The RIP Famous Person Thread

[harrybarracuda]

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Sgt. Walter Ehlers, WWII Medal of Honor Recipient, Dies at 92
Staff Sgt. Walter Ehlers, a Medal of Honor recipient for his heroic actions during World War II, died Thursday at the age of 92.

Ehlers, who joined the armed forces in 1940, was the last living Medal of Honor recipient who stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day.

He earned his Medal of Honor "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty" on June 9 and 10, 1944, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

During battle near Goville, France, Ehlers went ahead of his men to defend his squad against the enemy. He blocked his men from gunfire and even after he was wounded in the back, carried a rifleman to safety and then returned to the battleground to retrieve his rifle. Ehlers refused to leave his squad after his wound was treated.

“The Germans didn't leave much of me untouched," Ehlers said an interview with WWII Magazine in 2012.

Ehlers also earned three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star during his service with the 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Infantry Division.

After the war, Ehlers became an advocate for military veteran benefits and proudly worked as a security guard for Disneyland when it opened in California.

He is survived by his wife, Dorothy Ehlers; three children; 11 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

[Cujo]

Notables in their field may be a more accurate description possibly. I fear that many may have contributed toward society more than most on this forum and as such are deserving of a wee mention as they reach the end of their human life form.

Is it merely our own lack of knowledge of those who have provided services to the world's population such as a broadcaster, war hero, scientist, crime fighter and of course a pioneer and author of steam railway preservation that brings us to conclude 'WHO?'.

Certainly they may have achieved less fame than say Britney Spears, however their contribution should never be underestimated. I should mention that I enjoy reading some of their exploits as have also other members here.

I also enjoy reading some of their exploits though it does annoy me (for some strange reason) they get posted in the 'famous' thread.
Maybe you could start a thread title 'RIP notables in their field'.

[harrybarracuda]

So they aren't famous unless you've heard of them eh?

Get over yourself.

[Latindancer]

You're starting to sound a little old-womanish, Koojo.

[misskit]

I don't gripe as much as Koojo and I AM an old woman.

[harrybarracuda]

Lovejoy, Brookside actor Malcolm Tierney dies, aged 75
By Tom Eames
Friday, Feb 21 2014, 10:15 GMT

Actor Malcolm Tierney has died, aged 75.

The British actor was known for his variety of roles in TV, film and theatre, including Braveheart and Lovejoy.



Tierney played Tommy McArdle in the Channel 4 soap Brookside from 1983 to 1987, and was also known for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company back in the 1970s.

In 2012, he starred as Sorin in Chekhov's The Seagull at London's Southwark Playhouse.

Tierney was perhaps best known for playing Lovejoy's antique dealer rival Charlie Gimbert in the BBC drama.

He also had roles in Doctor Who's 'The Trial of a Time Lord' in 1986, and Star Wars in 1977.

Tierney also played the English sheriff who executes the wife of William Wallace in Mel Gibson's Braveheart in 1995.

Further appearances included A Bit of a Do, the original House of Cards series and Dalziel and Pascoe.

Several actors have paid tribute to the late star, with Samuel West describing him as "a wickedly good actor in every medium, and such a clever and funny man".

Brookside actor Peter Doran said that Tierney "always had a wicked sense of humour in the green room".

[Mr Lick]

Stuart Hall - obituary

Stuart Hall was a cultural theorist who coined the term 'Thatcherism’ and profoundly influenced New Labour




Stuart Hall, who has died aged 82, came to Britain from his native Jamaica in 1951 and established himself as a leading cultural theorist and as a hero of the intellectual Left.

A trenchant critic of Thatcherism (a term he coined), Hall had a huge impact on the reconfiguration of Left-wing thinking that underpinned the rise of New Labour, while his contributions to the theory of “multiculturalism” entered the political mainstream.

Hall arrived in Britain from Jamaica on a Rhodes Scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, soon after the first wave of Windrush migrants from the Caribbean. He was thus able to witness the reaction of the motherland to its colonial subjects turning up on her doorstep, and the prejudice he encountered inspired him to become involved in politics.


After abandoning a PhD on Henry James in 1958, Hall became the founding editor of the New Left Review, which did much to open a debate about immigration and the politics of identity. He went on, with Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart, to establish the first Cultural Studies programme at a British university in Birmingham in 1964. In 1979 he moved to the Open University as a Professor of Sociology and for nearly two decades his early morning broadcasts on BBC2 became compulsory viewing for any self-respecting socialist intellectual.


Hall first coined the word “Thatcherism” in a prescient article in Marxism Today in January 1979, four months before Margaret Thatcher herself entered Downing Street.

The Conservative leader had been patronised by many on the Left as little more than a shrill housewife. Hall was one of the first to acknowledge that Britain was entering a new era of politics

He characterised the phenomenon of Thatcherism as something more significant and more insidious than the personal style of one politician. He later described Mrs Thatcher as Hegel’s “historical individual”, a person whose politics and contradictions “instance or concretise in one life or career much wider forces that are in play”.

To Hall, Thatcherism’s popularity originated in errors on the Left. Socialists, he argued, had failed to recognise the disillusionment of many working class people with the bureaucratic state, while British trade unions, although industrially strong, had not offered any alternative vision. Thatcherism had “redefined contours of public thinking” by grasping that the way to people’s hearts was not just through Westminster but through other spaces in their lives that they did not even consider to be “political” – areas like morality and culture.

Hall called for the Left to fight the cultural battle against Thatcherism by an engagement with new social movements such as multiculturalism, environmentalism and gay rights – thinking that became integral to the “New Labour” project as it developed in the mid-1990s.

To Hall, cultural identities were not fixed, but fluid – “subject to the continuous 'play’ of history, culture and power”. In investigating how people with different backgrounds, languages and religious beliefs can live together without retreating into warring tribes, he became a leading critic of the sort of cultural absolutism epitomised by Norman Tebbit’s “cricket test”. “Britain is not homogenous,” Hall declared.

“It was never a society without conflict. The English fought tooth and nail over everything we know of as English political virtues – rule of law, free speech, the franchise. The very notion of Great Britain’s “greatness” is bound up with empire. Euro-scepticism and Little Englander nationalism could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar flowed through English blood and rotted English teeth.”

In Hall’s view the critical question was: “How much do we retain and how much do we give up of our cultural identity in order to be ourselves?” The concept of Britishness, he argued, needed to become more, not less, inclusive, recognising that the idea of multi-ethnic, mono-cultural society was a “contradiction in terms”.




In an interview in 2011 Hall felt that progress had occurred (“Just think of the visibility of black people in the media, in sport, in popular culture”); but he claimed that people still asked him why he did not go back to where he came from. The high point of multiculturalism, he said, had been reached before the attacks of 9/11, when “differences were everywhere, hybridity was everywhere, and no one had completely retreated into tribal enclaves”. The growth of Islamic fundamentalism which had precipitated this retreat he blamed on the failure of the West to engage with “a whole gradient of Islam that has been open to dialogue for many years... We know nothing about it. We stereotype it. We never had the tough argument that leads to better integration.”

Yet Hall lived to see and arguably had a major impact on the dramatic improvements in race-relations and a growing consensus around the idea of cultural inclusivity that Britain has seen over the last three decades. As he himself reflected, failed revolutions are often the most successful in the long run: “Remember 1968, when everyone said that nothing changed, that nobody won state power. It’s true. The students didn’t win. But since then life has been profoundly transformed. Ideas of communitarianism, ideas of the collective, of feminism, of being gay, were all transformed by the impact of a revolution that did not succeed… So I don’t believe in judging the historical significance of events in terms of our usually faulty judgment of where they may end up.”

Stuart McPhail Hall was born on February 3 1932 in Kingston, Jamaica, into a middle class family which subscribed to what he called “the colonial romance”. His father, Herman, was the first non-white person to hold a senior position – chief accountant – with United Fruit in Jamaica. Both his parents had non-African components in their ancestry, though as he recalled: “I was always the blackest member of my family and I knew it from the moment I was born.”

Growing up in what he called the “pigmentocracy” of the colonial West Indies had a profound effect on Hall’s childhood and outlook. His mother forbade him from inviting black school friends home, even though to white eyes he was black himself. When his sister fell in love with a black medical student, their mother barred her from seeing him. As a result she suffered a mental breakdown.

Hall was educated at Jamaica College, Kingston, but it was at Oxford that he became politically active. In 1957 he began editing the Universities & Left Review which, in 1960, merged with The Reasoner to form New Left Review, with Hall as its founding editor. He also became active in CND, speaking at its rallies and becoming a familiar face on television at a time when the majority of people on news, current affairs and arts programmes were white.

By this time Hall was teaching film and television at Chelsea College in London, but a decisive turn in his career came in 1964, when Richard Hoggart set up the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham. Earlier the same year Hall had co-written The Popular Arts with Paddy Whannel. As a direct result, Richard Hoggart invited Hall to join his new centre, initially as a research fellow. He became its director in 1968 and over the next decade played a leading role in the development of a worldwide movement of cultural studies.

In 1979 Hall left Birmingham to become Professor of Sociology at the Open University, where he worked for 18 years. After his retirement in 1997 he devoted his energies to establishing Rivington Place, an £8 million “global art space” in Hoxton, East London, where artists from ethnic minorities can explore issues of identity. In 2005 Hall was made a fellow of the British Academy.

Although Hall harboured great hopes for New Labour, he was deeply disappointed by the reality. From 1997 to 2000 he served as a member of a Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, established by the Runnymede Trust, whose claim that the term “Britishness” has racist connotations and that race-relations could be improved by “rethinking” it to include the experience of all Britain’s ethnic groups, was brusquely rejected by Labour’s Home Secretary Jack Straw following negative media comment.

Hall was inclined to lay most of the blame at the door of Tony Blair who, as Labour leader, had pitched his tent on “terrain defined by Thatcherism”. In the run-up to the 1997 general election, Hall and Martin Jacques had penned an exasperated article, “Tony Blair: the greatest Tory since Margaret Thatcher?” expressing their frustration that even though the Tories were “divided, exhausted and demoralised,” it was still “their arguments, their philosophy, their priorities, that are defining the agenda on which new Labour thinks and speaks”.

In 1964 Hall married Catherine Barrett, a Yorkshirewoman whom he met on an Aldermaston march and who became a historian of post-colonialism. She survives him with their son and daughter.


Stuart Hall, born February 3 1932, died February 10 2014

[withnallstoke]

RIP The Shifters.


" In the great rock and roll tradition, the newest soupergroup "The Shifters" blew theyselves up by means of a kazoo."

[harrybarracuda]

Another Oscar winner, I bet that pisses them off.



Robert M - Filmmaker Robert M. Fresco Dies At 83
by WENN | 21 February 2014
Filmmaker Robert M. Fresco has lost his battle with cancer at the age of 83.
The Oscar winner passed away in Manhattan, New York on St. Valentine's Day (14Feb14), according to the New York Times.
Fresco began his career in the 1950s writing B-rated horror movies including Tarantula, The Monolith Monsters and The Alligator People.
He also worked as a writer on several Tv shows including Bonanza, Wagon Train and Science Fiction Theater, and produced a 1972 adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which starred Ruby Dee and Blythe Danner.
In addition to his work in Tv and film, Fresco also made documentaries.
In 1970, he won an Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subjects for Czechoslovakia 1968, which chronicled 50 years of Czech history.
He was also known for his documentary on the Black Panther Party criminal case titled Trial: The City and County of Denver vs. Lauren R. Watson.

[Mr Lick]

Fanni Gyarmati - obituary

Fanni Gyarmati was the wife and muse of the Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti who preserved his legacy after his death in the Holocaust





Fanni Gyarmati, who has died aged 101, was best known in her native Hungary as the wife and muse of Miklós Radnóti, whom many consider to be one of the country’s greatest poets.

Radnóti, who lost his life in the Holocaust, dedicated much of his best-known love poetry to Fanni, and the fact that their relationship was never plain-sailing made his verse — and their devotion to one another — all the more powerful.


Miklós Radnóti was 17 years old when he met the strikingly beautiful and erudite 14-year-old “Fifi” Gyarmati in a house in Budapest where they took extra lessons in mathematics with the same tutors. The young Radnóti, an assimilated Jew, exchanged his pencil for hers so that he would have a pretext to talk to her. In order to impress her, he claimed that he was 18. Soon afterwards he began writing her love poems.


Yet after a year or so Radnóti, at his guardian’s insistence, enrolled at a textile college in Czechoslovakia where he met Klementine “Tini” Tschiedel, a Czech-German typist with whom he embarked on his first real affair. The young poet wrote love poems to both girls, but it was to Fanni that he showed his work, even seeking her views on poems written to her rival. Within a year, Radnóti had returned to Budapest and Tini had been forgotten.


Miklós and Fanni became inseparable, and it was she who, in 1931, proposed marriage — on a snow-covered bench in Budapest’s City Park. His guardian and her parents refused to sanction the match until he had completed his studies. They married in August 1935 shortly after Miklós had taken a PhD from Ferencz József University in Szeged

After a short honeymoon on Lake Balaton, they moved into a rented one-room flat on Pozsonyi Street, Budapest, where Fanni taught shorthand at a school founded by her father, while Miklós established a growing reputation as a poet and translator.




Statue of Miklós Radnóti and Fanni Gyarmati in Szeged, Hungary (ALAMY)

But in 1941, after six years of marriage, Radnóti began an affair with the painter Judit Beck, an old friend of Fanni’s. He addressed his poems Zápor (Rain) and Harmadik ecloga (Third Eclogue) to Judit, but he never kept the affair secret from Fanni.

Although it caused her much pain, she somehow managed to remain friends with Judit, who even painted her portrait for her husband. “If it pleases Miklós, so let him be pleased,” she wrote in her diary.

By the time Miklós began the affair, Hungary had entered the Second World War on Germany’s side and introduced a forced labour system that mainly affected the Jewish population. In late 1940 Miklós had been called up for three months’ forced labour service.

By the time he was called up for his second period of forced labour in 1942, the affair with Judit had ended. From his camp he wrote a letter to Fanni, assuring her: “I love you! It is you that I love! And everything but you is just a game!” — and he enclosed a poem, Októbervégi hexameterek (Late October Hexameters), by way of an “apology” for the Third Eclogue. “Mik sent me a poem,” Fanni recorded in her diary. “It is beautiful. He did manage to do it after all, and what a poem! ... And him there! To think that he has to abort so many things! In that animal-like existence, in haste, and yet he could write it.”

During his first period of forced labour Miklós had not worn any special marking, but by his second, Hungarian anti-Semitism had become more virulent. He was forced to wear a yellow armband, had his books confiscated and was humiliated and tortured on several occasions, while his poetry was subjected to anti-Semitic attacks in the Hungarian press.

Some days after his discharge Miklós converted to Roman Catholicism, but it did him no good: in May 1944 he was sent to a labour camp in the mining town of Bor in eastern Serbia. There, in August 1944, he wrote Fanni a postcard: “I wrote in my last card that I would be very much with you on our wedding anniversary, and it was indeed so, and thank you Sweetheart for the nine years we spent together. I miss you very much my Sweet and Only One.”

The same month, as Titoist Partisans began to get the upper hand, fleeing fascist troops attempted to force-march Miklós’s group of 3,200 Hungarian Jews back to central Hungary. Most died on the way, including Miklós, who, according to witnesses, was severely beaten in November 1944 by a drunken soldier who had been tormenting him for “scribbling”. Too weak to continue, he was shot dead along with 22 companions and thrown into a mass grave near the village of Abda in north-west Hungary.

After her husband’s death Fanni Gyarmati continued to live in their apartment on Pozsonyi Street, where the sign on the door still reads “Dr Miklós Radnóti”, and set about protecting and promoting her husband’s literary legacy. A posthumous volume of poems, Tajtékos ég (Foamy Sky, 1946), which she compiled, was later hailed by Edward Hirsch as “one of the pinnacles of Central European poetry this century”.

Eighteen months after Miklós’s death, the mass grave at Abda was exhumed. In the front pocket of the poet’s overcoat a small notebook was found, containing some of his most powerful poems, many of them contrasting dreams of bliss with Fanni with the terrible reality he was having to endure. In Hetedik ecloga (The 7th Eclogue), for example, he describes himself (in Thomas Land’s translation) as “Lying on boards ... a captive beast among vermin”, but finishes with the lines: “Alone I sit up awake with the lingering taste of a cigarette butt in my mouth instead of your kiss, and I get no merciful sleep, for neither can I live nor die without you, my love, any longer.”

Fanni refused to go to see his corpse. But the complete poems of the notebook, published for the first time in The Collected poems of Miklós Radnóti in 1948, are seen as some of the most important works of literature of the Holocaust.

In 1989 their relationship was depicted in Forced March – a “film within a film” feature drama, directed by Rick King, with Chris Sarandon playing Miklós Radnóti, and Renée Soutendijk as his long-suffering wife.

Fanni Gyarmati was born in Budapest on September 8 1912 into a Hungarian bourgeois family and was later described by friends as a stunningly pretty and intelligent girl who loved travelling and poetry.

After the Second World War and her husband’s death, she took a degree in French and Russian and later became a French and verse-speaking teacher at a theatre arts college.

Fanni Gyarmati won several prizes and received many awards for her work in the fields of literature and education, including the Hungarian Order of Merit.


Fanni Gyarmati, born September 8 1912, died February 15 2014

[Mr Lick]

Susan Hillyard - obituary

Susan Hillyard was an oil executive’s wife whose make-do-and-mend optimism won over Abu Dhabi’s royal family




Susan Hillyard, who has died aged 87, was the “First Lady” of the lost world of Abu Dhabi’s expat community before oil changed the region for ever; when she arrived in 1954, most of the emirate’s population had never set eyes on an English woman before, a potentially difficult situation she smoothed out through her cheery embrace of the emirate’s culture and people.

At that time Westerners of any description rarely visited the region, let alone a young Englishwoman decked out in trim skirts and cardigans, with a make-do-and-mend Home Counties demeanour and a beaming smile. Susan Hillyard, her husband Tim — a BP representative — and their daughter Deborah, were the first Europeans to settle in a city that had yet to become a hub for the oil industry. While Tim oversaw the construction of an offshore exploration centre and liaised with Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan — the ruling emir of Abu Dhabi — and his brother Sheikh Zayed Al Nahayan (later the first president of the United Arab Emirates), Susan Hillyard was left to settle into an alien environment where “civilisation” consisted of a kerosene-run fridge and a copy of The Ship Captain’s Medical Guide.


But she soon fell in love with the region. By the time BP struck oil in 1958, at the Umm Shaif offshore field, she had become a valued link between the closeted realm hidden behind the walls of the royal palace of Qasr al Hosn — with its veiled sheikhas and heady incense — and the gin-and-tonic set of émigrés and struggling oil prospectors



She was born Susan Watt on May 2 1926 at Weybridge, Surrey. Her father Ronald Watt and grandfather, AP Watt, were literary agents and, aged six, Susan wrote a short play titled The Burglar which her grandfather sent to Rudyard Kipling (whom he represented). Kipling wrote back encouragingly.

She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College before going up to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read Modern History and served as secretary to the university Conservative Association the term before Margaret Thatcher became its president.

Coming down, she taught History, Latin and English at Jersey College for Girls, Châtelard School in Switzerland, and St Helen’s in Quebec.

On her return to England from Canada she was introduced to her future husband through a mutual friend. The “chemistry was instant”, she recalled. They were engaged within three weeks. After their marriage in 1950, the couple moved to Baghdad where Tim was working and where Susan taught English and History at Baghdad University. From there the pair set off, three years later, for Abu Dhabi.

When her husband first proposed the move Susan was taken aback. “Aberdovey?” she asked. “What is BP doing in Wales?” Correcting her, Tim, who had previously travelled around the Gulf, explained that they would have to build their own house and she would need to learn Arabic as soon as possible. “My eyebrows shot to the back of my head,” she recalled. '“Dead easy,’ said Tim, 'You go to the zoo, stand in front of the camel enclosure, and when you can say 'Ghuqghq’ like them, you’ve cracked it’.”

Their sea passage to Abu Dhabi took them via Dubai and Bahrain. When Susan attempted to wash Deborah’s nappies over the side of their dhow a large grey shark swooped on the dangling bait .

They arrived at night in September 1954, to the crack of a rife shot from a nervous port guard, and settled into the house that Tim had built on the edge of town. By modern standards “Bayt Al Yard” (Arabic for Hillyard’s House) was rudimentary: a whitewashed cube, its walls were constructed out of coral heads harvested by pearl divers — their porosity helping to keep it cool — and the water for the cement had to be brought from Dubai, the water in Abu Dhabi being almost as salty as the sea.




The Hillyards with a cannon presented to them by Sheikh Shakhbut in 1957

BP, they soon realised, were counting the pennies and conditions were harsh. “Life, in fact, was grim, not just for the inhabitants but for us, even though we were used to hardship having gone through the war,” Susan wrote years later. “There was no blood, but toil yes, sweat aplenty for eight to nine months of the year and tears of loneliness, despair, and, I hate to confess it, self-pity.” She was, however, resolved to make it work and so embraced the sunny side of her new life. “Moaning is tedious and laughter has much more to recommend it,” she declared.

Susan Hillyard was to become such a fixture at the court of Sheikh Shakhbut — where she struck up close bonds with the women — that she was present at a royal birth.

When their English friend dangled the baby boy by his feet to drain fluid from his lungs (the practice of many an English midwife) the surrounding Arab women were aghast.

Only when the new mother repeated the action did the group relax.



Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan

Susan Hillyard threw elaborate birthday parties for Deborah, for which scores of local children were rounded up by a BP driver calling out “Deborah’s Christmas, Deborah’s Christmas”. The young guests were treated to sweets and introduced to English party games (a special shopping trip to Bahrain was required). “I had got in 144 bars of chocolate and 144 balloons,” Susan remembered late in life — for the 288 children who played pass-the-parcel and tag on the sand plains outside Bayt Al Yard.

The family became an incongruous yet accepted part of the landscape. She recounted the story of a tradesman arriving from the Buraimi Oasis at the crossing to Abu Dhabi Island who greeted the guard in the traditional fashion:

“Peace upon you.”
“And upon you be peace. What is the news?”
“There is no news. By God, Al Yard’s [Hillyard’s] lorry is stuck in the sabkha.”
“In God’s name what a mess!”

“What is to be done? It is the will of God. At least there are no camels involved.”

The family left Abu Dhabi after the discovery of oil in 1958 as Susan was concerned that if they stayed longer Deborah would later find it difficult to integrate with English children. Tim’s BP postings took them first to Canada, where a second daughter, Susanna, was born in 1960, and subsequently Alaska, Libya and Australia, before returning to England in 1967. In the early 1970s Susan was a consultant to Shell Oil on a proposed project to educate 25 Muscati boys from Oman at a British boarding school.



Abu Dhabi foreshore in the 1950s

Tim Hillyard died in 1973 and Susan subsequently settled in Derbyshire where she was active in the Anglican church and researched her memoirs. Before the Oil (2002) was a labour of love, written at the insistence of her old friend Sheikh Zayed who declared that she was “now the only person who clearly remembers Abu Dhabi as it was”.





Present day Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi was to change forever and Susan Hillyard was a great source of information on the city’s social history (she advised the British Museum and architects restoring the Qasr el Hosni). She returned to the city a final time in 2007 to find it unrecognisable from the small port she had known 60 years earlier. Until the end of her life she remained fascinated by the links between Western and Arab cultures; in her last days Susan Hillyard’s family sat reading to her from her own annotated copies of the Bible and the Koran.

Susan Hillyard is survived by her two daughters.


Susan Hillyard, born May 2 1926, died February 16 2014

[harrybarracuda]

Actress Miliza Milo, who can be seen -- albeit fleetingly -- in The Ten Commandments and Vertigo, two of the most important films of the 1950s, died Feb. 6 of natural causes in Sedona, Ariz. She was 91.

Milo also appeared in the drama Girl Gang (1954), on such TV shows as Playhouse 90, Shower of Stars, Hawaii Five-O, Three’s Company, All in the Family and Good Times and in regional theater productions.
Earlier, the St. Louis native had supporting roles in such 1940s radio anthology series as Escape (“designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half-hour of high adventure!”), Suspense, Romance and Crime Classics and in the comedy Meet Millie.
Her friend Jo Ann Sawyer noted that Milo served as a Navy WAVE (an acronym for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during World War II and in the late 1990s was voted the first female commander of the American Legion’s Post 43 in Hollywood, known as “The Post of the Stars.”
Milo recently appeared in Memorial Day and Veterans Day commercials that saluted veterans and were sponsored by Boeing.
Survivors include son John, grandson Todd and great-granddaughter Tatiana.
Click here to watch a tribute to Milo and “a cause near and dear to her heart,” woman veterans.

[Mr Lick]

Maria von Trapp, last member of Sound of Music family, dies




Maria von Trapp was the second oldest daughter of Capt von Trapp


The last surviving member of the Trapp Family Singers, the group whose story inspired The Sound of Music, has died at the age of 99, her family say.

Maria von Trapp died at her home in Vermont on Tuesday, her brother, Johannes von Trapp, told the Associated Press.

He said she was a "lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people".

Von Trapp and her family fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 and ended up performing around the US.

Their story eventually inspired the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music, and subsequent 1965 hit film.

It tells the tale of a young woman who leaves an Austrian convent to become a governess to the seven children of a naval officer widower, Georg von Trapp.


'Remarkable'

Maria von Trapp was the second-oldest daughter of Capt von Trapp - with his first wife - and was portrayed as Louisa in the musical.

Her family moved to the US state of Vermont in 1942 after visiting during a singing tour, and later opened a lodge in the town of Stowe, which they still operate.



Maria von Trapp, third from left, performed with her family around the US
Writing in a blog post on the lodge's website, von Trapp described how it was her ill health as a child that led her father to employ a governess to teach her and her siblings.

"She came to us as my teacher and after three years became our second mother," she said.

Marianne Dorfer, a family friend who runs the von Trapp Villa Hotel in Salzburg told the Austrian Times that von Trapp had suffered from a weak heart since childhood.

Ms Dorfer said it was because of Maria's ill heath that her father decided to hire a governess. "That of course then led to one of the most remarkable musical partnerships of the last century," she added

The Sound of Music was based loosely on a 1949 book by the governess, who became Capt von Trapp's second wife and died in 1987

[Mr Lick]

Emlyn Jones - obituary

Emlyn Jones was a bomb disposal officer who blew up a Nazi 'super gun’ and was later selected for the 1953 Everest team





Emlyn Jones, who has died aged 98, was an experienced Alpine and Himalayan climber, and served throughout the Second World War as a bomb disposal officer.

Jones spent much of the war defusing devices in London, but after D-Day he was posted to northern Europe, where he was involved in the destruction of the V3 “super-gun” – which was potentially much more lethal than the V1 and V2 rockets.

After the war he became a highly respected chartered surveyor and was initially selected for the 1953 Everest expedition, only to remain a home-based reserve climber for a second, post-monsoon, assault should the first attempt fail.


John Hubert Emlyn Jones was born on August 6 1915 at Llandudno, and remained intensely proud of his Welsh background even though he left Wales at the age of 14 to attend school in Dulwich. His father, a schoolmaster would often walk and scramble in the nearby mountains, inspiring his son’s interest in climbing.


On leaving school Emlyn qualified as a chartered surveyor with a firm in Liverpool, spending most weekends climbing in North Wales and the Lake District. He took climbing holidays in the Alps, in 1938 and 1939, and joined the Climbers Club (he would continue to climb in Snowdonia when he was on leave during the war, and joined the Alpine Club in 1944).


Jones joined the Royal Engineers on the outbreak of war, and was commissioned in May 1940. Four months later the RE established bomb disposal units, and posted Jones to command No 44 Section in the Gibraltar Barracks, Bury St Edmunds, where, one day, “knowing about explosives, but nothing about bombs, I was sent to deal with a UXB, an 'unexploded bomb’ of 50kg in a field, which I detonated”. He then spent two months training on RAF bombs and German fuses

While on duty at Great Livermere in Suffolk, Jones made a significant discovery: “The Luftwaffe’s low-level bombs had a time-delay fuse which did not arm until the shell hit the ground. We could stop the fuse’s clock using strong magnets or pouring in brine, safely withdraw the fuse and then steam or burn out the explosive. German intelligence realised this and developed the concealed and dangerous “ZUS-40” anti-withdrawal device. My sergeant and I unknowingly removed a faulty one of these new devices which very luckily did not detonate.”

Jones reported the development to the War Office’s “boffins”, who immediately spread the news; in January 1941 he was appointed MBE (military) for conspicuous gallantry .
By the age of 28, Jones was a major in command of all five bomb disposal companies working in north-west London: “We always knew where the bombs were; either in a hole in the ground or dangling in a building, I didn’t feel under constant threat. In 1944 the V1 rockets started, but they offered no work for us; they all went off!”

He was then posted to the second bomb disposal platoon sent to France immediately after D-Day. His front-line duties included clearing mines, booby traps and beach obstacles throughout Normandy, and in towns such as Amiens, Nijmegen, Ypres and Ostend.

In May 1945 Jones took part in the destruction of the colossal underground complex at the fortress of Mimoyecques, built with 150,000 cubic metres of concrete 12 miles from Boulogne. This was the site of the secret V3. Until this point Allied intelligence had assessed it as a launch site for the V2 rocket

The complex had five 330ft-long shafts inclined at 50 degrees, intended to house 25 V3 multi-chambered, smooth bore super-guns which could have fired 600 finned shells an hour, each weighing more than 200lb, into central London. Two of the shafts were almost ready for use. Churchill was advised to destroy the fortress “whilst our forces are still in France” and so the Royal Engineers were ordered to do so.

Jones later recalled entering the deep shafts to investigate, only to find little equipment remaining in them. But on May 9 and May 14 1945 he and his colleagues exploded 35 tons of explosives in the shafts. An infuriated Charles de Gaulle regarded this as an attack on French sovereignty, but, as Jones would recall with a chuckle: “Somehow, a message from de Gaulle managed to reach us just a bit too late!”

After destroying the V3 complex Jones was posted to “T Force”, whose duty was to secure areas against enemy demolition and destruction in the northern Netherlands and Germany. “I was sent on a course in Bishops Stortford in February 1945, in safe-breaking and lock-picking. Our instructor was an old lag.” Following action in the second battle of Arnhem, Jones was one of the first British officers to follow the Canadians into liberated Amsterdam.

On being demobbed in 1946, Jones joined Miln and Bourne, in Birmingham, as a county valuer . He was soon climbing again in the Alps; notable ascents included the North ridge of the Dent Blanche (14,318ft) followed by the Matterhorn, Rothorn, and the whole of the Moming ridge from the Mountet.


Emlyn Jones
In 1950 he joined a commercial partnership in London, where on only his second day he was invited by HW (“Bill”) Tilman, a pre-war Everest mountaineer, to explore the region around Annapurna II and IV in Nepal. To Jones’s delight, his business partners allowed him to take five months off.

No Westerner had been permitted to travel beyond the Kathmandu Valley since two Jesuit missionaries had done so in the 17th century. There being no hotels, the party stayed at the British embassy. While others sought to climb Annapurna IV, Jones crossed the Thorong La to the sacred shrine of Muktinath, returning via the Buri Gandaki valley.

In 1952 John Hunt was preparing for his attempt on Mount Everest. As a fellow member of the Climbers and Alpine Clubs, he knew Jones well, and selected him for the reserve team. Jones regularly attended the Everest reunions, which were often held at the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel below Snowdon.

In March 1959 Jones took a party of six on the British Sola Khumbu Expedition, an attempt to climb, and undertake cardiovascular research on, Ama Dablam (22,494ft) in Nepal . Deciding to attempt the precipitous north-east spur, they established Camp 3 at 19,850ft on a route almost devoid of any level ground; they set up one tent no more than a yard from a vertical drop.

George Fraser and Mike Harris set up final camp at 21,000ft and set off for the summit on May 1. They were seen on the easier, rounded summit slopes until, at midday, clouds hid them from view. Despite extensive searches, they were never seen again, probably having perished on the way down.

In his professional life, Jones worked as a surveyor until 1968, when he began a 17-year spell at the Lands Tribunal. He became an authority on rating valuation and appeals . He was appointed CBE in 1986.

Among Jones’s interests was music: he founded a 60-piece symphony orchestra at Leighton Buzzard. He also took great pleasure from membership of the Garrick Club, where he continued to play bridge twice a week until he was 98.

Jones was president of the Climbers Club (1968-69) and of the Alpine Club (1980-82), and a council member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (1964-69). He was High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1967-68.

He contributed various articles to mountaineering journals and wrote the book The Lands Tribunal: a Practitioner’s Guide (1982).

Emlyn Jones married, in 1954, Louise Hazell, who survives him with a daughter and two sons.


Emlyn Jones, born August 6 1915, died February 4 2014

[misskit]

He sure had a good, long run. We should all be so lucky.

[Mr Lick]

Ghostbusters star Harold Ramis dies aged 69




Ramis (right) found fame in 1984's Ghostbusters, which he co-wrote with Dan Aykroyd (centre)

Actor and director Harold Ramis, best known for the films Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day, has died aged 69.

He died of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, a rare disease that involves swelling of the blood vessels, his agent told the BBC.

The star found fame as bespectacled ghost-hunter Egon Spengler in the Ghostbusters franchise in 1984.

But he was also a talented writer and director, whose credits included Caddyshack and Animal House.

"His creativity, compassion, intelligence, humour and spirit will be missed by all who knew and loved him," said his family in a statement.

The star had reportedly been quiet about his illness, which dated back to 2010.
'The real deal'

But several friends are said to have visited him recently, including Bill Murray from whom he'd been estranged for years, the Chicago Tribune said.

Harold Ramis was a brilliant, shining example for every comedy writer” - Seth McFarlane Creator of Family Guy

Ramis' death prompted an outpouring of tributes on Twitter.

Billy Crystal, who starred in the director's mobster comedies Analyze This and Analyze That, wrote: "Sad to hear my friend Harold Ramis passed away.

"A brilliant, funny actor and director. A wonderful husband and dad. Big loss to us all."






A clip of Ramis as bespectacled ghost-hunter Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters

Iron Man director Jon Favreau added: "No, no, not Harold Ramis. Worked for him years ago. He was the real deal. Growing up, his work changed my life. He will be missed."


'Straight man'

Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane wrote: "Harold Ramis was a brilliant, shining example for every comedy writer hoping to achieve excellence [in] the field."




Ramis wrote, produced and directed Groundhog Day, about an irascible TV weatherman forced to live the same 24 hours over and over

Born in Chicago to convenience store owners Ruth and Nathan, Ramis studied at Washington University in St Louis and, on graduation, briefly worked in a psychiatric ward.

He started his career as a writer by penning arts stories for his local newspaper and editing Playboy magazine's "party jokes" section.

After leaving the magazine, he joined Chicago's renowned Second City improvised comedy troupe but said he realised his limitations as a performer after encountering John Belushi.

"When I saw how far he was willing to go to get a laugh or to make a point on stage, the language he would use, how physical he was, throwing himself literally off the stage, taking big falls, strangling other actors, I thought: 'I'm never going to be this big.'"




Ramis made a total of six films with Bill Murray, including military comedy Stripes


Instead, he played the straight man - acting as a sardonic foil to Bill Murray in the army comedy Stripes, and playing the most straitlaced and scientifically inclined of the Ghostbusters trio.

The film, a global smash in 1984, spawned a sequel in 1989 as well as a long-running cartoon series. A third instalment had been in development for several years.

Ramis acknowledged that the spectral comedy was his most memorable work but took pride in its longevity.
Some Harold Ramis writing credits

• Animal House (1978)
• Meatballs (1979)
• Caddyshack (1980)
• Stripes (1981)
• Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989)
• Groundhog Day (1993)

"People love Ghostbusters in a really big way," he said in 2009. "Parents loved it for their kids. Teachers loved it.

The film remains one of the most successful comedy movies of all time, with takings of more than $500m (£300m) adjusted for inflation.

After the sequel, Ramis developed his career behind the camera, directing Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and Robert De Niro in Analyze This.

His other films included The Ice Harvest, Bedazzled and prehistoric comedy Year One, his final movie, in 2009. More recently, he had directed episodes of NBC television's The Office.

Ramis also inspired a new generation of film-makers, including Judd Apatow, who cast the director in his 2007 comedy Knocked Up.

He is survived by his wife, Erica, sons Julian and Daniel, daughter Violet and two grandchildren.




Ramis received an American Comedy Award and a Bafta for screenwriting

[Mr Lick]

Anthony Crook - obituary

Anthony Crook was a racing driver who ranged from hill-climbs and sprints to Grands Prix and later took the helm at Bristol Cars


Tony Crook behind the wheel


Anthony Crook, who has died aged 93, was closely involved with the running of Bristol Cars for many years, and a notable driver on the 1940s and 1950s racing circuit.


Competing against drivers such as Stirling Moss and Roy Salvadori, he drove competitively in some 400 hill-climbs, sprints and circuit races, including three Grands Prix.






Tony Crook in a Frazer Nash at Le Mans


Thomas Anthony Donald Crook was born in Manchester on February 16 1920. His father, a Lancastrian colliery proprietor, died during the 1926 General Strike while the family was holidaying in Southport. Instead of breaking the news to Crook, a housemaid took him to see cars racing on Southport sands.“I knew then, absolutely, that I would be a racing driver,” he said.

As a teenage pupil at Clifton Collage, Crook owned an illicit, supercharged MG PA. The false moustache he wore when driving did not prevent detection and a subsequent beating, which he ameliorated “by freezing my bum” with chemist’s anaesthetic cream.







Crook behind the wheel of his Frazer-Nash 421-BMW at the 1952 British Grand Prix at Silverstone


By 1944 Crook was an RAF mechanic, achieving the rank of Flight Lieutenant and twice being mentioned in despatches. The same year he contacted the racing car builder Raymond Mays, asking to drive for his English Racing Automobiles operation, and in 1945 Crook raced a Frazer Nash BMW 328 for Mays at an event dubbed the “Cockfosters’ Grand Prix.” The following year Crook won Britain’s first post-war circuit race at a redundant airfield in Bedfordshire.

By the late 1940s he was running a garage in Caterham, Surrey. He later recalled Alfred Moss and his 17-year-old son Stirling, buying one of a pair of unused, pre-war racing tyres for £3. Crook had planned to use them on his BMW at the first post-war Goodwood meeting and had to make do with remoulded tyres (leading with two laps to go, one deflated and he missed the £5 prize money).

In 1951, when setting an endurance record in a Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica at Montlhery, he was struck in the face by a shard of tyre. The car spun, but didn’t crash, so a new wheel was fitted and Crook continued, setting the record. He kept the tyre shard.

At Snetterton circuit in 1953 Crook drove a brakeless Alta into a farmer’s field – where he was knocked unconscious by a cabbage. Two years later he retired from motor racing, after being admitted to hospital when his Cooper spun on oil causing a collision with Stirling Moss’s car at Goodwood.




Crook in a Lancia Aurelia in the touring cars race International Trophy meeting at Silverstone in 1954

Crook’s garage business sold Simca, Abarth, Fiat and Aston Martin models. He also had the Bristol concession, becoming a director of its car division in 1960. He become an unofficial vehicle scout for Peter Sellers, whose buying habits were often augmented by peculiar, not to say unreasonable demands. “I remember him having this old Lagonda, which he reckoned wasn’t fast enough”, Crook recalled. “He phoned me from the States, telling me he’d seen a Scout armoured car; I was instructed to put a Scout engine into this Lagonda.” When Crook protested that the two-foot engine simply wouldn’t fit, the actor barked: “Do as you’re told!”

On another occasion Sellers demanded the one-off Bristol 407 convertible that Crook was having made by Carrozzeria Viotti for his own daughter, Carol. One of the few convertibles that the company ever made, Crook had sketched out the design “on the back of an envelope”. As was often the case, however, Sellers soon returned it in exchange for another car, and in the years that followed Carol, or her friend Britt Ekland, would often be seen behind the wheel.

In 1973 Crook completely took over Bristol Cars, using a light aircraft to fly between its Filton factory and Kensington showroom. Criticised by some for not changing the design template of its powerful grand tourers, Crook kept the company afloat through many economic crises . Bristol retained tight control of its parts supply, and Crook was a fierce defender of copyright, sometimes threatening legal action. Sales of spares, along with repair and restoration work, often sustained Bristol.



Tony Crook with a model Bristol 401 (BRISTOL CARS)

In 1997 Crook sold 50 per cent of the company to the businessman Toby Silverton, completely relinquishing financial control in 2001. Bristol launched the Fighter, a high performance two-seater costing over £200,000. Few found buyers and it struggled to recoup its development costs.

Crook, who’d stayed on as managing director, left acrimoniously in 2007. Arriving at Bristol’s showroom he found the locks had been changed, and collapsed in the street. In 2011 Bristol went into administration. The name and assets were sold on, but Crook was deeply saddened.

On casual acquaintance Crook sometimes appeared severe, but in private was often warm and mischievous. He was also a Fats Waller devotee. Waller’s Your Feet’s Too Big was played at his funeral.

His wife, Diane, predeceased him in 2011. His daughter survives him.


Anthony Crook, born February 16 1920, died January 20 2014

[Mr Lick]

Alice Herz-Sommer - obituary

Alice Herz-Sommer was a concert pianist whose musical talent and cheery optimism saved her from death in the Holocaust


Alice Herz-Sommers at home in Belsize Park


Alice Herz-Sommer, who has died aged 110, was a pianist whose unending optimism came to symbolise the triumph of good over evil. She survived two years in Terezín, the “model” concentration camp used by the Nazis to convince the outside world that they were treating Jewish prisoners well, and at the time of her death was the oldest known Holocaust survivor.


Having achieved success in Prague as a child pianist in the 1920s, Alice Herz-Sommer was a finalist in the Vienna International Piano Competition in 1933 before playing for Artur Schnabel in Berlin. The critics at her early performances were enthusiastic. In 1923 the Czech newspaper Bohemia noted how when she performed Beethoven’s Sonata in A flat major Op 110, “her interpretation measured up to that of [Wilhelm Bakhaus] her famous rival”.


When Czechoslovakia was annexed by the Germans in 1939 she sought solace by learning Chopin’s 24 Études. Her husband Leopold was required by the SS to work for the Jewish Community Organisation, drawing up lists for “transport”. Eventually, in July 1943, he too was required to make the journey to Terezín (or Theresienstadt) with his wife and their infant son.


Alice Herz-Sommer’s first recital in Terezín was organised by Otto Zucker, a leading member of the Autonomous Jewish Administration in the camp. Meanwhile her son took part in Brundibar, an opera written by Hans Kraza for the camp’s children. She also took part in performances of Verdi’s Requiem directed by the conductor Rafael Schaechter. However her mother, husband and other family members all died, while she and her son lived in a barrack room in appalling conditions.


After the war Alice Herz-Sommer returned to Prague. But finding that anti-Semitism had taken hold in her homeland she eventually made her way to the new nation of Israel, where she taught at the Jerusalem Conservatory and often appeared in concert



She settled finally in North London in the 1980s, where she became the doyenne of the Jewish musical community, living an independent life full of good humour and insisting that optimism was the key to her longevity. “Life is beautiful, extremely beautiful,” she told Alan Rusbridger in 2006. “And when you are old you appreciate it more.”

Alice Herz was born on November 26 1903 in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. She was the fourth child of Friedrich, the wealthy owner of a factory that made weighing scales, and his wife Sofie, and was quickly followed by a twin, Marianne (Mizzi). She had three elder siblings.

Sofie, who was from a musical Moravian family, had been a childhood friend of Gustav Mahler and took young Alice to the premiere of his Second Symphony. The family also socialised with Franz Kafka and his associates. The music in this secular Jewish family was dominated by Dvorák, who was still alive when Alice was born, while the Prague of her childhood was a cultural and intellectual melting pot of Germans, Czechs and Jews.



Alice Herz-Sommer as a young woman

Irma, Alice’s elder sister, was her first piano teacher and she played duets with her violinist brother. She also had lessons with Václav Stepán, who had studied in Paris with Marguerite Long. Her diminutive height was of concern, and for a while Alice’s father paid for her to be stretched in an orthopaedic machine. It had little effect – other than to cause great pain – and she never grew taller than 5ft.

She recalled knitting socks for Habsburg soldiers during the First World War, despite the rampant inflation, poverty and hunger. The end of that conflict led to a rise in Czech nationalism – and with it anti-Semitism. Despite this, in 1920 she entered the German Academy of Music and Drama in Prague, which was headed by Alexander von Zemlinsky, a former pupil of Brahms. There she was taught by Conrad Ansorge, who had been in Liszt’s masterclasses in 1885 and 1886.

Her formal concert debut came in the spring of 1924 when she performed Chopin’s Concerto in E minor with the Czech Philharmonic to a sold-out hall, drawing rave reviews. She continued to perform regularly in Prague and also built up a solid collection of private students. Meanwhile Max Brod, Kafka’s publisher, was singing her praises among his intellectual acquaintances.




Alice with her son Stephan (later Raphael)

In 1933 Alice was invited to take part in the first Vienna International Piano Competition – but she forgot the date and had to take an overnight train and beg the organisers to allow her to be heard a day late. She made it to the final, but often wondered if better organisation on her part might have led to outright victory.

She was in Wenceslas Square on March 16 1939, cautiously observing the German invasion, when an open-topped vehicle came past carrying Adolf Hitler, his right arm lifted in a Nazi salute. Over the next three years her rights and freedoms were gradually whittled away. Like all Jews she was required to wear a yellow star on her coat and soon was barred from teaching non-Jewish piano students. “Everything was forbidden. We couldn’t buy groceries, take the tram or go to the park,” she recalled.

Her sickly 72-year-old mother was deported in 1942 carrying just a small rucksack, never to be seen again, and the following year Alice, her husband and their son were sent to Terezín. Even before they were out of the door their neighbours and former friends were taking their pictures, carpets and furniture.



While in captivity Alice Herz-Sommer gave more than a hundred concerts, often drawing strength from the Chopin Études that she had memorised. She recalled many years later how the Nazis had used Terezín — where hundreds of writers, artists and musicians were incarcerated — to present a false impression to the outside world.

“We had to play because the Red Cross came three times a year,” she said, adding contemptuously: “It was propaganda.”

Yet some individuals did retain their humanity. On one occasion she was summoned by name by a Nazi officer. Fearing the worst she approached in trepidation, but he simply said: “I can hear your concert from the window. I come from a musical family and understand music. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

After their Russian liberators arrived in May 1945, Alice and her son — one of only 130 children to survive the camp from 15,000 who were sent there — returned to Prague. A midnight concert that she gave on Czech radio was picked up on short-wave in Jerusalem. It alerted her family, notably Mizzi, her twin, who in 1939 had left on the last train out of Prague to escape to Palestine, to the fact that she was alive.

In 1949, with postwar anti-Semitism still swirling around Prague and the Communists tightening their grip, Alice Herz-Sommer finally joined her family in Israel. She was appointed to the teaching staff at the Jerusalem Conservatory, learnt Hebrew and rebuilt her life. For almost 40 years she enjoyed “the best period in my life… I was happy”.

Although the war was little discussed in Israel, when Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by the Israeli Secret Service she was invited by Gideon Hausner, the Attorney General who was a friend and also a pianist, to witness his trial in 1962. “I pitied him,” she later said of Hitler’s lieutenant.

By the 1980s Alice Herz-Sommer was once more feeling isolated. Many of those in her immediate family who had survived the Holocaust had died and the younger ones were working outside Israel.

In 1986 she moved to Belsize Park, in North London, to be near her son. There she studied with the University of the Third Age and enjoyed swimming up to 20 lengths a day until the age of 99. When she lost the use of two fingers she re-learnt much of the piano repertoire for eight fingers, continuing to play — alone or with friends, including the cellist Anita Wallfisch who had played in the Auschwitz orchestra — well into her second century and recommending a diet of fish, chicken soup and Bach to her many visitors.



Alice with her husband Leopold in the 1930s

Her story was told in A Garden of Eden in Hell, by Melissa Müller and Reinhard Piechocki, published in 2007; she was also the subject of two films by Christopher Nupen; Everything is Present, a tender portrait made in 2010, and his earlier We Want the Light. The Lady in Number 6, a short documentary about her life directed by Malcolm Clarke, has been nominated for a prize in this year’s Academy Awards .

Speaking to Haaretz in 2010, Alice Herz-Sommer declared that, despite everything, she did not hate the Germans. “[What they did] was a terrible thing, but was Alexander the Great any better?” she said. “Evil has always existed and always will. It is part of our life.”

She married Leopold Sommer, a businessman, in 1931. He was sent from Terezín to Auschwitz and then Dachau, where he died from typhus in 1944.

Their son Stephan adopted the name Raphael while growing up in Israel. He became a successful international cellist, but died suddenly from a heart attack while on a concert tour of Israel in 2001. “I am grateful that he did not suffer,” said Alice Herz-Sommer, who herself had suffered enough during her eleven decades.


Alice Herz-Sommer, born November 26 1903, died February 23 2014

[toslti]

Ghostbusters star Harold Ramis dies aged 69




Ramis (right) found fame in 1984's Ghostbusters, which he co-wrote with Dan Aykroyd (centre)

Actor and director Harold Ramis, best known for the films Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day, has died aged 69.

He died of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, a rare disease that involves swelling of the blood vessels, his agent told the BBC.

The star found fame as bespectacled ghost-hunter Egon Spengler in the Ghostbusters franchise in 1984.

But he was also a talented writer and director, whose credits included Caddyshack and Animal House.

"His creativity, compassion, intelligence, humour and spirit will be missed by all who knew and loved him," said his family in a statement.

The star had reportedly been quiet about his illness, which dated back to 2010.
'The real deal'

But several friends are said to have visited him recently, including Bill Murray from whom he'd been estranged for years, the Chicago Tribune said.

Harold Ramis was a brilliant, shining example for every comedy writer” - Seth McFarlane Creator of Family Guy

Ramis' death prompted an outpouring of tributes on Twitter.

Billy Crystal, who starred in the director's mobster comedies Analyze This and Analyze That, wrote: "Sad to hear my friend Harold Ramis passed away.

"A brilliant, funny actor and director. A wonderful husband and dad. Big loss to us all."






A clip of Ramis as bespectacled ghost-hunter Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters

Iron Man director Jon Favreau added: "No, no, not Harold Ramis. Worked for him years ago. He was the real deal. Growing up, his work changed my life. He will be missed."


'Straight man'

Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane wrote: "Harold Ramis was a brilliant, shining example for every comedy writer hoping to achieve excellence [in] the field."




Ramis wrote, produced and directed Groundhog Day, about an irascible TV weatherman forced to live the same 24 hours over and over

Born in Chicago to convenience store owners Ruth and Nathan, Ramis studied at Washington University in St Louis and, on graduation, briefly worked in a psychiatric ward.

He started his career as a writer by penning arts stories for his local newspaper and editing Playboy magazine's "party jokes" section.

After leaving the magazine, he joined Chicago's renowned Second City improvised comedy troupe but said he realised his limitations as a performer after encountering John Belushi.

"When I saw how far he was willing to go to get a laugh or to make a point on stage, the language he would use, how physical he was, throwing himself literally off the stage, taking big falls, strangling other actors, I thought: 'I'm never going to be this big.'"




Ramis made a total of six films with Bill Murray, including military comedy Stripes


Instead, he played the straight man - acting as a sardonic foil to Bill Murray in the army comedy Stripes, and playing the most straitlaced and scientifically inclined of the Ghostbusters trio.

The film, a global smash in 1984, spawned a sequel in 1989 as well as a long-running cartoon series. A third instalment had been in development for several years.

Ramis acknowledged that the spectral comedy was his most memorable work but took pride in its longevity.
Some Harold Ramis writing credits

• Animal House (1978)
• Meatballs (1979)
• Caddyshack (1980)
• Stripes (1981)
• Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989)
• Groundhog Day (1993)

"People love Ghostbusters in a really big way," he said in 2009. "Parents loved it for their kids. Teachers loved it.

The film remains one of the most successful comedy movies of all time, with takings of more than $500m (£300m) adjusted for inflation.

After the sequel, Ramis developed his career behind the camera, directing Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and Robert De Niro in Analyze This.

His other films included The Ice Harvest, Bedazzled and prehistoric comedy Year One, his final movie, in 2009. More recently, he had directed episodes of NBC television's The Office.

Ramis also inspired a new generation of film-makers, including Judd Apatow, who cast the director in his 2007 comedy Knocked Up.

He is survived by his wife, Erica, sons Julian and Daniel, daughter Violet and two grandchildren.




Ramis received an American Comedy Award and a Bafta for screenwriting

I watched Stripes over the weekend... very enjoyable

[harrybarracuda]

That last one was shit though, Year One or something.

[Mr Lick]

Duffy Power - obituary

Duffy Power was a Sixties pop artist who found his niche as 'the best British blues singer there was’




Duffy Power, who has died aged 72, was a British pop star turned R&B vocalist who brought a troubled intensity to home-grown blues.


Power began his recording career under the direction of Larry Parnes, Britain’s first major rock manager and a leading figure of the 1950s and 1960s music scene. Parnes took in young artists and relaunched them as teen idols, under stage names like Tommy Steele, Billy Fury and Dickie Pride. Power (real name Ray Howard) was among Parnes’s most gifted protégés; yet his thoughtful, blues-orientated vocals were unsuited to the conventional rock & roll mould allotted him, and by 1963 the 22-year-old singer-guitarist had struck out on his own, demonstrating his range and flexibility with a guitar/vocal cover of the Lennon/McCartney song I Saw Her Standing There. Backed by the Graham Bond Quartet, a recut version played on the BBC’s Pop Goes The Beatles later that year.


I Saw Her Standing There also marked a permanent shift in Power’s musical approach, and he went on to play with the likes of John McLaughlin, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce on a number of R&B/jazz fusion tracks, which were met with critical acclaim but poor sales. A self-titled solo album followed in 1972. Yet before long the earlier discontent, now exacerbated by drug and alcohol abuse, had forced Power’s retreat from the music scene.


“Screwed up and penniless”, as he put it himself, Power lived a reclusive existence writing in his flat, finally resurfacing towards the end of the 1980s through performances on BBC radio. The subsequent re-release of his compiled singles on CD ushered in a new following, struck by the soulful intensity of his covers and original folk blues compositions. The Irish composer and music journalist Colin Harper described him as “the best British blues singer there was”, his paranoia and insecurities a sad barrier to the success he deserved. It was Harper who helped Power, with the dawn of the new millennium, to compile material for Sky Blues (2009), consisting of vintage BBC sessions.


Three years later, again with Harper’s encouragement, Power released Tigers, his first new album in nearly four decades.


He was born Raymond Howard in Fulham, south-west London, on September 9 1941 and left school aged 14, beginning work in a laundry the following year. He acquired the moniker “Duffy” while playing in a skiffle band with friends, who had taken their inspiration from a film poster featuring Howard Duff. Parnes spotted him onstage in 1959 at the Shepherd’s Bush Gaumont, signed him up and rechristened him “Duffy Power” after Tyrone Power, who had died that week.

Performing in leopard-skin jackets and blue-and-gold lamé suits, Power released some half dozen singles on Fontana Records, yet before long his fortunes were on the wane. A friend rescued him from a failed suicide bid and took him to a Soho blues club to recover, where he discovered the music that would sustain him through the rest of his career.

It Ain’t Necessarily So (1963), a cover of the Porgy & Bess song for EMI’s Parlophone label, proved something of an airwaves hit, while subsequent original releases included Tired, Broke and Busted (1964), with backing from The Paramounts. Power could also be heard alongside Blues Incorporated, the R&B band headed by Alexis Korner.

Although their relationship got off to a stormy start when Korner appropriated several of Power’s original compositions for himself, the association did offer several recording opportunities with the group, notably on Sky High (1966).

Away from Blues Incorporated, Power also worked as a session musician, and played on the soundtrack for the 1969 heist film The Italian Job. An early 1990s collaboration with the jazz saxophonist Dick Hestall-Smith was among the material incorporated into Sky Blues.

Duffy Power is survived by his wife, Val.


Duffy Power, born September 9 1941, died February 9 2014

[harrybarracuda]

Director-producer Clifford John Bole, who helmed more than 40 episodes of various “Star Trek” series, died Feb. 15 at his home in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 76.

Bole directed 25 episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” seven of “Deep Space Nine” and 10 of “Voyager.” The Bolians, a race of aliens introduced in “TNG” episode “Conspiracy,” were named for him.

Bole also helmed episodes of series including “Baywatch,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Fantasy Island,” “MacGyver,” “M.A.N.T.I.S.,” “Matt Houston,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Scarecrow and Mrs. King,”
“Spenser for Hire,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “The X Files,” “T.J. Hooker” and “Vegas.”

Bole was a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. He maintained strong ties with the stunt community, including close friendships with Ronnie Rondell, Roy Snuffy Harrison and the late Hal Needham.

Born in San Francisco, Bole grew up in the San Fernando Valley, Calif., where he played in the backlots of studios, sneaking in with friends to watch productions in progress. He began his professional life as a script clerk, advancing to script supervisor and production supervisor assignments before breaking into directing. One of his first positions was script supervisor on “McHale’s Navy” in 1964.

Bole graduated from Harvard Military School and served in the U.S. Army, where he was stationed in Korea. He briefly attended USC.

After retiring to the Coachella Valley, Bole made creative contributions to key local projects. He recently completed the documentary “Cars Under the Stars,” showcasing the popular event El Paseo Cruise Night.

He is survived by his wife, Brenda; his daughter and two sons; and two grandsons.

Donations may be made to a cancer research organization. A celebration of life will be held later in the year.

[harrybarracuda]

"Warriors.... come out to playyyyyyyyyyyy"!



Roger Hill, who played gang leader Cyrus in Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic “The Warriors,” died Thursday in New York. He was 65.

Hill spent nearly 20 years as an actor, working mostly in theater. He was an early participant in the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop and appeared in Off Broadway and touring productions of Charles Gordone’s “No Place to Be Somebody,” Ed Bullins’ “The Fabulous Miss Marie” and “Hamlet.”

But the role with which he made the biggest impression was the charismatic but doomed gang lord Cyrus in Paramount’s “The Warriors.” He also played Alec Lowndes on ABC’s “One Life to Live” from 1982-85.

In 2005 he filed a lawsuit of $250,000 against Rockstar Games for using his voice and depicting him in the videogame based on “The Warriors.”

Born and raised in New York City, Hill graduated from the City College of New York. In later years, he left acting and spent time working as a part=time librarian and writing poetry.

He is survived by his only son, film editor Chris W. Hill.

[harrybarracuda]

Paco de Lucía, the brilliant guitarist who pioneered the fusion of flamenco and jazz, has died suddenly of what preliminary reports suggest might be a heart attack. He was 66.

The native of Algeciras (Cádiz) was playing at the beach with his children in the Mexican resort of Cancún, where he owns a home, when he suddenly felt ill, according to his close friend Victoriano Mera. He died on his way to hospital.

The city of Algeciras has decreed three days of mourning and will assist the family in bringing the body home.

De Lucía was a globally admired artist who won the 2004 Prince of Asturias Award for his tireless exploration of the possibilities of flamenco. He will also be remembered for his association with the late flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla during the 1960s and 70s.

The musician had been living in Palma de Mallorca for several years, although he also spent periods in Cuba and the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico. Those who knew him back in Mallorca say he had been less keen about playing the guitar of late. De Lucía preferred to spend time with regular people rather than join intellectual and artistic circles. He also devoted a lot of his time to his two young children.

Born Francisco Sánchez Gómez in 1947, De Lucía, shunned his own legend. Fame came early, in 1975, with his by-now famous rumba Entre dos aguas. It was the last track on the album of the same name that made its way into hundreds of thousands of Spanish homes as society was beginning to shake off the dark dust of the Franco dictatorship.

His association with Camarón alone – the pair released over 10 albums of traditional flamenco together as well as a flamenco-pop-rock fusion record - would have been enough to make De Lucía famous. But there was a lot more to come. His flirtation with jazz earned him accusations of bastardizing flamenco, but he kept on pushing the limits of his music and by the mid-1970s he had formed a sextet that included his two brothers, Pepe de Lucía and Ramón de Algeciras, as well as Jorge Pardo, Carles Benavent and Rubem Dantas. This musical group introduced the Peruvian cajón, a percussion instrument comprising a tall wooden box, into flamenco. Since then, it has become a staple of the genre.

De Lucía also incorporated blues, Indian music, salsa, bossa nova and Arabic music into his own sound. His performances at the Teatro Real opera house in Madrid helped blur the border between high-brow and popular music.

“Everything that can be expressed with the six strings of the guitar is there in his hands,” said the jury that handed him the Prince of Asturias award.

[misskit]

That's really sad. He was a great musician.



I saw him perform at Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society one Sunday afternoon in Half Moon Bay. Such beautiful guitar.