42] In September 2022, Ferencz appeared in the Ken Burns documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust.[43] In December 2022, Ferencz was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.[44] In January 2023, Ferencz appeared in the David Wilkinson documentary, Getting Away with Murder(s).[45] In March 2023, in what would become one of his last public appearances, Ferencz presented a video clip of welcome[46] to participants at The Nuremberg Principles: The Contemporary Challenges Conference, an event sponsored by the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America.[47] In 1946, Ferencz married his teenage girlfriend, Gertrude Fried, in New York.[7][13][3] They were married for 73 years "without a quarrel"[48] until her death in 2019.[49] They had four children.[50] Ferencz died at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida, on April 7, 2023, at the age of 103.[51] He was the last surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.[52] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Ferencz[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Ferencz#cite_note-52]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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