The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Latindancer]

A life well lived ! R.I.P. Mavis

[Mr Lick]

Author Doris Lessing dies aged 94




Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007

British Nobel-Prize winning author Doris Lessing has died aged 94.

Her best-known works include The Golden Notebook, Memoirs of a Survivor and The Summer Before the Dark.

She became the oldest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature when in 2007 she won the award for her life's work aged 88.

Born in what is now Iran, she moved to Southern Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - as a child before settling in England in 1949.

Her debut novel The Grass is Singing was published in 1950 and she made her breakthrough with The Golden Notebook in 1962.

On winning the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy described Lessing as an "epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".

After learning she had won the award, she said she was "very glad" but recalled that in the 1960s she had been told the Nobel Prize committee did not like her and she would never win one.

"So now they've decided they're going to give it to me. So why? I mean, why do they like me any better now than they did then?" she said.


'Pioneering work'

The Swedish Academy said the Golden Notebook was seen as "a pioneering work" that "belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th Century view of the male-female relationship".

As an author, though, Lessing distanced herself from the feminist movement.

The content of her other novels ranged from semi-autobiographical African experiences to social and political struggle, psychological thrillers and science fiction.

She had two children with her first husband, Frank Wisdom, whom she married in 1939. But she left the family home and the couple divorced in 1943.

She then married and had a son with the German communist Gottfried Lessing in 1945.

They divorced in 1949 and she moved to England with her son Peter

[harrybarracuda]

Syd Field dies at 77; wrote bestselling screenwriting bible

Field's 1979 book 'Screenplay' has sold more than 1 million copies in 42 languages. Writers including Judd Apatow, John Singleton and Alfonso Cuaron took Field's scriptwriting class.

By Elaine Woo
November 18, 2013, 8:42 p.m.
In the 1970s, Syd Field's job in Hollywood was reading scripts all day and picking out the gems that might make it to the screen. In one two-year period he figured he read 2,000 screenplays — and turned down 1,960 of them.

The rejects were an "amorphous goo" of confusing plot lines and poorly developed characters that often caused him to close his office door at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and go to sleep. But eventually he figured out what distinguished the winners from the losers.

The answer was crystallized in "Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting," Field's 1979 bestseller that today remains the bible of scriptwriters. Later Field took his advice into the classroom, teaching the essentials to several generations of screenwriters, including Alfonso Cuaron, Judd Apatow and John Singleton, many of whom produced their first successful drafts in one of his famous workshops.

Field, 77, often lauded as the "guru of screenwriting," died Sunday at his Beverly Hills home. The cause was the blood disorder hemolytic anemia, said family friend Valerie Woods.

"Syd Field wrote screenwriting books which did exactly what they were supposed to do — they made screenwriting seem possible," Apatow, a student of Field's in the 1980s, who co-wrote and directed 2005's "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," said in a statement Monday.

"Whenever I write a screenplay, I take out his book and re-read it," Apatow said, "to see if I screwed anything up."

Field wrote eight bestselling books on screenwriting, including "The Screenwriter's Workbook" (1984) and "The Screenwriter's Problem Solver" (1998). He gave workshops around the world, in Tel Aviv, Paris and Mexico City, where Laura Esquivel adapted her novel "Like Water for Chocolate" under Field's tutelage.

Singleton, the Oscar-nominated writer-director of "Boyz N the Hood," said he was only 15 when he devoured two of Field's how-to books. When he got to USC in the 1980s, he took a class from the master, whose genius, he said Monday, was that he "just broke it down … about what worked and what didn't work in American films."

Field's approach was formulaic, but for a novice it was essential knowledge: "You can't change the rules unless you know the fundamentals," Singleton said.

Experienced screenwriters say they still refer to Field's book. "The most inspirational thing he ever said was, 'Confusion always comes before clarity,'" recalled Anna Hamilton Phelan, whose credits include the screenplay for "Gorillas in the Mist," the 1988 film about the mysterious death of zoologist Dian Fossey. "I know people like myself still have moments when nothing makes sense. You remember that and relax."

The Field method could be summed up in a few words: three-act structure. It may seem obvious that any story needs a beginning, middle and end, but after slogging through thousands of horrible scripts, Field realized that many writers needed to be schooled in the basics.

In "Screenplay," he takes students by the hand and spells out the steps without fancy language or intellectual pretense. Written in a conversational tone, it tells nascent screenwriters what a screenplay is ("a story told with pictures"), what a plot point is ("an incident, or event, that 'hooks' into the action and spins it around into another direction"), how many plot points are needed (two), and how many pages translate into a minute of screen time (one).

Using examples from such classic films as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Chinatown," he goes on to outline the requirements of each of the three acts. Act I, for instance, should be devoted to telling "WHO your MAIN CHARACTER is, WHAT the premise of the story is, and WHAT the situation is." Act II brings the confrontation or conflict that reveals the protagonist's main goal. Act III resolves the story, showing whether the main character succeeds or fails, lives or dies.

He called these elements "the paradigm," the diagram of which is plastered on many a weary writer's wall.

There were at least two major plot points in Field's story.

Born in Hollywood on Dec. 19, 1935, he grew up immersed in the film world. His Uncle Sol was head of the camera department at 20th Century Fox, and his next-door neighbor was an agent who got Field a bit part in "Gone With the Wind" when he was a toddler.

His scene was cut, but his path seemed set. He blew the trumpet in a band on the set of Frank Capra's 1948 film "State of the Union," where he learned to play checkers from actor Van Johnson.

At Hollywood High School, his best friend was Frank Mazzola, who introduced him to James Dean. Mazzola later was the gang consultant on Dean's breakout movie "Rebel Without a Cause." At Mazzola's urging, Field started to study acting and was quickly hooked.

His mother's death before he finished high school would make an apt first plot point: Field jumped in his car and drifted across the country on Route 66 for two years until he realized he was lost, literally and metaphorically. Pulling himself together, he enrolled at UC Berkeley, where he met the person who would point him toward film.

At Berkeley he was cast in the world premiere of director Jean Renoir's play "Carola," which takes place during the Nazi occupation of France. Field spent a year at Renoir's feet, learning about the art of visual storytelling. "My relationship with Renoir literally changed my life," he wrote.

After studying film at UCLA, where he made a film with Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek of the Doors, he found work as a writer, producer and director on TV documentaries.

He wrote nine screenplays, but none turned him into a writing star, so he went to work as a screenplay reader instead, first for David L. Wolper Productions and later for Cinemobile Systems. In the mid-1970s he began teaching screenwriting at Sherwood Oaks Experimental College on Hollywood Boulevard, where the instructors included actor Richard Dreyfuss and producer-director Tony Bill.

After being put to sleep by too many dreadful screenplays, Field began to analyze the good ones. Here was his next plot twist: He realized that the basic elements — such as the set-up of the story, the development of the main character, the conflict the story turns on — were always "expressed dramatically within a structure that has a definite beginning, middle and end, though not necessarily in that order."

It took him a year to write "Screenplay," but it became an instant success — one that has since sold more than 1 million copies in 42 languages. By the late 1980s Field was in high demand, leading workshops around the world.

He met his wife, Aviva, at a workshop in Vienna in the early 1990s. She survives him along with a brother, Dr. Morton Field, of Beverly Hills; and a daughter from a previous marriage, Lisa Arcos, of Atlanta.

Like many of Field's most successful students, Cuaron, whose credits include "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (which he started in a Field workshop) and this year's hit "Gravity," did not slavishly adhere to the Field formula but regarded it as a pliable model for launching the screenwriter's creative odyssey.

"For a writer," Cuaron said in an interview, "the most important thing is to put things on paper. He helped you put things on paper."

[harrybarracuda]

Former Cannon Films exec and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves co-producer dies aged 87.

Kagan was head of production at well-known indie Cannon between 1982-88, during which time he was associate producer on two films directed by UK director Michael Winner: the 1983 remake of The Wicked Lady, starring Faye Dunaway, Alan Bates and John Gielgud, and Death Wish 3 in 1985.

He was also executive producer on Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987).

At its height in the 1980s, Cannon, then owned by renowned producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, was producing dozens of films per year, many of them B-movie classics.

Later in his career Kagan was line producer on Roger Spottiswoode’s action-comedy Air America and co-producer on box office hit Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as well as Stephen Sommers’ The Jungle Book.

Kagan is survived by his wife Kate.

[harrybarracuda]

DNA genius and double Nobel Prize winner Fred Sanger of Cambridge dies aged 95
Written by CHRIS ELLIOTT

DOUBLE Nobel Prize winner Fred Sanger, the brilliant Cambridge scientist whose work pioneered research into the human genome, has died in his 90s.

Born in Gloucestershire, he came to Cambridge in 1939 to study natural sciences at St John’s College.

He began carrying out research in the university’s department of biochemistry the following year, obtaining a PhD degree in 1943. During his first two years at Cambridge, both his parents died of cancer.

In 1958, his work on determining the structure of insulin earned him a Nobel Prize for chemistry.

Then in the 1960s and 1970s he turned his attention to DNA, the material that carries all the information about how a living thing will look and function.

He became head of the division of protein chemistry in the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

He and his team developed a rapid method of DNA sequencing – a way to “read” DNA. It was the forerunner for the work on the human genome which now holds out the promise of curing many of the major illnesses that plague mankind.

That research garnered him a second Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1980. He retired in 1983.

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Hinxton, where work on the genome continues, is named after him.

Dr Sanger, who lived in Swaffham Bulbeck, was 95, and it is understood he had been ill for the past two years.

Only four people in history have been awarded the Nobel Prize twice.

[Mr Lick]

Ray Gosling - obituary

Ray Gosling was an inspired broadcaster and gay rights campaigner who described the "important little things" in British life



Gosling in 2004, amid piles of cuttings, scripts and notebooks shortly before he moved into sheltered housing Photo: Martin Pope



Ray Gosling, who has died aged 74, was an inspired broadcaster and one of BBC radio’s most extraordinary talents; his rambling, iconoclastic word portraits of Britain’s cities and eccentrics could both enthral and exasperate listeners.


He was also a vociferous campaigner for homosexual rights, and in 2010, when he was 70, was catapulted into the headlines with his claim that at the start of the Aids scare in the mid-1980s he had smothered a lover to death in what he believed to have been an act of "mercy killing". But after a police investigation lasting several months, Gosling found himself facing charges of wasting police time; critics suggested the claim had been a ruse to kick-start his faltering career.


In the event he was spared prison, but was given a 90-day suspended sentence, having decided to plead guilty.


An early and unfashionable champion of the underdog, in the 1960s Gosling established himself as a unique voice amid the clipped radio tones of the day, his assertively provincial accent and jaunty lilt setting him apart in the largely post-Reithian soundscape.


Gosling’s speciality was the sideways look at such eclectic and quintessentially British institutions as the working classes, garden gnomes, garden sheds, pubs, allotments and faded seaside towns, the minutiae of life. “Not London, Paris and Rome,” he recalled once, “but Goole, Weymouth. The little things of life are more important than the big things.”



Gosling was a distinctive social historian but hated being called “quirky”; he mixed his whimsical essays with stabs of investigative journalism, and became involved in the gay rights movement, actively supporting the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.


Although radio was his natural medium, he also made regular forays into television, starting with the ground-breaking series On Site for Granada, an early example of social action as entertainment.


On screen his effortless, crumpled dishevelment struck the veteran critic Philip Purser as a cross between the Artful Dodger and the Bisto Kid, “wide-eyed, cheeky and a bit common”. Nevertheless The Sunday Telegraph praised his Granada series Gosling’s Travels (1974), ranking him alongside Betjeman and Ian Nairn — poetic, understated and emotional by turns.


Not that he was to everybody’s taste: in 1996 a documentary he made about Cardigan Bay was savaged by Robert McCrum in The Observer as “probably the worst programme ever broadcast by Channel 4, and quite possibly the worst programme ever broadcast in the history of British television.” Gosling, he added, “has finally lost it, flipped his lid and gone off into the deep end.”


The mid-1990s did indeed mark a change in Gosling’s fortunes: as programme commissions dried up, controllers considering his style old hat, so he faced a crisis in his personal life as his long-term partner, Bryn Allsop, grappled with cancer.


But Allsopp was not the lover he subsequently said he had killed; Gosling himself described this man as “my bit on the side, if you like”. In the course of filming a regional television documentary about death for BBC East Midlands in January 2010, he blurted out to the camera — perfectly coherently, but to the astonishment of the production team — the story of how, in the early days of the Aids epidemic, he had killed a man as he lay dying in terrible pain in hospital. “Everybody else had revealed themselves to me,” he explained, “and I felt I had to reveal myself to them.”


Doctors had said there was nothing they could do for his stricken boyfriend, Gosling went on. Asking to be left alone with his lover, Gosling then described how he had taken a pillow and held it over the young man’s face until he was dead.

When the medics returned, Gosling had said simply: “He’s gone”, and nothing more was ever said.


At first he declined to name the man in public, but Gosling’s confession led to his arrest on suspicion of murder and he named the person to police during two days of questioning before being released on bail. It later emerged that his lover’s name was Tony Judson, and that Gosling had in fact been out of the country when the man died.


Gosling said that in the 1990s his preoccupations with a failing career and a dying companion had caused him to ignore the brown envelopes piling up on the mat, demands for unpaid VAT that eventually led to his owing HM Customs and Excise £5,000 and, in December 1998, being declared bankrupt with debts in excess of £100,000.


Although Allsop died a year later, and Gosling had to sell his rambling Victorian house in Nottingham, he remained philosophical at the downturn in his fortunes, and admitted rather relishing his status as an impoverished national favourite. He accepted an offer from Nottingham Trent University to preserve and archive 40 years’ worth of files, notes, articles and scripts: spectacular drifts and tottering piles of paper which had filled his home to bursting point. These included a copy of the first issue of New Society, dated October 1962, containing an article Gosling had written about relations between black and white teenagers.


Raymond Arthur Gosling was born on May 5 1939 into a cultivated working-class family in Chester. He was brought up at Weston Favell, a village on the outskirts of Northampton. His father was a motor mechanic, his mother a schoolteacher until her marriage, who taught her son at home until, under protest, she enrolled him at the local primary school.


He quickly fell behind, and after a year was officially rated “backward”; although coming bottom of his class of 46, he passed his 11-plus and went to Northampton Grammar School, which he came to regard as part of an elaborate plot to suck him into the Establishment.


Attracted to the more vibrant ethos of working-class life, he preferred the company of boys from the local secondary modern school. He was good at English, and although sent to elocution lessons, cultivated (to his parents’ disappointment) “the accents of the scruffy and the secondary modern children”.
A sickly child, Ray had several spells in hospital, mainly on account of an injury to an arm which had failed to mend properly after a break; after several operations it became, and remained, slightly shorter than the other.


Between the fifth and sixth form Ray took a summer job as a railway signalman, later remembering not only the stress of concentrating on pulling the right levers but also the micro-rituals of “lobbing your phlegm out of the sliding windows, stoking up the black grate, polishing the fender, learning how to roll cigarettes”.


The experience kindled an interest in politics, albeit from a spectator’s viewpoint; he personally descended into the political fray only once, in 1963, when he stood as an independent Liberal in the Nottingham city council elections, his leaflets urging constituents to “vote for a madman just once in your life”.


Although raised in a churchgoing Anglican family, as an adolescent Teddy boy Ray left the Church of England and after a pilgrimage to a local abbey, embraced Anglo-Catholicism, before later converting to Rome. At Leicester University he read English, but left after a year and in 1960 founded what was described as Britain’s most controversial youth club, the experimental Leicester Youth Venture.




Gosling as a young man


Gosling himself called it a club for “the otherwise unclubbable”, attracting teenage prostitutes, young shoplifters, gamblers and thieves. But the following year, when he tipped off the police about who had been responsible for the club being robbed, he was beaten up and spent a night in hospital.


He was still only 23 when he published his autobiography, Sum Total (1962). In it Gosling sought to explain his inner conflict, a desire to tear down the semi-detached dream his parents had inculcated in him while at the same time “wanting to build something better”. Casting himself as a sort of angry young man, he caught the attention of producers at Granada, who recognised his television potential.


His freelance career (Gosling never had a staff job) lasted nearly 40 years, and made him a reasonable living; in good years during the 1980s he was said to be earning £50,000 annually, but paying his VAT late — and with penalties. As the work dried up, so did his ability to pay.


Matters were not helped by his unpredictability — some producers found him notoriously hard to manage — and his refusal to employ the modern tools of the broadcasting trade; rather than use a word processor, or even a typewriter, Gosling would fashion his scripts on scraps of paper in minuscule handwriting.


When he failed to get programmes commissioned he spent his own money developing new ideas, which he still could not sell. Gosling was even forced to cash in his 250 shares in Manchester United. When The Daily Telegraph ran a story in 2000 about his plight as he awaited the arrival of the bailiffs, he seemed rueful. “Many people will say that I’ve always been a scallywag,” he said, “and I’ve got my come-uppance.”

In 2004 he was taken on as an on-screen reporter for the East Midlands edition of the BBC Television documentary series Inside Out.


In the same year he moved into a small one-bedroomed ground-floor flat in a sheltered housing complex in Nottingham, where he latterly lived on benefits.


Gosling made a short series of television documentaries for BBC4 in 2006 about being pensioned off and going bankrupt; another, about his decision to move into sheltered accommodation, beat The Apprentice to the 2007 Jonathan Gili award for Most Entertaining Documentary. His more recent radio contributions included items on BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours.



Ray Gosling, born May 5 1939, died November 19 2013

[harrybarracuda]

Robert Conley - NPR’s All Things Consider Host & NBC, New York Times Reporter Dies at Age 85

NPR, NBC and New York Times newsman and communications pioneer Robert Conley (85) passed away Saturday, November 16th, with his family by his side in Virginia, outside of Washington D.C.

WEBWIRE – Thursday, November 21, 2013
News man and communications pioneer Robert Conley died Saturday evening at his home in Virginia, outside of Washington, DC. He was 85. He had recently been diagnosed with parotid cancer, which quickly spread to his brain. Like everything in life, he faced it with courage, strength, grace, determination and relent.

He is survived by his wife Mary Jane, his five children, Jonathan (and his wife Colleen), Dermot, Helen, Andrew and Shelagh, and three grandchildren, Mark, Matthew and Daniel.

“Robert passed away with his family near him, in peace. His life was an adventure at every turn and leaves us with an indelible mark of roads to travel and dreams to achieve,” his wife and children said in a statement. “None of us will be the same without him.” “He was a best friend as much as he was a father.”

He served in the Korean War, along side Robert Dole and others, of which after honorary discharge, he attended Brown University, where he met his wife who was attending Rhode Island School of Design.

As one of America’s most ground-breaking news men and journalists, Conley reported on events spanning the globe. Many know him from his work with NBC’s Huntley & Brinkley. He was also NBC’s Bureau Chief in London, Rome, Africa and the Middle East. Conley worked with National Geographic, was a front page reporter and Bureau Chief for the New York Times, as well as Editorial with The Washington Post.

One of his proudest accomplishments, outside of his family, was behind the curtain - his involvement in the creation of something that would change the way news was shared: the formation of NPR. He was on Capital Hill with a handful of his colleagues, making sure the Public Service Broadcast Act was addressed and passed. From this, his journey to work with his partners to create NPR through a network of established stations began. As NPR’s first General Manager, Conley created a news program to bring the audience into the story, known as the Peabody Award winning All Things Considered. And to coin a phrase, it’s been “live from Washington” ever since. He not only reported events that shaped the world, he influenced the way the world listened. Innovation and societal progress was something second nature to him.

He worked with 4 U.S. Presidents, and had been a member of the White House Press Corps. No story was untouchable to him, whether it is Washington politics, African plight, Middle Eastern events or American international involvements. His voice to the world included interviews with the King of Jordan, Nelson Mandela, and coverage of Reaganism, Iraq, and those involved with the Iran Contra crisis.

He was in South African interviewing and covering Mandela’s work, when Mandela became imprisoned – where Conley too was imprisoned as a supporter of Mandela’s philosophies – only to be broken out by forces. To Conley, Mandela will always be Tata, and they remained in touch throughout his life.

Always a maverick, in the 70’s Conley worked with legal teams in Washington and led a coalition that successfully reformed federal copyright laws for the first time in decades, in what he and other artists saw as a growing digital civilization.

He had appearances and interviews on the Today Show, Face the Nation and CSPAN. He went on to become part of VOA and the expanding reach of their networks. He loved to gain and share knowledge. Leading a division involved with education and information within VOA was a moment in his career that he found rewarding on new levels. Being live in front of students was equally a passion he continued throughout the last years of his life, as first journalist-in-residence at George Mason, an educational advisor, and author of a new approach to higher-ed textbooks. He always saw the equity in the intelligence of our future generations.

He leaves his mark on his family, friends, listeners, readers, students and the world, and yet leaves a gap. He shall be forever loved and missed. He will be laid to rest with military honors at Quantico National Cemetery

[Mr Lick]

Capt Andrew Angus - Obituary

Capt Andrew Angus was an officer decorated for rescuing wounded dispatch riders from a minefield in Italy



Capt Andrew Angus



Captain Andrew Angus, who has died aged 92, was a Grenadier Guards officer awarded an MC for the gallant rescue of wounded men from a minefield in 1944.


On June 18 Angus, the Signals Officer serving with 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, was leading a party of signallers up Monte Corno, south of Perugia, in order to establish vital communications with the forward companies.


Although they were following in the tracks of a Sherman tank, the carrier leading the group set off two S-mines, and the intelligence officer and a wireless operator were badly wounded. While Angus was loading the two injured soldiers into a jeep ambulance, two dispatch riders rode up the track, and, before he could warn them, set off three more mines.


One of the dispatch riders was killed instantly. The other rider and the driver of the jeep were severely wounded. Angus, although badly injured himself, managed to lift the more severely wounded man into the jeep and drove it back himself to the Regimental Aid Post.


He then insisted on returning with stretcher-bearers to bring out the other wounded man, maintaining that he was the only one who knew where the mines were. It was only when the rescue was complete that, weakened from loss of blood, he eventually collapsed. He was awarded an Immediate MC.


Andrew Drummond Angus was born at Birkenhead on October 4 1921 and educated at Shrewsbury. After Sandhurst he joined the Windsor Castle Defence Company, which was ordered to defend the castle against surprise attack by enemy parachutists and, in the event of an overwhelming invasion, escort the Royal family to the King’s private airstrip at Smith’s Lawn.

If the situation did not demand such drastic measures, a company of Coldstream Guards equipped with armoured cars, armoured Daimlers and Guy wheeled cars manned by a detachment of 12th Lancers and Northamptonshire Yeomanry was to move the Royal family ahead of the advancing Wehrmacht to “safe houses” in remote country locations.

Angus lived in the Royal Apartments and, together with fellow officers, often dined with members of the Royal Household, including the two Princesses and their governess, Miss Crawford.

In 1943 he accompanied his battalion by ship to Algiers and fought in the North Africa Campaign before embarking for Naples and taking part in the long slog northwards up the spine of Italy.

After he was evacuated to hospital in Rome, his parents received a telegram saying he had been placed on the “danger list”. Regrettably, the two soldiers that he had rescued died of their wounds. Angus, however, recovered, and commanded a detachment which guarded the King during his visit to Field-Marshal Alexander at his advance HQ on Lake Bolsena.

He rejoined his battalion in Florence and, in April 1945, took part in the forced crossing of the river Po. During a brief spell of leave he and another officer drove to Lake Como. In Milan, they came across the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, hanging upside down from the roof of a petrol station.

Angus was twice mentioned in despatches before the battalion finished the war in Austria. In 1946 he was demobilised and, having joined Jardine Matheson, worked at the head office in Hong Kong, with postings to Shanghai, Japan and Singapore.

In 1963 he returned to England and subsequently opened a Liverpool office for the Ionian Bank. He retired to a mill house on the river Severn, near Shrewsbury, in 1973. There he created a fine garden before finally moving to Eastbourne, Sussex.

Andrew Angus married, in 1952, Cecily Ayris. She predeceased him, and he is survived by their two sons and three daughters.


Capt Andrew Angus, born October 4 1921, died November 3 2013

[Mr Lick]

Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wakeling - Obituary

Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wakeling was a defuser of UXBs who emerged victorious in a five year battle of wits with Hitler’s bombmakers



Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wakeling


Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wakeling, who has died aged 93, had several narrow escapes from death in the course of his work as a bomb disposal officer.


During the Second World War the men of the Royal Engineer Bomb Disposal (BD) Companies risked their lives almost every day, often without ever leaving the shores of Britain. Some 45,000 unexploded enemy bombs (UXBs), as well as 7,000 live anti-aircraft shells and 300,000 beach mines were made safe. In all 394 BD officers and other ranks were killed, and more than 200 were wounded, mostly in the early years of the war when disposal techniques were in their infancy and developed by an often deadly process of trial and error.


On the night of June 13 1943, in addition to the usual high explosive bombs, more than 2,000 German SD 2 anti-personnel bombs fell on Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

Known because of the rotating vanes which armed them in flight as “butterfly bombs”, they caused havoc and near panic in Grimsby in particular.


The bombs had never been dropped in such numbers before in Britain and the town’s police force was overwhelmed by the emergency. Wakeling, a section commander serving with 3 Bomb Disposal Company, was drafted in from Nottingham with his section and every available officer and sergeant in the company.


Bombs were found lodged in railway wagons, at sewer junctions, in organ lofts, in the projection-room of a cinema, in chimney stacks and in the ceilings of bedrooms. Others hung from the branches of trees, from gutters or telephone wires and even garden gates. The slightest touch would set them off, and when detonated remotely to render them harmless, there was always the danger that they would set off a “sympathetic” explosion from another one nearby that had not been found.

When a bomb was discovered in the open, a circle of sandbags was built around it. After looping one end of a long length of string over the device, the BD men retired to a safe distance and the string was pulled. Where a bomb had fallen inside a house, in an effort to minimise the damage, a pulley and twine system was devised whereby the bomb was drawn across the room and up to the window space before being dropped into a sandpit below. If it had not already exploded, it could then be destroyed.

Wakeling, who was only aged 21, had dealt with a group of five successfully. Then, as he wrote afterwards, “I pulled a bit of string around the sixth. It didn’t go off so I pulled it again and it still didn’t go off.

“I was in a ditch with my driver and he said: 'If you pull it much more, it will be in the ditch with us’. So I went and looked at it. It was ticking. That was the stupidest mistake I ever made. It would have gone off on its own accord if I had left it. It only had a few ounces of explosive, but it [was still deadly].”

Twelve “butterfly bombs” were found in a pea field and marked at the time by poles two feet high. Wakeling wrote afterwards: “By the time we had got round to trying to locate them, the peas had grown to two feet, six inches, and we had a devil of a time finding them.”

During the three months that it took to clear Grimsby of the menace, it brought the town to a virtual standstill. As a result, the incident was hushed up for fear that the Germans would realise how effective the raid had been; in fact, it was never repeated.

The raid formed the basis for a memorable episode of the 1970s TV series Danger UXB starring Anthony Andrews. In 1993 Wakeling received a Civic Award from the town.



Eric Edgar Wakeling was born at Deal, Kent, on August 1 1920. His father managed a food processing factory and Eric was educated at Sir Roger Manwood’s School, Sandwich. He enlisted in the Army in 1936 and served in the Army Apprentices’ College for three years before being commissioned in 1940.

When he joined No 3 Bomb Disposal Company, two of its sections had just returned from Birmingham, where there had been heavy raids. They were leaderless; their officers and sergeants had been killed.

Wakeling was in no doubt that he was a replacement. Officers at first had little training and, as a subaltern and section commander, in the early part of the war life expectancy was about 10 weeks. The odds improved once BD units acquired more experience and better equipment to help them tackle the devices.

It was lonely work. Officers were often working on their own and much of the time there was no way of telling why one of them had been killed and so avoiding fatal mistakes in future. A “Category A” UXB, such as one which had halted production at a tank factory or was buried under the runway of an RAF station, had to be dealt with at once. It might be on a time delay fuse set to go off at any moment. The death of a BD officer in those circumstances was regarded as an acceptable risk.

Wakeling would reconnoitre the site and then the BD squads would work around the clock to dig out the bomb, which might be up to 50ft underground. The slightest vibration — a passing train or breaking up concrete — might re-start a clock or explode a bomb with a sensitive fuse.

On one occasion, working on an unexploded bomb in a brewery, Wakeling had great difficulty in extracting a fuse that he had not encountered before. As soon as it had been removed it was rushed to the Directorate of Bomb Disposals. It turned out that the device was equipped with mercury switches so sensitive that the slightest movement in any direction would explode the bomb – a deliberate attempt to kill any bomb disposal officer unfortunate enough to handle it.

“It was only by the greatest luck that I was still alive,” Wakeling wrote later.

“The fuse had a slight manufacturing fault in the system.”

From 1943 minefields which had been sown when Britain was threatened with invasion began to be cleared. This was a hazardous task as few accurate maps had been kept and, as many mines had been placed on beaches, wind and water had often moved them or rendered them unstable. Detecting mines amid shifting shingle was a nerve-shredding task. Wakeling was posted to 14 BD Company which had the job of clearing the Yorkshire coast and was then based at Shoreham, Sussex.

After 14 BD Company was disbanded in 1946 he moved to 12 BD Company at Horsham, Sussex, as second-in-command. He was in the War Office for a spell before being demobilised in 1947.

In civilian life Wakeling worked for Heinz and then for the pharmaceutical and household products firm Johnson & Johnson. In 1951 the Army Emergency Reserve was formed and, the following year, he became adjutant of 142 Regiment.

He commanded it in 1965 and retired from the Army in 1967. He was awarded the Emergency Reserve Decoration. Settled in a village in Buckinghamshire, he was a volunteer driver for the elderly and disabled and for the county’s ambulance service. After his wife died, he moved to Kent. He was regarded latterly as one of the last living links with wartime bomb disposal.

He published several books including The Lonely War (1994); Photographic Story of Bomb Disposal (1995); Danger of UXBs (1996); and A Short History of Bomb Disposal (1998).

Eric Wakeling died on Remembrance Day. He married, in 1945, Nicky Hopper. She predeceased him and he is survived by their two daughters.

Lt-Col Eric Wakeling, born August 1 1920, died November 11 2013

[harrybarracuda]

Former Manchester United defender Bill Foulkes, one of the survivors of the Munich air disaster who went on to win the European Cup, has died aged 81.

United said Foulkes passed away in the early hours of Monday morning.

Foulkes made his debut for United in 1952 and went on to play 688 times for the club - a figure only surpassed by Ryan Giggs, Sir Bobby Charlton and Paul Scholes.

Manchester United's executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward paid tribute to Foulkes, saying: "Bill was a giant character in the post-war history of Manchester United.

"He was a very gentle man, who I was privileged to meet on several occasions, including most memorably with his team-mates at the Champions League final in Moscow, 50 years after his heroics in the Munich air crash.

"Bill's contribution over almost 700 games and nearly 20 years will never be forgotten. The thoughts of everyone at the club - directors, players, staff and fans - are with Bill's family."

Foulkes, whose father and grandfather had both played rugby league for his home town St Helens, started work as a coal miner and was still going down the pit at Lea Green Colliery in the mid-50s, by which time he was a regular member of Matt Busby's United first team and had won his only England cap, in 1954.

After the Munich tragedy, he took over the captaincy and became the leader of the 'Busby Babes'.

He played for United for his whole career, the highlight coming near the end of his playing days when he was part of the 1968 European Cup-winning team, aged 36. Foulkes had played a key part in the semi-final too, scoring the winning goal against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu.

[harrybarracuda]

Leigh-Pemberton, BOE Governor During Pound Crisis, Dies at 86
By Jennifer Ryan - Nov 25, 2013 5:24 PM GMT+0300

Robin Leigh-Pemberton, who was Bank of England governor during Black Wednesday, has died at the age of 86, the central bank said.
Leigh-Pemberton became governor in 1983 and retired 10 years later, when he was succeeded by Eddie George. The BOE will announce details of a memorial service “in due course,” it said in an e-mailed statement today.
Prior to his appointment to the BOE, Leigh-Pemberton, later Lord Kingsdown, was chairman of National Westminster Bank. He was in charge of the central bank during the pound crisis in 1992 that cumulated in the currency’s expulsion from the Exchange Rate Mechanism -- the precursor to the euro.
“A tall, imposing and cheerful man, Robin had a talent for inspiring and persuading others to work for him,” said Mervyn King, who joined the central bank as chief economist in 1991 when Leigh-Pemberton was governor. “A born captain, he will be remembered with deep affection by the members of his team.”
King became governor in 2003 and retired this year. Current Mark Carney said Leigh-Pemberton made a “substantial contribution to economic policy and the financial system of the U.K.”
“He will be fondly remembered by current and former colleagues at the Bank of England,” Carney said.

He'll also be remembered as an establishment Yes Man.

[TizMe]

Family Guy: It's curtains for Brian Griffin

Family Guy's dog gets killed by a car.


In a move which has left viewers and long-time fans reeling in shock, the US animated comedy Family Guy has knocked off a member of the Griffin familly.
Brian, the family's beloved pooch, was killed in an episode which aired in the US this week.
The character has been voiced by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane since the pilot episode, which was broadcast in 1999.

"We thought it could be a fun way to shake things up," executive producer Steve Callaghan told US media.

It had been suggested in the show's writer's room that a member of the family be killed off and after a length discussion it was decided that it would be Brian.
"It seemed more in the realm of a reality that a dog would get hit by a car," Callaghan said.
"As much as we love Brian, and as much as everyone loves their pets, we felt it would be more traumatic to lose one of the kids, rather than the family pet."
Compounding the surprise, the Griffins almost immediately adopted a new dog named Vinny, who is voiced by actor Tony Sirico (The Sopranos).

[steve down under]

I think its about time someone really famous kicked the bucket especially now that you have to resort to posting that a fuckin cartoon dog in a crappy american cartoon has been killed off !

[kmart]

I think its about time someone really famous kicked the bucket especially now that you have to resort to posting that a fuckin cartoon dog in a crappy american cartoon has been killed off !

Actually that news is the only posting on here that has truly saddened me. Brian was a mainstay of the show, and I hope Seth McFarlane wakes up to the fact that Brian was probably more popular than any of the other characters on the show and brings him back, asap.

[harrybarracuda]

Shouldn't even be on here. Stewie only has to build another time machine and he can save him.

So there.

[harrybarracuda]

Veteran Welsh comedian Stan Stennett has died at the age of 88.

He passed away at the University of Wales Hospital in Cardiff last night, three weeks after suffering a stroke.

The comic – whose career spanned 50 years – was still performing just two weeks before the stroke, his son Ceri confirmed.

He told the BBC: 'It's all very raw for the family now, but the wider public will say a prayer with us for a great life making people happy and doing a job he adored..

Stennett was a friend of Eric Morecambe, and hosted the show the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, that was to be Morecambe's final performance on 27 May 1984, immediately after which Morecambe died of a heart attack. Stennett was manager of the theatre at the time.

Over his career he shared a stage with the The Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy and Les Dawson

. He learned his craft with the Combined Services Entertainments Unit after the War, and used to compere the Black and White Minstrels Show on tour.

He was also a jazz muisican and actor, and in the 1980s, he joined the cast of Crossroads, playing Sid Hooper for seven years.

1979 he was awarded the MBE for services to theatre and charity.

[wasabi]

I cried when Bambies mommy was shot,you can get fond of cartoon characters.

[Bobcock]

Veteran Welsh comedian Stan Stennett has died at the age of 88.

He passed away at the University of Wales Hospital in Cardiff last night, three weeks after suffering a stroke.

The comic – whose career spanned 50 years – was still performing just two weeks before the stroke, his son Ceri confirmed.

He told the BBC: 'It's all very raw for the family now, but the wider public will say a prayer with us for a great life making people happy and doing a job he adored..

Stennett was a friend of Eric Morecambe, and hosted the show the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, that was to be Morecambe's final performance on 27 May 1984, immediately after which Morecambe died of a heart attack. Stennett was manager of the theatre at the time.

Over his career he shared a stage with the The Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy and Les Dawson

. He learned his craft with the Combined Services Entertainments Unit after the War, and used to compere the Black and White Minstrels Show on tour.

He was also a jazz muisican and actor, and in the 1980s, he joined the cast of Crossroads, playing Sid Hooper for seven years.

1979 he was awarded the MBE for services to theatre and charity.

Sad News

RIP Stan.... a neighbour for many years, I delievered Stan's newspapers as a kid.

Lovely house, I assume he still lived there if he died in Cardiff.

[harrybarracuda]

Actor Tony Musante Dies at 77

He made a career out of playing tough guys good and bad and starred as a real-life Newark detective in the gritty 1970s ABC series "Toma."

Tony Musante, who took down drug dealers in his portrayal of a real-life New Jersey detective in the 1970s ABC series Toma, died Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York following surgery. He was 77.

Often playing a tough guy on either side of the law, Musante also sparkled as one of two menacing hoodlums (Martin Sheen was the other) who terrorize innocent people on a New York subway car in the 1967 thriller The Incident. Musante had originated the role in a made-for-NBC drama four years earlier.

A dark-haired Italian-American born in Bridgeport, Conn., Musante starred in several films made in Italy. He played a Mexican revolutionary in the spaghetti Western A Professional Gun (1968), an American writer in Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) and a man with a terminal illness who reunites with the love of his life in The Anonymous Venetian (1971).

Musante played a vicious hit man opposite George C. Scott in The Last Run (1971), a heel in Robert Aldrich's The Grissom Gang (1971), Eric Roberts' mob-connected uncle in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) and another mobster on HBO's prison-set Oz for a season in 1997.

He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his 1975 guest-starring role on an episode of NBC's Medical Story and starred as the Army officer who engineered the My Lai massacre in the 1975 ABC telefilm Judgment: The Court Martial of Lieutenant William Calley, co-directed by Stanley Kramer.

Musante starred opposite Susan Strasberg as Det. David Toma in Toma, which ran for a season in 1973-74. The real Toma worked out of crime-ridden Newark and was a master of disguise. Some criticized the series -- created by Roy Huggins (TV's Maverick, The Fugitive, The Rockford Files) -- for being too violent.

Musante did not want to commit to another full season and quit after Toma was renewed. The violence of the show was toned down, and the series was retooled as the much-friendlier Baretta, starring Robert Blake in the title role.

Musante also appeared in the films The Detective (1968), The Yards (2000) and We Own the Night (2007) -- the latter pair directed by James Gray -- and on TV in such series as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Fugitive, Marcus Welby, M.D., The Rockford Files and Pompeii.

The actor started out on off-Broadway stages and on TV in the late 1950s. Musante made his Broadway debut in 1975 as a gay burglar in P.S. Your Cat Is Dead! and received a New York Drama Desk nomination. He later starred with Meryl Streep in a 1976 production of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.
In February, he donated his personal-papers collection to the archives of Oberlin College. He graduated from the Ohio school in 1958.
Survivors include his wife of 51 years, Jane.

[harrybarracuda]

Oldest English Test player Reg Simpson dies at 93
November 28, 2013 11:28 IST

Former England cricketer Reg Simpson, who is the oldest surviving player to have played in a Test match for the country, has reportedly passed away at the age of 93.

Simpson made 27 Test appearances for England, the highlight of which was an unbeaten 156 against Australia in Melbourne in the final Test of the 1950-51 Ashes series.

According to Sport24, England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chief executive David Collier paid tribute to the late cricketer, saying that Simpson was an elegant opening batsman who served his country with distinction both as a pilot in the Second World War and a fearless fast bowler.

Collier further said that Simpson's 156 in Melbourne led England to their first post-War Test victory in Australia, adding that Simpson held a deep passion for the game.

Simpson also played in 495 first-class matches, amassing 30,546 runs, and served on the Nottinghamshire committee for 37 years after retiring, with the county's chairman Peter Wright saying that Simpson would have achieved even more in the game if his career had not been put on hold for the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

[harrybarracuda]

Last member of Burma's Thirty Comrades dies at 91
Ye Htut was part of group that spearheaded struggle against British colonial rule

Associated Press in Rangoon
theguardian.com, Thursday 28 November 2013 04.22 EST

The last member of the Thirty Comrades, the group that spearheaded Burma's struggle against British colonial rule, has died.

Ye Htut died at a hospital in Rangoon on Wednesday, family members said. He was 91.

The Thirty Comrades were led by General Aung San, father of the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. During the second world war the men went to Japan for training to fight British colonists. Aung San later negotiated independence from Britain. He was assassinated in 1947.

Ye Htut, who had been serving in the Burmese army until independence, went underground soon after, joining the armed struggle of the banned Burma Communist party. He laid down his weapons in 1963 to join the ruling party of the dictator General Ne Win, but was purged several years later in an inner-party struggle, according to his eldest son, Kyaw Kyaw. Ye Htut was involved in the 1988 pro-democracy movement.

Tin Oo, a former chief of staff and a veteran of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, expressed his condolences, saying he had great respect those who helped the country fight for independence. "I am very sad to hear about the death of the last surviving member of the Thirty Comrades," he said.

Tin Oo said he had met Ye Htut before independence and also when he served in Ne Win's ruling party. "U Ye Htut served as a patron of the Patriotic Old Comrades league, a group formed by retired army leaders during the peak of 1988 uprising. He shared his experience and had given us advice during the initial days," he said.

[harrybarracuda]

The Professionals star Lewis Collins has died aged 67, his agent said.

The actor, who played Bodie in the crime drama alongside co-star Martin Shaw, died in Los Angeles on Wednesday after a five-year struggle with cancer.

His agent said: "He died peacefully at his LA home surrounded by his family. Privacy is asked for at this very sad time."

The Professionals, which made stars of Collins and Shaw, was based around the adventures of a fictional crime-fighting unit called CI5.

Its memorable theme tune and action-packed plots made it a huge hit on ITV in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Collins's other most notable role came in 1982's Who Dares Wins, when he played a member of the SAS.

He was born on Merseyside and worked as a drummer in local bands and as a hairdresser before getting into acting.

PA

[harrybarracuda]

Gardner Hathaway, former CIA chief of counterintelligence, dies at 88



By Steve Vogel, The Washington Post
Posted Nov. 28, 2013, at 6:01 a.m.

Gardner R. Hathaway, a former CIA chief of counterintelligence whose nearly four-decade career with the agency took him to Cold War focal points ranging from Berlin to Moscow and placed him at the center of many espionage episodes, died Nov. 20 at the Vitas hospice in Vienna, Va. He was 88.

The cause was complications from cancer, said his wife, Karin Hathaway.

Taciturn but courtly, “Gus” Hathaway was an undercover officer known for his mastery of espionage tradecraft and his aggressive efforts to best the Soviet KGB.

“Gus was a risk-taker,” said Jack Downing, a former CIA deputy director of operations who served with Hathaway. “We needed good intelligence, and we needed to be aggressive to get it. He was canny and smart about how to do it.”

Hathaway convinced skittish superiors at agency headquarters in Langley to approve an operation in 1978 involving a Russian engineer named Adolf Tolkachev. The episode provided the CIA with a huge amount of sensitive intelligence on the Soviet military for a nearly a decade.

One celebrated incident in Hathaway’s career took place soon after he arrived in Moscow as the CIA station chief in 1977. When a fire broke out on the U.S. embassy’s eighth floor, Hathaway barred arriving firefighters from entering the CIA station — located the floor below the blaze.

He suspected some of the firefighters were KGB agents, and he refused to evacuate until the fire was contained.

Hathaway was awarded the prestigious Intelligence Star for his actions, with a citation noting that he had protected sensitive areas from penetration “at great personal risk.”

Gardner Rugg Hathaway was born in Norfolk on March 13, 1925. He was 2 when his father died, and he grew up in Danville, Va., with his mother and stepfather.

He served in the Army in Europe during World War II and was wounded in the leg by mortar shrapnel. After his discharge, he enrolled at the University of Virginia and joined the CIA a year after graduation in 1950.

He worked in Frankfurt, Germany, and then Berlin as a case officer. He later served in South America before arriving in Moscow as chief of station in 1977.

At the time, the CIA was reticent about running operations in the Soviet capital. Two CIA operations in Moscow recently had been discovered by the KGB, and the new CIA director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, ordered the station not to undertake any operations.

Tolkachev, a military electronics expert, had approached the Americans several times, leaving notes trying to establish contact. Senior CIA officials were wary, fearing it was a KGB-run provocation that could flush out American agents and sabotage hopes for improving bilateral relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Hathaway, who was approached by Tolkachev on a Moscow street, argued it was worth the risk.

He won approval, and the result was “one of the most productive operations we ever had,” said Downing. The stream of information continued until 1985, when rogue officer Edward Lee Howard informed the Soviets about the breach. Tolkachev was arrested and executed the following year.

Hathaway was determined to protect such agents, believing none should ever be caught because of mistakes by American handlers. “Gus never had an operation rolled up [compromised] because of bad tradecraft,” said Barry Royden, a former senior counterintelligence officer.

When the agency feared a published book in 1978 would compromise the identity of Aleksey Kulak, a decorated KGB officer who had fed valuable information to the FBI for years, Hathaway was determined to warn the mole.

To avert KGB surveillance, Hathaway donned a female disguise kept in the station and headed into the Moscow night to telephone Kulak. The KGB officer declined Hathaway’s offer of being spirited from the country and was left unmolested by the Soviets.

In 1985, after a stint as chief of the CIA station in Bonn, Germany, Hathaway was appointed chief of counterintelligence.

He became alarmed after a number of Soviet agents working for the Americans were taken into custody or disappeared during the last eight months of 1985. He suspected a mole had penetrated the agency.

In 1986, Hathaway assembled a team of trusted colleagues to investigate and look for common threads. The hunt would culminate in 1994 with the arrest of Aldrich Ames, a CIA counter-intelligence officer who had been selling secrets to the Soviets.

By then, Hathaway had retired, but he and others who had served in senior positions “caught the brunt of the firestorm” that followed, said Sandra Grimes, a former CIA officer who was part of the team that caught Ames.

Yet it had been Hathaway’s early suspicion that the agency had been penetrated and his determination to find the mole that made him “one of the real heroes” of the episode, Grimes added.

At Hathaway’s retirement ceremony in 1990, CIA Director William Webster called him “a consummate operations officer.” He was presented with the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, which noted in part his “willingness to challenge the conventional wisdom, inspiring leadership . . . penetrating intellect and profound compassion.”

Hathaway’s first marriage, to Marjorie Charlton, ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 42 years, Karin Kadereit Hathaway of Falls Church, three sons from his first marriage, Gardner R. Hathaway of Asheville, N.C., and W. Charlton Hathaway and Taylor Hathaway, both of Charlottesville; a stepdaughter he adopted, Sandra B. Hathaway of New York City; a brother; and six grandchildren.

Shortly after his retirement, Mr. Hathaway traveled to East Berlin at the behest of the agency and met with Markus Wolf, the East German spy chief and one of the most effective espionage agents of the Cold War.

Reunification with West Germany was looming following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Hathaway hoped to coax Wolf to move to the United States and cooperate with the CIA. Over coffee at his dacha, Wolf politely declined the offer, but presented his rival with an autographed copy of his memoir.

[harrybarracuda]

Prophetic indeed!

Willis Ware dies at 93; pioneer predicted the rise of the computer
As an engineer in the 1960s, he foresaw the omnipresence of computers and recognized the impact they would have on privacy.
November 29, 2013, 7:58 p.m.

Computer pioneer Willis Ware saw the future, and it worried him.

In 1966, Ware, who worked as an engineer at Rand Corp., foresaw not only the omnipresence of personal computers, but also social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

"The computer will touch men everywhere and in every way, almost on a minute-to-minute basis," he wrote in a paper presented at Rand 47 years ago. "Every man will communicate through a computer whatever he does. It will change and reshape his life, modify his career and force him to accept a life of continuous change."

Six years later, with personal data increasingly being added to company and government computer systems, he had another, darker prediction. "The central issue is that for various reasons there is more and more information about people floating around in data banks," he said in a 1972 Los Angeles Times interview. "The computer is beginning to make it possible to find out more about you in fewer places."

"I suspect that what we'll all give up is control over how essentially private information about ourselves is used. We'll gradually get used to that."

Ware, 93, who lived to see his predictions come true, died Nov. 22 at his home in Santa Monica. He had recently been in failing health, said his daughter, Alison Ware.

Willis Ware was on staff at Rand for more than 50 years.

"Willis helped usher Rand into the computer era at a time when computers existed mostly in the realm of science fiction," Rand Chief Executive Michael Rich said in a statement. "He was ahead of his time in thinking about the profound effects that computers could have on information privacy."

Although Rand, based in Santa Monica, is primarily known as a think tank, Ware did a lot more than just ponder the privacy issue. He wrote and spoke about the matter in numerous venues, including high-level government panels.

He was chairman of a committee created in 1972 by the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare to come up with policy suggestions. The committee's report — "Records, Computers and the Right of Citizens" — written by Ware, made several suggestions, including:

"There must be no personal data record-keeping systems whose very existence is secret."

"There must be a way for an individual to find out what information about him is in the record and how it is used."

"Any organization creating, maintaining, using or disseminating records of identifiable personal data must assure the reliability of the data for their intended use."

That committee led to more committees. In 1975, Ware was named by President Gerald Ford to a Privacy Protection Study Commission.

In the meantime, many of the policies that he and others urged be adopted were not implemented. Did this make Ware bitter or take on an I-told-you-so attitude in his later years when hackers, corporate mining of personal information and the National Security Agency made headlines?

"Not at all," Alison Ware said. "I never heard him be despondent about how things worked out. He was problem-oriented — he looked at a problem and took on the challenge of examining it."

Willis Howard Ware was born Aug. 31, 1920, in Atlantic City, N.J. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and earned a doctorate in the field from Princeton University. During World War II he worked at Hazeltine Corp. in upstate New York, designing classified radar detection tools, according to Rand.

At Princeton, Ware was part of the group that built the landmark IAS computer. In 1952 he joined Rand to help build the Johnniac computer, which weighed 2.5 tons and had 5,000 vacuum tubes.

"Johnniac demonstrated a lot of firsts," Ware said in an interview for an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers history project. "A machine that could run hundreds of hours without an error."

But Ware will likely be best remembered for his forward thinking about how computers would affect our lives. "He was able to foresee things we couldn't even begin to imagine back then," said computer scientist Bob Anderson, who worked with Ware at Rand. "He was truly a pioneer in the field."

In addition to Alison Ware, he is survived by another daughter, Deborah Pinson; a son, David; two granddaughters, a great-grandson and three brothers.

[harrybarracuda]

Actress Jean Kent, who was one of Britain's top boxoffice stars in the 1940s and 1950s, has died aged 92 after being injured in a fall at her home. Her death was announced by a close family friend, author and former film critic Michael Thornton.
He said the actress was injured in a fall at her home in the Suffolk village of Westhorpe on Thursday.

She was taken by ambulance to West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds where she died at 3.40am today.

Kent made her last public appearance in June 2011 when she was honoured by the British Film Institute (BFI) on her 90th birthday. It screened one of her films, Caravan, at BFI Southbank in London.

Her career included regular appearances in Gainsborough melodramas, which were popular with large numbers of newly-independent women following the outbreak of the Second World War.

Her films include The Browning Version, where she appeared alongside Michael Redgrave, the Prince and the Showgirl, which also starred Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, and Fanny by Gaslight.

Kent was born in Brixton, south London on June 29, 1921, the only child of variety performers Norman Field and Nina Norre. She met her husband Jusuf Ramart on the set of Caravan and they married in April 1946. He died from cancer in 1989.
Mr Thornton said: "I knew Jean for more than 50 years. She was a feisty, funny, outspoken character who never took herself too seriously.

"She knew what it meant to be a star, and regarded it as her job to live up to that position and never to disappoint the public."

He added: "Because she became one of the most famous stars of the Gainsborough era, with its bodice-ripping melodramas, she was underrated as an actress. But she was a great actress."
Source: Press Association