The RIP Famous Person Thread

[palexxxx]

^ R.I.P. Ian McLagan, that leaves Kenney Jones as the only surviving member of the Small Faces, one of my favourite bands of the 60's.

[Chittychangchang]

[Chittychangchang]

[harrybarracuda]

Gay 'affair' Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe dies aged 85

SCANDAL-hit party leader Jeremy Thorpe, the former head of the now defunct Liberal political party, has died at the age of 85.

By Paul Mosley / Published 4th December 2014




Thorpe was the North Devon MP between 1959 and 1979, becoming party leader in 1967.

Rumours about his sexuality dogged him throughout his political career.

But the nation was rocked in 1971 when an acquaintance, Norman Scott, claimed to have had a love affair with Thorpe in the early 1960s at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in Britain.

The scandal forced Thorpe to resign as party leader in 1976.

He denied the claims of a homosexual affair and was charged with conspiring to murder Scott. He was acquitted after a trial in 1979, shortly after losing his seat in the general election.

His wife Marion, who died in March this year aged 87, remained fiercely loyal to her scandal-hit second husband.

It was also Thorpe's second marriage. He was previously married to Caroline Allpass who was killed in a car crash in June 1970 and they had a son, Rupert, in 1969.

Thorpe married Marion Stein in 1973.

Between 1972 and 1974, Thorpe led the Liberals to an impressive string of by-election victories and, in the February 1974 general election, the Liberals gained 19.3% of the vote.

Shortly after his trial Thorpe was found to have Parkinson's disease and retired from public life. He never discussed his sexual orientation.

For many years, his Parkinson's was at an advanced stage. However, in 1997 he visited the Liberal Democrat party conference – the Liberal Party had joined the Social Democatic Party to become the Liberal Democrats in 1978 – and was given a standing ovation.

[harrybarracuda]

Danny Lee, Special Effects Man on 'Bonnie and Clyde,' Dies at 95
1:36 PM PST 12/05/2014 by Mike Barnes



A Disney veteran, he later won an Oscar for his work on the studio's 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks'

Danny Lee, a special-effects maestro who orchestrated the memorable bullet-ridden finale for Bonnie and Clyde and received an Oscar for his work on the Disney fantasy Bedknobs and Broomsticks, has died. He was 95.


Lee, who contributed to more than 50 Disney films during his career, died Nov. 28 at an assisted living facility in Prescott, Ariz., his family announced.

In an era before computer-generated effects, the Wisconsin native blew up houses and cars, created rain, flew people and beds in the air and helped create what was, at the time, one of the most shocking endings in cinema history.

At the conclusion of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the criminal legends played by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are killed by police in a hail of gunfire, their bodies shown jerking around in slow motion.

Lee is believed to be the first effects man to use synthetic blood capsules and exploding electric squibs to simulate bullets entering a body. By doing so, he accurately captured the 1,000 rounds of ammunition that the real cops pumped into Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in 1934.

Lee punched holes in their car and filled them with squibs embedded in putty. When the police opened fire, the charges were set off. The fabric of Dunaway's clothes was thinned to showcase the maximum effect of the blasts on her.

"She looked like a telephone switchboard with all those wires coming out of her," Lee once said.

Said director Penn in a 2008 interview with NPR: "It was a time where, it seemed to me, that if we were going to depict violence, then we would be obliged to really depict it accurately — the kind of terrible, frightening volume that one sees when one genuinely is confronted by violence."

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), starring Angela Lansbury, also had a memorable ending, this one featuring suits of armor brought to life to battle the Nazis. Lee shared his Oscar for Bedknobs with Alan Maley and Eustace Lycett.

A son of Carl Lee — an effects man who worked on Abbott & Costello comedies — Lee joined Disney Studios in 1969 as head of special effects. He worked on films in the Herbie, the Love Bug series as well as on The Shaggy D.A. (1976), Freaky Friday (1976) and The Black Hole (1979), for which he received another Oscar nomination.

Earlier, Lee was a freelancer who traveled around the world to work on-location for such films as The Ten Commandments (1956), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), On the Beach (1959), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Mary Poppins (1964) and The Great Race (1965).

After he retired in 1981, Lee and his wife, Jane, opened Danny Lee Studios in Chatsworth, Calif., where he taught classes.

In addition to his wife, survivors include grandchildren Stephanie and James, great-granddaughter Alexis and cousins Marjorie, Lory, Michael, Karen, Rachel and Rebecca.

A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Sunday at Ruffner Wakelin Funeral Home in Prescott. Donations may be made to Hospice Compassus of Prescott or Liberty Ellis Island Foundation.

[Sumocakewalk]

Had to pull my copy of Bonnie and Clyde out of the archives and watch the closing scene after reading of Danny Lee's passing here. Fairly mild by today's standards, but quite effective regardless.

R.I.P. Danny.

[harrybarracuda]

Ralph Baer, father of home video game console, dies at 92
Engineer invented the predecessor to today's home video game consoles while working at a defense contractor in the late '60s and early '70s.
by Steven Musil
@stevenmusil December 7, 2014 7:18 PM PST



Ralph Baer, widely known as the father of home video game consoles, died Saturday at the age of 92.

Baer, whose death was confirmed by the New York Times, began exploring the possibility of playing video games on a television screen while working as an engineer at a defense contractor in 1966. The result of his work was the "Brown Box," a prototype for what would become the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home gaming console. His invention helped transform computer gaming, an activity previously isolated to large, expensive computers, into a global market now generating billions of dollars in revenue each year.

Sanders Associates, the Nashua, N.H.-based military contractor that employed Baer, applied for a patent for Baer's invention in 1971 and was granted US Patent No. 3,728,480 in 1973. In 2010, Baer recalled how his invention immediately captivated the patent examiners reviewing his application.

"The examiner and the lawyer were talking jargon back and forth, and the examiner really wasn't paying much attention to me," he told the US Patent and Trademark Office. "While they were bantering back and forth about the claims, I set up a small television set and my game console in the examiner's office, and within 15 minutes every examiner on the floor of that building was in that office wanting to play the game."

Sanders licensed the system to Magnavox, which released the Odyssey in 1972. The Odyssey, the predecessor to today's Xbox and PlayStation consoles, was primitive by today's standards. The unit produced no sound, was powered by batteries and used translucent overlays to simulate color graphics on TV screens. Priced at $100, the Odyssey sold nearly 100,000 units in 1972, five years before the Atari 2600 video game console took the gaming world by storm.

While Baer admitted in a 2011 interview that at the time he could not foresee the revolution his invention would unleash, he remained modest about his contribution.

"Could I project how far this thing was going to go? The answer's obviously no. Nobody realized, even at that time, that we were on this geometric curve ... that would go straight up to heaven," Baer told the Salt Late Tribune. "It was unforeseeable; it was fantastic. I'm glad it happened. And if I hadn't had started it, someone else would have."

Born in Germany on March 8, 1922, Baer immigrated with his Jewish family to the US on the eve of World War II. Settling in New York with his family in 1938, Baer soon found a job in a factory making leather goods. After seeing an advertisement for a correspondence course in radio electronics, Baer quit his factory job and became a radio service technician in 1940.

After serving in US military intelligence in London during WWII, Baer used the GI Bill to get a Bachelor of Science in television engineering from the American Television Institute of Technology in 1949. Baer went to work at Sander in 1956, remaining with the defense contractor until his retirement in 1987. Baer, who held 50 US patents and about 100 worldwide, also designed a number of early video games, including Ping-Pong, Handball and Soccer, as well as the memory skill game Simon.

Baer was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George W. Bush in 2006 for his "groundbreaking and pioneering" contribution to the video game industry. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2010.

Baer's prototype "Brown Box" is on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

[harrybarracuda]

Character Actor Eddie Rouse Dies at 60
8:28 PM PST 12/08/2014 by Mike Barnes

He recently landed a key role in the upcoming HBO high-profile series 'Westworld'



Eddie Rouse, a versatile character actor who stood out in such films as American Gangster, The Number 23 and Pandorum, has died. He was 60.

Rouse, who just weeks ago filmed the pilot for the HBO series Westworld in Utah, died Sunday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles of liver failure, his manager, Stephen Spacek of Spacek Management, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Rouse starred as a Sammy Davis Jr. impersonator hired through Craigslist to perform at a boy’s birthday party in Todd Rohal’s Rat Pack Rat, which was funded through Kickstarter and won a jury prize in the shorts competition at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Last month, it screened at AFI Fest in Los Angeles.

“He really made our little short shine this year,” producer Clay Liford said on Twitter.

Rouse made his feature debut as a cranky uncle on David Gordon Green’s George Washington (2000) — it was Green's debut as a feature writer, director and producer, too — and they reteamed for All the Real Girls (2003), a romantic drama with Zooey Deschanel, and the comedies Pineapple Express (2008) and The Sitter (2011), starring Jonah Hill.

He worked with Seth Rogen on Observe and Report (2009) and The Green Hornet (his scenes were cut from the 2011 film) as well as on Pineapple Express, and he showed off his dramatic chops by portraying a chef gone crazy in the horror film Pandorum (2009).

In addition to the 2007 releases American Gangster from directed Ridley Scott and The Number 23 from Joel Schumacher, Rouse had roles in the basketball movie Juwanna Mann (2002), in the Joaquin Phoenix faux documentary I’m Still Here (2010) and in the thriller Alyce Kills (2011).

He was quite busy as of late, with roles in Being Flynn (2012), Nature Calls (2012) and Low Down (2014).

On Westworld — set in a futuristic amusement park, executive produced by J.J. Abrams and based on the 1973 film written and directed by Michael Crichton — Rouse was to play Kissy, short for Kisecawchuck, a laconic American-Indian card and contraband dealer from the town's saloon.

“This was the thing he wanted so badly,” Spacek said, “to get in front of an audience to show the world what he was all about.”

Rouse went to Olney High School in Philadelphia and began his acting career with the city’s Bushfire Theatre of the Performing Arts. He attended the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he met Green and actor Danny McBride.

Rouse is survived by a son and daughter.

[Necron99]

You're slipping "Arry, you've only gone an missed one.......


Addams Family' actor Ken Weatherwax dead at 59



Ken Weatherwax, who as a child played the mild-mannered, bug-eating Pugsley on the original Addams Family TV show, has died, according to multiple reports. He was 59.

TMZ says Weatherwax died in his California home of a heart attack. A woman claiming to be his niece also posted about the death on Facebook.

Originally a New Yorker cartoon from the 1930s by Charles Addams, The Addams Family was adapted for TV by ABC. It ran for just two years, from 1964 to 1966, but lived on in syndication and movie versions.

Weatherwax also voiced Pugsley in the 1977 animated special Halloween with the New Addams Family, though other actors — including a 10-year-old Jodi Foster — gave voice to the character in various iterations through the years.

Weatherwax later found work in commercials but struggled to find regular TV work, eventually going behind the camera as a grip and set builder.

Ken Weatherwax (right) in 2006 with his former Addams Family co-stars: John Astin (Gomez Addams), Felix Silla (Cousin Itt) and Lisa Loring

[harrybarracuda]

You're slipping "Arry, you've only gone an missed one.......

Yes this pesky work has a habit of encroaching on my social life.

[Loy Toy]

This thread makes me so sad.

[palexxxx]

^ Why so glum, chum?

Turn that frown upside down.

AND .....

[luckyjim]

This thread makes me so sad.

Don't be such a pathetic drama queen LT.
People die, as will you.

[harrybarracuda]

Ernie Brace, civilian pilot held 7 years by North Vietnamese, dies at 83
BY DAVID COLKER
Los Angeles Times December 12, 2014



Pilot Ernie Brace, who was a prisoner in Laos and North Vietnam for seven years - longer than any other American civilian during the Vietnam War - was held mostly in solitary confinement, sometimes in stocks or chains.

But in a prison near Hanoi, he and a U.S. Navy pilot in the next cell were able to communicate by tapping on the wall and pressing tin cups against it to talk. For more than a year, the two men bolstered each others' spirits, shared stories and even acted out favorite movie scenes to provide each other company.

During all this time, they never saw each other. Years passed before Brace got to meet, face to face, the man in the next cell. It was John McCain.

Brace, 83, died Dec. 5 in a hospital in Klamath Falls, Ore. The cause of death was a pulmonary embolism, said his wife, Nancy Brace.

On Monday, McCain issued a statement. "Ernie endured more cruelty and severe torture than any other captive during the Vietnam War," he said.

"We developed a special bond that strengthened us both at a difficult time, helping us to survive together."

Upon returning home, Brace, who had been severely beaten, was awarded the Prisoner of War and Purple Heart medals. He was hailed as a hero, not only by McCain, but also high-ranking military officers for his conduct while imprisoned.

It was a stunning turnaround for Brace. Only four years before his capture, he seemed destined to live his life under the shadow of a highly publicized dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps.

Ernest Cary Brace was born in Detroit on Aug. 15, 1931. He quit high school before graduating. "He ran away to join the Marines," Nancy Brace said.

He was commissioned as an officer and flew numerous Korean War missions, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Back home after the war, things were not going well - his marriage was faltering and he was in debt. In 1961, he was on a routine solo flight over Maryland when the propeller faltered. Unable to land, he bailed out and the plane crashed into a field.

"The notion came to me suddenly that I could walk off from here, and people would think I was dead," he said in his 1988 memoir, "A Code to Keep." He ditched his parachute and hid from authorities.

But the mystery of the missing pilot made news and after a few days, Brace turned himself in. After 16 years in the Marines, he was dishonorably discharged.

He took a job as a pilot for a company that flew U.S.-sponsored flights from Thailand to Laos, covertly dropping off personnel, ammunition and supplies.

On May 21 1965, upon landing near a Laotian village, his plane was shot up by North Vietnamese forces that had moved into the area. Brace was taken prisoner and set out on a forced march for several weeks to a jungle camp in North Vietnam. There, he was placed in a bamboo cage so confining that he couldn't fully stand up. At night he was tied down, with a rope around his neck, and left at the mercy of rats and other vermin.

That cage and a similar one were his homes for more than three years.

He was transferred to the Plantation prison near Hanoi, where on his first night he heard tapping on the wall. Hesitantly, he answered, and eventually realized the prisoner in the next cell was tapping out letters of the alphabet in sequence. Instructed to put his ear to the wall, the prisoner told him, "My name is John McCain. I've been a prisoner over a year."

McCain taught him the tapping code and how to use a tin cup for voice communication. "The wall was like a confessional booth," Brace said. "Both of us found ourselves telling each other things we would never say to anyone else."

At one point, Brace was offered release if he apologized for his "crimes." He refused.

Release finally came March 28, 1973. Brace emerged to the news that his wife had remarried. He spent several months recovering at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, where he met Nancy, who was a nurse there. They married in 1974 and he went on to work in management for several aviation companies.

Although he was treated as a hero upon his release, Brace was haunted by his separation from the Marines. That was resolved when President Gerald Ford granted him a full pardon and his discharge was revised to honorable.

"It was quietly done, unlike my ouster from the Marines," Brace wrote. "But for me, the return of my self-respect was a triumph."

In addition to his wife, Brace is survived by sons Michael, Ernest, Patrick and Cary; and a sister, Rose Bradford.

[harrybarracuda]

The Great Escape actor Tom Adams dies aged 76 after cancer battle
Dec 13, 2014 13:17 By Anthony Bond



Veteran actor Tom Adams - who starred in The Great Escape - has died at the age of 76.

The performer, who also starred in television shows including General Hospital and The Onedin Line, died on Thursday after battling cancer, his agent confirmed.

With a voice described as "rich and chocolatey" he also worked as a voice-over artist, including adverts, and was a long-running voice of E4, Emma Harvey said.

"A true gentleman and a class act, his personality was as big and warm as his wonderful voice," she added.

"We'll miss him very much."

Adams, who lived in Windsor, was a young actor when he landed the role of Dai Nimmo, the RAF officer in charge of diversions in The Great Escape.

The 1963 cult classic Second World War drama about a mass breakout from a prisoner of war camp saw him star opposite Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough and James Garner.

He went on to have feature roles as Guy Marshall in 1960s medical drama Emergency-Ward 10 and Dr Guy Wallman in General Hospital between 1975 and 1978. Later he played Sir Daniel Fogarty in period drama The Onedin Line between 1977 and 1980.

He died at Slough's Wexham Park Hospital.

His friend, director Kate Wilson, said Adams had continued working, including advert voice-overs and a new play they had been working on just a few weeks ago.

Mrs Wilson paid tribute to him, fondly recalling times when he would come to stay with her and her husband.

"Ahhh, the chocolate of his voice sliding down the stairs...the man was a legend," she said.

"For anyone who knew him, his face, voice and presence will be sorely missed. Handsome to the end."

[harrybarracuda]

Phil Stern, Hollywood Photographer, Dies at 95
by Ryan Gajewski 12/14/2014 12:34pm PDT



Phil Stern, a photographer whose images of film stars have become iconic, died on Dec. 13. He was 95.

Phil Stern, a photographer whose images of film stars have become iconic, died on Dec. 13. He was 95.

Geoff Katz, Stern's licensing representative, confirmed his death to The Hollywood Reporter.

Director Brett Ratner remembered Stern by posted an Instagram pic Sunday of himself with the photographer, whom he called his "good friend."

See more Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2014

"Legendary photographer with an amazing life!" Ratner captioned the photo. "Grateful that I was there for his 95th birthday!"

Stern served as a U.S. Army Ranger in World War II, where he photographed his fellow soldiers. After the war, he moved to Los Angeles, where he became a staff photographer for Look magazine. He also worked for LIFE magazine.

Stern was a still photographer on a number of film productions, allowing him access to legendary film-industry personalities. His images of such film stars as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and musicians like Louis Armstrong are among his most recognized work.

Asked in a LIFE interview for the keys to becoming a successful photographer, Stern replied: "Access and a level of comfort with your subjects. They need to feel at ease. I think [celebrities] felt comfortable with me. They allowed me to photograph them undisturbed. It was just pure luck."









More here

[harrybarracuda]

Boxing-Ali's 'What's My Name?' opponent Terrell dies at 75
Reuters
8 hours ago



Dec 17 (Reuters) - Former heavyweight boxing champion Ernie Terrell, best known for his punishing loss to Muhammad Ali in the famed "What's My Name?" fight in 1967, has died at the age of 75, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on Wednesday.

Terrell, a towering 6-foot 6-inch boxer with an 82-inch reach, had been suffering from dementia and died at his home in Roseland, Chicago on Tuesday.

Born in Mississippi, Terrell beat Eddie Machen in 1965 to claim the vacant World Boxing Association heavyweight crown and successfully defended the title in his next two fights before losing it to Ali in a lop-sided bout on Feb. 6, 1967.

The pair slugged it out over 15 rounds at the Astrodome in Houston where a fuming Ali made Terrell pay for refusing to call him by his adopted name, instead referring to his birth name of Cassius Clay.

In the build-up to the fight, Ali had promised "I'm gonna punish you" and in the ring he danced around his opponent with a flurry of jabs and punches while shouting out; "What's My Name?"

In a 2009 interview with USA Today, Terrell said of his bout with Ali: "If I was going to fight him, then I would call him Clay. If he don't like it, so? I did it on purpose. We were fighting. What was I supposed to do, give him Christmas gifts?

"I had no animosity. I understood it's a fight. What he say, all that don't count. That was his way of promoting a fight."

Terrell retired from professional boxing in 1973 with a 46-9 record, including 21 knockouts, and began a career as a music producer in Chicago.

He ran unsuccessfully for alderman of Chicago's 34th ward in 1987 and went on to found a successful janitorial company that employed 100 people.

Terrell, whose sister Jean replaced Diana Ross as lead singer for The Supremes in 1970, was also an accomplished singer and his group, Ernie Terrell and the Heavyweights, performed in Las Vegas and on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. (Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes in Los Angeles; Editing by Ed Osmond)

[harrybarracuda]

Italian Actress Virna Lisi Dies At 78
Nick Vivarelli - International Correspondent



ROME – Italian actress Virna Lisi who played memorable roles in European and Hollywood films including 1965 comedy classic “How To Murder Your Wife,” with Jack Lemmon, in which she famously pops out of wedding cake wearing a bikini, and also a masterfully maleficent queen in Patrice Chereau’s “La Reine Margot,” died in Rome on Thursday. She was 78.

Lisi had been recently diagnosed with an unspecified form of cancer, according to Italian press reports.

Born in Ancona 1936 as Virna Pieralisi, she began her film career as a teenager in 1953, initially thanks to her stunning looks. Her increasingly important parts in Italian postwar pics include 1957 drama “La Donna Del Giorno,” 1963 crimer “Il Delitto” Dupre, with Alain Delon, and Mario Monicelli’s 1965 Italo comedy classic “Casanova ’70’,” in which she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni.

In 1965 Lisi was put under contract by Paramount. She debuted in Hollywood as a blue-eyed temptress opposite Jack Lemmon in Richard Quine’s “How To Murder Your Wife,” followed by “Not With My Wife, You Don’t” with Tony Curtis, in 1966, directed by Norman Panama, and “Assault on a Queen” with Frank Sinatra, also in 1966, directed by Jack Donohue.

Tired of being relegated to playing “dumb blonde” roles, Lisi in the late ’60’s broke her seven-year Paramount contract, after paying a costly penalty fee and reportedly turning down the lead role in Roger Vadim’s “Barbarella,” which went to Jane Fonda.

Back in Europe, Lisi struggled to find roles appropriate to her stature. But one came along in 1994 with her performance as the witchy queen Caterina de’ Medici in “La Reine Margot,” which won her the Prix Du Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and also a Cesar, France’s top film nod. She was honored with a career Golden Globe in 2004.She also received numerous Italian nods.

More recently, Lisi’s career mostly involved Italian TV series with the notable exceptions of Cristina Comencini’s ensemble drama “The Best Day Of My Life.” Lisi’s last film performance, after a twelve year hiatus, is in Cristina Comencini’s upcoming comedy “Latin Lover,” now in post.

Lisi is survived by a son, Corrado, and three grandchildren, Franco, Federico, and Riccardo.

[taxexile]

Mandy Rice-Davies,


who has died aged 70, stole the show in 1963 at the height of the Profumo affair when she appeared as a witness in a court case involving Stephen Ward, the society osteopath who had introduced the Conservative Minister of War, John Profumo, to the call girl, Christine Keeler.

Mandy Rice-Davies’s role in the Profumo affair was, in fact, a fairly minor one. As friend and flatmate of Christine Keeler, who was sleeping alternately with Profumo and with the Soviet naval attaché Yevgeny Ivanov, she was called to give evidence when Ward was prosecuted on charges of living off immoral earnings (she was said to have been in a chain of call girls run by Ward, which included Christine Keeler).
Ward, as it transpired, committed suicide before sentence was passed, but the real star of the show was Mandy Rice-Davies. Her pert reply to counsel when told that another participant in the drama, Lord Astor, had denied having slept with her — “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” — entered the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and has been much plagiarised ever since.

While Keeler was the more beautiful of the two girls, Mandy was by a long chalk the more resilient and street-wise. With her heavily mascara’d eyes, pouting lips and bouffant fair hair piled and lacquered in place, she seemed to enjoy the limelight and emerged from the scandal a winner.

Her unerring instinct for the perfect soundbite, her saucy innuendoes and good head for business enabled her to build her sex-laden notoriety into a lucrative career. With what she described as a “natural aversion to unhappiness”, she emerged emotionally unscathed but financially better off from a chain of marriages and affairs and became a novelist, actress and successful businesswoman.

She was born Marilyn Rice-Davies at Pontyates near Llanelli, Wales, on October 21 1944, the daughter of a former medical student turned police officer and finally technologist for Dunlop, and a Welsh girl from the Rhondda Valley. Brought up in the prosperous Birmingham suburb of Solihull, as a child she sang in the church choir and did paper rounds to raise money to feed her beloved Welsh mountain pony, Laddie.

It was while she was ministering to the needs of Laddie that she had her first sexual encounter — with a local “maniac” who exposed himself to her when she was riding her bicycle. Even at the tender age of 13 Mandy showed a gutsy instinct for self-preservation. “He didn’t touch me,” she recalled, “but the minute he stopped my bicycle I knew what he was after so I hit him with my bucket which had bran mash in it.”

As a child, she had been inspired by the story of the medical missionary Albert Schweitzer and, aged 12, decided that she too wanted to become a missionary and “hug lepers”.

Deciding after further research that this was not as attractive an occupation as she had imagined, after leaving school, she took a job, aged 15, as a sales assistant in the Birmingham store, Marshall & Snelgrove. She began modelling at the store, was discovered, cast in the film Make Mine Mink with Terry Thomas, draped herself over a Mini at the Motor Show, then, aged 16, ran away to London.


On her first day in London, armed with just £35, she answered an advertisement placed by Murray’s Cabaret Club, Soho, for dancers. Here she met Christine Keeler and the two women briefly shared a flat together. Through Christine Keeler she met the osteopath Stephen Ward (with whom she had an affair), and was soon circulating in smart London society, though, like Christine Keeler, she always denied being a prostitute. “We were just young girls in search of a good time,” she told an interviewer on Radio 4 last year, and on another occasion she admitted: “I was certainly game, but I wasn’t on it.”


Within her first year in the capital, she claimed to have been proposed to by the ageing Lord Dudley, had an affair with the fraudster Emil Savundra and became, still aged 16, the mistress of Peter Rachman, the notorious slum landlord. He called her “Choochi”; she called him “Chich”, and they lived together for two years. Despite the affectionate nature of their relationship, he never told her he had a wife. This created difficulties after his death from a heart attack in 1962 when the wife, Audrey, reclaimed the Jaguar he had given his 16-year-old mistress.

In between these amorous encounters, with that irrepressible hope of better things to come that had brought her to London, Mandy Rice-Davies continued to pursue a career as a model and actress. She appeared in advertisements for Pepsident, singing “You’ll wonder where the yellow went”, and for Pepsi, although she always refused to allow herself to be photographed in the nude on the grounds that “You never know, you might become prime minister.”

After Rachman’s death, Mandy Rice-Davies moved back to Stephen Ward’s house in Wimpole Mews where within weeks she had succumbed to the blandishments of Lord Astor, to whom she had been introduced by Ward some two years previously and who had paid the rent for the flat which she and Christine Keeler had shared in Comeragh Road.

When Stephen Ward was arrested and charged with living off immoral earnings, initially Mandy Rice-Davies refused to talk to the police. But once the trial got under way, she seemed to rather relish the publicity. Her sally to some American journalist “Call me Lady Hamilton” endeared her briefly to newspapers in three continents; and when she revealed that she had been the mistress of Peter Rachman, not to mention Lord Dudley, she became many a middle-aged man’s fantasy.

After the trial ended, Mandy Rice-Davies accepted an invitation to be a cabaret singer in Germany where she found solace with a new love (in 1966 she was cited in a divorce case by Baroness Cervello against her husband Baron Cervello), before moving to Spain and then to Israel where, aged just 21, she married Rafael Shaul, a former El Al steward. She learnt Hebrew and took six years of instruction before converting to Judaism.

Together, she and her new husband built up a chain of restaurants and opened two nightclubs including Mandy’s, a fashionable establishment in Tel Aviv; she also acted in Israeli theatre. During the Six Day War, she was rumoured to have worked as a volunteer for the Israeli Red Cross, but when the writer Auberon Waugh went out to Israel to visit her, he discovered she had in fact been working in her nightclub at the time, although she was “happy to jump into nurse’s uniform and pose for photographs with the wounded soldiers”.

She and her husband parted company after the birth of their daughter and Mandy Rice-Davies subsequently moved to Spain, though she retained a string of business interests in Israel and elsewhere. After her divorce, she had an Argentinian consul, a rich Swiss businessman and an even richer Canadian as lovers. In 1978, she married a Frenchman, Jean-Charles Lefevre, a restaurant owner, but the marriage lasted less than a year and she returned to Britain.

In 1981 she played Maddy Gotobed in a touring production of Tom Stoppard’s Dirty Linen and appeared in the long-running West End production No Sex Please, We’re British. She was in A Bedful of Foreigners for 10 months and acted the part of Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet at the Ludlow Festival. In 2013 she was involved in the development of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Stephen Ward the Musical in which she was played by Charlotte Blackledge.

Her film credits include Nana (1982), an X-rated piece of erotica based on Emile Zola’s book of the same name. She appeared on numerous television chat shows, took small parts in Heart of the Country and Chance in a Million, (both BBC series) and made a guest appearance on Absolutely Fabulous.

In 1988 she married, thirdly, Ken Foreman, the chairman of Attwoods waste disposal group. She and her husband led a luxurious and peripatetic life between their three houses in Virginia Water, Surrey, Miami and the Bahamas.
Mandy Rice-Davies’s autobiography, Mandy, was published in 1980. She also wrote several works of romantic fiction and cookery books.

Reflecting on her scandalous past in later life, she remarked: “I have never been sorry for myself. I’m of the existential school. I did it and that’s it.”

Mandy Rice-Davies is survived by her husband and her daughter, Dana.
Mandy Rice-Davies, born October 21 1944, died December 18 2014

[harrybarracuda]

Tuskegee Airmen Pilot Lowell Steward Dies at 95
The former member of the Tuskegee Airmen, who flew nearly 200 missions over Europe during World War II, died of natural causes Wednesday at a hospital in Ventura, Calif.
BY: LYNETTE HOLLOWAY
Posted: Dec. 20 2014 11:26 AM



Lowell Steward, the former Tuskegee Airman who flew nearly 200 missions over Europe during World War II, died Wednesday at a hospital in Ventura, Calif., the Guardian reports. He died of natural causes, according to his son Lowell Steward Jr.

Steward joined the Army Air Corps and trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama after graduating with a business degree from Santa Barbara College in 1941, the report notes.

In 1944, he was assigned to Italy with the 100th Fighter Squadron of the renowned all-black unit. “From Capodechino Air Base in Naples, Steward completed 96 missions, flying P-39 Airacobras and P-40 Warhawks. Later based in Ramitelli, Italy, he flew 96 escort and strafing missions in P-51 Mustangs,” the report states.

America’s first black military pilots held themselves to a very high standard amid intense racial scrutiny, Steward often said, the Guardian notes.

“He would say, ‘We had to be better because we were looked at harder. The odds were stacked against us. Some people wanted us to fail,’” Lowell Jr. said, according to the newspaper. He was ultimately awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the report says.


After his discharge in 1946, he moved to Los Angeles and tried to purchase a home, only to be rejected repeatedly because he was black, the report says.

“After several encounters like that, he said, ‘I need to figure out how to finance my own home.’ That’s when he went to real estate school,” Lowell Jr. said, according to the Guardian.

Steward went on to become one of the first black real estate agents in Los Angeles and worked for 40 years in the industry, the report says.

[harrybarracuda]

Renowned British actress Billie Whitelaw dies at 82
AFP-JIJI
DEC 22, 2014



LONDON – British actress Billie Whitelaw, famous for her intense collaboration with playwright Samuel Beckett, died on Sunday at the age of 82, her son told the BBC.

Described by Beckett as the “perfect actress,” Whitelaw became the playwright’s muse and they created a series of experimental performances together.

One of the most famous was in Beckett’s monologue “Not I” in which only her mouth was visible to the theater audience.

“This relentless mouth that wouldn’t let go,” she said in a later interview. “He was so demanding, he was so meticulous, if you said an ‘oh’ instead of an ‘ah’ . . . from the stalls you’d hear ‘Oh lord’ or you’d see his head going down into his hands.”

But because I knew he was radiating love and he cared and he wanted you to be perfect, and it’s not possible but he wanted you to be perfect, it didn’t upset me.”

The two had a close relationship until his death in 1989, after which she gave lectures about his dramas.

Whitelaw’s career on stage and on screen won her a series of awards and spanned over half a century, from playing the mother of the notorious gangsters in “The Krays” to her most recent appearance in the comedy “Hot Fuzz” in 2007.

One of her most famous roles was as a demonic nanny in the horror film “The Omen.”

She was married to British actor Peter Vaughan from 1952 until 1966, and later to writer Robert Muller.

Whitelaw’s son Matthew Muller told the BBC she died at a nursing home in London on Sunday.

“I could not have asked for a more loving mum,” Muller said.

“She had an incredible career — but first and foremost she was my mum, and that’s who I will miss.”

[harrybarracuda]

Veteran TV actor Booth Colman, famous for Planet Of The Apes and Star Trek, dies aged 91
By PAUL CHAVEZ FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 06:05 GMT, 22 December 2014 | UPDATED: 06:05 GMT, 22 December 2014



Booth Colman whose acting career in film and television spanned more than five decades has died at aged 91.
The veteran character actor played orangutan scientist Dr. Zaius in the 1970s television series Planet Of The Apes among hs many TV roles and also appeared in more than 50 films.
Colman died in his sleep on December 15 in Los Angeles, according to a report on Sunday by Variety.

Colman had guest appearances on shows such as Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, Star Trek, The Rifleman, Bonanza, Star Trek: Voyager and Chicago Hope.
He also portrayed a scientist in 1983 on the ABC soap opera General Hospital.

The actor was a Shakespearean authority who brought gravitas to his numerous performances as authority figures such as doctors, lawyers, scientists and clergymen.

Colman also appeared in TV comedies such as Gilligan's Island, Hogan's Heroes, The Monkees and later Frasier and My Name Is Earl.
He made his big screen debut in the 1952 western film The Big Sky starring Kirk Douglas and appeared in more than four dozen films.

The actor had a minor role in the 1954 science fiction film Them! and last appeared in the bigscreen in the 2003 movie Intolerable Cruelty by the Coen Brothers.
Colman also appeared on Broadway and for decades played Scrooge each year in a stage version of A Christmas Carol in the Detroit area.
His portrayal of Dr. Zaius in the short-lived TV series made him a fan favourite and lead to invitations to appear at film conventions.

[Bower]

Just been told by a musician friend of mine that Joe Cocker passed away this morning. Very sad, thanks Joe for some wonderful music, what a voice you had.
RIP

[helge]

Bye Joe

[BaitongBoy]

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free...

-Leonard Cohen