I just learned of the death of a Hollywood great you’ve probably never heard of, but whose contribution to classic cinema cannot be underestimated. Peter Ellenshaw was a special-effects master whose specialty was a now-defunct art called “matte painting.”
So, Anna Nicole.
I must confess, I wasn’t a fan. I thought she was a bimbo, actually, a grotesque and idiotic caricature of feminity, and an example of everything that’s wrong with the American worship of fame for fame’s sake.
Nevertheless, I find that I actually feel bad about her sudden death. She always seemed like such a helpless creature, and she has had a heavy ration of crap handed to her recently: the death of her 20-year-old son, the paternity battle over her infant son daughter, the on-going inheritance battle, and a newly minted class-action suit that named her, specifically, as a co-defendant. I have a hunch we’re going to find out she died of an overdose, either accidental or deliberate. I find it very easy to imagine her washing down pills with a glass of vodka while blubbering that we wouldn’t have Anna Nicole to kick around anymore. That’s a terribly sad ending for any human being, even one whose only apparent goal in life was to “be famous.”
I guess she managed that, though, didn’t she? She’ll now be enshrined alongside all those other starlets who met untimely and pathetic ends. Maybe that’s what she’s really wanted all the way along…
Ah, man, here’s another one: the writer Sidney Sheldon died Tuesday, aged 89. I’ve never read any of his novels, but I Dream of Jeannie, the ridiculous sitcom he created back in the 1965, has always been a favorite of mine. Growing up, it was part of my afternoon block of “must-see” syndicated re-runs, which also included (on a rotating basis over the years) Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, Hogan’s Heroes, Bewitched (that other sitcom about a hot blonde with magical powers), Get Smart, Laugh In, and, of course, Star Trek. As a little kid, I grooved on the slapstick of whatever trouble Majors Nelson and Healey got themselves into. When I got a little older, my interest in Jeannie became a little more, ahem, adult in nature. Let’s just say that, If nothing else, Sheldon deserves our respect for bringing us the sight of Barbara Eden in diaphanous pants.
Ah, the glories of a misspent youth…
I just learned from Scalzi that the columnist Molly Ivins has died. According to her obit, it was breast cancer and she was 62, about the same age as my mom.
This is really shaping up to be a crappy day.
In an occupation filled with self-important, mean-spirited blowhards who aren’t nearly as funny or smart as they think they are, Molly Ivins was a class act. Yes, she was unabashedly liberal, and yes, she was unsparing in her criticism of those politicians she thought were in the wrong, but she was also a sharp thinker who was motivated more by common sense and heartfelt populism than cynical partisanship. She took plenty of shots at Bill Clinton during his time in office, too. And she was damn funny when she did it. I’m going to miss her columns, which so often seemed to say (in folksier language, of course) exactly what I was thinking and feeling but couldn’t quite articulate.
I’m sure everyone who writes about Molly today will link to these items as well, but here is a tribute to her by her editor at Creator’s Syndicate, from which you can navigate to all her 2006 columns, and here is her final column, a protest against the president’s “surge” plan. Personally, however, I much preferred an earlier one that included this cri de couer:
What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn’t supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny? Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?
It’s a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there. Since 1215, civil authorities have been obligated to tell people with what they are charged if they’re arrested. This administration has done away with rights first enshrined in the Magna Carta nearly 800 years ago, and we’ve let them do it. [Emphasis hers.]
Yep, there she goes again, saying what I’ve been thinking in better language than I’ve managed to summon on my own.
Huh… while digging for material about Yvonne DeCarlo, I learned that her Munsters co-star Al Lewis died just under a year ago, on February 3, 2006, at the age of 82. Somehow that little tidbit slipped past my notice. Here is an NPR obit for him.
He must’ve been quite a character. According to that article, he operated a restaurant in Greenwich Village, at which he was frequently present to sign autographs and pose for pictures. He once got the radio time-delay button pressed on him for getting obscene on the Howard Stern show. He even turned up on a DVD about punk band The Ramones. But this was the bit that made me chuckle:
In 2000, a ponytailed Lewis ran as the Green Party candidate against incumbent Gov. George Pataki. Lewis campaigned against draconian drug laws and the death penalty, while going to court in a losing battle to have his name appear on the ballot as “Grandpa Al Lewis.”
In 2000, he must’ve been around 76 years old. I hope I’m still rattling chains and wearing a ponytail when I’m 76. Rest in peace, Grandpa Munster…
Another of those familiar faces I grew up with, Yvonne DeCarlo of Munsters fame, died Monday, aged 84. Here is one of the more comprehensive obits for her.
The Munsters wasn’t great television — personally, I’ve always thought the show’s contemporary rival The Addams Family was smarter, sexier, and funnier — but it was reliably entertaining, making up for its pedestrian storylines with a charming cast and some fairly nifty production design. (I’ve always loved the staircase with the secret trapdoor leading down to the basement, and the two Munster cars custom-built by the legendary George Barris were the apotheosis of a 12-year-old boy’s automotive fantasies.) As Lily Munster, the wife/mother character in what was really a basic family sitcom with a strange-looking family, DeCarlo mostly served as straight-woman to Fred Gwynne’s Herman and Al Lewis as Grandpa. However, she occasionally got some good one-liners of her own, and while she didn’t display the same dangerous brand of sexuality as Morticia Addams (played in her TV incarnation by Carolyn Jones), Lily was a beautiful woman. Er, vampire. Whatever.
Looking around the ‘net, I see that Bijou Bob has a brief tribute to DeCarlo, which includes a sultry photo of her in one of her B-movie roles years before Lily Munster, and Jaime J. Weinman posts a YouTube clip of her with Burt Lancaster in Criss Cross, as well as an audio clip of her singing in Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. And here is the famous opening title sequence for The Munsters, featuring Lily bidding farewell to her various family members as they head out for their day. Watch for that trapdoor I mentioned; someday, I will have one of those…
http://youtu.be/8TTIqK9nFH8
I just learned that Mike Evans, the first actor to play Archie Bunker’s neighbor and occasional antagonist Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family (there were two Lionels, you know), died a couple weeks ago at the age of 57. As with so many others I eulogize around here, it was the damned cancer that got him. What a shame — 57 isn’t very old, and I’m sure he had lots of living left to do.
A quick scan of Joel Schlosberg’s Carl Sagan meta-post would suggest that the Memorial Blog-a-Thon was a success — by my count, Joel links to roughly 125 blog entries and online essays, many of them in languages other than English (I’m honored to be among them, not too far from Scalzi’s listing), and I imagine there are others around the ‘net that did not get listed by Joel for one reason or another. I’ve read a number of them, and they’re all moving tributes. But the best thing I’ve read in conjunction with all of this is, not surprisingly, the remarks made by Carl’s own son, Nick Sagan. He remembers Carl not as some inspiring idol-figure or media personality, but simply as Dad, a human being with hobbies and quirks, just like the rest of us. I was amused to learn, for instance, that the great astronomer and science advocate Carl Sagan liked to play pinball, that he loved basketball and grew to appreciate The Simpsons after a bad first impression, but never enjoyed Beavis and Butthead or Aliens, and that he “talked” with dolphins in their “native tongue.” And then there was this touching father-son moment:
Today is the tenth anniversary of Carl Sagan’s death and the Memorial Blog-a-Thon I mentioned the other day is now underway. (See Joel Schlosberg’s big meta-post for links to participating blogs. Not surprisingly, John Scalzi has a tribute worthy of your time, as does Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy and Lou Friedman of The Planetary Society, which Sagan co-founded.)
Film director Robert Altman has died. He was 81.